Nintendo DS Archive

Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes – Review

By
Lawrence
 – December 27, 2010Posted in: Role Playing Games, RPG Reviews
Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes

It's not Might & Magic 10, but it is fun!

Don’t let the faux-anime art style or puzzle-based gameplay put you off – Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes is a great handheld role-playing game that should be in every RPG collection.

Faithful readers may be scratching their heads right now, given my attack of this game in my October 11, 2010 post titled Ultima, The Bard’s Tale, and Might & Magic – Where are the Real Sequels, in which I summarized it as “a shallow, JRPG-style story with zero original Might & Magic lore, and a match-three-colors puzzle game” and compared its visuals to Space Invaders.  (In my defense, I also called it “incredibly fun and addictive.”)  Readers may also be wondering why I am reviewing a game from 2009 on the eve of 2011.

The answer to the second question is that it took me a long time to finish this game.  Since picking it up over a year ago, Clash of Heroes has entertained me through jury duty, several train rides and doctors’ waiting rooms, and visits to my in-laws, and recently has been the game I chose to play instead of PC and console games while at home.  As my appreciation for the game grew, I decided to post a review despite the game’s age.  Regarding the first question – regardless of its quality, I don’t consider this game to be a true Might & Magic RPG.  Therefore, I stand behind most of my original statements.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , ,

Ultima, The Bard’s Tale, and Might & Magic – Where are the Real Sequels?

By
Lawrence
 – October 11, 2010Posted in: Role Playing Games, RPG Feature Stories
Classic RPG boxes

Gone ... and soon forgotten?

When it comes to bleeding a franchise dry, no sector of the entertainment industry is as efficient and mercenary as the video game industry.  The moment a game enjoys even a modicum of success, it is guaranteed to spawn endless sequels, delivered annually if possible, until the interest of the last possible buyer has been exhausted.

Except classic western RPGs.

We can count on new Mario, Tomb Raider, and Call of Duty games.  These and other games will continue to receive sequels far into the future.  Meanwhile, most of the classic RPG series of the past have vanished, remembered only by gamers old enough to have played them on an Apple IIc or a 386.

There was a day when the shelves of my local Egghead Software proudly displayed big, colorful boxes, heavy with thick manuals and cloth maps.  The titles on these boxes – Wizardry, Ultima, Might & Magic – marked these games as new installments in storied RPG series that many (or at least, I) believed would continue for as long as gamers played RPGs on computers.

Obviously, I was wrong.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

Etrian Odyssey 3 Ocean Map Icons

By
Lawrence
 – September 24, 2010Posted in: Role Playing Games, RPG Strategy
Etrian Odyssey 3 ocean sailing

Etrian Odyssey takes to the seas -- with inscrutable map icons!

 

Etrian Odyssey 3 is a new RPG on the Nintendo DS from Atlus.  Earlier this week, I posted a key to the Etrian Odyssey 3 dungeon map icons, which readers and forum posters were kind enough to help me sort out – thanks guys.  For a grid-based dungeon crawler RPG that puts so much emphasis on its mapping system, Etrian Odyssey 3 is remarkably quiet about what its map icons actually mean.  

This post tackles the game’s second set of map icons – the Etrian Odyssey 3 ocean icons.  These are the icons that you use while exploring the ocean in your ship.  Hard as it is to believe, these are even more confusing than the dungeon symbols!  Seriously, I feel like I just failed some kind of IQ test.  Here’s my best shot. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , ,

Games like Etrian Odyssey: Grid-Based Dungeon Crawler RPGs

By
Lawrence
 – September 21, 2010Posted in: Role Playing Games, RPG Feature Stories

 

Wizardry 1

Wizardry -- Hope you brought your imagination!

With Etrian Odyssey 3 hitting North American retail shelves today, it seems like a good opportunity for a post on a subject near and dear to my heart – the surprising resurgence of what, for lack of a better term, I will call grid-based dungeon crawler RPGs on Nintendo’s handheld system. 

What is a Grid-Based Dungeon Crawler RPG? 

Before Ultima Underworld introduced the ability to move freely through a 3D space, first-person role playing games were strictly grid-based.  Each time you pressed the arrow key left or right, you would turn a full 90 degrees in that direction.  Each time you pressed the up arrow key, you advanced one square forward on an invisible grid.  While this made mapping easy (graph paper was ideal) it also imposed artificial restraints on the dungeon designs.  (These evil mages must have hired only the best dungeon contractors to get all of those 90 degree angles and perfectly level floors just right!) 

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,