One of the great things about NTSC-UK is that the member base is far more hardcore than your normal internet gaming forum. No matter how many games I've bought in a week (e.g. 10) a short visit to NTSC-UK, and a glance at the 150 games Dazzyman has bought over the same time period soon put me at ease. No matter how many low down and dirty gamerpoints I've been taking from obscure NTSC-U sports titles, Famidude has already got there before me, and of course, no matter how many obscure NTSC-J 360 titles I think I own, someone has already got a First Play thread up stealing my thunder.
Well not this time people of NTSC-UK! Not this time!
Diario: Rebirth Moon Legend! A 2007 NTSC-J 360 release which is essentially an enhanced port of Idea Factory's tactical PS2 RPG game Rebirth Moon. This time, I dare the lot of you to own this game. It's taken me 2 months to track down a copy at a reasonable price, and it's out of print, and to my knowledge sold about 5 copies worldwide. But knowing NTSC-UK, I bet everyone owns a copy, Dazzyman owns 3 copies and Famidude already has 1000 points in it....
So, the game. It's a Tactical RPG. Story is unimportant. Largely because I didn't understand a word of it. Something about a metor crashing into earth, a bloke in glasses finding someone unconcious (usual floppy haired man/woman/either lead protagonist) in crater, 6 years passing, a return to said crater, an attack by spiders and giant white Pikachus, joining up with witch in leather and few people with pink hair, then going to university and setting off on quests to kill spiders. Intersperse with anime cutscenes, glowing pendants, overly large swords, and lots of terrible voice acting, and you pretty much have Diario in a nutshell. I'm sure someone here has played the PS2 version they can point out any factural innacurracies in the above statement.
The graphics are pretty awful, in a charming way. This wasn't what I think Microsoft were aiming for with Hi Def gaming. This is a little more.... Megadrivey.
The battlefield is a bit like Disgaea, with a square floating in space, and little pixellated characters bimbling about on it. The square can be rotated and panned freely with the triggers and the right stick. Unlike most traditional Tactical RPGs the movement of the characters is free (not so keen on this myself, but it worked well in games like Valkyria Chronicles and Operation Darkness), and there is no grid as such. It is still turn based however, and follows the usual move, shoot, item, end turn model. What makes it mildly interesting is that the attacks/spells all have the capacity to heal/damage enemies and friends equally, meaning careful positioning is needed to avoid wiping yourself out with an ill timed AoE spell, or healing your enemy back from the brink of death. There seems to be all sorts of subtle stuff about "elements" and the ability to make your weapon go super-sized and subsequently chain attacks which I am still getting to grips with, but by and large it all seems quite straightforward.
In game text is a mixture of Japanese and English. However, all story sections are 100% Japanese voice and text. It is possible to skip them as they aren't that entertaining, and simply use hand drawn cutouts of the protagonists flipping in and out of view, like those skit thingies in the Tales series. Terrible voice acting, either high camp or monotone droning. One of the guys sounds like he's doing a poo as he reads out the lines, which was quite amusing.
The anime is quite nice, and looks anime-ish (if that's your thing), but again is in Japanese. Bad lip sync as well (which is odd). The main UI has smatterings of English and Japanese, and it is fairly easy to work out general battling and moving. The pain comes from the descriptions of all the items/weapons/spells being in Japanese and needing at least 1 shot before you know what they do (and a good memory to remember). The battles are fairly swift, and at the end you get a grade. Even though I thought I did quite well, I've only over got a grade G. Which means I suck. I didn't even think Japanese games gave a grade G. Maybe it means Great! Yeah! (OK, lets not dwell on it).
Is it worth an import? Well, it's never going to get a PAL release, and it is quite rare, so I think it could hold its value quite well. My rule of thumb is - if it's out of stock at play-asia, don't sell. It's not quite as good as Spectral Force 3 (incidentally, a tip - the NTSC-U version of Spectral Force 3 works on an NTSC-J 360, if you want a worthy, slightly dull, but better than Diario, full English tactical RPG on your Xbox) but lets face it, there's hardly a glut of TRPGs on the Xbox. So yes, buy away - as by adding comments to this thread you can actually add to the sum current total Internet buzz about this game. Which is absolutely zero.
Right, I now open myself up to the flood of people who own this on 360 or PS2. I dare you!
Well not this time people of NTSC-UK! Not this time!
Diario: Rebirth Moon Legend! A 2007 NTSC-J 360 release which is essentially an enhanced port of Idea Factory's tactical PS2 RPG game Rebirth Moon. This time, I dare the lot of you to own this game. It's taken me 2 months to track down a copy at a reasonable price, and it's out of print, and to my knowledge sold about 5 copies worldwide. But knowing NTSC-UK, I bet everyone owns a copy, Dazzyman owns 3 copies and Famidude already has 1000 points in it....
So, the game. It's a Tactical RPG. Story is unimportant. Largely because I didn't understand a word of it. Something about a metor crashing into earth, a bloke in glasses finding someone unconcious (usual floppy haired man/woman/either lead protagonist) in crater, 6 years passing, a return to said crater, an attack by spiders and giant white Pikachus, joining up with witch in leather and few people with pink hair, then going to university and setting off on quests to kill spiders. Intersperse with anime cutscenes, glowing pendants, overly large swords, and lots of terrible voice acting, and you pretty much have Diario in a nutshell. I'm sure someone here has played the PS2 version they can point out any factural innacurracies in the above statement.
The graphics are pretty awful, in a charming way. This wasn't what I think Microsoft were aiming for with Hi Def gaming. This is a little more.... Megadrivey.
The battlefield is a bit like Disgaea, with a square floating in space, and little pixellated characters bimbling about on it. The square can be rotated and panned freely with the triggers and the right stick. Unlike most traditional Tactical RPGs the movement of the characters is free (not so keen on this myself, but it worked well in games like Valkyria Chronicles and Operation Darkness), and there is no grid as such. It is still turn based however, and follows the usual move, shoot, item, end turn model. What makes it mildly interesting is that the attacks/spells all have the capacity to heal/damage enemies and friends equally, meaning careful positioning is needed to avoid wiping yourself out with an ill timed AoE spell, or healing your enemy back from the brink of death. There seems to be all sorts of subtle stuff about "elements" and the ability to make your weapon go super-sized and subsequently chain attacks which I am still getting to grips with, but by and large it all seems quite straightforward.
In game text is a mixture of Japanese and English. However, all story sections are 100% Japanese voice and text. It is possible to skip them as they aren't that entertaining, and simply use hand drawn cutouts of the protagonists flipping in and out of view, like those skit thingies in the Tales series. Terrible voice acting, either high camp or monotone droning. One of the guys sounds like he's doing a poo as he reads out the lines, which was quite amusing.
The anime is quite nice, and looks anime-ish (if that's your thing), but again is in Japanese. Bad lip sync as well (which is odd). The main UI has smatterings of English and Japanese, and it is fairly easy to work out general battling and moving. The pain comes from the descriptions of all the items/weapons/spells being in Japanese and needing at least 1 shot before you know what they do (and a good memory to remember). The battles are fairly swift, and at the end you get a grade. Even though I thought I did quite well, I've only over got a grade G. Which means I suck. I didn't even think Japanese games gave a grade G. Maybe it means Great! Yeah! (OK, lets not dwell on it).
Is it worth an import? Well, it's never going to get a PAL release, and it is quite rare, so I think it could hold its value quite well. My rule of thumb is - if it's out of stock at play-asia, don't sell. It's not quite as good as Spectral Force 3 (incidentally, a tip - the NTSC-U version of Spectral Force 3 works on an NTSC-J 360, if you want a worthy, slightly dull, but better than Diario, full English tactical RPG on your Xbox) but lets face it, there's hardly a glut of TRPGs on the Xbox. So yes, buy away - as by adding comments to this thread you can actually add to the sum current total Internet buzz about this game. Which is absolutely zero.
Right, I now open myself up to the flood of people who own this on 360 or PS2. I dare you!
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