Anyway, we’ve played it for 20 hours or so, and now are preparing for our review. In the mean time, We’ll put some screenshots we’ve managed to capture so far.

Enjoy.

]]> http://www.gamehoof.com/2006/09/08/xenosaga-episode-iii-also-sprach-zarathustra-screenshots-i/feed/ 0 http://www.gamehoof.com/2006/09/02/valkyrie-profile-silmeria-ending-screenshots-spoiler/ http://www.gamehoof.com/2006/09/02/valkyrie-profile-silmeria-ending-screenshots-spoiler/#comments Sat, 02 Sep 2006 10:03:07 +0000 aru http://www.gamehoof.com/2006/09/02/valkyrie-profile-silmeria-ending-screenshots-spoiler/ Yet another screenshots from Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria. Sorry, can’t help it.

Anyway, these are the screenshots from the ending.

SPOILER BEWARE!

This time the Prince has to save his kingdom.

In this game, the Prince returns home from the Isle of Time with Kaileena, the Empress of Time. All the joyous feeling of finally undone the damages he had unleashed from The Sands of Time is wrecked when he found his kingdom of Babylon is set on fire by the army of the Maharaja. Their ship is destroyed and the Prince once again found himself washed up ashore (as far as I can remember, having a shipwreck has always been a mandatory since the first Prince of Persia in 1991). Kaileena is taken by the enemies and now the Prince must go to save her (it would be interesting to have the Prince captured instead, and Kaileena takes the role of the saviour here, but heey..).

Graphics

I always consider graphics as the fail-safe insurance or the last justification in considering wether buying a certain game has been a waste of money or not. The graphics in The Two Thrones seem to par my expectation of a PS2 quality, i.e. character details, lighting, structures details, extra bits here and there are well done. It also helps that all these fine details are rendered with almost no loading time, just like Soul Reaver.

Shipwreck: a longtime honored tradition in the series.

Sound and Music

The music is so-so. OK, I admit that I was too busy running, jumping and swinging to pay any attention to the music, except for the fighting mode. The positive note is that I found the music to be non irritating.

The sound effect is well placed, I haven’t seen any mismatch between the sound effect and the gameplay during the platform action and the fighting.

Unfortunately, the voice cast for the Prince is rather annoying, with sometimes his voice sounds and feels like an annoying teenager. It surely doesn’t suit the overall dark surrounding and his serious facial expression. The internal discussion between the Prince and his alter ego, the Dark Prince, is amusing enough, but it was the voice of Kaileena doing the narration throughout the game, “And so the Prince …”, which gives the best impression.

Gameplay

Since our prince is one helluva acrobatic hero, it’s a good thing that the control in this title is non-threathening enough to be able to execute all kinds of the platform actions. As a first time player of the series (the 3D ones at least), I spend some times to accustome myself with the Prince’s bag of tricks. Platform actions like running up a wall, running along a wall, jumping off a wall, climbing a pole, using the dagger to stab on a certain stab-point on a wall, swinging from one stab-point to another, sliding down a curtain, spring-jumping, and others are truly defying the law of physics. But once I get a hold on the control, I really enjoy doing all these stunts. Other not too stunning actions include grapping a ledge and climbing a ladder.

Boys and girls. Don’t try this at home. It’s very dangerous.

The Prince’s alter ego, the Dark Prince, has some extra platform skills using his chains, such as extra-far swinging and pulling a certain block on a wall.

Extra far swinging while you’re playing as the Dark Prince.

Power of the Sands

Imbued with the power of the sands, our hero can rewind and slow the time. Each use of these requires one sand point. The time rewinding is especially useful when you happened to fall, sliced by death traps or crashed during the chariot mini-game, and saves you from repeating all the way from the last save point.

Slowing the time can be used to move much faster than your enemies or to prolong a certain door-opening mekanism.

Fighting System

The fighting system gives much room for players in making their own fighting style. There are single-weapon mode and double-weapons mode, each with their own combos. Different choices of weapons give different sets of combo. Some special attacks require stepping on an enemy, running up a wall or swinging on a pole, which sometimes lead to a devastating blow.

Step on your enemy and hop!

My favourite in The Two Thrones is the Speed Kill attack, in which you can kill your enemy instantly by pushing the square button with the right timing, given you manages to sneak up behind the enemy at first. In certain parts of the game, where alarmed enemies can keep spawning their friends, direct assault is a no-go. Instead, you must execute a Double Speed Kill or even a Tripple Speed Kill to wipe a group of enemies without raising the alarm. This can be very difficult, but a successful Speed Kill can give so much satisfaction.

Timed right and the player will be rewarded with a nice Speed Kill animation.

In the other hand, it is far easier to wipe out a crowd of enemies while you’re controlling the more powerful Dark Prince, who’re equipped with a deathly chain. The only drawback is his constanly diminishing life-bar, which means you have to keep killing or breaking to replenish your life-bar (Soul Reaver anyone?).

The Dark Prince has no problem dealing with a crowd, you just have to do it quickly.

My Biggest Frustration

Thanks to the camera movement, sometimes it can be very difficult to control the Prince. One example is when I tried to swing left from a certain stab point. Instead of swinging left, the hero ended up swinging right, which lead to a certain death. Or when facing the enemies, controlling the Prince movement can be a real patient-enduring test (move to the right, the right, god damned you! Aaargh!).

I throwed my controller more than once, thanks to this nauseating camera and control adjustment.

A rather unforgiving chariot race, one of the mini games.

Conclusion

If you’re a long-time fan of the series, then buy this game to complete your collection. And if you’re a first time player of the series and looking for an alternative platform action other than the Tomb Raiders series, then I suggest you to buy this game too. You won’t be dissappointed.

Prince of Persia: The Two Thrones
Genre: Platform Action
Developer: Ubisoft
Release Date (US): 12/01/05

Saint Seiya: The Hades is the follow up title to Saint Seiya: The Sanctuary released in 2005. In this game, player will have to battle against an army of Spectres who begin to claim back their powers after being held for 243 years by the might of Athena.

Pegasus Meteor!

Characters

Currently, w2n has managed to finished the story mode and unlocked 24 characters, which include 5 Bronze Saints in both their tattered and repaired Bronze Cloths, 8 Gold Saints, 9 Spectres and 2 special characters.

The Bronze Saints in both tattered and repaired Bronze Cloths:
Pegasus Seiya
Dragon Shiryu
Cygnus Hyoga
Andromeda Shun
Phoenix Ikki

The Gold Saints:
Aries Mu
Taurus Aldebaran
Gemini Gemini
Leo Aiolia
Virgo Shaka
Libra Dohko
Scorpio Milo
Gemini Kanon

The Specters:
Aries Shion (former Gold Saint)
Cancer Mephisto (former Gold Saint)
Pisces Aphrodite (former Gold Saint)
Capricorn Shura (former Gold Saint)
Aquarius Camus (former Gold Saint)
Gemini Saga (former Gold Saint)
Wyvern Rhadamanthys (Judge of the World of the Dead)
Garuda Aiacos (Judge of the World of the Dead)
Griffon Minos (Judge of the World of the Dead)

Special Characters:
Sagitarius Seiya
Lyra Orpheus

Saint Seiya: The Hades

Graphics

As with other PS2 games, one primary factor in my decision to purchase this game was the graphics. While I don’t expect the graphics to come in par with the likes of Tekken or Soul Calibur series, I’m not disappointed either. The 3D engine has made it possible to depict the zodiac Cloths in sparkling appearance inside the cut scenes, especially for the Gold Cloths and the Specter Cloths. Then again, I still prefer the usual 2D anime style for the cut scenes.

As for the fighting scenes, the graphics are OK in my book. The characters movement, attacks and special attacks look fine as with the effects of cosmos beam, fire and explosion. The developers also took a special effort to make sure the different zodiac palaces do look different, something that I did not notice while watching the anime (they looked all the same to me). For an extra, the columns will crumble whenever a character being smashed into it, which unfortunately leaves a trail of thick smokes that can disable you to see your character for a moment.

Huge fighting arena

Gameplay

Suffice to say, the control in Saint Seiya: The Hades is quite simple, that it won’t make any difference whether you play the game for a while or a month. The character movement looks great with the quick sideway dash and forward dash. My favorite is the sideway dash, which performed by twice tapping the up or down button. Your character will dash sideway, circling your opponent, and combined with forward dash effectively enable the player to step on almost every spot in the 3D arena.

The basic actions are attack, block and cosmos charge. You can increase your cosmos meter by attacking or pressing the cosmos charge button. Once the cosmos meter is fully charged, you can perform special juggle attacks, cosmos attacks and the Big Bang attacks which is unique for each character (my favorite one ever since I watched the anime is Hyoga’s Diamond Dust).

The game does not come with long chain of complex combos that is a today’s common feature in this genre. Instead, player will only need to rely on simple attack combination plus a healthy amount of sideway dash. In this way the developer has chosen to make Saint Seiya: The Hades enjoyable even for non-fighting game fans.

The sideway dash really looks cool

Audio

Since this game is based on the latest anime of the series, I couldn’t find anything that resembles the tunes of Pegassus Fantasy or Blue Forever, which is a shame because I think it was Pegassus Fantasy that truly represented the anime series. The overall BGM is good, my favourite one is during the character selection screen. The only available voice over is in Japanese, which is great for fans who want to hear the dialog from the original Japanese casts. The subtitle is available in 4 different languages.

Early animation for the Big Bang attack

Overall

At first, it was hard for me to give an impartial judgement since I am a Saint Seiya fan. But after forking out hours of my time playing this game, I was actually enjoyed the gameplay without bothering anymore for the storyline or the fact that this is actualy a Saint Seiya game. So I can say that Saint Seiya: The Hades can be enjoyed by both fans or non-fans of the anime series.

That said, enjoy the game!

Publisher: Atari
Developer: Bandai Namco
Release Date: August 2006
Perspective: Third-Person
Type: 3D Fighting