My World My Way

This is a Nintendo DS game by Global A Entertainment, originally called "Sekai wa Atashi de Mawatteru" (the world revolves around me), and localised by Atlus USA for North America.

It's a solid light-hearted turn-based RPG. Battles use a face-on view, e.g. like Dragon Quest games. The player is not forced to use the touch screen. It has fairly simple mechanics, open to be fully exploited by the player for maximum reward!

It's very funny, never really takes itself seriously. An actual motive / plot never emerges until right at the end of the game! XD

You really get the feeling that you are powering up your characters on your own terms. Whether you are grinding exp for levels or grinding money for meals for stat boosts or grinding high level monsters for powering up your mimic partner or grinding monsters for rare drops... it feels like you're in control, doing things in your own way. And I love that.

It's certainly not for everyone, but I think it's my favourite DS game this year so far! The last last boss is SO DIFFICULT! The game would have been really short if it wasn't for the last area - I think the in-game clock was at under 40 hours before I went to the last area, and over 50 hours by the time I had finished, and I got wiped out a lot.

(reflecting the attacks from the last boss is the way to go!)

I wish there was some post-game content, "new game +" or something. :/

Global A Entertainment also made the Dungeon Maker games, which I really like. A lot of monsters and dungeon rooms / corridors are shared between this game and those ones. All good fun. ^_^

(I have a game by them called "Innocent Tears" for Xbox... comes in a huge box, which I've never opened... I get the feeling that I can't read enough Japanese to play it though...)

I only just found out that there is a Dungeon Maker 2 game released in English for PSP, so maybe I will try that next.

I noticed another game related to this "My World My Way" game on the Global A's website, for PSP and with a dark version of the princess. I wonder how that one is...

Master of the Monster Lair - Dungeon Maker for DS

Yay, Atlus have licensed a new DS game for North America - it's the sequel to the Dungeon Maker game for PSP that I enjoyed playing last year. This DS game was originally titled "Dungeon Maker: Mahou no Shovel to Chiisana Yuusha", but for some reason the US release will be called "Master of the Monster Lair", I don't know why they wouldn't want to associate it with the previous game.

It features a talking magical shovel! The character designs look very cute too, as opposed to the serious look and feel of the PSP game.

I really liked the PSP Dungeon Maker game, it was kind of like Dungeon Keeper crossed with one of those 3rd person hack-em-up RPGs. Lure them in, murder them, I couldn't help but think that sometimes maybe I was being more evil than the monsters...

3rd person 3D hack-em-up seemed a very PSP style of gameplay, I expect the DS will have a different type of gameplay but with the same kind of dungeon making. ^_^

It comes out in September 2008, and you can preorder it on Play-Asia already. It's priced well at $34.90 US dollars (under £18 GBP), which will probably be well worth it.