Backlog update

The updated list of my games finished in 2014:

01/25 - Unchained Blades (PSP)
01/31 - Ragnarok Tactics (PSP)
02/06 - Dragon's Crown (PSV)
02/21 - Luminous Arc 2 (DS)
03/11 - Sweet Fuse: At Your Side (PSP)
04/07 - Ys: Memories of Celceta (PSV)
05/06 - Class of Heroes 2 (PSP)
05/08 - Senran Kagura Burst (3DS)
05/22 - Half-Minute Hero (PSP)
06/06 - Monster Monpiece (PSV)
06/11 - Hyperdimension Neptunia (PS3)
06/26 - Breath of Fire IV (PS1)
07/28 - Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars (PSV)
08/13 - Magical Starsign (DS)
08/26 - Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS)
09/05 - Ragnarok DS (DS)
09/10 - Corpse Party (PSP)
09/18 - Muramasa Rebirth (PSV)

Muramasa Rebirth is an interesting hack 'n' slash with RPG elements. The remake surely shines on PS Vita oled screen, as every colorful game by Vanillaware. The game is a bit easy, and except for a few boss battles, there isn't much challenge once you have mastered the strategies to deal with enemies (there is not much variation). Even so, it is a pleasant experience.  

Magical Starsign

Magical Starsign

2006

Nintendo DS

Developed by Brownie Brown

Published by Nintendo

Magical Starsign is a RPG for DS made by Brownie Brown, a small studio that ended up being absorbed by Nintendo studios. The game brings a colorful magical world, combining a very conservative turn-based RPG, a humorous plot, and some quirky characters in a way that it does nothing wrong, but nothing that makes the game very remarkable. If you are up to a fun adventure, climb aboard the magical rocket and travel through the charming universe of Magical Starsign.

The art style is colorful and
very remarkable

Magical Starsign, as mentioned before, is a very simple and linear RPG, where you visit places, talk to people, learn the next steps in your journey and go fight enemies and bosses in order to obtain ways of progressing in your journey. The game starts with teenagers in the academy of magic going after their teacher, who had disappeared a few months ago when going to stop the leader of the space pirates, who intended to destroy the universe. The hero and his future companions end up scattered around the star system, that features planets for different elements (fire, water, earth, wind and wood. The whole plot revolves around this group of people trying to regroup and find the whereabouts of their teacher, stopping bad guys that cross their way meanwhile. 

The planet alignment is crucial for your
strategy.

The game revolves around magic, naturally, with 99% of the time forcing you to rely on magical attacks. Except for a few enemies, it is a waste to spend your turn using physical attacks. Another important feature is the elemental aspect, adding light and darkness to the elements of each planet. The interesting thing is that the position of the planets in their orbits, night and day affect the abilities of the characters. Each character is aligned to a different element and they have their magic skills boosted while the planet of their element is placed on its corresponding elemental region in the orbit. Light and dark characters have their magic skills powered up according to the time of the day. Enemies are also aligned to one of the elements, and have their stats boosted the same way as the playable characters. It doesn't seem very important at the beginning of the game, looking like the traditional elemental aspect of most RPGs. Later in the game, though, the characters can learn the skill that allows them to change the planets' places in their orbits and balancing which characters should have their magic boosted and which ones should not. Some enemies can do the same thing in order to enhance their abilities or weaken their foes and will often try to ruin the player strategy. This quirky mechanism adds some strategy to the otherwise pretty straightforward combat. It is a pity that in a game so focused in magic, there aren't more spells for each character.

The game is rather easy, though. There is not much to explore, the dungeons are pretty straightforward for the most part, the maps are short and the regular battles are mostly a matter of unleashing the low-cost magical attacks. Some boss battles are interesting even if you are somewhat overleveled, and a real challenge if you are very underleveled because there are some enemies that may screw up your main strategy by taking out exactly the character of the element that would hit the boss harder. Even so, the main storyline should be easy to overcome. 

Humor is an integral part of the game.

Other remarkable aspect of Magical Starsign is that the humor is an important aspect of the game. Characters often are weirdos, and there are lots of nonsense and absurd in Magical Starsign world. Although the humor is not exactly prize-winning, it gives a refreshing feel to an otherwise average and very predictable storyline.That, combined with the simple gameplay, makes the game an easy ride through the 30 - 40 hours the main storyline provides, leaving a good feeling at the end of the experience. 

Apart from the main storyline, the game provides a pre-post-ending challenge, the Glissini Caves, where the player can fight optional bosses that are much stronger than the final bosses of the main storyline. It is a treat for those who didn't find the rest of the game challenging enough (and it isn't). The tradeoff of beating the Glissini Caves challenge before tackling the final boss is that it will make the final boss even easier because of the levels and unique items that can be found in that part of the game. The game also provides a multiplayer mode called Amigo Mode, where players can collect friends and items, and participate in a timed-challenge against other players where they have to score points through battles, providing more value to those who want a bit more than the regular storyline from this RPG.

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In the end, Magical Starsign does well what it intended to do. The game doesn't push the boundaries of the RPG genre, doesn't add new things to the mix, doesn't shine on visuals, music or other aesthetic elements. At the same time, it doesn't make anything wrong that could make it annoying, boring, broken or frustrating, so it is an adequate RPG for DS, and recommended for fans of the genre who just want a fun game to play. 

                                                   

Backlog update

The updated list of my games finished in 2014:

01/25 - Unchained Blades (PSP)
01/31 - Ragnarok Tactics (PSP)
02/06 - Dragon's Crown (PSV)
02/21 - Luminous Arc 2 (DS)
03/11 - Sweet Fuse: At Your Side (PSP)
04/07 - Ys: Memories of Celceta (PSV)
05/06 - Class of Heroes 2 (PSP)
05/08 - Senran Kagura Burst (3DS)
05/22 - Half-Minute Hero (PSP)
06/06 - Monster Monpiece (PSV)
06/11 - Hyperdimension Neptunia (PS3)
06/26 - Breath of Fire IV (PS1)
07/28 - Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars (PSV)
08/13 - Magical Starsign (DS)
08/26 - Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS)
09/05 - Ragnarok DS (DS)
09/10 - Corpse Party (PSP)

I am somewhat wary of those horror VNs that people claim to be "the best thing ever", but I am satisfied with Corpse Party. The plot is a bit convoluted, but at least they didn't try to tie everything with ridiculous explanations for the events. They leave some things open, for better. 

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies
2009
Nintendo DS
Developed by Level-5
Published by Square Enix (jp) and Nintendo (na/eu)





Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies was the first mainline entry of the franchise to be developed for a handheld, instead of a home console, following the drastic increase of popularity of handheld devices in Japan since Nintendo DS and Playstation Portable releases. The transitioning to handheld devices didn't have any negative impact in the quality of the game, though. Of course, the graphics were not as good as they were in Dragon Quest VIII, but all the other aspects did not suffer any loss despite the game being on a system with far less resources.

Keeping up with the series tradition, Dragon Quest IX presents a large world with plenty to explore, and many sidequests to challenge the player out of the main story. Sentinels of the Starry Skies manages to keep a good balance between the main plot and other features of the game. While not very deep, the main story is original and engaging.

Characters ready for a fight. Graphics are not the best, but
they are adequate for the system and the art style of the game.

The story revolves around the Celestrians, who are some kind of guardian angels living in a place called The Observatory and who protect and help the humans, getting some kind of energy called benevolessence in return for their good actions. Their objective is to obtain enough benevolessence, so the sacred tree Yggdrasil can produce fyggs that will allow the Celestrians to move permanently to the Realm of the Almighty, which is their heaven. The main character is responsible for helping people from a small village named Angel Falls and collecting benevolesscence. However, his/her life is drastically changed after the Celestrian meet up with opposing forces, and the main character is sent into a quest that spans the human world, the Observatory and the Realm of the Almighty. Although the storytelling is sparse compared to other major RPG franchises like Final Fantasy or Tales of, the flow of the main story is quite good, not allowing the player to be bored or confused with a convoluted plot.

The world is filled with different locations and colorful characters that provide many interesting sidequests to enrich the playing experience. While the main story is interesting enough, Dragon Quest IX has a lot more to offer to those with time and patience to spend countless hours in a single game. The main advantage of Dragon Quest IX over many games with similar quest systems is that the quests are usually better developed than the average. Instead of the traditional quest system where you go to a "quest center" and receive quests like "someone asked you to gather some item/kill some monster, report back to receive your reward", the quests in Dragon Quest IX are offered by NPCs around the world and often provide some story development. This makes the quests attractive not only because of the rewards they may provide, but because they enrich the gaming experience.

The enemies being shown in the overworld map
is a refreshing change.

The other traditional aspect of Dragon Quest games, which is the combat, is largely unchanged from the other installments. The combat is turn-based, and the battles are semi-random (the enemies appear on the screen and can be avoided, but they are spawned randomly). The tactics are simple and rely heaviy on buffs, debuffs and status effects. There is not a lot of variation in the tactics, but the player needs to have at least one solid strategy in order to beat the boss battles and survive in the long dungeons.



Dragon Quest IX is somewhat different from other installments of the series as it lets the player to create as many characters as they want, and all the playable characters are created by the player. There is also some character customization, allowing the player to choose the characters' classes and allocating skill points to unlock new skills as they level up. It is important to note that the game isn't difficult, so the player doesn't need to worry a lot about choosing some specific classes. If you have some variety and decent levels, the challenges of the main story won't be very difficult to overcome.

All multiplayer interactions are available from the same inn.

One novelty for the series is the online component. It is possible to join other players in a cooperative play. You can either accept other players to help you in your quests or join other players' games and help them in their quests. You can also obtain quests, exclusive items and even characters and bosses from previous Dragon Quest games to enhance your gaming experience. The multiplayer mode is not intrusive, though, you can play the game as a single-player game without any notable loss. Unfortunately, Nintendo closed the DS Wifi Connection in 2014, so the players will have to use action replay codes in order to obtain the extra items and quests instead.

So, in essence, Dragon Quest IX is a lot like other Dragon Quest titles: the safest place to go when you are willing to have a well-crafted traditional RPG experience, without surprises or risks. This is what makes Dragon Quest so distinctive among the other RPG franchises, and what explains its success. Yuji Horii and Akira Toriyama partnership keeps working so well after all those years because they focus on what they are good making, and the result is that Dragon Quest IX lives up to the expectations of the fans of the RPG series and also are certain to please other RPG fans that have never delved into one of the biggest and most important gaming franchises ever created.

Operation Backlog: Another one

The updated list of my games finished in 2014:

01/25 - Unchained Blades (PSP)
01/31 - Ragnarok Tactics (PSP)
02/06 - Dragon's Crown (PSV)
02/21 - Luminous Arc 2 (DS)
03/11 - Sweet Fuse: At Your Side (PSP)
04/07 - Ys: Memories of Celceta (PSV)
05/06 - Class of Heroes 2 (PSP)
05/08 - Senran Kagura Burst (3DS)
05/22 - Half-Minute Hero (PSP)
06/06 - Monster Monpiece (PSV)
06/11 - Hyperdimension Neptunia (PS3)
06/26 - Breath of Fire IV (PS1)
07/28 - Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars (PSV)
08/13 - Magical Starsign (DS)
08/26 - Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies (DS)
09/05 - Ragnarok DS (DS)

Still had no time to spend formatting the first reviews. Working too much overtime...