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The Otaku’s Gaming Study #11 – Further Portable Gaming Reviews (Gravity Rush and Gungnir)

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The Otaku's Gaming Study #11 - Further Portable Gaming Reviews (Gravity Rush and Gungnir) 1

Welcome to the 11th installment of The Otaku’s Gaming Study, recently revived due to the recent completion of my Masters degree thesis to review titles I have not had time to fully review within their launch window – and are both shorter and more concise than my usual reviews. This time around I bring you two reviews of games on Playstation Portable devices, Gravity Rush for the PS Vita and Gungnir on the Playstation Portable. Special thanks go to Sony Computer Entertainment Australia and ATLUS USA respectively for providing me with review copies of these games through either physical or downloadable media.

The Otaku's Gaming Study #11 - Further Portable Gaming Reviews (Gravity Rush and Gungnir) 2The Otaku's Gaming Study #11 - Further Portable Gaming Reviews (Gravity Rush and Gungnir) 3

Gravity Rush
SCE Japan Studio | Sony Computer Entertainment
Now available for purchase on the Playstation Vita 

Once thriving and confident, the city of Hekseville is now shrouded in fear. A huge, dark presence towers over the city and what’s more, entire neighbourhoods are being snatched away – homes, possessions, families and all. Against this backdrop of chaos, you play as Kat, a young girl struggling to make sense of her own past. As storms rage in the skies above Hekseville, amnesia clouds Kat’s memories. As the stricken city fragments and its citizens demand answers, Kat must quickly come to terms with the incredible power awoken within her.

Gravity is now a force she can bend at will. Or rather, something her mysterious companion, Dusty the cat, can shift. As the townsfolk come to recognise this other-worldly power, they begin to place their fate in Kat’s hands – and with every call for help, she moves a little closer to answering the extraordinary questions thrown up by her strange predicament. What has happened to her? Why has this enigmatic feline chosen Kat as a gravity shifter? And who commands the sinister forces wreaking havoc across the city? In Gravity Rush on PlayStation Vita, brave the coming storm to discover the exhilarating truth.

Introduction / Storyline

When the Playstation Vita first launched in February there were some good launch titles released which I reviewed quite favorably… but many of these didn’t have much anything in the way of storyline and instead focused on some particular gameplay element. When Gravity Rush was first previewed I had  high expectations for it – with a gravity-based mechanism which looked like it suited the Vita’s control schema and some hints towards a storyline that would suit my tastes. How did it fare after months of waiting? Maybe not up to my greatest expectations but still a damn enjoyable game!

The storyline follows a girl by the name of Kat, who has lost all her memories. Befriending a mysterious cat she finds herself able to manipulate gravity to her will which she uses to save a young child from the threat of a Gravity Storm and mysterious creatures by the name of Nevi. From there she begins to use her powers to protect the town of Hekseville from disaster and attempt to solve the mysteries behind her missing memories – eventually rising from being a girl feared by the residents to one renown to the populace.

While the storyline does not live up to its full potential and could have used expanding upon in many places (and could use a more fulfilling conclusion), it is actually enjoyable to play through. While things start off slow with Kat as a main character, her personality and backstory remain interesting and generally doesn’t use too many plot cliches for a title like this. The game also benefits from the interesting intergration of manga-style cutscenes throughout the tale which are well used to simply put emphasis and focus on the storyline.

Design

SCE Japan Studio provided this game with some beautiful cel-shaded character and environment designs, and really shows the quality of game that the Playstation Vita is capable of displaying. The designs are purposefully detailed to be visually stimulating, with a slightly steampunk aesthetic to the open world design of Hekseville with an interesting colour pallete which helps define this title from others. The game as mentioned above also incorporates cartoon-style cutscenes, which initially feels like a means of avoiding cutscene animation but grows on you as the game progresses. A flaw of the visuals however is its very average draw-distance, possibly a limitation of the system itself but limits the enjoyment of the open-world design.

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Music

With the exception of a few vocals which are not in English, the game does not take advantage of either English or Japanese voice acting – which is a shame as I think they would have contributed to the enjoyment of the storyline. The games soundtrack however is sizable, and features a nice compilation of tracks which are softer in tone but suits the games setting and overall tone.

Gameplay

The games biggest draw is its gravity manipulation system, where Kat is able to bend gravity to her will allowing her to hover, free-fall, fly towards and stand on almost any surface you can direct her at. It is a system that takes some getting used to, however a few hours in I felt like it was second nature and really enjoyed taking full advantage of the system. Of course, this system is not without its problems, especially when you incorporate it into the games battle system. The basic battle controls are easy, square button to kick and X button to jump… but when you incorporate gravity into the mix, there is a considerable room for missing the target, sending you veering off course which can be frustrating.

The game is very mission oriented, so after the first half an hour you are flung into a world where you are given primarily given missions to complete instead of one completely linear storyline. The quality and enjoyability of these missions vary, some ranging from the cliche ones you would expect in any similar game and others which provide a bit more challenge. Add in a rudementary upgrade system and a few other goodies  and you have perhaps one of the best Playstation Vita optimized games on the market to date.

Final Score
Storyline/Character Development: C
Design: A-
Music/Voice Acting: B+
Gameplay: A-
Replayability: B
Personal Opinion: B+
Overall Score: A-

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Gungnir
Sting | ATLUS USA
Now available for purchase on the Playstation Portable in the North American market.

Gungnir would change the boy into a hero of legend, and carve a revolution in history…

“From today onwards, you are one of us.” Plucked from the plundered imperial trade caravan, the Daltan noble Alissa is invited into the resistance by Giulio, a Leonican boy. Giulio’s ability to look beyond race and see people and people moves Alissa’s heart. Since ancient times, the Gargan Empire has never been truly free of ethnic and class warfare. The ruling Daltan class had long prospered under the wing of the Emperor, in stark contrast to the “cursed people”, the Leonicans, who were forced into the ghetto classed Espada. Alissa meekly accepts Giulio’s offer. But regardless of her desires, her noble blood will inevitably attract the Daltan dogs of war.

Esperanza heads to battle…

But the Resistance is vastly outmatched, and is simply throwing the lives of their members away. Resigned to death, Giulio lifts his head skyward in despair, when “it” descends upon him. The Magic Spear Gungnir – the ebony lance of the God of Battle, from an age beyond reckoning. “This is… Gungnir?” Giulio grasps the lance in his bloody hands and runs riot upon the battlefield. Guilio and the war god instantly turn the tide, delivering a swift, brutal end to the enemy troops. At that moment, Giulio strikes fear into the heart of an empire… Esperanza’s incredible stroke of luck generates a groundswell of support. And so the wheels of fate slowly began to turn. A Leonican with the spear from the heavens, and a Daltan girl. What does the future hold for these two youths?

Storyline

As you can read in the blurb above, the storyline involves a corrupt empire which has exiled the Leonicans from the main cities and into a ghetto by the name of Espada. The game provides a considerably-lengthed introduction expanding upon the core storyline elements about how there is an uprising rebellion ready to go against these forms of discrimination. The de-facto leader of one group of members in this rebellion is Giulio, who rescues a Daltan royal girl from a suspected slave caravan, convinces her to join their cause and gains control of a mythological spear by the name of Gungnir and goes on the rampage to gain equality for all.

The game is fairly long, and given its length it progresses a bit slower than I would have liked at points, but proved to have a number of innovative plotpoints with sizable character casting and never really sinking into the cliches other tactical RPG’s have fallen into in the past. Despite this, it deviates on storylines that you would have heard before in other games and its core storyline is nothing unique… but what they have done with this title is interesting and captured my attention during most of my gameplay.

Visuals

The games battles take place using your normal isometric battle system, and the visuals look appropriate to the world they are trying to develop and well detailed. The flaw with this battle system is that while the environments have been designed well and are not just simple fields of grass or stone, sometimes I found it agitating to move the cursor around the area to select a specific character or space… but this is only a minor gripe. Out of battle dialogue takes place through a visual novel style system with character portraits which also look comparably good to their respective battle sprites, however would have benefited from a greater range and implementation of emotions. Despite a couple of personal flaws, the visuals themselves are solid and well suited to a game of this style.

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Music

As it was with Gravity Rush, Gungnir does not feature any voice acting in either Japanese or English. The soundtrack is sizable enough for a game of this size and has a nice array of instrumental music for battle and event scenes alongside a well animated opening sequence with a suitable instrumental number behind it.

Gameplay

On the outside the game looks like your standard tactical RPG affair with an isometric view, turn-based system and so forth… however once you dive into it they have made a few creative tweaks which should appeal to fans of the genre. The two major inclusions to Gungnir’s battle system are “Wait System” and “Tactics Points”, both of which if not planned out carefully can lead your party to their demise.The game features three types of special skills, “Scramble” which allows you to act immediately after use, “Beat” which are cooperative attacks and “Boost” which allows you to boost allied skills. While normal attacks do not pose so much of a problem as in other games, to use one of the three above skills you need to use “Tactics Points”, which progressively build up during battle and require balancing in their use but can be expanded through holding bases scattered around each of the fields.

However, the game also uses a Wait System which means the more power you use the longer you have to wait to attack (With any character) again while only moving or standing still allows you to attack much sooner. It all comes down to a balancing game between the two – especially considering that while you are given ample options in party members, you are required to select a leader “Ace” who will spontaneously end the game if defeated. Add the fact that non-storyline characters in either party can be killed in battle, ample opportunities to collect rare equipment provided you go “off the beaten track” and a New Game + with new storyline options… you do have quite a few options to further extending your gameplay. Apart from this, there was nothing particularly unique about the core gameplay system itself, but provided sufficient challenge and had enough content to easily last you 40 – 50 hours.

There are limitations with the gameplay however. At times the menu systems sometimes feel really bulky, where fulfilling most tasks requiring you to interact with different menus. In addition, there are no options to take part in random battles, with the entire game taking place along a set route of battles… meaning you need to grind through the same levels over and over again until you complete them – thankfully with the game carrying over EXP and other stats between failed battles.

But hey….. in the end the game shows that the Playstation Portable still has many RPG’s to offer the market, and hopefully despite the drop in licenses we will see more releases of them in the near future!

Final Score
Storyline/Character Development: B
Design: B
Music/Voice Acting: B+
Gameplay: B
Replayability: B
Personal Opinion: B
Overall Score: B

Sam
Sam
Founder of The Otaku's Study. I have been exploring this labyrinth of fandom these last fifteen years, and still nowhere close to the exit yet. Probably searching for a long time to come.
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