Advance Wars Days of Ruins (AW DOR) is, for me, tied with AW 2 for the best Advance Wars game, and it’s a shame a lot of people passed over it. To be fair, it was announced in 2007 and released in 2008, the time a lot of people are getting sick and tired of the trend where many stories tried to be dark and gritty and/or apocalyptical with little to no success, like Shadow the Hedgehog. DOR, however, is a polished game with an overall great writing.
First of, let’s get the story out of the way. Yes, it’s an apocalyptic setting, where most of the human population got wiped out, and our characters have to survive the harsh environment, but it’s not all dark and gloomy as it appears to be. The story is balanced with the central theme of “hope”, and the characters do their best to try to survive while helping other people out. They run into all sorts of characters, who try to make use of the environment in a variety of way, and it’s this clash of philosophy and belief that makes the story engaging. In addition, the game never lost the humor of the previous games; the game just moved the humor to a different location, mainly the Main Story’s War Room, where you get a skit where everyone is invited to chat or cause trouble, including the enemies, who will steal the show. There are some dark moments in the story, but those moments make the lighter moments all the more appreciated. Overall, I love the story. It may not have as many individual moments like AW2, but I think it has the best overall writing.
Gameplay wise, there’s plenty of adjustments and additions to enjoy. The new units provide additional variety to strategy, and battleships are pretty insane. You can move AND attack on the same turn, but its range is reduced to max 5, so if you go after rockets, you are putting yourself in range. The fog of war now allow buildings to hide units like forests and reefs, so there are more places to hide.
And the AI… OH GOD the AI. It’s even smarter, yet fairer, than in the one in AW Dual Strike. This AI stays out of your overall range, and its harder to bait them. Plus, they make some smart decisions, forcing you to think a bit harder. They are also affected by the Fog of War like human players, so now it doesn’t feel as unfair as before.
The soundtrack feels like Sonic Adventure 2, where it’s primary a variety of Rock music, but still enjoyable. My favorite has to be Will’s theme and the hero CO Power theme “Power Up”.
The story missions doesn’t have a separate difficulty, so it feels like it starts easy but ramp up to hard mode campaign close to the end. There aren’t as many cheap missions like AW1, but some can be a pain, like that final mission.
Overall, this game is slept on, and with the Reboot of AW1 and AW2, I hope this game gets a port or remake. Dual Strike… that’s a topic for another day. I got a lot to say about that game…
So I’ve been playing Evertale for at least a year now. Solid gameplay with some of the best writing in a mobile game. It has some cliche, but never gone too far after Arc 1, and the sexual appeal was tame, never at the absurd level like other games. Not a fan of the monetization and gacha rate, but there was always something to look forward.
At the end of January, 2.0 update drop, and everything changed for the worst. Level cap has been doubled, while earning rate of materials and exp were reduced. PVP was replaced with a bunch of modes where units are only controlled by the atrocious AI. While story writing quality was kept the same for the most part, the decrease of having a diverse type of characters was noticeable, and the sexualization slowly increased, to the point designs for the some female characters were replaced with designs that are straight out of magazine cover for 18+.
Now, there are Ads for the game that depicts the game to be horror genre, when actual game contain 0% horror. Even the Google Playstore page for the game changed the images to look like a horror game. The game was already lying to its early audience when it goes from a Monster catching game for kids to a typical gacha for teens, and now… WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!
We’re in the most worrying state since the devs have not communicated to the players since last year.
It’s been a month since Balan Wonderworld has been released, and I understand why many people don’t like that game. I’ve never played that game myself, but just looking at the videos just make me have to ask “Why?”
Despite all that, I just can’t help but feel bad for Yuji Naka.
After the disaster that was Rodea the Sky Warrior getting screwed over by Kadokawa Games, Balan Wonderworld is pretty much his latest chance to do something big, but it didn’t go well. A lot of people bash the game for a tons of questionable design choices, but I believe a lot has to do with the 80 costume/ability. I don’t know if this is a promise that Yuji had to keep no matter what during development, but why else he would make the game the way it is. I don’t believe it’s for the younger audience. I think he knows better than this. I also think being with Square Enix, a story centric company, is a bad idea when he doesn’t usually deal with writing story.
Whatever the case, I don’t think Yuji Naka is out, at least, I don’t want him to stop making game all together right now. What I would like him to do is just focus on smaller projects. Maybe make something less stressful. Make games that he want to make.
The website that was holding this translation (among others stuff I never got a chance to save) no longer exist. Yes, I did use this song for one of my seiyuu videos.
Dead blog page:
rikku-no-ai.blog.cz/1108/toriumi-kousuke-tokyo-rumba-mambo
Ever since I took a glimpse of you that night, I have loved everything about you Who are you gazing at with those sweet eyes? Shadow of the dance floor, magic of the mirror ball I want to embrace an ephemeral love at least
I won`t let you go home tonight, I continue whispering Until you fall asleep within a stardust of sighs Rumba Mambo Rumba I love you
Wearing a red dress, your back shivers Wipe away your tears, let me hear your story Lies of a cruel man, a love-filled chacha of weakness Please, forgive these lips in the end
Tonight I want to dance with our fingers entwined A rainbow-colored jealousy lights a flame for you Rumba jitterbug Rumba I love you
I won`t let you go home tonight, I continue whispering Until you fall asleep within a stardust of sighs Rumba Mambo Rumba I love you
My quick thoughts on Wild Arms Million Memories (JP only)
So one of the mobile games I used to play is Wild Arms Million Memories (WAMM), the latest game for the long inactive franchise Wild Arms, a Western theme JRPG. This is based on my experience from its launch in September 2018 - December 2019.
The main gameplay is a dungeon crawler action gameplay, where you control your character with one finger. It’s often compared to
Dragalia Lost, so if you like that game, then you will quickly get into this game as well. It’s pretty responsive, and quite tense at times. I enjoy it for what it is.
The energy system is non existence, so you could play til your heart content. The Auto-play AI is fairly competent, so at a decent level and with decent supporter, you can leave your game to do the grinding for you.
The supporter system makes it easy to catch up in the game. There are many players with high level characters set up to help you beat quests that are beyond your current level.
The events usually involves two things: Grinding for event points and tournament. Event points are earned by playing the event levels like normal. Tournament events are really fun, since they are more skill oriented. You are judged based on your skills, such as how much damage you can accumulate without taking hit and losing your combo, and how much damage you’ve taken, and are compared to other players.
The presentation and story seems to be its strongest point. All of the Wild Arms Characters’ design have been updated to a more modern style, while still keeping that distinct Wild Arms art style. The character 3D models are nicely done for a mobile game and are quite expressive, which does play a role for a section in the game’s story. The music is great, just like the music from the other games. It still keeps that western theme, and they are so catchy. I wish I could talk about the story, since there’s look like a lot of effort put into the writing, but I can’t speak Japanese, and the fan translator for the game has long since quit playing the games for reasons I’ll get soon, but it looks far better than what Fire Emblem heroes has offer, especially during its first two years.
While all of this sounds good, there are reasons why I, along with the fan translator, stopped playing this game.
The game’s performance is weaker compared to other games. While my android phone’s RAM is 3GB, it can run Tales of the Rays, which plays like 3D Tales of games, nicely at the lower graphic setting. I haven’t play Dragalia Lost, but in WAMM, it’s resulting performance depends on the levels you are playing. It run nicely in a more empty, plain levels, but it chugs hard on other levels like a factory theme levels, to the point of almost being unplayable. You’ll need at least 5-6 GB RAM just to not have your performance hindered.
The grinding in this game is horrible, like Fate Grand Order level of grinding. It takes a lot of materials just to level up equipments, especially the higher tiers ARMS since they require other ARMS to move up in tier. I’m talking about at least an hour or two just to transform a 3* ARM into a 4*. The lack of an energy system felt like an excuse to not balance the drop rates of the materials. You don’t need a lot of grinding to make progress in the story, but it does makes things much easier.
The game takes a long time to improve life quality. It took them over 6 months to finally group materials together so I wouldn’t have to constantly put all of the materials into the gift section, since the storage was limited and wouldn’t be expanded until after over said 6 months.
The tournaments are pay-to-win focused, especially now. While you can get decent rank, you really need the ARMS and especially the featured character to cut lots of time on those events.
How is the gacha rate? Lower than Fate Grand Order. 4% for getting anything 5*, and 1% for getting the 5* characters, which is equivalent to getting the 5* servant in FGO. Even FGO has a total of 5% for getting anything 5*. The step up pulls are expensive, and even then, it doesn’t guarantee a 5* character, and the earning rate for the game’s main currency is a bit slow. There’s a secondary currency you could use to earn tickets to pull, even a little for free, by using 3* and up ARMS, but that involves quite a bit of pulls and grinding. Lots of grinding.
The gacha is split into 3 categories: ARMS, equipment, and characters, and equipment has its own separate gacha section from the other two. That’s a blessing or a curse, depending on how you see it. What you focused on is up to you, but it does makes getting things much more expensive.
The good news is that you are not heavily depending on getting the higher tiers to make progress in most of the modes, but if you want to really win in tournaments… well… good luck. You can still get half of the rewards just by earning event points on those tournaments, so it’s not all bad.
The hardest thing for me to figure out is its three weakness charts that are played all at once. Elemental types, Attack Types, and a third type I can’t remember the name of. The game used to have two, but after the introduction of Character gacha and the third weakness type, they make it impossible for me to predict if I would land an effective hit.
As much as I want this game to succeed, this has a lot of inconveniences and is currently experience a drought of events as it approaches its one year anniversary. There is passion for this game. I can feel it as if some of the staff are actual WA fans, but it’s being overshadowed by the treatment of this game as a cash-cow, and it stinks. This game is probably the last time the Wild Arms franchise see any light in the modern time.
If you guys want to check it out, you will need to find ways to download it, since it’s available only in Japan. For android, you will need apps like QooApp. Like I said, it’s a fun game, and I wish for it to succeed.
I'm sorry, but... what exactly do people expect? It's a war... I don't mean to sound insulting to or anything, but death kinda comes with the territory of 'fighter pilots in a war' (Hell, even if she miraculously survived that, the burns would almost certainly shorten her life by decades accounting in poor treatment and infections from them).
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