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While Hollywood is sleeping, it appears that the game designers are wide awake. In August (all in a 2-week span) there are three must-purchase-immeditaley RPGs coming out.

First is the FF7 Dirge of Cerebus, which promises Devil May Cry style gameplay and drop-dead gorgeous cinema scens a la Advent Children. Of course this is the game of the three that I am least intersted in, since it is about Vinnie Vincent er. Vincent Valentine, one of the weakest Final Fantasy characters ever with absolutely terrible fashions sense.

Next is Xenosaga III. Which better not be as much of a disappointment as II. Of course, it probably will because it is said to be the last one even though the story was supposed to span 8 games. Oh well, it’s still Xenosaga and is a must buy.

And last but definitely not least is the game I am most excited about Rule of Rose. Rule of Rose is a game by Atlus (see my last blog post) that is very much aimed at the adult market. It promises to be absolutely freaky, disturbing and controversial with amazing graphics and gameplay. Fans of Silent Hill, look for this one.

So, there goes $150 and countless hours…

Dual Hearts is a fairly recent adventure/puzzle game published by Atlus. For those of you that don’t know much about Atlus, here is a little background. Atlus is a maker of quirky, unique games that are released in very short runs in the United States. In general Atlus games fall in to one of two categories, fun, quirky adventure/rpg games for general audiences and hard-core complicated RPGs for mature audiences. Because of their limited releases, and the overall complexity of many of their games, they generally don’t reach a wider appeal than that of the advanced gamer. However among many gamers (myself included) it is widely believed that some of the best and most creative games are coming out of Atlus. While Atlus does develop a lot of their games they also license games from other games publishers who don’t want to put forward the money to port the game for the US.

Dual Hearts, I believe, was simply published by Atlus. It was developed by Sony. People that have played other Sony games like Dark Cloud will find the graphics and play control to be somewhat similar. However that is really where the similarities end. Hard-core Atlus fans shouldn’t bother with Dual Hearts because it is not a uber-complicated, artsy, adult RPG. Dual Hearts definitely falls into the general-audience category of game. With that said, my son and I really enjoyed the game.

In most of the reviews that I have read of Dual Hearts they compare Dual Hearts to other Atlus games or even games like Dark Cloud. This type of comparision is not really fair. Dual Hearts is more like other Nintendo games like Mario 64, than anything else. However, unlike Mario Brothers, Dual Hearts is a unique, fun and entertaining game and not based on an overdone franchise. The whole game has a very silly feel and is more concerned with solving puzzles than with combat. Even the combat is based largely on figuring out what combination of attacks will defeat the enemy than pure button mashing (though there is a fair share of button mashing).

So, what did I like about the game:

• The story line is very fun and has a good moral message. The characters are cute and the whole game is well suited as a family game. The best parts of the game are when they are trying for the over-the-top cute antics.
• The puzzles. Most family-oriented games are about beating the bad guys and finding the items. Even games geared for younger audiences fall into this trap. While I like Norrath as much as the next guy, this formula does not work for family games. Dual Hearts is about the puzzles first and combat second.
• Replay value. There are loads of secrets. Each level has a percentage and some of the puzzles are quite difficult to figure out to get all the items.
• Creativity. The whole game is very unique in character design and in levels. All the levels are in characters dreams and as such are very different from each other.

What didn’t I like

• I have to agree with some of the other reviewers on one point. The game developement team really slacked in some areas. There is frequent polygon blurring, which can get quite annoying on some levels. Also some of the more creative levels really push the PS2 processor and end up resulting in annoying game slowdown. One level that stuck out in my mind was the one that was all pencil-sketched. It was almost painful to play that level because the motion skipped all over the place.
• The rating. Dual Hearts would have been better suited to tone down a little of the scary imagery and violence and aimed for a G rating. My 6-year-old son loves to watch me play the game and really enjoys the characters and imagery even if some of the thematic elements are over his head. On the whole though, there is really nothing in this game worse than you will see on Saturday morning cartoons. And the overall moral message one-ups many cartoons as well.
• The ending (singular). A game like this really would have been well served to have multiple endings. Aside from the “I want to get them all” there really is no benefit to getting 100% on all the levels. It would be nice if the extra work would result in a different ending. The game also could have taken a hint from Star Ocean and done some character endings. There is a love-triangle thing that could have stood to have some resolution and would have been fun if your gameplay would result in a different result.

The verdict: Four stars (out of five). If you’re looking for a game to play with the family that won’t drive you (the parent) absolutely batty with repetitive gamepay and trite story-lines, which will also grab your childs attention, then Dual Hearts is the game for you. If you’re looking for another hardcore RPG from Atlus, go out and pick up one of the Shin Megami Tensei games.

Yawn. I’m sleepy. Stayed up late the last couple nights finishing Drakengard 2. On the whole it was a fun game. I want to get the other two endings to see if they are better than the first. The game did get weird at the end which was good, but was still not as good or weird as the first one. There were some suprising plot twists, but nothing earth shattering, well maybe earth-shattering, but oh whatever… Anyway, they didn’t even animated the ending. The first ending is rendered still pictures and one 30 second rendered clip. What a crop of poop. They obvioulsy had like no budget for the game. Static cinema scenes are so 1980’s.

In other media stuff, Boschen and Nesuko, my favorite comic, had a major plot twist/tragedy. So that’s been on my mind all weekend. I still love the comic, but I hope things will improve for the main characters. For those of you that haven’t read it, you should. It’s by far one of the best Web comics out there. Great characters and storyline with lots of action, violence and nudity.

Blech. Mondays suck. Tuesdays do too. Actually work sucks. I just want to be at home drawing. Yech.

So now that I’m officially 3 hours or so into Drakengard 2, I feel I can give it a review. My review can be summed up by this statement…whoever said that it was more of the same from the first one, never played the first one.

Drakengard 2 as a basic adventure game is pretty good. As a sequel to the original Drakengard, it is pure and total crap. Why is it not as good as the first one? Let me count the ways…

1. The graphics suck. Drakengard had awesome graphics and amazing rendered cinema scenes. The graphics in 2 are mediocre at best. The rendered scenes are good, but not on par with the first one.

2. The play control is not that good. Drakengard had awesome play control. Everything in that game was smooth and well executed. This game plays like 50 million other games.

3. Two words: jumping puzzles. I almost threw the game out last night when I had to jump from pillar to pillar to get to a door. If I wanted to do jumping quests I would play Mario Brothers. They have no place in a hack and slash with a 3D perspective (Baldur’s Gate is forgivable because of the fixed perspective).

4. Where is the plot? Okay, so I’m only 3 hours into the game, so I really shouldn’t be commenting on this yet, but I will anyway. So far the characters suck and the plot is trite. I only hope it gets better.

5. TOO MUCH TUTORIAL. I’m still getting tutorial 3 hours into the game. That’s bogus. Sure there are now all these moves and spells and potions and stuff, but really. Thats what manuals are for.

Okay, now for the good things, because there are a couple and I should be fair.
1. The flight scenes are better. The control is very responsive and the flight works well. They also didn’t try to change too much of this. The only complaint about the flight is that they seem to have removed some of the physics. In the first one you could get messed up by wind currents and stuff. There’s none of that in this, which makes it easier but less realistic. Also you can lock on in strafe which is really cool (however the strafe sucks because you cant see the enemies on the ground).

2. You can play as the secondary characters indefinitely. This is very cool. I wish I could have played the whole first game as Arioch This really breaks up the play style nicely. However, the drawback is that there are fewer weapon types as each character is associated with a type of weapon and there are only 5 characters.

The verdict. The game itself is not too bad. It’s kind of fun. However it doesn’t deserve to have the Drakengard name attached to it. Drakengard was a masterpiece this is just another game. Basically it looks like Square cut the budget to like $5 and told them to make it more of an RPG or adventure game. Now there’s puzzles and crystals to hit and potions and spells and jumping puzzles and and maps to find and mazes and towns and money and all that other standard adventure stuff which is fine for Zelda but has no place in Drakengard. Even the music, while still good, is now standard orchestrated stuff instead of the wierd techno/orchestra stuff from the first one. I can see why Square didn’t want to bother release this in America (UbiSoft published it). They shouldn’t have bothered to make the game in the first place.

Okay, so today I went online to look for reviews of the new game Drankengard 2. All of the reviews I found basically just took the occaision to trash the first Drakengard and to say that the second one sucked like the first one. Considering that Drakengard is one of my favorite games I figured I’d do a post here so that there was at least one positive review floating around on the Web. So here’s my official review of Drakengard.

In Defense of Drakengard

I am an adult and I play video games. No, I’m not in a gamers anonymous meeting. I am writing a review of one of my favorite games, Drakengard. So why did I start with that sentence? Because lately I have been feeling like the gaming industry can’t remember the two most important words of that sentence: game and adult.

In my browsing the internet I have come across many reviews trashing Drakengard. The two primary reasons for this bad review are: repetitive gameplay and unoriginal gameplay. My response to this is that these reviewers are missing the point. Drakengard was never meant to be Final Fantasy. It’s a hack-and slash. Plain and simple. Comparing it to the likes of Square’s other games simply isn’t fair. A more apt comparison would be to Baldur’s Gate or Champions of Norrath, two highly acclaimed hack-and-slash games. When comparing it to those games, Drakengard wins hands down. Why? Because it’s an adult game.

Now don’t get me wrong, I enjoy Norrath as much as the next guy (though 2 was terrible). However, my biggest complaint with Norrath and Baldur’s Gate has always been their (cough) (cough) plots, which are comprised of a few jiggling breasts and burly men, with a talking lizard thrown in for good measure. Drakengard has a plot. A sick, twisted and weird ADULT plot at that. If you can find one other game where you battle 50 foot flying babies and where one of your main characters is a crazy elf who eats children, then I will give you a cookie, maybe two.

Why would I want to play a game with a digusting plot like that? Because I’m an adult. I am bored to death with the run of the mill cutesy game with a teen rating. Sure you can find some teen games with an actual plot that aren’t necessarily cutesy (FFX). But can you find one without some cute furry creature or angsty teenager? Or how about finding a good M-rated hack-and-slash. Silent Hill or Resident Evil you say? Sure, they’re both good games, but they’re really not in the same genre. What if you want to hack at an invading army of zombie soldiers with a 7-foot sword instead of a 2×4? Or how about a warhammer, pickaxe or scythe instead of a pistol? Silent Hill or Resident Evil won’t give you that.

So again, it comes down to a comparison between games like Norrath and Drakengard. So why is Drakengard better than Norrath? Let me list the ways…

1. It’s not about pretty elves. Sure there’s an elf in it, but she eats children and is absolutely insane. Oh wait, all of the main characters are insane. Caim just wants to kill the entire empire army; Leonard just wants to die; Arioch, well I covered her all ready; Verdelet, well he’s just annoying; and Seere, he’s got a big sister is a demonic child who wants to destroy the world and dances around sining “la la la la la the watchers” in a voice that alternates between that of Momo (Xenosaga) and that of an evil radio announcer. I like Lord of the Rings as much as the next guy, but come on, it’s not all there is to fantasy.

2. The play control rocks. As much as I like Norrath, in terms of sheer playability, Drakengard beats it hand’s down. Caim is super responsive and the battle system is phenomenal. And yes, some of that is due to the fact that there aren’t 5,000 spells to cast (just 500 weapons), but it’s a hack-and-slash and you can fight people with a butcher’s knife or a hammer that’s as big as Caim. Another of my biggest complaints about Norrath is the view. The over the head view is annoying. When I’m hacking and slashing I want to be up close and personal. At least Norrath improved on this in the first-person mode, but if you introduce two players, you are back to the teeny tiny characters. And forget 4-player, it’s almost unplayable.

3. Dragons. The strafe mode in Drakengard is one of the most fun gaming experiences out there. Having trouble killing that entire army of undead soldiers? Jump on your dragon and toast them all. Sure they’ve had games where you fly on a dragon (Panzer Dragoon) and games where you fight armies (Dynasty Warriors), but combining the two is just awesome.

4. Replayability. Okay so Norrath is really good in the replayability scale, but I like Drakengard’s system better. With Drakengard, you can go back to any level you have beat, at any time. There’s no need to start the game over. Do you want to change the outcome of the plot? Go back to an earlier and do something differently and you will get a divergent plot with new levels. The only other game that I’ve seen with a setup like this is Katamari Damacy (also an awesome game, but definitely very cutesy). You see, the problem with the easy, normal, extreme settings games is that you always have to start over at the beginning and do every level. How many Norrath players absolutely detest that damn burning elf village level at the beginning? Uh huh, and how many times have you had to play it? Exactly.

So when I want to take a break from my role playing games, kick back and beat up an undead army with a dragon (without all the blood and guts being censored), I will thow in Drakengard. When I want some cooperative cheesball elf fighting I will throw in Norrath. And I’m just going to go to EB and pick up a copy of Drakengard 2 and cross my fingers that the makers of Drakengard 2 didn’t listen to all the nay-sayers too much or I’m in for some Xenosaga 2-caliber dissapointment when I get it.