Dissidia, In a Nutshell

As everyone who's played Dissidia 012 Final Fantasy's Story Mode can tell you, the story itself isn't clearly revealed even after you've played to the end of it. Therefore, allow me to clear things up and shed some light on the subject.

This information was compiled after carefully studying the events of the game, along with some additional research done through the Web.

(SPOILER ALERT!!! Don't read past the marker if you want to figure things out on your own.)

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As you may already know from the reports, the cycles began in World A, when Chaos, a sentient Manikin created by Onrac researchers with help from Cid, a brilliant Lufenian scientist responsible for the invention of airships in their world, was taken away to be used as a weapon of war from his guardians, Cid and his wife. To force Chaos into obeying, they created another sentient Manikin resembling Cid's wife to take charge of him. This Manikin would be known later on as Cosmos.

Through the wars he was put through, Chaos eventually becomes hateful. When Cid and his wife attempt to rescue Chaos from Onrac, Cid's wife is killed, causing Chaos to finally snap, his power causing an opening in the Interdimensional Rift that sucks him, Cid, and Cosmos into World B.

Stuck there with no idea how to get home, the three are offered a way out by Shinryu, a dragon with a lust for power, who lived in the Rift and happened to observe their arrival. The dragon had sensed Chaos' immense powers and wanted them for his own. Shinryu promised them a way to get back home if they made a pact with him.

The pact made, Chaos and Cosmos gained the ability to summon warriors from other worlds to battle each other until one side loses. Cid, being human unlike the other two and thus may not live through all the cycles, was turned immortal to act as an observer, at the cost of losing his physical body. The powers of all the fallen warriors would in turn be absorbed by Shinryu as payment for the pact, while Shinryu would imbue some of this same power to Chaos. The cycle would then repeat, with the warriors' memories of the last cycle wiped clean. This process would gradually give Chaos the power to finally open a portal back to World A.

At first, Cid was content in observing the cycles, whilst continuing his research on Manikins, trying to create a perfect being by transplanting his own memories into it, thus giving it sentience and will. In the end, the best he could create was one who was a perfect likeness of him, but had no will of its own, which Cid had attributed to a failed transfer of his memories. He left this Manikin amidst the conflict to see what would become of it. This Manikin would, in the future, be known simply as the Warrior of Light. The rest of his creations, imperfect Manikins that were crystalline, held no human memories, and desired nothing but conflict, were discarded into the Rift.

Chaos, reluctant to fight with someone he pictures as his mother, allowed his warriors freedom to do as they pleased, thus causing some of them to have their own hidden agendas. Some of them wished to rule World B, some wished to destroy it. As the cycles continued, he slowly lost his memories of his time at World A, but still remembered his relationship with Cosmos through vague dreams.

Cosmos, on the other hand, willingly complied with the cycles at first, but slowly despaired as she observed her warriors fighting for their hopes and dreams despite not having any memories of how many cycles they've been fighting, not knowing how much they've gone through.

By the time of Cycle 012, Cid had realized the same thing as Cosmos. Breaking his pact with Shinryu, he stopped being a mere observer and sided with Cosmos, helping her by formulating a plan to end the conflict using crystals formed with both Cosmos' and the warriors' powers.

The plan was supposed to proceed during that cycle, but the imperfect Manikins complicated matters, released from the Rift by one of Chaos' warriors, Exdeath, who wished to sink the world into the Void. In the end, the Warrior and another from Cosmos' side, Kain Highwind, hid the other warriors from the Manikins. 5 other warriors of Cosmos joined Kain after that, abandoning the conflict to close the tear in the Rift the Manikins were coming from, thus greatly limiting the Manikins' numbers, at the cost of their lives. As a result of their deaths outside of the conditions Shinryu set for all in the conflict, they lost the chance to be revived in future cycles.

With the Warrior the only one remaining unhidden, defending Cosmos from the remaining Manikins who by now had reached Cosmos' fortress, Cosmos sacrificed herself to destroy the Manikins, saving the Warrior in the process, and ending Cycle 012.

Angered by Cid's betrayal, Shinryu revives Cosmos and the fallen warriors on both sides (except the ones who died closing the Rift), and sides with Chaos in Cycle 013 to thwart Cid's plan. Cosmos, having been revived with no memories of her plan to end the cycles, was about ready to resign herself into continuing until a traitor to Chaos' side, Golbez, reminds Cosmos of her plan, as the warlock also desired an end to the cycles, both for himself and also his brother, who happened to be a warrior of Cosmos.

The combination of Cosmos sacrificing her life once more, this time to imbue power to her warriors through their crystals, and the resolve of her warriors, led to Chaos finally being defeated, ending the cycles at last and transporting the warriors back to World A, and later on to their respective worlds. The Warrior, having no world of his own, remained at World A, making it his home.

Further angered by this loss, as ending the conflict would mean no more power from fallen warriors for it to consume, Shinryu traps Cid in a nightmarish realm resembling World B, where events happened differently and Chaos survived Cycle 013, but kept on suffering losses on each subsequent cycle. By Cycle 018 in this realm, Chaos had been driven insane by the losses and entered the conflict himself, destroying both Cosmos' warriors and his own, turning into what is now known as Feral Chaos.

By Cycle 020, Cosmos had already weakened to the point that she could no longer summon warriors to her aid. With Chaos on the way to destroy her, Cid sealed Cosmos in World B's Cavern of Earth. Being denied his target, Chaos instead turned on Shinryu, challenging the dragon. Cid, in turn, sealed off the entire northern continent of World B to restrict the conflict to that part of the world. He then sealed himself as well.

Eventually, the fighting died down, and Chaos himself went dormant.

Some time after that, 5 warriors were summoned by an unknown force into World B. By this time, only Moogles and Manikins roamed the land. The warriors eventually found Cid, now residing in the body of a Moogle with almost no memories of events prior. Using what little he remembered, he led the warriors to the northern continent, his memories slowly returning as the journey continued.

By the time they arrived at World B's version of Onrac, where Chaos was, Cid had finally recalled everything, and asked the warriors to destroy Chaos and finally free him from this realm. The warriors complied and, after an intense battle, finally managed to defeat Chaos.

As Chaos perished, he regained his senses, and thanked everyone for freeing his "father" from the nightmare. The warriors returned to their own worlds, and Shinryu, defeated, flew back into the Rift, thus ending the cycles for this nightmarish alternate reality.

As the alternate World B began to crumble, Cid asked Cosmos, now unsealed, if she wanted to come back with him to World A. The goddess of Harmony declined, stating that she would prefer to stay in that realm until it ended. Cid, respecting her decision, left her and returned home.

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ClaDun X2 First Impression Review

Cladun is a hack-and-slash, dungeon crawling and retro-style RPG brought by Nippon Ichi, the same guys who brought us the Disgaea series. The first game, namely Cladun: This is an RPG! was released on September 2010 and now they bringing it back with the sequel, Cladun X2. The feel of the second game is basically the same as the first, but as what they imply on its trailer, all the stuffs in it is X2.

The main plot of Cladun X2 is basically not connected to the first (or as far as I could see). You are stumbled upon a mysterious world known as Arcanus Cella, a miniature world on which accordingly whoever sets foot on it never gets out and the only door connecting to it leads to dungeons that constantly changes. You are introduce to few characters living in the world. As you progresses, you are able to learn about them little by little and along with secrets behind the small world that you're trap into.

One thing to know about Cladun X2 is that it has tons of varieties in terms of customization. If you're familiar on how most Nippon Ichi's game were made then you have a basic idea on what to expect at Cladun X2. I guess most of the elements of the original game are still intact at X2. I never played the first Cladun that much but as far as I could tell, everything are basically the same only with few additions and improvements. So if you played the first one, you're already knew what you're getting at X2.

For starters, the most notable feature here is that the game allows you to fully customize your character going from its name-your-character-thing, choosing gender, and up to managing and building-up characters. Everything will be basic from the start-- choose your job class, equip your weapon of choice and armor and build-up your character using the Magic Circle feature. After a few minutes of progress, the game will give more customization options for you mess around like changing job class, managing equipment's Job Titles and and tons of weapons/armors at your disposal. More of it, as your character's levels up, you gain various skills and Magic Circles depending on your job class. If you're starting to change job class more often then you will get a LOT.

Building up your character involves the use of the feature called Magic Circle. This is where you place all sorts of power ups called Artifacts to boost your character's stats and abilities. The feature involves using multiple characters (main and sub characters) that will be place in the circle. Depending on how strong the characters you're placing, how you place Artifacts and the Circle that you're using, you can build up your character in any preferred way you want. You will pretty much spend some of your playtime building up your characters considering the tons of stuffs you can do to improve your characters. Not to mention that do you will eventually have to create several characters to use for both sub and main character role.

yes folks. its a chicken sword... and its awesome!

Other than the varieties on building up characters, there are also some other varieties that somewhat doesn't really make up for your progress in the game rather it’s for all your amusements. One of the cool varieties in the game is editing character's sprite face and equipments. You can freely edit your character's face, armor and weapon all you want.  So if you want a character that looks like Squall from FF series with shades wearing Tidus' outfit and wielding a Buster sword, you go ahead. XD These optional varieties aren't really necessarily in your overall gameplay. You can play through even without messing with those but it’s actually hard to ignore it at first. It's time-consuming but addicting at the same time. You would find yourself editing faces and equipments the whole time than playing the main game.

the exit... so near yet so far (T_T)

The main gameplay is simple yet fun and challenging. You basically have to work your way to dungeon levels by finding the exit. Dungeons have different themes and each consist of 3 to 4 levels before going to the next dungeon theme. At first walkthrough, dungeons are simple and straight forward with some few handfuls of monsters in your way. As you progresses, dungeons became more and more complicated. There will be certain dungeon levels that require you to beat certain monsters before going any further. You can hack and slash your way or simply run pass through it, which you might try doing it anyway since there’s a reward for completing a dungeon if you beat its given fastest time record. But as you going further to dungeon levels, monsters will gradually improves. Once you starting to feel the difficultly, you might think of slowing down and try to play smart.

Unfortunately, Cladun X2 doesn't have any multiplayer mode at all. You can still do adhoc session with other players but it only does sharing of your pixel art of character's faces and equipments that you've created. I never played the first Cladun that much but I do knew there's a co-op mode there so it's too bad that they remove it at X2. Personally, it would have been fun to play Cladun with somebody else.

As I said, the game has tons of varieties you can mess around. Although some of these varieties are mainly for player's amusements and doesn't really add-up worth to the main gameplay, but these extra curriculums can be addicting at some point and that's actually how the fun works in Cladun. Building up characters might overwhelm you at first but it can still play the game casually. Surely there will be some grinding moments but they're not that as unforgiven as you may think and you can easily cope with it as long as you have the gist on the basics of the game. The retro feel of the game is a plus for guys (like me) who appreciate oldschool style of RPG gameplay. I would highly recommend this game for guys who appreciate classic RPG style and all.

And that's about it for my review. As always, I tend to make my review more general as possible so that I won't spoil the game that much for you. Everything I've talk about is just on the surface and it’s up you to know the rest. Hope this review is enjoyable and helpful.

Until then!

ClaDun X2 Trailer

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Ipod/Ipad Gaming: Simulations... Simulations... Simulations...

Greetings HobbyBox fans! Back once again for a game review from one software developer, Kairo Park. Focusing on the constant release of the same genre, Kairo Park had managed so far to deliver a few addicting games for the Apple and now as of recent for the Android users as well. 


Let's start with the game:

Game Dev Story was actually the first game that Kairo Park had released for the Apple IOS. This game actually boost lengthy game play as players try to create the ultimate game up to the most recent update, your very own gaming console. There was an original PC game but so far, no plans of importing it to English.


You actually start with a small 6 man team, that includes 4 developers, you as the manager and your lovely assistant. As the game also progress, you will receive offers of expanding your office, getting new people or firing your old employees. The game also allows you to train your employees and as every employee also has, the employee itself shows specialization (e.g. Music, Coder, Artist) that allows your game to be further enhanced depending on the employee's specialization. 

Another thing to look forward in this game is the challenge of mixing game combinations. There's actually 2 categories to choose from: Genre and Type. I won't go further with details but I think you get the point. Depending on your combination you may get the highest combination (amazing) to the lowest (not good). 
There's also a challenge of people management. You need to actually know which people are to keep and to let go as their special type of employees that have high stats which makes your game scores higher. Funny thing to mention also is that, the names of the employee, sounds like names of actual celebrities... Another factor is money... Well this doesn't become an issue when you already have like 6 or more employees as you can take projects to gain money while having your game sell on the market. 


Going with the game specifics, the graphics are kind of your every 2d sprite. Nothing to look forward but you may notice that once every while, you'll get odd employees wearing odd costumes. Sound/Music, it's sounds like a midi sequence but that's something you can live with.


Overall, the game may sound addicting but when you reach the part that your game has received the 1million prize reward, you may stop and say, "I'm done...". 


So here are the scores:

Graphics: I'd give it a 6, For a sprite based game. 

Sounds: I'd give it a 4, it's in midi. You can play your own sound but if you have an old iPhone or iPod, I won't recommend it

Gameplay: I'd give an 7. Addicting at the start but kinda routine at the end.

(Since there's no story, I'm changing the last category)

Replay: 4, Once you beat the top ranking game out there, that's it...

Over all: It's a 5... you may want to try it but probably stop halfway...

There's a few more games out there you may want to try as well from Kairo Park if you are into Sim Games:

Right now, I'm enjoying "Grand Prix Story" but again, you can always try the other Sim Games this developer had to offer. You can also visit their website to know more: 

http://kairopark.jp/iphone/en/

Well enjoy and happy gaming!

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY!! SUBARASHI!!!

It's kinda slow week for the HobbyBox but that's okay for now because today we're celebrating the Birthday of the owner of the HobbyBox -- Jima-san!

So here's Mr. Kougami to sing for us the birthday song for Jima. I think he will also provides the cake for the celebration. XD

So for Jima-san... HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

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Catherine: Nightmarish Experience

 Good day HB Fans! Maxwell here with 1st post and 1st review on Atlus' mind-boggling game: Catherine for the Xbox 360.

Now, you may think this is your usual adult oriented themed game with lots of nude or saucy sexy scenes but for the long run... It's not. The game is actually comes with a deep story line and a shocking wake up call. For most of the players out there who are in it for just the graphics and for the special scenes, this isn't your game.

The game actually starts with your hero, Vincent Brooks (ironically named), waking up from a nightmare and apparently meeting up with his girlfriend "Katherine". The two began a conversation which leads to Katherine wanting to tie-the-knot. So you go to the bar that night, talk to friends and ask for advise. They leave early and you decide to drink some more. Unexpectedly a cute girl sits besides and the next morning, you wake up with "Catherine", naked on the bed not before having another nightmare. Here's where 50% of the game actually begins. You are expected to see through a bunch of dialogues throughout the game. That's the point. The key to this game is the scenes, the conversation, the text messages and your responses. Skipping scenes and avoiding conversation would lead you to either making a wrong decision and ending with bad ending. Paying attention to details is a must in this game. There's also this meter that appears whenever you made your decision and apparently it affects your relationship with characters. The messy part is the nightmare.

The game's second challenge is the nightmare where you, as the hero must go through a series of levels of climbing all the way up to the very top, avoiding traps, pitfalls, getting crushed, hoping to be rid of this nightmare. You also get power ups along the way and meet other sheep like you whose goal is also to get to the top and be rid of the nightmare. There will also be boss battles... err... not like megaman boss battles but rather you need to get to the top faster or get forked. As the story progresses, the game becomes more dark and more deeper, more challengine as you find out, the nightmare was actually placed on to you!  You would find yourself hours and hours trying to find ways to get to the top and avoiding death.

The game graphics are actually very well made as every details are made sure to be outlined. Sound, creepy and yet perfect for the game. Gameplay... challenge... this game is not for the faint of heart as this requires planning and quick thinking. Having a panic button will get you nowhere. Storyline... this is the best part. Most of the game story is actually based from real life scenario and would ask you personally on how you actually deal on things. On every end of level there's a confession box where your response is uploaded in the internet and determines where you are indeed honest with yourself and with others. Bottomline... the game is an excellent experience. As even news of Atlus game being a high selling game out in the market, this game does deserves its spot. 

So my scoring goes like this:

Graphics: I'd give it a 9. Atlus gave its way to making sure those curves are well seen

Sounds: I'd give it a 7. 

Gameplay: I'd give an 8. The challenge and getting that gold trophy was worth it!

Story: 9. Can't beat a "Woman's Wrath"

Overall: I give it an 8.5

Looking forward to the next game out there!

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