Let's Play Some Motherf*$&ing Games: 2010!!!!!!

[Shale]

Ninja Gaiden II: In chapter 8. I was prepared for ninjas with rocket launchers. I was not prepared for ninjas with GATLING rocket launchers. Oh god the pain.

Sonic Colors: Got! Picket it up in a two-for-one-and-a-half deal at Toys R Us with the new DKC. Got through the first zone and started on Sweet Mountain. Liking it a lot.

[Meeplelard]

Castle Crashers: In a land, far far away...well, actually, we can't prove that, but really why does that matter?  IF you try to answer that, you WILL be smacked upside the head by a sack of flour....

4 Knights were busy cleaning a cafeteria...so it seems.  Actually, no one could tell what they were doing.  They also all looked identical, except that they all had different colors.  These great 4 knights were...

Xeroma, the Blue Knight, whom is about as generic as one can be!  He has the element of Ice.
Tide, the Orange Knight, whom is the only person who has any clue what he's doing!  The element of Fire is his forte.  He also hails from the mystical land of Canada.
Meeple, the Red Knight, who has an affinity for shoving an axe to someone's head!  The element of Lightning is his specialty.
And Oblivion Knight, the Green Knight, who seems to like going under the alias of a diety, and proclaim himself God.  POISON is the name of his game!

Suddenly, admist this cleaning session, MONSTERS ATTACKED!  The great Knights donned their weapons and went forth to save the day...only to see the Macguffin get stolen right under their eyes, and 4 beautiful (?) lasses get stolen too.  This is the beginning of the story, ok?  Heroic failures are assumed, cause the heroes aren't heroes yet, and everyone else is stupidly incompetent...

The 4 knights went off and beat the crap out of everything in their way, until a giant tank-like Ram appeared!

"Do not stand in the red target!" shouted Tide of the Orange, just as Meeple the Red was doing that very thing and got slammed by a bomb.  "...of course, I say that as Meeple gets nearly killed" he follows up, and then says "By the way, jumping is a great way to do damage and you can stay aireborne if you hit things!"

"well, gee, that would have been nice to know earlier!" said Xeroma the Blue.

After defeating the tank, and many more minions, a MUCH LARGER MAN appeared, with the Red Princess tied up.  The 4 valiant knights fought and prevailed against their large useless foe, and then cut the Princess free.  However, there was but one problem in this mess...

THEY ALL WANTED HER!  So naturally, the four Knights squared off and ATTACKED EACH OTHER!  Oblivion Knight was quick to poison his opposition, and victory seemed his...until Meeple can flying at him, and sliced his head off.  MEeple being the victor of this bloodfest, had rights to the Red Princess!

"Bah, I want the Green One!  She's the minority!" shouted the Green one as he placed his head back on his shoulders.

Then a level up screen occurred!  Each had decided to choose different paths, and would follow this method of training the entire way.  To the Blue one, a Balanced Build, raising all stats evenly.  As the team leader (being the first player), it is fitting he would have a protagonist build!  To the Orange Knight, a tank Build...but with many strength boosts too.  He would be the one that would take our hits.  To the Red Knight, nothing but strength.  SMASH is the name of his game, and SMASH he would do.  To the Green one, a Magic build, and he would refuse to use anything but that for the rest of the game!

During a shopping trip to restock on supplies...
"Oh, right, we all have Bows and Arrows, which can be swapped to be used instead of Potions!" said the Tide the Knowledge-able.
The 3 other Knights all stood glaring at the Orange one, angered as such an aspect of advice would have been handy earlier.  Alas, given the Speed Based nature, no one would ever gain a decent usage of the Bow.

In the forest the team went.  As they ventured forth, many of the creatures seemed to have fear of something, evident by the fluids released from their bodies.  As they crossed a large animal behind a bush...
"Say, does a bear shit in the woods?" said the Green one, only for a large disgusting sound to be heard "...I guess that answers that."  As the team marched forward, a large black fuzzy monster appeared, but it was dispatched.  The quartet cleaned their weapons and entered the shed...

...only to learn the monster in question was not that one, but an EVEN BIGGER large furry monster!  Alas, the team could not fight back, so jumping upon 4 deer, the one boarded by Tide the Knowledge-able fueled by feces rocket power, SET FORTH TO RUN FROM THE VILE BEAST!

"Battletoads Reference...Meeple no like.  MEEPLE SMASH!" said the Red one, as he flattened himself on the wall, knocking himself out from the race.  Shortly after, Xeroma the Heroic met a similar fate, only for Tide the Knowledge-able and Oblivion Knight the Flatuent prevailed.  Somehow, their success has brought back unto existence Meeple the Explosive and Xeroma the Heroic, only long enough for the entire team to fall down a waterfall, into a raging river.

Upon the river, the 4 Knights tried to make due jumping on logs, debris, sharks, alligators and corpses, fighting off whatever crazed enemy swarm they could make.  After a long and grueling battle against the forces of Mookness, a large ship appeared...

Their lord, the King, had followed them, to aid them!  It appears there was some luck i the midst...or so they thought, as right after, a Felince burst out of the water...one with fins and scales.

"Meeple see kitty...but kitties no like water or have fins.  Meeple confused..."
"Aha! The Boss Catfish has arrived!" so the intellectual one
"Yes, a 'Cat'fish..." responded the azure protagonist.
"AWESOME! I want one!" said the Green one, as he charged in, Poison Magic in hand, and fired!

...a 1 appeared.

"Meeple think that weak! MEEPLE SMASH LARGE KITTY!" as he did the same effect.
"Guys, we need to form a plan..." the Canadian one said.
"Hey, King, why don't you fire your cannon at that...monstrosities...teeth?" said the would-be Main Character.
"Huh? Me?  You mean I'm suppose to do something...well, I guess if he coughs up a hairball..." his highness stated...just as an aquatic hairball was formed "...ok, FIRING THE CANNON!"

With the cannon ball fired, the Feline's mouth opened, the team attacked with full force!  Upon several vollies later, and the...thing...ramming into the ship several times over, our 4 heroes were victorious!

As they wandered off, what new perils await them?  What new evil demons will the 4 have to face?  And will the idea of focusing entirely in POISON MAGIC turn out to be a good idea?  Stay tuned for the next episode of CASTLE CRASHERS: DL STYLE!

[Tide]

Meeple: *thumbs up* WRITE MOAR NAO. Haven't even gotten to the more awesome parts!

X-Men Legends 2: Inside some giant cathedral thing. Team is Nightcrawler, Wolverine, Gambit and of course, WELCOME TO DIE. They seemed like the best 4 characters off hand, although upon further reading, Juggernaut is pretty good. Magneto and Nightcrawler most likely have no equal though. Thoughts...

Nightcrawler - X Men Legends has this glitch, where if you don't invest a point into Teleport Attack, the stronger version, Teleport Frenzy, costs no Energy. To make things more dumb, Frenzy is a move that makes Nightcrawler invincible until he attacks. And each time he attacks he can also stun enemies. Oh and its GT. It's basically so dumb that Nightcrawler can probably beat the game by himself. You might be thinking, well since its a pretty obscure glitch, you can't take advantage it. Not true, since XML2 adds the feature of being able to redistribute your skills. So, if you just found out about this gimmick, GUESS WHAT YOU CAN DO. He wasn't bad before learning this move either. Quite possible Game MVP

Magneto - One of the best party members because he combines Might, Flight, Bridge building, and some good team skills together. He's actually one of the more *tanky* PCs, although this requires you to dump points into his passives. Magneto basically has a bunch of good skills, but never enough points to buy it all. DL-wise, this would make him outright nasty. He has a buff that blocks all damage 69% of the time when maxed, and he can reflect projectiles and reduce the damage from melee attacks.

Wolverine - A solid tank and good character for the first half anyway. He's got plenty of damage, and he's pretty resilient on the receiving end. In most of these ARPG games, Wolverine has the same weakness - lack of solid crowd control. Not in this one! So he's pretty damn good. DL wise, he's an ID whore. He has a skill which lets him ID enemies around 80% of the time when maxed.

Gambit - Very solid in-game as you can build him one of two ways. A melee character or a ranged supporter. So he can be easily shoehorned as a 4th if needed. His main weakness is that someone else will be better than him at his task. He's great otherwise though, but a bit energy intensive.

Sin & Punishment 2 - Got to Stage 6. If the game wasn't already over the top, Stage 5 will change that opinion. It is FANTASTIC.

[Niu]

SO3- Everyone give Dhyer cookies, he has achieved the impossible. After severe testing on Lucy at Dhyer's place, he successfully raised my Lucy respect!!

Perfect Symmetry actually has a improved invinci frame in the English version!! It is actually hard to knock out now!! It took me like 20 tries of Vertical Air Raid to figure out how to knock Lucy out of it and the only move I can constantly knock Lucy out with is Crescent Locus. Lies!! Lies!! Lucy can reliably kill people with Perfect Symmetry now!!
Oddly, Insanity Prelude who is hard as fuck to interrupt in the Japanese version become fairly easy to do, but then, who needs that when Perfect Symmetry becomes reliable now. Only if it can become faster, Maria can still outrun it, and the hit and way strategy still work. Still didn't see him beats fat or evasive characters, but at least I think he is a high heavy now!!! And most of all, he can kill Ghaleon now!!

[Rozalia]

GT5 - Did the epic final battle verses the Pagini Zonda and its 10 goons in my Acura DN-X Concept. My car has a power level of around 540 while Zonda boasts a heavy 780 but it didn't matter as I beat it in all the races through greater handling, some off roading and some cheating on the side as in the second map I smashed into the Zonda's side and while I ended up stright he wasn't so lucky shall we say.

The reward was the Veyron the FASTEST CAR IN THE UNIVERSE! Well okay maybe not but its still damn fast as hell and screw handling when you have all that speed to compensate. Now all thats left is to beat that bastard Go karter and his huge Karting skills. I have so far been uncapable to defeat him in the final event but I will win with time. No superboss will be beating me.

[superaielman]

Rival Schools: Surprisingly fun for a PSX fighting game with zero polish.

SoulSilver- Three badges gotten. Steelix takes 1 damage from something that OHKOed Snorlax. Steelix buffed defense is silly.

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

Snorlax defense actually isn't very good. But your point stands.

[Captain K.]

I'm guessing it was a Rock or Poison-type attack, since Steelix takes 1/4 damage from those.  EDIT:  immune to Poison, I'm stupid.

Also yay to Shale for Rival Schools.  That game is awesome.  Pity my copy got stolen.

================

And now in big news, I got an Xbox 360.  Was going to need a new system for MvC3, so went ahead and bit the bullet.  Got the 250GB version, so I'm extra poor now.

Have the following games:  Halo ODST, Dead Rising, Blazblue (CT, not CS), Star Ocean 4, Orange Box, Super Street Fighter 4, and Mirror's Edge.

Gamertag is shibakevin if anyone wants to add me.

[DomaDragoon]

Left 4 Dead 2 PC - Gives me Blue Screen of Death. 

VVVVVV - Beat. Got 14 shiny things, 463 deaths, most in The Final Challenge.

[Tide]

My guess is Super got hit by a fully powered up ROLLOUT from Miltank.

[superaielman]

That would be correct, Tide.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Have the following games:  Halo ODST, Dead Rising, Blazblue (CT, not CS), Star Ocean 4, Orange Box, Super Street Fighter 4, and Mirror's Edge.

Start with SO4 to get the disappointment out of the way.

To give you an idea of how disappointing it is... I liked it, but even -I'm- warning you.

[Yoshiken]

FE9: Got me a Mia! Also lost me a Shinon and a Gatrie. I've been putting off this stage now, methinks, since this was always the first one that destroyed me every time I tried a new challenge. First play through? Yeah, took a few attempts. Keep everyone alive? Not happening. I'm wondering what Hard Mode has in store to rape me completely. In the meantime...

Suikoden V: Finally got back to this one! I've been randomly going to Oboro for some character backgrounds - Suiko characters seem so much better with just 3 little summaries of character, which says a lot about Suiko characterisation, doesn't it? >.> In other news, I got me a Galleon, Cathari, Hazuki and..  some others. (Naturally, using a guide.) Oh, got Killey too. Just reached the Dwarven Mines again (on my way to recruit a Dragon Cavalry), so I'm assuming I get to recruit Gunde soon.

[Captain K.]

Start with SO4 to get the disappointment out of the way.

To give you an idea of how disappointing it is... I liked it, but even -I'm- warning you.

I'll probably still like it, I <3 tri-Ace that much.  Would have bought Infinite Undiscovery also, but Gamestop was missing one of the discs for it.

New game time!

SSF4:  Is sexy.  Figured I'd beat the game with 1+ characters per day just to get a feel for everything.  Done Honda, Juri, Ryu so far.  Why isn't Cammy the final boss?  Her A.I. is crazy good, much better than Seth's.

Blazblue:  What is this I don't even...  Yeah, this game is weird, both in story and gameplay.  I'll probably shelve it until I wear out SSF4.  It's too different and I don't want to learn two fighters at once.

Dead Rising:  Well this is disappointing.  Based on Frank's appearance in Tatsunoko vs Capcom, I assumed this was a "kill zombies in a variety of wacky manners" game.  Turns out it's a srs bsns "solve zombie mystery before time runs out" game like Resident Evil.  Not that those are bad, but not what I was expecting.

Halo ODST:  Campaign sucks, but who plays Halo for campaign?  It's all about the multiplayer, and my kid and I are having fun blowing each other up in amusing fashion.

Team Fortress 2:  More multiplayer shootiness.  Am I mistaken or is there no offline mode?  Anyhoo, I'm not very good at these games so I mostly just die a lot.  Only tried Scout so far.

Half Life 2:  Is very Portal-y.  Although I guess this game is older, so Portal is very Half Life-y.

[AAA]

TF2 has an offline mode in the sense there's a 1 player practice thing which goes over some basics of the Soldier class(which I would suggest if you're new, it's fairly easy to pick up but extremely powerful), and also the attack/defend gameplay mode on Dustbowl. You could also I guess make your own server and fill it up with bots I guess, but unless you have a top of the line computer that's probably not an option.

If you want another suggestion, Medic is straightforward and always appreciated by other teammates. Heavy is arguably overpowered now and extremely simple.

[Xeroma]

Trips, he's playing the 360 port. You know, the one that never got any updates :/ Meaning it lacks 1P training mode/tutorial mode.

[AAA]

Oh. Well in that case learn Demoman and laugh as everything dies to you all the time, what with your undestroyable stickies that can't be airblasted and pipes that do full damage even if you're halfway across the map.

[Tide]

Sin & Punishment 2: Did some practice scoring runs. Uploading to youtube as a sort of Let's Play. But I skip cutscenes, so maybe not. Still, give them a watch if you're curious about the game.

XML2 - Up to New York City with SENTINELS. Subbed in Storm for Gambit, who has an Extreme move that gives everyone invulnerability to protect an AI Guest. This would be pretty stupid if it ran off energy.

Donkey Kong Country Returns: Only playing this with Sis. We got up to mine cart area level and lost at least 50 lives. Fun times were had.

[Pyro]

Capn' K, if you're looking for RPGs on the 360, I highly recommend Tales of Vesperia and Blue Dragon. Both should be relatively cheap by now, and both are rather good.

[DomaDragoon]

New game time!

For Dead Rising, you can ignore the story if you want and just go around killing zombies.

For TF2, if you select the developer's commentary options, you can go around three of the maps to learn the layout. For a beginner, I'd suggest either Demoman (Trips is right with the pipebombs) or Soldier (closest to standard FPS playing).

[Yoshiken]

Suikoden 5: Complete! For a game I put off for so long, I ended up really enjoying the second half of it. Final party was Freyjadour/Lyon/Miakis/Bernadette/Zerase/Cathari, although I did use Georg, Kyle, Jeane and Shoon for a fair bit. Got the 'true' ending (going back to the castle, all 108 stars). Having one-rounded Dolph and Sialeeds in the earlier fights, I tried underlevelling myself again - seems I managed to get back to average by the end, since I didn't completely destroy Sialeeds2/Alenia/Zahhak and the final bosses were actually pretty problematic (although not enough for me to lose, apparently.)
Have to say, the final few War Battles were disappointing. Those basically came down to "Spam Flowing/Recover, win", which wouldn't've been so bad if the enemies did a little more damage - that said, I think those were unbalanced on the whole, what with some enemy units being perfectly capable of OHKOing some allied units.
Anyways, going into this expecting the normal SuikoFAQbait, it was still kinda dull for the first half, but really picked up later in the game. Story kept going much longer than I was expecting, but didn't drag on for so long that I started to expect it, which is good.

Anyways, back to FE9 now, I guess...

[Cmdr_King]

Atelier Iris- PLAYED.  So I've been wanting to play it on and off since this summer, and haven't had much success at finishing games I've already started, soooo I just played AI1.  Anyway, being a TV Tropes fanatic, I'd heard speculation that AI1 switched gears mid-development in a big way, and honestly playing the game I felt like I could see the welds where they cobbled the original design (which might be called Atelier Veola) into a more traditional, battle-centric RPG.  That said, fun.  Lacks in polish, but has the core Atelier stuff in abundance, and the battle system is entertaining enough (although given how few dungeons, and therefore new sets of enemies, there are it tends to streak.  You get stronger very slowly, so you'll basically be playing along then suddenly things can hurt you.)  The game did feel needlessly stingy with items at times, but otherwise I have few complaints.

Not going to go too deep into the cast, Klein is kinda Generic McHeroguy, Lita is one of those sources of "obvious spotwelds" I mentioned, and the rest of the cast is minor and doesn't pretend not to be.  Beggur has the seeds of several different brands of ham, which is great and makes up for the main villain (such as the game has a villain or main plot) being such a tool.  Actually it's kinda funny, the actual plot is basically 80% "we need to save Lita!... oh wow we have no idea what we're doing", with about 10% for intro and 10% for "quick, end the game before we fuck it up!".  It kinda works though.
So yeah, basically the game is actually about Veola, who has a nice character arc and is remarkably believable for a Gust female.  Or at least a Gust female in a non-Atelier-heroine role.  Then again, see above.  That she plays next to no role in the endgame is kinda disheartening, but I guess they didn't want to have multiple variable scenes.

And now, and for the first time in ages it's both possible and interesting, DL notes!

Klein- So I have no idea what the heck Eph was testing on, because my item damage was way lower than his.  On the other hand, all my damage was lower in about the same proportion.  So basically, what I'm saying here is that Klein's got the damage.  It's kinda funny since in-game he's more likely a healbot, but that's more to do with non-alchemy items being kinda meh.  Probably still some sort of heavy, despite the everything-you-could-want skillset; even with his well rounded Veola accessories, his speed's never going to be good and his defense is pretty bad.

Lita- Man, the game just does not want you to use her.  *ahem*  Anyways, entirely focused on speed.  The complete lack of utility is too bad, although I'll admit I never check out her last skill.  It might push her up a bit considering First Attack.  Gut says lackluster Middle though.

Delsus- So, I'm not sure what the heck I gave him that did it, but all his attacks loved to add Sleep.  Maybe Paw Gloves?  I dunno.  Anyway, assuming that was from some non-innate talent, he's a lot worse in the DL than in-game.  Feint Attack is pretty great, but not so helpful in a one on one at DL speeds.  Dark Shot could help some, but I'm not sure; AI1 status doesn't have very good duration, although the actual affect of the statuses is pretty good.  Counter might help, but not a whole lot.  Probably a solid Light, at a guess.

Norn- I totally didn't use Norn at all.  She's fast!  And... fast!  Unlike Lita, the damage doesn't really add up very well, and while her defensive skill covers the durability against elements, the defense is not really salvageable, especially without HP boosting.  Even without trying out Turn 2 Candy, I've played too many other Atelier games to respect that as some sort of death strike.  Light, probably Flonne-level.

Arlin- Reminds me of Flay, as a dueller.  Blocking, damage, a quick and effective buff, good stuff.  Reflects in-game well, he really does the lion's share of the damage while Klein's healing everyone constantly because you have to wait a long, long time for Heal Bulbs.  Middle, not a bad one.

Marietta- So you'd think she'd be good.  Guts and Healing!  Well, no.  Guts just isn't reliable enough to get DL credit, and while she's got the defense to pull off Healing, her speed makes it pretty easy to lock her down.  Damage isn't great, although she can get away with just using her base physical at least, saving all her SP for heals.  Light.

Veola- spamming Globes and Milk Scopes lets her rival Klein for damage, and she has at least some healing, but it's not nearly as potent and she's even frailer.  I still kneejerk Middle though.

Anyway, probably an 8/10.  Very engaging despite the nitpicky flaws.

[Excal]

DQIX - In the time since I last posted here I played, and beat this.

Generally a good game which felt, well, like it was just short of DQVIII on pretty much every mark.  This isn't much of an insult since I have a high opinion of DQVIII, and the job system is different enough to avoid the direct comparison that would have killed it.  Aftergame was dissapointing, seeming like it'd have something vaguely Lunar 2 like, since there were parts of the map I hadn't even reached yet.  But when it became clear that there was nothing but aimless questing/treasure hunting, I returned the game and called it quits.

Final Party was like so.  First class was for penultimate dungeon, second for final boss

Idris, Sword focused Armamentalist Lv 33/Warrior Lv 31, used Falcon Slash a lot
Titania Gladiator Lv 39, Helm Splitter all the way, also skilled with Lances.
Caleb Paladin Lv 33/Priest Lv 35, healing and support mostly.
Anna Priest Lv 36/Sage Lv 29, Omniheal, Omniheal, Omniheal.

Story was alright for what it was, just horribly short and showing the DQ series bad habit of having each area have its own separate plot that doesn't interact with anything else and which gives you a shiny when you deal with the local issues.  Props to the game for giving some slight sequence breaking in the Fygg gathering section.  But the main plot itself is very short, with a complete stall in the middle and no real explaination of how the villain a) became threatening, or b) how your solution to other issues left you able to still compete.  I assume the world has a very flat power curve.  The real issue here is that unlike DQVIII which had a fairly engaging core party, here you have a party of generics, and only one person trying to make up the slack.  And while Stella was less amusing than Trode, this feels like a disservice to Stella because Trode was helped a lot by having Yangus, Angelo and Jessica to play off of, and even Charmles for the time he's around (no NPC manages to live up to Charmles standard).

To make up for this, the gameplay is aided by the class system, which works fairly well and helps spice up combat.  Mixing and matching traits was nice as well.  Some weapons unfortunately felt like they got shafted having very few classes with access to them.  Granted, Gladiator was a nice class to be in regardless, but Axes still felt like a weaker choice in general to swords because half the freaking classes can use swords, while only two can use axes, and one of those didn't feel that strong.  That said, with the class system and polished skill system, the gameplay is the strongest I've seen in a DQ yet.

Which is good since the synthesis felt like a very clear step down.  Needing more materials was only part of it as the thing that got to me most was it being tied to one part of the world instead of being in the menu.  This made it far less convenient to do as the Quester's Rest just wasn't someplace I went very often by midgame as there'd almost always be a closer inn and the prices are all trivial.

All in all, likely a 7/10 game.

Other things I'm playing, still puttering along in SRW@1.

Just reached map 45, and am about to have access to the YF-19, so happy days.  I'm amused that there seems to be something going on with Isamu and Noriko, though my skills at deciphering the moon runes are nowhere near good enough to figure out what.  Nu Gundam is currently also a credit to the team, and there hasn't been much of the way of changes to the team.  Just picked up a Huckbein MkIII, which proved to be nice to have on its maiden run.  Though having +40 Morale on everyone else will tend to do that.  The Valkyries are also impressing me, since I'm kinda shocked that their @G form is actually nerfed.  At least here it seems to matter more what form you're in with Gerwalk making your evade suck, which seems a fair trade.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Capn' K, if you're looking for RPGs on the 360, I highly recommend Tales of Vesperia and Blue Dragon. Both should be relatively cheap by now, and both are rather good.

SO4 is barely a tri-Ace game at all. No choice in party members, your item creation is totally handcuffed (moreso than even VP2) and there's only one goddamn ending. The only part they got right was having a bunch of characters I dont care about... but they forgot to get the 2-3 I did.

[jsh357]

Wow, I agree with Excal's DQIX summary almost word for word.

I have been playing FFXIII for the last two months, and am staring at the end game now (barely done any side content up to this point).  I was not expecting to like this game since I have hated every new Final Fantasy game released after 10, but it might just end up being one of my favorites--or maybe #5 in the series for me--despite the story being so absurdly silly and me feeling no reasonable justification to save Cocoon.  It is a refreshingly challenging RPG.  I have heard some people say it's easy, and I kind of wonder how they arrived at that conclusion, as I have been dying on a regular basis.  Anyway, since I wasn't expecting to like it I'm pretty impressed.  Some neat little throwbacks to old games were icing on the cake (like that one area named after the empire in FF2).

I finished Professor Layton and the Mysterious Village the other day.  As with all puzzle games, the total lack of replay value kind of ruins it for me, but it was pleasant enough.   Story was lacking depth, as the only real interesting character is Layton himself, and he seems to just be an observer, which I doubt will ever change.  I'd play the sequel, though.

After finishing Layton I started up Golden Sun 3, and OH MY GOD STOP TALKING, PLEASE.  I mean, this was a problem in GS1 and 2, but I never expected them to make it EVEN WORSE.  One summary of GS1 and 2 was fine.  I didn't need (counting) four of them.  They should have just made the training area the only summary, as it was the coolest so far.  Overall, this game so far feels like a gigantic rehash, and that's sort of disturbing because I really liked how GS2 became a big, open-ended huntathon whereas GS1 was linear and expected something radically different again.  le sigh.