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Top Ten PlayStation Vita Games

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 10/20/2018

Posted in: Blogs, PlayStation Vita, Sony Consoles. Tagged: borderlands 2, dj max, dragon's crown, golden, golden abyss, gravity rush, handheld, killzone, mercenary, muramasa rebirth, persona 4, playstation, portable, ps vita, Sony, tearaway, technika tune, top 10, top ten, uncharted, vita. Leave a comment

The PlayStation Vita was a great system despite its lack of support from Sony. It had an incredibly strong first 3 years and tons of support from indie and third-party developers over the years. While Sony nailed the hardware down pat, the system was stuck in limbo between mobile gaming and Nintendo’s strong 3DS support. Here are my top ten favorite Vita games of all time. These will not include remastered compilations, HD ports, or anything that wasn’t significantly special for the Vita.

10. Borderlands 2

It may have struggled technically on the small hardware, but there were many patches put in place to make it playable. With that aside, Borderlands 2 is the best shooter on the Vita, and a lack of them didn’t help despite having twin sticks, due to the overall amount of content. We got the entire Borderlands 2 experience, plus all the DLC for $40 which was a steal. While it took a graphical hit, playing with a buddy on the go was never more fun.

9. Gravity Rush

Despite the nauseating camera, Gravity Rush was a treat to look at and featured a full console experience on the system. The characters were interesting, and the anti-gravity gameplay was one of a kind on the system. While it lacked in story and development, the game had gorgeous locales and interesting things going on.

8. Dragon’s Crown

A Vanillaware game is always something to get excited about, but having one on Vita is something more special. The game looked fantastic on Sony’s OLED screen and featured fantastic co-op gameplay with responsive controls and interesting characters. The game may have been short, but the experience was something to remember.

7. Muramasa: Rebirth

Muramasa was one of the best games on the Wii and having it ported to the Vita was a pleasant surprise. Not only did the system get this exclusive to remaster, but it played better than the original. With Vanillaware’s gorgeous visual design it played buttery smooth on the Vita with plenty of DLC, challenging combat, and interesting characters. It remains one of the best Vita games of all time.

6. Uncharted: Golden Abyss

While Golden Abyss didn’t push the series into new directions and played it safe, it was a solid Uncharted adventure that showed off the power of the Vita. Very few games achieved this graphical showcase and all the controls, combat, and adventuring were as smooth as ever. The lack of originality hurt the game a bit, but Nathan is as charming as ever in this adventure.

5. DJ Max: Technika Tune

You won’t see this game on most people’s top ten lists. This is one of the few good rhythm games on Vita and it takes advantage of all the hardware. The DJ Max series was a popular Korean rhythm genre on PSP, and its debut on the Vita is fantastic. With prompts displaying over music videos, the game is addictive with various taps, buttons presses, and modes. This game got me into K-Pop thanks to the game’s front-runner group KARA being featured with several videos.

4. Tearaway

The makers of LittleBigPlanet pull a fantastic game out of their hat that makes this the single most unique game on the system. It cleverly uses all of the hardware’s features with bright, vivid visuals and fun puzzles. Sadly, the game is really easy and extremely short (less than 4 hours long), and sadly we will never see a sequel.

3. Killzone: Mercenary

The single best FPS on the system, Killzone was the first with the budget of the franchises console brethren, Mercenary is probably the single best looking game on the system and plays amazingly well. With a solid campaign and fun online multiplayer and challenges, this is your go-to shooter.

2. Mortal Kombat

One of the best fighters on the system, and the game I got most excited about for this system. While the game took a mysteriously questionable graphical downgrade, the entire 2011 game is intact with exclusive Challenge Tower modes and all DLC characters. The fighting is smooth, fun, and the only MK game on the system.

1.Persona 4: Golden

While I never finished this game, and I don’t know if I ever will, this game probably gives you the most bang for your buck. A whopping 40-50 hour JRPG with remastered visuals from the PS2 game and added content for $40, it’s a damn steal. The story is brilliant, the combat system is amazing, and there’s something here for everyone. Patience is needed, and some level of grinding, but once you get into the swing of the game you won’t put it down. This is what we needed more of on the Vita and sadly, we didn’t get it.

Asphalt: Injection – 6 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 07/07/2018

Posted in: PlayStation Vita, Sony Consoles. Tagged: asphalt, gameloft, injection, playstation, ps vita, racer, racing, Sony, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: Ubisoft

Developer: Gameloft/Ubisoft

Release Date: 02/15/2012

Available Exclusively On

Gameloft and I don’t really get along. They used to release good Java mobile games back in the day, but after smartphones took off they released nothing but free-to-play or pay-to-win garbage. Sadly, this leaked over into handhelds a few times and the Vita was no exception. Injection is a dumbed-down port of Asphalt 6: Adrenaline for mobile phones. A mobile game directly ported to a handheld isn’t the best of ideas and this game proves why.

With all of the pay-to-win aspects taken out of Asphalt, this is a rare opportunity to see how the game would play if all microtransactions and other cancer-riddled stuff is stripped out. On the surface, it’s a reasonably accessible and playable racing game with licensed cars, more like a low-budget PS2 title. The tracks are boring but work, with boost icons and jumps. The purpose of the game is to boost your way through the track as much as you can and take shortcuts. Once you fill your boost meter you can go into Adrenaline mode which allows you to easily knock cars off the road Burnout style and zoom ahead. I found the cars all pretty much handle the same, drifting is awful, and the whole game feels stiff and poorly made.

That’s not to say there’s zero fun in the game, it does work and is a nice mindless racer for fans of the series or anyone wanting a bargain bin racer on the Vita. Gameloft is not a genius when it comes to handhelds as they don’t work like mobile phones. Outside of career mode, you can race with other people (no one was even playing during launch don’t worry) and there are typical event types to participate in such as elimination, time trial, and various others that have been done to death.

Injection is ugly, stiff, boring, and a slightly upgraded port of a mobile game that was already over a year old before the Vita was released. If you exhausted all your other racing options on Vita then go for this dead last.

Super Monkey Ball: Banana Splitz – 6 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 07/07/2018

Posted in: PlayStation Vita, Sony Consoles. Tagged: banana splitz, handheld, playstation, ps vita, puzzle, Sony, super monkey ball, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: Sega

Developer: Marvelous AQL

Release Date: 10/23/2012

Available Exclusively On

I love Super Monkey Ball. I remember playing this back on the PS2 and having a blast being OCD about collecting every banana in every stage. The GameBoy Advance version was probably my favorite of them all, but when I found out there was one for Vita I was quite intrigued.

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Sadly, the fun didn’t last long. The game, for starters, hasn’t evolved one bit with the same tiled textured levels and blurry backgrounds. While the game looks decent on Vita it looks quite boring and bland. Outside of that, the controls feel somewhat off and the gyroscope and thumbstick controls just don’t feel right. Even the D-Pad controls on Super Monkey Ball Jr. worked well on a 16-bit handheld system, what happened? When using the thumbstick the levels move around so fast and is so jumpy it was nauseating just getting through a level. On top of that, the levels may seem challenging, but they just aren’t that well designed. It almost feels as if they were randomly generated and slapped into the game. You get 60 seconds to complete each level and get higher scores by collecting all the bananas or you can be brave and find a shortcut on some levels and jump down to the goal.

On top of all this, the mini-games are bland and boring and make no sense, and then the course editor doesn’t actually let you save courses and create your own from scratch so it feels pointless. Multiplayer is fun as always, but playing by yourself should always be enjoyable. I’m not sure if I’m just burnt out on SMB’s overall design that has stayed the same for nearly 2 decades or this is just a not-so-great version.

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Banana Splitz could have been a definitive version of the series culminating nearly 2 decades of SMB into one fantastic game or rebooting the series into something different. The game is somewhat enjoyable, but it always feels like something is missing or wrong with the game. The series is really stale at this point and unless something drastically changes I won’t be rolling around Sega’s classic series again.

God of War: Chains of Olympus – 10 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/02/2018

Posted in: Editor's Choice, PlayStation 3, PSP, Sony Consoles. Tagged: chains of olympus, god of war, playstation, ps vita, ps3, psp, Sony, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEA

Developer: Ready at Dawn Studios

Release Date: 03/04/2008

Also Available On

Chains of Olympus was probably the single biggest PSP release during the entire console’s life cycle. It was one of the first games everyone wanted for the system and Ready at Dawn delivered with a God of War experience just like the console version and no cut corners.

The game takes place between the first two games with Kratos continuing his journey to rid every god on Olympus and his quest to kill Zeus. He finds himself discovering more nightmares of his past, his daughter, and various new gods not seen in previous games. The story is just fine and feels just like a God of War game, but it’s very short and can be finished in less than 4 hours.

I remember starting up this game for the first time and seeing half of Kratos’ face in the main menu, just like in previous games, and pressing that new game button. The game starts you out at the Battle of Attica fighting off a giant Basilisk sent to destroy the city by the Persians. I knew the game would have an epic first boss fight and a giant city to fight in as the previous games did as well. You also have to remember that this was released two years after God of War II so there wasn’t much else to go off of at the time. Thankfully this game carved its own path in the God of War series and later games actually borrowed things from this game.

Surprisingly the controls work out just fine with the handheld version. pressing the shoulder buttons and moving the analog nub allows you to dodge. The combat and animations are gorgeous and the game runs at 30FPS most of the time. Very rarely did it ever drop below that and sometimes even went up to 60FPS in smaller areas. Everything about this game is so familiar yet somehow slightly evolved from GoWII. The moves are more fluid and upgrades are a bit different as well. New magic items and a brand new weapon are introduced as well.

The Gauntlet of Zeus is a giant fist that brings slower more powerful hits, sadly due to the short length only one extra weapon was introduced. Efreet is the new AOE magic attack that uses fire damage, Light of Dawn is a long-range magic attack, and Charon’s Wrath stuns enemies. Kratos also gets a shield in the game allowing new counter-attacks and throwing back projectiles at enemies. The whole combat system as a whole feels new and enhanced enough to make this feel like a sequel rather than a spin-off.

Just like in previous games, you can upgrade your magic and health with hidden Phoenix Feather and Gorgon Eye chests, as well as using red orbs to upgrade items. Most of the hidden chests are easy to find if you explore all areas and pay attention to breakable walls and side paths. The best part about this game is the new enemies and bosses which is what makes God of War so epic to begin with.

After beating the Basilisk you will come across a few other bosses, but they aren’t large epic enemies like previous games, they are smaller and more challenging combat wise which is fine for the story that it delivers. I don’t want to spoil the game and tell you all the bosses right here, but the final boss proved quite a challenge and will test your reflexes for sure.

The environments are also amazing as with any God of War game with huge set pieces, massive buildings, giant statues, and various background stuff going on. Chains of Olympus was the best-looking handheld game ever released at the time and stunned everyone. It sold more PSP systems, which was good, and was the main reason why most people bought a PSP. The lighting effects and textures look great and are a step up over God of War II. There are some noticeable aliasing and audio compression, but overall the game seems impossibly good on the small system. This was also the first PSP game to use the full 333MHz of the CPU and required an update before playing.

Overall, Chains of Olympus is a milestone and a pinnacle game in the handheld market and showed just how much of a powerhouse Sony’s handheld was back in the day. Sadly, we never got a new God of War on Vita, but this game is playable on that system as a PSP download.

God of War – 13 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/28/2018

Posted in: PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation Vita, Sony Consoles. Tagged: god of war, playstation, PlayStation 2, playstation 3, ps vita, ps2, ps3, remake, remaster, Sony, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCE

Developer: Sanzaru Games, Santa Monica Studios

Release Date: 05/06/2014

Also Available On

Kratos and God of War are PlayStation icons and symbols of what the system can offer. This game was the biggest hit in 2005 and I went nuts for it like everyone else. It reinvented the action-adventure genre like no one else had with epic boss fights, cinematic combat, and insane-level design. We finally get all of this in portable form on the Vita. While it isn’t the most ideal version it’s still plenty of fun.

God of War is really starting to show its age and flaws these days, that is really clear. It was a new idea, however well executed, but still had some issues. The game isn’t quite as epic as I remember thanks to newer games in the series being insanely huge. There are only two big boss fights in this game and I could swear there were more. The game is brutal in spots, but still rewarding with many secrets and areas to explore.

You play as Kratos, a Spartan general who cried out for Ares to save him and defeat his enemies, but this all came at a huge price. I won’t spoil more of the story if you have never played this series, but longtime fans know it already. The game has amazing combat which is what was praised so much 13 years ago. Using the Blades of Chaos, Kratos can swing and spin them around with amazing animations and kill hordes of enemies. I’m not kidding about hordes, there are some scenes where you must defeat nearly a hundred enemies which is brutal.

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The enemy variety is also great as there are small easy enemies to huge lumbering Cyclops that take many hits to kill. God of War is famous for quick-time event kills. After so much damage is taken the enemies will display the circle button above their head. This initiates a quick-time button pressing even that will give you health orbs. Each enemy has its own unique animations. Each enemy is also a challenge on their own as some are dangerous on hordes while not so much alone. The level design is fantastic and the enemy placement is cleverly laid out to offer a challenge every step of the way.

The series is also famous for the magic powers you acquire that are different with every game. You get four which become very useful for various enemies. Poseidon’s Rage is great for clearing hordes of weaker enemies as it’s an AOE attack. Zeus’ Fury is the only long-range weapon you get for picking off ranged enemies. Souls of Hades is like a shield, and Medusa’s Gaze is great for larger single enemies to turn them to stone. On top of the Blades of Chaos you also get Artemis’ Blade which is a powerful short-range heavy weapon, but once the Blades were fully upgraded, I honestly never really used it.

Outside of combat are puzzles that will sometimes slow you down. Most consist of pressing switches in order, climbing puzzles, or jigsaws. Pandora’s temple is a giant puzzle within itself that takes up a third of the game near the middle. I just can’t stress enough how hard this game can be. Some spots had me restarting dozens of times until I got it right and this included platforming sections. The first game’s Hell area is notorious for being brutally difficult. Having to balance on long spinning logs covered in blades and then climbing spinning spiked towers that stretch on forever is daunting, but rewarding when you do complete it.

Overall, God of War is still a blast to play 13 years later and is as well polished as I remember. Outside of hardware limitations at the time Sony did an amazing job creating what they did. There are some cheap deaths, unbalanced difficulty in spots, and the quick-time events do get repetitive, but it’s minor issues that can’t really bring the game down even today.

The Vita version is the only way to play this game in portable form, and it’s not the most ideal version. The PS3 version runs at a smooth 60FPS, but the Vita cleans up the visuals a little and does have some FPS drops when a lot of enemies are on screen, but it’s not often. I’m sad to see this game doesn’t hit 60FPS which it does even on PS2 sometimes, which keeps this game from getting a perfect score.

Sony Slim PlayStation Vita – 5 Years Later

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 05/28/2018

Posted in: Editor's Choice, Hardware, PlayStation Vita, Sony Consoles. Tagged: 2000, handheld, playstation, portable, slim, Sony, vita. Leave a comment

Release Date: 05/06/2014

MSRP: $199.99

Colors: Black, White

It’s sad to say that the Vita was a mostly commercial flop as Sony got scared with the first sign of trouble. The Vita still continues to release JRPGs and visual novels today, but first and third-party support has been long gone. The Slim Vita was released right at the beginning of all this, but there’s still a huge library to play on anyone who hasn’t picked up a Vita yet. While the launch system was a fantastic piece of hardware, the slim version is as well.

While I won’t get into technical details about the hardware, the Slim Vita is virtually the same system just slimmer, more ergonomic, lighter, and has much better buttons and placement. The awkward oval start, select, and home buttons are gone with new circle buttons that are firm and less mushy. Everything just has a more satisfying click and less of a mush feeling to it which is nice. The downside to lighter and slimmer is cheaper feeling, but it still feels good in the hands.

The home button no longer lights up so those LEDs were moved to the top next to the power button as small bars which look sleek and minimal. The Vita also uses a standard micro-USB cable which is nice and ditches the proprietary charger, it’s just too bad they didn’t do that with storage. 1GB of internal memory is included for tiny games and saves, but you can’t use it concurrently with the outrageously expensive memory card.

The biggest change of all is the LCD screen which is no longer OLED. The Vita was touted as having a fantastic-looking screen, and while the LCD is nothing to scoff at, it doesn’t pop like the OLED did, but you wouldn’t notice unless they were side by side. This change always has more battery life as well. Also noted is the exclusion of 3G models as AT&T killed the Vita plans less than a year after launch.

Overall, the Slim Vita is the best version to get just due to all the improvements. Griping about the OLED screen isn’t enough to justify not wanting this version. We won’t get another iteration so this is the best you can find.

Freedom Wars

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 06/18/2016

Posted in: PlayStation Vita, Sony Consoles. Tagged: freedom wars, playstation, Sony, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: SCEA

Developer: SCE Japan Studio

Release Date: 10/28/2014

Available Exclusively On

The Vita is a strange system as several developers tried to make various genres stable on the system. With Monster Hunter clone Soul Sacrifice not exactly bringing about that feat, Freedom Wars is the next game to make the Vita a blockbuster hit for co-op monster-slaying fun. Freedom Wars starts out a little strange just like Soul Sacrifice. I didn’t understand the game for a while and it seemed just like there was something missing throughout the whole adventure.

Freedom Wars tries to bring about an interesting anime-style post-apocalyptic adventure in which people are all prisoners and sentenced to fight monsters that will destroy settlements unless they have some sort of trait that the government can benefit from. Everyone starts about with a lifetime sentence, but it can get reduced based off of various accomplishments such as donating loot from battle to “the cause”, fighting monsters, taking part in more missions, and behaving. This is ingrained into the player’s head from the start as you are sentenced to 1,000 years for walking for too long. Yeah, it’s crazy and I loved it. If you run for too long you get your sentence lengthened so you have to buy an upgrade that allows you to run, talk to other people, and do various other things which are actually quite cool.

Once you read your sentence you put your thumbprint on it and off you go. Now, the game is very slow to start and this is a huge downfall for these types of games as Soul Sacrifice suffered the same problem. There’s a bunch of dialog and back story to get through, a lengthy tutorial — not just for combat — and then getting used to controls and getting through missions. It takes over 5 hours just to get into the swing of things and start chipping away on missions which are not a good thing. These anime-type games always do this from monster slaying to JRPGs and it drives me crazy.

Once you do get into the field you can switch between melee and ranged weapons. The goal is to lock on to enemies and hack away at a weak point, but your special weapon is your grapple which can heal or do damage among various other things. Once you grapple to a weak point you can hack away at it and then the monster falls allowing all bots and yourself to go to town. It only gets fun when you find momentum and your AI teammates are all getting along and doing their job. You also have an assistant bot that always looks out for you that you can customize and assign certain weapons to. Once you fall you can be revived, but if it takes too long you lose a life. If you lose all your lives your sentence is lengthened and your reward for the next turn is reduced making this a tough game towards the end. I was able to whittle away to 4-5 star missions and it started getting ridiculously difficult and repetitive.

Without human teammates, the game becomes frustrating because you can fall in battle and 3 bots are right next to you and won’t revive you. There are also issues with the same 3 or 4 maps recycling over and over again and the same mission goals. Save these VIPs, destroy all these monsters, etc. It gets really boring towards the 10th hour and I just stopped playing after a while because I had no reason to go back.

Let’s talk about upgrading and creating weapons. This is so complicated and irritating as most of the time you can only upgrade or create something with components you have and it takes quite a few missions to build up a little variety. See, you have to create and build workshops to assign the civilians you save in missions to reduce build time and create things like healing items, weapons, ammo, etc. You can upgrade these buildings sometimes, but in the end, it’s all just a bunch of filler and nonsense. Give me a workshop to upgrade and create and leave me alone. It’s always so complex and unintuitive with these Japanese games. From JRPGs to action games, all the way to free-to-play mobile games. There are layers upon layers of unnecessary upgrade menus and fusing and defusing etc. It hurts the game quite a bit so I just rely on buying more powerful weapons and upgrading them; I completely skip creating new weapons entirely.

Customizing your character is quite deep as you can buy new color packs, armor, and accessories in the game with points you earn in missions. I enjoyed it quite a bit and there are a lot of things to customize here so players won’t be disappointed. Overall, the game looks quite good with great lighting effects and textures, probably one of the better-looking Vita games out there. There’s a lot of detail here and game, it’s just a mess and is completely unorganized and unpolished. I feel the developers were trying several different things and couldn’t decide on just one. The gameplay is clunky with repetitive missions, recycled maps, and annoying AI bots. The story is nearly non-existent as it takes forever to unfold as you slog through missions after missions just to get a text-cut scene. I would love to see a sequel, but seeing as the Vita is slowly dying I doubt that will happen.

Freedom Wars is only for the people who love Soul Sacrifice, Monster Hunter, or are really patient and don’t mind repetitive combat to get to an ultimate goal. Playing with friends helps, but it doesn’t hide the mess and unpolish in this game.

Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 03/23/2015

Posted in: Linux, Mac, Nintendo Consoles, PC Reviews, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, PlayStation Vita, Sony Consoles, Steam Deck Verification, Steam Deck Verified, Switch. Tagged: hotline miami 2, playstation, ps3, ps4, vita, wrong number. Leave a comment

Publisher: Devolver Digital

Developer: Dennaton

Release Date: 3/10/2015

Also Available On

Hotline Miami was one of my favorite games in 2013. It was violent, fast-paced, had tight controls, and rocked a retro 8-bit art style like no other game has. The music was fantastic as well, but the best part was the “just one more level” appeal. Hotline Miami 2 brings back the epic music, great art, violence, and well…some other things we didn’t really want.

Wrong Number starts out by giving us some backstory…well it tries and miserably fails at it. The story does not make one lick of sense because you are being flip-flopped between time periods and so many different characters. Each level just starts and the story is just there. There’s some dialog with no connection to the previous scene. It’s frustrating and makes you want the storyless original back. However, and it pains me to say this, the story isn’t the worst thing in Miami 2. The game is excruciatingly difficult. Now Miami 1 was hard but satisfying so. It had great replay value because it was the perfect challenge. Miami 2 is a near frustrating mess of endless restarts and trial and error.

You could say it’s a worse-level design but that’s not the case, I feel it’s more like the poor enemy placement. There are so many enemies in each level and I mean tons. They all have a variety of guns, melee weapons, and a few can only be taken down with certain weapons. I feel the placement is haphazard were using strategies in the last game over way overused here and end up being used to exploit the game to advance which is not fun at all. Enemies will see you if you can see them, this is how Hotline Miami works. If you can pan the camera further away you can get a quick sniper shot at them and a free hit, but for fewer points. One good strategy is moving in and out of a doorway really quick and letting some enemies see you, duck back into a corner, and slice everyone up as they enter the doorway or around a corner. That was an infrequent strategy in Miami 1 but in 2 this has to be done to just get partway through one area. Miami 2 is also full of long-winded levels that seem to never end.

Abusing Miami 1’s strategies is a crying shame here since this game could have had so much potential for more enemies and new strategies. After halfway through the game the levels become large and hard to navigate with traditional Hotline Miami controls and gameplay. It’s almost like the game tried to go into a new direction but didn’t evolve its gameplay for it. Miami 2 is also twice as long as the first game, but it overstays its welcome after the second act. I literally felt like the game became a chore and just wanted it to end.

However, that’s not to say the whole “one more level” thing is gone. I was hooked and the constant trial and error had me restarting levels dozens and dozens of times to try a new strategy, but it wasn’t really an enjoyable “one more level” feeling. A lot of times I had to exploit the enemy AI, only certain levels can really be completed one way and if you start a level with the wrong weapon, kill the wrong guy first, or even so much as to kill all the enemies in the wrong order you’re pretty much screwed. More often than not I was restarting a level not because my strategy wasn’t sound, but because the enemy AI screwed everything up because he wasn’t patrolling the correct corridor or left a room he’s normally in and blindsides me when I least expect it. Usually, this is a good thing, but not when you’re forced to kill enemies in a certain way due to poor enemy placement being overwhelming.

With that said, I hate to say that there’s really no reason to come back to this game after you finish. Do I want to spend an entire week restarting level after level again and again? Of course not. I’d rather re-download the first game and enjoy the excellent Miami-ness without all the hair-pulling. All in all, Miami 2 is not really a must-play even for fans, if you end up never playing this you’re probably better off sticking with the first game.

Tales of Hearts R

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 01/19/2015

Posted in: iOS, Mobile Reviews, PlayStation Vita, Sony Consoles. Tagged: jrpg, playstation, Sony, tales of hearts r, vita. Leave a comment

Publisher: Namco Bandai

Developer: 7seventh Chord

Release Date: 11/11/2014

Also Available On

If you have been following this site for a while you will know by now that I don’t have much patience for JRPGs. They are usually extremely long, random battles get tedious to the point of me wanting to quit the game completely, and sometimes the stories and battle systems can be boring or convoluted or both. Tales of Hearts R just so happened to be one of the few JRPGs available on Vita so I thought I would give it a try. I was in for a strange surprise.

The story itself is actually pretty decent and actually makes sense despite how involved it is. You play as a young hero named Kor Metor who is traveling the world to help save a girl named Kohaku along with her brother. There are links within people called Spirias. This is kind of like their soul. Somatics has weapons that are formed from this Spiria and Kor discovers he is one after watching his grandfather die at the hands of a woman named Incarose. There is a “Spiria disease” called xeroms that can cause dispir within people meaning part of their Spiria Core is missing or corrupted. Kor and his friends “link” with people to fight off this corruption. Kor does this to Kohaku and shatters her core sending the shards into eight pieces across the globe. However, what threw me for a loop was that this whole adventure was only the first half of the game. The second half involves another huge plot with an entire ancient planet that can suck out these Spirias. Of course, your new goal is to stop this new evil madman.

Holy crap…I can’t believe I remember all that! With that said the story consists of endless cut scenes…I mean endless. There are probably hundreds of cutscenes in this game but 90% of it is spoken Japanese dialog which is nice. There are a few anime cutscenes that are beautiful but I wish there were more. I know most people like cut scenes but I honestly felt it held up the game too much but that’s just personal preference. Aside from the story, the combat is actually pretty intense and deep. You can control four different party members in real-time in an arena. The attack buttons are completely customizable allowing you to assign new skills and “Artes” to Circle and X. While you hacking away at enemies a meter will charge that allows you to go into a “hyperdrive” mode to deal more damage and take less. All while this is going on you can also assign other members’ skills to the touch screen by flicking their icon which I thought was a nice touch. I had one party member heal at my beck and call exactly how I wanted him to instead of relying on his AI which would usually wait until everyone’s HP was in the red.

Secondly, you level up in this game very oddly and it took me a while to figure it out. You don’t buy weapons in shops, only armor. Weapons are acquired by leveling up your members through their Somas. There’s some sort of complicated line chart in the form of a star, but thankfully the auto-level button just lets you choose what type of fighting style you want for that character and it will assign the points accordingly. Along with this there are also cooking items that give you boosts during battles, but I never really got into this much. It did come in handy at times, but thankfully you level up fairly quickly while only hitting a difficulty spike on the last two bosses of the game. This required me to level grind for over a day just to raise my members up to about 12 levels to get an edge over the bosses.

Lastly, there’s a lot of side content in this game and a New Game+ which is usually unheard of in JRPGs as they are linear and follow a set pattern and path. There are other difficulty levels that also raise the level cap (200) as well as a few side quests for people interested in some more side stories (I usually hate side quests in JRPGs). With all that said it’s optional.

After the credits rolled and I logged 30 hours into this game I felt satisfied. The ending had closure, the final boss was rewarding to fight, and I felt myself feeling relieved that the game was just the right amount of challenge throughout and did not require constant bouts of level grinding. Graphically the game is average. Not very ugly but also doesn’t push the Vita to its limits. The music is monotonous and typical of a JRPG, but at least the voice acting is great. If you own a Vita this is probably the best JRPG you can plan outside of all those PS1 classics.

2014 Game of the Year Awards — Console Awards — PlayStation Vita

Posted by BinaryMessiah on 12/14/2014

Posted in: 2014, Game of the Year Awards. Tagged: danganronpa 2, freedom wars, game awards, goodbye dispair, hatsune miku, olliolli, playstation, project diva f 2nd, Sony, tales of hearts r, vita. Leave a comment

The Vita was a little weaker this year, but overall those games that were released were solid. The Vita has lost steam since last year, but here’s hoping 2015 is the year of the Vita.

Freedom Wars

Freedom Wars took the monster hunting formula that Monster Hunter did so well and made it better. With the addition of weapons and the unique Thorn weapon, Freedom Wars shot players into massive hunts with other players or AI controller characters. The insanely deep customization options and fantastic visuals were a treat as well. Not to mention widdling a 1 million year sentence to zero is quite the challenge.