Cale

Easily superior to it's predecessor. There is, however, a lot of recycled content, and if you played the first one, you'll be going through more than a few of the same things. Luckily, there's plenty of new content as well. Having your own characters to interact with it's world remains the best part overall. Worst is the figure battle nonsense, though I can see where it can appeal to others. The largest annoyance has to be that every now and then, an announcer talks about the figure battles trying to convince you to do them, and rather overly loud to boot. Wish I could figure out how to shut her up. A small black mark on an otherwise fun game.

To hell with the hate and hype, welcome to an objective review. I haven't noticed the strange facial expressions outside the occasional NPC staring at me dead-eyed. I mostly take games as they are, no matter how strange, so it isn't even a nitpick for me. Graphics are fantastic, but aren't as good as I was expecting. I've seen games whose cutscenes make you wonder if they recorded it with a live cast, but ME:A's graphics are below that level. Definitely like the jumpjet mobility. Jumping into something's face, hovering during the aim and giving them a face full of buckshot (aka Shotgun Angel) is one of my favorite things, and something so far limited to Halo 5 and Destiny (that I've played). LOTS of weapon diversity. I always carry one Remnant tech weapon once I could get it, as they act like ME1 weapons. Heat management is a small price to pay for unlimited ammo. Didn't like the sudoku-like puzzles. At least they aren't randomized and you can just look up the solutions. Mining is still tedious, but now has an annoyance factor and is far more time-consuming compared to ME2/3. You're reminded by your AI that you can mine an area every time you open the mining interface in a place you can look for resources. You then wander around in that area looking for the resources through the interface. Sometimes you find the resources in nodes out in the open. I wish that it was more frequently like that. The auto-cover system while usually adequate was somewhat a nuisance. With no manual override, I found myself out of cover at the worst times, my character standing there like a jackass getting killed as I tried to trigger going back into cover without success. There is also no crouch or prone function, automatic or manual, which can greatly reduce high ground advantages. Having the 'do/get stuff' button being the same as the melee button means that if one enemy dropped something while you're swimming in enemies, you can't melee. Not cool. Cryo, disruptor and incendiary ammo are now consumables, meaning I rarely ever use them as there are far better uses to the harder to earn credits. I miss cryo ammo, OP as it was. Sometimes, voices will play at the same time, making it hard to understand what was said. More than once, it was important enough information to have me running in circles of confusion. When you need to use facilities aboard the Tempest, you have to take off and go to orbit. Nit-picky, but it bothered me. It would have been very helpful to have a way to access the map without hitting the menu. Another minor complaint to be sure, but a **** one. Strangely, the music is typically subtle and light. It could have used a bit more impact to it from time to time.. All said, it's worth buying. It is the Mass Effect universe, the story is awesome. It is every bit as good and bad as the original trilogy, and hopefully, people won't force this new tale to live in their dark, nostalgic shadow.

Good: Excellent story and graphics. Squad commands well-implimented. Destiny-style controls allow Guardians to jump right in without learning new controls. Better implemented weapons than 4, including the best iteration of the assault rifle in the entire franchise. Bad: Rare to non-existent UNSC weapons and ammo in story mode, the story is not complete in itself and has quite a bit of padding. Multiplayer suffers due to insane sniping ranges, unavoidable sniper alleys and no way to know there is a sniper at all. Way too easy to kill and be killed. PvE elements seem like an afterthought and aren't very persistent. Spawn-camping is very easy to set up and maintain. REQ system makes little sense and leaves you vulnerable. Verdict: While I enjoyed **** deal, I prefer Destiny's crucible when it comes to multiplayer, which is pretty much the main reason anyone plays any halo game longer than a few weeks. Weak replay value except for completionists and hardcore fans of the series, and still no solo content outside of the campaign. While much better than 4 and the whole of the CoD franchise, it still loses to Reach and ODST within it's own.

I've only recently become a fan of the Halo franchise (thanks to Red vs Blue), mostly due to the fact that I'm not a big fan of FPS games in general for one reason: I do not enjoy online multiplayer. Co-op is better than competitive, but I still dislike it. One of the major reasons I played WoW for a few years was because I knew people I could play with personally, and I could solo the game front to back if they weren't around. The loss of Firefight-mode with nothing to replace it that I'm willing to play and don't have to pay more money for is a fatal one, and turns a game that would otherwise be something I'd keep for a long time into one I'll be trading in. Sure, the graphics are nicer, the story is great and it was a total blast to play, I just can't really play it more, as much as I'd like to. I'm just an old fart that likes to play alone, and you just can't do that with this game without playing the campaign over and over.

I really tried to give this game a chance. I really did. However, it rivals "Sonic: The Dark Brotherhood" in sheer crap factor. Sticker Star is just barely better in that you aren't forced to use the touchscreen to control the whole game. Sadly, where such touchscreen support would have been nice, it is glaringly absent, seemingly almost ignored. The plot is a bit too standard to a mario game, lacking any major twist to the plot that the previous entries in the series had. The complete lack of a development system makes the game fall very flat, as combat becomes nothing more than tedium, lacking real reason to exist. The sidekick you get is the most annoying since Navi herself and is even more useless than she is. All it needed to surpass her in raw annoyance was a sound effect telling you to listen like she does. For some reason, I found the constant use of the word 'sticker' to be very rapidly aggravating, and given it's said by almost every character in the game world, it was intolerable in less than 15 minutes or so. Once I hit a road block that had no obvious and immediate solution, I found myself feeling that I didn't like the game enough to bother looking at a game guide. I just shut it down, and went on to the next game I wanted to play. This game is an insult to the series, and the entire genre of JRPGs as a whole. Do yourself a huge favor: don't buy it. You aren't missing anything but compounding irritation.

Going in, I'd never played any of the Tales series. I am now rectifying the situation. I actually found myself savoring the game as I played, dragging out my first full playthrough to just over one hundred hours. The combat system (once free running is unlocked) is outstanding, reminescent of Star Ocean 2, only less cumbersome as long as you stay within the 8 provided shortcut slots when mapping abilities. The addition of AD skills as you progress seems to add a touch of realism to development, as a person who fights will pick up little things that they can do in combat that can give them a slight advantage. This adds subtle nuance to the concept of being a combat veteran as opposed to most JRPG games that use just a levelling system. The story was engaging, almost immersive at times, and proceeded at a pace that always seemed appropriate. The characters were very well done, Luke and Jade in particular, the first being completely believable and natural based on his past and circumstances, the second being just about the most awesome character ever to be created. The addition of alternate costumes is a feature that other games should have, as it was surprisingly nice to have the ability to change their appearance. The 3d features aren't overblown, though the text presentation could have been done a little better, as the text seemed to always be right at the top of the screen, with the characters far behind it. This tended to make them sometimes a bit of a pain to read, although I cannot think of a way that would have been better. Replay value is through the roof, as there are so many things that can't even be seen or gotten until at least the second playthrough. The many side conversations were a nice touch, providing extra comic relief, character and plot development, but could have used a way to control going through the text, making them sometimes more of an annoyance than their worth as part of the game. On occasion, you need to be able to somewhat precicely use the Mieu fire ability, and the controls are not well suited to this, making such situations easily the most annoying parts of the game. All in all, it easily makes my personal top ten of the genre, and should be a must play for any fan of good RPGs.

Okay, I'll admit that Mario games and myself have been on the outs since Super Mario 64. Lucky for me, there have been other games outside of the main series platformers, so I'm not living an entirely Mario-free life. The reason why is simple: Camera Screw. I can't stand games with camera screw. While Super Mario 3D Land is most definitely better about this than pretty much every Mario-themed platforming game with better-than-mild 3D worlds, it still suffers from this crippling disease. Symptoms of strange, inconsistent controls, death-by-camera, Indiana Jones syndrome (as in 'Why am I looking backwards at the thing I'm trying to run from instead of looking forward so I can evade obstacles in my path?'), inflated boss difficulty, inflated jump difficulty and suicidal hero are all present and accounted for. Happily, unlike many of it's predecessors, these issues are more moderated, and I could tell that it had been tweaked to minimize the very complaints I have. Unfortunately, minimization isn't elimination. Granted, I only rarely had to use the camera controls, and the fact that you can rack up an incredible number of lives not even playing seriously does help a great deal, but I shouldn't need so many lives, and I should never need to mess with the camera either. Worse, when I felt I did need camera help, the controls were usually locked, and when they weren't, they were so minimal that they provided no help whatsoever, except in a very few cases. Many of the levels also triggered my fear of heights as well. Seriously, why do so many levels have to look like they're a mile or more in the air? All in all, it's a great stride forward in making a better modern platformer Mario game that appeals to people like myself, but the continued camera screw continued to detract from the experience. A step in the right direction to be sure, but not out of the yellow for me.

Normally, I'm not one for short reviews. I like being logical, creative and at least vaguely interesting. This game doesn't deserve a long review, because it's just plain awful. The controls are awful, owing completely to the fact that almost all of the DS's buttons weren't mapped at all. The battle system is one of the most monotonous and gimmicky I've ever had the displeasure of using, the worst of which lies in the chao things. They had to be made deliberately super-cute so that one wouldn't mind how annoying they are and yet an absolute necessity if you don't feel like grinding for an hour here and there. The pace seems completely off, fast where it should be slow and vice versa. The story popped in and out of canon so much I half expected to see Tails coming out as actually being female, or some other absurd plot twist that could serve as a reasonable starting point for some yiff comics. To me, only games that are legendary for being horrible such as "Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" for NES or "E.T." for the Atari 2600 deserve a zero score. And if there's one thing nice I can say about this game, it is that it isn't quite that bad.

I've been putting off this review for quite some time and for good reason. My significant other purchased, played and clobbered the original bit.trip games for the Wii console, and I was looking forward to getting my hands on them as well in the portable format I so greatly prefer. I've actually grown attached to the soundtrack in its entirety, being a fan of some hardcore electronica, glitchcore, and 8-bit symphonic. I don't think I've ever been quite so let down in my life by anything. I've since even played through the originals in the console, and to call them significantly better is somewhat of an understatement. FATE is completely unplayable, since I'm left handed, and no effort to give those like me any chance at it was made whatsoever. Worse yet, it's by far one of my favorites of the series. RUNNER has a similar unplayability. A tiny amount of lag changes much of the timings, and said lag only gets worse as one plays. Even turning off and leaving off the 3D functionality entirely doesn't end it, prevent it or even limit it much. If you want to play the bit.trip series, stick with the Wii version, and pass this up. Just like I said of Sega and the Sonic Classics collection, I say deservedly for bit.trip saga on the 3DS: If you're going to do it, do it right, or just don't do it.

As a complete newcomer to the series, I have no previous games with which to judge this game against. I also am the kind of person that likes history, fantasy (and things with both, as long as the line between the two is fairly well-defined) and a good old-fashioned beat-em-up. As a general history lesson, it doesn't fail to tell the story as it happened while embellishing on various different points that history elaborates little upon. The player's character is a great warrior that time forgot, allowing them to fight alongside some of the biggest names of the Sengoku period while not sabotaging the historical storyline. The gameplay, while expectedly repetitive, is very well-done, essentially refining a HURR HURR MASH BUTTON into a halfway decent fighting system based on specific patterns of button mashing. Graphically, it takes advantage of the 3D functionality with surprisingly little camp, preferring to use it as more of a window into the game's world that is extremely appealing. The voice acting was left in Japanese, and that is as it should be given the game's setting and the fact if it were dubbed into English, the huge amount of bad voice acting would probably allow for it to be useful in torture chambers with native English-speakers as residents. Difficulty levels are a bit of a double-edged sword, scaling well to challenge players with stronger characters available, but scaling poorly when only weaker ones are. Weapons can be upgraded and personalized to the player's taste and fighting style, but getting materials is a pure gamble. You have no idea the stats of the weapon before you assign it, forcing a bit of farming in a game with a measure of tedium by it's very premise. The most annoying part of the game is that getting new missions stops the action completely, and are dismissed via most of the buttons you fight with which can make you not see new objectives entirely if you're hip-deep in ashigaru. More, the various mission objectives can't be reviewed in combat, they simply cycle through as the game progresses. What would have made it a great deal more fun would have been the introduction of squad-level tactics, where the player acts as a great officer over soldiers, instead of a maverick powerhouse warrior who fights like Japanese Chuck Norris with weapons and no beard-fist. It isn't perfect, it isn't for everyone, but it is by no means a bad game.

While it seems they no longer charge for it, I don't think much of this particular feature. The videos are short, typically make excessive deliberate use of the 3D feature (giving them a strong, campy flavor) and more often than not just plain uninteresting. Every video is 'pushed' over wireless internet access, so if there is a video you'd actually like to watch, you have to wait till anything in front of it finishes downloading whether you want it or not. A lack of archiving even for episodic content gives it a pop sort of feel. I don't bother with being fashionable, and the transient nature of the content in Nintendo Video is something I don't think I'll bother with either. If I had needed to pay for it, the score would be quartered. I think the effort would be better suited porting over an excellent open-source play-all like VLC, or working with Hulu and/or Netflix to get their services working on the 3DS sooner (if at all).

Personally, I thought Kirby's Canvas curse was a curse on the franchise. I really disliked it because in my eyes, it wasn't so much a Kirby game as it was a Kirby-themed pinball game with the twist that you draw your own ramps. Kirby's Mass Attack is nothing like it, thank God, and funny enough has a pinball mini-game that I find a lot more fun than Canvas Curse. The ability to move similarly has been retained, but works more like a rainbow tractor beam than a rainbow ramp. I must admit I was a bit irritated when I only had that first, singular Kirby, wanting nothing more than to just be able to use the control pad for a new Kirby game made in this century. The moment I got the second one, that vanished entirely, and it became obvious to me that I was in for one fun game. There's something particularly satisfying about starting a stage with a full horde of them, beating the snot out of various enemies. It's like controlling a vicious cloud of fluffy pink piranha. The levels are very world-appropriate, and have really cute touches, such as the skeletons of various enemies in the walls in a cave stage. The difficulty is just right, harder than Superstar but easier than curse, with a list of achievement-like goals for those that like to completely beat a game. The mini-games are a load of fun by themselves. Most notable to me is the most insane shoot-em-up ever (sadly a touch too easy). My nitpick is that the camera is sometimes a bit reluctant to go the direction you want to, even if your whole team is together. This is especially bad in the haunted house in area 4, making it a little harder than it was already. But, I definitely agree this is a must-have for most DS owners, and an easy near-perfect for Nintendo. Bravo, Nintendo, encore!

Is there any possibility for Squenix to actually make a real sequel to the original? I hate to be racist, but I actually enjoyed the total lack of humanoids in the original. Fix the speed issue, ditch some absurdly unbalanced classes, tack in a few that were skipped, and leave the JP system alone. I enjoy various forms of weapon-involving martial arts, and I can't remember the last time I learned techniques directly from my equipment. For just once, Square Enix, give us more of what was actually good. By using three cheat codes, this game goes straight to an 8 rating. #1 - Judges do nothing. @2 - Unlock all jobs. #3 - Enemy stat modifier for non-story battles (x2).

At this point, I'm still working on my last year of my first play through. Unfortunately, as I've played, my opinion of it has dropped, not increased. The graphics aren't all that good, and it's obvious they're supposed to get their depth from the 3DS. While I'm looking forward to seeing that, it takes something away from the NDS version, making the game areas feel significantly smaller. I'm aware that the Rune Factory series is a fork of the Harvest Moon series, but I keep finding myself holding this game up to the Rune Factory series as a whole, and finding it wanting. The questing feature is there, and you have the ability to see how fatigued you are, I'm happy to say. But was there any particular reason why I don't even get my own shipping box anymore? I feel a bit silly about it, comrade, but how could you be able to credit people for their efforts with such a system? At the very beginning of the game, you're forced to take sides in the childish bickering of two towns, Bluebell and Konohana. I'd just gotten the game home, and I swear I nearly put it back in the box and took it back. I can't stand such bickering in real life, and most people can't (which is why most avoid politics), so why would I want to play a game based upon this premise? The series as a whole is a bit notorious for having very long opening sequences, but ToTT really takes the cake on this one. I found myself genuinely wanting to throttle my new mayor before the primary tutorial was over. Once it was, I went to look for the option to increase the text speed only to find it no longer exists. Then to bed, just to find the tutorial wasn't actually over. Don't get me wrong, I don't hate it, but it's a far cry from the best of the series so far, and I must say I am disappointed.

Sadly, the state of Square-Enix's game quality outside of the still quite traditional Dragon Quest franchise has never been all that good, and Square itself was on a downslope prior to the merger anyway. Emphasis on graphics, bland, generic looking and generic playing characters, and a slow decline in the stories have been the norm. This game is a Starcraft clone, and not even that good of one. The story, which limps around the already rather bland world of an existing game whose medieval future is more interesting than it's technologically advanced present, is actually halfway decent. The characters, however, aren't even memorable, much less emotionally investing, and what's worse, there's a few points where they do things that won't necessarily surprise you, but will kinda leave you scratching your head. Game-play is a duh, and zergrushing wins almost every time. Unless you deliberately handicap yourself, operating under that strategy alone is more than enough to carry you through. It takes a game that almost had moments of frustration and desperation become a brainless mess once battle began. The classic 'rock paper scissors' common to tactical and real-time RPGs rears it's ugly, misshapen head here too. If I want to play ro-sham-bo, I have a young niece I actually enjoy playing that with. It's been used in so many games for so long now that it really just needs to be put to bed already. Sure, the game's been out three years and I'm late to the party. But this is definitely one I'll be taking to Gamestop to make my next game a touch cheaper, and I doubt I'll want to play it again in the future.

As a huge fan of the series from all the way back when I imported it for my birthday in 1996 as Bokujo Monogatari for Super Famicom (wow, I feel old now), I must say I'm very biased when it comes to this series. Within the context of the series and the Rune Factory spin-offs as a whole, this one is the best one, bar none. My only game-specific complaint is that it could be more difficult, but that's not enough to keep it from a perfect score. What is enough to dock a point is the voice acting. I dislike voice acting in games as a whole, with Doom III being the only exception. While not quite as annoying as the voice acting from "Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin", at least in that game I could turn it off.

This game I simply have to grade on a curve. Let's face it. The vast majority of 'Trek games out there just plain ****. The ones that are any good at all usually have massive, game-killing flaws, making for very unhealthy gamer - game relationships marked by lots of abuse from both sides frequently unending due to sheer bloody-mindedness (**coughcoughbridgecommanderhackwheeze**) originating from a diehard fanbase. For a trek game, it's not bad overall. The plot is okay, the missions are challenging but not stupid, and the actual combat system, while not perfect, is at least playable. Once you can play the Klingon campaign, there's an option that allows you to change your controls on the touch screen from English to tlhIngan'Hol pIqaD that appears to be Orkandian-canon friendly. On the flip-side, it seems that it suffers from instability, much like Bridge Commander. I had it freeze on me more than a few times playing through. Ships with cloaking have a serious advantage against you, since they can shoot at you for several seconds before you can even target them. However, when you play with a ship that cloaks, the AI ships seem to have no problems targeting you very quickly and pumping your nacelles full of cohesive nadion pulses. Shield regeneration seems to be very illogical, being very slow and far too brief in combat. Sometimes, the shields will partially be restored when warping system to system, but sometimes not, and a few times I actually lost shield integrity in transit. Topping all that off is the fact that Klingon shields don't restore at all, adding yet another layer of difficulty to the Klingon campaign (no wonder they always seem to be so ticked off). If you're a fan, you'll probably enjoy yourself, but otherwise, don't bother, as for you, I would rate it a 4 instead.

Sega made a grown man cry with this one. I was a fanboy back during the bit-wars and these were my favorite games for a long time. I don't care that there isn't any new content, and frankly, it doesn't need it. What I care about is that an effort to actually convert the games is absent. A script here, touch screen controls there, a menu or two, a copy of the rom files for each and an emulator. You can't even really call it a port because they didn't actually bother to convert the game data to the new system at all. They just slapped an interface over an emulator. An emulator simply unequipped to do these great old games any justice whatsoever. An emulator that could not be configured to actually let the start button be the pause button. An emulator that can't keep up with Sonic to the point of killing him in some of the fastest parts. An emulator that somehow lost all the nuances of control that the games had in their original form, turning them from slick and fun to clunky and awkward. They didn't even bother to go through the game data and attempt to convert it to the NDS's different vertical resolution, giving the game-play a squashed, distorted look that is always. If they'd just set the emulator to crop things a bit from the top and bottom, that might have been excused. It's painfully clear Sega just shoved them into a box that doesn't quite fit them, so there's little wonder why they came out wrinkled, though mangled feels closer to being the right word for me. I love the games, but they're not what I'm rating here. Do it right, Sega, or just don't do it.

While far deeper and better done than what I've come to expect of Atlus, this game reminds me more of Xenogears or Chrono Cross than CTrigger or FFTactics.. It lacks a true polished feel from moving around, and the combat system, while gimmicky (admittedly par for the course nowadays) is at least playable and as the game progresses, increasingly enjoyable. The story is extremely slow to get started, and I found my palm on my face more than a few times wondering why I should bother to try to save this game world once it did. The characters, while strange-looking, generally lack the two dimensional quality I've been forced to endure all too often as of late in the genre, even though it takes a very long time for some of them to be fleshed out. Learning when to back off, move forward or backward in time or change story lines can be frustrating, and while sometimes you have a few leads, there were several times where I simply got lost. The ability to skip through long-winded exposition is definitely a saving grace, given the inherently repetitive nature of some parts. It's not the best ever made, but it's definitely above mediocre, and should be on the purchase list of fans of the genre. Just be patient when you're getting started.

This game is a true classic, one of the quintessential games of the genre. Anyone that's played the original SNES title and liked it will be able to go on and on about how they liked it. The bard is still spoony, and hang it all I cracked up all over again once I hit that line. The graphics are good, and on the whole the game stays true to the original. So why the 6 rating? Because the %^*#!$* thing after a point becomes as hard as trying to solo an original Everquest character to the level cap while pretending the bazaar doesn't exist. While the high level of customization helped mitigate this somewhat, I found myself grinding far more than I felt was fun. By the end of the game, I simply felt overwhelmed as the difficulty combined with an overly complex skill system. Sure, I felt rewarded after I beat it, but the next time I play through this game, I'll replace the memory battery in the original cart and play it on my SNES.

This game was actually my introduction to the Dragon Quest franchise. I was intrigued at playing as a monster. I've enjoyed playing as the 'bad guy' since Super Mario RPG (even if Bowser was a bit slow for my taste). I found it entertaining, even if resource collection was a little bit of a pain. The story was not great, but I could tell it wasn't much more than an excuse to link battles and zones together. It was peppered with little details that added greatly to the atmosphere of the game as a whole (like loading your helpers into your cannons) The tank battles are fast, furious and frenzied, though the AI was a bit lacking in difficulty. If you are looking for something cerebral, you'll want to take a pass. 2-player versus tank battles with my wife ate up hour after hour for weeks, so grab it if you've got someone to link battle with.

I got this game in 2007, looking for a decent RPG. Unfortunately, this game is severely lacking, falling victim to the issues that seem to be plaguing the genre as a whole in the past decade or so. Only recently was I willing to pick it back up and play it through. Graphics and artwork are excellent. The storyline is a sub-par and quite predictable. The combat system DROVE ME INSANE. I can't draw to save my life, and my handwriting isn't great either, so I found the rune casting system to be very unforgiving. I frequently found myself failing to cast my runes frequently through the entire game. I do agree that it's nothing to judge till you're at least 2-5 hours in, but that's only because the battle system takes about that long (or longer) to become complex enough to be interesting. It's not awful, but in all honesty, it sat in my closet for four years. Take that as you will.