LBX

On Honorable Mentions, 2015

April 18, 2016 by Ashgar

This is the other backlogged post I have, then we’ll be into more recent things. At the end of January we did a Games of the Year show, and there are a few things I really enjoyed in 2015 that didn’t get much time on that one. Some of these made brief appearances on the blog, and some of them in the podcast; I consider all of these worth trying if you get a chance.

Evoland 2

The subtitle of this game is “A slight case of spacetime continuum disorder”, and it does live up to that. It takes probably the best segment of the first Evoland (the time travel section where you’re moving between 3D and sprite graphics) and uses it as the central premise of the game. For most of the game you are moving between the past, present, and future, occasionally messing things up enough that it affects a later era. Where Evoland mostly stuck to pretending to be Zelda or Final Fantasy, Evoland 2 is less restricted, and borrows from things ranging from Street Fighter to Puzzle Quest (in addition to a core that is mostly Zelda). It also has a card game that isn’t a triple triad knock-off, and I really enjoyed it. This just barely missed the cut for top 3 last year.

Pokemon Super Mystery Dungeon

The Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games have generally been pretty good, and I would call the DS series (Explorers of Time/Darkness/Sky) some of the best games with pokemon in them. The previous title, Gates to Infinity, was much less outstanding, but this one’s a return to form. For those unfamiliar, the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games involve playing as a pokemon, working through a series of randomly-generated dungeons towards some goal. This tends to be save-the world-type stuff, and a lot more story (and more serious story) than the main series. This one features all of the pokemon revealed at its release (all 720 of them) and features a story that is far better than the main games. It eliminates the random element of pokemon recruitment found in previous Mystery Dungeon games, which is nice, because there are plenty of other random things to worry about. This is my top 3DS game from last year.

I mentioned this a bit earlier. LBX is a solid mix of RPG and Robot Fighting game. Even though the actual robots are only about a foot tall, the battle system most de-emphasizes this by placing you on artificial terrain, so it feels like you’re still piloting giant robots. It has an obligatory tournament arc, and is full of other cliches, but it’s not really any worse for it. The story also goes a few places I wouldn’t expect for a kids game. Add in the large number of postgame activities, and there’s a lot here. Give this a shot if you like Level-5, action-RPGs, and/or customizable robots.

Star Wars: The Old Republic

This got revisited when I was going Star Wars crazy right before The Force Awakens came out. The Knights of the Fallen Empire content is one of the best pieces of narrative I’ve seen in an MMO, and some of the system revamps that go along with this (allowing you to use any companion for anything) were really appreciated. Changes to the leveling content also mean that you don’t need to do all of the (generally lower quality) side quests when levelling a character, and it gave me a chance to see some of the class stories that I did not have the patience to complete when the game came out. I’ll admit that other than the story content, there’s not a whole lot here that interests me, and the F2P model is still “please subscribe”, but it’s still worth checking out. The next chapter came out somewhat recently, so I’ll pop back in at some point to check that out.

AggroChat #75 – Diamond Jubilee

May 21, 2019September 20, 2015 by AggroChat

This week we had Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra and Thalen. Tam was jet setting around the country but should be back next week. It seems pretty insane that this is already our 75th show. Being our Diamond Jubilee of a sort I am swapping up our introduction a bit in an effort to make it easier to see precisely what games we happen to talk about on a given show. Without further delay here are the games we discussed this week on AggroChat.

Jigoku Kisetsukan
Final Fantasy Record Keeper
Final Fantasy XIV 3.1 Delay
Fallout New Vegas
Mario Maker
Volume
Magic the Gathering: Battle For Zendikar
Wildstar
Diablo 3
Subnautica
LBX
Disney Infinity 3.0
The Force Awakens Hype
Mass Effect 2
Star Wars the Old Republic
Black Mirror

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AggroChat #74 – Force Binds Us

May 21, 2019September 13, 2015 by AggroChat

We start of this weeks show by talking about our continued adventures in Diablo 3, and while a some of us have slowed down our progress Grace talks about falling back into the familiar rhythm of chilling out in solo play. With the upcoming September 29th release of Wildstar Free to Play she also talks about spending a lot of time on the test server, and the recent hoverboard racing event testing. Thalen this week spent time venturing into some single player games that had never got around to playing. First we revive our discussion of Wolfenstein New Order and why you should play it for so many different reasons. In a shocker we find out that Thalen never actually played Fallout New Vegas, which spawns a discussion about our appreciation of the game.

Kodra on the other hand spent his week mostly playing a bunch of indie titles and talks about Circa Infinity and The Magic Circle. Magic Circle being the game that he spent a significant amount of time at Pax talking to the Dev about. Additionally we are all jealous of him as he talks about his experience playing Mario Maker, which is essentially Infinite Mario. This spawns a discussion about each of our early attempts at creating content for our friends to play like Excitebike, Wolfenstein, Doom and Descent. Related to Magic Circle, a seperate discussion breaks out about the Stanley Parable and what it says about gamers themselves.

Ashgar is still heavily involved in LBX: Little Battlers Experience and has even gotten in his model kits from last week putting at least one of them together. He helped to clear up some of my confusion that there is in fact a Roleplaying game there, and it is very similar to the style of game that Pokemon is. We also get into a length discussion about Pokemon Go and how the Ingress type game is likely going to change what we are playing next year. There is really no way this is not going to be a huge title, and for the most part we agree that Ingress has been a tech demo leading up to this.

Finally several of us have spontaneously gotten sucked back into Star Wars the Old Republic. Right now it is impossible to go anywhere in the world without being bombarded by Force Awakens merchandise, and after a point I simply could not resist the pull of nostalgia. The best thing about coming back to a game after years of being away is the huge backlog of content available to be played. The current twelve times experience bonus for subscribers helps as well, because you quite literally only have to focus on your class story to get leveled which was always the best part of the game. Ash, Bel and Tam are all caught in the gravity well of this game for the moment, and it sounds like some of our other hosts might have gotten the bug as well. We will have to see next week if we are still talking out it, or if we have gotten it out of our systems.

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On Mini Giant Robots

September 7, 2015 by Ashgar

LBX is a 3DS game about fighting model robots. It’s a recent release in North America and Europe, but it’s a 3-year-old remake of a remake of a game that came out in 2011 in Japan. It’s kind of cheesy and clearly intended for a younger audience, but I love it anyway. The fighting itself has elements of games like Virtual On, and the structure of the game reminds me of Mega Man Battle Network, both games which I enjoyed a lot. More than that, the entire concept reminds me of one of my favorite games on the Game Boy when I was younger: Power Quest.

Tiny Fighting Robots

Power Quest was one of the early games for the Game Boy Color, and I got it as a Christmas gift when I turned 12. It is also a game about fighting model robots, but the core gameplay is a fighting game.The game itself involved you roaming around town, earning money to upgrade your model (by beating people around town in duels), and occasionally getting interrupted by the plot, which is mostly nonsensical and involves the Bad Hyenas Gang and your best friend. At the end of the game you fight in a tournament and defeat a masked wrestler to end the game. I probably wouldn’t consider it a very good game at this point, but on reflection it’s the first fighting game I got heavily invested in. I’d played Street fighter 2, but I didn’t really know how things worked until later.

While the plot is largely an excuse to fight robots, one thing that stuck with me is that about halfway through the game, your best friend moves away. Thanks to timing, I played this game shortly after I moved halfway across town (which might as well be halfway around the world when you’re 12). Another thing worth mentioning is the soundtrack, which was incredibly good for a Game Boy game.

Bigger Fighting Robots

LBX turns out to have a surprising amount of surprisingly well-done voice acting, and has an actual plot. It’s a lot like Pokémon in that an organization is using these things for evil (so of course you have to use them to put a stop to it), but there’s also a hint of a Last Starfighter-esque plot where this turns out to be training for actual giant robots down the line. (This is in the opening, so I don’t consider it a spoiler.) It also leans heavily on Defeat Means Friendship, so it’s not uncommon to be fighting alongside bosses after you beat them. Your own robot is quite customizable, so while you start with Achilles, you can eventually use almost anything you want. I’m eager to see where this one’s going, because I really like it so far. There’s also a cross-media element that might be a bit dangerous, but more on that later.