Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Disgaea DS: Pre-release Hype!

Not long till September 23rd now, good friends, and on that blessed 23rd day of September, the English version of Disgaea DS will be released! Now, I know we're all so excited, since Disgaea DS is just such an awesome game, that we may all wet our pants the instant it is released. But then again, we may not. What if you dont know what Disgaea IS?!

Read more...

A touch of nostalgia... NES

It may seem like such a century, but only 10 years ago we were rocking those 8-bit consoles for our gaming needs. And even though the graphics looked only slightly better than pea soup, we had hundreds of hours of fun. Today, I'm going to share some of my personal favorites with you guys, and by doing so, I'll be going back to those days i spent in front of my NES.

Read more...

Saturday, September 13, 2008

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance 2: Darkenigma's OurView


Here's another in what seems to be a barrage from me. Ravenwoods has been busy lately and he apologizes profusely. Well, as promised, today is indeed Saturday, and I will keep my word and present you with my OurView of FFTA2. So lets jump right in!


Lets take it from the top. FFTA2 is a strategy RPG game (much like Fire Emblem, discussed in my Fire Emblem Love article) published by Square Enix (ooh...ahh). So automatically we expect a great game right? Well, you get what you expect with this game, as it truly is the deepest strategy RPG available for DS at this time (with maybe the exception of Disgaea DS, but FFTA2 came out before Disgaea DS so...yeah). The only crap part about the game is the horrendously childish story. Its about a kid who gets sucked into a book and is warped to a different dimension where he battles other creatures and meets friends who are different races to people (including moogles... more on moogles later). But yeah you play as Luso (Robinson Cruzo, anyone?), and you go to this world in a different dimension to discover that you need to fill a journal with memories and when the book runs out of pages you go back to your world. That's about as unexciting as a game storyline can get. Its just so boring. There's no diabolical bad guy, you just solve daily problems like escort people around and defeat wanted creatures that are posted up in the local 'pub'. Yeah I said Pub because the game chose not to call them Inns. I know, strange.

This means there's no sense of urgency or there's no real enemy to chase, you just do stuff pretty much to get to your final objective. While eventually you do meet a diabolical bad guy, the game never tells the story in a convincing enough way, that I totally forgot that there even WAS a story. I was just playing because I wanted to make my character kick major ass. The music never sets the mood right in the numerous cut scenes in the game and Luso himself is as shallow a protagonist as it gets. He doesn't have a complex character at all, he's just this kid who wants to have an adventure. I guess what I'm trying to say is, I never got that spine tingling feeling when reading through the cut scenes. That for me is a great story in a game - if it can make my spine tingle at least once, that's good enough for me. This game didn't even come close. If you're over the age of 15, you'll probably feel ashamed at some point for playing a game that is seriously trying to sell such a childish, ridiculous story.

But that's where the criticism ends for me. Apart from the storyline, the game is amazing. The controls work just as you'd like them, (though there is touch screen functionality, it sucks hugely). You take turns moving your characters on a chessboard like map. At the end of battles you earn experience that goes towards leveling characters who took part in battle. After battle, you are presented with your spoils of war and AP points. AP points are what you use to master abilities. Each character in your clan has a job, in other words a class which you choose. The equipment you choose to use determines what abilities which character can use, and if equipped with the right items, allows them to master abilities and advance in their job levels. This all sounds very complicated, because it is. The game has a very steep learning curve. It will take you upwards of 2 hours to figure out just what the hell's going on and how the game works. But when you figure it out, you'll feel like you just learn't how to take a shit while doing the macarena. Yeah, its that great.

So this radical battle system is great and obviously extremely deep. But you get to a point where you need to advance more job levels to get to better jobs, but to do it you need better items (because with certain items for certain jobs, you master new abilities). What do you do then? You go and make your own gear! Well, almost. You go to the 'bazaar' and give up raw materials you collect during battles and turn them into cool items. There is a rather lengthy list of item types you can build, and each item type has 5 ranks of gear, from A to E grade items. If you have the right materials, it is indicated on the chart, and you are able to create that item. But be warned, creating the item doesn't mean you own it! You must then purchase the item as well.

All this is pretty fun but the battles take a long time to complete. Sometimes you just wish there was an auto-battle system and you could get it over and done with. That's where the dispatch system comes into play. You can send clan members to do jobs for you while you go off and do your own quests. This is the optimal way to play the game. As I promised about the moogles. Yes there are moogles who you fight and who fight for you. They make cute sounds and well... they're moogles for god's sake. Pretend for a second you don't know what a moogle is. Moogles are the mascot of the Final Fantasy series and they have appeared in pretty much every FF game after FF6. Allow me to continue now.

Now lets get to deeper elements of the game. The job system allows for really deep game play, posing questions such as: what will my main team consist of? How many of what job? Should I have spellcasters? How many do I want? What abilities should I equip? Which characters should use Items? and so forth. But when you think of it logically, the answers are very very clear.

Take a long hard look at the game after you've sunk 25 hours into it and you see that all that depth is pretty useless. Build a team of 4 ranged units (fusiliers, cannoneers, archers, assassins, snipers you choose) 1 thief and a soldier/parivir character and you've won every battle in the game. Plain and simple. You don't even need that thief, the thief is just to have a little more fun in the game. What's the strategy? Just stay where you are and shoot the shit out of the enemies as they helplessly come to you. When they get close charmshot or sleep as many as you can. Watch the ensuing carnage. If any are asleep, go and steal their accessories (if you like them). Use the parivir to smash the crap out of any toughies. Done deal. Healing, you say. No problem. cannoneers have ether shot and potion shot to spruce up any injured team members instantly from ridiculous distances, for no mana cost.

But I guess half the fun is getting to that 25 hour mark and deciding just which strategy is best for you. Either way, this is an entertaining title that will keep you playing for over 50 hours if you really like strategy RPG's. If you don't like the genre in general, stay far far away as you will bore of it in about 4 minutes (just about when Luso is still in school just about to get sucked into that book). Thanks to you all for reading!

Want to try FF:TA2 for yourself? Well then be my guest! Download here!



Read more...

Friday, September 12, 2008

No$gba : A beginner's Guide

Before I begin, I'm using no$gba version 2.6a
official site: http://nocash.emubase.de/gba.htm
This is by far the most compatible and speedy emulator of the DS system available. It isn't 100% compatibility but its still at a very decent state. So, enough rambling, lets get
to the meat of the tutorial.

Read more...

Thursday, September 11, 2008

Veni, Vidi, Vici!

Hello everyone. I am Ravenwoods. Hopefully I shall be co-hosting this blog!

I am quite excited really. We will do everything in our hands to provide you with the all latest news on DS. Many tips and tricks will also be provided along the way. We love this contraption and we would like to share all our knowledge, experiences and hype around it. We believe this blog will help that. Through this blog we can make a bonding with the DS community...So, in my next post I shall run a little personal review of one of the recent releases and then talk about some other stuff again relating DS. Hope to see everyone there :D

Salute, for I came, I saw and I conquered...;)

darkenigma: nice introduction Ravenwoods. Glad to have you on board!

A new challanger approaches!

I have some great news for you guys, I've spoken with a close friend of mine and he's agreed to write on our young Blog. He's going to be writing soon, keep an eye out for him. I know our blog is still young but me and any future writers are looking at this very professionally and we strive to provide the highest quality articles. Thanks for your support and for reading us!

As of now, I, darkenigma and Ravenwoods are administrators of this blog. I am sure you will welcome Ravenwoods, he's a great gamer and a great writer!

Fire Emblem Love

Today I'm posting about my love of the Fire Emblem series. If you don't know what Fire Emblem is, its a series of games developed by Intelligent Systems and published by Nintendo. It was one of the first turn based strategy games ever made and unlike others of its kind, a large portion of the storyline revolves around very charismatic and memorable characters.

  1. Fire Emblem Seisen no Keifu

    Wow, this is the one that started it all for me. Great charismatic protagonist Sigurd, and my personal favorite, Holyn (swordmaster, gotta love this guy). Some very unique things happened in this one compared to the rest of the games in the series like 2 generations of characters (the second generation consisting of characters from the offspring of the previous generation (who you pair up by making them fall in love)).

    download: here. This is the english patched rom, just boot it up in zsnes or any emulator of your choice.
    get zsnes (super nintendo emulator): here.

  2. Fire Emblem (GBA)

    The first FE on the GBA, this has a different art style. I prefer Seisen no keifu's style, but this game is a great portable FE experience. Highly recommended. The story is watered down compared to the SNES titles, but this is to be expected since the GBA was a very child oriented console (in western countries, anyway).

    download: here.


  3. Fire Emblem : Path Of Radiance

    This game was an awesome experience from start to finish. Its a GC (Gamecube) title that was admittedly hard to find, but was well worth the hunt. If you guys drop a few comments, I'll dig up the links for it and hey, you can enjoy the game for yourselves. You play as Ike, a mercenary's son, who finds himself in a complicated war in which he is helplessly entwined. Highly recommended.

    comment if you want me to dig up the links for this one, guys!


Well, I know its been a long post, if you've survived this far, good for you and happy Fire Embleming. If you want to take the new DS FE game for a spin, try out this link: HERE. If you want me to sum up what i think is good and bad about it, comment away!

Happy Gaming Guys!

Read more...

Don't be shy, post a reply! We'd love to hear your thoughts.


  © Blogger template by Ourblogtemplates.com 2008

Back to TOP