Guess what? GAME REVIEWS!
So, just a few days ago, I finished both "Apollo Justice - Ace Attorney" and "Tales of the Abyss", and I'm here to tell you about them before classes start again next week ;)
Oh, ryogalost, let me know if and when you're at home this weekend, and I'll bring the game by your place! Thanks for letting me borrow it!
Well *cracks knuckles*, let's get to it. As usual, there are quite probably spoilers behind the cuts, so read at your own risk.
So, Apollo Justice. Decent game? Oh, yeah. Worthy of succeeding the three Phoenix Wright games? ... no. Of course, this is only my opinion (I know a lot of people love this one), but it was just lacking a bit when it came to the characters. Of the new characters, I only liked Trucy a lot, I was mostly indifferent to the rest. Apollo was a watered-down version of Phoenix, who in his role as resident hobo plus pianist plus poker player overshadowed him quite a bit. Klavier, the new prosecutor, while nice to look at, was really not very interesting otherwise, sadly. So his first language is probably German, he's another prosecuting prodigy and moonlights as a rock star. That is ALL. Next to no characterization. That is just about everything there is to know about him. Also, he doesn't freak out nearly as nicely as every other prosecutor in the series so far. It's simply no fun beating him this way. And Ema (yes, the science brat from case 1-5) is the Gumshoe replacement in this, only that she's a perpetual sourpot bitter because she bolloxed up her forensics exams and ended up becoming a cop instead. Now she can be found at crime scenes everywhere munching snackoos and being a general bitch. Makes me wish I hadn't kept her out of jail in that case.
And Kristoph, the villain? Already turned out to be a bastard in the first case. Yes, so did Dahlia in the third game, but she was a lot more interesting, especially since in the last case, she was already dead and inhabited someone else's body, which is rather unusual to say the least. Kristoph's motive? Pride. He's nothing but a pretty-boy, watered-down von Karma. Yawn.
But enough about the characters. What about the cases, you ask. Well... aside from the last case, which has a goodly bit of meat on it (and lets you play as Phoenix for quite some time - just like in the good old days!), they feel truncated and in some cases very, VERY far-fetched. Yes, moreso than normal. Like a lot of people on the kink meme ask, why the fuck would Daryan risk his career over smuggling a strictly controlled and monitored substance into the country. For money? The dude's a fucking ROCKSTAR. He doesn't NEED cash. For that matter, neither should Machi, considering how fucking famous Lamiroir is and he's part of that act.
And what about any new game mechanics? Well... I wasn't a huge fan of the "Perceive" system. To explain it really quickly, during a testimony, Apollo can perceive nervous tics of the witnesses which they exhibit when they are lying and grill them until they spill the beans. The problem is that it can be a pain in the ass to tell a) at which part of the testimony to perceive and b) to then find the tic. Apollo's vision narrows to a relatively small circle which closes up on the witness, and you have to move it to the right place to see the incident and call the witness on it, and that can take a while, which is kind of annoying. I liked the psyche-locks better.
However, I did enjoy the bit in the middle of the last case, where you have to switch between past and present. That was impressively done and netted so much information without feeling like an info-dump. I wouldn't mind seeing that employed again.
So, in conclusion, I liked the game okay standing alone, but as a game in the "Ace Attorney" series, I found it lacking. Of course, now I'm out of lawyer games until the Edgeworth game comes out... oh well, maybe I'll play "Harvey Birdman".
Yes yes yes, I've managed to play another "Tales" game... so, how does it compare to the others I've played?
If I had to make a favorites list, this one would probably tie at the top with "Tales of Eternia", followed by "Symphonia" and "Phantasia" tied in second place, followed by "Tales of Destiny" in third, followed by "Tales of Legendia" in -387607603nd.
"Tales of the Abyss" had an interesting world, and a very interesting magic system which was pretty much also at the core of the story. Magic (or "Fonic Artes", as the game calls them) also influences other artes during battle - if a spell is cast, a ring-shaped "field of fonons" appears on the ground for a few seconds, and if a character stands in that field and uses an arte of their own, it might resonate with the field and turn into a different attack. I would have wished for a bit more variety in changing artes (like some of them changing into multiple different ones depending on the FOF), but it was a cool idea which I got a good amount of mileage out of. I also liked the Mystic Artes you could use during overlimit... but I'm getting ahead of myself. Aside from the regular HP and TP bars, every character also has an overlimit bar, which fills up as the character deals damage to enemies. Once it's full, overlimit can be initiated, and during the overlimit phase (which only lasts a certain time as the bar starts running down), if the character uses an arcane arte (meaning an elemental attack) and pushes the regular attack button while the elemental attack is in progress, a mystic arte starts which does a metric fuckton of damage (probably more than team attacks in "Symphonia" until the end).
So yeah, fighting in this was fun, the story was quite interesting... and what about the characters? Well, I liked them - there wasn't unconditional love like for some of the "Symphonia" characters (and honestly, I wouldn't be able to explain why I like them so much, considering that they weren't all that complex), but I genuinely liked most of them and harbored some love for at least a couple, namely Jade (if you've seen pics, that's the dude with the long brown hair, glasses and military uniform) because he's a snarky bastard as well as the group member with the most brains by far, and, even though he's an NPC, Fon Master Ion. I wish our world could come up with a religious leader willing to look past dogma in favor of the public good. Yeah, he was a meek little doormat a lot of the time, but for some reason, his good nature really appealed to me, especially since Luke, the protagonist, was a complete douche for the first half of the game, and once he started actually throwing his political weight around, people never saw it coming *grins* Watch out for the quiet ones, motherfuckers.
So... as mentioned, the protagonist and character you control was an ass. He knows nothing of the world at the beginning of the game, and yet behaves as though he's a fucking big kahoona. Thankfully, he isn't Senel from "Legendia" - neither the player nor the group of characters is supposed to like him, and therefore doesn't. Then, when he inadvertently kills a whole bunch of people believing to be on a mission to actually save them, he has to deal with that guilt. First, he's being a tool and tries to shift the blame, at which point the whole group turns their backs on him. After a while, he repents and tries to make up for his mistake for the remainder of the game. As a result, he is quite mopey at times, especially near the end, but considering what he did and what he learns about himself during the course of the game (nope, won't spoil that one for you), it is somewhat understandable.
Fighting and characters were good. What about graphics and sound?
Graphics were very comparable to "Star Ocean: Till the End of Time" - anime-styled characters, here and there a bit stiffly animated, but overall pleasant to look at. As usual, the few cutscenes there were were pretty to look at. The soundtrack was nothing to write home about, for the most part, although I do like the opening theme (I would have liked it better if we'd gotten the actual Bump of Chicken song, and not the neutered karaoke version, but I know why they did it - fucking music copyrights...) and the Grand Fonic Hymn, and the remainder fit the mood and was pleasant enough.
And finally, a few positives and negatives at a glance:
+ Not the regular "go through elemental temples/dungeons/etc" spiel
+ good characters
+ interesting twist in the fighting system
+ involving story (which I don't discuss much here for the reasons below)
- Long loading times
- No summons (I know, I shouldn't rag on that, but I *like* summoning a supernatural entity that kicks my enemies' asses!)
- VERY linear dungeons, there wasn't a ton to explore in most of them, they tended to be straight paths
- the bonus dungeon isn't accessible until close to the end of a second playthrough, while most other "Tales" games let you in with a clear save/final savepoint before endboss save
- for some reason, the coliseum is damn tough compared to regular and even a lot of boss battles. Too bad, it was always such a nice time waster.
So yeah, the game had a few issues, but when all is said and done, this definitely is one of the better titles of the franchise, even if you don't enjoy it as much as I did. It certainly is a billion times better than "Legendia" was. I won't recommend buying it, since used copies are relatively hard to find and therefore go for more than they cost new, but if you're interested in the (really quite involved) story, check out the "Tales of the Abyss" anime. This is the first "Tales" game to get a whole 26-episode run (Phantasia and Symphonia had only 4 OAV eps each and were barely understandable for people who didn't play the games beforehand, and Eternia got a fragmented and uninvolving 13 episodes), and from what I've seen in spot checks, it follows the game pretty closely, although here and there it smushes some boss fights together which were separate in the game. Most of them aren't so major that they need their own episodes, though - they were fun to fight separately in the game, but didn't make for enough storyline to show separately. Otherwise, large portion of the game script are kept intact - the ending of the anime is almost word for word identical to the end of the game.
So yeah, in short, you want to know what the hype is about, but don't want to spend 50 bucks on a PS2 game or don't even have a PS2? Watch the anime. This time around, it's actually worth it.
Okay, that's enough for now, this post is long enough and I need to get my butt to bed. Tomorrow is hair-dying time, and Monday, it's back to class. Bye for now!
Oh, ryogalost, let me know if and when you're at home this weekend, and I'll bring the game by your place! Thanks for letting me borrow it!
Well *cracks knuckles*, let's get to it. As usual, there are quite probably spoilers behind the cuts, so read at your own risk.
So, Apollo Justice. Decent game? Oh, yeah. Worthy of succeeding the three Phoenix Wright games? ... no. Of course, this is only my opinion (I know a lot of people love this one), but it was just lacking a bit when it came to the characters. Of the new characters, I only liked Trucy a lot, I was mostly indifferent to the rest. Apollo was a watered-down version of Phoenix, who in his role as resident hobo plus pianist plus poker player overshadowed him quite a bit. Klavier, the new prosecutor, while nice to look at, was really not very interesting otherwise, sadly. So his first language is probably German, he's another prosecuting prodigy and moonlights as a rock star. That is ALL. Next to no characterization. That is just about everything there is to know about him. Also, he doesn't freak out nearly as nicely as every other prosecutor in the series so far. It's simply no fun beating him this way. And Ema (yes, the science brat from case 1-5) is the Gumshoe replacement in this, only that she's a perpetual sourpot bitter because she bolloxed up her forensics exams and ended up becoming a cop instead. Now she can be found at crime scenes everywhere munching snackoos and being a general bitch. Makes me wish I hadn't kept her out of jail in that case.
And Kristoph, the villain? Already turned out to be a bastard in the first case. Yes, so did Dahlia in the third game, but she was a lot more interesting, especially since in the last case, she was already dead and inhabited someone else's body, which is rather unusual to say the least. Kristoph's motive? Pride. He's nothing but a pretty-boy, watered-down von Karma. Yawn.
But enough about the characters. What about the cases, you ask. Well... aside from the last case, which has a goodly bit of meat on it (and lets you play as Phoenix for quite some time - just like in the good old days!), they feel truncated and in some cases very, VERY far-fetched. Yes, moreso than normal. Like a lot of people on the kink meme ask, why the fuck would Daryan risk his career over smuggling a strictly controlled and monitored substance into the country. For money? The dude's a fucking ROCKSTAR. He doesn't NEED cash. For that matter, neither should Machi, considering how fucking famous Lamiroir is and he's part of that act.
And what about any new game mechanics? Well... I wasn't a huge fan of the "Perceive" system. To explain it really quickly, during a testimony, Apollo can perceive nervous tics of the witnesses which they exhibit when they are lying and grill them until they spill the beans. The problem is that it can be a pain in the ass to tell a) at which part of the testimony to perceive and b) to then find the tic. Apollo's vision narrows to a relatively small circle which closes up on the witness, and you have to move it to the right place to see the incident and call the witness on it, and that can take a while, which is kind of annoying. I liked the psyche-locks better.
However, I did enjoy the bit in the middle of the last case, where you have to switch between past and present. That was impressively done and netted so much information without feeling like an info-dump. I wouldn't mind seeing that employed again.
So, in conclusion, I liked the game okay standing alone, but as a game in the "Ace Attorney" series, I found it lacking. Of course, now I'm out of lawyer games until the Edgeworth game comes out... oh well, maybe I'll play "Harvey Birdman".
Yes yes yes, I've managed to play another "Tales" game... so, how does it compare to the others I've played?
If I had to make a favorites list, this one would probably tie at the top with "Tales of Eternia", followed by "Symphonia" and "Phantasia" tied in second place, followed by "Tales of Destiny" in third, followed by "Tales of Legendia" in -387607603nd.
"Tales of the Abyss" had an interesting world, and a very interesting magic system which was pretty much also at the core of the story. Magic (or "Fonic Artes", as the game calls them) also influences other artes during battle - if a spell is cast, a ring-shaped "field of fonons" appears on the ground for a few seconds, and if a character stands in that field and uses an arte of their own, it might resonate with the field and turn into a different attack. I would have wished for a bit more variety in changing artes (like some of them changing into multiple different ones depending on the FOF), but it was a cool idea which I got a good amount of mileage out of. I also liked the Mystic Artes you could use during overlimit... but I'm getting ahead of myself. Aside from the regular HP and TP bars, every character also has an overlimit bar, which fills up as the character deals damage to enemies. Once it's full, overlimit can be initiated, and during the overlimit phase (which only lasts a certain time as the bar starts running down), if the character uses an arcane arte (meaning an elemental attack) and pushes the regular attack button while the elemental attack is in progress, a mystic arte starts which does a metric fuckton of damage (probably more than team attacks in "Symphonia" until the end).
So yeah, fighting in this was fun, the story was quite interesting... and what about the characters? Well, I liked them - there wasn't unconditional love like for some of the "Symphonia" characters (and honestly, I wouldn't be able to explain why I like them so much, considering that they weren't all that complex), but I genuinely liked most of them and harbored some love for at least a couple, namely Jade (if you've seen pics, that's the dude with the long brown hair, glasses and military uniform) because he's a snarky bastard as well as the group member with the most brains by far, and, even though he's an NPC, Fon Master Ion. I wish our world could come up with a religious leader willing to look past dogma in favor of the public good. Yeah, he was a meek little doormat a lot of the time, but for some reason, his good nature really appealed to me, especially since Luke, the protagonist, was a complete douche for the first half of the game, and once he started actually throwing his political weight around, people never saw it coming *grins* Watch out for the quiet ones, motherfuckers.
So... as mentioned, the protagonist and character you control was an ass. He knows nothing of the world at the beginning of the game, and yet behaves as though he's a fucking big kahoona. Thankfully, he isn't Senel from "Legendia" - neither the player nor the group of characters is supposed to like him, and therefore doesn't. Then, when he inadvertently kills a whole bunch of people believing to be on a mission to actually save them, he has to deal with that guilt. First, he's being a tool and tries to shift the blame, at which point the whole group turns their backs on him. After a while, he repents and tries to make up for his mistake for the remainder of the game. As a result, he is quite mopey at times, especially near the end, but considering what he did and what he learns about himself during the course of the game (nope, won't spoil that one for you), it is somewhat understandable.
Fighting and characters were good. What about graphics and sound?
Graphics were very comparable to "Star Ocean: Till the End of Time" - anime-styled characters, here and there a bit stiffly animated, but overall pleasant to look at. As usual, the few cutscenes there were were pretty to look at. The soundtrack was nothing to write home about, for the most part, although I do like the opening theme (I would have liked it better if we'd gotten the actual Bump of Chicken song, and not the neutered karaoke version, but I know why they did it - fucking music copyrights...) and the Grand Fonic Hymn, and the remainder fit the mood and was pleasant enough.
And finally, a few positives and negatives at a glance:
+ Not the regular "go through elemental temples/dungeons/etc" spiel
+ good characters
+ interesting twist in the fighting system
+ involving story (which I don't discuss much here for the reasons below)
- Long loading times
- No summons (I know, I shouldn't rag on that, but I *like* summoning a supernatural entity that kicks my enemies' asses!)
- VERY linear dungeons, there wasn't a ton to explore in most of them, they tended to be straight paths
- the bonus dungeon isn't accessible until close to the end of a second playthrough, while most other "Tales" games let you in with a clear save/final savepoint before endboss save
- for some reason, the coliseum is damn tough compared to regular and even a lot of boss battles. Too bad, it was always such a nice time waster.
So yeah, the game had a few issues, but when all is said and done, this definitely is one of the better titles of the franchise, even if you don't enjoy it as much as I did. It certainly is a billion times better than "Legendia" was. I won't recommend buying it, since used copies are relatively hard to find and therefore go for more than they cost new, but if you're interested in the (really quite involved) story, check out the "Tales of the Abyss" anime. This is the first "Tales" game to get a whole 26-episode run (Phantasia and Symphonia had only 4 OAV eps each and were barely understandable for people who didn't play the games beforehand, and Eternia got a fragmented and uninvolving 13 episodes), and from what I've seen in spot checks, it follows the game pretty closely, although here and there it smushes some boss fights together which were separate in the game. Most of them aren't so major that they need their own episodes, though - they were fun to fight separately in the game, but didn't make for enough storyline to show separately. Otherwise, large portion of the game script are kept intact - the ending of the anime is almost word for word identical to the end of the game.
So yeah, in short, you want to know what the hype is about, but don't want to spend 50 bucks on a PS2 game or don't even have a PS2? Watch the anime. This time around, it's actually worth it.
Okay, that's enough for now, this post is long enough and I need to get my butt to bed. Tomorrow is hair-dying time, and Monday, it's back to class. Bye for now!