Tarren

Beautiful visuals, a mellow time limit and a deep crafting system, Atelier Ayesha Plus: The Alchemist of Dusk is a marvelous experience that is only slightly bogged down by a finicky frame rate. Atelier Ayesha Plus is a very laidback game. The crux of the game revolves around Ayesha's quest to save her sister Nio, which must be done before three years have passed. Moving around the overworld, gathering ingredients and crafting take time and you'll always have a countdown looming over you. While the in game time limit might initially make its players feel rushed they'll soon realize that they have ample time to complete everything the game has to offer. Even the story progression is relaxed, allowing the player to complete different parts of the main thread in different order. I feel that the time limit doesn't rush the player as much as it reminds them to not lose focus . The art of Atelier Ayesha Plus is fantastic. All of the colors of the game are muted but still paint a beautiful world. Ruins are dark, yet dazzling . Forests and fields are lush and seem much bigger than just the small parts that the characters trek though. However, there is a price for all its beauty; the game has a finicky frame rate and long loading times. As other reviews have mentioned, the frame rate can drop significantly in areas with a lot of movement, such as towns, or during transitions, like going into combat. Long load times are common and have caused me more than once to double check to ensure my Vita had not run out of power. Other small gripes I have about the game include the very small text and the default background music volume being too loud to hear dialogue (which can be turned down in the options menu). Most of your time in Atelier Ayesha Plus will be spent gathering ingredients and crafting them into new items. Almost all of the stock of the shops are ingredients and other raw materials, so you'll be crafting your own healing items, offensive items and most of your equipment. This isn't a problem because crafting is so engrossing. Craftable items list general categories for their ingredients, such as oil, animal part or paper, rather than specific items. This allows multiple combinations of ingredients to make the same item. Furthermore each ingredient has different traits which can add new effects and properties to the resulting item. This means that every batch of crafted items has the potential to be unique. I've sunk hours trying simply to find out what new properties I can find for my potions and poisons, even going so far as to use high quality ingredients to craft inferior items just to see if I can unlock something new. The combat of Atelier Ayesha Plus is simple as it is not meant to overshadow the exploration or crafting portions of the game. Like Personas 3 and 4, enemies show up on the map and having Ayesha hit them with her staff will allow her to attack first in the coming battle. Fights play out similar to other JRPGs, with characters either attacking or using special abilities on their respective turn however it also incorporates the Active Command System; each character has a Support Gage that fills up whenever they perform an action and can be spent in order to execute an action on another character's -or an enemy's- turn if you enter the correct prompt during that character's attacking animation. Also worth noting is the importance of items in combat. Only alchemists are allowed to use items and while the potions, bombs and poisons would seem meager in any other game, in the Atelier series they surpass even the most powerful magic. A single item can turn an unwinnable fight into an easy victory and a well stocked party can venture both further and for much longer than those with few items. While the Active Command System and emphasis on items are unique, they're not especially groundbreaking. But, again, the combat takes a backseat to the other elements of this game, meaning you don't have to min/max every character, grind for experience or craft the absolute best weapons in order to get by. As my first venture into the Atelier series, I really enjoyed Atelier Ayesha Plus. I always found something that I wanted to complete, not for the reward, but just to see what new property I can add to an item. Or to discover what new ingredients there were. Or to find what happens next in the story. The game is full of stuff you WANT to do, not simply "can do" or are "forced to do." And even with the overhanging time limit, the game gives you enough time to do it all. With its annoying frame rate as the only problem that really bothered me, I have to strongly recommend Atelier Ayesha Plus: The Alchemist of Dusk.

Campy, grindy and full of fan service, Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1 is a good time if you take the game as seriously as it takes itself. Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1 (HDNR;B1) is the remake to the 2010 Playstation 3 game Hyperdimension Neptunia. The first thing you'll note upon starting a new game is that the game doesn't take itself too seriously: the plot revolves around four goddesses representing different game companies attempting to best one another in a never-ending conflict known as the Console War. Each of the four nations of the world, Gamindustri, are named after game consoles and most of their citizens are personified video game developers and publishers. The game's absurdity continues in this fashion, and is chock full of Internet memes, video game references and fourth-wall breaking. Further adding to the game's campiness are regular doses of fan service. While nothing too extreme, there are quite a few panty shots and most, if not every, playable character has a swimsuit costume to unlock. Getting into the game play of HDNR;B1: combat is solid but can get repetitive, especially with the mandatory grinding the game forces on you. While every character has special moves that draw from their respective SP pool, the main attraction is the combo system implemented for your "standard" attacks: after an initial strike, you choose from rush, power or break attacks up to three times per turn and in any combination. Rush attacks hit multiple times and fill you EXE. gage (or super meter) faster than the others, power attacks do the most damage as possible while break attacks deal heavy damage to an enemies guard. Breaking an enemy's guard will increase the damage they take until their guard partially refills on their next turn. This system keeps the player interested in combat, alleviating a common problem in most JRPGs where the player simply hammers X until they've won. In addition, your character can perform a combo finisher once certain segments of the EXE. gage are filled (this does not deplete the gage) and use EXE. Drives that are the game's super moves, dealing massive damage to enemies in its radius at the cost of some of the EXE. gage. Almost as frequent as the combat is the game's dialogue segments. It's tempting to call this game part visual novel due to its lengthy and frequent conversations, however this also brings up another major part of the game: voice acting. Around half of the conversations are voiced, and in this game that means hours of voiced dialogue. Character voices are a bit hit and miss; some characters' voices work well, while others are kind of iffy (get it? 'cause one of the characters is ****...). The main character's voice in particular always sounds sarcastic which is odd given that she's supposed to be the clueless, ditzy heroine. Another oddity is Noire, whose voice sounds like it was recorded with a different quality than the rest of the cast. As previously mentioned, the game forces some mandatory grinding. This is because the game's bosses are gigantic difficulty spikes, often throwing two bosses at you back to back with no time to heal or save in between. Because of this, you'd have to grind out around five levels per dungeon in order to stand a chance during the boss fight(s). During my playthrough, I found a dungeon with fairly easy enemies that gave outrageous amounts of experience (appropriately called Whales) and ground on them while watching television. This made it so I could breeze through most of the game's chapters, but still took hours of my time to do. However HDNR;B1 is not without mercy and you can unlock a way to make the game easier (or harder if you're a masochist) and gain more experience from fights fairly early in the game, easing up on both the brutal boss fights and chore of grinding somewhat. Aside from the major issues regarding the game, its graphics are standard for the Vita (that is to say they're above average among the rest of the handheld market), load times were short and, while I did experience slow down twice in my playthrough, the game runs smoothly. Something the game lacks is replay value: there are multiple endings, however the point where those endings branch is late enough in the game that one can simply make multiple saves and progress towards each ending on each slot rather than replay the whole game. In short, Hyperdimension Neptunia Re;Birth 1 is fun as long as you're not looking for a deep or engrossing title. While its repetitive grinding, arduous boss fights and lack of replay value may bog it down, if you can enjoy the campy story, engaging battle system and (mostly) well done voice acting this game is well worth your time and money.

Demon Gaze: A good-looking but bland tasting RPG. Demon Gaze is a first-person dungeon-crawler JRPG. Aside from having to choose the Gazer class as the party leader, the player is free to pick from a pool of seven classes and five races (who start with different base stats and are locked out of certain equipment) to fill the rest of their party. The crux of the game revolves around defeating and capturing demons (the game’s bosses). Capturing demons will allow the Gazer to equip their key, giving them a suite of bonus skills and the ability to summon the demon in combat (who acts like a sixth, uncontrollable party member). I enjoy Demon Gaze’s art. There are plenty of bright colors and the character portraits are unique and fun. While there’s little movement during dialog, the character’s expressions are varied so it doesn’t feel like you’re simply talking to cardboard cut-outs. The voice acting is also very enjoyable and adds to the NPC’s personalities. The game is very, VERY linear. At the beginning of the game, the bulletin board where members of the inn post quests and the like is almost overwhelming. However, after a while you discover that all of those quests you assumed were sidequests are actually part of the main thread. There are only three sidequests in the game: Gather soul skulls for the mortician, Prometh, scrounge for black mushrooms for Pinay, the maid, and buy/find a set of rare clothing for the stylist, Kukure. All three of these sidequests are given fairly early on and you gradually complete them by finding hidden treasure (via treasure maps) within each area. The story itself “meh”. While on par with most JRPGs, nobody will remember its plot after a few weeks. The game allows an online component called “Gazer Memos” which are signs with short blurbs written by other players. These signs can warn others about upcoming hazards, help navigate a maze or notify them about nearby treasure and how to obtain it. While useful, seeing the memos scattered about an area really ruins the atmosphere. Also, since every treasure has been discovered and noted by fellow gazers, treasure maps become wastes of space in your inventory. Demon Gaze’s level designs are uninspired. While pretty to look at, there are no interesting or new themes to the levels (there’s a ruin level, a graveyard level, a forest level, ect.). Puzzles and gimmicks within the levels are just as uninspired and many levels have the same gimmick, such as damaging floor tiles, leading to monotony. Combat occurs on an almost static screen; enemies only flash when attacking or being dealt damage and there is the occasional swipe or flash from an ability or spell. The entire game is in first-person, so you never see your characters react. Also, there is a very limited diversity of monsters in the game, making palette swaps common. The difficulty is another problem that plagues Demon Gaze. On “cool” (the game’s normal difficulty), all the random encounters are little more than annoyances. Boss fights are either “decimate the party on the first turn” difficult or “could beat blindfolded” easy depending on the party’s level. There’s no sweet spot where you feel triumph over a difficult foe. You either crush the boss or be crushed by the boss. Demon Gaze is flip-floppy on how much technical information if wants to give its players. For example, you can read up on demons’ abilities that you’ve yet to face or capture, yet it never tells you what exactly your stats do. I can safely assume that strength increases my standard attack’s damage, but what exactly does mysticism do? And why, despite leveling nothing but intelligence on my wizard, do her spells seem to do the same amount of damage as they did 3 levels ago? Demon Gaze’s biggest fault is its combat: there’s just not a lot of strategy. While there are elements (air, dark, earth, fire, light, and water) and some monsters have weaknesses due to what class of monster they are, the extra damage is rarely noticeable. This is even more frustrating when facing bosses who, despite having titles such as “Fire Dragon Woman” and “Earth Iron Woman”, don’t have an elemental weakness. Status ailments (K.O.’d, poisoned, paralyzed, ect.) don’t last very long on monsters either and their most common medium, as special effects on weapons, is unreliable, meaning these effects aren’t a consistent factor in fights. This means most fights boil down to slugfests. The strategy I used for the vast majority of fights was to use the samurai skill Slash, which attacks an entire line of enemies, and the healer skill Holy Shield, which absorbs a bit of damage done to the party for a turn. There were no moments where I thought “Okay! I need to silence the enemy healer while rushing their archer in the back.” Most of the time, I didn’t even need to make a decision about how to attack, and thankfully, pressing the triangle button will make your party perform all of their actions from the previous turn. So almost every random encounter can be won by holding triangle. Bosses are somewhat exempt from the holding triangle play, but their fights are no more strategic. Boss fights are won simply by cranking up the defenses on your characters while chipping away at their health with your strongest abilities. Again, bosses have no elemental weaknesses and aside from a few who will remove your party’s buffs and/or who will rearrange the formation of your party (moving the members in the back to the front and vice versa), there is not a smidgen of thought involved in these fights. I picked up Demon Gaze because it seemed similar to the Etrian Odyssey series. I love the gimmicks that each new stratum brought and challenging combat that the E.O. games have brought me. Unfortunately, Demon Gaze, while similar at first glance, doesn’t have much of what made its fellow modern dungeon-crawler great. I took a bite, expecting a taste of the epic fun I hold dear. Instead, what I took a bite of what just a good-looking but bland tasting RPG.

I am very disappointed in Yoshi's New Island. I have fond memories of playing the Yoshi's Island port on the Game Boy Advanced and replayed it the weekend leading up to its direct sequel's launch. I had big expectations for Yoshi's New Island, hoping it would bring back what I loved about the original. However, Nintendo seems to have missed the mark in this respect. Let's start with what was good about the game: red coins, smiling flowers and starmen all return as collectables and nabbing all of them in every level of a world will net you a bonus level. This adds a bit of replay value and encourages poking around every nook and cranny instead of simply rushing to the goal ring at the end of the stage. The keys and locked doors also make a reappearance, further enticing the player to scour the level for that hidden winged cloud. Lastly, the art style, which is based off a myriad of mediums from oil paintings to crayons, is a treat to the eye. However, it seems that every good thing Yoshi's New Island has going for it, three not-so-good things are there to weigh it down. Ironically, there's not a lot of new in Yoshi's NEW Island. Every level feels like something that was in the original game, and one could be forgiven for assuming this game was simply an upscale remake at first glance. The transformations feel shoehorned and unnecessary; every transformation sequence has the player move into a doorway into another room, where they will transform into a vehicle of some type, complete the segment they needed the transformation for, then leave via another doorway as regular ol' Yoshi. Having the player go into another room where they immediately transform, but only until they leave said room breaks the flow of the game. Also, while the art style is pretty, Yoshi and some of his enemies are anything but. This gives an odd experience of seeing an ugly blob fluttering around on some gorgeous backgrounds. But the biggest fault with Yoshi's New Island are the teeny, tiny, almost negligible little nags that the game has. There are A LOT. It starts when the game is selected on the 3DS home screen; the game makes an annoying, squeak-toy like sound that is found nowhere in the game proper. Then there is the fact that, after returning to the game, Yoshi is sitting on the last level beaten, not the level the player has reached but has yet to beat. And those little nags are before you even start playing a level. Yoshi controls like a mess; he has an odd feeling of momentum that gives him a brief startup time before he reaches running speed, yet he stops on a dime. If the player ground pounds and then tries to move in a direction without taking their thumb off the control pad, Yoshi will just sit on the ground frozen in the warped ground pound pose. If Yoshi cancels his flutter kick before it reached its max duration he cannot flutter kick again until he reaches the ground and jumps. Annoying kazoo music starts playing if you manage to "win" on the roulette at the goal ring. And the most infuriating little nag is when Yoshi stands still and tries to throw an egg; there is a half-second animation where he turns, grabs an egg, and heaves it onto his shoulder. This half-second doesn't occur when you move and throw an egg, nor did it appear in the original game when Yoshi stood still. However this brief animation can easily mess with the player's timing when they are in areas where they cannot move, such as the many small moving platforms, and they need to hit an enemy or the like. In short, I cannot recommend Yoshi's New Island. It's a very bland platformer that we've all played before. What little it does have going for it is overshadowed by is flaws and every little annoying tidbit can really deter the player from wanting to pick it up after one or two hours of play.