Soul Calibur IV Review

Platform: Xbox 360

A tale of souls and swords, eternally retold . . . with progressively skimpier outfits, heftier amounts of exposition, and cheesier commentary. You all remember Soul Calibur II (or Soul Calibur for you old school folks), right? Now those were some damn fun games. You also remember Soul Calibur III, right? Well, I do, and I have a bone to pick with that turd (though not today). Using these two games for comparison points, it’s safe to say that SC4 is more fun that getting raped with a jackhammer, but less fun than being on the other end of said jackhammer.

I certainly hope that an explanation of what a fighting game is would be unnecessarily to anyone reading this. Why did I just say that? I’m not sure, actually. It’s not like I’d explain it even if it was necessary. Regardless, I’ll at least say how Soul Calibur is different from other fighting games. Unlike in, say, Marvel vs. Capcom, you don’t jump around like a lunatic and press 30-something button combos to whip out a laser cannon the size of Belgium. Instead, you can encircle your opponent strictly on the horizontal plane, and your attacks actually take off portions of your opponent’s health bar in increments larger than nanometers. That said, like in most fighting games, button mashing will get you pretty far in Soul Calibur IV, so odds are that unless you spend weeks memorizing the move list instead of studying for your finals, the little 13 year-old shit spamming Kilik’s long-range attacks will have just as much of a chance of winning as you do.

Who’s Kilik, you ask? Well, answering that question would involve delving into the plot, something that I’d rather not do. Besides, it’s not that important. There are two swords: a good one made of crystal and wielded by a pretty boy knight and a bad one made of flesh with a giant eyeball in the middle that’s wielded by a crazy, demonic suit of living armor. Shit happens, people find excuses to get involved, and they proceed to beat the shit out of each other. There, are you satisfied? I’m not gonna go into detail on the characters because I frankly don’t give a damn about them, and neither should you.

The game throws the usual array of modes at you: story, arcade, online vs, and a special mode, among others. The throwaway special mode for this game is called the Tower of Lost Souls, but more on that later. The only thing special about the arcade mode is an inevitable battle against the Apprentice from that horrible Force Unleashed game. Regardless, he is one cheap motherfucker. Really now, there’s not much you can do when your opponent shoots lightning from his fingertips aside from rolling over and dying. On a different note, it seems as though the creators learned their lesson from Soul Calibur III and decided not to shoehorn in a stupid pseudo-RTS mode. Unfortunately, they took a page from Soul Calibur II’s Weapon Master mode instead, pitting you in combat against ridiculously powerful enemies with equally ridiculous conditions for unlocking shit, so if you want those cat ears, you’re gonna have to fight Nightmare on steroids.

My last paragraph was getting a bit long, so I’m going to make a new one even though there’s no big change in topic. If you’re a stickler about this sort of thing, you can suck my metaphorical balls. Moving on to SC4’s online mode, I can say that, at the very least, it works. To put it bluntly, I fucking hate the interface. It’s a bare-bones set of menus that offers very little in the way of details or options. You can search for a game automatically, which will almost always fail since the system looks around for roughly five seconds before it throws its hands up and claims there aren’t any open games. Well, a peak into manual matchmaking always proves that there are, in fact, many open games. Thus, you shouldn’t trust the computer because it tells filthy lies. Even more annoying is how the game deals with lag. Matches can only go as fast as the slowest player, so if you end up playing some kid in Uzbekistan on an AOL trial, it’s curtains for you. Therefore, I’d recommend playing online only if you plan to fight your friends or you’re one of those million or so bastards that want to show off that “totally original” Ichigo Kurosaki they made in character creation.

Speaking of which, character creation from Soul Calibur III makes a comeback, and there’s a fairly diverse selection of clothing, weapons, hairstyles, etc. Unfortunately, using this mode to create characters for the Tower of Lost Souls mode is an exercise in frustration and monotony. Each item has stats associated with it, including those that alter your damage, health, defense, and whatnot. The problem with trying to maximize your stats is twofold. For one, there’s no way to organize items by their attributes, forcing you to wade through the default list. Secondly, the game lags like hell every time you equip or unequip an item. A different problem stems from the fact that everything is really fucking expensive. Seriously, since when do cat ears cost 10,000 gold? God damn inflation. By the way, if you’re going to make a character, for Christ’s sake, don’t take Zasalamel’s style, slap on a bunch of black armor with skulls on it, and name your dude “Death”. It’s not cool, it’s gay. Really gay. Millions of Linkin Park-listening emo fucktarts had the same idea, and they’re not rockin’ either.

I know it’s been fun folks, but this long-overdue review must come to a close. Before that, however, I’d like to say one last thing: Soul Calibur IV isn’t a bad game by any stretch. At the same time, it is also supremely unrefined, which prevents it from reaching greatness. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to building a team of lizardmen dressed as the Village People.

Rating: 3/5

PS: Next up is Fable II. Hopefully, it’ll still be relevant by the time I finish the review.

Crackdown Review

Platform: Xbox 360

Once upon a time, the cops screwed up so badly that gangsters managed to take over the world. The government then concentrated all its resources in a single city to prepare for a counterattack. As a part of this, they also began to make super soldiers. The sheer ridiculousness of this plot aside, you essentially play as a superpowered assassin. Don’t think of this as Assassin’s Creed, though, because this game forces you to be about as subtle as a howitzer. Then again, Creed wasn’t very good at that either.

The whole point of Crackdown is to kill all the leaders of the three gangs: Los Muertos (Mexicans), the Volk (Eastern Europeans), and the Shia Gen (Asians). While most of your victims make sense (they provide supplies, manpower, or information), some of them are just bizarre. For instance, one of the Los Muertos leaders supes up cars. Uhh . . . okay. That’s fucking dangerous. Luckily, these guys hide in very discreet places like oil rigs, the only skyscraper with a door, and the gym, so you don’t have to look long.

Control-wise, the commands are assigned to good positions, but the effects of pressing the buttons aren’t so sensible. For instance, pressing the melee attack button will make you kick, but you can’t control said kick for shit. Instead, you’ll probably miss by a mile, look like a ballerina in doing so, and either fall off a ledge to your horrible demise or get blown to smithereens by a grenade or four. Also, as the game progresses, you are able to jump higher and higher. Unfortunately, the controls lack sensitivity to the point that your choices are either to tap the jump button to hop like a morbidly obese ten year old playing basketball or to mash that fucker down and launch into orbit. Further complicating matters is the level design. As buildings get taller and taller, they become progressively more deformed, making them ridiculously difficult to climb. You’ll often find yourself slamming into an extended ledge or being stranded on the side of a building because the architect was on crack and decided to model it after one of Picasso’s faces,

Fortunately, there are ways to play such that you can avoid platforming. It’s called walking, and it’s a great way to get shot in Crackdown. Regardless, what you can’t avoid are gang showdowns. After you spend an hour or two pretending you’re Spiderman, you’ll probably stumble upon a gang hideout. At this point, your options are to either break down the front door and kill everything in sight or sneak in through the back door and kill everything in sight. Early on, this is simple enough since all you’re up against are a bunch of pea shooters and the occasional grenade. Things escalate, however, to the point that every schmuck with two hands touts 800 round machine guns, heat seekers, or cluster grenades. Combined with the fact that whenever you get blown up, you enter ragdoll physics mode and flop about helplessly for an eternity, you’ll often find yourself flying off rooftops while on fire and unable to do a damn thing about it. Hell, if you’re really unlucky, the enemies will chain heat seekers to juggle you in the air. Also, where the fuck is your backup? There’s a damn cop car on every street and the lazy bastards can’t stop by to lend you a hand?

On a quick note, one of the major features of the game is the ability to boost your skills. As the voiceover guy says, “Skills for kills, agent. Skills for kills.” I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that none of those s’s are z’s. For instance, as you kill more people with grenades, your explosives skill goes up, which makes your explosions a tad larger. When maxed out, you can annihilate entire intersections with a single rocket, which is pretty damn cool. On a less cool note, you can become a better driver by running enemies over. Yeah . . . good luck with that.

Let me get this out of the way: Crackdown is a damn fun game to fuck around in. To that end, all you have to do is download the Keys to the City pack to have access to a slew of cheats. When your car is invincible and goes 200+ mph, there’s no way you can’t have fun, unless you’re completely dull, in which case you can go play Too Human and tell yourself everything’s all right. All that aside, this is one frustrating son of a bitch to play seriously. Climbing poorly designed apartments and serving as little more than a volleyball for a bunch of trigger-happy gangsters to spike with rockets isn’t my idea of a fun time. Look elsewhere if you’re one of those obsessive perfectionist types that only live for plot and collectibles.

Rating: 3/5

Too Human Review

Platform: Xbox 360

Too Human is the story of mankind’s struggle to maintain its identity in a world where the cruel, unforgiving, endless winter and the constant threat of death drive many to abandon their humanity in favor of cybernetic enhancements to the point where they become more machine than man. It represents the ever-present dilemma humankind faces as technology becomes progressively more involved in every facet of our existence in the guise of a simple video game, and provides a deep and thoughtful commentary on the crossroads humanity finds itself at.

If you thought I was being serious in the last paragraph, you need a .45 caliber reality check. “The Misadventures of the Cyberpunk Norse Gods in Monotonous Combat Land” would be a far more apt title. You play as the futuristic super soldier version of the Norse god Baldur whom everyone has the hots for despite the fact that he’s one fugly bastard. Seriously, the dude’s bald and has glowing blue scars all over his face. Back to the matter at hand, he’s on a quest to . . . uh, kick ass. There’s supposed to be some backstory about Baldur’s murdered wife, Loki being a total dick, and a plot to destroy the world. I wasn’t really paying attention, and you’d have to pay me to give a rat’s ass about some typical soap opera story with cyberpunk embellishments.

Playing the actual game, I quickly realized that the only thing special about this game is its control scheme. The gameplay itself is the usual run-and-gun (or cut) action that’s been passed down from generation to generation and involves hacking away at “grunts” that all seem to have more life than you. I couldn’t tell because the damn game never showed me how much life the regular baddies have. This process might have been sped up if you either didn’t always knock them down or you could hit enemies while they’re on the ground, but neither of these things happens! Sure, this also means that they can’t cheap shot you while you’re down, but making that a one-way street with you being invincible while in agony after having your stomach slashed open would have easily solved the problem.

Before I get ahead of myself, I should say that your attacks in Too Human are controlled by the analog sticks (mostly the left one) instead of the buttons. At first glance, this would seem to spare your fingers from certain repetitive motions (and perhaps spare them for other repetitive motions unrelated to the game), but in reality, losing the precise movement and camera control functions of the two analog sticks deals a severe blow to the overall combat experience. For instance, you can’t just sit in one place and whack away at the oncoming hordes because the imprecise analog stick controls will easily let the baddies surround you and ravage you with their beastly appendages. Instead the instruction manual encourages “sliding”, which is where you target enemies far away from yourself after every attack in order to dash toward them and prevent a ganking situation. This, combined with the fact that you can’t hit the often downed enemies, makes combat a monotonous nightmare.

“What about the guns?” you might ask. Well, they fare even worse. Targeting is done using the left analog stick, which works just fine against single enemies, but when you’re faced with a cluster of targets, you’re fucked as the game’s targeting system goes berserk and there’s no alternate way to change your target. Oh, and don’t bother telling me to kite them. For those of you who don’t know, kiting is the tactic where you keep running away from an enemy and using ranged attacks to cut them down without fear of retaliation. Unfortunately, Baldur is one slow son of a bitch, so just about everything can hunt you down and kick your ass if you try to run. It’s like watching one of those bear mauling videos (or am I the only one who does that?), ‘cept you’re the one getting mauled. Anyway, the only things slower than you are the trolls and your own allies, and as much as you might want to, you can’t shoot your unwanted help.

Speaking of your allies, these guys are worthless. They can’t even distract the enemy long enough for you to catch a breather. When they are around, they each get the attention of 2-3 enemies tops. This may seem like a lot, but considering that you go up against waves of 20-30 baddies at once, you’ll be doing almost all of the work. To top it off, they have difficulty following you from platform to platform, so you’re usually on your own anyway.

While Too Human definitely won’t be getting any real praise out of me, it isn’t an unredeemable pile of doggie doo doo either. While usually plodding and horrendously dull, there are times when you get into a groove and really start kicking ass. It isn’t Nirvana or anything, but it’s a good sort of mind-numbingness. That aside, Too Human is average in almost every respect. The novelty of its control scheme and setting might appeal to you, but little else will.

Rating: 2/5

Xenosaga Episode 1: Der Wille zur Macht Review

Platform: PS2

I'm aware that this picture's from Xenosaga 3, but what makes you think this series will survive past the first review?

Normally, I would do some research to make sure my facts match up before I do a review. However, that wouldn’t do the sheer absurdity of Xenosaga’s plot any justice. Thus, everything I say is going to be from memory. Sound like fun? No? Too bad, let’s go.

Right off the bat, you’re “treated” to a cutscene of an archeologist finding a huuuuuuuuge stone tablet. “Treated” is in quotes because the movie clocks in at ten minutes, or at least it felt that long. Anyway, once that’s over, it cuts to the distant future where you’re introduced to the heroine of this story, Shion. She’s a sexy scientist, glasses girl, usually clueless, blah, blah, blah. Nothing special aside from the fact that her weapon is a gigantic taser claw. Oh, did I mention that she made a killer android called KOS-MOS that wields weapons completely practical for futuristic combat such as swords and scythes in addition to gatling guns and a gigantic chest laser. Nope, nothing unusual at all. Otherwise, the cast isn’t anything special aside from some kid who thinks he’s Vash the Stampede, who appears later. Regardless, on the same ship Shion’s on is an “emulator” of the big-ass stone tablet from the opening movie. Unfortunately, the emulator attracts space whale salt monsters called Gnosis, who are impervious to just about everything . . . everything except KOS-MOS, of course. Before you can get to killing, however, you have to navigate Shion around the various parts of the ship while avoiding the Gnosis, who are brutally disemboweling your cute, anime-faced fellow soldiers.

Soon enough, you rally a posse including KOS-MOS and a psychotic officer who’s a robo-racist or something in his spare time. You don’t have to deal with him long, though. Just as you reach the escape pods, he picks a fight with a Gnosis and does this by jumping around like a moron while going full-auto with his assault rifle. Unfortunately for him, his tomfoolery interferes with KOS-MOS’ aim and prompts her to shoot through him to hit the Gnosis. Thus, for his newbish behavior, he gets perma-banned from the server of life. This is only the first in a long line of lessons as to why you shouldn’t fuck with androids. I’ll stop relating the plot here because, frankly, I don’t know what the hell happened after that. Words went into my ears, but none of it made sense. Entire cutscenes were dedicated to people talking about stuff like the “Hilbert Effect”, the “Song of Nephilim”, the “Zohar”, and so on and so forth. At this point, I really didn’t give a flying fuck. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease just let me kill something!

While my wish was granted, combat was a whole ‘nother beast. Sure, it seems like simple turn-based fighting at first, but once you try to attack, you have shit like button combos, combo strings, robots, ether, and items. Hold on, items? Yes, even using items is an arduous ordeal. Xenosaga is the very image of the bureaucratic process. Pressing a button as simple and self-explanatory as “attack” unleashes a torrent of sub-menus, each of which unleashes another deluge of options. Jesus Christ, all I want to do is shank some space whales. Is that too much to ask for? Oh, and don’t even ask about the pause menu, I had an easier time learning multi-variable calculus than I had trying to figure out what the hell I was supposed to do in it.

Xenosaga can be compared to the Hydra of ancient Greek mythology. Once you cut off the head of unbearable cutscenes, two more appear: convoluted menus and slow-ass combat. If you somehow manage to ignore those, you notice the next layer of problems and things keep escalating until you finally throw your controller through a window, rip the disk out of the PS2, and devour it in hopes that the pain of disk shards mutilating your throat will serve as penance for your crimes against all that is holy. Speaking of which, did I mention that KOS-MOS is the vessel for the spirit of Mary Magdalene? That’s right, I just spoiled the shit out of the remaining games. “But wait, One Sin, aren’t you going to review those eventually?”

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha no.

Besides, that doesn’t even make any sense (I’m being perfectly serious, though). It’s like you need a wiki to figure all this out. Which reminds me, did you know that Xenosaga has its own wiki? “Big deal,” I bet you’re thinking. Sure, everything from Code Geass to Devil May Cry to Rosie O’Donnell has its own wiki, but Xenosaga actually needs one. Maybe you could read it to find out why Mary Magdalene is pumping space whales full of lead and has a black hole in her chest . . .

If you have a lot of spare time . . .

And have no life . . .

Or you actually like this shit . . .

Loser.

Rating: 1/5

Shenmue II Review

Platform: Xbox, Dreamcast (Review based on Xbox version. The DC one isn’t available here, anyway.)

It’s rare for a game to create a new genre. In fact, such is the cause for great celebration and the precursor to a millennium of peace and prosperity. Does Shenmue II do this? Hell no, but it certainly thinks it does. Director Yu Suzuki called the original Shenmue a “FREE" (Full Reactive Eyes Entertainment) game, whatever that means. In actuality, it’s just an adventure game with a fancy title. Well, let’s get this shitfest on the road.

You play as Ryo Hazuki, who is some punk kid out for revenge on the guy who whacked his dad. Alright, that’s sorta cliché, but I can live with it. Apparently, you’ve followed the killer’s trail to Hong Kong and the game starts with you getting off a boat and looking around the harbor. Okay, it’s time to get moving. I pressed the analog stick forward, and much to my surprise, instead of moving Ryo forward, this slammed the camera face first into the ground. Fine, then, directional pad it is. Oh, wait. The game still controls like ass. Crawling forward inch by inch, I triggered the game’s first cutscene. At first, it looked alright. It was about some old dude playing a mandolin. The problem came when said old dude opened his mouth. The “English” that came forth wasn’t quite engrish, but was so uninspired and awkward that I thought I had the language setting on “retard”.

“Alright, fuck this,” I said before pressing “start”. I was hoping for the main menu, but what I got instead was the control scheme. Umm . . . thanks? I kinda thought that’s what the manual was for. Regardless, once I got to the settings menu, I found that the outlook was still bleak. Under “language”, I was faced with a wide variety of options ranging from “game mode” to “cinema mode” to “Shenmue mode” to “ragtime theater mode” to “Initial D fucking remix mode”. Those names aren’t very descriptive, are they (well, except for the last two)? The description box next to each one didn’t help either. For instance, next to the “Shenmue mode” option is a blurb of text that says “Play the game in Shenmue mode”. No way. No fucking way. And here I thought that’d change the language to Mandarin Chinese. The worst part is that there’s no god damn difference between any of them! All I found was that the Shenmue mode just removes the subtitles while keeping the broken English. “Big deal,” I bet you’re thinking, “It’s just one voice actor. Not every game can be Oblivion.” Unfortunately, every voice is equally shitty! They certainly have variety down, but that’s like having sixty types of steaming shit to pick from as the sauce for your rice. No thanks, I’ll just play with the TV muted.

Maybe the alternate control schemes offer a silver lining? No dice. The only other option makes the default movement running, but I quickly found that the slightest touch sent me flying into a corner or into a pedestrian, at which point I ricocheted off them. Mournfully switching back to the normal controls, I prepared my hands for an agonizing ordeal.

Back to the game itself, it essentially amounts to a glorified version of hide and seek. You’re always looking for someone and when you find them, they tell you to find someone else . . . for 10+ hours. It isn’t as bad as I just made it sound, but wandering around the winding streets talking to NPC’s in hopes that one actually knows where you need to go gets old quickly. Every now and then, the game decides to spice things up by making you work a dayjob airing out books or lifting boxes. If you’re the daring type, you can also arm wrestle with sweaty Mexican dock workers. No, seriously. When things get serious, though, Shenmue II has two more tricks up its sleeve. The first of these is the QTE, or quick-time event. These are sequences in which random button inputs flash on the screen and you have to react without a single mistake. Hell, there were times when I got penalized even when I did press the right commands. The worst part is that while you can sometimes repeat the QTE immediately, there are times when you get sent waaaaaaaay back to repeat some stupid cutscene (which are unskippable, by the way) or perhaps even forced to continue the day after failing, wasting precious time.

Other times, you get fighting game sequences where you beat the crap out of random thugs. Before I go on, it’s important to note that the team that made Shenmue II, Sega-AM2, is the same group that made Virtua Fighter. Riddle me this, then: why does the combat in Shenmue suck huge, sweaty ox balls? Almost every fight involves getting ganked by 3 or more gangsters unless you spam the a and b buttons like a madman. The directional pad is unresponsive and makes precise inputs impossible, Ryo often ends up facing the wrong way after a combo, and enemies regain health when they hit you. To top it off, near the endgame, you have to hunt down and fight three pros. Unfortunately, it’s impossible! Hell, this is one of the few times where I actually quit a game in frustration. First of all, you have to pay a thousand bucks to fight the first one in a game where you’re lucky to have more than 100. Secondly, he fucking thrashes you no matter what you do. When you actually circle around his attacks, either Ryo’s facing the wrong way or the d-pad fails to register your move at which point he turns right back around and whoops your sorry ass. The part that pissed me off the most was his victory pose. He takes a bodybuilder’s stance and the camera zooms into his face, which makes him look like he’s got some mad constipation. I can only see that god damn face so many times before I start hurling the controller. In fact, I’d say this is the first game in which the controller ever left my hand for any reason other than turning off the system.

Despite all this, Shenmue II has a tiny sparkle of charm with its massive environments and plentiful mini games. Unfortunately, there are no true side quests, leaving the game extremely linear despite its vast territory. As a result, you’ll often find yourself lost with nary an optional path. Even then, I would have been a bit more forgiving if it weren’t for the absolutely abominable voice acting and controls. Hell, I would have at least finished the damn game if they had just made the control stick the default means of movement. Sega had a diamond with this game, but instead of polishing it, they shat on it before throwing it into the sewer. What a fucking waste.

Overall: 2/5

PS: Sorry for the formatting inconsistencies. Blogger just seems to hate me.

Burnout 3: Takedown Review

Platform: PS2, Xbox, and Xbox 360 (Review based on PS2 version)

There are racing games like Gran Turismo and there are demolition derbies like Twisted Metal. What happens when you combine those two? You get Burnout. This game is all about speed and what you use that speed to annihilate. Hell, it’s even more about speed than Need for Speed, which is actually somewhat slow. Regardless, perhaps I should get onto the plot. Oh, wait. There is no plot. This is a fucking racing game. Here’s your plot: vroom vroom, start your bloody engine. It may seem like I’m ragging on Burnout for this, but I’m not. There are fewer things I hate more in games than an inappropriately-placed story. I’ve never cared for all the “racing for street cred” or “racing to pay off your mafia debt” plotlines that seem to be all the rage lately, and I doubt I ever will. Luckily, you don’t have to deal with any of that in this game.

Burnout 3’s gameplay comes down to two important modes: racing and crashing. The racing mode, for the most part, also involves crashing. I know what you’re thinking. “Wow, that’s a lot of smashing. I guess racing must not be that important”. In most cases, you’d be right. A lot of the stage goals revolve around demolishing a certain number of opponents or avoiding being smashed, but one particular mode actually requires you to pass the finish line first. This is where Burnout’s worst flaws appear. I find it quite ironic that a racing game’s worst characteristic is its racing. The tracks appear to be designed for maximizing the carnage that occurs during races, but they aren’t exactly conducive to the racing itself.

Before I go on, I should mention that Burnout places a lot of emphasis on boosting. You have a boost gauge that charges whenever you drive towards oncoming traffic, drift, or do anything else that would normally get you hunted-down, dragged out of your car, and tased by the cops. Unfortunately, whenever you boost, the edges of your screen become rather blurry and fuck up your line of sight. In the crash modes, this isn’t much of a problem. However, when your goal is to cross the god damn finish line, you’re in for a world of hurt. “Alright, so just win the old fashioned way, right?” Wrong. You may start spazzing out when the action gets hard to see, but the computer won’t. Either you’ll get left behind to enjoy the scenery, the rubber band AI will finish you off, or a tiny pixel of your car will clip a passing bus and send you flying for an eternity in slow motion while your opponents fly by.

Alright, so fuck the racing, how about the crash mode? Now this is where the fun is. The basic idea here is to get your car to top speed before flying into the middle of a crowded intersection and creating pandemonium. Things get even better once your car explodes. If this concept stopped here and remained a test of chaining as many crashes together as possible, it would have been perfect. However, they throw in all sorts of multipliers that could easily make up for neglecting the carnage at hand. In fact, some stages can’t be cleared without the help of these bonuses. This defeats the purpose of the damn mode! The goal should be annihilation, not collecting trinkets. This is all still fun, mind you, but what the hell?

Burnout 3 is certainly worth a shot, but it lacks a strong foundation. A racing game that’s inept at racing can only accomplish so much. It definitely has style considering its dynamic soundtrack and slow-mo crashes, but the numerous holes found in its substance detract heavily from the experience.

Rating: 3/5

Review Index

-Expect frequent updates.
-If you would like to dispute an existing review or request a review on any game, feel free to do so here.

Articles like "the", "an", and "and" are ignored for the purposes of alphabetizing.

Reviewed:
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Burnout 3: Takedown (3)
Crackdown (3)
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness (4)
La Pucelle: Tactics (2)
Phantom Brave (1)
Shenmue II (2)
Super Robot Wars: Original Generation (1)
Too Human (2)
Xenosaga Episode 1: Der Wille zur Macht (1)


Completed and Rated: (Ratings are not final. Games with a "5?" are definite 4's that are candidates for a perfect score. And yes, Superman 64's rating isn't a typo. More on that later.)
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Advance Wars (4)
Age of Empires 3 (1)
Animal Crossing (3)
Ape Escape: On the Loose (1)
Ape Escape: Pumped and Primed (1)
AquaAqua (2)
Arcana Heart (1)
Armored Core 2: Another Age (1)
Armored Core 3 (1)
Armored Core: Last Raven (1)
Assassin's Creed (3)
Beautiful Katamari (1)
Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg (3)
Bomberman Generation (2)
Bouncer, The (1)
Call of Duty 2 (3)
Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (4)
Chaos Legion (1)
Crazy Taxi (1)
Custom Robo (2)
Dark Cloud (3)
Dark Cloud 2 (3)
Destroy All Humans! (2)
Digimon Digital Card Battle (1) <--- Don't ask.
Digimon Rumble Arena (1)
Digimon World 3 (1)
Disgaea 2: Cursed Memories (3)
.hack// Infection (1)
.hack// Mutation (1)
.hack// Outbreak (1)
.hack// Quarantine (1)
Dynasty Tactics 2 (1)
Dynasty Warriors (PSP) (1)
Dynasty Warriors 3 (2)
Dynasty Warriors 3: Xtreme Legends (1)
Dynasty Warriors 4 (1)
Dynasty Warriors 4: Empires (1)
Dynasty Warriors: Gundam (1)
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (3)
Evolution Worlds (1)
EyeToy: AntiGrav (1) <--- Once again, don't ask.
Fable (3)
Final Fantasy X (2)
Final Fantasy X-2 (2)
Final Fantasy: Crystal Chronicles (2)
Fire Emblem (4)
Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (2)
Gauntlet Dark Legacy (1)
Genji: Days of the Blade (1)
Grandia II (2)
Guilty Gear Isuka (1)
Halo: Combat Evolved (3)
Hot Shots Golf: Open Tee (2)
Inuyasha: The Secret of the Cursed Mask (1)
Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (4)
Jak 2 (3)
Jak 3 (3)
Kameo: Elements of Power (1)
Katamari Damacy (3)
Kingdom Hearts (3)
Kingdom Hearts II (3)
Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures,The (3)
Legend of Zelds: Ocarina of Time, The (5?)
Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, The (3)
Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, The (3)
Lost Kingdoms (2)
Makai Kingdom (2)
Mall Tycoon (1)
Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour (3)
Mario Party 4 (2)
Mass Effect (5?)
Medal of Honor: Rising Sun (1)
Mercenaries: Playground of Destruction (2)
Mobile Suit Gundam: Federation vs. Zeon (1)
Mobile Suit Gundam: Journey to Jaburo (1)
Mobile Suit Gundam: Zeonic Front (1)
Monsters, INC. (1) <--- Long story.
N3: Ninety-Nine Nights (1)
Need for Speed: Underground Rivals (1)
One Piece: Grand Battle (1)
Peter Jackson's King Kong (2)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (3)
Pikmin (4)
Ratchet and Clank (4)
Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (3)
Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando (5?)
Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters (2)
Ratchet and Clank: Up Your Arsenal (3)
Ratchet: Deadlocked (2)
Rise of Nations: Rise of Legends (2)
Robotech: Invasion (1)
Romancing SaGa (1)
RPG Maker II (1) <--- I can dream, can't I?
Samurai Legend Musashi (1)
Samurai Warriors (2)
Shaman King: Power of Spirit (1) <--- That's not a typo. Apparently, there's only one spirit in the universe.
Shining Tears (1)
Silent Line: Armored Core (2)
Sims, The (PS2) (1) <--- What was I thinking?
Sonic Adventure 2: Battle (2)
Sonic Heroes (1)
Soul Calibur 3 (2)
Soul Nomad & The World Eaters (3)
Spongebob Squarepants: Battle for Bikini Bottom (3) <--- Seriously.
Starcraft (3)
Starcraft: Brood War (3)
Star Fox: Assault (1)
Star Ocean: Till the End of Time (4)
Star Wars: Battlefront (3)
Star Wars: Battlefront 2 (1)
Star Wars: Bounty Hunter (2)
Star Wars: Empire at War (2)
Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic (3)
Star Wars: Super Bombad Racing (1) <-- It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Stella Deus: The Gate of Eternity (1)
Summoner (1)
Summoner 2 (1)
Super Bust-A-Move 2 (1)
Superman 64 (0?)
Super Mario Sunshine (3)
Super Smash Bros. Melee (5?)
Tales of Legendia (1)
Tales of Symphonia (5?)
Tarzan (1)
Tekken Tag Tournament (1)
Tsugunai: Atonement (1)
Universal Studios Theme Park Adventure (1) <--- Ask, and i'll kill myself.
Untold Legends: Brotherhood of the Blade (1)
Warhammer 40,000: Dawn of War: Dark Crusade (3)
Warriors Orochi (1)
We Love Katamari (3)
World Destruction League: Thunder Tanks (1)
Ys: The Ark of Napishtim (1)
Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Duelists of the Roses (1) <--- Once upon a time, I was a total idiot . . .
Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Falsebound Kingdom (2)
Yu-Gi-Oh!: Forbidden Memories (1) <--- The only thing that should be forbidden is this game.
Zoids: Battle Legends (2)



Incomplete:
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean
Beyond Good & Evil
Bomberman Jetters
Boom Blox
Dynasty Warriors 6
Elder Scrolls IV: Shimmering Isles
Fable: The Lost Chapters
Final Fantasy XII
Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift
Grandia 3
Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time Master Quest, The
Medal of Honor: Airborne
Metal Gear Solid
Metal Gear Solid 2
Metal Gear Solid 3
Ninja Gaiden Sigma
Pokemon Colosseum
Pokemon XD: Gale of Darkness
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Secret Agent Clank
Super Mario Strikers
Viking: Battle for Asgard

Phantom Brave Review

Platform: PS2

Once upon a time, the creators of Disgaea decided to fuck their proven grid-based formula in favor of something completely different for their next game. While Nippon Ichi gets points for trying something new, Phantom Brave is a bloody mess. Before I get too far ahead of myself, some background is necessary.

Phantom Brave takes place in the world of Ivoire across a large series of islands and is about a little, green-haired girl named Marona. Don’t expect Yotsubato, though; this is anything but a feel-good, slice-of-life story. With this game, it’s all about death, tragedy, and people being assholes to you. When she was a wee lass, Marona’s parents were something along the lines of ghostbusters and had a bodyguard named Ash. Unfortunately for them, Ash was a shit guard and they all died. In a desperate bid to not go out like a punk, the dad tried to revive Ash but failed, turning Ash into a phantom. Cut to a few years later where Marona essentially works as a mercenary to pay the rent on her island. Having the ability to communicate with and confine ghosts to inanimate objects makes her decent at this, but people aren’t exactly charmed by how she’s basically a necromancer. Thus, the first half of the game has you doing odd jobs for really nice people . . . well, they’re nice until they find out that you’re a freak at which point they don’t give you your due reward and kick your off their property. Watching this is painful and is an interesting attempt to make you genuinely sympathetic toward Marona, but only served to infuriate me. I hate nice guys, and her infinite tolerance for abuse made me foam at the mouth on more than one occasion.

You might think I’m exaggerating when I say everyone in this game is an absolute douche to you. (Un?)fortunately for you, I’m not exaggerating in the least. Clients will refuse to pay you, people will throw rocks at you and chase you out of town . . . hell, one guy even bothers to follow you around and steal credit for jobs you do. I actually thought this could have been pretty interesting, seeing the cruel and merciless world turn this little girl into a heartless killer. Unfortunately, the exact opposite thing happens: through the power of being able to take it like a champ and appealing to everyone’s inner pedophile, Marona eventually turns the populace of Ivoire into kind, civil beings. Aww, how sickeningly trite. A strong plot could have salvaged this game’s score, but Phantom Brave just decides to throw that all away.

Could strong enough gameplay mechanics save this sinking ship of a title from my fury? It certainly could, but it doesn’t. Where Phantom Brave stumbles with its characters and plot, it bites the dust when you actually try playing it. First of all, you yourself can’t fight for shit. Unless you’re particularly fond of bitch-slapping enemies for zero damage, don’t even bother trying. Instead, what you have to do is confine your phantoms to the local landscape at which point they absorb the item’s characteristics and are ready to rumble. Apparently, I’m the only one who thinks that possessing the enemies and having them jump off a cliff would be a good idea. Regardless, I can work with this. What I can’t work with is the strict time limit placed on your summoned characters. After a certain amount of turns, your characters disappear and stay that way for the rest of the battle. This doesn’t come off as an attempt to add depth to the game by forcing you to manage your troops and turns well so much as it appears to be fucking annoying. Alright then, let’s say you haven’t had enough punishment and have created an army of high-level troops to last through the time limits. Realizing your defiance, the game then proceeds to kick your ass. Remember the throwing feature from Disgaea? Well, it’s back, except now your enemies can use it too, and boy do they use it. There are no stage boundaries in Phantom Brave, which means that characters can be thrown off-screen and killed. If this happens to your enemies, the surviving enemies (up to the last one, which can’t be thrown away) gain the monster’s levels. If this happens to one of your guys, you get jack shit. When the enemies aren’t screwing you, though, you have other problems to deal with. For one, the physics in Phantom Brave is completely irrational. Sure, everything is dandy when you’re walking, but God help you if you so much as dare to pick something up. Either gravity’s out of style or steroids are all the rage because when you throw someone, you don’t just throw them. No, you fucking catapult them across the screen and usually out of bounds. See that little indicator that tells you where the object will land? Don’t bother with it. It might tell you where the point of impact is, but you’ll just keep going, and going, and going, and going . . . Alright then, since flying is out of the question, how about walking? No dice. Get too close to a corner and your character will begin to clip and act like it’s having an epileptic fit until either the game decides it’s had enough and ends your turn automatically or you drop off the stage and out of bounds. Lovely, just lovely.

Phantom Brave isn’t a game so much as it is an experience in undeserved frustration. Lacking both an incentive for the player (the plot) and the means to accomplish it with (the gameplay), it’s almost entirely worthless. I say almost because the post-game extras are actually somewhat nice with characters like Laharl, Etna, Flonne, Mid-Boss, Baal, and Pringer X making appearances. Aside from that, though, you have an unpolished, buggy-ass game that seems insistent on torturing you. Don’t bother with this one, folks.

Rating: 1/5

Super Robot Wars: Original Generation Review

Platform: Game Boy Advance

Super Robot Wars is a long-standing series in which all the mechs from your favorite anime come together for one massive battle royal. Sounds like fun, right? Well, what would happen if you took out all the well-known mecha and people and replaced them with an original cast? It becomes shit, that’s what. Honestly, when I first saw a video of SRW: OG, it reminded me ever so slightly of Fire Emblem, except with robots. While I always had an inkling of interest for the series, I had never been able to acquire any of the games, international copyright being the bitch that it is. When I first got OG, I ignored the “original” bit and just shoved it into my Game Boy Advance SP. First, I was greeted with that stupid Banpresto logo. Despising pre-game logos, I pressed “a” in hopes of skipping it. No? Alright, then. What about “b”? Start? Select? R? L? It turns out that the damn thing is unskippable. Quite unfortunate, really, considering how I’d be seeing a lot more of it over the next few days.

Jumping right into the game, I was offered a choice between two protagonists: a generic stern-looking hunk of a man and a goofy-looking kid whose face just screams “asshole”. Not being in the mood to play a school comedy/story about an average guy who needs to awaken his inner Amuro Ray and save the world (aka Gundam ZZ), I picked the former. At this point, I would normally explain the plot in graphic detail, but this time, two words will suffice: shit happens. What plot? I don’t see a plot. The game spends an ungodly long time before and after each mission throwing random terms and what barely constitutes character development at you. This game’s dialogue is the text equivalent of Xenosaga’s endless, torturous cutscenes. Thus, I did what any good reviewer would do and pressed “b” really fucking fast in hopes of getting to the next battle before I died of boredom.

The first few battles progressed swimmingly. Every time you attack someone, there’s a percentage of how likely you are to hit them and how likely they are to hit back. Up until my first real boss enemy, that percentage stayed at a healthy 80% vs 30%. Once I tried to fight the bastard, however, it was 0% vs 100%. From that moment on, fighting a boss meant using special abilities that gave me 100% accuracy and 100% dodge over and over and over and over and over . . . I guess that’s sort of like how things are in Super Robot shows, but it doesn’t make for a very fun game. As you play through the game, you gain more and more useless allies and fugly mechs. I know what you’re thinking. “They can’t be that bad, right?” No. They really are. Fortunately, there is one exception to this: the beauty I put up at the start of the review. Regardless, the game consists of running around with your 2-3 strongest guys (the ones you actually bother to put money into) while the rest of your useless team gets raped by enemy grunts, which are horribly overpowered, by the way. Take whatever stats your allies have and add a zero to the end of that and you have your enemies. It should be noted that you usually have a defensive target in the form of your battleship, which has massive amounts of health and weaponry. Unfortunately, your ship can’t hit jack shit. You’ll have a nice 0% accuracy to look at whenever you try.

While I would have liked to wail on this turd a bit longer, I’ve run out of things to say. Yes, that’s all there is to Super Robot Wars: Original Generation. Normally, this would be understandable since the main appeal of the series was getting to see Mazinger Z fire a rocket punch up a Gundam’s exit hole, but you don’t get that here. Instead, you just get a sub-generic plot, a generic cast, generic music, and an overall generic game. This title is a piece of shit and I wouldn’t bother with it. Go get a rom of one of the real SRW games instead, not this emasculated excuse of one.

Rating: 1/5

Disgaea: Hour of Darkness Review

No, your weapon isn't an electric guitar. I just thought this picture looked cool.

Platform: PS2 (also available on the PSP as Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness and later this year on the DS as Disgaea DS)

The Quick Version:

The Good:

- The story is anything but typical.

- Almost every character is dynamic and interesting, even unnamed enemies.

- The wide variety of available human and monster classes allows for epic party customization.

- There are talking penguins.

- The penguins have swords, bombs, and skulls that shoot laser beams.

- They also explode when you throw them.

- The game’s demented lifting physics allows for endless tactical possibilities, especially when combined with exploding penguins.

- The geo panel system adds an entire layer of depth to combat,

- The game’s Congress can be bribed (or threatened) to act in your favor.

- The story is divided into chapters, each one of which ends with an anime-style preview where the narrator just makes things up.

- Disgaea starts the trend in many Nippon Icchi titles where characters from previous games make cameos and are possibly integrated into the storyline. Most notably, Prier from La Pucelle Tactics is a hidden playable character here.

The Bad:

- The game throws a lot of concepts at you at once, which can be very overwhelming even with the tutorials.

- Later battles take forever.

- Flonne will piss the ever living hell out of you with her personality.

- Mid-Boss will piss the ever living hell out of you with his voice.

- You get more main characters than you could ever use, so it’s easy to sweep custom characters aside. In addition, they have slower growth than the mains, so they won’t be useful until you’re on your second playthrough or are pursuing endgame content.

- Geo panels make the maps look fugly.

- The Dark Congress seems needlessly antagonistic at times.

- There are multiple endings, but there are very few differences between the important ones. Which ending you get also depends on a questionable criterion: how many allies you kill (among other things).

- The game’s audio is inconsistent later in the game, so dialogue cuts in and out with no pattern.

- Disgaea continues La Pucelle’s unfortunate use of randomly-generated optional dungeons (story-related maps are fixed). Since you are in the Netherworld (aka Dark World) to begin with, you go to the so-called Item World, where you can go through a hundred stages of messy terrain and scattered geo panels that make it look like a giant clown threw up on the map.

The Ugly:

- There’s an item called the “Horse Weiner.” Take that as you will.

- Remember the level 2000 enemy from La Pucelle Tactics? Well, he’s back, but now he gained 2000 more levels and a whole lot of muscle. Even the main character says, “You’ve gotta be kidding me! Level 4000?!” The best part is that once you kill him, he comes back to life as an unexplodable penguin with roughly double his normal stats.

Rating: 4/5 (If aren't familiar with the scale, click here)
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The Long Version:

Background:
Disgaea: Hour of Darkness is yet another turn-based tactical RPG by Nippon Ichi Software and is its flagship title. I’m willing to bet that many of you have seen the ad for Disgaea in certain gaming magazines in which it was described as a laxative. I don’t know who the hell came up with that, but it was certainly entertaining.

Plot Synopsis:
Laharl is a demon prince and the son of the Netherworld’s previous Overlord, King Krichevskoy. After deciding to take a quick nap, he is wakened by his vassal, Etna. It turns out that two years had passed since he fell asleep and in that time, his dad had died after choking on a pretzel. The first thing you see after getting out of Laharl’s coffin/bed are maces, machine guns, and explosives littered around the room, which immediately brings up the question of whether Etna was trying to wake him up or kill him. Regardless, the Netherworld had gone to shit in the last two years with demon lords fighting for supremacy, so it’s up to Laharl to kick all their asses and claim his rightful position as Overlord. This won’t be easy, though, as he has to deal with treacherous vassals, worthless servants, and raising funds through pillage among other things.

I won’t say anything else, but the story only gets more and more bizarre. It doesn’t really stand out, though, as Disgaea is more character-driven than it is plot driven.

Characters of Note:
Laharl - Childish, selfish, heartless, and gluttonous, Laharl is the very picture of a jackass. However, he’s a very fun jackass to play as. Having quite a Napoleon complex, he constantly tries to prove his strength. Unlike other characters of this nature, though, he can actually back up his talk through his humongous sword and his special attacks, which include bombarding an area with dozens of fireballs and summoning a meteor, jumping on top of it, and crashing it into the enemy while laughing maniacally. His weaknesses include sexy bodies and optimistic sayings. He literally takes damage when someone says, “World peace.”

Etna – Laharl may be the strongest demon in his Netherworld, but Etna is the cruelest and most cunning. She is the only one of Laharl’s original vassals who bothers to enter combat for him, but she always has an agenda of her own to the point where her true loyalties are never clear. She has a team of hired muscle in the form of a squad of Prinnies, the aforementioned talking penguins. While they’re lazy and disobedient, her threats of violence are often enough to get them motivated. Etna also writes in a journal under the guise of going to the bathroom and narrates the preview for each chapter in which she makes herself the main character, twisting the story around that assertion to the dismay of other characters.

Flonne – Every angel has to start somewhere, and that’s exactly where Flonne is. Despite being a trainee who can’t even fly, Flonne is charged with the task of assassinating King Krichevskoy. There’s just one problem: she’s two years too late. To top it off, she’s the worst fucking assassin ever. When she first meets Laharl, she spills the beans . . . all of them. Not to fear, though. Seeing how much of an ass Laharl is, she decides to stick around to give him an attitude adjustment . . . or try to, anyway. While tolerable by RPG standards, Flonne is still the most annoying character in the entire game. Before and after battle, she treats you to a speech on the power of love and why you shouldn’t randomly murder things for fun. While this eventually plays into Laharl’s development, I’d have really liked to hear less of her.

Mid-Boss – In the rat race for the Netherworld throne, the demon lord Vyers was in the lead until Laharl returned. After that, though, he became Laharl’s first target and after their meeting, is branded “Mid-Boss” in memory of his fruitiness. He becomes a recurring enemy and lives up to his name, taking a beating every now and then to let you know he’s still alive. The only beef I have with him is his horrendous English voice acting, which sounds like someone has a terrible cold. What amazes me the most is that his VA manages to stick around for future appearances.

The Prinnies – They are the talking, exploding penguins I was talking about. While they usually have little to do with the plot, they’re among the most entertaining characters in Disgaea. Unorganized and lazy, Prinnies do everything from menial labor to hand to hand combat for minimum wage. One of their more notable attacks has them confusing enemies by dancing around them like an idiot.

There are other characters, but I can’t afford to dedicate more space to them. There’s more to a review than just listing characters, after all.

Game Mechanics:
Execute/End Turn – This works almost exactly as it did in La Pucelle Tactics except they finally fixed the special attacks so they also delay until you “execute” or “end turn” as opposed to being uncancelable and instantaneous. In case you aren’t inclined to read my last review, Disgaea has a system where you move your characters and set their actions in advance much like other turn-based tactical RPG’s. The difference is that you can either “execute” to activate all your current actions and continue with your turn or you can “end turn” to both execute and finish your round. Like I said before, it’s a pretty handy system and opens up a lot of tactical possibilities.

The Castle – Laharl’s castle acts as a hub throughout the game. You go through a portal to access all the other stages and every shop is here along with the portal to the Dark Assembly. At least there’s no stupid backtracking.

The Dark Assembly – Everyone loves Democracy, even demons. If you want to raise funds, get better items in the store, make stronger enemies, or unlock new character classes, you have to go through the Dark Assembly. Each time you propose a bill, a randomly-selected group of senators votes to decide whether they’ll accept or boot your ass back into the castle. Worried about falling victim to sectional conflict? Not to worry. You can either bribe senators ahead of time to make them more favorable towards you or simply stick your boot up their asses to force the bill through. Don’t do the latter too often, though. That gets you a bad ending.

Character Creation – In addition to the story characters you have, you can create custom-class characters ranging from warriors to thieves to demonic abominations. Don’t bother using it in depth too early, though. The cost of making a good character is prohibitive and doesn’t pay off until you can power-level.

Reincarnation – Reincarnation brings a character back to level 1, but retains allows them to retain a significant portion of their abilities and stats. I would recommend using this on Laharl at least once after he hits level 1000. Don’t bother with this until you can power-level.

Base Panel – In every stage, this is your starting square from which you unleash your hellspawn. Barring the ten unit limit, any character can come out at any time and act immediately. They can also retreat into your base panel if they haven’t acted on that turn, where enemies can’t reach them.

Lifting and Throwing – That’s right. There is an entire set of commands dedicated to grabbing things and chucking them. Their basic effects are self-explanatory, but their applications are numerous. When you lift something, it becomes immobilized (ally or enemy) and can’t act. However, if an enemy’s turn comes up while you’re holding them, you lose HP proportional to their level. Thus, you usually want to ditch them one way or another. Unfortunately, you can’t throw enemies off a stage. However, you can either throw them to an isolated area, at another ally or enemy, or in your base panel. Isolated areas normally only occur in the Item World and are platforms that can only be reached by throwing units. With the exception of a few attack abilities used in the correct situation, there is no way to enter or leave these platforms without lifting and throwing. When you throw someone at an ally with whose hands are free, they catch it and can continue throwing, thus transporting enemies to remote areas, moving injured allies back into safe territory, or moving assault units immense distances in a single turn. When you throw an enemy at another enemy, they fuse and combine their levels. Yeah . . . don’t do that. The base panel is the most interesting place to throw an enemy. If the target is a monster, your allies inside the panel fight it and if they win, capture it. If they lose or the enemy is a human, however, the base panel explodes and spits out the pissed-off enemy, thus leaving you with no way to retreat or get reinforcements.

There are two special applications of lifting and throwing that I would like to note. First comes tower lifting. You can place numerous characters in a row and have them all lift each other (defying the laws of physics in the process) in order to make a huge tower of up to ten characters. Utilizing this, you can traverse vast expanses in a single turn and usually send at least one character to the other side of the map. Unfortunately, you can’t use your allies as weapons, a problem that Phantom Brave and Disgaea 2 deal with later-on. The second special application involves Prinnies. Yes, those lovable penguins. Don’t you just want to pick up one of those cute buggers and throw ‘em? If you do, expect a surprise in the form of them fucking exploding. It doesn’t matter if they’re allies, enemies, or whether someone is at the landing zone to catch them. They go boom the second they hit something. The best part is that if there are any other Prinnies nearby, they also explode and create a massive chain reaction.

Geo Symbols – Occasionally, you will see colored squares in a given map. When placed on a colored square, these bestow effects on every other square of that color. Effects can range from “heal 20%” to “no entry” to “invincibility”. While this spices things up a bit, you might not want to deal with a map that has "100% Damage" on every square. Luckily for you, all geo symbols (aside from the invincibility one) can be destroyed or lifted (ignoring the “no lifting” one, of course).

On an unrelated note, the colored squares (aka Geo Panels) make maps look like a unicorn took a dookie on your screen. It’s not a pretty sight.

Item World – While I consider this to be a hellish place that I would rather not enter, the Item World isn’t a single location so much as it is you entering an item of your choosing and battling it out on randomly-generated stages. Each stage has an exit portal that you can enter if you want to avoid fighting and just move to the next stage. Every ten stages, you can fight an item boss to increase the item’s stats and you are given the option to leave the item. The latter can also be done with a specific item. While I suppose the item world extends replayability, I found the random stages difficult to navigate and rather tedious.

Cameos:
Prier from La Pucelle Tactics and Marjoly from Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure are both available as hidden characters. You’re mistaken if you think you’ll be purifying demons like in La Pucelle, though. Drawing from one of that game’s secret endings, Prier appears as the Overlord of an alternate Netherworld and is a demon through and through.

I suppose you can count Baal, the level 2000 enemy from La Pucelle Tactics, as a cameo character.

Rating:
If nothing else, Disgaea is a tactically deep game. However, it can be too deep for its own good. Without a guide of some sort, it’s impossible to properly use the character creation or reincarnation options and only hours of grueling battles can accustom someone to the Item World. Also, the wealth of tactical possibilities extends to your enemies, leading to turns that can take upwards of five consecutive minutes given the sheer number of foes you have to deal with later-on.

While this would normally earn the game a 3/5, the sheer personality that the title has and the strength of its main characters push it above the threshold into the 4/5 range. All Disgaea would have had to do was streamline its mechanics and make the Item World friendlier to use and it would have earned a much more solid 4. While Disgaea 2 does this to an extent, it does so at the expense of its characters. No Nippon Icchi game would be able to provide such as dynamic a cast as Disgaea: Hour of Darkness until Soul Nomad & the World Eaters.

La Pucelle Tactics Review

Platform: PS2

The Quick Version

The Good:

- There are separate “Begin Battle” and “End Turn” commands, which give you a lot a flexibility and let you undo most mistakes.

- Travel between areas is instantaneous, so backtracking isn’t as tedious.

- Travel between conquered areas of a dungeon is also instantaneous.

- The story, while somewhat cliché, still manages to throw a twist or two that you won’t be expecting.

- The main character isn’t the useless piece of shit you usually have to deal with in JRPGs.

- Monsters are quirky and quite entertaining.

The Bad:

- With two or three exceptions, your party will become very useless in short order.

- Special attacks (spells and whatnot) activate instantly, so once you use one, you can’t undo it.

- You can’t turn off attack animations, so in later dungeons, expect to be waiting a long, long time.

- The story in general is very uninteresting.

- Almost everyone except the main character is worthless or a total asshole.

- The “arrange” function only serves to make your inventory even more disorganized. Also, there’s no “arrange manually” option.

- There are only three ways to organize your party: humans first, monsters first, and by level.

- The Dark World dungeons start the unholy tradition of randomly generated optional maps (that are invariably hideous) that would plague future Nippon Ichi titles.

The Ugly:

- While technically taking place over three different continents, everything in the game feels like it’s within walking distance of your house.

- The final area of the game has a teleporter maze. Good fucking luck.

- The main game can be finished before you reach level 50, but the strongest enemy in the game is level 2000 (that’s not a typo).

Rating: 2/5

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The Long Version

Background:

La Pucelle Tactics is a tactical turn-based RPG made by Nippon Ichi Software, which is better known for the Disgaea series. I like to think of La Pucelle as the proto-Disgaea, since many of the concepts present here reappear other Nippon Ichi games (and also because I’ve never been able to find Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure, which came even before La Pucelle). More on that later. Many of you will recognize this as “that game”. Yes, that game you always see in the PS2 section of your local Gamestop and briefly consider buying before ignoring it in favor of something that doesn’t have “tactics” in the title. If this applies to you, then you have probably made a wise decision.

Plot Synopsis:

Prier is a sister in the Church of the Holy Maiden who also works as a demon hunter who is 16 years old (though her size in relation to other characters gives me the impression that 12 would be more accurate). In the world’s mythos, the fallen angel Calamity has a servant known as the Dark Prince who occasionally pops up to smack humanity around a bit. There’s also the Maiden of Light, who gives the asshole a kick in the nuts and tells him to make his own dinner. Now, when you picture someone called the Maiden of Light, do you think of a violent, loud ogre of a woman who beats the crap out of her brother and primarily attacks by ballshotting people or beating them to death with a blunt object? Despite wanting to become the game’s equivalent of Jesus, that’s exactly what Prier is. The first half of the game consists of lending a hand to the helpless locals and beating up their tormentors. For instance, you have to kill one guy who is convinced that ripping out people’s hearts Temple of Doom style will bring his wife back to life. There’s also another guy who is duped into buying a hair growth spray that creates furball monsters. The second half of the game is serious business, and you get to act more like a real adventuring party than the town’s militia. I’ll leave it at that for fear of spoiling the few twists that the game has.

With the exception of those twists, which I can count on one hand, the story is horribly uninteresting. It’s not entirely predictable, but it fails to draw you in.

Characters of Note:

Culotte – He’s the little brother character who is just as useless in combat as he is in the story. The only interesting thing about him is that his standard attack has him throwing school supplies while his ultimate attack involves a rocket, a stuffed cat, and said cat’s anus. Funny, right? The funny part is that I’m not kidding.

Alouette – She is Prier’s superior and a total bigot. She also has amnesia, which automatically makes her a shitty character. Later, she turns from a stupid crusader character into a stupid Jesus character who can do “miracles” and kill herself for the plot’s sake.

Croix – Yet another character with amnesia. Unlike Alouette, however, he isn’t a bigot. Instead, he’s a pedophile and Prier’s love interest. Considering how both of the people whom he’s romantically involved with during the game are half his size and look half his age, I can’t come to any other conclusion. He’s pretty handy in combat, having a gun and all. It’s too bad you can only use him for half the game.

Éclair – She is one of the many things in this game named after food items in addition to being a princess and wielding a lance twice her size. She is completely worthless until you find out she has a multiple personality disorder and unlock Dark Éclair, who has a beam lance. The game calls it an “aura lance,” but fuck that. It looks like it came out of Gundam. She would be totally awesome if she didn’t look like a ten year old running around in a bondage outfit.

Homard – He’s an air pirate. Yarr. He captains a giant blimp with a crew of cute little cat people and his butterfly mutant girlfriend thing who’s about as big as a water bottle. He also falls in love with Éclair, which leads me to believe he isn’t an actual sky pirate so much as he is a child molester.

Game Mechanics:

The combat in La Pucelle is both a blessing and a horrid curse. As I said earlier, it is a tactical, turn-based RPG. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, then just think of Napoleonic battles where people stand next to each other and take turns shooting. In La Pucelle’s case, all your characters start each battle inside your Base Panel, from which you deploy them to wage war with baddies. After you’re done moving your guys around and selecting targets, you can either press “End Turn” or “Begin Battle”. The latter executes all of your currently set actions, while allowing you to act with anyone you haven’t moved yet. Thus, if you fuck up and order your caster to whack the nasty grizzly bear, you can either cancel the action before doing anything else or if you “Begin Battle” before you notice, you can cover him with stronger units. The exceptions to this are special abilities and spells, which activate immediately. Thus, if you accidentally get your allies caught up in an area effect attack, you can’t cancel it. I found this extremely annoying.

An unfortunate flaw in the game is the inability to skip combat animations. That minute-long sequence of the giant cat with a rocket in its butt crash landing may be funny the first five times, but you won’t be pleased when your enemies’ turn takes three whole minutes.

You can also convert monsters to join your cause by purifying them. I’m not quite sure how it works. Perhaps your characters tie the monster in question to a chair and flog them until they submit. Unless you’re particularly fond of grinding out levels, you won’t be using monsters too often.

There are a few other concepts like weapon leveling, augmented stat growth, and dark portals, but I found none of them to be particularly important. I’ll spare you the reading.

Rating:

La Pucelle Tactics is an amusing little game, but it fails to impress on nearly every level. Long combat animations quickly bog down the battle system, the story is about as interesting as anything on G4 TV, the inventory and party menus are just for show, and there is no sense of scale whatsoever (characters of similar ages vary wildly in size and the world feels incredibly small). La Pucelle has the basis for a good game, but fails to utilize any of its potential by settling for a generic story and set of characters instead. While its debilitating lack of polish would be fixed in its spiritual successor, Disgaea, La Pucelle will have to settle for a 2/5.