Gocco of War: If You Like PSO, You Need to Try This

If there's one online, lobby-based game that will always hold a special place in my heart it's Phantasy Star Online and all of the subsequent follow ups that it got. I just loved logging into the hub cities, picking up a quest, finding some people to do it with, then heading out to smack around monsters, get items and materials, then find ways to improve existing equipment or get new gear. It's a simple process, but very enjoyable.

Sadly, nowadays Sega doesn't seem to think Westerners want to play PSO games, so we're stuck patching PSO2 so that it's in English since it looks like the game will never get an official release in this region. Sega's gonna Sega, so we're left fending for ourselves.

Recently, however, an interesting little game just showed up on Steam called Gocco of War, and it hits all of the right buttons for fans of Phantasy Star Online. It's a lobby-based co-op game where players pick-up a quest, then warp to the zone its in, shoot / stab all of the baddies, complete mission objectives, and get various materials from chests strewn throughout the area. When the quest is completed, you'll get some bonus gold, some badges, and get plopped back in the hub city.

From there it's a question of hopping right into the next quest, going to the shop to buy stuff, or depositing the materials at the crafting vendor where you can combine them to either make rarer materials, articles of clothing and so forth, or consuming them to upgrade weapons. These all cost gold as well, but the basic gist is that players get to craft quite a lot of stuff through trial and error between missions. A lot of it is aesthetic, but it's fun nonetheless.

Clothing is pretty much just there for looks as far as I can tell. The only things that affect combat are upgrading weapons and equipping badges that are rewarded at the end of the quests. Badges actually help a fair bit and players can have more than one on at a time. It's a bit of a grind to get them all (something that I'm nowhere near doing yet), as there are 1,600 of them and they are rewarded somewhat randomly after finishing a quest based on performance and the difficulty setting selected when at the quest giver.

When on missions, combat can be toggled between ranged and melee. Personally, I prefer to stick with guns so to keep enemies at a safe distance, and only go melee when I'm getting swarmed and using my sword is the only viable option. Melee does hit for more damage all things being equal, but there is more risk involved.

The nice thing is that this is totally co-op, though, with both an online and offline mode. When online you select a lobby to go to, each capping at 32 players, then when on a quest a total of four players can go together. When in the quest, you get to share rewards, so there isn't any bickering about who gets what. Just hop in, blast stuff, have a good time, and call it a day afterward. If you want to play offline for whatever reason, that's perfectly viable as well. When doing these quests, you'll often find NPCs that will come along and help, so you can still get some wingmen for the mission. It's very carefree and enjoyable regardless of playing online with others or going offline by one's self.

Aesthetically, it's a very cute game with characters sporting a decidedly chibi look, bright colors, and monsters that look almost like plush toys. The music compliments this as well with bouncy, happy tunes playing in the background. It reminds me of something that I'd expect to see during the height of the PlayStation 2's popularity in this regard, and given that it's one of my favorite consoles, I'm just fine with that. My only qualm right now with the visuals is that the frame rate needs work. As it stands, it's a little choppy. The developers are constantly making tweaks to the game, and they've said that 60FPS is on the to-do list, so I'm hopeful this will be addressed soon, as it's about the only thing in Gocca of War that bothers me at the moment.

In the end, though, I'm quite impressed with this game from what time I've spent with it. As someone who really, really likes PSO, this game is a welcome entry on Steam. It's nice that the developers are continuing to support it and there's even plans to add new quests and zones in the future, so there could be even more to do. For now, though, I'm content to enjoy the co-op experience while farming materials to doll out my character. If you consider yourself a fan of Phantasy Star Online, it's well worth trying out Gocco of War. It's the closest thing to a spiritual successor to PSO that I've seen in years.

Artifact Adventure: When an Instruction Book Really Would Have Helped

The day of the instruction manual has largely disappeared in video games. No longer are we required to pour over these booklets if we wanted to make any progress. Over the years, they were slowly replaced, first by in-game tutorials, and then pretty much by the first level of a game. However, there are some times when I really wish games had on. In this case, it came while playing some Artifact Adventure.

It's a small doujin RPG that quietly appeared on Steam a little while ago. As a concept, I actually quite like it as the game places as an open world 8-bit RPG. While some folks like to complain that the RPGs of that era were rather linear I never agreed with that assessment. There were plenty of times in early Final Fantasies and Dragon Quests where I'd hop on a ship, cruise across the ocean, and make landfall on some random continent, then wonder how far I'd make it before some mysterious monster would wipe out my party. Artifact Adventure takes this concept and runs with it, encouraging the player to wander around, talk to people, make decisions with consequences, and just see where things go.

Nonetheless, I really wish there was some sort of manual for the game. The problem is that as players collect these artifacts that they're on an adventure to find they gain new abilities, which should be pretty useful. However, there's no way of telling what the ability will be until you get it. I've made some decent educated guesses based on my years of playing games in the genre and looking at the name of an ability with alright results, but they haven't always been great. A lot of the stuff has fallen under, "Sounds like something a mage would use" so I've been bombarding abilities on my shaman, but it isn't always that easy.

Simply adding a quick list of the artifacts and what they do would have been an immense help here. I'm not asking for a return to the glory days of console RPG documentation with beastiaries, item lists, dungeon maps, and the like (though I would still love to see that some day...). All I want is some basic documentation. If a company is going to go through the trouble of translating the game anyway, why not make such a reference card while they're at it? There's a lot to like about this game, but it's being hampered by not knowing in advance what these artifacts do.

Video: Acceleration of Suguri X-Edition Gameplay Impressions (PC)

It's a game that probably slipped under a lot of people's radars, but Mr. Nash seems to like it.  Acceleration of Suguri X-Edition combines the competitive versus element of fighting games with the speedy blasty action of a shmup.

News: War of the Human Tanks Coming This Fall (PC)

In the past few years, more and more companies have gotten into the act with bringing localized versions of Japanese indie games to the West.  Rockin' Android, Carpe Fulgur, NyuMedia, and now we get to add Fruitbat Factory to the list, as they will be bringing the rather cute-looking War of the Human Tanks to the PC in the Fall.