Beaten: Reconstruction Zero: I Miss the Sunrise (on 6/3/13)

System: PC
Status: Beaten

Reconstruction Zero is one of those games I randomly found while looking for good free RPGs. It really doesn't play like any RPG I can think of, and it deserves a good look if you are at all interested in interesting or unique RPGs. The story of the game itself is quite good, and I won't go into any detail on it beyond that for fear of spoiling anything. To put it quickly, the game manages to craft a wholly unique world and setting to house the great gameplay, and a story that really doesn't lend itself to many cliches.

The gameplay itself takes place in a sort of strategy RPG setup. You command fleets of various ships (all of them characters you recruit throughout the story), and arrange them in small groups to perform objectives on a larger map. When in combat, you have a few abilities based on the race of the character, as well as having it be important how close/far away you are from enemy ships (and allowing you to 'push' the field of battle to prevent turtling). Each ship is equipped with various pieces of equipment, such as guns and protective assets, which you design yourself through the games crafting feature. As such, the setup of your ships will change dynamically, allowing you to adjust them for new encounters or new tactics you devise. Each ship has three health bars (as seen in the above image). If any of them is gone, the ship is destroyed. At the same time, every weapon in the game drains one of those life bars for their own attacks, and does damage to one of the lifebars on the enemy ship with a certain damage type. As such, its nearly impossible to create a perfect defense for anything, and a lot of the game revolves around having a wide variety of weapons to make sure you take advantage of enemies weaknesses.

The game is very tactical, and it takes some getting used to, but you never truly feel the game is unfair. With the exception of some special events, I was able to figure out what needed to be done, reconfigure my ships, and get it done. It is certainly an RPG everyone should at least try, especially since its free.

I finished the game, but have some alternate endings and optional bosses to defeat.

Completed: Borderlands (on 6/22/13)

System: PC
Status: Completed (on 6/22/13)

Borderlands is certainly a well reviewed and looked at franchise, so I doubt anything I say will be too new to people looking into it. On the surface, it certainly fills a niche that feels like it needs to be filled, an FPS RPG with randomly generated/dropped guns and equipment. The game fills that niche very well, and the game has a very unique sense of humor to it. It does an extremely good job at characterization of the world of Pandora, and I tended to mostly play through just to see what the next crazy thing to happen was.

Where the game does tend to slow down is the combat itself is very samey for most of the game. No matter what upgrades or new skills you get, they tend to not change the basic game mechanics very  much. You'll run up to an area of huts and houses, enemies will spawn from doors or be standing around, and you'll find cover, trying to get headshots for criticals or using your class skill to do extra damage, and the enemies will die. The strategies the enemies use change a bit, mostly when you get to the Crimson Lance enemies, or in the expansions, but most of the time you're fighting bandits, and everything tends to go the same way. You're not relying on your own skills too much though, as a huge factor is what gear you get in random drops, and sometimes you'll be scraping by on a too-low level gun, or find one that is so much better than your others that you'll only be using that gun for a long damn time.

Still, that was a long paragraph that basically boiled down to me as "I needed to take breaks from the game at times." It is still an amazingly fun game, it just tends to wear on you a bit when you go from place to place shooting the same guys. The personality of the game goes a long way to alleviating the annoyances.

The game and all of its expansions are completed, finished on second run. Don't have all the achievements, but many of them require multiplayer on the old Gamespy network, so...no dice there.

Completed: Xenosaga I, II, and III (beaten/completed on various dates)

System: PS2
Status: Completed (all of them)

The Xenosaga series is one that certainly aimed high, and ended up being completely forgettable (at least for me anyway). I loved the semi-predecessor in Xenogears, despite the utter wreck that is the second disc of that game, and this series seemed to do the same on a multi-game scale, they had high ambitions and designs, but ran out of steam/funding and ended up with much less. It certainly didn't help that all three games are very different in style and design, and their systems don't stay consistent, leading to no actual refinement, but wild swinging of things a game does well, and does poorly. The story between all of them stays consistent, but is basically inscrutable to anyone who doesn't read the supplementary materials, and likely suffers a great deal from the series being cut short(er) than the designers would have liked. I'll go through each game individually though.

Xenosaga I feels like the most direct successor to Xenogears. The combat system is very similar, in that you pick various attacks that add up to larger special attacks. The mix of mechs and ground combat works pretty well, though in general the special attacks of the characters fall far short of their normal attacks, so you generally won't use your spell abilities (not to mention the character that is focused on healing/special attacks can't take a hit). Overall game wise, the balance works out well, its fun to play, with only a few frustrations gameplay wise. The best part of the game is the side card game that is actually very fun to play and well designed, but doesn't make an appearance in any other games, and doesn't impact the main game in any way other than being an inefficient way of getting money. Overall, the first game is average, a decent RPG but nothing absolutely amazing, nor does it stand out in any particular aspect.

Xenosaga II is...much worse than the first game. They changed the art style around majorly, where the first was very animesque, the second shoots right to 'realistic' and is pretty jarring in the transition. The worst change though is the combat system. They take the 'combo' attack system, and remove most special attacks entirely from normal fighting. Your characters get only a few moves per round, and need to hit certain combos on enemies in order to start doing real damage, any damage before that is mostly scratch damage. So in any combat situation beyond common enemies, and sometimes even then, combat is a few turns of 'waiting' to build up attacks, then one huge combo boosted between characters to do as much damage as possible. It is very jarring to have to spend combat turns waiting, because if you don't get at least X number of attacks in to break their guard, you do nothing. What makes it worse is some enemies are immune to certain attack types, weak to things only one character does, and the like. In the end, you end up using a certain short list of characters because they can hit the most weaknesses and do the most straight up melee damage. If I had to score this game individually, I would put it way below par, the only real reason to play it is to see the story before the next game in the series.

Xenosaga III is a nice medium of art styles between the first two. Its not full on big-eye'd anime style, but not fully realistic either, and ends up looking the best for it. The combat system is a good medium as well, and it is quite fun to work through and doesn't make combat a  bore like the second did. This game seems to be where the designers finally settled down on one thing to do, and it works out quite well as they hit their stride. The sidequest system they shoved into the game though, is completely awkward. They basically formalized sidequests, but they did so in a way that if you aren't following a guide 100% through the game, you won't get everything from the sidequests, and will spend hours looking for random characters with no hints from the game itself. Thankfully, its not required to get to the bonus bosses, so no big deal there. The bonus bosses end up being cakewalks though, and the entire game does, once you get the robot summon spells near the middle of the game. The only limiting factor there is your MP, otherwise they will utterly wreck every enemy and boss in the game. The bonus boss is specifically designed to be killed by only those summon spells, leaving the otherwise well done combat system lacking...why bother, when you can one shot everything?

So overall, the series is...ok, the biggest problem is the utterly lackluster second game, which was a big hurdle for me to get through to the rather well done third game. I feel if they had made more of these games and finished the story it would likely be a more positive memory, but the problem is that audience isn't going to keep buying games if they suck in hopes you'll get better.

These are completed, all bonus bosses wiped out the first time around, so they are off my list fully.

Beaten: Dragon's Dogma (on 5/30/13)

System: PS3
Status: Beaten

For all the flak Capcom gets for its treatment of its older franchises, they have recently come up with some pretty awesome new ones. Dragon's Dogma is one of my favorite new ones they have made (the other being Monster Hunter), and its certainly a unique entry.

Where Monster Hunter could be defined as Bossfights: The game, Dragon's Dogma doesn't go quite that far. Dragon's Dogma still has amazing fights and set-pieces, but the key is that the game's engine from the very beginning is designed for it. The very first fight is against a giant dragon, the size of a castle, and when you fight it again later, the only thing that has changed is your gear. The game makes great use of the grab mechanics, sort of like Shadow of the Colossus, in that you need to hang on to monsters and stab/cut/whatever to do some serious damage. The difference between this and Shadow, is that you have allies who can also be away from the enemy, shooting arrows/magic/etc, or you could be doing that and leave your allies jumping on them. The game has a lot of very cool mechanics for different classes working together, such as knights using their shields to fling characters into the air to grab enemies, putting elements on weapons, and the like. The only problem with it is that you are only ever allied with AI characters, so you have to rely on them to act appropriately. They aren't stupid, since the game actually has mechanics for them 'learning' certain monsters and what works...its just too bad they'll remind you that 'Fire works well!' every five minutes, because its certainly true for almost everything.

Still, the game's mechanic treats bossfights almost as incidental...not that they aren't important, but you only a few times get a quest that says 'go kill this big  monster', usually you'll be going somewhere else, you'll see a nasty thing, and you want to go kill it. The game rewards you with pieces of the monster to upgrade your gear with, so you are urged to go hack off bits and stab them. Still, sometimes the reward is the awesome gameplay that happens just from the mechanics, launching from a melee fighter's shield, landing on the wing of a flying griffen, and stabbing them in the wings until they do a death dive and carve a furrow in the ground with their sudden crash landing, while the rest of your team proceeds to hack them apart. There are some reskinned monsters, but they tend to put different spins on them, so that you'll get killed if you assume all drakes or griffen styled enemies are the same.

The game's story is pretty barren, and NPC interaction is really loose. Since you custom make your own character, and interaction is purely determined by doing nice things to people, you can be utterly surprised when the game picks your 'lover', whom you just did quests for.

Still, overall the game is very enjoyable, the only major drawback being that you are walking almost everywhere, and it can take a long while going from points, fighting the same spawned enemies every time. The bigger monsters are more random, but chimeras, wolves, bandits, and the like spawn in the same places every time. Definately a game to pick up though for a unique experience, though perhaps you should find the director's cut, entitled 'Dark Arisen'.

Lost my save due to the PS3 crashing dead, so need to replay the whole game and do new game + plus some achieves to complete.

Beaten: Front Mission 3 (on 5/18/13)

System: PS1 (Played via PS1C on the PS3)
Status: Beaten

Front Mission is one of my favorite series of all time, mostly because it combines two things I love, giant military styled 'realistic' robots, and turn based strategy. It is too bad that we never got most of the main-stream games in English, and the series has kind of died off (don't mention the action-game thing they released recently, that's not Front Mission).

Front Mission 3 is a pretty standard game gameplay wise. You control each character piloting a mech, trying to kill your enemies piloting mechs. There is not much innovative about the base gameplay, though the fact that your pilots can eject from their mechs (or be ejected if hit right) is interesting, because it lets you hijack other mechs mid mission, or even non-mech vehicles like helicopters. In practice though, its so dangerous to have them running around on the ground that you likely won't have them there if you can at all help it. There are a few missions where you protect ground-pounders and they can shoot mechs for a little damage while walking around.

Story wise, the game actually splits into two different stories entirely based on the first choice you make in the story, with significant differences, so the game is at least playable twice for that alone. The story I played through this time was ok, typical Front Mission fare of geopolitics and people trying to stop a super project of some sort. It was forgettable, but that doesn't mean much, I forget a lot of good games' stories.

The game has an internet function, where you can browse the in-universe internet, go to websites and access things. You get passwords for places from missions or by sleuthing around and downloading programs, and that lets you access more background and information, and sometimes get access to gear. I'll be honest, after looking around it a bit, and not being able to figure out clues, I just looked up all the passwords that did anything. It was an interesting idea, but actually playing with it is not fun in the least, and requires way more use of note taking than the main game ever does. If you do play it, just look up the passwords, and only the important ones, the little bits of story aren't worth the effort to read through all the text.

I finished the 'Rebel' storyline, which leaves the 'Chinese' storyline for completion.

Completed: Breath of Fire (on 4/21/13)

System: SNES
Status: Completed

Good lord American box art was horrible around this time. This is another Super Famicom game we own that I played on a ROM, and this one was much better. Given, it is the first Breath of Fire, and the series had yet to work its way into its own little niche, but at least it was a decent RPG.

The game is very cookie cutter in story, your village is destroyed, you must save the world, etc. The fact that your character can turn into dragons is barely used beyond spell-like abilities. In fact, in the early game, the story-line related keys do more damage than your character's dragon breath. You have a wide variety of character's to choose from, all different animal-people, which becomes a common theme later on, but you quickly realize some are completely useless. The more useful ones get even better when you fuse them to other characters, which is one unique feature the game has going for them, and once you figure out who is best for this, you'll likely stick with them for the whole game.

The main annoying feature of this game, beyond the utter requisite to grind (seriously, Final Fantasy IV had near perfect balance around this time, why must I walk around outside town for hours in nearly every other game?) is the fact that all the bosses half a health bar...that you can see...and when it gets to zero, the boss changes color, and keeps fighting for what feels like a full half of the fight. If you are going to give the bosses health bars, don't make them lie. If you don't want us to know how much HP is left, just don't give them a health bar.

Otherwise, it is an ok, somewhat forgettable game, nothing unique other than character fusions, which mostly helps you get some use out of utterly worthless characters. No hidden bosses or challenges, so complete with just finishing it.

Completed: Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest (on 4/04/13)

System: SNES
Status: Completed

When the wife and I first moved to Cheong-ju, she found a little game store that had a Super Famicom for sale, along with a ton of games for it. Naturally, we snapped these up. Personally, I could always play these via roms, but actually owning them gave me reason to actually finish them. They are now basically the full list of SNES games on my backlog, since my actual US games are back in the states. However, given my Japanese skills are lacking, I actually played these via roms, translated if necessary.

Final Fantasy Mystic Quest is one of my friend's favorite Final Fantasy's...and I don't see why at all. On its face, its an ok RPG. There really is nothing special about it, and really barely anything that makes it an RPG in the first place. Your selection of items basically is null, you find better gear, you put it on, working your way up to the best gear. There really is no choice in the matter, no benefits/loss or anything of the sort. Even your weapons are basically defined by what kind of damage they do, so the biggest choice you will make in the game is what weapon to use on what enemy. Your allies always use the same gear and can't get better, and you can't choose them either. Boss fights tend to be a matter of luck only, either you deal enough damage to kill them, or they kill you. Leveling helps some, but isn't generally worth it, you could just get a bit luckier next try.

The story is even worse than the gameplay. The original Final Fantasy can be forgiven for its rather base story because it was one of the first (and it still had a better story than the original Dragon Quest, which consisted entirely of 'save princess, kill evil dude, game won'). This game has basically the same story, with less steps and twists than even the original. You can't even explore the map, you're stuck on highlighted paths to areas.

On a positive note, no optional bosses or challenges, so when you finish this game, you never have to touch it again.

Completed: Suikoden IV

System: PS2 (Playing on PS3)
Status: Completed
Currently: Got all 108 stars, beat both optional bosses, finally beat final boss...game locks up.

As the currently states, the game decided to add insult to injury, and froze up right as the final boss died. The sad thing is, I care so little about the finale of the story, that I'm not even going to try again. I got all 108 stars, I beat both optional bosses, I can call the game completed with no remorse.

The sad thing is, my last post was pretty bashing towards this game, yet I was all up for it redeeming itself. Random encounters are annoying, but it could be overcome. The game didn't even try. I truly now believe the horrendous amount of random encounters and the tons of bland characters that serve only for you to spend more money on leveling up weapons and getting gear serve purely to pad out the game. I believe my final time clocked out to be around 25 hours...at full completion. Yes, I followed a brief guide on collecting all the characters, and used Viki to teleport everywhere (you try spending hours just traveling between islands), but the game literally has nothing there. The stars serve no purpose whatsoever. They don't have any plot significance, even the ones you have to get beyond a few lines, and really don't contribute anything overall. The entire story is basically 'go here, do a naval battle, free the island, recruit more characters' rinse repeat for every single island. You will literally go to an island, blow up two ships, and step on the island with hardly any scenes to commemorate them being rescued or anything further.

The game is just offensive, all around. Too many random encounters, too many entirely useless characters, too many bland point A to point B events, a complete lack of any true story to the game whatsoever. This game is utterly terrible, and I now regret playing it even for completions sake...it just felt like a waste of time.

Oh, and the final dungeon, the pinnacle of the entire story? A spiral staircase. 4 screens of the same spiral staircase with random encounters. In addition to half communicated story that we long stopped caring about five hours ago.

I am so glad Suikoden V turned this shit on its head, or I probably wouldn't have many fond memories of this series. I need to play something to wash the taste out of my mouth...

Daily Review: Suikoden IV

System: PS2 (Played on PS3)
Status: Unfinished
Currently: Just allied with Middleport.

I was still in the mood to play more Suikoden after I finished III, and since this was the only standard Suikoden game I haven't finished yet (and I couldn't find I to do a full completion at the moment), this one went in. I had tried playing it before...twice in fact, and both times I had been driven away by the noticeable and obvious flaws with the game. I actually have a bit more will to finish it now, since Suikosource has great star lists that make it nigh impossible to miss stars, and make completion (and only having to play the game once), so much easier.

This is easily the weakest game in the entire series, which is sad because they had some good ideas. The naval theme to the game is unique and was what got me really excited about it at first, sailing around and fighting naval battles is a nice change of pace. The game returns to the more 'standard' combat and storytelling from the first two in the series, in that its turn based, and your main character is more of a blank slate, and doesn't speak except in choices you make. The runes have been changed back, so you no longer nuke your party with fire runes and the like, and everything is more reliable and standardized.

The problem is, in changing it back...well, the three heroes of Suikoden III were interesting and unique, and you could reliably relate to at least one of them. The rest of the cast was pretty interesting, though the optional stars were limited and optional for a reason. This game has far more pure optional stars to pick from, but most end up being standard 'after this point in the story, go back to this place, talk to this guy', and the characterization beyond that is nonexistent. Without the skill system from III, which was one of the best features, there is nothing to differentiate the characters beyond their stats, unique runes, and sometimes combos. Most of the characters I do quick upgrades to their weapons, take them to a few random encounters to get them to a decent level, then let them sit while I use a more standard team of reliably strong characters.

The main character is the worst offender in the entire lineup....he's dull, he's boring, there's no reason for him to be in the story beyond the rune he gets, which other than being the Macguffin the bad dudes are looking for, really has nothing to do with the story. Being a blank slate doesn't help, in a voiced game, it just makes him seem utterly dull and a passive person in all thats going on. Far more interesting and sensible characters, like the king of Obel, will step aside and state you should be leading...but why? The character was a knight trainee who got framed for murder...that's it. That's a similar plot-line to the first two games, but it doesn't work here. In I, you were the son of a famous general, inherit a rune that gets you hunted by your own country. Your character was defined by the people who worked for your father and stuck by you, and that drive to save yourself and fight back. In II, you were betrayed by your own country in a false flag operation, nearly killed with your best friend, and end up joining and leading the resistance against them. There, you were defined by your sister, best friend, and other major characters you picked up. In this game, the blank slate really has no characters that help to define him. You can choose two other recruits who accompany you through the first part of the game, but they give no reason for being so attached to you, and after the opening part is over, they really have nothing to do with the story. This lack of grounding makes the main character feel entirely out of place, as others come up with weak excuses as to why you matter.

The worst offense in the entire game though, is the random battles. To be fair, I've played games with horrendously difficult and common random battles. This game however, makes the triple offense of random encounters so common you could get in two or three just turning your ship around, the random encounters themselves rarely being of note beyond hitting the auto command or a set few commands to kill them quickly, and lastly...the world map being bare of any detail. Yes, the ocean is vast and mostly empty, but this is supposed to be an archipelago. In the entire game, there are 13 places to go. Only thirteen islands to visit, and several of them have nothing beyond a treasure hunting minigame or a few characters to recruit. Sailing to a new location means about a solid hour of sailing over featureless blue water, holding down R1 to go a little bit faster, and reading a book. Occasionally, you have to put down anchor and rest, but the encounters really provide no challenge, or add anything to the game. They just take up lots, and lots of time.

Gah.

Completed: Suikoden III

System: PS2 (Played on PS3)
Status: Completed
Currently: All 108 stars, extra chapter finished, so completed!

I love the Suikoden series, though I never really owned one until way later on, mostly due to getting the playstation very late in its cycle. I actually played it first by borrowing number 1 from a friend a few times, and beat that without owning it. 3 was actually the first one that I purchased, and since then I've gone on to get all 5 of the main series, plus tactics. I love collecting the characters, the well designed stories, and the very tactical combat the whole series has.

Three is no exception, and the series made a good jump to the ps2 and 3d at the same time. The 3d models are very clean and the art style ages very well, so much so I doubt this game will ever look truly bad compared to modern games. The story was well written and kept me going the entire way, even though technically this was my second time playing through (on my first I realized I had gone past the point of no return for getting all 108 stars, and kinda put it down, this was several years ago). The added fact that the second half can change in story based on which main character you pick, adds a bit of re-playability (though I doubt I will unless I try to do a challenge run). Overall it is one of the most solid JRPGs you can play, and I heartily recommend it to anyone.

My main complaints about the game are more comparisons to others in the same series, and noticeable parts where they changed things, and made them worse. The most noticeable part is the army battles. Where the previous two games took two completely different tacts (the first is more rock paper scissors with special cards, the second is more fire emblem), each time you felt as you gathered up your army and collected all the stars, that your options in combat were growing, and you were becoming noticeably more powerful as an army. Since you really don't get your castle till halfway through the game (where its clear you actually control an army), and since the story is split half the time, most of the army battles have predetermined rosters. In addition, practically every fight is purely scripted, you last a certain number of turns, something happens, its over. You can't really win, just not lose. Even later in the game, the second to last battle is specifically scripted to prevent you from winning too soon, which ended with me decimating the entire enemy army, then the last commander becoming invincible at half health and killing my units until the game finally ran its scripts, and let me kill him. The only battle you truly feel you lead your own combined army is the last one, and its a brief flirtation. The other major complaint is the stars of destiny seem...sidelined for this game. A full half are ones you get automatically through gameplay, and the rest are minor additions. I fully expect if I tried to beat this game with only the stars you get automatically, abusing the ones that are -very- powerful, the only major problem I would have would be the lack of blacksmithing over a certain point.

Still, as all my blogs tend to be, I write more about the little nitpicks than the overall good. I gave this a 4 star rating on my Backloggery, and would easily recommend it to anyone. Its a good game, whether you enjoy the series or not.

11/17: Quickfixes

Unfortunately, I've been stuck in one of those moods where I really can't get anything in particular done, so been pecking at a few games idly.

Name: Beyond Good & Evil
System: PS2 (Playing on PS3)
Status: Unfinished
Currently: Just finished the second story dungeon.

I feel really bad that I've never gotten to this game before, especially since I know it to be a solid game the few times I've booted it up and played it for a while. It also wasn't a big investment, and a great deal since I snagged it for 6$ from a Gamestop, like most of the later additions to my PS2 collection. I really have no complaints other than the strange graphical glitches that happen occasionally, which I have gathered come with the PS2 port of the game (and the PS3 may be making worse, I don't remember my PS2 doing the weird thing with the water). Overall the gameplay is solid, the partner system is fairly well implemented, there's nothing overtly annoying about any aspect of the game. The Pokemon Snap-like camera subquest is actually really fun, though once you get the radars that tell you where the animals you don't have are, it becomes rather trivial. Still, it seems a game that is full of collection sidequests, where the designers did their best to make sure they were not frustrating, which is always a good idea. Just need to put a few more hours into this and I can probably tick it off my completed list rather quickly.

Name: Wolfenstein 3-D
System: PS3
Status: Unfinished
Currently: Finished Episodes 1-3 on 'normalish' difficulty.

An oldie that I never got around to truly playing other than the horrendous SNES port I rented a few times back in the day. The PSN port does a pretty good job of capturing the game without mucking with it really at all. They even left in the old text screens after each episode advertising the next...along with all the cheesy text detailing you 'kicking Hitler's skull off'. Fun. My wife has all sorts of trouble watching me play this, and I have some issues as well, the game is smooth except when you start to turn (strafing and the like), where it gets a bit herky-jerky, and tends to give me motion sickness a bit. The damage also seems way out of line for the enemies even on the lower difficulty I'm on. One shot from pretty much any enemy can nearly kill you...or just nick you, and there doesn't seem to be much reason for the differences, not range or if you were moving or not. Still, the game is loaded with ammo (and all guns use the same type), along with plenty of health, so its really not that difficult. Taking it easy though so I don't make myself sick with the herky-motion. Twin-stick controls I think are the best way to play these old games though, its even how I prefer to play the original Doom 1/2 games now.

Name: RetroMUD
System: PC (Portal GT client)
Status: Null
Currently: Levelling up my Fallen alt, trying to get my Psi main money to train.

A real oldie for me, and a classic MUD, though the player base has shrunk in recent years due to a good solid year or so of crashes and unstableness. The core of the game is still great, with numerous classes, lots of options as to how to build characters, and all around freedom to do what you want. The community is always great for the game, and half the fun is chatting with the good people there. I really can't review the game much more than that, especially since a lot of it is personal experience, and not many people play MUDs anymore. Still, if I'm not playing something else, I'm playing this, much easier to cram in an hour or so of farming now that you don't have to worry about putting your gear in boxes if you carry it around.

Beaten: Parasite Eve

Beaten: Parasite Eve

System: PSX (Ps1 Classics)
Status: Beaten
Currently: Just beat the game, leaves Chrysler Building on Ex Game.

There are games that stand the test of time and are pretty much always great, no matter how far in the future you play them. The old turn based Final Fantasies still hold up, the original Super Mario Bros. still holds up. Parasite Eve...does not. To be honest, I've only played this on emulator, then finally purchased it from the Playstation Network PSOne classics category, and started to play it. I finally settled down this week and pounded out the rest of it in two game sessions.

The first big warning sign is the game is only 9 hours long, if you don't include the optional dungeon. For an RPG, that is insanely short, and you can tell this was an early playstation title. Clearly they were pushing disc space, but a two disc game is only 9 hours long? Too many FMVs, not enough game. I will pretty much wave off the ugly polygons, the odd looking FMVs (though still better than some of Final Fantasy VII popeye-armed FMVs), and the prerendered backgrounds that make finding boxes a pixel hunt. All of that pretty much came with the generation, and I enjoyed the old Resident Evils.

The second big warning sign is how clunky the combat is. It does 'cut' away to random battles, but they still show up on the prerendered backgrounds. Since the detection of where you can walk is so wonky, often times you are never quite sure where you can and can't go, especially in spots with odd angles. Since the game is an action RPG, and you have to actively dodge attacks, this can lead to you getting nailed by attacks where you had plenty of warning, but just couldn't move with the arena. Other times, you'll get nailed because Aya moves at a speed that suggests a leg injury (despite her animation insisting she is running full out), and the only time she can be called agile is when she casts Haste...which lasts maybe three attacks before wearing off, and uses up valuable healing magic points. Other times, you'll get nailed because...well, the monster just doesn't like you, and despite early monsters giving you nice warnings, sometimes the designers just coded a monster that'll nail you, nothing you can do about it. Bosses are really bad about this, they move much faster than your character, and will use attacks that hit nearly the entire screen...or just rush up and knock you down to one HP.

The game did something right in that you can customize guns by adding and removing attributes from them, and unless you're so stupid as to remove an ability from an armor you've bumped the attributes up insanely high on, thus losing those, you're never directly 'screwed' out of the defense/attack bonuses you add to your armor and weapons. There is an oddity that you get numerous weapons with multi-shot capabilities....when all that does is make Aya sit still for each shot, and get nailed by even more attacks (See above). Most of the game I went with a weapon with 1 or 2 shots, and that was it, sitting still any longer was an invite to use up even more heals. Still, if you find a great weapon but don't like the fact that it has 5 shots, you can always change it.

The final gripe has to do with the final boss fight, which surprise (Hi Squaresoft!) is a multi-parter. First part is fine, you can read his attacks, dodge out of the way, slide in to blast him, barring the cheap 'I'll knock you to 1 HP so fast you can't dodge' move. The second part splits, so you have one bird moving around like its on meth, and a beast shooting lasers across the whole map...difficult, but doable. Then the third, again, gains a 1 HP no warning attack, an attack that knocks you to half instantly, a melee attack that is near impossible to dodge, and a ranged attack which is your only chance to deal damage to him without getting hit...assuming you can move Aya under him fast enough so you don't get nailed several times. It's basically a roulette, if he spams the ranged attack, you can get numerous attacks off for free. After that? A chase scene, where one wrong turn is instant death...and repeating the whole boss fight over again. Whoever thought you could describe this as fun instead of 'controller breaking frustrating' was an idiot.

The games main sin though? It's dull, and it's boring. The story is gibberish (not literally), and they toss so much philosophy and pseudo-science babble that at some point you can just insert 'Mitochondria did it' into everything and be done with it. The random encounters are mostly waiting to shoot them, and running in circles till your gauge charges up so you don't get hit. Unless its one of the few random encounters in the game that does a decent amount of damage, you are at more risk of getting distracted and getting nailed a few times than actually dying. I had on a Youtube video of some other games music (By the way, music, not that great either, spent the game with it muted), and I got distracted by the videos, numerous times. Doesn't  help when you walk around a museum ten times looking for that one door you missed.

....Damnit, still have the Chrysler building to call this completed.

Daily Review: Monster Hunter Freedom Unite

Daily Review

Monster Hunter Freedom Unite

System: PSP
Status: Unfinished
Currently: Finished 1 Star Gathering Hall, and 1/2 Star Village quests, working through 3 star.

I suppose it is a good thing when I've been playing a game so much and so often over the past week or so, that I've been too busy to do daily reviews of it. That, or I can't resist the call to pick it back up every time I put it down and try to do something else.

The game is for me, unequivocally good. It is at that perfect level of challenging without being cheap or drawing things out too much. It also gives you a very clear work to reward ratio, and you can constantly see your rewards on your character. Even though it is an RPG, the only benefits and gains you get through the game come from killing big nasty beasts, and hacking them up to make new gear for yourself. So when you get that new bow, you know you slaughtered eight wyverns or so to make that damn thing, and you're proud of it. It does induce a bit of grinding, especially if you want to be ahead of the curve on gear somewhat. Right now I'm repeating a quest to kill an Iodrome because its the closest clear upgrade for my armor, though the helm will be a rare drop of the things skull. Next up is slaughtering a Kut-ku to make myself a new crossbow.

The only problem so far with the game is the PSP itself, and the fact that I've gotten it so late I am sure I will never see any of the online only quests, just because no one else is playing it, and none of my friends will get it or a PSP. The latter is rather simple, you can always group up through the game to take down monsters, but some Gathering Hall (aka online group area) quests are more than just higher HP, they're a whole new level I doubt I'll ever be able to solo. Just doing the 1 star quests was a pain, because they require you to kill so many more enemies, and the bosses have so much more HP...for obvious reasons, its designed for up to 4 people. The PSP is the other issue, and that is the noticeable lack of two joysticks...and the tiny little bugger that serves as one. I've mostly overcome the wonky camera controls, I've gotten used to doing little shifts to realign the camera with the 'face forward' button, but if you do want to move and look around at the same time you have to do this awkward claw motion with your hand. I'm already getting a cramp holding the joystick steady in one direction for long, like I did on Peace Walker.

I always manage to gripe more about the little things than rant about the larger things...but sincerely, those two little whimpers are all I have, and all I foresee having. The game is a great challenge, every time I die I know its my fault for getting too greedy, not dodging in time, dodging the wrong way, and the like. Every boss takes skill and timing, and decent gear to back you up though I am sure you could do some of these (and some crazy people have) without any armor. It's like an MMO...except requiring actual skill in combat, instead of clicking the same four buttons.

Beaten: The Witcher Enhanced Edition

Beaten

The Witcher Enhanced Edition

System: Steam
Status: Beaten
Currently: Just beat normal difficulty.

This may be an oddity considering my previous posts where I mostly nitpick games, but I truly have nothing negative to say about this game. It is a well balanced game, the story itself is well done gothic horror, and the only issues I had were more with my poor PC than the game itself (crashes, herky graphics, etc).

I can unabashedly recommend this game, mostly due to the fact that it feels like an old school PC RPG, difficult but not overtly so, with a well crafted story and a well balanced combat system. I was playing on normal mode, so the enhancements that make up most of the back end of your character creation were helpful depending on what you focused on, but not entirely necessary. I drank a few boosting potions and used weapon boosts before the last fight, and having done nearly all the quests, I curb-stomped the final boss(es). Through most of the game though, one boost or so is enough to get you through difficult fights, with none really required for standard groups of enemies. The chapters do have a sort of progression, though its hard to tell until you walk to do a quest and get slaughtered, but essentially there are a set of easier quests, and harder ones, and you should do them in a big chunk of each to get through. The game is set up so that if you skipped some stuff in an earlier chapter, you aren't screwed, you just have to focus more on the easy quests for the next chapter first. There never felt like there was any object that if I missed it I was screwed later on, it just made it easier...which is perfect, though I still felt I had to do -everything-.

The only downside of the action combat system is there really isn't much variety or strategy to the actual combat. Occasionally you might have to switch stances or swords mid fight, but usually you can go wading in. Victory is more determined by your prepwork than any actual skill in the combat, though if you constantly screw up timed clicking you might have issues. I can gather hard mode puts even more emphasis on prep, given the descriptor even states 'You will have to use alchemy to survive'. Should be an interesting challenge when I get around to it, but that won't be anytime soon. Long PC RPGs take it out of me.

Post-Move Quick Fixes

So yeah, moving really puts a kink in your gaming schedule. It's also really hard to play enough of one game to come up with a full post for any one in particular. To get back in the habit, here's some quick fixes for what I've been playing:

 

Man, I really want to like this game, mostly because of its status as a classic, but its getting really hard to keep playing this and even finish it with how bad its getting at times. I've never had to check a FAQ for an FPS game before, but I have to do it near constantly with this one. One moment, you're supposed to avoid a mined area, and the next a guy with a shotgun near one means 'clear it out'. There is almost no intuitive 'you should go here next' going on, and choosing wrong could either waste supplies (some of which you -need- to keep going), or get you some more depending on your luck. The movement is still slippery, and yet at the same time I keep getting caught up in corners. To top it all off, the game itself uses a weird memory load procedure, and thus my playtime is entirely limited to when it starts to get jerky, then I have to either quit out and reload, or just stop for the night. The bugs are really getting bad, I'm at a point where you need to cross in front of a sniper, so obviously you're supposed to toss a grenade up into his nest (his netting for some reason is bullet proof). Except A) Gordon tosses like a girl and its near impossible to get any distance on the grenades, and B) A total of 8 grenades went in, didn't explode due to some bug. This is about where I stopped.

This is almost entirely a guilty pleasure now, considering how long I have to get to 'complete' status and how random any progression is. Still very fun and challenging though. Trying to get through the challenge mode so I can have some more options in the main game. As with all rogue-likes though, I feel bad playing them because it is never definite progress. Means the game is truly fun though.

I actually beat this game a long time ago, but 'beaten' for it is only beating the Elite 4 the first time, and there's so much more to do. Over the past two weeks, I basically beat all the Kanto Gym Leaders, beat Red (the hardest match in the game), and re-challenged the Elite 4. That leaves re-challenging the gym leaders, which is a pain due to them only being available to get their numbers at a certain time...then you can only challenge them again at another time. I may just sit for an evening and screw around with the DS clock so I can finish it. Other than that, need to snag all the legendaries and I can call this complete.

To this games credit, its a near perfect mobile game experience. You can pick it up, complete one or two missions, save, put it back down, and when you next pick it back up you really don't have to remember where you were. I'll do a larger one on this one later because there's far more to cover, but essentially they improved on everything from the first game, removed a lot of the annoyances, and made the class system more intriguing (and way less broken). Still some small little quibbles, but I've been enjoying it. Mostly doing sidequests, I -think- I'm almost finished with the story, based on the quest list.

I actually try not to mention this one, and I'm kinda avoiding doing a full review since so much has already been said and its constantly changing still. I do have to say though, I love this game. There are minor quibbles, but I do truly enjoy booting it up, killing some monsters, having shinies drop (even if they end up not being upgrades), then logging out without any requirements to log back in. I put it down for a month or two, picked it back up recently, and had no problems swinging back in. I think its going to be a 'pick up at patch to see whats new' for most people though.

Completed: Atelier Iris 2

Completed

Atelier Iris 2

System: PS2 (Playing on PS3)
Status: Completed
Currently: Finished everything.

So yeah, going to be a complete 180 on this from last time I posted, but I basically spent the last few weeks playing this solid (and Diablo 3), and at first, my hopes were rather high. The alchemy system in the game was very promising, the combat system was solid, they did a lot of things right in the game. The story wasn't the greatest, but it was passable.

Then the game just...died. The story went from passable to so full of glaring plot holes that I was yelling at the screen...to basically flipping the player off. The ending was a wonderful montage of 3 second clips that explained nothing whatsoever as to what happened, just showed the characters smiling then, roll credits. The game never followed through on any plot threads, and near the end of it, started doing things that just made me think 'Wow, my team is either stupid, or outright heinous'. It really does not make your team seem endearing when you destroy one character's wedding ring (albeit to save the world, but still), and then say he's being a baby because his wife will be mad at him. Two priceless objects (to the characters who they belonged to) are destroyed near the end, and its given about as much weight as stepping on someones toe. "Sorry for destroying this." "It does not matter, it was only a symbol to the entire kingdom." Practically quoted. The games story is so laughably paper thin you see where everything is going from the start, and any attempt at charecterization falls so flat it makes actually playing the game painful, because you know you'll have to listen to these idiots talk some more. Note to the creators, we do not need flashbacks for everything. This was a 20 hour game, there were upwards of ten flashbacks in the game, sometimes to events that happened literally five minutes before.

The combat system started out promising with all sorts of little options. Then as the game winded on, you realized rather quickly...that the designers didn't have any idea on how to make the game challenging, or to do a little difficulty curve to it. You are either curbstomping -everything- without grinding at all, or are up against something with insane amounts of HP. The post-game challenges seemed to be the most promising, but the enemies there (and the final boss) would basically one shot every character, so you learned to just keep tossing revives and not bother with healing. Most of the 'challenge' came from the fact that the bosses would heal themselves every turn naturally...which just made the fights even longer. I enjoy a good challenge, but the fights basically ended up being a challenge to see whether I would run out of revives first or win.

The item and alchemy system was by far the most promising part of it. Turning items you find into others with recipes you buy or find along the way. Certain items you could create more of with just mana, allowing you to make healing items as you go instead of buying them. The first thing you notice after a while though, is it is very trivial to just make 99 of all your healing items, and thus never run out. The second thing you notice is that everything pretty much uses the three or four most common mana types. The last thing you notice is there are about 15 types of mana, and some of them are used for one or two items. It felt like the designers just petered out on this part halfway through, and though you have tons of mana, you always need the most common ones, and almost never need everything else. The crafting system itself allows you to substitute different items to get different effects, but since most of the effects don't work on that item type, or are rather ill defined, you never really bother with this or even need to. The only time you do substitute is when the game points it out to you, and you realize you can make a truly different item...for the three or four items that actually works for.

The other aspects of the game are passable. The isometric view is interesting at first, but after a while you realize every dungeon is going to be square cubes going at angles, and it starts to look very fugly. The sprites themselves are well done, but battles are always zoomed out so far you can't see any details but for the brief moments it zooms in for an attack. The game is rather short, and that would have been fine personally, but near the end there's a very noticeable series of painful attempts to lengthen it out (fetch quests, dungeons with constant unending random encounters in a game that made a large point that after a while random encounters stop in an area, having to retread old areas constantly).

Most games leave me with a "Damn, I want to play more of that" feeling, even ones I'm somewhat ambiguous about. About six hours before I finished this game, I had the thought cross "I can't wait to finish this so I can play something else." While watching the ending, my thoughts were "Well, that is the game flipping me off." When I was finally finishing the post game, my last thought was "Thank god I never have to play this again."

Quick Fixes

Not that many this time around, just two, but I don't have quite enough to say about one or the other to make a Daily Review.

 So this kind of came out of left field, but I hit the fortune cookie option on the Backlog, and it gave me this. My wife bought it a while back from a Gamestop for about 5$, and neither of us have really touched it. Quick thoughts on it though: The art style is beautiful, the sprites on 3d backgrounds actually work really well, and the art in the battles is very well done. Not quite Valkyrie Profile 2 level, but hey. Another thought is that I'm really enjoying the alchemy system, since its mostly collect recipes, have the other character craft it, then you can make them with mana from then on. This means that healing potions almost never run out, since they need just 1 Wood mana, which you can get from anywhere. I have 99 of several items just to not let my mana go to waste. The combat system itself is rather fluid, though for some reason seems to have brief load times mid fight, as in a half second or so. Not a major deal, but it does make the otherwise fluid action kinda herk at times.

The title of the game is "God Catching Alchemy Meister" or Kamidori Alchemy Meister (kinda prefer the latter since the direct translation is silly), and yeah, its a great game. I'm always a sucker for strategy RPGs with very in-depth aspects of crafting and character building. This doesn't have so much on the character building, kinda leaning towards Fire Emblem in that they just level up, gain stats, and go from there. The main heroines get outfits you can make that radically change their stats and skills, and the main character gets far more customization through his menu, but mostly its just swapping gear. Still, the strategy aspects of crawling around the maps and fighting monsters, and collecting materials to make new items is pretty fun. The game is split up into chapters, and they do warn you when you're about to change chapters since you can miss out on quests. All the quests tell you what chapter you fail them on too, which is very conveinant. The only thing you'd have to look at a guide for is the level certain characters have to be at to get events. Of course, being a strategy RPG with set characters...some are rather useless or ungodly slow, and very hard to level to get those events (in this case, mostly the earth elemental Aht since she only moves 2 spaces). Also, yes, it is an adult eroge game. Doesn't change the fact that the game itself is damn good, dirty pictures or not.

Beaten: Front Mission 4

Beaten

Front Mission 4

System: PS2 (Playing on PS3)
Status: Beaten
Currently: Just beat the game, need to go again and do the optional simulators.

Ah, another game that while great, took me forever to beat. I do love the Front Mission series, especially this game with how it portrays fairly realistic mechs. Its a fairly old game by today's standards, but the graphics still look very crisp (barring the wonky trees of course), and the little details they put into the terrain and combat make all the difference in the game and its presentation. The only odd spot there is when people are talking, they have a still image with their jaw moving up and down...which...looks really weird. The voice acting itself is pretty good though.

The characterization and story of the game plays out well. It never gets too deep into philosophical nonsense that has nothing to do with mechs, instead pretty much sticking to the people, their job (or goal), and having you follow them along. The oddity being that the game actually has two stories, one based on a team in Europe, and one based on a team in Venezuala. You would think that with an RPG with two stories like that, eventually they would combine to one final mission...nope. Eventually they do contact each other and exchange information, but you never have a mission where you use both teams. So instead you end up ping-ponging between the stories, following and enjoying each separately.

The game play is fun and enjoyable, though very slow at times. Some missions you can chew through pretty quickly, others are rather rough, and you have to go slow so as to not make any mistakes and keep healed...and that can lead to a mission lasting thirty minutes or so. There is a quick save function so you can resume in the middle of a mission, but sometimes the objectives you need to accomplish are borked by early decisions. The AI is both stupid and brilliant at the same time. They tend to lock on to one target and never change no matter what happens, which is dangerous for you, but it also means they ignore more vulnerable targets. Units that aren't close to you will either get 'pulled' by you getting close, or are activated on a certain turn. Usually this means you slow crawl across the map, pulling units one group at a time so you don't get overwhelmed. The mech designing aspect is simple enough, and you can tweak it to your play style, though there are noticeably better styles than others. Still, with two teams who have different skillsets, you get to experience a lot of different mechs without having to retool everyone, or worry about switching guys in and out.

Overall, a very good game, and considering I got it used for like 10$ it was well worth it. All I have to do to complete it is to do the optional simulator missions, but that requires a replay through on new game+, given by the time I realized they were there, I was already past the point of doing them for the European team.

Completed: Pokemon Leafgreen Version

Completed

Pokemon Leafgreen Version

System: Nintendo DS
Status: Completed!
Currently: Completed!

It is always a great thing to add another game to my list of completed. I may have to touch this again to send up starters, but I think you can get them and the other fossils in the other games without issues. I have kind of adjusted my views on this game, since I remembered it was the first remake, and the games were still working on a few things back at this point.

If you go back and play it now, yeah, it seems very bare bones. You can barely catch anything beyond the original 150, and the post game content consists of a few small islands with some Johto pokemon, Mewtwo of course, and the ability to rechallenge the Elite 4, and one of the legendary beasts from gen 2 wandering around. I did the islands yesterday, and the rest of that basically took this evening to finish up. The Elite 4 were actually rather challenging the second time around, the first time I curbstomped them.

Overall, its a mixed bag for the game, it clearly shows its age, and it lacks the refinements that the 4th gen games have, and also lacks the novelty of a new story and mons that the other 3rd gen games had. Overall, I would say pass on this unless you can find it rather cheap (hah), or you really want to get the legendaries associated with it (of which, I think only Mewtwo is unattainable elsewhere, could be wrong).

Daily Review: Pokemon Leafgreen Version

Daily Review

Pokemon Leafgreen Version

System: Gameboy Advance (Playing on a DS)

Status: Unfinished

Currently: 4 badges, working through Silph Co.

I really don't have much to say about the Pokemon games. They are kind of review proof. You either know you like them, you know you don't, or you haven't touched them since a certain game. Since the Leafgreen game is a remake of the first ones, its a bit strange, since it has a lot of the changes that have made them more balanced since the first incarnations, yet because it sticks to the same monsters being found throughout the world as in the original game, you really don't get a lot of the balancing advantages.

So yeah, this is probably the most 'eh' of the two remakes they've made so far. There's very little added to the game that isn't entirely superfluous other than the post game area where you can catch some different monsters than the original. If you've played the first gen already, you'd probably only want it to get the exclusive monsters that you need this version to get (which I think is only Mewtwo at this point, since the birds can be caught in HG/SS), and if you haven't played this gen already, there isn't much here to surprise you over the other versions with much wider selection initially.

My biggest trouble with the game is the system though, since I'm playing it on a DS, I'm so used to being able to close it and walk away, and have to remember the GBA games don't let you do the idle mode. Minor issue though, and not to do with the game. Does suck when you walk away, forget about it, and it dies on you though.