The Shrine

I would have been all over this one if I had known exactly what it was.

Aside from graphics being visually stunning, comfortable, atmospheric, and very alive - this game is packed with stuff to do. Audiowise, the direction of Hitoshi Sakimoto is top notch; among his best work.

* It's in the realm of Donkey Kong Country in terms of navigation gameplay; in that it is a platformer that the player can move through very quickly. Gathering power-ups as you navigate through the sections of the game. Although, unlike a platformer, the world isn't litered with enemies. There is an encounter system.

* Combat work largely on encounters. You'll see an exclamation mark and then the screen freezes in place and you'll hav enemie to fight. There are a lot of different, and very flashy moves that can be executed. It is similar to a fast paced Street Fighter.

* Towns are unique; on the outside, they have a very Castlevania 2 meets Japan feel to them; that is, they are on multiple levels, and you're not exactly safe. Some houses you enter will be shops, others typical residences, others with treasure, many will have ambushes set up for you, some with ghosts both good and evil.

* Boss battle are fairly long, they take longer than any 2D boss battles I can recall; but you'll enjoy them if you enjoy any 2D game boss battles.

* Size of the world is where this game surprises, it is absolutely huge. Much larger than I could have ever expected. Essentially:
-there is a world map (Japan) and you can navigate to the different provinces.
-Inside each province there is a very large 2D map which (like River City Ransom) can be navigated in more directions than left or right, there are also paths going up and down (intersections) and also multiple paths leading right/left from certain areas. Right now a single province, so far seems to be fairly large, much larger (perhaps several times larger) than other similar 2D games.
-Each province is separated into dozens of smaller sections (like Faxanadu, Zelda 2, or Castlevania); each section usually has stuff to complete (normally people to talk to, battles to fight, items to gather) before moving onto the next.

* The plotline is nice, reminds me VERY much of something like Ninja Scroll or Ninja Ressurection. Fits well with beautiful art, music, and darker atmosphere; although sometimes you'll be travelling and come across vast areas of sun drenched countryside which is a nice change from a dead forest with run down towns and temples.

I really like this game; should have played it sooner. It is still widely available. Very nice offering from Marvelous; well in line with other titles they published and produced like Little King Story and Rune Facory Frontier.

It is by those dudes who made odin sphere, but it actually plays decently enough.

Very interesting gameplay. Also sounds like Sakimoto is trying to compete with Okami with a similar soundtrack. (Which is a good thing, because Okami was an excellent soundtrack.)

Nice vid (despite the quality):

That video seems to jump around a number of the different location styles within the game. Unless that is some really random area that I haven't got to yet. For example, when travelling through a bamboo forest, it won't be just one area before moving onto a different type of area, but probably 8-10.

Otherwise, that video demonstrates the encounter system, and a nice variety of the sorts of areas and enemies that exist in the game. Not included: there's also a lot of platforming, and dialogue stuff in the game; those souls that you get from destroying enemies are also littered throughout area locations in a similar way to bananas in Donkey Kong Country (and with even large bunches of them like the larger bunches in DKC); also the towns and dialogue portions of the game that I spoke about were not demoed in the video.


And yes, Vanillaware was the developer, they used to be the game development portion of Atlus; and now seem to be aligning themselves with Marvelous (who are a very similar company, and distribute games through xSeed and Ignition over here, and Rising Star in Europe). For those not familiar with Marvelous, they're a fairly new company, established in the 90's, who have built themselves up on publishing more niche titles from small development houses (along with their own titles) on PS2, PSP, DS, and Wii. Their most notable series is Harvest Moon, which they acquired after merging with the Harvest Moon developer in 2003.