It’s been a little over a year and a half since the release of the original Dissidia Final Fantasy, but Square-Enix intends to show that its 20th anniversary idea is more than just a one-hit wonder. With the release of the awkwardly named (in true SE/Nomura fashion) Dissidia 012[duodecim] Final Fantasy comes many improvements on the original with more characters added to the roster, new multiplayer modes and gameplay enhancements to both the combat system and single player story. But have these changes truly breathed new life into the series, or has this Dissidia successor left us with an odd feeling of deja vu?

Duodecim (meaning 12 in Latin) is a reference to the point in the time line in which the game takes place. A prequel to the events of the original Dissidia, Duodecim covers the events of the “12th cycle” in the war between Cosmos and Chaos, the ever classic battle between light and dark. If you’re played through the story of its predecessor, there isn’t much that will surprise you about this earlier recount of the war. Granted, there is perhaps some intrigue in finding out why certain characters seem to be playing for the other team (ex. Cloud, Terra) when we know them to have switched sides before the beginning of the 13th cycle, but other than the occasional dipping into volatile shades of grey at certain chapters, Square-Enix‘s narrative generally remains to be a black and white affair.

While the familiar board game environment returns in Duodecim, the biggest change to the single player campaign is the addition of instanced overworlds, which allows players to freely roam from each objective. Scattered around each overworld are orbs of light which the player can then destroy and collect. Every four that are collected are then transformed into ‘skills’ which provide useful benefits for the players as they play through the game. These ‘skills’ are not usable in actual battles, but serve as helpful tools in maximizing point gains and item rewards when the player is making his/her way on the board. The overworld feature is a welcomed change to what was a dull, inanimate experience in the previous title, but with very little function other than to travel from point A to B whilst collecting shiny bright objects, the entire affair unfortunately still feels rather tedious and virtually inconsequential to the overall task.

Duodecim‘s combat system retains all of its core features of the original and will be immediately accessible to fans. Bravery and HP attacks and their purpose remains unchanged. EX bells, Dodge, Dash and Block all return in familiar form. What’s new to Duodecim are the Assist characters, and the choice between fighting battles in “Action-style” or “RPG” mode. During battles, secondary characters can be chosen, and called in by the player to provide support and/or assistance in dishing out damage. These ‘Assists’ can only be summoned when the appropriate amount of meter has been filled, which the player does by dealing Bravery damage. Assist characters can effectively do three things: deal bravery damage, deal HP damage, and take damage in place of the player. Each ability is dependent on how much of your Assist meter is filled. Truly, having an Assist character take a beating for you is certainly a life-saver when you know your opponent is about to deal a fatal blow to your health bar.

Players can choose to fight battles in one of two modes: “Action-style” and “RPG” mode. “Action-style” is your classic Dissidia style. Each move is inputted by the player, allowing them the highest degree of control in both which moves they wish to use and precisely when. In contrast, “RPG” mode is much more streamlined. During fights, players toggle between Move, Fight, Finisher, or Defend. Each command is fairly intuitive, with ‘Move’ automatically pursuing EX bells when present and ‘Defend’ being usually on point with Dodges. ‘Fight’ deals primarily with Bravery attacks while ‘Finisher’ is for your HP attacks. As with streamlined systems, you cannot choose which Bravery or HP attack your character will use when in ‘Fight’ or ‘Finisher’ mode, but the AI does tend to make fairly good decisions in regards to this. To be quite honest, I rather like RPG mode. Of course, during heated battles I will almost always go with Action-style over RPG mode, but in a game where grinding battles over and over again to level up characters is a die-hard necessity, “RPG” mode definitely feels like a well-rewarded auto-pilot that makes the mundane activity a lot easier to endure.

Online play is much more welcoming this time around with the ability to create lobbies, participate in group battles (team battles), as well as spectate other fights. Duodecim does not support its own online network so players again have to resort to Ad-Hoc on their PS3s if they decide to want to take the fight to the global stage. I haven’t delved too deep in this particular part of the game, but from sifting through menus, the online affair does feel like an actual part of the game this time around. Replay mode also returns, along with the store catalog for purchasing alternate costumes and characters for versus mode.

The Final Word
As a whole, Dissidia 012[duodecim] Final Fantasy is a great game, if not feeling more like an upgrade than a stand-alone title. While it boasts an entirely new story entry in the series’ long and winding war, and a hefty addition of characters to the roster, its combat-oriented focus places all of our attention on how it plays rather than what it tells. While Assist characters do add a wider variety of options in match-ups, and the addition of new fan favourites caters to the series’ self-defining fan service, the familiar pacing, graphical style, and untouched core mechanics don’t allow the game to significantly transcend above its predecessor. If you’re a fan of Dissidia, or just love Final Fantasy, Duodecim is a title worth adding to your collection.

- MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 — Good

Knights in the Nightmare is a fairly new game for the PSP available on PlayStation Store, and it comes with a game called Yggdra Union. Now, I haven’t played Yggdra Union, nor is this review about it, but it was requested that we mention it.

In Knights, you control the Wisp, which is the soul of a long-dead king known for ferociousness in battle. Each stage involves setting up to four weapons, setting your knights, and ordering your knights to attack, both with and without the set weapons (or key items, which are one-shot items used to recruit new knights), in order to slay enemies. However, there’s a little more to this game than just slaying enemies. There is a board for each stage called the Enemy Matrix, and you have to select which enemies appear in each turn of combat. You need to slay enemies whose spots on the Matrix go four in a row in order to clear the stage. Now, while I’ve only played a few stages, I can already tell that the gameplay doesn’t change much. If anything, the boss battles let you skip the slots, because you need only slay the boss.

And that brings me to turns. You get a minute of real time for every turn, but it’s only used up when you’re using the Wisp to activate a knight’s attack, charging that attack, and unleashing it. In other words, a single stage can literally last months… If you do nothing. I wouldn’t advise doing nothing, however, because the other way to lose time is if the Wisp is hit by enemy attacks, which could be anything from a few leaves dropping down one half of the screen to a spider web taking hold of a corner of the screen and spreading. Some of these attacks you can interrupt with the Wisp, however.

There are elemental weaknesses and resistances in this game, possessed by both weapons and enemies. You basically have a few pairs of elements that oppose one another, similar to the four elements in Final Fantasy X (fire, water, ice, and lightning).

As for the story, the heroine, referred to as the armored maiden, awakens you, the Wisp, from your long confinement. You then need to fight your way through the gauntlet of stages, each of which is preceded by a story scene. Basically, there’s some dark evil threatening the world, turning people into souls (like your knights), and thus a soul must be awakened to combat the darkness. The armored maiden, therefore, breaks into the castle of her own kingdom and releases you. The first few stages give away this feel of mystery, because you don’t know who your enemy really is.

The graphics of the game are very similar to the likes of Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift for the DS, except for certain scenes, which are much more like Japanese anime. When you’re playing the game, you might get the idea that the armored maiden is a very cold woman, but if you leave the game idle instead of loading your save file on the title screen, it shows you a beautiful anime-style opening movie that shows the armored maiden as much more feminine. The game even features a little voice acting.

The Final Word
It is a fun game, and I’d love to spend more time playing it, but I honestly prefer Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts more. That’s probably just my personal bias, though. This game is worth most of the $32.08 (including tax) you’d have to pay for it, but you may want to try out Yggdra Union, and see if you’d rather have both or just one game.

- MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good

Birth by Sleep has been a long time coming. It was first teased way back when Kingdom Hearts 2: Final Mix + was released in Japan and was officially announced soon after as a set of spin off’s to help expand the ever growing Kingdom Hearts universe. Unfortunately since the release of Kingdom Hearts 2 the franchise hasn’t exactly be on top form. We are a remake of the Gameboy’s Chain of Memories and the disappointing 358/2 days on the DS. Does Birth by Sleep bring back that spark of the original or does it put us all to sleep?

The plot is set 10 years before the events of the first game and revolves around 3 young keyblade wielders Terra, Ventus and Aqua. A new threat has emerged called ‘The Unversed’ along with a mysterious Masked Boy and our 3 heroes will have to find the source of the issue before it become a bigger problem. The plot is pretty standard for the series, but really hooks us in are the connections between our 3 protagonist’s and the events of Kingdom Hearts. It’s a nice bridge that helps solve unanswered questions that fans have been asking for. The idea works much the same as previous titles, you visit a number of Disney inspired worlds all of which have their own little sub-plots. The main hook this time is that you play the game under 3 different perspectives. At the start of the game you pick which one you want to follow. While every character visits all the same worlds and there is some back tracking to be had, each campaign plays out very differently. Most worlds have certain areas that only specific characters can enter. In Dwarf’s Woodlands for example Terra is limited to the castle and the surrounding areas while Ventus can only enter the woodlands and the nearby diamond caves. Each character has their own individual plot and while there are points the 3 stories merge, the 3 plots are varied enough that each campaign avoids feeling repetitive. Giving you more incentive to come back and complete the game as another character which helps you understand the overall plot.

The worlds in Kingdom Hearts 2 lacked the charm of the original and none of them had any real relevance to the plot. Making the game’s pacing all over the place and didn’t give you the feeling like everything is connected. Thankfully this isn’t the case in Birth by Sleep, the worlds have more of a significance to the overarching plot and that charm is back. This gave me a real feeling of immersion in the world with a nice combination of Disney stables and plot devices that would only make sense in Kingdom Hearts. Oddly enough the Square-Enix characters have had a major push back to only 1, Zack. Quite surprising considering how Final Fantasy heavy Kingdom Hearts 2 was.

Combat has seen an improvement incorporating the standard battle system with some influences from Crisis Core. Birth by Sleep using a deck based system, don’t worry it’s not card based like Chain of memories. Other than the attack button you can add a variety of magic and melee based moves which can be used by pressing triangle, instead of losing MP the moves will recharge. While they are equipped they will level up. Once levelled up the ability attached to will become permanent and will allow you to combine it with another levelled up move. This is where the game shines, when you combine moves you are given the option to add a crystal which will add an ablilty to it, what the ability will be depends on the moves being combined and what crystal you use. Abilities can’t be learnt by levelling up, only by certain points in the game and combining items can you earn things such as HP Boost, Last Chance or Treasure Magnet. This adds a great level of customisation making each character individual while also adds one of the most RPG heavy elements the series has seen which is a nice breath of fresh air.

Your character’s command style changes dynamically based on what commands you have used. If you used the fire commands you will change activate Firestorm which will add a fire element to your attacks and will end with a powerful finisher. These styles help make combat varied, give you the incentive to do more than just use attack, help you find your perfect deck and ultimately total destroy your enemies. In replace of summons due to hardware limitations we have D-links, you connect to change your command style allowing you to use their set skills and unique finisher, they also work as a nice health boost if a situation become dire. The more you use them you will unlock special perks when using that D-link, using Ventus’ D-link for example will temporarily gain the Haste and auto-counter skills.

While the 3 protagonists play some what similarly, each one has their own characteristics. Terra is a brawler who has powerful melee attacks but isn’t very fast, Ventus plays more like Sora and strikes fast and is very nimble and Aqua is very magic based which leads to bigger and more impressive array of magic commands later down the line. Guarding (or in Aqua’s case reflect) has also become a set skill rather than an optional extra. Guarding plays a much bigger role this time around become a vital tool in later boss battles. Speaking of boss battles they are easily Birth by Sleeps strongest feature. Most bosses require using tactics this time around, rarely can you just run in and tap X and expect to win. You will have to start predicting the bosses moves and block and attack accordingly. Though later on bosses can become cheap by being able to cancel all your attacks as they go to use one of their moves, but for the most part it’s a great step up from previous titles keeping that flashiness without losing the substance. Difficulty has also seen a bump up. Square Enix made sure that the western version will be harder overall along with a new difficultly mode Critical. I played all characters on Proud Mode and while I didn’t find it too challenging (save a few boss fights) I wasn’t finding myself breezing through the game, around the same difficulty as the first game.

Birth by Sleep really pushes the PSP to the limits and it shows. Loading times can be quite long, opening the menu takes longer than it should and using D-links, command styles and some spells can have long charging times making the action stop while the attack is preparing itself which takes away from the flow of the battle. This can be avoid with an optional install but for those with smaller memory sticks might be reluctant to part with almost half a GB. The worlds themselves are full of colour and look the part. Though they all feel empty and lifeless, partly to do with the fact you only ever see a handful of NPC’s in a world and some environments just don’t have much going on.

There are also a number of minigames. These include Rumble Racing, a music rhythm game involving ice cream, Fruit Scatter (think volleyball but with fruit) and the surprisingly deep Command Board a monopoly like minigame. All of which make nice distractions from the main quest with the Command Board being the meatiest of the lot. There is also an online component called in the ‘Mirage Arena’ you can take part in multiplayer races, arena battles and versus battles. I have unfortunately not had the opportunity to play with others, but they are nice additions to have. Along with trying to complete the Trinity report there are a lot to do once you have completed the main quest, this includes 2 optional bosses and to Kingdom Hearts tradition they almost require you to be a high level in order to beat them. Each campaign lasts around 10 to 15 hours each plus the time spent doing side quests you have yourself a long game especially for a portable title.

Birth by Sleep was a pleasant surprise, a return to form for the Kingdom Hearts series. It’s brought back what I love about the series while also bringing much needed improvements. It’s gone beyond what we expected from the Kingdom Hearts spin-off. It has it’s issues and it might not be for everyone, But if you have a PSP you might want to check it out.

The Final Word
Birth by Sleep is far from perfect but it brings the best the series has the offer and compacts it into a highly enjoyable portable format.

- MonsterVine Rating: 4/5 – Good

]]> http://monstervine.com/2010/10/kingdom-hearts-birth-by-sleep-review/feed/ 1 http://monstervine.com/2010/07/persona-3-portable-review/ http://monstervine.com/2010/07/persona-3-portable-review/#comments Tue, 27 Jul 2010 08:33:48 +0000 Diego Escala http://monstervine.com/?p=13380 Persona 3 Portable
Developer: Atlus
Price: $40.00
Platform: PSP

Persona 3 Portable is what happens when Persona 3 and Persona 3 FES decide to fuse together in one tiny handheld system. It basically contains all the improvements from FES and has a new female protagonist you can play as that adds new story options to the social links. My gut tells me to recommend this game to anyone with a PSP but I’m going to be honest and tell you this will be hit or miss with many people. You’ll either love wandering around in the Tartarus grinding up your party and building your social links or you’re going to hate how tedious it can all feel.

When you start the game you’re given the choice between a male or female protagonist. After you make that arduous choice(I’m just kidding, I know you all picked the girl) you’ll be heading to Japan as a transfer student to begin studying for exams, making friends, going on dates, and building up social links for the next 30 hours. Oh yea and there’s a turn-based RPG thrown in there if you really wanted to know. Each night at midnight the Dark Hour occurs. This happens every night for an hour and everybody in the city stays asleep within coffins during this time, but you and a select few have the rare ability to stay awake during the Dark Hour. This is when the school turns into the Tartarus and where you’ll spend your entire hour fighting Shadows if you choose. There are multiple levels in the Tartarus with a boss to fight at every few floors or so. You’ll take your party of 4 (including yourself) into this maze to level up and climb higher, and there to aid you are your Personas. These are manifestations of each member’s personality and are summoned by blowing your brains out. Each party member has their own specific Persona that doesn’t change, but this is an RPG so you are the unique one in a million who can use any Persona you want. You can collect multiple Persona and switch them on the fly but the real goal is to fuse multiple Persona together to form an even stronger one. One thing I feel I should mention is that you can acquire new equipment such as armor/weapons, but what I want to mention is that there’s quite bit of different kinds of equipment to collect and your characters change appearance depending on what’s equipped which is nice to see.Each battle is turn based and the graphics aren’t the greatest thing out there but they do have a distinct visual style that helps give P3P it’s charm. An improvement over the previous PS2 entires to the series is the ability to control your party members. Now you can decide whom you want to get healed or whether you want a specific ability used or not. There are also 2 new difficulty levels included for newcomers and veterans to the series.

Remember that awesome stuff I mentioned about building social links and studying for class? Yea forget the silly gameplay lets go talk about the life-sim part of the game. During the day you’ll spend your time going to class, hanging out with friends, and participating in clubs. You have 3 stats that will determine how the characters speak to you: Academics, Charm, & Courage. You’ll start the morning out in class for a moment but after that the game basically allows you to choose what you want to do with the rest of your day. Here is where you’ll decide whether you’ll build up your stats or work on your social links. Will you spend the day studying to raise your academics or possibly go to the karaoke to work on your charm? Social Links are the relationships you build with characters you meet in the game. Working on your social links works out for you in the end because they can help give you an XP boost with Personas of a certain type. Soon you’ll be trying to balance who you hang out with and when clubs are having meetings. I’m a complete sucker for games where you build relationships with your party members so I was instantly drawn into P3P. Eventually I was struggling whether to hang out with one of the many friends, go to the clubs, or work on my stats. I just didn’t have the heart to turn down most people. Eventually I just said ‘fuck you all I’m going to spend the night at karaoke’.

The anime cutscenes have been removed in favor of images of the character speaking with voice overs. The navigation has also been changed from being able to control the protagonist during the daytime segment to instead being more of a menu. You control a small circle and move that to where you want to go or talk with. I never played the first P3 for very long so I’m indifferent to these changes. I personally enjoy the menu-style movement since it gets me where I want to go quickly. You also have the ability to install data onto your PSP to shorten loading times.

The Final Word
If you’ve played any of the Persona games before you don’t need to read this to know that this is a great game. The addition of a female protagonist that adds new story elements, Maniac difficulty for veterans, and the ability to control your party members make this something players of the original game have to at the least check out. Newcomers to the series might be thrown a little off by the management of the life-sim elements and the grind in the Tartarus but if you enjoy RPG games then definitely give Persona a try.

- MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good

]]> http://monstervine.com/2010/07/persona-3-portable-review/feed/ 0 http://monstervine.com/2010/04/kenka-bancho-badass-rumble-review/ http://monstervine.com/2010/04/kenka-bancho-badass-rumble-review/#comments Thu, 01 Apr 2010 20:42:09 +0000 Diego Escala http://monstervine.com/?p=12466 Kenka Bancho: Badass Rumble
Developer: Spike
Price: $29.99
Platform: PSP

In Badass Rumble you take the role of a tough-guy high school student who goes on a week-long trip to Kyoto. Instead of following the rules he decides that he wants to pick a fight with every bancho in the city to become the #1 bancho. A bancho is a badass guy so you better be feeling pretty badass if you want to take down all 47 banchos in a week. The game is obviously focused on combat and re-playability for collectibles since the ‘story’ can be missed completely by just not going where they are located.

That’s when the main overarching gameplay mechanic shows itself. In BR(Badass Rumble) you have a week to do anything you want to do. Each day is split into three segments: the morning, afternoon, and for only an hour the evening. During this time you can go pick fights with thugs, find banchos, or go complete any small story quests. Story quests and banchos can be found by locating a person standing around a glowing ring and you merely have to walk up to them to activate it. As I stated previously you can choose to just not do lots of the story quests in exchange for more free-time to do whatever else you want since those quests usually take up a bit of what little time you have. Banchos are located by fighting other school kids and picking up their itineraries. Any new ones you acquire are added to your map and show the location, time, and day the bancho from that school will be in the city for you to find him/her. After you defeat a bancho your map will update itself showing that you conquered that bancho and as a plus if that bancho had defeated any others you automatically conquer their areas too. Oh yea and you can call certain npc characters to possibly meet up with but those moments are largely forgettable and only serve to fill out your journal.

It’s a shame that a game with such a quirky attitude and fantastic customization has one major flaw and it happens to be it’s combat. The controls take some getting used to and everything you do just feels so stiff and slow. Before I get into the combat itself let me take the time to explain how you actually initiate the combat with this handy guide:

Step 1: Find a Bancho
Step 2: Shoot him with your laser eyes
Step 3: Insult his mother
Step 4: Insert your fist in his face

I am not shitting you at all. You literally have to shoot enemies in the face with your ‘Menchi Beam’ and then the game shows you an insult you have to memorize. Once the insult goes away several words will appear on-screen and you have to match up the correct words to make the insult and if you pull it off correctly you’ll get to hit them first. Fail and you opponent shall ridicule your feeble attempt at mockery and proceed to knock you on your ass. You’d think this would get old(and it does) but once you get closer to the end the mini-game gets much more difficult. There are also hidden insults you can string together if you have the balls to risk it.

Now the combat is your basic brawler with light/heavy attacks and a grapple move. Locking onto an enemy becomes a necessity since you’ll start a combo and end up hitting air. Brawling eventually reverts to each fight reduced to constantly knocking an enemy to the ground to pin him there and kicking him while he’s down. There are dozens of different attacks you can assign to your 3-hit combo, grapple, dash, and meditate pose for you character but none of them feel any different and you’ll basically just end up picking whichever one has the most stars or looks the coolest. On the upside you can acquire 47 Local specialties from the main banchos you fight in the game. Each one does something explosively humorous(one involves you putting an enemy on your lap and giving them a good spanking before sending them exploding from your lap) and you’ll definitely want to collect them all.

This game is going to drive anyone OCD about collecting everything nuts. There are about a dozen or so weapons to collect, tons of clothing to acquire, a unique special ability from each of the 47 banchos, and journal entries to complete. You are NOT going to get all of this in one playthrough so get prepared to play through the game at least 3 times. A neat little feature is the ability to take pictures during cutscenes so you can send your friends the picture of your character in a banana suit giving the latest bancho a good spanking. Once you beat the game once you unlock Night Out Mode where you can take your character outside the hotel at night to fight some pretty tough banchos for some Bancho Souls that boost your character stats.

The Final Word
Badass Rumble is not going to be the game everybody likes. You’re either going to hate it for it’s weak combat and forgettable environments or you’re going to love it for all the weapons, clothing, special abilities, and basically limitless replay value you’re going to get from it. I loved the game for it’s quirky nature and the amount of customization but I couldn’t forgive it for having a clunky combat system and a city that felt dead.

- MonsterVine Rating: Average

]]> http://monstervine.com/2010/04/kenka-bancho-badass-rumble-review/feed/ 0 http://monstervine.com/2009/09/dissidia-final-fantasy-review/ http://monstervine.com/2009/09/dissidia-final-fantasy-review/#comments Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:45:57 +0000 Crepusculum http://monstervine.com/?p=11209

The goddess of harmony, Cosmos, and the god of discord, Chaos, intertwine in an eternal conflict. Chaos now has the upper hand, and it’s up to you to save the world, or land the final blow.

This is easily classified as a fighting game, and there’s a lot more to it than what you see at the first glance. At first, you can only play as the main heroes of the first ten Final Fantasy games, and each has their own combat styles. There’s Terra, whose magical prowess makes her one of the most formidable combatants siding with Cosmos, and the Warrior of Light, who’s a great all-around character. Simply by playing the game, you earn PP, which is used to unlock the characters sided with Chaos as playable characters, new looks for the characters, and more.

There are several different modes for playing the game, the most noteworthy being the story mode. Here, you can experience the trials and tribulations of Cosmos’ heroes as they search for the only way to save the world. I think there’s also a story mode for the villains, but you’d have to first unlock all the villains from the PP menu.

In story mode, you use Destiny Points to move your character to whatever other icon you want to interact with. If you still have DP remaining when you clear the stage, you get bonuses. Gil can be earned to purchase things from the shop, such as equipment or even a (almost) free level up. Summonstones add a good degree of strategy to the game, especially the ones you manually activate (some are summoned automatically, pending certain conditions). Some equipment comes in sets, so that if you have three pieces equipped from the same set, it unlocks a huge boost of some sort. There are also accessories in the game, and different types of them. With all of the possible equipment, there’s a huge amount of strategy to this game that you may miss at first glance.

By leveling up, characters learn new abilities. Most of these are attacks, though some are simply movement or indicators. However, these add yet more strategy to the game. You have to know how to control range, how to use your abilities to do that, and how to control the balance of power between yourself and your opponent.

Battles are truly a work of art in this game, with being able to crash your opponent into a wall, dramatic chase sequences, and even a new form of limit break known as the EX Burst. By gathering enough EX Force, small points of light that fly from your attacks clashing, and also collecting EX Cores, you can charge up your EX Gauge. Once full, you can activate EX Mode, where your character powers up, and is able to unleash an EX Burst once successfully inflicting HP damage. Every character has a different EX Burst, and they all require some form of interaction. A perfectly-executed EX Burst often means The Final Blow has been dealt.

There are two types of attacks in this game: Bravery and HP attacks. Bravery measures your attack power, and HP attacks deal damage equal to your Bravery. By using Bravery attacks, you can drain Bravery from your opponent. Be careful, though, as unleashing an HP attack will bring you down to 0 Bravery temporarily. There’s plenty of ways to evade or block incoming attacks, too.

There’s even an option to save a replay of your battle for viewing in the Museum mode. In addition, there are several Accomplishments, which act sort of like the PS3′s trophies, but you actually get rewards in-game for them, like new accessories.

The Final Word
All in all, this is a very deep game, with huge amounts of strategy for its simplicity. It’s like Final Fantasy chess, but with a lot more awesomeness to it.

- Final rating: Excellent

]]> http://monstervine.com/2009/09/dissidia-final-fantasy-review/feed/ 1 http://monstervine.com/2009/07/monster-hunter-freedom-unite-review/ http://monstervine.com/2009/07/monster-hunter-freedom-unite-review/#comments Thu, 02 Jul 2009 08:01:55 +0000 Diego Escala http://monstervine.com/?p=10157

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite is finally here after a long wait. For newcomers, MHFU is an expansion to Monster Hunter Freedom 2(from now on I’ll use acronyms). If you don’t know already, MH is huge in Japan, America not so much. In Monster Hunter you take the role of a hunter who’s on a quest to hunt monsters. In the opening video you get decimated by one of your foes called the Tigrex and you decide to take out your anger on every monster. There’s no story to go through. Just you, your weapon, and a monsters’ face in which to plant your weapon into. The point of the game is to take quests to kill monsters, loot from their body, make new weapons/armor, and use those new items to kill more monsters in which to make more stuff to kill more stuff with. Sound boring? Well it’s not.

Monster Hunter is notorious for being merciless to it’s players with it’s insane difficulty. It’s not the kind of game where you level up or get better equipment. The point is to watch your enemy’s movements and learn them so as to not get hit. This is the reason why many gamers are pushed away from the game. Many people complain on how the game needs a lock-on system or a health bar to view how much damage has been done to a monster, but I won’t complain about that since the monsters actually show physical damage of their condition by cutting off their tails, horns, talons, and making them limp. A lock-on system would be helpful in the PSP’s case since the camera is complete garbage, but then again it would make aiming for specific body parts a pain and possibly impossible.

A few of the problems with Freedom 2 still persist in this game. If you think you’re intimidated by the Tigrex then wait till you get your hands on the camera. Many hardcore MH players will cry foul and say you can center the camera with the L trigger or use your index finger on the directional pad but those are just excuses. Now don’t get me wrong, I love the game, it’s just that I don’t want to have to either run away from a monster and stop to turn around to center the camera. Using your index finger on the directional pad is not comfortable at all either. My friends and I like to use the term ‘crab fingers’ since placing the index finger there looks like a claw and it starts to hurt after awhile. My other problem with the game is that the monsters are still unbelievably cheap. You might say that I’m either playing the game wrong or just plain out suck, but how many times have you been hit by a Tigrex and knocked to the ground only to get smashed the instant you stand up and repeatedly charged into until you die. Yea that is not fun and I know it’s happened to every single one of you.

Since this is an expansion you must be expecting some worthwhile additions to make you shell out $30 for a game you bought 2 years ago. In a way, yes it’s worth the money if you loved Freedom 2, but if you didn’t like it or if you’re more along the lines of a casual player you might want to give this one a rent. There are a new maps for each area included with the maps from Freedom 2, but they’re only new if you didn’t play the older MH games. 5 new monsters join the fight but most of these are just re-skins of previous monsters. An example is the Hypnocatrice which is pretty much a Yian Kut-Ku with sleep attacks and the Nargacuga which is a Tigrex who attacks with it’s long tail. There are also newer quests to be given by a Felyne which will become available to you once you clear the old granny’s quests. Once in the guild hall you can try your luck at the extremely difficult G-Ranked quests. The storage box has been expanded to 10 slots and you can combine items while in the box. There are also new weapons and armor sets for you to acquire.

One of the bigger additions is the inclusion of a Felyne fighter. You can now purchase a cat to fight side-by-side with you as you trudge through the quests in this game. Each one has a personality and effects with that personality. Your Felyne has two types of attacks. A bomb and it’s sword-like weapon. Each Felyne can be leveled to a maximum level of 20 and can be given various tasks to do that raise certain attributes. Making them lift dumbbells will raise their attack stat while you’re out on a quest and doing sit ups will raise defense. Taking your Felyne out on quests with you will raise their fondness and allow them to gain combat points. Fondness affects how often your comrade will decide to fall asleep during a quest and their chance for dropping traps to aid you. Combat points are used to purchase skills they can learn which range from elemental attacks to being able to play flutes that raise certain attributes like health and attack.

My favorite addition to the game is it’s Data Install. For around 500MB it’ll install part of itself onto your memory card(like PS3 installs) and cut load times. Gone are the days of entering an area or waiting for a quest to start and being able to do something quick while the game loads. These loads are quick, and by quick I mean like 5 seconds quick. This is a godsend for players who grew tired of having to wait so long to enter a new area. Trust me, you’ll be in the next area before you even finish blinking.

The game supports 4-player ad-hoc play so you and your friends can hunt together via the guild hall. If you have friends with the game this can be simply a godsend since some of the later guild quests are quite brutal and are much easier with some friends. If you don’t know anybody with the game then you’re pretty much out of luck and will have to solo the quests. One thing I don’t understand is why multiplayer is ad-hoc only. In Japan they have ad-hoc party which is an application on the PS3 that allows ad-hoc PSP games to be played online. Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G was one of the first games to support this and you’d think to help boost sales and support for the American audience, they’d release ad-hoc party in America.

The Final Word
With 5 new monsters, G-Ranked quests, comrades, and other additions Monster Hunter Freedom Unite makes a great expansion. Hardcore players will enjoy all the new content and newcomers to the series will find a great entry of the series to start with. Although many of the problems with Freedom 2 are still present in Unite, it’s hard to not recommend this game. I’m sure I don’t need to tell hardcore players to get it or not since they probably have it already, while casual Monster Hunter players may want to just take it for a rent if only to try out the new stuff. If you haven’t been sucked into Monster Hunter by now you’d be doing yourself a great injustice by not at least checking it out.
MonsterVine Rating- Good

]]> http://monstervine.com/2009/07/monster-hunter-freedom-unite-review/feed/ 0 http://monstervine.com/2009/04/import-review-gundam-vs-gundam/ http://monstervine.com/2009/04/import-review-gundam-vs-gundam/#comments Tue, 21 Apr 2009 00:10:13 +0000 Craig Ballard http://monstervine.com/?p=8797

Gundam games haven’t exactly been in the good books in recent years, for every good game there are many shit ones. Dodgy controls and gameplay have stopped it from becoming a great franchise it could of been. Has Gundam vs Gundam found it’s potential or is it just another failure?

The year is 2030 an enemy known as the Devil Gundam has merged all the worlds into one, it’s up to all the Gundam heroes to work together and defeat the threat. Being a port of an arcade game of the same name the plot is wafer thin only being used a simple premise for all the Gundams being together in one place. A simple short cut-scene (or should I say launch sequence) for each series is played at the beginning of the Arcade Mode along with a nice piece of artwork at the end and that’s about it. The arcade mode consists of 8 stages along with a boss at the end. Though it bombards you with many options to choose from they all play out the same. Time attack mode, harder difficulties and different scenarios all follow the same objective of destroying the enemy until you or the enemy has no more points left. It would of been nice to have other objectives like ‘survive until time runs out’ and a variety of other modes to help flesh out the single player aspect more. This comes at a surprise as past PSP Gundam installments like Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. offered much more variety of gameplay options in the single player department as well as a more fleshed out story mode.

During combat you are given a set number of points, each gundam takes up either 1000, 2000 or 3000 points, the more powerful the gundam the higher the points, meaning you can’t die as many times as the stronger gundams, this is a way of balancing the game so everyone has an even chance, even the Guncannon can hold it’s own again Wing Zero if you are skilled enough. Once the teams points equals zero the game is over.

The game plays out like most Gundam games, you can perform a melee attack (Triangle), Jump (X) use your main weapon (Square) and sub-weapon (R) and combinations of these commands to perform other long/short range attacks. The combat system is both simple and surprisingly deep, you can easily stick to the simple attacks while those wishing to can experiment and make full use of the attacks offered t help give you an edge over your opponent. You also have a support mecha which quickly appear and do a set command for a small amount of time, as well as a special attack which you can activate when your G-Gauge is full (which naturally progresses as you receive more damage). 37 characters are playable (4 of which are unlockable) but each one plays and feel different, some specialise in Melee, others long range combat and some a combination of the 2, some fast and some slow, but all are well balanced. Weapons range from laser rifles, beam cannons, missiles, machine guns and more, along with some different types of beam sabers, giving you lots to choice from meaning you are bound to find a Gundam that suits your play style.

Beyond the Arcade mode you have a simple versus mode in which you can face off against CPU’s or even watch 4 CPU’s going at it, along with being able to battle it out over a local Wi-fi connection. The game plays well over Wi-fi but there was occasional slow downs and lag especially as things got hectic on the screen. Playing with friends can be insane fun and easily trumps anything the single player as to offer. Even if the single player doesn’t last you very long, those dedicated enough can put many hours into the game improving you skills and playing with friends.

Graphically the game is standard for the PSP, the Gundams themselves look brilliant, but the problem lies with the bland background all shining low res textures into the screen, and what little destructible buildings there are all fall down the same, like a planned demolition. If only the same amount of detail that went into the Gundams were used on the scenery.

The game is for Gundam fans only, everyone else should probably give this one a miss, unless you like arcade style action games. Your overall enjoyment of the game will be judged solely on your love for Gundam. Overall it’s a successful port of the arcade game though it would of been nice to see more PSP exclusive modes, a Mission mode for example, the single player doesn’t live up to the standards of Gundam Seed: Rengou vs. Z.A.F.T. or other games in the franchise. Got 3 other Gundam Loving friends? Then give this one a shot and expect to have a blast.

The Final Word
Fun, fast paced and surprisingly deep gameplay but a lack of different gameplay options and short single player mode, making this title fun but short lived.

- MonsterVine Rating: Average/Good

]]> http://monstervine.com/2009/04/import-review-gundam-vs-gundam/feed/ 1 http://monstervine.com/2009/04/patapon-2-review/ http://monstervine.com/2009/04/patapon-2-review/#comments Sat, 18 Apr 2009 02:44:16 +0000 Diego Escala http://monstervine.com/?p=8726 Patapon 2 Review

After a year the original rhythm game Patapon has earned its sequel. The first game was a huge success and garnered critical acclaim. Is Patapon 2 the sequel we’ve all been waiting for or has this series lost its footing in the rhythm?

The gameplay in Patapon 2 hasn’t changed at all from the first. You use the face buttons to issue your drum commands, the left/right arrows move the screen, the select button shows your list of commands, and the start button allows you to quit the mission. I should note my tiny gripe that the start button still doesn’t allow you to pause the game. I understand this is a rhythm game but having to put the PSP in sleep mode every time I needed to pause was just annoying.

Patapon 2 has an RPG element which involves levelling your units (more on that later) and collecting equipment to make your army stronger. The stronger weapons and pieces of armor also include various status effects like sleep, freeze, and burn. My major annoyance about this game that wasn’t change from the original game is that you still get all your weapons from missions. In missions the weapons you get are all completely random and if you happen to kill an enemy and they drop a rare weapon but have a horde of enemies you have to fight that weapon might disappear if you take too long. This gets increasingly frustrating if your bow units happen to kill enemies behind towers and you have a tower or two to get through, and not to mention the Karmens you have to fight.

The boss battles can get intense and are tons of fun.

The first Patapon had around 35 missions, while Patapon trumps this by having 80 missions. Missions usually take 5 minutes but can stretch up to 20. There are three types of missions: Hunting missions involve hunting various creatures for materials, boss battles which pit you against one of the game’s giant behemoths, fortress missions which involve you commanding your army through the defenses of a Karmen fortress, and missions that are similar to fortress missions but without the fortress. Fortress, boss battles, and hunting missions can be played repeatedly. Fortress and boss battles increase in level and difficulty every time you complete it.

One of the big additions to the single player campaign is the Hero unit. These are stronger than your regular Patapons and wear masks. These masks have different abilities that boost your Hero’s stats and can be acquired in multiplayer mission (more on that later). Hero Patapon can take the form of any class and rank of Patapons, and each class has a special ability which can be activated by performing a set of Just Timings. Just Timing is beating the drum (button) perfectly on beat and the amount needed to trigger your Hero’s special ability depends on the difficulty.

When you complete a certain amount of perfect beats your Patapon will get into Fever mode where the music gets faster, your Patapon get stronger/faster, and their specific skills get much stronger. For example the Tatepon’s shield gets much bigger when the defense beat is used, Yumipons get faster and fire 3 arrows at a time, and Yaripons throw their spears farther.

This new evolution map is a huge improvement over the first game.

One of the biggest gripes with the first game was the fact that if you upgraded your Patapon to a faster class for example, and wanted to change it for a stronger class you’d have to throw out the first Patapon to make room and losing all the materials and Ka-ching you spent on it. In Patapon 2 they have added an evolution map that has a vast majority of classes to upgrade to. The best part about this is if you create an ice resistant Patapon for a mission but need a fire resistant for the next mission you can just switch their caps in the equipment screen. You can also level up each separate class up to 10. Within the map are 6 memories to unlock advanced Patapon units. Once you unlock a class near a memory you’ll get the memory and be able to create new Patapons of that memory. The brute Dekapons, horse riding Kibapons, and musical Megapons return once again accompanied by the fist-fighting Robopons, magician Mahopons, and the flying Toripons.

This bell has slick dance moves.

Mini-games return to Patapon 2 and include some old favorites with new ones. The mini-games from the first game return with a twist. When you start up the game it’ll ask you which level you would like to start at. As you play the mini-game and if you get a perfect score you will unlock the higher levels. The newer mini-games have a twist on the gameplay by having notes move across the screen which you must hit at the right moment.

There isn’t much to say about the story. It takes place immediately after the first game and after landing on a mysterious new island you encounter the new enemy tribe called the Karmen. After that it’s your job to guide the Patapon tribe to through this new land. There’s also another tribe you encounter led by a Dark Hoshipon, but I’m going to keep as little spoilers as possible.

Rolito does it once again with the designs in Patapon 2. Each sprite is colorful and their animations are full of personality, style, and wit. The bosses are huge, menacing, and their animations all feel different giving each one its own personality. Rolito’s designs truly stand out and are a huge part of what makes the game so adorable.

The music in Patapon 2 is just as amazing as the first game. I found myself tapping my foot to the beats and humming the songs when I wasn’t playing. As you beat your drums and your Patapon army begins singing it’s hard not to smile. You’ll mainly hear the sound of your drums and Patapons singing during gameplay but the background music is a treat to the ears and I really hope they release a soundtrack.

Playing with 3 buddies is a complete blast.

Probably the biggest addition to Patapon 2 is multiplayer. Once you unlock your Hero character you are able to join 3 friends via Ad-Hoc in a co-op mode where instead of commanding your squad you control your hero. The mission is to transport a magical egg to the end of a level, and then hatching it by completing a minigame.You acquire eggs from bosses and some missions. You can then play these with your hero character and unlock upgrades for your hero. After each mission is a rhythm mini-game that involves hitting the correct beat for Ka-ching. The better your score the better the reward will be when the egg hatches. The big rewards are masks for your hero. There are 4 per egg to acquire. If you don’t happen to have 3 friends you can play all these missions by yourself with the aid of 3 AI heroes. You can also acquire new heroes to help you by playing the missions. Acquiring newer masks for your hero will aid you in the story mode by allowing you to use them.

The Final Word

If you couldn’t tell by now Patapon 2 is definitely a must own for all PSP owners. Nearly all of the problems with the first game are fixed and all the additions to this iteration are pushing this series in the right direction. With added multiplayer, more than tripling the campaign, and all the new things added getting this for $20 is a steal.

– MonsterVine Rating: Excellent

]]> http://monstervine.com/2009/04/patapon-2-review/feed/ 2 http://monstervine.com/2009/04/phantasy-star-portable-review/ http://monstervine.com/2009/04/phantasy-star-portable-review/#comments Wed, 15 Apr 2009 03:02:51 +0000 Diego Escala http://monstervine.com/?p=8620
After nearly a year of waiting the next game in the Phantasy Star series, Phantasy Star Portable, is released in the states. Does it live up or is this game merely a bust?

Gameplay- Good
In Phantasy Star Portable(PSP) start out the story making your own character. You can choose from the four races which include Beast, CAST, Human, and Newman. The character creation is fairly detailed and the feature of being able to play the first few missions in the demo and transfer your data to the full retail version is a nice touch. It’s also worth to note that there is a New Game mode once you beat the game. PSP is first and foremost a dungeon-crawler in which you travel from area to area collecting ‘keys’ to unlock the door to the next area. You start out with 3 classes: Hunter(melee), Ranger(range), and Force(magic). Each of these can be leveled up to 10 and when you get to certain levels with each class you’ll unlock the stronger version. The more powerful classes have requirements that require you to grind up each of the classes. It’s all your choice with how you want to play the game and can be enjoyed by playing with just one class or switching it up every once in a while.

PSP has a vast amount of practical weapons like this toy hammer and a giant piece of ham. That’s right, you get to fight monsters with ham and it’s delicious.

Grinding fanatics will get a blast out of this game since grinding isn’t necessary to get you through some the story, but for those that want to go the extra mile will be rewarded with some rare loot. Although I’m usually not a big fan of grinding, I found myself going back to play the S ranked missions to smash enemies and boxes for the fabled S rank equipment. Getting a new weapon always feels satisfactory and never makes me feel like I wasted my time which is how it should be. The sheer amount of weapons in this game is astounding. No matter whichever class you start out with you’ll have a vast amount of weapons to choose from ranging from knuckles, spears, daggers, grenade launchers, bowguns, dual pistols, wands, whips, etc. The lower ranked weapons are usually just the same except for a different color, but the rarer ones are some of the coolest and most interesting weapons I’ve seen in a game. The prospect of getting a better weapon or some new clothes to trick out your character can get you surprisingly addicted to it.

The game plays in real-time with the square button for your primary attack, triangle for secondary attacks or a special ability, L is to center the camera or strafe, R square/triangle will give you 2 more attacks if you use TECHNICS or just lock-on if you hold R with a different weapon. The arrows move the camera, the analog nub moves your character, and the circle button opens the action palette which I’ll talk about in a second. The action palette is probably one of my favorite additions to the game. Here you can assign a handful of weapons and items to slots. When you press & hold the circle button to open the pop-up style menu and with the R button you can scroll through your weapons and L to scroll the items which makes switching weapons or using an item streamlined, quick, and easy to use. One thing I would love to have in this game would be a dodge mechanic. It’s odd that the developers never included this since they could have mapped it to the X button since that one does nothing in the actual game except activate locks. It extremely frustrating when you’re in the middle of a combo, defeat an enemy, and as they go to explode you get hit in the blast since your run is too slow to escape the blast radius.

*sigh* Expect your partners to get stuck in fences a lot.

I can’t even begin to describe how awful the AI in this game is. I’ve seen some bad AI but PSP just takes the trophy. Your allies will stand around, take hits, and not even bother to attack the enemy. I’ve lost count how many times they’ve died when they were perfectly able to heal themselves. Usually they won’t even heal you unless other party members (including themselves) are below 50% health so be sure to bring a good amount of health items to each mission. This is especially annoying if you play as a ranger or force class since staying as far from your enemy will be your intention, your allies will decide to stay and walk around you will you try to hit the enemy. They could literally be just a few feet from each other and as long as you are not right up in the enemy’s face fighting your allies won’t bother to go fight. There are also lots of times when your ally will get stuck in a wall and you’ll have to go back to fetch them. I must also mention that if you have 4 allies with you the game will experience some major slowdowns when they’re all doing special attacks and there are a lot of enemies onscreen.

Story- Abysmal
There’s not much you can say about this story except that it’s your standard RPG story (with horrible dialog included free of charge). You begin as a newly appointed guardian and you are given your first partner Vivienne who plays a key role in the story. You soon learn about the SEED and a mysterious terrorist who might be behind the SEED’s return. It then goes into predictable and generic plot territory with each new chapter starting out like you need to go investigate this then meeting up with a new partner and doing the mission which ends with you finding the terrorist who runs off and leaves a nice boss for you to fight.

Grinding your abilities has never been so worth it.

Graphics- Mediocre
I can’t really say much about the graphics for this game. The textures are all repeated throughout each block for every mission and you won’t see anything impressive. The enemy models are all recycled from each level with a minor color change or a modified look if you play an S rank mission. The bosses look impressive as they tower over your character and unleash waves of pain upon you and your allies. The character models themselves aren’t that impressive but they do a great job of portraying the futuristic setting. Each weapon has a special ability that can be leveled up to 30 and the higher the level is the more spectacular the effect looks. For example with the knuckles you start out with a quick 3-hit boxing type punch, then at lvl10 after hitting the special attack button right after the first combo is over your character will do one more punch then a powerful kick that blasts all enemies in your path away, and at lvl.20 you’ll do a few flips towards your enemy ending in one final dive that does massive damage. Grinding your abilities to get them to lvl30 is satisfying as your eyes are greeted to a wondrous display of effects.

Some of the bosses are complete wimps like this guy, but some of the later ones can be downright brutal.

Multiplayer- Mediocre
Included in the game is Ad-hoc only co-op which is a shame, but hopefully in the future when we get Ad-hoc party this game is able to be used in it. Playing with up to 3 friends would be a blast were it not for all the slowdowns we got. The more effects that were happening on-screen the slower it got which killed the fun instantly. However playing with 1 friend was a better experience with little to no slowdowns and it made not having to deal with the story-mode’s AI so much better.

Overall: Phantasy Star Portable is an enjoyable experience that all PSP owners should try. The story mode itself should run you no more than 12 hours, but if you decide to play the side-quests and grind a little you’ll find yourself hitting over 20 hours. Despite the problems I listed the game can become quite addictive and has a nice little achievement system that gives rewards to players for doing specific tasks that can make even the casual player sit down to try to grind themselves up just to get that last sword they need for their collection.

Final Rating- Average

]]> http://monstervine.com/2009/04/phantasy-star-portable-review/feed/ 0