@MikeHawk said:
@Nottle said:
Also this game has been out for a while on the DS. How did that game review?
Apparently a 38/40 by Famitsu, in which the reviewer(s) said: "The animation, music, and story all combine together at a high level to keep the player constantly excited. The way the game links up with the book is innovative, and there's a lot of backdrop that allows you to understand the story on a deep level."
I own the DS version and played through about 20 hours of it before life kind of made me forget about it. I do intend to get back to it at some point, and while I wouldn't rate it as highly as Famitsu personally, up until the point where I stopped, I was enjoying my time with it. The gameplay is simple, with the battle system being a pretty simple combination of SRPG mechanics (you have a 3x3 grid and your proximity to your enemies affects how much damage you dish out and receive) and Pokemon-style monster-gathering. It's absolutely fine for what it is, but it's not particularly mind-blowing either. I do agree with the Famitsu review, though, in that the art, music, and book are what really make the DS version shine. You can tell that, on Ghibli's end, it was't just a typical contract job and that they put a lot of time and effort into their designs and soundtrack. The latter in particular deserves to be commended because of Joe Hisaishi's involvement and, well, it's generally unfair to compare typical game music to what he churns out and that remains true with the DS game as well. The book it also comes with is beautiful; it's basically a hardcover, 200-plus-page strategy guide printed on a specially textured paper that makes it feel old. Paging through it can be kind of a hassle in the middle of the story when you're asked to use it for story reasons, but it naturally has an appendix that minimizes that issue to the best of its ability. I'm bummed that the PS3 version seems to just utilize a glorified in-game PDF, since the book really is just great to hold and page through. Were it not for the language barrier, I'd heartily recommend buying the game just to see what it all looks like first-hand; I have no idea if online places have discounted it, but it's a pretty cheap game here in Japan anymore (I got my copy for about $20), so if you were really interested despite that, you could probably find some place that'd sell it for that cheap.
But my god, that soundtrack. It goes a long way to adding to the sense of adventure in the game, especially this piece that I've embedded. Very beautiful surprise when I heard it for the first time early on. I believe it's also in the PS3 version, too, but that's probably to be expected.
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