So my roommate checked the Wii Virtual Console thingy today.
Of all the games to get added… Romance of the Three Kingdoms 4 (SNES). Besides being kind of rare, I don’t recall 4 having any particularly interesting qualities… but I see this as Koei testing the waters. If they get a decent return on it, maybe they’ll bring us some of their niftier games, like Inindo, Gemfire, and Uncharted Waters.
Just thought I’d post about it.
So the reason I haven’t been posting much of anything is… well.. no reason, really. I have no excuses. I’m going to try to avoid spoilers for S3 in the following paragraph.
I got up to chapter 4 in Suikoden III and am using Hugo as my main character. I thoroughly enjoyed Geddoe’s chapters, and actually have won all of the optional boss fights that I think are feasible (which is to say, all except the Chris fight v. Bishop, Sarah, Yuber, the fight with true runes against Bishop, Sarah, and Yuber, and Hugo’s Yuber duel). The strategy fights you can (hypothetically) win are much, much more difficult to do anything with, particularly when you can only control the growth of certain characters. So I’m not feeling too bad about the game difficulty-wise: from here on out it’s pretty much Juan, Main, Caster, and whoever else. I’m going to try and level up more characters than usual (i.e. Thomas, Cecile, maybe Melville) and try out some of the interesting characters I never did before (Edge, Futch). I figure maxing out Armor Protect will help me to win nearly every strategy battle without many problems.
Oh yeah, and I’m pretty sure I’ve gotten every optional character except Guillame. I can’t get him right now because the True Water Rune stuff is going on in that area. Haven’t consulted a FAQ yet, but he’s the only one left I can investigate , so I have to conclude S3 is the easiest Suikoden to recruit all 108 characters. It also seems to have the most optional side-things (like the plays, for example).
I don’t usually post anything about anime, because I find much of it to be bland and not particularly neat. But a friend recommended “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya” (Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuutsu), and I have to admit it’s pretty neat so far. Bit confusing, but I think that’s the idea. Anyway, I’m guessing there are a bunch of random references I’m missing, because here’s one reference I got (which happened almost completely without warning – it lasts about a minute either direction). This is a big image, so I’m linking it, because I’ve optimized it as much as I can easily.
Image (2mb)
Yes, that’s right. Or, more precisely, Wright. I’m pretty sure Haruhi was made only a couple years ago, so Gyakuten Saiban would’ve been around. Fun stuff.
Anyway, one of the reasons I’d been thinking about watching Haruhi for a while is because it was recommended in a poll – “What anime would you recommend that everyone see” – conducted in Japan (#2, I believe). Not that the Japanese are infallible by any means, but they at least have a wider variety of anime that is released there to go from. And Haruhi is quite interesting, for its setting. Some may be put off by the random fanservice in the first episode; keep an open mind for the first 3 minutes or so and you’ll be able to figure out what’s going on.
Third item of the day: Gideon Zhi, of Cave Story (among other translations) fame, recently released a translation of the Super Famicom RPG Dark Law. If you like traditional pen-and-paper systems, where you get gold in the ones and tens rather than hundreds, growth is slower, and the game is more story-driven, you will probably like this game. It looks very interesting.
How… random. Right after a post full of random stuff, I have more random stuff to share.
The game series has long been one of my favorites, so it was only a matter of time until this happened anyways. Basically, if you took a “normal” strategy RPG and made it actually feel like a battle rather than a skirmish, then you’d have Langrisser. The first one came stateside as the Genesis game Warsong. Sad that nobody does it, though. I got my hands on the official Japanese guide for DL, the only Super Famicon game in the series (and a remake of L2), so I’ve been translating some stuff in it. The game should have a translation out in a couple months, hopefully.
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So I’ve seen a bunch of cool stuff over the past few weeks that I couldn’t really fit into any other entries. Having it all in one big post is better than making a half-dozen little ones.
Shigeru Miyamoto revealed this in his GDC keynote (available at IGN – it’s part 2), but it was not in the news, because evidently everyone was too busy whining about how Nintendo didn’t announce game information to consumers at a conference for game developers. Nintendo had been planning the Mii thing since the original NES / Famicom, but never implemented it until the Wii (probably because of the Wii’s internet friendliness). In his keynote, he showed off an early version for the DS that was scrapped as well as a version for Famicom that never got past the early prototypes. It’ll be interesting to see how a long-held dream works out in the end. If third-party games start using them, they could be really cool. As it is they seem to be a proof-of-concept.
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So yesterday I heard about a great-sounding game called Puzzle Quest for the DS and PSP. I hadn’t heard anything about it before, and the most unusual thing was that I heard about it from 3 different sources; vl, GAF, and SoSZ. It was described as a “RPG/Puzzle hybrid” and that is, more or less, what it is.
I visited the official site for the game last night. They have a downloadable demo that lets you reach up to level 7 (and a certain point in the plot). From the look of it, there’ll be two kinds of multiplayer, and the interview at GAF said that it has 40+ hours of gameplay (though it is the developers talking, and that’s almost never accurate).
Basically, if you take something like Bejeweled and add an open-ended storyline system along with stats, special abilities, and equipment that affect the game board, opponent, and the effects of actions, you’d have this game. You take turns with your opponent, each switching two gems and trying to get 3+ in a row or column. Depending on what object type you match up, you get mana, gold, or experience, or damage your opponent. If you get 4+ in a row, you get an extra turn, and like Yoshi’s Cookie (I’ve only seen a bit of Bejeweled) you can and should chain together combos to get even more stuff.
This game’s from the company that made the Warlords games for PC. If that means anything to you, let me know, because I have only heard of the series maybe once or twice, long ago.
So yeah. Try the demo. It kept me interested for more than 2 hours last night, and I’m already planning on getting the game.
Other than Puzzle Quest, finished Suikoden 2 (with a couple hours to spare on Clive even at the ending… how did that happen?) and I’m 6 hours into Suikoden 3. This time around, I’m going to play through each character’s first 3 chapters all at once, because I’ve heard it can help you understand the characters better. Suiko3 has had a lot of criticism, but I really like a lot of the features – The Trinity View system allows for a deeper plot, and the battle positioning/timing system along with skills makes for more strategic normal battles. I’m not enjoying the plot as much this time around (since it’s my 4th time through), but I’m playing my least favorite chapters first, so we’ll see if that changes.
