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.

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