It’s been very long since we’ve had a good batman game. Namely the NES Batman game by Sunsoft which I reviewed recently. Sure, it didn’t exactly feel like we were playing as Batman, but it was a fun game nonetheless.

Now we have Arkham Asylum, and it might just be the video game Batman fans have been waiting for for years. Is it true to the hype, or was the hype train a bit too big again?

Read on and see if random developer Rocksteady got it right!

Developer: Rocksteady
Publisher: Eidos
Date of Release: 2009/08/25
Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation 3, PC

Genre: Third-person brawler/stealth game
Players: 1

Looks and Sounds
Graphically, this game is awesome. Normally I whine that games only use a few colors, mainly grays and browns, but here it frankly doesn’t bother me that most of the game is like this. There’s quite a lot of different looking areas and despite the sorta limited color palette each area looks unique. And the visual style definitely fits great with the Dark Knight. The character models are really cool too. The basic henchman or police officer is a bit meh, though they look fine by normal standards, but the Batman vilains, and batman himself, definitely take the show. Killer Croc, Bane, Poison Ivy, ScareCrow, The Joker and Harley Quinn just look fabulous.  I frankly have nothing bad to say about any of them. Except maybe the Joker when you actually fight him… And some people might be sad to see Harley Quinn in a different outfit, but I like schoolgirls/gothic lolita so I’m happy. ScareCrow looks quite scary, Poison Ivy is hot, Bane looks big, badass and evil, Killer Croc looks perfect. I have no complaints here at all.

The attention to detail is phenomenal too. Mainly the damage on Batman through the game. The game takes place during one night, and it shows, as Batman’s costume keeps getitng ripped up and his cape gets damaged. By the end of the night his cape is in horrible condition and there’s cuts everywhere on Batman’s body. Even his face starts showing fatigue and such.

The sound of the game is also great. What steals the show here is the voice acting. Mark Hamill, Kevin Conroy, and Arleen Sorkin all reprise their roles from the animated series as, respectively, the Joker, Batman and Harley Quinn. This is probably the best performance anyone did as the Joker, EVER. Damn, he sounds just so awesome, this is crazy. I don’t think any voice has ever been so fitting for the Joker. Batman sounds great as well. Dark,commanding, sure of himself, but not as badly exagerated as Christian Bale’s Batman. The other voices are really good too, no complaining on that aspect. The rest of the sounds are fine. Gunshots sound like gunshots, the gadgets sound good, and the music is really nice, keeping a similar style to previous Batman soundtracks.

The presentation couldn’t have been much better than this. Rocksteady nailed it. This, is Batman. Pure and simple.

Story
The story isn’t incredibly original, as, or so I’ve heard, has been done a few times in the comics and such, and the final boss battle is taken from an episode of the animated series. After capturing the Joker REALLY easily, Batman brings him to the asylum. Sure enough, he gets away and goes deeper to the asylum, to get ready for the big party! So Batman takes on the job to stop the Joker’s plan… whatever they are. Along with the Joker, a bunch of his henchmen were taken in as well, making the takeover a lot easier.

The story is quite well put toghether, and you encounter a few vilains in the series. The plot has no HUGE twists or anything, but you don’t exactly know about the Joker’s goal with all this for a while through the story. Each vilain adds something to the story, so they don’t really feel tacked on.

Overall the story is quite well done, and feels like a Batman story should. I’m not 100% familiar with Batman stories, so there might be some better ones, but I still really liked this one, and there was never a dull moment.

Gameplay
Basics
Well, I’ll start right away by saying that the gameplay here is great. Now that I’ve got that out of the way, let’s describe it a bit.

There’s a few gameplay elements here. Stealth, combat and exploration. Each done in a third-person perspective, of course.

The most important one is probably the stealth. Basically, there are multiple areas in the game where you must try to get to the next place, or knock out all the enemies, without being seen. Some areas only have enemies with firearms, and in those cases you can’t go all Rambo on their asses, since you’ll get killed in seconds. Enclosed rooms require strategy and proper use of your gadgets to make it out not only alive, but with enough life left afterwards to survive later areas. Luckily the asylum is FILLED with gargoyles you can hide on top of(who the hell decorated the place anyways?). If you’re seen, you have to swing out of sight to survive. You had quite a few things you could do. Sneaking up on someone you can take them down from behind, if they pass under you when you’re on top of a gargoyle you can grab them from above and leave them hanging(inverted takedown=win). You can distract them with your tools, lay down traps to distract them… Use your imagination, as long as you take everyone out you’ll be fine. And if those areas are just a bit too easy, one part adds proximity mines on gargoyles to change up your strategy. In more open areas, goons are usually very perceptive and can see you from miles away, accurately shooting you with a sniper rifle. So you must use the environment at your advantage so that they don’t see you. Anywhere in the game you can use detective mode. It’s especially useful in the stealth parts, since you can see through walls, seee where the enemies are, what they’re doing and scan their current mental state (their behavior really changes as you knock out their partners). Overall, the stealth element is probably the best in any game I’ve played. Yes, including MGS4.

Combat is a bit simple though. At first you can button mash your way through. You have 3 buttons to use here. A basic attack button, a stun attack and a counter-attack. You get alerts when an enemy is about to hit you so you can counter. Pressing your normal attack button, at first, makes you attack straight in front of you. As you build up your combo, you’ll be able to change direction in the middle and attack anyone in the direction you’re facing (as long as they’re standing, or getting up). You can also try to use your gadgets in battle too, though only the batarang will be really useful (unless you lure bad guys towards explosive gel). Some enemies take anything you throw at them, unless you stun them first. And enemies that are knocked down but not knocked OUT can be knocked out while on the floor, if you crouch and press the counter/takedown button. Others require dodging properly to get out of the way and avoid certain weapons they use.  It’s basic, but it’s fun learning to get your combo count high, and the combat isn’t exactly BAD. It’s simplistic, but it’s actually fun to play.

The exploration is simple. Run around each area, looking for secrets. Maybe it be hidden trophies, or answers for riddles, there’s quite a few things to find in here. Riddles are given to you through your headphones, and you actually have to find the answers in the environments, and scan the answers by holding the detective mode button. Not much more to say here, but it’s a fun element.

Other stuff
Bosses offer different gameplay styles. The Scarecrow show some REALLY weird stuff, and then bring you in semi side-scrolling areas where you must get to the end without being seen by Scarecrow (now in Giant form) in the background. Also, the third Scarecrow segment starts out AWESOME. Other bosses are pretty standard stuff. Finding patterns and figuring out when to use different attacks, stuff like that. Scarecrow is the funnest of the bunch though.

Otherwise, you have a bunch of gadgets to use. 3 variations on the batarang (normal, multi-targetting and sonic batarang which is made to annoy enemies), explosive gel that you can use to trap enemies, a weird device to open doors, a Batclaw to knock down certin walls and grab onto enemies… There’s lots of fun to be had by experimenting with your gadgets.

The best part though is that you can upgrade everything you have. Health, attack power, melee attack moves, inverted takedown, all your gadgets, adding batarangs to combos, remote control batarangs, proximity explosive gel… It’s awesome. Just get enough experience to get an upgrade available and choose what you want.

Overall, the gameplay in this is awesome. It makes you feel like you’re Batman, for sure. Great stealth, relatively fun combats, and a bit of exploration add up to fun times.

Overall
I don’t understand how this happened. Rocksteady only made 1 game before, and it was a crappy FPS on the PS2, which was more of a budget title. So… How did Eidos figure they should get those guys to make the game? I thought they’d have chosen a company that has, you know, a track record of SOME sort. I have no idea what happened really, but DAMN, they couldn’t have done a much better choice than this.

They created, by far, the best Batman game ever. Sure, I still have quite the liking for the NES Batman game, but it’s nothing compared to this. This is the first time they managed to make you feel like you’re Batman. The presentation is great, the gameplay is great, the stealth element surpasses that of any other game with a stealth element(that I’ve played). The combat is a bit on the simple side, but at the same time I feel that if it was deeper it might not have felt that fitting.

The replay value is a bit on the low side, but it’s one of the few Current-Gen games that I know I’ll find myself replaying in the future.

I’d say this is a solid contender for game of the year. The high reviews and hype for this game are no joke.

Pros/Cons
Pros
- Awesome presentation
- Great voice acting
- Great stealth gameplay
- Simple yet fun combat
- Riddles and challenges add replay value

Cons
- Some boss battles (especially the last one) feel like they could have been a lot better
- After you get all the riddles and finish all the challenges, the replay value isn’t huge (higher difficulty levels if you really like the game)

The Save Factor
With a starting price of $60, the Save Factor for Batman: Arkham Asylum is

For Batman fans: $75 (if you’re a Batman fan and you DON’T have this game already… WTF ARE YOU DOING? This is the greatest value you’ll get from any batman game, and is more than worth the starting price)
For anyone else: $55 (yeah, surprisingly there’s lots of value for anyone with this game, not JUST Batman fans)

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If you know me, you know I’m a relatively big fan of games NIS America bring over to America. There are some exceptions, of course, and I’m more partial towards games developped by NIS itself.

This game caught my interest for a number of reasons:
1. Published by NISA
2. Etna
3. Various Darkstalker characters
4. Interesting-looking gameplay
5. Costumes for all the female characters
6. SCHOOLGIRLS!

Read on and see if the game is actually good like I was expecting, or if it actually deserves the stupidly low 3.5/10 rating from IGN.

Looks and sounds
The game uses 2D sprites. Standard Definition 2D sprites. I wouldn’t mind too much, but I was expecting a bit more from the game graphically. The sprites are okay, but they have a big lack of detail. To make the game look weirder, there’s some enemies that are 3D models. Relatively low-quality 3D models. Mostly for big enemies that take multiple squares. The animations during battle are quite good though, well detailed and cool-looking attacks. The animations otherwise (in the world map and in dungeons) are pretty bad though. Graphically, the game is sub-par PS2 level when it comes to 2D. I don’t mind, but I would’ve loved to see all those characters in high-definition 2D instead of sub-par PS2 level…
Oh, but the bigger sprites used during conversations and in the status screens look fine. Oh, and did I mention that changing a character’s costume won’t affect their battle sprite? That sucks ass, I’d love if I could have an army of schoolgirls pwning the enemies, but I can’t. Blu-Ray discs should have more than enough space for a few thousand extra battle sprites(counting each separate frame of animation, of course) for each female characters, there’s no excuse.

Sound-wise, the game is all over the place. Really. The music ranges from really fun to crappy. The battle music is fine, some character themes are a bit weird, and some music just sucks. The sound design is pathetic. In cutscenes, when characters are walking, the sound of footsteps is always the same, no matter if there’s 2 characters or 10 walking at the same time(the only exception is when there’s 1 character walking), and there’s no synchronisation at all. Other sounds during cutscenes are also badly synchronized. The voice acting is pretty good though… When there is voice acting. Cutscenes range randomly from having voice acting to not having voice acting. It doesn’t seem to matter whether the scene is important or not. An important story scene might not have voices while a totally optional and random Hot Spring scene (involving prinny trying to get a glimpse of all the naked girls) will have voices.
The sound design in the game, in general, is pretty bad. And with Blu-Ray, there’s no excuse not to have voices on every scene.

Story
The game takes place in a world composed of souls, or something like that. Souls are sucked into this world, making the world sustain. Someday, some people(from various different worlds) are sucked into the soul-sucking world without their souls getting absorbed. They learn about what the world is, and decide to release souls who haven’t been absorbed yet, and find a way back to their own world. On the way they find other people who got sucked in this world, and enemies, who ALSO got sucked in this world, who were ordered(by some “unknown” being named The Empyreal One) to kill the good guys. You have the find the truth of the world, and get out of there,

That’s basically it. The interesting part is that there’s multiple endings. You get one ending for clearing very specific conditions and basically finding everything in the game (Truth End), and another ending if you miss certain things(Bad Ending), and another ending if you get the things that prevent the bad ending but miss other things that are required for the good ending. Since the conditions are very specific(like keeping some enemies alive in certain story-battles), there’s tons of things to do to be able to get the truth ending, and if you want it you’ll most likely play through the game multiple times and check online for the conditions.

Overall the story is okay.It’s a bit standard, which is weird considering the potential the story has, and it’s not OVERLY good, but it’s still interesting enough.

But the character interactions are not too great most of the time. The conversations are lame, or borderline embarrassing at times. There’s exceptions, of course, but they’re rare. I was definitely expecting more from this, with so many characters from different games. And all the characters other than York and Miko lost their memories, so some characters who should no each other just vaguely remember their names, making for some awkward conversations sometimes.

The characters come from games like Disgaea (sadly there’s just Etna and Prinnies), Darkstalkers, Ar Tonelico, Mana Khemia 2 (coming relatively soon over here), Spectral Souls series (which I’m not very familiar with, other than the lame PSP SRPG which sucks) and there’s a few original characters (York, Miko, the 3 bad guys, Troy and a few others).

Gameplay
So finally the gameplay. Well, it’s a turn-based RPG with a twist. First things first:

Navigation
There are 2 types of areas you can navigate in. First, the world map. Basically, it’s a big empty map(there’s multiple “layers” of the world, and each layer has different areas you can go to). Yes, empty. There’s a few things you can do here. Moving around, which raises the “encounter” meter and battles start when it’s red long enough. There’s Sealed Stone Tablets that prevent you from moving on until you pass certain conditions. Pressing Square makes you search. Searching can find 3 things: Events, souls and save points. Events are where the story advances, or random non-sensical things happen, for some extra comedy/randomness. Souls go towards an invisible variable that determines which costumes get unlocked, go towards the “release ratio” for certain Sealed Stone Tablets, and they give items. Those are needed for various things as well. Save Points, contrarily to what the name says, are not used to save your game(you can actually save anywhere, other than in dungeons). This is where you can shop, do alchemy, check the database for titles and costumes, use a wider area search function and revive unconscious allies.

Searching is a HUGE factor in the game, as you’ll be doing it a lot. Some events you’ll find increase your Search Level, enabling you to find things you couldn’t before. And you know what that means? It means you have to go through all the previous maps to find new souls and events. That is until the final Sealed Stone Tablet tells you there’s only 1 soul left for the release ration in that area of the world, then you can at least skip that one map until you get Search Level 10. This does get a bit tedious, but it can enable you to get in more fights, find more item, and unlock costumes, which is a good thing.

The other type of area is dungeons. They’re handled in a side-scrolling matter. You can jump and double-jump… and that’s about it. You get battles in dungeons the same way you get them on the world map, though it does offer some different enemies. Each dungeon has a bunch of rooms, and exploring them fully is needed to find new items. Just get to the end and that’s it. There’s no challenge really, since there’s no actual obstacles in the platforming.

Battle
Battles are really interesting here. There are 2 sides: the enemy side and the guys you control. Each side is comprised of a 3 by 4 grid, with 1 character per square. Your team is made up of 4 characters from your fairly large roster of characters. Each turn is made up of 2 phases: the Enemy Phase and the Player Phase. In the enemy phase, you opponents attack, and there’s nothing you can do. The player phase is the fun part.

You can choose which character will be attacking with L1 and R1. You choose the target with the D-pad. Each character can have up to 4 attacks assigned to the different face buttons. You set the attacks in the equipment menu, where you have a number of slots for attacks. Each attack has a range, so the placement of your characters on the grid is important. Each attack takes up AP. AP is a set stat on the character, which can be boosted with active skills and certain equipments.  The starting AP is the character’s base AP stat. Their maximum AP is twice their base, and each turn they recover the same number of AP as their base amount. Each attack also has an area of effect. While multiple attacks just hit one target, some attacks target part of  line, some target a whole line, whether it be vertical or horizontal and some attacks hit a set area.

So when you launch an attack, the attack hits, and then you have a timer. During that timer, you can change characters and launch more attacks. These add up to a combo hit count(and each attack has a number of hits it can do). When you hit an enemy, of course his HP comes down but there’s 3 other meters that you can affect: Burst, Break and Down. Different attacks and combos affect different meters. The Break meter basically increases the number of hits(and slightly different animations) that will come from a Branch Combo attack (more about that later), and when it’s down each character attacking at the moment or in a branch combo get a nice AP boost. The Burst and Down bars break the guard of the opponent, increasing the number of damage your attacks do(and from what I understand a given enemy type will only be guard broken from one of those 2 bars). As for the HP, after it gets to 0, the enemy stays alive until you let the timer go down (or if you press left on the left analog stick to end the combo), so you can continue attacking it, and there’s still more HP to remove. Hitting the enemy enough will Overkill it. Overkilling basically gives more chances for item drops and sometimes some rare item drops too.

Branch combos are what you’ll be using to bring that combo hit meter up. Basically, during an attack, if specific attacks follow each other, you’ll get a Branch Combo attack going on. Those usually have special animations, and can involve multiple characters. Some branch combos can be done with only 1 character as well.

EX attacks, which you can access by pressing R2, require not only large amounts of AP, but also the EX bar. The EX bar raises when you get hit, and when you hit. When it’s high enough you can unleash the highly damaging (or healing) EX skills. You get more of those as you level up as well.

When enemies die or you stop your attack, you can end your turn, use items, move your characters around the grid and switch your characters with characters that are out of the battle. All of those (other than ending your turn), use a set amount of AP as well. A valid strategy is to skip your first turn to get tons of AP on your second turn to deliver tons of damage.

Overall, the battle system is very fun to use. It has a little of a learning curve, but by the time you reach the second save point it should be no trouble to use at all. Trying to set up your team to do optimal damage and number of  hits is really fun(number of damage and hits are needed to open up certain titles, which equals more items, money and points). The only annoying thing is that running away ALWAYS works.

Leveling and other powering up methods(and other stuff)
Winning a battle gives you 5 things. Experience points, gold, TP, EP and Party Points. Experience adds up to each character, and when they reach a certain number they level up.  Characters that were not in the active party get less experience points than those that are, so they still level up, but at a slower rate than active party members. Gold is used for 2 things: Synthesis and buying stuff. TP is used in the Save Points to search a large surrounding area, and you can exchange them for items at the database. EP is used for item upgrades, and party points are just like Use Points (which I’ll explain later) but that the whole party can use.

In the Save Point, there’s tons of stuff to do. The Alchemy shop is probably the most important, since you can synthesize, upgrade and enhance items. Each item starts at level 1. If you have the right amount of EP, you can distribute it to the item to raise its level, up to a maximum of 5. Items, after upgrade, can be processed to become different items. Those items are usually materials or active skills(which I’ll explain later).  Synthesis is fairly simple. Find recipes, either in souls, dungeons, or in the 2 shops in the Save Point. Those recipes are then added to the Synthesis menu, and if you have the right materials(which are listed when you highlight the item) you can make them. When you make an item, other than a few exceptions, the item is added to the shop. Also, synthesis will fail, producing a different item than expected. Sometimes it can be good, sometimes it can be bad, it’s random. Finally, each item has a “grade” stat. In the alchemy shop, you can take enemy drops and embed them within your weapons. Each item has a different stat boost, and each item has a different grade requirement. You can put as many things as you want in the items, as long as you have Grade left.

The other thing you can do to power up in the Save Point is use the database, where you can get titles and costumes. Titles have a set of requirements, and give money, PP, TP and items. The requirements range from doing high hit combos, high damage, killing a number of enemies, killing a specific number of specific enemies, finding certain items, finding souls, doing synthesis, and various other stuff, which can be pretty fun to do. Costumes are the interesting part. By getting side-events that have to do with certain characters, you unlock costumes for them in the database. When they’re unlocked, you can see the required conditions to actually get them, and when you get them, you can equip them. For the male characters, it’s really just a stat change. For female characters, it not only changes stats, but also the appearance in the status menus and conversation sprites. The stat changes can be either positive or negative, or sometimes both. Costumes are basically classes. And sometimes they’re just there for the LAWLZ, like Etna’s school swimsuit uniform, which reduced her HP to 1 when I first equipped it (though now she’s a bit higher). The costumes are really a fun element… now if only the battle sprites changed, and the costume change animation was not as lame and cheesy…

As you level up, you get normal stat boosts, but you also get Use Points. Those points are used to add stat points to any stat you want. Each stat has a different requirement of Use Points to be boosted, and that requirement rises as you level the stat up. And different types of characters have different requirements for each stat. For example, mages take less Use Points to boost their intelligence.  In addition to Use Points, you can use Party Points in the same way, by pressing Triangle on the Status option in the menu. This way you can really personalize the stats of every character like you want them. To add another layer to the personalization, there’s active skills. Those can give stat changes, slight behavior changes, or protection to certain types of attacks. Active skills are equipped directly to armor and accessories, which have a different number of slots each.

The leveling offers lots of ways to personalize your characters and really make the kind of team you want. There’s various different ways to boost your equipment and characters, and it’s fun to boost your team and make what works best for you.

OVERALL
Cross Edge has solid gameplay. The battle system is very fun. Sure, it gets a while to get used to, but after about 10 battles you’ll know exactly what to do. There’s a wide range of characters and attacks, so you can build your team like you want. Being limited to only 4 characters in your active party does make for some early decision making, but you can always grind your way to strong characters if you really want to. The leveling methods and various ways to boost your characters and equipment let you with lots of ways to make your characters like you want them.

The navigation is a bit weird and AWFULLY repetitive. Having to go through all the maps again when you search level increases (though some maps are only up to certain levels for that, so after level 5 some maps are okay until you reach level 10), and the world maps are nothing spectacular or incredibly fun. But it still works pretty well.

The gameplay is enough to make up for everything that sucks or are sub-par about this game. It’s fun and addictive, and in the end that’s all that matters.

Why did the game get bad scores?
Because, TECHNICALLY, the game is horrible. Nevermind the low-grade graphics(well, I do like 2D sprites, but most people don’t, so….) and the bad sound design, the whole of the game is a technical mess. Despite the game using low-res 2D sprites and low-res 2D in general, the game can’t run on the PS3 properly without lagging and slowing down constantly. On the world map, you’ll notice framerate drops all the time, especially when you’re using search. During battles sometimes the animation will stop completely for a few frames.  Sometimes the game will just slow down and not register your button presses. This is standard definition 2D game on a POWERHOUSE of a console, and it’s constantly slowing down. The game even slows down in menus. Oh, and while I’m at it, add BAD TRANSLATION to the mix. For the most part the translation seems fine(with a few hiccups here and there), but for some reason they managed to translate “Witch” as “Walorck”. So if you see a title that requires killing 15 warlocks, you actually need to kill 15 witches. Confusing AND stupid.

The other big problem is the loading times. There’s a 4.4GB optional install. You’d expect the loading times for a game like this to take no more than a second for map changes or room changes in dungeons. But the loading times for those can go up to 7-10 seconds long, and that’s WITH the install(can’t imagine how long the loading times are without it). It can’t be that demanding a game for a PS3, so why does it have so much trouble loading things? It’s probably that the code is badly optimized and it has trouble loading it.

Reviewers didn’t look past the technical difficulties, low-grade graphics and amateur-ish sound design. Because of that, it’s obvious that the scores for the game are far from stellar. Oh, and the fact that for some reason the reviewers had trouble with the gameplay as a whole, despite it not being very complicated. That lowered the score too. So basically they didn’t look at the gameplay, they just looked at the technical problems, and deemed the game to be BAD. But it’s not.

Also, I see a lot of people saying the menus are too hard to navigate… I think those people are morons, the menus are incredibly simple and self-explanatory, not much harder to go through than the average Final Fantasy menu.

So yes, the game is screwed up, it had so much potential but is ruined by badly optimized graphics, sounds and coding. The PS3 should logically have no trouble with the game, and there’s so much they could’ve done but didn’t (like costume changing the battle sprites for each character). And that’s why it got low scores. Because of lazy coding and graphics, and really not doing much good technically. Reviewers saw that(and seemingly lots of “normal” gamers), and didn’t look much further than that.

Overall
This is a really fun game. If you can look past the huge number of technical difficulties and bad sound design and low-level graphics, you have a fun and deep RPG with a variety of fun systems and a LOT to do.

NISA fans will find something to love here for sure, RPG gamers should like to see what it’s all about(with a rental at first), but I can’t suggest the game to anyone else really. Modern gamers are too stuck up to give a chance to a game with technical difficulties like this, really.

It deserves a much higher score than what IGN gave, that’s for sure. The gameplay alone is deep and quite interesting, warranting a high score by itself. My guess is that IGN, or any other big name reviewers, didn’t give it a chance and didn’t look further than the technical suckiness.

Yes, it should be on the PS2 (where the technical issues would probably not even be there), but it’s still a respectable game. Considering the lack of RPGs on the PS3, some people might want to at least check it out.

(this is officially my longest review, if not my longest post on the blog… 3600 words is WAY too long >_<)

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Not exactly the biggest RPG series out there, but still a noteworthy one. I never actually finished a Star Ocean game before this one, but I played them all (other than blue sphere) and I really like playing them from time to time.

I’m not a HUGE fan of the series, but I like them anyways, so here are my impressions!

Read on!

Looks and sounds
The character models are pretty good… As long as the game doesn’t do any extreme close-ups, where it becomes obvious that some parts were badly done (the…hands…). And the models look a bit too… doll-like. Especially Lymle, she look completely lifeless. But the style is pretty nice. Anime style, of course, but with a bit of realism too. Some characters more than others. Though your team is filled with the anime cliché looks, some characters like Commander Kenny look a lot more real. There’s quite a few space ships too, and they look pretty cool.

Through the course of the game, you go through various space ships and planets, and all of those look very nice. You get a large variety of environments and such. Spaceships, deserts, forests, plains, mountains, caves, ruins, corrupt planets, past civilizations…  All of those are very well done.

As for the sounds… Well the music is okay, nothing memorable, but it all fits well (is it just me or do I say that a lot?). The voice acting is… a bit all over the place. Some voices are fine, I quite like Edge, Reimi, Arumat and Myuria. But, on the other hand, you have Meracle, Lymle and Sarah, who can be very annoying. I got used to Lymle pretty fast, but Meracle and Sarah still bother me. Otherwise the game sounds okay.

Story
Well… There is a story in the game, but it’s mostly handled in an “episodic” fashion. When you get to a new planet or area, a new story starts. Most of them have important story elements to the actual story, but they can stand on their own pretty well too. Each, of course, affects the characters’ development.

At the beginning, you’re in control of Edge Maverick (most clichéd name ever), a member of the SRF, and after a few events on Aeos, after crash landing on the planet following a problem while in warp, you become captain of the Calnus spaceship, and you have to search for a new planet for mankind, since Earth is pretty much inhabitable after World War 3. On the way there, you learn about/fight things called “Grigori”, which are trying to destroy the universe. So it’s your job to save the universe. That’s basically it.

When on other planets or areas, you either learn more about Grigori, or go through other side-stories, some that have to do with the Grigori, some that don’t.

Also, this game takes place before any of the other Star Ocean games. I don’t know how the plot twist in SO3 affects the story here, but whatever. This is also before the UP3 is established, so it’s “fine” to interfere with under-developed planets and such.

I feel they managed to do a pretty fun story here. YES the characters are cliché and annoying, but they’re well developed so it’s fine. YES Edge goes through a bit of an emo phase for… quite a while, but it’s completely understandable. In the end it’s still an entertaining story.

There’s a lot of references to previous Star Ocean games and you even visit a planet from one of the previous games (though quite a while in the past). Even Welch Vineyard is back… Though I can’t say if she’s the same Welch as in SO3 or not… She looks quite different but… I dunno…

The story is done through many cutscenes, and that’s where the game kinda annoyed me. There’s a lot of them, and most are just boring conversations with nothing else happening, and, except for a few exceptions, they all use the in-game graphic engine so it’s not rare that you get extreme close-ups on characters and see the defects on the character models. Not that they’re bad, but it’s annoying to not be playing for almost 2 hours, listening to characters talking. At least the cutscenes are skipable.

Gameplay
The basics are no different from the usual RPG. Go around fields, fight enemies, get money, buy new equip and go along with the story. Since it’s pretty basic in that aspect I’ll skip to the interesting parts.

Fighting
Star Ocean games always had a fun Real-Time fighting system, and frankly all of them were very fun. And this one is no exception. Like previous SO games, you have different attacks depending on the distance between you and your opponents, and you can link normal attacks to special attacks. Special attacks can also be linked to other special attacks (and if you have a certain skill you can link more and more, and each time you chain a special attack the damage increases). The basics from SO2 and SO3 are all here, and, in my opinion, they’re refined. Everything works really well.

Added here are Blindsides and Rush mode. Blindside is a move where you charge, and when your targeted enemy’s attack is about to hit or about to start, you move in a direction. Then, if the timing is right, you’ll get to the enemy’s back, he’ll be slightly confused, and for a few attacks all your hits with be critical for sure. It’s not unbeatable though. Some enemies can counter you (making a critical hit on you) when you blindside. If you have the skill, you can “double blindside” which prevents you from being countered, but otherwise you have to learn which enemies can or can’t be countered.
Rush mode is a power-up of sorts. It uses a meter that’s under your HP and MP, and when it’s full you can use it. There’s 2 things to do with that. You can either launch a series of special attacks (cutscene-style… kinda) or use it as a power up. When it’s a power up, you get more attack, more defense, you’re able to do critical hits (you can only do that otherwise with Blindsides or a skill) and you get no knock-back at all from attacks.

Another new element is the bonus board. This is a series of 14 slots that fill up with gems if you accomplish certain conditions in battle. There’s 4 gems you can have. 10% experience bonus if you finish off an enemy with a critical hit, gems that heal 1% HP+MP heal after battle if you kill an enemy with just special attacks, a +1 party SP gem if you get an ambush and a +10% Fol (money) if you kill 2 enemies at once. You can get any combination of those up to 14. So that means you can get 140% extra EXP per battle, and you can easily farm party SP if you get lots of ambushes, or you can save on healing items by healing a small percentage of HP/MP every battle. The choice is yours, and it’s a pretty fun and useful system.

Overall the fighting system is really fun, and kinda deep. There’s a very big variety of enemies that have countermeasures to blindsides, weaknesses, different attack patterns, and are just overall killed in different ways. And boss battles are kinda tough and really intense. They can last over half an hour.

If I would be asked if the battle system has anything wrong with it, I’d know exactly what to mention: The targetting system. You can’t change target. At all. The only way to change target is to get close to an enemy and hope the game changes target for you. Otherwise, try getting the target you want, and lock to that target by pressing the left analog stick. It’s annoying, but after a while you get used to the crappy targeting.

Leveling and other stuff
The main leveling is nothing special. You get EXP, and when you have enough your level goes up and your stats get a preset boost.You get EXP from battle, of course, but it’s not rare that you’ll level OUT of battle. Opening chests, gathering resources, using a disintegration ring, completing item orders for shops and finishing side quests all give EXP. I was actually surprised when I leveled up once just by opening a chest, it was pretty weird the first time.

Skills are back, of course, but they’re much different than in SO1 and SO2 (completely forgot how they were in SO3 actually…). You can boost a variety of skills. Passive skills that affect your item creation, item drops on certain enemy types, resource gathering and other stuff, battle commands, passive battle skills, and special attacks can all be boosted. You learn special attacks by leveling, but other skills must be learned from books, which you can either find in chests or buy in shops. You can boost your skills in 2 ways: use individual SP (which you get when you level up, exclusive to that character) or use party SP (you get some of that when you open chests, gather resources. use a disintegration ring or complete item orders and side quests(one amount of points that can be used by anyone)).

A new system here is the BEAT system. It’s really simple. There’s 3 beats. S is an attack oriented beat that gives boosts to your blindsides, B is a defensive beat that gives boosts to Rush mode, and N gets the accumulated stat increase of both other beats but doesn’t boost either blindsides or Rush. For computer-controlled characters, using B is the best way to go, since they never use blindsides and they actually do use Rush mode. For the character you control, it’s all a matter of preference, I use S because I like the attack boost.

Item creation is back, but it’s a bit simplified. First you have to create recipes. For that you put characters in groups and start the process, and a clock will turn. Each time it does a full rotation 1 party SP is depleted. When groups get an idea, you get that recipe. Depending on groups and their aptitudes in item creation, you get different kinds of recipes. Then you can actually create the item. That’s very simple. You only need the ingredients, and the item will be created without chances of not doing it right. So that’s good, you don’t have to waste ingredients and risk getting a bad item, you always get exactly what you want. It’s a bit time consuming though, when you get a lot of characters in your party, you have a lot of groups to try in the recipe creation part. There’s also synthesizing, which involves “fusing” items together to add factors (extra stats) to the desired item. This can get you EXP boosts, FOL boosts, and boost for any other stat.

Like most RPGs, speaking to everyone in towns is very important. Not only do they help getting more involved with the worlds in the game, but they sometimes give side-quests (some that require item creation, other that just require finding certain items or people, stuff like that). And to add even more side-quests, most shops “request” items, which you can deliver to them later, or give to them right away if you have the required items. Those give lots of Fol, EXP and Party SP.

Dungeons are not bad. They’re a bit simplistic. Some are just battle after battle until you reach the boss, and others have puzzles or mazes to get to the next rooms. The puzzles are pretty cool… the first two times you do them, but when you’re required to do them like 10 times in the same dungeon, it can get annoying. Here you also get disintegration rings. These rings have the power remove certain obstacles from the way. Some are required for puzzles in dungeons, other are optional but useful when you’re looking for extra chests and such. Some chests are also blocked by certain elements and you must have rings to open them. Each ring has a limited amount of uses (light ring has 1 use before having to be recharged). You can recharge rings using a special skill (which requires certain stones), some rings can be recharged at certain spots in dungeons, and some NPCs can be paid to recharge them.

Overall
This is a very fun game. If you’re an SO fan, a lot of the story is pure fanservice. If you’re not, the story can still be enjoyable… and if all fails you can consider it a parody of anime and RPGs and get a good laugh out of it. The characters are massively clichéd but pretty interesting nonetheless. The battle system is really fun, despite the targeting system. The leveling is deep enough for an RPG veteran, and simple enough for an RPG newb. The item creation is simplified, but I hated always getting bad items in previous SO games, so it’s fun to actually always get what you wanted to make. Cutscenes are average and can get really long (in the last disc, there was a section of about 2 hours where I didn’t play at all), but there’s one in particular with a pretty nice spaceship dogfight…. So at least not all the cutscenes are boring. And the comedy isn’t too bad either… sometimes. The main game is fairly long, lasting around 40-50 hours on your first run depending on how much stuff you do.

If you’re an Gamer Point whore, you’ll find yourself replaying this game a LOT to get all the points. Battle trophies on all the characters (well, you’ll get quite a few anyways if you want to boost your characters’ level limit), finishing the game on multiple difficulties, there’s a huge amount of side-quests… There’s a lot of content in this game, that’s for sure. The one annoying thing, if you’re gonna do side quests, is the disc swapping. Going to certain planets or areas will require certain a disc in the drive. It’s a bit stupid since even early PS1 RPGs had all the area data in each disc, but in normal play this won’t affect you at all.

Overall, Star Ocean: The Last Hope is a solid RPG, and a must-play for any RPG fan who have an Xbox 360.

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Let’s start with a bit of history. Oneechanbara was a game in the “Simple 2000″ series in Japan, made by D3 publisher. It was a relatively simple game (as the title suggests). The full name was “Simple 2000: The Oneechanbara”.  Simple 2000 was just a bunch of cheaply made games for the most part and most weren’t really good and didn’t become popular. But The Onechanbara one of the few titles in the series, if any, to spawn an actual sequel. Heck, it was so popular it even got a movie (which I reviewed), and it was surprisingly good. Like a good B movie, a bit campy but ultimately a fun watch, and one of the very few good video-game based movies.

That of course made me interested in the actual games, and as luck would have it 2 were announced in America: this one, and Bikini Zombie Slayers on the Wii. So I knew I had to at least pick up one of them (and i’ll rent the other later). And, like the movie, this was surprisingly fun.

So let’s go! Read on!

Looks and sounds
The graphics are okay. Pretty much like a really early 360 title. The textures are kinda meh, the enemies look average, and the girls are well done. There’s a few problems though. I saw people whining about the resolution. I didn’t have many problems with that, but what I DO see, a lot, is screen tearing. There’s tons of it. All the time. May it be during cutscenes or during gameplay, if there’s some movement on the screen, there’s gonna be screen tearing. Heck, I even get some when just running around with no zombies in the vicinity. And there’s some graphical glitches, like Saki’s mini-skirt disappearing to show her panties at total random, which was kinda weird…

The sound is average. I actually don’t remember any of the music in the game just by thinking about it, but while playing you know it does the job okay.  The voice acting is all in Japanese with subtitles, and for the most part the voice actors do a good job, though sometimes they seem to lack emotion. The sounds of the zombies are well done, either showing what weapon they have and such giving you proper sound cues to know when to evade gun fire and such.

Overall, the game looks and sounds fine though not as NEXT-GEN (current-gen would be the proper term, but whatever ) as other titles on the 360, keep in mind this is a budget title.

Story
After… Whatever happened in the 2 first games, Saki and Aya are teamed up and taking a break from zombie-killing. But that break doesn’t last too long, as zombies are attacking the city. So it’s up to them to get to the bottom of this zombie attack. It just so happens that some organization is after Aya and Saki’s Baneful Blood, which has… something to do with zombies, and they want to kidnap Saki (and actually manage to do so in the beginning of the game). Saki is saved by Anna, a gun-using policewoman in a skimpy outfit (surprising isn’t it?).

 

The rest of the story pretty much revolves around finding out about the organization behind the zombie attacks (since they have control over that) . Not a super-interesting story, but it’s not bad either.

Gameplay
This works like a basic Beat ‘em up. Go through a stage, come across enemies, go further in the stage, beat more enemies, and eventually fight a boss. The game’s basics are… really basic. But it still has quite a bit of depth. There’s various enemy types that require different strategies to fight, or different moves for faster kills, or different strategies by using different characters.

The basic controls are simple. You have a jump button, an attack button, a kick/alternate attack button and a third alternate attack/move button. You can lock on which gives you some evasion moves. You have a style change move which changes the weapons a bit ( Aya gets 2 swords instead of 1, Anna exchanges here badass dual-pistols for a shotgun and a machine gun and Saki gets NOTHING), a button to change character (most missions you get to choose 2 characters for the mission) and a button to clean your bloody sword or reload your ammo.  And the “Back” button brings you to the item menu so you can use items to heal yourself and get temporary stat boosts and such (the instruction manual doesn’t tell you that). You have various attacks, depending on your Skill level and what button combinations you use. 

The camera is a bit bad, it moves way too slowly, but it does the job most of the time, though it gets really jittery when you lock-on to an enemy.

Each character has a bunch of normal attacks and 2 special attacks. There’s a ” counter stance” attack that does massive damage in a small area in front of you, but it takes away from your lifebar. As you build up your combo, a yellow bar fills up near your character’s portrait, and as it gets higher you can use an ecstasy attack. Saki and Aya get a spinning attack(as seen in the movie!). Aya’s does more damage, but Saki’s does a shockwave which attacks far away enemies and Anna just mows away all that’s in front of her with her guns and during those attacks you’re invincible.

Aya and Saki also have 2 special mechanics. First is the bloody sword. As you kill zombies, your sword gets more bloody and loses its sharpness, sometimes getting stuck in zombies, so you have to keep your sword clean to prevent getting trouble with things like this. Anna doesn’t have that, but she has to reload her guns from time to time. The other mechanic is the Bloodlust system. As you kill zombies, Aya and Saki get covered in blood, and if there’s too much, they get in Rampage mode. This speeds you up and makes your attacks a lot more powerful, but you lose health as you stay in that state. The only ways to get out of that is to either use a goddess statue head or find a goddess statues on the map to purify yourself. Anna doesn’t have that mechanic, or something to replace it, because she doesn’t have Baneful Blood(sorry, no blood-covered policewoman for you).

Enemies are mostly zombies, may it be animals or humans or mud with hearts (yeah, weird), and they’re a bit different from usual zombies. Not Left 4 Dead fast, but still they can be fast(when they want to) and they can also use weapons. At first they can have chainsaws and such, or they can be burning. Later they can have handguns and shotguns. Enemies get dismembered when you slash or shoot at them, and that changes how they act. Zombies with guns, for example, can’t aim properly anymore if you cut their head off. When you cut their torsos, only their legs are left(why their legs instead of their upper body? I don’t know) and they can kick you, but they’re easy targets. There’s various other enemies. Zombie crows, zombie dogs, huge zombies, mud zombies that you can rip their heart out of for a fast kill and a few others. Bosses are a bit tougher. They take a lot more abuse and have more complicated attacks. But they have patterns and relatively cheap AI that are easy to fool. Also, against certain bosses, if you evade certain attacks with the perfect timing, you get some bullet-time and if you attack during that time you do massive damage to the boss.

Other stuff
In addition to the normal mode, there’s a survival mode and a freeplay mode where you can go through any stage with any character, but the most “interesting” is the Dress-up mode. This starts you up with the characters in their underwear and you can dress them up to make your own custom costumes. To get those costumes though is a really tough task, as you have to do various “quests” in the game, which aren’t all that easy. But after getting some and making costumes, you can use those costumes in any more in the game.

Also, there’s a leveling feature in the game. Enemies gives orbs when they die, and those give experience. As you level up you get 3 points per level which you can put in 1 of 4 stats: Skill (gives more attacks as it gets to certain levels), Vitality (defense/health), Power and Reach (for Anna it’s Gun, which makes her guns stronger, so power isn’t one of the really important stats for her). So you can pretty much customize each character like you want them to be. Cool stuff.

There’s a few other elements I could speak of like bracelets, but sadly I suck too much to get more than 2 consecutive “Cool” attacks (which somehow require pressing X while your sword is in an enemy… or something like that… I’m not too sure, but it requires consecutive “Cool” attacks on  Blood Mist monsters.

Overall
The game is fun. It’s like an old-school beat ‘em up, but with a bit more depth. If you like old-school beat ‘em ups, this could be right up your alley. Otherwise, it’s really violent with blood everywhere and, if it’s selling, it’s mostly because of the premise of bikini/schoolgirl outfit-clad japanese girls killing zombies with katanas, but look beyond that and you actually have a good game. Simplistic, yes. Repetitive, yes. But bad? No fucking way. Not the best game ever, but it’s unreasonable to expect that. It’s budget-priced, so it’s not like you’re losing THAT much trying it out. And the face of the store clerk(and other people in the store) will most likely be pretty funny when you bring that up to the counter.

What could make the game better? MAIDS. You get a bikini and cowboy hat-wearing girl, a schoolgirl and a policewoman, but no maids? Sucks. Maybe you unlock maid outfits as you finish quests, I didn’t get everything yet so I don’t know. Also, the instruction booklet is horrible, one of the worst I’ve ever seen, it says nothing about the game and you have to rely on IGN’s well-written guide instead (though they don’t say much about the controls, but you’ll figure that out easily).

*EDIT*
Good timing I say, DLC was just released for this. 6 outfits(2 for Aya, Saki and Anna… 1 for Aya is free and 1 for Saki is free, the rest are 200 points) and 3 new characters to play as (Reiko from the older games(she’s free), Misery and Himiko (those 2 are 500 points)) and there’s a pack with all the content for 1600 points (20$… kinda a lot if you ask me…).

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Video game movies tend to suck ass. There are a few exceptions of course, but overall, for some reason movie makers can’t do any good when it comes to making video game movies.
But can you really go wrong with a movie with hot japanese girls in bikinis/schoolgirl outfits killing zombies with katanas that also parodies everything anime/zombie flick/action movie? The answer is no, you can’t go wrong with that. And that is really all Onechanbara is about.
 
Story (possibly slight spoilers)
Based on a game series by the same name(originally part of the Simple 200 series by D3 publisher), Onechanbara has a relatively simple premise. A crazy scientist from D3 corporation was conducting experiments to bring people back to life. Of course, that caused a huge zombie outbreak throughout the world. People who survived the outbreak are struggling to survive and trying not to become zombies themselves.
Enter Aya,  bikini-clad hot japanese girl out to find her sister, Saki, who is working for the evil scientist ho caused the outbreak and, after the outbreak, didn’t stop conducting his experiments. Aya has been, for a couple years, just randomly wandering around japan with some fat guy, killing every zombie in sight.
One night when fighting a bunch of zombies they come across some leater-clad girl with a shootgun that knows where to find Saki, so they head out towards the enemy’s… castle? Yeah, sure looks like it. Anyways, they head out over there, and along the way you hear about each character’s heart wretching past. Basically it all involves one of their loved ones getting killed or kidnapped by the evil professor/Saki.
The story isn’t incredible, but it works well and the characters, as cliche as they are, aren’t exactly that bad either(though the fat dude is pretty damn useless). Overall, entertaining story, it’s enough to keep the movie going and the emotional moments aren’t too bad. Not a bad story, but don’t expect anything incredible.

Action scenes
Now THIS is where this movie is great(well, other than the japanese schoolgirls/bikini girls). The action scenes are basically a big parody of anime and action movie action scenes, and wow they pulled that off really well. Just about everything in there parodies something. You get the anime-style “teleport dash”, auras covering characters/weapons, characters moving incredibly fast and being able to stop bullets and such. Realy, the action scenes really carry the movie on their own. Fast paced, exciting, and just really cool visually.

Zombie scenes
I did say it was a parody before, and the “zombie scenes” are just funny. They actually aren’t really scary and just exploit a bunch of zombie flick cliches. They keep popping out of nowhere, there’s body part getting ripped off, zombies just randomly eating people on the side of buildings… The visual effects really have a B-movie feel to them, and frankly i like that. They give more… realistic visuals sometimes than just badass CG. And if the effect is badly pulled off, at least you get a good laugh out of it.

Pictures
Of course I took a few screen captures.
Sorry for the low quality, but the video file i managed to find didn’t look that great either.

First appearance of Aya

Facing off against a few zombies. They're gonna get pwnd.

WTF is that?

Oh, they were clashing after powering up... wait what?

More super powers... I dare you to try stopping a bullet with a katana like that.Â

OVERALL
So is this a good movie? Well, yes, it is.  But you have to go at it with an open mind. You have to either have little to no expectations on this, or know that it’s just a big parody.
The visual effects are nice, the B-movie feel really helps, the action scenes are fun, the story, although really simple, is quite good, the whole parodying everything zombie/action/anime flick thing is really fun, and if you like anime you’ll have a blast out of the final battle. 
Bottom line: You like sexy japanese girls wearing bikinis or schoolgirl outfit? Check this movie out now. And if you want a good laugh and some nice thrill out of the fights too. Not a bad movie, and an example that movies based on video games can actually be good.

Other bottom line: I can’t wait for the Wii release of Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers in early 2009.(as well as an Xbox360 version… if i have a 360 by then)

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