GrimGrimoire PS2

Here is an interesting game from the makers of Odin Sphere. This game is both unique and breathtakingly beautiful. On top of that the music, voice-overs, and plot are well done.

Story:
You are Lillet Blan. A new student at the Silver Star Tower. She works hard to learn new spells, so she can become a great magician for her brothers. Through out this adventure, you learn from teachers, fight teachers, make friends, and become enemies with all you meet. During the fifth day of studying, a most unfortunate event happens. Everyone dies, and you are next. Facing death, you are transported back in time, having to replay those same 5 days again.

You must learn from your mistakes and learn greater magic in order to solve this mystery.

Gameplay:

This is played like a RTS, or real time strategy. There are 4 types of magic in which you can use, each having advantage and disadvantage towards another type of magic.

Glamour :

"The magic calls upon the faintest powers which exist everywhere, but the
fierce powers of created lives cannot be stopped."

These creatures hate the undead, while fear those lives made artificially. In this class you summon elves, faries, and unicorns to aid you in your defence. Its holds great power, and the undead had better watch out.

Necromancy:

"The magic calls upon those who should not exist, and therefore fear the
embodiment of nature's laws."

Ghosts, Ghouls, and gastly things is what you get with this magic. They fear the creatures from the Glamour grimoire. Most of these fallen souls have the ability to pass through walls, allowing them to travel fast. They also have the added benifit of not being hit by physical attacks. They are strong against the devil's sorcery.

Sorcery:

"The magic works with the enemies of god, but no method can fight against the
pure wills which still look to god in the deepest darkness."

This is one of the more powerful spell sets out there. You can summon creatures from Imps, to massive dragons. They fear the undead, but they laugh at the Alchemy creatures.

Alchemy:

"The incomplete lives, born by the hands of men pretending to be god, are
perfect prey to those who stand against god."

This is one of the more difficult spell classes to use. As it deals with more indirect attacks. Each of the the creatures you call forth are strong. All of the direct attackers use phisical force to attack,
thus making them moving targets towards ghosts. You can remidy that by using your Homunculus to turn the ghostly people solid. These man made creatures are weak against the minions of Hell, but make short work of the Glamour folk.


Through out the story, you will learn new spells. You shall only start with the basic elves and work your way up from there.

Each map in itself ranges from medium to huge. Many of the later missions will take around 30-60 minutes to complete. So prepare to spend some time with this game. Each map will have you complete a certain objective. Its mostly defeat all of 's runes, but they mix it up sometimes with timed, or missions with more than one enemy. The missions start out easy enough, but by the half way point the Normal difficulty may be a big much.

Most of the main missions unlocks a bonus level to play upon beating the level.


Overall: Great music, great music, everything is great. The replay value may be low to some people, but being able to replay old story missions, and all those bonus missions with each difficulty adds a good amount of replay value to those that work for it.

5/5 Loved it.

Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga (Rated M)

This is another game made by Atlus. A few other games you may have noticed that is labled with the Shin Megami Tensei title would be Persona 1 and Persona 2 (both versions) for the PS. Devil Summoner - Raidou Kuzunoha vs. the Soulless Army, Nocturn, and the newly released Persona 3 for the PS2.

The story:
In the world Junkyard (the name of the world), six tribes fight an endless war. They fight for supremacy and the right to ascend to Nirvana. All they know is to fight. After a blinding light interrupts a deadly skirmish between two tribes, new found powers are soon discovered. With those powers comes a new rule to this game of supremacy, eat or be eaten. Together with a mysterious black haired girl, can you lead your tribe to Nirvana, or will you simply become the food for other demons?

The gameplay:
This is your average RPG. You star off with three party members, and as you continue through the story you get more to use. Each of the party members can turn int demons. In their human form, they are weak, but can use guns. The guns changes powers and elements depending what bullets you equip them with. In demon form, you gain the ability to cast different abilities. To gain more abilities, you must master the Mantra your character has. Upon mastering the Mantra you can then buy another mantra, and switch back between the mantra's you already bought. Once you gained the abilities from the mantra, you have access to them when ever you want. The only purpose of switch back to a different mantra you mastered is to take its strengths and weaknesses.

During battle you must thing about your moves. You are given a set amount of moves, and the turn ends once they are used up. You can gain more actions by exploiting the enemies weaknesses, and causing critical attacks. Upon doing one of the aforementioned tasks, you gain an extra action. You will also lose two actions if you miss, or if they block your attack. The same shall go towards to your enemies.

Unlike many other SMT games, you don't befriend other lesser demons for you to use. Its just you and your party.

Overall, I'd give it a 6.5
Story - Its good, but a tad bit short, and linar, even with it spread out through 2 different games.
Music - I love it, wish I got the soundtrack with it.
Replay-ability - Lacking in this department. All you have to do is complete the story, and get all the montras.

The beggining of the Gaming Blog

This is the beginning of the KOK gaming blog. All of the information regarding games will go here. This is mostly to get an inside look at my gaming habits. This blog will attempt to keep the spoilers to a minimum, but some are bound to slip eventually.
Thats it for the first post (Which is really the second post).

Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the lost Ocean (GC)

I've recently been captured into the beauty of Baten Kaitos: Eternal Wings and the Lost Ocean for the Gamecube. Sure its old, but its a wonderful game. Its a 2 disk RPG. This game provides a unique twist on the RPG genre.

For starters the battle system is different than what you might be used to. You use cards to determine what you do. Each member of the party has their own deck, as do the enemies. The type of cards determine the strength, element, and other effects. At first you can only have so many cards in the deck, but as you upgrade your class, you gain more Max cards, 1 more card to choose from your hand (when in battle, and of course a timer.

Speaking of cards, there is a good variety of cards. Some are offensive, some defensive, while some are just plain useless. Some cards even change after time. So that useless card that heals only 1 hp can turn into something wonderful. If thats not enough, you can preform some combos to get a special card. To collect every card in the game, you will need will power, a LOT of time on your hands, and the ability to take lots of pictures.

Another thing many may not be used to is not automatically leveling when you gain a certain amount of experience. Instead, you must go to the church, then if you gathered enough experience you can then level up.

The story revolves around Kalas, who is out for revenge. Throughout the quest to revenge your families death you will join many others.

+Great Graphics
+Wonderful soundtrack
+Great story
+Nice new take on turn based RPGs

-Lousy voice acting
-Long

Over all its a great game for the people that loves a well played out RPG. If you don't care to play a game for more than 10 hours, then its not for you. Currently I'm clocking in at around 50 hours, only on the first disk alone. . . and I've yet to put a good dent into the story line.

*****/***** stars

If you want this game, your pretty much out of luck if you look in a store. It will most likely cost you a pretty penny, but you can get lucky and score a great price online, like from Amazon. I was able to snag this wonderful title at around $20 on amazon. I'll keep you posted on the story, and other aspects of this game. Also as I start playing other games, I'll post about them.