You Win!

Having enjoyed Riviera last year, the announcement of a sequel, even if it is only a pseudo-sequel, was very exciting. With only one copy on the floor in Atlus' booth, I had to lie in wait until I could grab it when someone finally gave it up and I was given a chance to try it out. Unfortunately, the game wasn't available in English, so it was a little harder to play because I cannot read any Japanese. I was thrown into the third of a series of three battles, and promptly lost thanks to being overpowered - there were six enemy units compared to my two units, which I mostly just moved around on my turn to see how the grid movement worked.

When the game began anew, I watched a bit of storyline sequence (none of which I understood, but had simply gorgeous artwork and graphics which partly made up for the complete lack of understanding), and then was launched into my first battle after fumbling through the menus and finally getting into the combat screen. It was very obvious as I moved directly beside an enemy and it launched into more story that this was a sort of tutorial, then the battle resumed. I moved around my characters on the grid battle field, which wasn't perfectly square but instead followed the terrain, which was neat. I was immediately scouting the battlefield for places I could surround the enemies, noting places I should avoid so that I could not be surrounded and pounded on.

Press start for union!

Once I was beside an enemy, I could hit start to begin a Union - a close up battle. My units battled the enemy units, though they really stood on their appropriate sides and sort of made waving motions at each other. At the top of a screen was a bar, which had passive on the left side and aggresive on the right; handily enough, pressing left on the D-pad moved my characters into passive mode and pressing right moved them into aggressive - what the results of doing this exactly was remained unclear. At the botton, a meter under the units showed a number of large, bold stars and some smaller, unbolded stars. Most of my units had two or three bolded stars and two to five unbolded stars. The enemies generally had significantly less stars than me, possibly signifying a strength difference. While the game was confusing at first thanks to the language barrier once I got into things it was a real blast to play and it is hard to describe accurately how fun the game was in just an impression. This is definitely a game to be looking out for once it is released, especially since it doesn't require the player having any knowledge of Riviera, though of course such experience will be a boon.