Bravely Second: End Layer (3DS): Grinding down.

When this first one came out, I quite literally dove into buying a new handheld to try it because I knew I had some long flights and a convention to spend time with it. In my review I had more than my share of nitpicks but ultimately I left it saying that I hoped that this would be come a franchise and hoped that this would have a nice linage behind it.

Well sure enough this series did get a sequel in April of 2016. And while I was enjoying it, I eventually set it down and moved on to other games. But after working through my pile I did go back to grind out and finish. So while the game has been out for a while, I got my thoughts on it now. 

BRAVELY SECOND: END LAYER (3DS)

Bravely Second picks up two and half years after the events of the first game. Agnes for her work as a crystal vestal has become a Pope in the crystal orthodoxy and is currently brokering a peace treaty with Braev Lee, the duke of Eternia. Just as they are about to sign the accords, they are interrupted by Kaiser Oblivion.

The attack is devastating and Agnes is taken hostage and brought to the Kaiser's floating sky fortress. Yew Geneolgia is the leader of Agnes personal security detail, the Crystalgard (and our primary protagonist for this game), and looks to rally his allies and the remaining orthodoxy forces to try to take the fight to the skyhold and bring Agnes back.

The game starts pretty much in battle, which is a great way to get JRPGs going

Obviously, the story of Bravely Second is more complex than that but after we pass where I've mentioned we get into spoiler territory very quickly. I will say that this time around the story is a bit more involved and fleshed out and the previous iteration. Bravely Default was by no means a simple story line but its basis was you need to restore the 4 crystals, and if you played the previous title then you know you did that a lot.

Bravely Second follows a more traditional damsel in distress trope where Yew rallies heroes to give pursuit to a new threat. And along that path there are twists and turns, old faces and new appear along the way. It does make you replay certain segments like the last one did which is something I still found annoying, but not the same amount of times so I won't ding it too hard for that.

This is probably going to end up being a shorter review than my usual shtick because this game is a pretty stone for stone copy of the original Bravely Default, so I would basically be repeating a lot of what I said in my previous review. Much like I said before, the Bravely series is basically a classic Final Fantasy JRPG in all but name: A 60+ hour fantasy adventure with turn based combat, random encounters and exceptional music. Since this is a direct sequel, many of the characters, enemies, and bosses return to reprise their roles.

Agnes is not a primary party member this time, but she is a relevant part of the story.

But it wouldn't be a sequel if they didn't add something new to switch up the palette, so with a new set of characters naturally we get a new set of bosses. And with new bosses we get a new set of job classes to use (called Asterisks in game). Twelve new jobs in all which gives you a pretty mind bending amount of variety to what your party can do. Some of them are pretty straight forward which just allow you to plow with damaging abilities, some of them are a bit more bizarre like the Patissier which requires using items to use the special abilities. Then you get some that make old ones irrelevant like the Bishop, which basically can do everything the White Mage does but to the whole party making it vastly superior.

What I always loved about how they implement the job system in this one is you have the ability to really play around with what skills you have to min/max your characters abilities. In the late game I was basically combo the right sets of jobs and abilities to make a very damaging spell attack all the enemies up to 4 times in a row and sometimes cast twice in a single turn, basically allowing me to just rain down offense in the returning Brave/Default system. Or you could go the classic route like I did in the first game and equip a ninja with as many weapons as they can hold and charge 4 attacks in a row. There are lots of viable ways to play.

Generally the combat system hasn't changed from the previous game, but the Brave Points from the old game are now Sleep Points which are used to trigger the Bravely Second ability. What this does is expends one of these point to allow one of your characters to have a free turn to use up to 4 abilities. You have to have the available turns to spend to do them still, but the benefit is that the damage limiters are removed, so if properly set up, you can unload with an attack that can reach the millions in damage. SP however can only be charged up when you 3DS is in sleep mode, so use them sparingly or you have to spend real money to buy SP drinks. Honestly I almost never needed to use this sans one story moment.

Outside of that, really there isn't a lot of change between the two games on a mechanical level. It uses the same world map, a lot of the same dungeons that appeared in the previous game, you fight a lot of the same bosses and monsters. The "build a town" with street pass mechanic returns more or less the same way (although you can fight optional bosses from other players this time around). You could say that this game basically is more of an extension or an epilogue to Bravely Default than it is a true sequel.

Bravely Second's soundtrack is pretty good as well on top of being fully voice acted. There are lots of little cutscenes and character interactions that help flesh out the story and almost all of them were fun to listen to. The only downfall to the music is that my favorite tracks that played in this one were just songs from the first game.

While all of the characters from the previous game make a return in some fashion in Bravely Second, many of them take a back seat to new protagonists Yew and Magnolia arch. The two major plots basically revolve around these two characters: Yew's mission to rescue Agnes, and Magnolia's mission to save the Moon and defeat the massive monsters (Baals) currently attacking the planet. Basically Ringabel is the only character we kinda lose between games and good riddance. I hate the amnesiac trope.

But whats nice is that even though the old characters return, it focuses on the new characters story with the returning characters as more of a supplement. I like this better because this is what allows the universe to expand and become more interesting. The Atelier games are excellent at this because when an old character drops in, They feel like a welcome Easter egg, and doesn't affect how I feel about them from the previous game.

I think there was another controversy about censoring the girls costumes again,
Honesty guys, if a little cleavage on 3DS pixels being taken away ruins your
experience of the game? You might be picking the wrong hill to die on.

What I didn't like is the flippin' tedium that the Bravely series has now become known for. If you are truly going to play this game in its full capacity, you are expected to grind all your characters up to the max level, and go through and max out all of their job classes if you want to have the right set of abilities to really go up against the tougher bosses in the game. And sorry, even with the fast forwarding mechanics grinding is still grinding. And grinding is boring. It's the problem I always have in the Disgaea games. If you are making a boss so overpowered that its going to take me 100+ hours of grind to stand a chance, I will sooner just not do it.

Which ultimately brings me to the biggest problem that I had in Bravely Second: the game was just too easy to put down and stop playing. As you can see from the date I listed in the intro, I basically played through this game over the course of two years. I would reach a point where I didn't want to waste time grinding so I could fight and had other games to play, so I would set the DS down and literally forget about the game for months on end. That says to me the story wasn't compelling enough to keep me bolted down with the game.

When raining down with 4 meteors on one turn rips baddies a sunder. But you really
need to use the right skills, or Magic can be some of the weakest attacks in the game.

I will say that the grinding aid features such as fast-forwarding the battles and being able to turn off all the random encounters makes a welcome return and honestly I don't know why every JRPG doesn't do this. I suppose it does make final dungeons that much easier, but it also takes out the path of attrition its supposed to be for the climatic final battle. Honestly, if I am grinded out to max level, I turn off random battles and never look back.

The other thing I could talk about is how the ending of the game played out. There really is no way to explain it without spoiling it to a degree, but it does the same kinda thing Undertale did when it played around with the medium and actually addresses the player and not the characters. Technically, if you go by release dates Bravely Second did it first, but only by a few months so they were in the same dev cycle, but I will say Undertale did it better. Both great though, I love how games are starting to mess with the medium to tell their story.

Edea Lee is still best girl. Love her to death.

I did ultimately like Bravely Second but the problem between the two iterations is that Bravely Default was a fresh breath of a new IP done to homage the classic style JRPG. Bravely Second is just more of Default. As said above, it's essentially a long epilogue. They are not going be caught in the Final Fantasy catch 22: Do you change things to try to make it feel new? Or do you stick with the formula and put out a samey release? They honestly can't win either way they go with it.

That being said. I'm not unhappy with my purchase of Bravely Second. It is what it is, more of this franchise. If they make a third one I'll be getting it. But I wouldn't be surprised to see the series end here. Who knows, maybe they'll make a fancy new one for the Switch?

Lol, Baal Buster. Best job class ever.

Persona Q (3DS): Yo Dawg, I heard you like Mashups.

Alright alright, I know what you are thinking: "Oh wow, CannonMan is going to gush about how much he loves the Persona universe again. Talk about how much he loves the characters, and wishes they were his real friends. Yadda yadda blah blah." 

Damn fucking right I am. Let's do this.

PERSONA Q (3DS)

Depending on which protagonist you start with, the storyline's opening starts off around midway through the points of Persona 3 and Persona 4. For example, if you choose to play the game as Yu Narukami from Persona 4 the game opens up during the Yasogami High Culture festival, and when Yu goes to get his fortune read by Margaret at her fortune telling booth (after the group date cafe bombs), they wind up in a variant of the Velvet room, when they leave they find that an old Clocktower that has long been destroyed now stands tall.

On the Persona 3 side, Mintao Airsato (the P3 hero) has just gotten over a cold and decided to take the team into Tartarus on their mission to discover the what the dark hour is and why it appears over Gekkoukan High. At the base of Tartarus, Minato enters the Velvet room where he finds Elizabeth and Theodore. There is a disturbance, a chime of a tower bell, and the rest of the Persona 3 team finds themselves in the Velvet room as well. The elevator that holds it begins to plummet to a crash, and when they exit they find themselves at some alternate school having a culture festival.

Depending on who you picked, you search your way through a dungeon/exhibit called "You in Wonderland" try to find your way back home where you come across two mysterious students named Zen and Rei. They appear to be trapped in this bizarro school as well and they can't use personas, so they decide to join up with your team to try to escape.

As you fight your way down to the bottom of the first dungeon you get confronted by your first boss, and just before you get overwhelmed by shadows, the other team comes in for the assist. They both realize that way home must be through 2 suspiciously locked doors in the velvet room, and going through the culture festivals dungeons will unlock the locks that hold the door shut. With that, the two classes decide to work together to see this through.

Don't ask me why they felt they needed the dance poses for the assist... I have no idea.

Alright cool, seems like we have a interesting mashup of Persona's two most lovable casts of characters. That'd be great for an interesting one off. But more surprisingly to me, is that according to the developers, this game is supposed to be canon to the story. That just doesn't make sense. the Stories of P3, P4, and the 2 fighting games happen chronologically to each other, so they clearly aren't all the same ages. They also didn't know each other when they met in the fighters, so that wrecks havoc on established story.

I assume this will all be determined as the story plays out and I approach completion, but as someone who has become somewhat obsessed with this universe, its doing a pretty good job of twisting my brain around trying to figure out how this can be considered canon. I'm just hoping it doesn't end up one of those "They don't remember what happened" things at the end of it. It probably will. :(

Now, let's make no mistake here. This game isn't a single mashup. Nope, its not just the mixing of P3 and P4. In addition, its also a fusion of the Persona game franchise, and the Etrian Odyssey (a series I had never played). It mixes aspects of the two game types together so while I have familiarity with some of the aspects, others are completely brand new to me and in some cases a little disorienting.

The biggest change is that game fronted me is the dungeons. This game uses the Etrian system for dungeon crawling which is basically done on first person grid based maps. I, HATE, first person. We all know this, and I was pretty worried that it would turn me off to the game completely. I am very bad at navigating an environment in first person and more than likely will find myself getting lost.

Persona Q tries to assist this by allow you to make a map of the floor on the bottom screen of the 3DS. It gives you a myriad of options to draw walls, place icons for doors, stairs, chests, and other things like place notes that you can type for yourself. To be honest it was a tad overwhelming, and I know at least one person it sort of turned to game off for.

Ugh.

However, as I played along I realized that some of the icons you can place change automatically depending on how you discover things, and drawing the walls aren't overly important because it will at least shade the squares you have already stepped on.  So if you tend to just focus on doors and portals, and maybe chests or important events, it makes the whole thing a little easier to manage and less time consuming. Mitsuru complained to me it wasn't detailed enough but I seemed to be able to navigate it easier.

The battles are sort of a hybrid of the two games as well and that definitely threw me off. Now, I've played games that have the two rank battle formation system before, Final Fantasy IV specifically comes to mind. Easy enough, heavies up front, weak in back. But what makes it a bit more challenging is I have to remember what characters have ranged weapons and can actually deal better damage from the back rank, the game tells you but I did have to shift my lineups a bit to compensate for it.

So far, the game hasn't made me split up. But I'm leveling a bunch of people just in case they do.

Also, the weakness system changes things a bit too. Normally in a Persona you can just spam whatever elemental weakness someone has and knock everyone down, then crush a massive all out attack. Not so easy to do in Q, because most importantly hitting an enemy with an elemental weakness doesn't always knock them down. It can, but its not guaranteed. Also, if you are slick enough to get everything knocked down, you aren't promised an All-Out Attack either.

If you hit a weakness or critical on a baddie, your character's little icon will glow gold. What this does is gives them an MP free action on their next turn, so long as they haven't been hit. This allows you to maintain your assault without draining your very limited MP without the cost of the expensive casts. But on top of that, you have a chance for an All-Out Attack when people are fired up, and its more likely the more characters are. I've had it happen with at least 3 people fired up, but if you can get all 5, its pretty much guaranteed.

They have also added a feature from Etrian in the form of visible wandering bosses known as FOE's. Each map has a number of them that wander the map in specific paths or are triggered by certain events. Sometimes evading them is part of the puzzle to complete the level, and typically when you first meet them, they are significantly stronger than you are. Most of the time you will be prompted to run away from them if you get locked into an encounter. They are worth some middling experience but you will usually get a decent persona if you beat them, so its good to go back and grind them once they are easy enough.

Some FOE's can be downright infuriating, which makes them satisfying to grind later.

The game remains contained to the school they are trapped in, so there aren't a lot of  NPCs you can interact with outside of the residents of the Velvet room, so there really is no social link system in this game. There are however quests that you can do for rewards, and many of them require "taking a stroll" with your comrades which allow you to get your hilarious persona interactions from the crossing over casts. This is kind of a hit or miss.

On one hand, its great to see some of the personalities of the two casts clash, and see what you could considering the sprouting beginnings of certain characters relationships with each other. But on the other, if you have played and love both Personas 3 and 4 then you pretty much already know what character types they are, and it can make some of the events a little predictable. For example, at one point Yousuke complains about being hungry, and the team gets into the idea of a cookoff. It's a rehash of a Persona 4 joke, but now they add Fuuka to the mix, who was also a bad cook in Persona 3. You can save Yousuke by making the right decisions in prepping the meal, but it still goes bad for him like you would expect it to.

I'm a bad fan. I am so disappointing in myself about it to. As we've heard me say a billion times, one of my favorite characters in this game is Kanji Tatsumi: the tough looking, rough n' tumble, and possibly sexually confused thug with a heart of gold and passion for sewing & cute things. Part of what makes me love this character so much was Troy Baker's performance of him. As I was telling a friend how much I loved how he did in this game, I looked it up to realize that Kanji in Persona Q is actually played by Matt Mercer. But he did such an exceptional job that I didn't even notice the difference. To make matters worse? I learned that he was the voice of Kanji in Persona 4 Arena Ultimax too, and I didn't notice then either.

So this game kind of spells out for you that there are only going to be 4 dungeons for you get through. This at first kind of miffed me. Only 4 dungeons? Tartarus in Persona 3 had well over 100 floors. The TV world in Persona 4 had well over 4 dungeons, so I thought this game was going to be a 20 hour breeze. I was wrong. With just 4 dungeons my first save of the game already has well over 80 hours. Why is that? Because this game is GRIND-TASTIC. I know JRPGs have some degree of grind to them but this is ridiculous. There is no easy way to do it and I'm getting the sense you have be at level 100 to beat the game.

Kanji just wants to wuv a puppy. Quit being a baby about it Koromaru.

They added some nice features to the Velvet room in this game that make fusing personas much easier, and you have the ability to choose what skills you want to transfer over rather than just randomly trying to get them. I found this super helpful. They also added a sacrifice feature which allows you to dump 2 personas for a big XP boost for the one you are leveling. So basically you can just grind for weaker personas and use them to boost your currents, OR you can use the compendium to get similar types for a fee and get a bigger XP boost. These are great features and I hope they appear in the upcoming Persona 5.

The music in these games are so awesome. I don't know why I love it so much but I do. Every song is just some well constructed theme fitting melody, and almost every song uses almost genre of music and meshes them together into something wonderful. The P4 hero's battle music "light up the night" is this mix of Ska, Rock, Hip-hop I'd guess? And as much as I can't stand horns in my music (and trust me, I usually have a visceral reaction to ska) this theme is just perfect. I find myself listening to the boss battle music all the time just because I love the background vocals "WhooaaaYeaaaahhhhh". Persona always gets a gold star on music.

In addition to the music, the game operates in a more "chibi" style art for the characters which gives it a more cute feel to it. And I gotta tell ya, as dumb as I thought it was to start? Inside of a few cutscenes I fell completely in love with it. It felt right at home and in some scenes made the game seem even funnier, (why won't Koromaru let Kanji pet him!?). Combine this with a number of returning voices and it all falls right into step.

So what didn't I like about the game. Grind. Grind is the end all be all problem for me in this game. Yes, I understand that Etrian games have a tendency to be a bit grindy. And I know that Persona is no slouch to doing that either. But there has always been kind of a unspoken rule when it comes to JRPGs in that in the majority of them, unless there is some easy form of level grinding, typically around level 60 is when you can beat the game. Well, I'm pushing my characters past that and I'm still struggling with the last dungeon.

Zen and Rei are the only 2 characters out of place. While they fit right in, they obviously have a few secrets.

The persona level cap is always a point of annoyance for me too. It makes sense that you can't build personas past the level of your main character in the game, so that doesn't bother me all that much. But one of the features of the street pass is that you can share a persona and get ones from other people. The problem is, these are also restricted by the level despite being in your pass book. So I have like 5 different personas locked in my book that would be game changers and help me finish the game, and I can't purchase them because some of them are like 20 levels higher than me. Why bother letting me see them in the first place..

The game can actually be kind of insulting too. Through out the game there are a number of puzzles you find and have to solve. I won't lie to you, a number of them are actually pretty difficult. Hell, one of them in the later stages forced me to use fuck'n algebra to solve it. Guess what Persona Q, I passed algebra with the lowest possible D. I'm not that smart. Some of them, not all, the other characters will solve the puzzle for you. They'll be one I couldn't figure out and Naoto will just step in and do it for me. Not for the fuckin' algebra one though.

Absolutely love the little Catherine reference used in this scene.
Fun fact, the "Love is Over" end theme appears in the P4 Animated series.

The biggest problem of all though, is that I didn't finish it. I couldn't finish it. Some people love the grind of games, I don't. I want a fun experience that will take up a great amount of time with a good story to go with it. If its designed well and the music is great, so much the better. And while Persona Q seemingly has all the intangibles that would make me give this game a fantastic rating, I hesitate to do so. Why? Because I got bored, and boredom is the kiss o' friggen death in a video game. I've gone on and on this point before, but if I hit the point in the game where I become bored with it, I move on. It's that simple.

I am going to eventually come back to this, but I have to say the amount of excessive grind really took the wind out of my sails personally. But if you are a fan of JRPGs and more specifically the Persona universe then this game is going to be right up your alley. It made me laugh on more than on occasion, the battle system is and interesting hybrid, the music is fun, the puzzles are hard, and I certainly dropped a huge chunk of time on it.

Reviewers have been going batty for this game and giving it scores of 8's, 9's, and I have even seen a few 10s. While I think perfect scores are a bit high for this one, the rest I would say is pretty accurate. While perhaps not the best Persona game I've played, Persona Q: The Shadow of the Labyrinth is a very welcome edition and hold over till the release of Persona 5. I would give this a strong recommendation to any 3DS owner.

And like all persona games, Ken rides the bench.
Because he sucks. 

Bravely Default: Remember when JRPGs were great? Square Remembers

So I mentioned this one in a review a few weeks back. I had my big summer vacation planned for this year to travel down to Austin for RTX. At this point in my life I consider myself to be a fairly seasoned con-goer. I've got a number of ohayocons under my belt, and have also been to a very crowded PAX East. So I knew two things for sure going in. I knew I would have some long travel ahead, and I knew I'd be spending time in line.

I sort of fell out of touch with handheld gaming for a while. Have a wave 1 DS Lite and a launch PSP. They pretty much provided all I needed in the way of handheld gaming. But as new iterations of handhelds came out, close to my trip I started hearing rumblings of a off shot game put out by Square Enix that took the world by surprise. It being heralded it as the Final Fantasy game we've all been waiting for. Well, hearing things like that piqued my interest. So after years of not using handhelds, I caved and got a 3DS specifically to play...

BRAVELY DEFAULT:(3DS)

The tale of Bravely Default weaves together the travels of four characters from across Luxendarc. Our main protagonist Agnes is a vestal to the crystal of wind, seeking to restore the power of the crystals in the hopes of stopping the decline of the world. Tiz, a country bumpkin who sees his whole village swallowed up by a massive sinkhole resulting from the decline of the crystals power. Ringabel, our resident womanizing amnesiac (who is a total douche in my opinion). And finally Edea, The daughter of the Grand Marshall of the Duchy of Eternia. 

Despite the 4 of them each having a difference of beginnings, they all end up walking along the same path. They travel across Luxendarc to each of the realms crystals in the hopes of reactivating their power, and hopefully restoring balance to the world. But the Duchy of Eternia sees the dependency of the crystals as a curse, and are out to stop Agnes in her quest. 

Ringabel, Agnes, Tiz, and Edea 

This is another one of those stories I kind of had to gloss over for the intro paragraphs because I don't really want to play spoiler. But did any of those story elements kinda stick out in your head? Four different crystals across the world corresponding to the for cardinal elements? A world in decline because of the crystals power? A warring empire looking to control the crystals? A ragtag band of hero's with at least one or more nobles? This is Final Fantasy 101, and has basically been the stories of FF's 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, and to a lesser degree 12. So anyone who's familiar with classic Final Fantasy is going to find these story elements pretty familiar.

But that isn't the only thing that rings familiar. Although all the character models and designs are original to the game, but if you ever played the Final Fantasy III or IV remakes on the DS, you'll note that the visual style of the characters looks remarkably familiar to those iterations. But I mean, alright, maybe it uses the same artists, and stories are kinda similar, and they came from the same company. That doesn't mean they are same thing, right?

Normally I would agree, but those are not the only comparisons. All of the spell names are practically the same from their FF counterparts, It functions with pretty much the exact same job system (at least that I remember) from Final Fantasy 3 and 5. Jobs that similarly to previous FF games had and many of them with the same names and features, nearly every aspect of this game calls back to those classic JRPGs from the NES and SNES eras, and I honestly couldn't be happier about it.

While I'm never crazy about the Knight class, 2 handing a weapon does big damage
And is a handy skill to unlock early. I find big damage is better than the shield defense.

The battle system of this game also remains classic, but has some of its own tricks to make it original. Namely, the Brave and Default system. These really are clever names for point system. Each round, a character and enemy gets one action a turn, and when you use an action, it spends that point. Simple right? However, you can choose to default (ie: defend) for a round. You take reduced damage but you store up a battle point when you do so. you can store them up to 3.

Once you are ready to really go on the offensive you can "brave" to spend these additional points and have that character take an additional turn. so with a full stack of points, you can unload up to 4 attacks with each character (since you can dip into the negatives when you brave). So on certain bosses, you can really fire off a massive assault for big damage. Or, if you are confident you can win quickly, you can brave 4 times and bring yourself down to -3 or -4 at the end of the turn. This is a gamble though since if you don't kill off all the baddies you are then vulnerable for 3 or 4 rounds of attacks.

And this game will quickly, and I mean QUICKLY, let you know this isn't baby's first JRPG. I am barely halfway though the game and the bosses I have encountered very quickly let me know that haphazard strategy will result in a game over screen. So for most of the regular battles you can tear through fine, but you definitely need to use the Brave and Default system smartly if you are going to beat this game.

You also have conditions for special moves you can do that hinge on the weapon type you are currently using. If you fulfill them, it allows you to fire off a special for big damage. They also can be customized to be more effective on a specific enemy type, elemental, and inflict status effects. On top of that, while that characters theme is playing, the party receives bonus effects as well, so a well placed special with a stockpile of BP can quickly turn the tide of battle.

There are a bunch wonderful additions that I love and wish Square Enix would have incorporated sooner and in more of their games. One is the classic auto-fight. I love this feature because it basically remembers the last set of actions you used for that character so if you are in an area with certain baddies you and set your attacks properly with the proper amount of braves, tap Y to go into auto, and then just walk the world map and the game will take care of those for you. Its better than Normal because usually auto-fight is just physical attacks. Setting up to remember specific actions makes clearing out randoms simple.

It also doesn't need to be an arduous process either, because if you tap left or right on the d-pad, you can increase or decrease the speed of the battle. So if you are traveling to a specific point and wanna save time, you can just set the battle speed to highest and have your auto fight commands set, and the tedious random battles can be over in a flash. Excellent feature and I wish this was standard in JRPGs.

But what if we step into a cave and half way through we find out we are not ready for it?. We clearly don't want to die but have no teleport stones (which you should, you flippin idiot)? No problem. In the configure menus, you can also set the likelihood of getting into random battles by increments of 50%. So you can adjust it to have half the battles happen, or even none (but you gain no EXP that way). Inversely, say you want to grind some fights to get more xp or increase your job ranks. All you have to do is crank the encounter rate up to 100% extra and you will be in a fight every few steps. This is incredibly handy.

The game has a pretty awesome soundtrack as well. This was one of the things I would see articles often brag about when they wrote about the game. It didn't take me long to see why. I don't know exactly how long ago this started but its becoming common enough in RPGs that I've noticed it as a trend, but a lot of games seem to be blending the classical sounding style you usually hear in a game like this, and mixing it with contemporary rock. The results are exceptional and they really help sell the battle. I've seen Final Fantasy and the Atelier series do this, and frankly I hope this becomes standard practice. It's fantastic.

Now as I tend to say, no game ever manages to get a perfect score from me and even those who make an outstanding case are no exception to the rule. This includes Bravely Default.  As I have previously mentioned, there are points in the game where the difficulty really ratchets up. Normally I am ok with a steeper difficulty curve, but there are points in this game where it feels the boss for an area is grossly overpowered to the baddies I have been thrashing going up to it.

On more than one occasion if not every other dungeon, I will be happily tromping my way through a dungeon mashing through all the fodder baddies it throws at me. I get the end of the dungeon where I get treated a cutscene (typically featuring Edea or Agnes yelling at someone), boss fight starts and inside of 3 or 4 rounds of combat I get completely steamrolled. Even at max level, there are bosses who just wail on me. It can be frustrating and it sort of messes up the difficulty curve. I'm told it gets murderous on difficulties higher than normal but I haven't gone higher yet. But the fact that I'm at level 99 and still getting creamed by bosses on normal says something

While I love the music in this game, the voice acting I am a little more meh about. I try to be objective when I first hear character voices, because sometimes they start off wonky and get better. There are lots of examples of this: Any Star Ocean game, Infinite Undiscovery, a handful of Tales characters, Blue Dragon, and the list goes on. While on the whole I like the voices of these characters, when Edea or Agnes gets worked up it makes me wince a bit. I've gotten more used to them as the game went on. Few games have 100% peerless voice acting, so this one doesn't rub me too badly.

But since I'm on the topic of characters, Ringabel and Tiz suck. I'm only in chapter 6 or 7 or so at time but so far neither of them have once had the slightest bit of interesting dialog to me. Tiz has a very powerful beginning that sort of starts him on the hero's quest but then immediately takes a backseat to the girls, who have actual important shit going on like saving the world from destruction, or committing high treason to your country. I guess his kind of generic facade is meant to be so the player projects themselves to him, but honestly I didn't feel it, nor have I cared yet.

Ringabel is a womanizing amnesiac: Fucking, Snore. Its been done a million times, and does nothing to make me care about that character.  The story finally seems to be starting to address who he is, but by this point I already don't care. Trying not to play the spoiler here but when certain events within the world start to take place, it starts to paint a pretty clear picture about who he is/used to be. So when he finally made the big reveal, it was promptly met with a "yeah no shit, I figured that out already when you SHOWED ME 10 hours before".

Then there really has been an annoying vagueness to the motivations of the antagonists too as I play this game. To unlock each of the jobs, you fight a respective boss with that job. And a lot of the pre fight conversations are "We need to stop the wind vestal, she'll {Do this/Cause this}" to which the heroes defiantly ask what they mean by that, and then all of them just respond by saying they are children or the don't understand. No fucking shit assholes, that's why we keep asking what the fuck is going on! But to make matters worse, not only do you have to refight the bosses at some point, but the game is now making me do it TWICE and seems to make me do it again, and I'm still not learning anything.

Now I heard the back half of the game can be grindy, but this is just ridiculous. Even with max level and encounters turned off, I still find myself getting bored retracing my steps a 3rd time to refight the bosses I've already done twice already. I hope the story payoff gets better because right now its taking a lot of wind out of my sails, and sadly when that happens, I put games down. Thankfully, while the grind is getting irritating, the end of the story is in sight so hopefully I can push through it.

I appreciate that there are a lot of different job options to pick from in the game, it just would have been nice if any of them were worth a shit. Oh sure, a lot of them sound really interesting in concept but after a while, like most job systems, I find myself just relegating to the regular heavy hitting classes and maybe a healer. between a dual wielding swordmaster (read samurai), pirate, valkyrie and a magic user with white magic, everything else ends up being next to use useless. Equip everything with Dual Wield, Multi-task, and Acrobatics, and your three physical fighters can mow down groups with crescent moon, or wail on a single target with 4 braves and 8+ attacks for massive damage.  Salve-Maker? Pfft, not in this lifetime.

Lastly, is the insane price of the bonus items you get from the street pass feature. You can rebuild the town destroyed at the beginning of the game, and the way you do that is by collecting street passes and then putting those people to work to unlock things over time. I was fortunate enough to be at a gamer and Internet convention, so I racked up 400+ passes pretty easily. But that still doesn't change that some of the items (such as the gold and growth eggs for grinding) cost like 2 and 5 million respectively. Once you get them farming is a snap but its still highly annoying to get to that stage to start.

Now, a lot of these seem like nitpicks and maybe they are, but I will say it hasn't deterred me from trying to finish this game yet. Reviews weren't kidding, Bravely Default truly is a Final Fantasy title in all but name. And not this Final Fantasy XIII cyber-punk emotionally stoic garbage we've been being shoveled into our faces for the past five years. No, this is straight up SNES/PS1 quality JRPG classic and god am I glad to see it. And I am not the only one either, the world was happy to see it as marked by its sales numbers.

The others who were happy were the people at Square-Enix, who seemed absolutely befuddled by the success of this game. Even to the point where they openly said "huh, we didn't think the rest of the world liked JRPGS." You colossal fucking idiots. YOU BUILT YOUR FUCKING EMPIRE ON JRPGS, OF COURSE PEOPLE LIKE THEM. So now Squeenix is reevaluating their direction and appear to be going back to what they do best and that is a good thing for gamers like me. (Hopefully Sega takes the hint and localizes the last fucking Yakuza games already.)

Believe the hype on this one. Bravely Default was everything I wanted it to be. It certainly has some faults and didn't merit paying for an entirely new system for just one game, but it did motivate me enough to get back into the handheld market. I've got 70+ logged in the game already and still have a good portion of the game to go. At time of writing I am currently in chapter 7 and I think I am making my final push to the end. Here's hoping this marks the start of a long and successful new IP, even if its walking the path of its predecessor to the letter. Highly Recommended.

See Legend of Zelda series? You can make a game identical to what you are and call it something different, and it feels new. Mix shit up a bit.

Theatrhythm Final Fantasy: A score of high notes.

So since February, I had paid for and been planning for a trip to RTX in Austin Texas. I had a lot of things I would like to do and places I wanted to visit, but having been to multiple Ohayocons and a PAX East, I feel I was somewhat prepared for what to expect. So despite the fun I was expecting, I knew there would be waiting in lines, and I knew there would be waiting at airports.

I have been eyeing Bravely Default for a while, and wanted to play it greatly, but I didn't want to start it before my trip. So I had this new 3DS XL and needed something to play on it. And then I remembered that trip to PAX east, I tried out an unreleased game by Square Enix. It mixed two things I liked, and seemed to be a good fit. But would it hold over? We shall see. 

THEATRHYTHM: FINAL FANTASY(3DS)

So yeah, story. This is a rhythm game so there really isn't one per say.  It would akin it sort of to Final Fantasy Dissidia: The world is in balance because of the two gods Cosmos and Chaos, and between them is rhythm, a crystal essence that controls music. Chaos as dispersed its power so Cosmos assembles heroes from the various Final Fantasy universes to collect Rhythmia to restore the crystals power.

And that's it. That is literally the entire extent of the story. And I suppose for a rhythm game that is all I can really expect. Dance Dance Revolution isn't exactly known for its stirring narrative. Bust a Groove never weaved an epic tale within the lyrics of the songs. Guitar Hero had a handful of cutscenes that were forgotten after about as long as it took to view them. So really, from a story perspective I got about what I expected out of this.

Not the cute chibi versions. Couldn't find a decent picture to use. Sue me.

No, Theatrhythm is about the celebration that is the Final Fantasy (FF) music catalog. And honesty I can't think of a better selection of soundtracks to make a rhythm game. I have spent many a workday at the various libraries I've worked at listening to Final Fantasy radio stations, as there practically isn't a bad song. I was very eager to jump headfirst into this one.

So the game starts off with a brief little prologue basically explaining the story as I just have, then it takes you to a screen where you assemble your FF dream team from a selection of one hero from each FF game. So naturally My team leader was quickly locked in as Terra from Final Fantasy VI (because 6 is best and if you disagree you are wrong, fuck you). I balanced out the rest of the team with a combination of Cloud, Tidus, and ugh... Lightning, because it provided me the most solid balance of stats across the board. Felt this was the best way to go because I really didn't know what to expect.

There are a few different game modes, but talking about one of them will really give you the biggest gist of the game. When you fire the game up, you can go to Series mode and how this works is you scroll through the list of the Final Fantasy Anthology going from one to thirteen. In it, you will play a simple prelude and epilogue song. These are optional but if you tap along with the beat you earn Rhythmia which is used to unlock things. Once done with that, you take on the 3 game types for that FF in no particular order.

Now the play is the same for all three, its just how they are delivered is what changes. So lets say I play Final Fantasy IV. I might start off with a Field Music Stage (FMS) and play "Terra's Theme", which is usually the overworld song. There is a circle which indicates where I hit the notes, and note icon's can be tapped, held, or swiped based on the direction of the arrow. It is pretty straight forward, but in FMS mode when you are holding a note, you might need to drag the circle up and down the line to maintain the critical rating (perfect). Sometimes you might have to swipe a direction at the end of a hold, but generally it follows a singular path. Of the three play styles, I find this one easiest.

Then you might move into "The Decisive Battle" in the Battle Music Stage (BMS). These are are the most fun to play because its where you are going to find all the fast, upbeat, and fun battle music from the FF universe. In this game mode, the note lines are broken up between the 4 heroes you have selected. the notes each fly at the hero and you need to tap, hold and swipe as they arrive. Essentially the same thing as the FMS but your eyes need to jump around the screen a bit more to keep up. These are my favorite songs to play.

Then we have the Event Music Stage (EMS) where you will be treated to a cinematic of CG animation or moments from the game while you try to play "Celes' Theme". I find this one to be tricky because besides things moving around in the background, instead of having the single line, the timing circle actually moves around the the screen along a singular path and you need to tap, hold, and swipe as it crosses the notes, and not vice versa. I find this to be the trickiest of the 3 game types because I never, EVER, can get the timing of the swipes down correctly and it only seems to get harder as the game gets faster.

I botch the arrows every time.

Once completed, you are treated to the game's ending theme where you can tap along as you did at the start. once you complete all five you total rythmia is tallied and added to your running total. In between the 3 major stages of the game you earn experience like you would a traditional final fantasy game and your characters level up and get increased stats and abilities. But what for? I'm glad you asked.

For the most part, the XP system seems to be fairly set with the exception of the BMS stages. In this mode, defeating monsters by performing the song well get you a pretty substantial boost of experience at the end of the level. As your characters grow stronger, they gain more HP to allow you to mess up more times during the song. Your increased stats also allow you to hit harder, which allows you to dispatch more enemies, thus allowing more experience to be earned.

And as you level, you unlock more abilities. Some of these are passive and take place within certain game modes, such as during the FMSs. Others are active, and are only triggered when certain stipulations take place such as hitting 20 goods on the tap icons, or when the 2nd monster comes out, or when you encounter a boss type monster. As you level up you get more Battle Points to allow you to equip better version of the abilities or more of them which eventually allows you dispatch even more. So naturally you want to use them, right?

Not so fast. Unfortunately using these items or abilities come at a cost, and if you are playing a music game, you will inevitably be a stickler for perfection. If you refuse to equip any items or abilities and go in equipped with nothing, this gives you a special stoic bonus at the end of each stage of like 200,000 points. You NEED these points if you intend to get an SS or SSS rank at the end of any stage you play. It is impossible to get higher than an S with items equipped, so equip or unequip accordingly for what it is you are trying finish.

Once you go through a round of those modes, you can play the songs again individually in the games challenge mode. This is typically where you will grind and play your favorite songs. But there is also a mode called Chaos Shrine, where you will play "dark notes" of the songs in the game. These are usually 2 different types of stages and the notes in the songs are switched up. They are usually harder, and the bosses in these areas drop better rewards, such as crystal shards. By collecting these you can unlock new characters from the various games, (I'm gunning for you Rydia). There is also a multiplayer mode but as we established: I have no friends and thus, didn't play that mode.

There are also songs to unlock as you play through, such as the "Blinded by the Light" from FF13 or "Dancing Mad" from FF6. This gives me a reason to keep playing so I am happy about that. There is also a large myriad of DLC songs to download for a buck a piece, but I intend to hold off on that since an updated release of this game will be coming out in September in Curtain Call.

The entire game is presented in this kind of cutesy chibi style of itself where all of the characters sort of resemble doll versions of themselves, or perhaps like the Tarutaru from Final Fantasy 11. It is a cutesy design and obviously because of the whole tone and theme of the game not meant to be taken seriously so it fits well. And it was cool to see some of the more notable baddies from the various universes all get a cartoony appearance in the BMS stages.

There really isn't a whole lot more that I can say about this. Its a music game that is functional, fun, and effective. It throws in some interesting RPG nuances that hearken back to the genre it draws from, it borrows hits from the incredible score from this timeless set of games with soon to be much more in the coming months. It's really turned out to be pretty much everything in wanted for a game of this kind.

Rydia would whip your fucking ass, Cloud. She didn't pussy ache about her
village getting destroyed nearly as long as you did. 

If I had to come up with complaints for it, I can only think of a few. One, the menus are kind of clunky an annoying. The entire game is navigated from the touch screen and nowhere else. which I guess is fine for play control, but when I am navigating the menus there should be no reason I couldn't move things along with the D-pad and the A buttons, that has been effective since video games. So I don't know why every time someone designs a new controller they need to fuck with what already works. Knock it off.

In addition to that, and I am not sure if this is a problem with my 3DS or the system as a whole, but the touch screen doesn't appear to be a sensitive as my original DS Lite was. I have only recently noticed it but if I barely tap the screen it doesn't seem like it registers as much as if I give it a more pressured tap. Not sure on that one. It might just be my system or something I just noticed but it hasn't really played a big factor until just recently.

And as I vented, DLC is like a buck a song and there is WELL over 50 different DLC songs that have come out, and additional characters as well. It sucks for the people who purchased this game at launch, I am fortunate because the better version will be coming out in a few months, just about after I start to complete this one so that is a pretty limited complaint to me.

As I have said previously before, when it comes to a new system I try to come up with at least 7 games that I know I would like to play before I buy them. And if I get a long play through out of them, then so much the better. When I was considered getting myself a 3DS, this was one of the first games that came to mind as a must have, if not top 3.

I am very happy to say that the game delivered on pretty much every front that I'm asking for. It may not have had every song I was looking to play but I haven't unlocked everything and I know I have about 100 more songs upcoming in the Theatrhythm: Curtain Call is sure to re-spark my interest in the game. But really? It was hard for me hate anything about this. It's Final Fantasy, it's a rhythm game, its pick up and play, its got great song selection, and its fun. I am doing a great job of raging on these blogs. >:|

6, 10, 4, 7, 9, Tactics, 1, 5, 10-2, 13-3, 8, Tactics advance, Mystic quest, 12, 13-2, 13, 3, and 2.

(of the ones I played, In that order.)

Guest Review: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies(3DS): A return to all that is Wright

Hey everyone. I'm taking a back seat this time because this is game I really wanted to play and review, but sadly I do not own a 3DS. Thankfully a friend of Rage Quitter, the lovely and talented GoatMaiden, was more than willing to step up for this one. -- CannonMan

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The phrase “Familiar yet Fantastic” was used on this very blog by Rage Quitter’s own CannonMan to describe the 13th entry in the “Tales” game series (Tales of Xillia.) I can think of no better way to describe the most recent Ace Attorney game (which would be #5 if you don’t count Investigations.)

Here we are once again, settling in with old friends and ready to experience the predictable-yet-twisted world of Phoenix Wright: art student-turned lawyer turned-bum-turned-adopted father-turned lawyer again. Get ready for more spunky sidekicks, more accusations scrawled in blood, more torturous childhood memories and questionable law tactics… I say, bring it on!

ACE ATTORNEY: DUAL DESTINIES(3DS) 

This is the box art you won’t see here *

“HOLD IT!” - FOR THOSE NEW TO THE SERIES

This long-running saga debuted back in 2001 in Japan with the Game Boy Advance game Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (released for the DS in North American in 2005) and followed through Ace Attorney: Justice for All, Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations and Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney. The first three games were eventually ported to the 3DS, phones, WiiWare etc. (everything except for Android devices it seems.) 

In the first game, spiky-haired rookie attorney Phoenix Wright (age 25), mentored by the buxom Mia Fey, heads into the courtroom to defend his first client. Phoenix takes on Mia’s little sister Maya, a spirit medium in training, as his assistant while battling the “demon prosecutor” and his ultimate Great Rival, Miles Edgeworth. Set in a parallel, slightly futuristic, vaguely Japanese universe, the games follow their own rules about 80% of the time (i.e. statutes of limitations are all over the place.)

Original "8-bit excuse for an attorney" Phoenix in Trials and Tribulations

(screen shot from http://www.gamesradar.com/ )

In all but Apollo Justice, where budding lawyer Apollo takes over as Wright’s protegee, Phoenix must investigate crime scenes, collect and examine evidence, interrogate witnesses, and gather character information from those around him to present his case before the unbiased if scatterbrained Judge. It’s Lawyer Sim meets point-and-click adventuring with a distinctly quirky twist. You’re not driving a car (Phoenix doesn’t even have a drivers license), shooting targets, jumping from floating platforms or finding your way through mazes in Ace Attorney games. You’re battling your inner doubts, talking to characters with names like Will Powers and Wendy Oldbag, stylus tapping your way to the ultimate truth, and eventually using various other-worldly tools such as the Magatama--a necklace Phoenix receives from Maya-- to determine if characters are hiding information.

This is a talky game, bordering on a visual novel amount of text. A goofy game to be sure, even when dealing with gruesome murders and the people who work to cover up their crimes (the dialog is hilarious for any number of reasons, from puns to odd translations to reflexive narrative), but one that relies on a player to pay attention to and care about the characters involved.

Phoenix, who you control most of the time, is, like many 20-somethings, sarcastic but unsure of himself. When you screw something up, it is he who takes the punishment, and to make this an effective deterrent, you gotta kinda side with the guy and want him to succeed. Also, so many characters reoccur in following games that it would be a wasted effort if you didn’t have some sort of emotional connection to them. 

There are two other games included in the series: Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth released in 2010 and a second Investigations game released only in Japan in 2011. These two games differ from the previous in that 1.) Miles Edgeworth is the main character and 2.) the character sprites are at times shown from a third person full-length perspective, as when you are investigating a crime scene. Investigations 1 was much shorter and did not sell as well as the former four games, and thus the second Investigation game was never released in North America.

“NOT SO FAST!” – THE LEAD UP TO GAME 5

I have been an aficionado of all the Ace Attorney crew for years. I have hung on every rumor of new games coming to the US. I even signed the petition for Investigations 2 to be translated, even though the first one struck me as overly easy (yet still enjoyable since I heart Miles Edgeworth.) I bought the soundtracks. I played all the Professor Layton puzzle games after hearing that a Phoenix Wright crossover, with the original developer of the Ace Attorney games Shu Takumi heavily involved, was in the works.

However, Takumi made clear he was not planning on being involved with any 5th game in the series since he felt the original series had gone to the point he wanted it to, story-wise.

Like hell. Without giving too much away, this is how Phoenix Wright appears in Apollo Justice:

Really Takumi-san, how can you leave us with THIS as our final parting image of

the hitherto venerated Comeback King?!

So when, two years ago, I heard that Ace Attorney 5 was in development for the 3DS, with an actual playable demo at the Tokyo Game Show, shit got real.

That Christmas I got a 3DS.

After that, game news developed fairly quickly (well, relative to the five years between the original notion that a 5th game might be a possibility and the actual announcement.) The first promo art showed Wright back in a suit thank god, and made it clear he would be a central if not the main character. It didn’t show any other characters from past games, but instead a girl in yellow appeared to be a new associate.

Ga. Where’s Maya?

“Another chick sidekick?” I thought. Beyond Maya, there’s been Pearl-Maya’s cousin, Trucy-Phoenix’s adopted daughter, Ema-a burgeoning forensics expert (who appeared at different ages through a number of games) and Kay (who only appears in the Investigations games).

Still, last October, I decided to give her a try and downloaded Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies.

Cute little chibi Apollo and Athena only appear on the start up screen (photo by Sarah B.)

“TAKE THAT!” – PLAY THROUGH

Okay, so what is it actually like to play the freakin’ game?

Even with the addition of 3D, not a lot has changed. Phoenix returns as a playable character, older, a little wiser, and brings on new recruit Athena. Being set only a year time-wise from the last game, Apollo isn’t all that different. He has a quarter-life crisis in this game and gets pretty banged up along the way, which he deals with astonishingly well.

The point of the game is to bring about an end to Dark Age of the Law, a loosy-goosy term implying that false testimony and forged evidence have become commonplace. The public no longer trusts the legal system, and it’s up to you and your merry band of lawyers to change that (whether you do or not is still debatable.)  

The character designs are attractive and the graphics are top notch. This is the first PW game where I don’t think anyone annoyed me so much I couldn’t wait for them to die, and I chalk that up to the graphics on the 3DS. I actually played with the 3D on for a while (a much longer discussion into Nintendo’s technological tactics may be in order, but now is not the time nor place.)

A plus for me has always been the Japanese-style artwork where not everyone is or looks twelve years old. New Prosecutor Blackquill’s hawk Taka is particularly striking. Blackquill’s animations are fantastic too, but I felt he lacked personality for a guy on death row.

While the limited voice acting is pretty “meh” (Phoenix and Apollo sound almost identical) there are a bunch of anime cut scenes that really do fit seamlessly and smoothly into the overall gameplay (although most of them end with someone screaming.)

Athena really endeared herself to me. Despite some childhood traumas that are a bit of a rehash, she’s not just a clone and ends up holding her own as a member of the team. Yes, she’s young and spunky like all of Phoenix’s “girls” (as he refers to them in the game) but she speaks several languages and uses her own Mood Matrix truth-finding device instead of handing it off to Phoenix. Another reviewer noted that she makes some faces that one does not expect a heroine to make.

Are there too many gimmicks? Yeah, I think so. None of them are hard to figure out, especially if you played all the other games. But between the Magatama, Apollo’s bracelet which lets him know a witness is lying, and the Mood Matrix, we are not allowed to play with them long enough to really get to know them.

Can you like this game if you haven’t played any other PW games? You can, but I think you get so much more by knowing the back story (like where did Apollo get his bracelet, who is Pearls, etc.) 

The game is not difficult. The addition of a text backscroll, the ability to save before important moments, and the fact that guessing on the Mood Matrix isn’t punished made getting stuck almost impossible. It’s great for playing 30 minutes here or there, so in that way, it is the epitome of a casual game. To use the visual novel as an illustration again, it’s like reading a book (though I challenge anyone to name an example in literature that is as unique and humorous.) It definitely slaked my thirst for the time being. According to a report, both Takumi and the team from Dual Destinies are working on new releases so we shall see what news comes in 2014.

Phoenix returns (photo from http://cubed3.com )

OBJECTION! (JUST A FEW*, AND THEY’RE MINOR)

Note that the game is only available as a digital download and cost $29.99 (there is a DLC case available for $5.99 which is money well spent.) I would’ve much rather had a physical copy, but beggars can’t be choosers.

I didn’t miss it, but reviewers have pointed out that the Jurist System introduced in Apollo Justice isn’t present in Dual Destinies. Apparently the attempt to bring jury trials back failed.

I was excited that the composer of “Gyakuten Meets Orchestra” and “Turnabout Jazz Soul”, two of my favorite soundtracks inspired by the games, was onboard for Dual Destinies, but none of the songs on initial playthrough were that memorable. The noise the Mood Matrix makes is really annoying.

Odd to me, the game is rated M for mature. I failed to see any more “blood, violence, suggestive themes or language” in this game over the others, which have been rated T. Perhaps because I’ve also been playing Zero Escape: Virtues Last Reward which has more shocking deaths and over the top swearing, the fact that Phoenix isn’t dropping F-bombs everywhere struck me as quaint. There’s a scene of violence involving a child, and another scene has a woman demanding that she wanted more than a professional relationship with another woman she worked with (not by far the first such overtone in the series.) Others lament that Capcom just wants Ace Attorney to fail in the US, and that an M rating is the kiss of death for a game like this. I haven’t been able to find any statistics on North American downloads so I guess the jury is still out on this one (hur hur).  

By Sarah B.

(images from http://aceattorney.wikia.com/ unless otherwise noted)

For more work from GoatMaiden, you can read about her adventures at her two blogs http://bellethecat.blogspot.com/ and http://goatmaiden.blogspot.com/.