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65. Tomodachi Life
Tomodachi Life basically follows a bunch of people you create who all live in the same apartment building if and until they get married and move in to one of the neighbouring houses. You watch them do their thing, make friends, go on dates, fall in love, and maybe have some babies.
As you're watching your Mii's do all of this, you can also play some mini-games with them, such as putting on a concert, helping them propose, playing guessing games, or just generally offering them advice when they ask for it. You can change their clothes and their apartments as well.
I adored this game and I played it nonstop for a good while, and I fully intend to go back and play it again. Watching the Mii's grow in to people, engage with others, get married, raise families, the epic rap battles, the cute clothing, the funny item descriptions. All of it was great and so much fun. It can be a major time sink but you really grow to care for these tiny fake humans.
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64. Mario Tennis
I'm grouping together Mario Tennis for the N64 and Power Tennis for the Wii. If I had to pick one I'd go for the Wii because you'll actually get a workout. I'm not sure what the story is other than Tennis tournament.
This is a Tennis game. So basically hit the ball when it comes in to your court and get it in to the opponents court and hope they miss it. There's also some gimmick levels, like ones where the fields move or you get stunned or other such things. You can play singles or doubles and of course can have your friends play with you.
Tennis is one of my favourite sports so this game is a lot of fun for me. Especially since you can play whenever and not have to worry about weather or finding a court or whatever. The Wii version especially will give you a very good arm workout if you play it enough. It's just a fun game if Tennis is a sport you enjoy.
Favourite character: Daisy Attachment 62592
Honourable mentions: Yoshi, Peach Attachment 62593Attachment 62594
I like Daisy's spunky attitude, especially in a largely male ensemble such as this. Yoshi makes the most adorable noises and I enjoy Peach's effects when she uses her special hits and all that fun stuff.
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I've only played Mario Tennis on the N64, but I loved that game. That and Tony Hawk's Pro Skater were a staple every time I visited a certain friend's house. I need to play that game again.
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Goddammit, Ultros! I thought we got rid of you?
Big fan of Tomodachi Life and Mario Tennis, though I only played the N64 game like Scotty and haven't even played the former. I owe my liking it due to Proto's Let's Play.
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So much Nintendo goin' on right now. Which means I haven't played most of the recent games. :shobon:
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63. Katamari Forever
Um I don't quite remember what the story is about. I think the King of the Cosmos has lost his memory and there's also a depressed, passive-aggressive robot version of himself who destroyed a bunch of planets and stuff, and they have The Prince and his cousins go out and roll stuff in to a ball to make new planets and restore the King's memory.
In this game, you roll stuff in to a ball. Hey, where are you going! I swear it's more fun than it sounds. You get goals for different levels, a lot of them are to make your ball a certain size, but you also get some like roll up a certain type of item or whatever. And you can also roll up Cousins, which will let you control a different little character. Then you get graded and berated by the King or his robot counter part.
I'm awful at this game and I don't appreciate the remarks I get when I complete a difficult level, but the game is amazingly fun. When I heard the description it sounded like the dumbest thing ever, and it kind of is, but it's actually really fun and pretty funny. You get the weirdest music too and then you roll up stuff like giraffes and people and you can still see their legs kicking. It's so absurd that it just works and it's actually a good mood booster because of how silly it is.
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Oh man I love everything katamari
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Great series. Only played the first game so far. I need to get my hands on the other titles.
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You made me remember how much I loved it so I made it my new set
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It's a pretty good set.
You should have seen me talking her into trying this game, and the first 5 minutes of her playing this game.
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62. Luminous Arc 2
Going on a bit of an early schedule because I'll be away tonight. So last one for today will be up in a few hours. In the meantime
Luminous Arc 2 is about the Knights and the Witches putting aside their age old racism and feuding in order to join together and stop a rogue witch and her posse who is setting out to do something very dangerous. Our young hero also manages to get a magical device stuck on him by accident which gives him great powers.
This is a Strategy RPG, so every turn you can move your characters a certain number of squares on the battle map, and then act by attacking or using a skill. This game does have some unique features. When you land a hit, you have a bar that will increase. There are 3 total bars you can fill. These bars can be spent on either special attacks or on making regular skills stronger. The main character can also “engage” with certain witches, which will give him access to their skills and special attacks. This game also has relationship meters, and bringing specifically indicated characters in to battles will allow you to have extra scenes with them after the fight is over. The game is divided in to chapters, with each chapter taking a break from the main story to show you a short about “Kopin” (see picture below).
General impressions:
I'd heard good things about Luminous Arc 2 so I decided to give it a go. I was pleasantly surprised, overall. It had a good sense of humour, interesting large cast of characters (I'm a big fan of large casts of characters), and while the story wasn't anything special, it did keep me interested. The game could get a bit difficult if you didn't do a bunch of level grinding so that could get tedious, but overall it was pretty fun.
Story:
While the story wasn't anything special, it wasn't bad either. I'm not sure if it would have had more impact if I'd played the first game, although I don't think they are direct sequels. More like the Suikoden games where you can play them out of order but they are still related? I could be wrong about that so its better to look it up. What was good about the story was the way it was told. The dialogue flowed well and it had some good down time and a really good sense of humour, making it pretty lighthearted. It was kind of refreshing because a lot of strategy RPG's like this one have such heavy stories.
Gameplay:
It could be a bit difficult at times, but overall it was easy to pick up on. Really the difficult part just came from all of the grinding needed. But I enjoyed having character scenes at the end of it if you brought the right character in to battle, and there was a good range of characters to use for different strategies.
World:
Being the type of game it is, the world isn't really explorable in the traditional sense. All you really have is like a background image except for the battle maps. But the map was pretty large and there were some pretty areas. Just not a lot of exploration to it.
Characters:
I'd say this is the strong point of the game. The characters are all pretty interesting, I like their interactions, and they're mostly pretty funny. There's a certain charm to them that I really enjoyed and watching the character scenes was my favourite part of the game.
Favourite character: Dia Attachment 62607
Honourable mention: Althea Attachment 62608
I wasn't expecting to like Miss Dia that much (it's weird to just hear her called Dia) because she's not my usual type of preferred character. But she grew on me a lot and actually has a surprising amount of depth for this game. She's snarky and self-assured and headstrong, but she's also a bit immature for who she's supposed to be and you can see her confidence wane from time to time. Althea is just a sweet girl and she sticks to her goals and she works hard, which is very admirable.
Overall this game doesn't have the most depth and it has more than enough cliche's, but overall it was a fun, lighthearted experience with some great and funny character interactions and simple, fun gameplay.
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61. Agarest War 2
Last one for today!
61. Record of Agarest War 2 (PlayStation 3)
A.K.A Agarest Senki and Agarest: Generations of War 2
Attachment 62611
Agarest War 2 is the story of Weiss, an amnesiac man who killed a God, and has to make up for it by essentially giving his own life and also involving his child and grandchild because this is an Agarest War game and your debts never end with you.
The gameplay for this game is pretty unique and complicated and rather hard to explain. The easy part is that this game has a dating sim aspect. The game spans 3 generations. The first two generations can end up with one of 3 ladies and their child will be the next generation's hero. The last generation can be paired with any remaining female party member. One way to improve relationships is your decisions in conversations and the other one is an unspeakable evil that I wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole and also one of the reasons this game ranked lower than its already fanservicy enough predecessors. In this game you can have 4 characters in battle, and your formation will depend on which character you select as a sort of “lead”. Then you'll have different attacks depending on which button you press (Triangle, Square, O, or X), and can also activate special attacks when you build up a certain gauge. I could go in to linking and all of that but just trust me when I say its easier to understand when you play it.
General impressions:
So I wasn't sure what to expect with this one. I loved the first two (yes, Agarest War 2 is actually the third one both in release and timeline) but I'd heard this one switched stuff up a good deal. In some ways this was a good thing because battles in the other two were tedious and this game made huge improvements in that regard, but on the other hand the characters and story were less interesting and this game took it way overboard with the fanservice to the point where I was genuinely uncomfortable. And for this series, that's saying something.
Story:
While there wasn't really anything wrong with the story, in fact some spots were quite interesting, it lacked the same charm of the other two games. It wasn't told in the best way and it didn't really live up to its potential. But it did have its moments and it wasn't a bad story either.
Gameplay:
The best thing about this game and a huge improvement over the other two. You can actually walk around the world map, battles were made faster (but not easier if you're used to the other system), there are a lot more story events and a lot less fights to do. Even towns were made more explorable. It's an improvement on the series gameplay in almost every way.
World:
The world is pretty interesting and it has it's good spots. It's still not graphically the best game but it still had some neat areas and places to explore. The battle maps do get a bit repetitive though. But the best thing is that you can actually explore the map in this game.
Characters:
The characters lacked the same depth as they had in previous games and became more cliche than ever. There were still some good ones but they just didn't have as much personality to them and some of them were just downright unlikeable. But there's still a large cast so there's bound to be someone I like.
Favourite character: Aina Attachment 62616
Honourable mention: Fiona Attachment 62617
Aina was just such a sweet woman, very soft spoken, very caring. It was nice to see, especially in contrast with the main character, Weiss, and she did soften him up a little. Same thing with Fiona. Fiona also tugged at my heart strings because can you imagine being a kid and suddenly waking up and no one you know is around and your parents are gone and everything is strange and different?
Overall this game is a huge improvement on the series in terms of gameplay. The maps are explorable, battles no longer take forever, there's much more scenes and story. But the game doesn't have the same charm and depth, the fanservice is WAY over the top, and it just isn't as interesting. But it's still a fun game for fans of the series.
And tomorrow we finish up the 60's and head in to the 50's yaaay~~
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The games did look fun for people who want they old school grindy feel to their RPGs.
Just waiting for Agarest Wars 3: The Harem Saga
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Every time I see this game I keep wanting to read it as "Record of Lodoss War."
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Cool list so far Pumpkin, you sure have a wide/diverse taste in games :)
