Another blog brought to you by the letter S. As in "Oh shi-"
By Video_Game_King 16 Comments
Samurai Deeper Kyo
( Wow, this one's obscure, even by my standards.) How obscure? Definitely more obscure than that music, but I had to create the page for it because I was the only person on the site who knew the game existed. I imagine that about five of you have done that and will yell at me about how that doesn't make the game obscure. To that, I say this: Mystic Dragoons. How do you combat that obscurity? Wait, how did I go that long without saying anything of value about the game? Eh, I'll just end it by saying that it's a Samurai Shodown-esque fighting game, and pretend that this paragraph has substance.Hold on, I remember why I didn't put anything meaningful in that last part: because I don't know shit about Samurai Deeper Kyo! Remember that Yu-Gi-Oh thing in my last blog? Well, that's about as far as my anime experience stretches. However, I have a buttload of Wikipedia experience, and it told me that the series is about somebody trapped in their rival's body, and they're trying to get out or something. Also, it takes place around Nobunaga times, meaning he's a character in the game, for whatever reason. Not that it matters; you can't play as him, and the story doesn't really mean anything. Yes, there's a story mode in this game, and while I still don't know how to say "Video Game King" in Japanese without it sounding stupid (with my understanding, it'd probably end like this), I did begin to notice patterns. Like how all dialogue seems to be made up of pre-recorded one-liners matched up in weird ways. Don't believe me? I'd link to a video on YouTube, but I doubt that they're there, so instead, you get a beheading.
.......Moving on, this game has something that most fighting games don't: a ridiculously unbalanced cast. Wait, not that; half the fighting games out there have unbalanced characters. I meant to say "assists." You know, like in Marvel vs. Capcom, only without the parts I liked in Marvel vs. Capcom. Explanation: you never summon your assists; they just kinda come when the bar fills up. At that point, they walk in, slash the opponent, and walk away, like they're looking for their car keys and decided to slice that guy up because they saw Bender's Game. (Hey, that joke's as obscure as the game!) There's no strategy to them, since you don't choose which ones you use, nor do they contribute well to combos most of the time, since if your guy comes out, chances are that the other guy's guy will come out around the same time. Guy. If you're looking to build combos, wait for your opponent to block (if it's the AI, they will; they love spam). Not only will it fill up your special meter, it'll also let you build up combos easier, if that makes sense. There's only so much they can take before they fuck up, and that's when you strike. Unless you chose Yuya, or anybody else who relies on ranged attacks; then you're fucked. I should probably mention that the cast isn't exactly well balanced; Yuya and some other characters start the match dead, while others, like Sesuka, can kick ass so much that they wear socks made of toilet paper so that their feet aren't always smelling like shit. It's not like the multiplayer would balance out; it's just that the characters don't balance well. Ending on that note, I give Samurai Deeper Kyo the Why did I Give it a 6.8 Award.
Review Synopsis
- I couldn't understand the story, but I didn't need to; it looks like it's the same crap as always.
- Wow, this is actually a bare-bones games. And people insult Super Smash Bros games for being simplistic...
- Not a lot of thought went into this.
Continuing the theme of shit people have known about for years, Nostalgia Critic! The only reason I'm posting him is because he triggered one of my phantom memories. I'd go into detail about that, but instead, I'll post a video that isn't the one that triggered the memory. Why? Because I know for a fact that I had this movie as a kid. That's why my childhood sucks.
Secret of the Stars
( Wait, why'd I play this game again?) I can't come up with any reason whatsoever why I should have played this game. It's not even like Brave Fencer Musashi, where people thought the game was good (even though I know it to be crap); nobody I know has had good things to say about the game, and I'm not the type of person who enjoys bad games ironically. Why? Because I know what bad is: unenjoyable. Also, this game. This game isn't too good, either. 
Want it to get weirder? Well, there's this video, but there's weirder shit yet: there's a town on the UFO. Also, you un-Midas a guy with a magic mustache, but back on topic, you don't find out about the UFO part until the end of the game, which is weird, since that particular town is pretty big to the game. It houses item storage, some important characters, and......what was it.......*remembers*....right, there's a town-building mechanic. Sort of. At certain points in the plot, you gather some guys to build your town, and it grows larger. That's it. No customization or anything, just a bigger town over time. Your reward? Some assholes kick you out for five minutes. Like the story, it gets worse: I smell potential for a glitch, even though I never bothered testing it out. My theory: leave one of your parties in town while the other gets kicked out. Nothing good can come from that. Wait, what's that? You didn't know that this game allowed you to switch parties? You're lucky; you get to hear me tell you about it. You didn't have to play the game to figure that shit out. Lucky bastard.
Of course, you have two parties, so you could always make the dungeons easier by exploiting the random number generator in the most obvious of ways. I'd say that it makes the game easier, but it doesn't, since the difficulty curve's still gonna go insane. Notice how I said "still", implying that even without RNG abuse that would make Devil Survivor blush, the game still has a weird difficulty curve. The first boss you see in the game becomes a regularly recurring enemy in five minutes, while opening a nearby bridge leads you to believe that it was up in the first place because it led to Mordor. Obviously, this means much more grinding than you'd think, probably because there are only about zero inns in the entire game. If they're in any towns, then they're usually well-hidden, since they never have an "Inn" sign on the front. Of course, you have to stay out more often because of this, making the grinding somewhat longer than it needs to be, like an incompetent version of Paladin's Quest or Caravan Heart. Oh, and did I mention that Kustera's party members aren't as obvious as the Aqutallions and their troll thing? Unless you pray to Gam-Fakcs, God of FAQs, the Kustera party's going solo, meaning A LOT more grinding.
This would probably be a good time to mention the combat, but there's not much to mention. It's regular turn based with no frills except for an auto function. Prepare to become friends with it, because you're gonna use it a lot. Even then, though, you'll get more repetition from it than you would a Scooby Doo DVD box set; the only saving grace comes later in the game, in the form of combination magic. You choose two magic spells, combine them, and do something. That's all there is to it, and to be honest, I only used two combination spells throughout the entire game. That can't be good. You know, like this game. I could give you some more reasons as to why the game isn't good (the graphics aren't good, everything looks the same, some random shit, it's short, etc.), and while I just did, I feel like I should end this game on the How Do People Like Bad Games Award. Seriously, how do people tolerate such bad games?
Review Synopsis
- The story? What story?
- You control two parties throughout the game, and the only use of the second one is to drag the game down.
- Otherwise, it's a perfectly generic piece of crap.