Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut

I know I had said that I was going to do my next posts about Lunia, and I should be a good person and keep to it, but I'm a bit sick of playing it at the moment. So, I'm going to pretend that I didn't promise that.

Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut was released in 2003 and is an enhanced port for the Gamecube and was originally released in 1998 for the Dreamcast.  It is also now available for download for Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network.

In the game, you start out as playing Sonic and you have to stop Eggman from reviving Chaos and taking over the world. Simple enough, it seems. Except that every time Chaos gets a Chaos Emerald (see the connection there???). But, not only do you get to play as Sonic, you also get to play as Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Big, and E-102 Gamma as they also try and reach their own goals. Throughout the story, they all go back in time, at least once, and learn a little about Chaos and how he came about through a girl echidna named Tikal.

The voice acting in the game isn't the best. At all. In fact, I had to change it from English to Japanese with English subtitles. And the expressions are over exaggerated. And sometimes the music isn't the best. But the story is good enough. The real reason I play it? Two words: Chao. Gardens.

A Chao is a tiny creature with an teardrop shaped head and a tiny blue body. In the game, there are three gardens that you can unlock where you can raise these creatures. They have stats that you can increase by giving them animals that you collect during the stages. But, when giving an animal that, let's say, increases swimming, it may decrease another stat. The chao will also take on physical traits of the animal, like growing bunny ears or getting a peacock tail. And, when they get older, they can turn in to a neutral chao, hero chao, or dark chao. Though, that depends on how they are treated or what food they are given to eat. But, this part of the game can give me hours of entertainment.

The game itself isn't that long, but you are also able to redo stages and find new things. So, the replay value to this game is pretty high. So, if you don't mind some older graphics and bad voice acting, I'd say try it.

Introduction to Lunia

For the next few posts I'm going to review different aspects of Lunia, which is MMORPG (massively multiplayer online roleplaying game). But, before I get in to the reviews of the different parts of the game, I'm going to take this blog to give a semi-brief rundown on the game including how it's played and a brief history of the game.

In Lunia, to fight, you go to different stages that have different monster levels, depending on which stage you are on. For example, monsters on stage 1-1 are level one, monsters on 1-2 are level 2, and so on until you get to stage 2-1, where the monsters are then level eleven. After each stage, there is a boss battle and, in order to finish the stage you have to (obviously) defeat the boss. These stages can either be played solo (by yourself) or with a group of four other players. Each episode consists of ten stages except for episode seven, which only has nine stages. In order to level up, you have to accept quests for each stage which also will show you a small "movie" that explains the plot, why you're there, etc. Besides the stages, there are also bonus stages that you can unlock using keys that you get when leveling up and myth stages, which you can only get to after rebirthing at least once and accepting a certain quest once you're level seventy. Rebirthing is pretty much getting to level 70 or higher and then resetting your skills and level so you're back at one, but it also increases your strength and amount of skill points you get and will cause you to get an accumulative level (which, some items can only be equiped when you get an accumulative level of about 120 or more).

Lunia (full name is Lunia: Record of Lunia War) was created by a Korean company called Allm and was originally released to Noth America by 12FootTall  but later changed over Ijji. It's English release was in May 9, 2007 as a closed beta and in July 31, 2007 it was released as an open beta. February 18, 2008 it was released in full on 12FootTall and late rereleased on October 7, 2008 on Ijji.

Haunting Ground

Hauting Ground (known as Demento in Japan)  is a game by Capcom for the PS2 back in 2005. You play a woman, Fiona Belli, after she wakes up, caged, in a basement. After escaping from the cage, she is finds that her parents and she were in a car accident and that she is the loner survivor and heir of the Belli Castle. But, it's not just that simple. While there she is chased throughout the castle as she tries to find her way out of the castle, her only friend a white German Shepherd named Hewie. You don't actually attack anyone in the game, but your actual goal when faced with your enemies is to hide from them until they finally leave you alone for a while. Which, even though certain places give you the option to hide, it's not the best idea. For example, an iron maiden. Also, after a while of running, Fiona will get tired and unable to run. And, if she gets too scared, she'll go in to 'panic mode', where the screen turns black and white, the screen shakes and blurs, and Fiona will repeatedly fall as you run. The only time you REALLY fight them is their boss battles, and even then it's just Fiona telling Hewie to attack them while you solve puzzles in order to defeat them.

Fiona Belli is eighteen years old and finds herself at Belli Castle after a car accident with her parents. She carries a life force (I have no idea how else to describe it) called Azoth, which is the reason for her imprisonment. Throughout the game she rarely speaks, preferring to sit in fear and scream for Hewie to help her. In fact, most of the dialouge is one sided, the enemies talking to her and explaining what they want from her and how they plan to get it.

Your first enemy is Debilitas. Though it is never said in the game, most people believe that he is a failed experiment by Riccardo. Though he is very muscular, he has the mind of a child, which is shown by his love for dolls. In fact, he thinks that Fiona is a giant doll and chases after her for a portion of the game until the boss battle, where you have the choice of either killing him or befriending him.

(Yes, that is a giant shard of glass she's licking.)

After defeating Debilitas, you are allowed a moment of peace to run around the castle as you please. Well, until you are a door away to freedom and some woman comes up behind you, grabs your hand and preventing you from leaving, to inform you that dinner is ready. This is your next enemy, Daniella. Though, this isn't really your first time meeting her (you see her in the beginning of the game when she shows you your new room and talks to the painting, reassuring it that she'll make sure that Fiona will be comfortable), this is when you start to see how creepy she REALLY is. In the first sit down chat you have with her, she informs you that she can't feel pain, experience pleasure, or taste food. Getting a bit creeped out, Fiona decides that she's done eating and wants to get as far away from Daniella as possible. But, Daniella doesn't seem to like that idea, and decides to wake Fiona up in the middle of the night and tells you that she isn't complete and decides to break a mirror. With her face. From that point on, she chases you around, with either a giant shard of glass or a hot poker, and attempts to take your Azoth, which she believes will 'complete' her. With her, there are a lot less hiding places and she sometimes like to pop out of large cabinets that you were about to hide in. Lucky for you, she hates mirrors and you can temporarily stop her from chasing you by uncovering a mirror and let her take a good look at herself. But, seeing as Daniella is the maid of the castle, there are times where you will find her cleaning and, if you go up to talk to her, she will tell you that she's busy at the moment and can talk to you later. She has a life outside of chasing you around, too. I hope that you can tell by how much detail I put in to this how scary she it (and how she's my favorite out of all the people you meet).

After defeating Daniella, you get to meet the most annoying enemy in the game, at least in my opinion, Riccardo. His intention is to get your Azoth in order to be reborn, having lacked an Azoth when he was created. Therefore, he has no intention of killing you like the other two (though, Debilitas never really wanted to kill you. He just didn't know his own strength.). Instead, Riccardo prefers kicking Fiona, slapping Fiona, and scary her by firing his gun in the air. He also likes to shoot Hewie, which can actually kill the dog, in which case you are alone, and will sometimes accidentally shoot you if he gets to wound up in the game of chase. The most annoying part of this enemy? Later on he injects you with something that messes with your vision and makes it so you can't see him. The only way to know he's coming is the change in music or Hewie growling, and even then you can't really find out if he's in the room yet or not.

(There would be a picture here, but it wouldn't work for me. :/ )

The last enemy you meet is Lorenzo, which he's pretty much two enemies with the same name. He's actually your grandfather, but he's not very loving as a family member. His goal is to gain immortality and, in order to achieve that, he needs your Azoth. Luckily, the first time you meet him, he's old and in a wheelchair. He's so excited to finally meet you (and that he's that much closer to immortality) he falls out of the wheelchair and chases you around by crawling, which means you can just kick him in the face to make him let go of you. But, somehow, after you think you killed him, he comes back and is now like, fifty years younger. And he has some super powers.

For me, this game took about eight hours if you know what you're doing. Also, this game incorporates Alchemy and you can make some pretty nice things, like earrings that turn you invisible if you stand still for long enough. Even though you can't really fight (unless you have the cowgirl outfit with the gun), it's still a pretty awesome game, even if it is short.

(All images are copyrighted by Capcom.)