I played more games than I expected in September. I played a lot of two games in particular, Metal Gear Solid V and Super Mario Maker. Both of those games are going to be frontrunners for game of the year, especially with heavy hitters like Zelda and Persona 5 missing the year.

Beaten

Etrian Odyssey Untold 2 – see here

Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney – see here

Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain –

 review coming soon.  Thoroughly excellent, though.  

Ongoing

Super Mario Maker ―

Maybe the best idea for a game ever, and it completely lives up to its promise.  I’ve put up a couple of levels so far and played through dozens. It is hard to make levels as good as real Mario ones, but that doesn’t mean you can’t put out something that it at least interesting.  I really love this game.  It might be my game of the year.  I’ve hear people say that this is the game that shows the need for the tablet controller, though we’ve already had like five of those, and it really does.  I can’t imagine doing this with just a controller.  I don’t know that I need another game after this one.  I could spend hours and hours with this.

LBX ― I was sold this one several friends gushing about its outlandish story.  That is true, it starts with secret agencies that build children’s toys to maybe take over the world and escalates to attempted child murder, by gun toting robot toy no less, within the first half hour.  It is delightfully insane. Also, customizing your little murderbot is a ton of fun.  Unfortunately, the fighting is incredibly clunky.  It is hard to get around.  I want to like this game so much, but it is just not very much fun to actually play.

Elliot Quest ― This was my go to lunch hour game, but then Super Mario Maker happened.  I’ll finish it sooner or later. Like a lot of the games it is styled after, it actually gets easier the further you go, since your character’s abilities increase.

Shovel Knight Plague of Shadows ― Another victim of Super Mario Maker. Yacht Club Game’s completely ridiculous free DLC is basically a whole new game considering how differently Plague Knight plays than Shovel Knight.  I haven’t yet mastered how he moves, so the mode has been kind of frustrating for me.  It isn’t as fluid or intuitive as Shovel Knight himself. Still, the amount of work that went into this is impressive.

Ace Attorney Justice for All ―

I’ve only cleared the first case, but my thoughts are the same as they were for this game’s predecessor.  This is just a great series, with awesome characters and stories.

Upcoming

Yoshi’s Woolly World ― I am a little conflicted on this.  On the one hand, Yoshi games are probably my least favorite flavor of Mario, even including the RPGs and the sports games.  On the the other hand, I really like Kirby’s Epic Yarn and this game looks even better.  I’ll likely end up with this, but I don’t know how much attention I’ll spare for it.

Legend of Legacy ― Another game I am on the fence about.  It looks amazing and I loved the demo, but this SaGa like leveling system has never worked in any game, ever.  I doubt this one will be different.  Still, it looks interesting enough to give it a shot.

Zelda Triforce Heroes ― I am all about this one, though.  Assuming it does release at the end of the month. I love Zelda and I really enjoyed the brief chances I got to play 4 Swords with more than one person.  This should be right up my alley.

Yakuza 4 ―

After a few times stopping and starting trying to play this, and with the release of Yakuza 5 imminent, I am finally committing to truly sitting down and playing this game. This should probably actually be up in ongoing since I started just before the end of the month, but this is going to be my October game.

Mega Man Legends ― This hit PSN at the end of September and it is one of the best PS1 games.  I really want to take the time to play through it, though I don’t know if I’ll get to it.  Still, if you haven’t played it you absolutely should.

Atlus has really milked the Etrian Odyssey series. Since the first game came out in, in 2007, they have released 8 games in the series, depending on how you count them. I am counting both Etrian Mystery Dungeon and the very conceptually close Persona Q. It isn’t a series that has undergone much of an evolution either; it started as a throwback, which left it little space to really grow. There has been consistent incremental improvement in interface and playability. That is enough forward momentum to keep the series in many players’ good graces. The Untold games have seen the biggest changes to the formula, remakes that optionally replace the player generated blank slates with a pre made party and add in a story. Etrian Odyssey Untold 2: The Fafnir Knight follows the same recipe as The Millennium Girl, but manages to improve on it in all ways, save one.

Etrian Odyssey 2 was the one game in the series that felt the most like a cash in. The others all featured improvements and changes of some kind, as small and incremental as they may be, but EO2 was absolutely just more of the same. It had a full new dungeon to explore and a few new classes, but otherwise not much was new. It is the black sheep of the series, not because it does anything wrong but because it lacks the unique traits that make EO3 and EO4 stand out. EOU2 is easily the most polished of the series in a lot of respects and it fixes the biggest problem that EOU1 had: Grimoire Stones. Grimoire Stones were an interesting idea, if inferior in every way to sub-classing, that just didn’t work in the first game. Getting them and managing them was always a hassle. The systems just didn’t make sense and in the end I simply ignored them and used the skills that my characters naturally possessed. In this game they have been altered enough that became useful, vital parts of my strategy. You can get stones for skills that you already have, making them even stronger, or like general sub-classing to get extra skills. It took a completely worthless and cumbersome system and turned it into something actually useful.

As much as I’ll tell you that I prefer default Etrian Odyssey, with its absence of story and free party creation, when given the choice in these last two games I have chosen story mode both times. While I enjoy the old school vibe of this series, I am a player that grew up on SNES Final Fantasy and Lunar games. I love goofy RPG stories. The ones in these two games haven’t been great, but other than a tendency to slow the pace of the game to a crawl for stretches I have actually enjoyed them. I liked the cast and tenor of this game more than the previous one, though not by a wide margin. Each games male and female leads are a wash, but while I really liked Raquna, but Flavio and Betrand are both really interesting characters. Betrand’s big secret actually gives a reason for his presence that previous game’s party seemed to lack. My biggest problem with EOU1’s story was that it spoiled the big twist at the end early on, but there is no such twist in this game.

My problem with EOU2’s story mode in its party set up. I hate that party. Not the characters, the classes. I don’t tend to use Protectors and while I might use one character for buff or debuffs, I wouldn’t have two devoted to that. Also, as great as the main character’s Fafnir class is, I really don’t like having all of my elemental attacks on my primary physical attacker. I know there are ways to get those classes to work, but it was not any party that I would have ever put together and trying to make a group I didn’t like work caused me a lot of frustration.

The frequency of these games have not lessened my enjoyment of them. I still really enjoyed Etrian Odyssey Untold 2 despite fighting through Etrian Mystery Dungeon earlier this year and Persona Q last year. This series has found a niche that it can effectively exploit. There are others that try to hit this same niche, but none do it better than EO, and EOU2 is the best so far. It is just a little better than what came before it, but that is enough to keep me coming back every time. With Etrian Odyssey V on the horizon, I couldn’t be happier that this series keeps chugging along.

2005 was a big year for video games. It was the zenith of the PS2, and it competitors, generation and handhelds were on the rise. The great games that hit during that year include Resident Evil 4, Shadow of the Colossus and Psychonauts. Or Call of Duty 2, FEAR and God of War. The Nintendo DS was coming into its own, with games like Nintendogs, Animal Crossing Wild World and Mario Kart DS. The game from that year that had the biggest impact on me, though, was Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney. In fact, it is the game that kept me from drifting away from playing video games.

I didn’t actually play Phoenix Wright in 2005, though. While that was a great year for games, it was also a year that I starting giving up on the hobby. It sounds silly to say now in light of how completely its successor dominates my playtime, but the DS didn’t interest me. I had liked the Gameboy Advance, but most of what it offered was watered down SNES ports. The PSP didn’t seem like it was for me, either. I didn’t even have a PS2, all I had a Gamecube. A Gamecube that got a lot of use playing RE4 and Fire Emblem: Paths of Radiance. In late 2005, I did get a PS2, and glutted myself on its wide pool of JRPGs. While the next year did account for a lot of time spent playing games, outside of a few standout titles (Dragon Quest 8, Final Fantasy X) glutting myself on mediocre RPGs really didn’t turn things around for me. I was just killing time. It wasn’t until the fall of 2006, with the release of Pokemon Pearl, that I turned around on the DS. I had been out of the Pokemon game since really early in Silver/Gold days, and the new one looked sure to reignite my interest.

I still remember that first DS. It was a black DS lite, and I bought it with Trauma Center and Star Fox Command. I thought Star Fox was okay, but it didn’t light me on fire, and Trauma Center, despite its wonderful concept, was simply too hard. I couldn’t make it past the midway point of the game. I ended up spending most of my time with Pokemon Pearl and finding cheap GBA games.

One of the things that drew me to the DS was that it seemed to have new kinds of games, experiences I’ve never had before. Trauma Center fit that mold, even if I eventually sold it back to Gamestop for Lunar Knights. Another one that really intrigued me was Ace Attorney, but it was really hard to find for a while. It did get a reprint sometime in 2006; I found it while out Christmas shopping. Buying something for myself while Christmas shopping is a big no-no, but I couldn’t pass on it. It was a revelation. Sure, it was essentially a simplified version of the adventure games that had repeatedly failed to catch my interest, but something about it just clicked with me.

The game is ridiculous, bearing little resemblance to an American courtroom and hopefully just as little to a Japanese one, with larger than life characters and a delightful anything goes mentality. This is a game where spirit mediums are called to the stand to have ghosts testify or where in the middle of the climactic struggle to save Phoenix’s friend turned rival Edgeworth from being found guilty of murder you cross-examine a parrot. Still, the logic of the puzzles was always solid and the characters stood out as being incredibly well-written. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced.

Of course, I know now that it really isn’t anything new, just a sterling example of a type of visual novel-esque adventure game that has been popular in Japan since the days of the Famicom, but for me it was all new. Before, the games I played were all RPGs of some kind or action games. I moved from Mega Man 3 and Final Fantasy to Mega Man X and Final Fantasy III to Mega Man Legends and Final Fantasy IX. To me, that is what video games were. Sure, I dabbled in RTSes and sports games, but my gaming diet consisted mostly just those two types of games. With the DS and Phoenix Wright, I found something different.

With Ace Attorney 6 announced and more importantly announced for a Western release, I felt an urge to go back to the game that started it all. Playing the version of the AA Trilogy game for 3DS is it just as good as ever. Enough time has passed that while I recall the gist of the game, I don’t remember each beat of the story and every puzzle. It is almost like playing the game for the first time. Not quite, though. It is hard to find that magic of the first time, when the player has no idea what to expect. The boundless creativity and wild west anything goes approach of the DS and Wii has faded again, being replaced by an endless parade of sequels that play just like you remember. Games like Ace Attorney struggle to sell up to expectations.  Video games are still enjoyable, sometimes comforting, but despite a burgeoning and diversifying indie scene, I look back with more than a little sorrow for that brief window when it seemed like games could be anything.