What?
Sorry.
Welcome to Pocketcast, the very professional and very serious podcast for people with frontal pockets.
Some call them frockets, but not in our society.
Get the fuck out of here with that shit.
You inbred fucking trailer trash piece of shit.
You got me so upset I can't speak.
Fucking don't call it a frocket.
We are the front pocket society of frontal lobe men.
Alright, I lost it. I don't know.
I don't think you had to save it.
I think I could have at least closed it out.
I think we're going to keep some of that.
Welcome to Pocketcast, the podcast about the DS and the DS library.
I am joined with, it's joined by...
We'll get it one of these days.
...some day, joined by Ed, who can be reached at...
Oh, you're not going to introduce my Twitter handle?
No, I hate it.
That's rude.
Alright, well, you can reach me at Unicorn.
Spell it out for the people.
It's phonetic. You don't even have to spell it.
You just say it and it knows.
Yeah, okay, so there's a zero in there somewhere.
It's Unicorn, Unic-e-u-n-u-c-h, Horn-h-0-r-n.
It's that simple.
And I'm Fletcher, I can be reached at GaptoothMF on Twitter as well.
Did you say the Twitter part?
We talked about it beforehand. I felt like it was implied.
At me.
Yeah, at me.
Like, if you say at me, people know.
So I'm co-hosting today.
And I'm hosting today.
Woo, woo, woo!
Got the crazy cat in the house too.
You're going to hear some meowing and some thuds and some scratching.
We're trying out the new studio today.
Yeah.
Please bear with us for any technicalities that we run into.
Oh, dude, the audio has been different every episode so far.
Every episode, yeah.
It's great.
I think it's going to continue to change for at least three more episodes.
Oh, at least.
I can guarantee you that. If you have ADD ears, then we are suited for you.
Yeah, there's so many flavors of audio depth to really pick through.
There are.
It's great.
Actually, we are really good at it.
And what we're doing is we're hypnotizing people by the canter in which we fade in and out and the cat pushes up on the microphone.
Yeah, no, it's intentional for sure.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
So Fletcher suckered me into doing this podcast where allegedly we're going to attempt to review.
You keep adding the doubt into the disclaimer term.
Yeah, yeah.
Allegedly the supposed 100 percent.
How many how many titles are in the USDS library?
Over over a thousand over probably roughly.
I'm going to say fifteen hundred.
That's a lot of weekends, dog.
That's a lot of weekends.
I mean, we're going to go through those weekends either way.
Those weekends are going to happen regardless.
Don't don't don't quote me to me.
Don't do that.
It's a good advice.
It's distasteful.
It's a good piece of advice.
You know, so, yeah, allegedly we're going to review or attempt again, attempt to review.
I wouldn't even say review.
Roughly talk about.
Talk about, discuss, experience.
Yeah.
Play a little bit of.
Yeah.
Fain expertise.
I like that.
That's a good one.
That's really good.
That's that's one for the for the docket for sure.
Absolutely.
So we're going to gain expertise on roughly fifteen hundred.
Nintendo DS games.
Yeah, it's very doable.
Super doable.
Way more doable than some other libraries, I feel like.
I feel like I feel like this goal is more attainable than, say, I don't know, retirement.
Because I think after this, we go on to the Game Boy Advance.
We're going to be doing taxes in zero G VR at that point.
Well, hopefully we will have something to take care of our arthritis.
Oh, yeah, hopefully that's that would be nice.
Yeah, maybe we can get new homegrown, genetically modified spinal cords or something.
This is medical marijuana.
Yeah, that'd be nice to I'd settle for that.
Yeah, it would work.
Work well enough.
Yeah.
Can't complain.
Yeah.
Become complacent.
Little future weed.
Let the man do whatever he wants because you're all fucked up on your arthritis medicine.
Can you get fucked up on arthritis meds?
I mean, if it's weed.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a good point.
All right.
Let's recap last week real quick.
Last week, we played Solatu robo, the Red Hunter.
Or was it Red the Hunter?
Red the Hunter.
It was Red the Hunter.
Did you continue to play that at all?
Oh, no, no, no, I did not.
I did not.
I thought about it.
I looked at it once and then I was like, I've experienced it.
You know, that was the conclusion I came to.
I don't.
So if you weren't sold on our synopsis of it last week, I'm going to stick with it even more so and let you know.
It's not good enough to even pick it up again.
Like once it's out of mind and you have another game on mind.
I was way happier with my selection this week.
Oh, yeah.
Well, all I could think of was we have fourteen hundred ninety nine additional titles yet to cover.
When I have time to pick up Solatu robo again, I'll let you know.
So, yeah.
So thanks, Red, for the adventure last week.
This week we were playing Glory of Heracles, which is also Hercules.
So just a renaming of do you know Greek mythology?
Oh, I do.
I thought so.
Yes, because Heracles is the son of Zeus.
But that's the actual name.
Hercules is a read.
I get to redoing of the name.
Morgan knows quite a bit about.
Is it the difference between the Roman and Greek names?
Perhaps maybe I might have to check that.
I'm not sure.
I wonder if that's the case, because I know Hera is Hercules mother in the original tale of Hercules or Heracles.
Yes, that sounds right.
So I guess that's something to do with that.
I did mean to brush up on my Greek mythos before this session.
I was going to, but I was really just relying on you.
Honestly, I would have assumed the same.
I will tell you, it didn't seem to matter too much.
I was going to ask you that.
I was very curious about how much of the story does it follow.
If I was a Greek mythology person, would I know the names of these people?
So that's actually the main point.
Names is pretty much where it lives.
The game pulls a lot of names, a lot of locations.
Names and locations, pretty much.
So names in general.
And just weaves it into a story.
So your companions, those are all names from Greek mythology?
I would say some of them are, and most of them are period specific names.
Some of them are kind of bastardizations of common names of the era.
It really just depends.
But not all of it was necessarily a direct pull from Greek mythology.
So I did some research, of course.
As one does.
And it was one of the first RPGs to do Greek mythology.
I think it still might be one of the only ones to do it.
Whereas everything else is high fantasy, medieval times, fantasy world, cyberpunk, future, what have you.
This is all super, like it was the first one.
89 is when it came out.
The first Hercules.
The first title or this one?
The first title.
I think this is like the fifth?
This is the fifth title, the first American release, and the last.
Yeah, the last one. They haven't had another one since.
I guess it was a big hit in Japan.
Or at least it hit enough for, what was it, four other episodes?
And so that's cool. Whatever.
Yeah, the very first one is very much so a Dragon Quest clone.
But in that same sense, I guess the first Final Fantasy is Dragon Quest clone.
And it just is like Doom, where it starts out a genre.
So some of the first titles to come out following it are called clones.
But I would say this is, it slightly reminds me, it's reminiscent of a Dragon Quest game.
But it does so much of its own in terms of battle.
You're looking at a JRPG.
You've got the overworld map that you go on to if you go from town to town or different locations.
And then each town location you go in and it's a safe zone.
When you're out on the world, you've got the random encounters, turn-based combat.
Turn-based combat is a little different in this, though.
There's a lot going on.
There's a lot to discuss. I think we might save that just for the combat section.
I think that's going to be the bulk of unpacking for this game.
Yeah, it's a lot to...
I didn't realize how much it was to regurgitate until writing it all out.
Because they do a good job of delivering it all to you, I think.
Agreed.
But when you're then having to write out your notes about it, you're like, oh my god, there's a lot going on.
Oh yeah.
Then you've got a bunch of characters that come into play.
Really pretty fun. Did you enjoy that?
I liked the...unlike to the characters, the dialogue was okay.
Very clearly driven from a Japanese anime-esque dialogue delivery.
Very animated.
There were some decent puns. I won't give them credit.
There were some good puns, even a couple of throwbacks to some other games.
Which were subtle and nice.
The ones that I really liked is where, because you play as just like any other JRPG, you have amnesia and you're found.
And eventually along the way, you need to choose what your name is going to be.
And before you choose the name, they say something about...how about the name Pit?
Yep.
And someone says, well Pit, that's not a very Greek name.
That doesn't sound very Greek at all. That being a reference to Kid Icarus.
You know, when I first read it, I was like, who is Pit?
I know who Pit is, but I can't think of who...I can't place the character.
And eventually, oh I've got it. Yeah, okay. That's funny. Very funny.
I knew it immediately from Smash Bros. That's where I remember to find it.
But I've never actually played a Kid Icarus game.
So what did you end up naming your character?
Aval. That's what I named. I named all of my characters Aval when I played Elder Scrolls.
Not Elder Scrolls. Neverwinter.
Oh yeah.
Yeah, Neverwinter.
Is that where that name was born from?
Yeah. It's actually a name that I considered changing at one point because of how much I use it.
It comes from...I was trying to think of a name that fit the fantasy world.
And I had an ale and a stout sitting next to me.
That's where it came from?
That's where Aval Stout comes from.
I hate you so much.
Yeah.
Okay. That's as good as any other origin story. I can't be too mad about it.
I went with Link. Man, I grew up playing Ocarina of Time so hard.
And every time you get to change your character's name, and I thought, why would I do that?
Link is a badass. And they're like, oh, it's time to name your horse. What would you like to name it?
Why the fuck would I name my horse anything other than Epona? It's the best name for a horse.
Epona is a great name for a horse.
It's the best!
Maybe that's just a Zelda influence.
Yeah.
But I do agree. It's the best name for a horse.
Do you feel that way then if we're playing a game where you choose the name, but when you go to choose a name, it already has a name assigned?
Do you stick with that character's name then?
No, I change it to Link every time. I have respect for the game.
I have to stay with it. I always stay with the names.
No, don't get me wrong. There is a part of my soul that says, respect the creators, respect the unique story of not grow up.
You grow up. Ocarina of Time, best game, hands down, ever.
It's a great game.
It's a great game. I don't know if I want to say best game of all time.
And that's fair.
Definitely put it up there. I agree with you.
Every time I get to name a character.
Link.
Link, dude.
Hey, I respect it. I respect the consistency.
It's worth noting that it's capital L, lowercase the rest. Some people out there don't have time on the old school games on the name selection, especially specifically for Ocarina of Time.
You've got one set on the left of all uppercase caps and then on the other side.
So you have to go all the way over. So I know there's a lot of people taking that shortcut and doing all caps Link.
That's some bullshit. Take the time, respect yourself, drop over to the other set, give yourself some lowercase letters there.
You don't like doing the butt dick or some funny name like asshole.
I mean, I appreciate the humor.
I do.
I always love that when you start a game like that and it's really funny, but then you start getting into the game.
Like every now and again, this just makes you giggle and pulls you out of the experience a little bit.
So I did do that one time on Ocarina of Time.
And then I got to the point of the game where you're leaving the forest, which is still fairly early on.
And you have to say goodbye to Soraya or whatever the fuck her name is.
And then she calls you.
Sora?
What?
Isn't her name Sora?
I refuse to accept whatever pronunciation that is.
I think that's the like it's S.
Oh, dude, don't make me look it up.
I believe the I thought it was S.A.R.I.A.
I just saw this source, saw this song or something like that.
Right. I just always thought that.
I mean, I feel like I've heard people pronounce it that way.
I'm not good at pronouncing video game names of anything.
And if I'd go in through this game, Glory of Hercules, Heracles, there you go.
Doing it wrong.
I would read people's names and I was like, walked out into the hood.
You know, I could not figure out the names of locations.
Well, besides locations are pretty easy because they are truly historical locations.
You've learned about, you know, Sparta, Olympia.
Yeah. At least in context of this game.
Yeah. That's much easier.
Whereas the names of the characters, I'm like, Axis? Axis?
Dude, I love language and like lingual roots and stuff like that.
Like root languages. Super fascinating to me.
And just for context, the character's name from Ocarina of Time is spelled S.A.R.I.A.
So and I think there are various versions out there that might have it spelled S.A.R.A.
I distinctly remember growing up with a version that had the I in there.
So I always thought it was S.A.R.I.A.
But it also could be S.A.R.I.A. or something totally different.
But Sora, I'm not going to accept that.
I mean, I'm not saying I am not. I'm not an expert.
No, no.
Although that's just what I thought.
And you're allowed to consume the game hearing it pronounced whatever way it works.
I just could have sworn that was her name.
Because it doesn't detract from you.
I feel like just hearing people say it in YouTube videos, you know, something like that, is where it is.
That's Sora's song or whatever the fuck the song is that you learned from her.
Yeah, her.
Or you have her song. Yeah. Yeah.
But anyway, getting to that point in the game and she's telling you goodbye and it's one of the most emotional parts of the game.
And then she's like, hey, don't forget about me, dick butt.
And wow, wow, I've just ruined this moment.
And so I've always felt such an immense guilt and shame over doing that.
And so I don't do that anymore.
I respect for the, you know, the digitally rendered characters with pre-programmed.
You know, it's someone's story, right? It's someone's passion.
It's a lot of people's passion that they put a lot of time into.
I was big on it as a kid. It was huge.
Yeah, so I respect the respect.
Have we missed anything uncovering the just the quick coverage of the glory of the glory, the GOH, the GOH.
It's not even the there is no the at the beginning of the title.
No, it's just glory of. Yeah. Yeah.
We are not great with our titles so far.
But hey, you know, we've also had some weird ones.
So let your robo. Come on. There's a game called Nostalgia.
I don't think we'll mess that one up. I don't think we'll fuck that up at all.
We haven't even played it. We've said the name perfectly so many times.
Call of Duty. Nailed it. Easy.
The world ends with you.
That could almost be a tongue twister for a child. Could be. Maybe.
That should be the only criteria for picking our next game.
The name is easy to pronounce. Can we pronounce the name? I like that.
That's a good one.
All right. So, man, there's not a whole lot else to go in.
I did want to talk about the writer and composer.
Just in brief. Yeah, absolutely.
Let's let's get into it.
I recall as a very general looking over it,
because there's not a lot to research on this game versus so to robo.
I mean, as far as pulling out any anything on your searches,
there is nothing I could really find on the development of it.
Just the fact that it was the first release.
I read a bit about the first release in America.
I read a bit about the transferring of people from one company to another.
To be picked up by what was that Data East?
Yeah, something like that. Yeah.
Data East gets picked up by Payon Pound.
Yeah, I'm going to let you go with that because I don't know.
P-A-O-N and then they get picked up by Nintendo.
Yeah.
And that's where this game gets published on the DSL.
It was like a 15 year. Once again, it was a big gap.
Maybe not 15 years. It was 10 years or something.
Once again, there's a big time gap between this game and its predecessor.
Well, so the first one came out in 87.
87. I thought it was 89.
So the second title was 89.
And then you had one in 92.
A second one in 92.
And this one was referred to as the Snap Story.
And I got the impression that that was a colloquial term that meant something to somebody.
I don't know what a Snap Story is, but that came out.
They were way ahead of their time on that one.
Yeah, that was huge.
Wow, they just saw Snapchat.
Nobody else has Snap, but they got it.
And then you had one in 94.
And then that was the fourth iteration.
And then you had the Japan version of Glory of Heracles released in 2008.
And then the North American adaptation in 2010.
Yeah. Quite a long time.
But yeah, everything I have in here in my notes are just bullet point facts.
There's no surplus of really anything extra quite like we had for Solo II Robo.
Did you find the interviews on their website?
They had interviews with the two people from the team that made GOH.
They had talked about the composer who they had pulled from the original games.
And the writer too.
The writer had worked on the third and fourth one, I believe.
That worked on the fifth one.
And he was in his early 20s.
And so he had talked about having some hesitation to going back to the game.
And then feeling like he needed to to show how much he's grown
and how much better the story could be told compared to how they told it the last time.
Due to his writing.
He's taken it all on his own of like I was young and I had a lot of growing to do.
Okay. I got you.
I was looking at the writer's other works.
And this dude was all over the place.
This guy wrote one of the other things he's accredited for is the storyline to the subspace emissary portion of Super Smash Bros Brawl.
He wrote the story for that.
Is there a story? I've never really played Brawl.
I've played Melee and that's where I fall off on my Super Smash Bros.
Yeah. You play through the main campaign thing.
I don't remember what it's called.
Yeah. If you play through the main single player mode or what have you.
There is a general plot and it's actually pretty good.
It's it's it's entertaining.
It certainly does a lot more for a melee game than you would expect it to have.
So it's pretty entertaining.
But I know he did. He was on a number of Final Fantasy games.
I think he worked on all of the Kingdom Hearts titles.
Wow. I do recall seeing that. Yeah.
And then I threw the Smash Bros Brawl storyline in there because I thought that was a surprise to see that in there.
That is an interesting that's an interesting place to be at.
And I can see it kind of because of how Laboratories that does Super Smash Bros.
They also do Kirby.
And I just seen the comical feel of Kirby and the comical feel of GOH.
I could almost see where that would come into.
You know, they wanted to have him on the team for something that makes a lot of sense to me.
Yeah. And it's it's not bad.
It's fun. It's it's entertaining.
And it really it's just there are parts where it's kind of funny how much it's it takes its time on some parts.
But I just idle conversation almost between your few heroes in your party.
And then when you get into some actual storyline or someone deciding to join up with you.
Yeah. Or they have to go off on their own journey.
It's very and I have to go now.
And that's it. It's very so it's funny where there's times where he really digs into things.
And then other times where they're just all right, we got to get the story going.
Yeah. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go.
And I did put almost nine or 10 hours in.
And I feel like the story did not open up.
Yeah. And I held off on doing any of my actual game research until like the last minute because I didn't I didn't want to ruin anything.
And yeah, I kind of thought I was missing out on something, too.
And then I'm reading up and doing a little bit of research on the title and discovering that seems to be the general consensus.
There's not a whole lot going on with the story. It's it's there.
That's about it. Yeah. And it's entertaining at times.
And it does have some good jokes and it's well written.
But the story itself is pretty weak, again, over utilizing some pretty standard tropes.
Like you mentioned, the amnesia thing.
I certainly well, I was very surprised to see a lot of these other well-known, very popular titles like Final Fantasy and Kingdom Hearts thrown into the mix in terms of the writers background.
So that was kind of a bummer. I was hoping for a little bit more knowing that.
Yeah, I could see that. I do wonder if it doesn't start to open up more.
I do feel like normally in a JRPG, even after nine to ten hours is not long.
Well, I think the total runtime for this game is averaged at about 20 to 22 hours. Oh, yeah. OK.
That's interesting. So you were you were you were about about halfway, about halfway through the game.
Well, that's all right. I'm proud. I'm proud. Yeah, that's pretty good.
I was a couple of hours behind you. But that but you I can say then you've gotten most of the experience.
Not that I think it's a bad thing. I enjoy I enjoy the battle mechanic and I can see that growing.
Oh, it's continuing to kind of grow. And as they give you new spells and your enemies are changing, you are realizing there's some more strategy to the battles and to using your layout.
Mm hmm. Yeah. I did want to also briefly talk about the composer.
Well, we could also name drop these people. I do have their names on here. Unless you wanted to say them.
I write down composer and writer for a reason. Yeah. OK.
So the writer was Kazushi nojima and the composer is Yoshi Taka Hirota. Good job. Thank you.
Over anglicized pronunciation just just to stay in my lane. It sounds great. I appreciate that.
So the composer and I do want to preface this with saying I felt I felt like the music in this game was fairly mid. Oh, really.
I don't and I don't mean that negatively. I just don't mean I rather I mean I don't think that it shined above and I don't think it was lackluster.
I think it was middle of the road. And I know mid is kind of an insult these days, but that's not how I'm using it.
I think I think it was middle. But I think it was good. It wasn't monotonous or anything like that. It carried. It did well.
It was fun. It was an extra saucy for me, though. Certainly not compared to, again, some of these other titles.
OK, let's hear some of these other titles. So Bomberman 64, the second attack.
Super Monkey Ball Banana Blitz. I'm a huge. Yeah. Monkey Ball fan. I do love me some Monkey Ball.
And then he also worked heavily on the sound design for Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy six. Wow. Yeah.
So I and I'm basing I'm basing my judgment mostly on participation in those last two titles.
I really like the music. I would honestly say I think it's above mid.
I can see where you're coming from, where it doesn't do anything new. Yeah.
It gives the comfy towns, the small towns, that small town music.
But it does it well. And what I initially noticed was the.
What I initially noticed was this, the quality of the sound that came out.
I don't know if it was just that I didn't have if the clanking of the robot from Solitude Robo was just so bad that I just didn't notice it.
But the stereo speakers on the DS are surprisingly they sound surprisingly good.
And especially in this game, they used the light. They utilized it very well.
It felt to me that's a that's an interesting point, something I hadn't considered again.
Again, worth noting that this is a later title in terms of the DS. Yes, absolutely.
I'm sure that probably had some kind of role to play. I'm sure it does.
Clean audio, though. I'll definitely give you that. And I liked the music.
I enjoyed it. I thought that was all very well placed.
And like you said, none of it gets repetitive.
That's something that you run into a lot with RPGs, especially is where the battle scream music is always the same.
And this one, I think, may have been the same.
Maybe not. Maybe it changed on location because I feel like that would have annoyed me.
But yeah, now that you mention it, I don't I don't recall particularly.
So that's a good thing. In my opinion, if I don't recall the battle music, that's great because there are a lot of lot of unless it's unless it's Final Fantasy.
I love Final Fantasy battle music.
But true. But their main battle sequence music usually maintains a certain like audio theme.
And there's a word for that in music theory.
Sue me for not knowing. But it carries a lot of that same melodic theme.
But overall, you I mean, I think any given Final Fantasy game will have like, I don't know, 10, 20, maybe 30 different battle sequence soundtracks.
OK, cool. Again, very similar, but also unique at the same time, especially if you were to sit down and listen through the OST, you'll notice very drastically.
And it would make sense if this game did the same thing.
It's certainly pretty typical of a turn based RPG like this.
Yeah. So it wouldn't surprise me.
Yeah, yeah, not bad. I liked it.
I enjoyed it. I can see why you call it mid and why you mean that in a not bad way.
Yeah, not at all. It's very average.
It's not like, wow, they really, you know, how did they put a symphony on here? Right.
Or this isn't the music I wouldn't think of.
There was one part where you're in a ruins part and they've got the the stereotypical.
What would you call it when they're in like India or Egypt or anywhere east of Europe or like in somewhere that's you get the insert typical desert soundtrack here?
Exactly. Desert soundtrack. Yes. Yeah, that's they had that.
I mean, yeah.
And again, not bad. No, fits the fits the type.
I just wanted to be cautious so as to not overhype it when if I were to just say it was good.
Yeah, especially when you're talking about heavily worked on Chrono Trigger.
Yeah, that's that soundtrack is phenomenal.
Yeah. And it doesn't help that we're literally coming off solo to Robo and that game's saving graces were sound and visuals.
Yeah. So well, speaking of visuals, do you want to get into visuals?
Oh, yeah, we can definitely get into.
So as far as visuals when I first did not like them and then really quickly came to love a lot of things about the visual presentation, they do a black outline around all of the characters.
And it has kind of a cell shaded look to it in a very miniature way.
Yeah, you know, it's a very like all your sprites are pretty small.
One thing I really enjoy about this game is the character design as well.
Because in a lot of DS titles, when you're dealing with RPGs, JRPGs, you get these chibi.
Is that the name for it? Yeah.
You know, these short, cute characters that are all I kind of like, they look like little kids that are going through these like world saving battles and the squish mallow rendition of your character.
Yeah. And when you see a lot of those on Nintendo or Super Nintendo, especially, they look so much better in the sprite.
And you can take it so much more seriously as a sprite than you can as a 3D polygon chibi type character.
Yeah, it detracts from the like you said, the seriousness and this one, this one, they just were like small, normal looking people.
I mean, as normal as some of your type goofy, silly video game characters are, but they were normal, normal proportions, at least.
Yeah. And then when you were in the battle screen, there is the idle movement that you and the enemies both do.
And it was so fluid. They did a great job. It was just fun to encounter new enemies and see what they're going to look like, how they're going to stand there on the battlefield.
And the your attacks look great. They've got they're really cool. They start to go just immediately from boom to boom.
Just like these huge explosions on the screen. You know, the character. So when you get to a certain point, you meet a group, they join your party temporarily while you're on the ship.
Yes. So one, I thought Patrick was a dude. Patrick was is not a dude. She is in fact a chick. Yep. And a fucking bad dude.
Her attacks, her melee attacks, the way they just clunk in, bro, it feels powerful. And the main character main character has that, too.
It's not as good, not as good. But you have. But I mean, the way that his attacks still have heft. It's good. It's got the way that he swings that sword.
You know, I know exactly what you mean. The animation design was very, very nice. You don't need vibration to feel that hit.
Agreed. It is such a great way to put it. So cool how you can feel the feel like your hits are having impact without any like having feedback or anything like that.
Oh, and there's there's a bunch of really nice knockback animations. There's a weird enemy character design model things going on.
There's some weird looking shit. Yeah, there are. There's you don't know what you're looking at. It looks cool. I think there's one that's this like two legged.
You're talking about the tube with the eyes like he's got like he looks like a like a snake slug thing with legs.
And he's like grayish blue. Do you know what I'm talking about? You're disgusting. Yeah, absolutely disgusting.
That is actually in the first one. Oh, really? Yeah. I mean, it's this is a very cool modernizing of it.
You can see how it had grown into this. This is definitely the image they had for it. Huh? That's wild.
And it is it is grotesque and it's creepy. And the first time you encounter it, you think this is going to be this is a tough spot.
You immediately know when something's going to be tougher than something else. Well, it doesn't. And the game tells you the game literally have a little text prompt that pops up and be like, oh, hey.
Oh, you thought you were fucking hard. Enemy has appeared and it's all outlined and shit.
It gets red. Yeah. You're like, oh, fuck. You get a little anxious and I just panic and I grab all of my major spells.
Yeah. Don't unload on this motherfucker. Oh, but I think that the visuals are really cool.
I it's turned up in the battle sequence. It is. And I think I don't want to get too far ahead, but I think the battles, the game was made for the battles system.
Honestly, that's where all the that's where everything I think shines the most.
The overworld visuals, I'm going to say it below the lacking. It is soft muddled.
No definition. And it's an overworld. I get it. It's every JRPG like this has a very flat overworld and that's to be expected.
But come on. Well, I will argue with you as to where there's a point where you're running away from the jail.
And when you come out, you're actually elevated above a spot that you're just recently at. Yeah. You know, I that was a little touch of like, oh, that's that's something you don't usually see like actual elevation differences that you can visually tell.
Yeah. And you didn't realize it because you're so used to these muddled plain flat overworlds that you didn't even think about this being a higher elevation until now.
They put you on top of it and you're like, oh, yeah, this does. I'm up here. This ridge is higher than over there.
I realize it. Yes. So I would give it that. But I mean, I feel like an all overworld map.
That's yeah, I didn't mean to overly trash on it, but it is not reminiscent of the beauty to be found.
And I and I hate I hate the controls of how slow you move. Oh, it's forced walk and make sense.
I guess it makes sense, right? Because you're because it's it's it's a image holder for your whole party on this big track.
And I'd say each time that you move, you're actually going a mile. Yeah. But this isn't an Oregon Trail simulator.
It's not supposed to take me 15 years to go off the coast. Well, I think that is part of it.
You're in Greece. You know, like, I mean, even they are immediately getting to this whole thing about like, oh, my God, we're getting sidetracked again.
Like, this is such a short trip trip from Sparta to Olympus. It's right there.
And you already know, sidewinding. The only reason I'm bitching is because of the random encounters.
Oh, they are over the top. They're so. And I'll say it again.
The battle system is where the game shines. And I still wanted to cut myself every time I hit a random encounter.
Yeah, I especially when you you start picking up these items that don't detract enemies from attacking you, but actually attract enemies to attack anymore.
And I can't imagine that must be you get out of a battle and you take a step, maybe two, maybe you're in another battle because it's already three, four steps max sometimes.
I hate overworld random encounters. It's just it's not just in the overworld, though.
No, there are. It's anywhere. That's not a town. Yeah. Anyway, that's not safe.
And where you can get into a random encounter going from the shortest point, a to b, your most.
I feel like I ran at one point when going through a dungeon where I don't know how to describe it,
but it's one of the first rooms in the dungeon where you can actually just do a direct a to b across the room to get to the exit.
And I ran all the way across, got down the stairs.
I could not believe I got I bet it was I bet it was 12 paces and I could not believe that I made it without any encounters on that level.
I was so stoked. Yeah, I had I had one instance where I was confused on where to go.
And so I exited a town and I started going north.
And then the game was like, hey, fuckhead, maybe you should go back to town.
And I was like, my bad, dude. So I started turning around and then I realized
I made it like 20 paces out without an encounter.
And it took me like 10 to get back. Bro.
I mean, at least at least you don't ever have to grind. I don't know about you, but I never had to grind.
Nope, never had to grind. And that was something that I also thought as a positive when looking at this game where that's that's beneficial.
I could see I also feel that way about Final Fantasy games where the random encounters are so constant.
And that's what's always kept me away from getting into Final Fantasy. That's fair.
And I think if anything, that's kind of what would stop me from progressing more in this game.
But like you said, the game, really, the shining factor is the combat.
Absolutely. The story isn't that much to write home about, but it is intriguing enough that I'm wanting to get to continuing on the story.
So please give me a few less random encounters. I'll go back and grind. It's fine.
Honestly, I want to go with elective grinding. Yeah, I agree with you.
It's kind of like, all right, let's see how far how good am I doing to because I'm going to do a little bit of a side grind on my way already.
Yeah, to see if my team is set up well enough to beat the upcoming boss without having to go back and do that elective grinding.
Well, and it's it's worth noting that this guy, this guy, this guy, really high up any other option for side quest XP grinding, except random encounters.
There aren't really side quests. There's there's a couple of here and there things, but not really.
No, and I guess that's where the game comes in at such a short time. I don't mind that.
I know I wasn't mad about it. I will say that I mentioned this earlier to you.
My biggest point of frustration in this game, 110 percent, was trying to figure out what the trigger was to bring up the next part of the cut scene, the story, whatever the game would give you a hint as to what's going on.
And then it's up to you to explore and talk to people and visit the shops and leave town and go up north until it tells you to turn around.
Oh, I guess it's not that way. I I struggled with that. Yeah.
And because, too, it's sometimes it's very direct. Yeah.
Of where you need to go, what you need to do to progress the story, to get that trigger to get to continue on other times.
The conversation just ends. And yeah, especially as an RPG game.
This isn't where I would end the conversation. No, I think maybe we should ask this guy a couple more things and get some clues.
And then you go to talk to him and you have pretty much the same conversation you just had. Oh, that's it.
That's all I'm getting. That was all the dialogue you had. Yeah.
And then you run into there's a lot of random encounters.
So am I going to have to go back out over here to get this thing to trigger?
And if not, then now I'm going to have to spend like an extra 10, 15 minutes to get my way out and back to then get back into town to find out.
Nope, you're supposed to go out this exit and then we'll start the cut scene.
Dude, I. That sucked.
I hated that. I did not enjoy that part. No, I didn't.
That first town you get into it is.
It's actually it's after the ship that first ship ride. Yep.
You get to that town and it's I mean, you have to talk to a bunch of NPCs in sequence and then like it in one point, you're all having a conversation.
This guy's house, you have a little cut scene and the ship dude is like, all right, I'm going to go check on me ships and he's out.
And you're like, OK, cool. And then they're like, hey, you guys should sleep here.
And you're like, sick. Conversation ends.
You have to then go talk to the wife who's in the kitchen and she tells you, oh, stay for supper.
It'll be ready soon. You should check out the shops in the meantime.
And then you go into one of the shops and then when you exit that one shop, there's some trigger and then something else.
Yes, I know. And then you do. And I like I've been in every shop.
I've been in every building. I went outside on both.
I went to the ship. Whoa, dude.
Yeah, I was brutal. That took me like and once once I got to the end of it.
Had I known or been given any kind of pointer?
Oh, this is what you're doing next.
I mean, I could have blitzed through that in like five minutes and it took me almost an hour.
I'm like, I bought everything from all the shops.
Yeah. And I also think I remember thinking I kind of enjoy this having to talk to everybody, having to figure out who to talk to to get this to progress.
But then it loses any sense of reason or giving you any direction of who to talk to.
If yeah, if it at least made sense or it was like, hey, go talk to Stacey.
She's outside the general shop and be like, oh, I should have paid attention when they told me what the icons were on the map.
But, you know, anything like I like clues.
And that's one of the things that I like the most about exploring new Zelda titles or old Zelda games.
They do a good job of keying you in. And a lot of games do this.
I'm just I'm just particular about Zelda, but not something that was present here.
And from a writing perspective, I think that's where this story really fell flat for me is just it gave you no game direction.
And you have to do that. You have to tell your player this is what you're doing next.
This is where you're going. There's nowhere in the game that you can see what your objective is.
There's no quest. There's no chapter title. There's nothing.
Yeah, I I that was especially when you got to the part where you're supposed to go to jail.
Basically. Yeah. And the game does a great job.
The first time you go to steal something from someone's cabinet.
Are you sure you're going to take that? Yeah. No, you're right.
I'm the hero. I should have.
Ladies, that was my mindset. You know, I'm immediately like, no, I'm not.
Oh, you didn't steal something your first time. No, no, no.
The second I opened that first cabinet, which I didn't know you could do until I was just back on it.
And little homies like, bro, you're really going to you're really going to take that Snickers bar.
Oh, my. Yeah. Fuck. Yeah.
Dude, some idiot left it in this cabinet up here in their own house.
I'm definitely taking it. And then you get did you ever steal something? I did.
OK. Yeah. Your entire party's luck falls.
And I only did it because like first, I feel guilty, so I'm not going to do it right.
Yeah. Yeah. And then we get to this part where you get to the game
and in order to visit someone in the jail to ask them some questions, you have to get arrested.
And so I'm trying to figure out how do I get arrested?
Like, well, if you go, they make some references about stealing from an item shop or this and that.
So first, I go in trying to interact with the shopkeeper and know you can't
you can't steal anything from the buy menu. Obviously. Right. Right.
So then I go up to the cabinet right in front of her and take something out of it.
And not only does your luck go down, but you're the person with you has
just think of the best way of making you feel bad about yourself.
Oh, undercut the shit out of you. Like, oh, it's not much of a hero move, is it?
I guess as your hero, you can do whatever you want.
With great power comes great responsibility, huh?
Yeah. It's so then my luck goes down.
Come on. I did this because I was told to do it.
I don't want to steal it. This whole time. I've been a good boy.
Yeah, it's not it's not a Santa Claus list ruling here, unfortunately.
But then that was another one where you have to talk around a bunch of different people
and you have to talk about a bunch of different people.
And that's something to do with this.
You know, so I agree that that was a very hard part.
Yeah. If it didn't have that, I would reference this game to I am said sooner.
Did you ever did not play that game out?
I believe that had either inspirations from or some people from the team
of like Chrono Trigger or something along those group along those lines.
I think it's a great RPG where there's no side quests.
It's just you're just trucking trucking through this journey.
Oh, yeah. And there is something nice about that
where you don't have to worry about missing out on anything.
Yeah, I do. I do miss those.
I because I like sandboxy.
I like that option, too.
But it's sometimes it's nice to just be along for the ride.
And you're just you're just playing it.
You're just taking the story and you're just you don't even get much of a say in what you're saying.
Yeah, the reals RPG. Yeah.
It's kind of nice, especially when you're on a time limit like ours.
Yeah, that's true. You know, I always feel bad for not being able to, you know,
explore all the nooks and crannies and get to all the different places.
But this yeah, this one was pretty, pretty hard to miss anything, really.
Yeah, really. I mean, you had to make a mental decision of like you'd see a treasure chest over there.
And so the game knew it had too many random encounters when the only thing stopping you to go in
and open that treasure chest is the distance and the battle.
You know, that's like six battles. Yeah, easily.
That's not worth whatever is in there.
No way. Legendary something in there.
No. Yeah, they did have, though, this mechanic of polishing weapons.
So any of the rusty weapons that you pick up in battle, I don't know if you don't get them in battle.
I think you just get them in the dungeons and like in treasure chests in random places.
And the chance of that getting polished for like 60 coins, which was bad.
Yeah. To see if it came out as a badass weapon.
Immediate addiction. It was just like, oh, I know where I left some chests at.
I'm going to go back and fucking see if this is like a sweet ass sword.
Yeah. But it's never worth it.
Yeah. Geo H's rendition of CSGO loot grates all day, bro. Absolutely.
Give me those skins.
So moving on to the battle system, there is a lot to talk about here.
To begin with, you are on a five by four grid.
Is it even that?
I believe it's that because you have the most people you have in a party that you can have on the grid are five.
Yeah. And then four, because you have two lines on your side that your team is on.
Oh, I see what you're saying. And then two on the other side.
You're counting the enemy slots too. I gotcha.
And then it's split in half.
Yeah. So you've got like a divide between where your environment is or what have you.
Yep. Yeah. And then that immediately I enjoyed.
I think that was one of the things that pulled me into wanting to play this game when I had seen the footage of it,
because as we discussed earlier, I'm not big on strategy RPGs.
Yeah.
But seeing such a small grid that you have to worry about moving around.
And you don't have to go all the way up onto their grid and attack them.
It's just really a way of saying you're in the front line, you're in the back line.
You're in the back. Yep.
You know, the person in back is only going to get attacked by spells or arrows.
Yeah.
And then some special attacks they can like charge back there and get you.
But you don't have to worry about moving your people besides forward or back.
Right.
So you have one. I always kept one of my magic users in the back, the rest of my attackers in the front.
Yep. And then you have the same deal going on with your enemies where you can only physically attack people in their front line and use magic or arrows on the back line.
Yeah.
And then you get into first just quickly, as quickly as I can cover it, you have MP.
Yep. Which is your magic points. Get your magic.
In any game. But on top of that, at the top screen, and there are like five different colored spheres with numbers, usually like 500 is the number next to them.
Yep.
And there's a red one, green one, blue one, purple one.
And there's one other one I think I'm missing.
I think it's black.
I don't know what it was.
Anyhow, it's there. They all are pretty much elemental colors. And so if I have two people using heavy fire attacks that may, although everyone else still has their MP, they're not going to be able to use those fire attacks because you've drained all of that red sphere down to zero.
You can still make a last last strike effort type deal. And I think it kills you. Does it always kill you or does it just take away some health?
I never actually.
Oh, I got into where I had to try last ditch effort. Just fucking blast blast.
If you have the MP, but the but say I'm going to use a fire attack. I'm out of the fire mana, but I still have MP. I can attack with that fire attack still using my health.
Oh, so Saks health.
Every time I use it, it killed my people.
Oh shit.
So it takes a lot of health.
So I'm not going to lie. I must have missed the explanation for that mechanic in the tutorial. And I just thought it was an unexplained mechanic that would be yet revealed later.
And, you know, I'm trying to remember. I'm trying to remember if it explains it or not.
Yeah, I never had it figured out. I figured they'll they'll give me the juice at some point and it just never came. I just so I never really. But I also didn't use magic very heavily.
The magic, the magic system in this game is pretty unique. It's very typical in that you use MP to cast spells and it has like a nifty little auto or extra we'll call it input means whenever you cast a spell, you can just let it cast the spell, which is exactly what it sounds like.
Or you can play like a little mini game to boost the magic power of the spell and it'll give it a some kind of multiplier for the damage.
Like an example of that mini game being, oh, you've got the one that I quite enjoyed where it's a circle.
You have to tap within the circle really fast to get it smaller and smaller.
And then they add in two circles that are moving around and you have to go between them simultaneously to get them smaller and smaller at the same time.
And if you don't go between the two of them, it does not work. You can't do one at a time. Right. Have to do them both.
And then you've got the one where you've got the Roman numerals one and two and you have to drag these dots that say one or two on them into the one or two spot.
Which is a really silly game. They're super simple. I ran into issues with that one a lot. Roman numerals.
So there's something coded into it. If you do it to if you try to drag the orb over too quickly, you'll quote unquote drop it or something.
It was you had to go very slow and steady. Yes. It was gimmicky for sure. They were like, I mean, what would you say? Fifteen.
Maybe even more different of these with the magic casting power of mini game things.
Yeah, I would say I don't think I got into all of them, but you see a list. You're given a list that you can do and you can see all the open spots for what they're going to become.
Yeah, there's there's quite a few. Yes. It was an unexpected mechanic and honestly a pretty decent one for the stylus as far as I did enjoy it.
I would have enjoyed it more had there been less random encounters. Oh, agreed. Because then you're just going through auto after a while.
Yeah, it wasn't that I didn't like it because like you said, you can play the game without ever using your stylus.
You never have to touch it, but you can also play it 100 percent with your stylus. True. You can. I.
Yeah, I didn't quite prefer that that method, but I did use it from time to time.
I used it when I was at the bar and I was like waiting for Morgan to pick me up.
So I'm just like sitting at the bar just playing my DS. But rather than, you know, being a show off that I'm sitting there playing video games.
I just had it sitting there on the bar. Oh, posh. Just using the stylus to play the game. A gentleman gamer. A gentleman gamer.
Wow. I like that. I don't want to put it in your face. Peasants. Peasants. I like that.
Coming back to the magic system, it felt like MP was kind of a precious resource.
There was no in between battle regen. If I remember right, I'm pretty sure you regen on level up.
You regen MP. So there are a few triggers that will fully regen.
So it was something I couldn't figure out and I didn't know if it was like, I don't know if it's equipment that my main character has on where he regens it like every turn.
So there are there are terrain bonuses that you might be benefiting from and those would generally give you like a three or four MP regen per round start.
But there are one of the other very robust systems of the game would be the equipment management.
A lot of the items, be the armor or a weapon or secondary weapon, what have you.
A lot of them have both active and passive skills tied to them. And then the amount of skills and magic spells that you can gain access to is asinine.
And it starts to just give them to you. At first it's slowly just giving you a few. You just have like three for each character.
And then it just lays on two pages of spells that you can do.
Yeah, so you can visit these temples to some of the different gods and mythos.
And basically there's a tablet and a fairy and you go and you interact with the tablet and you pray to the god and the god bestows the potential for knowledge upon you, unlocking six to ten different spells that you can't cast right away.
You basically just have to farm XP and eventually you will gain enough XP. Basically you level up once or twice and then you can use the spells.
That's generally the gist. Yep, that's generally about how long it takes you.
And then you talk to the fairy and she will give you the opportunity to learn an upgraded version or more difficult version of one of your power up mini game things.
Which is used for your stronger attacks.
Right. Yeah, you basically, whatever tier the spell is, you have access to those tier of mini games.
Yep. They start to get kind of hard actually.
Some of them do. And especially, it really I think pushed the accuracy and the usability of the touch screen kind of to its limits.
Which was, it was still okay. It wasn't, it honestly wasn't bad. I didn't find myself getting too frustrated with the controls themselves.
Still very not on the same level of today's touch screens in terms of accuracy.
So that yeah, and those touch and slide games, those were the worst.
Those were the worst.
Because there's definitely a lot of lost input along the slide.
It had to be something with the coding like you said.
Yeah.
Because with the other ones, I didn't have any issues where you have the ball or the circle moving around really fast and you have to get inside of it.
I had no problem with those.
But just that one, just that Roman numeral one.
So another thing I thought was funny and this is going to really show you my lack of education here.
Would the Greek use Roman numerals?
It depends on when.
When the story is taking place of the glory of Heracles.
Well, so don't forget about the Roman Empire.
Everybody was using Roman numerals after that.
Right.
So it just depends on when in history.
Okay.
But yeah, everybody was using Roman numerals after a certain point.
But I mean like the ancient Greek obviously were not using Roman numerals.
Man, I don't remember exactly what numbers looked like in Greek.
But no, I'm fairly certain they had their own lexicon for it.
That gave me a little giggle.
I did notice though that your gold has a D as like the currency.
Yeah.
They don't really say what the currency is, they say like you can see you have 100D or 2000D to spend at the store and certain things cost so many D.
I looked it up in the ancient Greek currency.
I don't remember the name of it but it did start with a D.
I'll have to look it up because now I want to know.
I didn't even think about it that much to be honest.
I always wonder what currencies are supposed to be.
Or what they're supposed to represent.
There's a fun YouTube series about what prices, I guess it's not a series but a video, about the price of how much money Pokemon Trainer makes by the time they go through and beat the Elite Four.
And first to do that they had to find an in-game product that was a real life product.
Oh, that had like a price attached to it.
Yeah, so that's the whole thing they go through and then they figure that out.
Blow out the economics of the entire game.
Yeah, the whole thing.
That's awesome.
Those are really fun.
The Greek, ancient Greek currency was the Drakma.
Drakma?
Drakma.
There you go.
Probably killing the pronunciation but whatever.
So that makes sense.
Dead language, right?
Nope.
Greece is still...
No, still exists.
Latin is dead.
Yeah, we killed that one.
Yep, public education, and then you go to school.
Yeah, sure.
You know, those things.
I was too busy playing DS games in school.
Yeah, education is unneeded here.
Especially when you're making a podcast.
Yeah, you don't have to be edumacated.
No, Joe Rogan's doing it.
Isn't he like hella educated?
I don't know, probably.
I don't know.
That's how uneducated I am, I don't even know.
Yeah, I'm so uneducated I don't even know who's educated.
That's right.
I did want to talk about the two-headed dog that you have to fight.
Oh yeah.
That was a very smart battle.
I know you liked that one.
I struggled with that one.
It took me so long.
I had it actually referenced to the one and only Game Facts Guide.
Nice.
There's only one on there.
This is a game a lot of people really miss, which is kind of funny because everyone calls Solitary Robo a hidden gem.
This to me is kind of more of a hidden gem than Sol.
Yeah.
I'd probably put them in the same-ish bucket for different reasons.
Yeah, well we'll definitely be getting to that.
Yes.
So with the dog, he multiplies after each battle sequence.
And I was really confused because when I would kill the clone, which takes obviously way less hits than the OG,
I thought I was killing the OG and that you had to somehow kill both of them in the same turn before he could move.
Otherwise they're just going to keep duplicating.
And so I was getting so frustrated I wouldn't even let the battle really play out all the way.
I'd give up part way through and be like, I can't get all these guys lined up in the same amount of damage.
And finally looked it up, played it through.
I enjoyed that battle.
It was a good one.
I thought it was a very well-paced, you got to have someone focused on healing, someone you can focus for a few rounds on the main guy.
And then after one or two times you have to have someone focus on the side characters, the clones that have come in from the enemy.
It was fun. It was stressful.
I mean you really felt the tension because before that battle you have a smaller battle that's supposed to be the big battle.
Where you're saving this little girl from these monsters.
Once you kill those, then this two-headed orthos, is that his name?
Yeah, I think so.
Comes in and you have to battle him.
So your MP is already drained.
I don't remember but I don't believe it fully restores the magic elemental stuff that you have to pull from.
And so you're limited on the attacks that you can throw out at this thing.
Oh yeah, you're partially drained going in.
Yeah, and it's the hardest battle you've had in so far.
Oh, for sure.
Yeah, it was definitely a good one.
I would say I probably used auto-attack on 95% of the battles.
I think that one was definitely one where I sat up in my gamer seat.
Was auto-attack, do you mean when you say that?
I mean the auto button.
Because there's an auto button at the bottom right.
Yep.
That's what you're talking about?
Yes.
So does that just choose the attack for you?
Yeah, so the game has the auto system.
And so you can go into the system settings and you can configure auto.
And there's the auto-auto, which is just let the AI decide what the best thing for your character to do at any given moment on any given turn.
And it will do that.
Otherwise, you can go into manual auto, which basically allows you to set the tolerance for various categories of play style, if you will.
So you can set an aggressive attack style.
You can set a...I think there's a tolerance setting for healing and rejuvenation type things, if you will.
And so you can set, oh, this is my healer character.
I'm going to make them be more focused on healing with their auto.
Or you can just leave it on auto-auto, which is what I did.
I never.
I used it once and I thought, man, that's a lot of ways to move to get to the auto button rather than just hitting attack.
Yeah.
Which is what auto does 90% of the time, to my knowledge.
I didn't use it very much.
True.
It will use skills and magic.
But otherwise, yeah, you can just spam attack.
But what I realized with is because I was usually not playing with the stylus.
But for me to hit A and for me to just lean over and just tap on auto in the bottom corner of the screen took the exact same.
And once I figured out that I was autoing everything.
See, and you did make a comment earlier about how the stylus is kind of not so great in this game.
But I did also find myself doing a similar thing where I would just use my fingers instead of the stylus.
And it worked.
That worked honestly fine.
That was fine.
Better than a half dozen in some other games.
For sure.
But buttons are definitely spaced out just far enough that it works most of the time.
I got sausages for thumbs.
So, you know.
Even with the stylus, I ran into issues with the menu.
Yeah.
Right.
I could just when I hit the right spot, it just catches you on the wrong.
And that could be the screen protector too.
You never know.
That's true.
It could be hard to say.
Aside from that though, I think we've pretty well covered.
Yeah.
There's not a lot left to be said about the game, I don't think.
I guess normally this is where we'd move into story.
But I think we've really covered that too as lightly as we've touched on it.
Yeah.
As far as I've gotten in it, there isn't a lot to be said about it.
No.
It's not bad.
It's not great.
It's a good way to move you along to new locations.
Yeah.
You're an amnesiac.
Right?
Amnesiac?
Wow, that sounded weird coming out.
You're an amnesiac trying to figure out why you're immortal.
You find another guy.
He's like, well damn, why am I immortal?
And then it's just a bunch of curious immortals trying to figure out why they're immortal,
trying to get up to Olympus.
It's a fun basis for a story.
Yeah.
That just, it's there.
It's alright.
I don't really care about any of the characters too much.
I mean, I would say there is a part where you lose the captain of the ship, he moves
on to his own thing.
And that kind of bummed me out because I like the captain.
But then he gets replaced with a spunky little girl and you're like, oh, who doesn't like
spunky little girls?
The side characters, yeah, the cannon fodder party members that the game feeds you periodically
in the various legs of the story are honestly more endearing than the main character.
Yes.
The main characters.
I agree.
Especially the other guy that you get out of jail.
He's a blast.
He's hilarious.
Good time.
Yeah.
And once again, while the story wasn't great, visuals come through here in the storytelling
when your whole squad is talking to somebody and then they need to talk to each other.
They actually all turn into a circle and talk.
And the cut scenes play out just so smoothly.
They remind me almost of like that early Prince of Persia tracking.
They use it with them.
How smoothly they pick up the there's a part where you kick some guys ass and one of the
guys picks up his come out his his partner off the ground and drags him away with them.
Yeah.
Looks good.
Straight up drags them all across the whole thing.
Yeah.
There's no in a lot of these RPG cut scenes.
Everyone's just standing there.
Yeah, you just have like a name card with a dialogue.
And the story is being told and you just know what's going on.
But in this it actually shows you what's happening.
It's pretty cool.
I like that a lot.
While the story didn't have a lot to give, the telling of it was well done.
Yeah.
I will definitely concede that.
Moving on to our very important and totally not arbitrary and pointless ranking system.
Yes.
The most prestigious, the most accurate part of the cast.
It's the only review you should listen to in the world.
Doesn't matter if you're an Xbox only gamer.
Yeah, I'm sure that they have a spin off version on here and we'll let you know how it is.
Absolutely.
You can base your your opinion off that of whether you're going to get the game or not.
Yeah.
Just stick around for an indefinite amount of time until we review said title.
Yeah.
And you got 30 years to kill.
Yeah.
But don't play that game until we tell you to.
Don't you fucking dare.
All right.
Story.
I'm going with the four.
I'm going to give it a five.
Wow.
Yeah.
It was nice of you.
It was all right.
It was cute.
It was fun.
Yeah.
There are different parts where gameplay.
Give it a gameplay in general is hard with this one because you have such such highs and such low.
I will give it a seven.
OK.
I was also going to give a seven.
I think the battle system carried it through gameplay wise.
Yeah.
Sound audio.
I'm going to give this one.
If we gave solo nine.
I got to give this one.
This is why I don't like these rankings.
Nobody does.
I got to give this one a nine out of 10 as well.
I was giving a nine point five because I thought it was better than so it's a robust.
OK.
I'm sweating on a seven.
I feel like seven's fair.
I feel how you want.
Yeah.
That's fair.
I appreciate that.
As can you.
Stylus.
Good bad.
True false.
Good.
Yeah.
Very good.
You can use it through the whole game.
You don't have to use it at all.
I really enjoy that.
Me too.
And then when I was I didn't think there would be a time when I would want to use the stylus
and then there absolutely was.
And when I did I played just great.
I can't agree with you more.
Balanced.
Beautiful.
Visuals.
I got to give this probably a nine out of 10 again.
Nine out of 10.
I'm going to give it an eight.
I would like to give it less but I don't know what we gave solo.
Solo rated really high.
In fact I can look it up.
Well then let's just say I would like to give it an eight then.
Without even knowing what I gave solo.
Okay.
I'm just going to give it an eight out of ten.
I think that sounds good.
That's fair.
Because they were good.
They were really good.
There's probably some way better ones out there.
We are later into the life cycle so maybe not.
Maybe this is you know we'll see.
Yeah.
Okay.
So that brings us.
Wait.
We're forgetting one.
I want to give it an eight.
I'm going to give it an eight out of ten.
Okay.
I'm going to give it an eight out of ten.
Okay.
I'm going to give it an eight out of ten.
Okay.
I'm going to give it an eight out of ten.
Okay.
So that brings us.
Wait.
We're forgetting one.
I wondered if you were going to remember.
This game didn't have a single ladder.
No it did not.
Nope.
Stairs.
Just stairs.
No ladders.
We're just going to NA it then.
I thought that meant it was good.
I mean I wouldn't say it's good.
Like that's like saying that you're a good skier because you don't go skiing.
Well we rated Solo 2 Robo good on its usage of the stylus because there wasn't any.
Yeah well here at Pocket Cast we believe in double standards.
Ah shit.
I like this game more than I like Solo 2 Robo.
I'm going to just say it flat out.
This game is way better than Solo 2 Robo.
Yeah I'm not fighting you there.
There's still another one that we are missing.
What?
Cross dresser.
Oh we didn't talk about it.
I thought we raced about cross dressing.
Did we rank?
Alman?
I thought maybe I just wanted it to be like a 10 out of 10.
Are you sure you don't want to go back to Solo 2 Robo just for Alman?
Well there's a cross dresser in this one.
It was not as enjoyable as Alman.
That was just weird.
So speaking to Morgan about it I guess it's a thing in Greek mythology where like oracles
are often cross dressers and people of power would often be cross dressers.
Very true.
Yeah.
I knew that fact.
Didn't even think about it.
Didn't consider it huh?
Nope.
Yeah I told Morgan about it's funny there's another cross dresser.
We have another game with a cross dresser.
It's pretty funny.
What does that leave us here?
That gives us round up round down.
Round up I like the game.
Alright.
That brings us in at a solid 8.
How do you feel about that?
Yeah Solo came in at 6.
I thought we were going to hit 7 out of 10 as the average on this one.
Honestly that's kind of where I thought we'd be too.
I'm not mad about the 8.
I had a good time.
Definitely enjoyed it more than Solo.
So I can't be too mad about that.
Yeah I definitely this past two weeks flew by.
I think I might keep playing it.
I don't know it's hard to say because of the amount of random encounters.
Yeah.
I don't know if I can keep going.
I think if I came back to it with the mindset of I'm just going to enjoy the battle system.
That would probably drastically change my perspective.
Once again same thing we felt about Solo a little bit.
Not on a time crunch.
Might have enjoyed it more.
But realistically.
That's the nature of the game baby.
Cater to our weirdly specific standards.
Well and as an adult right you're already fucking you're always pushed for time.
I got so much shit going on right now.
It's insane.
And when you're dealing with the DS title I'd like to have more progress happen.
In a shorter amount of time because of that pick up a play put it in my pocket.
Pull it out and play it a little bit.
I don't know.
Maybe not.
Maybe I'm maybe I eat those words too because I do like an elongated game.
Along gated game.
Along gated games.
That's our new publishing trademark.
That's us.
Don't steal it.
No I'm with you.
That is the one drawback to this.
Right.
So hopefully this next game we play.
I've got a RuneScape account.
So that I still probably will continue to play.
So how much time can I really commit to these titles.
We'll find out.
Stay tuned.
On the next episode.
What we're looking at now is randomizing some games and see what we're playing next week.
Yeah let's go for it.
Spin the wheel.
Tell me where to direct my focus.
And with such excitement of the randomizer wheel.
Fletcher and Ed forgot to hit record.
The game that it chose was Professor Layton and the Curious Village.
The boys were ecstatic.
Find out more on the next episode.
But before that.
Enjoy this blooper.
Hello and welcome to the podcast.
We are really bad at intros.
Oh the worst.
We are my best friend Ed and co-host.
God we just gotta start over.
Yeah yeah yeah.
Do you want to script it.