When the famous problem-solver Professor Layton and his plucky assistant Luke head to the town of St Mystère to investigate the secret of the Golden Apple, they have no idea just how many mysteries await them. Fortunately, their problem-solving skills fit right into a town where every inhabitant is obsessed with setting puzzles and brainteasers, but even the trickiest riddle is just an appetiser compared to the deepest secrets of St Mystère.

The first in the Professor Layton series of puzzle games, Professor Layton and the Curious Village is the perfect game for casual DS players who are ready to move beyond Brain Training. A collection of riddles, puzzles and brain teasers, the game is easy to pick up and play, and what it lacks in replay value, it more than makes up for in addictiveness.

St Mystère

Set in the context of a framing story, the object of Professor Layton and the Curious Village is to go from place to place within St Mystère, talking to inhabitants and solving the puzzles they pose. These puzzles take the form of classic brainteasers, encompassing everything from moving blocks to try to free a ball from a maze to rearranging matchsticks and solving riddles. Many of the puzzles are straightforward for anyone with half a brain, but even the most experienced puzzle solver is likely to trip up once or twice. Fortunately, if you are well and truly stuck, it is possible to dip into your limited supply of Hint coins to unlock up to three hints per puzzle- and certainly, by the time you have the third one, it will be entirely obvious what to do.

In fact, a challenge greater than solving the puzzles is simply trying to find them all, for whilst some are essential for moving the story forward, many puzzles are optional. Talking to every character you meet is essential, as is investigating everything you can see- a random press of the stylus could reveal a hint coin or even a hidden puzzle. Luckily, any puzzles you might be in danger of missing forever are gathered up and sent to Granny Riddleton’s shack, a place where you can visit and solve them at their leisure.

To spur you on further, the game also has a number of extras in the menu. As you solve certain puzzles, you’ll unlock painting scraps which can be reassembled into a complete picture and furniture which can be used to customise Luke and Layton’s rooms at the inn (take care that you give the right furnishings to the right person). Completing the game also unlocks some challenging extra puzzles that will keep you coming back for that little bit more. True, these extras can only delay the inevitable moment when the game holds nothing more for you, but they do help to keep it interesting for longer.

Story

As a mystery tale, it is no wonder that Professor Layton and the Curious Village spends most of the game setting up various plot points, before steadily revealing them all in the closing chapters. Perhaps surprisingly, you can’t reveal or investigate these main mysteries independently- instead, you are entirely confined to following the story as the game dictates. It’s something of a shame that you can’t have a guess at the main mysteries yourself, but ultimately the point of the game is to get you solving the smaller puzzles whilst it takes care of the larger ones.

Audiovisual

Visually, Professor Layton sticks with a clean and simplistic look, eschewing the usual attractive anime styles for a more old-fashioned appearance that fits well with the series without being particularly aesthetically pleasing. Background music is similarly simple yet fitting, whilst the English voice acting is apt if stereotypical (imagine a typical English gentleman and his plucky Cockney sidekick). Overall the presentation isn’t anything special, but it fits the game well.

Final Thoughts

A fun and diverting puzzle game, Professor Layton may lack in replay value, but first time around it should prove absorbing for casual players and the more dedicated gamer alike. I probably won’t be returning to it anytime soon, but it was certainly enjoyable enough to have me looking forward to the imminent European release of the second instalment in the series.

On a normal day, three teenagers go to visit their teacher at Shinjuku Medical Centre- completely unaware of the events that will befall them. A cataclysmic event known as ‘The Conception’ transforms Tokyo into a Vortex World filled with demons and illuminated by the cold light of Kagutsuchi. Only a handful of humans survive to see this new and horrific world, including one of the three teenagers, who is granted the demonic powers he will need to survive and find his friends.

The Vortex World

SMT Nocturne sees you take on the role of the nameless hero (I chose to call him Ryuki Takeshi, and will refer to him as such from hereon in) who is given demonic powers and cast adrift to survive in a radically transformed version of Tokyo. From this point onwards, the game can be considered a somewhat dark and twisted version of Pokemon- you fight demons, recruit them to your side, and employ them in battles as you traverse this new world to find your friends.

Of course, this is no easy task, and as you wander expanses of the Vortex World, you will have to develop a liking for long, maze-like dungeons, many involving puzzle elements. You’ll be dropping through holes in the floor, getting teleported back and forth and generally finding yourself fed up with more than a few areas as you try to navigate them. Add in darkened areas and floors that can damage you (although both effects can be countered), and you will come to understand that even before you factor in battles, this game involves no small amount of commitment. Don’t get me wrong- for hardcore RPGs it’s par for the course and all good fun, but it’s definitely a game that requires no small level of patience and commitment.

The life of a demi-fiend

Battle is the flesh and blood of SMT: Nocturne, which uses an earlier implementation of the Press Turn system that also appeared in the Digital Devil Saga series. The basic idea is exactly the same: you get one turn icon per party member, with most actions consuming one icon, misses and voided attacks consuming two and criticals or passes consuming a mere half icon. The difference here is that characters take turns in order of their agility, rather than formation order- a subtle alteration that can have quite a big effect on tactics.

Of course, you aren’t going to want to fight alone (well, most people won’t, anyway), so the first order of business for any new player is to build up their party of loyal servant demons. At the beginning, a Fairy will join you, but for those looking for something more substantial, the good news is that any and every demon in the game is up for grabs. Normal demons can usually be recruited with a mix of bribes and canny negotiating skills, whilst everything up to and including bosses can be fused using the facilities of the Cathedral of Shadows. At the Cathedral, two monsters can be combined to create a new, third being, with many rules governing the process- for example, at full Kagutsuchi, a sacrifice can be offered to power up the resulting demon even more, whilst special demon types known as Elements and Mitama can be used to increase a demon’s rank or stats respectively. The possibilities are almost endless, and they must be used to their fullest to outfit a killer team.

Having a crack team of bloodthirsty demons does come with its drawbacks, however. Only Ryuki is able to replace demonic party members, use items and equip custom skills (more on this in a moment), making him the linchpin around which the whole operation must function. Given that it’s also game over if Ryuki dies, you can imagine that there’s more than one situation where you’re relying on Ryuki as healer, demon summoner and main attacker whilst everyone else has to just twiddle their thumbs. Luckily, this unequal balance was addressed in the DDS games, and by playing this one, you can see exactly why things needed to be changed.

When it comes to skills, demons have a pre-set pattern of learning particular skills as they level up, as well as a random chance of asking to change an existing skill- a risky gamble if you accept, since a useful skill could become something completely pointless. If you want to introduce new skills to your demons, you’ll have to experiment with fusion, although again there is an element of chance to this.

On the other hand, you can control exactly which skills Ryuki learns, but don’t expect that to make matters easier. Our hero learns skills by ingesting Magatama; not only does each one impart a unique stat bonus, but as he levels up, he can learn its innate skills, effectively giving him the entire range of magical, physical and support skills to choose from. Great, I hear you say, except of course that there’s a catch- you can only retain eight skills at any one time. If you choose to keep one ability at the expense of another, the discarded skill is lost forever- regardless of how much you might want, need or desire it later in the game.

Back in the field, the world you find yourself in is now controlled by the phases of Kagutsuchi- the mysterious light that appeared in the sky when the Vortex World was created. Kagutsuchi has eight phases from ‘New’ to ‘Full’, and it goes back and forth between them as you wander the world. The phase of Kagutsuchi is important to various puzzles in the game, whilst it also affects demon negotiations and fusion, especially at ‘Full’ status.

On top of all the puzzle solving you’ll have to do just to get around Nocturne’s many and vast dungeons, the game also comes with an infamous optional puzzle that involves manipulating blocks- an interesting diversion at first, but one that becomes increasingly frustrating as you struggle through its twenty consecutive levels. After dedicating the better part of a day to solving level 1-19 without help and then being forced to resort to looking up the answer to level 20 before I had to go out, it is no wonder that this is a particularly painful aspect of the game that still continues to haunt me.

An even more intense but far more rewarding optional aspect to the game is the Labyrinth of Amala, a complex five level dungeon that is progressively unlocked by fighting Fiend bosses and obtaining their Candelabra. Filled with puzzles and tough monsters, the Labyrinth is a great place for levelling up and offers plenty of rewards, including the chance to recruit Devil May Cry’s Dante as a party member. Completing the Labyrinth also alters the ending of the game, forcing you to fight a ‘final final’ boss after the regular final boss, and showing you a unique scene that isn’t really worth all the effort put into obtaining it. Still, completionists won’t be able to stop themselves from exploring the full extent of the Labyrinth.

If all that still isn’t enough for you, however, then you’ll be pleased to learn that there’s more to do. If fighting the game’s many bosses just once wasn’t enough, you can also revisit the ‘memory’ of battling them, complete with the challenge of trying to defeat them within a certain number of Press Turns. Luckily, this feature can be completely ignored, but it’s there for the more dedicated player.

Story

As one would expect from the Shin Megami Tensei series, Nocturne offers a dark, apocalyptic tale filled with demons and references to mythology- it certainly isn’t as complex as the worlds of Persona and Digital Devil Saga, but it’s solid enough to make for a decent game. Even discounting the special ending gained by completing the Labyrinth of Amala, the game has multiple conclusions depending on which ‘Reason’ (effectively a philosophy for the new world) your character supports, although they aren’t the kind of endings that drive you to complete the game multiple times just to see them.

Audiovisual

With its functional cel-shaded graphics, Nocturne creates the right look for a dark, monster-filled world, but unfortunately it is beginning to show its age somewhat. The human characters in particular look rather generic and simplistic, although there are some attractive monster designs to make up for it. The background music has the appropriate rock/cyberpunk edge to it and makes for solid listening overall.

Final Thoughts

Although tortuous at times, and certainly a bit rough around the edges compared to the later SMT games, Nocturne’s solid core gameplay ensures that it still a worthy and enjoyable title in its own right. It’s not one for the casual gamer, but the hardcore RPG fan will certainly want to play it and exhaust all the possibilities this game has to offer.

As a Dark Knight and the leader of the fabled Red Wings, Cecil has dedicated his entire life to serving the King of Baron- but when the king begins pursuing a policy of aggression against other nations, he begins to reconsider. Greater forces are at work in the world, and Cecil must reflect on both his loyalties and his true allies if he is to save the world itself from peril.

Back in the old days, I had tried to get on with Final Fantasy in its previous incarnations; first I had a go at the US SNES version and its laughably sanitised translation, and in due course I tried the PSOne remake, but I was never able to stick at it for long. With the release of a completely overhauled DS remake however, I was given another chance with the game- and this time I was going to see it through until the end.

The World of FF4: remade

In true Final Fantasy tradition, FF4 is a game about magical crystals and destined heroes saving the world from darkness; exactly what you would expect from the era. Originally released for SNES, FF4 was the first instalment in the series where characters actually had names and personalities (remakes aside), and although most Americans knew it as ‘FF2’ for years, it was nonetheless generally regarded with fondness. Fortunately, the remake preserves all that, but it also adds enough to draw in players both old and new to the game.

The core gameplay of FF4 is exactly as you would expect- as Cecil, you and your party run around different towns and dungeons fighting monsters and bosses via an ATB battle system. Moving the game to a dual screen layout has allowed for some changes; for example, on the field, the touch screen displays a map of the area, and as with Star Ocean 3, you can gain bonus items for completing 100% of each map. In battle, the party line-up, ATB and attack descriptions have all been moved to the lower screen; overall it ensures that the game never looks cluttered on the small screen, but there’s no real implementation of the touch screen technology (you can move around via the touch screen map, but generally it’s easier to use the D-pad).

The DS may be considered a lightweight and mainstream handheld, but one thing’s for sure- the difficulty of this game hasn’t been toned down. Spamming attack throughout the game is guaranteed not to work here, with even some normal enemies proving difficult enough to warrant developing specific strategies to deal with them. Loopholes have also been closed with regards to certain bosses, so that while there are still a few undead that can defeated by judicious use of Elixirs, most of the time you are actually going to have to think about what you’re doing. It can be challenging, but mainly in a refreshing way; battles are rarely pathetically easy or impossibly difficult, ensuring that the game never gets dull.

As well as retooling a few of the party’s unique abilities for this release, FF4 now adds an extra layer of customisability with its ‘Augments’ system. Augments are special items that bestow characters with new abilities- collect them all and you can mix and match, giving Cecil Yang’s Focus or adding Fusoya’s Bless to Rydia’s arsenal. Collecting the best Augments does require some strategic planning, but when you combine it with the ability to customise a character’s battle menu with their most used commands (imagining going straight to Cura from the top menu instead of scrolling through the White Magic menu), then you can create your own made-to-order fighting force.

Playable Characters

“You spoony bard!”

Despite the large number of playable characters in the game, FF4 is very particular about when you get to use them- basically the story determines which characters you have in your party at any time, and there’s nothing you can do about it. Your final line up for the closing chapters of the game is Cecil, Kain, Rosa, Rydia and Edge.

• Cecil (Dark Knight/Paladin): The main character, Cecil starts the game as a Dark Knight with the ability to enhance his attacks by sacrificing his own HP, but after a life-changing event, he becomes a holy Paladin. As with most main characters, Cecil is a strong swordsman who makes an excellent front-line attacker, whilst his noble Paladin nature means that he can take damage for other characters (he’ll do that automatically if they are in critical condition) and use a limited range of white magic.
• Kain (Dragoon): Cecil’s best friend (that is, when he isn’t under the influence of the enemy), Kain is the classic Dragoon- a lance user who does the most damage with his Jump attack. Launch him into the air and he’ll remain impervious to attacks until he comes crashing back down to earth, doing major damage in the process. Many recommend him for the front-line, but with only two slots in front I tend to keep him in back so that Edge can have the other front slot.
• Rosa (White Mage): Cecil’s girlfriend and the main obstacle in the way of HARD GAY bliss with Kain, Rosa is the typical healer- physically weak, but able to heal with powerful magic. She also has Holy magic in her arsenal, whilst her Pray ability now restores bother HP and MP- useful when you’ve drained her reserves through constant spell-casting.
• Rydia (Summoner): As well as having access to powerful summons (including a brand new one that you can customise and have fight in her place), Rydia is a dab hand with black magic, making her unsurpassed in the field of negative status effects and elemental damage. As a child, she also has white magic abilities, but she loses these later in the game.
• Tellah (Sage): An old man who manages to forget most of his magical abilities, regain them and then leave the party for good, Tellah makes for decent magical support, but his MP runs out too quickly. Useful while you have him, but not a character you miss when he’s gone.
• Edward (Bard): The spoony bard of the game’s most memorable line, Edward is a weakling whose special abilities include hiding from danger, but when he’s not protecting his own skin, his song skills can come in handy.
• Palom (Black Mage): Twin brother of Porom, Palom may not be able to keep his mouth shut, but fortunately he offers up some useful black magic support to Cecil during his quest to become a Paladin.
• Porom (White Mage): Palom’s twin sister, Porom is a master of white magic and can also Twincast magic with her brother. Like Palom, she is a useful support character but isn’t outstanding in the overall character line up.
• Yang (Monk): A master of fist-fighting techniques, Yang makes for a perfect front row attacker who can Focus to power up his attack, or damage an entire enemy party with his Kick. A worthy addition to any line up.
• Cid (Mechanic): In this incarnation, Cid is a large-lipped engineer with a bushy red beard who may be excellent with airships, but is generally average in battle. His one special feature is the fact that he can analyse enemy stats at no expense- basically a free Libra that you can abuse whilst he’s in your party.
• Edge (Ninja): A latecomer to the party, Edge is a ninja prince with an eye for the ladies. Typically swift and weak, he has a range of average physical and magical attacks, and makes for decent front line support.
• Fusoya (Lunarian): Another latecomer who only stays briefly, Fusoya is basically another sage, albeit with the special ability to Bless the party and thus slowly restore their MP. A useful character to fill out the numbers, but since his low defence leads to him often falling in battle, you won’t miss him once he leaves.

Extras

“Fat Chocobo!? Blasphemer! He is known here as the Godsbird.”

Although the core of the original game remains intact, there are some new features worth mentioning. For example, back in the original, a character called Namingway would periodically show up and offer to change your characters’ names. Now that the game has cut scenes with voice acting, changing names isn’t allowed, so instead Namingway travels the world, changing his name and purpose as he goes.

Also undergoing a change in function is Fat Chocobo; now that the restrictions on your inventory have been lifted, there is no need for him to be able to store items, so instead he performs a number of different tasks. As well as letting you look at the bestiary, rewatch events and listen to game music, Fat Chocobo lets you train and customise Rydia’s new custom summon, Whyt.

In the main game, Whyt can now be summoned like an Aeon to fight for Rydia, but in order to get him into a fit state for that, you’ll have to pay a visit to Fat Chocobo. The first order of business is to take Whyt’s featureless form and customise it with a simple Paint-style drawing function; this, like the Whyt training, is the only feature of the game where the stylus and touchscreen capabilities are actually needed.

Rather than training him directly, increasing Whyt’s stats is done by playing mini-games relating to the different playable characters. You can solve maths puzzles with Rydia, press the stylus down for set numbers of seconds with Rosa (the most boring of the mini-games), defeat goblins with Cecil, jump and avoid birds with Kain or attack and dodge enemies with Edge. The mini-games are mildly diverting, but since I never used Whyt in the game, I wasn’t too bothered about them.

Also added to the game are the by now obligatory New Game Plus option (although you can only play through three times before having to start a completely new game), and of course a couple of super-hard optional bosses to pit yourself against.

Story

Although Final Fantasy IV is a product of the era of destined warriors and magical crystals, it does a good job of rising above such simplicity with plenty of character development, a serving of drama and a healthy dose of tongue-in-cheek humour. FFIX fans in particular will find much to like about the world of FFIV.

Audiovisual

Visually, FFIV has been given a complete overhaul, abandoning the simplistic SNES sprites for a pseudo-3D look that is so appealing and cute that I wouldn’t be averse to seeing it used in a lot more remakes- and that’s coming from a big fan of sprites. The music is composed by Nobuo Uematsu, of course, with the usual range of familiar themes undergoing some improvement so that they don’t sound too tinny and outdated in their new home.

Final Thoughts

Final Fantasy IV has always been a solid entry into the series, but the polish given to this latest remake ensures that is both addictive and enjoyable even in this era of flashy graphics and complex battle systems. There’s no doubt that playing this is gaming time well spent- now let’s have remakes for FFV and VI as well.

At the prestigious Al-Revis Academy, the best and brightest pursue the study of alchemy, spending their high school years honing this mystical art for the purposes of combat, defence and support. Leaving the forest where he lived alone with his feline best friend Sulpher, Vayne Aurelius enrols at Al-Revis at the behest of one of its teachers; but even as he settles down to school life, a greater power begins to awaken within him.

With the Atelier Iris series having come to a close, Gust’s alchemy games forged ahead by switching to the world of Mana Khemia, in which budding young alchemists spend their high school years learning their trade at Al-Revis Academy. With the trademark alchemy and battle systems carried over from Atelier Iris 3, Mana Khemia also adds its own spin that ensures that the game is more addictive than ever.

Al-Revis Academy

The game begins when Vayne is practically coerced into joining Al-Revis by teacher Zeppel; from thereon out, it’s your duty to attend classes and gain enough credits to pass each term and eventually graduate as a full fledged alchemist. Each school year is divided into four chapters- one for each term and one for the summer holidays, leading to a substantial game length of twelve chapters.

The entirety of the game takes place within the bounds of Al-Revis Academy; campus is a largely safe zone where you can buy items, perform alchemy and so forth, whilst the surrounding areas are monster-filled realms where the risk is high but the rewards are great. The centre of your adventure will be your workshop- the place where you and your allies gather to interact and perform alchemy- but by the time the game has finished, you will have explored every nook and cranny of the academy.

Each chapter is subdivided into separate weeks, consisting of story events, classes, free time, and- if you are unlucky enough- detention. The chapter will begin with a short compulsory event, then it’s off to Student Affairs to sign up for your classes. Over the course of your school life, you’ll have compulsory core courses and a selection of optional modules to take, but if you want to evade detention, you’ll have to get a decent grade in all of them.

As you would expect, classes cover a variety of different alchemy-related subjects, from synthesis to combat and even gathering items. At the beginning of each class, the teacher will set your objective, and then it’s up to you to fulfil it- either by going back to your workshop and synthesising a required item, or heading out into the field to gather items and defeat monsters. Depending on how well you manage to achieve your goal, you’ll get a grade from A-F, with only passing grades counting towards your required credits.

Unfortunately, if you can’t get enough passing grades, your precious free time will be taken up by detention. Since I was fortunate enough to pass all my classes, I never actually had to do any detention, but from what I’ve read it consists of menial tasks.

Once all your classroom duties are over, you will finally get the chance to indulge in some free time, although unless you plan to just go straight to the dorms and sleep, you’ll be busy doing optional missions. When free time is in effect, the quest system from Atelier Iris 3 makes a return, with various requests appearing on the Student Affairs notice board. Predictably, all the requests are either for items to be synthesised and gathered or for particular monsters to be defeated, with the rewards being entirely monetary. Although it might sound a little tedious, for those who have already been won over by the addictiveness of the Atelier series, it will be no great chore- and if you don’t feel like doing some extra questing, it’s entirely up to you.

The best part of free time, however, is that it lets you interact with your party members- pick someone in the workshop and choose to find out more about them, and you’ll find yourself drawn into a quest related to that character. From training with swordsmaster Anna to defending justice with upperclassman Flay, each event will flesh out one particular character whilst also building your relationship with them, with those relationship scores affecting the ending of the game.

With all your classes complete and free time whiled away, the chapter will end with a story event. Lather, rinse and repeat, and that’s basically the pattern of the entire game.

On campus

Whilst you’re juggling classes, events and free time, there will also be plenty of opportunities to wander around the Al-Revis campus. As well as a variety of shops where you can purchase alchemy recipes and ingredients, there are a number of other services available Of course, alchemy is the most important of these, and although the basic system is carried over from Atelier Iris 3, some tweaks and additions have been made.

The most annoying new feature is the fact that synthesising weapons, armour and accessories now takes place at the ‘Athanor’, leaving only mana items, key items and ingredient synthesis in your workshop. Even though the two places are only next door, it is extremely irritating to have to run back and forth because you need to synthesise a mana item before you can make a particular weapon, for example.

Fortunately, Gust have at least attempted to justify their decision by making the two types of alchemy a little different. When you synthesise in your workshop, you set (and later increase) the quality of your items by using a modicum of reflexes and timing to stop a spinning ring when it matches the element of each ingredient being used. Your allies can also help out in the synthesis, with their assistance also affecting the quality, slowing up the ring or switching all the slots to a particular element. Most of the time, you will want to maximise the quality of your item, as this will carry over to any other items you synthesise with it (and in the case of weapons, armour and accessories, give them more abilities), but certain quests in the game can only be completed by making a really poor quality item.

Fortunately, if you’ve synthesised an item whose quality you’re happy with, you don’t have to go through this process every time- you can just synthesise it straight from the ingredients without having to worry about elements and spinning rings. And of course, like previous games, you can try substituting one ingredient for another in order to see if you discover a recipe for something new- in fact, sometimes your allies will even suggest a new combination for you to try.

In contrast, synthesis at the Athanor doesn’t require such effort- all you need to do is pick your ingredients, confirm the synthesis and then decide what inherent abilities you want the item to have. These abilities are carried over from the ingredients, and depending on what you have on offer, you can assign one attack and two support abilities to an item.

Another new feature in this game is the ability to spread rumours about yourself- as you complete various achievements in the course of the game, you will be able to spread related rumours and gain a stat boost. Unfortunately, only one rumour can be in circulation at any time, and overall any effects they provide are negligible overall.

For those of you who find gathering and synthesising all the items you need a rather daunting and tiresome task, you’ll be pleased to know that your allies can assist you in this regard. In your workshop, you can assign them individual tasks such as gaining AP, gathering items or synthesising, and depending on their affinity for a particular task, they will return in a week or two of game time with the fruits of their labour. Since their synthesis doesn’t use up your ingredients, it’s a good way of building up a stock of items- although be warned that they cannot make any item you haven’t created at least once, even if you have the recipe for it.

Fight or flight: heading out into the field

Once you’ve exhausted the possibilities on campus, the next step is to venture out into the wilds. As with Atelier Iris 3, Mana Khemia has a set level of areas that you must visit multiple times, but this time the variety is such that it doesn’t get boring- and better yet, dungeons are no longer timed. In their place, however, time passes whilst you are in the field- and if you happen to get caught out at night, you will find that monsters are much tougher and more aggressive than their diurnal counterparts.

Like Atelier Iris 3, monsters wander around the field in the form of blobs that will pursue you and initiate battle if you get too close- again blue blobs are weaklings that can be destroyed with a slash during the day, whilst red ones must be fought (or at least escaped from, although again at night it seems to be impossible to escape). Fortunately, if you get defeated in anything other than a story battle, you will be teleported back to campus; you can also transport back any time by using the “Wings of Icarus” key item.

Even the battle system itself is straight out of Atelier Iris 3- the Active Cost Card Battle system is back, albeit with a couple of tweaks. In the old days, when a character died, they got a turn as soon as they were revived, but this time around, a dead character’s greyed out turn card remains in the bar, so even if they are revived, they won’t get a turn until their card comes back to the front.

Small as it may seem, this is just the first in a number of revisions to the system that force a change in strategy. Those who relied on the Burst Gauge in AI3 may be pleased to learn that it is back- but this time around it takes a lot more effort to fill the gauge, reducing its status as the easy option for finishing tough battles. That being said, later in the game you’ll get an extra finisher gauge tacked onto the Burst Gauge; provided you fulfil a certain condition whilst in Burst (such as attacking with a particular element, using knockback attacks, buffing your allies and so forth), this gauge will fill- and once it is at it maximum, you can select one of your characters to perform a deadly finishing move.

Those who recall that Atelier Iris 3 only had three playable characters will be pleased to learn that Mana Khemia has a more rounded eight possibilities, which means that the ability to switch characters in and out of battle is back. This time around, you can have three characters in your active party and three on standby, with the option to switch them. Unlike earlier AI games, however, when you start a battle or switch party members, the person who was switched out must wait a short while before being able to rejoin the fray- a feature that isn’t very forgiving of mistakes or short-sightedness with regard to party setup.

The other notable change is the return of MP- gone is the Skill Gauge of AI2-3 in favour of a more traditional system. Characters also have special ‘List Skills’ which require items rather than MP to enact.

After battle, however, you might notice another major shift from RPG norms- your characters will be gaining AP, but EXP is nowhere in sight. Unexpected as this may seem, this is because Mana Khemia simply doesn’t have conventional levelling up- instead, characters advance via the ‘Grow Book’, the latest take on the Sphere Grid type system. With the Grow Book, nodes are activated when you synthesise a particular item, and then the abilities or stat increases associated with that node can be obtained by spending AP. It’s a system that takes a bit of getting used to, but whilst it isn’t something you’d want to see in every game, it is worthy through sheer novelty value alone.

Playable characters

• Vayne: Like most main characters, Vayne is a balanced character with an emphasis on physical attacks. His weapon is his cat, Sulpher, who transforms into a bladed gauntlet, making him perfect for multiple hit attacks. Vayne is also the only one with the Analyse skill- unlike Atelier Iris 3, monster HP is not automatically displayed until you use this on a particular monster type. Fortunately, Analyse also does damage, so it doesn’t feel like a waste of a turn.
• Jess: the healer of the group, Jess’ basic attacks do magical damage, whilst she can also do ‘On the Spot Synthesis’- a two-turn attack that lets her synthesis and use Mana items on the field. Her deadly handbag also has the ability to transform enemies into candy.
• Nikki: A good backup character, it’s no surprise that Nikki’s massive spiked ball does some decent physical damage, but while her special skills are solid, there’s nothing particularly overwhelming about them. As a catgirl, however, Nikki’s kinship with beasts enables her to convert monsters into special hearts that she can use to re-summon them in battle.
• Flay: Once you get Flay, Nikki will probably be relegated to the back row, as he supersedes her in the physical department. With a giant mechsword that must have been borrowed from AI3’s Edge, Flay can do huge damage with multi-hit and drilling attacks. He can also imbue his attacks with Lightning element- his one concession to the existence of magical abilities.
• Pamela: A ghost with a killer teddy bear, Pamela is a weak attacker whose few healing abilities aren’t worth the pain of putting up with her weak specials. Still, it’s nice to see series staple Pamela finally being playable, even if I hardly ever used her.
• Anna: A master of swordsmanship, Anna is an amazingly swift samurai whose piercing blade ensures that she should almost always be on the front lines. The speed of her attacks more than makes up for lagging behind the like of Flay in terms of sheer strength, with her multi-hit repertoire often carving through the enemy.
• Roxis: the anti-hero of the piece, Roxis uses trading cards for magical and time-based attacks- he may not do much damage with a basic attack, but over time his specials will do a lot of cumulative damage. He can also clear the time bar of enemy spells, which remains a vastly useful skill.
• Muppy: A mysterious alien, Muppy is a rather incongruous addition to the game who arrives too late for players to care about him that much. He has a lot of fire based abilities, but overall he’s surplus to requirements.

Story

Although the overall story of Mana Khemia is pretty standard as RPGs go, the game recaptures the feel of the original Atelier Iris when it comes to feeling that you are actually part of a properly interacting world. All the main characters are well developed, and although side stories such as Flay’s quest for justice are rather annoying, overall the character exploration remains interesting.

Audiovisual

When it comes to visuals, sound and music, Mana Khemia is pretty much on a par with previous games in the series, with cute sprites, well drawn but not overly sophisticated backgrounds and a solid blend of background themes. This time around, however, the character designs have a different style- they are still attractive, but they are more angular than those of the Atelier Iris series.

Final Thoughts

Although it may seem a little simplistic and repetitive in places, Mana Khemia is a worthy successor to the Atelier title, and remains a highly enjoyable experience from start to finish. I’m looking forward to the English release of Mana Khemia 2.

Just as the four .hack games must be effectively considered as one, so too is DDS2 basically an extension of the first game- albeit a very worthy one that shouldn’t be overlooked. With that in mind, most of the game play details are of course the same as the first game, so what I will be looking at here are the differences, tweaks and improvements that the second game brings to the series.

Emerging from the Junkyard

Having survived the destruction of the Junkyard at the end of the first game, your heroes emerge into the real world- a place filled with just as many dangers as the one you just left. Once again, you will move between a relatively limited number of areas, each of which takes a while to properly complete, ensuring that the playing experience is at least as long as it was in the first game, depending on how much levelling up you want to do.

Compared to the last game, however, there is a lot more interaction with the areas you visit- gone are the unlockable coloured walls for optional areas, but in their place getting through even regular dungeons is a bit more of a challenge. As well as the old staple of disappearing walls and working out which teleport will take you forward rather than the beginning, there are also areas of darkness and damaging electrical areas that will deplete your HP. In order to combat these, you will need to purchase Light Balls to banish the darkness and Core Shields to protect you from external damage. And for those of you who welcome more action orientated pursuits, there’s a rather stressful section in the game where you will have to escape from prison by running from the jailer on the field map.

The other changes are mainly cosmetic- for example, Solar Noise is now called Solar Data, macca and cells have been replaced with dollars and flowers (valuable in this post-apocalyptic reality), whilst the menu now also contains a ‘Recovery’ option that automatically selects characters with the appropriate skills to heal the party- a faster option than scrolling through the skills menu yourself.

There is one major addition to consider, however, in the form of a new type of equippable item called a Karma Ring. Each Karma ring offers either a boost to stats or an advantage in battle (anything from Void Phys at the start of battle to providing the party with an extra Press Turn each round), and can be further customised by filling its empty slots with stat enhancing gems. Each character can equip one Karma Ring, which in turn usually has 2-4 gem slots- but be warned, if you want to remove gems and put other ones in, the ones you remove will be destroyed forever.

For those who imported data from the first game, there are also some extra treats- if you made the right decisions in that game, you’ll be able to learn some unique special abilities in the final dungeon, as well as having the chance of recruiting a ‘secret’ character (whose identity must be the worst kept secret in gaming history).

Field hunting also makes a return and operates in much the same way as DDS1, although it is only available when Serph is in the party, making it unavailable for huge stretches of the game.

Devouring the enemy

Aside from a few changes to the interface, at first glance the battle system looks much the same as the first game- Press Turns are back, along with all the familiar spells and enemy types- but alongside it, a few new twists have been introduced. The first and most obvious of these is the new Berserk Mode- when Solar Data is at or close to its maximum, your ability to transform becomes unstable, causing you to sometimes enter battle in Berserk Mode, a fusion of your human and demon forms. In Berserk Mode, your strength and chance of scoring a critical hit are greatly increased, but it comes at a price- magic is unusable, defence is lowered and it’s also very likely that your attack will miss.

Once again mastering skills for battle is dependent on the Mantra Grid, but this too has been given an overhaul for the new era. Instead of consisting of several linear tracks for each ability type, the new Mantra Grid is now a hexagonal grid that allows more freedom for switching between ‘tracks’- provided you’ve mastered an adjacent mantra, you can always jump across to learning one from a completely different element or skill type, even if you haven’t yet learned lower level spells from that element. This is certainly useful later in the game, since you can skip learning the basic spells that aren’t really useful anymore.

The new Mantra Grid also has another twist in the form several secret mantra which can only be unlocked when all the mantra around them have been mastered (not necessarily by the same character, just the party as a whole). Some of these mantras boost the party’s stats, but others are of an ‘Esoteric’ type that enable the mastery of extra skills of varying usefulness. Also present are powerful Hidden Mantra that only appear when a character reaches the end of a particular track, alongside a couple of special mantra that only appear on the grid when special optional bosses are defeated.

Combos have also been expanded and retooled somewhat- as well as having more combos to discover in the first place, they have been made somewhat more flexible. For example, in the first game elemental combos needed both elemental spells to be at the same level (so as you levelled up your single target spells you’d lose your lower level all target combos), but this no longer happens- so Teradyne and Bufudyne don’t just allow you to cast Mabufudyne, they also let you cast the lower level Mabufula and Mabufu.

In terms of overall difficulty, Digital Devil Saga 2 is much like its predecessor in that you can’t brute force it- you have to take your enemies’ strengths and weaknesses into account if you want to get anywhere. The game also has a Hard Mode for those who have cleared the first game or started a New Game+, but certainly the basic game is challenging enough, with significant grinding and learning of mantras required in order to best some of the later bosses.

Veterans of the first game will recall occasionally running into Omoikanes, tricky enemies that yielded great rewards for those able to defeat them. They’re back in Digital Devil Saga 2, but this time around it’s easier to get the better of them- instead of being weak to gun attacks, they come in groups of five and are vulnerable to random elements, ensuring that you should be able to kill at least a few of them over the course of the game and reap in massive rewards.

When you’re not out encountering Omoikanes, there’s a chance you might run into Jack Frost, a quizmaster who has 100 questions for aspiring adventurers. Each question is multiple choice; getting them right will net you an item, but getting them wrong will see the battle end immediately. Once you eventually get all 100 questions right, a secret area will open up.

Playable characters (spoilers!)

Serph (Varna): Despite being nominally still the main character, Serph spends large portions of the game being unplayable (more on that further down). Nonetheless, when you have him in your team he remains a solid all-rounder whose stat growth you can customise as you like (as before, I recommend focusing on STR, MAG and VIT), making for a solid attacker with a good command of magic. His natural element is ice, with a weakness to fire.

Gale (Vayu): This time around, Gale is playable from the start of the game, and although he’s an all-rounder with a wind specialist, he tends to fill in as the fire-user too. Whenever Argilla and Cielo are available, Gale tends to take more of back seat, but he is useful to fall back on in situations where they can’t contribute.

Argilla (Prithivi): Once again, Argilla is the weakest of the team physically, instead specialising in magic with an affinity for Earth spells. For me, Argilla was usually the healer of the team, although when the occasion called for it she could let loose with powerful elemental magic and combos.

Roland (Indra): New for DDS, Roland is inexplicably the team’s second Thunder specialist, although unlike Cielo he isn’t weak against ailments (instead, Earth is his weakness). He’s an average character who proves useful early on, but he later leaves the party and only becomes playable in the final dungeon if you don’t fulfil the conditions to get Heat back. Personally, I would have preferred Roland to be a fire user (since otherwise you don’t have a fire specialist until the end), with mine proving to be a stolid backup for ice, healing and thunder attacks.

Cielo (Dyaus): A vital component of my team, Cielo may be a weaker character who likes to pump his stat bonuses into random places, but even so for me he became invaluable, mastering not only his native thunder but Death and Expel magic as well. With various stat boosting spells on his side as well, there was never nothing for Cielo to do in battle.

Sera (Varnani): Serph’s replacement for a section of the game, Sera is basically the female incarnation of Varna, and as such absorbs all of the skills that Serph has learned up to the point she replaces him. Just like Serph, she is a solid all-rounder, although as far as design goes I prefer the original Varna.

Heat (Agni): Unless you make the right choices at two points in the first game and then two further points in this game, you will only get to use the overpowered ‘True Agni’ in one battle; however, for those who go the extra mile, Heat can be used in place of Roland in the final dungeon (he absorbs all the skills that Roland learned earlier in the game). As before, Heat is skewed towards being a powerful physical attacker (although never stronger than Serph/Seraph) rather than a mage, but as he is the only playable fire specialist, it’s good to have him along for that as well as the nostalgia factor.

Seraph (Ardha): Disappointingly, when Serph and Seraph fuse to become Seraph, the demon thus created is an ugly bug-eyed creature with a hideous design. Ardha, is, however, a strong all-rounder with no particular weaknesses, which makes him/her a staple of the front line. Certainly I rarely switched him/her out of the party once s/he joined.

Story

Following straight on from the original game, DDS2 unravels the mysteries behind the world of the Junkyard and the nature of both the Embryon and the Karma Society. It all gets a bit convoluted and confusing at times, but the game remains none the less enjoyable for it.

Audiovisual

Unsurprisingly, the game is identical to its predecessor when it comes to visuals and effects, with only slight changes to the look of the interface marking it out from the original. The background music has been updated and remixed for this instalment, but is still in keeping with the first game.

Final Thoughts

Between them, the two Digital Devil Saga games have proven that the RPG genre isn’t as stale and tired as one might begin to fear- there is still room for innovative battle systems that force you to do more than just select ‘Attack’ all the time. Here’s to much more of the same from the team at Atlus.

In the world of Ivalice, every child knows the tale of the War of the Lions, and the legendary hero Delita who was its foremost champion. Records are not always accurate, however, and one historian claims that the true hero of the war was not Delita but his best friend Ramza Beoulve. Delve into the past and discover the story never told- the tale of Ramza, a man who became a heretic just to protect what he believed in.

Before all the fancy battle systems of Nippon Ichi and its peers, there existed a strategy RPG that was to shape all that came after it. Bearing the Final Fantasy name, this game was a niche title whose general lack of availability doomed it to obscurity for many years, until finally it was dusted off, re-released and brought out into the light where it belonged. For obvious reasons, that game was none other than Final Fantasy Tactics.

Many years ago, I started FFT, but because I found the game so incredibly difficult I ultimately gave up and put it to one side. Ironically, however, it was not the recent PSP remake that brought it back to my attention, but a desire to play and complete all the classic PSOne RPG titles that I had, for whatever reason, missed out on in my teenage years. So it was that FFT re-entered the scene, and this time, I was going to complete it- no matter how long it took.

The world of Ivalice

Final Fantasy Tactics takes place in the world of Ivalice, a land threatened by war thanks to the ambitions of both the nobles and the Church. As Ramza, your goal is to rescue your sister from the madness, which in practical terms means moving across the world map fighting battles on different maps. The world map is a simple affair, consisting of connected points which you must travel between (it takes one day of in-game time to travel between one point and the next). Red nodes indicate that there are battles to be fought to advance the story, green nodes have been cleared but can be revisited for random battles, whilst blue nodes are towns and cities.

As well as being the obvious place in which to buy weapons and items, town also provide other services in the form of the pub and the soldier office (a few towns also have a fur shop where you can sell monster remains). The pub is the home of rumours that will explain the situation of the game and let you dispatch generic characters out to handle missions on their own, whilst the soldier office is the place to recruit new generics to bulk out your team while you wait for the story characters to join your team (remember that you can never have more than 16 playable characters at any given time, although you can dismiss units to make room for more).

As with so many other games, job classes are all in Final Fantasy Tactics, determining a character’s stats and abilities. Generic characters always join at level one with only the Squire (basic, no frills fighter) and Chemist (item user) classes open, and it is only by levelling up in these classes that better options will become available. Those familiar with the Final Fantasy franchise will be right at home with the range of classes, which includes staples like Black Mage, Priest (white mage), Summoner, Knight, Samurai and Ninja along a few more exotic options such as Dancer, Bard, Mime and Calculator (no, really). Story characters also have their own unique classes with skill sets that generics cannot learn.

Once a character is in a particular Job, you’ll need to go out and fight in order to accumulate the Job Points (JP) needed to master the abilities of that class. There are a range of command and support abilities available in each job, and it’s up to you to decide which ones to master first- bearing in mind that even using a particular item such as a potion requires you to have mastered the related abilities (that’s right- just setting the item command isn’t enough).

With all the requisite skills learned and equipment bought, the time has come to equip your characters for battle. Depending on their job, each character can equip a weapon (one or two-handed), shield, helmet, armour and accessory (not all options are available to all classes), with the game will automatically furnishing you with the best setup from your inventory unless you choose to customise. For skills, each character can set up to two command types; the one that corresponds to their job, of course, and another command from any other they have unlocked (for example, a Black Mage would obviously have Black Magic as their first command, but the second could be White Magic, Item and so forth). You can also set up to three support abilities- one relating to how you counter enemy attacks, one relating to movement (increasing range, letting you heal as move, etc) and another that lets you add extra commands such as Defend and Equip Change, gain extra JP in battle or just equip a type of weapon or armour that your job normally wouldn’t allow. Having just one slot for each support ability may seem rather restrictive, but it ensures that you have to think carefully about your choice.

Battle

With all that in mind, the time has come to head out to battle, which, in true SRPG fashion, takes place on isometric maps of varying altitude and terrain. For most battles, you are able to deploy up to five characters from your party, usually as one team, but sometimes in two squads. Unfortunately, whilst you are given an area of squares in which to place characters prior to the battle, you won’t know how these squares actually relate to the map and the enemy positions until the battle begins, which is a bit of a blow to any tactical formation you might want to make (then again, for the battles where tactical formation is that important, you’ll probably get killed and be forearmed for your subsequent attempts).

Once battle actually begins, characters get turns according to their speed, which is represented by the filling of the Charge Time (CT) gauge. Once the gauge reaches 100, a character can take their turn, with turn order visible via selecting an action and then pressing Left. As per usual, each turn lets a character move once and act once (provided they are in deep water, which prevents action), although unlike later games of the genre, if you move and haven’t acted yet, you can’t undo your move if you discover you’ve gone somewhere where no enemy is in range of your attacks. Battle objectives are of course the usual range of “defeat all enemies”, “defeat the boss” and “protect pathetically weak ally NPC who likes to make suicide attacks on the enemy”.

Whilst normal attacks and certain abilities take place immediately, spells, summons and various other special abilities require charging time of their own, meaning that several other characters may get to take their turn whilst the caster is preparing their spell. If the ability in question is targeting a particular unit, then it will always strike that unit even if they move (the only way to evade is to use the Lancer ability Jump), but if it’s aimed at a panel, then, with luck, you’ll be able to move out of the way. It’s also worth noting that most spells have a five square cross shaped area of effect and will target enemies and allies alike (the same goes for other abilities that target more than one square)- only summons differentiate enemies from allies when it comes to healing or dealing out damage.

With that in mind, it’s clear that battles require some thought, but there’s one more reason not to embark recklessly on a fight, and that’s what happens when a character dies. Excluding guest characters, as soon as someone is struck down, a three turn countdown begins, after which point they disappear, leaving behind either a treasure chest or the crystallised remains of their soul. When this happens, that character is gone forever- regardless of whether they were a named story character or your best generic. If you want to avoid this, you’ll have to revive them or finish the battle before the time is up, although conversely you’ll want this to happen to enemies so that you can pick up the items they drop and use the crystals to either inherit new abilities or replenish your HP and MP.

If human characters aren’t enough for you, then you may be pleased to learn that you can also recruit monsters using the power of a Mediator. If your Mediator is successful, the target monster will join your party and become fully playable, with the added bonus of it regularly laying eggs to add more monsters (some with better stats than the original) to the team. Unlike humans, however, monsters have a fixed skill set- they cannot equip items, learn new skills or have jobs. These limitations aside, monsters can be useful allies- especially chocobos, which have the added advantage of allowing humans to ride them.

In typical SRPG fashion, the battlefield also plays host to ‘guest characters’, ally NPCs who usually have to be protected from death at the hands of the enemy. Guest characters are often powerful, but they are also unpredictable- they’re just as likely to run away and save their own skin as to pitch in against the enemy, and when they do go on the attack, they’re as bad as the Americans for instigating friendly fire incidents in their eagerness to carve a path through to the enemy.

As well as all the usual stats, character strength in FFT is determined by three unique factors- Brave, Faith and star sign. Brave is a measure of a character’s courage and hence controls the success rate of physical attacks, whilst Faith measures a character’s belief in the supernatural and thus the success of their magical attacks; both of these stats can be raised permanently by repeated use of certain special skills. Meanwhile, star sign is important because when the in-game date matches with the dates of that sign, a character’s power is increased. That being said, the mechanics of star signs and character strength can be ignored throughout the game without too much ill effect.

In practice, what all this means is that Final Fantasy Tactics is not a game you can brute force your way through- if you don’t unlock the right classes and skills, much of the game will be hard, and even a slight change in strategy and character level can change a seemingly impossible battle into a manageable one. Even if you find most of the game a struggle, however, the last few battles are almost disappointingly easy, because once you recruit the deadly Orlandu, almost nothing can stand in your way.

My team

Ramza: As the main character, Ramza has to be at the forefront of the action, even getting the dubious pleasure of having to fight one or two story battles alone. Although his default class is Squire (an extended version of the Squire class available to generics, with some useful support abilities), you can of course take Ramza in any direction you wish- for much of the game I alternated between Monk and Knight; the former for its range of attack and healing abilities, the latter for the ability to break the weapons and armour of strong enemies.

Agrias: A Holy Knight by trade, Agrias is a robust character whenever she has a sword in her hand, but without it she can’t use her Holy Sword abilities- which is why you’d better prioritise teaching her the Equip Sword ability.

Mustadio: An Engineer with a gun specialty, Mustadio’s unique skills are rather limited, which is why I took him the route of learning Equip Gun and prioritising Chemist skills so that he could become a roving item user with a ranged attack.

Orlandu: As a knight, Orlandu has a skillset that overlaps with both Agrias and Meliadoul (another playable story character who joins up too late to be of much use). Although he only joins late in the game, Orlandu is such a powerhouse that he can carry the later battles pretty much by himself, making the end of the game generally rather easy.

Red Chocobo: The most powerful of the three chocobo types in the game (yellow, black and red), Red Chocobo doesn’t have the healing skills of the yellow, but its powerful Choco Meteor attack has been known to take down bosses on its own.

Rad: The one generic character that I’ve worked on, Rad was well-used until Orlandu came along, acting variously as a Mediator, Geomancer, Oracle and Summoner throughout the game, usually with Item as his secondary skill.

Story

A cut above the average RPG fare, Final Fantasy Tactics attempts to bring us a comparatively complex tale of church politics, intrigue and plotting, even spicing proceedings up with darker topics such as implied rape. Unfortunately, it doesn’t quite succeed- not so much through any story failings as from the fact that this version of the game is so poorly translated that it’s hard to understand any of the plot nuances. Hopefully the PSP version with its better translation has rectified this problem.

Audiovisual

Visually, Final Fantasy looks much like every other SRPG out there, using isometric maps and sprites, and despite its age, the overall look is quite pleasant- in fact, the sprites have more range of movement than some in more recent games! The background music isn’t as memorable as that of mainstream FF titles, but it still serves its purpose well enough.

Final Thoughts

A rough gem in a world that would later produce more polished titles, Final Fantasy Tactics is nonetheless a worthy game in its own right, and one that proves as addictive as the SRPGs that would follow it. Although the PSP version is all the rage at the moment, we mustn’t forget the original incarnation that started it all.

In the world of the Junkyard, six tribes are embroiled in a war where the victor can claim the right to escape the turmoil and enter the promised land of Nirvana. The conflict has been locked in a stalemate as long as anyone can remember, but all that changes the day a mysterious light appears in the sky. Changed by the light, the people of the Junkyard now have the ability to transform into demons and literally devour their enemies- a powerful new ability that should decide the course of the war one way or another. And for Serph, the young leader of the Embryon tribe, it is the start of a journey to save a mysterious young woman who appeared in the Junkyard at the moment when this all began.

An offshoot of the ever popular Shin Megami Tensei franchise of games, Digital Devil Saga’s initially rather cryptic title (trust me, it will make sense by the end) hides what turns out to be one of the more compelling RPGs out there. With a battle system that demands skill and strategy rather than brute force, and a game play style so addictive that you simply cannot tear yourself away once you start playing, DDS is a hidden gem even for those who thought they knew the RPG scene.

The Junkyard

During your adventures in the Junkyard, you take on the role of Serph, the quiet leader of the Embryon whose goal it is to defeat all the other tribes and reach Nirvana. What this basically means is that you and your team are embroiled in a battle royale situation, and unlike certain other series, that means there’s no beating about the bush- you’re out to put a permanent end to your rivals.

What this boils down to, of course, is visiting different areas and taking on the other tribes. There aren’t actually all that many locations in the game to visit, but each dungeon takes a while to complete, so all in all you get a decent playtime for the game. Not only will each area have several levels (luckily you can refer to a map to see everywhere you’ve been), but you’ll be solving puzzles along the way- everything from simple gate and switch setups to a few more complex situations such as having a limited time to swim through underground water pipes.

Fortunately, save points (or Karma terminals, as they are known), are relatively plentiful in the game, although game play is so addictive that your intention to just play to the next save point usually becomes ‘play for the next three hours’. Karma terminal come in two types- large Karma terminals will let you restore your party (for a price), whilst small ones lack this facility but do allow you to teleport to the nearest large terminal (a good way to avoid backtracking once you’ve completed a dungeon). Also scattered about the world are vendors, life terminals and rejuvenation points; the latter two have the same function of healing you, but with the difference that life terminals cost money.

Whilst playing the game, you’ll also notice a gauge in the top left corner measuring ‘Solar Noise’. The manual will very vaguely tell you that ‘Solar Noise affects your characters in different ways’, but don’t worry if you don’t have much of a clue what it does; it only affects the selling price of certain items, the damage done by a handful of abilities and the aforementioned water pipe mini-game.

Also available in certain areas is the ability to go ‘Field Hunting’; a more action-orientated game play mode, Field Hunting lets Serph slash minor demons (basically balls of light)- get enough within the time limit, and you’ll battle against a special enemy, the Mitama. Mitama are strong against all but a particular elemental magic, but they are also prone to run away, so killing them isn’t easy (although of course, if you manage it, there’ll be a big reward). Equally tricky to pin down are Omoikanes, random monsters who are only weak against your characters’ human forms, but who flee at the drop of a hat- again, defeating them will net you a nice bonus.

Naturally, the game also comes with optional bosses and areas for the truly dedicated to explore, most of them hidden behind coloured walls that you need a key to pass through. It is in fact possible to complete the entire game without ever unlocking these walls, but if you want to do everything in the game, you’ll need to track down the appropriate keys.

Hunting: we eat to live, and live to eat

Battle is the flesh and blood of DDS (often quite literally) and whilst the random encounter rate is higher than most of us would have liked, the game is refreshing in that you can’t get anywhere just by spamming the attack button as you can with most games. Instead, strategy is key to almost every battle, and those who ignore it probably won’t be able to make it past the first dungeon.

Before getting into battle, it’s important to make sure that you have the right selection of skills set up; as well as basic attacks, each character has room for 4, 6 or 8 skills depending on their level, and although that might seem quite generous, you’ll have to carefully pick and choose what works best for you. Skills come in four types- physical abilities which deplete HP, magic attacks which deplete MP, auto skills which provide resistances or trigger automatically under the right circumstances and shield skills which let you void, repel or drain certain types of attack. There’s a wide variety on offer, and you’re going to have become familiar with pretty much all of them in order to survive.

When it comes to actually learning these skills, you’ll be relying on the Mantra Grid; the game’s equivalent of Final Fantasy X’s Sphere Grid. Mantra are laid out in rows according to type, with nodes adjacent to mastered Mantra available for download at save points. Downloading a mantra costs money, but you then have to accumulate AP from battle to master that Mantra and use its corresponding skills. What you end up with, therefore, is great freedom of choice in customising your characters- which can be both a blessing and a curse depending on how decisive you are.

With all that in mind, the time has finally come to discuss battle itself, and it is here where the need for strategy will become apparent. Digital Devil Saga uses what it calls the “Press Turn” system, in which your party receives one full turn per living party member (you can have one to three members at any time). The party will act in the order you set in the menu, and generally the same conditions apply to the enemy- although certain bosses do get extra turns.

In the normal run of things, every action you take will consume one turn, but- and here’s where skill really kicks in- there are some important exceptions. If your attack corresponds to an enemy’s weakness, then you’ll only consume half a turn, whilst if your attack fails or is something the enemy is strong against, you’ll consume two turns (you can also pass to only use up half a turn). If you have a spare half turn left over (represented by a flashing hexagon in the top right rather than a solid one), then the next character to go will use this as if it were a complete turn rather than a half. That last specific may not make much sense until you actually come to play, but suffice to say that targeting enemy weaknesses will result in more turns and higher damage done before the enemy gets a chance to counterattack.

Of course, attacks and skills aren’t the only options you have in battle; as well as the obvious choice of using an item, you can also switch party members in and out of battle, revert to human form (more on this in a moment) or perform a combo ability involving two or three party members. Combos are unlocked by the right combination of individual skills between characters, and whilst they take up multiple turns, they can also be useful for dealing more damage than the component skills would be able to do on their own.

When it comes to reverting to human form, you might naturally wonder why you would want to do such a thing- after all, a puny gun-wielding human is far less impressive than a demon with special skills. It’s important to be aware of the ability to transform and revert, however, for not only does it help when you get ambushed and have to begin the battle in human form, but there are also attacks that humans are immune to, enemies that are weak against guns and combos that need at least one human character in order to perform. All in all, it isn’t something you’ll be using all the time, but it’s a useful option to have.

Another aspect of the game you’ll want to be aware of is the ability to hunt your enemy- since the mastery of Mantra is depending on collecting AP, you’ll want to enhance the amount you get at the end of each battle by literally consuming your enemy. In order to achieve this, you’ll first need to frighten the enemy by attacking their weaknesses or successfully nullifying the attacks, before finishing them off with a Hunt skill that will see your characters devour an enemy demon. The reward for pulling this off is a nice big chunk of AP, but beware- the greedier you are, the more likely you’ll end up with the stomach ache status effect, which prevents you from earning any AP at all!

Quick tip: If your HP/MP are low and there’s no restore point or item vendor in sight, save your ‘Noise’ items for this situation- not only do they permanently increase your stats, but they also completely heal you. It’s also worth noting that there’s a chance of healing HP, MP or both when a character levels up.

Playable characters

Serph (Varna): As Varna, Serph is an ice element demon with a natural weakness to fire, and with the unique feature that you can customise his stat growth (as any RPG player will know, strength, vitality and magic should be prioritised over agility and luck). Serph tends to become a worthy physical attacker and mage quite naturally over the course of the game; my focus was on enhancing his natural ice abilities with earth and healing as backups, alongside boosting abilities.

Heat (Agni): A strong physical attacker at the expense of magic, in Agni form Heat is a fire element demon who is weak against ice (like you can’t guess from the name). Unfortunately, whilst he is useful early in the game, the increasing importance of magic later on forces him to take a backseat, as both Gale and Argilla are capable of becoming better with fire element magic than he is. By the end of the game, I mainly used Heat for abilities I wanted but no one else had room for, but if you wish to develop his physical and ailment inducing skills, then that would probably be the best path for him.

Argilla (Prithivi): A natural mage and earth element demon (her weakness is force, the game’s equivalent of wind), Argilla is able to become skilled in both healing and elemental magic, which is exactly what I used her for. Her physical strength may be low, but with her outstanding magic ability, she’s just what you need later in the game.

Gale (Vayu): A force element demon with a weakness to electricity, Gale doesn’t join up until partway through the game, but he does come prepared with some handy force element magic that will probably be stronger than anything you’ve taught your party up to that point. I like to use him as a backup mage with a focus on force and fire element, as well as a revival ability for when Argilla is knocked out. His stat growth tends to be reasonably balanced.

Cielo (Dyaus): The final Embryon member to join the party, Cielo is an electrical element demon with an annoying weakness against ailments (i.e. negative status effects). Although he likes to boost his luck and agility to the detriment of other stats, Cielo’s electrical attacks are second to none, and once you level him up enough to withstand enemy attacks (for a while his relatively low HP makes him a risk in high stakes battles), he can make a good secondary healer as well.

Story

Since Digital Devil Saga and its sequel are two halves of the same whole, don’t expect the story to be completed in this game- instead, it will leave you on a frustrating cliff-hanger that can only be resolved by getting to the second game as soon as possible. As far as we actually see in this game is concerned, on the largest of scales it’s another battle royale, but there’s a lot more going on in the details- just don’t expect it to make any sense just yet.

Audiovisual

As a world filled with warring tribes and hideous demons, the Junkyard isn’t really the most attractive of places- you won’t find any brightly coloured girls and so forth here. Even so, the character and location designs are well thought out, technically accomplished and brought to life through cel-shaded models. The in-game music opts for an industrial theme overall, but is surprisingly worthy as a stand-alone soundtrack, with the battle theme “Hunting” proving immensely catchy.

Final Thoughts

An unexpectedly enjoyable and addictive game, Digital Devil Saga proves that RPGs don’t have to be all about level grinding and spamming the attack button- there’s still room to create a title where skill is necessary but the learning curve isn’t too steep. Just be warned- once you start playing, you won’t ever want to stop.

To be continued…in the Digital Devil Saga 2 review

Are you ready to take to the virtual kitchen? Pick up your pots and pans, assemble your ingredients and prepare to brave the world of Cooking Mama, where no recipe is too complex and no procedure too daring in the pursuit of that perfectly baked recipe? Can you prove yourself as skilled as Mama?

Everything from farm simulations to fireworks display games has come under scrutiny here at Azure Flame, but now the time has come to take cooking out of the kitchen and put it back where it belongs- in a handheld gaming console. In fact, there is a recipe book ‘game’ for DS, but when it comes to something you can actually play, what other choice is there than the Cooking Mama series?

Rather than having any specific sort of level plan to follow, the object of Cooking Mama is simply to cook the Japanese-style recipes available to you, unlocking more in the process (there’s also an option to combine different recipes, which I like to use to formulate the most bizarre combinations in an attempt to ‘break’ the game). Each recipe is broken down into a series of processes, each of which can be considered as its own little mini-game, all of them dependent on the touch screen, and occasionally the inbuilt microphone as well. Use your stylus to chop, cut, peel, drain, grate, fry and boil- but make you sure you don’t overcook the food or run of time, because an irate Mama will brand you a failure in the kitchen.

Don’t worry if you can’t get the hang of a recipe, however, because as well as being able to make it ‘for real’, you can use practise mode to repeat any of the stages in the process that you find difficult. And getting it right isn’t just for perfectionists, because the better you do, the more points you get at the end. And if even that isn’t enough for you, you can also use the “Use Skill” option to test your limits at the different skills in the game- with some of the higher levels seeming impossible for any human to achieve. Yes, you may think you’re the fastest with the stylus, but if you’re too fast, the game won’t register it- you have to find the right balance between speed, pressure and some indefinable skill that makes the game accept your faster presses.

Even with that in the mind, the game is great fun to start with, laced with an addictiveness that will have the entire family arguing over who gets to play next. Unfortunately, as with all games of this type, Cooking Mama just doesn’t have the staying power- there’s only so many times you can chop, peel and add ingredients before it all gets boring and repetitive. And once the prospect of unlocking more recipes has died away, there’s little incentive to continue.

Although the game’s claim that you can share recipes with friends had me believing that there was a full online mode, it is somewhat misleading- all you can do is send a one-recipe demo to another DS, which in my case was a hamburger recipe with all the instructions in Italian (“Prepara una hamburger”). This is somewhat disappointing, but perhaps not unsurprising.

Final Thoughts

Although Cooking Mama starts out as being great fun, it’s a game that soon loses its lustre due to its simplistic and repetitive nature. I’m hoping that the second game has more variety, but for now this first instalment in the series is good for brief diversions, and little more.

Extra: the cooking process

Tear: Pull the leaves off your vegetable one by one, but be careful as if you do it too quickly, the game will decide you’ve failed.

Chop: Keep tapping the knife to chop- this is one of the skills where it won’t register properly if you do it too quickly.

Cut: More tedious and difficult than chopping, this time have to move the stylus up and down to make the knife saw off slices. You have be thorough to get the slice cut off, but of course time is against you.

Add: Add the ingredients in the order shown- it sounds easy and it usually is, but bear in mind that the picture of the ingredient to add starts out jumbled up and only gradually becomes clear.

Grate: Move the vegetable back and forth on the grater and tap occasionally to shake off excess- generally easy except in the higher levels of the “Use Skill” mode.

Fold dumplings: Add the filling to a sheet of pastry, then fold over and finish the edges- one of my favourite tasks for the round sheets, but for some reason it’s difficult to fold up the square ones.

Cut tendon: A memorisation game- see where the game shows you to cut the meat, and then draw lines where indicated. It’s usually easy enough outside of “Use Skill” mode, especially as if you try to cut in the wrong place, nothing will appear.

Pan-fry and stew: These two skills are Parappa the Rapper style game play, as you add ingredients, adjust the heat, stir, press, flip and blow into the microphone with precise timing. For some reason, stewing is easier than pan-frying, although a single mistake can cause failure.

Pound the rice: Hit the rice with the mallet, but make sure not to hit the hand that’s folding it, or you’ll slow right down and lose time.

Crack an egg: Hit the egg against the bowl and then pour it in- straightforward if you keep your cool.

Tenderise meat: Hit the meat with the tenderiser- easy and stress relieving.

Peel shrimp, egg, beansprout: Move the shrimp’s head up and down and then peel off the outer layer, tap the egg to remove the shell or wiggle the end of the beansprout back and forth to break off the tip. Since you usually have to prepare more than one in the time limit, you have to get into the flow of it.

Place on stick: Memorise the example kebab the game shows you, and then make one exactly the same- it’s like that old Mastermind game.

Charcoal grill: Tap the fans to move the hot air over the kebabs as they drop in, but make sure to tap them when they’re cooked just right, or they’ll go away undercooked or burnt. Fun, but a bit hectic.

Cook amount told: A simple addition and memorisation exercise- Mama gives you three numbers, and you cook their sum. All you have to do it place the right number in the pan- the actual cooking is taken care of automatically.

Peel vegetables: One of the harder skills, you have to run the potato peeler over the vegetable, but it’s very difficult to get the game to register what you’re doing- you need slow and steady strokes in the right place, and all the while time is running out. Probably my least favourite part of the game.

Bread: Roll the food in breadcrumbs, but be sure to tap it vigorously or it won’t pick up enough breadcrumbs. Easy once you get the knack of it.

Riceballs, sushi, meatballs, stuffing: Make sure to pick the right amount out of the mix for each ball by circling it with the stylus- too small or large and Mama won’t be impressed.

Peel hot: Quickly peel the skin off a potato before your hand gets too hot.

Roll out dough: Move the rolling pin back and forth to fill the frame, but don’t spill out over the edges.

Remove foam: Draw round the foam at the edge of the pot to remove it- easy at first but it gets harder in Use Skill mode.

Weigh: Weigh out the right amount by circling the excess to remove it- it sounds easy, but you have a limited amount of goes to get it right.

Sauté: There are actually two types of sautéing- one which involves constantly flipping the food to make sure it doesn’t burn and another in which you must add ingredients with different cooking times in the right order so that they’re all perfectly cooked at the same time. The first is very difficult to get right since most of the time the food burns, whilst the latter is a mix of guesswork and common sense as you’re not told how long each food takes to cook.

Oven cook: Probably the simplest process in the game- Mama tells you how long to set the oven timer, and you set it.

Drain: Tip the pan to strain the food into the sieve, but be careful- too slow and you won’t get it all done in time, too fast and the food will go flying.

Takoyaki: Pour the right amount of batter into the small holes in the special frying pan, then circle each takoyaki to take it out when cooked. A fast and hectic process.

Arrange: Arrange your finished food on the plate with any side salad or draw a picture on your omelette with sauce. It’s virtually impossible to go wrong, unless you forget to put your food on the plate.

Mix: Draw circles to spin the bowl and mix the ingredients, but make sure the gauge is in the green area when the time runs out- get too vigorous and you’ll fail as it all goes spinning out of control.

Slice: Draw a line where the game tells you to slice vegetables and meat- very easy and straightforward.

Knead: Draw lines where the arrows tell you until the meter is full- another easy process.

Coat: Roll foods in flour, rotate them in butter and then put them on a plate- multiple tasks in one process can make the timing tight on this one.

Deep fry: Drop the food in the deep fryer, wait until it floats to the top and browns a bit, and then put it on the plate. There’s no time limit so you can do one at a time (recommended), but it is possible to drop the food and lose it forever.

Many generations ago, the spirits of Mana battled against the dark witch Anise and sealed her away, before the whole thing faded into legend. Now, however, the forces of good and evil are about to do battle again, thanks to the actions of a bored king and his ambitious general. It all begins one night when a Peddan soldier named Roget and the crew of the airship Nightswan are sent to scout behind enemy lines, but when they learn that their own superiors are plotting to start a war with all the nations of the world, Roget and his allies follow their hearts and resolve to use the power of Mana to combat the encroaching evil.

With previous games in the series being skewed more towards the RPG end of the gaming spectrum, I was somewhat surprised on starting Heroes of Mana to discover that it was more of an RTS game, but that it was a rare RTS for the Nintendo DS. Once the familiarisation phase was over, however, I settled down to actually play the game- only to discover that this was the one RTS game that would actually be at about my level.

Playing the game

Heroes of Mana is spread across twenty-seven chapters, all of which, apart from the first, feature a single battle mission sandwiched in between cut scenes (chapter one is all cut scenes). Overall, the main game should only take about fifteen hours or so to finish, but there’s more to it than that- as you complete chapters 2-26, you will unlock bonus battles that play out on the same maps, but with different objectives. Since there’s no levelling up for the characters in the game, you can’t use these bonus battles to improve your innate stats, but you might be able to find rare items, as well as experience that warm sense of completion for each bonus stage you clear. And for really hardcore fans, saving clear game data after you defeat the final boss will let you replay the game in Hard Mode for added ‘enjoyment’.

Between battles and cut scenes, you occasionally get the illusion of being in control of the Nightswan on the world map; what this actually means is that you get the chance to go to menu to save, change equipment and look in the game’s reference section before tapping a button marked ‘Go!’ that automatically sends the ship to its next destination. Don’t worry, though, this isn’t the only time you can save- pressing Start during battle lets you save in one of the game’s three slots at any time.

Battle

Once you’ve waded your way through the appropriate amount of cut scenes, you’ll finally be ready for the meat of the chapter- the actual mission. Of course, before it starts, you’ll be able to pick the named characters you want to use (up to five for most missions) and set up their equipment. Characters can’t change their weapons, but they can equip one each of three different types of accessory to enhance their HP, attack power, movement speed and attack range, although it’ll be up to you to decide on the right balance for each character. Once you start acquiring Mana spirits, you can also assign them to characters, which lets a character use a particular spell in battle.

Once you’re ready, your selected named characters and the Nightswan will be sent out to the battlefield, and here the fun begins. Unlike other RTS games where you build your headquarters in one location and work outwards from there, in Heroes of Mana, the Nightswan is your base; you build facilities and summon units from within it, and then move it about the battlefield as you wish. There is, of course, a catch- only when the Nightswan is attached to an anchored hook can you summon units and gather resources, but this leaves the hook vulnerable to attack from enemy ground-based units. When the Nightswan is freely floating, however, it is equally vulnerable to missile and flying units- and if your ship goes down, it’s game over.

Although you begin the level in command of your named troops, you’re going to need more than that to cut through the enemy hordes, and so in true RTS fashion you’re going to need to gather resources, build facilities and summon up to 25 units (except, of course, for those inevitable levels where you can’t use the Nightswan and have to rely on whatever forces you’re given at the start). The first order of business is to create a gatherer unit base and summon the all-important gatherer units to collect up the two types of resource in the game- Gaia’s Stones and Treant’s Berries. Stones are needed for building facilities, whilst berries are instrumental for summoning units- and of course, each Gaia and Treant will only offer a limited amount of resources, so you must spend them wisely.

With your resources at hand, you can start building other facilities within the Nightswan- in the first level you’ll only have a ground unit base, but as the game progresses you’ll unlock progressively more facilities and stronger units to summon. The bulk of your forces will be divided into four types- ground units, heavy units, flying units and missile units, which exist in a rock-paper-scissors type hierarchy in which heavy beats ground, flying beats heavy, missile beats flying and ground beats missile (where the superior unit does double damage against and takes half damage from the inferior one). To be honest, though, up until the last few missiles where class becomes important, it is possible to just brute force your way through a level by summoning lots of heavy units- their high HP and attack makes them tanks.

As well as these staple units, you’ll also have your named characters, who count as ‘Leader Units’- not only are they outside of the hierarchy, but they’ll even strengthen any generic units they surround with their unique abilities (for example, bow user Yurchael strengthens all missile units around him). Naturally, however, they aren’t invincible- so putting them in the line of fire could lead to some casualties, with the death of Roget (and occasionally other, usually weak, characters on certain levels) resulting in game over.

The final unit type that you can take command of are special units; generic units that exist outside of the normal hierarchy and usually have unique skills- everything from moles that burrow underground to spy on the enemy to giant eyeballs that shoot out lasers falls into this category. Enemy special units can be a pain, but it is entirely possible to get through the entire game without ever using up resources on them yourself.

As well as bases for your various units, there are a few other useful facilities that will be added to your repertoire. First off is the Healing House, which slowly regenerates the HP of nearby units (provided they’re standing still), and later on you’ll get the Resurrection House, which lets you bring back any deceased named characters. Also on offer are elemental shrines, based on the Mana spirits you’ve collected. Although they’re massively expensive, these shrines let you perform powerful summons which deal significant damage to all enemies on the field- it may sound a bit of a cheap move, but given that you’ll rarely have enough resources to use it, it doesn’t actually make that much of a difference to the game as a whole.

Once your units are on the field, you can select either all units of the same type or draw around a group with the stylus to select them- you can then point to where you want them to go on the map. Of course, there will be a fog of war hiding resources and enemies in any place you haven’t explored, but you’ll still be able to see the geographical layout of the area, with the top screen displaying an overall map that can be temporarily switched to the touch screen for faster scrolling.

Unfortunately, it is here that the flaws of the game begin to assert themselves, thanks to the simple fact that unit AI is so shoddy. Asking a group of units to move from A to B may sound simple enough, but their path-finding ability is so awful that what you’ll find is that by the time they get to where they’re going, your regimented troops will have become spread out all over the map, letting the enemy pick them off at leisure. Worse yet, some of the slower units seem to delight in taking the longest route possible, usually resulting in them taking a stroll right through the middle of the enemy encampment. Meanwhile, despite his status as the one unit you absolutely must keep alive, Roget’s stupidity has to be seen to be believed- once you see his HP getting low, your natural response will be to command him to run away to safety, but the idiot blithely wanders back into the thick of battle every chance he gets- usually resulting in an impromptu game over.

Although this is probably the biggest irritation of the game, it has to be admitted that it isn’t the only one. Not only is the touch screen interface so packed with icons and units to select that it’s easy to make a mistake, but the method of either drawing round a group or selecting all units of one type still isn’t enough. Say for example that you want to summon six gatherers and have half go to Gaia and the other half to Treant- obviously you’ll have to draw round groups of three, but with them all clustering round your ship when first gathered, it’ll be hard to pick them out. And since ally units can’t move through each other, build-ups and logjams in the vicinity of your ship occur all too often.

Still, where with a little perseverance in selection you can at least see the status of your units, when it comes to the enemy, all you get is a simple bar indicating their HP- fair enough, you might think, except that how are you supposed to use the unit type hierarchy if you don’t even know what you’re up against? Yes, there is a bestiary in the game, but since you can only look at it outside of battle, it’s hardly the most helpful of reference materials.

Given that all these problems can hinder game play somewhat, it’s probably a relief to learn that Heroes of Mana is largely rather easy- in fact, if the AI hadn’t been so poorly programmed, it would be a cakewalk. As it stands, the increasing complexity of maps and difficulty of getting your units to listen to you does introduce a steady learning curve into the game, with early missions being so easy that at times you can let your characters defeat all the enemies off screen without even looking at them and later ones requiring much more in the way of thought. For the truly dedicated, however, you can unlock Hard Mode by clearing the game once; or use the DS Wi-Fi connection to go online, download missions and compare your ranking with other players.

Story

As far as story goes, Heroes of Mana is one of those games that seems to have been written by committee, with each member contributing their own idea- resulting in an aggressive country that somehow takes over the entire world before withdrawing, an evil general with a tragic past, a bored king and various other plot twists thrown in here and there. The early chapters all follow a depressingly standard pattern in which you complete the mission, only for enemy reinforcements to show up, forcing some deus ex machina to save you. Just as this becomes hilariously predictable, however, the story starts throw in so many half-baked twists that you almost long for the old days.

As far as characters go, pretty much everyone who joins your party is a one-dimensional personality, and whilst some like Valda and Falcon at least join Roget in being important to the story, others like Gemière and D’Kelli are pretty much relegated to expressing themselves via one-liners in cut scenes. Series enthusiasts will, however, be interested to learn that this game is a prequel to Seiken Densetsu 3.

Audiovisual

Visually, Heroes of Mana opts for the tried-and-true method of 2D sprites on an isometric background, resulting in an attractive and pleasing look by handheld standards. Character designs are handled by Ryoma Ito of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance fame, and whilst they aren’t the most complex or aesthetically pleasing pieces to come out of the Square Enix stable, they are still solid and technically sound. The same can be said of the background music, which overall does the job and is decent enough, but isn’t something that will stick in your head or encourage you to acquire the soundtrack.

Final Thoughts

A largely enjoyable and diverting RTS title for DS, Heroes of Mana is let down by its one major flaw- the element of challenge comes less from actual intended difficulty than from a simple case of shoddy AI programming. It won’t satisfy the appetite of hardcore RTS fans, but if you’re the sort of person who wanted to get into the genre and found the more popular titles a bit too challenging, then this is the game for you.

In the town of Zey Meruze, childhood friends Edge Vanhite and Iris Fortner work as Raiders, travelling to Alterworlds to complete quests and earn a living. It’s a standard occupation for the people of the city, but unlike all the others, Iris is one of the last few alchemists in the world, and owner of a mystical book known as the Escalario- a tome, which, when completed, is said to grant the owner any wish. So when pieces of the Escalario begin appearing around the world, Iris and Edge are quick to pursue them, blissfully unaware that a darker force is also awakening.

With Atelier Iris offering such an immersive world and its sequel delivering vastly improved game play, there was no doubt that the series had me hooked, and so even when I heard that Grand Phantasm was a victim of ‘third game syndrome’, there was no way I couldn’t add it to my collection. And indeed, whilst the game does suffer a lot from repetitiveness, it somehow proved an addictive experience anyway.

The world of Atelier Iris 3

In Atelier Iris 3, you take on the role of Edge, a young Raider based in Zey Meruze, which, as with Kavoc in AI1, becomes your base for the entire game. A city so large that you’ll need to rely on the map and the local ferry boat to traverse until you get used to the layout, Zey Meruze is the hub of the game, containing various shops, NPCs, your workshop, the Guild (more on that in a moment) and the only save point in the game. Yes, that’s right, there’s only one location in which you can save, although as the game is largely easy, this isn’t as much of a problem as it might sound.

At the workshop

As your base of operations, the workshop (or atelier, if you prefer), is the place where you can save your game, perform alchemy and change job class via the Blades system, all of which will be explained below. Unlike the previous two Atelier Iris games, alchemy no longer involves collecting Elements; instead, it is entirely about item synthesis. Recipes can be learned either by buying them from shops, collecting them as rewards for quests, finding them in treasure chests, or by Iris receiving inspiration when she visits certain locations. The more new items Iris creates, the more her alchemy level will increase, which in turn will cause her to get inspiration from more places (it should be noted that there is a glitch where Iris’ alchemy level can carry over to a new game if you start it on the same memory card without switching off the power after quitting your old game- this also causes related scenes to trigger too early in the game). As before, substituting ingredients in a recipe can result in a new item being created, and as with AI2, it will always be clear when this is going to happen.

The other main function of your workshop is the ability to change Blades, the game’s job class/Dressphere system. Although Iris cannot use it, both Edge and Nell (the game’s third playable character) are able to switch Blades once Iris starts making pacts with different Mana. Each time a Mana is revealed after defeating certain bosses, either Edge or Nell will gain the ability to equip a new Blade in addition to their normal form. Each Blade confers its own stats and special abilities, which can be learned by accumulating Blades Points (BP) in battle, but as they can only be changed at the workshop, you can’t switch Blades on the fly in dungeons if you find you’ve come ill-prepared.

The Guild

Like Arc the Lad 3, the main force driving the plot forward in AI3 is accepting quests at the local guild, which take the form of defeating specific monsters, collecting or synthesising items or mediating between NPCs- all the usual RPG staples. Rewards come in the form of money, items and quest points, which are needed to level up your rank, thus unlocking more quests. There’s no limit to the amount of quests you can have ongoing at the same time, but whilst most only appear once in the game and give you unlimited chances to finish them, a few are repeatable and will crop up again and again, whilst others must be completed within a certain number of visits to the relevant dungeon.

As you can imagine, what this all adds up to is a formula that is either repetitive or addictive, depending on your mood. There are times when you’ll simply tire of doing the same old routine over and over again, but equally there are points when the satisfaction of completing a quest leads you to want to keep taking on just one more. In short, it isn’t innovative or mind-blowing, but if you’re in the right frame of mind, then it does have its own appeal.

As well as quests, each of the game’s ten chapters concludes with a mission which is usually triggered when you rank up (except in the case of going to face the final boss), during which time all quests are put on hold and advancing the story is all that matters. In between cut scenes you’ll be given a place to go, usually with the aim of defeating a boss and collecting a piece of the Escalario. Only when the mission is complete can a new chapter begin and the routine of collecting quests pick up where it left off.

Alterworlds

Instead of the usual dungeons and other field locations, the game play of Atelier Iris 3 takes place in Alterworlds, alternative worlds that can be entered via portals for limited periods of time. Excluding the final dungeon (which is just an amalgam of all previous locations anyway), there are actually only five Alterworlds to be unlocked in the entire game, which means you will be visiting the same areas again…and again…and again- the only consolation being that new parts of them will be unlocked as the game progresses. Worse yet, since the time you can spend in each Alterworld is finite before you get sent home again, if you can’t find what you’re looking for in one visit, you’ll have to go back and work your way through from the entrance again. Fortunately, to help you navigate through dungeons that much more quickly, the game provides a map of the area that fills in as you explore; the only trouble is that each screen is depicted as a basic square, so any twists and turns on the actual screen are not depicted, making the map a little confusing in the more complex areas.

Although the Action Dial from the first game has finally made a return, it is rather limited compared to the original version- for much of the game, the only action available to you is a simple sword slash, with a flamethrower and hammer being added later on. Between them, these three actions enable you to cut grass, smash rocks and crystals, melt ice and even knock items and enemies down from trees.

In contrast to the previous two games, enemy encounters are no longer random- instead, enemy groups are represented by Puni-esque blobs moving about the field. Blue blobs represent weak enemies that can be destroyed simply with a sword slash, white blobs are considered to be equal to your party in strength, and red blobs are stronger than your party (there are also purple and large red blobs that correspond to enemies and bosses that only appear during certain quests). Even though you repeatedly visit the same few areas, enemies don’t level up with you, resulting in an increasing number of blue blobs as you level up.

In what is gradually becoming RPG tradition, Alterworlds also contain fishing spots, so that once you earn a rod of your own, you can try to land a big catch. Fortunately, fishing is much less painful than it is in other games, consisting of you merely pressing X whilst the moving cursor is in the ‘Success’ portion of the fishing bar to land anything from a fish to a boot- or even a monster. As well as fishing, there are also spots where you can plant Mysterious Seeds and wait for them to grow into flowers or vegetable produce.

Once you’ve either run out of time, been killed in non-story battle or simply chosen to go back home, you’ll be transported back to your workshop and automatically healed. Before you go, any crystals collected and special achievements made (such as sword slashing ten enemies, fishing five times or not looking at the map at all) will be totted up, and you will be awarded points towards a cumulative score. As your score slowly builds up over the course of the game, you will receive bonus items at 1000, 3000, 5000, 7000 and 10,000 points.

• Ancient Forest of Valtessa: The first and most basic Alterworld, the Ancient Forest is highly straightforward and home to the weakest enemies. Partway through the game, the Forest Depths are opened up, which are ever so slightly tougher.
• Grimoire Castle: This period castle has several floors, a few annoying switches and a library on the third floor which is home to the ghost Pamela. Once you gain the flamethrower, you can melt away the ice and enter the freezer and the basement, which leads to the Squawk Village. The basement area is quite annoying to navigate, but the rest of the castle is reasonably straightforward.
• Posporia Battlegrounds: The homeland and battleground of the fairies and Kuma, Posporia can be a pain to get around due to each side blocking the way whenever they advance on their opponents. Fortunately, there are cannons to aid transfer from one side of Posporia to the other, but it can still be a pain to get around. Later in the game, the Great Tree becomes accessible.
• Crystal Valley of Dakascus: A large crystalline area with a well laid-out map and soothing background music in 3/4 time, the Crystal Valley is home to the Pengies, Gust’s take on Nippon Ichi’s Prinnies. Over the course of the game, the East, West, North and Celestial Rookery areas become available.
• Grand Gardens of Ishtar: Possibly the most frustrating location of all, Ishtar consists of three terraces, connected by teleports and large drops down that can be a pain to navigate (even the map isn’t a great help since you still have to remember which teleport takes you where). At one point in the game, you get the slightly pointless ability to use Lithographs, which enables you to change time for a limited effect on the map (for example, going to the past will rejuvenate a lake that dried up years ago, whilst going to the future means that a tree blocking your way will finally have been cut down).

Once the game is complete, you can also save clear game data which will unlock an Extras section in the game menu with BGM, character profiles and completed quest information. The latter two can be looked up in-game in the reference section anyway, along a bestiary, alchemy list and tutorial section.

Battle

Before you get into battle, it’s important to make sure you’re properly equipped for the trials ahead- not just with Blades, but with weapons and armour. As well as weapons specific to their Blades and armour specific to the character, each character can be equipped with up to two accessories that either boosts their stats or provides them with additional skills. Unlike AI2, characters can no longer permanently learn skills by keeping accessories equipped for a certain period of time- instead, you can only access a skill when that accessory is equipped. Also, there are no skills to be learned from equipping weapons- weapon synthesis is now as simple as Iris whipping up a new recipe in the workshop.

Instead of the “Active Cost Turn Battle” system in Atelier Iris 2, AI3 tweaks battle a little and relies on the “Active Cost Card Battle” system, which basically means that instead of having characters move along a time bar until they reach the end and take their turn, they now move along a line of cards until they reach the end and take their turn. Isn’t progress great?

Okay, to be fair, there are some other changes, and discussing them is just what this section is about. Charge Attacks and Break Attacks are gone, replaced by the standard attack command, and similarly there is no ‘Break’ section in the card bar- you can still Break (stun) an enemy, but it now just happens randomly. It is, however, also possible to knock an enemy back along the bar with any special skills marked “Knock back”. As with AI2, there are also attacks that can move independently along the bar until they take their turn, but now there is a wider variety than just “specials that appear five times and disappear”- you can have skills that go round the bar for a set number of turns before disappearing, or ones that immediately appear multiple times in the card bar, with each instance disappearing as soon as it gets its turn. Clear as mud, I know, but the good news is that there is an ability that clears the card bar of all these potentially irritating special attacks.

As far as special abilities go, the Skill Gauge is back, and it works much the same as before in that normal attacks charge it up, and special attacks use it up. The main difference is that the gauge no longer automatically starts at 1 at the beginning of each battle- instead, the level of the gauges carries over from one battle to the next, and it even slowly increases whilst you’re exploring the Alterworld. It is also worth paying attention to special abilities, as some of them rely on items, and the fact that they may be using up your precious stock isn’t always readily apparent.

One completely new addition to the game comes in the form of the Burst Gauge (yep, the designers really couldn’t get enough of gauges), a feature which is quite often the difference between a battle being easy or hard. The Burst Gauge increases by one point for every hit you score on the enemy (halved if the enemy is resistant to your attack, doubled if it is weak against it) and decreases each time your characters take damage (in order to better fill the Burst Gauge, you can equip weapons that do more hits per turn- their overall damage for a given strength will still be the same as a 1-hit weapon, but they fill up the Burst Gauge that much more). If you can manage to completely fill the gauge, you will enter Burst Mode, whereupon all enemies will be stunned for a short period of time, the Skill Gauge will fill up to 9, and the effectiveness of all your attacks will be greatly increased. Time it right, and your characters will be able to inflict massive amounts of damage, rendering most enemies little more than mincemeat.

In fact, like the other Atelier Iris games, overall the difficulty level isn’t much to boast about it- provided you work your way through all the quests presented, even the final boss isn’t that much of a big deal- in fact, the optional bosses Shadowstalker and *Mini-puni* (it looks just like the weakest enemy in the game, but packs a punch) present more of a challenge due to their ability to summon copies of themselves.

Playable characters

One of the biggest disappointments of Atelier Iris 3 is that there are only ever three playable characters- something of a shame when there are so many great NPCs in the game that you just wish you could recruit.

Edge

• Normal: In his normal form, Edge is the usual balanced swordsman type- a frontline attacker who specialises in Fire element and multi-hit abilities. It’s a solid starting form which will serve you well at the beginning of the game.
• Plua: With Plua’s Blades, Edge transforms into a ninja- weaker than normal, but with high speed and excellent evasion. His most reliable attack here is a quick strike which lets him take another turn directly after it is executed.
• Jiptus: In contrast, Jiptus’ Blades make Edge strong but slow, but they are arguably the best form for most occasions. As well as an ability that lets him drain a massive chunk of enemy HP to restore his own, Jiptus gives Edge the killer Soul Burst skill, which is an unstoppable killer move when used in Burst Mode with the Skill Gauge at maximum.
• Fanatos: With Fanatos, Edge transforms into a spiky-haired, winged warrior who uses books to call down wrath upon the enemy. He does have some decent moves in this form, but nothing outstanding.
• Luplus: Although Luplus can only be gained by fighting an optional boss, it is well worth the effort, as this is Edge’s only real option for becoming a mage type character with rare time-based skills. As well as being able to clear off any annoying recurring enemy attacks, Luplus enables Edge to slow down the enemy with Slow and knock them back with Cosmic Bane.

Iris

Unlike the others, Iris cannot change Blades; instead, she remains a staff-using alchemist throughout. Like Viese and Klein before her, Iris’ attacks are magical rather than physical, with Elemental Conversion hitting an enemy multiple times for significant damage, and Mana Storm being a great crowd-clearer. Iris can also summon any of the Mana she has made a pact with, and whilst this offers a useful set of skills, it does highlight the elemental imbalances that have always plagued the series. This time around, elements have been reduced to just Fire, Ice and Lightning, but whilst there has been an effort to reduce Fire’s dominance in the skill set, for some reason there is no Fire Mana, just one of the many Mana who don’t get to appear in this game.

Also, unlike her predecessors, Iris is unable to synthesis Mana Items during battle; instead she and the other characters can only use Mana Items from stock.

Nell

• Normal: In her normal form, Nell is a solid physical attacker who relies on a rapier for sharp, piercing attacks. A useful choice in areas where enemies are magic-tolerant, plus her weapons usually have plenty of hits- perfect for building up the Burst Gauge.
• Nymph: A healing form, Nymph’s Blades turn Nell into a mage who can use her Healing Echo to make Mana Items more effective (for example, a simple Heal Jar will heal the entire party for three turns). A useful form until you can synthesise accessories with powerful healing and resurrection spells.
• Siren: With Siren’s Blades, Nell is again a mage, but this time her skill set is rather different- her special abilities mainly rely on summoning Kobolds and forest creatures to attack the enemy, whilst she also has Norn’s skill of being able to turn the enemy into candy- a vital ability if you wish to collect items such as Vanilla Syrup and Chaos Candy for quests.
• Diemia: A souped-up alternative to Nell’s normal form, Diemia transforms her into a lance-wielding physical attacker. Probably the most useful form if you wish to use Nell as a warrior rather than a mage, Diemia even comes equipped with a skill that lets her turn her lance into a giant rocket and launch it at the enemy.
• Faustus: The Pokemon-esque Dream Mana enables Nell to turn into a doll-wielding magical attacker- she may look a little strange, but the Chomp ability, which has a high probability of causing instant death to regular enemies, is a valuable addition to her arsenal.

Story

With the driving force behind the story involving collecting parts of a mystical book and combating an evil force that wishes to end the world, Atelier Iris 3 doesn’t have much in the way of originality to offer on the story front, although with the fate of one character resting on whether the player gets the game’s good and bad ending, there is an incentive to work through the game properly.

Although it never really recreates the feeling of being part of the game that AI1 had, the fact that you have so few places to visit does give you sense of ‘getting to know’ the NPCs, simply because they appear so much. From slowly making friends with 12-year-old tsundere receptionist Phenyl to helping fellow Raiders get back on their feet, you’ll have plenty of exposure to all named characters.

Audiovisual

Again, Atelier Iris 3 is much the same as its predecessors in terms of both graphics and music, although the difference in quality between the attractive character designs and their corresponding sprites is more noticeable, whilst there is a lot of repetition in the game’s soundtrack. The English dub is even less bearable than usual due to all the bizarre accents the Vas use, but fortunately the original Japanese audio has been retained.

Final Thoughts

With its quest based system and lack of dungeons to explore, Atelier Iris 3 is most certainly a repetitive game, and for that reason everyone’s mileage for it will differ. The relative ease of the game means that it’s easy to make significant progress whilst you’re still in the addictive phase, but if you let it drag on for too long, it will inevitably become boring. Even so, if you’re an Atelier fan, you won’t want to miss out on adding this to your collection.