The advantage of drawing up gaming resolutions is that I never have to wonder what to play next. I’m going at a good pace, playing at least one of them every month. Innocent Sin, Atelier Elie and Phantasy Star Portable are done and I’m currently working on Dragon Quest 6. If you play one Dragon Quest you’ve played them all, so I don’t feel like talking about it. The characters are spectacularly colorless this time and I’m having difficulty caring about the rest of the game after beating Murdaw twice, but I’m only 14 hours in, so there’s still time for it to pick up.
My original plan after finishing HTND4 and PSP was to play Grand Knights History and Saiyuki Journey West, though.
Grand Knights History: I like Vanillaware’s rich art-style, but Odin’s Sphere and Muramasa were both too hard for me. I was hyped to hear they were making a game I could actually play, and in fact I’ve had the iso of GKH loaded up and ready to play since it came out last year
Then I heard it was coming out in English and thought, “Hmm, maybe I should just buy it.” Only now no one knows if or when it will ever come out because Vanillaware is working on another project and doesn’t have time to fix bugs or something messed up like that. The longer they make me wait, the more time I have to think, and the less certain I get that I’ll actually like it. I’ll wait till May to see if there’s any news on that front, then I’m just going to play it. [Savvy readers might notice a step missing between buying the English version and pirating the Japanese one, but surely they have better things to worry about]
Saiyuki Journey West: Unfortunately the iso I got doesn’t work. Normally I’d just go hunting for another one, but from the videos I’ve seen and reviews I’ve read, I’m reasonably certain I’ll like it. An above-average SPRG, doesn’t really stand out from the crowd but doesn’t have any major flaws either. It’s still available for a reasonable price too, so I’m tossing it on my To Buy list for 2012. Incidentally, that list looks something like this right now:
Phantasy Star Portable 2 (Sega)
Monster Hunter Freedom (Namco-Bandai)
Saiyuki Journey West (Koei)
Grand Knights History (Marvelous)
Frontier Gate (Konami)
Genso Suikoden: Tsumugareshi Hyakunen no Toki (Konami)
Atelier Elkrone (Gust & Idea Factory)
Ni no Kuni DS (Level5)
Shining Blade (Sega)
Kanuchi: Futatsu no Tsubasa (Idea Factory)
Seinarukana (CyberFront)
Conception – Please Bear my Child! (Spike)
Tales of the Heroes: Twin Braves (Namco-Bandai)
Eien no Aselia (CyberFront)
Moonlight Basket (Inu to neko)
Entaku no Seito for PC (Experience Inc.)
Little Witch Parfait (CyberFront)
And this is just for the consoles/handhelds I already own. I’ve been avoiding gaming news lately because they keep coming out with all these attractive-sounding titles.
The titles in bold are those I will almost certainly get sometime this year. Those in italics are games I’m on the fence about. I want to play them, but not that badly. If there’s a good deal going on and I’ve already bought everything else, I’ll take a second look. This whole “buying” thing really makes one think, doesn’t it? Having the money is the easy part. Spending it on games when there are more practical uses is not so easy. Still, this is the path I’ve chosen for myself. I’m not complaining.
Now let’s see if I can finish Dragon Quest 6 sometime this week.
It’s not because of bugs, XSEED have completed the translation and since they have no in-game programmers Vanillaware has to add the text to the game, which they don’t have time for since they are working so hard on Dragon’s Crown. :/
If you got a PS3 (or PS2) you should definitely play GrimGrimoire, it’s a real-time strategy game and the only RTS game on a console I ever enjoyed (controls usually suck on consoles for RTS games) – it’s far easier then Odin’s Sphere but just as gorgeous and really fun. I played twice through it in a week.. 8) It’s available as a PS2 classic on the PS3 PSN store.. and definitely worth the money! 🙂
I really want Elkrone, Conception and Suikoden as well.. I hope they get localised, so far Suikoden seems to be the most likely to get a Western release.. and Conception looks pretty slick. Love the design and the battle system looks neatly strategic. And most of the star maidens look adorable, I don’t mind magically impregnating them.. 8) I wonder if NISA will pick up Elkrone, but I hope so.
Oh, is that what is going on. That’s even worse than I’d thought. I won’t expect to see GKH any time soon then.
Hmm, GrimGrimoire. There’s a reason I haven’t played it even though I have a PS2, but I can’t remember what it is… Hmmmmm… Okay, I’ll toss it on the “To Play” list.
I have high hopes of Suikoden Hyakunen making it stateside as well, since almost all the previous games. Just waiting to hear the good news. I have ZERO hope of Elkrone coming out here though, which is why I’m fixing to buy it fairly soon. Conception, I like the idea, I like the little I’ve seen of the gameplay, now they just have live up to the hype and I’ll give them my money.
You probably shouldn’t have high hopes for Suikoden.
Even if it did get a stateside release, there’s still the fact that it’s a game that was rushed out to “beat” the end of the PSP lifeline. It’s not entirely broken but the game’s basically hovering at the “playable” state by strict technicality.
That bad, huh? I’m only going on trailers and promotion hype so far, haven’t paid much attention to the game itself. Have you played it? What’s so bad about it?
Finished it once, just about the only Suiko game I didn’t feel a particular need to 2nd playthrough or get 108 characters.
This game tries to revamp Suikoden’s gameplay system but doesn’t quite work out. You can tell the (new) mechanics are basically rushed. For example, there’s a row system (i.e front row/ back row) that does jack. Every character has a class but there’s very little differentiation between classes except for the one healer class (and the one bard class which is completely useless) because most skills don’t have any tactical effect, they’re all boring “low/medium/heavy damage.” There’s a reagant crafting/management system, which doesn’t pan out because once you’re past the 30 minutes mark you will have hundreds of them in your inventory and will never run out. I think you’re noticing a trend here.
Dungeon crawling (which is what you’re going to be doing most of the time when you’re not reading plot) is not very fun. The early “plains” areas are so small it’s almost insulting, early dungeons are super linear corridors where you follow the path and kill monsters in the way (battles are boring so this isn’t fun), there are only like 2 dungeons which I feel can actually be called “dungeons” in terms of size and actually solving puzzles in them.
Oh, and the camera loves to spaz out and give me a headache, usually when you get too close to a wall, allowing you to see jack if you don’t manually adjust it (the keys to do it are extremely strange. Instead of using the shoulder buttons, it’s square AND L/R.)
Which is strange, seeing as how Konami made Metal Gear Solid meaning they should at least know how to get a camera system working at this point of time.
About the only good things I can say about is the aesthetics isn’t bad for PSP and the plot is okay, although it feels a little bit deriative to me. The game got enough “polish” to make the flaws I just mentioned turn the gameplay boring rather than painful to play, which isn’t exactly high praise, but I guess I’ll mention it anyway.
Apart from the spazzing camera, none of that sounds like a dealbreaker to me. “I played it once but don’t feel like playing again” applies to the other Suikoden games I’ve played so far (1, 3, Tierkreis). Useless classes don’t bother me, since I usually pick a party in Suiko games and stick to them regardless.
The boring battles are a bit worrisome, but if the plot is decent, I can live with it. It sounds like it would be considered a decent game if it didn’t have “Suikoden” in front of the title, and that’s fine with me.
It’s a shame that the ISO of Saiyuki wont work or you’d be having a hell of a time.
It’s available as PS Classics in the PS Store.. i dunno if it’s the same for the PSP
I can’t get online with my PSP or I’d check to see. I haven’t ruled out simply finding another ISO, but I’d like to buy it if possible.
Oops… modded PSP’s can’t go online…at least that’s what i think.
You can always hunt a working ISO and donate 9.99 to charity, if it makes you feel better 🙂
I think in my case it’s not about modding but about my wireless being WPA2-encrypted, which the PSP can’t handle. If Koei-Tecmo had a “donate” button on their website, I would totally do that. I wonder why they don’t…