DS Game Impressions - Bleach, Dragonball Z, Infinite Space, Lufia

While going through and deleting a few half-baked reviews, I ran across this one that I had completely forgotten about from a few years ago, so here it is!

My friend lent me a few DS games that I wanted to play but didn't have, so I tried them out and have collected a few impressions of them here.

Bleach: The 3rd Phantom
I know very little about Bleach, but that isn't a big issue for this game.  It is set before the events of the anime/manga so it's more of a prequel.  It's a strategy RPG like Disgaea, so I was happy to dive in and give it a try.  You move on a grid, but thankfully can attack in a square around your characters, instead of the usual "plus" pattern.  When you choose to attack an enemy, the game will show this confrontation from a different viewpoint.  It switches to a side view, and the animations for the attacks are really cool and fun to watch.  Sometimes the attacks will include a special attack, adding to the damage done.

The only thing I don't like are the skills you can use in battle.  Most cannot be used after you move, making healers almost useless.  Also, you need to equip your items to use ahead of time, which I didn't catch on to at first.  The stat and skill upgrades are nice, though.  Upgrading your weapon can give you more skills, extra power for ones you have, or other bonuses.  You need to unlock one before the next in the line can be used, so planning is essential, since I don't think you can have all of them.  The game was so fun that I bought my own copy.  Now if only they made it so it didn't write "Bleach" somewhere on every screen in the game...

Dragonball Z: Attack of the Saiyans
Brought to my attention by Mole during one of the recent podcasts [recent at the time of original writing -editor], I decided to check it out, since I am a fan of Dragonball Z and turn-based RPGs.  First off, the game looks good.  The map sprites are cool little super deformed version of the characters and the battle animations are nice to look at.  The battles themselves are turn-based (as mentioned previously), where you can attack, defend or use a skill.  Skills are powerful, but costly.  They can be upgraded with points obtained from victories and new skill can be revealed when certain skills level up.  There don't seem to be many skills to learn, and it takes awhile to get enough points to buy anything.  There's also a "sparking" meter, which is presumably used for super moves.  Until you get those (I haven't yet), the meter is pretty useless.

Story-wise, the game starts just before the martial arts tournament when the Z fighters first see Picollo Jr. (the young one).  Along the way, you take control of different characters and do various unimportant tasks.  It takes over an hour to get Goku in the part, and then fight Picollo.  After that, you resume doing unimportant things that presumably lead to the fight with Napa and Vegita.  While it's nice that they don't just rehash the show/manga plot verbatim, the things you do just don't feel special or interesting.  Also, story bits in the game seem to take longer than they should, since there is a small pause after a text bubble goes away and before characters do their emoticons.  They also do them frequently, which just made the uninteresting story bits take that much longer.  So while the game looks good and the battles are fun, the story makes the game actually kind of boring.  I don't know if I'll play it much more.

Infinite Space
This is a game that's been on my radar for awhile.  Space exploration and battles with grid-based equipping.  It sounded really fun, but the price and availability has always been a drawback.  When I started, the first thing I noticed was the graphics.  It reminded me of the Transformers DS games which kind of looked like crap.  Ugh.  Well, I can look past that, especially for an RPG, so I dove further.

It was a letdown.  The space battles are interesting, but get annoying pretty quickly.  Most things in the game are not explained well at all, adding to the frustration.  The more I played the game, the less I liked it.  Some are small gripes, like your initial target in space battles is not the ship in the front, which you actually NEED to attack first.  There are plenty of big gripes too, like the computer AI being almost perfect.  I didn't even get the melee battles, but I read about them, and it seems I dodged a bullet by not getting that far.  As sad as it is, I'm going to pass on it and save that chunk of change.  I'll happily give my friend back his copy.

Lufia
Last but not least is Lufia.  This is a series I really need to get into, since I enjoyed the original on SNES back in the day (and I still need to get my own copy of that).  I have the GBA one, and should really play more, but I wanted to give this one a try since I've seen it for pretty cheap.  First off, it is an action RPG, not a turn based, but that wouldn't be enough to deter me.  The combat is ok, but not that great.  You don't get many moves so it's not as fun as it could be.  You get a pretty effect on your attacks midway through the combo, but all they seem to do is obscure parts of the screen for no benefit.

The combat can be a bit wonky, mostly from using the d-pad to move in the 3D space (it would be perfect for the 3DS circle pad).  It's easy to get hit, and you take more damage than you might think.  This is offset by the "retry with level boost" option on the continue screen.  There's also a lot more platforming than I would have guessed, and it's about as bad as you'd suspect.  While the game is funny and doesn't really take itself seriously, it's not as fun as the old Lufias.  A bit disappointing, and fans are better off skipping this one.

Morphite (Xbox One) Review

When I first heard about Morphite, it sounded like No Man's Sky, but with a story.  It's a space exploration adventure game.  You guide Myrah and travel from planet to planet to find out the secrets of the legendary Morphite.  Plus, there are tons of extra planets that are randomly generated when you land on them.

When you first see the game, it can be a jarring experience.  I immediately thought it looked like a child colored an N64 game.  I'm not meaning that in a negative way, that was just the impression I got.  The worlds are very colorful, and not big on detail.  What they are big on is visible polygons.

The story isn't really ground breaking, but it's enough of an excuse to hop from planet to planet and battle bosses.  The story worlds are not randomly generated, and have some light puzzle solving.  My main complaint with the story is that it's trying too hard to be funny.  However, they do succeed with your robotic companion Kitcat, who I find very humorous.  Maybe I just have a weakness for sarcastic robots.

Exploration involves a lot of moving around, jumping, scanning creatures, and later on, some grappling.  There are a lot of things to scan, from plant life to creatures and even some minerals.  There are even variations of each one: strong, weak, and even rare.  Trouble is, there was little to no visual difference between them.  So, you end up running around, trying to scan anything and everything to see if it's a new one.  Little and quick creatures are also annoying to scan.  It's not the quickest scanning, and the lock-on is really bad for it.  Scanning kind of a pain, but you do need the money and rare scans.

Story locations are marked on the star maps, but on the actual planets very little is.  Objective markers would have been nice for the times in the second half of the story where I was lost and confused.  The maps in general just aren't good.  Sure, they show the outline of the land, but no detail.  Oh, and they are limited to your current elevation, meaning they change a lot when going up or down.  Ugh.

Besides scanning and jumping, you will also be shooting.  After all, not everything in the universe is friendly.  Fighting on foot is very basic.  You aim with one stick, move with the other, and shoot with the trigger.  The Left Trigger locks on.  It works slightly better than it does for scanning, so it's best not to rely on it.  Ammo can be pretty scarce.  Thankfully, the basic pistol will slowly refill to 5 shots if it runs out.  It's not a huge help when your max is 100 shots, but at least you won't be left defenseless.  Switching between the different weapons and the scanner isn't very quick, either.  While I didn't die that often (at least from health loss), you can die pretty quickly if you aren't careful.  The boss fights aren't very hard, either.

Moving in space is little more than picking a destination from a star map.  You can only go so far as you have fuel.  Fuel will regenerate over time, so it's best to hang out in a space station and do some trading, or explore a planet and do some scanning.  There are some random events while traveling too, like finding items, losing money, finding traders, and getting jumped by enemies.  Like land battles, space battles are very basic.  You are in a stationary turret, and try to aim at the enemies.  Every shot produces heat, so you don't want to shoot so much that you overheat your gun and have to wait.  There's also a dodge that you can use every few seconds to try and avoid damage.  The space battles function, but they aren't terribly exciting.

What else can you do?  Well, you can sell your scans.  Rare scans and harvested minerals can be used for various upgrades to your suit and ship.  The necessary rare scans come from similar sources.  Need heat resistance?  Get a rare scan from something in a hot environment.  It makes sense, but can be a hassle trying to track down the last few you need.  Ship improvements are just pure money, and weapon upgrades require money and mineral resources.  Minerals are gained from shooting the appropriate rocks randomly on planets.  Sometimes you find a good amount, and sometimes there is only one.  The improvements get pretty substantial though, so it's worth doing them.  I'd recommend fuel first, so you can go to farther systems much faster.

As with most games, there are problems abound in Morphite.  There are holes in the environment and strange invisible walls.  I'm betting most of these are because of the random worlds.  I've fallen through the map several times, and some even on story stages.  I've gotten stuck in the environment and on various places on planets.  Some of these can be solved by quitting to the menu.  It thankfully saves very often, but the worlds are generated when you land on them, so even if going back to the same one, it will have a different map.  One story planet kept locking up while I was trying to load it up.  My last big gripe is that I can't adjust the viewing area.  This cuts off text on all sides of my screen and just bothers me constantly.

So is Morphite just No Man's Sky with a story?  Not as much as I would have thought in the beginning.  It has a distinct visual style, and an unremarkable plot saved by a back-talkin' bot.  The randomly generated worlds can be nice, but feel too much like each other to stand out.  The shooting aspects are very basic.  Scanning everything can be fun as you try to find the rare scans you need for the next upgrade, but you will end up doing it a lot.  It's not a hard game, but does have annoying parts that keep it from being a relaxing experience.  Overall, it's worth trying, but likely won't end up being memorable.


The Good:
Many worlds to explore, upgrades to purchase, and story to uncover.

The Bad:
Lacks polish or depth in many areas.

The SaHD:
How awkward was that scene where you learn about the grapple gun?  It just sounded like a video game.  It wasn't natural at all.

(Review code for Morphite was provided by the publisher)

Rebel Galaxy (Xbox One) Review

Rebel Galaxy has headed to home consoles after its recent PC release.  The game gives you a bit of story, then quickly drops you into the action.  There is a little explanation of what to do, but not much.  The game mostly leaves you to your own devices.

I'm ok with a game not holding your hand, but I'd like some information available in the game.  Over and under tutorializing are a frequent problem in games, and Rebel Galaxy is the latter.  The basic buttons are displayed fine on the screen, but figuring out navigation, mining and other things is trial and error.  It has a very old school mentality in that regard.

The best part of the game is just how much freedom they give you.  There is a story, but you don't really have to follow it.  You can run around and fight pirates, get bounty money and do side missions.  If you are more peaceful-minded (or greedy), go mining or become a trader, buying low and selling high.  Want to run afoul of the law?  Then do missions for the pirates and attack traders.  The game does a great job of letting you earn money for upgrades in as many or few ways as you want.

At first, I didn't realize that was the point of the game.  I was trying to do the story missions, and they quickly shot up in difficulty.  I was supposed to do extra stuff to make money, and slowly upgrade my ship and weapons and tackle the story missions as I did so.  It's fine for the game to do that, I just wish I had known earlier.  While you can do many things to earn money, you will likely be doing several of them to get ahead faster.  The side missions are randomized and repeatable, so there is no way to run out.  Plus each station has several each time you visit.  In fact, each new game randomizes the galaxy names and layouts.  It's nice that each player will have a lot of unique experiences while playing, or replaying, the game.

While traveling from station to station and job to job, you will be watching your ship fly.  A lot.  It's not the most interesting thing, but you do have to pay attention.  Fights can come at almost any point, so you should be ready for combat.  The bigger threat of not paying attention is flying too close to a planet or moon, and dying.  There are things to discover floating around, so there is stuff out there.  The game almost feels too realistic, since most times you are driving/flying somewhere, there isn't too much interesting going on, and the kind of interesting you would encounter is not the kind you want to encounter.

Combat is an important part of the game, since no matter what you will be involved in some fisticuffs.  Even if you are an item runner, you will need to know some fighting to know how to get the heck out of there when trouble comes knocking.  Though it is a vital part of the game, there is little instruction on it, as mentioned in part earlier.  Each ship is outfitted with a broadside weapon.  The number of shots of each (and hence its damage) is determined by the number of ports the ship has.  The same applies to the secondary weapons, although these are sometimes less direct weapons.  You can aim turrets manually, but I only really needed that for mining.  Otherwise, they shoot fine on their own.

There is a flak cannon you can equip to deal with enemy missiles, and deal with them you will.  I didn't realize that you have to fire them yourself, so I thought they were useless.  Turns out I didn't see that there is a button for them, so they are not actually useless.  Unfortunately, they are only useful if you aren't going too fast and try to vaguely aim them at the missiles, but they do work.  You do need some way to deal with enemy artillery, since as the game progresses, large enemy ship have a ton of missiles and torpedoes that they will not hesitate to shoot at you.  A lot.

Fights can vary in difficulty pretty wildly.  Since there are no levels of enemies, it can be hard to tell if you are capable of taking out some foes until midway through the fight.  Even if a job is labelled as easier doesn't necessarily mean it is.  Once you go through a few systems, the fights become much harder.  Enemies are numerous and outfitted with arms that eat through your shields and hull.  While you can hire a mercenary, two ships versus ten requires more power or good tactics.  Unless you are really good at destroying enemies, you will likely have to run a lot of jobs to build up money to go and buy better weapons and armor to withstand each new area.

As our moon has its dark side, and there are things I don't like in Rebel Galaxy.  More than there should be.  First off, you can't resize the screen, so the edges are cut off on my TV.  Second, the game starts off pretty loud, and I'm really not a fan of the music choices.  It isn't terrible, but it's some space western-y tunes that remind me of Firefly.  I can and do turn down the music and turn off the vibration, but it has to wait until I actually load up my game to do so.  Plus, with the vibration set to 0%, I have to go in again and change it up then back to get it to recognize that it is supposed to be off any time I boot up the game.  They might be minor, but they do get annoying.

There are still a few other problems I have with the game.  The game saves whenever you leave a station.  It only tells you this if you haven't saved in a while.  There is no on-screen indicator to know that you are saving or have saved.  While you can have multiple games, each has its own solitary save file.  That I can deal with, even if I don't like it.  The freedom the game gives has its downside too.  If you aren't committed to choosing a path or pushing yourself to do things, the game can be very aimless, like all open world/sandbox games.  While the problems aren't a huge deal, they are mostly ones that could easily be fixed.  Again, these problems may be bigger or smaller to you based off your own gaming preferences.

Rebel Galaxy can be very fun.  It might look and sound boring, since between fights there is a lot of flying through space and just staring at the screen.  When you actually play it, it is oddly engaging and easy to get caught up in.  It's one of those games you can sit down and start playing, then look up at the clock and realize you've been playing it for hours.  There are a fair amount of small issues that add up to make Rebel Galaxy good instead of great.  If the game sounds or looks at all interesting to you, definitely try it out for a few hours.