Taishou Mononoke Ikunroku

[Aurora]

The image quality of the game looks very nice, but the characters look like the average/generic anime/manga characters. They could easily be mistaken for characters of every other anime in existance. Boring.

[TaiMaiShu]

Hmmmmm..Looks like it might just be pretty good.

[Captain Vegetable]

Originally posted by Rose4256
edit: I agree with ClickStick re: the animation. They look like paper dolls, no?

I actually dig that kind of thing. I'll agree that the animation comes off as a bit shody, but the sprites are amazing, and the character designs are great! I'm all about this one, as well as V&B.

THIS JUST IN: For those looking to preorder, it's listed at www.ncsx.com under "Taisou Mononoke Kenbun Roku."

[Omni]

I agree that the animation comes off as a bit low-budget, almost like an upgraded low-budget PS1 RPG, but I still think it's gorgeous.

I really like the route that this game seems to be taking, with the RPG part and adventure part along with the whole Pokemon aspect, but sadly, Shine is probably right.

Now let's just hope Tsubaki does a stand-up job translating the whole game for us.

(You do speak Japanese, right? )

[Josh]

I watched half the trailer before I became dreadfuly bored.

This game looks like ass, and is not at all interesting to me.

[AaronChance]

If the gameplay is on par with the Atelier series, I'll definitely pick this one up. I love the look of the game, though I was thoroughly charmed by Atelier Marie and Ellie.

Rose4256 - I've been recommending Atelier Marie DC to you since it first came out on the 'gone but not forgotten' IGN DC import invasion board. You're out of excuses.

[AaronChance]

Just got this game so I'm giving this topic a big bump.

It's a lot of fun, though the language barrier is pretty strong here. Long story segments, thankfully most featuring voice acting making them possible for me to understand, and dozens of items only identified by their Japanese names. Some trial and error helps to figure those out though along with a Japanese dictionary.

Main gameplay is fighting demons with your own pet demons. Each demon has a certain amount of lives, so if you kill them once they go into this sort of coma thing to recover, which they will emerge from again after a while. To win normal matches you just need to put all the opposing demons in recovery mode at the same time. To win matches against other 'trainers' you need to do this and beat up the trainer, who can't be hurt until their demons were defeated.

All demons can attack, defend, and use special abilities. All demons I've seen so far have at least three special abilites and some have five. These can be anything from special attacks, to healing, special defense, etc. All seem unique so far. The important thing about the special abilities is they effect the element of the battlefield, which you want to be in your favor. For instance, if the element is water and you have demons who are water-aligned they will have extra 'JMS' abilities available. I have a demon whose JMS consists of a giant snowman popping out of her back and clobbering the enemy with a huge glove. Very funny.

Fight is all turn based with each demon having their action in turn. The trainers can intervene with their own action at any time, but once used it will be a while before they can intervene again. Trainers can attack, defend, use items, and move their demons around. Moving is important because normally only your front line can be attacked, so you can move a wounded demon to safety. Items consist of healing items, items for defense, items that change the element of the battlefield, and even huge one-shot demon summons that do massive damage which are best saved for emergencies.

After battle your demons earn exp points which will open up more slots in their inventory. These you equip with various items that will enhance their stats. The way the inventory is set up is kind of like a puzzle so it takes some thought to maximize this space. Also if it's a regular battle with a demon type you don't have you can opt to collect one for your own crew, though you can only have four active at one time.

When not fighting, you can go to towns to shop and other things, find free items in other locations, and go to enegry vortexes which will help level up your demons to new classes. Or you can visit the tutorial girl who will tell you everything about the gameplay... in Japanese of course.

Visually, the game is entirely in 2D with some fancy graphical effects to spice things up. It's high rez, but sports limited animation, so while it still looks good it's not as pleasing to the eye as it could have been. It gets the job done though.

This game is pretty hard to find but it was well worth the effort to me. It has that addictive quality I find in the Atelier series, which is no surprise since it's made by the same people, Gust.

[jiji]

Thanks for the impressions, Amma. I don't think I'll be picking it up, thanks to the language barrier, but it's nice to know Gust is still putting out quality games.

Alan Kwan has been enjoying the game as well, and posted some (brief) impressions here:

http://pub32.ezboard.com/fenlightene...icID=464.topic

[AaronChance]

Played some more and found even more neat thing about it. There's a lot of subtle details to the combat that are easy to miss if you rush through it or don't understand Japanese. That said though the language barrier isn't too big a deal. I can figure out which items are health items, which are summons, though there's a couple I just don't know. The equipable items are easy to figure out because they have an element and numeric stats.

Just found that if you charge the battlefield with one element over and over with special attacks and such, you earn these energy bars, which the trainer can spend on their own special abilities. My character can heal, while another character can put demons to sleep. Takes a few attacks to earn those bars so better not waste them.

Can't figure out how to evolve my little pet demons though. I have one that should be able to evolve, but when I go to that screen it doesn't let me do anything. Could need an item I just don't have.

I'd say that the language barrier is about equal to the Atelier series. It takes some initial time to figure everything out, but after a while you know what to do. The story elements are neat though so it might be less worth it if you don't understand at least a little spoken Japanese. It really makes me wish I had a larger Japanese vocabulary.

[RedCoKid]

Originally posted by Ammadeau
I'd say that the language barrier is about equal to the Atelier series. It takes some initial time to figure everything out, but after a while you know what to do. The story elements are neat though so it might be less worth it if you don't understand at least a little spoken Japanese. It really makes me wish I had a larger Japanese vocabulary.

(How did I miss this post?) Anyway, how does the language barrier compare to Sakura Taisen, Venus&Braves (did you pick this up yet?), D+Vine, Fushigi Dungeon, or SGGG? I don't want to play through many more games as language-intensive as the last 2. If I miss the story, okay; but when it starts to affect gameplay, eh...

Oh, and could you put a ?/10 value on your review?