First Impression - [Witch's Wish]

Sorry that I haven't been posting much. There just isn't many good NDS games out there at the moment....I'd been just grinding SMT and finished Picross 3D. Otherwise, not much has been happening, unless you guys want me to do a quick first impression on some crappy NDS games.


Anyway, maybe I'll start with a stupid game called Witch's Wish..or something to that regard. It's a cheap 3D storybook adventure game that's broken up to chapters. Initially I thought it's made by a Japanese company due to the 1 screenshot. Boy was I wrong. Only the main group of the young girls are drawn in moe style, the rest are just fugly. Western cartoon fugly. If the art department persist with one style it probably wouldn't be so much of a sort thumb, but the clash just feels bad and annoying.
Anyway, moving on to the gameplay. It's the usual "go here and talk" gameplay, with the occasional "draw symbol on the bottom screen" once per chapter. Each chapter lasts around 10~15 mins. Short, but since the story is stupid all the time, I don't really enjoy it. I have a feeling that this game is targeted toward a lot more younger audience population. It's stupid of me to give it a try in the first place anyway.
It's using 3D model with 2D sprites, and it's the sprite that's clashing. 3D models all look cheap and ugly at the same, so it all look stupid.

Anyway, this game is not really for me, but if you got a 10 years old kid with a NDS, probably a decent game. Heck, at least it kept me playing 2hours, so it's not that bad production quality-wise.

Shin Megami Tensei : Strange Journey

What happenes when you cross Shin Megami Tensei with Etrian Odessey? You get one absolutely beautiful game called Strange Journey

The world is coming to an end. Dark rings called Schwarzwelt is formed and expanding from the south pole on the Earth's surface, and eat away every single thing it encountered during its expansion. The world set out a team of elites to find out the true nature behind this phenomenon.

Being a Shin Megami Tensei game, you would expect tonnes of demons that referenced from myths and legends from various parts of the world, and this game didn't disappoint in that regard. You can have up to 3 minions by your side during the battle, while having at least 8 in your party (the number increases after each stage). There's also a function to fuse demons into stronger ones. However since you are the only human in the team, you are the only one (at the early stages anyway) that can use items and summon backups. It can be quite a hassle when all of your team members suffers from status ailments.

Each demon has it's own basic attributes, but can have up to 6 bonus/skills. Some are offensive like the basic spells, while some are passive ones that ups the basic HP. You can't change those on a whim. You do get a chance for a change once in a while when that demon leveled up, but the new one is always random. It's up to you to decide whether to keep the one they are replacing or gamble on a new one because you don't use that skill much anyway. Fair to say I had more disappointments than joy.

Like the previous game I played, Devil Survivor. The required exp for leveling up the demon goes up quite in an exponential fashion. Each demon has its own basic level, and the curve goes up from that basic level. I can see it so that you would have to refresh your lineup in a new dungeon just because the previous team level up too slow, as in the newer, higher leveled ones, requires less exp to go up to the next level than the ones you convinced in the previous dungeons.

One interesting mechanism in this game is the ability to talk to demons. Akin to lots of so-called "dating sims", the demon will say a couple of sentences and you will have to please them by choosing the correct reply to their question. If you failed to do so they will either stay angry (refuse to talk to you again), leave the battle, or just suddenly jump on you. They usually requires you to do it at least twice before the demon is friendly with you, and you will then be able to negotiate and gain benefits from them, whether it be obtaining mecca, getting items, or even convincing them to join you. Some demon don't like to talk to you, and you can't have conversation with them when it's during the full moon(unless you install a sub-app). Convincing them to join you also requires you to give up some life, some mana, some mecca and a couple of items, base on their request. You can sometimes deny their request and they will change it to the ones that you think suits you. For several times I had a demon even requesting getting 50k+ mecca from me, which i reasonably refused to do so, and the demon just change to other ones. What can be annoying is that sometimes when you fulfilled their demands they just leave....

The first time you encounter demons they will be in complete fuzzy state, as in you can't tell their strength, their HP, their weaknesses. It's like stabbing in the dark and hoping that it won't 1-hit-kill your party by some bullshit skills. Most of the time you will be underleveled anyway, so each time you goes into a new area it's always quite frightening to encounter the unknowns.

Through the whole story you also get apps that can be customised into your suit to suit the course of the action. There are ones that regen health for a certain steps you walk, ones that allow you to make one mistake in the conversation with demons, and ones that avoids battles in general, and several other one with various abilities. You can't carry them all, so you would have to choose wisely before your departure what you want to do in this expedition. You can, however, change them whenever you are at a save point inside the dungeon though.

The upper screen is your main screen, while the bottom screen shows the map that auto completes once you walk on that grid of the dungeon. You control like one of the first 3D shooters out there, up being going forward, sides being turning, and down meaning turning 180 degrees. Sometimes can be confusing if you just walk while staring intensely at the map.

In term of gameplay you use the d-pad and the buttons. I don't remember the stylus being used at all.

The save points are quite spread out throughout the dungeon, so are healing points. The healing points do cost you mecca, but it's always better to be prepared than to die and had to start your exploration all over again from the last save. You can also jump back to the beginning of the dungeon from the save points as well, so most of the time it's always the top priority to look for save and heal points on the map. The layout also means that it won't take more than 20min each time between places that you can save.

At the moment I'm quite enjoying it, really enjoying the dungeon design, the demons(though quite a number of them looks to be reusage from the older SMT games), their personalties, the skills, and the exploration in general.

This world is a parody of man kind's sins. I also suspect that at the end of the day you would have to make a decision, like in Devil Survivor, to be either on the gods side or on the chaos' side, or just staying neutral like a rogue. Right now I just want to finish the game and know what exactly the game has in term of the ending.

Highly recommended, especially to people that like the traditional JRPG grind-fest. Like Etrian Odyssey, you do have to take each step carefully, and that's what makes the experience so rewarding near the end of the dungeon when you can just pawn the ones that scared you previously.

Miles Edgeworth: Perfect Prosecutor [First Impressions]

I have to say that I'm not totally impressed. Starting off with the shitty name "Ace Attorney Investagions". Godamnit he's a prosecutor, a bloody PROSECUTOR! It's totally different from an attorney!! Why can't they just kept the Perfect Prosecutor name anyway? It just feels like they want to tag on the series name so this can sell, which feels cheap, and annoying at the same time.

I'm currently just starting on my 3rd case right now, and these are my impressions

What happened to the great looking CGs? I totally miss them, and I'm yet to see them in stories. Even if there had been one it's just feel that not memorable... And where's the chapter-summarising picture that appears in the arc selection menu? Where have they gone?

I am seriously not a fan of the 3/4 angle portrait by any means. What feels good in the previous titles is that you are playing as Phoenix Wright (or Apollo Justice), and you take the usual VN-isk first person view when exploring and during dialogue and stuff. I love it, it's making me feel immersed as the main character, and I was able to fee attached to his own emotions. In this one, all the characters are not facing you, instead staring at the empty space in the middle of the screen. instead of feel like you are Phoenix Wright, you feel like a bystander in this game. Even up to this point, I still don't feel I care about the characters one bit.

Which brings me to the writing. I don't know why, but other than Edgeworth making inside jokes referencing to the past series, I don't find things that funny. Maybe it's due to Edgeworth's character of being so Edgy and has everything under control, I just don't feel the same chaotic hilarity that's so loved in the previous titles. Edgeworth is still badass, but the supporting characters just feels bland. I feel the comedy had been lost in this one, same goes to the witty writing that has been the hallmark of the previous titles.

The new characters, they are so boring. Entirely not helped by the bad design of the first villian, the new characters somehow just lack personality in their design. In the PW series even though some characters can be said to be stereotypical, but they always has an unconventional side to make them feel interesting, in this one, it's just boring and feels cliche, as if the designer had run out of idea. Again, I'll go back to the 3/4 portraits, they are just not that memorable at this point, some even look quite ugly.

I do like the change of direction in term of gameplay though.

The investigation is quite a nice twist to the usual point and click. Instead of pixel-hunting that some people loath, it had been cut down dramatically and mostly replaced by just avatar running on the screen to various locations. It saves up quite a lot of time during gameplay, and allows the player to focus more on the mystery ahead instead of spending endless hours just trying to click on that tiny pixel.

The introduction of the Logic tab is also awesome. It also allow the player to think, even though most of the links so far had been easy. However, the sense of "omg, I think I got it!" when the last piece of the puzzle falls is just great.

I will still finish this game, as I am still hope that the final case would still present the same amount of epicness that's in the previous games. However I do fear that, since they went too serious and hyped up the overarching story too much early in the game, I won't care less when the final case actually comes. Not to mention at the moment the main story feels transparent and contrive.

I just hope it will still be a good overall experience and not get disappointed by it.

Edit:

So now I'd finished the game, I'm still disappointed by the overall presentation.

Like I said before, spotting cameo is fun, however, not when they just forcefully put in one without any continuation and meaningful story development whatsoever. They had committed this cardinal sin.

I know I said before that the characters are all so uninspiring, well, that changed in case4, but only one though.

The final chapter would be good if not for the endless "ooo, but no, there's still not *conclusive* evidence yet" *smirk.....The one before the final boss battle is great, if only they finish at that point or use that as the climax instead of that drag-a-thon we got in the game.

Overall, not as good as I'd hoped before the game came out. I like some of the changes, but there's too many dumb downs, changes in the wrong directions, uninspiring characters for me to like this game.

Ace Attorney is a great series, I don't think this one does the name justice