Duke Reivier's Grand Game Emporium

Repost of a review I wrote two years ago, saving it for posterity and better visibility. It holds pretty well even today. I think the game is an interesting and surprisingly heavy story of people stuck between the politics of two warmongering empires. I particularly like the character writing for the two central leads, Lunair and Revier. They start out rough, but over time, solidly build up a complimenting relationship, featuring reckless, well intentioned bravado on one side, and cold, calculated yet oddly humane pragmatism on the other. But that's the rub - it takes so long to truly get going. The first Act is extremely rough, and even when getting to the considerably tighter second Act, there are still multiple rough patches of poorly paced and ill fitting scenes to get past. However, the experience at the end is worth it - there's an intensely tense plot involving high politics and personal stakes, which eventually escalates to a dramatic, sober finish. The third and fourt...

After touring through both Illusion of Gaia and Terranigma, I got curious about their predecessor, the supposedly arcade-y, action-y and simplistic Soul Blazer. Well, it is certainly all those things. BUT, it is also a very oddly charming and enjoyable game, despite that. I think this comes down to its gameplay loop, mainly. See, you're an angel tasked to destroy monsters and rescue captive/dead life, and you accomplish both by destroying monster spawners. Doing so not only offers XP and progression, but directly releases formerly captive/dead inhabitants immediately. As in, fully functional NPCs, complete with sprites, dialogue, and sometimes even sidequests and items! This means that while you're making progress in the dungeon, you're also actively progressing with the restoration of life, and can get to feel it yourself. The game smartly uses this format to create fun vignettes, like delving into the backstory of a dolphin who was a shipwrecked man in its former life, or...

 So, in response to my Illusion of Gaia review, some people told me that Terranigma was that game but better in every way. Considering how Illusion of Gaia had fallen somewhat short of its great ideas, this easily grabbed my attention. Turns out, the truth is a bit more complicated. Terranigma starts out great. The initial hook is quite convincing, the protagonist feels a lot more fluid, and has far smoother moves. The "dungeons" in Act 1 are rather simplistic, but this can be easily overlooked, as it is effectively the game teaching the player the ropes. Act 2 is even better, as that's when the protagonist begins to revive life on Earth, and the player gets grand payoffs from guiding him around. The dungeons are a bit too action oriented for my liking, but it's still fine, they're all mostly well designed for their purpose and are decently fun romps. Unfortunately, the same can't be said for the bosses, which randomly block all use of magic and are designed m...

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 Here's the last wizard of this game, and quite an interesting one at that, too. Noel is essentially a hybrid of a cleric and an attack mage, carrying roughly equal amounts of both healing and damage spells. But that's not all; Noel can equip several pieces of fighter gear. This generally works out to his favor, as the defense they grant is usually more helpful than the intelligence on wizard gear, although the latter does have some spiffy pieces with elemental absorbs on them. Still, I had high hopes of his broader equipment selection paying off. As you can see in this screenshot, he starts off as a guest, which means he can't swap out anything until he joins "for real". This happens at the end of the Cave of Crimson Crystals. Like with Celine and Leon, I'll attempt to complete his first challenge with him in this state, and only switch to a full party if he's not up to the task. Noel starts with 800 SP and 400 BP. This is not as big as you'd think, b...

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 Well, I was wishing for a challenge at the end of last run, so why not take a look at the game's second, and only other attack mage? Meet Leon! Leon is essentially a darkly flavored mage, most of his spells are darkness elemental and he gets instant death and debuff spells. That said, he starts with a few water elemental spells, and those give him a decent alternative element to tap into. Leon starts at level 30, and with level 2 Alchemy. He also has the grace of starting with 500 SP and 350 BP. Now, this isn't as big as it sounds, especially since 120 of the SP has to be spent on Determination, but it's nice to have some flexibility building him up at the start! He also joins at the start of the Hoffman Ruins arc, and is a guest until the dungeon is cleared. This puts him under the same restrictions as Celine - he can't swap any equipment until he joins "for real". No armor, no weapons, no accessories, nothing. Speaking of weapons, Leon uses books as his mur...

 UNIVERSE  So, uhh...remember when this was a challenge run? Yeah, I don't! :D Now, granted, they were blocking more of his hits, and granted, they were taking longer to put down. But this was simply not enough to stem the tide of Air Slashes flying in their direction. What they did do was make him burn through more of his Blackberries. This wasn't a problem during fights itself, but did cost him more time summoning birds than I'd have liked. Well, good job being an inconvenience, enemies! The Crimson Devil buffed his damage so much the Ring of Might felt downright redundant! I swapped it for a Sacrificial Doll, as I consider it the strongest defensive accessory in the game. Sure, there are accessories with stronger individual effects, but it's hard to beat resistance to all elements alongside a free revive! Dias was so strong I skimped on stocking up on certain normally essential consumables, like Fruit Syrups and Illusion Dolls. While he was strong enough to fight wit...

 Here's the last swordfighter of Star Ocean 2's cast. Thematically, Dias is essentially a foil to Claude, relying on his own strength and staying aloof. Well, that's sort of the idea of these challenge runs, so that's promising! While I don't know how he plays mechanically, I expect him to have some swordfighting based moves. I also know that he wasn't able to use the Meteor Ring or Ring of Lightspeed in the original, hopefully that's not the case here! Dias can only be recruited in Rena's scenario. He can be controlled during the Forest of Symbols arc, but he only stays in the party for a brief period of time, is a guest there, and is clearly overtuned for the area. The only thing that can actually kill him here are the witches, and even then only very slowly. That said, this was a good opportunity to look at his attacks and special moves. His regular attack was easily the slowest out of all the characters so far, though it at least chained well with it...

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                          UNIVERSE Been a while, eh? Let's dispense with pleasantries and get on to it. Ashton was as I remembered him. A very fast fighter with some interesting special moves that nevertheless never superseded his regular attack directly. I tried going to the Lacuer continent with him directly, only to find that he was horribly outmatched there. Welp, back to Krosse continent! Actually, he headed directly for Arlia after that failed incursion. Why, you may ask? Because one of the ladies there has a Rainbow Diamond! Now, at this point, his pickpocketing skill was too pathetic to aim for it, despite him getting a fair amount of SP from talent fishing, but I would be sure to return for it later. For now, he purchased a pair of Venomous Stingers, and crafted them into the Maiden's Aria. With that, some judicious retreating from tough formations, and the Linear Motion battle formation bonuses, he eventuall...

 Ashton had reached Energy Nede, and the enemies continued to give him little trouble. On a whim, I checked out his two new moves. Hurricane Slash seemed fairly straightforward, hurling out a wide tornado after two slashes. For the most part it was a direct upgrade to Northern Cross, as it executed much faster and launched a faster projectile too. Deadly Triangle was interesting, it played out a rather long animation, but kept him invincible throughout, and often locked them in place before bombarding them with multiple hits. It was certainly good damage, just extremely unwieldy. Once again, these moves added utility instead of competing with his normal attack, which I greatly appreciated. The Psynard fight was trivial. The Arachnovias were easy, if not particularly elegant - slice them down with regular attacks, poison them a bit, win. Out of curiosity, I experimented a little with Deadly Triangle and it did freeze them. I didn't expect it to work on bosses, this was a pretty inte...

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Ashton is our next character, and he is rather interesting. He's a warrior like Claude, but unlike Claude he uses two swords, and generally favors offense over defense. He is mainly known for his distinctive sword techniques, especially his "ultimate" technique which looks and acts a lot like a big spell(without the downsides of one, thankfully). Ashton isn't found easily, you first need to overhear a conversation in Harley about a dragon in the Salva Mines, then return back there. Once you do, you can enter a portion of the mines that was formerly off limits, and find him there. The entire process is time sensitive, so you need to pay attention to the map and event triggers. This portion of the map has considerably stronger monsters, featuring lesser versions of the monsters inhabiting the Ell continent and the Sacred Grounds of Linga. Most dangerous of these are the jellies, being quite strong with their shots and having a chance to detonate when struck. They often ...