The next topic for our new vlog series is Persona 4, which NG5 and I have been playing as much as possible since its release.  This video only scratches the surface of my feelings about the game.  For a more detailed review, read on.

I should mention that I will compare Persona 4 to its predecessor frequently, my apologies to those who have not played Persona 3.  For my review I divide the game by its elements and discuss each individually:

Battle System - 1 More!:

Fighting in Persona 4 feels a lot like Persona 3 with some minor changes.  As I mentioned in the video, I love the fact that allies can be controlled in battle by the player – a Persona first.  After setting an ally to manual controls, they will remain that way for every battle afterward unless this setting is changed by the player.

While in dungeons, characters do not become “tired” like in Persona 3 – you are basically limited by your SP.  Knowing when to call it quits or when to push on is important if you are low on SP.  Being able to control your allies REALLY helps with SP consumption.  Why attack with garu when Yosuke can do it for you?  It is possible to recruit a certain NPC who makes dungeon crawling considerably easier… for a fee.

Another cool addition to battling is the guard option.  If you know an ally is weak to a certain element and you fear an enemy may try to sock them with it, have them guard.  Guarding prevents the attack from hitting “weak” and won’t grant your enemy a ”1 more.” This can be vital for harder battles where you may not be able to select your allies.

Overall, fighting feels fast and fun.  Your goal in battle is still to exploit weaknesses in an attempt to pounce on a downed enemy. Perhaps some people complained that Persona 3 was too easy, because you’ll find that bosses in this game don’t mess around.  One of the first bosses in the game gave me a bit of trouble.  It attacked my party with a wave of fire, which Chie was weak to.  The guard command helped and I ended up winning by a small margin.

Presentation - I Like the Flow of This Place:

Persona 4 features vivid colors and some great design.  Everything from menus down to simple dialog boxes are refreshing in their appearance.

Since the game is for the PS2, the graphics aren’t earth-shattering, but my mantra is quality design is far superior to great graphics with bad design.

The game’s music works very well with the design of Persona 4 and succeeds in maintaining a youthful feeling (when it’s appropriate).  The music is also wicked catchy…  Currently my favorite song is Princess Yukiko’s Castle.

Story - Yin and Yang:

One of the reasons I love the MegaTen series is because it is dark.  People you meet in Persona 4 will die.  Not die as in “black out”, or “pass out.”  Their corpses will be strung up on telephone poles or something equally dramatic.  I find that the serious nature of the game helps immerse me in the story and keeps me playing.

The subtle humor the game maintains helps to balance this out, yet draws me in just as much.  I feel like I can identify with some high school kids with a decent sense of humor, rather than some super serious muscle-bound warriors.

Social Links - Plays Well With Others:

The S-Link system is one of the best features that separates Persona 4 from other RPGs.  By forming relationships and strengthening them, the Persona your character can wield will become stronger upon creation.

There have been a few tweaks to the system since Persona 3.  For instance, there will be times when multiple S-Links can be strengthened at once by hanging out in a group.  There are also times when you may not even be hanging out with anyone and an S-Link will go up.  The other night I had a dream about Chie, which increased our relationship.  Cool huh?

With so many people to befriend, it’s nice to have more options when it comes to increasing ties with them all.

Conclusions:

If you enjoyed Persona 3, then you will enjoy Persona 4.  If you enjoy RPGs and have never heard of the Persona series, then this is a great place to start.  I have really been enjoying making a name for myself in the tiny town of Inaba and living out my days.  I don’t know what I will do with myself when my year is up, but I am sure I will have made a lot of great memories.

Related Entries:
All other Kotowari entries on Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 can be found here

As I mentioned in an earlier post, NIS America was nice enough to entrust me with an advanced copy of this year’s holy grail of video game software: Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice. I think I had been looking forward to playing the game for a full agonizing year (further accentuated by 5 months in Japan) when I finally slipped it into my PS3.

For a review of this magnitude, I’ll try and organize it by important elements.

Battle System:

When it comes to the battle system in Disgaea 3, it’s all about customization. The clever stage where the player may customize their army is Maritsu Evil Academy. Here you can do all the typical Disgaea preparations for war such as buying and equipping weapons and armor, healing the party and accessing portals to story maps, item world etc.

Abilities can also be purchased and upgraded with mana earned from battle and equipped to the player’s liking. This is especially important to note for players who like magic users: increasing the effect area and strength of magic requires active upgrading. As you can probably tell, mana is extremely important in strengthening an army. In the game’s early stages, you won’t be able to get enough of the stuff.

Homeroom is another very important element of customization at Maritsu Evil Academy. Homeroom is where characters can create other characters or pass bills by paying mana. Characters can then be assembled into clubs and have their seats arranged.

Clubs and seating both grant bonuses to characters in different ways. A Warrior and an Archer in a club would gain an increase in their combo attack percentage. If the two units sit next to one another, the percentage is further increased. Members of certain clubs also get bonuses like additional mana or exp gain. These bonuses may also be dependent on seating (sitting in a corner grants the character 25% more EXP, etc.)

The leader of a club is granted stat bonuses if his or her subordinates have higher stats. I love this system, because it brought my Thief and Mages up to speed with the rest of my team. Also, a leader may learn abilities (Ice, Heal, Braveheart, etc.) from subordinates if he or she stands next to them in battle.

Another new feature I love is the ability to link special abilities. By having 2 characters perform special attacks against an enemy in succession, a new fusion ability will trigger. These abilities deal much more damage than the two units attacking independent of one another.

In addition to linking special attacks is Magichange, which is when a monster unit will turn into a weapon temporarily for a human class character. It is important to note that both characters must be in the same club and the monsterclass character needs to have learned the magichange ability.

Doing so allows for some cool skills to be used and also grants the wielder both characters’ Evilities. My Sabercat and Fight Mistress pal it up frequently. The only drawback is that if she gets killed, so does my poor Sabercat.

My only complaint with the battle system stems from the new ability system, which no longer involves weapon mastery. Since characters don’t become more proficient at wielding their weapons–only performing skills–you will hardly ever want to perform normal physical attacks. Physical attacks cause very little damage compared to damage from a skill.

In the early stages of the game, you will be spamming the same 1 or 2 skills ad nauseum. Being able to combine skills and using monsterclass characters helps shake things up a bit though.

Presentation:

A lot of people were surprised at first when they heard that Disgaea 3–a 2D game–would be for the Playstation 3. It is my belief that a lot more can go into a game besides the addition of a third dimension, and Disgaea 3 maxes out that second dimension.

The character designs of artist Takehito Harada, the music of Tenpei Sato and the story are all elements that make for a great game on any system.

One awesome advantage of the massiveness of Blu-Ray discs is that both English and Japanese voice overs are included on the game. This includes voice acting for the story sequences and now in battle sounds as well. For the previous versions it really bothered me that the two didn’t always match up, especially when Japanese was selected.

The biggest advantage to having Disgaea 3 on the PS3 is the option of downloadable content. Right now in Japan it is possible to download the following familiar (and not so familiar) faces:

Adell Rozalin Taro Hanako Kogure Souichirou (From Hayarigami, huh?) Nekomata Monsterclass

There will be more downloadable content in the future, so if the characters in Disgaea 2 don’t do anything for you, be patient. Personally I wouldn’t mind some characters from Phantom Brave (I know my girlfriend is hoping for Putty), but we’ll just have to wait and see.

Extras:

Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice is like 3 games disguised as one. The main story is the first game, complete with 8 different endings. The Dark World is another game, and then there is still the Land of Carnage, House of Ordeals and a load of other sidequests both challenging and rewarding. I won’t reveal the others for spoilers sake.

Your playtime is pretty much limited by your attention span, but don’t be surprised if your hours break into the triple digits (as it is, I have logged over 300 hours with that last two games.)

Story:

The absurdity of the demon world is part of what made the Disgaea series so popular. What’s bad is good and what’s good is revolting. Maritsu Evil Academy is no exception. Here honor students are encouraged by faculty to battle one another for supremacy. Anything to keep them from going to class!

Classes are seemingly non-existent, or are a wholly consuming trial of one’s endurance. The later being the case for a mysterious home-economics course…

The game’s main character, Mao, is a typical demon with some otaku undertones. His goal is to defeat his father, the Overlord, who accidentally stepped on his Slavestation Portable, causing his 14 million hours of playtime to be lost.

Is NIS making fun of us? Probably, but it’s all in good fun.

How can Mao get the strength to defeat an Overlord? By emulating the Heroes in his comics and games of course! Mao’s loyal butler Geoffery attains a herodar (hero radar) and tracks down Almaz, the game’s bumbling would-be hero. Convinced that Almaz is a true hero, Mao forcibly switches titles with Almaz only to discover that his Hero abilities are somewhat… lacking.

Switching titles back proves more difficult, and requires Mao and his subordinates to go on a quest to open his heart–a feat rarely accomplished by demons.

Like all true Disgaea titles, the story is bittersweet. While it is filled with laughs, you will also find yourself feeling… emotions. How undemon-like! Don’t be afraid. That is just the side effect of a quality story, not one of Mao’s experiments.

Disgaea 3: Absence of Justice will be officially released tomorrow and should appear in stores on the 27th by the latest. It’s retail price is set at $49.99, but you can find it at Play-Asia for $49.90 here.

Lastly, I again wish to thank NIS America for kindly giving me an advanced copy of the game. I have loved every minute of playing the it, writing the review, and working on this blog. Here’s hoping that this is only the beginning!

Related Entries:
Disgaea 3 Doublejump Book Guide Review
Three Disgaea 3 Pre-Order Options
All other Kotowari posts relating to Makai Senki Disgaea 3 can be found here.

Yesterday I received my Doublejump Books Disgaea 3 strategy guide in the mail. It’s a bit ahead of schedule, at least according to the publisher’s website, but I’m not asking any questions. I don’t buy guides for most games, and NIS games are certainly not most games. They are literally filled to the brim with hours upon hours of ways to make tiny sprites bash enormous numbers out of each other. This may not sound like much fun to most people, but I daresay it is what I live for. Making awesome guides is what the guys at DJB live for. Luckily, they happen to have the same taste in games as me. Great minds… or so they say.

When I play a game, I love knowing how things work behind the scenes. This usually means a breakdown of everything numerically, the language of the gods. The guide includes the numbers behind such important features as stealing, weapon mastery, team attacks, maxing out a character, etc. Knowing how to make the numbers work in your favor can be a huge time-saver.

The second thing I love to have handy when playing a game as massive as Disgaea 3 is lists. If I could, I would lie in an aromatic field of lists all damn day. This is probably one of the most space consuming elements of the guide. Yet with so much data, the lists are extremely organized to help the reader find whatever they want as easy as possible.

The last thing (which I already mentioned) that is important to me, is organization. Especially when it comes to a guide for a game I haven’t even played yet. Spoiling anything for myself would surely result in an attempt to locate and terminate any brain cells affected. The layout of the guide makes it clear what sections to avoid in a case like mine. To get a better idea of the guide’s organization i recommend taking a look at a .PDF preview of it here.

As always, DJB puts their own special touches into their guide. This guide in particular contains some fanart as well as a cute comic. I was a tad disappointed that there wasn’t an interview with NIS America. The Disgaea 2, Phantom Brave, and even Makai Kingdom guides all included interviews with the games creators, which was one of my favorite features. I’ll let it slide since it’s obvious the game sucked up a lot of time.

As I wrote earlier, the pre-order bonus was that the guide’s publisher, djpubba, would sign the cover of each and every guide. If that doesn’t show appreciation, then goddamn, just pay someone to beat the game for you.

Related Entries:
Disgaea 3 Guide Pre-Order Bonus
Three Disgaea 3 Pre-Order Options
All other Kotowari posts relating to Makai Senki Disgaea 3 can be found here.

A lot of people would argue that rogue-like games are boring. About the same percentage of people would argue that Ninja are superior to Pirates. What do these figures mean? I have no idea.

Anyway, I picked up Izuna 2 with memories fresh in my mind of how poorly the first game was received. But alas, my faith in Atlus and female Ninja were strong. Plus the game is about $10 cheaper than most DS games, which is always nice.

Visually, the second installment only features slight improvements. The dialog-art and sprite quality is a bit better, but dungeon appearance, backgrounds and UI are virtually identical.

The story once again revolves around our misfit group of comically unemployed ninja:

• Izuna: The young, stubborn Ninja who often acts before she thinks.
• Shino: Izuna’s level-headed friend whom she considers to be like a sister.
• Gen-An: The group’s wise old leader.
• Mitsumoto: The member of the group taken least seriously. He loves women, but they all pretty much ignore him.

The group is still wandering ancient Japan after their last adventure. They stumble upon a tea house in the mountains and proceed to eat their fill. Izuna, of course, goes overboard and soon they are penniless again.

Lucky for them, a friend in a nearby town is holding a wedding, and they are all invited to the festivities–that means more food! During the celebration, Shino eats some tamagoyaki which she distinctly recalls eating during her childhood. She inquires as to who catered the wedding.

She learns from the townspeople that it was a girl dressed in foreign clothing. Shino is positive the girl is her long-lost sister, Shizune, so during the night she sets out alone to try and find her. By the time Izuna catches up to Shino, Shizune is nowhere to be found.

Izuna can see that this is important to Shino, and doesn’t want her to go off on her own again, so she decides to help Shino trace Shizune’s trail. Thus the game begins.

The largest improvement to the game, without a doubt, is the battle system. The last game received a bunch of negative press over this feature, and even left fans of the game wanting just a bit more.

Tag System Devistation

The name of this improvement is the Tag System. This system allows the player to enter a dungeon with 2 characters. You don’t even need to bring Izuna if you don’t want to. If one player is knocked unconscious, the other one takes over where he or she left off. If both characters are alive, they may perform a team attack that affects a large area–great when you are surrounded. There are some restrictions, though. You can only swap 3 times, and there is a gauge that must be full in order to perform a team attack. The gauge and the number of swap tokens regenerate as you perform actions. I believe it is about 10-20 actions for the team attack gauge to fill up.

I won’t go into detail over who can be recruited for Izuna’s team, but I’ll just let you know that less than 10 hours in, I already had about 8 characters to choose from.

The weapon system remains about the same although there are several new weapon types added. Different characters excel at different weapons, or in some cases, can’t equip them at all.

Dying makes you lose all held equips and money, but character level is retained. It’s not hard to find new weapons by simply going back into a dungeon and picking some up. However, weapons that you use in battle and repair frequently generate LUV, which increases critical hits, damage etc. If losing everything sounds scary there is a nice storage system which makes socking away cash and extra items easy.

I was happy to see that the localizers kept the Japanese voice-overs, which probably cost them a lot less. All in all I am enjoying just about every aspect of Izuna 2. The game is fun, the story is enjoyable, and I love the character design and setting. If a gamer had never taken on a roguelike title before, I would recommend this one in a heartbeat. If you are a veteran of roguelike or dungeon crawlers, then Izuna 2 should still provide a decent challenge and show you some cool new features to the genre.

Related Entries:
Izuna 2 Preview
Windy Windam Preview

A few weeks ago, I had a 4-hour long car ride and anticipated being painfully bored. I decided it would be a good idea to pick up a game for my DS. I had played Final Fantasy Tactics (of course) and Tactics Advance, thoroughly enjoying both. Call me old fashioned, but I trust Square Enix to make games that are just plain fun, so I bought A2: Grimoire of the Rift.

To be honest I haven’t really been able to put it down, much to the chagrin of my closest friends who have to put up with talking to me while playing. The game doesn’t differ much from its predecessors, instead it tries to build upon them.

The game boasts 56 jobclasses to master, spread out among 7 different races. Obviously each race and job excel in different areas, allowing for awesome party customization. The two new races are Seeq and Gria pictured left.

A2 is a tactical game at its core; battles take place on a grid where characters move and perform actions when it’s their turn. Characters earn EXP by engaging in battles, and all clan members earn AP after battle, regardless of their contribution. If you’re not up for a long battle, you could always send out some dispatch teams to earn loot, money and AP for you. Just make sure they don’t fail! I was failing dispatch missions like it was my job until I noticed a pattern:

A character who jumps up and down when placed in the leader position is more likely to succeed than one who does not Party members who bow their head in shame will not contribute to the party and increase the chance of failure Party members who raise their arm when placed in the party are the best contributers to a party Party members who stand, but do not raise their arm will help, but are second to those who raise their arm Always have a full party

As I mentioned, completing dispatch missions grants loot like yada-yada-crystal or blah-blah-gem. Loot is essential to the game’s awesome item synthesis system. 2-3 loots are combined and sent to a Bazaar where they are traded for weapons and armor. Loot can also be stolen by thieves and hunted by hunters. The more loot you acquire the more equipment you can buy.

Some pieces of equipment have abilities which characters can learn after wearing them and having attained the correct amount of AP. Once learned, abilities are permanent. Learning a certain number of abilities unlocks new jobclasses. Some jobs, however, can only be unlocked by completing quests.

The story is my only complaint really. It’s not that I don’t like the story, it’s just that I have little interest in it and find battling to be more of an incentive to play. The main character Luso is a normal student who is punished for being late to class by his teacher. The punishment is to clean up the school’s library. While there, Luso finds an old book, which asks for a name. Luso writes his name in the book and soon finds himself sucked into the fantasy world of Ivalice.

Luso

Luckily, right as he appears in Ivalice, a strange looking… man-bear-thing… named Cid happens to stumble upon him and forces him to join his guild. Cid helps Luso find a wizard who informs Luso that the key to returning to his world is to fill up the mysterious book which he wrote his name in with experiences here in Ivalice.

Another minor complaint I have is the complete lack of expressions when it comes to dialog art. Whether Luso is saying “I love Pie!” or “Ack! Were under attack!” his dialog art remains the same. I don’t think it takes a whole lot of work to add that in for at least the story characters.

The last element of the game worth mentioning is the auction system. Clans bid on territory at an auction house using coins with different values. The auction system simulates a real-time auction in which bidders have a set number of coins and turns to spend them on. Whoever bids the most wins (in case that wasn’t already obvious.) There are 3-4 territories to an area, and when the player takes over all of an area, he controls it for life. Gaining control of an area grants lower prices for mission info as well as items.

At first I found the auctions a bit clunky, but after participating in about 15 auctions, you can access to a store which allows you to spend clan points on coins. Clan points are acquired by completing missions and in my opinion are best spend on auction coins.

If you are interested in playing the game, you can grab a copy at Amazon.com here for $39.99. For more detailed information on the game, its story and jobclasses, check out the game’s official North American site here.