The plot of Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is a little unusual for the series. Set outside of Japan for the first time in the series, Strange Journey takes place in Antarctica where a strange phenomenon known as the Schwartzwelt is gobbling up land at a frightening place. The player takes charge of a member of the United Nations task force sent to investigate this bizarre phenomenon, which threatens to absorb the entire planet. In short order, the player is drawn into the Schwartzwelt, thrown into the middle of a vast conflict between demonic invaders and angelic interlopers, and tasked with the seemingly insurmountable challenge of saving the world and somehow getting home. Though there aren’t quite as many paths open to the player as there were in Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, Strange Journey does a very solid job of allowing players a free hand with their own fate.

The dual-screen setup organizes information quite well, but Strange Journey doesn’t have many options for direct touch screen control.

The plot works both with themes that are familiar to the series — the idea of a multi-sided conflict which the player must pick a side in, with widespread moral ambiguity allowing the player to pick which side they think is right — as well as many themes that are not. For example, large parts of the game can be read as an indictment of humanity and a roll call of its sins. The Schwartzwelt holds demonic constructs which mimic and mock events in the human world. In essence, the Schwartzwelt shows humanity’s worst parts — our careless destruction, our lust for war, our mindless consumption — and uses them as weapons against us. But there’s always a note of hope buried. Whichever path the player chooses, it shows humanity trying to come to grips with its problems, and trying to move forward. On the whole, the plot is exceptionally well executed with well-developed characters, a central theme that really hits home, and a sense of tension that simply never lets up.

As with many Shin Megami Tensei games, a lot of weight is placed on alignments and elementals, but Strange Journey takes this one step further. Rather than the Press Turn system of Nocturne, Strange Journey uses the Alignment Assist system. The system works by allowing all party members of the same alignment to execute a combined attack when one character hits an enemy’s elemental weakness. This system has some easily recognizable positives and negatives. To begin with, the Alignment Assist system is a bit more balanced than the Press Turn system. It’s a lot harder for a party of demons to wipe the player out simply because they ambushed the player and guessed the right element, resulting in an eight-turn beatdown. On the other hand, since the Alignment Assist system is only available to players, the player has a distinct and easily exploitable advantage over monsters, which makes the game as a whole a little less challenging. On the whole, the Alignment Assist system isn’t quite as strategically interesting as the Press Turn system was, though it is a lot more player-friendly.

One addition to the game which doesn’t quite fit is the password system. It’s a fairly simple system; upon request, the game will output a password for any demon in a player’s Demonic Compendium, allowing others to input the password and add that demon to their own Compendium. Essentially, it’s a demon trading system. The password system is an unusual turn for the series, and one that has some interesting potential, but the way it’s used in Strange Journey is a huge problem for the game’s balance. To begin with, it’s pretty easy to get demons with game-breaking skills at a low enough level for new players to use, effectively cracking the game’s balance right from the start. Furthermore, a major part of the Fusion process involves Demon Sources, which can add massively powerful and useful skills to a demon but are single-use only. By using the password system, a player can create a powerful demon with a long list of skills, output its password, reset the game, and then input the password. The player can now re-use the Source but still keep the new demon, all at the cost of a few Macca.

But perhaps the biggest problem with the password system is the trouble it causes for suspension of disbelief. Strange Journey takes place in an sequestered area with only a few people, with the idea of conflict between ideals and the struggle of isolated and threatened humans in a harsh environment forming some of the game’s major themes. Bluntly put, the idea of large groups of players sharing allies over the internet simply doesn’t work here. It actively runs counter to the ideas being presented in the story.

For a long time, Shin Megami Tensei games have been plagued by interface issues. Over the last couple entries, this has largely been reduced to a handful of annoying twitches in the way menus are set up, and a few bothersome holdovers. One of these — the need to exit and re-enter the Demon Fusion menu in order to reshuffle the skills a new demon will learn — has largely been taken care of, though not in a terribly satisfactory way. For the most part, the skills a new demon will learn are now fixed; usually only one or two very specific skills are carried over. This was probably to encourage players to make the most of Demon Sources, which do allow for skill reshuffling. The end result is that demons fused without Sources tend to be much less useful than those with Sources, though whether or not this was intentional is unclear. This, at least, doesn’t seem to cause any major balance issues, though the lack of control over what skills demons will learn is still a bit of a frustration.

As with some recent games in the Shin Megami Tensei line, Strange Journey features longtime series composer Shoji Meguro trying something a little new. This time, Mr. Meguro goes for the heavy-handed doom and gloom classical music, heavy on the ominous Latin chanting. The style is very unusual for Mr. Meguro, and there are times when his lack of comfort in this particular genre is fairly obvious. By and large the soundtrack is solid, and there are some places where it works quite well, but more or less the entire soundtrack uses deep Latin chanting in some form or another, meaning the tracks tend to bleed together.

The game offers a number of achivements. It’s a nice, if pointless touch.

Being on a less technically advanced system, the visuals of Strange Journey are understandably a bit of a step down from those of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. Strange Journey does bring a similar sensibility to the table where visuals are concerned, though where Nocturne opted for slick neon and deep black, Strange Journey tends towards earth tones and a more grotesque style of design. The slickness of Nocturne does rear its head every now and then, particularly in boss design, but for the most part, Strange Journey uses a rougher, cruder style. This actually fits Strange Journey a bit better, synching up well with the terrible things on display in the Schwartzwelt. Ultimately, the visual style does what visuals are supposed to do best: increase the game’s impact.

Due in large part to the password system, Strange Journey simply isn’t as tough as some other games in the series. Make no mistake, this is still a Shin Megami Tensei game; it will gleefully punish a lack of preparedness, and it loves throwing the player curveballs whenever possible. But the player’s ability to produce password demons that are well above what should be available to them at any given time goes a long way towards breaking this balance. This is less pronounced towards the very end of the game as the difficulty level starts to really ramp up, but for most of the player’s journey, password demons represent a hand delivered, gold embossed, engraved invitation to break the game’s balance.

In the end, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is an excellent game and a solid addition to the mainline series. Though its underlying systems are a bit less deep than the more complex mechanics of Nocturne, and players should probably ignore the password system on the basis that it breaks the game balance at every opportunity, Strange Journey sports a solid visual style, an exceptional level of character building options, and a story with strong characters and central themes that really hit home.

This game was played to completion and reviewed using a retail copy.

The traditional Pokemon combat system should be fairly recognizeable to most gamers by this point; a one-on-one or two-on-two turn based battle where turn order is determined by Speed, and the outcome of battle is largely a matter of levels and elemental rock-paper-scissors. There have been no major changes from the combat system seen in Pokemon Platinum, an unsurprising move given that changes to the basic formula of the series only really occur in between Pokemon generations. Regardless, this incarnation of the Pokemon combat system is the best balanced and most open in the series so far, and although HG/SS doesn’t make any major alterations to it, it remains extremely solid and well thought out.

The Rockets are back, but unfortunately, they don’t stick around long.

However, due to some problems with levels and Pokemon encounter placement, the one area where the game suffers the most is in the overall balance. Perhaps the best example of this is the Johto Safari Zone, which is unavailable for much of the first half of the game, and yet the trainers and wild Pokemon on the route leading to it tend to be around level 10 to 20. The second half of the game has a different problem however; thanks to a much more malleable structure, it is reasonably easy for players to wander into encounters with dangerously overleveled Gym Leaders. There are also places in the game where the difficulty spikes quite badly, most notably at the first run through of the Elite Four, and at the third Gym. Most of these problems are actually artifacts of the original Gold and Silver games, which really points to the fact that the difficulty curve simply hasn’t been properly smoothed out, but some are due to seemingly minor things, like the disappearance of the Vs. Seeker.

Story, however, is an area where HG/SS tends to fall far short. Granted that story has never been the main focus of the Pokemon series, particularly during the era that saw the release of Gold and Silver, but when the main character’s motivation for becoming the strongest Pokemon trainer in the land is, “Meh, why not,” things begin to take a turn for the worse. What little story there is revolves around the resurgence of Team Rocket, the Pokemon-napping, generalized evil-doing, mafia-esque group of Red and Blue. Though still missing a distinct leader, the nasty ol’ Rockets are back to their old tricks, stealing and abusing Pokemon for fun and profit. Unfortunately, that’s pretty much it for plot, and it completely gives up less than halfway through the game. For a title that lasts upwards of sixty hours, the directionless story and motiveless main character is a serious issue.

Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver makes a major change to the way the interface is handled, moving the entire menu to the touch screen. Unfortunately, the end result is very hit and miss. For example, being able to save at any time with a simple touch of the screen is great, and very useful, and the new sorting method for the inventory is a welcome change. Being unable to move Pokemon around in bulk in the PC, however, is a definite step back, and adds far more steps to team management than is necessary. On average, the touch-intensive interface tends to speed things up a bit, but the new kinks it introduces to the setup really need to be smoothed out before it can reach the level of effectiveness that the old interface had already achieved.

The music and overall sound is the one area that has seen the greatest leap forward. Though there are still some awkward moments, most notably the continued inclusion of Game Boy and Game Boy Color-era sound effects for many Pokemon, the music has undergone a massive improvement in quality. Individual instruments are now easily distinguishable, and while the sound is just as modern as any other Pokemon soundtrack, the boost in sound quality can give it a more symphonic edge as needed. Overall, the music is a vast improvement.

Pokemon following behind you have a shocking variety of responses, which helps give them a bit more personality.

Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver aren’t spectacularly different from Pokemon Platinum, visually speaking, but there have been a few minor tweaks. The game includes more 3D elements, a greater variety of small details on the field, and in particular, the team’s lead Pokemon following behind the player. This last item may seem frivolous and a waste of effort, but the variety of reactions each Pokemon has lends them a great deal of personality, especially given that these reactions are context-sensitive. Pokemon will show nervousness in a rickety old tower, for example, and calm determination in the face of a Gym Leader. On the whole, the visuals of HG/SS are not particularly spectacular, or as much of a jump in quality from the previous games as the sound is, but the new developments it brings to the table are a definite improvement.

Due to the aforementioned balance issues and the fact that some of the trainers are just plain stronger, HG/SS is actually a bit tougher than your average Pokemon game. The extra length, which should top out at between 60 and 80 hours, boosts the difficulty a little as well, but on the whole, it should still not present much difficulty for most gamers.

From the late-game option to use the original Game Boy soundtrack to the Pokemon following behind the player, HG/SS is something of a love letter to longtime fans of the series. Unfortunately, though chock-full of bonus content and fun minigames, the core game is not quite as strong as it could be. In particular, the frail story and balance cause the game issues, though without a doubt those longtime fans will be able to look past these issues. It’s become something of a mantra with Pokemon games, that new ones won’t change the minds of gamers who dislike the series, but Pokemon Heart Gold and Soul Silver are even less interested than most in changing perceptions of the series. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing depends entirely upon where you already stand on the series.

This game was played to completion and reviewed using a retail copy.

Once again, the world is staring annihilation in the face, and once again players step into the shoes of a nameless protagonist and decide whether to save the world, or to destroy and re-make it in their own image. The core ideas of Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne’s gameplay– demon collection, fusion and negotiation, large-scale dungeon crawling, mature story choices leading to good or evil, just to name a few– have all been updated and refined. Atlus has definitely learned what works across the last six years, and they put that knowledge to good use in Strange Journey. There are a handful of unfortunate issues that detract from the overall experience, though not so much as to make the game significantly worse. Gamers who are already fans of the Megaten universe should be well pleased with this latest installment, and newcomers will find plenty to like.

Sometime in the near future, an unknown black void dubbed the “Schwarzwelt” begins expanding in the Antarctic, and if it isn’t stopped it could eventually swallow the entire world. The game’s nameless protagonist is a member of an elite, multinational task force charged with entering and exploring the Schwarzwelt in an attempt to find out how to destroy it. The mission goes wrong almost from the word “go,” of course. Disaster strikes as the team of four ships enters the Schwarzwelt and the protagonist’s ship, the Red Sprite, is separated from the others and crash lands. The survivors have little time to recover, however, as crew members start keeling over dead, killed by things no one can see. Only intervention from a mysterious trio gives the protagonist the ability to perceive the demons, and hence fight them. From there the crew’s mission becomes simple survival, with the slim hope of eventually finding a way out. Will that hope be realized? Will there be a world left to go back to? Will the protagonist even want to go back, or will he have other ideas about what to do with the power hidden deep inside the Schwarzwelt? That’s up to the player…

Like Nocturne, Strange Journey is one big dungeon-crawl at heart. The only “safe area” is the few rooms of the Red Sprite. Everything else is the sprawling, labyrinthine zones of the Schwarzwelt. The game is in first-person with the top screen of the NDS being the first-person view, and the bottom being a map of the area while on the field, or enemy/ally stats during battle. Controls are handled almost exclusively via the D-pad and buttons. The only real use for the touch pen is to scoot the area map around so you can see various parts. The story progresses in a series of main missions, and there are dozens of side missions players can pick up as they choose from other crew members or even demons. An easily navigable menu system keeps track of player progress in those missions, as well as player inventory and demons. FMV is kept to a bare minimum, most cut scenes being handled by character portraits with dialogue boxes. The rest of the graphics are serviceable, if not very spectacular.

The game gets players into the action pretty quickly. No 2-hour long tutorials, no silly “practice” battles. Aside from a the interaction in a short 6-question quiz to determine the protagonist’s personality type (and hence how his stats will grow as he levels up), players will only be stuck twiddling their thumbs for 30-45 minutes of story set-up before getting dumped out into the wild. Be warned, though, these zones are enormous. Even the first one is labyrinthine enough to take several hours to fully explore. One of the mid-game dungeons is so mammoth that both the first and second floor maps are four times the size of the bottom screen. These areas aren’t all simple sprawl, either. There are one-way doors, conveyor belts, three different kinds of damage floors, holes, warp panels, dark zones and other obstacles everywhere. Each zone is literally a maze, and how to get from Point A to Point B is half the challenge of a stage. Visual-wise, the zone backgrounds are disappointingly bland but, frankly, that’s not a big deal. While out on the field, most of the action happens on the bottom screen map anyway. There are hidden items, enemies, doors and even entire sub-floors to find, and those only ever show up on the map via the Demonica Suit’s radar system.

Now while all that stuff is great, the most important part of Strange Journey, like Nocturne, is the demons. The game starts off fast here, as well. Both the Compendium and the Demon Fusion ability are conveniently located on the main menu and are fully available straight off the bat. Negotiation is also something players get to dive into almost immediately, as Pixie is the only demon in the beginning party. The rest will need to be scrounged for, but don’t worry about lack of choices. Atlus wasn’t kidding when they said there would be 300+ demons in the game. At my count, there were at least 44 different demon categories.  Several demons are available only through passwords, and there is even an entire category attainable only through fusion accidents! Getting 100% completion on the Compendium will definitely require multiple play-throughs and more than a little OCD.

Negotiation has been tweaked so that demons will be less prone to extorting all of a player’s hard-earned macca and items before deciding no, they don’t want to join the party after all. Instead, they ask a pair of questions first and decide whether or not to entertain your request dependent on the answers. This is where all the effort is. Each demon type has a long list of preset questions, from which it will randomly ask two. The correct answers aren’t set, though the same demon will tend to like the same answers. Get an answer wrong and it won’t join, simple as that. Get the answers right, though, and it will start demanding loot, but by this point it’s almost certain that it will join the party. Only once in the entire game did I have a demon decide it wasn’t going to join my party after I’d already answered it’s questions correctly and it had bilked me for what it could.

Fusing the demons collected has become worlds easier thanks to two major upgrades; the analysis gauge and demon source. Every demon has an analysis gauge that goes up incrementally every time a player faces it in a battle and every time it completes a battle in the player’s party. Pass specific points on the gauge and the bottom screen will begin displaying parts of the demon’s stats. From then on, that demon’s stats are always on display for a player’s reference, without the need to keep casting scan all the time. In fact, there is no longer any “scan” or “analyze” skill in the game at all. But the most important aspect of the analysis gauge comes into play once it has been maxed out. A full analysis gauge for a demon means the next time it levels up in the player’s party, it’s guaranteed to hand out a demon source. Demon Source is an item specific to each demon; i.e. Pixie Source or Angel Source. It will contain 2~4 skills, usually ones the demon originally had or an upgraded version thereof. Sometimes, though, entirely new skills will be on there.

When players decide to fuse two demons there’s the option to add a demon source into the mix. Doing so opens up the ability to customize the new demon’s skill set. Unfortunately, this system isn’t without its downsides. First off, demons are limited to a maximum of 6 skills instead of 8. Also, the skills on a demon source are set, and they aren’t necessarily the best ones the demon had. If the demon was one that was fused, its demon source may contain a bonus skill that had been fused onto it, but again, no guarantee it’s one of the good ones. Outside of adding a demon-source, there’s no other way to customize a fused demon’s skills. When two demons are put together the skills that show up are the ones you get, period. Still, despite these shortcomings overall the system is a vast improvement over earlier Megaten games.

The battle system, compared to the other parts of the game, has undergone a complete overhaul. Basic battle is very old school; all four player party members’ actions are input via menu commands, they go off all in one shot, then the enemy gets a turn. Players get a blade for slashing attacks and a gun for piercing attacks or magic spells. The armor equipped determines weaknesses and resistances, and accessories provide some various bonuses. All of these are available for purchase in the Red Sprite in abundance.  Too much abundance, actually. I found myself skipping over new weapons and armors in swaths because they weren’t much of an upgrade at all, especially later in the game.

The Press Turn system of gaining or losing turns by hitting an enemy’s weak points or resistances has been completely scrapped. Replacing this is the Devil Co-Op system, where a strike on an enemy’s weak point earns immediate follow-up attacks by any other party member of the same alignment. Having similarly aligned demons in your party allows for some pretty hefty damage output, but conversely, if everyone is different, aiming for an enemy’s weak-point becomes almost meaningless. This shifts strategy very heavily onto the party composition side. Putting a party together becomes a delicate balancing act between having enough same alignment demons to make Devil Co-Op worth it, and getting the right demons some battle-time so you can max out their analysis gauge. One thing that doesn’t need to be worried about, though, is having the enemy Co-Op the party back. There are no penalties for missing an enemy or hitting its resistances, reducing player-party weaknesses to more of an occasional irritant as opposed to lethal disasters waiting to happen.

Lastly, and pretty least, is Alignment. All the demons in the game have an Alignment put together off of two scales: Light-Neutral-Dark and Law-Neutral-Chaos. So there can be Light-Chaos demons or Neutral-Neutral demons and so forth. The player’s Alignment is on the Law-Chaos scale only and it can and will change across the course of the game dependent on what answers are given to which question. Which Alignment the player is at the end of the game determines which of the three endings is gotten. And, to be blunt, that’s the only point where Alignment matters at all. For 90% of the game, it’s effectively fluff. It really doesn’t help that a little over half-way through things, an easily repeatable NPC encounter opens up that allows players with a little patience to shift their Alignment any which way they want. Player Alignment only becomes locked in once the final zone is entered. Before then, it’s entirely possible to get both Law-Only and Chaos-Only things in the same play-through. On the plus-side, this makes it really easy to get all three endings. And it’s not like it is possible to get absolutely everything on the first play-through. A handful of Law/Chaos-Only quests do lock off their opposite number once accepted. So again, while this is a downside, it’s relatively minor.

Overall, I think there is only one thing about Strange Journey that I can say just flat-out disappointed me; the music.  Megaten games have always tended to have great and distinctive soundtracks, from Nocturne’s heavy techno to Persona 3′s hip J-pop.  Strange Journey tries to come up with a new concept by adding some tribal chanting to sweeping orchestrals, and this works in maybe one or two cases (notably the opener).  The rest of the time… not so much.  Battle and boss themes are regular orchestrals that are just about as bland as the backgrounds.  There isn’t the variety of music that a Megaten game usually has, either.  Most zones of the Schwarzwelt have their own music, though some repeat.  The battle and boss music stays the same throughout.  There aren’t many different tunes for the Red Sprite safe-zones or cut scenes, either.  The official soundtrack either has to be pretty short, or include tracks that are hardly ever heard in the actual game just to fill out the disc.  Ah well.  I guess you can’t have everything.

While the upgrades over its spiritual predecessor Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne have made Strange Journey a less vicious game that’s more forgiving of player mistakes, it is still by no means easy. A single error may not wipe the party any more, but players who don’t pay close attention to party members and inventory will soon find themselves in a boatload of trouble. A single playthrough will likely take at least 60 to 80 hours and there are ample incentives to play through a second time, including new demons and even an entire new dungeon. In sum, Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is a solid game with a handful of flaws that are easily overlooked. Fans of the Megaten universe both new and old should find plenty to love about it.

This review is based off of a copy of the game that I purchased myself.

Updated 3/16/10.

As with the rest of the game, the story of Glory of Heracles plays with traditional RPG cliches. The plot follows a silent, nameless main character with amnesia — nothing new there — who also happens to be immortal. In fact, all of the main cast will more or less come out and say when you first meet them that they’re never gonna die, can’t remember where they’re from, and are going to join the party whether you like it or not. The story takes a little while to get going, but it eventually takes up a number of elements of Greek mythology, from Pegasus to Daedalus, and blends them all together. Along the way, the story takes gentle swipes at a few of the more well-known cliches, such as stealing items from the houses of NPCs. The slightly snarky manner in which the game was written backs up this sense of fun, and the dialogue sneaks in a few well-placed references to, for example, the Legend of Zelda, and Kid Icarus.

Spells can be boosted with a touch screen minigame, but they’re mostly unnecessary.

On the whole, Glory of Heracles has a fun, if not particularly involving story. A large part of the cast’s motivation boils down to, “The Gods told us to do it,” a problem which generally stems from having a main party full of characters who can’t remember anything. With this much amnesia floating around, no one remembers if they even have any other motivation. Most of the main cast manages to flesh out reasonably well by the end of the game, though few if any of the secondary characters end up as much other than cardboard cut-outs. The plot itself is pretty loose, with no real overarching theme to tie the whole thing together, despite the abundance of potential themes in the mythological source material Glory of Heracles already draws from.

The combat system is a fairly basic turn based system, with a few interesting ideas. For a start, each of the player characters are arranged on a two-by-five grid that sits opposite the grid occupied by the opponent. Since players can’t place two characters on the same Y-axis, the grid system ends up behaving quite a bit like a traditional front-row back-row system, with the less defensive characters in back and more physical characters in front. Characters take turns in order of highest agility, but with a bit of randomization. Generally, games that use this kind of turn order end up making it tough to make certain tactical decisions in combat, since the player is never certain when a character will get around to taking their turn, but Glory of Heracles gets around this problem by very simply telling players what order their characters will be taking.

The game also has a few new ideas about spellcasting. For a start, spells not only consume MP, but also a substance called Ether, which is a sort of elemental MP determined by the battlefield combat takes place on. All spells either consume or create Ether, giving the player the ability to, for example, use spells that boost Earth Ether in order to cast a powerful Earth-elemental spell. It leads to some interesting tactical situations, especially when Ether Reflux, which causes damage to characters who try to cast spells without the proper Ether available, is taken into account. Players who find themselves up against a monster who uses nothing but Fire-elemental spells may find it wise to attempt to drain all the Fire Ether out of the playing field, forcing the monster to hurt itself when casting.

Unfortunately, as with many elements in Glory of Heracles, the combat system is never really pressed as far as it will go. Thanks in large part to the prevalence of very powerful abilities, and the fact that players with fairly basic equipment can cause abilities to activate something like 80 to 90% of the time, the difficulty level pretty much falls down a hole in the second half of the game. Even the final boss provides little or no difficulty, which is always a bit of a letdown.

One point of contention I have with Glory of Heracles is the interface, particularly menu setup. The biggest issue is that the menu is simply overcomplicated, forcing the player to tab between characters for the simplest of tasks and breaking up literally everything into its own separate category. One bright spot, however, is the game’s use of the touch screen. Though the menus themselves are not particularly intuitive, the touch screen controls are quite responsive, and even a little more useful in battle than the more traditional button controls.

The music for Glory of Heracles was composed by Yoshitaka Hirota, with newcomer Yoichi Kanno. Most gamers will remember Mr. Hirota from the Shadow Hearts series, whose soundtrack is absolutely nothing like the work found in Glory of Heracles at all. Where Shadow Hearts used a creepy, often industrial soundtrack, the tunes of Glory of Heracles are all strings and horns and heroism. Overall, the soundtrack is fairly good, though hardly outstanding. The only real problem with the music is actually not the music itself, but the fact that every time the player gets into a battle, the field or overworld music will restart. Given the game’s higher than average encounter rate, the first four bars of any given song will quickly begin to wear thin.

Which equipment gives what abilities will be a major part of putting your characters together.

Unlike many elements of the game, Glory of Heracles uses a transparently traditional visual style, save for the cel shaded characters themselves. Likewise, character design is fairly basic, which is a bit of a problem given that the greatest weakness of the visual style is its lack of detail. Bolder or more outlandish character design would have helped the cast to stand out more, as their dull appearances force players to focus on the faces, which are very basically rendered. The game does use some interesting visual tricks to make certain scenes more dramatic and exciting despite the lower-powered hardware of the DS, allowing for some creatively-shot scenes late in the game. On the whole, the visuals are solid, but they have some rather significant underlying issues.

With a moderate time to complete of around 35 to 40 hours, Glory of Heracles is a solidly-sized chunk of role-playing. Unfortunately, there really aren’t any sidequests to complete, and although the game offers some fun post-game tasks, such as a Golden Sun-style survival arena and a New Game+ feature, the fact that players are pretty much railroaded from beginning to end creates problems on multiple run-throughs.

Perhaps thanks to its lack of familiarity in the west, Glory of Heracles comes off as a solid RPG that strikes a reasonable balance between the traditions of the genre and its own innovations. Though some of its ideas don’t quite work out, and the game’s desire to make cultural references does, on occasion, fall flat, Glory of Heracles tries pretty hard, and succeeds more often than it fails.

This game was played to completion and reviewed using a retail copy.

The game is actually set about a hundred years after the events of Phantom Hourglass, but the only way you’d really be able to tell is by the elderly Niko, the pirate from Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass. As the game opens, Link has set off to Hyrule Castle to receive his engineering license. There he learns of the Spirit Tracks, a set of railroad tracks that keep the demon king imprisoned in the Tower of Spirits.  Eerily, these tracks are disappearing from the world, so the pair set off to the Tower of Spirits to restore them. Along the way, Princess Zelda is separated from her body. In this state she helps link as a Navi-like assistant, though she can also control various phantoms Link will encounter

Like Phantom Hourglass, the game’s biggest accomplishment is the stylus control, but that is also its single biggest flaw.  When the stylus inputs work, they are great, and this is true for about 90% of the gameplay.  Where things start to fall apart is boss battles.  The controls are imprecise to the point of being game breaking, as stylus commands can easily be mistaken for one another, and the addition of Phantom Zelda only adds to the confusion. The maneuver to pick up a bomb is pretty much the same one to stab it, making it explode right there.  This is annoying, and it will happen more times than you care for.  While this is manageable most of the time, boss fights often require exact and careful movements, which the controls make extremely difficult.  It simply is not acceptable that when you want to stab a boss, Link blunders into the intended target.  Controlling Phantom Zelda has similar problems, as sometimes instead of moving her, you’ll just walk to where she’s standing.  And then you get hurt.  And then you probably start swearing.  It’s so bad that the last boss battle is more about being lucky than any actual skill.  All of this could have been avoided by building the game around the directional pad with stylus input for items, a control scheme that would put less emphasis on stylus movements and more on overall gameplay.

There is one surprising aspect to Spirit Tracks that practically salvages the game.  Though Zelda games are known for their lore, individual games are usually somewhat weak on story.  Using the graphical style of Wind Waker, Spirit Tracks tells volumes of story without a single word by relying on facial expressions and body movements to great effect.  Princess Zelda is an early standout, conveying her thoughts easily even in Phantom form. You wouldn’t think that the gigantic lumbering Phantoms from Phantom Hourglass could be so feminine, but through their movements, every action flawlessly tells the story that the creators were going for.  Of course, there is plenty of plot in the form of text boxes, but it pales in comparison.

Graphically, Spirit Tracks gives players the experience they have come to expect.  The game is gorgeous.  Dungeons are detailed, and the overworld is pretty.  Everywhere you look, there are bright, colorful graphics, and the game pushes the limits of what the DS can do for sure.  This is, by far, one of the best looking games on the handheld to date.

Spirit Tracks also scores high marks for its music, but unfortunately, there are few new songs except for the overworld theme.  Since you’ll spend most of the game on your train, the bulk of what you’ll actually listen to still manages to be fresh and catchy.  It would have been nice for more new tunes, but it still does pretty well. The game also does moderately well with its sound effects, but it’s nothing new.  Fans of the series will recognize pretty much all of the sound effects from past games, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Sadly, that’s where most of the praise for Spirit Tracks ends.  Many people lamented the boat of Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass, but the train of Spirit Tracks is far worse.  It has only two speeds going forward: slow and slower.  It is an absolute chore getting anywhere in the game because it takes so long to get anywhere.  Warp points are accessible later on that do cut down on travel time, but they don’t shorten things by enough and end up being too little too late.  And unlike a boat that can go pretty much anywhere, trains are limited to tracks.  You can only go where the tracks go, so there is no such thing as a shortcut.  To make matters worse, there are enemy trains on the same tracks, and if you hit them, you die.  Players must be careful to avoid them, sometimes changing course to avoid certain death.  This nearly always results in a longer path.

Another major flaw is that this game seems very much like Phantom Hourglass all over.  Once again, the world is broken into four quadrants that you gain access to in turn, and each has a dungeon.  After you finish each one, you’re off the Ocean King Temple…. err… Tower of Spirits.  Fortunately, each trip to the Tower of Spirits features new floors that can be accessed without going through the previous ones, but it’s still somewhat annoying.  The game feels like a second quest through the previous title, not a new game that stands on its own.  Everything feels reused, including some of the monsters.

Phantom Hourglass was a very short game, but Spirit Tracks is even shorter.  Not counting the Tower of Spirits, there are only five proper dungeons to explore, and a fan of the series could probably guess four of them.  There are also fewer items to use.  In all, Link gets six sub weapons to his disposal, and three of them are bombs, a boomerang, and the bow and arrow.  This does mean that there are three new items, and this is a welcome change.  Despite the new tools, two of them feel similar to previous items from other Zelda games, so only one is truly original.

One final problem is the overuse of the Spirit flute. Zelda games apparently simply must have a musical instrument of some sort, so this game is no exception.  The problem is that you play the flute by actually blowing into the microphone on the DS.  That wouldn’t really cause too much trouble, except with harder songs, the DS tends to not recognize that you’ve stopped blowing to skip to a different note.  Shorter songs are almost as bad since they are a measly two consecutive notes long.  Much like the game as a whole, it feels like a good idea that was very badly implemented.  Worse, the microphone can pick up background noise when played on the go, such as on an airplane, and the DS will interpret this as constant input whether you are actually blowing into it or not, rendering any of the flute segments that do not have consecutive notes unplayable. One wrong note, like the one in between the ones you’re going for, and the song is ruined.  At least there is no penalty for retrying missed songs.

As mentioned before, Spirit Tracks is pretty short.  The game lacks a timer, but you could probably finish it in no more than 10-20 hours.  There are some mini-games that could lengthen your playtime, but they primarily involve the train, so some will probably not take the time to do them. Aside from a few tricky puzzles, the game is pretty easy on the whole.  The only difficulty comes from using the stylus to attack.  Figuring out how to deal with bosses isn’t challenging by itself, though getting Link to do what you need via the stylus is another story.

In the end, Spirit Tracks feels nearly exactly like its predecessor.  If you really liked Phantom Hourglass, you will like its landlocked clone.  If you were not a fan of Link’s last DS excursion, just save yourself the trouble and skip this one.  This one is only for the more diehard fans.

At first blush, the story seems to be a brazen attempt to justify the rest of the game’s mechanics: Annie, a lazy girl whose only ambition is to marry into power (and avoid all responsibility while doing so), meets with the disapproval of her grandfather, the Royal Alchemist of Orde. Said grandfather, being a Royal Alchemist after all, conjures a couple homunculi to carry her away in her sleep and deposit her in a workshop on Sera Island, where the royalty of the region are about to kick off a three-year development project to improve tourism and make Sera Island a top-rate resort destination.

I’ll give you a moment to reread that. I’d certainly have to.

Back with us? Good. Assisting you in this massive story shock are Tutorial Fairy Pepe and Development Admin Hans, who quickly acquaint you with the Alchemist’s competition going on as part of the program and how you compete. You’re given a rundown on how to build resort facilities, how to manage those facilities, how to use your own workshop, and then…

You’re on your own. 1080 days. Go.

Aside from handing you an assignment every 6 months, the game then doesn’t care what you do or how you do them. You have a time limit, you have fetch-quests to fulfill for fame and profit, you have friends to recruit at your leisure, you have locations to scour for resources and random battles, and (most importantly) you have the freedom to do whichever of the above suits you at the time. Unlike the strict, schedule-based linearity of Annie‘s cousin Mana Khemia, you control the direction at all times.

See? It’s kinda RPG-ish! It belongs on this website! Honest!

Whereas most JRPGs will start with the story and develop game mechanics to suit it, Annie takes the opposite route: It starts with a mechanical ideal, puts together a story to justify it, and then gradually develops atmosphere to flesh out what would otherwise seem contrived and painful to bear. Your three years on Sera Island are peppered with vignettes and sketches, there to highlight the supporting cast, the Island itself, and generally give credence to this far-fetched premise. As you progress, you come to realize the many facets of your companions, from the ridiculous to the respectable. In turn, they begin to depend on you, which begins to show Annie the importance of having responsibility.

Or not. You always have the option of neglecting your friends’ requests. When you don’t come through for them, they will call you on it. It may not be the robust morality system advertised by Fable or BioShock, but it’s present nonetheless. Rather than exist for its own sake, these choices exist as a result of much greater freedom than would be expected in a JRPG. How many games can you think of where you’d be called upon to find a MacGuffin for such-and-such, even if it means dropping your world-saving quest to take the time. Annie asks you for the MacGuffin, but time marches on; whether or not you’ll be able to process this request while adhering to your existing plan is a matter of your own skill in time management.

1080 days may seem like a lot, but they blow by faster than you’d think. Every time you synthesize an item, at least one day passes. (Depending on how many of that item you produce, several may pass.) Traveling between locations on the island takes between 1-3 days, depending on your starting point and destination. Gathering resources in the field takes up days, and may spawn random battles. (More on those later.) Pretty much the only things that don’t chew away at that 1080-day limit are accepting and receiving jobs, and traveling within the city limits. You soon find yourself lumping together tasks based on geography; “I’ll be gathering out there, which means I can stop by there and drop off these, then pick up more jobs and return home.” It’s a vicious cycle, and you’ve got three years of it.

While in the field, combat happens. It seems a little more glazed-over than combat in most RPGs; many battles can be fast-forwarded through (by holding the Y button) and hold little consequence (other than to drop items and award EXP). Though it seems simplistic enough, there’s actually more at work here than immediately appears. There’s an elemental strength/weakness system (where most weapons and armor can be modified to exploit certain Achilles’ heels), weapons which deal area damage (and key off of one of two attack stats), and differing special commands depending on whether that particular unit is in the front or back line. While it might not be particularly inspired, it must be remembered that the RPG aspects of this game are not – repeat: NOT – at the forefront. This beast is more SimCity than Star Ocean. Combat exists as a challenge to a means, more than a means to an end.

The resort facilities, however, get the spotlight. Throughout the game, certain funds (orders of magnitude greater than your pocket cash, mind) will be earmarked for development projects. By speaking to your Tutorial Fairy, you can choose which facilities to build (you choose one of two options for each of five sites on the island), remodel facilities once they’ve achieved a level of notoriety, and check detailed statistics on sales trends and clientele numbers. Once a resort attraction is up and running, you can begin to take jobs from there, with each completed task bringing fame to the facility (and rewards to Annie). However, neglect a building for too long and its numbers will begin to slip; a balance must be struck between the shiny newness and keeping people interested in the venerable oldness. Also available at resorts are minigames, which can provide fame or resources through intuitive, touchscreen-based bits of fun.

Graphically, this is one of the better examples of DS RPGs. Most cutscenes are rendered in the new-standard “Anime-style Portraits On Top of a Text Box” motif, though said portraits are a little more mobile and dynamic. Not animated, just… “animated.” Said portraits are colorful and detailed, with wide ranges of emotions. Certain elements, such as the synthesis animation and opening titles, are rendered in full-motion video… tragic, though, that you’ll watch each of them once and then skip through them every other time. The music is unoffensive but not terribly memorable, though it’s overshadowed by the vocal performance. Yes, a vocal performance on a DS cart. Entirely in Japanese. Figuring that a dub cast would be too expensive, an English dub would necessitate the removal of the Japanese voice work, and that the fans would be fine with or, indeed, prefer the Japanese track, NISA has retained the original dialogue. If that’s not your thing, an option-menu item offers to eliminate the voices altogether.

I suppose I should round out this review with a few gripes. The problem is, I don’t have that many. The vocals can get muddled with the BGM in a few places, but the options allow you to adjust that problem away. The game is short – 12 to 15 hours on the first playthrough, and scarcely 10 in subsequent runs – but that’s the price of a finite time limit. (Also, with 7 possible endings, it ultimately facilitates multiple playings and thus improves replay value.) The drop rate on some items is abysmal. (That, I can’t explain away.) If you’re looking for a crystal skull or ancient coin or something along those lines, be prepared to save and reset a couple times.

Was that it? I think so. Two justified gripes, and one really glaring one. Oh, and I found a typo once. That’s about it. In Annie‘s defense, though, she does get a few of the small things down to perfection. The Y button functions as a fast-forward in almost all circumstances, and when I say “fast,” I mean fast. (Again, improving replay value.) As you progress through the game, every item, person, and foe you come across is automatically added to an in-game almanac which can be referenced from the main menu or title screen – a very handy way to recall where to find that one rare item you’ve been looking for. Finally, the minigames that are occasionally offered at resort areas for fun and profit (and, occasionally, fame) are, by and large, genuinely entertaining… perhaps not so much in the case of the “pull a rope and get hit on the head with something” game, or the “3×3 Memory” game. The “Happy Spiel” game, in which you have to tap on a megaphone when a gauge reaches its maximum, can get downright white-knuckle at higher difficulties, while the Whack-a-Puni challenge is always good for some stress relief.

Atelier Annie ~Alchemists of Sera Island~ is a strange bird. A JRPG-but-not-quite, it takes some familiar combat and item elements and uses them to season what is, at its core, a robust strategy game. It stands an example of a big idea that, despite its uniqueness and scope, doesn’t neglect the small things that make it really shine. I’ve been told that Atelier Annie is closer to the spirit of the (Japan-only) original Atelier titles; if such is the case, I can only hope that this is the first step in getting them to our shores.

This game was reviewed using a copy provided by the publisher. Played to completion, twice.

Once upon a time, there was a little DS RPG called A Witch’s Tale. Her parents, Nippon-Ichi and HitMaker, were very famous in their own rights; one was a premier name in RPGs and the other was once a member of the famous Sega family. Though her pedigree shone, she was scorned from birth, partially due to the failings of her elder brother, Dragoneer’s Aria. As the young girl of the family, no one wanted to mention her in the same breath as her half-siblings Disgaea and Crazy Taxi. Realizing that she would have to seek her own fortune, she set out to prove her detractors wrong.

A Witch’s Tale didn’t have any friends to keep her company, but she did have books. Lots and lots of books. From these books, she put together a robust cast, pulling from Alice in Wonderland, Hansel and Gretel, The Wizard of Oz, Arabian Nights, and more. For the heroine, though, she chose Liddell, a spunky witch-in-training whose muddled past and thirst for power made her the optimal selection for an RPG protagonist. She opens up the Sealed Evil In A Can (or book of runes, in this case), unleashing a horrible curse on the world and waking up Loue, the bishounen vampire sleeping nearby. Loue gives the standard exposition dialogue and decides to ride shotgun on Liddell’s quest to restore peace and order to the land, meet with Queen Alice, and seal the Eld Witch once again.

A Witch’s Tale was happy with how the plot was structured, but a couple things weren’t quite right. For example, the original Hansel was a boy, but that didn’t jive with the “Six Princesses” motif. (Actually, there are seven. Or eight. Depends on which playthrough you’re on.) Believing that historical accuracy means nothing in the face of setting a tone and keeping on it, blam, Hansel’s a princess now. She believed that one wouldn’t mind if she played a little fast and loose with the characters, so long as the end result is entertaining. (And I’d have to agree.)

However, being an RPG conveys certain responsibilities. A Witch’s Tale soon realized that she was running out of princesses and corresponding elemental kingdoms, which resulted in Dorothy Gale as a caustic, angsty steampunk wrecking machine. She realized that things were getting a little out of hand, but the princesses had already been placed, so she concerned herself with the battle mechanics and figured that the masses would appreciate a little juxtaposition in the characterization. (Again, I’d have to agree.)

Expa Abyss, Level 1 Gamebreaker. If you can draw while sleepwalking, you’re set.

The mechanics, though, would prove to be a stumbling block. To be different, she shunned the use of buttons. “I’m on the DS,” she thought, “I might as well make the most of it!” Thus, all control was directed through the touch screen, from overworld navigation to menus to minigames and everything in between. The biggest spells required tracing a shape, which would’ve been novel if not for sheer overuse. (But more on that later.) A Witch’s Tale didn’t want to fall into the same number-crunching madness that brought her siblings such fame, so she opted for a much simpler system, hearkening back to the days of yore when enemies lined up in an orderly fashion for your convenience.  Rather than give Liddell living, breathing companions, however, she opted for animate dolls, two at a time, that provide backup while maintaining the “girl-vs.-the-world” motif that she worked so hard to foster. Thus, dolls were scattered throughout the kingdoms, though they went largely ignored because the dolls you got at the end of each chapter (each an effigy of the latest princess you rescued) were statistically so much better that none of the “standard” dolls could ever hope to compete.

Unfortunately, this was a side effect of a rather alarming trend: A Witch’s Tale didn’t have much of a head for numbers. She knew that she was supposed to incorporate “MP” to limit how much magic the player could use; she didn’t realize, though, that the super-huge-99MP-spell that could take down most any standard encounter in one shot would hit a point, right around the third kingdom, where it became unbalanced. Since A Witch’s Tale was a generous girl at heart, she gave the player a full charge of MP with each increase in level… without realizing that, despite using Expa Abyss (said uber-spell) every fight, it was actually near-impossible to run out of MP. Thus, what would in most RPGs be a lesson in resource-rationing becomes a wholly  meaningless number as Liddell and her stuffed companions steamrolled their way through the game.

It’s worth mentioning that A Witch’s Tale was, to her credit, a very generous girl… though without boundaries, that generosity quickly became unbalanced. As if the massive MP glut wasn’t enough, scattered throughout the world were tomatoes – yes, tomatoes – which, should Liddell fall in battle, would pick her up, dust her off, mend her dolls, fully charge her MP, and smack the foe responsible for such an inconvenience for four digits of damage. It might all be a bit much, but A Witch’s Tale wanted to be loved by everyone, even if it did mean a good bit of hand-holding. However, in her quest to be comfortable and easy to enjoy, she fell into the habit of being samey and repetitive: Run all over Kingdom A, collect three items (Usually requiring two boss fights and solving a puzzle), fight big boss, save princess, unlock Kingdom B, repeat. The kingdoms look and feel interesting enough, but she spent too much time concerned with how things look and not nearly enough with how things play.

She chose her aesthetics, too, to be as accessible as possible; the time-honored anime style of her family coupled nicely with the not-quite-dark storybook fantasy, producing something that looks like Rozen Maiden meets Phantasy Star with a bit of The Nightmare Before Christmas thrown in for extra marketability. The soundtrack, fittingly, seemed very light and music-boxy, though in certain circumstances it wasn’t afraid to lay in with some heavy guitar solos.

A Witch’s Tale was happy with things so far, but she wasn’t quite done. She’d read somewhere that people who play RPGs like to collect things, so she scattered a deck of playing cards around, hoping that folks would take the time to find all 53 (she left the Joker in just for the heck of it.) Unfortunately, some of the stronger cards became sentient and ran away, hiding in dungeons and fleeing at the mere sight of intruders. To capture these cards, players hoped to encounter them during a “BURST” fight, which would yield double EXP and increase the rate of critical hits to nearly 100%; such fights were rare,  occuring every 8th encounter. Worse still, BURST or no, the cards would often get the jump on the team and run away before any action could be taken. The players were frustrated, and A Witch’s Tale didn’t know what to do.

Worse yet, the story was ending soon, and she hadn’t really thought of a conclusion to her story, so she decided to go for the “shocking” route. She asked the Mad Hatter and March Hare to stall for time by setting up a long “So Here’s What’s Actually Been Going On” expository dialogue just before the final battle, then went with a punch-out ending so abrupt it’d make Space Ghost throw his powerbands up in confusion. “Aaah, but there’s a second ending!” she said with a wink. “You can play through the whole thing again – I’ve added one of those New Game + thingamajigs – but with an extra scene! Or, heck, I’ve got a deck of cards here. Blackjack, anyone?”

Now, some people would call it quits there. Heck, some would call it quits by the second kingdom, when they realize they’ve been had and American McGee’s name isn’t anywhere on this thing. But one boy actually chose to tighten his hat, duck his head, and play through the whole thing again. “This can’t be the end,” he thought. “No one is that bold or that crazy. Besides, the blackjack minigame’s not that good.”

And so, this young man plowed through the game again, now making a fine paste out of every random encounter (though they never stopped getting in his way), walking through every boss fight without breaking a sweat (even though they weren’t really that hard in the first go-round), and seeing the bonus scene and completing its sidequest (for an even more egregiously broken doll).  Finally, he came to the “Good End,” only to find out that A Witch’s Tale had fallen asleep in the interim and was startled by the fact that anyone actually played the game a second time. So she rounded up the whole cast for a much happier, but still somewhat nonsensical and confusing punch-out ending. “So, erm… how about some blackjack?”

“No, thanks,” said the boy, “I’ve got other games to play. I really wish you’d have just followed through. You had an excellent premise;  I mean, Dorothy as an angsty Steampunk princess? That’s awesome. But the numbers just didn’t line up, and the endings didn’t really do anything to help your case. You put together a fantastic cast, and a decent aesthetic and soundscape, but it feels like you didn’t do your homework. Just because you dress up with pumpkins and black skirts and spiderwebs doesn’t mean you’ll be popular. Being good and under-appreciated is better than doing things sloppy and attracting attention. I really hope to see you again, perhaps once you’ve done your homework.”

And with that, the boy rode off into the sunset, though if you strained to hear, you could make out his discussion with a travel agent. “Hey, you know any island getaways? Preferably those with no pumpkins whatsoever… Sera Island, you say? Sounds promising.”

This game was played to completion and reviewed using a copy provided by NISA.

One of the few happy times.

Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days begins right after Roxas is created near the end of Kingdom Hearts and continues through the events of Chain of Memories up to the beginning of Kingdom Hearts II. It shows what was happening outside Castle Oblivion as Organization XIII put its grand scheme into motion. While it doesn’t provide a whole lot more insight about the other Organization XIII members, it does show the scope of Axel and Roxas’s friendship. Overall, the story is very pensive and melancholy with few lighthearted moments — a stark contrast to the other Kingdom Hearts games, which are more upbeat and colorful. There’s more discussion about the nature of Nobodies — whether they have actual emotions or only memories of emotions — and it leaves one wondering if Nobodies are just misunderstood by others or really good at deceiving themselves. Above all, like Chain of Memories, it fills in the gap between Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II, and it gives Roxas proper treatment as a character rather than simply making the player think, “Who the #@%* is this guy and why do I have to play as him for the first three hours of Kingdom Hearts II?”

The game opens with a tedious, slow-paced tutorial spread over several missions. Each mission teaches you one simple lesson about the game, like how to swing the keyblade or how to jump on a ledge. It takes just under an hour to get past this “Kingdom Hearts for Dummies” nonsense. The “story” explanation is that freshly-minted Nobody Roxas is too much of a newbie to do much of anything, like understanding complex commands or forming a sentence. But this doesn’t apply to the player, so it comes off as intellectually insulting.

Oh, quit your whining. They’re just wimpy Shadows.

Once you get past the tutorial, you have to settle in for several hours of Roxas’s daily grind: receiving orders, killing Heartless, eating ice cream, and getting up the next day to start the process all over again. The story slowly drips out in between, and you begin to think that you just can’t make it through the game. It’s the same Disney worlds, the same stories, and the same music. Interaction with Disney characters is at a minimum due to the Organization’s shadowy nature.

Then Day 150 rolls around and things suddenly get interesting. On Day 170, you get to visit Never Land, only it’s not the ship and the clock tower; it’s a group of rocky islands with different music. Wonderland has some new territory to explore as well; you can access the Queen’s garden hedge maze, which includes missions that involve sneaking past card guards and chasing a highly evasive Heartless. There are plenty of new kinds of Heartless to fight as well; some are clever variations on classic Heartless, and some types that have never been encountered before. After 300 or so days, the story becomes pretty intense. Everything is unraveling and the events are leading up to the inevitable conclusion. It’s only a matter of “how,” and that unfolds in an epic and dramatic fashion.

The Panel system is a nice change from the usual bland point allocation systems.

The first part of the game makes it difficult to keep playing, and the interface doesn’t help either. The default controls — the ones that gave me so much trouble at E3 — are so terrible that they shouldn’t be in the game at all. The alternative controls, which let you use both shoulder buttons to move the camera, are much better. Battle menu controls are unchangeable, and while they are usually very easy to use, you can only scroll down through your lists of spells and items. If you accidentally pass what you’re looking for, you have to scroll through everything again. If you have extra backpack space equipped, it becomes pretty frustrating. Fortunately, you can hotkey your favorite items and spells, so that helps somewhat. The Panel system, which lets you equip items, spells, abilities, and levels as panels in a grid, is very easy to use, fairly customizable, and almost puzzle-like in the sense that you have to make different shapes of blocks fit together efficiently.

At least the game itself is easy, aside from the ridiculous new ghost Heartless than can drain most or all of your life with one move. Standard mode in 358/2 Days seems easier than Standard mode in other Kingdom Hearts games.

Like the other games in the series, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days has high production values. Graphics are top-notch, exceeding most DS games out there, and there’s plenty of FMV. For obvious reasons, most of the worlds are recycled from the other Kingdom Hearts games, but they’ve transitioned well to the DS. The same goes for the music, which sounds pretty decent coming from the DS’s speakers. Voice acting is of the same quality, though Axel sounds too melodramatic at times and Xion is just a little too flat. What’s notable is that the game features the final performance of Wayne Allwine as Mickey Mouse — a class act who will certainly be missed.

Still, the first several hours bring down the game and will most likely cause some players to abandon it before they get anywhere. It simply takes too long for the game to become what it should have been right at the start. Just as Reverse Rebirth redeemed Chain of Memories, the latter two-thirds of Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days make it worth toughing it out.

This game was played to completion and reviewed using a copy provided by Square Enix.

Devil Survivor‘s storyline deals with the sudden appearance of demons in downtown Tokyo, an event which triggers a government lockdown of the entire Yamanote Circle area. Our three young protagonists, Atsuro, Yuzu, and the silent main character, are locked in along with a sizeable section of the populace, given hand-held demon summoning computers called COMPs, and told they have seven days before all hell breaks loose. In true Shin Megami Tensei fashion, there are a wide selection of ways to deal with this problem, from simply running the government’s blockade, to tracking down and eliminating the source of the demonic infestation, to using this newfound demonic power to challenge God himself. SMT‘s moral ambiguity reigns supreme here, with a slew of factions and characters going quite beyond the traditional Law, Chaos, and Neutral alignments.

Taking out the center demon will destroy the whole team, but it’ll be much harder to do without defeating the side critters first.

All these characters and sides to keep track of means Devil Survivor‘s plot branches off and twists around to a surprising degree. When the player is not in a battle, they have more or less free reign to go anywhere they want within the confines of the Yamanote Circle. Players can freely converse with members of their party, scout out locations, and even do a bit of levelbuilding in Free Battles. Anything more major — such as playing through a plot-mandated battle, or advancing one of the game’s many sub-plots — will eat up thirty minutes of your time. Given that certain critical events take place at certain times and the overall time limit of seven days, proper time management is essential. This is especially true given that failing to complete certain events could result in missing some party members or even being locked out of some endings. Who the player talks to and when has a great deal of influence on how the story unfolds, causing the story to twist and turn unexpectedly.

For the most part, this unpredictability is one of the best parts of the game, but it does have a few unintended consequences. Since the game doesn’t often give the player the option of seeing all the events available in a specific time frame, some story elements become lost simply through a lack of time. The player has to carefully pick and choose which events to see, which helps build the sense of urgency that Devil Survivor really trades on, but it has the nasty side effect of fracturing the storyline quite badly in some cases.

The game’s combat system is a unique combination of a traditional tactical grid movement system and the particular brand of elementally-focused turn-based combat that Shin Megami Tensei has become known for. To explain; characters take turns based on an ATB-style turn queue, with each character or enemy taking their turn as a time-based meter fills. The meter is then expended as the character executes commands, allowing players some control over the turn order. When one character attacks another, the game switches over to a turn-based system where each side of the conflict is allowed one turn to beat the snot out of the other. An extra turn is awarded for hitting a foe’s weakness or scoring a critical hit, while hitting a resistance may cause you to lose any extra turns already acquired.

Each character is allowed a pair of summoned demons to assist in combat, the selection and fusion of which makes up a great deal of the game’s character customization. Demons can have up to three active commands, which include things like magic and special techniques, three passive abilities, which encompass stat increases and resistance boosters, and a racial ability. Racial abilities, as you may have guessed, are unique to each race of demon, cannot be inherited through Fusion, and are frequently powerful enough to build a unit’s entire strategy around. Unfortunately, in order to keep ahead of the difficulty curve, the player is required to constantly acquire new demons, making it exceptionally difficult to keep specific powerful racial abilities.

Humans, on the other hand, gain new abilities through the Skill Crack system. This system works by prompting players to select which ability each character will learn from which foe before combat. That ability is then acquired only if each specific character defeats the foe assigned to them. The end result is that both humans and demons have a great many options available to them in combat, and skill in constructing characters goes a heckuva long way here. Although the overall combat setup isn’t anything mind-blowingly original, Devil Survivor presents an enjoyable and engaging combat system in large part due to the huge number of character customization options.

Overall, Devil Survivor presents a solidly cohesive package, with features that tie into each other fairly well. The game does make a few unwelcome changes, especially where the Fusion system is concerned. Rather than the traditional grid, which was a simple and reliable way of seeing what demons were currently on hand and what could be produced from them, Devil Survivor complicates matters by showing the player a basic list of their current demons. The game won’t show players what demons over their current level can be produced without using an overcomplicated search feature, which quickly becomes more useful than the basic Fusion screen.

The Demon Auction system by which players acquire new demons is a bit more manageable than the Fusion system, and it’s an interesting alternative to the negotiation systems of other SMT games, but it’s also a good deal less engaging. The Demon Auction behaves mostly like eBay, with multiple people — or rather, multiple AIs — bidding on the same demons. There’s even a Buy It Now feature. But frankly, this is one area of the game where the lack of online features stands out. Devil Survivor spends a large hunk of time talking about the myth of the Tower of Babel and comparing it to the Internet, mostly in the sense of both objects being a towering achievement of mankind whose construction required mastery of communication. The lack of online features or even local multiplayer is something of a glaring omission, and an area where taking a rather easily manipulated offline auction system and expanding it for online play would have made a lot of sense.

In the end, Devil Survivor‘s interface and system design seems rather basic. The game fails to take any real advantage of the touch screen, in fact barely using it at all, which, combined with the inadequate Fusion interface and often poorly organized menus, can make using some of the game’s basic features clunky and confusing.

The game’s relatively tiny soundtrack is its biggest issue where sound is concerned. Most of the sound effects are quite acceptable, and the lack of voice acting is nothing surprising given the system this game appears on, but the fact that there are only about two dozen tracks in the entire game causes problems with repetition. Composed by series newcomer Takami Asano, a relatively unknown composer presenting his first major soundtrack in an RPG, and his first video game related work in more than ten years, the soundtrack works a bit too hard to replicate the feel of a Shoji Meguro OST. Mr. Asano tends to go far overboard with overdriven electric guitars, to the point where individual tracks tend to be poorly defined and lack a distinctive style.

The Fusion system could use a fair bit of streamlining.

Though the majority of Devil Survivor‘s visual style is well-executed, it has some serious issues in the area of consistency. Nowhere is this more evident than in the portrait art used for the game’s many demons. Many of the returning demons sport the same artwork they used in previous incarnations of the Shin Megami Tensei series, which wouldn’t be such a problem if individual games in the series didn’t vary so vastly, visually speaking. Demon artwork from the very first Shin Megami Tensei game is plopped down next to art produced for Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne, games separated by more than a decade and several shifts in style. Add to this brand new artwork for the game’s many demonic newcomers as well as completely original designs for the main cast produced by an artist new to the series, and you’re left with a visual style so jumbled as to be quite distracting at times.

Devil Survivor is fairly lenient in difficulty, largely due to the nearly omnipresent Free Battles, which allow players to levelbuild as much as they’d like at more or less any point in the game. The weight placed on level in damage calculation makes it possible to grind past the game’s difficulty curve without too much time or effort, which isn’t necissarily a bad thing given that most of the tactical challenge the game has to offer lies in the large number of “protect the AI” missions rather than in pummelling through waves of enemies. It’s difficult to tell how long Devil Survivor will take the average player given that it has no built-in timer, but the game feels slightly shorter than your average RPG, making twenty to thirty hours a fair estimate.

In the end, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor is a very solid game plagued by a few obnoxious faults. The game’s plot creates a wonderful sense of urgency and isolation, full of little things that genuinely make players feel as though they’re in a disaster situation. The combat system, though not particularly mind-blowing, is a unique and interesting take on the traditional TRPG setup, and provides enough character customization options to keep enthusiasts busy for hours. The major downside of all this is that players will have to come to terms with a blatantly fractured and distracting visual style, a repetitive soundtrack, and an often combative interface. The game’s unique concept and solid story, however, definitely make it worth the effort.

As in the original game, the story centers around a character of your own creation. At the beginning, you are allowed to chose from the four in-game races, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Lilties excel in strength while Yukes are the best spell casters. Selkies are generally weaker, but they get a wider attack and a coveted double jump ability. Finally, Clavats are the well rounded jack-of-all-trades-but-master-of-none race.

After a brief CG intro whose true meaning is not explained until much later in the game, your chosen character wakes up in the village on his or her birthday. It is a joyous day for the townsfolk, and you are about to embark on your coming of age ceremony in the forest. There, you are given your first taste of combat and generally prepared for life as an adult, which is fortunate, because you are about to be thrust into the world shortly.

Like the other two games in the series, Echoes of Time is a 3/4s view action RPG comprised primarily of dungeons filled with puzzles. Most rooms have some condition that must be met to move to the next room, and as such, dungeons have a linear flow that makes them relatively simple to figure out. By moving to each room in turn, the player will eventually run into the boss and finish the dungeon.

Though the combat is largely the same from the previous game, there are some major changes. For starters, Echoes of time is a more solitary game, which is arguably its biggest flaw. Though you can recruit a party, there aren’t enough resources to properly equip more than one character. Furthermore, all recruits start at level one unless you manage to hire a mercenary, but they require certain conditions before they will join you. In the end, many players will be striking it out on their lonesome, and like the original game, solo play is cumbersome, frustrating, and nowhere nearly as fun.

When fighting, players can jump, attack with their equipped weapon, summon a magic casting circle, or pick up enemies and items. In combat, most of the game will alternate between regular melee attacks and magic. Attacking with your equipped weapon is straight forward. Mash A until the chosen enemy dies, but magic is slightly more nuanced. The secondary screen (bottom for the DS, right side for Wii) shows the six types of magic: fire, ice, lightning, cure, clear, and revive, which can be selected at any time by touching them or rotating via button combinations. While casting magic, your character remains still, and a targeting ring can be moved or combined with other targeting rings for more advanced spells. As a significant improvement over Ring of Fates, magic is now limited by magic points instead of a finite number of magic orbs, and that makes things much easier.

Unfortunately, magic is also where everything completely falls apart. Monsters can use magic as well, and the odds are stacked very much in their favor. After being hit with a spell, monsters will gain a temporary immunity to all magic, but the reverse is not true. Since it is not uncommon to fight three or more enemies at a time, much of the combat will revolve around running away from opposing spells. Should you actually be hit, there is a high probability you will die, as a casting ring will be waiting for you just as the effects of the previous spell wear off. It can be extremely frustrating to be freed from the effects of an ice spell only to be frozen again the instant you can move. This is made all the worse by the fact that death means you will have to restart the entire dungeon again from the beginning, and it is something you will deal with. A lot.

Death isn’t the only thing that is frustrating about single play. As mentioned before, nearly every room has a puzzle that must be solved before you can move on. Each of them can be solved solo, but in many cases, one must have nearly perfect timing to get everything done before the puzzle resets itself. Clearly, the game was designed with multiplayer in mind with solitary play practically ignored by the dev team.

One final gripe about combat is that there is no pause feature. Pressing start brings up a menu in real time, so if you need to stop play for any reason, you’ll either need to close the DS or hit the home button on your Wii Remote.

The one place where the game excels is graphically. There is a small bump in graphics from Ring of Fates, and the entire game benefits nicely. Though most of the monsters return from previous games, the environments are bright and colorful with a wider variety than in the past game. There are also several FMVs that periodically play to give the game’s events some flare. These effects are made even more impressive on the Wii, especially if you are using component cables and a nice television. The colorful worlds are extra crisp on the console version, and it makes it surprisingly painless to play a DS port on the Wii.

Musically, the game performs on par with Ring of Fates with well-composed music that doesn’t get too repetitive. Though few tracks are particularly memorable, the music is pretty decent throughout, and it is made even better by piping it out of real speakers instead of a set of headphones or the small internal speakers on the DS. In fact, the music takes on a new level of clarity and depth when played on the console.

With these things in mind, one would almost think that the Wii version is superior, but sadly, this is not the case. The console version is a direct port of its handheld brother, but the interface kills it. Echoes of Time is clearly designed to be played using two screens, with one of them being touch sensitive. The result is that the television is divided into a main screen in the upper left and a smaller subscreen on the right. At best, the main screen will take up about a quarter of your total television’s surface, and nearly half of the visual real estate is devoted to a background. Furthermore, the touch screen makes changing magic spells quick and easy, but it’s a little more awkward on the Wii. Granted, you can probably get used to it by the end, but it’s not as intuitive as it is on the DS. This is especially important because at the end, you will need to cast spells comprised of more than one element, and fast switching will be all but required.

Plotwise, Echoes of Time has its ups and downs. The plot isn’t bad, but throughout most of the game, characters promise to let you in on the game’s secret “when the time is right,” or when you get to a specific point, “all will be revealed.” This is not the first game to use this cliche, but most games have more secrets to divulge. The player learns very little throughout the game, and the fact that everyone else seems to be in the know is kind of frustrating. In its defense, when you finally do learn everything, it’s an interesting story, and there are some great moments in the last third of the game. When the plot is on, it’s good, but for the bulk of the game, the plot moves slowly.

Since the game struggles in solo play, most people will want to play with friends. Fortunately, this time, the developers got it right. Joining up with friends is as simple as exchanging friend codes and waiting a couple minutes for them to synchronize. Then, one party will be the host, and all other players will look to join that game. The system is intuitive, and it works well. Another important point is that there is not much lag. Joining players will see a fraction of a second of lag for every action, but it’s not so bad that it’s game breaking. In fact, unless you happen to be watching all screens at the same time, it’s hard to notice. Hopefully, this method of multiplayer will be included in all future installments of the Crystal Chronicles series; it’s a much-needed step in the right direction.

Completing the game will take about fifteen to twenty five hours. It’s pretty straightforward, so really, it just depends on how much you want to farm for item creation. There is also a bonus dungeon after the game is finished, and subsequent playthroughs can have the difficulty increased.

One final thing that bears mentioning is that some of the dungeons have questionable design elements. In one dungeon, there are a series of boxes that must be moved, and if you move them too far, the entire room must be restarted. An even worse example of a poorly thought out dungeon can be found in the final dungeon. There is a room that has a key-operated moving platform, and any mistakes in handling the key or the platform can result in gap that can only be crossed with a double jump. As mentioned before, only Selkies can double jump normally, so unless you have an item in your possession to give that ability to any character or chose to play as a Selkie, death is the only way to move forward. It’s not completely game breaking, but it’s frustrating if you happen to run into this problem that could have easily have been avoided with better play testing.

There are a couple mitigating factors that make up for a couple of the game’s shortcomings. Echoes of Time has several mini-games that are extremely fun to play. In fact, it’s easy to spend a few hours on them. One can also unlock all of the bosses from Ring of Fates rather easily.

In the end, Echoes of Time is one major step forward and several steps of varying size backward. Ring of Fates emulated the multiplayer aspect of Crystal Chronicles superbly to make an outstanding single-player experience. Echoes of Time instead hearkens back to the series roots by making a game that is an interesting experiment that could have shined with a bit more work. They got the multiplayer right, but the solo play is as bad as it was in the original game. Also, the idea of a DS/Wii dual launch sounds great on paper, but the interface of the Wii version completely ruins the effect so badly that it feels like it was tacked on at the last minute. There are a lot of good ideas in this game, but the poor execution mars what could have been a breath of fresh air.