My apologies for the dark image, was using my phone camera.

Saw this at one of the cosplay shops in Singapore. Built looks good & solid but the design seems a bit off compared to the original.

If i had the space, wouldn’t mind hanging one of these up on the walls as house deco.

You probably have read reviews or heard from others about how bad this game ran on the Xbox 360. No doubt the technical issues surrounding The Last Remnant makes you wonder … how did it manage to pass Square-Enix’s QC? (Quality Control). When I was battling against a monster that does an area effect damage, the frame-rate barely made it beyond the 10 figure. Texture pop-ins are another obvious issue.

Can we safely conclude that this game sucks and toss it in the trash? Nope.

Despite all the technical hoo hahs about this game, I actually enjoyed playing it. It was far better than what I have expected, especially after reading online reviews. At the time of posting I nearly reached the end of 1st disc, completing about half of the sidequests.

So what aspect of this game did I find interesting / good?

Battle System / Gameplay
Huge battles consisting of 20 (or more) characters on screen. Instead of commanding one-to-one like in other JRPGs, you get to control a Union, which is literally an army up to 5 people. Each Union share one lifebar and the same commands. In other words, everyone in that union will execute the same command given and wipes out if its lifebar is depleted.

Music
The music is just spectacular and memorable. Nothing short of what I would expect from Square-Enix.

Graphics
Putting the technical flaws aside, The Last Remnant actually looked pretty good on the Unreal 3 engine. Plenty of details on both the characters and environments.

That’s about it for the good points.
Now for the low blows …

Lag and Texture Pop-Ins
This is the main problem that hinders the gameplay from the very start. Installing the game on the Xbox360 hard disk minimizes the issues but not entirely.

Customization
Only Rush’s equipment can be customized and that is also on a fairly low level; just weapons and two accessories. They could at least allow us to customize the general’s equipements. Too restricted.

Animation
Some parts of the game the animation looked good (e.g. Emma’s battle cutscene) but most of the time, the character’s animation seemed robotic and unnatural.

Lack of Hot Looking Babes

Overall I would give The Last Remnant the green light. Like everyone else, I was disgusted to see how bad the game ran when I started playing, but now it’s almost non-existence (in other words I gotten used to it). However whether or not its tolerable to others is beyond my judgement.

Your call.

There is no doubt when someone says the DS is packed with good games. Unless you are just a graphic whore, there is nothing shortselling about the DS comparing to the PSP. The World Ends With You has been hogging my gaming time for the past month and it’s still going on even after the main storyline has been completed. As a fan of Kingdom Hearts, how could I resist on not searching for secret reports? (Ansem’s reports anyone?)

Anyway old school RPG fans would be overjoyed to hear that Chrono Trigger is coming to the DS. Yes, the classic and without a doubt one of the best JRPG of all times will be coming to you in your portable dual screens.

Here’s a rundown of the new things that will be featured in the DS version;

FEATURES

• A masterpiece with an engaging and unparalleled storyline, leading to the discovery of multiple epic conclusions to a journey that transcends time
• An unprecedented and inspiring musical score created by Yasunori Mitsuda
• Intriguing battle system made possible by the unique combination of the Active Time Battle system and Tech skills
• Famed character designer Akira Toriyama lends his signature art style to create the vibrant world that has captivated gamers around the world
• Taking advantage of the Nintendo DS hardware, CHRONO TRIGGER makes its way onto the portable platform with all-new dual screen presentation and Touch-Screen functionality
• A brand new dungeon and a Wireless Play mode adds exciting new dimensions to this timeless classic

Awesome storyline, unique battle system and a music score that is extremely memorable, that literally sums up what Chrono Trigger is like. If you ask me, it sits along side by side along with Final Fantasy 7. Just hope they include all the animated scenes featured back in the PlayStation version.

Now that I think about it, I’m sure glad I picked up the hard to find copy of the original OST back then.

Right so there’s your reason to get a DS. Hop to it!

[Source : Kotaku]

Everyone of any importance is in this image. And I mean everyone.

Everything Nomura touches seems to turn into gold and The World Ends With You is no exception. Excellent character design (although Neku looks a hell lot like Sora), intuitive gameplay, plenty of mini-games and side quests to keep yourself busy and an unpredictable plot. If I were to explain the plot, you will find it extremely confusing since the plot appears to be contradicting itself at every turn. It’s so full of twist that even a pretzel looks straight in comparison. Finish the game, think about it and get back to me. You will know I’m right.

You would think he’s yawning. I know otherwise

Here’s an example: The game lasts for 7 days. Your partner, Shiki, stays with you for the entire 7 days duration of the game, from start to finish. But she will only be with you for less than half the game. Confusing? This is just the tip of the iceberg, and is the only example I can think of right now without spoiling any other parts of the game. Everything will make perfect sense once you’ve played the game.

While the main plot is quite linear and there’s really no way for you to get lost, there are actually a few alternatives on how you want to take the side story on. There are plenty of side stories where you can choose to help others out and help them make decisions on what they should do. These usually have less restrictions and have more open ended results based on the choices you made.

You’re controlling BOTH screens at once. Kool, eh?

The gameplay itself is fresh and something new. Like Phantom Hourglass and Ninja Gaiden, The World Ends With You relies very heavily on stylus. But the twist here is, you can actually make use of the D-Pad and buttons to take control of the battle that’s happening on the upper screen simultaneously. Talk about multitasking – it’s no easy feat for sure and most of the time you’re forced to concentrate on either one while blindly spamming buttons or sliding your stylus around like mad.

Another unique feature of this game is you can adjust the difficulty level on the fly. Some items can only be dropped from noises (enemies in TWEWY are called noise) with specific difficulty level. You can also set handicap on yourself by lowering your level and stats in order to get better drops.

Everything in the game revolves around pins. Your attacks and abilities mostly comes from the pin you are wearing. Different pin have different ways to activate, such as the Pyrokinses pin (the first attack pin you receive) which allows you to create fire along the path drawn by your stylus.

Other pins requires you to drag obstacles, tap on enemies, slashing enemies and a variety of other ways to activate the pins using just your stylus. It might sound confusing at first, but it’s very intuitive and you will be able to pick it up in no time. Fortunately, you will be given practice battles if the game requires you to learn more complicated moves or combos, so you can take your time to test and play around before you face an actual battle.

This would be the perfect image if Shiki were in it…

The light sounding BGM’s doesn’t really stand out during the game and blends in perfectly with the mood and situation that you might not even realize it’s there. It’s really not a bad thing since it just results in a better flow of the game. That’s not to say the BGM is poor and forgettable, since it’s really quite good. It’s just that the game itself seems to have the music volume down lower than the voice and special effects audio in order to allow players to absorb all the small details you would normally miss due to noise (pun intended).

The in-game graphics is nothing to shout about since all the characters are rendered with sprites and look extremely pixelated when brought up close to the front of the screen. But Shibuya itself and during character interactions where “pop-out” art is being used, they look great. I used the word “pop-out” because the characters seems to be static, cut-out images that needs to be swapped out every time they someone’s expression changed. Not to mention the use of speech bubbles that overlaps each other feels a lot like reading a comic or manga.

Before playing the game, I’ve read countless good reviews about TWEWY about it being “refreshing”. While I didn’t doubt that the game wouldn’t be anything short than awesome, I’ve played a bit of the Japanese version before and didn’t find it all that refreshing. Sure, the game play is something new, but still it wasn’t that different from the likes of Phantom Hourglass or Ninja Gaiden Dragon Sword. It wasn’t until I’ve finished the game the first time that I thought, “Ah, that was a very refreshing game…” I mean, where else can you cross-dress the main character into skirts and high heels for some of the BEST STATS in the game?

That said, you must definitely check out The World Ends With You! Btw, The World Begins With You

I recently had the chance to watch the extended secret movie which is only available in Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix+ and like any of the previous Kingdom Hearts trailers, this one leaves a whole lot of holes to be filled. Originally when me and Neko were watching the first trailer in the original Kingdom Hearts II, we both thought that the time-line is set in the future (Kingdom Hearts 3). It wasn’t hard to get us all fooled, especially after you have seen how the three keyblades (Sora and Mickey’s Kingdom Key along with Way to Dawn) were presented. I’m pretty sure most of the people have the same speculations as we did; It’s either in the far future after Sora’s arc, or those three Knights are Sora and the gang themselves (as adults).

After the extended version of the secret trailer came out in KH2 FM+, we found out that Square-Enix pulled a fast one on us. The time-line is actually set in the past before Sora’s arc, a prequel to be more exact. Just recently we found out the names of the three knights; Aqua (Blue hair girl), Terra (FF7 Zack lookalike) and Ven (Looks similar to Roxas). In this trailer you will see the three of them engaging an intense battle against Master Xehanort, who easily over-powered them.

Unlike the mysterious atmosphere in Deep Dive (secret movie in Kingdom Hearts I), Birth By Sleep feels more like an all out war against the darkness and Master Xehanort.

Birth by Sleep is one of the three newly announced Kingdom Hearts games and it’s due to be released on the Playstation Portable. The other two games are Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days (Nintendo DS) and Kingdom Hearts Coded (mobile).

Coming up next! “Another Post, Another Story”, a speculation of what we think on Birth By Sleep.