Playtime... is over!

Well, I finally wrapped up Hard Mode in Castlevania: Harmony of Despair a few nights ago. Kyle and I, after dying a few times on Dracula, were able to utterly destroy him on our third try.

It was quite awesome, actually.

I've been thinking about this game on a sort of macro level, though. I mean, I may discuss it more specifically at a later time, but I had a thought I'd like to share.

This game is what the single player of Super Smash Bros. Brawl should have been like.

Think about it. You have all these great Castlevania enemies, with level designs (okay, well, graphics, anyway) pulled right out of earlier Castlevania games. You have remixed boss encounters, with some crazy abilities (could you imagine if Gergoth could hit you from anywhere in the castle in Dawn of Sorrow?!) that, due to the nature of the game, fit perfectly. You have all the abilities of these characters from past games (Soma can steal souls, Shanoa can use/inherit glyphs, etc.), so they all remain unique and play differently. You can play it with other people, or go solo.

Now read this old post of mine and tell me it doesn't seem as if they took all my complaints about Smash Bros. and made a multiplayer Castlevania out of them.

I mean, shit is almost uncanny. This quote in particular proves noteworthy: "...for Christsakes, use graphics from the old games (whether ripped right from them or redone)!" So what does this all prove?

Well, it may not have been for Smash Bros., but dammit, I was right. These basic elements form the basis for a really great, fun game. Now, admittedly, it's not as though I described Harmony of Despair 1:1, and I would never claim I did, but some pretty important points are in there. Konami, being actual game designers (and not some blogger writing to about 2 people) certainly made something much better and more interesting than the barebones structure I laid out.

I'm not going to turn this into a Smash Bros. post, so I won't go into any more detail than that. I know it's a bit of an odd juxtaposition, but it made a lot of sense to me when I thought of it.

Now back to grinding spells with Charlotte - which is very, very tedious, so we'll see how long it lasts.

I have no use for children. Be gone!

It's Castlevania week over here, it seems. I recently picked up and started playing Castlevania: Circle of the Moon today. I've put about 45 minutes in, and I've already noticed some things worth talking about:

Nathan Graves moves insanely fast. He drops really fast, and (when you get the dash item) runs pretty fast too. Playing Harmony of Despair as I have made CotM seem like it's on speed.

The music is much better than I remember. This was a Game Boy Advance launch title and while the music definitely sounds "Game Boy Advance-y," it still sounds really good. The early themes are awesome, such as Catacombs, the Abyss, etc.

I've fought two bosses so far, I believe they were called Cerberus and The Necromancer. Both were really easy, yet enjoyably challenging. I know the bosses ramp up in difficulty pretty fast in this game, but that's okay because I don't know if I'll play through all the way to the end.

Speaking of the end, I've still been playing Harmony of Despair. I'm on Level 3, The End of Chaos (woo segue) in Hard Mode. I'm sure if I really tried, I could beat it fairly handily. It's just that this level is absolutely terrible, and easily the worst in the game. Let's enumerate its flaws:

Most of the level is this giant empty hole in the middle in which the boss sits. But wait, you say, there are enemies and platforms in there that you have to traverse to at least get to the boss! Ah, but there is no point to them, because there certainly are not treasure chests in there, nor are there any unique enemies, or really any interesting level design. It's just a bunch of random blocks that are put there to be destroyed by the boss when he wakes up.

The level was clearly designed around the boss. It's as if Konami said "Let's put a huge boss that takes up like two or three full screens in Harmony of Despair! Put that screen real estate to use! But... how do we design a level around it?" And some other guy went "Eh, fuck it. Just make it a big giant hole, throw some enemies in there, and call it good. People will eat that shit right up!"

Well, Konami Dude #2, fuck you. Your level is stupid. You also saw fit to put in two treasure chests only Shanoa can get to without waking the boss, and they're purple - which indicates they contain rarer (thus, better) items. Now, I'm all for character diversity and even areas that are only accessible by certain characters, but two purple chests for Shanoa only? Really? Thank you for making one player on this level completely and utterly pointless if you aren't Shanoa(not to mention boring and time consuming because of the huge stupid boss).

But, the rest of the game has really good levels. In fact, I enjoy all of them besides #3. Thinking about it now, I only beat level 3 that one time on Normal, because its a stupid level.

Anyway, back to CotM. Possibly more about that game later, if I don't get frustrated with it.

This long slumber has given me strength...

Castlevania: Harmony of Despair has been taking up a lot of my time this past week.

I have largely enjoyed it; I just gained the ability to play in Hard Mode last night. I've gotten to the second boss, and I can definitely beat him, but have been screwed over by circumstances the few times I've tried him (like when he moved to a iron maiden that was too far away for me to reach him in time to destroy the puppet). But that's another post entirely.

The game certainly has its ups and downs. The good part is that it is largely a blast to play - it really controls well, and Soma, the character I use, plays pretty much exactly like he did in Aria of Sorrow and Dawn of Sorrow, my two favorite Castlevania games. He can both acquire new weapons and armor, but also obtain souls for every single enemy in the game, like in his original games (that is, except the third boss, but whatever). You can even power his souls up by collecting 9 of each! I love this aspect of the game, and have now collected all the souls but a few of the bosses (the 4th boss, and Dracula, to be exact). Several souls are fully powered up, as well.

As far as the process one uses to "level up"... Well, it's honestly a mixed bag for me. I like that most people are around the same stat level unless they have the best weapons in the game, but I really don't like that stat boosts you get from food are not permanent. I understand that this would mean that people would just farm food points, but why not take out "food points" all together and make food a dropped item only? Then if people level their stats up that way, at least they earned it.

I mean, I don't know. In the end, it's probably best that stat boosts aren't permanent. The only other way to level up, though, is by getting better equipment. Which is fine, and of course, the best equipment is obtained by drops only. I'm okay with that - it's just what you're able to buy in the Shop is woefully inadequate when you're playing normal mode. Hard Mode does not give you much more, and certainly in the defense department it is sorely lacking. I get hit way too hard by enemies (30 damage from a ghost? ...Really?). But, I suppose that's why they call it Hard Mode.

I like that the bosses aren't pushovers, either - Dracula remains very difficult in Normal Mode, and the Puppet Master in Hard Mode requires perfection to beat, it seems.

The multiplayer is a blast, though. I've played both with random people, and one of my Xbox Live Friends or whatever stupid term you use for people you know. Konami didn't leave too much room to be a dick to random people in this game, either. Everyone shares treasure chests. When someone opens a chest, every player gets an item at random, so there is no possible way to bitch or fight over a chest. You cannot harm each other either, or affect each others movement, thus preventing you being knocked into spikes by some online douchebag.

As in every online game though, rage quitting/dropping out early has no penalty. Whatever items you got up to that point you keep, so people drop out all the time. For example, the first time I beat Dracula, I did so online - but as soon as I got to his room, the one player left quit on me, forcing me to fight Dracula alone, while he had health fit for two players. Suffice it to say, I was quite proud of myself for winning that fight, considering how much trouble I had been having with him.

Overall, I'm really enjoying the game. I want to at least beat Hard Mode, and maybe even make my Soma a ridiculous badass with awesome weapons. We'll see how that goes once I see how difficult Dracula is in Hard Mode. I hear he has the best weapon drops.

As an aside: Braid

So, for whatever reason I do not know, I booted up Braid last night, and beat the last few puzzles I hadn't completed from like two years ago when I first got my Xbox.

I'm not sure what the deal was, but I was like in puzzle genius mode last night. Puzzles that I could not for the life of me figure out made sense all of a sudden, and I beat the game. This nets all the achievements, of course, besides the Time Attack one. I have no desire to get that one because I don't care about achievements, but yeah. Neat, I guess.

I really, really liked that last level, though. I had not read any spoilers about Braid, and (MASSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD)I really like what they did with it. The last world you play is called World 1, and it details what happened in the beginning of the tale; namely, when Tim had originally "met" the Princess. You play through the last level of the world backwards, all the way to the point where the Princess is sleeping - the level returns to normal time when Tim is perched outside the Princess' window. What this essentially means is that Tim is a freaking stalker and had been following the Princess ever since the beginning of the game, and became increasingly crazy and delusional as time went on.

Now, is this a critique of gamers? Certainly this is a video game about a guy who is madly in love with a woman from afar, and he creeps her out so bad a literal "knight in shining armor" takes her away. Could this be a metaphor for the lonely nerd? Well, maybe a lonely nerd who takes his feelings way too far, anyway.

The way Braid's story was told, though, is inherently, and irrevocably videogamey. That's what has struck me so much about its presentation. If it were a movie, it would be nonsensical and boring, really. The impact of the "ending" would be minimal surprise, at best. But as a game, as the player plays through these levels and reads the increasingly desperate text about this Tim guy, they become attached to this little avatar and hope he succeeds in finding his princess.

But when he does... The fact that you, the player, are a willing accomplice to this creepy bastard really hits home, and makes you feel as though you were a bad guy this whole time. It's an experience that cannot be duplicated in books or movies; the player has a role in the story of a game because they are actively involved, which isn't possible in those mediums.

Now, I sort of see why people point to Braid when they are asked if games are art. I don't know if Braid is proof they are, but I know it is at least a step in the right direction.

Etrian Odyssey II: I'm back!

So I've discovered I don't have a huge impetus to play Shiren. Well, I'm not hopelessly addicted to it like I was with P3:Portable, anyway. So I popped in Etrian Odyssey II on a lark while I was tired a few nights ago, and I've put in another five hours or so, I believe.

I just reached the 20th floor before posting this, and am likely going to be facing the Strata boss soon, which will, like pretty much all the other Strata bosses, probably destroy me hard. Hopefully I can keep playing, because my guys are all level 55-59, just short of where I beat the last game. I'd like to finish the main story, to prep myself for Etrian Odyssey III, which I really need to pre-order so I get that awesome pre-order bonus art book.

Anyway. So I don't know what it is about EO that I love so much. It is not as though I ever played old-school PC RPGs when I was a kid (EO is like a love letter to those). The prospect of making my own map would have certainly made me vomit as a concept on its own. Endless grinding for loot and money never really appealed to me either, and I certainly don't like the goofy (and in a certain store in the original EO, outright disturbing) character designs, although the music is quite good.

It's hard to pinpoint, honestly. I guess EO is like the RPG genre distilled to its essence - a story that is both there, and virtually transparent, allowing you to fully customize your party any way you want. In fact, that's most likely it - the game is so ridiculously customizable that there is really no wrong way to do anything. There are just level-up paths that make your characters more powerful sooner than others, and I kind of like discovering that.

I mean come on - if you reach level 100 with your characters, the game allows you to "Retire" them and let you start over at level 1 with all your skill points, which means you can level them up all the way again and max out every skill and (probably, anyway, since I've sure as hell never done it) stat.

And I believe, like the last game, there is a bonus Strata after you beat the main storyline boss, which will allow you to really test your party's mettle.

I don't know why I'm so addicted to these hardcore RPGs these days. They're pretty much all I've been playing (with a short break for Super Mario Galaxy 2)! I hope I don't get RPG'ed out. Guess will see. Anyway, back to the grind.