Videogame Retro-Review: Star Ocean – PSP

Star Ocean – PSP

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Star Ocean originally released on the Super Famicom and was later updated and released on PSP.  The team that made Star Ocean is mostly made up of ex-Namco employees that had worked on Tales of Fantasia.  Star Ocean was the debut venture from Tri Ace.  For the record, I played through the PSP version.  Star Ocean’s schtick is a traditional JRPG with a player decided cast sprinkled with a little bit of time travel, fantasy, and sci fi.  Star Ocean does a lot of neat things despite it age but also subscibes to a lot of old tropes that are incredibly hard to put up with.

Star Ocean follows the tale of Roddick, who is from a race of humans with tails known as Roakians.  Basically his bud gets turned into stone and they have to go into the future for some Stone Cures–Oh wait my bad.  See you find the Stone Cure item about halfway through the game but you need a blood sample from a certain “demon” to make a cure.  Hi-jinks ensue.  The most refreshing part about Star Ocean’s story is how chipper everyone is.  Most of the party simply wants to join because they like Roddick, which is a refreshing pace from idealism, politics, and principles.

News: Video Game Releases

If you are not familiar with this section this is where we put out some info about the games we think are going to be somewhere between decent and awesome that we’re interested in that release today.

Persona 2 Innocent Sin – PSP

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Developed by Atlus and published by Atlus (Ghostlight in Europe).  While Persona 1 was released stateside for the PSOne as Persona Revelations and Persona 2.5 was released stateside as Persona 2 Eternal Punishment, Persona 2 Innocent Sin has never had an official release (although fan translations do exist).  The story follows a group of high schoolers (as all Persona games do) as they gain access to their Personas.  The new feature of this game is the rumor system.  But fair warning Persona fans, this will be a much, much harder game than Persona 3 or 4.

 

Gears of War 3 – 360

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Developed by Epic and published by Microsoft.  This series is already crazy famous and now its written by videogame novelist Karen Traviss.

News: New Persona 2 Trailer with Official Release Date

Atlus officially announces the date that most of the shopping websites have shown for quite some time now of 9/20 for PSP. Preorders come with the soundtrack/remix CD.  Along with this announcement they released a new trailer show casing some of the anime cutscenes and dialog concerning the rumor system.

[youtube http://youtu.be/R7XPD-5rRqs]

Turn 58 – 20% Cooler

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Featuring John “MusiM”, Joey, Scott “Artisan002”, Lauren, and Suzy “Specter”

Music by MusiM.  Buy the new album at musim.bandcamp.com

We begin with film this turn discussing Cowboys and Aliens, Avatar: The Last Airbender, and Battleship.

Continuing on with videogames we hit on Persona 3 PSP, Catherine, and Bastion.

And finally we end with literature and discuss Dresden and also answer a listener email!

UPDATE:

Currently the last 15 minutes of the turn got cut off due to a software glitch with our FTP client.  The problem will be fixed in approximately 9 hours (ie when MusiM gets home from work to upload the file again).   Until then there are a lot of other turns to check out.  Maybe some horror, spoilercasts, or rpg casts.

UPDATE:

The turn is now fixed!  Enjoy!

News; Persona 2 comes with a Music CD!

Yeah not that big of surprise if you’re an Atlus regular.  If you’re not then know Atlus almost 100% of the time dishes out a music CD with their preorders.  The CD appears to consist of some of the soundtrack, some remixes of the soundtrack by Shoji Meguro, “exclusive arrangements”, and a single unreleased track.  See the graphic after the break.  Preorder at Amazon.

 

If you are not familiar with Persona franchise, a quick summary would be high school kids summoning their ids to battle demons.  Kind of an evil Pokemon where you might kill god at the end filled with social philosophy and dungeons to grind in.  Really the best answer would be in our RPG series podcast.

Videogame Review: Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling together PSP

Tactics Ogre Let Us Cling Together is a remake of the original, absurdly hard Tactics Ogre for the PSOne (Not to be confused with Tactics Ogre Knight of Lodis).  The remake is done by Yasumi Matsuno, the original creator of Tactics Ogre, Ogre Battle, and Final Fantasy Tactics.  On top of that, “Let Us Cling Together” is a reference to a song by Queen, Teo Torriatte (Let Us Cling Together).  The remake focuses on adding a degree of modern design to an old brutal game.  The Old Ways punished players with death.  The New Ways are much more forgiving while still delivering a challenging experience.  To say I’m considering buying this game flowers is an understatement for my love for this remake.

News: Video Game Releases

Should we change it to Video Game Release when there’s only one game we care about coming out during the week?  Nah, grammar be damned!  l33t pick 4 teh w33k (note – I just died inside typing that).

Prinny 2: Dawn of Operation Panties, Dood! – PSP

Developed and published by Nippon Ichi Software (NIS), the action platformer featuring a thousand lives and a magic cape is back.  Expect it to be as ridiculously hard as the original.  A must for masochists and Disgaea fans everywhere!

News: Video Game Releases

And in case you had too much money, here are our video game release picks for this week.

Portal 2 – 360, PC, PS3

Developed and published by Valve.  Does this one even need introduction?

News: Video Game Releases

Our picks that were released this week!

God Eater Burst – PSP

Developed by Namco Bandia Games and published by D3 Publisher.  Gameplay is similar to the Monster Hunter series but infused with anime stylings and cutscenes.

Okamiden – DS

Developed and published by Capcom, this is the sequel to the critically acclaimed Wii and PS3 game Okami.  Unfortunately I had difficulty finding a trailer so the gameplay footage in this is a bit small.

Turn 41 – Pun-ishment

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Featuring John “MusiM”, Suzy “Specter”, and Scott ” Artisan002″

Music: Untitled tracks by MusiM

This week we’re back to video games and non-interactive moving pictures.

For videogames we discuss Castlevania Aria of Sorrow, Uncharted 2, Dead Space Extraction, Bulletstorm, DragonAge 2 demo, Pac Man Championship DX, Front Mission Evolved, Tactics Ogre, Dance Central, Transformers War for Cybertron, Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, Zen Bound 2, and many others.

For non-interactive moving pictures we discuss Batman the animated series, Batman Beyond, Hellboy Iron and Blood, Hellboy Sword of Storms, Bond, Lexx, Castle, and many others.