From the re-makes of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy to the more obscure Shiren the Wanderer, the DS has become one of the best places to find old-school RPGs. Nostalgia is no exception to this trend. Matrix Software even did the programming and 3D graphics for the Final Fantasy III & IV remakes before their work on Nostalgia.

Nostalgia is set in a Steam Punk version of Earth, complete with giant airships and an adventuring based economy. It is clear right from the outset that this is a throwback to a time when not every RPG focused on a character whose main motivation was angst.

You play as Eddy, a young man whose goal in life is to become an adventurer, just like his Indiana Jones looking Dad (had Dr. Jones decided to grow an impressive mustache). Your village didn’t burn to the ground and there isn’t a giant conspiracy as to your origin. You are just a guy who wants to see the world. Eddy even lives in a huge mansion with both of his parents.

This sets a very light tone that is prevalent throughout the course of the entire game. Even when things transpire that threaten the destruction of all of humanity, Nostalgia’s protagonist doesn’t let that keep him down. It is so upbeat that I suspect it will come across as too saccharine for the taste of most modern, jaded gamers.

The gameplay also harkens back to an older era. Combat starts with random encounters and is played out in the traditional turn based fashion. I was very happy to see the inclusion of the Final Fantasy X style of showing you the turn order of the battle on the bottom screen of the DS. Using stat boost for your characters and moves that slow down your enemies adds a nice strategy element to the combat.

The airship battles are more unique than the regular, “four party members vs. a few monsters” fair. When you fight from the ship, all four characters control different weapons, but share an overall health bar. This forces you to be a lot more strategic in your battles than you normally have to with turn based combat. I only died in this game on the airship battles and usually when I was distracted by something else going on in the room. These battles also take a lot longer to finish since you can overcome much more powerful enemies, as long as you plan ahead with your moves.

Your ship doesn’t level up. As you find new cities throughout the world, you will find upgrades to the ship’s shields and weapons. As you discover more cities, new parts will start to show up in London (your base of operations).

The airship has three different planes that it can travel on, each represented by different altitudes. To start, you can only travel at the lowest height. The medium height allows you to fly over some mountains and the highest setting lets you travel anywhere. The trick is, the higher the altitude, the harder the random encounters. Since you have a shared health bar in these battles, there is no way to recover if you die, other than re-loading your save. My advice is to watch your health closely and save often.

As you level, you gain new abilities, both for regular and ship battles. You gain a separate pool of points that can be spent to upgrade these abilities. This pool is shared with the entire party, so you have to carefully manage what points you spend on which abilities. Each of these have ten ranks that are progressively more expensive to unlock.

I thought Nostalgia taking place on Earth, rather than a generic fantasy world, was a fascinating concept when I first heard about it.  Sadly, other than the overworld being shaped after it and the cities having familiar names, nothing about the in-game world is recognizable as our Earth.

"Just like our world, except that it's completely different"

While the game is generally straightforward, there were a few points where it wasn’t quite so obvious as to where to go. Missing something like a small opening in a mountain or a downed pillar that looks like background (but is actually used as a bridge) would lead to lots of wandering and frustration.

Nostalgia isn’t perfect, but it is a nice throwback to a time when games like Skies of Arcadia and Grandia II ruled the RPG scene. While the ship combat did require some thought, the regular battles, even bosses, were fairly easy. It would make a good introduction to a younger player or someone new to the genre.

This review is based on a copy of Nostalgia provided to us by Ignition Entertainment.

On a very special twenty-sixth episode of “Barrel Roll! – A Video Game Podcast”, the Gregory clan takes on the touchy subject of in-game advertising when they “talk about stuff”.

In “What We’ve Been Playing”, Jesse has taken advantage of the recent Steam independent game sales so he has been playing through the entire CHRONOTORIOUS album in “AudioSurf”. He then goes on to discuss the album and why you should go pre-order it right now.

Jonah tries to play through “Klonoa 2: Lunatea’s Veil” on the PS2, but the copy he found has a big mark on the disc causing some major freezing issues near the end. He also picked back up “World of Warcraft” with the new 3.2 patch.  And, after only 8 years, he managed to finish “Final Fantasy X”. He even wrote a review. And yes, it is weird when I write the podcast reviews and have to talk in the third person. I mean, he says it is.

Brittany has been playing some “Crayon Physics”, also from the Steam independent games sale. Turns out these games are rad and people should go buy them.

In our news segment we are once again annoyed by countdowns. Jesse talks about the DSi’s Facebook integration, and a whole lot more.

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Outro Music – “Fortuna (Star Fox)” by The OneUps
Wipeout HD: Fury In-Game Ads

You might say I’m a little late to the party, having just now finished a game I started when it first came out in December 2001. I would say, “No, you are!” in a childish manner and then run away. As it turns out, I have a very bad habit of starting games, getting really far in the them, but never getting around to finishing them.

Around the time I got my PS3, I decided to pick up “Final Fantasy X” again. I debated starting over, but the last time I had done that, I found that I was only a few plot points from the end, and this save file was even farther than that one had been.

So how does the game hold up by today’s standards?

Surprisingly well.

From a game so early in the PS2′s life cycle, both the in-game and pre-rendered scenes still look good. They might not have all the flash of the upcoming PS3 “Final Fantasy XIII”, but to expect so would be insanity. The voice acting is just as horrible as you remember it, and while the plot is decent, most of the actual characters tend to get on my nerves. This can, at least partially, be blamed on said voice acting.

"Pre-Rendered Scenes Still Look Good"

The plot revolves around Sin, a giant monster that appears every few years, and the pilgrimage of summoners in their quest to learn the “final summoning”. This allows them to temporarily defeat Sin at the cost of their own lives. The overall tone of the game is very dark and gloomy, and probably the main reason it’s sequel, “Final Fantasy X-2″ is so chipper.

What holds up the best from this game is definitely the battle system. Many games still copy aspects of it today. You have a total party of seven characters, only three of which you can have in battle at a time. There is a display in the upper corner that lets you know the current order that both your party members and the attacking monsters will take their turns in. This dynamically changes when you use spells or items that effect a characters speed.

"An Example of the Battle Screen"

You also have the ability to tag out to any of your other party members as often as you’d like during battle. This was a big innovation at the time, as it made your entire cast of characters readily available for the entire game. You never have “I don’t know who to pick” syndrome, where you spend hours trying to figure out what combination of characters to use as your main kick-butt team.

Instead of the traditional leveling system of older FF games, there is what is called the Sphere Grid. All party members start at different points on the grid which is all interconnected. Theoretically, you could max out every character with every stat boost and ability… if you are a crazy person.

While this leveling system is fun and unique, it does have a strange side effect. Through the normal course of the game, Yuna, your white mage, can and most likely will acquire black mage abilities. Once she does, it renders Lulu, the character set up to be the black mage, useless. This is due to Yuna’s starting area providing her with significantly better stat boosts on her part of the Sphere Grid. By the end of the game, I found that I was only ever using a three man party, because those three had learned everything useful that the other four would normally do. The up side is, it saved me a lot of time normally spent on grinding.

If you are looking for a good RPG for the PS2 and missed this one the first time around, I would still recommend it. Like most Squaresoft RPG’s (yes, this is from when they were still called Squaresoft), it still holds up in all the areas that matter. Ignore the infamous “laughing scene” and enjoy a fun battle/leveling system wrapped around a decent fantasy storyline.