Geki Yaba Runner Review

Most runners are built on the premise that you run as far as you can until you die and then you start over. Geki Yaba Runner for the PlayStation Vita does away with the run until you die concept and incorporates a story that takes place over the course of 136 levels. 

As the player, you control a gnome who has the task of rescuing a princess. The majority of levels have a minimum amount of socks that you have to collect to progress because well, you're a gnome and that's what you do. This is, of course, easier said than done. Geki Yaba Runner actually touts itself as 'one of the hardest runners out there' and I can't disagree with that. The reason for this is because not only do you have to be extremely precise, you have to remember to use all of your gnomes abilities. 

The abilities consist of jumping, floating, falling fast, increased speed, and plowing through objects. If you touch a spike, you die. If you hit a wall, any wall, you die. If you run into a tree, you die. Pretty much everything will kill you, so you need to do everything perfectly and at times you're required to use two abilities or more to get through one tiny section of the game. This requires patience and muscle memory, but thank goodness respawns are instant.

I personally play a lot of runners and I can say that this one is definitely difficult, but thanks to the frequent checkpoints, it's not impossible. Regardless of the frequency, you will most likely die over 1,000 times. It wasn't unusual for me to die around 40 times on one level and in one case I died 133 times. Of course, this sounds like it would be frustrating, right? This actually drove me to play even more because I was determined to advance. There were so many times that I would say "one more level"  or "one more attempt" only to find myself playing three to four more levels. 

As I mentioned earlier, Geki Yaba Runner features a story, but it's pretty shallow. The story elements only feature a few still images that require you to piece together what's happening. I respect the decision to include a story in a runner, however, because it doesn't add much to the overall game, it wouldn't be missed if it wasn't there. Maybe if there's a Geki Yaba Runner 2, the story will be more developed. 

Geki Yaba Runner took me about 3 1/2 to 4 hours to complete. The difficulty progresses nicely and while at times you'll get stuck, the game is addicting enough that you'll want to complete the entire adventure.

4 out of 5 stars 

Thank you to QubicGames for providing the code. 

Strange of Sword City Review

When was the last time you finished a game and walked away feeling like it was a complete experience? A game that seriously made you have to take a deep breath when it was over and reflect on the time you spent with it? There are plenty of great video games, but there are few classics. For anyone who’s looking for a true RPG experience, Stranger of Sword City may be your new favorite game.

The first thing you’ll do when starting Stranger of Sword City is character creation. You pick the look of your character from over 60 pre-designed pictures of humans, elves, dwarfs and other various looks. Once you’re done picking your look, you must choose your character’s age. This is actually really important, because whatever age you select affects how many Life Points and bonus experience points you receive. Life Points equal how many times a character can die during your play through. Younger characters can have three, middle aged characters two, and elderly characters one. Once your character loses all of their Life Points they can no longer be recovered. Life Points can be recovered by resting your characters for long periods of time or by paying insane amounts of money; however if you have a character with one Life Point, there is no way to revive them. So why would you want to create an old character if they can only die once? The trade is that the older the character the more bonus experience points they receive.

After you select the age of your character, you get the option of “rolling” for bonus experience points, which just means press a button to randomize some numbers. If you have a young character, there’s a good chance that you’ll start off with three bonus xp, but you have the chance to get anything from three to nine. You can press the “roll” button as many times as you’d like, but you’ll soon realize that it will almost always be three or four so when you see a six pop up, you have to really think if you want to risk losing that because it could be a long time to get it again. I usually spent a few minutes rolling to see if I could get something higher and the majority of the time I settled for something in the middle of the minimum and maximum.  

Once you’ve created your character, the story begins. You find yourself in a strange place and don’t know where you are. There are people who excited that you’ve appeared and would like you to help them. It’s not a mind blowing story by any means, but it does have some pretty awesome elements. As time goes on, you are introduced to three different kingdoms. Each one asks for you to give them Blood Crystals that you find after defeating “Lineage” enemies. When you give them these Blood Crystals, you’re able to select a power and it advances the game’s story.   

Each battle in Stranger of Sword City feels like life or death. This isn’t the type of game that you can just queue up attacks while you’re watching Netflix. You have to strategically plan out your magic attacks, heals, and what type of attacks you’re going to do in each and every fight. Because death is permanent and there is no revive spell, you may find yourself in a lot of stressful situations. The best recommendation I can give is to always know where the nearest exit is, because once you head back to town, your health and mana are refilled. The downside to leaving an area is that the enemies on the level will reset and you’ll have to battle a few mandatory fights again. This is really a small price to pay to ensure that your most experienced warriors don’t die. If they do die though, it is not the end of the world, but it will make you have to spend some time grinding to get your newly registered companion up to snuff. I’ll talk about companions in depth a little later, but first I have to talk about Morale Points. 

Morale Points are a unique system that give your character the ability to call certain spells without using any mana. Examples of these spells are health regeneration, stronger attacks, higher defense, and group attacks. Certain skills can even be stacked so they can have a more beneficial effect. As you progress through the story you’ll start to get more Morale Points and you can use more skills in battle. To gain Morale Points all you have to do is attack enemies. It’s not a complicated system, but it is very valuable and should be used generously. You also use Morale Points to ambush enemies to receive better loot, but that will be covered later.

To get new companions all you have to do is register them at the Strangers Guild. The nice thing is that you can register a ton of companions so you can try to out different classes. A nice feature in Stranger of Sword City is that whenever you register a new companion their experience will be based off of the amount off of your main character, however they still start at level one. This makes it a smoother transition than to just have a level 1 character that needs to spend hours leveling up to 10+. You simply take them into battle and as long as they don’t die you’ll see them level from 1 to about 6 after one fight. 

The Stranger’s Guild also allows you to switch party members whenever you like. Whichever party members are not active are being “trained” which means that they are gaining experience. This experience though won’t actually level them, so if you have a level 12 fighter they won’t go from 12 to 13, but rather gain experience that will only require them to fight one or two times to get from level 12 to 13. Every time you check on your resting companions you will receive money that they found on their adventures. I’d recommend that if you have a lot of people sitting out that you check on them whenever you head back to the Strangers Guild so you can collect money and check on their progress. 

 Stranger of Sword City has a unique way of getting better gear for your group. There are locations around the world where you can “ambush” enemies. During the ambush you have a certain amount of turns to kill the leader of the group before they escape. If they escape you just receive experience and some money, but if you successfully kill them you get some type of gear. These ambushes cost Morale Points and the costs increase over time. This prevents you from repeatedly ambushing and getting all the phat loots in one sitting.  One nice feature is that you will know what type of gear you’ll be getting beforehand and you can choose to pass if it’s something you don’t want. This is essential to your party’s success, so I recommend you start getting used to ambushing early in the game. 

As you progress in the game, you’ll find that the maps are fairly large and most of them have an area that is blocked until you progress in the game. Within each level there are stones that you can discover to teleport yourself to and from town. This makes getting in and out of levels so much easier than having to use the main entrance and exit every time. Without these, Stranger of Sword City would be a much longer and much more difficult game. 

Overall it’s really hard to explain enough about the incredible details of Stranger of Sword City that will really do them justice. For anyone who is looking for a real adventure that will test you time and time again, this is definitely a game you want to pick up. I’ve had my PlayStation Vita since launch and I can say honestly that in the last four years that Stranger of Sword City is the game I’ve been looking for. 

Final Score: 4.5/5

Thank you to NIS America for providing the code. 

Dungeon Travelers 2: The Royal Library & the Monster Seal Review

For the last few weeks I have been playing Dungeon Traveler’s 2: The Royal Library & the Monster Seal. My time with the First Person dungeon crawler was spent sweating through tough battles, leveling and re-leveling my characters, dying, and then quickly regretting the fact that I wasn’t saving often enough. When I first started the game, I figured I would be able to move through story, rapidly press X during the the battles and experience some fan service, however this was not the case. Dungeon Travelers 2 isn’t a game that you can just grind while you watch Netflix. Each encounter can quickly turn deadly forcing you back to your last save.

During the story you play as Fried, a member of the Royal Library, who is putting together a “suppression team.” Fried is very serious about his mission and even though his team is filled with beautiful women, he doesn’t let this distract him. Fried’s team is dedicated to clearing the monsters out of the different dungeons in hopes in restoring peace to the Kingdom of Romulea.

At the beginning of your adventure you’ll start with a small team, but it will eventually grow to five playable members. You and your crew will head to many different dungeons with individual themes such as a forest, cave, catacombs, village, and more. As you progress, the dungeons will begin to introduce different elements that will increase the difficulty of your task. You may find yourself walking into anti-magic zones, where as you may have guessed, make it to where you can’t use magic, dark zones which don’t let you look at your map, warps that take you to another part of the dungeon, and traps that can poison, freeze, and inflict your party with all sorts of debuffs. There are also fake walls that you can only walk through if you have a flashlight or an active light spell. Pair these with epic battles and you will find yourself constantly face to face with death. The best advice I can give to make sure you stay alive is to always have an emergency exit which will teleport you back to the beginning of the dungeon. Also, make your map your best friend. It’s better to head back to town to be refreshed than to die and reload a save.

One of the aspects that I really enjoyed in Dungeon Travelers 2 was the random occurrences that happen in the dungeons. Sometimes you’ll come across shops, food vendors, and blacksmiths that can enchant your items. This can help give you that extra boost to keep going, which will prevent you from having to return to town. It’s advisable to always buy one thing from the food vendors to help restore your party's HP, TP (the Dungeon Travelers equivalent to mana) and motivation, which will increase the frequency of group attacks. These group attacks can really help the speed of your battles and allow you to progress a lot quicker.

One negative aspect that you are sure to run into while saving the world is that your bag only has 30 storage spots which can fill up quickly. You can throw some items away to free up space, but discarding items is always tough because you never know what you’ll need later. Luckily, back at your guild you can store up to 999 different items. It is highly recommended that you use this storage for items that you can’t use in the field because any drop from an enemy when you have full bags is gone forever.

As you progress through the game you start to pick up more party members with specialized classes. They will start off as one of the main classes, Fighter, Magic User, Maid, Spieler, and Scout. Once you reach level 15, you can choose to branch into 2-3 subclasses, and then again at level 30 where you can choose between 3-4 advanced subclasses. This customization of characters is incredibly deep and gives users the chance to really tailor their style of play. I personally like to play with a much more physical damage approach, but other people may enjoy more magic based gaming.  A quick tip would be as soon as you hit level 15, get ready to switch your class, and head out to the field to see how your character’s new skills are in action. Once you experience their skills, head back to the Royal Library and reset your character to another class just to see which one feels better. This will prevent you from leveling a character that isn’t as effective as you may like. Dungeon Travelers 2 gives you the opportunity to respec your character’s skills, but you can only reset your level to 1, 15, and 30. Leveling to 20+ with a character you end up not liking and having to reset to level 15 will set you back some precious progression time. I ran into this when I hit level 30. I was absolutely demolished by a boss. I decided to reset my characters and focus on leveling specific skills instead of spreading out my skill points into multiple categories. Having the option to customize your characters and resetting their skill points is a welcome feature because you never feel stuck. There is always the option to make adjustments that will improve your squad.

Some of the classes may seem fairly straightforward, but there are a couple unique ones that really set Dungeon Travelers 2 apart from other JRPGs. If you’re a seasoned veteran in the genre then you’re probably used to having a fighter for your main source of physical damage, a Magic User for healing and magic spells, and another source of support damage. This is the case, but when you add two new classes, the game gets really interesting.

The Spieler and the corresponding intermediate and advanced classes rely on random chances that will affect the battle. When you cast one of the random spells you may damage your enemies, heal yourself, or buff your partners. The Spieler’s normal weapon attacks are on par with the other secondary damage classes, but having the random spells make the class both different and a lot of fun. I’d recommend playing around with the Spieler to see what feels best for you. I tried out the Doll Master class, which gives you dolls that attack enemies or heal allies randomly. I like the idea, but I felt like I wasn’t benefiting as much as I’d like. I switched to the Trickster and felt much more in control of what was happening, even if it was random.

The Maid and her subsequent classes are easily my favorite in the entire game. Her abilities to recover HP and TP, as well as boost Experience make her essential to any team. While the HP, TP, and EXP spells  were the ones I felt were most important for my party, she also has defense, speed, critical rate and other support spells that will help you along get through what can be a pretty difficult game. The best part about her skills is that they don’t require TP. The fact that you can restore someone’s TP without using TP, gives this character a huge edge. Once you get into the more advanced classes you can start singing songs that will restore HP and TP every time it’s someone’s turn. This huge boost will sometimes make it feel like you are in complete control of the battle and in Dungeon Travelers 2, that is a feeling you want.

There are a lot of aspects that go into the battles. Each character’s speed, weapon speed, chant speed, and enmity ( which is how often a character is likely to be attacked) are all variables that you want to consider before heading to a dungeon and it can really turn into a numbers game.

You definitely don’t want your healer to have a high enmity, or higher enmity than your fighter classes. You also want everyone to have the highest speed possible so they can attack often, but you want your chant speed down so spells don’t take too long to cast. This may be confusing without actually playing the game, but the tutorials will give you long explanations that you should really pay attention to.

As you naturally progress you’ll find better items. Every point counts, but then you’ll start to get pieces that have resistances and bonuses on them. These are great, but eventually you’ll be faced with replacing one of those bonuses with a piece of armor that has no bonus, but higher defense and you’ll really sit there and wonder what to do. You could always keep both in your bag to try out, but that goes against your bag storage and it turns into a much bigger concern. Maximizing your attributes by making slight sacrifices will happen and you’ll only hope that you made the right decision.

Once you get the hang of the battles, things will get easier. This is not to be taken for granted. There is always a chance that your healer or fighter will be obliterated with an instakill attack and you’ll have to tough it out without them. Even with four remaining members, if my healer or fighter went down it was a struggle to get through the fight. Dungeon Travelers 2 really makes a point to make every member feel just as important as the other. The moral of the story is take care of your party members and they’ll take care of you.

Overall, Dungeon Travelers 2 will give you between 60-80 hours of gameplay. You will find yourself shocked by the deep customization in both the characters and equipment options. There is plenty to do, but patience is required. There will be times where you are sitting in a dungeon wondering where to go next, but once you figure it out you’ll feel an incredible rewarding sensation. I highly recommend this game to anyone who is looking for a challenge and isn’t afraid to stare death in the face.

4.5 out 5

Thanks to Atlus for supplying a code for review.