Archive for the ‘DS Reviews’ Category.
Following up last year’s Naruto RPG comes the next in the series, this time taking things in a slightly different direction. Rather than pick up where the first game left off, Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2 takes place at some unknown period after the first game, quite late in the anime series, with a side story not found in the anime. This time around, Naruto and allies must collect five mirrors in order to seal away a being of great evil that has begun to break free. Continue reading ‘Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2 - Staff Review’ »
Harvest Moon is celebrating its tenth birthday this year — no small feat for any franchise — and Natsume is celebrating that anniversary with their latest addition to the series, Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness for the Nintendo DS. Like most Harvest Moon games, Island of Happiness is quite lengthy. After thirty hours of gameplay I managed to make it through the first year of the game. Since here at RandomNPC we believe that an informed review can only be accomplished by playing a game through to its end, I thought I would offer an impression of Island of Happiness based on the first year of the game, in advance of a full review, which will come at a later date. Continue reading ‘Harvest Moon: Island of Happiness - Impression’ »
These days, remakes are all the rage, and many of them are finding their way onto Nintendo’s dual-screened portable juggernaut. These transitions typically mean new features as well as the expected boosts in graphics and sound, but they also mean comparisons to games that have been released years and sometimes even a decade after the initial release of the source material. In this light, remakes are unique in that they must compete with games of the past, present, and future in a modern day setting, yet Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen for the DS manages to hold its own. Continue reading ‘Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen - Staff Review’ »
Final Fantasy IV is a classic RPG that has seen release on five different gaming platforms, so remaking a game that has been played by so many, and often played so many times by those people, is a particularly difficult challenge. How does one make a game that is so familiar to its fans seem fresh and new while retaining the nostalgic feel at the same time? Fortunately, the DS remake of Final Fantasy IV exceeds expectations and is a new yardstick by which to measure remakes in the future. Continue reading ‘Final Fantasy IV - Staff Review’ »
When you’re a kid, summer vacation is the best time for swimming, riding bikes, and playing outside until after sundown. But for Luso, the main character of Final Fantasy Tactics A2, summer vacation is about leading a clan, fighting monsters, and saving another world. It is the making of an epic “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” essay. Continue reading ‘Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift - Staff Review’ »
Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard is a dungeon crawler that seeks to induce nostalgia for the very earliest RPGs; games that, if given half a chance, would happily hand a player their own teeth in a bag. The game’s designers have succeeded in producing a tough, classically-styled RPG, but its high level of difficulty, slow-paced plot, and one-dimensional cast is going to make it fairly impenetrable to anyone without a pre-existing love of dungeon exploration and turn-based combat. As far as dungeon crawlers go, Etrian Odyssey II is better than the vast majority, but this particular sub-genre remains a very insular and traditional one, and Etrian Odyssey II isn’t going to change any of that.
Continue reading ‘Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard - Staff Review’ »
Neku Sakuraba is a boy with a bit of a problem. He just woke up in the Shibuya’s scramble crossing, the busiest street crossing in the entire world, and he has no idea how he got there. In fact, he doesn’t remember anything other than his name. His only clue is a strange black pin with a skull on it. It’s not much to go on, and before he can figure things out, he is bombarded by peoples’ thoughts. Neku doesn’t even like other people, and yet, now he can hear everything they are thinking. If things weren’t going badly enough, he also got the strangest text message on his phone. “Get to 104. Fail and face erasure.” Despite his best efforts, Neku is unable to delete what is obviously some crazy spam message. And that’s when the frogs started attacking him. This is not a good day at all. In fact, it’s leading up to be a bad week. Continue reading ‘The World Ends With You - Staff Review’ »
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles, one of the first GameCube titles to make real use of the connectivity between Nintendo’s square console and the Game Boy Advance, got a lot of flak for being a multiplayer title with a fairly shallow single player mode. Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates doesn’t do multiplayer quite as well as its predecessor, as it loses a lot of the finely tuned balance between competition and co-operation that made the original so enjoyable, but it makes up for it with a much deeper and more satisfying single player mode. On the whole, Ring of Fates is a bit of a finger in the eye of some other, more simplistic dungeon crawlers, as it offers an entertaining, fairly complex combat system and a variety of dungeons to run through and level up in, and yet doesn’t skimp on the storyline, which is a surprisingly well-told and emotional tale. Continue reading ‘Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates - Staff Review’ »
Dungeon crawlers tend to have some fairly predictable faults; a weak plot, shallow characters, and overly simple combat are par for the course. Dungeon Explorer: Warriors of Ancient Arts has all these issues and more, compounded by a completion time that can hover around ten to fifteen hours. The game’s strengths lay in its character growth system, which provides a surprising level of control over development, and in its multiplayer, which allows players from all over the world to compete and co-operate in dungeon exploration and monster slaying, but these are largely overwhelmed by the overall shallowness of the game. On the whole, Dungeon Explorer: Warriors of Ancient Arts is a fairly simple, predictable dungeon crawler, but it does have a few points of interest. Continue reading ‘Dungeon Explorer: Warriors of Ancient Arts - Staff Review’ »
A young warrior wanders through the woods of the kingdom of Norad. He doesn’t know where he is, where he came from, or even who he is. All he knows is his name and that he needs to find civilization, food, and water. Luckily, he happens upon a farm in the outskirts of the village of Kardia. Meeting a kind woman, he makes his request for the much needed nourishment. He receives a watering can and a hoe. Continue reading ‘Rune Factory - Staff Review’ »
After his father was lost in space a few years ago, Geo stopped going to school and spent a lot of time looking at the stars. While looking at the stars one evening, Geo meets an alien named Omega-Xis. It turns out that Omega-Xis knew Geo’s father, and he decided to help Geo protect the Earth by fusing together to become Mega Man. This fusion allows them to pulse into an ordinarily invisible plane known as the wave world, a place that has been infested by beings known as FM viruses. Continue reading ‘Mega Man Star Force - Staff Review’ »
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