Ryu’s Nibbles – Ys Memories of Celceta & Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God
Just a quick update. I will not be doing a review of Lightning Returns, probably ever. Of all the games I’ve been disappointed with this has been the worst. It started out okay but got bad rather fast and within four hours I’d had enough. I’ve returned the game to Amazon for a refund. Take my advice folks, never bother with that piece of crap game!!
Title: Ys Memories of Celceta
ASIN (Amazon): B00GD1ESO4
Language: English
Publisher: XSeed (USA)/ NIS America (EU)
Format: PSVita Card/PSN Store
Type: Game, Single Player
Genre: Supernatural, Action J-RPG, Shounen
Synopsis:
In Ys: Memories of Celceta, developer Falcom revisits the land and characters of Japanese cult favorite Ys IV for its first ever European debut. This re-envisioning of the fourth instalment in the Ys series takes a brand new approach, changing and framing the story of Ys IV within an all-new tale of conspiracy, deception, and mystery. Featuring an updated version of the party-based battle system from Ys SEVEN, as well as the largest and most varied overworld in series history, Ys: Memories of Celceta brings a greater sense of adventure to the Ys universe than has ever been seen before.
Granted I’m only an hour or so in, but i can see why it’s rated as one of the Vita’s game sellers. However that only really applies i think to those who are into the series. On it’s own it’s a little confusing since you have to have played and gotten to know characters from previous games.
That said, i have to admit that i am enjoying my time thus far. Graphically the game is average, especially when you line it up with power horses such as Soul Sacrifice and Toukiden, which despite everything are graphically awesome. Thing this one seems to have going for it is that it feels and plays like a RPG should, combat is satisfying, having a lot of ‘oomph’ behind it and getting a lot of feed back from hits and misses; something a lot of games tend to lack on. I do find the slight ‘fuzzy’ appearance that crops up at times during cut scenes to be very annoying. This is a stylistic choice of the dev.’s, but not one I can really agree with sadly.
As you would expect from this style of game the graphics are damn good quality when there’s talking going on
The music isn’t to bad either, has the same vibe and feel to the original games, but a more up to date feel to them, and definitely with better sound quality.
With this release, i believe ALL of the Ys games are now available on the Vita, and the only complaint i have thus far is that the game uses english VA’s. Though i have to admit that they don’t do to bad a job of it, thus far.
Title: Sorcery Saga: Curse of the Great Curry God
ASIN (Amazon): B00I03Y6G8
Language: Japanese/English Subtitles
Publisher: Aksys Games(USA)/ Rising Star Games (EU)
Format: PSVita Card/PSN Store
Type: Game, Single Player
Genre: Supernatural, Rogue-lite, ChibiSynopsis:
To graduate from the magic academy, Pupuru has to retrieve the Magic Orb from the Magic Tower. However, instead of the relic, she finds a book full of curry recipes inside and releases Kuu-chan, a strange creature. For this, she is suspended from school.
However, she isn’t the type to mope around, since a curry restaurant near the school is facing a crisis, she decides to use the recipes in the book to create Magic-Curry to save the restaurant, and for that, she needs four legendary ingredients.
But standing in her way is an evil lord determined to marry her, a jealous witch who sees her as a rival and perverted wizards and heroes.
Before i get into this a quick note on this release. If you UK/EU based the only place to really get it at the moment is from the PSN store. This was due to a mix up in release dates apparently. All of the versions being sold on Amazon (and elsewhere) are American imports. Which will work perfectly fine, but are technically illegal as they don’t have a PEGI rating on them. No news from Amazon on when this will be fixed, and Rising Star Games have been tight lipped as well.
This game really has me confused and pulling my hair out lol. Graphically it’s pretty damn good, with the chibi characters being just on this side of being annoying. The dungeons are sadly a bit lacking, i would like to have seen a bit more detail for those. The monsters have a good variety to them, so far. Be interesting to see how that goes later in the game.
The weapons and armour in this game are ridiculous, with such things as forks, spoons, chopping boards and other senseless things. I have to admit i do rather like that, it doesn’t take itself to serious, and likes to give you a laugh.
Unlike other RPG’s where your out to save the world, or some kidnapped princess, you basically out to save your favourite curry restaurant. So you trawl through dungeons looking for ingredients and, while searching for the ‘Legendary’ ingredient. I like this change of pace, the light heartedness makes for a fun game. The characters are funny, and their banter does make me smile a bit. Though the translation of the game leaves a lot to be desired, it’s a ‘based on’ translation, not a true translation.
The thing that this game does, and will have you creaming over, is the rogue-lite elements. While you’re in a dungeon you level up and gain levels as you’d expect. However when you leave the dungeon you’re reset to lvl1. This does mean level grinding is pointless since as soon as your done you’re back to level one lol.
The thing i hated the most though was the dying. When you die you lose everything, and i do mean everything. You lose all your gear, all the stuff you’ve picked up, and any and all gold your carrying. So this means you can end up with literally nothing if you’ve forgotten to store things in your trunk. This can make it very hard to continue if you’ve lost everything resulting a bit of save scuming and restarting. The dungeons themselves seem to be dynamic, so they change from visit to visit, as does the items you’ll find.
This game is making me angry as hell, but I’ll admit to liking it!! I am concerned though that it only has a short campaign (by JRPG standards) 18-20hours, with not much being offered in way of replayability.
What about lightening return is so bad? Was thinking about getting it. I know your not doing a review but from one gamer to the next real talk. Break it down for me
The characters are lifeless, there’s no personality or anything from them. Lightning and Hope both may as well be machines.
The combat was pretty good though. I like the idea of swapping costumes on the fly to get around not having 3 party members but that was about it.
The main thing for me was the way the story was handled, it was badly scripted, badly written, and badly executed. This mixed in with a badly used time element, i just got fed up with it.
One of the bigger issues i had was the fact Lightning is the big bad reaper of souls, gods will incarnate, but she still has a curfew. Also the way it forces multiple playthroughs on you, which i normally wouldn’t mind. but given a lot of the content is going to be repeated over and over, it just didn’t sound like fun.
TBH this killed my love affair with Final fantasy, i won’t ever buy another.
My hope now is that Square takes Bravely default and turns it into a new franchise and pushes it hard. As well as getting it off the 3DS onto the PS3.
I have both these games waiting for me, once I finish off DanganRonpa. I’ll have to check my copy to see if it has a PEGI rating.