Gamer--freakz

Gamespot Score: 8.0 (Great)

My Score: 9.0


(+) Pros: - An overall HUGE leap from NDS to 3DS with tons of improvements, - Revamped classes are as fun to build teams around as in previous games, - Improved interface allows for better character customization, managing and drawing maps in dungeons, - Overworld airship travelling better than the sailing of EO 3, - More potential floors to explore with side dungeons, - Insane amount of content overall, - A lot more forgiving in training new characters and retraining old ones, - Casual mode (bleh).

(-) Cons: - A tad bit easier than previous games.


Gameplay time: 50 hours+

I know I haven't played many games on the 3DS, but I may have found a top contender already. I loved the "Etrian Odyssey" series on the NDS, LOVED it to no end...even though as a guilty pleasure, I've only managed to finish the first game (would have finished the 3rd one too...f**king Progenitor was OP). "Etrian Odyssey IV" is the series's first entry on the 3DS, and it goes without saying that the transition to the 3DS has made the game a f**king masterpiece. SIGNIFICANTLY improved visuals (even though the 3D in this game is shit...3D for all the games I've played so far on the 3DS has been shit), updated UI, a new overworld, a lengthy new journey overall...everything is just as an "Etrian Odyssey" game should be, and more! Even if first person dungeon crawlers aren't your thing, "Etrian Odyssey IV" is one of those games that YEARNS for your attention, because for heaven's sake, who knows how many dozens of hours have I dumped into this game (more than "Pokemon X", yes, I'm serious).


"Etrian Odyssey" has always been about one thing...exploring the Yggdrasil labyrinth. Even though the beginning of ever game in the franchise is somewhat similar, the end product and overall plot differ from one another. "Etrian Odyssey IV" is not different. You start off as a greenhorn explorer, new to the city of Tharsis, where explorers all around the world gather for one sole purpose: to reach the great tree Yggdrasil that beckons far off into the horizon. As in all of the previous games, many explorers tried, but none have successfully accomplished it....will you the one to break the ice? Or will your guild be just another band of corpses for the f**king turtles in the Golden Lair?

That's a pretty over-leveled party for a baboon....

The game flow in "Etrian Odyssey IV" is mostly similar to that of previous games...and you should know what to expect. The game is a first person dungeon crawler, with turn based combat featuring your team, which you will build from head to toe by yourself. As the game starts you are thrown into the guild house, where you will create a guild and the explorers who will form it. You will name each and every one of these explorers, and you will choose from many different professions available to you...all to form a team of 5 whom will march bravely into the labyrinth to discover the many dangers and wonders that await. When you set foot into the dungeons or the overworld, one thing becomes certain, the game has come a long way in terms of visuals.


Gone are the days of stale 2D portraits of monsters and bosses (though I do miss those now and then)...say hello to the newly developed 3D models of monsters. Environments look as detailed as always, though the inhabitants of these environments are the things that have changed. FOEs are no longer lingering red orbs that follow you around, and bosses are also no longer the black orbs that they are. Instead, now you have fully visible bears and furyhorns right behind your ass, making you feel the tension of fear even better than before (though in a way, red orbs of death were also rather scary back in the day).

You'll have to draw maps as usual, not surprising, right?

When we talk about "Etrian Odyssey", we have to talk about the meat of the game, the combat. Combat is turn based as usual, but what's so fun and intriguing about the series is that you create and craft your entire team by YOURSELF. Their skill tree, skill order, and how you want to shape them...it's all up to you. You get 5 members in a party, and the game has 10 classes that you can choose from. 7 at the start, 3 more as the game progresses. Most of the classes in "Etrian Odyssey IV" have made an appearance in previous games before, unlike the completely new selection of classes in "Etrian Odyssey III". However, these classes in the fourth installment have either gone through name changes and/or received massive tweaks so that they all feel considerably different from before (except medic, you can never change the medic). As usual, as is the case with all of the previous games, it's an absolute blast to build teams around different combinations of characters, and that is a charm of the franchise that will never go away.


Mapping out the various different levels of the labyrinth have also been one of the series's mainstays, and will never be going away. As you traverse through the different levels of the different labyrinths, you will be marking your own steps, drawing walls, noting shortcuts...all in the bottom screen. This shouldn't come as a surprise, as this was how it was always done, though I must say that the UI has taken an improvement. Not just in the map drawing department, but as an overall in menus. It is now WAY easier to customize character skills in the game since everything is laid out in a skill tree format...instead of just a plain list of skills. Its also easier to fit characters in the Berund Atelier as you buy weapons or armor. 

This is now how a FOE chases you around...a real, scary ass bear instead of a red orb.

Overworld travel was introduced in "Etrian Odyssey III" via sailing the waters. It was a fine addition, and luckily for us, Atlus implemented it into "Etrian Odyssey IV" as well. Though instead of sailing in the waters, we go sailing in the skies. Sky travel is a common means of transport for the explorers in Tharsis, and yes, a sky ship is how you'll be getting around the different places you need to be. In the overworld, there are no random encounters, though your ship will still be vulnerable to FOEs that wander around the overworld...these are stronger than the ones in labyrinths most of the time. As you'll be getting requests going into labyrinths, you'll also get requests concerning the overworld, making it a prime destination source, be it discovering new locations to explore or to gather the local foodstuff.  


Speaking of discovering new locations to explore...the new gameplay mechanic to completely discover a brand new dungeon during overworld exploration is a threat to those hungering for more floors to traverse. These are completely optional, which is the beauty of it. You may find monsters that you've never seen, items you've never discovered, or FOEs that can not possibly be vanquished elsewhere. While the main meat of each stratum is only 3 floors (it went from 5 in the first two games, 4 in the third game, and now only 3...wtf), these new side dungeons can serve as "extra floors" that serve to add to your playtime and to relinquish your hunger for exploring new places.

The available classes and their character designs in each of them...

As with previous "Etrian Odyssey" games, the amount of content in this fourth installment is pretty formidable, even more so than in the previous ones. Cruising through the game, mapping every floor to its finest, uncovering everything in all of the lands and beating the main story should net you about an easy 30-40 hours...standard for an RPG game. But going to the extreme, going for the game's 2nd ending, getting every material in the game, beating all the monsters, bosses and even uncovering the scary as hell 6th stratum can net you about 60 hours, tops. That's not counting the time you'll spend experimenting with different classes for different team compositions...


"Etrian Odyssey IV", while being the most improved game in its franchise, is also the friendliest and most forgiving of the series....which can be good in some situations. For one, you won't have to retrain an entire character from scratch if you want to reset their skill point allocations (or reduce their levels by half), in this game, you only need your characters to lose 2 levels to get all your potential skill points back. This makes retraining A LOT easier, and since the game now provides you with training scrolls throughout the story, you can instantly level a character up to as high as level 45, eliminating ALL previous frustrations of having to train a new class from level 1 when your other characters are much stronger. Also, we have casual mode...which I assume is an easy mode? I've never used the damn thing, but I guess it's a welcome addition to those who've always been pissed about the game's difficulty issues.

Yeap, the dragons are back. Someone prepare "Scatter about" please.

I have almost no gripe with "Etrian Odyssey IV", it is by far the best game in the series...and if it improves any further than this, we might have a serious case of perfection coming in. However though, I got to say that if one thing bugs me about this fourth installment, is that the game is more predictable and a lot less punishing than it used to be. I used to die to randomly examining a corpse, but now all you get is a puny spider bite that takes off a small bit of your HP...Monsters and FOEs can still prove to be quite difficult, however there is no longer a "killer combination" of monsters that almost spelled instant death when you encountered them (f**king ants from EO 1 man). The unpredictability and killer enemy combinations still exist! Though the game saves it all for the final stratum...which is a little bit too long to be keeping the guns for.


"Etrian Odyssey IV" provides the best first person dungeon crawling RPG experience up to date. I say first person because there are other amazing dungeon crawlers out there which are on par with this game (Persona games say hi). Brilliant visuals, breathtaking explorations and the intensity of FOEs lurking around the corner have never been better. I've yet to play "Untold" since it is a remake, but because of "Etrian Odyssey IV", I feel like I need to....I need my EO fix! If there is an "Etrian Odyssey V" in developement (it'll come, we just have to wait for it)...please let it be harder. 

Opening Songs
OP 1 (Season 1) - First Kiss (Ichiko)
OP 2 (Season 2) - I Say Yes! (Ichiko)
OP 3 (Season 3) - You're The One (Ichiko)
OP 4 (Season 4) - I'll be There For You (Ichiko)

Ending Songs
ED 1 (Season 1) - The Real Feeling (Rie Kugimiya)
ED 2 (Season 2) - Suki!? Kirai!? Suki!!! (Rie Kugimiya)
ED 3 (Season 3) - Gomen ne (Rie Kugimiya)
ED 4 (Season 4) - Kiss Shite Agenai (Rie Kugimiya)

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance, Fantasy

Episodes: 50 (13 episodes each in Season 1 & 3, 12 episodes each in Season 2 & 4)



I have been sitting on this for a LONG time. I knew that "Zero No Tsukaima" was aired a long long time ago, and I knew that it would be just my kind of anime....but I just didn't find the effort to go and watch it. Well, just recently I did, and I finished everything, all 50 episodes. When an anime drags for 4 seasons its gotta be pretty damn good right? It's all subjective really, like how all things get old, "Zero No Tsukaima" suffers the same fate. An anime like "Shakugan No Shana" managed to stay fresh because it took a DRASTIC change in season 3 that turned out to be for the better. "Zero No Tsukaima" never really changes its formula for all 4 seasons, which isn't exactly a very good thing. The first 2 seasons were fantastic, but then came seasons 3 and 4 which never introduced anything new and were kind of just more of the same...which god old pretty fast. Fortunately, I'll say that it all ended on a good note, at least (considering that the author the light novel series passed away, this was the best that we got).

Henrietta please. HENRIETTA!!!

Every opening song in each of the seasons is sung by Ichiko, and every ending song in each of the seasons is sung by Rie Kugimiya, so you can immediately tell that you'll be expecting the same kind of songs in every season, whether or not that's a good thing, I'll leave it to you. All of the songs feel kind of same-ish, so if you like one, you'll probably like the rest. The way Ichiko sings her songs sounds a little bit like Kotoko's loud and energetic voice...so there's a similarity. I liked "First Kiss" the most, season 1's opening. All of the ending themes are VERY cutesy (as expected of Rie Kugimiya), so you know what to expect.



Rating 8.0 (for the first 2 seasons), 7.5 (for the last 2)



"Zero No Tsukaima" is a great anime, don't get me wrong. For the most part, it serves as a harem in a medieval setting, with some...fairly endearing characters (Lousie is annoying as F**K, but can be nice at times). The standard harem setting in a fantasy setting plays out great here, and there's much to be had, be it cheesy awkward interaction between characters or small fan service segments. There are even minor scenes of action that can be fairly satisfying when Saito bests his foe, or someone  you'd never expect unleashes great amounts of magic to defeat a terrifying opponent. All of these are nice, but the meat of the show is the interaction between Saito and Lousie, which can be fairly wishy washy. While it all ends up nicely during the conclusion of the entire series, the "hardships" they go through are the same damn thing over and over. The constant bickering of Lousie when Saito so much as STARES at another woman gets REALLY F**KING old by season 3 and then Saito acting immaturely as self defense also comes off as a poor excuse. While these segments (there are plenty) can be a little bit stupid, the rest of the anime holds up well and the overall backstory of the world is pretty damn good.

No Saito, this is good!

The story stars one of the most on and off couples in all of anime history, Saito and Louise. Louise belongs to a magical academy in a medieval fantasy world, and Saito belongs in Japan in modern time. Louise is known as zero Louise in her academy, because she can't cast spells worth a crap. Her whole class makes fun of her, and being a member of a noble family, she wants that all to change. During the day of the familiar summoning, everyone in the class is required to summon a familiar, a beast that will follow their mage master for life. While everyone summoned grand beasts and creatures, Louise summons Saito, a regular high school student from the modern world. Now Saito is forced to live in this magical world, bound to Louise as his familiar. His job as a familiar? To serve Louise for as long as he lives. Will he build a proper relationship with her? Well, other girls in the academy have a lot to say for that.


"Zero No Tsukaima" is a great anime at its early stages that degrades into a tired and old formula. Everything else is great, but the constant "hardships" that Saito and Louise go through together get tired as these situations are pretty much the same as the ones before it. As an entire package though, the entire anthology of a series ends on a rather good note, so there's that. I'm glad they they ended it the way that they did.


Peace.

Opening Songs
OP 1 - Realization (Faylan)

Ending Songs
ED 1 - Ai no Sei de Nemurena (Aki Misato)

Genre: Action, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Romance

Episodes: 12



Just by looking at the above picture, you'll KNOW that I'm going to love this anime...just from that picture alone. I am a huge sucker for high school themed animes that combine school life, harem/romance and action together into one huge package. I've already seen plenty of those, and "Hagure Yusha" is another one that fits very nicely in that category. What's more, if you're into fan service, "Hagure Yusha" excels in that category too...boobies, panty shots...scantily clad women....you ask for it, you get it. While it's easy to pass by this anime right here, the action, world and plot are ALSO part of the show's strong points. It does a good job drawing us into the world of school life which is babel. How powers are brought to light and how different worlds are intertwined serve as a great fantasy setting, which further adds to the intrigue that this anime provides.

Yes, you know where this is going.

These are surprisingly good songs from pretty well renowned singers, if you ask me. The opening song is "Realization" from Faylan, and as we all know by now, Faylan is bloody awesome. "Realization" however, is a tad step down from most of Faylan's songs. It's still a good song, but it doesn't pack the usual intensity that she puts into most of her other songs. The ending theme is "Ai no Sei de Nemurena" by Aki Misato. I haven't heard any songs from her in awhile, and while "Ai no Sei de Nemurena" belongs to genre that I don't really like (the semi cute-sy songs), it's still a decent song. I just wish she'd go back to songs like "Scarlet bomb".



Rating: 8.0/10



Every man's dream yo, anyone would die to be in Akatsuki's shoes. The dude's a god, a legend. How do you sell out on an anime? You make an awesome protagonist. "Hagure Yusha"'s protagonist is a pretty damn likable one, similar to Izayoi from "Problem Children Are Coming From Another World"...they are both pervertic,powerful as heck, and have the personalities that just spell "IDGAF".  Other than him though, the other characters are...unique, so to speak. Miu and Haruka is stereotypical, but the rest of the cast are different from your everyday super powered high school kids (Kaido is just awesome). The plot is pretty average, but the lore and backstory of the series really stands out. Action scenes alright, but could have been better (because Akatsuki keeps stomping his opponents), and the fan service is a little on the heavy side, which can either be good or bad, depending on how you look at it (for me, I like it, some people hate it, some just don't care).

Oh yeah, he's a pimp alright.

Ousawa Akatsuki is a young man that traveled to another world and earned the title of hero over there. He defeated the demon king of that world and took her daughter with him back to Earth, his own world. While in Japan, a school organization known as Babel decided to take Akatsuki in. Babel is a school which specializes in training kids that traveled to other worlds and back, and have special powers. The demon queen's daughter, Miu, enrolled as Akatsuki's sister, and together, they get admitted in class B, the second best class during their very first year. There, as his hero nature goes, he is strong as hell, and he earns many friends and enemies. How will Akatsuki and Miu fare together at Babel? Akatsuki accepts his school life quietly while trying to conceal the fact that Miu is the demon king's daughter of his world.


"Hagure Yusha" is as fun as they come. If you enjoy stuff like "High School DxD", I'd say "Hagure Yusha" is fairly similar, the amount of lore and depth is actually quite amusing. There's a lot to like about "Hagure Yusha", a likable protagonist? Sexy ladies and fan service? Amusing powers? Pick your poison, because these are good.


Peace.

Gamespot Score: N/A

My Score: 7.5


(+) Pros: - Beautiful art style and direction, - Fully fleshed out characters that you can sympathize with, - Problem solving segments done well, variety of area's to visit, - Multitude of endings, - Easter eggs and tiny secrets found throughout the game that can help flesh out the story further.

(-) Cons: - Story is a little bit underwhelming if you don't discover everything, - Nothing too particularly difficult or out of the ordinary, - True ending leaves quite a bit to be desired.


Gameplay time: About 4 hours (to see everything)

I love me my pixel horror RPGs, and I've gotten all of them from vgperson. I'll say this as many times as I need to, she's awesome at what she does, and I'll eagerly wait upon every game she wants to release. Anyway,  "Alice Mare" was one of those games she did...but she didn't label it under horror. I got into it anyway, since it looked very much like one. From screenshots, I loved how it looked, and it was easily one of the nicer looking pixel RPG maker games...to me anyways ("Witch's House" will always be the most beautiful in this aspect). So I played it, enjoyed it, then the 1.05 update came up, I played through the whole game again, I enjoyed it again, and here I am. If you like your dose of pixel horror RPG maker games, "Alice Mare" isn't so different. It may not provide as many scares, but it sure is creepy as hell at times.



You play as as young boy named Allen (not Allen Walker, unfortunately), whom is suffering from a horrible case of amnesia. He knows nothing about himself and is taken in by a young man who is in charge of an orphanage, which already has some kids living in there. He introduces himself as teacher, and Allen was to stay in that orphanage with the rest of the kids. Things seem fine for a first day, but the kids warn Allen not to go up to the second floor. Allen, being the protagonist, needs to f**k something up, so he hears a voice coming up from the second floor. He goes up only to find a struggling butterfly in a casing. He gets caught by teacher and gets sent back to his room. The following day, he finds out that he is stuck in a dream, and realizes that the denizens of his dream call him Alice. He cannot leave the dream, and must find 5 keys to fix the world. In his dream he finds his friends at the orphanage too...what could this mean?

The answer is always no, if you want to live.

I don't know about you, but "Alice Mare" is one of the more beautiful looking RPG maker games, right behind "Witch's House". The character designs are pretty okay, but character models that appear when they talk look so effin adorable (see above image)! Every character has such a sprite/model, all of them look fabulous...I'd make bookmarks out of those if I could, and I don't even read books. The over-world itself feels as 16 bit as you can ask for. Its good enough, I'd say. Some of the areas look flat out weird, but otherwise, it's well polished.


"Alice Mare" is about traversing the dream world and discovering the life stories of all of Allen's friends. In this retrospect, the game does really well. You will be traveling to different pasts of the different kids and learn more about them, solving puzzles grants you pages of their life, which will be fit into a notebook later on. The game will showcase each page to you and an image along with it, reliving the life of the characters during the past. It's a well thought of sequence that ends up being creepy or disturbing in more ways than one, showing you how f**ked up these kids lived their lives.

That's not very nice.

Game sequence in "Alice Mare" is the same as every RPG maker game up to date, you solve puzzles, move on to the next person's dream, solve more problems and puzzles, then move on, rinse and repeat until the end. While there aren't any difficult puzzles in this game per se, the problems are really well done and relate to the person's whose dream you are in. That, and the variety of areas that you get to visit...each kid has an area in their dream land that relates to their life in the past. You get to visit a forest...a manor...a graveyard...so on and so forth. And the puzzles in those areas are a great fit for both the area itself and the person dreaming it.


"Alice Mare" has a lot of endings...which, to its merit, is one of its stronger points. Lately all the pixel horror RPGs that I've played only have a handful of endings...if I'm not wrong "Alice Mare" has 9. Of course, most of them are bad/f**ked up, but most of these endings open up a different side of the story that you can normally not see...and these all add up to the big picture. To make things better, you can access 4 of these endings rather early in the game once you solve their character specific worlds. To further add on to the story, there are easter eggs/small tips you can look for that open up MORE of the story or explain stuff that was never properly explained....The extra scene in 1.05 really helped out.

Yep, he's weird all right.

The cons are pretty simple to point out, especially for those of you that only finished the game a couple of times to get the best ending. A lot of the story isn't fleshed out if you don't look at the other endings/examine every f**king thing in the game...and even then the true "best" ending leaves quite a bit to be desired. WE STILL DON'T KNOW A LOT OF SHIT ABOUT TEACH! That and the problems in this game...aren't too hard to solve. Most of them are rather easy and you won't need to think too hard to get through them (Stella's level was a disappointment).


So that's "Alice Mare". There's another one for the pixel horror RPG family...and as usual, I'd like to play more when they are made available for the English speaking audience. Until vgperson translates another horror game, I'll wait patiently, because these are as good as they come. For the mean time, "Alice Mare" is a pretty good distraction with its plentiful of interesting characters.




Happy gaming.

Opening Songs
OP 1 - Traumerei (Lisa)

Ending Songs 
ED 1 - Mirage (Natsuki Okamoto)

Genre: Action, Drama, Fantasy

Episodes: 13



If you ever asked me when I even watched "Day Break Illusion", the answer is I don't know. I did not like the art direction and character design at first glance, it looked too cartoonish for my tastes. However, the art direction aside, there was depth to the story and characters, even though the action was a little bit of here and there. "Day Break Illusion" is a pretty strong magical girl themed anime, and it handles with all the themes related as such very well...friendship, not giving up, working together etc etc. It may not look like it, but "Day Break Illusion" is fairly dark, and it never lets up, from start to finish. There can be rather disturbing moments, but that's just the nature of its overall dark theme. There are no flowers and butterflies, but rather, a story of mankind's crumbling and demon slaying.

Easily the cutest things in the anime.

The opening song is pretty epic, and you should be able to guess why. The song itself is "Traumerei", and it's sung by Lisa. Like most other Lisa songs, it's got her usual flair and excitement in there, it sounds mighty epic, though it doesn't outshine the likes of "Oath Sign", nothing in her discography beats that, honestly. Not much so say here, anyone should give it a listen. The ending theme is "Mirage" by Natsuki Okamoto, and as an ending theme, you know how things go. Its a slow song, and though it ramps up a little towards the end, its still not something I'd like to listen to.



Rating: 7.5/10



I can't think of much downsides to the anime other than it being quite cliche at times (its a magical girl themed anime, the hell do you expect?) and that the art style is not to my liking. Other than that though every other prospect of the series seems to do fairly well. The characters are fine, they go through a lot of character development and turn out okay towards the end, even though some of them may be annoying as hell at the beginning. The action sequences are pretty average, though the concept of using tarot cards for powers is pretty cool (persona much?). The plot, for the most part, was good, though there are a lot of sequences left unexplained. I won't go too deep into that, to avoid spoilers, but I'd say that a season 2 would do them good to cover up some of the things that they didn't go too much into.

Pretty badass no? Reminds me of Sailor Moon.

The story focuses on Taiyo Akari, a regular 13 (or was it 12?) year old girl that loves fortune telling as a late hobby from her deceased mother. She's been working part time for a fortune telling agency that her mother once belonged to and is living with her uncle. She is on good terms with her cousin Fuyuna, until one day, everything changed. Fuyuna grew jealous about how Akari can mix so well with friends and people all around her, and she let that consume her. She became a demon and attacked Akari, and Akari miraculously transformed into a badass magical girl to kill Fuyuna in her demonic state. Akari soon learns about her power and the organization that is seeking those with this power. Humans consumed by jealously, hatred and negative emotion are called Daemonia, and the organization that Akari belongs to specializes in exterminating these creatures.


"Day Break Illusion" is a pretty good magical theme anime hidden underneath its pretty cartoonish art style. The art style enough dissuades many to watch it, which is a pity because deep down, its actually a good watch. There is more to the plot that I think needs explaining, and a second season will be just what it needs. Hopefully this isn't the end to Akari and her friends.


Peace.