Yakuza 6: Song of Life (PS4) - A retrospective on the series as a whole.

It's baffling to me that I have worked on this blog for as long as I have. As I've told before this blog was started actually as part of a masters course project. Seemed easy enough, start a blog and make a post. I play video games, so why not talk about a game I really liked? That game was Yakuza 4.

Since then it's a pretty winding road for the franchise (originally known as Ryu Ga Gotoku) as a whole. After a lukewarm launch and niche audience, interest in western releases waned for Sega and they basically gave up after the very poorly received zombie offshoot, Yazuka: Dead Souls. Thus began the 3 year fight to try to get Yakuza 5 released to the west. Once that battle was won, they tried again by releasing the prequel game Yakuza 0.

THAT was the game really allowed the tires to dig into the western soil and get some tread going. Now people were at the start of the story, and with the release of the Kiwami games, people are getting to experience the full story now. For those like me, this culminates with today's entry and the newest installment of this long running franchise. I've fallen too far behind to give each game a proper review. So instead while covering this one, I will speak on the franchise as a whole. Be warned: There may be spoilers ahead.

YAKUZA 6: SONG OF LIFE(PS4)

Yakuza 6 picks up mere moments after the ending of Yakuza 5 with longtime protagonist Kazama Kiryu bleeding out and injured in the streets after his last over-the-top battles with the Tojo and Omi when he is found by and finally reunited with Haruka. Haruka after winning a contest to become an idol and had just formed a supergroup with rival group T-Set, had just admitted to a live audience her guardian was former Yakuza, and publicly announced she was quitting the entertainment industry before running out of the Tokyo Dome.

While Kiryu was recovering from his injuries, he was approached by the police about his responsibility to the public damage that was caused with his battles with the Tojo and Omi clans. Instead of fighting back or using connections to get out of jail, he instead opts to do his time, and get out with a clean slate. When he does, he can return to the Sunshine Orphanage with Haruka and live as a family with the children there waiting for him.

But when he finally makes it back, he comes to find out that Haruka has left. She wanted the press and reputation of her ties to Yakuza to not hinder the other children's opportunities. Kiryu returns to Kamurocho to try to pick up her trail, only to find she is comatose from a hit an run accident and that she apparently had a son. With only a trace amount of leads, Kiryu takes the child and heads out to search Kamurocho and Hiroshima to find the alleged father of the baby and to find out who hurt Haruka and why?

As you saw in the last year end wrap up, I showered a little praise on both Yakuza 0 & Yakuza Kiwami for being standards of excellence in gaming. I have played nearly all of them available to me at this point, and outside of Yakuza: Dead Souls (a non-cannon offshoot, mind you) almost all of them rank equally in how they are built. Primarily because despite being a long running series, there really isn't a lot that changes in the core formula of a Yakuza game. It's the main reason most of them haven't gotten full reviews.

When you first look at screens and game play footage, you would assume its in that open world vein that you may expect Grand Theft Auto to fall under. And while to a small extent this is true for a basic framework for missions, this really isn't at all how the Yakuza franchise plays. It's more of a blend of sandbox, beat em up, and rpg if I had to narrow it down. As you walk around town you cant just start creating mayhem (because Kiryu is an honorable criminal?) and start smashing people. In this series combat appeared almost like random battles with thugs coming up with laughably obscure reasons to attack you. In Yakuza 6 this was made a bit more seamless by skipping the dialog to make it feel more natural.

The combat of the Yakuza franchise is really the bread and butter and this is why you play. It's a variant of the standard 3rd person action game and typically sticks to a light attack, heavy attack, grab/weapon, dodge convention. It can lend to button mashing if that is your style of play, but it goes to great pains to show you all the various combos and heat moves you can unlock that really can open up your strategy when you play. It's primary selling point is the heat mechanic: As you deal damage to enemies you raise a heat bar, and once it reaches capacity you would be surrounded by a flame like aura. When in the right situation, you will be prompted with a heavy attack prompt that will go into a brief but visceral animation of your character dispatching an enemy in brutal fashion. These are the heat moves and they are hard to watch at first but oh... so satisfying.

And there are TONS of ways to do these moves and they change by what you are standing by, what character you are using, what weapon you are holding, what stance you are in, if your heat gauge is full to certain levels. Its almost like a puzzle game itself to try to find and perform all of them, and its actually rewarded because the Yakuza games tend to be known for 100% completion excess.

Heat move from Yakuza Kiwami

The fighting styles in this game are also generally the same across the board but there are instances in which it does change where it makes sense. Typically the fighting style changes when you are playing different characters, and that works because naturally each character would fight differently. Seijima, a character from Yakuza 4, is a burly beast of a man so naturally his fighting style are big hulking swings and smashing heavy weapons to Kiryu's straight forward aggressive striking style. Akiyama is known for being suave and deceptive, so he uses a fighting style that employs kicks and tricky moves.

The times where this didn't happen for example are in Yakuza 0 & Kiwami respectively. Which almost make sense where this is the beginning of the timeline. Kiryu and Majima are still cutting their teeth in the yakuza so they actually employ 3 fighting styles you can change between as they develop their signature style. Since they are the only characters in those games, this mechanic works because it allows variance to the game play without forcing the game to take the narrative off the primary characters.

Combat suffered a little bit in Yakuza 6 because with the step up to PS4 hardware caused a step up in graphical display and game performance, and I feel to make time for all the rendering the move set was cut back a bit. It was still fun to do and visceral as ever, but it certainly felt lacking in comparison the rest of the series as a whole. The bottom line though is for skill, quick paced combat with a weighty feel to it? The Yakuza franchise nails it on that front.

Another trait that this series is known for is the straight jacket wearing level of distraction this game provides. See, the focus of these games is the primary narrative which sometimes can be a little bit samey. But in between the major story moments of the game, you get explore the streets of Kamurocho. This is actually a fun little recreation of actual Toyko red light district Kabukicho. And it features all the distractions you might expect from a downtown district of Tokyo: streets filled with restaurants, arcade games, gambling parlors, hostess clubs, night clubs, stores and filled with actual Yakuza members.

In this specific series of games, almost all of these are interactable, like an inception of games. Sega has on more than one occasion put in older games within Yakuza.  So I would stop my progress in the game so I can play Taiko Drum Master, Virtua Fighter, or Out run. Sometimes there are side quests with random NPCs involved with these, but 90% of the time they are thrown in there as just extra bullshit to play with while you do. You might think why would you put in there then if it doesn't mean anything, but I can't tell you how easy it is to sunk into other game instead of moving on. The number of distractions only increased with each installment of the game (Yakuza 5 had so much side shit they could be sold as separate games) before finally dialing back some in Yakuza 6.

As mentioned prior there is a fair amount of side questing to do. A lot of the times this will just involve you having to go to a place and beat somebody up, but a lot of these are a way to introduce some of the mini games. Most of these provide experience bonuses to level your character faster, and some of them will unlock item rewards. None of them are required to actually beat the game but the experience helps as bosses will force you to get more skillful in your fighting.

Although some are really fucking out of place. Most egregiously, and I've talked about this before, is the required hostess club missions in Yakuza 4. In a game where I am suplexing someone onto a bike rail and them smashing his friend with the actual bike, being forced to stop so I can play Pretty Pretty Princess THREE TIMES is incredibly jarring and unnecessary. One time made sense for story context, three times was just ridiculous and excessive. But if you wanted to get the completion, you had to do this with like six girls. No thank you.

I'm not kidding. In the midst of the story of crime, betrayal, and honor you
need to take 3 breaks to make sure your hostess fashion is up to snuff.

Or like in Yakuza Kiwami, I'm being constantly hounded and mugged by Majima, but then suddenly he stops because he feels he needs to be better than me at pocket cart racing. What?! Perhaps this is a way of leading horse to water as it were for getting the player to notice and try these mini games, but honestly in the game that lets you go out and explore what there is it see, I can't image there is much a need to make the player try them. A friend I recently turned on to the series told me she couldn't progress with the story because she was enjoying the side questing too much. So yeah, not a big problem on that front.

From a graphics perspective, the Yakuza franchise made some strides when going from the PS2 to the PS3, and from that point on has remained incredibly consistent on that front. Once they had down their design in Yakuza 3, the character appearance never really changed. They just continued to overhaul and tweak it's visual design to where we are now with Yakuza 6 where all the textures have damn near photo realistic skin imperfections and lifelike glisten to sweat and tears. I found myself on more than one occasion marveling at how good the series has come to look.

Actually, looking at it now Yakuza 1's graphics really laid the foundation well.

There has to be a degree of motion capture as well because the most recent iteration of this game featured a number of NJPW wrestlers and Kiryu had busted out more than one pro wrestling move into his new arsenal on more than on occasion. But more so than that is this is the first time I recognized a character as an actual personality as one of the primary characters in Yakuza 6 was famed Japanese actor Takeshi Kintao who you may know from the new Ghost in the Shell movie, The Blind Swordsman, and probably most famously Battle Royale.

Additionally, the Yakuza games are somewhat of a fun time capsule for this depiction of contemporary Tokyo. with Yakuza 0 it starts off in the 80's where outfits are garish, technology is dated, and clubs had very different visual stylings to them. And as you play through the series you always stay in, or wind up coming back to Kamurocho. Kind of like Nier:Automata you could argue that by reusing the same map it feels cut and paste, but really I always feel nostalgic and familiar with the streets, and enjoying finding what stayed and what changed.

Majima's "Breaker Style" from Yakuza 0

This series soundtrack tends to be fairly complimentary as well. 90% of the time you probably wont even notice the OST as much of it shifts from droning overbearing ambiance for it's dramatic moments, and a hard rock bed during fight sequences. You will notice more iconic sounding theme in the bigger moments of the game where you have long drawn out action sequences, and each game usually has some big main theme that goes down during the fight sequences of the game. Yakuza 4's "for faith" for all 4 final boss sequences is still hands down the best. In each game only a few tracks will truly stand out, but all of these OSTs are ones you can toss on a playlist and get lost in while you do stuff around the house.

But most importantly of all for the Yakuza franchise, is that if there is any one selling point above all else is that this game has some truly exceptional story telling. Throughout the series and primarily in the early stages of the franchise, the narrative is based around Kazama Kiryu and Haruka Sawamura. Despite being in and out with the yakuza, Kiryu is still a pretty predominant figure in it's politics and despite his best efforts seems to constantly drawn into the fold be it power struggles, murders, or turf wars.

Much like the setting the game takes place in, I love the dedication to the development times of the games in correlation to the characters. This isn't as notable with most of the cast but is primarily noticed with Haruka. When you first meet her in Yakuza 1/Kiwami is only 9 years old. By the time you see her in Yakuza 6 she is almost 20. When you look at the development times of the games, she is always aged just as old as you saw her from the last game release over the course of the entire franchise. You basically get to see her grow from child to adult through the series. Resident Evil 6 did this with Sherry Birkin, and that is a chronology continuity I have always appreciated seeing when it comes to storytelling.

Haruka: Age 9 as of Yakuza: Kiwami

Haruka: Age 18 as of Yakuza 5

Yakuza 4 set off as a branching point where we started to deviating from Kiryu as the primary focus, introducing us to a wave of new characters and stories to follow before branching back to our stalwart hero. With new characters allowed to take the stage, we are now starting to see a bigger focus on new fan favorites like Akimaya and Seijima in 4 and 5, and Majima in 0, Dead Souls, and the upcoming Kiwami 2 remake. So while Yakuza 6 marks the end of the Kiryu arc, there is plenty of people who could carry the story if need be. But not Tanimura, that character basically vanished after having a lead role in Yakuza 4.

Ultimately though, this series is crime drama through and through. So despite reasonably stable starting off points for the story (usually a murder), there will be so many twists and turns during the course of the story, that you will never really know what to expect by the end of it and some of it can be pretty ridiculous. Well, that's not entirely true. When talking to a friend, I described what I call my "Shirts off, Shit's Serious" rule. You always know when a fight is important contextually, because MAN do the dudes in Yakuza love to rip their shirts off to show off their bitchin' ink jobs on their back.  When you see guys ripping off their shirts and jackets in one seamless transition, you know things are about to go down in a big way (this is extremely hilarious in 4, where 8 people do it in one segment).

There are a small handful of complaints I can make. Like I mentioned before, fights in these games almost have a very Final Fantasy random battle feel about them, as people stop you on the street to make some ridiculous commentary about why they are going to kick your ass before having a fade transition to the battle sequence. This was worked out in the newer games, but it certainly can affect the pacing in some of the earlier ones. Although I have to admit I loved some of the sillier reasons people would fight me.

If you are a player who is obsessed with 100% completion, best of luck to you because this game fucking counts everything. Fighting styles, scores in arcade games, money won in all casino games, eaten every one of the food items in the 100's of restaurants, dated all the hostesses, and on and on and on. My first play through of  Yakuza 4 I want to say ended with just under 90 hours of game play. By the time I was all said and done with it, the game told me I had just under 25% complete. That is literally insane. Its even harder with some like Yakuza 0 where you have to buy properties to complete that quest, but the game or map doesn't actually tell you which you bought or which you own.

I mean if Akiyama was courting me, I'd have full hearts too.
Dat Mauve blazer. *swoon*

It definitely suffers from the tropes of Japanese story telling sometimes. When watching cut-scenes of conversations they tend to repeat a lot of the same things they said to each other while pausing for effect or making confused sound effects. You will always have some low level shouty grunt losing their shit over the smallest perceived slight, and the antagonists in these series are usually so cartoonishly evil you can basically pick them out the moment you see them for the first time.

Also if you are like me and not starting with the actual beginning of the storyline (I started at 4), the beginnings of all these games are going to be confusing as hell because they will make reference to characters, clans, locations, and events that tie to the previous games. While it is confusing, once you learn the major players specific to the title and what the main plot of the game is, the back story isn't as necessary as you can focus on who you do know. It will all eventually tie together.

And this is somewhat of a personal gripe but if you are going to give a me a karaoke minigame to play, why would you only provide two songs? This is something that is consistent in like every one of these games and I have no idea why. The dual layered blu-ray disc is huge. I'm not saying pull a whole tracklist of DDR in there, but I don't think 5 or 10 total songs is asking a lot. You expect me to play them more than once if I'm doing the hostess club dating, some song options would help that.

It also will throw you to the wolves with some more traditional Japanese gambling too. Most of the games you might recognize from a usual casino, some you might recognize but not know how to play like majong or pachinko. But some of these games can be very, very culturally unique and require a lot of re-reading of the rules to go back to even get a loose idea of how to play it. I've played Majong for like 12 hours and I still don't eff'n understand that game.

Was this good? I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I'M DOING.

Lastly, and my biggest complaint: where the fuck is Yakuza Ishin!? Done in the same mechanics of the traditional series, it is a set period piece where the characters are used in historical japan. Basically the same kind of game only with samurai instead of gangsters and swords instead of fists. I've seen trailers and gameplay and this game looks fucking fun as hell, but because its knee deep in Japanese history they won't localize it because they don't think Americans would understand it. Bitch, we love Kung Fu movies, Anime, and now have a burgeoning K-pop community. How about you let us decide what we do or don't want. Thankfully, with the sudden growing success of the series, the hard no they were giving us about localizing it seems to have changed to a maybe. I have a small hope.

I really don't know what else I can say about this franchise other than its one of the best series I've ever played. None of them are perfect, but I love these characters, I love this universe, I love the music they use, I love the mind numbing amount of distraction, I love the brutally visceral combat, I love the drama, I love the idea of smashing a bicycle over a thugs head before smashing his friend with one of the wheels. I love that you fist fight a fucking bear. I love the Yakuza games.

You can read this review and apply basically everything I've said to any of them. I think they are all great and if slathering this series with praise isn't enough for you to give one a shot, then I don't know what else I can do. With the resurgence this series has been getting, we are getting a Kiwami 2 remake and remasters of the remaining titles on the PS4 so you have no excuse, because they will all be available in one place. Pick any of them, it won't steer you wrong.

Except Yakuza: Dead Souls. Don't pick that one.

Persona 4 (PS2): I truly am empty inside...

Back when I was in high school (about 15 years and 84lbs ago) I really had a massive affinity for anime. The massive anime buzz hadn't hit yet. There was no Toonami, and I had to wake up at 5am on a Sunday to watch DBZ, a show nobody knew about. But no show resonated with me more than Tenchi Muyo, the story of a socially award guy who has like 6 beautiful alien women fall in love with him. Always gave me hope that despite my nerdiness, I'd find that special someone. (Spoiler alert: that show fucking lied to me.)

But because of this I've never been able to shake my Otaku roots. I don't watch anime like I used to, but I still naturally gravitate to JRPGs knee deep in them like Star Ocean, Tales of {Any}, Final Fantasy and so forth. As you have seen in this blog already, I started to fall for the Persona 4 universe when I played Persona 4 Arena and enhanced it by playing through Persona 3 twice on two platforms. I have since been sporadically been keeping up with Persona 4 and I am ashamed to admit this universe is becoming a bit of an obsession....

PERSONA 4:(PS2/Vita)

Inaba is one of Japan's more rural cities. Its got a high school, a reasonably small shopping district, and lies on a floodplain. The problem is there has been a rash of mysterious murders where bodies are being found hung upside down on television antennas, and with no identifiable cause of death. Around this same time Yu Narukami (renameable) is taking the train in to stay with his uncle Ryotaro Dojima and his daughter Nanako for a year. 

On his way to his first class Yu meets of the son of the Junes megastore owner, Yosuke Hanamura and a friendship is quickly established. This allows Yu to also meet and befriend some of Yosuke's friends: Chie Satonaka and Yukiko Amagi. As they hang out at the food court of Junes after class, Chie askes if Yu has heard of the "Midnight Channel" rumor. Supposedly when you would watch a turned off television at midnight when it rains, it would display your soul mate.

The channel turns out to be real but instead of a soul mate, it appears to displaying the people who are to be murdered next. In a clumsy chance accident, the group discovers they can fall through the screen of a TV and take them to an alternate world where shadows reside. After meeting a friendly shadow named Teddie they discover that when in this TV world, you can be faced with your shadow.

A shadow is a manifestation of of your innermost feelings that you deny and lock away, and if you forsake them it gives them a massive influx of power to become their own identity and kill the original. But if you confront this side of you and accept it, they transform and become your Persona (a manifestation of the Tarot you represent) and will fight for you. After attaining this power, the group decides they will use their new found ability to prevent any further murders and hopefully figure out who is the culprit and bring them to justice.

I hated the Chariot arcana in Persona 3, in 4 MP doesn't stretch is far
which makes chariot arcana's vital to use.

Having played Persona 4 Arena first I was actually a little disappointed to find out that the protagonist was a  silent one in this game. The stories in those games were remarkably long and for the most part fully voice acted and watching the Persona 4 anime was also very entertaining in its own right as well.  But I suppose it makes sense because this was how Persona 3 was played out and I loved the fuck out of that game. 

Persona 4 has one of the most lovable cast of characters I've played in an RPG. Even in games that I completely love there are always a character or two who I just can't stand. I never seem to have this problem in the Persona series maybe because there is nothing really super about them. They are just normal teens with normal teen problems. Cleverly, the whole "facing themselves" aspect is a strong way to make them likable because you pretty much see that they are all flawed.

This scene is faithfully recreated in the anime, and is worth watching the whole thing to get to it.

Its not overly elaborate and emo, not all of them have some tragic heartbreak. Yeah a few of them kind of fall into some anime stereotypes but when every new character was introduced I found it hard not to love them. Probably to the unhealthy level of jealousy of them not actually existing to be my real friends.. I had this problem in Catherine too.. god I need a life.

In terms of play Persona 4 doesn't exactly deviate from its previous iteration all too much but there are some subtle differences.  At its core, its just like Persona 3 it is a combination of Japanese school simulation and dungeon crawling JRPG. The lectures in Persona 4 aren't nearly as long winded as they are in 3 but you still need to pay some attention to them. The main focus is to maintain your social life because the stronger your bonds are with people, the more powerful personas you can create.

Unlike in Persona 3 however, there isn't just one massive tower for you to continuously explore. When you enter the TV world you then can break of into stages where are manifestations of the characters psyches. The levels seem larger on the whole than Persona 3 and the monsters are a bit more sparing, but they are only about 8-9 floors each so you don't feel so intimated needing to climb 200+ floors of tower. You get different settings for each area so the change of pace is great too.

You can tell this is the Vita version by its much more polished looks. 

Combat in Persona 4 has made some subtle improvements to it. It still follows much of the previous Persona protocol of giving you general orders for your teammates so they will fight in a particular style, and if enemy weaknesses are discovered, they will naturally go after them. Just like in the previous game if you hit weaknesses or critical all the enemies off their feet you have the chance to go in for a big all out attack to put them down. 

The biggest difference in Persona 4's combat is probably my most thankful change. Now when you give your characters other specific tactics, you can set them all to direct control which allows you to manually take control of all the other characters  It can slow down some of the combat to a crawl so I don't use it often, but for some of the difficult boss fights in the game its an absolute must.

Hey! Do you like this song?!

I certainly hope so, because if you don't you are going to hate the fucking battle sequences. Now the  Persona series tends to have some music that is all over the gamut such as "Mass Destruction" from the previous game, but with this one I kind of scratch my head at it. Its a decent song and it would work well for a theme or a major plot moment, or maybe even a boss fight. But for every single random battle you come across it just seems horribly awkward and out of place. I think its just the goofy chorus line, and it loops pretty frequently. I know that's pretty common in JRPGs but it hasn't become white noise yet and I have 60 hours in my save....

That being said, I really like the soundtrack for these games, and I certainly liked this ones than 3's. Much of it really seems to fit the setting of the scene and the over world maps music changes ever so often or occasionally isn't there when its raining. You just get the slight rain sound during those moments and I thought that was kind of a nice touch so I wasn't getting hammered to death with all the same music.

The fishing game is pretty simple, But after playing Nier every fishing game is pretty good. 

There are a handful of mild aggravations. Like Persona 3 there are events that happen in fixed intervals, and the wait time between them can be long. You are supposed to use these moments to level up your characters, grind, increase your social links and so forth. I was usually able to march my way though each stage in about a day or 2 of in game time and complete the said goal. This leaves me with like 2 weeks of in game time to burn. I'm supposed to do it to increase social links, but it has the ability to slow the games pace to a crawl.

Atlus must really hate their fans, because much like any other game I have played that says Shin Megami Tensei on the cover, this one's difficulty spike is just as murderous. I didn't play Persona 4 on easy because Persona 3 was a cakewalk on that setting. A few stages in, I was getting smashed by enemies so hard into a stage that I seriously had to consider restarting the whole game to tone it down.You have to choose your team carefully before each area otherwise if you have a weakness monsters will go after it. It's not too difficult, but the game will let you know when you fucked up. Save often.

Kanji is the team's lovable idiot. In both 4 and 4 Arena his dialog is solid gold.

Money is incredibly scarce. You have to fight monsters to get them to drop items, those items allow new weapons and armor to be available. The problem is everything is ridiculously expensive, so you almost never have the money to re-equip your team unless you grind for a few hours. I suppose that's how you stay well leveled, but when you first enter a new stage an ass kicking is eminent.

Many of the maps in the various stages are huge and they aren't packed wall to wall with monsters. On one hand it makes it fairly easy to run and explore and jump through your floors without issue, but as stated above you need to grind your level and get money above all else. Because you have to constantly run there and back to find monsters, grinding can be a bit of a chore. Worse than that the moment you outlevel a certain area? You might as well stop wasting your time there because the experience drops to virtually nothing.

The game kinda can trap you too. I tried to max out my social links by talking to the characters that interested me as a player. What I should have been doing is maxing out of the ones of the types of persona's I used so they can get stronger faster. The big mistake I made was ignoring my Hermit persona, because it makes it less expensive to recover when in the dungeon areas, now I'm at the end of the game and can't recover easily.

This freak'n mutt. If it had told me how important he was I would have paid more attention to it.

While I am not shredding through this game with my usually unhealthy amount of game addiction, I still have managed to put up a ridiculous 74 something hours in this game and I still haven't completed it yet (but I'm right there). I'm sure some of the things I've complained about in this review are some of the reasons some gamers disliked JRPGs (or "idiots" as I like to call them.) But if I can play a pair of games that are nearly 5 and 7 years old respectively for well over 80 hours each time, then that says something.

I have never been so entrenched in a universe like this in a long long time. Tales of {any}, Final Fantasy, Disgaea all have universes I love and are passionate to (too weird?) but the Persona series definitely has me going back to goofy high school roots of falling in love with characters that don't exist and wishing they were my real friends. I've watched through the anime like 3 or 4 times already. I'm fanboying so hard for this series I am considering getting me some yellow contacts, because the shadows look awesome with those.

I'ma frame this and put it on my desk.... Cuz I don't have a picture with actual friends to use.
*sob*

Supposedly in August of 2011 it was announced that Persona 5 is in the works and I hope that its true. Both Persona 3 and 4 had fantastic universes and characters, and Persona 4 Arena did a wonderful job of intermixing the two story lines together. Its my hope that the fifth game picks up where Arena left off since it ended on kind of half cliffhanger, and after introducing the new character Labrys, I would really like to see where that story is looking to go.

Persona 4 is available on PS2 on amazon new for like 18 bucks right now, and if you have a PS Vita Persona 4 Golden is available for 40 (with animated cut scenes, and additional content {those fuckers}). I absolutely recommend this game if you are looking to dust your PS2 off for another 80 hours or so. Its hard for me to believe that almost a year ago (August) I had basically shrugged this series off as too difficult or uninteresting. I'm very glad I went back to it because its proven to be a very satisfying series.

Sadly my love letters Chie Satonaka will go unread.....

Because shes not real... Sigh....

Odin Sphere (PS2): The Last Great Game of a Generation

As I haven't had much to play of late, I find myself to be introspective. In this age of high tech hardware and top of the line graphics and cinematics in our video games, I have always been a massive advocate that high end life like graphics don't always make the game. Just take a look at some of the simplistically designed titles such as Limbo, Braid, or Disgaea. None of them have 3d out the ass and I've played those a lot more than I have some ridiculous cover based shooter. All a game really needs is solid core mechanics and is fun to play. Everything after that is bells and whistles. 

One game that truly emphasized this was one of final games to be released during the era of the Playstation 2. It came out with practically no hype that I heard behind it, and I picked it up completely on impulse knowing nothing about it. What I ended up purchasing was a game that I spent well over 120 hours to play through and was such a hidden gem I know am willing to throw my money at any product they intend to release in the future. I am speaking of course, of Vanillaware's loosely norse based mythological adventure......

ODIN SPHERE:(PS2/PS3)

The story of Odin Sphere is expertly crafted among 5 separate tales. When you start the game you take control of a young girl in her library attic. You pick up a tomb and sit down to read. In the world of Erion, Demon King Odin wages war against against the Fairy kingdom of Ringford to the south for control of a Crystallization Cauldron that has the ability to produce pyspher crystals. The war is waged in the wastelands of the former kingdom of Valentine, who's remaining survivors are cursed and trapped in the form of anthropomorphic rabbits called Pookas.

As the war wages, you take control of 5 characters and play along each of their adventures during this sorted timeline:
-Gwendolyn the Valkyrie, who is caught up in Odin's plan to distract one of the faeries agent's and is torn between the duty to her father and the love that develops to the agent.
-Cornelius, the prince of the neutral kingdom of Titania who is in love with the princess of the former kingdom of Valentie, and is cursed to become a pooka and sets off to reunite with his love and find out the truth behind his grandfathers death.
-Mercedes, the fairy princess of Ringford who is ill-prepared to lead and is caught up in an uprising of her cousin Melvin for the throne. She must quell the usurping before she can lead her people into war.
-Oswald, the Shadow Knight who was orphaned and adopted by Melvin, but is betrayed the Fairy kingdom when he falls for the valkyrie, Gwendolyn.
-Lastly there is Velvet, one of the two remaining uncursed survivors of Valentine and its former princess. She fights to stop Odin from using the cauldron because it is the reason Valentine was destroyed, and piece together ancient prophecies to try to stop a foretold Armageddon.

The game can best be described as a side-scrolling hack and slasher with RPG elements. Levels are broken up by story chapters where you get exposition about the character and the situation. Then you go into various levels of the game. The maps are all basically a series of combat challenges of varied difficulty. All of the maps are completely circular so you can't really get lost. If you continue going one direction it will eventually bring you back to where you started. The objective is to clear the map of enemies as quickly as possible.

When you defeat enemies, they drop phozons which you can absorb into your weapon. These allow you to use your various magic attacks but the more you collect they more they level your weapon as well. They are also used to grow seeds you can plant for recovery items. So there are many instances where you may want to release the phozons you collect, and while you don't get as many back when you release them, their experience does stack when you absorb them again.

As stated just one paragraph ago, you can plant seeds to grow various fruits and sheep (yes, you and grow sheep. No, I'm not kidding.) which you can harvest and use to recover your health. But one of the first mistakes I made was trying to hoard my healing items. What you want to do is start stuffing your face because as you eat, your health has an experience gauge too and every time it levels you gain a larger health meter. Some fruit will leave seeds so you can eat the fruit, plant the seed, release your phozons, and repeat. 

Lastly there is an alchemy system as well. By combining certain items with material bottles you get new items that can help in battle, recover health, remove status ailments, and so forth. You can also upgrade the bottle levels through simple multiplication to produce extra phozons to collect. So after some stages you may wanna spend a minute doing some item creation.

People who are very familar with 2D fighting will feel right at home with the combat. But what makes it fun is each character has a different style of weapon or a different type of a ability unique to their character. Gwen is a valkyrie and is able to use a long float that can turn into a downward dash. Cornelius is fast and nimble in his pooka form and has lots of quick moving and flipping combos to hack enemies with. Mercedes is a fairy and can fly while using her bow and so forth.

The graphics of Odin Sphere are probably one of the games best selling points. In an era of games of shades of brown and gun metal grey with lifelike sweat and grime glistening effects, it was a wonderful change of pace to have beautifully illustrated characters with bright vibrant colors that pop out and contrast well. The animations of the character sprites are well done and many of the monsters are original to set this great fantasy piece together.

The music is classical, and scores well with the game. There are a handful of notable tunes in the game but nothing so memorable you'd catch yourself humming it later though.

But what is incredibly noticeable about the sound is how well voice acted it was. All of the characters manage to speak in their own style accent that feels "medieval" enough to fit in with the the games setting. None of it really feels awkward or hokey, and they stay away from some of the anime stereotypes of giving a character an exceptionally high voice. Sure, there is an occasional exception to this but their characters are sympathetic and tragic and really bring emphasis to the story.

Its not without its flaws though. Because all the maps are circular, there really isn't any real exploration to be had in the game. You can pretty much play the entire game only moving in a single direction and can probably complete it. While each stage is a map of different areas to explore the only thing that changes from map to map is what type or the number of enemies appear.

Because of of the lack of exploration, the game concept can get a little samey. You are basically plodding along from one fight to the next. Since the controls are fairly tight, I think a little platforming in the game could have helped somewhat and led way to some complex boss battles. Its fun to play but by the end of the game you are more pushing to see the end of the story rather continued excitement  Its fun but can be a bit much to finish all at once.

And on the technical side, I played this on the PS2. There are a handful of boss fights, and I would say Odette in particular where there is just too much shit on the screen, and the frame rate starts to chug way down. I suppose it helps with precision to beat the boss but it is annoying. However, I am told on the PSN re-release they have since fixed that issue. So that's great.

What really made me fall in love with this game is that it took aspects of games that I love, none of which are original, and combined them together to make something I felt was really special. It was easy to get behind and fall in love with this universe, and its all capped off by a clever bit of ingenuity on how to properly unlock the final good ending in the game.

I really don't know what else I can say about it. I had never heard of Vanillaware before this one, but they have made me a huge fan of their work from one game alone. I am eagerly awaiting their upcoming PS3 release Dragon's Crown and and somewhat crestfallen that I never got to play their Wii title Muramasa: the Demon Blade. They also released a title on PSP called Grand Knights Story. Supposedly the last two were supposed to get PSN HD releases but that was last reported in 2010 and they have yet to see the light of day.

Odin Sphere is 20 bucks on the Playstation Network under its PS2 classics. It was a total impulse purchase but I'm completely thrilled with what I got. I easily cranked out 120+ hours to finish it and even now I have the urge to go back and play it further. As far as I am concerned it was the last great game on the PS2.

Persona 3 FES (PS2): The fascination continues...

So as you read a few months ago, I fell completely in love with the Persona universe when I started playing Persona 4 Arena. Playing through the story really got me into the characters and I wanted to know more about it. As I played that I downloaded and watched the Persona 4 anime as well. A fun but somewhat cut down recap of the events of Persona 4 with some characters from 3 spruced in there. But as I watched it, I reflected on that I never actually finished Persona 3. The game had a crazy difficulty spike and because of it I set the game down and never finished it. But with this re-invigoration of mine with the Persona series I decided to dust off the ole PS2 and give it one more go.

PERSONA 3: FES (PS2)

You take the role of Insert Name (in my case Akira Mizaki since this takes place in Japan), a 16ish year old transfer student to Gekkoukan High who has lost his parents. While your are traveling via train, the animation cuts to a young girl holding a gun to her head, breathing heavy and trying to pull the trigger.  Exasperatedly she drops the gun and buries her face in her knees. Upon transferring in and coming into the dorm where you will be staying, you are greeted by a young boy in striped pajama's and he makes you sign a contract stating you will take responsibility for your actions.

After signing the contract you come across the same girl from the scene transition, and is in panic wanting to know why you are there. As she goes to pull the gun, another student named Mitsuru Kurijo stops her and informs her that you'll be here for a bit, and introduces you to her as Yukari Takeba. Cooler heads prevail and you all crash for the night.

The next few days you begin adjusting to school life until one evening there is seemingly a monster attack, as a large beast is chasing another dorm student. Yukari takes you to the roof to escape where you are cornered by the beast. And in a desperation move, she goes to use the gun she has but drops it as she brings it to her head. The protagonists picks it up with eyes dilated and holds it to his own head and pulls the trigger, unleashing a monster that lays waste to the one that was attacking you. 

You come to find out that you were actually being watched by this dorm, as they are actually a task force called SEES who assembled to fight these monsters called shadows, who only appear in a hidden hour that takes place between midnight and 12:01am called the Dark Hour. Only a select few can fight in this hour, and they implore you for your help to fight the monsters and end the Dark Hour by investigating a massive tower that appears during it.

Sorry that was a bit a mouthful. The game is essentially a blend of a Dungeon Crawler, JRPG, and High School simulation. During the day you have to attend school, keep your grades up, join clubs and maintain relationships. All of these social ties affect your ability to create Personas, which affect you characters statistics and what spells they can use. As you level you can create new Personas by mixing the ones you have together to create better stronger ones, and in some cases transfer abilities from one to the others. 

At nights you can explore the Tartarus, the mysterious tower that appears where their school is every night during the Dark Hour. An apparent nest of shadows, the goal is to go in and push upwards as best you can before the night of a full moon. In the tower you can grind for experience, items, money, or new personas. But you don't want to stay in for too long, your character can become exhausted or sick, which will effect your ability to perform during the day. So the whole game you have to strike a balance between all of these things in an attempt to maintain pace with everything.

While dealing with maintaining friendships in the game can be kind of tedious at times, many of the characters have some very funny dialogs about them when you hang out. Some of them have problems you need to help them through to help strengthen the bond, but you need to know their personality quirks to get the best results to evolve the relationship. My two favorites were Kirijo and Maya. Kirijo is funny because she's the rich heiress to massive conglomerate, so she is positively baffled at how to eat at a fast food restaurant since the food is so cheap and there is no silverware. Maya is a player you meet in an online game who just speaks in excessive l33t, and while those are funny, the best is the payoff at the end when you finally meet face to face. Its not often during a game I actually find myself laughing out loud, but it was totally worth it.

So if you haven't been able to tell up to this point, the game is directed to a very niche audience. I love the idea in concept, but some of its execution falls a little bit flat. For one thing, you actually have to pay attention to the lectures in school. Because getting good grades raises your academics and charm, which you need to befriend certain characters and make certain persona types stronger. Some of the lectures are fucking long and boring (just like in real high school!) and a lot of the time you don't even get a hint to the question before you have to guess at it.

This guy never shuts his fucking mouth. Just find a walkthrough with the answers.

Then when the school day actually ends, traveling from location to location can get a bit tedious. If I wanted to date Kirijo I would groan because that would mean I would have to walk all the way to the other side of the school. While the movement speed is fast there is at least 3 or 4 screen transitions. God forbid I needed to buy new equipment first because then I gotta walk my ass out of the school, ride to the mall, buy my shit, walk all the way back before I could go on my date. I can be tedious because its pointless walking. There is a place where you can jump right out of the school to the travel menu which is handy, but its only in one spot so that can be annoying.

The music has a handful of notable and catchy songs, and some of them are just awful. I am a big fan of the "Burn My Dread" song from the beginning of the game, its got a catchy kinda techno-y rap kinda thing going for it. But on the other hand, I would hate exploring the Tartarus because it has this dismally boring piano rhythm of like 3 to 5 notes. Make sure you have your own music on standby. Midway through the game you can change the dungeon BMG but none of the selections are all that spectacular.

I really like this f'n song.

The dungeon crawling is pretty well done. The map is constantly changing except for boss floors or section transition floors. You can travel as a team or split people up to fight shadows or look for treasures. Most of the time you will explore with the group because as I mentioned before, this game can have a huge difficulty spike and being caught alone if you are under leveled can be certain doom. Almost every level has an escape  which you can use to get out and recover your health and magic if you are out of items, but if you don't make it to the boss floors you have to do that same section you just completed over again (luckily, you don't have to beat the boss to escape down on their floors, so you should do so anyways to recover, save, THEN tackle the boss.)

I stuck with small swords, It was much easier to time preemptive strikes.

The combat follows the JRPG team leader format. You have full control of your character and you can give vague instructions to the rest of your team for how you would like them to perform. Players of the Pokemon series will feel right at home because it operates in the same way. Many of the shadows feature some form of weakness and if you can strike their weakness (or get a critical hit) you can knock them down and have an opportunity to attack again. If you can knock down all of the enemies, you can go in for a massive team bum rush for big damage.

But you need to be careful because your own persona's have strengths and weaknesses too, which means you do as well. So its important to get a feel for what kind of monsters you are facing on a floor and what abilities your teammates have so you don't wind up getting floored every turn and crushed. You can revive teammates but if the main character bites it, game over.

My big tip is this: early in the game, you can fuse a demon girl called Lilim. She is probably the best personas to fuse early because she really only has a weakness to Light magic (few enemies use light), and has the ability to have all 4 major elements at the same time. With the right type of stat boosting items (like things that raise strength, magic, and luck), she can end up being a persona you can ride for most of the game, I made it nearly to end with her because while the spells may not have had the same power by the end, they still knocked things down for a massive attack. Figure out how to make them and make sure the fusion gives her all 4 elements.

She doesn't have Bufu, but if she did instead of Marin or the Rak's
this would be one of the best 4-Elements Lilims you could make.

I had to tone down the difficultly in this game to get all the way through it. But in hindsight I am glad that I did. Yeah the game could get a little slow from time to time, especially when I was waiting for full moons to proceed with the game. But it has a likable cast and follows a pretty tried and true JRPG format that I had a good deal of fun with. Story featured some twists and turns and had some pretty interesting moments. I can see why this game didn't take the world by storm, but I can also see why the Persona series has the cult following it does.

Persona 3 FES also features a bonus chapter that extends upon the ending staring Aigis, but I only played it a little bit to set that aside to move on to Persona 4 (and it kind of makes the ending of game a punch in the crotch). If you are looking to give this a try, you can try to find it on the ps2, they updated the game slightly for the PSP release, and looks like it can also be found on the PlayStation store under PS2 Classics. I believe the PSP version has updated combat which borrows elements from Persona 4 and a female main character as well, to change your dating options. If the PSP game can be played on PS3? Get that one.

One thing I can definitely say about this series is this: If the game didn't have my interest before, it fucking has me now.

If only I grew up in Japan...
Maybe I coulda grew up as popular as I was in this....

Ico Collection- Shadow of the Colossus (PS3/PS2): A Colossal Return

Considering what a huge advocate of the PS2 I was, it was a wonder I never played Ico. Even more so, considering the size of my PS2 library its a bigger wonder I have never played Shadow of the Colossus. So as a two parter retro review I will be playing the HD remakes of these two titles in the recently released Ico Collection. For the record, playing this disc is what fried my PS3 just before Dark Souls came out. The game I started with first was...

ICO COLLECTION- SHADOW OF THE COLOSSUS: (PS3/PS2)

Our game starts off with a scene of a lone man named Wander riding on a horse through various terrains to travel to an alter in an secluded underground shrine in a forbidden land. Upon arrival he undrapes something he brought with him, which is reviled to be the body of a dead girl by the name of Mono. He carefully places the body upon the alter, Wander is attacked by a group of shadowy forms, which he easily dispatches with a shining sword. After making quick work of them, a loud celestial voice(s) booms from the ceiling expressing surprise that he has the weapon. Wander learns that he is speaking to Dormin and tells that he's heard he has to power to resurrect those who have died. He pleads with this entity to restore Mono to life, to which Dormin responds that he can do this for Wander but to be wary of what he asks. The cost of such a favor could be very high, more than he might be willing to pay. But as so many tragic heroes before him he claims to not care and says that no price is too high. He is told to travel the countryside and destroy 16 different colossi that he can find by holding his legendary weapon in the light and in return for doing this he will revive the girl. So with his trusty steed at his side, Wander heads off to defeat the Colossi.

Sometimes, you just gotta make em say I Do.

Right out of the gate, let's get this out of the way. It says Ico HD Collection. Not Remake. So much like the God of War Collection, these are just a pair of PS2 games with a bit of the high definition glean on them. Some of the animations and designs show their age, but ultimately the characters are well designed and the environments have a gorgeous serene appeal to them. Although the horse you ride in the game is the biggest eff'n horse in the history of existence and Wander has more of a frolic rather than run, the graphics and overall design looks great and was not something I noticed after I actually started playing.

Defining the style of game Shadow of the Colossus is somewhat tricky, because it blends together some elements to make up its final product. I would hesitate to call it an action game because I relegate that to more of the spectacle fighters or beat em ups and the action in this one doesn't fit in that traditional concept. I think more accurately it is an adventure game with a strong focus on puzzle platforming. Each stage is essentially broken up into two aspects. At the start of each stage, Dormin informs you of what colossus you are out to kill and roughly where they are found. You take off on your doofus horse and travel the countryside to find the colossus. This isn't exactly a puzzle, but sometimes the locations of the beasts are not immediately apparent. You can hold up your sword in the light to shine beams of light, and the closer to the correct direction you are, the more focused the beams become. There is pretty much zero fighting in these sequences, and no music either. Just the sound of the wind blowing around, some chirps of the birds overhead, and the hoof beats of your steed beneath you. It actually has a pretty calming effect, so instead of raising tension before the monster, its leveling you out so you can approach with a clear head.

During the course of the adventure you will visit nearly every kind of terrain type,
 each providing a different aspect to the battle

Which is good, because each battle with a colossus is a puzzle in and of itself. Each of them pretty different from the rest of them each with their own individual nuances and weaknesses. You can shine your sword on them to discover where their weak points are, and although you have a bow, you almost always have to climb upon the beast and attack with the sword. They start off simple enough, with the beasts having a fairly noticeable point to grab and climb by their feet, but as you progress some of the monsters are constantly in flight, or barely come above water or sand, forcing you to figure out how to antagonize them enough to come after you and expose a weakness. Once you start climbing the grip gauge mechanic starts moving, showing you exactly how much strength you have to hang on. It diminishes gradually as you scale their hide but as your advance upward the colossus will begin to flail around to try to fling you off. If you try to move while they are doing so the grip gauge depletes even faster. If your grip runs out or you let your finger slip off the grip button, you'll be sent flying off their back straight to the ground and will be forced to try again. The whole concept really does a fantastic job of increasing your tension as your eye constantly is checking that lower corner of the screen, making sure you have just enough grip to land that last stab, praying you have just enough to hang on to the end. I would try to hold off until they would stop flailing to try to let go of the grip and ride their shoulders to recharge the grip for as long as possible, sometimes it worked, sometimes I would groan having to scale back up again (colossus #15 was a particular pain in my ass for this because it was difficult to get to the top of his head, and the prick wouldn't stop flailing long enough for me to plunge my sword in. The fight took almost 3 fucking hours). As you scale around you will have highlighted crests to signify their weaknesses and instead of just hitting the button to stab, it starts to charge its power, so you can gamble holding on a bit longer to do that much more damage.

Sad thing is, this isn't even one of the bigger ones.

Jump on the item they are swinging around the most.... Makes total sense.

What makes this string of battles so incredible is nature of the colossus you are fighting. Colossus #5 (The Avian) is a very large bird colossus, circling over a lake. As you swim you will find three broken stone pillars in at the surface of the lake that you can climb on. Standing on them will cause the bird to swoop at you, if you time it right, you can leap onto its back and grab on. Then some impressive camera work pans around to show the bird taking flight higher, and begins to spin and twist to try to shake you off as you scale to its wings and tail. watching the world flip and turn beneath you coupled with epic classical score behind it all builds to this incredible movie effect. Each fight is very original to itself and is memorable in its own way. This is fantastic because I've felt video games have been going away from boss fights to just make you fight waves of regular baddies, or just fight a enemy that just requires them charging into a wall and then punching them. It made me happy because I don't have to deal with the game aspect and just get boss fights.

The controls are functional, I suppose. Everything in the control in this game seems a bit loose. When I am scaling and trying to jump from ledge to ledge it sometimes takes 2 or 3 tries to get the asshole to jump the direction I want him to. The grip gauge never seems to last long enough for me, you can increase it by killing white tailed lizards as you travel the map in this game is enormous, and finding them is very needle in haystack like. Ultimately, the most of my biggest complaints come from having to ride that fucking horse. I don't remember his name, but for the sake of this review he should be called Boxer, because his stupid ass should be sent to the glue factory, (yes, an Animal Farm reference, Eff you). This stupid animal you have to call for like 3 or 4 times before he actually turns around. Every time I would try to mount him I would jump like 5 or 6 times in place trying to trigger the climb up animation. When riding him even mashing my X button he would never seem to pick the pace more than a casual trot. Yanking on the reigns one direction or another would eventually make him turn like 10 gallops after I missed my turn. Multiple times he'd glitch to stop from going over a cliff but then refuse to back up or let me jump off. And the worst of all in a particularly precise battle, he would hit a rock small enough to step over and would come to a complete stop. Since I'm using my bow facing the other direction, I would have to wait the like 4 minutes it would take the turn the dumbass around so I can try again. Or more or more accurately I would be mowed down by the colossus and lose a big chunk of health. That stupid animal was more frustrating than the fights.

That aside, I think the aspect that really made this game feel great was the way it told a story without dialogue or cut-scenes to characterize everything. The whole thing has this very independent movie feel to it. You start the game with the normal "save the princess" mentality but as you fight you start to feel that these Colossus aren't exactly evil or even bad.. Most of them are just minding their own business, doing nothing. Not even harming the area around them. Then as you fight them it doesn't feel like they are attacking you as much as they are defending themselves. Even their death sequences have that effect. When you strike the deathblow everything slows down to slow motion as you watch the Colossus collapse in a heap as a very sad sounding melody plays instead of some victory music. As each one dies a black poison escapes their body and possesses itself within Wander. As you play on, He becomes more and more scarred, worn, and almost undead looking. With each fight I felt more sympathetic to the Colossi, and that Wander's goal had become selfish rather than noble. The only real dialog heavy cutscene comes at the end of the game where all the truths are revealed. It was incredible well done.

It took me a while to get back to this game after it fried my PS3, but I am glad that I did. It definitely lived up to the hype and I'm looking forward to getting into the time trial modes when I get a chance. But first? Ico.