2006/09/27

Melty Blood ~ Act Cadenza

Based on the game and anime series Lunar Legend Tsukihime, Melty Blood is a one-on-one beat 'em game series that's been around for a while if I'm not mistaken, and there's even a new arcade game coming out based on this game.

The first thing you'll definately notice about the game is the 2D graphics seem similar to Guilty Gear or Street Fighter Alpha, with it's anime style look and wild combo attacks that can have the characters flying all over the screen. The characters look detailed like their anime likenesses, but their animations do seem a bit stiff, and the character sprites also seem a little small. And despite the majority female cast, there's almost zero fan service as far as that goes. The girls are all fully clothed like everyday people should be ^_^.
The voice acting is good (it is Japanese afterall), though it does get repetative after a while, and the background music is ok as well.
Gameplay is rather easy to get into since everyone seems to have the same joystick/button motions to pull of their special moves and supers. The only problem of course is that using the standard PS2 analog controller can blister up your fingers rather quickly.
There's incentive to play through the single player modes multiple times to unlock all the hidden stuff like hidden characters and character art, but whether you feel like going through essentially what feels like the same thing over and over again is up to you.
Overall: Fans of the series would definately enjoy it, as well as 2D fight fans who enjoy games like Guilty Gear. I think what would have helped make the game better would be a little more speed.

Ratings:
Graphics – 8
Sound – 8
Gameplay – 8
Lifespan – 7
Overall – 7

2006/09/21

First Impression: Yakuza

In Yakuza, play the role of Kazuma Kiryu, who takes the fall for a friend of his over the murder of a Yakuza lord and is sent to prison for it. He gets out on parole 10 years later to find things have changed and he's a marked man by his former clan members.

First thing you'll notice is that the game looks like any other Grand Theft Auto clone, with a big city to run around freely in, it's just that your on foot and not jacking cars. You run around crowded streets (like the real Japan) to get to where your going, and fight off thugs who are after your head, or punks who feel you've disrespected them by running into them on the street. There's a bit of an RPG feel to the fights, as you can level up your character with points collected from beating up bad guys and learn new moves and such.

So far the only real complaint Ihave about the gameplay is that there isn't a proper target lock option. While you can hold your position and target what's directly in front of you, it would have been nice to actually be able to target who you want to fight so you can react quicker to enemies sneaking up behind you. And of course there's the bad english voice dubbing, which really doesn't fit when using Japanese references like "aniki". They should have just stuck with the Japanese dub with english sub-titles, since the game is rated Mature anyway so anyone playing should at least be able to read.

Full review coming soon.

2006/09/11

Anime Fighter Previews

Melty Blood ~ Act Cadenza
Based on the anime series and Type-Moon PC game Lunar Legend Tsukihime, the game takes an old school approach and puts the characters from the series into a 2D fighting game, looking like Guilty Gear with it's anime-like appearance and flashy special moves.

Fighting Beauty Wulong
3D action game based on the anime series about a high-school girl trained in the martial arts and looks to improve her abilities and challenge stronger opponents. I'm pretty vague on the details of the game, so I'll have more later after playing it a bit.

2006/09/04

Second Opinion: Magna Carta: Tears of Blood

Well I FINALLY finished this one last night after taking an almost 1 month break from playing it. I can't believe I actually started playing this one around December LAST YEAR, and even it took me this long to get around to completing it with an in game time of around 92 HOURS.
There isn't really more to add from my original review last year. Other than maybe gamers could lose interest midway through like I did because of all the running back and forth you have to do throughout the game. Even when you get transport to send you somewhere, there's still a lot of walking involved to get to where you actually want to go! It doesn't help that the in game map is crap as they don't show you the whole world you traverse, but just a bit of it, so if you get lost of lose your way you waste even more time running around just so you can see which position on the map you are and how far you are from where you need to go!
Another thing to comment on is that after all the Hell you go through to finish the game, the final boss battle comes of as dissapointingly easy, and the game ending is really crappy and not worth the time you'll spend to get there. You don't even get any hidden extras or bonuses for finishing the game, unless I maybe need a faster finishing time, but I doubt I'll be playing through this from the beginning again.
Overall, I think I'd drop the overall rating for this one from a 6 to an average 5. If they can speed up the battle system, fix the map, give you controls of the in game camera, and improve on the horrendous voice acting, they could have a serious contender if they choose to make any more Magna Carta games.