Yeah, it took me nearly seven years to get a copy of this game and play it from start to finish. Besides being Johnny Come-lately to every video game ever I still can’t help but be impressed at how good of a game it actually is. Though at least twenty people have told me so before. Here is hoping that the sequel holds true to the first in quality, but with a Tron based world how can it not be even more amazing?
Also speaking of Tron. Watch this and find a towel to mop up the drool:
Way back when I first purchased my Nintendo DS (original baby!) I felt stupid not too long afterwords because being the huge RPG fan I am the Sony PSP was looking like it had much more potential for RPGs to be made. With its classic controller scheme and the fact that the Playstation (PS1) had been the RPG king of its day I was saddened that I had caved in to the neat stylus/touchscreen combo.
The DS has really come through for us RPG players of recent though. Let me give you a list of games. This is a list of all the upcoming and current Nintendo DS games that are RPGs or variant on the RPG genre. You may notice that the grand total comes to about ninety different games. Ninety!!!! That is in fact, a ton of games. I probably own just about every decent RPG ever made for the Playstation and that total barely touches thirty.
Quality is definitely an issue here however, and the total number of good RPGs out of all of them may be much much lower, however from my small library I am willing to bet that most of the ones with the words “Square Enix” written on them are pretty damn good.
A couple of the upcoming titles that will be released this year (some this week) are Valkyrie Profile, Pokemon Platinum, and Black Sigil. All three look fairly solid in their respective ways. Black Sigil is the most appealing to me as it is the most traditional JRPG of the bunch. It almost looks like something out of RPGMaker XP. Lets hope it can stand up to the good things I have heard.
Otherwise it will become Izzy fodder.
She is vicious, trust me!
P.S. – In hindsight I probably should have called this blog <3 RPG Gaming…. oh well.
For a few hours each weekend I have been replaying the original Paper Mario, praise be to virtual console, and have been quite thoroughly enjoying it. Paper Mario reintroduced us loyal nintendo RPG lovers to a lot of the concepts that were introduced by Nintendo and Square (now Square Enix) in Super Mario RPG. Most specifically the action commands which could be performed during battle, and right before, which allowed you to deal extra damage or reduce incoming damage. Which would happen with correct timing of certain button presses. The actual story of Paper Mario is what really made the game fun however. The silliness of the paper citizens of Mushroom Kingdom coupled with the comical nature of the events in the game really make it a game you can laugh with while playing. For example, the haunting voice of Tutankoopa, or the Invincible Tubba Blubba who loves munching on ghosts both have quite amusing dialog to go with their ridiculous appearance and nature.
The sad news is that the latest game in the franchise of Paper Mario was nothing but a disappointment. Leaving out the incredible turn based combat system that held the series strong for two iterations was a complete disaster. Another thing that made me very sad was the secondary characters. The pixl’s were though part of the story, not very unique in appearance and mostly just sat in the background as a a helper. This may as well be called a platformer/action adventure game. Lets hope the next time around they can return to the formula that makes the it fun to play.
In summary:
Paper Mario – Awesome
Paper Mario: Thousand Year Door – Awesome (though I made no mention of it above)
Super Paper Mario – Crap crap crap poop crap awful bad.
This review can be summed up in a few words, so that is how I will post it.
Classic part of the game: Still amazing.
New content found in the game: Boring as hell, please don’t do this again Square/Enix.
I must have spent a good 2-3 hours wandering around in the new content without any major contribution to the story or character development.
Well Christmas is over and the new video games are here! Chrono Trigger DS is the first in my line-up of games to beat which I received over the holiday. So far so good. The game plays for the most part exactly as it did on the SNES and Playstation, minus the fact that loading time is faster than the other two platforms. As far as using the stylus goes its pretty much a feature to use if you in fact like using the stylus. Personally since its not a requirement to playing the game I just stick with the standard D-pad + 4 button usage. Also I was kinda impressed to see that they shipped the game with both a poster an a soundtrack! 
Regardless that there are only two titles on the CD, its still a nice little extra you don’t see too often. Another bonus to the game is that they kept in all of the extra content they added when Chrono Trigger was re-released in the Final Fantasy Chronicles version of the game. All of the FMVs are there and they actually added even more content to the game by slapping in a couple new dungeons and adding a side mini multi-player game where you raise a monster and can battle it against other monsters your friends have.
All in all the game is much better in my opinion just for the fact that it is now portable and feels just like the classic version of the game. It is a must buy for those of you who love RPGs like I do.
Next up a final followup of Chrono Trigger leading into the revamped Dragon Quest 4!