Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow (DS)

 

At least better than the box in the box version

So, got an urge to replay Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow after playing the Castlevania Anniversary Collection with the game Aria of Sorrow that this is a sequel too. And since I already had a file why not play a New Game + version? Stupid me of course choose Hard Mode. Game starts out somewhere in Japan as Soma Cruz having a... date (?) with Mina Hakuba when suddenly a woman named Celia Fortner shows up and summons a couple of monsters to kill Soma so a new Dark Lord can be chosen. Arikado shows up and hands Soma a knife to fend them off. Celia disappears and Arikado mentions that she is the high priestess of a cult bent on resurrecting the dark lord to prove that... God is good? Well, obviously the cult is crazy.

So Soma with the help of Hammer tracks down the cult to their castle and apparently Arikado have appeared as well together with Julius Belmont and Yoko Belnades. Celia has found two more Dark Lord candidates, Dimitri and Dario and its Soma that gotta stop them. Dimitri is the first one encountered and he has the ability to copy others ability. And he seems to die and Soma absorbs his soul?

Well, that looks painful

Continuing across the castle you find Dario that have the power of fire and hides at the top of the castle. If you beat him here you get the bad ending since the trick is getting the Paranoia soul and use it to enters the mirror in the throne room to fight the demon hiding there to take away Dimitri's powers. With that you gotta confront Celia that seems to have taken Mina and sacrifice her to force Soma into the role of the Dark Lord. If you have equipped Mina's talisman Arikado for some reason appear before its to late and shows that it's a doppelgänger that taken the form of Mina, but this unleashes the dark soul that enters the Doppelgänger and Dimitri is reformed. They head to the abyss and Dimitri sacrifices Celia to gain dominion of a demon that backfires and turns him into an abomination. Which Soma kills, everyone gets out, the end.

I haven't played this game since I got my 3DS (which I can see since there isn't any note in the records of this game) which means that it gotta be at minimum 11-12 years since. Why is that? Mostly because like everyone else I dislike the forced touch screen controls. It's fine with breaking the ice and such, but the damn magic seal. It's so hard to know what you did wrong and there's also a damn time limit. Thank God the final boss didn't have it. Don't know how many times I had to use up potions that I shouldn't have to draw that stupid seal correct. 

I hate you!

It took me somewhere around 8 hours to play through (but then I got all souls before starting the game). Getting the second bad ending (failing to equip Mina's talisman before seeing "her" sacrifice) unlocks Julius mode like in the prior game where you run around as a classic Belmont whip wielding hero, but this time you can get Yoko and Alucard as well and the final boss is Soma that acts like Dracula. Noticed I had a save right before the boss and did some grinding and then defeated Soma. Just about 9 hours. I restarted and played a bit in the beginning of the game and it's kinda fun so that might be future playthroughs if I play through it again, especially since I don't have to use the touch controls. Also, the art is a bit of hit and miss. I've gotten used to it, but it was a bit jarring to go from the previous games art style to a more... I can't say "anime-esque" sine that is true of the GBA games as well, but a more... cartoonish look maybe? Music also... not that many good tracks actually, the wizard lab is nice, but otherwise it's the old tracks like Vampire killer and Bloody Tears that sticks out, as well as the final boss battle theme against Soma with Illusionary Dance as its theme.

Aer: Memories of Old (Switch)

 

Flying High, High!

I'm A Bird In The Sky!

I'm An Eagle That Rides on the Breeze!

Another story-driven plattformer puzzler in the vein of Rime. It's rather short since I finished in an afternoon between lunch and dinner. And after rage quiting Chrono Cross after a boss beat me up good. So I needed something soothing instead. The game tells the story of Auk who have the ability to transform into a bird and is sent out on a pilgrimage like the sages of old to the different temples on the islands in the sky after the great divide where the creator lifted the islands to the sky.

So basically go around and gather the parts of a relic and piece together the story behind it. The first thing you get is a lantern with light that can show you ghosts of the past and listen in to the story of before and after the great divide. Apparently the Dreamer slept the dream that created the Creator that in his turn created the world and together with the spirit animals protected the humans, but the humans began losing faith and began preying to the god-king (if it was a god or mere human the game doesn't clear up) who sent soldiers to gather the powers from the temple and holy places, in the meantime the Creator felt a Void in his heart that threatened to swallow him that came from the humans which he had bonded with since they were his greatest creation. So to protect them he ripped out the Void from his heart and sundered the world and imprisoned the Void behind the Veil.

The humans led by the great sage made pacts with the spirit animals so that a few humans could take the form of said animal. The first sage took the form of a bird and the same goes for Auk. The sage also hid the parts of the relic with the three guardians of the dream and spirit animals guarded the keys to the temple. But since the Veil is failing snow from the north crawls south while animals falls dead and their ain't many humans left in the world. 

After gathering each relic a clearer vision of the Void appears in some nightmare world and after gathering all three and activating the lighthouse that open the ways to the Creators Shrine  Auk flies in. She is touched by the Void and seems to fall dead, but is saved by the flame of the lantern that tells Auk that she is the spirit of the great sage and that she will protect Auk for as long she can and guide her through the darkness in this tomb or whatever it is. Right before the confrontation the sages light goes out, but a shimmering light appears on Auks arm as she enters the final room. The Void appears and tries to grab her but is repelled by the light on Auk's arm that now also appear on Void, it again tries to reach for her but she stand fast and pushes her hand onto the hand of the Void and a white light engulfs them both and... credits roll, the end. 

Interesting story and piecing together everything. I missed that your mentor had his own cave near the lighthouse, but I guess it was just another clue on how to get to the keys and temples. So that's the great thing, but as a game... there's hardly anything there. Mostly go from point A to point B and maybe push a button. The hardest thing was actually finding a stair in the last temple that took me a hot minute (and one small look at youtube to see what I was missing). I also had the game freeze on a loading screen ones and the loading times can be rather long I feel, especially just for a room when the overworld or the temples aren't a problem and rather huge in comparison to this one room.

It's a one playthrough game really if you were as thorough as me so I got the story and all that around it and its rather soothing as mentioned. Also funny is that it was a lot of Swedish names on the production of the game, guess more cinematic than gameplay comes from that. Checked the internet for what others felt and many classified the ending a bit abrupt, maybe missing one final puzzle before entering the final cutscene. Also a great theory on what it all means and some explanations on things I missed as well. Sadly there is no sequel or spiritual successor since the company behind it have shut down as well. 

Radical Dreamers (Switch)

 

Hard to see how it is a Chrono Trigger-game at first glance.

Finally got Chrono Cross: The Radical Dreamers Edition, the remake... remaster... port(?) of the sequel of Chrono Trigger which I played before... a couple of times. Not only does it have the game Chrono Cross, but also the Satellaview-game Radical Dreamers. I almost bought a reproduction cart of that game, but decided to push it back since my assigned budget for video game expenses couldn't cover it at the time and this game was announced in the meantime. Which probably was lucky since my Retron-5 is a hit or miss with reproduction carts, especially games that officially wasn't released. And one of my sisters stills hogs the family Super Nintendo.

So what is Radical Dreamers? It's a visual novel game with random encounters where your action can get you killed in several ways, like being killed by monsters or traps out in the mansion where Serge, Kid and Margil (the thieving group Radical Dreamers) are looking for the jewel the Frozen Flame and the lord of the manor, Lord Lynx that Kid wants to kill. The first notion I got it was a Chrono Trigger-game (besides being bundled with Chrono Cross) was that they mentioned an army from Porre which was the southern continent of Trigger, and then it is revealed that the caretaker of Kid that was killed by Lynx was Lucca and that she gave the Time Egg (aka The Chrono Trigger) to Kid for safe-keeping. I also assume Magil is Magus since they look a lot like each other for the few instances of art that appears on the characters. The wikipedia article about the game also mention that Kid might be Schala as well, and that the Frozen Flame is part of Lavos and found in ruins from Zeal... I didn't get that dialog in the game, but since there appears to be 7 endings that might be understandable.

Was it a good game? Music is nice, you can't really talk about graphics but the art they show is wonderful and the story is rather good. Didn't die, but it appears to keep track on my health after battles and traps so it wouldn't surprise me. A bit short since it only took me 2-3 hours to get through without a guide (might have been faster if I would have mapped out the place). Now it's on to the real game in the package.

Alwa's Legacy (Switch)

 

Well, it looks worse than it is.

Well, I gotta try the sequel. So I did and finished it during the free time of my work week. Same gameplay mostly, but they changed the progression of spells and added some spells. Instead of singular upgrades you get the orbs to unlock different abilities for the spells, some coming back from the first games, other are new and probably a good idea to learn what they do. One allows you to change the colour of Zoe's cape by passing through a bubble and another allows you to change the colour of the bubble. So mix and match different abilities. Thankfully they allow you to reset and change the skill tree which compared to other games I played is a nice welcome. 

Story is... well, basically the same idea as before, find four bosses, get things, fight Vicar and the game ends. There's not much story. One thing that IS problematic with the story is that it doesn't start the same as the first game ended, instead of Sage greeting Zoe it's this child Mary that leads you to Sage. I also get the sense that it have been somewhat of a continuing loop since Sage mention that Zoe has to choose the right thing this time... and if you jump to the left in the water at the start you can see several piles of bones with what looks like purple hoods... are they past incarnations of Zoe?

Not that hard, I found all but one orb and one tear, died only some 80 times. Then again, I had a really hard time after finishing the first boss to know what to do... turned out I missed an exit to the bridge area. This caused me several deaths, running around all over the map and using one tear to teleport away from the Rose Castle since you can't get back until you get the yellow magic. How can it be that I still feel stupid?

One neat thing is that they have a choice of choosing Swedish for the text, which is included since I believe most of the creators have Swedish names. I couldn't have that on for more than 5 minutes since it doesn't sound epic, but instead rather corny. Might be that the language barrier creates a distance to the very clichéd text overall.