I'll make a note of that when I start it up. I struggle a lot more with keeping myself in balance, so there's not that much time I allow myself for games these days, but I'm hoping to put some time into it this weekend.
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RPG Community |OT| Take the Epoch to a New Era
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I'll make a note of that when I start it up. I struggle a lot more with keeping myself in balance, so there's not that much time I allow myself for games these days, but I'm hoping to put some time into it this weekend.
I figured I'd share my overly long Caligula Effect: Overdose writeup. I finished it on the first day of blitz (I was playing it through Feb anyways) so I swapped in another game in its spot.
The Caligula Effect: Overdose (PS4, PC, Switch)
Short Version:
A wonderfully written game that deals with the myriad psychological issues that plague the inhabitants of a virtual world. Characters shine as they take you through sweeping twists and turns throughout their arcs. A fantastic combat system lets you set up the perfect chain against your enemies as you predict their moves mere seconds into the future. A great soundtrack and solid overall narrative carry the game, making up for its issues in animation and general dungeon/level design. Some forgettable elements such as the 500+ student 'social link' program is too tedious to bother with to get passive skills, but they're wholly un-needed.
As you get to know your allies and enemies, you start to learn that there really is no good or evil - simply one side against another for their own personal reasons. Every character feels human with a real sense of growth, adding to the mostly delicate handling of social and psychological issues. A few trip-ups here and there come out of an incomplete understanding or unfortunate ignorance, but the game certainly has a positive message for nearly every one of its cast members, regardless of which side they're on.
The additions into the game, the complete overhaul of the UI and battle system, and the re-worked narrative make Overdose practically a remake. The additions are such an intrinsic part of this game that I simply cannot imagine it without the characters and arcs that were added. I can absolutely see why the original Vita version was panned so heavily as its barely half the game that Overdose is. I'd recommend it fans of the older Persona games (1, 2 EP, 2 IS) as the writer of this game worked on both of those. I really enjoyed my time with it and think its great overall, though I'll admit I'm more forgiving to games that resonate with me emotionally.
The Caligula Effect: Overdose (PS4, PC, Switch)
Short Version:
A wonderfully written game that deals with the myriad psychological issues that plague the inhabitants of a virtual world. Characters shine as they take you through sweeping twists and turns throughout their arcs. A fantastic combat system lets you set up the perfect chain against your enemies as you predict their moves mere seconds into the future. A great soundtrack and solid overall narrative carry the game, making up for its issues in animation and general dungeon/level design. Some forgettable elements such as the 500+ student 'social link' program is too tedious to bother with to get passive skills, but they're wholly un-needed.
As you get to know your allies and enemies, you start to learn that there really is no good or evil - simply one side against another for their own personal reasons. Every character feels human with a real sense of growth, adding to the mostly delicate handling of social and psychological issues. A few trip-ups here and there come out of an incomplete understanding or unfortunate ignorance, but the game certainly has a positive message for nearly every one of its cast members, regardless of which side they're on.
The additions into the game, the complete overhaul of the UI and battle system, and the re-worked narrative make Overdose practically a remake. The additions are such an intrinsic part of this game that I simply cannot imagine it without the characters and arcs that were added. I can absolutely see why the original Vita version was panned so heavily as its barely half the game that Overdose is. I'd recommend it fans of the older Persona games (1, 2 EP, 2 IS) as the writer of this game worked on both of those. I really enjoyed my time with it and think its great overall, though I'll admit I'm more forgiving to games that resonate with me emotionally.
The Caligula Effect: Overdose is a game that I purchased at release and never got around to. A friend online was playing it near launch and singing praises about its writing, music, and combat system. Having similar tastes in many aspects, I made a mental note to get to the game sooner than later. Other friends had cited the game as poor, bad, and a waste of time yet all of these statements came from people who played the original release on Vita. The friend singing praises however had similar things to say about the original entry. I'd wondered just how different a remaster could be for someone to be so negative on one iteration yet quite positive on the next. Almost a year later, I finally ripped off the plastic wrapping and gave it a spin and learned its far more than a remaster. The game is essentially a complete remake.
In Overdose, there were new characters added to the story to help flesh out the narrative. The combat system is completely revamped and the game is essentially doubled with the addition of the Musician route. Players now have the choice to join the games antagonists, known as the Musicians, and see just what their forbidden lives are all about. I was quickly warned by a friend in regards to the 'forbidden Ostinato Musician route' – and that warning was to not refuse taking the route. There is no moral choice in joining them as the games main antagonist even invites you to see just what they're about and let you decide how you want things to go. Consider it acting as a double agent. It's highly encouraged to do this as you'll see just why this game does not have a traditional concept of good or evil.
The game plays with psychology almost exclusively, diving into myriad traumas, phobias, and desires that initially define the people within, yet ultimately become just a tiny part of the character. The Caligula Effect is named for the feeling of doing something one shouldn't, breaking taboos and engaging in acts that should otherwise be forbidden. I've read that the game is named for the film as there is no actual 'effect' in psychology but more along the lines of the number of people who rushed out to see a highly nigh-pornographic film about the emperor Caligula and his endless sexual deviancy. Only a few times does the game give a namedrop, but the reason for choosing it – breaking taboos – it seems to fit in with the overall theme of the game.
The story is about a virtual world that people are transferred to upon hearing a song by a virtual idol that is similar to our very own worlds Hatsune Miku. People with sadness in their lives, difficulties living every day, and even severe traumas are offered a chance to live out their days in a virtual utopia free from pain. The place is built by two virtual idols who want to create a perfect world and allow people to live in blissful ignorance. Yet in their naivete, these idols Mu and Aria never stopped to think about peoples actual feelings. They continued building this paradise thinking it was the way to ease pain.
What would a perfect world be? This virtual paradise, Mobius, isn't made up on the actual inhabitants ideal world. Instead, it's a copy of the real world based on whats found online and in fiction – the thought that the best time of ones life is their high school days. While such a sentiment is incredibly incorrect for many people, television shows, manga, games, music, and more often pain high school life as something grand and fun without ever getting into just why it may an exercise in social torture. So, those transported into Mobius from the real world will live out their days as happy high school students regardless of how old they are in the real world. Upon entry, they're asked a few questions by Mu and given what they want to help them feel at easy.
Could it be a perfect body? A different gender? A multitude of friends? A string of talent? Fans galore? It could be anything that someone wanted to change in the real world. While living out their mindless bliss, once a person becomes aware that they're in a virtual world, everything changes for the worse. What used to be friends and family are now just faceless NPCs who act on a set routine. Imagine waking up to find out your entire family are just virtual clones programmed to do your bidding. One wouldn't be blamed if they went crazy at the thought.
Those who awoke to find out their perfect world is a sham now have an intense desire to throw away this world and go home – as part of the Go-Home Club. There are those who have awoken to this false reality and have decided they want to keep it going forever. Thus, they become musicians, namely the Ostinato Musicians. They create music that gains fans, much like the virtual idols, and keep more trapped souls addicted to this farcical world in an effort to keep the facade up for the rest of them. While it's easy to see why some people might want to continue living in such a paradise, some of these musicians take their freedom and power to an extreme.
At the start of the game, you meet with one of the two virtual idols who helped create the world. She's distraught and seeking help, having realized that Mu is slowly going crazy. Aria allies herself with you and you quickly join up with the Go-Home Club. She attunes your emotions and allows you to weaponize them, granting you a means to fight back against those who the musicians have turned into psychopaths. As you go through the game, you're introduced to more and more people who awaken to the fact that their reality is false. Over time, their emotions are tuned and formed into weapons – many of which represent some of the characters pasts, issues, or traumas.
Tying into weapons, the games combat is a treat. It's a mixture of strategy RPG, turn-based RPG, and has a touch of Active Turn Based systems found in games like Final Fantasy or Grandia. While this may seem like a difficult mixture to pull off, the game does it phenomenally well. In battle, you've four characters – all of which fall into particular types or styles. Some may be aggressive and offensive, others may be defenders who focus on counters, some may be technical powerhouses who need to be guarded while a few excel at support and long range attacks. Every single character is unique with their own style and half the fun of the game is in toying with new team compositions.
In battle, when you select your actions, you can see a prediction of the future across five seconds or so. You get whats called an Imaginary Chain that depicts what you'll do, what your enemy will do, how much damage they'll take, and so on. What it does not account for, however, are missed attacks. You can set up what would be the perfect chain of moves, but if you're lacking in accuracy or the enemy is simply too high a level, you might completely scrap your entire battle plan.
As you battle, you start off your turn by selecting three actions per character. Each of these actions can be delayed along a timeline to set up follow-up attacks, exploit weaknesses or altered states, or event delay your defending to ensure you block every portion of an attack. In the top left you'll see your hit rate. With a 95% hit rate, there's a high chance everything you see will go according to play. With a 25% chance to hit, you're better off trying for basic potshots that don't require any detailed setup.
Once you get your moves set up however, it's incredibly satisfying to see the entire chain play out. You may spend a thirty seconds to a minute planning out your attack and seeing the chain upwards of 12 times per round, but once you confirm your final action, it's time for the battle to shine. Some fights can be knocked out in seconds while others may take minutes, depending on your setup and what you're fighting. I've had regular enemies stunlock me with large area of effect attacks while bosses were on the other side of such an onslaught.
It rewards tactical thinking and preparation in such a grand way. It's quite amusing to suffer a verbal beatdown by an enemy who spends multiple minutes trash talking you, only to have them get wiped out in a single turn as you tweak and tailor your chain in a perfect manner. Countering their attack, sending them airborne and delaying your allies attacks until they're in the air, then exploiting their downed state as they land and even dealing critical damage as their 'risk gauge' raises as a result of getting hit so much.
The number of tools at your disposal is quite high, be it from a large number of attacks to a slew of support skills. At any point, characters can dash out of the way of attacks at the cost of an action, as well as guard or restore their SP which is used for all the attacks in the game. The way the combat system comes together is wonderful and I must say I enjoyed every moment of it. The game has an incredibly high number of battles (with one dungeon making practically every single battle in it mandatory due to corridor sizes), so its recommended to get familiar with the system quickly. That said, on Normal, combat was a breeze in most cases unless an enemy was 10+ levels above me. I did have a few boss fights push back quite hard on me, but I only ever saw a game over screen no more than three times in 35 hours.
The music in the game is another part where it shines. It's a beautiful mixture of artcore, pop, rock, electronic, and indie all blended together. With every antagonist having their own song that's made by real world vocaloid producers, there's a fantastic soundtrack that serves as a perfect backing for the hail of bullets and flurry of blades. The way the songs are portrayed in the dungeons is quite intriguing with pianos replacing all vocals until a fight actually start. Once the lyrics kick in and the music turns up, it adds an intensity to the control chaos of the tactical battles. With the addition of the musician route, listening to these songs at will has made me quite happy as there are a number of them that I simply could not get out of my head. The protagonists song is made by none other than Utsu-P, a favorite producer of mine who is known for making vocaloid metal and notable for being one of the first to make a vocaloid scream.
With a lovely soundtrack and magical battle system noted, it's time to move onto where the game shines the most – the characters. The entire narrative is driven by character interactions across a cast of over 20 characters. As mentioned before, this game does not have a traditional concept of good versus evil. As you interact with both the Go-Home Club and the Ostinato Musicians, you learn more about each person and why they are the way they are. You learn about why people came to Mobius, why they want to go back, why they want to stay, what they'll fight for and who they truly are.
Over the course of 35 hours I had an emotional rollercoaster across the entire cast. There were characters who I outright hated and wanted dead for hours only to turn around as I learned their story or they did something that essentially redeemed them. There were characters I trusted and liked, yet realized later they were little more than a lying snake. This entire cast of people starts as just a group of individuals defined by their disorders and traumas. Messiah complex, dysmorphophobia, sociopathy, bereavement, androphobia, aphonia, peter pan syndrome – you name. Someone has something psychological that brought them to Mobius. And the interesting part? They may just be a random NPC walking the halls.
As you get to know your comrades on both sides, there may be a flow of sympathy and empathy from the player as they may relate to one or more of these characters. I know I certainly did. Yet over time, that trauma or disorder or phobia eventually becomes something that doesn't define them. It becomes something they either learned to accept, to get over, to try to work with, or to simply deal with in their own way. By going through character episodes, I saw these allies being fleshed out as real people with real problems, some of which I personally shared. I grew close to them and was eager to find out more about them, to learn what they wanted to do about it if given the chance to go back to reality, and what I could do to help them with that.
Near the tail end of my playthrough, I wanted everyone to be able to go home. I didn't feel there was any good or evil save for one or two characters who were truly monsters. There was no good guys versus bad guys. It was simply people on two sides of a conflict with opposing viewpoints. Once I got to see why those who wanted to stay truly wanted to stay, I felt almost guilty for taking away the one place they could truly be happy – even if it was a lie and they knew it. As every characters story reached its climax, I felt there was a fantastic resolution to everything shortly after the 'secret' scene after the credits rolled.
The story was expertly crafted from a character perspective. The ups and downs, twists and turns, the guesses that made me suspicious of some members and trusting of others being flipped around, the gradual reveals, and the overall growth of these people really made the cast stand out as one of the best overall groups I've seen in a game. These people grew up over the course of the game, trusted and confided in one another, and exposed their damaged hearts to the world in an effort to form a bond with those they never thought possible.
When it comes to games being subtitled or dubbed, I've no real preference unless the dub comes out bad due to poor acting or poor direction. Caligula is a game where I'm uncertain if the voice acting would actually be viable in English due to how much screaming there is between characters. Hearing these men and women pour their hearts out, get at each others throats, and scream until their voices crack as tears stream down their face is a level of drama that isn't often seen in English voice acting. It's not to say that it would be bad in English, I just feel that the voice directors wouldn't push for such brutal emotion in the most heated of lines. I felt like some members could be heard practically shaking as they lamented and their performances certainly elevated the experience even if they weren't speaking my language.
I had favorite members who I wished a better world for, hated members who I wished would turn themselves in when they got back to reality, and even those who I questioned the sanity of because they seemed to be people who could not operate in a society in any form, be it virtual or not. Yet as those credits rolled by, I learned why they're like that. There is a reason for everything. Every action taken by these people on either side – and they're all understandable save for one vile human being who I won't touch on for the sake of spoilers.
It's incredibly difficult for me to imagine this game without the musician route and without the seven additional characters and storylines that came with the Overdose release. It feels like the original wouldn't even be half the game. It'd be a soulless husk operating on a theme and idea that never would be actually realized. Overdose is the second chance that this game deserved and it did such a wonderful job of telling a story about empathy.
While I could gush about the combat, story, characters, and music, not everything in the game is great. To point out a few negatives, the game generally looks pretty flat with some stiff animations that look bizarre or out of place at times. Weapons clip through clothing, legs jut off to the side in strange angles when spinning, and there's a weird sense of the characters looking like they're on ice at times. The models themselves aren't anything special and its pretty obvious they're just up-res'd Vita models. Thankfully, most of the talking is done with portraits which are expertly done and simply drip with style.
Another negative, though its something that ended up being practically useless, is the Causality Link. There are over 500 students in Mobius and each one of them has a problem. Be it a fear, a fetish, a guilt, a complex, a disorder, a trauma, or simply just an issue in general, there are so many students who are tied together in a massive web that covers the entire school. There's a huge mystery surrounding a murdered girl, there are those who question the nature of reality, there are gangs and turf wars, and there are even those who are aware of the world and just want to be left alone. How do you interact with these people? Well…
Unfortunately you have to talk to every person up to three times to get them to befriend you. Then they may reveal what their problem is. You'll learn their problem and then get a hint on how to solve it. At that point you'll invite them into your party and do what it asks of you such as equipping a specific item or talking to a specific character or raising affinity with someone they like. It's a world of tedium that simply takes far too long to ever be worth it. The biggest issue with this system is that its' entirely optional but it's the only way to get passive skills.
Thankfully, I got through the entire game having only resolved one random NPCs issue because it just happened to be convenient. I nabbed a 10%+ experience boost passive which helped me with catching up lower leveled party members, but I found just doing one of these quests took enough time and effort to make me shy away from wanting to resolve them all. I imagine on higher difficulties, these passive skills would come in handy and I'm sure with a guide there'd be a way to beeline towards the crucial passives. I've also been informed that completing the Causality Link can lock you out of the True Ending due to an unpatched bug, but I feel like anyone crazy enough to do do all 500+ of these social links would have already seen that ending by this point.
Finally, level design is a bit bizarre in some cases. The game handwaves away the insane dungeon design by stating the virtual idols simply put together a mishmash or everyone's memories in regards to floorplans, hence why there are doors to nowhere, massive gaps in floors, incredibly tight corridors, and mazes galore. With the addition of a dash feature and enemies having relatively small vision cones, skipping battles is quite easily with the exception of one temple that is incredibly claustrophobic. I'd say half the dungeon was spent in battle due to how many fights you have to do thanks to the tiny walkways and throngs of enemies littering the map.
Despite a few issues with animations, level design, and presentation, I felt the game handled its psychological and social commentary quite well. There are a few slip-ups that seem mostly attributed to ignorance than malice such as heterophobia vs androphobia and the localization of some societal issues and syndromes that simply do not exist in the US can lead to a bit of confusion. However, it's a game with a message that needs to be heard in full, as taking a simple sentence or screenshot out of context could paint the games commentary in a negative light.
One such example could be a character who struggles with her weight in the real world due to her dysmophophobia. This causes her to be extremely critical and mean to overweight people as she lashes out against the fear of something she may become. What would seem to be a series of fat jokes and trashing on overweight people does eventually get resolved in a dearly apologetic and heartfelt way with a series of scenarios that tug at the heartstrings. It's a reminder that context is key and that these characters are just humans who make mistakes. They can be mean, cruel, awful, and harsh while also being kind, loving, supportive, and gentle. No one is black and white. They're a murky mixture of grey that is subject to emotions.
I think it's worth looking at for anyone who liked the earlier Persona games as its written by Tadashi Satomi of Revelations: Persona, Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment fame. By the end of the game, my playtime was around 35 hours though I'd say two hours of that was idle time due to chores and errands taking place between a few scenes or battles. I didn't do any of the endgame optional superbosses nor did I dig too deep into the chaotic web of social links in the Causality Link.
To wrap it all up, I think The Caligula Effect: Overdose is a wonderful game that may not be for everyone. While the battle system and UI were overhauled completely, some may find issue with the way the game presents itself, the pacing, or just find themselves turned off by it being somewhat like a Persona game. I had a lot of fun playing it and I enjoyed my time in the world. I really loved the characters, enjoyed the sadistic dungeons, bounced my head to nearly every song, spent hours setting up the perfect chains in battle, and found my eyes watering up as someone shared a bit more of their hurtful past. Despite a few notable flaws that don't detract too heavily from the experience, it's a wonderfully written game with characters I'm unlikely to forget for years to come.
In Overdose, there were new characters added to the story to help flesh out the narrative. The combat system is completely revamped and the game is essentially doubled with the addition of the Musician route. Players now have the choice to join the games antagonists, known as the Musicians, and see just what their forbidden lives are all about. I was quickly warned by a friend in regards to the 'forbidden Ostinato Musician route' – and that warning was to not refuse taking the route. There is no moral choice in joining them as the games main antagonist even invites you to see just what they're about and let you decide how you want things to go. Consider it acting as a double agent. It's highly encouraged to do this as you'll see just why this game does not have a traditional concept of good or evil.
The game plays with psychology almost exclusively, diving into myriad traumas, phobias, and desires that initially define the people within, yet ultimately become just a tiny part of the character. The Caligula Effect is named for the feeling of doing something one shouldn't, breaking taboos and engaging in acts that should otherwise be forbidden. I've read that the game is named for the film as there is no actual 'effect' in psychology but more along the lines of the number of people who rushed out to see a highly nigh-pornographic film about the emperor Caligula and his endless sexual deviancy. Only a few times does the game give a namedrop, but the reason for choosing it – breaking taboos – it seems to fit in with the overall theme of the game.
The story is about a virtual world that people are transferred to upon hearing a song by a virtual idol that is similar to our very own worlds Hatsune Miku. People with sadness in their lives, difficulties living every day, and even severe traumas are offered a chance to live out their days in a virtual utopia free from pain. The place is built by two virtual idols who want to create a perfect world and allow people to live in blissful ignorance. Yet in their naivete, these idols Mu and Aria never stopped to think about peoples actual feelings. They continued building this paradise thinking it was the way to ease pain.
What would a perfect world be? This virtual paradise, Mobius, isn't made up on the actual inhabitants ideal world. Instead, it's a copy of the real world based on whats found online and in fiction – the thought that the best time of ones life is their high school days. While such a sentiment is incredibly incorrect for many people, television shows, manga, games, music, and more often pain high school life as something grand and fun without ever getting into just why it may an exercise in social torture. So, those transported into Mobius from the real world will live out their days as happy high school students regardless of how old they are in the real world. Upon entry, they're asked a few questions by Mu and given what they want to help them feel at easy.
Could it be a perfect body? A different gender? A multitude of friends? A string of talent? Fans galore? It could be anything that someone wanted to change in the real world. While living out their mindless bliss, once a person becomes aware that they're in a virtual world, everything changes for the worse. What used to be friends and family are now just faceless NPCs who act on a set routine. Imagine waking up to find out your entire family are just virtual clones programmed to do your bidding. One wouldn't be blamed if they went crazy at the thought.
Those who awoke to find out their perfect world is a sham now have an intense desire to throw away this world and go home – as part of the Go-Home Club. There are those who have awoken to this false reality and have decided they want to keep it going forever. Thus, they become musicians, namely the Ostinato Musicians. They create music that gains fans, much like the virtual idols, and keep more trapped souls addicted to this farcical world in an effort to keep the facade up for the rest of them. While it's easy to see why some people might want to continue living in such a paradise, some of these musicians take their freedom and power to an extreme.
At the start of the game, you meet with one of the two virtual idols who helped create the world. She's distraught and seeking help, having realized that Mu is slowly going crazy. Aria allies herself with you and you quickly join up with the Go-Home Club. She attunes your emotions and allows you to weaponize them, granting you a means to fight back against those who the musicians have turned into psychopaths. As you go through the game, you're introduced to more and more people who awaken to the fact that their reality is false. Over time, their emotions are tuned and formed into weapons – many of which represent some of the characters pasts, issues, or traumas.
Tying into weapons, the games combat is a treat. It's a mixture of strategy RPG, turn-based RPG, and has a touch of Active Turn Based systems found in games like Final Fantasy or Grandia. While this may seem like a difficult mixture to pull off, the game does it phenomenally well. In battle, you've four characters – all of which fall into particular types or styles. Some may be aggressive and offensive, others may be defenders who focus on counters, some may be technical powerhouses who need to be guarded while a few excel at support and long range attacks. Every single character is unique with their own style and half the fun of the game is in toying with new team compositions.
In battle, when you select your actions, you can see a prediction of the future across five seconds or so. You get whats called an Imaginary Chain that depicts what you'll do, what your enemy will do, how much damage they'll take, and so on. What it does not account for, however, are missed attacks. You can set up what would be the perfect chain of moves, but if you're lacking in accuracy or the enemy is simply too high a level, you might completely scrap your entire battle plan.
As you battle, you start off your turn by selecting three actions per character. Each of these actions can be delayed along a timeline to set up follow-up attacks, exploit weaknesses or altered states, or event delay your defending to ensure you block every portion of an attack. In the top left you'll see your hit rate. With a 95% hit rate, there's a high chance everything you see will go according to play. With a 25% chance to hit, you're better off trying for basic potshots that don't require any detailed setup.
Once you get your moves set up however, it's incredibly satisfying to see the entire chain play out. You may spend a thirty seconds to a minute planning out your attack and seeing the chain upwards of 12 times per round, but once you confirm your final action, it's time for the battle to shine. Some fights can be knocked out in seconds while others may take minutes, depending on your setup and what you're fighting. I've had regular enemies stunlock me with large area of effect attacks while bosses were on the other side of such an onslaught.
It rewards tactical thinking and preparation in such a grand way. It's quite amusing to suffer a verbal beatdown by an enemy who spends multiple minutes trash talking you, only to have them get wiped out in a single turn as you tweak and tailor your chain in a perfect manner. Countering their attack, sending them airborne and delaying your allies attacks until they're in the air, then exploiting their downed state as they land and even dealing critical damage as their 'risk gauge' raises as a result of getting hit so much.
The number of tools at your disposal is quite high, be it from a large number of attacks to a slew of support skills. At any point, characters can dash out of the way of attacks at the cost of an action, as well as guard or restore their SP which is used for all the attacks in the game. The way the combat system comes together is wonderful and I must say I enjoyed every moment of it. The game has an incredibly high number of battles (with one dungeon making practically every single battle in it mandatory due to corridor sizes), so its recommended to get familiar with the system quickly. That said, on Normal, combat was a breeze in most cases unless an enemy was 10+ levels above me. I did have a few boss fights push back quite hard on me, but I only ever saw a game over screen no more than three times in 35 hours.
The music in the game is another part where it shines. It's a beautiful mixture of artcore, pop, rock, electronic, and indie all blended together. With every antagonist having their own song that's made by real world vocaloid producers, there's a fantastic soundtrack that serves as a perfect backing for the hail of bullets and flurry of blades. The way the songs are portrayed in the dungeons is quite intriguing with pianos replacing all vocals until a fight actually start. Once the lyrics kick in and the music turns up, it adds an intensity to the control chaos of the tactical battles. With the addition of the musician route, listening to these songs at will has made me quite happy as there are a number of them that I simply could not get out of my head. The protagonists song is made by none other than Utsu-P, a favorite producer of mine who is known for making vocaloid metal and notable for being one of the first to make a vocaloid scream.
With a lovely soundtrack and magical battle system noted, it's time to move onto where the game shines the most – the characters. The entire narrative is driven by character interactions across a cast of over 20 characters. As mentioned before, this game does not have a traditional concept of good versus evil. As you interact with both the Go-Home Club and the Ostinato Musicians, you learn more about each person and why they are the way they are. You learn about why people came to Mobius, why they want to go back, why they want to stay, what they'll fight for and who they truly are.
Over the course of 35 hours I had an emotional rollercoaster across the entire cast. There were characters who I outright hated and wanted dead for hours only to turn around as I learned their story or they did something that essentially redeemed them. There were characters I trusted and liked, yet realized later they were little more than a lying snake. This entire cast of people starts as just a group of individuals defined by their disorders and traumas. Messiah complex, dysmorphophobia, sociopathy, bereavement, androphobia, aphonia, peter pan syndrome – you name. Someone has something psychological that brought them to Mobius. And the interesting part? They may just be a random NPC walking the halls.
As you get to know your comrades on both sides, there may be a flow of sympathy and empathy from the player as they may relate to one or more of these characters. I know I certainly did. Yet over time, that trauma or disorder or phobia eventually becomes something that doesn't define them. It becomes something they either learned to accept, to get over, to try to work with, or to simply deal with in their own way. By going through character episodes, I saw these allies being fleshed out as real people with real problems, some of which I personally shared. I grew close to them and was eager to find out more about them, to learn what they wanted to do about it if given the chance to go back to reality, and what I could do to help them with that.
Near the tail end of my playthrough, I wanted everyone to be able to go home. I didn't feel there was any good or evil save for one or two characters who were truly monsters. There was no good guys versus bad guys. It was simply people on two sides of a conflict with opposing viewpoints. Once I got to see why those who wanted to stay truly wanted to stay, I felt almost guilty for taking away the one place they could truly be happy – even if it was a lie and they knew it. As every characters story reached its climax, I felt there was a fantastic resolution to everything shortly after the 'secret' scene after the credits rolled.
The story was expertly crafted from a character perspective. The ups and downs, twists and turns, the guesses that made me suspicious of some members and trusting of others being flipped around, the gradual reveals, and the overall growth of these people really made the cast stand out as one of the best overall groups I've seen in a game. These people grew up over the course of the game, trusted and confided in one another, and exposed their damaged hearts to the world in an effort to form a bond with those they never thought possible.
When it comes to games being subtitled or dubbed, I've no real preference unless the dub comes out bad due to poor acting or poor direction. Caligula is a game where I'm uncertain if the voice acting would actually be viable in English due to how much screaming there is between characters. Hearing these men and women pour their hearts out, get at each others throats, and scream until their voices crack as tears stream down their face is a level of drama that isn't often seen in English voice acting. It's not to say that it would be bad in English, I just feel that the voice directors wouldn't push for such brutal emotion in the most heated of lines. I felt like some members could be heard practically shaking as they lamented and their performances certainly elevated the experience even if they weren't speaking my language.
I had favorite members who I wished a better world for, hated members who I wished would turn themselves in when they got back to reality, and even those who I questioned the sanity of because they seemed to be people who could not operate in a society in any form, be it virtual or not. Yet as those credits rolled by, I learned why they're like that. There is a reason for everything. Every action taken by these people on either side – and they're all understandable save for one vile human being who I won't touch on for the sake of spoilers.
It's incredibly difficult for me to imagine this game without the musician route and without the seven additional characters and storylines that came with the Overdose release. It feels like the original wouldn't even be half the game. It'd be a soulless husk operating on a theme and idea that never would be actually realized. Overdose is the second chance that this game deserved and it did such a wonderful job of telling a story about empathy.
While I could gush about the combat, story, characters, and music, not everything in the game is great. To point out a few negatives, the game generally looks pretty flat with some stiff animations that look bizarre or out of place at times. Weapons clip through clothing, legs jut off to the side in strange angles when spinning, and there's a weird sense of the characters looking like they're on ice at times. The models themselves aren't anything special and its pretty obvious they're just up-res'd Vita models. Thankfully, most of the talking is done with portraits which are expertly done and simply drip with style.
Another negative, though its something that ended up being practically useless, is the Causality Link. There are over 500 students in Mobius and each one of them has a problem. Be it a fear, a fetish, a guilt, a complex, a disorder, a trauma, or simply just an issue in general, there are so many students who are tied together in a massive web that covers the entire school. There's a huge mystery surrounding a murdered girl, there are those who question the nature of reality, there are gangs and turf wars, and there are even those who are aware of the world and just want to be left alone. How do you interact with these people? Well…
Unfortunately you have to talk to every person up to three times to get them to befriend you. Then they may reveal what their problem is. You'll learn their problem and then get a hint on how to solve it. At that point you'll invite them into your party and do what it asks of you such as equipping a specific item or talking to a specific character or raising affinity with someone they like. It's a world of tedium that simply takes far too long to ever be worth it. The biggest issue with this system is that its' entirely optional but it's the only way to get passive skills.
Thankfully, I got through the entire game having only resolved one random NPCs issue because it just happened to be convenient. I nabbed a 10%+ experience boost passive which helped me with catching up lower leveled party members, but I found just doing one of these quests took enough time and effort to make me shy away from wanting to resolve them all. I imagine on higher difficulties, these passive skills would come in handy and I'm sure with a guide there'd be a way to beeline towards the crucial passives. I've also been informed that completing the Causality Link can lock you out of the True Ending due to an unpatched bug, but I feel like anyone crazy enough to do do all 500+ of these social links would have already seen that ending by this point.
Finally, level design is a bit bizarre in some cases. The game handwaves away the insane dungeon design by stating the virtual idols simply put together a mishmash or everyone's memories in regards to floorplans, hence why there are doors to nowhere, massive gaps in floors, incredibly tight corridors, and mazes galore. With the addition of a dash feature and enemies having relatively small vision cones, skipping battles is quite easily with the exception of one temple that is incredibly claustrophobic. I'd say half the dungeon was spent in battle due to how many fights you have to do thanks to the tiny walkways and throngs of enemies littering the map.
Despite a few issues with animations, level design, and presentation, I felt the game handled its psychological and social commentary quite well. There are a few slip-ups that seem mostly attributed to ignorance than malice such as heterophobia vs androphobia and the localization of some societal issues and syndromes that simply do not exist in the US can lead to a bit of confusion. However, it's a game with a message that needs to be heard in full, as taking a simple sentence or screenshot out of context could paint the games commentary in a negative light.
One such example could be a character who struggles with her weight in the real world due to her dysmophophobia. This causes her to be extremely critical and mean to overweight people as she lashes out against the fear of something she may become. What would seem to be a series of fat jokes and trashing on overweight people does eventually get resolved in a dearly apologetic and heartfelt way with a series of scenarios that tug at the heartstrings. It's a reminder that context is key and that these characters are just humans who make mistakes. They can be mean, cruel, awful, and harsh while also being kind, loving, supportive, and gentle. No one is black and white. They're a murky mixture of grey that is subject to emotions.
I think it's worth looking at for anyone who liked the earlier Persona games as its written by Tadashi Satomi of Revelations: Persona, Persona 2: Innocent Sin and Persona 2: Eternal Punishment fame. By the end of the game, my playtime was around 35 hours though I'd say two hours of that was idle time due to chores and errands taking place between a few scenes or battles. I didn't do any of the endgame optional superbosses nor did I dig too deep into the chaotic web of social links in the Causality Link.
To wrap it all up, I think The Caligula Effect: Overdose is a wonderful game that may not be for everyone. While the battle system and UI were overhauled completely, some may find issue with the way the game presents itself, the pacing, or just find themselves turned off by it being somewhat like a Persona game. I had a lot of fun playing it and I enjoyed my time in the world. I really loved the characters, enjoyed the sadistic dungeons, bounced my head to nearly every song, spent hours setting up the perfect chains in battle, and found my eyes watering up as someone shared a bit more of their hurtful past. Despite a few notable flaws that don't detract too heavily from the experience, it's a wonderfully written game with characters I'm unlikely to forget for years to come.
I beat the second game for my blitz with Dragon Quest II: Luminaries of the Legendary Line. And so far, while still mostly enjoyable, it definitely is my least favorite Dragon Quest game so far. It starts fine with gameplay very reminiscent of the first game. You soon get some party members though, so the battle system is a lot more involved with multiple monsters to fight and more magic abilities for you to use. While this is all nice in theory, there are also downsides to this with battles taking considerably longer to complete, while mostly being not all that interesting. Also it seemed to me like the encounter rate might be higher than in DQ 1 and the difficulty curve is a bit weird, so with all that the pacing seemed off to me at times.
Another aspect that contributes to this is the larger world and the freedom you have to explore. While it was a lot of fun to go exploring at first, it soon became tedious to me, because I was missing things everywhere and I sometimes couldn't remember where I had to go and how the places were named. So I spent a lot of the time zooming around the world looking for stuff I half remembered. Having the ability to quickly make screenshots on the Switch helped me a bit with this, it was like a nice little notebook that I probably should use more in the next game. Another annoying part is the invisible doors: I just have to know, that I have to walk into that wall? Really? (Or maybe I am just blind or stupid? Maybe both)
So now a bit more about my personal experiences with the game:
While Dragon Quest I's biggest strength was its focus, the biggest weakness of the second game is its lack of it. There is a lot to do, but it doesn't fit together all that well. There are some great moments and you can see the groundwork of the games to come, but as of today I don't know if I would recommend it. While the first game has a unique charm to it, this one feels a bit like a worse version of the future games.
Another aspect that contributes to this is the larger world and the freedom you have to explore. While it was a lot of fun to go exploring at first, it soon became tedious to me, because I was missing things everywhere and I sometimes couldn't remember where I had to go and how the places were named. So I spent a lot of the time zooming around the world looking for stuff I half remembered. Having the ability to quickly make screenshots on the Switch helped me a bit with this, it was like a nice little notebook that I probably should use more in the next game. Another annoying part is the invisible doors: I just have to know, that I have to walk into that wall? Really? (Or maybe I am just blind or stupid? Maybe both)
So now a bit more about my personal experiences with the game:
It starts with the search for the prince of Cannock, who apparently can't sit still for a second. This part was so long, that I actually thought, that he might be dead as I only knew him as a coffin so far. But well he is alive and he got a heal spell, so that is nice. On to save the final member of the party with the princess of Moonbrooke. I liked this part of the game a lot, with the cursed princess following you around and the exploration of the destroyed castle of Moonbrooke.
But after all this sadness, it's time for a bit of adventure. Jumping from a tower to glide across the sea to another part of the world is a very cool idea, and while not all that exciting to look at in such an old game, I still find the idea exhilarating, though I probably couldn't do it in real life. Lucky for all of you, the world does not depend on me to save it. The adventure continues with getting a ship and finally being able to explore the whole world. So I visited the DQ 1 continent and checked out the Dragonlord's former castle. I got quite shocked, when I got to the basement and saw the dragonlord sitting on his throne. So I went back to prepare for a big fight, but he is actually not the dragonlord, but his grandson and a pretty nice guy who helps you in your quest. Appearances can be quite deceiving and people shouldn't be judged on their appearance or ancestry.
I think this first part of the game was the best part and it goes a bit downhill from here on out. Exploring with the ship is fun, but you have to get so many different doodads and they all clutter up your inventory and you forget where to use them, well at least that was my experience. Sometimes I randomly stumbled upon important things like one of the five sigils, but they felt very unimportant at the time. And as I was bumbling around I fought a lot, so I was quickly overleveled for big parts of the game. So this middle part of the game felt very unfocused and unsatisfying to me. The final parts aren't all that much better. I hated falling through the roof in the second to last dungeon and the enemies were now a bit too strong for me, killing me instantly if they attacked first. So I finally got through this stupid cave and the new monsters in the snowy final area are even tougher, with suicide monkeys killing me in an instant… At least there is a priest nearby with free healing.
So I fought my way through Hargon's castle and get stuck on this guy Belial, who just doesn't want to die. So after a few attempts, I try Hocus Pocus and hope for a good effect and he just instantly dies. So that was an amazing moment for me right there. Got immediately stuck on Hargon afterwards though. So I grinded for a bit and got better equipment and now I easily defeat him. But Malroth is no pushover. He has few attacks, but they are pretty strong and although it looked pretty bad for me at times, I still beat him on my first try. So there are no monsters anymore and I also am the new king now. Sweet!
But after all this sadness, it's time for a bit of adventure. Jumping from a tower to glide across the sea to another part of the world is a very cool idea, and while not all that exciting to look at in such an old game, I still find the idea exhilarating, though I probably couldn't do it in real life. Lucky for all of you, the world does not depend on me to save it. The adventure continues with getting a ship and finally being able to explore the whole world. So I visited the DQ 1 continent and checked out the Dragonlord's former castle. I got quite shocked, when I got to the basement and saw the dragonlord sitting on his throne. So I went back to prepare for a big fight, but he is actually not the dragonlord, but his grandson and a pretty nice guy who helps you in your quest. Appearances can be quite deceiving and people shouldn't be judged on their appearance or ancestry.
I think this first part of the game was the best part and it goes a bit downhill from here on out. Exploring with the ship is fun, but you have to get so many different doodads and they all clutter up your inventory and you forget where to use them, well at least that was my experience. Sometimes I randomly stumbled upon important things like one of the five sigils, but they felt very unimportant at the time. And as I was bumbling around I fought a lot, so I was quickly overleveled for big parts of the game. So this middle part of the game felt very unfocused and unsatisfying to me. The final parts aren't all that much better. I hated falling through the roof in the second to last dungeon and the enemies were now a bit too strong for me, killing me instantly if they attacked first. So I finally got through this stupid cave and the new monsters in the snowy final area are even tougher, with suicide monkeys killing me in an instant… At least there is a priest nearby with free healing.
So I fought my way through Hargon's castle and get stuck on this guy Belial, who just doesn't want to die. So after a few attempts, I try Hocus Pocus and hope for a good effect and he just instantly dies. So that was an amazing moment for me right there. Got immediately stuck on Hargon afterwards though. So I grinded for a bit and got better equipment and now I easily defeat him. But Malroth is no pushover. He has few attacks, but they are pretty strong and although it looked pretty bad for me at times, I still beat him on my first try. So there are no monsters anymore and I also am the new king now. Sweet!
While Dragon Quest I's biggest strength was its focus, the biggest weakness of the second game is its lack of it. There is a lot to do, but it doesn't fit together all that well. There are some great moments and you can see the groundwork of the games to come, but as of today I don't know if I would recommend it. While the first game has a unique charm to it, this one feels a bit like a worse version of the future games.
I finished up the story for Destiny Connect: Tick-Tock Travelers on PS4 today. I loved the Disney-inspired art style. While it's no Kingdom Hearts III in quality of graphics, it was still colorful and pleasing. It was also interesting how all the enemies were appliances. The soundtrack was also great, though it's a shame NIS didn't release the soundtrack anywhere. The story was alright. It's about time travel and I really love these kinds stories, but I never really felt that attached to the characters. There were some emotional moments in the story, and it did have a great ending, though. The story was kind of short, but it didn't feel like it was going too fast and it didn't drag on either. It took me about 13 hours to complete it. The gameplay is where the game really lacked. It was a very basic turn-based JRPG, but it did feel nostalgic and refreshing playing a game like this as it reminded me of JRPGs in the PS2 era.
I'm going for the platinum trophy before I move onto Yakuza 0 for my next blitz game. It's a bit of a grind and very luck-based, but hopefully it won't take long.
I'm going for the platinum trophy before I move onto Yakuza 0 for my next blitz game. It's a bit of a grind and very luck-based, but hopefully it won't take long.
Finished Shadows: Awakening, my second blitz game this blitz season
Final verdict is that it is alright. It has some flaws but overall I would say it is one of these solid but unspectacular games one needs to play every now and then to ground one a little bit.
I bought the game in the last Steam Sale because I was looking for something in the vein of Diablo 3 but playable with a gamepad because I've come to enjoy these types of game more with a controller. Even if that comes with losing precision in aiming abilities. So when I first started the game I was thinking for an hour or two that I was playing the game wrong. Enemies took long too kill and the overall pace was too slow. It took me a bit to adjust that loot is not a focus of the game itself but rather puzzles and its story.
The story itself is alright. You are a demon summoned to stop a powerful council of mages and have the ability to consume souls of powerful warriors or beings to add to your party. I won't go into more details but I thought it was very well done. There are also consequences in the story but also in the gameplay if you recruit a character or not. For example I chose the hunter character in the beginning so some areas were only a place for loot and exp. If I would have chosen another character to start with they would be part of the personal story of that character. How you can apparently skip entire characters which seem important for some story parts would be interesting to see for me if I would replay games. Since that often leads me to want to see as much as a game has to offer in a single playthrough I also respect it if developers are bold enough to withhold stuff from you depending on your decisions.
I also found the world they build interesting. There is a game called Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition with which Shadows: Awakening is linked storywise. Since I haven't played the former I don't know these connections though. There is also Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms of which Awakening is a new version of because S:HK had a lawsuit between devs and publishers.
Gameplaywise you are always controlling a single party member at a time and have a party of 4. Between these 4 you can switch to any character almost every time. You are blocked from it if the character is stunned in combat or if you are in an area were only one of your character is allowed in because they have story connections there. There are also a number of other characters available which you can put into your party. Though only a few characters matter for the story while others don't even have dialogue and are just a reward for a bossfight. Here I would've preferred a "quality over quantity" approach. And two party slots are always set for the demon and the character you chose in the beginning.
I think I would've also preferred if they went for a linear level up progressions instead of what they did. You have 4 stats to dump your points into and since the roles of your characters are pre-determined it doesn't make much sense to put them in more than 2 stats.
There is also a mechanic where you switch between the demon and human realm. You enter the demon realm by changing to the demon character. Sometimes the road is blocked or a bridge is out in the human realm and the only way to get to the other side is in the demon realm. It is a blessing and a curse for me. On the one hand it is cool solving puzzles this way (more a bit down). And when you enter the demon realm the human world stops. So you can either use this to scout out how many enemies there are or to change the positioning. On the other hand there are also enemies that are only fightable in the demon realm so you have to go through an area twice to get all the exp. Since some of the areas are big and you need to switch between both realms to get everywhere it can get a bit tedious.
The combat is kind of one note. You stand next to an enemy and press or hold your attack button. Occasionally you heal yourself or use an ability. The abilities are pretty boring. Some small area of effect in which you deal damage and then you wait for the cooldown to go away and your mana to regenerate and repeat. The passives are also pretty boring and give either a stat boost, more defense or a small boost for something to happen (critical strike, mana recovery, etc.). For this I also got to add that I barely used magic since I didn't pick the mage in the beginning and had no desire to buy equipment for the mages I unlocked along the way. Maybe their abilities are bit more exciting but from what I've played with them not by much.
The puzzles are good and some are tedious at the same. They are often an interplay between the human world and the demon realm. Some times the solution is in the demon realm. Sometimes you have to search for something with a similar form in the human world and then switch to the demon realm to know what candles you need to light. Sometimes you need to cross an abyss and the bridge is only in the demon realm. Or the solution is right there, highlighted in the demon realm and you need to remember a sequence and apply it in the human world. There is neat stuff there but then there are also instanced where the solution is in a random corner of the map somewhere in the background. Though to be fair these are mostly only optional puzzles where this is the case. Puzzles also often repeat though then use another frequency. My least favorite ones were the ones where you had to roll a stone around to put it on a switch. It wouldn't be so bad if there would be a way to grab them. If there is one I didn't find it and instead had to roll it by walking against it. Didn't always work that well.
I should also add that in the end I used cheat engine. Initially only to increase the movement speed. It broke the game a little bit but that was something I didn't have too much a problem with. What the table I used also activated was better loot so everything that dropped for me was the highest rarity. And honestly, it made the game better for me. The loot was probably my least favorite aspect of the game. Sometimes you stumble upon a room with strong enemies or a puzzle guarding a treasure chest only for it to either only contain currency or equipment that is worse than what you already had. And even with the higher rarity a lot of it was junk that was worthless. And since enemies don't respawn there is no way to possibly get better equipment by farming or more money to buy the good stuff from merchants. Would've preferred it if they made the equipment drops set rather than random.
Graphically I liked the environments. Nothing to special but nicely put together and cohesive. Also taking aesthetics from different cultures. The game is also fully voiced which led to a soldier in an Arabic themed city speaking with a (I believe) Scottish accent.
Want to wrap this writeup before I have to leave so sorry if it isn't fully complete or some typos are in there. In the end I don't want to be too harsh on the game since I binged it the last couple of days and that always impacts how I enjoy games. Like I said in the beginning it is an alright game. It is competently made, has some ideas but also some flaws. If there is a sale on it I would recommend to trying it out.
Final verdict is that it is alright. It has some flaws but overall I would say it is one of these solid but unspectacular games one needs to play every now and then to ground one a little bit.
I bought the game in the last Steam Sale because I was looking for something in the vein of Diablo 3 but playable with a gamepad because I've come to enjoy these types of game more with a controller. Even if that comes with losing precision in aiming abilities. So when I first started the game I was thinking for an hour or two that I was playing the game wrong. Enemies took long too kill and the overall pace was too slow. It took me a bit to adjust that loot is not a focus of the game itself but rather puzzles and its story.
The story itself is alright. You are a demon summoned to stop a powerful council of mages and have the ability to consume souls of powerful warriors or beings to add to your party. I won't go into more details but I thought it was very well done. There are also consequences in the story but also in the gameplay if you recruit a character or not. For example I chose the hunter character in the beginning so some areas were only a place for loot and exp. If I would have chosen another character to start with they would be part of the personal story of that character. How you can apparently skip entire characters which seem important for some story parts would be interesting to see for me if I would replay games. Since that often leads me to want to see as much as a game has to offer in a single playthrough I also respect it if developers are bold enough to withhold stuff from you depending on your decisions.
I also found the world they build interesting. There is a game called Heretic Kingdoms: The Inquisition with which Shadows: Awakening is linked storywise. Since I haven't played the former I don't know these connections though. There is also Shadows: Heretic Kingdoms of which Awakening is a new version of because S:HK had a lawsuit between devs and publishers.
Gameplaywise you are always controlling a single party member at a time and have a party of 4. Between these 4 you can switch to any character almost every time. You are blocked from it if the character is stunned in combat or if you are in an area were only one of your character is allowed in because they have story connections there. There are also a number of other characters available which you can put into your party. Though only a few characters matter for the story while others don't even have dialogue and are just a reward for a bossfight. Here I would've preferred a "quality over quantity" approach. And two party slots are always set for the demon and the character you chose in the beginning.
I think I would've also preferred if they went for a linear level up progressions instead of what they did. You have 4 stats to dump your points into and since the roles of your characters are pre-determined it doesn't make much sense to put them in more than 2 stats.
There is also a mechanic where you switch between the demon and human realm. You enter the demon realm by changing to the demon character. Sometimes the road is blocked or a bridge is out in the human realm and the only way to get to the other side is in the demon realm. It is a blessing and a curse for me. On the one hand it is cool solving puzzles this way (more a bit down). And when you enter the demon realm the human world stops. So you can either use this to scout out how many enemies there are or to change the positioning. On the other hand there are also enemies that are only fightable in the demon realm so you have to go through an area twice to get all the exp. Since some of the areas are big and you need to switch between both realms to get everywhere it can get a bit tedious.
The combat is kind of one note. You stand next to an enemy and press or hold your attack button. Occasionally you heal yourself or use an ability. The abilities are pretty boring. Some small area of effect in which you deal damage and then you wait for the cooldown to go away and your mana to regenerate and repeat. The passives are also pretty boring and give either a stat boost, more defense or a small boost for something to happen (critical strike, mana recovery, etc.). For this I also got to add that I barely used magic since I didn't pick the mage in the beginning and had no desire to buy equipment for the mages I unlocked along the way. Maybe their abilities are bit more exciting but from what I've played with them not by much.
The puzzles are good and some are tedious at the same. They are often an interplay between the human world and the demon realm. Some times the solution is in the demon realm. Sometimes you have to search for something with a similar form in the human world and then switch to the demon realm to know what candles you need to light. Sometimes you need to cross an abyss and the bridge is only in the demon realm. Or the solution is right there, highlighted in the demon realm and you need to remember a sequence and apply it in the human world. There is neat stuff there but then there are also instanced where the solution is in a random corner of the map somewhere in the background. Though to be fair these are mostly only optional puzzles where this is the case. Puzzles also often repeat though then use another frequency. My least favorite ones were the ones where you had to roll a stone around to put it on a switch. It wouldn't be so bad if there would be a way to grab them. If there is one I didn't find it and instead had to roll it by walking against it. Didn't always work that well.
I should also add that in the end I used cheat engine. Initially only to increase the movement speed. It broke the game a little bit but that was something I didn't have too much a problem with. What the table I used also activated was better loot so everything that dropped for me was the highest rarity. And honestly, it made the game better for me. The loot was probably my least favorite aspect of the game. Sometimes you stumble upon a room with strong enemies or a puzzle guarding a treasure chest only for it to either only contain currency or equipment that is worse than what you already had. And even with the higher rarity a lot of it was junk that was worthless. And since enemies don't respawn there is no way to possibly get better equipment by farming or more money to buy the good stuff from merchants. Would've preferred it if they made the equipment drops set rather than random.
Graphically I liked the environments. Nothing to special but nicely put together and cohesive. Also taking aesthetics from different cultures. The game is also fully voiced which led to a soldier in an Arabic themed city speaking with a (I believe) Scottish accent.
Want to wrap this writeup before I have to leave so sorry if it isn't fully complete or some typos are in there. In the end I don't want to be too harsh on the game since I binged it the last couple of days and that always impacts how I enjoy games. Like I said in the beginning it is an alright game. It is competently made, has some ideas but also some flaws. If there is a sale on it I would recommend to trying it out.
BS05G1
Finished Horizon Zero Dawn! Played the game more than the 88 hours above as I then went on to do trophies from the DLC, the 100% checklist and also collecting datapoints before starting a New Game+ save on ultra hard just in case I want to return.
I know that there was a lot of comparisons during the release window between this and Breath of the Wild, but I genuinely was not thinking about that game while playing. Assassin's Creed, Skyrim and Mass Effect are better examples to use if you were describing this game to someone who had never heard of it. Horizon sometimes feels like it was made as a result of following all the trends in AAA games, resulting in a product which can firmly fit into the box of "Ubisoft game" that was being thrown about a few years ago. It has a Focus mode that highlights objects and enemies that resembles Detective Mode in the Arkham games or Eagle Vision from Assassin's Creed, there are a bunch of towers to climb for purposes of revealing the map, there are bandit camps like Far Cry and Metal Gear Solid V, you can hide in tall grass like in Uncharted 4 and AC4, and hunt animals like in Tomb Raider and AC3. Unfortunately, some of these things have been have been simplified in the shift from the games they came from.
The open world is the checklist style of having activities repeated multiple times across the map, something I was getting tired of when playing Assassin's Creed. It is not outright horrible per se, but it isn't super interesting, so for most of my playtime I had a podcast on. There really isn't a bunch of stuff that you just happen across while exploring in terms of random events or landmarks. I disappointingly wandered into the far edges of the map only to be met with areas I could not access until the story allowed me to. I think you only visit one ruin that has no connection to the main questline. Similarly, there was a location that I found that resembled an outpost, and the 5 unnamed NPCs there had the same lines that other NPCs did in other parts of the world, and there wasn't even a merchant. I sighed and thought that it might have some later significance in a quest, yet after finishing all activities, I never went back to that place. The world never felt like it was lived in like I wanted it to.
Horizon also uses another tried and tested way of disseminating information to the player in the form of datapoints, commonly known as audio logs/text logs. This is something I have also grown tired of, but I kind of begrudgingly get through them because I know there might be good stories in them. The biggest failure of the datapoints is that are really hard to find. Some of them are in the middle of nowhere, in places where you would never go for a quest, where there are no places of interest nearby. I legitimately found a couple of them between two rocks in a river, and I don't understand why they would be there. They are never marked on your map, and the only way to know that you are close is to keep an eye on your compass in the middle of the screen, but the distance at which they appear is so small you could go through a linear section of a game and walk right past them without ever knowing there was some info right next to you. In terms of the content of these datapoints, it varies. Some of them are about the state of the world where Aloy lives, but there is so little detail about anything from before the Red Raids it makes it feel as if the world just popped into existence just over a decade ago. For these types of logs, I also wish it was in the style of Skyrim where you had multiple books in multiple places around the map, instead of - for example - a single book that describes the Liberation of Meridian. Other datapoints describe the world of the Old Ones (hey that's us!), and the ones that are not linked to the story are kind of lackluster. They aim to paint a picture of how people used to live, but it doesn't really work for me. For example, one is a text description of a dating app called RPGreet where you earn XP for every successful date, and in my mind rather than finding a device with a description of it, it would be better if the device actually had the app installed and you could look through it. I feel the same way for another that was a film review; it would more interesting if they had a poster for the film or better yet, a trailer. Most of it is just ads, but the story stuff I'll cover later.
The highlight of the game is the combat, where you face off machines which resemble animals from our present day. The first of these machines you fight, Watchers, are simple enemies with a single weak spot in its eye, but the others are more complex with more places to target with your arrows. Some of these pieces are components that can be broken off which weaken the machine's ability to fight, and when the components land on the floor, you can pick them up for use as a crafting material. Some of the larger machines have components that double as weapons, so knocking them off stops them from using one of their abilities against you, but also you can use that weapon against them. Nothing is more satisfying than breaking of a Thunderjaw's disc launcher and absolutely decimating it with its own weapon. As well as standard arrows and elemental arrows, there are also corruption arrows, which can make machines turn against their own, and also tear arrows, which deal less raw damage but have a greater likelihood to break off components. As well as regular components, these tear arrows can also remove armour plating from the machines so you can deal more damage with your regular arrows. There is a small selection of weapon types with bows and slings and ropecasters and tripcasters. The thing I'm not sure about is having the different arrow types locked onto certain types of bows. Since there are only four slots in the weapon wheel, you can get in a situation where 3 of them are bows; for example, having a sharpshot bow for tear damage, a hunter bow for fire damage, and a war bow for corruption damage. I wish there was a more elegant way to handle this so I could switch to the other weapons easier, but I can't think of how to do it and keep the mod system intact. Similarly I wish there was a better system for consumables. Usable items are mapped to your dpad in the way Souls games do it, but you have to cycle through all the possible items you have, which include 3 traps, 3 healing potions, 4 resist potions, 2 skill abilities and a rock. You can go through the items at the same time as having your weapon wheel open but it is still clunky.
Aloy is another strength of the game. I'm glad that she is a distinct character and not someone who's personality is based on player actions or conversation choices because it feels like I'm learning about her throughout the course of the game rather than guiding her thoughts. Her biggest strength is her compassion, because she shows an empathy that is rare in RPG protagonists from these types of games. In other RPGs, I can't help but get the feeling that main characters are mercenaries in the way they interact with people who need help, accepting only on the basis they will get gold or items or experience. Aloy however comes across as someone who helps others because it is the right thing to do. She seems to quickly make a connection with the people she talks to, sharing in their sadness, mourning when they mourn, and mirroring their joy. Of course there are her own personal ups and down as you go through the main story and the types of things she shares with the people she meets. She is also shown to have a cheeky sense of humour but it doesn't come up as much as I wished it had.
I did the DLC just before the last couple of quests and I was impressed. Some of the things that I had complained about in the main game had been improved. One of them was how conversations seem so static, using the shot reverse shot technique I've seen in almost every western RPG since KOTOR. In Frozen Wilds, I saw Aloy and certain NPCs use more body language when talking, and overall be more expressive. There is one guy who seems like he is being condescending and Aloy puts her hands on her hips and gives him a look that surprised me in how effortless it looked. The Tallneck quest in this area has a twist on it that makes it more interesting. Similarly, the bandit camp has a unique boss with a new weapon that you can obtain, and has a new type of enemy that isn't in the main game. Even the hunting grounds has a quest in it that is entirely different from the ones that were in the base game. For the actual quests, I really liked the main thread and the lore of Project Firebreak and the Daemon, and also enjoyed the Waterlogged sidequest and the audio logs of The Last Girls on Earth. The only thing I was annoyed with was the new enemies who feel likebullet arrow sponges and the fights against them are like tests of endurance because they seem to take forever. The Frozen Wilds is some good content and makes me really want to see Guerrilla Games make a whole game like that.
Check out some photos I took through photo mode! (spoilers ofc)
Other thoughts: Sony need to allow you to upload screenshots to Google Drive, the way you can upload to OneDrive from Xbox.
Also, now that it is confirmed that HZD is coming to PC, it shouldn't be long before there is a mod that makes it into a survival game, where managing your hunger (among other things) is a key part of the game.
Man there is a ton of stuff I left out but I didn't keep good notes and this post is already super long.
Finished Horizon Zero Dawn! Played the game more than the 88 hours above as I then went on to do trophies from the DLC, the 100% checklist and also collecting datapoints before starting a New Game+ save on ultra hard just in case I want to return.
I know that there was a lot of comparisons during the release window between this and Breath of the Wild, but I genuinely was not thinking about that game while playing. Assassin's Creed, Skyrim and Mass Effect are better examples to use if you were describing this game to someone who had never heard of it. Horizon sometimes feels like it was made as a result of following all the trends in AAA games, resulting in a product which can firmly fit into the box of "Ubisoft game" that was being thrown about a few years ago. It has a Focus mode that highlights objects and enemies that resembles Detective Mode in the Arkham games or Eagle Vision from Assassin's Creed, there are a bunch of towers to climb for purposes of revealing the map, there are bandit camps like Far Cry and Metal Gear Solid V, you can hide in tall grass like in Uncharted 4 and AC4, and hunt animals like in Tomb Raider and AC3. Unfortunately, some of these things have been have been simplified in the shift from the games they came from.
The open world is the checklist style of having activities repeated multiple times across the map, something I was getting tired of when playing Assassin's Creed. It is not outright horrible per se, but it isn't super interesting, so for most of my playtime I had a podcast on. There really isn't a bunch of stuff that you just happen across while exploring in terms of random events or landmarks. I disappointingly wandered into the far edges of the map only to be met with areas I could not access until the story allowed me to. I think you only visit one ruin that has no connection to the main questline. Similarly, there was a location that I found that resembled an outpost, and the 5 unnamed NPCs there had the same lines that other NPCs did in other parts of the world, and there wasn't even a merchant. I sighed and thought that it might have some later significance in a quest, yet after finishing all activities, I never went back to that place. The world never felt like it was lived in like I wanted it to.
Horizon also uses another tried and tested way of disseminating information to the player in the form of datapoints, commonly known as audio logs/text logs. This is something I have also grown tired of, but I kind of begrudgingly get through them because I know there might be good stories in them. The biggest failure of the datapoints is that are really hard to find. Some of them are in the middle of nowhere, in places where you would never go for a quest, where there are no places of interest nearby. I legitimately found a couple of them between two rocks in a river, and I don't understand why they would be there. They are never marked on your map, and the only way to know that you are close is to keep an eye on your compass in the middle of the screen, but the distance at which they appear is so small you could go through a linear section of a game and walk right past them without ever knowing there was some info right next to you. In terms of the content of these datapoints, it varies. Some of them are about the state of the world where Aloy lives, but there is so little detail about anything from before the Red Raids it makes it feel as if the world just popped into existence just over a decade ago. For these types of logs, I also wish it was in the style of Skyrim where you had multiple books in multiple places around the map, instead of - for example - a single book that describes the Liberation of Meridian. Other datapoints describe the world of the Old Ones (hey that's us!), and the ones that are not linked to the story are kind of lackluster. They aim to paint a picture of how people used to live, but it doesn't really work for me. For example, one is a text description of a dating app called RPGreet where you earn XP for every successful date, and in my mind rather than finding a device with a description of it, it would be better if the device actually had the app installed and you could look through it. I feel the same way for another that was a film review; it would more interesting if they had a poster for the film or better yet, a trailer. Most of it is just ads, but the story stuff I'll cover later.
The highlight of the game is the combat, where you face off machines which resemble animals from our present day. The first of these machines you fight, Watchers, are simple enemies with a single weak spot in its eye, but the others are more complex with more places to target with your arrows. Some of these pieces are components that can be broken off which weaken the machine's ability to fight, and when the components land on the floor, you can pick them up for use as a crafting material. Some of the larger machines have components that double as weapons, so knocking them off stops them from using one of their abilities against you, but also you can use that weapon against them. Nothing is more satisfying than breaking of a Thunderjaw's disc launcher and absolutely decimating it with its own weapon. As well as standard arrows and elemental arrows, there are also corruption arrows, which can make machines turn against their own, and also tear arrows, which deal less raw damage but have a greater likelihood to break off components. As well as regular components, these tear arrows can also remove armour plating from the machines so you can deal more damage with your regular arrows. There is a small selection of weapon types with bows and slings and ropecasters and tripcasters. The thing I'm not sure about is having the different arrow types locked onto certain types of bows. Since there are only four slots in the weapon wheel, you can get in a situation where 3 of them are bows; for example, having a sharpshot bow for tear damage, a hunter bow for fire damage, and a war bow for corruption damage. I wish there was a more elegant way to handle this so I could switch to the other weapons easier, but I can't think of how to do it and keep the mod system intact. Similarly I wish there was a better system for consumables. Usable items are mapped to your dpad in the way Souls games do it, but you have to cycle through all the possible items you have, which include 3 traps, 3 healing potions, 4 resist potions, 2 skill abilities and a rock. You can go through the items at the same time as having your weapon wheel open but it is still clunky.
Aloy is another strength of the game. I'm glad that she is a distinct character and not someone who's personality is based on player actions or conversation choices because it feels like I'm learning about her throughout the course of the game rather than guiding her thoughts. Her biggest strength is her compassion, because she shows an empathy that is rare in RPG protagonists from these types of games. In other RPGs, I can't help but get the feeling that main characters are mercenaries in the way they interact with people who need help, accepting only on the basis they will get gold or items or experience. Aloy however comes across as someone who helps others because it is the right thing to do. She seems to quickly make a connection with the people she talks to, sharing in their sadness, mourning when they mourn, and mirroring their joy. Of course there are her own personal ups and down as you go through the main story and the types of things she shares with the people she meets. She is also shown to have a cheeky sense of humour but it doesn't come up as much as I wished it had.
There's a LOT to get through.
I think the devs are to be commended for how they roll out the story, starting with a couple of mysteries and slowly answering them, but introducing new questions with the answers. At the end of the opening chapter after the proving, you have your answer to Aloy's birth, but the revelation leads to more problems to solve. After getting hooked at this point, I was disappointed that the story didn't really progress at all for a few hours, but I was reinvigorated after arriving at Meridian where there was a bunch of new weapons and armour to buy, and new quests, and new place to explore.
So in Aloy's time, the circumstances of her birth are the main driving force, as well as finding out why the apocalypse occurred in the first place. Straight out the gate you find out that she was discovered as a baby, all alone, and one of the Matriarch's took her to be a curse and had her cast out (fuck you Lansra). But the events that lead to Aloy becoming a Seeker and venturing out of the Sacred Lands begin when an unknown group invades and kills a bunch of people including Aloy's father figure, Rost. She wakes up some time later and finds that a lot of her Nora tribespeople have lost the war already, and are now licking their wounds. In time, she finds out about the cult called The Eclipse and the malicious force that guides them called HADES.
At the same time, you're finding out about the world before, about how the world was driving itself to ruin, and how climate change almost destroyed them. But then, a woman named Elisabet Sobeck helped develop the technology to claw back the world from the brink of annihilation and saved the environment. However, the the company who created these robots decided to shift to making military robots, and the man in charge, trillionaireJeff Bezos Ted Faro, led the world to destruction after he ordered the construction of combat robots that couldn't be overriden. The tech bros also had the smart idea of having the robots use biomass for fuel, so when they lose control they start destroying nature to sustain themselves, which also means destroying humans.
The way this ties together is that Aloy is the clone of Sobeck, a result of an abandoned protocol where clones of the creators of Zero Dawn would be raised to be caretakers of the system they built, however Aloy is the only clone that exists. Aloy thought that Sobeck somehow saved humankind, but the reality is that the Faro robots won, and decimated the planet. Sobeck's solution, Zero Dawn, was to ensure life would continue on Earth after they died out, by creating an AI called GAIA who could revive the atmosphere and the waters, and proceed into the rebuilding the human race. Aloy was created because GAIA was going to self destruct in an effort to stop HADES from reversing the terraform process and killing everything, hoping that Aloy would carry within her the talent Sobeck had and fix everything just as her "mother" did.
Like I said, it's a lot. Aloy struggles with being alone, having been ignored all her life, and the only thing that kept her going, her source of motivation, was learning about where she came from. Even when the Nora tribe finally accept her, she rejects them, not because she feels she can do without them (although she can), but because they never made amends with her and started to treat her like she was divinely sent, and she doesn't share their beliefs. Aloy never gets to be a part of a family like she wanted, and even though she makes friends along the way it doesn't feel the same, possibly due to these NPCs being absent for the most part after meeting them. In the world, there is a sense of grieving due to the events of the Red Raids, where the Mad Sun-King carried out mass kidnappings and sacrifices, but after he died the Carja started to make peace with the other tribes. There is a spot in Meridian where travelers come and pray for their lost loved ones. The whole apocalypse comes about because of a corporation going too far and everything going all man vs machine. The whole Zero Dawn project is a desperate effort to preserve life after everything is lost, and when listening to audio logs of the people involved, makes you wonder what people are capable of achieving with just a shred of hope. Their lives will undoubtedly be cut short but they still have a purpose, even though they will never see the fruits of their labour, not even knowing if everything will work out. You have logs from people in different situations; some are part of the military force who are tasked with fighting against the enemy, who don't know that they are guaranteed to fail and die, some are from people who expect to die and you hear there final thought before everything they know ends, and finally you have the chosen few who are living in isolated places where the machines cannot find them, who will die knowing they are the last of humanity (at least for now). It also makes you wonder about mankind's legacy, with most of the people of Aloy's time knowing the Old Ones exist but not really with any detail, and everything they wanted to leave behind to teach the new humans was basically destroyed.I think they really knocked it out of the park with their first game in this style, and I think there is a lot of promise in whatever they make next.
Also, Ersa deserved better.
I think the devs are to be commended for how they roll out the story, starting with a couple of mysteries and slowly answering them, but introducing new questions with the answers. At the end of the opening chapter after the proving, you have your answer to Aloy's birth, but the revelation leads to more problems to solve. After getting hooked at this point, I was disappointed that the story didn't really progress at all for a few hours, but I was reinvigorated after arriving at Meridian where there was a bunch of new weapons and armour to buy, and new quests, and new place to explore.
So in Aloy's time, the circumstances of her birth are the main driving force, as well as finding out why the apocalypse occurred in the first place. Straight out the gate you find out that she was discovered as a baby, all alone, and one of the Matriarch's took her to be a curse and had her cast out (fuck you Lansra). But the events that lead to Aloy becoming a Seeker and venturing out of the Sacred Lands begin when an unknown group invades and kills a bunch of people including Aloy's father figure, Rost. She wakes up some time later and finds that a lot of her Nora tribespeople have lost the war already, and are now licking their wounds. In time, she finds out about the cult called The Eclipse and the malicious force that guides them called HADES.
At the same time, you're finding out about the world before, about how the world was driving itself to ruin, and how climate change almost destroyed them. But then, a woman named Elisabet Sobeck helped develop the technology to claw back the world from the brink of annihilation and saved the environment. However, the the company who created these robots decided to shift to making military robots, and the man in charge, trillionaire
The way this ties together is that Aloy is the clone of Sobeck, a result of an abandoned protocol where clones of the creators of Zero Dawn would be raised to be caretakers of the system they built, however Aloy is the only clone that exists. Aloy thought that Sobeck somehow saved humankind, but the reality is that the Faro robots won, and decimated the planet. Sobeck's solution, Zero Dawn, was to ensure life would continue on Earth after they died out, by creating an AI called GAIA who could revive the atmosphere and the waters, and proceed into the rebuilding the human race. Aloy was created because GAIA was going to self destruct in an effort to stop HADES from reversing the terraform process and killing everything, hoping that Aloy would carry within her the talent Sobeck had and fix everything just as her "mother" did.
Like I said, it's a lot. Aloy struggles with being alone, having been ignored all her life, and the only thing that kept her going, her source of motivation, was learning about where she came from. Even when the Nora tribe finally accept her, she rejects them, not because she feels she can do without them (although she can), but because they never made amends with her and started to treat her like she was divinely sent, and she doesn't share their beliefs. Aloy never gets to be a part of a family like she wanted, and even though she makes friends along the way it doesn't feel the same, possibly due to these NPCs being absent for the most part after meeting them. In the world, there is a sense of grieving due to the events of the Red Raids, where the Mad Sun-King carried out mass kidnappings and sacrifices, but after he died the Carja started to make peace with the other tribes. There is a spot in Meridian where travelers come and pray for their lost loved ones. The whole apocalypse comes about because of a corporation going too far and everything going all man vs machine. The whole Zero Dawn project is a desperate effort to preserve life after everything is lost, and when listening to audio logs of the people involved, makes you wonder what people are capable of achieving with just a shred of hope. Their lives will undoubtedly be cut short but they still have a purpose, even though they will never see the fruits of their labour, not even knowing if everything will work out. You have logs from people in different situations; some are part of the military force who are tasked with fighting against the enemy, who don't know that they are guaranteed to fail and die, some are from people who expect to die and you hear there final thought before everything they know ends, and finally you have the chosen few who are living in isolated places where the machines cannot find them, who will die knowing they are the last of humanity (at least for now). It also makes you wonder about mankind's legacy, with most of the people of Aloy's time knowing the Old Ones exist but not really with any detail, and everything they wanted to leave behind to teach the new humans was basically destroyed.I think they really knocked it out of the park with their first game in this style, and I think there is a lot of promise in whatever they make next.
Also, Ersa deserved better.
I did the DLC just before the last couple of quests and I was impressed. Some of the things that I had complained about in the main game had been improved. One of them was how conversations seem so static, using the shot reverse shot technique I've seen in almost every western RPG since KOTOR. In Frozen Wilds, I saw Aloy and certain NPCs use more body language when talking, and overall be more expressive. There is one guy who seems like he is being condescending and Aloy puts her hands on her hips and gives him a look that surprised me in how effortless it looked. The Tallneck quest in this area has a twist on it that makes it more interesting. Similarly, the bandit camp has a unique boss with a new weapon that you can obtain, and has a new type of enemy that isn't in the main game. Even the hunting grounds has a quest in it that is entirely different from the ones that were in the base game. For the actual quests, I really liked the main thread and the lore of Project Firebreak and the Daemon, and also enjoyed the Waterlogged sidequest and the audio logs of The Last Girls on Earth. The only thing I was annoyed with was the new enemies who feel like
Check out some photos I took through photo mode! (spoilers ofc)
Other thoughts: Sony need to allow you to upload screenshots to Google Drive, the way you can upload to OneDrive from Xbox.
Also, now that it is confirmed that HZD is coming to PC, it shouldn't be long before there is a mod that makes it into a survival game, where managing your hunger (among other things) is a key part of the game.
Man there is a ton of stuff I left out but I didn't keep good notes and this post is already super long.
FF Tactics and a lot of the Dragon Quest games are available on Android. Also a couple of the Ys games.
Don't know how you feel about gacha but there's Fire Emblem Heroes and that new Dragon Quest of the stars. Other than that, not so much. But RetroArch does run on Android.
Don't know how you feel about gacha but there's Fire Emblem Heroes and that new Dragon Quest of the stars. Other than that, not so much. But RetroArch does run on Android.
There's also Valkyrie Profile: Lenneth on mobile. Basically all the Square Enix games.
I had finished Yakuza 3 as part of the blitz, played the version that's part of the Remastered Collection brought out. I don't come here as often anymore, but might be good to share some thoughts. Really loved the theme of the game and most of its story. It shows that Kiryu has a very kind self much more clearly in the main game. The Okinawa vibe was really good and gave the start a very homely atmosphere. Kiryu really cares for these kids so having the main quest be solving problems for them instead of delegating them to sidequests is pretty good. It's also a good spot to gradually increase the severity of the case. Grew a soft spot for Rikiya and his dumbass pretty quickly. The antagonists all had some great voicework in them. I was pretty impressed how well scenes hold up in a lot of cases. Combat was something I struggled with a bit early on with the restricted health/heat and how often enemies will block your attacks, that kinda became the thing whenever I couldn't grab a character. Also noticed I was using weapons more often than other games, so kiryu also killed. Game kept being generally good all the way through end, only exception is when going back to okinawa and you're kinda dealing with the kids while the plot has kicked up 100 times.
Wasn't expecting to like Yakuza 3 that much, but I feel it does everything right that Kiwami 2 lacked in conclusion. Yakuza 0 is still best tho. Gonna be a while before I tackle Yakuza 4, but it's likely I'll play through the series more quickly than I thought as I only need to get Yakuza 6 to complete the set.
I got plently to play for now. Will be going at FFVII Remake which I played a bit till chapter 3. First impressions are good, mostly going into it blind af as I'm a FF newbie.
I had finished Yakuza 3 as part of the blitz, played the version that's part of the Remastered Collection brought out. I don't come here as often anymore, but might be good to share some thoughts. Really loved the theme of the game and most of its story. It shows that Kiryu has a very kind self much more clearly in the main game. The Okinawa vibe was really good and gave the start a very homely atmosphere. Kiryu really cares for these kids so having the main quest be solving problems for them instead of delegating them to sidequests is pretty good. It's also a good spot to gradually increase the severity of the case. Grew a soft spot for Rikiya and his dumbass pretty quickly. The antagonists all had some great voicework in them. I was pretty impressed how well scenes hold up in a lot of cases. Combat was something I struggled with a bit early on with the restricted health/heat and how often enemies will block your attacks, that kinda became the thing whenever I couldn't grab a character. Also noticed I was using weapons more often than other games, so kiryu also killed. Game kept being generally good all the way through end, only exception is when going back to okinawa and you're kinda dealing with the kids while the plot has kicked up 100 times.
All my feels. They done Kashiwagi dirty and my boi Rikiya :'(. That move where they almost killed off Kiryu like that, but reassure fans with the after credits scene, much better than the fake out from kiwami 2
Wasn't expecting to like Yakuza 3 that much, but I feel it does everything right that Kiwami 2 lacked in conclusion. Yakuza 0 is still best tho. Gonna be a while before I tackle Yakuza 4, but it's likely I'll play through the series more quickly than I thought as I only need to get Yakuza 6 to complete the set.
I got plently to play for now. Will be going at FFVII Remake which I played a bit till chapter 3. First impressions are good, mostly going into it blind af as I'm a FF newbie.
I finished FF14: Shadowbringers for the blitz a couple of days back. I had done the quests leading up to it in December during a free login campaign, but only now managed to buy the expansion and go through it. It was one of these games you see people hyping to death and go "it can't be that much", and it ends up being *that much*.
It is the most tragic and emotional the universe of FF14 has ever been, with multiple instances of personal loss as you see this broken world in which the heroes lost, and whatever life remains will be extinct soon unless you act, and act *now*. Unlike every other major threat the WoL has faced, this is one they can't win against; at best you can stop things from getting worse, but the fact is that the majority of the world is gone, permanently. Worse, the world is gone because heroes did what they thought was right in the distant past.
I often feel blessed as a FF3 fan when playing FF14, because the writers pick all the interesting themes and concepts from it and expand them in a brilliant way in the MMO; that I had an entire expansion based on what started as a FF3 reference is wonderful, and every time I'd hear Eternal Wind playing I'd tear up because I love that song.
This is maybe the first time I wished the WoL weren't such an emotionless character. Beyond everything happening in the First, knowing that your dear friends were accidentally summoned to a foreign place with no means of getting back, and stayed there for literal years because of a mistake that only happened because they were near you would make anyone feel at least a little guilty. Not to mention what your friends would be thinking all that time away, and then finally seeing you again. But neither you nor the Scions show sadness or happiness, or cry or hug each other, when they get together; you get a slight amount of surprise of seeing you in the First of all places, and then you're ready to hit the road like it's the usual. For a heavily character-driven expansion as this one was, I wish the WoL could be more of a character with true relationships.
But though we didn't have that emotional connection with them, we had that with G'raha Tia (I cried my eyes out when his identity was revealed, so many years after the Crystal Tower raids were released) and Emet-Selch (I too cried when he smiled in his final moments and said "Remember us", finally acknowledging my resolve and accepting leaving the world for mortals), the absolute stand-outs here. I agree with everyone that says Emet is one of the best FF antagonists, after I finished the Qitana Ravel and learned his motives I wanted to stop fighting him and help find a way to get his home back. I understood his plight and knew if I were in his place I'd do the same thing. And that's not to mention all the things he didn't say, like how we used to be friends back in Amaurot days.
I think I prefer Shinryu purely in terms of fight design and the music, but Hades is better in every other aspect; I cried there too. Also cried every time Tomorrow and Tomorrow (the ending theme, though bits of it play often during the MSQ). And when Eternal Wind played in the initial credits. And when G'raha Tia shed tears. And when Ardbert saved me. 😭😭😭😭
Lingering thoughts about Hydaelyn, the Echo, and the WoL:
I haven't started 5.1, some of these may be answered there or in 5.2 (please don't tell me if they are answered or not! I'd like to be surprised)
---
There are many other things I could gush about, like the lovable assholes Pixies, how Soken is a god, the sequence in which you see the giant Talos coming to life to reach Mt. Gulg, seeing the frozen Flood in the southern edges of Amh Araeng for the first time, Ryne's struggles to be better than her predecessor, Alisaie crying... this expansion was too much and I love it dearly.
I often feel blessed as a FF3 fan when playing FF14, because the writers pick all the interesting themes and concepts from it and expand them in a brilliant way in the MMO; that I had an entire expansion based on what started as a FF3 reference is wonderful, and every time I'd hear Eternal Wind playing I'd tear up because I love that song.
This is maybe the first time I wished the WoL weren't such an emotionless character. Beyond everything happening in the First, knowing that your dear friends were accidentally summoned to a foreign place with no means of getting back, and stayed there for literal years because of a mistake that only happened because they were near you would make anyone feel at least a little guilty. Not to mention what your friends would be thinking all that time away, and then finally seeing you again. But neither you nor the Scions show sadness or happiness, or cry or hug each other, when they get together; you get a slight amount of surprise of seeing you in the First of all places, and then you're ready to hit the road like it's the usual. For a heavily character-driven expansion as this one was, I wish the WoL could be more of a character with true relationships.
But though we didn't have that emotional connection with them, we had that with G'raha Tia (I cried my eyes out when his identity was revealed, so many years after the Crystal Tower raids were released) and Emet-Selch (I too cried when he smiled in his final moments and said "Remember us", finally acknowledging my resolve and accepting leaving the world for mortals), the absolute stand-outs here. I agree with everyone that says Emet is one of the best FF antagonists, after I finished the Qitana Ravel and learned his motives I wanted to stop fighting him and help find a way to get his home back. I understood his plight and knew if I were in his place I'd do the same thing. And that's not to mention all the things he didn't say, like how we used to be friends back in Amaurot days.
I think I prefer Shinryu purely in terms of fight design and the music, but Hades is better in every other aspect; I cried there too. Also cried every time Tomorrow and Tomorrow (the ending theme, though bits of it play often during the MSQ). And when Eternal Wind played in the initial credits. And when G'raha Tia shed tears. And when Ardbert saved me. 😭😭😭😭
Lingering thoughts about Hydaelyn, the Echo, and the WoL:
Am I the Amaurotine who left the Convocation of the Fourteen when they were thinking about summoning Zodiark, and if so how am I alive in the present if that happened millennia ago? We never learned where we came from, or who our parents were or anything.
Who summoned Hydaelyn in the first place? Was it me/the dissenting fourteenth Amaurotine?
When Elidibus meets Minfilia back in 2.x, he says she hasn't "mastered" the Echo. Later in 2.x, you see a Sahagin using an advanced form of Echo to cheat death and move his soul to a different body. Would "mastering" the Echo mean the WoL could essentially become an Ascian, with the same set of abilities?
If having the Echo means being tempered by Hydaelyn, what does that say about the Garleans with the artificial Echo? Would it be possible to obtain Her gifts without being tempered?
Midgardsormr removed the "blessing of light" that Hydaelyn gave me, which I now assume was the tempering. How did he do that, and what was the deal he made with Her when he came to the planet?
If Hydaelyn is a primal, are the Twelve really deities or are they primals as well?
When G'raha Tia put those summoning circles around me before the Hades fight, using the same words he used to summon me from a different star, I thought he was going to summon my copies on the remaining shards and we'd fuse and become WoL Blanco Completado, lol. Was a little disappointing when that was used to explain how I'd fight Hades with 7 other players.
We know that Umbral Calamities are tragedies that usually wipe out entire species in Hydaelyn. But we also know that Calamities happen when another star is rejoined with the Source. Is this a chicken and egg situation, which triggers what?
I haven't started 5.1, some of these may be answered there or in 5.2 (please don't tell me if they are answered or not! I'd like to be surprised)
---
There are many other things I could gush about, like the lovable assholes Pixies, how Soken is a god, the sequence in which you see the giant Talos coming to life to reach Mt. Gulg, seeing the frozen Flood in the southern edges of Amh Araeng for the first time, Ryne's struggles to be better than her predecessor, Alisaie crying... this expansion was too much and I love it dearly.
Now more on Paranoia: Happiness is Mandatory. A game no one else here will probably play.
There are three secret societies to join. At least that is the number of recruitments I encountered. And I got one extra mission to go on for the secret society without my usual team. I wonder If there are different missions as the one I went on seemed like with different setup might work the same for the others.
End stats told me it took me 13h 40m to beat and only using one extra clone. Don't know how the time keeping is, spend some time waiting to heal and restarting a few missions and with skipping dialog in retries. At the end you make a choice from three options for the outro card and text. You can continue after beating the game and it will put you at the start of the endboss. So it is rather simple to see all three endings. I've also seen one option before the endboss that might lead to another ending, but you need to do something specific in previous mission(s) to be able to choose that option. I unfortunately did not, but I have some safety saves and will look into it at a later time.
I liked the story has a few twists. It also has Companion specific events. Some parts play differently when you have specific members of your team with you. Like in the Spoiler below I have an Image of one such event. They are usually short distractions and give a bit of flavour to your team and story. For a speedrun, you'd want to avoid it though, I guess.
And ten you and your teammates get scattered on the map and you have to collect them and then fight a strong mob before continuing with your mission. Without Ryan in your team you skip that.
Writing seems very fitting to the Paranoia style with personality flavour to your teammates and NPCs you interact with. There are even some small subquests you can encounter during missions to help you out. There isn't too much of it though. It's not like a JRPG, most time is spent moving through maps and fighting.
There are also some lore bits in the environment to find on computer terminals or pads.
Every mission for the computer is also accompanied with an R&D mission that gives you unique gear and a fun conversation with R&D guy, like the one below.
And of course the humour of the computer.
TL,DR:
Fun game, Funny game, Fitting Paranoia licence in writing, not too long, also not too deep in RPG systems
Very unique
I'd recommend it (But I'm also a fan of the Paranoia RPGs)
Sorry to post so late again, I only played it a bit with long pauses and didn't want to write again until I found out how to level up in the game. And the way is by dying and getting a new clone. Since I played carefully and didn't want to waste a clone before it was absolutely necessary, like when I hit 100% treason rating. This took two very long missions that I played at 90%. And I guess the level ups are fixed and not up to the level of your team. My second clone had a higher pool of ability points, but not as high as my teammates, who auto level through missions. Maybe I should have cloned more often and would have gotten higher pool that way. New clones also get a random mutant power assigned. You have 5 clones to fall back on and you can buy more with black market currency. The game isn't that long so you don't have to be as frugal and save with your clones as I have.
There are three secret societies to join. At least that is the number of recruitments I encountered. And I got one extra mission to go on for the secret society without my usual team. I wonder If there are different missions as the one I went on seemed like with different setup might work the same for the others.
End stats told me it took me 13h 40m to beat and only using one extra clone. Don't know how the time keeping is, spend some time waiting to heal and restarting a few missions and with skipping dialog in retries. At the end you make a choice from three options for the outro card and text. You can continue after beating the game and it will put you at the start of the endboss. So it is rather simple to see all three endings. I've also seen one option before the endboss that might lead to another ending, but you need to do something specific in previous mission(s) to be able to choose that option. I unfortunately did not, but I have some safety saves and will look into it at a later time.
I liked the story has a few twists. It also has Companion specific events. Some parts play differently when you have specific members of your team with you. Like in the Spoiler below I have an Image of one such event. They are usually short distractions and give a bit of flavour to your team and story. For a speedrun, you'd want to avoid it though, I guess.
And ten you and your teammates get scattered on the map and you have to collect them and then fight a strong mob before continuing with your mission. Without Ryan in your team you skip that.
Writing seems very fitting to the Paranoia style with personality flavour to your teammates and NPCs you interact with. There are even some small subquests you can encounter during missions to help you out. There isn't too much of it though. It's not like a JRPG, most time is spent moving through maps and fighting.
There are also some lore bits in the environment to find on computer terminals or pads.
Every mission for the computer is also accompanied with an R&D mission that gives you unique gear and a fun conversation with R&D guy, like the one below.
And of course the humour of the computer.
- Savescumming is possible
- by copying your save folder
- you can force a save by exiting
- Standing in the doorway you can shoot enemies that are further away without triggering reactions
- Otherwise entering a room with enemies triggers the whole encounter
- You can't shoot through doorways, enemies can
- Enemies often aggro one specific teammate, run away with him and the enemies will follow, you can lay ambushes that way or shoot them in the back while they are running.
- Use your drugs and stuff, their gone after the mission
- You can take more than fits in your bunk to the next day
- Drop stuff before you answer to R&D the only time your character loses inventory and pick it up again before going to sleep
- Money resets each mission or promotion which is almost the same thing
TL,DR:
Fun game, Funny game, Fitting Paranoia licence in writing, not too long, also not too deep in RPG systems
Very unique
I'd recommend it (But I'm also a fan of the Paranoia RPGs)
I finally got around to finishing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, as my third blitz game. I initially had a hard time getting into it because of the high fantasy setting, my least favourite setting in any kind of media. It was hard for me to play more than 20-30 minutes of it at a time because I just wasn't feeling it, and on top of that I would only touch it once every few days. However, I realized this wasn't the best way to approach the game as it was harder to pay attention to the story. So a few weeks ago, while this quarantine is going on and I was running dry on games to play, I gave the game another shot. I dedicated a few hours a day, every day, and several hours on weekends. Two weeks later, I finally finished the game after investing about 50 hours into it. Lo and behold, it is now one of the best games I've ever played.
The story was fantastic and the side quests were too. There's so much content in this game and all the content is amazing. Even the side quests had so much meat to them, that it felt like each one was a movie. Even after spending 50 hours in this game, I still feel like I haven't experienced two thirds of the game. One of the biggest turnoffs for me in Western RPGs is the amount of dialogue I couldn't care less about. However, this game also has some of the best dialogue I've seen in a video game. I never felt the need to skip a cutscene or any of the dialogue. The scenes played out beautifully and it had great voice acting.
Where the game falls short is the combat. It's not bad by any means, but it did feel clunky at many points. Other than that, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was a fantastic game, and I would recommend it to everyone. Even those who don't normally play video games, this game can be treated like a big-budget TV show.
The story was fantastic and the side quests were too. There's so much content in this game and all the content is amazing. Even the side quests had so much meat to them, that it felt like each one was a movie. Even after spending 50 hours in this game, I still feel like I haven't experienced two thirds of the game. One of the biggest turnoffs for me in Western RPGs is the amount of dialogue I couldn't care less about. However, this game also has some of the best dialogue I've seen in a video game. I never felt the need to skip a cutscene or any of the dialogue. The scenes played out beautifully and it had great voice acting.
I got the ending where Ciri lives and becomes a Witcher, but we trick the emperor into thinking that she's dead. I'm glad I got this ending because it's what I wanted for Ciri. I wonder if Ciri will be the lead character in the next game. I really liked the segments where you play as her in this game.
Where the game falls short is the combat. It's not bad by any means, but it did feel clunky at many points. Other than that, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was a fantastic game, and I would recommend it to everyone. Even those who don't normally play video games, this game can be treated like a big-budget TV show.
Just finished my first game of the blitz! (A month and a half in lol)
Legend of Grimrock 2
I liked the first one, so of course I'd pick up the sequel.
To begin with, the character creation is greatly expanded. Grimrock 1 had four races and fighter/mage/thief classes, and the sequel adds ratlings and five more classes. Here's where things get weird: how the race's/class's are designed translates to how they plays is bizarre. Insectoid(Good magic) Battlemages are one of the best tanks in the game. Minotaurs(Good strength/hp bad accuracy/magic) make the best throwing ninjas since thrown weapons have high accuracy. Look up context for creating characters, since this is a lot longer then the first game, and you really don't want to screw yourself with a bad build.
Does anyone reading this know any other games with such subversive class design?
The game itself is much larger and more open then the original. This is both good and bad. Good in that we have much more diverse locations and tilesets, more gameplay and content in general, bad in terms of finding and keeping track of secrets, and puzzle hints being hidden clean across the map in an unrelated room. The game doesn't keep track of secrets you've found so you really better do so yourself. The puzzles are also more elaborate, and I had to look up a guide more then once. Some of the good puzzles include the clock puzzle where
or the cemetery puzzle requiring you to
. And then there's the picky object interaction ones. I tried to use the
to open the door to the pyramid by placing it in the receptacle, but that didn't work. I was supposed to use its special attack on the door...
The story and lore, while still slight, are more present then in 1. Creation mythos, more character backstories, some sort of Dark Souls style cyclical world with cryptic references to the previous game buried in a desert, and so on.
I like this genre a lot, I liked Grimrock 1 a lot, and I like this game a lot.
Legend of Grimrock 2
I liked the first one, so of course I'd pick up the sequel.
To begin with, the character creation is greatly expanded. Grimrock 1 had four races and fighter/mage/thief classes, and the sequel adds ratlings and five more classes. Here's where things get weird: how the race's/class's are designed translates to how they plays is bizarre. Insectoid(Good magic) Battlemages are one of the best tanks in the game. Minotaurs(Good strength/hp bad accuracy/magic) make the best throwing ninjas since thrown weapons have high accuracy. Look up context for creating characters, since this is a lot longer then the first game, and you really don't want to screw yourself with a bad build.
Does anyone reading this know any other games with such subversive class design?
The game itself is much larger and more open then the original. This is both good and bad. Good in that we have much more diverse locations and tilesets, more gameplay and content in general, bad in terms of finding and keeping track of secrets, and puzzle hints being hidden clean across the map in an unrelated room. The game doesn't keep track of secrets you've found so you really better do so yourself. The puzzles are also more elaborate, and I had to look up a guide more then once. Some of the good puzzles include the clock puzzle where
the open bridge moves with the time on a clock face
input directions that recreate a character's journey
serpent staff
The story and lore, while still slight, are more present then in 1. Creation mythos, more character backstories, some sort of Dark Souls style cyclical world with cryptic references to the previous game buried in a desert, and so on.
I like this genre a lot, I liked Grimrock 1 a lot, and I like this game a lot.
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Finished Gothic for my Blitz. So here are some of my thoughts. Most is probably not new and said before but nevertheless:
Gothic begins with you getting kicked into a prison colony. After you arrived the first things that happens is you getting beat up. No hint of a back story that you are some noble or whatever else with special abilites by birth. No one cares about how came there or what your name is. Just the smallest possible cog in the war machine.
The story takes some time from there. You are introduced to the three factions of the Colony. And from here the first thing you will do is mainly side questing because everything but maybe two monster will beat you up. Be that the lowest class in the faction or some big flies. I would almost describe it as work to get where you at least can easily move between the three camps and maybe go besides the road to slay some creatures. Having only played Elex (and Risen 2 but I have not many memories of it at this point) this cycles could probably be described as a Piranha Bytes staple at this point. And the character growth is really satisfying and motivating. It keeps me going like none other because my mind gets going with where I can go and what I can do then once I have enought points to upgrade my character so he can hold a certain weapon.
That loop makes the by today standards relatively small world bigger than it is because areas open up to you by defeating stronger enemies. RagnarRox describes them as "natural progession borders" which I think is a fitting term. While this could be described as a skill check because it depends on your stats and equipment it is also more elegantly solved that some barriers for reasons that unlock once you hit a certain story point. Though there are still some points that are blocked of by story progression because a) you can't buy better equipment until you've proven yourself enough and b) because there aren't enough exp in any given chapter to get enough for being able to get to everywhere in the gameworld.
A thing I really enjoyed in upgrading your character is that he animates differently if you acquire the knowledge. On a level up you get learning points and some health boost. With your learning points you go to different trainers and exchange them for stats or upgrades. There are attributes like strength, dexterity or more mana points that are straight forward, deal more damage with your attacks and are required for being able to equipping better weapons. The other stuff you can get is training in certain weapon classes like one-handed, two-handed or bows. Once you opt for that and get the knowledge from your trainer your character starts to hold his weapon and attacks differently. All according to the instructions given to you. It also changes the combat system a bit because you can combo your attacks more competently. Neat thing that I would like to see more in games but at the top of my head I can't think of much that does that.
Like I mentioned before the story is a slow start but once it gets going it gets going with twists, turns and betrayals. Can't speak for the English localization but in German it is well written. Of course that depends on how one defines that. For me it roughly means the dialogue conveys what it wants by not being too long, sounds like something a human would say, character motivations and the relationships between them and other factions make sense, are thought out and it all follows a logic.
Here the relation between the three faction is well worked out. Events that unfold build on one another. Characters act differently towards you because of that. Some beats are not that original but well executed.
A connection I didn't make before but now seems obvious is that the Colony is probably symbolic for the Ruhrgebiet, an area of Germany with a past in ironworks and coalmining and the area where Piranha Bytes is located. Which would also explain why the world population is more diverse than you would expect going by today's discussions about diversity in RPGs since there were quite a few so called Gastarbeiter (guest workers) in the area. At least with the male population. While there are a few woman in the game world they are scantly clothed and working as slaves. It's not great though one could argue that it makes sense in the game's world.
Something I didn't expect to like as much as I did were the controls. A common story from what I have heard. You are mainly using two buttons to interact with objects or NPCs in the gameworld and depending on what you have equipped and out what you do changes. For example if you have your weapon or spell sheathed you talk with an NPC but with weapon out you attack them. There is some getting used to it when you open chests or want to pick something up but after a bit it should be no problem anymore. Though I fought in the trading windows it could get cumbersome at times.
The combat system also works well. It might lack some depth and the targetting can be wonky but other than that it is made for 1 on 1 combat which can be hard to pull off in the game sometimes. Most monsters in the wild hunt in packs and more often than not if you try to pull one everyone else will be on their way too so you better get used to running away a lot. Because if you try to take on too many enemies you will find yourself dead most times. Of course with some of the earlier monsters it will be no problem because with late game equipment they will barely do any damage and die in one hit but lategame enemies will be a threat even with the best possible equipment.
My favorite aspect was problaly the world. It is the antithesis to most open-worlds today in which it is small and doesn't have vast horizons. It unfolds very well paced to you. The only thing I didn't like was if I got into one of the areas that are mission relevant and cut off by a loading screen. But I was never a fan of mines in videogames. And getting out of them often revolves around climbing ladders which was too slow for me here.
Enemies also only respawn between chapters. So no overpowering to much between chapters. Which would also be pointless since equipment matters also. But this aspect makes the world feel alive for me. That there is an ecosystem and not just a theme park for you to play around in. While there is some nuance to add here it is really neat. Which makes me surprised that I heard the complaints about that mechanic.
Graphically the game is obviously not up to date but it is readable in its animations, design, etc. so there are worse things about the game. Soundtrack is very atmospheric.
It's a rough diamond but a diamond nonetheless. I would definitly recommend checking it out for a few hours to get an idea about it. Playing through it one has to decide for themselves. There are some parts that are relics of "gamer culture" in the early 2000s like "you went the extra mile here is a naked lady in a bathtub, aww yeah!!!!" but I didn't get too distracted by it.
I like it so much that I will probably jump into Gothic 2 before the next big RPG blitz
With Gothic fresh on my mind I also decided to check out the playable teaser of the remake and... oh boy.
First the good. The designs are pretty and some are a good update of the old ones, game looks alright though maybe a bit to bright. Character animations are good. Some parts are also kept like your character not being able to hold a sword probably in fights until he improves his skill. The introduction video for the world is good. Picking up items is also streamlined which is not unwelcomed for me but also take it or leave it. So there is some good to be found here.
Everything else though is terrible.
The combat system I do not like. I saw a screen of it before playing it and it looked like the system of For Honor so I didn't even try it with a mouse and used a controller. While there are similarities with the system in Gothic as in that it isn't made for bigger groups of enemies but more 1-on-1 oriented. I personally don't like it but it seems to be pretty popular. Though I'd much rather would have seen some update on the original game's mechanics. These are apart from key combinations you have to press to fight not that different from today. You have your different attacks, a block/parry (?) and evasive moves. My idea here is to build that out a bit. Use the parry for when you fight someone with a weapon and have the sidestep used for beasts. Don't have a solution for swinging your weapon left or right but there is probably a way. The stamina bar is something that they can keep or leave out I don't care.
While I said that the world introductary clip is done well what comes after that is horrendous. Absolutely terrible. A big part what made Gothic (at least for me) special is that you don't have an heroic entrance. You are tossed in prison probably for jaywalking, beat up and then saved. Here the nameless hero is a Nathan Drake-ish badass rogue all of the sudden who keeps talking to himself the whole time. The VO doesn't help and makes him sound like a moron while talking like he is in Blue's Clues. Additional they imply why he is imprisoned and that makes me mad because we can't have any mystery any more and everything needs to be explained. Also his clothes don't look like he is a prisoner at all.
The scene in which he is brought in to the colony is an Uncharted-as beginning as you gonna get. Explosions, hanging on a ledge while big objects fly past you in slowmo, you fall deep. No you being expendable or getting beat up to set the mood for the game.
Then there is Diego who is Jack Sparrow all of a sudden which he is absolutely not in the original. Who is also introduced in some Jurassic World looking scene and makes an entrance like Zorro.
There is other stuff like the barrier not being visible, you not being able to pick up something that would be a quest reward and not getting beat up for trying. You start with fighting wolves which are in the beginning of Gothic some of the beasts that frighten you the most and maybe the fifth or sixth enemytype you can take on.
It also showed me that the word "modernize" in relation to videogames is something that tells everything and yet means nothing.
Didn't even finish the demo. No matter how I played with the settings I never got above 40FPS which made me sick after a while. And since I didn't really like playing it I uninstalled it.
To sound like some asshole snob: This seems like a remake of a PC focused series that is made in mind with consoles first. I want to be open minded about and hope it is good and they take some of the negative feedback to heart but I won't hold my breath. I get that it probably makes more money that way but man is it hard to not be bummed out. And I am not a Gothic fan for that long.
Which is not to say that there aren't things you couldn't improve in Gothic. In my opinion you could do more with the day-night cycle in terms of wildlife. Many animals sleep at night and have maybe one up as a guard. Make more dangerous predators come out at night. Or the game could use some "fluff" in the midgame. Pretty much after joining a faction the only thing you do is main quests and maybe some exp hunting because you already did almost all sidequests the game has. While not bad it can make the game move pretty fast because some major events that should maybe take a bit more time to unfold than they do. Maybe change how you work your way up in the faction you join.
There is also some cut content/quests like a bandit camp that could maybe be introduced into the game with a remake. Maybe flesh out some characters more if you have to. Make the world more seemless like some areas are not behind a loading screen. Being able to use the mouse in the trading menu would be also welcomed. And then there is the repopulation that could be handled a bit more nuanced. For example if you extinguish some predator animals from an area make lesser threatening creatures come to it because it is now safer for them instead of adding just one to the pack or one to the area where there were multiple before.
That would be some points from the top of my hat with out thinking about it too much.
Gothic begins with you getting kicked into a prison colony. After you arrived the first things that happens is you getting beat up. No hint of a back story that you are some noble or whatever else with special abilites by birth. No one cares about how came there or what your name is. Just the smallest possible cog in the war machine.
The story takes some time from there. You are introduced to the three factions of the Colony. And from here the first thing you will do is mainly side questing because everything but maybe two monster will beat you up. Be that the lowest class in the faction or some big flies. I would almost describe it as work to get where you at least can easily move between the three camps and maybe go besides the road to slay some creatures. Having only played Elex (and Risen 2 but I have not many memories of it at this point) this cycles could probably be described as a Piranha Bytes staple at this point. And the character growth is really satisfying and motivating. It keeps me going like none other because my mind gets going with where I can go and what I can do then once I have enought points to upgrade my character so he can hold a certain weapon.
That loop makes the by today standards relatively small world bigger than it is because areas open up to you by defeating stronger enemies. RagnarRox describes them as "natural progession borders" which I think is a fitting term. While this could be described as a skill check because it depends on your stats and equipment it is also more elegantly solved that some barriers for reasons that unlock once you hit a certain story point. Though there are still some points that are blocked of by story progression because a) you can't buy better equipment until you've proven yourself enough and b) because there aren't enough exp in any given chapter to get enough for being able to get to everywhere in the gameworld.
A thing I really enjoyed in upgrading your character is that he animates differently if you acquire the knowledge. On a level up you get learning points and some health boost. With your learning points you go to different trainers and exchange them for stats or upgrades. There are attributes like strength, dexterity or more mana points that are straight forward, deal more damage with your attacks and are required for being able to equipping better weapons. The other stuff you can get is training in certain weapon classes like one-handed, two-handed or bows. Once you opt for that and get the knowledge from your trainer your character starts to hold his weapon and attacks differently. All according to the instructions given to you. It also changes the combat system a bit because you can combo your attacks more competently. Neat thing that I would like to see more in games but at the top of my head I can't think of much that does that.
Like I mentioned before the story is a slow start but once it gets going it gets going with twists, turns and betrayals. Can't speak for the English localization but in German it is well written. Of course that depends on how one defines that. For me it roughly means the dialogue conveys what it wants by not being too long, sounds like something a human would say, character motivations and the relationships between them and other factions make sense, are thought out and it all follows a logic.
Here the relation between the three faction is well worked out. Events that unfold build on one another. Characters act differently towards you because of that. Some beats are not that original but well executed.
A connection I didn't make before but now seems obvious is that the Colony is probably symbolic for the Ruhrgebiet, an area of Germany with a past in ironworks and coalmining and the area where Piranha Bytes is located. Which would also explain why the world population is more diverse than you would expect going by today's discussions about diversity in RPGs since there were quite a few so called Gastarbeiter (guest workers) in the area. At least with the male population. While there are a few woman in the game world they are scantly clothed and working as slaves. It's not great though one could argue that it makes sense in the game's world.
Something I didn't expect to like as much as I did were the controls. A common story from what I have heard. You are mainly using two buttons to interact with objects or NPCs in the gameworld and depending on what you have equipped and out what you do changes. For example if you have your weapon or spell sheathed you talk with an NPC but with weapon out you attack them. There is some getting used to it when you open chests or want to pick something up but after a bit it should be no problem anymore. Though I fought in the trading windows it could get cumbersome at times.
The combat system also works well. It might lack some depth and the targetting can be wonky but other than that it is made for 1 on 1 combat which can be hard to pull off in the game sometimes. Most monsters in the wild hunt in packs and more often than not if you try to pull one everyone else will be on their way too so you better get used to running away a lot. Because if you try to take on too many enemies you will find yourself dead most times. Of course with some of the earlier monsters it will be no problem because with late game equipment they will barely do any damage and die in one hit but lategame enemies will be a threat even with the best possible equipment.
My favorite aspect was problaly the world. It is the antithesis to most open-worlds today in which it is small and doesn't have vast horizons. It unfolds very well paced to you. The only thing I didn't like was if I got into one of the areas that are mission relevant and cut off by a loading screen. But I was never a fan of mines in videogames. And getting out of them often revolves around climbing ladders which was too slow for me here.
Enemies also only respawn between chapters. So no overpowering to much between chapters. Which would also be pointless since equipment matters also. But this aspect makes the world feel alive for me. That there is an ecosystem and not just a theme park for you to play around in. While there is some nuance to add here it is really neat. Which makes me surprised that I heard the complaints about that mechanic.
Graphically the game is obviously not up to date but it is readable in its animations, design, etc. so there are worse things about the game. Soundtrack is very atmospheric.
It's a rough diamond but a diamond nonetheless. I would definitly recommend checking it out for a few hours to get an idea about it. Playing through it one has to decide for themselves. There are some parts that are relics of "gamer culture" in the early 2000s like "you went the extra mile here is a naked lady in a bathtub, aww yeah!!!!" but I didn't get too distracted by it.
I like it so much that I will probably jump into Gothic 2 before the next big RPG blitz
With Gothic fresh on my mind I also decided to check out the playable teaser of the remake and... oh boy.
First the good. The designs are pretty and some are a good update of the old ones, game looks alright though maybe a bit to bright. Character animations are good. Some parts are also kept like your character not being able to hold a sword probably in fights until he improves his skill. The introduction video for the world is good. Picking up items is also streamlined which is not unwelcomed for me but also take it or leave it. So there is some good to be found here.
Everything else though is terrible.
The combat system I do not like. I saw a screen of it before playing it and it looked like the system of For Honor so I didn't even try it with a mouse and used a controller. While there are similarities with the system in Gothic as in that it isn't made for bigger groups of enemies but more 1-on-1 oriented. I personally don't like it but it seems to be pretty popular. Though I'd much rather would have seen some update on the original game's mechanics. These are apart from key combinations you have to press to fight not that different from today. You have your different attacks, a block/parry (?) and evasive moves. My idea here is to build that out a bit. Use the parry for when you fight someone with a weapon and have the sidestep used for beasts. Don't have a solution for swinging your weapon left or right but there is probably a way. The stamina bar is something that they can keep or leave out I don't care.
While I said that the world introductary clip is done well what comes after that is horrendous. Absolutely terrible. A big part what made Gothic (at least for me) special is that you don't have an heroic entrance. You are tossed in prison probably for jaywalking, beat up and then saved. Here the nameless hero is a Nathan Drake-ish badass rogue all of the sudden who keeps talking to himself the whole time. The VO doesn't help and makes him sound like a moron while talking like he is in Blue's Clues. Additional they imply why he is imprisoned and that makes me mad because we can't have any mystery any more and everything needs to be explained. Also his clothes don't look like he is a prisoner at all.
The scene in which he is brought in to the colony is an Uncharted-as beginning as you gonna get. Explosions, hanging on a ledge while big objects fly past you in slowmo, you fall deep. No you being expendable or getting beat up to set the mood for the game.
Then there is Diego who is Jack Sparrow all of a sudden which he is absolutely not in the original. Who is also introduced in some Jurassic World looking scene and makes an entrance like Zorro.
There is other stuff like the barrier not being visible, you not being able to pick up something that would be a quest reward and not getting beat up for trying. You start with fighting wolves which are in the beginning of Gothic some of the beasts that frighten you the most and maybe the fifth or sixth enemytype you can take on.
It also showed me that the word "modernize" in relation to videogames is something that tells everything and yet means nothing.
Didn't even finish the demo. No matter how I played with the settings I never got above 40FPS which made me sick after a while. And since I didn't really like playing it I uninstalled it.
To sound like some asshole snob: This seems like a remake of a PC focused series that is made in mind with consoles first. I want to be open minded about and hope it is good and they take some of the negative feedback to heart but I won't hold my breath. I get that it probably makes more money that way but man is it hard to not be bummed out. And I am not a Gothic fan for that long.
Which is not to say that there aren't things you couldn't improve in Gothic. In my opinion you could do more with the day-night cycle in terms of wildlife. Many animals sleep at night and have maybe one up as a guard. Make more dangerous predators come out at night. Or the game could use some "fluff" in the midgame. Pretty much after joining a faction the only thing you do is main quests and maybe some exp hunting because you already did almost all sidequests the game has. While not bad it can make the game move pretty fast because some major events that should maybe take a bit more time to unfold than they do. Maybe change how you work your way up in the faction you join.
There is also some cut content/quests like a bandit camp that could maybe be introduced into the game with a remake. Maybe flesh out some characters more if you have to. Make the world more seemless like some areas are not behind a loading screen. Being able to use the mouse in the trading menu would be also welcomed. And then there is the repopulation that could be handled a bit more nuanced. For example if you extinguish some predator animals from an area make lesser threatening creatures come to it because it is now safer for them instead of adding just one to the pack or one to the area where there were multiple before.
That would be some points from the top of my hat with out thinking about it too much.
I started Persona 1 (PSP) for the blitz but then I got swept up in the Final Fantasy VII craze surrounding the remake.
Since I don't really visit the Era front page much at all anymore, I'm just going to post my Final Fantasy VII thoughts here instead.
I'm going to start by saying that I have long been extremely dubious of this remake. I didn't think Square had it in them to present the world and characters of Final Fantasy VII any more. Final Fantasy VII, to me, is an isolate within its franchise. Bridges connect it to Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy VIII but it is also very much its own thing. It takes the steampunk of Final Fantasy VI and instead of applying it to a medieval world, applies it to an analog to post-war and post-post-war-boom 20th century earth, with the world the carcass left behind after a triumphant industrialist and capitalist power moved on to bolder and more extreme methods of stripping the planet of any and all energy for its own, narrow benefit. The styling is more punk and gritty than fantasy meets reality tends to mean in Final Fantasy from VIII onwards. So I really thought the kind of remake we were likely to get is one that made the world and technology sleeker and shinier and mostly ran on Sephiroth mumbo jumbo and melodrama rather than the deeper themes of Final Fantasy VII.
Final Fantasy VII Remake was not that. It got what made the original special much more so than I would have dared ever hope, from the smallest sights and sounds to the wonderfully expanded script. Many of the area maps were immediately evocative to me of the painted backgrounds in the original. The game finds reasons to make you walk on all the irregular paths, e.g. pipes, you had to walk on in the original. The conversations are instantly familiar and expanded in a fashion so true to the original that it felt like the game I imagined as a child as I peered beyond the actual script. Moreover, they are truly wonderfully written. The characters come alive like never before but yet as their old selves and, hence, their lives and concerns are those they originally had, tapping into the original themes. The OST is also full of very strong and varied adaptations of the original soundtrack although I found myself missing the particular sounds of the old midi on several tracks.
The battle system is also more than I would ever have hoped for after the announced transition from ATB to an action system. This tends to leave me worried about party play: for me, a core charm of a party-based RPG with cool characters is interacting and using those characters together on a regular basis. It is very easy for turn based systems to tap into this, for me, even if it takes a really fine tuned system to maximize. Meanwhile, it is very easy for additional characters to just sort of drop out in single player action systems. Final Fantasy VII Remake, however, really encourages you both to switch characters (to change aggro and charge ATB; which charges much slower when you aren't playing as a character) and use commands to characters you're not playing (less likely to be interrupted than when you are playing them; the game is almost paused while you give commands). The battle system also makes epic and engaging fights that are frankly cool but ridiculously undertuned in the original.
The ending really put a damper on this enthusiasm, as I'll go into below, and leaves me wondering if the subsequent episodes will be satisfying or not but I've been playing through the early chapters again on hard mode while playing through the original Midgar segment on the side. Doing so has reinforced my assessment of the virtues of the game as I've laid out above.
Since I don't really visit the Era front page much at all anymore, I'm just going to post my Final Fantasy VII thoughts here instead.
I'm going to start by saying that I have long been extremely dubious of this remake. I didn't think Square had it in them to present the world and characters of Final Fantasy VII any more. Final Fantasy VII, to me, is an isolate within its franchise. Bridges connect it to Final Fantasy VI, Chrono Trigger, and Final Fantasy VIII but it is also very much its own thing. It takes the steampunk of Final Fantasy VI and instead of applying it to a medieval world, applies it to an analog to post-war and post-post-war-boom 20th century earth, with the world the carcass left behind after a triumphant industrialist and capitalist power moved on to bolder and more extreme methods of stripping the planet of any and all energy for its own, narrow benefit. The styling is more punk and gritty than fantasy meets reality tends to mean in Final Fantasy from VIII onwards. So I really thought the kind of remake we were likely to get is one that made the world and technology sleeker and shinier and mostly ran on Sephiroth mumbo jumbo and melodrama rather than the deeper themes of Final Fantasy VII.
Final Fantasy VII Remake was not that. It got what made the original special much more so than I would have dared ever hope, from the smallest sights and sounds to the wonderfully expanded script. Many of the area maps were immediately evocative to me of the painted backgrounds in the original. The game finds reasons to make you walk on all the irregular paths, e.g. pipes, you had to walk on in the original. The conversations are instantly familiar and expanded in a fashion so true to the original that it felt like the game I imagined as a child as I peered beyond the actual script. Moreover, they are truly wonderfully written. The characters come alive like never before but yet as their old selves and, hence, their lives and concerns are those they originally had, tapping into the original themes. The OST is also full of very strong and varied adaptations of the original soundtrack although I found myself missing the particular sounds of the old midi on several tracks.
The battle system is also more than I would ever have hoped for after the announced transition from ATB to an action system. This tends to leave me worried about party play: for me, a core charm of a party-based RPG with cool characters is interacting and using those characters together on a regular basis. It is very easy for turn based systems to tap into this, for me, even if it takes a really fine tuned system to maximize. Meanwhile, it is very easy for additional characters to just sort of drop out in single player action systems. Final Fantasy VII Remake, however, really encourages you both to switch characters (to change aggro and charge ATB; which charges much slower when you aren't playing as a character) and use commands to characters you're not playing (less likely to be interrupted than when you are playing them; the game is almost paused while you give commands). The battle system also makes epic and engaging fights that are frankly cool but ridiculously undertuned in the original.
The ending really put a damper on this enthusiasm, as I'll go into below, and leaves me wondering if the subsequent episodes will be satisfying or not but I've been playing through the early chapters again on hard mode while playing through the original Midgar segment on the side. Doing so has reinforced my assessment of the virtues of the game as I've laid out above.
For starters, the whispers made every scene they were in worse than the comparable scene in the original. They were purely detrimental. I was hoping they were just the manifestation of Aeris's madness much like this game leaned more into Cloud's Sephiroth madness. That'd still be annoying but it was better than what they increasingly seemed to be: a fourth wall gimmick boxing the game in to the shape of the original scenario. In truth, they were just this latter thing: a statement by the developers that while this remake was constrained, future episodes would not be so constrained. A statement told in full on Nomura fuckery that sounded a long, low quality, and frankly stupid note at the end of the game. The thing is, a) the developers were not so constrained and b) the closeness to the original was pretty much the source of all the goodness in the game. As to a), I was right there with them as they expanded on the existing scenarios and dialog. They did a fantastic job. I also wanted *more* wholly new scenarios exploring Midgar, which they never really did after chapter 4, adding additional dungeons instead. As to b), the game was so good because it was essentially a second pass at greater depth and with the benefit of decades of reflection. Notably, when the game went *off* rails, it had substantially less to say and generally lower quality stuff to say where it said anything at all. Chapter 4 is the only exception to this.
Moreover, everyone knew that after Midgar faithfulness was going to be harder to see through. We all knew and accepted that. It was a regular part of conversations I had with others concerning the project. They didn't need a grand pronouncement of it.
I can only understand what the developers did from an internal perspective that felt incredibly burdened by the legacy of Final Fantasy VII. The statement then seems either "See we can do it! Trust us!" or "Fuck your expectations!" In either case it counter-productively comes across to me as the latter. Square *shouldn't* lay down the burden of the legacy. It is shouldering that burden and taking it seriously, which made the game great. It is such a strange, tone deaf ending. Moreover, it leaves me right back where I was at before the remake with respect to future episodes.
At least we'll always have Midgar, because really it was fantastic in this.
Moreover, everyone knew that after Midgar faithfulness was going to be harder to see through. We all knew and accepted that. It was a regular part of conversations I had with others concerning the project. They didn't need a grand pronouncement of it.
I can only understand what the developers did from an internal perspective that felt incredibly burdened by the legacy of Final Fantasy VII. The statement then seems either "See we can do it! Trust us!" or "Fuck your expectations!" In either case it counter-productively comes across to me as the latter. Square *shouldn't* lay down the burden of the legacy. It is shouldering that burden and taking it seriously, which made the game great. It is such a strange, tone deaf ending. Moreover, it leaves me right back where I was at before the remake with respect to future episodes.
At least we'll always have Midgar, because really it was fantastic in this.
I have completed Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey Redux and wow do I have things to say about it.
The game starts out fine as a dungeon crawler with SMT mechanics, a cool premise, and the ongoing mystery of the schwarzwelt.
Unlike all the other SMTs I have played, there is only a Japanese dub, which really clashes with the multinational cast from around the world.
Anyway SJ has a "humanity's (seven deadly?) sins represented as dungeons" theme, with an active warzone, a a hedonistic pleasure island-type red light district, and most poignantly of all IMO, a large corporate shopping mall stratum followed by a world of endless garbage and pollution piled up as far as the eye can see. I approve!
Then this theme seems to be muddied with sector Eridanus which is... a garden with a large tower in the middle? Followed by... A giant super server containing all of humanity's memories? There's probably some symbolism here but I'm afraid it's lost on me.
The alignment system is handled well. Demon co-op attacks occur with all teammates of the same law/neutral/chaos alignment, and you alignment makes negotiating easier or harder.
I love the boss of the third stratum, Horkus. He has oodles of HP, is immune to ailments, and summons pigs to eat and heal. The trick to this fight is that any ailment applied to a pig Horkus eats will be applied to him as well. Very thematically fitting that the personification of gluttony and consumption is done in by his own vices!
Unfortunately, the main story takes too long to get going – most of the arcs in first couple of stratums end up being monster of the week type of deals, with very little carrying over from one stratum to the next. The schawrtzwelt itself doesn't really feel like a lived community the same way Tokyo did. I've heard that Nocturne does the whole demon world thing better.
Eridans is where the game starts creaking at the seams.
In sector Erindas, we are introduced to Captain Jack and his mercenaries, AKA the most blatantly-going-to-be-evil organization this side of Fire Emblem. They enter the plot unceremoniously, the narrative expects us to be unsure about these shady characters for a good chunk of this chapter and the next, and they turn out to be -get this- evil! I feel it would have been more effective if Jack's squad were present at the beginning of the story, then gradually turned evil.
The big problem from here on out is the gameplay. Brute force puzzles with pitfall floors, teleporter mazes, conveyor belt mazes, and dark levels? Not a good recipe. This ties into what I feel is a very huge issue: unlike in Etrian Odyssey, you cannot draw on the map. Sure, some things are drawn, but they don't give you context, like the map says there's a teleporter here, but not where to. Redux thankfully has apps that let you see where teleports lead and warn you about traps so it is not as much of a brute force thing (it's still bad since you can't write out a coherent path yourself), and these apps were apparently not in the original. Holy mother of tedium.
No map drawing gets REALLY BAD in the final sector, an interweaving maze of floors that require you to revisit floors, flip switches, open shortcuts, and find the critical path to the final boss. When I was unsure of where to go, I had to manually explore each floor looking for unused areas. It turns out that something the game marked as a wall, wasn't a wall. I'm mad. Also, there's a hidden room with nothing but hazard tiles in it. That's so spiteful it's hilarious.
The demon fusion and source system are limited and obnoxious to play around. Rather than freely allow you to create your own builds, almost no moves outside of a demon's "type" can be inherited. Instead, analyzing a demon in your party enough grants you a one-use source containing moves that can be selected at fusion. I get that other extreme of SMT 4's "build nuking death squads with no restrictions" is also a problem, but I sure as heck like that more then this.
Let's talk about the new content Redux added! The Womb of Grief a seven floor bonus dungeon, and Alex, a new character who wants you dead (and Zelenin plus Jimenez but the narrative forgets about this and drops it). I liked the dungeon well enough, like the clever teleporter puzzle that isn't just brute force like every other one in the game. The Demonee-ho boot camp missions were great; the twist behind it made laugh.
(They're not marked on the map lol screw you)
There is almost no documentation on the new dungeon on gamefaqs, so I had to go digging through let's plays whenever I got stuck. Someone on these very forums made an invaluable map. Thanks!
Anyway, let's talk about how this content effects the plot. Unless you complete the bonus dungeon, it doesn't as far as I know. If you do, it is revealed that
Complete the dungeon and agree to side with Alex to avert this, and you get one more floor and a new final boss. Beat it and you get a happy version of the original's ambiguous ones!
Or so I thought. Thinking that this would be another round of "Law and Chaos are both dicks and Neutral fails to address the systemic causes" I went with what I thought to be the lesser evil and went Redux Neutral.
I got a surprise. The protagonist is now
I checked the internet, and Redux law and chaos result in
Not what I was expecting from this series.
Sure, these new endings piss all over the ambiguity of the original, but I don't feel that OG SJ was some sort of pinnacle of writing in the first place. Still, it sucks if you did like the original's endings. I actually like this change to the formula and hope it returns in SMT 5.
TLDR: Strong start, narrative that is good at some points and disjointed at others, level design gets more obnoxious as the game goes on.
The game starts out fine as a dungeon crawler with SMT mechanics, a cool premise, and the ongoing mystery of the schwarzwelt.
Unlike all the other SMTs I have played, there is only a Japanese dub, which really clashes with the multinational cast from around the world.
Anyway SJ has a "humanity's (seven deadly?) sins represented as dungeons" theme, with an active warzone, a a hedonistic pleasure island-type red light district, and most poignantly of all IMO, a large corporate shopping mall stratum followed by a world of endless garbage and pollution piled up as far as the eye can see. I approve!
Then this theme seems to be muddied with sector Eridanus which is... a garden with a large tower in the middle? Followed by... A giant super server containing all of humanity's memories? There's probably some symbolism here but I'm afraid it's lost on me.
The alignment system is handled well. Demon co-op attacks occur with all teammates of the same law/neutral/chaos alignment, and you alignment makes negotiating easier or harder.
I love the boss of the third stratum, Horkus. He has oodles of HP, is immune to ailments, and summons pigs to eat and heal. The trick to this fight is that any ailment applied to a pig Horkus eats will be applied to him as well. Very thematically fitting that the personification of gluttony and consumption is done in by his own vices!
Unfortunately, the main story takes too long to get going – most of the arcs in first couple of stratums end up being monster of the week type of deals, with very little carrying over from one stratum to the next. The schawrtzwelt itself doesn't really feel like a lived community the same way Tokyo did. I've heard that Nocturne does the whole demon world thing better.
Eridans is where the game starts creaking at the seams.
In sector Erindas, we are introduced to Captain Jack and his mercenaries, AKA the most blatantly-going-to-be-evil organization this side of Fire Emblem. They enter the plot unceremoniously, the narrative expects us to be unsure about these shady characters for a good chunk of this chapter and the next, and they turn out to be -get this- evil! I feel it would have been more effective if Jack's squad were present at the beginning of the story, then gradually turned evil.
The big problem from here on out is the gameplay. Brute force puzzles with pitfall floors, teleporter mazes, conveyor belt mazes, and dark levels? Not a good recipe. This ties into what I feel is a very huge issue: unlike in Etrian Odyssey, you cannot draw on the map. Sure, some things are drawn, but they don't give you context, like the map says there's a teleporter here, but not where to. Redux thankfully has apps that let you see where teleports lead and warn you about traps so it is not as much of a brute force thing (it's still bad since you can't write out a coherent path yourself), and these apps were apparently not in the original. Holy mother of tedium.
No map drawing gets REALLY BAD in the final sector, an interweaving maze of floors that require you to revisit floors, flip switches, open shortcuts, and find the critical path to the final boss. When I was unsure of where to go, I had to manually explore each floor looking for unused areas. It turns out that something the game marked as a wall, wasn't a wall. I'm mad. Also, there's a hidden room with nothing but hazard tiles in it. That's so spiteful it's hilarious.
The demon fusion and source system are limited and obnoxious to play around. Rather than freely allow you to create your own builds, almost no moves outside of a demon's "type" can be inherited. Instead, analyzing a demon in your party enough grants you a one-use source containing moves that can be selected at fusion. I get that other extreme of SMT 4's "build nuking death squads with no restrictions" is also a problem, but I sure as heck like that more then this.
Let's talk about the new content Redux added! The Womb of Grief a seven floor bonus dungeon, and Alex, a new character who wants you dead (and Zelenin plus Jimenez but the narrative forgets about this and drops it). I liked the dungeon well enough, like the clever teleporter puzzle that isn't just brute force like every other one in the game. The Demonee-ho boot camp missions were great; the twist behind it made laugh.
It turns out your foul-mouthed drill sargant is actually a regal, dignified god of military strategy putting on an act.
There is almost no documentation on the new dungeon on gamefaqs, so I had to go digging through let's plays whenever I got stuck. Someone on these very forums made an invaluable map. Thanks!
Anyway, let's talk about how this content effects the plot. Unless you complete the bonus dungeon, it doesn't as far as I know. If you do, it is revealed that
all of the original game's endings spell disaster for humankind, and Alex has gone back in time to stop them from happening.
Complete the dungeon and agree to side with Alex to avert this, and you get one more floor and a new final boss. Beat it and you get a happy version of the original's ambiguous ones!
Or so I thought. Thinking that this would be another round of "Law and Chaos are both dicks and Neutral fails to address the systemic causes" I went with what I thought to be the lesser evil and went Redux Neutral.
I got a surprise. The protagonist is now
immortal and trapped on the moon forced to destroy the schwarzwelt whenever it reappears, and humanity has learned nothing.
both faction representatives toning it down from the original by either making humans fundamentally pacifistic and altruistic, or allowing the demons to share the earth with humanity, and both prosper.
Sure, these new endings piss all over the ambiguity of the original, but I don't feel that OG SJ was some sort of pinnacle of writing in the first place. Still, it sucks if you did like the original's endings. I actually like this change to the formula and hope it returns in SMT 5.
TLDR: Strong start, narrative that is good at some points and disjointed at others, level design gets more obnoxious as the game goes on.
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OP
OP
Sceptile Agreed, I bounced off SJ when I first played it because the level design became too draconian. It's not conceptually different from the dungeon crawling in other mainline SMT, it's just amped up to a level that starts feeling like a kaizo fanhack of an SMT game. The setting is unique but I actually prefer the post-apoc urban setting in II, IV, Apocalypse etc.
If I go back and play it to completion it will 100% be through emulating the DS version with fast-forward and save states.
If I go back and play it to completion it will 100% be through emulating the DS version with fast-forward and save states.
I ended up finishing my final blitz game the other day, Might & Magic X: Legacy.
And I really enjoyed it. It's definitely a flawed game for sure:
There's a lot to find in the world that makes exploration really satisfying. Some parts of the world are blocked off by not yet having the required traversal abilities, like the abilities to navigate deep forests, shallow water, and climb mountains. Other parts you can go to at will, but you will certainly get your ass kicked early on. There's small dungeons just labeled "Dangerous Cave" all over the world, these typically have only 1 monster in them but way above the level of the surrounding area. These are fun to come back to and beat down once you're strong enough, or you can buff yourself up and try to take them down at an earlier level to make the reward even more valuable.
The dungeons themselves are pretty good. None stood out in my mind as "great" but all were pretty solid. The House of Ravens side-quest dungeon was particularly satisfying to complete.
This game has definitely made me want to (re)play the earlier games in the series, both the real time and the turn based ones. Well, 4 through 8 at the very least. So I guess in that sense it could make a pretty good entry point for new players to the series as well. The story is a continuation of the story from Heroes of Might and Magic 6. I never played that one so I'm sure there's references I missed, but I never felt lost.
And I really enjoyed it. It's definitely a flawed game for sure:
- Some pretty ugly, blurry textures
- Performance is pretty bad (huge drops when wandering the world) for a game this fugly
- Steam version still requires a UPlay login
- I had one bug with a critical dialogue choice that I had to google, ended up having to modify an XML file to get past it
- The voice lines for various events get really repetitive
"They've found us! Alright, who forgot to take a bath!"
There's a lot to find in the world that makes exploration really satisfying. Some parts of the world are blocked off by not yet having the required traversal abilities, like the abilities to navigate deep forests, shallow water, and climb mountains. Other parts you can go to at will, but you will certainly get your ass kicked early on. There's small dungeons just labeled "Dangerous Cave" all over the world, these typically have only 1 monster in them but way above the level of the surrounding area. These are fun to come back to and beat down once you're strong enough, or you can buff yourself up and try to take them down at an earlier level to make the reward even more valuable.
The dungeons themselves are pretty good. None stood out in my mind as "great" but all were pretty solid. The House of Ravens side-quest dungeon was particularly satisfying to complete.
This game has definitely made me want to (re)play the earlier games in the series, both the real time and the turn based ones. Well, 4 through 8 at the very least. So I guess in that sense it could make a pretty good entry point for new players to the series as well. The story is a continuation of the story from Heroes of Might and Magic 6. I never played that one so I'm sure there's references I missed, but I never felt lost.
I've beaten 4 blitz games but been neglecting to post impressions here. Honestly I don't feel like writing a lot so I'm not going to do justice to the games and instead just summarize some thoughts shortly for each.
Nier: Automata: A masterpiece that lives up to its hype. The narrative is just amazing and I loved the themes it presents. While the gameplay is generally fun, it gets a bit repetitive at some points and it has annoying rates of backtracking.
Fire Emblem (GBA): my 2nd incursion into the series and I also really liked it. Found it easier than GotHW and the shorter chapters were more enjoyable too. If I had to complain about something it would be Hektor's mode being 90% rehash.
Megadimension Neptunia VII: the obligatory Nep game, not much different for the rest except for some changed features that manage difuse some annoyances of the saga while at the same time adding others.
Energy Breaker: one of those hidden and fan translated RPG gems for the SNES, it's a pretty unique experience and one that I really enjoyed. To nitpick a few things: the game does not really manage well new party members and some annoying difficulty spikes.
I swapped in Iceborne for my last game and it´s technically completed since I finished the story but I'll wait to slay some of the end game monsters to count it.
Nier: Automata: A masterpiece that lives up to its hype. The narrative is just amazing and I loved the themes it presents. While the gameplay is generally fun, it gets a bit repetitive at some points and it has annoying rates of backtracking.
Fire Emblem (GBA): my 2nd incursion into the series and I also really liked it. Found it easier than GotHW and the shorter chapters were more enjoyable too. If I had to complain about something it would be Hektor's mode being 90% rehash.
Megadimension Neptunia VII: the obligatory Nep game, not much different for the rest except for some changed features that manage difuse some annoyances of the saga while at the same time adding others.
Energy Breaker: one of those hidden and fan translated RPG gems for the SNES, it's a pretty unique experience and one that I really enjoyed. To nitpick a few things: the game does not really manage well new party members and some annoying difficulty spikes.
I swapped in Iceborne for my last game and it´s technically completed since I finished the story but I'll wait to slay some of the end game monsters to count it.
I just completed a Chinese game. Tales of Hongyuan, an interesting little game. It uses turn-based combat with 5 party members, has a base you can upgrade and it feels rater jrpgish. I think it's a one or two man project, not entirely sure, but it's a small team nonetheless. There are a lot of reused assets, but a lot of the stuff look good for a smaller project like this. Took me around 20 hours to beat. It's a decent game, but with so-so translation. If you want to give any Chinese game a try, this is a decent place to start. It's far from the best rpg from the country,. but there is fun to be had.
So my FF mania has continued (poor Persona 1)
...
I ended up platinuming FFVIIR, which is not something I often do. It just sort of happened as I just found myself naturally wanting to do all the content. The only trophy that was out of my way was the trophy for getting all 9 dresses---you can get 6 on the way to completing normal and then hard mode but the last three you have to go back and do a couple chapters over again (in my case for no other reason). I just did it at the very end after I had indeed gotten everything else. It was the only time I felt harried (why am I doing this again?) the entire time and it was pretty quick as I had to skip sidequests and what not. But in any case, for the most part my point with this is that I feel FFVIIR is a game that is meaty--but with just the right amount of meat, well-distributed.
Hard mode is interesting. It is basically a mode where you are effectively always max level (you'll get to 50 by the end of the first couple chapters), have access to a full array of materia and the equipment allowing for its use, and you already know most of the mechanics of the encounters and your characters from going through the first time. The only costs are you can't use items, MP doesn't restore at benches, and the enemies are retuned. The thing is: hard mode isn't tuned that aggressively against your advantages. I made it through most of it having a single revive magic, which is really the main limiter on keeping your party afloat, before finally deciding to go back to chapter 4 (I had been playing hard mode and FFVII OG Midgar side-by-side until the latter was done in an instant, but I skipped chapter 4 for this reason) and realizing you could get multiples. It is just a fun mode and I felt I really got to know when and how to use MP as well as how to manage ATB and party play much better than I had the first go around. I recommend it.
Similarly, the superbosses offer just the right amount of challenge, in my opinion. I wasn't sure I'd get through them but when I applied myself to them, it just sort of naturally happened that I did--but without them seeming a pushover.
My thoughts above on the game in general more or less continue to be my thoughts now.
...
I did not get too far beyond Midgar in OG FFVII. I might still play more of it. But it was interesting comparing the two and seeing all the little things the remake picked up on and ran with. It was also interesting to see where it diverged, particularly with regards to the few spots where I think the remake is pretty messy.
...
I ended up picking up my FFXII Zodiac Age save from a couple years ago. I had just done Raithwall and was on my way to Mt. Bur-Omisace. As a kid I had gotten to Mt. Bur-Omisace in OG FFXII before stopping at the Stillshrine because the bats there were absolutely murdering me and my occassion for playing--my mother had gotten me the game when I had the flu for a week or so (the last time I had it, I think)--had passed--I'd gotten better. I wasn't really into it and I struggled against the gambit system so it was one of those games I just sort of never went back to after my situation changed. It wasn't a purposeful drop, but not many times when I dropped a game as a child did I really mean to drop it permanently--I just happened to do so.
In any case, talk around GAF was pretty positive about FFXII so I decided I'd give it another go and try and actually play it on its terms, e.g. learning to use gambit. I started trying it out in between games a couple years ago and it just sort of stopped when the games I was waiting for came out. I wasn't particularly enamored of it, but I was trying to learn it. Didn't help that I was struck with choice paralysis about opening up my second jobs on the characters.
But I picked up my playthrough again after finishing FFVIIR and again I struggled to like the game. I just asked friends for second job recommendations to overcome that choice paralysis hurdle but then I struggled with the messy layers of systems and the at times obtuse loot placements. I'd be running around in low level gear impoverished from trying to get all my magicks, getting through by the seat of my pants and coming into some money only to spend it all again on magic. Eventually, I again followed advice and did a couple of hunts, got some nice gear and money--but with the former I found I could just sit on the latter. I also started using a magick/technick placement guide and control-F'ing through it when I entered an area so I knew where to look for cool spells.
In any case, the game started growing on me by leaps and bounds in the last areas and dungeons as my characters grew into their roles and I started getting a lot of cool loot--and the money to shop once near the end to fill in the gaps.
I mostly played Ashe who I had classed as a White and Time Mage. I had her on a healing gambit that had her doing all the most important healing actions without command although I'd override the gambit for, say, situational area heals, pre-timed big heals when I knew damage was going to spike, and less important status ailments the gambit didn't encompass. I would then do the other support manually, i.e. the buffing, dispelling, bubbling, decoying, floating, etc. I really liked that perch and it felt really in tune with the game to be sort of the overlooking manager of the battles. Support felt so rewarding and powerful in this game. White mage is also fun in this game because of just how prevalent undead and holy-weak enemies are in the endgame (honestly too prevalent but curaja'ing hordes of zombies is so much fun).
In any case, I got to the ending and ended up spending tens of hours finishing up most of the hunts, doing the extra dungeons, getting all the espers, etc. before finally deciding to go through the final dungeon today. I still have stuff I can do in the game but I was beginning to feel maybe I'd had my fill and I would just get the finale out of the way before possibly doing yet more.
But, I really wish Square would iterate on this battle system. In a lot of these sorts of party-based, action, MMO-lite JRPGs support really gets benched because they aren't built around micromanagement and automation tools. It is wonderful seeing support not benched (incidentally, it wasn't in FFVIIR either). So I think the gambit system is a great starting place. I'd want an iteration to work on making the damaging roles more interesting too. Iterate on the system and provide better dungeons and loot system. There's so much potential for an even better game.
The presentation of FFXII was a bit of a cross-roads. It felt as if between FFIX, FF Tactics, and more on-the-nose Star Wars than FF had ever been before, and largely drawing on the prequel trilogy in terms of aesthetic while on the OG trilogy in terms of content. It was also strange because most of the game was, really, a dungeon crawler as the party did there-and-back-again journeys between far-flung objectives and delved deep dungeons. The story was delivered as pretty short punctuation marks on these journeys but had this high-drama FF Tactics meets Star Wars air. It is not incomplete in the sense of, say, FFXV's narrative but it definitely feels there could've been more.
But yeah, it is the meat of the game that I really liked in the end. I would've liked more FF Tactics-esque drama. I wasn't particularly keen on the on-the-nose Star Wars aspect.
...
I ended up platinuming FFVIIR, which is not something I often do. It just sort of happened as I just found myself naturally wanting to do all the content. The only trophy that was out of my way was the trophy for getting all 9 dresses---you can get 6 on the way to completing normal and then hard mode but the last three you have to go back and do a couple chapters over again (in my case for no other reason). I just did it at the very end after I had indeed gotten everything else. It was the only time I felt harried (why am I doing this again?) the entire time and it was pretty quick as I had to skip sidequests and what not. But in any case, for the most part my point with this is that I feel FFVIIR is a game that is meaty--but with just the right amount of meat, well-distributed.
Hard mode is interesting. It is basically a mode where you are effectively always max level (you'll get to 50 by the end of the first couple chapters), have access to a full array of materia and the equipment allowing for its use, and you already know most of the mechanics of the encounters and your characters from going through the first time. The only costs are you can't use items, MP doesn't restore at benches, and the enemies are retuned. The thing is: hard mode isn't tuned that aggressively against your advantages. I made it through most of it having a single revive magic, which is really the main limiter on keeping your party afloat, before finally deciding to go back to chapter 4 (I had been playing hard mode and FFVII OG Midgar side-by-side until the latter was done in an instant, but I skipped chapter 4 for this reason) and realizing you could get multiples. It is just a fun mode and I felt I really got to know when and how to use MP as well as how to manage ATB and party play much better than I had the first go around. I recommend it.
Similarly, the superbosses offer just the right amount of challenge, in my opinion. I wasn't sure I'd get through them but when I applied myself to them, it just sort of naturally happened that I did--but without them seeming a pushover.
My thoughts above on the game in general more or less continue to be my thoughts now.
...
I did not get too far beyond Midgar in OG FFVII. I might still play more of it. But it was interesting comparing the two and seeing all the little things the remake picked up on and ran with. It was also interesting to see where it diverged, particularly with regards to the few spots where I think the remake is pretty messy.
...
I ended up picking up my FFXII Zodiac Age save from a couple years ago. I had just done Raithwall and was on my way to Mt. Bur-Omisace. As a kid I had gotten to Mt. Bur-Omisace in OG FFXII before stopping at the Stillshrine because the bats there were absolutely murdering me and my occassion for playing--my mother had gotten me the game when I had the flu for a week or so (the last time I had it, I think)--had passed--I'd gotten better. I wasn't really into it and I struggled against the gambit system so it was one of those games I just sort of never went back to after my situation changed. It wasn't a purposeful drop, but not many times when I dropped a game as a child did I really mean to drop it permanently--I just happened to do so.
In any case, talk around GAF was pretty positive about FFXII so I decided I'd give it another go and try and actually play it on its terms, e.g. learning to use gambit. I started trying it out in between games a couple years ago and it just sort of stopped when the games I was waiting for came out. I wasn't particularly enamored of it, but I was trying to learn it. Didn't help that I was struck with choice paralysis about opening up my second jobs on the characters.
But I picked up my playthrough again after finishing FFVIIR and again I struggled to like the game. I just asked friends for second job recommendations to overcome that choice paralysis hurdle but then I struggled with the messy layers of systems and the at times obtuse loot placements. I'd be running around in low level gear impoverished from trying to get all my magicks, getting through by the seat of my pants and coming into some money only to spend it all again on magic. Eventually, I again followed advice and did a couple of hunts, got some nice gear and money--but with the former I found I could just sit on the latter. I also started using a magick/technick placement guide and control-F'ing through it when I entered an area so I knew where to look for cool spells.
In any case, the game started growing on me by leaps and bounds in the last areas and dungeons as my characters grew into their roles and I started getting a lot of cool loot--and the money to shop once near the end to fill in the gaps.
I mostly played Ashe who I had classed as a White and Time Mage. I had her on a healing gambit that had her doing all the most important healing actions without command although I'd override the gambit for, say, situational area heals, pre-timed big heals when I knew damage was going to spike, and less important status ailments the gambit didn't encompass. I would then do the other support manually, i.e. the buffing, dispelling, bubbling, decoying, floating, etc. I really liked that perch and it felt really in tune with the game to be sort of the overlooking manager of the battles. Support felt so rewarding and powerful in this game. White mage is also fun in this game because of just how prevalent undead and holy-weak enemies are in the endgame (honestly too prevalent but curaja'ing hordes of zombies is so much fun).
In any case, I got to the ending and ended up spending tens of hours finishing up most of the hunts, doing the extra dungeons, getting all the espers, etc. before finally deciding to go through the final dungeon today. I still have stuff I can do in the game but I was beginning to feel maybe I'd had my fill and I would just get the finale out of the way before possibly doing yet more.
But, I really wish Square would iterate on this battle system. In a lot of these sorts of party-based, action, MMO-lite JRPGs support really gets benched because they aren't built around micromanagement and automation tools. It is wonderful seeing support not benched (incidentally, it wasn't in FFVIIR either). So I think the gambit system is a great starting place. I'd want an iteration to work on making the damaging roles more interesting too. Iterate on the system and provide better dungeons and loot system. There's so much potential for an even better game.
The presentation of FFXII was a bit of a cross-roads. It felt as if between FFIX, FF Tactics, and more on-the-nose Star Wars than FF had ever been before, and largely drawing on the prequel trilogy in terms of aesthetic while on the OG trilogy in terms of content. It was also strange because most of the game was, really, a dungeon crawler as the party did there-and-back-again journeys between far-flung objectives and delved deep dungeons. The story was delivered as pretty short punctuation marks on these journeys but had this high-drama FF Tactics meets Star Wars air. It is not incomplete in the sense of, say, FFXV's narrative but it definitely feels there could've been more.
But yeah, it is the meat of the game that I really liked in the end. I would've liked more FF Tactics-esque drama. I wasn't particularly keen on the on-the-nose Star Wars aspect.
Hi folks, figured this is as good a place to ask as anywhere. I set out this year to beat 20 RPGs in 2020 and right now, I'm lagging behind. I've only completed 4 even with everything going on. I'm working my way through the Witcher 3 on Switch now and enjoying that, but I want to start something for my console play time as well. The question is what... too many options sort of a thing, lol. I've gone back and forth and started nothing for weeks. The games I'm considering are:
Breath of Fire 3
Divinity Original Sin
Final Fantasy XIII
The Legend of Heroes Trails in the Sky SC
Magic Knight Rayearth (Saturn)
Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door
Parasite Eve
Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne
Skies of Arcadia Legends
Valkyria Chronicles
Wild Arms 3
I'm leaning toward preferring something which isn't TOO massive of a commitment while also going through The Witcher but the games here I come closest to starting are the ones that I think are longer so...
Breath of Fire 3
Divinity Original Sin
Final Fantasy XIII
The Legend of Heroes Trails in the Sky SC
Magic Knight Rayearth (Saturn)
Paper Mario The Thousand Year Door
Parasite Eve
Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne
Skies of Arcadia Legends
Valkyria Chronicles
Wild Arms 3
I'm leaning toward preferring something which isn't TOO massive of a commitment while also going through The Witcher but the games here I come closest to starting are the ones that I think are longer so...
OP
OP
This one is like sub-10 hours and would be a good change of pace in between longer RPGs. It still plays pretty unique even 20 years later and is a great game.
You can beat it pretty painlessly in a week or so, under no circumstances would it take months let alone years. If it took years to beat this game, that would be gaming negligence of the highest and most unforgivable degree.
I beat act 1 of Dragon Quest XI. It only took me 50 hours...
I'm still having fun, though. I can't wait to play more. However, with how big the game is, I am abandoning my plans to get the Switch version. I don't see myself replaying this or many other games in the forseeable future.
I'm still having fun, though. I can't wait to play more. However, with how big the game is, I am abandoning my plans to get the Switch version. I don't see myself replaying this or many other games in the forseeable future.
You've got a long ways to go based on where you are in the scenario. Short first playthrough times tend to be over 60 hours for perspective.
Yet more Final Fantasy...
Continuing the theme of PS2 Final Fantasies I had yet to beat, I played Final Fantasy X-2. As a child, I avoided this game with first impressions being that it was a flanderization of Yuna and Spira. Aeana and Rabbit in the Discord, however, kept talking positively about the game, particularly its combat and job systems, so I decided to play it some day and that some day occurred these last couple of days during my Final Fantasy mania.
Combat is indeed the main draw here. The dressphere system is interesting, the dresspheres themselves are interesting, and the ATB underlying their use is interesting. Instead of being a game where jobs get subsumed into master or replacement jobs, it is a game where you are supposed to want to keep various jobs and switch between them in battle. This switching is structured by garment grids, wherein you slot the dresspheres and then in battle you can move between connected dresspheres (but not unconnected ones). Sometimes there are bonuses for just having a garment grid equipped, sometimes bonuses can be achieved by moving between particular nodes on the grids. So the idea is to build a grid that connects the jobs you'll want to move between optimally, taking into account grid bonuses (although I found these mostly superfluous--more important was just which jobs had more or fewer spokes). The jobs themselves are very simple and tailored to a specific role, e.g., white mage doesn't even have an attack option--it is replaced by pray which serves as your background action, a light party heal, with casting white magic being for heavier support. Moreover, they generally all feel quite good and easy to grasp. Underlying this, the ATB and cast bars vary graphically with different jobs and actions and there is some interesting interplay: returning to the white mage example, it takes an ATB bar filling to be able to start casting, whereupon there will be a cast bar, which must also fill. The thing is, however, after casting a spell, you can immediately do another action. You can't do this for, say, pray or an item (which has a smaller cast bar). So while the first spell takes an ATB and a cast bar, the second takes only a cast bar where it is a successive spell. Or as another example of the variability of the ATB, the ATB is shorter after an item is used than it is after an attack is used.
The characters also have these goofy limit break type things that pick up from Yuna's summoning in FFX. The party is dismissed but instead of an Aeon, one of your characters becomes a classic multi-part RPG boss, with the two hands supporting a body that can revive them. It is fun to do from time to time.
As to the story, I feel that there's a kernel of a good after-story to FFX here but the new characters and stories are kind of weak. Yuna is a strength when she shines through (my favorite moments were largely when yuna was being frank or openly sad) but the whole magical girls/sky pirates sideshow--which subsumes her a lot, particularly early on--is grating at times while inoffensive but mundane at others. Occasionally it is amusing. Fairly little was done with other returning characters. It isn't the flanderized sequel it appeared to be to me as a child: it is fluff with something of a core, mostly inoffensive if at times the coat of paint is annoying. So I'd say it is a game to play for the combat system but it isn't something to make one mad that "they didn't understand x,y,z character or the previous game." It is low-key fun just to see Spira again. Just don't expect great things from the narrative. Don't expect terrible either.
Finally, the structure is a bit odd. The game has you retreading the whole of Spira by the airship every chapter scouring the locales for continuations of ongoing stories in the world and doing assigned missions. It thus involves a ton of back-tracking and the game really leans into that (e.g. it loves the "there's a chest in this room you can see in the cutscene but the cutscene is going to force exit you from the area--so come back and get it!). Luckily, the maps are all quite small and easy to get around. Unluckily, the game can be kind of obtuse about how it places content at times.
All in all, I had a good time with the game and am glad I gave it a chance.
Continuing the theme of PS2 Final Fantasies I had yet to beat, I played Final Fantasy X-2. As a child, I avoided this game with first impressions being that it was a flanderization of Yuna and Spira. Aeana and Rabbit in the Discord, however, kept talking positively about the game, particularly its combat and job systems, so I decided to play it some day and that some day occurred these last couple of days during my Final Fantasy mania.
Combat is indeed the main draw here. The dressphere system is interesting, the dresspheres themselves are interesting, and the ATB underlying their use is interesting. Instead of being a game where jobs get subsumed into master or replacement jobs, it is a game where you are supposed to want to keep various jobs and switch between them in battle. This switching is structured by garment grids, wherein you slot the dresspheres and then in battle you can move between connected dresspheres (but not unconnected ones). Sometimes there are bonuses for just having a garment grid equipped, sometimes bonuses can be achieved by moving between particular nodes on the grids. So the idea is to build a grid that connects the jobs you'll want to move between optimally, taking into account grid bonuses (although I found these mostly superfluous--more important was just which jobs had more or fewer spokes). The jobs themselves are very simple and tailored to a specific role, e.g., white mage doesn't even have an attack option--it is replaced by pray which serves as your background action, a light party heal, with casting white magic being for heavier support. Moreover, they generally all feel quite good and easy to grasp. Underlying this, the ATB and cast bars vary graphically with different jobs and actions and there is some interesting interplay: returning to the white mage example, it takes an ATB bar filling to be able to start casting, whereupon there will be a cast bar, which must also fill. The thing is, however, after casting a spell, you can immediately do another action. You can't do this for, say, pray or an item (which has a smaller cast bar). So while the first spell takes an ATB and a cast bar, the second takes only a cast bar where it is a successive spell. Or as another example of the variability of the ATB, the ATB is shorter after an item is used than it is after an attack is used.
The characters also have these goofy limit break type things that pick up from Yuna's summoning in FFX. The party is dismissed but instead of an Aeon, one of your characters becomes a classic multi-part RPG boss, with the two hands supporting a body that can revive them. It is fun to do from time to time.
As to the story, I feel that there's a kernel of a good after-story to FFX here but the new characters and stories are kind of weak. Yuna is a strength when she shines through (my favorite moments were largely when yuna was being frank or openly sad) but the whole magical girls/sky pirates sideshow--which subsumes her a lot, particularly early on--is grating at times while inoffensive but mundane at others. Occasionally it is amusing. Fairly little was done with other returning characters. It isn't the flanderized sequel it appeared to be to me as a child: it is fluff with something of a core, mostly inoffensive if at times the coat of paint is annoying. So I'd say it is a game to play for the combat system but it isn't something to make one mad that "they didn't understand x,y,z character or the previous game." It is low-key fun just to see Spira again. Just don't expect great things from the narrative. Don't expect terrible either.
Finally, the structure is a bit odd. The game has you retreading the whole of Spira by the airship every chapter scouring the locales for continuations of ongoing stories in the world and doing assigned missions. It thus involves a ton of back-tracking and the game really leans into that (e.g. it loves the "there's a chest in this room you can see in the cutscene but the cutscene is going to force exit you from the area--so come back and get it!). Luckily, the maps are all quite small and easy to get around. Unluckily, the game can be kind of obtuse about how it places content at times.
All in all, I had a good time with the game and am glad I gave it a chance.
Haven't posted here in a while cause I haven't played a lot of RPGs lately but I DID play some now and I couldn't have more different feelings about them
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (I played a little bit of that years ago when it came out but started again)
So, I need to ask this question right at the start: Is this game a parody? Cause it feels like parody.
This might be the first "so bad it's good" game I have ever played. Unless it is a parody. The story is, and I'm genuinely sorry for using this term, so cringey I almost can't handle it. The character designs are beyond parody levels. Who thought it was a good idea to include the scene were it is revealed that the Potatoe thing built the robot, I'm gonna be charitable here, as a "maid" robot. Why. Why. The main character is constantly shouting about the power of friendship which just reinforces my "this is a parody" theory.
Even more evidence is that fucking combat dialogue. Literally everybody is constantly shouting the same 2-3 lines during combat, including the enemies. It is insane. It is impossible to not encounter this during testing because it happens every time.
This is what a normal fight against some soliders sounds like:
DON'TFORGETYADONEANCHORSHYADONEYADONEYADONEDONTFUCKINGDOITFORGETMEMEMEMEANCHORSHTHINKYOUCANTAKEDONTFORGETMEMEMEANCHORSHOYADONEYAMEFUCKINGDOITMEMEDONEYADONEYADONEMEMEMEMEPOPPYPOWERTHINKYOUCANTAKEMEYADONEFUCKINGDOITYADONEYADONEYADONE
How.
Why.
Just.....wh....why
I feel like my brain is melting. The combat is also soooooooo sloooooooooow. Fighting an enemy can take up to 5 minutes without you ever getting below 50% health, it's insane. And there just is NOTHING to the combat at this point. I know it get's more complex (and hopefully more interesting) later on but I've also read it takes between 15-20 hours to have all the options in combat which, again is so INSANE that I cannot help but think it is on purpose because the game is a metacommentary on jRPGs and MMOs which would also explain the god awful sidequests.
I don't....know if I have played enough jRPGs to appreciate the joke that is clearly being played on me and I don't know if I can keep playing this. Music is good tho.
Shadowrun Dragonfall
This is the third time I have tried getting into Shadowrun and I really don't understand why it didn't grad me the first time I've played it cause I have a great time with it? Just weird, no idea why it took me three tries to like the game. The combat seems kinda sparse but it's also not the reason I play the game so it's fine. Like with most of these games, combat is more like a (sometimes necessary) distraction from the more interesting parts of the game for me (which is exploring the world and talking to people), so I don't mind it being rather simple. The only cRPG where I think it really loved the combat were the Divinity games but I also don't need every game to be like Disco Elysium and have no combat at all (tho I also wouldn't mind more of them, some games would be drastically better if they had the balls to do that. Looking at you Torment). There is one side quest in the game that shows me how much more interesting the game could be if combat was way more sparse but it is what it is. And as I said, combat is perfectly serviceable. It's not overly complicated but there is enough going on to keep you interested and most combat encounters don't drag on for too long, at least so for.
I like the writing, I like the character, the story seems really neat so far and I really, really like the world. Not the biggest fan of the graphic style but the character portraits are neat. I'm probably gonna check out the other games when I'm done with this.
Gothic 2
There's nothing new to say about Gothic 2 so I'm gonna keep it short: It is still one of the greatest RPGs of all time, it has easily my favorite map of any RPG ever, combat is still terrible, it's a fantastic game and an all time great. Took some work to get it running on Windows 10 but there are also some graphic mods that make it look pretty decent, so that's a big plus. Loved it back when I played it as a kid, still love it now.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 (I played a little bit of that years ago when it came out but started again)
So, I need to ask this question right at the start: Is this game a parody? Cause it feels like parody.
This might be the first "so bad it's good" game I have ever played. Unless it is a parody. The story is, and I'm genuinely sorry for using this term, so cringey I almost can't handle it. The character designs are beyond parody levels. Who thought it was a good idea to include the scene were it is revealed that the Potatoe thing built the robot, I'm gonna be charitable here, as a "maid" robot. Why. Why. The main character is constantly shouting about the power of friendship which just reinforces my "this is a parody" theory.
Even more evidence is that fucking combat dialogue. Literally everybody is constantly shouting the same 2-3 lines during combat, including the enemies. It is insane. It is impossible to not encounter this during testing because it happens every time.
This is what a normal fight against some soliders sounds like:
DON'TFORGETYADONEANCHORSHYADONEYADONEYADONEDONTFUCKINGDOITFORGETMEMEMEMEANCHORSHTHINKYOUCANTAKEDONTFORGETMEMEMEANCHORSHOYADONEYAMEFUCKINGDOITMEMEDONEYADONEYADONEMEMEMEMEPOPPYPOWERTHINKYOUCANTAKEMEYADONEFUCKINGDOITYADONEYADONEYADONE
How.
Why.
Just.....wh....why
I feel like my brain is melting. The combat is also soooooooo sloooooooooow. Fighting an enemy can take up to 5 minutes without you ever getting below 50% health, it's insane. And there just is NOTHING to the combat at this point. I know it get's more complex (and hopefully more interesting) later on but I've also read it takes between 15-20 hours to have all the options in combat which, again is so INSANE that I cannot help but think it is on purpose because the game is a metacommentary on jRPGs and MMOs which would also explain the god awful sidequests.
I don't....know if I have played enough jRPGs to appreciate the joke that is clearly being played on me and I don't know if I can keep playing this. Music is good tho.
Shadowrun Dragonfall
This is the third time I have tried getting into Shadowrun and I really don't understand why it didn't grad me the first time I've played it cause I have a great time with it? Just weird, no idea why it took me three tries to like the game. The combat seems kinda sparse but it's also not the reason I play the game so it's fine. Like with most of these games, combat is more like a (sometimes necessary) distraction from the more interesting parts of the game for me (which is exploring the world and talking to people), so I don't mind it being rather simple. The only cRPG where I think it really loved the combat were the Divinity games but I also don't need every game to be like Disco Elysium and have no combat at all (tho I also wouldn't mind more of them, some games would be drastically better if they had the balls to do that. Looking at you Torment). There is one side quest in the game that shows me how much more interesting the game could be if combat was way more sparse but it is what it is. And as I said, combat is perfectly serviceable. It's not overly complicated but there is enough going on to keep you interested and most combat encounters don't drag on for too long, at least so for.
I like the writing, I like the character, the story seems really neat so far and I really, really like the world. Not the biggest fan of the graphic style but the character portraits are neat. I'm probably gonna check out the other games when I'm done with this.
Gothic 2
There's nothing new to say about Gothic 2 so I'm gonna keep it short: It is still one of the greatest RPGs of all time, it has easily my favorite map of any RPG ever, combat is still terrible, it's a fantastic game and an all time great. Took some work to get it running on Windows 10 but there are also some graphic mods that make it look pretty decent, so that's a big plus. Loved it back when I played it as a kid, still love it now.
Out of curiosity: What do you think is bad about its combat? I have my gripes with it because of the chance of little to no damage and enemies being more lucky than you which leads to frustration in the beginning, makes combat encounters unpredictable despite being able to easily handle them. Other than that while a bit clunky I think it is quite good. I like the tactical note a lot.
I never liked the combat in Gothic, especially at the beginning it's pretty much all "get the enemy to attack you, move backwards to avoid their attack animation and quickly hit them after the animation finishes". It's why I almost always play a Mage or a ranged character in Gothic 2. I know some people like the combat but it never clicked for me.
Fair enough. In Gothic and Gothic 2 so far I never really got on with magic sadly and almost everyone I talk to played a mage. To me going the mercenary route just feels right. Ranged combat is whatever for me though in Risen 2 and Elex I played ranged characters.
So since I like Dragonfall I thought I should maybe look into the Shadowrun books but those covers.....they don't fill me with confidence
I know the saying about books and covers but by god, those look like a cyberpunk version of those romance novels you find at the airport.
I know the saying about books and covers but by god, those look like a cyberpunk version of those romance novels you find at the airport.
It's not just the combat, I just really liked the Mage story in Gothic 2 (plus you get some really cool spells later on). It also has one of the most infuriating quest chains at the beginning which I always found super funny.
Damn, the side quests in Dragonfall are really fantastic. One of the companion quests is really dark, holy shit
I'm having tons of fun with Pillars of Eternity, despite some jankiness, and it's making me wonder if I should go back to those old Infinity Engine games. I thought I didn't like RTwP combat, but maybe I was just too stupid as a teen to figure out how to play them correctly.
I finished Dragonfall and that story is just fantastic all around. I really fucked everything up in the end, I think lol.
It's cool that you can lock yourself into a really shitty situation because of your own actions earlier.
Plus Mask of the Betrayer (the expansion) is a genuine masterpiece. Like, almost Planescape levels of greatness.
It's cool that you can lock yourself into a really shitty situation because of your own actions earlier.
You should try Neverwinter Nights 2, it's more modern than the old Infinity Engine games and I really enjoyed the game as well.
Plus Mask of the Betrayer (the expansion) is a genuine masterpiece. Like, almost Planescape levels of greatness.
Oh, good call, I should! I think I have every old-school RPG known to man on GOG, haha. Is it worth playing through the main NWN campaign before MoB? I feel like I hear nothing about the main game.
I need to play Dragonfall too...
From a story perspective I don't think you need to play NWN2. There might be some characters and connections but nothing major. Also, while I personally like the main campaign most people don't and it's something like 50-70 hours long so it's not a small time investment.
I think MotB starts you at like level 20 or something, so starting it without having any knowledge of NWN2 might be a bit overwhelming, depending on how familiar you are with the systems obviously.
Don't remember if it has separate tutorials but I don't think so.
One thing tho, make hard saves every now and then. NWN2 is very buggy so make sure you have a fallback save in case something bad happens.
It's really good. If you like system heavy RPGs there's not a lot going on here. It's a very basic combat system and you also only level up your own character. But the story (and side stories) are really great.
Spiderweb Software daily sale on Steam, the full pack of games (minus Avernum 3 and Queen's Wish) discounted to $22. I've always been pretty intrigued by their existence, so I think I'll grab it. Love that there's this guy just pumping out giant, ugly indie RPGs.
Honestly I love good combat but I'm here for the roleplaying above all else, ultimately.
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Pillars of Eternity 1 and 2 both have very easy difficulty settings and they are fantastic. Get them with all the DLC.
Finished Final Fantasy 7 Remake yesterday and it was pretty good! I wouldn't jump into the original FF7 just yet, but I'm definitely about playing it later this year. Also looking forward to part 2. By the time that gets released I probably can play through FF7R again on hardmode lol.
It's funny enough also the first FF game I finished. I have played some games for a little bit before, never enough to stick with it. While I was a little off the combat at first in the demo it does a great job once you actually can get into it. The game delves into it a bit more. It's quite obvious they kept the party size limited to 3, so that would be something they might have to figure out in part 2.
Enjoyed it a lot and it was a lot more than I expected (it's a meaty game). Gonna try to salvage what's left of the blitz tho.
It's funny enough also the first FF game I finished. I have played some games for a little bit before, never enough to stick with it. While I was a little off the combat at first in the demo it does a great job once you actually can get into it. The game delves into it a bit more. It's quite obvious they kept the party size limited to 3, so that would be something they might have to figure out in part 2.
Enjoyed it a lot and it was a lot more than I expected (it's a meaty game). Gonna try to salvage what's left of the blitz tho.
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 might be the worst game I have ever kept playing.
I cannot fathom how this game got good scores, it is so, so, so terrible. Literally every aspect of it is broken.
It is the first time I have ever seen a game become "so bad it's good".
I genuinely feel like this is a social experiment gone wrong.
Is Xenoblade 1 like this? I thought about getting the Switch version but man. Maaaaan.
I cannot fathom how this game got good scores, it is so, so, so terrible. Literally every aspect of it is broken.
It is the first time I have ever seen a game become "so bad it's good".
I genuinely feel like this is a social experiment gone wrong.
Is Xenoblade 1 like this? I thought about getting the Switch version but man. Maaaaan.
I never played XBC2, but I stopped playing the first game about 25 hours in. I liked the world and exploration. I didn't mind the story, but everything else started to bore me.
Oh, and I can still listen to the OST from time to time. Mostly when it' Reyn time!
Oh, and I can still listen to the OST from time to time. Mostly when it' Reyn time!
Well, it depends on what you didn't like about Xenoblade 2 in the first place.
You didn't like the VA? Xenoblade 1's VA is better
You didn't like the Side quests? Xenoblade 1's are way worse
You didn't like monsters several levels stronger than you in places there shouldn't be? Those are in Xenobnlade 1 as well
You didn't like the cast? Both games are so different there
Is it the story?