Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus (Vita): It's actually about ethics in ninjitsuism.

Right, So then. I bought this Vita because I totally wanted a Vita, and not because I'm not a spineless individual with no willpower who couldn't resist the urge of a new Persona 4 spin off, even if it was a dancing game.  But regardless of what ever sound reasoning I had used to purchase the system, I now own one and needed to buy some games for it.

I kept picking this game up and snerking at it because it looked as fan service-y as the cover made it appear, so I never gave it an honest thought. But I did catch a couple of seconds of the footage of the upcoming PS4 version of the game, and surprisingly I got more interested in the game. Dragon Quest: Heroes let me know I could like the hacky-slashy brawler "warriors" style grind if it was done properly, so why not actually give this game a shot before I spend on a full priced PS4 version of the game. So I wore a long coat, hat, shades, and scarf that covered my face and waited for the store to empty out so I could pick up a copy of......

SENRAN KAGURA: SHINOVI VERSUS(Vita)

So I'm late to the party on this one so I'll try to summarize as best I can. This edition of the game is a sequel to Senran Kagura Burst, which I believe is the 2nd game in the series on 3DS.  The premise of this universe that there are a number of academies that students attend like normal students, but a select few are chosen in secret to be trained as Shinobi.

Each school has their own philosophy as they train their shinobi to follow specific paths, Hanzo Academy representing good (and where you find series protagonist Asuka and her team), and the Hebjio Clandestine Girls Academy which allows their Shinobi to travel a darker path of evil. During the course of the story, the Hebijo team issues a challenge to the girls of Hanzo to a Shinobi Battle Royale, where the winning team earns the right to burn the opposing school to the ground.

But during the early confrontations, a third academy makes themselves known. Gessen Girls academy was founded by a rogue Hanzo instructor who is technically a good ninja, but does so to the extreme of trying to purge the evil shinobi, as opposed to striking a balance and co-existing with them. With all these players in place, it becomes an all out battle royale of ninja girls with individual motivations for fighting to save their school.

Okay, so plots really don't get much more anime than this. Three different schools training ninja girls out of high school students. It's absolutely as ridiculous as it sounds. The stories are somewhat delivered in visual novel style that Japanese developers love. If you think Disgaea you would have an idea of what I am talking about. In a number of scenes you will see the rendered character models with a couple of animations to deliver certain queues home. These are only in the main school story quests where this happens though. The character quests have no rendered models and are just done with text.

There is actually a massive abundance of story in this game. Because when you choose a school to play as, you get to also chose a character. When you go into that schools story mode you then get to opt to play through an individual characters story which helps explains their motivations and character traits {sometimes}, or you can play the school story mode which you could consider to be the main story of the game.

The character stories are typically a lot more tongue and cheek the main story. For example, Katsuragi is Hanzo's heavy hitter using big walloping melee kicks. The problem is, she is also the team's pervert. So in her personal story mode, you find that one of her primary motivations is to be the best at sexual harassment of all the schools. But her teammates have become so used to her groping their tits that they don't react and its not fun for her anymore. So she goes out to find other girls to fondle. It ends with her finding another character as perverted as she is and they have this epic rivalry form to see who can out grope each other. This is an actual story plot line in the game.

But when you play the main school story, while that personality is still there you find out both of her parents are shinobi who are current rogue and on the lam. They have been protecting Katsuragi from the shadows but things have finally caught up with them, so Katsuragi strikes a deal with her pursuers that if her school can be successful in the Shinobi Battle Royale, her parents can go free. It is a lot more serious, and more believable motivation for the characters. Which makes the whole thing feel bizarre that both these angles come from the same character.

Literally the reward for beating Katsuragi's character story. It's deep and meaningful.

The problem with this is there amount of characters in this game are fucking bonkers. Each school has 5 playable characters all of them with different kinds of weapons. So that means for me to get through the entire games story mode, I have to play through 5 characters individual stories (roughly 5 to 6 levels each) AND their schools story more for another 5 or so levels three different times. Not only that but I believe I saw that there is a returning 4th team that also becomes playable as well. How much time do you think I have, Senran Kagura?!

Levels in this game are usually broken down into two specific types. Either A: Get flooded by waves of generic baddies for you to dispatch a la Dynasty Warriors before fighting the specific rival of said level, or B: the level is just the specific rival straight up in a one on one fight. Sometimes after dispatching a wave of baddies I have to run to a new area of the map, but it doesn't feel like there is any real reason for it other than to do it. Platforming as not really been a factor in this game in any real capacity, so to that extent its kind of a let down. It's really just arenas to smash enemies. Dragon Quest Heroes did this same thing.

Thankfully, movement and combat is fast. which is a must for a ninja game.

So when I play an action game of this variety I have a few simple pre-requisites. Is the combat fast and fluid, does it have skillful combos or just button mashing, and is the combat fun to do? The first of these is most important because I'm playing fucking ninja girls, so if the combat is slow then this game is already a dud. Thankfully this game is every bit as fast paced as it should be. Even the slow hard hitting characters still move with a relative speed about them so they aren't so much unplayable. Although they do tend to be my least favorite to use.

The comboing however is more up for debate. When you start as a new level one character, your combos are pretty limited. Basically you mash your light attack to set up a heavy and if you time the heavy right you blast a number of enemies away. But as you begin to level, your attack types change a little and it alters the combo somewhat, landing your heavy in a different part of the lights changes the finishing heavy. You also have an ability to flurry after a heavy which basically lets you dash after an enemy or enemies you knocked away to follow them with another face paced aerial combo. It's a little tricky to get used to but when you figure out how to do it, its fun as hell to keep the nonstop wave of punishment going.

The combos extend as you level, but the core structure doesn't change all that much.

That's not even including the Shinobi Transformations every girl can do. At one point you can tap the L button and your Kunoichi will go into a magical girl style transformation which basically changes them into a slightly different version of their previous outfit. Their health is restored and recovers slightly and the combo attacks change. For someone like Asuka, this can be game breaking. She has dual wielding katanas, and basically the transformation gives her these tornado attacks that rip enemies asunder with a near endless combo. In addition to the changed moves, you can also unload your special attacks for big damage. But be wary because the enemies can do this to.

Here is the problem I have with the combat though. Despite playing with a number of characters each with their own different types of weapons, the combos never really feel like they change all that much. Sure, some characters weapon speed and movements change so you have adjust for that, but ultimately you are spamming your quick attacks until you are ready to blast them off the ground and quickly follow up with your aerial rush. I don't know, the game feels like it is begging for more special type moves to use, something to make the combos feel different with each character. Thankfully keeping your chain alive is fun, and that's ultimately what kept me going.

Dragon Quest: Heroes manged to pull this off by allowing you to use the two buttons to switch up your combos, but you also had special moves you could use for situations that change the pace of the fight. The Bayonetta series gives you different weapons, and using them feels like it changes how the game plays from weapon to weapon forcing you to change your strategy and combo to accommodate for it. Senran Kagura doesn't seem to do either of these and I feel the combat can feel a little samey as a result of it. It doesn't make it bad, but I do think it will affect the game's longevity. 

Alright. So let's just get this out of the way. If Dead or Alive: Extreme Beach Volleyball is considered too fan service-y, then Senran Kagura is pretty much is that level squared. You can beat an opponent by wailing on them till their life bar goes down, but as you fight them parts of their clothes (mainly covering their tits and ass) will continue to fly off in a ridiculously fan service-y close up. If you deal enough damage their clothes blast off of them so they are fighting in their underwear. They will go into a frenzy mode with nonstop chains but now take increased damage. If you can hit a special in that state, it will blast off their remaining undies and leave them character censored but nekkid.

This is also reflected in the following cutscene if one exists, where the defeated kunoichi will continue to banter with their foe as if they were fully clothed with chibi versions of their faces covering the naughty bits. I have to admit that I find it hilarious and creepy at the same time. I can't deny that there is certainly an audience for this kinda thing, but it certainly does make a case for why women might want to be represented better in games.

This is the worst review I've ever done.

It doesn't stop there either. In between missions you can go to the shop to buy unlockables (where the shopkeep also has her own jiggle physics that can be used with the touchscreen) where you can buy alternate costumes of the girls for their ninja transformations. So yes, Asuka ended up dressed like a maid pretty much the moment I had access to it. Shut up, don't judge me. But to push the fan service even further, there is a "Lingerie Lottery" where you can bet an amount, shake for your fortune, and then get a poorly textured new set of undies for your girls to have revealed when they get their clothes blasted off. Ok, so maybe that is a little much.

You have a multitude of costume options as well that you can start changing pretty much from the word go so that also helps. The only thing I can think of that seems to have pretty crappy textures are the undies from the aforementioned lingerie lottery. They just seem poorly textured and look low rez in comparison to the rest of the costumes. but since the goal is usually to stay clothed, it ended up not being a major issue for me. Otherwise the game looks decent visually. There are a number of different environments to fight which each have their own nifty aesthetics, but ultimately where you are fighting doesn't really affect the pace of the battle and the platforming is minimal. The character options are good and they do a pretty good job of making so many characters unique from one another.

There are 98 of these to collect. Because the game really wants to drill home that I'm a creep.

The music I feel kinda of torn on. Usually my reviews break down either A.) an amazingly well complimentary score. or B.) unoriginal lifeless music to fill the dead air that you probably won't remember. Shinovi Versus seems to fall in the middle of these two areas. I couldn't hum a note of the combat music because I'm to focused on the battle to listen. The main theme is pretty anime rock so that was good. There is some wonky character story music that comes up kind of often that you could consider notable I guess, but its not good. Music really isn't this games strongest selling point. 

There are a couple of small issues that I have with the game. First of course is the story. Now I'm not about to sit on here and shit on the game for having a goofy sense of character stories where its basically just an excuse to treat the player with another fan service-y image like one of the girls deep throating a polish kielbasa or something (I'm not entirely sure that's not actually in there). That's just what this game is so I expect it at this point.  The problem I have is if you are going to do the visual novel thing, the dialog and text have to be quick and punchy and entertaining. To go back to the Disgaea example, they are very good at this. Get your plot out, follow it with a joke, get me back into the game.

It does suffer from the problem of too much fucking text sometimes. There is actually a massive abundance of story in this game. Because when you choose a school to play as, you get to also chose a character. When you go into that schools story mode you then get to opt to play through an individual characters story which helps explains their motivations{sometimes}, or you can play the school story mode, which you could consider to be the main story of the game.

One of the biggest storytelling problems this game has, and more so in the individual character quests is some of the story dialog takes place during the level. So trying to catch the small text in a game where there are lots of character models flying around an a relatively high speed while at the same time trying to pay attention to my HUD and execute combos more often then not means I am missing a portion of the story when it is delivered. Thankfully the character stories tend to be less important so I don't as much worry about missing them.

Shinovi Versus makes the mistake of giving me literally whole screens of text. Just barfing un-narrated text at me without any character animation (or sometimes even a character on screen) of exposition. This is not a good way to do because eventually eyes gloss over and you just start skimming the text or skipping it entirely. In a story mode, that's a problem. Persona 4 Arena/Dancing all Night did it that way and as much as I love it, that's not a good way to deliver on the story. Lost Odyssey did this even worse and those screens were actual very important story exposition. It needs to be quick and punchy.

Sometimes you will get like 15 of these in a row, which is horrendous.
And apparently, modesty isn't much a value in this series.. 

The other issue I had is that I felt that the game was a little too easy. Now you can increase the difficulty before you start a level so I think for the remainder of the game I am going to do that now that I know the controls. But if the combat starts to feel a little samey and levels are too easy then that is just a recipe for disaster. I think out of the levels I have played I only really struggled with one particular fight and even then I haven't lost. 

What could be the game's biggest saving grace is the one mode I haven't played yet. Shinovi Versus features an online multiplayer mode. I know, I know, I bitch about multiplayer games all the time because online gamers are the scum of the planet. But this is case where I think it would give the game the challenge it needs. You can play versus in one on one battles or two on two teams. And there is also a co-op panty raid mode (I'm really starting to hate writing about this game) where you basically are on a race to collect them as they fall from the sky.

The moment you unlock this, there is no reason not to spam it.

I find myself thinking about the anime High School of the Dead when I think of something to compare this to. That show had a simple zombie premise, and interesting cast of characters, and really fun and dramatic combat sequences. But then in the middle of of all the fun action, there would be a super close up of a upskirt crotch shot, or slo-mo bullet time sequence going through a pair of boobs. Why? The show was good enough on its own, it didn't need the fan service breaking me out of an action scene to let me know boobs and vaginas exist.

And that's what I feel about Senran Kagura: everything about this series from what I can tell works great, plays great, and looks great. But if all the fan service that is in there was removed, I don't think it would impact the quality of the game without it being there. It would probably add some legitimacy to the story and situations playing out. Thankfully the majority of the cutscenes in battle are skippable so you can just mash X to get right back into the fight.

Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus was my first taste of this installment. I got the game used and played it for a number of weeks. That's usually a pretty good sign as far as its play-ability goes. But I would be lying if I didn't feel like an absolutely creep while I played it. This is game that has literally no shame about what it is and proudly flaunts that fact. If you are looking for a game that is going to give you serious character development with a rich storyline in a complex universe? It might be in there somewhere, but Senran Kagura probably is not what you are looking for.

But if you are looking for a fast paced hack and slash brawler that doesn't take itself too seriously, that plays very competently and is fun to plunk down short term plays with, then Shinovi Versus delivers on that front. For all of the ragging of this game I did in this review, ultimately I enjoyed the time I spent with it and will probably go back to play more when I have time to kill. If they develop more on polishing the storytelling, game modes, and tweak combat some more I might be pretty excited to try the PS4 version of the game when It finally comes stateside. So if you are upset Dead or Alive Volleyball 3 isn't coming to the U.S. then maybe Senran Kagura: Shinovi Versus will scratch that itch for ya.

Now I feel I should play Beyond Good and Evil to balance this out. 

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.