Fig's Gaming (And Other Stuff) Corner

I'm working on a new area of my island, and I need two things: Someone that can make an obstacle course map (not a full-blown maze, but enough that it's possible but not incredibly easy to cross within three minutes), and someone to make a puzzle.

 This is the basic idea of the puzzle. There will be a 5x5 grid of the stone number tiles, with different numbers on the tiles. When a tile is stepped on, the number will be decreased by 1. To win, every tile must be reduced to zero (a blank tile). However, once a tile is reduced to zero, it can't be touched again. If the player steps on a zero tile, they have to restart the puzzle. (It's also restarted if they recall out and return) There will be a single entrance into the grid, and there won't be any walkable edges outside the grid, meaning all of the outside tiles (excluding the entrance one) have walls right next to them.

 I can do all the variable, linking, and map parts of setting up the puzzle, but I need someone to create the map itself, the layout of the puzzle. I'm not good at creating puzzles, but I'm just fine with the variable parts of setting it up.

 If you're interested in helping me with either of these things, please send me a PO. I'll consider anyone that asks to help, as long as the overall map quality is good. If I can't manage to get you a monetary or item reward, or you don't want those things, I can definitely promise you a cameo NPC or something of that nature on my island. 

  Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney is a game made by Capcom. It was first released for the GameBoy Advance in 2001 in Japan only, but was remade for the DS and translated into English in 2005. The game is essentially a point-and-click text-based adventure. This may sound like a turn-off to some people, but it's actually an incredibly compelling game. It has an excellent story and enjoyable mechanics, plus highly memorable characters and quite a bit of quirky humor, despite the dark themes (every case involves murder) present throughout the game.

  I'm not going to go into a lot of detail about the story or characters, because with a game like this you absolutely do not want spoilers. Some of the main characters are Phoenix Wright, a defense attorney that is just starting out (the tutorial level is his first case); Mia Fey, Phoenix's mentor; Maya Fey, Mia's little sister and Phoenix's assistant; Miles Edgeworth, a ruthless prosecutor; and Detective Dick Gumshoe, a detective that works very closely with Edgeworth.

  As I already said, every character is memorable. There's so much witty text throughout the game, and a lot of it is just plain hilarious. The story is also incredibly well-done. Each chapter starts out in a way that doesn't look that interesting, but a short way into it you'll be sucked into the world of Phoenix Wright, constantly thinking about who did it and why. I actually had a dream about this game once after playing half a case right before going to sleep.

  The gameplay is broken up into two main segments: investigations and trials. In the investigations you'll explore the crime scenes and other locales related to the case at hand, gathering evidence and clues, as well as speaking with characters involved in the case in one way or another. After you finish your investigation, you head to trial and cross-examine the witnesses called on by the prosecution, pressing them for details and presenting evidence that contradicts their testimonies. Some of the things you look for are just stupidly obvious, while others are incredibly obscure. The thing I like about this, though, is that if you spot an obscure or vague contradiction without relying on dumb luck, it gives you a great feeling about your own intellect. You have to really think over how the testimony contradicts a piece of evidence before you present it, because if you're wrong you receive a penalty. Five penalties and the trial ends, with your client being declared guilty. This is basically a Game Over, and you have to start from your last save (almost always directly before the trial).

  The execution of the story is just so well-done. Like I said earlier, you do not want someone to spoil any part of this game for you. It just ruins an amazingly enjoyable experience. When you're in court and nail a witness, or find a chain of contradictions, making the prosecution go "Mmph!" in frustration, annoyance, shock, or some combination of the three, it's a fantastic feeling. It actually makes me smile, without trying to in any way.

  I give this game a 9.4 out of 10. It's an incredibly enjoyable and unique experience playing as a defense attorney, and the story, characters and humor are so well-done that it's a blast to play through this game. The only thing I dislike is that it has no replayability whatsoever; there's a specific dialogue tree used to get through the game, and the script has to be followed exactly. There is no flexibility on how you get through the game, meaning once you've beaten it once there's not much reason to play it again, unless you got amnesia and forgot every last detail of the game. Now that it's been out for five years you can most likely get a bargain on this game if you can find it used. I very highly recommend this title to all DS owners. Give it a try, you won't be disappointed.

  Tales of Phantasia is the first game in Namco's now well-known Tales series. It was originally released in Japan in 1995, but never hit Western shores in this form. However, fans translated the entire game by hacking a ROM image of the cartridge. It was remade for the PlayStation One in 1998, but still didn't receive an English localization, until its next remake for the GBA in 2006. It was finally localized and released in English three years after the GBA remake was released in Japan. The game is slated to be remade yet again for the PlayStation Portable.

  The game's main character is Cress Albane, son of Miguel and Maria Albane. The story starts with him heading to the nearby forest go hunting with his close friend, Chester Burklight. They return a short time later after capturing a large boar, only to find their hometown of Toltus completely destroyed. Not a single person in the village at the time survived the attack. With her dying breath, Maria Albane tells her son to stay with his uncle in the town of Euclid to the north, and protect the pendant he was given by his father earlier that day, as it was the reason the town was attacked.

  The Tales series uses a unique battle system for RPGs. It's not a full action RPG, as it has random encounters and the like, but the battle system is very action-oriented. You control one of the characters in your party, and the others (up to 4 characters can be in a party) are controlled by the AI. You can assign the AI to use a certain broad strategy, and designate which skills they should and shouldn't use. If you want to, you can leave all 4 characters on AI control and watch them fight, but for your own good, you should control at least one. It's fairly obvious that you're expected to control Cress the entire game, but it is an option to control the others.

  The game has an intriguing story, but there are a few things that bug me. There are way too many minor characters, and some of them are set up to look like they should be major. For example, early in the game is an antagonist that attempts (and succeeds) to revive the evil king from 100 years ago. You literally know his name for about five seconds before he's killed and never seen or mentioned again, and you'll be aware of his existence for approximately twenty minutes before this event. There are a lot of characters like this, but he's probably the most extreme example of it. There are plenty of good points about the story, though. It's nice to see an RPG do a time-travel story well. It's not as epic as the obvious one, Chrono Trigger, but it's not an abomination either. You don't get to freely travel between ages, either, so you'd better make sure you got everything in the past before you leave that time period for good.

  Anyway, the story revolves around Cress and his companions trying to defeat the evil king Dhaos, who essentially threatened to conquer the world one hundred years ago, until a party of four imprisoned him. His seal was broken, and to save them, Cress and Mint, one of his first allies, are thrown into that time period for two main purposes: To gather information on magic, and defeat Dhaos for good in the past, preventing him from being awakened in the present. Sometimes the story just goes way too fast. Right when you find out Dhaos ever existed, BAM! You better go find a magic user so you can kill him. That kind of awkward rushing happens quite a bit throughout the game. It is good for keeping the story from going too slow, though. There's one thing worse than an RPG with a rushed story, and that's one with a frustratingly slow story.

  The gameplay is very strong. The battle system is often incredibly fun, but certain dungeons (I'm looking at you, Morlia Mineshaft) have frustratingly high encounter rates, and usually, every battle is the exact same set and formation of enemies. This causes it to grow old quickly. Plus, to fight effectively, Cress needs to use his skills, which drain TP (basically the same as the average RPG's MP) absurdly fast. You'll be using TP-restoring items on Cress far more than any magic user in your party. At the end of the battle, everyone restores a small fraction of their max TP, but this doesn't help much when Cress regains 10 TP after using about 30-50 to defeat the enemies.

  Now, one system I like is the Master Skill system, where you can find skill scrolls that let you use a combination of two skills as one extra powerful ability. To use these skills, however, you need to master both skills that are combined together. To master a skill you have to execute it in battle 100 times. First, it would be nice if either the number was lower, or different skills needed to be used different amounts of times. Second, because of how much TP skills consume, the only truly effective way to master skills is to wander outside towns, grinding by defeating the enemies with the skill you want to master and nothing else, then retreating to the inn when your TP is critical. Regardless of this annoyance, it does well to keep you leveled and wealthy. I like the fact that I can usually equip everyone in the party with the best items available in a town's shop as soon as I reach it. Also, the way you master skills to learn double skills feels like a nice reward: stick to training up a certain skill you like and you get a stronger one that's almost the same as the one you were using. This way, any play style you like can be just as strong as any other because skills get upgrades keeping them balanced in power.

  Generally, dungeons have very nice layouts, varied and not too long, with the occasional new mechanic, and plentiful puzzles. Also, bosses are usually not that tough to beat, but some have odd gimmicks that make them unique. For example, one boss, a sorceress of some type, has two bodyguards that will keep Cress occupied. To survive, your best bet is to manually order your casters to hit her, interrupting all her spells and keeping her from ever landing a hit while Cress pounds away on the bodyguards. Finding a good strategy to defeat the tough bosses is one of the most enjoyable parts of the game, but it bothers me when the entire strategy to defeating a boss is "press the A and B buttons, a lot". The truly hard bosses are few and far between.

  Now I think I've finally finished discussing this game. A very unique RPG for its time, and some could say it's one of the fathers of today's popular action-RPG genre. I'd rate it an 8.8 out of 10 overall. It has nice, colorful 16-bit graphics, a great soundtrack, voiceovers used in battles (incredibly rare in 16-bit games) and a very fun battle system that was highly unique when it was released. If you own a DS or an old GBA, you should search the internet and your local game store for this gem of an RPG, because despite its annoyances and flaws, it's very worth your time and monies. If you own a PSP, be on the lookout for the upcoming remake with updated graphics, which will hopefully be translated into English in a year or two.