Previews de OZ y Suikoden Tactics - ¡Traducidos, 50/60Hz y en Febrero!

Bebpo escribió:First of all, Sony is batshit insane for not letting this game come to the US. Whatever their actual 'complaints' were with the game they must've been BS and Sony must have an another motive (such as reducing competition for Genji which they are publishing), because Oz is excellent.

Oz is by the Suikoden III team. But it seems like they took the good parts of Suikoden III (character designs, interesting plot) and fixed most of the development team's faults and then made an action rpg. Oz is an action rpg setup in a way not unlike Chaos Legion where it's broken into episodes(levels). But unlike CL and more like a real A-Rpg, the game is filled with story that's told through 2d dialogue boxes featuring tons of gorgeous artwork (each character has many expressions) and pretty nice in-game cutscenes with full voice acting. The plot is more like one of an rpg, very interesting and epic with some mild connections to the wizard of Oz. The dialogue is pretty solid too, which is not too much of a surprise as Suikoden III had some pretty good dialogue. You can buy items and equip them between stages which also adds to the rpg feeling. The menus and overall polish of the game is really good. Music is excellent (done by the Castlevania composer), and the graphics look pretty good for the most part (excellent character designs, but framerate is somewhere in the 30fps or slightly below area [still better than SIII's 15fps ^^;]).

Gameplay is interesting. The game is described as a rythmetic action game. Basically the entire premise is that you play along with 2 AI characters and you're supposed to dizzy an enemy -> knock him in the air to a friendly AI -> they'll knock the enemy around between each other -> they'll call your name and then send it flying back to you -> you try to keep up the volley. The longer you juggle an enemy the more your super meter fills up. When it's lvl.1 or higher you can do super moves that do high damage and dizzy even huge enemies allowing you to start juggling them. Some bosses can't even be hit by normal attacks, so the goal is to juggle other things filling up your super meter and then attacking with supers. The controls are actually pretty darn good with R1 lock-on, L1 reseting the camera to what you're locked on, R2 changing targets, good dodge strafing with R1+X. O calls your AI guys to beatup whatever you have targetted and send it flying at you if possible. This is great because some enemies can only be hit in the back so you call your friends to distract the enemy while you run up behind him and take him out. The gameplay definitely takes some real time getting used to as you really got get the timing and physics down for the juggling; but once you do it's a pretty original and fun battle system. Camera is fine as you get full control...but since you'll have people volleying an enemy at you from off-screen a lot of the times, it is a bit hectic. Only way they could've improved it IMO is if they zoomed the camera out further so you could see more of the field.

So yea, heavy in story; draped in style; filled with beautiful 2d art and great music...Oz is really cool so far. If the story and gameplay pays off in the end, this could be the action-rpg of the generation and Sony are evil bastards if they don't allow it into the US.

Finished Oz at about 14 hours.

Plot was really cool and ties into the Wizard of Oz nicely Some really nice stylish CG movies in there too. Music is just totally awesome the entire time; I'm buying the ost the day it comes out.

There is also a huge amount of replay value to the game. Beating it the first time, the story ends at X number of eps. Well going by Japanese sites there are like 7-8 hidden eps/levels that branch into a bigger storyline and better ending. Sounds awesome, can't wait to see the expanded tale. There is also a bunch of unlockable art pieces, movie gallery, tons of costumes, and even some nice gameplay additions.

Sony really needs to get kicked in the face if Oz never comes to the US. Oz is one of the best action/rpg games I've played and everything is just so well done and polished. This will go on the 'essential import' lists in a few month after more people have played it I think.

If Sony really plans on completely denying it forever, I might actually do a full dialogue translation faq as there isn't 'too' much and I will have a lot of free time in August.

To unlock the two bonus modes (one which is OMG cool, and another which is funny and cute), the 2 bonus ep chapters in the main story (one which is really genius bizarre, and one which is a good subplot answering some of the main plots questions), the 4 hidden playable characters, unlock all the art gallery minus 1 pic (bad ending title screen), unlock the sound gallery and move galleries, and see 3 of the 4 endings (there is a horribly bad ending but you have to get all C ranks and that means taking like an hour an ep for 10 min eps...so yea I'll skip this), and to take all the various branching paths and see all the dialogue; it took me 3 full playthroughs and about 30 hours total. And I'm currently going through the 2nd bonus mode which may be another 3-5 hours long (with its own completely original story) if I'm thinking correctly at how they implemented it.