Disgaea 4, Of promises and non sparkly Vampires

Name:  Disgaea 4, A Promise Unforgotten
Developer: Nippon Ichi
Year: 2011
Platform: Playstation 3
Genre: Role playing game, Strategy
Time Spent: 20/30 Hours on main game. 150+ Post game

Intro: Since I wrote about Prinnies a short while ago I decided I should also write about the latest Disgaea installment. This is the 4 Disgaea title, not counting the remakes or spin of like can I be the Hero Dood. I don't own this game yet. But my friend Belsammael was so nice to borrow it to me for a while. Thanks to him I put hours into a useless hobby instead of doing what every responsible person should do. But I think every gamer can concur with this *wink*

Story: The story starts with Valvatorez, a NON sparkly vampire. And a weak one at that. Although being one of the most powerful beings in the universe before he lost his power due to a promise. It involved him not drinking blood till a certain event has passes which unfortunately took longer then expected. Because of his weakness he is banished to the lower parts of the netherworld to be a lowly prinny instructor. The most suckiest job you can have. Valvatorez regains his energy though... due to the power of... SARDINES! Yes you read that correctly. After learning that the higher demons make a mess of the Netherworld and rule without honour he sets out on a journey to make the Netherworld right again, and teach everyone about sardines.

In his journey he is accompanied by his servant Fenrich, a werewolf in leather pants. Fenrich is quite shrewd and tries to let his master drink blood again on certain occasions to make him stronger again. Whatever he does, apparently all is for his lord. Later on this party is joined by Death Emizel, a mage and a son of the current president of the netherworld. Fuka, a human who died and got turned into a half prinny (due to a shortage on prinny skin) who denies this fact and keeps saying this is all a dream. Desco, the ultimate final boss and little sis of Fuka for some odd reason. And Vulcanus, a female angel who is keen on money and hides lots of secrets. Some characters from old instalments also return. Together they set out towards the president to set things straight.

From Left to Right: Desco, Axel, Fenrich, Valvatorez, Emizel, Fuka and Vulcanus

Gameplay: Gameplay is roughly the same as all the other Disgaea games so far. You start out with story characters with certain abilities, although you can create your own custom characters to battle for you. Every character has its forte. One being able to wield swords and axes, the other able to shoot arrows or heal. You also have monsters with their own unique attacks.
With these characters you set out and start on the next map in the story. A looks a bit like a giant chess board. Lots of squares where you can play characters on. You start in the base panel where you can summon characters to do battle and move towards the enemy. You can summon 10 characters per battle, but you can make more characters so you can adapt to every situation.
Disgaea 4 also brings back the geo blocks. These blocks give a certain effect to the area they are standing on. These might include bonuses for both parties such as attack +50%. But they can also obtain effects for ally or enemy only. There are even weird affects such as warp, clone and deathblow.
Besides these things you also have the campaign board where you can power characters up, unlock bills for stronger items or create new characters. On this board you can place buildings with have a beneficial effect to every party member adjacent to it. They might get more experience or mana. If you give it some effort you can even unlock magichange ( which changes your monster into a very strong weapon), Fusion (which fuses 2 monsters together for a huge and strong monster) or even the combined force of these things. Try to unlock everything!.
Last but not last. If you don't like giving a game a lot of effort, the main game can be played without too much trouble, although it might need more grinding than the last few games. Once you start post game content you need to start on all advanced things to even try to win a map.

Audio/Visual: A huge increase from the last installment are the graphics. For a Disgaea game this might sound strange since you work with sprites usually and the skits are mostly just moving 2d pictures. However, background, home base AND the sprites got a huge upgrade from the last game. If you want to see the difference, you can turn HD off in the settings to see how it looked before.
The music in the game hasn't changed much from the last game. You usually hear some themed music that fits a stage. The theme music for your home base once again is annoying as hell after 10 minutes but secretly it makes you laugh. It keeps fitting the Disgaea theme and that's what counts.

Verdict: I really like games that keep me busy. Even if there is not story to to keep your attention. Whatever you do, this game makes sure that you always have a new goal to work towards. It is a shame I had to give this copy back to my friend otherwise I would still be playing and optimizing my characters.
Gameplay:

Solid gameplay with new improvements, although the main game got more challenging it is still doable.
Story:

Not the best story in the Disgaea series but overall this made more sence than the last instalment.

Audio/ Visuals:

An increase from the last game, not as mindblowing as games are these days, but good enough nonetheless.


Fun Facts: Disgaea 4...
... breaks the 4th wall, constanly talking about this game and the player.
... 's Fuka gives other characters nicknames such as Valzy and Fenfen.
... returns Flonne to us. Now as a full fledged ARCHANGEL!!!
... 's Asagi didn't get the memo about being HD now, thus her sprite is always bad quality, you can fix
    this by downloading the HD sprite from PS store for free ;)
... also returns Zetta as a playable character, now as a NON book.
... 's Fuka and Desco get their own show, named (very original) The Fuka and Desco show.

Final Fantasy XIII Fabula Nova Crystallis

Name:  Final Fantasy XIII

Developer: Square Enix

Year: 2010

Platform: Xbox 360, Playstation3

Genre: Role Playing Game

Time Spent: 40-50 Hours main Game, 80+ for every content + trophies

Intro: Like I said I would, I was going to go into Fabula Nova Crystallis, the story that revolves around Final Fantasy, XIII-1/2, Type-0 and Versus XIII. Since we should probably start with what we have lets begin with XIII-1. The first game released for this story. Although it doesn't tell much about the story of Fabula Nova Crystallis it is a great game to kick off. 

Story: The Story begins somewhat abrubt. After a scene where 1 woman kicks ass and doesn't chew bubblegum you are thrown into battle. It seems the character you control is someone named Lightning, and aloth with that, Sazh, the guy with the afro hair with a chocobo chick in it. Along in this area you get to know Snow, the leader of the rebellion called Nora. Vanille, a very optimistic girl, seeing the situation they are in. And Hope, a child that can't take all this violance anymore and whines quite a lot.

After some playtime with all of them you meet Serah, Lightning's sister and apparently the fiancée of Snow. She turns to Crystal just when you meet though. Turns out there are Semi Gods in this world called Fall Cie.

They have the power to turn human's into L'cie. Fullfill your task and you turn to Crystal forever. Fail? You are turned into a horrible monster called a Cieth'. Needless to say, if you are branded you are out of luck, and as it turns out every partymember gets branded as a L'Cie by a Fal Cie of an opposing planet called Pulse. Now branded traitors by the government you have to save yourself and try to break this cursed system of the Fall Cie on the planet Pulse and your own planet called Cocoon.

Gameplay: This game uses the familiar ATB bar again just like in older Final Fantasies like 8 and 12. However, it has segments this time. You start up with 2 segment but you can end up with a total of 6. You can fill every segments with an action such as attack or fire or cure. Stronger attack's such as blitz, Blizzaga and Haste fill up more bars because they are stronger. This way you can fill the gauge with a combination of attacks to defeat your enemy. 

However, you mainly use auto attack in this game. If you scan your opponent trough the use of libra or a librascope you learn the weaknesses of your enemy yourself. Auto batlle automatically chooses the right option for you. Due to the low amount of skills you sttart out with you are sadly beginning the first 1/4 of the game only pressing X/A to auto battle which might be quite boring.

You control only 1 Character in game. To at least have some control over battle this game introduces paradigm shift. Every character isn't stuck to 1 roll although they usually excell in something. You have Commander(physical attack), Ravanger (magic), Medic (heals), Saboteur (debuff), Synergist (buffs), Sentinel (defense). In a paradigm deck you can make 6 combinations of these. You can make medic medic medic for quick heals, Commander Ravanger Ravanger for fast damage. Every time you shift in battle you switch to a deck that you need at the moment, instead of choosing what actions you make, instead you are mainly choosing what roles you need at a certain point in battle, making it really fast paced.

Outside of battle is a bit boring I have to say. The main problem with this game is that it is VERY linear. Chapter 11/12 is the first one where you can explore, the rest of the game you are spent following a certain path. Combined with the easy early auto battle this game starts of slowly.

Audio/Visual: With this game being the first on the next gen console the graphics really jump out of your screen. The opening video takes you away and the good part is. IT DOESN'T END. The graphics stay the same, in battle or viewing a scene, it doesn't matter at all. Even the texture of the clothes the people are wearing is made in great detail. Every area you visit has some remarkable contents. Varying from a dark dump to a vast green field with lots of animals flying or walking around. Graphics wise this game set a new tone for a Final Fantasy Game.

The soundtrack this time isn't made by Nobuo Uematsu, and you can notice it. This game has lots of orchestral music, even in the battle theme. There are also lots of soundtrack's with vocal's this time, even during gameplay. Luckily they don't have the overtone so there is quite a balance between gameplay, graphics and music here.  Too bad I can't forgive them for not having the classical victory tune though. 

Verdict: I really enjoyed this game, even though it was quite linear. I like going to places I shouldn't be and getting stronger items before fighting the main boss. Being stuck with sucky characters sometimes made it even harder but the story, the music and graphics all made it good for me. To be honest I even replayed it once more.

Gameplay:

Story:

Audio/Visuals:

Fun Facts: Final Fantasy XIII...

...'s character Lightning was supposed to be a man? They changed it late into the process

... is the first game not to have a victory fanfare or a prelude.

... is the first part in Fabula Nova Crystallis? More on this later

... was supposed to have DLC but they skipped this. Also more on this later.

... Nora, the resistance group, is also the name of Hope's mom who died in the beginning of the game

... Mom's are though.

Stab into the past. Assassin's Creed

Name:  Assassin's Creed

Developer: Ubisoft

Year: 2007

Platform: Xbox360, Playstation 3, Pc.

Genre: Action Adventure

My year started real busy... and also really broke. So no new game for me yet. Instead, a collegue and a friend of mine who attended my new years party brought me a nice package I could borrow. Assassin's Creed 1,2 and Brotherhood. Since I was also kind of a Prince of Persia fan I thought I would like this, thus I started with 1.

Assassin's Creed is a game that takes place in 2 timelines. The first one you get to know about is the timeline of Desmond. This guy is part of some assassin's family and has been captured by a research facility. It seems our main character has dna which has the memories of his ancestors who were all Assassin's. One of his ancestors apparently has something they need and you need to play trough all the memories of your ancestor to find what they need. In order to acces that memory they use machine called the Animus.

Once you go into the Animus you play trough a specific memory in order to learn what happened during your ancestor's time and to get closer to the memory our doctors need. Once you control your ancestor, called Altair, you are an assassin with all it's skills and weaponry. With those tools you need to assassinate several people, in order of the Brotherhood. This Brotherhood says they do this in the name of peace. However, as you progress the game you discover a dark secret.

Once you are logged in into the animus you can see a few things on the screen. On the bottom left you see a small square with some symbols, these correspond to directions on the D-Pad. Up selects the Hidden Blade, a small weapon used for stealth assassinations. Right selects the sword, your strongest weapon during combat. Down selects fists if you need to beat someone up but not kill them yet. Left selects the short blade, a small weapon which is quick in combat but not quite as strong. Also, if you are not in combat, you can thrown small throwing knives to end a life from a distance. 

Next to this you also see a bar at the top right. This is your synchronization bar and shows how well Desmond is in synch with Altair. If he takes too much damage you lose your synchro and thus need to start from the last (auto) savepoint. Your health goes up if you do more missions and side missions. In short, it is just your health bar.

Finally left from the synchro bar you can see the Abstergo logo. When it is white, you are anonymous and can practically do whatever you want. However, the logo changes colour in different situations. When you are being chased or noticed by the guards, it is red. When Hiding it is blue and so on. 

Finally the bottom right displays the minimap where you can see all missions and sidemissions.

Graphic wise I think this is a great game. It takes place in the middle east and thus you don't see lot's of colours in this game. However, every person/ building/ environment has been made in great detail, almost showing no flaws in designs.

This game doesn't have any music. Instead ou mostly hear the murmering of every citizen of the 4 places you visit. At first it is interesting what every citizen has to say but it gets real repetitive after a while. Almost everyone has the same line and after 2 or 3 hours in game you know every line of what a citizen is going to say.

Overall this game is a nice way to spend your time. But if you are a completionist like me you are going to have a hard time. Not because it becomes impossibly hard to do all side missions but because everything is exactly the same. Only your normal missions include something new or important to the storyline. Next to that, there is no real reward in doing all side missions except for some lousy achievements on the Xbox version.

And last but not least, although it isn't hard to complete all side missions, you are annoyed to death by every drunk /beggar that walk around town that seem to only target their annoyance to you instead of every other frigging citizen. It just really ruins the overall feeling of this game

Fun Facts: Assassin's Creed...

... has some similarities with Prince of Persia, which isn't strange since it is made by the same team.

... takes place around 2010 and 1190 respectively.

... has main characters who are based on real people from around that time. Only a couple of people 

    are imaginary.

... has some hints about the apocaliptic year 2012. It seems the Templars will do something to us in 

    that year.

... beggar's should DIE!