Rewind Review: Grandia II

This week we’re headed back to one of my favourite consoles, the Sega Dreamcast to explore Grandia II.  A fantasy RPG set in yet another world of fantasy and magic Grandia II brings with it it’s own charm and unique battle system.  Released in 2000 for the Dreamcast, Grandia II was also later ported to the Playstation 2 and Windows.

Sarcasm much?

Taking the part of Ryudo, a Geohound mercenary, you begin the story by being hired by the Church of Granas to escort a young songstress to an upcoming cermony.  This of course goes horribly wrong, and you are left with saving the songstress, Elena and escorting her to presumed safety with the Pope of the Church of Granas.  Trekking out across the large map, you eventually find yourself with the inevitable task of saving the world.  Seeking the location of the great sword Gransaber, you set off to defeat the evil go Valmar.

Let’s be honest, the overall plot here isn’t that unique, but Grandia II does do a solid job of presenting it.   There are a bunch of twists along the way, and every new character has some interesting background to learn about.  The story does an excellent job of connecting us with each one and making them all feel equally important.

The game is presented in a beautiful, 2.5D graphics.  The colorful and detailed sprites jump off the screen.  The varied environments are even more full of details.  Though this detail goes down somewhat on the battle screens, the characters are still lively and fully animated.  Each character has their own hand drawn head shot that appears during each of their actions.

So much going on.

The instrumental soundtrack that comes along for the ride is sharp and to the point.  It’s not the greatest soundtrack of it’s time, but it’s not bad, and does do a decent job of setting the mood at each phase of the game.  Grandia II does come with a pretty solid voice cast however that does really add a lot to the game.  Having fully voiced characters was also still fairly rare for the turn of the century console game.  This gave the overall game a solid presentation.

General gameplay is fairly traditional when it comes to RPG’s.  Explore the world map, talk to NPC’s in the various cities, and complete a relatively linear line of quests.  All of this any RPG player will be quite used to.  There were no surprises here.  The battle system however was quite unique in it’s design.

Headed to the map!

Taking inspiration from Final Fantasy’s active time battles, Grandia II adds  more layers to the equation.  Characters can move freely around the battle zone depending on their movement points, to either attack or avoid damage and attacks.  They can also perform combos that will lay multiple hits down on the selected enemies.  The really unique feature though, is the initiative bar.  Each character has their own initiative, which creates a sequence actions for all characters involved in the battle.  You’ll have to carefully plan around this initiative to both avoid enemy attacks as well as recover from them appropriately.  Well timed hits can also cancel out actions of various enemies on the screen.

Balancing all of these features makes combat fun and exciting.  You also have to balance each characters health points, magic points and skill points throughout.  Battles are pretty intense and short, with loads of colorful animations to keep you into the action.

The solid story and action of Grandia II allowed it to be one of the best RPG’s on the short lived Dreamcast.  With the various ports and soon to be released Steam version there is still much to enjoy with this game if you happened to miss it.  I suggest you do.

As always thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed this week’ Rewind Review.  Keep checking back for more, and don’t forget to like and comment below!

Check out last week’s Rewind Review.

Rewind Review: Suikoden II

If you are at all a fan of classic PlayStation one RPG’s then you already will know a good deal about Suikoden II.  Suikoden II was one of the standout RPG’s of it’s generation, and still holds out today as one of the best ever.  Released to the North American audience back in 1999, this classic game mixes RPG elements with simple, large scale tactical battles.  With over 100 playable characters it offers an entirely unique variety of game play for the genre.

Early game over?

The story takes place primarily in two lands of Highland and Jowston as the two primary lead characters in the game are caught up among a political plan to start a war between the two nations.  Separated early on in the story you begin your quest after meeting up with several characters from the first game, whom are now fighting against your former country.  This initial beginning sets you up as the future leader of an Alliance Army, fighting for your freedom, and the eventual meeting with a former friend who has now become your greatest nemesis.  The plot is full of twists, developments, and happenings throughout.  You’ll never be disappointed with the amount of effort put into the story side of Suikoden II.  Though fairly linear it’s solid and entertaining throughout.

Another major factor to the story is the amount of backstory each character has.  All 108 collectible and playable characters have some backstory.  Several of these characters were established in the original game, but the sequel adds literally dozen’s of new characters, each with their own style, background and motivations.  This sheer amount of story makes other RPG’s of its type pale in comparison.

Throughout the game you will meet more characters.  Many will join you on your quest after a short dialogue regardless of your actions, while others may require you to perform a task, or reach a certain level, or maybe recruit another character first prior to joining.  There are also several “hidden” characters whom can only be recruited through specific quests or at specific times in the game.  This adds an extra layer to game play as you try your best to collect each one.  Doing so has several benefits both in combat and out and it’s generally worth trying your best to do so.

Oh there’s more…

The primary game-play of Suikoden II revolves around a fairly straight forward, classic top down RPG style.  You explore your surroundings, talk and interact with people and items, and complete quests to move the story along.  Basic combat takes place on a pseudo-3d plane with up to six characters in your party.  Each character comes with a basic set of skills and magic to go along with their basic attacks.  Every character in the game also collects experience from battles and levels up, increasing their statistics and abilities.  During combat your characters can also work together to cast special spells and co-operative skills to inflict more damage on enemies, or result in special statuses.  This makes collecting new characters important not only for their mix of skills, but how those skills interact with others.

Later in the game you will also start taking place in large scale warfare, where armies battle each other on a field.  These armies are assigned a leader from your collected characters, as well as support characters who add a variety of skills, or statistical bonuses to each unit.  Though this part of the game has some tactics to it, it generally comes down to a Rock, Paper, Scissors feel as certain unit types generally just work better against others, though it’s still important to make sure you take advantage of the lay of the land in order to avoid those pairings going against you.

Your main character can also engage in one on one duels, which again come down to a Rock, Paper, Scissors effect, though you must guess what attack is coming next based off of what the attacking character says prior.

Eventually you will also build your own base of operations.  Here all of your collected characters will gather and you can speak with them.  Many characters you collect will also be very useful here as vendors, or craftsmen.  Some of these characters are not available for regular battles as well, but each one has his or her uses somewhere.  As characters level up they will gain new skills here as well, and the base can be upgraded.  There area also several mini games available here, with my favorite being the Iron Chef style food battle, where your chef’s will be challenged by others to make the best plates, depending on what items and ingredients you have been able to harvest during your regular questing.  This adds a great deal of flavor (pun intended), and humor to Suikoden II.

Visually Suikoden II is gorgeous for it’s era.  Each character and environment is hand drawn, and there a dozens of different animations.  Throughout the game characters move on the screen, even on the world map your hair flops around as you walk through the world.  In the battle screens both the characters and enemies are animated and highly detailed.  Magic and co-operative moves fill the screen with light and action, and it’s a fun just watching the going-ons on the screen.

The orchestral music also sets the tone of the game very well.  It’s one of the better soundtracks of the time.  Battle sequences feature faster beats and with the characters bouncing around and moving their stances it really helps you get into the tempo of each battle.

Flying Squirrel Girl is this your crew?

Suikoden II had a lot going for it.  The well thought out, twist filled story, and the massive amount of characters integrated with a variety of game-play elements made it truly unique.  It still stands the test of time, though it’s sequels became more and more disappointing.  Luckily you can still fairly easily play the original if you own a PsVita or PS3.  This is one of the very few games I would not mind seeing an update of, so long as it stuck to just the visual aspects of the game, and didn’t try to change basic game-play or story like many remakes tend to do these days.

As always, thanks for reading and be sure to check out the comments section below and let me know what you think of Suikoden II!

Check out last week’s Rewind Review too.

Rewind Review: Doom

With Doom being re-released, reimagined, remade, whatever in 2016, I thought it would be cool to take a look back at the original in this week’s Rewind Review.

Doom was originally released in 93, and is considered one of the early originators for both modern first person shooters (FPS) and horror games.  Assigned to a post on Mars after being not so nice to your commanding officer, you take the role of, well, Doomguy I guess, for the main character lacks an actual name.  A dull, leisurely duty on Mars is of course interrupted when the massive conglomerate UAC does some experiments deep inside Mars’ moon Phobos that go horribly wrong.  You of course, are sent to investigate and hilarity ensues.  I mean horror, horror ensues.

Come at me braaa!

From here on in, it’s an endless assault on your senses as you confronted by terror after terror, and you must proceed to kill them all as quickly as possible.  The gameplay is fairly simple, use your fists and guns to kill the demons as you explore the complicated maps, picking up new weapons, items, and precious key cards along the way.  This game was intense, even to today’s standards.  Monstrosities pop out at you from everywhere and grow increasingly more difficult to kill, and appear in more numbers as the game advances.

Set over 3 chapters, you will fight through Phobos, Deimos, and then Hell itself as you k ill countless demons.  Though you start off with fairly recognisable weapons like a trusty pistol, or sawed-off shotgun, later weapons become more unique and often copied in games to come.  Most notably the marine’s trusty saw which can cut creatures in half in seconds, and of course the BFG (Big F$%*ing Gun), both becoming series mainstays.

Hmm, this is a big f&*%ing gun!

One of the earliest games to be presented in pseudo-3D, the visual depth of Doom adds both visual uniqueness as much as it adds to the gameplay itself.  For the date of release the graphics themselves are great, and way over the top.  Each demon pops with blood and guts when shot or killed, or exploded.  Your character’s face is pictured in the HUD and acts as a visual cue of how badly hurt you are, a trick developer ID took from its first foray into the FPS world, Wolfenstein 3D (which you can play right now online here!) .  The sounds and music also fit right in as you explore increasingly more bizarre levels searching for the exit door.

Doom also introduced tons of new tech in it’s design.  It’s pseudo-3D environments added not only depth but height to their design.  This coupled with the stereo sound made for stellar gameplay allowing not only the player to hear noises all around, but for the A.I. to also hear the players distant gun shots and be drawn to them.  Doom also introduced online multiplayer and modding with it’s WADS feature, allowing players to alter gameplay and character models in the game, giving all new complexities at the time of it’s release.

Doom spawned a ton of sequels, clones, even a movie featuring The Rock.  With it’s later sequels being regarded as disappointing at the least, but still graphically amazing, it will be interesting to see if this next generation version will be able to compete with what was then next gen with the original Doom.

As always, thanks for reading, and I hope you enjoyed this weeks Rewind Review.  Be sure to let me know by liking or leaving a comment below, and check back often for more content!

Check out last week’s Review Rewind here!

 

Rewind Review: The Legend of Dragoon

Rpg’s were my thing growing up, and The Legend of Dragoon was an exceptional one.  Released in 2000 for the classic Playstation, The Legend of Dragoon is full on innovations, both rewarding, challenging, and sometimes puzzling.

I have the power!!!!

The Legend of Dragoon takes you to a fantastic world, where dragons exist, and of course much political drama ensues, Endiness.  Broken up into various nations defined by their varying climates you start your quest in the temperate jungle of Serdia.  You take control of Dart, a young adventuring returning home after unsuccessfully searching for the creature that killed his parents and destroyed his birth home.  Quite coincidentally his new home is then destroyed and sets him on a quest to save his friend who was captured during it’s destruction.

The story unfolds traditionally here, as you explore new regions, you meet new companions that help you along the way, or require your help.  The story is quite long and expansive, and stays relatively linear throughout, but there is still a fair amount to explore as you go.

Designed during the early years of 3D Rpg, The Legend of Dragoon, mixed 2D backdrops with 3D characters creating a very interesting look.  The backgrounds are detailed and well drawn, and the 3D characters, though somewhat pixilated are still bright and pop out at you.  Battles take place in a more 3D environment, against also 3D pixelated enemies.  There are various cinematic camera swoops and close ups during the action to help keep you entertained as you play through the turn based battles.

Full of life, yet not quite alive

These battles feature all of the usual RPG features, though The Legend of Dragoon does set itself apart with it’s Additions feature.  Additions are basically timed combos that are initiated whenever you choose to a physical attack.  Hitting the correct quick time buttons with the right timing results in not only increased damage, but potentially different status affects, as well as building up you ‘sp’ bar.  As you explore more of the world this sp bar comes of more and more importance.

Wait for it…

Each character eventually finds themselves attuned with a particular dragon spirit.  As your sp bar builds during battle, this gives you the ability to transform into a Dragoon, and use various special abilities unique to each dragon.  This adds a great deal of power to your attacks and magic, but limits your defensive options, so a balanced attack is still prudent.  The Additions feature remains active as you use your Dragoon’s attacks to add critical damage to your targets.  This style of combat adds a load of interaction and difficulty to each battle especially later on when the enemies hit hard.

Though the random, non-boss battles do get repetitive after awhile, what with grinding for more levels, and items, the overall story holds enough charm and heartbreak for you to ignore this.  For the time, this massive 4 disk game gave enough content and story to compete with the then juggernaut of Rpg’s Final Fantasy a run.  In the end however, it didn’t bring enough innovation to truly become more than a very solid Rpg during the age of awesome Rpg’s.

Thanks once again for reading, and be sure to comment, like and share below.  Let me know about your experience with The Legend of Dragoon!

Check out last week’s Rewind Review

Rewind Review: Earthworm Jim

Who’s going to save Princess What’s-Her-Name from a bunch of power grabbing mutants and a flying cow?  None other than Earthworm Jim of course!  This side scrolling Sega Genesis classic is hard to forget for anyone who’s played it.  Inspired by other classic games like Sonic, and popular comics and toy lines like The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, this 1994 release is a bizarre but great blend of both.

Wait are we underground or not?

Imagine your life as a simple earth worm, eating dirt, and avoiding feet during a rain storm, when suddenly a super powered suit falls on you, giving you the power to save princesses and fend off wave after wave of crazy mutants.  That’s the plot in a nutshell.  There’s no deep seeded reflection, or violent beginnings here.  Just enough exposition and explanation to get us started on an adventure.

It’s the quirky nature of the game that really helps this game stand out.  The levels are comic like and colourful, and full of enemies.  Most of these levels have a stranger, eerie, alien like subterranean feel to them.  You’ll encounter mutant frogs, birds, and grannies along the way.  Yes, mutant grannies.  With a rogues gallery that includes the likes of Queen Slug-For-A-Butt, Psy-Crow, and Major Mucus, you can imagine some of the artistic leeway the developers were given here.

Have a cow man

Gameplay here is really similar to another classic of the previous era Bionic Commando.  Jim’s power suit gives him the ability to think and act like a human.  Besides the usual running and jumping, Earthworm Jim’s suit also happened to come with a handy gun that can fire off several rounds in quick succession.  When in a pinch, Jim can take advantage of his still elasticity worm body to whip across the screen and grapple from point to point.  If that doesn’t work, he can blow his head up into a balloon and float down to platforms, or use the buoyancy to float up through water.

This side scrolling adventure is broken up by various different levels.  Some levels are basically rail shooters, where you have to pilot Earthworm Jim around on obstacles on increasingly ridiculous devices as you fire at enemies along the way.  One level in particular has you protecting Peter Puppy, a seemingly harmless pup with Jekyll and Hyde tendencies that often get Jim in trouble if he should happen to run into harm’s way.  These different levels break up the pace well, and keep you doing different things along the way.

What do you mean you’ve never seen an earthworm in a super suit riding a hamster before?

Boss battles are common to encounter at the end of each level, and are pretty classic patterned events.  They are of course set aside by Earthworm Jim’s overly clever sense of humour, and completely over the top villains mentioned earlier.

Wait. Is this really fair?

Consider among one of the best games to ever come out during the 16-bit era, and one of the best characters ever, Earthworm Jim brought a lot to the table.  Though later sequels would eventually show a decline in character, charm and gameplay, the original game still stands as one of the best.  With it’s quirky sense of humour.  Literally down to earth protagonists, and smooth easy to get into gameplay it’s very hard to argue.

Thanks for reading, and as always leave a comment or like below, and let me know what you thought of Earthworm Jim.

Check out last week’s Rewind Review too!

Ghouls and Ghosts: Rewind Review

Welcome to Rewind Review, this week we are going 8-bit!  Let’s adventure into one of the best ports of the 16-bit era, Ghouls and Ghosts for the Sega Genesis.  Originally released in 1988 in arcade’s, the grueling hard platformer made it’s way to the SMS in 1989.  The sequel to Ghosts ‘n Goblins continues the saga of Knight Arthur as he fights off the undead in side scrolling fashion.

I don’t need no stinking armor!

Knight Arthur’s quest takes him through various eerie and quirky levels as he fights to release the soul of his love, Princess Prin Prin, captured by Loki among many other souls.  The usual left to right jumping and platforming from this point on are familiar traits, though there are several twists added in.

Starting off in a full suit of armor Arthur can fire various weapons in four directions to fight off skeletons, undead and yes of course, ghouls and ghosts.  As he takes damage pieces of his armour fly off, till you’re reduced to fighting in your tighty whities!  As you proceed through each level, you’ll find enemies throughout, as well as obstacles that need to be avoided through jumping, scaling ladders or the like.  Though the difficulty for the 16-bit version is also scaled down from the arcade original, there is still a lot of though areas, and precise jumping skills required to get through each level.  Not to mention of course giant boss battles at each level end.  These generally demand you hit a boss 4-6 times in a particular hit box while avoiding fireballs as usual.

I guess I had this coming….

You’ll find more layers to Ghouls and Ghosts in the form of various weapons and armour that can be collected, or bought in each level.  These items are hidden in chests, or secret doors that you activate by jumping in certain locations.  As an added bonus, some of these chests hold an evil magician who will fire a magic bolt at you once the chest is open.  get hit and look forward to spending several seconds as a helpless duck, or an old man with a cane.  These affects make you killable in one hit, but they don’t last long.

You can also call upon limited magical abilities to help you clear the screen of enemies.  These vary depending on the armor you are wearing.  Silver arm throws a blue wave in front of you, red armor summons fire to your side, and the ultimate gold armor gives you control over lighting itself.  These abilities are limited, and you need to bide your time before using them to avoid wasting them on only a few enemies on the screen.

Thor ain’t got nothing on me!

Ghouls and Ghosts consists of five levels with a sixth boss level, but just to add to the charm and difficulty, you’ll have to play through the first 5 levels twice before getting to the real ending.  You’ll also be tasked with finding the gold armor, and the only weapon that can kill Loki along the way before you can proceed to the final phase.  This is a good one to remind us just how hard games used to be.  Though the levels are not actually that long, the difficulty means you will spend hours trying to complete the full game, and get the true ending.

A very awesome full playthrough to enjoy, via SaikyoMog

This game became a great early example of how hardcore games could be ported and dumbed down in a sense for a broader audience.  The core of the game was still maintained very well, but Ghouls and Ghosts became open to a much broader audience after it’s arcade port.  It’s a situation that often vexes modern publishers that port, or re-release games to more modern technology, or to a bigger selection of consoles.  Ghouls and Ghosts still stands as one of the better conversions to date, and remains very playable.  It’s unique setting, simple but challenging gameplay and quirky humour stands the test of time extremely well.

As always, thanks for reading, and don’t forget to comment and like below, and let me know if you have tried Ghouls and Ghosts!

And while you are at it, check out last week’s Rewind Review

 

Shining Force II: Rewind Review

Welcome back to Review Rewind!  This week we are going way back to a classic, and a game ranked among many people’s favourites, including my own, Shining Force II.  Brought to us from Japan in 1993 Shining Force II is the indirect sequel to the 1992 Shining Force game.  This somewhat unheard of, better-than-the-original sequel is a tactical RPG.

Squirtle?

Taking place in the fantastical world of Granseal, Shining Force II is filled with knights, mages, monsters and most every other basic trope to this genre.  The story starts off when a thief, Slade, accidentally releases an ancient demon after stealing two magical stones that kept it sealed for centuries.  Some of the demon’s power escapes, inhabiting the main character’s King.  You and the city’s wise man Astral, manage to free the king, only to discover the ancient demon has been released and is quickly gaining power.  Various shenanigans ensue, and you basically, kinda, accidentally get your town destroyed trying to seal the demon away and have to sail far off to an unknown land.

From this point, the story unfolds through straight forward dialogue boxes, some open world adventuring, and of course, many, many tactical battles.  These battles take place on a 2D, top down grid map.  Your units of varying types, races and abilities duke it out in a turned based system.  Every unit has up to 3 possible abilities to choose from depending on their class and restricted movement each turn.  Each unit gets to uses their abilities once per turn, and gains experience points each time to help them advance through levels.  Each action takes place in forced perspective, hand drawn animations, which add some charm to otherwise average looking graphics.

Each battle forces you to take advantage of both terrain, and your characters’ various abilities.  These battles can be long, though generally they aren’t overly challenging.  This changes of course if you happen to lose a particular character integral to your strategy, but a quick reload of the game lets you start over.  Your fallen allies can be raised by priests in towns for a small fee.  Priests will also save your game, promote your characters, or cure curses that incur when you equip powerful cursed items.

Gotta praise to be raised and drop a dime in the box too!

Shining Force II is filled with dozens of characters to collect, including several hidden characters.  As they gain experience and levels, their stats and abilities expand.  Once they reach level 20 you have the option to advance them to a new, more powerful class.  Some characters have options on what classes to evolve into if you can find the right item to activate it.  Some of the best characters are found hidden throughout the world, while others you must be very patient with until they can be promoted, and start with terrible stats, creating a mini challenge in each battle to get them experience without losing the battle, or getting them killed each time.

There are a vast array of items and weapons to find, buy and equip.  Each class has their own  specific types of weapons that they can equip, along with armor and special items which increase various stats, like speed, luck, or attack.  Though the best weapons are found hidden near the end of the game, you will spend a lot of time shelling out thousands of the game’s currency to upgrade weapons and armor at each town you progress to.

Time to upgrade!

Though overall a simple story, Shining Force II’s plot is still filled with various plot twists and interesting events.  There are also several stand out characters, though the main character is certainly the exception here, as the fairly bland young man who grows up to be a hero.  Though there are many characters, generally mid way through the game you tend to stick to your favourite 12 and rarely switch them out unless a specific battle calls for it.

Fail….

Graphics aside, this game still holds up well to today’s gameplay standards.  This shows even more with the various remakes, and sequels that followed.  With a long story, and just enough difficulty, this game is still a great one to go back and play.  Be wary however of the old school mentality, this isn’t a drop in and drop out game, you need to set time aside to make it through some of the later battles, but generally it’s worth it!

 

As always, thanks for reading, and make sure to comment, share and like below!

When you are done reading this, make sure to check out this Rewind Review from a few weeks ago!