Elfboy's 2012 Game Retrospectives

[Dark Holy Elf]

Same thing I've done for the last two years. In this thread, I take a look back at every new game I've played this year, from worst to best, and talk about what I liked and disliked about them. I'll try to post one of these every day or two, and discussion is always encouraged.

[Dark Holy Elf]

12. Lost Odyssey (Xbox 360, Microsoft/Mistwalker, 2008)

Last year, I called the spiritual predecessor of this game, Blue Dragon, the most disappointing game I had played that year (though certainly not the worst). It seems Mistwalker has a talent for this, because guess what? Lost Odyssey manages to be that for me in 2012!

Lost Odyssey is in many ways a promising RPG. Despite the fact that it is clearly designed in the same manner of the PSX Final Fantasy games, which are a relative low point in the series in my estimation, it manages to sidestep some of their problems. For one thing, its battle design is certainly not just mailed in; actual love went into individual randoms and boss battles clearly. The battles generally manage to have some teeth to them, and make good use of the game's unique battle mechanic, in which the back row is initially greatly protected from damage but this protection drops as the front row sustains damage. While the difficulty curve is a bit eccentric, overall there's little to complain about here, and it certainly represents the game's biggest improvement compared to the games it wants to emulate.

On the writing front, the game can report one stunning success, which is often cited as the reason to play the game: its dream sequences. These are essentially a collection of short stories detailing events from the past of the immortal protagonist, delivered entirely with text, music, and some simple artistic touches to the background. The simple presentation is very powerful and the quality of the language is top-notch, an unexpected gem in a video game. My only complaint about them is that while excellent, they seem divorced from the main game too often; they should serve as a powerful backstory, but with a few exceptions the game fails to make adequate connections between them and the present storyline.

The present storyline, sadly, is where the game goes very astray. In marked contrast to the dream sequences, the language and/or translation here is not good at all, and the narrative cohesion is weak. Scenes give little insight to the motivations of characters, who by and large come off as flat and uninteresting. Scene direction itself is, bizarrely for a modern game with a decent-sized budget, a total mess, with the characters' body language often being as awkward as the stilted dialogue.

The game's other flaws largely come from what I already alluded to: trying a bit too hard to be a PSX Final Fantasy game, and inheriting some of that era's problems. Large towns in which you're given little direction. Long animation times for almost every attack used by either side in battle. Extremely unfun, forced mini-games (the back-to-back collectathon during a funeral standing out as the worst) At times maddening dungeon design. And then to top it off, it introduces one new flaw of its very own, which feels like from a still further-departed era: massive stretches of gameplay without save points. These two flaws combine for some rather miserable experiences at points in the game.

The skill system also manages to be a bit of a mess. Half the PCs are completely fixed (so there's little fun to be had with them), while the other half can learn absolutely everything and become broken in a rather dull way. The innate unbalance doesn't overly bother me, as the "broken" PCs should be that way due to having centuries' extra experience, but it's still not much of a fun system at the end of the day.

In the end, Lost Odyssey has enough ingredients there that it could have been one of the strongest RPGs of the current generation, but misfires on enough key issues to just feel like wasted potential. Both the writing and gameplay have more than enough flaws to make unreserved praise a dream. The one plus side is there is one aspect of the game that merits said unreserved praise: its soundtrack, which is almost undoubtedly the strongest of any game I've played this year and just more evidence that Uematsu is one of the best in the business. But in the end, it will take more than a great soundtrack and a stellar set of short stories for me to recommend this game for general playing.

The good: Dream sequences, music, some core battle system ideas and battle design
The bad: Non-dream writing and scene direction, general sluggishness, two-hour dungeons with no save points
The ugly: Costume design. Queen Double-thong especially.

Rating: 4.5/10

[Dark Holy Elf]

11. Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360, Square Enix/Eidos, 2009)

This is probably something that deserves a separate rant at some point, but something I've noticed: when it comes to big-budget titles, Western games tend to emphasise what the player can do, while Japanese games tend to emphasise the how. This is a broad oversimplification and there are plenty of exceptions, of course, but Arkham Asylum pretty nicely highlights what I'm talking about here. And to spoil things, the "Western emphasis" is not something that appeals to me at all (and is why on this entire list, there is only one other Western game besides this one).

Arkham Asylum is a Batman game. It is an excellent Batman game. Everyone I've talked to who is a big fan of Batman who has played this game loves it, and it's easy to see why. The game frankly does a brilliant job of capturing the feel of Batman. The dark visuals and brooding music both feel like something out of a Batman movie. Batman fights in a way that fits the Dark Knight: overpowering brawling thugs hand-to-hand, and dealing with gunmen via a number of stealthy takedown tactics. A variety of gadgets, most notably Baterangs, can be used to aid Batman in both combat modes. It very much gives the player that he or she is playing as Batman. If that was the game's goal, and I rather suspect it was, it succeeded admirably.

The game's writing is also very faithful to its Batman source. The game plays like a Batman movie. Not an especially intelligent or thought-provoking one, but a faithful one, and one where some half a dozen Batman villains get to show up and play. The star of the show is without question Mark Hamill's Joker, who brightens every scene he's in (and there are a lot of those!). An honourable mention goes to Scarecrow the hallucinogenic scenes he brings to the game.

Where the game goes wrong, and why it ends up with a relatively low score from me, is that, in the end, it's just not much of a game. As I mentioned, the game nails "what" you can do, but the "how" is boring. Melee combat is largely brainless as you either mash the attack button or the button the game tells you to press (counter, stun, etc.). Stealthy gunmen takedowns tend to feel drawn out and a bit random as to whether you're spotted or not at times, and aren't precisely my idea of fun. Bosses are where the gameplay actually becomes worthwhile, especially when they mix in bosses and mooks to deal with at the same time; unfortunately, the game has two bosses total. And even at its best, the gameplay feels positively stifled compared to Devil May Cry and its spriritual successors.

Exploration and navigation aren't much fun either. It's like the design team realised that their combat would get stale and repetitive quickly so they threw a fair bit of walking and climbing into the game as padding. This is about as exciting as it sounds. Well, it does serve as an excuse for you to listen to the Joker's ramblings while doing something that takes up approximately one percent of your attention, so it's not all bad.

Ultimately I'm not sure what to make of the game. It got rave reviews from its target audience and who am I to argue with them? I think there's a place for this game and what it does well. It's just not the type of game I particularly want to play myself, and I can't help but feel a bit apprehensive that it's a direction more and more games will go.

The good: Nails the feel of Batman in almost every possible way, Joker is great
The bad: Dull gameplay and doesn't offer much to a Batman non-fan
The ugly: Joker's transformation. Fortunately such things are easily reversible apparently.

Rating: 5/10

[Shale]

I've always seen Arkham-series fistfights as a gameplay skip mechanism. Once you reach the point where it's Batman versus a bunch of thugs who don't have knives or guns, you've won the fight. Beating them up might as well happen via cutscene. The real meat of things is supposed to be exploring (which gets rough at times, especially late when you've got the run of the whole island and very little to actually do ), and Predator sequences. I love setting up elaborate remote-controlled takedowns in those, but if they're not your thing then the game doesn't have much else other than Hamill.

[Dark Holy Elf]

10. New Super Mario Bros. 2 (Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo, 2012)

In case you somehow didn't know by now, I'm a pretty big fan of Mario platformers, especially the 2D ones. The NES Mario games were, though not my first video games, certainly the first that made me truly love the medium, and every 2D Mario platformer I've played since has definitely impressed me, with two exceptions. One is the Japan-only Lost Levels, the game so bad they retconned another game to take its place. The other is this one.

That isn't to say that New Super Mario Bros. 2 is a bad game. It isn't, of course. The essential 2D Mario formula is still present, and still fun. It doesn't fundamentally screw up anything that it carried over from the previous games. Mario is still great fun to control with his running, jumping, and wall-jumping. The old standby powerups of the fire flower, racoon tail, and starman are still around to be played with. Star coins are still good fun to collect, calling for a mix of platforming skills and secret-hunting. As with its immediate predecessor, there's a bonus world with some tougher stages as a bit of an aftergame, which is fun to play through.

But the problem is that, reviewing the game in my head, there's basically no praise I can lavish on the game that would actually be unique to this particular game. It's a marked contrast to my thoughts on New Super Mario Bros. Wii, for instance. About the only truly new thing the game tries for is to add lots and lots of coins and put an extra incentive on gathering them, but I can't say this really grabbed me. Ultimately I cared about coins less in this game than I did in the very original, where they were at least useful for getting extra lives; extra lives were irrelevant in this game because the game showers you with them.

Ultimately it's a game that I can only recommend to those in its target audience. If you like 2D Mario games, the game is worth checking out for sure. If you aren't a big fan, though, there are better games in the series to play... almost any of them. I guess one point in the game's favour is that the target audience for 2D Mario is rather demonstrably huge, so I can't even fault Nintendo for designing the game the way they did. Still, it's disappointing. Would my time spent on this game have been better spent replaying another game in the series? I'm not certain.

The good: 2D Mario games are good
The bad: I can't say anything specific to this game in the above category
The ugly: Eight worlds again, the princess is kidnapped again, etc.

Rating: 5.5/10

[Dark Holy Elf]

9. Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem (Nintendo DS, Nintendo/Intelligent Systems, 2010)

While I wasn't a big fan of Shadow Dragon, this game's predecessor, I still enjoyed it enough to play it twice, which says what a big of this series I am. So I was very disappointed when it became increasingly clear this game would not be localised. I ended up playing the game with a fan-translated menu patch, which means I'm still a little unclear on the plot and can't say much about the writing.

That said, Fire Emblem games are things we play for gameplay anyway. As Shadow Dragon had some good ideas but was ultimately disappointing, New Mystery had a fair deal to fix. Overall, while quite similar to its predecessor, there are a few key things it improved on. First and foremost, Shadow Dragon's bizarre requirement of killing off your own characters to get optional content is gone. Map design is, if perhaps not as original, more polished overall, and there are fewer cases of Marth having to visit out-of-the-way villages which waste your time (though they still exist).

Otherwise it's mostly more Fire Emblem. It keeps most of Shadow Dragon's interesting points, such as reclassing, the forging system, the ability to skip enemy phase, and skip animations without needing a menu option ahead of time. It still has lots of difficulty modes, ranging from easy to brutally hard if that's your thing. In fact it has even more than Shadow Dragon, because of the introduction of a big new one: Casual mode, which makes permadeath a thing of the past. I have no interest in it personally, as Fire Emblem feels designed around permadeath to me, but I'm sure for some people this is a great option to have.

On the other hand, most of the reasons Shadow Dragon ended up the weakest Fire Emblem of the 21st century are still around to plague its sequel. The gameplay still feels simplistic, with neither of the battle positioning commands, shove and rescue, making an appearance. The game still doesn't feel worth caring about on a plot- or writing-front, although I can't judge for certain as I chose to read the game script for the original Mystery of the Emblem as this version did not have a translation at the time. There is no skill system and PCs tend to feel awfully similar to each other as such. The game's aesthetics are so-so, and in particular they feel like a step back from the GBA games, which there is no excuse for.

Beyond that, just like with New Super Mario Bros. 2, I am left with little to say about the game. It certainly differentiates itself from its precursors a bit, but ultimately it's more of the same. It has a full translation patch now, so if you like the series you should probably give it a spin. If not, it won't change your mind about much of anything, unless you think permadeath was the one thing holding the series back. Then you should either give this a try or wait for Awakening in a month's time, a game I'm hopeful will return this series to greatness after its diversion with a pair of passable remakes.

The good: Shadow Dragon's neat additions without the weird killing-off PCs thing
The bad: Still feels overly simplistic with a plot that is two decades old
The ugly: In this world, villains do not die when they are killed

Rating: 6/10

[Dark Holy Elf]

8. Final Fantasy XIII-2 (Xbox 360, Square Enix, 2012)

Ah, Final Fantasy XIII, possibly the most polarising game in a series full of polarising games. Last year I made no secret of the fact that it was a game that I was seriously impressed by as I named it my favourite game of 2011. Still, it was not without some notable flaws, and when I heard its sequel was going to be a similar game mechanically, I had high hopes that it would address those flaws. As it turned out, it addressed... a couple of them, and introduced a bunch more. Oh well.

FF13-2 carries on the original's clever battle system, in which rapidly switching between job sets mid-battle is crucial to victory. The same six roles make their return and, when the game makes an effort to, there are some really great battles involving quick thinking and proper application of various paradigms to overcome the enemy. I can think of many worse things to play than another take on this system.

Additionally, there are a couple notable additions to the battle system, things which most fans had called for. One is the ability to switch between leaders, allowing a greater level of management possibilities. The other is that the leader dying no longer leads to a game over; now, you must lose both human PCs before that happens. This makes things a bit easier, but not dramatically, and does cut down on some of the frustration.

While there's a fair bit wrong with the writing (more on that in a moment), there are some bright spots too. Serah's a pretty enjoyable character if not terribly deep, and the game does some pretty fine work with most of its endings, with special bonus points for how the game trolls you if you were thinking that somehow the "100% percent" ending would be all sunshine and rainbows.

Unfortunately, it feels like for every step forward the game makes, there are two steps back. Despite some welcome improvements, the battle system takes some fairly significant steps back. You only have two PCs to build instead of six, the crystarium becomes vaguely nonsensical with its stat boosts hidden, and two of the more interesting roles (synergist and saboteur) are greatly simplified. It may be intended to nerf the power of those roles, but it means you end up using just the main two offensive roles far more in randoms, which is bad. Speaking of randoms, they're much harder to avoid and control than before, removing the player choice there. The game introduces a monster system but anyone hoping for something at the level of pokemon will be disappointed; you can never control your monster, recruiting them is purely a matter of chance, and they're even more simplistic than the PCs possessing one limited role each. (You can switch between three monsters mid-combat, but this isn't really enough.)

But even more than the system changes, it's battle design which suffers. Where the original FFXIII featured battles which were well-balanced both in terms of their raw difficulty but in terms of difficulty of getting star rankings, the sequel's feel mailed in and all over the place. Some of this is a concession to the game's less linear nature, but it still feels like battle design received far less love. There are glimmers of the higher quality of balance seen in XIII, mostly in the final dungeon and final boss fights, but it's just not enough.

The game's decision to eschew linearity in favour of quests is mostly for the worse. The game periodically lacks direction and some of the "quests" are inane, including at least one forced one, in which you have to hunt down five pieces of ore scattered throughout different places in the game with little hints as to where they are. This is the type of oldschool RPG garbage that I thought we had moved past. I guess not.

And the writing is, apart from the points I mentioned, generally a mess. The game's time travel plot ends up completely nonsensical, and even moreso than XIII the game ends up purely character work on the writing front. And beyond Serah... the second playable character, Noel, is very boring, while the villain is largely a bit of a mess, with an extremely unsympathetic motivation. The other new characters largely fail to be memorable outside the ridiculously flamboyant bit character Chocolina. Some of the returning characters, namely Snow and Hope, manage to be decent, at least, but no more than that.

Overall, it's a decent game, and I certainly don't regret the time spent playing it. It's a sequel to a game I have a great admiration for and manages to recapture at least some of what made that game good, mostly by having more of the same battle system, slightly polished. It still ends up a bit disappointing, however, since a sequel to FFXIII could have gone in a much stronger direction.

The good: More FF13 combat, fixing a couple issues there
The bad: Weak battle design, plot is generally a mess, fetch quests
The ugly: The lack of humour shown by anyone who hates on "Crazy Chocobo"

Rating: 6/10

[SnowFire]

[superaielman]

Die, both of you. CHOCOLINA IS HELLSPAWN AND MUST BE STOPPED AT ALL COSTS

[Jo'ou Ranbu]

<superaielman> I am "secretly" Chocobolina.
<Grefter> Grefter.png

[Meeplelard]

So it's agreed, Chocolina needs to be in more games *nods*

[Dark Holy Elf]

I love you guys.

[Shale]

What in the actual fuck.

[Cmdr_King]

It's a time travelling chocobo who gained magical powers and became humanoid in order to stalk her companions, FFXIII's cast.

[Grefter]

I see they addressed all the issues I had with FF13 then.

[superaielman]

What in the actual fuck.

An obnoxious gimmick character who the game thinks makes for a cute distraction from the main 'plot'. \

[Captain K.]

This is the point where we ridicule Super for getting so worked up over a shop NPC.

[Shale]

It's a time travelling chocobo who gained magical powers and became humanoid in order to stalk her companions, FFXIII's cast.

*one trip to the Internet later*

Holy shit, you're not even exaggerating a little, are you.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Chocolina is Doctor Who.

Also, the best character in the entire FF franchise that's been introduced since FFX (discounting, perhaps, Head Editor).

[Dark Holy Elf]

7. The Legend of Hereoes: Trails in the Sky (PlayStation Portable, Falcom, 2011)

I played a fair number of JRPGs this year (as always), and to spoil things a little, they all turned out around the same place for me (except Lost Odyssey)... good games that could be better. Trails in the Sky fits in with that crowd nicely.

Let's start things off with the aspect of Trails which generally receives the most praise: its setting. Setting is generally a pretty low priority for me in games (and indeed, in stories in general); only a few are done well enough for me to really care. This game's is one. Trails in the Sky is set entirely in the country of Liberl; over the course of the game, the player will spend time in each area of the country, learning what makes it tick and the many kinds of people who live there. The game aims for somewhat lower stakes and is stronger for it; we get more time to see Liberl largely at peace and thus a good view of how it regularly functions as a society.

Beyond that, the general writing manages to be good if short of great. While there is relatively little overarching plot, the individual mysteries which characterise each chapter of the game are fun to get to the bottom of, and the two main characters, if not incredibly deep, are fun to watch and have an endearing and rather real relationship. The supporting cast has several decent entries too, despite a misfire or two, with Olivier stealing the show as perhaps the best-done version of the JRPG narcissist trope I've seen. Helping everything along is an excellent and crisply-written localisation. The game is very dialog-heavy but fortunately the writing quality keeps all the reading from feeling like a chore.

The gameplay is fairly decent too. It's a fairly straightforward RPG with some positioning elements, similar to Grandia or Lunar except that the grid is more explicit. There's an FFX-style turn gauge with some Xenosaga-style phase bonuses, and character setup feels akin to FF7's materia (called "orbments" in Trails), streamlined a bit (there are only six slots) and with more character differentiation, which are positive changes overall. It's easy to describe in terms of other more famous games because the game doesn't do much new or notable on this front, but it pulls off the elements it fuses together quite well.

Unfortunately, just like FFXIII-2, though, it gums things up when it comes to battle design... probably even moreso, in fact. Little thought seems to have gone into balancing enemy stats as enemies who struggle to do damage are not uncommon, and in general they erred on an easy game to the point where I don't recall anything ever that has a two-hit kill on the PCs (in a game where PC healing is very strong), not even the optional plot fight using his limit break. Randoms and fixed swarm fights end up more interesting than boss fights because at least they have numbers and a few do have decent designs, but there's little compelling here. Having Hard Mode that was unlocked for a first playthrough would have helped, though I'm not certain how much.

There are a few other gameplay and polish complaints I have, such as the orbment menu being a bit of a mess at telling you which orbments will yield which spells (and then placing the healing spells far down the menu for you to scroll time each time you need out-of-battle healing). The text speed is also a bit too slow (and can't be increased), and there's a lot of time spent walking around, talking, and advancing the plot... the latter of which I honestly don't begrudge the game much because it's part of the setting work, but these combine to make the game one hell of a chore to replay, and I doubt I ever shall (whereas the two-spots-lower New Mystery is a sure thing in that regard).

The writing, while generally good, isn't without its own flaws. The game is only the first part of a series, which is fine, but it doesn't do a very satisfying job of wrapping up its own plot, with the main villains' motives in particular being a mix of cryptically underexplained and mind controlled. I'm also not overly fond of the direction the series seemed intent on going at the end, as it didn't sync with the setting well. Ultimately this is probably more cause for me to leery of the sequels than it is a bad statement on Trails itself, however.

Trails in the Sky is a decent overall RPG which isn't really good enough at anything to be great (unless you're a bigger fan of setting work than I am) but still manages to be pretty all-around enjoyable. It leaves me with excitement for neither replays nor sequels, but is a game I look back on with a remarkable amount of fondness despite that.

The good: Setting work, quality of writing and localisation, decent gameplay
The bad: Weak battle design, somewhat sluggish pace
The ugly: Generic anime badasses, of which this game has a couple too many

Rating: 6.5/10

[Cmdr_King]

I miss the old DL sometimes.  It means I can't make Sage write these people.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Warning: A Memory of Light may slow these a bit. <.<

6. Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story (Nintendo DS, Nintendo, 2009)

I was not a big fan of the original Mario and Luigi, and I never bothered with its sequel after hearing that, according to most sources, it was even weaker. But after hearing that the third was an improvement, I figured it was worth finally giving the series another shot. And I'm glad I did.

Bowser's Inside Story is, first and foremost, a comedic RPG. It is very, very good at said comedy. Both Bowser himself and Fawful, the game's completely insane main villain, are absolutely great characters, stealing scene after scene. (The character with the third most lines, the sarcastic helper Chippy, is also surprisingly good.) The actual plot is pretty much completely crazy and proud of it, but it works well; the Mario world is already established as a strange place, so making a game about Mario and Luigi's adventures inside Bowser's body, helping him fight Fawful without his knowing, and unlocking all sorts of zany powers along the way (the most memorable being Giga Bowser, an image you should all be familiar with by now). The series of bizarre situations largely end up as an excuse to have more fun with the game's two most effective chracters.

The game manages to be briskly paced and not overstay its welcome. While gameplay isn't something I'd precisely recommend playing the game for, alternating between a simple 2-PC RPG and a simple solo RPG, the game manages to shake things up enough by switching between them, and the extensive use of mini-game like special attacks and timed hits and dodging for everything else keeps things fresh enough, all improvements on the first game. The game also manages to be just challenging enough to make you care about doing well in this aspect of the battle system, which again contributes to its ability to hold your attention long enough to get through the game.

Still, there are limits to how much I can praise a game when it lacks both serious plot and deep gameplay. Bowser's Inside Story is a fun diversion but I don't think I could ever call it a great game. Even its comic writing isn't perfect; it's held back a bit by Mario and Luigi's silent nature, and by how ineffective some of the bit characters are at maintaining the high level of comedy set by Bowser and Fawful. And it would have been nice to see a bit more complexity in the non-timing/mini-game aspects of the battle system.

That said, for what it is, the game succeeds admirably. It's not meant to be deep or redefine the RPG genre; it just wants to be a silly good time. And it succeeds at that. In the sometimes problematic history of Mario RPGs, this is the first I've personally played which I would consider a clear success at its goals.

The good: The deliciously crazy romp that is the misadventures of Bowser
The bad: Lack of any real gameplay depth, writing stumbles at points
The ugly: Bowser's food bills

Rating: 6.5/10

[Dark Holy Elf]

5. Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin (Nintendo DS, Konami, 2006)

I've played several very solid games in the Castlevania series over the past two years, and Portrait of Ruin, the only one I played in 2012, is another excellent entry in the series.

I've noted before that I'm a big fan of sidescrollers and other similar action/adventure games which offer multiple playable characters, and make it easy to switch between them (i.e. needing a separate playthrough doesn't count). Two of my favourite games in the genre, Super Mario Bros. 2 and Mega Man X8 are both fine examples of how this can be done, and I often wonder why there aren't more. So Portrait of Ruin serving up two characters which you can switch between certainly made me happy.

The balance between Jonathan and Charlotte isn't perfect (in particular, once Jonathan gains a particularly overpowered move which gives him rapid infinite flight I rarely switched away from him), it does manage to be quite good for a while with Jonathan providing faster attacks while Charlotte provides better crowd control and utility, so there's plenty of reason to switch between them and find which one works better. Perhaps more interesting, there's a second choice to be made, as you can decide whether your non-controlled PC appears on screen as computer-controlled help or not. The advantages of having a helper are obvious, and the disadvantage is that, if attacked, you lose MP/stamina which is crucial for your attacks, so you can find yourself helpless. This ends up an excellent design decision because losing MP, while potentially deadly, is not as frustrating as losing HP, so the player doesn't feel held hostage to the ally's poor ability to avoid enemy fire; MP regenerates quickly if you aren't in a heated battle. It's a great balance and a lot of fun.

Past that gameplay, and seems to fit in nicely with the series' general upward trend throughout the portable titles of the past decade. The hitstun is less brutal than in some previous games; otherwise the same ol' side-scrolling action remains solid enough. Enemy design isn't too exceptional outside a few boss fights, but the game's best boss fights are very good. In keeping with how your party works, the best are against two enemies at once, and this includes the final boss fight (the best such fight in the series, likely).

My complaints with the gameplay largely rest in the fact that while the best of the game's boss fights are truly excellent, there are also some forgettable ones mixed in there. Also, while having two playable characters is nice, each individually is not as much fun to control as Soma or Shanoa, as even the faster one is a bit on the sluggish side and their skillsets are limited. To be clear, this isn't something the game is terrible at, but it could be better.

Beyond that the game doesn't do much overtly wrong, but, as with so many games in the series, it feels like it only manages to be good rather than great. The combat is not exceptional, the exploration (insofar as I care about it at all) is not exceptional, the story and character work is rather minimal and, of course, unexceptional. It's good, certainly, an enjoyable romp of a game which I could certainly see myself playing and getting more into, but I can't help but feel something is missing. Maybe it's just how brilliant the game's best boss fights are... if the game could sustain that all the way through, it would be outstanding.

The potential is there, but it feels like a potential not quite realised. It would take the game's successor, Order of Ecclesia, to realise that.

The good: Two-PC system is excellent, a couple brilliant boss fights
The bad: Neither PC is exceptionally fun, some bland design elsewhere
The ugly: How most games' opening movies show characters doing things that don't do in-game (something this game averts!)

Rating: 7/10

[Meeplelard]

I see there's no mention of constant "Jonathan!!!" "Charlotte!!!" you keep hearing throughout the game.  This is a fraudelent PoR review as a result!  HOW CAN I TRULY KNOW YOU PLAYED THE GAME NOW!?

[Dark Holy Elf]

I also realised I forgot to mention that once again a significant part of the game is behind some FAQ-bait requirement, which is bad but by now so expected that it wasn't worth recalling apparently.