Developer/Publisher: Konami || Overall: 8.9/10

Konami’s Suikoden RPG series has finally gotten its own strategy RPG offshoot, in the form of Suikoden Tactics for the Playstation 2. Rather than comparing Suikoden Tactics to widely known staples of the genre, it would be more appropriate to compare it to another recently released strategy RPG — Stella Deus: The Gate of Eternity, from Atlus. If you’re in the market for a new strategy RPG, Suikoden Tactics would be an excellent choice, even on its own merits.

Suikoden Tactics takes a while to set up the story; it takes nearly two hours before you can really start to catch on to what might (or might not) be happening. From what you might be able to gather from the first couple hours (as to not spoil anything later on) is that the story has something to do with a band of travelers trying to find information about Rune Cannons, the main character being named Kyril. The traveler’s interests in Rune Cannons are not explained, but during their search they stumble upon, presumably, a Rune Cannon that changes people into fish-human hybrids. However, the origins of the protagonists and their interests in Rune Cannons becomes a subplot (or takes a backseat, rather) to events and conspiracies revolving around Rune Cannons in general. Even more puzzling is the weird goat girl that never says anything and doesn’t partake in battles, but follows the main character wherever he goes. The beginning stages of the story are fragmented, and take place over a number of in-game years, however, its not all that complicated. The most important point about the story is its ability to keep the interest in playing the game.

Suikoden Tactics takes all that has made strategy RPGs great in the past, and rolled it up into a neat, polished package. Not only that, but it adds on a level of complexity (in the form of elements), forcing you to be more tactical in your approach to each battle. In regards to controls, Suikoden Tactics uses the tried and true command-menu. Unfortunately, after experiencing the “Direct” control scheme implemented in Stella Deus: The Gate of Eternity, which sped up battles considerably by making buttons shortcuts to individual commands that would normally be on the command-menu, it makes it seem like Suikoden Tactics is lacking in that department. However, Suikoden Tactics is considerably more complex, and there are aspects of the game that make battles go faster, so it evens out the playing feel in that regard.

As said before, the usual features in a strategy RPG are present. There are the side quests in which you can send a party member to accomplish, side quests that you can actually participate in, the building and maintaining of an army of personality-less allies, and other bits and pieces. But it is the unique aspects of Suikoden Tactics that make the game shine, namely the elements. Elements are your usual magical properties in any RPG like Fire, Earth, Lightning, Water, etc. Each element has its own opposite, no surprises here. Where it gets more complex is that each character has an “affinity” to a certain element. So if a character had a Fire affinity, and they were standing in a square that had the elemental property of Fire, they would get “powered-up” – attack and defense are noticeably higher as well as the prospect of healing after every turn while in the friendly elemental field. Keeping that in mind, it becomes wise to try standing in friendly elemental areas, avoid opposites to your affinity, and manipulate the battlefield to your advantage. Enemies are also able to use elementals in the same way. Besides the elementals, there are other nifty aspects such as switching out party members for fresh troops (allowing you to exploit your whole army in a battle if need be), and mounting party members on animals you find along the way. There are also a number of battle skills that characters can learn that allow you to customize each of them in a way that will be optimal.

There are parts of the battle system that give leeway to speeding up each battle, as well as stepping out of the norm of regular strategy RPGs. There is no use of Action Points, normally seen in strategy RPGs, to dictate each character’s turn. They basically get to move and then act, but if they act before they move, they aren’t allowed to move again (unless they have the specific battle skill to do so). There are also no Magic Points, as the special skills and magic are lumped into a category called Runes; you can use a specific Rune skill a limited amount of times in each battle and the number you’re allowed to use them increases as you level up. If you equip the battle skill on a character to do so, a character can attack more than once during his or her action, speeding up the battle quite a bit compared to what it could be if the battle skill weren’t equipped.

The town and back-end systems aren’t too out of the ordinary. There are five different places in a town that are of interest: the Outfitter, the Blacksmith, the Quest Guild, the Rune Master, and in certain areas a training ground. The Outfitter is the place to buy your equipment and items; armor and hand gear being the most important, they can affect the status of a character. There are also about ten extra slots for each character to hold items or extra equipment as you so desire. At the Blacksmith, you simply upgrade the weapon each character has (there’s no weapon-choosing here, it’s just straightforward upgrading). The Rune Master is the place to go for your special skill and magic needs. When you acquire an orb you have to pay a Rune Master to equip or unequip the Rune Orb. There is also a training ground of sorts every so often where you are able to level up and find treasure. Oddly enough, a permanent death situation is presented in the training levels of the game, while not integrated into the story battles. So, what it basically means is you shouldn’t push the capabilities of your group so far as to have someone in your party die, making them not playable anymore.

Sound and graphics do take a place in the fold as well. Most notable for the sound portion of the game, the voice acting is either a hit or a miss. Many might not like the choice of voice work for the main character, because he comes off as a young adult with the voice of a ten year old, but any fan of the .hack series will recognize Kyril’s voice as Kite’s. You’ll probably be more able to accept the voice of Kyril if you played through the .hack games, like I have. Other voice work is moderate at best, sometimes falling lower than that. Graphics-wise, the game is modest at best. The characters are cel-shaded, and scenery isn’t that striking either. The entire story takes place with in-game animation; CG movies will be admittedly hard to come by, if there are any to speak of. However, we should probably be grateful they took the time to have in-game animations rather than still pictures talking back and forth a la Stella Deus: Gate of Eternity.

As for what is disappointing about the game, it mostly comes in its overall package. While yes, Suikoden Tactics is very recommendable for a strategy RPG, it doesn’t have that extra “oomph” to push it over the edge and make it one of those games you’ll cherish forever. If there were a better story (and to a lesser extent a stronger overall voice cast), the end product would have been better balanced between it and gameplay. Nevertheless, Suikoden Tactics is a refreshing experience for the strategy RPG fan.

Developer/Publisher: Konami || Overall: 9.5/10

Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner is the sequel to 2001’s Zone of the Enders. Fans of the original should consider it practice, since ZOE 2 is where the real challenge starts. ZOE 2 has reached new heights of diversity in gameplay compared to the original, and everything (and I mean everything) about the original battle system has been improved. The visuals have also taken a completely different course into the anime/cel shading direction. If there’s one thing to be sure about, almost any fan of the first Zone of the Enders will enjoy its sequel.

If you felt like me when playing the first ZOE, we were kind of left in the dark as to who the enemies really were and what their intents were. Thankfully, a “Previous Story” movie is included on the main menu screen which gives a recap of the whole first game and explains the different plot holes that were left to question. We learn that an evil “army” named BAHRAM, bent on creating all-around destruction, went to the colony where the first game’s hero, Leo, lived to retrieve an orbital frame (which are what the mechs that are in the game are called) named Jehuty. Jehuty would be used to activate a weapon of mass destruction named Aumaan. At the end of the first game, we were given a non-elaborative statement about what Jehuty’s “final” mission would be, which was to go to Mars and self-destruct in Aumaan. So, we were left to wonder what would actually happen to the characters we saw through the first game, as well as what would happen to Jehuty and its AI named ADA.

Many years after the events that happened in Zone of the Enders, the story picks up with a character named Dingo on a Metatron mining mission on one of Jupiter’s moons. Metatron, being the precious energy substance of the future, was very highly valued. While on the mining mission, Dingo finds Jehuty hidden away in a large box on the moon. Unfortunately for Dingo, BAHRAM did as well. Dingo hops into Jehuty and proceeds with kicking the bejeezus out of all the units sent after him. ZOE 2 is a very straightforward game, and progresses more or less like a regular action game. The “world traveling” parts that were present in the first game have been done away with and replaced with cinematic sequences filled with story. But while ZOE 2 loses the “freedom” aspect, it definitely makes up in keeping the challenges diverse.

The primary objective of beating up an endless amount of ambiguously named enemies has been done away with in the transition to the sequel, but there are still plenty of enemies to slaughter. Raptors, Cyclops and Mummies make their way back into the game, but not without friends and some new characteristics. Raptors, while more or less the same as in the first game, are the most common unit you’ll be seeing. The Raptor AI has been immensely improved, and actually poses a challenge at certain times. The Cyclops, which was just a hard-punching version of the Raptor with no long-range attack, has now become a formidable opponent as well. Using some sort of distortion blast for long-range attacks as well as getting an AI upgrade makes the Cyclops not-so generic of an enemy anymore. The Mummy has also had an AI boost, but besides having the usual couple of sub-weapons to use against you, when defeated can sometimes revert into a Raptor and continue fighting. Other enemies making their first appearance in the game are orbital frames such as Spyders (basically mini walking tanks), Leonardo, Mosquitoes, among others. Just about as often as you’ll be fighting against “regular enemies,” you’ll be fighting boss-like enemies. There are so many different boss battles (not to mention they can take a while) included in the game, and they really diversifies the experience as you play. Each boss is extremely unique in how to beat them, almost reminiscent of the way a Metal Gear Solid game treats its bosses.

Nearly all of the sub-weapons from the first game also made the transfer as well as a couple new sub-weapons. Absent sub-weapons that were featured include the Javelin and Bounder, but the Javelin can be seen being used by a Raptor sometimes. New sub-weapons include the Vector Cannon and the ability Zero Shift. The Vector Cannon is a huge cannon that has so much energy it can blow the crap out of battleships many times bigger than Jehuty, but to use it Jehuty’s feet must be on a firm ground. Zero Shift is the ability to travel from one point to another with almost no time spent between traveling. If you can’t grasp the concept, just think of it as teleporting. The new sub-weapons, as well as enhancements to the pre-existing ones, add another layer of gameplay as you’ll have to use sub-weapons intelligently through the game. Many of the sub-weapons now rely on a pressure-sensitive button command, unlike the original ZOE, allowing for more control over your sub-weapons.

While the gameplay experience being extremely revamped is a very important part of what makes ZOE 2 great, the visual aspects also take a very big part. ZOE 2 is easily one of the most visually impressive console games to come out of this generation, let alone for the Playstation 2. The detail used in mech design, environment, and the use of cel shading to give the game an anime feel along with anime cutscenes really gives it a distinct art style. It’s not 100% cel shaded though, it still uses the “realistic” style seen in most games for a majority of what is seen, but the cel shading amplifies the visuals immensely. Music is also very good and fits in exactly as it should be, and even the J-popish theme song the game has fits in. I may not understand the words in the song, but I still feel the emotion they convey…sniff.

While the game only took me eight hours to beat on normal, it is an amazing eight hours at that. After you beat the game, there is a New Game+ sort of thing that allows you to play through the game again with a different version of Jehuty (whether or not you have certain abilities dictates the version, as well as the look). A Versus Mode is included, allowing you to play against a friend or computer using mechs from the game, but until you beat the game once you won’t be able to play with anything but Jehuty. What will take the largest amount of time, though, are the Extra Missions. Throughout the game, you collect items called Ex Missions that allow you to attempt specific challenges, whether they are survival, objective, etc. What it comes down to, is extending the length of the title quite a bit past the ten hours or so you might spend on the single player mode after one go. Also worth mentioning is that there is a level that is basically one huge, epic battle fighting against literally hundreds of orbital frames while being assisted by only a few allies. Needless to say, it’s definitely a weird kind of adrenaline rush to take part in it.

Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner is a game that makes me clamor for more ZOE-action. Packed full of high-paced mech action has always been its most appealing aspect, but the story is also another factor in its appeal. ZOE 2 is one of the best games for the Playstation 2, but is unfortunately fairly rare nowadays. If you see the game and it interests you, my advice would be to buy it, you won’t be disappointed. Here’s hoping for a Zone of the Enders 3.

Developer/Publisher: Konami || Overall: 7.6/10

The scene opens up with a tavern. A man with a patch over his eye and a pony tail walks into the noisy building from the cold night with a shorter companion by his side. The companion, shrouded in a cloak and with her face hidden simply follows the man. Across the way from the entrance of the tavern, a red-haired adventurer, named Adol, is sitting down with a friend of his. The man with the patch over his eye goes over to Adol, and asks him to accompany him on an exploration around the world. Just then, two soldiers come in, looking for the “red-haired Adol” wanting to arrest him! I don’t want to give away the crappiness of the introduction of the story to Ys: Ark of the Napishtim, so I’ll fast forward to my summary of the opening part of the story; the beginning of the story of Ys: Ark of the Napishtim is trash.

It’s not often that I exclaim obscenities when trying to understand what is trying to be conveyed, but it seems like the beginning of the story was tossed together as an afterthought. The beginning movie is pretty much the only movie the game has for the most part, and it’s badly voice acted. Though there were some very nice graphics exhibited, I counted about three instances of fan service, in which the underwear of the annoying-peppy-blonde-girl character that has some sort of crush (I’m guessing) on Adol is shown. They really know how to pack that kind of thing in. Had I rented the game, the beginning movie alone would make me seriously contemplate whether or not I should return it sooner than I had intended. However, what really saves this game from getting a horrible score is the game-play, and the story later on in the game actually helps it, as well (but after being in the gutter from the beginning, there’s nowhere to go but up, and the bad taste of a poorly set up story always lingers).

I would have to say what the main point of the game would be that it tries to pull off an “old-school” approach to gaming. Ys: The Ark of Napishtim seeks to accomplish this by having relatively simple controls, as well as old-style (but not completely crappy-looking) graphics, a silent main character, and the story itself just being set in a fantasy world (more specifically, the world of Ys, where all the games in the series has taken place). However, because of this “old-school” approach encased in the game, there are many enhancements over the games from back in the day. In Ys: The Ark of Napishtim, every single word displayed as dialogue from a character has a voice-over and rightly so. Every character, even the unimportant characters in a town you find in a back alley will have a voiced dialogue. The voice acting isn’t half bad, and everyone talks except for Adol himself. You’re just supposed to assume what he says by the one-sided conversations people have with him. However, there are a few instances (I think about ten times) where it says Adol “explains to (character) everything that has happened so far.” So, you’ll just have to assume that Adol tells them every single little part of the journey you had just been on, down to how many slime creatures you killed on the way over to see them. The only downfall with the voice acting is that there are a couple of very annoying characters (such as Professor Raba who talks in an over-exaggeratingly old-man’s voice), and that you can tell that there were only a few voice actors doing the voices for all the different characters.

At various times throughout the story you will meet characters (like Professor Raba) whom have met Adol in the past or have known him through his “legend” or whatever it is. I don’t even know what it is, because it made no sense to me when they talked about “when we were at the Tower of Whatshisface” or “you may not recognize me now since I’ve grown into a beautiful woman” and many other instances of back-story that are never actually explained. It was only until I researched the game a little bit online that I found out that this is the sixth game in the series. So it makes some sense as to why it came up repeatedly about people, places and events that seem to be completely random after knowing this fact. Even though it isn’t very important to the story of THIS game, it would have been nice to actually understand what they were talking about.

Story faults aside, the actual game that is inside Ys: The Ark of Napishtim is interesting to say the least. The main feature of the battle system is that there are three different elemental swords (wind, fire, and electricity). It’s up to you to use the swords to your liking, constantly “upgrading” them by collecting enough stones called “Emelas” (or Emel) so that you can use each sword’s special ability more often, or acquire the unique skill attached to the sword. Even though having three elemental swords implies (to me, at least) that there would be enemies that are immune to one sword but not another (forcing you to use the right sword to kill them), you will find this to not be the case for the most part. For how much the game relies on these three swords, it comes out to being which sword you fancy using the most. There are times where you can notice an increase in damage from one sword over another for a particular enemy, but all-in-all the swords were not used to create much of a type of strategy for playing the game. If it weren’t for the story actually requiring there be three swords, it would have been better to just have one sword with a bunch of different abilities. Other kinds of items in the backend system add to the game-play as well.

Unlike most RPGs, there aren’t hundreds of things to collect, rather just a few accessories, pieces of armor, items, event tools, and other such things that are somewhat rare. It gets to the point that it almost influences you to really look for as many items as you can and buy all the items you can. There are a lot of unique accessories to collect throughout the game that will make a big impact on the game itself, such as an accessory that will increase your HP by 50% or another that will increase your attack and defense a little bit. There are also EXP, Emel, and money enhancers so that you can milk out the highest amount of things from every enemy you beat. While you only start out with one accessory holder, you can find more throughout the dungeons, up to a total of five slots for accessories.

Like I said earlier, the whole game itself is very simple and the learning curve isn’t that long at all, and you’ll be able to master the fighting aspect of the game in no time, since the only button you really press is “Square.” Sometimes you press the “Circle” button to use a magic attack associated with the sword you’re using, but this is basically all that you do to fight. The “Square” button is also used to talk to townspeople and investigate treasure chests.

Although the game is pretty easy to learn and get into (playing-wise), there are a couple of annoyances here and there. A minor annoyance is that when you’re in the field or a dungeon, there is no on-screen map to help you find where you are in reference to the place you actually are at currently. So if you’re in a dark cave that is pretty much a maze, you might end up going in a circle or not remember how to get back to a particular part of the dungeon you had been to before but died in. However, the most annoying thing about the game is the bosses.

In all my years of playing video games, I have never seen such cheap, stupid bosses that literally make me throw my hands into the air and say “how do I beat this stupid freakin’ boss?” I understand that boss battles are an important part of any game, but these bosses are, for the most part, so out of place and so over the top in terms of what they can do to kill you that it’s practically amazing that I even beat some of them. Just to tell you what kinds of bosses you have to deal with, you fight a wall. You fight a wall with big, long, skinny, rock arms and a face that can launch flowers that blow up and shoot a large energy beam from its mouth, while swinging around the arms and slamming them on the ground so that rocks can fall from the sky to fall on top of you. If that’s not crazy enough for you, how about a big frog that can roll up into a bowling ball, crap out slime that makes you slide around, as well as use its tongue as a spiked-ball mace? Oh wait, I forgot to tell you that the frog has STEALTH CAMOUFLAGE – it can seemingly disappear! Even if you have the greatest skills in the world at playing this game, you will not beat any boss if you’re not at the right level. A general rule about boss battles is if you haven’t beat a boss after fifteen tries, level up at least five or ten levels, and you’ll see that the boss is all of a sudden a lot easier than they had been before. However, regardless of whether you’re even at the right level, it may take a couple of deaths to get a hang of what the boss actually does. You really can’t expect the things they pull out of the air when it comes to the boss’s abilities. Just when you think you figure out a boss, it surprises you with a new ability it hadn’t used the first time you faced it.

Regardless of all that has been said about the game, Ys: The Ark of Napishtim is a game that really grows on you. One may be displeased by the out-of-the-ordinary old-style graphics incorporated in the game or even the weird set-up for an underwhelming story full of references to past games in the series, but for those who suck it up and go on to actually try and complete the game, you’ll find the game to actually be fun, and actually get caught up in the story a bit. Being a title that is priced less than a “premium” title definitely may influence some people to pick up the game, especially if they are fans of the series (whom haven’t had a Ys game brought to North America since the Super Nintendo days). Even though the game doesn’t take very long to finish, you may end up spending around 20-25 hours on the game as a whole. For those that actually venture far enough as to beat the game, there are a few extras included in the game, which affect game play, audio, visuals, and other things that can be activated by entering the cheat code before playing a new game. In the end, however, Ys: The Ark of Napishtim may only appeal to fans of the series.