Review: Nostalgia

Would you just look at that name? Nostalgia. This is a game begging to stir the signals in your brain and mash enough of them to recover something from your childhood; something you loved and enjoyed. When we feel nostalgic we get this weird feeling of maybe being somewhere, maybe back home. It makes you feel comfortable and happy. Nostalgia for the Nintendo DS does not make me feel nostalgic or fuzzy. It makes me feel frustrated and like I just wasted 20-something hours of my life. Go figure!

Nostalgia is a Japanese RPG for the 3DS that was released back in 2009 in North America. I absolutely love the JRPG genre but this title does absolutely nothing to be original except in setting. Your name is Eddie and you are the teenage son of the famous adventurer Gilbert Brown. Gilbert gets caught up in some trouble as usual and saves a girl named Fiona from the Ancient Cabal. The guys dressed in black are always the bad guys, right? So Fiona has lost her memory and you as the hero take on the task to help her not only get her memories back but also go on a mission to save the world by collecting powerful ancient tablets. Joining you along the way is a mage named Melody and a marksman named Pad. You have the perfect, four-person party with a swordsman (Eddie), gun support (Pad), black magic (Melody), and white magic (Fiona). On a scale of 1 – 10 I would give the story a 3 or a 4, but only because Nostalgia takes place in an alternate steam punk history.

In the game you have access to an airship right from the beginning and you zip around the world fairly quickly to collect each tablet. I came across Egypt, a cape town in Africa, London, and New York City to name a few. The sad thing is each of these towns/cities are all mostly copy and pasted with updates to their visual textures. Each location feels the same with hardly any effort given to distinguishing culture beyond simple features and NPC names.

The battle system is not unique whatsoever as it harkens to the most basic of turn-based RPG combat. You mainly bash A the entire game without much thought. The top screen of the DS is used to show you the combat while the bottom screen outlines which character is up next to take their turn. It simply allows you to strategize so that you will never lose, because honestly you sort of have to try to get a game over in Nostalgia. You make enough gold in the game to never have to worry about healing items so battles will be a breeze.

But what frustrated me the most in Nostalgia was how sometimes it would take the liberty to become extremely difficult for no reason. This mainly happened when I would fly my airship around the world and encounter air battles. It sounds cool right? Skies of Arcadia had an excellent combat system set up and airship battles in that game are now nostalgic. Well, Nostalgia falls flat because the creators for some reason decided to make airship enemies extremely strong. In fact, I made sure to save after every battle while flying because you never knew if you were going to encounter another airship that could blow yours out of the water in just two hits. If the rest of the game was so easy why were they making airship battles so challenging? Because enemies in the air took longer to defeat the fast pacing in the game was lost to silly air battles.

In addition to these low-quality attributes the creators did try to add some extra features to Nostalgia to keep you entertained… That’s if you could stand the general gameplay on its own. The game has over 30 sidequests for you to try out at the Adventurers Association but it seems the rewards were never really worth it. They mainly consist of flying somewhere, talking to an NPC, going to a location you have already cleared, finding something, fighting a boss, and then returning that item to whomever asked you to go on such a boring quest. Because the locations aren’t very entertaining to travel through the first time around, why would you want to go back for a reward that doesn’t even make the journey worth it? There are also landmarks in the game that you can fly your airship around to find, but the best prize comes after finding all of them and to me that’s a waste of time. In fact, I only did one quest in the Adventurers Association and that was all.

One element that made Nostalgia completely broken was the fact that when you saved your health and magic points were always completely healed. So if you were in an area with monsters giving high EXP you could just train for 20 minutes and level up substantially. This is probably the easiest game that I have ever had the privilege to play where I could level up so quickly, and bosses were usually a breeze because of this. In fact, as I mentioned earlier, airship battles were actually more challenging than most boss battles. Why would the game be made like this?!

Nostalgia was developed in part by Matrix Software, the people behind the DS remakes of Final Fantasy III and IV. Now those were alright looking games but they were successful because they had a great story behind them. Nostalgia looks alright but the gameplay and story are so basic that Matrix’s contributions to the game are a sad sight to see. There are a few in-game animations that are hardly impressive to say the least, and the only potential I saw in these animations were at the very end when the story actually briefly became interesting. I’m sorry to say that yes, it takes until the very end for the game to become interesting in its storyline. Such a shame!

Nostalgia is a fake title for an RPG that is so basic it should be renamed “How to Play a JRPG” or something to that like. I know this review is entirely negative but there really isn’t anything nice to say about it. Okay I can find one complement: the artwork for the game is nice to look at. You can see it in the intro movie and at the very end. Whoever drew those pieces did a good job at portraying a concept for what should have been a good game. The characters actually look like they have some life behind them, instead of the simple-minded drones that we got in the game. The one thing that may have been nostalgic was how quickly the characters were able to get over a death or some grand emotional moment and move on in the quest at a fast pace. This reminded me of Final Fantasy IV for example, but then I realized these scenes were more comical instead of nostalgic to watch. I’m sorry Nostalgia, but you are nothing that resembles the name.

Title: Nostalgia

Developer: Matrix Software, Red Entertainment

Genre: Japanese Role-Playing Game

Year: 2008 (JP) 2009 (NA)

Platform: Nintendo DS (Played on a Nintendo 3DS)

Completion: In-game timer states that I played for roughly 21 hours, but my 3DS stats application says I played for over 24 hours; this is due to dying a few times in ridiculous airship battles. Did not attempt any sidequests as the main adventure was more than enough, although rewards for these quests are additional character information, gold, and weapons/armor.


-Jared Cyhowski

Discussion: Dragon Quest IX - Sentinels of the Starry Skies

Dragon Quest IX – Sentinels of the Starry Skies was released in Japan in July 2009 and in North America a year later. Released to strikingly high praise, the Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu gave it a 40/40 and Nintendo pushed its marketing campaign to the roof. I just recently beat this title last weekend, all while starting it back in August of 2011. Yes, it took me five months to get through Dragon Quest IX so I cannot review the game with a fair accuracy. Instead I will be looking back at my experience with the RPG and select to be what I believe is the game’s mix of high and low points.

First I must point out my thoughts on the story. I only thought it was okay. I thought it was boring and too simple throughout the majority of the game. But that’s what gets me. The story is mostly based on the fact that your character needs to collect seven pieces of a mystical fruit that have been scattered around the game’s world. For an RPG on the DS, Dragon Quest IX’s world is admittedly large, but that doesn’t make up for the repetitiveness of the story. Go to a town, learn about something bad that’s happened there, learn it’s because of the fruit, and then go fight whatever consumed the fruit. You save the day and everything’s okay. This happens for over two-thirds of the story until you’re so late in the game that if you’re still playing, then you’re committed to the end. This is where part of my own faults shine through, as I would take long breaks from playing DQIX after retrieving a piece of fruit. Or I was too tired during a school semester, and sometimes it was because I got bored. Thankfully some element of an overall story shines through in the end and really hits home with why you just spent 40 hours collecting pieces of fruit… repetitively.

The gameplay fulfills the Japanese RPG standard for what is expected in a turn-based game. You run into an enemy, a battle screen is initiated, and you take turns fighting the enemy. Dragon Quest IX doesn’t really differ from other RPG’s in its combat, but it does animate the battles in a way that’s fairly entertaining. Some boss battles are challenging, especially near the end, so this is when I found myself grinding through levels the most. Other than battles there really is only one other thing to do, and that’s running around getting to your next destination. I will mention here that yes you can do quests, but no they aren’t very worth it. Why should I go and put time into a quest when the item I receive isn’t necessarily useful? As long as you have money, which is actually hard to collect later in the game, you will be able to purchase equipment that suffices more than enough.

One of the reasons why I am criticizing Dragon Quest IX so much is because it’s clear it was built as a game to be shared with other people. It’s actually a lot more fun that way. I was only able to play DQIX with a friend in multiplayer mode for a short 40 minutes or so, but it was completely worth both it and the hassle it is to get your DS’ to communicate. Dragon Quest IX differs from other games in the series in that your supporting characters are entirely created by you. Their character class, hair, eyes, etc. are all your creation, and thus they are sort of meaningless to the plot of the game. You take them into battle and everything, but they don’t have a single line of dialogue. In multiplayer mode you can either traverse someone else’s world or they can be invited to yours. Then you can play through the story together and fight every enemy with a friend. This just makes the game more enjoyable and I wish I could have played more of it this way. But in the end it takes away from the single player experience in that the game feels somewhat lifeless on your own.

Everything I just touched upon seems to be more negative than positive, but Dragon Quest IX isn’t necessarily a bad game. It just lacks what I find to be of key importance in a JRPG: story. I need something that keeps me entertained and on the toes of my feet. DQIX tends to feel like a shopping list of “here’s what to do next.” As I mentioned it took me months to play through the game for various reasons, but in the last few weeks is when I pushed forward to the end of it. That last quarter of the game is where any hint of real story come to life, and thus my most recent impression isn’t wholly negative. If I played DQIX all the way through right when it came out, or rather, when I started playing the game, I think I would have possibly found the game more enjoyable overall because of its improved ending. But I may have also found it to be an extreme chore to keep collecting fruits. Damn that “fygg” tree for spreading fruit around the world. I can’t help but mention that Inuyasha did the same thing with those damn crystal shards, and for some reason I sat through every episode of that series. Same concept, same persistence on my end to make sure every fruit/shard was collected at last. That’s how I roll.

After beating Dragon Quest IX I learned that there’s actually a ton more stuff to do, but I don’t think I could put myself through more because it features what I didn’t really care for in the game to begin with. Level grinding, gathering items, quests, etc. Sometimes those elements are fun, but not so much unless there’s a great story to go with it! I know in Final Fantasy XII I went a bit overboard with collecting almost everything in the game, and let’s admit it, the story wasn’t exactly the greatest either. So maybe something just didn’t click with me in DQIX.

In the meantime I have purchased Dragon Quest IV and Dragon Quest V on the DS, and Dragon Quest VIII for the PS2. I hear these titles are better than DQIX and they feature actual characters and a more solid story. I will let you know what I think whenever I get to them. Until then, everyone can look forward, or not, to Dragon Quest X Online. We’ll see how that one goes.

Title: Dragon Quest IX – Sentinels of the Starry Skies

Developer: Square-Enix

Genre: Japanese Role-Playing Game

Year: 2009 (Japan), 2010 (North America)

Platform: Nintendo DS (Played on Nintendo 3DS)

Completion: Beat the game in 52 hours on the dot. Earned 23 accolades and completed 5 quests (not many). Spent a little over 40 minutes in multiplayer. Party level was 45/46 at end of game.

-Jared Cyhowski

Blue Dragon... And the Occasional Poo

At times, Mistwalker's Blue Dragon stinks of poo... literally.

The original Blue Dragon for the Xbox 360 had the potential to be a gem, but it falls short in many areas. This doesn't mean the game isn't fun, it's just... a tad bit frustrating. It was released back in 2006 on the Xbox 360 in Japan, and came out in America in mid 2007. To my knowledge, there weren't that many Japanese RPG's out on the 360 at the time, and this game seemed to be promising.

Why? Mistwalker composed a "dream team" of RPG developers. Hironobu Sakaguchi directed from Final Fantasy fame. Nobuo Uematsu composed the score, also from Final Fantasy fame and other works. And alas, Akira Toriyama provided both character and monster designs. His credits belong to writing and illustrating Dr. Slump and Dragon Ball, and creating character designs for Dragon Quest and Chrono Trigger.

So lets first start with character design. Apparently Toriyama has

a thing for poo... quite possibly originating from his other works such as Dr. Slump. The very first enemy you battle in Blue Dragon is a freakin' Poo Snake. Yeah, I said it, Poo Snake.

For main characters Shu, Jiro, Kluke, Marumaro, and Zola, he does a fairly good job. Jiro, in the green, reminds me of Vegeta for some reason. NPC's look alright, but kinda get boring after a while. Also, I could have sworn I saw Bulma walking around somewhere in Jibral.

*Note: The expressions found on these primary characters rarely change throughout the game...

The best part about Blue Dragon is its ending. Not so much because the game actually ended, but because the final boss battles and ending to the narrative were quite exciting. Looking into Blue Dragon's story I didn't know what to expect, but I'm glad I didn't expect much.The plot revolves around Shu, Jiro, and Kluke living on a planet and everything seems to be going just great. Then out of nowhere the sky turns into a purple miasma. My first thought

was Naraku, but no, actually the main villain in this game is THE ULTIMATE ALMIGHTY OLD-MAN NENE (and pet side kick frog parrot dude who *spoiler turns out to be a badass final boss). Hold on a second...

Nene? What the hell kind of name is that?! I played the game with its original Japanese vocal track turned on with English subtitles, and Shu says "Nehneh" wicked fast. I guess you could pronounce his name "Naynay", but we all know you want to call him "Neenee".

Anywho, with that rant out of the way, Shu's living the good life until purple miasma shows up and Land Sharks destroy his village. Cool beans. You're pretty weak so you can't fight the shark but you somehow capture it and use it to fly up to Nene's base. It's not a real shark, it's a robot shark that can fly, obviously. In his base your party of three are told by a mysterious woman's voice to swallow orbs of light, and they do. Congratulations! You know have the ability to turn your shadow into a monster to fight other monsters! Which is actually BADASS.

Here's Shu fighting a huge rat. Who do you think will win?

Over the course of the game you come across a city, a few towns, and a lot of ancient ruins. Unfortunately the ancient ruins all look the same. At first it's cool because the "ancient" ruins are all very advanced and decked out with technology, but hallway after hallway and room after room of the same stuff gets kinda boring.

The story is predictable and you know what will happen next. You chase Nene all around the world, he gets away, and you do it again. The battle system prides itself on the formatting of older JRPG's, which is totally fine with me. Each shadow starts off with its own special skill, and you level that skill up with SP. There's the option of changing your skill to learn all of the other skills, but why would you do that when you're already so strong with your current skill? I was a level 50 Sword Master and battles were going smoothly. I changed Shu to something else and suddenly the game became surprisingly frustrating.

For me, Blue Dragon was frustrating because I wanted more to happen. There are certain elements of the game that I wouldn't mind so much if the story was more engaging and if the monster and dungeon designs weren't so repetitive. Blue Dragon became more of a chore to finish instead of a captivating story that left me wanting more. And what was up with the frame rate at times? Most of the game looked pretty but some of the animation slowed down way too much for an Xbox 360 game. Cut scenes were also plagued by random black loading screens... in the middle of the cutscenes. Why couldn't the cutscene be one long scene?

That doesn't mean there weren't good parts to Blue Dragon. There's got to be some great stuff here to develop an anime television series adaptation, manga, and two sequels on the Nintendo DS. Sakaguchi did an excellent job at creating a new world setting where you follow the protagonists who need to save it. It's simple and lighthearted, enough so that for fans of older Square games and more mature RPG's it may just be too simple.

But like I said before, the ending of Blue Dragon and even the latter half of the game is where it's at. All save for the final dungeon, Nene's fortress. Jesus christ, it was one of the most infuriating experiences needing to battle so many monsters just to get to the final boss. Ironically this is where the best examples of level design take place too... go figure.

With the story being cliche in that the Ancient Civilizations had such powerful technology and they all killed one another, and then the world rebuilt itself, I was sure nothing too exciting would come from it. But then Nene decided to do some crazy ass thing where the planet LITERALLY DIVIDED IN HALF.

And behold! The center of the planet is made up of ancient space cube technology!

Isn't that cool? I thought so too!

Blue Dragon's first sequel, Blue Dragon Plus for the DS takes place a year later after the events of the first Blue Dragon. It features Shu and the gang with some newcomers, and new evil has arrived. It has a strategy RPG feel to it, which is a large turn from Blue Dragon's traditional battle system. The second sequel, Awakened Shadow, takes place after the events of the first sequel. This one's a little different where you create and customize your own protagonist and then Shu and the gang help you.

I really hope these sequels go a little more into the character's backstories and relationships. Blue Dragon sets up Shu and Jiro both having feelings for Kluke. I don't know about you guys, but Shu seems to be more of an older brother figure while Jiro is the shy guy who should be her boyfriend. Besides, that Sahlia girl that Shu saved from killing herself and then gave him a cookie in thanks is totally the girl for him. Yup. C'mon, she gave him a cookie!

As for extra sidequests and achievements, the sidequests seem to be alright and the achievements aren't so cool. Once you get your airship, known as a Mechat in Blue Dragon, you can fly it around and go wherever you want, including new areas you couldn't get to before. These mainly consist of new locales with multiple floors and really difficult monsters to battle (the strongest ones in the game). Defeating these monsters usually leads to getting new gear and items, leading to the fulfillment of achievements. Other achievements require you to level your characters and their shadows to level 99.

Finding every item in the game is probably the hardest achievement, because it means you need to do everything in order to qualify. I'm not sure if this also means finding every item and such scattered throughout the world though. Meaning, every location seems to have items, gold, experience points, etc. that you can obtain by just hitting a button. For example, if you check out the fireplace you may get 10 gold. Check out the stove right next to it and you may get more gold. At the same time you may get nothing, and the game will tell you so. But don't worry! There's a "nothing man" in the game that allows you to trade in all those nothings for rare items. Unfortunately this gets very tedious. Running around and checking out every rock, house, pipe, vent, etc. and constantly pressing A takes time and is probably best suited for completionists.

A side note on the soundtrack. Uematsu does a fine job with supplying a fairly good score for the game. It's not his best score, but a song that stands out is the boss battle music "Eternity". I remember attending the Video Game Orchestra's concert at Anime Boston 2010 and hearing this song performed live. It was quite the experience! Another song that IGN gives a nod to is "Cave". My personal favorite? It may very well be "Happy Birthday", and it plays at the very end of the game.

So would I recommend Blue Dragon? Honestly, probably not. I would rather recommend Mistwalker's other RPG Lost Odyssey. It has more heart, a well constructed battle system, a memorable soundtrack and well-presented story.

So get to it and try some Lost Odyssey, or wait it out for a hopeful release of The Last Story!

Title: Blue Dragon

Developer: Mistwalker

Genre: Japanese Role-Playing Game

Year: 2006

Platform: Xbox 360

Completion: Played through Blue Dragon in roughly 55 hours. Leveled Shu and others to 50. Explored most areas in every storyline dungeon but did not attempt sidequests after getting the Mechat.

- Jared C.