So, I finally had a chance to play Tales of Graces F. It's actually been pretty fun so far. I have to say that this game has the distinction of making the characters look like total badasses right out of the gate.
Most games, especially RPGs, have a tendency to make you slog through techniques like "Slash The Sword Once," "Slash Your Sword A Few Times," and "Chug A Potion" for a good five or ten hours before giving the flashy death moves out. Not so with Tales of Graces F! While most of the Tales series has a habit of giving you at least a few flashy--and useful--moves and spells early on, this one has decided to double down and hand you monster-mulchers even earlier, enough so that I'm a bit concerned to see what this game's idea of high-end power looks like.
The crafting system is a bit of a fresh air two. The system relies on two separate, but intimately linked, mechanics. The first is Dualize, which is a variation on the "Item A plus Item B equals Item C" crafting tradition, with the added wrinkle that there are quite a few combinations and recipe chains to be found, plus this is where the equipment customization that traditional Tales cooking lives. The second is the Eleth Mixer, which is effectively a magitek equivalent of a Star Trek replicator. You charge it Eleth (aka mana) and it randomly produces items. The more items the Mixer creates, the bigger a charge it can hold, and the more items you can program in at the same time. It's really useful for duplicating materials for Dualizing, and (making the Star Trek parallels even stronger) especially for popping out meals for instant healing and effects in mid-combat.
The only real gripe I have thus far is much less about the game itself than a related decision. Some luminous soul at Namco did not see fit to release--or license--an official strategy guide. It wouldn't be such a hassle if there wasn't just so many little bits and details everywhere to deal with, especially with the title system (which is where you get your abilities and moves) and crafting. I'm not much fond of playing an RPG completely blind (especially a modern JRPG), and I have the extra nerdy habit of reading them at work during break times. There always seem to be little tidbits to be found about the world-building and item lore in a good guide, and I miss that.
Oh, well, Release The Harvest anyway!
Friday, September 30, 2016
Wednesday, September 21, 2016
Bloodbath & Beyond
Well, put quite simply, I decided I needed a break from all the JRPG nuttiness that I've been tearing my way through for a couple of weeks or so. I started going through the PS3 edition of Tales of Symphonia, but I couldn't build up enough steam to actually go through my usual RamPaGe.
After a bit of dithering, I put in my old, banged up copy of Borderlands 2 again. It's funny; this is the only FPS I've ever really gotten obsessed over, which considering its pretty much FPS: The RPG, says a lot.
There's still plenty of shoot-and-loot awesomeness to be had. The baddies are still full of hilarity and sociopathy, like if they grabbed a pack of deranged forum-goers and dumped them on a planet with a multiple metric craptonnes of guns and ammo and functional immortality. It's one of those games you just have to experience, even without being a fan of any of the contributing genres and themes of the game. You literally can spend hours tearing around shooting Mad Max extras with a gun that shoots acid lasers (!) while they scream about meat bicycles and demanding their hitpoints back at the top of their lungs.
Ever wanted to play a game that has Ork Shoota guns? Welcome to the Torgue family, boys and girls! Want to get angry sharkfaced shotguns that shoot fire? Bandits can give you one! Burst-fire grenade launchers? Dahl has you covered! Elemental weapons that make the Covenant plasma family look like pea-shooters? Welcome to deadly elegance of Maliwan! Guns that get more accurate as you fire? Hyperion, baby! Old-school elephant guns capable of one-shotting the biggest monstrosity? Come on down and get you a Jakobs! Guns that turn into grenades? Tediore has a deal for you! More dakka? Vladof! Vladof! VLADOF!
And this is in the vanilla game. DLC gives you stuff like fighting a giant metal T-Rex on wheels, sniper rifles that rain elemental doom like flowers of death, throwing down with a giant snowman to a metal cover of Carol of The Bells, and guns that fire exploding swords!
Yeah, I'm a fan.
After a bit of dithering, I put in my old, banged up copy of Borderlands 2 again. It's funny; this is the only FPS I've ever really gotten obsessed over, which considering its pretty much FPS: The RPG, says a lot.
There's still plenty of shoot-and-loot awesomeness to be had. The baddies are still full of hilarity and sociopathy, like if they grabbed a pack of deranged forum-goers and dumped them on a planet with a multiple metric craptonnes of guns and ammo and functional immortality. It's one of those games you just have to experience, even without being a fan of any of the contributing genres and themes of the game. You literally can spend hours tearing around shooting Mad Max extras with a gun that shoots acid lasers (!) while they scream about meat bicycles and demanding their hitpoints back at the top of their lungs.
Ever wanted to play a game that has Ork Shoota guns? Welcome to the Torgue family, boys and girls! Want to get angry sharkfaced shotguns that shoot fire? Bandits can give you one! Burst-fire grenade launchers? Dahl has you covered! Elemental weapons that make the Covenant plasma family look like pea-shooters? Welcome to deadly elegance of Maliwan! Guns that get more accurate as you fire? Hyperion, baby! Old-school elephant guns capable of one-shotting the biggest monstrosity? Come on down and get you a Jakobs! Guns that turn into grenades? Tediore has a deal for you! More dakka? Vladof! Vladof! VLADOF!
And this is in the vanilla game. DLC gives you stuff like fighting a giant metal T-Rex on wheels, sniper rifles that rain elemental doom like flowers of death, throwing down with a giant snowman to a metal cover of Carol of The Bells, and guns that fire exploding swords!
Yeah, I'm a fan.
Sunday, September 11, 2016
An Ocean of Mud
So.
It took some time for me to digest things, but I managed to beat Wild ARMs 2 last Tuesday, and it's time for the final thoughts before I pick another game to take on.
The ending was actually pretty good, only marred by the age-old tradition of cutscenes overriding player input when it comes to text boxes. It came close to turning a fairly nice closing sequence (everything gets wrapped up fairly tightly, casualties are light and fairly deserved) into a boring set of static screens. An interesting thing is that except for the actual credits, everything was done using the in-game engine, which could be a turn-off to some but helped tie things nicely in my opinion.
SPOILERS: The final boss was an absolute blast, being the evil demon of doom Lord Blazer, that your main character Ashley channels for transformations Breath of Fire style (down to having blue hair). In a bit of plot escalation done right, he pops up right after you manage to wax the Kuiper Belt (AKA Lavos' granddaddy) and then Ashley channels the local anime Excalibur and, quite frankly, wrecks Blazer's face. It was a lot like final Power Rangers episode, and got further boosted by various other characters showing up to help fuel your best super move and say uplifting stuff. Eat your heart out, Final Fantasy IV! End Spoilers.
Anyway, it all works out in the end. I'm not particularly keen on trying out the local collection of superbosses, mostly because they require something like 5-10 hours of extra grinding that I flat don't have the patience for.
So, in conclusion, Wild ARMs 2 is a fun little game, and deserves attention from anybody looking to see what old-school Playstation RPG goodness was all about. It is a little rough around the edges (the graphics are overall fairly meh, the Wild West influences slowly dwindled to nil in only a few hours in favor of the usual JRPG clichés), but it works out pretty damned well. The puzzles were actually a nice touch, giving much-needed brain-stimulation to what usually amounts to monster mazes. the story actually made use of some tired elements in a fine way, giving them new life and taking them to new heights (a frickin' invading evil dimension, not just eldritch legions, a hostile alternate universe).
Yes, it was very enjoyable all around. The Harvest Has Triumphed!
It took some time for me to digest things, but I managed to beat Wild ARMs 2 last Tuesday, and it's time for the final thoughts before I pick another game to take on.
The ending was actually pretty good, only marred by the age-old tradition of cutscenes overriding player input when it comes to text boxes. It came close to turning a fairly nice closing sequence (everything gets wrapped up fairly tightly, casualties are light and fairly deserved) into a boring set of static screens. An interesting thing is that except for the actual credits, everything was done using the in-game engine, which could be a turn-off to some but helped tie things nicely in my opinion.
SPOILERS: The final boss was an absolute blast, being the evil demon of doom Lord Blazer, that your main character Ashley channels for transformations Breath of Fire style (down to having blue hair). In a bit of plot escalation done right, he pops up right after you manage to wax the Kuiper Belt (AKA Lavos' granddaddy) and then Ashley channels the local anime Excalibur and, quite frankly, wrecks Blazer's face. It was a lot like final Power Rangers episode, and got further boosted by various other characters showing up to help fuel your best super move and say uplifting stuff. Eat your heart out, Final Fantasy IV! End Spoilers.
Anyway, it all works out in the end. I'm not particularly keen on trying out the local collection of superbosses, mostly because they require something like 5-10 hours of extra grinding that I flat don't have the patience for.
So, in conclusion, Wild ARMs 2 is a fun little game, and deserves attention from anybody looking to see what old-school Playstation RPG goodness was all about. It is a little rough around the edges (the graphics are overall fairly meh, the Wild West influences slowly dwindled to nil in only a few hours in favor of the usual JRPG clichés), but it works out pretty damned well. The puzzles were actually a nice touch, giving much-needed brain-stimulation to what usually amounts to monster mazes. the story actually made use of some tired elements in a fine way, giving them new life and taking them to new heights (a frickin' invading evil dimension, not just eldritch legions, a hostile alternate universe).
Yes, it was very enjoyable all around. The Harvest Has Triumphed!
Tuesday, September 6, 2016
Final Fantasy Sidequests Advance
Well, the end of Wild ARMs 2 is finally nigh, and I plan to pull off a victory sometime tomorrow. I've decided to take a bit of a break and pander to my reader.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. It has been said that this was the herald of the end for Sqaure's golden goose and flagship series. That this was an abomination before gamers. Hell, this is the one game that I can recall triggering grown men in real life devolving into pissy internet fanboys over.
The nay-sayers are fools.
FFTA is just plain fun, and a fine example of handheld RPG goodness. It tossed out a lot of the annoyances and wonky mechanics that the original Final Fantasy Tactics, while keeping and polishing the better parts.
It gave us all sorts of new and improved jobs/classes. Granted, they're kind of samey after a while, but any game that hands us Paladins and Assassins without jumping through hoops is worthy of attention, much less things like good Archers and Gunners (at least in Final Fantasy, the ones in the Ogre Battle series are scary) and 'flavor' classes that are actually viable. Throw in the fact that you have four new races to play with, further stepping away from the 'homo sapiens only club' that Final Fantasy was known for, and your band of blood-crazed warrior mages just got even more awesome.
Alright, the law system is kinda crap, and the story tends to come across like a PBS producer horked down two bottles of Nyquil before an ill-fated attempt to write a Sesame Street/Final Fantasy crossover which through delirium-fueled evil magic made it to a desk at Square Enix. There does seem to be some scary logic to the whole setting, which I'll talk about below.
The game is pretty much Sidequest: The Game, and I'm alright with that, to be honest. I like it a lot, actually. You actually get to run a clan of adventurers about doing deeds of daring do, and wind up with all sorts of nifty goodies and abilities doing so. There is an 'implied' crafting system; basically you go and fetch materials in missions and then do missions where those materials are refined and then more missions where you make the goodies. Everything got little blurbs of lore, which warmed my little nerdy heart. I like finding actual details about my stuff outside of plain stats. All in all, it's loads of fun, wrapped up in nice bite-sized chunks.
Remember that in FFT, thieves sucked? How that to be even remotely effective in snatching equipment, you had to do something like five hours of prep, then get into battle and still rely on clunky mechanics and positive thinking? Advance did away with all that. Stealing is close to broken rights out of the box, and gets broken quickly thereafter. Remember how status effect spells retained their traditional uselessness (except for Seal Evil, that was fun)? Advance made them efficient and worthwhile. Combine the two and you how have a game that encourages you to literally rob people blind.
Considering how battlefield larceny is simple and lucrative, it's little wonder that this version of Ivalice is pretty much Saint's Row Final Fantasy Edition. While it's loads of fun to play in, we have an empire that has a veneer of tyrannical monarchy over what amounts of an ever shifting socio-economic landscape dominated by a patchwork of armed gangs engages in all sorts of brigandry. Seriously, its like what would happen if the Italian States were run by Jack Sparrow (granted, some of those guys were just as crazy and much much worse). Screw the philosophical arguments, anybody not a named character was having a crappy and likely short life. That said, it's an awful lot of fun to tear though, and at least it isn't Filgaia, Sanctuary, or any planet in 40k ever.
Oh, and you can build a Black Mage that dual-wields magic wands to beat things to death, without much effort. Fear the Muscle Wizard!
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. It has been said that this was the herald of the end for Sqaure's golden goose and flagship series. That this was an abomination before gamers. Hell, this is the one game that I can recall triggering grown men in real life devolving into pissy internet fanboys over.
The nay-sayers are fools.
FFTA is just plain fun, and a fine example of handheld RPG goodness. It tossed out a lot of the annoyances and wonky mechanics that the original Final Fantasy Tactics, while keeping and polishing the better parts.
It gave us all sorts of new and improved jobs/classes. Granted, they're kind of samey after a while, but any game that hands us Paladins and Assassins without jumping through hoops is worthy of attention, much less things like good Archers and Gunners (at least in Final Fantasy, the ones in the Ogre Battle series are scary) and 'flavor' classes that are actually viable. Throw in the fact that you have four new races to play with, further stepping away from the 'homo sapiens only club' that Final Fantasy was known for, and your band of blood-crazed warrior mages just got even more awesome.
Alright, the law system is kinda crap, and the story tends to come across like a PBS producer horked down two bottles of Nyquil before an ill-fated attempt to write a Sesame Street/Final Fantasy crossover which through delirium-fueled evil magic made it to a desk at Square Enix. There does seem to be some scary logic to the whole setting, which I'll talk about below.
The game is pretty much Sidequest: The Game, and I'm alright with that, to be honest. I like it a lot, actually. You actually get to run a clan of adventurers about doing deeds of daring do, and wind up with all sorts of nifty goodies and abilities doing so. There is an 'implied' crafting system; basically you go and fetch materials in missions and then do missions where those materials are refined and then more missions where you make the goodies. Everything got little blurbs of lore, which warmed my little nerdy heart. I like finding actual details about my stuff outside of plain stats. All in all, it's loads of fun, wrapped up in nice bite-sized chunks.
Remember that in FFT, thieves sucked? How that to be even remotely effective in snatching equipment, you had to do something like five hours of prep, then get into battle and still rely on clunky mechanics and positive thinking? Advance did away with all that. Stealing is close to broken rights out of the box, and gets broken quickly thereafter. Remember how status effect spells retained their traditional uselessness (except for Seal Evil, that was fun)? Advance made them efficient and worthwhile. Combine the two and you how have a game that encourages you to literally rob people blind.
Considering how battlefield larceny is simple and lucrative, it's little wonder that this version of Ivalice is pretty much Saint's Row Final Fantasy Edition. While it's loads of fun to play in, we have an empire that has a veneer of tyrannical monarchy over what amounts of an ever shifting socio-economic landscape dominated by a patchwork of armed gangs engages in all sorts of brigandry. Seriously, its like what would happen if the Italian States were run by Jack Sparrow (granted, some of those guys were just as crazy and much much worse). Screw the philosophical arguments, anybody not a named character was having a crappy and likely short life. That said, it's an awful lot of fun to tear though, and at least it isn't Filgaia, Sanctuary, or any planet in 40k ever.
Oh, and you can build a Black Mage that dual-wields magic wands to beat things to death, without much effort. Fear the Muscle Wizard!
Friday, September 2, 2016
Boss Fight At High Noon
Or,y'know, not.
The Wild ARMs 2 campaign is going quite smoothly again. This game is something else; I find so much that I like, then it remembers its a PS1-era RPG and finds a way to remind me. A list of examples:
The Setting
We have a combination of Post-apocalypse rebuilding and Wild West aesthetics, giving us crazy awesome stuff like Texas Rangers that ride around in troop trucks and carry rifles that have huge, permanently attached bayonets, Rambo-esque desperados that use the kind of artillery rarely seen outside of bullet hells, and dusty clapboard mining towns that revolve around psycho-sensitive ore. We even get crazy awesome stuff like sentient transforming dragon mecha from another dimension. The primary threat? It's a damn world-eating alternate universe, as in an actual universe that devours worlds. Eat your heart out, Galactus.
Unfortunately, the whole Wild West thing takes a back seat to the usual legion of RPG stuff, like the standard wizard types that need care and feeding, the standard rival-but-not-really 'mysterious wanderer' party member, the standard loads of ancient ruins, and the gobs of Magitek goodies that the bad guys get. This game heads straight into the usual formulas way too often. But even then, its does it very well, and we have plenty of unique concepts and crazy awesome to play with.
The Gameplay
Holy crap, an RPG with good dungeon puzzles! Even the cliché puzzles are done interestingly, and sticking in Zelda-like tools like bombs and grappling hooks and wands is a stroke of genius. The combat portions are done very well. Its a little too easy for veteran RPG players, but giving us turn based combat that gives you sword-and-sorcery goodness and gun-toting explosive death at the same time is something special. The "Force Point" system is a very good take on the old mana meter. In short, this is fun stuff.
Unfortunately, there are minor but very annoying flaws. The game opted for both "stop at the edge" and "fall right off like a moron" when it comes to being at the edge of platforms. This makes some of the timing-centered puzzles infuriating, especially with the wonky old-school controls. The game's puzzles have garnered an somewhat evil reputation, but mostly undeserved. There are, however, a bit too many of the old "what the hell do I do to get to the next town/dungeon" problems. I don't need linear, spoon-fed questing, but leaving the player high and dry because you forgot about an incidental part of a dungeon you conquered twenty or more hours ago is unacceptable.
Well, that was a bit of a mouthful. I haven't reached a verdict just yet, though as it stands the campaign will be concluded in a week or two (hopefully sooner) and I'll likely fall on the positive side of the spectrum. I've already decided to put Wild ARMs 3 on my watch list, since it seems to be the closest we'll get to the Good, The Bad, and The Random Encounter RPG the series is known for. The Harvest Never Rests!
The Wild ARMs 2 campaign is going quite smoothly again. This game is something else; I find so much that I like, then it remembers its a PS1-era RPG and finds a way to remind me. A list of examples:
The Setting
We have a combination of Post-apocalypse rebuilding and Wild West aesthetics, giving us crazy awesome stuff like Texas Rangers that ride around in troop trucks and carry rifles that have huge, permanently attached bayonets, Rambo-esque desperados that use the kind of artillery rarely seen outside of bullet hells, and dusty clapboard mining towns that revolve around psycho-sensitive ore. We even get crazy awesome stuff like sentient transforming dragon mecha from another dimension. The primary threat? It's a damn world-eating alternate universe, as in an actual universe that devours worlds. Eat your heart out, Galactus.
Unfortunately, the whole Wild West thing takes a back seat to the usual legion of RPG stuff, like the standard wizard types that need care and feeding, the standard rival-but-not-really 'mysterious wanderer' party member, the standard loads of ancient ruins, and the gobs of Magitek goodies that the bad guys get. This game heads straight into the usual formulas way too often. But even then, its does it very well, and we have plenty of unique concepts and crazy awesome to play with.
The Gameplay
Holy crap, an RPG with good dungeon puzzles! Even the cliché puzzles are done interestingly, and sticking in Zelda-like tools like bombs and grappling hooks and wands is a stroke of genius. The combat portions are done very well. Its a little too easy for veteran RPG players, but giving us turn based combat that gives you sword-and-sorcery goodness and gun-toting explosive death at the same time is something special. The "Force Point" system is a very good take on the old mana meter. In short, this is fun stuff.
Unfortunately, there are minor but very annoying flaws. The game opted for both "stop at the edge" and "fall right off like a moron" when it comes to being at the edge of platforms. This makes some of the timing-centered puzzles infuriating, especially with the wonky old-school controls. The game's puzzles have garnered an somewhat evil reputation, but mostly undeserved. There are, however, a bit too many of the old "what the hell do I do to get to the next town/dungeon" problems. I don't need linear, spoon-fed questing, but leaving the player high and dry because you forgot about an incidental part of a dungeon you conquered twenty or more hours ago is unacceptable.
Well, that was a bit of a mouthful. I haven't reached a verdict just yet, though as it stands the campaign will be concluded in a week or two (hopefully sooner) and I'll likely fall on the positive side of the spectrum. I've already decided to put Wild ARMs 3 on my watch list, since it seems to be the closest we'll get to the Good, The Bad, and The Random Encounter RPG the series is known for. The Harvest Never Rests!
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