Chrono Trigger (DS)

Chrono Trigger was originally for the SNES. This was later ported over to the Nintendo DS containing all the features of the PlayStation version, as well as bonus features of its own. This DS version has UI changes / enhancements, bonus dungeons, a new ending and an additional control scheme that uses the touch screen. Everything about the game screams high quality, from the graphics to the story. The plot heavily centers around time travel and it doesn’t even take that long before you’re thrown deeply into it. While you can name your character to anything you want, the protagonist’s default name is Crono. He visits the local festival before he is sucked into various events that has him, along with the friends that he has made, time travelling all over the place. There are two control schemes which you can use simultaneously. The first is the normal button layout and the second is using the touch screen. A neat part is that the touch screen includes shortcuts to the various sub-menus like equipment and saving. Unfortunately, like many games for the SNES era, you can only save at save points.

The game has a turn based combat system with an Active Time Battle (ATB) bar similar to Final Fantasy. While it is turn based, the order of turns is determined by the bar below each character’s stats, thus you may sneak in more turns before your opponent’s if the character is fast enough. The bar continues to get charged even when you’re selecting your move to add to the faster pacing, although you can opt to make it pause instead. The combat options aren’t anything too special these days. You can attack, flee, use items or using special attacks that consume MP. There are combo special attacks where two or three characters are needed to have their ATB bar full in order to execute. One of the neat things about the game is that it eschews the random encounters that are so common in JRPGs of those days. Instead, you can see the enemies on the screen. Getting into contact with them will trigger the battle screen, which takes place on the same screen, there is no transition. It’s quite innovative for the time, although this means it cannot hide the loading screen, instead you have a short awkward noticeable pause as it loads and unloads the battle.

The graphics are distinctly SNES and a remnant from that era. The issue is that it hasn’t aged particular well on a small screen, as it tries to shove in too much detail to the point that it is hard to tell apart some things. The map on the lower screen helps but sometimes you don’t realize that there is a chest there or where the path forward is since the 2D overhead nature covers them up. Stacking onto this is how it is easy to get lost and not be sure on where you are supposed to go next. It can be hard to see on the world map which parts are the dungeons you need to go to in order to progress the story. One thing to note is that you have to make sure you save often because if you lose a battle, you’ll have to reload a save. This isn’t normally a big issue except when you encounter an unwinnable fight as part of the story and then when you have control of your characters again, they are all at 1 HP. You probably won’t realize this until you get into battle... It’s also quite frustrating when you’re blindsided by cheap enemies (no matter how leveled up you are) and then lose a ton of progress as you haven’t saved for twenty minutes or so (and you can do a lot in twenty minutes).

Due to the story structure, you will end up trekking back and forth a lot, which can feel tedious. This is a problem that’s further compounded due to the travel system requiring you to run through the same dungeons with unavoidable trash mob fights. This makes it a chore and it’s only until you get to a certain later point in the story where this issue is resolved. While the difficulty is finely balanced for most of the game without a need to grind levels, the final boss can be tough as it requires you to be higher levels. This is thanks to the final boss doing party wide attacks that do immense amounts of damage. You’re expected to have done the optional sidequests to get amazing armor and a decent level, so that’s a little bit unfair. It’s actually really cheap this way when you end up being severely underlevelled if you didn’t do any of the “optional” things when the boss has multiple phases, two to three turns for every one of yours, and does massive party wide damage. With that said, the optional sidequests are where the game shines. It uses the time travel aspect really well, although it is similar to the main story where it doesn’t give you clear directions.

The game also seems to throw in the towel towards the end by having a lot of the later bosses and enemies have access to the dreaded attacks that reduce to your party member’s HP to 1. Bonus points when they use a party wide version of that attack. This is just a cheap and lazy way to add “difficulty”. The story is solid although not amazing, despite the huge potential for being a time travel story. Maybe it’s because it was told so quickly that you don’t get to get even more emotionally attached to the characters. The brisk pacing means that it’s one thing after another. When this is combined with that face that multiple story arcs are being told, sometimes concurrently, its impact is lost until the ending where you can get a bigger picture over it. The ending is great though, after you’ve slogged through the various forms of the final boss, which may be a bit too much even for a final boss.

The game doesn’t take too long to finish at only around 20 hours or so, even longer if you get lost, which is easy to do. There are multiple endings, but the main one you get is satisfying enough. Several of the other endings are joke endings or bad endings, and it is a lot of effort to get them as you’ll need to play a decent portion of the story again. As the endings are influenced by at what point of the story you decide to fight the final boss, it’s quite clever and unique. The optional dungeon is disappointing in that it reuses the dungeons from the game, and then after pushing past those, the new stuff comes. It’s padding to make the post-game stuff last longer. Overall, Chrono Trigger is an impressive game for its time. However, while its mechanics are still sound, newer players might wonder what all the hype was about. Everything is polished but kind of lacks that addictive feel at times. The pacing is quick, which is a double edged sword since it doesn’t waste the player’s time, yet you don’t get to spend enough time with those awesome characters. Nevertheless, it’s still very much worth playing at least once since it’s a great adventure.

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Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Trials and Tribulations (DS)

Phoenix Wright:  Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations is the third game in the series.  It was originally for the Game Boy Advance but was only released in Japan.  It was ported to the Nintendo DS and translated into English.  Naturally, this means that the graphics aren’t going to be the cutting edge 3D graphics the DS was capable of at the time.  Instead, it relies on highly detailed 2D sprites and the game still looks great.  The game is primarily a visual novel.  An annoying part is how you cannot change the speed of the text until you have already read it (thus useless for first time players).  Since the text of the speed varies, if you read it fast, it can be annoying waiting for it.  There are no new gameplay elements added compared to the second game.  However, this also means that there are no additional gimmicks just to say that they had added something new.  The story is the main draw card of the Ace Attorney games anyway, and Trials and Tribulations continue the strong story writing.

The gameplay sequence has you perform investigative elements such as finding clues in the crime scenes, and gathering testimony from witnesses.  Then when you turn up to court, you listen to the witnesses and counter the prosecutor’s arguments with your own.  You refute the witness’s testimony with evidence, or you can press them harder to reveal that there are contradictions and thus they are lying.  There is a health bar which will deplete if you push too far or use the wrong evidence.  There are also various points where if you select the wrong option you will lose and have to restart from a checkpoint.  There will be times where you will not know how to advance and it takes a bit of trial and error.  Once you have found it and the game explains its logic, it makes sense.

A feature of the game is the highly exaggerated characters, who have weird mannerisms and quirks, that would not fly in a real court.  The judge is always the clueless, easily led old guy, and the prosecutors that Phoenix faces against are supposed to be strong, but they end up being some of the weirdest characters around.  The theme of the game has to do with the past.  There are five cases in total.  The first case is set in the past and gives us more of a backstory involving Phoenix Wright and his mentor, Mia Fey.  It is an unexpected turn of events surrounding a murder and it introduces an obviously important character who will turn up later on.  Being the tutorial case, it is fairly easy and short.  There are no investigative elements and it only takes 1.5 hours to complete.  In that short amount of time, it manages to set the tone and personalities of the various characters. 

The second case involves the thief of a priceless artifact.  It starts off with predictable elements such as an overconfident and arrogant character, and a client who is definitely not guilty.  However, the series always likes to play around with your expectations and then defy them and this is exactly what happens here.  It has various plot twists that completely flip the meaning and motivation of each character’s actions.  It also continues the theme of referencing events from previous games.  The third case is the first one to really start to feel lengthy, taking around 3-5 hours to complete.  While there are not as many twists and turns as the previous episode, it is a great murder mystery that manages to hide how the true killer executed their plan.  A returning character is charged for murder.  In the story, it involves a fake Phoenix Wright, inconsistent testimony of events between the accused and all other witnesses, and wacky characters even by the series’ standard.  It takes a while for it to build up momentum but it has a good and satisfying story with its structure and chain of events.

The fourth case is yet another surprise in terms of jumping back into the past and revealing a bit more about a particular character.  In a way, it is an extension of the first case, and we are thrown immediately into the court section without a chance to investigate.  It takes around an hour and a half to finish but reveals so much about the characters.  The fifth and last case, as you can expect, is the longest case in the game, taking around 5-7 hours to complete.  It is very complex but unlike some of the long cases in previous games, it manages to keep its focus on the murder that had happened.  This game was also initially planned as the last featuring Phoenix Wright, so it aimed to close his story and you can feel that in this case.  It manages to wrap up the story around Phoenix’s history from previous games, as well as the earlier cases in this game, and complete it in a fulfilling manner.  Twists and turns were expected and they were delivered, and it leads to a satisfying ending.

Overall, Phoenix Wright:  Ace Attorney – Trials and Tribulations has a great story and is a great game.  While there are no new game mechanics, the gameplay was solid enough already and the most important aspect is the story anyway.  The cases that took place in the past may be a tad bit annoying at times but it was worth it in the end when the final case helped close a chapter in Phoenix Wright’s story.

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Pokemon White Version 2 (DS)

Pokemon White Version 2 is part of the fifth generation of Pokemon games for the Nintendo DS.  It is the third version that typically releases with additional content.  However, for the first time ever, there are two “third versions” and they are both a direct sequel.  The game is set two years after the events of Pokemon White and it still takes place in the Unova region.  You’ll start in the western side of Unova, which we haven’t seen before.  There is a fair amount of changes but it has all the same areas as White, so you’ll be exploring many of the same towns, same caves, and the same ruins for a big chunk of the game.  It gives some familiarity but at the same time, you wish that there were more new things.  To be fair, it has enough changes to still be enjoyable if you haven’t recently played the first.

In addition to the Pokemon Champion storyline, there is another subplot that involves your rival.  He is hot headed and charges forward without thinking to save Pokemon that is currently being kidnapped by Team Plasma.  Team Plasma shows up again as the villains with a new plan, despite being defeated two years ago in White.  White 2 has a strong beginning but it starts to drag on by the time you get half the badges.  This is because the pacing seems to slow down a lot as the towns/cities are spaced further apart, and the Team Plasma subplot has a limited amount of scenes.  Like the previous game, most of the plot occurs right before you attempt to fight the Elite Four and it is over very soon.  It involves the new legendary Kyurem but the motivation of Team Plasma feels similar to previous games so it doesn’t add anything new or interesting.

Unlike the original, you aren’t forced to encounter only Gen 5 Pokemon until you win against the Elite Four.  Pokemon from all generations appear from the very beginning and it is definitely a lot more fun and engaging this way.  The game plays in a top down view, not much has changed and it is effectively the same game with some new features.  White 2 is a minor iteration to White, so it is still mainly 2D sprite-based graphics.  While the environments are rendered in 3D and the game shows this off at times, it doesn’t add too much to the game.  You walk around collecting eight badges by winning against gyms in each city in order to obtain the right to become the Pokemon Champion.  You encounter Pokemon, catch them, level them up and evolve them in a bid to become stronger.

Pokemon battles uses a turn based battle system and you hold a party of up to six Pokemon.  Each Pokemon can access up to four moves, annoyingly, you must forget and replace one if you wanted to learn something new.  Each Pokemon is different, with typings that give them an advantage over another, and leveling them can allow them to evolve into stronger Pokemon.  You’ll be encouraged to experiment and mix and match your way.  You’ll definitely be swapping your Pokemon party around multiple times over your journey.  The game is heavily menu based and thus can feel clunky.  It takes a second or two to load each sub-menu after a button press.  Type advantages continue to be the way to go and allow you to defeat opponents several levels higher than you.  The game overall is fairly easy and if you don’t run away from every random encounter, then you don’t really need to grind, this includes the postgame content too.

There are new additions including the PokeStar Studio minigame, where you participate in creating a new Pokemon movie.  It’s less exciting than it sounds since you just choose from selections to get an ending.  White 2 tries to change things around compared to the first game so that players don’t get too bored from the similarity.  Beating the game, and by that, meaning that you have cleared the Team Plasma subplot, defeated the Elite Four and the Champion to become the Champion yourself, will take around 25-30 hours.  It depends how much time you spend on catching various Pokemon and changing your team around.  However, there is a lot of postgame content.

The postgame content includes the rest of Unova, which is probably around one-third to one-half of what you had already traversed.  Most of these are mainly areas from the original game.  It is still a lot of fun to go through, plus there are a surprising amount of Legendaries to challenge and catch.  Doing these will take 10+ hours at a fast pace.  Perhaps the biggest addition is the Pokemon world Tournament which is there for you to test out your team and eventually battle all gym leaders from previous games!  This alone is hours and hours of extra content, although it really depends how much you like battling.  Overall, Pokemon White Version 2 improves a lot upon the original.  The inclusion of all Pokemon from all previous generations from the very beginning gives it a completely different flavor.  While the story is definitely weaker than the original, everything else is better (or at the very least, the same).  It has more content than you would expect, especially the meaty postgame which is extremely impressive.  Pokemon White Version 2 is definitely worth your time even if you have not yet played the original.

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Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen (DS)

Dragon Quest IV:  Chapters of the Chosen is a remake of the original game for the Nintendo DS.  It features all the additions that the PlayStation had, but enhances the graphics even more.  The game is a typical NES JRPG with the player exploring towns, upgrading equipment, talking to NPCs for sidequests and fighting monsters to gain experience for leveling up.  There is a world map and of course, random battles.  The encounter rate is reasonable and it doesn't feel too high.  The menus are a bit old school and can be a bit fiddly to navigate.  Dragon Quest IV takes an unorthodox approach in its presentation compared to most JRPGs.  Instead of following the hero as they journey through the world, recruiting more characters into their party, the game is split into multiple chapters.  Each chapter will focus on one party member.

Once you have played through their solo chapters, the next chapter will have them band together and have the player finally gain control of a full party.  While this is an interesting take, in the end, it can feel cumbersome and repetitive.  The downside with a separate chapter for each party member is that they all start at level 1.  You will definitely have to grind because otherwise, the monsters will deal significant damage and kill you.  Upon death, you lose half your gold but don't lose anything else, a cheap price to pay compared to other older JRPGs.  The first character is Ragnar, whereby he is part of the royal guard and has heaps of experience as a soldier.  He is tasked with investigating why the children are disappearing from the kingdom.  His chapter is quite short, not only in terms of story but also in terms of dungeons.  The subplot is straightforward and isn't too thrilling.

The second chapter follows Alena, who is a princess and yearns to explore the world in order to grown stronger.  She is joined by two companions so you get to employ a little bit more strategy during battles.  Her chapter is longer than the previous, taking around 2.5 hours.  Naturally, grinding is required in order to comfortably beat monsters and bosses.  A good thing is that Alena gets to explore a bigger chunk of the world.  The third chapter follows Torneko.  He's not a typical protagonist, being a father who's a bit overweight.  He dreams of being a merchant and this makes the chapters a little bit different than the rest.  Instead of a focus on battling monsters, the focus is on earning enough money to fulfill his dream.  This makes the directions in how to progress the story a little bit more annoying and vague but is otherwise enjoyable.

The fourth chapter rounds out the party, following the twin sisters Meena and Maya.  They are dancers but leave town in pursuit of the one that had killed their father.  There's nothing special about this chapter since the twins travel around the land, get into towns and clear dungeons to obtain the items required to advance the story.  In total, it'll take around 7-9 hours to complete the first four chapters introducing you to the various party members before finally allowing you to gain control of the protagonist again.  Chapter 5 finally allows you to control the protagonist, as he finds out he is the chosen one and destined to defeat the great evil.  As he travels across the land, the characters from the previous chapters join him.  Unfortunately, they all join rather easily and abruptly, with no build up.  Thus it doesn't feel plausible at all that they suddenly just join a stranger and then travel with them.

The battle system is a simple turn-based system.  Your characters can attack, use magic or use an item.  There are no complex hidden mechanic but the simplicity works well.  If you set the battle message speed to its fastest setting (which is "1" by the way, not "5"), then battles are a lot more bearable and quicker to boot.  Once you have more than four characters, you can swap them in and out during battle in certain dungeons and on the world map, adding a layer of strategy.  There are some inconveniences to some battle commands.  Trying to escape battles will probably fail more often than not, but perhaps the most annoying thing is that even using a reviving spell can fail.  Considering that your character is usually dead in desperate situations, having it fail twice in a row is quite annoying, frustrating and cheap.  It is worse when, no joke, your revive fails five times in a row in a boss battle.  While this is a staple of the Dragon Quest series, it just feels terrible.

Surprisingly, the action takes place on the lower screen of the DS, while the upper screen will show the map on the overworld, and the character stats during battle.  More impressively is how it uses both screens while you're in a town or dungeon, allowing you to see and plan your path further.  While the game looks to be 2D, you can rotate the camera angle while in towns and dungeons.  The game uses the top-down perspective to hide doors and items from your view.  While you can rotate the camera in towns, you can only do so in specific dungeons.  Thus it can get annoying when the item required by the story is hidden this way and you are encountering random battles all the while trying to find the missing thing.  Despite the promising premise of dedicating a chapter to each party member and having them come together, the story ends up being a very simple affair.  It boils down to the protagonist being the chosen one (with the other party members also the chosens but not as important), travelling around the world to defeating the great evil that threatens the land.

The story has no nuances or any subplots but it works for the most part since the game is short for a JRPG and can be beaten in 20-25 hours.  To give you an idea, the average level of your party members will only be around 35-40 when you get to the final boss.  After you beat the final boss a postgame dungeon is unlocked, packed with more treasures and tougher bosses.  Overall, Dragon Quest IV:  Chapters of the Chosen is a very traditional JRPG, for better or worse.  However, the simplicity of the story and the battle system makes it a lot of fun and gives it a classic feel.  The requirement to grind your characters from level 1 multiple times can get annoying but the good far outweigh the bad in this installment.

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Pokemon White Version (DS)

Pokemon White Version, along with Black Version, marks the beginning of the fifth generation of Pokemon, released for the Nintendo DS.  It features 156 new Pokemon in the new region of Unova and the biggest difference between the two versions is a new area exclusive to each version.  Unlike Pokemon Diamond, Pearl and Platinum, which barely made any visual improvements compared to the Game Boy Advance games, Pokemon White makes some progress to showcase the DS's 3D graphics capability.  It retains the same overhead view as previous games but the outside areas are 3D, it's just not too obvious.  The inside of buildings are still 2D though and 2D sprites are still used during battles.  The camera angles and cutscenes try to showcase the 3D world but it doesn't quite impress when most of the time, it still looks and plays the same as previous 2D games.

There are a bunch of new features but most feels incremental rather than revolutionary.  There are now seasonal cycles which is based upon the current month, as well as day and night based on the DS' dates and clock.  As the seasons change, so too does some of the scenery as well as areas you may be able to access (e.g. in winter, snow has piled on too thick and blocks an optional area).  Two new types of battles are introduced.  Rotation Battles and Triple Battles.  Black Version has mostly rotation battles where you can rotate a trio of Pokemon at any time.  White Version has the triple battles, where three Pokemon fights onscreen at once, with the twist being that each Pokemon can't target all three opponents depending on their position.

The game's premise is similar to all the previous games before it.  You've just grown of age to be able to get your very first Pokemon and then travel the world.  You're paired with two of your best friends as all three of you pick your starter Pokemon and then aim to battle the eight gym leaders scattered around Unova.  The ultimate aim is to get all eight gym badges, challenge the Elite Four and take the title of Champion.  You'll be battling your friends constantly on your travels.  Mixed into all this is the usual villainous team, this time being Team Plasma.  They are one of the oddest team yet and their schemes aren't as clear cut or obvious as previous villains.  They work on the guise of freeing Pokemon... by stealing them from their trainers.  As their theme music is somewhat creepy, you probably won't have the best impression of them.

Surprisingly, White isn't a cakewalk.  The first gym is somewhat challenging and while after the second gym, it gets back to really easy, there are certain sections of the game that might give you a bit of trouble.  However, the difficulty really depends on the type of Pokemon you end up using.  Changing Pokemon often is necessary but adds to the grind because the Pokemon that gym trainers use are usually around 10 levels higher than the wild Pokemon.  The experience gained by Pokemon has been changed somewhat.  Your Pokemon gain experience for participation in battles, however, the bigger the level difference, the more experience they get.  This means that they'll only get a measly amount if your levels are more than 1-3 levels higher, making it frustrating to level at times.

Running through caves and over grass will trigger encounters with wild Pokemon, of which you can either capture for your own use or to gain experience.  The problem with using random encounters is that some areas have absurd encounter rates.  This is not a joke, in some areas, you just want to run through it but are forced into a battle every SINGLE step.  If you're lucky, you may be able to make it two steps before you hit a random battle.  It's tedious, annoying and ridiculous.  It severely hampers exploration and makes the game really hard to enjoy at times.  Using a Max Repel to remove encounters is annoying even if you try and hotkey it to a button, requiring multiple layers of menu to use it and it doesn't even last long.

The other extremely annoying thing is that the AI spams status effects on you.  When they use it, more often than not, it works in their favor (you missing an attack, hitting yourself during confusion etc), but when you use it against them, it feels like there is no effect.  A good example is in the beginning of the game when you use sand-attack to lower the opponent's accuracy four times in a row yet they still never miss.  Compared to them using it just once on you and you miss four times in a row.  Compounding the issue is the way the game wastes your time with slow menu transitions, slow battles (even when you turn off animations) and the fact that the AI still keeps on spamming moves such as protect which just delays the inevitable.

Some of the cities and towns you get to explore are impressive and large, featuring plenty of optional things to find and get.  Trainers are also scattered in the routes in between that force you to battle them.  However, there is a tendency for these trainers in the same routes to use the same Pokemon, which can get really repetitive and stale.  Unfortunately, the game has a few features that either rely heavily on wireless or with interacting with players of the other version (or if you just buy the game twice and have two DS's).  Certain Legendary Pokemons are locked to wireless events or require you to catch Pokemon that is exclusive to Black.  This includes certain Pokemon encounter rates too.  This means that you cannot see everything the game has to offer with only one version of the game and you have no friends who are playing at the same time.

There are some 3D cutscenes that uses both screens at once which are pretty good and looks great.  The difficulty ends up scaling well for the main story of beating the Elite Four, becoming the Unova Champion and foiling Team Plasma's plans.  The final trainers that you battle against have levels that are close to your own if you did not end up grinding much for experience.  Beating the game takes only 20-25 hours, but Pokemon White has a decent amount of postgame content, which brings with it a massive difficulty spike.  This is because trainers now have Pokemon that are 10+ levels about the Elite Four!  While with some strategy this is no issue, there's simply not enough to do to grind the 20+ levels required for a rematch against some of the tougher opponents and rematch against the Elite Four.

Overall, Pokemon White Version is what you'd expect of a Pokemon game.  It makes a few changes and marginally improves the graphics and presentation of the series as a whole.  The decision to limit the first part to only new Unova Pokemon is somewhat weird but gives a sense of cohesion to the game.  There are some niggling issues such as the high encounter rate and random difficulty spikes though.

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Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Justice for All (DS)

Phoenix Wright:  Ace Attorney - Justice for All is a visual novel, original a Game Boy Advance game, it was translated and ported to the Nintendo DS.  You play as the lawyer, Phoenix Wright, whose job is to defend his client and clear them of murder.  The gameplay is a mixture of part visual novel, part point-and-click adventure.  Phoenix will spend time investigating the crime scenes and questioning the witnesses.  Traversing the various settings via a menu, you cannot progress further into the story until you have obtained all the evidence, thus you know you will always have the evidence you need during the Court sections.  During the investigative segments, you have the options to talk to the characters, presenting items to trigger further conversations and examining the environments for evidence.  As you talk to the characters, more about the case in question will emerge.

A new mechanic called the Psyche-Lock is introduced, which is just a fancy way of asking the player to come back until you have enough evidence in order to tease more information from the character.  The court sections are definitely more exciting as this is where all the twists and turns are revealed.  During these sections, Phoenix is able to question the witnesses' testimony, finding contradictions, pressing them and presenting evidence to his advantage.  The "puzzles" are harder this time around, and picking the right evidence can be tough.  There are often leaps of logic in order to identify contradictions and what evidence to present.  Some sections, such as the Testimony, you have unlimited chances and can just keep pressing each statement to trigger the next section.  Other times, you have a Health Bar which depletes if you state the wrong thing or present the wrong evidence, and can result in a game over.

Luckily you can save the game and suspend it at any time.  You can play the game using either the touchscreen or buttons, although the touchscreen is a little bit more intuitive to use.  The writing is the game's drawcard and its strongest point.  Throughout each of the cases, heaps of red herrings and twists are revealed.  There are often times where it feels like it is getting sidetracked and it stretches it a bit when trying to wrap those points back into the plot.  In order to keep surprising the player, it takes a turn to the more fantastical and as a result, is harder to believe.  Returning characters come in the form of the Judge and prosecutors, as well as major side characters who somehow manage to keep getting involved in murder cases.  The case clients are all new characters though.

The cases are long, taking a few hours to get through each one, and even if you have a strong suspicion on who the murderer is, you don't know how or why.  Justice for All blends in the perfect mix of drama and humor.  There are heaps of running gags of the spineless Judge (who is easily swagged, much to many's annoyance), and the seemingly evil prosecutors whose only purpose is to get a guilty verdict on Phoenix's clients, even when it is obvious they are not guilty.  Each case has plenty of highs which are perfectly matched with the adrenaline-pumping music.  The thrills and satisfaction you get when Phoenix yells out an objection and expertly backs it up with logic is unparalleled.  There are a total of four cases.  Unlike the first game, there is no additional bonus case for the DS port, which is disappointing.

Each case takes longer than the previous.  As the first case is a tutorial, it is fairly short but the last will take several hours to complete.  The tutorial starts straight in the courtroom with a classic case of amnesia in order to form the excuse to guide the player through the gameplay flow and mechanics.  The first case is a random murder while the second case has Maya being framed for murder.  The third case is more about how the murder happened considering the situation and the fourth case is a murder that takes place in a hotel where Phoenix is encouraged to take on the client to prove them innocent.  The fourth and final case is definitely one of the best with the highlight being a returning character and the fact that it ends up not turning out to be like the other cases.

The fourth case touches on an element that's interesting, testing Phoenix's integrity and the tough choices that he has to make.  How the case closes was spectacular and neat, fitting perfectly with where it was going.  Towards the end, it did become somewhat of a mess with the trial being dragged on for so long that you start to forget what the initial purpose was.  Luckily, the time investment for the conclusion and ending of the game was worth it all.  The game takes around 15 hours to finish which was approximately the same length as the first game.  Overall, Phoenix Wright:  Ace Attorney - Justice fro All is a fantastic game with an addictive story.  While the majority of the game plays the same, the addition of Psyche-Locks gave it something new but most importantly, the stories of each case was addictive and captures your attention, hooking you until you've seen it through to the end.

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Professor Layton and the Spectre's Call (DS)

Professor Layton and the Spectre's Call is the fourth game in the series (also known as Professor Layton and the Last Specter outside of Europe), exclusively for the Nintendo DS.  It is set as a prequel where Layton first meets Luke and is the first in the prequel trilogy.  In this game, Professor Layton travels to the town of Misthallery, where a giant shadow spectre is turning up in the night to wreck havoc to the houses.  Destroying buildings and bridges alike, it is truly a supernatural mystery.  In this town, Layton meets Luke, who can somehow predict when the spectre will next appear.  The team is rounded out by Layton's new assistant, Emmy, who is able to beat the most beefy of men in physical combat as well as being intellectually gifted.

The team travels around the town, as well as sections of London to solve the mystery, where they will encounter various characters, both new and old (mostly new), including some who are evil.  The characters each have their own quirks, whether these are visual or their personality.  The population has a thing for puzzles and will randomly give you puzzles for no reason (however, sometimes they're integrated and relevant to the scenario which is a bonus when this happens).  The story is told via text dialogue from NPCs and the occasional animated cutscene.  The animation is better than ever before and the game generally has higher quality artwork.  Be warned though that the story is slow going until you hit the last third of the game in which it ramps up the pacing and is really nice.  While the revelation of the spectre can seem a bit underwhelming, the ending was fantastic and emotional.

The voice acting is superb and coupled with the new music that plays in the finale, it really nails the atmosphere.  This is one of the best stories within the series with a neat twist in the finale to simulate a final boss battle.  The series has always mixed story with puzzles and point and click adventure mechanics.  When exploring the world, you will be using the touchscreen to travel around the town, investigating sections by tapping on objects.  There are collectables hidden within the environment and they are hard to find unless you tap on everything.  Travelling between screens can be tedious, especially when you need to travel to a faraway place.  To help alleviate some of this, there is a limited quick travel system by the way of a boat where you can get on and off at certain stops.  This is actually crucial since the map is really big now and certainly unwieldy at times.

There are 170+ puzzles within the game, with 155 that you can access via the story.  The rest are unlocked when you finish the game and are some of the hardest puzzles it has to offer.  There are a variety of puzzles and a lot of them require you to think outside the box.  You'll get word puzzles, logic puzzles, arranging items into a pattern and shifting blocks around.  Some can feel cheap because it's all down to the wording but if you are stuck, you can use a Hint Coin (which is found in the environment) to unlock up to four hints in each puzzle.  However, there are limited Hint Coins available in the game so you need to use them sparingly.  In additional, there are three minigames:  Toy Train, Fish and Puppet Show.  The train minigame allows you to set the path of the train to go via all the stations but have obstacles and limited fuel.  The Fish minigame allows you to set bubbles for the fish to bounce off in order to collect all coins.  The Puppet Show minigame just makes you choose specific actions to match the scene.

Furthermore, if you have the US version ("The Last Specter"), then there is a RPG Professor Layon's London Life.  Unfortunately, the European version dummies this out and is not accessible at all.  If you follow a walkthrough and don't care to solve the puzzles yourself, being only interested in the story, then you can breeze through within 7 hours (same as previous games).  However, play is properly and you will take anywhere from 10-25 hours depending on your skill and how much exploration/backtracking you do.  Overall, Professor Layton and the Spectre's Call presents more of the same great mix of puzzle gameplay ad story.  The plot is intriguing at first and culminates into a grand finale.  This game is definitely worthwhile for fans of the series and is actually also a decent place to start being the beginning of a new trilogy.

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Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors (DS)

Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors is a puzzle visual novel (or point and click adventure) released for the Nintendo DS (and finally ported to PlayStation Vita, PlayStation 4 and PC eight years later!).  The story is told via text, with no voice acting.  Therefore, there is a lot of reading and no option to increase the text speed.  You can skip text that you have already read in a previous playthrough though which helps a lot in speeding things up in subsequent playthroughs.  The game has six endings and in order to have the full experience, you will need to play through the game multiple times to get all those endings as they each reveal a different bit of the overarching narrative.  It also makes the true ending that much sweet as each ending reveals just a tiny tidbit of information, with the true ending revealing all which by that point, you come to realize just how much you actually know.

While reading comprises most of the game, the other part are escape room puzzles where you select and investigate objects in the locked room to find items which you can use, and combine, to help escape.  You will obtain clues within the rooms, combine items to create new ones and minigame puzzles where you need to break codes using the hints you have found.  The game is completely in 2D barring a few animations of doors opening.  Character models have limited animation.  While you can use the physical buttons to advance the text, you have to use the touch screen when solving puzzles as there's no other way to explore.  You turn around in the room using arrows on the touchscreen and touching an object will let you investigate it, which is too cumbersome for a button control scheme anyway.

You get unlimited time with solving the puzzles.  Basically, if you get stuck, you need to select everything that you can see to get as many items as you can but some items can be hard to pick out from the scene.  A sort of hint system would be nice because the puzzles can be hard to decipher, obscure and at times, unintuitive at what you need to do.  Who would have guessed that you need to combine the dry ice with frozen chicken in order to crumble the dry ice?  In terms of the plot, you play as Junpei, who was kidnapped along with eight other people to play the Nonary Game.  Each person wears a bracelet with a number from 1 to 9, there are also nine doors which they must find and explore.  The goal is to find the number "9" door in order to escape.  The twist here is that each door only opens if the digital root of the people entering it (based on their bracelet's number), matches the number on the door, which gives some intense situations when the group realizes that not everyone is going to survive.

Making the game more intense is the fact that the characters only have nine hours to escape.  If they haven't escaped by the end of the nine hour time limit... they all die.  It takes a while for the plot to get going and multiple playthroughs before you finally get answers.  However, by the time you complete the true ending, you feel that the revelation was very clever and it leaves you pondering over what you have just witnessed.  It can really do your head in and gives you a fresh new perspective on what had happened.  It is lovely in the way the story manages to tie together threads from various other endings into one cohesive story.  Even better was the way it utilized the DS's two screens.  That said, the ending left just enough questions unanswered or vague that while it was still satisfying, it doesn't give you complete satisfaction.

Not everything is positive since the game spends a lot of the dialogue stating the obvious like the bracelets have stopped their detonation sequence, or that the character has a knife which can cut through meet.  It can get very repetitive with these pieces of dialogue which adds nothing except pad it out.  You have to repeat puzzles every time in every playthrough which is boring.  The game can get quite gory and unsettling in its descriptions.  Since characters die, it goes into detail explaining the remainders of the body and its effect on the surroundings.  Overall, Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors tells an intriguing story that while slow in the beginning, is really worthwhile by the end of it.  You must be prepared to replay the game multiple times in order to truly appreciate the various plot threads.  While the escape room puzzles are fairly weak in terms of being unintuitive in its explanations and the repetitive nature of the game, it is definitely worth playing.

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The World Ends with You (DS)

The World Ends with You is an action RPG set in the Shibuya district of Tokyo.  Initially released exclusively for the Nintendo DS, it later received a port to mobile devices with a revamped battle system.  This is because the game heavily uses the features unique to the DS, namely, the two screens.  The game has a heavily stylized art direction that's very distinct and holds up really well to this day.  It features 2D graphics and even with the lower resolution of the DS screen, it looks fantastic.  The unique battle system is probably what would make people either hate or love the game.  It's called the Stride Cross Battle System, in which you control two characters independently on two screens at once.  Monsters appear on both the top screen and the bottom screen.  However, each monster pairing on the two screens share the same HP bar, so if you damage the top, you're reducing the same HP bar as if you're damaging the bottom.  This is likewise with your characters, you only lose the game when the whole HP bar is completely depleted as once the HP of one of your characters depletes, any further damage will deplete the other character's.

The confusing part occurs that there are different battle inputs for the top and bottom screen.  The top character attacks via button inputs to create combos.  It has a pattern gimmick minigame, whereby once you match enough you can execute a powerful fusion attack.  The bottom character, which is always the protagonist, Neku, requires the use of the stylus.  Dragging the stylus will move Neku around or dash.  Different attacks will require different types of touch input such as dragging, swiping or tapping.  Attacks take on the form of Pins, thereby allowing you to heavily customize your fighting style.  You can collect Pins (and thus expand your arsenal of attacks) via progressing through the story, defeating enemies or purchasing them from shops.  Neku can initially only equip two pins at once but can eventually up it to six.  It is a confusing battle system for sure at first since it is really difficult to manage two characters at once.  With enough practice though, it is manageable and a lot of fun.  It is challenging and to ease you into it, the top screen's character has an "auto" function where if you leave the character idle, the computer automatically takes over to assist.  It is not recommended though since you can definitely deal a lot more damage if you control it yourself, even if you resort to mashing the button and only paying attention to Neku on the bottom screen.

There are three different characters to pair up with, each with their slight differences in how the combo minigame works.  There are various toggles in the main menu to influence the game.  The player has the option to decrease their character's levels, lowering it will make the game harder but will also increase the drop rate of items from enemies.  You can also change difficulty at any time and once you're far enough into the game, losing a battle means you can retry instantly . One of the neat things is that random encounters don't exist in the game.  The player presses a button to "scan" the area and then tap enemies to engage them.  The game is set in Shibuya with stylized versions of real buildings and landmarks.  It can get confusing at first but is fairly large to explore.  You can buy clothes and food to increase your character's stats, as well as a typical level up system.  As the game plays primarily with the touchscreen, including movement on the field, it is best to play with the DS resting on a desk otherwise you'll probably get hand cramps.  The game is balanced well in terms of difficult.  There were only a few boss battles where it feels cheaty since the bosses like to teleport to different sides of the screen.

With bosses that do like to teleport frequently, it makes focusing on screens at once even harder since they warp too quickly for you to adapt your attacks.  It feels unfair and the final boss battle can be obtuse when it's not too obvious at first glance what you are supposed to do, resulting in it regenerating its health at a faster rate than you can reduce it.  If you're stuck in any battle, most of the time changing your Pins or even lowering the difficulty will allow you to progress.  The story starts off so so in the early beginnings but soon after, gets very interesting.  You quickly develop a bond with Neku and Shiki, and as things are revealed over the game, it just gets better.  Neku wakes up with no memory and is thrust into a game taking place at Shibuya.  He meets and makes a pact with Shiki and together, they must survive 7 days otherwise they will be permanently erased.  They have to participate and complete missions given to them by Reapers, who are also around to erase the Players.  Monsters called Noise roam around to attack Players.  There is one major minigame called Ten Pin Slammer.  It is a ring out game which isn't that fun to play, thankfully you're only forced to play it for the story in a few spots.

After completing the game, you can select any day to replay but keep all your items and stats.  You can also unlock an additional chapter called Another Day, which takes place in a parallel universe.  This chapter mostly involve the minigame and also a boss rush.  Playing through the chapters again completing specific objectives will unlock "Secret Reports" which provide a lot more background to the game, going much deeper into the lore than the game had done so far.  The game spans over three in-game weeks, each with 7 days.  It depends whether know where to go but it can take around 10-20 hours to complete the story.  As you progress through the plot, you can see the character development within Neku, from a reclusive unlikable character when he was first introduced to a loyal, caring, yet still cool, person.  The ending was a bit confusing at first but was good in the end.  There were a few revelations and the slow unraveling of Neku's death was handled really well.  You'll grow to like all the characters and it has some pretty big emotional impacts.  Overall, The World Ends with You is an absolutely stellar game.  It has a unique and fun battle system that doesn't get boring even after you finish the game.  The story told is much more nuanced and detailed than you'd expect.  It is definitely a game that should not be missed if you have a DS.

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Pokemon Platinum (DS)

Pokemon Platinum is the third game in the Generation IV Pokemon games, after Diamond and Pearl.  It is in effect an enhanced update of those two games, with additional Pokemon, improved graphics, changed story elements and new environments to explore.  Since it is a Pokemon game, Platinum has the predictable gameplay and plot, which is to say that they're both solid and easy to understand.  You take the place of a beginner trainer, obtaining your first Pokemon (out of a choice of three) before journeying across Sinnoh.  There are two main story arcs in the plot, the first one is as the player, you are travelling to each city to challenge all eight Gym Leaders in order to be eligible to compete in the Pokemon League.  You aim to defeat the Elite Four and finally the Pokemon Champion to be crowned the Champion yourself.  The other story arc is your frequent encounters with Team Galactic; they predictably are causing trouble and want to take over the world.  A neat element is that you have a rival who starts out with you and will periodically challenge you, growing stronger along with you.  You get to pick their name and this gives it a more personal touch.  The biggest draw here is you get to carry six Pokemon with you at one time to participate in battles.

You encounter Pokemon in the wild, such as walking around in grass or in caves, and by weakening them, you are able to catch them.  You can catch as many Pokemon as you like since you can store them away and retrieve when necessary.  It is a turn-based system, with a paper, scissors, rock weakness system, such as fire is strong against grass, which is in turn strong against water.  The many different types of attacks and Pokemon make the battles dynamic and encourage the player to pay attention.  Pokemon earn experience and can level up, getting stronger in the process.  For certain Pokemon, they will eventually evolve into a stronger form once they reach certain conditions.  If you've played the previous Pokemon games then Platinum will feel right at home.  It has better music than the GBA games and feels nostalgic.  It has 2D graphics through which does not seem much of an improvement to the series and is probably the most disappointing aspect since the DS is capable of more.  One of the really annoying things with Platinum is the high random encounter rates.  You will take one or two steps and then a random encounter occurs.  It's frustrating when you have to travel through a big patch of grass.  You will end up gritting your teeth and deciding to just use an item to eliminate all random encounters towards the end of the game.

Even if you have the willpower to keep random encounters on, you'll come to realize that they do not provide good experience points at all and is a big waste of time.  Platinum has a good balance of difficulty when you don't actively grind to level up your Pokemon as other Trainers you encounter and battle will have Pokemon whose level is about on par or higher than yours.  This is true especially in the beginning of the game when you catch a full party of six Pokemon and need to alternate between them to level them up.  Levelling up Pokemon eventually becomes easier with the introduction of Exp Share, but this only allows one other Pokemon to share the experience gain and is not recommended to use extensively and exclusively for a Pokemon to level up since they won't get the additional stat boosts that normal battles provide.  Soon you'll come to realize that you are playing catch up against other Trainers as the experiences gained are low and enemy Trainers are four to five levels above you.  Gym Leaders start to have a level gap of up to ten levels and this becomes ridiculous at the Elite Four and Pokemon Champion battles where they can be up to 17 levels above you.  This forces you to grind to get your Pokemon to within the Level 55 to 60 range and have a chance of defeating the opponent without being killed in one shot.

It's unfortunate that the game ends up forcing you to spend hours of grinding at the end of the game since it has a slow pace already with waiting times for the animations to play, loading times and slow menus, it's ends up being the last straw and becoming annoying and waste of time.  The fake difficulty with high levels, constant HP restore of opponents and an overabundant usage of confuse ray and paralyze attacks serves more to highlight the unfairness of the enemy AI more than anything since whenever an enemy uses an attack, it will work for them but when you try the same tactic, it will not work half the time.  As touched upon, Platinum is bogged down by inefficient menus, especially item storage and item usage during battle.  You have to trawl through various menus and slowly select the items you want, a more streamlined approach would have been appreciated.  Platinum has all the staples of a Pokemon game including fishing and obtaining a bike for faster travel.  It uses the second screen of the DS in an interesting way as you obtain a Poketech.  This takes up the bottom screen and you can obtain apps during your travels, so you can have a hidden item radar detector, a screen showing the current health of your Pokemon, show the time, and more.

Another returning feature are Pokemon Contests where you compete in the beauty of your Pokemon and if it can impress judges.  Perhaps the biggest and most touted new feature of Platinum is the Distortion World.  This ends up being a massive disappointment since it's a boring maze puzzle in order to reach Giratina.  Unfortunately, the Distortion World is short and as with some other Legendary Pokemon, Giratina has an absurdly low catch rate which makes it annoying as you chuck Pokeball after Pokeball in the hopes that the random number generation falls in your favor.  Even after you become the Pokemon Champion, there is a wealth of post-game content including the return of the Battle Frontier, a place to battle to your heart's content.  Furthermore, there's another smaller island to explore which will take up at least two to four hours with new Pokemon to catch plus new story content.  All in all, the game has so many things to do that it will keep you busy for hours if you decide to complete it all.  Overall, Pokemon Platinum serves more of the great Pokemon gameplay, with 210 Pokemon to encounter in the beginning plus more are introduced after the main story arc.  While the plot is predictable and there are some annoying design choices, this is a fun game.

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Professor Layton and the Lost Future (DS)

Professor Layton and the Lost Future (also known as Professor Layton and the Unwound Future in US) is the third and final game in the original trilogy, the others being Curious Village and Pandora's Box.  It plays pretty much identically to the previous games, being that you use the touchscreen exclusively for the whole game.  You move around by pressing the arrows that appear onscreen, and investigate objects by tapping on them with the stylus.  The key gameplay is finding puzzles and then solving them, and the story that revolves around these puzzles.  The game boasts 168 puzzles, which are a lot!  153 of the puzzles can be found within the story mode, and the remaining 15 serves as bonuses which you must unlock by completing minigames within the story mode, these extra puzzles are extremely hard.  Continuing the trend set by previous games, the rules of each puzzles are explained within one screen, but it is noticeably wordier now.  There are a wide variety of puzzles but there are several types that keep cropping up, so your enjoyment of the game depends on whether you like these types of puzzles or not.

To begin with, there are a bunch of shape based puzzles, which involves moving blocks around on a tiled square when there are only limited empty spaces.  The blocks are usually oddly shaped objects which makes the puzzles harder.  A variation will be swapping the puzzles shown in the blocks around and reconstructing the images in a different way.  The next type of common puzzles are visual-based, designed to confuse you with a tangled mess.  These involves checking which are the two ends of a rope among of mess of ropes, or reshuffling the tangled ropes such that only two are connected.  Further examples include checking how many posters there are on the screen (the posters are taped on top of each other so only the edge and corners peek out) or how many ripples are in a pond when several stones are thrown in.  Tangrams feature in several puzzles, which you need to manipulate by rotating and flipping them.  Then you might have to check out what's the original shape that created the mirrored image.  The wordier puzzles have you reading several statements and then deducing which person is lying or what object it is talking about.

You might have to count some items or be thrown into several mazes with specific conditions, and trying to make it out from one end to another.  Personally, it feels like The Lost Future's puzzles are much harder than previous games.  Thankfully, Hint Coins return, which you gain by tapping in certain areas in the environment, and you use these to unlock hints.  In additional to the three hints given, there is now a Super Hint for each puzzle, which basically gives you the answer.  From the very start of the game you'd notice an uplift in quality.  The animations are smoother and cleaner, not as pixilated anymore.  The artworks are nicer too, as well as the character portraits.  The story is told via the animated cutscenes, dialogue with character portraits and static backgrounds, and fullscreen artworks.  The story has a lot more unusually designed characters this time around, including talking animals.  The game is story-heavy, more so than previous games, with puzzles being infrequent in the earlier parts of the game as it sets the story up.

That said, The Lost Future has the best story out of the three games, it is intriguing but does stall in the middle where it ends up being a big runaround.  Still, it is the biggest story in terms of scale, with a brilliant twist during the climax, and an amazing and emotional ending.  You get to see a side of Professor Layton that you've never seen before, and it was fantastic.  The whole game is worthwhile just for those ending scenes alone.  It contained just the right amount of mystery and drama.  The story begins when Professor Layton and Luke receive a letter from the future, and the pair end up travelling ten years into the future, and have to solve a mystery... with their adversary being the future Professor Layton.  Rounding out the story is a wonderful cast of characters.  The Lost Future also has the biggest map yet for exploration, although it takes place in both present and future London.  However, the tedious nature of walking around makes you wish that there were some sort of fast-travel system.  Furthermore, it is even easier now to miss puzzles during the game as some puzzles require you to interact with an object multiple times before it shows up.

The game blocks progression at certain points and lets you continue only when a specified amount of puzzles are completed.  There are several minigames, including a Parrot minigame, where you draw ropes and the parrot will automatically try to reach from one end of the screen to the other.  Then you'll have the Toy Car minigame, where you place arrows to direct the car around the screen, collecting all the items and reaching the destination.  Finally, there is is a Story Book minigame, where you collect stickers for solving puzzles and filling up a storybook with the appropriate sticker on each page.  After you finish the game, there are several bonuses unlocked depending on how good you were at solving the puzzles.  You will get to unlock profiles, artwork and music.  Overall, Professor Layton and the Lost Future is more of the same, yes, but it refines the formula and gives it a nice graphics boost.  The story is fantastic with an emotional ending.  The Lost Future is highly recommended and is the best game in the series yet.

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Professor Layton and Pandora's Box (DS)

Professor Layton and Pandora's Box is the second game in the series, also known as Diabolical Box in the US.  Once again, released exclusively for the Nintendo DS, it combines an engaging mystery story with puzzle solving gameplay.  Continuing soon after Curious Village, Layton and his sidekick, Luke, find one of their mentor killed by the mysterious Pandora Box and embark on a train to solve the mystery surrounding it.  The story told in this game is intriguing, and the pacing is faster and flows better than the original.  Layton and Luke will meet familiar faces, most of which are predictable.  Throughout their travels, they will dig up further mysteries but thankfully, it doesn't keep building up for the whole game before revealing the answers.  Instead, it slowly rewards you with the mysteries' answers, which works much better.  The plot stalls in the middle of the game when it feels like you haven't made much progress and all you're doing is being bounced back by the characters.  The ending was disappointing and felt anti-climactic.  After the deaths and rumors of vampires etc, the actual reason of why these phenomenon were occurring felt tame and nowhere near as extravagant as it could have been.

The story is told via animated cutscenes, and also character dialogue in which there is a piece of artwork serving as the background.  In a way, Pandora's Box is a visual novel.  The animation appears pixilated even on such a small screen which is disappointing.  Not all dialogue is voice acted, but when it is, the voice actors did a good job.  You advance the story through solving puzzles and also going to various areas to talk to characters and investigating objects.  Unlike the first game, Pandora's Box now have various different areas to explore so you don't have to backtrack as much.  There is the train, the town of Dropstone, and the town of Folsense.  However, you do spend effectively half the game in Folsense where you have to trek all over the town, backtracking and speaking to the same characters again and again.  Still, it does not feel as mundane or repetitive as Curious Village did.  Of course, your enjoyment of this game is heavily reliant upon the quality of the puzzles and at the beginning, the puzzles in Pandora's box is varied enough to be interesting.  Play until the end though and you will find that the types of puzzles are being repeated heavily in a short amount of time.

There are various types of puzzles including logic and deduction puzzles, spot the difference, visual pattern puzzles, word puzzles, and moving oddly shaped objects in order to move another object from the top of the screen to the bottom.  Some of these puzzles are hard, frustrating and abstract.  A lot of them have some kind of word play, where very specific wording will give you the clue in how to solve the puzzle.  Of course, there were more than once where this type of word play was lame and cheap but the game does teach you how to approach puzzles from a different angle.  There is an overabundance of certain types of puzzles, such as mazes that require you to trace and find the shortest route from one end to another, and determining which knots will get caught when pulling on a bunch of tangled ropes.  It's very easy to miss puzzles during the story but thankfully the game collects missed puzzles into one area, although you will miss the character dialogue if you go down this route.  Once again, you play through the entire game using only your stylus and the touchscreen.  What continues to impress is the fact that all the puzzles only require one of the DS's screen for instructions.

There is a new memo pad which allows you to scrawl anything but the resolution of the DS's screen makes it difficult sometimes.  This small resolution also makes it hard for the spot the difference puzzles at times.  There are a few minigames such as a Hamster minigame in which you strategically place objects in order to make the hamster walk as far as possible.  Then you can collect camera parts to unlock spot the difference puzzles and finally, you collect tea ingredients to brew tea and give to NPCs.  Completing this minigames fully will unlock harder puzzles from the main menu.  Pandora's Box boasts over 150 puzzles, of which the story will contain 138.  The remaining 15 puzzles are super hard challenge puzzles which you must unlock first.  Overall, Professor Layton and Pandora's Box is a good puzzle solving game.  How good you are with puzzles will determine how long it'll take for you to complete the game, although some puzzles will bound to give you some pause.  This is a fantastic follow up to the first game with a good story and strong puzzles.

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Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney (DS)

Originally released for the GameBoy Advance, Phoenix Wright:  Ace Attorney was given a graphics uplift and ported to the Nintendo DS.  This is a visual novel focusing on courtroom drama.  You will play as the titular Phoenix Wright, a defense attorney, as he accepts legal cases, gathers evidence and then battle in the courtroom to prove his client's innocence.  Naturally, it is heavily text-based and the main lure here is the well written stories.  There are five cases in total to play through, all of them dealing with murder with Phoenix's job to declare their innocence.  The first case is really short but each new case is longer than the previous.  The characters are endearing and each story is amazing.  You truly feel the power and exhilaration when Phoenix yells out "Objection!" and you prove the witness or prosecutor wrong.  The moment when everything clicks into place at the end of a trial feels great, as the player would have worked hard to get to that point.  The best part of Phoenix Wright is the sense of achievement once you complete each case.  The gameplay involves gathering evidence through talking to people and examining the environment for clues.  This is the part of the game where it's less fun and feels more tedious as the cases go on and you're expected to spend more time in this section.

When scouting for evidence, you go to each setting to talk to people or examine for clues, however, travelling between these places is based on menus.  Each setting has a specific list of places to go, instead of a master list.  This means it will get tedious during the later cases when you are expected to go to the same places multiple times... and not immediately knowing you were supposed to go there.  You'll be travelling through three settings in order to get to the place you want... only to find that maybe you weren't supposed to go here yet and need to go to another place first.  The other gameplay element takes place in court during the trials.  You will be listening to witness's testimonies, either pressing their statements for more information or presenting evidence to expose their contradictions.  Through contradictions, you will be able to deduce what has happened and prove your client is innocent.  In a way, it feels like Phoenix is more like an investigator, who finds out what actually happened rather than just defending his client.  Still, these court proceedings are much more fast paced and fun thanks to the situational pressure placed on the player.  As the cases get more complex, the connections between when to present evidence and when to press witnesses can be hard to determine, since the game only allows five mistakes before a game over.

The game also wins on the music front, with suitable tracks for wins, losses, surprises and more.  It helps with the immersion of the story.  The graphics are sprites with limited animation but still decent.  The backgrounds are much more detailed than expected.  So you will be playing five cases in the game, all of which are murder cases.  The first case is about a friend who is accused of murdering his girlfriend.  This serves as an introduction to Phoenix Wright as the rookie lawyer, his backstory and how the game works overall.  It's a short piece but works well as a tutorial.  The second case is the murder of someone he is close with, and the stakes are high in the case.  There are many twists and turns and is also the case where the handholding of the game just drops off.  You're expected to solve the mystery on your own now.  The third case is when the stories start being a decent length.  It focuses on the murder that took place in a TV studio.  This case has a great plot twist but starts to deviate a bit with exaggerated characters and events.

The fourth case is very long, taking at least 3-4 hours to go through if you know where to go and what to get.  There are a lot of red herrings along the way but it is a superb story that also functions as a backstory.  Solving the murder that occurred recently somehow will also solve a murder from fifteen years ago.  Although vents were exaggerated in how witnesses were called or the dialogue that occurred, it lets you know that something like this will never happen in a real court.  The last case is exclusive to the DS version, which is the longest case yet, taking at least 5-6 hours to clear.  This case has so many plot twists it is not funny.  It has a murder case within a murder case, it is complex and intense.  It tends to sidetrack lending the player to think why they are looking at some stuff when it ends up not being related to the case at hand.  It does wrap up nicely for the ending.  The fifth case also has the honor of using the DS functions during the evidence hunting, using both the touchscreen and the microphone.  Overall, Phoenix Wright:  Ace Attorney is a fantastic game.  It is definitely one of the visual novels out there with a decent amount of gameplay to boot.  It requires logical thinking in order to know how to proceed and the stories are great.  If you have a Nintendo DS, then be sure not to miss this gem.

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Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter (DS)

Drawn to Life:  The Next Chapter is a sequel to the original Drawn to Life game.  Interestingly, two sequels with this name were made, one for the Nintendo DS and one for the Wii, both of which actually had different plot, graphics and gameplay.  In The Next Chapter for the DS, the player takes on the role as the Creator, a god to the people of the game world, able to materialize your drawings into the world.  The population knows that you exist and will often call upon you to help them out.  There is a robust story and starts off with a pretty pre-rendered sequence showing the antagonist Wilbre kidnapping Heather (a returning character from the previous game).  Wilbre then proceeds to drain the village of color, leaving only the ink outlines.  The villagers use the Book of Life and call upon the Creator for help, to which a hero is drawn and created to save the day.  The hero travels to various villages to help restore color, solve that village's problems and in the end, save Heather.  There are four villages in total and each one has a subplot where they have encountered some sort of issue.  You'll end up helping a person get their lost voice back, discover a village with ridiculous laws and help overthrow a tyrant.  While the story is quite deep for a game of this genre, it is also its weakness, which shows right from the beginning.

You see, the game starts off with a super long cutscene to set up the story which felt like a hindrance.  You're sitting there waiting and waiting until you can actually control your character but it takes a while.  There are constant cutscenes playing which breaks the flow of the game at times due to their length.  In the end, it is a simple story which yet takes a long time to tell its tale.  The Next Chapter is a platform adventure game presented as a 2D sidescroller.  As the hero, you will have access to a sword, springing punch and a projectile weapon, all of which are drawn by the player.  These weapons can be upgraded with extra moves through coins collected throughout the levels.  Expect to jump from platform to platform, swim underwater, slash at enemies and swing on vines.  It's a classic platformer with heaps of fun.  The core mechanics of Drawn to Life is the ability to draw at specific points in the story which it then brings to life into the game.  What you draw will influence how certain objects look like in the world such as the platforms, balls, birds and transport vehicles.  Of course, the hero, i.e. the character you control, is one that you have drawn yourself, which makes no two games alike and unique to each player.  It is something special when you see your own creation move, jump and interact in the game world.

However, it is hard to draw something in detail though so you will often opt for simplicity.  Plus, for your character, there is no point in having a lot of detail as it will get shrunken down for gameplay, which means it ends up losing all of that detail anyway.  The game plays on the bottom of the touchscreen, with a map and collectibles screen above.  There is an overworld where the cutscenes and level select happens.  Each level has a Pirate Coin which is hidden and sometimes there will also be a hidden person for you to find and save.  There are normal coins scattered throughout the levels to purchase items, and paint pellets to help recolor the world.  From time to time, there will be simple puzzles in which you draw platforms to traverse across big gaps.  The constant engagement of the player to draw items into the game keeps your attention and makes the game fun.  The mechanics are simple to master and makes it a blast to go through the levels, you pretty much only have a jump button and an attack button, although you are able to switch weapons at any time.  Later on in the game, you are able to change forms:  either a blob or a spider.  The blob can shrink to move into tight spaces while the spider can walk on walls and ceilings, both come with the downside of reduced attack ability.

Later levels are naturally harder, needing to dodge stronger enemies who fire projectiles, dropping platforms, acid etc.  However, the last few levels stray into the territory of being annoying with the sudden deaths, requirement to constantly change forms wasting time, time limits in the form of a wall of lava chasing you which end up being trial and error gameplay and random doors that you must choose to get to the end of the level.  The Next Chapter has a great art direction, being a cartoony 2D.  The graphics are great and shines through, with different environments such as castles, space, forests and underground caverns.  The level design is towards the simpler side which makes it easy to traverse and no frustrations.  The ending is hard to understand at first and requires some deep thought, be sure to keep watching through the credits.  There are two emotional scenes in the game, the first one being when the mother sings for the son, and the second scene is the ending when you realize what the Drawn to Life games were about.  The music is actually a highlight of the game, being catchy when required and sad when needed.  The Next Chapter takes around 8-9 hours to finish, plus probably another hour or so for backtracking for the remaining collectibles, this is not a hard game.  Overall, Drawn to Life:  The Next Chapter is a hidden gem, with a charming world and excellent game play, bound by a unique concept that works well, it is definitely a great game.

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Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS)

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a puzzle adventure game exclusively for the Nintendo DS, developed by Level 5, known for games such as Dragon Quest VIII and Rogue Galaxy.  It is a charming game with very nice aesthetics.  The game boasts 135 puzzles, however, these puzzles are designed to be short.  All puzzles are solved using input from the touchscreen, with the instructions displayed on the top screen.  In fact, you can play the whole game using only the stylus and the touchscreen since progression is through tapping areas.  Of course, the game heavily relies on the quality of its puzzles and the first one is so easy and kind of lame that you feel might have set the tone for the rest of the puzzles.  Thankfully, the game has puzzles which are ingenious, such as the mathematical ones, however, there are more than its fair share of puzzles where the trick is a play on words, which feels lame.  The game has more good puzzles than bad mind you.  Naturally, you will get stuck in puzzles.  When you're exploring the village of St Mystere, you are able to tap the screen on specific environmental objects to obtain hint coins.  These hint coins will unlock one of three hints to aid you in puzzles.

Each puzzle will also award you with "picarats", the higher the number, the harder the puzzle.  Getting as much of these picarats as possible not only is a mean of showing off your intellect through your high score, it also unlocks some in-game bonuses.  Tapping environmental objects may also reveal hidden puzzles which are not required for story mode.  If you find a puzzle that is too hard, you can give up on them.  You can also replay puzzles at any time.  Solutions are given at the end of each puzzle but sometimes it does not provide enough information for you to find out the most efficient way to get to the answer.  Even if you miss finding a puzzle and pass the point of no return for it, there is an area for you to catch up on these missed puzzles.  This is a nice feature and removes the stress of not experiencing everything the game has to offer.  There are various types of puzzles, and some vary in style to each other by a huge margin.  Types of puzzles including mathematical (such as using simultaneous equations), sliding block puzzles, word play and riddles.  In one puzzle, you might be asked to solve a chess problem, in another, you will be given three water pitchers of varying sizes and aim to get a certain amount of liquid in each one.

Other puzzles might ask you to move a matchstick in a diagram to make a new diagram.  The impressive thing is that all these puzzles only require one screen of instructions, and considering the small DS screen, this is quite an accomplishment.  The huge variety also means that you can look forward to the next one even if you don't like the one you have just encountered.  These puzzles are great at teaching you to think differently, it gets you to think about what matters when presented with a problem, and that not everything is relevant.  That said, some of the puzzles are extremely difficult and abstract such that when you get the answer, you feel as if it's a bit of a stretch to assume someone can make the connection without outside help.  The story is about a Baron who died leaving a huge inheritance to the person who can find the golden apple within the village of St Mystere.  The Baroness hires Layton to find the golden apple, once he arrives, Layton and his sidekick Luke notices something odd with the village.  Everyone loves puzzles and strange events after another continues to occur.  The story is presented in textboxes with character portraits and static backgrounds.  There is complete English voiceovers which is nice.

From time to time, there is also animated scenes, although the low resolution of the DS screen does not do these animations justice.  The ending was a little bit predictable but the rapid revelations of all the mysteries during the climax was enjoyable.  The villain felt tacked on and as the game was developed with a trilogy in mind, it ends in a "To be continued" note after the credits.  The game is great fun in bursts but the puzzles get stagnant if you play for long periods of time.  The other thing is that you will be traversing the same areas within the village multiple times, which get boring especially when you don't want to risk missing a puzzle so you end up talking to everyone again and again.  Dependent of your skill level, the game takes around 7-8 hours to finish completely, and replay value is limited as you'll have the most fun if you haven't encountered the puzzles before.  The game provides some bonuses such as music, artwork and extra super difficult puzzles.  Overall, Professor Layton and the Curious Village is a fun game.  Merging such a huge variety of puzzles with a coherent and engaging storyline is difficult but Level 5 have managed to do it well here.  This is a game that is definitely worth a play since it tests your intellect and is a game experience you would not have encountered before.

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