New Games

Gone a bit crazy buying new video games lately ... and am thankful I'm bilingual cos more and more of these (Japanese) games are localised into Chinese than English. Well, I guess Greater China/Asia is a much bigger market than, say, US and Europe combined (?) 

Anyway, here are the new titles I bought in the past couple of months or so: Natural Doctrine, Danganronpa 2, Sword Art Online Hollow Fragment, Legend of Heroes: Ao No Kiseki Evolution, Legend of Heroes: Sen No Kiseki (Trails in the Flash) and Nobunaga's Ambition: Souzou.

Type-0? No, this is more kawaii

Danganronpa 2 was a disappointment not least cos it is quite an expensive but I just didn't get the game (which was, apparently, voted by Japanese gamers as the best PS Vita game of 2013). Investigating into murders of fellow students just isn't my thing. And it's "trial system" is just very, very lengthy and hard to grasp. So having played one chapter I'm giving up. Natural Doctrine I really enjoyed/loved -- it is so challenging I rage quit quite a few times *lol* and the voice acting is really cool -- but have reached end of second playthrough so am pretty done with this game/title.  SAO and Evolution I bought cos of the beautiful graphics (and cos I was desperate to play some new games after Natural Doctrine) but SAO is a bit like Ys - hack and slash - which isn't really my cuppa; while Evolution, though is turn-based (my favourite genre), it's in Japanese and looks a bit dated compared with Sen No Kiseki. So I'm playing its sequel Sen No Kiseki right now -- beautiful anime though difficulty-wise it's child's play compared with Natural Doctrine. What I like about this latest (localised) LoH title is it's a bit like Persona 4 Golden and Final Fantasy Type-0 rolled into one (both my all-time fav games). It's set in a school and has a turned based battle system (P4G) and the story revolves around this group of nine specially hand-picked students who are gonna, like, save the world (Type-0). Actually, Type-0 is experiencing a re-surge of interest cos its fan-made English patch is finally released. It's nice to see gamers discussing and sharing tips on their favourite characters and strategies etc. on forums. I, unfortunately, didn't have that during my three playthroughs cos the game still isn't officially localised and I enjoy a game a lot more if I could discuss it with other online gamers. Anyway, I think this game deserves to be widely played and recognised! I'm still annoyed that the Vita system doesn't support the demo of this game hence I won't be able to get the summer uniforms to unlock the "what if" ending, which I kinda want, being a completionist ... boo-hoo.

And there is Nobunaga's Ambition: Souzou which I downloaded just yesterday. It reminds me of  Sangokushi 12 (Romance of the Three Kingdoms XII), which I really enjoyed fiddling ~ "fiddling" as I didn't know how to play it properly -- it's in Japanese. It's a strategy game so involves a lot of micro-management, which I love in this genre. 

So much to play and so little time -- it's tough to relive one's teenage years ... LOL