@Machina
My friend really enjoyed the 2nd condemned and said it improved a lot over the first too. He echoed what a lot of reviewers said and mentioned that the story takes a huge nosedive about 3/4 the way through the game. Again I've only played the first but have enjoyed the story so far so it's a disappointment that it does that. I think the gameplay and atmosphere of the game will forgive it though.
There are demos for Eternal Sonata and Blue Planet but I'm not sure about Lost Odyssey. I own all 3 games and will say Lost Odyssey is vastly superior to the other two. Not that the others are bad by any means but I enjoyed it the most.
Lost Odyssey I would put it to closely resembling the old school PS1 final fantasy games. You have random encounters, turned based combat, and lots of CGI cutscenes. The scale of the game is epic and the characters and story are very well done. The music is also great, I'd put it up there with Uematsu's best. The game does have some technical hiccups with framerate & loading but for all the talent in the studio I don't think Mistwalker are quite there yet as game developers as some of the bigger RPG houses. The huge improvement IMO over BD makes me look forward to what they debut in the future though.
Eternal Sonata is probably my 2nd favorite of the 3. It's also much much shorter then the others 2. I beat it my first playthrough in about 25 hours. That seems short for a JRPG but IMO it's the perfect length for it's playstyle. It's more of a Real-time combat system with character classes and a neat light/dark based theme to it. Story get's pretty out there towards the end so I find it the weakest of the 3. Art style is gorgeous and the demo gives a good representation of the game. It's what persuaded me to buy it and I'm happy I did.
Blue Dragon is similar to Dragon's quest I would say. It doesn't have random encounters. You can see most enemies on the map and avoid some if you like (ie: Eternal Sonata), but combat is again Turn based. Graphics are decent if somewhat childish and story ramps up later in the game. It takes a while to get going however. The demo for this game is pretty poor I thought and actually turned me off from buying the game. I ended up getting it later after Lost Odyssey because of a few recommendations here. I haven't enjoyed it as much as LO but it's still fun. There are some who put it above ES but it's a personal preference so opinions do vary. The good news is that it's super cheap so even if you don't like it then you aren't out too much money.
As far as Halo 3 goes....
1) In the campaign game options you can turn on free-for-all game scoring that gives you points while you play through the levels. You gain extra points for things like headshots, grenade sticks, and playing at a higher difficulty level. You also lose points for dying and killing your useless NPC soldiers. The skulls work as a point multiplier and can turned on and off at any time but only before you start a level. For example there is a skull that prevents your shield from regenerating unless you melee an enemy. Some make the game more difficult then others but they do allow you to tweak the difficulty to suit something that challenges you. There are also achievements for reaching a certain score in a level so you'll need to use some of the skulls to accomplish this. If you go for these my suggestion would be to play the game on Heroic with a few extra skulls. The difficulty spikes considerably when you use them on legendary.
2) There are two types of Halo3 matches. Ranked and Social. With Ranked matches you will be paired up with players of your rank. So most of the time playing this you will be with players of similar skill. The one exception is that the game gives you different ranks for different game types. Example would be that if I was say a level 50 rank in Lone Wolves and never played Team Slayer I would still be a rank 1 in that. So it's possible you could get some higher skilled players but it's pretty good in keeping them mixed up. Social matches have no rank involved so you just get paired up with random players of all levels. Rank doesn't mean everything though, I've played Generals who were terrible and been mopped up with Lieutenants. The best way to improve IMO is just find friends to play with and enjoy it with them. It's much more enjoyable to work together then having 4 guys just run & gunning.
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Completed X360:  |
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| High Def Movie Collection |
6 pts
5 pts
4 pts
