Finally my favorite RPG has made it to the Japanese PlayStationStore. Grandia has the best battle system ever and a very cute story without moping emo main characters.

Full list of game archives additions this week:
Grandia
Langrisser I&II
Lunatic Dawn Odyssey
TILK - Aoi umi kara kita shojo -
Gakkou wo tsukuro - kocho sensei monogatari

That are 4 RPGs in one week. Hopefully Sony Computer Entertainment America and Europe will finally start releasing more PSOne Classics soon, so more people can check out those fantastic games.

With some folks here on Destructoid I'm doing this project of playing Persona 3 alongside the in-game calendar. Unluckily a project like this is sometimes a bit difficult with a game like Persona 3, because there are quite a few breaks in the game, where you cannot save for days.



April 7th:
Persona 3 starts off with the protagonist experiencing some strange events on his way to his dorm after being transferred to his new school. At the dorm he meets two of his school mates: Yukari Takeba and Mitsuru Kirijo. After a good night's sleep he goes to school together with Yukari. In school you will also meet with Junpei Iori for the first time. Players replaying Persona 3 can see some familiar faces running around town, which is a really nice touch.

April 8th:
Another day at school and in the evening the protagonist will meet with Shuji Ikutsuki, chairman of the boards of your school. In the night there is a quite disturbing cut-scene with Junpei.

April 9th:
After another school day the first full moon of the game is upon us. Akihiko-sempai comes home after being wounded by a shadow. To make matters worse he has lead some shadows to the dorm and our hero has no choice but to run away with Yukari. Once he arrives on the roof, he summons his Persona for the first time in an incredible cut-scene. After a short fight he falls into a coma and only awakes several days later.

April 17th:
Awakening in some hospital Yukari is waiting beside the bed and tells a bit about herself and her father.

April 18th:
Of course there was enough rest the whole week so the protagonist goes to school today. In the evening he decides to join the SEES (short for Specialized Extracurricular Execution Squad). Also in the night there a strange boy makes an appearance in your bed room and talks about your awakening powers.

April 19th:
In the evening Junpei joins the SEES and moves into the dorm. You now have 3 active team members.

Also note to everyone playing:
You cannot save until April 20th.

If action films are my gaming bread and butter, then action-adventures are the video game equivalent -- I love everything about them from the trademark running around and collecting things for people to the well developed storylines. As you may imagine, I was a big fan of Shadow of the Colossus, or Wanda to kyozō as it was called in its original Japanese release.

Watching a film based on Shadow of the Colossus is the kind of thing that I have wet dreams about in the middle of the night, but apparently someone thought it was a good idea other than me. So it's happening. Based on the original 2005 game film and maybe not being worked on by Ueda Fumito, the game's creator, it is being made for the cinema screen.

According to Destructoid, there will be new stuff in the film, you can watch either alone or with friends, and the film is unknown percent complete. I do think a film like this has much hope in being brought here, but I'm going to have to import this one. It's currently slated for a release at some point. Saying DO WANT would be a severe understatement.

I have already posted about this yesterday and today it already begins at midnight! So if you are crazy like me, load up your copy of Persona 3 in the middle of the night and start playing your first day. Afterwards talk about it in the forum thread.

I'm really happy that quite a few people actually have interest in joining in this.

If you didn't catch what this is all about and are too lazy to click any of the two links, here is what I wrote earlier:


After watching the Persona 4 Endurance Run videos on giantbomb every day, I had the crazy idea, that it would be fun to play through Persona 3 alongside the in-game calendar, that starts in the night of April 7th in 2009 and ends on January 31st 2010. But instead of doing this alone, maybe it would be fun to do it with multiple people. Everbody would play only up to the point, where the in-game date matches the actual date. Then they could post here about what they did or with whom they formed social links in the game. It would be really interesting to hear about the different ways of playing the game and discuss the current in-game events here.

Players, who were interested in Persona 3 but afraid of the enoramous time investment can use this as an easy way to finally play the game, because the playtime would be stretched out over almost 9 months resulting in only a few minutes every day. Players, who already finished the game, can replay the game by using the NewGame+ feature, enjoy the story and maybe help first time players, who are stuck in certain parts.

Would anybody like to participate in something like that?

Two weeks ago I asked in the forums if anybody would love to participate in a simultaniously playthrough of Persona 3 on a daily or weekly basis.

So if you don't read the forums or missed the thread, here's what I wrote:


After watching the Persona 4 Endurance Run videos on giantbomb every day, I had the crazy idea, that it would be fun to play through Persona 3 alongside the in-game calendar, that starts in the night of April 7th in 2009 and ends on January 31st 2010. But instead of doing this alone, maybe it would be fun to do it with multiple people. Everbody would play only up to the point, where the in-game date matches the actual date. Then they could post here about what they did or with whom they formed social links in the game. It would be really interesting to hear about the different ways of playing the game and discuss the current in-game events here.

Players, who were interested in Persona 3 but afraid of the enoramous time investment can use this as an easy way to finally play the game, because the playtime would be stretched out over almost 9 months resulting in only a few minutes every day. Players, who already finished the game, can replay the game by using the NewGame+ feature, enjoy the story and maybe help first time players, who are stuck in certain parts.

Would anybody like to participate in something like that?


So if anybody else is interested, go over to the thread in the forums or leave a comment here.

I was actually really excited about White Knight Chronicles and could not wait to get my hands on the game. Although the game was released at the end of December last year, I only got it at the end of February, because the friend, who was supposed to send it to me, was busy and didn't find the time to post it. So when I finally got it, I played it for about two hours before going back to Persona 3, because I was obsessed with Persona 3 at that time. So finally another month later at the end of March I finally sat down and finished the game two days ago.

The game starts of with you creating your avatar in this world, who will from this point on follow the main characters party without ever saying single word or taking part in the story in the least tiniest bit. I am not sure, why they even included this into the single player story, because it doesn't make any sense. Of course it is nice to level your character for the online play a bit before going into that, but it looks strange to have a random user-created character following the story of characters, that actually have some kind of personality.

After creating your avatar the story follows the main character Lenard, who after completing a small escort mission (Yes, the first mission is an escort mission.) and seeing the circus come into town sneaks into the castle, where a huge party is going on. Of course the party ends with the circus people actually being evil people and attacking the castle and killing both the king and the invited guests. Lenard, who falls in love with the princess at first sight (Although I already had a crush on her as a child), protects the princess Shizuna and escapes with her into an underground passageway only to end up in an old treasure hall. Of course the enemies are following and a giant monster drops through the ceiling, leaving Lenard with no other choice but to pick up the Arc of the White Knight, transform into the White Knight and fight this monster.

At this point a lot is going on and quite a few interesting characters are introduced. Sadly this part is the best part of the story and afterwards it all only goes downhill. Of course defeating the monster alone isn't enough and the princess gets captured anyway. Lenard and his gang of course tries to get her back and he catches up with the evildoers countless times. Of course those encounters always end up with a boss battle and the princess taken away anyway. Along the quite short story not very much time is spend with developing the characters, but instead they try to spend time with talking about legends and myths, that add a bit of depth to the world, but since they are very JRPG-cliche listening to them isn't very fun. What makes matters even worse is the terrible ending, which stops in the middle of the story and comes out of nowhere. Perhaps it would have been more appropriate to call the game White Knight Chronicles - Episode 1, because that is what the game actually is.



The battle system isn't very fun either. In battles you take control over one character of the party, that you can change on the fly, with the rest of the party being controlled by the AI. There are quite a few attacks to be learned in the game, but the differences between them are rather small making learning most attacks rather pointless. The battle system also has a combo system, that chains together multiple attacks, but consumes ActionPoints. Unluckily you will need those ActionPoints to transform into the White Knight, so it is better to use normal attacks than to spend your ActionPoints on combos. So in most battles you just wait for your action circle to be full and press a button to execute the attack, making the battles extremely boring. For bigger enemies you can transform into the White Knight and completely destroy most enemies without problems. What is really strange is, that a lot of giant enemies in the normal dungeon take way more damage than boss enemies. But of course if you have no ActionPoints left for a boss battle you are more or less screwed and can reload your game.

In addition to the single player mode, there is also an online mode, where you can do special quests with up to four other players. Although you can finally take advantage of the combo system in this mode without having to care about ActionPoints being spend, the quest take place in the same areas you have already visited in the single player with the same enemies running around. Access to quests is limited by Guild Rank, that raises after earning enough points by doing quests. Really annoying is the small number of quests, that are available for the low Guild Ranks. The first few Ranks only have 2 quests each, that you will be doing over and over to achieve enough points for the next rank. Adding in some more random quests would have helped a lot.

I was expecting a lot, because Level 5 usually makes really great games, but sadly White Knight Chronicles turned out to be quite a shitty game.