I don’t have much of an attention span when it comes to video games. This doesn’t mean I can’t stick with a game for a long time, I can, it just means I don’t want a lot of downtime during my game. I don’t want to talk to NPCs in the tavern or solve riddles with dialog trees. The story needs to be present and entertaining but shouldn’t require me to take notes. I don’t need lengthy cut scenes to motivate me, nor do I need a party of mages, rangers, wizards and elves to keep things fun. Just tell me where to go, what to find and who to beat up and I’ll do my best to do so…and Bastion is the perfect example of everything I want in an RPG.

• Bastion has a simple-yet-fun story of good versus evil.
• Bastion has NPCs that contribute to the experience but aren’t required and don’t drone on.
• Bastion has a nice level-up system and fun inventory management.
• Bastion has a lot of action and destruction.

Bastion plays just as good as it looks...incredible.

Bastion joins a select few

Bastion reminds me a lot of the Guardian of Light release from last summer. It’s a wonderful balance of everything that makes a game fun and entertaining. On top of all the game play goodness, Bastion is also beautiful. The worlds of Bastion are colorful and extremely artistic. The style of Bastion will remind you more of Braid than Tomb Raider but it works wonderfully and is a delight to see, although there are times when the art is hard to decipher and you’ll find yourself falling through a hole in the floor pretty easily. You may notice the art style first but the second thing you’ll come to love is that you have a narrator.

Having a narrator talk throughout your game might sound annoying but believe me when I say it is the exact opposite. Whereas most RPG games give you directions in the form of text that requires endless reading, Bastion dumps all their effort into the narration of each level and just about each action your character can perform. Having a narrator is also a great way to fix the “where do I go” problem RPGs often suffer from. Bastion as a whole is extremely linear but more than once the narrator helped guide me around a level where I would have otherwise been standing there wondering what to do next. Having a voiceover also eliminates the need to stop the action for text and dialog trees. You can keep fighting and moving while you listen to directions and suggestions. The only problem with the narration is that I want it so much be to Sam Elliot and it’s not. Hopefully they can remedy that in a sequel.

Teaming up with fake Sam Elliot feels very efficient and gives you the satisfaction of teamwork without requiring an actual team. This is another feather in Bastion‘s cap. Too many games lean on the multiplayer crutch, and it’s nice to play a game that is incredibly satisfying for the single player. They could have easily slapped co-op on to Bastion but when games do that I feel it detracts from the single player campaign because everyone is so focused on what multiplayer delivers (or doesn’t deliver) that they skip right over the campaign and dismiss the game as weak. A lot of time and effort went into Bastion’s campaign and it shows in every detail of the game. So what’s wrong with Bastion?

Don't let the style fool you, things can get tough real quick.

Flaws are few and far between

Honestly, there’s not much to ding Bastion on except maybe the wash-rinse-repeat aspect that is, frankly, common amongst every game, especially RPGs. Bastion is several hours of game play that has you hopping from level to level in search of crystals to restore order to the world. At a glance Bastion looks like a very monotonous journey but the length of the levels and inventory choices create a wonderful pace. Each level is relatively short but your selection of weapons, upgrades and add-ons keeps you playing over and over while you learn and pick your favorite combination. In addition to the main story quest there are smaller challenge levels that focus on weapons and tactics which keep things fun and motivating by way of high scores and time limits…my kind of challenge. If you get a little bored with the main line you can jump out for a bit and just have fun beating stuff up.

However, Bastion succeeds most at just being a good, solid game that is a little break from the normal video game grind. It doesn’t matter if you spend most of your time shooting people in Call of Duty, watching rendered HD goodness in Final Fantasy, or trying to lay down the next high score in Galaga DX…Bastion is a wonderful distraction that is a great experience. It’s just challenging enough to not bore you and the pace keeps you playing without even noticing. It’s rare for a game to keep me interested for more than a half hour in one sitting, but Bastion unlocked that achievement, and for that I have to give it props. The Summer of Arcade is off to a great start…lets hope it keeps up.

Brian is a freelance writer that blogs, tweets and even co-hosts a podcast about all the stuff you enjoy.

Remaking a remake…again

I’m huge arcade fan and Galaga is certainly in my Top 10 along with Ms. Pac-Man, Burger Time, and a few others. When I discovered Galaga Legions last year, it quickly became a favorite that did justice to the original. It managed to update Galaga without going over the top…it was just enough. Similarly, Pac-Man CE was an update that was a lot of fun and very challenging, and then they updated that late last year with Pac-Man CE DX (too many letters, if you ask me). Pac-Man CE DX was again another great game and spin on Pac-Man, so naturally when I saw a Galaga DX was coming out, I had high hopes that it would do for Legions what Pac-Man CE DX did for its original CE update.

It might look like Galaga Legions, but there's a few surprises.

Galaga Legions DX builds on top of Galaga Legions and adds more patterns, more challenge, but also does something I didn’t expect – new controls. With the original Legions you could place your satellite ships in any of the four cardinal directions while you continued to shoot straight up…and it was fun. Legions DX throws out this mechanic and instead turns the game into a dual-stick shooter, which seems to take a little bit of the Galaga out of Galaga, if you know what I mean.

However, even with the dual-stick update, Legions DX is far from a disappointment. This game tosses more patterns at you than you can count, and this time you’re also up against the clock. One of the best updates to the game is a time limit, similar to what you have in Pac-Man CE DX. This creates some artificial rush but the dual-stick controls negate this a bit and makes the game a lot easier overall. Unlike the first Legions, which I haven’t been able to beat on adventure mode, you’ll cruise through Legions DX fairly quickly. But whenever a game appears to be easy it usually means it’s not and that is most certainly the case here. Sure, you can get to the end quickly, but can you get a high score? Galaga has always been about a high score and that doesn’t change no matter how many sticks you use to control your ship.

More patterns, more bad guys, more chaos.

Last but not least, Legions DX also adds a time trial mode for every level of every stage, and in another page from the Pac-Man CE DX handbook, Legions DX features the “oh crap” slow down when an enemy gets too close to your ship. It’s a neat effect that is quite satisfying but at this point nothing too new. If you’re a Galaga fan…or a shmup fan at large, then Legions DX should certainly be on your buy list. The original Galaga Legions is a lot more challenging than Galaga Legions DX, but Legions DX is not without merit…and hey, it’s Galaga!

S’good to be the king

Whoever said we all get 15 minutes of fame never played Half Minute Hero. As the name implies, your fame here is limited to just around 30 seconds as you battle the forces of evil over and over again. I’m a sucker for time limit games. I just think it brings the best out in gamers and finds out just how good you are. Half Minute Hero is a port from the PSP game and I had never played it before, but the challenge of doing anything in 30 seconds was too much of a draw. Thankfully, I wasn’t disappointed with the game even though it strays from the 30 second constraint pretty quickly.

To be fair, however, the quests in Half Minute Hero will almost always be completed in less than 90 seconds, if not less than 60. You play a would-be hero fighting the forces of evil (surprise) that have cast nasty spells all over the kingdom. Conveniently enough, every evil spell has a 30 second time limit before your game is over. Helping you along the way is the Time Goddess and even though you can skip her chit chat, make sure you pay attention because she gives you invaluable hints to completely each quest.

Don't get too excited, all battles are automatic and quick.

As you wonder around each quest map you’ll come across baddies that you fight automatically…yes, automatically. No turn-based time sucks here. When you hit a bad guy your hero goes for the gold every time. Frankly, I really like this feature because in most other RPGs the combat can be extremely daunting, and just because it’s automatic doesn’t mean there isn’t any strategy. Like any good RPG, you can equip your hero with weapons and armor. You’ll visit villages and towns on each map where you can buy additional weapons and food. Quick tip: Save your money and always have an herb handy, you’ll need it.

As far as the 30 second time limit is concerned, you’d be surprised how much you can do in half a minute. However, thanks to your friend the Time Goddess, you can pay to pray at her altar and she’ll reset your clock to a full 30 seconds. If you play your cards right and earn enough gold, you can keep your time going for upwards of two minutes. Two minutes can be a life saver, but don’t go thinking you won’t see that clock hit zero. You’ll fail a lot and have to start each quest over again and again, but since everything happens so fast you don’t really mind. Half Minute Hero is a near-perfect combination of arcade rules in an RPG setting. It works out pretty well. Half Minute Hero is also very well written with humorous dialog, and after you complete each quest you get to watch game credits, which is surprisingly rewarding.

Don't let the old school charm fool you, this game isn't without problems.

If there’s any place Half Minute Hero fails it’s in the controls. You’ll never have a harder time moving your character around map than you will in this game. You wouldn’t think moving around a grid would be so challenging but it just ends up being frustrating, especially when it nips you in the butt and causes you miss a village at the last second. Grrrr! Another tip, the maps are built on a four-way grid, there are no diagonals so don’t try…it’ll just upset you. The cartoon graphics don’t do anything to help the controls despite their charm. You can switch to an old school 16-bit graphics mode, which helps in the control department but otherwise looks like pixel barf on your big screen television.

Sit, play and be on your way

Neither Galaga Legions DX nor Half Minute Hero will result in hours of session gaming. Both of these title are designed to be quick pick-up games that will keep you playing for a few minutes before you’re on your way to bigger and better things. If you’re a high score junkie like myself then you’ll find a little more depth to each of these games, but neither game is perfect or without its faults. However, for $20 you get two games of high quality that can’t be argued. Try the demo of each game before you buy but no one will fault you if you add both of these to your arcade library…and I’ll see you on the leaderboards!

Brian is a freelance writer that blogs, tweets and puts up big numbers.

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Am I crazy? How could a game this good actually be bad?

A little backstory is required here (as is usual), both for myself and for Square Enix as a company. First, we’ll deal with Squeenix. It didn’t used to be Squeenix. Before Squaresoft merged with its biggest competitor, Enix, it was the creator of some of the most amazing games ever to grace the Super Nintendo including Chrono Trigger, Super Mario RPG, and Final Fantasy III (really VI, we’ve been over this). The entirety of my contact with Squaresoft was through Mario RPG, so when a friend forced me to play Final Fantasy III on the SNES, telling me it would change my life, I was skeptical. That skepticism faded rather quickly, giving way to such a deep connection that I could in deed be hurt by plot twists meant to hurt the gamer’s emotional status.

Little did I know, all safe and snuggly with the knowledge that Squaresoft was responsible for some of the best games ever released on a Nintendo console, that Squaresoft and Nintendo had parted due to Final Fantasy VII, purely because the game made more sense being on a disc-based medium due to storage constraints. I stayed loyal to Nintendo, snagging a GameCube when the next console cycle hit, but in doing so I was aware that there was virtually no chance of seeing any good RPGs on the system, least of which from Squaresoft.

We’ve finally reached a point where the story reaches to Crystal Chronicles as one fateful day I read through my monthly issue of Nintendo Power and learned that Squaresoft, now Square Enix, would be releasing an RPG for the ‘Cube. But not just any RPG! A Final Fantasy RPG! Such elation would be rare for me, so with a key eye to every new detail, I was ready to purchase the game Day One. This is where the trouble begins.

Sweet, easily fixable trouble.

Let me be clear before this article progresses any further, even though I’ll still inevitably get a hateful response somewhere down the road: Crystal Chronicles is not the worst game ever, nor do I even feel that it’s a particularly bad game. To be honest, after I gave it a second chance, it certainly grew on me. But it could and really should have been a lot better, based upon the various well-reasoned points I’m about to me. So let’s start the hate train with the most obvious fault: Multiplayer.

Multiplayer in an RPG is a wonderful concept, but it is hard to find an RPG that meshes with other players. Usually, this cannot be achieved with the standard turn-based RPGs as those involve too much micro-management to remain fun for all players. Real-time RPGs though, such as Secret of Mana or Tales of Symphonia, work fairly well to balance the need for constant engagement by all players at the same time. Crystal Chronicles was sold primarily as a multiplayer experience, hinging the majority of the design on the need for up to four players actively playing at once. And in theory, this should have been great. Except it wasn’t.

Everything fell apart due to a simple design flaw: Every player was required to connect a Game Boy Advance to the GameCube in order to play the game. While you could play in a single-player game with just a GameCube controller, multiplayer refused to give that option. The point of the GBA controller was to offer each player with more than just what was on the TV screen, with some players having a map displayed on their GBA, some having the conditions to unlock better rewards at the level’s completion, and stuff of that nature. Extraneous information meant to improve the teamwork, somehow, by enforcing the need for all players to share what they had at their disposal. Again, in theory this makes sense. In practice it just doesn’t work.

My main complaint rests with how rare it was for me to encounter friends that met three critical requirements to play Crystal Chronicles with me. Number one, I knew very few people with their own GBA. Number two, I know even fewer people who had a GBA/GameCube game link cable. Number three, I knew absolutely no one who had even the slightest interest in playing Crystal Chronicles for any sort of length of time, being it a one-day thing or until the game’s completion.

It may shock you to learn this, but this isn't me and my friends. I'm just using the image for a point of reference.

Simply having the option to use the GameCube controllers during multiplayer sessions, rather than the GBA game link mess, could have alleviated much of my stress. I could conceivably convince friends to give a random GameCube game of mine a try as long as it didn’t require an investment from them beyond time, but to ask them to have a GBA and the link cable, an item I think I’d used with a total of four games (Metroid Prime, The Wind Waker, Animal Crossing, and Crystal Chrinocles), was just not happening.

I did manage to persuade my cousin to try it out with me, just once, leading me to understand another aspect of the multiplayer: It isn’t meant for anything less than three people. Besides the frustration of my GBA being non-backlit and trying to play in a darkened room, and even besides the technical difficulties of the link cables getting disconnected frequently, what really ruined our good time was an even simpler design mistake: The Crystal Chalice.

I’ve got to explain the story of the game before things will make any sense from here on out, so let’s take a break and just listen to what’s framing the game itself. Crystal Chronicles takes place in a world covered in a poison called miasma, staved off only by special crystals. Each town has its own crystal, but said crystals are powered by myrrh, something that’s produced only by myrrh trees. To completely recharge a crystal for one year, three drops of myrrh are needed with each myrrh tree giving a single drop every three years. You collect the myrrh via your crystal chalice and once you fill it with three drops, you travel home and save your family and friends for another year. Should you fail in your mission to collect myrrh drops every year, your hometown will die. It’s a simple premise but within it comes huge, HUGE problems for gameplay, all because of the crystal chalice.

Given the option, I think I'd just stay home nere the town crystal, thanks.

Since the world is covered by miasma, you will slowly die if you aren’t being protected by a crystal. Your hometown is free to roam about, as there is a giant crystal protecting all of it, but as you travel to different parts of the world your only protection is your crystal chalice. And that’s where the trouble begins as you have to carry that stupid chalice everywhere.

In a single player experience, a small flying Moogle will carry it for you, dragging it along. Sadly, this Moogle isn’t usually fast enough to keep up with you at a full sprint, meaning you’ll quickly outrun him. For some reason, to alleviate this annoyance, Squeenix decided to make the Moogle get fatigued if he’s made to carry the chalice for too long, meaning he’ll complain and ask you to carry the chalice so he can regain his stamina. If you don’t help him, he’ll lag way behind, leaving you to rush into the poison gas and slowly chip away your health.

However, in a multiplayer game, you don’t have a friendly Moogle helping you along. Rather, one of the people playing will need to carry the chalice for the party. The direct purpose of this seems to force players to stay in close proximity to each other, stopping a possible hang-up when playing with more than one person on a single screen. Still, it becomes incredibly frustrating to have to lug that stupid chalice around everywhere and ensures that there can be no swift dodging maneuvers. For example, if you have two characters and are fighting a boss, you’d assume the best strategy would be to drop the chalice between the two of you and fire off some magic attacks and bum-rush with everything you’ve got. But if the boss happens to be mobile, you’ll need to get moving fast, something that isn’t easily possible as it takes time to pick up the chalice and start running, hopefully coordinating between your partners the proper direction to run.

If only these characters weren't chained to a giant bowl, things would be wonderful!

When my cousin and I tried playing we soon hit a massive roadblock that killed our enjoyment of the game. We’d been playing for a few hours and ran into no real difficulties beside the tedium of barring the chalice. Then we hit the mine level and made it to the level boss, a boss that moves around and leaves very little time open for attacking. It had downed my cousin, leaving me to run around and try to revive him in between avoiding attacks and dragging the chalice with me. I’d set the chalice down, try to revive my cousin, fail, and eventually have to give up as the boss was too swift in trying to kill me. But I couldn’t attack it as dropping the chalice, attacking, and picking up the chalice again took too much time, resulting in a severe hit from the boss. Eventually I just couldn’t do anything to avoid the attacks and died. We figured we’d be punished with a repeat of the boss fight or something. Nope, turns out death here is just like the usual Final Fantasy games: Back to your last save point, in this case all the way at the beginning of the game. We shut the game off and never tried playing as a team again.

Again, I actually really like Crystal Chronicles. The world is full of really interesting histories, the graphics are stunning, the music is amazingly beautiful, and playing levels over and over to grind up your character is strangely enjoyable. But Crystal Chronicles wasn’t built to be a single-player game, or at least it didn’t want to be. Its selling point was the multiplayer experience, an experience severely lacking due to logistics. Yes, it’s possible to assemble the proper group of people, a group that all have Game Boy

Advances, link cables, and a willingness to play, but it is not very likely that everyone, or even a majority of the gamers who bought the game for that matter, actually could assemble the needed parts to get the most of the game. I sure couldn’t. D & D is an activity a group of people need to give a lot of time and devotion to, but it’s not something just anyone can really get into because of that same required devotion. Crystal Chronicles is similar, but it didn’t have to be.

Two simple fixes and things would have been perfect. First, lose the GBA-only controls for multiplayer. Sure, keep the option, but don’t force it on everyone. Secondly, include a tireless Moogle in multiplayer, and send him to the single-player game as well if he gets the chance. Crystal Chronicles is a bad game because of the promises it made and failed to keep, something that’s almost worse than a bad game that never tried to fool you in the first place. I can see exactly how great the game could have been in the right circumstances, but instead it’s merely an oft-forgotten gem on the GameCube, a system that couldn’t afford for any games to be forgotten.

At the very least, take heart in the fact the series is still going in some form or another.

As usual, that’s just my opinion talking. You can disagree all you like and you won’t be wrong. If you loved Crystal Chronicles, every single aspect of it, regardless of the faults I saw, nothing says you didn’t enjoy every bit of the game. Like I said, I was disappointed with it but I still loved the hell out of it when I gave it a serious chance to prove itself. Enough out of me, did you love Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles? Or were you just as frustrated as I was? Leave a comment and let me know. Sadly, if I don’t get at least three comments within the year my village will die of a horrible poison. You wouldn’t want that, would you?

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Not a bad roster. I can totally get behind that.

The Final Fantasy universe is a special place where purely by coming from a game called “Final Fantasy,” any and every character gets an instant pass regarding dialogue and voice. Then again, this is also primarily a fighter, so the story isn’t all that relevant. I’m getting a little ahead of myself, so let’s start with the story.

Final Fantasy Dissidia 012’s story isn’t fantastic by any stretch of the imagination. Actually, scratch that. The story is great according to the imagination were you yourself to write the script for this game. For what it should be, the story is rubbish, making barely any sense. The tricky concept to grasp is that while this is a fighting game, this is also a Final Fantasy game, an aspect that sort of cancels itself out, meaning the story is neither good nor bad. Rather, it just exists in order to facilitate some sort of real progress toward unlocking characters and items, and for that it’s nice that it exists at all.

Where you’ll find the most disappointment is in the voices of the characters. Dialogue is bland and extremely awkward, despite the gorgeous visuals. That’s the strange thing here: Dissidia 012 is a beautiful game packed with cutscenes that will dazzle your eyes, but the voice acting will pain your ears. The sound itself isn’t at fault though since the soundtrack is lovely, feeling just like the epic Final Fantasy scores before it. It’s just those damned junior high attempts at voice acting that make you cringe again and again. I’d almost prefer the Super Smash Bros Brawl approach of just keeping everyone silent for cutscenes.

I think I understand what's going on here...?

What really sets the Dissidia titles apart from other fighting games is the unique way that nothing makes sense. Stop, I’m making a joke there. Dissidia 012’s fighting mechanics, as with the first Dissidia title, make sense once you figure them out, a process that takes a long, LONG time to really grasp. It can be rather daunting to look at trailers or gameplay footage and feel confident in your ability to figure out what’s going on, but rest assured that with enough diligence that curve levels out and things flow smoothly, ultimately drawing you in to experience each fighter and learn the vastly varied play styles each character showcases, a feature that gladly stands out since each character really does play differently.

If you’re a return visitor to the Dissidia universe after loving the first one, 012 (seriously, could they have thought of a more awkward name?) will essentially just be more of the same except with assist attacks, a welcome inclusion. There are some new characters with fan favorites such as Tifa from FFVII and Kain from FFIV, but not much has changed overall. It’s just more of what made the first game a success.

Never mind, I'm totally lost, but at least I'm okay with that.

PSP owners out there, this is one of those titles that I can’t recommend to you enough. It’s sort of one of the few reasons the PSP’s existence can be justified at all, so not owning one of the two Dissidia titles seems extremely silly, like owning a Wii without Smash Bros or the original Xbox without Halo. I mean you can do it, but why deprive yourself of a clear system seller? Go ahead and feel confident in your Final Fantasy Dissidia 012 [Duodecim] purchases. You won’t be disappointed.

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How do you outdo one of the best underrated games on the GBA? Let's find out.

When we last left off, I was talking about the adventure of Isaac, Garet, Mia, and Ivan to stop the four lighthouses of the world from being lit. By the time the first Golden Sun wraps up, two of the four lighthouses have beacons atop them, shining brightly as glorious failures. Then, right before the credits roll, the four hop on a ship and set off for the next stage of their journey.

This is where The Lost Age picks up, except you aren’t playing as the four from the first game. Rather, you start as Felix, Jenna, and Sheba, characters that appeared sparingly in the first game. Felix is Jenna’s brother, back from the dead and apparently set on a course to light the lighthouses despite being warned not to, whereas Jenna and Sheba were taken against their wills and forced into the conflict. The three set out to finish their task, but to do that they’re going to need a ton of new Psynergy to accomplish this goal. Eventually they meet Piers, a new character, to round out the group of four.

The game is immediately familiar for those who played the first title. None of the mechanics have changed in the slightest. Each character has a limited number of inventory slots, meaning that they can only carry a select few items like weapons or armor or healing potions, forcing you to be a bit choosier as to who has what in their possession and what Djinn they have equipped as this will affect what Psynergy they have access to and how effective they’ll be in battles and so on and so forth. None of the core mechanics change at all, even down to the littlest thing, like setting shortcuts to the L and R buttons for Psynergy outside of battles or the method of dealing with curses and downed party members. The Lost Age doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but rather gives it a long stretch of land to really show what it can do when it has some space to get rolling.

If you're not paying attention, you'll have sworn you had just sene this game...

I don’t have exact numbers, but I’d say The Lost Age is a little less than twice as long as the original Golden Sun. I felt a much greater sense of freedom to explore the world since relatively early on you acquire a boat that lets you get to half of the world via the vast ocean. Sadly, there were a huge number of times where I had absolutely no clue where I was supposed to go, forcing me to check online to make sure I wasn’t just going around in circles. I still don’t see that as a bad thing though as I much prefer an RPG that’s so large it’ll take a while to figure out where you need to go next. Then again, I’m the sort of gamer who enjoys finding something new around every corner, seemingly of my own accord and curiosity.

As is standard with the Golden Sun games, these diversions certainly pay off with major dividends. Going off the beaten path down a side passageway usually leads you to an incredibly powerful weapon or a new Djinn, making the rest of the game feel easier, or at the very least like you’ve been playing smarter. Plus, each special weapon has its own Unleash Attack completely unique to that weapon, and while the first game had a handful of awesome Unleash Attacks, The Lost Age has some that look and act even better. I’m particularly a fan of Megiddo, an Unleash Attack that sends the character into the air to slam a giant fireball down to earth onto your opponent. The sense of power the game accomplishes is amazing.

Hellz yeah!

Something I didn’t really mention in my discussion of the first game but that becomes abundant here is the lack of grinding you tend to put yourself through. As the world opens up to you, just searching around will send you into a handful of encounters, enough so that you’ll be gaining experience and money at an alarming rate, meaning that very few boss battles are a real problem in terms of needing to grind. Rather, a lost battle typically means you need to rethink your strategy of Djinn usage or Psynergy selection. The only real exception is the final battle. That boss pulls so many shenanigans it’s not even fair, but then again that’s what a good final boss does, am I right?

Everything here just feels better. The music is even better than the first, offering some tracks that I’d find myself going out of my way to listen to. I’m partial to the ocean battle track, or even the standard battle track. But as I said, everything just feels better here with more to do by far. I kept getting new Psynergy powers that allowed me to access even more areas and still I was never entirely sure what I’d learn next.

Probably the point where the game takes a drastic change is relatively late in the game where I will certainly be giving spoilers away by telling you. You ready? Here come the spoilers!

Seeing Judgment return as a summon isn't the spoiler. Judgment just doesn't want you to be ill prepared for spoilers, that's all. Also I spoiled it earlier anyway.

Eventually your new party runs into your old party from the first Golden Sun, a reunion that does two very cool things. The first is incorporate your old party into your new party, effectively making your new team consist of eight members instead of just four, though there can still only be four out at one time. The second thing that happens is Isaac talks, and pretty casually at that. I was jarred just a bit when he first spoke because this was the main character from the first game, a typical silent protagonist, a role that Felix takes up here as odd as it feels since he spoke so freely in the previous game. However, allowing Isaac to speak pleased me on a level I didn’t expect, mostly because his dialogue didn’t feel stereotypical of the “hero” character. Instead, he sounds like he gets it, making him one of the few characters in a dialogue scene not asking “What’s going on?” I loved that.

Overall, it’s tough to recommend just The Lost Age. Don’t play this one first. Just don’t. You’ll get vastly more if you play Golden Sun first, then follow this right up. Between the two you can easily manage over 60 hours of gameplay, assuming you aren’t going for full completionist work, and that comes at a price of probably under $30 for the pair of games. You really can’t go wrong here.

You'll most likely thank me later.

So who out there has already played The Lost Age? Leave a comment and let me know your thoughts on the series. You know, go ahead and do it even if you haven’t played either game. Does this sound like the type of game you’d be interested in? I want to know. And with that I’m off to let Pokemon absorb my life for a little while now that Golden Sun isn’t soaking up all my DS’ playing time.

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The cover art alone is getting me excited. Can the game live up to that?

Dragon Quest VI originally debuted on the Super Famicom in December of 1995 as the last in the Zenithia Trilogy, but here in the US the most we got was Dragon Warrior IV, a version of Dragon Quest IV (we called things Dragon Warrior here). We’re coming down the end of the DS’ lifetime thanks to the 3DS coming out next month, so now more than ever it’s critical for a title to stand out as the best of the best in terms of quality and value.

Thankfully, Dragon Quest VI is a title that reminds us not to do away with the old ways just yet. DQVI is entirely faithful to the old-style RPG’s that have long since begun to fade. The first thing you notice is that the graphics aren’t in full 3D but rather sprite-art, keeping them true to the original game but still updating them heavily to a fine polish. In battle, enemies are also sprite-art, but they move in such a hypnotic way that you’ll think twice about saying anything bad about the old style of graphics. Basically, DQVI looks magnificent with Akira Toriyama’s usual flair everywhere. Purists will be extremely pleased.

It really is a game you need to see in action to appreciate.

The story is also one of those things that harkens back to the days of the SNES/Super Famicom, though that makes sense as the game originated there. I don’t want to get into the story details, but this is definitely a JRPG, meaning all the usual baggage that goes along with those types of games is prevalent here just as much as it ever was. The story is far from bad, but smaller instances and side quests have a more satisfying feeling than the main story does, mostly because the entirety of the story doesn’t really feel like one big whole until very late in the game.

Any small nit-picking aside, Dragon Quest VI is a must-buy for fans of both the Dragon Quest titles and fans of old-style RPG’s, such as myself. Everything here is crisp and carefully put together, making a product that’s easy to recommend, even at the usual $40 price tag for Squeenix games on the DS.

You get what you pay for here, and games this good you gotta pay.

One part of the game that’s particularly old school is the constant random encounters. Yes, those aren’t necessarily everyone’s favorite part of the game, but here you’ll encounter just enough monsters to place you at a level high enough to fight the next boss with a good degree of fairness. You’ll find yourself grinding very little in the overall game, save for the ending where the rude awakening happens and the final boss reams you mercilessly. If this sounds like fun, congrats, you’re still a fan of the old style of RPG’s and Dragon Quest VI is a must-buy for you.

And that’s really all there is to say. You’ll love it if this is your thing and find nothing here to like if this isn’t. It’s that simple. Squeenix may be doing awful things to the Final Fantasy name, but Dragon Quest is just as good as it’s always been. So, anyone interested in picking this one up?

Want more game reviews? Check these out:

-For The Win: A Review of Marvel vs Capcom 3

-Why I Hate Sports: A Review of Mario Sports Mix

-Why I’m Never Going To Space:  A Review of Dead Space 2

Cooler promotional art there never was.

In the early days of the Game Boy Advance, there was a lot of room to demonstrate why exactly an update to the holy handheld was required. Game Boy games were typically simple; even the RPG’s they yielded tended to be shallower then the SNES counterparts. The Game Boy Color gave us color (obviously), but beyond maybe the Pokemon games, there wasn’t much depth to handheld titles.

Camelot, a company previously known for making the Mario Golf and Mario Tennis titles, had a chance to try something extremely different than what they were known for. Instead of an arcade sports title, they made an RPG called Golden Sun, a game with enough flare to justify purchasing the GBA specifically to play it.

The main drive behind upgrading from the Game Boy Color to the Game Boy Advance was the processing power behind the colors and effects the system could generate, colors and effects the previous generation couldn’t possibly handle. What Golden Sun demonstrated within the very first minutes of the game was enough to say, “Yes, this is where handheld gaming is going.” And that’s even before the battle screens appeared.

Mm-mm, that's just tasty right there.

I was amazed when I first got into a battle and saw the level of detail in the characters, backgrounds, and even attacks. Golden Sun is gorgeous in presentation. You’d be hard-pressed not to say it’s stunning work laid out on a GBA screen. Not only does it show off how far superior it is to the GBC, it shows how it’s superior to even the SNES. Just watching the summons would push me over the edge of awesome. Go watch Judgment get called forth and tell me it isn’t one of the coolest attacks ever to make it into video games.

At the heart of every RPG is the story and Golden Sun certainly has one that got me curious. The game starts with Isaac and his best friend Garet running about in their village of Vale as a great tragedy occurs that forces Isaac to lose his father and his friend Jenna to lose her brother, Felix (wink wink). The story picks up three years later after Isaac and Garet have been training with the use of Psynergy, the energy force the game calls its magic system. They enter Sol Sanctum and get tricked into retrieving four elemental gem stars required to light the four elemental lighthouses of the world, an act that will supposedly destroy everything and be very, very bad. Supposedly. I think.

Sort of reminds you of Avatar...doesn't it?

While the story is somewhat slow and fairly basic at its core, there is a certain curious quality about it. I played the game to completion when I first purchased it, but as I remember correctly, I only completed two of the four lighthouses before the credits started rolling. Why? Because there is a sequel, The Lost Age, in which the story is resolved. I haven’t played that yet, much to my distress, but that will soon change as my wife recently found me a used copy for my birthday. My point is, Golden Sun as a stand-alone title leaves you begging for more, even though my first playthrough had me clocking over 40 hours. That’s a serious chunk of time for a GBA title.

Those that have played Golden Sun aren’t going to try and sell you on it based purely on the story, or even the graphics; they’ll try to sell you on the Djinn. Djinn are magical creatures you can collect throughout the game to the point that each of the four main characters can equip seven. The Djinn can be used in battle, each with its own special technique. The trade-off is that the Djinn provide stat-boosts for the characters, as well as abilities for the particular class the character happens to be. The more Djinn, the better the class, and the more varied the type of Djinn you have equipped, the more varied the class will be. When you use a Djinn, however, that stat boost and class change will be lost until it’s reequipped, done so by performing a Summon attack. Summon attacks require between one to four Djinn of the same type, allowing you to make use of the most devastating attacks in the game. Once summoned, the Djinn will then recharge and become reequipped to the various characters.

It’s this constant balancing of equipped and stand-by Djinn that make for a unique battle style in Golden Sun. While you may really, really want to use your Djinn and save up a few to unleash Judgment, you could be costing your character vital stats in the middle of the battle, or worse, forcing him to lose some of his key Psynergy such as Cure Well or Ragnarok. Even better, mixing around and playing with the Djinn combinations can become rather enjoyable since you can play it safe and dull (like I did) and use stack like-typed Djinn upon the characters with the same elemental type, or you can find grand combos that provide cooler attacks than ever before. Golden Sun provides a lot of room to experiment, room that players have seemed to enjoy.

No way! That totally IS Avatar!

My last little thing to mention regards naming the characters. I am a huge proponent of being allowed to name characters within video games whatever you’d like, permitting you to create your own narrative rather than just the one the game provides. It gives you the chance to forge a deeper connection to the story and the characters than you may otherwise have. Oddly enough, Golden Sun permits you to rename Isaac, but not the other characters…unless you know a cheat code. I happen to know said cheat code. I’ll leave you with the knowledge that if you’d like to rename the four playable characters, plus three others, enter Up, Down, Up, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, Up, Right, Down, Left, Up, and then Select while you’re on the screen where you can name Isaac. If done correctly you’ll hear a slight “ping.” You’re welcome.

So there you have it, a true Game You Should Have Played. Dark Dawn, the third game in the series, just released at the beginning of this week, so you might as well spend some time catching up before you dive head first into a righteously excellent game. I’ll leave you to comment on whether you’re a Golden Sun fan or not, but please, no spoilers here! I’m the only one allowed to spoil things!

Want more Games You Should Have Played? Check these out:

-Homeward Bound: More Earthbound For The US

-Games You Should Have Played: Super Mario Bros 3

-Games You Should Have Played: Final Fantasy III SNES

Everyone and your mother can play this game at the same time.

Here we go, we have another FPS to review. But this time there’s a catch. This time, we’ve also got an MMORPG, of sorts. Yup, talking about MAG this time, a First Person Shooter that’s big hook is the ability to play with 256 players at the same time. In fact, there isn’t even a single-player aspect to the game. Does this make it a deal breaker? Let’s find out.

Hope you Like Online Play

MAG starts you off with a choice between making a character in one of three factions. You need to choose well because you can’t change your faction and you can only have one character per PSN account at the same time. Personally, that sounds about as stupid as I’ve ever heard. You can finally change factions when your character reaches level 60, but that’s a big devotion there. If you’ve picked the wrong faction right off the bat without meaning to, you could find yourself really hating MAG.

Obviously, since online is the only way to play MAG, you better be ready to deal with everything that entails the online experience. If there is lag, the game is terrible. If there is downtime on the servers, you can’t play the game, period. Luckily there haven’t been any major instances of either of those quite yet. The controls work well, so you’ll never feel that they’re the cause of any of your failures.

If you suck, you'll have no friends. Just like the real world.

The actual cause of all your failures comes from the inability of your squad to work together as a team. You can’t be a one-man army here, no matter how much you’d like to be or how good you think you are. There are just that many players on the map at any time ready to pick you off. However, when your team’s working well together, there’s an amazing feeling of synergy that puts the game to the top of its potential.

Not Without Some Reservations

Still, the game isn’t perfectly balanced. There is one team (SVER) that will win far more times than they’ll lose. People will argue this back and forth, but the maps built for their defense are nearly impossible to attack unless the SVER team playing is beyond idiotic. What I’m trying to say is, you should choose SVER as your first faction.

I’m hesitant to get into MAG due to the limited time the game will exist. It’s an online only game, so when people stop playing the game, how will there be 256-player matches? If you want to play MAG at its high point, better play it now. The longer you wait, the higher the chance you won’t really be playing MAG as it was supposed to be played.

Just think how dull this would be without the max number of players.

It all comes down to how much you enjoy FPS’s and how happy you can be playing only with and against real players online. If so far everything sounds awesome you, then you’ll probably love MAG. If you hate either shooters or online games, pass. Just don’t rent it. If you want it, better buy it and be prepared to play it for a while.

You'll be seeing a lot of her for a while.

You know that Final Fantasy XIII is on its way, right? It’s been quite a few years in the works, but we’re finally getting rough release dates for the game of games. Currently, Final Fantasy XIII is scheduled for a December release in Japan, which means an early-mid 2010 release for the US (expect those dates to change like crazy). But what’s all the hype about?

We’ve Only Been Waiting for 3 Years

For starters, any new final Fantasy title is a big deal. Wait, let me rephrase that; any new NUMBERED Final Fantasy title is a big deal. That’s because we don’t get them very often, and when we do the games are polished down to such perfection that we can’t but either nominate them for every award possible or desperately search for the problems so that we may properly scorn them (not possible).

Final Fantasy XII met with a lot of praise and a lot of indifference (I have a copy but I never bothered to open it, for example), so the next installment has some high hopes.

From what everyone has seen and played of the game one thing has become clear: This game is going to win every award it can for the year after it’s released. There’s no arguing that. The only chance any other game has is if it’s a sleeper success, but that’s not likely against this one. Just go to any major gaming website and find some trailers for the game. The game looks huge, interesting, and super confusing… but in a good way.

This will be one of the best looking games up till this point in gaming, whether you like it or not.

I’ve been going out of my way not to find out what the plot of the game is. Most of my reasoning comes from my desire to just play the game fresh and without any expectations in terms of what the plot has to offer. I can assume from the things I’ve seen that there is a future with a governmental system that needs to be overthrown by a rag-tag group of rebels lead by a snappy leader and a new character that magically has abilities no one has never seen before, but that’s just me assuming things again.

A PS3 Exclusive Leaves Wii out to Dry

If you can figure out what's happening here, you know more than I do.

The biggest news for us in the US concerns which system gets this beast. Originally it was going to be a PS3 exclusive. Now it’s coming out in the 360 as well. That’s a major hit to Sony, but a major boon for all 360 fans. Doesn’t matter which system you have or support; the important thing is that EVERYONE (except Wii owners), now get a chance to experience THE game. Yes, this will be the biggest game to (maybe) hit stores next year even if you don’t like RPGs or Final Fantasy or Square-Enix.

As I said, expect the game sometime next year, though probably by late this year we’ll be able to hear from Japan exactly what we can expect from the title. Plop down a preorder and keep some vacation days open for this one.

Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story is the third game of the series and it’ll be on the DS this September.  Surprisingly, the Mario & Luigi role playing games don’t get nearly as much credit as they deserve.

Look, I’m a Mario addict, especially anything that plays like Super Mario RPG.  The Paper Mario series is also great, but people forget about the Mario & Luigi games on the Game Boy Advance and DS.

So why should you be buying it?

The Mario & Luigi games are turn-based role-playing games that put you in control of Mario and Luigi.  Different from most RPG’s is the ability to increase the damage you can inflict on an enemy by timing a button press correctly, so when Mario is about to stomp on a Goomba for instance, a quick press of the A button before he lands will do increased damage.

Likewise during defense, pressing the A button will save Mario from damage if timed correctly.  For Luigi, just insert the letter B instead of A.

That’s where the fun comes in as you have to keep track of Mario and Luigi individually and time things right, so if an enemy swings a bat or something, you have to evade as Mario and then Luigi.

It’s tricky to figure out, but once you get going, everything just feels awesome.

The biggest draw of these games is the humor.  Few games are written with as much obvious humor as the Mario & Luigi games.  When people say, “Oh, this game is funny,” it’s hard to believe them.  But I promise, with these games, I’ve found myself guffawing multiple times, running to find someone to show off the funny thing that just happened.

Mario & Luigi: Bowser’s Inside Story is one of the few games I actually plan on getting the day it comes out.  It’s both lighthearted enough for kids to play, but offers a great deal of challenge for the older gamers.  Thus far the game has been fairly popular in Japan, but why gamers in the US haven’t gotten excited is completely beyond me.

Metroid Fusion: Metroid became my bread and butter after I first got a chance to play Metroid Fusion, (I’m still terrible at them, but I readily consume them if possible).  The game is tough, especially if you want to get the best ending, (beat the game with 100% items in under 2 hours), but it is so worth it.  I still pop this one in and play it every now and then. Amazon can hook you up with a copy for under $15.

Golden Sun: RPG’s are everywhere on the Advance, but this was one of the first and still one of the best.  The graphics were amazing for a handheld, (still amazing actually), and everything about Golden Sun kept me playing for hours.  Overlooked, but simple to find and cheap to play.  Go get it.

Advance Wars: I am bad with tactical games, but not Advance Wars.  I picked this one up on a whim and it was one of the best whims I’ve ever picked a game up on.  There are a handful of sequels including a DS version, but if you’re strapped for cash, you can’t go wrong with this original.  It’ll keep you busy for quite a while.

Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga: If you’re still waiting for Super Mario RPG 2, then this may tide you over for a while.  The Mario & Luigi series doesn’t get nearly as much love as it should, but the games speak for themselves. Get yourself started/hooked on this series as soon as possible.

Wario Land 4: Surprisingly, there were no new Mario games made specifically for the Advance.  However, Wario saw the fourth game in his series come to the Advance, and it was pretty darn good.  Truly a worthy platformer for a worthy system.

Be sure to check out more of my video game reviews here.