edred
Damn man I thought I loved DQ as a series after playing XI and III but this was so incredibly meandering and drawn out. I really try to avoid dropping games but this one lost me.
1997
This is a game I’ve been hoping to play for a long time and I’m glad I finally had the opportunity thanks to the Eight Mansions team.
The premise was fantastic - a sci-fi futuristic monster hunting game with truly outlandish monsters. Additionally the world you’re hunting on is in the midst of a multi-year evacuation plan.
The monster hunting itself was very rewarding in that in order to find all monsters you have to be very thorough in exploring and talking to everyone. Adding on top of that, entire planet is evacuating, so NPCs are slowly disappearing entirely. This added for some really unique gameplay I probably will never see in another rpg.
The combat itself was honestly pretty boring, full of skills that I had no need for and many I never even used. The only thing you really have to worry about is accidentally exploding animals instead of catching them, but 95% of combat was me just mashing attacks.
The game being split into 3 different scenarios was also interesting. This means you have to collect 30, 50, then 100 animals starting from 0 each time. By the end I was pretty worn out, but it was well worth the final payoff after collecting all animals and finishing the story!
I would recommend this for any JRPG enjoyer looking for a unique experience.
The premise was fantastic - a sci-fi futuristic monster hunting game with truly outlandish monsters. Additionally the world you’re hunting on is in the midst of a multi-year evacuation plan.
The monster hunting itself was very rewarding in that in order to find all monsters you have to be very thorough in exploring and talking to everyone. Adding on top of that, entire planet is evacuating, so NPCs are slowly disappearing entirely. This added for some really unique gameplay I probably will never see in another rpg.
The combat itself was honestly pretty boring, full of skills that I had no need for and many I never even used. The only thing you really have to worry about is accidentally exploding animals instead of catching them, but 95% of combat was me just mashing attacks.
The game being split into 3 different scenarios was also interesting. This means you have to collect 30, 50, then 100 animals starting from 0 each time. By the end I was pretty worn out, but it was well worth the final payoff after collecting all animals and finishing the story!
I would recommend this for any JRPG enjoyer looking for a unique experience.
Absolutely fantastic game but the overarching story way so disjointed compared to Y7 I couldn’t help but feel disappointed. Hoping Y9 can somehow pull it off more, or even better just tell a smaller story.
Beautiful sprites, world and character design. Thanks to good use of the GBA hardware, the NPCs in this game have nearly as much goofy charm as their counterparts in the 3D games. I haven’t played a ton of Zelda games, but I really enjoyed this one!
2003
A very flawed but still a pretty interesting experience for the GBA.
You're a vague member of some "body guard"-esque organization called "Gate Guardians" tasked with keeping a train full of frontier settlers safe. The entire train gets abducted by an also-vague organization of bad guys called CIMA who then force you to save each settler one by one.
The gameplay is a weird mix of lemmings-style strategy where you're commanding settlers around while trying to keep them from dying, and an action RPG. The strategy portion is the majority of the game, but also is vexingly not very fleshed out. Puzzles are simple from beginning to end and never have any additional mechanics added to increase complexity. Additionally settlers have absolutely no pathfinding so you're forced to command them very carefully.
A cool element is that the game has a "trust" system which, when settlers trust you enough allows them to craft items for you. This fits nicely with the games primary themes so it was a nice touch, even if the majority of the items aren't very useful.
The story was simplistic, but still had a nice ending! All sorts of elements went entirely unexplained, but I don't think it's fair to ask much of a GBA game intended for kids. The bigger shame is the localization which is absolutely full of errors.
Another highlight for me were the game's character art, and the boss encounters. Every settler has a 90s-manga-style portraits that seemed way too high quality for a game of this budget.
Bosses had multiple attack patterns, some with even some shmup-esque attacks that fill the screen with projectiles. The arenas too were occasionally unique, like a railroad-themed room that forces you to battle on train tracks. It's not great that this was the game's high point was boss fights considering the majority of the game is spent shepherding around weak settlers though.
Overall probably wouldn't recommend this to most people as like 75% of the game follows the same exact structure of
1. enter new zone
2. save person
3. get split up from person
4. fight boss
But if you're looking for a unique game on the GBA this might be for you.
You're a vague member of some "body guard"-esque organization called "Gate Guardians" tasked with keeping a train full of frontier settlers safe. The entire train gets abducted by an also-vague organization of bad guys called CIMA who then force you to save each settler one by one.
The gameplay is a weird mix of lemmings-style strategy where you're commanding settlers around while trying to keep them from dying, and an action RPG. The strategy portion is the majority of the game, but also is vexingly not very fleshed out. Puzzles are simple from beginning to end and never have any additional mechanics added to increase complexity. Additionally settlers have absolutely no pathfinding so you're forced to command them very carefully.
A cool element is that the game has a "trust" system which, when settlers trust you enough allows them to craft items for you. This fits nicely with the games primary themes so it was a nice touch, even if the majority of the items aren't very useful.
The story was simplistic, but still had a nice ending! All sorts of elements went entirely unexplained, but I don't think it's fair to ask much of a GBA game intended for kids. The bigger shame is the localization which is absolutely full of errors.
Another highlight for me were the game's character art, and the boss encounters. Every settler has a 90s-manga-style portraits that seemed way too high quality for a game of this budget.
Bosses had multiple attack patterns, some with even some shmup-esque attacks that fill the screen with projectiles. The arenas too were occasionally unique, like a railroad-themed room that forces you to battle on train tracks. It's not great that this was the game's high point was boss fights considering the majority of the game is spent shepherding around weak settlers though.
Overall probably wouldn't recommend this to most people as like 75% of the game follows the same exact structure of
1. enter new zone
2. save person
3. get split up from person
4. fight boss
But if you're looking for a unique game on the GBA this might be for you.