Finished off Fire Emblem Conquest last night. Again, I'm gonna keep this short and sweet because there's already been a ton said about this game's mechanics and such on this forum, so I'll mainly just stick to my opinion.
This is my favorite FE game I've ever played. By virtue of working for the bad guys, the dynamic that the main character has to go through with his/her siblings is so much more explored and nuanced than in Birthright. I enjoyed the side characters far more as well, as they tended to be either more entertainingly strange/quirky, or just written from a very interesting perspective (with my personal favorite being Forrest). Though this game doesn't have the infinite grinding that you can do like Birthright and Revelations, it still felt like I had tons of time to work out character relationships, and even planning which characters to bring to which mission to foster which relationships was a very cool element to consider. Verdict: Highly recommended to fans of the series and strategy games. In my opinion, the best FE to date in terms of both mechanics and story. Loved it to bits!
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This was a really good game, and a very smart evolution over Awakening in many ways. I'm going to keep this fairly short and sweet comparatively to my other reviews, since I don't really feel I have that much to say that hasn't already been said about this game mechanically.
The change-up to the support system took a LOT of getting used to (like more than half of the game), but it's a nice change. It actually forces you to think tactically about your units' positioning short of just "put fat guy in front and squishies in back." Awakening made it far too easy to just make fat guy-mobile guy pairs that could just run around and fuck everything with impunity, so it's nice that I never ran into that here. The story was also very good. I mean, this IS Fire Emblem we're talking about, so it did feel a little drawn out at times, although I would say markedly less than other installments (especially Awakening which has a serious identity crisis with what it actually wants the narrative to be about when it basically totally changes the plotline halfway through and then changes it back at the very end). The heartfelt moments really felt it, I genuinely didn't see the twists coming, and the voice acting was actually very good and was never annoying. This is a good time to clarify that I DID play the Japanese version, and am very well aware of the god-awful terrible English voice over they shat this game out with. Verdict: Highly Recommended. If you're a fan of strategy games or Fire Emblem, then you've probably already played this. If you haven't somehow or have been intimidated by the series' difficulty up to now, then this is a great entry point, as things like Phoenix mode really put the game on some fantastic training wheels that just let you experience the story at your leisure. I always hear people online like Totalbiscuit and Jim Sterling talking about how much they love Dynasty Warriors, so it's always made me wanna try them. I looked up some stuff about them, and 3 seemed to be a pretty good place to start, other than just buying the most recent game in the series (which seemed to be the actually most common recommendation). There was much frustration at losings, and this game certainly has its problems, but I actually had quite a lot of fun with it. For reference, I played through as the Wei Empire as Dian Wei.
We're gonna start off with my problems with the game, for no particular reason. First off, I'd imagine that most people who've played more recent 3rd person action games are going to take big issue with the camera, and rightfully so. The camera really feels too zoomed in sometimes, and the ONLY way to reposition it is to hit the L button, but that's also your jumping recovery button, so often, you're just SOL and gotta deal with fighting towards the camera (the R-stick literally does nothing for some reason O.o ). Other technical problems include the fact that even though the draw distance isn't huge, I very often ran into problems where not every soldier actually present at my location wasn't being shown because of hardware limitations. This wasn't usually a problem, as their is a radar you can change to be either map-wide or just a local area, and using the radar to get a better idea of how many soldiers are actually around you is a good tip. That radar is especially good for tracking when enemy generals and officers are near, as they appear as white dots that blink red, which is only confusing because friendly officers also appear as white dots, but ones that blink blue :/ The control issues don't really stop there, but not for technical reasons. For a game that is not only a sequel to a very similar game but also a game that came out in 2002, this game does an inexcusable job of telling you how to play: It doesn't tell you jack shit. In my stubbornness, I refused to look at the manual and basically just spent the first hour or so of the game just getting a handle on how to actually play. Now, the actual controls aren't that hard to figure out, but its the overarching game strategies that will likely take you longer to figure out. You level up as you kill soldiers, and if you kill more, you'll get stronger. You can also get straight up stat buffs from killing enemy generals, officers, and gate guardians, as well as new weapons and passive items to equip. Now, even though it numerically shows your EXP-gain from killing mans at the end of battle, (I'm like 99% sure) you actually do get stronger in real time, but there's no way to really know that other than the fact that you'll notice you're killing enemies quicker, or not getting staggered as much. Additionally, at first, the battles really feel like there's a sense of urgency to them, as you get notifications like, "X-general's troop is in trouble!" which will constantly make you think you're losing. However, there are hard time limits on battles, with fairly easy to understand win/lose conditions, so generally, you want to kill as many enemy soldiers, officers, etc. to level up as much as possible, because otherwise you just will not be strong enough to do the later missions, some of which do require some element of speed. Now onto what I really love about this game, and that's the style, concept, and gameplay. The whole concept and style of the game is that you're fighting the on-foot battles of what would be larger strategic affairs in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms setting. As a result, though it takes a little while to get used to, there's just something so satisfying about fighting a massive battle with thousands of troops as just one uber-troop on the field. The strategy that you have to develop after (usually) several tries at a map, based on which allied NPC's tend to start having trouble and where, and how best to hit up all of the enemy generals in the most advantageous situations. For a game about mostly just mashing the X-button, there's a lot more strategy involved than I first thought. The combat also has a surprising amount of nuance to it. Though you'll be initially expecting that the best way to go forward, is just to mash the x-button like crazy. But not mashing it so fast won't go through your entire combo and makes it so your down-time before you can attack again is much lesser, meaning you can keep on top of a blocking opponent much harder (I don't believe there's any way for the player to block attacks, at least not that I could suss out. It's a bit like God Hand in that way). Additionally, you also have your Musou (warrior) attack, which is one you can activate once you build up the Musou gauge by striking enemy soldiers. Your Musou attack breaks you out of staggers, and almost always has some crowd-clearing element, so fighting generals in a sea of their own troops to keep your Musou gauge topped up can actually be a legitimate strategy. There's also a charge attack of some sort, but I never actually figured out how to use it effectively, so I'll refrain from commenting on it. I certainly know the enemy knows how to use it though! They beat my face in with it a whoooole lot Xp The last bit that I love is the setting and style, which this game is just oozing with. It's Romance of the Three Kingdoms, so it's based on real events that took place after the fall of Han China. For a history nerd like me, this stuff is sooo cool. Being real generals and fighting hand to hand (admittedly in a very unrealistic and exaggerated fashion, but still) in real places is just such a cool thing to me. The game's graphics are okay for an Xbox game with a scale like this. The most important thing is that the generals look pretty darn good, and the use of a color palatte in their design is also well used, so nothing (other than the ground textures) is too hideous to look at. Verdict: Somewhat recommended. As my lengthy problems section trys to get across, this game has a lot of problems, which make it difficult to objectively recommend across the board. However, as a fan of action games and historical fiction games, I enjoyed this game to pieces, and if you are as well, then I think you'll likely get at least some enjoyment out of it. And if this game's mechanics are too obtuse, then trying one of the more recent entries which are just as cheap is also a safe option I heard about this game years ago, and I was crazy psyched for it: I promptly completely forgot about it. Fast forward to a week or so ago, and I remembered this game existed, and bagged one on eBay really quick. When I finally got into the game, I was little lukewarm at first, as I really didn't understand how you unlocked characters, but once I got past that hurdle, I was soooo into this game. Into it like CRAZY (15 hours in 3-ish days) and played it until I unlocked every character, even the support and helper ones (although not every Koma evolution).
This is far and away the best Smash-like fighter I've ever played. Part of that lies in the solid game mechanics, and another lies in the excellent use of licenses. This is definitely the Smash-like I've played that's most like Smash Bros in terms of overall mechanics (punch other dude 'til he fall off level), but the fact that you also have super moves and a health bar (not to mention various other game modes and swappable characters with support moves) really adds a fuck-load to the formula. The game's main mechanic is the Deck-system, in which you use the panels you get from completing stages to compile little manga-like pages. These pages hold battle Koma (panels), support Koma, and finally helper Koma. Battle Koma are your actual fighters. You can have 3 of them in a deck at once, and you can swap between them any time during a fight. Support are your more MvC-style they-hop-in-and-do-a-thing-type attacks. Of the 48 playable battle characters, there are far more support characters, and even more helper characters (which just provide a small boost to a battle Koma they're compatible with). You can use the R and L buttons as hotkeys to activate specific support calls or battle character swaps, but any more than two and you'll have to touch that panel on the touch screen to actually do it. I'm not sure how the meta would play out on that on a competitive scene, but I never had any problems using it. More than 2 supports on one deck is unwieldy to handle, and I usually stuck to two battlers, two supports, and then whatever helpers I wanted to throw in. The stages themselves have one main objective, usually split between a score-based time attack (how many point can you earn), a stock match, and a collect all the things. There are weirder events which are more uncommon like trying not to get hit for a long time or destroying all the walls as fast as you can, but they're very uncommon. There are also 4 or 5 sub-objectives in each stages, which don't need to be completed in the same playthrough of that stage (and usually can't be). There are quite a lot of stages to actually play on for a mobile game, and even though they aren't insanely diverse, I'd put the stage selection at least on par if not better than Smash 3DS. You have things like collapsing platforms and destroyable walls of varrying durability to content with as well, so you've got to get a good grip on your surroundings quickly to use them as well as possible to fulfil the stage objectives. Now, the licenses, are there ever a fuck-load. I'd try and name them all, but it's a lot easier if you just looked up a list online, because frankly if it was a franchise JUMP owned in 2007, it's in this damn game. Of the 48 playable characters, there certainly aren't that many franchises. Big players like Dragon Ball have 7 battlers (more than any other I found), and other heavy hitters like Naruto, One Piece, and Bleach have 4 or 5 a piece as well. However, there are a lot of older favorites and weirder cult classics that also have 2 or 3 playable characters, like Bobobo Bobobobo, Hunter X Hunter, Fist of the North Star, Jojo's Bizzard Adventure, and even fucking Yu-Gi-Oh (yes, really) to name just a few. Support characters do exist from every present franchise though. The characters have a kind of type devision between them in a rock-paper-scissors style formula (laughter, power, and wisdom) where the stronger type get 1.5x damage on the weaker, which is a bit strange and not really necessary, but it's there. I imagine if you wanted to get REALLY competitive in this, that would be a serious annoyance, but for me, it mostly just prompted me to learn a few more characters of each type and encourages different, more diverse teams for different situations. My 3 main teams were two dudes of each type, with team Strength being Ken (Fist of the North Star) and Luffy (One Piece) (whom you start with, and whom I really liked), team Wisdom being Sasuke (Naruto) and Piccolo (Dragon Ball Z), and team Laughter being Don Patch (Bobobo) and Frankie (One Piece). I didn't get close to trying every character though. There're just SO damn many, and considering that you have to put together a new deck to try a new set of characters, it's not the fastest thing in the world to just breeze through all the ones you have. Even if you have just a passing interest in Anime, you'll probably love the theme of this game. I'm very far from an Anime-freak, despite being a Japanese Language & Culture Major, but even I got such a thrill when I saw characters I knew, especially if it's one of my favorites (like Bobobo!). Even if you understand NO Japanese, this is still a fun, fairly idiot-proof game if you just wanna play every stage and beat up mans as Animus. Just remember that you've gotta up the J-Power of your Koma to actually unlock new battle Koma! This stumped me for far longer than it should've Xp. The objectives aren't that complex to figure out. Then again, if you're someone like me who wants to unlock ALL the dudes, you might wanna look into that English patch that Exhumy Senpai linked a little while ago in the "What are you Playing?" thread. Alternatively, there are some very good guides on Gamefaqs in English that explain exactly what to do, and they were more than adequate for when I got confused on stuff. Things where the game falls a bit flat usually come down to smaller quality of life things. There are way too many menus which need to be backed in and out of when it comes to assembling decks. It really doesn't utilize the touch screen or double screens for assembling decks and viewing Koma information as well as it could (the number of times I wished there were a faster way to go through the dozens and dozens of helper Koma to do upgrading were many). Also, unless you're a MASSIVE Anime fan and can just name the themes as soon as they come up, you'll probably think most of the music is fairly background and forgettable, even though it's never bad or annoying, just nothing I'd never put on my MP3 player. Verdict: Very highly recommended. It's been a good while since I had a game I was so feverishly addicted to keep playing. The fact that this is a fantastic Smash-like that is both portable and has a super strong license star power makes this an absolutely must own for any fan of Smash Bros or Anime, or even if you just like fighters or action games, I'd say this is still worth at least a try for the 10 bucks it'll cost you to import a complete copy. |
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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
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