Estpolis Denki（エストポリス伝記）

What is Estpolis Denki? Oh my god, is this another 16-bit "hidden" gem that only Jhipsters had access to in the 90s??? Calm down, it's just Lufia on the SNES. Sometimes after hours of hardcore twitch reflex games such as Dark Souls "Prepare to cry to your mommy, we're so hardcore edition", I feel the need to just zone out on a tradition "hold down red button to win" Super Famicon RPG, and boy is this one as traditional as it gets.

Rare instance where Japanese cover is not better

So yes, this was localized to English and has plenty of reviews out there, all of which will mention that the game starts with the final boss. I vaguely remember some other game that did this before or maybe it was this one when I played it way back in the day. In any case, I don't remember so it's fair to say that it was a pretty fresh idea in 1993. So much, in fact, why not slap it right on the box for us dumb Americans?

Battle in opening story? Good, cause I only do battles and don't read so good

To be fair to the cringe marketing, the game does make a great first impression. The opening scene graphics and music are really good. Unfortunately, I think it serves to make your expectations too high for the game to ultimately deliver on.

This might work on journos that don't actually play the game

To set the context, this game came out on in June of 1993. This was a year after Final Fantasy V and Dragon Quest V, so yeah it might not be fair to compare it to such big franchises but I would say this game falls squarely in the B tier similar to say Breath of Fire, which came out 3 months prior to this game.

First of the 4 first "final" boss fights

Besides the nice intro, the story has some cool ideas and themes. For example, one might be reminded of one recent popular manga/anime as only the elf from the hero's party survived 90 years after the intro battle. As for the ending, I won't spoil the story but there is a reason why the game title was localized to Lufia.

So while the story had potential, unfortunately, the writing and dialogue was not great. There's nothing wrong with it necessarily but I can't quite figure out why it seems a bit cringe. The character's dialogue all sound like they were written by the same person and they don't really stand out as different people. It's times like this, I'm glad I read the original Japanese so I know it's not a problem with translation.

Lufia is a slightly annoying, girly girl that loves flowers and dresses and yet still more interesting than the hero who has absolutely no distinguishing character traits. The cheeky half-elf Jurina was my favorite character and I looked for a good illustration but the game manual doesn't have any. The only one I found online was one pixiv fan art.

There's an interesting blog post from the localizer that talks about having to change the dialogue about medicine that makes your boobs bigger. The dialogue was so dumb it was funny but not in a good way.

Uh oh, can't talk about boobs in America!

The conversation goes on to where Lufia claims she has bigger breasts than Jurina. The main character is like, "well I dunno, not like I ever saw em" and Lufia retorts, "you can't tell over the clothes?"

Hmm, I can't tell either from the pixels. Need a Unreal engine 5 remake with proper "physics" 😉

I guess the localizer changed it to hair tonic or something cause you know, "Think of the poor children!" I also liked the fact that you could buy hard alcohol without the game really getting into how old the characters are. It also restores your health, so remember kids, there's nothing like some whiskey to improve your health!

Don't worry Nintendo America, alcohol is old news we got fentanyl now (T⌓T)

As for the battle mechanics and dungeons, there was nothing special. It's standard fare, where the only magic I used was to heal now and then. Sure, for bosses, I might buff to make things easier, but it was as vanilla as it comes. I do appreciate vanilla RPG with fast forward when I'm in the mood though.

Score: 2.5 breast tonics out of 5

Overall, the game had potential but the writing just did not do it for me. The music was not bad so I enjoyed it for what it was but I would put it in the average or slightly below average category. I would recommend if you are on the mood for a traditional SFC RPG grind. Trigger warning for those insecure about their bra size.

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

ARETHA（アレサ）

ARETHA is a GAME BOY RPG that came out in late 1990, and the English spelling of the title can't help but make me think of Urethra. And if a tube full of piss isn't the best way to describe this game, I don't know what is.

Yes, that's the official title

Putting aside the questionable decision to romanize "Aresa" as ARETHA, one might certainly be tempted to buy this game based on the cover. I suppose it did well enough to spawn a whole series?

This game did come out only one year after the GAME BOY's launch but I've played enough RPGs on the GAME BOY to make a fair comparison. Heck, the first SaGa game came out almost a year before and was WAY better than this headache. It had amazing innovative features like being able to talk to NPCs in the same screen! 

If only I could see the dialogue IN THE GAME...MIND BLOW

I vaguely remember finishing this game on an Anbernic GAME BOY shaped device in a stupor while shoved in what seems like ever shrinking economy seats on a plane. This year, I went a little crazy with Chinese Android handhelds because I freaked out about tariffs. BTW, speaking of tariffs, every time I post about how shit the world has become, it seems like we figure out a way to make things even worse.

GOOD JOB MERICA! WE DID IT!!!

Anyway, the only thing that motivated me to finish this game was being stuck in a metal box thousands of feet above the ground. The mechanics are so broken, I couldn't even enjoy old school grinding.

If you fight too many enemies, they disappear until you enter a new area. Then it changes to new enemies that more often than not will totally destroy you. And since the previous guys disappeared, there's no way to grind on weaker enemies.

Thank god for save states because there were times I had to keep retrying to get less enemies that I could handle because multiple enemies were a death sentence. They can pound on you for multiple consecutive turns without giving you a chance to do jack.

I can never decide which color scheme to use with GB games...

The game was filled with the usual fetch quests but often with weird and very expensive random items you had to buy in towns.

The main character pops in at random times and reminds you what to do but at some point, I missed giving something to someone and I was almost ready to give up even following a guide.

Jema is not actually the main character but I can't tell the difference 

The story could have been kind of interesting but there were so many fetch quests, I literally had no clue what was happening. Not to mention weird and baffling game design decisions for instance, the inn keeper would often be out so you just have to go back in and out a few times. What's the fucking point?!

Where's the fucking manager?? I'm going to change my character's name to Karen

Your grandpa heals you for free at the start but of course that doesn't last long. You can withdraw some money from an ATM (huh?) like 30000 pera to start. But the money scale was so wack, I didn't even feel like counting all the zeros for stuff that costs 26500000 pera or whatever. Huh, where's the commas, you ask? Lol, what you think this is PS5?

Grandpa looks younger than me, fuck I'm old 

The menus and UI are just shit as well. I guess I can't be too harsh. I can only hope that one day, somebody can figure out how to show you which weapon is for who and whether it's better than what you have equipped or what each items do. I can dream, can't I?

No idea how much Healing B is better than A and no I don't give a fuck

At least according to the guide, DEF actually has no effect on your damage. It said don't waste money on armor so I guess that's one less thing to worry about. Innovation!!

The music is pretty mediocre, like I've heard worse but the GAME BOY already demonstrated how good music can be on the device with games from 1989 and it's not up to par. Yeah, I've heard worse when it comes to game music so it's ok, I suppose? You spend most of the time hearing only a few of these tracks though so it gets old pretty fast.

It has music, so yeah... it's there.

I followed the guide and fast forwarded through until I got to the climax final end, which consisted of fighting like ~15 (or so I lost count) regular enemies you encountered already and was blissly freed from ever having to play this game again. Yes, you read that right, you don't even fight the final boss.

Yeah, I finished this game... Sigh I dunno man, I'm dumb

Score: 1 "I'd rather pay tariffs than play this shit (JK, China's supposed to pay right? Still waiting for the check)" out of 5

I can only hope playing this game was worth it as maybe the rest of the series is amazing (doubt). Not that I remember the story anyway.

I love quirky mechanics as much as the next person when it works but there's a fine line between quirky and broken. Actually no, this game just sucks, slightly better than Avalon Code, but that's not saying much.

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

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

Cosmic Fantasy: Bouken Shounen Yuu（コズミック・ファンタジー 冒険少年ユウ）

Well, it's fucking 2021 and shocker, things are still shitty as ever but hey, at least we still got video games. Oh, I don't mean the shit they're churning out these days according to "global standards" (aka whatever China will allow). I'm pretty much resigned to sticking with games made up to 2020 at this point except for maybe the occasional Falcom game here and there. Fortunately, there's plenty of games on my backlog so let's play some classics from the good ol' PC Engine: Cosmic Fantasy.

Stop peeping over the Great Firewall, China!

Yeah, I know, I know, same ol' gripes. Even I'm getting tired of my own blog. Still, the last thing I want to do is to write about games in-depth like Hardcore Gaming 101 or something. I would think most real gamers would just prefer to play the damn game instead of reading some lame blog about it. Maybe I'll try some pro gaming journalist tactics and find some potentially transphobic dialogue that needs to be wiped off the face of the planet.

16 years old but at least no gender is specified here

By all accounts, Cosmic Fantasy is a pretty mediocre RPG. It plays like one of those super barebones, fap PC RPGs such as Dragon Knight except without the breastasees. Speaking of characters that might identify as a girl (not that I would dare to assume), Saya is the only other party member that can fight despite that motorcycle robot and others who supposedly join your party. The Sega CD version seems to have added having more than two characters in your party but I don't know if I'm going to ever bother playing this again.

Why don't you DO something, motorcycle mouse?

However, despite the bare bones mechanics, it's still an extremely impressive technical showcase of the PC Engine CD using animated cutscenes with voiced dialogue. Along with Tengai Makyou Ziria, it must have been exciting to see in early 1990, when the competing consoles were just the Famicom and Mega Drive.

Look at that cutting edge very round technology!

These days, I'm much more appreciative of the freedom developers had to umm "innovate" with games like this even though I woudn't say this one is a great game. Nowadays, it seems we have all this fancy technology only for it to go completely to waste due to racist coporate policies and the latest social media rage fit. Sometimes, you just want a simple lighthearted RPG story with maybe a hot spring scene thrown in for fun. Is that too much to ask nowadays? Yeah, apparently it fucking is.

Yeah, yeah, another DQ clone

What, should I talk about the game? I mean, there was that one part of the story where you probably want to grind before Saya leaves the party temporarily for story reasons. The items get kind of ridiculous near the end with how many elixers you get but really, there isn't much to say.

I stocked up on these Camp Capsules for nuthin

Score: 2.5 (CONTENT WARNING: Full nudity screenshow below!!!) out of 3

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Sike! You perv!

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

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

Ni no Kuni: Shiroki Seihai no Joou（二ノ国 白き聖灰の女王）

The whole idea behind Ni no Kuni was like a dream come true when it came out like 10 years ago. An RPG by Level-5 and Studio Ghibli with music from Joe Hisashi? Finally, the technology had advanced to where you can play a game that looks and sounds just like a Ghibli movie!!

In 2011, this was some god damn amazing shit

Yes, of course, I'm skipping the first DS game with the not so high definition graphics far from cinematic quality. At the time, I was just starting my journey as a Jhipster gamer. In fact, one of my first import buys for my collection (aka bad financial spending habits) was for the Japanese Magic Master that came with the limited edition of the DS game. Fortunately, you can still pick this up for a reasonable price unlike the false scarcity shit they pulled with the non-Jhipster Wizard Edition.

Way better than getting a stupid plushie imo

It's hard to believe that almost a decade has gone by since this game was released. Gaming has sure come a long ways since then. There's like WAY more frames per second and look at all dem pixels and shit. Oh and don't forget all that lazer ray tracing shiznits!! You can stare for hours at the reflection in the water as you go from one mission to the next, exactly like very other mind numbingly bland and unoriginal AAA game. Hell yeah!!!

Yet another grumpy old man rant but all I see these days is racist censorship, pay to play online, shit gacha games that last maybe a year at best, and everybody trying to move suckers into some sort of subscription service. And now PS5 is going X for confirm and O for cancel with no option to switch?? Jesus fucking Christ (not the brown one)!

So glad 'Merica is pushing superior moral values onto depraved Japanese gamers

The fact is, Ni no Kuni looks exactly as good as it needs to be for a Ghibli style video game. I mean honestly, it probably would have even worked on a PS2, like Rogue Galaxy (also Level-5). The game looks gorgeous and I really enjoyed the intro and the whole premise for your adventure. I especially loved watching you eat your mom's delicious looking eggs and bacon in fine Ghibli style.

There's nothing that says Ghibli like some eggs and bacon

Unfortunately, perhaps my hype for this game was a little too high as the gameplay definitely has that Level-5 feel to it. Though I've only played a few of Level-5 games so far, there's just something about them that seems super mainstream. While I don't dislike Level-5 games, the gameplay never seems very original and feels super safe. It's almost like marketing research comes up with what's supposed to be fun and you end up with a game that's well... supposed to be fun. You know what I mean? All I'm saying is, I was all into the game until they introduced Imagens and oh hey look, it's a fucking Pokemon clone. Bleh.

I just used the pink punch guy for like 95% of the time

I never played a Pokemon game for more than a couple hours and I don't know if I ever will but I'm not into this collect 'em all shit. I got the All-in-one edition so I used the special DLC or whatever that was included for the bulk of the game. Sure, you can recruit enemies, level up the little buggers, and feed them shit to evolve but yeah, not my thing.

I did spend a good 40 hours to beat the game and then some for trophies and I'm still probably far from getting the platinum. Out of all that time, I feel like most of it was spent doing those side quests primarily getting those heart pieces from here to there. Oh, and playing fetch for that fucker who kept losing his damn notebook everywhere.

Now, it may sound like I didn't like the game but overall, I have to say it's a solid title. While the battle system wasn't my favorite, it was good enough to keep my interest even though I probably spent most of the time just punching the shit out of everybody with the pink guy.

I really, really wanted to love this game. I mean, just look at it!

Score: 3.5 git off my lawn with your Cross Worlds mobile MMO crap!! out of 5 (38 hours to beat)

I was really on the fence on whether to score this as an above-average or a great game. While the graphics, cutscenes, and music were undoubtedly great, I went with a 3.5 above-average. I liked the story but I feel like it didn't quite have the impact of a good Ghibli film. Certainly, the characters development could have been better. I mean, geesh, the 3 characters from Koudelka had better chemistry than Oliver, Jairo, and Maru. As for the gameplay, it was I dunno... polished I suppose. Your party's AI isn't great but good enough. You gotta level up your Pokemon err Imagens and switch them out during battles etc. Plus, you got all them fetch side quests, alchemy, etc., etc. It's a good game but just not quite a great game for me. But I'm sure we can all agree, Joe Hisashi is da bomb yo!

I mean it's a bit heavy for gaming BGM but still.

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