Trails in the Sky the 3rd Evolution（英雄伝説 空の軌跡 the 3rd Evolution）

It's become a regular ritual of mine to pick up a Trails game every time a new one comes out in a desperate attempt to try to keep up. Now that I've finally beaten the 3rd one, that brings the current tally to 3/11 or a grade of F minus minus minus, which compared to the US government is actually pretty good IMO. I would put up the usual Trump meme pic but I'm so fucking tired of that shit, here's a picture of a bat plushie instead.

Please stop eating the fuckers, for fuck's sake!! (You know who you are)

There is no better time than now to escape from shitty reality into the sweet bliss of logical and responsible adults in a fantasy RPG video game. Yes, let's dig into the 3rd iteration of brave heroes fighting against people of differing ideologies, political intrigue, and high-level foreign policy negotiations between shrewd leaders... Naw, let's just go into some la-la land after the prologue chapter with magic memory doors n shit... yeeaaaaah....

Falcom, your own characters are saying your setting is a fucking JOKE!

I'm glad they didn't call this Sora no Kiseki TC, calling it "the 3rd" like a 5th wheel is appropriate because it plays like a fan-service afterthought, not the finale of a trilogy. It's a good excuse to get all the characters from the first 2 games together and reminisce on extra events that fill out the setting. As much as I love to see little side stories of tiny RPG characters in pajamas, the manner in which the game presents them just bothered me. Like, why does a character that recently LIVED through the event need to see a memory of it much less through some weird door? From the standpoint of the character, it must be like watching a shitty home movie from last week on VCR (kids, you'll need to Google that).

 

Awww, so cute! Oh I know, let's have her fight ruthless mercenaries and ancient legendary monsters!

Yeah sure, technically the game does have a story and it's not bad actually. But at times, it just feels so contrived and just an excuse to beam all the familiar crew back into another game (and I mean "beam" literally). I did at least like the new character and her VA, RieB with a weird B (or whatever that is). While I'm not into nuns, she was cool because she likes to eat. It's too bad she's not a morbidly obese trans person of color to properly represent us American gamers. Missed opportunity there IMO. Maybe it'll be fixed in the PS5 version if MS buys Falcom or something. #FuckMe2020

Why is she white, thin, and binary? I want REAL people, like those assholes that don't wear masks

The part of the game that I finally really started warming up to was the combat. I know I complained about the fact that it's recycled for SC but kinda like how some people start to like shitty songs after hearing it repeatedly on the radio, it eventually grew on me. As usual, I loved how you start at level 90 unlike most RPG sequels that offer no explanation as to why you're back at level 1 and weak as fuck again.

They couldn't resist the obligatory stroll in molten lava cliché however

Another common annoyance that this game handles gracefully is grinding under-leveled characters. I really wish more RPGs scale EXP like this. You haven't used a character for a few chapters? No problem, just have them hang out in the back for a few battles and they'll level up in no time. I even maxed out 9999 EXP in one battle for the unsightly males to prepare for the final battle.

As usual, I tend to leave... ugh MEN out of my party

Save for some minor changes such as enemy elements, the mechanics are pretty much identical. However, the strategies I employed were different because of the insanely effective quartz. While I mostly ignored arts in the first game, having 50%-75% reduction in casting time made them so much more useful. In particular, because some bosses are immune to all debuffs and status ailments, it's vitally important that you keep your buffs up. Speed, in particular, is of the upmost importance in hard mode. As usual, I have not played in nightmare mode, saving that for another day.

Yeah! What's wrong with having a 13 year old girlfriend? Hmm... let me think... #Jailbait

Other notable areas besides the combat, side stories, new character, and Agate's weird relationship with a 13-year-old girl, are the annoying mini games and music. The mini games such as poker, blackjack, and trivia are well, like I said, just annoying. I didn't mind the fishing contest so much though.

From this angle, you can tell Estelle has it where it counts

Some of the dungeon songs were head rockers so I'm liking the soundtrack more and more with each iteration of the series, which is always a good sign of things to come.

Good stuff. I was rocking while dungeon crawling.

Score: 3.5 C'mon Falcom, where is the obligatory hot springs church outing event? out of 5 (79 hours to beat)

Is the premise contrived and the game a bit fan servicey for bringing back all these characters? Sure, but overall, I still had fun for the total of almost 80 hours and the main plot wasn't bad, just a bit too much hocus pocus for my tastes. For the reason that I had fun for that amount of time and there's nothing wrong with the game, I would rate it as slightly above average.

Cover art for "I'm so wet, I want to have your baby but I'm a nun!" (as featured in the doujin series) 

I guess there's finally an English localized version of the game on Steam but based on the original PSP version. I dunno, maybe because I wasn't a Jhipster back then, but I like the Evolution remakes just fine so there's a tiny Jhipster smugness bonus added on for this version.

"It was a clever inducement of the temporary representative Cashius bright that broke down the agglutinating situation of a war." WTF??? I bet Falcom never expected anyone to read this shit.

The final boss battles were kind of brutal even in just Hard mode. I recommend looking up the best party member distribution before you start the last dungeons. Thankfully, they at least offer you an option to save before the last boss battle because I would have thrown my Vita at the wall if I had to start over after hours and hours of fighting. Thanks to the OP Absolute guard and continually buffing despite that annoying move the final boss has to remove all your buffs, I was able to make it to the end on my first try. Whew!

Legend of Heroes VII? That's one of like 5 ways to define this series (fucking Falcom man)

And that's that, finally done with this series in a series in a series. I'm definitely NOT catching up on all these Legend of Heroes RPGs but I'm having fun with them so I suppose it's not a bad thing to have a whole stack to go through still. I'm certainly looking forward to moving on from Liberl after well over 200 hours in the same locations. It's time to go to Crossbell... finally!!!

Additional Evolution screenshots for the Jhipster smugness library

Beating the game unlocks music from all 3 games. Cool, unless you're a classic OST pig in the mud

Ugh, fuck this trivia game. I'm down for more what's his face crossdressing though.

Holy shit, is this some huge spoiler?! Naw, it's just another fucking "memory".

Oh magic clothes that coincidentally reuses an existing asset? How... convenient!

The cursive on this Salt Paling doc is hard to read saving Falcom from further embarrassment.

It's a hidden gem shooter! Get your copy now before it becomes RAREZ!!!

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Final Fantasy XV（ファイナルファンタジーXV）

Well, here we are, Final Fantasy goddamn FIFTEEN, 29 years into the series. We are halfway to the point where Squeenix will probably need to avoid roman numerals for 30. That'll make searching on google about the game a bit... tricky to say the least. But I really do hope they make 16, 17, and so on instead of fucking with it like all the other companies eg "Final Fantasy One X1 Pro" or god forbid just "Final Fantasy".

Cindy will have a cameo in FF XXX in hologram form

I bought this over 2 years ago used for about $25 so I don't have any of the DLC. I usually try to wait for the inevitable GOTY version but I got suckered in early with the Assassin's Creed limited time quest. It was pretty fun and even had parkour gameplay that's not part of the regular game. I did miss the Moogle Chocobo Carnival event but whatever, who cares.

I'm guessing not available on Stadia (cause didn't buy that shit)

I still remember the FF13 Versus trailer oh so many years ago. I'm not even gonna google how long ago that shit was cause it'll just make me feel old as fuck (again). But yeah, what is there to talk about that hasn't already been said? Do I want to go into the whole Cup Noodle thing? Or talk about the movie/anime/DLC multimedia franchise approach to the story? I'm sure all the "pro" gamer sites have all that covered so let's just fucking talk about the game.

The GEICO collab ad campaign

You have to hand it to the Square part of Squeenix, if there's anything consistent about them, it's that they like to change things up. FF15 is unlike any game I've played before. It's a virtual road trip, instagraming, cooking game with your male buddies with no BL elements whatsoever.

Chicks love guys that can cook (if you look like Ignis that is)

I guess I can talk about the battle system which was ok I suppose. There were a few places where the monsters seemed to be over powered especially in the last chapter but I just learned to avoid them. The economy is also kind of broken as you can bungle your way through with Elixirs. Mostly I just spammed attack and it's a mainstream game so you'll get through it without a great deal of effort. Magic is completely useless this time around as you have to craft like 3 at a time, they hurt your own party more often than not, and the cool off period is incredibly long. But really, is FF15 a fantasy game about defeating evil, fighting bad guys, and watching a story unfold in an interactive entertainment medium? Nah.

Menudo with Curry and Nan??? Hmm, I have a hipster food truck idea...

Like I said, FF15 is all about taking photos with your pals, taking photos of your food, bugging Ignis about his can coffee while you cruise, and camping out with Coleman gear. I dunno if I would call it a fun game but it was certainly interesting and to a certain extent relaxing. Sometimes, I would let Ignis drive and I would kill time reading something on my phone in the real world. Other times, I would try to use fast travel but it's not fucking fast at all.

I'm sure this will be fixed on PS5 remastered GOTY re-milk edition

The photo algorithm they implemented seems pretty ingenious. For example, at the end, when you pick your favorite photo, I picked one with Iris and her bother was like, "uhh ok... should I be concerned?" So obviously, there's some logic in there to know that she was in the photo. It also made the ending just really funny. I giggled at least. Yeah, I have a weird sense of humor.

I will choose imouto everytime, anybody's imouto will do.

I put in about 70 hours for the Platinum, the last 10 or so spent mostly fishing and trying to make that special soup to kill the mountain. I'm not sure how many of the 70 hours were spent multitasking while cruising around, etc. For us Americans, if you're going crazy from all this winning while being trapped in the house, this might be the game for you. (#MAGA 2020! aka "let's fuck ourselves for another 4 years")

Who needs real life when you can catch 91 kilograms of fish from home?

Score: 4 Going outside? Pfft, over rated. out of 5 (70 hours for platinum, 48 hours to beat)

This game by all measures is a solid above-average 3.5 game. It was pretty fun, the graphics are amazing but the story is a bit weak. However, I'm going on a whim here and giving it a 4 great game score mostly because I appreciate that Squeenix is still around to make big budget Japanese RPGs. Sure, you can't pan to the bottom to see Iris's underwear in gallery mode but at least it's not trying to shove whatever social message is trending these days in your face. (I can't wait to pre-order Beyond Good and Evil 2 #sarcasm!)

I'm assuming there's a PC mod to get full 360' camera control

At the very least, despite the weak story being spread out over a film, anime, and I assume DLC, I really enjoyed the ending. There's nothing like a set of Coleman logo camping chairs to get you invested into the characters. (Please click on my Coleman affiliate links to support the site!)

Don't those Coleman chairs look so comfortable? Buy yours today!

More screenshots to compare resolution pixels with Stadia since I will be reviewing it once I become pro gamer reviewer and get free shit... one day.

29 years of technical advancements right here

Don't you just hate the idiots that try to compute at the pump?

The 2016 version of fan service, properly masculine and assertive. Oh how far we've fallen.

Ironically this collab mission is still playable while Terra Wars lasted all of 176 days.

Better IMO than Asscreed 3, I would stop playing AC but they keep giving me free copies!

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Seiken Densetsu - Final Fantasy Gaiden（聖剣伝説 -ファイナルファンタジー外伝-）

The last Seiken Densetsu game I played was that gacha mobile port shit RISE of MANA, which definitely left a sour taste in my mouth. So naturally I went and bought the Vita port of the mobile remake of the first game in the series. After all, this game has the same janky mobile graphics like the last one I hated so gotta buy it, right? (Gamer logic 101)

Concept art looks great but a Gameboy doesn't have the specs to-, wait what? $700 iPhone? ...oh.

Now that I actually played through the game that I bought almost 3 years ago on $ale (no doubt for more than the current list price), I'm happy to report that it's actually still (almost) a real game unlike RISE of MANA. I say almost because this game is so easy, you can practically play with your eyes closed or I guess poke at your screen like some lab monkey as intended for the mobile folks. The graphics don't look so hot either. I may even go as far as to say you may as well stick with the OG Gamboy sprites. Yeah yeah, once again the Switch probably got the better deal with the whole collection of the original games, don't worry I'm already moving off of the Censorstation (but the trophies...).

25 years of technological advances and this is what we end up with?

As for the gamplay, the bosses are so easy this game is kind of like Sekiro except it's like you switched places with the bosses and they only get one try to kill you. I know cause I totally beat and can write a "review for Sekiro". (← Google, please rank this part) In fact, instead of the pro journalists that used a cheat to beat it, I'm so efficient, I beat it by watching somebody use the cheat. Actually I didn't even watch it, I count one of the views of somebody else watching on Youtube as me beating the game, I'm super pro like that. Uh where was I? Oh yeah the gameplay.

It's cool, it's just a game- wait... is this like... your job? Oh... wow.

I'm not sure about the difficulty but everything else seems to be a faithful port of the original so I did have to look up a guide when I got stuck in a few places as this is old school "You stuck? Well I guess you fucking stuck then" type of game. It's pretty ridiculous when one NPC says "Yeah, why don't ya get your ass out there and try flare on dem rocks 'till you find em hidden entrances like?" Other than getting stuck, it was a pretty simple game that I finished in a little under 12 hours. It was a bit annoying that you have to constantly switch out stuff from your menu. The 3 quick slots helped but I could have used like 6 slots, especially one for those goddamn fucking annoying keys.

Going back to the Jhipster agenda, let's discuss the localized title Adventures of Mana. Now you can play as Mana going on countless amazing adventures, wait, that's not a character? It's what? But the grammar... fine whatever.

This first game of what non-Jhipsters call the Mana series is also a Final Fantasy spinoff hence the localized title Final Fantasy Adventure for the original game. Now, you may be inclined to think that it's a spinoff in name for marketing purposes only like the Final Fantasy Legend series but no, it's a real spinoff with Moogles and Chocobos.

Aww so cute, sorry about your legs oh spoilers

In fact, in the GBA "new testament" remake, they removed all the FF stuff and made it a proper Seiken Desetsu game. However, this is definitely NOT that game so not sure why they changed the English name but once again, we are not new to localizers who don't know jack here at Jhipster land.

As for this original GB remake, I found the story had some good moments. Yeah, it's a Gameboy faithful remake so the dialogue isn't going to win the Pulitzer eg "Ugh, I'm dead. Croak." but it wasn't bad and had kind of an interesting ending (again "for a GB game" being the key caveat).

The script says "don't die!" but the face says "whatever"

I did find it funny for the best part of the story, they still decided to censor one item you need from Medusa blood to tears instead. This game obviously was loved by the JP kids back in the day because there's a whole page of details of how in the original game, you get experience for the end of the Medusa boss potentially putting up an awkward "You leveled up ze" message, ruining a touching moment. No worries, they fixed that "bug" in this remake.

Amanda, is she going to be a girl you hook up with? Play to find out!

Overall, I found Seiken Densetu - Final Fantasy Gaiden to be a standard old school portable title, something to kill time or to decompress while playing a "real" game. It's a really good Gameboy game, one that probably deserves a 3 or even 3.5 score in its day. However, on the Vita with these graphics and zero difficulty, it's a mediocre experience overall. The title screen music is great though at least.

The rest of the OST unfortunately was not as good as the title screen

Score: 2.5 buckets of blood out of 5 (12 hours to beat, 16 for plat)

Now if you'll excuse me, I have like 5 hours of grinding left killing scores of elephants to get the rest of the trophies since it's SOOO much fun and yes, I totally have a life (not really). OMG, killing elephants, what kind of message is that sending our kids? I demand this game be taken down immediately! Oh excuse me... what? We only care about censoring sex? But that's a natural part of our species... uh huh... uh ok I understand... Stay tuned for our extensive coverage of MK11, the hottest new game just released!

Don't forget to only pick Warrior and Mage to be able to unlock all 99 stats trophies!

Good thing the Auto save works as well as it does (shitty mobile port)

Oh, does this lead into the sequel? I haven't played that since before my Jhipster evolution.

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

Kairisei Million Arthur（乖離性ミリオンアーサー）

Let me tell you a story about a foolish gamer who for some reason no sane individual can surmise decided to go about collecting all the trophies for Karisei Million Shits Arthur. He got all the way up to the last gold trophy which involves collecting 100 yes ONE HUNDRED Ultra Rare cards. He gave up on this stupidly repetitive task for many months until a collaboration event with Peach Beach Splash gave out 5 ultra rare cards with 20 名声, the equivalent of 100 identical cards. Giddy with excitement and disbelief he laughed at the fools for essentially giving away the gold trophy. Without hesitation, he went ahead and maxed out by combining all 5 cards but alas no trophy??!!

The tragic folly and downfall of a foolish gamer

With a pounding heart and shaking hands, he looked at the card details to discover to his shock and dismay that it had only gone up to 90 instead of 100. The fucking UI only said MAX so he had forgotten he needed to max out the level of one of the 5 cards FIRST, then evolve it to Million Rare, and THEN combine the other cards as Ultra Rare cards only have a max of 90 名声. Screaming in frustration and anger, this foolish gamer, instead of deleting this piling heap of garbage, decided FUCK YOU SQUARE, I'm going to do this the hard way. He then proceeded to waste his life away for the next 10 days until he finally achieved his empty, meaningless, and pathetic goal.

The end result of a fool's quest and his loss of valuable time and life

Oh, and I think there's a game in there somewhere.

Score: 0 fuck you fuck you fuck you Square Enix out of 5.

Some of the cards have cool art, I'll give it that. But I think it's ridiculous they still haven't finished the main storyline 9 months after release. Whatever, the story is meh anyways. I DON'T CARE.

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely

ZERO ESCAPE Koku no Jirenma（刻のジレンマ）

Usually, I like to write up these posts while I'm actually playing through the game in order to capture some of the different thoughts I have in the process. However, ZERO ESCAPE games (yes, they went all caps AGAIN) are the kind where you can't really gauge how good it is until you reach the very end and ZERO ESCAPE Koku no Jirenma, ur, I mean Zero Time Dilemma is no exception.

Best looking cover but 3DS barf. Played Vita version (duh)

My first impression was wow, god damn, the graphics are SO much better than Zennin Shi- ehem, excuse me, Virtue's last whatever. Especially Phi, wow, she looks good in those glasses. The graphics in this game look great overall, despite the weird graphics glitch of long hair twitching like it has SERIOUS seizures. I also just loved the chemistry and humor between Phi and Sigma. It was good to see those two again.

Phi is so hawt. Going back to VLR after this game is kinda painful.

However, a few hours into game, some cracks began to show. The variety of puzzles were much more limited and even less than a challenge than previous games. The only real challenging puzzle was how the heck to get unstuck when you run out of scenarios to play, which I guess counts as a puzzle?? Also, the length of the game was much shorter though I wouldn't necessarily say that it needs to be longer given the story.

Another beef I had with the game was the poor synch between the dialogue and mouth movements. For example, even for a one liner 「ええ」, which is totally one syllable, the mouth moved twice. I assume it was to match the shitty and awkward English track (as usual). The reason I'm guessing this is because this game was bankrolled by Aksys Games, not Spike Chunsoft.

We've reached a weird time in gaming history where Japanese games are simply not sustainable without the western market. Not only are there so much more people outside Japan (obviously), the rise of the shitty mobile games in Japan have made naruto onepiece weeb money indispensable ("naruto" pronounced as "now-roo-toe" of course).

You know who you are.

Now, if you want to buy Japanese games on steam, you have to hope the American publisher is willing to sell to the Japanese market. The Jhipster glory days of whole generations of games never seeing English localization is clearly over.

The music is also nothing special, much of it is recycled from the previous game. Overall, the quality of this game just kinda reeks of indie, the kind that over promises and under delivers. Maybe Aksys Games didn't put up that much money after all, I dunno.

I swear I've heard this song somewhere else...
I enjoyed the last entry of the ZERO ESCAPE series and yet couldn't help feel disappointed. Yes, the story had some good moments but also introduced things that I feel kinda broke the rules. I'm not one of those anal assholes that try to find every plot hole. I don't really care as long as I'm enjoying myself and things are believable enough. However, at the end of the day, while I enjoyed Koku no Jirenma, there was nothing exceptional about it (well except for Phi's hawt visual upgrade).

Score: 3 Meh, I guess it's better than nothing™ (by Inafune) out of 5 (25 hours to beat)
+.5 optional bonus for Phi's design.

Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely