Chaos Rings III was released on the Japanese Vita on October 16. I received my copy of of the game today and played for a few hours. Here are some brief impressions, feel free to add more if you are playing as well!
First, the game opens to a menu that allows you to select from CRIII or any one of the three previous games (CR1, CR Omega, CR2). The previous games need to be downloaded from PSN, but they are all free downloads. There is no code to enter, so you can lend the cart to your friend and he/she can also download and play the original 3 games on their Japanese account as long as they are using your cart (you can't access the games outside of the cart menu). The versions of these games included here are slightly updated compared to the previous PSM version of CR1, for example the text has increased in size to make it more legible on the Vita screen. Nice that they took the time to do this.
Now, onto CRIII itself. The story and pacing have been very good thus far with lots of interesting camera angles used in story segments that give the game a cinematic feel, and there has been plenty of voice acting, all of excellent quality. The graphics are a bit sub-par, however. While there is a lot of nice detail, particularly in the houses, the framerate feels a bit jerky while moving around towns and I rarely feel it hit 30fps. It's not terrible, but having just played Toukiden (which runs very smoothly and looks better), the difference took some getting used to. Furthermore, the textures on the character models are generally low res and look like something on the 3DS blown up to the Vita's resolution.
The battle system is a fairly fast-paced turn-based system. It's simple, effective, and very smooth. Here the framerate fares better, and loads in and out of battle are very quick. I have not been in many battles yet, but I really like what I've seen thus far.
The controls are nice and responsive with the buttons and sticks, though you can also use the touchscreen interface if you want.
Overall I'm really enjoying the game so far, and looking forward to playing more the next chance I get. I only planned to check out the intro today, but the game immediately pulled me in and I ended up playing for nearly 2 hours; the sign of a good game, I'd say!
This is also available on the Japanese iOS for 2800 yen.
First, the game opens to a menu that allows you to select from CRIII or any one of the three previous games (CR1, CR Omega, CR2). The previous games need to be downloaded from PSN, but they are all free downloads. There is no code to enter, so you can lend the cart to your friend and he/she can also download and play the original 3 games on their Japanese account as long as they are using your cart (you can't access the games outside of the cart menu). The versions of these games included here are slightly updated compared to the previous PSM version of CR1, for example the text has increased in size to make it more legible on the Vita screen. Nice that they took the time to do this.
Now, onto CRIII itself. The story and pacing have been very good thus far with lots of interesting camera angles used in story segments that give the game a cinematic feel, and there has been plenty of voice acting, all of excellent quality. The graphics are a bit sub-par, however. While there is a lot of nice detail, particularly in the houses, the framerate feels a bit jerky while moving around towns and I rarely feel it hit 30fps. It's not terrible, but having just played Toukiden (which runs very smoothly and looks better), the difference took some getting used to. Furthermore, the textures on the character models are generally low res and look like something on the 3DS blown up to the Vita's resolution.
The battle system is a fairly fast-paced turn-based system. It's simple, effective, and very smooth. Here the framerate fares better, and loads in and out of battle are very quick. I have not been in many battles yet, but I really like what I've seen thus far.
The controls are nice and responsive with the buttons and sticks, though you can also use the touchscreen interface if you want.
Overall I'm really enjoying the game so far, and looking forward to playing more the next chance I get. I only planned to check out the intro today, but the game immediately pulled me in and I ended up playing for nearly 2 hours; the sign of a good game, I'd say!
This is also available on the Japanese iOS for 2800 yen.
