One of my most anticipated game ever and it paid off. Quite In depth review
Gameplay- The game has two story modes, the Demon dog (god) kings story which features nippon ichi softwares characters along with the new characters for trinity universe. Kanata is the Demon dog king who has been told he has to change into a demon god gem to balance the universe out and stop these drifting objects. He refuses and decides to try and destroy the Drifting objects from the Inside.
The other story mode involves playing as Rizelea who is a Valkyrie who is after the same thing as Kanata. But her plan is to try and turn Kanata into a demon god gem to balance the order in the netheruniverse.
*Slight spoilers* The two storylines later meet with each other with the two main characters joining sides which, which involves them destroying the drifting objects course together.
*Spoilers end*
The aim of the game is to stop the drifting objects hitting Empirya, Even though they can never hit, you can freely go to drifting objects that are around and drift them off course. The drifting objects are like small dungeons which you must find the gravity core. To do this you have to scan the area, a bit like in cross edge. This will bring up lines which are different colours representing different things.
- Red lines show where there is a Hunting spot, this evolves fighting monsters in a number of battles this will award you with a chest and enemies will not attack you for a long time, The time is more than it takes to complete the dungeon in most cases.
- Yellow lines lead to a hidden treasure
- Blue lead to a Managraph image, Managraphs are like a decoration paint that put on your weapon to increase it power and release a special power. They need certain items to make them that can be found in dungeons of drifting objects coming into the netheruniverse.
- White lines now these are the goal of the drifting objects, These are the gravity cores destroying these will send the object off course and you will score a chest. The Object will start drifting so you need to get out. You will be given a time limit to escape the object it usually way more time than you need to escape. The great thing is that when your escaping you will have no encounters and rare drops will appear but try not to get distracting and searching every where or you'll drift away. Drifting away will earn that you get trapped in the object and have to wait for a passing object to appear, to be honest It doesn't mean much but you'll lose Evaluation points.
evaluation points are points you get for completing drifting objects, the higher the rank the further you can explore drifting objects.
The other thing with dungeons are that there is usually a boss guarding the core. The other thing in drifting objects are Lurkers, Lurkers are horrible and difficult creatures that may follow you after some time in a dungeon, If they attack you your best option is to run but they are challenging battles with great rewards.
The story involves events that can be chose n the main screen or drifting an event object, which is the same as the normal objects but linked to the storyline.
The main screen is where you can choice where you want explore and events that have popped up, an Inn and a shop. The shop lets you buy new equipment sync items together to make new ones. Also here is a managraph work shop which lets you make managraphs for your weapons, there is also a monster synch where you can make challenging monsters to train against and a Meteorite work shop that lets you make Meteorites which can be used to bring stats up.
Well that's enough of that now on to the battle system, The battle system involves pressing combinations of X, Triangle and Square to perform attacks. X is strong single hits, Square is a short barrage and triangle and magic attacks. These can be linked together to get combos and special moves to trigger. Finally O performs a special skill. Like Cross edge you have AP which increases with better equipment. Each move takes up a certain amount of AP, the more AP you have the more attacks you can do damage and combos you can deal out.
The only other thing I would have to say about the game play is you do seem to level up quite quick and I was worried that this game would be a lot like cross edge which required alot of level grinding but luckily it didn't. It seems at the start of the game that the enemies are easy but the bosses are hard but later they all seem to get easier.
Graphics- The graphics are really good in my opinion a lot better than the original project of cross edge, they are 3 dimensional where Cross edges seemed to be 2 dimensional. The character designs and back ground designs like games like this were very pleasant and I really liked them.
Sound- the soundtrack is actually very good and enjoyed it, A lot of sound effects were recycled from cross edge which annoyed me a bit but it didn't bother me too much.
The voice acting was pretty good, and the dialog was very good and funny in places, but some of the voice acting let the game down, they have changed Prinnys voice which bugged me for a while and Lucius dialog annoyed me some times and Mizuki was unbearable through out.
Trophies- The trophies are actually very challenging but a lot easier to obtain than cross edges. They involve things like spending so much at shops, drifting so many object and defeating so many enemies these carry on to new game +. The other trophies involve getting so many treasures and managraphs and synch so many items which do not cross over. To be fair a lot of them are time consuming but achievable and they put out for a great challenge.
Summary- A game I really enjoyed alot with lots to keep you entertained with and a reasonably good story, I'd say its one the best RPG's I've played.
+ Great game play
+ Great character designs
+ Not much level grinding involved
- Some bad voice acting
- Some trophies may take along to achieve