Updating the inventory with a new post, instead of appending it. Unlike previous claims regarding the various Final Fantasies, I have no intent of expanding on any of these reviews. More importantly, I have no intent of saying I will and then not.
DS Games
The Legend Of Zelda : Phantom Hourglass (Nintendo) : Reviewers aren't kidding when they say TLZ:PH makes intuitive, hopefully trend-setting use of the touchscreen. The character design is great, the animation is beautiful and expressive, the graphics are lush and gorgeous, the music and sound effects are fantastic. The hammer and grapple are sweet. I initially wrote the boomerang off as gimicky but got used to it - likewise with the bombchu. Aiming and using the bow and arrow? Awesome. The gameplay is overall pretty solid, though the fact you can't pause the game to switch weapons is really irritating - there's nothing quite like getting your ass beat silly while you're digging around in the flyout for whatevere's going to get you out of your current jam. All of this ought to build up to a glowing recommendation, and it would - but the game has a few quirks that keep it from usurping the original TLZ and The Minish Cap as my favorites in the series. First there's the menu thing. That's an issue, but a relatively minor one. Running through the Temple Of The Ocean King half a dozen times is frustrating as all hell - while it certainly saves space on the game cartridge, you don't get any of the equipment you need for your constant sojourns through the temple to be FUN until very late in the game. Repeating the temple a jillion times is integral to the story and for the most part it works relatively well, so it's ultimately forgivable. What really cheeses me about PH are the bits relating to the boat. First, it takes forever to get anywhere. This would be forgivable if it weren't such a chore to chase fish, or avoid sharks and the like. Second, you need a cohesive suite of boat parts to increase the boat's hit points - which you really, really need if you want to, say... beat the game. Getting the boat parts becomes a gamebreaker - like the kinstones in Minish Cap, they occur randomly. You never know what you're going to salvage or find in a treasure chest. There are several different boats and several different parts for each (prow, hull, wheel, cabin, chimney, anchor, cannon) - but instead of all boat parts being a cohesive, collectible set distributed throughout the game (like items, heart containers, and every item ever in every other zelda I've ever played), they're completely random. We're talking seven or eight of one part, five or six of another, three of this, four of that, one of this, that, and the other thing.... and after a couple of hours of "boat part grinding", I had almost all of two boats and almost none of the rest. This level of total randomness - especially given that having a complete boat has a very serious effect on gameplay - is something I find unacceptable in a series of games that strongly features puzzle-solving and item collection as a major theme. I could easily handle going on a long quest for a part or even saving up a few thousand rupees for one, but having to grind for hours and hours on the slim chance that the final part I need might drop? If I wanted that, I'd play WoW. In the final analysis, Phantom Hourglass is a damned fine game. But it's nowhere near the best of 2007, and it is by no means my favorite installment in the franchise. If I were going to letter grade it, I'd shoot for a solid B - if the boat parts bit wasn't an issue, I'd go for an A-. The fact that boat parts (and treasure) can be exchanged with other players over wireless doesn't matter to me - the fact that you apparently have to to conveniently build a boat or rake in the loot is something I consider to be points off, as strong multiplayer is only a selling point when your social situation allows for it.
Orcs & Elves (Fountainhead, iD, EA) : An absolutely FANTASTIC old-school turn-based dungeon crawler. I missed out on Ultima Underworld and Eye of the Beholder, so O&E scratches a long-held itch. The gameplay is incredibly smooth-flowing for a turn based game, the story is vintage Monty Hall Dungeons & Dragons, the graphics are either "vintage EGA" or "obviously unchanged from the original Cellphone version" (your choice), and damn if I didn't enjoy every minute of O&E's incredibly short 3-4 hour play time. I'm hoping the game does well enough to bring the sequel (and Doom RPG) to the DS. Orcs & Elves is an in-your-face reminder to modern gamers that one time - before Final Fantasy VII came along and fucked it up for everybody - gameplay used to matter far more than story* or graphics. These days? We're swimming in cutscenes, voiceovers, horribly emo androgynous protagonists, hundreds of pages of the latest twist on Ye Old save-the-world "story." Frankly, I'm sick of it. And I'm ecstatic that O&E has come along to remind everyone that it didn't used to be that way, and it doesn't have to stay that way. Thank you, John Carmack.
Puzzle Quest (Infinite Interactive, Engine Software, D3 Publisher) : Like O&E, a game that places gameplay above everything else, and a game with many elements of oldschool PC RPGs - namely the conquering, fortress-building and the like. The actual game-game is the most fun I've had with a puzzle game since Puzzle Fighter - addictive, making excellent use of the touchscreen, and as easy to grasp as it is complex. My first playthrough was as a druid, which turned out to be the equivalent of the "fucking HARD" setting - my second time through was as a warrior, which - with the lessons I'd learned as a Druid - turned out to be "stupid easy." Great gameplay, adequate graphics, forgettable music. Forgettable in that after a few moments I turned the music off and tried to forget about it - it's that American Fantasy Music sort of thing that works as background at renfairs. It does nothing for me. As good as the gameplay is, I'm sad to say that this is by far the buggiest DS game I've ever played - it actually locked up on me a few times! Ultimately, Puzzle Quest is barely an RPG - it's really a simple, well-designed puzzle game with RPG elements. PQ covers a lot of the "it's the gameplay, stupid." RPG elements that O&E doesn't - between the two, an oldschool gamer with a DS will have hours of fun to pep up those otherwise boring bus rides.
Scurge : Hive (Orbital Media, SouthPeak Interactive) : Bought used at The Record Exchange for 10$ - cart, case, no manual. Ought to be renamed IsoMetroid - it's got the weapons, it's got the "the guys who made Oni watched Aliens! And made a game!!!" aesthetic, and it even has little snot-colored Metriods that act like Metroids. They don't need to be frozen, though - they just blow up with the normal application of force. The weapons are pretty cool, the protagonist has incredibly strange hair that you'll eventually get used to. I gave up on either the last or next-to-last boss, which quickly caused me to go looking for something less frustrating to play. S:H has decent graphics, some cool gameplay elements, and a decent-if-totally-rehashed-and-predictable story. The thing that really stands out about this game is the music - it's blippy, it's bloopy, it's IDM-tinged, and in the context of "this game is a nearly-intact GBA port," the music is really, really good. A delightful surprise, and much more pleasing to my ear than the traditional pseudo-orchestral stuff the Japanese seem to like in their games. A good amount of fun at the used price. While I wouldn't have paid full price for S:H, I'd definitely consider paying retail for a sequel. Assuming Orbital Media decides to make one.
GBA Games
Castlevania : Circle of the Moon (Konami) : Exchanged the dud copy of Fire Emblem I picked up along with C:HoD for this, which actually worked after a few tries. "Castlevania : Knockback of Rage" would be a better name for the game, honestly - the knockback dial seems to be cranked up to eleven. It's crazy. A lot of reviews bitched about the color palette, but any visibility issues you'd have with the game on the GBA are nonexistent on the DS - I find the game to have the richest, prettiest graphics of the three GBA Castlevanias. In fact, I'd say that graphics and sound are by far the best of the three, with Harmony in second place and Aria looking and sounding positively 8-bit. The castle is cool, the enemy variety is pretty nice, and the magic card "DSS" system is really cool. Doubtless it was one of the contributing factors when it came to kicking the game from the Castlevania canon (as it doesn't really fit the general flavor of the series), but it's pretty sweet nonetheless. The game retains the cross/clock/axe/holy water/etc "subweapon-that-falls-out-of-some-candles" thing - of these, I found the axe and the cross to be the only subweapons of any real use. The only real kink - aside from the insane knockbck - is the relative rarity of potion drops makes the lack of a shop a real pain at times. For overall gaming enjoyment on the GBA, I'd rank C:CotM behind C:AoD for fun and ahead of AoD and HoD in every other category. Biggest gameplay cramp? No backdash. Otherwise, ++
Castlevania : Harmony of Dissonance (Konami) : Bought used from The Record Exchange. I'm glad I didn't pay full price, though a manual would have been nice. HoD really ought to be called Castlevania : Backtrack Of Tedium - you spend almost all of the game running through areas you've been through before to get to palette-swap mirror-universe versions of the areas you've just been through. It's a neat gameplay concept, but there isn't enough visual variety to offset the incessant repetition. Couple that to an incredibly strange experience mechanic (the higher your level, the less xp you get from enemies - meaning an enemy that gave you, say... 300xp in your 20s will give you 4xp in your 30s), a "traveling" shop that only opens if you meet requirements ranging from easy to incredibly frustrating (level 50 for one shop location sounds reasonable until you pick up on the "innovative" experience issue), and an incredibly difficult-to-execute griffon jump, and you have the least enjoyable portable Castlevania. I slogged through to the final boss on this one, realized I really needed to level up, experienced the experience "feature," and promptly went looking for something more fun to play. Not a waste of time by any stretch, but too much hassle in the endgame compared to DoS, AoS, PoR, or CotM.
On a Squenix note, I had intended to buy Revenant Wings until it was pointed out to me that the game is (A) an RTS, and (B) more story than game. Forget that. I looked at Ring Of Fates and would have bought it if I hadn't had the good sense to check out a gameplay movie first - talking Precious Moments! My brains! I'm not into kids-as-protagonists and I frequently play with the sound off, so that's also a no-go. Both of these bear mention in that they've actually been released in the US (as of this writing), unlike the Squenix games I want - FF IV DS and FFT A2. Get with it, guys! I want to give you money - but I'm only going to do it in exchange for games I know I'm going to enjoy!
I'd also like to try out the DS port of Mazes of Fate, but can't seem to find it anywhere. The reviews I've read have grumped about glitches and some game elements, but promise at least 20 hours of gameplay. Given that most DS games tend to run 5-15 hours (unless you're one of those spastics who absolutely MUST hit level 99 and get every single enemy drop and item and so on), that alone is a point in its favor.
Currently on order : Age Of Empires : The Age Of Kings (recommended by eric), Advance Wars : Days Of Ruin, and a used copy of Riviera : The Promised Land. Gameplay forecast for April : 100% chance of colons.
* If story was really more important than gameplay, they wouldn't be calling them Role Playing GAMES, now would they? They'd call them something else, like Interactive Fiction, Cutscenes With Levelgrinding, Button-mashing Books, or whatever. And I wouldn't play them.
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