Cam's Eye View: Xbox 360 Back Track Part 2: fable 3 for the Xbox360 review

Hey, everyone, and welcome back to the 360 Back Track! I have noticed while looking at Gamefly.com that the 360 is kind of losing exclusive games for its console. It’s like Halo will be the last thing Microsoft has going for it. Gears of War has ended with the third game and well, you can’t just rely on the download market or Japanese shoot em’ ups to drive your sales anymore. This is turning into the Turbo Grafx for pete’s sake, literally, since it’s a console mostly known for its quality shooters like Halo, Gears of War, Deathsmiles, and you get the idea. It also doesn’t help that it basically has no good RPG franchise going for it. It does have its quality RPG titles like Lost Odyssey, Blue Dragon, and Tales of Vespira. You could say “Oh Cam, what about the Fable franchise?” Well, you could say that, but you would be wrong, the Fable games are not the best games on the 360. In fact, to prove this point, I’m going to review today the recent game in the franchise and what is considered the second worst game in the series called Fable 3! I can’t believe what some sites are giving this game like an 8 out of 10 and 9 out of 10. In my opinion, that is way off the mark since this game is one of the worst and messiest games I have ever played. It isn’t the worst game on the 360 since it does have its moments, but it’s a really bad game.

The story of Fable 3 takes place 50 years after the second game in the continent of Albion. The old king is dead and you play as one of two princes, and you basically play the good egg out of the two. After some incidences at the castle caused by your jerk wad of a brother, you leave the castle with your mentor Walter Beck and your servant Jasper. You then find an ancient artifact that was owned by your father, and you start to develop a revolution to take down your brother, and become king in his place. While there are some great voice work and some decent characters, the story isn’t original and it doesn’t really get interesting until a little after halfway through, and I didn’t really feel connected until I became king.

The gameplay is a somewhat mix of action with RPG elements, and a somewhat king simulation. You run or teleport from place to place completing missions. To arm yourself against the horrors that await you in Fable 3, you get a sword, a hammer, and either a rifle or a handgun to take down your enemies. You also have a decent magic system where you can upgrade how powerful your magic can be and combine 2 spells together. Throughout the game, you can make decisions that will alter the later parts of the game, like how much support the other kingdoms will give you in the ending part of the game where you are king and need to make big decisions that will affect the ending of the game. Later in the game, you will become king and this is where the game will actually be interesting. You have to make the decisions that will either improve you in being a good king, or make you a bad king with some results in poor defenses against the final enemy, distrust from your allies, and well, giving you big evil wings in the end. You can also get in a relationship with a woman and get married to her, but it’s rather tedious, so I wouldn’t really bother with it, but that’s just me. You can also team up with other people and go around the world of Albion taking down evil. There are also mini-games, like making pies and playing music that will net you some extra cash for some of the fairly expensive weapons and clothes.

The art style is fantastic and it reminds me of other games like Overlord. It’s a beautiful looking game and it’s one of the better looking exclusives on the console, even though I think Tales of Vespira looks better if we are talking exclusive RPG’s. The music isn’t bad either, but again, I feel like I’m playing Overlord, due to the sound of the music. The voice acting is also not that bad and it seems like the actors really wanted to pull you into the story, and even though I said the story was unoriginal I did feel pulled into it due to the voice work.

However, a lot of big things and little things really bring this game down. The first thing I want to complain about, and well I am going to complain about is the over-powered firearms and magic. This made the game way too easy, because I could easily flank the enemies from far away, and I only died once. The loading times are ridiculous. It seems like it took forever for a lot of the loading screens to be done with. There are also a bunch of glitches that I found that pulled me out of the game, like seeing hair on top of a character’s head move, and just a bunch of little, but nothing serious bugs that just made me shake my head since I’m a game tester and I hate seeing this stuff in a released game. The AI is terrible. I feel like the ally and enemies are just not that smart. I was able to just flank enemies from afar and they could never get out of the way or get close to me. Even if they got close to me, they wouldn’t attack. Even though it’s nice that I could carry a sword or hammer, with the over-powered magic and guns, I had no reason to upgrade my melee weapons. The king gimmick might be the most interesting thing in the game, but it comes in so late in the game and it just isn’t fully pulled off. The reaction from your allies when you make a bad decision is silly, since it’s like, “ oh, hey, I’m glad I’m your ally!” and then when you make a bad decision “ I can’t believe I fought for you! You suck!” How does that make sense? They should have known that you were going to make some harsh choices when you became king, and it’s like they never knew that. It’s terrible writing at its best. There are also a bunch of little things that drag this game down, like holding the A button to open doors, a clunky menu system where everything is set up into room-like areas that I guess they were trying to do like Terranigma did, but not well-executed, and very repetitious main missions and relationship missions. I felt like I was doing the same dang thing over and over and OVER AGAIN!

Overall, Fable 3 and Lionhead Studios are terrible. I mean, I can’t believe these guys get so much money for such below-average games. Fable 3 is one of the worst executed games I have ever played and one of the worst games on the 360. I can’t recommend this action RPG and I can’t recommend any games from Lionhead. I can understand the founder being really high-spirited about his games, but I can’t see why they promise so much and deliver so little. Don’t buy this game, and even if you own it, return it! I say, go out and get Tales of Vespira or the other Japanese-styled RPG’s over this terrible game. Stop sucking up to the companies’ mainstream reviewers! You can give a game a bad score. It will show them that they need to WORK HARDER!

This game gets a 4 out of 10

Cam's Eye View: Eternal Sonata for the Xbox360 and PS3

You know what I have noticed with all of these Xbox 360 reviews and 360 games I want to do reviews on? The Xbox 360 is slowly turning into the Turbo Grafx-16. Before you leave a shallow hate-filled comment, let me explain myself. What do you get when you get a 360? Halo? Gears of War? Well, if you can’t think of any other genre besides a shooter, then no flipping way, Sherlock! The Xbox 360 is the home for more quality shooters from first person, third person, to arcade-style shooters. Is there ANY other genre you can think of putting on the 360? I know a lot of the 360’s profit probably comes from players getting Xboxlive Gold membership, because then they can play online with shooters that are mostly on other consoles, but for some reason people buy them on the 360. There are also a lot of arcade-style shooters like the Raiden series, Deathsmiles, and other arcade shooters on the console. What happened to the amount of high quality Japanese-style RPG’s that were on the console? I mean, there are a lot of quality titles on the system, like Blue Dragon, Lost Odyssey, and depending on who you ask, Last Remnant. For example, here is another quality RPG you could get on the PS3, but I feel like this is the better version, Eternal Sonata. It’s a very original and unique Japanese-style RPG that is definitely worth more of your time than other RPG’s that have come out, but since I have talked about them already, I won’t list them. I mean, who would have thought a video game based off one of the world’s most famous musicians, Frederic Chopin, would be well good? And on top of that, it isn’t a music game! Well, actually that’s a lie, since music plays a huge role in this game, but it isn’t a Guitar Hero rip-off. So, let’s dive into the Sound of Music and review Eternal Sonata.

The game starts out with the famed composer, Frederic Chopin, voiced by Patrick Seitz, in his bed in a very ill condition. He then makes some kind of fantasy world within his mind, filled with a tyrant named Count Waltz of Forte, voiced by Liam O’Brien who rules over the imaginative world. Chopin then joins up with multiple characters throughout the game to take down Waltz and protect the world. In that sense, you could say the overall style is unoriginal with the whole ‘take down an evil guy and save the world’ story, but to my surprise, Eternal Sonata has one of the deepest, memorable, and original stories I have ever seen. I mean seriously, there are themes of escapism, death, life, political espionage, and rebellion being the themes throughout the game. It’s told very well with some really great voice actors doing some of the best voice acting I have ever seen. I mean, there is even a girl in the game named Polka, voiced by Erin Fitzgerald, who has the ability to use magic, but in that world, people who use magic are outcasts and are doomed to die. There is some deep stuff here if you stay with this game. In the game, you will meet the already said Polka, Allegretto and Beat, two brothers who lived in the sewers, Viola, a headstrong farm girl who is skilled with the bow and arrow, and Salsa and March, two sisters who guard a magical forest that the Count wants to destroy. Later, the group will meet the rebel group, Andantino, consisting of Jazz, the calm-headed leader, Falsetto, Jazz’s lieutenant, and Claves, Jazz’s girlfriend. In the PS3 version, you get Crescendo, a young prince and Serenade, Crescendo’s fiancé.   All of these characters are fully developed and you really feel for some of them, like Chopin and Polka.

The gameplay is a mix of action and turn-based RPG mechanics. You only have 3 party members at once, which require some tactical planning later in the game when you have about 7 team members. You take turns freely moving the character around the battlefield and then start hacking away at the enemies and bosses. You can choose between a quick and combo-making attack or a super strong attack and they all run on a timer. Each time you make the character move, a timer will start and count down to zero, which will make the characters turn over. You have to think logically to choose between using more weak attacks and using two strong attacks, since enemies are tough in this game, but are tougher in the PS3 version. The other main gimmick of this game is the light and dark mechanic. In the battlefield, there are areas covered in shade that will affect your strong attack, but can also affect the enemies, either changing their attack or turning them into different monsters entirely if they stay in the shade. Lucky for us, in the overworld, enemies are visible so you can easily dodge them, but like my disclaimer goes, grind a couple of fights to make sure you don’t get wailed on later in the game because it will happen. I’ve died a couple of times going through this game. Each time your party levels up after a boss fight, a few things change, like the time to idle and the amount of time in battle that you can take. It gets pretty hard near the end of the game when you really have to think on your feet due to you not having a lot of time to plan out your strategy, but you can also get some benefits from these changes. Just expect a challenge later in the game. I’ll explain my thoughts about that later.

Graphically, it’s beautiful. It’s one of the best-looking games I have ever seen artistically. It doesn’t push the limit of the consoles, but I think it looks amazing. The detail of the anime-style look is amazing. It doesn’t take a Tales of Vesperia look, but everything from the characters and monsters are all well-designed. The music is what holds this entire game together with great tracks that are wonderful to listen to and are beautifully composed. The composer in charge of this is Motoi Sakuraba who helped rework some of Chopin’s work while making some original tracks for the game. She is, of course, famous for working on the Star Ocean, Valkyrie Profile, and the Tales franchise. There was also some help from Stanislav Bunin who also helped record a few tracks. The voice acting is top notch and is definitely worth talking about. Each character sounds great even when some of the characters are more annoying, but even the annoying characters sounds great. There are some impressive voice actors like Sam Riegel, Patrick Seitz, Mona Marshall, Megan Hollingshead, Amy Rose, Tara Strong, D.C Douglas, Tara Platt, and other great voice actors.

I could easily go on why this game is great, but there are some flaws that I just don’t like and might be the deciding point in which you invest your time in this game.  The whole party level idea is interesting, but it makes combat tedious later in the game and some of the benefits are not worth it for less time in battle. I mean, I really enjoy the combat system, but the Party class totally ruins it for me later in the game. There is also an early dungeon in the game that will drive you nuts with an extremely tiresome puzzle. Clearly, no one went through this part thoroughly because it is a major roadblock in the game and halts the pace due to a somewhat unclear way of solving the puzzle. I am also surprised that they didn’t use other mechanics, like if the monsters are weaker than you, they run away. I just think they could have added more little touches like that instead of making battles tedious later on.

This could have easily been one of the best action/ turn-based RPG’s of any console, but due to some confusing game mechanic decisions, I can’t fully say this game is for everyone. If you want a good challenge and beautiful music in a RPG format, then I would highly recommend this game. It is still a bit pricey, but it isn’t like 60 bucks or anything. The PS3 does have more content, but the game is much harder and with annoying party class mechanics, I can’t fully agree that it is the better version. I say, get the 360 version since it’s about 20 or so dollars. I would really like to see a sequel to this game or some form of spiritual sequel. You will just lose yourself within this magical, musical, and creative world of Eternal Sonata

This game gets a solid 7 out of 10.

Cam's Eye View: 3 Year Special Part 4: Dragon Quest 8: Journey of the Cursed King for the PS2 review

Welcome to the next part of the 3-year RPG special. I remember reading a pretty harsh statement from Bioware stating that Japanese-style RPG’s lacked innovation. While that may be true in some areas, I don’t think they should say that when Bioware’s Dragon Age 2 was not as good as the original, with a not-so-well-developed story, bland characters, and still had what critics called an identity crisis of wanting to know what kind of game it wants to be. It also doesn’t help with the whole controversy about that Bioware employee giving the game a perfect 10 out of 10 and calling any other reviewer biased and stupid. Even though RPG’s from Japan still use common gameplay elements like turn-based combat and have fairly simple melodramatic stories, it works out for some series since sometimes we don’t need a fully complex story with underlying political or religious themes. Sometimes, we just need a simple story with enjoyable characters and a sense of adventure and excitement without having to pay close attention to the story’s many underlying themes. This is where the very popular Dragon Quest series comes in. This is probably the most popular series back in Japan and for good reason. The franchise has had very simple, but entertaining plots (it differs from game to game since Dragon Quest 4 and 5 have great stories) and great characters with a combat system that hasn’t changed in about 20 or more years. While I have admittingly stayed far away from this franchise due to extreme levels of difficulty that does turn some people off, if you stay with the games you will learn to love them and be hooked on them for the rest of your life. This is where Dragon Quest 8 comes in for the PS2! A game that I think is far better than Final Fantasy 12 and 13 entirely, Dragon Quest 8 with its simple yet entertaining story, great characters, simple combat, and of course the artwork of Akira Toriyama added for some flare is a great RPG. Any RPG fan that likes old traditional turn-based RPG’s should get this game immediately! It’s one of if not the best RPG on the PS2 and one of my favorite RPGs. Let’s dive into the wonderful world of Dragon Quest 8: Journey of the Cursed King.

The story tells us of a kingdom that was cursed by a jester turned evil wizard named Dhoulmagus. This event doesn’t end well with the results being the king turned into a sort of frog-like man, and his daughter turned into a horse. The king is accompanied by a hefty thief named Yangus, and of course the main character named Hero (I called him Alan). It is their quest to save the king’s land and stop Dhoulmagus in his tracks before he rules the world. Along their journey they will meet two more characters, Jessica a hot vixen with a headstrong attitude, and Angelo a suave yet clever swordsman. The story might not be original, with a pretty simple plot, but if you look at a lot of Japanese styled RPG’s of today, their stories aren’t that original or unique either. Dragon Quest 8 fixes this by having only 4 main characters and the story being well told with some touching scenes, funny scenes, and some pretty dark areas. It all results in a wonderfully told story and one that you will be sticking with for awhile.

The gameplay is very simplistic in design, but like I said in so many other reviews about RPG’s, there are some tweaks done that makes this franchise so charming. Battles take place in a first person perspective, kind of like if you were playing a turn-based version of the Elder Scroll games. You take turns smacking around monsters and leveling up. Surprisingly, all of the characters can excel in specific weapons, like the Hero, who has no name of course, is actually really good with boomerangs since they can hit all enemies on the screen, Yangus can do heavy damage with an Axe, Jessica can use a whip, and Angelo is great with a sword or bow and arrow. This gives the game a lot of variety since having a hero who can hit all the enemies on the screen with one normal attack is a great thing to have since the battles can sometimes have up to EIGHT enemies on screen. Heck, I even ran into a battle with TEN enemies. Battles can be tough depending on what monsters you are fighting in that exact battle. Sometimes, they can be pushovers and sometimes they can be even harder than the boss! I kid you not, I got killed at least twice by normal enemies that happened to be in big groups, and then I blazed through the boss like melted butter. Each time you level up each character, they get skill points that you can use on different attributes that can help you. For example, Jessica has an attribute called Sex Appeal. If you focus on that specific attribute, monsters in battle will be swayed by her and not attack your party. Or if you level up Yangus’s humanity, he can have an attack later where he has a bunch of old people run over the monsters. There is a deep strategy here since the encounter rate is high, which require you to be a few levels stronger than you already are to defeat the bosses that will hit you hard if you don’t level up enough. You can also increase your attack power by doing a sort of buffing move called psyche up where your tension rises and you do more damage. About half way through the game or so, you can fight visible monsters in the overworld and recruit them to make a sort of backup army, and if you group certain monsters together, they can do special attacks and moves, kind of like in Dragon Quest 5. As you travel across the world from a third person perspective, you can find items to mix together in an alchemy pot to make new, rare, or normal items for your party, but you will have to wait awhile for the alchemy pot to finish the first item before moving onto the next. This is a smart idea since you don’t get a lot of money in the game, and items cost a lot. Sometimes, it’s better to find ingredients for one weapon instead of buying the current weapon you see at a store.

The graphics are beautiful for the PS2. Level 5, the developers of the White Knight franchise, the Professor Layton series, Dark Cloud series, Rogue Galaxy, and Jeanne D’Arc knew how to make the next game in the Dragon Quest series. They tuned this series tightly so it isn’t as drawn out as Dragon Quest 6 or 7. The characters are memorable, and they are complex and 3 dimensional, and I say that even when Jessica wears a somewhat sultry outfit and an even sultrier outfit if you find the playboy bunny outfit and the Hero doesn’t talk. They both have so much character in them that you cannot find in games like Final Fantasy 13. The character and monster designs by famed manga artist Akira Toriyama look great in this cel-shaded 3D environment. One of the best things about the design of the monsters is the personality they give off that only Akira Toriyama’s designs can do. Even their personalities affect how they attack in battles, like the Jailcat and its many color-pallet-swapped cousins will sometimes just lick themselves, and there are enemies that will just stare off into space. Even if some of the names of the monsters are terrible puns, there is just a charm to them that just brings you more into the game. The voice acting is terrific! Yeah, you can say it sounds bad because of the hammy accents, but that is part of the charm. It is like if you were watching the love child of a Monty Python and Princess Bride film. I mean, sometimes in RPG’s, the voice actors aren’t given good direction and they sound silly pulling you out of the game in result. You hear the voice acting in this game, and you just get pulled even more into its unique world. For a while, I wanted to know who the voice actors were for this game, and after some research here is what I found. Ricky Grover voices Yangus, Emma Ferguson voices Jessica, Blake Riston voices Angelo, Jon Glover voices Trode, and there are some other great voices, just look up this game on IMDB. The music is heavenly, and I get the feeling of great adventure awaiting me when I pick up my controller and turn on the PS2. The composer for this series is Koichi Sugiyama. He is famous for making that great and awe inspiring theme song that again gives you the feeling of an awe inspiring adventure awaiting you. He is also famous for working on the entire Dragon Quest series, along with film and T.V like Cyborg 009, Gatchaman, and even Godzilla vs. Biollante. His music is great and is definitely I-pod worthy, so go find the soundtrack for this game right now!

Oh my goodness, this is such a perfect game! I mean, I might be fan boyish right now with this game, but there are some minor faults. The encounter rate can be high and a tad annoying at times when you are trying to get to place to place and are stopped by constant random encounters, but that’s really only if you’re traveling by night when certain enemies come out and the encounter rate is higher. For some reason, they decided to keep the gimmick of reviving your dead friends ONLY at the church. Granted, you can get out of areas faster by using specific spells to get to the church, but it’s just the fact that you can’t revive them on the spot, which is tedious, since fights get tougher and tougher. Before I move onto the conclusion, here are some tips for people who want to play this game. Have the Hero focus on boomerangs and lances, grind until you’re about level 6 before you fight the first boss, and don’t just flail away at the boss. Look at the situation, and when you get Angelo, make sure you use him as the main healer along with the Hero, and make sure you’re about 4 levels above your past level before you go onto each boss fight. It will make boss fights much easier.

Well then, what can I say that I haven’t said already about this game? I…LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE this game! This IS one of my favorite games of all time. It’s basically everything you want in an RPG, it’s almost perfect. Heck, it IS perfect. I declare Dragon Quest 8 to be the best RPG on the PS2. You can get this game for about 10 bucks and more. If you can find it, BUY IT! You will not regret it. You could say that Dragon Quest 8 is being stubborn with how traditional it’s staying, but really? Is that a bad thing? It’s like people complaining about how Super Mario Galaxy 2 is just more Super Mario galaxy? Again, is that REALLY a bad thing?!  Sometimes, it’s better if we don’t invest our time into some new-fangled game gimmick that in the end is unpleasant, like Fable 3 and Mindjack. You will probably see me review Dragon Quest 4, 5, and 9, so make sure to look for those in my 2012 reviews. Dragon Quest 8 is hands down one of my top 20 favorite RPG’s of all time and is one of my top 25 favorite games of all time. Now, go out and have yourself an amazing adventure through the land of Dragon Quest 8!

This game gets a 10 out of 10

Cam's Eye View: 3 Year Special Part 3: Tales of Vesperia for the Xbox360 review

Hey, everyone! Welcome back to the third part of this 3-year special! Now then, since I got my “hello” out of the way, let’s talk about the Tales games from Namco. If you are blinded with confusion about this series and saying to yourself, “what is this Tales series?” Well, you are not alone, and no, I was not insulting your intelligence. I’m serious, since, um…let me explain. The Tale franchise is apparently a huge fan-followed-action RPG franchise from Namco that has been going on since the first game appeared on the Super Famicom. It officially started to come here when the PS1 came to be, and FF7 made RPG’s a huge moneymaker here in the states. Namco caught wind of this and decided to start releasing the Tale games over here to take the big boys like Final Fantasy down a couple of pegs. This plan failed, but we did get some of the games over the years. The first game we got in the series was Tales of Destiny, the first game to be released over here in 1998 with good reception. They then released Tales of Eternia over here under the title, Tales of Destiny 2 with generally positive reviews, despite some complaints about the graphical presentation and sound work, but well received nonetheless. Sadly, after that, they basically have been releasing some of them over here, but not all of them. I think this is due to a good chunk of gamers really liking this series, but not a big enough chunk of customers to port over the entire franchise in the U.S. For example, we got left out of the ACTUAL Tales of Destiny 2’s release on the PS2. We got Tales of Symphonia for the Gamecube with it ending up as one of the console’s best and ONLY RPG’s with a cult following. Namco left us in the dark about Tales of Rebirth for the PS2, but gave us Tales of Legendia for the PS2. Namco also gave us Tales of Abyss, and are going to give us Tales of Grace for the PS3. I am going to review the most recent of the Tales game to come over here in the states known as Tales of Vesperia for the Xbox360. In my opinion, this could be the best Xbox360 game. This is debatable, due to people saying that Gears of War or Halo is the best game on the console, but this is my review, and I am going to say that Tales of Vesperia is the best game on the console, and I could highly recommend it to anyone looking for a great RPG for the console. Let’s dive our way into no man’s land and get onto part 3 of this 3-year Anniversary Special.

The story takes place in the planet of Terca Lumireis, where people live inside kingdoms and towns protected by barriers so that monsters don’t kill them. The story then takes us to the kingdom of Zaphias. Our main hero, Yuri Lowell, voiced by Troy Baker, is an ex knight who is kind of like a Robin Hood or V-like character, who watches over the little people of the lower areas of the kingdom and makes sure the royal knights don’t harass them. One day, there is some commotion when a magical item called an Aque Blastia is taken from the lower quarter’s fountain area and causes water to overflow. Yuri sees that the knights don’t really care, and decides to find out what has happened to the Aque Blastia and find who stole it. After letting the thief who stole the blastia run away, Yuri is accused of breaking into the mansion and thrown in jail. After the help of another captured hero named Raven, voiced by Joe J. Thomas, Yuri escapes the castle and takes along with him the princess of the castle named Estellise Sidos Heurassein, or for short, Estelle, voiced by Danielle Judovits. Yuri decides to leave the kingdom with Estelle and his dog partner Repede to find a friend of his named Flynn Scifo, voiced by Sam Riegel, to find out what is going on. The story is great, with some very well-developed characters that might be anime stereotypes in some ways, but they are fleshed out in such a way that you could care less about that. The story itself might be not the most original, but it’s a deep and multi-layered story with some interesting outcomes from both sides of the guilds and the royal knights. Later in the game you will even question some of the character’s later judgment and decisions. Besides Yuri, you will meet the human acting dog partner Repede, Estelle a shu- in princess with no knowledge how the outside world works, Karol Capel a young monster fighting guild member, Rita Morido a very stern and serious female spell caster, Raven, a laid back and smart-alecky veteran archer, and Judith an elf-looking spear-wielding woman with a mysterious other persona. In the PS3 version, which is only in Japan, you could also play with Flynn, a very stern and serious knight, and Patty Fleur, a mature-acting young pirate girl.

The gameplay featured in Tales of Vesperia is of an action RPG. The battle system used here is an upgraded version of the battle system from Tales of Abyss, called the “Evolved Flex-Range Linear Motion Battle System”. This is where you fight on a 2D plain, but you can also hold one of the trigger buttons to move around a 3-dimensional plain to dodge enemy attacks and flank them from another side. You can also block attacks and pull off combo attacks. Each character also has his or her own set of special moves they can pull off to do things from super attacks, healing others, strengthening others, and other abilities that your characters can pull off during battle. You yourself can only equip 4 special moves at a time, but you can equip them anytime outside or inside battle. Sometimes, the special moves will have to be used to solve a puzzle from time to time within a boss fight. Monsters are all visible on the overworld and dungeon map so you can pick and choose your fights, but like I said in Grandia and Lunar: Silver Star Story, you will need to grind a bit to make yourself strong enough with the huge amounts of boss fights that are in the game. Sometimes, you can surprise the enemies and get a lead in the fight, but that can work against you also. When enemies catch you by surprise, it will cause your team to be mixed up, and you will usually have characters swapped with other characters that are not cut out for those specific enemies. While the super moves are nice, you can also pull off Over-Limit mode, where your attacks are stronger, and you can pull off an even stronger move while in this mode. There are even elements of quick-time events, where you can pull off a quick attack that will usually end up killing the weaker enemies and  cause major damage to bosses. There is a lot of strategy, and even though button mashing will help in some areas, you will need to be more strategic in some fights or else you will get wailed on. There are other RPG elements, like an alchemy system, healing items, buying better equipment, but I think one of the best features is the leveling-up system. You level up normally, but the best part is that your unused party members aren’t left out of the leveling up since they level up and learn skills and new moves along with your used party members. Oh yeah, there is offline multiplayer where your friends can take charge of the characters that aren’t being used by you. It’s an overall complex action RPG that is easy to grasp for any gamer old and new to get into.

The graphics, while not pushing the limit of the 360, look amazing. The cel-shaded anime look is taken full advantage of here, but it looks glorious. What I am trying to say is that everything is colorful, detailed, and it’s an overall beautiful package. The character designs are great, with anime and manga artist, Kosuke Fujishima who is known for his work on You’re Under Arrest!, Oh My Goddess!,  Sakura Wars (1997-2005), and some of the other major Tales series like Abyss, Symphonia, and the recently released Xillia. His artwork is amazing, and it’s really well-animated, with each character having a bunch of personality to their movements. The game also uses in-game, CG, and anime cutscenes to tell its story, and they all look great, especially the anime opening the game with the song, Ring a Bell by BONNIE PINK. It all works well. The voice acting is great, with voice actors like Troy Baker, Danielle Judovits, Julie Ann Taylor, Michelle Ruff, Joe J. Thomas, Megan Hollingshead, Sam Riegel, and other great voice actors make up the cast of the game. The funny thing is half of these people aren’t that famous, and I think they do a great job. I know there isn’t a Japanese track to this game, but I don’t think it’s needed. The music is wonderful with the composer being Motoi Sakuraba. He is mostly known for his work in Star Ocean: The Second Story, Beyond the Beyond, Shining Force 3, Valkyrie Profile, and is the main composer for the Tales games. There are a lot of great tracks featured in the game, and it’s definitely worth looking for the special edition of this game just to get the soundtrack. He has also worked on the Mario sports games, the other Star Ocean games, and the Golden Sun series. I know I already talked about how great the characters are, but I’ve got to talk about Yuri as an example. At first, he might come off as the “rebel leader”, but later in the game he will kill off two main villains without the others knowing. I won’t say whom, but their deaths are gruesome and he won’t even tell everyone that he did it. He is also very calm-minded, but he makes sure to put the team’s priorities first hand unless he needs to take things in his own hands. I could easily stretch this into a 30-page review and take up half of the review talking about the characters, but they are all just amazing and I don’t feel like making this a 30-page review.

Even though this is just a wonderful game there are a few minor flaws. Switching from the 2D plain to a 3D plain feels a tiny bit clunky. I also don’t like how Namco is selling level upgrades on the Xboxlive market place. I really didn’t need any of them since grinding is cut like a fine steak to where you don’t really need to buy the level upgrades. My final complaint is a common one amongst RPG’s and its unbalanced boss fights. Seriously, there are everywhere in RPG’s! Last Remnant has them, Final Fantasy has them, and of course the older Dragon Quest games have them. It’s annoying when you are feeling good and then you have to fight off a giant beast that is overly powerful. It isn’t as bad here, but it has happened a couple times, but mostly in the early part of the game.

This is a GREAT RPG for the 360. I dare say it’s even the best RPG on the system. I could recommend this to anyone more so than Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey. This game is a bit pricey still and 40 bucks is the cheapest I have seen. You could also get it for about 20 bucks off the Games on Demand series for 20 dollars. The collector’s edition is about 10 bucks more, but it is totally worth it. It’s one of my favorite games and is my favorite out of the Tales series. I say go find it. It is totally worth more than other games like Infinite Undiscovery and the recent Star Ocean game. This has been part 3 so let’s get moving to an adventure that you will never forget. Next time we will jump into the grand adventure known as Dragon Quest 8: Journey of the Cursed King.

This game gets a solid 9 out of 10

Cam's Eye View: 3 Year Special Part 2: Blue Dragon for the Xbox360 review

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to part 2 of this 3-year RPG Special. We last left off on one of the developer Mistwalker’s most celebrated titles, Lost Odyssey for the Xbox 360. For a console that is covered in shooters, Lost Odyssey is one of the best games you could get if you want Japanese-style RPG’s. While you could complain that it shouldn’t have used random battles (and to some extent I agree), I love the game. I enjoyed and was pulled into the story, I enjoyed the characters, and I love the turn-based fighting mechanics. It’s one of the better games you can get for the 360, and for about 10 to 12 bucks, I could totally recommend this 4 disc long game. However, there was a game that came out before Lost Odyssey that is still solid, but might be the weakest RPG in this special. I mean it’s not a terrible game since I don’t want to play a terrible RPG like some RPGs in the past, but it is probably in the same area where it has good and bad points that could be the deciding point for you as a gamer as to whether or not to invest in it. Let’s try to catch our shadows and review Blue Dragon.

Blue Dragon takes place in a fantasy world where once a year, weird things happen in different parts of the world. Later, these occurrences are revealed to be caused by ancient machines thought to have been destroyed or buried forever. During one occurrence in a small place called Talta Village, three teenagers named Shu, Jiro, and Kluke get wrapped up with the main villain of the game named Nene, who somehow knows how to control these ancient weapons. Along the journey, the three teens will be joined by a little demon character named Marumaro and a warrior girl named Zola. Here is one of the deciding points that I talked about. The story is very weak and pretty generic. It’s a shame, since this is by the guys behind Final Fantasy and the artist of the Dragon Quest franchise. The characters are pretty bland and don’t really have anything that separates them except probably their gender. There are some grand and epic moments, but there really isn’t a wow factor that the story has going for it. Just like another great RPG, Lufia 2, the story is a missed opportunity and I don’t think Microsoft  really wanted to put down the money for a truly solid translation for the game, which in the end, makes the story come off as generic. It boils down to the point where some of the side characters and the main villain have more character to them and that’s bad when you feel more attached to the side characters and the bad guys, since Nene is not that bad of a villain.

Like the story, the gameplay is pretty straightforward. It’s a turn-based RPG, which is how Japan loves their RPG’s. It has a bit of a wall system like Lost Odyssey. Since you only have 5 characters to control, you can have 3 characters up front who will take most of the damage while the two other characters will be in the back casting spells and taking less damage. There are a few tweaks to the system, which are nice. Random battles are thrown out the window in place of monsters that are visible on the field and overworld map. Your main weapons are the giant blue shadow monsters that resonate within your character. This means you are only equipping items that will make your health higher, take less damage, and increasing your attack powers to name a few. Your shadow monsters are also class specific, and can change classes throughout the game, like for example, Shu’s shadow is a warrior, but can learn attack and defense magic. Each class has specific abilities that you can carry over from that class to help customize your party to the perfect fighting force. Some of the abilities learned from these classes can be used outside of battle, like make a sphere around your character that can defeat monsters kind of like an instant win mechanic in Earthbound, but you only gain part of the experience that you would have gained from fighting them. There is even a battle grid that you can make appear, entrapping any monsters that are within it to fight in order to gain bigger awards, but also risk fighting monsters that are stronger than you and get wailed on. Another added bonus for the battle is that sometimes if you entrap specific monsters, you can pull off something called a monster fight that will make certain monsters fight other ones, making some fights easier. Later in the game to pay tribute to Final Fantasy, you can unleash super moves that take forever, but bring in the pain, usually killing all of the monsters.  Even if the gameplay in this game is straightforward it’s deep enough to be enjoyable.

The graphics are beautiful. Instead of taking an anime cel shaded look, like the Naruto Clash of Ninja series, which I think looks cheap, everything here looks like it was made out of clay. Everything is smooth, and there are basically no ridges on any of the characters. It looks great, and it helps with the added art style of Akira Toriyama due to his creative approach towards enemies and characters. I especially love how the machines look, definitely very original looking. Famous composer, Nobuo Uematsu, does the music. While this isn’t his best work, there are some great tracks that range from soft piano playing to techno music, to even a terrible, but addictive boss fight music that is like shredded up rock and roll. It’s a great package if you’re looking for good presentation in this game.

However, I have a lot of complaints for one of the better RPG’s on the 360. The story is weak! I think it’s because it was a poor translation. I mean, there aren’t any grammar issues, but I just never felt blown away by a lot of the events in the story. This is a flipping RPG! You HAVE to HAVE a GOOD STORY! The characters are bland and forgettable except for a few side characters and the main villain. That is sad when you can’t feel connected or even care for the 5 main characters! I also hate the character design for most of the main cast. Marumaro is like the only main character design I like. The other 4 main characters have huge heads that would in real life make your neck snap. There aren’t even a lot of emotions in their faces, usually the same facial emotion through the entire game. This is Mistwalker Studios by the way, the people who made Lost Odyssey and hopefully coming here in the states, The Last Story. Two greatly well-received games! Lost Odyssey’s story might not be original either, but it’s actually interesting and keeps you going while you play with memorable characters! Did Microsoft not have that much faith in this game? I mean, you’ve got a legendary RPG designer, a legendary character designer, and a famed composer! I think you could have at least given up the money for a good translation. I also hate how you can’t level up everything at once, like in Tales of Vesperia. In that game, even if you aren’t using specific characters, they will still level up! It’s so tedious, since later in the game you will need to grind all of your classes and for a while, you will lose one of the main characters that happens to be the attack magic user. I also hate this barrier spell that you can kill enemies with on the overworld and level screen, because unless you level up your barrier magic abilities, it takes up a huge chunk of magic points each time you run into a monster and kill it, while only gaining a small amount of experience and shadow points that you could have gotten. In Earthbound, with the instant win mechanic, you wouldn’t have to lose any of those experience points, you would just have to run up to a monster weaker than you and BOOM! Fight’s over, and you gain all of the experience you would have gotten if you were forced to fight it. Of course, later in the game, if you level up your barrier magic abilities, the “kill weaker monsters” barrier will give you more experience, but it’s usually a bad idea to switch classes, since you will basically drop in everything from health to attack power if you choose a different class.

Even though I pointed out some annoying flaws with this game, I enjoyed it more than other more terrible RPG’s, like the first Two Worlds and Risen. Heck, Blue Dragon is very cheap now with the highest price I’ve seen being 10 dollars. I still recommend this game over a huge number of RPG’s and shooters that are on the system. Now, the story is terrible and the characters forgettable and this might be the deciding point if you want to buy this game or not, but trust me it’s a good game. It has solid turn-based mechanics with a more streamlined customization feature, and it doesn’t have random battles. Thanks for reading and see you in part 3 where we travel to a no man’s land and I take a breath and take a chance with Tales of Vesperia.

This game gets a 7 out of 10