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.

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Although I play a lot of stuff published by Square Enix, prior to Radiata Stories, I’d never played a tri-Ace game before. Squeenix games developed by studios like Jupiter, Level-5, or others, sure, but for some reason, never tri-Ace. I’m familiar with their reputation for shiny graphics and generally average games, though, and Radiata Stories in particular seems to be a polarizing title.

It is a very pretty game, with appealing graphics that border on painterly, and—unlike many other games where brown is the dominant color—are pleasing to the eye. Similarly, the soundtrack is quite good; certain tracks would always get stuck in my head over the course of my playthrough. This being Square Enix, the localization is also solid, with nary an annoying voice to be heard.

The underlying mechanics are also, for the most part, excellent. The battle system is one of the best I have ever seen in an action RPG. This is a much more immediate system than your typical one a la Tales or Kingdom Hearts, where AI-controlled party members’ capabilities are individually tweaked through menus. A menu is still used here, but everything goes through the main character, Jack Russell (named after the dog breed?). Once Jack is able to lead his own parties, he can issue commands to individual members or the whole group, and even call them into special formations. These commands can be learned in various ways over the course of the game, and like with a lot of battle systems, you’ll come to rely on certain actions more than others. Battles themselves are generally easy, and whatever genuine challenge gets thrown at you isn’t of the frustrating kind. As for navigation, for the most part, I was able to get around just fine, with the final dungeon being the most annoying place in a world that lacks them.

Where Radiata Stories falls apart—oddly enough, given the title—is in the storytelling. It starts out promising, with Jack leaving home to go to Radiata Castle, to join an order of knights. This initial part of the game is plot-heavy, but by the time Jack takes up residence in the town surrounding the castle, the player finds that they now have a lot more freedom… or so it seems. Here, the game’s quasi-open world feel expands even more; in addition to the regular day and night cycles, Jack can now take on odd jobs, make friends, and freely explore most of the city and world. However, unlike a lot of open world games, story events in Radiata Stories can’t be started at your own pace; instead, they will be automatically triggered after waking up or—more annoyingly—after arriving at home to save your progress (and naturally, you can’t do so until whatever cutscene that happens is over, if they allow you even that). About the save system: there are a few temporary save points throughout the world which pop up during story events, but permanent ones only exist in one place at a time, which is always in Jack’s living quarters. You can see how this can be problematic.

Aside from pacing concerns, the story itself has its share of cracks. Though most of the characterization is great, Jack himself isn’t handled particularly well. Certain aspects of his personality change too quickly, even given the tale’s brevity; it leads one to believe that Jack is either naïve or fickle, or both. The meat of the plot, once the game gets around to it, is somewhat confusing. There are two branching paths this story can take; the ending I got was unsatisfying, and what I’ve heard about the second one didn’t sound all that hot either.

Despite its great battle system and beautiful visual and aural aesthetics, I can’t really recommend Radiata Stories. Much as I prefer to play games for the actual game parts, a competent narrative (whenever narrative of any kind is called for) does contribute a lot to the overall experience. While the story does try to break away from certain JRPG clichés in an admirable way, it interrupts the open world flow of the overall game when it isn’t wanted, and on top of that, doesn’t make a good enough case for its own importance. Radiata Stories is chock-full of promising ideas and approaches, especially for a JRPG, but in the end, it doesn’t deliver as well as it could have.

My first experience with the Ys series was last year, when I downloaded and played the TurboGrafx version of Ys Book I & II via Virtual Console. I found the game to have its share of quirks, but overall, an enjoyable experience. Much the same can also be said of Ys: The Ark of Napishtim, the sixth game in the series (for simplicity’s sake, I’ll be referring to it as Ys VI from here on in). Like other games in the series, Ys VI has appeared on multiple platforms. It was originally a 2003 PC game. Two years later, it was ported to the PS2; a year after that, the PSP; and a mobile version is currently in the works. This review is of the PS2 version.

As in previous Ys games, the hero of the story is the red-haired adventurer Adol Christin. This time around he boards a pirate ship, only to fall overboard during an attack on the open sea. He winds up in the Canaan Islands, a land cut off from all others by the surrounding Great Vortex, where he meets the Rehdan priestesses Olha and Isha. The story goes from there, and although there are references to people and events from past Ys games, playing them is not a prerequisite, as the main tale in Ys VI stands well enough on its own.

The bosses are impressive, in that particular Ys fashion.

Ys VI certainly shows its age. Textures are lush, but the tiling is obvious on an place like a field. FMVs are similarly lush, but have a similar so-obvious-that-it’s-CG sheen, and the character models in these movies range from tolerable (Adol) to hideous (Olha and Isha). Its status as a port is also clear from the slight jaggies on some of the still anime character art—especially on the brusque bishonen Geis—which would be perfect on a game developed specifically for the PS2. Animation is simple, and many of the characters don’t do much other than rotate their entire bodies, if they move at all. The soundtrack goes all over the place; most of it is all right, but there’s also a badly-executed techno track and on the opposite end, a boss battle theme that is Ys music at its finest. As for the non-musical sounds, the omnipresent voice acting isn’t very good (to put it kindly), some of the sound effects are similarly weak, and the mix is uneven at times.

However, all of this is mainly window dressing. The real meat of Ys VI lies in its dungeon crawling and hack-n-slashery. Adol, the one and only playable character in the game, has a set of quick moves and attacks, as do his foes, making grinding a fast-paced, enjoyable experience. Aside from one particularly tricky jump, all of his moves and abilities are easy enough to pull off, and (fortunately, as the default setup is a bit odd) the controls are completely customizable. Among your usual bits of equipment are three special swords that Adol obtains during the course of the game, each one with a different moveset and elemental magic ability. Each of these swords can be swapped in on the fly without having to go to a menu screen, a feature that makes otherwise plain battles more interesting. As for the enemies, a good variety of them can be fought, and the bosses in particular make for fun, and sometimes tough, battles. And though finding out where to go next in the story can be a little tricky at times, and there is a fair of backtracking, moving from place to place doesn’t take very long, and the larger dungeons can be easily escaped from by using a certain key item. All in all, the battle system and exploration aspects of Ys VI are quite enjoyable, and any potentially tedious parts are made to be as brief as possible.

Ys VI is one of those games that is not for everyone. The graphics and sound are those of a low-budget game with high-budget aspirations—a description which is certainly apt here. Also, though there are a few sidequests and hidden areas to explore, the game is fairly short, which might put off those RPG players who like lengthier experiences. However, the action is meaty, often challenging, and a lot of fun. Gamers who are willing to forgive the game’s aesthetic missteps could certainly find a lot to like here.

If I was to pick a single video game RPG hero as my favorite, Mario would be very close to—or at—the top. Though best known for his platforming adventures, ever since Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars first arrived for the SNES, Nintendo’s most famous mascot has also flourished in a very different genre. Super Mario RPG helped pave the way for its primary successor, the N64′s Paper Mario. Along with the handheld-centric Mario & Luigi series, the Paper Mario games are fun, whimsical affairs.

Super Paper Mario is a bit different from Paper Mario, its GameCube sequel Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, and, well, all other Mario RPGs in one crucial way: it’s action-based instead of turn-based, and all of the battles take place directly on the field, a la Kingdom Hearts. Flower Points—which, in the past, were used for special attacks—are done away with entirely; now, most specific moves can be pulled off with the simple press of a button, making battle generally easier than before in this already easy series. Stylish moves make a return, but they aren’t as central to the experience as they were in TTYD. This game is also a lot more platforming-heavy than other Mario RPGs and rewards constant exploration. These changes add up to a very different experience when compared to previous Mario RPGs, but one which suits the source material quite well.

Mario reaches an intimidating expanse...

Speaking of exploration, the main feature in Super Paper Mario is the ability to flip the regular “flat” world ninety degrees to reveal a three-dimensional view of that same environment. Often, hidden items, paths, boxes, coins, pipes, and even enemies will appear in a flipped view, making frequent flipping a must if one wants to see as much of the game as possible; however, stay too long in the flipped view, and Mario will start losing HP. Paper Mario has always played around with the idea of two-dimensional objects in three-dimensional spaces, but it is within this third game’s flipping mechanics that the visual whimsy really hits its mark.

Naturally, this inter-dimensional travel is a core theme of the story as well. Mario and Luigi set out to rescue Princess Peach from Bowser, but this otherwise routine mission is complicated by the arrival of Count Bleck, who sets in motion a prophecy that would destroy not just Mario’s world, but all that exist. Now on his own, Mario winds up in a town called Flipside, where he meets the wise man Merlon and the butterfly-shaped Pixl Tippi. From there, he begins his quest to find the Pure Hearts needed to make sure that the dark prophecy doesn’t come to pass, and that a counteracting “light” one does instead. This story is pretty typical fare and a certain segment breaks with the overall pace in an odd way, but it also winds up being the best in the series thus far, thanks in large part to some unexpectedly dramatic turns.

...which is actually a piece of cake to cross.

As in most any RPG, Mario travels to a wide range of locales and meets some interesting characters along the way. He also picks up new Pixls, tiny creatures who each enable Mario to use a certain ability; for instance, Tippi can reveal hidden objects and tell the player about an enemy’s attributes. For more abilities (and ever-important healing purposes), several items can be obtained from stores or by defeating monsters; many of these require gimmicky motion-control actions in order to be put to effective use. Finally, there are a few party members that are picked up along the way, each of which can be swapped in to replace Mario at just about any time; none of these newcomers can flip, but they each have a certain crucial ability that Mario and the Pixls lack, and that no item can replicate. In addition to their benefits out on the field, the Pixl and party members’ abilities help in Mario’s exploration of Flipside, and over the course of the game, the number of places available in this hub world slowly grows, sometimes revealing new distractions like a card shop, a restaurant where items can be made into new ones with the help of certain recipes, a 100-floor dungeon, and an arcade where minigames can be played.

Peppered throughout all of this is the humor that has come to be expected from a Mario RPG. In addition to a funny and smartly localized script, there are a handful of cheeky visual references to the Mario platformers of old. Along with its memorable soundtrack and appealing visual aesthetic, all of this is designed to put a smile on any Mario fan’s face.

It isn’t perfect—very few games are—but I can’t recommend Super Paper Mario enough. It’s humorous yet touching, simple yet brilliant, and breezy yet addictive. In spite, yet also because, of its different approaches to gameplay, it shines as one of the best Mario RPGs ever made, and a fantastic game in its own right.

When I first played Tales of Symphonia last year, what most struck me about it was how large and complex the story was. In addition to the main plot, which was meaty enough on its own, there were also the smaller, personal stories of each of the playable characters. These were told over the course of the game, and also through optional events called “skits”. By the time the final battle came about, I knew Lloyd and his crew intimately—their personality quirks, their hopes and fears, their likes and dislikes. This particular brand of character building seems to be a hallmark of the Tales series, as I encountered it again in Tales of Legendia.

The main storyline of Legendia is much shorter than Symphonia’s, but this shortening comes at a price. Although a fair amount of personality and depth had been given to the characters, there were still some unanswered questions by the end. These questions—many of which tied into the greater question of, “Why did (character) come to the Legacy?”—are all handled in the Character Quests, an optional companion piece that becomes available once the main game is beaten, and takes just as long (or longer) to finish.

HOO, HAH, EAT THI—oh, wait.

Regarding the Character Quests, the manual says that, “only after the bonds between these characters are understood that the true ending of the story is uncovered,” which is a little misleading. The overarching story that links the Character Quests is largely detached from the main plot, and thus, the whole thing feels more like a sequel, albeit one with no voice acting (battles and skits notwithstanding), and where all experience, equipment, items, and gald (the currency used in the Tales games) are carried over. Though the dialogue rambles on unnecessarily at times and the plot seems oddly Legacy-centric toward the end, the interconnected stories of the Character Quests are all enjoyable and well told.

After a brief introduction, the Character Quests get underway, one at a time, until the biggest mysteries are explained. In between the lengthy, lengthy cutscenes, the party is required to revisit just about every dungeon in the game, and sometimes backtrack through them as well. As you can imagine, this is a bit tedious, though new enemies, refilled treasure chests, trickier puzzle booths, and a new item called the Sorcerer’s Scanner vary things up a little. Regarding that last item on the list: the Sorcerer’s Scanner is a special tool that allows the player to search their immediate area for hidden items or monsters. Though many dungeons contain obvious areas where hidden stuff would be, in others, it’s a case of constant trial and error. Add in the fact that your character comes to a stop whenever the Scanner is used, and dungeon crawling turns into a potentially tedious exercise of its own. Of course, no one has to use the Scanner, but some of the better items can be found this way.

Also new in the Character Quests is a workshop where certain rare items can be forged into powerful weapons, armor, and accessories for the party. Some items in particular can be very hard to find unless you either have a guide or are willing to try out everything, but such is life in your typical JRPG. The last major new feature is a Battle Arena, which is what it says, and which I only participated in a few times.

Overall, I had a good time with Tales of Legendia, both the main story and the Character Quests. It’s a real credit to the game that the story is so good, and the characters so interesting, that I’ll keep on playing even when the otherwise flashy action gets stale and the otherwise pretty dungeons get tedious. If you like story-centric RPGs with a script, visuals, and sound that are all quality, this is one game where you can’t go wrong.

Tales of Symphonia wasn’t entirely my thing: the story’s inspirations were obvious and it got convoluted at times, the cel-shaded graphics were okay but blurry (at least on the Wii, which is how I played it), and the combat was usually button-mashy. However, I liked the characters and general aesthetic, and somehow, it got its hooks into me. Thusly, when I fleshed out my PS2 RPG collection last year, I ended up adding Tales of Legendia and Tales of the Abyss to it (the 360′s Tales of Vesperia joined my backlog this year).

I’ve heard Abyss is better than Legendia, but wanted to play the older game first, since I found the premise more intriguing: a young man and his sister find themselves shipwrecked on a massive ancient ship called the Legacy. Aboard this vessel are dangers awaiting the sister, and the man sets out to save her. At first glance, and despite the presence of the clichéd large relic from an ancient civilization, it seems a novel enough premise, and the story does carry out in a unique way, especially in regards to how a certain story event and its aftermath is paced. Also, Legendia, like Symphonia, bluntly tackles the issue of race in how (and why) the game’s factions are divided as they are. The entire story takes place aboard the Legacy—making it a nice change of pace from the many, many JRPGs that require entire worlds to be traversed—and the cast of characters is charming, though a touch clichéd and/or weird at times. This is all presented in a colorful, softly-rendered world populated by chibi characters, who are occasionally shown in still, non-chibi 2D anime versions for cutscenes. As with Symphonia, the voice acting is of a decent quality (and there’s a lot of repetition when it comes to the battle audio), the music is nothing overly special but all right just the same, and the FMVs are lush anime affairs courtesy of famed studio Production I.G.

"HOO, HAH, EAT THIS!"

As for exploration and combat… well, it’s what I expect from a Tales game, though a step back from Symphonia. The dungeons are fairly linear, with what few branching paths their are largely reserved for items, including special items blocked off by large blobular zones that often contain more powerful monsters than the usual random encounters. Battle is still button mashy, with assignable special attacks and your supporting party members on autopilot, for the most part. AI party members’ attacks can be turned on and off at the player’s leisure, and whole tactical strategies can be applied as well. However, aside from certain boss fights, the battles are quite easy, and certain special enhancements and attacks, such as the feature that lets the player combine a character’s individual moves into one uber-move, can be outright ignored.

The meat of Tales of Legendia is fairly short: I beat it today with a completion time in the range of 33 hours. However, a lengthy postgame mode, called the Character Quests, is available once the main storyline has been beaten. I’ve barely started it, and in fact am debating whether or not I want to continue with it as Legendia’s combat’s a bit bland, but there’s still things I don’t know about many of the characters—and I’d like to know. Such is the hold that the characters in this game seem to have on me.

Special Stage: In addition to game impressions and such from this year’s Tokyo Game Show, Game|Life’s Chris Kohler has been writing an awful lot about Japanese curry lately. I’m not all that big on curry, but I do love me some katsu, and as such, these posts have me craving chicken katsu or chicken katsudon. Every. Single. Time.

I haven’t even dipped into the TGS episodes of Listen UP yet, but given the “curry bets” of previous shows, all of which were to be settled around this time, I don’t think my cravings will end anytime soon…

(ETA, 9/26: Craving fulfilled thanks to some oyakodon from a favorite restaurant; save for the mushrooms and pickled radish, neither of which I’m a fan of [thankfully the latter was all in one small section of the bowl's edge, getting its vinegar all over some neighboring carrot sticks], it was essentially the same as the chicken katsudon I’m used to from another place, and tasty. I have some leftovers to eat for lunch today, too!)