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Role Paying

As much as we all mock Square Enix's constant strip-mining of the Final Fantasy name, it's hard to deny the cosmic sense that Theatrhythm makes. Final Fantasy games are known for their grandiose scores, so it fits that Square Enix made a game that's all about the soundtrack. Theatrhythm turns all of the franchise's RPG elements into musical mini-games. Cinematic cut-scenes become backdrops as chains of sounds unfold on the screen. Characters wandering about the overworld are accompanied by a string of beeping notes. Battles line up four characters and make them flail at oncoming streams of music in order to attack enemies or deflect blows. And all of this is accomplished much like other rhythmic action games: players tap at the 3DS touch screen and jab the directional pad to stay in tune with whatever's on display.

As in Dissidia, Theatrhythm rounds up the leads of many previous Final Fantasies, picking at least two from each numbered game. Tactics is once again left in the cold, though it's nice to see supporting characters like Rydia, Vivi, and Faris get some recognition (even in weirdly uniform doll-faced form). The game's selection of music is a bit more obvious. While each game contributes over a dozen tracks, they're all apparently chosen more for their familiarity than for how well they fit the gameplay. Still, popular Final Fantasy beats like “The Man With the Machine Gun” and Celes' theme work fairly well amid the screen-tapping and button-clicking.

Import Barrier: It's all easy to pick up as far as the gameplay goes. Unfortunately, Japanese 3DS games are region-locked.

Chances of a Domestic Release: Despite the lack of an official date, it's very, very likely that we'll see this here. I would say that a U.S. launch is certain when it comes to any game with Final Fantasy in its title, but we're still waiting for news about Type-0.

Suikoden is one of those ill-fated series that's spent the past decade or so trying to recapture the heights of its earliest games. Most agree that the first two Suikodens were excellent, unexpectedly well-structured RPGs where players raised an army of over 108 characters. Series creator Yoshitaka Murayama departed during the development of Suikoden III, however, and from there it was a struggle to keep the series in fans' good graces. And the newest entry, Suikoden: The Woven Web of a Century, makes a valiant attempt on the PSP. Apparently set within one of many worlds referenced in the DS-based Suikoden Tierkreis, this new Suikoden deals with some unpleasant monster that shambles out of bed and tries to destroy the world every century or so. But there's a solution: the player-named hero, along with his pals Jino and Myura, is sent 100 years into the past. Without picking up on the finer points of the plot, I assume that it all makes sense somehow.

Konami clearly spent some decent money on Suikoden: The Woven Web of a Century. The animated cutscenes and the soundtrack are quite nice, and the game's battle system offers some new ideas. As the hero and his friends train alongside their ancestors, they'll gain new skills and master various jobs. Players can also see enemies roaming around before battles, and that's a welcome change from the frequent random fights of Suikoden V. Yet all of these strengths don't really evoke the same mood as the best Suikodens. For all of its production values, the game never seems to be more than a half-decent RPG that's straining to fit into the Suikoden mold. With Murayama gone, though, this is the best the Suikoden name may ever get.

Import Barrier: There's plenty of Japanese dialogue to take in over the course of the story, and even the game's battle menu is in kanji. Oh well. At least the PSP's region-free.

Chances of a Domestic Release: Vague. Konami's released every main Suikoden game over here, but they've apparently ditched the fading PSP in favor of the Vita. Any English version of The Woven Web of a Century would most likely show up there.

Nendoroid Generation has curious origins, being a PSP game based on a toy line based on a plethora of anime series and related properties. It's an RPG, but the huge pile-up of characters is the main attraction, as players will see squat Nendoroid versions of heroines from Black Rock Shooter, Steins;Gate, Lucky Star, Kannagi, Haruhi Suzumiya, the Touhou Project, K-On!, Death Note, The Familiar of Zero, Fate/Stay Night, Dog Days, Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Boku-tachi wa Mada Shiranai, and, of course, the Hatsune Miku universe. All of them meet up at a school, venture forth into the wild, get into battles, and unleash a variety of attacks. And then they topple over because their heads are so large and unwieldy. No, wait...they just have humorous little adventures with plenty of in-jokes for the fans.

As an RPG, Nendoroid Generation casts party members as either hard-hitting attackers or supportive performers who dance to power-up the attackers. The dancing element also appears outside of combat, as player make their virtual Nendoroid figurines better fighters by putting them through rigorous dance mini-games. Players can also customize the giant-headed munchkins with a variety of costumes and accessories, much like the real-world toys they resemble. And just to bring the semi-insidious merchandizing full circle, the special edition of the game comes with eight Nendoroid figures: Fate/Stay night's Saber, The Familiar of Zero's Louise, Steins;Gate's Kurisu (Chris?), Touhou's Reimu, Dog Days' Millefiori, and the main characters from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha, Haruhi Suzumiya, and Black Rock Shooter.

Import Barrier: There's the usual round of Japanese text that comes with an RPG, but the game's essentially one big toybox.

Chances of a Domestic Release: None to speak of. Many of the franchises sampled in Nendoroid Generation aren't even available commercially in North America. And with many different companies involved, pesky legal issues will keep this one in Japan.

The Tales series can have pretty much whatever it wants in Japan. If it wants merchandise and manga and perhaps an anime series based on its latest game, those are never out of the question for Namco's biggest RPG series. And if it wants to take a page from the Dynasty Warriors series and make a battlefield brawler where popular Tales characters slash away at droves of enemies…well, no one's going to stop the Tales series. The result is Tales of the Heroes: Twin Brave, a PSP showcase that recreates the direct combat of a Tales RPG as a full-scale action game. The titular heroes pair up and dive into the fray with the same hyper-flashy swordplay and spells used in the main Tales games, though special moves from the grander console games are scaled down a bit for the PSP.

It would be folly for the game to include every last character from every last Tales game, but Twin Brave picks the two most popular from each. You'll see Cress (formerly Cless) Albane and Chester Barklight from Tales of Phantasia; Stahn Aileron and Leon Magnus from Tales of Destiny; Kyle Dunamis and Reala from Tales of Destiny 2; Reid Hershel and Farah Orested from Tales of Eternia (which was Tales of Destiny 2 in the U.S., just for the record); Lloyd Irving and Zelos Wilder from Tales of Symphonia; Emil Castagnier and Marta Lualdi from Tales of Symphonia: Dawn of the New World; Senel Coolidge and Chloe Valens from Tales of Legendia; Veigue Luhnberg and Tytree Crowe from Tales of Rebirth; Luke fon Fabre and Guy Cecil from Tales of the Abyss; Caius Qualls and Rubia Natwick from Tales of the Tempest; Yuri Lowell and Flynn Scifo from Tales of Vesperia; Luca Milda and Spada Belforma from Tales of Innocence; Shing Meteoryte and Kohak Hearts from Tales of Hearts; Asbel Lhant and Cheria Barnes from Tales of Graces; and Jude Mathis and Milla Maxwell from the recent Tales of Xillia. That should be plenty for any…wait, Shing Meteoryte? That can't be a real name, not even in the Tales series. Oh…I guess it is.

Import Barrier: You pick characters, you slash things, and you listen to everyone's Japanese voice-overs. It's not that hard to grasp.

Chances of a Domestic Release: Minimal. Namco often needs a push to release even the major Tales titles in the U.S., and they're certainly not going to bother with a spin-off.

The cover of Mass Effect 3 is a disappointment. In a space-opera RPG that's all about winning many diverse alien races to the side of humanity, Electronic Arts went with a shot of the player's avatar Commander Shepard at his most generic, with not a lizard-like warrior or blue-skinned creature in sight. But there are indeed plenty of them within Mass Effect 3's story. This third Mass Effect opens with a full-scale invasion by the Reapers, a race of machines that spent the last two games getting ready to wipe out all advanced organic life in the galaxy. As they have a go at Earth, Commander Shepard (whose sex and appearance depends on the player's preferences and Mass Effect 2 save data) heads off to rally as many alien cultures as possible and form a fleet capable of defeating the Reapers. So there's a good bit of traveling to do, and nearly all of the supporting characters from previous Mass Effects return—as long as they survived the player's playthrough of previous games.

Mass Effect 3 offers Shepard a good deal of choices in the quest for an army, including a diverse array of responses to other characters' questions, threats, or conversational remarks. If you care nothing for the RPG element of this, you can dispense with dialogue options and go straight to the Action Mode, where the party-based cover-shooter combat is tough and Shepard has predetermined hardass responses. The direct alternative is Story Mode, with its lighter challenge and emphasis on talky plot. RPG Mode lies between the two, using the mixture of decisions and combat that's pretty much the Mass Effect standard. BioWare also promises that Mass Effect 3's elaborate main quest and numerous side adventures will wrap up most of the plot threads from previous games. That could mean that they'll just start a new Mass Effect trilogy before long, but let's not be cynical about it.

Street Fighter X Tekken was announced in a brilliant flourish when Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada mock-crashed Street Fighter producer Yoshinori Ono's panel at Comic-Con 2010. In early glimpses, the game looked to be an amusing crossover as well as a potentially competitive fighter. And it delivered on the first part. Capcom's comical preview videos introduced an extensive (if predictable) lineup of Street Fighter characters. From Street Fighter IV, Capcom pulled Ryu, Ken, Abel, Chun-Li, M. Bison, Juri, Vega, Ibuki, Guile, Dhalsim, Sagat, Cammy, Balrog, Zangief, Rufus, and Akuma. From Final Fight and past Street Fighters, we get Poison, Hugo, and Rolento. And the Tekken side has Kazuya, Jin, Heihachi, Nina, Xiaoyu, Law, Asuka, Paul, Lili, Hwoarang, Julia, Bob, Marduk, Raven, Yoshimitsu, King, Steve, Kuma and Ogre. All of these Tekken folk are fashioned in the distinct style of Street Fighter IV, and the game's tag-team feature lets player pick two characters and mix their attacks together.

But there are problems. A vast number of competitive folk already dislike the game's Gem system, which lets players equip up to three little jewels that boost their stats or simplify the game's more intricate maneuvers. Used to level the playing field for newcomers, the Gem system may degrade Street Fighter X Tekken's traditional competition, especially when certain gems and their advantages can be bought as downloads. Slightly less criticism is thrown at the game's Pandora mode, where one character is removed in order to give his or her partner extra attack power for a limited time. Also contentious is the fact that the Vita version of the game, due out in the fall, will have at least twelve new characters including Elena, last seen in Street Fighter III. For those who take the plunge next week, the PlayStation 3 package seems the better choice, as it has five bonus characters: Sony mascots Toro and Kuro, Cole from Infamous, Pac-Man, and an amusingly accurate version of the Mega Man from the first game's NES box art. The Xbox 360 version has…uh, a bigger case.