Game Title: Spheroids
Developer: Eclipse Games
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 226 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

There are lots of side-scrolling platforms out there.  Though I view platformers in a lot of different sub-genres.  One genre that I especially like are what you would call Mario Platformers.  Basically, platformers that try to mimic the Super Mario series.  You know the formula.  Platforming.  Collectible currency.  And all around, just colorful, cute worlds to go through with enemies that look like someone was on LSD when they came up with them.

I have only encountered one Mario-like platformer in my 3 years of reviewing games for the PS Vita.  Back when PlayStation Mobile was still around, there was a game called Blue Beacon, which was practically a Mario clone, though was not well-known.  Even now, if you google search the game, once of the first things that will come up is my own review of the title.  Since then, I’ve not seen many, if any Mario-like games for the Vita.

One of this week’s releases caught my eye in this manner, though.  A game that looks quite odd when you look at screenshots and videos, yet it is by definition, a Mario-like platformer.  Here is my review of Spheroids for the PS Vita and PlayStation TV!

Story

In Spheroids, strange aliens have invaded the planet, and you are given special equipment by a scientist in order to fight against them.  Across the game, you journey to several different countries in the defense of the planet against the invaders, each introducing you to a new type of technology, aimed at the increased assault against the sphere-shaped invaders.

The storyline is kind of interesting, but it’s not presented in a very good fashion.  When I started the game, I didn’t even know there was a storyline.  Little scenes happened here and there (and the difficulty of those I will mention later on in the review) and off you go.

Gameplay

Spheroids is a 2D platformer with some light puzzle and combat elements thrown into the mix.  As you go through each stage, you will be jumping across platforms, using various tools to navigate obstacles, and fighting various enemies that you come across in each section of the stage.  It is very Mario-like in all aspects, aside from the fact that you can only attack enemies with tools, rather than jumping on top of them.

Progression goes through Chapters, each of which consists of a few stages.  Each chapter is based on a character, which changes the background environment and once you clear all stages, you move onto the next Chapter and repeat this process until you do everything from all 8 countries and complete the game.

Basically, you have only a few factors to worry about in each stage.  There are enemies to deal with, of course, but breakable environments, coin-blocks, and interaction-based objects.  You’ll find many environments that can be broken from the get-go, and breaking these with your grappling hook weapon is key to opening a path to travel to get to the end of the stage.  Then you have objects you can interact with, like metal objects the grapple can latch onto, allowing you to pull up and down or swing to time jumps towards the next area.

Finally, you have coin-blocks which are the game’s currency.  Unlike Mario, there is a practical application for it instead of getting new lives (since you have infinite lives in Spheroids).  Coins add to your currency total and at the beginning of each level, there is an Arcade Machine used for upgrades.  You use coins to purchase upgrades, be it temporary power-ups or permanent power and armor increases for power-ups, max health, etc.

As far as fighting enemies and difficulty are concerned, I don’t consider this to be a particularly hard platformer.  None of the enemies really direct their attention to you.  They are just bouncing around the levels and you need to get rid of them in order to proceed.  Once you attack them, however, things can get tricky.  Some early enemies just die from 1 hit, while others may divine into several smaller enemies that you must dodge and take out.  When the game traps you in rooms until all enemies are defeated, 3 enemies becoming 12 smaller enemies definitely becomes a hassle to deal with.

Now we get to the game’s length.  Spheroids is not very long.  With only a few levels per chapter and each level taking only a couple minutes to go through, the entire experience might take you around 2 hours, 3 hours tops.  Not really a lengthy experience, if I do say so myself.

Controls

First off, Spheroids is compatible with the PlayStation TV.  No special controls here for L2/R2, but it can be played on the micro-console for PSTV owners.

Controls are simple enough.  D-Pad for movement and the X button is used for jumping.  The Square and Circle buttons are used for the grappling hooks.  Square for the hook used for swinging and Circle for the one that is used for attacking enemies.

All in all, pretty easy to get used to.

Presentation

Visually, the game looks nice.  The world is very colorful and the 2D renders look crisp and smooth.  I really can’t complain about how the game looks.  What I can complain about is the text and the music.  First, text.  In story scenes, there are text bubbles for conversation.  The unfortunate thing is that it is very difficult to read.  I started the game on the PSTV and I couldn’t read a single word on-screen.  It was way too small and blurred to make out.  Even on the Vita, it’s difficult.

Then music.  The one music track in the game is a pretty nice beat, but when you have the same music track for an entire game, it gets a bit repetitive and boring.  There should’ve been a bigger variety of music tracks.

When performance comes into play, most of the time, it’s fine and without issue.  The long times can get close to the 10 second mark, but it is within acceptable parameters for a handheld game.  The frame-rate does drop in some sections, though.  I found several instances where I was jumping and got some slow-down.

Game Title: Asdivine Hearts
Developer: Kemco
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 245 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

Kemco is a developer known for making lots of Mobile RPGs.  Their reputation is good for making lots of games, but not-so-good for many gamers’ opinions of said RPGs.  They make lots of retro experiences, but the term “shovelware” comes up a lot when you go on Mobile forums and start talking about Kemco RPGs.  I’ve played my fair share and wouldn’t call them that, but some of them do have a bit of a generic feel and look to them.

Kemco RPGs have come to console before. If you recall the game that came to PlayStation not too many years back, End of Serenity.  That was a Kemco RPG.  I thought it was fun, though it was a pretty short game, overall.  Today, we dive back into Kemco’s world of RPGs with the recent release of a new Mobile to PlayStation port.

Here is my review of Asdivine Hearts for PS Vita and PlayStation TV!

Story

The world of Asdivine is governed by two deities: The Deity of Light is responsible for creating life and the Deity of Shadow for maintaining Death.  After the two of them have an argument about how the world works, a strange event happens below, resulting in a large number of monster appearances.  One year later, two orphans are setting a wildcat free in the forest when it becomes possessed by what claims to be the Light Deity and journey across the world to fix what was broken a year prior.

The story of Asdivine Hearts is good, but not good at the same time.  The first half of the game has a pretty generic storyline that is very predictable and each character’s introduction feels like they are nothing more than bare-bones clichés thrown into a forced harem party setup.  Once the second half of the game starts, things get more interesting with character backgrounds, more in-depth interactions, and the overall plot becoming much more engaging.  But, you have to get past the first half to get to the good part.

Gameplay

Like many Kemco RPGs, Asdivine Hearts is a turn-based RPG with some very light social elements thrown into the mix.  You will spend most of your time, watching story events, exploring the overworld, town, and dungeons, and fighting your way through a wide variety of enemies and bosses.  Imagine SNES Final Fantasy and you’ve got it down pat, savor a few other features.

Main progression basically goes story events pointing you in the direction of your next destination, and you travel the large overworld map (which turns into 2 fully-sized overworld maps later on) to get there and continue on with the story.  This has everything an overworld map RPG needs: Towns, Dungeons, Boats, Airships, and lots of random monster encounters.  You will be spending a lot of time traveling for each story objective.

There are also a couple things to do on the side.  Asdivine Hearts has side-quests for NPCs as well as an Affection/Trust mechanic.  Your party consists of you and 4 female characters, each of which has a special unlockable ending sequence.  Every so often in the story, you gain Free Time where you can interact with them, not unlike Free Days from The Legend of Heroes: Trails of Cold Steel.  Make correct dialogue choices and their Trust with you goes up.  If a girl’s trust is at a certain point by the final boss, you unlock her ending.

The battle system doesn’t have a whole lot out of the ordinary.  You have your typical magic spells that are used by spending MP.  Though you also have Skills that use regenerating Action Points, which is nice when you don’t want to constantly be using regenerating items during longer boss fights.  The biggest hitter, however, is the trust gauge.  Over the course of many battles, you build up the gauge and can unleash it at 100% for an intense combo, some characters which get up to a 20-hit combo all in one turn.

As far as difficulty, it has a pretty nice curve to it, so long as you stick to Normal Mode.  Easy Mode has virtually no challenge outside of the final boss and Hard Mode is pretty extreme.  But stick to Normal Mode, and you have a nice amount of difficulty for RPG fans.

Length is one of the more disappointing aspects of the game.  I’d heard from many people that the game lasted 20-30 hours, but I finished my first run at barely over 16 hours.  Those looking for a long RPG to fill their time will not find it here, as it is a rather short RPG, even for handheld standards.

Controls

Asdivine Hearts is compatible with the PlayStation TV, so the Vita version can be taken on the go or played on the TV via the micro-console.  No special controls here, but it is compatible.

Controls are pretty simple.  D-Pad or Left Analog Stick is for basic movement.  X is used for selecting or talking with NPCs.  Square brings up the World Map.  Circle cancels options, and Triangle pulls up the menu options.  You can also press Start anywhere to pull up the option to save your game.

Presentation

Visually, the game’s 2D renders look very polished and refined.  In comparison to End of Serenity, it looks quite good.  From the details of the environment drawings to the fact that character and enemy renders move in battle, it all around looks pretty decent for the kind of game it is.

I cannot say a lot for music. It fits with the style, but I doubt it will be anything you will overly fallin love with.

Presentation is mostly good, except for stuttering.  Every time you load a new area or when a battle animation is about to play, the game freezes and stutters for a split-second.  This amount of lag is very apparent in battle, but not as much so during loading screens for new areas.  It is a bit annoying, especially with how fast everything else runs in the game.

Game Title: Fate/Extella – The Umbral Star
Developer: Marvelous, Type-Moon, XSEED Games
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 1.3 GB
NA Availability: Retail | Digital Download
EU Availability: Retail | Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

The new game in the Fate/Stay Night series is full of surprises that no one expected.  No one expected Type Moon to make a sequel to a turn-based RPG into a Musou like Dynasty Warriors.  No one expected said game to come to the West, considering Fate/Extra CCC which ultimately served as a prologue into said game did not leave Japan.  And this writer did not expect to stay up many hours after his usual bedtime to make a review of said game.

Yet the new Fate game is here on both the PS Vita and the PS4, ready for some musou action with lots of Fate twists and turns.  Not to mention a PS Vita musou that has a large focus on story.  The last 2 musou games I reviewed for the Vita had virtually no stories, being Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires and Samurai Warriors 4: Empires.

But enough of the introductions.  Here is my review of the PS Vita and PlayStation TV title, Fate/Extella: The Umbral Star!

Story

Extella takes place not long after the end of Fate/Extra and Fate/Extra CCC.  The protagonist wakes up inside the Moon Cell, the virtual environment that exists on the Moon where the Holy Grail War took place.  Now, it is a location occupied by Servants, reincarnations of history’s most famous heroes.  Instead of fighting over the Holy Grail, they now wage war for ownership of the territories and the forging of new empires.

The protagonist then begins assisting Saber and Caster-class servants, completely unaware of a looming threat on the horizon that not only will affect the Moon but the Earth it orbits as well.

The story of Fate/Extella starts off extremely confusing.  The first 2 chapters skip over very important details and lack focus on the seriousness of what’s going on and instead focuses on a dating sim-like flirtation between the character and their chosen Servant characters.  Something that was not really there at all in the game’s predecessor.

That is not to say it doesn’t redeem itself.  The latter 2 chapters of the Main Story bring the focus to explaining everything and as convoluted as the concept of the overall storyline is, the latter half of the game is quite exceptional.  There is still a bit of the over-flirtation, but it plays out much as I’d have expected from the get-go.

Gameplay

Fate/Extella is a Musou action game, much like Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors.  When you go through stages, you will fight off mass hordes of enemies, along with strong boss-like Servants that are essentially leading said mass hordes.  It’s got its own quirks, but the general flow of Dynasty Warriors is what the game follows.

The game’s modes are mostly divided between Story Mode, Side Story, and Free Battle.  In Story Mode, you play through each of the 4 arcs of the storyline of the game, with the completion of each arc unlocking the next arc.  As you clear Story Arcs, you also unlock Side Stories for each of the non-major Servant characters and are able to play as them in their own smaller story scenarios.  And finally, clearing Main Story arcs also unlocks playable characters for Free Battle, where you can create your own battles and just go at it for the fun of it.

For all intents and purposes, Main Story is where you’ll spend most of your time in the game.  Each Story Arc is set around a specific character.  When you play through the story, you will transition between a base of operations and actual missions.  At the base, you can talk with your servant, craft equipment, and install various skills you acquire during missions.  But that is minor compared to the amount of time you spend out in the field.

When you’re on a mission, you get thrown into a large set of environments and play the typical Musou “Conquest” game.  While each mission has its own set of objectives, you will be invading territories and taking out enemies until you can claim it as your own.  Though this differs a little from the formula.  Every territory has “Assaulter” enemies that will spawn after fighting off so many pawns.  You must make all Assault enemies for the area spawn and then defeat them before you can claim said territory.

But that isn’t all you’re going to be doing.  Every mission has different objectives.  One mission could throw you in just to reclaim territories and make a Boss appear while the next has you hunting down Plants that endlessly spawn Assaulters and then leading a Boss through several environments to lay a trap for them.  It’s all very different, even though the basic synopsis of the overall battle is similar.

The combat follows basic Musou principles.  You have weak and strong attacks, with the ability to combine them for combos.  But a few major things come into play here.  First of all, your combos are limited until you fight enough enemies to level up your character to unlock new combos.  Second, you have Moon Drive and Noble Phantasms that come into play.  Moon Drive builds up as you fight enemies, letting you have a brief transformation that gives you completely different abilities and a heightened set of stats.  And Noble Phantasms are Ultimate Attacks only accessible once per battle and only if you explore enough to find each Noble Phantasm fragment before heading to the boss.

The above showcases how the game stays fresh, but different characters also help that.  Some equipment you can find lets you freely swap between 2 playable characters in battle so you don’t always have to use Saber for an entire battle or Caster for an entire battle.  Along with this is how every one of the 17 playable characters play completely different from one another.  From attack speed, combos, and weapons, every character feels like their own special class.

The difficulty of this genre comes and goes, with many people calling musou games mindless button-mashers.  Extella tries to keep this from being a game where you just mash buttons for the entire experience.  Now, there is a feature in the game called Auto-Combo that lets you do exactly that.  Mash the square buttons and it will make complex combos automatically.  However, that does not make the game easy.  The combos are generated randomly and you will often find yourself fighting ground enemies while Auto-Combo takes you high into the air, performing combos against thin air.  It has uses, but it’s part of the strategy to know when to and when not to use that feature.

As far as length goes, each mission can take anywhere from 15 minutes to 35 minutes.  Even without touching the Side Stories, I would expect missions and story scenes for Main Story to last you at least 20 hours, if not more.  Ironically enough, it’s nearly as long as Fate/Extra was if you include Side Stories, despite not being an RPG.

Controls

The controls are pretty simple.  First of all, Fate/Extella is compatible with the PlayStation TV and makes use of the L3/R3 buttons.  On the Vita, locking onto a boss makes use of the touch screen as does initiating a Noble Phantasm.  On the PSTV, L3 and R3 are used for these functions.

Moving around is done with the Left Analog Stick and moving the camera is done with the Right Stick.  You can use “Code Cast” items with the D-Pad for healing/changing characters.  The R button is used for dashing.  Then come the face buttons.  X is for jumping and Circle is for mid-combo dashes.  Square is used for normal attacks and Triangle for heavy attacks.

It’s pretty simple once you get used to it.  The tutorial level does a really nice job of explaining all of this.

Presentation

Visually, the game looks good.  I would probably rate the visual level around late PS2 era.  The big thing is that all of the character models are smooth and high-quality.  There are no jagged edges to be seen here.  From environments to close-ups of characters, everything looks great.

The music quality is very fitting as well.  There are a lot of songs that sound like they come right out of history, which fits Fate’s idea that all Servants are reincarnations of heroes from across the history of the world.

Now, performance.  Most Musou games on the Vita don’t have stellar performance.  Fate/Extella is an exception to that rule.  Load Times do run around 8-10 seconds a piece, but the frame-rate stays a steady 30 fps and never drops.  As too-good-to-be-true as many Vita gamers may think that sounds, I never once saw the frames drop or lag in combat.  It greatly exceeded my expectations of what the performance was going to be like, given how jumpy Koei Tecmo’s Musou Vita games have been.

Game Title: Atelier Shallie Plus ~The Alchemists of the Dusk Sea~
Developer: Gust, Koei Tecmo
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 3.1 GB
NA Availability: Retail (Limited Edition Only) | Digital Download
EU Availability: Retail (Limited Edition Only) | Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

Atelier is a long-standing franchise that has a big and growing user-base in the handheld world.  Counting the game we are going to talk about in a moment, there have been 7 Atelier games released on the Vita, plus Mana Khemia on PSP that is a spin-off of the Atelier series.  For that many games to release on the Vita in a single series in less than 4 years is really something.  For fans, that’s good.  For others, that is quite surprising with how often the games are coming out.

Most of my Atelier reviews have been games from the “Dusk” series, which is a trilogy of games on its own, having their own continuity but also allowing each game to stand on its own.  It began with Atelier Ayesha Plus and continued when Koei Tecmo sent me a review copy of Atelier Escha and Logy Plus.  Then, I got the opportunity to try the new series with Atelier Sophie, my favorite game of the series to date.

Finally, we are going to finalize the Dusk Trilogy with the most recent release in the West.  Here is my review of Atelier Shallie Plus: Alchemists of the Dusk Sea!

Story

6 years after the events of Atelier Escha and Logy (10 years after the events of Atelier Ayesha), the strange force known as “The Dusk” is ravaging the world’s water supply.  Oceans have completely dried up and many towns that remain filled with water begin to show signs of drought.  The story stars 2 alchemists, both with the nickname Shallie.  Shallistera is the princess of a village and departs to a city to save it from drought.

The story is told from 2 perspectives.  Shallistera’s story focuses on her journey to save her village, learning a lot about the Dusk and how it has been affecting the world over the decade of the series.  Shallotte’s story focuses more on her daily life as she trains and aims to become a better alchemist to help at home with her mother.  They’re two very different perspectives, though they intertwine into one, long story.

As interesting as the story is to the overall continuity, I could not help but feel it never really hit the mark Atelier goes for.  The serious tone is a change from the overall cutesy feel the series normally goes for, but the big issue is the imbalance between character interactions/backstory and progression of the main story.  It is decently balanced in the first part of the story, but the latter half feels more like 80% character backstories and 20% to the actual plot of the game.

Gameplay

Like previous games in the series, Atelier Shallie Plus is a crafting and turn-based RPG.  As you play, you’ll be doing a lot of exploration, fighting enemies, crafting items with alchemy and all around completing various tasks that the game throws at you.  It’s pretty normal Atelier formula.

Since this is a “Plus” release, this version of Shallie has all of the DLC from the PS3 version of Shallie.  On top of that, it adds new playable characters as well as a significant amount of new voiced story scenes with those characters (Ayesha and Logy from earlier in the Dusk series).  The story scenes are especially note-worthy because Ayesha plays a big part in one of the more important story scenes a little past halfway through Shalistera’s story.

Main Progression is kind of like it was in Escha and Logy.  After the intro, you play through the game as one of the two Shallies.  You then play through the game from their perspective, and can change over and replay it from the other perspective once you complete the game and unlock New Game Plus.

Now aside from that, you go through chapters.  In each chapter, you have tasks that pop up for completion.  In order to complete each chapter, you spawn story scenes and complete your main tasks.  Eventually, completing tasks will end up in a Finalize task where you go back to your Atelier base and complete the chapter.  While many chapters have set tasks for the story side, you will end up doing random other main tasks at the end until you spawn the finale of the chapter.

With how this progresses, I must say that Shallie is the easiest Atelier game I’ve played to date.  There are no time restraints and it is incredibly easy to get story scenes to spawn.  While you do still have to do a lot of crafting for alchemy (creating items from materials) for many of the main tasks, you don’t have to have it up there for those tasks and scenes to first spawn.

Combat is also pretty simple, savor a couple boss fights.  The turn-based combat hasn’t changed a lot, but the difficulty isn’t too high.  Most battles won’t give you problems and as long as you upgrade equipment when you can, most bosses shouldn’t cause you any problems unless you’re on the Hard difficulty.

The combat is a little different, though.  All of the assist attacks and defense maneuvers come from your backup party members instead of your main party.  You also have a Burst gauge and when it hits 100%, you go into Burst Mode where all of your stats sky-rocket.  This is very easy to build up and stack for major fights so you can go right into Burst when the battle starts.  And this is key because what bosses the game has do have their needed strategies.

Now, overall, each campaign of Atelier isn’t as long as previous games.  Each campaign should take you around 15 hours to complete, leaving doing both around 30 hours total.  This is a bit shorter since my last Atelier was 40 hours long, but it still has a decent amount of length to it.

Controls

As always, Atelier Shallie Plus is compatible with the PlayStation TV.  There are no special controls on the PSTV, but the compatibility is there for those that want to play this on the go as well as on the TV.

Controls are pretty simple.  Left Analog Stick lets you move around town areas and dungeons and the Right Analog Stick moves the camera around as well as zooming features.  Apart from that, X lets you interact with objects to harvest items, talk to people, etc.  Then Square lets you swing your weapon to start battles with enemies, Circle lets you jump, and Triangle brings up the customization menus.  The L and R buttons are used for pulling up your tasks as well as the fast travel menu.

Presentation

Visually, as always, the graphics look quite amazing.  Very few, if any jagged edges, and looks like it was taken straight from the PS3 or PS4, but on a handheld.  Gust knows how to make a game look beautiful on a handheld.

The music is unique as well, and some of the soundtrack sounds quite epic.  The track I took from my PSTV Gameplay video came from the soundtrack and sounds like something you’d see from a AAA game like Final Fantasy.  The main issue with the audio is the fact that we, once again, have an incomplete English dub.  There are a lot of scenes in the game that are voiced in Japanese but not English.

Performance is about the same as you’d expect.  First, load times are great.  The longest time I waited for a loading sequence was 4-5 seconds, so it is excellent there.  But there are a lot of frame-drops.  The game stutters quite a bit during battle animations and when loading new areas.  It’s about the same that was in Escha and Logy Plus.  Annoying but not game-breaking.

Game Title: Metroid Prime Federation Force
Developer: Next Level Games
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Game Type: 3DS
Download: 9,781 Blocks
NA Availability: Retail | Digital Download
EU Availability: Retail | Digital Download

Metroid started off as a side-scrolling platformer, but a lot of today’s Metroid fans recognize it as a first-person shooter.  I also recognize it as such.  While Metroid Prime was born in 2002 on the Nintendo Gamecube, my entry to the franchise was on the Nintendo DS handheld, in the form of Metroid Prime: Hunters.  After enjoying that game, I went back and played the original games to experience what came before.

As far as handhelds go, I was always hoping that they would continue what they started with Hunters and make another handheld FPS Metroid game.  While I wouldn’t call Hunters the absolute peak of the series, it provided a fun FPS experience for the original DS that could easily be used to make something more doable on their current handheld, the 3DS.

What we did get was something that fans did not expect and that many vocal fans made it clear they did not want.  A Metroid FPS has released on the Nintendo 3DS and I’ve finally obtained a copy to play and review.  Here is my review of the FPS game, Metroid Prime: Federation Force!

Story

The story of Federation Force takes place after the events of Metroid Prime 3. Instead of playing as bounty hunter Samus Aran, you play as a Marine of the Federation Marine Corp.  After getting through training, you are sent out on various intelligence and investigation missions in the galaxy, collecting artifacts about ancient cultures and fighting off Space Pirates that are found in various parts of the galaxy.

The biggest critique from the userbase about Federation Force is that you don’t play as Samus Aran like you do in all other Metroid games.  However, I feel that a bigger problem is the story, itself.  Each mission shows itself as its own little thing that’s going on in the galaxy, but the story really never hits home outside of the times when Samus shows up for some part of some mission.  But there’s really no overall gigantic plot point that really grips you into feeling it’s a good story.

I think this is mostly because Federation Force and Hunters are both just supposed to be used to set up a possible Metroid Prime 4, setting the basis for Samus as well as the basis for the Federation Marines, speculating that they would be working together on a far grander scale once Prime 4 is developed and released, be it on the 3DS, Nintendo Switch, Wii U, or another system entirely.

Gameplay

Somewhat its own thing, Federation Force is what is called a Co-Op First-Person Shooting game.  At its heart, it’s a first-person shooter like other Prime games, but it has a particularly strong focus on Co-Operative play, much like how Hunters was primarily focused on Deathmatch-like play.  But I’ll go more into that in a bit as I do have a good bit to say regarding that focus.

Progressing through the game is a matter of doing the tutorial and tackling missions.  In regards to missions, you travel through a number of planets and you will have a specific set of missions to tackle on those planets.  Most of the time, these missions will be made available all at once, allowing you to complete them in any order you choose.  And once you complete them all, new story events will spawn and the next set of missions will appear, and the process starts over until all 22 missions the game has to offer are cleared.

When you go through each mission, you’ll be running around in FPS fashion inside a mech loaded with weapons.  You can fire off weapons and sub-weapons at enemies, exit the mech (in a very Fallout 4 Power Armor-like fashion) to navigate tighter stealth areas, but all in all, you’re going to be doing a lot of puzzle solving above all else.  While an FPS would make you think you would mindlessly be shooting constant enemies, Federation Force surprises in that it is as much a puzzle game as it is a first-person shooting game.

And we have some typical modern FPS elements like hidden items in the form of Mods.  Mods are enhancements you can equip to your mech to give you special abilities, like more damage, automatically reviving after dying, or quicker recoil from sub-weapons you can find and equip.

Aside from Campaign Missions, you also have Blast Ball and Multiplayer that you can take part in.  Blast Ball is a soccer-like game where players run around a field, shooting at a large orb, trying to get it into a score area on the opponent’s side of the field.  But as I said before, imagine it like soccer but with FPS mechanics with shooting the ball instead of kicking it.  And Multiplayer lets you do Co-Op missions with other players, local or over the net.

And that Co-Op focus is where things start to showcase themselves.  Federation Force is clearly meant to be played with friends helping you.  The first 2 mission sets are easy to navigate by yourself, but once you get around Mission 10 or so, things get substantially more difficult.  Many missions are clearly set up specifically so that it will be incredibly hard to complete them without Co-op.  They are beatable, but many of them are crazy hard because of the timing available to you in those missions.  If you plan to play this game solo, take advice from me and don’t.  You’ll have a bad time.

And that focus is what I most did not like about the game.  I’m a night owl and am awake when many people in my country are asleep, so whenever I went to play the game and found that I needed Co-Op, very few people were around to help me.  So I toughed it out and did the campaign solo, and ended up hating a lot of missions because of it.  I can understand Nintendo’s wish to encourage co-operative play, but you shouldn’t develop a game and make it incredibly hard to play solo, especially a first-person shooting game.

Now, the length of the game is also something to make note of.  There are 22 missions to play in the game (and Hard Mode once you beat the game).  It took me around 15 minutes to finish each mission.  So not accounting for replaying missions in case you do Co-op, the game should last you at least 5-6 hours, and most likely will last longer unless you never fail any of the missions.  That’s a pretty decent amount of time for an FPS game, so I have no complaints there.

Controls

Controls are pretty intuitive for the game and allows for an easy way to play, whether you are using an older 3DS or a New 3DS.   Obviously, the New 3DS allows for traditional dual analog FPS controls with the Circle Pad moving you and the C Stick moving your aim.  However, if you use an Old 3DS or a 2DS, it’s just as easy.  On those models, you hold R while moving and can use the Gyro features to tilt the system to move your aim.  The Gyro feature works really well and, in my opinion, works even better than the New 3DS C Stick aiming.

Now aside from that.  The basic control scheme goes: Circle Pad to move, L to lock onto a nearby enemy, R to enter Manual Aim mode, B to fire and hold for a charge shot, X to cycle through items/subweapons, Y to fire/use items and subweapons, and A for interacting with terminals and other puzzle-related stations in the field.

The controls are something I really liked because they made New 3DS players have their own traditional control scheme, but the Gyro aiming makes it easy no matter what model of the system you have.

Presentation

Graphically, no real complaints.  The game has a very chibi-like design, but the graphics work well.  The actual graphics themselves look nice.  There are occasional jagged edges on some models but for a 3DS game, it looks quite nice.

I can’t say any part of the soundtrack really jumped out at me, but I can’t say I hated it, either.  The music is what it is.

Performance gets a thumbs-up from me.  Load times are nice and short and the frame-rate stays nice and steady from start to finish.  It’s a well-optimized shooting game for the 3DS.

Game Title: Tomb Raider
Developer: Eidos Interactive
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: PS One Classic
Download: 209 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

Did you know that last year was the 20th anniversary of the Tomb Raider franchise? How sad that I didn’t even do anything to celebrate it. I mean, sure, I reviewed Lara Croft Go, but I’m talking about the Tomb Raider franchise. I personally view the Lara Croft series and Tomb Raider series in different lights. And it is high due time that I did something on the site to help celebrate that anniversary, even though it is no longer 2016.

The 3DS doesn’t have much in regards to Tomb Raider and I have already reviewed the PSP version of Tomb Raider Anniversary and Legend, so there’s only one thing left to do. It is time for me to go back and do retro reviews of all four PS One original games. Note that I say 4 because Tomb Raider Chronicles never released on PSN.

So, let’s start with a retro review of the original 1996 classic, Tomb Raider!

Story

The original Tomb Raider is about a young adventurer named Lara Croft being approached by a big company owner named Jacqueline Natla. Being a woman known for going on adventures and exploring ancient tombs, Lara is enticed to go and find a strange magical artifact for her, completely unaware of the significance of the artifact that she seeks being tied to the ancient past and a long-lost civilization.

Now, the above paragraph and the story shown in this game’s remake offers far too much credit to the actual story of the original game. You do get the basic setting in the intro, but the actual overall story and background is far less in-depth than people are used to by now. You are given bits and pieces of the story, but once you do get the whole thing, you’ll find that the story and villain’s plot in the original is far different and more “basic” than that of Anniversary, despite being the same game.

Not to say it’s terrible, as you’re given plenty of story in each level, but it’s nothing like players of Anniversary will be expecting.

Gameplay

Tomb Raider is a 3D Platforming Adventure game with combat elements thrown into the mix. As you play through the game, you’ll be navigating through dungeons and tombs full of platforms to jump across, enemies to gun down, and lots of puzzles to solve. It’s typical Tomb Raider formula, though a little more puzzle-oriented if you haven’t played the original series before.

Let’s start this off to clarify that anyone who played Tomb Raider Anniversary will find this a similar yet very different game from that remake. Many rooms are very different in the original, from the Waterfall room near The Lost Valley to the “Tower” room in Greece. How each room plays out, what order they’re in, and how you fight off each of the human “bosses” of each level is also different. All of the quick-time events of Anniversary are actual combat boss situations in the original game.

So, the progress of the game is mostly in the form of platforming and puzzles, where enemies are more or less distractions to deal with before taking a look and figuring out the next puzzle for you to solve. Your task is to explore every room from top to bottom to find items that you need for solving puzzles. Now, if you have played Anniversary, what you need you already know, like the Cogs from The Lost Valley, the Keys in the Greece Tower, or the artifacts for the Obelisk in Egypt. They just won’t be in the same, precise locations.

This increases both the difficulty of the game but also one of the biggest issues. Lots of the most important rooms are easy to miss. One of the Cog rooms, for example, is well-hidden behind vegetation, making it hard to find unless you know where it is. This amount of hide and seek does add length to the game, but can make it frustrating without referencing the renounced Stella’s Tomb Raider website for walkthroughs.

The difficulty is also increased by combat. The game uses auto-lock whenever a weapon is equipped but many bosses bring about unfair situations. The final boss of the first level set starts out while you’re swimming and can easily knock out the majority of your total possible health before you even get out of said water to begin attacking them. You can refer to THIS VIDEO on my YouTube channel for this example. This turns even boss fights into puzzles.

Of course, if you know what to do, you can balance this with the many cheat codes that are available in the original series. With a quick trip to the internet, you can find a nice, little cheat code that gives you all weapons and maximum ammo. Note that these unfair boss fights are still very hard with this cheat, but it will give you a better chance of taking them down within the first dozen attempts as opposed to many, many more. Especially considering the PlayStation Version of TR1 has limited save opportunities and no checkpoint system.

The length of this game is around the same as its remake. I spent roughly 30-45 minutes on each of the 15 levels of the game. That leaves the game around 8-10 hours in length, though I do admit I used Stella’s walkthrough a lot past the initial level set. So, going through without a walkthrough could potentially put it far above that length.

Controls

First off, this game is compatible with the PlayStation TV. So, unlike Anniversary, Vita and PSTV owners can enjoy this classic adventure on the big screen without owning a PS3.

Now, let’s talk about controls for a moment. You use the D-Pad to move (There were no Analog Stick controls back in 1996 when this game first came out). Like the original Resident Evil games, Tomb Raider used what is now known as “Tank Controls”. You could turn once you started running or walking, but to set up intricate platforming, you would have to stop, hit left or right to manually turn and then set up your jump.

Most of the rest of the controls are less awkward. The L button is used to manually look around with the camera and the R button is used to hold to walk instead of run. L2 and R2 are used the side-step and that can be a little tricky on the Vita, unless you own Joetsu’s handy little L2/R2 grip. You can manage by using R with walk with some extra turning before jumping, but it is so much easier with the side-step commands.

Then we have the X button for picking up objects and firing weapons, Square for jumping, Triangle for pulling out weapons or putting them away. Circle for Rolling to face the opposite direction, and that’s about all there is. Though I will say that Square for jumping makes side-stepping during combat extremely hard to do (Holding X to shoot and hitting square at the same time when you need to dodge). I, myself, prefer to move the free-look to R and jumping to L to make it a little easier.

Presentation

Visually, the character models look pretty decent for an early PS One title. The environments, on the other hand, are quite blurred out and very hard to make out. Of course, this is a 21-year old game, but in comparison to other PS One games, it really is relatively ugly as far as environments are concerned. Especially when compared to Tomb Raider 2, which is only one year less old than this game.

The music in the game is quite nice. In fact, the music used in one of the tombs is one of my favorite music tracks for the entire franchise. But one thing that makes the sound side of things not so good (outside of the bad voice-acting) is the fact that so many of the levels have no background music at all unless there is an enemy you’re fighting. Then, you have some intense music and once they’re dead, you are given silence.

Performance runs well for the entire game, though the CG scenes do have a problem with stuttering and audio cutting out, whether you’re on Normal or Fast Disc Load Speed.

Game Title: Dynasty Warriors Godseekers
Developer: Omega Force, Koei Tecmo
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 1.6 GB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

I only recently became aware that the famed Dynasty Warriors musou series  was actually a spin-off of another Koei series called Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  Unlike Dynasty Warriors, that series was more based on strategy than mindless action, especially early on when the series’ first game debuted in the mid-1980s, almost a decade before I was born.

Strategy isn’t really what you think of when you think of Koei Tecmo’s games in general, either, so the newest Dynasty Warriors title is a pretty big surprise as a Dynasty Warriors game and as a Koei Tecmo game in general.  So, this is a new experience for me with the series in many more ways than just one.

Originally dubbed Dynasty Warriors: Eiketsuden in Japan, here is my review of Dynasty Warriors: Godseekers for PS Vita and PSTV!

Story

Godseekers takes place during the Han Dynasty and revolves around Zhao Yun along with his companion and newcomer to the DW series, Lei Bin.  As the story begins, the two wander outside their home and come upon a sealed woman named Lixia (also new to the series), and protect her from nearby Yellow Turban soldiers.  Upon being freed, Lixia travels with the two in search of gems for an unknown purpose.

The overall story is taken right out of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, with a focus on the Shu kingdom.  Over the course of the game, you partake in a lot of key battles that are outlined not only in the games but also the actual Romance of the Three Kingdoms historical novel made out Ancient China.  Many things are different as Lixia is a part of things, but it follows a lot of the actual events of history.

The story itself is pretty interesting, and is fresh for me as the last two Warriors games I played on the Vita had no storylines, being “Empires” versions of Dynasty Warriors 8 and Samurai Warriors 4.  So having a story to dive into was nice and fresh.

Gameplay

Much more like the Eiketsuden and Romance games, Dynasty Warriors: Godseekers is a turn-based Strategy RPG.  Instead of mindlessly slashing your way through battles, you will be moving units on a grid-like map in order to take down other units or follow other mission-specific objectives.  Picture Final Fantasy Tactics meets Dynasty Warriors and you won’t be far off.

Progressing through the game is tied between taking missions from a World Map and managing all of your troops and inventory from said World Map.  As the story progresses, new locations will become available to you and, with them, new story events to keep the plot going.  Between those missions, though, you have much more that you can work on and start doing.

First off is your management of inventory and units.  You can buy and equip weapons and items to each playable character in your arsenal.  This is especially important because lots of weapons have specific effects that are useful for certain battles and units cannot use healing items unless you actually equip them with healing items (like how you can’t use healing items in Atelier unless you equip your alchemist with that item before you head out into the field).  And the further along and more characters you recruit, the more extensive this management will become.

The other aspect is side-missions.  The majority of possible characters to recruit do not come from Story Missions at all.  Every time you find a new area and clear its story mission, a bunch of side missions pop up that you can go through.  These missions are not only useful for grinding when the difficulty spikes, but are crucial for recruiting all the characters and new units you can, as many characters can only be recruited via side missions.

Now, let’s get to actual combat.  Every mission will be different, but your units will appear on a grid along with enemy units and, most of the time, ally units.  During your turn, each of your units will go as well as any Ally Units that hail from sides of the war that strive for the same goal as you.  Then all of the enemy units will take their turns and the cycle repeats.  It’s pretty simple turn-based gameplay.

Along with each mission having specific targets or objectives to take out or pass, there is a bit of Musou thrown into the game as well.  When you are near an enemy unit and within your attack range, you have various attacks that you can use in combination with one another.  Which attacks you use, where your opponent is facing, and a few other factors will determine how much damage you can do.  For example, you may be able to combo 5 of your first attack but the overall damage might be far less if you did 1 of your 2^nd attack and only 2 of your first.

And as you fight, you will build up 2 gauges: The Musou Gauge and the Synchro Gauge.  When the Musou Gauge is filled for any character, their Ultimate Attack or Musou Attack becomes available.  This has a special animation and is a far stronger attack than any other at their disposal.  And the Synchro Gauge is similar but when it is full and you activate it, all nearby units can enter a queue of combo attacks and you can all launch attacks at once, effectively stopping time for the enemy to not worry about them making any moves at all until your attacks are finished.

Once you take out the specified target, reach the specified location, or fulfill whatever objective the current mission has, you claim victory and all of the experience you built up from fighting off enemies is added up and used to level up your units to increase their stats and prepare them for future missions.

Now, leveling is a key part in missions, because every mission has a recommended level requirement.  If you play on Easy Mode, you can probably get pretty far in the game without having to stop and grind, but anything above that and you’re going to be stopping to grind a lot, be it by doing side-missions, going back to the Training Area, or just doing easy missions over and over again.  Like any SRPG, the game’s difficulty goes up pretty quickly, so that grind is something you should be prepared for.

But it stays repetitive all the same with that grinding.  The first time I had to grind, I had a mission in Chapter 2 that asked me to be Level 10 and I was only around Level 4 or 5 at the time.  I’d spent more time grinding than I’d spent on the entire story before that.  It’s just something to make note of if you don’t like that much grinding.

As far as length goes, without grinding or side missions, you might be able to complete the game in around 6 or 7 hours, but you’d have to be extremely lucky to be able to accomplish that.  I would put it more around 20-30+ hours with all the side missions, recruiting, and grinding you’ll have to do.  In other words, it will keep you quite busy.

Controls

Thankfully, touch controls can be disabled and Godseekers is compatible with the PlayStation TV.  So, if you want to play the game on the big screen without double-dipping for the PS4 version, you can.   In fact, there’s even a prompt when you boot the game on the PSTV to automatically optimize the controls for the micro-console.

Controlling the game otherwise is not hard to do.  D-Pad and Analog Stick can be used to move around in the menus.  The L and R triggers don’t really do anything.  Square is used to highlight all of the squares on the battle grid, and Triangle/Circle can be used to look at the stats for a unit that you’re looking at.

It’s pretty simple to do, really.

Presentation

The graphics I cannot really complain about.  It’s definitely a step up from the last few Warriors games on the Vita.  Each of the zoomed-in cinematic scenes look flashy, and there’s a ton of detail in story scenes.  That’s one part of the game I can’t really say anything bad about.

Now, performance.  Load Times aren’t a problem.  Frame-Rate is far from perfect, though.  If you’re familiar with the recent Dynasty Warriors Vita games having some minor FPS problems, it’s here as well.  A lot of times, you will see some decent lag during battle animations and it’s very noticeable.  Granted, this is a turn-based game so they won’t really mess anything up.  But they are an annoyance.

Game Title: Tomb Raider II
Developer: Eidos Interactive
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: PS One Classic
Download: 195 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

When I began my coverage of the early Tomb Raider games, I didn’t at first realize what a daunting task it would be.  I had played the original game many years ago, but never really got around to playing 2-4.  I kind of just jumped straight from 1 to Chronicles to Legend.  Little did I know that not only are more recent Tomb Raider games huge, the original games were massive as well.

As such, the game I’m about to do a retro review for will be the end of Phase 1 of Tomb Raider coverage.  I’ll shift my focus onto a couple other games and then come back for the final two of the PS1 Tomb Raiders available on the PSP and PS Vita.

So, here is my retro review of the PS One Classic, Tomb Raider II!

Story

The story of Tomb Raider II takes plays 1 year after the events of the first game.  The plot revolves around an ancient artifact known as the “Dagger of Xian”, a magical artifact that the Emperor of China once used to command his armies.  Lara Croft becomes involved as she investigates the Great Wall of China researching the Dagger’s legend when she meets some thugs from the Mafia and chases after them, in the hopes of finding more about the dagger.

Now, for those of us whom have played the game will know that the above paragraph is filled with magical events that we only dream were actually explained to us.  The game starts off with a cinematic before the title screen of a previous Chinese War (assuming you were patient enough to watch said cinematic) and once you hit New Game, you are right in gameplay.

And that’s the problem with the story because if you asked me about Tomb Raider II’s story, my first response would be “There was a story?”  Cut scenes are extremely scarce and most don’t give you much, if any information regarding the actual plot.  Until late game, there might as well not even be a story.

Gameplay

Like its predecessor, Tomb Raider II is a 3D Platforming game with combat and puzzle elements.  Just like the first game, you’ll be doing lots of jumping, climbing, pulling switches, solving puzzles, and gunning down enemies with any weapon in your arsenal.

Since this is a sequel, they did try to improve the formula.  Tomb Raider II introduced the climbing mechanic, allowing you to grab and climb up walls instead of just grabbing platforms and ceilings.  That’s about it, outside of new weapons like the Harpoon Gun that can be used while underwater and the Grenade Launcher for those of you that wish to see your enemies blown into a dozen blocky pieces.

The biggest improvement is the fact that you can now save anywhere you want.  In TR1, you had Save Crystals hidden in every dungeon and you could only save your game at said crystal.  If you spent 20 minutes progressing and died right before the next crystal, guess what?  You get to re-do those last 20 minutes.  The infinite saves really helps you out.

Main progression is similar to the first game.  Your task in each area is to explore and find switches that will open up areas and then go to those areas and find more switches and puzzles and keep going until you find the exit for the level and move onto the next.  However, this is a bit more complicated than in the first game.  The areas are much larger and there are more intricate puzzles that require not only items, but timing as well.

There are also more environmental tasks thrown at you for some of the puzzle-solving and item-retrieving.  Not only will you need to search rooms, but some levels will have you going through extense underwater sections as well.  One of the main level sets is actually at the bottom of the ocean with you swimming around with sharks and exploring wrecked ships, and those levels give you some very unique tasks (and are, in my opinion, the most memorable levels in the game.

As far as the combat mechanics and boss fights, you can expect just as many unfair fights not only with bosses but normal enemies, too.  There will be lots of times where you’ll be surrounded by several enemies and playing vanilla would make the game extremely difficult.  Thankfully, there are Cheat Codes built into the game to help balance and keep things in your favor.  Not only did the Level Skip and All Weapons/Ammo cheat return, but the latter cheat also replenishes health packs, so you can be ready for any situation, even though the game is still difficult with all of that active.

Now, let’s talk about length.  Some people will tell you that the game can be beat in 4 hours, and those people are not being honest with you.  There are 17 levels to go through and even playing with a guide, you should expect to spend the better part of an hour on each level.  If you’re like me and decide to tough it out without referencing a guide (but still using the All Weapons cheat), you should expect to spend 1-2 hours or more for each individual level.  It took me around 30 hours to beat Tomb Raider 2, but if you use a guide, you might be able to do it in under 20.

Still, think about that for a minute.  An action game that lasts nearly 20 hours.  Some handheld RPGs aren’t that long nowadays.

Controls

Just like the first game, Tomb Raider II is compatible with the PlayStation TV.

The control scheme has, unfortunately, not been changed since the first game, so you’re still dealing with tank controls.  Actually, the entire scheme is exactly the same.  D-Pad for movement.  L1 for free-look.  R1 for walking.  L2 and R2 for strafing left and right.  X for interacting and Square for jumping.  Triangle for weapons and Circle for rolling to turn around.

So you should know a thing or two about this, but since it remains unchanged, it still remains especially awkward compared to today’s games.

Presentation

Visually, the graphics have improved.  Lara’s face looks a bit awkward, but the polygons look much better.  An example of this would be Lara’s Breasts, the topic of any Tomb Raider discussion.  In the original, her breasts were literally like triangles.  In Tomb Raider II, they made them curved to look more realistic.  The environments all look better too.  The environments in TR1 looks really blurry and made it hard to make anything out, but this is a definite improvement.

Audio has also improved a bit, but not all.  There were a lot of areas in TR1 with no background music and there are still some of those areas in TR2, but a far less number of them.

One issue with the audio is the fact that the audio cuts out every so often.  That’s also tied to performance because the game has some slight frame-rate issues.  In many areas, the fps will drop a little bit.  Not a lot, but maybe about 5 down from the normal flow.  And when it does that, the audio cuts out as well.

Game Title: Dynasty Warriors Vol. 2
Developer: Koei
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: PSP
Download: 156 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

Reviewing Dynasty Warriors: Godseekers recently made me think about how much of the series I’ve actually played. In all honesty, the only Dynasty Warriors game I’d really played before that was Dynasty Warriors 8: Empires (and Samurai Warriors 4 Empires if you consider Warriors one single series), and I really wanted to broaden my horizons with the series.

Seeing as how most of the Vita’s Dynasty Warriors games are multi-platform with other games, I decided to grab two games from the series recently that are not multi-platform. So, until I resume my Tomb Raider coverage with its third entry, we are going to cover some handheld-exclusive Dynasty Warriors games.

This starts with a PSP exclusive game known as Dynasty Warriors Volume 2!

Story

The story of Dynasty Warriors Volume 2 revolves around various battles of the Romance of the Three Kingdoms storylines, as the entire series has done since its origins. The Yellow Turban rebellion and onward, you will see storylines surrounding many of China’s great battles detailed in the Romance stories.

Though one thing I’ll say is that the story of this game is very underwhelming. When I say we get story, I don’t mean that we get nice, cinematic story scenes. It’s more like you pick a battle to take part in and you get about three bubbles of speech before the battle actually starts. It isn’t voiced and is very bare-bones. For trying to dive into DW games with story, this one’s was very underwhelming and disappointing to me.

Gameplay

Much like most of the series, Volume 2 is an action musou game. During gameplay, you’ll be spending all of your time fighting off hordes and enemies in the hopes of gaining control of territories and making your way to the enemy stronghold where you can overpower the enemy and win the battle. It’s pretty basic musou formula.

Now note that this game’s title is “Volume 2”. While the first PSP Dynasty Warriors game is also handheld exclusive (outside of the PSTV), I chose to do Volume 2 because it helped balance out and fix a lot of the issues that came with the first game. While this game isn’t perfect as you’ll find later on in this review, there were some pretty major HUD problems in the first game that are fixed here.

When you boot up the game, you basically have a choice between playing Musou Mode which serves as the game’s campaign/story mode, Free Mode where you can make your own battles, and Multiplayer Mode, where you can use Ad Hoc to make local multiplayer games. However, the majority of your time will be spent in Musou Mode.

In Musou Mode, you will play through a campaign of battles with your selected character from the Character Select screen. Volume 2 contains all 48 playable characters from Dynasty Warriors 5, but you only have access to about a quarter of them from the get-go. When you go through this game mode and complete each character’s campaign, you will unlock more characters to be able to use and play as in both Musou and Free Modes.

Now to actual progression. Every character has a tree of sorts of battles and each battle can have different outcomes. Depending on what you do in each battle, you progress to another battle. As I just said, though, there are different outcomes. Depending on the outcome of your first battle, you could lead on into one of 2 possible paths and the next battle may lead to even more paths. This leads to every run through Musou Mode potentially being different from the last.

Anyone who has played a Warriors game should know the basic formula for Musou Conquest, but it’s slightly different in this game. Instead of there being a giant open sandbox-like group of areas to explore, the overall map is made up of separate grids. When you start, you can only roam around the grid you’re in and cannot move to another until you seize control of that area.

This is also a little different. Instead of defeating a certain number of troops, you take control of an area by taking out any major enemies, like officers, leaders, or unique characters that you come across. Take all of them out and the area is yours. Once the area is seized, you can move to any grid on any side of the one you just took control of. You continue this process until you get to the enemy’s main camp and seize it to win the battle.

Combat is pretty much the same Dynasty Warriors has been for a good while. You have light and heavy attacks you can use to create combos. You also have a Musou Gauge that rises as you fight and when it’s full, you can unleash a powerful Musou Attack. Many DW games that came after this have similar combat systems, like Dynasty Warriors Next.

As Musou games go, combat does tend to get repetitive. I’ve played Musou games that have stayed fun throughout and others that really don’t feel like they have a lot to them, and Volume 2 really hits the mark for the latter. The combat isn’t nearly as fast-paced as some other games of the genre and without the ability to freely roam around the overall map really makes the repetitive nature of the game all the more apparent.

However, repetition doesn’t make the game easy. The game challenged me from the second battle I took place in, which is part of the actual difficulty of the game and the limited control scheme I’ll explain in the next section.

As far as length goes, each battle takes me roughly 20-30 minutes to complete. So, if you did a campaign of, say, 5 or 6 battles, that’s around 3 hours of playtime. Since there are 3 different kingdoms to go through, that gauges the overall game around 9 hours, which isn’t bad for an action game.

Controls

Although I call this a handheld exclusive game, Dynasty Warriors Volume 2 is compatible with the PlayStation TV.

As far as the control scheme is concerned, you use the Analog Stick to move around and you hold L to center the camera. Unlike other games, there are no free-roam camera controls. The only way to manipulate the camera is to press or hold L to center it behind your character. That makes combat in general very difficult and awkward to do. You’ll constantly be fighting waves of enemies and then have to turn, press L, and then continue after you see what’s behind you.

The rest is simple, though. X for jumping, Square for light attacks, Triangle for Heavy Attacks, and Circle for Musou Attacks. Not that the game thought you needed to know. The game doesn’t really explain anything to you. I had to reference the digital manual to find out what half of the control scheme actually did.

Presentation

Visually, I can’t really complain. For a PSP 3D game, it looks pretty decent. There are jagged edges around many character models, but for what it is, it actually looks much better than what I was expecting.

Audio is basically what you’d expect from Dynasty Warriors. It has some nice rock-based theme music for battles, which is really what I’ve come to expect with my history of the series.

Performance I can’t say is bad. Load times are short and I cannot think of a single time that the frame-rate dropped or got laggy. The game was optimized well for the PSP, which is something many can’t say about some of the more recent Vita Warriors games

Game Title: Uncanny Valley
Developer: Cowardly Creations, Digerati Distribution
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 83 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: No

Side-Scrolling Horror experiences were never really my thing until last year.  I’m a lover of the horror genre, but most of that love comes from franchises like Parasite Eve, Silent Hill, and especially Resident Evil.  All of them are 3D horror franchises and have rarely dived into the 2D realm, outside of Resident Evil Gaiden for the Game Boy Color.

But last year, a little horror game called Claire changed my mind.  It was a 2D side-scrolling horror game with a story that hit me right where it hurts the most.  Since then, I’ve been far more open to 2D horror games than I ever was before.

So today, I have a new 2D horror game that was originally on PC but recently came to the PS4 and Vita both.  Here’s my review of Uncanny Valley!

Story

The story of Uncanny Valley revolves around a Security Officer named Tom, whom is plagued by Night Terrors.  You control Tom from his first day at a new Security Officer and through the days that follow, along with his recurring and disturbing nightmares.

Plot-wise, Uncanny Valley is hard to follow because of how much it jumps around.  The way the game switches between the night terrors and the real world, it’s very hard to distinguish which is which.  One minute you’re in the middle of walking home and the next, you’re running from a giant face thing that is coming out of the wall, and then you wake up seemingly in an entirely different part of his life where he’s married to the house cleaning lady that you seemingly meet only days before.

Not to say that it’s a terrible story, because it does get interesting, but it’s really hard to follow and because of that, really never seemed that thrilling to me.

Gameplay

Much like Claire, this is a 2D side-scrolling game that has a focus on exploration, finding items, and solving puzzles with said items.  There are also some combat elements introduced later on in the game when you have weapons at your disposal.

Unlike Claire, though, you’re not continually trapped in a ghost-filled building.  You go through Tom’s daily life of patrolling the Security Office, going home to his Apartment, and continuing the next day.  You can freely explore the apartment, environments outside, and the station itself, and depending on what you do, things may proceed in a different way.

For example, you can sleep all day and not go to work if you want, and things may skip to a different nightmare or just go to the next day, or diligently patrol every day.  There are a lot of different things you can do which will affect future story events as well as endings you get when you complete the game.  In this sense, there is a fair bit of freedom and not linearity that most side-scrolling indie games like this have.

Now, I said above that there are exploration elements.  As you explore each area, you will be able to find items to collect and use later, large objects to push into place to be able to access new areas, and terminals to access in order to get key info for unlocking doors.  There are some of these types of things in the normal, daily life of Tom, but they’re far more apparent when the night-terrors take over, since most of them have you trapped and having to solve some puzzle in order to escape.

Of course, exploring isn’t without dangers.  In many areas, particularly in the night terrors, there will be horrible, obscene, terrible monsters that will chase after you if they see you.  So, you have to be able to navigate around them as well as do your normal exploration.

The overall experience is pretty short.  One trek through the game should take you roughly 2-3 hours to complete.  There is replayability through multiple playthroughs for different endings but any one go will not take very long.

Controls

Despite having very few touch controls and no motion/camera controls, this game is not compatible with the PlayStation TV.

The control scheme isn’t too hard and, unlike some other indies, they are explained to you in the tutorial.  Moving about is done with the D-Pad and the shoulder buttons are used for running and picking up items.  The X button is used for interacting with doors and puzzles, Square is use for the Flashlight.

There are some light touch controls, too.  When you hit Select to open the inventory, you access it with touch controls as well as the Main Menu.

Presentation

Graphically, the game has a pixel-like structure and design to look like an old-school side-scroller.  Tied with the dark environments and the creepy bits of music.  This works well, but the graphics, themselves, are not as refined as they should be.  Many of the backgrounds and pixel-like, but they end up very blurry, which is difficult to look at.

Now, performance.  I know what you’re thinking.  It’s a 2D side-scroller with a simple design.  How could it possibly have performance issues?  Well, loading times are fine, but in many of the nightmare sequences, you get slowdown which is very strange.

Game Title: iO
Developer: Gamious
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 470 MB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: No

Valentine’s Day hasn’t been a particularly big day to be remembered for game releases, though it has been known to happen.  For PlayStation fans, this past Valentine’s Day fell on Tuesday, the day every week when new games release on the PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, and PlayStation Vita systems.  And it’s also a day for surprises.

This week, I was surprised with a game that was to be released on Valentine’s Day that I’d never heard of.  I always try to keep up on all of the upcoming games for the Vita, but this one had me stumped.  Thankfully, the developer reached out and offered me a review code so I could check it out and bring you guys some coverage.

If you’re a fan of physics platformers, here’s my review of the game called iO!

Story

Due to iO having no story, this section shall remain blank.

Gameplay

iO is, in fact, not the name of the newest product from the Apple Corporation.  It is a physics platformer that involves shrinking and growing.  In each stage, you’ll be using momentum and size-changing mechanics to get your sphere from the start of the stage do the end point across obstacles and other hazards in your way.

The game has 3 different sets of levels for you to tackle.  A group of 25 tutorial stages to teach you the mechanics of the game, 5 sets of level for the main campaign, and finally a set of 75 Advanced levels to test your skills to the extreme.

The basic mechanic you have in this game is the ability to change your sphere’s size.  In each stage, you have platforms to cross, climb, jump over, or simply ride across.  To get through these areas, you will have to grow and shrink the sphere as you roll it for a variety of reasons.  Some stages need you to shrink it small enough to fit through a tight gap, while others have you shrink it to pick up speed to make a long jump.

It starts off pretty simple, with stages that just have you shrinking or growing to go through simple openings and slants and then it gets much more complex.  The game steadily adds moving platforms to traverse, weight-oriented platforms you need to knock over lava pits, and all the way to using momentum to slam into walls and shrink or grow to climb them.  It is very extensive and some of it even has you jumping into open space and using weight intricately to guide yourself under platforms to find the end point.\

The simple aspect of the game is one thing that I like.  Many of the puzzles are difficult, but they’re all short enough that you won’t lose all that much progress with frustration if you fail.  The most you’ll spend on a single one is maybe 10 or 20 seconds aside from looking and setting up what you need to do.  It’s a very easy-to-grasp puzzle game while remaining challenging at the same time.

Length isn’t really that far, overall.  There are around 225 levels total and each level shouldn’t take you more than a minute or so to tackle.  So, that leaves you with around 3.5 hours of game to tackle.  Or, if you’re really bad at puzzle games, it could last a lot longer.  Now, this isn’t bad at all for the price of around $7.99.  It’s not great, but it’s not bad.  For me, paying $8 for nearly 4 hours of gameplay isn’t all that bad (especially when some people pay $40-60 for First-Person Shooting Games that only offer 5-7 hours)

Controls

iO is one of the many smaller indie games that are NOT compatible with the PlayStation TV.  So, users of the micro-console will not be able to play this game on the big screen.  As far as controls, though, there’s nothing the game does the PSTV can’t do, as all controls are button controls.

Speaking of controls, things go pretty simple.  You can use the Left Analog Stick and the Left/Right buttons on the D-Pad to move your sphere around in each stage.  The Right Analog Stick and the Up/Down buttons on the D-Pad are used for shrinking and growing the sphere.  Finally, you can use the Circle button to pause your game and the Triangle button to reset the stage.  Aside from using X in menus to select options, that’s all there is to it.

Presentation

Visually, the game has a very basic and simple graphics engine.  What is there does show itself in very smooth graphics, but with how simple it is, that is not hard to do.

Music is the only thing I’d complain about with presentation, simply because the entire game only has a single music track.  The track plays indefinitely through menus, title, and stages.  There’s no variety in things.

Performance I can’t say anything bad about.  Frame-rate is always steady, load times are almost nonexistent and the game overall stays really stable all the way through.

Game Title: Berserk and the Band of the Hawk
Developer: Omega Force, Koei Tecmo
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 2.8 GB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

Popular anime franchises being turned into action games isn’t all that new at this point (just look at Naruto and Dragon Ball Z’s multitude of fighting games that look and feel more like action games), but them being turned into Musou action games is.  This first happened last year when Omega Force took the first season of Attack on Titan and converted it into a Musou-like formula (though it did feel different since there were no “hordes” in the game).

They’ve tried again with the long-running Berserk series.  First titled simply “Berserk Musou” in Japan, it has come West and has had my interest for nearly a week now as I’ve been trekking through the many arcs of the Berserk storyline that game crammed into itself.  But now the release day is here and I’m ready to review it!

So, here’s my review of the Vita/PSTV version of Berserk and the Band of the Hawk!

Story

Berserk has been around for 27 years at this point and a lot has happened with the story.  The game starts us off right at the beginning.  In a medieval setting, you play as a lone mercenary named Guts who wields a large great-sword.  Guts drifts from place to place until he comes under attack and is forced to join an infamous group of mercenaries known as the Band of the Hawk.  And the story goes from there with how Guts grows attached to this group and his relationship and rivalry with their leader, Griffith.  And that’s all I can say to avoid spoilers.

Now there’s one thing to know about Berserk.  The storyline is very violent, dark, and gruesome.  Once you get past the first arc or two, the true storyline will start to showcase itself and will go from a semi-realistic group of mercenaries fighting for one side of a war to a Dark Fantasy filled with omens, demons, and more  I’m really walking the spoiler line with this, but just note that the story gets very dark.

The game showcases a lot of Berserk’s storyline.  If you recall, the original 1997 anime series only covered one part of it, the Golden Age arc.  Then the 2016 anime series covered the Conviction Arc and the 2017 Anime series is going to cover the Falcon of the Millennium Empire arc.  The game covers more than that.  Across the game is the 3-part Golden Age Arc, the Black Swordsman arc (that takes place before Conviction), the Conviction Arc, and the Falcon of the Millennium Empire arc.  It covers the entire Berserk storyline aside from the Fantasia Arc, which is still in the middle of being made in the Manga.

So, basically, you’re getting a huge amount of story that not even the anime has caught up with yet.  Makes you wonder how the Attack on Titan game got away with a whole game around only 1 season.

Gameplay

Berserk is an action musou game, much like the Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors franchises.  While each stage in Berserk will not be around the whole Conquest gameplay that DW is known for, you will be doing missions by traveling through large maps and taking on large hordes of enemies while the storyline of each stage pushed you further towards your next objectives.  Despite not being the cliché Conquest gameplay, it is still very much a musou game.

When you boot up the game, you’ll have 3 game modes to go in: Story Mode, Free Mode, and Endless Eclipse Mode.  Story Mode is the only available option at first, while Free Mode unlocks later and Endless Eclipse will gradually unlock as you play through the story.  To be simple, Story Mode lets you pay the story, Free Mode lets you replay Story Mode scenarios with any playable character, and Endless Eclipse Mode lets you run through a gauntlet of stages with various tasks in each level you climb up in.

If you’re curious about the playable characters, there are a little over half a dozen.  While you will mostly be playing as Guts, there will be the occasional stage where you have multiple characters to choose from.  The playable roster is as follows: Guts, Griffith, Casca, Judeau, Serpico, Schierke, and Nosferatsu Zodd.  Not a huge roster, but considering the storyline, it makes sense why those characters were chosen to be playable.

When you’re trekking through Story Mode, you basically go between Stages and Events.  Conquering each stage in story mode will unlock events between various characters that give you insight into more of the overall storyline, and can sometimes foreshadow future story stages that haven’t happened yet.

Next, when you’re inside a stage, you’re in a large 3D environment with the ability to freely roam around any area that isn’t locked.  You will have various objectives popping up to be able to progress to the next stage of the battle.  This is where the game has variety and tries to stray from the repetitive nature of the musou genre.  You will nearly-always have different objectives in each mission.  One mission may be to protect and lead NPCs out of a warzone, while the next may be to hunt down and take out key bosses to scare away an army attacking the nearby kingdom.

It’s enough to make you forget sometimes that Berserk is actually a Musou game, but there is one type of objective that really hits the repetitive nerve hard.  When you are trapped and have to defeat a certain number of enemies, things can really feel repetitive.  The first few times you only have to take down a hundred or two, but when you get to the missions that say “Slay 600 enemies” or even 1,000, it really just drags and drags and drags and you just want the objective to be over so you can get some more story.

Now the combat is pretty in tune with Musou formula.  You have light and heavy attacks you can combo together in different ways depending on what sort of enemies and groups you’re fighting.  But Berserk does have a few features that feel a little unique.  As you fight, you can fill up a “Frenzy Gauge” and once it is full, you can temporarily increase your stats and ability to stagger enemies and fill up another gauge in that mode called the “Deathblow” gauge.  Filling that up lets you either perform an ultimate attack and much later in the game, do a special transformation.

These combos are more important for bosses, though, than hordes.  While some bosses will be with hordes, some of the bosses are very large.  When you are fighting Giant Bosses, you will have to use very intricate combos in order to break their guard and be able to do much damage (and likely also have to build up your Frenzy and Deathblow Gauges before said boss fight takes place).  Giant Bosses can easily break your guard and send you flying across the arena, so they require much more skill to fight against.

Once you complete the objective of your mission, the stage ends with some story cutscenes and then you gain experience to level and learn new combos as well as gaining materials and equipment so you can equip, enhance, and combine items to increase your stats for your next mission.  This continues on for the rest of the game.

For length, each battle stage should take you an average of 15-20 minutes a piece on the Normal Difficulty.  Across 46 Story Missions, 59 Events, and the story scenes for each mission, don’t expect to beat the game until you’ve thrown at least 15-20 hours into the game.

Controls

As always, Omega Force and Koei Tecmo have made Berserk compatible with the PlayStation TV and with special controls to boot.  On the Vita, activating certain features that I can’t say because of story spoilers, along with locking onto bosses are done on the touch screen and those controls are sent to the L2/R2 and L3/R3 buttons on the PSTV.

The rest of the controls are simple enough.  Left Analog Stick to move, Right Analog Stick to move the camera.  The D-Pad allows you to cycle through your available items and sub-weapons (and R to use said item or sub-weapon).  The L button allows you to guard and block incoming attacks.  Then the rest are for combat.  Square is for light attacks and Triangle for heavy attacks.  X lets you dodge and Circle will activate your Frenzy Mode or Deathblow attack.

Presentation

Visually, the game is good and lackluster at the same time.  All of the character models and enemy models are done well.  There are a lot of features and details, down to little pieces on the characters’ armor.  Environments are where the game took a hit, which I think was deliberate.  The environments are much less detailed than character models.  There aren’t that many details and they really seem out of place.  But I’ll explain why they did that later in this section.

The music isn’t taken straight from the anime soundtrack (aside from the anime scenes in the game taken from the Golden Age movies), but it’s pretty intense music that really takes the feel of Berserk as you play.

Performance is actually really good.  Most battles only take around 2-3 seconds to load before you can dive in, and the frame-rate rarely strays from around 30 fps.  The only time I ever saw the fps drop was during the ultimate attack when Guts is wearing a particularly-spoiler-heavy costume.  Outside of that, it plays extremely well and smooth, unlike most Vita musou games.

Game Title: Poochy & Yoshi’s Wooly World
Developer: Good Feel, Nintendo of America
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Game Type: 3DS
Download: 7,769 Blocks
NA Availability: Retail | Digital Download
EU Availability: Retail | Digital Download

Yoshi has always and will probably always be my favorite character in the Super Mario franchise.  As you’ve seen in previous Mario and Yoshi reviews, I’ve always loved the ability to play as Yoshi as well as diving into Yoshi’s own subseries from the Mario franchise.  Yoshi’s Island.  Yoshi’s Story.  And of course, the ability to play as Yoshi in Super Mario 64 DS have been big highlights of the series for me.

So when Yoshi’s Wooly World came to the Wii U, I was at a loss.  One Yoshi game wasn’t enough to get me to chuck out the cash to buy a Wii U, and it seems that my patience has finally paid off.  Mere weeks before the launch of the Nintendo Switch, Yoshi’s newest adventure got ported from the Wii U to the 3DS and what a port it was, promising  30 fps play on the 3DS and 60 fps on the New 3DS.

So, let’s use our egg-throwing skills and check out my review of Poochy & Yoshi’s Wooly World for the Nintendo 3DS!

Story

The game is the same as the Wii U version of the game.  On an island made completely of yarn, the wizard Kamek ambushes a group of Yoshis (or Yarn Yoshis to be precise) and transforms all but two of them into bundles of yarn for Baby Bowser to use to build a new castle.  The Yoshi’s then give chase to find the pieces of their friends scattered across the various worlds on the island .

The story is pretty standard Mario premise.  Villain kidnaps someone, protagonist goes after them.  But I view this as a pretty nice step up from previous handheld Yoshi games because it separates from the dependency on Baby Mario and Baby Luigi being in the game, allowing Yoshi to go solo and help their own series flourish (plus you don’t have that annoying ‘get hit, hurry and save Baby Mario’ feature anymore).  And that is one thing I really like about it.

Gameplay

Like previous Yoshi games, Wooly World is a 2D Platformer with combat elements thrown into the mix.  During the journey to rescue the other Yarn Yoshi’s, you’ll be side-scrolling through levels and fighting off enemies and bosses to get from one stage to the next.

First of all, let’s talk about how this is different from the Wii U version of the game.  The 3DS version removed the Co-Op mode, so you can’t do any multiplayer with any friends, though the feature that lets you scan a Yoshi Amiibo to have 2 Yoshi’s under your control to mimic co-op play is surprisingly still built into the game.  Amiibo is another thing.  The number of Amiibo figures that can be scanned for the Craft Yoshi feature has increased significantly since the Wii U game.

The other addition to the game is the new Poochy Game Mode.  As you go through the campaign, you’ll unlock levels in a special game mode where you control Poochy in an Endless Runner to collect coins and Poochy Pups.  Also speaking of Yoshi, the easy “Mellow Mode” from the game that gives Yoshi wings to easily fly through a level has been further enhanced by giving you endless Yoshi Pups to use instead of Eggs/Yarn Balls to further make things easier if you’re having a hard time or are getting this game for a young child to play.

Now, playing the game takes you between Craft Isand and the 6 Worlds the game has you play through. Craft Island has a bunch of things you can do outside of the main campaign, like the Poochy Runner I just mentioned, an Amiibo Shop that lets you scan Amiibo figures, a Boss Tent for re-challenging bosses once you finish the game, and finally the Yoshi Craft hut, which allows you to modify the design on Yoshi.  You can scan Amiibos for Yoshi Designs or you can pick colors and manually draw your own and share them via StreetPass.

The Yoshi Craft feature really gives this game a LittleBigPlanet feel (and the fact that the graphics and design make everything look like LBP meets Yoshi’s Island).  You have a lot of freedom with this feature.  You can use the standard Yoshi colors from games like Yoshi’s Story, but the fact that you can manually draw and share your own designs is a really neat feature that’s built into the game.

Navigating the actual levels is pretty in tune with what Yoshi fans can expect.  You can jump and flutter around each stage, eat enemies, and then use Eggs to pop open clouds to open new areas or to solve puzzles.  A lot of previous elements return, including the transformation levels, giving you new Yoshi Forms to play as, from an Umbrella riding through the wind to a giant Mega form, similar to the Mega Power-up from Super Mario 64 DS.

One big enhancement from previous Yoshi games is Power Badges.  As you play through the game, you’ll collect coins for points and unlock Power Badges.  These badges require a number of points to use and take into the stage, but can manipulate the stage in a variety of ways.  They could increase your defense so you don’t lose as much health when hit, or they can make you bounce out of pits you might fall into instead of having you die automatically.

Also, the Yarn theme goes heavily into all of this.  First of all, since all enemies you eat are made of yarn, you get Yarn Balls instead of Eggs, and instead of killing enemies right-away, being hit by a yarn ball will actually tie them up with yarn, allowing you to then bypass or stomp on them from the air.  The environments are also shown here, with sections you can eat through (which unravels the yarn) and light environments you can move and manipulate by pushing against it.

Bosses do this as well, but bosses are the one thing about the gameplay I did not like.  Each boss fight was pretty unique and has its own easy-to-learn boss pattern.  However, the game starts rehashing old bosses with new move-sets pretty early in the game.  Across the 6 worlds there are 12 bosses, and you have a couple boss monsters you fight 2-3 times across those worlds.  It really just feels like they didn’t want to use any other enemies so they just decided to rehash bosses from previous worlds in new ones.

Rehashed bosses aside, there’s a lot to do here.  Each world has 8 stages, so you’ve got 48 campaign levels to trek through, plus half a dozen stages in the Poochy Runner game and a secret stage in every world if you collect all of the flower collectibles.  With each stage varying in length from 5 to 10+ minutes, the game should still last you a good 8 hours or so.

Controls

Controls are pretty simple.  Moving is done with the Circle Pad, but you can also use the D-Pad for movement.  Since this is a side-scroller, I highly suggest the D-Pad for this.  Then the face buttons do most other things.  A is for jumping/fluttering, B is for using the tongue to eat items or enemies, Y lets you freeze your Aim when throwing a Yarn Ball as well as the L trigger.  Finally, the X and R buttons let you start aiming and throw Yarn Balls.

Finally, the touch screen comes into play, too.  It’s not necessary for any platforming, but it does give you easy access to the Power Badge menu and the ability to switch from Classic Mode to Mellow Mode if a stage is giving you problems.

Presentation

Presentation is the best part of this game.  The graphics on the 3DS look wonderful.  I don’t think I ever saw a single jagged edge when I played through the game.  The whole yarn design came over to the handheld extremely well.  The music came over and fit as well.  The soundtrack is full of incredibly cute music that sticks with the theme but also sticks with you.  I’ve had many of the tracks play in my head well past putting down my handheld.

Performance is the best part of this, though.  Nintendo’s claims of 30 fps on the old 3DS models was no joke.  The game played without a hitch on my 2DS, and the load times are nice and short as well.  You’ll not be waiting more than a few seconds for any part of the game to load.

They did a great job with this port’s optimization.

Game Title: Story of Seasons ~ Trio of Towns
Developer: Marvelous, XSEED Games
Platform: Nintendo 3DS
Game Type: 3DS
Download: 5,441 Blocks
NA Availability: Retail | Digital Download
EU Availability: Retail | Digital Download

If you’ve been living under a rock for a long time, or just don’t play farming simulators often, the Harvest Moon series has been renamed and branched off on its own, now known as “Story of Seasons”.  If you’ve watched my website, you’re probably not very exposed to it, as I’ve only reviewed one game in the series and it was really more of a spin-off mix of Story of Seasons and Popolocrois from the PSP.  That was Return to Popolocrois: A Story of Seasons Fairytale.

Thanks to XSEED Games, I’ve been offered a chance to dive into a mainline Story of Seasons game to play a Harvest Moon experience for the first time since the age of the Nintendo 64 and PlayStation.  A game that’s been vastly praised for its initial release and already has tons of guides online for players, here’s my review of Story of Seasons: Trio of Towns!

Story

Trio of Towns stars a young boy (or girl, depending on your gender preference) who wants to grow up to be a great farmer.  After being shown a flashback of you visiting a farm when you were small, we come to the present, where you propose to your parents that you want to move to a faraway town and raise your own farm.  After having a heated discussion with your father saying you don’t have what it takes, you set off to try anyways.

Across the game, Trio of Towns has you starting up a small farm and slowly gaining reputation in three separate towns.  It doesn’t have an extravagant story to it, but it’s like you’d expect.  The story is about raising a farm and helping and getting to know everyone in each of the three towns as you provide them with crops.

The great thing about Trio of Towns is how charming each town is, and how different they are.  As the towns are progressively introduced to you, they all have different types of industry levels, different backgrounds, and all around have completely different character than the other two towns do.  Harvest Moon is known for being very cute and colorful, but Trio of Towns is just one of those games where as you get to know any character, you can’t help but just offer a warm smile.

Gameplay

Story of Seasons isn’t easy to define as one genre.  It’s a farming simulator, but it’s also got dating simulation elements, a variety of different types of mini-games, and a very task-oriented job system that reminds me heavily of the Atelier series.  I guess you could call it a Farming Adventure game without a lot of exploration/adventuring.

As you start the game, you’re given a tour of your first town, a brief tutorial on how to farm and harvest crops, and the various things you can do in the nearby town.  From then, you are on your own to farm and sell your crops, interact with characters in the town, do jobs, and a lot of other things that slowly unlock and present themselves to you.

Farming is the big thing, of course, but you can’t do a lot of farming at first.  You have a Stamina Gauge and doing any farming uses up stamina.  You’ve got a nice little 9×9 square for farming, but just tilling and planting seeds that amount of space will use up most of your stamina gauge, requiring you to eat food or sleep before you can continue.  When you get bigger farms, you get better stamina, but it still is a pretty hard process between what you can do before your stamina gauge needs to recharge.

That’s where everything else you can do comes in.  Each town has jobs you can perform during certain times of the day.  You may be delivering packages for the General Store or helping the Florist chop up some wood for their next shop project.  There are a lot of different jobs you can do, which will net you money to help you purchase seeds and other farming equipment/materials to help you do better with the game.

Now, I mentioned “during certain times of the day” on purpose.  The game has a clock where days and seasons pass by.  You can’t just wake up in the middle of the night and do a job for the florist.  You have to go there when the store is actually open, giving this a bit of a life sim feel.

Aside from that are more optional things, like presenting gifts to NPCs.  Story of Seasons is known for allowing you to become close to someone and marry them.  There are 4 different potential male husbands for girls and woman brides for the boys.  There is a Gift system built into the game, where each potential lover has items they love and your task is to acquire and give them what they love.  After all, receiving something you love is clearly the key to someone’s heart, right?  (It’s never that easy in the real world).

So basically, you have a lot you can do.  Farming.  Jobs.  Buying and Selling.  Managing Livestock.  Giving Gifts to start dating and then marrying your chosen lover.  And that’s only the tip of the iceberg cause once you’ve been doing that for several hours, more towns become available and your options soar even higher with different mini-games, like fishing and more.  There’s just so much for you to do that sometimes you worry you can do too much on the side with trying to balance it and farming.

There’s also Multiplayer Features to dive into as well.  A couple hours into the game, you unlock a feature that is very similar to Animal Crossing: New Leaf’s Town Visitation feature.  It will allow you to visit other players’ farms and them to visit yours.  It’s a fun little addition for those of you who have multiple 3DS units in the house.

Across everything here, you’re going to be busy.  Realistically speaking, you could still be learning and getting tutorials for new features after playing for over 15 hours.  And you can easily play for 15 more before the game comes to a close.  For not being an RPG, this game can take a very long time to play through.

Controls

Controlling the game is pretty easy.  The only real forced touch interaction for the touch screen is changing the map when you want to change from your Town Map to your World Map that shows all 3 different towns.  Other than that, the touch screen is rarely used.

You move around with the Circle Pad and the D-Pad is used for navigating menus.  The L trigger doesn’t really do anything but the R button is to quickly open the tool menu when you need to swap tools for a specific farming task.  While moving about, the B button is used to jump for platforms and the X button brings up your menus, for saving, quest information, and tools/items.  A is used for interacting with NPCs or confirming options in menus.

Overall, pretty easy control scheme and the game does a great job of explaining how everything works.

Presentation

Visually, it is acceptable for the 3DS.  There are a fair number of jagged edges, but only noticeable if you looks reallllllly close to the screen.  For a normal player and not a review writer, it’s hardly noticeable at all.  The game is otherwise very colorful and there’s plenty of detail in the characters.  Jaggies or not, it adds to the charm.

The only issue I have with the game is that certain areas have no background music.  Some of these areas are when you are experiencing certain kinds of weather, like rain.  But there are other areas where there just isn’t background music and you only hear sound effects of walking, running, and using tools.

Performance is very good.  Load Times are nice and short and the frame-rate is steady for the entire experience.  No complaints from this writer.

Game Title: Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Great Journey
Developer: Gust, Koei Tecmo
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Game Type: Vita
Download: 2.7 GB
NA Availability: Digital Download
EU Availability: Digital Download
PSTV Support: Yes

It feels like it was only last year that I seriously got into the Atelier series, but now I’ve played almost every single Atelier game the Vita has to offer. With reviews of the entire Dusk series, one of the Mystery series games, and having played Totori and Meruru beforehand, I’ve got most of the series covered. Although the newer games are really what strikes my fancy. I loved Ayesha and enjoyed Shallie and Escha, but none of them compared to how much I adored Atelier Sophie, the first of the Mystery series.

Of course, I’m in the minority for loving the Mystery series the most, but I was most excited about getting that series’ second game this year in the West. Not only because it is the second Mystery game, but also that the game claimed that it would ditch the point-to-point world map for a true open-world experience.

It’s finally here! So let’s get started with my review of the Vita/PSTV version of Atelier Firis: The Alchemist and the Great Journey!

Story

Atelier Firis takes place not long after the events of Atelier Sophie. The story revolves around a young girl named FIris with the magical ability to see the ore inside rocks, whom has lived in an underground mining village all her life, with dreams of one day seeing the outside world. That dream bears fruit when an alchemist named Sophie bombs her way into their village and discovers the natural talent for alchemy that Firis holds, opening the doors for her to venture off into the world.

The game follows Firis as she travels out into the world with her older sister to become a licensed alchemist and explore the world freely. You have the typical cutesy dialogue that Atelier is known for, but there are 2 things I loved about the story. First is how emotional the story is around Firis. Within the first hour of the game, I felt for her.

The other is the fact that you get to see an alchemist grow from the point of knowing nothing about alchemy all the way to becoming a licensed alchemist. Most Atelier games have you playing as alchemists who know at least a little about alchemy from the start of the game, but until Firis meets Sophie, she doesn’t know the first thing about it.

Gameplay

Atelier Firis breaks from normal tradition and instead of being just a turn-based RPG with multitasking elements, it is an Open-World RPG with Multitasking Elements thrown into the mix. Firis is the first Atelier on the Vita that gives you a true open-world to explore as you progress through the story. No point-to-point maps. Just big, open areas for you to explore.

Outside of that, you have similar things to do. You are still fighting enemies to level up and gather items, you’re still using alchemy to combine items into new items for quests and side-quests, and you’re still going to have little bits of dialogue to pull up for character development for each individual extra character there is in the game.

How you do these things, though, is different. First off, the time limit system comes back for awhile. When you venture out into the big open world, you have exactly 1 year to travel, get 3 letters of recommendation to take the alchemy licensing exam, and pass said exam. That sounds like a long time, and the system is pretty lenient, but remember that with the return of the time system, everything you do uses up time. Running, Harvesting materials, performing alchemy, fighting enemies, and even just backtracking for something uses up precious time.

One new system that I love is the Portable Atelier system.  As you explore, you find campfires, and can use these to set up a tent-like Atelier for you to rest or use alchemy.  It’s very much like that scenes from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.  You walk into this tent that’s barely big enough for 2 people and you’ve got a massive house inside it.  Every time you go in, it’s just a magical moment.

Now the game can be tricky with this system in place. You have a time limit, but the moment you start rushing through areas, you’ll miss an optional area off to the side that contains materials you need for your next main quest. And realizing that takes away a lot of time. So, the best advice is to explore areas as you normally would. Just don’t stop to grind battles often or anything like that.

Now onto how you progress in the game. The story will unlock itself when you reach areas of the game. But as I said above, this is an Open World RPG, meaning that you’ve got large areas to explore and everything you find and everywhere you find has monsters to fight, materials to collect, NPCs to talk to and get side-quests from, and towns/cities where major story scenes take place.

Knowing where to go is a matter of referencing the World Map. You’ll always get story prompts on where you need to go, as well as Quest Information from your customization menu. So, while you do have the freedom of roaming around wherever you’d like, there still is a presence of linearity of where you need to be going. For example, if you go out into the open world and try to go back into the mining village, you’ll get a prompt telling you you’re going the wrong way, but the game won’t stop you from going backwards if you so wish.

As much as this is an Atelier game that focuses on alchemy, I feel like combat has a much bigger presence in Firis than past games. Because you’re exploring and you interact with so many enemies on the map, you end up taking part in a lot of combat. So, if you’re someone who hasn’t played the series because of the lack of combat focus, this game should be more to your liking.

Alchemy, itself, is pretty in tune with how it was with Sophie. When you throw materials into your cauldron, you get a grid with colored tiles for each material, where you can set in formations to enhance the items you’re making. A little bit more in depth is the catalyst system, where you set a catalyst depending on what types of bonuses you want on your items and you must line up the grid pattern to get those bonuses.

Now, overall, the difficulty isn’t too high. It’s about the same as it was in Sophie. There will be key times when you need to level a bit, but for the majority of the game, just fight battles that come your way, and you won’t need to stop to grind. And the length is about the same as well. I cleared the game in around 40 hours, so you’ve got a lot of game to be able to cover.

Controls

Controlling the game is pretty standard. But first of all, like the others before it, Atelier Firis is compatible with the PlayStation TV. There aren’t any special L3 or R3 controls, but it’s playable, so those wanting to play it on the big screen can do so.

Outside of that, we’ve got the Left Analog Stick to move and the Right to move the camera. The D-Pad can navigate menus (but is not used for zooming. Start is used for that now). The R trigger doesn’t really do anything while the L trigger can pull up your dialogue list so you can re-read dialogue from previous cutscenes.

Finally, the face buttons. X interacts with NPCs and objects as well as confirming menu options and Circle lets you cancel options or jump while out in the field. Triangle pulls up your customization menu or look at details in combat. Finally, square is used to swipe your staff to collect materials from trees and rocks or to strike enemies and begin a battle.

Presentation

Here is where things get dicey. But before we get to that, the visual presentation is great, as these games always are. The character models and environments all look really nice on the handheld screen and the cel-shading helps them look that much better.

Load Times are fine, but the frame-rate is where the real problem lies. Atelier games are known for having frame drops in many areas, especially the Dusk games. But Sophie was an improvement and Firis is not. The opening mining town area has a very random frame-rate. You’ll start by seeing it run around 25-30 fps and then suddenly it will slow down to around 12 fps for a while. Then, you’ll be in the same area, and it’ll jump back up to 25.

It’s even more confusing out in the open world, because those areas that are HUGE compared to the mining town almost all run at a smooth 30 fps, aside from very specific areas. Outside of the mining town, there are very few areas that slow down to around 10-12 fps, but they are definitely there. I think this is one of those cases where Gust could have sacrificed a little bit of graphical prettiness to eliminate those really bad areas.

Ever since the PSP and Nintendo DS generation, I’ve found a love for playing games both on the little screen and the big screen. When the PSP’s Video Out cable became a thing, I loved it. It was terrible to keep hassling with this massive cord between my PSP and my TV, but being able to play games like Dissidia and Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops on my TV was well worth it. It began a long rise in my love and desires for being able to take a game on the go and play on the TV at the same time.

This continued this generation with the Vita and the PS Vita TV (or PlayStation TV as it is called outside of Japan and Asia). Being able to play Vita (and PSP) games on the go with my handheld and then just swap a memory card and play them on my HDTV with a Dual Shock controller was absolutely incredible. I loved it and wanted that to continue. And apparently Nintendo heard that desire.

Now, we are in the dawn of a new era of gaming, and Nintendo has released a game system that blends console gaming, mobile gaming, and handheld gaming all into a single device. There has been a lot of hype, controversy, and more around their newest piece of technology, but just how good is it? Let’s find out! Here is my review of the Nintendo Switch!

Hardware

In terms of hardware, the Switch is divided into 3 different pieces (though technically 4). You have the Dock that the system fits into for TV Mode, you have your Switch Unit that functions like a tablet or a screen, and you have your Joy Con Controllers. Each piece is a crucial piece to the overall puzzle and how the system showcases itself as a console, handheld, and tablet all in one.

The dock has a big open area that the console fits into and in the back is a compartment that opens up to reveal the electrical ports. There is 1 HDMI port, 1 USB port for controllers like the Pro Controller, and 1 USB-C port for the Power Adapter to give the unit electricity to run. This is pretty simple, though worth noting that the back compartment door has to remain open for cords to be going into this section.

The Unit itself is like a big tablet. On the front is the screen, itself. On the top are buttons for Power, Volume, Headphones, a Game Cart slot, and the system speakers. On the bottom is the USB-C slot if you want to charge up the system without having it docked in Console Mode (which is preferable that I’ll explain later). And on the back, we have a kickstand that pulls out so it can be propped up but is also hiding the MicroSD Card Slot to expand the system’s memory.

Finally, we have the two Joy Con Controllers. Each one slides in and snaps in place on either the side of the system itself for handheld mode or on a special grip included in the box to be used as a controller. These are meant to each be handled with one hand, each containing two shoulder buttons, an analog stick, a menu button, and four buttons (either directional buttons or face buttons). On the inside of them, there are also two extra buttons for games that utilize each as an individual controller for local multiplayer.

Interface

Now with interface, we will be talking about 2 things. The first is how the interface works with the hardware. As I said above, the Switch is a console, a handheld, and a tablet all in one. When the system is in the dock, it displays on a TV via HDMI cable and the Joycons are used wirelessly as controllers. If you want to switch it up, you simply pull the system out of the dock and it automatically switches the display onto the built-in screen.

From there, you have two options. You can open the kickstand and display it on a flat surface and still use the controllers wirelessly, or you can slide and snap them onto the sides of the system and use it as a handheld.

Next is the software OS. The user interface of the Switch Operating System is very simple and easy on the eyes. Basically in the middle, you have your square icons for all installed games, be it digital downloads or retail copies of games. Below that are small icons for various features. These would be News, eShop for browsing and purchasing digital content, Gallery to manage your screenshots, Controllers to re-pair or re-calibrate your Joy Con Controllers, Settings, and Sleep Mode for when you wish to power down the system.

Above in the left corner are user icons to show what users are currently active. You can also go in here to see their/your profile, Online Friends, Activity, etc. And in the top right is your indicator for Clock, Wi-Fi Connection, and Battery Level. It’s a pretty simple UI, overall.

Hardware Performance

Now, how does the system perform? The first thing we should take note of is the hardware. Transitioning from one “Mode” to another is seamless and runs extremely well. You pull the unit out of console mode and by the time you have it out, the screen has already taken over. If anything, it waits for you to get the Joy Cons to continue playing.

The great thing about this is for power outages. Lightning Storms are the bane for console gamers. But with the Switch, even if your console is turned on when your home’s power goes out, it automatically switches control over to the unit, making you not lose any progress and you can just switch to handheld mode to continue playing.

One thing that I don’t like with the hardware is something you’ve likely already heard, and that is related to the Left Joy Con. The Joy Cons are used wirelessly outside of handheld mode, so their antenna and the dock’s antenna have to communicate to run properly. If you have objects between the Left Joy Con and the Dock, you are likely to experience lag or having to re-sync the controllers altogether. This is likely a design flaw because I have not experienced this at all with the Right Joy Con. It’s always the Left.

Now, other than this, the Joy Cons are very unique controllers and actually work really well without the grip that comes with the system. As strange or awkward as it may sound, having one Joy Con in one hand and another in the other, I was able to play a little more fluidly than I could with the controller-like grip. Although motion controls are a bit dicey like this, it makes for a very comfortable experience.

What wins the comfort game, though, is handheld mode. As a handheld gamer, I look to this mostly as a handheld gaming system, and handheld mode is very comfortable. The Switch isn’t all that heavy, and the positioning of the Joy Cons on the side works wonders. As I said in the initial video, it feels more comfortable than the grip and it really just works well. As much as I loved seeing Zelda on the big screen, it was that much more satisfying to hold it and see that huge open-world on the go.

Battery Life + Charging Time

Speaking of on-the-go, let’s get to everyone’s big question: Battery Life and Charge Time. I spent 2 days doing tests for this so I could have some accurate stats for you. Granted, all of these were done while playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, so this may be different for other games. If it is, I’ll be incorporating Battery Life into each Switch Game Review I do on the channel.

But, with testing until the battery hit 15% where the system advised I plug it in, here is the Battery Life I got in Handheld Mode:
• Max Brightness + Wi-Fi Enabled – 2 hours, 36 minutes
• Max Brightness + Airplane Mode – 3 hours
• Low Brightness + Wi-Fi Enabled – 2 hours, 50 minutes
• Low Brightness + Airplane Mode – 3 hours, 12 minutes
One thing to note about the above is that Airplane Mode can only be used in handheld mode. It cancels all wireless communication, including the Joy Cons so that means Tablet Mode cannot use Airplane Mode to increase Battery Life.

This is about what I expected out of it, but less than I’m sure many handheld fans were hoping for. Obviously, this may depend on the game being played. Shovel Knight may have considerably better battery life than Zelda did. But that’s what I got.

The more shocking stats I got for battery were charge times. I found that charging happens significantly faster in handheld mode than console mode. Here’s what I got for using the same power outlet for both options:
• Console Mode – 6 minutes for 1% Charge.
• Handheld Mode – 1 minute, 15 seconds for 1% Charge
Why handheld mode charges so much faster, I don’t know. Since the Joy Cons charge as well as the unit when you’re in handheld mode, but that’s definitely a good thing for handheld gamers.

Screens, Profiles, Sharing, Multitasking

If you’re curious about screen resolution. When you’ve got your Switch plugged into your TV, you can set the resolution between 480, 720, and 1080. In handheld mode, it defaults at 720, so you’ve got a resolution a decent amount bigger than that of the PlayStation Vita and significantly bigger than that of the Nintendo 3DS.

With games, there are basically 2 things that are nice here. First of all, you can have several profiles on your Switch and if one profile buys a game digitally, any profile can access and play that game. So, if you and your girlfriend have profiles and she buys I am Setsuna, you can play it on your side, but save data is separated between the two of you, so you have your own profile in the game and don’t risk hurting or accidentally deleting her save file.

Along with profiles, the social elements have changed. We temporarily still have Friend Codes for adding people, but Miiverse is gone. If you want to share screenshots, you can use social media like Facebook and Twitter to do so. There will be more social elements later on, but I am glad to see Miiverse go away. It was a huge hassle for me to get review screenshots through the Miiverse website.

The other thing that’s nice is the multitasking involved. When you’re in the middle of a game, you can go back to the home screen and browse the eShop or any of the other main apps without having to close down the game first. On the 3DS, you had to close games to do pretty much anything else, but with the Switch, it’s really got good multitasking optimization.

Game Storage

Finally, let’s talk about game storage. The Nintendo Switch, by default, has an internal storage capacity of 32 GB, which means you only get around 25 GB to be used. Most of the Switch’s current digital games take up less than 2 GB of space, though Zelda takes up a meaty 13 GB. That’s why it’s great that Nintendo added a MicroSD Card Slot. So, if you’re willing to spend a few bucks, $40 could net you an extra 128 GB of storage, with bigger MicroSD cards releasing nearly every year.

Game Title: The Legend of Zelda ~ Breath of the Wild
Developer: Nintendo
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Download: 13.6 GB
NA Availability: Retail and Digital
EU Availability: Retail and Digital
Supported Modes: TV, Tabletop, Handheld

With the release of the Nintendo Switch, there are 2 big things that handheld gamers are looking for in Nintendo’s new hybrid console. One of them is open world games on the go. The Switch will get Skyrim later on this year, and people are looking forward to playing it and similar giant open world games on the go.

The second is the new Legend of Zelda game, which caters to both reasons. This new game has been a big hype train ever since it was announced, plunging the world of Zelda not only into a cell-shaded game that isn’t in the chibi Toon Link style, but also because it brings Zelda to the Open World genre. As such, I’ve spent most of my Switch time with that very game.

For my first Nintendo Switch Game Review, here is my review of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild!

Story

Long ago, the land of Hyrule was ravaged and wiped out by a force known as “Calamity Ganon”. 100 years later, a young warrior named Link awakens in an ancient Shrine of Resurrection with no memories of his past, called by the one whom is attempting to keep Ganon from freely roaming and destroying the rest of the world. The young Link is then tasked with venturing out into the vast lands of Hyrule, appease great machines once used by Ganon, and heading to Hyrule Castle to take out the Calamity once and for all.

The plot of Breath of the Wild has a lot more story to it than any other Zelda I’ve played. You’ve got all of your current things happening with NPCs, but the overall timeline and the backstory of how Calamity Ganon destroyed Hyrule in memories you unlock as you progress through the game. Those memories dive quite deep into both Link and this game’s version of Princess Zelda, offering a deep amount of character development not seen much in the series before now.

Gameplay

Breath of the Wild is an open world action-adventure game that takes the Zelda series to new depths of exploration. When I say open-world, I don’t mean like Ocarina of Time open. I mean The Elder Scrolls and Fallout open. To give you an idea, the web did size comparisons of maps and found that Breath of the Wild’s explore-able world is BIGGER than that of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. That’s how big the game truly is.

Progress in the game basically has you trapped on a plateau for the first couple hours of the game, having you tackle dungeon-like shrines to gain special powers needed for the full open world, like Bombs, the power to move magnetic objects at will, and the ability to stop time for moving objects that would otherwise run into you and kill you. Once you get those, you get a Paraglider that lets you glide through the air and the full open world opens up to you.

Exploring the world isn’t as easy as it sounds, though. Besides the intimidating size of the map, the game is also heavy on survival elements. First, you’ve got a durability mechanic where weapons only last so long before they break and a stamina gauge that depletes as you run, swim, climb, or use your paraglider. So, if you run from enemies, you have to watch that gauge unless you want it to run out and have you slowly walk for about 10 seconds until it recharges. And without heart drops from enemies, you must rely on enemy and harvesting drops like food to refill your HP. There’s also a crucial Cooking mechanic that is designed to take your base food and make it into a meal to better replenish HP.

On top of this are environmental hazards. You’ll come across a lot of areas where you take constant damage because of the environmental changes. From snowy mountains too cold to bear without warm armor to a hot mountain that causes anything unprotected to burst into flames (including you), there’s a big focus on getting the right equipment in the equipment and armor system. The game has armor that customizes your look (especially if you have Zelda-themed Amiibo figures for special outfits like Link’s Twilight Princess or Ocarina of Time tunics), but a lot of armor sets are required for certain portions of the game. Otherwise, you must buy constant potions to protect you from environmental conditions instead of just wearing the proper armor that you can buy at a nearby town.

Now outside of the survival elements, when you reach the open world, you have a lot of options made available to you. There are 4 main dungeons you’re supposed to clear before tackling the final dungeon and boss, which can be done in any order. And, if you don’t care about getting the True Ending, you could go straight to the final dungeon from the start and try the final boss. Or do one or two dungeons and then the final boss. To put it simply, there are a lot of options available to you and you have the freedom to do as you choose.

With that being said, there’s an intimidating amount of content available in the game. You have the 4 dungeons to clear and the final dungeon. For the True Ending, you’ve also got 12 memories to find specific locations for to gain access to more of the game’s backstory and working through the various shrines located across the world map to increase your heart gauge until you can grab the story-focused blade from a special dungeon hinted at when you clear the main dungeons.

And that’s just for the main objective. If you’re talking about side objectives, there are dozens of side-quests for random NPCs in the various towns and settlements you come across. And past that, you can catch and customize wild horses to ride on, buy and customize your own house, build a town up from scratch, protect NPCs from mid-boss monsters, and the list goes on. For not being an RPG, there is a staggering amount of content packed into this game.

Being open world and Zelda doesn’t mean that this game is a nice easy trek of exploration. This is one of the most difficult games in the series. Across bosses with intricate patterns and attacks to learn to losing stamina while climbing a cliff and falling to your death, there’s a lot of strategy involved in almost any sort of exploration through this world. You will have to be tactful and only Zelda experts will be able to get through dungeons or bosses their first try.

As far as time is concerned, expect a time sink. If you do the game right and go for that True Ending, don’t expect to spend any less than 40 hours in the game. That is including completing the 4 main dungeons and collecting all of Link’s lost memories in order to unlock the True Ending instead of the normal Alternate Ending if you go in without recollecting those memories. And once you do beat the final boss, there’s all the other side quests that you didn’t already do to complete while waiting for the first wave of DLC to roll out this summer with Hard Mode and the Cave of Trials.

Controls

Controlling this game is pretty simple. Note that you do need both Joy Con Controllers to do this. Moving Link around is done with the Left Analog Stick and the Right Analog Stick is used for moving the camera. Clicking the Left Stick lets you crouch and clicking the Right Stick activates your map and zoom for placing markers for places you want to go. Then we’ve got the four triggers. L is used for activating runes/subweapons and LZ is used for defending with your shield. R is used for throwing subweapons, and R2 is used to aim with your bow.

Now, the 4 directional buttons are used for actively swapping equipment without going into the customization menu. Up for Runes. Left for Arrows. Right for melee weapons. And Down for whistling to call your horse to you. And the face buttons. A interacts with objects and NPCs. B puts away your weapons. X is for jumping, and Y is for melee attacks.

Overall, not a very difficult control scheme once you get used to it. But one feature I especially like is motion-controlled aiming. When you are aiming your bow, you can slightly move your Joy Cons to use motion controls for precise aiming, which I find extremely useful.

Presentation

First of all is presentation. Visually, the game looks beautiful. In TV Mode, the graphics look near-flawless with little not even smaller jagged edges to be seen anywhere. In handheld mode, there are a few jagged edges here and there, but it’s beyond anything you’d find in a handheld like the 3DS or PS Vita. It’s a very beautiful game.

The music score is also excellent. You have calm piano tunes out in the world, but key locations have magical remixes and mashups of previous Zelda titles. I especially love the Hyrule Castle theme, which melds Ocarina of Time’s Ganon’s Castle song with the traditional Legend of Zelda theme song.

Now, performance. Breath of the Wild on the Switch is not without a few frame drops here and there. Most of the time, we’re running a nice and smooth 30 fps but in some heavy areas, you’ll see it drop down to 20-25. Surprisingly enough, running the game in handheld mode significantly reduces how often these drops appear.

This is where I think to myself on how my review standards should be. Is it acceptable for a Nintendo Switch game to have something running under 30 fps? On the Vita, it was okay if it was small, but with the Switch? For now, I’m going to make 30 fps my standard for frame-rate and I’ll take a point off for these frame drops. They’re not severe enough to affect your game, but they’re noticeable.

Battery Life

Now that we have Presentation out of the way, let’s talk about Battery Life. In my tests, different games have drastically different Battery Life results. So, I’m going to include Battery Life information in every Nintendo Switch Game Review I do. So, if you are taking Zelda on the go, here is how long your unit will last until it gets down to 15% Battery, where the system informs you to plug in a charger:

• Max Brightness + Wi-Fi On – 2 hours, 36 minutes
• Max Brightness + Wi-Fi Off – 3 Hours
• Low Brightness + Wi-Fi On – 2 hours, 50 minutes
• Low Brightness + Wi-Fi Off – 3 hours, 12 minutes

So, Breath of the Wild is likely to give you around 2.5-3 hours of battery total. That’s pretty low, especially compared to the much longer times I recorded for the Switch version of I am Setsuna, but that’s plenty of time to do what you need to do. At least for a while.

Ever since the Nintendo Switch released, a lot of people have their praises and gripes about the various modes the system can go into.  Some people claim the dock scratches up the screen of the unit, while others talk about the load times of handheld mode to not be consistent.  And they have taken it upon themselves to try to fix the problems, themselves.  Dock Socks is now a term for covering the front of the dock with a cloth “sock” as well as finding unique ways to play in handheld mode while charging with portable chargers.

One gripe that has been solved, however, is the ability to charge while in tabletop/tablet mode.  Since the Switch’s USB-C charging port is on the bottom of the screen, using the kickstand to prop it up on a table means that you cannot charge the system while in this mode.  This is a major problem for many people, especially if the TV is in another room or just not available.

One stand vowed to fix this.  Hori, known for making accessories for a lot of game systems, released a display stand to allow you to have the unit out of the dock in tabletop mode, but also charge at the same time.  This is the first accessory I’ve chosen to acquire to review.  So, let’s get to it.  Here is my review of the HORI Compact Playstand for the Nintendo Switch!

Design

The design is pretty simple.  The Stand is collapsible so it starts out just like a semi-flat rectangle.  It opens up with a flat base extended about 6 inches behind it with 3 “stoppers” that a kickstand can rest in for different angles for displaying the unit.  Once the system is pulled up, locked into one of the stopper positions, and the small resting tray is pulled down, you can slip your Nintendo Switch unit on the front and begin playing in tabletop mode without the use of the Switch’s built-in kickstand.

The one thing to note about how the system displays is that there is no “clamp” to hold both the top and bottom of the system at the same time.  A small tray pulls down for the bottom to rest on and the rest of the system just sort of leans against the stand, itself.  At first, I had serious doubts on how good it would actually be, but closer inspection showcases some rubber stoppers that the system sticks to when inserted correctly to keep movement to a minimum.

The last part of the design are holes meant for the power cord to feed through.  The kickstand has small holes that you can feed the power cord from the back and up into the bottom of the unit.  This allows you to have the unit on display for local multiplayer as well as being able to charge it at the same time.  Outside of that, I love to use it like this when I am not near my TV.  Use handheld mode until the battery gets low, and use the playstand to charge in tabletop mode.

Performance

So, how well does this actually work?  I’ll divide that into sections.  First, let’s talk about the base.  The extending base with the stoppers for the different angles is pretty solid and stable.  The Switch’s kickstand only allows the system to prop up for tabletop mode on hard, flat surfaces.  If you wanted to display your switch, say, on your bed or even a couch, it would fall over and risk breaking the kickstand.  The HORI stand, however, provides a lot of stability and can easily stay still and display on many soft surfaces from mattresses to couches to large pillows.

The way the system rests was my first worry.  There are rubber stoppers to keep the system from moving, but I feared the unit would simply fall out and crack the moment someone accidentally bumped into the table your display is on, or sits down next to you on the couch your system is on.  The rubber stoppers proved my worries wrong.  I did a lot of tests with the stand on a bed and accounting for bumps and people falling down onto the bed and the same with a thick and semi-unstable couch arm, and the unit never fell out of the stand.  In fact, the only time it ever did was when I pulled and leaned it forward (towards me) a significant amount that would never happen in accidental situations.

And the system doesn’t really move or even wiggle around once you have it in the right position.  I’ve placed it there and carried it while in the stand, even so much as lightly shaking the stand.  While doing this, the system never budged from its set position.  The rubber stoppers prove to be much more efficient than I had imagined they would be.

How the cord feeds through does have a cause for longevity concerns.  Basically, the cord feeds through in a straight line through the back of the stand and then directly up to go into the unit.  But the cord must be tightly pulled backwards for the unit to fit into the stand correctly.  This makes a lot of sense, but the way the cord has been bending for me has me concerned about the longevity of cords by doing this.

The way the angle works is that it goes straight up from being flat along the base, and if you have more angle for viewing, the cord is being curved and bent tighter and tighter.  I feel like excessive use like this could significantly shorten the life of the power cord and require you to grab a spare or two within a few months of using it like this.  I could be wrong, but with the way I look at the cords, it makes me worry as my power cord is slowly getting a bend in that section just from a few days of me using the stand.

Game Title: I am Setsuna
Developer: Tokyo RPG Factory, Square Enix
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Download: 1.3 GB
Availability: Retail (Japan, English Text Option), Digital Download (US, EU)
Battery Life: 4-6 hours
Supported Modes: TV, Tabletop, Handheld

The Nintendo Switch has opened a lot of doors for handheld gamers with Nintendo games, for sure. The success of the new Legend of Zelda game is more than proof of what kind of console experiences Nintendo’s new system can take on the go. But there are also a lot of third party doors being opened. JRPG fans have Disgaea 5 to look forward to (or for those who imported the Japanese version, they can experience it now since it has an English menu option).

One such JRPG that is sensitive to handheld gamers was Square Enix’s own I am Setsuna game. This is a pretty touchy subject because the PS Vita version of the game was opted out of the Western release. Vita owners were quite upset that the Vita version cannot be played in English. But Square Enix did not leave all handheld owners out in the West.

Having released on the Nintendo Switch on launch day and after I’ve had a lot of time to complete it, here is my review of the Nintendo Switch version of I am Setsuna!

Story

I am Setsuna revolves around a mercenary who travels around the world, doing various jobs for towns. As the game begins, he is given the job of murdering a young woman from a port town, only to find out that she has been chosen to go on a pilgrimage and sacrifice herself to calm the monster threat that is all over the known world. Having second-guesses about his mission, he travels with the sacrifice who calls herself Setsuna, and sees her journey through to appease the monsters and protect the human race.

Setsuna’s story I liked because it is so emotional. The entire game has a really sad tone to it, with Setsuna traveling to effectively commit suicide in order to protect the world. And the further you go, the more you learn about her and the sad state of the entire world. But the biggest thing is the amount of emotional twists in the game. Just when you think you have something figured out and are sure the story is going to play out a certain way, the game throws a tear-inducing plot twist your way. I literally cried after the game ended because of how touching and sad the whole experience was.

Gameplay

I am Setsuna is a turn-based RPG that is a throwback to the Super Nintendo-era RPGs made by Square Enix. You have turn-based combat, a partially-overhead camera view, towns with shops, party members centered around a particular Job, and more. All in all, it’s made to feel like a retro RPG made in more modern times.

Progress in the game is driven by story. As with older Final Fantasy games, you are limited on where you can go on the World Map until a certain part of the story, where your Airship unlocks. Until then, you have a set route on where to go, though you do have a decent amount of freedom in that you can explore optional areas and go back to previous areas if you need.

Towns and Dungeons have pretty basic elements around them. In every town, there’s always an NPC that starts that section’s story arc, and shops. Shops range from Item Shops, Weapon Shops, and Spirinite Shops. Item and Weapon shops are pretty basic, you spend money on items and weapons. The Spirinite Shop is where things get more unique because you can only get money in the game by selling NPCs monster drops from your battles.

Not only does selling these items get you money for items and weapons, but they unlock Spirinite. These Spirinite stones are like Materia from Final Fantasy VII. Equipping them teaches a character a certain skill. But in order to buy them, you must sell certain materials. Kind of like a synthesis system for items.

Now, the final thing and the biggest nostalgic element is combat. Battles don’t take place on a separate screen. When you happen upon enemies, the battle triggers, your party jumps into position, and combat begins. Your overall position affects how you do battle. Multi-unit skills like attack skills or AoE healing skills will affect a certain area around the target. Anything in that area gets hit/healed, but anything outside won’t. So if you have 2 party members together and one not, only 2 will be healed. It is heavily inspired by Chrono Trigger’s combat.

The big thing about combat are boss battles and enemy types. You have certain fights you need certain party members for. Some bosses are incredibly hard for some party formations and easier with others. And you have some story segments where certain characters aren’t around for you to use. The same goes with enemy types. If you’re fighting a dungeon full of enemies that self-destruct when they die, having multiple healers would be more advised than not.

Speaking of that, I don’t consider I am Setsuna to be an overly hard RPG. As long as you fight your battles, you shouldn’t have any problems with most bosses. Though there are a few bosses that are going to give you a hard time regardless, but there’s only really one section of the game where you’d have to grind for levels and even then, you don’t have to grind a lot. It’s a pretty accessible game on difficulty, even for non-RPG gamers.

Now, we get to the biggest thing that makes purchasing this game a debate: Length. I am Setsuna was published by Square Enix, so you might be thinking it is some epic RPG that exceeds 50 hours and it is not. I did about half of the side quests that open up at the end of the game, and I still managed to clear it in a little over 20 hours. That isn’t really that long for a JRPG, let alone one that Square Enix picked up to publish. If length matters to you, think about that before buying.

Game Modes / Controls

Nothing too complicated with the controls. First off, all 3 game modes are supported by I am Setsuna. You can play it in TV Mode, Tabletop Mode, and Handheld Mode, though in the next section, I’ll explain why this game is best played in handheld mode over the others.

Controls are simple. The Left Analog Stick moves you around the map and dungeons and the Arrow Buttons can be used to cycle through menus. The rest is done with the face buttons as the triggers and the Plus/Minus buttons don’t do anything. A lets you choose menu options or interact with towns/NPCs. B cancels a menu option. X brings up the menu when wandering towns and dungeons, and Y lets you organize your inventory from the menu.

Presentation

Visually, the game looks lovely. There aren’t any jagged edges on the character models and all of the effects look great, from the details of enemies to the snow tracks you and monsters make as you run around in dungeons.

This is why I highly recommend playing Setsuna in handheld mode. In TV Mode, you can’t really see just how much detail is put into this game’s presentation. The first time I switched into handheld mode, I was shocked at just how much detail was thrown in. In my honest opinion, the game actually looks better when played on the go than on the TV.

Sound-wise, it is very nostalgic. There are a lot of tracks that sound very similar to classic Final Fantasy music. But the soundtrack is also really sad and adds to the tone of the game. From the World Map theme to story scene music, it just has a sad tone to it. If you can find the developer village on the map, it even tells you that the composer cried as he made the music for the game.

Performance-wise, I have no complaints. Load Times are slow, and the game runs a steady 30 fps from start to finish. It was ported over quite well.

The only aspect of the presentation I will note is the translation. There are a couple Spirinite Skills that have their presentation written in French, rather than English. This is an issue in all Western releases of the game (PS4, Steam, and Switch), but it’s still there, in case you thought they may have removed/patched it.

Battery Life

Here is where things get interesting. The first Switch game I reviewed was Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which offered an average of about 2-3 hours of battery life, no matter your settings. This game gives you a significant amount more. Here are the Battery Life stats (100% down to 15% where the system tells you it is getting low) for I am Setsuna in Handheld and Tabletop Modes:

• Max Brightness + Wi-Fi – 3 hours, 46 minutes
• Max Brightness + No Wi-Fi – 4 hours, 10 minutes
• Low Brightness + Wi-fi On – 4 hours, 54 minutes
• Low Brightness + Wi-Fi Off – 5 hours, 24 minutes

These are much better readings than Zelda was. You’re getting an average of 4-6 hours of battery life with I am Setsuna, which brings the Switch pretty close to the battery life of the PS Vita and Nintendo 3DS. Considering other games I’ve been testing, these optimistic results may be the range of the norm for most games.

Game Title: Toukiden 2
Developer: Koei Tecmo
Platform: PlayStation Vita
Download: 2.7 GB
Availability: Retail (US, EU), Digital Download (US, EU)
PSTV Support: Yes

The hunting genre has made quite a name for itself, on console and handheld alike. This past generation has had a lot of hunters. To name a few: God Eater: Resurrection/GE2: Rage Burst, Final Fantasy Explorers, Freedom Wars, Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate/Generations, Toukiden: Age of Demons/Kiwami, and the list just keeps on climbing.

The good thing about this is that the hunters that have a large focus on story are expanding and becoming their own series with their own unique backstory and plot. God Eater did this last gen with the PSP and continues in this generation. Others are as well, particularly the most similar hunter to MH, Toukiden. Age of Demons and Kiwami had a lot of backstory and added a lot of character to its series, despite its design looking heavily inspired by Koei Tecmo’s “Warriors” series.

Toukiden is continuing on with a fully-fledged sequel with a new cast of characters. Finally in the West, here is my review of the open-world Hunting RPG, Toukiden 2!

Story

The plot of 2 begins during the event called “The Awakening”, when the human civilization fell when giant monsters called Oni appear in the world and ravage everything around them. You are a Slayer in the very first battle of the Awakening when you are swallowed up by a portal. 10 years later (2 years after the events of Age of Demons and Kiwami), you awaken near a village of slayers with no memory of your past. Taken in by a local “Professor”, you begin fighting the Oni an exploring around the village for clues of your past.

The story of 2 is really good because of 2 reasons. Despite the fact that it has an almost all new cast, all of the characters are very likeable and it’s easy to really dive into their individual backstories. The other is the fact that we are given a lot more backstory about the Oni and how The Awakening happened in the first place. Over the course of the game, you will find out where the Oni came from, how they came into the human realm, and discovering a way to push them back from lands they’ve infected.

Gameplay

Toukiden 2 is an Open-World Hunting Action Game/ Hunting RPG. Across missions and story progression, you’re going to be exploring a large world that you have free roam to explore while fighting off small monsters as well as giant boss fights. It’s very similar to the first Toukiden, but with far less focus on enclosed missions and much more focus on exploration and story.

First off, past the open-world, what is new about this game? First off, only about half of the enemies in the game return from AoD and Kiwami. Most of the bosses you fight in the story are new with most returning bosses are saved for optional missions. There are also a handful of new weapon types, Mitama skills, and the new Demon Hand sub-weapon used in combat and story alike.

But first thing’s first. This is an open-world game, so what does that entail? When you leave your village, you walk freely out into the open world. You can run around and take side quests from NPCs, join multiplayer “Joint Operations” that are littered around some of the dungeon-like areas. But the biggest thing is that you can freely explore all of these giant open areas without taking on missions or doing story objectives. If you want to gather materials on your own, you can just form your party and just run around for the sake of running around, fighting whatever bosses or enemies you encounter and choose to fight.

The removal of time limits is countered with a survival element called Miasma, the dark energy the Oni pour into the human world. As you explore Oni-infested areas, you suffer from Miasma exposure (Like radiation in Fallout). If the gauge fills up, you die and get a Game Over, but if you watch the gauge and make sure you find shrines littered around the map that cure you of it, it’s easy to manage what you need to get done.

This also leads to an exploration-based story. Every time the story moves forward, you get a marker on your map to go to, leading the game away from enclosed missions and more focusing on exploration without time limits. Over the course of the game, you can complete the story by only doing 2 missions during a couple “Do a mission until some event happens to advance the story” phases of the game. Since you encounter Oni out in the field, there’s no risk of not getting materials you need for weapons and armor until post-game.

The biggest non-combat aspect returns in the form of Weapon/Armor Crafting and Mitama Management. Crafting is pretty simple. Bring the right materials, and you can create new weapons or armor, and again to enhance them so they get stronger. That’s pretty basic Hunting RPG stuff. Mitama management is a bit enhanced from the last game, though. You get Mitama to equip and they have skills, but they also have “Boosts” you can equip to further enhance your experience, like giving you bonuses when you collect body parts from bosses or using certain weapon types, which are further enhanced as you fight with them and the Mitama, themselves, level up.

Now onto actual combat. Outside of the new weapon types, combat hasn’t changed that much. You still take a party of up to 4 members out in the field and fight Oni. The Rifle still has various ammo types and the sword still swings as slow as it always has. The main enhancements are thanks to the Demon Hand sub-weapon. This allows you to grapple onto an enemy to do aerial attacks, but is also tied to the Unity Gauge.

In Kiwami, you could perform special “Ultimate Attacks” with your party when the Unity Gauge is filled up. In this game, it allows you to grab onto an Oni with the Demon Hand and then perform a large punch attack that has a high probability of sending them flying and ripping off body parts for you to collect. It’s the same basic idea, but a little easier to pull off since it’s like a long-range grappling hook.

Repetition I feel is not an issue in this game, like other hunters. Many past hunters are repetitive because you’re always doing enclosed missions and you’re constantly re-fighting the same bosses over and over again. In Toukiden 2, outside of the optional missions, I only repeated bosses a couple times across the entire game. It is far less repetitive than the first game was, thanks to both this and the open-world.

The difficulty this time around I put it around average. While the game is challenging, I found it to be a pretty easy-to-grasp experience outside of the post-game missions that unlock once you beat the story. To give an example, many of the final boss fights I thought were long, but I never had a problem dodging and fighting them with the Rifle (only to find out that the game’s shop actually had a rifle twice as powerful as the one I was using that I could’ve used instead). If you’re used to the genre, it shouldn’t be too hard, especially if you’ve played the first game and remember boss patterns for the returning enemies.

Length is kind of subjective. I’ll put it in 2 different perspectives. If you want to do no side quests. No needless exploration. No optional missions. You only want to do the story. If you do it like that and rush through the game, you can beat the story in about 17 hours. If you do it proper with upgrades and a few side quests and missions here and there, you’re looking more towards 25-30 hours. So, as long as you don’t try to race your way through the game, you’re getting quite a bit of time out of the game.

Controls

Controls are very important because of the differences between playing on the Vita and playing on the PlayStation TV. The PSTV control scheme is very different from the Vita one and actually plays much better. But I’ll get to that in a moment.

On the Vita, you use the Left Analog Stick to move and the Right Stick to move the camera. L is used to reset the camera behind you and R is for certain types of attacks (like firing bullets with the Rifle), or doing a normal dash. X is used for dodging, Circle for charge attacks, Triangle for a sub-action (reloading the rifle), and Square for melee attacks. And then the Demon Hand, High-Speed Dash, and Mitama Skills are all done on the touch screen.

On the PSTV, the touch screen controls are redirected to the extra buttons. L3 uses the high-speed dash, L2 is for Skills and R2 is used for the Demon Hand.

The Demon Hand is is where the problem lies. On the Vita, you hold the touch screen and aim towards the enemy, but for some reason, the registration of targets is incredibly off-balanced. When on the PSTV, you look straight at the enemy and the Demon Hand auto-recognizes it. On the Vita, you have to practically have the enemy off-screen before the target shows up. It’s a pretty large problem. Not if you’re a PSTV user, but yes if you’re a Vita user.

Presentation

Visually, the game took a hit. The character models aren’t much different from the first game, but the environments took a huge hit. A lot of the environments are lacking much detail at all and the sky looks even worse. It’s one of those situations where you think “Alright, they downed the environment graphics for performance because this is an open world game on the Vita”.

When you hit performance, it doesn’t pan out. I would say the game has an average fps of 20-25 fps. Sometimes it’ll jump up to 30 in exploration or town and in some small instances, it’ll drop down below 20, but for the most part, it runs around 20-25 fps. Enough to be a hindrance to the game, but not to the point of making it unplayable. I didn’t have many problems playing it with the Rifle weapon. It was just annoying, especially on the PSTV where the frame rate is more noticeable.