I just got around to picking up and playing this game. I was a huge fan of the original game as were many people who picked this up. Does this game live up to it's predecessor? Is it as story driven colorful and incredible as the first game? Or is it a pass?
(The following review is based on personal opinions and preferences. It is not influenced by money, popularity, black mail, or any other factor which might skew the rating. It is based solely on the properties which the game displays. This is a Voice of Truth review.)
Grpahics 8/10
The game, much like VC1, has a nice watercolor anime painting style to it. It looks pretty and it's something rather unique. It keeps the tone of the story serious but light at the same time, and it's always fun to watch the letters "RATTATTATT" rise up from your gun as your shooting. Or watch "BLAM" or "KA-BOOM" show up when your destroy a tank. My biggest complaint is that they removed the beautiful animated cut scenes from the first game in favor of still picture face shots. Simply put it's like taking a picture of someones head and just showing that with different expressions. There are still some animated cut scenes but they're far and few between.
Sound 7/10
The sound in this game, like so many others, is hit or miss. I like some of the characters but others I just want to hit with a crowbar. Very few of the characters actually speak. Mostly they just make awkward noised as text dialogue appears on the screen. In the animated cut scenes I mentioned in the last section they talk sorta. Important note this is a Japanese game and with most Japanese games the female characters, especially anime girls, have extremely high pitched voices.
Story 5/10
This really saddened me. The first VC had an incredible story. This story is less focused and more of just a do this, this and this. I'll sum up the story really quickly here for you. You are a stupid kid named Ivan. Ivan is class clown. Your brother is the straight A over achiever. Your brother gets deployed on a secret mission and killed, but you refuse to accept that he's dead. So you join the academy. You are put in charge of class G. Class G is the Failure class. You try and help class G become better so you can get deployed on a secret mission and find your brother. The whole while a civil war is going on. That's the basic premise of the story and I have to say the rest of it doesn't get much better. It's extremely predictable. They focused less on the main story and instead added mini back stories to every member of class G. This is cool but I would have preferred the good story that only focused on five characters from the first game than a bad story that focuses on everyone. There are some other parts that make no sense either. Here's an example; class G is dispatched to protect a VIP transport. That VIP turns out to be the princess. WHY ON EARTH WOULD DISPATCH FAILURES TO GUARD A PRINCESS? It just makes no sense. Surely you would send your best people, but no, the failures get the most difficult missions. Another example is when one of the generals, Bauldren, is attacking a Darcsan town. They know that he is personally leading the attack yet they send the failures to fight him. Seriously? Why not send the best team, eliminate an enemy general? It just makes no sense.
Gameplay 7/10
The gameplay in this game is much like the first VC. It's a turn based strategy game. You deploy people than select an individual solder and make them fight. You a continue this until you run out of command points (cp) Than your turns over and the enemies get the chance to do the same. Anyone who played the first game knows one thing, the best offense is a strong defense. In the first game the best strategy was to place your people in strategic positions and let the enemies be mowed down by your gun fire barrage as they advanced on you. (Your units fire automatically at enemies when the enemies are moving) However in the first game the enemies would either stop or be slaughtered. That's no longer the case. The enemies power through the gunfire often taking only minimal damage, waltz right up to the sand bags your crouched behind and will lob a grenade right at your feet. (The problem with grenades are that you can't counter attack, and they destroy cover)You also aren't able to bring as many people into the fight as you could in the first game. You are now limited to six people, with a maximum of four per map zone. Most maps are divided into three to four zones and you have to fight through one zone to advance to the other. So at most your defensive wall is only four people. Not all the game play is bad though. The combat is still fun and addictive and there is a new moral system. It's a gauge that's on the side of the screen that goes up as you kill enemies and capture bases and goes down as your players dies or you lose bases. The higher the number the more likely it is that a good potential will happen and the lower the number the more likely it is that a bad potential will activate. (Potentials are characters special abilities, boosting health, damage, resistance, ect. Bad potentials take away from those.) When the moral reaches 0 you lose the fight. New to this game are armored techs. They carry a big shield and a hammer. Charging in there they deflect bullets off the shield than clean up with the hammer. One other positive change is that individual units get better. Classes are still upgraded as classes, (Exp is applied to the class, no the unit, and the level up affects everyone of that class) but now the more you use a particular unit the more honors he/she gets. The honors can than be spent to upgrade that unit into one of two things. 1st they can become an overall better solder (small bonus's to every stat) or they can become more of what they are (Certain skills get significant advances while others get significant decreases.) Than once they get more honors they can do the same advance again. It's a nice idea but there is no explanation how to get the honors you need to advance.
Multiplayer 5/10
OK, so where to start. This game offers two types of multiplayer modes. First I'll cover co-op. Co-op is just it sounds like. You play with other people to try to take down the campaign missions. However the missions don't get any harder with more people. It's the same mission just with more people. The main problem is trying to work a strategy without communication. Unless everyone has a mic for their ps3 they won't be able to communicate effectively. The second type of multiplayer is Vs. This is about as unbalanced as it gets. Anyone can hop onto Vs. and fight anyone. So you could get someone who just started the game fighting someone who beat it three times. There's no balancing to try and make it better. Who ever is further in the game is going slaughter anyone whose newer than they are. Add to all of this that you have to be using adhoc on the ps3 and you get a multiplayer that just feels tacked on.
From Xfire: "It's been estimated that roughly half of the video games ever released on the market can no longer be downloaded or purchased. Whether this is exactly correct is not the point. Rather, we think that either way, the video game industry, as a whole, has done a terrible job at preserving video games and making older titles available to play for future generations."
You can play all of these games still lol. The headline is just misleading. Funny is that there is not one game in the list that you really can't play anymore due to it being online only games.
Its not about games you can't play. Its about games you can't officially buy anywhere.
Who needs to buy these games anyway? Most of them are average at best and won't really be missed.
It says buy, not play though. You can't purchase Deadpool or the Simpsons game anymore. Unless you have a 360 for the simpsons or a physical copy of deadpool, or purchased it before it was delisted.
Look at his comment. It's from 9 hours ago. Article goes back 4 hours. Title might have been changed after realising the mistake
One you actually legit cannot play AT ALL is Noby Noby Boy. I miss turning my brain off and messing around in that game, was so psyched to re-download it when i rebought a ps3 slim, but you cant, even if it's in your downl library, along with a few other obscure PS3 games i had.
I would replace Transformers Devastation with War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron tho.
Transformers Devastation was good but not as good as Fall and War of Cybertron they should be on the list. SH 2 I can play any time I want since it came free in a $10 Xbox I bought used. The Simpsons Arcade I have on my PS3 surprised the Xmen Arcade game is not on this list or the Turtles arcade game either.
I had the X-Men arcade game on my 360. I don't know if Xbox Live is still a thing or not, and of it is, I don't know of they still sell X-Men. But it was deinitely on Xbox Live at some point.
If you had X-Men before you can redownload it from your transaction history on the 360 Microsoft did not castrate the 360 from online. That is how I was able to redownload the old TMNT arcade game to my 360 you can't play it on XB1 or Series X but you can still access it for sure on the 360.
Twinfinite Writes: With Fire Emblem Three Houses the series takes its first leap into a school life game, but there are other great JRPGs out there with a school setting.
Currently playing through Trails in the Sky SC, after spending 60 hours finishing the first. I want to jump into Trails of Cold Steel, but was told by several people that it's better to play the previous games first.
Trails of cold steel is great to jump right into. You won't feel like you missed anything. I am sure there is more to get out of the 3rd and 4th TOTS games but I don't see any reason to wait to play Steel.
There are some mentions of events in Trails in the Sky in the first 2 trails of cold steel, but not much. You should definitely play Trails in the Sky completely before Trails of Cold Steel 3 and 4 (which are yet to be released), because there are characters from that series in those games.
You might also want to play Trails of Zero and Azure, which are the 2 unlocalized games. There are translation patches for them out there that are 100% done.
Interesting, thanks for the tip. I heard TITS 2 was the best one in that series, so I think I'll still finish it. Depending on the ending though, I may jump into TOCS after, mainly because the gameplay looks way better, and obviously the visuals as well. The TITS combat is a little shallow IMO.
Cold steel 1 was my first trails game. There were certain parts where I could tell they were referencing previous games but other than that it was a complete and separate story. It was great and I never felt like I missed out on anything just small mentions of other events.
doesn't matter which you play first as the games directly involving the story of Sky aren't even all released here to even worry about order. You'll miss alot of references no matter which way you look at it. Just play which ever ones you want in any order as long as 1s before 2. They're self contained stories by name for the most part.
Finished Cold Steel II today.
I have some time now to finish the Crossbell games before Cold Steel III arrives in late October. I can't sing enough praise for the Legend of Heroes series. I have only beaten Sky FC a little earlier and gonna play SC soon too. I feel sorry for the fans of jrpgs that misses this hidden gem of a series.
I have been a great fan of Nihon Falcom since the elary 90's. One of the strongest japanese developers out there. But and support their games Kreygasm.
So how does Fire Emblem: Three Houses compare? Well, it doesn't offer the agency of Bully, but it does feel more expansive than Persona, even if the choices you have to make aren't quite as interesting. Its strength is in how well-realized and expansion it all feels, its calendar peppered with a multitude of fun events like feasts and dance festivals. Where Valkyria Chronicles 2's academy feels like a series of rote menus, Three Houses' setting feels fully integrated into the gameplay and story.
