So here’s the deal, if you already own a 3DS, be sure that you log into the eShop before midnight on August 11th, because anyone who has logged into the eShop before that date will be treated to a selection of free downloadable games. Most of us should have already done this since there is the free Pokedex 3D to be had and also the new Nintendo Video feature. If you haven’t, well then you better get your butt in there! When you log into the eShop, your account will be recognized as an “Ambassador”. With your Ambassador status, starting September 1st there will be a selection of Nintendo games available for free for you to download. By the end of 2011 there will be a total of 20 free games available to you, and the titles are no slouches either.

If you want the full details of this offer, you can read the full press release on the Nintendo site here:

http://www.nintendo.com/corp/nintendo3ds/news/

Happy gaming!

Animal Crossing 3DS
Enough chatter about the 3DS itself, it’s time to talk games, and first up I want to talk about Animal Crossing 3DS. The game was shown off at this past E3 (2011), but it was just an unplayable movie demo of game footage which had led to much pessimism over a timely release date. On the bright side though, we do know that it is definitely coming, and Nintendo has a page dedicated to it that was posted during E3. You can check out this page, which has both video footage and screenshots of the upcoming game:

http://e3src.nintendo.com/games/detail/#/3ds/animalcrossing

What we can glean so far from the information given and things speculated on by watching the videos is that you will be able to be mayor of your town, and you will have a secretary who presumably will help you accomplish certain tasks, as that is generally what secretaries do. Player characters are now taller and we can see the bottom half of their body better, and there has been indication that you will have pants and skirts along with your tops. Also clearly visible on the video footage is that your character can now don a wetsuit and go swimming and diving underwater presumably to scavenge for things. Aside from this there is also that suspicious box in the center of a flower garden that many speculate is a type of bee skep. Can we entice bees into producing honey for us now? Only time will tell, but with each little pebble of something new I see I become more hopeful for an early arrival of this game! Of course if you have kept track of this blog at all in the past you know that I am an avid Animal Crossing fan, and this game will be a must have for my collection….and it was also partly responsible for my haste to purchase the system this summer.

Harvest Moon: A Tale of Two Towns 3D
The next game I want to mention is Harvest Moon: A Tale of Two Towns. This game will be released both on the 3DS as well as the original DS. A bonafide set in stone release date hasn’t really been set yet, but I would not find it unreasonable to expect this game by the end of summer. Currently the speculated release date is September 13th, but anyone with experience in waiting for a game from Natsume knows that setting back release dates is kind of a religion for them. It would be excellent to have this game in September, but it wouldn’t kill me to wait for October.

So, you may be wondering what will be different between the 3DS version and the regular DS version, and there are a couple things that have been confirmed by E3 convention goers, one of which is the addition of an animal petting game and the other is the ability to streetpass to exchange/share crops and such. Could there be more differences than that, sure there could be since game developers don’t usually like to provide complete spoilers, but that could also be the only difference as well. Either way I will be purchasing the 3DS version since I’m lovin’ the 3D and I want as much extra Harvest Mooning as possible, lol. XD

I think I wrote about this game before, so I won’t go into much game play specifics, but here is an overview. You will be able to choose between living in two different rival towns, one of which focuses on crops and the other which focuses on ranching. You are of course free to move to the opposing town during the game, and overall the story goal is to get the two towns to be friendly again and open up the tunnel the links them. Aside from these goals are of course your personal farming and marriage goals, but there will also be a quest system in which you can take odd jobs from villagers to improve your relationship with them. This game will also have “reverse proposals” in which the guy can propose to you, instead of you being the one to put in all of the effort. E3 footage of the game also gave more information about the wilderness area between the two towns, which can be used for scavenging and encountering wild animals, some of which may be hostile and could harm you! The developers say that this will be the largest area of wilderness yet in an HM game, so we can hope for a lot of things to do!

Luigi’s Mansion 2
Another game to keep an eye out for is Luigi’s Mansion 2, which probably won’t be released until early next year. I remember playing the first Luigi’s mansion, which was incredibly fun, so I am definitely looking forward to this title. Along with improved graphics, you are going to have not only 1 house to bust ghosts in, but several! Of course from gameplay trailers it looks like the basics of the game are still intact, you adventure through a haunted house sucking up Boos and such with your trusty vacuum of doom. You can check out the game trailers and screenshots at the official Nintendo site here:

http://e3src.nintendo.com/games/detail/#/3ds/luigismansion

I should also mention that if you own a 3DS you can download the same trailer for free from the 3DS shop and view the footage in it’s full 3D glory, and I do seriously mean that. The depth and space created with the 3D effect is fabulous for this game and overall the graphics are quite a bit better than the original Gamecube game.

Fantasy Life
When I stumbled upon the scant amount of information for this game I became instantly excited. Here is a game where it appears you make your own custom character, which looks like it’s kind of on the same level of customization you find in the Mii Maker. The trailer shows you adjusting the height and face shape of your character, so I’m imagining/hoping you’ll be able to choose hairstyles, eyes and more.

So, with this custom character you embark on a casual RPG/life simulation game that starts in an endearing little town. The graphics have a little bit of a Professor Layton flavour, which is nice since I fully enjoyed the Layton games and the sort of whimsy the art provides. Anyhow if you watch the game trailer closely you will see a few in game activities that can be had, such as fishing, farming, adventuring, magic and more, all depending on which of 20 jobs you decide to take. On top of this it looks like the game is also going to utilize network gameplay so hopefully there will be the opportunity to streetpass and such. Finally, as if things couldn’t get any better, the game will also have Yoshitaka Amano doing the character illustrations and Nobuo Uematsu creating the music!

The only bad thing about this game is that it’s not even out yet in Japan, which of course means a looong wait for us in the states…so sad. (ToT) However it seems to me that LEVEL-5 isn’t as slow as other game companies in getting games translated for the North American Market…or at least as not as slow at Natsume, blargh. XP So hopefully we can expect it within a year of it’s release in Japan. Anyhow, here is the link to the official Japanese site if you’d like to keep track of the game: http://www.level5.co.jp/products/fantasylife/

Also here is the link to the awesome little trailer that should make you starry eyed like me if you love this kind of stuff!http://youtu.be/gdNiuvuypH4

Professor Layton and the Mask of Miracle
With a possible release for sometime in the fall or holiday season of this year, this title is another that you can look forward to sooner rather than later. Again, as in all Layton games, the professor and his sidekick Luke go around town and solve puzzles to figure out the greater mystery of the game. I haven’t read too much about this game to be honest, but it’s Professor Layton, a series I have come to love and trust, so really you can count me in as a buyer without even knowing much about the game ^^;. It will of course be interesting to see how the 3D pans out for this game. The game trailer I’ve seen so far shows an interesting 3D puzzle and more depth being given to the scenery without loosing the wonderful and whimsical 2D drawings that these games are known for. So, without further ado, here is the link to the Layton and the Mask of Miracle trailer: http://youtu.be/RTKVHaXCh4A

So far those are the five titles I am keeping an eye out for, but of course with a little more research and time to blog, I’m sure I could expand on this list.

To be honest, after trying out the first Rune Factory game, I didn’t really give much of a hoot for the series, mainly because you couldn’t play as a girl and woo bachelors. After finally being able to play as a girl in Harvest Moon, I just haven’t been able to go back to playing the other side. Guys really don’t know how lucky they are to always be able to play their own gender in most everything. :p Anyway I digress…. Now, just because I didn’t play any of the others beyond the first one doesn’t mean I haven’t been interested in the series. I’ve always thought that the character designs were beautiful, and the idea of battling monsters AND farming has always been appealing. Really it was just the one hang up of not being able to play my own gender that held me back from the games.

Well…..it appears now the day has finally come where I will no longer have to hold back!! It’s true, you can play as both a girl and boy in this newest installment of Rune Factory! Of course 100% of the details are not known at the moment seeing as it’s not due out in Japan until February 2011, but I imagine as we get closer to the launch date we will find out more info. As it stands now, you can play as Azel or Sonia, and apparently you get to switch back and forth between the two in the beginning of the game. Rumor has it though that eventually around midway through the game you have to choose which character you want to play for the rest of the game…..though I figure that is mostly speculation at this point.

The good news is that there are heroes, aka marriageable bachelors for Sonia. Currently only two heroes are listed on the official site, those being James and Joe. However there appears to be at least one more hero for Sonia to woo who made a brief appearance in the trailer, and in this screenshot from Famitsu on the right. He appears to be a brunette with glasses for all of you who have glasses moe. So far though, the official site seems to mainly be focusing on Azel and his dating and marriage candidates, which is a little disappointing. Hopefully more of Sonia’s screenshots will be posted in the future.

Anyhow, overall the game looks gorgeous and the battle system seems way better than previous incarnations of this series. The game with be out February 24th in Japan, so by then we should know a lot more. I figure that this game will be easily be picked up for the North American market since the other Rune Factories have been, and rather quickly at that….well at least faster than some Harvest Moon games. Another nice thing of note is that this will be coming out for both the Wii and the PS3, which is nice for me since I only have a Wii.

Here is the link to the official site so you can continue to watch for new info:
http://www.mmv.co.jp/special/game/runeoceans/

First thing you are going to want to do is register, so just click the link that I circled in the screenshot above, which will take you to the new registration page.

After clicking the link, you will wind up here where they are asking for your email address so they can send you one of those activation emails. Just put in your email, and click the send button which is circled.

After you click send, you are going to get this confirmation page, which asks you to go find the email they just sent and click the activation link. Just leave this page alone for now, and go log into your email.

The email should be easy for you to fine because it will probably be one of the few Japanese emails you will have in your inbox….unless of course you know Japanese and frequent lots of Japanese sites, in which case, what are you doing reading this tutorial? XD OK enough humor. Find the email and click the big long activation link which you can find as seen in the picture above.

After clicking the link, you should see the above pic, which is thee almighty registration screen. You should be able to follow my notes and fill everything out up to the security question for password retrieval. Go ahead and fill everything out as you like, keeping in mind the character limits which I’ve boxed and also the fact that you must use all lowercase alpha-numeric characters.

OK, so here are my translations of the questions. I’m not 100% positive that the second one is asking for your mother’s maiden name, but it has the kanji for mother in it and so in context one can conclude that without reading the rest of the kanji. Anyway, choose whichever question you think you will most easily remember, and if you have to, take a screenshot of it and save it on your computer if you think you will have trouble. On the line below, type in your answer. Your answer can be in English so don’t worry!

OK, so after you have everything else filled out, scroll down to the bottom, click the box that says you read their legal mumbo jumbo and then click the green button. At this point you will be redirected out to the main page where you can now login!

OK, here is the login box screenie for those of you who need extra help. It’s your basic login box, you enter your user ID, password and click login. Once you’ve logged in, you will then need to click the game start button to start the game, which is right above the login box. Well, I hope this helped everyone who wants to try it out, and I hope you enjoy the game!

I just recently discovered that there was a free, online version of Harvest Moon available to play at the Marvelous Entertainment’s Bokumono site. The site and game are of course in Japanese and you will need to register through Moog in order to play, but it is quite easy to do so if you know your Japanese. If you do not know any Japanese, then things will be a little more difficult. ^^; However you can always cut and paste the registration pages’ text into an online translator to help you out.

Once you register, you can start playing right away. In Minna de Bokujou Monogatari, you are basically going to be taking quests and doing farming using the harvest sprites. This game is really very much like Zynga’s Frontierville in game mechanics, but it has that decided Harvest Moon flair. I really hate to say it, but currently it’s looking like just another social farming sim. Of course for the Harvest Moon lover it’s always nice to get you fix with new games and material. Right now I’ve just been completing what appears to be some newbie quests. The game is really not a difficult read if you have a couple years of Japanese language knowledge under your belt. If you don’t know any Japanese, you may find things a little more difficult, as you really need to be able to read your quest requirements. There is a decent amount of kanji in this game as well, so for the non-speaker you are probably going to have to have a good dictionary like denshi jisho at the ready if you want to make it through.

Here is the link to the main site:
http://pc.bokumono.com/

As I promised in my last posting, here is some basic info on dungeons in CCT that you can add to what you already know from the tutorial. So, after you decide to send your chocobo into a dungeon you will head to the map. As a beginner, there are only a few areas available to you. For the most part you are going to be using the Stone Step nearly exclusively until you get your chocobo up to having AT LEAST one full star in every stat and stamina. Sure it sounds nice to be able to send them into the Brick Cairn for 6 hours and leaving them, BUT you will have to closely babysit them otherwise you will return 20 minutes later to a passed out chocobo.

So after you choose your dungeon you will get your last chance to change your chocobo’s gear and add bonus goods if you like, (but not food). I think the important thing to look at here though is your Chocobo’s stamina. The star level there really gives you an indication of whether or not your chocobo can handle a particular dungeon. Boboko here can be left unattended for a full hour in the Stone Step and come out fine, but to be honest he can’t be left to his own devices in the Brick Cairn yet, which has a difficulty rating of 1 1/2 stars. I just sent him on another crawl through there, and after having adventured for about an hour and a half I had already refilled all of his potions beyond the point at which he would have passed out if I had left him alone.

Okay, so onto the anatomy of the dungeon crawl itself. Here I’ve taken a screenshot of what it looks like when you encounter a monster. Pretty much all dungeons are just repeated walking until an encounter. You can encounter 3 different things in dungeons: monsters, treasure, and traps. Anyway in the screenshot above you can pretty easily make out the HP bar, and the three potions each chocobo is given. One thing they don’t explain in the tutorial is that you can refill those three potions for free and infinitely by click the large potion bottle underneath the HP bar. This makes dungeon crawling a little more interactive if you want it to be, but to be honest it’s rather boring to watch your chocobo walk around in a side scrolling environment for an hour. As I said earlier, if you attempt the Brick Cairn with only one stamina star, YOU WILL have to babysit your chocobo and refill their potions about every hour.

That pretty much cover dungeon crawling for you. You should already be familiar with the screen above that you get when you come to the tower to retrieve your chocobo. In case you didn’t know though, if you choose to watch the replay, you don’t have to watch the whole thing all over again, you basically select each encounter to rewatch those specific encounters. Also what you get at the end is pretty hit or miss. You may get a lot of treasure, or you may get none at all. I am imagining that luck factors into all this, but I haven’t had enough feathers to expend to prove anything yet. If I ever come up with any definitive information on luck, I’ll be sure to make a posting about it.

Visit the Ranching Basics Info

This little pseudo tutorial thing is meant to supplement what you already do in the tutorial quests when you start the game. The information here is just to enhance that and add some new points that they don’t really discuss in the tutorial. Anyway, on with the show now. In the above picture you can see my oldest chocobo “Boboko”. I’ve labeled a few key areas in the screenshot to make it easier to find what I am about to talk about, those aren’t the official labels or anything, but just what I call them.

So first of all up at the top left is your breeder name, which you can change at any time by clicking the pencil icon. Immediately next to that is your Breeder Rank, and following that are your gil, special points and feather amounts. It will pay for you to keep track of your feather amounts since they are very crucial to creating new nests. Now, down below you will see an area that I call the “Status Bar”. In this area you see your Chocobo’s name and how many hours he/she has left until their retirement. Next to that is the “Feed Gauge” for lack of better term, and then the luck gauge. The feed gauge obviously fills when you feed your chocobo food. By feeding your chocobo you help raise his/her stats and also help prepare them for the dungeon. The luck gauge only fills when you apply or remove feathers from your chocobo. As it is, you can only apply feather’s to your neighbor’s chocobos, not your own. You can however remove any feathers that have been placed, including feather’s on your neighbor’s chocobos. Now here is some key information, every time you place and remove feathers, those feathers are expended! That means they go poof and they disappear forever! Therefore the usefulness of adding luck to your chocobos is negotiable. Since feathers are so important for nest building, it may be best not to waste them on luck. As it stands, the placement and removal of one feather will only give your chocobo 15 luck, which isn’t enough really to tell if it gives you better treasure finding ratios in the dungeon or what have you. I am feather poor at the moment, so I’m not in the mood to find out. I will also make note here that every time you leave a dungeon your chocobo is fully dirty an therefore at least loses 15 points of luck…so yeah exchanging feathers sounds less tasty now doesn’t it?

Moving along now, below the “Status Bar” I have labeled the icon area below the “Tool Kit” and the “Stats n’ That” sections. I’m going to start with the toolkit area first. The first icon in the toolkit is the gate to go to the dungeon, but were not going to worry about dungeoneering right now. Next is the shop, where you go buy food and armor, and finally your feed bag/item bag. In the middle there are icons for brushing, removing feathers and breeding, all of which were explained in the tutorial. Breeding could use a more in depth guide, but we’ll save that for later. What is most important here though is in the stat’s n’ that section. The little chocobo head icon will take you to your chocobo’s stats, which are of course important to look at since this is a stat raising/breeding game!

The above screenshot is what you will see after you click the chocobo head icon to review your chocobo’s stats. Starting at the top, it is important to note that you can change your Chocobo’s randomly generated name by clicking the pencil icon. Below the name and birthday/type section you have your stats. Boboko is my second chocobo, which was auto-given to me in the game after you are made to retire your very first chocobo. Usually a chocobo who hasn’t been leveled up at all will have up to one star in any given stat, but should at least have a half star in every stat. Obviously I’ve been working on Boboko for a while and raising his stats. Now, you may notice that underneath the star rankings in the stats, there is a little bar. When that bar fills up completely, you will gain a half star and the bar will return to zero. You fill bars by giving your chocobo food, AND different types of gysahl greens and other foods will raise different stats.

You can discover what stats each type of food will raise by moving your cursor over the desired food. Here you can see that the red gysahl green will raise the strength stat. There are a few foods that will raise all of the stats, but usually they are quite nominal, and really only good for kind of topping off your chocobo’s feed bar. Two types of food right off that bat that raise everything are white gysahl, and turnips. Now I also want you to realize, that raising stats through feeding is VERY SLOW. Don’t expect to see big changes immediately. I’ve had Boboko now for almost half of his lifespan before retirement, and I’ve just now managed to get every stat to have one full star in it. This is why breeding becomes important, so you can breed your chocobo with your neighbor’s chocobo and thus try to preserve some of your hard work. I will get into breeding in another post as I still have a few more investigations to do, and this post has become rather long. I will also cover the basics of sending your chocobos adventuring in another post as well. One last important thing to note about feeding and stat raising is that foods that are the same color as your chocobo will raise their stats a little faster, therefore it may pay to not aim for a fully rounded chocobo, but instead raise the stat they are best in the most and then cross breed with a different chocobo to get a youth with better stats.

Well, hopefully this has helped you understand your stats a little better and has put you on the path to better breeding! Have fun!

Visit the Dungeon Basics Info

Usually over the holidays, I give myself extra lazy time as I figure it’s my “vacation” of sorts. With this extra time, I used it to check out some new social games on Facebook. I was surprised to find that Square-Enix has suddenly decided to join the ranks. Currently they offer two games on Facebook, those being Knights of the Crystals and Chocobo’s Crystal Tower. The above screencap is of Chocobo’s Crystal Tower as you can imagine, but I figure I will start off giving an overview of what I find to be the weaker game, which is Knights of the Crystals unfortunately.

Knights of the Crystals is set up a lot like Final Fantasy Tactics in terms of class systems and taking quests to level up your hero, but that is where the similarities end. When you do battle during your quest, it’s pretty much a matter of clicking a button to enter an encounter, and your success rate is determined by your stats. The game has made it fairly easy for you though to have success every time, as certain things can only be unlocked according to level, or by items in your inventory. In this way, battle is a lot like the really early versions of Dragon Quest, where you go out in the field and suddenly encounter a slime and are told your outcome. All in all it is rather boring, which is disappointing because it seems that with a little more effort they could have something a little more engaging. Boss battles on the other hand are entirely different. During a boss battle you chose two party members from your guild and go fight the boss traditional turn based RPG style, albeit in a flat 2D paper kind of way. Just like in your traditional RPG you select your allies actions, fight, use magic, use item and so on.

Everything you do in Knights of the Crystals takes AP power, which is basically your energy bar, and once you run out you have to wait for it to recharge, or ask your friend for a power pack. You can only use a power pack once every 12 hours or so however. Of course you always have the option to pay real money for more AP, of which you are reminded of frequently. This kind of thing though is run of the mill for all social games, BUT what comes next is not. In your travels you will come to entire quest areas that require special items for you to quest there. These special items of course you have to purchase with real money using their special coins, and are not available to purchase with in game gil. Occasionally though when completing treasure collections or achieving goals you may be given one as a prize, but it is not enough for you to really partake of the additional quests. For me, I find that entirely aggravating, now granted I realize games like Treasure Isle have unlockable lands with their special cash, BUT they give you the opportunity to gain cash, albeit very little. Square-Enix’s games do not give you the opportunity to gain any of their special coins. In my opinion, there is a line you cross where you can take away too much of the game to whereas the non-paying player is really only getting a sample of what they want you to pay for. A good social game will offer a free game to everyone, and have additional bonus things you can get by paying real money that adds to the game, but doesn’t detract from the non-paying players gaming experience. A good example of this would be Pet Society where all of the mechanics of the game, all of the mini games and etc… are available to all players, but specialty items can be purchased with real money, all of which are not necessary to the enjoyment of the game. Not to make Playfish out to be saintly or anything, because I have my own irritation with them, but we will not go there….at least right now.

Ok, so last but not least is Chocobo’s Crystal Tower (CCT), a game which I found infinitely more fun than Knights of the Crystals, but also much more confusing. In CCT, you take on the role of a Chocobo rancher, breeding and raising Chocobo’s to go into dungeon towers and scout out treasures for you. Those of you who played FF7, you will find a heaping helping of nostalgia in this game, as the theme music for the ranch is the old Chocobo ranch in 7 and then of course there is the whole Chocobo breeding and ranching thing. Though unlike the very simplified version of Chocobo ranching in 7, this game is a little more complex. CCT involves a lot of stat raising, of both your breeder stats and your chocobo’s stats. Stat raising for your chocobo is mainly confined to feedings, and his/her adventuring in dungeons. You on the other hand get stats for doing just about everything for your chocobos and even your neighbor’s chocobos. I don’t want to get too in depth with it here, as I plan to make a separate posting about some of the details of ranching later to help out the newcomers to the game. Unfortunately CCT doesn’t have the best of game guides and the in game tutorial, whereas helpful, by no means covers everything, and can be a little dense at times.

I’ll leave off here now, but you can look for a more in depth overview of the gameplay of Chocobo’s Crystal Tower in the near future!