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Stale Phantasia

The title may not be familiar, but Banshee's Last Cry is a terribly important game. It's a seminal work among visual novels, or “sound novels” as developer Spike Chunsoft likes to label their particular vision of the genre. First released in 1994, Banshee's Last Cry helped popularize story-driven, text-heavy games in Japan, and its legacy extends everywhere from a Game Center CX episode to Spike Chunsoft's recent Zero Escape series. It's known in Japan as Kamaitachi no Yoru, or Night of the Sickle Weasel, but that direct translation suggests unused Pokemon designs or Redwall villains. Scythe-toting pine martens and razor-wielding black-footed ferrets are far too cuddly for a murder mystery.

And Banshee's Last Cry remains a murder mystery in the typical Agatha Christie fashion. The player follows a young man and his girlfriend as they vacation at a remote skiing lodge, and killings soon interrupt the tourists staying there. Players direct the storyline through the hero's responses, and it's possible to prevent murders by uncovering secrets in time. Granted, it's not quite the same story as Kamaitachi no Yoru in its setting. Aksys put the game through the Phoenix Wright treatment, shifting characters and backgrounds to North America. The murder-plagued lodge is now in British Columbia instead of Nagano, the protagonists are now college kids Max and Grace instead of Toru and Mari, the brash Osaka businessman is now from Texas, and everything's just a step removed from the original Japanese stage. You can rename the leads if you like, though.

That aside, Banshee's Last Cry follows the original game's path when it's important. It's told through pages of text laid against static photos and accompanied by some stereotypical music. Yet it might just catch up those normally intimidated by visual nov…sorry, sound novels. The storyline moves at a decent pace, and the player's faced with plot-altering decisions fairly often. It may not satisfy those seeking the same Kamaitachi no Yoru that enveloped so many players in Japan, but Banshee's Last Cry remains an interesting sample of a craft that's seen too seldom on these shores.

Broken Age was a long time coming. For many years, Tim Schafer and the rest of Double Fine couldn't make a game without people asking for another point-and-click adventure. You know, just like The Secret of Monkey Island and Full Throttle and Grim Fandango and other games that Schafer handled while at LucasArts. These request-makers had a point: the old LucasArts adventures amused many, aged well, and enticed even those who normally didn't care about video games. After a wildly successful Kickstarter and almost two years of work, we have our throwback adventure game. Well, half of it, anyway. Part one of Broken Age is available to everyone now, and the remainder of it will be out later. Think of it as the game's second floppy disk that fell behind the desk, where you won't find it until the fall.

Not that Broken Age is mired in the aesthetics of vintage-1991 computer games. Dialogue appears over characters just like it did back in the day, but the rest of Broken Age is quite beautiful in its own manner. Gently colored backdrops and cartoonish details surround the game's two characters. Shay is a bored young man on a spaceship peopled by adorable yarn robots and an overprotective computer, so he's fascinated by the discovery of a more dangerous layer behind his coddled realm. Vella is cautious young woman among the sacrifices her bakery-village offers to the monstrous Mog Chothra, a fate she swiftly rejects in favor of searching the world for a method of slaying the creature.

There are relatively easy puzzles to solve and a neat little secret at the heart of everything, but Broken Age is driven just as much by the characters met along the way: a family of largely unconvinced cloud cultists, a seething AI knife, a disgusted tree, a weaving space navigator, the gossipy worshippers of a slumbering god, or a lineup of sacrificial maidens. Schafer and the game's extensive voice cast give them all endearing tones and amusing conversations, and they do it without resorting to blatant fourth-wall breaches or the well of insufferable whimsy that Tim Burton may never escape. Yet Broken Age isn't all sugary surface. It's about adolescence. It's about privileged upbringings. It's about patriarchal mores. It's about a lot of things, but never so obviously as to swallow up the story.

The light touch doesn't always serve Broken Age when it comes to the leads. Shay's blandness is key to his side of the tale, but Vella seems strangely low-key for someone fueled by vengeful societal change. In a Game Informer interview, Schafer pointed to Hayao Miyazaki's comparatively subtle take on feminism as inspiration for Vella. Well, even Kiki and Satsuki got angry sometimes.

But I can't get angry at Broken Age. It's modern and pretty, but it's also everything that the LucasArts adventure game was at its peak: a trip a freshly imagined world that's worth revisiting even after you've put together all the puzzles and subplots. Maybe we'll get the second half soon. Maybe not. Even in the first act, Broken Age is something special.

Like Banshee's Last Cry, the original Tales of Phantasia was a landmark in its field. Pushing the Super NES (or the Super Famicom, for you sticklers) to rare limits, Phantasia established two major forces in RPGs: Namco's own Tales series and the studio tri-Ace, the latter of which was formed by three major Phantasia staffers. Phantasia saw all the reissues one would expect of an RPG esteemed in Japan, but North America so far received only the downsized Game Boy Advance port. So a free, faithfully attractive iOS version of Tales of Phantasia sounds like a grand deal.

It's not. Tales of Phantasia's looks don't suffer too much from shrinking to a iPhone or iPad screen. It's apparently based on the PSP version, which means an animated intro and larger character when compared to the 1995 original. The problem lies beneath: the game's battles are extremely hard, save points appear less frequently, and everything costs more. Why all the changes? Because this Tales of Phantasia is “free” just like Candy Crush Saga. Everywhere the player can spend real money, not Tales-world gald, to get ahead, whether it's buying experience points or an item that revives the entire party. Oh, and you can't save at all unless you're online.

Even in its better forms, Tales of Phantasia still suffers from excessive battles and a storyline that was fraught with clichés two decades ago, from its time travel antics to hero Cress Albane's abruptly destroyed hometown. And everything's worse here. Cress moves ridiculously fast, whether with the awkward control-pad simulator or simply by tapping a location on screen. The battles are a little easier to control, but they grind out sluggishly on older iOS devices. It's sad that Phantasia is limited to this and the Game Boy Advance version when it comes to official North American releases, and it's pathetic that even the crunched-down, outdated GBA port offers the better experience.

“I heard you don't like the new Final Fantasies,” Square Enix says, storming into your office. “Well, maybe you'll like this. Random battles. A job system. Little characters with huge heads and simple motivations. Just like it all was in the old days!” And so Bravely Default lands on your desk.

This isn't the first time Square Enix courted the sensibilities of older Final Fantasies. They've reissued the earliest games many times in the past decade, and they've ventured into old-as-new territory with Final Fantasy Dimensions, 3-D remakes of Final Fantasy III and IV, and 2010's Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light. Such is Bravely Default's heritage. It's a Final Fantasy in spirit, complete with a backdrop of warring kingdoms, crystalline powers, and airship armadas. This is the world of Luxendarc, and its fate lies with four heroes: Wind Vestal Agnes Oblige, reformed Eternian Army officer Edea Lee, memory-wiped playboy Ringabel, and Tiz Arrior, survivor of a demonic sinkhole that ate his entire village (which was doomed one way or another, since this is an old-fashioned RPG). The party contends with fierce empires, ancient evils, and circuitous subsquests, all while changing costumes and jobs.

Bravely Default's title isn't without meaning. On top of the attacks and various battle skills available, characters can open each combat turn by “defaulting” and stocking up a bonus turn, which is activated in later turns by the “brave” command. The various jobs offer many specialties, and it's possible to combine them all in judiciously destructive ways. It's the same trick that made Final Fantasy V (and III, I guess) so darned captivating all those years ago, and that's a big part of Bravely Default's appeal.

Of course, many of us in the press paid special attention to the fan uproar over Bravely Default's costumes, several of which are less suggestive (and a speedo is gone entirely) in the North American version. Perhaps this is a good place to put the issue to rest and take in Bravely Default as a whole. Then we can find new minutiae to complain about.

Masaya's Assault Suits series is yet another pitiable casualty of an evolving game industry. During the 1990s it provided some of the best side-scrolling action games ever to star a mecha, both in official titles like Cybernator and spin-offs like Metal Warriors and Front Mission: Gun Hazard. Yet the series faded into middling re-releases in the PlayStation 2 era, and no one took up the torch. Well, no one in the mainstream, that is. With the fringe shooter Gigantic Army, Astro Port put together a shameless tribute to the legacy of Assault Suits.

Those who've played Assault Suits games, Cybernator in particular, will recognize Gigantic Army's sources instantly. It's a game made of detailed mecha, demolished city outlines, and a lead robot that handles with deliberate weight. Whether the machine is boosting through the air, rushing across the ground, or adjusting its multi-angle aim, there's a strangely authentic hint of sluggishness to everything. There's also an arsenal of six weapons, a shield, and a convincing variety of enemies; Cybernator isn't the only inspiration at play here, and Gigantic Army's walking weapon platforms and Macross-style missile dances pluck from the broader vein of anime-influenced robot games.

Nyu Media's release of Gigantic Army balances out the gameplay, apparently making things a tad more fair to your frequently outnumbered mecha. It all seems like the most compelling Assault Suits tribute since Metal Warriors…wait, did I never write about Metal Warriors here? That simply won't do.