I've wanted this game for like 6 years, ever since I saw it in a store the last time I was in Japan and didn't pick it up assuming I'd find it cheaper somewhere else (although I never did QwQ). Finally got it for like 8 bucks last week and got to playing it this week. I assumed it'd just be some kiddy, throwaway game, but it's actually a lot more than I bargained for in terms of content and difficulty!
On its most base level, this is a Pokemon-themed Typing of the Dead but on a DS and typing largely Pokemon names instead of words and phrases like in TotD. Given that it's every Pokemon between 1st and 5th generation, that's well more than 500 Pokemon with tons of stages with various modifiers in the most extreme varieties. I'm fairly sure the English title (as this did come out in PAL territories, just never the US, but I played the Japanese version) calls this a "Typing Tutor," but that is just plain old false advertising as far as I'm concerned. This game is a lousy typing teacher, but it is a great typing score attack game. Each stage has certain challenges within it to try and complete, from getting a certain number of Pokemon in a row without making errors, to catching a certain total number, to getting a certain high score. The first dozen or two stages are pretty doable, but after a certain point I just had to throw in the towel as far as getting all the medals though. Not knowing all the Japanese Pokemon names is probably the biggest reason why, as a big part of getting high scores is starting to type their names before the text-box prompting you what their name is pops up, I just eventually had to accept I'd never be able to 100% this game. On top of Japanese keyboard layouts being JUST different enough that the technical, non-letter key entries were always difficult to remember, this was a game I got a lot of playtime out of but eventually had to accept that I'd never be able to reach some of the absolutely astonishingly high score challenges they set for you XD Verdict: Recommended. It's a fairly simple premise, but damn if it isn't addicting. As far as original Pokemon spin-offs (i.e. not Mystery Dungeon) go, this is definitely near the top of the list as far as quality goes. The Japanese version has all the stuff you'd type in roman characters as well as Japanese, so even if an English version didn't exist this is a fairly import-friendly game. If you're looking for a DS game that's a bit out-there but also loads of fun, this is definitely a good one to pick up. Just keep in mind that if you're not a big (or even mild) Pokemon fan, you'll likely eventually get frustrated with just how much the game's hardest challenges demand an encyclopedic knowledge of their names.
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A friend of mine has been talking up Dynasty Warriors Gundam Reborn for ages as one of the best Musou games, and I'd been looking for another fairly mindless de-stressing game to play now that I'd finished Starlink, so this game was too perfect to pass up when I came across it for under 800 yen. While I wouldn't say it surpasses Hyrule Warriors as the best modern Musou game, it is a damn close second place that deserves all the praise it gets. I settled in for my first ever PS3 platinum trophy with this baby. In an effort I cannot possibly recommend, I spent over 140 hours getting 100% of the in-game collectible cards (at least half of which was grinding the same missions over and over to just kill a certain amount of troops with every single character XP). Couldn't recommend it, but I enjoyed the game enough to slog through that, which says something in itself I suppose XD
As with the other Gundam Musou games, you can play as a myriad of pilots and even more mobile suits. The pilots themselves don't really do anything but add certain passives and skills. Think of them like the character and the mobile suits like the weapons in a normal Musou game. The characters have levels that increase base stats of fight, shot, and defense, as well as certain passive skills that skillpoints can be put into. Every character is different in this way, ultimately, as their max stats and possible skills they can learn are different for every pilot, and each pilot usually has a certain Gundam only they can pilot until you unlock it for free-play with other pilots. The mobile suits themselves are among the other titanic Musou games for just how many there are. With the exception of one boss character who can't physically move (so there's a good reason you can't play it), every single mobile suit that appears in the game can be unlocked and played for a total count of over 120! They all have quite a bit of difference as well. The big-name Gundams have quite unique and well animated movesets, sure, but even a lot of the smaller, unimportant enemy stooge mechs have meaningful movesets that make them just that much more different to play. Sure, some characters feel quite similar, but on the whole there is a really surprising amount of depth to the differences between each mobile suit, and that is far and away the shining star of this game. Where the game falls a bit behind Hyrule Musou for me is the stage and map design. The game has an "Official Mode," where you play stages based on the stories of 6 different Gundam series, as well as an "Ultimate Mode," where you play through over 20 "what if" crossover stories between the characters from many series beyond those represented in the Official Mode, usually revolving around some special gimmick for that scenario (like defending an allied ship, or only playing as Newtype characters). While the Official modes are fully VO'd and have some very pretty 3D-animated cutscenes as well, none of the story bits in the Ultimate Mode are voiced, so it's a bit of give and take there. Official Mode basically has every stage on a different map, or a different take on the same map (different starting locations, restricted to a certain section of a larger map, etc), and while Ultimate Mode doesn't introduce any new stages, it does a pretty good job of not making any maps feel like they're repeating. However, I wouldn't really say this is a good thing, as the biggest reason for this is because so many of the maps are fairly empty and replaceable with one another. It's a symptom the first Gundam Musou game suffered from quite badly as well, and the 4th entry in the series does not escape from. The combat is as excellent as it's always been, but it's really just as it's always been. The same blocking, dashing, boosting, and melee/ranged attacks that made the first Gundam Musou game a blast are still here, as rockin' as ever, but with a far-expanded cast now. Not really a plus, but certainly not a negative when the game has added like 30+ new characters compared to the 3rd game in the series: If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Verdict: Highly recommended. If you're gonna play just one Gundam Musou game, let it be this one. It's easily one of the best spin-off Musou games, and was definitely one of the best Musou games, full stop, at the time of its release. It doesn't quite hit the high of Hyrule Warriors, but it was a Musou entry of a quality heralding the great quality of Hyrule Warriors, and is definitely worth checking out if you need some more Gundam or some more Musou in your life. Beat Starlink a week or two ago and only just now have the internet to type about it! I helped a friend beat all the Gummy Ship stuff in Kingdom Hearts 3, and it made me really wanna play a real spaceship game. I looked over on the eShop and noticed the eternal sale that the Digital Deluxe edition of Starlink was still on, so I picked it up. It made a really great simple game to de-stress to while I was waiting for my job to start after moving to Japan.
Starlink is a game by Ubisoft and it is very much still an Ubisoft Game (TM). Large open-world with tons of icons scattered around that you progressively unlock more of with effectively identical activities to do to fill up number percentages, all while a larger story goes on around it. The gimmick this time is that you're a spaceship, but that said, it's a pretty decent gimmick. There are two parts to Starlink: planets and space. Space has you in your spaceship flying around, getting into dogfights, and attacking larger spaceships in raid-like solo fights. They're really well put together, and honestly I kinda wish the whole game had just been a better fleshed-out space game, because you're honestly barely in space unless you really wanna do ALL the nearly identical raid-like fights. The second part is the planets, where you're still in a spaceship, but your spaceship is basically glued to the ground like a landmaster in Starfox. You zoom about these slightly procedurally-generated planets doing quests for quest-givers, attacking enemies you find, scanning wildlife, and collecting goodies. There is a lot of planet stuff in the game, and honestly I thought it was a shame because it's definitely the less remarkable part of the gameplay loop. You're a spaceship, so of course you can customize it! If you have the physical toy, you can plonk your IRL guns onto the ship's wings and they'll appear on your ship in the game, same goes for wings on your ship. They'll even face backwards if you plonk them on backwards! It's a really neat gimmick, and the digital replacement for it is honestly really horribly clunky and cumbersome and really would've benefited from a faster way to instantly toggle between loadouts without going into a menu (the game does have loadouts, you just can't go between them quickly). There are 4 different elemental weapons, fire, ice, stasis, and vortex; and there are also a series of additional neutral weapons that have no element attached. They're all really different and fun to use, and using one with a pilot gets only a certain amount of skill points with that weapon, so you're encouraged to try out loads with different combos to get more skill points and see what works best together. The weird thing is that the number of each is really odd, especially how there is only ONE stasis weapon, and given that vortex enemies are weak to stasis, you're gonna be using that ONE a LOT. The physical versions of the game also never came with at least one of these elemental weapons, and given there are certain in-game activities that require all the elements to complete, the game NEEDED extra toys to be bought to actually 100% if you bought the physical toy (a very crappy, but quite typically Ubisoft move). In summary, weapons are fun, but elemental gunplay is kinda poorly thought out and badly monetized to boot. The Switch version comes with included Starfox DLC where you can play as fox, fly the Arwing, and play some special Star Fox missions as you try and track down Star Wolf, and at least compared to the rest of the content in the game, it's fairly substantial. Now, there isn't actually THAT much to do, but it's another story side-quest in a game that otherwise has ONE story-related side-quest that isn't a part of the main story, so at least proportionally it's a fairly sizable amount of content. It's quite well put together too, and easily makes the Switch version of Starlink the definitive one despite how much better other consoles can likely run the software. The story of Starlink is VERY forgettable and a far cry (no pun intended) from Ubisoft's better writing achievements of recent memory (such as the excellent Watchdogs 2). It's very kiddy in the kinda bad way, where it seems like it's trying to feel deep but never really does anything beyond looking pretty and having an atmosphere of something cool happening without anything meaningful occurring. For the sake of selling more toys, the cast is bloated to the point where there were several cutscenes that featured characters I never remembered seeing before, let alone knowing the character traits of. The story was clearly not the focus of this game, and was sacrificed for the sake of selling more toys. Not a deal-breaker (I mean I 100%'d the planet parts of the game, so clearly there's something to the gameplay loop that's appealing despite the story), but a shame given how well Ubisoft has shown they can construct a narrative. Verdict: Recommended. Starlink may not be anything mind-blowing for most people, but it's a good time, and something fairly easy to recommend if you can get the digital deluxe edition for 50% off like I did. It made me look forward to the upcoming Starfox DLC for it, and even more look forward to the innovations a Starlink 2 may bring, if that ever exists. |
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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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