Final Fantasy X is in the top tier of the Final Fantasy series, in my opinion. I absolutely adore the battle system, and I even like the story, which is where most people seem to point when talking about the weaknesses of the game.
The story has its problems, sure. What happens to Tidus at the very end could have been foreshadowed better than it was. Also, explicitly saying what is going to happen to you right before it happens sort of hurts the dramatic tension, Tidus! Also Square shouldn't have let the player name Tidus. It would have been better had the characters referred to him by name rather than various pronouns or whatever.
But the overall story, Spira's story, is really good, in my opinion. The thousand year stalemate caused by Yevon is handled quite well, I think.
This playthrough was my third playthrough of the game total. Some things stand out this time, which I don't remember feeling at the time, but seem glaring now. For example, the game is one giant hallway. There is a path, there is an arrow telling you which way to go down the path, and it lasts the whole game. Not a whole lot of deviation, there. The Calm Lands are pretty open, but honestly there is still only one place to go. It would be interesting to play XIII again someday and compare it to this.
I love the graphics, though, especially in HD. The art produced for FFX still holds up, and taking all the bluriness out of it is nice. The characters are designed a little weird (Lulu is jut a pair of tits with a doll, Tidus wears lederhosen, etc.) but still aren't totally jarring just because they CAN be (see: FFXIII). I also don't mind the voice acting, although the laughing scene is still painful. I get what they were going for but the voice actors failed miserably at it.
As for the gameplay, I think this is Square's finest turn based battle system they've ever made. Note that doesn't include active time battle. But, I like how different moves affected your turns, and how you could think about what you wanted to do and how Square put some difficulty behind the battles!
...If you play on the regular sphere grid, that is. If you know the game somewhat well and use the expert grid, you may find yourself gliding through the game with no challenge, as I did this time around. I only died on two battles: Seymour III and Braska's Final Aeon, the last boss in the game. Seymour just required some HP grinding, while BFA requires a whole bunch just to be able to do enough damage before he just smashes you. As always, late game Final Fantasy sucks, because after you climb Mt. Gagazet, go through Zanarkand and beat Yunalesca, you get control of the airship and can enter Sin after you fight him and knock off his wings for some reason. Sin's innards aren't very interesting and make for a poor final dungeon. Also, the crappy minigame you have to play to even GET to the final battle is annoying. The camera rotates around and you can't control it, and it moves SLOWLY. You have to grab 10 items that appear and disappear, while dodging the icicle spears that cause battles when you touch them. Sucks if you get hit with a battle with a fiend that can cast Bad Breath!
The minigames throughout the game are pretty weird, too. You can tell Square was trying to repeat FFVII in that regard - they are many, and they are tough. I managed to beat the Chocobo race this time around, and didn't hate it too much. Dodging lightning bolts proved too annoying for me to keep at, after I dodged over 160 of them, then got hit, meaning I'd have to start over. At least that stuff is optional.
The music is phenomenal from start to finish. I do not understand why people don't like X's tracks but hold up the entirety of VII as excellent when half of VII's were boring one note songs. X's melodies are beautiful and the remixes in the HD version grew on me. The fact that they didn't touch Otherworld is good, though. That song works perfectly as is.
Well, on to X-2, a game I have never given a fair chance. I can play it with headphones now, so if I start to feel embarrased (and given the intro, I will!), I can pop them in and not worry about how awful it can be. Everybody says the battle system is really good, so let's hope so.
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Sunday, February 16, 2014
Sonic Generations
It amazes me how attached I am to the Sonic series, considering there hasn't been a game I've absolutely loved since Sonic Adventure 2 Battle on the Gamecube back in 2002 (and that game only partially holds up as great now, mind). But playing through Sonic Generations was, for the most part, a blast.
The premise of the game is that some time monster is erasing time and now classic Sonic and new Sonic have to team up to stop it. That's all you need to know; like any Sonic game, the story is dumb and irrelevant. What it does is set up a reason for two different types of Sonics, alongside their own type of gameplay, to run through heavily remixed levels from the whole series.
Sega did a fantastic job on many aspects of this game. First of all, the music is 100% great from start to finish - not one complaint on any of the remixes. Hell, my least favorite level of the game (the only level I would argue is actually really BAD, but I'll get to that later) has awesome music. If I could, I would buy the soundtrack to this game, and that's only partially because of the remixes present - the stuff I hadn't heard before is great, too.
The level designs themselves are very well done, for the most part, as well. Anyone who has played the games the levels are from will appreciate the lengths Sega went to to both reference the original levels and put a twist on them. I won't spoil it, but 3D Sonic's Chemical Plant Zone level is worth the price I paid for the game alone ($10, admittedly, but I would recommend the game even at $20). It goes both ways, too - Classic Sonic's City Escape is probably my favorite level for him, mostly because of what they do with the truck from Sonic Adventure 2 throughout the whole level. Absolutely brilliant.
But, this IS a Sonic game, meaning it has faults. The bosses are pretty terrible, save the Silver the Hedgehog and Metal Sonic fights. As much as I like the game he's from, the Shadow fight is boring, lengthy, and stupid. And every one of the Robotnik/Eggman fights are slogs, too. The final boss is easy and boring. Now that I've beaten the game, I never have to play those fights again (at least, I don't think I will - if I go for 100%, I'll probably have to get S ranks on those stupid things too).
But, the most egregious level in the game comes from Sonic Colors (not even the Sonic Heroes level was the worst - who'd have thought?!). Planet Wisp has turned me off from playing either version of Sonic Colors because that level is so godawful it makes me cringe. I've never played Sonic Colors, but it seems to me from the level that Sonic collects little things called Wisps that grant him temporary powers he can use to traverse the level, such as a rocket which launches him very high vertically, or a spike ball thing that allows him to attach himself to walls and ceilings. These are the two wisps in the game, and Sega uses them to create puzzles the player must solve to advance in the level. I'm going to break it down by Sonic, here:
Classic Sonic:
The Wisp classic Sonic gets is the spiky ball one, which allows him to attach to certain surfaces and move gears and such. When you press Y, it uses the Wisp, and then Sonic has a limited time to solve whatever puzzle he's doing. First problem - there is no indication how much time Sonic has while using the Wisp. Hope you solve the puzzle before time runs out! Also, the controls in spike mode are very laggy (I'm not sure if that's by design or from poor programming, or both), and considering all the missiles and stupid crap the game throws at you, missing a jump will cost you. This is the only level in the game where Sonic has to solve puzzles like this, and unlike a Mario or Yoshi's Island or something it is not fun. It slows the pace down to slower than even a water level. Yes, I would rather play through Labyrinth Zone any day than play this monstrosity of a level again.
3D Sonic:
The level starts out good, then the back half of it is this awful slog running around using the rocket Wisp. It's not AS slow as Classic Sonic's version, but if you screw up on the last rocket puzzle and take too long, as near as I can tell, it is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to beat. You have to die and try again. Long story short, Sonic has to grab the final rocket Wisp, get to the center of the area, and rocket up. My first time playing this section, I wasn't sure where to go, so I wandered around trying to figure that out. There is a ceiling coming down that destroys platforms if it gets to low, but it can be pushed back up using the rocket Wisp. Problem is, the platforms don't come back, making the center of the stage impossible to reach! If there was a way to do it, I couldn't find it, so I let the ceiling crush me and tried again. The game gave me no indication save me running around for boring minutes on end trying to figure out if I could proceed. Awful, just awful.
That aside, I enjoyed most of the game quite a bit. I would say it's definitely the first good Sonic since SA2:B, but I think I want to go back and grab Sonic Unleashed - I've heard mixed things (I don't want to be a stretchy Sonic werewolf, for example), but the level in Sonic Generations from that game is fantastic and the little clip they showed of it in the credits looked pretty good, too. Sonic Colors and Sonic 06 are not games I'll be looking into, though. And maybe I should try to beat Sonic Adventure 1 one of these days... Nah, I don't want to play crappy Dreamcast-era fishing minigames.
Anyway, I think I'm going to poke around doing some of the challenges in Sonic Generations before I shelve it. If I ever get a Wii U, I might look into Sonic Lost World, too - it looked like it would be pretty fun, though I don't know much about it.
Lord help me, I'm a Sonic fan.
The premise of the game is that some time monster is erasing time and now classic Sonic and new Sonic have to team up to stop it. That's all you need to know; like any Sonic game, the story is dumb and irrelevant. What it does is set up a reason for two different types of Sonics, alongside their own type of gameplay, to run through heavily remixed levels from the whole series.
Sega did a fantastic job on many aspects of this game. First of all, the music is 100% great from start to finish - not one complaint on any of the remixes. Hell, my least favorite level of the game (the only level I would argue is actually really BAD, but I'll get to that later) has awesome music. If I could, I would buy the soundtrack to this game, and that's only partially because of the remixes present - the stuff I hadn't heard before is great, too.
The level designs themselves are very well done, for the most part, as well. Anyone who has played the games the levels are from will appreciate the lengths Sega went to to both reference the original levels and put a twist on them. I won't spoil it, but 3D Sonic's Chemical Plant Zone level is worth the price I paid for the game alone ($10, admittedly, but I would recommend the game even at $20). It goes both ways, too - Classic Sonic's City Escape is probably my favorite level for him, mostly because of what they do with the truck from Sonic Adventure 2 throughout the whole level. Absolutely brilliant.
But, this IS a Sonic game, meaning it has faults. The bosses are pretty terrible, save the Silver the Hedgehog and Metal Sonic fights. As much as I like the game he's from, the Shadow fight is boring, lengthy, and stupid. And every one of the Robotnik/Eggman fights are slogs, too. The final boss is easy and boring. Now that I've beaten the game, I never have to play those fights again (at least, I don't think I will - if I go for 100%, I'll probably have to get S ranks on those stupid things too).
But, the most egregious level in the game comes from Sonic Colors (not even the Sonic Heroes level was the worst - who'd have thought?!). Planet Wisp has turned me off from playing either version of Sonic Colors because that level is so godawful it makes me cringe. I've never played Sonic Colors, but it seems to me from the level that Sonic collects little things called Wisps that grant him temporary powers he can use to traverse the level, such as a rocket which launches him very high vertically, or a spike ball thing that allows him to attach himself to walls and ceilings. These are the two wisps in the game, and Sega uses them to create puzzles the player must solve to advance in the level. I'm going to break it down by Sonic, here:
Classic Sonic:
The Wisp classic Sonic gets is the spiky ball one, which allows him to attach to certain surfaces and move gears and such. When you press Y, it uses the Wisp, and then Sonic has a limited time to solve whatever puzzle he's doing. First problem - there is no indication how much time Sonic has while using the Wisp. Hope you solve the puzzle before time runs out! Also, the controls in spike mode are very laggy (I'm not sure if that's by design or from poor programming, or both), and considering all the missiles and stupid crap the game throws at you, missing a jump will cost you. This is the only level in the game where Sonic has to solve puzzles like this, and unlike a Mario or Yoshi's Island or something it is not fun. It slows the pace down to slower than even a water level. Yes, I would rather play through Labyrinth Zone any day than play this monstrosity of a level again.
3D Sonic:
The level starts out good, then the back half of it is this awful slog running around using the rocket Wisp. It's not AS slow as Classic Sonic's version, but if you screw up on the last rocket puzzle and take too long, as near as I can tell, it is absolutely IMPOSSIBLE to beat. You have to die and try again. Long story short, Sonic has to grab the final rocket Wisp, get to the center of the area, and rocket up. My first time playing this section, I wasn't sure where to go, so I wandered around trying to figure that out. There is a ceiling coming down that destroys platforms if it gets to low, but it can be pushed back up using the rocket Wisp. Problem is, the platforms don't come back, making the center of the stage impossible to reach! If there was a way to do it, I couldn't find it, so I let the ceiling crush me and tried again. The game gave me no indication save me running around for boring minutes on end trying to figure out if I could proceed. Awful, just awful.
That aside, I enjoyed most of the game quite a bit. I would say it's definitely the first good Sonic since SA2:B, but I think I want to go back and grab Sonic Unleashed - I've heard mixed things (I don't want to be a stretchy Sonic werewolf, for example), but the level in Sonic Generations from that game is fantastic and the little clip they showed of it in the credits looked pretty good, too. Sonic Colors and Sonic 06 are not games I'll be looking into, though. And maybe I should try to beat Sonic Adventure 1 one of these days... Nah, I don't want to play crappy Dreamcast-era fishing minigames.
Anyway, I think I'm going to poke around doing some of the challenges in Sonic Generations before I shelve it. If I ever get a Wii U, I might look into Sonic Lost World, too - it looked like it would be pretty fun, though I don't know much about it.
Lord help me, I'm a Sonic fan.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Devil Survivor 2: First Complete Playthrough
I just wrapped up Daichi's ending of Devil Survivor 2. As the credits roll by, I want to reflect on the game, given how much I enjoyed the first one.
First, the differences. The first game has a much better overall story. I won't spoil either game, but suffice it to say DS2 is basically a traditional mainline Megaten story whereas DS1 is its own thing. Not that DS2s story was bad - it's just not as original as the first one. I also thought the enemy was far less interesting than the enemy in the first game.
The Fate system, though, is where I feel like the game sort of falls apart. I was excited for this mechanic when I first heard about the game because it takes one of my favorite aspects of Persona 3 and 4 - social links - and grafts them onto Devil Survivor's structure. I can see what the developers were going for but because the story doesn't make too much sense unless you already know what is happening, it falls apart.
You see, I used a guide for this game, and not for a single battle - not one! I used a guide when I got to the second day because the game does an extremely poor job of hinting which story events will advance your Fate level with a character, and which ones are largely pointless. The Nicaea website, which shows you a clip of someones death before it happens, can be difficult to decipher too, because you have to be in the right place at the right time or else the person you are trying to save will die (which is likely as intended - the characters don't know when/where these events happen either). In practice though, it's just frustrating and stressful. So, I used a FAQ to tell me which options to pick so I didn't lose anybody and so I could focus on my favorite part of the game, battles and demon fusion.
Both are improved over DS1. Gone is the weird magnetite system from DS1 that most players don't use much, and in its place is a system that will occasionally reward the player with items that will allow them to fuse demons differently. For example, when fusing, I can attach the "Fire Set" item to the new demon, which allows it to pick moves of the fire type that I've unlocked. This is great when I have a demon that is otherwise perfect, but weak to fire - slap the fire set on it, pick Null/Repel/Drain Fire, and fuse! There are other types, too, such as items that boost demon stats, remove moves the demon comes with you don't like, remove stat caps from the fusion ingredients, etc. etc. This is by far my favorite addition to the game.
They also added a few new demon powers as well as made some of them "evolve" and get stronger when you level up your demons enough. One of the evolutions allows the demons team to attack up to seven squares away for sacrificing some MP - this got heavy use from me at the end of the game. It made those types of demons actually useful for once, because I can stay out of range, still attack, but not have to worry about getting murdered since the enemy can't reach me!
They did some balancing, too. There are more useful physical moves in this game, as opposed to the Pierce/Deathbound in the first, although that is still extremely viable. Drain got nerfed a bit, but Holy Dance still hits hard. The game also gives you a fairly stable set of characters so you aren't stuck with a set that sucks.
It really is too bad the story is so boring, because given the gameplay enhancements in DS2, I could see it beating out DS1 as one of my absolute favorite games. DS2 is still really good, and I will probably do some New Game + stuff throughout the year, since I enjoyed that mode so much in the first game. I really could spend a decent amount of time picking out why the story feels so half assed, but there'd be plenty of spoilers and I'm sure it has been done elsewhere better than I could. I'd still recommend Devil Survivor: Overclocked over this one.
Here's looking forward to Devil Survivor 3, though. This series is a very close second to Persona 3 and 4 as my favorite sub-series of SMT for sure.
First, the differences. The first game has a much better overall story. I won't spoil either game, but suffice it to say DS2 is basically a traditional mainline Megaten story whereas DS1 is its own thing. Not that DS2s story was bad - it's just not as original as the first one. I also thought the enemy was far less interesting than the enemy in the first game.
The Fate system, though, is where I feel like the game sort of falls apart. I was excited for this mechanic when I first heard about the game because it takes one of my favorite aspects of Persona 3 and 4 - social links - and grafts them onto Devil Survivor's structure. I can see what the developers were going for but because the story doesn't make too much sense unless you already know what is happening, it falls apart.
You see, I used a guide for this game, and not for a single battle - not one! I used a guide when I got to the second day because the game does an extremely poor job of hinting which story events will advance your Fate level with a character, and which ones are largely pointless. The Nicaea website, which shows you a clip of someones death before it happens, can be difficult to decipher too, because you have to be in the right place at the right time or else the person you are trying to save will die (which is likely as intended - the characters don't know when/where these events happen either). In practice though, it's just frustrating and stressful. So, I used a FAQ to tell me which options to pick so I didn't lose anybody and so I could focus on my favorite part of the game, battles and demon fusion.
Both are improved over DS1. Gone is the weird magnetite system from DS1 that most players don't use much, and in its place is a system that will occasionally reward the player with items that will allow them to fuse demons differently. For example, when fusing, I can attach the "Fire Set" item to the new demon, which allows it to pick moves of the fire type that I've unlocked. This is great when I have a demon that is otherwise perfect, but weak to fire - slap the fire set on it, pick Null/Repel/Drain Fire, and fuse! There are other types, too, such as items that boost demon stats, remove moves the demon comes with you don't like, remove stat caps from the fusion ingredients, etc. etc. This is by far my favorite addition to the game.
They also added a few new demon powers as well as made some of them "evolve" and get stronger when you level up your demons enough. One of the evolutions allows the demons team to attack up to seven squares away for sacrificing some MP - this got heavy use from me at the end of the game. It made those types of demons actually useful for once, because I can stay out of range, still attack, but not have to worry about getting murdered since the enemy can't reach me!
They did some balancing, too. There are more useful physical moves in this game, as opposed to the Pierce/Deathbound in the first, although that is still extremely viable. Drain got nerfed a bit, but Holy Dance still hits hard. The game also gives you a fairly stable set of characters so you aren't stuck with a set that sucks.
It really is too bad the story is so boring, because given the gameplay enhancements in DS2, I could see it beating out DS1 as one of my absolute favorite games. DS2 is still really good, and I will probably do some New Game + stuff throughout the year, since I enjoyed that mode so much in the first game. I really could spend a decent amount of time picking out why the story feels so half assed, but there'd be plenty of spoilers and I'm sure it has been done elsewhere better than I could. I'd still recommend Devil Survivor: Overclocked over this one.
Here's looking forward to Devil Survivor 3, though. This series is a very close second to Persona 3 and 4 as my favorite sub-series of SMT for sure.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Link Between Worlds
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds is fantastic from start to finish.
Really, I could end the whole post there if I wanted. The game is just pure fun. It gets you right into the action right away - no boring tutorials, no awful villagers you need to talk to for hours before you get your sword, no learning how to pilot a boat/train/bird, it's just "Hey, here's your sword, go fight and explore."
My favorite thing about the game is how open it is. At anytime, you can go do whatever you want. I thought the item renting thing would be kind of a letdown at first, since you just have all the items for the most part right away, but I actually wasn't bothered by it at all. It allows the designers to just make the dungeons and overworld as they see fit, and not have, say, the hookshot be the key to get to this part of the world, the hammer be the key to this part, etc. The world switching thing is fantastic and is an excellent mechanic (Link being able to flatten himself onto a wall and then walk along it makes for some fun puzzles). Even the sidequests are fun!
I put a solid sixteen hours plus into the game, which includes beating the game and finding everything (and I mean everything). There are bonus treasure chests in every dungeon, and they all contain a power up for Link, which adds to the exploration aspect. There are 100 little things to find scattered throughout the overworld, and every ten you find allows you to upgrade an item of your choice - again, the game acknowledging that every player may like to use certain items to fight. I used the Hookshot quite a bit throughout the game, but many players swear by the Wind Rod thing. It was pretty useful for the very fun battle gauntlet, but that was really the only place I used it much.
The fighting mechanics are spot on, too. Swordplay is just as fun as in LttP, if not better, and the secondary items are fun to use too. I went through the battle gauntlet three times - three times! - in a row, with pleasure, to unlock everything you can get from it. I talked to all the NPCs (not that many of them have anything revelatory to say, but they often hint at secrets). I thought the story was pretty fun, if kind of basic.
Probably the best part about the game, though, is how it uses Link to the Past's world not only for level design but for putting nice twists on old areas for veterans of the old game. There was one particular item that I did not get until after I beat story mode - despite being able to get it almost right off the bat! This is because Link Between Worlds inverts an old puzzle from Link to the Past, so that I didn't think I could complete it until I found the item I'm referring to. I should have seen it coming!
The music is amazing, as well. Link to the Past really has good music, and this game remixes it to great effect. The Dark World theme in particular really shines as probably my favorite tune in the game, despite the Hyrule Forest music being present and as always, fantastic. Despite some people's complaints about the graphics, I found them fine. At no point did I stop and think to myself "Wow, this game is ugly," so people who say the graphics are terrible are exaggerating. Are they as gorgeous as LttP's spritework? No, but they also aren't bland, boring New Super Mario Bros-esque, either.
I absolutely loved the game, and alongside Animal Crossing which I remain addicted to, will likely go back and play Link to the Past. Link Between Worlds made me realize I have a lot of nostalgia for that old game, despite not beating it until highschool, ten or so years after it came out. Who knows if it'll hold up as well compared to the new game - a curiousity that surprises me, considering how good the old game is. Link Between Worlds is just that good.
Really, I could end the whole post there if I wanted. The game is just pure fun. It gets you right into the action right away - no boring tutorials, no awful villagers you need to talk to for hours before you get your sword, no learning how to pilot a boat/train/bird, it's just "Hey, here's your sword, go fight and explore."
My favorite thing about the game is how open it is. At anytime, you can go do whatever you want. I thought the item renting thing would be kind of a letdown at first, since you just have all the items for the most part right away, but I actually wasn't bothered by it at all. It allows the designers to just make the dungeons and overworld as they see fit, and not have, say, the hookshot be the key to get to this part of the world, the hammer be the key to this part, etc. The world switching thing is fantastic and is an excellent mechanic (Link being able to flatten himself onto a wall and then walk along it makes for some fun puzzles). Even the sidequests are fun!
I put a solid sixteen hours plus into the game, which includes beating the game and finding everything (and I mean everything). There are bonus treasure chests in every dungeon, and they all contain a power up for Link, which adds to the exploration aspect. There are 100 little things to find scattered throughout the overworld, and every ten you find allows you to upgrade an item of your choice - again, the game acknowledging that every player may like to use certain items to fight. I used the Hookshot quite a bit throughout the game, but many players swear by the Wind Rod thing. It was pretty useful for the very fun battle gauntlet, but that was really the only place I used it much.
The fighting mechanics are spot on, too. Swordplay is just as fun as in LttP, if not better, and the secondary items are fun to use too. I went through the battle gauntlet three times - three times! - in a row, with pleasure, to unlock everything you can get from it. I talked to all the NPCs (not that many of them have anything revelatory to say, but they often hint at secrets). I thought the story was pretty fun, if kind of basic.
Probably the best part about the game, though, is how it uses Link to the Past's world not only for level design but for putting nice twists on old areas for veterans of the old game. There was one particular item that I did not get until after I beat story mode - despite being able to get it almost right off the bat! This is because Link Between Worlds inverts an old puzzle from Link to the Past, so that I didn't think I could complete it until I found the item I'm referring to. I should have seen it coming!
The music is amazing, as well. Link to the Past really has good music, and this game remixes it to great effect. The Dark World theme in particular really shines as probably my favorite tune in the game, despite the Hyrule Forest music being present and as always, fantastic. Despite some people's complaints about the graphics, I found them fine. At no point did I stop and think to myself "Wow, this game is ugly," so people who say the graphics are terrible are exaggerating. Are they as gorgeous as LttP's spritework? No, but they also aren't bland, boring New Super Mario Bros-esque, either.
I absolutely loved the game, and alongside Animal Crossing which I remain addicted to, will likely go back and play Link to the Past. Link Between Worlds made me realize I have a lot of nostalgia for that old game, despite not beating it until highschool, ten or so years after it came out. Who knows if it'll hold up as well compared to the new game - a curiousity that surprises me, considering how good the old game is. Link Between Worlds is just that good.
Sunday, January 5, 2014
Animal Crossing: New Leaf
So after putting over 200 hours into Animal Crossing: New Leaf, I have come to the conclusion that it is the finest entry in the series and, here in January of 2014, one of my favorite games of all time.
The Animal Crossing series was good to begin with, back in the original English release on the Gamecube. It was a sideways take on the Sims, which had been released about a year earlier (the first version having come out in Japan only on the Nintendo 64 in 2001). In it, you played the (seemingly) only human character to move into a village of talking animals, and worked to build a bigger house, obtain more clothing and furniture, and make friends with the animals. It is now somewhat simplistic compared to the versions that have come out since - to visit another person's town, you inserted your town's memory card into the second slot on the Gamecube, after which your friend could go visit, all by their lonesome. There was no simultaneous multiplayer until the DS version, Wild World, which contained improvements such as new items and things to do.
City Folk, on Wii, wasn't too much of an improvement over Wild World, and to be honest, I barely touched it and thus don't remember too much of it other than thinking the town proper felt strangely empty because most of the shops had been moved to the downtown area to the north of the rest of the town.
New Leaf, released June 9th, 2013, is the first game to truly feel complete. I wonder where they could take the franchise from here - everything just seems so thought out and well designed. Take, for example, the fact that the downtown area from City Folk remains - but is completely fine because now, as mayor, the player can customize his town and make it seem not empty, but vibrant and - most importantly - his own. Never before have I felt as much attachment to my town then in New Leaf, and this is largely due to the fact that when you walk around my town, it is unmistakably mine. The tiny main street area I erected with sidewalks, street lights, and statues, fountains, and gardens does not exist in anyone else's town. Yet, when I visit other towns, I feel truly away from "home" - their towns are laid out differently and have very different features (I've seen tire benches and other unidentifiable buildings, some of which I want, some of which I think are very strange). Now, visiting someone else's town isn't just to see the layout and contents of their home, but their town, as well.
Having played during two seasons of New Leaf - summer and winter - I feel confident enough to say that Nintendo added a bunch of content to spruce up activities when in earlier games the player would get bored. There are season-exclusive furniture sets as well as some activities that aren't in other seasons. Winter in particular is better than I remember it, because even in addition to the Christmas set, there are two sets of furniture to get from snowmen as well as (as far as I'm aware) several items to win from playing bingo with the snowmen you build (unfortunately, when you start bingo, the player receives a bingo card that cannot be removed from their inventory until a bingo is obtained, which is dumb. The player should be able to leave the bingo card in their house, and go get it when they need it, not be screwed out of inventory slot for untold days until bingo is obtained).
I'm impressed with the mini games Nintendo added on the island as well. They are pretty simple, but all are fairly fun and all fit in the Animal Crossing engine pretty well. One of them tasks the player with entering a bunch of random houses and finding items for a scavenger hunt - something that seems so obvious to include in the series in retrospect. I do wish there were more exclusive items to get on the island, and that most of them weren't locked away on the multiplayer version of it (not too huge a problem, mind you, because you can earn medals alone for it, but sometimes actually connecting to the island takes forever and really kills your enthusiasm for it, especially when you get there and its just the cabana bookcase AGAIN).
Villager interaction is better, too. They've added several tasks the villagers request of the player, almost all of which are pretty simple and fun. One of my favorites is hide and seek, where three villagers hide around town and the player has to find them within the time limit. Long gone are the times when animals would just take items right out of a players inventory, although that was limited to the Gamecube version, if I recall. Now, if a villager wants an item, they ask to buy it or trade for it. Also, the villagers suggest new public works projects for the mayor to undertake, which actually makes the villagers important to the town since without them, the mayor would get nothing done.
Nintendo has also added what would otherwise be called achievements in the form of badges the player gets from a new character that shows up in town whenever they accomplish some hidden task. Most of them are things like "fish a lot," or "play the game a lot," but some of them encourage tasks as a subtle way of nudging the player to do certain things. Had I not seen one of my friends had gotten a badge for earning a ton of medals on the island, I'm not sure how much of that I would have explored. Sadly, I now want to collect all the badges, which will likely be an exercise in frustration because I'm sure plenty of them involve some crazy amounts of play time to get.
Overall, I am extremely impressed with the game. I'm sure they'll think of something, but I am sincere when I say I don't know what they will add to the next one other than maybe refining some of the very few rough spots in this version. Unlike Wild World, where ultimately I decided I liked the original better, I can say with confidence that New Leaf is the best version of Animal Crossing to date by a landslide, NES games or no.
Friday, December 27, 2013
It's been a while...
So now that I have keyboard access again, I thought I'd write a blog about some of what I've been playing since May (7 months?!). A lot of it is a bit rusty upstairs so I'll write what I can.
The first game I got absolutely addicted to since Soul Hackers was Animal Crossing: New Leaf, which I played every day pretty much until August, after which I didn't pick it back up until December 5th. I've gotten re-addicted to it, though. That was kinda the idea when I bought the game digitally. Stupid as it may seem, I knew I wasn't going to remember to go grab the cart when I wasn't playing because I wouldn't remember to, meaning when I get addicted to a new game (like the next game I'll talk about) Animal Crossing probably would be done forever.
But I kept playing. What's nice about this Animal Crossing is it lets you customize the town as well as your house and clothes and all that. What this means is you can not only plant flowers and trees but also erect statues and buildings and illuminated arches and fountains etc. This is great because now, every time you visit someone elses town, there really is a lot of variety. When I go to a buddy's town, I may see some structures I'd never seen before and think "Wow, I would like one of those for myself!" This pretty much happened to me when, after I picked the game up again for the second time, a buddy of mine was randomly online and made me visit his town. He had played quite a bit since I had last played with him and his town was quite customized. I was jealous and wanted to make my town as good as his too. This has (apparently) happened to another buddy of mine after visiting my town, too. This is great because I would really like to complete the museum and paintings are SUPER hard to find and having mulitple friends play means more chances to exchange duplicate paintings.
Anyway, Zebes is chugging along just fine. I've put about 178 hours and 15 minutes into the game as of this post, which is an additional 45 or so hours since I stopped playing back in August. I'll probably easily crest over 200 hours in early January. I've been customizing my town pretty heavily since I redid my house and stuffed it full of custom furniture from Cyrus, another feature I've fallen in love with. The idea that there are several variations on the "modern" line of furniture, for example, is great because now my favorite furniture lines can become even more my own rather than seeing someone else's house and going "Oh, you have the modern set too... Yay."
I just realized I wrote a couple paragraphs about interior design, gardening, and architecture in a video game. I'm going to change subjects now before some jocks bust in the door and start beating the hell out of me.
Sometime in July, Shin Megami Tensei IV came out, and I alternated between it and Animal Crossing but mostly played SMT IV. The game grabbed me right at the beginning, with quite a high level of difficulty early on but with some pretty cool story hooks and the demon fusing I've come to love so much. I haven't played it since late July/early August so I'm a bit foggy on the details, but I remember really enjoying trying to trick out my demons. Like in Persona 4 Golden, you get to choose which abilities pass on to fused demons, meaning you don't have to reroll them every time hoping for a perfect combination like in Nocturne (that game would probably be one of the best games EVER if they made it so you could choose which moves to pass on). This meant that I quickly tried to create demons that couldn't even be touched by certain types of attacks, something that was pretty hard to do before you could choose which abilities to pass on. It resulted in several demons that couldn't be hit by anything besides debuffs and Almighty attacks, which can never be blocked anyway. Since the turn system meant that every time one of the enemies whiffed an attack they lost a turn, this quickly made most of the game a cakewalk, besides the occasional difficulty spike here or there. After you get to a certain point about ten, maybe twelve hours in, the game gets pretty easy, which is disappointing because it's still such an interesting setting and has a pretty cool story. I quite liked unlocking more and more demons, too, and tricking them out as much as I could, which is something I've really only done in SMTIV and a little in Persona 4 Golden.
Next up, after messing around with getting a perfect game in Wario Land 3 which had come out on Virtual Console as well as the two Oracle Zelda games, I played Pokemon Y. This was the first Pokemon game since, well, Diamond to make me think I liked Pokemon again! I doubt there will ever be a situation where I catch them all again, unless they stop doing that crap where you have to live in Japan and go to certain events to get certain Pokemon, but oh well. The single player game itself was a breeze, the Exp Share spread experience between all the Pokemon, and if I were into competitive battling, the functions they added would have helped the awful grind that portion of the Pokemon experience has. Alas, I beat the one player game and moved on, not really looking back too hard because, well, meh to the competitive stuff.
I then started a new game in Fallout: New Vegas in Hardcore mode, and was able to finish it in that mode, getting the achievement (one of the rare times where an achievement actually made me want to play a game different, which only took them, what, 8 years? Grats, Microsoft!). I played as a primarily unarmed fighter, because I was going for the "Do 10,000 Points of Unarmed Damage" achievement as well, which I got. It made the hardcore mode of the game probably quite easier since I didn't have to worry about ammo or worry about the fact it had weight now. Really, managing the sleep/hydration/hunger meters wasn't too difficult, it was the fact that stimpaks and food didn't instantly heal me anymore - I couldn't just slam a bunch of needles into my arm anytime I was getting brutalized, meaning I had to play smarter. This was a good thing, since the game actually had challenge again, since all my previous playthroughs besides the first weren't too difficult since for the most part, I knew what was coming.
Fallout: New Vegas is definitely my favorite 360/PS3 game by a wide margin, that's for sure. All I have left achievement-wise is the stupid Caravan card game stuff, which I probably will never do, and some of the DLC ones, mostly in the later DLC that I kind of rushed through the one time I played it.
And finally, I just began playing Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, which is hitting all my nostalgia nodules for Link to the Past pretty squarely. I just pulled the Master Sword out of the Lost Woods, and have quite enjoyed everything the game has thrown at me so far. I don't want to say too much about it yet, other than after you pull the Master Sword from the pedestal, when you re-enter the Lost Woods, the FANTASTIC MUSIC STAYS, which is one of the few complaints I have of LttP, because it's one of my favorite video game tunes of all time.
Whew, that was a lot. The keyboard performed pretty well throughout this update, so hopefully I'll write many more blogs in 2014 than I did this year. Glad I could pump out one more.
The first game I got absolutely addicted to since Soul Hackers was Animal Crossing: New Leaf, which I played every day pretty much until August, after which I didn't pick it back up until December 5th. I've gotten re-addicted to it, though. That was kinda the idea when I bought the game digitally. Stupid as it may seem, I knew I wasn't going to remember to go grab the cart when I wasn't playing because I wouldn't remember to, meaning when I get addicted to a new game (like the next game I'll talk about) Animal Crossing probably would be done forever.
But I kept playing. What's nice about this Animal Crossing is it lets you customize the town as well as your house and clothes and all that. What this means is you can not only plant flowers and trees but also erect statues and buildings and illuminated arches and fountains etc. This is great because now, every time you visit someone elses town, there really is a lot of variety. When I go to a buddy's town, I may see some structures I'd never seen before and think "Wow, I would like one of those for myself!" This pretty much happened to me when, after I picked the game up again for the second time, a buddy of mine was randomly online and made me visit his town. He had played quite a bit since I had last played with him and his town was quite customized. I was jealous and wanted to make my town as good as his too. This has (apparently) happened to another buddy of mine after visiting my town, too. This is great because I would really like to complete the museum and paintings are SUPER hard to find and having mulitple friends play means more chances to exchange duplicate paintings.
Anyway, Zebes is chugging along just fine. I've put about 178 hours and 15 minutes into the game as of this post, which is an additional 45 or so hours since I stopped playing back in August. I'll probably easily crest over 200 hours in early January. I've been customizing my town pretty heavily since I redid my house and stuffed it full of custom furniture from Cyrus, another feature I've fallen in love with. The idea that there are several variations on the "modern" line of furniture, for example, is great because now my favorite furniture lines can become even more my own rather than seeing someone else's house and going "Oh, you have the modern set too... Yay."
I just realized I wrote a couple paragraphs about interior design, gardening, and architecture in a video game. I'm going to change subjects now before some jocks bust in the door and start beating the hell out of me.
Sometime in July, Shin Megami Tensei IV came out, and I alternated between it and Animal Crossing but mostly played SMT IV. The game grabbed me right at the beginning, with quite a high level of difficulty early on but with some pretty cool story hooks and the demon fusing I've come to love so much. I haven't played it since late July/early August so I'm a bit foggy on the details, but I remember really enjoying trying to trick out my demons. Like in Persona 4 Golden, you get to choose which abilities pass on to fused demons, meaning you don't have to reroll them every time hoping for a perfect combination like in Nocturne (that game would probably be one of the best games EVER if they made it so you could choose which moves to pass on). This meant that I quickly tried to create demons that couldn't even be touched by certain types of attacks, something that was pretty hard to do before you could choose which abilities to pass on. It resulted in several demons that couldn't be hit by anything besides debuffs and Almighty attacks, which can never be blocked anyway. Since the turn system meant that every time one of the enemies whiffed an attack they lost a turn, this quickly made most of the game a cakewalk, besides the occasional difficulty spike here or there. After you get to a certain point about ten, maybe twelve hours in, the game gets pretty easy, which is disappointing because it's still such an interesting setting and has a pretty cool story. I quite liked unlocking more and more demons, too, and tricking them out as much as I could, which is something I've really only done in SMTIV and a little in Persona 4 Golden.
Next up, after messing around with getting a perfect game in Wario Land 3 which had come out on Virtual Console as well as the two Oracle Zelda games, I played Pokemon Y. This was the first Pokemon game since, well, Diamond to make me think I liked Pokemon again! I doubt there will ever be a situation where I catch them all again, unless they stop doing that crap where you have to live in Japan and go to certain events to get certain Pokemon, but oh well. The single player game itself was a breeze, the Exp Share spread experience between all the Pokemon, and if I were into competitive battling, the functions they added would have helped the awful grind that portion of the Pokemon experience has. Alas, I beat the one player game and moved on, not really looking back too hard because, well, meh to the competitive stuff.
I then started a new game in Fallout: New Vegas in Hardcore mode, and was able to finish it in that mode, getting the achievement (one of the rare times where an achievement actually made me want to play a game different, which only took them, what, 8 years? Grats, Microsoft!). I played as a primarily unarmed fighter, because I was going for the "Do 10,000 Points of Unarmed Damage" achievement as well, which I got. It made the hardcore mode of the game probably quite easier since I didn't have to worry about ammo or worry about the fact it had weight now. Really, managing the sleep/hydration/hunger meters wasn't too difficult, it was the fact that stimpaks and food didn't instantly heal me anymore - I couldn't just slam a bunch of needles into my arm anytime I was getting brutalized, meaning I had to play smarter. This was a good thing, since the game actually had challenge again, since all my previous playthroughs besides the first weren't too difficult since for the most part, I knew what was coming.
Fallout: New Vegas is definitely my favorite 360/PS3 game by a wide margin, that's for sure. All I have left achievement-wise is the stupid Caravan card game stuff, which I probably will never do, and some of the DLC ones, mostly in the later DLC that I kind of rushed through the one time I played it.
And finally, I just began playing Zelda: A Link Between Worlds, which is hitting all my nostalgia nodules for Link to the Past pretty squarely. I just pulled the Master Sword out of the Lost Woods, and have quite enjoyed everything the game has thrown at me so far. I don't want to say too much about it yet, other than after you pull the Master Sword from the pedestal, when you re-enter the Lost Woods, the FANTASTIC MUSIC STAYS, which is one of the few complaints I have of LttP, because it's one of my favorite video game tunes of all time.
Whew, that was a lot. The keyboard performed pretty well throughout this update, so hopefully I'll write many more blogs in 2014 than I did this year. Glad I could pump out one more.
Friday, May 17, 2013
Hack You!! SMT: Soul Hackers
I just wrapped up Soul Hackers, and I have to say I really quite enjoyed it. I suppose it helps that I went into it with pretty low expectations - it sure isn't a pretty game - but I think the game has several things going for it.
As with any SMT title, the demon fusion and battle system are the main draws, and while this one is a bit more simplistic with regards to raising demons, the game still retains strategy and depth. The demons themselves don't level up, only your two human characters do, so when it comes time to get stronger demons, you fuse the ones you have away. This isn't too different from Persona 3 and 4, really, because since it takes so long to level demons up manually in those games you really shouldn't do it anyway. I do miss the ability of demons to learn new moves via level ups, though, because trying to keep attacks that I want across multiple fusions was quite a pain in Soul Hackers. Zeed, the weird demon that costs no MAG to summon nor keep in your party unlike every other demon in the game, was also interesting, albeit confusing to keep on par with my human characters. When you fuse demons to him, he absorbs some of their attacks, stats, and even levels. He can be leveled down, though, and he sort of evolves into cooler looking forms the higher you get his level. I could not, though, for the life of me figure out how to keep certain moves on him. I would go through long stretches of the game with him vastly underleveled because I wanted to keep Tarukaja on him (this spell boosts the party's attack and is stackable up to four times, meaning if I can get four of them off I am doing TONS of damage with regular attacks).
The other demons weren't used too often, to be honest, because I was scared of the cost of having them in my party. MAG is a resource that you gather as you beat demons, and you can even buy it. It is important because summoning demons into your party costs a significant amount of MAG, and each step you take while a demon is summoned in your party drains MAG at a slow drip. Have four demons summoned, though, and that drip can become a waterfall. Luckily, MAG becomes less and less of a worry as the game goes on, to the point where I wasn't worried about it at all like halfway through the game. I do like MAG, though, in that it makes sense thematically - demons will help you, but there is a cost for their help.
The other reason I didn't run out of MAG very easily is that when you turn the difficulty down via the handy hacks you have, the cost of summoning old demons from the compendium goes down a lot. Those hacks might be my favorite thing about the game - they weren't in the Saturn version as far as I'm aware, and allow you to do several things at any point in the game by touching the touch screen. As I already mentioned, you can turn the difficulty down or up at any time (causing battles to become easier or harder and shop prices to go up or down), make the dungeon maps completely visible at all times or to only become visible when you explore them space by space, turn off alignment for summoning demons into your party (if you have a Law demon in your party, a Chaos demon would refuse to join you if you don't have this off), and allow you to see that HP, stats, movesets, and strengths and weaknesses of any demons you encounter. I played the game with the difficulty set to normal, the maps always visible, alignment off, and without the ability to see the stats of the demons I fought right away. I feel like this is the perfect balance for the game - I spent virtually no time wandering around dungeons any more than I wanted to because I could see the map, but I was still challenged because the battles weren't set to easy. The boss battles became sticking points, although even they weren't too bad because I would usually lose the first fight to them, reload, and then slaughter them (as is the grand ole SMT way). I also found an item that let me save anywhere pretty early on, which I made heavy use of. The nice part was, when I wanted to grind a little bit, I would knock the difficulty down, turn a podcast on, and go to town for some easy level ups.
I really enjoyed the setting and tone of the game in only a slightly ironic way. The game is so 90s it's ridiculous. The setting is like the idea of the future of the internet as seen in the early 90s. There is a company creating a virtual city where you can go to watch movies and shop and bank and chat with other people like some sort of magical place that doesn't exist ye- oh wait it's the internet. But it isn't cheesy on purpose though, nor is it overwrought. It's kind of cute, actually. The plot is alright, it's not really anything to out there as far as generic JRPG plots go, but it's not bad either.
Honestly, the whole thing kind of reminds me of Final Fantasy IV, in a way. A really breezy game if you let it be, with kind of a goofy plot with party members constantly coming and going, I kept thinking of FFIV as I played. It isn't exactly comparable - the battle systems are actually quite different - but I really feel like this game hit a good balance of goofy JRPG melodrama and neat battles while not being stupid hard or too grindy or anything like that. I had a good solid 30 hours of fun with Soul Hackers, and I may even revisit it someday.
That isn't something I thought I'd say about the game after the first thirty minutes, but that's a first impression for you.
As with any SMT title, the demon fusion and battle system are the main draws, and while this one is a bit more simplistic with regards to raising demons, the game still retains strategy and depth. The demons themselves don't level up, only your two human characters do, so when it comes time to get stronger demons, you fuse the ones you have away. This isn't too different from Persona 3 and 4, really, because since it takes so long to level demons up manually in those games you really shouldn't do it anyway. I do miss the ability of demons to learn new moves via level ups, though, because trying to keep attacks that I want across multiple fusions was quite a pain in Soul Hackers. Zeed, the weird demon that costs no MAG to summon nor keep in your party unlike every other demon in the game, was also interesting, albeit confusing to keep on par with my human characters. When you fuse demons to him, he absorbs some of their attacks, stats, and even levels. He can be leveled down, though, and he sort of evolves into cooler looking forms the higher you get his level. I could not, though, for the life of me figure out how to keep certain moves on him. I would go through long stretches of the game with him vastly underleveled because I wanted to keep Tarukaja on him (this spell boosts the party's attack and is stackable up to four times, meaning if I can get four of them off I am doing TONS of damage with regular attacks).
The other demons weren't used too often, to be honest, because I was scared of the cost of having them in my party. MAG is a resource that you gather as you beat demons, and you can even buy it. It is important because summoning demons into your party costs a significant amount of MAG, and each step you take while a demon is summoned in your party drains MAG at a slow drip. Have four demons summoned, though, and that drip can become a waterfall. Luckily, MAG becomes less and less of a worry as the game goes on, to the point where I wasn't worried about it at all like halfway through the game. I do like MAG, though, in that it makes sense thematically - demons will help you, but there is a cost for their help.
The other reason I didn't run out of MAG very easily is that when you turn the difficulty down via the handy hacks you have, the cost of summoning old demons from the compendium goes down a lot. Those hacks might be my favorite thing about the game - they weren't in the Saturn version as far as I'm aware, and allow you to do several things at any point in the game by touching the touch screen. As I already mentioned, you can turn the difficulty down or up at any time (causing battles to become easier or harder and shop prices to go up or down), make the dungeon maps completely visible at all times or to only become visible when you explore them space by space, turn off alignment for summoning demons into your party (if you have a Law demon in your party, a Chaos demon would refuse to join you if you don't have this off), and allow you to see that HP, stats, movesets, and strengths and weaknesses of any demons you encounter. I played the game with the difficulty set to normal, the maps always visible, alignment off, and without the ability to see the stats of the demons I fought right away. I feel like this is the perfect balance for the game - I spent virtually no time wandering around dungeons any more than I wanted to because I could see the map, but I was still challenged because the battles weren't set to easy. The boss battles became sticking points, although even they weren't too bad because I would usually lose the first fight to them, reload, and then slaughter them (as is the grand ole SMT way). I also found an item that let me save anywhere pretty early on, which I made heavy use of. The nice part was, when I wanted to grind a little bit, I would knock the difficulty down, turn a podcast on, and go to town for some easy level ups.
I really enjoyed the setting and tone of the game in only a slightly ironic way. The game is so 90s it's ridiculous. The setting is like the idea of the future of the internet as seen in the early 90s. There is a company creating a virtual city where you can go to watch movies and shop and bank and chat with other people like some sort of magical place that doesn't exist ye- oh wait it's the internet. But it isn't cheesy on purpose though, nor is it overwrought. It's kind of cute, actually. The plot is alright, it's not really anything to out there as far as generic JRPG plots go, but it's not bad either.
Honestly, the whole thing kind of reminds me of Final Fantasy IV, in a way. A really breezy game if you let it be, with kind of a goofy plot with party members constantly coming and going, I kept thinking of FFIV as I played. It isn't exactly comparable - the battle systems are actually quite different - but I really feel like this game hit a good balance of goofy JRPG melodrama and neat battles while not being stupid hard or too grindy or anything like that. I had a good solid 30 hours of fun with Soul Hackers, and I may even revisit it someday.
That isn't something I thought I'd say about the game after the first thirty minutes, but that's a first impression for you.
Sunday, May 5, 2013
Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon
Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon is a must play for any 3DS owner. The game was charming and fun as hell for pretty much the entirety of its run (save for one cheap boss, but oh well).
It eclipses it's predecessor by leaps and bounds, which becomes obvious pretty early on. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about the mission structure of the game, as I went in expecting to slowly unravel the mysteries of a mansion or two like in the first game. What you end up doing are (not-so-bite-sized as you might think - most missions take about 20 minutes each) missions wherein you have a general goal, and must figure out how to accomplish it.
Dark Moon is way more puzzley than it's predecessor, and is better off for it. You must not only *find* the ghosts, you must figure out how to capture them. It's not just a matter of blinding them with the flashlight than sucking them up with the Poltergust 5000 - you have to figure out how to lure them out of their hiding spots or figure out how to disarm them, etc. The environmental puzzles are fun, too - figuring out how to navigate the sometimes large mansions is a lot of fun. The mission structure also limits a lot of potential backtracking, because as soon as you complete an area, Prof. E. Gadd teleports you back to his lab and then will send you back right where you need to be most of the time.
I find the game is very well-paced, in that it starts with simple puzzles and easy combat and slowly ramps it up as you go along. The bosses got progressively more and more challenging and frankly, aside from one near the end (not the final boss), were excellent little puzzle battles. The team (apparently the same people who made Mario Strikers Charged, a game I was quite fond of back in 2006 or whatever, and also the recent Punch-Out!! for Wii) really took the vacuum suck/blow mechanic and ran with it. They pretty much give you every type of puzzle imaginable for those mechanics, and hide all kind of neat stuff to find. Having just beat the game, there's still plenty for me to go back and do. There is a Boo ghost hidden in every level, and I found not quite half of them while playing through the game. In all five mansions, there are hidden gems that you can find, which do who knows what if you find them all. The game ranks you on how well you beat missions, so at the very least you could always go back and try to beat your previous score. Having just played the single player mode to completion without going back to retry any of those levels or unlock everything, I clocked in at just over 12 hours. I paced myself over the past two weeks to really stretch out how enjoyable it was, and I'm glad I did, as I really didn't want the game to end.
One more thing is how charming Luigi is. I really enjoyed his comments and nervousness throughout the whole game. Charles Martinet really does an excellent job of making Luigi just a lovable guy who is scared yet courageous in his own way, as every time Luigi would quiver in fear he would make me laugh. I don't know exactly how to explain how much I love Luigi in this game, I really recommend playing it to see how well done he is. Next Level Games really knocked it out of the park on pretty much every level here.
It's another one of those games, too, that really uses 3D well - I found I needed it for a few boss fights, and the game felt weird without it turned on, so I played the majority of the game in 3D mode. I guess its this and Mario 3D Land so far for useful 3D games.
It eclipses it's predecessor by leaps and bounds, which becomes obvious pretty early on. I wasn't sure how I'd feel about the mission structure of the game, as I went in expecting to slowly unravel the mysteries of a mansion or two like in the first game. What you end up doing are (not-so-bite-sized as you might think - most missions take about 20 minutes each) missions wherein you have a general goal, and must figure out how to accomplish it.
Dark Moon is way more puzzley than it's predecessor, and is better off for it. You must not only *find* the ghosts, you must figure out how to capture them. It's not just a matter of blinding them with the flashlight than sucking them up with the Poltergust 5000 - you have to figure out how to lure them out of their hiding spots or figure out how to disarm them, etc. The environmental puzzles are fun, too - figuring out how to navigate the sometimes large mansions is a lot of fun. The mission structure also limits a lot of potential backtracking, because as soon as you complete an area, Prof. E. Gadd teleports you back to his lab and then will send you back right where you need to be most of the time.
I find the game is very well-paced, in that it starts with simple puzzles and easy combat and slowly ramps it up as you go along. The bosses got progressively more and more challenging and frankly, aside from one near the end (not the final boss), were excellent little puzzle battles. The team (apparently the same people who made Mario Strikers Charged, a game I was quite fond of back in 2006 or whatever, and also the recent Punch-Out!! for Wii) really took the vacuum suck/blow mechanic and ran with it. They pretty much give you every type of puzzle imaginable for those mechanics, and hide all kind of neat stuff to find. Having just beat the game, there's still plenty for me to go back and do. There is a Boo ghost hidden in every level, and I found not quite half of them while playing through the game. In all five mansions, there are hidden gems that you can find, which do who knows what if you find them all. The game ranks you on how well you beat missions, so at the very least you could always go back and try to beat your previous score. Having just played the single player mode to completion without going back to retry any of those levels or unlock everything, I clocked in at just over 12 hours. I paced myself over the past two weeks to really stretch out how enjoyable it was, and I'm glad I did, as I really didn't want the game to end.
One more thing is how charming Luigi is. I really enjoyed his comments and nervousness throughout the whole game. Charles Martinet really does an excellent job of making Luigi just a lovable guy who is scared yet courageous in his own way, as every time Luigi would quiver in fear he would make me laugh. I don't know exactly how to explain how much I love Luigi in this game, I really recommend playing it to see how well done he is. Next Level Games really knocked it out of the park on pretty much every level here.
It's another one of those games, too, that really uses 3D well - I found I needed it for a few boss fights, and the game felt weird without it turned on, so I played the majority of the game in 3D mode. I guess its this and Mario 3D Land so far for useful 3D games.
Sunday, April 21, 2013
Final Fantasy VIII
Has there ever been a final dungeon in the Final Fantasy series that wasn't an annoying painful slog through content that should have been optional? Because I certainly can't think of one. Final Fantasy VIII certainly doesn't fit into that category. Since the point of these blog posts is sort of to try to take a snapshot of my mindset during and immediately after I play a game, that's what I need to talk about right now.
It seems to happen at the end of every Final Fantasy game - I get to the final dungeon having fun, and then feel like I have to slog through a bunch of crap and cannot WAIT for the game to be over. Happened last year with Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy XIII, happened in X, it's particularly bad in IV, etc. Since it's not story related at all, let me explain why the final dungeon is a piece of shit in VIII:
As soon as you step foot in it, the game takes away your ability to do anything but your normal attack. I don't just mean in battles, either - you cannot use items or magic outside of battle at all either, without leaving the final dungeon. You have to earn the ability to use them again by beating bosses sprinkled throughout the dungeon. Here's the list of abilities you can't use:
Magic (all of it. No Curaga, no Haste, no Firaga)
Item (no Potions, no Phoenix Downs, nothing)
Draw (hope you don't fight the one boss in the dungeon with a new GF without this ability!)
Command Abilities (special abilities your GF give to your characters during battle, such as Treatment or Mad Rush, both of which I made heavy use of that were suddenly cut off)
Revive (THE WORST OF THE LOT. Even IF you have your magic or items again, you have to beat ANOTHER boss before Life or Phoenix Down will work on any of your characters! *kills self*)
GF (Summons.)
Save (That's right! You can't save in the dungeon until you beat a boss and pick this option! Have fun trudging back to the very beginning every time you beat a boss to save!)
Limit Breaks (The least offensive one to me, since I didn't use them much in VIII)
There might be one or two more, but those are the ones I can remember. Absolutely incomprehensible that anyone would design a game like that. There is literally no reason other than blatant padding that someone would do that in a game. Ugh.
Anyway! It may not seem like it, but I really do enjoy Final Fantasy VIII. It has some pretty good bits! The mechanics are quite fun, if a bit out there. Junctioning magic to your stats seems pretty complicated and annoying at first, but once you get the hang of it, tweaking your characters to be efficient fighters is really satisfying. For example, I turned Squall into a physical damage powerhouse, and routinely would cast Haste and Berserk on him to just crank out huge amounts of damage. But it isn't just your Strength stat that you can mess around with! You can also change your attack element, slap a status on your attack such as Sleep that causes your normal attack to inflict that status (and the more of that spell you have junctioned, the more likely it will stick). All of this is done by junctioning Guardian Forces to your characters and using their abilities to junction magic to different stats and abilities.
It sounds daunting, but it actually starts to make sense fairly quickly in game. The menus could be organized a bit better, though. It took a while to get used to figuring out which part of the menu let me junction magic to status attacks as opposed to stats, and the fact that you can't see what abilities a GF has in the Junction menu is stupid - you have to back out of the Junction menu and go to the GF menu AND press L1 or whatever to see which abilities that GF has. Ugh.
As clunky as Junctioning could be, it is my favorite part of the game. Really deep diving into the system and making my characters as strong as they could be was very satisfying. Then using some of the abilities to boost stats was fun, too (Str Up at level up was a fun one, since that made Squall or whoever gain a bonus strength point every time he leveled up). I enjoyed making my defense so good that Thundaga and Firaga did all of 200 damage to my 7000 HP characters. Nice!
As for the story... Well, it is full of holes. I ended up liking a big chunk of it though - he's kind of a pain to play as at first, but Laguna ended up being done really well overall. A lot of his story isn't really spelled out for you - you have to figure it out with the bits you have. But when you start to piece together what he was up to, it's actually pretty impressive. He's probably my favorite character in the game.
Not that the other ones are bad, though. Irvine didn't get much time to develop, nor did Quistis or Selphie or Zell, but none of them are offensive. Squall is a douchebag until disc 3, and Rinoa is fine I guess. Seifer's entire story arc doesn't make a lick of sense though. The payoff of the ending was fine, I suppose. Ultimately, there are parts of the story that are head-slappingly weird (the big one coming near the end of disc 2), but I still found even those parts enjoyable and charming. And even though there are parts of it that don't make any sense, I still enjoyed the story of VIII more than VII, as it's easier to follow.
I'm having difficulty placing VIII in the series as far as my favorites go, though. VI still has a deathgrip on the top slot, and it's probably still followed by X, but I have no idea whether I like VII or VIII better. I'm leaning towards VIII but I don't know. VII actually had a little challenge, whereas VIII was such a cakewalk I wonder if I'll ever have the urge to play it again.
Anyway, it's really weird that I've now beaten all the Playstation Final Fantasies (well, the PS1 ones, anyway. Still haven't even tried XII). As some more time passes, maybe I'll be able to rank them or something. Not sure which game I'll play next... I might jump into Luigi's Mansion, who knows.
It seems to happen at the end of every Final Fantasy game - I get to the final dungeon having fun, and then feel like I have to slog through a bunch of crap and cannot WAIT for the game to be over. Happened last year with Final Fantasy VII and Final Fantasy XIII, happened in X, it's particularly bad in IV, etc. Since it's not story related at all, let me explain why the final dungeon is a piece of shit in VIII:
As soon as you step foot in it, the game takes away your ability to do anything but your normal attack. I don't just mean in battles, either - you cannot use items or magic outside of battle at all either, without leaving the final dungeon. You have to earn the ability to use them again by beating bosses sprinkled throughout the dungeon. Here's the list of abilities you can't use:
Magic (all of it. No Curaga, no Haste, no Firaga)
Item (no Potions, no Phoenix Downs, nothing)
Draw (hope you don't fight the one boss in the dungeon with a new GF without this ability!)
Command Abilities (special abilities your GF give to your characters during battle, such as Treatment or Mad Rush, both of which I made heavy use of that were suddenly cut off)
Revive (THE WORST OF THE LOT. Even IF you have your magic or items again, you have to beat ANOTHER boss before Life or Phoenix Down will work on any of your characters! *kills self*)
GF (Summons.)
Save (That's right! You can't save in the dungeon until you beat a boss and pick this option! Have fun trudging back to the very beginning every time you beat a boss to save!)
Limit Breaks (The least offensive one to me, since I didn't use them much in VIII)
There might be one or two more, but those are the ones I can remember. Absolutely incomprehensible that anyone would design a game like that. There is literally no reason other than blatant padding that someone would do that in a game. Ugh.
Anyway! It may not seem like it, but I really do enjoy Final Fantasy VIII. It has some pretty good bits! The mechanics are quite fun, if a bit out there. Junctioning magic to your stats seems pretty complicated and annoying at first, but once you get the hang of it, tweaking your characters to be efficient fighters is really satisfying. For example, I turned Squall into a physical damage powerhouse, and routinely would cast Haste and Berserk on him to just crank out huge amounts of damage. But it isn't just your Strength stat that you can mess around with! You can also change your attack element, slap a status on your attack such as Sleep that causes your normal attack to inflict that status (and the more of that spell you have junctioned, the more likely it will stick). All of this is done by junctioning Guardian Forces to your characters and using their abilities to junction magic to different stats and abilities.
It sounds daunting, but it actually starts to make sense fairly quickly in game. The menus could be organized a bit better, though. It took a while to get used to figuring out which part of the menu let me junction magic to status attacks as opposed to stats, and the fact that you can't see what abilities a GF has in the Junction menu is stupid - you have to back out of the Junction menu and go to the GF menu AND press L1 or whatever to see which abilities that GF has. Ugh.
As clunky as Junctioning could be, it is my favorite part of the game. Really deep diving into the system and making my characters as strong as they could be was very satisfying. Then using some of the abilities to boost stats was fun, too (Str Up at level up was a fun one, since that made Squall or whoever gain a bonus strength point every time he leveled up). I enjoyed making my defense so good that Thundaga and Firaga did all of 200 damage to my 7000 HP characters. Nice!
As for the story... Well, it is full of holes. I ended up liking a big chunk of it though - he's kind of a pain to play as at first, but Laguna ended up being done really well overall. A lot of his story isn't really spelled out for you - you have to figure it out with the bits you have. But when you start to piece together what he was up to, it's actually pretty impressive. He's probably my favorite character in the game.
Not that the other ones are bad, though. Irvine didn't get much time to develop, nor did Quistis or Selphie or Zell, but none of them are offensive. Squall is a douchebag until disc 3, and Rinoa is fine I guess. Seifer's entire story arc doesn't make a lick of sense though. The payoff of the ending was fine, I suppose. Ultimately, there are parts of the story that are head-slappingly weird (the big one coming near the end of disc 2), but I still found even those parts enjoyable and charming. And even though there are parts of it that don't make any sense, I still enjoyed the story of VIII more than VII, as it's easier to follow.
I'm having difficulty placing VIII in the series as far as my favorites go, though. VI still has a deathgrip on the top slot, and it's probably still followed by X, but I have no idea whether I like VII or VIII better. I'm leaning towards VIII but I don't know. VII actually had a little challenge, whereas VIII was such a cakewalk I wonder if I'll ever have the urge to play it again.
Anyway, it's really weird that I've now beaten all the Playstation Final Fantasies (well, the PS1 ones, anyway. Still haven't even tried XII). As some more time passes, maybe I'll be able to rank them or something. Not sure which game I'll play next... I might jump into Luigi's Mansion, who knows.
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga 2
"Why do you like this game?"
It's such a simple question, one that I struggled to answer. It was asked in earnest, not in any way mocking me, by my roommate, who also likes games quite a bit. He wasn't saying the game was shitty - he probably thinks so, though - but he just wanted to know why I was playing it. "Just to play all the SMT games?"
I suppose that's part of it. It's hard for me to define aloud, though, so I'm going to attempt to do so here, even if it comes out stupid.
There's just something about weird stuff, to me. I don't like the anime crap that pervades so many Japanese RPGs these days - full of trope lines like "That's the power of friendship!" and other groan-worthy moments such as that. The truly weird stuff, though - the strange worlds they seem to create for those games is a big one for me. How many games have you played made by somebody outside of Japan wherein the last dungeon takes place on and IN the sun, that has you delving deeper within by jumping into lotus flowers all the while fighting progressively stronger demons from actual world religions?
Not many, I'd say.
I'm sure there are subtleties to the story of the two Digital Devil Saga games that I'd appreciate if I knew more about these obscure religions (or even the not obscure ones, like Hinduism). There were parts I thought were neat as it was! But not having that context stripped out quite a bit of meaning, I'm sure.
So why did I end up enjoying most of my playthrough?
Although the two games can be boiled down to pretty big grinds (you don't HAVE to play it that way, but it's probably the easiest way to get through it), I did enjoy customizing my characters quite a bit. I'd say that's something that Japanese RPGs still do very well for the most part - Etrian Odyssey, Persona, and yes, Digital Devil Saga all let me tweak my characters down to a very minute level. DDS even lets me switch moves in and out of my characters' move pools at will outside of battle which is always fun (and makes the bosses interesting, since it's assumed that the player will have varied skills by the time you reach them). But I talked about that in my last post about this series.
I don't know, though. It's hard for me to pin down why I feel the need to play through these games. It certainly isn't masochism, I wouldn't play a game if I hated it or even worse, if it was absolutely boring (like I think the DemiKids games are). Maybe I want to be able to notice callbacks in future SMT games or something to that effect (if there even are any. Who knows). I don't really consider it a "badge of honor" or anything like that, because who would be "impressed" that I played through these games? Who would even care?
I guess it just boils down to the fact that I like experiencing weird things. I like being presented stuff without much context and try to absorb it and figure it out. I like dreamscapes. I enjoy grinding levels and customizing characters. I guess that's it?
As for Digital Devil Saga 2, I'm glad I played through it and finished it. It was a very strange ride, and figuring out how to set my party up for the bosses was pretty fun (especially once I finally beat the last boss - I went from getting beat up pretty badly to winning pretty easily with some tweaks and no grinding - satisfying!). I doubt I'll ever play through them again, but you never know.
My next project, after maybe Soul Hackers on 3DS in a few weeks, will likely be the Devil Summoner games. I played quite a bit of the first one, but I feel like I should restart and see how far I get, considering I know this series a lot better now.
It's such a simple question, one that I struggled to answer. It was asked in earnest, not in any way mocking me, by my roommate, who also likes games quite a bit. He wasn't saying the game was shitty - he probably thinks so, though - but he just wanted to know why I was playing it. "Just to play all the SMT games?"
I suppose that's part of it. It's hard for me to define aloud, though, so I'm going to attempt to do so here, even if it comes out stupid.
There's just something about weird stuff, to me. I don't like the anime crap that pervades so many Japanese RPGs these days - full of trope lines like "That's the power of friendship!" and other groan-worthy moments such as that. The truly weird stuff, though - the strange worlds they seem to create for those games is a big one for me. How many games have you played made by somebody outside of Japan wherein the last dungeon takes place on and IN the sun, that has you delving deeper within by jumping into lotus flowers all the while fighting progressively stronger demons from actual world religions?
Not many, I'd say.
I'm sure there are subtleties to the story of the two Digital Devil Saga games that I'd appreciate if I knew more about these obscure religions (or even the not obscure ones, like Hinduism). There were parts I thought were neat as it was! But not having that context stripped out quite a bit of meaning, I'm sure.
So why did I end up enjoying most of my playthrough?
Although the two games can be boiled down to pretty big grinds (you don't HAVE to play it that way, but it's probably the easiest way to get through it), I did enjoy customizing my characters quite a bit. I'd say that's something that Japanese RPGs still do very well for the most part - Etrian Odyssey, Persona, and yes, Digital Devil Saga all let me tweak my characters down to a very minute level. DDS even lets me switch moves in and out of my characters' move pools at will outside of battle which is always fun (and makes the bosses interesting, since it's assumed that the player will have varied skills by the time you reach them). But I talked about that in my last post about this series.
I don't know, though. It's hard for me to pin down why I feel the need to play through these games. It certainly isn't masochism, I wouldn't play a game if I hated it or even worse, if it was absolutely boring (like I think the DemiKids games are). Maybe I want to be able to notice callbacks in future SMT games or something to that effect (if there even are any. Who knows). I don't really consider it a "badge of honor" or anything like that, because who would be "impressed" that I played through these games? Who would even care?
I guess it just boils down to the fact that I like experiencing weird things. I like being presented stuff without much context and try to absorb it and figure it out. I like dreamscapes. I enjoy grinding levels and customizing characters. I guess that's it?
As for Digital Devil Saga 2, I'm glad I played through it and finished it. It was a very strange ride, and figuring out how to set my party up for the bosses was pretty fun (especially once I finally beat the last boss - I went from getting beat up pretty badly to winning pretty easily with some tweaks and no grinding - satisfying!). I doubt I'll ever play through them again, but you never know.
My next project, after maybe Soul Hackers on 3DS in a few weeks, will likely be the Devil Summoner games. I played quite a bit of the first one, but I feel like I should restart and see how far I get, considering I know this series a lot better now.
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