Blarg-a-rant! I live!
Finally have a bit of a breather for a couple of days. Things are going mostly ok, but springtime at work is somewhere between a riot and a Cub Scout meeting.
In the nerdy front, I'm going to put my playthrough of Shining Force EXA on ice for a while. It's not bad, really, but it's getting really bland and same-y. I have some thoughts on the game to share, in no real order.
The Good
The combat is ok, but one thing I really did like was the defensive battles concept. While tearing about, your home base gets attacked by a semi-random pack of mooks and a boss. The fun part is that you have to defend a big shiny generator from big-ass swarms of nasties, and not only do you get good rewards for beating the baddies, you seem to get a boosted drop rate for cash and gear.
Another nice thing is that you actually can call in support fire from your base (which is pretty much looks what would happen if Aztecs got their hands on a Death Star). Canonizing freaks doesn't get much cooler than this.
One really cool thing is the base itself. You get to upgrade its capabilities, with nifty stuff like blowing more stuff up harder, robot buddies for defensive battles, radar abilities for shiny hunting, and an randomized dungeon you can tear around and plunder in.
The Bad
Could be the hardware, could be somebody at Sega just not thinking things through, but getting a certain threshold of enemies on the screen starts some serious slowdown. Unfortunately, this is a hack-and-slash style RPG, with extra emphasis on reflexes and mobility, so things can get really crappy really quickly.
One major flaw in the game is that combat overall just doesn't really evolve for your characters. Toma the warrior is your archetypical beatstick with two similar styles. One handed weapons which hit faster and allow for shields and more mobility, and two handers which...don't. Cyrille the Sorceress gets spellbooks which allow for you to cast spells of various kinds and smack fools with a big-ass book. She also gets crossbows, which tend to be suited for particular enemies. None of these are crap in and of themselves, but in a genre where one expects at least some game-changers over time, in the from of special loot or level unlocks, this stuff gets monotonous quickly.
The difficulty comes in two flavors, and unfortunately is almost exclusively determined by the character chosen at any particular time. Toma is simply much beefier and more nimble than Cyrille. He's far from invincible, but he has a much easier time with both big bosses and swarms. Cyrille is powerful, escpecially when you can exploit elemental weaknesses, but one unlucky hit and it's game over. For me, this had the bizarre effect of primarily using Cyrille in the field, since Toma is much more viable in defensive battles, which are all about big swarms and being able to tank some hits to get going. The end result is that I have to save every five minutes now, since any time I confident, Cyrille dies. Fricking Horrible.
The Shiny
The loot drops in this game are your standard gold and gear. Gear is randomly generated, with up to two special properties (usually along the lines of stat boosts, hits a mook type harder, elemental properties, though sometimes a special move comes along). An interesting twist is that you get "Secret Arts" which act as a third special property and have specific bonuses. These are earned though various challenges throughout the game like fighting supersized enemies or arena battles. Another interesting twist is Mythril (not mithril!), which you collect like a second currency, and can spend on "Power Arts" which are basically stat boosts. Mythril is harvested from big crystals out in the field, can be extracted from gear with special properties (vanilla gear has to be sold or discarded), and dropped by monsters (boosted by a special Change Mythril trait), and also is gained in large quantities from denfensive battles. Get all the Mythril you can.
On a final note, natural Mythril Crystals look an awful lot like the mineral crystals from StarCraft. If I get enough Mythril, can I build a Goliath or Siege Tank? That would be the shit, man.
Wednesday, April 22, 2015
Tuesday, April 14, 2015
Metallurgy, Mineralogy, and Monster-Mashing
Blarg-a-rant!
Let's not mince words: I love games that have crafting systems. Going out and finding stuff, then bringing it back to base to make your own special shinies just doesn't get old. It has also sparked something of a real life interest in how stuff like swords and armor are made, what ores and techniques are involved, and how to alloy, temper and otherwise alter things.
In light of all this, I've done a bit of IRL research into stuff, and compared my finding to how various "craft-heavy" games I've played relate to it. Some of it is actually pretty close along, some of it not so much. In any case, I'd to talk about a few things I've found and/or inferred along the way.
TES V: Skyrim
Let's bring a big name right out of the gate. This open-world masterpiece manages to benefit from a whole ton of both RL research and both in-house and in-universe traditions. Put very simply, what you can smith, brew, or magically enhance is directly related to how good your character is at these respective tasks. While somewhat inefficient compared to getting paid instruction, the act of crafting improves your abilities, with the improvement directly related to the value of the final product i.e. make costlier products to get more experience. Some of the more interesting things here is that we have iron and steel as separate things in game (with steel as an alloy of corundum and iron), where I've notices plenty of games that treat them as identical or near-identical in properties and strength. We also have analogues to several "traditional" materials as well: Corundum for copper, quicksilver for mithril, and Dwarven metal for orichalcum. While there is an orichalcum named as such in the game, Dwarven metal actually fits much closer to the classical definition, being a brazen or golden colored metal with special properties and associated with an advanced, long-extinct civilization al a Atlantis.
Of interest is that, in-game, alchemy and metallurgy are treated as very separate disciplines, with few connections beyond skill enhancement potions. The closest in-game connection is a minor "radiant" quest involving bringing an unusual ore sample to a nearby alchemist. Amusingly enough, your character identifies the mystery sample immediately, but there's no way to just tell the guy instead of ferrying the thing to the shop. Interestingly, this is the same town (Riften) where fetching alchemical agents for specific purposes is a commonplace thing. Maybe the local "expert" is the lazy idiot he seems, since people actually know a thing or two themselves here.
Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song
I'm deliberately contrasting here. This game is very much an opposite to Skyrim. It's a tragically flawed JRPG for the PS2. I won't go into details about the game as a whole (I plan on doing a Wreckonomics article at some point), but one of the more interesting points is the smithing system it has. The gist is that you 'temper' equipment with various materials ranging from ores to monster parts to special patented alloys available at certain guild-affiated shops. While in most RPGs you just get straight stat boosts (and the odd penalty) right off the bat, you actually have some immediate changes (usually in durability), while the full effect of the alteration only coming into play after using the weapon, with the change coming faster the harder you are on it. It's quite possible to break a weapon and then re-temper it before the full effect appears. To add a bit of depth, most weapons have 'harmonious' materials that when used and broken in result in stronger versions (+X) that end with a final, 'named' weapon at the end of the chain. This is usually worth doing, by the way.
The very interesting part, is that the ores in this game are, to date, the closest to real life i have encountered in a video game. There's plenty of fantastic ores, monster parts, and such-like, but real life ores and terms are present. Notable ones include marcasite (iron ore, related to pyrite), meteoric iron (besides the traditional mystical significance, the best way to get nickel-iron alloy in pre-industrial times), native silver (native as in found in a mostly pure, not compounded state), electrum (despite the traditional disdain among some older D&D fans, this stuff was very real), and finally, mullocks (a term for waste ores.) You are quite welcome to run a search on this stuff, in fact. Also of note is vermillion (a red pigment, containing mercury); I believe that this was a mistranslation of the mercury ore cinnabar, but I have no real proof.
One final note is that, as mentioned above, this game has two 'patent' alloys, Vernie and Garal. Two separate guilds hold the patents on these and jealously guard it, to the point that while the player can have these alloys tempered to equipment, they will never find any out in the field. Both have very separate properties (Vernie for light gear, Garal for heavy stuff), and are the trademark specialty of the patent holders, much like how various alloy blends are patented and guarded by real life organizations.
Quite a level of depth for a game that expects to race your way through it.
Well, I have plenty more to say, and a few more games to talk about, which I'll be covering in a future article. Stay tuned, and keep smacking them monsters!
Let's not mince words: I love games that have crafting systems. Going out and finding stuff, then bringing it back to base to make your own special shinies just doesn't get old. It has also sparked something of a real life interest in how stuff like swords and armor are made, what ores and techniques are involved, and how to alloy, temper and otherwise alter things.
In light of all this, I've done a bit of IRL research into stuff, and compared my finding to how various "craft-heavy" games I've played relate to it. Some of it is actually pretty close along, some of it not so much. In any case, I'd to talk about a few things I've found and/or inferred along the way.
TES V: Skyrim
Let's bring a big name right out of the gate. This open-world masterpiece manages to benefit from a whole ton of both RL research and both in-house and in-universe traditions. Put very simply, what you can smith, brew, or magically enhance is directly related to how good your character is at these respective tasks. While somewhat inefficient compared to getting paid instruction, the act of crafting improves your abilities, with the improvement directly related to the value of the final product i.e. make costlier products to get more experience. Some of the more interesting things here is that we have iron and steel as separate things in game (with steel as an alloy of corundum and iron), where I've notices plenty of games that treat them as identical or near-identical in properties and strength. We also have analogues to several "traditional" materials as well: Corundum for copper, quicksilver for mithril, and Dwarven metal for orichalcum. While there is an orichalcum named as such in the game, Dwarven metal actually fits much closer to the classical definition, being a brazen or golden colored metal with special properties and associated with an advanced, long-extinct civilization al a Atlantis.
Of interest is that, in-game, alchemy and metallurgy are treated as very separate disciplines, with few connections beyond skill enhancement potions. The closest in-game connection is a minor "radiant" quest involving bringing an unusual ore sample to a nearby alchemist. Amusingly enough, your character identifies the mystery sample immediately, but there's no way to just tell the guy instead of ferrying the thing to the shop. Interestingly, this is the same town (Riften) where fetching alchemical agents for specific purposes is a commonplace thing. Maybe the local "expert" is the lazy idiot he seems, since people actually know a thing or two themselves here.
Romancing SaGa: Minstrel Song
I'm deliberately contrasting here. This game is very much an opposite to Skyrim. It's a tragically flawed JRPG for the PS2. I won't go into details about the game as a whole (I plan on doing a Wreckonomics article at some point), but one of the more interesting points is the smithing system it has. The gist is that you 'temper' equipment with various materials ranging from ores to monster parts to special patented alloys available at certain guild-affiated shops. While in most RPGs you just get straight stat boosts (and the odd penalty) right off the bat, you actually have some immediate changes (usually in durability), while the full effect of the alteration only coming into play after using the weapon, with the change coming faster the harder you are on it. It's quite possible to break a weapon and then re-temper it before the full effect appears. To add a bit of depth, most weapons have 'harmonious' materials that when used and broken in result in stronger versions (+X) that end with a final, 'named' weapon at the end of the chain. This is usually worth doing, by the way.
The very interesting part, is that the ores in this game are, to date, the closest to real life i have encountered in a video game. There's plenty of fantastic ores, monster parts, and such-like, but real life ores and terms are present. Notable ones include marcasite (iron ore, related to pyrite), meteoric iron (besides the traditional mystical significance, the best way to get nickel-iron alloy in pre-industrial times), native silver (native as in found in a mostly pure, not compounded state), electrum (despite the traditional disdain among some older D&D fans, this stuff was very real), and finally, mullocks (a term for waste ores.) You are quite welcome to run a search on this stuff, in fact. Also of note is vermillion (a red pigment, containing mercury); I believe that this was a mistranslation of the mercury ore cinnabar, but I have no real proof.
One final note is that, as mentioned above, this game has two 'patent' alloys, Vernie and Garal. Two separate guilds hold the patents on these and jealously guard it, to the point that while the player can have these alloys tempered to equipment, they will never find any out in the field. Both have very separate properties (Vernie for light gear, Garal for heavy stuff), and are the trademark specialty of the patent holders, much like how various alloy blends are patented and guarded by real life organizations.
Quite a level of depth for a game that expects to race your way through it.
Well, I have plenty more to say, and a few more games to talk about, which I'll be covering in a future article. Stay tuned, and keep smacking them monsters!
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