The Insane Asylum

quote Insanity Prevails

I'd already heard a fair bit about Disgaea DS before I picked up the game. It has been praised for being a witty excellent take on the SRPG genre, with various gameplay features cited as defining factors that separate it from the crowd. So my expectations were put a bit high when I slipped the game card into the DS and turned the power on. My conclusion? It's good but not as great as I had hoped, as the game does have problems holding it back.

Graphically, the game makes extensive use of 2D sprites in 3D environments. Despite the small size the characters show a fair amount of detail that makes each one easily recognisable. With the wealth of classes comes as wealth of different appearances and wonderful designs, although it's worth noting that created characters always take up the same appearance based on their chosen class. More than just an aesthetic issue, this can actually become a little confusing when the enemy is using units of the same classes, as enemies don't appear onscreen any different to your own units outside of the map screen.

Speaking of which, the second screen is used very effectively in this game. Sometimes an object on the map might obscure your view, which is an issue in any isometric game. Not only does this game let you rotate the camera in 90 degree increments but the top screen also displays a map showing a grid, coloured squares and character placements. Allied and enemy units are also signified by different icons, letting you know if you're about to unleash your ultimate spell of destruction on your own partner...

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quote Dark Arcanine

Introduction:

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is the third instalment in the Harry Potter book series. Having now survived Voldemort three times, Harry is developing quite the reputation. The question is will he strut his stuff with Dementors surrounding the castle and a mass-murderer called Sirius Black hunting him down? Or will he be too scared and revert back to the state he was in within the first book?

Plot:

Having a thing for danger, Harry always likes to start the year with complications. The year before he escaped his adoptive parents’ house in a flying car and proceeded to use it to get to Hogwarts. This year after blowing up his aunt, he runs away only to be confronted by a large, black dog and saved by the Knight Bus. Facing possible expulsion for the use of magic underage in the presence of Muggles, what is in store for Harry this year?

Following on from the strong focus maintained throughout Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Rowling ensures that all parts of the plot come together in their relation to the title of the book, being the prisoner of Azkaban or in other words, Sirius Black. Enticed by overhearing the Weasleys, Harry makes it his mission to try and find out the truth about the connection between himself and Sirius. Meanwhile Sirius is also trying to get close to Harry, breaking into Hogwarts multiple times and constantly watching…

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quote Vergil Ties

One game that the PS2 needed to carry Sony’s legacy of excellent RPGs over to a new console was Final Fantasy X. It had everything: Cutting edge graphics, seemingly epic storyline, excellent soundtrack and some high quality cutscenes amongst a different sort of leveling system and old school turn based gameplay. It could’ve utilized what it had to make a game that will excel Final Fantasy IX (which is one of my favorite RPGs), but instead decided to take the Final Fantasy VIII route and put way too much emphasis on cinematics and justifying and (often) overcomplicating nothing that anybody actually cares about. That’s not to say that Final Fantasy X is a BAD game, but rather, just a boring one.

Rather than start at the root of what’s wrong with Final Fantasy X, let’s start on a high note. The highest note I can think of has to be the graphics. Holy shit, are they good or what? The textures are realistic looking, giving the illusion that it’s like wandering through a real forest or wasteland. Speaking of forests and wastelands, the variety of environments are fairly good. From the traditional wasteland level, to ruins and even to big, sprawling cities, Square spared no expense in giving us different environments to look at, and the colors that they’re all represented with are perfect. Amongst that, character models look pretty damn nice. There’s a lot of attention paid to detail in terms of clothing and hair (sure, the main character is pretty much Cloud with his hair gelled downwards, but that’s not a bad thing, right?).

The one thing that forces me to drop my jaw is the immense amount of detail put into the FMV scenes. These scenes are a testament to how much the PS2 can take in terms of graphics. The quality is pushed well through the roof, forcing the player to sit back and enjoy them.

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quote Gamecube Guru

Haha, 360 loses another exclusive.
Ported from the 360 over to the PS3, Eternal Sonata manages to maintain the awesomess from the 360 version, and add a few big drops of awesomesacue to the PS3 version to make it worth your money if you have both. Now, the PS3 isn't that loaded with RPGs, and normally, an RPG fanatic wouldn't shell out money for a PS3, unless they happen to be into other sorts of games, and odds are, they aren't. However, with Eternal Sonata on the PS3, maybe things will change. Maybe... As far as I'm concerned, it should. It plays, looks and sounds like a title that should be selling units and should make the PS3 popular with RPG enthusiasts who didn't get a 360 (which is scarce as far as I know, because many RPGs have appeared on the 360, whereas there aren't too many for PS3, at least, that you can't get on 360 as well). Hell, it should be the JRPG equivalent of Metal Gear Solid 4... or at least inFAMOUS and Killzone 2! Has a couple of minor gripes - most of which doesn't even feel like them, depending on your perspective - but still damn impressive, and perfectly able to show off what the PS3 can do to, once and for all, silence the 360 fanboys.

A dreamy symphony of a universe.
The story behind Eternal Sonata is that the famous composer, Frederic Chopin, is lying on his deathbed. Okay, so that's it, right? Wrong! This game takes place within Chopin's mind. Instead of a boring opera house filled to the brim with living violins and whatnot, you have a literal dream land, kind of like a typical RPG world (forests, mountains, towns, etc). In this world, Chopin is aware that he's dreaming, though he possesses not musical overtures that will lull the enemy to sleep, but rather, magic and prediction of the future, as well as being able to read people's thoughts (sounds cool, but this is a dream he thought up; unless it's uncontrollable, he should already have it planned out). He soon meets up with the heroine, Polka, and a couple of street urchins, Allegretto and Beat. This ragtag group sets out to confront the ruler of the country of Forte, Count Waltz, about the high taxes he has placed on everything except the questionable medicine known as Mineral Powder, which seems to be like a nuclear cure for cancer - it'll work, but at what cost?

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