I really like dungeon crawler roguelikes for some reason. I was playing the more recent Crypt of the Necrodancer and I was wondering when this all started. The earliest I could remember enjoying something like that was Azure Dreams. The game is a dungeon crawler roguelike with a town building simulator, kind of like Dark Cloud in a way. Basically you spend the entire game trying to climb the 100 floor tower while collecting items. Each time you go in you are reduced to level 1. Everytime you die you lose everything you have. If you managed to find a rare wind crystal you can warp back to town and keep all the loot you find, which is used to upgrade the town. Unless you find a monster egg! This game has a huge variety of monsters which can be hatched and then raised to level and fight with you. Some monsters if you raise them long enough can evolve into new monsters as well. If you want to you can also fuse monsters together making them incredibly powerful. It basically has everything you can wish for.
When you first start the game you get a few cut scenes of your dad teaching you to be nice to girls and stop picking on girls. Then fast forward to a dark and stormy night where you are waiting for your monster hunter father to come home when suddenly the door bursts open and one of your dad's monsters walk in without him. Then everyone realizes he is dead because there's no way it will come back without him. Then fast forward a decade and its your 15th birthday! You're getting woken up by your tomboy childhood friend neighbor who kicks you out of bed, literally. You wake up talk to a priest, get blessed, blah blah blah, after an hour of talking you finally get to head into the tower. There you meet a random talking monster who wants to be your friend and the two of you head off into the dungeon to beat up monsters. Combat is simple. Everything is turn based and you have to walk in either of the 4 directions and even move diagonally. You may attack in front of where you are looking at or use and item. Every time you move or attack, the enemy will move or attack as well. Your monsters are AI controlled and will fight on their own. You may set the pet to fight normally, conserve mana, use spells, or support. Supporting monsters will cast support magic for your weapon every time you swing. It will boost your attack but at the same time drain its mana. Once mana is depleted the monster will be unable to fight and has to be returned into your bag. Mana also depletes over time while fighting/travelling around the tower as well.
Moving around the dungeon you will see the background change often. Usually every 5 levels you will reach a new area where different monsters will show up. Each monster has their own trait as well as skills. For example, a Kraken has electric skin that reflects damage back to the attacker. Its usually the first monster you meet in your mid teen floor and the first monster that will kick your ass so hard you sit there wondering what the heck happened. Something like a Block monster has really low attack but enormous armour. These are inherent traits in the monster that can be passed on in fusions. So for example, you can fuse a Kraken and a Block together to make a monster with both the electric skin and bonus armour. However, you can only keep the traits found on the original monster. Say you make a Kraken and it has both armour and skin if you fuse that to a Dreamin whose inherent trait is sleep immunity, you'll only keep electric skin and sleep immunity. You cannot pass the armour bonus down. You start off only able to bring one monster out at a time and later on you'll find another collar to bring two with you at a time. To find more monsters you need to collect eggs which are rare and a lot of the time not the monster you want.
So you beat up a few monster reach really far into the tower and then suddenly something comes over and punches you so hard you are one step from dying. If you die right here, all the eggs you have collected are gone, all the items and gold you got are gone. If you have a wind crystal, which are fairly common items in the dungeon, you can instantly warp back to town saving your hide and allowing you to keep everything. There is no way out of a dungeon except to use a wind crystal. There are no check points, no exit elevator no nothing. You might think this is an easy way to get out and you run no risk, think again. There are plenty of traps in the dungeon that can kill you as well as monsters using skills from across the screen killing you unexpectedly or a monster simply hitting too hard that you die before you can run away. When you get back to town, sell your items, you can spend the gold on upgrading the town or your own house. You start off in a little shack because your mom is a useless shit and didn't do anything for the last 10 years that your dad died except sell off his monster to get by. You need to support your family by beating monsters and spending that money on your house. Upgrading your house allows you to store more monsters and items as well as make it more visually pleasing. You can also buy items from the general store and customize your house to look more fancy. Besides upgrading the house, you can spend it on public buildings to help the entire town because they are useless shits that can't get anything done without the help of a 15 year old kid.
Public buildings serve one of two purposes. One is a time waster such as bowling and casinos. The other purpose is to meet girls. Yes this game also lets you romance a bunch of girls that ranges from your childhood friend, to some dying sickly 8 year old, to some 20ish dancer from out of town. In the Japanese version you can also romance your rival but homosexuality is frowned upon in the west so it was removed. Marriage was also removed because the people involved are too young, as well as gay marriage being illegal. Romancing girls are pretty easy depending on which girl. For example your childhood friend, Nico, you need to build fountains and other "cultural" buildings and once your rival's sister starts showing interest in you because you reached very high in the tower, she will realize she loves you and that you are actually a really cultured person. The sickly dying girl needs you to build a hospital, then find a rare herb on a high level floor and give it to her and she will magically be cured, but still really weak and gets tired often. The waitress Patty needs you to buy a lot of food and she will realize she loves you because you spend so much in her shop. Once you romance a girl she will randomly show up every morning to wake you up and then give you a goodbye kiss when you leave. If you romance a lot, a random one shows up. However once you upgrade to a big house. ALL OF THEM will show up and wake you up and kiss goodbye. This really really drags on every single day. If you want to leave sooner then keep an ugly house. The mid size house isn't that bad looking but if you want to live like a king then you have to spend 5 minutes with your harem every morning.
Overall there isn't too much to do in this game, and its not really very complex but its highly entertaining and will keep you entertained for hours. Finding good monsters then evolving and fusing them gives a sense of accomplishment and progression. Upgrading your town and romancing girls are a great distraction from the endless dungeon crawling. If you like dungeon crawlers or monster raising games, don't miss this one. Its one of the most overlooked gems on the PS1.
Showing posts with label PS1. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PS1. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
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.
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