You've probably not heard of Rule of Rose but you know it was banned. Why was it banned? Well I wasn't really sure until I did some research for the sake of this post. It was banned in the UK along with some other countries. I was thinking "This must be the scariest game in the world!" But I was wrong. It was banned for Psychological torture. You're thinking what the hell is that supposed to mean? Violence and torture by kids towards other kids. Also underage lesbianism as well. The psychological torture isn't the game characters, its on you for playing this game. Its torturing you with its boring running around.
Rule of Rose is a very short horror game by Atlus, yes another Atlus game. I'm not bashing on Atlus games or anything it just happen to be Atlus that made these games. For example, I thought Disgaea to be fairly fun even though the story was crazy and the council system stupid and the whole thing was annoying as hell. You know what, that game sucked. How about Rhapsody: A musical adventure then? Your a girl rescuing the prince with an army of stuffed animals. Cutest game in the world. Not something you'd want to admit to playing though. Anyways enough about Atlus games.
Its one of those horror games where you are a helpless girl instead of someone with a gun shooting hordes of zombies. Only exception is that those games you're actually scared. The difference between those games is that there is something chasing you. You're actually running away. You're in a panic. In rule of rose it has none of that. If its a horror game without horror then what exactly is it? It can't be something and not something at the same time. If I had to describe it as something else then I'll say its like a virtual scavenger hunt and a fairy tale. Doesn't' sound very scary does it. Its not meant to be scary.
The game is set in the 1930's somewhere in Europe. It's made for people with European fetishes. I don't blame them because Europeans are hot, but since this is Japan most of them are 12. You start off the game as Jennifer, a 19 year old young woman on a bus and some boy asks you to read him a story. Then he runs off and you chase him for some odd reason and end up at a orphanage. Off the start you can see some kids with paper bags on their head bashing an animal tied in a bag to death with sticks. Sets the mood of the game because that's you in the bag and those sticks are the game play and those kids are the developers. After you get past the bloody mess you open the door and its mysteriously locked. I was thinking "Ohh typical haunted house game?" No you just wander around and start digging at a grave and some girls come and pour water all over you and push you inside the coffin. Now you wake up on an airship and the kids ask you to join the "Aristocrats club" Every month you need to give them a gift or they kill you.
I just want to point out how much I hate Jennifer. She's absolutely frightened of everything. She'll faint randomly or get scared and start shaking and scream all the time and break down crying. Everything makes her yelp and everything scares her to the point of going insane. She's probably already insane.
The story is divided into chapters and each chapter is a different month. The chapters are not always chronological either. Now you're untied you get to walk around the airship that is like four times the size of Russia. You go to the Aristocrat Club door and the poster says "This month's gift is a butterfly." Now you have to find a butterfly. You walk around the huge airship looking for a butterfly but half the doors are locked or unopenable. Eventually though as you talk to people or see scenes more of these doors will be open. But you have no indication of what will be opened and what will be locked next. So you'll have to keep looking around. If you have a bad sense of direction you'll probably be stuck lost running around in circles. The good thing is 90% of the game you are in the airship. Its just different sections are open and closed during different months and people move around. Eventually even if you suck at directions you'll memorize it since you'll be bashing the walls with your fist if you can't find a door or room.
Near the start you'll find your pet dog "Brown" and the game gets much easier. You are able to let him search for items by looking at your inventory. If the item says "Find ??????" Then you can let brown smell it and he'll go looking for the ?????? item. Nothing is in plain sight. If you know where it is, you can't find it unless brown smells it and barks. But at least you have a dog now right? Well sometimes it wants to go into locked rooms so you're stuck finding things out yourselves. Unfortunately Brown isn't of much use in combat. In fact he just stands there blocking your way.
Combat in this game sucks. I know they are trying to make the game a little realistic with you being a helpless girl. I thought something like Clock Tower series made it right where when you run your panic meter rises and you start running more and more wildly. In here you pretty much just "run" around and when you attack its slow and awkward. Jennifer closes her eyes and turns the other way while waving whatever weapon she finds in front of her. I don't know about you, but I wouldn't be closing my eyes while waving whatever I have in front of me hoping it'll fall dead. Because chances are they'll miss if I'm not looking and I'm dead. Well that's exactly what happens. You're accuracy is terrible. If you miss it takes a long time for you to stop the attack and "run" away. And by running I mean walking. You don't exactly run even though the animation shows you running. Its like someone trying to run as slow as they can. Your weapons can be anything you find. For example the first combat you see is a weird child and you're armed with a fork. You stab the thing to death with your fork.
Another thing is that items have no indicator on how powerful it might be. You would have to guess the lethality on the weapon and then actually test it out. Combat is awkward as your goal is to walk behind them and stab them then run away. This pretty much is the only way to fight as getting hit about 2-4 times means you are dead and you'll need to hit them around 6-8 times to kill something. Most things come in packs and when you get hit you're stuck which means if you get ganged up on you're dead by just one hit. Bosses are different. It's much easier because they are alone but they are an endurance fight. It'll take you five minutes just to kill something repeating the same thing over and over again. Most combat can be avoided though, until you get to ones where its like a pack of mobs inside a small room. The room is locked until you clear the enemies. That's the hardest part of the game. The game itself is confusing as there is not a lot of combat and there is no scare at all. You're just mindlessly running around talking to people finding items. At the end of every chapter though you'll get tortured.
The game itself is about you remembering a lost memory. Everything is something that happened in the past and all the people are ones you knew. It starts to build up slowly and slowly until you get to the ending. Its like a suspense movie that stopped halfway and said "hey movie is over! Haha suck it up we're not telling you the rest go home and bitch." It never really explained what happened. The enemies are things from your past that comes back to haunt you. The whole game has a fairy tale vibe from the very beginning with the chapter Once upon a time... to the enemies and even the narration. If you're looking for horror this is not it. If you are looking for combat this is not it. If you're looking for a story this is not it. What is it then? What exactly is it?
The story might be the main point of the game but the combat and the searching is so frustrating it really grates on your sanity. Not only that its a slap in the face as it ends without telling you anything at all. You're still lost in the end as everything is just a messed up fairy tale like Alice in Wonderland. I love fairy tales. But this story is like a hole in your head being filled with vomit. Also if you happen to finish the game you get a special key that lets you go into a room where you can change your costume. You can switch to things such as, nurse costume, tennis costume, gothic lolita costume, octopus costume, and even a chair. Yes a chair. Your dog brown also changes too and you get matching weapons that are super powerful. For example as a Octopus your dog becomes a crab and you get to wield a frozen tuna. Check it out on youtube if you don't believe me. It's completely stupid though. Who'd want to play it a second time?
A good thing about the game is the graphics, the music, and the feel. The graphics you can set to have a grainy effect. I especially like this effect. It feels like you're in a old movie. The music is amazing. I can sit there and listen to it all day. Its mostly string instruments and piano. The feel of the game with the music and the graphics makes it really feel like the 1930's. Unfortunately, this is all that is good about the game. If you like to be tortured by playing a boring game then go ahead.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Thursday, April 16, 2009
The Last Remnant Part 2 - Overglorified Coin Tossing
Last time, we finished talking about the horrid battle system that turns TLR into a coin tossing nightmare, where the game developers have assumed that a system of chance and sheer luck would fairly even the playing field between skilled players who could strategically plan ahead and those who just mashed buttons. The fun has only just begun.
One thing that becomes tediously unmanageable is the method in which the game tries to add layers of complexity and detail. Players can collect materials and components from their battles and use them to upgrade existing gear (instead of just selling the loot like vendor trash). In addition, often times monsters will drop 'eggs' which can be broken down into more components at the end of the battle in which they were acquired. Eggs can be sold for a greater amount of cash at vendors if they aren't broken down, so we can see that Square wanted to give their players a choice, and put their decision making abilities to the test. One thing you will notice is that the eggs can be disassembled into individual materials immediately after completion of a battle, but whatever decision you choose will be permanent; disassembled eggs cannot be reassembled, and eggs you have not disassembled cannot be disassembled later. While this is a frustrating mechanic that limits the player to making an immediate choice, I can sympathize, as allowing the player the freedom to disassemble later on removes any possible shortcoming of holding onto as many eggs as possible.
What is worth complaining about is the lack of information given. When presented with the egg disassembly screen, you are told what materials the egg is comprised of, but you are not told what the materials are for. As there are thousands of upgrade materials, you have NO idea whether or not you should disassemble the egg as you do not know if you even need the disasembled materials or not. The only method is to have previously WRITTEN DOWN the materials and quantities required while at the Blacksmith, PRECEDING and OUTSIDE of battle. You absolutely need a notepad to play this game. Worse, your party members will need upgrade materials as well to upgrade their own equipment. While you do know what items they are looking for, you will have no idea how much of each component they need. If your party member has 5 of 6 Feathered Skull Husks required to reach his next upgrade tier, you will not be told that he needs 6, nor will you be told how many are remaining before he reaches his next tier, nor will you be able to control how many he gets the next time the material drops. So if 20 Feathered Skull Husks (yes the component names really are that long) drop the next battle, either your teammate with 5/6 gets all 20 or nothing at all. If your 20 party members all require a common material... Good luck getting it for them, as it'll take five times as long to gather the components because of the wasteful loot distribution system. Once a party member receives an item, you can no longer take it away from them; it's gone forever.
In the same vein of taking control away from the player in the dumbest way possible, you cannot control the equipment your party members equip. This is silly, since you are capable of picking up, creating and purchasing equipment that is strictly confined to certain races (most of which your main character is not). So how do you get your party members to equip this epic item that you found for them? You have to enter and exit the world map repeatedly until your party member ASKS you to lend the item to him or her. Once they have it equipped, again, you will not be able to repossess it or assign it to someone else, unless you provide them with even better equipment that will overwrite that slot. What was Square thinking? How does this better gameplay in any aspect but convolute something that should be damned simple? You never get to see how the comparison of your party member's stats before and after the item is equipped, so it's really hard to tell who should get what in the first place! But once you fuck up, it's over; there's no going back, you mind as well reload your save. Hey I have a great idea, how about if when the game starts, you get a totally unrelated decision of which you have not gotten any information about how to answer correctly, and if you make the wrong choice, your game turns off! More coin tossing, anyone?
What about the game's skill trees? As your character (or your party members) starts to level up, you will gain access to new skill trees, such as potion abilities, herbal abilities, magic abilities, melee... etc. In the same way as mentioned above, on a random chance of entering the world map, you will be confronted with the daunting question 'Shall I focus on melee skills or diversify into magic?'....... Wait, is the character melee based or magic based? What are his stats like? What skills will he learn in the future for either tree? Is diversifying going to slow his leveling? How many other casters do I already have in my 20 man team? None of this is answered, but you must make a decision right away, which invariably, irreversibly and ultimately affects the outcome of the rest of the game. Once you answer, there is no going back, even if the character in question has not actually placed any experience into their new tree yet. TLR is a game of uneducated decision making where tossing a coin is as effective as trying to understand the mechanics of the game intimately.
The last thing that annoys me severely is Square's attempt to move away from the traditional by eliminating the level system. Instead of having levels to represent character strength, it is now apparently the cool thing to have no levels. When has this ever been a good idea, especially in a method that is as poorly implemented as in TLR? While no levels appear on any of your characters, your character does indeed have individual hidden levels. You will notice a drastic difference in skill between unleveled members of your party, versus leveled ones. Ones that die often in combat, or are benched often will be drastically weaker than those who survive and fight on. However, Square does away with the leveling system, so you have no idea whether or not your party members are the most fit for battle of the lot of fighters at your disposal. You may be fielding severely weak and underleveled party members and not even realise it until you see them get one-shotted by a boss. Yet, you do see an aggregate level called 'Battle Ranking' that rates the aggregate strength of your entire party... So then what the hell is the point of having this awkward no-level system when ultimately, in the background of it all, there IS a level count, and the AI sure as hell knows what it is, but they aren't going to tell you. Talk about pointless.
Seriously, Square needs to understand that if they want to be original and innovative, they have to actually incorporate some brilliance and sensibility into the design. By changing the outlying appearance of the game, they've implemented half-assed features that do more to cripple the game than enhance it. And it's not just Square that is guilty of this as many other developers have taken the idea of being ground breaking to the level that they would have done much better by sticking to what they know. Not everyone in this universe is a brilliant genius, and out of the hundred people who jumped off a cliff with a prototype parachute, only one managed to deploy it. Square is one of the many who ended up as a bloody splatter in their blind approach to finding a winning formula. Innovative ideas may sound mad at conception, but it's the ones with method in their madness that find success... TLR is an exercise in sheer idiotic lunacy.
One thing that becomes tediously unmanageable is the method in which the game tries to add layers of complexity and detail. Players can collect materials and components from their battles and use them to upgrade existing gear (instead of just selling the loot like vendor trash). In addition, often times monsters will drop 'eggs' which can be broken down into more components at the end of the battle in which they were acquired. Eggs can be sold for a greater amount of cash at vendors if they aren't broken down, so we can see that Square wanted to give their players a choice, and put their decision making abilities to the test. One thing you will notice is that the eggs can be disassembled into individual materials immediately after completion of a battle, but whatever decision you choose will be permanent; disassembled eggs cannot be reassembled, and eggs you have not disassembled cannot be disassembled later. While this is a frustrating mechanic that limits the player to making an immediate choice, I can sympathize, as allowing the player the freedom to disassemble later on removes any possible shortcoming of holding onto as many eggs as possible.
What is worth complaining about is the lack of information given. When presented with the egg disassembly screen, you are told what materials the egg is comprised of, but you are not told what the materials are for. As there are thousands of upgrade materials, you have NO idea whether or not you should disassemble the egg as you do not know if you even need the disasembled materials or not. The only method is to have previously WRITTEN DOWN the materials and quantities required while at the Blacksmith, PRECEDING and OUTSIDE of battle. You absolutely need a notepad to play this game. Worse, your party members will need upgrade materials as well to upgrade their own equipment. While you do know what items they are looking for, you will have no idea how much of each component they need. If your party member has 5 of 6 Feathered Skull Husks required to reach his next upgrade tier, you will not be told that he needs 6, nor will you be told how many are remaining before he reaches his next tier, nor will you be able to control how many he gets the next time the material drops. So if 20 Feathered Skull Husks (yes the component names really are that long) drop the next battle, either your teammate with 5/6 gets all 20 or nothing at all. If your 20 party members all require a common material... Good luck getting it for them, as it'll take five times as long to gather the components because of the wasteful loot distribution system. Once a party member receives an item, you can no longer take it away from them; it's gone forever.
In the same vein of taking control away from the player in the dumbest way possible, you cannot control the equipment your party members equip. This is silly, since you are capable of picking up, creating and purchasing equipment that is strictly confined to certain races (most of which your main character is not). So how do you get your party members to equip this epic item that you found for them? You have to enter and exit the world map repeatedly until your party member ASKS you to lend the item to him or her. Once they have it equipped, again, you will not be able to repossess it or assign it to someone else, unless you provide them with even better equipment that will overwrite that slot. What was Square thinking? How does this better gameplay in any aspect but convolute something that should be damned simple? You never get to see how the comparison of your party member's stats before and after the item is equipped, so it's really hard to tell who should get what in the first place! But once you fuck up, it's over; there's no going back, you mind as well reload your save. Hey I have a great idea, how about if when the game starts, you get a totally unrelated decision of which you have not gotten any information about how to answer correctly, and if you make the wrong choice, your game turns off! More coin tossing, anyone?
What about the game's skill trees? As your character (or your party members) starts to level up, you will gain access to new skill trees, such as potion abilities, herbal abilities, magic abilities, melee... etc. In the same way as mentioned above, on a random chance of entering the world map, you will be confronted with the daunting question 'Shall I focus on melee skills or diversify into magic?'....... Wait, is the character melee based or magic based? What are his stats like? What skills will he learn in the future for either tree? Is diversifying going to slow his leveling? How many other casters do I already have in my 20 man team? None of this is answered, but you must make a decision right away, which invariably, irreversibly and ultimately affects the outcome of the rest of the game. Once you answer, there is no going back, even if the character in question has not actually placed any experience into their new tree yet. TLR is a game of uneducated decision making where tossing a coin is as effective as trying to understand the mechanics of the game intimately.
The last thing that annoys me severely is Square's attempt to move away from the traditional by eliminating the level system. Instead of having levels to represent character strength, it is now apparently the cool thing to have no levels. When has this ever been a good idea, especially in a method that is as poorly implemented as in TLR? While no levels appear on any of your characters, your character does indeed have individual hidden levels. You will notice a drastic difference in skill between unleveled members of your party, versus leveled ones. Ones that die often in combat, or are benched often will be drastically weaker than those who survive and fight on. However, Square does away with the leveling system, so you have no idea whether or not your party members are the most fit for battle of the lot of fighters at your disposal. You may be fielding severely weak and underleveled party members and not even realise it until you see them get one-shotted by a boss. Yet, you do see an aggregate level called 'Battle Ranking' that rates the aggregate strength of your entire party... So then what the hell is the point of having this awkward no-level system when ultimately, in the background of it all, there IS a level count, and the AI sure as hell knows what it is, but they aren't going to tell you. Talk about pointless.
Seriously, Square needs to understand that if they want to be original and innovative, they have to actually incorporate some brilliance and sensibility into the design. By changing the outlying appearance of the game, they've implemented half-assed features that do more to cripple the game than enhance it. And it's not just Square that is guilty of this as many other developers have taken the idea of being ground breaking to the level that they would have done much better by sticking to what they know. Not everyone in this universe is a brilliant genius, and out of the hundred people who jumped off a cliff with a prototype parachute, only one managed to deploy it. Square is one of the many who ended up as a bloody splatter in their blind approach to finding a winning formula. Innovative ideas may sound mad at conception, but it's the ones with method in their madness that find success... TLR is an exercise in sheer idiotic lunacy.
Monday, April 13, 2009
Odin Sphere Ending - Prophecies are 100% true! (spoilers below)
I like how that every book is moving at its own pace but it all sort of fits into place and meets in the final book the Armageddon. It was nicely done but a let down because all the good characters are dead and all the shitty ones remain. Now about the ending, to get the real ending, you must read the poem in Velvet's book you get from Lord Gallon to understand what is happening.
THE land sinks into
the cauldron's fire
THROUGH blades and
arrows are unleashed,
the flooding fire
cannot be stopped
IT can only be chained
A FIERY 6-eyed beast
speeds the guiding
hand of salvation
THE one who removes
the torment is mine
own son
THE Lord of the
Netherworld emerges in
a triumphant march of
death
ONE that threatens
the darkness is the
shadow of the lost
master
THE looming blaze
cometh, burning
down the forests
THE flood of fire that
man cannot withstand
is halted by the world
tree and vanishes
THE Lord of Snakes
consumes all left behind
BORN in chaos and fire
SLEEP in mother's arms
LIFE disappears from
the land
ALL comes to an end
THE ring shall be lost
THE birthing cry of
newborn souls
WELCOMING two
crownless lords that
shall survive the
Armageddon and
lead the revival
HOLY SHIT!? WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN!? Yeah that's what I said too. But luckily for you a NPC helped decipher the poem for you and dropped a ton of hints. But unfortunately, the NPC is in Velvet's book therefore he does not know about the fate of the people in the other books. So you're going what the hell? Who do I pick for the bosses ahead? Well here is something shitty for you. If you happen to pick something wrong and go "oh wait it must be that other guy!" You're locked in the book and you must finish it and get the bad ending and redo the book all over after you're done. Every ending is a bad ending except the true ending if you follow that poem above.
At first I didn't realize I had to look at the poem as you have to go back into a book to read the text you've collected in the game. The book itself is painful. Because you didn't get the good things from the later books for the earlier books you'll have to go back and replay your books to level up if you didn't and to get some potions and such. The bad thing is, you'll have to start from chapter 1. Yes, you have to go through the whole book AGAIN. How can it get any worse right? Well it can because everything kills you in 1 hit in the final book. So you'll have to stock up on Elixirs and Painkillers. That's a lot of time spent on your characters going back and everything. I guess this is their strategy. Make you repeat the same shit over and over to rack up on game time. The good thing though is that all the bosses in the final book are unique. With the exception of one.
I assume most people will get the bad ending, realize they have to read the poem and get another bad ending because its vague then get the real ending. That is an average of three tries of the book! The worst part is you need to do every boss with every character to get every scene in the archive. Every character has a unique scene for the boss. This just makes everything longer than it has to. I'm not surprised though, considering we had to do everything in the game at least five times through. It is not after you are done that you understand what it means.
The most annoying part of the poem is that you don't know until after you picked the right character and finished it that you go, "oh so this is how it is! What a twist! Let's all go and vomit blood out of our throats!"
After you managed to get through that train wreck of a poem you get the ending. Which is like five minutes long and 4 and a half minutes of it is the credits. It was disappointing because I thought it would continue on and finish off the books but it didn't as the book itself is just a part of the bigger picture, aka the final book. For a game that focuses on storyline, the story itself is really minimal in this game. If you skip the combat you can go though a book in like ten minutes.
THE land sinks into
the cauldron's fire
THROUGH blades and
arrows are unleashed,
the flooding fire
cannot be stopped
IT can only be chained
A FIERY 6-eyed beast
speeds the guiding
hand of salvation
THE one who removes
the torment is mine
own son
THE Lord of the
Netherworld emerges in
a triumphant march of
death
ONE that threatens
the darkness is the
shadow of the lost
master
THE looming blaze
cometh, burning
down the forests
THE flood of fire that
man cannot withstand
is halted by the world
tree and vanishes
THE Lord of Snakes
consumes all left behind
BORN in chaos and fire
SLEEP in mother's arms
LIFE disappears from
the land
ALL comes to an end
THE ring shall be lost
THE birthing cry of
newborn souls
WELCOMING two
crownless lords that
shall survive the
Armageddon and
lead the revival
HOLY SHIT!? WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN!? Yeah that's what I said too. But luckily for you a NPC helped decipher the poem for you and dropped a ton of hints. But unfortunately, the NPC is in Velvet's book therefore he does not know about the fate of the people in the other books. So you're going what the hell? Who do I pick for the bosses ahead? Well here is something shitty for you. If you happen to pick something wrong and go "oh wait it must be that other guy!" You're locked in the book and you must finish it and get the bad ending and redo the book all over after you're done. Every ending is a bad ending except the true ending if you follow that poem above.
At first I didn't realize I had to look at the poem as you have to go back into a book to read the text you've collected in the game. The book itself is painful. Because you didn't get the good things from the later books for the earlier books you'll have to go back and replay your books to level up if you didn't and to get some potions and such. The bad thing is, you'll have to start from chapter 1. Yes, you have to go through the whole book AGAIN. How can it get any worse right? Well it can because everything kills you in 1 hit in the final book. So you'll have to stock up on Elixirs and Painkillers. That's a lot of time spent on your characters going back and everything. I guess this is their strategy. Make you repeat the same shit over and over to rack up on game time. The good thing though is that all the bosses in the final book are unique. With the exception of one.
I assume most people will get the bad ending, realize they have to read the poem and get another bad ending because its vague then get the real ending. That is an average of three tries of the book! The worst part is you need to do every boss with every character to get every scene in the archive. Every character has a unique scene for the boss. This just makes everything longer than it has to. I'm not surprised though, considering we had to do everything in the game at least five times through. It is not after you are done that you understand what it means.
The most annoying part of the poem is that you don't know until after you picked the right character and finished it that you go, "oh so this is how it is! What a twist! Let's all go and vomit blood out of our throats!"
After you managed to get through that train wreck of a poem you get the ending. Which is like five minutes long and 4 and a half minutes of it is the credits. It was disappointing because I thought it would continue on and finish off the books but it didn't as the book itself is just a part of the bigger picture, aka the final book. For a game that focuses on storyline, the story itself is really minimal in this game. If you skip the combat you can go though a book in like ten minutes.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Odin Sphere - Where playing once isn't enough
Odin Sphere is made by Vanillaware and published by Atlus. It is considered to be the spiritual successor of Princess Crown. Although I never played it, I've been told it was enjoyable. The entire idea of this game is you are a little girl in a room and there are books laying around. As you pick up a book and read the story, you control the main character as he or she goes on their adventures. As one book is completed, more books open up. This game is kind of like the Tales series meets Valkyrie Profile. Yes, this actually is like the Tales series! You are wondering how I got to know this game. Well, it's Cent. Do I wish horrible death upon him for this game? Not really. I enjoyed the story of this game.
First off each book is divided the same way:
Prelude - Introduction
Chapter 1 - Plot
Chapter 2 - Plot
Chapter 3 - Plot
Chapter 4 - Plot
Chapter 5 - Plot
Chapter 6 - Plot
Epilogue - Ending
And every chapter has a few acts too. Every chapter starts the same way. You are in town, which allows you to move like a side-scroller, Valkyrie profile style. You press up to enter buildings to exit places. Then when you exit you are at the world map and you can choose where to go. Visit old places or continue with the story. If you choose to continue the story it will change acts and a small cut scene will happen. After the cut scene you are thrown into the dungeon. After clearing the dungeon towards the boss you are met with a cut scene and then you fight the boss. After the boss is another cut scene. After that you are onto the next chapter in town. Repeat until after the epilogue.
Each book focuses on a specific hero who is related to one of the few royal families in the story. All books are set in the same world and at different time frames which overlap. Characters overlap each other and their stories are intertwined. Here are the five main books and their characters. I included a small introduction
Book 1: Valkyrie - You play as Gwendolyn, daughter of the Demon Lord Odin, king of Ragnaviel. You follow your father's plans to fight against the fairy army and to claim the cauldron that annihilated the kingdom of Valentine. You are eventually wed to Oswald the Shadow Knight, also the enemy's greatest fighter. Afraid at first, but soon you realize his kindness.
Book 2: The Pooka Prince - You play as Cornelius, the prince of Titania, who has a relationship with Velvet the princess of Valentine against the wishes of your father and his advisers. One day you wake up being cursed and transformed into a Pooka. You must find a way to change back, and help Velvet while hiding your identity as you are afraid of her reaction.
Book 3: Fairyland - You play as Mercedes, the princess of Ringford, the fairies. Your mother, the queen was brutally murdered by the Demon Lord Odin and you are now the queen. You must lead your army to victory and stop Odin from taking the cauldron as if it is ever activated, it will absorb all the psyphers and all faeries will be wiped from the world.
Book 4: The Black Sword - You play as Oswald, the shadow knight. You are an orphan that was adopted by the fairies and used as a tool for victory. You are the greatest fighter but cursed to a fate of death by your adoptive father. You move from one person to serve to another until you finally met Gwendolyn.
Book 5: Fate - You play as Velvet the princess of Valentine. You and your twin brother Ingway were cursed to death by your mother who had the ability to see into the future. You must find a way to defy your destiny.
Book 6: ??? - The final book. Won't spoil it.
That's a lot of books isn't it. But the story itself isn't very long as 90% of the game is in the combat. Combat itself is like the Tales series. Real action side-scrolling. It's fun as the characters are all different, have their unique style, and strength and weaknesses. Sometimes, its just downright frustrating. Every dungeon has a few stages and mini-boss stage and the boss stage. Each stage is the same you are in a side-scrolling map and the entire map itself is a circle so if you keep running in one direction you'll never reach an end. Monsters will spawn, you kill them and when they are all dead it will calculate a rank based on your speed, damage, and damage taken. Depending on your rank you will get better rewards from the chest that spawns. After you are done grabbing the chest you move to another stage and repeat the process.
That doesn't sound so bad. It sounds enjoyable. Well it is, the first time around. Unfortunately for you, you need to play though the game five times over just for the main storyline and about...11 times for the final book if you want to get every scene. I want to point out that, every dungeon is the same, every map is the same, every mini boss is the same, and every boss is the same. For all five books. You don't fight them in the same order and you don't fight every boss but most bosses you need to fight 3-4 times in the game. It was fun the first time, they could have thought of something new right? Depending on the character the bosses might get harder or easier. For example, Gwendolyn and Cornelius are pretty rounded characters. Mercedes has a bow that's fast but you need to take around 5 seconds to reload once you are out of ammo. Oswald is fast but his air attack sucks and his close range attack is weak. Velvet is the slowest, hits the weakest, and has the worst POW out of any character, but she dominates anything in the air.
For example, Wagner the dragon. He flies around and breathes fire. When you fight him with Cornelius, you have a hard time getting to him and hitting him because you're hopping on the ground. If you are Mercedes, you can fly up and shoot him with your bow and dodge every single attack he does. Its like shooting a fish in a barrel. The most amazing one is Velvet. She just jumps up and swings her chain and it drops in seconds. Then there are times where bosses are completely frustrating because your character does horrible against them. Every boss there is a few ways to beat it. First way is to learn their combos and avoid their attacks and kill them without taking much damage. This will be the way everyone will go for. The second way is to have a ton of healing items and spam them constantly when you get hit and wear out the boss. This will the the way people will pick if they are horribly under leveled or bad at combat. The final way is to grind endlessly until you learn Overcharge, a skill that allows you to do double damage for the duration. This will make boss battles end so fast they don't have time to hit you.
All characters have the exact same skills and Overcharge is usually the final if not the second final skill they will learn. Probably something you wouldn't need right? Well, lets just say this game has the tendency to lag. If there are many projectiles or things on the screen. Everything will slow down. This usually means you are not able to dodge attacks. So you would spam more potions than you would normally do right? That's ok right? No. Some bosses have the ability to kill you in one hit. This includes regular monsters too. While combat itself is not hard, the occasional hit from one of those can be frustrating. A good thing is if you die, you restart the stage. If you happen to lag and is unable to dodge these hits then even potions cannot help you there. You must resort to using Overcharge. While Overcharge alone isn't a instant win. It helps you finish the fight faster before it can lag and kill you.
Another thing about this game is not only does it lag a lot when there are a ton of stuff. The loading times are terrible. Every stage you need to sit there while your playstation loads for about a minute. Then you enter the stage. The stage doesn't start right away though, it usually takes up to 20-30 seconds to start. Even then some monsters don't spawn right away. One example is Revenant, the mini-boss. It took me exactly 58 seconds running around before it finally spawned on me. Why won't they spawn right away? To give you time to prepare? Not exactly. Sometimes when you think you have time and you're busy doing things on your PC when you get attacked by a mob of monsters. You're going "What? Instant battle?" If it can spawn instantly sometimes why not do it for every battle? The loading time is long enough at it is, you shouldn't need another wait time. If you revisit cleared stages it becomes a safe map and the music changes. If you were to wait there and go do something else. When you come back you might find yourself dead. Why? Because shit will spawn and kill you. Yes, monsters spawns in safe spots.
Combat may be frustrating and repetitive but the storyline is always different for every character. Sometimes you know whats going to happen because of a previous storyline you met that character before as an enemy or such, But this time you are on the opposite side, you know why they are doing what they are doing. Neither side is wrong, they all have their reasons to do what they are doing. Maybe it was the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe it was coincidence, and perhaps they were waiting for you. Each of the characters are very like able and well developed. I particularly liked the story of Cornelius and Mercedes the best. Mercedes I started off hating her because she was this frightened spoiled child that became the queen. But as the story progressed she became strong and she really did feel like a real queen. The story of Gwendolyn and Oswald was a little disappointing but good nonetheless. There is not a story that I would say is bad. Now Velvet there is mixed feelings. Parts of the story I didn't like her, parts of the story she was alright.
I like to point out that the voice acting in this game is pretty bad. Almost as bad as the voice acting for the cut scenes of Persona 3. A good thing is that you can change the voices to Japanese. It may not be any better but because you don't understand Japanese you can remain oblivious.
Sexism is also everywhere in the game. Although mostly in Gwendolyn's chapter. Women are used to bear children for the men. If a Valkyrie is unable to fight, she will be brainwashed and when she is woken up by a kiss, she will fall in love with the man that wakes her up and bear his children. Its like slavery. Just wanted to point that out.
If you thought Okami was repetitive you haven't seen anything yet. This game redefines being lazy. The bosses are the same, the characters are the same, the dungeons are the same, the maps are the same. I also am wondering, like for example, Odin. You fight him with every character except Cornelius. How is he still the king? He gets his ass kicked by every single random character in the game. He has the strongest Psypher as well. Although it was shattered by Mercedes near the end of the game. This includes every other boss as well. If we were to combine all the story lines together, you'd notice how much they get their asses kicked. Sometimes story lines are a little weird too. Like some scenes happen to both characters but when you read the book of the other character, things are a little different.
Another annoying thing is if you wish to revisit an old book, you need to go through all the chapters and the story. That's not bad if you don't ever go back but in the final chapter you need to use characters from all books. Unfortunately, the characters in the early books did o't get the powerful items from the later books. You will have to play through the books again to reach the end to upgrade your characters. Only then are you prepared for the final battle.
If you can stand lag, fighting the same laggy bosses over and over again, the long loading times, and the sometimes frustrating combat, then you should try this game for the story. People will say, this game is about the story. I know it is, but that doesn't change the fact that 90% of the game is combat. I probably typed more text in this post than the whole game combined.
First off each book is divided the same way:
Prelude - Introduction
Chapter 1 - Plot
Chapter 2 - Plot
Chapter 3 - Plot
Chapter 4 - Plot
Chapter 5 - Plot
Chapter 6 - Plot
Epilogue - Ending
And every chapter has a few acts too. Every chapter starts the same way. You are in town, which allows you to move like a side-scroller, Valkyrie profile style. You press up to enter buildings to exit places. Then when you exit you are at the world map and you can choose where to go. Visit old places or continue with the story. If you choose to continue the story it will change acts and a small cut scene will happen. After the cut scene you are thrown into the dungeon. After clearing the dungeon towards the boss you are met with a cut scene and then you fight the boss. After the boss is another cut scene. After that you are onto the next chapter in town. Repeat until after the epilogue.
Each book focuses on a specific hero who is related to one of the few royal families in the story. All books are set in the same world and at different time frames which overlap. Characters overlap each other and their stories are intertwined. Here are the five main books and their characters. I included a small introduction
Book 1: Valkyrie - You play as Gwendolyn, daughter of the Demon Lord Odin, king of Ragnaviel. You follow your father's plans to fight against the fairy army and to claim the cauldron that annihilated the kingdom of Valentine. You are eventually wed to Oswald the Shadow Knight, also the enemy's greatest fighter. Afraid at first, but soon you realize his kindness.
Book 2: The Pooka Prince - You play as Cornelius, the prince of Titania, who has a relationship with Velvet the princess of Valentine against the wishes of your father and his advisers. One day you wake up being cursed and transformed into a Pooka. You must find a way to change back, and help Velvet while hiding your identity as you are afraid of her reaction.
Book 3: Fairyland - You play as Mercedes, the princess of Ringford, the fairies. Your mother, the queen was brutally murdered by the Demon Lord Odin and you are now the queen. You must lead your army to victory and stop Odin from taking the cauldron as if it is ever activated, it will absorb all the psyphers and all faeries will be wiped from the world.
Book 4: The Black Sword - You play as Oswald, the shadow knight. You are an orphan that was adopted by the fairies and used as a tool for victory. You are the greatest fighter but cursed to a fate of death by your adoptive father. You move from one person to serve to another until you finally met Gwendolyn.
Book 5: Fate - You play as Velvet the princess of Valentine. You and your twin brother Ingway were cursed to death by your mother who had the ability to see into the future. You must find a way to defy your destiny.
Book 6: ??? - The final book. Won't spoil it.
That's a lot of books isn't it. But the story itself isn't very long as 90% of the game is in the combat. Combat itself is like the Tales series. Real action side-scrolling. It's fun as the characters are all different, have their unique style, and strength and weaknesses. Sometimes, its just downright frustrating. Every dungeon has a few stages and mini-boss stage and the boss stage. Each stage is the same you are in a side-scrolling map and the entire map itself is a circle so if you keep running in one direction you'll never reach an end. Monsters will spawn, you kill them and when they are all dead it will calculate a rank based on your speed, damage, and damage taken. Depending on your rank you will get better rewards from the chest that spawns. After you are done grabbing the chest you move to another stage and repeat the process.
That doesn't sound so bad. It sounds enjoyable. Well it is, the first time around. Unfortunately for you, you need to play though the game five times over just for the main storyline and about...11 times for the final book if you want to get every scene. I want to point out that, every dungeon is the same, every map is the same, every mini boss is the same, and every boss is the same. For all five books. You don't fight them in the same order and you don't fight every boss but most bosses you need to fight 3-4 times in the game. It was fun the first time, they could have thought of something new right? Depending on the character the bosses might get harder or easier. For example, Gwendolyn and Cornelius are pretty rounded characters. Mercedes has a bow that's fast but you need to take around 5 seconds to reload once you are out of ammo. Oswald is fast but his air attack sucks and his close range attack is weak. Velvet is the slowest, hits the weakest, and has the worst POW out of any character, but she dominates anything in the air.
For example, Wagner the dragon. He flies around and breathes fire. When you fight him with Cornelius, you have a hard time getting to him and hitting him because you're hopping on the ground. If you are Mercedes, you can fly up and shoot him with your bow and dodge every single attack he does. Its like shooting a fish in a barrel. The most amazing one is Velvet. She just jumps up and swings her chain and it drops in seconds. Then there are times where bosses are completely frustrating because your character does horrible against them. Every boss there is a few ways to beat it. First way is to learn their combos and avoid their attacks and kill them without taking much damage. This will be the way everyone will go for. The second way is to have a ton of healing items and spam them constantly when you get hit and wear out the boss. This will the the way people will pick if they are horribly under leveled or bad at combat. The final way is to grind endlessly until you learn Overcharge, a skill that allows you to do double damage for the duration. This will make boss battles end so fast they don't have time to hit you.
All characters have the exact same skills and Overcharge is usually the final if not the second final skill they will learn. Probably something you wouldn't need right? Well, lets just say this game has the tendency to lag. If there are many projectiles or things on the screen. Everything will slow down. This usually means you are not able to dodge attacks. So you would spam more potions than you would normally do right? That's ok right? No. Some bosses have the ability to kill you in one hit. This includes regular monsters too. While combat itself is not hard, the occasional hit from one of those can be frustrating. A good thing is if you die, you restart the stage. If you happen to lag and is unable to dodge these hits then even potions cannot help you there. You must resort to using Overcharge. While Overcharge alone isn't a instant win. It helps you finish the fight faster before it can lag and kill you.
Another thing about this game is not only does it lag a lot when there are a ton of stuff. The loading times are terrible. Every stage you need to sit there while your playstation loads for about a minute. Then you enter the stage. The stage doesn't start right away though, it usually takes up to 20-30 seconds to start. Even then some monsters don't spawn right away. One example is Revenant, the mini-boss. It took me exactly 58 seconds running around before it finally spawned on me. Why won't they spawn right away? To give you time to prepare? Not exactly. Sometimes when you think you have time and you're busy doing things on your PC when you get attacked by a mob of monsters. You're going "What? Instant battle?" If it can spawn instantly sometimes why not do it for every battle? The loading time is long enough at it is, you shouldn't need another wait time. If you revisit cleared stages it becomes a safe map and the music changes. If you were to wait there and go do something else. When you come back you might find yourself dead. Why? Because shit will spawn and kill you. Yes, monsters spawns in safe spots.
Combat may be frustrating and repetitive but the storyline is always different for every character. Sometimes you know whats going to happen because of a previous storyline you met that character before as an enemy or such, But this time you are on the opposite side, you know why they are doing what they are doing. Neither side is wrong, they all have their reasons to do what they are doing. Maybe it was the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe it was coincidence, and perhaps they were waiting for you. Each of the characters are very like able and well developed. I particularly liked the story of Cornelius and Mercedes the best. Mercedes I started off hating her because she was this frightened spoiled child that became the queen. But as the story progressed she became strong and she really did feel like a real queen. The story of Gwendolyn and Oswald was a little disappointing but good nonetheless. There is not a story that I would say is bad. Now Velvet there is mixed feelings. Parts of the story I didn't like her, parts of the story she was alright.
I like to point out that the voice acting in this game is pretty bad. Almost as bad as the voice acting for the cut scenes of Persona 3. A good thing is that you can change the voices to Japanese. It may not be any better but because you don't understand Japanese you can remain oblivious.
Sexism is also everywhere in the game. Although mostly in Gwendolyn's chapter. Women are used to bear children for the men. If a Valkyrie is unable to fight, she will be brainwashed and when she is woken up by a kiss, she will fall in love with the man that wakes her up and bear his children. Its like slavery. Just wanted to point that out.
If you thought Okami was repetitive you haven't seen anything yet. This game redefines being lazy. The bosses are the same, the characters are the same, the dungeons are the same, the maps are the same. I also am wondering, like for example, Odin. You fight him with every character except Cornelius. How is he still the king? He gets his ass kicked by every single random character in the game. He has the strongest Psypher as well. Although it was shattered by Mercedes near the end of the game. This includes every other boss as well. If we were to combine all the story lines together, you'd notice how much they get their asses kicked. Sometimes story lines are a little weird too. Like some scenes happen to both characters but when you read the book of the other character, things are a little different.
Another annoying thing is if you wish to revisit an old book, you need to go through all the chapters and the story. That's not bad if you don't ever go back but in the final chapter you need to use characters from all books. Unfortunately, the characters in the early books did o't get the powerful items from the later books. You will have to play through the books again to reach the end to upgrade your characters. Only then are you prepared for the final battle.
If you can stand lag, fighting the same laggy bosses over and over again, the long loading times, and the sometimes frustrating combat, then you should try this game for the story. People will say, this game is about the story. I know it is, but that doesn't change the fact that 90% of the game is combat. I probably typed more text in this post than the whole game combined.
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Valkyrie Profile Silmeria - Prequel or Sequel? The chronologically confused
"Come to me dark warriors; battle awaits us"
You probably heard that line over and over again if you ever played Valkyrie Profile. That was a good thing because the voice actress for Lenneth was great. Valkyrie Profile (VP) was an amazing game, my all time favorite. Its too bad I can't say the same for Valkyrie Profile Silmeria (VPS). The good thing about VP was the combat, combined with dungeons where it requires careful thinking to get past. The best part was the wide variety of Einherjar (souls of the dead that join you in combat) that you can get. On the world map while you are flying you can hit a button to listen to the dying souls until you find one then you fly over and you learn of their background and how they die then take them on your quest.
What exactly is VPS? Well its a sequel of VP, except you take everything good about VP and remove it. You are not a Valkyrie. You are Alicia the princess of Dipan, yes the same Dipan in VP. You share a body with Silmeria where she can take over you at anytime. Often you are talking with her to yourself which is quite awkward and the people you are with think you're some kind of nut job. One major thing about this game is that there are no Einherjar stories to watch/listen before you get them. In fact, you don't even get all of them. While randomly going into dungeons you will sometimes find a sword, two-handed sword, bow, or staff laying there on the ground. Touching them prompt a question "do you wish to take this Einherjar?" If you click yes then it goes "Jessica has joined your party," or something similar. That is it.
That's it, I'm serious. There is nothing else to explain about it. A sword is a light fighter, a two-handed sword a heavy fighter, a bow is an archer, and a staff is a mage. When you get an Einherjar you get a random one out of two or three that could possibly appear in that one item at that particular location. So you can never get all of them and you never learn of their stories. You can read their background in the status menu but its not the same. Would you rather watch a hockey game or read a book about what happened during that hockey game? Same idea. The background is very brief as well and it doesn't really explain much.
Now combat, you remember VP having very memorable combat right? There are four characters each with a different button controlling them. Well they decided to complicate battle. First Alicia can't use a bow like Lenneth so she's always got a sword. Second combat starts off with creatures everywhere. You are standing awkwardly in a group of four which you can split apart into two separate groups if you wish. The only reason to split is for boss battles as regular battles you just rush in and kill everything four on one. Most creatures are spread out so you can take advantage of that. There will be a red box in front of them telling you their attack range. You have a dash option that lets to "jump" across their line of attack if you wish letting you flank them from the sides or the back.
When you get into range to hit someone it'll be just like the original VP where you hit buttons and you start fighting. Exception is after the first few dungeons you get an artifact that allows you to hit more times than your weapon allows. Yes this means you can technically hit as many times as you want before you AP bar runs dry. Most creatures die before your AP bar runs dry anyways and you're always fighting four on one. Another thing I like to point out that's different to the old VP is that every character has the same moves and Purify Weird Soul (now called Soul Crush) skill. The exception is the storyline characters which has unique skills and Soul Crush. So there is no point in using your Einherjar. If you beat the "boss" of the battle, one mob that has a yellow health bar, the battle is immediately over so a strategy for this game is rush in kill the "boss" and the battle automatically ends. This happens for regular random creature encounters.
Soul Crush are built up the same way as in VP except its always up because there is no need to combo your moves to reach 100. You have endless attacks so its always at 100. Another thing about combat is depending on the direction and height you are attacking an enemy you hit different parts of their body and you can slowly break pieces off them. Like for example a giant crab you can attack its pincers its legs or its back, the shell. If you take the time to slowly break down parts you get more crystals (kind of exp) and occasionally item part drops. If you choose to attack their main body and kill them fast you won't get those parts. Those parts are to be traded in at towns to buy weapons. Yes NPCs don't carry much gear you need to grind endlessly to get these parts and trade it in. Most of the time its ??? so you don't know what you are really buying until you do.
Another thing you need to watch out for when you buy or gear up characters is the color and rune of the gear. There are red, green, blue. In your equipment screen is a diamond, weapon on the left head on the top does on the bottom arm on the right body in the center and four accessories on the four corners of the body. Depending on the color and the runes you can connect them together to enhance your effects or learn new combat skills. This means you have to keep changing your gears around to learn skills in combat. Once you learn it you can change your gear and learn another.
What's different for attack moves in this game which may or may not be a good thing is that everyone learns the same attacks. This means there is no difference in who you pick as an Einherjar, as you don't know their stories and they learn the same stuff. But this means that you can customize their attacks. For example you have a character that always does a low rising move you can combine it with another character which does an high move. Kinda like VP but you have more variety to choose from.
Lastly, everyone who's played VP are familiar with the side scrolling, crystal shooting and climbing around in VP. Well they removed that. It's still a side scroller except the controls are a little strange. Alicia moves awkwardly and when she jumps it feels like she doesn't have any momentum at all. She jumps way too high and you usually can't predict how far she can jump because she doesn't seem to jump very far or walk very fast. You can freeze enemies like the old one but now you can't freeze objects or walls. Your missile will bounce off walls and you can technically bounce it around and hit a frozen enemy. If you hit a frozen enemy you will automatically swap places with them. Its a very annoying thing sometimes when you accidentally swap with someone and ruin the ladder you were making. Also there is just not as many puzzles as the first one. If you count pushing a single block into a single hole beside the block a puzzle.
Another thing annoying about this game in dungeons is the use of seals. Seals can be put in a stand and everything in the room/section will get affected by some kind of status effect. For example a room has the seal no jumping. That means in that room you can't jump unless you remove the seal from the stand. If it says attack up 120% it means all enemies get 120% attack. If you were to take the seal off the stand you'd have 120% attack while you hold it. If you leave the dungeon seals are automatically reset. You can buy seals with your crystals if you break apart a lot of creatures. The better the seal the more expensive it is. there will be a shrine usually at the start and at the end of the dungeon to let you swap seals that you have "bought." You can only carry a few at a time so choose wisely. Do they really need to complicate thing so much? I know they are trying to do something different but this is just insane.
Also I like to point out that Lezard Valeth looks like Harry Potter and Rufus looks like Captain Jack Sparrow. I'm serious go google them up right now! Someone watches too many Hollywood movies.
Last but not least this is technically a prequel as it takes place before the time of VP but its also a sequel. How you ask? Time travel. You might find it weird that there is Lezard Valeth in your party as he is one of the main villains in VP. The story of VPS follows after the story of the good ending in VP. Yes the ending that's impossible to find out unless you look for a guide online. You find out near the end of the game when you meet Lenneth who introduces herself as not the Lenneth from VPS time but as Lenneth the creator in VP where she killed Odin or Loki or Lodin and remade the world after Ragnarok. She also tells you that Lezard Valeth went back in time to come to VPS time to plot something. Groan.
So what exactly is it? A prequel or a sequel? Its chronologically confused! The story line is awkward and boring as well. I rather sit though Persona 3 again than listen to the story of this game. Granted I never finished the game and I only got to the part where Lenneth comes and joins your party. But getting there is annoying enough. Enix and Tri-Ace made a perfect game but ruined it with the sequel or prequel whatever it is. I know they wanted to try something different but instead they got rid of the good things. Lets take Zelda series for example. Every one of them is slightly different but it keeps to its Zelda roots. This thing just says "screw the roots lets pull the whole tree out and plant a rock and hope it grows into a statue."
I'm mostly comparing this game to VP but if you were to compare it to other Square games its really not that different. I would say this game is more comparable to other Square games than to VP. The only thing similar is the name, the characters and a part of the battle. Battle isn't too bad but tedious as half the time is spent moving around and some maps have annoying obstacles where you team would get stuck behind and you are one man short.
The game itself is not that bad if you don't compare it to VP. The game itself is fairly easy, you just need to grind to get the stuff and then boss battles are pretty much the same. Spam all your moves and spam Soul Crush. If you can attack its weak spot for massive damage. Outside of combat its pretty complex with characters, equipment, skills, etc. Although not overly complex but enough to give anyone a headache without a guide. People who never played VP might enjoy it, those who have probably won't like the changes.
You probably heard that line over and over again if you ever played Valkyrie Profile. That was a good thing because the voice actress for Lenneth was great. Valkyrie Profile (VP) was an amazing game, my all time favorite. Its too bad I can't say the same for Valkyrie Profile Silmeria (VPS). The good thing about VP was the combat, combined with dungeons where it requires careful thinking to get past. The best part was the wide variety of Einherjar (souls of the dead that join you in combat) that you can get. On the world map while you are flying you can hit a button to listen to the dying souls until you find one then you fly over and you learn of their background and how they die then take them on your quest.
What exactly is VPS? Well its a sequel of VP, except you take everything good about VP and remove it. You are not a Valkyrie. You are Alicia the princess of Dipan, yes the same Dipan in VP. You share a body with Silmeria where she can take over you at anytime. Often you are talking with her to yourself which is quite awkward and the people you are with think you're some kind of nut job. One major thing about this game is that there are no Einherjar stories to watch/listen before you get them. In fact, you don't even get all of them. While randomly going into dungeons you will sometimes find a sword, two-handed sword, bow, or staff laying there on the ground. Touching them prompt a question "do you wish to take this Einherjar?" If you click yes then it goes "Jessica has joined your party," or something similar. That is it.
That's it, I'm serious. There is nothing else to explain about it. A sword is a light fighter, a two-handed sword a heavy fighter, a bow is an archer, and a staff is a mage. When you get an Einherjar you get a random one out of two or three that could possibly appear in that one item at that particular location. So you can never get all of them and you never learn of their stories. You can read their background in the status menu but its not the same. Would you rather watch a hockey game or read a book about what happened during that hockey game? Same idea. The background is very brief as well and it doesn't really explain much.
Now combat, you remember VP having very memorable combat right? There are four characters each with a different button controlling them. Well they decided to complicate battle. First Alicia can't use a bow like Lenneth so she's always got a sword. Second combat starts off with creatures everywhere. You are standing awkwardly in a group of four which you can split apart into two separate groups if you wish. The only reason to split is for boss battles as regular battles you just rush in and kill everything four on one. Most creatures are spread out so you can take advantage of that. There will be a red box in front of them telling you their attack range. You have a dash option that lets to "jump" across their line of attack if you wish letting you flank them from the sides or the back.
When you get into range to hit someone it'll be just like the original VP where you hit buttons and you start fighting. Exception is after the first few dungeons you get an artifact that allows you to hit more times than your weapon allows. Yes this means you can technically hit as many times as you want before you AP bar runs dry. Most creatures die before your AP bar runs dry anyways and you're always fighting four on one. Another thing I like to point out that's different to the old VP is that every character has the same moves and Purify Weird Soul (now called Soul Crush) skill. The exception is the storyline characters which has unique skills and Soul Crush. So there is no point in using your Einherjar. If you beat the "boss" of the battle, one mob that has a yellow health bar, the battle is immediately over so a strategy for this game is rush in kill the "boss" and the battle automatically ends. This happens for regular random creature encounters.
Soul Crush are built up the same way as in VP except its always up because there is no need to combo your moves to reach 100. You have endless attacks so its always at 100. Another thing about combat is depending on the direction and height you are attacking an enemy you hit different parts of their body and you can slowly break pieces off them. Like for example a giant crab you can attack its pincers its legs or its back, the shell. If you take the time to slowly break down parts you get more crystals (kind of exp) and occasionally item part drops. If you choose to attack their main body and kill them fast you won't get those parts. Those parts are to be traded in at towns to buy weapons. Yes NPCs don't carry much gear you need to grind endlessly to get these parts and trade it in. Most of the time its ??? so you don't know what you are really buying until you do.
Another thing you need to watch out for when you buy or gear up characters is the color and rune of the gear. There are red, green, blue. In your equipment screen is a diamond, weapon on the left head on the top does on the bottom arm on the right body in the center and four accessories on the four corners of the body. Depending on the color and the runes you can connect them together to enhance your effects or learn new combat skills. This means you have to keep changing your gears around to learn skills in combat. Once you learn it you can change your gear and learn another.
What's different for attack moves in this game which may or may not be a good thing is that everyone learns the same attacks. This means there is no difference in who you pick as an Einherjar, as you don't know their stories and they learn the same stuff. But this means that you can customize their attacks. For example you have a character that always does a low rising move you can combine it with another character which does an high move. Kinda like VP but you have more variety to choose from.
Lastly, everyone who's played VP are familiar with the side scrolling, crystal shooting and climbing around in VP. Well they removed that. It's still a side scroller except the controls are a little strange. Alicia moves awkwardly and when she jumps it feels like she doesn't have any momentum at all. She jumps way too high and you usually can't predict how far she can jump because she doesn't seem to jump very far or walk very fast. You can freeze enemies like the old one but now you can't freeze objects or walls. Your missile will bounce off walls and you can technically bounce it around and hit a frozen enemy. If you hit a frozen enemy you will automatically swap places with them. Its a very annoying thing sometimes when you accidentally swap with someone and ruin the ladder you were making. Also there is just not as many puzzles as the first one. If you count pushing a single block into a single hole beside the block a puzzle.
Another thing annoying about this game in dungeons is the use of seals. Seals can be put in a stand and everything in the room/section will get affected by some kind of status effect. For example a room has the seal no jumping. That means in that room you can't jump unless you remove the seal from the stand. If it says attack up 120% it means all enemies get 120% attack. If you were to take the seal off the stand you'd have 120% attack while you hold it. If you leave the dungeon seals are automatically reset. You can buy seals with your crystals if you break apart a lot of creatures. The better the seal the more expensive it is. there will be a shrine usually at the start and at the end of the dungeon to let you swap seals that you have "bought." You can only carry a few at a time so choose wisely. Do they really need to complicate thing so much? I know they are trying to do something different but this is just insane.
Also I like to point out that Lezard Valeth looks like Harry Potter and Rufus looks like Captain Jack Sparrow. I'm serious go google them up right now! Someone watches too many Hollywood movies.
Last but not least this is technically a prequel as it takes place before the time of VP but its also a sequel. How you ask? Time travel. You might find it weird that there is Lezard Valeth in your party as he is one of the main villains in VP. The story of VPS follows after the story of the good ending in VP. Yes the ending that's impossible to find out unless you look for a guide online. You find out near the end of the game when you meet Lenneth who introduces herself as not the Lenneth from VPS time but as Lenneth the creator in VP where she killed Odin or Loki or Lodin and remade the world after Ragnarok. She also tells you that Lezard Valeth went back in time to come to VPS time to plot something. Groan.
So what exactly is it? A prequel or a sequel? Its chronologically confused! The story line is awkward and boring as well. I rather sit though Persona 3 again than listen to the story of this game. Granted I never finished the game and I only got to the part where Lenneth comes and joins your party. But getting there is annoying enough. Enix and Tri-Ace made a perfect game but ruined it with the sequel or prequel whatever it is. I know they wanted to try something different but instead they got rid of the good things. Lets take Zelda series for example. Every one of them is slightly different but it keeps to its Zelda roots. This thing just says "screw the roots lets pull the whole tree out and plant a rock and hope it grows into a statue."
I'm mostly comparing this game to VP but if you were to compare it to other Square games its really not that different. I would say this game is more comparable to other Square games than to VP. The only thing similar is the name, the characters and a part of the battle. Battle isn't too bad but tedious as half the time is spent moving around and some maps have annoying obstacles where you team would get stuck behind and you are one man short.
The game itself is not that bad if you don't compare it to VP. The game itself is fairly easy, you just need to grind to get the stuff and then boss battles are pretty much the same. Spam all your moves and spam Soul Crush. If you can attack its weak spot for massive damage. Outside of combat its pretty complex with characters, equipment, skills, etc. Although not overly complex but enough to give anyone a headache without a guide. People who never played VP might enjoy it, those who have probably won't like the changes.
The Last Remnant pt.1 - Hiding Information from the Player Makes the Game Easier
The Last Remnant. Yea, well the title is probably the best part of this game - you don't have to expect an even shittier sequel. I mean it is LAST right? No. It's about as last as Final Fantasy is final. So what will it be called? The Second Last (Penultimate) Remnant? Last Remnant 2? Who knows, just close your eyes and plug your ears till it blows over. But I'm getting ahead of myself since we haven't even dived into how shitty the first one is.
The story is quite simple and generic, so I won't talk about it too much. Typical boy wanders out into world, has hidden fantastic powers, is out to stop super villains and eventually gets the girl. Of course, the 'girl' in this game happens to be your little sister, so unless there's some incestuous undertone here, which I really wouldn't put past the Japanese, there is effectively no romantic portion. Possibly for the best. See it how you will, but there really isn't any other female lead in this game worth mentioning.
Whoa okay, so that's not entirely true. There is one character that does blossom out to be passable, dare I say, interesting but unfortunately, no more than an hour in, you will quickly start getting the hint that this character is going to be obsoleted. First, you notice that she's over 40 and let's face it, any character that isn't within the teen's bracket is going to leave your party permanently, and bequeath his or her role in the game to another more youthful character. The game quickly introduces to you her replacement: a lone NPC that looks exactly like her, except younger. They mind as well just tell you: this character is going to be replaced by a younger, hotter version. Don't bother training her. She even repeats 'I will gladly give my life for Athlum' several times, with exceedingly painful emphasis as soon as there is even the slightest threat. No other character emits this sort of patriotic valor, but that's not the effect that Square was trying to achieve. No, they were trying to drill a foreboding warning into your mind, as if it wasn't obvious enough. To put this into perspective, you realise all this within the first hour of a game rated at a length of 70-100 hours. I would not have minded so much if she wasn't the one single good character of the game. Afterwards, you're left with a terrible and forgetable cast who you really wish you could do without.
Most of the other characters do very little talking in the game, but the dialogue is lame, both in the way that it is uninteresting and doesn't progress the game. It is meaningless chatter to fill in the void. Avoiding these NPCs entirely and continuing will have no negative impact on your experience. Unfortunately, they apply the same sort of treatment to the cutscenes, drawing out meaningless babble and adding awkwardly long pauses between sentences. I'm not sure if it was an issue with the English dubbing, but the scenes themselves are also too long. If I want to pan around the environment at a distance that is much too close to really get a grasp of the surroundings, I would happily do it myself when I am in control of the camera.
And I haven't gotten into the real shitter yet: the gameplay of this game is unbelievably terrible. First, you should know that Square designed this game off the Unreal engine, and admitted to facing many challenges converting a FPS engine to work well with a turn-based RPG game. It seemed to me that they were really forced into working with something they knew would be problematic and limiting, just so they could sell it under the pretense that it was a JRPG marketed towards the American market. Seeing that The Last Remnant was built practically around the XBOX 360, with the controls and interface contoured for the 360 controller, and that a PS3 version has never been discussed... This game was solely targeted towards American console FPSers between the ages of 13-20ish. I really hesitate to bump the number higher, as the gameplay really isn't deep enough to warrant drawing in the hardcore crowd of RPGers, who are often older geeks.
Regardless, I am still unclear as to what aspect of the game really appeals to the American audience. Does the story or setting have a strong resemblance to western culture? No more so than other JRPGs. Do the characters feel like they bear the attitudes and personalities of typical American people? No, in fact, most characters are quite soft-spoken, perhaps with the sole exception of Rush, the main protagonist (the player) who is a total moron. I guess that's very much like the typical American 360 player after all, but why just him? How could you even feel anything but alienation from this character; he's impossible to respect in any aspect. Is the game trying to appeal to American non-RPG audiences by dumbing down what the RPG genre is and reducing any complexities down to random chance and your character levels? .... I think we found a winner!
That's exactly what Last Remnant's gameplay is: a shitty, random, washed out version of what a tactical RPG is usually like. Of course, instead of viewing this as a weakness, Square promotes them as innovative features.
Here's a taste: Instead of controlling individual characters, you give commands to an entire squad, consisting of up to 5 characters each. You eventually get to control practically a battalion, with multiple squads under your command. Giving orders to a group is fine and all, but what ultimately ends up happening is that each of your groups members deliver individual commands. It completely defeats the purpose of the group-system in the first place, as you have none of the advantages and all of the problems. You can tell an entire party to attack, use spells, use skills or defend... But they all do different things. Say if you tell a party to use spells, only 2 of your party members will cast some spell of their choosing, and the others will run in and melee. You won't get to choose what spell these two use, or which of your characters will cast the spell. Switching your target to another enemy at equivalent distance will bring up a completely new set of options. You may only be able to defend this turn if you attack the enemies on the left, but you may only be able to melee the enemies on the right. Is there a particular reason that you are restricted in such a way? No! You can restart the fight, and have the exact same conditions, yet different combat options will be open to you. Last Remnant uses RANDOM chance to fluctuate the difficulty of battles. If you tell your party to attack with spells, the game may choose to have your weakest caster cast the spells and use up the party's aggregate mana. Conversely, telling your party to heal another party may have your slowest caster cast the heal... Which usually means that your allied party is already dead before the heal is completed. The inability to choose who will use what wildly changes how your battles will play out, meaning if you input a set of commands for a fight, you may end up failing miserably... Yet in the exact same battle, the same commands again may allow you to win handily because the random members and random skills chosen just happened to match up in such a way that it maximized the effectiveness of your party.
... That is an atrocity. To have the element of luck and nebulous party/combat management be the main deciding factor in your battles is a terrible idea from conception. Why not just roll dice at the start of the fight and be done with it?
But wait, it can't be that bad right? You can probably level up or gear up a little more to improve your chances. No. You can't. Although the skills chosen to be cast (and who casts them) are random, the option of possible commands that appear for your party are ALSO random. Some turns, for no reason, your party will not be allowed to heal. It doesn't matter if they have healing items on them, if they have no health, full health, lots of AP, little AP or no status afflictions... You just CAN'T. No reasons are ever given in this game, so you just got to tough it out until your heals or attacks start to appear. If you've got shitty luck, expect to watch your party get slaughtered when they cannot make any moves other than 'play it by the ear' for 5 consecutive turns. And what is 'Play It By the Ear'? That's when your party members get to do whatever the fuck they want, and you won't even know because all their skills appear as ???. It literally IS just rolling the dice for that turn. Although I'm telling you, sometimes even THAT doesn't appear as an option. Then you're really fucked and you mind as well just reload your closest save.
But what the fuck is the point? Sometimes you're unable to heal, and your only hope of healing is to select Play It By the Ear and hope to God that one of your party members will decide healing is a good idea. So if your party is technically capable of using a heal... Why the fuck wasn't the option there in the first place? Was it just funny to have it hidden? Why is there even a 5 command options limit in the first place? You have 5 things to pick from at random, and sometimes they're all shitty. But by the luck of the draw, your parties may do something that is actually helpful. There is no planning your battles, there is no skill and there definitely is no strategy. I've read some comments and reviews that compliments TLR for having an innovative level of strategic commanding... But nowhere have I found anyone who can tell me HOW they are being strategic. Simply put, these people are full of shit, and are probably indeed the never-played-a-RPG-before Americans that Square were hoping to please.
While in combat, you can maneuver your squads to deadlock other enemy squads... Once in deadlock, that's when the damage begins, pending your nebulous combat options above. There is also a strategic flanking damage bonus that you will never be able to capitalize on. Your squads can supposedly go around and attack an enemy squad at its rear for increase damage... But you simply cannot get this to happen because you cannot give your squad a command to go to a specific location on the battlefield. Everything you do is relative to the enemy squads. You can either stay put and do nothing where you are... Or you charge forwards towards the targetted enemy squad. There is no in between, there is no walking to the left edge of the battlefield, nor is there a 'Circle around the deadlock and flank them' command. This game is charge, charge, and charge.
Here's what I don't understand. Square tries to make the game easier to understand and play and not make it too overwhelming with information to the player... But they do it hiding everything. You do not get to see why certain spells cannot be cast, you don't get to know why you can't heal, you don't get to know who is even going to attack first in a deadlock. All this stuff is important, as it affects the way you're going to command the next turn. If your enemy is going to get off the attack first the next turn, you may want to avoid casting large-long-cast spells. If the enemy has been charging a long casting spell for the previous turn, you may want to have options to attack quickly and interrupt or run the hell away. But no, you're completely at the mercy of the game, who on a whim may or may not give you the commands to effectively deal with the situation.
Even GIVEN the option to heal/attack/resurrect in this game, it is still a pain in the ass. If two parties are low on HP, even selecting which party to heal becomes impossible. You cannot target friendly parties. Instead you target the enemy party that your friendly parties have targeted. You can then cast a heal to heal the target of your target. Wow. Way to make it confusing, assholes. But worse, if two parties are targetting the same enemy squad... Which party are you healing? Now that will be fucking random again. You won't get to pick, and you're definitely not going to get a second command option to heal the other group. Again, either you tough it out and hope to God that next turn you get the options you want, or you restart.
This is a fairly long game, and there are way more problems than this. Stay tuned for TLR, Part 2.
The story is quite simple and generic, so I won't talk about it too much. Typical boy wanders out into world, has hidden fantastic powers, is out to stop super villains and eventually gets the girl. Of course, the 'girl' in this game happens to be your little sister, so unless there's some incestuous undertone here, which I really wouldn't put past the Japanese, there is effectively no romantic portion. Possibly for the best. See it how you will, but there really isn't any other female lead in this game worth mentioning.
Whoa okay, so that's not entirely true. There is one character that does blossom out to be passable, dare I say, interesting but unfortunately, no more than an hour in, you will quickly start getting the hint that this character is going to be obsoleted. First, you notice that she's over 40 and let's face it, any character that isn't within the teen's bracket is going to leave your party permanently, and bequeath his or her role in the game to another more youthful character. The game quickly introduces to you her replacement: a lone NPC that looks exactly like her, except younger. They mind as well just tell you: this character is going to be replaced by a younger, hotter version. Don't bother training her. She even repeats 'I will gladly give my life for Athlum' several times, with exceedingly painful emphasis as soon as there is even the slightest threat. No other character emits this sort of patriotic valor, but that's not the effect that Square was trying to achieve. No, they were trying to drill a foreboding warning into your mind, as if it wasn't obvious enough. To put this into perspective, you realise all this within the first hour of a game rated at a length of 70-100 hours. I would not have minded so much if she wasn't the one single good character of the game. Afterwards, you're left with a terrible and forgetable cast who you really wish you could do without.
Most of the other characters do very little talking in the game, but the dialogue is lame, both in the way that it is uninteresting and doesn't progress the game. It is meaningless chatter to fill in the void. Avoiding these NPCs entirely and continuing will have no negative impact on your experience. Unfortunately, they apply the same sort of treatment to the cutscenes, drawing out meaningless babble and adding awkwardly long pauses between sentences. I'm not sure if it was an issue with the English dubbing, but the scenes themselves are also too long. If I want to pan around the environment at a distance that is much too close to really get a grasp of the surroundings, I would happily do it myself when I am in control of the camera.
And I haven't gotten into the real shitter yet: the gameplay of this game is unbelievably terrible. First, you should know that Square designed this game off the Unreal engine, and admitted to facing many challenges converting a FPS engine to work well with a turn-based RPG game. It seemed to me that they were really forced into working with something they knew would be problematic and limiting, just so they could sell it under the pretense that it was a JRPG marketed towards the American market. Seeing that The Last Remnant was built practically around the XBOX 360, with the controls and interface contoured for the 360 controller, and that a PS3 version has never been discussed... This game was solely targeted towards American console FPSers between the ages of 13-20ish. I really hesitate to bump the number higher, as the gameplay really isn't deep enough to warrant drawing in the hardcore crowd of RPGers, who are often older geeks.
Regardless, I am still unclear as to what aspect of the game really appeals to the American audience. Does the story or setting have a strong resemblance to western culture? No more so than other JRPGs. Do the characters feel like they bear the attitudes and personalities of typical American people? No, in fact, most characters are quite soft-spoken, perhaps with the sole exception of Rush, the main protagonist (the player) who is a total moron. I guess that's very much like the typical American 360 player after all, but why just him? How could you even feel anything but alienation from this character; he's impossible to respect in any aspect. Is the game trying to appeal to American non-RPG audiences by dumbing down what the RPG genre is and reducing any complexities down to random chance and your character levels? .... I think we found a winner!
That's exactly what Last Remnant's gameplay is: a shitty, random, washed out version of what a tactical RPG is usually like. Of course, instead of viewing this as a weakness, Square promotes them as innovative features.
Here's a taste: Instead of controlling individual characters, you give commands to an entire squad, consisting of up to 5 characters each. You eventually get to control practically a battalion, with multiple squads under your command. Giving orders to a group is fine and all, but what ultimately ends up happening is that each of your groups members deliver individual commands. It completely defeats the purpose of the group-system in the first place, as you have none of the advantages and all of the problems. You can tell an entire party to attack, use spells, use skills or defend... But they all do different things. Say if you tell a party to use spells, only 2 of your party members will cast some spell of their choosing, and the others will run in and melee. You won't get to choose what spell these two use, or which of your characters will cast the spell. Switching your target to another enemy at equivalent distance will bring up a completely new set of options. You may only be able to defend this turn if you attack the enemies on the left, but you may only be able to melee the enemies on the right. Is there a particular reason that you are restricted in such a way? No! You can restart the fight, and have the exact same conditions, yet different combat options will be open to you. Last Remnant uses RANDOM chance to fluctuate the difficulty of battles. If you tell your party to attack with spells, the game may choose to have your weakest caster cast the spells and use up the party's aggregate mana. Conversely, telling your party to heal another party may have your slowest caster cast the heal... Which usually means that your allied party is already dead before the heal is completed. The inability to choose who will use what wildly changes how your battles will play out, meaning if you input a set of commands for a fight, you may end up failing miserably... Yet in the exact same battle, the same commands again may allow you to win handily because the random members and random skills chosen just happened to match up in such a way that it maximized the effectiveness of your party.
... That is an atrocity. To have the element of luck and nebulous party/combat management be the main deciding factor in your battles is a terrible idea from conception. Why not just roll dice at the start of the fight and be done with it?
But wait, it can't be that bad right? You can probably level up or gear up a little more to improve your chances. No. You can't. Although the skills chosen to be cast (and who casts them) are random, the option of possible commands that appear for your party are ALSO random. Some turns, for no reason, your party will not be allowed to heal. It doesn't matter if they have healing items on them, if they have no health, full health, lots of AP, little AP or no status afflictions... You just CAN'T. No reasons are ever given in this game, so you just got to tough it out until your heals or attacks start to appear. If you've got shitty luck, expect to watch your party get slaughtered when they cannot make any moves other than 'play it by the ear' for 5 consecutive turns. And what is 'Play It By the Ear'? That's when your party members get to do whatever the fuck they want, and you won't even know because all their skills appear as ???. It literally IS just rolling the dice for that turn. Although I'm telling you, sometimes even THAT doesn't appear as an option. Then you're really fucked and you mind as well just reload your closest save.
But what the fuck is the point? Sometimes you're unable to heal, and your only hope of healing is to select Play It By the Ear and hope to God that one of your party members will decide healing is a good idea. So if your party is technically capable of using a heal... Why the fuck wasn't the option there in the first place? Was it just funny to have it hidden? Why is there even a 5 command options limit in the first place? You have 5 things to pick from at random, and sometimes they're all shitty. But by the luck of the draw, your parties may do something that is actually helpful. There is no planning your battles, there is no skill and there definitely is no strategy. I've read some comments and reviews that compliments TLR for having an innovative level of strategic commanding... But nowhere have I found anyone who can tell me HOW they are being strategic. Simply put, these people are full of shit, and are probably indeed the never-played-a-RPG-before Americans that Square were hoping to please.
While in combat, you can maneuver your squads to deadlock other enemy squads... Once in deadlock, that's when the damage begins, pending your nebulous combat options above. There is also a strategic flanking damage bonus that you will never be able to capitalize on. Your squads can supposedly go around and attack an enemy squad at its rear for increase damage... But you simply cannot get this to happen because you cannot give your squad a command to go to a specific location on the battlefield. Everything you do is relative to the enemy squads. You can either stay put and do nothing where you are... Or you charge forwards towards the targetted enemy squad. There is no in between, there is no walking to the left edge of the battlefield, nor is there a 'Circle around the deadlock and flank them' command. This game is charge, charge, and charge.
Here's what I don't understand. Square tries to make the game easier to understand and play and not make it too overwhelming with information to the player... But they do it hiding everything. You do not get to see why certain spells cannot be cast, you don't get to know why you can't heal, you don't get to know who is even going to attack first in a deadlock. All this stuff is important, as it affects the way you're going to command the next turn. If your enemy is going to get off the attack first the next turn, you may want to avoid casting large-long-cast spells. If the enemy has been charging a long casting spell for the previous turn, you may want to have options to attack quickly and interrupt or run the hell away. But no, you're completely at the mercy of the game, who on a whim may or may not give you the commands to effectively deal with the situation.
Even GIVEN the option to heal/attack/resurrect in this game, it is still a pain in the ass. If two parties are low on HP, even selecting which party to heal becomes impossible. You cannot target friendly parties. Instead you target the enemy party that your friendly parties have targeted. You can then cast a heal to heal the target of your target. Wow. Way to make it confusing, assholes. But worse, if two parties are targetting the same enemy squad... Which party are you healing? Now that will be fucking random again. You won't get to pick, and you're definitely not going to get a second command option to heal the other group. Again, either you tough it out and hope to God that next turn you get the options you want, or you restart.
This is a fairly long game, and there are way more problems than this. Stay tuned for TLR, Part 2.
HAWX, the Arcade Sim that Appeals to No One
I played through the entire campaign on PC with a Logitech 3D Pro in under 3-4 hours. I was beyond disappointed. I'm going to mostly compare it to the Ace Combat series, as it was intended as its primary competition in development, but really, you should keep in mind that whether or not you liked Ace Combat, it won't matter: this game appeals to nobody. You won't find much to like in this game whether you're a fan of arcades, simulators, or bullet-hell coin eaters.
After accepting the game for its surreal tone, and the ridiculous maneuvers and poor assist-off camera, all things that are recognizable from the in-game-footage trailers, I was hoping it'd at least match up to being somewhat entertaining as the Ace Combat series for me. That is, I wanted the game to have interesting mechanics, challenging missions, larger-than-life boss fights, and some wild environmentals like in Ace Combat. I got none of that.
HAWX is has 19 missions, all of which are either defend a specific airspace, escort a platoon or another aircraft, bomb a set of ground targets, slip through radar, or shoot up all your objective targets as they close in on your position. Or a combination of any of those. It gets pretty tiring after a while, since there really isn't much more to it than that, and you wouldn't be able to tell some of these missions apart. Their biggest and best gimmick was when your plane's electronic systems go haywire and you were unable fire any missiles. That's kinda funny, since I thought assist-off turned off all your computers anyway? Regardless, I like gimmicks, but if that's the best they can do, that's pretty lame. You have to really dig to find creativity or inspiration that went into the mission or map designs. (Oh wait, I forgot. They didn't design the maps, since they just took satellite images and converted them to landscapes. Fantastic.)
What did Ace Combat offer? You got to fight spaceships armed with laser batteries. Gigantic bomber fortresses with a cloaking field. Fly through caverns in training jets with no armaments dodging the detection of enemy ace fighter pilots. Sinking submarines with splintering ICBMs raining metal shrapnel from the sky. Flying through narrow vent openings in nuclear compounds to blast missiles within the silos ala. Death Star. Or dodging giant pillars of lasers fired from space. It was ridiculous but once you got past that, the game was actually enjoyable... It's an alternate universe. Think of the game more like a bullet-hell game where you slaughter hundreds of enemies until you get to the end where you fight a massive firepower-excessive boss. Those were always fun. The problem is that HAWX went halfway and fell short at pleasing anyone. You get past the insane flight mechanics (or lack thereof) but there really is nothing left for you to enjoy. HAWX's big problem is that past its thin unpleasant exterior shell, there is only a hollow, lifeless, generic game underneath, with an unfulfilling story, forgetable characters and monotonous gameplay.
Speaking of the plot, for a Tom Clancy storyline, wow... Was it ever predictable and just mundane. I won't spoil it for anyone here, but the story was something you could see coming a mile away, and wasn't particularly noteworthy anyway. Maybe they wanted to really keep it down to earth (relative to Ace Combat) and possibly even within the framework of the Tom Clancy novels, despite a few of the aspects about Artemis being outlandish, but what really bothered me, was the lack of personality in both of your wingmen. They both like money, whores and money. Did I say money? They can't get enough of that. At least, until they need to be patriotic all of a sudden. Then it's all honor and glory. But now they want medals. And women. And medals. Did I say medals? So first they fall in love with their new job in exchange for a vast sum of material payment, then they turn on a dime and decide they don't care about the pay at all and are willing to work for free? Inconsistent and contradictory doesn't even begin to describe it.
Furthermore, did they just cookie cutter these guys out of Army of Two or something? They're shooting down hundreds of pilots, tanks, bombers and reducing bases to rubble... Yet they mind as well be fist-pounding. Even when your own cities (read: civilians) are being burned to ash, its just an "Aw, shucks" here and there. There is not the slightest air of seriousness in any of the pilots you encounter, which really ruins immersiveness as to them, it really is just a video game. Coming from the pilot instructors who describe your movements as 'drifts' and 'power slides', I guess I shouldn't be surprised. At least in Ace Combat, when your cities are being destroyed, your wingmen are either too shocked or enraged to say much of anything like this.
Its even worse that at the end of every mission, you get the most juvenile dialogue out of these two, and its even REPEATED. As in, Ubisoft was too lazy to give them new lines for scripted triggers. And these are scripted dialogue lines, so obviously someone at Ubisoft didn't give a shit that you had to listen to the same ignorant crap that they already made you hear 3 missions ago. Beer, bling, tits and ass after every successful mission.
Thankfully, a few of the missions you fly will have your wingmen mysteriously not be by your side. I'm guessing that it's because of an infiltration directive or possibly they're off fulfilling their own missions at the time. What a relief right? Nope! They still come over your radio just as often (and their portraits show them flying in their planes??) to pester you with their frat-boy depiction of warfare. "Alright, score one for the good guys, we just sprinkled radioactive debris all over our cities. Let's go back for some booze! Oh, and some medals."
Ace Combat, which has little story-writing base, at least does fairly well throwing in lively characters with differing (usually foil) personalities. In some games, where your wingmen actually die, you do miss them somewhat, which is already leagues more than what I can say for my wingmen in HAWX (I've tried killing my wingmen, trust me, they can't die). I won't say the Ace Combat characters are deep, but compared to HAWX, they're the Mariana Trench. Your wingmen in AC will actually play a role in establishing relationships and connections with other NPC characters... Especially those you save in several missions. Even better is that those you SAVE and assist actually often come back to help you out in your final missions. Cue the cutscenes of a fleet of jet fighters, bombers and AWACS and heavily-accented Russians singing along with your wingmen (who could do without that?). Damn that is awesome, to for once, have the numbers on your side, a good payoff feeling for having saved so many people and struggled against impossible odds all the way up until the end. Characters actually mean something in AC, especially since the cutscenes show them having some persona outside of their cockpits. If anything, at least they have a face. In HAWX, you'll never see your wingmen's faces. Talon and Casper (your wingmen) are as generic as can be.
Worse, I would have thought that the Ghost Team you save in the very first mission, who tells you they 'owe you one' and they 'won't forget'... never actually come back to repay their due. What a letdown. Everything is very impersonal in HAWX, you don't really feel anything from any of the characters, save whoever is debriefing you... Since he's probably barking his head off at you (if anyone has played GRAW2, it's the same sort of 'way too loud and obnoxious authority'). I figured hey, maybe since its a video game, and they've established that they're not aiming for realism... They'd actually try be entertaining instead.... Nope.
Characters aside, the storyline in AC's 3,4,5 and Zero still trumps that of HAWX. Sad to know huh? Fun events happen in AC, and you can have multiple mission choices. Depending on how well or what you do on your previous mission, your next mission may be something different. You may also unlock special planes by doing things differently. Your carrier gets sunk while you are being debriefed on it, so you get to emergency takeoff with whatever plane you want (a relief after being stuck with carrier-based planes for a good 3-4 missions). You deal with several layers of conspiracy and internal sabotage. You're led into traps. You have to fight people who were your allies in the past. You find unexpected help from people you thought were your enemies or who you thought were dead. You get framed for war-crimes that you didn't commit. They're not great plot twists, and some are more predictable than others, but at least they are there. For HAWX, they guide the player on a monorail of boredom: there are no alternative missions; you unlock planes purely by your grinded experience level; replayability is hugely lacking. Grinding experience and achievements to unlock new planes and their weapon packs (which you need to do if you want to use the other planes in Multiplayer) is not my idea of fun. There aren't any surprises either. People who start evil end evil... Those who start good end good. Not like it even matters, since everyone is so single-layered and predictable. The story basically follows the same stereotypical, overdone route. Its a war, and you're winning it step by tiny step. You don't ever feel like you're being pushed back, or have the carpet pulled out from under your feet... It's pretty linear, drawn-out progression.
HAWX singleplayer was a huge letdown. There's not much to do after you complete the campaign, other than doing it again on harder difficulties (or for achievements)... or free flight (fly around the map with no enemies). I don't remember for sure, but I don't think there were multiplayer modes outside of team deathmatch and coop either... So that will definitely get stale as well. Apparently most reviews have labeled the multiplayer as being the weakest aspect of HAWX, so I wouldn't expect any sort of recompensation by graduating from singleplayer to multiplayer - it only gets worse.
I'm fine with the fact that game developers can take liberty in modifying the genre or doing something new and unexpected with their game. It may not always work out, but it's innovative and progressive, and the only way for developers to foray into new territory, that may yet pioneer an unexplored direction of gaming. However, the main aspect, no matter what you're trying to do with the game, is to make it fun and entertaining. If this is sacrificed or lost in the concept, then the game just won't fly. HAWX is exactly like that, burdened with uninspired missions, maps, characters and gameplay, there really is no motivation to taxi to the runway, much less take off, regardless of whatever field of gaming you come from, sim-buff or arcader. Peel away all the fancies and shinies, if the game isn't fun to play, it appeals to no one.
One of the greatest, lingering facepalming moments in HAWX surely would have been the moment you hear from your wingman, "I haven't been in a battle like this since the Gulf War!"... Only for him to say again 3 missions later "I haven't been in a battle like this since the Gulf War!" .......... >_>
After accepting the game for its surreal tone, and the ridiculous maneuvers and poor assist-off camera, all things that are recognizable from the in-game-footage trailers, I was hoping it'd at least match up to being somewhat entertaining as the Ace Combat series for me. That is, I wanted the game to have interesting mechanics, challenging missions, larger-than-life boss fights, and some wild environmentals like in Ace Combat. I got none of that.
HAWX is has 19 missions, all of which are either defend a specific airspace, escort a platoon or another aircraft, bomb a set of ground targets, slip through radar, or shoot up all your objective targets as they close in on your position. Or a combination of any of those. It gets pretty tiring after a while, since there really isn't much more to it than that, and you wouldn't be able to tell some of these missions apart. Their biggest and best gimmick was when your plane's electronic systems go haywire and you were unable fire any missiles. That's kinda funny, since I thought assist-off turned off all your computers anyway? Regardless, I like gimmicks, but if that's the best they can do, that's pretty lame. You have to really dig to find creativity or inspiration that went into the mission or map designs. (Oh wait, I forgot. They didn't design the maps, since they just took satellite images and converted them to landscapes. Fantastic.)
What did Ace Combat offer? You got to fight spaceships armed with laser batteries. Gigantic bomber fortresses with a cloaking field. Fly through caverns in training jets with no armaments dodging the detection of enemy ace fighter pilots. Sinking submarines with splintering ICBMs raining metal shrapnel from the sky. Flying through narrow vent openings in nuclear compounds to blast missiles within the silos ala. Death Star. Or dodging giant pillars of lasers fired from space. It was ridiculous but once you got past that, the game was actually enjoyable... It's an alternate universe. Think of the game more like a bullet-hell game where you slaughter hundreds of enemies until you get to the end where you fight a massive firepower-excessive boss. Those were always fun. The problem is that HAWX went halfway and fell short at pleasing anyone. You get past the insane flight mechanics (or lack thereof) but there really is nothing left for you to enjoy. HAWX's big problem is that past its thin unpleasant exterior shell, there is only a hollow, lifeless, generic game underneath, with an unfulfilling story, forgetable characters and monotonous gameplay.
Speaking of the plot, for a Tom Clancy storyline, wow... Was it ever predictable and just mundane. I won't spoil it for anyone here, but the story was something you could see coming a mile away, and wasn't particularly noteworthy anyway. Maybe they wanted to really keep it down to earth (relative to Ace Combat) and possibly even within the framework of the Tom Clancy novels, despite a few of the aspects about Artemis being outlandish, but what really bothered me, was the lack of personality in both of your wingmen. They both like money, whores and money. Did I say money? They can't get enough of that. At least, until they need to be patriotic all of a sudden. Then it's all honor and glory. But now they want medals. And women. And medals. Did I say medals? So first they fall in love with their new job in exchange for a vast sum of material payment, then they turn on a dime and decide they don't care about the pay at all and are willing to work for free? Inconsistent and contradictory doesn't even begin to describe it.
Furthermore, did they just cookie cutter these guys out of Army of Two or something? They're shooting down hundreds of pilots, tanks, bombers and reducing bases to rubble... Yet they mind as well be fist-pounding. Even when your own cities (read: civilians) are being burned to ash, its just an "Aw, shucks" here and there. There is not the slightest air of seriousness in any of the pilots you encounter, which really ruins immersiveness as to them, it really is just a video game. Coming from the pilot instructors who describe your movements as 'drifts' and 'power slides', I guess I shouldn't be surprised. At least in Ace Combat, when your cities are being destroyed, your wingmen are either too shocked or enraged to say much of anything like this.
Its even worse that at the end of every mission, you get the most juvenile dialogue out of these two, and its even REPEATED. As in, Ubisoft was too lazy to give them new lines for scripted triggers. And these are scripted dialogue lines, so obviously someone at Ubisoft didn't give a shit that you had to listen to the same ignorant crap that they already made you hear 3 missions ago. Beer, bling, tits and ass after every successful mission.
Thankfully, a few of the missions you fly will have your wingmen mysteriously not be by your side. I'm guessing that it's because of an infiltration directive or possibly they're off fulfilling their own missions at the time. What a relief right? Nope! They still come over your radio just as often (and their portraits show them flying in their planes??) to pester you with their frat-boy depiction of warfare. "Alright, score one for the good guys, we just sprinkled radioactive debris all over our cities. Let's go back for some booze! Oh, and some medals."
Ace Combat, which has little story-writing base, at least does fairly well throwing in lively characters with differing (usually foil) personalities. In some games, where your wingmen actually die, you do miss them somewhat, which is already leagues more than what I can say for my wingmen in HAWX (I've tried killing my wingmen, trust me, they can't die). I won't say the Ace Combat characters are deep, but compared to HAWX, they're the Mariana Trench. Your wingmen in AC will actually play a role in establishing relationships and connections with other NPC characters... Especially those you save in several missions. Even better is that those you SAVE and assist actually often come back to help you out in your final missions. Cue the cutscenes of a fleet of jet fighters, bombers and AWACS and heavily-accented Russians singing along with your wingmen (who could do without that?). Damn that is awesome, to for once, have the numbers on your side, a good payoff feeling for having saved so many people and struggled against impossible odds all the way up until the end. Characters actually mean something in AC, especially since the cutscenes show them having some persona outside of their cockpits. If anything, at least they have a face. In HAWX, you'll never see your wingmen's faces. Talon and Casper (your wingmen) are as generic as can be.
Worse, I would have thought that the Ghost Team you save in the very first mission, who tells you they 'owe you one' and they 'won't forget'... never actually come back to repay their due. What a letdown. Everything is very impersonal in HAWX, you don't really feel anything from any of the characters, save whoever is debriefing you... Since he's probably barking his head off at you (if anyone has played GRAW2, it's the same sort of 'way too loud and obnoxious authority'). I figured hey, maybe since its a video game, and they've established that they're not aiming for realism... They'd actually try be entertaining instead.... Nope.
Characters aside, the storyline in AC's 3,4,5 and Zero still trumps that of HAWX. Sad to know huh? Fun events happen in AC, and you can have multiple mission choices. Depending on how well or what you do on your previous mission, your next mission may be something different. You may also unlock special planes by doing things differently. Your carrier gets sunk while you are being debriefed on it, so you get to emergency takeoff with whatever plane you want (a relief after being stuck with carrier-based planes for a good 3-4 missions). You deal with several layers of conspiracy and internal sabotage. You're led into traps. You have to fight people who were your allies in the past. You find unexpected help from people you thought were your enemies or who you thought were dead. You get framed for war-crimes that you didn't commit. They're not great plot twists, and some are more predictable than others, but at least they are there. For HAWX, they guide the player on a monorail of boredom: there are no alternative missions; you unlock planes purely by your grinded experience level; replayability is hugely lacking. Grinding experience and achievements to unlock new planes and their weapon packs (which you need to do if you want to use the other planes in Multiplayer) is not my idea of fun. There aren't any surprises either. People who start evil end evil... Those who start good end good. Not like it even matters, since everyone is so single-layered and predictable. The story basically follows the same stereotypical, overdone route. Its a war, and you're winning it step by tiny step. You don't ever feel like you're being pushed back, or have the carpet pulled out from under your feet... It's pretty linear, drawn-out progression.
HAWX singleplayer was a huge letdown. There's not much to do after you complete the campaign, other than doing it again on harder difficulties (or for achievements)... or free flight (fly around the map with no enemies). I don't remember for sure, but I don't think there were multiplayer modes outside of team deathmatch and coop either... So that will definitely get stale as well. Apparently most reviews have labeled the multiplayer as being the weakest aspect of HAWX, so I wouldn't expect any sort of recompensation by graduating from singleplayer to multiplayer - it only gets worse.
I'm fine with the fact that game developers can take liberty in modifying the genre or doing something new and unexpected with their game. It may not always work out, but it's innovative and progressive, and the only way for developers to foray into new territory, that may yet pioneer an unexplored direction of gaming. However, the main aspect, no matter what you're trying to do with the game, is to make it fun and entertaining. If this is sacrificed or lost in the concept, then the game just won't fly. HAWX is exactly like that, burdened with uninspired missions, maps, characters and gameplay, there really is no motivation to taxi to the runway, much less take off, regardless of whatever field of gaming you come from, sim-buff or arcader. Peel away all the fancies and shinies, if the game isn't fun to play, it appeals to no one.
One of the greatest, lingering facepalming moments in HAWX surely would have been the moment you hear from your wingman, "I haven't been in a battle like this since the Gulf War!"... Only for him to say again 3 missions later "I haven't been in a battle like this since the Gulf War!" .......... >_>
Monday, April 6, 2009
Xenogears - Where giant robots meets Christianity with sexism thrown in
This is one of my favorite RPGs when I was a kid. Up there with Valkyrie Profile. Since I was like 10 back then I didn't get much of the story. So recently I went back and replayed the game. It was nothing like I remembered. Infact I was stunned at how terrible the second half was. It was still an enjoyable game with an interesting storyline though.
You start the game as Fei Fong Wong, an orphan at some mountain village. You wake up from bed at the mayor's house where you learn a bit about your history. Three years ago some masked man took you to the village all bloody and hurt. So you walk around and you realize its your two best friend's wedding. You talk to the guy he says some stuff to you pats you on the back and the girl's bratty little brother comes in and starts yelling at the guy and asks you to talk with him. You walk out the building and talk to him and he starts asking why he's marrying his sister instead of you.
On the cover art there's giant robots and even the name Xenogears depicts some kind of robots right? But there are no robots to be seen. You're going "what the heck wheres the giant robots! I don't wanna walk around some mountain village with clay houses and farms." Just be patient they're coming. Now you go and visit the girl and the sexism begins. She talks about how women born here are raised to be married off to the men and how the men have the choice to leave the town. She wishes she was a man. Then she talks to you and asks you what would have happened if you were born here instead of coming here, would things have happened differently. Suddenly the mood tenses and there's some mutual suppressed attraction going on. Then they awkwardly end the conversation and the guy has to look for a "camera" from the doctor. Wait camera? Mountain village? Wha?
So you climb the mountain to meet Doctor Uzuki, or Citan. While Fei calls him Doc for short. He's a doctor that lives far away in the village and you see him playing with a "land crab" some giant crab robot. On your way over though you get the first glimpse of combat. Its quite fun with Triangle for light hit, Square for medium hit, and X for heavy hit. Using those buttons in the right order can do "deathblows" or combos. A light hit takes 1 ap medium 2 heavy 3. There is a bar on the side that shows your ap. It starts with 3 and eventually you can get up to 7. This may seem fun at first but later on its pretty much spam all the deathblows you know. Any reason not to use deathblows is to learn new deathblows. Each hit will give you exp to learning a deathblow of that type. For example using triangle gives you 1 triangle exp. You need for example 2000 to learn a deathblow. If you use the deathblow square, x. You won't learn any triangle deathblows. So 90% of the time you are using deathblows. Kinda gets repetitive doesn't it?
Moving on after your dinner with the doc and his wife and daughter giant robots land at the village and start shooting each other. You finally see some robots. Not just see but you actually command a robot for the first time! Anyways stuff happens people start dying and you climb into an empty robot and start shooting people. Gear combat is about the same except you can only hit once per turn. Same light medium and heavy hits. Light one uses less fuel and heavy uses most fuel. Every turn you get a bonus attack level. Higher attack level stronger deathblows. This game uses both gear combat and human combat. I'll get to that later as there is a major flaw in that system. Beating the robots and watching your friends die you go berserk and blow up the village. Yay go us! Now everyone is pissed off at you for blowing up the village and you get kicked out. You're wandering around the forest when some red headed chick points a gun at you and start spouting random words. I like to point out how shitty the voice acting and the cartoon cut scenes are. You can hear the words before the mouths actually move and when they're done the mouths are still yapping. Great...
Anyways that's your main female some high ranking officer and the victim of sexism throughout the game. She gets punched by a troll in one hit and then becomes unconscious and somehow you knew her name and called out "Elly!" and you beat up two trolls with your bare fists while she gets knocked out in one hit while holding a gun. What pisses me off is the gun is gone when she joins your party! She doesn't use a gun anymore she uses a rod and whacks enemies with it. It sucks crap as she is a caster character. Anyways why would a high ranking officer get knocked out by a single hit from a troll? Is it because she is a girl? Yes according to the game it is. Fei will constantly tell her to "quit the military it doesn't suit you" because she is a girl. Then Fei turns emo and Elly yells at you to stop being a cry baby. She storms off and then gets attacked and you have to go rescue her AGAIN.
A good thing about this game is that the characters are likable. Each one with their strengths and weaknesses and also their gears have strengths and weaknesses. The only characters that have any impact on the story is Fei, Elly, and Citan. Which really sucks because I really liked Maria. Rico and Emeralda are also enjoyable characters but no, after you get them they just sit on your ship and rot away. I was really hoping they'd go back and expand on their character but they didn't. It was a huge letdown. Also the female characters are depicted as weak and fragile and needs to be protected. They're going around beating up giant shit in a robot how are they weak and fragile?
The first disc was enjoyable the story was nice lots of buildup. You're caught in between a war of two countries. The Kislev which sits on the ruins of an ancient empire so they have advanced technology. Aveh which is some crappy desert country with no technology, and the Gebler which came out of nowhere to help them. They are a branch of Solaris, which rules all over the world in a city in the sky. They call themselves the shepherds and the land-dweller lambs. As you progress though the first disc you reach a climatic end. Then you hit disc two and all your expectations were crushed.
Whats wrong with disc two? Well, its not a game anymore, its just reading what the characters did. As in there will be a chair and a character will sit down and start talking about what happened. That is the whole screen a character sitting down and words appear. I wish you can make the words to read faster but you can't so its really slow and tedious and the music was boring. Occasionally you see a picture. It was as if they ran out of time and they had to rush it. The story was completely butchered. There were so many plot holes and random things appearing, dues ex machina style. Funny because there is a god of machines called Dues in the game. Occasionally though you get a random battle out of nowhere and you kill it and the story continues and while prompting you to save.
After reading the butchered story you finally gain control of your character. Which is pretty much crap now because its the end of the game. You ride your gears in and fight, the end. What sucks is in the end, you don't even get out of your gears anymore. Everything is dependent on your gear. Gear gets different upgrades and equipment so leveling up doesn't make any difference neither does your deathblows that you spent training or the characters you spent time perfecting. What a waste. The game should've ended on the first disc. The second disc was an abomination. It should not even exist. It is there to tie up loose ends but instead it ruined everything.
Worst part is sexism was flying everywhere. Fei forced Elly to stay home because its too dangerous. Why is it too dangerous for her and not the rest of the people? Why did she have to quit the military to stay at home? She was angry at first but after spending the night together she accepts. "Men like someone to watch the home when they are fighting. They can't fight if they don't have the peace of mind that they will have somewhere to return to" I had to go vomit blood after hearing that. Really? Would you tell a military officer to stay home? If I was Fei I'd go "Lets go together!" Why not? She has combat experience and probably the best trained fighter outside of Citan. But no, she's a woman she has to stay home.
I also like to point out a giant bug in the second disc. One boss will randomly crash your game when you're fighting it. Usually within minutes of the fight. There is no way to get around it except pray it doesn't happen. If I remember correctly it took me 11 tries before I did it without crashing. Luckily there's a save before the boss, the bad part is there's a cut scene and reading before the fight.
If you can get past the sexism and the stand the second disc overall its not that bad of a game. I hate giant robots but I still found this game to be enjoyable up to the second disc. The storyline is pretty unique and I recommend it if you're wondering about existentialism. I know it's complete bogus but its a fun story.
You start the game as Fei Fong Wong, an orphan at some mountain village. You wake up from bed at the mayor's house where you learn a bit about your history. Three years ago some masked man took you to the village all bloody and hurt. So you walk around and you realize its your two best friend's wedding. You talk to the guy he says some stuff to you pats you on the back and the girl's bratty little brother comes in and starts yelling at the guy and asks you to talk with him. You walk out the building and talk to him and he starts asking why he's marrying his sister instead of you.
On the cover art there's giant robots and even the name Xenogears depicts some kind of robots right? But there are no robots to be seen. You're going "what the heck wheres the giant robots! I don't wanna walk around some mountain village with clay houses and farms." Just be patient they're coming. Now you go and visit the girl and the sexism begins. She talks about how women born here are raised to be married off to the men and how the men have the choice to leave the town. She wishes she was a man. Then she talks to you and asks you what would have happened if you were born here instead of coming here, would things have happened differently. Suddenly the mood tenses and there's some mutual suppressed attraction going on. Then they awkwardly end the conversation and the guy has to look for a "camera" from the doctor. Wait camera? Mountain village? Wha?
So you climb the mountain to meet Doctor Uzuki, or Citan. While Fei calls him Doc for short. He's a doctor that lives far away in the village and you see him playing with a "land crab" some giant crab robot. On your way over though you get the first glimpse of combat. Its quite fun with Triangle for light hit, Square for medium hit, and X for heavy hit. Using those buttons in the right order can do "deathblows" or combos. A light hit takes 1 ap medium 2 heavy 3. There is a bar on the side that shows your ap. It starts with 3 and eventually you can get up to 7. This may seem fun at first but later on its pretty much spam all the deathblows you know. Any reason not to use deathblows is to learn new deathblows. Each hit will give you exp to learning a deathblow of that type. For example using triangle gives you 1 triangle exp. You need for example 2000 to learn a deathblow. If you use the deathblow square, x. You won't learn any triangle deathblows. So 90% of the time you are using deathblows. Kinda gets repetitive doesn't it?
Moving on after your dinner with the doc and his wife and daughter giant robots land at the village and start shooting each other. You finally see some robots. Not just see but you actually command a robot for the first time! Anyways stuff happens people start dying and you climb into an empty robot and start shooting people. Gear combat is about the same except you can only hit once per turn. Same light medium and heavy hits. Light one uses less fuel and heavy uses most fuel. Every turn you get a bonus attack level. Higher attack level stronger deathblows. This game uses both gear combat and human combat. I'll get to that later as there is a major flaw in that system. Beating the robots and watching your friends die you go berserk and blow up the village. Yay go us! Now everyone is pissed off at you for blowing up the village and you get kicked out. You're wandering around the forest when some red headed chick points a gun at you and start spouting random words. I like to point out how shitty the voice acting and the cartoon cut scenes are. You can hear the words before the mouths actually move and when they're done the mouths are still yapping. Great...
Anyways that's your main female some high ranking officer and the victim of sexism throughout the game. She gets punched by a troll in one hit and then becomes unconscious and somehow you knew her name and called out "Elly!" and you beat up two trolls with your bare fists while she gets knocked out in one hit while holding a gun. What pisses me off is the gun is gone when she joins your party! She doesn't use a gun anymore she uses a rod and whacks enemies with it. It sucks crap as she is a caster character. Anyways why would a high ranking officer get knocked out by a single hit from a troll? Is it because she is a girl? Yes according to the game it is. Fei will constantly tell her to "quit the military it doesn't suit you" because she is a girl. Then Fei turns emo and Elly yells at you to stop being a cry baby. She storms off and then gets attacked and you have to go rescue her AGAIN.
A good thing about this game is that the characters are likable. Each one with their strengths and weaknesses and also their gears have strengths and weaknesses. The only characters that have any impact on the story is Fei, Elly, and Citan. Which really sucks because I really liked Maria. Rico and Emeralda are also enjoyable characters but no, after you get them they just sit on your ship and rot away. I was really hoping they'd go back and expand on their character but they didn't. It was a huge letdown. Also the female characters are depicted as weak and fragile and needs to be protected. They're going around beating up giant shit in a robot how are they weak and fragile?
The first disc was enjoyable the story was nice lots of buildup. You're caught in between a war of two countries. The Kislev which sits on the ruins of an ancient empire so they have advanced technology. Aveh which is some crappy desert country with no technology, and the Gebler which came out of nowhere to help them. They are a branch of Solaris, which rules all over the world in a city in the sky. They call themselves the shepherds and the land-dweller lambs. As you progress though the first disc you reach a climatic end. Then you hit disc two and all your expectations were crushed.
Whats wrong with disc two? Well, its not a game anymore, its just reading what the characters did. As in there will be a chair and a character will sit down and start talking about what happened. That is the whole screen a character sitting down and words appear. I wish you can make the words to read faster but you can't so its really slow and tedious and the music was boring. Occasionally you see a picture. It was as if they ran out of time and they had to rush it. The story was completely butchered. There were so many plot holes and random things appearing, dues ex machina style. Funny because there is a god of machines called Dues in the game. Occasionally though you get a random battle out of nowhere and you kill it and the story continues and while prompting you to save.
After reading the butchered story you finally gain control of your character. Which is pretty much crap now because its the end of the game. You ride your gears in and fight, the end. What sucks is in the end, you don't even get out of your gears anymore. Everything is dependent on your gear. Gear gets different upgrades and equipment so leveling up doesn't make any difference neither does your deathblows that you spent training or the characters you spent time perfecting. What a waste. The game should've ended on the first disc. The second disc was an abomination. It should not even exist. It is there to tie up loose ends but instead it ruined everything.
Worst part is sexism was flying everywhere. Fei forced Elly to stay home because its too dangerous. Why is it too dangerous for her and not the rest of the people? Why did she have to quit the military to stay at home? She was angry at first but after spending the night together she accepts. "Men like someone to watch the home when they are fighting. They can't fight if they don't have the peace of mind that they will have somewhere to return to" I had to go vomit blood after hearing that. Really? Would you tell a military officer to stay home? If I was Fei I'd go "Lets go together!" Why not? She has combat experience and probably the best trained fighter outside of Citan. But no, she's a woman she has to stay home.
I also like to point out a giant bug in the second disc. One boss will randomly crash your game when you're fighting it. Usually within minutes of the fight. There is no way to get around it except pray it doesn't happen. If I remember correctly it took me 11 tries before I did it without crashing. Luckily there's a save before the boss, the bad part is there's a cut scene and reading before the fight.
If you can get past the sexism and the stand the second disc overall its not that bad of a game. I hate giant robots but I still found this game to be enjoyable up to the second disc. The storyline is pretty unique and I recommend it if you're wondering about existentialism. I know it's complete bogus but its a fun story.
Friday, April 3, 2009
Persona 3 - Destroying the world with Apathy-Syndrome!
You're probably gasping and thinking "Why are you dissing this game?" Yes I know it’s popular, but what I don't know is why? There is so much to say I don't really know where to start off. So let’s start off with how I came to play this atrocity of a game. I heard of it from a friend who assured me it was "kinda like tales series," by know I know he was lying and he had to tell this game to someone to ease the mental scarring from playing it. If you like the tales series, stay away from this. The first thing that pulled me to this game was the movie intro. Some catchy jpop music with some weird things being shown and it doesn’t seem too bad. Now you're probably wondering what happened to that friend who suggested this to me. Well, he's dead. He got cancer from playing this game. Good going persona 3.
A lot of people say they like the graphics. The cut scenes are all cartoon-animated which I don't mind but for some odd reason, for these cut scenes, the voice actors/actresses all sound like they are mentally retarded. For example, imagine a monotone robot. Now imagine the robot singing chords. Now imagine the robot being the characters and the chords being the words and emotions of the characters. The voice acting in the cut scenes are terrible. Not only are they slow and awkward they also try and force them to be all dramatic which just amplifies the awkwardness. Outside of these cut scenes though, the voice acting is good. One of the better ones I would say with the exception of a few. They try to make the characters talk in really high pitch or a really dead voice. Don't take my word for it the first cut scene when you start the game will tell you what to expect in the voice actors. The weird ghostly boy you meet talk in a voice that drills into your brain, literally. Hearing this voice will cause brain damage. I don't know what’s with Japanese games and high pitch voices. Do they really talk like that? Then the English voice translators will try and adapt that voice making it sound creepy and forced. I don't have a thing against high pitch voices. In fact I thought the woman (Lili Taylor) that played Eleanor in The Haunting (of house hill) sounded pretty hot. Her voice was high but not forced like the ones you hear in this game.
After getting past the cut scene and the aural cancer that you caught, you are most likely going, "hmm what’s with that girl trying to kill herself? Is this game supposed to be emo?" Yes it is. Right off the start you get a kid who makes you sign your name, which is pretty interesting because you put in both your first and last names and different people talk to you using either the first or last names. For example if you put down the name "Katherine Lang," most of your friends with refer you as Katherine or Katherine-kun while all teachers and people you aren't familiar with will call you Lang. Except during voiced scenes they call you, "him, you, the new transfer student, that guy." Yeah I know they can't say your name but it’s rude. They can just not voice your name out instead of saying one of the above. Then you meet two girls who you supposedly share the dorm with. And you get a menu on 3 different choices you can pick. This happens a lot in the game. Different choices change the answers they give but have no other effect on the game. Exception is the few that actually make differences but we'll get to that soon enough. Then you'll be brought to your room to sleep and told "the first day of school is tomorrow."
The second day you successfully go to school and what is the first thing that jRPGs do when you see a new place? Yes show a million cut scenes. After sitting through the terribly voiced cut scenes you end up at school. One thing I need to point out is. Everyone in the school dresses normally in uniform except her. She's wearing pink. Isn't the point of school uniforms supposed to make everyone look the same? Why is she wearing pink? Why pink? Anyways she's the "most popular girl in school" and since you came to school with her everyone is talking about you. After getting past some sexual innuendos from a guy called Junpei who happens to know the girl you were with, Yukari. I like to point out that they use slang a lot. Expect to hear a combination of these in every voiced scene, "lame, man, dude, you shits, punk, damn, bitch, Stupei." Yes Stupei, its Junpei but Stupei. You're probably thinking this "Am I playing the right game?" Yes you are. You are playing a RPG and a high school simulator in one!
How is this a RPG and high school simulator? Well let’s put it this way. By day you are a high school student and you must go to class and listen to lectures and write exams, then after school you have to hang out with people to establish "social links." These social links are what gives you super powers. Sounds lame? Well so is the story. You have to hang out with friends, and each one is a different arcana (tarot cards). For example the first one you meet is the magician arcane, a friend in class who has the hots for a teacher and wants your advice. Remember you also need to up your stats. There are three: Academics, Charm, and Courage. Academics help you in exams while all three help you with social links. Different people like different stats. For example with high charm you can seduce that pink wearing girl, Yukari, while if you have high courage you can hang out with weird businessmen at night all alone in the mall. When you finally get back to the dorm it becomes night. At night time you can talk to the rest of your dorm mates about the same thing they said the night before, and the night before that. Really there is almost no reason to talk to them as they repeat the same thing over and over again. If you're done with whatever you want to do you can go back to your room to "study" or "sleep." If you want to you can choose to go to "tartarus."Every night at midnight all time stops and it becomes the "dark hour" an hour where everyone transmogrify into coffins. There are 25 hours in a day but "normal people" can only feel 24. Tartarus is what your school transforms into at the dark hour. And as soon as the dark hour is over the school goes back to normal. What exactly is it you ask? Well it’s a randomly generated dungeon tower.
I don't have anything against randomly generated dungeons. I'm going to focus on the high school simulator first. When you play the game you need to have two things open at once. First is your ps2 which is probably plotting a way to kill you by now after you put in the disc. Second is a computer with google open. Why google? Because you're stuck without it. For example one question asked in class is "Why is salt placed outside restaurants?" Unless you are Japanese chances are you have no idea what it’s for. Chances are you'll be googling it up. It’s to bring in business. If that isn't enough to piss you off they give you retarded questions like "Who founded Theosophy?" You probably never heard of Theosophy in your life, and you probably don't care. Sure if you fail the quizzes in class its fine, but you are expected to remember them for the exam in the coming months (game time). Exams are made up of 40% quizzes, 40% lectures in class and 20% on your academic stat. The answer is Madam Blavotsky by the way. Yeah I never heard of her either. That brings me to another point. It you're like me and don't like to read up guides on how to do things you're going to wear out google's search engine. Then you find out they aren't on google because they're Japanese. Then you have to look up a guide to find the answers. Why do they need to make this so difficult? Can't they pick something where you don't need google? I wanted a game not another class.
Outside of school you need to make friends. Doesn't sound so bad right? Wrong, your friends are jerks. You can only hang out with them on specific days for example the magician is Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Then Yukari is say for example, Tuesday, Friday. The more you hang out with friends the higher the rank becomes. It’s almost the same for every person. Level 1-3 you start getting to know them they open up to you. At around 4-6 they become emo. When you think you can't get any worse 7-9 they completely trust you with everything from their secrets to their credit card numbers. They'll fall into a pit of despair and it’s up to you to save them. And finally last but not least at level 10 they get an epiphany because of you and you two become inseparable. Congrats! You got a freaky friend for life! That’s not the worst part. If you don't hang out with them they get mad. You'll need to hang out and apologize to them to make up. You need to hang out with them WHILE studying, gaining charisma, learning courage AND going into tartarus to train your body so you don't get your ass kicked the next coming boss. You also have tons of friends to hang out with. Worst part is you can "date" girls. It isn't really dating, but more like listen to them bitch and whine then turn emo and get an epiphany. Girls get jealous if you get them above level 6. That means you can't "hang out" with any other girls. Yes hang out. You can't even talk to another girl without them flipping into a bloody rage and carving out your picture with a blood stained knife in her room while reciting a lipstick-stained piece of poetry. For some odd reason, they don't get jealous of guys. You are technically bisexual. Your guy friends hit on you give you handmade bracelets and blush at you. I don't know about you but hearing "Every time I sleep I dream of you. Every time I close my eyes you are there," from a guy is probably something I want to avoid. Before you can slam down your button going "ABORT!" he goes emo now you have to "save him." Final screwdriver in your eye moment is when you have to pick choices while "hanging out" with them. I use hanging out loosely because it’s not hanging as its more like sitting there letting them talk about themselves and how everything sucks and you are the only one who understands them and the last flickering fire remaining in their life. If you pick the wrong choices they get mad and you have to waste another day apologizing and if you choose the wrong options while apologizing you need to spend ANOTHER day attempting another apology. Some friend they are.
While doing all of the above you are also the emo rangers at night. Apparently an evil appears and it’s destroying the world! With what? An army of people eating shadows? Zombies? Airplanes that shoots bubblegum at kids? Pyramid heads? No it does it with.....APATHY SYNDROME! OH NO THE HORROR! What exactly are the symptoms of apathy syndrome? Well when you get attacked by a shadow you don't die you become sort of apathetic and sit in the corner of your room muttering to yourself not doing anything. HOLY SHIT CALL THE EMO RANGERS! You and a group of kids must now venture into tartarus and train themselves while battling a big giant shadow that comes every full moon. The rest of the time you can do whatever you want and the story sort of hangs while you make friends and enter tartarus. At the full moon, the story moves on. It's probably the worst part of the game because they try so hard to make it dramatic, and the horrible voice acting doesn't help the mood. You're wondering why I keep using emo rangers right? Well every full moon something dramatic happens and one or more of the characters die/get scarred/goes insane. After that they become depressed and emo. Then one or more of your party members will go over and tell them stuff. Then they get an epiphany and their personas morph into a more powerful form and they come back becoming super powered. Great story right? Let’s talk more about tartarus. When you first enter the tower there’s like 150 floor? 200? I can't remember but it’s fairly long. Every 5 levels is a boss. Every boss level is a two way portal to the entrance. As long as you open it you can go back to the entrance heal up and go back to fight the boss. Throughout the other levels there will be one way exits to the entrance. Well bosses aren't exactly tough at the start and they all look like the regular monsters. At least it has more variety than Bioshock I guess, mostly re-coloured enemies though. Battle is another thing I'll get into. As you climb higher and higher the bosses become further apart. By the time you reach halfway to the boss your sp and hp are low. If you don't like using items you can either, go back to the start or rush past the next 10-15 levels to find the two way portal and then go heal and fight the boss avoiding the rest of the levels.
When you battle something you can see the shadow crawl towards you. If you swing your sword and whack it before it hits you, the battle starts normally. If you miss and it touches you they get first move and if you hit them from behind you get first move. Ok think rock paper scissors. Now think persona 3 with the same rules. In battle there are different types of attacks, 3 physical and the rest elemental. Slash, pierce and strike for physical. Fire, ice, wind, lightning, dark, light for the elements. Where's earth? Yeah it doesn't even have earth. Most shadows are either weak to a few elements/attacks or strong/immune/reflect elements/attacks. You have no idea what they are weak or strong against. Unless you "scan," which takes a few turns. If you hit something that has a weakness with its weakness it falls down on the floor and you get another free turn. This allows you to chain combos. If you hit a fallen one it gets up and you lose your chain. If you manage to knock every mob on the ground you get a super move that pretty much kills everything on the screen. Now here is the best part. Your hero can switch persona in battle. Each persona has different skills and you can morph persona together to make new ones. But each one of your personas has a different strength and weakness. Technically the shadows can do the same to you, and they do it often. Also I need to mention that if you are knocked down the next turn will be spent “getting up.” So you're dead if you have a weakness out. Your friends cannot change personas so their weakness and strengths are always there. And to put salt on the wound, they can't be controlled either. You can tell them to "support/heal, full out attack, no command, knock down, assist target." Those generally don’t do much. Unless you scanned the weaknesses, they will not knock down a target with the weakness. If you give them no commands they do whatever, and they usually do stupid things like waste all your consumables or randomly attack knocked down targets. If you use support/heal they heal you and then they start attacking. Where’s the support? Only if you give them no commands will they cast support skills.
Let’s put a situation here. A boss is a giant bird who is weak to nothing and strong against wind. It casts lightning and ice moves. You got a few allies. One is weak to ice strong on lightning one is weak to lightning but strong on pierce, one is strong on ice but weak to fire. One is strong to dark weak to light. One is strong to wind but weak to fire. Ok which ones to bring. Obviously the one that’s not weak to ice and lightning right? Well here’s the problem. You haven't trained them so you might as well bring the ones you trained right? Ok now the boss gets stronger. It casts full party lightning. Everyone is at half health and the guy is knocked down. It gets another move. It casts full party ice. The guy wakes up another guy is knocked down. It gets another move. The worst part is your party is bad at managing healing. You're down to 60/200 health another person is down to 200/800. The ai will heal the 200/800 because it’s technically a lower percentage than you. Ok now the boss flicks you with a feather. You flop. Game over even though the rest of your party is alive. Yes you die the game is over. You can resurrect others but they can't resurrect you. The best part is when everything can spam instant death. Instant death comes in two elements light and darkness. If you’re strong to light or darkness you get a less chance to get hit by instant death, if you're immune you don't get hit at all, reflect you bounce it back. If you are weak though, the chances increase. The best part is any random shadow will have it. You are grinding in tartarus you get ambushed by a pack of shadows 4 of them. Each one cast instant death. Mudoon for example, full party instant death 60% chance of success. If you are strong to dark or immune it usually means you are weak to light. If they cast Hamaon 60% chance of success light elemental instant death. You are dead because you choose to block Mudoon.
Sometimes they don't even need to do that. Sometimes a battle starts and you happen to use a persona that’s weak to ice, it cast bufudyne and you take 80% of your health. Now enemy ai is set that it will exploit weaknesses. And when they get a weakness they will cast another move to combo. For example a shadow called the red tank or something in one of the levels cast fire and has a skill called vile assault. Vile attack does double damage on fallen down targets. You have like 500 health. It casts Agi and it does like 30. You fall. You're thinking whew this guy is a pushover. Vile assault does 800 damage. You are dead. You lost one hour of grinding and now there’s a hole in your tv. After replacing your tv and getting the cast off your hand you can try again. Now we get to that big shadow looming over every full moon. Unless you train in tartarus you cannot beat it. But if you climb up high in tartarus you will eventually hit a stop. You can't go futher unless you defeat the shadow. This can technically be reached in the first few week of a month if you seriously sit down to grind. Also in tartarus you will get tired if you train too long forcing you to go back. When you are tired you do less damage and get healed less while being more prone to get critical striked. Why is critical bad? It’s like a weakness. You get bonus damage dealt on you and knocked down. Ok so we got to the end, what do you do for the rest of the month? Hang out with friends I suppose. By the end of the game, you're running out of friends and all your stats are maxed. The last few months are done going to class and sleeping the rest of the day. What’s worse is the game gives you two months of summer vacation. No classes and you can't hang out with friends from school. You can only wait for them to call you. They call randomly to hang out every Sunday. Thing is, you can't rank up on those days. You can only improve the relationship but the rank doesn't move unless YOU ask them out. So you can’t rank up you can’t do anything. Wait! What if I didn't train before the big boss comes? Well restart your game because you're stuck. You don't have enough days to train left because you'll get tired and your party members automatically leave you when you are in tartarus.
The best strategy is to go healer while setting everyone else to full assault. But the best healer is the lovers arcana. So what about the rest of the arcanas? They’re useless because the ai is just so unreliable at healing that you will have to do it yourself. Not to mention if they get weakness exploited they are useless. You can pick a healer without a weakness. The levels are horribly balanced as well. Most of the time the bosses in tartarus are harder than the bosses that come in the full moon. But unless you beat it you cannot move on. In persona 3 FES (festival) they added things in combat like maid uniforms, bondage gear, and swimsuits. Why the hell do you want to fight shadows in bondage gear?
Who the hell wants to fight shadows and got to school at the same time? They tried to make it unique, and although you have to admit it is, there are just too many flaws to this. I never played persona 1 or 2 or any of the series that spawned the persona series but it'll be safe to say, I don't care and I don't want to know.
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