Christmas Haul 2010

So Christmas has come and gone, and, as usual, has affected the games I'm playing currently.

Before I get to those, a simple list of the games I've gotten (so far, because I may be getting one or two more on New Years day):

-Final Fantasy XIII (PS3)
-Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light (DS)
-Prince of Persia (PS3)
-New Play Control Pikmin (Wii)
-Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii)
-Nier (PS3)
-Contra 4 (DS)
-Shantae: Risky's Revenge (DSiWare)
-Mighty Flip Champs (DSiWare)

I also got a swanky new DSi XL (midnight blue) that looks and plays great, but anyway.

I have begun Final Fantasy XIII and don't have much to say about it yet - I'm about two or three hours into it and it seems I've barely started, which is about what I expected given how much I've heard TWENTY HOUR TUTORIAL since the thing came out. Most of what I've done so far has been gameplay, though, which I'm happy about - it's not a boatload of text or twenty minute cutscenes the whole time. Granted, I just unlocked the ability to Paradigm Shift along with leveling up via the Crystarium, so I've got some learning to do (along with some reading, which is quite difficult on a SDTV - fucking dammit).

The other Final Fantasy I got, 4 Heroes of Light, is pretty great so far! I like the combat system a lot - it is challenging so far, but not frustrating or unfair. Depending on the fight, you have to be very careful, as one or two mistakes can cause you to lose. The nice part is that you don't lose too much if you get party wiped - the game randomly picks one of the types of gems you have and halves them. This means that you may have to grind for those gems again if you need them, as they provide both easy cash if you sell them and also they are used to upgrade your Crowns, which are similar to the old job systems of old Final Fantasys.

My big complaint is that the game, despite being called 4 Heroes of Light, actually splits them up pretty quickly, and that is quite annoying. I want to really delve into the Crown system but can't, really, because all my stupid guys are all apart so I don't really know which Crowns to level up yet. Hopefully it won't be long before they all get together and I can really start to grind them up.

I've also played a bit of both Mighty Flip Champs and Shantae: Risky's Revenge, Wayforward's DSiWare offerings which I downloaded for $20 total on Christmas day. I like them both quite a bit! I'm a bit lost as to where to go next in Shantae (I've beaten the first boss and I think I'll probably have to talk to townspeople for a clue as to where to go next), but the mechanics are pretty solid. I like the monkey transformation and I look forward to unlocking more transformations to maneuver my way around the delightful side-scrolling world better. By the by, Shantae looks absolutely fantastic on my majestic DSi XL, as does Contra 4 and Mighty Flip Champs (it seems 2D sprite art games are a good fit for the little beast).

Mighty Flip Champs is a puzzle platformer in which you press any face button on the DSi to make the bottom screen flip to the top screen. You must navigate the levels to get to the end using this mechanic. It is like 2D Portal, actually. I'm in the second set of levels and they are getting fairly devious, at this point. Great little game, though, easily worth the eight bucks.

And that is all for now, and likely all for 2010. My New Years goal? To write more blog posts next year than this year, which is already my most prolific year. Hopefully the writing competency gets better, too...

Second Annual Ocarina of Time Throwdown: Afterwards

Yesterday, four friends of mine sat down and began to race our way through the entirety of the Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Three of us played on Nintendo 64s, one on a Gamecube, and myself on my Wii. After about eight and a half hours, I came out victorious, but that is not what this post is about.

I hadn't played OoT in about three years (since the last Throwdown) and had since played through Majora's Mask twice. Some things surprised me during my revisit to Hyrule.

First and foremost, I have this game down pat. Again, not bragging, it's just that I beat this game so many times that it has almost literally become muscle memory for me. I almost felt as if I was watching someone else play through the game as I watched myself beat the entire thing in a single day.

I forgot some things, though. Like I always did when I was younger, I forgot to go get Saria's Song after meeting up with Zelda before attempting to enter Dodongo's Cavern. Frankly, I still think it's stupid the game makes you do this - you leave the forest, are given the Fairy Ocarina from Saria, then you run to Hyrule Castle, talk to Zelda, then are expected to run right back to Saria to learn another song.

WHY DOESN'T SARIA JUST TEACH YOU HER STUPID SONG WHEN SHE GIVES YOU THE OCARINA?!

Anyway. Coming off playing Majora's Mask twice as I did, I was surprised at how short the dungeons are in OoT. Besides the Water Temple, all the dungeons can be completed fairly quickly and don't get too devious in terms of navigation - they are pretty linear. I'm glad Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, and Twilight Princess didn't fall prey to this.

I do suppose that they are only linear because I know exactly where I'm going, which is a fair point. Considering I've beaten Majora's Mask so many times, though, the dungeons in that game aren't a cakewalk to me each time I play them, which is how I prefer it.

What Ocarina of Time has over Majora's Mask, and probably every other Zelda game, is the final boss gauntlet. The little dialogue from Ganondorf right before the battle is fairly chilling, then the duel you have with him is intense, and you can easily die if you aren't careful. Then you have to run down the collapsing castle with Zelda, and, just when you think it's all over, you hear a noise from a pile of rubble. Link runs in to investigate.

A gravely injured Ganondorf pops up from the rubble, and floating there, he holds up his hand. The Triforce of Power appears, reminding the player that Ganondorf will not go down easily. Nothing is said at all from any of the three people standing there as Ganondorf begins to transform into the monstrous pig-beast Ganon. Holding two giant twisted sai, the beast roars its challenge at Link as it begins flailing its arms. Link, taken off guard, loses his Master Sword as Ganon knocks it out of his hand, out of the arena. Ganon then takes a moment to squeal triumphantly as he knows Link is in trouble without the only blade capable of killing the evil dictator. Link, sword-less, looks up at his foe, in what is probably the single best pre-boss scene in any video game ever:

So, so tense. I'm going to end it there, at one of the greatest moments of quite possibly the greatest series in video games.

Dragon Warrior III First Impressions

So I came across a copy of Dragon Warrior III for the NES last week for a decent deal, and since it was in fantastic condition I bought it. After Phantasy Star IV, I wanted some more classic-style RPG to sink my teeth into.

I've heard good things about Dragon Warrior III, too. It has a rudimentary job system, and you get to name all of your characters and pick their classes and all that. It's also an NES RPG, which means once you've saved, you have to hold the Reset button as you turn the power off - and I'm playing this thing on a knock off Famiclone, so we'll see how well the save stays in the cartridge. Although when I turned it on the first time, there was a save with the guys at level 36, with names like Kain and Crono - which says to me the game was started back in the mid nineties. So obviously the save battery still works in the cart...

Anyway, as for game impressions, I will start by saying the encounter rate is too high. I know, I know, it's an 8-bit RPG so I should expect as much, but still. The battles are fast paced, though, which is nice - I sort of expected incredibly slowly moving text, but it moves pretty fast if you set it that way. I love the music, and the graphics look like a 1986 NES game, even though it was released in Japan in 1988. I like them, though. They're simple, but not boring looking, like Paladin's Quest, which I also picked up when I bought Dragon Warrior III.

I reached the first boss, though, about three dungeons in - and he kicked my ass. I forgot, this being a Dragon Warrior game, that when you lost a battle, you get sent back to the last town you saved at, minus half your gold - but you keep your experience. Which was nice! I would have lost a half hours worth of grinding had that not been the case. I'm going to have to grind some more to beat that guy, though.

It's difficult to write about these old RPGs. The battle system is classic Dragon Warrior/Quest, which is to say it didn't change all the way up to Dragon Quest IX (and even then, it wasn't too different). And it's not like the story is really worth writing about. Either way, I'm having a good time.

Rune Factory 3: Harvest Moon Reloaded

Rune Factory 3 may have perfected Harvest Moon.

Okay, so it may be a little too early to say that yet - I've only put in about 10 hours or so - but so far I am very happy with what I've played of Rune Factory 3.

The Rune Factory games (all with the subtitle "A Fantasy Harvest Moon") take what you do in the mainline HM games (farm and woo ladies) and add dungeon crawling into the mix. You wouldn't think that would work, would you? And I would argue that it hasn't, at least until now (although I've only played Frontier, the Wii version - not the two previous DS games).

The Wii version had way too much crappy voice acting and loading to be much fun; you see, I'm used to the quick loading of Harvest Moon 64 and Harvest Moon DS, the two HM games I've spent the most time with. When you throw load times in, the game just becomes unbearable. To be fair, the Wii version wasn't too addled with load times, but any at all really kill the experience for me. There was also a heavy emphasis on "Runeys" - I didn't play the game long enough to really tell what they were about, but a cursory search of the internet has shown that they govern how fast your crops will grow - for example if you don't take care of a certain area, the Runeys will die out there, causing your crops to grow much more slowly. Likewise, if you take really good care of an area, more Runeys will come and will cause crops to grow really fast there. A lot of the complaining about the Rune Factory games that I've seen on the internet has focused on the Runeys.

I have not seen one Runey since starting up RF3 - nor have their "effects" ever been mentioned in the game. In Rune Factory: Frontier, the Runey's were explicitly explained in-game; here, they bear no mention.

But the sheer amount of things to do in RF3 boggle the mind. Every day, there are "Requests" posted to the bulletin board in town that you can do to help villagers out, to both get items or gold from them and to raise your relationship with them (there's also requests sent directly to your mailbox, which seems kind of weird to me - why are there two places where you can get jobs?). If you don't feel like helping out villagers, you can go into one of four (that I know of) dungeons to kill stuff and get even more items, such as gems from mining spots or loot drops from your enemies. The fighting is real time, and you have many different weapons to choose from - I am currently using two swords, because you move fast and, as the flavor text so aptly puts it, "overwhelm your foes." You gain experience by fighting, but you don't merely level your character up this way - pretty much everything you do in RF3 will level up.

From what I've seen, you can level up walking/running, fighting (each individual weapon type has it's own level associated with it, i.e. swords, dual swords, spears, etc.), fishing, cooking with hands, cooking with a knife, love (which is leveled up by dealing with villagers of the opposite sex), friendship, sleeping (you level this up by sleeping, and when an enemy puts you to sleep, a higher level of "sleep" skill will wake you up faster), farming skills (such as your skill with a hoe, scythe, watering can, etc.), and so on. I'm positive I haven't even seen everything you can level up in this game yet. Also, another thing to note is that when you level something up, it not only boosts your capability with that skill, but it also usually adds something to your stats - whether its HP, RP (Runey points, which is basically your tolerance for fatigue), Strength, or whatever. This comes in handy, because you typically don't have enough time each day to do a whole lot of farming AND dungeon diving (its typically either dabbling in both, or one or the other). When you farm a lot, for example, your strength and RP will go up, allowing you to both farm better, and last longer in the dungeons.

There's a lot to find in this game, it seems. As for the characters, they are mostly one-note so far - they don't have the depth I'd like to see, but at least they aren't flat out boring like the characters in Frontier seemed to be. Certainly the script in the game is nothing to write home about, but it is passable (it isn't annoying, at least, which is appreciated).

As far as graphics go, I like them, for the most part. There are a lot of villagers, and I kind of wish my choices for chasing ladies weren't so varied. I may change my mind on this later, but there are too many girls to keep track of, and a lot of them look similar (at least they do on the map - their personal portraits that come up when you talk to them look quite different).

The sound isn't as iconic as in Harvest Moon 64, but it isn't bad, either.

One of the things I discovered just before starting this blog is that I apparently can ask anyone in the village to accompany me into the dungeons - if I can get some of the girls in town to come fight things with me, my love for this game will probably skyrocket (assuming they have passable AI, of course). You apparently can turn into a "wooly" too, which is a sheep-looking thing. I just unlocked the ability to do that, and I don't really know what it's for, yet.

I stayed up later than I wanted to the other night playing this game, which historically has been a good sign for me loving a game, because it means the game has its hooks in me. We'll see if they stick...

Unsung Heroes: Phantasy Star IV

I just beat Phantasy Star IV. As posited in this article, PSIV is one of the largely unsung classics of the 16-bit era. While I wouldn't quite put it on the level of Final Fantasy VI or Chrono Trigger, I do think it is a better game than Final Fantasy IV (which I do like quite a bit). It really is a shame this series hasn't seen any love other than Phantasy Star Online and its crappy handheld spin-offs.

Would I recommend it to someone who is used to the standards of today's RPGs? That's hard to say. Do you enjoy grinding a bit (such as WoW)? Sure, it'd be offline, but there's quite a bit of grinding. At least, that's how I played it - the nice part is, it doesn't take too long to level up - you get to a new area, level all your guys up once or twice, and then challenge the boss. If you are able to beat him, keep going. If not, level up another time or two.

You have Techniques, which is basically magic in this game. This costs MP to cast. You also have Skills, which have a counter on them - you can use them as many times as is listed, until you spend a night at an inn, when they are replenished. They are entirely separate from Techniques, so you don't have to split MP between them. Some characters (the robots) can't use magic, so they are limited to their Skills. Some Techniques and Skills can also be used in a certain order to cause special attacks, such as Nawat and Nazan to cause Blizzard, which is the only one I found myself. Apparently there are 14 of these and they are all pretty powerful.

If I have a complaint about the game, it really is that the battle system isn't anything exceptional. It's not bad - I would say its even above average! - but compared to the openness and flexibility of both Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy VI I would say it's pretty plain. Much akin to the Dragon Quest games, to be honest. The encounter rate can be somewhat high, sometimes, but it wasn't ridiculous.

Although it was a little more sparse than I would have liked it (due to what I'm guessing are space constraints, some of the scenes are a little lighter on dialogue than I would have liked), the story was presented excellently. I already mentioned those colored manga panels in my last post, and they really do deliver throughout the game. They are well-timed to the music for the ending as well, which is nice. It really does wrap up the story of PS1-4, too.

So I suppose I don't have too much more to say about the game. I am going to start up Phantasy Star II again, probably tonight, too. Whether I beat that game or not, we'll see - from what I remember, it's even more grindy than PSIV and a little slower, and also not as well presented. But I'm going to try! I have the ability to play Phantasy Star I, too, and I'd like to, but I really will need to buy some graph paper in that case. Which kind of sounds like Etrian Odyssey, so I'm tempted... We'll see how that goes, though. One of the blessings of playing PSIV and II is that they are on a PSP collection I have, so I can play them portably, and I only have access to I on my 360 Genesis collection. Anyway, though, I really enjoyed PSIV and will probably play it again someday. It's like RPG comfort food - lots of grinding, light story, excellent graphics and music.

Oh Sega. How the mighty have fallen.