Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep HD 2.5 Remix

Okay. So it took me over three years to actually get around to getting the platinum for the HD remake of Birth by Sleep. It was back in March 2015 that I got the KH2 platinum. And frankly, I’ve completely given up on getting the Chain of Memories platinum, because that game is just not very good and having to play it over and over is absolutely no fun. But anyway, yesterday I finally got around to beating No Heart and then the Mysterious Figure with Terra, before anticlimactically having to go and find a heartless I’d missed in Deep Space – finally popping that coveted platinum trophy.

And despite dragging this out over several years, I think I can say with confidence that this is my favourite in the Kingdom Hearts series. The first game is the best conceptually, with the merger of Disney and Square the best-balanced, the story not yet horribly bloated and the overall feeling the most joyful. KHI Sephiroth on Proud Mode is also the best they’ve balanced a hidden boss to be a very hard challenge while also feeling rewarding and fair to fight. KHII is the best player experience, and nothing quite matches the joy of late game Sora destroying everything with a highly intuitive control system. It’s also the best-looking game so far.

But Birth By Sleep has a lot going for it. It has the most emotionally resonant story, quite cleverly balancing a tragic story with a satisfying feeling of having triumphed by beating the game. It has the most pure-hearted of the central boy characters, for much as I love Sora there are a few moments where he borders on psychotic when he talks about the deaths of enemies. It has the most interesting control system in that each of the three wayfinders have their own unique playstyle, so that mastering each of them takes different skills. More than any other factor, though, I think it’s the very serious tone and the dynamic of strained friendships, loss, betrayal and protective instincts that fuel the story that make me like it the most.  

In terms of flaws, there are a few that stand out – a somewhat awkward control system derived from the game’s origins on PSP; poor balance of certain skills and shootlocks that mean that the game stops being vaguely challenging only about a third of the way in; a distinct lack of Final Fantasy elements, represented pretty much entirely by moogles and Zack; and the most ridiculous hidden bosses, all of whom spam attacks over and over that can take you to 1hp so that most of the fight against them is just dodging and healing, and who require you to be more lucky than skilled in taking them down. One quite nice thing was that the platinum necessitated beating them all with every character, and of course my pride necessitated doing so on Proud Mode, which was partly why this process stretched out so long – I hesitated to load up the game when I knew all I’d be doing was trying an unfair boss over and over.

But beat them I finally did, and very much enjoyed watching the ending and extras on a TV screen instead of on a little handheld. And with Kingdom Hearts 3 now only 7 months away and the franchise entering my life every day thanks to Union X, I’m very much in the mood for playing through this game again. When I head back to England in a few weeks I’ll pick up 2.8 as well and fill in the little blanks I haven’t yet familiarised myself with.

I have to say, though, I’m still just a little sore that even with this remaster of the final mix, the original Japan-only expert version of the original three Ice Cream Beat tracks never reappeared.

South Park: The Fractured but Whole DLC – From Dusk Til Casa Bonita

South Park returns with an extra little episode for The Fractured But Whole. It was just right for me to fill the gap left by finishing Ni no Kuni 2, a couple of hours with new content for a familiar old game. And since we're in the middle of a long break from new South Park on TV, it was nice to get this content as a kind of extra episode. 

The plot is nice and simple - Kenny's sister has fallen in with the lame Vamp kids, so there's a superhero mission to save her. This means new powers for our hero and a new character, Henrietta the goth. The goths are some of the most fun characters on the show, so this is a great addition, and it helps that she's a very useful buffer character. 

This DLC recalls a few different episodes of the show, and has a nice surprise boss fight (sadly spoiled for me by a thumbnail in a recommended YouTube video), and happily doesn't make it easy for the player, even when they've finished all the game's major challenges. The puzzles are simple and straightforward, though there was one point I thought I got myself permanently stuck after straying from the intended path, and the battles are all satisfying and enjoyable. There are even a slew of mini-games that are kind of fun. 

No trophies and only a couple of hours' enjoyment, but definitely a fun diversion, with a few laughs and sweet character moments. Oh, and adorable cat ears for my main character, who is definitely not Evan. 

Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom

It's Ni no Kuni 2!

Did I enjoy playing Ni no Kuni 2: Revenant Kingdom? Absolutely. Did I fall in love with the world far more than I did in the first game? Yes. Do I think that objectively speaking, Ni no Kuni 2 is a good game? To be completely honest, no. 

Evan is adorable. Not sure about cut-price Lisa Simpson

There are many good points and bad points to this game, the sequel to one of the most notable JRPGs of recent years. For me, the good outweighs the bad. But I am under no illusion whatsoever that many people wouldn't feel the same. This game hit a perfect note for me for two reasons - firstly, the overwhelmingly enjoyable nostalgia evoked by what is almost a reimagining of Suikoden; and secondly, because I utterly adore the cute, girlish, angsty adolescent character archetype so common in JRPGs, but not very popular in the West. I am well aware from characters like Hope in Final Fantasy XIII and Genis in Tales of Symphonia and the hate they get in Western fandoms that I'm in a minority for loving that kind of character. A lot of people cannot stand these often whiny adolescents, so I really wouldn't recommend they play a game like this where one is the main character.

While I enjoyed the original Ni no Kuni, I did not love it. I liked it enough to begin grinding out the platinum, but lost my saved game and never felt like going back to replay it. The world-building was nice, Oliver was a likeable kid and of course the Ghibli connection was intriguing, but I felt that the second half of the game was messy, the combat was slow and frustrating - especially when it came to catching and levelling up familiars - and some of the mini games really were not very fun. The idea of going back to replay the game doesn’t appeal very much at this stage. 

Evan's Oliver cosplay

The sequel is an altogether different prospect. I had fun from beginning to end and even grinding out the platinum trophy was mostly enjoyable. I liked Evan much more than Oliver, too. While both are supposed to be the same age, Evan seems at least 3 years older than Oliver, who to me looked 10 and was written like he was 10. Evan was convincingly 13 … though only the Japanese subtitles of the original trailer reveal that’s his age, and since Level-5 are notorious for putting things into trailers that don't make it to the final project – most glaringly in Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright – I'm not sure his age is canon. Though Oliver has a much more detailed backstory and far more emotional depth, I liked Evan Pettiwhisker Tildrum far more, as he was adorable from beginning to end. 

How cute is he?

It was Evan's introduction trailer that actually made me preorder this game, which until then I had thought I might get sometime in the future on sale. Evan and only Evan convinced me to shell out the cash. He is the most adorable character I've seen in a long while, especially as a lead character. The characters I like tend to be androgynous, optimistic, goofy, shy and uncertain of themselves, but can step forward to meet a challenge when they must. Evan is all of these, with silly cat ears. His appearance fits the archetype to a tee, with that vaguely aristocratic page-boy hairstyle that has come to symbolise the boy prince (and conveniently skirts the question of whether Evan has two pairs of ears or a lot of blank skin on either side of his head). His blue-eyed pretty face would look a lot like Penny from Inspector Gadget with a pair of pigtails. I wasn't disappointed by him, either - he starts adorably diffident and fussy, goes through some angst, but emerges stronger and becomes a capable leader while never stopping being adorable. If the protagonist were the only thing to consider, I'd be delighted with Ni no Kuni 2. The one thing I would have liked to have seen would have been more development, more depth in his reaction to loss, betrayal and sacrifice, which was all kept just a little too light and brisk, even for a game with children as an ostensible target audience. 

Another strength is the visuals, building on the first game's aesthetic to try and make the player feel like they're immersed in a Ghibli world. Natural scenes in particular look fantastic here, mostly in the background of world map battles, and the Chinese-style city of Goldpaw is gorgeous and great fun to explore. 

This just looks beautiful, and fighting dragons is classic fantasy fun

I also enjoyed the combat much more than the first game's turn-based system, even if it's less nostalgic. It's like a simplified Tales game, with lots of hacking and slashing, plus long-range attacks, some of which have to be channelled. The game is certainly easy, though I added to the challenge by insisting on playing as melee Evan, and should probably have had a difficulty slider or at least tougher bosses. By the time there's actually a challenge in combat, the game is more or less over, and there really could have been some Kingdom Hearts-style ridiculous hidden bosses: only one of the post-game bosses was even a little challenging, coincidentally the one you can easily grind levels from as she spawns extra minions, and neither the toughest tainted monster nor the one at the end of the boring post-game dungeon was challenging. The Higgledies also add a small but fun additional layer to the game, and if you take the time to explore the system you do very well. Aesthetically, they’re a great addition, evoking the Kodama from Mononoke-hime, and very cute and entertaining to watch. Though if your brain accidentally interprets the loading screen higgledies as facing towards the camera rather than away from it, you’re gonna have a bad time. But having a summoned Higgledy knight or a huge gravity ball that is then copied by another Higgledy means a huge power spike in battle, which was very rewarding. There probably should have been more of a boost from getting harmonious Higgledy groups, and giving them unison attacks could have been an extra level of fun as well as another throwback to Suikoden, but they were certainly a positive addition. 

Higgledies are just one more part of what makes this such a happy, cute world

Speaking of Suikoden, the core of the game beyond the central storyline was pretty much directly lifted from the classic series. Around the world, various characters can be found who ask you to do different fetch quests, and in return they'll join your cause. Some just ask for cooked dishes, or for you to kill off a boss, but some ask you to do very lengthy tasks or to give them something you won't find until the endgame. They fill up your city and can be set to gathering materials or researching various perks. At first, I absolutely loved this system, but in the end it's executed a little poorly. You only get to a stage where it starts to feel satisfying and you're eager for it to continue when you're about to finish the game, and it's a definite disappointment you can't max out the kingdom before you watch the end credits, four necessary recruits not showing up until afterwards. The city-building should have been more flexible, the rewards more varied, the possibility of levelling up the whole kingdom far more frequent (or automatic) and the Stars of Destiny - erm, I mean the Evermore recruits - able to give more interesting bonuses. 

Uhhhh

I also quite enjoyed the army mini-game. There was one of these in Suikoden, too, which was also oddly cute for such a serious matter (and you could permanently lose allies in those battles!). Here, the same rock-paper-scissors system prevails, only you roam the countryside engaging in battles, taking down structures and occasionally having to chase or escort another unit. A lot of others online hate this mode, especially the necessary number of battles for the trophy. But I liked it, mostly because I imposed a rule on myself not to use the square button. The square button in this mode is the win button. It's so much more fun not to use it and actually having to strategise which troops met which enemies where. Of course, when you can summon a dragon to the middle of the battlefield it becomes a bit moot, but I had a blast with this mode using this condition. At the same time, obviously the mode would have been way better if I didn't have to artificially increase the difficulty. 

All these elements were delightful and I have no complaints about them. For the rest, however, I wasn't so impressed. 

The mysterious look

The story itself is unoriginal and unsatisfying. There was so much potential to explore this world and these characters that was not realised. Everything starts out very well, in classic JRPG style and not a million miles from Suikoden. The young king is overthrown on his coronation day, saved only by a mysterious man from another world who appears in his room and a Seirei no Moribito-style female guardian. In the aftermath, Evan decides to found his own kingdom and unite the world, not by conquest but by alliance. Some have taken his quest to be Hitler-esque but it's really more of a case of starting the United Nations. The rest of the game is spent going between the different nations, finding that luckily they have a huge problem caused by an outside force, saving the day and forging an alliance. Then there's the matter of who is causing all the world's problems. It's nothing new, you soon get tired of Grima Wormtongue scenarios over and over again, and with only five kingdoms, it doesn't take very long to get through and has to be padded out with things like a three-part fetch-quest-cum-minigame-tutorial to get a library card. The ending just isn't very satisfying and the game length is too short, especially when there were so many interesting questions: what about kingdoms who want nothing to do with Evan's system? What about kingdoms who would leave if Evan allied with old enemies? Should Evan's privileged birth really make him the great saviour of the land? Then giving the real triumph of the ending to a character the audience doesn't care about in the least (tied into the story with a bizarre throwaway superpower) irritated me quite a lot. I really hoped for more from the final act of this story, and can only hope future DLC is more satisfying.

Evan, you can't just go into people's houses and do that

The game also has a very weak supporting cast. The other party members, for some reason all human, are extremely bland. Compared with the casts of the Tales games, Chrono Trigger, even goddamn Popolocrois, these characters are flat and boring. Batu is just a musclehead. Leander has pretty much no character beyond that he is smart, Bracken has some sparkle but never gets decent development. They try to spark some chemistry with Tani and Evan with a fake romance scene but there's absolutely no connection between them so it falls flat. Only Roland gets a modicum of development, but the chapter devoted to his actions is wasted with next to nothing new revealed about him, his superficial appearance in this world is never explained and only the first game's premise makes him even being in this game anything less than completely bizarre - and given that the first game is referenced largely only in old statues, place names and a single early puzzle (the game's only fun, vaguely challenging traditional RPG puzzle), that doesn't feel like enough. 

Totally blending right in

You might notice that I used all the English names here, whereas I insisted on using the Japanese names for the first game. Actually, yes, I played through the game in English, something I have never done before when given the choice. I even got undubbed roms of older games when I could. But Evan's voice was one of the reasons I fell for the game, and the acting is very good here. I love all the regional accents, with Welsh fairies returning but also plenty of Yorkshire, Scottish, Estuary and even Australian accents rendered (sometimes so thickly I wonder if non-British audiences can understand). That said, sadly there isn't nearly enough voice acting here. Sometimes at very strange moments, recorded speech ends to be replaced by grunts and that bleep-bloop-in-vaguely-the-pitch-of-the-speaking-character familiar from many other RPGs kicks in. The first game had way more recorded speech and animated cutscenes, so lovely as the rendered world is here, this was a real disappointment in a sequel on a next-generation console. Other problems include the speech boxes during army scenes being tiny and disappearing too fast and the effort put into rendering character movements noticeably declining over the course of the game - Evan's final rousing speech is delivered in such a robotic way that you wonder if the scene was meant to be animated and then they couldn't get it done so slapped together a basic scene in the in-game engine. 

Given that one character is canonically an English speaker and Evan has a very British boy-king feel to him, playing in English made sense. Plus to be honest, the Japanese version has really silly names. Tani's Japanese name is 'Shirty'. On the other hand, I wish the main antagonist's name had been kept, as the English version seemed to be designed to spoil a twist for any player who knows how Japanese morae work. Still, when I play it through again, I'll do so in Japanese. 

This guy is such a troll

The world-building also suffers as the game goes on. Ding Dong Dell is a fun classical fantasy city, though the fish theming is pretty hilarious and the Grimalkin must get hungry a lot as they go about their business. Then Goldpaw is absolutely gorgeous - though with Sino-Japanese relations not at their best just now, I question the wisdom of making a city that's clearly based on China and then having it populated by dog-people with names like Fai Do and Bau Wau who love gambling but are suffering because of their leaders' corruption and cheating. Hydropolis is pretty but nothing particularly original. For some reason too many JRPGs have to have a futuristic world amongst all the swords and sorcery, from Chrono Trigger to Tales of Symphonia, and it's always the ugliest and least fun part of the game, and the same happens here. The tone doesn't fit well and fighting robots after all the majestic dragons just isn't very exciting. Much better to keep it simple and high fantasy, and maybe throw in a ninja village or a vampire castle or something. Wait, that's Suikoden again. 

Evan needed more friends

Though Ghibli was not involved this time, key personal stayed on. Momose Yoshiyuki did a great job with the character design, perhaps my favourite element of the game, but I was disappointed by Hisaishi Joe's input. I adore his work, own several of his OSTs and image albums, and the themes that reappear from the first game are great. The rest...is lacking. Most of the city themes are simplistic and repetitive, lifting from Carmen and, of all things, Kraftwerk, and the battle music is unmemorable. I think what extra work was done here was phoned in. 

Go, my knights!

With the game barely marketed and most of the revenue coming from big fans of the first game shelling out for hugely overpriced limited editions, I don't know that the sales here are going to inspire much confidence in a further sequel. I wouldn't be surprised if Level-5 just stick to their safe cash cows like Inazuma 11 and Professor Layton, both of which are about to have new anime adaptations (woo!). Maybe they'll even go back to Dark Cloud. But I would certainly enjoy seeing more from Ni no Kuni, especially with more Evan or perhaps some sort of event where Evan and Oliver can work together. I’m keen for what the DLC will bring. But when I'm being completely honest, I cannot say that this game was well-made or worth returning to over and over again, and the quick, easy platinum is testament to the lack of depth and substance here, even if it's far less frustrating than the first game was. There’s some more endgame content for a 100%, more weapons and outfits to get, but since absolutely all of them are obtainable only by grinding items in the extremely boring final dungeon, I don’t see myself bothering.

Ta-daaa, it's the platinum

I loved Evan and had more fun with the first half of the game than I have with any other game I can think of in years. But ultimately I was left feeling a little unsatisfied, even disappointed. And the honest truth was that if Evan had looked like Kratos I probably wouldn't have cared for the game at all. Still, after finishing off the game I felt like something was missing from my life that no other game can quite fill, so that’s definitely a sign I enjoyed the world. I’m very keen for the DLC and will absolutely buy it. But I categorically wanted more, and I have to say, this game didn’t quite deliver.  

South Park: The Fractured But Whole

I very much enjoyed playing through The Fragmented But Whole. It seems to be doing less well with critics than its predecessor, but I think that’s quite a lot to do with the post-Gamergate obsession with avoiding triggering people meaning that anything edgy or offensive must be docked a few points, no matter how self-aware it may be about that. However, as a game, a story and a role-playing experience, I found it far more satisfying than The Stick of Truth.

There are certainly disappointments. I didn’t find the fart powers of the first game amusing, so it was a bit disappointing to find out that you continue as the same character with the same central ability – even if later there’s a kind of plot explanation for it. There was also a lot in the trailer that didn’t materialise in the game – Mint Berry Crunch is absent, probably not to appear until a later DLC; Mysterion is not the nemesis he was presented as, and is in fact a very minor character here; PC Principal is not the teased berserker boss but in his usual role of spewing social commentary and tacking a random quicktime event move onto the combat system; even though you’re told you can ‘pick a side’, unlike the first game you don’t get to make a decision whether to side for one faction or the other, so there’s never really any sense of picking a side. Well, there is one scene late in the game where you have a choice to make, which I don’t think makes any difference to the game whatsoever, but may be the game’s most harrowing and memorable, with a sudden shift in tone and humour supplied only by its juxtaposition with the other comedic elements around it.

For its flaws and broken promises, though, I think this game is considerably better than the last one.

Firstly, it’s just much more fun to play. The first game was an extremely simple RPG system which became pretty pointless as soon as you got some teammates with overpowered abilities – all you had to do was get Kyle and one-shot everything with arrows. Here, the Final Fantasy Tactics-style grid battle system with teammates and ranges to consider was much, much more compelling and fun. Yes, I had a team to steamroll the regular enemies I met, but bosses needed some strategy changes. Not only the hidden boss in the burrito shop (who was a fun challenge) but even some of the regular bosses were actually pretty difficult to adjust to, especially the larger ones. Hands down, that makes this a much more enjoyable game to play.

I could forgive the first game being simplistic, though, when the story was fun. Again, I think this game improves on the last. The first may have had a slightly clearer storyline – the MacGuffin has to be retrieved – but it suffered from being heavily fragmented by weird sequences at night and trips away from South Park. This game unfolds like an episode of the show, starting from a mundane adventure that lightly mocks pop culture (Cartman and Co, having squabbled with the other kids who were playing superhero, decide the way to get their superhero franchise started is by getting the reward money for finding a cat) and then spiralling out into something far bigger (a mysterious figure is uniting the crime bosses in the town to cause a crime wave and oust the current mayor). The twists are predictable, especially if you’ve ever seen Unbreakable, but that’s part of the parody, really. It was also a bit more believable in the first game that the whole thing was an exaggeration in the minds of the kids – something the show did some great jokes about in the past – but that’s something the player can quickly accept.

The personal story of the main character is also more satisfying. It builds upon the first game, yes, and you have to look past all that unfunny fart-power humour, but under the guise of ‘filling in your character sheet’ and ‘giving the superhero a tragic backstory’, a lot of this game revolves around figuring out the character’s identity and past. A lot of that is poking fun at current identity politics, where everyone is extremely sensitive about being politically correct about people’s self-identification, and the South Park politics remains centrist and observational – it mocks the bigots who will attack someone’s identity no matter what it is and famously put a joke right that the start that life is easier for white people, but it also revels in classic offensive stereotypes, small-town mentality and the idea that political correctness is all a bit daft and just as brutishly self-righteous as those infamous sexist frats. Through it all, your main character comes over as sympathetic and sweet, even staying mute except for a cute little sigh when he eats dinner as his parents fight.

It’s remarkable, really, how South Park is perhaps the first major game where you can actually customise your 10-year-old character in any number of ways – gay, pansexual, gender-neutral, any nationality you want – regardless of whether it’s tongue-in-cheek or not. I also have to talk about Tweek and Craig. The series started by poking fun at fandom and the tendency for there to be gay porn about any show with a lot of male characters. Neither Tweek nor Craig considered themselves gay, and didn’t get it at all. When the town got depressed when they faked a break-up, they decided to stay together for the sake of others while not really being gay. And yet recent episodes and this game have pushed away from that. It’s actually a major subplot of the story – Tweek leaves with the ‘Freedom Pals’ while Craig stays with Coon and Friends. The schism causes them to break up, where they bicker for a while but adorably keep asking the main character how their ex is getting on in between the bitterness. Finally they go to couples’ counselling, in typical daft South Park-style, and their special attack becomes a hilarious and adorable pastiche of Japanese BL (which, by the way, nobody has called ‘yaoi’ for a very long time). But they begin to express themselves, publically and privately, not as fake boyfriends but with genuine affection. If anything, the relationship is treated with the most respect just about anything has ever been given in South Park. Partly it remains a joke, that the one thing respected in the writing is the forced love affair between two 10-year-old boys pushed together by fangirls, but that doesn’t stop it being strange to see this show of all shows making something incredibly cute and progressive.

A lot of this is built out of a pretty weak season for South Park. Season 20 seems to be known in the fandom – which I’m not really part of – as a very weak one. Parker and Stone never expected Trump to win so a lot of their plans had to be changed. They struggled doing a season-long storyline that was a mess of ideas about trolls, ’member berries and Cartman turning over a new leaf after getting a girlfriend, which ended up with a lot of badly-explored ideas. For example, tensions between the sexes plus protests over the National Anthem (with a touch of Harambe) culminated in Butters’ ‘Wieners Out’ movement. The boys disgusted the girls, got what they wanted and were even protected by the PC Principal approving their right to protest peacefully. Then Butters tried it again, got told it wasn’t the right time by the Principal and the whole plotline vanished with the girls never able to give a decent response, which came over as a bit weird. Some of that unevenness finds its way into this game with very little actual thought going into Wendy’s presence or the actual underlying problems with South Park’s rotten underbelly and extremely uneven power structures.

But primarily the question is whether this is a fun game and a solid tie-in. I think it succeeds at both. Yes, it’s still a bit too short, but it’s longer and more satisfying than its predecessor. It’s also funnier and more human. So I unhesitatingly say that in my opinion, it’s better than The Stick of Truth. 

South Park: The Stick of Truth

I didn’t get the South Park game when it came out, even though I heard a lot of positive things and have been enjoying the show since it first started airing in the US – with a few hiccups here and there as the show went off the rails for a while. The Stick of Truth didn’t appeal for two reasons – firstly, I had a huge backlog of games I wanted to play at that time. But secondly, and more importantly, I refused to spend money on an incomplete game, and in the UK several sequences were cut out because someone somewhere deemed them inappropriate. Total bullshit, especially because one late-game sequence disarming a bomb recalls one of the cut sequences and thus makes very little sense.

But I’ve been a lot more into South Park since the new season began and The Fractured But Whole seems a lot of fun. Plus if I preorder, I get The Stick of Truth for free. So that’s what I did, and knowing that it was a very short game, played it through. The censorship, repetitive combat and simple story mean I’m happy to play it through just once and forget it (I sided with Kyle and the elves, for the record), but I actually rather enjoyed the 8 or 9 hours I gave this game. Ordinarily I don’t feel like I’ve really finished a game and can write my review until I’ve seen everything it has to offer and usually gotten the platinum, but in this case just a single run was adequate. Which isn’t to say it was a cursory speed-run: I finished all the side-quests but one (didn’t find the last hobo) and did pretty well on the collection and completion sidequests too. But I don’t think I’ll be going back for more.

The game was fun. Visually, it is of course just like an episode of the TV show. That isn’t the greatest of feats, given the show’s famously simplistic style. The acting is of course delivered by the show’s main cast, and probably the main draw, with the same crude humour, occasionally clever satirical parts and lots of nods to the show’s past – even right back to the beginning at times, with callbacks to very old episodes through elements like the stuffed and mounted Scuzzlebutt. And the gameplay is a satisfying rendition of classic turn-based RPGs, with combat revolving mostly around status ailments. Honestly, the game was far, far too easy. There was only one fight that I found challenging, which was against Al Gore and his bodyguards, which I had to concentrate for because if I didn’t defend against the enemy’s attacks with perfect timing I lost. But that was the one and only time that the game presented anything even a little difficult, and once Kyle joins the party his most powerful attack just wiped everyone out like the Magus Sisters in Final Fantasy X.

So with the presentation as would be expected from modern games, and the gameplay not so great, what about the story? Well, that’s certainly the saving grace of the game and what keeps the player coming back, though it’s not exactly the best story ever. The charm is that the boys are playing at being fantasy characters, from the Black Friday episodes of the show. They have split into two factions, the humans – led by Cartman – and the elves – led by Kyle.

The player, as a new kid, meets Butters and through him joins Cartman’s faction. He learns to fight, and in a parody of Skyrim that goes way too far and dominates too much of the game despite not being funny, he uses magical farts to get an advantage in battle. Thus he goes around town beating up bullies, rats and homeless people and making friends on Facebook. After causing disaster on an alien spaceship that abducts him for a bit of anal probing – censored in Europe – our hero ends up having to contend with an alien virus that has disastrous and very South Park-ish effects on the town’s population, as well as the secret government agents who want to hush the whole thing up.

The parodies of classic games are certainly enjoyable. While the turn-based combat evokes Final Fantasy, the mute main character is more like Link and there’s a whole section that’s essentially a tribute to Zelda. The show’s climax with betrayals and revelations and big firey battles with recognisable old faces is satisfying, too.

South Park may be puerile and at times push a joke too far when it’s not actually that entertaining, but generally it’s the added layers that a joke gets that are amusing. Gross-out humour about Mr. Slave’s butt isn’t very funny, but seeing an old face long missing from the show in an unexpected place gets a laugh. The edgy humour of fighting through an abortion clinic isn’t so amusing, but getting cornered into having to pretend to do an abortion on Randy Marsh by your cover story makes it much funnier (though again gets censored). The game also did the fashionable thing of playing with the notion of free will, like Bioshock or Spec Ops: The Line, but for a funny sequence with a very creepy photographer.

Initially satisfying to explore with lots of combat to learn, it’s a shame there isn’t a mode that’s much more challenging, and that there couldn’t be considerably more variety in the battles – and a lot less farting. We’ll see how game 2 measures up tomorrow!

Gone Home

A nice little game, very simple to play with a slowly-unfolding story. It’s nice that it starts hinting at horror, at murder and the occult and weird creepy secret passages, but eventually resolves into a very normal story of adolescent rebellion. Ultimately, the story wasn’t a very clever or inventive one, but it was sweet and the way it gradually resolved made this a fun short game to play – for free. 

Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright

I feel like it has been years and years since I first heard of this game. I remember very much liking the look of the trailer when it was released – which was also the first time I found out that in Japan, Phoenix Wright has the somewhat hilarious name of ‘Mr. Naruhodo’. In the eventuality, very little of what was in that original trailer made it into the final game intact, but the general concept remained, including the excellent central prospect of making the game about witch trials, including a setting very much recalling The Crucible.

The general idea of melding these two series was a good one. The gameplay of both has always been fairly similar, especially in the early DS games: static (or almost static) scenes could be searched on the touchscreen to advance the story. The crucial differences, of course, being that in Phoenix Wright this led to a trial and in Professor Layton it led to puzzles. The game does the obvious and satisfying thing of having both: as you search for clues to the next trial, you are given numerous puzzles. As I enjoyed every Layton game and the first Phoenix Wright games, this suited me well.

Yes, the character designs between the two games are very different. Layton recalls cutesy European comic book art while Phoenix Wright is more typically anime-style. But the fact that the two kind of clash is actually quite charming, and I like the way the characters from each world have a different ‘speech noise’ for the lines that aren’t read by the actors.

The story is fairly predictable but well-executed. Professor Layton receives a letter telling him about the mysterious city of Labyrinthia and how one girl has escaped – but is on the run from witches with formidable powers. Professor Layton attempts to keep the girl safe but after various magical events (that aren’t actually explained in the main story and then handwaved a bit in an omake sequence) she is taken back to Labyrinthia – as are Layton and Luke.

The girl manages to get caught up in a trial, and is defended by Phoenix Wright and Maya, who also manage to get themselves caught and taken to Labyrinthia. Thus begins an adventure that largely features dramatic witch trials and a mysterious ‘Storyteller’ who distributes pages to the citizens of the town that unfailingly tell the future.

Now, every Layton game since the first has essentially relied on the twist that the inexplicable events happening in the story are in fact explained by imaginary technology (indistinguishable from magic…), so the way this story unfolds ought to be no great shocker to anyone. And also may bring to mind a minor M. Night Shyamalan film. But there were a few things in the big unveil at the end I didn’t see coming, mostly to do with relationships between different characters.

There were a few things that don’t make a whole lot of sense. There’s no good reason the Storyteller doesn’t just remove Layton and Luke from Labyrinthia as soon as he becomes aware of them. One trial – featuring a very appealing girl-disguised-as-a-boy character – doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny well once all the secrets are revealed, making the player wonder how someone could have known to ‘stop time’ and, presumably, disassemble part of a wall. It also kind of skips over the fact that a very real attempt at murder happened, and was averted only by chance. Then there’s the way nobody really has any objections to the way they’ve been made to live, even the ones who have had years of suffering.

Nonetheless, the game is interesting throughout and has a wonderfully atmospheric setting and very entertaining characters, especially all the crazy witnesses and the quirky librarian. Overall, I felt the game was markedly easier than any previous title in either series I’ve played, and graphically Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy had much nicer-looking polygon models, but the novelty of this game, its interesting setting and engaging characters, make it a whole lot of fun. I also very much enjoyed the little omake episodes included as DLC, each with an easy little puzzle.

I would love more of this idea, really. I guess I’d just love another full Layton game, not a weird smartphone vampire game. I’m also not at all sure that Youkai Watch will be a satisfactory substitute. I guess I’ll just have to patiently wait to see what I get!

And you know what? I’d really love a feature-length animation of this crossover! That’s something I’m pretty certain I’ll never see, though. Alas!