I have to adit, but this is the Beyblade I grew up with. Yea yea, I was 13 when it came out, but I am 20 now, so that was a lomg time ago. I remeber being absoulutly obsessed with this show.
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I mean I had a CRAZY obession with it. I can talk on and on about how much I loved it but it will go on for too long. Anyway, this show consits of 3 season, 1 movie and 1 spin offf season that was cancelled.
Sophomore album “Emblas Saga” is another soaring, ambitious take on Norse mythology. Thematically they follow in the footsteps of viking metal.
The three season were Metal Fusion, Meatal Masters and Metal Fury. The movie was called Sol Blaze and spin off was shogun steel. Season 1 was called Beyblade Metal Fusion and stared a teenage called Gingka Hagane as he traved the country to become the strongest blader. On his way, he meets freinds, forms rivials enimes and has to save the world and all. I must say, at the time, this was pretty much the first anime show I ever watched, (well second, as I watched Sonic X) and was truly inpressed with the visuals, soundtrack and story. They were much better than the tyson sereis which played the same 8 songs every episode for 3 seasons. This sow had an actaul soundtrack with a orchestra and all.
I love the characters and beys and story. The show does pstart up ok, then get a bit slow in the middle, but towards the end of the season, it gets really epic, heck even violent.
This is when the first national tornament will declare the worlds strongest blader.There are lots of laughs, crys, unexpected twists and just a great show over all. My only issue with season 1 was that it does go on for a bit too long. I mean 51 episode for a season is pretty long, but thats ok. It's all for character development. Season 2 was called Beyblade Metal Masters and is a much better season, in my opinian. It is set a few months after the first and Gingka and the gang prepare for the WORLD Champianship were the the world isn't happy that the national tornament in Japan declared the worlds strongest blader instead of holding a worldchampians ship. So they hold a world champianship and ever blader around the world team up in groups to represent their country.
This season was very similar to season 1 and 3 of the orignial Beyblade were they travel the world, but Metal Masters is a much better one. I really enjoyed this season, as the characters face new obstcles outside and within their team. The last 8 episodes, do get very interwsting, however, but it felt like season three, beyblade g revolotuion of the original series, where they have a champianship, it's over and for the last 8 or so episodes do something else. Only this time, the something else in Metal Masters is much bigger and badder than the gang has faced before.
The ending of this season was in my opinian, the weakest of the show. They didn't really explain too much about the thign they were dealling with and a WHOLE BUCH of plot holes.
But it's interesting. Season 2 deserves a 7/10. Season 3 was called Beyblade Meal Fury and is the third and final season of the Metal series and is in my opinian the DARKEST of the lot. The first two season did feel similar to the original series in some way, but this season is totally original and out there. I mean, it's all about anceint beyblades, gods of destrucution and all that jazz. It sound a bit surreal when on paper, but exucutted really well. Season 1 and 2 were quite fun seasons.
Season 2 was very enjoyable, but this season is very serious at times and very unexpected. Certain character get complete developments in this season and there is so much drama. I will admit that ths season felt a little bit like season 1 and a bit like season 2, where it started of slow, like season 1. But Gingk and the gang are travelling the world again, like in season 2, only this time, there are looking for the 9 legendary bladers who have beein chosen from destiny to defeat the ultamate evil Nemisis. Now, as much as I love this season, it has WAY TOO MANY PLOT HOLES inti that I like to think about. I mean, this new evil seems to have come from know where, but it is revealed why we haven't noticed throught the previous seasons.
I did love how certain events of the past all tied up for this one season. And the second half of this season is the BEST throought the whole show.
I mean, I was loving it so much. And the battles are show much better, coller and violent than the prevoious seasons and has a MCUH better ending that the original beyblades. This seaaon felt much similar to season1 were certaincharacters return from that season and the battle fight are simialr in parts. Is it the best season in the show. Yea, it's a great season, but there are WAYYY TO many plot holes for me to like. So, on that note, I willgive it a 7.5/10. Overall, the Beyblade Metal Saga is a decet anime and pretty cool.:).
PS2 Review - 'Metal Saga'by Erik 'NekoIncardine' Ottosen on June 11, 2006 @ 4:30 a.m. PDT
In the not so distant future… Desperate to find a way to save the earth from pollution, mankind created a gigantic supercomputer and named it Noah. Noah’s solution, however, was to exterminate its creators. In a matter of days, civilization fell to terrifying weapons and monsters created by Noah. This cataclysmic event came to be known as the Great Destruction.
Genre: RPG
Publisher: Atlus Developer: Crea-Tech Release Date: April 25, 2006
If Atlus is known for anything, it's for quirky stuff from Japan. Need I highlight such examples as Disgaea, Trauma Center, and Sky Gunner to get this point across, or to indicate that Metal Saga is most likely going to fit in Atlus' vein of each release fitting into a different vein. Metal Saga is best desribed as the three-way love child of Rogue (or the many others names for it, including Nethack, the *bands, etc.), Disgaea, and an older Final Fantasy, getting the mini-games and much of the overall feel of the third, the humor of the second, and the mostly plotless 'just do stuff' pure RPG insanity of the first. If you like your RPGs with deep incredibly complex plots a la Xenosaga, you probably won't enjoy Metal Saga's wide-open nature too much. However, if you are interested in a decently built, highly open, and quite humorous send-up of and tribute to the older school of RPGs, Metal Saga is worth a really good look.
The first group who's going to be turned off by this game are art fanatics who like their games with the absolute top quality of graphics and sound. Metal Saga has almost nothing that couldn't be done on two or three discs and a PS1 in either area – the models aren't too extreme on the polygon counts or texture detail but look great nonetheless, and non-3D art is all in plain, yet well-done, anime style or a pseudo-military menu appearance. The sound is simple, with catchy yet not-masterful music meant to evoke the feel of any of the PS1 RPGs, complete with the highly eclectic mix common to those games. Of course, a PS1 RPG the size of Metal Saga, with the number of tunes, sidequests, etc., that this game possesses, would have insane load times and take four discs, so having it on the newer system isn't entirely wasteful.
The second group is those who like extremely detailed plots, or like their plots handed to them. Metal Saga does not have you out to save the world or anything similar. You are a hunter with a nerdy-looking tie, using vehicles to make money in a wide-open and rather insane post-apocalyptic world. If you've ever imported the Metal Max games, this title takes place in that world, but isn't too heavily linked to the earlier entries, so don't worry if you haven't played it. You explore the world freely, and very little except monster difficulty stops you from going wherever you want, whenever you want. Even monster difficulty can be worked around with a sufficiently well-beefed vehicle or character, unless you challenge one of the bosses – and you never know when you will. Bounties and sidequests are literally the entire game, so you are open to learn moreabout the world or to take one of the game's many endings (I found two funny ones in the length of my review playtime), so if you want an epic plot, stay away because this game is almost pure dungeon crawling.
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Sadly, the dungeons aren't all that interesting – it's straight exploration with no gimmicks and little to differentiate rooms, other than your memory. Find the treasure chests and maybe the boss, hope that you've found that boss' bounty so you get the full money from it, and that's about it.
Combat isn't much more involved – it's a standard old-school turn-based affair, with the only twist-ups being that skills cost money instead of MP (money is everything in this game), the you can jump in and out of any vehicles you have with you, and you can have a dog with a bazooka on its back as an ally later on, which explains the 'Dogs of War' advertisements. Expect a simple attack-and-be-attacked affair normally, with fairly few options to consider. This is sad, given the evolution seen in games like Xenosaga, but it's not entirely deviod of fun, mostly because the enemies you face are quite interesting, to say the least. A hint: If you don't want to enjoy the details and just want to speed up the fight, hold L2 to speed animations. Also, look at the turn bar on the top when targeting your opponents; the zig-zagging target selection seems less random at that point.
Now, here's the good news, which may turn the game from a no-sell to a great choice for many. Metal Saga is hilarious. I'm fairly easily entertained, I admit it, but this game is parody to the brim. The money dependence and old-school graphics are tributes to the old school of RPGs. The knives and guns who ride unicycles, robot zombies, and giant trash heap boss are an obvious send-up on the crazy enemies in many RPGs, and that's just in the first couple of areas! Then there's strange things like the League Of Uncivilized Barbarians, fancy people with black suits, and the option when you first meet a fellow mechanic's daughter to say, 'Let's get hitched!' – and have the response, after a long pause, be, 'Okay.' This leads to an ending, of course.
There are also subtle gags like all numbers going down from 999 instead of up from 0, and being able to download the music from the jukeboxes you find – illegally. Also, any 'Yes'/'No' options are replaced with more contextual statements ('Let's save, you can never be too careful'/'I'm too cocky to save'), and even the relative lack of save points is a joke, albeit a bad one that will prove to be a pain at times.
Further, the dungeons aren't very interesting in terms of activity, but actually exploring them is surprisingly joyous in and of itself, not just for the new laughs from new enemies, but because these dungeons are surprisingly beautiful. The abandoned buildings evoke a feeling of real, unexplained abandonment, the junkyard has a useless tank with witty comments if you keep looking at it, and the other dungeons have little subtle gags and feel that combine rather impressively.
The vehicles I mentioned for combat? First, customizing them is as simple as customizing equipment, and includes just as much variety – with the exception being that you need to watch your tank's weight. Armor tiles, equivalent to HP, take up weight too, after all. Don't like how your vehicle looks? The game includes the ability to custom-paint the vehicles (think Jet Grind Radio's Grafitti editor, but more robust), and save the results to your memory card. Don't need that vehicle right now? Make sure to park it or send it to a garage so that birds don't crap on it. The vehicles are the stars of the game at many points.
Unfortunately, in the time I had to review this game, I didn't get to the dogs of war - they look to be a fun and fairly well-managed twist on play, though.
Metal Saga is filled with little touches and surprises – mini-games, odd areas, working jukeboxes, and all sorts of other things indicate that Createch really wanted to make the world the centerpiece of the game. The effect is beautiful, and every little new surprise keeps the game fresh for quite a while of play, without getting overly gimmacky, mostly because its very nature as a tribute and parody makes nothing gimmicky. It's also all well-coded and explained, so generally you won't be wondering, 'What am I supposed to do here anyhow?'
As crazy as it might sound, much of Metal Saga's beauty is precisely in its intentionally not pushing any play boundaries. It is not the greatest role-playing game of the year, not even on the PS2. It does not offer action-packed combat where precise timing is part of doing things. It is the funny little popcorn flick of RPGs, it's Scary Movie to, say, Xenosaga or Final Fantasy X's Scream, meant to be enjoyed as itself, and as a tribute to and parody of days gone by in the genre. If you're not fully convinced or scared off, give it a rental and try it, particularly if you're a big fan of RPGs and want something a little more plain and old-school. Not everyone is going to like it, but those who do will probably love it.
Score: 7.9/10
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