As I did with Earthbound last year, I’m compelled to go in-depth with my Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bride review, so I’m splitting this into two sections. The first will discuss the game overall, spoiler-free. The second will go heavily into spoiler territory and talk about things I both liked and didn’t like with how the game progressed. Spoilers will be under a cut and clearly marked (at least, better marked than they were in the Earthbound review, cut notwithstanding). So, here we go.

Dragon Quest V is wonderful. There isn’t really much more to say about it than that. It takes the refined formula that characterizes the series and stitches to it a story that outshines and outclasses most other JRPG tales, along with a handful of unique features and engaging diversions. The Dragon Quest formula, for those who aren’t familiar with it, is a certain style of first-person turn-based fighting, combined with interesting dungeons, lively towns and castles, casino minigames, and a reasonable amount of grinding, all presented in a brightly-colored Akira Toriyama world set to a serene Koichi Sugiyama soundtrack. It’s a world with blue slimes with round eyes and goofy smiles, lamps that can turn day into night, and mini-medals sought after by an eccentric king. If you’re at all familiar with Dragon Quest, then you know what I’m talking about and should feel right at home.

One of the major features specific to Dragon Quest V is the ability to recruit monsters as party members. This isn’t as clear-cut as it sounds. Unlike in monster-collecting RPGs like Pokemon, the player doesn’t have any control over the recruiting process; there’s no special spells or items that can be used to convince them to join your side. Rather, at the end of battles, a monster might randomly show up and ask to join your party. This happens pretty rarely and, as one learns after obtaining the Big Book of Beasts, not all monsters are recruitable, and some are harder to enlist than others. All told, I don’t think I recruited much more than a dozen monsters, but that was okay, as I wound up with a pretty solid all-monster backup team by the time the final dungeon came around, including a Slime Knight that had been with me for a good majority of the game.

Another way in which Dragon Quest V differentiates itself is with its diversions. The usual casino games (slots, roulette, etc.) are present, as is the sidequest wherein mini-medals, which are scattered all over the world, can be exchanged for rare goodies, but there are some new things to do as well. One of my favorites is Treasures and Trapdoors, or T’n'T for short. T’n'T is a giant, life-size board game played with a die and a set number of turns; the spaces along the board contain anything from an additional turn or three to a random battle, a treasure chest to an inn, a dungeon entrance to a stat boost. It’s sort of like playing a scaled-down version of Dragon Quest within Dragon Quest. The prizes for winning a round of T’n'T are good, and later on, playing certain boards can be a great way to amass a lot of cash without having to dungeon-crawl in the traditional sense. Another I liked is the Knick-Knackatory, a museum where the “knick-knacks” that the hero collects on his journey can be displayed. I never did get all of the knickknacks, but I came pretty close, and it was neat to see the museum slowly fill up over time, both with exhibits and with visitors.

As for Dragon Quest V’s story, like I said, I really do believe it is one of the best ever in a JRPG, and in large part, this is due to its structure and approach. For instance, while there is backstory, and a fair amount of it—this being the second part of the Zenithian Trilogy, the events of Dragon Quest IV are very vaguely alluded to, but there are other bits of history, specific to DQV, that factor in as well—there is no need for flashbacks on the part of the hero, as we see every important thing that happens in his life right then and there, in whatever the present happens to be at the time. From hereon in, I’ll call the “hero” Kiyoshi, as that’s what I named mine; like all Dragon Quest heroes, he is nameless until the player intervenes.

The game starts with Kiyoshi’s birth, and quickly jumps forward six years when he is wandering the world with his father, Pankraz. Who Pankraz and Kiyoshi are and what the former’s quest is are major plot points in the game, and ones that follow our hero through the years. We follow the six year-old on his adventures, and after another timeskip, see him again as a teenager, growing into a young man. He has more adventures, learns more about himself, and chooses a bride. The quest he embarks with his wife continues on from there, and his life, as all our lives do, grows larger and larger.

Major spoilers from this point on.

(more…)

It was time to come down from the space station. The lack of natural, Earth gravity wasn’t good for my body, and one could only take so much of Arona’s wheeling and dealing after awhile. I had to return to familiar territory. Fortunately, a budget flight to a Caribbean island grouping known as Tropico came upon my radar. Having grown up in Miami and its environs—as entrenched in the world of Carribean and Central and South American politics as it is its cultures—I had some minor reservations, given the borderline-snarky brochure about Tropico, but I was also eager to see palm trees and soak in streets filled with sunshine and Spanish again. Yes, there would be a lot of Spanish; none of the English patois of my own West Indian side of the family, no Hatian Creole, no Brazilian Portuguese. Still, I suppose this simplified things a bit.

My return to Earth involved a bit of time travel, and I was thrust back into the 1950s, in the thick of the Cold War. I took on the alias of “Carmina Salazar” and found myself alarmed at both the limited wardrobe options she/I was presented with compared with the men’s closet, as well as the fact that her/my advisor, throughout our administrations, seemed to assume that the presidente was, in fact, a man the entire time. Even Carmina’s musings to herself about her own beauty as she walked the streets and countrysides seemed not to be enough to convey her femininity. Did the presidential advisor, Penultimo, not get out much?

Perhaps Penultimo simply wasn’t a very good listener. There was one administration where I was advised to build up a nice nest egg for myself in my Swiss bank account. However, after my first specific order through Penultimo, which netted me a cool three thou, subsequent ones wouldn’t go through for some reason. I finally mucked my way through things and amassed the required balance, but it took the more routine measure of money laundering through a bank I had built myself to make most of that ill-gotten cash. This was not the only technical problem I faced, though it was the only one that involved miscommunication with my advisor; the others were minor, of the sort the computer back on the space station might term “glitches”, and simply stepping away for a bit and coming back seemed to right things. Then there were the less technical ones, the typos in the memos that Penultimo would present to me during a few specific administrations. In one instance, the name of a country was spelled both correctly and incorrectly within the same note!

There were other frustrating moments, though some of these came out of my own moral quandries. For the most part, I refused to grow tobacco and erect cigar factories, which severely hampered me during an administration on an island on which tobacco was practically the only thing that would grow. Then there were the offshore oil deposits. Considering the indescribably disgusting mess going on in the present-day Gulf of Mexico, I stayed away from offshore rigs until the very end, when the need to amass an incredible amount of money presented itself.

Still, despite the tough work, long hours, and little annoyances, the islands of Tropico were beautiful places to manage. Palm trees swayed gently on landscapes of rolling hills, flat, sandy beaches, and steep cliffsides. The terrain was oftentimes tricky to navigate, but the well-worn footpaths, probably made by natives from a more agrarian past, were a great help. Laying roads straight was another fussy bit of business, but I got the hang of it after awhile, and would even sometimes go back and repave the old crooked roads that I had been presented with at the start of my term of an island. The buildings for the islands inhabitants all proved to be useful in one way or another. Those for the tourists—them being a picky bunch—not so much. When land becomes flattened to place a building, sometimes it’s a crapshoot as to whether or not it looks okay, or just silly. Meanwhile, the people had their problems and demands, as people everywhere do, but that’s life, yeah? At least I could silence the radio announcer, Juanito, when his interruptions got too distracting.

My time running the islands of Tropico has ended, at least for now. It was a interesting and engrossing series of terms, but not enough to make me forget about that spinning metal bicycle tyre some light years away from here. That place will likely remain my first choice should I be torn between a gig as Administrator, and one as El Presidente. Still, I wouldn’t mind dipping my toes into that clear blue water again in the future, lively Latin music playing on the radio. It’d be hard to say no to such a beautiful place.

There was a post on Kotaku that made the rounds awhile back that attempted to answer the question, “What if Super Mario Bros. was made in 2010?” Although I myself would’ve added a ton of logos at the beginning, it hit the mark, showing just how much mandatory tutorials, dumb achievements, and so forth routinely interrupt what used to be a pure experience.

Remember when you would go to an arcade, or turn on your NES, to play, say, Super Mario Bros.? You’d just get a starting screen with a small copyright notice and an option to select the number of players, and away you’d go. No fuss, nothing telling you how to move or attack before setting you free to explore the world, break blocks, defeat enemies, or what have you. You just dove right in and played. These days, it’s hard to find that sort of experience outside of retrogames (of course) and casual games, or as they might be better termed, “retrogames from the future”.

One of the current kings of retrogames from the future is Popcap, and one of their handful of popular titles, even amongst “hardcore” types, is Plants vs. Zombies, a strategy game where the goal is to use garden vegetables and the like to keep a horde of brainthirsty undead from making it all the way across your suburban lawn and into your equally suburban house. It had been enthusiastically recommended to me not long after its release by CloudANDTidus, and although I took forever even just to check out the demo (sorry about that, Clidus), I’m glad I did. Plants vs. Zombies is fun, funny, addictive, and aside from a brief logo screen, an equally brief bit of loading time at the beginning, and a small smattering of Steam achievements (none of which are of the silly “First mission beaten” variety), at its core, it feels like it could’ve been made twenty years ago.

A bit more about how the game plays. As I understand it, Plants vs. Zombies is in the trendy “Tower Defense” genre, which I am not too familiar with. However, if a “Tower Defense” game means an RTS without building construction and offensive maneuvering, where all one has to worry about is unit generation, resource gathering, and defending the base, then I guess Plants vs. Zombies fits the bill.

The game takes place on a loosely defined grid outside your home. Only Peashooters (which, naturally, shoot out pea bullets) are available at first, but new species become unlocked as the Adventure mode wears on. So too do new enemies show up, and features become unlocked, including the Minigame, Puzzle, and Survival modes. Some of these modes, particularly Vasebreaker and certain minigames, have a heavy element of luck involved, but this is obvious by their design and does not make them any less fun.

The pacing and aesthetics have a lot to do with keeping things lively. The individual missions, whatever mode they’re in, are just the right length, and can be paused at any time and picked up again later, even if you quit out of the game. The awesome end credits notwithstanding, the music is inoffensive and not particularly earwormy, which is fine with me. Your plants are brightly-colored and bouncy, with beady, dark pupils, while the zombies are bug-eyed and tend to shamble forward at a more languid pace. In between all this, you’ll talk to your neighbor Dave, aka “Crazy Dave”, a scruffy fellow who wears a saucepan on his head and knows a thing or two about zombies (he can also be counted on for some lines of laugh-out-loud dialogue, including a gamer’s in-joke or two).

This game offers so much variety and straight-up fun that it’s hard to put down at times. Flaws are few, the most damning being that your mouse cursor stays the same as it is in Windows. The lack of a custom, game-specific cursor wouldn’t be a problem were it not for the fact that the action can get very hectic at times, especially in Survival mode, and it’s far too easy to lose track of the damned thing. I also wish there was a way to archive the Tree of Wisdom’s sayings for future reference, but there doesn’t seem to be such an option, unless I’m overlooking something. Other than that, I’ve no complaints, and like CloudANDTidus did before me, I urge you all to at least check out the demo for Plants vs. Zombies as soon as possible, or at least before the zombies eat your brains.

Though it may seem otherwise, Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth (referred to as AAI from here on in) is not an easy game to pigeonhole. It could be considered as either a spinoff of the main Ace Attorney series or a full entry in its own right. It is the first and only Ace Attorney to feature both a prosecutor as the main character and a heavy emphasis on crime scene investigation. However, it’s as lengthy and as well written as many of its predecessors, and represents an evolution of, rather than a complete break from, the core Ace Attorney formula.

Spinoff or not, there’s no denying that this is a different sort of Ace Attorney. Set sometime after the events of the third game (Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations), it stars Miles Edgeworth, a savvy public prosecutor who’s both friend and foil to defense attorney Wright. It opens in Edgeworth’s office, where there’s been a murder, and the cases that follow only get bigger and messier from there. The goal of the game is to find the culprits for these cases by analyzing evidence and other information gathered throughout the course of the investigation. Typical for the series, AAI is funny and well-told, and while the plot can be predictable at times, in general, it is solid, anime-flavored drama. However, the localization suffers in spots from awkward grammar and typographical errors. It is far from the worst game localization I’ve ever seen, but it could’ve greatly benefited from an extra round of editing and polish.

While convoluted murder cases are a hallmark of Ace Attorney, how they are handled is what truly sets AAI apart. Previous games took place entirely from a first-person point of view for the investigation phases, and only showed the main character during trials. In AAI, Edgeworth is represented onscreen nearly all the time. When he’s not in his typical 1/4 front portrait view, he’s a sprite on the top screen of the DS, and can be made to walk or run around his environment. This comes at the expense of the freedom to move between several different locations, as Ace Attorney’s defense lawyers did, but is realistic within the context of the story, particularly when dealing with partner characters—no more running back to the office just to speak with your assistant! Other new features include the “Logic” command, where Edgeworth pieces together things he has noticed in order to explain something within the scene, and a device that recreates crime scenes, AAI’s subtle, and suitable, upgrade from the previous games’ magical MacGuffins.

What else is different? The post-investigation phase in an Ace Attorney game typically involves a courtroom showdown, but not in AAI. Edgeworth still takes testimony and presses both witnesses and suspects, sure, but all of this action takes place right on the scene, and as such, is very tightly integrated with the investigation phases.

If all this sounds like a radical departure from the old formula, it’s one that fans need not worry about, as there’s much that hasn’t changed. The basic interface, for one, as well as the fact that the entire game (except for saving functions) can be played with just the touchscreen if one prefers. Speaking of controls, the ability to shout “Objection!” using the microphone has returned. Also handled in a familiar way are the first-person crime scene examinations, where a specific area can be searched for evidence; likewise, the basic process of interviewing witnesses and presenting evidence to them is the same as it’s always been. The visuals and music are stylistically consistent with the rest of the series, though the majority of the reused art assets—such as the portrait views for Edgeworth—have been given a much-needed facelift.

One “feature” that has been in the series all along—and is also present in AAI—is the methodical process that pervades throughout the cases, and the testimonies in particular. Often, it’s not all that difficult to figure out just what is going on at certain points in the story, but jumping too far ahead in one’s conclusions can have dire consequences, and the correct answers can be rather obtuse. Perhaps it is because I’ve played the previous games and am used to the Ace Attorney thinking process, but I encountered such stumbling blocks far less in AAI. That, along with the lack of real make-or-break, nail-biting moments, has made for what’s possibly the easiest Ace Attorney yet.

While we’re on the subject of familiarity: as mentioned before, there are many throwbacks to earlier titles in the series. From the appearance of beloved characters like police detective Dick Gumshoe, to tiny, Easter egg-like details, there’s much here that will put a smile on any Ace Attorney fan’s face. However, this has come at the expense of introducing more new characters to the canon; while there are some, the amount of them feels insufficient when compared to the earlier games. This heavy reliance on familiar elements, while not bad in and of itself, is the most spinoff-like aspect of AAI, and weakens its case for being a good starting point for newcomers.

So, is AAI just a spinoff, or a true Ace Attorney game? The verdict points to somewhere squarely in between. It’s a great adventure game, with a lot of excellent ideas that I’d like to see put to use in future Ace Attorneys, but it also relies heavily on the past, and has a localization that isn’t quite up to par with those of its predecessors. If you’re a fan, especially an Edgeworth fan, you’ll probably love it. AAI is a fan’s game, and while I don’t doubt that newcomers to Ace Attorney can and will enjoy it, one gets the sense that they’re not really who it was made for.

For the past few years, I’ve been tying up some final loose ends in the old school JRPG space. I never set out to play everything—for instance, I’ve no plans on touching Xenogears, for an assortment of reasons—but there have been a handful of titles that I’ve slowly been getting around to. Last year’s non-port, non-remake relics were Earthbound and Secret of Mana; I didn’t like them, but couldn’t hate them, either. The former was archaic (even for the time) and sported certain horrible and frustrating bits of game design, but its charming atmosphere made it easy to see why it has garnered a fervent fanbase to this day. The latter has a clunky interface and AI, overenthusiastic animation, and a rushed translation, yet the rest holds up fairly well, and in general, the game wears its ambition proudly.

This year’s major relic is Chrono Cross, the PS1 sequel to a Super Nintendo game made by a once-in-a-lifetime “Dream Team”; a console RPG which has since become one of the most beloved of all time. With such a pedigree, Chrono Cross has a lot riding on it. On top of that, aside from executive producer Hironobu Sakaguchi and composer Yasunori Mitsuda, none of the most recognizable names from the aforementioned original game’s “Dream Team” show up here. This doesn’t bode well, but it’s unrealistic to believe that Chrono Cross would equal or even surpass its legendary predecessor, right? As long as it works, there shouldn’t be much to worry about, right?

Well, therein lies the rub. Chrono Cross doesn’t work, not as a whole. Rather, it should, it ought to, parts of it do sometimes, and it contains so many things that could make everything work, but they all fit together in the wrong way, or too much glue is used in one place, and not in another. The result is a goopy mess of wasted potential, a skunk works project that looks good on the surface, but creaks at the seams.

This is a JRPG where the protagonist adventures with only the barest of motivations even after a few hours in, and with little to no pressure from outside forces pushing him forward; sometimes, when said pressure does come to bear on him, events then progress in a such a way that make absolutely no sense in the context of what happened even just a scene or two before. This is a tale where, whenever the central plot rears its ugly head, it starts out presenting itself in a natural and fluid way, then bombards you, via whatever deux ex machina device happens to be available, with tons of information that confuses things once again before, during, and/or after a major boss fight. This is a plot in which, toward the end, when things do kind-of sort-of make sense now, the last little bits thrown at you are absolutely ludicrous and makes you wonder what kind of crack the writers were smoking.

This is a game that commits one of the gravest crimes of game design: instead of guiding the player whenever necessary, it makes assumptions of them. It assumes that the player will go in a certain direction once heading to a new town with an open main square that happens to have several branching paths, so that the entire place can be explored before triggering the very cutscene that hints as to you why the townsfolk were talking about the things they were. That’s not a problem, but what is is that it also assumes that the player will remember every single snippet of conversation, amongst many dozens of characters and across several locations, that takes place throughout the course of the game. As such, this is a game in which a strategy guide or online walkthrough won’t be wanted merely for the optional stuff (and there’s a ton), but just for figuring out how to progress through the damned story. I don’t know how much is the fault of the localization—the PlayStation era was hardly a golden age for English translations of Squaresoft games—or the writing itself, but either way, a game like this should not have a narrative structure this sloppy.

Then there’s the battle system, which confuses simplicity with elegance, and complexity with depth. This may sound strange considering the genre, but in the Chrono Cross system, there are just too many numbers. Don’t get me wrong; it’s not the numbers themselves, but the types of numbers. There are percentages and decimals all over your average battle screen, along with blinking graphs for your Elements (Chrono Cross‘ version of spells and healing items) and your usual HP indicators. It’s a system that closely integrates turns with three different grades of physical attack, the aforementioned Elements, field effects, and summons that are both rare and borderline useless. Leveling has been completely done away with, but party members can still earn stat upgrades at the end of each battle, which kind of makes one wonder what the point of having no levels is. It’s a highly unusual and experimental battle system—par for the course for a ’90s Square JRPG, when you think about it—but suffers from the same syndrome that Kingdom Hearts II did in that the regular enemies tend to be too easy, while certain boss fights ramp up the difficulty a noticeable amount. Even with the latter taken into account, it’s possible to run away from several boss battles, including the very last one, so perhaps I’m overstating the difficulty there.

And speaking of the final boss, there are two options to dealing with it, and one of them requires an item that is talked about many times, but can only be obtained by going someplace that isn’t labeled on the map and is referred to but once or twice (without any clear indicators that You Should Go There) during the regular course of the game. Using this item, well, that’s another matter entirely. Let me save you the trouble: unless you really, really like exploring, don’t bother searching for hints in the game—if you want the “good” ending, skim through an FAQ to get the details.

However, before you think that this review is all negative, rest assured that there were some things I liked about Chrono Cross. While I found main character Serge to be bland—even for a cipher—and heroine Kid a bit annoying, there were some cast members I genuinely liked, such as Norris. Certain references to the game’s predecessor that popped up early on were kind of cute. For the most part, and despite the ugliness of PlayStation graphics in general, the visual aesthetic was nice. One of the main subplots was largely enjoyable and quite touching, although a certain track associated with it wore out its welcome really fast. And speaking of music, Yasunori Mitsuda’s score was great; I went in thinking that I wouldn’t like it, as I’d been overexposed to a handful of pieces over the years, but the soundtrack as a whole grew on me.

So, in summation, don’t play Chrono Cross, especially if you’re, like me, someone who loved its predecessor to bits and would be put off by an inferior battle system and convoluted, inelegant lump of a story. Just go straight to your favorite Japanese import game music retailer and plunk down Â¥3,204 or thereabouts for the soundtrack instead. That way, you’ll get one of the very best parts of the game without actually having to play it!

There’s been a lot in gaming press, blogs, and messageboards lately about how Japanese RPGs are stagnating. With the arrival, en masse of high-quality Western RPGs on consoles, history is repeating itself. Remember what happened when console gamers discovered what good first-person shooters and built-in modding/customizing tools were like? Halo was not a big deal to those of us who had previously played everything from Wolfenstein 3D onward, and Little Big Planet looked nice, but was it really going to revolutionize things when powerful—but not overly intimidating—modding tools like UnrealEd were old news?

Anyway, like I said, there’s a lot of whining about how JRPGs have gone downhill, and some people think that the best way to fix them is to, generally, make them more Western. Such homogenization isn’t the best approach (and wouldn’t make the core JRPG consumer base happy), but what is? While some JRPG series (most notably Dragon Quest, Tales, and Pokemon) soldier on with high-quality, well-received main entries, other games have been seeking different approaches. There’ve been some novel experiments (Valkyria Chronicles, The World Ends With You), but more commonly, we’ve seen a lot of hybrids.

Hybrid RPGs are not easy to pigeonhole, and they’ve always kinda-sorta been around in one form or another, but the past few years have really seen them come into their own. For evidence of this, RPGamer’s Best of 2009 Awards is worth a look. While more traditional RPG fare took the top prizes, many genre blends popped up in other categories: SRPG/shmup Knights in the Nightmare, RPG/microgame mashup Half-Minute Hero, dungeon crawler/farming sim Rune Factory Frontier, and so on. The phenomenon isn’t limited to Japan, either, one of the more recent examples being the Western-developed puzzle RPG Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, likewise mentioned in the Best of 2009. Clearly, RPGs mixing with other genres is a growing trend, and going by the quality of the hybrids I’ve played so far, it’s one that I personally would like to see continue.

One of the original hybrid RPG stars has been, not unexpectedly, Mario. First in Super Mario RPG, then in the Paper Mario and Mario & Luigi games, the portly Italian plumber’s RPG adventures intermingle with the precise jumping and timing that define his platforming exploits. The Mario & Luigi series in particular adds an extra layer of challenge by having you control both Mario Bros. on the field at the same time, and eventually, special moves become available that can only be pulled off when the two are together. The second game, Partners in Time quadruples the party when Baby Mario and Baby Luigi join their older selves on the quest. This was also the first game in the series to appear on the Nintendo DS (the original was on the Game Boy Advance), occasionally reserving the top screen as the babies’ domain, with special areas only they can explore, for when they aren’t riding piggyback on the adults.

The latest Mario & Luigi game (and the last Mario RPG ever made that I had left to play), the Fall 2009 release Bowser’s Inside Story, is likewise on the DS, but this time, the party is reduced to three: Mario, Luigi, and perennial bad guy Bowser. The basic plot is that the Mushroom Kingdom has been hit hard by a disease called the Blorbs, which causes the local Toads to swell up into obese giants. Meanwhile, Bowser is, yet again, planning to kidnap Princess Peach when, along the way, he eats a strange mushroom which causes him to swallow up the Princess, Mario, Luigi, and half the Kingdom. Mixed in with all this is the delightfully mad Fawful, Cackletta’s henchman from the first game who comes back as a full-fledged villain here. While Mario and Luigi explore Bowser’s body to try and find a way out, Bowser commences on his own journey. What comes out of their adventures is one of the strangest symbiotic relationships the Mario canon has seen yet.

The hallmarks of the series are all present—the platforming, the special moves, the hidden items, the funny script, and so on—but a third major element has been added to the mix of RPG and Platformer: Minigames.

(more…)