The X Button

Crime Scene, Part Fun

It's widely speculated that Shu Takumi, the creator of the Ace Attorney series, is a little tired of protagonist Phoenix Wright's contemporary adventures. Wright's had a long career defending and investigating all sorts of weird characters, but Takumi pulled him out of his modern-day Japan Los Angeles trappings and tossed him into a medieval-fantasy pocket dimension in Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright. Takumi's The Great Ace Attorney goes even farther. Phoenix isn't even the star anymore. We're now in Meiji-era Japan, and our hero is Ryunosuke Naruhodo, ancestor of Phoenix (who was Ryuichi Naruhodo in the original Japanese games). For the game's first case, Ryunosuke finds himself accused of murder and represents himself, learning the ins and outs of the game's slightly skewed justice system.

After that opener, The Great Ace Attorney jumps into its real story. Ryunosuke and his assistant Susato are on a steamer to London, and along the way they land in the thick of a mystery involving Sherlock Holmes himself…and an introduction to the game's investigative methods. Despite its prologue in Japan, The Great Ace Attorney spends most of its case time in England with the informal group of Ryunosuke, Susato, Holmes, and a ten-year-old doctor named Iris Watson. One case might deal with a murder in the middle of a carriage ride, another one with an eccentric Japanese student and his pet cat, and they soon run up against the imposing prosecutor Barok van Zieks. The Great Ace Attorney strings along cases with more obvious literary links than previous games, though it also feels like the start of a new Ace Attorney series. There's the strong promise of a sequel even when the last case is over.

The Great Ace Attorney follows legal sparring along the same lines as previous Phoenix Wright adventures: poke around crime scenes for clues, then use the resulting evidence in rapid courtroom cross-examinations. This time, Ryunosuke works alongside Sherlock during the investigations, bouncing ideas off the esteemed detective and even picking up on details he might've missed. The trials allow for more direct confrontations. As in Professor Layton vs. Phoenix Wright, a defense attorney can cross-examine multiple witnesses at once. What's more, Ryunosuke can work on individual members of the jury, testing their opinions until they toss their flaming knives onto the correct side of the courtroom scale. That's how the British legal system works, even today.

Import Barrier: There's a lot of dialogue, and it's rarely in English beyond the occasional interjections from swan-hatted Jezail Brett. And that stings a bit because…

Domestic Release: Capcom hasn't announced any localization for The Great Ace Attorney. There's always a chance, of course, and perhaps Nintendo could lend a hand. Yes, we're hoping for Nintendo intercession a lot this week.

Best Name: Egg Benedict, a suspicious customer at a pawnshop.

A brief history of Langrisser follows. Masaya started the series back in 1991, introducing players to massive strategic battles full of tiny soldiers, side-view skirmishes, and the lush, suggestive illustrations of Satoshi Urushihara. These were the hallmarks of Langrisser as it wandered across 16-bit systems, checked in with the swiftly doomed PC-FX, strode through the Saturn and PlayStation era, and eventually came to a mediocre end with Langrisser Millennium on the Dreamcast. You couldn't see much of Langrisser in North America unless you picked up the original on the Genesis (under the name Warsong) or imported the later games, but the series gave way to Masaya's Growlanser titles. And more of those came here.

Well, Langrisser is back. Re: Incarnation (it's half a pun, I guess) sets out in a world besieged by flooding, and its protagonist, Ares, is a young hero seeking a magic sword named Excalibur. He's also seeking a loved one who disappeared years ago, in case the clichés weren't layered on thick enough already. Along the way, he'll meet doughty knights, obnoxious rebels, buxom tactical maids, and a new incarnation of Jessica, a recurring celestial avatar in the Langrisser games. Urushihara's art is nowhere to be found, but Hiroshi Kaieda retains the tradition of heroes who sport generous forelocks and heroines who wear next to nothing, right down to female knights in armor and string bikini bottoms. That practice seems a lot creepier when it's applied to younger female characters, however, and Re: Incarnation has several of those.

In gameplay, Langrisser Re: Incarnation retains the overhead-view battles of previous games, and it'll look familiar to any fan of the Fire Emblem series. Characters position themselves on grids and attack in ridiculous-looking scenes of huge-headed figures flailing at each other. At least you can turn off those interludes and streamline the conflict. The game's story also branches out as the player leans toward one of three factions: the Brightness hagiocracy, the imperial military, and the disgruntled misfits of the Darkness cadre. Choosing sides is always an interesting touch, but it's easy to see that this new Langrisser is no Tactics Ogre or even Fire Emblem: Fates.

Import Barrier: The battles follow the usual rules of a strategic RPG, so they're not hard to understand. The dialogue remains in Japanese, though. Oh, and the 3DS has a regional lockout to challenge you.

Domestic Release: No news yet, but even with its suggestive designs, Langrisser Re: Incarnation isn't out of bounds for some North American publishers.

Best Name: The hero's long-lost sister is named Licorice, but that's standard fantasy-anime silliness. I'll go with the bishop-general named Lugner Menteur. That's a name worthy of a Tales RPG.

It's hardly new that Metropolis Defenders lets players built and maintain a city. That was commonplace in video games as far back as the early 1990s, when SimCity reigned over middle-school computer labs and Super NES launch libraries. What's unique is the city's system of defense. For one thing, the metropolis actually transforms and rotates, like a giant tank or one of the traction cities from those partly fun, partly hackneyed Mortal Engines novels.

Interception City can't roam around and devour weaker urban realms, but it's heavily fortified against assaults. In a world that vaguely recalls the cartoonish militancy of Advance Wars, the human race faces a seemingly unstoppable threat from extradimensional monsters. Commanding the last known refuge of civilization, the player directs the city's defenses by placing and upgrading weapons and barriers, while getting little glimpses into the lives of the officials in charge of this delicate fortress.

When monsters arise and threaten the city, players revolve its perimeter to ward off threats and directly control some heavy weapons. After overseeing the upkeep of a city, it's satisfying to target attackers in the crosshairs and fire as they swarm the city. As the city successfully defeats its enemies, it expands and toughens up at the player's direction. While the upkeep of the city involves some spreadsheets and municipal guidelines, the battles come together with a colorful panache. It hardly hurts that the monster designs are the work of Gravity Rush artist Takeshi Oga.

Import Barrier: Some of the more intricate points of city defense require Japanese knowledge…or some patient trial-and-error.

Domestic Release: No one's picked up Metropolis Defenders just yet, but it's had a good share of attention in the English-speaking press. It's the sort of intriguing genre crossbreed that nicely rounds out a niche publisher's catalog.

Best Name: Lovelock, the artillery commander. I assume he's named after James Lovelock, originator of the Gaia Hypothesis. That would be strangely fitting.

Setting off on your own, Xblaze? You started off as an off-shoot of BlazBlue, but now you have a sequel and you're all grown up. Xblaze Lost: Memories isn't really about the BlazBlue series proper, as you'll see little of the disdainful vampire heiresses or self-aggrandizing, nail-wielding ninja superheroes from the fighting games. Instead there's a lineup of magicians, warriors, and intrepid schoolkids hashing things out some 150 years before the events of BlazBlue. And Lost: Memories plunges right into it.

Xblaze Lost: Memories stars a young woman with a rotten family life wracked by her father's bizarre experiments. It's left her with an eyepatch as well as the same voice actress and hair color as BlazBlue's Konoe, but that's probably coincidental. After digging too deep into her own backstory, she awakens in a mysterious inter-dimensional realm, befriends an equally mysterious woman named Nobody, and takes on the moniker of “Me.” She's swiftly pushed into plotlines with characters from the original Xblaze Code: Embryo, often seeing events from the first game with a new viewpoint.

While Code: Embryo unfolded like a visual novel most of the time, Lost: Memories mixes other perspectives with its conversations and character portraits. The player guides “Me” through pixel dungeons from an overhead view. Here she evades traps and enemies while gathering Memory Fragments, which Nobody can change into more useful Memory Crystals that correspond to different characters. Before she'll do that, however, Nobody asks the player trivia questions while she and “Me” cavort in big-headed, ultra-flat form. It's still a visual novel much of the time, so players should prepare for a lot of talking—even inside the dungeons.