Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright

I feel like it has been years and years since I first heard of this game. I remember very much liking the look of the trailer when it was released – which was also the first time I found out that in Japan, Phoenix Wright has the somewhat hilarious name of ‘Mr. Naruhodo’. In the eventuality, very little of what was in that original trailer made it into the final game intact, but the general concept remained, including the excellent central prospect of making the game about witch trials, including a setting very much recalling The Crucible.

The general idea of melding these two series was a good one. The gameplay of both has always been fairly similar, especially in the early DS games: static (or almost static) scenes could be searched on the touchscreen to advance the story. The crucial differences, of course, being that in Phoenix Wright this led to a trial and in Professor Layton it led to puzzles. The game does the obvious and satisfying thing of having both: as you search for clues to the next trial, you are given numerous puzzles. As I enjoyed every Layton game and the first Phoenix Wright games, this suited me well.

Yes, the character designs between the two games are very different. Layton recalls cutesy European comic book art while Phoenix Wright is more typically anime-style. But the fact that the two kind of clash is actually quite charming, and I like the way the characters from each world have a different ‘speech noise’ for the lines that aren’t read by the actors.

The story is fairly predictable but well-executed. Professor Layton receives a letter telling him about the mysterious city of Labyrinthia and how one girl has escaped – but is on the run from witches with formidable powers. Professor Layton attempts to keep the girl safe but after various magical events (that aren’t actually explained in the main story and then handwaved a bit in an omake sequence) she is taken back to Labyrinthia – as are Layton and Luke.

The girl manages to get caught up in a trial, and is defended by Phoenix Wright and Maya, who also manage to get themselves caught and taken to Labyrinthia. Thus begins an adventure that largely features dramatic witch trials and a mysterious ‘Storyteller’ who distributes pages to the citizens of the town that unfailingly tell the future.

Now, every Layton game since the first has essentially relied on the twist that the inexplicable events happening in the story are in fact explained by imaginary technology (indistinguishable from magic…), so the way this story unfolds ought to be no great shocker to anyone. And also may bring to mind a minor M. Night Shyamalan film. But there were a few things in the big unveil at the end I didn’t see coming, mostly to do with relationships between different characters.

There were a few things that don’t make a whole lot of sense. There’s no good reason the Storyteller doesn’t just remove Layton and Luke from Labyrinthia as soon as he becomes aware of them. One trial – featuring a very appealing girl-disguised-as-a-boy character – doesn’t really stand up to scrutiny well once all the secrets are revealed, making the player wonder how someone could have known to ‘stop time’ and, presumably, disassemble part of a wall. It also kind of skips over the fact that a very real attempt at murder happened, and was averted only by chance. Then there’s the way nobody really has any objections to the way they’ve been made to live, even the ones who have had years of suffering.

Nonetheless, the game is interesting throughout and has a wonderfully atmospheric setting and very entertaining characters, especially all the crazy witnesses and the quirky librarian. Overall, I felt the game was markedly easier than any previous title in either series I’ve played, and graphically Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy had much nicer-looking polygon models, but the novelty of this game, its interesting setting and engaging characters, make it a whole lot of fun. I also very much enjoyed the little omake episodes included as DLC, each with an easy little puzzle.

I would love more of this idea, really. I guess I’d just love another full Layton game, not a weird smartphone vampire game. I’m also not at all sure that Youkai Watch will be a satisfactory substitute. I guess I’ll just have to patiently wait to see what I get!

And you know what? I’d really love a feature-length animation of this crossover! That’s something I’m pretty certain I’ll never see, though. Alas! 

Final Fantasy Type-0 HD

I play quite a lot of Square Enix’s remakes. I still need to pour more hours into both Kingdom Hearts updated versions and I’ll almost certainly get the updates for Final Fantasy VII and XII. But this one was not only a disappointment, but by far the game I’ve enjoyed least in the Final Fantasy series. Yes, less than XIII or XIII-2.

I probably should have researched the game a little more before I bought it. I didn’t really know anything about it other than that it had an extremely pretty protagonist and was set in the Fabula Nova Crystallis universe. Because, you know, after FFXIII everyone just loves all that vague and poorly-explained lore about l’Cie and Black Tortoise Crystals. Not satisfied with how vague and unnecessarily complex this world is, the game infodumps a complex political situation about warring nations on you, introduces artificially-created life forms in an academy where if a person dies, all memories of them are erased from the minds of those who knew them and a backstory about the events your playing having been repeated millions of times already that you have to trawl through text entries in a library book to uncover.

All this I could forgive if it had framed a good game that was fun to play and full of engaging characters on an interesting journey. Sadly, the failure of these elements are where the game really became my least favourite in the entire series.

First, the game was horribly clunky and at no point became fun as a gaming experience. This may have been a fairly decent game for the PSP, but contained many of the drawbacks of Crisis Core without the advantages of a compelling atmosphere and engaging characters. The limitations of the system mean the main structure of the game is awful – the action parts are very repetitive and linear fights occasionally mixed up with some vaguely more strategic segments in the world map, but far worse is the way the game is divided into missions. This means that between combat sections, you are in a very basic school with a clunky portal teleporting you to different locations, where you can complete pointless and often very long-winded tasks for very little advantage and next to no character development. Things like the characters’ running animations and the straight edges of many locations betray the simplicity of the source, and the lazy update means not only have only textures been updated rather than entire models – resulting in very jagged or simplistic vehicles and buildings – but several minor characters have only very lazily been updated. It’s embarrassing when some old councilwoman comes to see the main characters – who have actually been updated to look current-gen – and she looks like she’s arrived from the wrong game altogether.  

The game design is also poor. Apparently by intention, you can pick members for your team that make it impossible for you to complete some missions. For example, you can choose characters who have no long-range attacks for missions that require them, or not equip any magic and go into a restricted section that automatically kills you for using any physical attacks. And then you have to go back to a save point ages before. Apparently the idea is to become familiar with your team, but it’s absurd not to even forewarn you that some choices make the game impossible. This isn’t what playing very difficult old games was like: back then, you knew you had to develop skills to win. Here, skill is not involved.

The balance is also terrible. I levelled characters evenly for a while, but then just decided to train only Cater, and she soon stomped everyone and the game was stupidly easy – unless you are surprised by a level 99 monster on the map, in which case you just have to watch your character die. Not once did I find a boss battle a satisfying challenge.

There is also an option to start the game with all enemies 30 levels above you, which I chose and regretted because it meant I kept dying in one hit and had to spend ages killing even basic enemies. There’s giving players a challenge, and then there’s just making them endure tedium until they finally match the enemy levels, at which point the difficulty ends up the same as it would have been normally in any case.

So the game wasn’t fun and the world-building was complex and confusing. How about the overall story? Unfortunately it’s clumsy too, unfolds in a very dull manner and keeps every character at arm’s length. There’s very little to find interesting in the battles between the armies of different nations or the self-sacrifice of some major players, none of whom are actually interesting. There’s really no reason to care who becomes ‘Agito’ in a quest for some vague extra powers, or stopping the incredibly uninteresting Cid. And the way that the story is delivered not through surprises and quests and discoveries, but dumped on you like clockwork after each mission is a pain. Especially since leading up to the mission has been the extremely boring school day where you desperately look around for ways to pass the time, and hope chocobo breeding will actually become interesting at some point (it doesn’t, even if the babies are incredibly cute).

Which only leaves the main characters of Class 0. Twelve of them are artificially-created warriors with impressive fighting prowess and the ability to resist magic jammers and be brought back to life if they fall in battle. In a naming scheme that wasn’t even cool when Gundam Wing did it, they each have a name based on a number, or more specifically a playing card. Thus, you have names like Cinque and Trey, plus Ace, Jack, Queen and King – though inexplicably no number 10. Essentially, they are Organisation XIII, but instead of having clichéd bad-guy personalities they have clichéd anime high school character personalities (there’s the rough-speaking one, the know-it-all one, the Iinchou, the class clown, the air-head etc etc), and instead of looking flamboyant and distinct, they all look like very pretty pop stars with amazing hair. Added to this are the incredibly uninteresting Machina and Rem. Machina is basically Riku, embracing his dark side for the power to protect others, and Rem is basically a plot device who – cough! cough! – has an incurable disease slowly killing her but that she can keep secret.

The fact they’re almost aggressively a collection of stock characters, as well as not having any real past, makes them very hard to identify with or like. They’re put on a pedestal from the start, but it doesn’t make them insecure or vulnerable or anything else that might humanise them. They just plod through their missions and spout occasional lines that keep their personalities completely on the straight and narrow. And though most of the weapons are what you’d expect – guns and swords and spears – when you get to the flute and the mace and the main character with zappy playing cards, it feels a bit desperate. And I felt bad for poor Eight, the small cute one with only his fists to use.

I did start to like them – at the very, very end in the one scene where they actually show some development. But that was in the ending sequence and far too late. And yes, I’ll happily concede that they’re gorgeous and I love the aesthetic Square have developed of incredibly pretty characters who look like the prettiest biracial kids you ever could see with lovely floppy hair. But I wish what they had done with them had made them likeable and interesting. Instead, the only thing I can say was a success here was the designs of this specific group in this game – not overall character design. In all other aspects, I felt that Type-0 fell badly short, and most assuredly had no place being on a current-gen console. 

Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy

Not counting the alternate-world Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright, this game is the last in the Professor Layton series that has so far been released. It’s also the last in the ambitious prequel series, which also includes the Eternal Diva film and follows the impact of the uncovering of various sites built by the Azran, an ancient and technologically advanced race reminiscent of how the people of Mu are often depicted in Japanese media.

Though it seems a little odd that none of the monumental, world-shaking events of this game are referenced by Luke and Layton in the games that chronologically follow it, and the people close to the characters’ hearts aren’t so much as mentioned again, such is the nature of prequels and I don’t have any real complaints about that. There are some fun things done here, too, like the frequent appearance of Inspector Chelmey as a background figure, usually facing away from the camera, off on a grand tour with his wife.

The Azran Legacy was certainly my favourite of the series on the 3DS. While the polygonal characters still lack the charm of the hand-drawn sprites, they’re rather better-done and closer to the original than in Miracle Mask. The interface was a little less clunky and the animations were a little more versatile. On the downside, the game had by far the least fun collection of minigames of the entire series – none of the three were remotely enjoyable, being an ugly nut-rolling game, a frustrating and dull flower-blooming game and a rather arbitrary and charmless dress-up game. There’s also a small Streetpass game that was largely about memorizing the locations of random things, but in effect was mostly about waiting for the nice people who’d set challenges that could be completed on one or two screens.

But the game itself is what matters, and it was an entertaining and fun one. Unlike the other games, it doesn’t restrict its location, but takes place in multiple countries around the world, all of which are very cliche in the most charming way. It starts in an oddly slow and dull way, unlike the grand goings-on that open Miracle Mask, but after the prologue in a frozen town and a rather dismal fishing village are out of the way (plus another visit to London), the entertainment level goes up drastically and is sustained better than any of the previous games through variety.

The games have always showed a fun, highly romanticised view of England, but this time Layton, Luke and Emmy travel the world – and the worlds they visit are all just as fanciful and over-the-top. There’s a wonderfully classic Western town full of cowboys, where the local problems are sadly solved thanks in large part to Luke’s talking-to-animals magic powers, one of the elements of this series I like the least. There’s a hidden village in a rainforest, where the funny-looking mushroom-haired denizens are pointedly light-skinned. There’s a funny creepy rural town in thrall to the local priest and archaic traditions, a slightly Wicker Man­­-esque community I honestly didn’t expect from Professor Layton. There’s a sunny vaguely Spanish resort town packed with touristy goods. And quite interestingly, there’s a pseudo-Arab town with headscarves and turbans aplenty.

This time, more than a mystery, there’s a straightforward adventure with a shadowy, heavily-armed organization competing with our heroes on a collection quest. Of course, the organization is largely represented by a manzai comedy duo who are completely incompetent, because after all if a small army with machine guns just cornered our heroes there wouldn’t be much of a story. Things never feel very high-stakes, but then, the usual charm of Layton games is that they’re quite restful.

At the end, things do come to a head and there are such dramatic episodes as a fellow scientist seemingly getting shot in the arm and Layton hang-gliding off the top of a huge building, but what really makes the story satisfy is an extended sequence of twists. I was feeling clever for figuring some of them out – but the sheer profusion of them meant I was surprised! For example, I saw the truth behind Sycamore coming from the start, but didn’t expect the truth behind Descolé. The flashback of the defining moment in his life was cliché but satisfying. I also didn’t see Emmy’s decisions coming, nor the origins of Bronev, even if I knew what to expect with Aurora. Oh, there’s something that’s always satisfying about representatives of an ancient, mysterious civilization speaking in a lilting Irish brogue.

In terms of the puzzles, nothing felt very innovative here, but there were some very fun ones to solve and nothing was ever too hard, except of course the usual absurd (optional) final hidden puzzles.

I don’t know how much more Layton we’re going to see. I don’t know if most of Level-5’s resources are now going to be diverted to the monstrously popular Youkai Watch series – pun intended. But I’ll certainly be having fun with Professor Layton vs Phoenix Wright and hoping for plenty more to come. 

Kingdom Hearts II.5: Kingdom Hearts II

I haven’t written about the HD remake of Chain of Memories yet because...well, it got very dull trying to get the platinum, and when the sequel came out, that’s what I wanted to play. I haven’t stormed through Kingdom Hearts 2 quite like I thought I would, but in the last couple of weeks I got back to it, and yesterday I got the platinum trophy. Happily, unlike Chain of Memories, this can all be done in one play-through, as the difficulty trophies stack. And let’s face it, I wouldn’t feel satisfied only beating the tough hidden bosses on an easier mode.

I draw the line at doing it with zero experience points, though. That’s not a challenge I need to go through!

I have a degree of ambivalence towards KH2. Until the true sequel comes out, it’s the best-looking of the games, and despite the over-reliance on ‘reaction commands’, it’s got the most enjoyable gameplay. Yes, at easier difficulties you can just mash the attack button and have very few problems, but that’s not going to get you far in critical mode, especially with the likes of data Xemnas or the Lingering Will, both of whom were vastly harder than the relatively easy Sephiroth in this game.

This game is also where Sora goes from adorable, pudgy little fella to an attractive adolescent who can be taken much more seriously. Well, when he’s not singing. Sora’s still childlike in that classic shounen-protagonist mode, but I find him emotionally believable and engaging. In this game, he actually suffers in several ways, and it makes me believe in him.

But KH2 suffers from having a story that feels inconsequential, stays too shallow morally and gets downright messy. This was the objection I had when I finished the game on the PS2, which must have been about ten years ago now (reposted here). It’s unfortunate that Chain of Memories introduces Organization XIII but doesn’t finish them, because they come to dominate this game and the fact is that they’re neither very interesting nor very threatening.

I remember that I hadn’t played CoM the first time I played through this game, and not only is that a bad idea in terms of understanding the plot, it also means that the first fight with an Organization member is against Demyx. And when a plot tries to build up a malevolent and powerful organization Sora will have to truly struggle to defeat, when their battle prowess is first represented by goddamn Demyx, you know there are problems – even if he does make it clear he’s not a fighter. Organization XIII never feel like a tangible threat, absurdly decide to take on Sora one by one, and though there’s an attempt to give them some depth, it never really works. It’s quite clever that Xemnas has been using Sora as a heart harvesting machine, giving him a moment to question whether he’s doing the right thing, but his ultimate plot is vague and never even comes close to fruition. He wants to make an imitation Kingdom Hearts, suggesting that if he does, the nobodies will regain what they feel they have lost, but actually he wants to use it to become godlike, probably destroying the universe to remake it as he sees fit. But he never gets very close to this, with Ansem the Wise sabotaging things, and then tries to merge with his false Kingdom Hearts anyway, becoming only powerful enough to be a typical big blobby final boss who can be defeated by being hit a lot. As the antagonists’ plot is so vague and never becomes a tangible threat, the whole overarching story becomes weak.

We also have to deal with the bland and overlong prologue, where the player has to control Roxas and do very boring things in Twilight Town. Roxas unfortunately is not very engaging or likeable, especially compared with Sora, being rather less concerned with other people and having to be made sympathetic with artificial angst – when looked at from a bit of a distance, the things DiZ does to Roxas in the simulation are totally unnecessary and meaningless, other than to be cruel.

I have to say that I felt more charitable to Axel on this playthrough. He puts up an irritating, cocky front, but he is suffering, unlike the others probably actually does regain something of his heart through contact with Roxas, and does act nobly towards the end. I don’t think he was redeemed, but I didn’t find him wholly objectionable this time.

But of course he brings a level of moral complication to the concept of Nobodies. Sora is taught that they are not real people, cannot feel and should not exist. Thus, his killing of the various members who attack him does not affect him like killing a person – though the way he talks (mistakenly) about taking care of Maleficent is just a little psychopathic. But Axel shows that these nobodies have the potential to be drawn back towards becoming whole people, even if in very limited circumstances. That potential surely changes the morality of snuffing out their existences, even when attacked. But Sora – as with his parents back home who we hear nothing about in this game – doesn’t even consider that.

The mess that is the story of the Nobodies isn’t done yet, though it’s really their ‘Somebodies’ that are looking to be foregrounded a little more. It looks like we’re to have an Organization made up of different forms of Xehanort, but Lea has joined the fold (please stay away from Ventus, Lea) and I don’t think we’ve seen quite the end of Braig, who was made much more interesting with his expanded role in Birth By Sleep. But the truth is, the Organization made the plot far sloppier and far less interesting than it should have been, and I suspect all the series’ notorious problems with complexity of plot derive from half-baked ideas being put into awesome-looking secret endings and portable spin-offs.

Sora’s story, however, certainly kept me engaged. There are some well-chosen new Disney worlds, like Mulan’s Land of Dragons and the rather brilliant one based on 1920s black-and-white short cartoons. The Tron world works as a bit of variety, but I have to say that the Pirates of the Caribbean world is a bit jarring. This playthrough reminded me how clunky the Lion King world is, too – I love The Lion King and am very happy it got included, especially with adorable cub Sora, but it’s just not very well-done. The attempts to recreate scenes from the film are awkwardly mechanical in a way the rest of the game isn’t, and the way the animals’ jaws just flap looks much worse than when humanoid characters are talking – or even the Disney mascot characters. Plus even if they managed to get Ernie Sabella and even James Earl Jones reprising their roles, the lack of Jeremy Irons and Matthew Broderick really hurts the English version.

I also will not accept that the writing is not intentionally homoerotic. Only Dream Drop Distance is more obvious. In the first game, Sora genuinely seems to have puppy-love affection for Kairi. But here, as famously pointed out by VG Cats, his reaction to Kairi is almost dismissive while being reunited with Riku is presented with far more significance. Yes, he knows Kairi is safe whereas it’s not clear with Riku, but he also has faith in Riku’s ability to take care of himself – yet still ends up on his knees pouring out his heart – appropriately enough. At every point, he seems to have far more emotional investment in what is happening with Riku, and treats Kairi almost cursorily.

As a game, though, I think this one is the best-designed yet, and the most fun to play. Birth By Sleep would be a very strong contender if not for Shoot Lock being almost comically overpowered for most of the game, and Dream Drop Distance is ruined by the ‘free flow’ mechanics, which made it far too easy. Though some were very frustrating (goddamn data Xaldin), I found the extra boss challenges of this game a lot of fun to get through and puzzle out – as well as the silly Mushroom XIII who added a bit of extra flavour to the final mix. I’m quite proud that I didn’t beat Lingering Will or Data Xemnas in the way that seems to be common on Youtube: for Lingering Will I absolutely relied on Stitch, and abused Limit Form as much as Session for Data Xemnas. The fights were challenging without seeming impossible, as opposed to the Vanitas Remnant who gets beaten by relying on gimmicks.

Kingdom Hearts 2 is a great story with great characters and worlds slightly let down by the main story being pretty lacklustre. And that same story will affect Kingdom Hearts 3. Will that game be able to build on the convoluted and overwrought backstory to tell a satisfying tale? It’s been a very long time coming, so I certainly hope so. And one thing’s for sure, I’m in this series for the long haul, and very much enjoying it. Next: watching the silly Re:Coded cutscenes in HD as I play through Birth By Sleep again – which is by far my favourite in the series in story terms.