gremyarts

A Knight to Remember When I played the original Etrian Odyssey, the series known in its native Japan as Sekaiju no MeiQ (“MeiQ” a stylized form of “meikyuu”, Japanese for “labyrinth”, the full translation being “Labyrinth of the World Tree”), on the Nintendo DS, I didn’t have any expectations other than a chance to experience an old-school Japanese RPG. While it did have its flaws, I enjoyed it enough to the point where I played its sequels, not to mention remakes of the first two games on the 3DS, Etrian Odyssey Untold and Etrian Odyssey 2 Untold: The Fafnir Knight, the rereleases giving players the option of an experience akin to the originals or one with fleshed-out characters. The second Etrian Odyssey’s remake focuses on the eponymous Fafnir Knight whom the player names, dispatched from the Midgard Library to High Lagaard to help the Duke of Caledonia’s daughter, Arianna, in her quest to complete a ritual in ancient ruins known as Ginnungagap, whilst exploring a labyrinth

The Rainbough Connection The original Dragon Quest for the NES, at the time in North America known as Dragon Warrior for legal reasons, was my very first Japanese RPG, and despite my fond memories of it, I didn’t play any of its sequels on the system until generations later, and the franchise would ultimately blossom in popularity outside the Land of the Rising Sun. The eleventh entry initially saw release on the PlayStation 4 and the Nintendo 3DS, although North Americans only got the former version, which would, akin to many other Square-Enix RPGs, see an updated rerelease, Dragon Quest XI S: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Definitive Edition, on the Nintendo Switch, with this particular incarnation’s extra content ultimately carried over to other platforms. In the world of Erdrea, an army of monsters invades and destroys the kingdom of Dundrasil, with the protagonist whom the player names, an infant during the attack, spirited away in a basket down a river and raised in a village

The Devil (Summoner) Is in the Details During the 1990s, Atlus’s Megami Tensei series didn’t really get much exposure outside Japan, save mostly for the first Persona game and one of its sequels (with the other part of the second game not seeing a legal English release until the PlayStation Portable came out), although the third mainline entry of the main Shin Megami Tensei franchise, Nocturne, reigned in popularity among North American gamers to the point where many future MegaTen games would receive official translations. Another game Anglophone gamers initially didn’t receive was Shin Megami Tensei – Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers, originally for Sega Saturn before a port to the Sony PlayStation and over a decade later to the Nintendo 3DS, with North Americans getting that particular release. Soul Hackers occurs in the fictitious Japanese harbor town Amami City, where Algon Soft has its headquarters, aiming to make it a “city of tomorrow”. The player’s character is a member the

After Earth, But Good Depending upon how players define the term, open-world videogames can possibly date back to the 1970s, given the existence of titles with limited boundaries, nonlinear gameplay, and no concrete goals, although developers wouldn’t elaborate on the concept until games became more complex in the ‘80s, with early RPGs such as the first Ultima trilogy being possible examples. The turn of the millennium would see the idea expand even more, with non-RPG cases such as the commercially-successful Grand Theft Auto III. Games such as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild many critics deemed “revolutionary” for open-world games, and other companies would attempt to rival it, among them being Biomutant. The game begins in a post-eco-disaster world inhabited by anthro mutant characters, the player customizing a protagonist when starting a new game. Regardless of whatever form they take, they have excellent backstory largely revealed in the initial hours of the game, and

A Champion Among SaGa Ever since its monochrome beginnings on Nintendo’s Game Boy system, Square-Enix, at the time Squaresoft’s, SaGa series has been the odd duck among the company’s franchises, given its nonstandard traditions, with its later entries exemplifying its unorthodox disposition. However, the third installment of the franchise, given the misnomer Final Fantasy Legend III during its initial release, was far more traditional in terms of its mechanics, given SaGa creator Akitoshi Kawazu’s decision to devote effort to the first Romancing SaGa on the Super Famicom, although the Japan-only Nintendo DS remake, SaGa 3: Jikuu no Hasha - Shadow or Light (the subtitle meaning “Champions of Time and Space”), brought the gameplay more in line with the rest of the oddball series. Shadow or Light features an encounter system similar to the DS SaGa 2 remake, where enemies wander fields and dungeons, and always charge the player regardless of strength. Contacting one aware model