During the past two days, I have beaten two games. The first game was
Professor Layton and the Curious Village. This game had been a birthday gift from Imani, so it got to jump in line once I finished 358/2 Days. The game itself is essentially a never-ending onslaught of puzzles. The game itself claims to have 120 numbered puzzles, of which I ultimately beat 102 of them (the remainder I was unable to find). The puzzles themselves vary widely. Some are word puzzles, some are math puzzles, at least one I solved using trigonometry. Most of the puzzles are clever, but I find that too many of them rely on imprecise wording to create their difficulty. In word puzzles, this is acceptable even perhaps expected. In peg-and-string puzzles, this becomes incredibly frustrating. Overall, I would say that it was a rather fun game, and would recommend it to people who like puzzles. Just be aware that the game has essentially zero replayability due to the fact that the puzzles themselves don't actually change.
The second game that I beat was
Blue Dragon. Blue Dragon has been in the game in my 360 since the beginning of September. In general, it is a classic Japanese console RPG. It is perhaps most notable for its pedigree: its story was written by Hironobu Sakaguchi (
Final Fantasy) and character designs by Akira Toriyama (
Dragon Ball,
Chrono Trigger,
Dragon Quest). Nevertheless, the game itself is quite average. Gameplay follows standard job-based JRPG tropes. I also had serious issues with the game's achievements. Most of them are of one of several forms: (1) Do something annoying perfectly, (2) Max out something, (3) Kill an optional boss that is ridiculously difficult. Eventually, I got tired of attempting to get 100% completion and just went and killed the final boss. Due to getting several of the type 2 achievements (maxing out all the jobs for all the characters), the final boss' second form never got a chance to attack me and the third/final form only got two actions before death. I had picked up the game relatively cheaply from Newegg at some point, but honestly I can't recommend the game. There are better RPGs for the 360 and this one doesn't really bring anything special to the table.
Published by
XPostcurses
