Pretty much just going to go by what I added in RPG Ratings in 2010 since there's no other way I'll remember everything I played. Though I had to go by memory for non-RPGs and unfinished stuff so probably forgot some of those.
Sands of Destruction (6/10) - Sands of Destruction is a very strange game. The premises of both the plot and gameplay are interesting in theory, but implemented pretty poorly. Of course the plot doesn't bother me much but the gameplay did. The system revolves around BP (battle points) where each action takes 1 BP and you can gain more BP by fulfilling certain conditions (critical, knock down/stun/launch enemy, and every 10 hits) up to 6 and you can start from 1-3. First off, the way to manipulate the starting BP is kind of stupid. You equip accessories and over time the BP count increases or decreases depending on the character's likeness to the accessory. This pretty much limits what accessories you use, though it does encourage diversity in them since different characters like different accessories. Second, the most effective way to get more BP is to just chain flurries together for over 10 hits per BP used, which pretty much makes the other two methods obsolete (and detrimental, but more on that later).
One other problem with the battle system is that if you ever get up to 6 BP, you're FORCED to use a finisher of some sort, either the character's super attack, super blood skill, or super life skill. The first two tend to be weaker than flurry chains ANYWAY so they're useless but the super life skills tend to be good. But if they had designed it non-retardedly it would let you use your other BP instead of encouraging a 1 starting BP no-critical chain to get the most damage, which is unintuitive as hell.
The skill customization system was okay, but like the rest of the game was poorly handled, though partly not a fault of its own. Every battle gives CP that can be spent to boost skills. Each skill has a cap on number of times it can be boosted (which raises every 10 levels) and 2 choices of what to boost (outside of super attacks which only have 1). The boosts tend to be fairly weak in power, but upgrading enough times gives a choice of a special bonus. In the case of flurries you can "Fortify" which lets you chain them together, essentially allowing the character to use all 3 flurries with 1 BP. Flurries were already the best attacks to begin with, so this makes nearly every other skill in the game obsolete, barring healing and buffs.
Then there's stats. Most of the stats are extremely effective (ATK/DEF/SPD most notably) which is arguably a good thing but then the game goes and gives effectively quadratic stat growth compared to level which makes level the single most important thing in the game. A few levels can mean the difference between a nearly impossible fight to a steamroll fight. The balance just isn't there at all.
And then there's the fact that PC balance doesn't exist. Taupy completely breaks the game and then Rhi'a and Kyrie are obviously the two next best characters and then the others are notably worse.
But even with all the flaws, it's not a TERRIBLE game. I even enjoyed it! It's just really disappointing how much they botched something that could've been so much better.
Glory of Heracles (7/10) - Now here's a game I don't feel so bad about enjoying. While it's nothing amazing, it's pretty fun fluff.
The plot cliches:
1) Silent, amnesiac main, but he's frickin' HERACLES so who cares.
2) Journey to find out his identity, but he's frickin' HERACLES so who cares.
3) Some thief girl who dresses like a boy, but she's with frickin' HERACLES so who cares.
4) Long haired bishie shows up, but he's with frickin' HERACLES so who cares.
5) Then there's some people named after Greek gods and shit, but they're ACTUALLY Greek gods and shit so who cares.
There's probably more I dunno I wasn't paying much attention.
The gameplay is mostly classic RPG, but with a few twists.
First, when using spells and skills there are little stylus minigames that you can do to boost power. But the game gives you the option to just "auto" them and you'll get about half the boost you would if you had perfected the minigame. The game's easy enough that you can just auto on the randoms and maybe even bosses. Though the bosses can get pretty rough sometimes so maybe not.
Second, there's "ether". In addition to costing MP to cast spells, you also need the correct elemental ether, which is global to allies AND enemies. For example, the best elemental spells require 666 of the element and 111 of the other 3 elements, while increasing the light element some (I think 200 or something). If you case a spell and there's not enough ether, you'll still cast the spell, but you'll take backlash damage. On weak spells this is only equal to the amount of ether that you lack, but on stronger spells that can increase to like 20, which is pretty killer. But since enemies also require ether, you can abuse this some by using up the ether before they act and they'll eat lots of backlash damage. The ether refills a small amount every turn, so it's essentially infinite, but not limitted. The ether counts also carry over from battle to battle so you can't just spam fire spells through the whole dungeon or anything.
There's also a very large number of skills the characters get. Each character innately gets their own action skill list, some passives, and some magic. The passives and magic generally aren't unique but they aren't universal either (at least not innately). On top of that, equipment will also give skills as long as it's equipped. Overall, the skillsets characters get make them pretty varied in battle, but not overly specialized.
One thing I really did not like about the game was the crafting system. Considering I'm normally a fan of item creation systems, GoH handles it poorly. When you get to a new town there's a place where you can combine items to get a new one. However about 90% of the time you won't have enough for ANYTHING they have there, which makes it pretty pointless. The game's also very stingy on cash so you're likely to just sell off items you don't need to buy new ones... and then a couple of towns later you'll need those items you sold off to craft stuff. On top of that there's an inventory limit so you'll have to sell or drop stuff anyway. It's probably better to just ignore the whole crafting system entirely.
Likes Sands of Destruction, GoH also has quadratic stat growth, but the stats aren't nearly as effective (though still effective), so it's not a big deal. It does throw overlevelled PCs at you at times (on purpose, since it's your average level + x) but you generally catch up... except the time it does that right at the final dungeon. Kind of annoying balance-wise but not really a huge deal.
One nice thing is that the game is really good about skill documentation. For example, there's a skill called Berserk which lowers your defense and increases your offense for a few turns (and removes control of the character). Specifically what it does is lowers your defense to 0 and adds it to your offense, and the game actually tells you this! IIRC it's not in the skill description itself but in the encyclopedia thing somewhere but still. It's kind of a big deal since the game does have a lot of varying effects on its skills.
Though the game does have poor documentation on equipment. For example, one of the characters has a unique armor with hidden resists on it. Which might make it the best armor to use. There's also some cases of hidden speed boosts or losses on equipment which will actually increase or decrease the character's speed tier (higher tiers always go before lower tiers and tiebreaks in tiers are determined by AGI). Not as important as skill documentation in my opinion but still.
Overall it is a fun fluff game. I do recommend people play it. Just don't expect anything amazing and it's pretty enjoyable.
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES (The Answer) (4/10) - It's no secret that I dislike Persona 3 but I picked this up because I didn't have a hard copy of the game and it was cheap and had new stuff. Decided I'd give it a shot. It still sucked. I think I liked The Answer more because it felt less tedious because it was much shorter. Or maybe because Aigis > Minato as a main character. Or maybe because it didn't have the annoying S.Link stuff. I dunno. I don't really care either.
Last Rebellion (5/10) - I'll say it now: Last Rebellion gets more hate than it deserves. It's still not a good game.
Basically the gimmick is that the main PC is actually two people in the same body. Except the body actually changes appearance to who is in control. Which makes no sense but hey RPG plot just roll with it. There's some other stuff too but I mostly forgot it because it wasn't anything new.
The gameplay was original. Like I said before you have two PCs in one body. They can both act each turn, but the PC who acted last is the one that stays out. Since they act at the same time you can essentially force the same PC to be out all the time to soak up hits and stuff. Which is usually Nine (the guy) since he's more durable (physically at least, but magic is more rare). The PCs don't really differ much anyway. They both pretty much have the same skillset except for one skill. When the enemies are dead (or not, but they usually fail if not), Nine can absorb their MP and Aisha can absorb their HP (or were they flippsed I don't remember). Nine's skill has a chance of reviving them, while Aisha's will kill them permanently (so you can end the battle). Other than their stats (which are hidden.... and don't mean a lot anyway) that's their only difference.
One big gimmick though is the stamp system. Enemies have multiple parts (sometimes up to 14 or so!) and physical attacks will stamp those parts. Casting a magic attack after stamping will hit ALL parts that are stamped, with no increase in MP cost and no decrease in damage. Sounds cool right? Too bad that you can just spam physicals to do more damage anyway so it's not really all that effective. Too bad.
The other big gimmick is the combo system. Like I said before, enemies have multiple parts. If you attack the parts in a specific order your damage will increase (up to 5x), but the order is initially hidden. Once you hit a part in the right position in your chain, it will be revealed. So essentially it's a numbers game to figure out the right order as quickly as possible. I thought this was an okay idea, but nothing amazing. Incidentally once you figure out the order your 5x damage physicals will just outdo magic damage all day, so it's horribly balanced anyway.
The game is only about 15 hours long or so and the length is one thing it does right. The gameplay just doesn't lend well to a lengthy game.
But there are two awesome parts of the game. First, ultimate superboss Prinny. Second,
CATBOX superboss.
White Knight Chronicles (4/10) - Ugh, this game.
Plot: You are some random dude. A princess gets kidnapped. You go save princess. Oh and you get a sweet mech too. Then 30 hours of shit happens. Suddenly cliffhanger. The end.
Also UOM powar.
Battle: Take FF12. Now remove gambits and /make it slower/. There didn't need to be 5+ second downtimes in between actions. Seriously. There's like a combo system or something but I didn't bother much with it because magic doesn't combo well. Also, while you can move around on the field and stuff it means nothing. If an enemy is attacking you and you try to run away to evade the attack it's going to hit you anyway. Also it's slow. Really slow.
You can customize the characters somewhat though. You get points when you level up that can be put into one of the eight weapon class trees to learn skills. You actually get to choose what skills to learn in a tree, but some skills have requirements. Not exactly original but interesting enough I guess.
The online quests are the best part of the game, but probably only if you do them with friends. The battles don't seem as slow when you've actually got four people controlling characters and doing useful stuff instead of AI. But whatever. Doesn't save the game from sucking.
Have I mentioned it sucks?
It sucks.
Final Fantasy XIII (9/10) - Okay, I liked FFXIII. I know people hate it but haters gonna hate, etc.
As usual, I didn't care about the plot. In fact, it's kind of stupid. You guys are slaves to some other being but oh wait you go against that and do your own shit. Whatever. It's like the whole defying destiny thing except you're defying slavery?
Characters are a mixed bag. Lightning is an annoying prick. Female Cloud except she only got the annoying prick part right. Forgot the rest of the character there. Sazh is frickin' Frocobo and awesome so I don't need to say anything there. Snow gets a lot of hate but I kinda liked him. The whole HERO HERO HERO stuff was kind of annoying but whatever. Hope just fails at everything and is one of the worst characters ever. Vanille didn't annoy me and I felt the party needed another non-emo person so she's okay. Fang did stuff?
Battle system I really liked. First off, this was the best implementation of ATB yet. Though I never liked ATB much so whatever that says. Instead of filling up a bar to get a turn, you fill up a multi-tiered bar (starting from 2 and up to 6) to get actions. Each skill you have can take multiple bars, and you can queue them together, such as using Attack 3 times in a row, or Attack + Fira. Normally waiting until the bar is full and pulling off a full chain is most efficient, but sometimes you may really need to get that healing off so you can use Cure as soon as you get 1 bar. It adds more strategy compared to the basic ATB.
Second, there's the paradigm/class system. Each character has 3 main classes they can choose from (eventually getting the other 3 later), but can only be in one at a time. Each class has their own set of skills, passives, and extra bonuses. For example, the Commando class gets a large bonus to damage (+100% at class level 1) and also grants a smaller bonus to damage to all allies (+15% at class level 1 IIRC) and specializes in dealing direct damage. But you can change classes in battle at any time by doing a Paradigm Shift. A Paradigm is just a setup of classes for the party members, and a Paradigm Shift switches between them. If you're attacking you might be in a Commando/Ravager/Ravager Paradigm but if you get hit by a powerful attack you might go to a Sentinel/Medic/Medic Paradigm to get some healing. Or you might want buffs or debuffs and switch to paradigms for those.
Third, the chain system. Every attack in the game has a chain power which determines how much it increases the enemy's chain value. This chain value starts at 100% and acts as a multiplier to damage as well as some other things such as status accuracy. For example, a Commando's Attack command has a chain power of 0.5%, so it would increase the target's chain value by 0.5% (assuming no resistance of course). A Ravager's Fire spell, on the other hand, has a chain power of 10%. So while a team of three Commandos do more raw direct damage, they raise chain extremely slowly, so throwing in a Ravager to boost the chain will allow the Commandos to do more damage per hit. In addition to the chain power, each skill has a chain timer stat which increases the amount on the chain timer. If the chain timer hits 0, then the chain is reset to 0%, so you don't want that. Commando's Attack has a large chain timer increase at 3 seconds, while the Ravager's Fire only increases it by 0.1 seconds. So a party of three Ravagers would also be ineffective as the chain would reset too often.
In addition to that, each enemy has a stagger point. Once the chain reaches the stagger point, the enemy enters stagger status. This immediately increases the chain value by 100% and during stagger all attacks will interrupt the enemy, essentially making it impossible for them to attack unless you leave it alone. In addition, the target's chain resistance is set to 0 for the time, which makes it possible to jack up the chain value quickly (up to 999%). Stagger duration depends on the chain timer when the stagger point was hit, so it won't last forever.
The character customization system is a bit in the vein of FFX's sphere grid. Each character has their own grids, one for each class, and you spend points in them to gain stats and skills. These grids are pretty linear though. I never really cared for the non-linear parts of FFX's sphere grid anyway, especially since there's an obvious path that takes the least amount of points due to it costing points to go backwards (FF13 doesn't do that part thank goodness).
Also Blinded By Light is amazing.
Overall, FF13 was definitely one of the best games I played in 2010.
NIER (8/10) - Ah, NIER. One of the few games I actually bothered to replay twice immediately after finishing. Well okay it was only half the game and it gave incentive to but still, I wouldn't bother with that most of the time these days.
Plot: Holy crap a plot I actually cared about. You're this guy who has a sick daughter. You're trying to find a cure. But then halfway through she gets kidnapped so you have to go save her. Also, you're fucking BADASS.
That aside, I felt the game really did a good job of portraying the main character as a loving father. In fact, it did a good job with characters in general. All of the main characters (outside of Emil) were actually pretty cool. You get Nier the badass main character,
Weiss GRIMOIRE Weiss the wiseass book, and Kaine the vulgur sidekick (who actually has some interesting backstory... though you don't get much of that until the second playthrough). Oh and Emil's emo or something. But most of the goodness comes from the way they interact together. Generally while exploring whatever place the plot wants you to explore you'll get dialogue between the characters. This is all in real time so it doesn't disrupt you from stabbing those enemies, which is the way it should be. White Knight Chronicles did this too but Nier has a better cast so whatevs.
The game itself plays most like an ARPG with some danmaku mixed in. You get to use swords, spears, and... some other weapon type I never used for melee attacks. Each weapon type has a special move and a charge move. In addition to that you get several types of magic attacks, which are what I used for the most part. But both melee and magic are useful depending on the situation. And even sometimes different spells are more effective. Often times the enemies will rely on hitting you with projectiles, so you have to dodge those danmaku style to get in. Or you can block but that forces you to stay in place and eventually you can get guard broken too (though it takes awhile). It's actually pretty fun gameplay-wise. And I don't say that often for ARPGs.
The customization is pretty simple. You get "words" from enemies that you can attach to weapons, spells, and martial arts (though I never figured out exactly what that did...). These can range from simple things like boosting damage or defense to adding status effects. You can attach a word you've gain to any number of weapons, spells, or whatever. It's not really a complex or exciting system but it was implemented well.
Then there's the music. I'd have to say Nier is my favorite OST of all time right now. Several of the songs are definitely in the tops and I'd say all of them are at least "good". That's pretty impressive for only two discs worth of music.
Overall, this is definitely a game I'd recommend. It's just an interesting ARPG in many ways, even though the ideas are fairly simple. And it has a plot actually worth caring about and characters that don't fail. Play it.
Trinity Universe (6/10) - My second IF game. And not my favorite.
The plot:
Kanata is supposed to turn into the Demon God Gem to save the Netherverse from flying objects. He refuses because being a rock sucks so he becomes the Demon Dog King and runs away with his vassal Tsubaki. Then there are flying objects and Kanata and crew has to go inside to stop them from trainwrecking into the city (I'm pretty sure there was a train in there somewhere anyway).
Rizelea is a Valkyrie trying to figure out wtf is wrong with the Netherverse now. She tries to figure out why stuff is trying to trainwreck into other stuff. Since it's due to Kanata being doglike she tries to make him become gdlk.
Also crossover hijinks.
And awesome random game references.
And SRS FKN BSNS.
Yeah, the core plot's not that good but the dialogue is amusing because none of it is taken seriously at all. In fact, this is one of those games I enjoyed the wordy bits more than the gameplay bits. And not because the gameplay sucked (though it is mediocre). And almost all of the characters are fun. Even some of the NPCs (Macaroon's Happy Tutorial ftw).
The gameplay is similar to the Legaia series I suppose. The characters have three attacks: square (rush), X (mighty blow), and triangle (magic). Inputting these three attacks in certain combinations will do special attacks. For example: XXXXX will do a special attack, as will XXXXXXXX. The equipped weapon needs to allow the attack for it to work though. While the inputs for these attacks are the same, the attacks are actually different. Though they just differ in animation and damage/hit count so it's not a huge deal. Characters also have unique input sequences for some other attacks. Personally, I liked that most sequences were universal since it meant less memorization. Which is important, due to what I'm going to mention next.
Each attack takes AP, which you gain each turn and can be stored up to triple the base amount (which is recommended). The number of AP depends on the attack type and the character (so some characters might need less AP to use magic attacks, for example). Once the first attack is used, the AP will slowly drain over time as well, so you need to input the attacks quickly. Generally this means you should mash the next attack button. But if the attack is too quick you can't mash too much or you might input it twice instead of once and screw up your sequence horribly. It's not TOO hard to avoid but it's also too easy to actually do and really adds nothing to the game. It also means that unless you're really good at memorizing you better have your combos written out and follow them while you're attacking. Every turn. For the whole game. Yeah, the system is okay in theory but being in real time and forcing you to input it every time was just annoying.
What I did like about the game was the link system. On a character's turn, they can end their turn by linking to the next character's turn. Doing this can get you some bonuses to stats and it also carries over the hit count which increases damage (...I think) and SP gain rate for special attacks (which is actually pretty important). There's actually no downside to linking so it should be done every turn possible, even on those where you're not attacking so you can store up AP. I'm not entirely sure how good the stat boosts are but sometimes you can get healing or boosts to SP as well.
The SP special attacks are actually quite useful in this game (unlike Cross Edge). Since they only cost SP and no AP, they're essentially free damage. The damage isn't all that great (though definitely notable), but they tend to add a lot to the hit count, which increases your combo, which allows you to get more damage and SP. It's actually possible to fire off a special to start the combo, do your combo, and then get another special before you're done.
Customization takes the form of meteorites in this game. They don't show up until the end of Kanata's path but are early in Rizelea's. Each character has three rings that meteorites can be placed on. The meteorites themselves generally give a boost to stats, though some have other effects such as regen or elemental/status resistance. But their effectiveness depends on which ring they're put on. Putting a HP boosting meteorite on the inner ring might boost it by 2000, while putting it on the outer ring only gives 1000. So you have to choose which boosts you want the most. In addition, meteorites have colors and putting a specific set of colors on a ring gives another bonus (which doesn't depend on the ring). For example, four meteorites of the same color gives a bonus depending on the color, and there are some combinations that require mixed colors. The combinations are all documented in-game so you don't have to figure them out yourself, fortunately.
One thing to note about the gameplay is that it's all dungeon crawling. I know this doesn't appeal to many, but I feel it is good at trimming all the excess exploring that RPGs like to use to bloat their play time.
Overall, I somewhat enjoyed the game (enough to play both sides and the aftergame but I cheesed the hell out of it), but I wouldn't really recommend it for gameplay. I did quite enjoy the dialogue so I'd say it's worth it for that if you like wacky fourth wall breaking humor, but then again, that's not for everyone either.
Recettear: An Item Shop's Tale (6/10) - Another game I felt failed on its potential. It's strange since the game is kind of similar to Gust's "traditional" Atelier games in style, but does so much differently. For the worse, but I think I prefer it to an actual clone anyway.
The plot: Recette is lazy and then a fairy shows up and tells her her father has a huge debt and she has to pay it off. Clearly the best item is to
open an item store extort people for money while giving them cheap items so it's legal.
Yeah, nothing deep or complex but it doesn't try to be. It's mostly a character driven game anyway, though can't say I was a big fan of the characters so it didn't do a whole lot for me. Had its moments though.
The gameplay is split into two parts: dungeon crawling and
selling items robbing people "legally".
Dungeon crawling is pretty basic ARPG fare. You get to hire an adventurer and then control them fighting the enemies while Recette takes all the fat lutes. Each adventurer plays differently in basic attacks, special attacks, and even movement. Louie is average and boring with generic sword moves. Charme is fast and can dash to be even faster. Caillou is a slow mage with quick magic attacks that are BROKEN AS FUCK JESUS CHRIST WHAT. Elan has a two hit combo and can also dash. And finally Tielle is a ranged archer who can charge up arrows for more spread and damage. Caillou is easily the best BROKEN OMG and Tielle is pretty fun too. Whatever to the others. But I do admit they did a good job with making the characters different. The actual combat actually isn't engaging for the most part but the bosses can be fun. The only problem is that there are no save points before them so if you lose you have to travel through five floors of random dungeons to get back. Ugh.
Then there's the
item selling ALL YO YENZ part to pay off the debt. You line up some items on the counters (and later in a vending machine) and then open up the store. A number of people will come in and buy or sell items. There you set the price of the item (haggle) and the customer will either agree or disagree. If they disagree you can try a different price (or the same one...). Each customer has a different value they'll agree to and you have to figure it out on your own. And then write it down probably. Giving a price the customer accepts the first time will increase your combo and give you more EXP (exponentially increasing, so it's BIG). However if the customer does not accept, the chain is reset. There's also times where customers will ask for a type of item and if you don't have it that will break the chain. Or if you have it and they don't have enough money for the price you tell them that will break the chain. Or if that stupid troll comes in and tries to sell you something at 500% base price to rip you off and you don't accept it will break your chain. All of this is incredibly annoying since the only way to increase your merchant level later on is to chain chain chain and there's so much stupid shit that will break it just to piss you off. Or sometimes only like four people will come in so you can't even build a chain anyway. Ugh. I liked it outside of the retarded chain breaking bullshit but ugh ugh ugh. Ugh.
Yeah, I'm not really a big fan of the game. It tries to do some interesting things but ugh they implemented them pretty badly. And don't even get me started on the shoddy coding. Actually, I need to go into that.
Bug 1: The game splits your inventory into pages and remembers the cursor position for each page. Convenient! But if you remove all the items from a page (such as by putting the item up for selling), the cursors of later pages will be messed up because the game seems to remember them by page number and you just removed a page.
Bug 2: Teleporting enemies can teleport outside the walls and die. SERIOUSLY. You don't even get EXP for this.
Bug 3: The game displays the % of base price you are asing for when selling/buying items. Pretty handy since that's what the customer cares about (rather than raw price). Except the algorithm that calculates that is really horrible and is flat out wrong in some cases. I'm not even talking about simple rounding errors. I saw a 230% price (on the dot) show up as 227%. Consistantly for that item. Seriously.
Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland (8/10) - It's no secret I'm a fan of Atelier games. While I tend to prefer the more gameplay oriented ones such as the Mana Khemia series, the traditional ones are still fun enough.
The plot: Rorona's master Astrid is super lazy so no one comes into the Atelier for stuff. Jerks over in the castle want to demolish the Atelier so they can
pollute the air put up some factories. They give Astrid three years of assignments to prove that the Atelier should stay. Astrid gives Rorona three years of assignments to prove that the Atelier should stay because she's lazy.
Also Astrid is master troll of epic proportions.
GUST PLOT
Like the other traditional Atelier games (such as Atelier Annie), the focus is more on crafting items to finish the assignments rather than battle gameplay. The crafting is pretty simple: Put in items, get new item. The items you put in determine the quality and traits of the item you get out. Sometimes this is pretty important. You can also do quests for the town for money (and trust rating). You can do the same with characters which will raise their friendship level.
Battle system is also pretty simple, though more complex than Atelier Annie. Characters get up to 4 skills: 2 active that cost HP, and 2 passive. They can boost them with points gained from level ups. Non-Rorona characters have assist gauges that can be used for offense when Rorona attacks of to defend Rorona when she's being targetted. There are two elemental gauges that correspond to pairs of elements that raise when the element is used. Skills that are gained from equipped weapons generally require the element to be above a certain point to be used.
And all of this doesn't matter because Rorona can just throw items and OHKO everything.
Time for bug list! Because GUST CODING needs emphasis.
Bug 1: Evade bug. For multi-target attacks, as soon as one character evades the attack will not affect the other characters.
Bug 2: FLYING RORONA. Not sure how I got it but it was pretty hilarious.
Bug 3: Non-deteministic equip menus! If you try and equip something and cancel, then hit up or down to move to the next spot in the screen, the cursor will move to a random one instead. Also hitting L1 or R1 to go to a new character goes to a random character Okay maybe it's not random but hell if I know what's going on there.
Bug 4: Enemy defense stats don't do anything. Debuffs don't seem to do anything.
Bug 5: Game freezes often. Most commonly if you move to town and then to the Atelier too fast. Can also happen on the field after battle.
Bug 6: Sometimes a dummy item shows up in battle spoils. I never got that one myself.
Bug 7: When boosting skills, the new level won't change unless you leave the screen and come back.
Bug 8: Max HP increases seem to carry over the increased current HP after battle. Of course this resets the next time you go into battle.
Bug 9: If you pick up a green ? item on the field with your inventory full, the game will pick up the item but you won't get it.
There's probably more that I don't remember right now.
But seriously, the game's fun enough but really simple. One of those fluff RPGs. I probably give it a higher score than it deserves and may lower it down to 7 after thinking on it more but it's still fun.
Also
Falling, The Star Light is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard.
Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth (8/10) - Yay Ace Attorney! Like the other Ace Attorney games, I enjoyed it quite a bit, though I still did not like the investigation parts. Logic made them more interesting than normal at least. But as usual, the dialogue and "court" gameplay (though this time it's not in court but same idea) make up for it. Overall a fun game.
VVVVVV (10/10) - I'm usually not a huge platforming fan, but there are some styles I tend to like. VVVVVV was not really like them because it was actually original! Instead of jumping, you flip gravity, moving from floor to ceiling to get past obstacles. All the obstacles are set (if they move, it's in very predetermined patterns), which is one thing I definitely prefer in platformers. It's also extremely hard, but very forgiving. If you die you just respawn at the previous checkpoint, which is like once per room. Another thing that more platformers need to do.
Yeah, play it. Seriously.
Blazblue: Continuum Shift (6/10) - Eh, the game's fun enough, but I think it relies too much on combos (...like most fighting games). Playing against people is always good though.
Super Street Fighter IV (6/10) - I wish I could play this more to get a better feel of it but no one plays online and 1P fighting games are like the most boring things ever.
Pokemon HeartGold (?/10) - Starting the unfinished stuff. I like Pokemon and that's about all I have to say here.
Etrian Odyssey III: The Drowned City (?/10) - Almost done with this. Is awesome just like the other EO games. Subclassing was a cool addition and new classes shake things up a bit. Probably my favorite of the three so far.
Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey (?/10) - Need to get back to this some time. It's SMT meets EO and pretty solid at it so far. Not exactly top priority to finish at the moment but still.
Spectral Souls (?/10) - Meu!!! Decently fun SRPG, though of course lacks polish like all IF games.
Chaos Wars (?/10) - Meu!!! Actually pretty fun as well, though has its own share of issues. Best voice acting ever though.
And if you read all of this you have far too much time on your hands. Go play some games!
