Review: Star Ocean 4 The last Hope International

So i finished with the story and so lets take a look at what i find of this game.

the first thing that immidiatly took my attention would be the bad voice syncing whne spoken voices are on english, if you put it on japanese spoken no problem, but there was absolutly no effort to change the lip syncing. so sometimes you hear them speak when their mouth is shut. Not that it is a real owner, but still..

Next is the graphics, beautifull but a little to shiny, meaning i had sometimes difficulty to see my surroundings in bright areas. next to that not much to mention.

story.
At the end of the game i was a little dissapointed, for me it ended really to fast, there was still some huge enemy te beat, but they wouldn't allow it. To me it was like i was trown of a cliff and left to death. They go trough the trouble to create a big evil entity and then stops the game without you actualy kill the thing, that is really annoying. On the other hand this game is to short, at this moment on my first save file there stands a 60 play hours, that is nothing to me, but i explain later how it is that there is 60 hours. At certain points in the game i was able to say what would happen, who would leave my team and some other minor things.

Next to all that the game was pretty good, i did not regret to buy this game, only that the story could be better. another thing that annoyed me was that there is no pause button, if you pause you expect to the game timer to stop, it goes on, and sometimes i had to pauze for 5 hours because someone wants to see tv, so i get 60 hours ingame, but in reality it are like 40 or something.

The battle system, its good, its better, its awsome. I like the battles, the blindside is really something to get used to, but when you have, most enemies really become easy, even bosses are becomming to easy. the bosses ingame really have a nack to invest more in HP then in decent attacks. some bosses takes half an hour to kill while i had one boss where i had 2 minutes to kill.

Your characters have all their own story for joining you, what i like and dislike is that all yor members are almost equall in usefulness in battle even if they look stupid. at some point you get a catgirl in your party, aside the fact that she is really annoying, she is my best attacker of my whole team. so on that point it would be okay.

End stuff related i haven't seen much that would mark a good end stuff, i think i need to find good area where i can find moonstones to forge my best item. so i guess i haven't seen everything, also there is a tournament system if you complete the right quest, this tournament is really boring, the first 50 enemies are really easy in solo play, team battles is better and survival has a challenge, but when you hiet lvl 100+ that dissapears fast. By note the lvl cap is 200, thats a damn big grind you need to do.

Item crafting has gone to hell compared to Star ocean 3, now you need to invent your recipys, not that i dislike it, but in my opinion is the star ocean 3 inventing system beter.

Overall, it is a good game ,but i rather play star ocean3, it has more a wow feeling to my main character.

Anime: flame Of Recca (dropped)

Recca is a boy living in the modern world, only he seems drawn to following the ways of the ninja. On the day he befriends a girl named Yanagi who has a mysterious power of healing, he is confronted and challenged by a Dark Priestess. This battle leads Recca to discover a strange power within himself. Afterwards, he finds that not only is his past and destiny not as crystal clear as he had thought, but there are others with powers practicing the way of the ninja who challenge him one after another.
source

It doesn't happen much that i would drop a anime, other few cases are clannad after story and Zero No Tsukaima. I liked the concept in this anime but the story development was way to fast, people who have seen this anime would probably agree, i have never seen such fast story telling. It is not as extreme like the Tsubasa Movie : Princess of the Birdcage, where a good 1 hour and half long movie is suppressed into 20 minutes. this anime is sort like this, in a few episodes the story has taken off like a rocket and gone into a whirl of events that have ridiculus follow ups. That is the biggest reason for me to drop this anime.

The other reasons were things like, unclear of what IS strong? I somehow i wonderd how Kurei is suprised how Recca has grown and even feel intimidated by Recca when he is in fact, much much stronger then him. A second reason is something that i see in bleach, getting stronger then your opponent in 5 minutes or when in battle and cleary losing, thinking (AGAIN) of why he is here and then gain a uber power boost. This anime is to much based on the 'wow he got that much stronger' feeling, invoking that feeling every episode is not good. (People who disagree that Ichigo from bleach doesn't apply to this need to see the episodes when he learns his bankai and hollow mask, he doesn't really train, he unlocks it and uses it)
All of those little reason can be brought under the second reason for dropping: No Balance.

so i watched this anime into the tournament and at the second round (against Kurei personal guard) i gave up on it.

Overall i would say, ninja lovers, try it(although they leave the ninja far behind them), people who like fast development that endlesly reapeat itself over and over, watch it. If you are looking for a decent story, go look somewhere else, otherwise, give it a try.

Anime: Baka to test to Soukanjuu

Introduction
The story centers around Akihisa Yoshii, the "baka" of the title. His academy rigidly divides up the student body into classes based on the results of tests. The prodigiesprodigies are in the A class with reclining seats complete with air conditioning, but Akihisa is in F class, the lowest rung of the school ladder which is furnished only with low, decrepit tables and worn-out straw tatami mats. A girl named Mizuki Himeji is actually one of the smartest girls in Akihisa's sophomore year, but she had a fever on test day and was pigeonholed into the F class.
The school happens to have developed experiments to summon fantasy creatures, and Akihisa decides to rally F class to take on the higher-tiered classes and seize their perks. The F class uses the summoned creatures in an all-out battle for school supremacy. source

I had a good first impression of this anime, the characters had good personalities and the academy battle system was a genuis invention. To summon a creature and battle with your test scores, wage war with other classes for better studyrooms and material and above that if you loose a battle, you need to take supplemntary classes to get your scores back.

Troughout the story you get to see how genuis Class f really is and how easy to manipulate yoshii is. after a few eps i was fairly convinced that this was a good anime in story and character. they like to give the viewer some echii moments as a breather between certain events, but it isn't something that would be utterly distracting.

Overall, this is a good anime, i would have prefered another ending, but i can live with this one. I reccomend this for school anime lovers and those who like idiots.

Review: Just Cause 2

It was mere coincidence that i got to play this game, someone borrowed it to me whil he was on vacation and so i got the chance to test it out.

I honestly didn't had a clue what to expect from this game but the start wasn't promising, it cutscenes were lagging like hell, so i needed to turn down the graphs, not that i care about them, but even with high settings, there was some delay on the visual output. after the cutscene were the sound ended a minut before the the visual was done i was soarinf trough the sky and plumeting towards mother earth only to get close to my death comrade who was shot out of the helicopter and who had my pda, also i don't know his name. Then i safly pull my parachute out of nowhere and land neaby a militairy instalation on the island of Panau.

At this point i did not gain any intrest for the game, but then i got to test the grappeling hook, from that point on, the game was fun. In this game you can blow up militairy installations and you get paid for it, you have a whole island to explore and more then enough towns and militairy basas to destroy. Although the targets you need to destroy are mostly the same (Water towers, broadcast towers, satelite discs, fuel tanks, gas tanks, pipelines, AA sites and i can go on) so after a while (about 20 houres of destruction , you feel that it is getting dull and the missions do not bring any change in this. You got several sorts of missions, agency missions for the good old USA, territory missions for the rebels on Panau to gain new terretory (duh) and faction missions for those rebels to make their fight more easy (because you do all the work) those missions except for the agency doesn't really differ from the usual destruction you leave in your wake. Everywhere you go, you either destroy and flee or capture and flee, both are fun in the beginning, but later on its boring.

Storywise is this game a joke, its nothing were decent and posseses nothing entertaining (except for a few cutscenes) but this game doesn't really need a story, the story is only there to give you a reason to blow things up. At somepoint i wished that they left the story behind and said : " here, your job is to destroy everything you meet so get to it, you get objectives, fullfill them for stuff and parts.".

like i said you can explore a whole island, so you can also find parts to upgrade your weapons and vehicles, you can buy them from the black market, but they only deliver one item at a time, that means when you need explosives ( and those you need a lot), and ammo for your 2 weapons
you gonna need to call the black market seller 3 times
and watch the cutscenes of him comming and going ( yes i am aware you can skip them, but most of the time you forget that). transporting yourself across the landscape to a certain point is a pain in the ass, because helicopters are dull and slow, airplanes hard to control, the same for cars, after a while i got used to traveling with my parachute, it was fatser then the car (no need to get on the road, trough the jungle) i have seen and done many things in order to get to my obective (transportation by the black market seller helped to).

Your grapple hook is your friend, you can do the most awsome stuff with it, like grappeling and pulling yourself to a driving car or grapple the car and apply the other end with the ground (in a chase this is really handy) overall the gameplay is good.

So what i think is, if you like destruction/explosions/mowing down lots of soldiers with diffirent kind of weapons this is your game. If you are looking for a good story, don't try this, it wil strike as a huge dissapointment.

anime: Dance in the Vampire Bund

Intruduction
Japan is shaken when the Vampire Queen reveals herself in a tv show and claims to create a place for vampires. The next day, a high school boy named akira is approached by that Queen who ask if he remebers the promise.

I would rank this as a weird anime, the story is decent but sometimes hard to follow. Personalities of your main characters are well designed, altough i didn't was really fond of that lolita Queen. i believe the ending was a total mess and i'm still wondering how we got to such an ending.

Overall i would say to only watch this if you like vampire series, those who like vampires will have their fill. Its also a bit filled with ecchi stuff, so be carefull befor you decide to see it.

Anime: Kiba

Introduction
Zed, a 15 year boy, would be your above average troublemaker, whenever he sees a door he get the urge to smash the door. Because of his behaviour in public his friend Noah, who covers for him, try to talk to Zed, why he breaks door. Zed is feeling like a bird in a cage, sufficating and boring. zeds mother is hospitalised and doesn't seem to see Zed at all. When Zed is accused of a fire he didn't start, he runs away, is assautled by a strange creature that calls him a shard caster and then captured by the police. Noa who have seen Zed fighting the creature tries to save zed by releasing him by force. Unknowing of Noa, Zed escapes in the confusion and runs to his hideout, there a portal appears and takes zed to another world.

The first episode of this anime is a bit depressing, my first impression would be that it wouldn't last long before i call it quits. But the second episode changed everything, you get in a cheerfull environment and get to know a lot of characters that have interesting personalities. The rest of the story develops in a nice way, they like to suprise you with new areas every 6 episodes.

The story itself is decent enough, i had my questions at certain parts, but it wasn't anything that could burn it into the ground. I even came to like Zed mentality, he was in the search for power, but also want to know if he needs that power. Now to be honest, the first time i saw Zed i figured he was an evil guy, because of that mean look in his eyes.

The one thing that really annoys me is that you don't have a clear understanding of who can beat who, i had several times thought: he is weaker, beat him.

Now overall, i would say it is a decent story and is worth the watch if you like magic in battle with some star wars rippedoff swords.i don't recommend that you make time for it, watch when you have time should be better.

Code Geass Season 3

This post contains spoilers about the story from season one and season 2, do not read it, if you haven't seen them yet.

The reason why i wanted to make this post is not about conformation of season 3, but more to tell why i don't want to see a season 3.

After going around on some forums, i noticed that a lot of people are saying that a season3 is comming, they try to back it up by saying that lelouch isn't dead yet and always point out to the last scene where C.C lifts her head as she was talking to the driver who is supposed to be Lelouch.

For starters i want Lelouch to be dead, if he was alive and living in hiding with C.C that would totaly defeat the purpose of zero requim. Now i can hear you, but he got the global peace, I agree to that, but another achievement was to be killed bu Suzaku as redemption for Euphy. If getting killed by Suzaku means nothing, then their friendship is worth nothing as well, and the words he said would be meaningless to (Only those who are prepared to fire, should be fired at). If he was planning to live afterwards with the code that activates on death, for me that would totaly take the strenght and meaning of the ending away.

Now i got that clear, there is one other thing i want to say, IF they make another season, i hope they wont go further on what they have, i would rather want them to see making another story with new characters etc. The Geass have mass potentional, you can create so many stories with it, the story doesn't even need to be in the same timeframe or world. They could easily play a geass story in the medieval times or in another dimension, but if they somehow 'revive' Lelouch, i think i would be unable to watch the season.

Btw, a reason why lelouch doesn't have the code and so could revive is that the code should be taken and not recieved, i can state that by CC saying to VV "Charles,why did you take away VV codes at this point of time" meaning as soon the Geass user has the power he can choose when he takes the code. The second reason is that Charles grabs him but then disovles into the world of C, i believe that Charles isn't dead (also because i don't want him, his speeches are so good) and still has the code. Now i also agree that my second reason doesn't have much base but Lelouch is dead and stays dead.