Aside from galges and RPGs, I also fancy diving into puzzle games from time to time. Tetris was an enduring companion from my elementary school days and later in life I fell in love with another block-dropper going by the name of Lumines.
After getting a Vita, Lumines Electronic Symphony became a part of my initial to-buy list... or at least it was until I saw that Ubisoft handled the publishing (went through quite a few poorly-made games by said outfit). The critics sang praises for it being impressive from a gameplay and graphical standpoint, but few of them even noted that the key part of the game is also the music.
The first Lumines for the PSP had a unique sonic vibe to it that made every screen a joy to play despite it's simple presentation. I eventually abstained from getting Electronic Symphony upon finding out that the Daft Punk project didn't go through and that it did not feature even a single track by Takayuki Nakamura.
Got to try the download version for free later on via PS Plus. In my opinion, it's a mixed bag. I appreciated it as a fan of the franchise but there were a lot of things in the game that left much to be desired.
First and foremost, there's no more "Challenge Mode". The standard game is now called "Voyage" where you run through 33 of the 43 unlockable screens in a neverending cycle until you top the screen out. There were some okay songs, but none of them were particularly memorable and it just didn't feel the same without the Nakamura tracks. A lot of the vocals were insufferable since they mainly involved artists with odd European accents that sung a few unintelligible verses then proceeded to repeat either the title or a single phrase/sentence like a broken record for the rest of the song.
Having to go through those ditties eventually proved too grating for my sanity, so I just played the game with the Vita's volume down and listened to the first game's tracks or Vocaloid music through my mp3 player.
The graphics are indeed a step up from the original PSP game and even beats the presentation of the PS3 and 360 versions. That's because the blocks were rendered in 3D, making them easier to see even against animated backgrounds. The gameplay is largely the same, but with additions. For one, the Chain Block that used to activate only after being joined with a matching four-stack can now work just by being adjacent to similarly-colored blocks. This made stack cleanups infinitely easier.
However, there's also this annoying Shuffle Block, which randomly switches the block colors of a whole grounded stack. While this can be beneficial when the stack is at risk for overflowing, it mostly just throws off your matching plans. The worst part is that there's no way to disable it. To keep it from being disruptive, you have to leave a clear space on the screen to serve as a sort of "discarding area" away from the stack. Due to the increasing speed of both the blocks and the timeline, said method will eventually become less and less feasible, leaving you no choice but to actually put the darn thing on the stack and pray hard that the switch actually creates an opening instead of making things worse.
Avatars now have skills to assist gameplay and can be utilized at any time by touching them onscreen. After using a skill, they will become dormant and go through a recharge period which you can hasten by tapping the rear touchpad .Of course, said function can only be done while you're moving and stacking blocks around, a skill that people weak towards multitasking can never hope to properly manage. Sadly, some of my favorite avatars were given the crap ability to summon that damn Shuffle Block.
The thing about this game is that the more than half of the trophies are easy to get. The solitary challenge lies in clearing 30 blocks or more in the Stopwatch 30 second mode, but it's nothing for people who have actual experience with any prior Lumines title.
When you manage to get one successful run for Voyage, the rest of the unlockables can be obtained by just leveling up to a maximum of 50. Other than grinding, there's little incentive to play most of the other modes (Save for Master mode, which will nab you a trophy for unlocking the fifth screen). Playlist Mode wasn't even given a High Score table, which is irritating because it's the best place to filter out those stupid tracks as well as being the only place where the miscellaneous skins can be used.
Got everything done in about a day and a half then deleted it from my system. Electronic Symphony was presented well, but the uninspired vocal tracks and the Shuffle Block diluted the experience. The first Lumines for the PSP is still the best one out there, followed by Supernova and Live. Along with Lumines 2, Electronic Symphony will inevitably fall under Q? Entertainment's "Dark History" belt, which is a crying shame.
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