Ryu’s Nibbles – Lightning Returns, Danganronpa, Toukiden
This is a new thing I’ll be doing from now on for games I’ve bought or pre-ordered. these will be first impressions based on a few hours of play rather than reviews based on when I’m either close to the end or finished the game. There will be no comments on the story in these posts, I’ll save those for my full reviews. Here I’ll be going more for ‘impressions’ and how the mechanics work so far.
Final Fantasy XIII-3 – Lightning Returns
ASIN (Amazon): B009E09FKS
Language: English/Japanese
Publisher: Square Enix
Format: PS3/XBox 360
Type: Game
Genre: Supernatural, Action J-RPGSynopsis:
Take control of Lightning in an expansive and eve moving world as she fights to save a world doomed by complete devastation.
Fight in exhilarating battles with a more direct battle system and explore the world that Lightning inhabits. With increased freedom and character customisation Lightning Returns Final Fantasy XIII, gives the player unique opportunities as you use your time wisely as the final days of a doomed land close in.
How will you spend your finals days?
Lightning under your control: Lightning will be the playable character – with a highly evolved range of techniques for battles and exploring the environment. Customise Lightning with a large range of different outfits and weapons, that affect not only the way she looks, but also her actions and abilities.
Action-oriented combat: A new battle system gives a level of direct control over the action unlike any Final Fantasy game, while having iconic elements that are known and loved throughout the series too.
A constantly moving, beautiful world: Stunning artistic direction depicts a doomed world filled with choice and diversity. Living, expansive environments featuring a rising and setting sun provide unique experiences for every player.
Use your time well: A world on a course for total annihilation presents unique challenges where certain areas, missions, and people will only be available during selected periods. How will you use your remaining time?
A connected experience: Stay connected to Final Fantasy and its characters, with unique features that link the in-game world to the real world.
I’m still relatively early in the game, only about 4hours in at the moment. however i have to admit I’m enjoying myself so far. I have to admit i was concerned about only having the one character in the party, I’m so used to having three. Yet the way you swap outfits is done really well, so you essentially get the three party members. The combat system is a bit meh, but it does grew on me over time.
Graphically the game is astounding, the cut scenes are awesome and essentially movies, which is great. Yet i have to admit the money spent on making it graphically superb might have been better used on optimising the game. The load times from the disk can take anywhere from 2-4 minutes which is ridicules. Thankfully you can install the game to the HDD which cuts the load times down to around a minute, mostly around thirty seconds. For those with 12GB HDD though your going to be SOL as the game uses 5GB of space, and needs another 4.5GB for the Japanese voice packs. Have to admit i like the way they’re going with this release, no story DLC, just costumes, but those are stupidly expensive, as in £3.99 a set.
So to conclude, at the moment i like this game. I don’t regret pre-ordering it.
Final thing to note, the Japanese voice pack is free for the first 2 weeks of launch, then it goes up to a paid price, which i expect to be around the £3.99-£5.99 range which is way over-priced IMO.
Toukiden – Age of Demons (Vita)
ASIN (Amazon): B00H2AFM2W
Language: English/Japanese
Publisher: Tecmo Koei
Format: Vita
Type: Game
Genre: Supernatural, Action J-RPGSynopsis:
Slay dangerous Oni in this brand new game from Tecmo Koei’s Omega Force.Toukiden The Age Of Demons Game PS Vita takes Tecmo Koei’s expertise in historically themed games to an expansive fantasy world influenced by historical and traditional Japanese elements.
Developed by the team that created Dynasty Warriors, this new franchise casts players in the role of the demon-fighting warrior, known as a Slayer. Starting from the Utakata Village headquarters where they will accept quests, players will venture out to battle monstrous and deadly Oni (demons) before they destroy all of humanity. Players can select party members from a supporting cast of characters, or join together with up to three other players through ad-hoc mode.
Hunt for Adventure: Action adventure gameplay with a hunting theme and fantasy-themed historical Japanese setting
Choose your Weapon: Take on monsters with a sword, bow, Kusari-gama, or other weapons.• Customize your Character: Select from a variety of features to create a unique Slayer.
Slay in a Pack: Up to 4 players can play together in Infrastructure Mode or through ad-hoc multiplayer gameplay.
Build your own Party: Select party members from a supporting cast of characters-or team up with friends for multiplayer sessions.
Slash! Pierce! Destroy!: Skillfully defeat monstrous and powerful Oni using the Targeted Destruction System to protect the human race from annihilation.
When i first started playing this game i really loved it, it’s a hybrid of Monster Hunter and Soul Sacrifice and it works really well. Everything that was in Soul Sacrifice, mechanically, is in here. Graphically it’s a slick locking game, which plays really well, in the few hours I’ve played the game i haven’t found one thing to complain about, graphically and mechanically.
The one thing i will complain about is the way it handles tutorials. There’s some things that have great explanations, but then others, which are really important, are just ignored. This makes gameplay rather difficult at times as you’re left fumbling around in the dark.
If you liked Soul Sacrifice then you’ll (i think) love this game. However i have concerns about how long it’s appeal is going to last. I find the concerns over the in game help and guidance growing more and more pronounced.
After these few hours I’m not really sure anymore whether i rate the game as highly as I did when played the demo a week ago.
Danganronpa – Trigger Happy Havoc
ASIN (Amazon): B00GD1ESMQ
Language: English/Japanese
Publisher: Tecmo Koei
Format: Vita
Type: Game
Genre: Supernatural, Action J-RPGSynopsis:
Hope’s Peak Academy is home to Japan’s best and brightest high school students-the beacons of hope for the future. But that hope suddenly dies when Makoto Naegi and his classmates find themselves imprisoned in the school, cut off from the outside world and subject to the whims of a strange, murderous little bear named Monokuma. He pits the students against each other, promising freedom to anyone who can murder a fellow classmate and get away with it. It’s up to you to find out who Monokuma really is, and why you’ve been taken from the world you once knew. But be careful what you wish for-sometimes there’s nothing more deadly than the truth…
This game is weird! Weird but damn awesome, despite only playing around 5hours in. In a lot of ways this game reminds me of Virtues Last Reward. The game is graphically awesome, no denying that. Given the age of the game i was surprised how good it looked. I wasn’t keen on the way the sprites look however, they look fine from front on, but they’re 2d from the side, it looks weird.
I don’t really like the way the conversation system works, you get a hell of a lot of repeated conversations which gets a bit tired after a while.
However i have to admit this is the game I’m expecting the most from! Like Virtues Last Reward this game has an amazing presence that jumps out of the game and grabs you.
Conclusion
Of these three games i have to admit they were all great, but only Danganronpa has blown me away. Lightning Returns and Toukiden have the potential to go either way and wouldn’t surprise me. Danganronpa however is only going to get better, I’d be very surprised if it got worse. I really recommend this game, can’t wait to get even more into this game!!
I have just completed the first case in DanganRonpa and am loving it. I bought Lightning Returns too, but I have yet to play it. It’s waiting for me for when I finish Bravely Default.
TOJ did you play all the FFXIII games before? I played the first one and was ok with it but then I bailed when i realized they were just cashing in on FF fans nostalgia with the FFXIII series.
Yeah I have played the other FF13 games. The first one I didn’t care for. FF13-2 was much better and the way it ends makes you want to play the next game.
Toukiden is a big disappointment 🙁 the longer i’ve played it the more apparent the flaws in the game have gotten. I’m tempted to ship it back to amazon for a refund lol
I say go for it bro. ship it back and tell them the product was not satisfactory 😀 . Oh btw I think I’ll adopt this first impression style for my next FI. I like the format. it makes it easy to truly capture initial thoughts as they tend change so much more the longer you play a game. Of the 3 games Danganronpa – Trigger Happy Havocis the only one I may actually buy, Toukiden was never on my radar and now that you called it a disappointment i’m not getting near that. As for FFXIII-3, um no. I’ll play FF Bravely default please. I want a real jrpg not a movie with rpg sprinkles on top.
Best way to enjoy FFXII-3 is not to consider it part of the final Fantasy franchise. I found if i stopped thinking of it as a Final fantasy game i rather got into it and enjoyed. But once i started comparing it to proper FF games, or even Bravely default (the best FF clone ever) it falls short!!
Oh, and playing Person 3 on the PS3 is freaking awesome!!
And yeah i like this format, have to admit though i sort of borrowed it from TotalBiscuit, i love his WTF series and decided to make a similar style for my blog. Though without the YouTube 😀 I need to tweak it a bit but i think it’s a good format. Play a game for an hour or so, do an intial impressions post, then later on when it’s near finished or finished, do a proper full on review
Didn’t I tell you to resist the urg bro 🙁 you already have P3 on the Vita and you have tons of other games on hold. you know what I’m calling PSN and telling them to hold all your pre-orders :p
Then I’ll just steal your curry!!
Its interesting they chose to release the old ps2 version though. I’d of thought they’d of released the updated PSP one
Don’t use the name of curry in vain >.<
I would think the least they could have done was merge the 2 to make a better overall product. You know the additions of the PSP version with the anime cut scenes and 3D world of the original.
I played Danganronpa a couple or so months ago, and the game was really addicting. I ended up playing for hours at a time, if not all day, going for completionism.
Good stuff, good plot. Great game.
I’ll be trying to sit down over the weekend with it. Really looking forward to it
I never did get around to playing Danganronpa but I enjoyed the anime for what it was worth and everyone says the game is much better so I really want to play it. One of these days when I find the time I have to give it a try. Even from the anime alone it gave me the vibe of a mix between Ace Attorney and Zero Escape, both being DS (and later 3DS, Vita for VLR too I suppose) series with great stories and a visual novel-esque style. Though it looks like the game style for the trials is quite different from either of those, what I’ve seen of it seems kinda like a rhythm game. But anywho, I very much want to play the game one of these days and see what it does better than the anime. Enjoyable as the anime was, it was very rushed with its pacing and characterization wasn’t all too great so I feel like the game has a lot more room for building on those.
I’d really like to play any one of these three.
I’m nomally not into anime(apart from pokemon, if it’s considered an anime :P)but you make it sound fun.