“Protect the Light, condemn the Dark.”

Birthed by the same guys who brought us Rune Factory, Marvelous Entertainment, and published by my bias, Atlus Games, Luminous Arc is a turn-based strategy game which plays like Jeanne D’Arc but doesn’t kick as

The Witch of Immolation could pass for a Shinigami.

hard. The game pits the Church versus the Witches with your main character, Alph, playing on the side of the Church. Well, intially. Alph and the gang–called the Garden Children, since they were raised and trained in the Ever Garden–finds out that the Church is up to no good and that the Witches are actually nice people. So they decide to change courts, just like that. They were eventually found out and branded as traitors by the Church, which made saving the world a tad more complicated.

What is peculiar about this game for me is that I can’t decide whether it’s good or bad. It just sort of lies in between. It’s in limbo. There are a number of good things I liked about it but there are also a handful which I hate. To make things easier, let’s do this Church-Witch style. Oppositions!

Pros:
1. The first thing that I really like about it is the piano piece that was being played during the title screen. The first time I opened the game, I just stared at the title screen and listened to it, completely forgetting about the ‘New Game’ button flashing in front of my face.

2. Inversion of the paradigm. Rather than the usual Church=good, Witch=evil, they actually dared turning the tables around and casting the Church into a bad light, raising the risk of harboring the wrath of millions of Roman Catholics all over the world by a 2948723987%. Of course, I exaggerate. But, seriously. It’s not everyday that you find a game which antagonizes God.

3. Nice character design! Although I could say otherwise with the puny humans, I absolutely loved the Witches. Twilight Witch! lsdjflsjd! Lady Claire! The Witch of Immolation! They all end in exclamation points! Even I was surprised with how handsome God was.
4. Like Jeanne D’Arc, the battle system was pretty straight forward. You have the usual commands you’d find in a turn-based strategy game. However, see Cons # 2.

The two main protagonists, Alph and Lucia.

Cons:
1. In-game music was forgettable. I only liked the Prelude, the tune during Intermissions and…the opening song, I guess. The voice overs were annoying at times. I hated Theo’s voice. He sounded like a girl. I mean, sure, he’s a small kid and is the younger bro but, do you really have to rub it in?

2. Battles can sometimes get cluttered. This usually happens when there are too many characters in a small space and you can’t see where your stylus is pointing to save your life. Thus, it may lead to stray hits to fellow members or mistaken Heals for enemies. Not good. You can switch to the D-pad but its configuration during battle weirds me out. Plus, you can’t position your party during the beginning of battle.

3. The story was kind of slow at first that I was tempted to drop it for a while. But it picked up along the way so I guess it’s okay. Perhaps they just shouldn’t have taken too long at the beginning.

4. Some character classes are just better off without. For instance, Nikolai. His class is a Savant. First, what on earth is that supposed to be. Second, Nikoalai hits strong but his Move and Speed attributes are so low he dies even before he gets to hit anyone. Another one is Mavi, who’s the Nature Witch. I love her to death ’cause she’s so cool and her physical attacks are just tops but her magic just sucks. And her resistance to magic is so low. And she’s a witch. What’s up with that.

Probably my favorite, the Twilight Witch. Never mind that she has ‘Twilight’ in her name.

Well, that’s some of the ones I can remember right now. As I said, it was a bit slow and boring at the beginning but it picked up later on with some plot twists and other whatnot. It’s quite a short game if you just want to finish the main story. With 26 or so chapters, where each chapter is equal to one place/city, I managed to finish it in a little over 20 hours. That’s just for the first playthrough, though. Upon finishing the game for the first time, a dungeon opens when you load your saved and finished game. I reckon it’s like Jeanne D’Arc’s Coliseum but I can’t be too sure since I just looked at the first floor.

All in all, I think it’s a pretty decent game, considering the fact that the franchise reached Luminous Arc 3. And since it’s the first game, I guess we should give it some slack. I read in places that some of the issues were fixed in the other Luminous Arc games that followed so I guess the production team’s aware of the game’s weaknesses as well. Story-wise, it does have some decent turns and you might like how the witches look like. I told you, it’s a game in limbo. So I leave you in limbo as well whether to play it or not.

P.S. The characters are funny in this game. Maybe I should make a compendium or something.

So, that’s Priel. As you can see, she’s an angel. And she’s so, like, Gossip Girl-American. I should be annoyed but she’s so funny I cannot possible be. My favorite Priel line:

Scene: God just emerged from his cocoon but is ‘disturbed’ by the planet’s heart.

Priel: WHAT?! Who’s disturbing Master God?! Like, OH MY GOD!

I just couldn’t. /dies on the floor laughing

P.S. I’ll do a Luminous Arc post when I’m not too laz–busy anymore. kk.

You guys seriously have to thank 999 for bringing me back from the dead.

So I’d be opening up the start of the second semester with a gush post. Semestral break just ended and, well, I did nothing productive except doing Little Sister’s project (which took me weeks), reviewing her for her Biology competition and finishing up a game. Yep, nothing spells ‘sem break’ better than ‘finish a game!’. Actually, I’ve been playing this one even before the semestral break but it was only during that time that I actually finished, finished it. And I’m talking about 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors.

Junpei and the unlucky gang of the abducted.

Developed by Aksys Games, 999: 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors, or simply 999, is a mystery/suspense/puzzle/visual novel game which features six different endings. Which explains why it took me so long to finish it. And which also explains why I’m all “Oh, good Lord God! What is this masterpiece!” about it. Basically, you’ll be playing Junpei, your average teenage boy. Well, now he’s not so average anymore considering how he wakes up–no, falls off–from the top bunk of a bed inside a ship’s cabin. All would’ve been well and good if seawater didn’t come gushing in from the tiny cabin window. If this wasn’t bad enough, the door’s locked. You’re now tasked to sniff around the room for clues on how to open this obstruction to safety before you swim your way to the Underworld.

From this initial puzzle, one pretty much gets a grasp of how the whole game operates. Quite simple, really, since it only involves looking for stuff inside rooms. Plus, there’s a pattern: search for the code for the locked door. But some rooms would just stump you. However, what would really hook you to this game is the story. From the outset, you have nine people trapped in a ship

Told ya it’s not Lelouch Zero.

by some mysterious masked figure named Zero. No, not Lelouch Zero. It’s…some other Zero. Anyhow, he tells the nine of you that the ship is sinking and that the group has nine hours to find the door with the number nine, your door to freedom. Great, just great. And so, you and your group skeddadle all over the ship, trying to look for the numbered doors, solving puzzles and trying to keep each other alive–or killing each other off.

The game possesses multiple endings which are determined by the doors you go through. There are nine doors in total so you have plenty to choose from. I took the 5, 7, 1 route in my first playthrough which got me the Axe End so you can just imagine my horror when *mumble, mumble, blahblahblah*. (ke. No spoilers.) Since you’re probably going to get the endings in a jumble, it’s quite a different feeling when the pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place. What you might get to discover in one route which just confused the living daylights out of you, might suddenly make sense in another route. In a sense, the whole

June’s so pretty. Lucky bastard, Junpei.

story is a puzzle that you have to piece together on your own by gathering all the information from the different endings. I saved the True End second to the last and, jumping Jupiters, it was so fulfilling.

Now I understand why a lot of gamers love 999. It’s a stroke of genius. From the story to the gameplay, it was very well thought of. And it doesn’t skimp on the visuals either. I…don’t remember the in-game mus–scratch that. I remember. It was so traumatic. I dread every moment that a knock comes from the coffin. Seriously, 999 is perfection. If there’s one game to play in the DS, this is it. Playitplayitplayit.

Drawing circles has never been this cool.

Perking up a notch from my last disappointment, Time Hollow is like Steins;Gate–only tamer. And it’s on a handheld, not on a TV. You control Ethan Kairos, weilder of the Hollow Pen. This pen gives him the ability to freeze the present and draw a Hole into the past–giving him the ability to change it–

Flashbacks floatin’ ’round that awesome menu screen.

the repercussions of which also changes the present which transports him into some sort of parallel universe, basically, a different present. I told you, it’s like Steins;Gate. It muddles with your brain. Anyway, Ethan wakes up one day into a present where his parents have been missing for 12 years and everything jumps off from that. He gets into all these convoluted mysteries which range from missing friends to murder. On top of trying to save these very unfortunate people, he has to save his parents from going missing and eventually return to the present he knew.

So first things first, the visuals are awesome. The opening song rocks. The clock-like interface is splendid and the sounds are really cool. The game is not without wit too, what with the names of the characters representing numbers (i.e. Onegin, Twombly, Threevet, Fourer, Fivet, etc). Unlike Trace Memory, though, you won’t be doing any real-time exploring here. You just have a map of the neighborhood with the places you can go to, so epic adventure time is out of the question. As for the gameplay, it’s not exactly a puzzle game. You have to complete the information in your Flashbacks so you can get your pen to glow so you can change the past. Flashbacks are images that Ethan, and other Pen holders for that matter, gets when the past is changed by him or other holders. So it’s more of an investigative kind of thing than a puzzle game, per se. Weirdly enough, despite being text heavy, it wasn’t boring. Primarily because the story is really engaging, with all the twists and turns. If you have a game that’s messing around with time, you’re a horrible person if you get bored. Plus, the eye-candy’s just tops. I absolutely love the anime style drawing and the cut scenes (Kori!!).

Also, the game has a really cute cat. That’s a plus. A big plus.

Straying a bit into the philosophical road, Time Hollow, like Steins;Gate, show its players how messing around with time can lead to the worst of consequences. Plus, it comes with a dear price–in the game, at least. And how it can burden the one who remembers. Remember Okabe? God, if I were the one who saw Mayuri die for 24739274 times, I’d probably go crazy.

Anyhow, yey! Time Hollow! Get it if you want some of your time-bending crazy fix. It’s not mind-blowingly awesome but it does have its moments. It’s worth sinking a few hours of your time into.