With that particular free-time-sucker taken care of, I actually made leaps and bounds of progress in other games this time around.  Who knew you could actually get things done when you’re not obsessively playing 70-hour JRPGs?  I certainly didn’t.

My first order of post-P3P play was getting back into Metroid Prime 2, a game that I had ostensibly been playing this entire time, but that in reality, I hadn’t touched since getting my ass back into Tartarus.  Going back to a game like this after a break tends to be a bit difficult for me; not only do I have to remember where I was and what I was doing, I also have to make sure that I don’t mess up the (to me, at least) freakishly complicated control scheme and end up shooting myself in the foot (so to speak).  I was, after all, coming from a game where pressing X was about the most complicated thing you ever had to do, so this was a bit of a leap.  Thankfully, the strategy guide that I kept glued to my lap throughout the course of the game made the whole navigation thing much easier, so all I really had to acclimate to was the controls, and after an embarrassing twenty minutes or so, that wasn’t so bad either.  I mentioned, when I was playing this before, that I didn’t particularly care for the whole light world/dark world mechanic, and while I never really got to like it, it does become less of an annoyance as the game goes on and you obtain more options that allow you to disregard the more annoying bits (like health-sapping).  If I hadn’t had the strategy guide for this game, I honestly think I would have lost patience with the portal-hopping that becomes more and more important and less and less intuitive as you get closer to the end; I’m sure Metroid purists would tell me that that’s just part of the exploration phase, but I’m just too impatient.  I don’t want to throw a controller, I just want to get the damn visor.  So I guess I’m a cheater.  Meh.

The next game I started after Metroid came to a close was Dead Space (yes, the original).  I picked up the collector’s edition of Dead Space 2 shortly after it came out, largely because I simply got hooked by the hype train (predictably), but I never actually finished the first game; in fact, I didn’t put much time into it at all.  So, in order to abide by my own rules, I started up a save from scratch and started scouring the Ishimura.  I love survival horror games when they’re done well, and Dead Space certainly is; however, I am also a giant baby when I play them.  I scream and drop controllers a lot, because I am extremely easily startled, and Dead Space does a lot of startling.  I got progressively more and more paranoid as I played, both in the game and out of it; while Isaac spent a lot of time shooting dead bodies before they could get up and staring unblinkingly at vents, I had a positively horrifying trip to my dark, cold storage unit where a falling box nearly gave me a heart attack.  It didn’t help that the lights in the hall were flickering, either.

Even though I don’t really “do” shooters, I’ve had one thing mercilessly programmed into me by both those I have played and by years of zombie movies: you gotta shoot ‘em in the head.  Unfortunately, abiding by that maxim in Dead Space will get you very dead very fast, and as bad as I am at shooting things in the head, limbs are worse.  Don’t get me wrong; I really like the mechanic, but it’s definitely more difficult to line up a shot that will take off a leg when it’s flailing around and (usually) running directly at you.  The sights on the plasma cutter helped with this, which is probably why I exclusively ended up using that and the Ripper in my travels.  With inventory management being a bit of an issue, I found that deciding on a minimal number of weapons and sticking with those eliminated the need to have a bunch of ammo for different things taking up space.  That, and I just like to cut things up with giant flying saw blades.

I think my favorite thing about Dead Space, though, is the fact that it takes pity on the directionally-challenged, like me, and actually implements a navigation system that WORKS.  Rather than simply putting a blip on your radar and expecting you to figure out what exactly is going on, you can, at any time, call up a beam of light that will run directly towards your next objective.  It even adjusts itself as you follow along, so it’s not leading you directly into walls or anything like that.  I really appreciated this; it might have felt too linear to some, but I get lost really easily, and this felt like an unobtrusive way to get that under control.

I believe I’m going to play Dead Space: Extraction for the Wii before I get into Dead Space 2, but before I do that, I decided I need a break, so I started up Trinity Universe for the PS3, a game about which I actually knew precious little, save that it’s a JRPG that has bright, flashy Japanese artwork on the box.  That’s usually enough for me.  Now… knowing my predilection towards Persona and others of that ilk, you should take me very seriously when I say that, as of now, I think I am prepared to name this the most Japanese game I have ever played.  I know, right?  Watch this trailer and tell me I’m wrong.  As far as I can tell, my current mission is to knock floating objects out of orbit by traversing the dungeons inside them and destroying their gravity cores; if I don’t, the protagonist (the Demon Dog/God King) has to be turned into a gem in order to protect the town.  There is a second storyline featuring a Valkyrie who has some as-of-now nebulous connection to my current character, but I don’t really know what her deal is yet.  The gameplay is pretty standard JRPG fare; it’s turn-based, with some additions such as the ability to execute attack chains and special moves depending on how you set up your basic attacks.  Dungeons are, for the most part, short and sweet, which I like; you do end up going back to the same places time after time, but the areas are small enough that it doesn’t feel tedious.  There are a bunch of features that I haven’t messed with yet (and may not at all), such as a monster colosseum and a crafting system that I’ve only given cursory attention to; really, there’s an almost overwhelming amount of stuff here, and my biggest problem with this game so far has been that I’m not really sure how to tell what’s important or significant and what’s not.  It’s definitely…. interesting, though.  If you play with the sound off.  Otherwise it’s a little annoying.

In progress: Trinity Universe (PS3); Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (DS)

Completed: Persona 3 Portable (PSP); Metroid Prime 2: Echoes (Wii); Dead Space (360)

New: Dead Space 2 (360); Lord of Arcana (PSP); Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes (DS)

*sniff*

Even with the obsessive love of all things Atlus that I have been carefully cultivating over the last several years, I really didn’t think that I was going to get quite as into Persona 3 Portable as I have.  I was, of course, deluding myself, but most people have been kind enough to not point that out to me.  Anyway, aside from maybe an hour or two of playtime split between Metroid Prime 2 and Golden Sun, it’s literally all I’ve played since the last time I updated this column.  I haven’t even touched WoW, which should tell you a bit about how devoted I’ve been.  Now, after sinking 80-90 hours into the PS2 version of Persona 3 (120-ish if you include the FES content in that total), you might wonder why I have taken it upon myself to rack up another playthrough of that length, particularly when I have so many other worthy titles currently collecting dust on my shelves.  All I can tell you is that P3P is NOT the same game as P3.  It’s better.  A lot better.  Well, maybe that’s not ALL I can tell you…

1. The female main character is more than just a skin. Putting a female main character option in P3P seemed like a pretty cool idea, and it was one of the reasons (read as: justifications) I was really interested in giving the reboot a shot even though I had already sunk so much time into the console version.  All too often, though, this option is little more than a cosmetic change.  The graphics are different, and maybe you’ll get a few altered dialogue options, but things basically follow the same path.  In P3P, however, huge chunks of the game change depending on whether you choose the female or the male main character; this is most notable in the social links.  You would expect the obvious change to be that the romance options are different, and this is certainly the case, but that’s not where it ends; some social links are changed, some are absent, and some are completely new.  My current favorite is the Strength link, which was the sports team manager in P3, and is now Koromaru (quite possibly my favorite team member, because HE DOESN’T TALK).

2. You can use fast travel. Remember how you used to have to haul ass all the way across town every time you wanted to go from place to place?  Remember how it was a lot easier to just hit the damn square button in P4?  Well, now you can do that here as well.  This is balanced a bit by the fact that you don’t actually walk around in any given location (aside, of course, from the dungeons themselves); rather, people and things of interest have icons on them that you must click on to interact.  Sometimes this is nice, because you can kind of take in everything at once and see, for instance, if there are any social link folks in the area who might be down for some hanging out, but it admittedly takes a bit away from the overall experience (they also took away the animated cutscenes).  Given the size of the game, I suppose there had to be a few cutbacks, so while this is a bit of a downer, I’m okay with it overall.

3. You can control your party directly. This is the biggie.  Anyone who has spent a large amount of time playing Persona 3 has had at least one moment when he or she has screamed outright at a party member who has done something mind-blowingly stupid, because you do not directly tell them what to do, only what general battle tactics to use.  This was the biggest improvement P4 made over P3; the ability to give direct commands took away the need to sit, fingers crossed, through a major battle, hoping that Mitsuru would remember that people need to be HEALED a bit more than enemies need to be CHARMED.  Not that that ever happened to me, you understand.  Anyway, P3P takes a cue from P4 and adds this option to your tactics.  I think this change alone would have been enough to get me to play again, honestly.  You can also equip your party members without actually having to talk to them, which is not only handy when shopping for stuff, but also a lot less annoying.  Dear Yukari: just take the goddamn bow and SHUT UP.  And heal me.  Bitch.

4. Dungeons are a lot more streamlined. I often feel that the fighting part of Persona games is just something I have to do in order to have more time to social link.  It’s not that it’s bad, it’s just that social links tend to be more addictive.  It’s like pausing your game of Sims to go play Pokemon for an hour or so; they’re both great, it’s just a major gear-switch.  That’s why I’m really pleased by the way the dungeons have been made more convenient for serial social-linkers like myself in P3P.  I recall, in P3, that I would dungeon-crawl in smaller chunks than I do in P3P; a set amount of floors in Tartarus open up at a time, but long before you could hit that wall on your first foray into newly-available territory in P3, you were basically forced to stop, because you would run out of precious SP, or your party members would become fatigued and whiny.  In P3P, though, my play style has changed drastically; although Fuuka and your party members will still bitch about being exhausted, they never seem to actually get the “Tired” status that affects their combat, and the SP problem is solved by allowing you to pay for healing at the save point in the lobby (not as expensive as Fox, but also…. no Fox, which is very very sad).  The removal of these limitations usually means that when a new block of floors opens up in Tartarus, I go straight through in one visit, warping out periodically to save and heal.  I usually return once or twice to rescue the people who somehow get lost there (another new feature contrived, I expect, to keep you coming back to the dungeon now that your actual progress is faster) or to fulfill Theo’s requests (Theo is Margaret’s brother; apparently you can choose either of them, so obviously I went with the dude).  This way, I probably spend about the same amount of time in Tartarus as I did before, but it’s all condensed into much fewer visits, leaving me more nights to stat-boost or social link.  I’m a fan.

5. You can personalize your Personas. Yes, you will still spend a large amount of time re-rolling your fusions to get the skills you want.  However, you now have the added benefit of skill cards, which can be given to you by other characters as rewards, purchased from the antique store, or even gained from your existing Personas when they reach a given level.  This means that, with some limitations, you can give your Personas pretty much any ability you want, as long as you have the card to do so.  I’m sure this could be used/exploited way more than I have done, but I’m actually perfectly content with the benefit I’ve discovered, which is giving Invigorate 3 to pretty much every Persona I can (and then making sure it’s passed on via fusion).  I never run out of SP, and it’s awesome.

I guess this sort of turned into a Five Things, didn’t it?  SNEAK ATTACK!  Well, since it’s the only thing I’ve played, I feel like it’s justified, but I…. okay, I was going to say that I promise I’ll talk about other things next time, but I probably can’t do that.  I promise I’ll try?  That sounds good.

In progress: Persona 3 Portable (PSP), and technically Metroid Prime 2 (Wii) and Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (DS), I GUESS.

Completed: none

New: Kingdom Hearts: ReCoded (DS)

I don’t do well writing straight-up reviews, not because I necessarily have trouble with the form or the content, but more because I just don’t play things in a timely fashion 99% of the time.  Could I post a review of Metroid Prime?  Sure, but who would really care?  I mean…. Elaine might, but only so she could monitor me for any negative terminology and soundly beat me if any showed up.  (I….kid?  I think?)  However, since I do have a project–a resolution, if you will–in progress, I’m resurrecting the ol’ journal-style update system so that I have something pushing me along besides my list and you have something to read and scoff at when I start lagging behind… or just get stuck on Persona forever, which is what pretty much happened this week.  Surprise!

I’ve actually already completed two games this year, putting me pretty much on track for my “game-a-week” goal…which is good, because I’m pretty sure the ones I’m playing now are going to take a while to complete, so I’m going to get a bit behind already.  Oh well.  I started playing Little Big Planet on New Year’s Day, because I figured that since the second one is due out this month, I should probably get on the bus and at least give it a go.  What I found is that LBP is a completionist’s dream…and nightmare.  Each pre-loaded level comes packed with a ton of stuff to gather: new fabrics, costumes, props, and scenery abound.  You can use these assets to customize your Sackcreature as you like (in my case, with pigtails, a halo, fairy wings, and nasty sharp pointy teeth), and also to trick out your “pod,” which is where you go when you’re not out traversing the galaxy.  These things, however, comprise only a tiny, tiny part of what makes LBP special; the pre-loaded levels are absolutely insignificant compared to the number of user-created ones you can obtain from PSN.  I didn’t even touch this feature, because I suspected that if I did, I wouldn’t stop.  I’d keep roaming forever, becoming furious when I encountered levels that lacked quality, but allowing that fury to fuel my ever-intensifying search for the diamonds glittering among the coal.  It’s extremely cool that this kind of play exists, and it’ll be interesting to see how LBP2 refines it, but honestly…it’s just not *for* me.  So, I played the pre-mades and moved on.  On its own merits, this is a fun (if not particularly challenging) little platformer; it’s not put together as well as some, perhaps, but its other features are its true focus anyway, so I can forgive a few quirks.

If you follow me on Twitter (and if not, WHY NOT?), you may remember the sad tale of my silver Ratchet and Clank-era PSP, which died a tragic death a short while ago after three lovely years.  I replaced it with the new God of War-bundled 3000 model, which, aside from being pretty damn sexy, also comes with God of War: Ghost of Sparta, a game that I would have purchased anyway, given my enjoyment of the PSP’s first installment, Chains of Olympus.  Having recently played God of War 3, I wanted to go through this as well while it was fresh in my mind, and you know what?  Ghost of Sparta is better.  GoW3 is, no doubt, an amazing game, and gorgeous to boot, but where it would sometimes frustrate me and feel like it was running itself in circles, Ghost of Sparta…. didn’t.  I don’t think this was a function of difficulty, but rather of how the games differ in their setup.  GoW3 felt like I just got stuck a lot, and I don’t mean stuck as in “I don’t know what to do,” but rather stuck as in you spend a whole lot of time mucking around the same area before you can move on to somewhere else.  Ghost of Sparta felt like I was moving through my environment and making progress, whereas GoW3 felt like I was being shuttled between set pieces.  Beautiful, meticulously-constructed set pieces, mind you, but set pieces nonetheless.  My only real complaint with Ghost of Sparta was that the magic felt clunky and tacked-on; this wasn’t a major thing for me, given that I really only used it when they made me, but there you go.  Otherwise, I was very impressed, and glad this was the game I used to break in my new system.

I never made it through the first two Metroid Prime games when they were released on the GameCube; this wasn’t necessarily because I didn’t want to, but more because I tried and just never got the hang of what seemed to me to be a completely impenetrable control scheme.  Two things changed between then and now: one, I’ve been playing a lot more shooters recently and have gotten more practice handling button configurations beyond the “just press X” style that a confirmed JRPGer is most comfortable with, and two, the Metroid Prime Trilogy was released on the Wii, with re-vamped controls that seemed to make a bit more sense to me.  I did play Prime 3 when it first came out, and I had markedly less trouble with the controls than I seemed to remember from my first round of Prime excursions, so I wanted to give the other two a shot before I dove into Other M.  As of now, I’ve finished Prime and am working my way through Prime 2.  There’s still a lot to keep track of, control-wise, so there is a bit of a learning curve, particularly if, as I am, you’re a bit slow on the shooty-shooty front.  However, sticking it out this time is proving to be pretty rewarding; I’m not so sure I like Prime 2 as much as I liked the first, but this is largely because of the whole “light world/dark world” thing that’s central to the storyline.  Basically, you (as Samus) are tasked with returning power to the light side of a planet by traveling to its dark counterpart and stealing it back.  The trouble is that when you’re on the dark side, energy is constantly leached from you if you stand in the toxic atmosphere for too long.  For a game that prides itself on puzzle-solving and such, having to constantly worry about whether you’re standing in a light bubble that’s consistent or one that’s going to collapse if you pause for too long just seems like a gimmicky hassle.  I recently gained the Dark Suit, which slows down the rate at which the atmosphere will damage you, so I’m hoping this makes things less annoying.  Avoidance of hazards is one thing, but there’s no way you CAN avoid the dark miasma all the time; sometimes you just have to grin and get slowly digested alive by it, which is why, I think, I have a problem.  Otherwise, the basic structure matches up with that of the first Prime, so aside from pushing through the “dark world” sections, I’m enjoying myself so far.

I never played the original Golden Sun games for the GBA, I think because I had it in my mind that they were SRPGs…. and you know how I feel about those.  (Hint: Not good.)  I might have to track them down, though (I mean, if I ever get a GBA again…), because I’m really loving the new one, Dark Dawn, so far.  It almost plays like a cross between Final Fantasy and Pokemon; you’re on a quest to save the world, blah blah, blah… but on the way, you collect these awesome little critters called Djinni that you can equip to your party members, allowing them to perform special attacks in battle and then summon even bigger monsters who will crush your opponents with even bigger special attacks.  Oh, and you also have magic powers of your own.  You know, just as an aside.  I’m about two hours into the game at this point, so, you know… still kind of in tutorial mode.  I suspect I will have more to say about this next time.

I am also playing Persona 3 Portable.  I don’t think I can talk about that yet.

In progress: Metroid Prime 2 (Wii); Golden Sun: Dark Dawn (DS); Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable (PSP)

Completed: Little Big Planet (PS3); God of War: Ghost of Sparta (PSP)

New: Lost In Shadow (Wii)

I say this because I’ve made this declaration before…. or, well, a version of it, anyway.  It’s no secret to anyone that I have a bit of a backlog problem.  Everyone has flaws, okay?  I’ve even tried, on this very site, methods of spurring myself to get a handle on things, but it generally seems to fall apart after a while.  In the interest of driving down that very scary number, then, and in the spirit of the New Year that is upon us, I’m going to try something a little different, and I invite any and all closet backloggers out there to play along with me.

I like lists.  So, my gaming “resolution” for this year is very simple: I’m going to make a list here of all the games I complete (start to finish) in 2011.  As a loose goal, I’d like to have completed an average of a game a week over this year: 52 games.  This sounds pretty reasonable to me.  The rules are as follows:

1. You don’t talk about Fight Club.  Wait…. wrong list.

1! All games on the list must be played, as mentioned above, beginning to end this year.  Games that I started in 2010 and finish in 2011 don’t count (although this only excludes Final Fantasy: 4 Heroes of Light), nor do any games which I may start in 2011 and not finish until 2012.  Games that I give up on are likewise excluded.

2. Games that I have played before do not count, unless it’s a remake/upgrade.  Persona 3 Portable is okay; Final Fantasy 8 on PSN for the billionth time is not.

3. 100% completion isn’t necessary, just the main storyline.  Extra time spent on a game is… well, extra.

4. Downloadable games count, as long as they are full games and not added content onto a pre-existing game.  I’m not saying I *won’t* play this stuff, just that it doesn’t count on the list.

Pretty simple, right?  The list will start here as soon as I finish my first game.  Happy 2011!

1. The Yuffie Syndrome- There are few things I dislike more as a gameplay device than having your hard earned powers/weapons/doo-dads stripped away just so that you’re weaker while you go and traipse around to try and get them back.  While not the first game to do this by a longshot, Final Fantasy VII is the one that always pops into my mind here; in order to get Yuffie on your team, you must endure her stealing all of your materia first (and I always question whether it’s worth it, but in the end, I always cave and do it anyway).  Lords of Shadow doesn’t just do this once–oh no, that wouldn’t be nearly annoying enough.  Instead, you are forced to contend several times with creatures called chupacabras who take your relics and powers away–here’s the kicker–just for fun.  Because they can.  Never mind that you have to fight off werewolves or zombies or whatever happens to be in the area without half of your stuff in order to catch the little bastards and choke them into giving it back up, they just want to have a rousing game of hide-and-seek.  To make matters worse, they scream taunts at you while you’re tracking them down based solely on how close/far away you happen to be at any given time, so if you’re in the area and solving a puzzle to unlock a path to their location, they will only register that they’re practically right in front of you and will yell the same four lines of dialogue the entire time.  YES, I UNDERSTAND THAT I HAVE FOUND YOU.  PLEASE SHUT UP WHILE I REDIRECT THESE LASERS.  If only there were an option to beat the crap out of them once you find them.  Or a chupacabra genocide minigame.  I’d love that.  There’s also a boss fight towards the end of the game that does largely the same thing, but after the chupacabras, the level of annoying there was barely noticeable.

2. Star-Studded- Well, at least they didn’t spare any expense when it came to the cast.  The game’s protagonist, Gabriel Belmont, is voiced by Robert Carlyle, with other major characters played by Patrick Stewart, Jason Isaacs, and Natascha McElhone.  Frequently, when games cast well-known actors who aren’t strictly voice-actors, there’s a danger of them sounding stilted or simply wrong in their delivery, because this isn’t their normal field and they’ve been cast purely for name recognition.  Fortunately, these folks are all seasoned and/or talented enough that it isn’t an issue.  In fact, lest I sound like I feel that they only just escaped being horrible, I should clarify: I really enjoyed the voice acting, particularly from Robert Carlyle (and of course from Patrick Stewart, who is now paired with Morgan Freeman on the list of people I want to narrate my life).  The only real complaint I have in this area isn’t the actors’ fault; during larger fights, Lords of Shadow falls into the trap of only having a few lines of dialogue for an enemy to spout which are consequently repeated until you just want to defeat them to shut them up.  Even when you’re not fighting the character in question, this can get annoying; I mentioned the chupacabras above, and a couple of characters during fetch quests also feel it necessary to put their two cents in repeatedly if they think you’re not doing their bidding quickly or efficiently enough.  I’m looking at YOU, Baba.

3. Huuuuuuge Tracts of Land- Oooooookay.  It’s time for me to get into the biggest bitch I have about Lords of Shadow.  First off, let me say that the designers really outdid themselves graphically.  The game is lovely, and the scenery really lends it a sense of scale that I think is incredibly important to the story they’re telling.  But what the FUCK is with the camera angles?  If you’re going to make a game that does not allow the player to adjust the camera, that’s fine, but if that’s the choice you make, you really, really need to make damn sure that the camera goes where you need it to go and shows what you need it to show.  Platforming was frequently made more difficult than it needed to be because the camera was too busy proudly displaying the lovely mountains and ruins to notice that Gabriel couldn’t see the next ledge to which he needed to desperately cling, and the camera during combat was nothing short of atrocious.  For a game that relies so heavily on dodging and countering, and particularly one that likes to throw large numbers of enemies at you at a time, having a camera that not only cuts the enemies off-screen but sometimes even cuts YOUR OWN CHARACTER off-screen is simply inexcusable.  In addition, since the camera isn’t fixed, but rather follows Gabriel around as it sees fit, some of the finer points of the puzzles which must be solved throughout the levels are made much more difficult than they need to be.  This was by far my least favorite part of the game, and something that I’ve heard almost universally from others who have played it as well.  If there’s a direct sequel, I really, really hope that they do something about the camera.  Really.

4. Choose Your Own Adventure- Lords of Shadow features a relatively standard advancement system–well, not really standard for Castlevania, but one which will likely be familiar to players nonetheless.  As Gabriel dispatches enemies, he earns experience points, which can then be used to unlock combo moves and upgrades that he can then use during his adventure.  While this sounds like a great idea in theory, I found that, similar to when I played God of War, no matter how many combos or new types of beatings I was able to bestow upon the slavering horde, I pretty much always stuck with the same damn thing.  Sure, there were times when something specific might be called for, but in general, the amount of dodging and quickness of foot that is required to make it safely through any given area means that attempting to pull off a fancy combo often results in getting your face gnawed on.  Or at least, it did for me.  It’s entirely possible that my own lack of skills was what made this feature kind of unnecessary, but still, I tended to get along just fine without much other than my cross-chain-whip-thing and the most basic forms of light and dark magic.  I kept unlocking other stuff, but I really didn’t use it that much, honestly.

5. Warning: Here Be Spoilers!- No, seriously.  If you haven’t finished the game and you don’t want me to spoil it for you, skip the next paragraph, because I’m gonna spoil it hardcore.  Go ahead.  I won’t be offended.

All gone?  Okay, then.  So, what’s the one thing you can pretty much always count on to be somewhere in a game that bears the Castlevania name?  Dracula, right?  I thought so too, so I was full of theories from about Chapter 5 onward about how Zobek was Dracula (I mean, he was clearly going to be evil somehow), and kept waiting for him to reveal himself.  When the end of the game was a fight against not Dracula, but Satan himself (which was pretty cool, actually), I was a little disappointed, but I was still waiting.  One would think that you can’t really backtrack from Satan to Dracula, but I still harbored a little bit of hope that he might show up after all.  And then the credits rolled.  Not a bad story, I thought, but was it really Castlevania?  Yeah.  It is, it turns out.  After the credits, you find out that not only was Dracula in the game…. you were actually playing him all along.  Yup, Gabriel Belmont turns out to actually be Dracula.  In essence, this is kind of an origin story, which I thought was really, really cool, and I didn’t even see it coming.  The ending quite intentionally sets up for a sequel, and I for one will definitely be looking forward to it when and if it happens; even considering the issues I had with this game, I had a good time overall, and that ending was just the punch I needed to keep me wanting more.

For those of you who skipped the last paragraph, here’s all you really need to know.  Castlevania yay!  Now go play it.

1. One, Two, Three- In order to get the full story of Birth By Sleep, you have to play it three times.  At least, that’s what you are led to think.  While it’s true that, if you complete the game, you will end up with four separate save files, the stories that you play are more than different enough that you won’t feel like you’re repeating yourself.  For each playthrough, you select a main character: Terra, Ventus, or Aqua.  That was actually the order I played them in, but you can choose whomever you like in whatever sequence; their storylines intertwine in such a way that one won’t give you any clear advantage, nor will it “spoil” the others if you choose poorly.  I would, however, suggest saving Aqua for last, not because of her story, but because her gameplay style is markedly different from the other two, and takes a bit more finesse to execute correctly.  If I’d started with Aqua, I would have gotten really frustrated, but having the experience of the other two beneath my belt meant that I was better educated in how the combat system functions.  The basics are the same, however; you equip different commands for use in battle, which level up as you carry them around, enabling them to be fused together to create more powerful commands.  As in the other titles of the series, combat is real-time, and you fight with a Keyblade that can also be swapped out for more powerful models as you progress.  The worlds you visit are the same, but the areas within those worlds are not, nor are the events you experience while there or the bosses you fight.  For example, in Cinderella’s Castle of Dreams world, Ventus plays shrunk to the size of a mouse, cooperates with Jaq the mouse in recreating Cinderella’s dress, and fights a huge version of the evil cat Lucifer, while Terra (arriving after Ventus has already left) escorts Cinderella through the forest to the palace, fighting a gigantic music-playing Unversed (as the monsters in this title are known) at the end, and Aqua must clear the way for the glass slipper to make it to Cinderella despite the evil stepsisters and stepmother, who summon a giant cursed pumpkin coach for her to fight.  Each world has this sort of three-part structure, and while playing as any given character, you may sometimes arrive first, sometimes after your other friends have already been there, and sometimes even briefly team up with them, or simply meet in passing.  Overall, I was drawn in completely by how well the stories meshed, and didn’t feel like I was repeating myself at all.

2. Girl Power- Both Elaine and I have talked, both on our own podcast and as guests on others, about female characters in video games, and by the end of Birth By Sleep, I was quite surprised by how Aqua turned out, so I wanted to give her some special attention here.  Aqua is the first playable female main character in the series; previously, female characters were either non-playable or showed up only in “guest” roles (Ariel in KH1, Mulan in KH2, etc.).  In many JRPGs, simply by knowing a character is female, you can often make a few assumptions about her: namely, that she will be a magic-user of some kind (true for Aqua), and that one of her main motivations will be her love for one of the male characters (this one’s where the surprise comes in).  While yes, Aqua is physically weak, instead excelling at magic attacks (and she DOES excel… I believe the phrase “swirling tornado of death” is appropriate here), she ISN’T in love with Terra or Ventus.  Or anyone, actually.  The other two are her friends, and she is incredibly devoted to and protective of them, but it’s as a sibling might be, not a lover.  This, I thought, was an interesting choice to have made when the norm seems to be otherwise, and it’s even more so given that, in Aqua’s storyline, she often seems to be surrounded by moments where the classic “prince meets princess” love prevails (Snow White awakened by her Prince, Cinderella reuniting with hers following the glass slipper fitting, and so forth).  She just doesn’t seem to have romantic love as a priority, which actually leads to some humorous moments such as her total obliviousness upon being hit on by Zack; it’s moments like those, actually, which make me believe that Aqua’s non-romanticism is actually a conscious choice about her character, rather than “she was a guy but we gave her boobs to be different.”  It’s kind of refreshing, in that way.

3. Missing Persons- In most of the other Kingdom Hearts titles, particularly the PS2 numbered entries, Final Fantasy characters such as Cloud and Squall are prominently featured right alongside their Disney counterparts.  The fight considered by many (me very definitely included) to be the hardest in the game is even a Final Fantasy character: Sephiroth.  However, in Birth By Sleep, FF character appearances are limited to one: Zack, who inhabits the Olympus Colosseum.  The way that the game is set up would, admittedly, make it a little difficult to shoehorn in very many of the other characters that have appeared in the series before, but to me it felt like they really half-assed it by including Zack, but no one else.   It’s always been a cool feature of the series that these characters could even legitimately BE in the same universe; I was among the doubters way back when the first Kingdom Hearts came out, because, let’s face it… the idea of Mickey Mouse slapping around baddies next to a dude with a gunblade sounds pretty ridiculous without any context to support it.  Even IN context, it’s a little weird, but it really does work, which makes it all the sadder that that particular element seems to have been forgotten in this title.  Hopefully it’ll return in the future.  Sephiroth and I still have a score to settle, after all.

4. So Very Pretty- If there’s one thing you can say for Square Enix, it’s that they know how to put on a show.  Birth By Sleep is goddamn gorgeous.  Not gorgeous “for a handheld title,” either.  It’s just really, really good-looking.  It’s pretty enough, in fact, to make me wonder why they didn’t target this for a wider console release; I love my PSP, but it’s not exactly the most popular system around, and with a title this high-quality and a series this well-loved, it just seems like they would have gotten a lot better exposure and, ultimately, made a lot more money if they had gone with a different platform.  They also would have been able to avoid issues like the RIDICULOUS LOAD TIMES that come along with a UMD-based game.  There is an install option; in fact, there are three.  I went with the largest one, which was something like 600 megs (over half my meager memory stick, but I figure I can always remove the install and re-do it if I want to play again).  Even with the install, however, there’s loading EVERYWHERE.  You load going into and out of menus, before cutscenes, when going into new screens, and basically every time anything new happens.  The install helped (the half hour before I realized I really needed to do this was very long…), but even so, it was excessive, particularly with Terra; for some reason, he seemed to have issues transitioning into his Command Styles where the others didn’t, but that may have just been something screwy with my copy.  Again, I don’t have a problem per se with Squenix’s platform choice here, it just… well, it makes me wonder.

5. Mythos- I mentioned up above that Kingdom Hearts is a series with a particularly strong story, and that’s where Birth By Sleep really shines.  It and the other titles surrounding the numbered entries (Chain of Memories, 358/2 Days, and the upcoming Re:Coded) really dive into the world that these characters inhabit; it’s vast and complex, and even if you’ve played all of the games, you still might be a little hazy on the details (I know I am).  To get an idea of how intricate the connections between the games and their characters are, look up Blank Points on YouTube and check out the user comments that accompany the secret video from the end of Birth By Sleep (which I, obviously, couldn’t be bothered to unlock myself… hence the YouTubing).  It’s fascinating stuff, and it really made me want to play KH 1 and 2 again to get all of the OH YEAH moments I think the handheld entries will spark in me.  Oh, and spoiler warning, by the way.

I’m modifying how I do Five Things; namely, I’m not writing up EVERYTHING I play, just the interesting stuff.  Look, I’m not reviewing Crafting Mama, okay?  I’m just not.  So next time will be…. whatever I feel like!  HA!

1. A Little Foresight Would Have Been Nice- So the Prince has this brother, right?  Nice guy, if a bit overzealous about some things, such as defending his kingdom.  Don’t get me wrong; I understand that you definitely want to keep your people safe, free from foreign invasion, blah blah blah.  This is perfectly reasonable.  What may not be as reasonable is when you just run out of ideas, or worse, want to shortcut it.  Sure, it sounds like an awesome plan to raise an army out of sand.  The castle is surrounded by it, after all, and not only do sand soldiers lack the ability to feel pain, hunger, or fatigue, they also (and this is key) don’t need to be paid.  Woohoo!  Did no one stop to think that maybe–just maybe–using some sort of dark magic to raise a sand army might result in a bunch of evil, nigh-unkillable motherfuckers who have access to your whole setup?  Remember what I said about them not feeling pain, hunger, or fatigue?  Still valid.  Only now, it’s against you rather than for you.  Remember, kids, shortcuts kill.  The more you know.

2.  All In The Timing- I’ve actually never played any of the PS2/Cube/XBox era Prince games.  (I’ve actually sort of been hoping that, like the God of War and Sly collections and the potential Team Ico collection, the three will be re-released on a PS3 compilation blu-ray, but I don’t think that’s even rumored at this point.)  I do have a backwards-compatible PS3 as well as a GameCube-capable Wii (and, well…. a GameCube), so I really don’t have any excuses other than being too lazy to track down copies.  Regardless, I’ve heard that, supposedly, this installment adheres more to the “original” series (Yes, I know there were PoP games before these.  You know what I’m getting at.) than to the previous 360/PS3 title, which was more platform-y and less swarms of combat fodder-y.  First of all, I should say that I loved the last Prince of Persia.  I found it soothing, sort of along the lines of Flower.  I thought it really flowed along nicely, with almost everything making sense and not requiring a whole lot of calculated thought.  Every once in a while you’d hop down and beat the snot out of some random baddie, but by and large, it was more about running along walls and such.  TFS definitely has more than enough platforming to keep fans happy, but it doesn’t feel the same to me.  Instead of being intuitive, it’s more of a puzzle.  This isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, but it does indicate a very different focus.  This sounds cheesy, but it’s less of an “experience” and more of a “game.”  As to whether something can be both at the same time, that’s a subject for another column… just know that, if the last (or, as in my case, only) Prince you played was the last one released, you’re going to need to adjust your play-style just a bit.

3. Water World- The very most challenging part of my TFS experience centered on a series of jumps that should have taken about a minute and a half, but ended up taking me about an hour to complete.  I’ll describe it, and perhaps you’ll know what I’m talking about (or, like the friends to whom I’ve already lamented this, you won’t, and I’ll come off as a hopeless idiot, which I guess is par for the course anyway).  Upon entering the palace towards the end of the game, you are confronted with two parallel sheets of water, beyond which is a series of ascending water spouts.  One of the key features the Prince must master throughout the course of the game is the manipulation of water; once it’s “frozen,” you can run across it, jump on it, and otherwise treat it as solid.  In this particular instance, you need to stand between the parallel sheets, freeze them, and then wall-jump between them to the top.  This is where the tricky part comes in.  At the top, you have to unfreeze the water after you perform the final jump so that you pass through the opposing sheet, then quickly re-freeze it so that the spout on the other side can be grabbed.  You must find the sweet spot after you pass through the sheet but before you get to the spout, but for some reason I just couldn’t do it.  They say that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.  Well, if that’s true, then I was absolutely batshit.  I simply could not figure out what I was doing wrong, so again and again, my little princely fingers would go crashing through the water spout, or I would just smack off of a solid sheet of water, frequently resulting in a painful (usually deadly) drop to the floor below.  The really funny part (in retrospect… at the time this was not funny AT ALL) is that when I finally got it right, I was so excited that I immediately screwed up afterward because I wasn’t expecting to succeed, and thus was not prepared for what would happen when I did.  So I had to start all over… but thankfully, some sort of muscle memory took over and I lucked into success much more quickly the second time around, even though I never did consciously figure out what I changed.  The moral of this story is that water sucks.

4. Group Brawl- I mentioned before that in the last PoP, you rarely fought more than one enemy at a time.  In TFS, as I understand was the case in Sands of Time, etc., fighting larger groups is not only the norm, it’s something that they tout as a big bonus, since apparently a lot of people had a problem with the single-combat model.  Personally, I don’t care whether I’m fighting a big group or just one; it’s just a different style.  As advertised, there are in fact a crapload of enemies thrown at you in any given fight, and the combat styles you have available to you are quite different as a result.  I found that the tornado ability is pretty much all you need, actually.  It’s all well and good if you want to introduce some variety by trailing a line of fire behind you or whatever, but if you can suck everything into one big vortex, seriously, what else is there?  Just get used to being swarmed.  I never had a terrible issue with this, but if you’re the easily distractable type, be warned that there will be a lot of things requiring your attention.

5. Getting Better All The Time- It’s not exactly a secret that I enjoy games which offer a well-developed progression system.  It’s a lot easier for ME to get better of my character and/or his/her equipment gets better as well.  Better yet is if I have some sort of say in how that progression takes place, so I’m happy to say that TFS does just that.  As you level up, you can develop your character map as you see fit, expanding basic abilities and stats as well as making your special shiny skills specialer and shinier.  As I mentioned, the only skill other than the basic ones that I really put to use was the Tornado, so that’s the one I pumped my points into.  If, however, you prefer to spread your smackdown methods out mre evenly, well, you can certainly go that route as well.  If you’re of the more variable sort, and you’re playing on the 360, there are, as an incentive, plenty of tasty, tasty cheevos to be had as well.  (I imagine trophies for the PS3 are the same, but I played on the XBox…. and also, “cheevos” is more fun to say.)  The Prince is yours to develop, though, and that’s the m0st important thing.  You’re really not going to screw yourself over no matter what you do.  Unless you ignore the tornado.  Seriously, that skill is awesome.

Well, my meeting is only about halfway over, and I’m still bored, so guess what?  This Five Things just became a Ten Things double feature!  Next on the list is Muramasa: The Demon Blade.  This is an interesting little title that’s worth snagging if you happen to run across a copy (which you probably won’t, as it didn’t sell very well).  It’s by Vanillaware, and it very definitely looks it.  In fact, I think the box blurb should really be something like “A Dumbed-Down Odin Sphere!”  ….Well, that’s being a bit mean.  Not inaccurate, mind you, but not very nice, because it’s not a bad game, just not exactly complex.  Let me see if I can clarify this a little.

1. Easy Mode- Muramasa is not a difficult game.  In fact, to tie some threads together, it’s sort of a relaxing experience rather than some sort of extreme test of skill.  Even though the gameplay (and obviously, the visual style) is extremely reminiscent of Odin Sphere–and I’ll be talking a lot about Odin Sphere for that very reason, so get used to seeing it–it’s much, much easier.  Much.  It’s so easy, in fact, that it sometimes feels a little boring.  Odin Sphere was fiendishly difficult at times, so a bit of a decrease was probably due; surely, though, there should have been a middle ground somewhere?  These games are both enjoyable on their own merits, but they could have been really good with just a few minor tweaks.  I feel like Goldilocks–the “too hard” and “too soft” games are already covered, but I’m still waiting for my “just right.”  Come on, Vanillaware!  I know you have it in you!

2. Twin Paradox- There are two main characters in Muramasa, Kisuke and Momohime, and each of them has his or her own individual storyline.  This is great in theory, but in practice, they get a bit same-y.  The stories themselves are kind of neat, and both are worth telling, particularly in context with each other, but I think it could have been just as effectively covered in one interwoven playthrough as opposed to two parallel ones.  I sort of had the same issue with Folklore (might as well call out all the obscure titles I can while I’m at it), where dual storylines were presented in more or less discrete chunks, which after a while just starts to feel like you’re repeating yourself.  Because you are.

3. Backtracking- One of the reasons I really would have preferred to see a single storyline is that you see a lot of the same scenery in your second playthrough as you did in your first.  Now, don’t get me wrong; the art is lovely, but when you’re looking at the exact same thing for hours at a time, even pretty art gets old.  What bothered me even more than that repetition, however, was the fact that you have to run back and forth across the map every time you get a new quest destination–and there is no fast travel option at all.  In my ideal version of Muramasa, there would be a fast travel option, perhaps unlocked once you have traveled the long way to a place once (I’m actually a big proponent of this in most games–if there’s a storyline reason to hoof it, that’s fine, but there rarely, if ever, is; once you’ve established a travel route, it generally works just as well to hop around).  Once travel times had been condensed, it would be a lot easier to interweave the storylines, too; with both of those things accomplished, the finished product would end up being much tighter and more polished–less sprawling and artsy, perhaps, but I think that would actually be a good thing.  For me, anyway.

4. Collections Department- Have I mentioned that I’m a bit of a completionist?  I may have.  This usually translates into an obsessive devotion to side-quests, which don’t really exist in Muramasa.  Instead, there’s a great big flowchart of 108 swords you can forge for your characters.  I suppose you could argue that the swords themselves count as side-quests, because they are obtained by spending the souls you obtain when you slay your enemies, so if you were so inclined, you could farm enough souls to continue unlocking as many blades as you wanted (some are storyline-linked, but aside from that, this holds true).  You’d probably expect that I would get a little crazy about my blade collection, being, as ever, a collector at heart.  Honestly, though?  I just got kind of bored.  I did like the idea of forging your own upgrades, though, and if the repetition issue had been fixed a bit, I probably would have gone for a full complement.  As it was, I unlocked as many as I could for both characters (they do have separate trees, which eventually intersect, but not until well past where I got in the process).

5. …For A Wii Game- Seems like every time a good (or even sort-of good) game comes out on the Wii, you can rely on this to be the end of at least a few normally positive review sentences.  It’s like people feel that they have to be apologetic because it just can’t be a good game if it isn’t on the 360 or the PS3.  And, admittedly, the Wii has some limitations.  It’s not high-def, and it doesn’t have a standardized control scheme, which often makes it more difficult for a “traditional” gamer to get invested in a title.  In general, the Wii isn’t geared towards these people anyway, at least not in the majority.  This has always been a sort of sticky point for those who would identify themselves as “hardcore,” or even as “gamers” at all–most soccer moms who just bought the system for Wii Fit and Just Dance aren’t very likely to self-identify in this way.  So, when a game that dares to strike outside that mold comes along, it somehow falls lower on the prestige scale than, say, your typical 360 shooter.  I’m not saying that this is never warranted–sometimes it is.  But I think that some games unnecessarily get a bad rap just because they’re on the Wii, and that’s not fair.  For all my issues with it, Muramasa is a pretty damn decent game, for a Wii game.  And for a game.  Period.

Well, now that my hand is cramped as hell from writing all of this, I’ve actually managed to stay relatively sane throughout most of a horrifically boring day, so even if no one reads this, I’m a winner!  Until I have to transcribe it all… I’ll look up what’s going down next time as soon as I get home and find my list.  It’s something awesome, I’m sure.  (Note: It’s Trauma Team.)

Where was I?  Oh, right, podcast!  Awkward moments abound as we plunge back into our new…. season?  Would you call it a season?  I’m full of linguistic quandaries today!  Anyway, listen up as we squee over new controllers (well, *I* do, anyway), discuss why Microsoft is more immature than a twelve-year-old boy, and of course, answer oodles of listener mail.  You guys are the best!

Links R’ Us!

Arc Rise Fantasia

Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep

Plants vs. Zombies

Metroid: Other M

Dissidia getting a sequel: “Duodecim”

Pink DualShock 3 controllers coming this fall

Playstation celebrates 15th anniversary

PS Move “not a preorder product”

Buy Knights in the Nightmare for PSP, get Yggdra Union for free

MS bans user for living in Fort Gay, WV, because it says “gay” and they are idiots

250 gig Kinect bundle announced to no one’s surprise; will cost $400

The Last Guardian confirmed for TGS

Carmine shirts raise $150k for Child’s Play

Bioware mines data from Mass Effect 2; interesting statistics

Deathspank: Thongs of Virtue coming 9/21; is a full sequel

Relic designer Brian Wood saves wife and unborn child by sacrificing himself in a tragic car accident; you can go directly to the trust fund donation site for them by clicking here

As always, we love and cherish and read listener mail, so keep sending it to podcast@someothercastle.com!

Also, I’m posting a link to the trailer for Catherine that we talk about, because I don’t know what to make of it… maybe you do.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Arc Rise Fantasia

Alice in Wonderland

Splinter Cell: Conviction

Naughty Bear

Dead Rising: Case Zero

Metroid: Other M

Crackdown 2

Persona 3 Portable

XBox Live gets a price hike…. as if you didn’t already know

inFamous 2 will have a playable demo at PAX

Devil May Cry 5 might be in development; will be “more western”

Super Mario All Stars coming to the Wii, Japan exclusive for now

GTA Chinatown Wars coming to the iPad

Starcraft sells 3 million copies in 1 month

Pachter predicts Live will get $100 “Platinum service”

Puzzle Quest 2 coming to PSP

Wii vibrator attachments…yep, they really exist (IMPORTANT SIDE NOTE: How the hell did we miss that these things work over Skype?  WHAT??!?)

Lost in Shadow donating 10 cents for every “like” they get on their Facebook page

Blizzard demands, among other things, James Cameron to direct a Starcraft movie

DSi and DSi XL prices dropping by $20 each; Lite staying the same

Atlus to be merged with parent company Index Holdings; should still be releasing games under Atlus name

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep will not be coming to the PSP Go

MC Chris donating all proceeds from items sold on his eBay page to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation

New 360 controller being released with “transforming” D-pad

Now, pay attention, because this part’s important!  We may be a little inconsistent over the next few weeks as we get back into the swing of getting the show nice and regular again, but as I believe I said…. WE’RE BACK!  We’re starting afresh with listener mail because we had soooooo much backed up, so if you have something you’ve sent–or heck, something new!–send it our way again, and we PROMISE we will read it on the next show as a thank you for sticking with us.  Peace out until next time!

Did that help?  I don’t even know that I expect it to; it’s really tough to get a grip on this game unless you’re playing it, in large part because it’s actually four games, all of which share only the restriction that you must complete your task in thirty seconds.  Hence the name.  See what they did there?

1. An Odd Sort of Balance- It’s not balance at all, actually.  At least, I certainly didn’t think so.  As I mentioned, there are four single player modes (with one more that opens up after you’ve beaten those four): Hero 30, Evil Lord 30, Princess 30, and Knight 30.  The game plays very fast, and it’s very addictive, so I ended up playing the whole thing in only a few sittings of goodly length; what this made me notice, however, is that the developers seemed to focus much more on the Hero campaign than on any of the others.  I don’t just say this because the other campaigns are shorter, although that is definitely the case, but more because only the Hero campaign really seems to have any depth to it (or as much depth as you can have when you’re only playing 30 seconds at a time, I suppose).  Each character’s story is designed to follow a particular gameplay style: Hero 30 is the RPG, Evil Lord 30 is the RTS, Princess 30 is the shooter, and Knight 30 is the action game (which turns out to be one big escort quest.  Yippee.).  I don’t know whether my personal viewpoint might be a bit skewed due to my own preference for RPGs, but I felt that the others were just kind of half-assed, although admittedly fun (for the most part… there were a few spots in Evil Lord 30, for example, that I cordially invite to die in a fire).  Time-wise, my theory holds; I think that the other three campaigns together *might* have taken me as long to get through as Hero did, although again, if they were truly holding to the game types, this isn’t exactly unheard-of for an RPG.  According to Kotaku, the announced sequel looks like it’s going to focus on the Hero end of things exclusively, and I have to say, I’m okay with that.  I appreciate the attempt at variety, but not when the effort is barely there.

2. Simple on the Surface- This point (or “thing,” if you will) focuses mostly on Hero 30, largely for the reasons I mentioned above; in fact, I think it’s why the Hero section seemed to outweigh the others by so much.  Each of the sections contains its own method of manipulating time, whether it be to slow it down, rewind it, or reset it, and these methods may be used to differing effect throughout the game.  While it’s largely just gimmicky in most places, though, it’s actually an integral part of the story in Hero 30.  The actual battles here don’t consist of selecting actions as they do in traditional RPGs, but rather of slashing your way across the encounter screen while your opponent attempts to do the same.  Much like in the Wario Ware series, however, the true challenge doesn’t lie in actually executing the actions needed to succeed, but in processing what is needed before you get to the actual part where you pull it off.  Your brain has to be pretty speedy to pull something like this off (I know, right?  How did *I* finish it?), and the fact that you’re actually completing multi-part quests within these constraints means that the complexity of the game can be a bit surprising at times.  I found this rather nifty.

3. 8-Bit Awesome- You might be fooled, by looking only at the box art of Half-Minute Hero, into thinking that the game utilizes some sort of stunning graphics/cutscenes/whatever.  Not so.  Instead, the characters and their surroundings take a cue from games of yore and go about it all 8-bit style.  Far from being a detriment, though, this actually proves to be a brilliant choice.  More complicated sprites would simply look silly speeding through the levels at the pace required, and–again, Wario Ware comes to mind here–adopting less ornate graphics allows the player to concentrate more on what needs to be done rather than on drooling over the pretty pictures.  The PSP has plenty of gorgeous games already; the aim of this one is different, and the art style reflects that.  Lest I sound like I’m putting it down, however, allow me to clarify; by no means does Half-Minute Hero look bad.  The sprites are designed and put together quite well; they’re there to lend an air of nostalgia to the story while still being functional.  Speaking of that, my next point…

4. Nostalgia- It’s not just the looks; basically everything in this game is intended to appeal to those of us with fond memories of, say, the original Final Fantasy or Dragon Warrior.  Characters are frequently aware of their own ridiculous stereotypes, and when they aren’t, YOU are.  Take, for example, the bumbling king of Princess 30, or the numerous villagers and shopkeepers of Hero 30.  These are characters that would look and sound perfectly at home slapped down in a NES game circa 1987, and they’re absolutely perfect.  The nostalgia factor of this game, for me, made it even better than it would have been had I never played one of the legacy games it emulates, and I suspect the same is true for many people.  I’m definitely not saying it wouldn’t have been fun otherwise, but that really made it stand out for me.

5. Auto-Save My Ass- There isn’t one.  Guess how I know that?

Next time, it’s back to the console as I talk about Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands!