Thursday 7 June 2018

Game #36 Complete - Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II

Dragon Ball Z: The Legacy of Goku II is a top down action RPG based on the very popular Dragon Ball Z manga/anime/general pop cultural phenomenon. DBZ was pretty much at its height when the GBA was released, and quite a few DBZ games made it onto the GBA. Only 3 made it into the challenge list: this game, Dragon Ball Advanced Adventure (an action platformer based on the original Dragon Ball i.e. young Goku's adventures), and Dragon Ball Z Supersonic Warriors(a 2d fighting game).

As you may have guessed from the title, Legacy of Goku 2 is a sequel to another GBA title, Legacy of Goku. There was also a third game, Buu's Fury. Neither of these got good enough critical ratings to get onto the list, so it seems the Legacy of Goku 2 was a high point in the series.

Game #35 Complete - Fire Emblem

Fire Emblem is a tactics RPG, in the long running Fire Emblem series. The Fire Emblem games before FE(GBA) where not localised in the west, but the success of Super Smash Bros. and the Fire Emblem characters there lead to FE(GBA) being localised. Ironically none of the characters in this game appeared in any Smash game, but Roy from the previous unlocalised GBA title did. Speaking of which, this game is actually a prequel to that game, with some returning characters. Since the success of FE(GBA) the FE series has been localised fairly consistently, including the 3rd and final GBA title, Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones which is also on the list.

This is another game that is quite close to my heart, which I attribute to getting me into turn-based tactics/strategy games, a genre which I now quite enjoy. There are a couple of other similar games on the GBA coming up too, including the well known Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, and some less well known titles like Tactics Ogre, Zone of the Enders, Super Robot Taisen, and Rebelstar. This puts tactics RPG as quite a big genre on the GBA. Anyway, on to the actual review.

2017-18 Awards

Here's a little follow up to the anniversary post:

The Best Game I Played This Year: Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow. I'm a big fan of metroidvania games in general, and the GBA Castlevania games in particular, and AoS is the best of those. It's a decent length game for a new player, but I ended up powering through it in a (very enjoyable) evening.

The Worst Game I Played This Year: CIMA: The Enemy. Everything about this game is terrible, and another 20 competing games under my belt have shown that it really is that bad.

The Spyro the Dragon Hidden Gem Award: (Game I knew nothing about which turned out good) Turok: Evolution. Based on the lack of any information, and the fact it was a portable tie in to a home console game, I assumed this was going to be a bit shit. Turned out to a decent Metal Slug-alike I had some fun with. Nothing world shattering but decent enough.

The Incontinent Cat Hidden Turd Award: (Game I knew nothing about which turned out bad) Lufia: The Ruins of Lore. I thought this was going to be a decent if unremarkable JRPG. Turned out to be an excessively slow and horribly dragged out game that demoralised me by the end. (CIMA would have been a good candidate for this too but I thought I'd avoid awarding it twice).

The Phantom Menace Award for Biggest Disappointment: (Game I knew about and thought was good) Riviera: The Promised Land. I knew a fair bit about this, and had even played the beginning before. However it turned out just kind of slow and meh in the end.

The Duke Nukem Forever Award for Biggest Hold Up: Final Fantasy V Advance. A long JRPG combined with other life stuff resulted in me putting the game down for a long hiatus.

The E.T. Award for Laziest Tie-in: Shrek: Hassle at the Castle. There was some competition for this one, but the strange platform brawler gameplay, short length, and almost identical playable characters clinched it.