Black Sigil: Blade of the Exiled for DS. Anyone have updates?

[blackthirteen]

To your credit blackthirteen, one of my favorite dungeons in EE was the one where I sailed the boat through it.  I think so much more could be done with vehicles in RPGs that isn't fully realized. 

Trust me, making the boat wander inside a dungeon was an incredibly hard challenge to me, hearing this may sound stupid to most people but RPG Maker has many bugs that make things complicated sometimes. Each time a vehicle entered a new location the music theme became buggy once the vehicle was disembarked, it messed up all the music tracks. Thus making the boat and airship teleport from the World of Light and the World of Shadow was very tricky too. I had to make extra efforts to make it works.

I can’t confirm it yet, but I’m planning to use a submarine with EE2, but due to this bug I’m unsure if I’ll want to deal with this again…

However, in the future I’m intending to make my own RPG Engine, so I’ll have more freedom :)

[Dincrest]

My copy just came in today.  Earlier than I expected.  So unless I'm engaging in debauched ribaldry tonight, I'll post some initial impressions. 

[Buddy]

I'm going to have to order it somewhere else. I called Amazon again today and like a few years ago, they cannot figure why their system won't send DS or PSP games to my address. Makes no sense, it's like the Twilight Zone. Books, DVD's, movies, 360/PS3/Wii games they send to me no problem, but cannot for the life of me get a handheld game sent.

[Lard]

Here's how awesome Amazon is.

Amazon.ca won't stock half the shit that Amazon.com does.

Amazon.com will NOT ship games to Canada, instead telling you to order from Amazon.ca - but refuse to give a reason why.

I literally had to wait until I went back to fucking South Korea to get my hands on a copy of Hotel Dusk, because Amazon refused, under any condition, to sell me a copy.

[Gen Eric Gui]

Here's how awesome Amazon is.

Amazon.ca won't stock half the shit that Amazon.com does.

Amazon.com will NOT ship games to Canada, instead telling you to order from Amazon.ca - but refuse to give a reason why.

I literally had to wait until I went back to fucking South Korea to get my hands on a copy of Hotel Dusk, because Amazon refused, under any condition, to sell me a copy.

Use a site other than Amazon next time?

[Animage]

Supposed arrival tracking date said today.  Hopefully less than 2 hours and I can be playing this.

[blackthirteen]

My copy just came in today.  Earlier than I expected.  So unless I'm engaging in debauched ribaldry tonight, I'll post some initial impressions. 

I'm really looking forward to your previews and final review! :)

[Dincrest]

So far I'm 1.5-2 hours in and I like the game so far.  The plot is still setting up so nothing major has happened yet, though I can sense a lot is going to happen.  I predict this one will be a slow burner.  I like that depending on who you have leading the party, some NPCs say different things.  Pat's E3 story on this game made mention of a possible 7 endings, so I'm still waiting to see where and when I can influence that. 

Graphically, the environments are very detailed- more so than Chrono Trigger or Secret of Mana, which it takes visual influence from.  I like the character art.  The Mode 7 overland is nowhere near as pretty as the rest of the graphics.

The orchestral music sounds quite good through the DS speakers, but is best heard with headphones. 

Gameplay is solid.  The battle system is kinda like Anachronox's which was an ATB type system with options to move your character around the field in lieu of a normal attack (though the difference is that battlefield movement ended your turn in Anachronox and in Black Sigil, after moving the character can still use a spell or special skill.)  Battling is actually fun, so right now I'm not too nonplussed about slow overland movement and a high encounter rate.  The one aspect I find cumbersome is that each character can only carry a limited number of items into battle.  I personally find pooled items more intuitive/streamlined.  The instruction manual did not say how to escape from battle, so I had to figure that out on my own.  I did, but it wasn't 100% intuitive. 

And though saving is typically done at save points or on the overland, there is a quicksave feature.  Anyone who reads my reviews knows that's always something I harp about in my handheld reviews. 

I haven't played enough to encounter any bugs, and hopefully I won't.  I mention this because there's been talk through the grapevine that the game is still buggy.  (Though in the 16-bit days, we would exploit bugs all the time to level up quick.  Except for Phantasy Star 4 where your stats would drop if you went past level 99.)  If it's buggy, what matters is how the company handles it.  When I got Ever17, the first pressings of disc 3 were faulty because the voice tracks wouldn't install properly.  So Hirameki asked us "victims" for the bar code number of our games and sent us properly pressed disc 3's.  So if Black Sigil proves to be unplayably buggy at some point, I'd hope the company doesn't screw us over. 

[DM Kyle E. Miller]

Sounds good, Neal. Thanks for keeping us posted!

[MeshGearFox]

Reading gamestop's review, it sounds like most of the bad vibes I was getting from the game are correct.

[ShadowLaguna]

GameSpot gave it a 6.5.

http://www.gamespot.com/ds/rpg/projectexile/review.html

[Dincrest]

GameSpot has not been too kind lately to handheld traditional RPGs.  I mean, they gave Crimson Gem Saga a 5.0 and it's easily the better game.  I don't fault their complaints for either game, though.  But I wonder if the reviewer forgot that you can move your characters around on the battlefield in order to reach enemies blocked off by battlefield obstacles.  I notice that the review didn't mention any bugs, so we'll see how that goes since the grapevine's been buzzing that the game's buggy.  Some have said it's buggier on a DSi than the DS Lite or DS "fat" and others say the hardware makes negligible difference.  I use a first-gen fat DS. 

Games like Crimson Gem Saga and Black Sigil are comfort food RPGs.  Nothing fancy or pretentious.  It's mac 'n cheese. 

[MeshGearFox]

What's with moving in battle anyway? It looks like if you pick attack and you're out of range, you'll move up to the enemy anyway, in the space of about a turn and a half, whereas if you manually run up to them, you won't attack till the charge bar fills completely again. And you can't seem to DODGE with it.

[Animage]

Completely reminds me of how you had to move in battles in the Legend Of Hero games on PSP.

Very annoying to myself, but easy to get around in battle.

[Dincrest]

Once you move, you can either defend or use a spell/special skill/combo attack.  So even after you move, you're not a sitting duck.  You just can't do a normal attack after you manually move.  And sometimes the battlefields have obstacles in them that characters won't automatically bypass, forcing you to move them.  There is no need to manually move if the battlefield is a flat surface.  Random battlefields can sometimes be arbitrary.  But, if I know a boss's charged attack is going to hit a certain range, I can just run out of its range and defend.    

Admittedly, though, the game does have some gameplay elements that most folks dislike about old school RPGs, such as: items aren't pooled in battles, high encounter rate with paltry money drops, expensive items/equipment, slow overland movement... so this one's definitely try before you buy.  

And I haven't encountered any bugs yet that crashed or froze my game.  

So far, the story and music are the aspects of the game I like best.