A blog that is all over the place about all sorts of things
As a fan of the Ace Attorney series I felt compelled recently to purchase Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney Official Casebook Vol. 1, a comic book anthology featuring various amateur Japanese artists contributing their talents to tell new Ace Attorney stories. (more…)
Ace Attorney Investigations 2 for the Nintendo DS
Valkyria Chronicles 3's PSP case gives off a gritty feeling to it
So what’s the difference between Sega’s Valkyria Chronicles 3 and Capcom’s Ace Attorney Investigations 2?
If you’re an English speaking fan of either franchise then there might be very little difference between the two since you won’t be able to play either in the near future. (more…)
Phoenix Wright's second adventure
What a difference it makes when you play a game on a console it was originally intended for. That’s the feeling I got when I played Ace Attorney 2 (Ace Attorney: Justice for All) recently for the DS.
After taking my sweet time and beating the iPhone version of the first Ace Attorney game, I was surprised at how quick the sequel was on the DS.
Everything felt quicker and smoother, from navigating the different menus to examining various crime scenes to the presenting of evidence in court. (more…)
Growing up during the days of the original Nintendo and Super Nintendo, I didn’t get much of a chance to enjoy some the great RPGs of the day.
It wasn’t until later, while I was in high school, with the advent of console emulation and ROMs that I managed to get a chance to play some of them. It just so happens that one of those games was Lufia 2: Rise of the Sinistrals. (more…)
It was only a short, few months ago that Namco Bandai released a few pieces of artwork for their next “mothership” Tales game to celebrate the franchise’s 15th anniversary (which coincidentally is today!) and they even launched a site counting down the days to the next Tales game.
Well, the clock finally hit ZERO and we now know that this new Tales game is Tales of Xillia and it will be the first PS3-exclusive Tales game thanks to the minute and a half long promo that was posted with the game’s reveal. (more…)
If there is one game series that really could use a new title in the franchise, it’s Chrono Trigger. Despite it’s popularity amongst fans of the RPG genre, the series has only had 1 sequel in the form of the Chrono Cross which was released a decade ago for the Sony PlayStation, and has seen the original title released on the Super Nintendo, Sony PlayStation and Nintendo DS.
Chrono Trigger is consistently considered to be amongst one of the best RPG titles ever released for any platform and in recent years has been viewed as one of the titles in dire need of a sequel by gaming magazines such as Game Informer, EGM and Famitsu. (more…)
If there is one game franchise that PlayStation 3 (PS3) owners (and fans of JRPGs) would love to see is ANY Tales game on the PS3 that is in English.
Now I am sure some of you have heard it all about how Namco Bandai is ignoring its European and North American Tales fanbase by not releasing some of their games over the years. Fans have missed on games like Tales of Destiny 2 (not to be confused with Tales of Eternia which was released as Tales of Destiny 2 outside of Japan), Tales of Rebirth, Tales of Innocence, Tales of Hearts, and a few of the Tales of Radiant Mythology titles. (more…)
“Ugh, this English dub sounds awful!”, “I wish they picked better voice actors!”, “Gahhh… My ears!!” – These are some example of the common things you’ll hear people say about English audio tracks on their favourite Japanese-developed Roleplaying Games (RPG). Through the years we’ve seen the best (Disgaea) and worst (Arc Rise Fantasia, Xenogears) that English audio tracks can inflict on all games, from the mediocre (Arc Rise Fantasia) to the very great (Xenogears); yet over the years there has been great strides taken in providing gamers with good localizations. We see this in games which are text-heavy, such as the Ace Attorney series, where a lot of Cultural jokes and references are molded towards a North American audience, to games which feature a lot of audio, such as Valkyria Chronicles or Disgaea 3. (more…)
When I last mentioned Arc Rise Fantasia here on Axis of Bozz it was in a somewhat festive mood. At the time not only had the game won an award from IGN at the 2009 E3 Expo as the Best Wii RPG, but the North American localization and publishing rights were transferred to Ignition Entertainment, the company responsible for the localization of Muramasa: The Demon Blade, from previous license holder Xseed Games. Although my interest in this series has waned over the course of the last several months, my initial interest was due to the presence composer Yasunori Matsuda and character designer Kenichi Yoshida amongst the game’s staff, I was devasted when I first learned that the English audio for the game was fairly awful. After hearing the news I couldn’t help myself from asking, “If it’s true, how could things have gone so wrong?” (more…)
It’s funny how even in this modern age of gaming, in which we have highly polished and detailed 3D graphics mimicking real life, that there are still several great games out there that are still using 2D graphics that not only can entrap a gamer into playing it over and over again but launch a successful franchise. There are some games, such as the Disgaea series, where the gamer replays the game due to the immense epilogue content in the form of dungeon crawling and extra bosses to battle or additional, multiple endings, and then there are story-driven games like the Ace Attorney franchise. (more…)