Dragon Age II DLC Round Up

My Dragon Age series retrospective continues today with the DLC round up for Dragon Age II.  Like my round up for Dragon Age: Origins, I will be focusing on stuff that actually adds story content, and not all of the various items that were sold in packs or given away for free for various reasons.

1. The Black Emporium, free from the Xbox store
The Black Emporium is a curiosity shop full of strange creatures, items and relics ran by the mysterious and rather creepy Xenon, but unfortunately there's not a lot to it. It's fun to look around for 15 minutes or so investigate all the weird stuff that's on display, but there's not really a lot to do.  You can buy some equipment which changes out every so often, but you will probably find better stuff on your travels anyway.  You can also change your appearance if you don't like how your Hawke turned out or you get bored of it.  You also get a mabari hound as part of the deal, who you can summon in combat and talk to at the Hawke estate.  One mustn't grumble too much as this is a freebie, but it's not terribly exciting all things considered.

Overall: 5 out of 10

2. The Exiled Prince, £4.69 from the Xbox store
This is the Dragon Age II equivalent of The Stone Prisoner from Origins, seeing as it adds a new recruitable character to the game who is as fully fleshed out and integrated into the experience as any of the others that were included for free.  But whereas Shale was a well written, extremely funny and interesting character with an interesting back story to uncover, Sebastien Vael is rather dull in comparison.  He was sent away by his parents to become a member of the chantry, only for his family to be murdered shortly after he arrived in Kirkwall.  Now he's trying to find out who was responsible and weighing up whether to abandon his religious pursuits in the name of revenge or put try and put the hatred he feels aside and embrace the teachings of the chantry.  It's not terrible, just a little bit bland compared to what has come before, not to mention overpriced.

Overall: 6 out of 10

3. Legacy, £6.75 from the Xbox store
If you have already played both Dragon Age II and Inquisition, but skipped this DLC, then it may actually be of some interest to you. Hawke travels to a recently exposed part of the Deep Roads after being called out by members of the Carta (essentially a dwarven version of the Mafia). It turns out that they are trying to bring back creature by the name of Corypheus that Hawkes father had a hand in imprisoning during his time as a Grey Warden. Corypheus was a major player in Inquisition, and he was introduced here. This pack is actually pretty decent, and as well as some important back story you also get a nice new weapon in the form of Hawke's Key, which you get to personalise a little bit by choosing which attributes it gets powered up with. This DLC also feels more substantial than anything that was released for Origins, at around 3 hours if you do everything.  Worth a look!

Overall: 7 out of 10

4. Mark of the Assassin, £6.75 from the Xbox store
While not as important from a story point of view, Mark of the Assassin is a lot of fun. You team up with the titular assassin, Talis (voiced and modelled on the appearance of Felicia Day) and head off to Chateau Haine in Orlais to try and steal a valuable artifact called the Heart of the Many.  During your time with this DLC you will go on a big game hunt for a wyvern, explore the chateau either with the option to go loud or stealthily, before experiencing some interesting twists with an entertaining boss battle at the end. I sometimes find Felicia Day annoying but she is at least a decent actress who delivers her lines well and makes a convincing elf.  I think this is the best DLC of all the stuff that was released for Dragon Age II and it's fitting that it was the last.  Again it weighs in at about 3 hours of content if you take your time, explore and complete all of the side quests.

Overall: 8 out of 10

Conclusion
With the exception of The Black Emporium which is free, I would say that all of the Dragon Age II DLC is just a tad too expensive for my liking.  Unlike Dragon Age: Origins though there is no complete or ultimate edition that I know of, at least for the Xbox 360, which is a shame. These are included in sales every so often though, so it's worth holding out for one of those before you decide to pick them up. On the whole the quality level has increased compared to Origins, apart from the extra party member where Shale was most definitely better than Sebastien.  That brings us to the end of Dragon Age II then - I will soon be embarking on my play through of Inquisition.  I was thinking I might try playing as a Qunari, as previously I have played it as an elf and a human. I expect there will be a bit of a gap before I return with my Inquisition review as it is extremely long and I don't want to burn out before the end due to rushing through it.  There will be other stuff on the site / channel in the meantime though!

Dragon Age: Origins DLC Round Up

Now, I do realise that this is somewhat overdue, seeing as Dragon Age: Origins was originally released way back in 2009, but I never got around to writing about all of the various DLC that Bioware made in the years following the main game. I am currently in the process of replaying the entire Dragon Age series from beginning to end, so what better time to share my thoughts will you all about the optional extra content? This article will be focusing on the DLC that is quest related, rather than those that just add some extra weapons or armour. There will be a short summary on each pack followed by a score out of 10.  I won't be including Awakening here because that is full on expansion pack which already has its own, separate review.

1. Warden's Keep - £4.69 from Xbox store, free with Digital Deluxe, Collector's and Ultimate Editions
This is a fairly brief, but useful bit of extra content that gives you a quest that will take roughly 45 minutes to complete at the most.  When you're done, your warden will have a new base of operations, although that doesn't really mean very much.  It mostly just gives you access to a party storage chest where you can dump your loot in between quests, and a vendor to sell the junk to.  The quest itself is quite good fun with some interesting lore to listen to or read in the codex, and there are some moral choices to be made at the end.  It's not worth the rather steep price of almost a fiver, either wait for a DLC sale or buy the Ultimate Edition instead.

Overall: 6 out of 10

2. The Stone Prisoner - originally free with pre-orders, now free for everyone to download
This is quite easily my favourite of all of the extra content released for Dragon Age: Origins, and I can't really imagine playing through the game without it. The Stone Prisoner adds an extra recruitable party member to the main game, in the form of Shale, a golem. There's an introductory quest that needs to be completed in order to add her to your party, which takes about half an hour.  After that you can bring Shale along on any quest that you see fit, and chat with her in camp.  She is a very well written and interesting character who has some very amusing dialogue and a bit of a problem with mages and birds.  By increasing your standing with her through dialogue options or gifts, you can eventually unlock a loyalty mission which will give you some insight on her backstory, which is well worth taking a bit of extra time to do.  Shale ends up being one of best party members in the game, and because there's no cost involved you may as well install her!

Overall: 9 out of 10

3. Return to Ostagar - £3.39 from Xbox store, included with Ultimate Edition
This one adds about 45 minutes of extra content again, and allows you to return to the battlefield of Ostagar, which is where the Grey Wardens were betrayed by Tehyrn Loghain at the start of the game and King Cailan lost his life.  Your task here is to recover all of Cailan's armour from the darkspawn that are still lurking about, ending with a final confrontation with a nasty Genlock Necromancer. After that, you should return to Cailan's mutilated body and give him the burial he deserves.  This DLC reminded me very much of the Normandy Crash Site DLC for Mass Effect 2.  It is similar in tone and purpose.  Not too bad, but nothing all that spectacular really.

Overall: 6 out of 10

4. The Darkspawn Chronicles - £3.39 from Xbox store, included with Ultimate Edition
This DLC lets you play out a "what if" scenario, where the darskpawn end up winning during the invasion of Denerim at the end of the main game.  You take control of a Hurlock who hear's the whispers of the archdemon and can enthrall other darkspawn units such as genlocks, shrieks and even an ogre. This one takes roughly an hour and a half to finish, and it's a bit of mindless fun really.  Laying waste to the hero's from the main campaign does give you a bit of a sick thrill.

Overall: 6 out of 10

5. Leliana's Song - £4.69 from Xbox store, included with Ultimate Edition
This takes the form of a prologue to the main campaign and gives you some insight into the backstory of Leliana, the rogue who became a member of the chantry for a time, before eventually joining up with the Wardens. You will be carrying out a variety of crimes in and around Denerim alongside your partner, and lover, Marjolaine. Those who have spoken to Leliana extensively in camp will know that Marjolaine ended up betraying her and leaving her for dead - now you can get the full, sad story.  This is probably the best DLC so far after The Stone Prisoner, as it actually focuses on a character that I already care about.

Overall: 7 out of 10

6. The Golems of Amgarrak - £3.39 from Xbox store, included with Ultimate Edition
This is probably my least favourite of all the DLC that was released for Dragon Age.  The main reason for this is that it doesn't feature any of the party members that you have formed a bond with over the many hours that you spent from them, and instead introduces a couple of dwarves that are looking for assistance in recovering the lost secrets of golem creation from the ancient fortress of Amgarrak.  It's another very brief tale at around a single hour - not enough time to get to know these new characters or care about them.  It's also punishingly difficult, and it's highly recommended that you don't attempt it until you've completed the Awakening expansion. I did quite like the design of the new creature that is introduced, called the Harvester, though it did remind me of the polymorph from Red Dwarf a little bit.  This DLC isn't worth seeking out individually, but you may as well play it if you obtained it as part of the Ultimate Edition.

Overall: 5 out of 10

7. Witch Hunt - £4.69 from Xbox store, included with Ultimate Edition
Witch Hunt is another incredibly brief, and somewhat underwhelming piece of extra content.  Like many of the others, it weighs in at roughly an hour.  This one actually had a lot of potential because it sees the return of Morrigan, a very popular character from the main game excellently voiced by Claudia Black.  After the final battle with the Archdemon, she took her leave from the party and requested that you never go looking for her. Well, here you are, looking for her. The final conversation with Morrigan is incredibly brief and after its over the end credits roll and that's it.  I would have liked the chance to have a quick chat with Finn and Ariane, your new companions that you barely have any opportunity to get to know.  It's a shame you don't, because their dialogue is well written and humorous and I would have welcomed more of it. Instead of going out on a bang with its last adventure, Dragon Age: Origins fizzles out instead, which is incredibly frustrating.

Overall: 6 out of 10

Conclusion
Overall I would say that the DLC for Dragon Age: Origins is worth playing through at least once if you are a fan of the original game. Most of these packs are pretty brief however and are definitely not worth paying the full amount for in 2019. However there is a solution - the Ultimate Edition of the game includes everything listed here as well as the Awakening expansion, and because everything is included on a second physical disk you can buy a second hand copy safe in the knowledge that you will still be able to access everything (as long as the DLC disk isn't missing, of course).  This is definitely the cheapest way to get ahold of everything - copies go for a bout £15 on Amazon and eBay.  While most of these only add an hour or two of game play at the most, it all adds up to an extremely solid package that I think is still worth a punt, despite the rather dated visuals.

One last thing - I wasn't sure if the the Ultimate Edition would work properly on the Xbox One, because you install the DLC from a second disk, put apparently it does work after you jump through a few hoops.  Apparently you should install the DLC disk first, then the main play disk, then put the DLC disk back in before launching the game. Then you should be able to access anything. I haven't confirmed this myself because I don't own a copy of the Ultimate Edition, but if you do this you should be OK.

Summer Backlog Review #5: Cosmic Star Heroine

Welcome back to my fifth review for the Summer Backlog Challenge 2018! With this, I have successfully completed the challenge, which I failed to do the previous two times I attempted this.  I'm not going to stop there though, we still have over a month left which should be plenty of time to complete at least one or two more games from my list.  For now though, it's time to review Cosmic Star Heroine.  First of all though, like always, let's go over a bit of the history.

Back in the glory days of the Xbox 360, Microsoft had their Indie Games program where talented (and sometimes not so talented) amateur developers could create their own games using the XNA platform and make them available for others to enjoy. Two of the best and most popular games on the service were Breath of Death VII, and Cthulhu Saves the World, from Zeboyd Games (aka Robert Boyd). These were classic 16-bit style RPG's with a very strong sense of humour and plenty of fun gameplay. Eventually, Zeboyd were handed the reigns to the Penny Arcade RPG series and make the third and fourth entries, which I thought were a big improvement over the first two.  Then, in 2013, a Kickstarter campaign was launched for Cosmic Star Heroine, which would be developed in Unity and released initially on PC and PS4. Since it was released the game has been well received by the sales haven't exactly set the world on fire, unfortunately.  The game is just about to be released for the Nintendo Switch, however, so hopefully it will get into the hands of more people.  I think it really does deserve to do better, so let's get into the reasons why...

Plot & Character: 8 out of 10
Cosmic Star Heroine puts in you in the shoes of Alyssa L'Salle, a talented super spy in a futuristic science fiction universe.   The first mission of the game sees her rescuing hostages and defusing a bomb in a skyscraper with the help of her friends, the "gunmancer" Chahn and hacker, Dave. Rather than being the sort of spy who keeps their identity a secret from all, though, Alyssa is famous across the entire system of planets and has plenty of fans.  This fame comes at a price though, and after discovering something that may threaten the safety of everyone, Alyssa finds herself in the crosshairs of would-be assassins, chased by bounty hunters and double crossed by her own agency. From there it's up to her to conduct her own investigation, gather a rag tag bunch of allies and take down the evil that's threatening the universe.

The game has a lot of characters that you will recruit over the course of the roughly 12 hour long campaign, 10 not including Alyssa herself in fact.  All of them are interesting and have their own part of play in the story, but I found that I didn't really use the later ones very much. Not only was I near the end of the game by the time they came along, I was also quite used to my set up of Chahn, Sue and Psybee (an insectoid alien guy). This is partially down to me though - more adventurous types would probably revel in experimenting with various power combinations, and it certainly is possible to come up with some creative and powerful attacks if you play around a bit.

On the whole I enjoyed the story, it moved along at a brisk pace, and the writing was very good with plenty of jokes as well as more serious moments when required. 

There are plenty of pop culture references that you may recognise.

Graphics: 8 out of 10
The visuals of Cosmic Star Heroine definitely evokes the look and feel of a PlayStation RPG, such as something by Working Designs, except in full widescreen to make the most of modern TV's, of course. The environments are nice and colourful with plenty of different types of location to explore, from swamps to space ships, and tropical planets.  The character sprites are nicely defined and animate well, and there are also nicely drawn character portraits whenever someone speaks. Also, during key scenes there are animated sequences, and quite a lot of work has gone into these.  A particular highlight was the concert where you meet Lauren, and she performs an entire song.  There is definitely a high amount of care and polish that has gone into the graphics which I really appreciate.

Sound & Music: 9 out of 10
While there is no voice acting at all in Cosmic Star Heroine, I really don't feel that the game needs it. What it does have instead is an absolutely fantastic soundtrack thanks to Hyperduck Soundworks.  Highlights here include both the regular battle music and the boss music, and the song from Lauren's concert once again which does include vocals.  I've used each of these pieces of music in the background to my review, so I hope Zeboyd / Hyperduck don't mind!

The other component here are the sound effects, which are also very well done.  Each ability, such as Dave's Zap or Chahn's Purification Torch have their own sound associated with them which are well crafted and sound suitably sci fi.

Here's Chahn in her introductory cut scene.

Game Mechanics: 9 out of 10
In battle, Cosmic Star Heroine adopts the Chrono Trigger style of encounters where enemies can be seen wandering the map and you actively engage with them, rather than the classic random battles. Then, the characters and the enemies take turns biffing each other depending on their speed statistic. Alyssa and friends have up to eight abilities that they can choose from at a time, most of which can only be used once before you have to defend and recharge them. Some of these abilities will be purely offensive such as Alyssa thwacking something with her bo staff or Dave zapping something with electricity, others could be buffs to boost defense or offense, and others still can have some interesting effects.

Take Clarke for example, the disco dancing robot who joins your ranks roughly half way through the story. He has an ability called Mortify, which means that the rest of the party does more damage while he's dead.  You activate it, then on Clarke's next turn you either choose an ability that kills him and heals the rest of the party, or kills him and does massive damage to all the enemies.  He's dead for the rest of the battle but everyone else is now stronger.  This is probably something you want to save towards the end of a boss battle, but it's an interesting mechanic.

Equipping new weapons and shields can also give you access to new "programs" in battle which are additional abilities that can be used. The battles themselves always move along at a brisk pace, with animations playing out smoothly and responsively which is very much appreciated.  Those who have experienced the terrible PlayStation versions of various Final Fantasy games will attest to just how annoying it can be when it takes ages for a simple animation to load, but there's none of that here thankfully.

For roughly the first half of the campaign, your party is preset but different characters will be swapping in and out as the story dictates, which means that you will have to learn and adapt to new skill sets quite frequently.  This keeps things interesting.  Eventually though the game will open up and you will have free reign over who you bring with you.  You also get your own spaceship and can travel back and forth between the three planets in the game at will, though the main story does remain linear - this just allows you to go off and do some optional quests for your various party members should you wish to.

Cosmic Star Heroine features a large and diverse cast of recruitable characters.

Value & Replaybility: 7 out of 10
While Cosmic Star Heroine is hardly the longest RPG, I do feel that you get your money's worth. If you just focus on the critical path then it will probably take you around 12 hours to complete on the standard difficulty setting, which is a decent amount of time.  There are some extra challenges that can be sought out though, such as boss battles with Dem Bones from Breath of Death VII or Cthulhu himself.  These are likely to require a bit of grinding before you will be able to take them on.

There are also four separate difficult options, ranging from Tourist for people who want the game to be a cakewalk, up to Heroine for those who want a steeper challenge.  I found that the normal difficulty was about right for me - it was a perhaps a little on the easy side for most of the game as long as I didn't avoid too many fights, though I did still die a few times during some of the boss battles.  This was usually a case of me either trying to rush through the fight too quickly or not knowing the best strategy, and usually a simple change in tactics or a more patient approach would see me through.

The game isn't terribly replayable really - the story is going to play out the same way regardless of what you do, though you could start over on a higher difficulty.  It is well written and entertaining enough that I could see myself coming back to it again after a while, I guess.  This gets less likely the bigger my backlog gets, unfortunately.

Innovation & Cleverness: 6 out of 10
While the plot and setting are not terribly original, Cosmic Star Heroine deserves some points in this category because of it's well thought out battle system.  Each character has their own palette of abilities that have been very well thought out and often work in conjunction with the abilities of the other characters in interesting ways. Limiting the palettes to eight active slots and giving out new abilities as you level up really forces the player to think hard about what they will leave out.  It is quite easy to quickly swap out a party member or an ability depending on the type of enemy you're likely to face in a given area, however.  Very smart stuff indeed.

Overall: 8 out of 10
I had a lot of fun playing through Cosmic Star Heroine - so much so in fact that when I finally did start playing, it only took me a few play sessions to reach the end because I didn't want to stop. The writing, graphics, music and compelling battle system all combine to deliver an extremely solid RPG that will keep the majority of players amused for a minimum of 12 hours, potentially longer if they decide to increase the difficulty or seek out all of the optional challenges that the game has to offer. If you own a Switch and you enjoy a good RPG then do seriously think about picking this up - it would work very well in handheld mode.  I look forward to seeing what Zeboyd Games does next!

Summer Backlog Review #3: Mass Effect: Andromeda

Welcome back to the Summer Backlog Challenge 2018, and review number three! We're making steady progress through the games this year, which I hope will continue for a bit longer.  Eventually though I will run out of the shorter games so these reviews will be further apart. That's where the diary entries come in - they pick up the slack when I'm not quite ready to give my full opinion.  I have just finished Mass Effect: Andromeda this week though so it's time to weigh up what I think about it.

Those of you who are familiar with the Mass Effect series already will know that it is a sci-fi action RPG series developed by long term legends of genre, Bioware. By the time the original game was released they had already entertained 1000's of PC owners with their classics set in the Dungeons & Dragons universe, such as Baldur's Gate and Neverwinter Nights. Then with the advent of the original Xbox they decided to make something a bit more console friendly, which resulted Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, still regarded as one of the best games set in a galaxy far, far away ever made.  That experience gave the company the idea to create their own original space opera, and thus the Mass Effect series was born.  It was conceived as a trilogy right from the start, with story seeds sown from the earliest moments that would pay off two games later.  Everything went smoothly, until players got to the end of Mass Effect 3 and witnessed the ending.  To say it was divisive would be putting it mildly.  The disgruntled fans ranted and raged all across the internet, until Bioware finally relented and released the free Extended Cut DLC.  Then, all went quiet - the series was seemingly done, for now.   A few years later though, Andromeda got announced and the fans started to get excited about what the new game might bring.  Then they played it, and the backlash began again.  Is it truly as terrible as everyone would have you believe? I really don't think so, but allow me to explain further...

Plot & Character: 7 out of 10

Mass Effect: Andromeda sees the series transported 600 years into the future and into another galaxy. The Andromeda Initiative has set out to try and set up a colony on one of several potential "golden worlds" that have been identified thanks to some clever Salarian technology.  Things don't go according to plan, however - a strange dark matter known as the scourge causes massive amounts of damage to the human Ark, Hyperion and the planet that they were hoping would be conducive to supporting life turns out to be un breathable and beset by devastating lightning storms. The "Pathfinder", i.e. the person spearheading the expedition to find a livable world, tragically dies while exploring this planet, and so it falls to their heir to take up the mantle in their stead.  This is your playable character, a male or female human named Ryder (you can choose their first name).

I did think this was a pretty good starting off point for a new game (or potentially a whole new series) but certain developments later on in the story weren't so great. The new antagonists, the Kett, came across as a weak facsimile of the Reapers, or rather the Collector's from Mass Effect 2. Vaguely humanoid, hostile aliens who take the genetic material of other species and use it to make more drones.  Not very original at all, and not as well executed as before. There were also several plot lines that were set up in this game that never went anyway, because Bioware were obviously expecting to continue the story in a sequel at some point.  We now know that this isn't going to happen, not even in the form of DLC, so it does make these threads quite unfulfilling.

In terms of characters and your crew, I have slightly better news.  While it took me a while to warm up to them, I actually came to really like the crew of the Tempest (which is the new Normandy), at least the alien ones.  I found the two humans, Liam and Cora, a bit boring and predictable really, despite the latter being trained as an Asari Commando for much of her life.  The new Asari, Peebee was annoying at first but once you get used to her energetic personality she's actually pretty cool. Drack, the Krogan, shares a lot of personality traits with Wrex and Grunt before him - he's gruff, likes to shoot the bad guys and is a nice guy at heart.  His unique trait is that he is very very old, and most of his organs are synthetic transplants.

My two favourite crew members are definitely Vetra and Jaal.  Vetra can't possibly match the excellence of her fellow Turian, Garrus Vakarian but she's not too far off.  She's loyal, dependable and very good in a fight.  Jaal is a member of the only new non hostile race in the game, the Angara.  He's a part of their resistance and very experienced in fighting the Kett, and he's a very interesting person with lots of stories and insights to share about life in the Andromeda galaxy.  The crew is rounded off by Lexi, an Asari doctor (voiced by Natalie Dormer from Game of Thrones), Suvi, a human science officer with a lovely Scottish accent, Kallo, the ace Salarian pilot, and Gil, the chief engineer.  While these last four won't be joining you in battle, they are all fairly well fleshed out with their own "loyalty missions" to complete throughout the game. In fact, this is one aspect of Mass Effect: Andromeda that I thought was done really well, the loyalty missions were more extensive and spread out that they have been in previous games, and even when you were technically done and had unlocked the level 6 skills for that character, there were normally more scenes to see with them.

Ultimately, even though the story is quite unoriginal in key areas, the fleshed out characters go a long way for compensating for that.  The unresolved plot points were quite interesting too, such as they were, so it is a shame that we will probably never find out where they would have led us (unless a novel or something is released that covers that stuff - that could still be an option).

Mass Effect: Andromeda does look nice, but not quite this nice (this is early promo artwork).

Graphics: 7 out of 10

For a good deal of the time, Mass Effect: Andromeda is a decent looking game, and occasionally a beautiful one.  For me, the icy world of Voeld was the stand out, with the blizzards eventually giving way to serene tundra with a very pretty skybox to behold.  The jungle planet of Havarl also impresses, with it's dense, lush vegetation.  Outside of the environments, much has of course been made of the poor facial animation in the game, so much so that it became a meme for a while and staff who worked on it were persecuted.  While this has been improved with patches since the game was released, it still ain't that great - NPC's have a tendency to look like waxy automatons rather than living, breathing people.  Of course, it stands out the most on the human characters as our brains know what they should look like and can spot when something isn't right.  There is also a noticeable difference in quality between minor characters and important ones - your crew obviously had a lot of work put into the making them look halfway decent, whereas a random scientist on Eos can tend to look a bit half baked.

Sound & Music: 7 out of 10

I don't think the music of Mass Effect: Andromeda is quite as strong as the trilogy that preceded it, but I did come to rather enjoy it by the end of my time with the game.  The main theme starts of rather subtly, but gradually builds up to something more epic.  You will hear this tune every time you load up the game and during the end credits, so you will be rather familiar with it by the end.  Other than that, there is also some great battle music with some furious drum work, perfect for driving you on and furthering your blood lust.  There was also one particular use of synthwave that gave me goosebumps - I think it plays as you land on Voeld for the first time, if I'm remembering correctly.

The voice acting is pretty good most of the time but I do remember a couple of instances where there were some very odd line reads - almost as if the voice actor wasn't aware of the context that they were saying these things and therefore emphasising the wrong part of the sentence. This has to be the fault of whoever was directing the voice actors, and also whoever decided it was fine to insert these recordings into the game as they were. Maybe the studio was rushed, I don't know, but it does come across as rather unprofessional, especially from a big studio like Bioware. 

Havarl is quite a nice looking environment but the dense foliage makes it trick to navigate at times.

Game Mechanics: 8 out of 10

Like it's predecessors, Mass Effect: Andromeda is a third person cover shooter with strong RPG elements, such as levelling up, equipping and modifying armour and weapons, spending points on skills, an in depth conversation system and romance options. The combat mechanics have been tweaked in a few different ways that I actually came to enjoy after a while getting used to them. Firstly, you no longer stick to cover with the press of a button, instead all you have to do is kneel down next to something large enough to provide cover and you will automatically protect yourself.  It feels odd at first but became second nature by the end of the introduction.  You also have a jet booster built into your suit which is used both in navigating the world and in combat.  By jumping in a fight you get a few seconds of slow motion where you can snipe fools in mid air, which feels really satisfying when you pull it off.  There's a skill that you can buy that will extend this bullet time as well.

Andromeda also scraps the notion of fixed character classes, allows you to spend your skill point on whatever you want right from the get go, from either the combat, tech or biotic skill trees.  As you unlock more skills you do unlock different profiles that kind of act like classes, except you can add multiple profiles to a favourites list and switch between them in battle on the fly.  It's very handy, and allows you to experiment with various different skills to see what you like best. I'm not too sure what they level cap is in this game, or if it even has one, because I was around level 56 by the end of the game and still going.  My companions had maxed out all of their skills already but I was still going, because there are roughly 50 skills to choose from with 6 levels each. When it comes to powering up the skills, Andromeda has borrowed the same system that was introduced in 3, where you have one choice of upgrade for the first three ranks of a skill and then you have a choice of two different options when you reach ranks 4, 5 and 6. For example you may have to decide whether a skill does more damage vs shields or vs armour.

This game also takes a leaf out of Dragon Age: Inquisition and shifts over to open world exploration for the bulk of its play time. There are plenty of more structured missions such as the main story events and the loyalty missions with your crew, but a lot of time will be taken up with bombing around in the Nomad (which is the new Mako), establishing new forward stations (that you can then fast travel to) and completing side quests. Because you are trying to make these planets liveable and establish new colonies on them, almost everything you do in the game gives you Andromeda Viability Points, or AVP, with the goal of getting every planet you visit to 100% viability. If you are thorough and do everything (or a good deal of it at any rate) this isn't too hard.  Reactivating the Remnant vaults (which are like atmospheric processors that radically change the planets for the better) and killing Remnant Architects (huge worm like robot creatures that are the most challenging things to fight in the game) will give you a large amount of AVP.  Once you hit certain thresholds you get to choose who to bring out of cryo which basically gives you a new perk such as the ability to detect and mine more minerals.

On the whole I didn't mind the open ended structure too much - it made sense for the story they were trying to tell here, but I think I still prefer the briefer, more tightly designed structure of the original trilogy over this one.

Jaal ended up being one of my favourite characters and a valuable addition to the crew.

Innovation & Cleverness: 4 out of 10

Quite a low score here because as this is part of an established franchise, it's a little low on originality, and as I said earlier a lot of plot came across as a bit rehashed.  However, I do want to give props to Bioware for managing to come up with an entirely new crew of characters that are interesting to hang out with for the most part.  They also do a decent job of establishing some mystery in the plot, with Ryder's memories gradually being unlocked over time. 

Value & Replayability: 8 out of 10

The Mass Effect series, like most of Bioware's games, are designed to be replayable. As well as the Paragon / Renegade choices, the story and side missions often present you with choices that will have an effect on the overall plot.  It can be fun to go back later on as a completely different version of Ryder and do things differently than before.  In the previous games, decisions you made in the first and second game wouldn't pay off until the third part, and some of the key choices you make in Andromeda obviously would have changed something in the planned sequel.  Again, we're unlikely to find out just what at this point.

This is also a pretty huge game - the new open world structure with vast planets to explore and a seemingly endless supply of quests to complete ensure that your play time can easily reach the 50 hour mark.  I ended up just shy of 55 hours on my clock and I know I still had quite a bit left to do.  That is considerably longer than any of the previous games in the series which took about 30 hours at most to finish if you took your time with them.  So you definitely will get your money's worth with this one.  What's more, you don't need to go out and buy a full copy of the game, at least if you own and Xbox One.  It's included as part of EA Access so you can sign up to that at a cost of £3.99 per month until you're done, which if you ask me is a great deal.

Overall: 7 out of 10

I don't agree with the general consensus that Mass Effect: Andromeda is a terrible game, in fact I think it's quite a decent one. It certainly has its flaws, and overall I would place it in third place within the series overall (with Mass Effect 2 being first, 3 being second, and the original game coming last), but we aren't exactly swamped with quality science fiction RPG's so it is one of the better efforts in recent years. I also don't think this game is directly responsible for the death of the franchise - for that I think the blame lies partly with the "fans" who ranted and raved about every little problem, and partly with EA for not providing Bioware with the time and support they needed to deliver a AAA product.

Yakuza 5 review

The Yakuza series is one that I've been interested in for quite some time now.  The first game in the series piqued my interest due to its apparent similarities with my beloved Shenmue, yet when I played the game myself I found the combat rather clunky and lost interest a few hours in.  Something brought me back though and over time I have acquired copies of all the other entries that have been released in the west.  I spent a fair bit of time with Yakuza 3 and really enjoyed it, but I set it aside for some vague time in the future when I would dedicate myself towards completing it properly.  That day never came, but in the meantime the hype over Yakuza 5 and the disappointment from long term fans that it showed no sign of being localised hadn't escaped my notice. 

When Sony finally did announce that the game would be released digitally on the PlayStation Network, I decided it was worth supporting and used some of my birthday money towards it.  Whenever I buy a new game I always have to try it out a little bit, even if I don't intend to play it all the way through there and then.  This is usually only the first few hours of the game, but I had so much fun playing Yakuza 5 that I ended up spending about 12 hours on it!  Still, after that first day and a bit of playtime, I did set it aside so I could concentrate on finishing Tales of Xillia.  Roughly one month later I came back to it though, and have now completed the game having spent about 75 hours on it in total.  Suffice it to say that I really enjoyed myself, and now firmly intend to go back and play the first four games, plus Dead Souls.  If you are curious about the Yakuza franchise and have never taken the plunge, let me attempt to explain why you should strongly consider giving it a go.

Plot and Character: 9 out of 10
Having watched some of the videos that go over the plot of previous games, it is apparent that these games can get rather convoluted and hard to follow.  That wasn't really the case with Yakuza 5 though, despite it being deep into a well established series.  The main protagonist of the games, Kazuma Kiryu, has moved from Tokyo to Fukuoka, changed his identity, and is just trying to make a living as a humble taxi driver.   That all begins to fall apart when the chairman of his former yakuza family cuts in line and gets into his taxi one day, in order to warn Kiryu that there is a war on the horizon between the Tojo Clan and the Omi Alliance.  From this point on his is gradually drawn back into the yakuza life yet again, and the plot deepens from there.  He is only one of five playable characters though, and after about 15 - 20 hours of playtime depending on how thorough you are with the side activities, the game shifts onto Taiga Saejima, who fights differently and has plenty of his own problems.

While there is enough mystery in the plot to keep you interested throughout the games long play time, it never becomes too hard to follow.  Also, by shifting things up every 20 hours or so, the game remains fresh.  Saejima's part of the story was my least favourite but I kept going in the knowledge that I would eventually get to play as three more characters after him.   His main side activity was hunting, which was a nice change of pace from all the fighting, but the opening hours of his chapter really dragged for me.  By far my favourite was Haruka.  She has been in the series since the very first game, where she started out as a little girl that Kiryu had to take care of.  Now she's about 15, and has been noticed by the head of a talent agency for pop idols.  She is in the very early stages of an idol career as week take control of her, preparing for the finals of a TV show called Princess League.  Her chapter was a lot of fun, and the rhythm based concerts and dance battles were a very nice change of pace.  This game really has three key strengths: the characters, the variety of gameplay, and the sense of fun.

Take that! A foot to the armpit.

Graphics: 8 out of 10
Yakuza 5 does look very good for the most part and the engine has obviously had an upgrade since Yakuza 3.  The key cut scenes of the game have had the most attention, with the character models looking extremely detailed and realistic.  Outside of these the rest of the game running in realtime is slightly less detailed and there are one or two rather ugly textures to be found, but overall this is an impressive looking PS3 game.  When things get really hectic there are signs of slowdown, but nothing that's too detrimental to the overall game play.

Sound and Music: 8 out of 10
The Yakuza series hasn't had Enlgish voices since the first game, and from what I heard when I tried to get into it all those years ago, that's no great loss, as it was truly terrible in places.  My untrained ear can't really tell if the Japanese actors are good at their jobs or not, but it all seems perfectly fine and having them speak their native tongue just makes the game feel more authentic.  There are some quite brutul sounding crunches in combat, and the move where Kiryu grates somebodies face on the pavement always makes me wince due to the unpleasant sandpaper noise that accompanies it.  There is some great music in the game as well, from the tunes that play while your in combat, the suitably cheesy ballads that you can belt out at the karaoke parlours, and the pop or dance tunes that Haruka performs to.

Harukaaaaaaaa-chaaaaaaan!

Game Mechanics: 8 out of 10
The Yakuza games are chiefly brawlers - kind of like a modern day equivalent of something like Streets of Rage.  There is a lot more to them than this though as I will attempt to explain.  When you first take control of a new character, their move set and abilities are fairly limited.  By beating random thugs that will come at you in the street or by taking down people in the story, you will earn experience points and level up.  Each time this happens you will be given three pips to spend on a variety of things, from extending your life bar, to learning a completely new move.   By the time you're getting towards the end of that characters chapter, he will be incredibly powerful and able to beat the shit out of most enemies, bar the bosses.  I was playing the game on the default Normal difficulty and never really had too much trouble in any particular fight.  You are given healing items from completing side quests and from random drops so even if I did get close to being defeated I could just down a Staminan Spark or something and be right back in the fight.  Those who are good at action games may want to go straight to Hard mode.

In addition to regular moves, each character also has their own array of heat moves.  You earn heat by successfully beating on your opponents, or by blocking incoming attacks.  Once the bar is filled you can then trigger some really painful looking attacks like the face grating one I mentioned earlier.  You can also pick up a large variety of background objects and use them as weapons as well, all of which have their own heat move associated with them.  So you could pick up a bicycle, beat somebody around the head a few times with it, throw it at them and them stomp on top of them for good measure.

If the combat was all the game had going for it then I would start to tire of it eventually, and this is pretty much what happened back when I tried to play the first game. The great thing about this series though - the later games at least - is the vast variety of things to do.  Aside from the taxi driving, hunting, pop idol business and other main side modes that each character has, there are also many more side activities.  You can go to a hostess club and attempt woo a pretty girl, you can go bowling, play darts, air hockey and billiards.  Virtua Fighter 2, Taiko no Tatsujin and UFO Catcher machines can be found in Club SEGA that are based in most of the cities, and there are a whole host of gambling games like poker, pachislots and more in there.  Plenty of things to break up the fighting.  All of the mini games are at least competently implemented as well, which is important. 

Just grin and bear it!

Innovation & Cleverness: 7 out of 10
While Yakuza 5 is building on the previous titles in the series, it does bring a lot of its own new stuff to the table as well.  The decision to allow you to play as Haruka and make musical performance the focus of her chapter instead of combat was a masterstroke.  Really a lot of the reason that I played all the way to the end is because I couldn't wait to see what new thing the game would throw at me next.  The story is good enough to back up the game play though, resulting in a highly polished experience.

Value and Replayabilty: 9 out of 10
As I mentioned in the intro, it took me 75 hours to get to the end of Yakuza 5 and while I did complete most of the sidestories for each character, I came nowhere near to doing everything that is possible to do in the game.  My overall completion rate was about 25%, so if you were truly determined to get 100% it would take a long long time indeed.  When you get to the end of the story for the first time you unlock two extra modes - one where you can play through the story again but with all of your levels and abilities intact from last time, and one where you can visit any city with any character and complete anything that you skipped while playing through the story.  So even when you're done playing the the game once, there's plenty to come back to.

Overall: 8 out of 10
Yakuza superfans will probably hate me for not giving this game at least a nine out of ten, but the combat can get somewhat repetitive and so I'm marking it down slightly for that.  This is based on my own enjoyment of the game after all.   I did have a lot of fun playing through the story though, a few dull moments aside, and all of the optional content was a ton of fun.  I definitely will be going back and playing through all of the previous games now, and any future titles such as Yakuza 0 and Yakuza 6 that will hopefully be brought over eventually.  If you have never tried this series before then jump on board, you're missing out on quite a lot!

Evoland Review

Until now, I have never reviewed anything from Steam or on the PC, but I recently acquired a Steam Link and controller, opening up a whole world of cheap gaming from the comfort of my sofa!  From now on I will be covering PC titles more often, though not the latest, biggest and flashiest titles.  I am thinking more of cool indie games like Crypt of the Necrodancer, fantastic graphic adventures like The Book of Unwritten Tales, and RPG's like this one, Evoland: A short story of adventure video games evolution.

The very first version of this game came from a LudumDare competition, which is a game jam where the participants are given 48 hours to develop a game idea based around a particular theme.  The theme for that year was evolution, and so creator Nicolas Cannasse put together his game showing the progression of adventure games (more specifically, RPG's) throughout the ages.  Starting with primitive Game Boy style monochrome graphics, the player is rapidly guided through concepts like flick screen and smooth scrolling, 8bit graphics and music, turn based battles, full 3D environments, pre rendered backgrounds and HD graphics, plus a lot more in between.  Probably the games greatest strength is the way it never sits still for very long and within half an hour or so at the most you are on to the next thing.

This part of the game is very remiscent of The Legend of Zelda, though there are stretches that play like Final Fantasy as well.

Evoland is a pastiche of past games through and through, so don't expect it to have an amazing plot of characters of its own.  The story is as classic and as basic as it gets, really - an evil force is threatening the land and its up to you, the hero to stop it, with a little help from the heroine.  The default names for the two party members are Clink and Kaeris, and the the baddy is called Zephyros - that alone should be enough to tell you not to take this game too seriously.  No, Evoland is really all about the evolution gimmick, and the constant shifting of its presentation and game play styles. Because the game is very brief, and cleverly written for the most part, it works, and never becomes tiresome.  The whole thing will only take you between 4 and five hours to complete, a little longer if you decide to find all 30 of the optional hidden stars and the cards for the side game.

There was only one part that I wasn't really a fan of, and that is the games attempt to try Diablo style game play.  They never really commit to it as you don't have any skills and the "equipment" that you collect is just a joke, so the game play just comprises mashing the attack button over and over again and killing hordes of week mobs.  Hell, some would argue that's all that Diablo is, anyway.  Of course, the wise ones amongst us know better!  Just as I was starting to tire of this bit of the game however, it was over, and from there the game swiftly moved on to its climax.

Overall: 7 out of 10
Even though the game is not as vast and detailed as something like The Witcher 3, it still must have taken quite a lot of work because there are so many different art and game play styles all rolled into one.  Multiple different character sprites needed to be created, and both real time and turn based battle engines needed to programmed.  The whole game was put together by two people, so it's quite an impressive feat.  In summation, I really enjoyed my time playing Evoland, flawed though it is in places.  If you are a fan of the games it references - chiefly The Legend of Zelda, Final Fantasy, Dragon Quest, and Diablo, then I heartily recommend that you spend an afternoon playing through it. There is also a sequel, where this concept has been fleshed out to last at least 20 hours.  I plan on playing it soon, so I will be sure to let you know if it manages to remain interesting for all that time. In the meantime, take care!

Tales of Xillia Review

Over the Christmas break, I picked up a copy of Tales of Zestiria on the PS4 for a reasonable price (£25).  After checking it out for an hour or two, I remembered that I never quite finished Tales of Xillia despite really enjoying what I had played of it, so I decided to set aside Zestiria for the time being and go back and try to finish Xillia.  As it turns out, I didn't have very much of the game left to go - just the last chapter of the story.  I managed to play through this content in a couple of days, then after a quick break I decided to start Tales of Xillia 2 rather than attempting the bonus dungeon of the first game.  I'm now about ten hours into the sequel, so you can expect a follow up review to this one at some point, hopefully a few weeks rather than months or years!  Anyway, now I will attempt break down exactly why I found Tales of Xillia so enjoyable and why I think it may just be my new favourite in the Tales franchise.

Plot and Character: 8 out of 10
The main plot of Tales of Xillia is pretty compelling, and carried me through most of the game.  Things do get a little weird and convoluted in the final stages of the game, which is a bit detrimental to the overall quality, but for the most part the game is well written and what's going on have a nice mysterious quality to them that makes you want to learn more.  The story revolves around two main characters, and you can choose which one to play as at the start of the game.  The story plays out the same way regardless for the most part though there are times throughout the game where the two will become separated for a while and you will experience scenes and areas that the other character won't.  In order to see every little thing you will have to play the game through twice.

So on the one hand we have Jude, a medical student who is running late for an important exam as the game begins.  On the other, we have Milla, who is actually the human embodiment of the Great Spirit Maxwell.  She has control over the four elements of earth, wind, fire and water, at least for a time.  Something happens very early on in the story that robs her of her powers, and leaves her pretty much as a normal human being, but with no knowledge of human culture, manners and typical day to day things that the average person just knows. As you can imagine, the comedy potential of this is pretty high, with all sorts of little scenes playing out such as Milla trying to work out why her stomach keeps rumbling, and things of that nature.

In addition to these two protagonists, there are four other characters that will eventually join your party over time - we have Elize, a troubled little girl with an animated (and very opinionated) puppet called Teepo.  I loved Teepo, he was one of the highlights of the game for me - it was always a delight to see what he would come out with next. Then there's Alvin, a rather cocky mercenary type who is more than a little shifty in his motives, and then Rowen, a butler who was formally a great warrior on the battlefield, where he was known as the Conductor.  Rounding out the main cast is Leia, a childhood friend of Jude who happens to have a crush on him, while Jude himself is slowly falling for the enigmatic Milla.

While the main story is indeed decent for the most part, as in most Tales games it's actually the characters that is the stronger part of the game, and I believe this is the strongest cast they've ever had in a Tales game.  As veterans of the series will know, there are hundreds of optional skits that you can watch, all of which are fully voice acted and most of which are very funny and entertaining.

It's great to play such a colourful game for a change!

Graphics: 9 out of 10
While the game doesn't really look light years ahead of Tales of Vesperia, the previous game in the series that was designed for HD consoles, I still think the game looks great, especially the vibrant colours.  With so many games going for a colour palette consisting of brown, mud and turds these days it is very refreshing to see such brilliant blues, gorgeous greens and ravishing reds.  The towns are all nicely designed for the most part, but the wide open areas of the world can look a little sparse and lacking in detail at times.  There's also some quite noticeable pop up at times as townsfolk and background elements are drawn in seconds after the rest of the environment is loaded.  It's a bit jarring, but it's nothing that effects the gameplay.  Finally, while the main characters and the antagonists they go up against are all well designed, less important characters and the humans that are just milling about in towns definitely look like they've had less effort spent on them.  This is understandable I suppose, but still a little disappointing.

Sound and Music: 8 out of 10
The soundtrack of Tales of Xillia has once again been composed by series stalwart Motoi Sakuraba, who as far as I know has worked on every game in the series, which is a lot of games by this point.  As a result of the sheer volume of music he's had to come up with over the years, and also from the fact that he has his own style, his work does have a habit of sounding extremely samey at times.  There are most definitely pieces of music in the Xillia soundtrack that are extremely reminiscent of stuff that's come before, but there's also a fair few pieces that sound a bit different from previous titles.  I'm thinking specifically of the Chinese style tunes from the city of Xan Diu and surrounding areas like the Xagut Floodmeadows.   Even the standard sounding stuff is still well done, it just comes across as a little derivative.

Now let's turn to the voice acting, which I thought was great!  I do know that people had issues with Milla's voice work, but to me it sounded perfect.  Yes, so alright, her lines often sounded a little stilted and unnatural, but think about it - she's not used to being human!  She's a great spirit who has suddenly been thrust into a world she knows very little about, so of course her mannerisms are going to be a little strange.  The other characters are really well performed as well, in particular Teepo, Rowen and Alvin.

Choosing to play as Jude or Milla does add a bit of replay value to the game, but it doesn't change things in a major way.

Game Mechanics: 8 out of 10
The Tales series are action RPG's through and through, with quick, often hectic battles that can be over in seconds.  They play out a bit like a fighting game, except there is a lot more depth, especially when it comes to boss fights that often require more than just mashing the attack button to defeat.  Careful defence, exploitation of the enemies weakness and command of your other characters is important to succeed.  Of course, being the right level for the fight helps as well, but I never really found that I needed to grind in Xillia at any point, until after the story and the bonus dungeon comes into play.  After dabbling with that place for a little while, I decided to put it off until later.  You can also link with any of the other three characters in your party by pressing a direction on the d-pad, which gives you access to specific abilities.  In the case of Leia, it allows you to steal items from downed enemies.  While linked you will also be filling up a bar on the left hand side of the screen.  As the segments fill up, you can unleash powerful link attacks with your partner character, and it's it's completely full you can fire off Artes without using up any TP until the bar is drained and you start over.

In Tales of Xillia, character development mainly takes place with the Lillium Orb system.  It's reminiscent of stuff like the sphere grid from Final Fantasy X where you have nodes that you can activate with points earned from levelling up.  The nodes around the outside of a segment typically give you a small stat increase of some kind, but by completing a segment the middle will then be filled in, earning you a more significant upgrade such as an Arte or a Skill.   Artes are your active abilities that you use in battle, which are either offensive moves or buffing / healing spells.  Jude and Milla both tend to favour attacking directly with their fists or weapons, whereas other characters like Elize serve more of a healing role with a nice sideline in powerful magic spells.  Skills are more passive in their nature, and your character has a pool of skill points to spend, which increases as they level up.  The skills can be turned on and off at any time so you can tweak your characters for different boss scenarios.

Xillia also has a rather strange shop system where you have to donate random items that you've picked up from shiny spots on the overworld or in dungeons, as well as from random drops from defeated monsters.  It all seems rather complicated initially but there's actually not that much to it.  What I would do is choose either weapons or armour and then donate all the crap that I'd picked up recently to level up the shop and unlock the next tier of equipment.  Then the next time I would do the same for the other type of gear.  You still have to have the money to be able to buy the gear as well, so it's difficult to actually break the game by unlocking multiple tiers of weapon at the same time, for example.  I played with game with the combat difficulty set to Normal, which wasn't very challenging for the most part.  Those confidant in their abilities might want to turn this up a notch.

The story of the game is broken up into chapters, and as you progress you will also unlock opportunities for completing various side quests and sub stories.  Some of these are very simple one and done fetch quests, others are more in depth and will take you most of the game to finish as the next little piece of the story is doled out.  It is possible to miss out on these optional scenes (and a good many of the skits as well) if you plough on with the main story too quickly and don't take the time revisit towns that you've been to previously.  It is quite easy to go back to other areas because you can access a map and fast travel to them with ease.  I would definitely recommend doing everything that you can to get the most out of the game.

Teepo is my favourite character by far!

Innovation & Cleverness: 6 out of 10
When you get down to it, the Tales games are all quite similar to one another, with just subtle improvements and differences from one iteration to the next.  Tales of Xillia is at least a bit more free form that previous games in the series, with the wide open environments between towns to explore and the optional side content that you can take part in.  Otherwise, mechanically and stylistically, it's pretty much business as usual and will hold no real surprises if you've played one of these games before.

Value & Replayability: 8 out of 10
My completion time for Jude's side of the story was about 35 hours, without tackling the extra dungeon.  It would take roughly the same amount of time go through the game as Milla as well, and I had such a fun time going through the game that I could actually see myself doing that at some point in the future.  For now, I'm focused on completing the sequel, which takes place one year after the first game.

Overall: 9 out of 10
As I said in my intro, Tales of Xillia has knocked Tales of the Abyss off of its number one slot in this series.  The whole game was hugely enjoyable from beginning to end, and I may well come back and play through Milla's version of the story if I can find the time to do so.  From what little I've played of Tales of Zestiria so far, I doubt it's going to beat Xillia - the characters just aren't as immediately like able and the the camera seems to have quite a few issues in combat.  That's another review for another day, however.  For now, I would recommend Tales of Xillia to both newcomers and those who have played a Tales game before without reservation.  It's a refreshing change of pace from all of the western RPG's that have been released recently.

Wild Arms 3 | PlayStation 2 Tuesdays #15

This week it's the turn of Wild Arms 3 - a fantastic and quite overlooked RPG.  I would like to start this episode with another personal history lesson, as I often tend to do, and go over my experience with the series.  I picked up the first Wild Arms in 1997 when it was released for the PS1, and it was actually my first serious attempt to play through a turn based JRPG.  At about 10 or so hours in, I got stuck on a particular boss (Zed), and at this point the concept of grinding for levels was completely alien to me, so after retrying the fight half a dozen times or so and failing, I gave up.  Then Final Fantasy VII happened, and Wild Arms became forgotten until some time around the year 2004, when I found Wild Arms 3 in a bargain bin for £10.  At first it didn't even occur to me that it was part of the same series that I had tried some 7 years before, though when I heard the music and started to get the gist of the plot, it began to come back to me.  After thoroughly enjoying the game from beginning to end, I then went back and played through the first two game in the series (having to import part 2 from the US).  By then, both Wild Arms 4 and Wild Arms Alter Code F (a PS2 remake of the original) had been announced, and I imported them both as soon as they were available.  I hope to get around to covering the rest of the series in future seasons, but first things first, let's dive into what makes Wild Arms 3 so special, and quite possibly the best entry in the series!

Wild Arms 3 is a great western RPG, and by that I don't mean one that's been developed by team from Europe or the US, I mean western in the howdy pardner, rootin' tootin' Clint Eastwood / John Wayne sense of the world.  The western influence has been present in all the games in the series, yet it hasn't always been as strong as it could have been, with the first two games having quite a large amount of fantasy influence in them, and the fourth game veering into the realm of science fiction.  This time around though, every one of the four playable characters carries a gun (or ARM), you get to ride horses, raid a train, fend off dastardly bandits, and do other cowboy type stuff.  The characters include Virginia Maxwell, who is a descendant of "Calamity" Jane Maxwell from the first game, a young Baskar (native American style culture) by the name of Gallows who is desperate to leave his village, the loner Jet Enduro roaming the world looking to make his fortune, and the wise sniper Clive Winslet who is taking on random jobs to help pay for medication to heal his ailing wife back home.

Next up, the presentation - Wild Arms 3 is incredibly polished, with a fantastic animated intro that plays each time you load your save and actually changes to represent what's going on in the story.  The tune that accompanies this intro is also one of the best from the series, bettered only by the extremely catchy whistling theme from the PS1 original.  This is bookended by another great tune and a series of screens that summarise your character level and other stats should you say no when asked if you want to continue playing after you save your game. The music that accompanies the main game also happens to be one of my favourite RPG soundtracks - series veteran Michiko Naruke turns in some fantastic pieces, from the upbeat toe tappers that can be found in the many dungeons and the over world, to the more laid back tunes from the many towns such as Claiborne.  Visually, the game uses a cel shaded look with a paint like texture that looks quite good most of the time, and a bit odd at others.  For instance, Virginia's hands look freakishly huge in her white Mickey Mouse style gloves, with fingers that resemble sausages.  Overall though, the game is incredibly slick, and it feels like you are watching an episode of a great anime show each time you fire it up.

The game play is fairly traditional turn based stuff but there are a few twists that this series throws into the mix.  Early on in the game each of the four members of your party gets their own "Medium" - an object that allows them to connect ancient guardians of Filgaia (the planet the series is set on) which allows them to cast spells, use special abilities an summon the guardians to aid in combat.  To use all these things you need to earn Force Points (or FP), which can be done by attacking enemies, taking hits and evading incoming attacks.  Building up your FP to certain thresholds (like 10, 30, etc) allows you to use spells like Cremate or Heal without actually expending any FP.  Then there are certain character specific abilities like Clive's Lock On which is allows you to hit enemies that usually have a very high evasion rate, or Extend, which lets Gallows use a spell like Heal on the entire party instead of just one person.  These actually do use up FP.

The one other thing I want to touch on the the dungeon design and the puzzles. Each of your characters have their own tools, like a bomb, a flame crest or a boomerang, and there will typically be locked doors throughout the dungeons that will require you to blow something up, light a torch, or hit a switch with the boomerang.  None of it is especially taxing, but it does help to add some variety to the game play and stop you from getting bored with endless random battles.  Also in the dungeons are two different types of crystal - red and white.  You characters have a bank of vitality, and when a fight ends with them on less than 100%, this vitality is expended to top it back up to maximum.  The red crystals in the dungeons refill this vitality.  The white crystals are related to a system that allows you to skip random battles. Just before one is about to be triggered, a white exclamation mark appears over the head of your on screen person and you have a second to cancel the battle.  One ECM point is used up by doing this, and should you run out you will then be forced to fight.  White crystals restore your ECM meter.

If you're still open to playing games on the PS2 and not all about the current generation, then I would really recommend checking out Wild Arms 3.  Whether you check out the preceeding games in the series is up to you - it's not entirely necessary (there are connections to the first game throughout the third, but the story is self contained enough for it to not really matter).  I'm going to try and cover another RPG a bit later on in this season, but they do take a bit more preparation than the standard episode.  Next time though, I'll be looking at a classic platformer - Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy (with HD footage!).