For the longest time I won­dered about why I read Zero no Tsukaima, which might be bet­ter than its anime adap­ta­tion but is still pretty sub­par in just about every aspect. Then I remem­bered some­thing a friend said: “does it mat­ter whether or not I’m actu­ally play­ing a game as long as I feel like I am?”

From last season’s Baka to Test to Shokanju to this season’s Angel Beats, the game inspired premises are becom­ing more and more obvi­ous. Is this just a coin­ci­dence? Does the ‘game-like’ story/setting have an appeal of its own? After all, the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion of anime-fans are also those who grew up play­ing video games, espe­cially the styl­is­tic clas­sic adventure-party RPGs that range from table­top D&D (Stan­dard RPG Sys­tem for Japan­ese) to Final Fan­tasy. So I’d say there’s some­thing spe­cial in mak­ing the viewer feel like they’re immersed in a well-paced game, espe­cially when it not only takes less time, but also saves you from the bore­dom of grind­ing and side-questing.

But what makes a story ‘game-like’? Is it just the con­cep­tual sim­i­lar­i­ties like NPCs, recov­ery exams points, and lev­el­ing up? Well, it’s all that and much, much more. The game-like story shares a great deal with both the clas­sic adven­ture and shounen gen­res, but to truly give the excite­ment of play­ing a RPG your­self, there’s a cou­ple of bases you to cover and bal­ance. Read the rest of this entry »

My first impres­sion was that this game is just out­right ridicu­lous: premise of steam-powered trans­form­ing mechs launch­ing from a secret base beneath a Broad­way the­ater, stereo­typ­i­cal char­ac­ters as flat as their card­board cutout pre­sen­ta­tion, plenty of super-shounen tropes in the story… It’s even got wee­aboo cul­ture all over — espe­cially when the open­ing scenes involve a half-Japanese half-Texan cow­boy samu­rai fea­tured as the main hero­ine… Wat? （￣～￣;）

But you know, I love not grind­ing, or wor­ry­ing about expe­ri­ence dis­tri­b­u­tion, or max­i­miz­ing expe­ri­ence gain from every bat­tle. Because in Sakura Wars V, you level up by talk­ing and forg­ing inter-party bonds, visual novel style; kind of like Per­sona social links, except bet­ter since it actu­ally lev­els you up. So take all of that frus­tra­tion out and add some fresh inven­tive­ness to each bat­tle (Valkyria Chron­i­cles style, this is by the same dev team) and you have some real Tac­ti­cal RPG gam­ing, like hop­ping between sky­scraper roofs destroy­ing artillery or an aer­ial bat­tles in the New York City sub­way — yes really.

Read the rest of this entry »

Netto first got me think­ing when he reported the eroge indus­try to be in a state of peril, but I’ve been put­ing it off until this past week­end, when I (finally) fin­ished Per­sona 4 and got started on my UK ver­sion of Agarest Wars. As one might guess, those two games are very much on the topic here.

Tears to Tiara Visual Novel on the PS3 (those graph­ics aren’t bad at all)

The bound­aries between JRPGs and Visual Nov­els has always been blurred. After all, IGN recently iden­ti­fied the JRPG “talk­ing card­board cutout” tra­di­tion in their Top 10 Ways to Fix JRPGs, and the most rec­og­niz­able image of Visual Nov­els has got to be that win­dowed screen­shot of bishoujo char­ac­ter CGs atop a class­room back­ground with dia­logue box beneath it. Not to men­tion, there are Vis­nov pro­duc­ers like Alice-soft (Rance) and that branch of Leaf/Aquaplus (Tears to Tiara, Utaware­ru­mono) who seems to spe­cial­ize in import­ing RPG ele­ments into their Vis­novs. But com­bin­ing JRPG and Vis­nov ele­ments goes far deeper than just the graph­ics corner-cutting of pre­sen­ta­tion or the addi­tion of a basic com­bat system.

Read the rest of this entry »

Since the start of the fall school semes­ter, my friends and I have made Tales of Ves­pe­ria as our group gam­ing project of the sea­son, played weekly Fri­day with some spe­cial event excep­tions. We finally beat it last night, as part of our anime club’s finale week­end. This game has def­i­nitely made my top favorites list (not to men­tion Rita, dear Rita), for my expe­ri­ences in it have been absolutely brilliant.

Score: 9/10

Pros (isn’t this like… almost every­thing?):

• Excel­lent cast of char­ac­ters — stereo­typ­i­cal to start, but charm­ing and well-developed
• Intrigu­ing and well-paced plot­line — a fetch quest evolves into a leg­end, full of rev­e­la­tions and grip­ping climaxes
• Smooth and excit­ing bat­tle sys­tem — sim­ple, easy to learn, yet with great cus­tomiza­tion and team-coordination ben­e­fits for the skilled player.
• Great visual pre­sen­ta­tion — Anime-style graph­ics that we know and love in its best.
• Good world con­cepts — lack­ing the usual duo-world, but I was just as amazed when the skies…

Cons (some to fol­low):

Read the rest of this entry »