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| Blade Dancer; Not quite as generic as it seemed. | |
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| Topic Started: Dec 20 2006, 11:15 AM (127 Views) | |
| UtopiaNH | Dec 20 2006, 11:15 AM Post #1 |
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Cu Roi
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I've put another 5-6 hours into this little handheld title and I can say although it features absolutely nothing actually "original" in it, it's taken some neat systems and put them together in a rather solid way. First of all: The Battle System: I was not impressed by it at all at first; it seems like a slow ATB system; nothing original, and the magic/ability system appeared to just be the skies of arcadia one. That being said, the game takes basically chrono trigger's engine, and uses a shared mana bar that goes up as you do damage and take damage. The shared mana bar is also shared with the enemies, so using your special moves puts you at risk of the enemies using their special attacks. You can interrupt special attacks, and have yours interrupted. It's actually pretty well excuted; surprisingly so. The reason I say it's Chrono Trigger's is, it's Chrono Trigger's. All your party members you can switch between by pressing left or right, and they each have a counter that you have to wait for before their turn is ready, and they all act independantly. You have combined special attacks, as well as individual ones, and getting combined ones off is risky as you lose concentration if any member of it is interrupted. Enemies continue to attack you while you're selecting attacks, and there's no "wait" option so it can be rushed decision making. If an item breaks in battle you have to manually reequip it and it takes up a full round, and you also have to spend time looking through your inventory depending on how organized you are. The gameplay: The game has you wandering around the island with a main city (as far as I'm aware; there could be another city further into the island, but I've only been visiting the main one so far), with the central location offering specific quests and objectives within the larger picture. The game is fairly linear and story-orientated but it still has some elements of exploration and wandering for hidden chests, and the enemies are visible floating skulls (that are different colours and run from you if you're higher level, and run towards you if they're higher). And because of this system you won't be fighting low level encounters repeatedly if you chose to. The game is tuned fairly difficult although not in any way frustratingly so, and you can overlevel to overcome it, but I can say I've died numerous times already because of poor planning, bad luck, or inability to get away from a very powerful enemy. Running from an enemy puts you back on the field with the floating skull right behind you, so if you don't book it, you'll be right back in combat were you started before. You can't pause to look through and use your items on the field and therefore healing can be difficult as the enemy can respawn nearby and attack you while you're browsing through menus. There's also a very, very indepth but simple crafting system that intertwines the whole game. Every weapon has durability and you consume them fast, so constructing weapons to keep yourself from going broke is important. You get recipes from completing quests, or "appraising" an item for 100g flat, which breaks the item down into it's components (and you can then appraise the components often to break them down further), and can also apparently learn recipes by manually combining ingrediants, but you have to have the right set, and there's a luck based probability on discovery (and have to get further into the game). Chests drop unique items that can't be purchased, and if they're a consumable, or a weapon it's a good idea to go deconstruct them right away so you can also replace them; by the same token waiting until the items almost broken is also smart because you can only appraise something once, and when you recraft it, it's full durability. The Story: Meh; but really, who cares? It's a Nippon Ichi translation, so names are wacky, voices are well recorded but annoying. There's nothing I can see saving the story as it's extremely generic, but then again it's not so in your face that you have to listen to twenty hours of cut-scenes about pointless stuff So yeah... I recommend buying it if you have a PSP. |
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| Runeslash | Dec 20 2006, 04:49 PM Post #2 |
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109th Star of Destiny
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The only thing I can really say is that this game has the distinction of being the only game I don't own (no PSP)... yet I have the soundtrack to it, and I got that for free. So, if nothing else, I know the music is decent. |
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