Continuing with what seemed to be a nice started the following months brought not much to my interest but, no complaints here, it allowed me to enjoy what I’ve already gotten so far. 

April got me involved, deeply, with Rondo of Swords, a Nintendo DS  game. This is a game that to this day I still keep, a game I keep on going back to. Absolutely love it.

Rondo of Swords is in essence a simple, challenging and entertaining turn-based strategy game that dares to be different, and succeeds. Gameplay it’s divided into several parts: Story, where the characters converse; Battle, which uses a unique combat system; and Preparation, which allows you to develop your characters, form your party, and so on.

As the game progresses, the player will gather new allies and move the story forward. Depending on your actions and the characters you use in battle, the story can change, resulting in four possible endings.

I would like to point out that Rondo of Swords is, as any strategy game, difficult. Hard. When the game's at its best, a hard-fought victory feels like a tremendous accomplishment...and at worst, it feels arbitrary and unfair (1UP)

The Story goes like this: The Kingdom of Bretwalde: situated in the center of the continent of Bravord and surrounded on all sides by strong nations, it was established by a holy knight whose blade drove back the Darkness that threatened to engulf the land.

On this day in Bretwalde, the people are  mourning their recently fallen king with a solemn funeral.  But during the ceremony, the neighboring Grand Meir empire attacked without warning. One by one,the knights of Bretwalde fell to Grand Meir's forces. The few surviving knights, led by Serdic, escaped south to the Shalem Emirate Federation...

The tribes of Shalem were divided over what to do regarding Grand Meir's invasion of Bretwalde, when an unexpected visitor arrived: Princess Marie of Bretwalde, believed to be sequestered in a Veronan cloister. Her innocent visit ignited the situation: one of Shalem's tribes  attempted to capture the Princess in order to gain favor with Grand Meir, prompting Serdic to mobilize his forces. The Bretwalde Army was once again on the march...

 His actions will shape the fate of the entire continent!

As I find myself entangled in Rondo of Swords, June got me interested in 3 new titles, Lego Indiana Jones: The Original Adventures and Etrian Odyssey II:Heroes of Lagaard.

Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard is a 3D dungeon crawler role-playing video game.

You slowly make your way up the trunk of a massive magical tree in order to reach a floating castle at the top while completing smaller quests along the way. The tree is represented by a series of vertically-stacked levels which are explored one at a time with frequent return trips to town in order to rest and resupply. You move a single "step" at a time, moving and turning in fixed increments. Time passes only when an action is taken, causing movement, encounters, and combat to all be entirely turn-based. Enemies are randomly generated and can’t be spotted in advance, although certain more powerful "FOEs" usually can be seen on the map and avoided if necessary. The game uses a first-person view to present the labyrinth using a combination of relatively simple 3D computer graphics for environments and single-frame 2D sprites for enemies.

Similar to early computer role-playing games that did not support automatic mapping, players of Etrian Odyssey II must maintain their own maps.

This game was so HAAAARRRRRRRDDDDD!!!!!!  So hard it’s not even funny. No way I finished this one.

Lego Indiana Jones brought something more appealing to the general public. And something you can easily play with your kids and/or significant other (willing enabled). 

The game allows players to recreate moments (albeit more humorously) from the first three Indiana Jones films. It features the same drop in/out co-operative play mode as seen in the Lego Star Wars video games, although it is restricted to local console play.

The game often follows the events in the films, however, some scenes from the film have been altered to become more family friendly or just provide comic relief to the player.

In an effort to make the game more family friendly, all references to Nazis have been removed. Deaths are not nearly as graphic and, in the Temple of Doom, Mola Ram does not rip out a victim's heart.

Next in Part 3: Onslaught of games.

2008 has been touted by many as being the greatest year for gamers. Why would you ask? Well, obviously your mileage might vary but, taking into account the great accolade of game releases that have populated 2008 there’s much to rejoice.

In the following posts I’ll be looking at the games that I have played in 2008 (along with a mini review of each of them) (sorry, no numbered scores to look at). The games my family played, what my kids loved playing, games that we played at parties, etc. 

All in all 2008 was a great year for gaming entertainment. Let’s take a look at what made it so great.