Eiyuden Chronicles: Rising (Switch)

Red and Blue, the main character colors

Decided to get the game Eiyuden Chronicles, but the physical game doesn't release until a month or so after the digital release so I got the prequel that was released a year earlier. Eiyduen Chronicles is supposed to be a spiritual successor to the Suikoden games where the first two games was supposed to be rereleased in 2023, but got moved to 2024 and as of writing (early may 2024) no words of when they are gonna be out. So I might play through them on my PS3 as I snapped them up on the Classic releases years ago. 

That game was a full on JRPG with battle mechanics, this game though is an action-rpg plattformer where you go through several areas to mine materials and fight enemies to help the people in this little town that have been struck by an earthquake. You play as the scavenger girl CJ (as we learn in the end credits scene means "Crown Jewels") who look for a bigger treasure than her father so that she can go home due to her homes rite of passage. You begin helping the town to get access to the Barrows that exists below the town. Together with the kangaroo samurai Garoo and the acting-mayor Isha, who can use magic without rune lenses (rune lenses grants magic for some reason), you explore the forest, quarry and barrows around the village. Turns out that the town is besieged by bandits that in reality are soldiers of the Empire that looks for rune lenses. 

The Barrow was also sealed long ago to stop an evil sorcerer from escaping and turns out that he still there, possessing Daksa, Isha's father and the lost mayor of the town. Apparently the sorcerer created a sigil that created rune lenses in people in order to harvest them, and this in turn created Isha's magic. She's not the first one from that town and it seems to be a curse upon the town with a person being born once in a blue moon with blue hair and magic and a rune lense in their body that will kill them before growing up. So of course you destroy them.

It was a fun game. Got really addictive with the gameplay loop of going through areas to collect resources, solving quest and upgrade the town to get more stuff. Mostly the story beats and some of the characters will probably appear in the main game. CJ, Isha and Garoo feels like a no brainer, as well as Melora the magic girl and the mercenary samurai that protects the village. And the imperial bad guy of course. 30 hours to 100 % everything. Might try Suikoden 1, heard some say it's only 8 hours. 

Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition HD (Switch)

 

What it's supposed to look like

Well, more Final Fantasy and I pretty much only have one game left besides playing the original games again... and the sequels to XIII on the PS3... or the sequel to IV I got for the Wii, but ease of start and play is really better on the Switch. So it was XV the Pocket edition in HD. I don't have a Playstation 4 or 5 so this was the best way to play it. I read somewhere someone didn't know who this is for, like everyone got a phone that can play this or you got a Playstation. Well, apparently it's for me who don't want to play games on a phone and doesn't have a newer Playstation. So let's wait 5 years until I got around to it.

So basically, you play prince Noctis on his way to his wedding with the lady Lunafreya. With him he has three friends, Gladiolous the muscle, Ignis the smart guy and Prompto the wisecracking one. After getting their car fixed by Cid and Cindy news reach that the Empire have attacked their kingdom and killed Noctis father the king in order to get a ring and crystal. On their journey they bump into the empire's chancellor Ardyn that seems to help them for some reason. Suddenly we start to collecting summons that represents the six gods. I don't know if a lot got missed in the smaller Pocket Edition, but at times I just went with the motions cause I didn't quite get why I did everything.

That goes on until we get to this island republic under the empire's protection where Leviathan lives and Lunafreya is there as well to get the blessing. So after an action packed sequence the beloved are so close to reunite and then... Ardyn shows up and kills Lunafreya. And somehow Ignis got blinded. Some sad moments, the light of day is disappearing and daemons attack the civilians. Collecting the last things and entering the empire's capital to get the crystal they stole. And Ardyn reveals that he is actually immortal and a former king of Noctis kingdom, but he somehow was demonized and turned evil... as said, I don't always follow why things happen. Doesn't matter, Noctis enters the crystal and get Bahamut's blessing and suddenly it has gone 10 years. The world is overrun by daemons and only one city is left standing due to a power generator. Noctis meets up with his friends and they head out to get the throne back from Ardyn. After battling it turns into a one-on-one fight between Noctis and Ardyn. Noctis wins and then I guess he dies since he needed to sacrifice himself to return the light. Doesn't explain how he sits on the throne at the end with Lunafreya. 

Story is passable, gameplay is interesting. You got three weapons to chose from, which I only used the normal sword since it was fast enough. I wonder if they were supposed to have weapon triangle system, but it doesn't seems to be working. You got magic... but you gotta pick it up from power sources and they are one use only. Better using the armitage system were the royal weapons are used for great attacks during a short time. It has a cool-down timer, but it works. Voice acting is good, the graphics are not up to the normal game, and looks a bit like Bravely Default, although they looked better there. There is one funny scene where someone is painting the gang and they use a really high-res picture of the group from the normal version where everyone laughs at how ridiculous it looks. That was kinda funny. Other graphical things people talked about was the food it was life-like, no such thing here. Would have been fun with just a still image of the food. Also, no need to save treasures as all they are for are selling for cash. I got that you used to use it upgrade your weapons, but they simplified it with just being able to buy the things. Fine by me. Also the reason for the magic system is that you needed items so they used the power sources instead. 

Overall, if you can't play it in a normal way it works. Rumours of Switch 2 is high and I would probably get the normal version if they got it as well. 

Update 2025-05-28: Well, now the Switch 2 is just one week away and sign of Final Fantasy XV.

A DnD tale: Tomb of Annihilation - The Oracle (Part 2)

 

"Granddaughter, it's a foreign mirror

Taken from the jungle by crime!"

The adventure continues. After two of my sisters mentioned that they thought the adventure should be shorter I had to counter that with more setting up the game. So I spent a whole Sunday rolling dice to simulate the first 27 days for them to reach Orolonga and let me tell you, I haven't rolled that bad in ages. Several days where lost for my rolling of a 1 on the navigation skill forcing them to crash the boats in the rivers getting stuck, getting lost in the jungle and actually causing a tropical storm. And then I found out that I've mixed up Nangalore with Orulonga so I had to backtrack and guess how the travels would have gone. AND I missed that you are supposed to roll for morning, midday and night for encounters. So they only got attacked one night by ghouls. Which they handled with ease with a fireball and some use of the light sword. 

Anyway, they reach Orulonga and has to figure out the secret of the ziggurat. They won't even climb the first stairs. They look for footprints and since they haven't meet Artus Cimber and Dragonbait so I have them being with the naga, so they of course have gone trough the trails. And since Freja have talk with plants, they find out they took the black and purple orchids without meeting the Chwinga. So they do the same, to the flowers great terror, and clears the first trail. The second trail they actually begin doing things the book have foreseen, like Immeral first trying to bypass it by running up the stairs, followed by a shadow step. Both fail. And now they look around and find the second Chwinga that have the red feather so they go back and search around to find them and then run up the second pair of stairs, clearing the second trail.

This time they encounters the POISONOUS snakes that block the path. After trying to charm them to no avail, they look for another Chwinga, find the one that eats the snake and crawls past the other snakes. And then they have reached the top and enters the shrine to speak to the guardian naga inside. Artus and Dragonbait is already here asking about Mezro, the lost city and they get the answer that it will only appear again if Ras Nsi, the general of ancient time is gone and his wherabout is in Omu. Then it's our heroes turn and they are told that the rod piece they are looking for is in Omu and where that it. They also get the location for the crashed airship the Star Goddess. Since it's fairly close they decide to continue towards it. It takes them 10 days to reach it after some time getting lost in the jungle and as they approach they are called by the captain of the airship for help. Below the crashed airship a couple of ghouls are lurking so Destinova throws a fireball while Artus and Freya shots arrows on the two lasting ghouls. Freja, Dragonbait, Artus, Hope and Immeral climbs up to help the survivors down, but the trees begin rumbling and three girallon zombies comes rushing through the jungle on the path to fight our heroes. Hope rushes first and uses her sun sword to burn the first girallon. And then it makes it's five attacks, which she wasn't prepared for. Then Artus just takes off his glove and uses a cone of cold on all three, killing the first one and badly injuring the other two. Dragonbait follows with an attack with his sword, killing the other one with two strikes. Then Immeral attacks the final one until it falls down and die.

After rescuing the crew of the ship they start fixing the ship up. And for two days straight they have a tropical storm so they mend the blimp during that, after 4 days the crew have regained their strength after being without of food for several days and they fix it up and 10 days later sails back to Port Nyanzaru to fix the last bits, bunker up with more rations and bug salves. And here we ended the session. Next time they either get to Omu or get drifted out to other areas of interest. Someone mentioned the ideas of fighting the red dragon near the Dwarven area, the Terrorfolk home at Firefinger and obviously the gargoyles attack around Omu. Need to find some damn rules about aerial combat though. 

Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII - Reunion (Switch)

To the promised land

So as of writing everyone else is playing and talking about Final Fantasy VII: Rebirth which made me get some cravings to return to that world, but since I don't have a Playstation 5 or a decent computer I had to go to the only option left without replaying the original game, and that is playing the remake of the PSP prequel that I have had on a shelf for 2 years. 

So that's what I did. It starts like the original Final Fantasy VII, on a train inbound to a Mako reactor and a soldier jumping of at the station fighting Shrinra soldiers. In this game you play as Zack Fair, the guy Cloud impersonated in the original game and Aeriths boyfriend to be. It's a simulation of a Wutai attack where they have taken uniforms from Shinra and you are supposed to stop them before they blow up the reactor. Here you meet your instructor Angeal. The training is cut short when Zack gets beaten up by Sephiroth. Then it's off to Wutai as the war is still going on and you encounter Yuffie before fighting the boss, but afterwards Angeal disappears. And then you are sent out to look into his hometown with the Turk leader Tseng that Sephiroth kills in the temple with the black materia. There it is revealed that Angeal and another of the super SOLDIERS Genesis came from the same village and that Genesis have, for some reason sprouted wings like Sephiroth in his final form.

After that it gets to stop several attacks by Genesis that works with a scientist called Hollander that wants revenge when Hojo took his promotion so to speak. It culminates with Zack killing Angeal and capturing Hollander, who is rescued by what it seems to be the director of SOLDIER that have been financing Hollander. For revenge it is stated, but revenge for what isn't really stated I get, unless I missed it by not playing through all missions (I stopped at around 50%). Meanwhile Zack met Aerith and Cloud and after giving Aerith the idea to sell flowers Cload and Zack heds for Nibelheim and pretty much reenacts that parts of the Final Fantasy VII story, but without Cloud being centre stage. Sephiroth goes insane, burns down the village and Cloud is the one that finally offs him from the reactor. Zack and Cloud gets captured by Hojo that experiments on them, Zack escapes and brings Cloud with them, They get help from one of Zacks friends in the Turks, a girl I haven't seen before. After a run around Zack faces of Genesis in the bombed out village Angeal and him came from so defeating him it pretty much returns to what I known before. They reach the outskirts of Midgar, but the Shinra army catches up with them. Zack makes a last stand killing them all, but dies from his wounds, giving the buster sword to Cloud. And it ends with Aerith selling her flowers and a train pulling up near the Mako reactor with Cloud atop it. The game bookending it self and straight up tells us that the story continues in Final Fantasy VII.

Gameplay wise it's more of an action RPG. You equip up to three accessories and six materia that gives you different attacks and enhances stats or effects. Like the original the materia levels up, but I assume it's random like the normal level ups. You have a three wheeled spinner that constantly spin and if you get 777 you get a level up, I think 444 is materia level up. At times you can get three characters and it will give you a special attack and might trigger a summon that also have to align on the wheel. Sceptical in the beginning, but as soon I learned that the level ups isn't completely random (the more monster you kills, the higher a hidden EXP value goes and the possibility for a guaranteed 777 goes up). Feels a lot better than a certain game that also talked about randomness in their level ups.

Overall, I found it enjoyable. The music when they hint at the original songs are great, it's fun seeing locals and people you recognise from the original game, but I quickly realised that people I didn't recognised would probably die. Imagine my surprise that the girl Turk seemed to survive. When I got used to the gameplay it was rather ok. Would have preferred more JRPG elements to be honest, and I expected at least one more materia slot. Never got the idea around materia combining so never bothered. Only took me something like 30 hours and the game ends on a new game+ save so I can replay it with levels and most equipment intact. I guess I have to redo all the missions, but since I was level 50 and with some mastered materia it would be a piece of cake to get back, if a bit tiresome at some enemies. Got craving to play the remakes of Final Fantasy VII, hopefully they release them for the Switch 2 or something (unless it's a freaking cloud version).

Update 2025-04-28: And my prayer's were answered, but the monkey's paw curled its finger with the invention of Game Key Cards. At least it isn't a cloud version, right?

Princess Peach: Showtime! (Switch)

 

All the worlds a stage!

Newest Princess Peach game and a short game at that. My niece got it as well when she turned 8 and seemed to like it. At that time I still hadn't picked up my copy which I did the day after. Got to play it a week after when I finished up the Dragon Quest Monster game.

So the story is that Peach wanted to go to the theater, but after arriving a body-less "sorceress" named Madam Grape and the Sour bunch seals of the the theater with Peach and a lot of locals called Sparklas (I think). So she has to go through each play to get 10 different costumes that allows her to master different vocations like some bakery chef, a kung fu master, swordsman (or woman in this case), ninja, detective, superhero like Iron Man, a cowgirl, master thief, figure skater and a mermaid... maybe not a vocation, but still?

There's three stages per costume, first you begin with Peach and something like half-way through you get the costume and learns the rope. The second stage you are dressed from the start and the third stage is rescuing the one that the costume was based on. There's 5 floors and a basement and 5 bosses to beat. In every stage there is Sparkle gems to collect and a costume for Peach and her friend for the adventure, Stella. After beating the game you can find hide and seek ninjas in every stage and refight the bosses and try getting sparkle gems from the bosses by clearing some conditions, like take no damage, use minimal of resources and such. Each floor also has a rehearsal stage that allows you to do certain costume segments to get a high score, like Swordsman and Kung Fu Master beating up enemies without taking damage, the master thief gliding and collect jewels during an obstacle course and the superhero rescuing civilians from aliens. 

I did most things and it took something like 24 hours. Only thing left is getting the sparkle gems from the bosses. Two cleared in full, one with one condition left and two where I got to get everything. The gems is then used to buy decorating stuff in the theater. Only one thing left. Final boss is interesting since you "get" a new costume called Radiant Peach which turns the battle into a shoot'em'up. I also get that the joke is that Peach is radiant like a star since she's the star of the game (and in universe the plays). 

You would have a queen, not dark but beautiful and terrible as the dawn! Tempestuous as the sea, and stronger than the foundations of the earth! All shall love her and despair!

Now, I found it rather enjoyable the time I played it. There where some issues like that the nature of the stages dragged a bit if you replayed them a lot to get everything. You can't skip in-game cutscenes so it drags a bit, the movie like scenes you can skip and you can watch them whenever you like. Wished you could jump around the stages a bit easier. The game also took a long time loading the stages for some reason. And the final nitpick is that the dress costumes you can buy and get. Most of them look the damn same, in that they are white and pink for the most of it. They have different designs, but more colors wouldn't be bad. Really, the most interesting dresses are the bosses since then you get a different color. And the detective costume since it alone is brown to suit the Sherlock Holmes look. 

I heard some people compare it to Balan Wonderworld that have the same costume idea, but I guess it's much less costumes here and it only affects the stages they are in. In Balan I got the impression you choose which costumes to use and that differentiated the game play. Of course I haven't played Balan and with the reviews I will probably never do it. I thought going in that this game would be get the costumes and choose what to use and such. 

Overall, fun game. Feels like it could be in the Paper Mario Universe with the stage feeling and such. Will I play it again? Maybe not, I'm not that interested in playing the bosses until I master the game and there is no reward what I could see for doing it. I wonder if they use this to test certain ideas for games. The super hero one gave me vibes of Wonderful 101 and I would have liked more Kung Fu Master, Master Thief and Detective. I can skip Mermaid and Skater.

The last thing I saw before playing this was that the director is actually the same director who made Mystical Ninja Starring Goemon for the Nintendo 64 and you know I like that game. The ninja stages made me think of that and still wait for the Mystical Ninja collection Konami has to be working on.

Dragon Quest Monster: The Dark Prince (Switch)

 

Missed opportunity to not have the one-eyed monster behind the age rating.

Continued with the Dragon Quest games and it was part of the Dragon Quest Monster spin-off series. I haven't played the other games in this particular series. It's a side-story for the 4th game in the main series and chronicles the story of Psaro the Manslayer, the main bad guy from that game. It starts with him as a kid as the second son to Randolfo the Tyrant and his human mother dying. He gets too Nadiria to get help to his mother, but Randolfo instead curses him to not be able to hurt monsters, but Psaro is saved by the Zenithian dragon that tells him that his mother has died. Psaro returns to the world and is told by dwarfs how to wrangle monsters so that they can help him fight other monsters since he himself couldn't do it. After entering a tournament he meets Rose, the elven girl who cries ruby tears and saves her from the slavers. And together they set out to be the very best, like no ones ever known.

They travel across the lands of Nadiria and meet Toilen Trouble, a human pickpocket that joins you. You also gets help from an unknown master that push you on. The different circles lead to different stories, like the fire circle tells the story of the Brimstone Boys as they are trying to resurrect a fire bird god from the volcano that you gotta stop, the futuresque city tells of Sir Percival that stood guard outside Rose's tower that you first beat up and then help depose of the mad king sitting at the top. And at times we shift back to the main story of the main game. You watch the destruction of the Chosen's village at the hands of Dolph the Destroyer, your older brother, the kidnapping of Rose and the awakening of Estark. The kidnapping shows the bad ending where you plays out the original ending of the main game where the Chosen cuts of your every limb and you become more and more gruesome. It is undone by Toilen having stolen the Sands of Time and brings you back to the moment where the choice was finding the real Rose after the kidnapping. It also tells us that the master behind you, Aamon was the one behind the kidnapping and this tells the story from the main game when Aamon lured Psaro into the war with humankind... and incidentally become the main bad guy in the post-game content for the DS version of the game. 

With all that Psaro challenges his father after the Chosen helped defeating Dolph. An intense battle as my main team fell one by one, except my trusty Dark Slime Boomph which I had dumped a lot of seeds on. Using my healing herbs I held him alive until he did the final strike and felled Randolfo the Tyrant. Psaro don't take the throne and leaves. The gang is picked up by the Zenithian Dragon that returns them home. Credits roll. The game continues in the post-game with the third Estark demon that hides in Whisper Wood so you go there with the youngest brother Ludo. I didn't beat him so I quit the game for now.

Overall a fun game. It's basically Pokemon, but you gotta breed them to better and better versions. I don't like the amount of choices you had and it was just flukes that made me realize that the Dark Slimes breath attack actually hurts (and kills) Liquid Metal Slimes in one attack so I began farming that to keep my main team somewhere around 40-70, wish I had upgraded the healer slime I used to get Omniheal a lot sooner. So basically brute forced my way through it. I got that a higher grade meant better monsters, and a bred monster is better than a caught one due to getting more skill points. But hey, it's finished. Small nitpicks is like why can't I sort the bestiary after new entries? It annoys me that they show there is, but you have to manually look through the damn book over and over since the red dot can meld into the monsters.

Dragon Quest Treasure (Switch)

 

We're gonna have a land of our own, Plutonia!

While writing this it's Monday after the news broke that Akira Toriyama had passed away so I obviously went into some kind of Dragon Quest mode. I thought of replaying XI again, but in 2D the whole way, but I didn't feel for putting in another 100 hours. I got Dragon Quest Monster for the Switch, but then I recalled I had Dragon Quest Treasure which I started when I got it back in 2022, but dropped off after something like 17 hours into the game. So 5 hours later I was finished with the main quest and could call it quits.

Story is a prequel to XI where Erik (the thief from XI) and his sister Mia as kids rescues some strange animals the pirate vikings captured, a flying pig and a flying cat. They show them an island where two daggers exist, the siblings take one dagger each and with it they can understand the creatures that wants the siblings help in order to find the 7 stones so that they can be un-cursed by the gods and return to heaven.

So you begin by finding an abandoned train station that you fix and with the train it take you to the railway headquarters in the middle between the floating islands. You name your island and I chose Plutonia like the song from Albert Bouchards album Imaginos II. Then it's off finding treasures, fight monster, recruit monsters, restore more train stations and find more islands to travel to in search of the seven treasures of the old dragons. There's gangs of treasure hunters fighting you at every turn, big monsters, deep dungeons and an evil pirate captain that stand in your ways. And the treasure you find is all connected to the history of Dragon Quest, either items from the games, characters from the game or things like playing cards from our world. 

It was a fun game really, more hack'n'slash than an rpg, but it works. Still, after getting 4 of the main treasures I just tuned out. The grind got to me. Going place to place wouldn't be so bad if you didn't constantly got a warning after a set amount of time about another rival gang that you either have to fight off or get back to the base so that you can dump your treasures into the vault. But that still isn't enough since then your base can be attacked so you have to fight off the invaders. I just want to explore the islands and take my time! So I probably got a bit burned out. So two years later I just went straight for the final quests to get the 3 remaining treasures and then fought off the pirate captain and watched the credits and then started up the post game and just saved before calling it quits.

It was kinda sad seeing the credits since not only had Toriyama passed away, but this was apparently the last game that the composer Koichi Sugiyama worked on as well. No in memory off in the credits if I didn't miss it. Maybe that is saved for Dragon Quest XII or the remake of Dragon Quest III. A fun distraction and only took me 22 hours as a whole to finish, not 100 %, but I can't be bothered with that. Other games to play.