Arbiter of Fate

Well, after a bit of gamer's angst, I went ahead broke Kingdoms of Amalur:  Reckoning back out.  I mostly did so because, well, it was time to have a reckoning with Reckoning.  You wouldn't believe how utterly pissed I was when that damn event flag bug decided to manifest.  The time has come for the Harvest to come and shove some Tuatha into blender and see if they go whirr.


I had forgotten just how stupid fun the combat system can be.  Tearing through the mooks with all sorts of crazy tools of doom is still awesome so far, especially since I had the good fortune to get some chakrams early.  It's still like a kickass meld of God of War and Tron; you get to toss around homing frisbees of whirling death, plus they come in elemental flavors as standard, so pick your favorite of ice, lighting, and fire and let the fun begin.


I've also forgotten how bland a lot of the characters are, especially the generic townsfolk wandering around.  There are some bright spots, though, especially this schmuck you bump into, wandering in circles and sounding like Andy Serkis just had a bad experience with scotch bonnets and decided write an emo metal song to get his mind off things.  Turns out he's a wolf that got changed into a man by some local freaks, and now he's upset because he can't catch and eat chickens and is forced to wear pants.  It's hilarious.  He gives you a quest to go kill the aforementioned freaks, and bring him magical well water so he can turn back into a wolf and raid henhouses.  So much for otherkin.


In any case, things seem to be going along pretty well, and hopefully I'll have the chance to unleash the doom upon the baddos without having to deal with another game-breaking bug.  The Harvest never rests!

Another Galaxy Saved

So, another game beaten.  Rogue Galaxy was a actually quite a fun ride from start to finish, and has the distinction of having of the more pleasant endgame sequences I've seen.  I've noted before that I already have a bizarre reluctance to get through a game's final dungeon and beat the end bosses, but somehow, this one was different. 


Despite that last dungeon being the same Mordor ripoff that video games traditionally had since at least Super Mario Brothers, and boring in and of itself with cut-and-paste layouts, the same-but-more mooks that every RPG seems to have, it was kinda fun.  I can point to several more imaginative and unique dungeons I've been through that felt more like chores than a game's payoff (I'm looking at you, Tales of the Abyss).  The final boss battles were actually pretty damn fun, too.  You start off kinda lame with using one of the game's gimmick guns, but then Jenova 2.0 pupates (I'm not joking) and all hell breaks loose.  You wind up tearing you way through a freaky series of duel bosses on a giant space battleship (a literal ironclad in space) that has been assimilated by the evil space mojo, along with the crew and the local Shinra wannabes. 


I've been given to understand that some people think it was both contrived and unduly tedious.  Those people shouldn't play RPGs.  I grant that it seemed a bit out of nowhere, but watching Valkog and his idiots get theirs without padding the game with a crappy second final dungeon works out for the best. 


All in all, the game worked out quite well, and I'm happy to have popped that sucker into my beat-up PS2 and allowed the Harvest to take a whack at it.  I still haven't chosen the next victim for my dork side to corrupt and loot, but we shall see.  And if nothing else, I now can say I played a game with a badass space Womble, a literal dog soldier, and the madness that is Jupis Tooki McGanel.


The Harvest Has Triumphed!

Guardian of the Night

In an effort to make a change of pace while I deal with various real-life issues (nothing earth-shattering, just annoyances and inconveniences), I dragged out a bit of old-school goodness:  Castlevania:  Symphony of the Night. 


I had the good fortune of finding a black-label PS1 copy a few years back, and I trot it out occasionally to get away from both the daily grind and the daily level-grind.  This treasure is chock-full of old sorts of gaming goodness, and combines some of the better mechanics found in old-school platforming with the exploration of adventure games, with a dab of RPG-style stats and loot.  There's even some fighting game style button commands; I'm terrible at those, so they're not all that relevant to me, but even I think it's a nice touch.


Even for the gaming vet, there's just no real substitute for storming your way into a gothic castle of doom, smashing aside the horrible, grotesque minions of evil and walking away with all sorts of goodies.  Overall it's very satisfying, and one can easily see why Konami was so eager to stick to this formula in some shape or form for a good while afterwards.  Your main character, Alucard (ala Adrian Farenheit Tepes) showcases a good sense of loss and regrowth, losing most of his power soon after entering and then proceeds to smack evil anyway, becoming an engine of awesome judgment upon the castle's denizens before taking on Big Bad Dad Dracula himself.


SPOILERS!


There is a nifty concept that Konami tried out here:  As above, so below.  After following certain fairly intuitive (translation problem or maybe just a straight up lie notwithstanding) steps, you actually wind up in a second castle, which happens to be a complete inverse of the first one.  That's right, the already crazy castle in completely flipped upside-down and filled with even more evil freaks.  Unfortunately, it wasn't executed all that well.  A smart player can 'cheat' by just flipping the first map upside-down and following it accordingly, including all the hidden passages and rooms, but otherwise you have no real sense of where you need to go.  Things are also hurt by having several sections share a music theme (each one in the first castle gets a unique one), and with a few places all but outright forcing you to use either cheesy techniques or outright avoidance to get through.  The latter is somewhat ameliorated when you get your stats back up to snuff, but the difficulty spike is pretty nasty all the same.  Still, it was a nifty idea overall, and a good twist that fits the franchise very well.


END SPOILERS


One of the things I liked a lot is the enemy variety, even within some subsets you get all sort of unique critters and baddies to fight.  The two big families are skeletons and knights/armors, with all sorts of different weapons and features.  One of my favorites is the Nova Skeletons, bony wizards that patrol about and unleash arcane laser death; those can really hurt if you get hit.  The bosses enjoy the same level of variety.  Admittedly, we have a lot of the usual horror cliché monsters, but Symphony is where they got codified and established (especially Granfaloon aka Legion and Galamoth).  I would've liked to see a bit more (Super Castlevania IV's Dancing Ghosts really amuse me), but even so things are rather wonderful.  The triple threat of copy Trevor Blemont, Sypha, and Grant was one of the best moments, and a fine tribute to III.


On a final note, you've probably heard it all before, but it bears repeating:  if you want to see what old-school gaming was really capable of back in the day, you need to try this puppy out. PS1 physical copies are fairly common, and fairly reasonable in price, you can download them on both Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network, and finally there is a tweaked version bundled with Rondo of Blood for the PSP.  Matters are helped that this is a 2D game (though built on a 3D engine), so it stands up a fair bit better visually to a lot of its contemporaries.  Game on, and never let the Harvest rest!

To Play, Perchance To Grind

Aye, there's the rub.


Well, I've managed to hit a low point in Rogue Galaxy.  To be fair, I'm probably not going about it at the right time or even the right way; there's evidence that at least some of what I'm doing is supposed to be done either really early or in the post-game content.


I jumped away from the nifty storyline and decided to do a bit of grinding and crafting; mostly I'm just trying to make sure everybody's weapons are up to stuff for the final boss.  It's been going about as well as can be expected.  Some characters have fairly simple recipe chains to get their final uber weapon, others have a bit of complexity and somewhat counter-intuitive requirements. 


The whole thing about it that's sticking in my craw is that our hero Jaster does have a fairly simple subweapon (a energy gun of flashy harvesting awesomeness) recipe, but he has eight--eight!--different candidates for an ultimate sword.  The first seven are the Seven Star Swords, unique and kickass manifestations of doom upon the wicked.  Each one is acquired in a different way, with the first one handed to you at the beginning of the game, and all share the same basic upgrade scheme (fuse a common sword of high enough level for each of the stages).  The big problem is that a) the other six swords in the set have acquisition methods that vary from fairly straightforward to requiring a bit of patience and investigation to flat-out obtuse (I'm looking at you, Duke Nightmare), and b) their power levels are simply just not commensurate with the effort you spend.  None of them have any real advantage over the first one, nor do they have any plot significance or collection bonus.  At least they look badass.  But then the game decides to mock you by giving you another uber-blade right before the endgame!  At least Final Fantasy VII and its damn chocobo races didn't have a reward overshadowed by the plot.


Anyway, I finally gave up after getting most of the party up to snuff, and went back to the story.  It still hasn't managed to disappoint so far, and it's been an absolute blast to go through.  Everything is getting resolved, and while there's still a good bit of angst going on, the characters are actually plowing forward and are proving that they have what it takes to get things done.  It should actually be rally corny, but it works very well overall (except for the Myoko and Chie cutscenes, yuck), and I'm looking to smiting Jenova 2.0 and saving the universe soon.  The Harvest will triumph!

Feeding Toads

So, Rogue Galaxy.  I've finally managed to that point that experience has taught me to both love and dread: the penultimate dungeon.  I love it because that is typically the most flavorful and fun part of the entire harvesting experience, with lots of the plot threads finally coming together in a tapestry of awesomeness.  I dread it because it also tends to be the point where you have to give that tapestry a quick glance and bury yourself in all the little sidequests and last-minute crafting and grinding affairs a modern RPG entails. 


We've been introduced to the lost planet Mariglenn, home of crystal spires, togas, and where magic and technology have reached a point that the rest of the galaxy (itself an idyllic fruitopia of Clarke's Law) looks at them and starts complaining about how they're harvesting dirt and struggling to achieve fire.  The legends are true, but the tech (and magitek) level is a tad bit lower than believed, while still being quietly amazing.  We're also being acquainted with Mother, Jenova's avant-garde sister and local abomination.  Fortunately, no goth pretty-men have shown up to raze villages and screw with life in general.  Unfortunately, it's fairly obvious that totally-not-Shinra are going to come along and be dipshit ultra-capitalists.  Grimdark hijinks will likely ensue.  Fun fact: Daytron (the primary subsidiary of Shinra, Inc. the Galaxy Corporation) has a company logo that looks awfully similar to Atari,  Somebody at Level-5 probably has an evil sense of humor.


But we're now down to getting everybody's equipment optimized and ready to go.  The two crafting systems are the factory (which is both as stupid fun and infuriatingly finicky as you'd think), and the weapon synthesis.  It's your standard video game "item A plus item b equals item c" system, with the twist that you're giving your weapons over to be digested and regurgitated by magic frog. 


I'm not making this up; evil space mojo is tearing around and turning life forms into eldritch combination of Tyranids and the Borg.  Our little friend Toady (the frog in question) and his buddy had a close encounter with the evil space mojo.  Toady's friend got the shaft and wound up a giant Frogthulu zombie thing and promptly was found by the Harvest,  Toady wound up becoming a cute talking purple amphibian that also doubles as the Space Philosopher's Stone.  So we have a crew of kickass anime space pirates that feed weapons to a (presumably unique) frickin' frog, that promptly barfs back up as all sorts of magic swords and death rays and magitek bazookas and stuff.  Oh, and they have to be seasoned (read: used in 15 battles) for him to even taste the things.  Apparently he likes to taste the despair of my fallen enemies.


This game is awesome.







 

Space Wizards Are Nuts

And ancient space wizards are even crazier.  Oh, that's not what they're called, of course, but the magitek in Rogue Galaxy is so pervasive that Clarke's Laws need therapy now.  Why the hell healing abilities don't exist is beyond me, especially given everything else going on.


Now that that's out of the way, back to the fun space adventures.  I'm well on the way to the final Key Piece (AKA Space MacGuffin), and wandered into the Gladius Towers, an ancient two-part fortress of doom.  It's fairly spooky (by local standards) and atmospheric, but I'd really like to know why there's an ancient, apparently untouched and very unstable piece of architecture in the middle of the ultra-modern capitol of the local space empire.  Oh, and it's haunted by all sorts of nasties to boot, and apparently is under some sort of self-inflicted curse.


It wouldn't be so bad if the place was cordoned off by itself away from the teeming masses and the important infrastructure and offices and stuff, but the actual atrium of the haunted, crumbling palace of terror is used as the public headquarters of the galaxy's biggest corporation!  It's like if  a slightly happier version of Shinra Tower was designed and built by Ivo Shandor.  Sure, there's some high-end force fields locking everything in place, but one glitch and all sorts of nasties would probably come and wreck the damn planet.  Oh, and the whole place is eight kinds of trashed past the first floor.  Space OSHA must not be a thing here.


The only thing I can really think of is that the Galaxy Corporation uses the place as a testing ground/specimen collection zone/emergency income source.  It would explain why the HQ is also the guild hub for all the bounty hunter/adventurer types tearing around.  The local freaks are getting too noisy?  Send in some scrubs!  Need some monstrosities for mad science and profit?  More scrubs! 


Space dungeons are just weird. 

Unleash the Doom!

Things are still going pretty well with Rogue Galaxy.  The moves have gotten a bit more ridicu-awesome; I've managed to unlock a 'spell' that summons a bunch of space helicopter to unleash laser death upon the forces of evil.  The move itself isn't all that impressive graphics-wise or in terms of damage (at least not now), but the idea of an ex-soldier (who may or not be a deserter) that spent the last ten years in a bottle on a mining planet somehow having the resources to call in organized, precision gunship strikes jumps right past "incongruously dumb" to "holy crap this is awesome, EAT LAZORS!"

The factory system is also kinda fun, but it's just too finicky for me to get completely behind.  The developers were probably trying to convey the difficulties in real-life assembly processes, as well as making sure we earn our extra toys.  To be fair, at least so far I've only made minor screw-ups, without losing any materials to failed attempts.  Watching the factory actually do things to materials is also fun to watch.  Oh well, perfection is not a thing that exists on this earth anyway.

I've actually found some emotional moments; ironically enough, the biggest one so far was a tear-jerking bit involving the backstory behind a dungeon boss, which came right after an episode of a recurring mother-and-daughter melodrama (they're looking for daddy and the galaxy is all mean and lots of crying and it's-so-damn-sad-why-don't-you-give-them-a-hug "BLURG MAKE IT STOP DAMMIT").  No, I can't stand those two, why do you ask?  It's still good to know that Level-5 can do tragedy and angst right.

Overall, the experience is quite enjoyable, and far from over.  We'll see what craziness is in store.  The Harvest Never Rests.

How To Raise The Stakes

So.  Rogue Galaxy has some faults, to be sure; the mooks are nasty, the dungeons tend to be internally repetitive in their layout, it really could've used at least a limited after-combat healing (or a regeneration mechanic).  But damned if isn't a blast.

Then it happened.  Somebody has finally come up with the next level in item crafting concepts.  They up and gave me a factory.  I get to make assembly lines and watch widgets do stuff to materials and fiddle with power lines and stuff.  I actually haven't had much chance to fiddle and play with it yet, but it was pretty fun once it got going.

We shall see how things go, since we've seemed to have some really cool stuff coming (which is how it should be for crafting), including ancient legendary artifacts and hi-tech harbingers of doom.  How we make things that are supposed to be legendary relics of antiquity is beyond me, but RPGs have been doing this forever (probably since frickin' Angband) so whatever.

One of the things that makes this system (and the game as a whole) interesting is that they openly mix futuristic technology with magic, without even really calling attention to the fact.  This is space fantasy at its finest; you don't need to sit there and be all "ooh we got magic and spaceships."  Show, don't tell, eh?  It's like this throughout the whole game, just giving us patently ridiculous things and concepts and running with them without pedantic poking at the seams, never letting you really spot the thread.

The characters are mostly your average RPG fare, you got your standard protagonist (type A 'cheerful'), your usual demure love interest, the dark-and-totally-not-a-spy mercenary, and some other cliches.  They're fairly well-done overall; you get a standard robot buddy that is pretty much C-3PO with some ball bearing upgrades, the jaded veteran is a literal dog soldier (that one was nicely done).  Then there's Simon.

Simon is pretty much Character of The Game, in my opinion.  Somebody at Level-5 wanted a space dwarf, but blended the usual stereotypes (stocky, big nose, Scottish accent) and subsumed them by making the guy wander around in a space-trenchcoat and a freaky mask that more than compensates for the lost beard.  What we wind up with a boisterous, badass space Womble that tears around with a flamethrower pistol (with elemental variants even) and a multiple-missile launcher that unleashes explosive doom upon the unworthy.  He even gets a special attack where he lobs a volley into the air and does a dance with a little paper umbrella.  Best.  Womble.  Ever.  Group him with Flashbang Poe, Salvador the Gunzerker, Bacchus D-79 (SPESS ELF ROBOCOP) and watch the forces of badness become meat smoothie flambe!

The guide for this game has a hilarious inconsistency, in that they flat out tell you to not fight all the random mook battles so you can conserve your items for the bosses.  Then the rest of the guide goes and tells you about how you need to kill lots and lots of freaks for a bounty hunting sidequest, and then goes on to tell you that you should be farming mooks for rare random drops (instructions to farm drops shows up near constantly).  So, we totally don't want to smack a bunch a random critters because we need to keep our potion stock up (by the way, basic heal potions and resurrection potions are sold in infinite or near-infinite quantities everywhere, including inside most dungeons), but we want to smack random critters for a bounty quest, and we want to smack random critters for random bitz.  The Harvest may never rest, but it sure gets confused sometimes.  It might have worked a bit better if they said that we shouldn't really farm until the boss is dead and we can keep our fancier healing items in reserve.  Instead we have literary schizophrenic kleptomania in the guide.  To be honest, I only buy guides for maps and to stare at something during lunch at work anyway.