A title with plenty of potential, let down by poor presentation and some broken mechanics.

Lost Kingdoms was the first RPG to grace the Gamecube. It's short, and is certainly lacking in the visual and sound department, yet introduces an interesting real time card battle monster summoning battle system which almost makes up for its other short comings.

The main protagonist in Lost Kingdoms is a young princess named Katia. When her kingdom is engulfed in a black fog casting evil wherever it appears, Katia is forced to take up her family's rune stone gaining the power of monster summoning to fight back against it. As the princess travels to find the other four rune stones to help her she will meet a few characters here and there, but there isn't really a lot of depth to them and the story seems to be just a loose framework to push Katia from dungeon to dungeon.

The game is essentially a 3rd person action RPG. When in a battle against monsters from the black fog, Katia can use special cards to defeat them from a ready made deck. This deck can be adjusted from the menu as Katia gains more and more cards from chests and enemies. There are 3 different types of cards she can use; the first is a card that allows Katia to attack with a variety of weapons; second type is a spell that can be used to heal or attack an enemy; the third allows Katia to summon a monster to aid her in battle.

Some of these cards can be used more then once, like the melee attack cards can often be used two – three times before they fade away. At the end of each battle your deck resets so that you never lose a card for good, however you can only have 30 in a deck, and if you use them all in one battle you are instantly screwed to death as you can't perform any actions. On certain bosses later in the game this gets frustrating; recycling your deck would have been a better option.

Each battle is fought in a limited space, even more limited as some enemies are large, and your summons aren't always small either. So a lot of time in battle is spent running around avoiding being hit while trying to get enough magic stone power to cast your cards. These stones are dropped whenever an enemy dies and can be substituted with Katia's hp if there are no stones around, this seemed like a bit of a needless edition to me.

The monsters that Katia can summon to aid her are essentially carbon copies of the enemies that she also fights throughout her trek, but there are quite a lot of them to choose from, over a hundred total cards to be precise. Each time Katia uses a card it gains experience, once it has accumulated enough it can be evolved into a better card by talking to Gurd who is essentially your card shop, and location guide. In fact there is only one other npc in the whole game worth talking to, Alexander. He collects fairies, so any you come across on your travels he will trade with you for a reward, in the form of a rare card for Katia to use. The only other characters in the game are pretty much all faceless guards or the occasional boss who will speak to Katia, though they do little to bring the ridged world of this game to life.

Despite its rather unique and surprisingly fun battle system, Lost Kingdoms has a lot of presentation problems as mentioned earlier. Firstly, this game is ugly. There isn't really another way to describe it. Pretty much every character and dungeon is blocky with some less then stellar textures and laughable animations. The game is colorful though, and has some interesting creature designs, but these can't make up for everything else. The sound is nearly non existent. There is no voice acting and the music is pretty much instantly forgettable, however it isn't awful either.

Lost Kingdoms is also dreadfully short for an RPG, clocking in at 6 – 10 hours if you do the available side quests and play around evolving cards, but there is no real reason to replay it after you have gone through it the once. That isn't to say it's a bad game though, I just don't think it really lived up to its full potential.

+ Fun battle system.

- Ugly.
- Forgettable music, no voice acting.
- Really short.

An interesting artifact, both of FromSoft and of card battlers. You could write a ton about how this relates to other FromSoft games; an eeriely similar if super simplified/kiddie version of The FromSoft Plot (a vague large darkness brings a depressive atmosphere to a fantasy world), the weird experimentation in gameplay of their earlier games, and translating their style to the family-friendly Gamecube. A lot about this game is interesting, but it doesn't totally come together.

You can't get into the story like other FromSoft games as it's a cliche skeleton here, so you gotta focus on gameplay. While there's a lot I like (which is why I'm going to try the sequel), things somehow feel both too simple and too complicated. While each system in the card combat is simple, there's like 6 or 7 systems to manage (attack types, card cost, elemental type, blah blah). Compared to it's closest equivalent Chain of Memories, that game was way more complicated in it's deck building but the way the combat flowed was more natural when you built a good deck. Here, it feels like I'm either running out of cards too fast, or just padding my deck with a few big ones and like a million sword attacks (minor issue, I wish the monsters made more of an impression). I do like that the aesthetic is FromSoft + YuGiOh and some of the Red Fairy scenarios are cute, but getting through this was alternately dull and annoying despite the good parts. Let's see if the sequel improves!

A really solid and nice-looking Zelda acquintence that just has a few elements that keep me at arm's length. Mainly, keeping track of quests and where to go seems a little obtuse (and seems to be enhanced by having a character you literally need to pay to remind you what to do next) and for a game like this while I'll still follow the story I feel like I shouldn't have to try that hard to keep track of things. The slightly isometric look of things also added little frustrations constantly of how to interact, where to move, etc. I do think the spritework is really pleasing to look at, and a pretty funny localization for how often people are sarcastic or rude to you. Might be able to breeze through this one later but it's not holding my attention well.

Seriously?

Lunar Dragon song, or Genesis as known here in the UK was the first title of this series released in the EU. I was excited, as the older games looked brilliant and was met with nothing but a wall of bad gameplay decisions that simply baffle the mind. I don't say this lightly when I say that Lunar Dragon Song has to be among the top 10 worst games I have ever played.

Now I will say that Lunar is not 100% without good qualities. The character artwork is nice and I quite liked the story at first with your characters being part of a courier service though it soon fell apart as past an initial delivery it loses all direction.

Everything else seemed like it was designed intentionally to be awful. Let me start by saying that in no RPG is it a good idea to make your characters lose their hp as they run. That's right, either walk everywhere or steadily lose your hp. Other then to infuriate and purposefully be different like a modern art gallery there is no point to it at all. This is just the start of the frustrating features this title has. I don't joke when I say this game is about as player friendly as an exploding oven.

The second most annoying feature, at least for me, was the experience / item issue. Lunar is a standard turn based RPG where each character and enemy takes it in turn to perform an action such as "item" or "attack" based on their speed. While basic the combat system is relatively fun but not fun enough to have to battle everything so much. There are two modes selected before combat, one that gets characters experience to level up at the end of combat, and one that allows them to get items at the end of combat, you can not do both. Bare in mind the only ways to get money are to either do deliveries between towns (which takes ages) or combat for items to sell as enemies don't drop money and you get nothing but a system that is totally pointless and involves extra grinding for no reason at all. Who, and I mean who, play tested this game?

Thirdly, throughout the dungeons there are multiple treasure chests that can't be opened normally, oh no, you have to run through the whole dungeon in a timed mode called "virtue" killing every monster, if you do it in the time allocated the treasure chests open. It's annoying. Just another "there to be different" features that adds nothing fun to the experience of dungeon traveling.

And last, why have only one character that does half decent damage, then take away all his skill to make him useless? Why? It didn't even make much sense plot wise, never mind gameplay wise.

Graphically the game is passable though will never impress. The characters and areas are colourful and fairly well designed. However, everything is a bit pixelated and really doesn't take advantage of the DS. The audio is of a similar fair getting by with some fairly generic RPG background tunes that neither offend or offer a reason to be remembered.

I have no idea how long the game lasts because this is one of the few RPG's I have played that I simply couldn't stomach to finish. Considering the item / experience issue though I can imagine it would take a while, but the question is, would you really want to? I gave up at about 12 hours in and honestly thought I did well.

Simply put, if you like RPGs or even if you don't, avoid Lunar: Dragon Song. The game is plagued with issues that simply take away all fun that the game potentially had leaving nothing but a game full of different gameplay mechanics that other developers never implemented for a reason. They just aren't fun.

+ Anime character designs look nice.

- Game breaking item/experience issue.
- Losing HP when running is an awful idea in every way.
- Graphics are pretty sub par.
- Everything else.

[Emulated on PCSX2]

Devil Summoner: Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon is the sequel to the first Raidou game and fourth entry in Devil Summoner series. Despite loving Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army I found this game to be quite disappointing, both as a standalone game and a sequel.

Despite being a sequel, King Abaddon does not respect the original game. Kaya’s gone (apparently moved?), a certain character I won’t name is revived just to be a note-taker which totally defeats their death in the original, the cast from the original game get no more development and it feels like they are there because it being a sequel demands it (some are even reduced to mere comedy relief such as tae’s entire character being fainting since she faints every scene she appears in). King abaddon also tries really hard not to reference the previous game’s plot to the point the shopkeeper doesn’t even remember you which makes me question why they even made a sequel in the first place.

Story-wise I did not like this game at all. Story fell out all over the place without a clear idea of what it wanted to say and would dwell on certain plot points way too long that I was waiting for it to be over. I really do wish they would have brought back the original writer because it really shows that they didn’t work on this one (they probably didn’t even plan for a sequel considering how soulless army wrapped up its story perfectly). One big addition I was not a fan of is “alignments”, a staple of the SMT series that made its first and only appearance in the devil summoner series with this game. While they can be well implemented, king abaddon does a terrible job with it by awkwardly inserting philosophical questions into casual conversations which really took me out of the game. What's even stranger is that none of these choices matter - no matter which alignment you choose the ending will be the same with the only major difference switching the deaths of two characters. Content-wise they’re also almost identical with at most swapping out a mini-boss or two (final dungeon and final boss remain the same). With how poorly they’re implemented along with how they don’t even change anything makes me question why they were even added in the first place, to appeal to SMT fans I guess?

As for the gameplay, I was not a fan of it in this game. While raidou can dodge (which is a great addition), Atlus had no idea how to balance this out and their solution was to make every single enemy constantly teleport across the screen (which makes fights really tedious like a game of whac-a-mole). Guns have also become completely useless with the removal of elemental bullets and just letting the player have access to unlimited bullets. Unlike the first game, fights take an extremely long time to escape from making it more viable to just kill the enemies. Another change I was not a fan of was the MAG rework, giving all your demons a shared MP pool. The biggest issue with this is that, unlike the first game where you were encouraged to swap out demons when they ran out of mp, you can pretty much just use the same two demons the entire fight and when you run out of MAG fights become very frustrating (looking at the final boss). While I suppose it's not too big of a deal some mechanics such as combo attacks and sword fusion are missing from this game which was a bit of a letdown. With that all said, one of my biggest issues with king abaddon is boss reuse, the prime offender being the soldier bugs which are reused and reskinned throughout the entire game even up to the final chapter (appearing a total of 13 times) making the game feel extremely repetitive.

While I’ve said a lot of negatives, King Abaddon does make some changes I like. Gone is the tedious fusion where you had to grind to make loyalty to fuse, gone are the random encounters in towns, gone is having to go all the way back to konnou-ya just to fuse and heal. King abaddon also allows the player to use two demons at once and offers more control options such as hiding them (making them invincible while holding a button but they can not take action during this) and being able to teleport them to you. Fusion is also more robust with nice additions such as demons leaving notes when fused and the ability to pass on passive skills. Negotiations are also great, possibly one of the bests in megaten with demons having their own conversations if they recognize each other and being able to use your demons to help you out when negotiations are not going well. Demons leaving sad notes when fused was also such a wonderful way to make them feel alive and broke my heart every time.

Presentation-wise the game oddly feels a lot lower budget with lower quality prerendered cutscenes and a lot less. One of the funniest scenes is when a cow gets kidnapped by a bug and just flies into the flat background (it looks so bad). The redone models for characters such as raidou and tae also look noticeably worse.


While I personally did not enjoy it and have a lot of complaints about it I still believe it's a good game in its own right and worth giving a shot especially if you’re a fan of the series. I just wish this game wasn’t so disappointing for me because I really wanted to love it.

Possibly the most fun I have playing as a character in a video game. Oh, what's that? The camera's bad? The music (especially towards the end) is repetitive? Tiny-Huge Island in general? Easy to overlook when you're chaining long jumps and careening around the various open stages with the sloppiest grace imaginable. I highly recommend going for 100%, THEN replaying to see how you can better utilize Mario's moveset to get the stars more efficiently. Trust me, your third eye'll open and you'll become like me: Doomed to replay this classic once a year forever more!

“Thinking about death for the first time. It is called youth." Futaro Yamada "人間臨終図鑑"
I don't know if it's my first time, but this game certainly my youth.
The interesting thing is that this VP was released at the same time as planescape:torment. (The CG movie is very similar). The PST was existential; the VP is deeply moving, as it was youth through death.

The following contains spoilers.

Now, the main topic. Profile is a strange title.
But when you consider how the story goes, it's certainly the most accurate title.
Warriors from all walks of life, all dying for different reasons. The protagonist, the Valkyrie, judges them, selects them and leads them into new battles.
You should follow the game system and keep sending your trained warriors to Valhalla. It's exemplary. You are an example of a worker. Your boss will be pleased.
But if you manage to cheat the system enough to avoid upsetting your bosses, you'll find yourself in for a surprise.
Ragnarok. Just before the apocalypse, the Valkyrie, who has been on the side of judgement, is put on the side of judgement.
I love this moment, this scene towards the end. I don't have a particular taste for tragedy, but I still like VP as a tragedy.

The combat is also very attractive. It's like a fighting game, with lots of movement, character coordination and special moves. It's the kind of combat that only tri-Ace can create.

I don't want to mention the sequel here. It's barren.

you hear the one about avid players of tetris? their minds basically get rewritten because of exposure to the damn thing. thing is, this is true of any earthly activity that brings together body, mind, and soul. its psychosomatic, kinaesthetic. any activity that informs consciousness will bleed into the subconscious. my dreams aren't really like the ones LSD presents, but my fear is that they will be.

a product of its time in all the ways that matter and bolstered as a result. psx architecture struggling under the weight of hell and failing to load in the density of its worlds in time leaves the mind incapable of guarding itself for whats going to happen next - legitimately unsettling, unpredictable, uncanny, uncaring. youre sieved through textures and atmospheres at a rapid clip. no barriers exist here, everything is simply a permeable membrane. every scene, vignette, happenstance, and interaction a stitched-together quilt one night and a tesseract the next. like any work of its kind it requires a certain level of maturity and commitment - particularly these days when the only thing you can reliably bet on about an audience is their urge to demystify - but you ought to take the leap. this is really affecting work here that i cant possibly be cynical about and a great alternative to melatonin