Crimson Tears

[greg]

Frys Electronics had this game in the bargain bins forever, but since I only have a J-PS2, I never bought it. However, now I see it's only 725 yen on Amazon Japan. Score. Snagging it now.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Big breasts, mind you.

[PepsimanVsJoe]

I got sick of this game in less than ten hours. I'll play a lootwhore game for weeks on end but this gets boring way too quickly and the camera is absolute shit.

[Obiwanshinobi]

It's not a pure bred "lootwhore game", though. Not quite unlike Blood Will Tell, it shares fast killing and looting with Diablo, but in the end you can rely only upon your skills. Imagine playing through Diablo only to realise you must take on the ultimate boss barehanded and butt-naked (it doesn't have to end like that, but you must be ready for it). So much for "lootwhoring". It's about fooling around with the combat engine. Trinkets to be found in dungeons just add some spice to it.
I for one can't perform long chain combos with Tokio, whereas each girl earns me 14 hit combo easily, 30 hit is by no means impossible, and 50 hit happens once in a blue moon. If you don't enjoy this sort of stuff, looting alone isn't likely to keep you enterteined all the way through.
I didn't like having to deal with multiple gun wielding enemies in certain dungeons, but the only moment when the camera really bothers me is the second Mighty Destroyer battle.

[PepsimanVsJoe]

It's not a pure bred "lootwhore game", though. Not quite unlike Blood Will Tell, it shares fast killing and looting with Diablo, but in the end you can rely only upon your skills. Imagine playing through Diablo only to realise you must take on the ultimate boss barehanded and butt-naked (it doesn't have to end like that, but you must be ready for it). So much for "lootwhoring". It's about fooling around with the combat engine. Trinkets to be found in dungeons just add some spice to it.
I for one can't perform long chain combos with Tokio, whereas each girl earns me 14 hit combo easily, 30 hit is by no means impossible, and 50 hit happens once in a blue moon. If you don't enjoy this sort of stuff, looting alone isn't likely to keep you enterteined all the way through.
I didn't like having to deal with multiple gun wielding enemies in certain dungeons, but the only moment when the camera really bothers me is the second Mighty Destroyer battle.

They should've went all in or not at all. At least with Blood Will Tell while I could find some cool rare swords if I put forth the effort but I could still ignore it entirely an enjoy a well-designed game. Crimson Tears gives me all these different weapons to fenaggle with, customization to do, levelups to gain, and even some really nice grabs like Max-stat boosters. In every one of these instances there's some design-decision in place that keeps things from becoming enjoyable. I'll have an awesome weapon but it'll break in less than a second due to a lucky combo from the enemy, most if not all of my money is spent on repairs instead of things like upgrades, some levels are just long empty corridors so I can't get much in the way of experience, and the only stat-boosters seem to be in one or two sections of the game. If all of those things were ultimately meant to be pointless Dream Factory probably could have just done up a system where all of the weapons are readily available but have different advantages depending on the situation. Unfortunately it wasn't meant to be and it's probably because the only compelling aspect to the game is the ability to acquire cool stuff and get stronger.

And yeah maybe I should be more concerned with the actual skill the game requires but more often than not it came down to whoever got the attack in first. As far as beatemup engines go Crimson Tears does not have a very well-designed one and even in cases where it should work the game purposefully trips itself to remind me that in the end I'm playing a hybrid title that can't be bothered to do either portion correctly.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Corridors? Only one dungeon has got something like that (the worst dungeon in the whole game, but not because of the corridors).

Weapon-wise you're actually better off entering a dungeon with weapons on basic level (since every levelling up repairs them a bit, and weapons on high levels do it less frequently). Chaining levels them up in no time (weak weapons make chaining easier too).

As for the combat engine, it's no more messy than in 90% games of that ilk (including DMC3 and God of War). Surely from a Capcom fighting game with flat levels you could expect combat as transparent as in Onimusha 1&2 or God Hand (I wish Onimusha spawned a console equivalent of Diablo, complete with co-op and versus modes; not likely to happen now), but it would slow everything down.
The thing is, you play as a killing machine entering a room swarming with enemies, and after 20-30 seconds you're the last thing alive in there. Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V level design serves this exact purpose: you know the room's layout the moment you enter it, without seeing the lot, and you can focus on fast killing. Even most bossfights shouldn't last longer than one minute each. Exploration and combat are extraordinarily fast paced.

Of course Crimson Tears could be more polished in many respects. It's all very primordial, but I like the idea of twitchy combat in dungeon crawlers and this game is a step in right direction if you ask me. Last but not least, I'll say it again: enemy designs are sick and the animations are beautiful.

[greg]

Big breasts, mind you.

They don't look huge. I can manage. Looks like there's some nice jiggle physics too. Who won't want to play a game that has breast physics? (OK, I'm joking. Kinda.)

[greg]

Guys, there's a gashapon set for Crimson Tears! How cool is that?
http://plajapan.com/product_info.php?products_id=2298

[Obiwanshinobi]

Classy Deviant Art pic.

Who won't want to play a game that has breast physics? (OK, I'm joking. Kinda.)

The Best Real-Time Polygonal Boobs Animation I Saw in a PS2 Game Award goes to Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance. Take that, Japan. Not 100% realistic (this would be too much for the poor ol' hardware I'm afraid), but pretty rad nonetheless. Oddly enough, seems like they edited it out in those PS2 Champions games (powered by the same engine). Of all things... In Bard's Tale, however, animated knockers are back (if I remember correctly; it's been a while).

[BulletMagnet]

Guys, there's a gashapon set for Crimson Tears! How cool is that?
http://plajapan.com/product_info.php?products_id=2298

Gashapon is on the cusp of being it own Rule 34 - it exists for EVERYTHING.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Cleared it tonight. Bonus dungeon is delicious, Capcom way. I can see myself coming back to it every now and then (and I couldn't be bothered beating the time trial as Drizzt in BG:DA for the sake of unlocking him in the full game). I don't have much to add about the combat; in my book it's second to none at what it does.
By the way, not only the story is pretty good for this kind of game and the ending didn't disappoint me, but also the music is quite commendable.

Enjoy those classy deviantART pics of Amber/Asuka and Kaede.

[greg]

The local shmups gang (undamned, jon, specineff, kjs77) helped me and my family move into an apartment a couple weeks ago. I now finally have my gaming setup in place as of last weekend. So I finally started to play my new Japanese Crimson Tears that I received about a week or two before we moved, but my PS2 and everything was all packed up and I had more important things to do than to play games.

OK, so again, this is the J version. I didn't see the point in talking with everyone who is standing around in the street to the far right (I didn't bother trying to read most of what they were saying, since what I did read was drivel) when all I needed to do was buy some weapons and items from the people standing in a line next to my cool garage that my three characters love to stand around in. I just teleported into the first sewer dungeon and started playing. It's very similar to any other dungeon crawler like Izuna, Mystery Dungeon, Torneko, Gauntlet, or Dungeon Explorer. Just fight the badguys and look for the level exit to the next area. I got to the first boss, and he wiped me out so quickly! But I like the game, and I can foresee many hours spent playing this game.

[Obiwanshinobi]

It sure took me many hours to beat it and I barely even tackled bonus dungeon. Glad I'm not the only one who appreciates the animations.
Townspeople don't have much to say anyway. You should talk to everybody at least once per chapter as they give you optional quests. It's not too wordy even for this genre.

[RNGmaster]

Gashapon is on the cusp of being it own Rule 34 - it exists for EVERYTHING.

Dodonpachi bullet-shaped gashapon?
Oh, and don't link to ryona videos if you don't want to start a massive flamewar with me, please.

[Obiwanshinobi]

You swing that way?

[RNGmaster]

You swing that way?

I'm not trying to censor you. Ryona is fine in terms of free speech, but I have personal moral problems with it (and guro in general) since it fetishizes the mistreatment of women. I've read about far too many cases of females being horribly abused (search Schoolgirl in Concrete, and if you get off to it there is something very, very wrong with you) to just laugh off abuse of women - even fake women - as an acceptable fantasy to have.

[Obiwanshinobi]

Mistreat of women has been fetishised all over the culture for ages (YouTube is just too amazing), but as usual, it takes a fancy Japanese word for the internet people to get on their high horse. I found stuff you can do (to female NPCs as well) in nearly decade old GTA: Vice City and Soldier of Fortune II more disturbing than that vid.

[greg]

Oh great, so it has a name. Ryona. I thought that was the name of a character in the game. You know, 20 years ago, there is no way I would have ever known that such a fetish existed, let alone known that it had a name.
THANK YOU, INTERNET!

[Obiwanshinobi]

Truth be told, I thought it refers to the name of a character from some fighting game. When I looked up Urban Dictionary, it was the most giggleworthy discovery since "yoghurting" and "rainbow drink". Those vids are too fucking absurd to be frowned upon. The men I saw mistreating women for real... You just wouldn't suspect them of jacking off to this. Lone geeks must be a rare breed among actual sadists.
Of course from now on, knowing the word, I'm gonna feel smug and haughty everytime I see it. Japanese equals double wrong after all.