Video Game Comparisons: Monster Hunter, Gods Eater Burst, and Lord of Arcana, Part 3

Okay, so quick recap...

Monster Hunter - 4
Gods Eater Burst - 5
Lord of Arcana - 3

Equipment

Okay, so I could be totally lazy, count the types of weapons and armor and just call it a day, right? Well, unfortunately, I can't. The equipment in each game is not only different, but have a certain synergy with one another. So with that said, let's compare the equipment in each game.

The Gunlance. Eat your heart out, Squall!

To start off with, Monster Hunter has eleven types of weapons. All of them have a characteristic that gives them strengths and weaknesses. The most popular classes of weapons here are the Greatsword and Hammer. They do extraordinary amounts of damage, but in return they are slow and hard to use. There are also two different types of armor - Blademaster armor and Gunner armor. The Blademaster armor offers more protection than the Gunner armor, but logically, it can only be used by melee weapon classes. The ranged weapons are the bow, light bowguns, and heavy bowguns. The only way to describe a bowgun is, for the light one, the rocket launcher and the heavy is an entire artillery cannon. Yes, you heard me right. Still, with the prey you're hunting, such powerful weapons are gonna be necessary.

And the game's setting is medieval fantasy!

However, the thing about heavy weapons like greatswords, hammers, and heavy bowguns make you a good deal slower, leaving you a sitting duck if you don't use them right. You're a strong but still ordinary human - lugging these things is not gonna be easy for anyone, even if your career is hunting monsters that can chew you up and spit you out every other day. That being said, some weapons come with shields or can block in some way, but certain weapons you can't block at all - like the dual swords, long swords, or any of the hammer classes (i.e., the hammer and war horn classes) so you rely on agility in order to avoid damage.

Apparently, you can't block with this baby because it's too delicate.

As you can only use one weapon per mission, and can only change weapons between hunts, you usually have to make do with what you have. This strict restriction on weapons is to further encourage co-op gameplay, as your teammates can draw some of your target's fire as well as cover up for your weaknesses, like if you're using a ranged weapon, you have some people up front that can tank for you. Also, each weapon comes with certain skill points, and you normally have to have the complete set to get the skills (or anti-skills) they come with, whether it's doing more damage, more stamina, or even just sharpening your weapons faster. You have to change equipment to whatever your target is weak to, etc etc etc.

Gods Eater Burst is somewhat simpler yet more complicated to talk about at the same time. There are three categories of equipment, divided into subcategories - the sword, the gun, and the shield. For the sword, the classifications are the Short swords, Long swords, and the Buster swords. For the guns, there are the Assault, Sniper, and Blast. The Shields are Buckler, Shield (derp), and the Tower Shield. So, everything is neatly divided into subcategories, right? Well, here's where it gets tricky...

"It costs $400,000 to fire this gun for twelve seconds."

See, unlike in Monster Hunter, you can have one sword, one gun, and one shield equipped at the same time. This way, you're completely covered in terms of equipment - it's just a matter of preference and the prey you'll be fighting. For the swords, the Short sword is fastest and can do piercing damage, but suffers from a short reach and limited power. The Long sword is the happy medium, doing purely slashing damage. The Buster sword has the longest reach, can be charged up for a massive strike a la greatswords from Monster Hunter, and can also do crushing damage, but in exchange, it's slow and cumbersome, require some practice before it can be wielded.

This is a short sword. They only get bigger from there.

The guns are purely aesthetic, but they have their damage specializations. Assault guns are the jacks of all trades, capable of rapid fire. Snipers do great piercing damage, and Blast guns do excellent crush damage. The shields aren't so specialized. Bucklers instantly deploy and block a good amount of damage. Shields take about 0.2 seconds to deploy and block most of the damage. Tower Shields take half a second to deploy but block all the damage. Now I know what you're thinking. 'Pf, half a second, big whoop,' you're all thinking. Well, trust me, these guys hit hard, hit fast, and generally are somewhat hard to predict. That half a second could mean the difference between surviving their attack or being KO'd.

Like to see anything get through THIS!

One of the most unique aspects of Gods Eater Burst is their Bullet Editor. See, you can load different kinds of bullets that do different kinds of damage into your gun. You can even take your enemy's powers and use them as bullets (which I'm not going to get into because this comparison is long enough as is without going on a tangent). However, Bullet Editor allows you to create and 'program' your own bullets to use in combat. I've tried it and, well, let's just say my results were relatively lackluster. Once you get a handle on it, however, some of the things you can do are pretty amazing.

Gotta admit, these are pretty awesome.

As for armor... well, you get customizable outfits and certain upgrades you can buy or craft, but there's no armor. Your only armor is your shield and upgrades. The outfits are purely aesthetic, so yes, going out there in a bikini is the same amount of protection you'd get from going out wearing a full suit of samurai armor. And I'm not kidding, both of them are outfits you can get throughout the game.

Lord of Arcana is probably going to be the shortest section here. They only have five kinds of weapons - the one-handed sword, the 2-handed sword, the mace, the polearms, and the firelances. You can only equip shields with the swords. Now then, the weapons don't really even have any special effects or anything - they only increase your attack and/or defense stat (or lower them, if you're switching to a different type of weapon) and have different affinities. Basically almost bare-bones weapons that you'd get from an RPG. Because the dodging mechanism is so finicky, not having a shield is quite the bane, and because you can cancel your combo with the 2-handed sword to block... okay, you can see where my preferences lie, but honestly, there's not much I can say here.

Sword and shield - stop staring at her cleavage.

Quite honestly, compared to the amount of customization and the kinds of upgrades you can do in Monster Hunter and Gods Eater Burst, this feels significantly lacklustre. The upgrades and skills you can get only come from orbs which you can then insert into your armor... if your armor or shield HAS any sockets. Sure, this allows for freer customization and upgrades, but in the end, it's just cumbersome and lacks the detail or effort the other games put into their own equipment.

So in short, I'll have to give 2 points to Gods Eater Burst because of more flexibility with its weapons and how to use them, 1 point for Monster Hunter for its diverse range of weapons and armor, and 0 for Lord of Arcana because it's just too limited.

Current tally:

Monster Hunter - 5

Gods Eater Burst - 7

Lord of Arcana - 3

Monsters

Let's face it, the monsters in each series are the real stars of the games. We're much more in awe of them than we are of our characters or any side characters. And because of that, it just feels that much sweeter when we take them down a couple notches. So, let's see who has the best monsters around.

Yuan Kut-Ku. Don't let its appearance fool you - it'll kill the unprepared hard.

Monster Hunter is known for its creatures. They are not only diverse, but each of them are unique and challenging, yet still seem fair (though at times they do get a bit cheap...). You can be fighting giant apes to dragons to wyverns... and when you have a game where raptors are rank-and-file mooks and the beginning bosses who are barely challenging, you know that it's going to be awesome.

Congalala and Blangonga - two monkey cousins, and respectively, the fat slob and the fit boss.

Eventually, the monsters will fall back on palette swaps that are stronger, but even if you take out the palette swaps, there are so many different types of monsters, and it's really just crazy how many there are and how unique they can be. Some monsters take their cues from mythology, others from a certain theme and element... it's just nuts.

Gods Eater Burst, I'll admit, isn't nearly as diverse. It really doesn't take long before they fall into a regular set of monsters, then just do palette or graphics swaps the whole way through. The monster designs are certainly unique, though, as they take cues not only from mythology, but also from technology. Their designs are still pretty damn awesome.

The Quadriga - part elephant, part tank, part missiles, all death.

That being said, there really is no excuse for the limited number of monster types that you can face before they switch to simple graphics swaps. Aside from the mook monsters, off the top of my head, I can count about nine different types. They all have about three, maybe four palette and/or graphics swaps. Yeah, Gods Eater Burst, I'M NOT FOOLED. I can see that you more or less copy/pasted their monster types and either just buffed them, changed their elemental design, or gave them a few new attacks! Seriously, it's a total buzzkill when you have to fight against the same monsters over and over and OVER.

The Vajra family line. Honestly, when you get down to it, there's no difference.

Now then, Lord of Arcana at least has a BIT of more diversity... though still not much. Square Enix has an addiction to taking cues from ancient mythology and incorporating them into their games, from weapons to gods to monsters. There is no exception here. 

Awesome design. Now if only the boss fight was more exciting...

While very visually impressive, most of the boss monsters suffer from chronic slowness - you can easily run to the other side of the arena and they'll be shambling about to catch you. Grendel, who's shown right there, spends most of his time flying in the air, occasionally attack, rinse and repeat. To damage him you have to attack his sword, which he sends to the ground occasionally for attacks. That's not to say that the bosses aren't challenging, though. Each boss is unique, having different designs and tactics so you every creature requires their own strategy and equipment to bring down.

It's a huge, angry centaur. Do I even need to say 'run'?

The mooks make a great deal of the game, however, so a good deal of design - and mythology - are behind them as well, from your standard goblins and slimes to your minotaurs and those goddamn griffins. And at least they have their own unique features (albeit small ones) so they don't feel like carbon-copy mooks each and every time. So not a great amount of diversity, but still pretty good.

So, in conclusion, I'm giving Monster Hunter two points for its diverse and many monsters and creatures, Lord of Arcana gets one point for its use of mythology for both is mooks and big cheeses, and Gods Eater Burst gets zilch because they repeat their own creatures FAR too much for their own good.

Final tally:

Monster Hunter - 7

Gods Eater Burst - 7

Lord of Arcana - 4

In Conclusion

Okay, all three games do have their merits. In the end, though, I feel like Gods Eater Burst has done enough to merit as its own game, rather than just being a copy of Monster Hunter. Monster Hunter is the originator of all these series so it takes top spot, though Gods Eater Burst is definitely a close second. Lord of Arcana, on the other hand, feels like a greedy grab at Monster Hunter's audience and while they do have a few interesting concepts in there, poor diversity and controls as well as some questionable decisions make it the lowest game on this list. 

This is Kenji, and thanks for reading the whole way through. Or at least skimming. Or even looking at it.

...

Now go back and read all of it if you haven't. >_>

Video Game Comparisons: Monster Hunter, Gods Eater Burst, and Lord of Arcana, Part 2

The continuation of my review. Just a recap -

Current tally:

Monster Hunter - 3
Gods Eater Burst - 3
Lord of Arcana - 0

Sound

In any video game, sound is extremely important. Music much more so. It puts people in the mood to either cry or kick some butt. Let's see which series has the most epic music, hm?

When you hear this music, RUN.

Starting off, Monster Hunter doesn't have many ambient soundtracks. When it's just you and you're not fighting a hostile monster, there is no music, just the gentle sounds of nature and perhaps the grunts of a couple herbivores nearby. When you start fighting a small hostile mob, depending if it's a boss creature or not, you get some generic music. However, if you fight one of Monster Hunter's signature monsters, that's where the real music tracks kick in.

This takes the sting out of trying to take out the Kushala Daora's wind barrier.

The fast-paced orchestral themes are perfect for capturing the intensity of the entire fight, no matter what creature you're fighting against. The fact that they kick in only when a boss creature is aware of you is also a good sound indicator that you have a fight on your hands. When that happens, you know to bring your weapon out, and pray to lady luck. The music is extremely awesome and you'll love it.

Gods Eater Burst uses orchestral for the most part as well, though they include a bit of background music whenever you're starting off a mission. In exchange, and partially because of the small maps, the background sounds are notably absent. However, even when you're fighting particularly unique bosses, unless you're fighting certain monsters in certain conditions, the music you get is generic music depending on the stage you're in. Sure, there are supposed to be variations if you fight different enemies, but honestly, they sound so much the same, I honestly couldn't tell.

Hope you like hearing this every time you fight in the subway levels...

Still, there ARE unique pieces, and while for the most part Gods Eater Burst sticks to orchestral, a few times they put in some rock music as well. While I should stay that putting in rock kills the mood, it honestly doesn't. It helps that only one track is rock while the rest is orchestral. I won't spoil it, but it's the theme song for one of the characters and so it's really fitting.

On retrospect, this is a very good song to fight to...

As for Lord of Arcana... it's quite different, to say the least. Unlike either Gods Eater Burst or Monster Hunter, it uses rock for the most part. The background music is prominent in every level, although it gets pretty generic when it comes to normal fights - especially if you here it a couple dozen times. Still, I can't lie and say I don't like rock, but it feels more like a love letter to Devil May Cry the more I play the thing.

And this is the background song for a supposedly soothing cave level!

Nevertheless, when it hits the right notes, it hits them with a frickin' arrow piercing another arrow. The unique boss tracks are high-paced, adrenaline-filled, and set the mood up perfectly. Since you'll most likely be soloing bosses, the music gives the perfect mix of desperation, high-paced action, and all in all, the mood that it's a duel between you, a very skilled human with gleaming weapons against a powerful monster that will do all it can to turn you into a pancake. 

No snark here - this song is just awesome.

So in conclusion, I say Lord of Arcana gets 2 points because I like rock and the songs are just pure awesome, Monster Hunter gets 1 point because of their powerful orchestral sound tracks, and Gods Eater Burst gets nothing because, awesome as their music is, they just play it way too many times.

Current tally: 

Monster Hunter - 4

Gods Eater Burst - 3

Lord of Arcana - 2

Story

And driving any game is the storyline. So therefore, these games have a great storyline, right? ... Well...

This is the extent of the plot in Monster Hunter.

Honestly, in Monster Hunter, there's no plot. You're in the Hunter's Guild, you take contracts to kill monsters for cash, rinse and repeat. The game doesn't even end or give you special recognition if you kill the 'end-boss' monster. It's endless. You just keep killing monsters and fulfilling contracts. That's all there is to it. But then, considering you'll be using up all your time just grinding out items or killing monsters, you probably won't care too much about the story, just killing things and get new shiny equipment.

When you're facing a monstrosity like this, who the f*** cares about the story?!

I'm not gonna lie or sugarcoat it. Gods Eater Burst has the other two trumped by a mile when it comes to the story. It has actual side characters, character development, an actual plot dealing with world-wide threats and the monsters. Sure, it has plenty of cliches, but at least the characters are nice and approachable and develop at a decent, believable rate. Still, I do wonder if fanservice-y females are required everywhere around here...

This is your boss. No, she's not wearing a single scrap of undergarment.

That being said, the plot is split into two. The game was originally just called God Eater, but Namco decided to rename it Gods Eater Burst and add in a new storyline and monsters after the main plot is done. The second plot is more focused on character development and feels more like a 'friendship forever' thing, but luckily this isn't over done. And besides, the character it's focused on you'll probably feel pretty close to. Again, no spoilers, but take my word for it.

Your commanding officer and teacher. Remember him well.

Lord of Arcana DOES have a plot, but if you don't bother to talk to the NPCs, you'll never even get a hint of it. Not like it matters. The plot is that you're the chosen one to be the lord of the land of Horodyn. In order to fully become the lord, though, you'll need to defeat eight monsters that have been sealed away, but reactivate when you've done enough missions. And that's all the plot. And once you finish the plot, nothing even changes - the other NPCs just tell you to kill the other monsters to grow stronger and consolidate your power. You still need to deal with contracts. It feels less like you're a lord and more of their personal hit(wo)man.

Suck-ups. All of them.

In the end, though, despite having a poor excuse of a plot... it's still a plot. There's nothing more I can say about this.

So in conclusion, Gods Eater Burst gets 2 points for having a structured plot, Lord of Arcana gets 1 point for having a simply excuse plot, and Monster Hunter gets nothing for having no plot whatsoever.

Current tally:

Monster Hunter - 4

Gods Eater Burst - 5

Lord of Arcana - 3

To be continued in Part 3

Video Game Comparisons: Monster Hunter, Gods Eater Burst, and Lord of Arcana, Part 1

And on to the subject of video games.

When I had a PSP, I heard of Monster Hunter. I heard of how great it was, addicting, tedious, etc etc. I was still on Dissidia at the time, but when you've beaten the crap out of Chaos and every villain about ten trillion times and grinded out your favorite characters' levels to the max as well as their best equipment, it gets boring and tiresome. So I decided to get Monster Hunter Freedom Unite to see what all the fuss was about. I popped it into the PSP and began playing it... for several nights straight.

Lunchtime!

Needless to say, I was hooked. I quit after a while because Monster Hunter began kicking my rear to the curb, but I was addicted to the genre. I did some research and found two more games that fit the genre. They were considered copycats to Monster Hunter, and while I can see why, they're unique enough to be their own games, and to consider them ripoffs or copycats is too harsh. They are Gods Eater Burst and Lord of Arcana.

Down, kitty! DOWN!

Now then, as I said, all of these games have their own merits, and can each be qualified as their own game. However, that really begs the question: Which of these games is really better? I decided for the sake of this blog and to satisfy my own curiosity to compare and contrast for myself. I'm going to use six criteria for this judging: Gameplay, Graphics, Sound, Story, Equipment, and Monsters. I know this seems a bit much, but honestly, since the equipment and monsters are so different from game to game, yet play so prominent a role, there's no choice. I'll also be using a tally system. For each category, which ever game scores first gets two points, second place one, and third place gets nada. And I believe I should mention this: THIS IS STRICTLY OPINION. DON'T TAKE WHAT I SAY HERE SERIOUSLY. So, without further ado, let's get started.

Oh, SHI-

Gameplay

Gameplay! It's definitely THE most integral part of any game! So how do these three games hold up? Let's look at each of them individually.

To start off with, Monster Hunter. It's hard. It's nails-to-the-balls, tear-your-hair-out-crying-in-frustration hard. Monster Hunter can and will punish you for even the slightest mistake. This is especially prominent with solo gameplay. One has to learn the terrain of the battle, memorize and know how to dodge enemy moves, as well as read them so you know it's coming. This is because you are a puny human. They are faster, stronger, more powerful than you are, even with your shiny equipment. To make things difficult, there is no lock-on, so you'll have to struggle with the camera controls to keep the beastie in your line of sight. You CANNOT just charge in, whaling your weapon and expect to win. Do this and you will die faster than you can say 'TIGREX!'.

This is a VERY accurate depiction, actually.

Monster Hunter was made with co-op in mind: You're able to form a party of four with your friends and go on missions to take down monsters. With a full party of well-equipped members, the co-op aspect makes any, and I repeat, ANY mission trivial. Unfortunately, Monster Hunter Freedom Unite only had ad-hoc, so unless you guys can figure out how to hook up Xlink Kai or find some friends who also like to play Monster Hunter, you'll be doing this solo. And you shall weep. Hard.

However, it's not all about hunting. In between missions, you will be grinding out materials for new weapons and gear. This is because there's no leveling up - your strength is determined only by your skill and your equipment. Sometimes, the material comes from monsters, but a lot of the time, the materials necessary are minerals mined from cracks, bugs you catch from bushes, and even fishes and certain herbs. You're even given a farm that you can invest in to make your grinding a bit easier! And believe me, because some of the materials you'll need can be rare, you'll be grinding. A LOT.

I can't believe I have to do chores in a video game...

Gods Eater Burst cuts down a LOT of the grinding I mentioned earlier. In Monster Hunter, you practically needed to bring a toolkit to grind out materials. Here, it's much simpler - the weapons and gear use materials come from monsters or just literally laying around at specific spawn points on your map. You even get material rewards for the mission as well, which is extremely handy. Still, there's some grinding, especially when you're trying to get a particularly rare drop from a monster.

GIVE. ME. YOUR. FAAAANGS!

The combat and gameplay itself is MUCH faster than Monster Hunter. You're allowed to switch weapons and block on the fly, you can jump high and dash around, and your attacks come off very fast. However, because of this increase in speed for you, that means that the creatures on Gods Eater Burst will also be faster to compensate. Thankfully, if you don't have friends to play with you - or at least, no one that your ad-hoc can reach - you can bring in rather competent AI partners in to help fight. Thanks to this, the gameplay is easily a fraction of Monster Hunter's difficulty. While Monster Hunter feels like an actual hunter stalking its quarry, waiting for the decisive time to strike, Gods Eater Burst feels more like a high-flying action fight that feels more at home in an anime or manga.

Lord of Arcana, developed my Square Enix, is certainly different, and it honestly feels more akin to a Devil May Cry game than either Monster Hunter or Gods Eater Burst. What happens is this: When you encounter an enemy, you are instantly transported into a closed 'zone' to take out your enemy. But because on the 'overworld' map they are represented by one creature, you have only a slight clue who you're fighting or how many until it starts. Said closed zones are always completely flat, so there's no bother trying to use the terrain to your advantage.

I dare you to tell me this isn't a design from Devil May Cry. I DARE YOU.

Grinding is particularly tricky here because not only do you have to collect materials, you also have to collect monster cores for particularly powerful/rare equipment. You can only get these from either boss creatures or when the specific region they're located starts flashing red on the minimap, and whether you get these cores or not is completely luck-based. Sure, you can get equipment to sway the odds more in your favor, but honestly, the core system to me is very frustrating. I can't tell you how many times I wanted to throw my PSP across the room when I saw my attempt at a core ended up in an explosion of bloody giblets.

As for the combat and gameplay itself, the pacing is somewhere between Monster Hunter and Gods Eater Burst - certainly faster than the former but slower than the latter. However, sometimes, you have to deal with multiple strong mooks at once, and they REALLY love to blindside you, interrupting any combos and stunlocking you so you can't take advantage of any openings. Griffins are particularly guilty.

This motherf***er here is responsible for more than half my deaths in this game!!

For boss enemies, though, you get a quicktime event once you've damaged them enough, and we all know how we as gamers love THOSE. These quicktime events allow your character to pull off moves that Dante himself would be proud of. There's two for each boss - an optional one in the middle which deals extra damage and you can fail if you so wish without any damage, and a mandatory one to pull off as an insane finisher. While such things are fun to watch, I honestly failed a few times because... well... quicktime events. Not my kind of fun, but they're awesome to watch when you do it right.

So, finally, in conclusion... I'm not a fan of either quicktime events or crazy-hard difficulty or being blind-sighted and I like fast-paced action fun, so I'm giving Gods Eater Burst 2 points, Monster Hunter 1 point, and Lord of Arcana gets nothing because of their griffins.

Current tally: 

Monster Hunter - 1

Gods Eater Burst - 2

Lord of Arcana - 0

Graphics

I'll admit it, all three games have used the PSP graphics engine well, but which one used the graphics engine the best? Well, again, that's what I'm here to find out.

The environments of Monster Hunter are very lush and expansive, truly feeling like places these untamed beasts would live in. The terrain has been lovingly detailed as well, up to the bushes and trees in the rainforest and forest locations which realistically (albeit frustratingly) obscures your enemy's position, making tracking them down a bit more difficult. And it truly does feel like they're the actual environments it describes - or at least, it tries very hard to. It still has its flaws, though. It suffers from a few graphical hiccups here and there, and sometimes the expansive areas to fight monsters in feels more like giant empty rooms than anything. Still, the environments are quite immersive.

Nothing like fighting monsters in a giant bog.

The environments in Gods Eater Burst are where it suffers the most. Sure, it feels very apocalyptic and grim and the places are well-detailed.... there's only seven or so environments. When you see it the first couple times, you can feel the effects of the apocalypse, but after seeing it a couple hundred times when they're not that big, you really stop giving a damn. It gets very tiresome just fighting in the same places over and over and OVER AGAIN. It doesn't help that all the maps are extremely small, especially compared to Monster Hunter or Lord of Arcana. The lighting's pretty nice, though.

Like this place? Great - get ready to see it a couple thousand times.

The environments in Lord of Arcana are... relatively cramped. Packed with a lot of monsters, it's hard to maneuver around them. The Scarlet Tower is rather big and it definitely feels RPG-esque, but other than that, the environments are very plain and lacking in detail. The environments in the end are really nothing memorable - they're almost just palette swaps. Besides, the combat 'zones' are all just flat land palette swaps anyway, so that loses quite a few points.

Final Fantasy, anyone? Anyone?

So in conclusion, Monster Hunter gets 2, Gods Eater Burst gets 1, and Lord of Arcana once again comes in with a big fat goose egg.

Current tally:

Monster Hunter - 3

Gods Eater Burst - 3

Lord of Arcana - 0

To be continued in Part 2.

Starting off: RWBY

Aaand I'm making a post practically a few minutes after my intro. I'm funny that way. *shrugs*

I'm sure no few of you have heard of Monty Oum's latest work, RWBY. For those of you who need a bit of background, Monty Oum is an amateur animator who became famous thanks to his Dead Fantasy series - a series of 3D animated videos of the girls from the Final Fantasy series and the Dead or Alive series fighting one another. The videos were fanservice in many ways - many saw their favorite characters from either series participate and kick massive amounts of ass... and it helps that the girls themselves have been rather well-known for being fetish fuel. I mean, Dead or Alive. Come on, people. Luckily, aside from having the hottest girls in each series join in, the perverseness is very much a secondary thing, with the gravity-defying, flashy, Advent-Children-style action taking place foremost. The videos - and Monty Oum himself - rapidly gained popularity, enough that Rooster Teeth, a company infamous for its web series like Red and Blue, hired him to do their own series: RWBY.

Cute and badass. At the same time. There's gotta be a law against that.

The series centers around its four girls, whose first name initials make up the name: Ruby Rose (pictured above), Weiss Schnee, Blake Belladonna, Yang Xiao Long. Each girl has their own color code to - and for the sake of avoiding the title of 'Captain Obvious', I'll leave it to you guys to figure out. The backstory is that most of mankind has been wiped out by the creatures of Grimm, and to counteract them, the survivors of humankind have formed the Hunters/Huntresses, people specifically trained to combat the creatures of Grimm. And surprise surprise, our four protagonists have been inducted into the elite Beacon's Academy to start off their adventure.

Now then, to start off with, the action doesn't disappoint - which is certainly helped by Monty Oum's addiction to putting guns (or gun motifs, same thing) on EVERY FRICKIN' WEAPON. Here's just a sample - and I repeat, a SAMPLE - of just how said guns are used on the weapons.

Yes, it's a gun-scythe. Yes, it's awesome. Yes, it would never work in real life. Yes, f*** reality.

Now, if it was just a pure action series like Dead Fantasy was, just having awesome fight scenes would be great. However, it's not all action - there's actually a storyline, in case the backstory I gave didn't already tell you. This is where RWBY starts suffering a bit. On a technical level, while the animations for the fights are absolutely top notch, the animations for the characters doing normal things is... a bit choppy and sometimes just plain novice-like. Obviously, most of the work was put in the fight scenes. Graphics are simplistic, but I don't suppose that can be helped. The 'extras' aren't even fully rendered - they're just black silhouettes. Although a bit lazy, this makes it REALLY handy to tell the main/supporting cast.

Tell me this doesn't SCREAM 'Hogwarts'.

Also, this series has anime cliches coming out of the wazoo. I mean, take your pick, it's probably there. The hyperactive, cheerful girl being paired with the cold and calculating one, the quiet, bookish type with the loud, boisterous bruiser, the whole school itself, good cop, bad cop, etc, etc, etc. The voice acting itself definitely isn't spectacular - but then, it's not like they brought in Michelle Ruff or Stephanie Sheh to do them. It's currently in debate whether this is a very professional amateur work or a very amateurish professional work.

That said, even with these flaws, RWBY does quite a few things right. We expected over-the-top action from Monty Oum and delivers it to us on a silver platter. The characters, despite being cookie cut-out cliches, are developed and written well enough that one can genuinely like the characters for their various quirks and oddities. There are also a good deal of funny moments too, helped by the main character, Ruby, being such a ditz. The designs for the weapons, characters, and the setting are very well done, and that aside, the series is just beginning (despite being 10 episodes in at this time of writing). Who knows how much it'll develop in the future?

So, in conclusion, if you're looking for character-focused, heavy narrative... don't expect to find much of that here. On the other hand, if you're looking for lighthearted comedy and/or insane action that essentially gives physics the middle finger, RWBY is the series for you.

Introduction

Hm, well, I never thought I would make a blog, but why not.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Calvin Wan - or you could call me by my most common alias, Kenji. That works too. I'm not much of... well, anything. I'm a writer, gamer, otaku, and bookworm. I'll be writing whatever interests me, be it a book, a manga/anime series, a game, or perhaps even just snippets of writing and pseudo-philosophical pondering.

That being said, I'm not looking for a lot of views - a couple at best is what I'm hoping for, so it doesn't seem like a waste of time - but regardless, I think I might have a lot of fun doing this. So, thanks for visiting and I'll be sure to write something soon!