I've always wanted to play this game ever since I heard the news a while back about a guy in Japan who married his DS. Decided to play this just to know what it's about.

After finishing the first part of the game (I chose Rinko), I played the real time mode for a week. It's repetitive and there's nothing much to do. I guess that's what real life is all about, if you think about it.

But still, this isn't a horrible game. I commend it for what it has tried to do. It has nice graphics (for a DS game), the characters are nice and it has a unique real time mode. It just lacks some things to make it a compelling game for me.

Dreams are born from chaos.

The mainline Neptunia series has become better and better with each installment, culminating in what I think is the best game of the mainline entries so far. And yes, I said mainline entry because this series has a ton of spin offs, but we won't count that for now.

Story - The story, while still having a lot of comedic factor, thanks to our Protagonist of Protagonists™ Neptune, is more darker and interesting this time around. The whole game is divided into three acts (each with their own opening!): Zero Dimension Neptunia Z, Hyperdimension Neptunia G and Heartdimension Neptunia H. Each act contains a somewhat different story but ultimately ends in a single conclusion. I like that the story takes us to different dimensions in each act. On the first act, you're traversing an apocalyptic version of Planeptune, on the second, we travel back to present day Gamindustry, etc. I would even call this game a trilogy, as each of the three acts is very substantial and different on their own.

Characters - The story is also helped by a huge cast of new and returning characters, from the CPUs, the CPU candidates and villains. The new star of the show is of course, Uzume Tennouboshi, a tomboyish character that we first meet in an apocalyptic version of Planeptune. She always tries to put out a cool outside persona, but as we all know deep inside, she's a softie. Aside from Uzume, there's also the older and more mature version of Neptune, who remains mysterious throughout. And much to the displeasure of Noire, seems to share her younger counterpart's sense of humor. And of course there's also Arfoire who gets physically (and emotionally) beaten up by Neptune and co. but still remains a good villain throughout the game.

Combat System - I like the combat system of MDNVII. It is turn based, but also has some sort of a tactical aspect to it as characters can move around the battle area. Characters can be freely moved (limited in area) around for better positioning. Each character can also do three different types of attacks, Rush, Power and Standard. I find that Rush attacks are best at building the EXE Gauge while Power are best at dealing damage. Speaking of the EXE Gauge, it's consumed by using certain skills and transformations, so it's best to keep it filled as much as you can.

Music and Sound - Voice acting is still pretty good. I can't say a single bad thing about the cast other than I wished that the English dub had more lines that are voiced. As with all Compile Heart games, the Japanese dub is 100% voiced but the English dub is around 60 - 70% voiced. It's not as bad here as in their other games cough Dragon Star Varnir cough but I just wish they would put more budget into this as the English dub is really good.

The various sound effects are fine, nothing stands out but nothing's bad either.

The music is also one thing I think this game excels at. While it's not in the level of Nier Automata, I'd say there are some pieces of music from this game that I've listened to again and again. Fun fact, the main theme for this game is composed by Nobuo Uematsu.

SUMMARY
Overall, Megadimension Neptunia VII is a good starting point for anyone who wants to dive into the series. It has a self contained plot that is different from the rest of the mainline entries. And even though there are a lot of returning characters, you'll easily catch up to who they are.

Just remember that this series started off as a parody of the console wars during the 7th generation of consoles (Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii), that's why you'll see a lot of gaming references throughout and it doesn't always take itself too seriously.

So if you're down for some fun, quirky JRPG, give this game a shot.

Also, Uzume is best girl.

From the wise words of Kenichiro Takaki: "Tits are life, ass is hometown".

This guy's a legend. Too bad his games tend to be mediocre at best. Eh, but who cares, as long as the fanservice is great we'll keep coming back.

The character designs in this game are more beautiful than Senran Kagura's IMO, and the combat is pretty fun. The repetitiveness and the lack of variety bring it down though. If they slashed the game time by half this would have been more bearable. Ah well, at least you get to see more of the girls.

I really tried to like this game. I was a big fan of the Parasite Eve series though I still tried to keep an open mind while playing this, which means I didn't let nostalgia ruin my experience. But this is just a really bad game overall. Part of it can be blamed on the system it was made, the PSP, due to lacking the right analog stick which made the controls very clunky. Although even if it had better controls, the gameplay is still very frustrating and RNG dependent and makes which it so bad to play. I really don't know what they were thinking when making this game.

A redeeming quality of this game is that the Body Switching mechanic is fun and unique to it. And the graphics are great for a PSP game, I suppose. But it ends there.

So for the bad things:
The enemies can one or two shot you even at normal difficulty making the game very frustrating, if it had good controls it would be a little bearable but it doesn't have that. And good luck dying! Because you're retrying that 10 to 15 minute level from your last checkpoint.

Passive skills also have RNG activations which makes them useless at tough situations. Seriously, a skill can sometimes only activate once in an entire chapter even at level 25 (the max level of it)!

The AI allies are so dumb that you have to body switch to them just to keep them alive and helping. And when you run out of AI allies, sometimes reinforcements will arrive after some time and there are times that there will be no reinforcements at all. But there's nothing that indicates that! So yeah, good luck waiting for that reinforcement whenever it'll come.

The camera is also really bad. It doesn't show what's directly above you. So if there's a flying enemy above Aya's head, the camera will look up but you won't see where the enemy is. The game also likes to throw homing missiles at you but they're so hard to dodge because the camera won't let you see where they're coming from.

I don't really want to comment on stuff like the characters and story because then, I'll be comparing it to its predecessors (and I will be trashing this game a lot more) which I don't want to do. This review is only about The 3rd Birthday as a standalone game.

Dungeon Travelers 2 is a quirky first person dungeon crawler RPG that contains a lot of... questionable artwork. If you're fine on playing a game with a lot of fanservice, and you're a fan of first person dungeon crawlers then this game is a must play.

Developed by Sting Entertainment, makers of the extremely difficult Yggdra Union, this was the Vita RPG that I was really hyped about. It has a really deep set of RPG mechanics including a diverse class system with multiple levels and different paths, equipment upgrading, skill trees, challenging encounters and bosses. On top of that, it has a pretty beefy runtime (took me 150+ hours with a bit of grinding). You think beating the story mode is where the game ends? Wait till you get to the post-game and find out that there are still multiple massive dungeons to explore!

This is one of the best RPGs on the Vita, period.

I last played this game 12 years ago. I plan to revisit this game in the future and will update this review with fresh thoughts.

My rating: Overall 3/5
-Battle system is excellent. Job classes and switching of roles mid fight is really fun and taking down post-game monsters will require you to master the system.
-Story is okay. It gets pretty good as the time goes by.
-Worst thing is its overuse of data log without explaining the events and characters naturally.
-Villains are underwhelming.
-Dungeon design is bad. It's a hallway simulator.
-Long drawn-out tutorial (first 20 hours) will bore you to death.
-Even the Crystarium is linear.
-Presentation is superb. Visuals, sound design and music are all excellent.
-Some weird direction with its voice acting though.

It might be a bit weird for me to say this since I mostly play JRPGs, but I freaking love this game. My rating for this is very biased of course, since I have a lot of nostalgia playing this game in the past. My history with racing games start with Need For Speed Underground, and this racing game is the best I played in that era and until now, unfortunately. The sense of speed, best graphics at the time especially the car destruction, the car collection, the soundtrack (oh God the soundtrack is amazing), the open world (there are downsides to the open world though) all converge to create a spectacular game.

Gameplay 4.5/5
So, the gameplay loop in this game is pretty amazing. You race in this open world consisting of a city and a mountain region (if you have the Ultimate Box edition, an island as well). You compete in different types of events, like a regular race where you go from Point A to Point B. A stunt run where you accumulate points within a time limit and how you accumulate these points is that you perform various feats like using your boost to doing Air Time. Road Rage where you try to crash other racers and accumulate the required number of Takedowns. And Marked Man, where you go from Point A to Point B, but there are these cars that try to ram you and crash you, like Road Rage, you have to survive this event by not crashing too much.

The sense of speed in this game is really good, and this is the most important part of a racing game to me. You'll really feel like you're driving at 200+ mph and it feels exhilarating. One caveat though is that it gets pretty hard to see and react to what's in front once you're travelling at high speeds based on my experience.

The car crashes are also one of the highlights in this game imo, and are awesome to look at, though they get old pretty fast once you play enough times.

There's also this open world where you can explore it at your leisure whenever you're not competing in an event. It's a good open world with multiple types of activities like smashing gates and billboards, finding shortcuts, and even obtaining new cars. That's right, you can obtain new cars in this game by finding a certain car that's highlighted by the game and performing a Takedown on it.

In that aspect, the cars in this game are all really good and there are a lot of them. They're divided into three types. Speed cars which are supposed to be the fastest types of cars, stunt cars which are a hybrid between speed and toughness, and tough cars which are all about durability. For me, speed cars are the hardest to drive since they crash so easily and going very fast in this game has its downsides (refer to three paragraphs above). If you're really good at this game, I imagine speed cars would be the best, but for me, I crash very easily at high speeds so there's that.

Presentation 5/5
The graphics in this game is pretty amazing at the time. The cars and the world are very detailed. The cars are all amazing to look at, and has very realistic detail when they take damage. The car crashes are also very detailed and are really entertaining at the start. There really is no racing game like Burnout when it comes to car crashes.

The sound effects in this game are pretty generic and fits the genre, the highlight of course are the sounds when a car crashes. You can hear windows shattering, tires exploding and cars transforming into tin cans. Just more details that make the crashes spectacular.

The highlight though for me, is the soundtrack. And oh man, this is really a nostalgic soundtrack for me that whenever I hear these songs, I think that I'm playing Burnout Paradise again. Like listening to Avril Lavigne's Girlfriend while taking down cars in Road Rage is really unforgettable for me. Most of the songs here are from the 2000's era though so I know it's not for everyone, but it is pretty memorable for me.

Overall, I consider this game to be one of my favorite games of all time. There hasn't been a racing game in the past decade surpassed it, sure they've improved graphically, but in other aspects, this game is still the best.

Ah, Blue Reflection. What can I say? It's a pretty unique setting, in which you play as Magical Girls (think Sailor Moon) solving your friends and schoolmates problems. The characters are pretty much anime cliche stereotypes so if you are familiar with that, then you'll easily recognize that here. A decent (but very easy) turn based system that uses a time bar where you can knock enemies back to delay their turns. And more than a $100 price tag for a physical copy of this game. You heard that right, this game is pretty rare and expensive nowadays.

Story 3.5/5
You play as Hinako, a student who used to do ballet dancing but due to an accident from her past, it pretty much hampered her ability to dance again. One day, she is granted a power by two mysterious girls (twins?) from her school that allows her to enter other people's hearts that's been corrupted by shadows due to their strong emotions. And together with those two, they banish the shadows and return that person to normal. The game pretty much goes on like this for almost the entire game, although, the later parts of it become more and more interesting due to the game providing more detailed backstories than the ones that comes first. Back to Hinako, at first she didn't agree into becoming a magical girl herself, but the twins promised her that she will be able to walk normally (and ballet dance) again once their job is done. So naturally, Hinako agrees to that and the story continues. My opinion to the story, like I said it's pretty unique, has the vibe of a chill, slice of life genre. I just hoped it was expanded upon outside of the school setting. The story is pretty slow, since you will be doing a lot of heart diving, but luckily the game doesn't last that long (I got my platinum at 30 hours), and that included grinding for materials.

Characters 2.5/5
Pretty typical anime stereotypes. I don't think there's anyone stood out to me in all those characters.

Gameplay 2.5/5
The gameplay is, unfortunately, repetitive due to the nature of the story. You'll be entering A LOT of the student's hearts and each one is a dungeon itself. Main quests, sidequests, they're pretty much the same. Sometimes, you have to fetch stuff, kill a number of enemies, etc. The one saving grace is the turn-based system itself is pretty good. It's sleek, intuitive and really good to look at. The boss battles against Sephirots (no, not the one from FFVII) are also the highlight of the gameplay, offering decent challenge and are all visually stunning.

Presentation 4.5/5
This is where the game shines IMO, the graphics and visual direction stands out, the character models look great, the animations during battle are on point, the UI is so sleek that I even manage to include it here. The music is a masterpiece. I just hope there's more to the school than just walking around and talking to people and stuff. Also, the dungeons are pretty repetitive in their design. And that's why I decided to deduct half a star.

In the end, Blue Reflection is a flawed masterpiece and in which I consider a hidden gem. The uniqueness of the story and the superb visual and audio design are what made me enjoy this game so much, despite the repetitive gameplay. I would revisit it again in the future, for sure.

In my opinion, this is one of the best Tales of game I've played. The story is excellent. The characters are great, and are simply the best part of this game. Sadly, the boring gameplay and bland dungeons has put me to sleep a few times. Honestly, I would have rated this a 5 star and a masterpiece if the gameplay wasn't so dull.

Story - 5/5
It is not your typical save the world JRPG, but rather a tale of Velvet's revenge against the person who killed her brother. The first hour of the game is very fast paced and shows us the reason for Velvet's quest for revenge. After that, there is a significant period where the story slows down. Sure, there will still be stuff that's happening, but it won't pick up the pace again until you're near the end. And when it does pick up, it will bombard you with twists and turns and it will never stop until the credits roll.

Characters - 5/5
All of the characters you get in your party are excellently written and have their own motivations on why they're sticking with Velvet. Like her, almost all of them are pretty much flawed and/or keeping a dark secret. Except one, there's one character that I can say is good. Even the main antagonist has a really good reason for his actions and not just because he's evil. Overall, the characters are simply the best part of this game.

Gameplay - 2/5
Sadly, I did not enjoy Berseria's gameplay so much. The combat is very button mash-y, bad character progression options which baffled me for a long time (I liked Xillia's progression more). The killer though are the boring dungeons. I'm glad they've abandoned this engine in Tales of Arise because these dungeons are so bland and uninspired, it made me put down the game a couple of times because I was so bored. I started playing on Hard difficulty (because I'm used to JRPGs that treat Hard as Normal, and Normal as Easy) but had to put it down to Normal, because the difficulty just increases the HP the enemies have without making them difficult. When I put it down to Normal, the game became much more enjoyable to me and it made me go through the dungeons much faster to get to the next part of the story.

Overall, I still recommend this game for the story and the characters and for the fact that it has an unconventional story that is not typical in a JRPG.