A look back at: Arc the Lad

That looks like something out of the Playstation 1 RPG maker.

And wowee, I finished an RPG in just a week. This game seems to be infamous because of its short length, at least compared to the others in its franchise/collection, which would obviously take longer. But a shorter RPG is welcoming. Did you really expect that this short RPG was however a TACTICAL RPG? Because it is.

I would argue that this is 100% the main thing that sells me to Arc the Lad. How quick and simple the battle system is. You're not bombarded with having to micromanage characters constantly, recruiting/creating new ones, or having to watch some rather slow AI make decisions that just elongate things. Everything is done swiftly. You move, do an action, enemies do the same, everything's dictated by the agility stat, and oddly enough you have no equipment or weapons at all in the game. Heck, you don't even have shops. Does that make things harder as the only source of items are from enemy drops or secret chests? Yes. Does it offer a different kind of challenge that actually is more enticing? Oddly yes. By the way, simplicity doesn't mean it's easy, as character stats grow up in a traditional way and there are some level spikes to watch out for.

This game's intent on setting the stage for a much longer sequel, so that explains its shortness. Nevertheless, while the gameplay is a high point, as is the music (was not expecting the sequences to be THAT GOOD), the plot is just full of RPG cliches. Let's list them!

Main hero has a missing parent (in this case father)? Check!

Crazy Pandora's box in the game? Check!

Main female lead ends up falling in love with male lead? Check!

Glowing things being a way to get party members or clues to new locations? Check!

Hero's home gets ransacked/destroyed/taken hostage? Check! This one is kind of all of the above, since Arc has a mountain home with a mom and his house gets burned down and mother taken prisoner, but we never even see her anymore afterwards so we have next to no idea where she even is.

Timid young man is the third main party member? Check! (Poco)
At least one or two beefcake characters? Check! (Tosh and Iga)

And one of those beefcake characters is a fistfighter? Check!

At least one or two creepy old men? Check! (Gogen and Chongara)

Unorthodox weapons in combat? Check! (Poco's instruments, Chongara can summon things from pots which makes him the gimmick character, thankfully he's not a bad one)

Elemental guardians? Check!
"Humans are evil bastards" speeches? Check!

Evil demons ACTUALLY being the reason humans get blamed? Check!

An evil minister and a good king? Check!

King gets backstabbed and dies by minister hands? Check!

Mirror on the wall? Check!

Global airship? Check!

At least one goofy cutscene with lame humour? Check!

A temple with lots of barefisted monks filled with honor? Check! Also includes an evil leader in the monks.

An inevitable fighting tournament section? Check!

The host of that tournament is a monster who gets champions killed? Check! (thanks Grubba from Paper Mario: TTYD)

A village of civilians getting nuked because the bad guys wanted a silly little trinket? Check!

A secret underground lab with evil scientists? Check!

Everywhere the hero goes there's trouble? Check!

Bad guys wait for heroes to do hard work before taking the treasure? Check!

Earthquakes destroying stuff? Check!
Heroes are branded as fugitives by the corrupt bad guys? Check!

Main leads get separated? Check!

Sidequests that can take longer than the main plot? Check!

I guess the only cliche this is missing is basically the hero isn't an idiot, Arc is actually quite smart and heroic and does hero things well. But if you're like me and played dozens of JRPGs at this point there's just too much to this plate that you've probably seen elsewhere.

A look back at: Tales of Destiny 2

And I mean the actual Tales of Destiny 2, not what Tales of Eternia was marketed as in the West.

And sadly the game never got imported to the West at all. Heavily anticipated as a Namco title in Japan yet never saw a Western release and at the time of writing this, fans are clearly having a hard time translating it all. At least it's a Tales game through and through, giving us most of the stuff we'd know from playing the previous titles, though things look a lot bigger. As far as the game's plot, a lot of it fanservices previous characters, one of which is THE most famous character of the previous game returning as a totally different man. No translation meant I had to consult someone's own translation of the lines on GameFAQs and just watching as characters speak a language I never really studied.

Well gameplay can be more important, and I've never been a fan of grading you after battle to get better rewards. It emphasizes nigh-perfection in every battle in order to get better rewards, and the more sophisticated a game's battle system is, the harder it is to get a good grade on your battles and thus a better tech for your characters who could use it. Especially when you have the Linear Motion Battle System making it that you can only control one character and having AI control the rest of the party, which has mixed results usually. Also especially when enemy HP gets to be quite high in the end of the game, with end dungeon enemies having around 10000 HP. Also also especially when melee attacking isn't that good, and spellcasters make or break the battle on both sides, making a party of three main spellcasters (usually Reala, Harold, and Judas) and one physical fighter (usually Kyle) a default party throughout the game.

The characters are at least fun, and the plot loves time travel so much it becomes a central theme. Judas/Leon is a nice addition, not the best, but at least he sticks around throughout the game. Nanaly's funny skits with Loni are fun, and Reala's plot importance as the mysterious girl with godlike praying is kind of redundant. Harold is a breath of fresh air too. Yes, we do get to see the Swordians in their human form in the past, which is really cool. Yes, we get to see our former heroes from Tales of Destiny 1 in better roles. Rutee's the mother of Kyle now, unfortunately her husband Stahn dies in the current timeline. Philia and Garr are leaders of their respective areas, and even Lilith and Chelsea have minor roles. Our main two villains are actually quite decent. Elrane is basically a foil to Reala, both being avatars of god but Elrane being deranged and wanting to destroy all to cure all. Barbatos, woo, he's on another level. Imagine if you will a boss that wants you to fight like a true man, so much that if you try using healing spells, spells in general or USING ITEMS, he'll counter it hard. He thinks it's a fair way to fight too, but this kind of counter makes him one of the truly hardest battles ever. And he's just totally crazy as a character. To think that he also tried to kill the former heroes, somehow ONLY succeeding in the case of Stahn, it's insane.

But the time-traveling is only so much fun and the plot sort of devolves into a whole "Kyle loves Reala" thing, and while it's not the single worst romance overall, I was able to make at least one comparison. I remember how Lunar 2 went, with the epilogue involving Hiro making a one-way trip to finding his love Lucia again. This is kinda like that, but with a bit of amnesia on Kyle's part after the storyline time distortion brings everything back to the way it was. So when Kyle ends up going to the ruins where he first met Reala in the erased timeline, she's back and gives the memory back. Really weird.

A look back at: Pokemon Azure Horizons

Team: Quagsire, Aggron, Clefable, Crobat, Ampharos, and Infernape (starter). These being Pokemon I have used a number of times (or just twice in Clefable's case), so these end up being the ones I tend to gravitate to in terms of what we have.

Well, Azure Horizons is alright to me. I would say it's a hack in a similar form to (Blazed) Glazed or Dark Cry, it uses new mons (up to Gen-4 in this case though), new character sprites, new story, new gym leaders, new evil team, and new region, and melds things properly. This is something I tend to think of when I think of decent ROM hacks due to it having these things. I am of course not insinuating that ROM hacks that keep the base region or story the same are bad though, it's just sometimes you want more than just going through the Kanto region again, and this delivers quite fine in that regard.

And luckily, I did use Allen's walkthrough to get through this one, but due to the fact that it was of an older version and that Hacksrepairman had a new patch and there was a new update and all that, many parts were modified. I took it upon myself to document any changes and Allen will probably get to them when he modifies the walkthrough he made, it must have been a coincidence he was getting to modifying his walkthrough around the time I played Azure Horizons. And well, it's worth noting that this is the second ROM hack I played that actually had Gen-9 mons in them (Nameless was the first, the author added Farigiraf, Archaludon, and Koraidon in the complete release). And while the old walkthrough states that stuff involving Team Tundra and Leon were left unfinished, the new update does in fact finish them, giving a new leader (Frost, doubling as champion of the region), making Leon a secret Elite Four member, making Wallace more important, and even offering a post-game battle facility (just a house). Plus new legendaries.

My gripes come from not being able to get certain mons due to bugs or things like that. Shedinja somehow didn't come to me after I used the method when evolving Nincada. Croagunk, for some inexplicable reason, evolved into Bulbasaur. And I tried breeding Manaphy to get Phione and got another Manaphy. These are small hiccups though. It can be argued that Team Tundra kinda sucks since they just want Suicune to help...only Ice type Pokemon? Sure, but for one Suicune is already the mascot of Crystal so has already seen canon prominence and two I can actually argue that there should really just be more Ice types available. Tundra grunts aren't bad though, and have surprisingly varied teams. Overall though I liked Azure Horizons for what it has.