You know this was a pretty damn busy month for January. Most years January is pretty quiet, but this January there were FOUR games I wanted, and strangely enough each game was for a different system. First came Lost in Shadow for the Wii, then Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective and Prinny 2: Dawn of Operation Panties, Dood! came out on the same day for the DS and PSP respectively, and then the PS3 ended the month off with LittleBIGPlanet 2. Even more bizarre than there being one game for each of the current generation systems I own in the same month is the fact that they were all good. Sure some were better than others, but even the most flawed one was still good enough to be considered good. So even though I’ve already talked about two of these games in previous blogs, let’s take a brief look at the games of January 2011, and see how they held up. How about we go in order of release?


Lost in Shadow (Wii)
Release Date: January 4th, 2011
Developer: Hudson

Lost in Shadow is a 2D Platformer for the Wii, and while it’s not a bad game, it certainly has its issues. Out of the four games I bought this month, Lost in Shadow was the only one I didn’t finish simply because it was boring. The visual style and concept of traversing the shadows is entertaining enough for maybe one level per play session, but try and sit down with it for any length of time and you’ll probably get bored. Apparently they introduce a cool mechanic later on, but I’m four and a half hours into this thing, and they STILL haven’t introduced it. The only thing they’ve done to break up the tedium is have one boss fight, and while it was an absolutely amazing boss fight, it still didn’t take me long to get over it and return to my bored state.

Lost in Shadow is a good game, but its main problem is pacing. There isn’t enough variety in the level design, and the cool thing they do add to the mix takes too long to show up. It’s not a bad game, but you’ll probably get bored with it.

Recommendation Level:
Weekend Rental


Prinny 2: Dawn of Operation Panties, Dood! (PSP)
Release Date: January 11th, 2011
Developer: NIS America

Prinny 2 had a lot to live up to what with its predecessor being one of my all time favourite games, and initially, it didn’t do anything to convince me it was a worthy sequel. The level design was poor, they added a lot of extremely cheap enemies that made the cheap enemies from the first game look like Goombas with no feet, the main Prinny was an asshole, and the difficulty was ramped up WAY too far to the point of me almost completely abandoning it. However I eventually caved in and switched the difficulty setting to “baby mode”, and suddenly three of the problems mentioned above were fixed. (the main Prinny is still an asshole)

Baby mode is a much better designed game what with the more forgiving level layout, extra health, and easier boss battles. I’ll admit that sometimes the bosses felt insultingly easy on baby mode, but seeing as how everything else about the game is better on baby mode, I’m willing to let my pride be damaged a bit by pushover boss battles. (Well, by Prinny standards)

I previously talked about how much I didn’t like Prinny 2, but that was before I switched it to baby mode. Baby mode of Prinny 2 is actually a good game, though I’d still recommend the original game over it for the fact that it’s a better designed game and it’s only $9.99 on PSN. But for what it’s worth, Prinny 2 is fun on baby mode, so long as your definition of fun still involves dying a whole lot.

Recommendation Level:
Play the Original Instead


Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective (DS)
Release Date: January 11th, 2011
Developer: Capcom (Specifically the Ace Attorney Team)

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective is an original I.P from the Ace Attorney team, and it’s far better than any of the Ace Attorney games. The puzzles are fun and really clever, but the main hook of this game, much like Ace Attorney, is the story. (Though the gameplay is also phenomenal)

There are two things I can say about this game right away. Awesome characters, and a VERY well thought out story. The characters don’t (usually) fall victim to many anime stereotypes, and are actually quite realistic. They all have their own issues and mysteries, and there isn’t a single character you won’t want to know more about. The story is also the single BEST video game story I have ever seen, and it’s EXTREMLY well thought out. Every major plot twist was amazing, and by the end of the game every single piece of the mystery fit together perfectly. The most amazing moment was finding out who the main character’s identity is, but I don’t dare spoil it because it’s probably the most outstanding revelation I’ve seen in a game.

It’s early on in the year, but already it’s going to be hard to top this game for Game of the Year status.

Recommendation Level:
Buy it!


LittleBIGPlanet 2 (PS3)
Release Date: January 18th, 2011
Developer: Media Molecule

There isn’t really a whole lot to say about LittleBIGPlanet 2 because while really fun with a friend, it’s an extremely standard platformer. The level design is really good and it has a lot of interesting mechanics, but it’s still a very basic platformer in a lot of ways.

This time around they added a very silly story with some very silly characters starring in some very silly cutscenes. I was initially turned off by the story and the pointless cutscenes, but over time I learned to like the expanding cast of goofy characters, and the silly tone of the whole thing. (That guy with a notepad for a head is my favourite character) The level design is even better than the design in the first game, and by far the biggest jump in quality compared to the original game is the boss battles. Boss fights in LBP 1 and the PSP game were terrible, but the bosses in LBP 2 are extremely fun, and worth replaying over and over.

The game is still extremely boring to play on your own, so I highly suggest playing with a friend or sibling. I played through the first world on my own, then restarted the game and played the whole game with my brother. It was a much better experience, and helped to overlook the basic feel of the game.

LittleBIGPlanet was a lot of fun to play with my brother, and despite how short it was, it was a worthwhile purchase. However if you don’t have anyone to play co-op with, you might not find it as fun as I did.

Recommendation Level:
Buy it for co-op. If you can’t play with anybody next to you, rent it.

The winner of the game of the month award for January 2011 goes to Ghost Trick Phantom Detective. Go buy it and experience its greatness. I might do a full review at some point to go into further detail about why it’s great.

Prinny Can I Really Be the Hero? is one of my all time favourite games, but many people instantly say the game sucks for one specific reason. Prinny jumps the same way Simon Belmont does, meaning that once you jump, you cannot alter his path. You’re committed to that arc, and if you mess up the jump, there’s not much you can do about it. This causes a lot of, in my opinion, completely unjustified hate to the game, and I am going to speak my mind and tell you once and for all why this really isn’t that big of a deal.

First of all, I find it pretty unbelievable that a person can’t simply adjust to it. After all, I’ve been playing the Mario games my entire life, and it didn’t take all that long for me to get used to it. I feel that it’s the same kind of unjustified excuse for why people say Mario Clash and the Game Cube version of Mega Man Anniversary Collection suck. So what if they swapped the jump and attack buttons? Is it really that impossible for your brain to adjust? At the risk of sounding offensive, I find the people who despise a game for this sort of thing to be quite narrow minded. When you move to a new house, you can adjust. When someone close to you passes away, over time, you can adjust. So why is it that the human brain can adjust to something so drastic, yet it can’t adjust to a different jumping mechanic in a video game?

Second, the claim that there is nothing you can do to adjust your jump is completely misinformed. Compared to games like Castlevania and Ghouls and Ghosts which use the same jumping mechanics, there is a lot you can do to save yourself. While Prinny does jump in a set arc, there is also a double jump, and this double jump is the main way to save yourself. Let’s piece together a situation, and see the various ways you can save yourself.

Example 1: Say you’re jumping towards a platform and you overshoot it. Rather than just falling in the pit like other games, you can use your double jump to go back the way you came and land on the platform.

Example 2: Let’s say that in the example above that after you double jump in the opposite direction, you're going to overshoot it anyways. Rather than just fall in the pit, once you are above the platform you can use your ground pound attack to stop in mid air and shoot yourself straight down.

Example 3: Similar to example 2, if you think you’ll over shoot a jump, you can use your second jump to jump straight up, and thus land on the platform below you.



There is a more advanced technique which one can use when it comes to moving platforms. Say that you’ve used up both of your jumps, and the platform has moved out from under you. Rather than just hip pound into the abyss and kill yourself, you can make one last ditch effort to save yourself. When you attack in mid-air, you stay stuck in that spot for a brief time before you start to fall. Even if there are no enemies nearby, if you can still use it for just a little more hang time. While that time is brief, it may just be enough time for the platform to move back under you, and let you land on it. It’s not a situation that happens all that often, but it’s just one more trick you can use to salvage a jump.

Those are your main methods of correcting jumps, and with practice you can overcome the limitations of the set arc quite easily.

And finally the most important reason as to why this style of jumping is perfectly acceptable is that unlike games like Castlevania or Ghouls and Ghosts, the entire game is designed specifically for it. Aside from the fact that the level design is crafted specifically for it, making it so that Mario style jumping would be completely incompatible with it, there’s another, much more important reason for it that 100% justifies it.

Prinny’s gameplay is centered entirely around patterns. Every single thing you do will trigger a specific pattern, and it’s your goal to figure out what you need to do to trigger a pattern that will get you through the stage. You will die a lot, but once you find a pattern that works, you can pull it off every time. Now imagine for a moment that they didn’t have a set arc for your jump, and instead had the adjusting in mid-air and momentum of the Mario games. Unless you’re running at full speed, it’s very difficult to do something exactly the same way every time in a Mario game. Since patterns in Prinny are so precise, any significant screw up of a jump can completely throw off the pattern. Because of the pattern gameplay of Prinny, a consistent arc is much more suitable, and it’s overall to the game’s benefit.

When you factor in the above, I find it impossible to make a convincing argument that the game is bad simply because of its jumping mechanics. It’s completely foolish to say the game would be better without it, and the continuous use of the excuse “I’m used to Mario style jumping” makes me extremely frustrated. While Prinny’s jump may not be able to adjust, the player most certainly can.

Even though I love the DSi and anyone who utters the words "backwards compatibility" will get a swift kick in the shins, I can't deny that the DSiWare is a load of poo. Oh sure there are a handful of standouts, but certainly not enough to say it's a worthwhile place to buy games. However while most DSiWare games are doomed to fail, The one success story to come from DSiWare is Wayforward. When DSiWare had nothing noteworthy on their store, Wayforward came along in 2009 and gave us the absolutely brilliant Mighty Flip Champs. It was an amazingly well designed puzzle game that was not only a completely original concept, but a concept that worked so beautifully that it holds it's own against such brilliant puzzle games as The Adventures of Lolo and Downstream Panic. It was DSiWare's first must own title, and from what we've heard from Wayforward, it's done extremely well.

2010 gave us a game from Wayforward that a cult following had been demanding for eight years, a sequel to the 2002 Game Boy Colour game called Shantae. Shantae: Risky's Revenge was put up on DSiWare for a somewhat steep 1200 points, but that extra cost was well worth it because it's not only just a good DSiWare game, it's a good Nintendo DS game. Risky's Revenge rivaled even the most amazing of retail DS games what with it's outstanding sprite art, incredible soundtrack, and awesome gameplay. It was the sequel that everyone wanted, and it is DSiWare's showcase title.

After Risky's Revenge, the thought never even occurred to me that Wayforward could be working on another DSiWare title, even though it was incredibly obvious that they would be. In the February 2011 issue of Nintendo Power, that thought finally crossed my mind when an exclusive preview for Mighty Milky Way was shown. It’s a spiritual successor to Mighty Flip Champs, and that has me quite excited.



To be honest I’m not super hyped yet since I haven’t seen any footage, and I don’t quite understand how the game works from just text alone, but the interview with Sean Velasco was the most intriguing part for me. One question asked was “What makes it a spiritual successor to Mighty Flip Champs?" The answer had me in thought for a while.

To sum it up, Sean said that they had to create requirements for what goes into a “Mighty” game. They listed some requirements such as “cute girl protagonist, actiony puzzle levels, retro sound effects, a loud colour palette, and copious nonsense.” This means that they now have the idea of what a “Mighty” game should be, which hopefully means that the “Mighty” games will become a series, much like the bit.trip games.

Hopefully it won’t be long before more news of Mighty Milky Way is announced, because I’m most certainly interested. I expect this will be a 2011 release, seeing as how in the interview they said they had been working on the concept for over a year. If so, let’s hope it’s as good as Wayforward’s previous DSiWare titles, because it would be awesome to have a great DSiWare title from them three years in a row.

Prinny Can I Really Be the Hero? is one of my all time favourite games, and I feel it gets misunderstood an awful lot. Sure Prinny was difficult, but if you can get past that you’ll find a great game with a ton of replay value. My play time on Prinny CIRBTH is 71+ hours, and I’ve done pretty much everything in the game. With a game that I adore so much, it would be quite difficult for any sequel to match it. Well Prinny 2: Dawn of Operation Panties, Dood! has been released, and guess what? It doesn’t hold up to the standards of the original. I’ll fully admit that I haven’t completed Prinny 2 yet, but I HAVE played through the first six stages where you can choose them in whichever order you like. So what’s wrong with this follow up? Well let’s take a look.



First of all, let’s take a look at the main character, and compare him to his counterpart from the first game.

In Prinny CIRBTH, Prinny was naïve, stupid, and carefree, but he was also a nice guy for the most part. The fact that he was on such a dangerous mission, yet so accepting of it made him a strangely hilarious character. Sure his comrades were getting murdered, but for him it’s just an ordinary day at work, and still has a pretty bright attitude. His voice was also a joy to listen to, not just because he had a lot of funny lines, but because all of his emotions were completely over the top. He was all around a really likable character, and he was a character that I was really rooting for the whole way through. Everyone likes an underdog, especially when the underdog is a nice guy that is deserving of a reward.

The Prinny in Prinny 2 had none of the traits that made him likable in the first game. His voice was changed to a more generic voice which decided to ditch most of the over the top emotions, and instead of a bright carefree attitude he was hit with the asshole stick and now spews insults and back talks with every other line. Now granted an asshole character can be great fun so long as the insults are funny, but they don’t even get that right. Much like everything else he says, his insults are so bland and emotionless that they just make me want to punch him. Due to all of this, Prinny isn’t likable, and I don’t want to root for him anymore. I’m rooting for Etna to blow his brains out so he can’t be a dick anymore. You know a Prinny is unlikable when you’re more willing to side with ETNA than it.

Next on the list is the feeling of accomplishment. Prinny is a notoriously hard game, but one of the big reasons why it’s such a joy to play is that every victory feels like you just got your report card back and saw that you got straight A+ marks. A very big part of that feeling of accomplishment was the victory music when awarded with something. The victory song after beating a boss, the song on the results screen, and the song when getting a netherworld award all feel extremely victorious, and as you sit there listening to it you feel that you’re slightly better than everyone else.

Now in Prinny 2 that feeling of accomplishment is severely decreased because none of the music sounds all that victorious. It takes one of the best parts of Prinny 1, and makes it much worse. I realize that saying “the victory music isn’t as good” sounds like an extremely petty complaint, but unless you’ve played both games, you really don’t understand just how big of an impact it makes.



What’s worse is when you get a netherworld award. The netherworld awards are special medals you can get for pulling off significant accomplishments, such as simply beating the game, to getting 50 S Ranks. In the original game these are such a joy to get because you work so damn hard for them, but the victory is so great that you really feel proud. A camera crew comes up to you and awards it to you, and there’s a great song in the background that I’d always sit and listen to for a while. Now in Prinny 2 the camera crew is still there, but the music is completely bland and not celebratory at all, and the camera crew now has distracting voice acting. Adding those voices really hurts that victorious moment somehow, and rather than feeling proud about getting an award, I just felt annoyed when I had to listen to the host’s annoying voice. As I said, this all sounds petty, but believe me when I say it’s a big issue.

However probably one of the biggest issues for me personally was the addition of stage specific hazards. Now a lot of people complained that Prinny 1 had very little variety, and to this day I object to that. After all, did the original Super Mario Bros. have much variety? Did Ninja Gaiden have much variety? Just because Prinny was on more capable hardware and had the possibility for more variety, didn’t mean it was really required. The stage specific hazards in Prinny 2 were not only poorly handled, but one in particular threw away everything we had been taught about how to play Prinny.

Prinny is all about patterns. Everything you do will result in a set pattern, meaning that once you figure out where to stand, when to jump, when to attack and so forth, you could discover a pattern that could get you through the stage no problem, and once you found that pattern you could do it every single time. There’s a certain stage in Prinny 2 where there’s a thing in the background that shoots fireballs at you, and you can stop it from shooting for a brief time if you hit certain switches to attack it. It’s not a big deal at first, but at the final checkpoint there’s a part where you have to do some vertical platforming while that thing shoots fireballs at you. No matter how hard I tried, I could not find a pattern that worked, and it dawned on me that it was shooting them at random. I might be wrong about that, but no matter what I tried, I couldn’t get it to shoot in a consistent pattern.

Because of the way Prinny is designed, there’s basically no room for twitch reflexes. Unless you know exactly what to do, the chances of you making it through the stage are slim. When a game that centers around patterns suddenly throws in something that’s completely random, the game completely falls apart. It’s completely unfair, and there’s no excuse for such a poor choice.



Another problem with Prinny 2 is the story. Now of course it seems unfair to criticize the story in a platformer, but I have a good reason. In Prinny 2 the goal is to retrieve Etna’s stolen panties, and for the first six stages you get a rare item at the end of them to put in a trap to lure the thief. In the original game the goal was to collect ingredients for the ultra dessert, and since the sort of items you often got were things like monster toenails, it was much funnier that they were being put in food, rather than just a trap.

The final thing that stinks about Prinny 2 is that in the normal mode you now only have two spare hits before you die. Three hits and you’re dead. In Prinny 1 you got four hits on normal mode, and it was possible to regain health through a combo meter. This design is still in Prinny 2, but it has been turned into the baby mode. This is really unfortunate because the health system in baby mode is a much better design, but the levels themselves have been made easier too. It strikes me as a bit of a kick in the face that they disguise a poor design choice as “hard mode”.

But in the end, is Prinny 2 bad? Well I’m not entirely sure how to react to that. In the eyes of a lot of people, Prinny 1 was bad because it was just too hard, and at first glance had a lot of poor design choices. However once you sit down and get into it, you may be surprised to find that it’s actually a really well designed game, and that some of those “bad” design choices actually work to the game’s advantage. I don’t think the same can be said for Prinny 2. The bad design choices they made for the sequel are simply bad, and no matter how much I love the original, I cannot excuse these choices. My advice? Pick up the original game, and ignore Prinny 2. The complaints above may seem petty, and most of them only really apply if you’ve played the original, but if you have played the original, trust me when I say they really add up. Prinny 1 is just a better designed game, and thus I cannot really recommend Prinny 2.

Because I’m lazy I have decided to NOT include relevant pictures in this blog, and instead just post pictures of random stuff on my hard drive.

2011 has a lot of good stuff coming out in January, but the year got started off with a Wii exclusive platformer called “Lost in Shadow”. This was a game that had been talked about for a very long time, and was delayed at least once in order to polish it up. It was in a lot of issues of Nintendo Power, and it seemed like a game Hudson was putting a lot of effort into. The game made me interested enough to buy it, and thus I entered the world of Lost in Shadow. Is it good, or should it stay in the shadows?

Now keep in mind this is not an actual review. So far I’ve only played about three and a half hours, so this is more of a first impressions than a review. However I feel I’ve played enough to give some insight on the game. Why am I doing this before beating it? Well, mainly because I have a strong feeling I won’t be finishing this game.

So the game starts with a very pretty opening cutscene where a young boy dies and his shadow gets separated from him. After that there are no more CGI cutscenes, which is kind of a bummer. The basic idea is that since you are a shadow, you can only traverse on the shadows of objects. Thus we get an interesting visual style where there are objects in the foreground, but you have no physical interaction with them. At first it’s a bit confusing to pay attention to the shadows and not the foreground objects, but you quickly get used to it.

The first few stages consist entirely of platforming with some very basic puzzle elements thrown in. As I said earlier, you can’t physically interact with the foreground, but what I didn’t mention is that your little fairy friend can. Using the pointer on the Wii-mote, you can use your fairly to interact with certain objects and move them around so their shadows suit your needs. If you find yourself in a situation where you can’t progress anywhere, chances are good you’ll have to find an object to interact with to create a new path. It’s pretty nifty, and it further increases the cool factor of the concept of traversing the shadows.



Later on you’ll pick up a sword, and as you can guess, this is where the enemies start to show up. As you’re probably already aware from other reviews, this is where one of Lost in Shadow’s downsides comes into play.

The combat in Lost in Shadow is probably its biggest downside, at least at first. At the beginning of the game you’re extremely underpowered, and it will take many sword swipes to down the simplest of enemies. This wouldn’t be so bad if not for the fact that after your combo of three slashes, and depending on the enemy, even after your first slash, you’re completely defenceless since it takes a little while before you can slash again. This mean’s you’ll likely get hit unless you take the strategy of slash once, run away, and wait for another chance to slash. Fortunately killing enemies gives you experience points in yet another case of COMPLETELY pointless RPG elements, so as you level up you’re able to kill enemies much more easily.

One thing that I should say is that there was one level early on where I simply HAD to turn down the difficulty to easy because I was still underpowered, but the level was completely SWARMING with enemies, and I died many times because I couldn’t defend myself. The enemies were way weaker on easy, so if you want to get through the earlier stages without too much trouble, switch it down to easy for a few stages. After I had played on easy for a while, I decided to just keep it at that level. Call me a wuss if you want, but I’ve got better things to do than replay your long stages after dying near the very end for the fourth time.

Lost in Shadow’s other weakness is that there is very little variety. They introduce a handful of mechanics relatively quickly, and then they don’t do anything different for a long time, until you get to the first boss. This isn’t really a bad thing as the levels are still enjoyable to play if you just do one or two in a play session, but even when you do take breaks, it gets monotonous after a while.

I mentioned a boss fight above, and I have to give the game a lot of credit and say that it was extremely awesome. I’m gonna spoil it, so skip the following paragraph if you don’t want to know about it.



The first boss isn’t technically a boss fight. The boss is a shadow monster with arms and legs sticking out of it, and all you can do is run away from it in terror. The only way to put distance between it and you is to not only run as fast as possible, but to hit switches that create patches of light. The monster will be stuck at the patch of light until it fades, and that’s when you have to get moving and not mess up your jumps. If you dawdle for too long the monster will catch up to you, and it’s these brief moments where you see the monster that make you want to poo your pants. After all, if it touches you even once it’s an instant kill, so you want to get as far away from it as possible, and never let it catch up.

Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation once said that a monster stays scary the less you see of it, and this game is what truly made me understand that. While it can also be scary to see the monster, not seeing it can be just as scary, if not more-so. He also mentions frequently that it’s scarier to be completely defenceless, and this boss also proves that to be true. Lost in Shadow is not designed to be a horror game, but this one boss fight was so genuinely terrifying that I’m willing to call it one of the scariest things I’ve ever seen in a game. (Though keep in mind I never play any horror games, so to most people this will be extremely tame)

Sadly, after the boss fight it was back to the same old stuff I did in the previous levels. Don’t get me wrong, the atmosphere and art style still make them interesting enough to play through and have fun, but if you don’t get as engrossed with the style as I do, you might find the game just flat out boring.

Now from what I’ve heard they introduce a cool mechanic later on, but I have yet to encounter it. I assume it has to do with the sparkly parts on the ground that I haven’t been able to do anything with yet, which would explain the collectables I don’t have access to yet. I’ll most likely have to re-play old stages to get those items once I get the new power. I just hope it isn’t too long from now, because I’m honestly getting a bit tired of what the game has to offer at this point.

So in the end, do I recommend Lost in Shadow? It’s hard to say. Obviously I haven’t played until the end, and thus there’s still a lot of stuff I haven’t seen, but aside from that boss fight there’s not really anything in this game that I’d say you have to play the game for. That boss is cool, but it’s not enough to buy the game, and it has most likely been done more effectively in other games. However if you’re looking for a Wii game that you can pick up every once in a while and play a level or two, that is when I can recommend Lost in Shadow. It’s a great time killer, and it’s great for distracting you when waiting for other games to come out, or waiting for a phone call or something. However if you’re looking for an outstanding game that you’ll want to play all in one sitting, you’ll want to look elsewhere.

If you’re curious about it, give it a rent.

If you were to ask me which Pokemon game is the best out of the entire franchise, I’d blow your mind and say Pokemon Ranger. I’ve been playing the Pokemon series ever since Red, faithfully shelling out my money for nearly every game in the franchise, and after Ruby and Sapphire came out and officially stagnated the series by being lazy uninspired piles of vomit, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d been abandoned. So I mostly ignored Pokemon after that, only stopping by to play Pokemon FireRed. Once the DS came around I started buying every Pokemon game again, starting with Pokemon Dash which was awful, then Pokemon Mystery Dungeon which was awful, and then Pokemon Trozei, which was somewhat good if not just for introducing Lucy Fleetfoot, which despite her art style is easily the coolest main character of any Pokemon game.

After those three games I decided to skip out on Pokemon Ranger and just wait for Diamond and Pearl which would further stagnate the series. However I couldn’t stop myself and I eventually bought Pokemon Ranger not knowing anything about it, and I am incredibly glad I did.



As I said at the start, Pokemon Ranger is easily my favourite game in the Pokemon series. It replaced the boring press (A) a billion times and go into a coma gameplay of the RPGs with fast paced action where you circle Pokemon with the stylus in order to befriend them. This may not sound like the most amazing idea ever, as many people are quick to dismiss it and say “all you do is circle Pokemon”, which is somewhat true, but it’s a hell of a lot more fun and interesting than having the action of channel flipping disguised as an RPG.

So before you start throwing plastic Pokeballs through my window with death threats inside of them, let me go into further detail about what I like about Pokemon Ranger. As an added bonus, I’ll also talk about Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia and Pokemon Ranger: Guardian Signs. So as the title of this blog suggests, this is a retrospective of the Pokemon Ranger series.



To begin with, let’s look at the main characters. You can choose between either Solana or Lunik, and seeing as how I’ve never played as Lunik, I’m not sure if it makes any real difference to the story. However seeing as how Solana is the coolest heroine in the Pokemon series right after Lucy Fleetfoot, I always take her, not caring if the story is different without her. Afterall, I’d rather play as an awesome female character than be forced to play as an awesome male character. I mean, you just don’t see enough awesome heroines in games, so that’s why I usually choose the girl when given the option.

Anyways, what I like most of all about Solana is that she’s not a kid. In the RPGs you’re always a ten year old, (even though they look about seventeen) and while that was perfectly fine when I was young, now that I’m older I’d much rather play as a character more my age. Solana’s age varies from source to source since I don’t think she has ever been given a specific age, but judging from how she looks in the game, the show, and the manga, she looks to be in her early twenties. This makes her much more relatable, and it also suits her role as a Pokemon ranger. After all, young kids shouldn’t be sent out on dangerous missions, so it makes sense that the characters would have to be older to get a job as a Pokemon Ranger.

The other thing that makes Solana a much more appealing character than the RPG heroes and heroines is that her sprite, along with all the other people, actually looks like a human being. In the RPGs they are all one tile sized chibis, and while that style certainly works well enough, they’re hard to take seriously after seeing much more sophisticated and realistic sprites in the Ranger games.

Next on the list is the story. While it still won’t win any awards and is still pretty light-hearted, it’s most certainly more edgy and better told than other Pokemon games. It actually has structure, and the story progresses all the time unlike the RPGs where you can go through three gyms and nothing happens to further the plot, which is virtually non-existent in the first place. It’s still a bit silly, and it has more than its fair share of dumb dialogue, but the final boss is so cool that it really makes the final part of the game epic. Though if you already know who the final bosses are, it won’t have as much of an impact on you as it did on me.



Next is the difficulty. As mentioned before, the Pokemon RPGs have next to no strategy unless you’re battling competitively, and while the Ranger games have very little strategy except circle things really fast, the bosses and even some of the standard encounters are difficult enough to warrant some planning out. Most of the time you can bull crap your way through bosses by just using Plusle or Minun’s Pokeassist to stun them for a free chance to circle, but if you challenge yourself to not use Pokeassists, or at least not use Plusle, you have to do a bit more planning.

For example, there’s an encounter against a Steelix that is one of the harder bosses in the game, and you have to be sneaky when fighting him. It’s completely possible to get him without an assist, as I have done it, but most people will want to get some help. If you don’t want to use Plusle, a good strategy is to get a Jynx and a Medicham. Use Jynx’s assist to make Steelix hover in the air, and then use Medicham’s assist so each loop is worth two loops. It makes it a lot easier.

If you use Pokeassists for every boss, it will make the game a lot easier, but it will still present some problems if you don’t choose the right ones. The real challenge though is beating bosses without assists. The very final boss in particular is way more fun if you don’t use any assists, as are most of the bosses. Oh sure you’ll probably die a few times, but it makes catching them a million times more satisfying. Though if you can manage to catch Scizor without an assist, I’d like to see that since to this day I can’t do that.

The last thing on the list that I really like about Pokemon Ranger is that it’s short. If all you want to do is get to the end credits and not do any of the after game content, it will take you maybe eight to nine hours to beat your first time through. My most recent play through the game was a mere six hours and fifty-three minutes. While that may not sound like a good thing to most, just trust me. It’s a good thing.

The above are the main things that make Pokemon Ranger the best in the series, and of course the fact that the game is simply a lot of fast paced intense fun. It was a new take on the series, and it was a great idea when you stop and think about it. The RPGs consist of people capturing Pokemon and forcing them to fight for their amusement. The Ranger series on the other hand involves people befriending a Pokemon long enough for them to help protect the environment, or if necessary, thwart the big bad guys. Once they get the Pokemon’s help, they let them go back to where they came from. It’s a concept designed specifically for the parents who won’t let their kids play Pokemon because they disapprove of the “animal cruelty” of the main series. And if it’s this much fun, I most certainly support it.



After Pokemon Ranger, I had regained faith in the Pokemon series, and was excited for Diamond and Pearl. To briefly sum it up, they were decent, but in the end brought me back to the conclusion that the Pokemon series was beyond help. However the disappointment of Diamond and Pearl didn’t stay in my mind for too long, because it was announced that a new Pokemon Ranger game was in the works. I was the most excited I had ever been for a game, because I had thought that Pokemon Ranger would just be a one-shot that they’d never go back to. However they decided to make another one, and I couldn’t have been more excited. Pokemon Ranger Battonage was released in Japan, and I had to wait a really long time before it was brought over to North America. However it finally got here, and I rushed out to buy it. Little did I know that it would be one of the most disappointing games of all time.

The first warning bell went off when I found out that Hal Laboratory who co-developed the original game was not involved with Shadows of Almia. I didn’t think much of it, but it was certainly troubling. The second warning bell went off as soon as I got to the title screen where they were playing recycled music from the first game. “Okay” I thought, “so they cut corners a little bit. I don’t mind.” These were just small complaints, but as time went on, I found out that they had changed a lot of very important things.

As I started the game I was frustrated to find that I was a younger character in a ranger school, and thus I not only had a less relatable character, but I knew that I’d be stuck in this school area for a while before I got to go out and do anything semi-interesting, and by “a while” I mean two friggin hours. And throughout these two hours I want you to play a little drinking game that will more than likely kill you if you try it. Take a SIP any time someone says the words “friend”, “dreams”, or any variation of them (friends, friendship, dream) I guarantee you will be puking within the first half hour. I emphasize SIP because if you took a full shot you wouldn’t make it through the first ten minutes without puking. (Though that might happen even without the alcohol)



*If you are not of legal drinking age do not play drinking games with actual alcohol*

You know it wouldn’t be SO bad if things got exciting after those first two hours, but that’s just until you leave that damn school area. And if you’re dumb enough to put up with it and read ALL of the text, it might take you anywhere from two and a half hours to three. Really it’s not until six hours in that you get your first important mission and the game gets exciting. In the first game the game is almost OVER at that point! This segways into my next complaint. THIS GAME IS TOO EFFING LONG.

As I said, Pokemon Ranger will take you at most eight or nine hours to beat on your first play through the game if you just want to get to the end credits. Pokemon Ranger: Shadows of Almia took me twenty-five hours to beat. That is simply too long for what Pokemon Ranger has to offer. I barely remember anything about Shadows of Almia because throughout the second half I was just in a trance, not caring about what was happening in the game, but rather just mindlessly playing to see the end credits. Out of those twenty-five hours there are only a handful of areas that I can honestly remember. I don’t even remember who the main villain was. To put it simply, the game was extremely boring, and I’ll tell you the main reason, which is also the main flaw with the game. They dumbed down the combat.

In the original game you have to loop the Pokemon without interruption, meaning you have to capture it all in one shot. If the capture line gets attacked, hits the Pokemon, or you lift the stylus, you have to start all over. This was the main aspect that made the original game challenging and fun. In the sequel there is a bar that fills up each time you loop the Pokemon, and once you fill the bar, you befriend it. You CAN get attacked/hit the Pokemon/lift the stylus without having to start over, but if you wait around for too long without looping, the bar starts to decrease and you’ll have to fill it up again. However you’re given a lot of time before the bar starts to decrease, so it usually isn’t a problem. In order to make this somewhat difficult, they decided to make each capture take many more loops than the original game, which basically just makes the pathetically easy fights go on way longer than they should. Since the combat was so easy I never ONCE needed a Pokeassist in Shadows of Almia, which made it so there was none of the strategy of the first game. Circle really fast, lift the stylus when you’re in danger, wait for a safe chance, then repeat.

So when you combine forgettable characters, a boring story, pathetically easy and boring combat, and stretch the game on for 25 hours with nothing interesting happening for the first six, you not only ruin everything good about the first game, but you just overall make an extremely boring game. Pokemon Ranger Shadows of Almia was NOT worthy of the Pokemon Ranger name, because the Pokemon Ranger name should insure quality. Pokemon Ranger Shadows of Almia sucked, and it would forever be a puke stain on the entire franchise.



Oddly enough it wasn’t too long after the second game came out in North America and destroyed any hope that was left for the Pokemon franchise that a third installment in the Ranger series was announced for Japan. When I heard about it, I simply laughed it off and didn’t give it a second thought. After the second game, I was genuinely shocked that they were going to make another. How on earth could they possibly redeem themselves after what they had done? The game was announced for a North American release, and I still shrugged it off. Once the release date started to draw near though, I got curious about it. After all, I went into the second game with such high expectations that it was bound to disappoint no matter what. However after Ranger 2, I genuinely had no idea what to expect about the third one. I didn’t expect to hate it, and I didn’t expect to like it. With this totally clean slate, I could go into Pokemon Ranger Guardian Signs with the same frame of mind as I went into the first game. Knowing nothing about it, and not having any expectations. I decided I’d buy it and try it out, and I am so glad I did.

Right off the bat Pokemon Ranger Guardian Signs fixed a huge problem that both games had. As much as I hate on the second game for taking a long time to get started, the original Pokemon Ranger took it’s time getting exciting too. It took about two hours before it really got going, but unlike the second game where it took two hours to leave the first AREA, and then four more hours to get to exciting stuff, the first game simply took two hours to get exciting. Guardian Signs is clearly aware of that problem, and throws tons of stuff at you as soon as you start the game, and never lets up. The first thing you see in the game is you high in the sky riding a Staraptor and chasing two bad guys on hover devices. You then catch some Pokemon without any tutorial, and then you dodge some bullets the baddies shoot at you. You then get knocked into the ocean, chase a Mantyke to get your styler back, and then within the rest of the first hour and a half you’ll fight Celebi, time travel, and see Raikou. Needless to say, Guardian Signs is much more exciting than even the first game.

The other big problem that the first two games had that was fixed in Guardian Signs was the music. The first game had some decent tunes, but they all sounded really grainy and unpolished. Shadows of Almia simply recycled a lot of tunes from the first game, and what was new also had that grainy sound to it. Guardian Signs not only made the sound quality better, but actually had a couple of really memorable tunes, such as when you’re riding on the legendary beasts, or while fighting the Pokemon Pincher grunts. Which brings me to my next point, the villains.


awesome Pokemon Pinchers song

In the first game the Go-Rock Squad was a complete joke, and while the Go-rock Quads were at least memorable, they still weren’t all that intimidating. However the final scene before the final bosses with Gordor is actually quite intimidating because, to put it frankly, Gordor’s just kind of insane. In Guardian Signs it’s completely backwards. The standard grunts of the Pokemon Pinchers are actually more intimidating than the higher ranks. They have the more threatening and awesome music, they look like what a normal villain (by cartoon standards) would look like, all dressed in a black uniform rather than a Dragonball Z villain with a dumb costume, and while some of them fall to comic relief, they’re actually more serious in tone than the main villains. I think the big problem with the main villains is that the main villain keeps changing. In the original game the main villain was Gordor, and it STAYED that way. There were no plot twists where it turned out there was someone more evil, it was just Gordor. In Guardian Signs the main villain changes so many times, and it keeps changing right up until the cutscene before the final boss. Because of this I had no time to get intimidated by the villain because I didn’t know who to be intimidated by. Sometimes it’s better to just keep things simple.

Now Guardian Signs DID keep the dumbed down combat of the second game, but they fixed it up a bit to make it more interesting. The boss fights made it so you were now pretty much required to use Pokeassists, which sometimes felt a bit like it was just lengthening the fights, but at least spiced it up a bit, and they added to a few things the second game introduced. They also had some pretty interesting boss fights, the coolest of which was a boss fight with a Ditto. I’ll let you figure out why that was cool.

What’s interesting about Guardian Signs is that while it did keep the easy combat, it didn’t feel as monotonous because the story was so exciting that I didn’t mind the fights being over quickly. The game also benefited from being severely chopped down in length, only taking fourteen hours to complete rather than twenty-five. It was longer than the first game, and right at the very end it did sort of seem to drag, but it at least ended when it was out of stuff to throw at you. It was just slightly too long, but for the most part, it flew by pretty quickly.

Pokemon Ranger Guardian Signs was a worthy sequel to Pokemon Ranger, and did the name proud. It’s still not as good as the original, but it was enough to redeem the series in my eyes. I highly doubt there will be a fourth game, and I kind of hope it stays that way. I’d rather have the Ranger series end on a high note than suffer through another Shadows of Almia.

I’m on my sixth page of text in Microsoft word, so I’d better end this. I’ll wrap this all up by saying if you want to try the Ranger series, play the original first, and if you want more, go play Guardian Signs. Both of them are great games, and I highly recommend them. Just stay away from Shadows of Almia, unless you want to try that drinking game.