Bravely Default 2 Impressions

As someone who is a massive fan of Final Fantasy 5, its successor series, Bravely Default, has been recommended to me countless times. However, every time a game in this series is brought up, there's always some kind of caveat like "This game is great, but that second act is a doozy!" or "That game improves on some aspects of the original, but downgrades in other areas." As a result, I've been waiting for an ideal jumping-on point for this franchise for a while. When I saw in the recent Nintendo Direct that a demo for the newest game in the series, Bravely Default 2, was available, I figured that the time had finally come to get on board.

Background
Bravely Default 2 is a turn-based RPG in the style of classic Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games. One of the game's defining features is a job system that lets each character mix and match skills from a variety of classes. The demo features four classes: White Mage, Black Mage, Vanguard (knight), and Monk. The other major feature is the "Brave" and "Default" system that allows you to take extra actions in one turn at the expense of subsequent turns; which creates a risk-reward dynamic to the battle strategy. Despite its somewhat misleading name, Bravely Default 2 is actually the third game in the series and begins a new story with different characters than the previous games.

Pros

• I found the game's graphics appealing, both in terms of art style and use of textures. The very detailed textures on somewhat simple-looking stylized character models made the gameplay and cutscenes look they were being enacted by dolls being posed in a playset. I thought it was kind of a neat look.
• The game has nice battle animations that are distinct for each character and enemy. It's impressive considering how many types of monsters you're likely to encounter.  For example, I like the way defeated enemies slump over and collapse; in most games of this type, they would just fade away.
• On the topic of the doll-like quality of the game's graphics, I had a lot of fun playing dress-up with my characters; each character has a special costume for each class. I spent several minutes in the Job menu cycling through the classes for each character just to admire the costume designs.
• No two characters in the main party speak with the same type of accent. I like this voice casting decision because it conveys that the characters come from a multicultural world.
• The FF5-like job system has the potential to be a lot of fun, especially later on once more than four classes are available. 
• The music in the demo features pieces influenced by classical music, traditional Middle Eastern music, and rock. It was effective in giving the impression that the final game will have a great score.

Cons

• The game's user interface can be a little unclear or inconsistent in layout. I sometimes felt like it was hard to display the info I needed both in menus and during battles.
• Bravely Default 2 eschews traditional random battles for having enemies visible on-screen. The problem is that the enemies respawn too quickly; after defeating an enemy, all I would have to do is walk a short distance and then turn back to find that same enemy was alive and well again. Usually, the nice thing about having on-screen enemies is the ability to clear a room and explore freely; this demo did not allow me to do that, which I found frustrating. 
• After coming out of a battle, other enemies in the area can engage you immediately. I had many situations where I had to fight multiple groups of enemies consecutively without a break, making the effective frequency of combat higher than what it would have been with random encounters.
• By far the biggest issue with this demo was its extremely imbalanced difficulty level. Just to make a modicum of progress into the dungeon in the demo's quest, I had to grind for a considerable amount of time. After playing for several hours, I managed to make it to the dungeon boss only to find that I could barely deal any damage to him; I would likely have to grind for several more hours just to be able to finish this demo, which just didn't seem worth it to me.

Ultimately, this demo had the opposite effect than what was intended; it made me feel less inclined to pick up the full version. Why would I pre-order the full game when the demo was so discouraging to play? Since there seemed to be potential in the game from an artistic and mechanical standpoint, I'll probably give it a second look if reviews indicate that the final game has been drastically rebalanced to offer a less grinding-focused experience.

The demo warns you that the difficulty has been turned up "a little higher", but to me this seemed extreme.

I found the dialog in the demo to be fairly entertaining.

Be prepared to spend a lot of time staring at the battle screen if you decide to play this demo.

Cris Tales Impressions

 As I had mentioned in one of my E3 posts, one of the games that came out of nowhere and caught my eye was the indie RPG, Cris Tales. Since a demo became available on Steam during the expo, I made a point of downloading it and giving it a shot while it was still fresh on my mind.

Overview:

Cris Tales is a turn-based RPG in which the main character, Crisbell, works to prevent a calamity from striking her town by using her powers as a Time Mage. Cris can see the past, present, and future at once and manipulate one time period to affect the others. This ability can be used during combat as well as during interactions with NPCs and the environment.

Observations:

• I love this game's art style. It's a nice hybrid of anime and the illustrations in a kid's storybook. The way the game visually divides the different time periods on a screen is a pretty neat effect. The game also does a good job of working its 2D designs into 3D environments.
• The animation looked a little choppy. I'm not sure if this is a style choice or a limitation of this early build of the game. I have a fast PC and was running the game on the low settings, so I don't think it was a performance issue.
• Combat is turn-based but also allows for timing-based button inputs to get critical hits (similar to the Paper Mario series). I think this has the potential to make battles more engaging, but I found the timing to be hard to judge. This may be due to the choppy animation.
• Using the time manipulation powers could lead to a lot of interesting possibilities in the full game. At one point in the demo, Cris sees that two NPCs homes will collapse in the future but only has the resources to save one of them with her time powers. The game makes it clear that who you choose to help will have consequences later. I'm curious to see how this will play out in the full game and what the true scope and impacts of decisions will be.
• In battle, the use of the time powers is usually pretty straight forward. Against standard enemies, you can increase or decrease their age to make them weaker. The boss in the demo, however, exhibits puzzle-like elements in battle. In this case, the foe is wearing impenetrable iron armor, but if you get it wet and move forwards in time, it will rust, making the enemy vulnerable. I'm interested to see what other kinds of time puzzles the full game will incorporate into boss battles.
• I had mixed feels about the story and dialog. Some of writing was entertaining, but I kind of felt like the characters were over-explaining things or talking down to the player. However, since this game seems to be going for a kid-friendly vibe, it could just be that I'm much older than the target audience for this game. Cut scenes are fully voiced but sounded a little stilted. I suspect this is because the game requires the player to press a button after each line of dialog, which adds extra pauses (Octopath Traveler had a similar issue). An auto-play option in cutscenes would definitely be nice.
• I played this demo on PC, but I think this game would be a good fit for Switch, so that will probably be my platform of choice if I end up getting the full game when it releases.

I came away from this hour-long demo really impressed by its art and intrigued by the possibilities its mechanics present. While I have some reservations about the story, I think it could improve as the game progresses.  Cris Tales is slated to come out sometime in 2020, so I'll be sure to check in on it again then.

If you're interested in trying the demo of Cris Tales for yourself, you can find it on the game's Steam page.

MomoCon 2019

 Having attended a general nerd/pop culture conventions like Dragon Con for the past several years, I've been interested in attending a convention that focuses a little more narrowly on my main nerd fandoms: video games and anime. Conveniently, Dragon Con's sister convention, MomoCon, happens to be focused on those two very things! While the anime parts of it were a lot of fun and the cosplay, of course, was on point, it was the gaming events that really stood out to me. In particular, I really enjoyed meeting indie developers and trying out demos of their games.

Here are some of the gaming highlights from the con:

Inti Creates (website)

Among the devs with displays on the MomoCon floor, Inti Creates was one of the largest and most well known. They make Bloodstained Curse of the Moon, which was one of my favorite games of 2018. As one of their employees stated, they are the makers "of fine 2D action games... and also Gal Gun."
I was able to demo four of their games at the convention:

• Dragon Marked for Death (Switch) - The newest game from Inti, an action RPG with 2D platforming elements. It's hard to get a good sense of an RPG during a brief convention floor demo, but it felt solid and had very nice sprite work. The combat was quite tough, so I think learning combos would be key.
• Azure Striker Gunvolt 2 (Switch, 3DS) - My favorite among the games I tried at the Inti booth. It's similar to Mega Man but with more of an over-the-top anime flavor. The character I played as, Copen, had an interesting mechanic in which you first dash into an enemy to lock on to them, and then jump back to fire homing shots at them. I may end up making space in my queue for a Gunvolt game in the near future. 
• Blaster Master Zero 2 (Switch) - I have very limited experience with previous Blaster Master games, but this one appeared to stick quite closely to the formula of the original. This series breaks up the Metroidvania format by having vehicle combat and occasional overhead shooter segments. Since the game controls differently depending on whether you're on foot, in a tank, or in the shooter segments, I would likely need to spend some time with it to get the hang of it.
• Gal Gun 2 (PS4, Switch) - This was probably the strangest game I played at MomoCon. It's an on-rails light gun shooter that also features dating sim elements; your character apparently is shooting crazed anime girls with pheremones?! Unfortunately, the floor demo used a PS4 controller, which I found really difficult to use to aim the gun. Also, the suggestive themes in this game made it a little awkward to play on a convention hall floor surrounded by thousands of people! 

Mega Cat Studios (website)
I had never heard of this studio before, but they had a rather prominently positioned booth with more games to try than any other developer. Most of their focus seemed to be on making new games for retro systems like the NES, SNES, and Genesis. I appreciated that each demo station uses a vintage CRT TV set. They also had a demo for one game for modern consoles.

Games Played:

• Log Jammers (NES, PC, Switch, PS4) - A lumberjack-themed sports game pretty clearly inspired by Pong and Wind Jammers. It was pretty basic I liked the work they put into the customer NES cartridge.
• Little Medusa (NES, PC, Switch, PS4) - A puzzle game in which you turn enemies into stone and knock them into the water to form bridges. A fun game for shorter sessions. I liked the cute and colorful graphics.
• Old Towers (Genesis) - A puzzle platformer in which your character zooms up vertical stages along rows of coins. The way the character moves coupled with the fact that you have to get every coin to reveal the exit reminded me of Pac-Man.
• Crunch Out (SNES) - I watched my wife play this one. In this area arcadey management sim, you play as the manager of a video game company and run around the office making sure your coders keep working by feeding them and keeping them awake. There's definitely some commentary being made about the state of the game industry here.
• Bite the Bullet (PC, Switch) - A 2D shooter like Contra or Metal Slug but with a twist, eating your downed enemies allows you to upgrade your character and charge up special moves. As their only game on modern hardware, it takes Mega Cat's retro designs and adds a lot of embellishment. The controls and character movement felt a little sluggish but I'm hoping that's just due to the floor demo being an in-work build of an unreleased game.

 

 

 

 

Studio Soft Colors (website)
This studio only had one game on display, a visual novel:

• Aquadine (PC, mobile) - This visual novel set in a Venice-like city had really pretty artwork. It seemed to have some pretty deep lore about mermaids, Atlantis, and other mythological concepts in addition to a more typical romance plot. The con floor was far too loud and busy to really focus on a visual novel, but what I saw has me interested to try the demo. 

Blue Bomber Games (website)

This developer's game won Momocon's Best Georgia Indie award!

• Looking for Heals (PC) -  A dungeon crawling action RPG in which the player character is the healer for a group of wreckless AI-controlled warriors. Most of the gameplay involves following your party around as they battle their way through skeletons and demons casting various healing and resurrection spells on them to keep them alive. It's a simple but novel concept. Only a limited demo was available, but the game seemed like it will feature some humorous writing as well.

Pixel Nicks (website)
Pixel Nicks also only brought one game, but they made it count by winning Best Overall in the Momocon Indie Showcase!

• Eagle Island (PC) - A Metroidvania with Rogue-like elements. The player character has very limited abilities, so he relies on his pet bird to attack enemies and pick up items. I liked the lush look of the environments despite the fact that they're procedurally generated.

 Cosplay
While I mostly focused on indie games for this con, of course, it wouldn't be a real con without some cosplay. Most people were cosplaying as anime characters (a little out of scope for this blog), but I did happen to snap photos of my two favorite video game characters cosplays that I saw.

Majora

Bayonetta

Nintendo Switch Demo Roundup

Since finishing Blossom Tales, I’ve primarily been focusing on PC and mobile games for the last several weeks. However, the effects of Switch withdrawal have been setting in, so I decided to see what’s been going on lately on Nintendo’s hybrid console by rounding up some demos from recent or upcoming games.

Kirby Star Allies

My wife and I have played through several Kirby games together and they are usually wonderful co-op experiences. Thus, we went into this one with high expectations. The general look and feel of the game appealed to us in classic Kirby fashion, but the “Allies” component yielded mixed results. Kirby rolls with a squad of 3 companions that can be controlled by other players or the AI. By combining his abilities with those of his allies, Kirby can use special combo skills that are a lot of fun to experiment with. Unfortunately having a team of four characters on screen along with flashy combo moves means that there’s a lot of chaos on the screen and keeping track of the character that you’re directly in control of can become difficult. Unfortunately, all this on-screen busyness (especially with the erratic AI companions) detracted from the more subdued co-op experience that we were looking for. I think we’re going to hold off on this one until we get a better picture of what the upcoming Yoshi game will be like that promises to scratch a similar itch.

 BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle

As I had mentioned in my Skullgirls review, it's been a while since I've really sunk my teeth into a traditional fighting game. Blazblue Cross Tag Battle mashes up several franchises but caught my attention in particular due to the inclusion of characters from RWBY and Persona 4 (I'm currently watching/playing both). The game also features characters from the Japanese arcade game, Under Night In-Birth, and of course, BlazBlue. The content of this demo was extremely slim, featuring only one character from each franchise and only one stage, but it was enough for me to get a sense for Cross Tag Battle's Marvel-vs-Capcom-style combat. I also appreciated that every combination of characters features unique animations and voice work. I have heard that previous BlazBlue games have featured pretty good single-player content, so I'm tempted to bite on this one if it gets good reviews.

Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido

Well, this was certainly the strangest of the bunch. In Nintendo's latest puzzle game, you play as a "sushi striker", a warrior who defeats their enemies by rapidly eating as much sushi as possible and then throwing the dirty plates at their foe. I was expecting a simple little puzzle game with a goofy premise as window dressing; instead, I found that Sushi Striker is a game with a fully-featured campaign featuring lengthy anime cut scenes, lots of voice acting, a sing-a-long theme song, and of course, one of the most bizarre plots I've every seen in a game. The game play consists of matching up different colors of sushi as the pass by on a series of conveyor belts and then flinging the empty plates at the rival sushi striker. The game also features some RPG-like elements with player stats and the ability to use special moves by partying up with magical creatures called "sushi sprites" (basically seafood-obsessed Pokemon). The game play and story were amusing enough to get my wife and I pretty interested in this game, but the $50-price tag gave us some pause. I'll be keeping my eye on this one.

Happy Birthdays

First up, I'll admit that the only thing I knew about this game in the beginning is that the promotional artwork featured some really cute drawings of dinosaurs. It turns out that beneath this game's cute exterior, lies a complex SimEarth-like ecosystem simulation game. In the beginning, the game features a helper character, appropriately named Navi, who prattles on tirelessly (and redundantly) about the game's mechanics. Once Navi is finally done with you, the player is turned to loose to tinker with the world's temperature, topography, moisture content, and a variety of other factors in order to get new lifeforms to spawn. For someone like me, who likes a game with structure, Happy Birthdays didn't hold my interest for long. However, for a natural born tinkerer like my wife, there is a definitely a lot of appeal to tweaking the terrain of a planet and then watching as new types of cute little critters are born; she spent several hours building mountains, rerouting streams, and collecting creatures. Thus, this a is a title whose appeal will vary greatly depending on your personality.

If you're interested in buying or pre-ordering any of the games in this post and also supporting this blog, you can use the Amazon affiliate links below:
Kirby Star Allies
BlazBlue Cross Tag Battle
Sushi Striker: The Way of Sushido
Happy Birthdays

Demo Hotness: Grapple Force Rena

 
After having been delighted by Galaxy Trail's Sonic-like platformer, Freedom Planet, I've been eagerly awaiting its sequel. While it appears that Freedom Planet 2 is a still a while off, in the meantime, the game's developer has been supporting a smaller indie project called Grapple Force Rena.  A demo for this previously unknown game recently became available on Steam, so I decided to give it a go.

Much like Galaxy Trail's Freedom Planet, Grapple Force Rena (GFR) has the look and feel of a Sega Genesis game. However, while Freedom Planet drew inspiration from Sonic, GFR feels like a 16-bit pastel-colored cartoon take on Bionic Commando with a touch of Treasure influence thrown in for good measure. As would be expected from a Bionic Commando-like (I have no idea if that's a real expression), this game is all about its grappling hook mechanic. Rena can fire her hook in any direction to swing, pull, rappel, and grab any surface or enemy. Thankfully, for a game that is so singularly focused on a locomotion mechanic, GFR really gets the feel of the movement right. It took me a little while to find the control scheme that worked for me, but after a few minutes, I was swinging Rena around like Spiderman. GFR also sports some cute pixel art and a cheerful soundtrack.

The demo of GRF is pretty generous; it includes five stages comprising the first world of the game. I was surprised to find that each of the five stages had a different structure rather than just simply trying to get from point A to point B. Here's a quick breakdown:

• Stage 1: Introduces the different actions Rena can perform with her grappling hook and introduces the quirky characters inhabiting the game world. It does a good job of showing off how versatile the grappling hook can be. Otherwise, a fairly straight-forward linear platforming stage.
• Stage 2: Hunting down all the enemies in the level using an on-screen directional prompt. This level also features a fairly simple mid-boss battle. There's not much to the combat but I enjoyed picking up enemies and ricocheting them off of walls like pinballs.
•  Stage 3: Searching the stage for the entrance to the enemy's secret base. In this stage, Rena is joined by a flying companion. While I liked the idea of expanding Rena's move set by giving her a partner, I felt that the execution here was a little off. I often found myself trying to grapple a ledge or an enemy, only for my companion to fly into my path. I'm also not a big fan of scouring stages trying to find something, especially when there's no map.
• Stage 4: A chase scene in which Rena tries to knock down the villain's airship. Rena's locomotion could make for some exciting chases but this one was fairly slow since I had to repeatedly stop to pick up more enemies/objects to throw at the airship. I'm hoping later parts of the game will involve chases that are more focused on quickly fluid movements and less on chipping away slowly at an enemy.
• Stage 5: The boss of world 1. After being lukewarm on the previous two stages, this one brought me back in. It's definitely standard first boss fair, but doing it with a grappling hook was enough to make it feel different than other platformers. I think there's some potential here for great boss battles later in the game.

While this early demo didn't exhibit quite the level of fluidity, speed, style, and polish that I saw in Freedom Planet, the solid mechanics at its core were enough to keep me interested. Previews of some of the upcoming parts of the game show a lot of promise, so I plan on checking in on this game again later as it develops.

If you're interested in trying the demo for yourself, you can find it on Steam or the game's website.

Demo Hotness: Spelunker Party

A great thing about Nintendo’s eShop is the proliferation of demos. On many occasions, demos have turned me to new franchises and genres that I would have never discovered otherwise. In other cases, they’ve shown me that a game that sounds like a good fit for me on paper just doesn’t work for me in practice. Square Enix’s new co-op 2D platformer, Spelunker Party, unfortunately fell into the latter of those two groups. Some thoughts on the experience my wife and I had with the demo:

• The game has a simple and cute visual style. However, the male spelunker, female spelunker, and their animal companions all look like they were drawn by different artists, giving the game a somewhat uneven look.
• In local co-op mode when playing with the Switch docked, the screen splits into small windows even though additional screen space is available when playing with two characters. This can be problematic as it makes many of the game’s already tiny obstacles, traps, and items even harder to see. For visibility’s sake, it would probably be best to play this game on two Switches.
• Spelunker Party is extremely unforgiving for a game with the word “Party” in its title. Touching any of the cave’s tiny obstacles is instant death as is missing a jump or even falling from minimal heights. These deaths are in fact so instantaneous that the game strangely doesn’t bother to animate your character falling, but instead just displays the death animation the moment his/her feet leaves the ground if your jump or fall trajectory would result in death. It also doesn’t help that two characters can’t grab the same rope at the same time,
• Spelunkers also have a finite amount of air in the cave (yet another way to die), but thankfully checkpoints with air refills are easy to find. However, once you’ve lost five lives, the whole level must be restarted. If there’s a disparity between skill levels of the players, it’s quite likely that one will be left staring at the game over screen while the other one continues with their remaining lives. Having to sit out the rest of the level like this significantly detracts from the party potential of Spelunker Party.
• The game’s music is simple, repetitive, and catchy. It reminds me a lot of the upbeat tunes you’d hear in Bomberman.

Based on my experience with this demo, Spelunker Party could potentially make for a decent 2D cave exploration game for those with the patience for its finicky nature. However, as a casual co-op or party game (which is what I would expect from a game with “Party” in its title), I think Spelunker Party would introduce more frustration than fun.

Note: At some point after playing the demo, it was brought to my attention that this game is a remake of an Atari game which helps to explain some of its quirks. Thus, it may have some additional appeal to retro gamers, but as somebody that lacks that nostalgia, I still can’t recommend Spelunker Party.

Demo Hotness: Octopath Traveler

 After teasing the mysterious new RPG, Octopath Traveler, over six months ago, Square Enix hasn't said a word about the game since. However, much to my surprise, not only was the game prominently featured in the September 13th Nintendo Direct, but it also had a demo released on the eShop that very same day! I immediately dove into this meaty demo, here are my thoughts on the 2-3 hours of gameplay on offer:

• First, a warning: Octopath Traveler may feature seemingly innocent looking 16-bit graphics, but do not be mistaken; this game features very dark themes such as murder, slavery, and rape. This is NOT a family-friendly game!
• The structure of Octopath Traveler is very similar to Saga Frontier. You start the game by picking one of eight protagonists; two are available in the demo: a knight and a dancer. Each protagonist has their own unique story and starting location, but their quest will eventually intersect those of the other characters. When you meet another one of these characters, you can add them to your party but continue along your original character's quest line.
• Even though it's clear that this game is still unfinished, the production values are very high. The 2D/3D hybrid art style is very striking and most of the cut scenes are fully voiced. However, what grabbed me the most was the beautiful soundtrack.
• The combination of 2D sprites and 3D background has a cool old-school look to it but also uses advanced lighting and particle effects. These effects generally look really nice but sometimes obscure certain details like character facial expressions and staircases in dungeons. It would also be nice if the character sprites had a broader range of animations to make cutscenes a bit more dynamic. There's a good chance a lot of these things will be polished up in the full version of the game.
• Octopath's combat system features random encounters and straight-forward turn-based battles with the turn order displayed at the top of the screen (similar to Final Fantasy 10). The unique wrinkle is the boost mechanic in which boost points can be stored up to allow your character to strike multiple times per turn. Also, enemies have weaknesses to certain elements and weapons that can be exploited to stun your foes and gain additional turns.
• The demo only featured single-character scenarios, so I wasn't able to get a feel for how the game's combat will work with a party. With only one character available at a time, combat strategies were pretty limited, but there's probably potential for interplay between characters in battle once a party has been formed. With what was shown in the demo, I'm not really able to determine exactly how deep Octopath's mechanics will be.
• Olberic's path presents a pretty generic RPG story of a disillusioned former knight. While his plot is something I've seen in many games, his unique ability, dueling, makes for some fun possibilities: Olberic can challenge pretty much any NPC to a duel, including those that are blocking access to doors and passageways. Thus, I was able to duel a guard, win, and then step over his unconscious body to enter a restricted area.
• I found Primrose the dancer's path to be much more compelling from a narrative standpoint. It covers the mature themes I mentioned earlier to set up a dark revenge tale. Between the two paths available, the writing and voice acting are much stronger in her story (Olberic's is still ok, though). Her special ability, alluring, allows her to recruit NPCs as temporary companions to join her in battle.
• Each path in the demo features some lengthy opening dialog scenes, a town, a short dungeon, and a boss battle before coming to an end.
• It was clear that a lot of features that will be available in the full game are not available in the demo. These include the world map, a quest log for managing side quests, and a character status screen. Also, the demo lacks the ability to change the text speed or skip cutscenes. Even though these basic features were all missing, I still feel like this bare-bones package was enough to give a representative taste of the game.

I finished the Octopath Traveler demo hungry to experience more of this unique Switch-exclusive RPG. As much as I enjoyed titles like Saga Frontier in the PS1 era, the lack of a cohesive narrative and quest structure often led to dead ends and reliance on guide books to make progress. Octopath seems like it will deliver on the intersecting multi-adventure premise of the Saga games but use modern story-telling techniques and structure to hold the game together in a more statisfying and complete package.

Demo Hotness: ARMS Global Test Punch

A game that I like more in theory than I do in practice

 

Over the past 2 weekends, I've had the opportunity to try out the online multiplayer demo of Nintendo's newest fighting game, ARMS. Now that I've been able to participate in 3 different sessions of the ARMS Global Test Punch, my thoughts on the game are starting to come together.

• Controls: I initially went back and forth between two of the game's control schemes: motion controls and Pro-controller. In general, I found that while the motion controls allow for more fine control of punches in mid-flight, the pro-con offered much better movement and blocking. I ultimately found that I got more consistent results with the pro-con, but it's definitely admirable that the motion controls work as well as they do; they're certainly a viable option. I'm very curious to see if any competitive players will be using motion controls in the upcoming E3 ARMS tournament.
• Characters: While I initially didn't appreciate them, the character designs really started to grow on me. There's a good amount of variety to their designs and play-styles. I do wish that they had a little bit more personality in their win and loss animations. Hopefully, the full game will feature some additional voice work to give the characters more life.
• Mechanics: There is more depth to this game than meets the eye and I like how switching between characters and mixing and matching weapons allows for a wide variety of strategies. This is a game that requires a fairly high degree of finesse to play, and thus I don't think button-mashers will get very far. As a result, the game doesn't feel as approachable as old-school fighting games or Smash Bros, so I think exciting matches pretty much require two players of equivalent skill and a firm grasp on the systems.
• Music: The theme song is extremely repetitive, but manages to get stuck in my head every time I play!

Overall, I really appreciate the creativity and intricacies of ARMS, but I'm just not sure that it's a game for me. Generally, the games that work for me have to do at least one of the three following things: offer a satisfying single-player campaign, be a good co-op experience with my wife, or keep house guests entertained. From what I've heard from those who have early access to the full game, the single-player is very limited and there's been no mention of co-op. Thus, the whole thing hinges on ARMS's potential as a party game, and at this point, I don't think this game's mechanics lend themselves well to that. From what I can see in the demo, ARMS is a game that really encourages honing one's skills and then going online in search of worthy opponents. By the time I got to the 45-minute mark in my third Test Punch session, I found myself checking my watch; I think I got my fill of online competition from the demo alone. Thus, there's a good chance I'll be passing on the full version of ARMS until it gets a price-drop unless I hear something especially compelling about the content not featured in the demo.

Demo Hotness: Mercenaries Saga 2

Mercenaries Saga 2 is a tactical RPG that plays somewhat like a stripped-down budget version of Fire Emblem. The game alternates between brief story scenes and turn-based tactical battles on an isometric grid battle field. While compared to Fire Emblem, the story, graphics, and music are all a pretty significant downgrade, the core game play is fun and engaging. The menus and interfaces are a little clunky, but not to the point where they significantly hamper enjoyment of the game.

The demo includes the first 5 missions of the main game, and I found myself quickly hooked by the game's quick small-scale battles. Since the full game is $5 (USD) on the eShop, I can pretty much forgive the game's shortcomings in terms of presentation and UI. With solid tactical RPG game play and such an incredibly low price, I'll probably be picking up Mercenaries Saga 2 next time I get a craving for some turn-based strategy on my 3DS.

Acknowledgement: I became aware of this game after seeing Michael Cunningham (@FinalMacstorm) singing its praises on Twitter. The man definitely knows his handheld RPGs, so when I saw him get this excited about a budget game, I knew I had to give it it a shot. You can find articles by him at RPGamer and Pocket-Console.

Demo Hotness: Kirby Planet Robobot

As a fan of the Kirby games from back in the Super NES days, I was pretty intrigued when I heard all the praise heaped on Kirby Planet Robobot earlier this year. Considering that Kirby Super Star for SNES would easily be one of my desert island games, this new Kirby would have a high bar to reach, but I decided to give the demo a spin.

The demo offered two stages a "Normal Stage" and a "Robobot Stage", and the first of the two was certainly true to its name: the most bog-standard basic Kirby stage one could imagine.  The very basic layout of the stage did give me the opportunity to admire how far Kirby games have come in terms of graphics, however. While the music was a pleasant arrangement of a classic Kirby tune, I was somewhat disappointed that I wasn't greeted with an original composition. It was pretty clear from this stage that any gameplay innovation that could be present would be entirely concentrated in the Robobot stage.

The Robobot stage definitely delivered. Once Kirby acquires his mech, the whole game really comes alive. Controlling the mech and destroying enemies and obstacles was very satisfying. In addition to the upping the intensity of the action, the mech gameplay also incorporated some light puzzle-solving elements, which was a nice touch. By selectively destroying objects and powering up the mech appropriately for the environment, Kirby is able to find secret areas and gather some extra collectables. I was also pleased to find that boarding the mech causes the background music to change from a classic Kirby piece to a catchy new jam.

After playing through both stages, I was definitely impressed with the gameplay enhancements the titular Robobot provides, but was left wondering what the ratio of normal stages to Robobot stages would be in the full game. As much as I enjoyed the cute presentation of the whole package, if the mech gameplay doesn't make up the bulk of the game, there might not be enough new stuff here to draw in a long-time Kirby player like me, especially without the co-op mode that was a key feature of the classic games.

Demo Hotness: Pokemon Sun & Moon

I haven't played a Pokemon game since Pokemon Ruby (i.e. about 13 years ago), and thought that now would be a fine time to check in with the series and see if enough has changed to pull me back in. This is another case where I'm really glad that Nintendo has started posting demos in the eShop.

Similar to the Yokai Watch 2 demo, I was immediately struck by the beautiful graphical presentation; Fire Emblem Fates, Yokai Watch, and now Pokemon Sun/Moon are real showcases of how far the visuals and audio of portable games have progressed. I'm guessing that the lack of stereoscopic 3D in this game is a result of the graphics pushing the 3DS hardware to its limits. I especially admired the use of varied camera perspectives in towns and battles that helped bring the world of Pokemon to life. The music featured in the demo sounded great and complimented the graphics and gameplay quite nicely.

Unlike the Yokai Watch 2 demo, the Pokemon Sun/Moon demo is structured in a way that guides the player through a good vertical slice of the gameplay. Over the course of an hour or two, the player can wander around through town, battle Pokemon in the field, meet some seemingly plot-essential characters, and face off against a boss trainer. While I enjoyed getting to sample these different aspects of the game and see how they've changed, I wasn't really able to get a feel for the difficulty or strategy of Pokemon Sun/Moon since the starting Pokemon in the demo is so overpowered that I was able to one-shot pretty much every enemy I encountered. Thankfully at the end of the main quest of the demo, the player is free to explore further and there are some additional trainers to battle that do manage to put up a decent fight, so there may be some potential for a challenge in the full game, though I suspect the plot-critical quests will be deliberately easy for the sake of younger players.

Overall, this demo impressed me quite a bit and piqued my interest to play the full game at some point. My favorite upgrade to the classic Pokemon formula is the ability to summon a Tauros to use as a mount as well as break through large rocks. This helper Pokemon mechanic eliminates the need for items like the bicycle and HMs like Rock Smash and Cut; this is the exact kind of streamlining Pokemon has been needing and it makes me optimistic that there will be other quality of life improvements throughout the full game. One concern I had was that I noticed that the demo seemed to rapidly deplete my 3DS's battery (after playing for 2 hours I went from fully charged to 25%). Other than this one issue and some concerns about the difficulty level, I think that I found enough to like here to consider returning to Pokemon, but I will probably wait for the rumored Nintendo Switch version, Pokemon Stars, so that I can enjoy the improved graphics and sound of this Pokemon generation on a larger screen when I'm playing at home.

Demo Hotness: Yokai Watch 2

With the new Pokemon games due to come out soon, I decided to check out the one game that was said to give the Pokemon series a run for its money (in Japan at least): Yokai Watch.

I'll just come out and say it: This may be one of the worst demos I've ever played. While it starts out perfectly fine with a wacky cartoon theme song and some silly opening dialog that I can see appealing to children, there is nothing else here to convince someone to get the full game. After going through some brief dialog, the player is directed to walk a very short distance before immediately getting pulling into a cut scene. The cut scene then drops the player into a battle with only the most minimal explanation of the combat mechanics. I found myself just clicking around through menus aimlessly until the enemy was defeated, but I'm not even sure to what extent (if any) my input had on the outcome of the battle. With the battle completed, there's a few more lines of dialog that presumably are there to set up the core mystery of the plot, and then the demo abruptly ends. So that's it: some dialog and a single poorly-explained battle. The only thing I positive I can really say is that the demo was a nice showcase of the game's graphics, which are pretty impressive by 3DS standards. Other than that, this demo utterly failed to show me anything that would put Yokai Watch in the same league as Pokemon.

Bottom line: Don't waste your time or your memory card space on this incredibly underwhelming demo.

Demo Hotness: ReCore

At last year's E3, ReCore was one of the few Xbox One exclusive games that really piqued my interest, so I was pretty excited when I found out that it was coming to PC as part of Microsoft's Xbox Play Anywhere initiative. After hearing some very mixed reviews for the game when it came out a few weeks ago, I was glad to hear there was a demo available so I could try it out for myself.

I should start out by saying that the demo was set up such that it starts out at the very beginning of the full game with a 30-minute countdown timer for the free trial period. As a result, I was only able to get a very small taste of the game and chose to experience as much gameplay as possible rather than devoting any time to adjusting settings or performance optimization. I found that outside of a long loading time on the title screen, the game ran very smoothly on "High" settings. However, for some reason the resolution was locked at 720p, giving everything a somewhat blurry look on my 1080p screen. I'm assuming this is something I could fix given more time if I buy the full game.

After an extremely brief opening cut scene, I was dropped right into gameplay and was immediately impressed with how solidly the game controlled. The Metroid/Nintendo lineage was apparent right off the bat; making Joule run, jump, and shoot all felt really natural with the Xbox 360 controller. There were a few minutes of light platforming before entering a cave that served as a sort of mini-dungeon and combat tutorial area. Combat consists of Zelda-style lock-on aiming with the option to use a grappling hook to rip the cores out of enemies as a finisher. Capturing these cores rather than simply destroying an enemy gives an XP boost as well as provides crafting supplies, but I didn't really get to see the implications of this in the demo. Joule is aided in combat and exploration by her robot dog companion that can attack enemies and help find hidden items. Later on it appears that she can recruit other robot animal helpers and craft various upgrades for them. This cave area didn't have much in the way of puzzles to solve, and was mostly focused on combat, platforming, and finding keys to unlock doors. Predictably, the mini-dungeon ended with the requisite giant spider boss that every video game seems to need to have. The boss wasn't very difficult but it effectively served the purpose of allowing me to master the basic battle mechanics. With the boss defeated, my demo fittingly ended soon afterward.

In addition to the more obvious Metroid and Zelda influences, this brief gameplay experience of navigating a dungeon with an AI companion gave me some Beyond Good and Evil vibes, which is definitely a plus. The environments I got to see were pretty standard desert and cave settings, so most of the ReCore's personality comes from the enemies, robot helpers, and to a lesser extent the protagonist, Joule. As Joule is the only speaking character, I couldn't help but notice that even in the span of a 30-minute demo, she spends a lot of time thinking out loud and narrating her own actions. I'm hoping this is mostly done for tutorial purposes at the beginning of the game and is not a constant throughout since I only need to hear things like "I wonder where the power source is?" and "There sure are a lot of enemies here" so many times, but maybe I would get used it.

Ultimately, thirty minutes with ReCore was just not enough time to gauge how much I would enjoy the whole game, but the little bit I got to play did seem to have potential. At this point I'm not sold enough to spend the $40 on the full game, but will definitely be keeping an eye out for a sale and may revisit the game once I've finished off my backlog.

Demo Hotness: Picross 3D Round 2

After all the praise that's been heaped on the original Picross 3D over the years, and all the hype leading up to Round 2, I figured I'd take a little time to see what all the fuss is about. While I've never played a 3D Picross game, I do have some experience with traditional 2D Picross puzzles.

Here's a quick primer for those unfamiliar: a basic (2D) Picross puzzle consists of a grid empty squares with numbers marked at the ends of each column and row. These numbers provide clues as to which squares should be filled in and which should be left blank. A correctly solved puzzle will form a pixelated image once all proper squares have been filled in.

The demo of Picross 3D Round 2 largely consists of tutorials that teach puzzle-solving techniques with each of these tutorials followed by a small puzzle that allows the player to try out the recently-learned techniques. This came in handy since the 3D puzzles are much more complex than their 2D counterparts. Each puzzle takes the form of a cluster of small white cubes that can be filled in with one of two different colors. Cubes that are not to be colored in have to be eliminated from the puzzle all-together. Determining what to do with each cube can be challenging as the numerical clues must be considered in the context of three-dimensional space. The game also provides a method to view cross-sectional slices of the puzzle so that the inner cubes of the cluster can be accessed. When the puzzle is complete, the once formless cluster of cubes has been chiseled and colored to form a simplistic blocky 3D model of an animal, household appliance, or Nintendo character. After several tutorial segments, the demo leaves the player alone to solve three new puzzles without any hand-holding. With each of these three, the level of complexity increases.

This demo worked out pretty well for me as the tutorials do a good job teaching the player the type of logical thinking needed to make solving these puzzles in 3D approachable. The music in the game was pretty pleasant and definitely helped put me in the mellow puzzle-solving mood. As this game is almost entirely touch-screen based, I'm kind of surprised Nintendo didn't release this as a mobile game as it would be a great fit for a smartphone or tablet. I'm not sure if I would have the patience for all 300 puzzles included in the full game, but my brain could probably use the exercise so I may end up buying the game if it goes on sale.

I should note that while the tutorials are fairly thorough, I would recommend that those with no Picross experience start with a 2D version in order to learn the basic principles of Picross before graduating to 3D. I'd suggest checking out the free-to-play Pokemon Picross available in the eShop. Players who have already played the original Picross 3D should skip this demo entirely as it doesn't seem like the tutorial segments can be skipped.

Demo Hotness: Style Savvy Fashion Forward

Lately I've found that playing demos is a great way to stay abreast of new releases even while buried deep in lengthy backlog titles like Final Fantasy XII. To kick-off my "Demo Hotness" series of posts, I decided to go a bit outside of my element with Style Savvy Fashion Forward.

Style Savvy is a series of simulation/role-playing games about the world of fashion. The gameplay combines some light business management and puzzle-solving with a virtual dollhouse of sorts. In this demo, the player character is a new arrival in town and immediately tasked with the bizarre first job of being a fashion consultant to a stalker. Yes, you read that right, your first client is a woman who spends her time obsessing over and spying on a local celebrity and has become fixated on transforming herself to look exactly like her idol. The player's job is to accompany this client to clothing stores, make-up boutiques, and hair salons helping her make the best fashion choices (within her budget) in order to achieve her somewhat creepy dream. This scenario functions very well as a demo/tutorial since the player always has a clear template (a photo of the celebrity) to reference when making clothing, hair, and make-up selections. It's also inferred that at some point in the full game's plot there will probably be a moral of the story about the importance of individuality and self-expression, which is a nice little message for the younger players that this game is most-likely targeting. After the first chapter of this stalker scenario, the demo wraps up by giving the player a sampling of new clients whose style and budgetary requirements need to be met.

While I'm not sure that the full game would hold my interest the whole way through, playing this demo was certainly an enlightening experience. As someone who doesn't know very much about women's fashion, there were a lot of concepts and terminology that I had to figure out as I went along. I also appreciated that while the clients' requirements were generally pretty strict, there was always a wide variety of possible solutions (i.e. outfit suggestions) that would satisfy them, thus allowing the player a considerable range of creative freedom. This demo also provided me with some new perspective regarding gender in videogames: While the player can design their own character, there is no gender selection option; the protagonist of Style Savvy must be female. Also, all NPCs, at least in the demo, are women. I've never encountered this situation before, but maybe now, I've had just the smallest taste of what female gamers saw when playing many of the male-centric games of years past.