Beaten

Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation – see post here.

Space Megaforce – see post here.

Super Mario RPG – post coming soon.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE – see post here.

Ongoing

Secret of Evermore – I’ve put some significant time into this game and it is surprisingly good considering its reputation. Thinking about what I am going to write about this game reminded me that somehow Seiken Densetsu 3 didn’t make it on my 25 SNES games list, even though I’ve never played it. Secret of Evermore may not be as good as that game, but it is much better than it’s somewhat reviled reputation might lead one to believe. It plays like a classic 16-bit action RPG, but with a story that isn’t filtered through tight space restrictions and cultural differences, at least not as strongly as most.

Dragon Quest VII – I should be finishing this game before too much longer. It isn’t really a game to rush through, its episodic nature doesn’t really suit marathon play sessions. It is a near perfect portable RPG. Each island takes only an hour or so, which makes this ideal to play in short bursts. This is a game designed to keep the player involved for an hour a day for three or four months. At about 20 hours in the main plot is still at best simmering in the background, but each and every island has had an internally satisfying story that keeps the player moving along. The job system just unlocked, which is sure to give the gameplay as much to keep the player interested as the story and characters. So far, this game is great.

Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice – I only managed to complete the first case and the first half of the second before Dragon Quest VII hit and distracted me. I’ve loved what I’ve played so far. The first case felt more involved that first cases usually are; it wasn’t especially long, but it did an excellent job of setting up the troubles that Phoenix and company will be dealing with for the rest of the game. I don’t have a clue how that will play out, but so far this is a pretty strong entry in the series.

Upcoming

Shin Megami Tensei 4: Apocalypse – I really like the original SMT4 and it has been a while since I’ve played a game in the series. I already bought the game, even though I knew that I’d be tied up with Dragon Quest VII and Ace Attorney for the next couple of weeks. Still, this looks really good. I might have to take a break from Dragon Quest VII to get some of this in, but it is hard to put that game aside. Still, as soon as I’m done with that I’ll be popping this game in.

Jotun – This piqued my interest, so I grabbed it during its introductory sale. That purchase made extra sure I wouldn’t be able to afford River City Tokyo Rumble. I expected to get into this already, but between finishing Tokyo Mirage Sessions and Super Mario RPG, I just didn’t end up with a lot of time to play this. I’ll likely get to it in the coming month.

Legend of the Mystical Ninja – This is the next game up after Secret of Evermore. I’m less and less sure about actually finishing 25 SNES games this year, but I am not going to give up.

Skyblazer – After Mystical Ninja. Or maybe before, since I am emulating this one.

Robotrek – See above. I am going to try to make up some ground on this project in October.

When Nintendo announced that they were partnering with Atlus to create a crossover between Fire Emblem and Shin Megami Tensei I don’t think anyone expected it turn out like Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE. Maybe some of the details were easy to guess; I wasn’t surprised that it essentially plays like a Persona game, but the end result is something that has little in common with either of its inspirations. There are certainly elements of both that remain, but Tokyo Mirage Sessions is very much its own game. TMS is a game that takes it theme and commits to it whole heartedly.

This is a game about idols, there is no getting away from that. There are numerous musical numbers that pop up as party members put out singles and perform in concerts. The whole game is awash in pastels, all sky blue and pink. The character’s home lives are never even mentioned, they all work for a talent agency that doubles as a cover for their monster fighting, and spend their time training for various artistic endeavors. It is as far away as possible from SMT’s post-apocalypse or Fire Emblem’s fantasy medieval battlefields. Yet, despite being nothing like them, it does feel a bit like the progeny of both series.

The party in TMS is made up of aspiring or active performers. Some are pop star-esque idols, others are actors on teen TV shows and some do it all. Their artistic abilities and aspirations also give them the power to be Mirage Masters, people able to harness the powers of martial spirits from another realm to fight back against the mysterious entities that are stealing people’s “performa,” the essence of their talent and artistry. It is nonsense, but Tokyo Mirage Sessions commits to this conceit with an admirable completeness. Everything revolves around it. As the characters grow stronger in battle their musical skills grow stronger, which in turn makes them stronger in battle. It is a cycle, everything feeds into everything else. Crazily enough, if one is willing to buy into this central conceit, then everything kind of works.

Battles, which take place in an arena and are themed to look like performances, play out much like the PS2 Persona games. Four characters in the party each have an array of skills that are mostly from the SMT series, with a few Fire Emblem themed ones tossed in. Like the Persona games, there is a great emphasis on hitting enemies’ weaknesses. In this game, doing so trigger a session attack, where the other party members take turns jumping in to continue the assault. Eventually even inactive party members start to join in the fray, creating cascading sessions of 6 or even more attacks every time a weakness is hit. Each party member has certain skills that can be powered up with random “ad-lib” performances, which turn the games many musical numbers into more powerful attacks. Soon multiple characters work together in duets that combine two characters for an attack that extends the session. It eventually makes hitting those weaknesses almost essential to effectively fighting through the dungeons.

Those dungeons are right out of SMT games. They are some effective and sprawling puzzle dungeons. Each one has a trick. One had the player avoid camera’s that snap a photo and send the player back to the start, another is set on the back lot of a movie shoot. Each has its own tricks and themes and none are a pushover. Since the bulk of the player’s time is spent in the dungeons, they needed to be good and they are.

Going into the game, I was afraid that the theme and cast would be suffocating, but Atlus, who did the heavy lifting on this game, and the localization team did a wonderful job creating a group that is largely enjoyable. They don’t break far from anime tropes for characters: there’s a taciturn loner, an earnest yet slightly inept romantic interest, and a boozy female authority figure, but they are portrayed in such a way as to make them charming instead of grating. Touma, the player character’s best friend, really wants to be a Power Rangers like hero. He tries to live up to a heroic ideal in his real life. There isn’t much complicated about him, but he is generally positive and enjoyable. Other than protagonist Itsuki, the bland everyman that rallies the others around him, Tsubasa is the center of the game. It is her quest to become an Idol, despite her nervousness and fear of the spotlight that continually pushes things forward. It is what gets her and Itsuki drawn into this drama and her rise and success keeps bringing the team in conflict with the dark forces working behind the scenes. If he character didn’t work the whole thing would fall apart. Luckily, she is one of the games strength. TMS does a great job of building that character throughout, as she conceivably grows as a performer and a character. I don’t even have time to get into Barry Goodman, who might be the most scathing take on a Western anime fan I’ve ever seen.

Spending so much time with the characters helps disguise how small this game actually is. It is only six dungeons and one hub area. There are a handful of other areas, one screen each, but outside of the dungeons the game is actually tiny. It is like the game wants to pass itself off as a sprawling JRPG experience, but to do so it has to patch over its budget roots. It doesn’t make much of a difference while playing, but thinking back on it makes it clear how limited the game is. Maybe limited is the wrong word; focused us more appropriate.

If the battle system comes out of SMT, where does Fire Emblem fit in? In the Mirages, the spirits that help the party fight their evil counterparts. The Mirages are all slightly reimagined Fire Emblem characters, mostly from the first game or Awakening. They act like the Personas out of that series. The main plot is about the Fire Emblem characters getting stuck in the real world. It is nonsense, but it kind of works.

There are some problems with this game. By the end battles can become tedious as the increasingly complex attack sessions take longer and longer to play out. It feels like it goes on about one dungeon too long. Outside of each character’s trio of sidequests, there isn’t much else to do but fight through the dungeons. Still, I think I love this game. It is not subject matter I tend to like, but Tokyo Mirage Sessions makes it all feel refreshing. It is probably the best console JRPG since Persona 4. It is light, a piece of fluff, but also a fully realized experience that doesn’t get made all the often anymore.

I’ve written about Fire Emblem Fates’ other two paths already and felt like now, before the fall 3DS rush starts – Ace Attorney 6, Dragon Quest VII, River City Tokyo Rumble and Shin Megami Tensei IV: Apocalypse are all due before the end of September – was the best time to finally get to the third and final FE Fates path, Revelation. I sped through it only about a week or so. It does everything the middle path of Fates’ side choosing main game should do, yet I don’t know that I like it very much.

How Nintendo and Intelligent Systems differentiated the Birthright and Conquest paths was effective from a gameplay standpoint. The classes and weapons were all different and with a few exceptions so were all of the characters. They aren’t quite separate games, even ignoring the identical first five chapters, but they are very different experiences. Revelation takes those two sets and mashes them together. It doesn’t pare them down to an interesting mix of both casts; it is the entirety of both casts made available. That means that no one’s favorite character is left out, but it also means that you get more than twice as many characters as you could possibly use. It really compounds a problem that both of the first two paths had: the glut of royal characters. When each half of the cast gives you four royal siblings and map tend to allow 10-14 characters to be deployed, that only leaves up to five other characters to be deployed, assuming that you are using all of both of your families. Which is tempting to do, since those siblings tend to be some of your best characters. And that’s without even getting into the second generation.

Actually, let’s get into that second generation of characters. In Fire Emblem Awakening, the children of you characters coming back in time to stop a dreadful event was the entire conceit of the game. It gave an end goal to the supports, which had been a big draw in the GBA games and were gutted in the GC/Wii ones, with each pairing producing an offspring that could join your army. It worked in that game because that game was designed for it. They kept the mechanic in Fates, but it lacks the conceit. They come up with some half explained reason for the children, who haven’t been born yet, to grow up somewhere where time passes differently and they grow to adulthood in no time, but it is unsatisfying. It feels like it was kept because it was a popular feature and not because it has any place in the game. It feels like an afterthought; the child characters, as fun as some of them are, do not have a role to play in this story.

The cast is a big reason why Revelation only works as a second or third path. There are so many characters that few have a chance to make much of an impression. But holdover feelings from the first time through game give the player a reason to try and use them.

My hope was that the big cast would give reason for big maps. Let the player deploy twenty or more characters and fill the screen with enemies on a truly massive battle. That is not the path that Revelation takes. Instead, each and every single map is a gimmick map. I don’t mind gimmick maps, they can be a fun alternative to the normal ones. Elements like environmental hazards, fog of war or shifting terrain make for a good change of pace. In Revelation, they are the pace. There are no normal maps, except maybe the last one; every last one has some sort of twist. It isn’t fun, it is exhausting. I eventually had to switch over to classic mode, since there were too many variables for me to keep track of.

They are actually pretty finely crafted stages, for the most part. It is just that the rules continually change. Classic Mode, which I am glad exists for people who don’t want the same Fire Emblem experience that I want, feels like a cheat to me, but I also found it necessary. Losing the penalty for a character dying fundamentally changes how I play the game, shifting from my usual cautiously aggressive tactics to ones that are downright reckless.

The story is the story that both of the previous paths made obvious was out there. Both of those games danced around a central problem while solving ones that seemed much less pressing. This one has the player’s avatar deal directly with the mysterious entity that has been manipulating both countries. It doesn’t flesh out the conflict that greatly, keeping things more personal than political, but it works.

Fire Emblem Fates Revelation is a mixed bag. It is altogether too much of a good thing. Its solution to every problem is more. More characters, more stuff going on in the maps, more supports. Like eating too much candy, you kind of love it even as it makes you queasy. Fire Emblem Fates is a monumental trilogy that I loved even while I wished that they pared it down somewhat.

Beaten

Illusion of Gaia – see post here

Shin Nekketsu Kouha – see post here.

Bravely Second – see post here.

Ninja Smasher – This is a neat little metroidvania game for the 3DS I picked up last month. The central mechanic of the game is that every time you hit an enemy with your attack it allows you to jump again, meaning that you can fly through areas slashing enemies and leaping to the next one. It is fun, for a while. The game takes about three hours to complete, but it starts to lose its luster about an hour in. The levels aren’t that interesting and the bosses are just damage sponges. You get your four bucks worth, but that’s about it.

Pokémon Alpha Sapphire – I am on the record as loving the Pokémon series. Black & White, Black & White 2, X & Y: the three previous versions of Pokémon were all a ton of fun. The only generation of Pokémon that didn’t really do it for me was the third, Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald. I played them, but I usually gave up about halfway or so through the game. When the inevitable remake happened, I was eager to fully experience the game. But that just didn’t happen. I ended up skipping the games when they were first released, only getting it a half a year later during a surprise sale on the game. Then I played it. Pokémon Alpha Sapphire is likely the best rendition of the Pokémon formula. It does nearly everything well. Still, I found myself utterly disinterested in the experience. Part of it was the lack of newness; there are no new Pokémon in Alpha Sapphire, nothing this game does that other Pokémon games don’t also do. The bigger part is that I have never really enjoyed this setting. The routes are laid out in unintuitive and frustrating ways, there is too much surfing and an overreliance on field HM’s altogether. I know a lot of people that love this game, both the original and the remake. No matter how many times I try, I just can’t get into this particular version of a series that I like. Now that I’ve beaten the game, I don’t feel a particular need to do so.

Ongoing

Space MegaForce – I’ve played a couple of stages of this SNES shooter and it is fast. I haven’t played enough to form much more of an impression than that, but that is impressive enough so far.

Super Mario RPG – please understand.

Fire Emblem Fates Revelations – I’m pressing through this third path of Nintendo and Intelligent System’s excellent strategy game, but it isn’t really doing it for me early on. There are just too many gimmick maps. There is a teleporter map, a windy and a map filled with ice all to start things off. Those gimmick maps are fine, but they are best when they are used to offset regular stages. I hope there is more to this than just these bullshit stages because I really want a solid wrap up to this game’s story.

Monster Hunter Generations –

Maybe it is just that I had my fill of MH4U and wasn’t ready for more Monster Hunter, but so far I have been unable to really get into this game. There is a lot I like about it in theory, from its monster list to some quality of life changes made to this version from MH4U, but none of that has really helped me find the desire to sink my teeth into it and really play. Of course, my problems might all stem from forcing myself to change my weapon. In previous MH games I have used the hammer. I’d try out others; I tended to use a light bowgun quite a bit online, but primarily I stuck with the slow but powerful hammer. This time I wanted a different experience, so I’ve used the lance, gunlance, and sword & shield. None of those weapons feel as natural to me as the hammer does though. When I get back to this, likely after I finish Fire Emblem, I think I’ll switch back to my trusty favorite.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions –

I am still pushing through this game and still greatly enjoying it. It is a long game and I haven’t had the time I’ve wanted to get this game beaten. TMS is pretty perfectly paced throughout the first two thirds. Each new dungeon adds a new character or concept, but it doesn’t feel like those things were artificially kept from the player but that the abilities of the party are growing. That is one of Tokyo Mirage Sessions overriding themes; it is about growth. Each of you party member’s grows individually as an entertainer and they grow as a team. That growth is reflected in their ever increasing combat abilities. I hope the game is able to stick the landing.

Upcoming

Secret of Evermore – As soon as I clear out Super Mario RPG and Space Megaforce I am on to this.

Legend of the Mystical Ninja – I’ve got this downloaded to my WiiU, ready to go as soon I have time. This is a game I have played before, but only enough to know that I want the full experience.

Skyblazer – This is more wishful thinking that anything else, but if I get done with the four other SNES games on this list, Skyblazer is up next.

Ace Attorney: Spirit of Justice – We appear to be missing out on anther Ace Attorney spin-off, but I am not going to complain about the Ace Attorney games we are getting. I can’t resist this series.

Dragon Quest VII – I got the PS1 version of this game three or four years ago, shortly before the 3DS remake was announced. I held off playing it, thinking this would come over. Then it didn’t. I held off until close to a year ago, but soon after I started it was announced that the 3DS game was getting an American release. I am so ready to play this damn game.

As I’ve said before, I was interested in 7^th Dragon because of its connections, as loose as they may be, to Etrian Odyssey. It didn’t turn out to be a terribly choice, though in the end it really reinforced how great the Etrian Odyssey series is. 7^th Dragon III: Code VFD doesn’t stand up to the quality of any of the Etrian Odyssey games on the 3DS, but it is a fairly entertaining game in its own right. While it has plenty of new things to offer, it feels in some ways like a glorious throwback to the low-poly days of the PS1. That is admittedly a flavor that is pretty common on the 3DS, but as someone who was 12-16 in the glory days of the PS1 it is just my sort of flavor.

Really, the game is different enough from the EO series that the comparison really isn’t fair. Outside of some larger similarities, they are really two very different kinds of games. They do both feature a player generated party and things like strong monster visible on the field, but the focus of the games is very different. Etrian Odyssey games are highly focused experiences. They are about the player’s specific party and confounding labyrinthine dungeons. There is a reason that mapping the floor is a vital aspect of the series. Exploring and knowing the terrain is a significant portion of the experience. While you do build your own party in 7^th Dragon, the dungeons tend to be afterthoughts. They are mostly just corridors connecting one set of cutscenes to another. They look nice enough, but there is little interesting about the dungeons themselves.

The party building is robust, but thanks to it refreshing array of interesting and unique classes, wrapping your brain around how each class works and interacts takes a long time. Honestly, the classes are individually powerful enough and the bulk of the game easy enough that mastering the party building isn’t remotely necessary. There are a few “normal” classes, like the Samurai and the Mage, but most of them fall into fairly interesting new territory, even if the game doesn’t always do a great job of exploring that new territory. Take the God Hand class, for example. The God Hand is essentially a Monk, with a combination of healing skills and fist based attacks, but in 7^th Dragon they added a twist. Using the class’s punch skills inflicts God Depth on an enemy, the higher the rank of God Depth the more powerful attacks you can use, which in turn raises the God Depth more until it resets or you use the powerful finishing blow that resets it. It is a neat mechanic and God Hands, in my experience, are one of the most powerful classes in the game. Also, their default look is Maids and Butlers, which is amusing to me. However, no other class interacts with the God Depth mechanic. It exists just for that class, just like hacking exists for the hackers. The game piles on unique and fiddly mechanics to go with its unique and fiddly classes. There is a lot good and interesting there, but it feels like a rough draft of what could have been a great set of classes.

Much of the enjoyment of 7^th Dragon III is in its delightfully bonkers story. You start as a character playing a VR video game about killing dragons, but you are so good at it that the mystery corporation that makes the game recruits you to time travel to several spots in history and fight dragons. You are not, however, doing so to rewrite history and save people from dragons, though you end up doing that, but merely to kill the dragons and get DNA samples. That is to be uses, somehow, to compile a compendium of dragons to better fight the coming 7^th True Dragon. Each of the 3 time periods have its own attractions, from ancient Atlantis to a future Medieval Age that somehow exists even though the end of time is fast approaching the ravaged current Tokyo. There are strange delights everywhere, much of it originating with the player’s party. When confronted with the destruction of Atlantis, the protagonist just calmly forces shady corporation Nodens to relocate all the Atlanteans through the time portal to the current day. One sidequest has the player building a cat sanctuary; another has you tracking down a real life power ranger. It is all nonsense, held together by spurious logic and borderline nonsensical twists that quickly twist again before you unravel exactly what the twist is supposed to mean.

7^th Dragon III: Code VFD is kind of a mess, but it is a completely enjoyable mess. There is enough good that comes from the team and character building, as well as the story and battle system that it is easy to just keep playing until the game ends. But once you put it down and look at it critically, all the flaws are glaringly apparent. This is not a great game, but it is a game whose flaws are never deal breakers. It is just delightfully messy, the perfect sort of RPG for a breezy summer playthrough; fun while it lasts but soon forgotten.