Dungeon Travelers 2 The Royal Library and the Seal of Mamono

After reading an article that caught my eye at Kotaku that lists ten games Japanese gamers recommend this year, Dungeon Travelers 2 caught my interest.  Easily described as a Moe dungeon crawler RPG with tons of fanservice, with tons of ecchi CG's and just about every enemy in the game being some kind of anthropomorphosized monster-girl, or fruit,(seriously Fruit.).  Aside from all of that, it is a pretty enjoyable game that differentiates itself a lot from other dungeon crawlers.

For one, you don't create your own characters in this game.  Instead as you progress, new girls join your team about every chapter of the game and each of them have their own classes available and you build your party around it.  Speaking of classes, there are tons of them as there are five base classes that split into a large class tree.  From the first class it splits into two, and from those it splits into another two.
For example here is the fighter class tree from this wiki

Fighter	Paladin	Valkyrie
		Samurai
	Berserker	Samurai
		Dark Lord

Gameplay is standard dungeon crawler RPG fare, explore dungeons, find treasure, fill maps, random encounters, trap floors etc.  In battle each character takes turns like your normal RPG instead of the usual your team then enemy team turn orders most dungeon crawlers take like Etrian Odyssey.  The battles flow pretty fast from what I've played and aren't as slow or as difficult as many dungeon crawlers usually are.

I happened across a sale on the Limited Edition premium box set for the game shortly after reading the article at yesasia.com.  From their full retail price of $128.99 to just $79.99 I took the opportunity to snag it up for myself.  Consider myself lucky :P

The premium box set includes a cardboard box that holds inside the game, a deck of playing cards decorated with some of the monsters from the game, a artbook, soundtrack, and drama CD.  I was also lucky to still receive the pre-order bonus that I guess yesasia had leftovers of which include a PSP skin and a PSN code for a PSP custom theme.

The game was released in Japan in March 28 2013 and is rated for 17+.

Developed by Aquaplus, Game Website http://aquaplus.jp/dt2/   

[Review] Magical Drop V

A cult-classic puzzle game by some, the Magical Drop series is a fast-paced puzzle game with an emphasis on matching colored orbs to create combos to crowd your opponents screen to win, similar to the Bust-A-Move series by Taito.  Back in the day I've played a bit with an earlier entry, Magical Drop 3, and it was extremely fun.  Now the newest entry in the series makes it's appearance on Steam and it is a blast.

Released on November 15th, Magical Drop V features a story mode for solo play, along with local play versus modes, which includes a 2-on-2 team battle mode and a 4 player king of the hill.  There's also online play for each of the modes and leaderboards for high scores.  The game features 10 playable characters w/ 4 unlockables.  Each character in the Magical Drop series is made unique with a drop pattern.  As you create combos, orbs will drop in a pattern unique to that character.

New in Magical Drop V is the Ghostlop game mode, which apparently was an unreleased arcade game that got incorporated into Magical Drop V.  Ghostlop is accessed by playing a select few characters and at first glance it looks similar to playing Bust-A-Move, but it is completely different.  Ghostlop is played by tossing a fireball up towards an arrangement of blue and orange colored ghost orbs, and to break them your fireball can switch between a blue and orange glow to destroy the appropriate colors.  It's a more difficult game mode from my experience.

Winning a round of Magical Drop comes down to 2 different objectives. First is to meet the quota, which is to destroy a certain number of orbs before your opponent. The other method is if a column of orbs reaches the bottom of the screen.  So to do real well in this game is to be fast and have a good eye for setting up combos.

The story mode is just your typical arcade style solo play where you pick a character and go through some short dialouge between them and the various cast of the game till you reach the final stage and play off against a boss character.

The graphics are in a clean and crisp HD with a very colorful scheme to it all.  The visual effects are great when combos are made as orbs explode, and as high combos are made, there are some nice magical visual effects such as water bubbling, fire blazing, and thunder appearing on screen.

The sound effects are satisfying as you pop orbs and that really energizing ding you hear when you keep comboing goes into a higher pitch gets you pumped up.  Characters are voiced in Japanese, but some of them can sound a little bit obnoxious.  Music is a nice, light, and cheerful tune when on the various menu screens, while during matches they're more faster paced, but it's difficult to pay attention to it when the sound of popping orbs and combos are just all over the place.

Overall, Magical Drop V is a real fun fast paced puzzler that is great to kill any amount of free time.  The game is available on Steam for $9.99.

[Review] Hatsune Miku Project Diva f

The newest game from Japan's popular virtual idol has arrived at last bringing a whole new set of songs and features to the series on the PS Vita.  There's a good lot of content in the game this time around so lets get moving through the review.

The game has a great selection of popular Vocaloid songs, a total of 32 in this game.  Gameplay basically involves you pressing the corresponding face button as a icon flies across the screen to a target. Hitting notes at the right time will raise your "song energy" or health but missing them or hitting them with bad timing will deplete it as shown at the bottom left of the game screen.  At the bottom is a progress meter than shows your Completion.  A song is considered complete if you score a ranking of Standard or higher.  Higher ranks are earned through hitting more notes perfectly.

There are several new features added to the game with this latest version as well, such as scratch targets where you swipe your finger on the touchscreen as the note hits the target, and a "Technical Zone" where you need to hit all the targets to earn a large amount of bonus points and progress towards clearing the song.  Missing any notes during this will fail the Technical Zone and you will lose the bonus.

Each song also has another bonus section called a Chance Time where all notes will fill a special star meter that takes the place of the health gauge temporarily.  When it is filled and you near the end of Chance Time a large star target will appear and if you hit it while the star gauge is filled you earn a handful of bonus points and completion progress as well as an alternate song ending.  As you complete a song you earn diva points which is the game's currency used to unlock new costumes and items.

Outside of the main rhythm game mode, there is a shop where you can buy many costumes and accessories, or modules as the game calls them, room items and decorations for the Diva Rooms, and presents to give to your virtual idols.  The Diva Room is a mode where you can interact with Miku or any of the other Vocaloids, and also acts as a menu for a bunch of bonus features such as the gallery for all the art seen during the load screens and a playlist with all the songs.  It also includes an alarm clock and kitchen timer feature.  Giving presents to a Vocaloid and using the Touch Communication feature will increase their friendship with the player and as it raised it unlocks new items in the store.

 

There is also an edit mode where you can add music from your Vita's playlist to create your own songs to play.  Lastly there's an Augmented Reality mode where you can display a "life-size" Miku or any other Vocaloid in the real world and take pictures with them.  You can also enable a AR-live concert where they will perform a song and dance while in AR mode.  If only the Vita's built-in camera quality was better, this would make for really fun pictures.

As you select a song, you are given some options before starting play.  One of the options is with each song, you can select which modules you want to use.  Each song will usually default with the original Hatsune Miku, save for songs that are sung by other Vocaloids such as Megurine Luka in which case it uses their default module. Once you select or change the appearance for that song's character, it will be saved for the next time you play that song.  If you select another song, it will have a different set up so each one has a independent module.  You can also save and load modules you create so you can easily load up a unique appearance you made for one song to use in any other one.

 

Another option you are given is to view the current song as a PV or a music video without the in-game display. 

And lastly, before you begin a playing a song, you can choose to buy a help item to assist you with clearing a difficult song, or purchasing a challenge item which makes it a little bit more difficult but with more benefits in the end.  Clearing a song with a help item will usually award you the lowest rank upon clearing, but it helps you not fail it.  Challenge items include having the targets appear much later to the point where you almost miss them, to having only half your health and you must clear the song before it depletes.  By clearing with a challenge item, you can earn 2x to 4x the amount of diva points.

Overall I'm really enjoying this game compared to previous entries in the Project Diva series.  The graphics are just so sharp, bright, and detailed; and the costumes are all just wonderful.  Menu navigation as a whole has improved in my opinion, as you can select a different module for each song independently of each other.  I also really like the songs they put in the game.  Some of my favorites include Himitsu Keisatsu (Secret Police), World's End Dancehall, and Black Rock Shooter, which finally makes its Project Diva debut.

So if you're a big Vocaloid fan, this game is a must have.

[Review] Persona 4 Arena

What do you get when you mix Arc System Works, the creators of Guilty Gear and BlazBlue, with a popular franchise from Atlus like Persona 4?  You get one awesome fighting game and a well written but lengthy story mode.

Set two months after the ending of Persona 4, our originally unnamed hero, Yu Narukami, returns to Inaba for a Golden Week break.  Upon his return, he and his friends discover that the Midnight Channel has returned.  This new broadcast is stranger than the ones they've seen before however, as Yu Narukami and his friends are all featured in what appears to be a fighting competition labeled the P-1 Grand Prix.  Yu and his friends all join up to reform their Investigation Team to solve this new mystery.

Persona 4 Arena comes with a handful of game modes typical of modern fighting games such as Arcade, Versus, Training, Network, Score Attack, and a Lesson Mode for beginners.
The story mode originally starts with four members of the cast, but will expand as you complete them, further unlock more characters stories.  You will be spending most of your time in story mode reading through dialogue with only a few fights in between.  It's definitely a more enjoyable and immersive experience if you have played the original game before so I recommend it if you haven't.

The gameplay in Persona 4 Arena is slightly different from other fighters.  There is an automatic combo mechanic which if you continue pressing the light attack button it will create a basic combo.
Whats also unique is in the fact that every one of the 13 playable character has their own Persona that is controlled independently.  Personas though should be sent out cautiously as they can be rendered unusable for a limited amount of time if they get hit too much, leaving you to fight at half strength.
Each character has a very unique play-style and no one plays like each other.

Online play features ranked games and custom lobbies that can hold up to 8 players.  Each match is recordable and replayable from the gallery.  A neat little feature is the ability to create you own title that is displayed by your online username by putting 3 different phrases together.

The game has a wonderful soundtrack and includes both Japanese and English audio dubs.  The game includes a lot of the soundtrack from Persona 4 with a few from Persona 3 as well, with a handful of new songs for the game.  One note though for fans of the original Persona 4 dub is the replacement of Chie Satonaka and Teddie's voice actors.  Though we will miss their original voices, the new actors still do a great job bringing them to life.

Since Persona 4 Arena is developed by Arc System Works, you can expect sharp, 2D HD character sprites similar to BlazBlue on a 3D background environment.  There's loads of well made animations, flashy moves and effects, and the color scheme of game fits well into Persona 4 with all the yellow menu screens and in-game HUD.

Persona 4 Arena is a wonderful package and a must buy for fighting game enthusiasts and for fans of the original Persona 4 who want a worthy sequel.

[Review] Ys: The Oath in Felghana (PSP)

The Ys series of action RPG games are supposedly a cult favorite amongst RPG fans.  Many have praised its soundtrack and fast placed hack-n-slash action platforming gameplay and after playing this remastered third entry in the Ys series, I would agree.


The story begins with series protagonist Adol Christin and his companion Dogi arriving on the remote island of Felghana to find their childhood friend Elena attacked by wild monsters.  As the prologue unfolds, our heroes learn that the monsters appearance is unnatural and it will be be up to them to figure out where they are coming from and put a stop to it.

The graphics in Ys: The Oath in Felghana features a 3D environment with 2D animated sprites for all the characters.  The game features a multitude of environments from forests, mines, ruins, volcanic underground caves, and a snow covered mountain to name a few.  Most of the monsters are rendered with sprites but all the bosses are large 3D models and they look really impressive.  During conversations, character portraits are displayed and most of the dialogue is voiced, a new addition for this PSP remake.  Almost all the visual effects in the game are presented with a glowing orb, which essentially are just hit-boxes for your attacks or an enemy.

The voice-over in this game is great, as it includes some of my favorite voice actors I recognize from many other JRPGS and anime.  But the music in the game is exceptional.  The game features a remixed soundtrack from the original release, which includes two sets of the old soundtrack.  Most of the best tracks in the game come from the later dungeons and the boss battle themes.  They're all fast paced rock tunes that get you really pumped.

The gameplay mechanics are all relatively simple.  The game is presented with a birds eye view on Adol and combat is simple button mashing with the X button with the occasional magic spell from the square button.  There's also a burst meter that when built up from combat is unleashed with a press from the triangle button which will grant Adol a significant buff and will heal a bit of health.  Weapons and armor can be upgraded once obtained, and their are consumable items which aid you in combat.  Surprisingly the game does not feature health recovery items, and you can only heal at save points, a full burst meter, or health pickups from defeated foes.  With no healing items means that the gameplay is difficult and you have to avoid getting hit, especially in boss fights where you can't even use any items.  The game features a wide range of difficulty modes from very easy to a almost impossible nightmare mode.

This game was very fun and one very classic RPG from the Ys series.  This entry is one of the best in series according to hardcore fans and I'd recommend this game to anyone who loves a fast paced action RPG or anyone interested in the Ys series.  This game also gas a Steam version and it is really cheap right now during the Summer Sale.

Review: MicroVolts

So I came across this little free to play shooter on Steam a few days ago and decided to give it a try.
At first glance I thought it was some kinda anime shooter(cuz of that anime figure), but it was just a shooter that used toys/action figures as its theme.

It's gameplay is typical of a shooter with the third person perspective, but in this game for most of the modes you have access to seven weapons you can switch to at anytime; melee, rifle, shotgun, sniper, minigun, rocket launcher, and grenade launcher.  The game has quite a lot of maps to play on and several modes including free for all, team deathmatch, and capture the flag gametypes.  There's also an elimination mode where a player has one life per round to kill their opposing team, a zombie mode where a player is chosen at random to be a zombie to infect others, and there's also a single player wave survival mode.

Now as a free to play game, there's a in-game store to purchase new weapons and costumes for the four playable characters.  Most can be purchased with in game money while some are bought with cash.  Weapons in the game have stats, so that means higher level guns do more damage.  Costumes come with stats to increase movement speed or health points.  Now the cash only versions of these items of course offer higher stats than the ones you buy with in-game currency.  Some players may find it unfair or claim it to be a pay to win kind of game.

I've found this game pretty enjoyable and it's great for some casual fun once in a while.  Like every shooter, skill does play an important factor aside from what stats a weapon may give you.