Excessive

prier from La Pucelle

Lately Nippon Ichi has captivated me and have completely caged my soul, and threw in a PS2 and their games as punishment. In other words, I've been unhealthily addicted to all Nippon Ichi games (a japanese game development company), La Pucelle, Disgaea and Phantom Brave. All are SRPG (Strategy Role Playing Games), all feature hilarious humour, mind blowingly deep gameplay and replay value you could have sex with. The graphics in all of the games are handdrawn 2d sprites, beautifully drawn and molded into the world.

La Pucelle: Tactics (Pucelle meaning Virgin in french... actually, everything in this game is named humoursly using french words) features a group of people who belong to a church group, as they're pretty much hired or ordered by their leader (the head priest guy I guess) to go to various jobs, like investigating the sighting of zombies in the sewers by the city, or running after murderer. The game features a grid system, much like Disgaea, where movement is planned out, and while the game is turned based, it's unlike Disgaea in the way attacks are fought. It's a much slower paced game, but you are instantly rewarded for your work, which keeps you wanting to play more and more. The game revolves around a much smaller party than you'd most typically find in Disgaea, as you can only have eight members on the field at once; party members are created or "recruited" by 'purifying' monsters, purifying them so much until they join your party, only after killing them that is. Once defeated, there is a chance they will join your team, and are immediatley availble from the base panel. The game roxxors my boxxors to the X.

I've recently got Emily horridly addicted to Disgaea, which I can't really complain about a monster I created. I'm glad that she is enjoying it though, as I'm completely in love with the game, and being able to share it, as well as share my knowledge about the game is enjoyable. I've also continued playing it, even with all the other games I'm into lately, my timer is still going up consistently; it's at 195 hours now, which is either really impressive, or really pathetic, I'll leave that up to you. It's got to the point where I just go through my entire item listing, going into the item, leveling it up to 20 or 30, getting all the residence, and them moving them into one of my own weapons, then selling it, then move onto the next. I could do this for hours and hours and it stays fun! That's the best part about this game... there are so many things you could do and still have fun... so it's really up to the user and what mood their in.

Phantom Brave is the latest release from Nippon Ichi, and the first release by the brand new north american branch of the company NIA. It features new concepts, new ideas and so on. One thing for sure is that Nippon Ichi always does something once and the completely redoes the game, but keeps enough familiarity to let return players become immersed right away. Phantom Brave is by far the most difficult to learn, and if I hadn't had played both La Pucelle and Disgaea beforehand, I would've vomitted and then threw out the game. Even with my hundereds of hours of experience, some of the concepts are difficult for me, or maybe I'm just making them more complicated than they actually are... I'm not sure. I'm sure with time and experiences I'll come to understand it even more. It's by far their biggest feeling game yet, it seems so wide open. I'm really enjoying it so far, although I was a little scared at first because of how complicated it seems, and the graphics seem to have gone down a notch from the previous games, but it seems really huge and innovated, and the first few levels excite me and the story seems much deeper than the previous entry (Disgaea) and so I'm looking forward to continueing the game.

So that's what I've been doing lately... pretty much the entire time. Just games, lots of games. There is much more to write about but I think I'll save that for tomorrows entry. Just trying to keep you guys up to date. Emily and I went shopping, and I'll probably talk about that, I added a few more games to my collection, and I also have a few things planned for the website, which may or may not interest you, but if you are a fan of console gaming, especially old-school console gaming, you may just get an erection! Woot!

785 words

1 Comments