The First 3 Hours: Magna Carta II

Roughly one full week after the game’s official North American release, I finally got my hands on Namco Bandai’s latest JRPG for the Xbox 360, Magna Carta II.

Now, I say ‘JRPG’ knowing full-well that the game was developed by South Korean developer Softmax, and is about as Made-in-Japan as kimchi. However, in terms of game style, Magna Carta II is JRPG through-and-through. Besides the fact that it was paid for and published by Japanese mega-publisher Namco Bandai.

In terms of story, MCII follows a young amnesiac man named Juto who is torn from his peaceful life when two mainland armies vie for control of a giant, living weapon found on the otherwise neutral Highwind Island. Juto, dragged into the war, finds himself on the side of the Southern Forces, the underdogs in the current civil war, as he searches for revenge and answers about his past.

Don’t feel too bad if this sounds extremely familiar to you, as MCII indeed touches on just about every JRPG cliché known to man. The story also features a beautiful, strong-willed, but secretly insecure princess, a giant warrior of a different race that has limited personality but uses a huge hammer or axe in battle, and a fire mage who acts like a little cocky bitch all of the time, despite the fact that his usefulness on the field is questionable at best. Yes, Magna Carta II, so far, offers no real giant leaps in tried-and-true JRPG storytelling.

Now, despite the myriad clichés present, Magna Carta II has occasional strokes of brilliance in its story. Every once in a while, you will say, ‘wow, that’s pretty cool.’ Unfortunately, those few moments are lessened by the sheer amount of ‘meh’ that the story is sure to provoke. Honestly, certain moments that should have felt Earth-shattering in their impact on the story came off feeling half-done, half-assed, or both.

That’s not to say the story isn’t interesting. It is, and I am enjoying it. But it feels like it just could have been so much better.

Graphically, Magna Carta II does a decent job. For the most part, locales are complex and interesting, and the ability of each of your party members to interact with other environmental objects uniquely is a welcomed addition. Animation is decent if occasionally slightly awkward. Character models, again, are generally pretty good, but nothing that couldn’t have been improved.

The Japanese (or Korean, for that matter) voice-overs are nowhere to be seen on the North American version, so you’ll be stuck with the English cast. This is usually not a big problem, as the English cast typically delivers a good performance, though it’s not without its awkward moments.

The battle system, possibly Magna Carta II’s biggest strength, is a mix of real-time action and turn-based strategy. Each of your characters will attack enemies in real-time, but a sensitive stamina meter prevents any one character from going out on the offensive for too long. This provides for a system that encourages you to switch between characters often in battle to prevent your party from getting too held up on enemies (who don’t seem to have stamina meters). There are other functions of the battle system that allow you to ‘Chain’ attacks with other party members to increase attack power and put off the dreaded ‘Overheat’ status.

Though I initially found this battle system impossibly complex during the Japanese demo, the full game introduces the concept much more gradually, allowing for plenty of time to get comfortable with the controls.

One other thing that I think Magna Carta II does well (so far), is provide alternative methods of experience and gold harvesting. Though, like in most RPGs, you are free to spend as much time as you like beating up random monsters to grind up levels, MCII is chock-full of NPCs who will offer you quests in exchange for experience, money, and (occasionally) rare items. Though quests are nothing new, receiving experience bonuses for doing them is a concept that hasn’t really caught hold in the JRPG genre, and it’s an addition that I would highly recommend bringing in again.

Finally, let me just touch on the soundtrack, which is, in a word, great. The music has a generally nice feel to it, and is reminiscent of lots of great PS1 soundtracks like Legend of Dragoon. There is no pesky battle theme, either, meaning that you can enjoy an area’s background theme without being constantly interrupted by the same battle music over and over again. So great.

My only gripe with the soundtrack is the disappointing (though predictable) exclusion of the game’s Jpop theme song from GLAY, replaced instead by an orchestrated, no lyrics version. Namdai’s MO, I know, but disappointing nonetheless.

Overall, Magna Carta II is a good JRPG, with occasional strokes of ‘great,’ but bogged down by its own unrealized potential. If you have been holding your breath for a new HD JRPG since SO4, then feel free to pick this one up, as it will scratch that JRPG itch. But if you are holding out for the next genre-redefining JRPG, I’m afraid this just isn’t that game.

At least, not after my first three hours with it.

GameTrailers Previews Magna Carta II

Namco Bandai has a commitment to keeping the JRPG genre going in Japan. With titles announced regularly for every major platform thinkable, many of their franchises are extremely well-known and well-loved in their home market.

North America, however, is a different story. Not only does Namdai release less than half of their own RPGs, the ones they do release get barely even an announcement from the publisher. So, though I tend to enjoy Namdai's RPGs very much, I find I have a difficult time finding things to say about their titles.

Thankfully, GameTrailers has graciously provided us with a short video preview of Namdai's upcoming Magna Carta II that really gives viewers a good overview of what the title is all about.

Check it out below.

Magna Carta II is available for Xbox 360 today in North America, and will be available on October 16, 2009 in Europe. It has been available in Japan since August.

The First 3 (Actually 7) Hours: Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled

I had been following Black Sigil (also previously known as Project Exile) since at least summer 2006 (maybe longer, it’s hard to remember that far back). For anyone keeping score, that’s about 3 years. It’s worth mentioning that at the time, the game was promised to be coming out that very year. And so here we are. Finally, 3 years later, I have the game in my DS that promised a new 16-bit RPG in the style of RPGs of yesteryear. Was it worth the wait? Was that extra 3 years enough time for new start-up Studio Archcraft to make a game worthy of the games it harks back to? I’ve now been playing the game for about 7 hours. Let me tell you about it.

Black Sigil follows the story of a young knight in training named Kairu. Kairu is the adopted son of the noble Averey house in the land of Bel Lenora, and very gifted in swordplay. But there’s a problem: Kairu can’t use magic to save his life. This is more than just an inconvenience, however, as everyone in Bel Lenora can use magic, and the only other person in recent memory who couldn’t, betrayed the land and lead an army of cursed demons throughout the countryside. As you might well imagine, this makes many people a lot less friendly to our young hero, and after a bunch of spoilerific events that I won’t go into, eventually leads to his exile.

After leaving Bel Lenora, Kairu finds himself lost in a new land, with new enemies and allies, and various other plot twists. Which brings me to my first main point in this preview: Black Sigil’s story is very interesting. Since I’m only 7 hours in, I can’t yet tell you if the story works itself out, or if it stays coherent throughout, but I can tell you that so far it is what is keeping me coming back. The characters are interesting, the plot is often intriguing, and the game is generally well-written. If you like RPGs for their stories, Black Sigil (so far) is a winner.

However, before you even get into the story, you are probably drawn to Black Sigil by its graphical style. The first easy comparison is Square Enix’s classic Chrono Trigger, and this comparison is not unfounded. The character sprites look patterned exactly after Chrono Trigger’s. Let me just say here, that if there is any 16 bit RPG that had character sprites worth mimicking, it is definitely Chrono Trigger. However, the game’s dungeons and towns are actually a little more reminiscent of Final Fantasy VI (released as Final Fantasy III on the SNES back in the day). Just to make things simple, suffice it to say that if Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI were to have a baby, it would look like Black Sigil. And if you have nothing but good memories of either of those games, Black Sigil’s graphics are sure to make you very happy.

So there are two things that I, so far, adore about the game. Now let’s talk about something that I don’t like, and is actually a pretty big deal: the battle system.

Probably a lot of you, if you’ve seen gameplay of Black Sigil, are thinking that it has a lot in common with Chrono Trigger. And you would be (partially) right. Your party consists of three active members who wait for their time gauges to fill up before they can attack, cast magic, use a special attack, initiate a combo skill, or use an item. Combo attacks require your characters to learn certain skills with other members of your party, and require that both characters’ gauges are filled. Some of your skills will hit only one target, while some will hit a group close to each other, or all the enemies in a line, and so on. So far very Chrono Trigger, right? Well, here is where things get a little ugly. See, unlike CT, your characters don’t actually encounter the enemy on the field you’re exploring. Instead, battles are random, and your party is whisked away to a battlefield. I guess that’s forgivable, right? Except that these battlefields are littered with holes, rocks, and various other obstacles that prevent you from just being in a big, open field. In order to attack your enemies, your characters will actually have to move around this field into a position where you can attack from.

Wait, you say. That sounds like a good idea. I don’t want to be in some boring flat field every battle, you say. This sounds like it adds some spice to an otherwise overused battle system, you say. And in theory, you are right. In practice, however, this is incredibly aggravating.

Consider this: you have three characters in your party, and you are in a battle against five enemies. Not bad odds. But you need to realize that this battle field is such that several of your enemies are in a narrow area behind a wall of rocks, which each of your melee characters will need to go around in order to attack. Now realize that your characters can only walk a certain distance before their turn is up. Though walk-only turns allow your gauge to fill faster, if multiple characters are on the move, it means people are taking staggered turns all over the place. Now realize that when your first character makes it into the narrow area where the monsters are and attacks, your second character is now completely blocked and cannot do anything. Instead of giving you a turn back, this character auto-defends (i.e. they just stand wherever they are). Sure, on your turn you can move your character manually by holding the L button, but this prevents them from attacking.

At the beginning of the game, this is typically not much of a problem, but the further you get, the more narrow and obstructive the battlefields become. In fact, in the area I’m in right now, some of the battlefields allow only one character to move period. This is alright if you want to make your other characters cast magic all the time, but as you probably understand already, MP isn’t free. Not only that, but not all of your magic is necessarily usable at any one time. Only certain spells hit enemies regardless of where you are.

I should also note that your characters will probably auto-defend if the enemy they were targeting is defeated by someone else. Yeah. I thought we were done with that after the original Final Fantasy too.

By now you should have gathered that I don’t particularly enjoy Black Sigil’s battle system. What you may not have gathered is that the enemy encounter rate is extremely high. I’m talking every 2-3 steps. World map, dungeon, it doesn’t matter. You will be fighting a lot. Might as well make peace with it now.

Oh, I forgot to mention that your characters will randomly have bad status at the start of battles. One of your guys might be Blind, or another might have a Broken Arm (which is like Mute for your non-magic skills), or someone might be Poisoned. It’s not every battle, but it is frequent enough that I notice it. And seriously? Bad status right from the start of the battle?

Battles are hard and frequent. What makes this terrible is that they are hard and frequent for really no good reason. Honestly, I can’t see how you could truly enjoy the battle system unless you enjoy hurting yourself.

Next up, I am obligated to mention that the dungeons are mind-bogglingly long and filled with things that your characters will inexplicably get stuck on. Things that any normal human being could walk over, like rocks and cracks, present an insurmountable object for your character, resulting in you just getting “stuck” every so often. Coupled with the previously mentioned ridiculous encounter rate, this makes dungeon exploration incredibly painful. Remember when you didn’t want to turn the camera in Xenogears because you didn’t want to get in a fight for no good reason again? That’s what exploring dungeons in Black Sigil feels like. Sometimes I just make my characters stand there because I want a few seconds that I’m not fighting. No lie.

Oh yeah, and save points are few and far between. If it wasn’t for a quicksave system, the lack of save points would make the game completely unplayable. Seriously.

Last, but not least, let me touch on the game’s soundtrack. It is very well-done. The songs are haunting and original, while retaining that 16-bit era feel. If you liked RPG music back in the 90s, there is a lot to like about this game’s soundtrack. It is, therefore, with a heavy heart that I must inform you that you won’t get to hear much of it, as every time you get in a battle (or save, for that matter), it stops the track that’s playing, and starts it back from the beginning. With the battles as frequent as they are, this means that you will become very familiar with the beginning few seconds of each track, and not much else. If you enjoy video game music, I would advise you to let your characters stand idle for a minute every so often so that you can listen to a well-composed score.

I’ve rambled on for quite a while now, so if you skipped everything above, just read this: Black Sigil has a very interesting story and is beautifully nostalgic in its art and music design. Unfortunately, its ruthlessly frequent and questionably designed battle system kicks you (the player) squarely in the gonads repeatedly, draining much of the fun that could have been had out of the game. If you play RPGs to experience a good story, and can bear the battle system rubbing bleach in your eyes, I would definitely recommend it. If a frustrating battle system ruins a game for you, avoid Black Sigil like the plague.

I personally, am quite astonished that I am so eager to play a game that I find so frequently not fun. I think that says a lot about the game.

As always, if you have any questions or comments about something you feel I neglected to mention, please feel free to post below.

The First 3 Hours: Star Ocean: The Last Hope

Star Ocean: The Last Hope is the fourth main installment of developer tri-Ace’s flagship sci-fi action-RPG series, and a prequel to the events of the original Star Ocean on the Super Famicon. The game is the third title in the Square Enix x Xbox 360 project, and certainly the most high-profile. It also happens to be my most anticipated RPG of 2009.

I sat down for most of Friday and Saturday with the English version of the game, and thus have more than 3 hours of experience with it. However, I’ll try to let you know how I felt after 3 hours compared with after 12 (which is where I am now).

Being a long-time Star Ocean series fan, the first thing that I can tell you is this: if you love Star Ocean, The Last Hope will be 100% pure joy to your soul. Don’t bother reading this preview, just go buy it. I promise you’ll like it.

SO4 starts off with the launch of the first official SRF (Space Reconnaissance Force) – an effort to explore and colonize habitable extraterrestrial worlds in order to save the human race, which has destroyed their own planet through nuclear war. The mission consists of 5 faster-than-light enabled spacecraft piloted by a handful of specially trained explorers. The protagonist, Edge Maverick, is a crewman aboard the SRF-003, Calnus, along with his childhood friend Reimi Saionji.

As you might expect, the expedition hits a bump in the road and 4 of the 5 ships crash-land on the destination planet of Aeos, which becomes your first area, and (if you play at a similar pace to me) your first three hours.

During your stay on Aeos, you will learn the basics of combat, explore a rather large area, and gain your first insights into the larger overarching plot. But to be completely honest, these first three hours are all kinds of boring. Aeos is a relatively small, uninteresting planet, with almost no variation in enemies or scenery, and virtually no interesting plot to keep things moving. Really, you’ll mostly just be spending time trucking around the jungle fighting big bugs and searching for treasure. I literally almost fell asleep while doing it.

Thankfully, as you near the end of the area, the plot picks up almost immediately, and things really start getting cool. It’s too bad, then, that the game forces you to backtrack your way through the level (though a short cut is available), sort of robbing you of that sense of excitement.

Battles play very similarly to Star Ocean: Til the End of Time or Tales of Vesperia (depending on which you are more familiar with). You are given a team of up to four characters who are each balanced differently, and then are given an enclosed 3D virtual space to slug it out against baddies in real-time action-based battles.

Your characters can perform standard attacks, trigger combo special moves or magic, or use items. Attacks can be chained together for bigger combos and damage, and the advent of Rush mode allows you to hit faster and harder after receiving and dealing enough damage. Your Rush gauge is emptied after each battle, so you might as well use it whenever you get it filled.

New to this style of fighting is the Jump command, which is activated simply by pressing the B button. Each character has an individual jump, which adds to the enjoyment of trying out other characters. Holding this jump button allows you to “charge” your jump, in turn allowing you to jump higher or farther (depending on the character). This is typically used exclusively to perform “Blindside” moves (known as “Sight Out” in the Japanese version) that allow you to break out of your enemy’s line of sight and deliver critical attacks from behind. Each character’s Blindside animation is unique, and occasionally has different effects, making it fun to try everyone’s out at least once.

Battles are high-paced and extremely fun for the most part, but are slightly cheapened by the copious amounts of them. If you buy the game just to fight enemies, you will never be bored, but the large amounts of enemies on the map can often get frustrating when trying to figure out a puzzle or get out of a confusing area.

The bonus board and copious amounts of Battle Trophies (a carryover from SO3) make you feel good about trying new things in battle, but don’t necessarily make or break the combat experience.

However, there are several low-points to the combat that I really should mention. Any gamer picky about framerate will likely be annoyed with the frequent blips that pop up in the middle of big battles, though they typically aren’t big enough drops to ever mess with your pace. Second, the glaring omission of multiplayer co-op is really a “what were they thinking?” moment. With all the depth and variety involved in battles, it is a huge loss that someone else can’t take control of your other character(s) to help out, and I’m really not sure what they excuse is on this. Third, though rare, the game can freeze during battle, forcing you to restart your console from your last save. This only happened to me once during my 12 hours, and occurred after I have been playing for quite a long time without a break, but I thought you should have a heads-up.

SO4 plays out in with a much more science fiction feel than its predecessors, which I really enjoyed. The addition of the controllable Calnus, which lets you travel to planets at your leisure, is a great feature, and the overall story of the game feels like a large improvement for the series. The Private Actions, handled almost exclusively aboard the Calnus during warp, are much more fun than previous games, both to watch and participate in, though it’s a little odd not to have them in towns.

The game has plenty of drama and action to keep you interested, but also keeps a sense of humor throughout, careful not to take itself too seriously. If you like Japanese storytelling, there isn’t much to complain about here. However, to get the whole story, you will have to read the game’s included dictionary and collection synopses, as the game proper doesn’t cover all of the details (which is, imo, too bad).

The game’s presentation is, for the most part, quite praiseworthy. Running on the same engine as Infinite Undiscovery, the locations and character models are absolutely gorgeous to look at, and SO4 manages perhaps the clearest graphics of any RPG this generation. That being said, the same awkward animation found in IU is also present in SO4 to a lesser degree, but is not as noticeably bad as IU’s (at least, I didn’t think so).

One big complaint I have is that some of the more futuristic landscapes are so detailed that they become incredibly difficult on the eyes. You’d think that multiple textures, transparency, and lighting would be a good thing, but it can all too often be very taxing to look at. Also, the game’s rotatable camera frequently bounces off of things in confined areas, further adding to the pain. These are complaints I had after playing for more than 6 hours straight though, so if you keep your play sessions shorter, they shouldn’t be too big of a hassle.

The English voice acting is, for the most part, rather solid. The lip-synching is very good (especially compared to IU), and most of the voices fit very well. There will be people who won’t like it, but that’s just how localized JRPGs go. However, the omission of a Japanese language track is, again, a terrible decision by Square Enix. Honestly, I think a lot of people would pay a little bit extra to just download the Japanese track from Xbox Live if it didn’t fit on the discs. But for it to be absent completely is ridiculous. The same goes for the anime style portraits and Japanese menus. It’s fine that they wanted to replace them with something more “accessible,” but I don’t see the problem with offering fans the option.

In the grand scheme of things, however, these complaints are minimal, and certainly not frustrating enough to be deal-breakers. The CG portraits are not as terrible as you might think, and the localization, in general, is very good.

I should add, for fans of the series, though the gameplay is more reminiscent of SO3 (except way better), the overall game is much closer to SO1 and SO2.

If you are a fan of the series, or just a fan of the action-RPG genre in general, Star Ocean: The Last Hope is a no-brainer. Though the game isn’t quite as polished as Tales of Vesperia or Lost Odyssey, it is definitely the best title with the Square Enix logo on it in a while (even though it’s a tri-Ace game), and provided the rest of the game holds up to my first 12 hours, is what I would feel is the first must-own RPG of 2009. I seriously haven’t put it down for 2 days, and would rather be playing it than writing this.

If there’s anything you think I missed or have any questions about the game, please feel free to ask in the comments. As usual, no spoilers please and thank you.

The First 3 Hours: Megami Ibunroku: Devil Survivor

By way of quick introduction for those unfamiliar with this title, Megami Ibunroku: Devil Survivor is the latest entry into Atlus’ long-running flagship Megami Tensei (MegaTen for short) series, and the series’ first entry on the Nintendo DS. It is an SRPG that follows a group of several young people trapped in Tokyo who must choose whether they will prevent the world from ending in 7 days.

As with most Megami Tensei titles, you get to name the main character right at the beginning, and he speaks only when you decide what he says. This is a mechanic that I’m not particularly fond of, as it robs the main character of a truly active role in the story, but I recognize it as a MegaTen staple, so I can’t really fault the game for it.

The game starts out a little slowly, and at first, seems like just a big advertisement for the Nintendo DS. Those familiar with the MegaTen series will likely be aware of characters summoning demons using small, portable computers, regularly called COMPs. Devil Survivor follows this trend, but the COMP is clearly modeled exactly for the DS in this game, and shows up throughout the story regularly. Honestly, it started to get on my nerves a little.

Other than that, the game actually feels very reminiscent of older games in the MegaTen universe. I found myself regularly comparing it to Shin Megami Tensei If for the SNES, though the story is admittedly much easier to follow that If’s.

Speaking of story, the game is very heavily story driven, unlike the recent Persona titles which place a large emphasis on spending time doing whatever you want, Devil Survivor has very little else to do than participate in story events (which are much more frequent and much more lengthy than battles). Truly, I would call the game more of a visual novel with an SRPG battle system thrown in than a true SRPG.

However, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as the game’s story is consistently intriguing. It manages to retain the dark feeling of the MegaTen franchise, but also manages to come across very accessibly. Though the protagonist does remain silent, the story presents many different opportunities for the player to give his input, and can have an affect on how events turn out. I would love to give you more details on the story, but there have already been events that I feel would spoil the experience were I to share them.

I suppose this brings me to the battle system. The game is a self-described SRPG, but really plays much closer to a regular turn-based one. At the beginning of a battle, you may place up to 4 “teams” on the field. Each team is made up of at least one human character (known as a Devil-User in this game), and up to two demons.

Once placed on the field, all of the teams (both friendly and hostile) take turns moving around the map on a common grid system. Teams can move, attack an adjacent enemy team, use individual abilities on the map, or end their turn. The map abilities are useful if you need to heal out of an encounter, want to inflict status ailments, or impede or damage a distant enemy. The real brunt of the combat, however, occurs when two teams engage in battle.

Once a battle has begun, the game plays out exactly like any other turn-based RPG. You give your units commands, and then watch as each side takes turns hitting each other. Normally, a battle lasts for only one round, but extra turns can be (and should be) accrued through scoring critical hits or playing to your enemies’ weaknesses.

It should be noted that though teams can have up to 3 members each, the entire team is defeated if its leader is killed. This can be both a blessing and a curse, as it will be sometimes prudent to wipe out an enemy team’s leader quickly to prevent unnecessary damage, but doing so forfeits the extra experience that would have been accrued if you had killed each enemy separately. The enemies can also wipe out your teams by killing your leaders. I found this particularly frustrating with Yuzu, as she has pitifully weak defense and low HP.

But what about the demons? What would a MegaTen title be without demons? Each character’s first demon is given to them quite early on, but the rest must be bought via the Devil Auction, which becomes available later. During my first three hours, I never came across an option to fuse or evolve demons in any way, though the game’s official website does indicate a way to do so.

In terms of the hardware, Devil Survivor doesn’t do much with the DS’s specs. There is no touch screen functionality, the top screen is rarely used (and when it is, it’s not for anything important), and there is zero voice work. The choice to put the game on the DS seems like little more than an excuse to capitalize on the enormous DS market.

That being said, Megami Ibunroku: Devil Survivor is one of the first DS RPGs and one of the first SRPGs that I have legitimately enjoyed playing in a long time. If the rest of the game can keep up the interesting story and manageable difficulty level, I would happily recommend the game to any one looking for a story-heavy linear RPG.

Megami Ibunroku: Devil Survivor was released for Nintendo DS on January 15, 2009 in Japan. There is no word on a North American release yet, but I would imagine that Atlus USA will pick it up sometime this year.

If you have any questions about the game that you don’t feel I answered, please leave a comment and I will answer you to the best of my knowledge. I won’t spoil any story events, though.

A Fresh Look at Venetica

You may not have heard of Venetica, an action RPG for the PC and Xbox 360 developed by a small team in Germany. That's okay. We have some coverage of it for you.

Venentica was announced several months ago with about 3 screenshots, a YouTube trailer, and a short summary of the game's premise. It was an eyebrow raiser, but not much more than that. Well developer Deck13 has made an appearance at the currently ongoing Games Convention in Leipzeig Germany and has released a plethora of new screens and some more gamplay details.

The game's story follows Scarlet, your average action female lead with a low-cut shirt, tight leather pants, and quick slashing combos. What sets her apart is her dad, who happens to be Death. Apparently there has been some confusion in the afterlife, and a bunch of supposed-to-be-dead souls have escaped and are running around Venice all undead-like. Which, you know, isn't supposed to happen. So Death sends his daughter out to clean up. (I suppose Death is just too busy to be bothered with these kinds of things.)

The game features a heavy emphasis on action, encouraging the players to work on exploiting their enemies' weaknesses rather than just button mashing, and gameplay will reportedly change depending on what weapon you have equipped. Many of these weapons will apparently have other uses than just combat, such as a large hammer which can be used to smash certain walls.

So far, the screenshots of the various locations Scarlet will be visiting are looking quite nice, though I'm not completely sold on the character model of Scarlet herself. The game still is quite a ways off from release, with the developers shooting for sometime late next year, so there is certainly still plenty of time to tweak.

From what I've seen and heard about this game, it looks like some sort of interesting mix of Fable, the Legend of Zelda, and a straight-up action title. Not necessarily bad source material, and I'm a lot more interested in the game since I learned that it is the same developers behind the quirky PC title Ankh. So here's hoping Venetica holds up when it sees release around Q3 2009.

You can check out IGNs hands-on with the game here, or look at their full screenshot gallery here.

GameTrailers Previews Infinite Undiscovery

I usually don't post something when another site does a review or a preview or whatever, but GameTrailers' recent video preview of tri-Ace and Square Enix's upcoming Infinite Undiscovery is such a detailed first look at the game in motion that I thought a lot of you who are anticipating this title would be very interested in watching it.

And, for those of you not impressed by the title thus far, perhaps this will give you a better sense of how the game will play as a whole, rather than just clips of solid battle.

The preview certainly doesn't mention everything we have covered here (such as Private Events, character relationships, etc.), but it does present a nice chance to see how a lot of the elements come together.



Give it a watch and let me know what you think below. I think you already know what I think.

Hands On with Tales of Vesperia, or How Video Games Caught Up with Anime

For a lot of people, their weekends consist of sleeping in, watching TV, hanging out with friends, running errands, and generally just taking a break. While I too enjoy such things, the highlight of my weekend was the 20-ish minutes I spent playing Tales of Vesperia.

For those of you who have been hiding out in a cave for the past 6 months, Tales of Vesperia is the next "main series" Tales of RPG from Namco Bandai (the previous being Tales of Innocence for the Nintendo DS), and it marks the long-running Tales of franchise's first foray into HD gaming, debuting the end of this summer on Xbox 360 in both Japan and North America.

Before I get into my impressions and the nitty-gritty details of the demo I played, I think it's important for you to realize that I am something of a Tales of fanatic. Though I knew of the series from its inception, Tales of Phantasia on the Super Famicon, I never actually got around to playing it until Tales of Eternia (unfortunately renamed to Tales of Destiny II in North America) on my PlayStation 1. After that, I was completely hooked on the series and have kept up with it as much as possible since that time. In fact, I mostly bought my GameCube last generation just to play Tales of Symphonia. I hope that you will look upon my following impressions with this in mind.

First off, the demo starts with a brief, fully-voiced cutscene, which though mildly interesting, is not overly exciting or revealing of the plot in any coherent way. I suspect this was intentional so as not to give away any of the story, however, it makes the cutscene feel a little foreign, and probably won't do anything to draw anyone's interest in the plot.

One thing that everyone will notice right away, though, is just how crisp the graphics are. Though the game appears to be running on the same (or a similar) graphics engine that gave Eternal Sonata life on the 360 last fall, the graphics are greatly improved for ToV. In fact, the game looks like an HD anime, even during gameplay. Each character is truly a sight to behold, and puts the PS2's Tales of the Abyss' graphics to utter shame.

The voice acting (done completely in English for anyone playing the demo on a North American 360) is about what you would expect from an anime-esque game. While this may turn some off, I will throw in an interjection here that all of the Tales of games have had such voice acting, and it often ends up working well. Though I always prefer to play/watch media in its original language (especially Japanese, since I speak it fluently), from the little I saw, the English actors do quite a good job. Certainly anyone familiar with English-dubbed games/anime will feel right at home, if not impressed with the performance.

After the cutscene, players are given control of a party of 4 characters: Yuri, Estelle, Repede, and Rita. (Karol is present in the demo, but is not available for combat). Navigating the level map is just what one would expect from a Tales of game, with a generally linear path filled with monsters, treasures, and interactive points of interest. There are several branching paths that allow players to hunt for treasure or fight additional battles, as well as some giant flowers that will stun the player if touched.

Which brings me to the level presented in the demo. Like the cutscene, the area is unfortunately a non-descript grassy forest type area, typical in many RPGs, especially early on in the story. Being that as it may, the graphics are still quite lovely, and most JRPG fans (especially Tales of fans) will have no issue with it. Certainly we can be sure that there will be much more interesting locales to visit in the full game.

Battles are handled in a style very similar to Tales of Symphonia or Tales of the Abyss (which really should come as no surprise considering it was the same team that has worked on all three games). Your four party members are set off against a group of enemies in a 3D battle "zone." The character you are in control of can be guided around this field, dodging enemy attacks, attacking, using special moves and items, and generally just fighting it out. The "free run" ability (which was also present in ToS and ToA) feels much more fluid than previous installments, and makes the 3D battles feel much smoother. The only issue I had with the battles was the reversed controls. Traditionally, Tales of games in North America used the bottom face button to attack, and the right face button to use a special move (X and O respectively on the Dual Shock, A and B on the 360 controller). These are opposite on the demo, and definitely take some getting used to. Due to the demo actually being a Japanese-only demo, it is likely these are the Japanese controls and will be switched for the North American release, but it was still a little weird.

The demo allows you to control any of the four characters I mentioned above, but easily my favorite was Yuri. Sword combos mixed with 'artes' makes for a very familiar battle experience that many are sure to enjoy. Estelle and Rita, on the other hand, are relatively clunky in battle, and will definitely require more patience to master playing as. Repede is quick and fairly powerful, but I just had a hard time enjoying playing as a dog.

At the end of the demo is another short cutscene followed by a surprisingly difficult boss battle. The boss hits hard and is surrounded by smaller, faster subordinates that will consistantly hassle your spell casters and get in the way of your special moves. Without any specific plan of attack, my party fell quickly to the merciless onslaught doled out by the underlings. In fact, it generally seemed that the monsters could kill my party members faster than I could revive them. Interesting to note, however, was the presence of the stun-inducing flowers from the area placed in various locations around the edges of the battlefield. Striking these flowers produced a shower of pollen that would stun any enemy within its vicinity. Though initially frustrating, this battle showed not only that the game will require both strategic thinking and battle competence, but will also employ environmental elements within the battles that can give players an edge in more difficult encounters. Hopefully there will be more of these in other boss battles throughout the game.

Overall, despite the bland location chosen for the demo, Tales of Vesperia was an immensely enjoyable experience. Newcomers to the series will be instantly swept up in the gorgeous visuals and fast-paced gameplay, while long time fans will definitely be delighted by the enhanced gameplay mixed with plenty of tried-and-true Tales of gaming.

For those of you who prefer to watch rather than read, I've embedded Gamersyde's video of the first part of the demo. Enjoy.



Tales of Vesperia is set for release on Xbox 360 this August 7th in Japan, and tentatively for August 19th in North America. I, for one, will be picking this up launch day (and taking a day off to play it).