Sunday, April 8, 2012

Quick update and Winter/Spring Gaming: Hakuouki, Tales of Graces f, Xenoblade Chronicles, and more

Back again with some interesting news. Went to see the Korean music groups FT Island and CN Blue concert on March 9 at the Nokia theater. It was fantastic. Both group has so much energy and were great with the crowd. They were singing their main hit sogs and also some of their Japanese songs too. CN Blue had some English single released in Japan so they were able to sing some English songs. Live music was just the best. I had a blast at the concert.

From February on there has been tons of RPG games that I have been wanting to get my hands on.

February:

Hakuouki Shinsengumi Limited Edition
First English translated otome game(visual novel love simulation gears toward female audience) on PSP. It's a VN so lots of reading but I do love the Shinsengumi. The character designs and CGs are gorgeous. Lots of ikemen and bishounen. Thank you Aksys

March:

Tales of Graces f



I'd been waiting for 2 years for this RPG on the PS3 ^o^ it was just so fun. Gamestop was having the special preorder of special character costumes from the Earlier Tales game and ToGf PS3 theme(my current theme on PS3). I finished the childhood arc, the skits were adorable and starting out the adult arc. Looking to be a fun game...waiting for Tales of Xillia to be localize in the US too.

Good finds for March:
Alice Madness Return
Roaming around at Target near my area and found this being on clearance for 14.98. I was so happy, I grabbed it in a heartbeat. I've been wanting to play this game since last summer. This was a very sweet find cuz most of the other places has it for twice the price. This game is the sequel to the previous American McGee's Alice on PC. It's lovely and colorful with awesome darker and twisted Alice as she returns to Wonderland.

Jeanne D'Arc
Fry's Electronics had this for about 9 bucks on the PSP. PSP games are dwindling now even though it's so popular in Japan. The game is a grid based RPG develope by Level 5 studio. The story is a version of Joan of Arc and it has great chibi character design with vibrant CG background. Turn based like FF tactics. Heard it got good reviews for its time so I decide to pick it up.

April:

Xenoblade Chronicles

One of the beset Wii RPG out there. Monolith Soft studio bring us this visually appealing saga of Xenoblade Chronicles. I heard this was the prequel to Xenogears and Xenosaga. Anyways, the story follow the journey of a young boy named Shulk with his powerful weapon, the Monado fighting with mechanical monsters with the help of his friends. Love the terrain and roaming space in this game. So many quest and menu systems takes a bit to get use to. It's a Gamestop exclusive game for the Wii and I got the artbook with the pre order. I was really happy that this was brought to the US cuz Europe got it way before us and it was out in Japan 2 yrs ago. What's even cooler is that you can change the vocal track to Japanese so you get to play it with the original Japanese vocal with English subtitles. The Japanese voice actor for Shulk sounds so adorable. Definitely a great pick up.

here's a pic of the game case and the artbook


Future U.S. release games:

Next up on my to get RPG game list would be...

Atelier Meruru: The Apprentice of Arland coming out in May. The next Ateleier games for PS3. Another atelier game..alchemist, mixing, and magic. I got the Atelier Rorona Lim ED and Atelier Totori Lim ED so will probably get this one too. Same character design as the previous game..hoping it will be fun.

The Last Story on the Wii releasing in July. The next game on operation rainfall list of RPG for the Wii that they want it to come out(Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, and Pandora Tower). I do have the original Japanese version of this game...I played a bit of it, pretty straight forward and fun but I'm not that good at Japanese so the US version will help me understand to story more.

Growlanser Wayfarer of Time on PSP out in July. It'd been a long time since I played Growlanser. Missed it a lot. Hopefully the battle system in this one will be good.

Ni no Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch on PS3 sometime in 2013. This is suppose to have a different story than the NDS version that I have.

These were the prospect games so far..and whenever I get a PS Vita..Gravity Rush looks really cool.