After really loving the first game, I went into this game expecting to love it, and was initially disjointed that it was SO much of the same, but after a little while, I found the things this game in particular has going for it, and came to love it equally along with its predecessor.
Mechanically in terms of how your character moves and how battles generally work, it's exactly the same as rocket slime. You hop and jump around and fling yourself into enemies and items to pick them up and send them back to home base on all of the oodles of rafts and train carts lined across the world. Vehicle battles are still cases of collect the things and put them in cannons while sometimes fighting off intruders/invading their vehicle. Game design, however, is what this game has going for it over the original. In terms of presentation, it's very silly just as Dragon Quest spin-offs tend to be. The story is about your troupe of friends (who only happen to look exactly like the group of friends from the last game but aren't the same slimes) who sail around the world on adventures. But when the 7 power orbs are stolen by the tail-gang, you're sent on a mission by the king to get them back. It's all just silly fluff and very kiddy: Don't expect to get any engaged by it. It's just glue to hold the stages together. The graphics are also a LOT of reused assets from the last game. Almost every character sprite, aside from the new enemies (about 50% more than the last game had), are reused, although all of the environments are in 3D, so they're all new. Also, as a side note, the world map is modeled off of Earth, and the racist stereotypes of the bigger stages you go to, especially on the bosses you fight, had me in stitches. The jet-powered flying Statue of Liberty that says things like "Yes I Can!" and "FREEEEEDOM!" and "You've extinguished the flame of freedom..." is probably the reason this game never came out in America XD Where all of the tank battles in Rocket Slime (2) were story based until the end game (if I recall correctly), Mori Mori Slime 3 has an overworld where you can sail your ship around and get into ship battles with other enemy ships you meet on the map. You sail around this world to the different towns and stages where you do the on foot(?) sections. Another new thing this game has is on-foot bosses, which in turn drop another new feature, super-weapons. When these are fired from your cannon, they bring up a huge animation on the top screen. If they hit, they do tooons of damage and you get another cool animation, but they're fairly easy to deflect, so you've gotta time when they're fired carefully. With the normal very powerful weapons still in the game though, in the very-very endgame, the super-weapons do become a bit obsolete, although not completely. One of my favorite new features is the new balancing changes that have been made to the battle system. You can customize your ship to get slightly more HP or damage or firing speed, but the biggest part is changing the hull. A new hull means a new layout when you walk around the ship in battles and also different amounts of item dispensers, granted the new ones might be further away. The cannons tend to be a bit more cramped, so you're closer to the cannons more often, especially if you're in the enemy ship harassing them to keep them from firing stuff. However, knock-back is also increased, so getting knocked back into the cannon is much easier, especially with the smarter AI (they actually dodge attacks now). This make the best strategy from the last game of just immediate, constant harassment obsolete, so you HAVE to have actual proper ship battles now. Several overpowered items have been nerfed as well. No longer do Metal King Shields travel very slowly like normal iron shields. They still absorb 5-hits, but they travel much faster, meaning they burn out quicker and don't provide the incredible defense they used to. There're also more items which just clear out the air through explosions or through weaving through the air between the 2 air-lanes. There's also a new lane: Because you're at sea, you can fire torpedos! They don't add too much because a great majority of items are air-based, but it's one more thing to keep track of. Allll of these ship changes combined with the increased enemy amount (and thus more possible crew-members with unique strengths and abilities) make for a much more varied and fun vehicle battle system which I absolutely love. The game does have a bit of grinding if you want your ship to be the best it can possibly be, but if you're willing to just collect most everything you come across on foot (which isn't really a hassle) and are willing to retry the harder ship battles once or twice as opposed to just upgrading for more HP or damage, you shouldn't have too much trouble. The end-game content which I'm working my way through now however, is REALLY REALLY hellishly difficult, and requires a lot of grinding to get your ship to max abilities and really kitted out with the best ammunition. In summary, it's a great sequel that builds well on the previous game's strengths. The only part I'm most sad with is that it does require a pretty good knoledge of kana and vocabulary (thought not Kanji) to understand, and it's a shame that it'll probably never come to English speaking territories for most people to play .
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Riviera is really like no other game I can think of, which makes it very hard to recommend, or even describe to people. You progress through very linear dungeons trying to get to the end, but you don't really walk around. You can only shift from room to room, and in each room, toggle between a "move" and "look" mode. In Look-mode, you can observe your surroundings, and usually find cool stuff (either weapons, quest items, power-ups, and/or points).But, looking comes at a cost. You only have so many action points, and looking once (at a new thing) takes away an action point. However, by fighting monsters well, you can earn more action points (I almost never had a problem having enough of them). This consists of beating them as quickly, and with as flashy a finisher as possible in turn based battles.
To level up you don't really gain experience through battles, but by using items a certain number of times with each character, they'll get a permanent stat boost. As items can only be used so many times in story-battles, you'll be doing most of your stat boosting in practice battles, which can be done anywhere outside the main "town" area, but DAMN is there a lot of it. Out of the 18 hours I spent on this game, I easily spent at least 6+ hours just grinding out levels. You get progress quickly enough, and you can only do it for as many items you have to grind that you can hold in your tiny inventory, so by design it's fairly spread out, but just know what you're getting into: If you dont' grind, you gon' die. Riviera is one of my favorite genres in terms of setting: Norse mythology written by Japanese devs. The world of Rivera that they make is so engaging and diverse, you just always want to see more of it! The setting totally won my heart, as well as all of the beautiful hand-drawn backgrounds (even if the same ones are reused a lot). The narrative is also fairly neat, although it is an Atlus game, so it's fairly anime-tastic, for better for worse, and it's also kiiiinda harem-anime-esque (1 main guy character travelling with 4 girl charactes), except without any love story, if that makes sense. Like I said before, it's not an easy game to describe Xp Lastly I do have to mention the voice acting. There's a surprising amount of it for a GBA game, even if it is mostly just beginning and end of battle voice clips, but all 5 characters have quite a few of them, but they're REALLY grating and awful. It reminds me a lot of voice clips from Star Ocean: Second Story, if I had anything to compare it to, though frankly if there were more of it, it'd be more like the original YS 1 & 2 English translations on Turbografx. Damn I'm actually glad there's not more voice acting in this game XP Despite all of my griping though, I really enjoyed this game. I'm really looking forward to when I go through Yggrda Union, and will also keep a firm lookout for the other games by these devs. The style of the game is just so unique, that it really surpassed feeling like a GBA game, unhindered by its medium, instead feeling more like a game that could've been of most any era, but happened to be on GBA. A full recommendation for anyone who wants an interesting spin on a JRPG-style. After having just beaten Super Mario Bros U, NLU was a fun change of pace, despite its much shorter levels. You only have 100 seconds to beat every level, thus making their lengths much shorter than the original game where you commonly had 400-500 seconds to beat them. Combine this with the fact that Luigi (and possibly the other characters(?) I never had a chance to try that out) controls like he does in SMB: Lost Levels/SMB2 (i.e. he can jump higher, has lower falling acceleration) and you get really fast paced and manic levels, because this game is HARD.
All of the levels are new, with none being taken from the original game, but just because the levels are short, doesn't mean they're easy. Granted you usually will get a mushroom early on if you enter a level small, but they basically cram 500 seconds worth of enemies into a 100 second stage. With Luigi's crazy jumping, I was fairly frequently crazily jumping around trying to avoid the onslaught of enemies flying around me, or trying to avoid the lava/acid/spikes which threatened below my feet. The secrets are also immensely well hidden. Despite many run-throughs, I didn't find a single secret in the first four worlds, where in the main game I'd found them all. The difficulty is one of the few small qualms I do have with the game. Considering that the game is technically playable with 4-people at once, the speed at which you have to complete levels really makes it so one player is constantly leaving the other person behind. That said, the addition of the Nabbit character really makes it a little easier for the second player given his immunity to enemies, but that still doesn't save you from the screen scrolling or pits to kill you. Ultimately, I feel the game is good, but far too short a novelty to warrent the $40 price tag which the physical release shares with the main game's physical release. I'd say defeinitely keep an eye out for the New Super Mario Bros U + New Luigi U pack that I got, which tends to be a much more reasonable $45-$55. Still, it was super fun, and still comes very recommended to any Mario fan if you can pick it up at a good price. DAMN! This game was great. Definitely the best New SMB game so far. I'd chalk most of that up to not only the great level design and music, which is par for the course, really, but also due to the new wing-suit power up. It just feels like such a more natural evolution of the tanooki leaf and feather/cape, and it just works really well within the levels to provide an easier run while still being very skill based. Especially if you get the bundle with Luigi U, one of my favorite things I've come across on impulse in a long time. Really sorry I missed out on it when it first came out.
Expect a review for Luigi U in a few days, but that game is REALLY hard so far. Kinda surprised they sold it by itself, tbh. It seems like they almost expected you to beat NSMBU first with the skill level that even the first world demands. |
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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