Robot Claw

…but more on that later.

Right now lets talk about the amazing wave of great RPGs that have recently been released for the DS. Of course I have them all, and a large pile of them have accrued on my shelf waiting to be played. Here’s a whole bunch of words on this nothing topic!

I have ‘finished’ Avalon Code. The game gets points for originality, but sadly detracts more points for a very clumsy UI. Nice graphics though. The (inevitable?) sequel should be much better. Chrono Trigger is a remake of the SNES classic, and sits on my shelf waiting to be played. I know I will love it (the game is a classic for a reason), but when will I get to it?

Blue Dragon is waiting to be played – it’s a RTS based on the Akira Toriyama created franchise first seen as an XBox 360 game. Thegame on the left is an unusual sort-of-like-lemmings/sort-of-like-Lost-Vikings strategy game based on the mascot for a Japanese phone company??! However did it get released in the US? Who knows, but it’s a fun little game.

The game at left is the closest a game could actually get to a Wizardry homage without violating copyright. Which naturally means it’s one of the best games I have played in years! It even has a ‘classic’ wireframe black & white graphics mode! Highly recommended! Fire Emblem is another of my waiting-to-be-played titles, and since the franchise is solid I expect a fun game.

FF:CC2 is coming to Japan with me – it is a roguelike set in the Crystal Chronicles world. The first in the series (on the DS, called Ring Of Fates) was very good and this one should be even better. The game on the right comes out just prior to our trip, from the same developers who did Yggdra Union, and promises to be one of the most complex strategy RPGs yet seen for the DS. In other words – my kind of game!

The game on the left is an unabashed Animal Crossing (meets Harry Potter?) DS game that just came out (KLS is going to play it first). The one on the right is a more complex followup to Puzzle Quest that after an hour or so of play is hands down better than the disappointing Puzzle Quest Galactrix (which was, shamefully, an uncompiled Lua script running emulated on the DS!!)

Haven’t played either (again, on my shelf). I expect the game on the left (another unlikely Japanese import) to be better than the one on the right…

I played both SRW games for GBA and they were grand. The DS version looks like more of the same only bigger, brighter and (assumedly) better? The last game on this list, Valkyrie Profile, is the latest in one of my favourite franchises of all time. I have high hopes for that one, to say the very least 🙂

This entry was posted on Friday, May 15th, 2009 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.