The X Button

A Little Soul

Aquapazza firmly plants its feet in a new trend: crossover fighting games that gather up characters from various visual novels and dating sims. So far this whole idea has brought about things like Twinkle Queen, but Aquapazza has a more established pedigree courtesy of Arcana Heart developer Examu. It draws in characters from various Aquaplus and Leaf titles. Utawarerumono contributes Hakuro, Touka, Oboro, and Karura. From Tears to Tiara, we have Riannon, Morgan, and Arawn. The long-running To Heart franchise offers Tamaki, Manaka, Multi, Konomi, and, in her valkyrie-ish Dungeon Travelers getup, Sasara. Kizuato puts up a single contender in Chizuru Kashiwagi, so good for her. Mind you, these are only the directly playable characters. There's a lineup of over a dozen partner characters who can be called upon the midst of battle, and they represent even more franchises, including Comic Party, Routes, and White Album.

All of the characters' good-natured roughhousing fits in the boundaries of a typical four-button fighter: three attacks of ascending power are available, while the fourth button summons your chosen partner. Aquapazza builds on this base with guard-breaking techniques, moves that auto-block during certain frames of animation, and ways to damage an opponent trying to recover from a knock-down. There's also the “Active Emotion System,” which gives aggressive players a boost in attack strength, while defensive strategies are punished. Also key is one's choice of a partner in arms; most of them launch unique strikes at your opponents, but a few will boost the Active Emotion gauge or make it easier to perform combos. Aquapazza's made the rounds in Japanese arcades, and the PlayStation 3 version added a few characters (and, of course, a special edition with plenty of anime-girl merchandise). It's aimed at the fan who's intimately familiar with To Heart or Tears to Tiara, but the underlying gameplay might give Aquapazza a push among the fighting-game throngs.

Import Barrier: The PlayStation 3 is region-free, so no worries there.

Chances of a Domestic Release: Not so good. The anime versions of Utawarerumono, To Heart, and Comic Party were released domestically during the Great American Anime Bubble, but that won't help Aquapazza in the present day.

I find the cover of Soul Hackers intriguing. Originally released for the PlayStation and Saturn, Soul Hackers is a spin-off of the demon-heavy Shin Megami Tensei franchise, and it's full of strange ideas. You're a seemingly normal computer jockey in a cyberpunk-ish future, but a turn in a new online game leaves you carrying the souls of recently deceased demon-hunters. Meanwhile, your best friend Hitomi has her own identity crisis, as she's periodically controlled by a demon called Nemissa. The two (or three) of you soon join up with a team of hackers called the Spookies, who go about summoning monsters, unraveling conspiracies, and using hi-tech pistol COMPs called GUMPs. Yet it's white-haired Nemissa who gets the cover shot for Soul Hackers, and perhaps her outfit isn't the only reason. Despite the obvious duality of their roles, she and Hitomi are one of Shin Megami Tensei's most interesting cases of human-demon symbiosis.

Box-art ruminations aside, Soul Hackers remains a dungeon-crawler from 1997, with a first-person view, some rather basic graphics, and a menu-based battle system. The 3DS version adds quite a bit, though: full voice acting, lots of new animation, 30 extra demons to summon in combat, and a new devil that grows by grabbing friend tags through the system's StreetPass feature. Finishing the central game unlocks a new bonus dungeon featuring other Devil Summoner protagonists, including Raidou Kuzunoha and the original Devil Summoner's hero (who looks darned close to an anime Leisure Suit Larry). Players can also adjust the game's difficulty in the midst of dungeon forays, just in case their StreetPass-raised pet hasn't made enough friends to hold its own.

Import Barrier: Japanese 3DS are still region-locked, and Soul Hackers is a text-heavy game besides.

Chances of a Domestic Release: There's a fair chance that Atlus will release it over here. They're already choked with Shin Megami Tensei games, though, and the dated core of Soul Hackers puts it well behind its more recent relatives.

Ah, there was quite the commotion when Dragon Quest X was announced. Dragon Quest IX had prepared us for the presence of online RPGs in Japan's most popular RPG series, but some people were unprepared for the news that Dragon Quest X would be an online RPG on the Wii. Yes, the Wii, which still has the lowest online presence of the three major consoles. But Dragon Quest X had no problem selling 400,000 copies in its launch week, even boosting Wii system sales in the process. And most players had no problem with the game's paid subscriptions, either, though Square Enix set aside a two-hour block of each day wherein players can enjoy the game for free. It's called “Kids' Time,” but there's nothing to stop adults from jumping in. Well, aside from the Kids' Time chunks being in the after-school hours of 4 to 6 p.m. on weekdays and 1 to 3 p.m. on weekends.

Dragon Quest X's five titular races fill the usual roles of dwarves, elves, and ogres, plus the catlike Pukuripo and the fin-eared Weddies. Players start the game as a simple human, however, and they'll change to another breed once they enter the game's full multiplayer storyline (hence the “awakening” of the five races). These are Dragon Quest races, too, so they're all designed with Akira Toriyama's usual cartoonish appeal, and the base classes available to them include the warrior, the mage, the monk, the thief, the martial-arts expert, and the minstrel. The skills from these rudimentary jobs can be combined to make new professions, however. This allows all sorts of specializations when players form four-character parties and take part in real-time battles and exploration. The group has to choose a leader to direct the game's story, though, and that'll make for some delightful debate among the party.

Import Barrier: Considering that Dragon Quest X's online infrastructure doesn't yet exist in North America, you won't get far by playing this here.

Chances of a Domestic Release: It's a toss-up for the Wii version of the game, as Nintendo's remained silent about bringing it to America. Yet there's a Wii U edition in the future, and it seems much more likely to come here.

Next week is devoid of notable releases, but there's a groundbreaking game headed our way this Friday. Why is Final Fantasy Dimensions groundbreaking? Well, it's the first time Square's had the temerity to charge almost thirty bucks for an iPhone title. That aside, Dimensions is also notable as a game deliberately aimed at the more nostalgic of Final Fantasy nerds, the ones who pine for the franchise's 16-bit days. Like most of the games prior to Final Fantasy VI, crystals are the driving force behind the story here, and they draw together two disparate groups: the Warriors of Light and the Warriors of Darkness. The Light half is led by a kid named Sol and the Dark contingent gets a leader named Nacht, but the characters aren't so Manichean; for example, the Dark group includes two of Sol's childhood friends. Along with these eight leads, there's a lineup of rotating allies to fill slots in the five-character party. They include a dragoon, a bard, an android, a dancer, a one-armed ninja, a dwarf, and a drunkard. Old-school RPGs always needed more alcoholism.

Dimensions uses the same basic, polished-looking sprite art seen in Square's Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, and it adopts a “Job” system reminiscent of Final Fantasy III and V. It covers all the usual suspects in Final Fantasy professions: warriors, monks, thieves, summoners, and three different colors of mage. However, some jobs are exclusive to one side of the dualistic cast. Only warriors of Light can become dragoons, memorists, bards, knights, or elite cat-eared white mages called “devouts,” and only Dark warriors can be rangers, dancers, ninja, dark knights, or high-level black magi. It's a return to the old-school Final Fantasy style that some praise almost a bit too readily, and let's be honest: the price isn't that bad compared to what you'd spend on a new Final Fantasy back in 1993.