A look back at: Vandal Hearts II

The old fantasy ages were rife with all sorts of political intrigue, something that is realistically still happening in certain nations. Nations divided into two different types of governments will find some way to reunify by force, while specific storyline people get caught in the intrigue as they go along. Vandal Hearts II is definitely all about that. We have Joshua, Adele, Yuri, and Clive, four known friends from a small town who all have different backgrounds and such, separated by the powers that be in scandals and such. Reminds me a lot on the kids in Suikoden II, coincidentally also made by Konami. Man, Konami knew how to write fantastic stories, didn't they?

Poor Joshua, the guy had to go through a lot, trying to figure out right from wrong, accidentally having to kill Lord Kossimo, and then forced to live a life as a (at least badass) bandit. But still wanting to make sure he can at least make some sort of amend to Adele, the woman he wanted to love. Plus wanting to see his old friends Yuri, Clive, as well as adopted sister Rosaly again. Yeah, in case you're wondering, the endings of the game deal with how Joshua deals with these characters, as Clive, Yuri, and Adele are in danger of permanently dying during the course of the game if things aren't met well.

Unfortunately the character development is the weakest part of Vandal Hearts II, as aside from Joshua, the only playable character to get enough focus is Baron Pratau, the fifth character you permanently acquire. And even then, he's a politician by nature and the only one to get some centralization. At least he's the good politician, fighting for the good of this country even when assassins try to come after him. Every other character you have with you is a subordinate of some kind to either Joshua or Pratau, with Hammet being the only exception as he just wants vengeance on his village. On the non-playable side, we see a ton of characters that either are enemies, or simply unfought, as the many gray area characters in the game tend to off each other. The most interesting villains have to be Agatha's three main lieutenants as well as the three Blood Knights, all of which at least get some sort of representation in that they do flee after having been beaten a few times before their eventual deaths. Godard is of course the overarching villain and a psychopath by nature, with puppetry and brainwashing at his disposal.

Oh did I forget the battle system? No way was I going to forget that. Having two units from both sides move simultaneously is an interesting idea, but not the best in execution. It can actually make battles annoying if you end up trying to attack a certain enemy who just moved from the spot you were attacking, though this tends to be an issue enemies have to deal with themselves too, so it's appropriately double-edged. Also weapons do require percentage levels to use special skills on them before you can have those abilities, and you can then swap those abilities on better weapons and such. Missing an attack still ups the percentage of the weapon levels. As for difficulty, yeah, the battle system will make things all over the place, but the level curves just fine. Practicing on easier battles helps gain the stats needed too. A long game for sure, interesting with mechanics and plot, but this will likely be the last Vandal Hearts I play due to the series dipping afterwards.

A look back at: Pokemon Gold Unova

Sorry, no walkthrough from me for this one, since one's already provided by the author and it was enough. My team for this game was Raikou, Meganium, Hitmonchan, Quagsire, Magmar, and Crobat.

Well, this was an exhausting one. Pokemon Gold Unova will likely give players a lot of expectations when they see the name of it. Ooh, I get to play through the Unova region! You're right. You are playing through the Unova region. However, it's not playing Pokemon B/W/B2/W2 in Gen-2, it's actually playing a Gen-2 game with the Unova map. Therefore, there's no Pokemon past Gen-2 here, meaning you're limited to just 251. Or rather 250, because I couldn't find Unown anywhere.

There still is plenty of interesting moments here. Quite a lot of in-game trades are here for better Pokemon, and for the most part there's no worrying about obedience since the first badge you get is actually Morty's which allows obedience up to Lv50 (plus you get Surf right away). Actually, the way the game curves is another odd point. Morty's the first gym leader, and the remaining Johto and Kanto leaders follow in a strange order (though Blue is the last, which makes sense). Or perhaps I shouldn't talk about the curve as strange, because it actually is okay, even though the game takes a long time and you eventually do battle the champion who has at least one Lv100 Pokemon, it gives ample room for developing your team properly, even by having high-level wild encounters to practice on plus rematching zones. The issue I have is that it can mean that uninitiated players will be quite surprised that all the gym leaders, plus several late-game regular trainers, have powerful competitive teams. I say that last part loosely since they usually don't have full six teams, however they can have strong movesets and even helpful held items. Those who weren't looking for challenges would be surprised, and possibly annoyed at times. Plus some trainers even have legendaries, and this isn't a randomizer.

To be fair the legendaries aren't really a problem mostly. You get one of the three Johto beasts as a starter which is great, and the optional Entralink area can have you find multiple other legendaries in the grass (need Surf for Mew, Mewtwo, and Lugia). As for other Pokemon, there's no change to the trade evolutions sadly. The author recommends the TGB Dual utility for the trade evolutions, which is iffy, and besides you can catch wild Alakazam, Golem, Scizor, etc. out in the wild. The regular starters are available in certain places, and there's several static shiny encounters. So I don't have too much trouble with the wild encounters in the game, though sadly the issue with several of them is that it can often be too late to use several Pokemon that are cool (Sneasel's another example, it's acquired in Giant's Chasm well after the last gym badge).

The other thing to criticize may just be the NPCs themselves. The trainers exhausted me by the end of the game and the sad part is there are minimal instances where you can actually skip them. Even getting out of a gate (or into a gate) a trainer (or even two) ambush you right out of the blue (and one gatehouse I remember had up to SEVEN TRAINERS IN IT). Their dialogue has its ups and downs. During the later part, there's a lot of talk about friendship which is fairly obvious. Before that, tons of trainers are rather happy to battle, even if they lose. This includes Team Rocket grunts. This game has an interesting way to deal with Team Rocket too, they still love to steal stuff and gain money which is way better than Team Plasma's original motives, and they even take over the Pokemon League. But apart from the interesting character Willius and his relationship to Bek they're just sort of there. Another criticism, there are tons of characters who know me by name, which is quite strange the further you get. Being called "boy" a lot can be annoying but I can forgive this due to Gold not having an actual female protagonist in the series yet. And the roadblocks, they really don't make sense sometimes, it's just "you can't go here until you beat the gym because I said so". The worst one is having to go ALL THE WAY BACK to Alder in order to unlock the Pokemon League, even though you have all the badges. And you get Fly about 3/4ths of the way in, unfortunately the region doesn't have Fly access for every city either, some like your hometown can't be accessed.

It's certainly worth a challenge if you just want to play Gold differently than before. But that's what it's got going for it and the name makes you think there's a lot more to the game than you'd expect. There's also Gold Sinnoh which I may try soon, probably going to be the same sort of thing there.