Category: Reviews

Tales of Cutscenes

RKasa

November 5, 2009

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When I first played Tales of Symphonia last year, what most struck me about it was how large and complex the story was. In addition to the main plot, which was meaty enough on its own, there were also the smaller, personal stories of each of the playable characters. These were told over the course of the game, and also through optional events called “skits”. By the time the final battle came about, I knew Lloyd and his crew intimately—their personality quirks, their hopes and fears, their likes and dislikes. This particular brand of character building seems to be a hallmark of the Tales series, as I encountered it again in Tales of Legendia.

The main storyline of Legendia is much shorter than Symphonia’s, but this shortening comes at a price. Although a fair amount of personality and depth had been given to the characters, there were still some unanswered questions by the end. These questions—many of which tied into the greater question of, “Why did (character) come to the Legacy?”—are all handled in the Character Quests, an optional companion piece that becomes available once the main game is beaten, and takes just as long (or longer) to finish.

Regarding the Character Quests, the manual says that, “only after the bonds between these characters are understood that the true ending of the story is uncovered,” which is a little misleading. The overarching story that links the Character Quests is largely detached from the main plot, and thus, the whole thing feels more like a sequel, albeit one with no voice acting (battles and skits notwithstanding), and where all experience, equipment, items, and gald (the currency used in the Tales games) are carried over. Though the dialogue rambles on unnecessarily at times and the plot seems oddly Legacy-centric toward the end, the interconnected stories of the Character Quests are all enjoyable and well told.

After a brief introduction, the Character Quests get underway, one at a time, until the biggest mysteries are explained. In between the lengthy, lengthy cutscenes, the party is required to revisit just about every dungeon in the game, and sometimes backtrack through them as well. As you can imagine, this is a bit tedious, though new enemies, refilled treasure chests, trickier puzzle booths, and a new item called the Sorcerer’s Scanner vary things up a little. Regarding that last item on the list: the Sorcerer’s Scanner is a special tool that allows the player to search their immediate area for hidden items or monsters. Though many dungeons contain obvious areas where hidden stuff would be, in others, it’s a case of constant trial and error. Add in the fact that your character comes to a stop whenever the Scanner is used, and dungeon crawling turns into a potentially tedious exercise of its own. Of course, no one has to use the Scanner, but some of the better items can be found this way.

Also new in the Character Quests is a workshop where certain rare items can be forged into powerful weapons, armor, and accessories for the party. Some items in particular can be very hard to find unless you either have a guide or are willing to try out everything, but such is life in your typical JRPG. The last major new feature is a Battle Arena, which is what it says, and which I only participated in a few times.

Overall, I had a good time with Tales of Legendia, both the main story and the Character Quests. It’s a real credit to the game that the story is so good, and the characters so interesting, that I’ll keep on playing even when the otherwise flashy action gets stale and the otherwise pretty dungeons get tedious. If you like story-centric RPGs with a script, visuals, and sound that are all quality, this is one game where you can’t go wrong.

Yep, It’s a Tales Game

RKasa

September 25, 2009

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Tales of Symphonia wasn’t entirely my thing: the story’s inspirations were obvious and it got convoluted at times, the cel-shaded graphics were okay but blurry (at least on the Wii, which is how I played it), and the combat was usually button-mashy. However, I liked the characters and general aesthetic, and somehow, it got its hooks into me. Thusly, when I fleshed out my PS2 RPG collection last year, I ended up adding Tales of Legendia and Tales of the Abyss to it (the 360’s Tales of Vesperia joined my backlog this year).

I’ve heard Abyss is better than Legendia, but wanted to play the older game first, since I found the premise more intriguing: a young man and his sister find themselves shipwrecked on a massive ancient ship called the Legacy. Aboard this vessel are dangers awaiting the sister, and the man sets out to save her. At first glance, and despite the presence of the clichéd large relic from an ancient civilization, it seems a novel enough premise, and the story does carry out in a unique way, especially in regards to how a certain story event and its aftermath is paced. Also, Legendia, like Symphonia, bluntly tackles the issue of race in how (and why) the game’s factions are divided as they are. The entire story takes place aboard the Legacy—making it a nice change of pace from the many, many JRPGs that require entire worlds to be traversed—and the cast of characters is charming, though a touch clichéd and/or weird at times. This is all presented in a colorful, softly-rendered world populated by chibi characters, who are occasionally shown in still, non-chibi 2D anime versions for cutscenes. As with Symphonia, the voice acting is of a decent quality (and there’s a lot of repetition when it comes to the battle audio), the music is nothing overly special but all right just the same, and the FMVs are lush anime affairs courtesy of famed studio Production I.G.

As for exploration and combat… well, it’s what I expect from a Tales game, though a step back from Symphonia. The dungeons are fairly linear, with what few branching paths there are largely reserved for items, including special items blocked off by large blobular zones that often contain more powerful monsters than the usual random encounters. Battle is still button mashy, with assignable special attacks and your supporting party members on autopilot, for the most part. AI party members’ attacks can be turned on and off at the player’s leisure, and whole tactical strategies can be applied as well. However, aside from certain boss fights, the battles are quite easy, and certain special enhancements and attacks, such as the feature that lets the player combine a character’s individual moves into one uber-move, can be outright ignored.

The meat of Tales of Legendia is fairly short: I beat it today with a completion time in the range of 33 hours. However, a lengthy postgame mode, called the Character Quests, is available once the main storyline has been beaten. I’ve barely started it, and in fact am debating whether or not I want to continue with it as Legendia’s combat’s a bit bland, but there’s still things I don’t know about many of the characters—and I’d like to know. Such is the hold that the characters in this game seem to have on me.

Special Stage: In addition to game impressions and such from this year’s Tokyo Game Show, Game|Life’s Chris Kohler has been writing an awful lot about Japanese curry lately. I’m not all that big on curry, but I do love me some katsu, and as such, these posts have me craving chicken katsu or chicken katsudon. Every. Single. Time.

I haven’t even dipped into the TGS episodes of Listen UP yet, but given the “curry bets” of previous shows, all of which were to be settled around this time, I don’t think my cravings will end anytime soon…

(ETA, 9/26: Craving fulfilled thanks to some oyakodon from a favorite restaurant; save for the mushrooms and pickled radish, neither of which I’m a fan of [thankfully the latter was all in one small section of the bowl’s edge, getting its vinegar all over some neighboring carrot sticks], it was essentially the same as the chicken katsudon I’m used to from another place, and tasty. I have some leftovers to eat for lunch today, too!)

The Digital Devil Saga Duology

RKasa

August 1, 2009

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Once upon a time, there was a dystopia called the Junkyard. The people of this land were divided into six factions, each one designated by a specific color, and their never-ending fight for the right to enter Nirvana was overseen by a seventh entity, the Karma Temple. One day, life in the Junkyard changes when a strange girl emerges from a cocoon, and all of the residents receive the powers of demons. The battle is ratcheted up a notch as the presence of these demons, or Atma, require the residents to start eating each other to remain sane.

Right from the outset, Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga is not your typical JRPG, and the plot only gets more complicated from there. By the time the game ends, you are left with a cliffhanger and many unanswered questions, all of which are addressed (in a sometimes sloppy manner) in Digital Devil Saga 2. Throughout their journey, Serph and the other characters grow and change, find old emotions and uncover pasts and events which they had forgotten or never even known. They’re the types of characters one can get attached to, and even the most unlikable of all, the volatile Heat, ends up being more than he seems.

While the story may be a refreshing departure from the anime fantasies of most JRPGs, the battle and character growth systems are quite familiar. Here, the biggest outside influence on the Digital Devil Saga duology seems to be Final Fantasy X. Not only is one able to swap characters in and out during the midst of battle, but the ability systems in both games take forms that resemble the Sphere Grid. By spending in-game currency at save points, characters can unlock different ability sets, called Mantras, for their Atma to learn. In Digital Devil Saga, Mantras are arranged in a clear, mostly linear map, but in the sequel, this is replaced by a hexagonal grid that not only allows more freedom, but is also tougher to navigate. Once a Mantra has been paid for and set, Atma Points, which are used to master said abilities, can be earned by defeating and/or devouring enemies during battle. It’s a straightforward, elegant system that, while not being quite as complex as the Sphere Grid, does its inspiration proud.

Going back to battles: one of the game’s most distinctive features is the “Press Turn” system, which makes what would otherwise be a staid turn-based affair into something more dynamic. At the beginning of each round in battle, every character and enemy present receives a turn. These turns can be added to or subtracted from by pulling off certain moves. For instance, attacking a monster with a spell type it’s weak against, or with a critical hit, will add a turn to your party’s current round. However, if you miss in your attack, or cast a spell that an enemy can block or absorb, a turn or two can be lost. Skipping a character will cost half a turn, combo attacks cost two or three, and there are other, specific ways to manipulate the number of turns per round, especially in the second game. It’s the type of system that requires careful strategizing and can also get your party into trouble very quickly, especially in the later dungeons. There have been times when I enter a random battle and the enemy goes first—only to be completely wiped out by them without doing anything, because they attacked with spells my party were weak against, or happened to pull off a completely successful instant-death move on everyone. Fortunately, these occurrences were infrequent enough to be merely annoying rather than frustrating, but at the same time, they’re a notable flaw in this otherwise ingenious system.

The game’s general aesthetic is another notable feature. The character designs have a unique style to them, and the world eschews the Judeo-Christian and Buddhist themes of many other JRPGs for Hinduism—from the concept of Nirvana, to enemies visually based on the likes of Vishnu and Ganesha, to the simple mandala designs found throughout both games. Voice acting ranges from tolerable to excellent, leaning more towards the latter overall; unfortunately, the sound mix for the battles nearly drown out any present voice snippets entirely. The guitar-driven soundtracks are decent, and DDS2’s is especially good, with heavy electronica leanings and an engaging, beat-infused main battle theme that trumps the first game’s more sluggish one.

When I first began fleshing out my PS2 RPG collection, it took me quite awhile to find these two games at a decent price (I eventually snagged them off of eBay in a single lot for $100). Despite the occasional annoyances with instant-death battles and having to grind late in both games in order to take down some particularly tricky bosses, I greatly enjoyed them. They were each a good length—roughly 35-40 hours apiece—and although some bits of the story ended up being vague and nonsensical in DDS2, I liked the world and the characters. There’s more about the DDS duology to enjoy than I’ve discussed here, but in general, if you’d like to play a dark, mature RPG with large, complex dungeons and challenging battles, these two games are worth looking into.

Dungeon Hero C

RKasa

July 5, 2009

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Yesterday I beat Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon, despite being tired and feeling generally sluggish. Managed to get through the last wing of the dungeon and the final stage all right, partially because I had finished a particularly tough optional dungeon and gotten a really sweet reward from it that served me well for the endgame. There is a decent amount of postgame content, but some of it requires a ton of grinding (and therefore, way, way more dungeon crawling) and even though I enjoyed the game a great deal, I need a break from it for awhile.

Yeah, Chocobo’s Dungeon is very good indeed. Though I’ve played dungeon crawlers before (most notably the excellent Dark Cloud 2), I’d never touched an actual roguelike/mystery dungeon game before this one. Although Chocobo’s Dungeon eases some of the pain of dying in ways which are more forgiving than your average “true” roguelike—dying in a dungeon still means you’re stripped of your loose items and cash, but here, you at least get to hold onto your equipped gear and accumulated experience—it is still not without challenge, and has given me a taste for the genre. In this sense, much like how the Mario RPGs lend a lighthearted, but not stupidly easy, approach to traditional JRPGs, Chocobo’s Dungeon seems to do the same for roguelikes.

The story is one which I covered somewhat in my previous post, but I’ll rehash it here again, while giving some additional details. Chocobo is the partner of Cid, a treasure hunter. While after a treasure called Timeless Power, they get whisked away to the realm of Memoria, and the town of Lostime, where the Bell of Oblivion regularly makes the townsfolk forget the past with each ring. Not long after Cid and Chocobo’s arrival, an egg drops down from the sky, and a green-haired baby hatches from it. Strange events follow, and Chocobo gains the ability to enter randomly-generated “mysterious dungeons” generated from the Lostime inhabitants’ memories. Some dungeons are required to progress through the story, but many more are optional, have strict rulesets, and forbid the use of outside items, even equipped ones. These “special rule” dungeons are often insanely tough and always require careful planning, but the rewards gained are typically very useful and range from the opening of new type of stores to the acquisition of new jobs. More about the latter as we go on…

Navigating and fighting in these dungeons is a breezily-paced, yet entirely turn-based, affair; every move forward on the map, every use of an item, every attack—all of it takes up turns. As such, moves have to be planned carefully if one doesn’t want to be creamed by the monsters who inhabit these dungeons. In addition, there are both harmful and beneficial traps and treasures scattered throughout the floors, many of which are hidden or unidentifiable without using certain moves or items. Being randomly-generated, the dungeons largely consist of simple tilesets, but at the same time, this being a spinoff of the Final Fantasy franchise, they’re made to look as detailed and appealing as possible.

Wrapped up in all this is a new take on the Job System, the classic Final Fantasy trope that has appeared in many of the series’ games. For those not familiar with jobs, they are essentially entire ability sets, separated out according to the job title; thus, you have black mages which specialize in harmful magic, and knights which can pull off various physical attack moves. Chocobo’s Dungeon doesn’t have the wealth of jobs that are in, say, Final Fantasy Tactics, but there are still a good variety of them, and they are all different enough from each other to recommend certain ones for certain dungeons.

So, the dungeon crawling and battle system is meaty and addictive. How about the rest? Getting around in the world is fairly easy overall, though the entire game is plagued by those much-loathed loading screens. There’s a decent crafting system to improve upon weapons bought and/or found in dungeons, as well as fishing and gardening sidequests which don’t have to be messed around with much and have some good payoffs. Overall, the graphics are all right, with some particularly nice aesthetic touches lent to the monsters, which are mostly unique takes on classic Final Fantasy baddies such as Bombs, Lamias, and Tonberries. Animation, particularly in cutscenes, is passable; oddly enough, the mouth positions in particular seem to be part of the overall movement cycles, and I highly doubt matching lip movements was a concern, even in Japanese. For most of the game, I used the Classic Controller; the quick item menu option in the dungeons would only work half the time, if that, but otherwise the controls were all right. However, for the minigames in the Mog House, the Wii Remote was required. I didn’t play these much, and the best one was Pop-Up Duel, which looks to have been directly ported from the earlier DS title Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo Tales, where it wasn’t so much a diversion than a big part of the overall game. Speaking of Chocobo Tales, the script in Chocobo’s Dungeon is much better than the former game’s, with none of the forced humor, and a greater focus on drama. Finally, the soundtrack is nothing short of wonderful, consisting largely of inoffensive arrange tracks of classic Final Fantasy tunes, ranging from the familiar (the classic “Prelude”) to the unexpected (FFXI’s “Tarutaru Male”, among others).

In general, Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon is a solid second-tier Final Fantasy spinoff, and a game well worth checking out for RPG-starved Wii owners, and those wanting a good dungeon crawler in particular.

Ancient Mana Fortress Vanished

RKasa

June 6, 2009

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I beat Secret of Mana last night after a long, protracted round of final battles—my second attempt at them, actually. The whole endgame, very much including the boss before the final ones, was riddled with bugs that would make text boxes render incorrectly and, most annoyingly of all, the Mana Sword to randomly disappear from the main character’s hands during a certain battle. These sequences alone made it the buggiest Super Nintendo game I have ever played, and one of the buggiest games I’ve played and beaten, period.

Bugs aside, Secret of Mana is full of quirks—some charming, others annoying. One of the first things I noticed, after watching the simple yet lovely opening and starting a new game, was the animation. The main hero walks with an exaggerated bounce that even carries over to his hair, and the shopkeeper in the first town—like many that I would see later on—danced in a spastic rhythm. These wouldn’t be the last odd animations I would see, as the walk cycles for the playable girl and sprite characters were even more silly than the hero’s. However, the battle animations, as well as those for the monsters, are very straightforward, and later on, the dragon Flammie would fly and undulate in mid-air with an almost hypnotic fluidity.

I eventually got used to the heroes’ bouncy, flailing gaits, but one thing I was unable to really get the hang of up until the very end was the menu system. Pressing Y on a SNES (or Wii Classic) controller brings up the “ring commands”, a set of menus. The sprite and girl use four ring menus (items, magic, mana weapons, and everything else), while the hero uses everything save for magic; each menu can be searched through by pressing up or down on the directional pad, with left and right reserved for going through the menus themselves. Oh, and each character has their own individual set of commands; those for characters not directly controlled by a player are accessed via the X button. I understand why it was set up this way—Secret of Mana can be played cooperatively with one or two others—but I was never able to navigate through menus with the efficiency and ease that I have been with other action RPGs.

Battle has its own quirks as well. All enemies are visible and encounterable directly on the field, which I liked, and in general battle plays out like a more action-driven version of Chrono Trigger, but with individual power attacks subbing for combo moves. Although the sword is clearly intended to be the hero’s weapon, I had the whip equipped on him for a good portion of the game as it was excellent for ranged attacks and easier to hit flying enemies with. There’s also areas of certain dungeons that require either a sword, axe, or whip to be equipped in order to progress, and the latter weapon was the one that had to be employed the most frequently when it came to such situations. As I was playing alone, I had to constantly manage the computer-controlled characters both through the Action Grid and on the field, often backtracking when I would press forward only to find that at least one of them was stuck on a narrow ledge or some similar piece of scenery.

The game’s story, lovingly told with the help of distinctive graphics and a soundtrack to match, takes place in a world where the life force “Mana” is weakening. Many years ago, there was an advanced civilization which consumed a great deal of Mana. They reached their peak with the Mana Fortress, which was stopped by an ancient hero in order to restore nature’s balance. Now, an empire seeks to revive the ancient fortress while a boy in the village of Potos happens to come across the legendary Mana Sword, and thus the tale begins. Along with the plot itself, it’s got many other JRPG tropes, all served in an unusually compact package. There are Mana Seeds to seek out, Mana Weapons to level up, and elemental magics to gather. There’s also the odd plot hole or two, and several scenes that could have benefitted from more fleshing out. The dialogue could’ve also been better; apparently, the localization was a rush job by fan-favorite translator Ted Woolsey.

All in all, it’s an interesting, if average, action RPG with a smattering of unique ideas, some of which stick better than others. One recommendation I must make for anyone who is planning to download Secret of Mana via Virtual Console (which is how I got it), especially if one has never played it before, is to get the original manual via replacementdocs. Healing and support items like the barrel are not explained in game, nor are they in the VC download’s own documentation, but they are in this manual, which features tons of information in general. I only wish that I’d thought to seek out a printed world map as well. The overworld and mapping features within Secret of Mana are extravagant considering the game’s age, but flawed, a description which nicely sums up the game itself.

The Final Word on Okami

RKasa

May 21, 2009

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I beat Okami late Monday morning. I failed to write down the total completion time when the final stats were tallied, but by taking the timestamp from my New Game Plus file and adding on whatever time passed between that and my previous save file, I was able to come up with a good estimate: 50:10:43. Those fifty hours ten minutes and change took me over six months to compile, and my fellow okamibloggers have pretty much given up on the game (I know this is the case with namatamiku; not sure about CloudANDTidus). Despite its pretty graphics and atypical setting, there was something about Okami that seemed not to click with us, and it’s not the type of thing that can’t be explained either.

One major problem with Okami is how the story is paced. Certain events happen in such a way as to lead one to assume that the game is really and truly ending, but instead it keeps going, and in shorter, less satisfactory chunks; that these latter chunks differ from the main initial one in certain significant ways also feels problematic. It’s as if the whole of Okami is one tangent-riddled, dialogue-heavy game squashed together with its slightly more focused, but also even more haphazardly-paced, sequel. In the game’s second half, certain things are revisited for reasons that make very little sense in the grand scheme of the story, and are more tedious to deal with on top of that. The game doesn’t start to feel coherent again until the final few hours (which also includes one of the single best dungeons, in a game with several decent ones already), and even then, some bits of story come out of nowhere for the vaguest of reasons.

While the pacing is off, this isn’t helped by the fact that Okami can’t settle on an overall tone. While some characters and quests are quite entertaining and well thought out (Issun, the Sasa Sanctuary sequence, and certain canines come to mind), others waffle between the lighthearted and the serious, and some of these changes aren’t entirely convincing. I think part of this lies at fault with the game’s borderline whimsical audio-visual style, and I don’t mean the traditional Japanese elements, either. The characters’ broad animations, particularly the squashing and stretching of the heads used in lieu of lipsynch (as the human characters lack visible mouths), serve the story well in lighter moments, but when it comes to the heavier ones, they’re a detriment.

Let’s move on to the gameplay, which is pretty much the main reason why I play games to begin with. While I enjoyed certain quests, sidequests, boss battles, and what have you a good deal, this was a little disappointing too. Perhaps the biggest letdown of them all was how easy it was in certain respects, and how difficult it could be in others, especially in getting certain brush techniques to work the first time. Getting all the money you could ever need was a fairly simple affair, as was finding items for use in battle without having to buy them, and even then, I wasn’t compelled to use handy items like Exorcism Slips, Steel Soul Sake, and Inkfinity Stones in battle until the second half. Even the health-regenerating Holy Bones saw rather limited use during the first twenty hours or so. In my final stat wrapup for Okami, I found that I had ended up clearing the entire game without losing a single life.

All in all, Okami was okay. Not amazing, not fantastic, and definitely not engrossing or compelling, just okay. The graphics are beautiful, as is the music, and the setting is a refreshing break from those you tend to see in other action/adventure games, but it also contains an oddly-paced, tangent-filled story in an already sidequest-heavy world. A bit more polish and tightening up of the narrative structure, a slightly less forgiving overall difficulty, and a more subdued character animation style to make the serious bits feel more serious while keeping the whimsical ones whimsical would’ve gone a long way to making this okay game into one that is truly great.

Source image from Bits, Bytes, Pixels and Sprites.