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Overruled!

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Well, here’s the gist of it.

Bill 156 is a revised version of the bill to restrict manga, anime, and games with sexual and “anti-social” depictions of children earlier this year. The proposed, now approved and passed, bill will amend the Youth Healthy Development Ordinance which, a couple of days back, only restricted minors from purchasing/renting “harmful” publications.

Now, however, the industry would have to regulate content they publish, be it manga, anime, or even static drawings that exaggerates certain, for the lack of a better description, “inappropriate content” such as sex/rape/whateverthefuckthat’sinappropriate.

Another section of the revised bill would allow the government to directly regulate the above mentioned items if the depicted acts are deemed harmful/inappropriate to minors.

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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this post are very random and is that of an uneducated (anime wise) but awesome being.

First thing’s first. Remember that post I wrote a couple months back where I mentioned—well, I’m paraphrasing here; I don’t remember exactly what I said—how fan service is forcing the anime/manga industry into the gutter? Well, guess what, laddies. They have finally decided to do something about it and that, my friends, is Bill 156.

While you might think, “Hey, that means our anime/manga is gonna get directly affected!” others, such as myself, would feel more relieved with the passing of this bill.

So here’s the thing.

I’ve always thought that anime fandom now has been split up into factions. But to keep it simple I’ll generalise it all and just split the fandom into three.

In Group A, we have the “Classic” fans and in Group B, the “New” fans and finally Group C, the “casual” fan.

Group A: Fans probably grew up watching the old, by-the-book series where fanservice wasn’t the focus of any show (excluding hentai here, FYI).

Group B: Fans are what I call the ‘moe’ fans, who watch (and enjoy) the new, senseless, stuff whether there’s any fanservice or not.

Group C: Fans are just casual dudes. They watch anything someone from Group A or B recommends.

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Before the wave of crap

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Again, I’m just generalising here. The faults with these groupings are crystal clear but please, bear with me.

If you’ve noticed, the new generation of fans are filled with more minors/teenagers now as compared to last time. The amount of fanservicey anime being released and the mean age of anime fandom is kinda inversely proportional, don’t you think?

By simple logic, I can deduce that Group A fans will be the older people, who keep to themselves mostly (again, generalising) whilst group B would probably be dominant in this area, since the younger fans wouldn’t bother going ‘deep’ into an anime (analysing and really understanding a show) so they watch senseless (I apologise for my choice of word here) rubbish.

From this, I can safely assume that group C will be more of a sub-Group B than a whole new group itself, what with the barrage of  ”new (and shallow) kinds” of animes and its younger fans. Would you rather watch/read something your parents recommend to you or your best friend? You’d generally pick what your friends recommend, right?

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After the wave of crap

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So what does my retarded theory have anything to do with this?

We all know that this bill is gonna stir up some “hardcore action” between the government, the fans and the people in-charge of content (screenwriter, mangaka etc) but when it comes down to it, is this a good move for the industry, for its fans, as a whole? I believe so and you should too.

I’m not sure if you guys share my views on this but I’d say that the general Japanese fans (of manga/anime/whatever) are pretty messed up. I mean, compared to us ‘normal’ fans, they’d be what we call “extremists”. The lengths they go through to do peculiar things that’s frowned upon by the society… Very interesting. Are they actually manly, stupid or stupidly manly? Food for thought.

Anyway, with the otaku-ism being at its height of extremeness in Japan, and these dudes showing up on the news doing weird/strange/retarded stuff everywhere, it’s only a matter time before the world gets wind of these happenings. I’m in Singapore and I’ve heard of these things; I’m sure many people all around the world would have as well.

Inevitable, these things are. The Internet can be a bitch sometimes. I’m sure the Japanese government would have realised that they’d have to put a stop to this.

So yeah, to actually answer the above question, well, from the virtual statistics I came up with (which I mentioned above), there are a lot more younger fans now so this bill might actually be a good thing in these fans’ upbringing.

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This is just here to fill in the gap.

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And this in turn, leads to another question: “Was the government thinking of their people and the country’s future when they approved the bill (to be voted on)?”

With all the strange things happening within the otaku crowd, I’m sure they’d want to stop it or at least keep it to a bare minimum. So yes, I do believe that the decision was made for the good of the people (aren’t all laws based on that anyway…).

Honestly speaking though, how much of a difference would this bill actually make? Even if they had the right intention, I’m not so sure if its impact is enough to totally change the fandom but maybe with time; we can only hope. Maybe in a few years, when we look back at the controversial approval and passing of bill 156, we might realise that they did the right thing. But who knows, right?

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Awww, cute aren't they?

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Reiterating what I asked earlier: How big of an impact can the passing of bill do for the anime fandom?

Nowadays, kids who are barely even teenagers get exposed to hentai or part thereof (ecchi shit y’know) not just from watching anime but from the Internet too. We all know they can’t stop the Internet but this bill might just be enough to put a stopper on the premature exposure. We all know that hentai/porn is “bad” but don’t misinterpret me. I’m not saying we shouldn’t watch these things; they’re awesome, but at least be of age when you do/watch it, please!

Of course, everything I’ve said is all speculation. I could be (probably am) wrong, and the Japanese government could be doing all this just to fuck with us fans, in which case, you’ve just wasted your time reading crap you didn’t need to care about, so I apologise for wasting your precious time. But in the case where I am right, here’s what I think you guys should do.

Stop being such babies, whining time and time again about the passing of this bill. Fun fact: Japan has a current population of approximately 127,430,000 citizens, only about three or four million of them actually matter with regards to the passing of this bill.

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Hit the cutey girls with this...

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The anime/games/manga industry will not die.

What’s this I’m hearing about “every single anime getting banned”? The only reason you guys think that is because “every single anime” now is going a little over the top with their sexual shit.

We know sex sells but back then, these things weren’t marketed with sex but were successful nonetheless. It’s a step backward, but a good one. As for how long it’ll take to revert the industry back to what it was 10 years, I do not know. No one does.

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Little girls + Banhammer = THIS.

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“Time will not slow down when something unpleasant lies ahead.”

Yeah, it won’t. News flash for those who hasn’t realised it yet. With the passing of bill 156, I’m sure people will start to rage. Manga publishers and some companies have already expressed their discontent with this bill but there’s really nothing you can do.  1 April 2011 and 1 July 2011 (dates when the regulations actually take effect) are coming whether you like it or not. Now’s your chance to sit and think about all the text you’ve just read above for the next few months. Is it really worth the rage?

Earlier today, I was listening to Radiolab’s newest episode and they were talking about selflessness and heroism (which has no relation to the topic at hand but anyway…). Just how many of you are actually not thinking about what YOU won’t get and what YOU will lose but what the industry and fandom has to gain when this bill takes effect?

I admit, at first, I was thinking of how great it was that I would be able to watch something without the constant sexual references, which was selfish of me, but I then realised after some thought that we’re wasting time discussing all this.

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Kakashi approves.

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“What’s coming will come, and we’ll meet it when it does.”

Here’s a suggestion: instead of wasting our time blurting out reasons why the bill is good or bad, how about we put in the effort to help the companies, mangaka, animation studios adapt to the change instead? Our best bet now is to support the creators and hope for the best.

So, instead of thinking about it as them pressing the ‘Self-destruct’ button, think of it as a ‘Reset’ button.
The optimist sees the doughnut; the pessimist, a hole.

As mentioned above, the bill doesn’t come into full enforcement until April/July 2011 so expect a shitstorm of idiotic fans raging and crying till then because their own stupidity and arrogance blinds them from common sense (which they already clearly lack).

So, now that you’ve read all the crap above, tell me. What are your thoughts on the bill?
I’m sure many of you might disagree with whatever I said. Why though? TELL ME.
Comment here! Don’t talk to me on MSN or IRC about it!

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No, seriously, comment here. I know you guys read my posts but are lazy to comment.

Harry Potter > Twilight

And this isn’t coming from someone who has no idea what he’s talking about, unlike most of you loud-mouthed people who have actually only read/watched one of the two and decided to blab about how the other sucks. No offence. Seriously, though. I’ve read all the books from both series but the ONLY reason I read Twilight was to see what the hype was about; to see if it really was ‘the next Harry Potter.’

In any case, after countless times of having the same conversation over and over and over again with Twilight fans, I decided that it’s time I set my opinion about this in stone (website rather) and never, ever, have a conversation with anyone about this ever again. If anyone starts up a conversation about this with me, I’ll simply direct them here!

I figured that since the Harry Potter phenomenon is coming to an end with the last two movies soon (Well, at least until Jo publishes The Scottish Book), this is the time to ‘set things straight’. Without further ado, here are the reasons why I think Harry Potter > Twilight.

(In case you don’t know what ‘>’ means, it signifies ‘greater than’. You know, like in math.)

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this post are not the views and opinions of an English and/or Literature major. Also, these are only about the books, don’t get me started on the movie adaptations.

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#1 Obviously: Harry Potter is better than Twilight because it isn’t Twilight.
That’s one to HP, none to Twilight.

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I first read this 10 years ago.

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#2 Religious references: We know that both the writers of the series, Rowling and Meyer come from ‘religious’ backgrounds. Rowling, Christianity and Meyer, Mormonism. They both show their beliefs in their works, which I’m all out for by the way, but how they do it—that’s a whole different thing. It’s not just about displaying their personal beliefs but rather how they display it. Harry Potter is filled with references to Christian themes and the bible and whatnots. Some even believe that Harry is a ‘Jesus figure’ but you’ll have to actually read the book to get that; I’m not spoiling anything. However, the story itself works independently from its themes. There’s no actual mention of the bible or why they’re celebrating Christmas or any of that jazz; there are only implications of Christianity in her books.

In the case of Twilight though, the story works exclusively as a campaign for the evilness of a male’s hormones. It treats sexuality (being a vampire, rather) as a disease. And so the story is essentially about a boy who can’t control his urges for a girl and a girl who just can’t help but be attracted to that guy. What happens later on? Again, you’ll have to actually read the books.

I’d rather have these religious beliefs to be lightly referenced than having a whole story based on it. Religion is a sensitive topic and Rowling did a better job in ‘sharing’ her personal beliefs.

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9 years ago for this.

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#3 Universe: Do you believe Hogwarts could actually exist? That we are muggles and a magical world exists in secret? This might make me into some sort of Potter-geek but I wouldn’t dismiss the idea. The amount of detail Rowling put into creating this world is immense. So immense that as you watch the movies or read her books, her world engulfs you, transporting you into a whole new universe. New creatures and beasts, magical sports, new languages, a plethora of spells, not to mention the different kinds of food and that’s just the beginning!

And what do we know about Twilight? It’s set in boring old like-any-other-town-or-city Forks, Washington, good Vampires don’t attack you, Vampires love baseball and Vampires and Werewolves don’t get along. Anything else? That’s pretty much it.

Rather than getting the audience sucked into the universe, Twilight is pretty much shoving a cheesy and complicated love story down your throat whether you like it or not.

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This got me hooked into Potter.

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#4 Characters: You can’t deny that the Harry Potter series has way stronger characters than Twilight. Rowling really thought of her characters. Ranging from jokers and carefree Fred and George Weasley to evil dictator Voldemort, everyone plays a part, no matter how minor you might think the character is. And Snape, Snape, Severus Snape.. How big of a role did he play at the end when in the beginning, we thought nothing more of him than a vindictive bully? She even goes further to let us know these characters as the plot progresses, not just read about them and go “meh.”

Harry is an orphan living with his only relatives and goes through life’s trial, troubles and experiences losses. Bella is just a hormone-driven teen who can’t decide which guy is more attractive.

Characters in Harry Potter actually undergo proper development; no one is perfect, or magnificent. Twilight? Apart from Bella (a.k.a. Mary-sue), who ditched all her friends and family to be with/like a guy she’s infatuated with (I guess you can consider that a change?), and Jacob Black who I felt was particularly different from your ‘typical Twilight character’, everyone else was pretty much perfect, weren’t they? They’re all two-dimensional characters at best; not much depth to them.

As you delve into Harry Potter, it’s impossible not to find situations that you can empathize or sympathize with. Her characters are remarkably life-like and so wonderfully portrayed you can’t help finding yourself falling in love with them.

Sure, Rowling killed some characters… (OH NO!) But you know, when there’s a war, people die. That’s a given. I think Meyer was just too much of a wuss to kill her characters off. Does that really justify what I’ve been hearing from some people? That Rowling doesn’t love her characters as much as Meyer because she killed them? Really, guys?

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Turning point of the series.

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#5 Flow/Continuity: Every book in Harry Potter links up perfectly, like a perfect web of information. I remember reading the first book and caring nothing about the name ‘Sirius’ that came up early on. Then come book three, he was now a major character! At that point, I realised that Rowling had a grand plan for her story; everything’s connected. From the first book to the last, what we thought was ‘just another detail’ happened to be part of the bigger picture.

As for Twilight, everything seemed really static, characters and all. The story didn’t flow well between books. First book and third, second book and fourth? What. Even the build-ups were misleading. I was reading the fourth book and expecting this super huge epic battle but IT NEVER HAPPENED. That was very, very anti-climatic.

Setting the perspective of books itself (Harry Potter in third person, Twilight in first) aside, as you read Twilight, you’d probably notice the sloppiness of Meyer’s usage of words. At one point, you might feel like you’re reading a typical secondary school student’s composition and others, an English major’s essay.

It felt like she was writing with a thesaurus on her desk, checking for synonyms time and again, using ‘big’ words when they seemed convenient, losing the consistency flow. Rowling’s work, as far as I’m concerned, barely had any ‘big’ words; everything was simple to understand and flowed like water in a river.

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Easiest book to associate life with.

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#6 Morals/Lessons: What does Harry Potter teach you? The importance of choice, friendship, family, reliance, dependence, love, playing by your strengths and a whole lot more that I could probably write a whole essay on just ‘Life Lessons and Moral Values we can learn from Harry Potter’.

What does Twilight teach you? Don’t judge a book by its cover, you don’t have to be what people expect you to be, selfishness is great, life threatening secrets are good, stalking a girl and watching her sleep every night is awesome and that’s not all! We also learn that Vampires are as whiny, self-absorbed and impotent as any human; very much unlike evil ‘Dracula’ or whatever we’ve been reading for years in classic literature and the best one yet, true love is the best; ditch everyone for it, who cares! I guess I could write a whole essay on this too!

Harry Potter, in so many ways, portrays what is great about being human—which doesn’t have anything at all to do with the magic in the books—and Twilight, on the other hand, makes you think that being human, being imperfect, is a horrible fate to befall a person. The problem here is, while Twilight does have things we can learn from the story, there are more serious—dangerous—lessons we can pick up that really isn’t something you’d want apply to life; you’d be beaten up to a pulp. I just can’t stand the lame attempts at being positive in the Twilight saga.

Romeo and Juliet was sexy once upon a time, but look, they ended up dead.

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The book that made me go "WTF"

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#7 Creativity: When I explained about the universe, it was as good as me saying that Rowling is more creative than Meyer which I do think so. Considering every point I’ve made so far (except the first), Rowling clearly has the edge and I must say that her writing style is top-notch as well. Meyer is too repetitive to the point that it’s annoying and irritating to read what she writes. 402187309128 words describing how hot Edward is? Please. Rowling keeps her words fresh and invents new words to lessen the annoyance of reading (not that you’d ever get annoyed reading her stuff) her works.

Here are examples of really bad writing from Twilight books:

1)

“Gah,” I gasped.

2)

“Yiiik!” I yiked.

God, how do you people get through all of this? I literally had to force myself to finish the Twilight books just so I can put up a strong (hopefully strong enough) argument. I dare you to go find something as awful from Rowling. I haven’t found any good quotes worth mentioning from the Twilight series but there’s a huge number from Harry Potter.

Here’s an example of creativity from the second book the Harry Potter series I liked:

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE

Then he waved the wand once, and the letters of his name re-arranged themselves:

I AM LORD VOLDEMORT

Harry Potter definitely isn’t just a shallow story for only young children. Twilight fans will never know what kind of man James was before he turned vampire. Harry Potter fans, however, know what kind of a man James Potter was before he died an honourable death.

Rowling has spent almost 20 years with her characters from the series. She planned and thought out every character thoroughly. She even gave them unique names. She created a world within our own for her witches and wizards and has based their heritage off of real mythology and history. The spells are in a dead language (latin mostly) and they have organised governments with strict laws. One of the best things about the series is that you can study these intricate details.

In Harry Potter, there are arguments over everything from Snape’s loyalty, to the cryptic meaning of Trelawney’s prophecies, to Dumbledore’s love of socks. Twilight fans can only argue about who Bella will marry. Speculating and asking about what might or might not happen, whether these events are connected and why character X has to go through Y is redundant because Twilight is just too predictable. Everything is thrown at your face, just like that. By the end of the first book, if you can’t figure out how it was going to end, I envy you because I saw through the whole thing.

To Potter fans, these are common, everyday questions. Jo Rowling leaves hints and vague information in her books in bits  for us to piece together. When fans ask her questions like these she’d answer: “You have read the book(s), right?!” Like an amusing childhood fairytale, Meyer’s “saga” is to be taken for face value; delving deep within will display its undesirable flaws. The mere fact that Harry Potter makes you think, makes you question Rowling, and causes you to come up with theories proves its superiority and shows Rowling’s creativity.

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Favourite book of the pack.

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I could write more but seeing as I already have seven points now and seven is “most magically powerful number”, I’m going to stop here. Can you Twilight fans support your claim that Twilight is indeed, better than Harry Potter? What do you guys think? Give me your best arguments! Comment!

To end off, a couple of self-answered questions:

-Which series got its own theme park? HARRY POTTER.
-Which series got its own hysterical musical? HARRY POTTER.
-Which series inspired a whole new genre of music? HARRY POTTER.
-Which series has a supposedly immortal man, a hippogriff, a main character with a rockin’ scar and convict as a godfather, a double agent who every one hates until the very end, a complete butt hole who you can still sympathize with and has millions of fans world wide?

HARRY POTTER.

Why? Because Harry Potter is not Twilight.

P.S. Has it already been 10 years? When I grow older and have a family, I’d be trying to talk my kids into reading for fun I will hand them a copy of Harry Potter, not Twilight.

P.P.S. For those who were wondering, the first reason was CLEARLY a joke.

North American cover. Lightning <3

Everyone, and I mean everyone, has surely heard of Square Enix. They’re notorious for creating games that has spawned millions of reasons for bad cosplay! With Final Fantasy XIII released recently, Square Enix has given fans even more reasons to fail at cosplay but who cares about that… right?

Final Fantasy XIII takes place in the fictional floating world of Cocoon, whose government, the Sanctum, is ordering a purge on civilians who have supposedly come into contact with those from Pulse, the much-feared world below. Lightning, an ex-soldier from Cocoon, begins her fight against the government in order to save her sister, who has been branded a Pulse l’Cie—unwilling servants to the beings known as the fal’Cie, who maintain order on both Cocoon and Pulse—and thus has become an enemy of Cocoon. Lighting then sets out to save her sister, gaining new companions as she fights for the sake of her sister.

Typical Final Fantasy plot ain’t it? A band of heroes coming together to bring down the enemy for a cause. But that’s not all the story has to offer!

Loved

Well written story: The story is the main star of FFXIII but now, don’t worry about all the mumbo jumbo you just read in the intro; they’ll be explained in the game. Think of it as your typical RPG where X happens to Girl A and Girl B decides to save Girl A by doing Y. The chain of events somehow happens to be a plot by some evil dude to destroy the world and it turns out that girl A had actually set out to save the world! Did that help?

What makes the story really well written, however, are the strong themes of the game. Responsibility, duty, individualism, team work, hope, faith, fate/destiny, reliance and the big one; choice, are among the few I thought were really well woven into the typical ‘band of heroes saving the world’ story.

This was so well done in Final Fantasy XIII that even with the clichéd main story, the story as a whole stands out because of its back-story and great characters when compared with the other Final Fantasy games

Drop-dead gorgeous: Final Fantasy XIII has the best graphics I have ever seen in any game so far. Apart from the beautifully designed universe, characters, Eidolons and special effects, Final Fantasy XIII goes a step further to perfect the details. Body language, lip-syncing and very (I really mean very) detailed facial expressions can really bring out the emotion from the characters, and in turn, brings the game to life. The PlayStation 3 can manage such great graphics and I’m sure Square Enix has utilised its power this time by pushing the story-telling grandeur of Final Fantasy to its limits.

Character’s character: First, I’d like to say that Lightning is NOT a female version of Cloud but she is more awesome than Cloud in any way imaginable. Now that we have that all cleared up…

The main characters of the game undergo a change of character as the story progresses. Take Hope for example. When you first meet him, he’s a total whiny b***h but by the time the credits roll, even before actually, your opinion of him might have already changed.

Characters’ voices also played a pivotal role. Maaya Sakamoto as Lightning was by far, the best voice casting decision ever. No one else could’ve have player her better. Other notable voice actors in the Japanese version are Daisuke Ono as Snow, Minako Kotobuki as Serah and Yuuichi Nakamura as Cid Raines. I’m sure there are many more well-known voice actors in the cast who I have no idea about; I only recognised these voices.

Of course, I played the game in Japanese because I can’t stand the English dubs. From what I’ve heard, everyone who played the English version is displeased by the fact that Vanille just wouldn’t shut up. Tough luck, guys.

Eidolons: The Eidolons obtained in the game play a big part in both story and battles. Each character will eventually wind up with their own Eidolon at some point. These Eidolons are able to transform into vehicles which are vital to the story (Transformers, much?). Apart from summoning them during battles, characters also have a more intimate relationship with their Eidolon in this game. Delving further into this will give too much away from the story but know this: the Eidolons are huge entities of the story’s theme of choice. A really intelligent design, one might add.

Intensity at its limits: Battles in FFXIII are relentless and so intense that it forces you to dish out attacks in lightning-quick succession while maintaining your advantage. Everyone is constantly moving – evading and exchanging blows – as the camera pans around the battlefield, zooming in and out on the action to provide you with awesome cinematic sequences.

Unlike the older battle systems of the previous games where ‘I attack, then stand around while you attack me,’ FFXIII’s battle system is more of a combination of the best of FFVII (7), FFX (10) and FFXII (12).

The Active Time Battle and Summoning system are back for good with new additions: the Paradigm Shift and Stagger system. The return of Active Time Battle keeps the clock ticking as you strategise and decide how to effectively attack, which will eventually break the stagger limit of the enemy and ‘stagger’ it, making it more vulnerable. This is the Stagger system.

With all this happening in real-time, you will also have to choose the best strategy by having your characters switch into the right roles – Healer, Supporter, Attacker and so on– at the right time. Roles are known as Paradigms in the game and the process of switching between them is called the Paradigm Shift.

FFXIII removes the traditional levelling of characters. Instead, experience points, known as Crystarium points, go into levelling your Paradigms. Levelling your Paradigms through the Crystarium system brings back memories of the good ol’ Sphere Grid from FFX. You move from node to node for each Paradigm, gaining skills or statistic power ups as you move through the web-of-nodes.

Oh and of course, these roles have cooler names which you’ll have to find out as you play yourself!

Finally, we have the Summoning System where you summon an Eidolon to fight for you. As mentioned above, the Eidolons are able to transform into ‘vehicles’ and you can ‘pilot’ them during battle to dish out even more damage. Piloting your Eidolon is a new part of the battle system known as the Gestalt System. I found it handy at some point but you don’t actually have to use it at all throughout the game.

Here’s a hint though: Summon an Eidolon when your party is almost wiped out. Thank me later!

Equipment system: Instead of the typical get into town to buy new equipment you get “spoils” (item drops) from monsters or items from treasure boxes which you can use to upgrade your equipment (more like just weapon) and accessories. The great thing about this, I found, is that you don’t get to equip armor and therefore change your characters’ looks. Why is this good? I usually play any game, especially Monster Hunter, with the mindset of making my character the best looking warrior ever, regardless of pathetic statistics for battle.

Accessory leveling can get pretty redundant though. You’d be spending most of your materials on upgrading the first few weapons you find and then realise that you’re out of items to upgrade anything with. The rest of your weapons just sit around in your backpack (?), waiting- hoping- to be used. I figured that since the “Optimize” function wouldn’t get any other weapons equipped, I just sold the lot to get some money which is pretty darn scarce in the game.

Grinding? Not at all: I went through the game without any grinding so it definitely doesn’t require any grinding if you’re only in it for the story.  FFXIII was designed in such a way that you need not grind to go through the story. Everything seems to be perfectly “at your level” when you first reach it. All the bosses are beatable from the first point you see them, assuming you don’t skip the battles around that are meant to train you. It’s all about strategising and quick thinking.

Post-game stuff will definitely require some grinding so if you’re in it only for the great story, you have nothing to worry about. Else, grind ahoy! Missions get really tough at some point so you’re gonna need to spend some time grinding.

If you do meet some really strong mobs, chances are, you’re not supposed to be fighting them yet so don’t worry about it. Ignore the mobs and carry on with the story. If you meet a boss and you get raped over and over again… Well, you kinda suck because I had no trouble. Yes, I did get wiped out here and there but after learning their patterns, bosses shouldn’t pose much of a problem.

Soundtrack: Masashi Hamauzu’s finest work yet, Final Fantasy XIII’s Soundtrack covered lots of genres: from blues, rock and orchestral to techno. Coming from the composer of FFX’s and FFVII: Dirge of Cerberus’ soundtrack, one could only expect something better than the last and I must say, the soundtrack is rather satisfying to listen to. “Blinded By Light” (The standard battle theme) is by far my favourite from the pack.

Neutral

Towns nowhere, save points everywhere: Anyone noticed the lack of towns in the universe? I mean, yeah, it was designed in a way that there would not be towns but I missed being able to go to shops and chillin’ with the townspeople every now and then, after mutilating huge monsters. But hey, guess what? There are barely any towns and NPCs too! It wasn’t till I was in the final two chapters did I notice the lack of NPCs. Which is good, isn’t it? Considering that I didn’t notice at all. Well, yeah it was good and all UNTIL I noticed it. I miss the interaction.

They ‘make up’ for not having towns and its people with a huge number of save points though. These save points act as your shopping centre and upgrade facility. There are so many of these that you can almost always take a break before progressing so you don’t have to play the game for hours at a time, being unable to save; that’s a plus.

Not so Loved

Movie, much: Cutscene, after cutscene, after cutscene. Feels like watching a beautiful CG movie! Why didn’t they just make this into the next Final Fantasy movie? Spirits Within was crap but this would have been pretty awesome as a movie. Too bad it isn’t. It’s pretty ridiculous to have to go through a series of them then move your character for like 10 steps and see ANOTHER series of cutscenes. Whatever happened to the Final Fantasy we know and love?

Linearity at its finest: What made this game pretty disappointing was that they took the whole element of exploration from it. Sure, there’s a chapter where you get to explore to your heart’s content but even then, there isn’t much exploration to do. Chapter by chapter, you go on this oh-so-linear path from point A to point B with obvious dead ends hiding treasure boxes so you might make a detour at some point but ultimately, everything goes in a slick, straight line.

Poor like beggars: Money in the game is really, and I mean really, hard to come by. The fact that everything in shops are really expensive doesn’t help too. 1000 gil for Phoenix Downs! You can’t even get that much money easily! Make sure you spend wisely or you’ll be in a tight spot. Unless you start selling your weapons and stuff.

Quests:  Quests appeared out of nowhere nearing the end of the game. Come on, Square Enix. There you are playing through your chapters happily and wham! They dump a large exploration area, very much unlike the usual linear areas you have been going through and tell you, “Hey! Here are quests randomly scattered around! Have fun!” Boy, did that piss me off. The quests got me sidetracked from the story for quite a bit too. Quests are great and all with nice rewards but do it post-game or you’ll be distracted for a long time.

Biased

Japanese dub, English subs: Good things come to those who wait; I waited and viola. Too bad to all you impatient people; I feel your pain. The Asian version got released with the original Japanese voice acting and English subtitles. It even got released with a Deluxe edition which came with the awesome soundtrack and a special Lightning Edition Controller. All I need now is the Lightning Edition PS3.

Translations, yo: Was it just me, or were there subs appearing when no one was talking sometimes? Not to mention when it happened as lips of character A were moving. I found that weird. At first I thought they were glitches. But then it happened again. I figured I couldn’t do much about it so I asked around and no one said they experienced such a thing. Weird ain’t it?

Anyway, as per every localised game, the translations were liberal. Doesn’t affect me much but it really pisses me off when they change the whole “feeling” of the sentence.  For example, Lightning was being way more of a b***h towards Sazh in the beginning but the subtitles don’t portray that very well. It was still good though, so kudos Square Enix.

tl;dr

Final Fantasy XIII is Square Enix’s new attempt at setting the bar for next-generation RPGs and hell if they haven’t already done that with this release. The game is very polished as a whole even with the new and experimental systems implemented. My faith and love for the Final Fantasy franchise has officially been renewed.

Ever since Final Fantasy X-2, my interest in the series had been wavering. Then Square Enix decided to release Final Fantasy XI which was an MMO and that was crossing the line. Whatever happened to the classic conventions of role playing games? It seemed to me more like progress for progress’ sake but that’s just me.

Final Fantasy XII, on the other hand, gave me hope although the game had its faults but come Final Fantasy XIII, everything changed. I now realise that Square Enix are able to implement the classic role-playing gaming conventions and integrate new, experimental, systems into it.

Although the game might put you off within the first few hours as it did to me, after really sitting down and getting into it, I realised that this game really isn’t nearly as bad as everyone has been saying. Hell, I even take back my snarky comments about it when I first started playing it.  The franchise is definitely going in the right direction with the release of Final Fantasy XIII.

Now, let’s all be patient while we wait for the rest of the Fabula Nova Crystallis series, Final Fantasy Versus XIII and Final Fantasy Agito XIII. Oh yeah, don’t forget Dissidia Duodecim (Dissidia 012) which will be out in 2011.

P.S. Lighting is a playable character and she has an Aya Brea costume in the new Dissidia!

I will, in great(?) detail, talk –Well, more like rant– about anime but yeah, talk sounds good.
Before I go into that though, there’s something you need to see. Take a good look at it!

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All-Seeing Eye of Anime

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Or should I say… Let it take a good look at you!

Now, proceed with caution; you’re being watched.
Remember that as you read the rest of this post.

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Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this post are very random and is that of an uneducated (anime wise) but awesome being.

Hi, my name is Hilmi… and I’m an alcoholic. this is my rant on anime.

<srsbiz>

I used to really love anime when I first got into it. Hell, I didn’t even know what I was watching at that time was actually anime! The moment I found out that there were more of these “cartoons,” my guts were telling me that I “gotta watch ‘em all”. That was about 10 years ago for me and my love for anime increased with each show I watched back then.

Now however, I’m beginning to feel distanced from anime as I watch more. Of course, great shows do come by occasionally, which leaves me thinking that there is yet still hope for anime but that “light at the end of the tunnel” is pretty dim from where I am.

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Mmmm, good times tasted good...

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The popularity of anime has been surging rapidly across the globe and as the demand for it increases, studios produce even more anime; which is good in a sense that we’re getting more anime now as compared to years ago but too much of something good doesn’t necessarily make it any better.

This could also be seen as bad considering that the amount of average anime increases synonymously with the demand for it and well, too much of a bad thing definitely makes it worse… (unless you are some evil monster planning to take over the world!)

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Evillllll!

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With such a massive amount of anime being produced, we’re bound to come across repercussions of themes from series X in movie Y. Almost every anime you get now resemble another in some way; a tad bit too much for some, too. It has even come to the point where some elements and themes have become cliched. Fortunately, there are some that really stand out even though the show’s concepts are lifted from elsewhere.

Voltron (Hyakujuu Ou Golion) is a fine example. Big robots combining to form an even BIGGER robot? I believe that idea came from Mazinger Z (correct me if I’m wrong)? But that didn’t stop Voltron from becoming such a successful series now, did it?

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Mazinger Z vs Voltron!

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What I’m saying is that even with the vast majority of anime being similar to each other, there are good ones among them. Unfortunately, two-bit “wannabe-shows” also exist.

An example is Kiddy Grade. A sci-fi adventure series with two girls kicking some ass! Ever heard of Dirty Pair? Pretty much the same concept. Chicks, guns and ass kickin’. I personally found Dirty Pair much more entertaining than Kiddy Grade and in so many ways too, but that’s just me!

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Eclair is clearly the hottest of them all.

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A more recent example of this is Sora no Woto. When compared to K-ON!, Sora no Woto looks like “the long lost sister” with a similar art style and a kinda similar character setting. Young female lead joins a group of other females and thus, their “adventures” begin! Hey, that actually sounds very much like the generic moé slice of life stuff! I don’t have to say which of the two was generally the better one, do I?

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Bunch of twins separated by series

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The success of a show, I strongly believe, is all about its execution, regardless of if the show has “borrowed” elements. Imitating, whether on purpose or not, is inevitable what with so much anime being produced now. I believe that there’s no need for a “new” idea, but rather new takes on existing ideas. That’s how the Gundam franchise is successful. People love it, give them more; just don’t give them the exact same thing in disguise. Being similar to one another doesn’t make anime any better or worse nowadays. What it could do is give fans the wrong impression of what to expect and mislead them.

So guys, please, just stop saying things like “RahXephon is an Evangelion rip off!” Like I’ve mentioned above, similar things are bound to be seen again. Even Evangelion took elements from other shows and refined them but I don’t see anyone saying that Evangelion is a rip off of Mazinger Z for having robots! Come on, people! I’m so sick and tired of having to listen to people ramble on and on about how show X ripped off of show Y. Everything are copies! It’s a conspiracy! Oh no!

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Robots galore!

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Most shows in the “Great Library of Anime” are mediocre at best. Sure, occasional gems like Kimi ga Nozomu Eien or FLCL will surface but with each gem, you’ll find a dozen unwanted rocks. Finding great shows like the legendary Hayao Miyazaki‘s past works (Lupin III,  Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke) or even Mamoru Oshii‘s works (Patlabor, Urusei Yatsura) isn’t so easy now. However, directors like Mamoru Hosoda (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Summer Wars) and Makoto Shinkai (5 Centimetres per Second, The Place Promised in Our Early Days) show promise so watch their stuff!

They (Hosoda and Shinkai) have been referred to as the “Next Miyazaki” by professionals who, unlike me, actually know what they’re talking about so take THEIR words To Heart and watch the shows these two directed. Of course, there are other big names like Noboru Ishiguro, Yoshiyuki Tomino, Shinichiro Watanabe, Hideaki Anno, Satoshi Kon, Isao Takahata, Shinji Aramaki and a whole lot more from the hundreds and thousands of other directors so check them out or ask around (me) for stuff you to watch.

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Miyazaki looks a lot like Colonel Sanders doesn't he?

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Oh yeah, just so you guys know, most of the shows by the guys above are from the past two decades so they might be old! That puts some of you off doesn’t it? One of the excuses I usually hear from people for not wanting to watch a older shows goes somewhat like: “Nah, the art looks old.” Come on, man.

That’s really not a good reason to pass out on something great. Actually, to be honest, it’s a FUCKING HORRIBLE reason. I loathe people who refuse to watch such great shows for such stupid reasons and then say that there aren’t any good anime to watch. You’re not even giving anime a chance and you’re saying it sucks? Whoop de doo, geniuses!

I understand if you decide to pass on things like Odin or Machine Robo because they’re shit anyway but when you say that to something like Nausicaa, you’re really missing out. Really now. Just being old doesn’t make a show any less enjoyable or awesome although the older ones could be corny, lame and/or stupid when compared to newer (and better) things.

Take Otaku no Video as an example. Back then it was a great show depicting the life and times of anime otaku (is plural for otaku, otaku?)  but when you compare it the newer shows of the same genre like Welcome to the NHK! and Genshiken, you’d probably go “Oh man, Otaku no video was pretty dumb…”– at least that’s what I felt after watching all three of them.

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Scene from NHK! made kinda funny

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Rewinding back to what I said on the success of a show depending on its execution… There are other important factors too, like how it’s marketed and most importantly, FANS. Yes, FANS. That’s us!

How many of you fans know at least half of those directors I named without checking what shows they did? Not many, I would guess but you don’t have to know them at all! All you fans have to do is support the creators (even if you don’t care/know who they are) by BUYING their releases.

I know this isn’t possible for everyone since we don’t all speak or understand Japanese and a chunk of anime fans are teenagers who just can’t afford to spend so much on anime. Furthermore, not all anime releases have legitimate English subtitles or dubs and that totally blows, by the way. It’s because of situations like this that we turn to the Internets.

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Macross: Do You Remember Love?

Probably would’ve never been able to watch (and enjoy) this show if it weren’t for the Internet.

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If you know where to look, you can find pretty much anything, provided they exist of course. Remember, Google is your best friend! Just be careful and make sure you don’t get caught though. Do some research on your country’s laws and actions against piracy before starting some illegal downloading or you might end up like us Singaporeans. Odex a company based in Singapore (Oh man, I really wanna move out now) went to great lengths against anime downloading. A friend of mine got caught and had Odex won in court, he– no, everyone who were caught would’ve had to pay so much.

Way to go Odex! Fining us for stuff you “licensed” is kinda acceptable but for shows that you didn’t even bother to bring to us?! Know your legal rights. All this could easily be avoided if companies just brought the shows we want to us but life’s unfair and we can’t have everything we want; just be thankful that we are getting anime at all. Start buying anime! Then maybe, just maybe, we’ll actually start getting everything we want.

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Anime robots on riot in Singapore!

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So yeah, the more we buy the more they produce, right? It works vice-versa too; stop buying and they stop producing (that’s usually the case).  With this in mind, why-the-hell-are-people-buying SHIT like QUEEN’S BLADE?  Who in the right mind would love watching these alienated chicks shooting whatever stuff from their god damn tits?!

I’m genuinely appalled that people would actually buy the Blu-Ray version! HD ALIEN TITS! OH YEAH! These kinds of shows have a specific target audience but seriously. I do not understand (and I doubt I ever will) why some even bother watching shows like these.

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Really? Come on.

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Stop buying these things! Do you want to see such a great form of art go down the drain? We already have so many of these fan service and ecchi shit. A little bit of it spanned in a few episodes throughout a series (or a few scenes in a movie) is fine but having a whole series dedicated fan service and twisted fetishes is just going too far.

If you want fan service, import some dōjinshi! Fan. Service. Get it? This way you still get your fan service and they’ll stop producing rubbish! Then they’ll hopefully get back to the drawing board and dish out something awesome. It’s a win-win situation. Nothing to consider!

If worse comes to worst, get yourself your lewd anime from fansubs for free! I’m not trying to encourage piracy but if that’s what it takes to stop studios from producing these ridiculous shows that have no meaning at all then so be it. Do it for the same reason why Dumbledore and Grindelwald wanted a new world order in which wizards ruled over muggles: “For the greater good.”

</srsbiz>

And that concludes my unexpectedly long and…

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...faaabulous...

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…rant on anime! If you made it this far, congrats and thanks for finishing the whole thing!
It seemed to me like a really bunch of random stuff I thought of and I barely made any good points.
I’m not even sure what I’m talking about anymore.

Here’s a summary of the random points in the rant above. Not sure if I missed anything

Summary

I think that’s all I covered but yeah, like I’ve warned you all, they are all pretty random.
And you know what, I think– I know– I went overboard with this post.

Oh and one more thing, Avatar: The Last Airbender is NOT an anime. Don’t tell me you’ve watched Avatar if I asked what anime you’ve been watching/watched. It is not an anime or “Japanimation.” Not even a wee bit. If it should be called anything, unime or “USAnimation” would be perfect. It’s bloody awesome for an American cartoon though, I’ll give it that.

P.S. Remember that eye at the start? Remember I told you to keep that in mind?
Did you? If you did, good for you. Else, well, nothing!

Cover art for the Japanese release

Record of Agarest War is an SRPG originally released for the PlayStation 3 released in 2007. An updated port of it: Record of Agarest War: Reappearance was then released for the XBOX 360. The Agarest project is a collaboration of Idea Factory, the guys who brought you Spectral Souls, Red Entertainment, known for their Sakura Wars releases, and Compile Heart, who are actually a division of Idea Factory.

Record of Agarest War tells a typical tale of an ancient evil demon god, Summerill, rising back to power and a young man by the name of Leonhardt and his descendants are the last, best hope for the world of Agarest. Their journey will span generations and continents as they strive to once again bring peace to their beleaguered world, even as the cost of their own souls.

Will Leonhardt and his descendants be successful in this epic long quest? Well, they probably would be considering that the good guys always win in games like this but the story, although interesting, isn’t the main highlight of the game!

Note: This review is based on Aksys’ localized version of Record of Agarest War: Reappearance.
Ghostlight’s badly localized version (I know it’s bad because I’ve bought and played that) and the Japanese release (which I’ve also bought and played) on the PS3 are the originals with no additional content from the “Reappearance” version.

Loved

Longgggg (literally) story: What’s different from the usual stories you see is nowadays is that this story spans out five generations. An interesting and new method of storytelling, I might add. You first begin the game with Leonhardt, a renowned solider and aristocrat, also the main-est of the main protagonists. He gets killed in an attempt to save an elf girl, Ellis. At the point of death (or as he’s dying), he is approached by a strange witch-like person, Dyshana, who gives him a choice of either sacrificing his, and his descendants’, souls in exchange for being “reborn” and fulfill her goal of defeating Summerill or well, just die. Having the righteous “I-have-to-save-that-girl-no-matter-what” personality, Leonhardt, of course accepts this proposal and from then on, his and his descendants’ destiny were set on stone.

And so the quest begins… Every generation, you (the main protagonist) will develop relationships with some of the girls introduced and at the end of each generation; “mate” with the girl you like the most. Your offspring, the star of the next generation, will carry on the quest to thwart Summerill.

While the main objective of the heroes is constant, each generation has its own flair to it. Different places, settings, characters and execution keeps the game fresh (yet keeping to the main story) and leaves you wanting to know more and more as the game progresses.

Soul-breeding: Record of Agarest War introduces a new system: soul-breeding. This works together with the nature of the story and adds some dating-simulation aspects to the game. The basic idea of this is, as mentioned above, your hero mating with a girl at the end of each generation and having a child who will star in the next generation.

As you go through the story, there will be scenes where you chat with the girls and your responses will affect them differently. The strength of your bond affects your child’s initial statistics and statistical growth and the girl you marry affects the child’s looks and weapon preference so there is quite a variety of combinations to consider if you’re going into the game to make full use of the system.

A problem I found with this system is that your “spouse of choice” is limited to only one of the “special three.” This means that you are not able to pick some other girl you’ve been introduced to and like more than the “special three.”

Nonetheless, you don’t see something quite as cool as this in RPGs every day so a plus to this.

Characters, characters, characters!: When I thought Tears to Tiara had a long list of characters, boy, was I surprised when I finished Record of Agarest War. By the end of the game, you would have about THIRTY playable characters which is a really huge selection because you only ever need six of them in any battle.

A smart thing Idea Factory did was NOT having just humans and demons in the story. There are different species of human-like creatures ranging from elves to harpuias. I thought this was a smart move because if every character was human, they’d all die at the end of a generation and the story would definitely crumble…

So yeah, having different species just gives them an excuse (a good one, too) for not killing off characters due to “natural death.” You’ll see some familiar faces every generation so don’t worry too much about losing them.  You even get to see some of them grow up!

Unfortunately, because there are so many characters, some of them just don’t get enough attention. There really isn’t much character development in this game. Sure, a couple of them do shine but most conveniently appear at one point to help the party, get recruited or whatever and then slowly fade out and you forget they even existed. This is especially so for those who are not in the “inner circle” of the protagonists. Some are seen for just like twice the whole game…

Even though some characters barely get into the spotlight, every character has a different, noticeable personality so you can actually see the amount of effort put into the planning of these characters. You might find yourself liking or hating some characters because of their personalities at first but as you go on with the story, you might have second thoughts.

All in all, I found that the characters’ personalities were portrayed really well.  The funny scenes were genuinely funny, dramatic scenes believable and sad scenes actually sad. The game is fully voiced and features voice actresses like Kana Ueda and Ami Koshimizu. Speaking of voices, the game only has Japanese audio; no English dub but Aksys’ release comes with English subtitles.

Strategically tactical battalica: Battles in Record of Agarest War are your traditional grid-based battle system where each unit has to wait for its turn to attack. Without going into much detail that could possibly bore you readers, I’ll just bring up what sets the battle system apart from the usual SRPGs.

Significant differences are Extended Areas, Combination Arts and Break System. Every unit has an “Extended Area” which can link them up with teammates when positioned on the right grid squares. Linked units have some benefits such as bonus Ability Point (AP, spent to do anything and everything on the battlefield) boosts and can perform linked attacks. AP carries over to your next turn so if you can’t do anything with a character during a turn, fret not because next turn, that character has even more AP to spend. Units involved in linked attacks will probably move from its initial position so these movements can be used strategically to get a better positioning. A unit at the far end of the grid can be used to attack a unit at the opposite end when linked up so you’re going to have to think ahead and anticipate the enemy’s moves.

Combination Arts are combined skills. Using two or more specific skills in a specific order will combine them into a new skill, which is of course, a stronger attack. A combination skill usually can either be ‘Break’ or ‘Combo’ oriented so choose your arts wisely. This brings us to the Break System.

The Break System is a system to reward the player’s positioning and relentless attacking. Every unit in battle has a “Break Bar.” Within a single combo, a unit can get “Broken.” Broken units take more damage and specific combination skills gain more hits, hence getting a higher combo count, when used against a broken unit.

So logically thinking, you’d want to link up all your characters, dish out all the ‘Break’ combination arts followed by the ‘Combo’ ones to maximize the battle system so positioning is key to mastering the battle system.

Because battles are (really) strategic, it might take quite some time to finish each battle, which can be quite a drag when you have easily 400 battles to go through just to get to the end of the story.

Equip(ment)ality: Equipments play a huge role in this game. Apart from the usual synthesis of stolen or obtained items from enemies to create weapons, armor and accessories to equip, skills also have to be equipped. Each character has a number of attributed skill slots. You can only equip skills of an attribute that you have a slot for. To make it easier give more freedom to the player, weapons also have attributed skill slots.

You’re free to develop your characters according to your preference and decide which skills you’d rather use, which is a good thing in the sense that there’s no “best” strategy or method to develop your character’s statistics.

Would you rather use the stronger, more damaging weapon or the weaker one with better skill slots?  There is no right and wrong in this game, only strategy.

Oh no, please don’t “grind”: With every battle won, you get experience points, gold and additional resources for use in the game. Record of Agarest War has an intuitive way to reward, or punish players, for their actions. There is a multiplier that modifies amount of resources gained based on the party’s highest character’s level and turns taken to finish the battle.

Let’s say you’re at level 25 and you have a decent strategy that works; you get more experience points for killing a “stronger” level 30 boss in 3 turns and level up to 30 because of the multiplier. In the same scenario, at level 30 this time though, you still beat the boss in 3 turns, but the multiplier will not be as great and you end up still being level 30. This is a great system to punish players who grind early in the game “to make the game easier to play later on.” I’d rather take the challenge and have fun without having to grind, thank you very much.

Piece of advice – There’s really no need to grind to finish the game. Just think more.

Saucy CG: You’ve probably already seen the risqué images of women in revealing positions and such if you’re interested in this game. There is an in-game gallery where you can view these images, which can be unlocked through the course of the game by meeting specific and possible hard to meet requirements.

But hey, you deserve to see these images after all the hard work unlocking them, right?

Soundtrack: The soundtrack, composed by Kenji Kaneko and arranged by Ayako Saso, is real awesome. I loved every single track and found them all very fitting to the current scene.

The music is split into different parts; orchestral, rock, and random bouncy-pop fun. I found that the battle themes were of  very high quality, which is something you’d normally expect from bigger franchises like Final Fantasy  or Atelier Iris. Oh yes, the themes are really that awesome. I’ve found myself humming these themes countless times while playing the game!

Hell, I thought it was really awesome that I’m having the OST shipped over as I type this.
The REAL JAPANESE OST, not Aksys’ release.

Neutral

Graphics schmarfics: Non-battle scenes of this game is done like a visual novel. Character designs are very anime-like and unfortunately, there are barely any anime-like cutscenes.

Record of Agarest War goes classic with its 2D sprites during battle. It’s either a hit or a miss and I personally think it’s a hit only because the 2D sprites bring back the memories of playing the classics like Final Fantasy Tactics and Advance Wars.  Of course, those of you who think, “Hey, the PS3 can do so much more than this crap,” give it a chance! Games have never been just about graphics unless you’re a graphic whore.

The animations of these sprites are pretty crisp too. Attacks have really cool effects and even though 2D, they’re still visually appealing. What’s more, weapons equipped are reflected on your 2D sprite, which is pretty cool considering these small details are usually overlooked in most games.

One would expect a 2D game on a new-gen console to be running smoothly, but not with this game. There are some frame rate issues with the game at different points in the game. While it isn’t such a huge problem, I have to admit that it gets irritating at times. There you are running through a maze-like forest, lost, helpless and frustrated. Then the game lags. RAGE!!!1111one

Every decision counts!: Every choice you make in the game affects something. It leads you to the dark side, or maybe light, have a girl hate you, or love you, lead you to an awesome ending, or not (yes, the game has multiple endings) Anyway, sure it does all this but some of the decisions make so sense.

For example, “Would you rather break through the enemy forces or go the longer route to avoid unnecessary battles?” I’d think breaking through would be the “dark-side” choice because you’re risking your party. But how the hell does that affect a girl’s feelings for you? There’s barely any hint of their preferred path and you’re left thinking “Damn, she hates me now.”

Flat battle terrains: While I didn’t think this was a problem, one of my friends brought up that the terrains during battles are just flat and although the battling is strategic, one could say that without terrain advantages (like in Final Fantasy Tactics) almost every battle could be won with the same strategy. So this might turn some people who want bigger challenges off.

Here’s my advice: Start the game on Hard mode. You have nothing to lose and all to gain.

Auto-battle: One great (questionable) thing about this game is that you have an in-built AI to help you do battles. Relying on this AI to get you through battles will just make you cry, especially when you’re playing on Hard mode. Fortunately, the AI is not so pathetic that it lets your party die for no reason at all. AIs can only do so much…

It gets useful in easy battles where you know your party will definitely win though. It will definitely get you through those filler battles without losing your mind.

Think of the AI as a player who prioritizes healing and defense but recklessly attacks, thinking nothing of the aftermath.

Not so Loved

Filler quests: Exploration points are just a drag sometimes. It makes me think that they’re just to keep the player play the game longer than they should. I found them unnecessary but well, that’s just me. I’m sure some like the fact that they can still do some exploring and treasure hunting despite the game being a “visual novel” thing. But seriously, some of these exploration areas were designed to get you lost and I literally spent an hour (including battles) at one of these places.

Oh, and I have to mention that the exits are not even clearly shown.
And that was just to find a way out; not even treasure hunting yet.

What happens between?: I’ve given praise to the story but you’ll be left wondering about some things sooner or later. What happens while “Son A” is growing up? Why the hell did it just jump to when he’s older and ready to carry on his father’s quest?!

We never find out. There are hints as to what happens during the child’s upbringing but one can only speculate from the little information given.

Battle camera: The battle camera is great in the sense that you can rotate the camera as and when – No, you can only rotate it during your “Move” phase which is kinda weird. Good thing is that it focuses on the currently units attacking/being attacked. However, the rotation function is pretty much useless when you can rotate exactly 90 degrees each time and some huge bloody tree or rock or whatever damn thing is blocking your view at every angle you change to except the default.

EDIT: It seems you can also rotate during your attack phase (Thanks to Vicious7 for this information) but still, I stand by my point of the rotation being useless at times when there are objects obstructing your view.

Biased

Trophies and Titles: There are titles in the game that you can unlock as you play through the game. These titles have requirements like “Kill 5 of X monster and 10 of Y monster”, “Have all weapons and armour” and “Deal 1,000,000 damage.” I really like this kind of “reward” system in a game only because it gives the player a sense of accomplishment after delving deep enough into the game.

Trophies are the same thing. With all these rewards, you gain more bragging rights!

Leader boards!: The game has an online leaderboard which records information like Max Damage, Max Combo  and Max Stats of players. This is great as it keeps everyone playing to get higher on the leader board. Sooner or later, you’ll see someone with a higher score than you and wonder how he/she did it and then commit your time to beat the score … or not.

This is great and all but once people start hacking the game…

Liberal translations (localization): Not saying that I have any problems with the translation, but I found that they were pretty liberal. Yes, they get the point across but not every line was a direct translation. Then again, there is a reason why it’s called localization. Sometimes, localizing is a better choice for weird lines anyway but yeah, just my two cents on it.

Physical release?!: As most of you already know by now, Aksys’ PS3 release is digital download only. It’s about a 10gb download so that might take a while to get. Fortunately, it only took me an hour to download it so yeah, lucky me. Still, not having a physical release for keeps is kinda sad but what can you do? Things change and digitising everything  is apparently the current trend.

tl;dr

Love dating simulations and your traditional SRPGs? Record of Agarest War is both of those, coupled with a long but engaging adventure that spans generations! Despite its flaws and questionable content, it’s very entertaining and is definitely an enjoyable experience.

Battles are similar to that of other SRPGs with the inclusion of Extended Areas and Combination Arts which gives the player a whole lot more options and things to consider every battle! Non-battle scenes are like visual novels with very anime-esque character designs and the scenes involving these characters are convincing, even if ridiculous.

I would say that the game is targeted mainly at the anime and visual novel fans but if you’re sick of just living through just one lifetime, looking for an enjoyable battle system, love dating simulations or just want to check out CG photos of 2D chicks, then this is the game for you!

So release the inner perverted otaku in you and get Record of Agarest War!
Support Aksys (so they’ll bring us the prequel)!

P.S. I don’t remember if Aksys kept the name Leonhardt or changed it to Leonheart. Hmm…

Leanne <3

Familiar with the Star Ocean series? Star Ocean 4: International must have caught your attention recently, I bet. tri-Ace, known for their uniqueness and awesome battle systems, are of course, the guys who brought Star Ocean and Radiata Stories into your lives, have now paired up with Sega as their publisher for their new RPG, Resonance of Fate (known in Japan as End of Eternity)!

In the distant future, Earth is in peril due to drastic environment change. Poisonous gases of unknown source have cloaked the planet and it resulted in the near extinction of mankind because they could not adapt to the change. The surviving humans built a gigantic device called Basel, an environment purifier buried deep in the ground, which cleanses the air in the surrounding land.

The protagonists, Vashryon, Leanne and Zephyr are Hunters – hired mercenaries willing to do whatever it takes to earn more cash for a living. The story revolves around these Hunters and their adventures…

Loved

Lolstory: A good thing about the game’s story is that it moves in a different “direction” than most other game stories. It starts out with a dramatically epic moment where Zephyr, a hunter, saves a girl, Leanne, who was destined to die.
Why did it happen? What happens next?

You wouldn’t find out until later (and I really mean later) in the game. The game really starts in Vashryon’s house, where he lives with Leanne and Zephyr. The opening cutscene event was Leanne and Zephyr’s first encounter and when the game starts, they’re living together?  What gives?!

The first half of the game is just a load of unserious, “get-to-know-the-characters” kind of thing. You would definitely be full of questions but don’t worry about them just yet, they will be answered in due course. Of course, there are some story elements that contribute to the “big picture” but apart from those little things, you’d mainly be getting used to each protagonist’s personality and such. Fortunately, it gets a whole lot more serious after the halfway mark and you finally get to know why the introductory cutscene happened and each protagonist’s past and stuff.

It’s pretty refreshing to experience a different way of storytelling rather than the usual linear story telling in the recent games. Though I like the setting of the story, there really isn’t much to say about it other than it being “different” While the whole story is pretty unique; its execution is typical of a JRPG, although it does have its own strong points. The humour, paired with the seriousness pulls your attention and leaves you wanting to know more.

One great thing about the story is also that it isn’t all about “saving the world” like every single RPG we see nowadays. The focus of it is more on characters’ personal goals. This game’s story requires a fair amount of brain power to process and understand so prepare yourself!

Oh, and just a heads up, once you’re on the game’s MAIN MENU (where you can continue/load etc), wait a little and a cutscene will play. Note that this scene is different from the one that shows when you first run the game. It’ll help answer some things you might be wondering.

Beauty-FULL: As compared to the most recent graphic monster FFXIII, Resonance of Fate doesn’t even come close to being as gorgeous but nonetheless, the graphics are pretty awesome. Character designs are not too shabby and from what I’ve read, a whole load of effort was put into making characters’ hair, especially Leanne’s, which looks stunning. Other designs like the world of Basel and its monsters are also stunning.

Have I mentioned that battles are cinematic? You’d be watching your characters’ fancy shooting throughout the battle. Matrix-like actions occasionally come by (although not as awesome as the “real” thing) but you get my drift.

Let’s play dress-up: Don’t like Leanne’s hair colour? Sick of ugly default clothes? Fear not!

One of the best things about this game is that you can buy clothes and accessories for your characters! Anything changed will be immediately reflected in the game. Although things like gloves, hair bands and other small accessories are not really noticeable, they do change. These changes apply in every cutscene as well so that’s definitely a plus. Spending “cash” on clothes would actually be worth it if you get to see what you bought all the time.

Fortunately for us guys playing the game, we get to dress Leanne up.
You’re in for a treat if you like p______, guys! Keep in mind to pay more!
So yeah, who cares about Vashryon and Zephyr, right?

Weapons, levels, equipments: Resonance of Fate’s levelling system is loosely based on statistics. The level system itself is very different from your typical RPG. There are 3 types of weapons, Handgun, Machine Gun and Throwing Weapon (grenades…). As you use each type of weapon, the level of that weapon type will increase. A character’s total level is the addition of all 3 weapon type’s levels. With each level gained, your character gets more HP and more “weight capacity”. Weight capacity is how much weight a character can carry around with him. Each piece of equipment has a weight value and a character can only carry weights of up to the character’s weight capacity. Oh, this also means that…

THE GAME HAS NEITHER MAGIC NOR SWORDS.

This brings us to equipments. Your main stats are highly based on the weapon(s) you have equipped. You can also equip additional accessories which gives you more resistance to physical damage, status immunity and the likes. Your weapons are the key to your SURVIVAL.

You can customize your weapons by adding scopes, bullet magazines and such. These customization parts adds more weight to the gun they’re attached to while improving them. This is a great feature to the game as you’ll find yourself customizing your gun for at least a half hour each time; trying to find better combinations, getting a suitable weight for your weapon and such which can be really fun! Characters can also dual-wield weapon but keep the weight capacity in mind! You don’t want to spend so much cash on another gun and not be able to use it!

Confuzzle puzzle: The world map of Resonance of Fate is basically Basel as a whole. Elevators take you to different levels of Basel where there are other towns and locations of interest. Your path to these places however, is blocked. You have to create your own path to these places. The world map has some sort of a puzzle-like system where the World Map needs to be filled in with energy hexes. You can rotate these hexes and place them down on “locked” hexagons, unlocking them, so you can move on that hexagon. Thinking that it’s pretty simple?

Well, not when the hexes you get have different colours, shapes and sizes! Coloured hexes are your “barriers” that stop you from going somewhere you aren’t supposed to (yet). As you progress through the story, monsters you meet might drop coloured hexes but your means of going past “a certain coloured barrier” are the people who hired you for a mission, be it story or optional. Non-coloured hexes are easily, and mostly, obtainable from various (almost every) monster you randomly meet.

Neutral

Battle system: The greatest pro and the greatest con of the game is definitely the battle system.
This is by far the most epic battle system I’ve come across in my gaming life.
It’s also a really original system when compared to the typical RPG battle system.

The learning curve of the system is pretty steep but in-game tutorials and guides will get you through it with no problems, hopefully. I won’t be going into a detailed explanation of the whole battle system because it is one hell of a complicated system.

Although complicated, with the help of the tutorials and guides and maybe the Internet, you’ll get used to the system and realize that it isn’t really that complicated. Also, when you lose a battle, you get a game over screen BUT you have the choice to retry the battle at the cost of some money or load from a previously saved file. This is pretty cool since you wouldn’t have to go through the dungeon again or whatever as you usually do for other games.

As good as it sounds, you might find yourself stuck retrying a battle for a long, long time. Up till the point where you have no more money to spare and have to quit/re-load the game. So, be sure to save your game if your gut tells you that the next battle will be a tough one!

One thing I don’t really like about the system is how you change targets. It’s really hard to get the right target and not lose any charge time at all.

Another is that after say, your two hundredth battle, you’ll come to realize that the cinematics during battle are actually limited to a few fancy moves. You’re bound to notice the repetition of certain moves.

Finally, the party’s critical condition. This is when your party loses their cool and start panicking in battle when things go bad. Everything changes when you get into critical mode so avoid it! It’s almost always a sure-lose situation the moment you get into critical mode. I mean, why even have implement the mode if the chances of making a spectacular comeback is next to none?

Oh yeah, don’t go into your first battle without going through the tutorial.
It will not go well, trust me on this.

At your own pace, sir: The game progresses at any speed you want it to. You have the choice of when you want to proceed to the next chapter to advance the story. How useful is that? Well, each chapter in the game has the story mission and a couple of optional missions. If you decide to finish off the story mission early, you can choose to not proceed with the story to clear the optional ones.

The game tries to be time-friendly with a suspend save function implemented. This is so you don’t have to search for a save point to take a break. You can save almost anywhere, except during battles. Suspend saves are deleted when loaded though. Great for RPGs as us healthy men who do not have all the time in the world.

Unfortunately, as I said, the game tries to be time-friendly. Sure, the suspend function is great and all but you can’t save during battles and some battles can take quite some time to finish. This is especially so for the boss battles which could take you up to an hour (or more) to finish off.

Soundtrack: I liked it but really, there isn’t much to say about it.
Wasn’t spectacular or breath-taking or whatever but it didn’t suck either so…

Not so loved

Optional missions: As mentioned above, the game offers optional missions which can change the pace of the game and the player can gain more rewards doing the extra work. However, these optional missions are posted on a mission board by “a NPC” with a picture on it. Why, you ask?

After finding out the mission exists, you’ll have to  find the person in the picture to accept or finish the mission. Seriously, come on! At one point I was searching for some old fart for almost an hour before I gave up and just went on with the story.
I find the whole “find your mission” thing a real drag. Not to mention frustrating too.

Interactivity: NPC interactivity with the player is very minimal. Apart from the optional missions where they tell you what to do and all, NPCs are really insignificant. You can get through the game without talking to a single NPC at in your leisure time. Sure, they give you information about where things are and all but the interaction just isn’t there.

The upside is that NPCs literally talk when you initiate a conversation with them. What they say, however, has barely or no relation to whatever that appears on the textbox. For example, the NPC would be saying “Good morning!” but the text box would display something totally different! That’s pretty odd and funny if you ask me.

Rubies please: The currency of Basel is Rubies. It’s really, really hard to earn Rubies so every Ruby counts. Don’t go spending rubies on nonsense you don’t need. This beats the point of having a boutique that sells nice clothes and such because clothes cost a bomb! Believe it or not, a skirt costs more than a freaking gun.

Upgrading your weapon with more parts would be a smarter investment because clothes you buy  changes ONLY your appearance. You don’t get bonus defense points or anything else.

Biased

Translation: Weird wordings here and there and very liberal translations but if you’re playing with English voices (or in Japanese but have no knowledge of it) then it shouldn’t be a problem at all.

Gorgeous voice acting (Japanese): The voice acting is real convincing and I can’t help but go: “Hey, I’ve heard this voice before!” Some research has led me to results I was already expecting.

Voices are from several voice actors from the anime industry ; few of the more prominent ones being Ken Narita (Jeremiah Gottwald – Code Geass), Keiji Fujiwara(Takeshi – Sola) and Ai Orikasa (Ayame – Sakura Wars).

tl;dr

Resonance of Fate is unique and truly something original from the usual RPGs you see coming out from Japan. If you’re looking for something new, unrelated and different from the usual RPGs you’ve been seeing lately or if you really love GUNS, then this is just for you!

However, this game is not for the faint-hearted. The battle system is a very steep learning curve and the battles themselves can be real hard. Optional quests also require you to have some patience. The story although quite cliché, is pretty complicated and requires some thinking to make sense of it. These factors could lead to some frustration, followed by anger and finally, dropping the game. We wouldn’t want that now, would we?

Resonance of Fate steps so far out of the traditional RPG field that even the most experienced gamers will have to take a step out of their comfort zone and learn something new. I highly doubt casual or average gamers have what it takes to play this well but well, prove me wrong!

This is certainly a fine addition to the new generation RPG collection with its crisp graphics, soothing soundtrack, a unique and original battle system, and an interesting story and I’d recommend it to anyone who enjoys RPGs, wants to try something new and looking for a challenge.

Blonde is Octavia <3

Played Utawarerumono by Leaf? Utawarerumono was, I’d say, a successful Strategy RPG back then. Not too long ago, in 2005, Leaf came back releasing Tears to Tiara as its successor. Now (well, not now but in 08), however, a PlayStation 3 version of it has been released!

Tears to Tiara: Kakan no Daichi is set in a fictitious medieval era resembling the middle-ages. The story unfolds with Riannon, priestess and daughter of the Gael tribe’s former chieftain, being kidnapped by the Divine Empire and offered as an appeasing sacrifice to the Demon King, Arawn, during his resurrection ritual. Upon receiving news of what had happened, the Gael tribe, led by Riannon’s brother and First Warrior, Arthur, swore to bring Riannon back and take out the Divine Empire. And thus, began the Gaels’ epic struggle against the Divine Empire…

While the game retains the Strategy RPG form from its PC predecessor, though turn-based instead real-time now, there are several alterations and enhancements to it, which include brand new character designs, new scenarios, new characters and a change from the original 2D graphics to 3D! If you were thinking, “Oh, just another port…” think again because the game is no port, but a total remake!

Loved

What a story: I was very impressed with the story as a whole. It touches on many themes such as faith, free will, and the pointlessness of perfection. These points were also well woven into the story. The complexity of it makes you yearn for more as the story progresses. Not to mention that the scenes are actually convincing; the funny parts are genuinely funny, sad parts genuinely sad etc, so you wouldn’t find yourself bored at any point!

What /really/ impressed me about the story, though, is how the series toys with mythology and history to make a complex and intriguing, yet flowing and understandable story. The creators have delved deep into Welsh and Arthurian mythologies with numerous references such as Annwn, Dyrnwyn and the “Cauldron of Resurrection,” which was, in my opinion, a really intelligent inclusion in the story. Even the names were lifted from mythology; Gaius (Latin of Julius Caesar), Londinium (Original Roman name for London), Arawn, Ogam and so on… There are also hints of Christianity which you would probably only miss if you have absolutely no general knowledge of it…

You’d think that with so many references, the creators are trying to hide a poorly written story, wouldn’t you? Well, worry not, for Tears to Tiara has not only a great story, it has the references too! (THIS IS SO CORNY). The pacing of the story is extremely well done and there’s no event or scene that doesn’t come with an accompanying impact to the story (except for those near the beginning, maybe).

<random>
Ever read “The Chronicles of Prydain” series by Lloyd Alexander? If not, what the hell?
Read it! It’s pretty damn awesome but this is not the place where I talk about it.
</random>

Characters, schmaracters: Tears to Tiara is one of the few games with a long list of “main” characters.

Even with such a long list, the characters each get enough “screen time” for the players to figure out their personality. Ranging from naïve heroes to clumsy caretakers, every character in the game is unique. What I loved about the “main” characters is that majority of them are female!

A new character, namely Lidia, was added to the already full-of-characters roster in this version. This new character, as you may have already guessed from the name, is /also/ female and what’s more, a whole new arc has been added to the main story focusing on her and Octavia.

With such a wide range of characters shining in the lime light, you’re bound to find a character you’ll feel attached to. Mine is Octavia; she’s righteous, pure and really hot.

Not gorgeous but awesome: For a PS3 game, I’d say that the graphics is pretty mediocre (considering what a PS3 can actually do at its full potential) but that doesn’t make it any less awesome. Backgrounds give you that atmospheric feeling and characters have their different, yet convincing facial expressions. Those mentioned above are of course, only seen during the visual novel segments. Character designs are very anime-like and some of the cut scenes are just like watching an anime (with bad animation). There’s a surprise animated scene waiting for you when you finish the game so hurry and complete it!

The actual game play itself is in 3D, with nicely rendered models and different environments. The animation of these models seems pretty sloppy to me though. Not to mention how bland and emotionless the character models are as compared to their 2D counterpart. As compared to other 3D SRPGs I’ve encountered so far though, I find that the graphics in this is at a slightly high tier.

The game also has a gallery, accessed from the main menu, where you can view unlocked CGs. Interestingly, you can change your menu’s background picture with one of the unlocked CGs but what good would that really do? Sure, it’s cool and all but the point…?

Normally, I wouldn’t judge a game by its graphics but for visual novels, well, they are VISUAL novels and you’d be VIEWING more than playing so if the graphics (art) aren’t in the slightest bit appealing, I know I wouldn’t play the game. Would you?

BATTLE! (and stuff): Battling in Tears to Tiara: Kakan no Daichi is very straightforward. There are two phases; player and enemy phases. You get to move and attack during your phase. The enemy is able to counter your attacks during your phase as well. This works the same way for both “players’” phases.

Before that, however, is battle preparation. After doing the necessary equipping and character selecting, you will then have to place your units on the field. Battle commences after this is done. Players can also set a leader in their party during battle preparation. Of course, there are benefits. Leaders have an activated passive skill that affects allied units within range of the leader during battle or gets you bonuses for winning a battle. Different units have different leader skills which might affect your battle or rewards so be sure to keep changing leaders to maximise this feature!

Other components that constitute the battle system are the Chain Stock, ZOC (Zone of Control) and Elements.

Each character in the game has a chain stock gauge which gradually increases as you attack, cast spells or get attacked. The chain stock is used for chain attacks or magic boosts. Either of the above would need at least one (of four) bars from the chain stock. For chain attack, when you attack and have at least one bar of chain stock full, you will see a circle flash on the screen. That’s your cue to press your action button (varies with the different PS3 types; O or X). Chaining attacks with a maxed out chain stock gauge (4 bars) will connect your combo with your finishing move so use your chain stock wisely!  As for magic boost, you get to either improve the spell (i.e. damage more) or add effects to spells at varying costs of the chain stock.

ZOC or Zone of Control refers to the area surrounding a character. The only purpose of this is to disallow enemy units move through the character’s ZOC area. This greatly affects character positioning and adds more potential for strategies in the game.

There are a total of seven elements in the game; Fire, Wind, Earth, Water, Holy, Star, and Darkness. How it works: Element A is stronger than B but weaker against C. This would mean that element A does more damage to B and less damage to C. However, if the elements are neutral to each other, no change of damage will be applied. Each turn, there will be an element that gets a boost. ALL units of that element will have their stats boosted for that turn.

Sounds very complicating doesn’t it? The system is really easy to pick up even without understanding Japanese. I found most battles enjoyable. The AI in the game isn’t too stupid either. Some battles were actually hard but maybe that’s because I started out on hard mode. Hmm…

Equipping: Apart from the usual equipment like swords and armour, characters can buy skill books to master passive skills. Characters also have unique passive skills that they will naturally learn. These passive skills can be equipped by using skill points. You can equip lots of passive skills, only limited by your skill points. Each character starts out with eleven points at level one and gain one point per level. Skill points are restored when the skill is unequipped so don’t worry about it.

Just think of it as AP from Final Fantasy or if you don’t know what AP is then…

Muzical: I honestly have no idea who composed the orchestral music of the game. Nonetheless, I found that the soundtrack was very fitting. Atmosphere changes with the songs throughout the game. One of the songs that totally grabbed my attention off from the game was “The Song of Beginnings” (Or at least that’s what I translated it to be). That moment when *DINGDINGSPOILERLOLIWONTSAYANYTHING* was so full of impact and the song during that scene was even used as an element of the story.

OP and ED were both sung by Suara and the insert song, by Rena Uehara. Incidentally, these two sung songs for the anime adaptations of Tears to Tiara and Utawarerumono respectively.

Not so loved

Ecchi-ness Being a remake of an eroge, one would expect H-scenes but no, because the game is on PS3, there are no inappropriate contents because of legal issues and stuff but anyway, there are suggestive themes. Remember the CGs I mentioned? There are a few of them with tentacle rape, revealing scenes of the girls and stuff.

With such a great story, I found that the supposedly “erotic” content of the game was highly unnecessary. It seems very much like these ecchi scenes were just dumped in to try and get more players to get the game. I suppose it could work on /some people/ but the story itself was enough reason for me to get the game…

The reading game: However much engaging the story is, you’d find yourself reading for quite a while before you finally get to battle. Take for example, the introduction of the story before your first ever REAL battle. It will take you at least an hour without skipping anything. Not to mention that unlike most visual novels these days, there isn’t a skip feature. If you’re thinking you can skip all the text in your re-run of the game, think again! Only way for you to “skip” text is to keep holding down the square button…

There are also quite a fair bit of unnecessary kanji, WITHOUT furigana, so it might get irritating for people who are still learning Japanese.

Camera control: The camera control is horrendous. You would expect a more fluid camera system from a SRPG so you could analyse the playing field with east but in Tears to Tiara: Kakan no Daichi, you have so little control over the camera that you might be looking at a huge green tree on your screen instead of the battlefield at some point in battle. The camera rotation very, very limited. Sure you can still rotate the field but I’d say that it’s only about 45 degrees left and right?

Biased

Ridiculousness: Some events are really just so ridiculous that a “wtf” would not suffice as an expression. What really stood out was mainly the reason(s) why a character decides to join your party. It’s really hard to talk about Tears to Tiara without spoiling anything. If I told you more about how ridiculous things can get, I’d be spoiling some things so you’re gonna have to trust me on this. You might not feel the same about this but I thought it was bad. You’ll know when you’ve played it. Let know what you think!

nihongo onri: Yes, there is no news and I doubt there ever will be news of it being localised and released in English. As I’m still learning Japanese, I find games like these a good way of killing time, enjoying a game and improving my Japanese at the same time. That’s like killing not two, but THREE birds with one stone.

Oh, and nihongo means Japanese.

TROPHIES WHERE: Need I say more?

tl;dr

I’m sure many of you have never heard of this game. Well, even if you have, you probably haven’t played it because it’s all in Japanese. Even though language IS a barrier, the one between this game and you playing it isn’t the thickest of barriers. I’d suggest a translation guide to delve deeper into combat and actually enjoy the great story but it’s pretty easy to pick up with no knowledge of Japanese. Although it would probably suck since most of the game will be skipped…

Tears to Tiara: Kakan no Daichi is definitely one of the better additions to the bulk of JRPGs on the PS3.

While it may have its fair share of mediocrity, it is really enjoyable.

Stunning visuals, an engaging battle system and a greatly paced storytelling make Tears to Tiara: Kakan no Daichi a must-have for fans. More so if you’re into single player RPGs with possibly hours and hours of game play (grinding) with an engaging story!