Mass Effect - Impression

Posted by MangaPunkSai on January 3, 2008

Although playing it for different durations of time nearly every day since Christmas I have yet to complete Mass Effect. Why is that, you might ask? Even though I’m now 22 hours into the game I’ve barely progressed in the main story because I keep going around completing side missions and exploring uncharted planets. When expressing such to my brother, who had given it to me for Christmas and inquired if I had beaten it yet, he summed it up perfectly: "Well, that’s BioWare for you."

This game is so impressive it’s kept me from even touching Mario Galaxy yet, and if you know what a complete Nintendo kid I am that should tell you something. I don’t even like Sci-Fi that much and I find Mass Effect entirely engrossing. Of course, the RPG aspect has something to do with that. If you ever played BioWare’s precursor to this game, Knights of the Old Republic, you are going to love Mass Effect.

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Eternal Sonata - Impression

Posted by MangaPunkSai on January 1, 2008

I haven’t completed Eternal Sonata yet, as its a nice long RPG. However I have made it to the 4th chapter of the game and think I’ve got a pretty good handle on it now so here for your reading pleasure are my impressions. For starters, Eternal Sonata represents a new era for the Xbox, it is one of the reasons I finally broke down and got myself an Xbox 360. It demonstrates that Microsoft is certainly willing to expand their library to include a wide variety of game genres and won’t shy away the strange and unique (as opposed to the console’s predecessor.) Eternal Sonata is a J-RPG through and through and its structure to me invokes memories of playing Chrono Cross and Breath of Fire 3, especially in the roaming areas which are generally linear (with a few paths branching off leading to treasure chests) with a set camera angle and several repeating elements. Granted this made it seem a bit oldschool but the story, overall visual design and the battle system are what makes Eternal Sonata stand out the most.

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