Portable RPGs

DOOM

2006-01-24T13:37:00.000-05:00

Hey dudes... first of all... are you thinking about a RPG... DOOM RPG? Yes! Finally it's here... long awaited for me at least, but it's out there. Inmerse yourself in a hell of a game anyplace and anytime using your cell phone.
A turn-based first person shooter role playing game set in da doom universe. Say goodbye to humdrum mobile gaming and prepare yourself for the return to Mars in a showdown with the legions of Hell! Thy flesh will be consumed...
Feel again be surrounded by those cacodemons of hell.. even green imps! Those ugly bastards are back and very thirsty for blood.

Unfortunately is currently not available for my carrier and/or country... But I'm sure I can get this game somewhere else... Raf? :-D

Raf, if you are reading... THE TUMAN WILL BURN YOUR SOUL!!! MHWUAH HWUAW HWUAH!!!!

Lunar: Dragon Song DS

2006-01-19T13:20:00.000-05:00

Long time no see... here's my review about this game.

First of all, I must admit the character design took my attention from the first time I saw the box. the game is very well detailed and for me, the graphics are very polished. Don't forget it's the first RPG for the DS/US.

About the story, it's good enough. Interesting point of view and the game has nice characters (and very funny), something very desirable.

Ok, let's go straight to the bad: the combat system. Man, every RPG player spects some fun in battles, and you know what I'm talking about. you spend a -lot- of time in almost every RPG battling monsters and gaining experience to reach higher levels, weapons and armour and so on... but I don't know those lads of the devel group were thinking when they decided THAT YOU CANNOT CONTROL THE BATTLES! You can select automatic or manual combat at the beginning of the battle... and automatic means FULL automatic. You cannot even select which monster you can attack! Can you believe it? Well, no problem. Let's choose 'manual' mode and surprise!!! Yuo can select if you cure, attack or scape indeed, but you -cannot- choose the monster to be attacked. Teh order of battles is rather simple: first you attack flying monsters and then the ground type ones, period. You can choose while you're on the forests before battle if you want to gain experience or items in a battle... yes, you decide: items or experience, but NOT BOTH! This is specially annoying bc in this game you have to work in order to obtain money/special items and so on. Nice idea about working, but the combat systems really sucks, it's boring and I'm very dissapointed about it.

Well, I feel relaxed now :-P. I've sold the game and I'm waiting for some nice RPG titles for the DS coming soon. Here's a first glimpse:

- Xenosaga I&II
- Children of Mana
- Final Fantasy III
- Tales of the Tempest
- Iron Feather

I hope this review may be helpful to you...

And if theres a hardcore Dreamcast reader around (sorry, I'm a little out of topic, since the DC is not portable :-P) there will be two new dreamcast games on february: under defeat and rajirugi (japanese olny releases).

Namely,

darkmoon.

More on KoP

2005-09-08T12:13:00.000-04:00

I just stumbled across this piece of news at pspupdates.com:

– KINGDOM OF PARADISE
Available November 15th -- Rating Pending
Kingdom of Paradise is an action-RPG title where players take the role of a young warrior outcast named Shinbu. When one of the five martial clans attempts to disrupt a peaceful balance of power within the land of Ohka,
Shinbu seeks to defend his clan and restore equal power to the five clans that once ruled the world. With more than 20 hours of gameplay, players will venture through vast, living worlds and battle mythical enemies in a quest to restore peace to Ohka. More than 150 sword attack styles are available and
players can create unique fighting combos by customizing sword attacks and moves gained throughout the game. In Ad Hoc mode, custom-created sword skills can be shared with friends and players can battle in one-on-one matches. Special skills and defensive items, along with an exclusive sword, are available to download via Infrastructure mode.

Kingdom of Paradise = Tenchi no Mon!!!!!

2005-08-24T10:24:00.000-04:00

Finally!!!! That elusive game "Kingdom of Paradise" has shown itself!!
From IGN:
"Based in a fantasy realm, Kingdom of Paradise tells the story of the fall into chaos when the Kirin clan broke 300 years of peace between five martial clans in the land of Ohka. The warrior Shinbu has set out, after his clan was destroyed by the assault, to find a way to restore peace to Ohka. Besides its sprawling adventure story across 20 hours of play, Kingdom of Paradise distinguishes itself on PSP with a unique style to its action combat, where you can select from more than 150 sword attack styles and increase your skills in battles that combine realtime action and turn-based battle customization. The game also features downloadable extra skills and items (including an exclusive sword) over a wireless connection to the net, two-player battles over an ad-hoc wireless connection, skill trading (also over ad-hoc wireless with another player), and designs by Korean animator Ko Jinho."

PSP Ys pushed into 2006 - PSP News at GameSpot

2005-08-18T09:14:00.000-04:00

Bad news, guys!! :(
PSP Ys pushed into 2006 - PSP News at GameSpot

This is a hard blow on the PSP RPG scene (if there was such a thing).

Baten Kaitos

2005-08-17T12:04:00.000-04:00

The more I play this game, the more I like it. Battles are really fun, now that I figured that I needed to setup my deck :) I played for the first 5 hours of the game with the default deck + passes to fill in the blanks... Oh boy.. If you play this game, make sure you add new Magnus to your deck as you get them, and remove old less powerful ones...
I still think the voiceovers suck!!
It would be really cool if you could have the voices in japanese and the text in english.. I wonder if one could create such a disc by using both the american and jap versions of the game, and replaced some files in one with files from the other.. it could work.. But to be able to do such a thing, you would need some sort of mod-chip.. If I had one, I would really try to do this, as it would make this game so much more enjoyable.....

Eternal Darkness and Baten Kaitos

2005-08-16T13:29:00.000-04:00

I have not been able to find Eternal Darkness...
I tried Circuit City, Target, Gamestop, Electronics Boutique, and even Walmart so far, and nothing...
I eneded up buying Baten Kaitos at EB for now.. I've played like 5 hours so far..

I really thought I was not going to like the battle system too much (as it is a turn-based, card based system, with real time elements); but I must say that it's a lot of fun..
The music is also very good, and the graphics for the battles are gorgeous..
The in game backgrounds are beautiful, but pre-rendered, which is not common now a days; and not necesarily a good thing..

What I hate the most about the game is the dubbed voice overs.. I'm sorry Namco localization team; but you did a terrible job at this.. Not only the acting leaves a lot to be desired, but the sound files seem to have been compressed with a really low bitrate (or something), and some sequences sound like if the character was talking from inside a cardboard box!!

This, as opposed to really good dub jobs like the ones for FF X or ToS, is really sad.
It's a very good thing that the clips can be turned off, or skipped during the game, though.

The story is good so far; but we'll see.. as I've only played 5 hours..

Popolocrois

2005-08-16T13:20:00.000-04:00

RPGamer has an article and a preview about Popolocrois.
In the article they mention an early October release for Popolocrois; which doesn't quite match the 9/27 date we knew about, but it's fairly close.

Legend of Heroes (Gagharv Trilogy 2)

2005-08-12T14:45:00.000-04:00

Gamestop has it scheduled for 10/18/05...

Remember that this is in fact : "Eiyuu Densetsu Gagharv Trilogy: Akai Shizuku".. I wonder if it really is coming out this October... Release dates seem to be so "dynamic"...

If it does in fact come out this soon; then this is great news for us!

As far as DS titles go, the only one that seems interesting is "Lunar" (Dragon Song). According to gamestop, it's coming out 9/27

More ToS

2005-08-12T10:55:00.000-04:00

There's so much I didn't do in ToS!...
I'm going to the Mall today, so yesterday I spent a couple hours on ToS.. I know I finished it.. But there's lots of things I didn't do...
I found out that the final boss is a wimp compared to other enemies.. (Abyssion, the final team in the colliseum advanced singles)
I also found out that there was something I could have done so that Kratos would have been in my party, but I don't have a savegame that old.. Oh well..

I finished ToS

2005-08-11T10:42:00.000-04:00

What a great game!! It was refreshing playing something this fun! It took me around 55hours to complete the game; and I know I didn't finish all the sub-quests. You can easily play this game for 80+ hours.
I thought that Kratos was the coolest character in this game, and came across a "Kratos" Club... Which I personally think it's a bit too much!
Darkmoon recomended I try "Eternal Darkness" (its not a Jap-RPG, but a Lovecraft's inspired adventure).. I'll see if I find it.. I went to both Circuit City and Target yesterday, and no luck!. I'll try Electronic Boutique and Game Spot today.. I need a hair cut anyways, so I'll go to the mall after work..

Advent Children

2005-08-10T12:46:00.000-04:00

The Final Fantasy movie that we've all been expecting is almost out!!
(NO, SPIRITS WITHIN DOESN'T COUNT!!)
34 days, 18 hours and 11 minutes, according to the official webpage.
My only hope is that they don't dub it.. or if they do, that they still provide the original japanese voice track!!

Upcoming Titles / Lunch Dates -Update-

2005-08-01T12:41:00.000-04:00

I think it's time to take a look at the coming titles, and their lunch dates!!

ebgames.com

POPOLO CROIS PSP: 9/27/2005
YS: THE ARK OF NAPISHTIM PSP: 10/01/2005

gamestop.com

PoPoLo Crois: 9/27/05
FF Advent Children (Movie): 09/30
Kingdom of Paradise: 11/15/05
Ys: The Ark of Napishtim: 12/1/05

Big disconnect on Ys..

So in short, still a long ways for the first PSP RPG; almost 2 months...

Lack of updates

2005-08-01T12:38:00.000-04:00

Hey!,

I wanted to say sorry for the lack of updates.. I've been a little busy trying to do some development on the PSP (look at http://rafpsp.blogspot.com/), also still playing ToS... (It's a great game!!), and ToP on the PSP...

Raf

Tales of Phantasia (DeJap's translation)

2005-07-23T13:59:00.000-04:00

Tales of Phantasia on my PSP (via Snes9Xy??.... Please note the text :)

New blog member!

2005-07-22T15:17:00.000-04:00

I'd like to welcome my good childhood friend "darukkumun" as he joins the blog..
Expect some posts from him on games for the DS/GBA..

Welcome, Darkmoon!!

Firmware Version 2.0

2005-07-22T12:05:00.000-04:00

There's been a lot of talk about the new fw version coming out...
I think it's a shame how lots of people are willing to sacrifice the ability to play homebrew applications, just to have a web browser..
Heck if it comes to it, I'll write a webbrowser (or port one) myself.. I should be able to, I'm a "software engineer" and write code for a living after all.....
Maybe I'll start another blog to report on my progress :)

Funny Images

2005-07-22T12:02:00.000-04:00

There's a couple funny scenes in both ToS and ToP that I wished I had my digital camera around when I saw them so I could post them here.. I'll try to remember to have my camera close when I play games from now on :)

Tales of Something-ia...

2005-07-20T19:49:00.000-04:00

Not amazingly, I found that Wikipedia also has a page for Tales of Symphonia!
(Which again, is the main game that I'm playing.. I know this is supposed to be a PSP blog.. but no one really reads this blog anyways.. right?? I'll just keep pretending that people magically know about it and come for their daily fix of RPG news [specially about PSP, but also maybe about GC o_O]...)
Anyways, I stole a pic from them (they're free so technically it's not stealing.. but somehow I still feel bad about getting it from their article...):

Tales of Phantasia

2005-07-20T09:10:00.000-04:00

I started playing ToP on the PSP (using the snes9x port by 'y', and the translated rom)..
It's really good!! I can see how Tales of Simphonia (The one I'm playing on the GameCube) takes lots of elements from this title. Most likely all "Tales" games are like this, but I wouldn't know, as I've only played this two..
The menu interface is like any RPG, but the battles have a semi-real-time interface, where you only control the main character, and the rest of the party is controlled by the AI.
What I didn't like about ToP is that it has random encounters, and I thought it was a little more fresh the way it's handled in ToS, where you can see monsters, and most time evade them (Like in the "Chrono" series, but also in the world map)...
Here's a screenshot I grabbed from WikiPedia:

Kingdom of Paradise (again!)

2005-07-19T21:13:00.000-04:00

OK, enough of this sidetracking and procrastination!! I need to learn more about this game..
Off to wikipedia!! For those of you that don't know about it, Wikipedia is a Wiki powered, and completely open online encyclopedia.. I've become addicted to it (I recently signed up and made some updates to Naoki Urasawa - sensei's article, I earlier made some additions anonymouly too)..
Anyways, Wikipedia returned nothing... It's time to get serious....
IGN, PSP411, CircuitCity, Amazon, I even tried Walmart!!!!, but nobody seems to know about this elusive title... could it be an error on gamestop.com's website??
Gamestop describes it as follows: "Three hundred years ago, the known world consisted of nine continents spread across a vast ocean. Ohka was the center of this world, ruled by five martial art houses, until Sema, one of the continents threatened their rule. Once considered an outcast, Shinbu returns home and defends his clan, the Gate of Seiryu. After learning that he and a girl name Suirin are the only two living clan members left, Shinbu joins her on a journey to defend their clan and return the balance of powers in Okha."
And continues: "As he travels through Tenchi no Mon's world, Shinpu will collect more than 150 different kinds of Sword Sheets, which allow the martial arts fighter to use certain techniques. By combining these sword techniques, he will gain access to chain attacks. Another option to attack enemies in the game are deathblow techniques comparable to magic spells. If the player finds out the elemental weakness of an enemy, he can exploit it by using the corresponding deathblow technique to deal a massive amount of damage to his foe."
I gotta say... WTF???

Back to that Kingdom of Paradise

2005-07-19T16:43:00.000-04:00

I got sidetracked by the Legends of heroes, while looking for Kingdom of Paradise....
A quick google search returned nothing!
Then I tried using Gataga, you know, that GREAT search engine that uses social bookmarking services to return results, that unlike google's and the other engines, are not generated by machines (bots), but rather by people... and it seems, that it's gone..... ?? You can read the blog there.. They don't really explain what happened?? Did MS or Google buy them???

I get sidetracked again!.......

Legend of Heroes

2005-07-19T16:34:00.000-04:00

According to GameSpot, "The Legend of Heroes" is "a single-player turn-based role-playing game featuring more than 100 unique characters to interact with, over 50 hours of gameplay."
Well, this sounds exactly like the games that I enjoy so much (I'm not fond of MMORPG; particularly because I don't have the time/money necessary to embark in such journeys)..
But this description is just to general, I'm sure there's gotta be some more info on this title somewhere else.. let's keep looking...

A-Ha!!: Over at PSPWorld, they have the real scoop!
It turns out that this "The legends of heroes" is the 'famous' "Eiyuu Densetsu Gagharv Trilogy: Akai Shizuku". Yes!! One of the titles I thought were never going to come to the West is finally at hand!!

According to PSPWorld:
The Legend of Heroes: Is coming out as early as September!! This is great news...

Upcoming titles

2005-07-19T16:21:00.000-04:00

The release dates of the two RPGs that are coming out for the PSP this year according to different sources:

According to ebgames.com:
Popolocrois: 8/23/2005
Ys: The Ark of Naphitism: 10/1/2005

According to gamestop.com:
Popolocrois: 8/23/2005
Ys: The Ark of Naphitism: 11/1/05

I guess there's at least agreement on Popolocrois now (This used to be false a couple months ago); and who knows when Ys is really coming out....

There's also mention of another RPG over at gamestop, something called:
Kingdom of Paradise, they say it's coming out 11/18/05... I'll do some digging on this "new" title...

Tales of Symphonia

2005-07-19T13:27:00.000-04:00

Nowadays I'm playing Tales of Symphonia for the GameCube...
I tried playing Skies of Arcadia.. And probably played for more than 10 hours.. But then I bought TOS, and it's just so much better...
As a grownup with a son and another baby on the way, I don't seem to have as much time as I did for playing games.. This makes me a lot more selective and critical.. I can only afford to play so for so much time..
This is another reason/value for the PSP for me.. It allows me to take advantage of every small free time I get.. BUT!! Where are the RPGs for the PSP???
Ys: The Ark of Naphitism is on the way. I've heard nothing but good things about this game.. I mean, with a name like that, IT HAS TO BE GOOD, right??? But nobody seems to know when the release date for the PSP port is!!
Popolocrois is now scheduled for next month here in the US. But I believe it's a strategy/rpg, and I don't enjoy these kind of rpgs as much as the "regular" kind... I'll probably still get it, just because it'll be the only "decent" PSP RPG available... I'll report on it here.
There's so many good RPGs out for the PSP out in Japan, though!! I'm just gonna have to learn Japanese.. It's the only way!!

So much stuff I want to talk about...

2005-07-19T11:29:00.000-04:00

There's just so much stuff I want to talk about!! My hope is that the comunity will help fill the holes, so that we'll all be more informed on what's going on...
Let me start by talking a bit about myself...
The first RPG (and I really mean CRPG, but I like the RPG acronym better) I remember playing was Origin's Ultima III (http://www.uo.com/archive/ultima3/). I remember thinking, "wow this looks really fun, you have the ability to really explore this virtual world.." It gave me a feeling that no game had ever given me.. A feeling of freedom.. But the controls were really clumsy, and not being exposed to the genre before, I remember dropping it after like 15mins.
Next came Ultima IV(http://www.uo.com/archive/ultima4/) (I was like 15 probably), a friend kept telling me how good it was, so I decided to give it a shot..
I got instantly hooked. The interface was so good (although a joke by today's standards).. I played this game for months, and finished it!!
Next came Ultima V, VI, VII, VII-part two, VIII... I never played IX or X, or whatever the last one was... I had moved on by then..
At the same time Ultima VI or VII was out, I also tried a different kind of RPG, The Eye of the Beholder. I finished II and then I. They were different, because they were first person, and 3d. (But not like moder 3rd person shooter games, the EOB didn't have smooth scrolling; rather, the character moved one "block" at a time, and made 90degree turns..)
I never owned a SNES system, so I was first introduced to Final Fantasy on an emulator. It was the translated FF V, the version that never came to America. And it became my favorite game of all time. The story and the music were so good...
After FF V, I played VI on the emu.. And I was prepared for VII....
I had to wait until VII was ported to PC, as I didn't own a PlayStation.. But it was woth every second of the wait. Final Fantasy VII pushed V out of the throne and became my new favorite game. Sprites had been replaced with real-time vecorial renderings!! The music was better, and the story!! What a plot!! What twists!!, It was better than any movie I had ever seen.
I then played FF VIII, and IX, but only X was really good enough to capture me like VII did.
In parallel I also played other Square games like Chrono Trigger and Chrono Cross. And I think both are fantastic games too..
But three years ago I came across a gem... I don't really understand how I missed it before. But Xenogears, is without doubt as good, or better than Final Fantasy.
Two years ago I played Xenosaga, Episode I. But it was not nearly as good as Xenogears. (Xenogears is supposedly like episode III or IV in the saga.. I'm not sure if they'll re-make it, or if it was just used as a base to build upon and create a whole new saga)..
(TO BE CONTINUED...)

Blogger

2005-07-19T11:08:00.000-04:00

This is my first blog entry, ever!
I started this blog because I'm frustrated with the fact that there are no RPGs for the Sony PSP console.
I know, I know, you're already saying, how about Untold Legends!. Well, I started writing "no good" RPGs, but you know what?? For me Untold Legends doesn't count.
I'm into japanese-born RPGs, like Final Fantasy (really almost anything from Square(Enix), except Bahamut Lagoon..)
I guess this is enough for a first post, I'll elaborate in another post. I want to see how my blog looks!
PS: It's 11:08am but this thing wants to post as if it was 7:59am, what's the deal with that? Any ideas??
PS2: I already figured it out... O_o...