Recent reviews by Elfmo

Siren's Call is an epilogue to a story about a group of high-school friends, one whose moral seems to elude the characters who took part in it. This isn't for a lack of trying, though; the cast does their best to make sense of what happened, and why it happened. But, the ramifications of their actions are perhaps a little tough for them to handle.

The person having the most trouble making sense of it is our protagonist, Oliver. He's autistic, and doesn't quite understand the emotions of his friends. But, being the caring friend that he is, he always gives it his best effort. He is empathetic to their plights, and is often caught between saying what his friends want to hear, and what he feels they NEED to hear.

Oliver feels a heavy responsibility to his friends as the leader of The Midnight Guard, a group comprised of him and his friends, who went on what can only be described as a Persona-esque adventure that summer in their dead-end Florida town. Oliver is about to head to college, and he carries the burden of the burden of their feelings as he attempts to say his final goodbyes to a group whose heroic exploits may have caused a whole new problem that's arguably even worse. And thus, he sets out on his final day to try and let them know just how he feels, lest he never get the chance again.

All the cold, hard, facts of the story have more-or-less already happened; the story presents itself as a mystery by allowing Oliver's conversations with his friends to slowly reveal the facts to us, bit by bit, and the events of the present are simply the Oliver and company coming to terms with them. There's a surreal/thriller element to the story, added to clue the reader in on the fact that Things Aren't What They Seem (TM). It's effective, and doesn't take attention away from what's truly interesting about the narrative.

The wheels threaten to come off in the final act of the story, which features just too much internal monologuing, and probably too much extraneous information. But, Siren's Call is a great coming-of-age story about accepting the events of the past, and accepting change. It's about understanding that sometimes, life is chaotic, and not everything that happens has meaning, or is somebody's fault. It might be said that the theme of Siren's Call is that life doesn't have a theme. That sometimes, all you can do is look back at a situation, see what you can learn from it, and how you can grow as a person from your experience.

I'm putting a "not recommended" on this game with a caveat: This *is* a very good game, and if you don't have a Playstation 2 (or just really, really want it for the PC), I would definitely recommend buying this game. Keep reading.

Most of what's written here in the reviews is on-point: Ys VI: The Ark of Napishtim is a fast-paced action RPG that stars Adol Christin, an absolute spaz who leaps into dangerous situations with no regard for his safety - as if he knows he's in a video game - while going on adventures, not minding his own business, and killing everything in an excessively violent fashion...typically to guitar-driven up-tempo rock.

This is the basic formula of most Ys games, and it's the formula of Ark, although playing it in 2015 might feel a little dated (the game was originally released in 2003; we've had it on the PS2 for a long time, but this is the first PC version in English). The core gameplay is good, with difficult bosses (although not as difficult as other Ys games), and intense dungeons (which are much more difficult than other Ys games).

But, everything I could say about the game has been said here in the other user reviews (other than no one talking about how non-existent the plot is, even for the usually-threadbare stories of the Ys series). I wanted to write this review for one reason:

I'm of the opinion that, if you already own the PS2 version, you can pretty much ignore this version. Buy this version if you really want a PC version, or if you're a huge fan of the series and want all the art materials that come with the game for free. If you're very, very into the Ys series, this art is super-cool. But, if what interests you is the game, the PS2 version is superior and has existed for years. If you're really looking for the best version, that's gonna be the one.

Other than the expanded available resolutions and the additional art, the two main gameplay additions that make this version unique are:

1. "Warp Mode" - An item in the game, the "Wing of Alma", which used to warp you out of a dungeon, now allows you to warp between save points. This is a great idea - Ark is a fun game, but it's a bit antiquated, and one of the ways that this shines through is in its insistence on having you backtrack across the entire map of the game, and then back again, and then back. Over, and over again. This change is a good idea, and makes the game less frustrating.

...If you find it. The Wing of Alma is an item that can be missed. I should know; I missed it when playing through the game this time around. This is slightly peculiar, because when I reached the last dungeon of the game and looked up why I still couldn't warp anywhere, I recognized the item, and I knew I had gotten it the last time I played through the game. I specifically remember a time I was forced to use it once, because there are actually ways (albeit very few) to get Adol stuck in mid-air, with your only options being to restart the game from your last save, or use the Wing of Alma to escape.

In any case, what I'm getting at is, this new feature that's meant to help "modernize" the game can be missed entirely. This is peculiar to me, especially thanks to the new "Catastrophe Mode" (more on that in a minute), which demonstrates that the localization team is able to control which items appear in chests, and which items you recieve from NPCs at different parts of the story. It's baffling to me that getting this item in your inventory isn't somehow mandatory.

2. "Catastrophe Mode" - After choosing the difficulty level of your game, players are asked to choose between "Standard Mode" and "Catastrophe Mode". Standard Mode mimicks the gameplay of the original Ark of Napishtim; treasure chests around the game contain a myriad of items - mostly healing items and items that cure status ailments - of which you can stock up to nine. "Catastrophe Mode" attempts to emulate the games that followed Ark of Napishtim - Oath in Felghana and Ys Origins - by giving players no stockable healing items, and making items that restore HP or cure status ailments drop randomly off enemies. If you touch the item, it's automatically used, and that's a wrap.

This sounds pretty cool, but what specifically was intriguing about Oath in Felghana and Ys Origins were the "buff" items that dropped off enemies: pick up a blue potion, and your defense is raised temporarily, either until the timer runs out, or until you grab another blue potions (or red for strength, and a few other colors for different stats). Every enemy you kill slightly raises the experience you gain from the next enemy, stackable up to double experience. This encourages players to continuously fight.

I'm not saying that I can't understand or sympathize with why all of these features weren't added - that's likely a staggering amount of work to incorporate those things which weren't even in the game to begin with, and perhaps not even possible. But, the fact remains that these additions aren't in the new Catastrophe Mode. So, Catastrophe Mode essentially becomes "no items" mode, or maybe "use any healing items you get immediately" mode. You can emulate Catastrophe Mode in any version of Ark of Napishtim by simply doing exactly that: every time you come across a healing item, use it immediately. Or, just don't using any healing items during a boss fight. It's not a feature worth buying an entire game over, especially when you can DIY the concept...and, if you're the type of gamer that Ys appears to be branded towards (gamers who think of themselves are "hardcore" who want everything to be as hard as possible), then you probably already HAVE played Ark without using healing items, just to demonstrate to yourself that you could do it.

Thus, my verdict is: If you can't get this game on PS2, this is a great opportunity for you. If you CAN, or if you already do...stick to the version with the optional dungeon content. Stick to the version with has voice acting. Stick to the version with cool new cutscenes, especially the intro cutscene that makes the beginning of the game so much less confusing, since establishes the beginning plot of the game without you having to read it somewhere. Get the PS2 version.

EDIT: I removed a statement which was shown to be incorrect - whoops.