Drinky Crow
Banned
Picked up Kingdom of Paradise and Legend of Heroes. I've put about an hour into Kingdom of Paradise and a little over two into Legend of Heroes.
Thankfully, the hideously foul taste of Magna Carta hasn't killed my desire for a decent RPG, and both these games seem to deliver. Brief initial impressions:
Legend of Heroes is old-school Falcom with a SERIOUS visual and usability upgrade. It's classic bighead sprites and big complicated dungeons, and the battle system feels like Lunar's but a lot flashier. There's a lot of anime talking head jabber and emoting sprites, but when you finally break away from the prologue into the meat of the game, it's pure 16-bit design goodness with a current gen polish. The frame rate is glassy smooth, and outside of initial 10 second or so spot, load times are almost non-existent save for the occasional hitch before a big spell. The art and texture work, while simple, is very pretty, and there's a lot of nice environmental effects. This is good stuff.
Kingdom of Paradise is even prettier still, and has great animation. The battles are a weird combination of Dynasty Warriors and Star Ocean, with combos you design yourself by placing scrolls into this bugei combo graph thing. I haven't really gotten into it, but MAN the fights look good, the character models are decent (despite what the atrocious boxart would have you believe), and the environments are sexy. Again, load times aren't a problem that I've noticed. Minuses? THe voice work is spotty, but I'm so shocked by having full voice in a handheld RPG that I ain't gonna complain. This game is a looker, and appears to have some interesting innovations, though we'll see.
Well, I'm impressed. The Magna Carta Episiode(tm) has been forgotten, and I'm gonna settle in for some animu fag stat wanking amusement.
Thankfully, the hideously foul taste of Magna Carta hasn't killed my desire for a decent RPG, and both these games seem to deliver. Brief initial impressions:
Legend of Heroes is old-school Falcom with a SERIOUS visual and usability upgrade. It's classic bighead sprites and big complicated dungeons, and the battle system feels like Lunar's but a lot flashier. There's a lot of anime talking head jabber and emoting sprites, but when you finally break away from the prologue into the meat of the game, it's pure 16-bit design goodness with a current gen polish. The frame rate is glassy smooth, and outside of initial 10 second or so spot, load times are almost non-existent save for the occasional hitch before a big spell. The art and texture work, while simple, is very pretty, and there's a lot of nice environmental effects. This is good stuff.
Kingdom of Paradise is even prettier still, and has great animation. The battles are a weird combination of Dynasty Warriors and Star Ocean, with combos you design yourself by placing scrolls into this bugei combo graph thing. I haven't really gotten into it, but MAN the fights look good, the character models are decent (despite what the atrocious boxart would have you believe), and the environments are sexy. Again, load times aren't a problem that I've noticed. Minuses? THe voice work is spotty, but I'm so shocked by having full voice in a handheld RPG that I ain't gonna complain. This game is a looker, and appears to have some interesting innovations, though we'll see.
Well, I'm impressed. The Magna Carta Episiode(tm) has been forgotten, and I'm gonna settle in for some animu fag stat wanking amusement.