Dragon Quest IV（ドラゴンクエストIV 導かれし者たち）

Ahh Dragon Quest IV, the fourth entry in one of the most mainstream RPG series you can think of. Does the internet really need yet another review of this game? I only played the DS version, which I would imagine is very different from the original 1990 Famicom release. But yeah, it's good and if you like traditional RPGs, you should play it. What more is there to say that hasn't already been said? Let's find out, shall we? Heh, heh, heh.

I created an all female party in Dragon Quest III thereby missing some pafu pafu dialog with an NPC. On the flip side, I was able to equip them all with extremely strong bikinis and garter belts. There's no visible difference in the game but I'm sure the fictional game characters felt objectified nonetheless. This time, as a more "mature" gamer, I went with the male protagonist. This had absolutely nothing to do with any concern that a female protagonist would not be pafu pafu eligible. In the end, as far as I could tell, your gender made zero difference to the story.

Not sure if original author but source is here

There is no "official" explanation of what pafu pafu actually IS so thanks to random internet artist for very clearly illustrating an event that takes place in the first chapter where an NPC regains his memory with help from Fureya's umm assets. Speaking of the chapter structure, I really enjoyed playing through each of the character's backstory in each chapter and then recruiting them into your party in what was originally the last chapter (more on that later). I'm frankly shocked that Squeenix didn't make the game into separate episodic purchase$$$ for their mobile ports (barf).

DS version looks mostly the same so fuck this app shit

Overall, I liked the diverse cast such as the twins and Arina, the strong tomboy female character. She doesn't use any magic or any of that weak nonsense, just physical attacks with knives, whip, claws, etc. Oh wait, I forgot that strong female characters didn't exist before Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn. 

Hey, Aloy doesn't wear a weird hat!

I also liked the fact that you can talk to your party members every time you talk to an NPC. I'm not sure if this was part of the original Famicom release but I found that for the most part, your party members say something unique for every NPC conversation, which adds a ton of additional dialogue to the game. It gave a bit more personality and flavor to the adventure since they weren't silent for the majority of the game. You do miss the comments of people you don't really use so who knows what the old guy or Toruneko had to say about shit. While I prefer something like the skits in the Tales series, it's better than nothing for sure.

As usual, since I can't take screenshots from my game file on the actual hardware, here's a quick screenshot I took of the game status screen.

Definitely better than the male version with the weird fish hat

The final boss animations really stood out for me and were pretty cool. While writing this, I actually found out there was an additional chapter not in the original version even though the game clearly said "Fin". The post credit chapter was pretty grindy and features what looks like the same final boss but with different color palette and a tiny change to the original ending. Meh.

Score: 3 missed opportunity to translate final boss name as "DEATH PISS ARROW" out of 5 (38 hours to beat)

Overall, this was a solid fun and traditional RPG, which of course is what the DQ series is known for. I would definitely recommend setting battle speed to the fastest setting. In additional, having the dual screen real estate made it really easy to look around the map by rotating your view where that was allowed. The dungeon maps are pretty small and easy to navigate as well. As long as you have the hang of basic buffs and debuffs (Sukuruto and Rukana), it's a pretty simple and frictionless playthrough.

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

Avalon Code（アヴァロンコード）

Cute girl smiling sadly while boy disappear into dust, so deep

Yes, this blog has kind of been in a slump these days as my posts seemed to get kind of stale. However, I should remember one of the original reasons why I even started the blog, which was to catalog what I've played.

I'll still continue to make little swipes at the absurdity of the so called "gaming community", for example how people think games are the way to go to disseminate social agendas instead of, oh I dunno, politics? Oh golly gee, why are Republicans trying to pass a record number of anti-trans bills when we "fixed" Deadly Premonition 2?? It's almost like boomer politicians don't play games?? Naw, that can't be it!

To be clear, I really don't care how Nintendo labels gender in Animal Crossing either way. Putting aside the fact that Animal Crossing is a chore game I don't care about, it's all the "articles" and griping on social media by privileged westerners or Chinese that would be so comical if it wasn't so ridiculous.

Where's the petition to remove these toxic words from the English vocabulary?

All of which has nothing to do with Avalon Code, ha. So yeah, I hated this game and every minute of it was so painful. And no, it has nothing to do with the fact that I chose the girl and failed to woo that bad boy from the desert. IGNorant has a 8.3 GREAT score because of course they loved it.

The "deep and engrossing story" is about you putting shit in a book before the end of the world. And the "innovative game play mechanics" is hunting through page after page for the right size pieces to make shit. It's not so bad at first if you haven't played through the end, but I'm sure the professional IGN reviewer MUST have played to the bitter end. Later on, you really do want to tear your hair out trying to find 3 pieces of fire, 4 pieces of spiders, or whatever through pages and pages of characters, monsters, weapon, etc. again and again and fucking again.

Shuffling shit around might seem dandy now but wait till you're flipping through all the characters, enemies, weapons, and items in the game

I even resorted to looking up a guide because surely, this couldn't be how you're supposed to actually play the game but nope, there was no secret menu of categories or sorting or anything at all really. I threw all the deaths into a piece of bread to keep it handy to weaken bosses. Hmm, maybe I should've organized the shit on random characters so I don't have to dig through page after page. No, fuck that shit! Why do I have to WORK to make up for what the game purposely made a chore? Even Atelier Marie, made over a decade earlier, had fucking menus and blue/green/etc. categories. To add insult to injury, to make the better weapons, you have to solve fucking sliding puzzles. The difficulty near the end was just fucking ridiculous having to match just the goddamn background patterns. And no, just looking up the recipe online doesn't work. You HAVE to solve the puzzle for the item to appear, which logically makes no sense.

I have a life so I'm proud to say I didn't touch this shit

Fortunately, the last boss wasn't too hard to beat with a weak weapon that didn't require torturing oneself with this shit. Putting aside the "innovative game play mechanics", all the dungeons are boring stupid time trials, which I quickly stopped giving a shit about and the story so unremarkable, I don't even feel like writing about it. Oh yeah, except of course for that part where you lose all your spirits so you have to collect them AGAIN but in reverse order.

To sum up, the best part of this game was when I was finally able to trade it in to get some store credit. It felt so good to get rid of this piece of shit that honestly, I would have been happy to get Gamestop level pennies as long as I wouldn't have to see it sitting on my shelf of DS games.

Score: 0.5 well at least I can retire on my GME stock out of 5 (just kidding, I tried to cash in at the peak and eventually had to sell my cousin's truck to pay off my payday loan)

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

Tantei Kibukawa Ryousuke Jiken Tan - Kamen Genei Satsujin Jiken（探偵・癸生川凌介事件譚 仮面幻影殺人事件）

It's been getting more difficult to make these posts more interesting as gaming news seems slow these days. Then I figured since Tantei Kibukawa is a game written by a game scenario writer about the same game scenario writer playing an online MMO to find a murderer in the game in the game so that he can make a game based on the murder that happened in the game in the game, why don't I make this blog post about how I'm writing this blog post to be meta. Unfortunately, I couldn't really tie my meta blog post into talking about the game so I gave up on it.

"passwords" is not a typo here, you need more than one to log onto the PC in the PC... in the PC

Of course,  I'm sure you realized by now that the previous paragraph is about how I failed to write a meta blog post about a meta game with a meta intro. Yes, I just pulled a "if god can do anything, he can make a rock to heavy for him to lift" paradox. Mic drop!

Reminds me of the good ol' days when the gov did shit... (CDC? Who needs that?)

Anyways, I know I've been going on and on about getting rid of my more mediocre games in order to make more room in my (sister's) basement. Of course, you never know if a game is good or bad until you play it. That's just common sense unless of course, you're a paid game "journalist".

I assumed that Tantei Kibukawa on the DS would just be another mediocre mystery ADV game with horrible visuals. I mean, if you go by just the game cover, it looks... unique. However, I can agree with many of the reviews on Amazon Japan that the graphics grow on you to the point where characters such as Izuna and Rio actually look cute over time.

I would date her, but then again who wouldn't I date? Real girls, that's who. (Self proclaimed voluntary incel aka vincel #yaRight)

Not only are the graphics actually endearing, the story is also surprisingly pretty darn good. You know, I play obscure games with the faint hope that some of them would be a hidden gem but it's pretty rare unless you think hidden means "is not FF or Pokemon" like some YTers. And dare I say it, this game is kind of a hidden gem. Or at least good enough that I would be interested in playing more but oh, sorry, this is the only port among a whole series of games that are now completely unplayable without resorting to buying somebody's old Japanese flip phone with the game installed. So much for game preservation... You would think at least the series author would still have a copy around but well, here's a recent tweet from him.

永劫会の動くガラケーを手に入れたぞ！ pic.twitter.com/BHpJakndeq

— 生王正生 (@ikrmmso) January 5, 2020

In terms of gameplay, it's nothing more than your typical menu based detective ADV game. I did however get stuck just a couple times as you need to poke at some parts of the background to progress (that amazing DS innovation!) You also get a chance to exercise your deduction skills by answering Izuna's questions correctly. The only penalty for getting those questions wrong is you get a lower rating from her at the end. A better rating just unlocks some more memos to read about other cases, which are of course trapped on garake phones.

Whoa, a hand icon? DS is the only console that can handle this kind of gameplay!

I was hopeful that there was going to be some interesting gameplay when you're asked to select your character class in the MMO. It went into quite a lot of detail on the differences between choosing to be a policeman, reporter, etc. I don't know if that was too much to implement but you never really play the MMO as they describe it.

Score: 3 eh, I'm sure nobody will miss the other 18 or so games out of the series (shrug) out of 5 (12 hours to beat)

As usual, unlike the "pro" reviews, I feel no need to provide even a basic summary of the plot with my shitty writing and leave it as an exercise to the reader to check it out for him/her/etc self. I would say that if you like ADV games, this is definitely one worth giving a shot. (Sorry, Jhipsters only. I assume too obscure for fan translation.)

Now, my only issue is trying to decide whether to dump this game to make more room or keep it around as a "hidden" gem in my DS collection. Sigh, decisions, decisions. It may seem insignificant but I live in a modern, advanced society. It's not like I have to worry about life and death situations such as plagues from the old barbaric medieval times...

P.S. For future reference (if we're all still alive), I'm talking about fucking COVID-19.

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

DS Yukemuri Suspense Series: Free Writer Tachibana Maki - "Touyako, Nanatsu no Yu, Okuyu no Sato" Shuzai Techou（DS湯けむりサスペンスシリーズ フリーライター 橘 真希 「洞爺湖・七つの湯・奥湯の郷」取材手帳）

Unlike the crazy long title, this is one of those short games that I try to knock out every now and then in order to thin the herd so to speak. Clocking in at under 8 hours, this ADV game for the DS is about 3 girls traveling to hot spring locations for a travel magazine and getting caught up in various mysteries along the way. Be prepared to enjoy much naked deltoids as this game features live photos similar to Machi by Chunsoft. In fact, according to my expert research (Wikipedia), several people were involved in the making of both games.

In the Switch remake, the shoulders are covered by a tasteful cloak

There are 3 chapters in all and each chapter is from the viewpoint of one of the 3 girls. Personally, I thought Satomi was the cutest. Unfortunately, I was unable to find any other games or AV works featuring her. By AV, I mean Audiovisual works of course, you freaking perverts.

Honestly, I'd go out with all three but my standards are low #IncelGamer

The interesting aspect about this game is that it's by Zenrin, a map company that for some reason decided to branch out into video games very briefly. Each chapter features a map of the hot springs town and you have to navigate to the correct location based on clues and whatnot. Ahhh, brings me back to the good ol' days in Japan before smartphones. "So yeah, take the B-2 east exit, make sure to go up the stairs to your right NOT the escalator. Then turn left at the 7-11 and look for a large sign with a blue bird on it. Take a right and look for another 7-11 that doesn't sell oden. Go to the house next door, tap twice loudly, and follow the cat that comes out of the alleyway to the ABC-Mart. My house is just around the corner in the basement of a snack. EASY. Make sure to say hello to the Mama-san on the way in!"

The Zenrin marketing is just annoying enough to make me hate them

The dialogue was interesting enough to read as the girls banter with each other. The mysteries were nothing to write home about but the short length made it mostly tolerable. Interestingly, after you finish each chapter, you can look up more info on the hotels, attractions, and sights of each location. Who knows if any of this information is still accurate but it's interesting for a video game at least.

How the heck am I supposed to check-in from my DS?

Score: 2.5 cheers to much improved modern life thanks to $900 iPhones, $100/month data plans propped up by telecom monopolies, soaring healthcare costs, and... hmm... nm out of 5 (7.5 hours to beat)

Overall, the game was interesting enough, particularly with the tie in to real travel locations. It even came with a giant blue sticker to seal your user registration card for a chance to win a trip for two. Unfortunately, I was just a wee bit too late to apply and missed the deadline.

Proof that yes, I owned this game before dumping it at Gamestop

In the end, did I like this game enough to keep it around? Naw, I need to make some room in my closet for my complete Funko Pop Fortnite collection or whatever the kids are wasting their parent's money on nowadays. Ok, boomer.

I'm so cute! Global warming? Growing wage gap? #MeToo? Eh? ♥️ What's that?

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

Ikatan: Ikamono Tantei（いかもの探偵 -IKATAN-）

Ikamono Tantei is one of those games that come from the golden age of when Japanese game companies didn't need to make money overseas but then again CyberFront is gone so maybe they did need the money. This game isn't even very good and I would've been quite upset if I bought it at full price in 2008. Fortunately, I was too busy working 12 hour days as a salaryman corporate slave back then to buy low budget DS titles on day one. Anyways, the main appeal of this game seems to be the cross-dressing main character: Kai.

Oh the resetera threads I could make with this

The actual offensive thing about the whole poking game (or "non-consensual gaming" as Sony Cali would label it), is that it's just a cheap token segment that appears exactly once and has nothing to do with the rest of the game design. The gameplay is the weakest part of this mediocre game as it consists of you tapping highlighted key words in the dialogue and selecting the right key word at the end of each chapter to solve the mystery.

The dialogue won't progress until you tap the keyword so you can't miss them though then it begs the question,"why can't the game just pick it up for you?" This is yet another one of those games that just annoys you by having to touch the screen every once in a while. Not utilizing hardware gimmicks effectively seem to be a common theme for most games on every Nintendo platform starting from the DS and Wii.

INNOVATION!

Other than the pointless "gameplay", I thought the characters were pretty funny. The story tries to be unique in that you are solving silly and pointless mysteries apparently called "ikamono". For example, in the second chapter, there's a weird man dressed as cat that refuses to leave the Iriomote cat exhibit. The character illustrator for this game worked on the original novel illustrations for Boogie Phantom, yet another anime I need to watch one of these days.

Looks way better then Chrono Cross at least

Anyways, the best part of this game if you bought it used for about $5 like myself, is that you can finish it in like 5 hours. However, if you want to unlock the last 4 omake episodes, you need to collect ALL the keywords in each of the 4 chapters. I successfully did this for the first chapter but gave up after trying to visit every location on the map dressed as both male and female and still ended up missing some keywords.

Each of the total of 12 omake episodes are just a small bit of dialogue and I'm OK with only having read through 9 of them. I only have so much time left to play all my shit after all.

Score: 2 yet another game nobody cares about (including myself) out of 5

On a completely random side note, I played through Heavenly Sword after this game and it also has a character named Kai. What a weird coincidence!

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

Murder Club（殺人倶楽部）

The legacy of the J.B. Harold series of detective ADV games goes back even further than the Tantei Jinguji Saburo series, though it doesn't seem to have the same miraculous tenacity. The series sadly got into the dead dumb-phone platform for the last 3 games and are basically unplayable as far was I'm aware. It's too bad because I'm kind of curious about the 5th game Seattle Purple Haze. The only thing I could find about the game was this tiny screenshot.

"Little did J.B. know that renting would lead to homelessness years later when he could no longer afford his Ballard rent due to soaring tech stocks."

Unlike the last 3 games which are lost in the heady days of flip phones and PHS (lol remember picchi?), the first game Murder Club has been ported to every platform imaginable. Its release history reads like some sort of abridged game console timeline from the original PC-88 1986 release to the MSX, Famicon, PC Engine CD, PC, DS, etc., the most recent release being a port of the iOS version on the Switch eShop. The later versions are all based on the DS remake which is the version I played.

God, Janet Robbins is so HAWT in the remake.

I believe the DS remake is mostly the same as the original but with a new coat of paint and some improvements to the UI. It also added an epilogue where you can check on what the cast is up to after the main game, as well as, a lead in to the sequel. Fortunately, my used copy had already unlocked the epilogue because supposedly you have to beat it with 100% completion to unlock and I only had 97% with zero desire to play all over again.

The official sites always feature Janet... Well, she IS hawt.

I also checked out the PC Engine CD version because it's the only version with all voiced dialogue. It's a rare fully bilingual game with both text and audio so no reason to pay $80 for the TurboGrafix CD version. But then again, what else would all the rich, privileged non-Jhipsters spend their money on?

Well, you have to spend your institutionalized socially advantageous money somewhere.

The unfortunate thing about the PCE version is that the BGM for the game is just awful. It's so weird because the title and setting screens have pretty darn good CD quality jazz music. A little too much soprano sax for my taste but still pleasant to listen to. What, did they think having a nice jazz BGM would be too relaxing or maybe it was some technical limitation? Even without a CD soundtrack, they could've done a better job with the sound chip IMO. At least in the DS version, while the BGM is super boring, I didn't even really notice nor care.

Yeah the OP sounds good but wait till the game starts...

Finally, onto the game itself, what's all the hubbub about? Is this game really so good that it needs to be ported to 13 different platforms over the span of 31 years? Well, for a 31 year old game, it's pretty good but that's not saying much. It's a standard old-school PC-88 ADV game which means you're trying menu option after menu option. I feel like some of the menu options are useless and should've been removed. For example, why the fuck would you want to ask everybody's blood type? Americans don't even know their blood type half the time. It's not like we're reading Japanese teen magazines to see what boy hunk is compatible with our blood type "personality". I actually had a tiny bit of fun seeing how many ways the VAs could say "I don't know" for all the various menu options but it gets old fast.

Today's blood type?? She's playing ya man! Get a DNA swab! You never watched CSI?

In addition, I understand that there weren't countless podcasts and murder channels to describe in depth how murder investigations were conducted in 1986 but the way you go about it is simply ridiculous. The game dumps a ton of characters on you at the very start which is a bit overwhelming, trying to remember who did what. After you spend a few hours asking everybody their blood type, you then get search warrants and start finding evidence I guess nobody bothered to dispose of. Then, you go to the DA to start arresting people for questioning. You press them with the evidence until they confess. Case closed. All in a good day's work, eh detective?

If you ignore the gameplay, this game does a pretty decent job of uncovering a web of human drama for you to untangle. The story pales in comparison to the deep human drama presented in Hokkaidou blah blah but it kept me interested enough once I got over the initial mental hurdle of memorizing all the characters.

Unfortunately, this is the extent of the fan service. No Yuji Horii panti here.

Score: 2 "Look at my amazing complete PC Engine collection, no it doesn't bother me that I can't read most of it, I'm a Youtuber not a gamer silly!" out of 5 (8 hours to complete)

Pretty cool but how much was a Sharp X68000? Probably like one of my kidneys.

As I look back on the short list of games I completed so far from 1986, I would say that this game is a very middle of the road average 3 score for its time. The remake was fairly well done in that it was faithful to the original while adding some minor improvements. However, in today's standards, this would be a hard one to recommend unless you're striving to be a Jhipster gamer historian like yours truly or just really partial to old school ADV games.

The only reason to buy the U$ version is if this typo bother you. #1stWorldProblems

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

DS Dengeki Bunko Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu II（DS電撃文庫 イリヤの空、UFOの夏II）

You may be wondering, hey eminent Jhipster, if part one of Iriya no Sora DS was soooo boring, why in the world would you waste your time with the second half? Well, you must be new to this blog. If this Jhipster doesn't play through these games, who else will inform the greater English-only internet what they're missing out on? Sure, you can waste your money on one of those A-Z Patreon funded books cause I'm sure those authors are fully fluent in Japanese and actually played through all those games they throw in there with a token synopsis and some screenshots that you can google yourself in like 3 seconds.

Uh huh, yeah, sure. Whatever you say.

Anyways, Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu II is one of those perfect examples of why you shouldn't shit on a game you never finished (*cough* Jason Schreier *cough*). Though in my case, they split the story into 2 games so I technically finished the first game. Needless to say, the snail's pace of the first 2 volumes of the light novel rapidly speeds up in this game and some shit finally happens! For example, Iriya changes up her hair.

I'm pretty sure I know what white looks like and that's not it (screenshot from Nintendo's site)

Kidding aside, I finally realize why this light novel is regarded as highly as it is. It definitely went in a direction I didn't expect and it becomes clear that this is not a happy-go-lucky story as suggested by the first game. I don't want to get too much into spoilers but there might be a rape scene in there (sorry if this triggered you).

The main character is as spineless and useless as always so at least his character is consistent. But now that shit's starting to hit the fan, you do feel for the poor kid. After all, he is just a snot-nosed middle school boy.

He's just a boya (Ha! Get it? I'm here all night folks!)

The setting with the war, UFO, aliens, etc. was not really explained at all but it's merely just the backdrop for the love story. It's a very immature love story about a normal boy and a mysterious girl, a bit touching at times but also tragic. I thought it was worth the read even though it took a while to get to the interesting parts.

As for the rest of the features, they removed the multiplayer card game (oh noes!!) and that annoying feature of touching words to unlock cards. Now, you can just enjoy the story and play the mildly entertaining side-scrolling shooter, at your leisure.

Hidden gem shmup (check my $100 eBay listing, great deal!!) 

You can play as the fighter plane in the air or jump down to shoot enemies on foot Contra-style. I was quickly able to beat 4 stages but then it just starts over at a harder difficulty and that was good enough for me.

Score: 3.5 Cero D for sexual content? But it's just words, you guys didn't even illustrate it! out of 5 (16.5 hours to finish)

I'm not sure if this sound novel is above-average in general but it certainly got me hooked enough to finish it much faster than the first part. Also given how boring the first half was, averaging the two scores gives it about a 3 average which is around what I would score for the entire story overall. You never know how you'll feel about a game until you finish it all the way to the end. Good thing I have a real job that doesn't require me to poop out a diarrhea review in time for the release date.

In any case, it was good enough for me to be interested in picking up some of the other DS Dengeki Bunko games. All right, look like it's time for some SHOPPING!!!

Time to open up my monster amazon.co.jp wishlist!

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 IV（ファイナルファンタジーIV）

I probably beat FF4 more times than any other RPG as a kid. I definitely remember grinding all my characters up to level 99. Oh to be a kid again and have all that time to waste! I don't remember if I owned the game or rented it but it would be quite an achievement to grind to level 99 on a weekend. Gotta love them negligent parents! Back in my day, parents didn't need to watch or love their kids. Look at me, I turned out just fine!

Parental neglect has never been more hilarious!

I decided to play the DS version this time because I heard it was the hardest version (cause I'm hardcore gamer). Right away, I could tell the difference in the first battles outside Baron. Each enemy took 2 hits to kill (or 1 jump) and they hit back for around 30 damage. Without using a potion, you wouldn't make it past more than 5 or 6 battles. Still, I felt most of the game was fairly balanced until the last dungeon. Phoenix downs are plentiful for a reason as bosses will kill your party members more often than not.

Yeah, shit is easy here but just wait...

This is the first FF game with the famed ATB (active time battle) system and while I didn't really think much of it at the time playing the easy type for westerners rpg newbs version as a kid, playing the DS version really ups the tension and excitement. For the harder boss battles, it becomes a race against time as you frantically revive your party members and try to time heals so that it happens right after they're revived and before the boss kills them again. In particular, there is one really cheap boss battle that starts with everybody dead except Cecil and someone (wearing green) who joins you last minute under-leveled as fuck.

Even the box art screams "easy type for whiney babies!!!"

The battle system in FF4 is one of the most innovative RPGs for the time which is why I'm really more in the FF camp over DQ because I appreciate when developers try new shit even if it's totally broken at times (*cough FF8 cough*). The ATB isn't the only thing to rave about. I remember being giddy with excitement when I figured out you can bypass reflect by reflecting spells on yourselves (or vice versa for healing). Don't forget about casting float for enemies that spammed quake, and that annoying dungeon where you couldn't use metal equipment. Sure FF3 had similar neat ideas such as casting mini to enter tiny dungeons but here it actually affects the game play and makes it so much fun to play (sometimes annoying too). However, it definitely falls behind other games like FF6 in the story department.

On the DS, the graphics are way shittier than this #PSP-fanboi

Playing as an enlightened Jhipster, I was hoping to be wowed by all the brilliant prose in its pure, unadulterated Japanese form. Unfortunately, there's nothing the English translation really left out in terms of story. Sure, no more "spoony" bards but 「黙れ、貴様！」 isn't exactly Shakespearean prose. It's funny how we used to think as kids that NOA was censoring all these naughty curse words with "spoony" but really Japanese doesn't have much in terms of swearing in the English sense. "Shut up, (derogatory and rude version of) you!" doesn't really translate to any kind of swearing. The "oh we're cool cause we didn't censor the curse words" fake marketing makes Barret from FF7 seem juvenile and sophomoric now.

The one big thing I noticed playing as a Jhipster is that the pub in Toroia is a freakin' hostess club! It never says it outright but there's a Mama on the first floor and the second floor is dedicated to pretty oneechans talking to men. I know a fucking hostess club when I see one (not that I've been to one cause ya know I don't gotta pay to talk to the ladies).

I bet Japanese script is "I'll kill you and fuck your skull!" #CENSORSHIP

I really enjoyed the story as a kid, what with you starting out as a cool black knight and the whole Mist village thing. As an adult, maybe it's because I played this game too many times but I felt that the writing was a bit too juvenile and the voice acting in the DS version was pretty damn generic. I mean c'mon, how many times you gonna let Kain's shit slide? Really?!

I mean seriously, C'MON!!

I really wished they had a hard mode for the PSP version because the graphics are way better and the spell effects look so cool. The DS is the usual pixelated mess of course. Yeah, it had some new mechanics such as the decant thing (shrug) and some token multiplayer feature that I naturally ignored completely having no friends IRL. If it wasn't for the lack of difficulty, I would suggest the PSP version over the DS any day (don't even get me started on the iOS port).

Score: 3.5 get these muthafucking spoony snakes off this airship! out of 5 (53 hours to beat)

Also includes all the time lost dying in the last dungeon #gitgud

FF4 was one of my favorite games of all time for quite a while. The original SNES version was one of the best looking, sounding, and funnest RPG of its time and would easy be a 4 or even 4.5 score. However, playing through the DS version again in modern times, I have to say that it's definitely a fun game to play but also a bit dated in terms of the plot. Still, definitely a classic that I would consider a must-play for RPG aficionados.

Still one of my fav boss themes to this day

Currently, I am enjoying the after years and actually intended to write about it here along with the main game. However, after playing the interlude for about 5 hours and 3 hours on the first scenario, I'm hoping there's enough content to justify a whole post by itself. We'll see.

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

DS Dengeki Bunko Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu（DS電撃文庫 イリヤの空、UFOの夏）

Continuing my public service to the internet by providing witty prose about Japanese only games that no other English speaking person in his/her/popular-gender-neutral-pronoun right mind would play, here's part 1 of Iriya no Sora, UFO no Natsu. Fucking finally! I managed to slog, mostly half asleep, through this game, part of DS Dengeki Bunko series aka "oh wouldn't it be cool if the DS was like an ebook reader?" (The answer: not really.)

Kindle? Pfft, not nearly enough moe

While I normally play all my DS games on my New (not actually new) 3DS LL (Jhipster for XL), for games in TATE mode, the heavier model puts too much strain on my delicate gamer wrists so I usually bust out my regular 3DS for these occasions. For those not up on gamer terms, TATE is the weeb term for vertical screen（縦画面）primarily for shooters or shmups as the expert Youtube "gamers" (hoarders) call em. Speaking of shooters, this game comes with one in the form of a mini game that uses the touch pen to target enemies.

Extra weeb cringe if you pronounce TATE like Tater tots.

It was ok, about as good as you'd expect for a mini game hidden in a sound novel. I wouldn't exactly rave about it as some awesome shmup "hidden" gem to BUY NOW BEFORE PRICES SKYROCKET!! Or actually maybe I'll do exactly that as I'm looking to purge this one out of the collection. Anybody want my copy for the super fair price of $99.99?

There's also an annoying quiz mini game with questions about the story. Making even ONE mistake requires you to start over and while you can skip 5 questions they come back around again basically requiring you to memorize every single question anyway. Getting a 100% perfect completion is a fucking ordeal but it unlocks an extra side chapter. I know this because I played through the stupid quiz more times than I'm willing to admit to do a perfect run.

I actually read the whole thing and completed this quiz. Yes, I have no life.

All of the mini games are unlocked by finding cards that are hidden by tapping certain words of interest in the story. The cards naturally can be used for a card battle game that apparently supports up to 4 player multiplayer competition action. I would guess that 4 people with 4 copies of this game unlocked all the cards and got together to play against each other probably exactly zero times in this universe.

As for the meat of the game, which is the book, you can read it for yourself free, provided you're fluent in Japanese of course. I did like the artwork which is primarily the reason why I bought this game in the first place (yeeaah, I need to stop buying shit based on the cover). Unfortunately, the music and sound effects are unremarkable and totally forgettable. In fact, I forgot about them already.

I should've checked Metacritic first (pfft, ya right)

While the reviews are pretty good overall, personally this story was just not for me. It was perhaps too slow paced or maybe a bit too unrealistic for my tastes. I don't know what it is but it did serve as an excellent way for me to knock myself to sleep faster than popping some Benadryl. I really wouldn't recommend this one unless you want to waste 20 hours of your life. Or you can just watch the OVA anime through the magic of Youtube. (Content ID so totally legal, right?) In the end, I really regret wasting my time on this... Alrightly then, onto part 2!!

I'm not sure if I was awake the whole 18 hours...

Score: 2.0 but does it support TATER tot mode?? out of 5 (18 hours to complete)

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

Negima!? Chou Mahora Taisen Kattoiin☆Keiyaku Shikkou Dechai masuu（ネギま!? 超 麻帆良大戦 かっとイ~ン☆契約執行でちゃいますぅ）

Among a looooong list of Negima!? games, ネギま!? 超 麻帆良大戦 かっとイ~ン☆契約執行でちゃいますぅ I believe is the first of the two Negima!? games on the Nintendo DS and based on the reviews, I probably should have skipped this one and gone straight to ネギま!?超麻帆良大戦チュウ チェックイ~ン 全員集合!やっぱり温泉来ちゃいましたぁ. Don't worry, I won't look at you with Jhipster disdain for not remembering the exact difference between the two titles.

Oh I'm sorry, were you expecting Romaji with that?

But yeah, this game doesn't exactly exude quality as it opens with the shittiest looking title screen and a heavily compressed reading of the title a la "kattoi~~~~n!!". Ugh. Now, I'm obviously not one of those IGN "pro" contract reviewers who are randomly assigned shit and paid some sum to pump out a review of something they have absolutely no clue about as quickly as possible. So yes, I watched the anime adaptation (all 26 episodes) and read some of the manga. I even tried to watch the remake though I stopped because well, it's the same shit mostly. And yes, for the record, Yue is my fav girl followed closely by Nodoka cause you know, those shy types are the most wild in the bedroom. The main heroine is the most boring and stereotypical archetype evar so fuck that girl, whatever her name was.

My future waifu. Unfortunately, this is NOT from the game.

So yeah, even though this game is a mess, combining an ADV part, Negima trivial questions err... I mean trivia, and a shitty SRPG, I probably would have finished it nevertheless. I didn't even mind resetting constantly to find out which girls would give you new costumes in the ADV part nor the quizzes with random difficulty ranging from the easiest, "which girl is [name]" to some super niche Negima trivia. BUT what I couldn't stand are SRPGs that only reward exp to the character that defeats an enemy AND no practice stage to grind. There's no way in HELL I would diligently plan for which characters to level up by saving kills for a game of this caliber.

Not to mention, the difficulty is way too high for a game of such shitty quality. If you lose a battle, there's no way to keep your experience. Basically, a big fuck you and back you go to the shitty "kattoi~~~~n!!" title screen. Oh, we took away all the characters that you leveled up from previous fights? Ha, why don't you start over, you sorry fuck?!

No, fuck you game. You're going straight into dumpster. There goes 8 hours of my life, down the tubes. Also, my copy of the game was super shitty so who knows if the Gamestop dumpster divers would even bother with your ass.

Score: orz I just needed a kiss from Yue to keep going but alas it was not to be out of 5

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

orz - Failed to finish (not rated)

Final Fantasy III（ファイナルファンタジーIII）

Every new Final Fantasy game I buy seems to require several hours of research to determine which version is best. I really only want to buy one copy of each game, as strange as that may sound to the "pro" game hoarders... err I mean collectors. I usually just go for the latest version that uses real buttons and not on a goddamn phone. With Final Fantasy III, given my unabashed bias and love for the PSP aka the best console of all time, it seemed natural to give my yen offerings to the Amazon Japan Gods and get me some of that UMD love.

This filtered washed out mobile shitfest graphics is not exactly the same as the PSP version (impartial opinion)

Now, I'm sure you 2D purists are already scoffing at me for going for the 3D remake but if anybody can explain why the original version is better in terms of gameplay, please do let me know what I'm supposedly missing out on. As for personal preference, I really don't care about 2D or 3D as long as the game plays fine. I will say that zooming in to find hidden items was kinda annoying and pointless. I'm not sure how that mechanic worked if at all in the original Famicon version. In addition, the load times was just a few seconds too long. Even using an ISO without all the UMD grinding, the load time was juuuust long enough to be annoying but the 2x speed in auto battle mode made up for it a bit.

3D? Pffft, you must be one of those people that liked FF13 *scoff*

Besides the 3D changes, I found FF3 interesting because you get an airship within the first hour of the game. Of course, this airship doesn't go over mountains so you can't go much farther than what you could easily walk anyway but I still thought it was a nice twist. What's even more interesting is less than 10 hours into the game, an NPC gave me an item for going around the world map on a Chocobo and it didn't take more than a couple minutes, the world map was so small, I assumed there was more to explore than just this tiny world (you'll need to play the game to find out).

Don't get too excited, you ain't gonna get too far with that.

This is the first FF game that uses the job system like Bravely Default (comparison for the new kids). I'm not going to guess at who or how the job system was invented but after playing FF2, it feels like a natural progression from the crazy everything has a level chaos. If you consolidate the disjointed parts of FF2 and wrap it in a neat logical package called a job... voila! Job system!

Out of the first 3 games, the combat in this one is definitely the best so far. While FF1 was 99% holding down circle and FF2 a crazy albeit unique mess, FF3 is the first game in the franchise that has any sense of strategy. Though when you open up 4 chests with equipment for the scholar, you can tell the game is trying to tell you something. You need to play around with the jobs somewhat to see what works at different parts of the game. However, the system definitely did have some flaws including the fact that you'll never have the time to really level up and try out all the various jobs. The game balance near the end seemed to kind of break down as well as bosses took only about 6-10 hits of 6000-9999 damage to defeat.

Character designs were kinda meh but Refia twin tails with glasses was a winner

I liked the fact that you need to actually buy and use items in the beginning as Esuna is a 7(!) level spell. Phoenix downs are also not sold in stores so you need to use what you can find until you unlock Revive much later in the game (though earlier than Esuna). It was really annoying to have to find a spring to revive party members as sleeping at an inn doesn't work so I usually just reset instead.

The setting of the story is very similar to FF1 with the 4 warriors of light again, which feels like a step backward from FF2 in terms of character development. This time, you're trying to restore balance with light or something via talking crystals. I was never a big fan of the crystal stuff in Final Fantasy but I guess this is where it kinda starts to become an FF theme. You know what kind of game would be really cool? What if, in a unique twist, you are actually warriors of dark fighting against light?! That would be pretty darn cool!!!

GOD DAMMIT SQUARE!!! You made the boring part of the story! (DS version)

As I mentioned, I'm not sure why they went back to the generic FF1 character style (is this an early example of FF9 retro throwback??) They tried to give the characters some back stories in the 3D remake but even so the character development is non-existent and they end up feeling almost as generic as the FF1 warriors of light anyway. You can see snippets of personality and interaction in short bits of story and by talking to the 5th character that joins your party now and then. But at the end of the day, you can change all the characters to cross-dressing harpies and the main plot of restoring light to the balance or whatever would work exactly the same. At least this time, the 5th character isn't actually in your party as an under-powered, dragging wet towel that you are constantly switching like in FF2.

It's too bad the characters are so boring because the world setting and story events are arguably the most interesting in the series so far. However, it all falls flat as the events unfold around the generic characters that you're not really invested in and the final villian was too abstract to really interest me. I guess we'll have to wait for FF4 for the Parom/Palom level feels. Well, at least we can enjoy the fancy new intro vid.

Character interactions not as rich as intro suggests
Score: 3 "I may be cute but I'm fucking warning you, this book is pretty darn heavy!" out of 5 (31 hours to beat)

I thought the game was just average on all counts. Oh well, at least FF3 brought us Moogles... and it has twin tails... and a cat suit so... mission accomplished! Now I hear the final dungeon in the original version is hella difficult but it was pretty tame in the remake and thank goodness for that cause I was ready to be done with this game.

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