What I've Been Playing These Days - May 2010

So it has been quite a while since I've talked about what I've currently been playing here. Let's jump into it, shall we?

So I bought Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey and despite my best efforts, I don't like it all that much. The main problem is the combat system: it plays like a modified version of Nocturne's system, which I liked, but with a few key differences. First, your attacks do bonus damage based on your alignment rather than spell type or demon type.

That drives me insane.

Here's why: My main guy? He's neutral right now. It takes a while to change alignments, and so the only way I can get bonus damage through using my MC's attacks is if my demons are also neutral.

Perhaps it's because I'm only in the first two floors of the second zone, but there are very very few neutral demons. My MC is the best character because I can change around his attacks more easily than my demons, yet I can't get bonus damage or whatnot because of the reasons I listed above.

So I gave up on the game for now. I might go back to it at some point, as it's possible I just prefer Etrian Odyssey to it and had gotten off a huge sting of playing that, but who knows.

I bought, played, and beat Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth since I last posted here, as well. Overall, I enjoyed it! I'm not sure if I prefer it or Apollo Justice - I certainly do like the improvements made to the mechanics of the series in this iteration, though. The game limits you to whatever screen you have to be investigating and will not let you leave until you've finished. So there is no more wandering back and forth between 5-6 areas clicking on everything multiple times looking for the next plot point! Considering that was my biggest complaint about the previous games, it's a pretty big deal they fixed it.

As far as the story goes, I thought it was pretty good for being largely self-contained, although I would have liked to see a cameo from Maya. I want to know what the hell that girl is doing now after having ditched Phoenix!

But anyway, I enjoyed it quite a bit, and it was funny as hell just like the previous games. I particularly enjoyed the one character who couldn't take anything Edgeworth did seriously and laughed at almost everything he said. It was pretty meta, and I liked it.

Pokemon Heartgold and I have reached an impasse. I beat the Elite Four and am in Kanto, but I don't feel like playing much any more. I think it's because I have to level up a little bit to start beating the Gym Leaders over here, but there is ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE TO DO SO. So eff it. I could just send my Pokemon over to Diamond and grind them fairly quickly there, but that's a pain so whatever. I'll come back and plow through the rest of it someday.

I bought Rune Factory: Frontier for Wii and I like it, but I'm just not in the mood for a hack'n'slash right now. It also doesn't help that the story and characters are ridiculous and stupid beyond belief. Why can't the writing of these Harvest Moon games ever be as good as Harvest Moon 64? I mean it ain't Shakespeare, Natsume!

Half-Minute Hero is fuggin' awesome and I will beat it eventually. I suspect once I have my PSP out regularly (read: once Persona 3 Portable comes out) I'll be popping it in and out quite a bit. But because it's pretty action-y, I'm not really in the mood for it.

I picked up Glory of Heracles on the cheap yesterday and have put about two hours into it, and it has already amazed me at how rough around the edges this game is. The battle system is pretty neat, but everything from the graphics to the dialog to the music all seems like it was made on a very light budget. I'm kind of surprised Nintendo published it - it seems below their standards for presentation. That said, the battle system shows promise so I'll put a little more time into it and get back to you.

Final Fantasy IV Advance still contains the "You spoony bard!" line from the SNES version and that's all you really need to know in regards to the game's quality. This will be my RPG snack - I'll play just a little bit of this for a while, I believe.

I finally opened my copy of Final Fantasy Tactics: Grimoire of the Rift today as well, and have already dumped two hours into it (boy, days off sure are nice). This game is going to be loooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong but I'm liking it so far. The battles could move a little faster (I'm used to the speed of Devil Survivor, so I'm somewhat spoiled), and the job system seems a little opaque, but that might just be due to my unfamiliarity with the previous FFT games. I've been itching to play another one of these since I finished Devil Survivor, so I'll definitely be putting more time into this one.

I think I'm all caught up now. Within the next week or so, I'll be receiving two games I got great deals on for DS: Super Princess Peach (which I've wanted to play for quite a while now) and Infinite Space (which I bought primarily because I think it's going to get quite expensive soon). I'll probably write about those soon.