LogFAQs > #898564591

79. Mario and Luigi: Dream Team
Original Release: 2014
Developer: Nintendo
Platform: 3DS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bR2lft3cduc" data-time="

Fuck me. I just typed a whole thing on this game but clicked the delete button on accident, and I don't feel like typing all that again, so I'll say a little and save the rest for the BiS write-up: Dream Team takes things a little too far with its long, drawn out boss battles. The HP sponge bosses tend to repeat the same long moves over and over again and missing a timed dodge does tremendous damage. Fortunately, the giant battles here are so much better than BiS's giant bowser crap.

78. Tales of Zestiria
Original Release: 2015
Developer: Namco Bandai
Platform: PC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCkaq1GsK_s" data-time="

This game has a bad rep. Most Tales fans hate it as much as Legendia (a game I love). I, however, found it to be a breath of fresh air after Xillia 2. The big reason here is the game's world. It's a beautiful, lore-filled land taking inspiration from Arthurian legend. There are medieval castles in the middle of lakes, towns that come straight out of fairy tales, dragon-inhabited mountains, and rolling fields of farmland. After the boring, empty fields of Xillia 1/2, this was a nice change of pace. The fields were big and well designed for the most part. This is such a nice world that Berseria also takes place in, and it was nice playing both games and finding the connections. The lore is pretty dang good.

Zestiria's battle system, on the other hand, is a sloppy mess. First off, there was a serious issue with framerate, and I don't know if it's my PC acting up or the game itself. I was pretty sure I was dropping well over 30 several times. Second, the battle system itself is a hodgepodge of bad ideas. You have two humans (eventually) and the rest of your party members are "seraphs" that you can fuse with. If you decide to keep all four members of an active battle party out, that's fine and all, but the AI is pretty bad and your allies will die often. In order to dish out more damage and hit weaknesses, you need to fuse with your seraphs. Both humans can do so. This is also nice and all but it reduces your battle party to two, and you can still die fast. Bosses in the latter half of the game were incredibly cheap and could one-shot your allies if you weren't careful, and the damage I was dealing back seemed to always be middling.

Zestiria also seems to want to send you on a crappy fetch quest about 3/4s through the game. The items you need to obtain have been available since the very beginning but they were optional. Had the game actually told me to collect them throughout the game, I would have been doing it. Instead it tells you, "Well you've explored the world, now go get all these items that you thought were optional!" Didn't really seem like anything but to pad out game time. These items attempt to help you make sense of the backstory of the villain but his story was already obvious enough. The story also gets incomprehensible at certain times -- I just don't get why Namco Bandai can't stick with simplicity (Xillia had similar issues). That being said, there were some -really- epic moments in the game. Just listen to the track above. It plays during one of the most epic segments/boss battles I've experienced in the last decade. Go Shiina is amazing, and I wish he would do more music. Sakuraba's music here isn't that bad either, which is saying a lot for his Tales work.