Pokemon Conquest will save the Japanese RPG.
No, wait - allow me to explain myself! I'm not saying it's the best RPG of all time, nor is it an absolute must-play for everyone. It's just what the title represents and how it's executed that matters.
Before I discuss why Pokemon Conquest will save the JRPG, I must discuss the mainline Pokemon series and an earlier spinoff.
For many people, Pokemon Red or Blue was their first JRPG. It certainly is a gentle introduction to the genre - you can never lose progress in Pokemon, just money, like in the Dragon Quest series. The series teaches players to level up their parties to make them stronger, and teaches them about status ailments and all the other regular JRPG stuff. It also appeals - and is directly marketed - to kids.
Hook 'em young, right?
The thing is, once a kid gets hooked on Pokemon, he tends to broaden his horizons with regards to JRPGs. He may check out Dragon Quest, which is probably where Nintendo would like him to go next since they publish that series here in the States. Or they may check out Final Fantasy, since that's a premier series as well. Regardless, they got to those series as a direct result of being taught JRPG fundamentals from Pokemon.
But what of niche RPGs? How could a company - any company, not just Nintendo - expand the audiences for those? Pokemon doesn't teach kids how to play strategy RPGs, for example. Nor does the mainline series teach kids how to play roguelikes.
Until Pokemon Mystery Dungeon, that is.
The Mystery Dungeon series didn't start with the Pokemon version - it actually started with Dragon Quest. With its roots in the PC game Rogue, the Mystery Dungeon series starts a character - sometimes a few more - in the entrance to a randomly generated dungeon filled with enemies. They are then tasked to explore the dungeon and make it out alive, a tall task due to the random nature of the game. In most roguelikes, if the player dies, they lose everything, including their levels.
Not so, though, in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon. The player character in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon levels up and actually maintains those levels even if they die - they might lose some items, but the game doesn't really punish the player too hard. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon also lets players recruit other Pokemon to help them fight, which makes the dungeons that much easier.
This is a pretty clever way to introduce roguelikes to a completely unsuspecting audience, wouldn't you think?
And that's exactly what happened, at least with me. Pokemon Mystery Dungeon on DS made me a fan of roguelikes. I have since gone on to play Shiren the Wanderer, on both DS and Wii (they are completely separate games despite sharing a title), Final Fantasy Chocobo's Dungeon, and a few others such as Fatal Labyrinth and Dragon Crystal (Shiren on DS is the best roguelike of all time, in my opinion). I never would have played any of those games without having eased my way into the genre with Pokemon Mystery Dungeon.
So where does Pokemon Conquest fit into all this?
Well, it follows that a company such as Koei would try to pitch Nintendo* on letting them use the Pokemon characters in one of their incredibly obscure Nobunaga's Ambition series. They saw people pick up obscure types of games like roguelikes and must have thought, "Why not try to make a Pokemon Nobunaga's Ambition game? Surely we can try to get people into this type of game to sell our own brand eventually."
And that's pretty much what they've done here. Pokemon Conquest is Nobunaga's Ambition with Pokemon in it. It is, I'm sure, not anywhere near as hard (or probably as complicated) as the series that inspired it, but I will tell you - once I'm done with Pokemon Conquest, I'm going to look into Nobunaga's Ambition.
Mission accomplished, Koei.
Pokemon is such a weird IP, isn't it?
So how, exactly, will Pokemon Conquest save the JRPG? Well, it by itself will not. But it is a stepping stone to expanding the audience of these games. Pokemon is such a huge juggernaut that every title with the word "Pokemon" on it will sell hundreds of thousands of copies, if not millions. If a game like Pokemon Conquest does well, who's to say the Pokemon series won't eventually expand to other types of RPGs and make the fanbase of the genre grow even more? The fact that Pokemon Conquest is so good gives me hope that this is exactly what will happen.
*it had to have been Koei pitching Nintendo. There's no way it would be the other way around, right?
Sunday, June 24, 2012
Sunday, June 10, 2012
Dragon Warrior VII
Apparently, I can't get enough Dragon Quest.
I beat V less than two months ago, and though it drags on near the end (really, game, I have to level up my kids for hours before I can continue? Thaaaaanks), I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. And last year, I played through what had been my favorite Dragon Quest mechanically - VI. I loved that Class system so much.
I had heard for years that Dragon Quest VII (Warrior here in the States - the last game in the series with that title) had the most extensive version of the Class system, though. I had also heard that it was by far the longest Dragon Quest, and that most people took over 100 hours to beat it, much less do many of the sidequests.
So I longed for the game, to at least try it out. I say try because the game is infamous for being ugly. I never bothered to look it up online because I knew I'd play it eventually.
A few weeks back, I went into the retro game shop near where I work, and lo and behold they had a mint copy of the game for forty bucks. Having just gotten paid, I bought the game knowing I'd probably never see it cheaper than that. I went home that night and popped it in...
And almost threw up. The game really is incredibly, indescribably ugly. I say this as someone who had only a Nintendo 64 in the late nineties, and enjoyed such "beautiful" games as Bomberman 64, Banjo-Kazooie, and other such blurry messes. Dragon Warrior VII came out for the original Playstation at the end of 2001, which is the same time Squaresoft released Final Fantasy X - a game that may still be their best-looking 3D game, in my opinion.
As I played the first few hours of the game, I kept telling myself the battles would look good. Surely, they would, right? I had been weaned on the beautifully animated DS titles, but I tried to keep the faith. And by and large, the battles do look good, at least in terms of the monster sprites. The backgrounds and even the text boxes in battle are godawful. I will say that the enemies animate their attacks pretty well, though I do miss their idle animations from the DS games.
But to look at Dragon Warrior VII's graphics and dismiss the game as bad would be a mistake. At the time of this writing, I have invested about 40 hours into the game and can't say that I've disliked it at all. Dragon Warrior VII is one of the slowest-paced games I have ever played, though. I didn't fight my first battle until I was two and a half hours into the game. Before that point, I had to wander around some stupid ruins and I have to say had extremely little fun. But once you get to that battle, though, the game starts to get good.
And when you hit 18 and a half hours in, you unlock the Class system finally (at least, that's where I unlocked it). I don't know why they put the Dharma Temple (renamed Alltrades Abbey in the DS games) so far into the game. I wish it had been accessible earlier, although a certain character leaves your party just before unlocking it, so I guess I would have been a little upset if I had leveled that characters classes up a lot just before losing them. I still haven't seen him since he left, either, which is weird since he features pretty heavily in the story to that point. Anyway...
You gain experience in your classes by fighting battles, but not by gaining levels. What this means is that after a certain number of fights, your characters will level their class up and potentially learn new moves. What is really nice about this system is that once your characters learn a skill or spell, they always have access to it, even if they switch classes. This makes sense to me more than the Job system in the various Final Fantasies - if I can do an activity at one point, it's not like I forget how to completely do certain tasks once I change Jobs. I always thought that was dumb. Many of the moves you learn are useful, although some of the classes themselves suck because they're largely just barriers to unlock the better classes. I do not look forward to training someone to master the Bard, Dancer, and Jester classes to unlock the TeenIdol class and then have to master that and Sage (which requires I master the Cleric and Mage classes to unlock) to be able to unlock the Summoner class. Ugh.
But, knowing the amount of fun I'm having, I probably will do all that. The gameplay is deep, and knowing cool moves is worth it. My main hero and one of my other party members have a move called WindBeast, which has no MP cost and is their most powerful attack. If I only want to target a single enemy rather than wail on all of them with my boomerang, I'll spam WindBeast. It's great for bosses who aren't immune to wind attacks! Plus, it is not considered magic, so even if my characters are silenced they can still use it, and since it's a "skill," having lowered accuracy otherwise (being "dazzled") doesn't affect its accuracy. Hooray!
One of the downfalls of the game, though, is its localization. I wouldn't say it's incomprehensible, but they packed a lot of content into the two discs, so sometimes the NPCs don't quite tell you enough about where to go or what to do next. So, about three hours in, I began using a FAQ to play through the game, and I haven't regretted it one whit. The fact that you cannot advance in the game without acquiring enough Land Shards means that if you didn't use a FAQ, you'd have to crawl over the entire game looking for that one little piece you need to be able to travel to the next land. If there's one glaring problem with the game, it is that one, even over the godawful graphics.
I do enjoy what those Shards unlock, though. The game starts on what is the only existing island in the world, and to be able to restore the other lands in the world, your party must find these shards, place them in this ancient ruin, and then travel back in time and solve whatever is plaguing that particular land. Typically this involves killing lots of monsters and a few bosses, although sometimes its just solving a few puzzles in towns. The Dragon Quest series has always been known for its vignettes, and they are arguably at their strongest, here. This is because once you save a land in the past, it becomes available to visit in the future. You can then talk to the NPCs and maybe learn how what you did to help the town in the past has gone through time. Sometimes you are revered and remembered (one town explicitly wrote in their history to expect the party to come visit again someday, and to throw a huge party when they do) or are completely forgotten in favor of the local person that helped your party out at the time. Either way, the vignettes are always creative and fun, and many times link together in weird ways (there have been multiple times where someone from some vignette reappears later in a different vignette, older and somewhat wiser. It's always interesting seeing these characters again).
All told, I've got plenty of game left - probably 50 or 60 hours! I hope it doesn't drag on during the second disc, though, which I'm nearing. I want to actually finish this game, length be damned.
I beat V less than two months ago, and though it drags on near the end (really, game, I have to level up my kids for hours before I can continue? Thaaaaanks), I ended up enjoying it quite a bit. And last year, I played through what had been my favorite Dragon Quest mechanically - VI. I loved that Class system so much.
I had heard for years that Dragon Quest VII (Warrior here in the States - the last game in the series with that title) had the most extensive version of the Class system, though. I had also heard that it was by far the longest Dragon Quest, and that most people took over 100 hours to beat it, much less do many of the sidequests.
So I longed for the game, to at least try it out. I say try because the game is infamous for being ugly. I never bothered to look it up online because I knew I'd play it eventually.
A few weeks back, I went into the retro game shop near where I work, and lo and behold they had a mint copy of the game for forty bucks. Having just gotten paid, I bought the game knowing I'd probably never see it cheaper than that. I went home that night and popped it in...
And almost threw up. The game really is incredibly, indescribably ugly. I say this as someone who had only a Nintendo 64 in the late nineties, and enjoyed such "beautiful" games as Bomberman 64, Banjo-Kazooie, and other such blurry messes. Dragon Warrior VII came out for the original Playstation at the end of 2001, which is the same time Squaresoft released Final Fantasy X - a game that may still be their best-looking 3D game, in my opinion.
As I played the first few hours of the game, I kept telling myself the battles would look good. Surely, they would, right? I had been weaned on the beautifully animated DS titles, but I tried to keep the faith. And by and large, the battles do look good, at least in terms of the monster sprites. The backgrounds and even the text boxes in battle are godawful. I will say that the enemies animate their attacks pretty well, though I do miss their idle animations from the DS games.
But to look at Dragon Warrior VII's graphics and dismiss the game as bad would be a mistake. At the time of this writing, I have invested about 40 hours into the game and can't say that I've disliked it at all. Dragon Warrior VII is one of the slowest-paced games I have ever played, though. I didn't fight my first battle until I was two and a half hours into the game. Before that point, I had to wander around some stupid ruins and I have to say had extremely little fun. But once you get to that battle, though, the game starts to get good.
And when you hit 18 and a half hours in, you unlock the Class system finally (at least, that's where I unlocked it). I don't know why they put the Dharma Temple (renamed Alltrades Abbey in the DS games) so far into the game. I wish it had been accessible earlier, although a certain character leaves your party just before unlocking it, so I guess I would have been a little upset if I had leveled that characters classes up a lot just before losing them. I still haven't seen him since he left, either, which is weird since he features pretty heavily in the story to that point. Anyway...
You gain experience in your classes by fighting battles, but not by gaining levels. What this means is that after a certain number of fights, your characters will level their class up and potentially learn new moves. What is really nice about this system is that once your characters learn a skill or spell, they always have access to it, even if they switch classes. This makes sense to me more than the Job system in the various Final Fantasies - if I can do an activity at one point, it's not like I forget how to completely do certain tasks once I change Jobs. I always thought that was dumb. Many of the moves you learn are useful, although some of the classes themselves suck because they're largely just barriers to unlock the better classes. I do not look forward to training someone to master the Bard, Dancer, and Jester classes to unlock the TeenIdol class and then have to master that and Sage (which requires I master the Cleric and Mage classes to unlock) to be able to unlock the Summoner class. Ugh.
But, knowing the amount of fun I'm having, I probably will do all that. The gameplay is deep, and knowing cool moves is worth it. My main hero and one of my other party members have a move called WindBeast, which has no MP cost and is their most powerful attack. If I only want to target a single enemy rather than wail on all of them with my boomerang, I'll spam WindBeast. It's great for bosses who aren't immune to wind attacks! Plus, it is not considered magic, so even if my characters are silenced they can still use it, and since it's a "skill," having lowered accuracy otherwise (being "dazzled") doesn't affect its accuracy. Hooray!
One of the downfalls of the game, though, is its localization. I wouldn't say it's incomprehensible, but they packed a lot of content into the two discs, so sometimes the NPCs don't quite tell you enough about where to go or what to do next. So, about three hours in, I began using a FAQ to play through the game, and I haven't regretted it one whit. The fact that you cannot advance in the game without acquiring enough Land Shards means that if you didn't use a FAQ, you'd have to crawl over the entire game looking for that one little piece you need to be able to travel to the next land. If there's one glaring problem with the game, it is that one, even over the godawful graphics.
I do enjoy what those Shards unlock, though. The game starts on what is the only existing island in the world, and to be able to restore the other lands in the world, your party must find these shards, place them in this ancient ruin, and then travel back in time and solve whatever is plaguing that particular land. Typically this involves killing lots of monsters and a few bosses, although sometimes its just solving a few puzzles in towns. The Dragon Quest series has always been known for its vignettes, and they are arguably at their strongest, here. This is because once you save a land in the past, it becomes available to visit in the future. You can then talk to the NPCs and maybe learn how what you did to help the town in the past has gone through time. Sometimes you are revered and remembered (one town explicitly wrote in their history to expect the party to come visit again someday, and to throw a huge party when they do) or are completely forgotten in favor of the local person that helped your party out at the time. Either way, the vignettes are always creative and fun, and many times link together in weird ways (there have been multiple times where someone from some vignette reappears later in a different vignette, older and somewhat wiser. It's always interesting seeing these characters again).
All told, I've got plenty of game left - probably 50 or 60 hours! I hope it doesn't drag on during the second disc, though, which I'm nearing. I want to actually finish this game, length be damned.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Top 20 Games of All Time - Right Now, Anyway
Every few years, my friend Kyle and I decide to re-evaluate our top X number of games. I haven't discussed this 2012 edition with him yet, but figured I would go ahead and write this post with the knowledge he will eventually too. I'd like to sort of see where I stand now, and maybe revisit this once a year or every other year or something like that to see how my tastes evolve over time (plus it will give me an excuse to write about these games over and over again).
So! With no further ado and for no particular reason, here are my top 20 favorite games with a short blurb attached to them.
20 - Sonic 3 & Knuckles - My favorite Sonic game of all time, and still the one to beat in terms of level design, music, and controls. A very long game that has the ability to save but doesn't overstay it's welcome (except for Sandopolis Zone 2, the worst level in the Genesis games), this is the Sonic game I keep booting up the Gamecube collection to play.
19 - Shining Force II - Though it has fallen way down my list due to the fact that I think I love it so much because of nostalgia, I still say this is a great game. It's like Fire Emblem, but way more forgiving. Easily the best RPG on the Genesis (as much as I think Phantasy Star IV is great) and the best in the series. Perfect difficulty curve, great music, interesting character progression (I love the idea of "Promoting" someone to a better class).
18 - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - The pinnacle of the Grand Theft Auto series. It took what GTA3 did, but improved upon it in every way. Slightly better controls, a much more interesting world to explore, a lot more vehicles, an interesting and likable protagonist (sorry, Vice City) and a great soundtrack. Plus, it doesn't have GTAIV's crappy controls, annoying cell phone, ugly graphics, etc.
17 - Dragon Quest V - As much as I fought to get through this game (I had to play it almost three times through to finally beat it!) I have to say this is the finest Dragon Quest game. I had a lot of fun with both VIII and VI, but the story in Dragon Quest V is one of the most heart-wrenchingly good stories in the entire videogame medium. There is nothing like it.
16 - Ghost Trick - I asked myself as I was making this list what my favorite adventure game was, and although I loved the Phoenix Wright series and thoroughly enjoyed 999 and Hotel Dusk, I kept coming back to Ghost Trick. It's excellent music, intriguing story, great ending, and 100% enjoyable gameplay from start to finish put it past every other game in the genre. Seriously, there wasn't anytime where I had to force myself through a puzzle to get to "the good parts." Although some of those last few puzzles were rough.
15 - Fallout: New Vegas - The game that sold me on Western RPGs. Yes, it took until 2010 for me to be interested. It was the world of this game that really drew me in. Gone are the endless subways of Fallout 3. A wide selection of interesting characters (and Matthew Perry!) to meet and sometimes murder. An incredibly well-designed faction system that adds more gravity to the decisions you make. Also, you can get an ending where you screw basically everyone over and crown yourself King of the Strip.
14 - Pokemon Diamond - I struggled to pick my favorite Pokemon game. I have played almost all of them, but none of them hooked me as much as Diamond did. My game clock is over 320 hours. I caught them all - at the time there were 493 of them - and proceeded to IV train around 30 of my favorites to level 100. Without using Rare Candies. I think I may have burned myself out of Pokemon games for a long time (I beat White's story mode, quit, and haven't looked back), but what a way to go out, huh?
13 - Wario Land: Super Mario World 3 - As much as I enjoyed Wario Land 2 and 3, this one still has my favorite mix of platforming and puzzles. It's also one of those weird Game Boy games to have an excellent soundtrack. The Wario Land series are almost all excellent, and I'm glad they all tend to be different from one another because I don't think this game could really be improved upon in many ways.
12 - Phantasy Star Online Episodes 1&2 - Who knows how many hours I've put into this game. A time sink like no other, this game was so much fun to play with other people it's ridiculous. I used to play split-screen with the aforementioned Kyle way back in the day, and briefly last year we sort of hacked the game to play online again. Kyle had other things to do, but I actually got a new character almost to level 40 before I put the game down so I would play other things. Addictive as hell, obviously.
11 - Donkey Kong - The Game Boy version, that is. The best puzzle platformer of all time. Mario is tasked with finding a key and then bringing it to the exit - it sounds simple, but you must simultaneously figure out how to get the key to the end of the level, and avoid all the traps and enemies along the way. Brilliantly paced and with very in depth controls, it is one of the most replayable games ever.
10 - Super Smash Bros. Melee - The best multiplayer game of all time. A brawler that is as deep as you want it to be. An impressive level of prowess can be exhibited while playing this game, and having four players wail on each other on a tiny arena never gets old. All told, I've probably put over a thousand hours into this game (I wouldn't be surprised if it was somewhere around 2000, to be honest. I played this game several nights a week for almost six years straight).
9 - Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow - On a platform with three fantastic Castlevania games, the first one released outdoes them all with the soul system. Soma will occasionally acquire the souls of his defeated enemies, which grant him new powers. They range from new attacks to stat boosts to transformations and with the ability to equip different weapons, the amount of ways to attack are really second to none in the series. The level design is also very well done as well, and the bosses are perfect, at least in terms of difficulty (not really any with cheap ways to kill you, although still very tough).
8 - Final Fantasy VI - My favorite Final Fantasy of all time by a long shot. This game has amazing graphics and one of the best soundtracks of all time. The story is quite good as well, with great villains, a couple famous twists, and plenty of neat sidequests. The battle system is also full of quirky ways to fight, but isn't stupid like in some of the later games in the series.
7 - Tetris - Whatever version you want to put here, I will be playing some kind of Tetris until the day I die. This is the best puzzle game of all time. There is no other puzzle game where I dream about the pieces after a long late night session. This is probably the purest videogame on here - no fluff, no extraneous BS, just a d-pad, a rotate button, and usually great music.
6 - Super Mario World - The best Mario game ever contains the most fun things to do in the series. There aren't any extraneous power ups, the levels usually contain their own unique ideas, and Yoshi and the cape add a great dimension to an already robust suite of abilities from Mario 3. I usually play through this game once or twice a year, and I can usually do so in two very quick sittings (maybe an hour or so each). I have this game memorized and I still love to play it.
5 - Super Metroid - Another game I have pretty much memorized, this is 2D level design at its absolute zenith. Exploring is always rewarding, and the combat is sometimes tough but always fair. The bosses are all amazing, and the almost dialogue free main quest is eerie and atmospheric. I love the Metroid series, but this one stands head and shoulders above them all.
4 - Devil Survivor Overclocked - The best strategy RPG of all time. The demon summoning in this game lends an almost Pokemon-like quality to creating a battle party. The complimented but very good story is worth playing through the game several times to see all the possible endings. Face it - a game in which God (as in, THE God, the Alpha and the Omega from the Bible/Koran/etc) basically tells you "I'm going to destroy the world in 7 days unless you do something about what your idiot species caused," cannot be a bad game. That it slavishly includes figures from prominent religions that we've all heard of, and demons from places as obscure as 19th century Russia is only icing on the cake.
3 - Etrian Odyssey III - And with this entry, we've really reached the games I consider to be a pretty much three-way tie for the best game of all time. EO3 has the deepest, most customizable RPG party system in memory that is also manageable. There are so many different party combinations, you almost can't go wrong (almost. Good luck with your Yggdroid/Farmer). A fairly decent story combined with excellent sidequests. The sea exploration mode, which I still haven't completely finished despite having killed several endgame bosses (conquering those dragons are some of my proudest videogame moments). I still go back to my file every once in a while to grind a little bit just because the battles are so much fun (and because my party kicks so much ass).
2 - Persona 3: Portable - This is a seventy hour game that I have beaten four times. It came out in 2010. I have beaten it four times. Why? Probably my favorite story in all of gaming with an incredible battle system makes this game hard to put away for good. Great quirky music with a cool cast of believable characters (all of whom you can actually directly control in battle now! Sorry PS2 Persona 3, this makes the PSP version infinitely better). This was the game that got me into Shin Megami Tensei, and it hasn't been topped yet.
1 - Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - This is probably what I would say is the greatest video game of all time. An incredible setting with a great hook - the world is going to end in three days, what are you going to do about it? The cyclical nature of the time traveling meant that unless you completed a big task, you might not accomplish much in this playthrough. You have to go back and forth through time to unravel the intricate messes the Skull Kid left for you before you can even attempt to stop him. The atmosphere in this game is amazing - the sense of foreboding that just pervades every second you play this game is unsettling. And, the fact that this game introduced me to my future wife will always make it hold a special place in my heart.
So, there you have it. My favorite 20 games of all time, at least according to me in May of 2012. This actually took a bit longer to write than I thought, and I was surprised by some of the rankings on this list, but rereading it, I have to say I wouldn't change anything. These are the games that I will come back to time and time again. I would be surprised if this list changes very dramatically in the future - in fact, the only way I could see it changing much is if a bunch of newer games supplant the ones here. Nothing that exists currently can top these ones.
So! With no further ado and for no particular reason, here are my top 20 favorite games with a short blurb attached to them.
20 - Sonic 3 & Knuckles - My favorite Sonic game of all time, and still the one to beat in terms of level design, music, and controls. A very long game that has the ability to save but doesn't overstay it's welcome (except for Sandopolis Zone 2, the worst level in the Genesis games), this is the Sonic game I keep booting up the Gamecube collection to play.
19 - Shining Force II - Though it has fallen way down my list due to the fact that I think I love it so much because of nostalgia, I still say this is a great game. It's like Fire Emblem, but way more forgiving. Easily the best RPG on the Genesis (as much as I think Phantasy Star IV is great) and the best in the series. Perfect difficulty curve, great music, interesting character progression (I love the idea of "Promoting" someone to a better class).
18 - Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - The pinnacle of the Grand Theft Auto series. It took what GTA3 did, but improved upon it in every way. Slightly better controls, a much more interesting world to explore, a lot more vehicles, an interesting and likable protagonist (sorry, Vice City) and a great soundtrack. Plus, it doesn't have GTAIV's crappy controls, annoying cell phone, ugly graphics, etc.
17 - Dragon Quest V - As much as I fought to get through this game (I had to play it almost three times through to finally beat it!) I have to say this is the finest Dragon Quest game. I had a lot of fun with both VIII and VI, but the story in Dragon Quest V is one of the most heart-wrenchingly good stories in the entire videogame medium. There is nothing like it.
16 - Ghost Trick - I asked myself as I was making this list what my favorite adventure game was, and although I loved the Phoenix Wright series and thoroughly enjoyed 999 and Hotel Dusk, I kept coming back to Ghost Trick. It's excellent music, intriguing story, great ending, and 100% enjoyable gameplay from start to finish put it past every other game in the genre. Seriously, there wasn't anytime where I had to force myself through a puzzle to get to "the good parts." Although some of those last few puzzles were rough.
15 - Fallout: New Vegas - The game that sold me on Western RPGs. Yes, it took until 2010 for me to be interested. It was the world of this game that really drew me in. Gone are the endless subways of Fallout 3. A wide selection of interesting characters (and Matthew Perry!) to meet and sometimes murder. An incredibly well-designed faction system that adds more gravity to the decisions you make. Also, you can get an ending where you screw basically everyone over and crown yourself King of the Strip.
14 - Pokemon Diamond - I struggled to pick my favorite Pokemon game. I have played almost all of them, but none of them hooked me as much as Diamond did. My game clock is over 320 hours. I caught them all - at the time there were 493 of them - and proceeded to IV train around 30 of my favorites to level 100. Without using Rare Candies. I think I may have burned myself out of Pokemon games for a long time (I beat White's story mode, quit, and haven't looked back), but what a way to go out, huh?
13 - Wario Land: Super Mario World 3 - As much as I enjoyed Wario Land 2 and 3, this one still has my favorite mix of platforming and puzzles. It's also one of those weird Game Boy games to have an excellent soundtrack. The Wario Land series are almost all excellent, and I'm glad they all tend to be different from one another because I don't think this game could really be improved upon in many ways.
12 - Phantasy Star Online Episodes 1&2 - Who knows how many hours I've put into this game. A time sink like no other, this game was so much fun to play with other people it's ridiculous. I used to play split-screen with the aforementioned Kyle way back in the day, and briefly last year we sort of hacked the game to play online again. Kyle had other things to do, but I actually got a new character almost to level 40 before I put the game down so I would play other things. Addictive as hell, obviously.
11 - Donkey Kong - The Game Boy version, that is. The best puzzle platformer of all time. Mario is tasked with finding a key and then bringing it to the exit - it sounds simple, but you must simultaneously figure out how to get the key to the end of the level, and avoid all the traps and enemies along the way. Brilliantly paced and with very in depth controls, it is one of the most replayable games ever.
10 - Super Smash Bros. Melee - The best multiplayer game of all time. A brawler that is as deep as you want it to be. An impressive level of prowess can be exhibited while playing this game, and having four players wail on each other on a tiny arena never gets old. All told, I've probably put over a thousand hours into this game (I wouldn't be surprised if it was somewhere around 2000, to be honest. I played this game several nights a week for almost six years straight).
9 - Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow - On a platform with three fantastic Castlevania games, the first one released outdoes them all with the soul system. Soma will occasionally acquire the souls of his defeated enemies, which grant him new powers. They range from new attacks to stat boosts to transformations and with the ability to equip different weapons, the amount of ways to attack are really second to none in the series. The level design is also very well done as well, and the bosses are perfect, at least in terms of difficulty (not really any with cheap ways to kill you, although still very tough).
8 - Final Fantasy VI - My favorite Final Fantasy of all time by a long shot. This game has amazing graphics and one of the best soundtracks of all time. The story is quite good as well, with great villains, a couple famous twists, and plenty of neat sidequests. The battle system is also full of quirky ways to fight, but isn't stupid like in some of the later games in the series.
7 - Tetris - Whatever version you want to put here, I will be playing some kind of Tetris until the day I die. This is the best puzzle game of all time. There is no other puzzle game where I dream about the pieces after a long late night session. This is probably the purest videogame on here - no fluff, no extraneous BS, just a d-pad, a rotate button, and usually great music.
6 - Super Mario World - The best Mario game ever contains the most fun things to do in the series. There aren't any extraneous power ups, the levels usually contain their own unique ideas, and Yoshi and the cape add a great dimension to an already robust suite of abilities from Mario 3. I usually play through this game once or twice a year, and I can usually do so in two very quick sittings (maybe an hour or so each). I have this game memorized and I still love to play it.
5 - Super Metroid - Another game I have pretty much memorized, this is 2D level design at its absolute zenith. Exploring is always rewarding, and the combat is sometimes tough but always fair. The bosses are all amazing, and the almost dialogue free main quest is eerie and atmospheric. I love the Metroid series, but this one stands head and shoulders above them all.
4 - Devil Survivor Overclocked - The best strategy RPG of all time. The demon summoning in this game lends an almost Pokemon-like quality to creating a battle party. The complimented but very good story is worth playing through the game several times to see all the possible endings. Face it - a game in which God (as in, THE God, the Alpha and the Omega from the Bible/Koran/etc) basically tells you "I'm going to destroy the world in 7 days unless you do something about what your idiot species caused," cannot be a bad game. That it slavishly includes figures from prominent religions that we've all heard of, and demons from places as obscure as 19th century Russia is only icing on the cake.
3 - Etrian Odyssey III - And with this entry, we've really reached the games I consider to be a pretty much three-way tie for the best game of all time. EO3 has the deepest, most customizable RPG party system in memory that is also manageable. There are so many different party combinations, you almost can't go wrong (almost. Good luck with your Yggdroid/Farmer). A fairly decent story combined with excellent sidequests. The sea exploration mode, which I still haven't completely finished despite having killed several endgame bosses (conquering those dragons are some of my proudest videogame moments). I still go back to my file every once in a while to grind a little bit just because the battles are so much fun (and because my party kicks so much ass).
2 - Persona 3: Portable - This is a seventy hour game that I have beaten four times. It came out in 2010. I have beaten it four times. Why? Probably my favorite story in all of gaming with an incredible battle system makes this game hard to put away for good. Great quirky music with a cool cast of believable characters (all of whom you can actually directly control in battle now! Sorry PS2 Persona 3, this makes the PSP version infinitely better). This was the game that got me into Shin Megami Tensei, and it hasn't been topped yet.
1 - Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask - This is probably what I would say is the greatest video game of all time. An incredible setting with a great hook - the world is going to end in three days, what are you going to do about it? The cyclical nature of the time traveling meant that unless you completed a big task, you might not accomplish much in this playthrough. You have to go back and forth through time to unravel the intricate messes the Skull Kid left for you before you can even attempt to stop him. The atmosphere in this game is amazing - the sense of foreboding that just pervades every second you play this game is unsettling. And, the fact that this game introduced me to my future wife will always make it hold a special place in my heart.
So, there you have it. My favorite 20 games of all time, at least according to me in May of 2012. This actually took a bit longer to write than I thought, and I was surprised by some of the rankings on this list, but rereading it, I have to say I wouldn't change anything. These are the games that I will come back to time and time again. I would be surprised if this list changes very dramatically in the future - in fact, the only way I could see it changing much is if a bunch of newer games supplant the ones here. Nothing that exists currently can top these ones.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Giana Sisters DS
On a whim, I decided to buy Giana Sisters DS from Newegg, since it was only $15 and I've absolutely never seen it in real life before. I guess I figured the game would be hella rare someday, and that may or may not be true.
Either way though, I'm surprisingly glad I bought it. It's actually a fun little game! Well, I should say that it is by no means anything special. What I mean is that the game does very little to differentiate itself from other similar platformers. You just jump around and pick up diamonds (basically Mario coins). You have to get through the levels without dying. Sure, you can pick up a bubble powerup (one of two, the other of which I haven't seen yet) and float around by using the microphone or the A button, but that's about it as far as unique mechanics. And to be honest, the bubble works exactly like it does in that one level in Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins, although I would argue that it controls better.
The music is fantastic, though. It sounds like a Commodore 64, and is soothing, which are two things I would never type about music at the same time. It's weird because I feel like this game was very nostalgic for it's creators to make, but I have no idea if they're the same guys who made the original Giana Sisters.
I have to say, the balls of those guys back then to call the game Giana Sisters. "They're Italian siblings who run and jump and get a powerup that let's them shoot energy balls!" Sound familiar?! The graphics on the C64 game look a LOT like Mario 1, as well. In fact a lot of the level design of the game is ripped straight from the NES.
The graphics are pretty good, though. I quite like the pixel art - it seems to be a cross between a flash game (which I usually find bland and ugly) and a retro NES game (which I usually find gorgeous). I don't really know how to describe them better than that. It was actually the level graphics combined with the fluid character and enemy animation that I saw in a Youtube video that made me seriously consider getting the game.
But Giana Sisters DS is actually a pretty good little game. It's not a remake so far as I can tell, but it's hard to actually tell because there's so little information on the game anywhere. I have no idea why this was released in America. Who knows who the Giana Sisters are here, besides weird retro nerds like myself? And who thought the thing would sell, especially with the hideous box art? If you do ever come across the game in a Gamestop or whatever for like $5, pick it up! You'll be entertained for a few hours.
Either way though, I'm surprisingly glad I bought it. It's actually a fun little game! Well, I should say that it is by no means anything special. What I mean is that the game does very little to differentiate itself from other similar platformers. You just jump around and pick up diamonds (basically Mario coins). You have to get through the levels without dying. Sure, you can pick up a bubble powerup (one of two, the other of which I haven't seen yet) and float around by using the microphone or the A button, but that's about it as far as unique mechanics. And to be honest, the bubble works exactly like it does in that one level in Super Mario Land 2: Six Golden Coins, although I would argue that it controls better.
The music is fantastic, though. It sounds like a Commodore 64, and is soothing, which are two things I would never type about music at the same time. It's weird because I feel like this game was very nostalgic for it's creators to make, but I have no idea if they're the same guys who made the original Giana Sisters.
I have to say, the balls of those guys back then to call the game Giana Sisters. "They're Italian siblings who run and jump and get a powerup that let's them shoot energy balls!" Sound familiar?! The graphics on the C64 game look a LOT like Mario 1, as well. In fact a lot of the level design of the game is ripped straight from the NES.
The graphics are pretty good, though. I quite like the pixel art - it seems to be a cross between a flash game (which I usually find bland and ugly) and a retro NES game (which I usually find gorgeous). I don't really know how to describe them better than that. It was actually the level graphics combined with the fluid character and enemy animation that I saw in a Youtube video that made me seriously consider getting the game.
But Giana Sisters DS is actually a pretty good little game. It's not a remake so far as I can tell, but it's hard to actually tell because there's so little information on the game anywhere. I have no idea why this was released in America. Who knows who the Giana Sisters are here, besides weird retro nerds like myself? And who thought the thing would sell, especially with the hideous box art? If you do ever come across the game in a Gamestop or whatever for like $5, pick it up! You'll be entertained for a few hours.
Monday, March 5, 2012
Devil Survivor 2: Devil Speed
Having beat Tales of the Abyss, I dove headfirst into Devil Survivor 2 and was immediately struck by how different the music is. I couldn't get over how retro-sounding it was, especially compared to the guitar butt-rock of the first game. I have since grown fond of what I've heard of the soundtrack, but it is much more Persona than Devil Survivor to my ears. Not a bad thing! Just not what I expected.
As for the gameplay, I must say that if the battles stay as interesting as they have been, Devil Survivor 2 might be an improvement over the first. There are more wrinkles to the battle system, but things generally balance out. I will say that the game starts out incredibly hard, mostly because you have no skills unlocked for your main guys, nor do you have much in the way of options for demons to summon. The game has gotten progressively easier as I go on, which is probably a mistake to say because I'm sure the game will hand me my ass as soon as I turn it on again.
Some of the stuff they've added is the ability to directly affect enemies Extra Turns with moves like Extra Cancel, which... Cancels the opponent's extra turn. But there are even passive abilities that change how easy or difficult it is to affect an enemy's or your own Extra Turn, which you'd think would get aggravating, but it isn't too bad. There's a few new demon powers, but most of the ones I've seen so far are as they were in the first game (they don't fix what isn't broken, basically). There's a neat new demon power called Ghost Wounds which doesn't seem much more than a nerfed Bind at first, but then you realize it limits the attack range of an enemy to one - imagine using it on bosses! I haven't done so yet, but it could change the dynamic of quite a few battles if used properly.
The battlefields start out as all repeats of battlefields from the last game, which would have been extremely disappointing had they not quickly switched things up. So far it seems like every battlefield from the first game is in this one, with a few slight changes, as well as a lot of new ones. My favorite map so far involves a set of four escalators (no, they don't move) in the middle of the field. These limit the center of the playing field to four narrow paths that demons and humans can only get through with demon powers such as Flight or Phantasm. There's also a neat parking garage map as well as some other interesting indoor levels that are overall much more interesting than DS1's set of mostly outdoor playfields that were all pretty much wide open. I just feel like so far, the battlefield design is top notch in DS2.
Now as for the story, I am only ten hours in. I am not too interested in what is going on, though. Maybe DS2's story is a slow burn (I hear it gets good later!) but one of the things I loved about the original was how quickly it hooked you with its storyline. So far, DS2 seems like I'm fighting some weird crap the Big Dipper sent to Earth (no, that is not a joke). Then again, I have no idea why there are demons around this time, and I have no idea what these JP people are all about.
No word from Metatron about humanity needing to purge the demons from the world yet either (I guess he figured humanity learned from last time).
There is this new Fate system, which basically seems like they're putting the Social Links from Persona into Devil Survivor. Can't complain much there, and raising the Fate relationship with one of your party members gives instant benefits, such as causing them to develop an innate resistance to an element (which doesn't take up a passive skill slot!) or allow you to Joint Skill Crack moves (which has allowed me to crack three moves at once by assigning three Skill Cracks to one demon and then having my main character kill it). They also unlock powerful demons for fusing just like in Persona. I'm pretty excited about this addition to the game, although my obsession with it caused me not to focus on getting an item for a character as fast as I could, which resulted in the death of a potential party member. It's too bad, but I can see myself playing through the game more than once to see everything like I did with the first game.
...Which is pretty much what I wanted from a Devil Survivor sequel. I'm going to obsess over this game. At some point I'll probably even try to figure out which DS is my favorite. The near 200 hours (!) I've played of the first game will probably win out in terms of game time, but that's just because I had to do everything over again in Overclocked.
Man, Shin Megami Tensei is such an awesome series.
As for the gameplay, I must say that if the battles stay as interesting as they have been, Devil Survivor 2 might be an improvement over the first. There are more wrinkles to the battle system, but things generally balance out. I will say that the game starts out incredibly hard, mostly because you have no skills unlocked for your main guys, nor do you have much in the way of options for demons to summon. The game has gotten progressively easier as I go on, which is probably a mistake to say because I'm sure the game will hand me my ass as soon as I turn it on again.
Some of the stuff they've added is the ability to directly affect enemies Extra Turns with moves like Extra Cancel, which... Cancels the opponent's extra turn. But there are even passive abilities that change how easy or difficult it is to affect an enemy's or your own Extra Turn, which you'd think would get aggravating, but it isn't too bad. There's a few new demon powers, but most of the ones I've seen so far are as they were in the first game (they don't fix what isn't broken, basically). There's a neat new demon power called Ghost Wounds which doesn't seem much more than a nerfed Bind at first, but then you realize it limits the attack range of an enemy to one - imagine using it on bosses! I haven't done so yet, but it could change the dynamic of quite a few battles if used properly.
The battlefields start out as all repeats of battlefields from the last game, which would have been extremely disappointing had they not quickly switched things up. So far it seems like every battlefield from the first game is in this one, with a few slight changes, as well as a lot of new ones. My favorite map so far involves a set of four escalators (no, they don't move) in the middle of the field. These limit the center of the playing field to four narrow paths that demons and humans can only get through with demon powers such as Flight or Phantasm. There's also a neat parking garage map as well as some other interesting indoor levels that are overall much more interesting than DS1's set of mostly outdoor playfields that were all pretty much wide open. I just feel like so far, the battlefield design is top notch in DS2.
Now as for the story, I am only ten hours in. I am not too interested in what is going on, though. Maybe DS2's story is a slow burn (I hear it gets good later!) but one of the things I loved about the original was how quickly it hooked you with its storyline. So far, DS2 seems like I'm fighting some weird crap the Big Dipper sent to Earth (no, that is not a joke). Then again, I have no idea why there are demons around this time, and I have no idea what these JP people are all about.
No word from Metatron about humanity needing to purge the demons from the world yet either (I guess he figured humanity learned from last time).
There is this new Fate system, which basically seems like they're putting the Social Links from Persona into Devil Survivor. Can't complain much there, and raising the Fate relationship with one of your party members gives instant benefits, such as causing them to develop an innate resistance to an element (which doesn't take up a passive skill slot!) or allow you to Joint Skill Crack moves (which has allowed me to crack three moves at once by assigning three Skill Cracks to one demon and then having my main character kill it). They also unlock powerful demons for fusing just like in Persona. I'm pretty excited about this addition to the game, although my obsession with it caused me not to focus on getting an item for a character as fast as I could, which resulted in the death of a potential party member. It's too bad, but I can see myself playing through the game more than once to see everything like I did with the first game.
...Which is pretty much what I wanted from a Devil Survivor sequel. I'm going to obsess over this game. At some point I'll probably even try to figure out which DS is my favorite. The near 200 hours (!) I've played of the first game will probably win out in terms of game time, but that's just because I had to do everything over again in Overclocked.
Man, Shin Megami Tensei is such an awesome series.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
The Tale, Completed
I finished Tales of the Abyss tonight with a game clock of 35 hours and some change.
I must say, I really enjoyed the majority of the game. If I had the time to really delve in to the subsystems and minigames and sidequests, I'm sure I would like the game a lot more. However, I have Devil Survivor 2 sitting right here next to me and that cannot be ignored for too long.
I rather enjoyed the story of Abyss, though. There was quite a bit of weird techno-babble, but my mind always replaced "fon" and "fonic" with magic, at which point everything makes sense (sort of). There were some aspects of the story which were strange or confusing, but I feel like the overall tale of most of the characters was compelling (aside from a certain betrayal that is forgiven by the main cast WAY too easily). I did miss the characters being complete dicks to each other throughout the game, although Jade did stay his normal jerk self the whole time, so that was refreshing. The motivation of the main enemy still seems a bit oddly thought out to me, but I'm sure I missed something somewhere (especially since for most of the last ten hours, I couldn't be bothered to sit through the skits).
As an aside, I don't understand why the skits don't let you skip through the text faster. I can skip voiced dialogue during the main game by pressing a button because I can see the text, but why can't I skip through the skit stuff? I would have watched every skit had I been able to just read through it at my own pace. They also tended to pack like three skits back-to-back-to-back right after a plot point, so you had to sit there for minutes at a time as text would just scroll by with no input from you whatsoever. Also, none of the skits are voiced, so any sort of pacing the game would have from preventing you from skipping through the text faster is lost anyway.
But I digress. I ended up getting some cool Fonic Artes by the end of the game, and had quite a bit of fun during battles. The last battle was pretty dumb, though, because the boss could basically kill everyone in one hit if he so decided. I'm sure I was underleveled a bit, but I decided I didn't feel like grinding so I just cheesed my way through the battle with strategic item use. I probably would have ground had the enemies in the last dungeon given me more than a THOUSAND EXP PER BATTLE! That was ridiculous since a few dungeons ago I was getting near two thousand. That sort of crap drives me nuts. It's like training in Pokemon all over again.
Overall, though, I would say the game is worth a playthrough, if only to see how well-written the characters are, especially near the beginning. I don't know if I could recommend the PS2 game since apparently there's some pretty bad load times, but the 3DS version was fun. I don't know if I'm ready for a Tales game again so soon, but now I'm thinking of picking up Tales of Graces f and maybe looking into picking up Vesperia at some point.
Anyway, Devil Survivor 2 awaits. Hee-ho!
I must say, I really enjoyed the majority of the game. If I had the time to really delve in to the subsystems and minigames and sidequests, I'm sure I would like the game a lot more. However, I have Devil Survivor 2 sitting right here next to me and that cannot be ignored for too long.
I rather enjoyed the story of Abyss, though. There was quite a bit of weird techno-babble, but my mind always replaced "fon" and "fonic" with magic, at which point everything makes sense (sort of). There were some aspects of the story which were strange or confusing, but I feel like the overall tale of most of the characters was compelling (aside from a certain betrayal that is forgiven by the main cast WAY too easily). I did miss the characters being complete dicks to each other throughout the game, although Jade did stay his normal jerk self the whole time, so that was refreshing. The motivation of the main enemy still seems a bit oddly thought out to me, but I'm sure I missed something somewhere (especially since for most of the last ten hours, I couldn't be bothered to sit through the skits).
As an aside, I don't understand why the skits don't let you skip through the text faster. I can skip voiced dialogue during the main game by pressing a button because I can see the text, but why can't I skip through the skit stuff? I would have watched every skit had I been able to just read through it at my own pace. They also tended to pack like three skits back-to-back-to-back right after a plot point, so you had to sit there for minutes at a time as text would just scroll by with no input from you whatsoever. Also, none of the skits are voiced, so any sort of pacing the game would have from preventing you from skipping through the text faster is lost anyway.
But I digress. I ended up getting some cool Fonic Artes by the end of the game, and had quite a bit of fun during battles. The last battle was pretty dumb, though, because the boss could basically kill everyone in one hit if he so decided. I'm sure I was underleveled a bit, but I decided I didn't feel like grinding so I just cheesed my way through the battle with strategic item use. I probably would have ground had the enemies in the last dungeon given me more than a THOUSAND EXP PER BATTLE! That was ridiculous since a few dungeons ago I was getting near two thousand. That sort of crap drives me nuts. It's like training in Pokemon all over again.
Overall, though, I would say the game is worth a playthrough, if only to see how well-written the characters are, especially near the beginning. I don't know if I could recommend the PS2 game since apparently there's some pretty bad load times, but the 3DS version was fun. I don't know if I'm ready for a Tales game again so soon, but now I'm thinking of picking up Tales of Graces f and maybe looking into picking up Vesperia at some point.
Anyway, Devil Survivor 2 awaits. Hee-ho!
Sunday, February 26, 2012
Now I remember why I wait like eight years between Tales games!
It's not because they're bad, but because they're insanely long!
I mean don't get me wrong. I just got done with a four hour Tales of the Abyss marathon. And as soon as I'm done with this post, I'm going to jump right back in. But man! I'm 25 hours in and thought the end was in sight, but it's not!
The characters, though, have gone through some "growth." I won't explain why, but Luke is no longer a petulant little asshole. He rarely tells people to shut up any more. However, Jade has become more and more of a jerk, and I absolutely adore him for it. He is definitely my favorite character in the game by a long shot.
Story aside, though, let me talk about the pacing. That four hour marathon was great and the next few hours will presumably be just as interesting, but the last couple of times I played Abyss?
It was... Abysmal.
Sick burn.
It was, though. The game decided to make me run back and forth between the same like five towns a million times, with not much battling in between, while the game just threw out plot point after plot point after exposition after plot point. And while a good chunk of the plot was interesting, it took too goddamn long to get through. And the swamp dungeon was retarded. "Oh, getting bored with all the exposition, player? How about a dungeon where you spend the majority of your time getting into a fight with a giant monster who can't be beaten? A monster who your party members tell you to run from? And they're right, too, because the thing can kill you in like three hits. Oh, and while you run from it - how about we halve your walking speed on the world map? WOULD YOU LIKE THAT, PLAYER?!"
I can't remember if I had gotten this frustrated with Symphonia. Despite playing that game forever and enjoying it quite a bit, I remember very little of it. I don't know how much I'll remember about Abyss, but I hope I remember how entertaining the party is as they bicker and bitch at each other.
That four hour marathon sure was fun, though. I got to explore some pretty neat dungeons, including one where the party was split up halfway through and had to spend the rest of it getting back together. It kind of reminded me of that dungeon in Final Fantasy VI where that happens, although it was no where near as hard (plus, with the ability to avoid battles if you can run away from the enemies, you don't lose a ton of time or HP).
Hopefully the rest of the dungeons are as interesting as that one (and with boss battles as fun!), because I can't guarantee I'll stick with the game once Devil Survivor 2 comes out if I'm not having fun...
I mean don't get me wrong. I just got done with a four hour Tales of the Abyss marathon. And as soon as I'm done with this post, I'm going to jump right back in. But man! I'm 25 hours in and thought the end was in sight, but it's not!
The characters, though, have gone through some "growth." I won't explain why, but Luke is no longer a petulant little asshole. He rarely tells people to shut up any more. However, Jade has become more and more of a jerk, and I absolutely adore him for it. He is definitely my favorite character in the game by a long shot.
Story aside, though, let me talk about the pacing. That four hour marathon was great and the next few hours will presumably be just as interesting, but the last couple of times I played Abyss?
It was... Abysmal.
Sick burn.
It was, though. The game decided to make me run back and forth between the same like five towns a million times, with not much battling in between, while the game just threw out plot point after plot point after exposition after plot point. And while a good chunk of the plot was interesting, it took too goddamn long to get through. And the swamp dungeon was retarded. "Oh, getting bored with all the exposition, player? How about a dungeon where you spend the majority of your time getting into a fight with a giant monster who can't be beaten? A monster who your party members tell you to run from? And they're right, too, because the thing can kill you in like three hits. Oh, and while you run from it - how about we halve your walking speed on the world map? WOULD YOU LIKE THAT, PLAYER?!"
I can't remember if I had gotten this frustrated with Symphonia. Despite playing that game forever and enjoying it quite a bit, I remember very little of it. I don't know how much I'll remember about Abyss, but I hope I remember how entertaining the party is as they bicker and bitch at each other.
That four hour marathon sure was fun, though. I got to explore some pretty neat dungeons, including one where the party was split up halfway through and had to spend the rest of it getting back together. It kind of reminded me of that dungeon in Final Fantasy VI where that happens, although it was no where near as hard (plus, with the ability to avoid battles if you can run away from the enemies, you don't lose a ton of time or HP).
Hopefully the rest of the dungeons are as interesting as that one (and with boss battles as fun!), because I can't guarantee I'll stick with the game once Devil Survivor 2 comes out if I'm not having fun...
Saturday, February 18, 2012
Tales of the Abyss
A few days ago, I bought Tales of the Abyss for the 3DS. I was a bit hesitant to buy it, since of all the Tales games I've played, I've only liked Symphonia. However, I hunger for RPGs, and haven't played an action-based one in a while (with maybe the Ys series being the last ones I played, last year).
Tales of the Abyss (the version I'm playing) is a port of the 2006 PS2 game with some minor 3D effects added, while fixing some - apparently pretty bad, I'm told - technical problems. The 3DS version has no load times, which means this version is likely going to be the definitive version of the game. The 3DS gets one of those, for once! ...Okay, Devil Survivor Overclocked is better on 3DS, the 3DS port of Ocarina of Time is probably the new definitive version, and the same goes for Star Fox 64 3D. I guess I'm just bitter that bit.trip.SAGA has technical problems the Wii versions don't have.
As for the game itself, though, I must say I'm really enjoying Abyss so far. I'm about nine or ten hours in. Let me just say this:
The characters in this game are complete assholes, and I love them.
The narrative of Abyss throws your battle party together out of necessity rather than choice, so no one in the party is really comfortable with each other, much less nice to each other. So, whenever one of them screws up, the others pile on that person and make fun of him or her. The main character, Luke, spends most of his dialogue saying dumb things and then telling other people to shut up after they make fun of them. The quiet girl, Tear, the first to join your party, rips on the Luke whenever he gets cocky after battles. She, in turn, is made fun of by Luke for being "ice cold." And not in a flirty way! He means it! As in "You are an ice-cold bitch, Tear."
Then there is Jade. I have no idea what role he will play in the narrative overall yet, but I must say he is already my favorite character in the game (and quickly becoming a very memorable character overall). He's a bit older than the other party members, and he makes it his job to make fun of, embarrass, and just generally be a dick to all of the other party members. He goes out of his way to do this. He's not always overt about it, either. Sometimes, he just stays silent as he watches the other characters make idiots out of themselves. Once, he was called out for not saying anything, and he said something along the lines of "Oops! You caught me. I was enjoying that." My favorite line, though, occurs if the party enters a battle by being chased down by an enemy on the map: Luke will panic and act like everyone is going to die, while Jade says in the most sarcastic voice you'll ever hear "Oh no, this is terrible!" after which Luke tells him to shut up.
I love that guy.
The battles, though, seem to be built on your typical Tales system. It has been years since I've played anything in the series substantially (probably since 2004's Symphonia), so I'm not sure how much different it is from more recent entries. I will say, though, that the system feels just like what I remember of Symphonia's. The enemy groups are all visible on the map, and you don't enter battle unless you touch them. The battles themselves take place is 2D, although you can run around the battle in 3D when you're not attacking by holding the L trigger. Don't worry, it's more intuitive than you'd think. You spend the battles doing button combos, while trying to chain in special attacks throughout, to keep your hit count up to do more damage and keep the enemy from attacking you. If you need to use an item or want to tell one of your AI-controlled companions to use one or cast a spell, you can press X, which will pause the battle while you cycle through some simple menus to do what you need to do. A cooldown timer will then appear on the upper left of the top screen to let you know how long it will be before the item or spell is used. I haven't seen one for longer than two seconds, either, so it's not like you have to wait forever.
From what I can tell, the AI is programmed fairly well, so I don't think you'll have to worry too much about babysitting them or wasting revival items on them too much. You do have the option outside of battle to tweak your party's AI a bit. You can tell the characters to only cast magic when they have 75% or more of their MP unless they need to cast a healing spell, or reduce that number to 50%, 25%, or to use magic willingly. You can pick and choose which spells and abilities they can use as well, so if you don't like them wasting MP on, say, a shield spell that only protects you over a certain area of the battlefield, you can turn that crap right off and they won't cast it anymore. You aren't forced to play just as Luke, either - you can switch your party members at any time and play as a spellcaster if you so choose. I like Luke's gameplay, though, so I've spent the whole game playing as him so far.
The main story so far is basically about averting a war, so I'm not too enthralled with that, although the constant banter between the party members definitely keeps me interested. Supposedly, Tales games subvert genre stereotypes about halfway through, so maybe that will change. I hope it does! But I'm having a blast so far, so I'll keep playing.
It's too bad Inazuma Eleven finally came in the mail a day after I bought Tales of the Abyss. Oh well! I'll get to it eventually...
Tales of the Abyss (the version I'm playing) is a port of the 2006 PS2 game with some minor 3D effects added, while fixing some - apparently pretty bad, I'm told - technical problems. The 3DS version has no load times, which means this version is likely going to be the definitive version of the game. The 3DS gets one of those, for once! ...Okay, Devil Survivor Overclocked is better on 3DS, the 3DS port of Ocarina of Time is probably the new definitive version, and the same goes for Star Fox 64 3D. I guess I'm just bitter that bit.trip.SAGA has technical problems the Wii versions don't have.
As for the game itself, though, I must say I'm really enjoying Abyss so far. I'm about nine or ten hours in. Let me just say this:
The characters in this game are complete assholes, and I love them.
The narrative of Abyss throws your battle party together out of necessity rather than choice, so no one in the party is really comfortable with each other, much less nice to each other. So, whenever one of them screws up, the others pile on that person and make fun of him or her. The main character, Luke, spends most of his dialogue saying dumb things and then telling other people to shut up after they make fun of them. The quiet girl, Tear, the first to join your party, rips on the Luke whenever he gets cocky after battles. She, in turn, is made fun of by Luke for being "ice cold." And not in a flirty way! He means it! As in "You are an ice-cold bitch, Tear."
Then there is Jade. I have no idea what role he will play in the narrative overall yet, but I must say he is already my favorite character in the game (and quickly becoming a very memorable character overall). He's a bit older than the other party members, and he makes it his job to make fun of, embarrass, and just generally be a dick to all of the other party members. He goes out of his way to do this. He's not always overt about it, either. Sometimes, he just stays silent as he watches the other characters make idiots out of themselves. Once, he was called out for not saying anything, and he said something along the lines of "Oops! You caught me. I was enjoying that." My favorite line, though, occurs if the party enters a battle by being chased down by an enemy on the map: Luke will panic and act like everyone is going to die, while Jade says in the most sarcastic voice you'll ever hear "Oh no, this is terrible!" after which Luke tells him to shut up.
I love that guy.
The battles, though, seem to be built on your typical Tales system. It has been years since I've played anything in the series substantially (probably since 2004's Symphonia), so I'm not sure how much different it is from more recent entries. I will say, though, that the system feels just like what I remember of Symphonia's. The enemy groups are all visible on the map, and you don't enter battle unless you touch them. The battles themselves take place is 2D, although you can run around the battle in 3D when you're not attacking by holding the L trigger. Don't worry, it's more intuitive than you'd think. You spend the battles doing button combos, while trying to chain in special attacks throughout, to keep your hit count up to do more damage and keep the enemy from attacking you. If you need to use an item or want to tell one of your AI-controlled companions to use one or cast a spell, you can press X, which will pause the battle while you cycle through some simple menus to do what you need to do. A cooldown timer will then appear on the upper left of the top screen to let you know how long it will be before the item or spell is used. I haven't seen one for longer than two seconds, either, so it's not like you have to wait forever.
From what I can tell, the AI is programmed fairly well, so I don't think you'll have to worry too much about babysitting them or wasting revival items on them too much. You do have the option outside of battle to tweak your party's AI a bit. You can tell the characters to only cast magic when they have 75% or more of their MP unless they need to cast a healing spell, or reduce that number to 50%, 25%, or to use magic willingly. You can pick and choose which spells and abilities they can use as well, so if you don't like them wasting MP on, say, a shield spell that only protects you over a certain area of the battlefield, you can turn that crap right off and they won't cast it anymore. You aren't forced to play just as Luke, either - you can switch your party members at any time and play as a spellcaster if you so choose. I like Luke's gameplay, though, so I've spent the whole game playing as him so far.
The main story so far is basically about averting a war, so I'm not too enthralled with that, although the constant banter between the party members definitely keeps me interested. Supposedly, Tales games subvert genre stereotypes about halfway through, so maybe that will change. I hope it does! But I'm having a blast so far, so I'll keep playing.
It's too bad Inazuma Eleven finally came in the mail a day after I bought Tales of the Abyss. Oh well! I'll get to it eventually...
Tuesday, January 17, 2012
Import: The Last Window
I imported a game last week.
The Last Window: The Secret of Cape West is the Japan and Europe only sequel to 2007's Hotel Dusk: Room 215, which was released in the US. It again stars Kyle Hyde, and the game's story takes place a year after the first game.
The game play is exactly the same as in Hotel Dusk. The player moves Kyle around on the touch screen while holding the DS like a book, and Kyle's dialogue displays in a text box on the left screen while he either manipulates puzzles on the right screen or talks to other people. I enjoy the game play, but to be honest, there isn't a lot of it. Most of the time, you talk to tenants and make sure you pick the right questions to ask or answers. When you do solve a puzzle, it is either baby easy or pretty obtuse (getting the key out of the music box took me forever to figure out).
Where the game shines, though, is in the narrative, and more specifically, it's presentation. No, I do not mean the graphics - while I really do enjoy the "Take On Me" music video art, what I love is the writing. Kyle is very well written as a grizzled ex-cop, who doesn't really have a knack for sales, which is his current job. The other people who live in his apartment building (the eponymous "Cape West") are all well written as well. The game does a good job of making them all seem like normal people, while slowly revealing more sinister secrets about a few of them as time goes on. It also handles misdirection well; I had completely read one particular person to be a murderer, and I wasn't even close. It really does read like a good, pulpy detective novel (which, when written well, I genuinely enjoy).
The story ties into the first game in subtle ways, as well. Nile was a group of criminals that Kyle was investigating on the side in the first game, and were a big reason why he had quit the police force two years before the events of The Last Window. They eventually pop up in this game, and it all makes sense why. The story stands on its own, but has callbacks to the first game, and even some foreshadowing that I didn't realize was until much later (a painting hanging on one of the tenant's walls). All the little touches to the narrative impress me and I wish more games were capable of it.
The first quarter of the game, though, is pretty boring. You spend a lot of that time doing mundane things like paying rent and talking to all the tenants. I honestly can't remember what a lot of it was. It's worth getting through, though. Once the story proper picks up, the game becomes tough to put down.
The Last Window makes me very sad, though. It wasn't released in America mostly because it didn't sell well in Japan or Europe, and I don't think the first game did very well in the States anyway. This type of game should do well here, if only the right audience had access to it. Like I said before, the game is basically a mystery novel - which sell very well in this country. If more people were exposed to it, I'm sure we'd be seeing many more games of its ilk. Unfortunately, probably the only place where it could get notice would be on Apple devices, and it would probably cost too much for most people to pay attention to it and I'd also never have a chance to play it because I hate those things. I wish gamers would give off-the-wall stuff like this a chance. I know people who like to both play video games and read; there is no reason why they shouldn't give Hotel Dusk and The Last Window a shot. CING, the creators of Hotel Dusk/The Last Window, went out of business a year or two ago. It seems like Kyle Hyde's story was meant to be a trilogy, and we'll never get to see how it ends.
Hopefully America's gaming market matures, so I don't have to import other gems like The Last Window in the future, and so developers with solid ideas don't keep going out of business.
The Last Window: The Secret of Cape West is the Japan and Europe only sequel to 2007's Hotel Dusk: Room 215, which was released in the US. It again stars Kyle Hyde, and the game's story takes place a year after the first game.
The game play is exactly the same as in Hotel Dusk. The player moves Kyle around on the touch screen while holding the DS like a book, and Kyle's dialogue displays in a text box on the left screen while he either manipulates puzzles on the right screen or talks to other people. I enjoy the game play, but to be honest, there isn't a lot of it. Most of the time, you talk to tenants and make sure you pick the right questions to ask or answers. When you do solve a puzzle, it is either baby easy or pretty obtuse (getting the key out of the music box took me forever to figure out).
Where the game shines, though, is in the narrative, and more specifically, it's presentation. No, I do not mean the graphics - while I really do enjoy the "Take On Me" music video art, what I love is the writing. Kyle is very well written as a grizzled ex-cop, who doesn't really have a knack for sales, which is his current job. The other people who live in his apartment building (the eponymous "Cape West") are all well written as well. The game does a good job of making them all seem like normal people, while slowly revealing more sinister secrets about a few of them as time goes on. It also handles misdirection well; I had completely read one particular person to be a murderer, and I wasn't even close. It really does read like a good, pulpy detective novel (which, when written well, I genuinely enjoy).
The story ties into the first game in subtle ways, as well. Nile was a group of criminals that Kyle was investigating on the side in the first game, and were a big reason why he had quit the police force two years before the events of The Last Window. They eventually pop up in this game, and it all makes sense why. The story stands on its own, but has callbacks to the first game, and even some foreshadowing that I didn't realize was until much later (a painting hanging on one of the tenant's walls). All the little touches to the narrative impress me and I wish more games were capable of it.
The first quarter of the game, though, is pretty boring. You spend a lot of that time doing mundane things like paying rent and talking to all the tenants. I honestly can't remember what a lot of it was. It's worth getting through, though. Once the story proper picks up, the game becomes tough to put down.
The Last Window makes me very sad, though. It wasn't released in America mostly because it didn't sell well in Japan or Europe, and I don't think the first game did very well in the States anyway. This type of game should do well here, if only the right audience had access to it. Like I said before, the game is basically a mystery novel - which sell very well in this country. If more people were exposed to it, I'm sure we'd be seeing many more games of its ilk. Unfortunately, probably the only place where it could get notice would be on Apple devices, and it would probably cost too much for most people to pay attention to it and I'd also never have a chance to play it because I hate those things. I wish gamers would give off-the-wall stuff like this a chance. I know people who like to both play video games and read; there is no reason why they shouldn't give Hotel Dusk and The Last Window a shot. CING, the creators of Hotel Dusk/The Last Window, went out of business a year or two ago. It seems like Kyle Hyde's story was meant to be a trilogy, and we'll never get to see how it ends.
Hopefully America's gaming market matures, so I don't have to import other gems like The Last Window in the future, and so developers with solid ideas don't keep going out of business.
Saturday, November 26, 2011
Metroid II: Return of Samus
Metroid II: Return of Samus was released on 3DS Virtual Console this week, and I promptly grabbed it on Wednesday. Three hours and twenty minutes of gameplay later, I've finished it for probably the third or fourth time in my life.
This game is considered by many to be the black sheep of the Metroid series, and, as much as I like it, that is probably correct. It's an oddball little game, that's for sure. But it is not a bad game, which is what many people paint it as. It certainly has some issues, but the game is worth playing overall.
One of the issues with making games for the 8-bit Game Boy back in the early 90s was that despite its (relative) power, the screen resolution was tiny. This meant that although the system could display pretty detailed sprites, they either had to be incredibly small or way too large. One of the primary complaints people have about Metroid II is that Samus' sprite is way too large on the screen, which means that the player has a limited amount of time to react when enemies appear. While this is true, Metroid II does mitigate this by being predictable - and not in the "oh I know what is going to happen, BORING" way, but in the way where the player can recognize the room and enemy type and predict what things he'll likely encounter. The game will occasionally throw you for a loop, but most of the time you can predict what sorts of things will happen given the room. This fits with the overall theme of the game, as well - you are exploring a wild planet, after all, and you are a foreigner invading an ecosystem that has creatures who have behavior patterns and follow rules (the designers of the game, though, most likely just made the enemies behave the way they do to, again, mitigate the problem of there not being enough screen real-estate for the player to react to them).
Another major complaint about the game is the lack of free form exploration. In Metroid II, Samus is tasked with obliterating the Metroid species on SR-388, and so the whole point of the game is to track down every last Metroid and kill them all. There is a counter in the bottom right of the screen that tells the player how many Metroids are left. Also, when paused, that counter switches to tell you how many Metroids are left in your current area. "Areas" are divided into sections where the player must kill a certain number of Metroids, after which the planets lava will drain a little, allowing Samus to explore deeper into the planet. This doesn't really make any sense - why does the death of a certain species cause lava to drain? - but because of this, the player is limited to these areas until they clear out the Metroids.
This wouldn't be much of a problem to most people, I'm sure, if the level design wasn't so odd. It's unclear if the designers really were trying to make the underground caverns of SR-388 feel natural to the point that there are very few landmarks and thus it's very easy to get lost, or if they were constrained by the shortcomings of the Game Boy (probably a little of column A and a little of column B). The player will encounter very tight passageways filled with enemies that are hard to hit (depending on their current beam weapon, anyway) and then all of a sudden they'll be in a wide open cavern with very few enemies and tons of empty space they can jump through. These rooms are usually where players get disoriented, and they are actually my biggest complaint about the game. Because they are so large and empty, it's easy to confuse one room for another, and most of the time, they have little to no background - which means you can't tell how far Samus is falling when she jumps off a ledge into the blackness. This disorientation is further exacerbated when you realize that each of these enormous rooms are slightly different, but not in immediately obvious ways. So you might think you're in one large room, and start heading in a certain direction, when you are really in a different room. This is why an in-game map would be great, which is another complaint people have (myself included).
The 3DS version, though, is nice because you have the ability (as with any 3DS game) to go to the main menu by hitting home, hopping on the internet, and pulling up a map of the game (which I did when I got lost right at about the halfway point - didn't need to use it again after that, though). You also have the ability to use savestates, which make the battles against the Omega Metroids a bit more manageable (bastards). It is for this reason that I'd say this is the best version of Metroid II - sure, it's not the Super Game Boy version, but who cares? I played through this game on my original brick Game Boy when I was a kid, and if I could beat it on that impossible to see screen, anyone can beat this game on their beautiful 3DS screen.
My favorite thing about Metroid II, though, is the atmosphere. This is a creepy game. The few actual songs the game has are great, but most of the time there is just this weird set of atonal beeps and bloops. It sounds as alien as one could imagine. Since there are sometimes seconds long periods of silence, where you can only hear Samus' footsteps, the fact that Samus is alone in the middle of nowhere is really driven home, even more so than in the original Metroid, which I also think is good at reinforcing the feeling of loneliness. And when you encounter a Metroid, it is genuinely scary - they usually pop out of an egg or mutate when you first see them, and then they come at you with everything they have while creepy music plays. The game won't let the player control Samus as they mutate, so they are forced to watch this grotesque evolution play out (the player is allowed, however, to switch to missiles during this time). The power of the Metroids is also readily apparent, what with the fact that every other enemy in the game is some small, easily swatted away insect that probably only survives on SR-388 because the Metroids have no interest in eating them. There are a few larger creatures, but they are usually heavily armored and can only be damaged by shooting them from one side, suggesting that these enemies developed some sort of defense against the predatory Metroids.
The game is also really challenging. Not just because it's easy to get lost, either - as you get farther into the game, the Metroids get tougher and tougher. The Omega Metroids take a whopping 40 missiles to kill, and they spend a lot of time flying around the screen erratically! Luckily, they too have patterns, so if the player is observant they can be exploited.
Metroid II is also, as far as narrative is concerned, the most important game in the series. It's ending is the catalyst for Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, and Metroid: Other M - which is near half of the entire series created up to this point, including the Metroid Prime series. If you take that series out of the overall narrative (as the Japanese creators of the series apparently have at this point) Metroid II's events are crucial for the narrative of all the rest of the following Metroid games. Pretty neat for a little black and white Game Boy game, huh?
This game is considered by many to be the black sheep of the Metroid series, and, as much as I like it, that is probably correct. It's an oddball little game, that's for sure. But it is not a bad game, which is what many people paint it as. It certainly has some issues, but the game is worth playing overall.
One of the issues with making games for the 8-bit Game Boy back in the early 90s was that despite its (relative) power, the screen resolution was tiny. This meant that although the system could display pretty detailed sprites, they either had to be incredibly small or way too large. One of the primary complaints people have about Metroid II is that Samus' sprite is way too large on the screen, which means that the player has a limited amount of time to react when enemies appear. While this is true, Metroid II does mitigate this by being predictable - and not in the "oh I know what is going to happen, BORING" way, but in the way where the player can recognize the room and enemy type and predict what things he'll likely encounter. The game will occasionally throw you for a loop, but most of the time you can predict what sorts of things will happen given the room. This fits with the overall theme of the game, as well - you are exploring a wild planet, after all, and you are a foreigner invading an ecosystem that has creatures who have behavior patterns and follow rules (the designers of the game, though, most likely just made the enemies behave the way they do to, again, mitigate the problem of there not being enough screen real-estate for the player to react to them).
Another major complaint about the game is the lack of free form exploration. In Metroid II, Samus is tasked with obliterating the Metroid species on SR-388, and so the whole point of the game is to track down every last Metroid and kill them all. There is a counter in the bottom right of the screen that tells the player how many Metroids are left. Also, when paused, that counter switches to tell you how many Metroids are left in your current area. "Areas" are divided into sections where the player must kill a certain number of Metroids, after which the planets lava will drain a little, allowing Samus to explore deeper into the planet. This doesn't really make any sense - why does the death of a certain species cause lava to drain? - but because of this, the player is limited to these areas until they clear out the Metroids.
This wouldn't be much of a problem to most people, I'm sure, if the level design wasn't so odd. It's unclear if the designers really were trying to make the underground caverns of SR-388 feel natural to the point that there are very few landmarks and thus it's very easy to get lost, or if they were constrained by the shortcomings of the Game Boy (probably a little of column A and a little of column B). The player will encounter very tight passageways filled with enemies that are hard to hit (depending on their current beam weapon, anyway) and then all of a sudden they'll be in a wide open cavern with very few enemies and tons of empty space they can jump through. These rooms are usually where players get disoriented, and they are actually my biggest complaint about the game. Because they are so large and empty, it's easy to confuse one room for another, and most of the time, they have little to no background - which means you can't tell how far Samus is falling when she jumps off a ledge into the blackness. This disorientation is further exacerbated when you realize that each of these enormous rooms are slightly different, but not in immediately obvious ways. So you might think you're in one large room, and start heading in a certain direction, when you are really in a different room. This is why an in-game map would be great, which is another complaint people have (myself included).
The 3DS version, though, is nice because you have the ability (as with any 3DS game) to go to the main menu by hitting home, hopping on the internet, and pulling up a map of the game (which I did when I got lost right at about the halfway point - didn't need to use it again after that, though). You also have the ability to use savestates, which make the battles against the Omega Metroids a bit more manageable (bastards). It is for this reason that I'd say this is the best version of Metroid II - sure, it's not the Super Game Boy version, but who cares? I played through this game on my original brick Game Boy when I was a kid, and if I could beat it on that impossible to see screen, anyone can beat this game on their beautiful 3DS screen.
My favorite thing about Metroid II, though, is the atmosphere. This is a creepy game. The few actual songs the game has are great, but most of the time there is just this weird set of atonal beeps and bloops. It sounds as alien as one could imagine. Since there are sometimes seconds long periods of silence, where you can only hear Samus' footsteps, the fact that Samus is alone in the middle of nowhere is really driven home, even more so than in the original Metroid, which I also think is good at reinforcing the feeling of loneliness. And when you encounter a Metroid, it is genuinely scary - they usually pop out of an egg or mutate when you first see them, and then they come at you with everything they have while creepy music plays. The game won't let the player control Samus as they mutate, so they are forced to watch this grotesque evolution play out (the player is allowed, however, to switch to missiles during this time). The power of the Metroids is also readily apparent, what with the fact that every other enemy in the game is some small, easily swatted away insect that probably only survives on SR-388 because the Metroids have no interest in eating them. There are a few larger creatures, but they are usually heavily armored and can only be damaged by shooting them from one side, suggesting that these enemies developed some sort of defense against the predatory Metroids.
The game is also really challenging. Not just because it's easy to get lost, either - as you get farther into the game, the Metroids get tougher and tougher. The Omega Metroids take a whopping 40 missiles to kill, and they spend a lot of time flying around the screen erratically! Luckily, they too have patterns, so if the player is observant they can be exploited.
Metroid II is also, as far as narrative is concerned, the most important game in the series. It's ending is the catalyst for Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, and Metroid: Other M - which is near half of the entire series created up to this point, including the Metroid Prime series. If you take that series out of the overall narrative (as the Japanese creators of the series apparently have at this point) Metroid II's events are crucial for the narrative of all the rest of the following Metroid games. Pretty neat for a little black and white Game Boy game, huh?
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