August 2, 2009
Filed under The Role Playing Guy, featured
The Role Playing Guy: August
Written by Mark | Contact this author
New Releases this Month!
Final Fantasy Dissidia:
To celebrate Squaresoft’s 20th anniversary, they have created a title that pits the heroes and villains of the first 12 Final Fantasy games against each other. This will be a fighting game with RPG elements. It reminds me of Ehrgeiz which was actually a pretty badass fighting game for its day.
It is very exciting to see some of the older designed Amano characters coming to life in this game, characters like Firion just look amazing.
Look into my eyes and say "8-bit bitch" again..
Final fantasy: Dissidia will be released on the PSP on the 24th of this month.
Muramasa: the demon Blade will also be hitting shelves on the first of next month. Just take a look at this screenshot and tell me you’re not aroused:
Tentacles? Dear me! What is a girl to do?
If you have a Wii, I would definitely check this title out.
Two new Final Fantasies announced!
Old news to some, but Final Fantasy XIV has been confirmed and it will be an MMO, Square-Enix initially stated that it would be platform exclusive to the PS3, however, they quickly went back on that word and announced plans for the 360 and PC as well. Final Fantasy XIV will follow the same style as XI. We all know that graphically its going to be impressive. But will Square-Enix learn from the mistakes of FFXI? FFXI is the MMO for only the most hardcore of players, it is an extremely difficult game that requires more time then any casual player can afford. They have admitted that they’ve taken the hint, and a lot of the content will be tuned more towards the casual gamer this time around. IF that remains true, this may be a decent MMO for those who are in to that type of game.
And a new DS RPG titled “Final Fantasy Gaiden: The Four Warriors of Light” was announced. Not a lot about it is known at this point, The graphics are interesting though. It appears to be a rough attempt at some serious cell shading on the DS, I really want to see some videos of this game to see what the action really looks like as I’m sure the screenshots are not doing it justice, but for those who are curious. Here is a screenshot:
Title: Sands of Destruction
Platform: Nintendo DS
ETA: January 2010
Previously Titled “World Destruction” and likely changed to avoid bad PR, “Sands of Destruction” Is a game with some very impressive names attached to it. With the former writers and developers of Xenogears on hand (my personal favorite RPG). And the music of the one and only Yasunori Mitsuda (responsible for the fantastic soundtracks of Chrono Cross and Xenogears), this appears to be a very promising title worth watching.
obligatory screenshot
The story itself, from what I understand, revolves around a group of characters bent on world destruction, hows that for an interesting premise? Though I have to bet they’ll cop out and not destroy the world by the end of it. I mean how many works of Japanese fiction ever end with the world being destroyed anyways? Oh wait..
The graphics and design definitely remind me of Xenogears. Not a whole lot is currently known about this title, except that it is also related to the anime series “World Destruction” that aired 13 episodes in 2008.
Needless to say, I personally cannot wait for this one.
Welcome to the travel log!
Here I just like to post some blurbs about my adventures in RPGs for the past month.
Throughout some June and July I’ve been playing Phantasy Star Portable. While I’ve yet to be compelled to write a review, I had a bit of fun with this game. First of all, it has some of the best character customization features out there. I ended up with a black, high voiced, afro-clad midget spell caster by the name of “Professor McNasty.” By the end of the game, I had him prancing around in a leopard thong and blasting away at enemies with a “twinkle star” rod that looks like something that might have come from the festering bowels of sailor moon.
The gameplay is adapted from the fantasy star universe, so it is basically an offline MMO. The story isn’t all the great, and the gameplay gets extremely repetitive. It is still a fun title if you can get your hands on it and enjoy this type of thing. It also has local wireless play if you want to bring along friends, which I expect would be a lot of fun.
Much to my joy I discovered that Final Fantasy VII is now available for download on the PSN network, naturally I quickly downloaded it for my PSP and have been playing it when I get the urge, nothing has changed in this version, I just love having such a great classic in my hands, I’ve also been told Xenogears will be on PSN soon as well *GLEE*.
I’ve also been playing Chrono Trigger DS, a very classic enjoyable game. I have yet to make it far enough to try out the new additions yet. But I hear there is an ending that ties in directly with Chrono Trigger, and I MUST have it!
Toward the end of the month, I picked up Mass Effect. This game is too amazing for words, more information is available in my review
Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals
Platform: SNES
Released: August 31st, 1996
So this month I decided to choose a game that was a little obscure. At this time you can only find this game on the original SNES, or out there in ROM world.
Lufia II is actually a prequel to the first game, and in my opinion, a much better executed game. The world itself is a bit of an interesting one, based around the appearance of “Sinistrals”, mysterious giant god-like men that weave a path of destruction everywhere they go. Initially our heroes are no match for these monsters, but as you progress through the game you slowly work your way through the ranks. This game has some nice dramatic moments, and the ending is one of the sadder, yet beautiful endings I’ve seen in an RPG to date.
They call her "Lydia Rosenblat, Sinistral Accountant"
Mechanics wise, it is a pretty standard turn based RPG. They have a fun monster evolution system that allows you to train your own monsters and have them aid you in battle. This game is also LOADED with puzzles, and some can be rather difficult. This game also features a particular nasty place called the “ancient cave”; an interesting little sidequest. You are basically stripped of all gear, items, levels, and spells. You start from floor 1 and have to work your way to the final boss on floor 99. you cannot save, but you can choose to leave at any time. If you die you have to start all over. You can find extremely rare and powerful items in here however, and the beauty of these special items is that you can take them into the dungeon over and over again, unlike your standard items that get stripped. Each floor is randomly generated so the monsters and items are different each time you enter. When you leave you are returned to your original state. I spent countless hours doing this, and for the record, made it to floor 97 before I died and decided to never go back again. I later used a hacked rom to find out what floor 99 was all about.
Damn you Ancient Cave, damn you to hell
The graphics are certainly dated today, but for its time were quite impressive! And the music for its time was simply amazing, and on par with the work done on Final Fantasy VI. The designers began creating a lufia for the PS1, a game I was extremely excited about, but sadly, the company went bankrupt and the project was scrapped. The franchise was later picked up by another company and a crappy handheld game was made that was nothing like its predecessor, after that the Lufia franchise faded into oblivion. A sad end to what I thought was a beautiful series of games with great production and excellent prospects.
If you are into classic RPG’s and can secure yourself a copy, you’re certain to enjoy this title.
As this is my first column, there will be no Q&A. But please send me your emails! I would love to make this column as interactive as possible and this section will not work without help from our readers! So send in your questions, feel free to talk about anything in this column. If you think I suck and would like to flame me with hate mail, bring it on! There are some of this months discussion topics on the right if you need a little help, but don’t feel the need to use them as guidelines, I’ll be happy to discuss anything RPG with our readers in this column!
Send your questions to me now!
-Your favorite RPG?
-Final Fantasy Dissidia
-The Lufia Series
-Mass Effect
-Western RPG’s
-Sands of Destruction
-Phantasy Star Portable
-Tentacles in Japanese media
-Whatever the hell you feel like writing about!
And now we bring the first edition of “The Role Playing Guy” to a close! Now that i know i can integrate CSS into my posts here, wordpress is my bitch. My passion for RPG’s have been re-ignited this month thanks to the greatness of Mass Effect, so I plan I picking up where I left off on a few other titles I own, so expect more reviews, news, and random crap in next months edition! Thanks for reading!
-Mark
Nice column, sir. I especially like the Travel section. Trea read this and loved it, I on the other hand wondered why you didn’t spend more time on EA games brand of sports themed gaming. Technically, pretending that your Peyton Manning COULD be construed as a RPG. “Will you bury the hooker or just toss her in the dumpster?” See, I think your missing out.
Maybe i should write an editorial on how EA is CANCER to gaming.
does anybody remember Hellgate: london? A game with great potential that was practically raped, stabbed multiple times, and left to die in an alley by EA. This was a new company, and not a well funded one, so they jumped on the EA bandwagon for better funding.
the game was not finished, the quality was that of most alpha tests, but EA FORCED them into a Halloween release date on the game to boost sales.
The game tanked, and it tanked hard because it was so disgustingly filled with bugs that players couldn’t handle it, mind you, the premise and design were fantastic, they game just wasn’t allowed room to breath by its evil EA overlords.
One year later, the company went bankrupt and the game was sold to a Korean company, the US and European servers were shut down and this beautiful game that was conceived on US soil is now in the hands of a generic free to play MMO publishing company… yay.
Devoted fans of Hellgate can do nothing but cry themselves to sleep every night. had EA not forced a release on this company and let them actually finish developing the game, things would have probably gone differently, people would not have lost their jobs, and a possibly great franchise wouldn’t have died.
Thanks EA. hopefully, future developers will realize that dealing with EA is like signing a contract with the devil himself. sooner or later down the road, you can expect a hot poker to be inserted into your rectum, just wait for it.
I do admit that even the sports games I play from EA have more bugs than a Indiana Jones movie. The AI is a short bus lifetime rider. Seriously, your teammates can sometimes be worse than your opponent usually cuz your on team is busy raping you in other ways. They are the devil, but they are the only devil with a sports game franchise so I suckle from their cancerous teet.
E.A. : Errant Assholes
Hey, what about 2K games? The Bigs 2 is like the best baseball game ever made! I should really review that, now that I think about it. But Mark, if you seriously wanted to write an editorial about that, that’s what the new “right column” is for. And that’d be cool, because seriously? EA? The devil.
Hum… I would say EA was a devil, but Activision marched into Hell and push EA into purgatory. Activision is the new and improved Lucifer come to sit on the throne of killing IP. Remember EA put out Dead Space last year… Ummm. I need to play more Dead Space….
EA also has its claws dug into Bioware, and they are doing great things, so there is some hope!
we can continue this discussion when i finish my editorial, yes, I am writing an editorial on this!
About the column..
Mark, I would love to see you continue this column monthly. I would like to hear your take on Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. (Lost Odyssey’s battle load times are a lot quicker if you install the game to the hard drive.)
Also an interesting thing to note in your features on RPGs would be how friendly they are for people who can only invest a couple hours at a time to a game, for us older gamers. <– The main reason why I don’t play many JRPGs anymore is that many of them have their save points hours apart and I have no clue when the next one will emerge. This sucks if I only have an hour to sit down and play the game. Also I don’t always have 100 hours to invest in an RPG, though if it is really good I will.
Phantasy Star Zero set for November 10th release. Can’t wait. I really hope it’s got Internet play enabled.
yeah! looking forward to that one too. Novembers going to be an expensive month!
holy freaking shit, apparently square-enix though Lufia II was good enough to buy the rights to and warrant a remake on the DS. The remade version of the game is going to be called: “Estpolis: The Lands Cursed by the Gods”.
Square-enix, i might just have to start loving you guys again..
Woah, hold on there, Mark. Let’s reserve that for if they put both of the Lufia games on the DS… preferably on one cartridge. All kidding aside, Lufia II was one of the best RPGs on the SNES, though a little unknown. I’d love to see it make a return with updated graphics.
well, this may be a dealbreaker for some, but they are turning it into an action RPG with the remake, so it’ll be a bit different from the original. It’ll still retain all its puzzle elements though. I hope they remix the soundtrack as well, i don’t think anything was wrong with the original, it’ll just sound dated on the DS. hasn’t been confirmed for US (hopefully will).
Hmm, a bit of a different approach. I’ll miss the old school feel of the turn-based action, but I played the shit outta both Lufia games in high school, so the new stuff would be appreciated. As long as they keep the “World’s Hardest Puzzle” in, I’ll be happy.
the article can be found here, has a magazine scan of some screenshots with it: http://news.vgchartz.com/news.php?id=5903
So, it looks like they finally released that Lufia remake in the form of “Lufia: Curse of the Sinistrals.” It’s gone from an amazing top-down RPG where you had to involve strategy in your battles to your stereotypical 3D action-RPG where the key to victory lies in how quickly you can hit the Attack button. After giving it a shot, you can color me disappointed. I’m sick of these “remakes” that stray so far from the original that they’re similar in name only. I’ll continue playing it to see if my nostalgia-induced rage subsides and I can see the game for what it really is, but I can’t guarantee a favorable outcome for the game.
yeah, i was pretty excited about this until i read up on the opinions of fans of the original, i’m not sure i’ll even try it. FF: 4 warriors of light looks so much better anyways
Well, here’s a quote from a review on Amazon extolling the virtues of the new Lufia, but it just comes across as telling me why I hate this game already:
“A major difference is the transition from a Turn-Based battle system to an Action battle system. No longer will you have to assign actions to each party member and then watch things play out. Now you’re the one controlling the action. You only control one character at a time, but switching between characters is as easy as tapping an icon. Some puzzles will require you to use certain characters, as everyone has their own special abilities.
You no longer travel on a world map, but rather select your destination from a list. Luckily, the world map isn’t necessary since the dungeons are large and will keep you busy enough. You might even appreciate the time saved by not having to run from place to place.”
Argh! Old-School-Nerd-Rage!!!
On a side-note, 4 Heroes of Light is a severely dumbed down RPG (think Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest), but I can still consider it an RPG. It at least has an overworld with random encounters and a (REALLY small) inventory. All this aside, it’s still kinda fun in a “I’ve got 10 minutes to kill while I’m taking a dump” way.
yeah.. the old lufia was one of the most merciless unforgiving bastards of an RPG out there.. not happy to see them dumb it down like that
floor 97 of that damn dungeon, NINETY-F**CKING SEVEN!!
over a decade later and i’m still bitter about that one..
speaking of 4 heroes of light, its on sale at amazon for 15 bucks right now
considering the only free time i have is “10 minutes to kill while my baby takes a dump” i’ll pick it up
lots of other great game deals for their pre black friday sale too, check it out:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/browse.html/ref=pe_24010_17624040_pe_00_head/?tag=cheapassgam08-20&node=409566
Mini-review posted!
yeah.. dosn’t sound like a game i’ll pay 35 bucks for, hence jumping on the $15 price tag, we’ll see how long it holds my interest. if it fails i may just have to put my handheld gaming on hold until pokemon black/white or something interesting drops in the 3DS world (i hear an ocarina of time 3d remake is in the works, hell yes to that)
I believe the OoT remake has been confirmed on the 3DS. That will probably be my ENTIRE reason for purchasing one.
yeah, i looked it up, its confirmed, just watched a video of it in their lineup. there are quite a few other hopeful titles as well (i’ve always loved paper mario, MGS, etc)
the price tag is estimated at $300 a pop though.. good thing they are coming out after tax season. still.. would have to get one for the wife too, 600 bucks? fucking ouch man..
Oh, I’d forgotten about Paper Mario. While I love that series, I’d love to see another good ol’ Super Mario RPG (or hell, a remake of the original would make me happy too).
agreed 10,000% on the remake.
another one? square-enix has been botching the crap out of pretty much everything they’ve touched lately, either majorly, or tiny annoyances that still ruin a game. i hate to say it, but i’m pretty sure the Squaresoft i fell in love with growing up is long dead, maybe they died when Sakaguchi left, or the merger, i dunno.. bugs me though..
Truer words were never spoken, sir.