Post by Random on Feb 17, 2007 22:11:32 GMT -5
Alright, I'm bored out of my skull so I think I'll just run through all the DS games I currently have.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
If you have a DS, you must buy this game, or you are not getting your money's worth out of your DS. I could leave it at that. But then again I'm mostly writing this because I'm bored anyways so that'd kind of defeat the entire point of this.
Ace Attorney is a game (for the DS of course) in which you play as rookie defense attorney Phoenix Wright in 5 different cases, starting under your mentor Mia Fey. While all of the cases are murder cases, they do vary quite a bit. Surprisingly, I think the game itself is somewhat old as it was released in Japan quite a while before ever hitting the US.
I guess the traditional way in which you would expect a handheld game to fall short would be with the graphics. However, Ace Attorney actually has pretty good graphics and the style is very nice, even if the main character looks quite stupid if you look at his face too long sometimes. Theres no special 3D stuff going on here, and really not even fluid motion, just sprites, and it works well. So I guess if you're looking for a game with stunning visuals, this isn't it, but honestly if you're looking for a game with stunning visuals and considering handheld titles first you're not horribly bright, but, like I said, the style is very nice and the art is well done, so the game still looks good even if its not fancy or anything.
Another way you might expect a handheld game to fall short would be with the audio quality. However, the music and sounds in Ace Attorney are both extremely good. I found myself intentionally not doing whatever it was that I needed to do at certain points in the game merely because I wanted to listen to the music for a little bit. The music also fits whatever the feeling in the game is when it is used every time and adds a lot to the overall feeling of the game while you're playing it, drawing you even further into the situations. You can find all of the music for each game in this series plus some remixes and orchestrated versions (which are both extremely good) here.
The game play, much like the music, is also nothing short of excellent. I am still amazed that they were able to make this game relatively difficult without making it impossible by making you do things that you weren't given any kind of clue for. Ace Attorney will definitely make you stop and think on multiple occasions, particularly on the last case, and theres a high probability that you will want to check some manner of walk through at least a couple times. Despite this, the game has an excellent learning curve and doesn't just throw you into situations where you're really thinking hard to get to the next part. They give you plenty of time to get used to the way things work before you have to deal with really thinking hard.
As good as I have said the other parts of the game are so far, the story and character development are better than any of them. Each individual character is different from all the others, and all of their interactions are extremely believable and realistic, which can either make you really care about your client or make you want to get them a guilty sentence even though you're not supposed to. Each case also has an interesting story, some of them connecting with each other. Admittedly, the first case is nowhere near as interesting as the last, but in saying that I don't mean to imply that the first case is not very interesting, its still pretty fun and because it is the first case you might not really notice it at first.
Its sort of a minor point, but the controls are also fairly good. You can use the touch pad exclusively, or only the buttons, or any combination of the two, which has made me wish for this kind of option in all the other games I've got so far (theres no setting to change for this, each one is always usable).
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Justice for All
While I'm tempted to pretty much copy and paste the stuff I wrote about Ace Attorney for this because it pretty much all holds true, I won't, but I'll mostly just be talking about the differences between the two games.
Justice for All has four cases, instead of five like Ace Attorney did, but I suspect that the fifth case in Ace Attorney was a little bonus for the north american version that the Japanese version did not have. Justice for All follows Ace Attorney of course, so there are some references to things that happened in the first game.
The graphics in Justice for All are pretty similar to, or the same as they were in Ace Attorney, but I would say that in some instances they're slightly improved, if not by too much.
Sound wise, I initially thought that Justice for All had much worse music, as some of the themes changed, but after listening to them more over the course of playing the game I like them about as much as the ones in Ace Attorney, more or less in some cases. Basically, they remained excellent but if you played the first game and loved the music you might find it weird playing Justice for All the first time and having your beloved music changed.
Capcom did not change any of the controls really, they didn't need to be changed anyways, but they added a new feature called Psyche Locks which makes talking to people more dynamic. It fit in quite well and was a nice addition.
As far as the story goes, Justice for All is an excellent continuation of things from Ace Attorney. While the sequel does kind of suffer from the need to explain how to play the game in the first case which in a game like this more or less to equates to instances in games like the Metroid series where in each new game you suddenly have to collect the same old powerups again, Capcom actually made it somewhat believable and made it very painless for anyone who already knew what was up. Several new characters were also added, some connected to old characters, some not, and they also kept a large portion of the characters from Ace Attorney. The new characters are just as well developed and fleshed out as the old ones, keeping the game's story and atmosphere at the excellent level of quality the first game had.
Final Fantasy III
Final Fantasy III was one of the first games I got for the DS, and I was immediately impressed by its graphics. The game's intro video that plays when you do not hit anything at the start has extremely amazing graphics for a handheld, but sadly the game does not feature similar looking cutscenes. The in game graphics are not all that impressive compared to other DS titles, that being said however the DS has pretty amazing graphics for a handheld system generally speaking.
The music is exactly what you would expect from a classic Final Fantasy title. Traditional music for the series, with the standard issue Chocobo and Victory! themes. As you know if you've played any other Final Fantasy games, that means the music is relatively good, but personally I found it to be somewhat lacking, and it could've been a bit better.
Much like the music, the game play is again your typical Final Fantasy stuff. Turn based fighting, random encounters, you get the idea. The one thing that varied compared to other Final Fantasy games that I've played is the job system. As you progress through the game, you gain access to different jobs. Each one has its own special ability or abilities, generally the typical stuff such as Thieves getting Steal and Flee, though mages just get Magic typically (Black, White and Red mages anyways). There are a lot of jobs to choose from, ranging from the simple stuff like Thief, Warrior, and Black Mage to more uncommon stuff like Viking, Geomancer, Scholar, and Bard. While the number of jobs you can choose from is nice, it would be deceptive not to mention that a fair number of the jobs don't actually seem to be all that great, and quite honestly are useless when compared to some of the other options available to the player.
The story doesn't seem to be horribly deep, and while it is fairly linear, somehow the game itself doesn't seem to be very linear. I haven't quite gotten around to completely finishing the game, so there may be some nice plot twists coming up at the end but that does not seem to be the case. Most of the story is pretty clear early on, though there are little bits and pieces that may surprise you randomly as you're playing through. The characters really aren't particularly deep either, they have a basic personality that only actually really shows in random conversations you get while talking to some of the NPCs, so that could have been better. The reality with Final Fantasy III however is that its a remake of a very, very old game, so it should not be surprising that neither the characters nor the story are particularly deep or complex.
This version of Final Fantasy III also gives you the ability to add friends and message them using the DS's wifi capabilities. That is all. Why anyone would care about having the ability to message other people on a handheld RPG title with no multiplayer capabilities is completely beyond me, so Square-Enix probably added it just because they could.
The bottom line is, if you like the older Final Fantasy games and maybe miss the way they played, this is for you, if you like the newer Final Fantasy games mostly and don't particularly care for some of the originals, you probably won't like this game.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney
If you have a DS, you must buy this game, or you are not getting your money's worth out of your DS. I could leave it at that. But then again I'm mostly writing this because I'm bored anyways so that'd kind of defeat the entire point of this.
Ace Attorney is a game (for the DS of course) in which you play as rookie defense attorney Phoenix Wright in 5 different cases, starting under your mentor Mia Fey. While all of the cases are murder cases, they do vary quite a bit. Surprisingly, I think the game itself is somewhat old as it was released in Japan quite a while before ever hitting the US.
I guess the traditional way in which you would expect a handheld game to fall short would be with the graphics. However, Ace Attorney actually has pretty good graphics and the style is very nice, even if the main character looks quite stupid if you look at his face too long sometimes. Theres no special 3D stuff going on here, and really not even fluid motion, just sprites, and it works well. So I guess if you're looking for a game with stunning visuals, this isn't it, but honestly if you're looking for a game with stunning visuals and considering handheld titles first you're not horribly bright, but, like I said, the style is very nice and the art is well done, so the game still looks good even if its not fancy or anything.
Another way you might expect a handheld game to fall short would be with the audio quality. However, the music and sounds in Ace Attorney are both extremely good. I found myself intentionally not doing whatever it was that I needed to do at certain points in the game merely because I wanted to listen to the music for a little bit. The music also fits whatever the feeling in the game is when it is used every time and adds a lot to the overall feeling of the game while you're playing it, drawing you even further into the situations. You can find all of the music for each game in this series plus some remixes and orchestrated versions (which are both extremely good) here.
The game play, much like the music, is also nothing short of excellent. I am still amazed that they were able to make this game relatively difficult without making it impossible by making you do things that you weren't given any kind of clue for. Ace Attorney will definitely make you stop and think on multiple occasions, particularly on the last case, and theres a high probability that you will want to check some manner of walk through at least a couple times. Despite this, the game has an excellent learning curve and doesn't just throw you into situations where you're really thinking hard to get to the next part. They give you plenty of time to get used to the way things work before you have to deal with really thinking hard.
As good as I have said the other parts of the game are so far, the story and character development are better than any of them. Each individual character is different from all the others, and all of their interactions are extremely believable and realistic, which can either make you really care about your client or make you want to get them a guilty sentence even though you're not supposed to. Each case also has an interesting story, some of them connecting with each other. Admittedly, the first case is nowhere near as interesting as the last, but in saying that I don't mean to imply that the first case is not very interesting, its still pretty fun and because it is the first case you might not really notice it at first.
Its sort of a minor point, but the controls are also fairly good. You can use the touch pad exclusively, or only the buttons, or any combination of the two, which has made me wish for this kind of option in all the other games I've got so far (theres no setting to change for this, each one is always usable).
Graphics | Sound | Atmosphere | Gameplay | Overall |
7 | 10 | 9.5 | 9 | 8.875 |
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney, Justice for All
While I'm tempted to pretty much copy and paste the stuff I wrote about Ace Attorney for this because it pretty much all holds true, I won't, but I'll mostly just be talking about the differences between the two games.
Justice for All has four cases, instead of five like Ace Attorney did, but I suspect that the fifth case in Ace Attorney was a little bonus for the north american version that the Japanese version did not have. Justice for All follows Ace Attorney of course, so there are some references to things that happened in the first game.
The graphics in Justice for All are pretty similar to, or the same as they were in Ace Attorney, but I would say that in some instances they're slightly improved, if not by too much.
Sound wise, I initially thought that Justice for All had much worse music, as some of the themes changed, but after listening to them more over the course of playing the game I like them about as much as the ones in Ace Attorney, more or less in some cases. Basically, they remained excellent but if you played the first game and loved the music you might find it weird playing Justice for All the first time and having your beloved music changed.
Capcom did not change any of the controls really, they didn't need to be changed anyways, but they added a new feature called Psyche Locks which makes talking to people more dynamic. It fit in quite well and was a nice addition.
As far as the story goes, Justice for All is an excellent continuation of things from Ace Attorney. While the sequel does kind of suffer from the need to explain how to play the game in the first case which in a game like this more or less to equates to instances in games like the Metroid series where in each new game you suddenly have to collect the same old powerups again, Capcom actually made it somewhat believable and made it very painless for anyone who already knew what was up. Several new characters were also added, some connected to old characters, some not, and they also kept a large portion of the characters from Ace Attorney. The new characters are just as well developed and fleshed out as the old ones, keeping the game's story and atmosphere at the excellent level of quality the first game had.
Graphics | Sound | Atmosphere | Gameplay | Overall |
7.5 | 10 | 10 | 9.5 | 9.25 |
Final Fantasy III
Final Fantasy III was one of the first games I got for the DS, and I was immediately impressed by its graphics. The game's intro video that plays when you do not hit anything at the start has extremely amazing graphics for a handheld, but sadly the game does not feature similar looking cutscenes. The in game graphics are not all that impressive compared to other DS titles, that being said however the DS has pretty amazing graphics for a handheld system generally speaking.
The music is exactly what you would expect from a classic Final Fantasy title. Traditional music for the series, with the standard issue Chocobo and Victory! themes. As you know if you've played any other Final Fantasy games, that means the music is relatively good, but personally I found it to be somewhat lacking, and it could've been a bit better.
Much like the music, the game play is again your typical Final Fantasy stuff. Turn based fighting, random encounters, you get the idea. The one thing that varied compared to other Final Fantasy games that I've played is the job system. As you progress through the game, you gain access to different jobs. Each one has its own special ability or abilities, generally the typical stuff such as Thieves getting Steal and Flee, though mages just get Magic typically (Black, White and Red mages anyways). There are a lot of jobs to choose from, ranging from the simple stuff like Thief, Warrior, and Black Mage to more uncommon stuff like Viking, Geomancer, Scholar, and Bard. While the number of jobs you can choose from is nice, it would be deceptive not to mention that a fair number of the jobs don't actually seem to be all that great, and quite honestly are useless when compared to some of the other options available to the player.
The story doesn't seem to be horribly deep, and while it is fairly linear, somehow the game itself doesn't seem to be very linear. I haven't quite gotten around to completely finishing the game, so there may be some nice plot twists coming up at the end but that does not seem to be the case. Most of the story is pretty clear early on, though there are little bits and pieces that may surprise you randomly as you're playing through. The characters really aren't particularly deep either, they have a basic personality that only actually really shows in random conversations you get while talking to some of the NPCs, so that could have been better. The reality with Final Fantasy III however is that its a remake of a very, very old game, so it should not be surprising that neither the characters nor the story are particularly deep or complex.
This version of Final Fantasy III also gives you the ability to add friends and message them using the DS's wifi capabilities. That is all. Why anyone would care about having the ability to message other people on a handheld RPG title with no multiplayer capabilities is completely beyond me, so Square-Enix probably added it just because they could.
The bottom line is, if you like the older Final Fantasy games and maybe miss the way they played, this is for you, if you like the newer Final Fantasy games mostly and don't particularly care for some of the originals, you probably won't like this game.
Graphics | Sound | Atmosphere | Gameplay | Overall |
7 | 8 | 6 | 7.5 | 7.125 |