Accel Knights 2: Full Throttle (3DS)

First, I'll point out that though this is a 3DS game, I haven't bothered to stitch the top and bottom screenshots together, since the bottom screen is mostly unused and doesn't have anything interesting on it. But anyway, Accel Knights 2 is a game with an amazing premise: it's about knights on motorbikes jousting in a fantastical future world. Also, the motorbikes can transform into power armour. Obviously, this game never got released in the west, presumably due to some market research by the publisher that told them that people outside Japan weren't interested in buying games where awesome stuff happens. It's also the sequel to a Japan-only DSiWare game, but getting hold of such a thing in this day and age  is currently beyond me.

Anyway, these jousts don't take the form of real time action, instead being a kind of strategic rock-paper-scissors arrangement, albeit one where you can see what your opponent is picking. The battles take place in rounds, and each round has two parts. The first part is the RPS bit, where each knight decides to charge a low, middle, or high attack by holding X, A, or B to fill a meter. High beats middle, middle beats low, and low beats high, and you can see what your opponent is charging. However, you can change which one you want to charge at any point in this very short sequence, and I think the last one you press is the one that you use. It's really best to just pick one and charge it all the way, which gives you a two-out-of-three chance of winning.

The second part of the round is a much simpler rhythm-based affair: there's a bar with some lines along it, another line moves along the bar, and you press A whenever the moving line meets one of the stationary ones. Being successful in either part of the combat builds up your MP, which you then allocate between rounds. The aim of the battle is to be the first one to fill up your final charge meter, which transforms your motorbike into power armour so you can dleiver your final attack and win the fight. You can (and should) also use MP to charge up your two engines (one for each part of the combat round), though, as doing so significantly increases the amount of MP you build up in future rounds, and charging the final meter takes a lot of the stuff.

Accel Knights 2 is definitely a case of style over substance, as the battles are very repetitive, and once you've won a few and figured out how it all works, it's also incredibly easy. But, the game's style is cool enough to make up for the lack of substance, and it's definitely an enjoyable experience (for maybe two or three battles at a time, at least). If you are able to attain access to this game, I'd recommend you do so.

Breed Master (Playstation)

Though the title might sound like one of those Japan-only racehorse management games, Breed Master is actually a colour-matching puzzle game, with some monster raising/battling flavour added. It's also part of that strange class of games: those very low budget Playstation games that came out well after everyone had moved onto the PS2.

It has a few quirks besides that, too, like how not only do you have (almost) complete control over when pieces drop into your pit, but the game doesn't end when they reach the top! Instead, you can summon another row's worth of pieces by pressing the R1 button at any time, and the game ends when your monster's HP reaches zero. You can probably work out from there that filling your pit to the brim damages your monster, and that's right, but it only causes a small amount of damage. Instead, damage is caused to your opponent's monster (and vice versa) mainly by getting rid of coloured pieces by matching them, and doing so in combos, as tradition dictates.

Now, it's the combo-forming that's my favourite part of this game, as it takes an approach similar to the Magical Drop series, in that being fast and dextrous in your movement of the pieces is more important than the approach preferred in games like Puyo Puyo, for example, where setting up a large chain in advance and waiting for the right piece you need to trigger it to come along is the main tactic. Getting bigger combos does more damage to your opponent, of course.

Then there's the monster-raising aspect of the game. The pieces come in four colours, and there are four corresponding meters for your monster below its HP meter. As they fill up, your monster will level up, and very occasionally (like, no more than three times in an entire single-player run), four yellow blocks with hexagrams on them will fall into your pit. Put those together and your monster evloves into a new form, with more HP and a different magic attack. Magic attacks are performed in a similar manner to evolution, except these hexagram blocks are green, and they appear a lot more frequently. Magic attacks range from healing your monster everytime it damages the opponent, to turning the bottom few rows of their pit into junk blocks, or making unbreakable stone pillars appear in their pit for a short time.

The problem with Breed Master is that it feels half-made. You'll get good enough to 1CC the single player mode after no more than two or three attempts, there's no checklist to see entice you into trying to hatch that one monster you're missing, and the game's core mechanics aren't exciting enough for versus play to be much of a draw. It's an okay game, and if you see it going cheap, it might be worth gettin for a couple of hours' entertainment, but it's not one to bother actively seeking out.