Final Fantasy Tactics has got to be the most disappointing game I’ve ever played. I’d heard a lot about it, recently as well as when it came out, and with the FF name attached, I had high expectations. But the game was awful.
I quite liked the unusual battle system – as the title suggests, more tactical than in most FF games. With a team of (usually) five players, you traverse a large playing area and defeat large numbers of enemies, adapting to their different powers. The trouble with this is that (a) it’s piss easy, since you can level up by attacking your own team-mates, so you can just wait until you have a weak enemy and level up to high heaven killing and healing yourself while the enemy chips ineffectually at you, and (b) if you leave a character knocked out for too long, they die and become unusable for the rest of the game. My characters I’ve spent hours building up? Uh-uh. I don’t think so. I’ve never reset a game so much in my life, usually simply because my revive spell didn’t work, since the ground was a bit slanted next to the body. Ugh.
Still, it’s quite fun, and the different job classes keep things interesting. So all could be forgiven (in this particular case; Wild ARMS’ deathly slow battles killed it) if the story was good. And I’d heard good things. It starts out well - a young noble called Ramza fails to prevent a kidnapping, and sees that one of the enemies is his old friend - but soon spiralls out of control, with a convoluted story of political intrigue where most of the large cast is totally flat, stupid McGuffins in the form of balls of power that turn you into a monster and then get swept under the carpet when they get in the way of a tacked-on ending, and characters who don’t develop at all, but just go through the motions. Not all of this can be blamed on bad translation, though I’ve never seen such a poor rush-job in an official release.
And Cloud? Totally not worth the 5 minutes or so it took to get him.
What a waste of 60+ hours. Oh well, it was fun getting a mime, and developing my magicians to take everyone on the field out on the first turn. But please, please let the next game I play be more interesting story-wise.
You could see that Suikoden II had been influenced by this game, and it in turn by the first Suikoden, but both were SO much better than this in story terms.
Friday, 7 October 2011
Narutimate Portable
The second game wasn’t nearly as fun as the first, half because you only got three characters (and I only really liked playing as Jiraiya) and half because two of the most fun game modes (copying Shikamaru and tree-climbing) were absent. Plus towards the end the fighting got quite dull; once you and the computer were adept at defence all that happened would be that you kept swapping places with the kawarimi no jutsu ad infinitum until one of you left an opening and got hit with a combo. Plus the story wasn’t as interesting in the second part. Still, a fun game. Not much replay value, but I enjoyed it while it lasted, and it was good for my Japanese practice.
Thursday, 29 September 2011
The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker
The Legend of Zelda: The Windwaker was not really worth the time I spent on it. It was a very long game, as a matter of fact – a lot of gameplay hours, which is usually a good thing, but that’s only if there’s a really good plot driving things. Here, unfortunately, the game got rather repetitive and the delays I encountered weren’t because of taxing puzzles that really made me think, but because so much of the game is spent sailing about, looking for tiny little islands or even moving cyclones, without which you cannot progress. Some of the things you had to find were really quite obscure – in the end, I resorted to using a guide.
Let me explain the way I like to play RPGs. In the old days, when I was quite the little computer geek, I would play a single game tirelessly for weeks on end, until every last secret, every last event had been discovered. I would always play it through once on my own, agonising over the difficult bits until I solved them, and wouldn’t check an online guide unless I had been truly stumped for days on end. After that, I would play again with a walkthrough, and make sure I collected absolutely everything there was to collect.
So, after all 108 allies in Suikoden were assembled, and Cloud and gang had a gold chocobo and could summon the Knights of the Round Table in Final Fantasy VII, I was satisfied. I played a dozen or more others, but those two remain my favourites, followed by Chrono Trigger and Wild Arms, though the latter was let down by a painfully slow combat system.
Well, games drifted out of my life in my later teens. I blame the quality of the games for this! And the fact that I made the dubious decision of buying a Japanese PS2. Anyway, these days I only play once, normally on my own, resorting to a guide if I get stuck for about an hour.
I play for the story, and pursue any sub-games I stumble upon until they get dull. So in The Windwaker, for example, I found The Nintendo Gallery (a silly, endless sub-game where you take photos of all the characters in the game), but didn’t bother taking many photos. I went to various hidden island, but needed someone to tell me where to find the ones I needed to get to in order for the game to continue. It’s the most satisfying way, and I just end up feeling that there are better things to do if I play for too long.
The game wasn’t a bad one by any means. It’s a good, solid combat system, which means you don’t have to go through the tedium of levelling up all the time. The story starts out much like any other RPG: the young hero’s sister is kidnapped, and in the attempt to rescue her, he stumbles across an evil plot that threatens the world, and discovers his true destiny. Unfortunately, it pretty much remains as generic as that, and at no point did I particularly care about my little neo-Link (who I called Link anyway) or his little friends. This wasn’t because of the cutesy graphics – they’re fine by me, and a lot more detailed than FFVII’s Cloud ever was, not to mention the sprites of Suikoden! I would perhaps have preferred something a little less twee, but that’s what the upcoming sequel will deal with, I’m sure.
No, it was the lack of anything to really interest me plot- or character-wise, and the repetitive structure (collect so many of these, then so many of those, and fight the same 10 or so baddies over and over again) that were the disappointments. Plus the fact that the game was very easy, despite its length. Oh well! Tomorrow I shall try something new! The game invited me to start all over again (with a worrying moment where the main character is given invisible clothes…but that only meant he stayed in his regular outfit, not that there was going to be some sort of nude mode, which REALLY wouldn’t suit this game!), but I don’t think there’s much appeal to that!
Let me explain the way I like to play RPGs. In the old days, when I was quite the little computer geek, I would play a single game tirelessly for weeks on end, until every last secret, every last event had been discovered. I would always play it through once on my own, agonising over the difficult bits until I solved them, and wouldn’t check an online guide unless I had been truly stumped for days on end. After that, I would play again with a walkthrough, and make sure I collected absolutely everything there was to collect.
So, after all 108 allies in Suikoden were assembled, and Cloud and gang had a gold chocobo and could summon the Knights of the Round Table in Final Fantasy VII, I was satisfied. I played a dozen or more others, but those two remain my favourites, followed by Chrono Trigger and Wild Arms, though the latter was let down by a painfully slow combat system.
Well, games drifted out of my life in my later teens. I blame the quality of the games for this! And the fact that I made the dubious decision of buying a Japanese PS2. Anyway, these days I only play once, normally on my own, resorting to a guide if I get stuck for about an hour.
I play for the story, and pursue any sub-games I stumble upon until they get dull. So in The Windwaker, for example, I found The Nintendo Gallery (a silly, endless sub-game where you take photos of all the characters in the game), but didn’t bother taking many photos. I went to various hidden island, but needed someone to tell me where to find the ones I needed to get to in order for the game to continue. It’s the most satisfying way, and I just end up feeling that there are better things to do if I play for too long.
The game wasn’t a bad one by any means. It’s a good, solid combat system, which means you don’t have to go through the tedium of levelling up all the time. The story starts out much like any other RPG: the young hero’s sister is kidnapped, and in the attempt to rescue her, he stumbles across an evil plot that threatens the world, and discovers his true destiny. Unfortunately, it pretty much remains as generic as that, and at no point did I particularly care about my little neo-Link (who I called Link anyway) or his little friends. This wasn’t because of the cutesy graphics – they’re fine by me, and a lot more detailed than FFVII’s Cloud ever was, not to mention the sprites of Suikoden! I would perhaps have preferred something a little less twee, but that’s what the upcoming sequel will deal with, I’m sure.
No, it was the lack of anything to really interest me plot- or character-wise, and the repetitive structure (collect so many of these, then so many of those, and fight the same 10 or so baddies over and over again) that were the disappointments. Plus the fact that the game was very easy, despite its length. Oh well! Tomorrow I shall try something new! The game invited me to start all over again (with a worrying moment where the main character is given invisible clothes…but that only meant he stayed in his regular outfit, not that there was going to be some sort of nude mode, which REALLY wouldn’t suit this game!), but I don’t think there’s much appeal to that!
The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time
Even in 2005 this game was showing its age, and not just in terms of graphics. Perhaps it’s because I was used to the refined control system in The Wind Waker, but it was just incredibly frustrating. Fiddly, often badly-designed and with enemies that were supposed to be tricky but were just stupid, I soon got rather bored. And Navi was not only annoying but bloody useless at doing her job in battle. Too much block-pushing, too: bad memories of Tomb Raider. I resorted to a guide soon after Link became an adult. On the plus side, the story was rather better than The Wind Waker’s, if still not exactly a Square epic. And the biggest plot twist…well, unfortunately, playing Super Smash Brothers had already given it away – and other than that, it was all pretty generic.
Monday, 26 September 2011
Suikoden II
Suikoden is a very important game to me. It was the first RPG that really hooked me, that really made me see how computer games could be a way of telling a good story rather than just being an adrenaline rush. It’s the game that steered me away from beat-em-ups, then my genre of choice, and to RPGs. Yes, I had loved adventure games with RPG elements as early as playing Dizzy on my Commodore 64, but the plotlines there were nothing close to the fully-involving environment Suikoden offered. It was my introduction to the world, and it was only after playing Suikoden that I discovered older classics like Chrono Trigger, and came to wait in anticipation for Final Fantasy VII.
So even before Suikoden II came out, I was excited, downloading the artwork and hearing reports that it was even better than its predecessor. I snapped it up as a US import, and should have played it through years ago.
So what happened?
Well, firstly, I’d sold my Playstation and got a Japanese Playstation 2, expecting to be able to get a mod chip easily, which would have played US and UK games. I never did get that mod chip. I had a Playstation emulator on my PC, but it crashed several times while I was playing Suikoden 2, and finally, various other pursuits just pushed it to the back of my mind.
Well, finally, I’ve played it through. It’s still often heralded as the best of the series (and I have little interest in the ugly-looking 3 and 4), and it was certainly a lot of fun. However, for me at least, it doesn’t come close to the first game.
Yes, perhaps to a degree it’s because I was a lot younger then, and more accepting of cheesy plotlines. But Suikoden 2 is weak in a way Suikoden never was. The original game was a simple story, based on the old Water Margin tales – the son of a general discovers the corruption of the empire he is a part of, becomes part of the Liberation Army and fights against the evil emperor. It was very basic, but it worked, and the characters made it a gripping and moving story, with all sorts of mini-adventures. The second game works similarly – two childhood friends are fighting in the Highland army when the camp is ambushed and wiped out…except of course for our young heroes. It turns out that the brigade was attacked by its own side disguised as the enemy in order to foil a peace treaty (seems clever until you think…why didn’t they just break the peace treaty by attacking the enemy in the first place?). Once again, there is the classic opposition between a young hero who gradually rises up to be a great leader, and a ‘bad guy’. Only this time, the bad guy isn’t a weak figure being manipulated, and doesn’t have much of a story of his own. He’s just a nut. But he’ll do nicely as an antagonist. The problem comes when he gets killed and the hero’s childhood friend becomes the main opposition.
There is just never a satisfactory reason for his continued bad guy status. The writers never seem to be able to make it sound like he really wants to do anything he’s doing, even though he does it anyway. There are a whole bunch of half-hearted reasons why he must keep fighting with the hero, but they all seem so contrived that the suspension of disbelief vanishes, and disbelief comes crashing down on top of your head.
Still, plot aside, there are a plethora of little extras. I played the original for weeks, getting every little extra. Here, I didn’t really bother – not only do I not really want to spend that much time on each game any more, but once I found out that I had already lost my chance to see the scenes with Clive in, I kinda lost interest in being a completist. Nonetheless, I did the vast majority of what’s available in the game, with a guide (because there are 108 recruitable characters, and some of them will only come with you after some VERY obscure conditions are met, like the one who needed an item that only appeared very rarely in one shop), and saw all the different endings, none of which had the sense of drama or closure the original had. Plus some glitch in the game gave me four powerhouse characters at level 99 automatically, so none of the fights were any real challenge at all. And for the most part, the story of the hero’s rise, the little sub-plots, the humorous moments, the way the castle grows and changes as more people join and the fun of the big epic battles made it a very enjoyable experience. And while the translation was really terrible, that provided some unintentionally humorous moments, and I could often tell what the original Japanese was behind some of the odder moments (for example, Jowy randomly says ‘Sorry’, which was probably ‘Warui’, in the context meaning something closer to ‘Thanks, and I’m sorry to be a bother to you’).
There’s nothing inherently wrong with the idea of the two heroes ending up on opposing sides. Indeed, it can work really well. It just needs to have a good reason, and be believable.
Probably the best thing about the game, though, is the great character design. The three central characters are all great, and look very pretty. Not sure why, though, but the ones I thought were cutest were the boys that look like girls (Tuta) and girls that look like boys (Wakaba). I just can’t resist androgyny!
So even before Suikoden II came out, I was excited, downloading the artwork and hearing reports that it was even better than its predecessor. I snapped it up as a US import, and should have played it through years ago.
So what happened?
Well, firstly, I’d sold my Playstation and got a Japanese Playstation 2, expecting to be able to get a mod chip easily, which would have played US and UK games. I never did get that mod chip. I had a Playstation emulator on my PC, but it crashed several times while I was playing Suikoden 2, and finally, various other pursuits just pushed it to the back of my mind.
Well, finally, I’ve played it through. It’s still often heralded as the best of the series (and I have little interest in the ugly-looking 3 and 4), and it was certainly a lot of fun. However, for me at least, it doesn’t come close to the first game.
Yes, perhaps to a degree it’s because I was a lot younger then, and more accepting of cheesy plotlines. But Suikoden 2 is weak in a way Suikoden never was. The original game was a simple story, based on the old Water Margin tales – the son of a general discovers the corruption of the empire he is a part of, becomes part of the Liberation Army and fights against the evil emperor. It was very basic, but it worked, and the characters made it a gripping and moving story, with all sorts of mini-adventures. The second game works similarly – two childhood friends are fighting in the Highland army when the camp is ambushed and wiped out…except of course for our young heroes. It turns out that the brigade was attacked by its own side disguised as the enemy in order to foil a peace treaty (seems clever until you think…why didn’t they just break the peace treaty by attacking the enemy in the first place?). Once again, there is the classic opposition between a young hero who gradually rises up to be a great leader, and a ‘bad guy’. Only this time, the bad guy isn’t a weak figure being manipulated, and doesn’t have much of a story of his own. He’s just a nut. But he’ll do nicely as an antagonist. The problem comes when he gets killed and the hero’s childhood friend becomes the main opposition.
There is just never a satisfactory reason for his continued bad guy status. The writers never seem to be able to make it sound like he really wants to do anything he’s doing, even though he does it anyway. There are a whole bunch of half-hearted reasons why he must keep fighting with the hero, but they all seem so contrived that the suspension of disbelief vanishes, and disbelief comes crashing down on top of your head.
Still, plot aside, there are a plethora of little extras. I played the original for weeks, getting every little extra. Here, I didn’t really bother – not only do I not really want to spend that much time on each game any more, but once I found out that I had already lost my chance to see the scenes with Clive in, I kinda lost interest in being a completist. Nonetheless, I did the vast majority of what’s available in the game, with a guide (because there are 108 recruitable characters, and some of them will only come with you after some VERY obscure conditions are met, like the one who needed an item that only appeared very rarely in one shop), and saw all the different endings, none of which had the sense of drama or closure the original had. Plus some glitch in the game gave me four powerhouse characters at level 99 automatically, so none of the fights were any real challenge at all. And for the most part, the story of the hero’s rise, the little sub-plots, the humorous moments, the way the castle grows and changes as more people join and the fun of the big epic battles made it a very enjoyable experience. And while the translation was really terrible, that provided some unintentionally humorous moments, and I could often tell what the original Japanese was behind some of the odder moments (for example, Jowy randomly says ‘Sorry’, which was probably ‘Warui’, in the context meaning something closer to ‘Thanks, and I’m sorry to be a bother to you’).
There’s nothing inherently wrong with the idea of the two heroes ending up on opposing sides. Indeed, it can work really well. It just needs to have a good reason, and be believable.
Probably the best thing about the game, though, is the great character design. The three central characters are all great, and look very pretty. Not sure why, though, but the ones I thought were cutest were the boys that look like girls (Tuta) and girls that look like boys (Wakaba). I just can’t resist androgyny!
Thursday, 1 September 2011
Hatsune Miku Project Diva: Dreamy Theater
I got the first Project Diva game quite a few years ago, now, and the second about as soon as it was available. On the other hand, I got my PS3 relatively recently, and it was only within the last few months that I felt familiar enough with the system to get this game running. It’s not simple in the least, especially if – like me – you want to keep custom firmware on your PSP. Which I did, for while I have a Pandora’s battery, it would be a pain constantly switching back and forth, and I wanted to keep playing my patched ROMs.
Project Diva: Dreamy Theater plays the content you have on your PSP version of the game on the PS3, with beautiful graphics befitting the powerhouse system. That’s about it, though. You can’t unlock songs on there, or use the edit mode. You can’t have a little room for your Vocaloid, or get new costumes. So really, it’s an add-on more than a game in its own right. Not only that, but every time you load the game, you have to plug in your PSP (version 6.20 firmware at least), hook it up to the PS3 using a special program (which I had to download from the PSN because it didn’t want to transfer) and let it recognise that you have a saved game on there uniquely linked to your PSP – ie, not a Prometheus CFW save. The first time took a while.
But I was soon hooked. The pretty graphics are draw enough, and the songs remain a lot of fun. I much prefer playing the rhythm game when the buttons aren’t attached to the screen, and soon was flying through the songs. When I discovered that you had to have at least 39 downloaded edit songs, I initially struggled, but once I had figured out how to get them onto the game had a ball with the silly custom songs others had made, and they ensure I’ll never delete the game even though the rest of the content is included in the sequel. Soon, I had all the trophies except for two remained: one for starting the game 39 times (One reading for 39 in Japanese = Miku) and one for getting a ‘perfect’ on all songs on the hardest setting. The only song left was the Christmas song, ‘Kogane no Seiya Sousetsu ni Kuchite’ (something like ‘Holy Night of Gold Decays into Snow’…), which I knew was formidable. In looking up what the hidden trophies are, I’d found a lot of people complaining about how hard the song is and how they’d tried it for months. I was fortunate, I suppose. Only took me a few tries!
So this is my first game where I have 100% of the trophies (no Platinum here though). And it was a whole lot of fun!
Project Diva: Dreamy Theater plays the content you have on your PSP version of the game on the PS3, with beautiful graphics befitting the powerhouse system. That’s about it, though. You can’t unlock songs on there, or use the edit mode. You can’t have a little room for your Vocaloid, or get new costumes. So really, it’s an add-on more than a game in its own right. Not only that, but every time you load the game, you have to plug in your PSP (version 6.20 firmware at least), hook it up to the PS3 using a special program (which I had to download from the PSN because it didn’t want to transfer) and let it recognise that you have a saved game on there uniquely linked to your PSP – ie, not a Prometheus CFW save. The first time took a while.
But I was soon hooked. The pretty graphics are draw enough, and the songs remain a lot of fun. I much prefer playing the rhythm game when the buttons aren’t attached to the screen, and soon was flying through the songs. When I discovered that you had to have at least 39 downloaded edit songs, I initially struggled, but once I had figured out how to get them onto the game had a ball with the silly custom songs others had made, and they ensure I’ll never delete the game even though the rest of the content is included in the sequel. Soon, I had all the trophies except for two remained: one for starting the game 39 times (One reading for 39 in Japanese = Miku) and one for getting a ‘perfect’ on all songs on the hardest setting. The only song left was the Christmas song, ‘Kogane no Seiya Sousetsu ni Kuchite’ (something like ‘Holy Night of Gold Decays into Snow’…), which I knew was formidable. In looking up what the hidden trophies are, I’d found a lot of people complaining about how hard the song is and how they’d tried it for months. I was fortunate, I suppose. Only took me a few tries!
So this is my first game where I have 100% of the trophies (no Platinum here though). And it was a whole lot of fun!
Tuesday, 5 July 2011
Patapon 3
Patapon 3 was a big disappointment. I loved the first game, found the system even better in the second even if the story wasn’t as smooth and iconic – and so had high hopes for the third. But the designers ruined everything that was good about Patapon, and made a frustrating game I finished only out of dogged loyalty, not enjoyment.
The first and biggest flaw was that they decided that instead of a full Patapon army, the player could use only 4 units, like the second game’s hero mode for multiplayer. This is the crux of it: in order to be able to expand the whole game to play multiplayer, the concept of controlling a cute and varied army was excised. Well, I don’t like playing Patapon multiplayer – I like playing it on the train. And the whole appeal for me was building up a big army with lots of units for different jobs. To make it worse, the different units aren’t even all fully customisable – apart from the main hero, each has only a limited number of variants. Thus, rather than exploring in depth, I found the class I liked most for each and stuck with it from about mission 5 to the very end of the game. And the spear unit was pretty useless no matter what.
The change in army style also meant a change in gameplay – the ways to lose were for everybody to die (rare except when there were stupid traps) or for your flag-bearing Hatapon to die. Hatapon becomes vulnerable when all units with a shield die. My only unit with a shield was my big, powerful attack unit. Thus the entire game was nothing more than keep-your-tank-alive-or-die. With stupid summons (which are nothing more than dull button-mashing in hopes of ‘perfect’ ratings and cannot be varied without multiplayer) to bring him back to life once or twice.
The difficulty progression was stupid. The difference in power between levels is absurd, to the point that the game overall was ‘die on every attempt until your units go up one level, and then easily beat what was until then near-impossible’. This held true right to the very end, where the last dungeon was horrible at level 29 but a piece of cake at 30.
The minigames that broke up the action are gone. The humour has all but gone – the crazy bosses that raise a smile are repeats from previous games, and the one fun new enemy, a great big ogre, reappears so much he’s soon a bore.
The story makes little sense and seems very carelessly translated. Your soldiers spout the most random nonsense, and the bad guys are semi-coherent. That there are multiple endings based purely on a choice at the end only frustrates. Gone is the charming simplicity of the quest of the first game, or the fun of discovery of the second. A repetitive, weird and dull game I never thought could have been made from Patapon is all that’s left. Such a shame.
The first and biggest flaw was that they decided that instead of a full Patapon army, the player could use only 4 units, like the second game’s hero mode for multiplayer. This is the crux of it: in order to be able to expand the whole game to play multiplayer, the concept of controlling a cute and varied army was excised. Well, I don’t like playing Patapon multiplayer – I like playing it on the train. And the whole appeal for me was building up a big army with lots of units for different jobs. To make it worse, the different units aren’t even all fully customisable – apart from the main hero, each has only a limited number of variants. Thus, rather than exploring in depth, I found the class I liked most for each and stuck with it from about mission 5 to the very end of the game. And the spear unit was pretty useless no matter what.
The change in army style also meant a change in gameplay – the ways to lose were for everybody to die (rare except when there were stupid traps) or for your flag-bearing Hatapon to die. Hatapon becomes vulnerable when all units with a shield die. My only unit with a shield was my big, powerful attack unit. Thus the entire game was nothing more than keep-your-tank-alive-or-die. With stupid summons (which are nothing more than dull button-mashing in hopes of ‘perfect’ ratings and cannot be varied without multiplayer) to bring him back to life once or twice.
The difficulty progression was stupid. The difference in power between levels is absurd, to the point that the game overall was ‘die on every attempt until your units go up one level, and then easily beat what was until then near-impossible’. This held true right to the very end, where the last dungeon was horrible at level 29 but a piece of cake at 30.
The minigames that broke up the action are gone. The humour has all but gone – the crazy bosses that raise a smile are repeats from previous games, and the one fun new enemy, a great big ogre, reappears so much he’s soon a bore.
The story makes little sense and seems very carelessly translated. Your soldiers spout the most random nonsense, and the bad guys are semi-coherent. That there are multiple endings based purely on a choice at the end only frustrates. Gone is the charming simplicity of the quest of the first game, or the fun of discovery of the second. A repetitive, weird and dull game I never thought could have been made from Patapon is all that’s left. Such a shame.
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