The Endgame - Destiny

Format: PS3, PS4, Xbox360, Xbox One, PC
Story Completion: 100%
Story Satisfaction: 10%
Character Level: 24/32

If you're a dedicated gamer like me you'll probably understand that our playthrough of a game is just one of the many lives we live, and pretty much every one of these lives spans from a game that asks 'What if?'

Destiny certainly poses this question, more specifically it asks 'What if we lived in an age of prosperity where we've managed to colonize the Moon, Venus and Mars and thanks to a war between various alien factions there is now only one inhabitable city in the universe and every day we wonder if our city will fall. Oh and by the way there's a huge Death Star in the sky that protects us.'
You play as a Guardian, one of the few that reside in the last city left on Earth, with your underline goal being to fight back against the numerous alien factions across the inner galaxy before they bring the fall of this city as well

As you can probably tell, Destiny's story is not it's selling point, in fact most of the story could be ignored without detracting from the game at all to be honest, however everything else is handled in such a way that it will just keep you coming back for more.

This little light is your companion throughout the game. Though a lot of companion in games are renowned for being painstakingly annoying,  your 'Ghost' is actually a surprisingly amiable and witty comrade.

At the basics, Destiny is an FPSMMO, and as a game it's strikingly similar to Borderlands. The most enjoyable part of the game basically comes from hunting for rare and valuable weapons and armour to make you even stronger, and this aspect appeals to the little boy gamer inside of me so much. See, the chance of getting all the really rare loot is really tiny, but that chance is still there, and it does happen, so you'll find yourself doing everything you can to find it. Destiny offers a lot to help with this, but it's basically all end game content, the best loot comes in the form of engrams: Items that you can get decoded to reveal a piece of armour or a weapon, but unlike in Borderlands Destiny limits your access to the best loot based on your level. You'll find shitty white and green drops up to level 15 or so, before white fades out of existence altogether and delicious blue engrams start dropping, these give good stuff but you really want to find the purple ones that give you legendary equipment, the only stuff better than these beautiful babies are the Golden associated Exotic stuff, but seriously good luck getting any of that stuff without grinding ten hours a day.

Each of the enemies has a weak point which will cause them to take extra damage, none of them are particularly hard to find, I wonder where this one's could be!

All that said, developers Bungie have done exceptionally well at helping us answer the call to loot keeping the game fun (in fact in hindsight this is where the fun begins) after you hit the level cap, with Rare and above equipment having an extra stat to boost you above level 20, as well as much harder missions for you to test your skills at with the potential for those beautiful blue and purple orbs to drop on the way keeps us playing the same simple missions over and over again. If you like to keep things fresh there are daily bounties which offer a goal to strive for and some excellent rewards too. The multiplayer is pretty decent too, it's easy to see evidence of Bungie's roots with Halo within, and that's not a bad thing as it's a fun and enjoyable experience, and the completely random distribution of loot at the end means you don't always have to do well to get the best of prizes. What? still not good enough for you? You long for an epic adventure? Well, like any strong MMO Destiny also gives you super capped out players the chance to do Raids - reeeaaallllyyyyy long missions for the highest level and best players, with epic bosses and of course the rarest of loot. I'm not at a decent level to try one yet but my overly obsessive friend that I played through the game with tells me doing a Raid with some good quality equipment on will take around six hours.

SIX. HOURS.

Is that a mighty enough feat for you?

When you find someone with gear like this, just smile, and know that you're probably never gonna 'get there'

Destiny really shines through in terms of its combat though, which feels very smooth and satisfying. The guns look good and there's a genuine feeling of power when you squeeze the trigger, and melee kills are often more fun than blasting an alien in the face. There's no feeling quite as satisfying as knifing a full health enemy in the face and sending it's corpse ragdolling back a few meters, the animation just gives a level of impact that screams 'Ooohh that's gotta hurt' as you laugh and tower over your victims sprawling corpse.
The three classes to choose from offer a variety of unique playstyles to suit all preferences . Titans dive in head first and punch the ground in the face to annihilate everything nearby; Hunters stay back and shoot everything in the face with high damage and precision; and Warlocks do whatever they do and magic everything in the face. Each has it's own diverse skill tree allowing you to create a class that truly suits you as a player.

Aside from class you can also choose your character's race. Chose from Human, Android, or Extra from James Cameron's Avatar

With all that said and done, how does the story end? Does the end of the story make up for the rest of it being basically irrelevant? No not really, one of the factions awakes a giant blobby heart in the sky, potential for epic battle against omnipotent god-like jelly. Reality, a disappointing fight against three statues empowered by the heart one at a time, and are about as generic as most of the bosses in the missions prior. Kill the third statue, the heart just sort of... implodes... and that's it, cue the ending sequence which didn't even play for me for some strange reason, but hey who cared about the story anyway?

Overall Destiny is a very solid and enjoyable game, with a huge amount of content (and growing) for you to explore and discover. It really didn't live up to the hype upon release but I fail to see why, the story is insignificant but that doesn't stop the game being enjoyable. It's less like an adventure, more like good fun stress relief and opening-a-pack-of-trading-cards level excitement.

TL;DR: Great game, brilliant combat. Story may be pointless but who cares when the promise of loot is abound. Haters gonna hate, but they have no reason to. Deal with it.

Level One: Alien - Isolation

Format: PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox360, XboxOne
Chapters Complete: 5/18
Difficulty: Normal
Deaths: Too many to count

The metallic corridors of the Nostromo are dimly lit as Amanda Ripley crouches silently behind a pile of conveniently placed cardboard boxes. There is not a sound except for Ripley's faint and slightly fearful breathing. Silence. Suddenly, a small beep resonates from her pocket and with a shaking hand she pulls the glowing motion tracker out to observe; it begins to beep faster and faster. Then, an echo. Clunk... clunk... clunk... clunk... "It's close" Amanda thinks to herself while remaining as silent as possible. A thud. Amanda quickly turns around on the spot. A screech. Clunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunkclunk. Amanda looks down to find herself impaled through the stomach, then everything just stops.

O-Oh my Mister Xenomorph, what big teeth you have

This is how it feels to play Alien Isolation, a breath of fresh air in the Survival Horror genre that gives a genuine feel of threat and fear and doesn't rely on overused and predictably placed jump scares. After the disaster that was Colonial Marines (now let's never mention this again), Alien: Isolation finally allows the player to feel nigh on powerless when confronted by a being you can hardly fight back against, a feeling that can be experienced in very few games to this day. But boy oh boy does this game do it well.

Set around fifteen years after the events of the Alien movie, Isolation sees you take on the role of Amanda Ripley (didn't see that one coming), daughter of Ellen Ripley, as she takes to Sevastopol Station to discover the truth about her missing mother. She arrives with two others and the place clearly looks damaged and very unsafe, yet they decide to go in anyway, and while traveling by wire to the the station, an accident occurs separating the trio and inevitably leaving Amanda stranded aboard the Station, with no idea of the horrors that await her.

Alien Isolation is a game that fuels itself off your powerlessness. Amanda is thrown into the Station alone, and with no weapons or equipment to help fend for herself, and additionally she has no combat experience, all the perfect qualities for a very hostile environment. The whole of the first chapter plays with your mind, there's little you can do except walk forward, and thought there is absolutely nothing of threat to you at all at this point you still find yourself moving slowly, listening for the slightest sound and hiding. That is the spell the atmosphere of the game puts you under, the spell of expecting everything around you to be at your throat within the next second, and it's a spell that never wears off. And when you finally can defend yourself, just remember; firing a gun is basically a dog whistle for the Alien, Amanda melees like a pussy, and the only thing you can do to scare off the Alien is by setting fire to something, and having the resources to do that isn't exactly easy.

The save points are very well incorporated, and even tell you when enemies are nearby before you go to save. Expect to be killed by the Alien at least once right after saving if you're not careful.

After spending the whole first chapter in fear, wondering if the Alien was going to get me, I was extremely disappointed to find the first encounter with everyone's favourite Xenomorph is not only in a scripted cutscene, it's also not a surprise seeing as it's spotlighted by the classic cliche of spittle dripping from the ceiling RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CAMERA. Needless to say my initial reaction was 'Oh so that's it then?' Thankfully that was the only time I had that feeling.

From that point on the Alien is always around, it roams the vents above and sometimes drops down to have a little peak as you cower in the shadows and hope to God it doesn't notice you. For the next few chapters the Alien is basically summoned by Amanda's trespassing where she shouldn't be and setting off every alarm imaginable. Eventually you'll hear the Alien on the prowl after you shut them all off and the real fear begins, because that Alien just loves to lurk around and never go away, it's easy to end up hiding in the same place for twenty minutes plus on NORMAL difficulty. Expect to cower in that locker for over an hour while the damn thing ponders whether it was just the wind that made that one dust particle on the floor move a little to the left, or whether it was you, and then does the same for everything else in the room if you're playing on hard or above.

Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit.

By the time you reach chapter 5 you're sort of used to the system, you're only really at threat after all the alarms go off, which is cool. Aaaaaand then you turn like the third corner in the mission and are greeted just by the sight of the Alien uncoiling itself from the vents and looking around. All of a sudden you realize that little safety net you thought you had never really existed at all. It's genuinely horrifying.
Blend all this together with the Alien's intelligent AI which will start to learn if you keep hiding in the same places and you're left with a stealth game that's everything a Survival Horror should be: hours of playtime with not a single second being spent free from fear.

TL;DR: A truly spectacular and unpredictable game that finally brings the tension back into Survival Horror, a must for anyone interested in the genre, even if you're like me and have never seen the Alien movies. Just be ready for chapter 5, it's a dick. Deal with it.

Level One (Hundred) - Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment

Format - PS Vita
Current Level: 117
Floor Reached: 79

So, for those of you that don't know (and trust me on this, it's probably a good idea that you do know) Sword Art Online is a popular anime series about a Virtual Reality MMORPG, it's your standard fantasy game set in a world called Aincrad with a huge 100 floor dungeon and a raidboss on each floor, everyone who got a copy was super excited but shortly after starting the game they realised the logout button was gone and nobody could get in or out. An entity calling himself Akihiko Kaiyaba reveals himself as the creator of the game and claims that should you die in the game, the Virtual Reality headset you are using will fry your brain and kill you in the real world. The only way for everyone to escape is for someone to defeat the boss on the 100th floor. That's about all the basic knowledge you need. when I first played this game I had no experience with sword Art Online whatsoever bar a strong desire to get into it that was never fulfilled because of the well-known rule 'Games > Not Games'; but because of this inexperience I had litterally no idea  what a lot of the opening cutscene was.

Take for example the first character you meet, a game original character called Philia, the first thing pointed out to you is that she is a 'Yellow Player,' this means she has committed crimes against another player in the SAO universe, but Hollow Fragment doesn't seem to make any effort to explain that at any point. In fact, the game isn't very beginner friendly at all, the tutorials are sufficient enough for you to understand the game's mechanics, sure, but this is a game you will get NO enjoyment out of without any background knowledge, because believe me, disregarding what the game offers to SAO fans, it's actually pretty terrible.

In fact even though I am a huge SAO fan I hate how flawed this game is, but let me start with the obvious one. Sword Art Online: Hollow Fragment COMPLETELY screws up the SAO timeline we know from the anime with an excuse that I can only describe as 'ripping a hole in the Aether makes everything explainable.' This flowchart might offer more insight.

As you can probably tell, two characters that should most definitely not be Aincrad in Hollow Fragment are present, and while I do really like both characters, their presence is just another factor that makes me feel like I'm playing a disappointing Chinese bootleg of a spectacular anime.

Regardless, maybe it's time to talk about the actual game now, but believe me it doesn't get better from here.

After starting up the game you get a little character creation which is great, you can change Kirito's eye colour, hair colour, name and stuff and create a truly unique character, but despite offering this it feels like the game really doesn't want you to. Let's be honest here the colours change fine but the name, oh the name! It basically doesn't matter what you call the character, the game developers clearly weren't smart enough to program changeable text fields into their dialogues so even if your Kirito is called Droopyballsac or god knows what, the characters will ALWAYS call him Kirito. In fact the only thing that changes if you change the name that what you entered appears above the health bar in the bottom corner, but honestly what's even the point of naming him if everyone's just going to shout "Ah! It Kirito!" anyway?

If you expect to dive into a typical JRPG and grind a few levels, at least Hollow Fragment might surprise you. With the game being set vaguely sort of after the events of the first half of the SAO anime Kirito starts off at level 100 and at least the game is true to the JRPG style, if you want to get to level 101 anytime soon, you're going to be grinding monsters forever because everyone knows lategame levelups take an eternity to happen. Don't forget you'll want to level up all the characters you like too so they can help you in the raids, which is fine if you take just one partner with you but just bear in mind that leveling them all takes an millenia as well, if you don't want to be stuck on the most painful grind ever, pick your favorite character and don't ever change, trust me.

Believe it or not this is actually the first battle, but seriously I can't deny the battles against bosses like this guy are pretty damn epic.

Surely a game based on an anime with such epic fight scenes has some brilliant combat to make up for it though? Right? RIGHT!?
... Wrong...
Combat is flat and boring to be honest, Kirito has one basic combo, press O four times and then do a sword skill to finish the combo. Though there are a variety of skills to use the only thing that really seems to make a difference is whther they do AoE damage or single target. The biggest problem with this though is that those four basic attacks of yours will do only the tiniest sliver of damage to the enemy, then suddenly it'll lose half it's health from one sword skill. In fact, saying that combat is really quite stupid: Skills cost 100-150SP to use, which would be fine, but you start with 300SP and that figure doesn't increase. The SP Recharge rate is really slow so you'll often find yourself slowly chipping away at the enemy's health as if you were trying to cut down a tree with the slightly more solid end of a feather.
Don't get me wrong though it doesn't mean every fight is a grind, there are ways to restore your SP, and I'm not talking about potions. The designers had a pretty good idea with one of their mechanics, to keep the feel more like an MMO you can praise your partner when they do in combat, and as a nice touch if you praise a particular thing a lot that partner will use it more often since they know you like it. That's great and all but the real beauty of this mechanic is that i's about the only thing that makes combat manageable: Every time you praise your partner, you regain 50SP. It basically means you can spam that praise button and regain enough mana to kill everything by the turn of the decade. Probably not that feature's intended use, but gosh is it important.

Multiplayer looks like it could be a lot of fun, but since it's ad-hoc only you're probably not trying that out unless you have a good group of SAO friends.

Hollow fragment is another game that becomes pretty laughable and loses a lot of its seriousness by falling foul of it's terrible Japanese translation, because if there's something everyone knows about the cute red-haired girl in the corner it's that "his swords skills are is very impressive". Even the dialogue that is grammatically correct is horrible though, every single sentence is so basic the game may as well have been translated by a 10 year old and a lot of the game feels wooden because of it, and don't even get me started on the stupid chatting system.
It's nice that you can talk to the characters and build relationships with them, sure, but unfortunately all that consists of is choosing whether to say 'Right.' to a badly translated fragment of a sentence, or whether to say '...' instead, and if you do it outside of events the effect is nigh on negligible anyway. No need to delve any deeper on that.

I'm sorry what? Are you talking about conquering Aincrad or does Lisbeth also have a bondage dungeon where you all like to hang out

Overall I really hate that this game has so many flaws in it, the world of SAO in the anime is a spectacle of a place that I would personally love to journey in (minus the whole die in real life thing, I wouldn't last too long with that), but this game just takes everything away from that and turns the epic adventure of survival into a slow and painful climb to the top of a mountain... while you're the size of an ant.

And that's only half the game, there's also a large free roam area with lots of quests and stuff similar to Final Fantasty XIV's Guildleves, but despite having access to these from the start most of them are near impossible for you to do then and you may as well just tackle Aincrad, I think this area has a story to it as well, but I can't for the life of me find it.

TL;DR: It's nowhere near as good as it could have been, badly translated and combat is dull and grindy. Only manageable if you're an existing SAO fan and barely playable even then. (But this is me we're talking about I still like it. Deal with it.

Level One: Kingdom Hearts Birth By Sleep (Final Mix)

Format: PSP (Re-Released as part of KH 2.5 Remix on PS3)
Current Playtime: ~7 hours
Characters Played: Aqua
Difficulty: Standard

So I'm finally back after how long? Three months? More? Put bluntly I had a very busy period and a lot of games to play, I just couldn't be arsed to write, I am so sorry!

Anyway we're back, and the new year has rolled in! Time to actually do what I said I would do and finish every game I play before starting a new one, starting with... Kingdom hearts - Birth By Sleep.

Now if anybody knows me, they'll know I'm really not a huge fan of change, so when you take a series I adore and take away some of the defining features that made the game part of the series, you're already pretty low down in my books, just take a look at Bioshock Infinite for example. Bioshock infinite took away the well recognized Big Daddies and Little Sisters, as well as the familiar setting of underground dystopia Rapture, in favour of a floating paradise in the sky, Columbia. Needless to say I was pissed, how can you still have a Bioshock game if it's not in Rapture!? With no Big Daddies!? But I admit, I was young and naive then; I've played Bioshock Infinite, and it is indeed an outstanding game, an outstanding Bioshock game, nonetheless. It kept all the basic game mechanics the same and still pulled off that classic Bioshock old-world style as well as that uneasy feeling you got while exploring Bioshock 2's dark and unsettling setting, it tells a unique and interesting story just like the previous games too and I honestly believe it really is the best Bioshock yet.

Enter Kingdom Hearts - Birth By Sleep, a game which in theory I should hate like I hated Bioshock Infinite when I first saw it, however the reality is quite the contrast, this might indeed be my favourite Kingdom Hearts yet.You can see how I'm drawing parallels here I'm sure.

As with most Kingdom Hearts games, there's your fair share of minigames, including an ice-cream music games, a monopoly rip-off, and who could forget the classic 'beating up fruit' game

Kingdom Hearts BBS tells the story of Ventus, Terra and Aqua - three wielders of the iconic Keyblade that have seemingly little or no ties to any previous characters (except Ventus, he looks like Roxas and is just as much of a pussy). You can choose to play as any of the three characters, noting the fact that each playthrough with a different character will show you different sides of the story developing into one big whole picture.

 Let's take Aqua's story for example, seeing as that's the one I've been playing, at the beginning after taking her Master's exam with Terra and succeeding where he failed while Ventus (too young to take the exam) looks on. After this section Terra leaves, clearly angry at having failed, aqua goes to follow but is stopped by the master, and he tasks her with bringing back Terra, and later Ventus who also leaves in pursuit of Terra, albeit against the Master's orders. This is what forms the base of Aqua's story and her incentive for travelling to all the other worlds, however this is something you'll only know if you play through Aqua's story, as I can guess this particular scene will only appear in hers, and the same goes for scenes from the other stories which must definitely be omitted from hers. Though this arguably causes a fragmented story full of holes, the holes are in fact mysteries that keep you playing on, and indeed make you want to play the other stories too, they tie together so nicely that discovering the truth about pretty much any event in a different story is insanely satisfying and full credit to the writers for that one.

Mirror, Mirror on the wall, why make the real one so bloody obvious!

Gameplay-wise some of the pretty basic Kingdom Hearts mechanics have changed but actually results in a system so much better than other KH titles. You still have your basic attacks and jumps but all the spells and special abilities you want to use in combat are called 'commands'; you can choose and make a 'deck' out of them which makes the set number of abilities you can use, up to about 8 different ones. with the right build you can create some pretty spectacular combos too. BBS also still kinda has KH2's Summons (but they're basically just extra 'Limit Breaks'), and has a new kind of ability called a 'Shotlock Command', but neither of these things are particularly necessary and can quite easily be forgotten about. I know I only use them when I realize I haven't used them in a long time.

As for the enemies you face? Well it's not the Heartless this time around, instead you have The Unversed, but they actually have a pretty unique and cool design, not to mention they're so similar to Heartless in terms of their attacks and movement that I'll let that one slide, I actually like them a lot; much more than those dynamically coloured turds we fought in Dream Drop Distance

All in all BBS is a spectacular game, it brings about a lot of really quite risky changes and handles them all well and even building on and improving them, all while maintaining that wonderful Disney-Final Fantasy fusion of gameplay, story and style that just leaves us thinking "Now this; THIS is a Kingdom Hearts game"

Sure okay the whole Command and Command Fusing system is kinda complicated, but hey, this is literally all the equipment you can equip in the game so that's simple enough for you!

TL;DR: Though it changes a lot it's the best Kingdom Hearts yet, a beautiful story delicately woven like three silken threads, and some truly enjoyable new characters too. Also: Play Aqua, because Terra is a dick and Ventus is a pussy. Deal with it.

The Endgame: Danganronpa 2 - Goodbye Despair

WARNING: This post contains spoilers that WILL reduce your enjoyment of the game should you choose to play it. As a courtesy to my tiny readerbase, the spoilers have been blanked out.

Though I'd usually have done a Level One post for this game a week or so ago, it's a Danganronpa game so naturally two hours spent writing a blog post would be much better spent playing through the game to reach the end as soon as possible, that's how highly I regard the storylines of the Danganronpa franchise.

Becuause of just how much I adored the first Danganronpa game I was honestly afraid to play this second one, i thought I wouldn't like that characters as much, and the fact it's set on a deserted island wasn't helping; but allow me to go ahead and say this now, I could not have been more wrong. It was as if I'd decided that 1 + 1 was over 9000.

So the Danganronpa franchise is a series of games (turned anime) which is not unlike a cross between the Hunger Games and CSI. 16 High School students with 'Ultimate' talents (as in, the best at what they do in the world ever) are taken to a deserted island and, thanks to the appearance of a monochrome devil bear thing (called Monokuma) are forced to murder each other for a chance to get off the island to freedom. It's not quite that simple though, of course. After a murder is committed a class trial is held in which all the living students debate on who among them is the killer before a vote occurs; if the students successfully guess who the 'blackened' (read: murdering douche) is, the the blackened will be executed in the most ironic way the game developers could come up with; however, if the students guess incorrectly, the blackened will go free, and everybody else will be executed! Yaaayyy executions!

If you were to play bingo with all 16 characters here, and crossed off every character who died, you would win in three ways

The game is split into a three part structure: Firstly is Daily life, a visual novel/mild dating sim where you simply go around spending time with the other students to learn their backstories and stuff; Next comes Deadly Life, one of your friends has died! Time for us untrained high-schoolers to investigate the crime! This portion is very standard of a point and click detective game, but it works well, and unlike the first game where for example the blackened in first case is more obvious than a bear trying to hide among a small pile of Hundreds and Thousands, all of the cases here will lead to more questions than they do answers as you investigate. Lastly is the Class Trial part, arguably the most fun, where lengthy discussion is had and through a number of minigames you use all the evidence at your disposal to pin down and expose the culprit.

Anyway, enough about the generics, let's be specific here; though I largely believe this sequel is better than Danganronpa 1, even I have my own issues with it, but let's look at the positives first...
Danganronpa is a franchise which uses its characters to make the story so much more potent, as with Danganronpa 1 each and every character is unique and everyone who plays the game will inevitably develop a list of five characters which they adore more than any others, and some they will loathe more than even others in real life; this is part of what makes Danganronpa so powerful, you know a murder will come, but who is going to be the victim, how would you feel if the character you've been getting to know in the Daily Life sections suddenly shows up dead on the floor of a beach house. Play the game and write down your favorite characters. Finish the game, count how many survived. You want my result? 1 out of 6, [even my most favorite character who I thought wouldn't die thanks to her resemblance to one of the first game's characters turns out to be the murderer towards the end of the game]. Danganronpa will rain havoc upon your feelings and your faith in people, enjoy the victory of that first case where two of the less amiable characters snuffed it all you want, it's only a matter of time until the next killing happens, and who knows who it'll be this time....

One noticeable factor about the sequel is how predictable it becomes if you've played the first game. [Case 3, usually very calm character flies off the chain with rage once they're accused of murder]

Which brings me onto the next thing the sequel does so much better than the original, the actual killings. Each and every murder that takes place is unique and convoluted and every case solved give a much greater feeling of satisfaction compared to the first game; take the second to last case for example where a murder takes place in a funhouse using all sorts of misunderstanding to its advantage; it's kinda confusing and really complex, yet everything makes perfect sense, and that is how solving a crime should feel. Don't even get me started on the last case which is [a suicide made to look like murder but is actually murder]. Yeah. Exactly. [The nut-job of a 'victim' basically tortures himself, dangles a spear above him over a bar near the ceiling (holding onto a rope at the end) then starts a fire, the remaining students find the fire and use so fire grenades from nearby (yeah I've never heard of those either) to put it out, buuuuttt one of the fire grenades had its contents replaced by a dense poison gas, which when thrown on the fire caused the guy to die instantly, releasing the spear to fall straight into his stomach, but more importantly, making a fellow student into a 'blackened', and with no way of telling who it is, a truly unsolvable crime], I could even go so far as to call it the most beautiful murder in the history of the detective genre.

Detract from that though, and we come to another key feature of Danganronpa which makes me adore it, and that's the Executions, in the first game they were great: brutal, ironic and in one or two cases genuinely frightening, in each and every one you watched it was almost as if you could feel the Blackened's pain as they endured it, in fact the very first execution even made me feel physically sick, it was that shocking. Danganronpa two however, falls flat initially on this front, with he first execution being too pants for me to even enjoy, the second being mediocre at best and the third was even more pants than the first and holds the place of least favorite execution of the franchise [Used a giant syringe to pump an arm shaped rocket enough to blast the girl into space forever more, I'd have preferred it a million times more if they'd stuck the syringe in her and pumped her full of that medicine stuff until she literally exploded]... What? The power of Danganronpa comes from feeling, and if you can't feel the pain of the person undertaking it, or even laugh at how stupid it is, then you might as well just be watching another cutscene, not a human being dying before your eyes in a truely brutal way.

In the trials you argue by shooting the words out of people's mouths with 'Truth Bullets', it's actually a very powerful way of shutting down someone's argument, you should try it sometime

The last trial though? It takes everything you thought you knew about the world of Danganronpa 2 and instead throws a complete mindrape right in your face, the screen starts becoming all flickery and glitchy and when it first happens you'd be forgiven for thinking your PSVita was having a serious malfunction. [The last trial basically involves a showdown with the mastermind behind it all, this time a virus taking the form of the 'Bigger Bad' from the first game: Ultimate Despair - Junko Enoshima, after an epic battle of wits, the classic 'hold X to charge your final attack' scenario] (and a part where I got stuck looping the same dialogue about ten times because it took me that long to realize I needed to use the statement recall function you only had to use about twice previously )[eventually the final boss went down, and I was left to wonder (after a bit more dialogue) what kind of future the five surviving characters would make for themselves, choosing to remain on the island after finding out about all the shit that's gone down in the outside world.] what does happen to them in the end? Well that's not a question Danganronpa ever likes to answer, Yet the ending is just as satisfying if not more so, and the game just leaves you to mourn the deaths of your favorite characters by showing pictures of them during the end credits.

TL;DR; A tragically beautiful storyline that will play havoc with suspense and emotion. a must have for fans of the hunger games, detective games or visual novels, even more so if you love all three.

Level One - Conception II: Children of the Seven Stars

Oh Japan, your ability to throw out rather strange games is unmatched by any other country. What have you bought us now? Conception II, and if the name isn't cringey enough, try playing the game. The game isn't bad, in fact I adore it, but not without a bit of... ehhhh.....

Conception II is the rather strange child of Atlus, the company loved for the Etrian Odyssey games and of course, the Persona franchise. And as with most Atlus games, it really shows that the game was made by one and the same.

Like the above, Conception II is a Dungeon Trawling JRPG, with a high-school Dating-Sim like section between your adventures. The dungeons look like they've been ripped right out of a persona game, same kind of style, same kind of mechanics, looks and controls, the works. The combat feels a little lacking compared to the persona games, possibly because it feels more complex in this and feels oddly random at times; I've gone from consistently one-shotting a particular type of enemy with a basic attack to only doing half the health of the exact same species of enemy in the next room over, which can throw a little bit of a spanner in the works. Unlike in the Persona games, enemy weaknesses are determined by directions you attack from rather than elemental properties which, although they exist in the game, seem to have much less significance than its other persona.

Remember when you had trouble figuring out an enemy's weakness in Persona? Well forget about it because this game tells you all the best places to attack right from the start!

I find it really difficult to compare the two games in terms of their dungeons and combat, they're similar yet so different at the same time, but I have to hand it to Atlus for one simple mechanic that makes life in Conception II a whole lot nicer. The God's Poke ability is a passive skill the protagonist has while walking the dungeon floor, and it automatically kills any enemies the game knows to be significantly weaker than you whilst still granting all the exp from the battle, a feature the game couldn't do without because of just how much grinding you need to do to keep your team fighting fit, but more on that a bit later.

You may still be wondering what I was on about when I mentioned the game being more cringe-inducing than the title; well, where Persona is an adventure that looks at the deeper meanings behind repressed emotions and friendship, Conception II is another generic story of saving the world with friends... that promotes teenage sex and polygamy. I mean, with a name like that how could you ever have thought otherwise. there's nothing inherently wrong with this but the whole concept just feels kind of weird, but why wouldn't it? Story-wise you play as God's Gift (read: yourself) in a world where monsters are threatening the world and 16-18 year old boys and girls blessed by the Star God work to combat them, however this is very difficult because nobody has enough Ether (basically the element of light that would beat dark, blah blah blah) to counteract the huge amount of dark energy inside the labyrinths; however, you as God's Gift, happen to have an insanely high amount of 'Ether' (not sperm) which will allow you to fight and hopefully seal of the dungeons. in order to help you on this quest you need teammates, and good ol' Ether helps here too, see you can gain allies to fight with by passing this Ether on to others, specifically, by making children. Yup, through a sacred ritual called, wait for it, 'Classmating' *cringe* you can make your own little star children to fight alongside you. Cute right? Sure, but the soundtrack to the ritual sections is... *cringe, cringe*

Classmating in a nutshell! Note that she doesn't actually mention what you need to think of, or what you need to touch...

Nothing quite like watching an implicit sex scene where everyone's been covered in bright pink florescent paint while listening to the questionable background music, which you get to hear more of as your relationship with the character deepens. As far as I've seen the song has progressed to:
"Oooohhhhhhh ~ Touch my heaaaarttt ~ Yeeeaaaahhhh ~ Just wanna make love to youuu...." Yep, after that last one the whole ordeal has started to feel a little less innocent than the game tries to make it out to be. But that's not even the last of it, after all that you get to choose your new child's class (Archer, Theif, etc, etc) to a sickeningly cheery chorus of "Congratulations - on your new arrival" *cringe, cringe, cringe*
I literally have no explanation as to what kind of feeling I have when hearing this, but it's weird and I can't say I like it, I sorta feel like the game is sarcastically calling me a huge dick for basically knocking up all the best girls in the school and even one of the teachers, but of course, what I do outside of the gaming world is not something I plan to talk about here.

Sex, drugs and overactive Ether aside though, there's something really special about the characters, all of which (except one, in my personal opinion) are really fun and lovable despite falling into about every award winning category for 'Overused Japanese Character Cliches', including fan favourites like 'Thinks she's completely plain but is actually something special', 'Really cute and ditzy younger girl', and who could forget the insanely popular 'Genius kid who became a teacher at 18'. You'd be forgiven for thinking these cliches would take away from the game though, honestly aside from that one character that falls a bit flat (ironically, the cast constantly draw attention to her having the biggest rack of the lot (thank you Japan...)) and is sickeningly shy even for me to handle, I truly do love the characters, their event scenes are amusing and gripping in various ways and these are honestly the reason I keep coming back to the play them game as much as possible: to see the next events until I can't see any more events! To advance the story so I can see more events! I'll be honest, I find the dungeon sections tedious in comparison

CAN YOU NOT!?

Conception II is a game which, despite all it's... unusual traits, there's a lot of charm sealed within this game. I understand this game really isn't for everyone, in fact I think this is even more niche than most other JRPGs out there so I wouldn't go so far as to recommend it despite my love for the game, so unless you've been really interested by what you've read here or you're a fan of the only JRPGs I could call weirder than this (the Ar Tonellico franchise), it's worth a try, but don't drop too much money on it unless you know you'll like it.

TL;DR: It's Persona with added sex metaphors, and I love it. Deal with it.

Level One: Lost Kingdoms

Format: Nintendo Gamecube
Year of Release: 2002
Hours played so far: 6
Cards Collected: ???

If you were to travel back in time and find me 12 years ago, you would still find me as video game and TCG enthusiast, so naturally when I flicked open a copy of Cube Solutions and saw a guide for Lost Kingdoms... I thought nothing of it, because I had absolutely no idea what the hell it was. Fast forward 5 years, and you'll catch me reading these same Cube solution magazines again. Why? because I think that video game strategy guides are the best kinds of reading material out there. I even bought the Sonic '06 (Piece of Shit Be Upon It) guide book because it was actually a guide and not the result of a teenage girl's strange OCxSonic fanfiction.

But to be fair all that detail is pretty negligible, what matters is that when I realized what the game was. I needed it. But I never ever saw it anywhere... until I was at a convention the other day. One copy, and the price - £12. Exactly the amount I had on me. I will never ever forget, that on that very day, I met my destiny.

Anyway enough of that, Lost Kingdoms is an Action RPG in which you play a young princess whose mission is to drive back a kind of black fog that is enveloping the world and summoning monsters that destroy everything and kill people, you know, typical black fog stuff. The monsters can only be defeated by someone with the power of the cards bestowed upon them by a Runestone (looks like all the kings have one #gatherthecolouredstonescliche) annndddd.... that's about as deep as the story goes to be honest, as far as I've seen at least.

This is the Capture Circle mechanic in action.... I still don't know how to use it

Gameplay-wise Lost Kingdoms is loosely similar to Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, you have a deck of cards (monsters) which you use for the mission; in battle you can summon these creatures with the A, B, X or Y button when the card is available, and you can cycle through cards if you don't want to use any of them by discarding to draw a new one. The cards come in different types, similar to KH, Weapon monsters allow you to attack quickly at melee range, Summon monsters are pretty self explanatory,and Magic Monsters summon for a period of temporary invulnerability while a powerful ability smites your enemies. There's also a pretty standard elemental affinity cycle, and its importance is actually bigger than I expected to the point where the game basically says "That's a card you'll never get back, idiot"

THE CARDS! THEY BURN!

Lost Kingdoms brings a feature the differentiates it dramatically from KH: CoM though and this mechanic is what makes the game so frustrating and difficult, yet so very fulfilling.When a card in your deck is used up, it doesn't come back. Seriously, the only time you'll see that card again is when it goes back into your deck after the mission. Used your big-ass 5* rarity monster on some shitty enemies at the start of the mission? Enjoy not having it for the boss fight. This may seem relatively fine at first but it adds a huge strategy element to the game, knowing the power of your cards relative to the enemy as well as which types you've got left, not to mention your health which will drain if you use a card that costs too many gems, the list goes on and on, perhaps we can assume the protagonist of the game is a princess and not a prince because of all the multitasking? Wasting cards becomes a huge price to pay in battle; especially given the huge length of some of the missions and that the random encounters that don't have a 'grace' period so if you're really unlucky you can be out and straight back in to an even worse fight! Oh and did I mention that running out of cards is game over? Technically it's not, but the princess doesn't have the ability to attack without the cards, it's like she's not a real princess at all. That big boss you've been struggling on? 1HP? But no cards left? Well you can't kill it because apparently your princess didn't learn how to bitch slap like all the true princesses out there.

I won't lie this is one of the hardest games I've played in a while, the first run of a mission is extremely difficult as you have to run around figuring out where to go so you use more cards up in random battles and it can be very easy to run out unless you're really lucky, this is balanced out by the fact that cards you find in chests can be temporarily added to your deck for the remainder of this mission, sure this balances it out a bit, but it still keeps the 2nd and onwards run of a mission just as hard, because sure you'll know where to go but the chests don't respawn so there'll be no cards for you to add back in, so you have to make those 30 cards you take with you count, and that can be difficult, especially with how easy it is to miss with your weapon monsters and how retarded AI is for the summoned ones.

The multiplier's actually pretty good as well, at least now you don't have to give the AI the satisfaction of causing that pissed look on your face

All in all though I do really enjoy this game so far, though whether you complete a mission does seem to be down as much to trial and error as it is actual skill Lost Kingdoms seems to be a unique and fun experience worth playing if you can get your hands on it, and providing you can deal with the frustration that comes from failing a mission over and over again, I promise you'll enjoy it. if you're a fan of Kingdom Hearts: CoM and are desperate for a more challenging experience even though it's not a KH game, I assure you you'll love this.

TL;DR: Super frustrating and super difficult, Lost Kingdoms is the abusive father of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Deal with it.