You would think that I would learn my listen after the first time. I never thought that Agarest Senki would ever see the light of day outside of Japan, but it was announced for released in Europe a couple of months ago and it should be coming out within the next two months if I’m not mistaken. Now I’m surprised to learn that the game is actually coming out in the States as a PSN release, via Siliconera.

Judging on the lone piece of art on the homepage, it looks like they’re not going to be cutting any of the content out. Now I just have to weigh whether I should get a special edition of the EU release and make my wallet cry or get the US PSN release, which won’t have an artbook, but will allow me to spend money on other things…

Introduction

To be honest, 7th Dragon is my first import game in a very long time and is the first time I’ve attempted to play an RPG in Japanese. For most RPGs, this would have been a terrible idea, but for 7th Dragon, where the story doesn’t seem to be at the front of focus, this turned out to just be a regular bad idea. Thank god I can read enough to figure out the place names…

As the title says, the main site is up. You can access it here. There’s nothing much on the site, info on one character (the main character, who is nameless and silent.) There, however, videos, which have been uploaded to youtube by some kind soul and thus I have embedded them below.

The game, from what little we know, seems like classic SMT to me. To my chagrin, dungeon crawling is done in 1st person. Not my favorite mode of exploration, but it doesn’t matter, it’s an SMT game, I’ll buy it no matter what.

From the videos, it seems like demon negotiating is back. I say that with lack of confidence, since I have never played an SMT game before III. It did look familiar to something in Persona 2, which I assume to be similar.

Sorry, you can only have one daughter in the game…

After only having it for a week, I managed to beat DQV. It took about 25 or so hours. Overall, I would rank the overall experience of this game somewhat lower than my experience in DQIV.

DQV’s story is pretty standard as far as Dragon Quest games go. More or less, there’s this big evil dude that is resurrected/brought into the human world/causing havoc and you, as the hero, needs to stop him. V is a little different than the others in how it builds up to final fight thought, with more of a focus on the hero’s life than preview games.

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Wow, I’m about two months overdue for this post. I know that I promised to upload pics as seen as I got in, but I was kind of busy. I actually have a backlog of posts I went to publish, but I’ll hold back a little. I’ve been in Yokohama since June 1st. I’m staying about a 10-minute walk away from Aobadai-eki in Shofu Dormitory.

The reason I am here is to do research at Tokyo Institute of Technlolgy 『東京工業大学』. I’m working with an RF related lab. I haven’t really done much besides using some Agilent machines to take measurements of some transistors.

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Whoa, it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything here. Sorry about that all, I’ve been see busy with end of term projects (which started around the beginning of April ish?.) Since my last post, I’ve: beaten DQV and wrote my mini-review for it (which I forgot to post,) gotten TWEWY and beaten it, gotten addicted to Europa Universalis III, started some manga series and finished others, and rewatched the ending of the Gundam Trilogy a billion times I also got the Samsung N120, a nice little subnotebook.

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The single for “Kiseki,” by NIRGILIS, came out today. “Kiseki’ is the OP from the new season of Tetsuwan Birdy: DECODE. I’ve been waiting for this single to come out for a while now. Out of all of the OPs from this spring (or is it still winter?) season of anime, it’s probably the only OP I particularly like. It’s a very energetic song.

This is actually the only song I’ve heard from NIRGILIS before. The PV is pretty interesting, for the sole reason it uses people to anime some of the lyrics. As in, at a certain point, the people use their own bodies to combine into romanji.

The PV of the song uploaded on youtube a couple of weeks ago. It’s embedded below. You can get the single at the usual places.

NIRGILIS’s website

Since I wrote about the previous one, I really won’t write that much here. I thought of the previous game more as multiple ADVs with a side of RPG. That feeling was kinda of reversed for this title though. By mere virtue of AT 2’s RPG side not sucking, it now feels like the ADVs were added to the RPG part. The funny thing is, besides being non-sucky, it’s actually pretty good.

To a make a long story short, the game is about the mystery of who has been targeting and killing people in the little town of Inaba. The victims have all wound up in strange positions, dangling from television poles and such. The police have no idea of who the suspect could be or how they are doing this. Also odd is the fact that victims appear on the Midnight Channel, a channel that only appears at midnight, before they are killed.

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As with every drama, I’m fashionably late with this one as well… This time, it wasn’t a Chinese one. *gasp* For once, I actually decided to watch a Japanese one. I know, big surprise since I’m a big fan of wuxia. Initially, I wanted to see if I could find a historical drama based during the Sengoku Jidai period or at least something with people dying. Alas, I could not find a single one (I suppose they’re not very popular.) I did, however, settle on a comedy: My Boss, My Hero. I wasn’t disappointed and hope to see more comedy jdramas in the future ^^.

This one stars a 27-year old son of a yakuza boss, Sakaki Makio. If there’s one defining trait he has, it’s that he is utterly stupid. This is demonstrated when his failure to count and compare numbers ruins a deal that his father sets up with a foreign mafia. Angry that his son is so dumb, he makes a deal with Makio: either he returns to and graduates from high school, or his younger brother, Mikio, will take over the group.

So, Makio is enrolled into a high school as a senior, attending school with a bunch of kids ten years his junior. In his school, only one person, the principal, knows his true identity as a yakuza. If anyone else finds out, Makio will get expelled. Quite a bit of the comedy comes from how hard Makio has to restrain himself to not give himself away (the rest of the comedy coming from the hilarious faces he makes.)

The whole drama is pretty hilarious, though. The whole thing is pretty much ridiculous.

Of course, there’s always some kind of cute love interest in these types of dramas and for this one it’s Umemura Hikari, played by Aragaki Yui. Her name seems oddly familiar, I think she may have done some gravure before. Anyway, on the cuteness scale, I’d rate her an 8, right below Horitaki Maki (10 <3 ) and Shida Mirai (9).

Unlike the female leads I’m used to in most of the Chinese dramas I’m used to watching, Umemura doesn’t really become annoying at any time during the drama. Even when there’s an inevitable (and hilariously caused) big misunderstanding between Umemura and Makio, she doesn’t spend half of the series hating him.

There is also Sakura-something Jun… Unfortunately, Makio only utters his full name once or twice during the series, so it’s hard to remember. He literally calls him Sakura-something throughout the whole series, which I find hilarious. Anyway, Jun plays the role of Makio’s best friend/conscience. The thing I most remember him for is the way he talks. More like, what kind of motions he uses when he talks. They seem a little feminine to me, but that’s ok, he’s a fun character.

Besides being really funny, I think this series can be pretty touching at some points, especially towards the end. Even though Makio is still, at heart, a yakuza, he’s actually a pretty good guy in the inside. Later in the series, the extent he goes to protect his friends without letting them know he’s a yakuza is pretty sweet, especially when he can’t fight in front of them.

Anyway, if you don’t watch this one, I’m just going to say that you’re missing out. It’s one of the few dramas that had me actually laughing out loud.

Just really busy lately. For some reason, even though I don’t have a money source right now, I’ve been buying a lot of douijn and games lately. Oh boy, have I gotten a lot of games. I ended up double dipping and picked up Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI for PC. I enjoy playing on my computer much more than using my PS3 to play it. The interface feels a lot better/quicker. I also ended up creating my own force for once. Maybe I could start those gameplay diaries again.

I also got Valkyria Chronicles and Little Big Planet.. I haven’t played the latter as much as I’ve played the former, even though I’ve only had Valkyria since yesterday. I think I’m already on the 10 hour mark. I’m at chapter 9 right now. It’s a pretty good game. It’s one of the few recent SRPGs that requires ACTUAL strategy (unlike a certain grindfest *cough-cough*.) Having troops fire on you while you move your own units really does add another element to strategy. Hopefully I can beat it by the next weekend so I can do a little writeup on it.

Joking aside, the real reason I’ve been busy is the sheer amount of work I’ve been given as of late. I haven’t even been able ot play most of the games I’ve gotten… One of my classes has a lot of projects. If you’re really interested (for whatever reason,) you can look at the processor we had to ‘make’ that was due Thursday. Anyway, you can expect more posts in the future (like, one or two days.)

Top picture source: Minoharu

After waiting for a year, I finally got the DS version of DQ IV. I have just now realized how much I must suck at DQ games. I’ve been wiped out like 25 times in the 20 hours I’ve played. I actually had to grind to fight a certain boss :-/

I haven’t really played that many DQ games before… Outside of playing one of the Dragon Quest/Warrior Monster games as a child and playing Dragon Quest VIII, my experience in this area is pretty much nothing. I thought that this would have a pretty similar feel to that.

In therms have battle systesms, they’re both pretty much the same, except that the fourth iteration is a whole lot faster than the eighth. I wouldn’t be surprised if this were the fastest turn based RPG system I’ve ever seen. It’s a wonder how much having minimal animations and low HP, maybe the developers of the Xenosaga.

There is sadly not that much character development in this game. They took out the party talk feature in the Western versions of the game. For those unfamiliar with the series, party talk is basically exactly what it sounds like. It basically allows you to get the insights on the current situation from your party members. It’s also pretty useful if you haven’t played the game for a while and you have forgotten where to go. It’s not that bad, but wtv.

Truth be told, I’m more looking forward to DQV right now. Even though IV has the best music in the series, imo, it seems as though V has the better character interaction, especially since pary talk isn’t in any of the Western editions.

Well, this is great. I finished most of this post last week when I had just gotten the game, and now I’ve finished it :-/. GREAT timing. Anyway, I might as well give you my important end-game stats.

26:12 with Hero at Lv 33
Battles: 761
Monsters Defeated: 1928
Victories: 696
Times Wiped Out: 17
Times Fled: 46
Max Dmg: 282

I think most of the wipeouts was with Torneko and the twins. At some point in Torneko’s chapter, being wiped out doesn’t really affect anything, so I got a bit crazy >.> With the twins, one of the bosses was kinda hard T_T