The Twin Gaming Critics

Little King's Story Classes

2010-08-09T19:38:00.000-07:00

I have been meaning to write about Little King's Story for quite some time now. It is a very fun and distinctive game that resembles Pikmin in much of its gameplay. Essentially, you play the game by calling various citizens to follow your character, the titular Little King, and them ordering them to complete various tasks. As such, much of the gameplay is built around choosing the right balance of occupations among your followers so you have all of the skills you need in order to defeat the enemies before you and clear the obstacles out of your path towards world domination. Unfortunately, one of my major pet peeves of them game relates to how the various occupations were designed. While a few of them are very functional and well designed, there are also quite a few that could be significantly improved.

Probably the best designed classes in the game are the Hardworking Farmers, the Buff Lumberjacks, and the Ripped Miners. Other than the combat classes, these are the three classes that I found myself bringing multiples of on a regular basis. These three classes form the backbone of the exploration, treasure-finding, and problem-solving in the game: farmers dig holes to find stuff, lumberjacks clear out logs blocking the path, and miners eliminate rocks that are in the way. While almost any class can perform these tasks, these three classes do the same job in a third of the time. Furthermore, only they can start work on particularly difficult projects such as massive boulders. So, unlocking these classes serves as a way to open up new areas of the game-world. Furthermore, the Miners in particular can instant-kill a certain rock enemy. I actually wish the farmers and lumberjacks also has associated enemies they could instant-kill; I am fond of that kind of "use the right weapon to defeat the enemy" design. These classes are even useful in fighting certain bosses. Since they mix basic utility with knowing when to bring extras for particular challenges, I really like these three classes.

On the other hand, we have the soldier classes. They are actually very similar to the aforementioned farmers, lumberjacks, and miners, in that they can do a wide range of jobs but specialize at one in particular: combat, in this case. However, I have two general problems with the soldier classes. The first problem is that throwing soldiers at the enemy is just about the only form of combat in the game. The main strategy of combat is waiting for the enemy to become vulnerable, send in the soldiers, then call back the soldiers before the enemy attacks. Having a few more types of combat class with different strengths, weaknesses, and special abilities might have made it a little more interesting. My second problem is that eventually your Grunt Soldiers are obsoleted when you acquire Hardened Veterans, which do everything Grunt Soldiers do, except they have two special abilities as well. Having one class that is a direct upgrade of another is really frustrating. I ended up with a couple dozen Grunt Soldiers I was no longer using spending their days wandering around my kingdom (there was no advantage to spend the cash to upgrade them compared to making new guys into my main army).

On that note, the fact that the carpenters get replaced twice is even more galling. Carpenters as a class are much more limited in scope than soldiers or the workers. All they do is build bridges and staircases at certain points in the game. If I didn't expect to find a build-point, I usually didn't bother to bring one at all. Since the later varieties of carpenter get the ability to build structures the earlier ones cannot, the carpenters mainly serve as a means to make sure the player has built up his kingdom to specific levels by certain points in the game. As the lumberjacks and miners prove, there are much more elegant ways of doing this. To add insult to injury, the third tier Giga carpenters are only required once in the entire game.

Next up are the Animal Hunters, the only real non-soldier combat class in the game. These guys are actually interesting. They do spice up combat a little, and have the special ability to shoot down certain kinds of projectiles the enemy sometimes throws at you. They can also take on flying or elevated opponents that the soldiers can't get at. However, their use is rather niche. If you aren't going to be taking on flying enemies or such, there is little reason to bring them over soldiers. I also find the fact that they can only carry a limited supply of arrows to be a little unnecessary.

Next up are the extreme specialists: the Gourmet Chef and the Savvy Merchant. Gourmet Chefs can only do one thing: instant kill giant chicken enemies. It is actually an interesting niche. Giant chickens are typically rather obnoxious enemies, but a single chef can wipe out an entire army of them by himself. You don't always need to bring them, but they are very valuable in specific situations. Similarly there are the Savvy Merchants, who have the ability to find hidden buried treasure and unlock a certain kind of treasure. Other than making you some money, Savvy merchants are completely optional. Honestly, there is nothing particularly wrong with these specialists, but I kind of wish they had some other use to justify creating more than one or two of either. This is where giving citizens a use other than following the player around would have been nice. Maybe making more merchants could have opened up some shops for the player to buy from?

Similar to the two trainable specialists are the immigrants, four specialists who move to your kingdom from defeated kingdoms. You only ever get one of each type. I actually really like these guys. While each one of them is only capable of removing a specific kind of unusual obstacle, they do give you give you access to nice treasures and new areas while adding a lot to the flavor of the game. Since you get them automatically without spending money, there is little reason to complain about them being so specialized. I am honestly disappointed there weren't immigrants corresponding to the rest of the rival kingdoms in the game.

Finally, there are the three secret classes found at the end of the game: the Steel Knight, the Rainbow Wizard, and the Doctor. All three of these classes can only be acquired towards the very end of the game after spending a lot of money on various investments, and you can only ever have one of each. To be honest, I really don't like these guys. It feels a little frustrating that I couldn't train citizens of my own choosing to be a Doctor or Wizard. Furthermore, by the time you actually get these characters, you are already pretty much at the end of the game, rendering them rather useless. I think I would have preferred some mid to late game units that could have been deployed in numbers enough to actually mix up combat.

Overall, the game played quite well, but I think there is still a fair bit of room for improvement. Giving classes stuff to do in the kingdom would have been interesting, and more options to make combat more interesting would have been nice. I would really like to see a sequel to Little King's Story someday, or at least someone make another game in the same vein.

Starcraft 2 Terran Campaign

2010-08-04T21:11:00.000-07:00

I have been playing the Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty campaign fairly regularly since release, and I am almost done with it. I think I only have another mission or two left to go. I have been enjoying the campaign quite a bit. In terms of gameplay, the campaign is quite varied with well-designed missions. On the other hand, the campaign's story has felt very slow and directionless. So while the individual missions are fun, the campaign as a whole feels somewhat lacking.

The best part about the missions is that all of them play very differently from each other for the most part. None of the missions have been traditional "destroy the enemy's base" style missions. Instead, every mission has very unique victory conditions, optional objectives, and required strategies. Blizzard really explored the limits of mission design for an RTS, even more so than they did in Frozen Throne. MIssions such as intercepting trains, escorting evacuating colonists, and so on make for exciting missions that can really take advantage of the game's variety of units and tactics. While the game does have its number of "hold out against waves of enemies for x minutes" missions, it does keep them fresh by giving the player various different conditions or advantages.

Unfortunately, there are a couple of problems with the mission design. Almost all of the missions involve rushing the player through various mission objectives. For example, one mission might force the player to reach certain objectives before a competing enemy does while another mission might force the player to deal with explicit time limits. While this design is generally a good thing, since it makes the game tense and exciting, it does get old after a while. Furthermore, most missions are primarily designed to show off and take advantage a new unit that has just been unlocked. Between these two factors, it often means that the player rarely gets to take the time to experiment with units that were received in previous missions. There are a few units that I have only seriously used in the mission I got them from. Other units that don't have an affiliated mission are even worse off.

My biggest complaint about the game though is the pacing of the story. Overall, 20% of the campaign is serious main story advancement while the remaining 80% consists of side missions that don't directly advance things. Despite the length of the campaign, it actually feels like there are a lot fewer major story developments than in previous Starcraft/Warcraft campaigns. It also means that the story plays out very slowly, with some expositions at the beginning and most of the major developments weighted towards the end. While I liked the numerous new characters that were introduced to flesh out the Starcraft world, it feels like only a handful of them received significant development or screen-time. Stetman should have at least gotten conversations like Swann did, and a few more characters could have appeared inside missions.

Some special mention needs to be made of the Zeratul missions. While it was definitely a good idea to give the player a chance to take a break from the Terrans to enjoy some time with the Protoss, that entire story arc consisted of vague prophecies, serious plot and character retcons, anti-climatic introductions to long-awaited villains, and attempts to redeem established villains using the subtly of a wrecking ball. In other words, it contained all of my least favorite things in one short story arc. Can't Blizzard write a story without retconning their past works these days?

For the upcoming Zerg and Protoss campaigns, I hope that Blizzard continues the good work as far as mission design goes, but tries to add a bit more of the central story to the missions as a whole.

Lost Planet 2 stage design lessons

2010-07-30T20:54:00.000-07:00

One of the games that my brother and I have been playing a lot of over the last few months is Lost Planet 2, the third person shooter made by Capcom. The game's strong emphasis on co-op gameplay makes it a great game for our purposes. However, the game definitely has its mix of great stages and poorly designed stages. After a while, I think I have noticed a few patterns, which could be taken as lessons to be learned for future games.

Ironically enough, mission 1-1 is one of the hardest stages in the entire game, particularly at higher difficulty levels. This is entirely due to the final segment of the stage, where the players have to seize and maintain control over a mine. There are two main causes for this difficulty. The first is because of the open layout of the mine; it consists of a large open central area surrounded by multi-level structures with lots of open doors and windows. Essentially, every enemy in the mine area can easily get opportunities to shoot at the players, meaning that the players have to deal with all of the enemies at once, making it easy to get swarmed or surrounded. Second, the game asks the players to maintain control over four control posts at once for a certain amount of time. Because of the spacing of the control points and constant reinforcement of enemies from multiple entry points, this is very difficult to do with even two people. It feels like this part of the mission more or less requires four players in order to be easily feasible.

This second point is seen again in mission 5-1, where the players are asked to once again maintain control over certain control posts for a certain amount of time; this time it is two control posts located in different rooms separated by several corridors. In our case, my brother and I were each able to guard a room, but it was a very difficult fight for us, since powerful enemies constantly stream in from three entrances into each room. Based on these missions, it feels like missions that require maintaining control over multiple places at once vary in difficulty a lot more significantly based on the number of players than missions that require simply advancing forward. This is probably because these missions force players to split up, which is more punishing for two players than for four. I have no idea if it is even possible for a solo player to tackle these (disregarding AI helpers).

Perhaps a more positive and interesting way the game takes advantage of its co-op focus is in its stages with multiple routes. Most stages in the game are very good at having at least two routes to get from one room to the next. For example, 4-1's first area consists of a multistory building. Many floors in this building have two or even three stairways leading to the next floor. This opens up a lot of room for strategy. The players can all go down the same path and try to combine their firepower, or they can choose to split up, take different routes, and flank the enemy. This multi-route design even lets players split up to clear out enemies and independently secure objectives if they so wish.

On the flip side of the coin is the final section of mission 4-1: a narrow choke-point leading into a large area where there are multiple heavily armed mechs ready to shoot anyone passing through the choke-point. To make matters worse, the only weapons capable of talking out the enemy mechs are on the other side of the choke-point. This kind of design comes up in about three or four places in Lost Planet 2, and it really is inexcusable. In all of these occasions, the only choice is to make a beeline for the usable mechs or good weapons and pray you can find some cover before the enemy fire tears you to shreds. This kind of area layout gives an overwhelming advantage to the enemies, and can quickly become very frustrating to the players.

On a final note, I really liked the co-op cannon segments of the game. In these, all of the players need to to work together to man powerful weapons against giant enemies. While one player is aiming the cannon itself, other players are manning anti-aircraft guns to hold off threats, fighting off enemies who have boarded the player's vehicle, or working to power-up the main gunner's next big shot. These battle can be frantic, complex, exciting, and very epic. Unfortunately, I gather that they aren't very fun when one player is playing solo. That is a real shame. Unless the game designers can write AI that can actually behave the way a player wants them to in such a complex situation, this is going to remain a trade-off when choosing between making a primarily co-op vs single-player experience.

I think there is a lot about Lost Planet 2 that shows that a game built around four player co-op does have significantly different level design considerations than a game built just for single-player. As a big fan of co-op games, I do kind of wish that there were more games like Lost Planet 2 out there.

Communication and Interaction in Fable 2

2010-07-21T21:27:00.000-07:00

It has been far too long since I have last written a blog entry here. I have finally sat down to revive this blog with a post about a game that has been out for a couple of years: Lionhead Studio's Fable 2. I finally got around to playing it for the first time over the last week, and it was actually a fair bit better than I was expecting based on some reviews I have read about it. Unfortunately, one of the key selling points of the game, the ability to interact with the common characters throughout the world to earn their love or their fear, just fell flat. In practice, the lack of any real communication and the ability to only interact with faceless NPCs devoid of characterization makes it feel like the whole game world, including the player's own character, feel empty and lifeless. Fable 2 doesn't create the feeling that there are actual relationships between characters.

The fundamental problem with Fable 2's interaction is that it is impossible to actually talk to people; all you can do is use emotes called Expressions to get vague ideas across. Every NPC in the game-world seems to have their own base impression of the hero based on a combination of his renown (a value built up by doing quests), his alignment, and his appearance. From there, it is possible to further manipulate the impressions of the NPCs by taking various action, primarily Expressions, around them. For example you can pose heroically to impress people. NPCs will then occasionally make voice-acted comments as the hero walks by based on their personality traits and current impressions of the hero. However, at no point in this process do the NPCs and the hero actually interact in any significant way. It just feels like the player and the game-world are just talking at each other rather than engaging in anything substantial. It isn't even possible to tell which specific man or woman is actually doing the talking when they are in a crowd.

The biggest reason this interaction feels so hollow is because the people filling the game world really are hollow and lifeless. They are nothing more than names pasted onto three to six character personality traits, a handful of likes and dislikes, a generic character model, and a generic voice. I wouldn't be surprised if most of them where cranked out by a random NPC generator program. Furthermore, all of those statistics are devoted to determining how the NPC reacts to the hero performing any given Expression. All these NPCs are capable of is wandering around and reacting to Expressions. At the same time, none of them really stand out at all. They have no interesting personalities, they all look the same, and, worst of all, they are all equally frivolous in their emotions. Just by having my hero put on some nice clothes, half a city fell in love with my hero. Why should the player even care what the NPCs think of the hero when the NPCs are nothing more than generic background characters?

There are several honestly interesting characters in the game who are part of the story and the games various quests, such as Barnum, Hannah, and Garth. Unfortunately, these few interesting characters are completely segregated from any interaction. They generally have no reactions to the hero performing Expressions nearby, and they can't even be killed (one quest giver still offered me a job after I shot him in the head a couple dozen times). You can't even lock onto them to check their stats like you can with every other character in the game. It is really frustration that the only characters in the game that I actually care about don't really care much about my character.

The whole problem is compounded by the limitations of the Expressions. The Expressions are grouped based on how they influence people, and these groups include Flirty, Scary, Rude, and Fun. Pretty much all of the Expressions represent conscious performances put on by the hero to influence people's emotions and impressions. What is missing are Expressions that actually express the hero's own emotions. For example, it is possible to point and laugh at people to piss them off or humiliate them, but there is no crying emote to express sadness. This actually comes up in the handful of cutscenes where the player is asked to use Expressions to interact with story characters, such as when the player is attending the funeral of a slain monk. Without the ability to actually express the hero's own emotions, it is nearly impossible to engage in anything resembling a conversation. While the game does offer up Expressions for the player to use in such situations, trying to figure out the meaning of any given Expression in the scene's context is often very difficult. As such, the player's own character feels just as hollow and lifeless as the NPCs filling the world.

In the end, I never really bothered interacting with the NPCs of Fable 2 much during my go through. The game didn't give me much real motivation to do so. The NPCs and Expressions just felt too much like a mechanical puzzle to be cracked than anything with actual emotional payoff. In order to succeed with this kind of thing, you need to breathe life into the NPCs and treat them like actual characters, not just set-pieces.

Avalon Code: Some Random Musings

2009-08-08T22:02:00.000-07:00

I really have been meaning to write a follow-up to the post in which I assaulted the Book of Prophecy system in Avalon Code, but I feel rather torn regarding how I should follow that one up. On one hand, I feel like I really should elaborate a bit on how I think the Book of Prophecy idea could have been better implemented, but on another hand I also feel like I should just ignoring the positive side and instead describe how badly the game tortures you through the "Book Value" system. I guess all I can do is write a bit about both.

First, some more negativity.

One of the biggest issues with the Book of Prophecy is that every last page of the book has an associated "value" given by a number. Pretty much everything you do in the game other than pursuing the main storyline is related to this value. This number supposedly relates the "amount of information" contained within that page, but the method used to determine that number depends on the type of page in the book. For example, any page that allows Code alteration gives a higher value for putting more Codes on an object and giving the object more potent "Titles" created from Code combinations, with special bonuses for changing an item's form or giving a character the Title that they want the most. However, you also increase a page's book value by various things like talking to people and giving them gifts, killing monsters and juggling them with the irritatingly necessary Judgement Link attack, or just talking to your Spirits and using the powerful Spirit Magic attacks. At this point, the system doesn't sound so bad, but there are a few issues...

First, the connection between what builds up book value and the rewards you get for doing so simply are not very clear. I have absolutely no idea why making stronger weapons will cause the town's mayor to start holding a quiz minigame. I have no idea why doing well in that quiz minigame may cause a rare monster to appear. I have no idea why defeating that monster may cause some random part of the map to start producing Magic Jewels (the game's mostly unneeded currency). In effect, you just get randomly rewarded for going about and doing nothing particularly special. It is rather unsatisfying, in my opinion.

More problematically, the game isn't really rewarding you for any particular kind of activity. It is not like the game is rewarding you for doing the things you would normally do to win the game, since certain things that raise book value actually make the game more difficult, such as making monsters stronger by giving them powerful Codes and Titles. On the other hand, the game certainly isn't rewarding you for taking on greater challenges, since creating absurdly strong weapons that make battles a cakewalk will give you a lot of book value. The real problem, though, is that the game generally tends to give you a lot of book value (and other rewards) if you go around and do a lot of tedious, meaningless stuff that is mind-numbingly boring and frustrating, like checking every last square inch of most of the map squares in the game looking for things to examine (and watching the hero/heroine jump around and yell like an idiot whenever you don't find anything because the examine button is the same as the Judgement Link attack button). Basically, the game gives you a lot of rewards for doing things you will hate doing, which is a terrible game design.

Actually, there are a number more things I could complain about regarding how the game is so miserly in handing out good rewards and seems to enjoy in tormenting the player, but I really should focus a bit more on more constructive and positive endeavors. If I don't, I may go crazy thinking about how stupid I was to fall prey to some of that inanity. At least the experience taught me the rules behind solving 24-puzzles...

So, on to how things could have been better.

There are two things you see Avalon Code's Book of prophecy system that probably could have been used to better effect: unique special Codes and Codes that can't be freely removed from a page of the Book. In the actual game, these two things always coincide, and are always seen as problems that need to be removed, with the special Codes always vanishing when the problems they represent are cleared up. I think the system would be a bit better if unalterable Codes were far more common (with even normal, non-unique Codes being often unalterable), and unique special Codes could be removed and used on other pages of the Book. This arrangement would enable three things. First, making it harder to alter the Codes of something like an NPC or a monster would help the Code system have a stronger connection to the actual gameplay and characterization, since it would be easier to determine what codes like "Justice" or "Snake" are actually supposed to represent. Second, having two different tiers of Codes, with both common Codes (which you can create as many of as you like) and unique Codes, would allow a system where it is valuable to collect Codes, but also easy to alter the arrangement of a single page of the Book without having to flip through pages of the book searching for Codes or pull apart other code arrangements. Finally, it would allow a differentiation between Codes that add Titles and Codes that change the nature of an object in a way that could potentially remove the need for Metalize recipes, thus making Codes treasures in of themselves and encouraging greater player creativity.

Of course, a few other things would also need to be done. A greater connection between the Book and the reality of the game world could be emphasized by letting actions of the game characters more directly affect the contents of the Book. For example, instead of having to unlock a problem Code by adding a Title to a character, you could unlock it through the direct actions of solving that character's problems. As another example, instead of directly removing an enemy's Stone code using the Book whenever you want, you would instead weaken the monster's Code by adding another Code that contradicts the Stone, then hit the enemy with bombs and hammers in order to deactivate the Code, which would give you an opportunity to hurt the enemy with sword attacks as if the Stone code didn't exist. Any kind of greater interaction between Codes and real game states would have made Avalon Code a lot more interesting.

I think that is about enough commentary on that game for now. I've got too many other games to write about.

Romancing SaGa: BP, DP, and LP

2009-08-08T21:36:00.000-07:00

Among the games I have been playing during my break from blogging is Romancing SaGa, a somewhat older game for the PS2 I recently stumbled across. While Romancing SaGa is a remake of an old SNES RPG that never made it state-side, it is pretty clear that it is a loose remake, since there are some pretty interesting innovations derived from more recent SaGa games. One of the best of these innovations is the BP/DP system, which is involved in the costs for using the various spells and special weapon techniques in the game. This system is light-years ahead of traditional MP costs and results in much more dynamic and strategic combat.

BP is short for "Battle Points", and it is the primarily limiting factor on what special moves that you can use in battle. Unlike in a traditional MP system, where characters have MP totals that are carried over between battles, BP resets at the beginning of every encounter. Each character has three pertinent BP values: their starting BP amount, their maximum BP total, and the amount of BP that they gain at the start of each turn of combat. As such, a character's BP total is in constant flux, going up and down as the battle progresses and the character uses his spells and special moves, which in turn means that what moves the player has access to are also in constant flux. For example, a character who starts a fight may have to wait until turn 2 before he can cast a certain spell. However, if that character keeps using weaker spells in the mean-time, he might never get to use the stronger spell. So, BP makes the player have to constantly weigh the opportunity cost of actions.

I find that this approach is much more interesting than the traditional per-adventure MP model, which doesn't usually force the player to make interesting resource-management decisions on a round-to-round basis. In most RPGs that use MP, the dominant strategy consists of two parts: conserve MP as much as possible during regular battles, then use your MP with complete abandon during boss battles. Even if MP gets low, there are typically plenty of items available to restore it, so low MP is rarely a factor in determining which move a character has access to in a major battle. In the BP system though, the best special moves often consume from a quarter to half of a character's max total. So even though it is constantly regenerating, using your best attacks constantly isn't necessarily a good idea. On the other hand, since BP is encounter based, it means that characters can use their various special moves without worrying about saving them for boss battles, which makes regular battles generally more exciting.

However, the biggest innovation of Romancing SaGa is that it does incorporate aspects of more traditional per-adventure resource management as well using DP (Durability Points). DP isn't a character statistic; rather, it is a quality of equipped weapons. A weapon has a maximum DP ranging from 20 to 60 or so, with 50 being pretty common. Attacks can deplete anywhere from 0 to 10 DP with each use, and when a weapon reaches 0 DP, it becomes useless until repaired. However, normal weapons can only have their DP restored by resting in an inn, while special weapons can only be repaired by forking over a lot of money to a blacksmith. As such, it is usually worth conserving DP until you need it. However, an interesting effect of the DP system is that it encourages characters to carry multiple weapons (such as a regular weapon to use DP draining attacks with and a more expensive weapon to use low DP attacks with), which adds some interesting tactical layers to combat.

Where the BP and DP systems really shine is in how they interact. Since every attack has two costs, the system allows for a wide range of special moves that are useful in an equally wide range of uses. For example, weak, low BP, zero DP cost attacks are great for saving up BP for a bigger attack when dealing with normal enemies. High damage, high BP, low DP attacks are good at quickly eliminating regular enemies, but are generally unsustainable during protracted combat. High damage, low BP, high DP attacks are great for dealing solid damage to a boss round after round, but they chew through weapons and are thus useless for fighting regular enemies. Since exact details such as individual BP regeneration rates, current BP totals, what weapons are available, what the costs of various moves are, and so forth are so variable, there are rarely obvious choices to make. The sum result is that each character has a wide range of interesting moves available and the player is forced to make interesting resource management decisions every turn.

However, the system does have a few weakpoints. Most notably, spells use BP, but not DP; instead, powerful spells consume a character's LP (Life Points). However, each character only has six to eight or so LP, and when they run out, they die. Since this is hardly the only way to lose LP in a fight either, using spells with an LP cost can be suicidal. Another problem is that the number of actually usable moves is a lot lower than it could of been due to poor balancing of moves and limited availability of various special moves. The system could definitely use some tweaking and refinement.

In the end though, I think that an RPG combat system that incorporates multiple resources instead of just one ultimately produces a more interesting combat experience than one that uses just one if handled well. Mixing per-encounter and per-adventure resources together works particularly well. I would definitely like to see more games use systems like this.

Avalon Code: Limitations of the Code

2009-07-29T21:51:00.001-07:00

It certainly has been a while since I last posted an entry here...

In the interim since my last post, I have played through quite a few different videogames. I will try to make at least one post for every game I played in that time. Also, I have been taking a break from Persona 4 for about the same amount of time that I have been taking a break from blogging, so I will probably pick up my commentary about that game when I get back to playing it (which shouldn't be all that long now, though Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor is calling to me...). For today, though, the game I want to write about is a DS action-RPG called Avalon Code, which I completed a few months ago.

Avalon Code is something of an experimental game, basing much of its system on the idea of the "Book of Prophecy" that records the "Codes" of every object, monster, and character in the game world. The game allows you to alter these codes using the DS's touch controls, so that you can change the properties of almost everything you encounter. It is a system that promises an incredible amount of player freedom and seems like a great playground for player creativity, but it does little to fulfill those promises. In fact, the system seems to do little more than add a few unnecessary levels of frustration onto fairly typical RPG mechanics, and does little to live up to the concept's incredible potential.

Honestly, I really want to start this off by listing a few of the things in the Book of Prophecy that are implemented in an interesting way, but I seem to come up with a caveat for each one. The Book of Prophecy is an incredible resource of information, giving you a complete record of everything in the game and everything you have done that is available at any time, but it is so bloated with information that it can be really hard to navigate the Book and find the information you are interested in. Every section of the Book has a detailed index that serves as a shortcut for navigation, but the index is the same size for every section, whether it is a short chapter of just 10 entries or a bloated monster with hundreds, making the indexing either a bit excessive or totally insufficient, with little in-between. The four spirit bookmarks you are given help a lot to quickly find the information you need, but they come and go with the plot far too much and the spirits that accompany them are mostly useless and are annoying enough to somehow manage to overcome my fairly generous tolerances for irritating companion creatures (I mostly used the spirit that can't talk, and she still somehow managed to grate on my nerves). Still, all these complaints are insignificant compared to some of the real flaws in Avalon Code's system.

I may as well just tackle the big problems in order...

First, it is a pain and a half to actually do any serious modification to Codes using the Book of Prophecy. Codes take the form of Tetris-piece like building blocks that have attactched generic properties like "Fire" or "Justice". Each object in the book has sixteen spaces to place Codes in, and individual Codes may occupy from one to four spaces. The problem is that you can only put four Codes into a holding area that can be carried between pages of the book, and every other individual Code piece has to be attached to some character, item, or creature. This means that if you want to complete rebuild the Codes for a character or item (which is necessary quite often, for a reason I will get to later), you need to take apart all of that object's Codes a few pieces at a time, finding spots on random creatures and characters for the unneeded Codes as you do so, and then you need to hunt down all the Codes you need and place them a few Codes at a time on the object you are creating. To make this all the more bothersome, there is no way to have the game find the Codes you need for you, so if you need something specific, like a two-space Fire Code (this kind of need comes up a lot), you might need to manually search through hundreds of character, item, and monster entries looking for the Code you need, and you may do so only discover that the copy you have of the Code you need is attached to some item that you can't do without, forcing you into a hard choice and often making the entire search a big waste of time. A basic search function, or even a list of how many you have of each kind of Code, would have done a lot to make the system a lot more usable. Better yet, the system could have been designed without the "every code needs to have a place" and the "you only have a finite number of any given type of code" assumptions. Because of these choices, the Book of Prophecy system is extremely user-unfriendly.

The next big problem with the book is that you are only allowed to have a single version of any category of item at one time. There are dozens of different kinds of sword, but they all just variations off the same sword archetype that are created with Codes. As such, even if you have the knowledge and Codes required to make both the Kaleila Sword and the Rune Blade, it is simply impossible within to use both at the same time because both are created by modifying the basic Sword with Codes. This is somewhat acceptable, given the nature of the game system, but the problem is that changing between the different weapons requires going through all the hassle I just described in the paragraph above. You can't save a record of how the Codes were arranged previously, or create a second sword, so changing from one sword to another requires completely dismantling the sword you are currently using and creating a new sword. This makes experimenting and trying new strategies rather bothersome. And annoyingly enough, the game asks you to modify your existing weapons for unusual situations or rebuild your weapon into something an NPC wants as a present far too regularly, so you may need to disassemble even your favorite ultimate weapon every so often.

Still, the biggest problems stem from the fact that, for all the headaches you have to endure in modifying items and altering the Codes of monsters and characters, there really isn't any point in doing so. No matter what you do to the Codes of a character, it doesn't change the way that character looks, acts, or talks. No matter how you play with the Codes of an item, the amount of HP it restores and the amount of MP it costs to use still remain the same. The only properties you can change on a weapon are its attack power, its knockback power, and its element. The only properties you can control for a monster are its HP, its defense, its weight, and its element. Other than that, you really can't control anything with Codes. The only point in changing the Codes of a weapon is to maximize attack power, since even controlling a weapon's element is nearly impossible given certain aspects of the Code system, and one of the best weapons in the game, the main character's unarmed attack, doesn't even use the Code system! The only real point in changing the codes of a monster is to make it weaker by removing the Codes that increase its HP. Most of the items that you can create with codes are just variations of keys needed to unlock doors and healing items with different combinations of HP gain and MP cost. All told, it is simply boring.

One of the most tragic flaws with the system, though, is the simple fact that it doesn't reward creativity and experimentation. In order to get any real results from the Code system, you need to find recipes called "Metalizes" and follow them to the letter. If you want a powerful sword, you need to find a Metalize for a powerful sword and follow the recipe. If you want to create a new kind of healing potion, you need to find a potion Metalize and follow the recipe. If you don't have the Metalize, then you can't create the weapon or item you are trying to make, even if you use the right Codes. Nothing you can create without Metalizes compares to the power of items that follow recipes, and trying to improve upon a recipe by adding some Codes to a completed Metalize item tends to cause that item to revert more generic and useless form. Basically, Metalizes just take the place of the treasures you would acquire in a normal RPG, and the only point of the Book of Prophecy is to make you jump through some hoops in order to get less functionality from those items than you would get in said normal RPG.

The final tragedy of this whole system is that the Book of Prophecy doesn't have a vital role in puzzles, dungeons, or boss fights outside of its role in providing you with the keys, items, and equipment you need and the rare case of dismantling an enemy's invincibility. Almost all of the game's puzzles are solved by clever use of the "style" attacks you learn by progressing through the game and using the different weapon categories. So, even the potential for the Book to be used in puzzles and story events is squandered. In many ways, the "Scepter" from the old Playstation game Granstream Saga did all of the interesting things the Book of Prophecy did in a less user-unfriendly manner, so I really am not impressed by the few unique things Avalon Code does with the idea, and the all the complexity just feels meaningless.

Honestly, I can also name any number of other things I don't like about the system, like how the whole game is a slave to the idea of "Book Value", how only the four metal Codes are worth anything, how incredibly annoying it is to be forced to take a break from modifying weapons and go juggling because modifying Codes costs MP, how annoying it is that one guy can only be Code-Scanned in a single scene in the game (and I missed that chance), and countless other not-insignificant problems. I would probably need to double the length of this post to point them all out in detail.

What really bothers me is that I still really love the concept behind the Book of Prophecy. It has a ton of potential, and a game that realized that potential would be incredible. However, in the case of Avalon Code, that potential is completely squandered by a series of flawed design choices. Any game trying to fulfill the potential of the concept would need to re-imagine the implementation at its most basic level.

Shadow of the Colossus: Argo

2009-07-29T21:29:00.000-07:00

I finally managed to track down a copy of Shadow of the Colossus not too long ago, and I have finally beat it. Despite the games short length, I think that it is a real masterpiece of a game. Shadow of the Colossus is such a success because it manages to create powerful experiences and evoke strong emotions in those who play it. Since, I have already discussed fighting the Colossi before, this time I will talk about perhaps the most compelling character in the game: the hero's horse, Argo.

Even though Argo is merely a horse, and thus has no dialogue, he is nonetheless a character that I became attached to over the course of the game. Argo is the hero's, and thus the player's, constant companion throughout the course of the game. In particular, almost the entire entire exploration and journeying aspect of the game takes place from Argo's back. While the player often has to leave Argo behind in order to actually confront the Colossi, Argo does play a pivotal role in several of the game's epic battles. Furthermore, Argo is really the only friendly character the player has to interact with in the game, since the only other characters are Dormin, who is really only an ominous disembodied voice, and the hero's deceased love. As such, Argo's unwavering loyalty to the hero is the only thing that breaks up the quiet solitude of the game.

What really distinguishes Argo is that he is not just a vehicle for the hero to ride around on; Argo was created to be a character for the player to interact with. Argo doesn't just sit around waiting for the player, he often wanders off on his own, generally following the player around if you walk around on foot. Furthermore, once you saddle up, Argo proves to be realistically stubborn. I found that I had to be persistent and keep prodding Argo to get him to turn and run like I wanted him to. While Argo's tendancy to be difficult to control was annoying at first, I quickly got used to it and in the long run it made him a very realistic character. Pretty soon, I even discovered that I could use his intelligence to my advantage, since Argo was perfectly capable of navigating narrow canyon roads and such without any guidance from me other than an occasional reminder to keep running fast.

This characteristic of Argo's ended up being critical during the fight against the tenth colossus. In that battle, I needed to lure the fast-moving Colossus to pursue me as I fled away from it on horseback, at which point I could turn around in the saddle and fire an arrow at it's weakpoint. At first though, I kept aborting my attacks in order to guide Argo and make turns to avoid running into walls. As such, I had trouble making well-aimed shots, and I couldn't hit the enemy's weakpoint. I was only able to persevere in that battle when I came to the realization that I had to stop treating Argo like a vehicle under my control and I started to actually put my faith in him. So, I readied the bow and stopped worrying about trying to guide Argo around obstacles. Argo rewarded my faith several times over. Not only could Argo avoid obstacles and running into walls without my guidance, but he ended up being much better at dodging the attacks of the enemy colossus without my input. With Argo keeping us away from the enemy on his own, I was able to focus all of my attention on making my arrows hit their mark. Shortly thereafter, I started to make real headway in that battle. That was the point in the game where I fully stopped looking at Argo as tool in my arsenal for fighting the Colossi, and I started to see Argo as my partner.

By the end of the game, I had really grown attached to Argo. That is why the scene where he sacrifices himself and falls off a crumbling bridge t his apparent so that the hero could face the final colossus felt like a cheap gut-punch. During the game's ending, probably the most emotional part for me was seeing Argo walking back up the outer steps of the shrine like he always did. I was both very glad to see that he had survived the fall, and felt bad seeing him limping with a wounded leg. In the end, the fate of a horse overshadowed all of the other crazy things that happened during that ending. I suppose that is prook that the creators of Shadow of the Colossus made an amazing character.

I definitely wouldn't mind seeing more horses in future videogames act more like Argo. Maybe Epona could learn a thing or two.

Devil May Cry 4: Gating and Mission Design

2009-02-19T23:14:00.000-08:00

I was reading an interesting feature article on the website Gamasutra.com earlier today where a game designer was analyzing various elements of encounter and AI design in 3D brawler videogames. I was rather disappointed that he didn't analyze any entries in the Devil May Cry series; in fact, I am considering trying out his method of analysis on the game later. In the mean time though, one aspect of his article caught my eye: the concept of gating. While the concept behind gating is something that I was already familiar with, it is nice to finally have an accepted word for it.

In essence, gating is where the game developers put in obstacles to prevent the player from running away from or circumventing a battle. It is a valuable tool of the game developer, since it is pretty pointless to make a brawler-style game where the player can just walk right past every fight. There are a couple different ways of implementing gating: one way is to explicitly lock a player into a room until every enemy is dead, and the other is to design the enemies' attacks and AI to punish the player for trying to run away. While Devil May Cry 4 uses both methods of gating, it leans heavily towards the former in every mission, to the point where I think it begins to be detrimental to the game.

As is traditional in the Devil May Cry series, DMC 4's most common form of gating is where the game blocks off all of the doors and escape routes out of a room with red or white walls of energy. The games even use a specific color of wall to differentiate them from walls that can only be removed by solving puzzles or advancing the plot. Now then, there is nothing wrong with this strategy in of itself; plenty of videogames, including most incarnations of the Legend of Zelda series, lock the player in a room until the player defeats every enemy present. I think doing this is a great way to mark major battles. However, I think the technique is severely over-used in Devil May Cry 4. The typical mission structure of DMC 4 can be safely summed up as a string of three to five rooms where the player has to defeat every enemy in the group in order to proceed. While optional enemies sometimes appear, they are in the minority. After the first few missions set up like this, I actually began to forget that I could avoid some battles.

The problem is compounded by the fact that the majority of the battles that don't have explicit gating often are designed to take advantage of "soft" gating. For example, one of the few areas of the game where the player can run away from battles is in the long corridor sections of Fortuna castle. However, these long corridors are typically populated by either Frosts or Basilisks, both of which possess a mix of both high pursuit abilities and dangerous long-range attacks. So while the player can try to run from these enemies, he will probably take a few bad hits from enemy attacks. Furthermore, these groups of enemies are usually comparable in numbers and fighting strength to enemy groups that the player is locked in with. So even they still count as part of the linear chain of major fights.

Honestly, I think the developers went overboard with the gating in Devil May Cry 4. Gating is particularly useful for differentiating big, important fights from small, inconsequential fights. However, the developers decided to make just about every fight in Devil May Cry 4 a big fight, and cut out all of the little fights, and then they used strict gating to lock the player into that structure. However, that uniformity gets tiresome after a while. While Devil May Cry 4 has plenty of variety in enemies, it doesn't have enough variety in the kinds of encounters that the player faces. The consistent use of gating also denies the chance for the player to use running away, even of the temporary tactical withdrawal variety, as a viable strategy.

The World Ends With You: Gathering Pins

2009-02-18T23:38:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in my last post, there are somewhere around three hundred Psych Pins in The World Ends With You. As such, simply acquiring all of these Pins is a fairly significant aspect of the game. You even get rated on how many Pins you have mastered as one of the completion rankings in the save screen. All told, this is one aspect of the game that has probably eaten more of my time than the main plot.

There are four ways to acquire Psych Pins in the game. The most obvious way is to buy them from shops, which is fairly self-explanatory. The second way is to acquire them from plot scenes and various other story events in the game, which are actually surprisingly generous in this game. You can get a lot of great Pins and other items just by going through the game's story and opening up all the paths between the game areas, which is very nice and makes up for the game's lack of typical exploration-based rewards like the classic treasure chest. These two are simple enough, but the other two ways you get Pins are a bit more unique.

The third main source of Psych Pins is the Noise, the main enemies of the game. Normally, I hate trying to gather items that are randomly dropped by enemies in RPGs, but The World Ends With You puts an entirely new spin on this concept that makes it useful and fun. Basically, the game enables you to control your acquisition of Pins from the Noise to a very high degree. Every Noise has exactly four Pins it could possibly drop, one for each difficulty level, and a set probability for dropping each Pin. Whenever you beat that Noise, the game randomly determines which Pin the Noise drops, starting with the difficulty level you are currently playing at and going down from there until either you get a Pin or it runs out of difficulty levels to check. What is more, you know these drop rates for every Noise that you have defeated, and you know which Pins you have acquired from which Noise and the difficulty level they are associated with. On top of this, you can freely set the difficulty level at any time, and each area of the game has a fairly limited number of Noise at any one time (and different groups of Noise have different icons on the game screen, making it even easier to isolate them), so it is possible to control both what enemies you are fighting and which Pin those enemies are most likely to drop. If you want a Pin that is only dropped by a certain Noise on High difficulty, then you can easily find that Noise and fight it on High difficulty whenever you want (unless you have passed the point in the game where that Noise is replaced by other Noise, which happens). This is already a significant improvement over fighting a hundred random battles in hopes if finding a rare enemy who will only drop a kind of item with a 1/128 chance, but it gets even better still.

One of the real marvels of The World Ends With You's combat system is that you can vastly increase the odds of an enemy dropping an item, simply by taking on a handicap. At the bottom-right corner of the menu screen is a star rating, that serves as a multiplier for the drop rates for every Pin in the game. By voluntarily lowering your level below its maximum value (which you can do or undo at any time outside of battle), you can increase this star rating by one for each level you give up. If an enemy starts with a default drop rate of 2% for a certain pin, then decreasing your level by 9 will lead to a star rating of 10, which gives you an adjusted drop rate of 20%. What is more, by challenging enemies to chain battles (a sequence of battles in which you don't heal between battle like you normally do), you multiply the star rating by the number of battles in the chain. If you fight a three "reduction" chain battle, with the same enemy and level handicap as before, the star rating temporarily increases from 10 to 30, and the drop rate further increases from 20% to 60%. By taking on additional challenges, you transform a long-shot drop rate of 2% into a nearly guaranteed 60% chance. Combined with the elements I described in the paragraph above, this transforms the task of acquiring rare Pins from a matter of dumb luck into something that can easily be accomplished by good planning and effort, rewarding skill with the game rather than a high tolerance for frustration. The only barrier to getting the Pins you want is your ability to win battles, rather than how much time you are willing to put into the task. It turns a chore into a fun puzzle to sort out and a challenge to overcome.

A notable aspect of this system is that it even applies in boss battles. Actually, for normal boss battles, this may be something of a flaw. You can't tell the enemy drop rates until you have defeated the boss once, but you only ever fight the game's bosses once (at least, so far in my playthrough). It would probably work better if the drop rates for all of a boss's PIns were 100% by default, so you are guaranteed to get a Pin from the boss and what Pin you acquire is determined only by what difficulty level you have set when you fight the boss. However, the game's various optional bosses which you can fight endlessly are a different matter entirely. Their mix of very high challenge, extremely low drop rates, and valuable rare of even unique Pin drops seem designed to test your ability to manage this system, and they succeed at that task very well.

Also, the various battles against Pig Noise are worthy of note, though these are mostly just special battles that operate under special rules and are guaranteed to give you certain Psych Pins regardless of what your difficulty level or level handicap are set to. I really don't have much to say about them other than that I like them in general, but I get frustrated with how some are poorly designed (such as requiring a specific Pin that is not available during the period that the Pig Noise must be defeated in).

The final method that you use to acquire Psych Pins is Pin Evolution. Some Pins have the capability to transform into more powerful Psych Pins when they level up, based on the kind of Pin Points used to level them up. This gets a bit complicated, really, so I think I will skip my usual summary of the system and just mention some of my thoughts about it all. Put simply, I think this is one of the places where the game simply lets itself add a lot of complication for fairly little benefit. In order to use this system, I had to draw up a Pin Evolution chart based on information from a FAQ at GameFAQs.com, and I need to reference this chart practically every time I play the game. I find that doing so is practically a necessity, since even with the chart I have to devote myself to hours of work in order to get Pins to evolve, and it would be easily three time as much work without that resource. What is more, even the work I am putting in to this task isn't enough to get the 100% Pin Mastery rating, because that only counts Pins that have been mastered, but Pins that evolve don't count as being mastered. Most importantly, the large amount of effort required to level up and evolve Pins means that actually using Pins that have been mastered (and thus freely building the Pin Folders you want to use) will prevent you from ever acquiring a lot of the most useful and fun to use Pins in the game. This hurts the game more than it really helps, and runs counter to many of the other fairly ingenious elements of the game design.

The World Ends With You: Psych Pins

2009-02-15T23:18:00.000-08:00

The Psych Pin system is The World Ends With You is fantastic. It is a very simple and easy-to-use system that lets you completely build the combat abilities of the game's main hero, simply by equipping him with up to six Psych Pins, each of which has its own ability. Neku, the game's main character, can only attack by using a Psych Pin's ability, so he is ultimately a blank slate for the player to customize with the three hundred or so different Pins in the game. These different Pins can complement each other or interfere with each other in a wide variety of ways, leading to a surprisingly flexible and fun system, yet it is incredibly easy to work with.

The most distinct aspect of this system is its dependence upon touch controls. Each Psych Pin is activated by a specific touch command, and you can activate the Pin's attack in battle simply by using the command (you don't need to activate the Pin first, or something like that). Also, the order of the Pins in your "folder" is the order in which the game checks to verify the button input, and you can set Pins to a "sub-folder" so they will only be used if you hold down a button while inputting the touch command, so the system puts a lot of flexibility and control into the player's hands. As a result, you can easily and reliably perform a wide variety of combat options with very simple controls. However, these controls are not quite perfect. For one thing, some of the touch commands are less reliable than others. "Slash", "touch", "touch rapidly", and "yell into the microphone" all work perfectly well, and "drag" works well most of the time, but far too often "press", "draw a circle", and "scratch" can be a bit finicky. Far too often an attack that requires you to sustain a press or scratch will inexplicably cancel before completion, and it usually takes me two or three tries every time I try to activate a pin by drawing a circle. What is worse, several of these button inputs simply don't work well together. If you have a "draw a circle" or "drag" Pin at a higher priority than a "press" Pin, then it is nearly impossible to successfully use the latter. Many pins that depend on touching a specific type of object, such as an enemy, obstacle, Neku, or even just empty space, can often be a bit troublesome if you have another pin that uses a similar command on a different type of target. This gets even worse if the same Pin can target both enemies and obstacles, like some psychokinesis Pins or any drag command Pin (since dragging Neku will always move him, and this comes at a higher priority than any Pin). Finally, some Pins simply are not given a command input that suits the attack, namely Pins that launch an attack in a single direction, but have an input that doesn't actually control direction (such as "press Neku"), and as a result are very difficult to aim. As a whole, the system works well, but just has a lot of annoying quirks.

The annoying part about the whole touch command issue is that there are a number of commands which are under-utilized. For example, a small number of Pins require you to "slash down" or "slash up" on various targets in order to activate an effect, but not many. However, these commands are very reliable, don't contradict each other, and they only require you to place them ahead of generic "slash" Pins on the priority list. If this kind of specific command was used more often, it would made it much easier to combine different Pins. Also, a greater number of Pins with an automatic effect or the "touch Pin to activate" command would have been nice. Still, the fact that the system works as well as it does, even with a huge number of Pins, is a testament to how well this system was designed.

To get back to the topic of how versatile this system is, I really have to praise the variety of different Pin combinations you can create, each of which leads to its own combat style. There are Pins that cause status conditions alongside attacks, Pins that cause status conditions at the start of battle, and Pins that lengthen the amount of time enemies suffer from status conditions, so you can very thoroughly build a strategy based around any status condition in the game. There are healing Pins with differing number of uses, Pins that increase the number of times you can use your Pins, healing Pins with that mix different amounts of healing with the ability to cure various conditions, Pins that increase how much you get healed, healing Pins that have longer or shorter periods in which they leave the hero vulnerable, Pins that automatically activate a healing Pin when you become seriously injured, and Pins that just automatically heal you when you get hurt, so it is entirely up to you on how best to fit healing into a battle strategy and how many Pin slots you are willing to dedicate to that one aspect of combat. Because there are so many variables that control the ability of Pins, such as touch command input, attack power, number of uses, and reboot time, there are many different options for even a single type of attack, and thus there are countless options for strategies and combinations. Personally, I like to mix moderately powerful attacks that have a large number of uses with powerful attacks that have a single use and quick reboot time.

Finally, I really must say that I like the Pin folder construction rules, since they are so clear and created so much design space. Basically, all Pins are given a psych type (such as Psychokinesis, Shockwave, Energy Rounds, etc) and a class (C, B, A, Reaper, and Angel). You can only equip one Angel Pin and one Reaper Pin, but the other classes only come into play in combination with type. You can have up to three class C Pins of the same type, but only a single class A Pin of any given type. Because these rules depend on two different variables, it creates a framework that both restricts overly powerful combinations and leaves a very wide degree of flexibility. What is more, it is a system that generally encourages versatility, since the restrictions on C, B, or A class Pins will never come into effect if you use a wide variety of different types. I don't really think that every Pin is given a proper classification (some Reaper Pins are hardly worth the slot, for example), but the system as a whole is quite effective.

Next time, I think I will write about collectible nature of the Psych Pins.

Devil May Cry 4: Returning to Old Areas

2009-02-15T23:14:00.000-08:00

One area where Devil May Cry 4 really suffers in comparison to the older entries in the series is in how they handled Dante's section of the game. When Dante becomes the controllable character in mission 12, he begins a trek back through all of the areas that Nero has passed through earlier. As such, the second half of the game is a reprise of the first. Now then, earlier entries in the series used this same trick, and it is a perfectly legitimate way to proceed through a game if done well. However, the Dante section of Devil MAy Cry 4 ended up feeling tacked on because the developers did not change the old areas nearly enough to make the experience of reprising them feel new or interesting.

Returning to old areas is actually a classic element of the Devil May Cry series. In missions 16 through 19 of the first Devil May Cry, Dante goes back through the areas he first went through in missions 1 through 8 (as well as a few others). In Devil May Cry 3, Dante first climbs up to the top of the tower of Temin-ni-Gru, then descends down into its basement, and finally climbs all the way back up to its roof. However, the difference between these two games and Devil May Cry 4 lies in how they handled reprising old areas.

In the original Devil May Cry, it is daytime when Dante first arrives in the old castle. While the castle is completely loaded with demons, it otherwise seems to be a fairly ordinary castle. However, as Dante moves onwards and completes missions, day gives way to night, and by the time Dante returns to the keep that he explored in the first few missions, it is completely dark out. While the change in lighting is enough to make exploring the castle more difficult, the castle itself seems to become possessed by evil after nightfall. Walls lined with suits of armor take the place of doors, the internal structure of the castle seems to have rearranged itself, and certain parts of the castle, such as the cathedral, take on a twisted, biological appearance. The transformation of the castle works very well because it successfully twists what was once familiar and known into something unknown and much more frightening. The game also shakes things up by adding new rooms, new ways of getting around, new enemies, and a brand new, really difficult boss to this section of the game. It is impossible to say anything bad about this execution of the idea of returning to old ground.

In Devil May Cry 3, Dante does most of his backtracking through familiar territory in missions 14 through 17, where he climbs back up to the roof of the tower from its deepest basement. However, the game throws a twist at the player. At the end of mission 13, the entire tower transforms: the tower's height increases significantly, rooms that used to be connected are now on separate floors, some old rooms have collapsed, and new doors and passageways have appeared. As such, climbing back up the tower is not as simple as going though familiar areas backwards; it involves trailblazing completely new paths and getting used to new ways of exploring the tower. While this section of the game plays off of the familiarity of the old areas, it is in practice an entirely new set of areas to explore. To top it all off, the player fights two brand new bosses during this section of the game.

In contrast to what was done in the previous games though, the player does just play through familiar areas backwards after Dante takes over in Devil May Cry 4. While the game does try to mix things up a bit by adding a couple of new elements to the areas, the changes are superficial at best. For example, Fortuna castle has the exact same layout as in Nero's go-through, except that ice walls have appeared to shepherd Dante down a specific, roundabout route. Th only change of note is that a door that had been previously blocked off (but still on the map) is now mysteriously open, revealing a single stairwell. Other areas were not so fortunate. Dante travels through the underground lab in the exact same direction Nero did, fighting more or less the same enemies (in the same rooms), with the single change that he has to deal with a cloud of poisonous gas that is more annoying than interesting. The only area to get a real change in mood is the forest, which is filled with rain and a creepy fog that has rearranged the connections between rooms. However, the forest reverts to its sunny, familiar self as soon as Dante slays the area boss. Heck, even the "lost woods" puzzle is completely unchanged in Dante's go-through, with the exact same clue and solution. The entire thing is compounded by the fact that Dante fights the exact same set of bosses that Nero fought (minus the most interesting ones) in the exact rooms that Nero fought them, with only a single exception. All told, Dante's side of the game completely lacks any interesting twists to keep things novel or interesting.

Devil May Cry 4 might have been a lot better off if it had used some of the same tricks that the previous installments used to make familiar material fresh and interesting. At the very least, it would have been a good idea to have made Nero pass through the areas during the daytime and Dante at nighttime, or vice versa.

Devil May Cry 3: The 7 Hells

2009-02-13T23:32:00.000-08:00

In my last post on enemies in Devil May Cry 4, I compared the new demons from DMC4 to a particular group of demons from Devil May Cry 3: the Hell reapers. In my opinion, the Hell reapers of DMC 3 are an exceptionally good group of regular enemies because they combined a solid theme shared among all of them while also being good at requiring the player to adapt his strategy depending on the composition of the enemy group.

First off, all of the 7 Hells type enemies share several features in common appearance wise: they all where hooded cloaks, they have a gaunt, skeletal appearance, and almost all of them use scythes. In essence, they are all look vaguely like the cliche Grim Reaper. At the same time, each individual type of Hell reaper has a very distinctive look, particularly in terms of coloration and posture. So, a large group of 7 Hells looks like a mob of similar, but distinct individuals. I think it works quite well.

More important to the success of 7 Hells as enemies is in how each individual type of Hell reaper has its own focus:

Hell Pride: The most basic kind of Hell reaper, these guys are only capable of short range melee attacks.

Hell Sloth: These Hell reapers are capable of teleporting, making them good at surprise attacks.

Hell Gluttony: These ones are capable of performing a rather dangerous mid-range sand blast attack.

Hell Lust: These Hells are extremely fast and suddenly dash in from long range to attack.

Hell Wrath: These guys don't use scythes, but instead act as walking bombs.

Hell Greed: This type of 7 Hell carries around a coffin which it uses to periodically summon other Hell reapers.

Hell Envy: This is a version of the Hell Pride that is unique to a specific area of the game.

As seen in the list above, each Hell reaper has its own particular special skill, which requires different tricks to beat it. For example, while a Hell Pride can be quickly defeated with focused ground combos, a Hell Lust's vicious attacks force the player to keep moving and stay airborne. These wildly varying fighting styles also mean that it is possible to create a variety of unique combat encounters by combining different types of 7 Hell. For example, fighting Hell Prides and Hell Greeds at the same time is a fairly straightforward affair; one must simply take down the Hell Greeds quickly by attacking them during their periods of vulnerability, while occasionally clearing out some Hell Prides if they get too numerous or too close. On the other hand, in a similar fight against Hell Greeds and Hell Lusts, it isn't so easy to ignore the Hell Lusts. In that situation, one must instead turn to more hit-and-run style tactics.

The strength of the 7 Hells is that each kind of Hell reaper is designed to be a building block for an encounter, instead of a monster that can do anything on its own. As such, even though Devil May Cry 3 is full of encounters against the 7 Hells, no two are exactly the same. At the same time, these encounters feel thematically appropriate, because the 7 Hells are share a common design paradigm.

I can confidently say that the 7 Hells are the best set of enemies from the entire Devil MAy Cry series.

Persona 4: Individual Social Links

2009-02-13T23:29:00.001-08:00

Since I have already summed up most of my general feelings about the Persona 4 Social Link system, it is time to look at some of the individual Social Links in depth.

Culture Clubs: Much like in Persona 3, you get to choose one club to join for each of two categories, and these clubs have associated Social Links. The big difference here is that the choice in club actually matters. In Persona 3, whether you picked the Art Club, Music Club, or Photography Club, you were still going to end up in the same club as teammate Fuuka and Social Link character Keisuke, which certainly makes you wonder why they bothered to give you a choice at all. In Persona 4, though, choosing the Drama Club will open up a Social Link of the Sun Arcana with a girl named Yumi, and choosing to join the Band will open up a Link of the same Arcana with a different girl (I don't really know who she is, since I am still on my first playthrough). This means the choice in club may not have any significant gameplay difference (as far as I am aware), but it does change the subplots and scenes that you experience across the game, which adds to the game's replay value and makes the player's choices feel more important. This is certainly a nice improvement.

Sports Clubs: As with the culture clubs, the choice of which sport club you join is far more significant than it was in Persona 3. However, it implements that significance in a different way. Both club choices have an associated character, but regardless of which choice you make you will befriend both of them (since they are close friends with each other). Far from making the choice irrelevant, though, your choice in club has a major impact on the storyline associated with that Social Link. Thus, you meet two great characters either way, and there is still a significant difference based on the choice. Also, having larger groups of people hanging out with each other in Social Link scenes makes them more interesting and dynamic, which helps a bit. I actually like this implementation of the club choice better than the culture club variation.

The Fox: This is a truly bizarre and fun Social Link, that doesn't work quite like any other. For one, the fact that it is a Social Link with a surprisingly intelligent animal that can't talk is strange enough, but but even more strangely it doesn't even use the same system to determine its growth as other Social Links. Rather than build up affection with the Fox, you must solve people's problems with the game's quest system in order to unlock higher levels of this Social Link. What is more, the Fox actually goes with you into the game's dungeons and provides special healing services there (and building the Social Link gives you a discount on those services). The unique way you build the Fox up makes it stand out as a refreshing change compared to other Social Links, and its added usefulness makes me wish that more Social Links were given side benefits and a role in the game's dungeons.

Margaret: This woman is another strange Social Link like the Fox. She is the assistant to Igor, the strange figure that fuses demons and Personas for the heroes in pretty much every Shin Megami Tensei game, and thus doesn't even really exist outside of the mysterious Velvet Room that only the hero can visit. As such, raising her Social Link is based around bringing her unusual Personas (this makes it a lot like the Fox), and doesn't even cause time to pass. The fact that there was no Social Link with Elizabeth, Igor's assistant in Persona 3, always seemed a bit strange (particularly in FES, where you can go on dates with her), so this is a nice touch. This unusual Link also adds some much needed variety to the game, and helps add to the number of plot important characters who have Social Links (a nice trend in Persona 4 that needs to be carried even farther).

The Dojima Family: Both the hero's uncle and cousin are Social Links in this game, and they are easily two of my favorite Social Links in the entire game. The simple fact that the game's nameless hero actually has a family is nice enough in of itself, but just as important is the fact that these are the only Social Links other than the ally links that are with plot-important characters with a large number of voiced lines of dialogue. As such, the Social Link scenes don't have to bear the entire burden of developing these characters and portraying the hero's interactions with them, and they appear frequently even if you never build up their Social Links. This means that, even though their Social Link scenes are dominated by central problems (in fact, both Social Links share the same problem, just with two different sides), these problems don't create the same issues to anywhere near the same extent that they do in other Social Links. Other than the ally characters, these are the only two Social Link characters who react to the game's plot and have an impact upon the greater story of the game. The Social Link system would really benefit by making more Social Links resemble the ones with the Dojimas.

None of the other Social Links are really notable enough to be worth mentioning, so I may as well wrap this up. I still need to write more about ally Social Links, but that is going to be its own post, and I need to play a bit more of the game first. I may need to shake off the grip The World Ends With You has over me before that can happen, though...

Persona 4: Social Links

2009-02-11T22:36:00.000-08:00

Persona 4's Social Link system is one of the elements that has changed the least since Persona 3. I have already discussed both Persona 3's version of Social Links and a few ideas on how to change that system, and unfortunately many of the issues I raised earlier are just as problematic, if not even worse, in Persona 4. As long as the Persona games still use the classic Shin Megami Tensei system of acquiring new "monsters" and fusing them to create ever stronger "monsters" (which is its own issue), then the gameplay benefits of building up Social Links will be perfect as-is, but the actual process of building up those Social Links is still significantly flawed.

The greatest problem of the Social Link system is still the lack of presence and development of the Social Link characters. Most of the Social Link characters are still just random people that are completely unrelated to the main story of the game, so you really only interact with them in the ten scenes that build up the Social Link. Many still don't show up at all other than the times in which you can hang out with them, and none of them react at all to the main plot of the game. At the very least, the game designers could have given these characters the same constant presence that many of the nameless recurring NPCs in the game have. After all, every last person walking around the game world (other than a few who only show up for quests) has their own personality, quirks, problems, and reactions to the events of the game. there is no reason the game designers couldn't have given the same kind of dialog that the nameless NPCs use to convey so much to the player, in addition to normal Social Link development. Even such a minor addition could have added a lot. As it stands, it often seems like the Social Link plots and the main story of the game are so separate they may as well not take place in the same setting or involve the same main character.

Another great problem is the nature of the Social Link subplots. In almost every case, these subplots involve some problem that the Social Link character is facing, and how this problem gets solved. Often, this problem takes the forefront to the detriment of actual development of the character or portraying a believable friendship with the main character. This is actually a pretty major problem from Persona 3, but it has become more apparent to me since I last discussed this issue. A good example of how bad this can get is seen with the Social Link character Yumi, a girl the main character can meet if he joins the Drama Club. The first few scenes in this Link, which focus on introducing Yumi's love of acting and straightforward, strong-willed personality, are quite fun, but shortly afterwards the entire thing gets hijacked by a plot involving Yumi's estranged father falling ill. Almost the rest of the Social Link subplot is a long chain of scenes at the hospital in which Yumi laments her bad luck in life. These scenes don't even really portray how the hero helps her through this (that is just left as a vague implication), instead, they simply focus upon various stages of how Yumi's problem develops, almost completely ignoring the main hero's presence (and thus the player's importance). Even the idea that this is supposed to be the drama club Social Link is ignored by this subplot, which makes most of the fun parts of the first few scenes involving Yumi completely meaningless, and really stretches the question of why you can only see scenes involving Yumi in the hospital on days when the drama club meets. I am certain that the writers for the game intended this to be a fairly emotional story, but in creating a story about how Yumi deals with her problems with her sick father they completely forgot to actually tell a story about a growing bond between Yumi and the main character, which is what it should have been. This kind of focus on a character's problems, rather than on the character itself and how that character interacts with the main character, is far too typical for Social Links.

With all of that said, Persona 4 has indeed made a few significant improvements over Persona 3's version of the Social Link system. The two biggest are the addition of every Persona-using ally as a Social Link (which addresses a major problem I had with Persona 3), and the change to girls' Social Links so you don't automatically pursue a romantic relationship with every girl you know. The former change is probably worth its own post, so I'll get into it another day. The latter change is simply a much-appreciated improvement, since it means that you don't need to act like a two-timing skirt-chaser in order to build up every Social Link, and can feel more free to build up a girl's Social Link even if you don't want her to be the main character's girlfriend. Actually, considering some of the important secondary effects of building an ally's Social Link and the fact that many of the ally characters are girls, the latter change is practically essential to Persona 4. In addition to those two major changes, the added stronger link between Social Links and the hero's attributes, so raising Social Links both more frequently requires built up attributes and raising some Social Links will also improve certain attributes, also is a nice general improvement, and the pay you earn for Social Links involved with part-time jobs is another much-appreciated addition.

This is such a big part of the game that I still have quite a bit more to say, particularly about individual Social Links, but I should probably save it for another day. This post is getting long enough.

Devil May Cry 4: Enemies

2009-02-11T22:00:00.000-08:00

There is a pretty good variety of enemies in Devil May Cry 4, ranging from the weak Scarecrows to the insanely powerful Blitz demons. However, I don't think that the list of enemies, nor how the enemies in the game are used are perfect. It is a little hard to pin down exactly, so I will tackle the various enemies in Devil May Cry 4 one at a time.

Scarecrows:
These are the successors to the Puppets of Devil May Cry 1 and the Hell reapers of Devil May Cry 3; they are weak enemies designed to be fought in large numbers throughout the game. Unfortunately, the Scarecrows just don't seem to do the job as well as their precursors. First of all, the Scarecrows only come in two main varieties, an Arm type and a Leg type, which are difficult to distinguish from each other since they both fight in more or less the same manner. In comparison, the Puppets of DMC1 came in blade-wielding, dart-throwing, and gun-toting varieties, as well as in the slightly stronger Bloody Mary variety. In DMC3, there were seven kinds of Hell reaper, each of which was both visually unique and had distinct powers. This lack of variety really hurts the Scarecrows, since most Scarecrow battles end up feeling the same.

The other problem with the Scarecrows in DMC4 is that they don't appear very frequently in the game. It is actually a lot of fun to tear through large hordes of weak enemies using your large array of flashy attacks in a Devil May Cry game. That is more or less the reason for the existence of the Scarecrows and their ilk. Yet, Scarecrows don't actually appear all that frequently in Devil May Cry 4. While they appear in just about every major section of the game, with the exception of the first few missions they only appear in a room or two per mission, if that. In comparison, just about every corridor and transition room in DMC1 or DMC3 is stuffed with fights against similar enemies. Part of this is due to DMC4's tendency to build stages around 3 or 4 major fights against stronger enemies with little in the way of optional fights in transitional areas.

Assaults and Frosts:
With DMC4's emphasis of having a few major battles per mission, the lizard-like Assaults end up being one of the most prominent enemies in the game, particularly in Son of Sparda mode, where they al but replace the Scarecrow. They are designed to fulfill the role of an enemy that is a bigger challenge than the Scarecrow, but still weak enough to be fought in groups of three or four. In that sense, they are somewhat comparable to the stronger varieties of Hell reaper from DMC3. However, while the stronger Hell reapers came in a wide variety of specialist forms, the Assaults come in only one form that tries to do everything at once. They throw long-ranged attacks, perform a variety of mid to long range dashing attacks, have decent melee capability, can perform a screaming attack at short range to stun Dante/Nero, and can block both gunfire and melee attacks. This all-in-one nature of the Assaults doesn't really help them as monsters. Since they can fight using a variety of moves, there isn't really any kind of strategy for fighting them, so they end up being more annoying than anything. At the same time, they always fight the same way and rarely come alongside anything else, so fighting them gets old after a while.

The Frosts are really just elemental versions of the Assaults with a greater emphasis on power and defense over speed, so a lot of my comments above apply to them as well. Oddly enough, they are introduced much earlier in the game than the Assaults.

Chimera Seeds and Chimeras:
I actually like these things. The Chimera Seeds are almost unique among DMC4 monsters in the thematic nature. The Chimera Seeds only appear in the forest area, and are directly linked to the boss of the forest, which successfully ties together the enemies in the area, the area itself, and the boss of the area together in a way no other area of the game is. The Chimera Seeds themselves do something unique: they attach themselves to other enemies and make those enemies stronger. However, I much prefer it when the Chimera Seeds start out unattached, so I have the chance to try and prevent some of them from attaching to other the enemies. For too often, enemies come with Chimera Seeds pre-attached.

Basilisks:
I really have no idea why the designers of DMC4 used Basilisks the way they did. Basilisks fulfill a pretty basic and necessary niche of monster: they are relatively fragile enemies that specialize in ranged attacks. As such, they should have been a major enemy that appears alongside Scarecrows and Assaults for most of the game. Yet, the Basilisks are introduced only near the very end of Devil Hunter Mode, appear in only a few places even in Son of Sparda mode, and generally only appear in packs consisting of only Basilisks. I really have no explanation for it.

Gladius:
Once again, this is a monster that only appears in very few encounters. Yet, they are a pretty interesting enemy, since they can picked up by Nero and thrown at other monsters for a pretty powerful attack. At the same time, their presence can make a tough fight much harder, since they are distracting and can do a fair bit of damage. They really deserved a bigger presence in the game.

Cutlass:
As far as I can remember, these guys only show up in a pack of three in one encounter in the entire game. Their presence is so limited that I don't even know what to say about them. Like the Gladius and Basilisk, these guys seem to have been designed primarily for their role as weapons used by Agnus Angelo. Outside of that role, they don't seem to have much point in DMC4.

Bianco Angelo and Alto Angelo:
I can't deny that the Angelo-type enemies are some of the coolest enemies in DMC4. The Bianco Angelos work well as a mid-tier enemy designed to be tough until you get used to their quirks. The Alto Angelos work well as elite opponents on their own, and can transform a group of Bianco Angelos into what is practically a mid-boss fight. Yet, I can't shake the idea that there should have been a third kind of Angelo, such as an Angelo similar in strength to the Bianco that was designed for ranged combat. That would have given some more variety to the early/mid game Angelo fights, and would have opened up a greater variety of Alto Angelo squads. Alternatively, it would have been nice if the Angelos appeared alongside the weapon type enemies (Gladius, Cutlass, and Basilisk) more regularly, and even better if they could have synergized with them more. For example, maybe an Alto Angelo could pick up a Cutlass and use it as a weapon, similar to how Agnus does.

Mephistos and Fausts:
Honestly, at this point I just plain hate these things. There is only one strategy that works on them: shoot them until their cloak falls off (which can take a frustrating amount of time), then slash them while they are vulnerable until they die. At the same time, they are too powerful to casually group with other enemies. The one time I fought Mephistos and Frosts at the same time, I discovered that it was almost as tough as a boss fight. As such, you only fight Mephistos in groups of two or three Mephistos, with a Faust occasionally thrown in for a particularly tough fight. This makes fights against Mephistos tedious, annoying, and boring. I much preferred enemies like the Bloodgoyles of DMC3, which were similar, but weak enough to be paired up with other enemies.

Blitz:
This enemy has so far only appeared by itself as a really difficult solo fight. I have died or nearly died every time I have fought it. While there is only one real effective strategy, the enemy is rare enough and strong enough that I can't really complain. The third time I fought a Blitz, I got to use a Gyro Blade to fight it, so I can't fault the designers for not trying to spice up battles against the thing.

After writing this much, I think the recurring issues of enemy and encounter design have come out into the open. In short, while the game has a wide variety of interesting enemies, the enemies don't complement each other very well. You fight most enemies in groups consisting of just that enemy type, with occasional exception. Most of the enemy-types in the game are fairly resilient enemies with a wide range of both long and short range moves, which means that they don't have glaring weaknesses that the player can exploit or that other enemies could cover for in a mixed group. A such, there is little strategy to be found in determining what order to kill the enemies in. The lack of variety also means that fighting these enemies gets a lot less interesting after a while.

Devil May Cry 4: Boss Handicaps

2009-02-05T22:42:00.001-08:00

Today I had to suffer the shame of killing a boss while it was handicapped for the second time in my time playing Devil May Cry 4. What really bugs me though is that I am not convinced that I needed the handicap. I am pretty sure that I could have won that fight at its full difficulty if I had been given the chance. Unfortunately, the game made the choice for me. This particular incident makes for a good example of why I don't like auto-adjusting difficulty that doesn't ask for the player's consent.

Mission 9 of Devil May Cry 4 is one of my least favorite stages in the game, mostly due to its introduction of the Alto Angelos, and it is much worse on Son of Sparda difficulty than I expected. I am ashamed to say that I needed to use a few items to live through the second battle, where an Alto Angelo unit was reinforced by a whole flock of Gladiuses. I subsequently had to continue after dying to a laser beam trap on the climb up towards the boss. After all of that trouble, I was pretty determined to beat the boss, even if I had to continue a bunch of times, since I did not want to have to climb my way up that stage again.

Unfortunately, I died to the boss, Agnus Angelo, three times before I finally beat him. However, I noticed something strange on my third attempt: Agnus summoned a group of three Gladiuses to fight me instead of the two Basilisks he had summoned during my first two attempts. When Angus summoned the Gladiuses again on my fourth and final attempt, I became certain that the Enemy Handicap had kicked in. I received confirmation of that fact when I beat the stage and was hit with the associated score penalty. While part of me was just relieved that the stage was behind, I was also honestly frustrated. I felt like the game had denied me the chance of having a fair shot at beating Agnus at his full power.

Since this is currently my second time through the game, I have fought Agnus Angelo several times already, albeit on a lower difficulty mode. The main reason I was dying was because I was being reckless and taking too many hits while I was on the offensive, and I still needed to get used to identifying his moments of vulnerability again. I am pretty sure that I could have beaten him at his full power with enough practice fighting against him at that level. If I was given the choice, I would have kept on fighting him at that power level until I beat him. But the game didn't give me a choice in the matter.

I don't think the idea of giving the payer an advantage if he keeps losing is a bad idea in of itself, but I don't think it is fair to the player if the game adjusts the difficulty without the player's consent. I would have preferred it if the game gave me a pop-up window that had explicitly asked my if I was willing to take a penalty to my score in exchange for weakening the boss. That way, I could have kept trying against the boss at full power as long as I liked, and still have the option of an easier fight when I finally reached the point where my patience runs out. Since different people have different tolerances for frustration, there is no way a single fixed number of deaths before the handicap kicks in will please everyone.

The World Ends With You: Battle System

2009-02-05T22:42:00.000-08:00

While I have certainly been devoting a lot of time to Persona 4 lately (more than 70 hours so far), I have also been spending quite a bit of time playing The World Ends With You, Square-Enix's unusual RPG for the Nintendo DS. The game is a masterpiece. I am almost staggered by how well it blends creativity, style, ambition, excellent gameplay, and a great story. Honestly, I can't believe me it took me this long to give the game a try. Still, if I am going to actually critique the game, rather than just praise it shamelessly, I may as well start by talking about its distinctive combat system.

The most important thing to say about WEWY's battle system is that action occurs on both screens of the DS simultaneously. The main character, Neku, fights on the bottom screen using touch controls, and his partner fights on the top screen using button controls. The two characters remain separate on their different screen for the entire battle, even though they are fighting the same enemies. What is more, the battle occurs in real time for both screens, so enemies can attack both of the characters you are controlling at once and you must fight back with both characters at the same time. Needless to say, actually fighting effectively with both characters at once is very difficult. Actually, I find it totally impossible, and usually end up doing badly whenever I try. The great triumph of this battle system, though, is that you don't really need to do the impossible in order to do well and have fun.

The battle system's greatest strength lies in the "light puck", a ball of glowing light that wanders up and down between the two screens during a battle. While a character has the light puck, that character's attacks are strengthened, and when they hit with a "combo finisher" the light puck moves on to the other character. By keeping the light puck moving between characters with a constant string of successful combo finishers, the light puck's power increases, further magnifying its benefits for whoever is carrying it. Because of this system, the player gains more benefit for simply paying attention to whoever has the light puck than trying to pay attention to both screen at all times. The light puck's glowing beacon turns the game's chaotic battles into something ordered and coherent, and sets a fun, fast-paced rhythm to the battle system that adds a lot to the game.

As a side-note, I should also mention that the game offers a few options regarding automating the character on the top screen, if you really don't want to manage the battle, but I don't use that system so I can't really comment. It is a nice touch, though.

Controlling the main hero on the bottom screen is probably the other great highlight of this game's battle system. Other than a single button used to toggle some of your options, the lower screen is entirely controlled via touch controls, and is probably one of the most intuitive and widely varied versions of such a control scheme that I have ever experienced. You can use a wide variety of simple motions such as touching, slashing, pressing, scratching, and dragging in order to execute a wide variety of commands determined by your equipped "Psych Pins", and the vast majority of these controls are amazingly responsive and reliable. As a whole, the main hero is highly customizable, easy to control, and can easily take part in mobile, fast paced combat against the enemies of the bottom screen with only a relatively small learning curve. Most importantly, the kinds of decisions you need to make while controlling the main hero are fairly simple and quick (mostly involving what pin to attack with or where to move), so it is fairly easy to just pick an attack, execute it quickly, and pass the light puck on to the hero's partner.

Unfortunately, the controls for each of the hero's three different partners are not as easy and fun as the bottom screen touch controls. You control the top screen character with either the four directional buttons or the four face buttons, with different combinations of button presses corresponding to different defensive moves and attacks. This is not bad in theory, but as a whole I find these controls to be terribly clunky and difficult to use. The biggest problem is that you can't see your attack options until you start attacking since they are random, but if you actually pause longer than a second the attack is canceled automatically, and any enemy attack will also cancel your attack, forcing you to start over. What is more, the top screen characters can't move, so they have to rely on precise timing of defensive moves in order to dodge any attacks, and you can't use most of these defensive moves while attacking (and can't defend yourself if you are looking at the other screen). Finally, these clunky battle controls are combined with small minigames unique to each character, so that you have to choose your attacks carefully if you want to complete the minigames and acquire "fusion stars" needed to active the game's powerful fusion attacks. As such, they require you to slow down and think about your moves which would mess up some of the rhythm of the battle system even without the difficult controls. All told, trying to actually earn a fusion star or two with this control scheme is a lot like trying to wrestle a slimy eel, so I mostly end up just button mashing when the light puck drifts to the top screen.

Mercifully, the top screen controls are amazingly well suited to button mashing. The randomness of the top screen controls sabotages any attempt to precisely control the upper character, but it also means that you always have a chance of earning fusion stars even if you just point the character towards an enemy and hit the same button over and over. What is more, the characters in this game can take a surprising amount of punishment, so being unable to dodge attacks is not a severe problem. As long as you don't actually try to do anything too complicated or precise, the upper screen controls actually work quite well. It is certainly a major flaw of the game that it is easier to just ignore a fairly major element of the combat system, though. The game would probably have been better off if the upper screen side of the battle was more focused on actually fighting, rather than running a minigame in order to earn fusion stars.

Still, even with that flaw the game's battle system is a lot of fun. The fact that is works so well even though it is a remarkable departure from anything seen before is very impressive. With a bit more fine tuning, it could have been perfect.

Dragon Quest 4: Chapters

2009-01-31T23:14:00.000-08:00

Dragon Quest IV's distinguishing characteristic is its chapter-based structure. The game is split into five chapters: the first four chapters introduce most of the major controllable characters, while the fifth chapter encompasses the majority of the story. While I am still only in the fourth chapter, I think that the chapter based structure is a great idea. The four early chapters do an excellent job of setting up the central conflict in a believable manner and making a large number of characters interesting.

Establishing the history and motivations of a large supporting cast is easily the most important outcome of Dragon Quest IV's Chapter structure. Compared to most Dragon Quest games, Dragon Quest IV has a lot of characters. I have been introduced to eight permanent characters so far, and there very well may be even more yet to be introduced. With a cast this large, it is very easy for characters to end up being underdeveloped or overshadowed by other characters. However, by giving various members of the cast their own introductory chapters, most of the characters of the game are put into the limelight as the central character in their own fairly involved adventures. These chapters introduce most of the cast as adventurers and heroes in their own right, before they are ever recruited by the main hero. These chapters introduce the various characters' motivations for becoming heroes, as well as what sets them on the path to becoming part of the main party of heroes. As a result, the entire cast of characters becomes very interesting.

The four introductory chapters are also put to good use as a means of foreshadowing the central conflict of the game. While each of the first four chapters has its own self-contained story, most of them directly tie into the larger chain of events going on behind the scenes. Furthermore, each of the chapters has so far set up different facets of the plot and added various mysteries to the game. So by the time the main hero enters the action, a lot of set-up has already been done. The four chapters also flesh put a significant fraction of the game world, much of which the player will need to travel through again later on in the game.

A particular advantage of the four chapters of Dragon Quest IV is that all of them give the player different gameplay experiences. While some of the chapters are more focused on a single character, others give the player multiple characters to use. While some of the chapters are dominated by powerful physical fighters, others primarily have magic-oriented characters. The kinds of dungeons and situations the various characters come across vary wildly as well. Even the enemies that appear are pretty different. No two chapters are exactly alike, so in some way it feels like several different RPGs rolled into one. This variety keeps things plenty interesting as the player goes from one to another.

There is another game that takes advantage of the introductory chapter concept: Seiken Densetu 3. In that game, all six possible characters have their own unique starting chapter, usually consisting of a sequence of story events leading up to a short dungeon. Like in Dragon Quest IV, these prologues do an excellent job of introducing major characters and establishing their motivations for becoming heroes, as well as introducing various villains and the major countries of the game. However, I think the set-up in Seiken Densetsu 3 is not as good as in Dragon Quest IV because the player only has to play through the chosen main character's prologue, and only gets a cutscene summary of the other character's prologues. This does have the effect of marginalizing the plots of the two supporting characters, which is a trend seen elsewhere in the game.

Thinking about it, one can argue that the split-scenario section of Final Fantasy VI is more or less the same thing as Dragon Quest IV's Chapters. The scenarios too are something that occurs relatively early in the game as a means of temporarily putting the spotlight on individual characters. The scenarios in FFVI are even the time where several major characters are first introduced as well.

Personally, I love having individual chapters in an RPG. This is another device I would like to see revisited in the future.

Persona 4: The Hero's Characteristics

2009-01-28T23:25:00.000-08:00

A concept from Persona 3 that has been noticeably improved in Persona 4 is the set of attributes that represent the main character's strength of personality and ability to interact with other people. These attributes don't factor into combat at all, but they can have a significant role in the hero's day to day life. In both games, you improve these attributes by spending time performing certain activities,This is one of those elements that I didn't really like in Persona 3, but the changes made to the concept in Persona 4 have made me warm up to it. I may as well just go over each change one at a time.

1) The number of attributes has increased from three to five. Persona 3 had just three attributes (Academics, Courage, and Charm), but Persona 4 has five (Academics, Courage, Diligence, Expression, and Understanding). Charm was my least favorite of the original set of three, since the attribute it was supposed to describe (how popular the main hero is) was built up in the least logical ways (answering questions in class and drinking coffee?) and didn't make a lot of sense because of the Social Link system (why is popularity separate from the main measure of how many friends you had and how much they liked you?). However, it was removed, and has been replaced by three other attributes that make a lot more sense. Like Knowledge and Courage, these new attributes describe the hero's capability to do something, rather than the extent to which he has done something like Charm did, which better matches the actual function of these attributes. Also, the increase in the number of attributes greatly made it necessary for the game designers to increase the variety of activities you need to do in order to raise the hero's attributes, which adds to the variety of the game a bit. What is more, the added number adds to the difficulty of building them up, which forces the player to specialize a bit and adds to tough and interesting choices in daily activities.

2) Attributes have more uses now. In Persona 3, the hero's attributes only affected his grades on tests and limited your ability to unlock a small number of Social Links, but in Persona 4 they have many more uses, and these uses are more dependent upon individual attributes. Beyond just unlocking Social Links, high attributes are required to progress through some Social Links or get hired for part-time jobs. A number of conversation choices throughout the game require higher levels of certain attributes, particularly Courage and Understanding. Raising some attributes increases how much you get paid for part-time work. Raising Diligence lets you go fishing for longer periods of time. These changes make improving attributes worthwhile across the entire length of the game, so there is no longer a clear point where they start or stop being useful.

3) There are more ways to improve attributes now. In Persona 3, you primarily improved your attributes by going to class, going to restaurants or entertainment venues, and studying. There were a few fun alternatives, such as donating to the temple (in the original version only) or visiting the Nurse's Office while sick, but mostly it involved going to a restaurant and wondering why eating tuna improved your Knowledge. Persona 4 makes some much-needed improvements, so now it is much easier to raise attributes in a variety of ways. You can raise some attributes by going to club meetings and working at a part-time job (so it is now possible to strengthen Social Links and improve attributes at the same time), Courage can be raised by defeating powerful enemies, Understanding can be improved by choosing certain conversation options in plot events, and many attributes can be built up simply by reading a book (so buying books and obtaining rare books through quests and events adds some new versatility to the system). As a whole, you will see improvements to attributes far more often in the new system, and you don't have to make a choice between improving attributes and building up Social Links anywhere near as often, which is good because that choice is inherently one-sided in favor of Social Links.

All combined, attributes are simply more important to the game now, and add a lot more to the game experience. Of course, the system is far from perfect, but I am nowhere near as critical of it as I used to be. If the next Persona game simply takes the changes made in Persona 4 a step or two farther, it would probably improve the experience even more. For example, I certainly wouldn't mind seeing these attributes affect the dungeon exploration side of the game, or vice versa.

Persona 4: Day to Day Life

2009-01-25T22:57:00.000-08:00

One of the most important aspects of Persona 4 is the tough balancing act between the countless different activities you need to accomplish within the limited time the game gives you. Just as in Persona 3, you need to attend class, hang out with friends and raise Social Links, improve the hero's attributes through a wide variety of activities, and still somehow find time to dive into the dungeons in order to fight the Shadows. However, Persona 4 is far from being a carbon copy of its predecessor, and features a number of changes and improvements to the system. If anything, just figuring out what to do each day might be an even more complex challenge than before.

One of the most important and visible changes to daily life in Persona 4 is the addition of changing weather effects. This plays a pretty important role in the plot, thanks to the Midnight Channel (which only appears on rainy nights) and the looming threat of the fog (which marks the deadline for reaching the end of every dungeon), and it plays an equally large role in the gameplay. On rainy days various people change their schedule, soccer practice is cancelled, restaurants change their selection, the main store offer discounts, the effect of studying at the library improves, different fish show up at the fishing spot, rare monsters appear in the dungeons, and countless other minor things all occur, making a rainy day totally different from a sunny one. This adds a level of complexity on top of the basic weekly schedule that drove Persona 3, adding some variety to an already interesting system. It is a bit of a shame that the distinction is so binary, though. Simply adding some more minor changes to cloudy days, or introducing windy days or something, would have helped. Certainly, foggy days should have been made more visible and notable, considering their importance to the plot, but as it is you hardly even see fog even on the days when it is actually important to the story.

An equally important change to daily life compared to Persona 3 is the shift to the characters venturing into the game's dungeons in the daytime, rather than the evening. Now, you need to give up the most important phase of the day in order to progress through the game's dungeons, rather than a lesser one, and now going into those dungeons even leaves you too exhausted to do almost anything in the evening, as well. You could choose to go into Tartarus pretty freely in Persona 3, since you never lost too much by doing so (there was always more time to do thing in the evening than there were things to do), but you have to give up important opportunities to build up Social Links every time you dive into Persona 4's TV World. This forces hard choices, and encourages the player to go through the dungeons in as few trips as possible. At the same time, many Social Links are reduced in availability or are even completely unavailable unless you have already completed the latest dungeon, so there is also an added impetus to clear through the dungeons quickly, which both balances out the impetus to wait and build up Social Links in order to get the added strength and changes the tome of the game quite significantly from how it was in Persona 3.

Thanks to the condition/fatigue system, Persona 3 made it impossible to clear through the dungeons in a very small number of trips and a short amount of time. You could only go so far through Tartarus before your characters became tired and had to leave, and whenever that happened it could take them several days to recover, especially if someone became sick. Persona 4 changes that, though, and completely abandons the condition/fatigue system. Even if you push your characters to the limit in the TV World dungeons, everyone is guaranteed to be in top fighting form the next day, so the only limit on how often you go into the TV World is the opportunity cost, which has been made more important. This places a lot more burden on the player to decide when is the best time to dive into the game's dungeons, unlike in Persona 3 where 90% of the time your best choice is to simply go into Tartarus every time you are in great condition and have a full team, without hesitation.

One final thing I like that mixes up the schedule is the addition of the Persona Forecast system. This system adds special rules and benefits to the Persona Fusion system depending on the day, and also lets you know what the special rule or benefit will be for the next day. In addition to tying in well to the game's weather theme, this can be a strong impetus to either try to raise a Social Link or dive into the TV World, depending on your situation and the exact benefit, which can either make your choices a bit easier or a bit harder, and certainly makes things more interesting. I do wish that they would let you see the forecast a bit further into the future, though.

Since this post is already pretty long, I think I will need to write about the activities you actually do during the day some other time.

Status Effects

2009-01-25T22:44:00.000-08:00

Status effects like poisoned, blinded, asleep, and so-on have been a mainstay of the console RPG genre since it's earliest beginnings, and they can even trace their roots back to the Pen-and-Paper RPGs the genre grew out of. Yet, status effect spells have a history of being neglected and useless. In most RPGs that I have played, the opportunity cost of using a status effect spell is far too great compared to the benefit of the spell in order to make using the spell worth it.

The fundamental problem of status effect spells in console RPGs is that the most RPGs are built on the assumption that the player will fight a large number of battles, each of which takes a relatively short amount of time. However, status effects are generally designed to weaken and inconvenience enemies, not kill them quickly. For example, a status condition that gives an enemy a 50% chance of losing its turn is only useful if the enemy lives long enough to take two, three, or more turns. As a result, it is not worth using a status effect on most enemies, since they can easily be killed by one or two good attacks in most RPGs. That leaves only only two situations where status effects are useful: in unusually long regular battles, such as against a large group of enemies or particularly durable regular enemy, and boss battles. Unfortunately, this is where most RPGs drop the ball, since flat-out immunity to status effects are insanely common in RPGs. The average boss is immune or incredibly resistant to every status condition. While this is somewhat reasonable, considering that many status effects render an enemy completely powerless, the fact that even regular enemies are often given complete immunity to a wide range of status conditions, often for no discernible reason. Furthermore, status effect spells often are given a very low chance of taking effect. Because of this, using a status effect spell is a huge gamble, and is thus a pretty poor choice compared to just doing reliable damage.

I don't think there is any good justification to making status effect spells useless. If you are going to give the player an option, that option should at the very least be situationally useful. Thankfully, there are games out there where status effects are useful or even invaluable. Here are some of my observations and my advice to anyone designing status effect attacks for an RPG:

-Give the player information about the enemies' immunity to status effects.
Simply being uncertain about whether or not an enemy is susceptible to a status condition is often enough to prevent the player from using a status spell. This is why it is important to give the player at least some feedback about an enemy's resistances and vulnerabilities. For example, in Final Fantasy X it is possible to use the Scan spell to see what status effects an enemy is immune to. Furthermore, FFX would give an "Immune" message if you hit it with a status effect it was immune to, instead of "Miss". That is a very important distinction, particularly if status effect inducing attacks have a low chance of success. Without such an indicator, the player may not realize an enemy is immune to an effect and try using that effect over and over on that enemy, or just write off an enemy as being immune after a single miss. Giving the player at least some information and feedback gives the player the ability to make informed decisions.

-Status effects with a low activation rate have no value.
At one point, I considered pairing a status effect to a physical attack to be a good idea, since it meant that the attack would still do some damage, even if the status effect itself didn't take hold. However, I have since realized that there are some caveats on this principle. Let's say there is an attack called Paralyzing Strike which costs 2 MP and does damage equal to the player's basic attack with an added 20% chance of paralyzing an enemy. While it sounds like a good deal at first, the reality is the player can't afford to use this attack in lieu of a basic physical attack. Even at a low MP cost, using Paralyzing Strike every turn can quickly add up to hundreds of MP over the course of a dungeon. As a result, the player is likely to save Paralyzing Strike for use against specific targets that he specifically wants to paralyze. However, if the paralysis effect is not reliable, the player will grow frustrated with Paralyzing strike, and will switch to using more reliable strategies, such as using high MP cost, high damage attacks. As a result of this effect, status effect inducing attacks are only useful if they are either reliable or free, such as in the case of weapons that have some chance of causing a status effect with every hit (though even those generally have to compete with weapons with different effects).

-Useful status effect attacks come in two general categories:
a) Status effects that shut down the enemy's ability to do damage.
In Dragon Quest IV, I have run into enemy groups consisting of four or more enemies that both capable of dealing a lot of damage and tough enough to require the concentrated attack power of multiple characters to bring down. I have also discovered that the Snooze spell is very helpful against these enemies, since it is cheap, hits an entire group of enemies, and can shut down their attacks for several turns. When a status effect spell can swing an entire battle from very dangerous to well-under control, it becomes a very attractive option.

A similar example is with Iron Giants and Blind in Final Fantasy X-2. Even though Iron Giants are powerful attackers that can nearly flatten a character in one hit and can withstand several rounds worth of punishment, they are susceptible to the blind condition, which makes them miss almost every attack. So having a character use a blind-inducing attack on an enemy every turn is a sound strategy.

b) Status effects that allow the player to defeat enemies faster.
This should be where the poison status condition goes, but it is rarely useful, despite being in every RPG since the original Dragon Quest. In most cases, it does about 10% of an enemy's max HP in damage every turn, which is only useful if the player can only hit that enemy for a comparable amount of damage with each attack. So it is useless against most enemies, which will likely die in a turn or less of concentrated attacks, but it would be wildly overpowered against a boss which is expected to last a dozen or more rounds (thus, most bosses are immune to poison). The only time I have ever used poison as a serious combat strategy was in Final Fantasy X, where poison did one fourth of an character's max HP in damage every turn. That was powerful enough for me to use it as my primary means of killing certain enemies (such as the apes on Mt. Gagazet).

Perhaps a more interesting version of this kind of status condition are effects that increase the damage the player will do against enemies. For example, the oil condition in Final Fantasy XII caused the next Fire elemental attack to do double damage, which made it into one of my main boss-killing strategies. Better still is Persona 3's Distress condition, which makes every attack against the Distressed target into a critical hit. Because of the way criticals work in Persona 3, a spell that makes every enemy distressed can let the player mow down an entire enemy party with just basic attacks (if the condition actually connects, that is).

Status spells can be very useful, and open up more complex and interesting strategies to the player, if the developers of an RPG let them. However, unreliability is the bane of usefulness; there is no reason to give the player a skill that does not do its job. If you design status effects with particular uses in mind, then they will be useful. Far too often, it seems like status conditions are designed the monsters to use against the PCs, but then are given to the player with little though put into their usefulness.

Armored Core For Answer: Hard Mode

2009-01-22T22:45:00.000-08:00

While trying to reach 100% completion of the Normal Mode missions in For Answer, I have completely hit a wall in my attempts to actually complete mission 42, what I think is the final mission of the last plot branch of the game. There are so many things I could say about how poorly this mission is designed, how this last plot branch is itself horrible, and how basically unfun it is to get stuck in a game designed to be played through multiple times without any choice but to proceed forward through an impossible challenge, even if there are still things undone on other plot branches, but doing so would probably only make me more angry, so I won't. Instead, I have devoted myself to playing through the game's missions on Hard Mode using the Free Play option (which is a nice option they made available), and I have been pretty happy with the experience.

I will start off by echoing the sentiments my brother expressed in his recent article: it is much better for the higher difficulty levels of a game to provide new challenges, rather than to be a rehash of the normal difficulty level. This is especially true for any game in which you have to unlock higher difficulty levels and the player is expected to play through the game multiple times, such as the Devil May Cry series or Armored Core For Answer. Trying to change the difficulty by altering the math that controls damage values and similar properties is often a bad idea, simply because it can easily imbalance some of the game, often making things more frustrating for the player rather than adding to the feelings of excitement and sense of overcoming impossible odds that are incredibly important for higher difficulty settings. However, adding new challenges to overcome on top of the old ones does add to that sense, and also keeps things fresh. The Hard Mode missions of Armored Core For Answer take the approach of adding new challenges rather than altering the old ones, and it has rekindled my interest in playing through the many missions I have cleared several times already.

One thing I particularly like about the alterations made to the For Answer Hard Mode missions is that they are unpredictable and logical at the same time. In some missions the enemy is reinforced with additional troops, and in others you simply don't get the reinforcements that you typically do. In some missions they add new hazardous environmental conditions, and in others you have to deal with new, severe technical issues with equipment vital to the given mission. The game actually tries to create a sense that the Normal mission is the version in which things go off without a hitch, and the Hard mission is where unforeseeable problems interfere with the mission parameters (listening to your operator get much more angry with the people hiring you to do these missions and even explode into short tirades about poor intel really changes the mood of the missions, and can be pretty funny, too). The fact that Hard Mode makes you fight even more Arm Forts and NEXTs than Normal Mode is another nice touch, since those kinds of enemies are the most imposing and fun to fight type of enemy in the game.

Still, I wish there was a bit more consistency in how big of a change was made in the jump in difficulty. For some missions, the change is hardly noticeable, such as the addition of a few Normals to a NEXT battle or the removal of some reinforcements that didn't help much anyways. This goes as far as few missions in which I am not even sure what they changed (they probably just added some additional enemies). In other cases, the change completely alters the nature of the mission, such as the inclusion of a pair of NEXTs into a mission that was just a straight-up battle against MTs and Normals. The last example is practically the equivalent of adding a totally new mission into the game, that happens to occur when you are already depleted from a protracted battle. I would be a bit happier if more of the missions took the middle road and avoided either extreme. Adding on a complication that matches the existing challenge, like the sudden arrival of a third NEXT into what is normally a battle against two NEXTs, works much better in my opinion.

Dragon Quest 4: Equipment and Nostalgia

2009-01-22T22:38:00.000-08:00

When I first walked into an equipment shop in Dragon Quest IV: CHapters of the Chosen for the DS, I was greeted by a very familiar sight: a cypress stick, an oaken club, and a copper sword were for sale, along with wayfarer's clothes, leather armor, and a leather shield. For me, that simple list of weapons and armor is full of nostalgia that dates back to my earliest memories of playing console RPGs. The fact that the Dragon Quest series keeps even the list of low-level equipment more or less constant throughout is a pretty good example of how the series utilizes consistency in order to cultivate nostalgia. This is a sound strategy, since nostalgia can be a very powerful thing, since it is what drives people to become dedicated, long-term fans for a series.

The first console RPG I ever played was the original Dragon Quest, renamed Dragon Warrior in the US. By far, my strongest memory of the game is the decision the player faces at the very beginning of the game: to spend his meager amount of starting cash to buy an oaken club and a set of wayfarer's clothes, or to focus on defense and buy the cypress stick and a suit of leather armor. Since I have never put a whole lot of time into the game, I never really made it much further past that point. As a result, that early experience of shopping ended up being particularly memorable, especially since I repeated it several times to experiment with different starting equipment set-ups.

The next time I played a Dragon Quest game, it was Dragon Quest VIII, Journey of the Cursed King, for the PS2. Farebury, the very first town, had the same stick, club, copper sword, and leather armor that was available in the first shop in the original Dragon Quest. Based on some quick research on GameFAQs, it seems that this near-exact list of early equipment is available early on in pretty much every installment of the series. Even when I was playing Dragon Quest VIII, seeing a copper sword immediately brought my childhood memories of struggling to save up enough money to buy one in the original Dragon Warrior. I experience the exact same feelings of nostalgia when I started Dragon Quest IV last week. All it took was that little bit of familiarity to get me really excited about playing the game. The nostalgia value has been enhanced by the use of the same graphical representations for these pieces of equipment in both DQ IV and DQ VIII.

In the greater scheme of things, something like the names of early pieces of equipment is pretty minor. Yet, I would argue that nostalgia is built upon the familiarity of what would otherwise be inconsequential details. For that reason, I think maintaining consistency in things like monster choice, equipment choice, and so forth between different iterations of the same series is important. These things are what build recognition, familiarity, and nostalgia among fans. I believe the Dragon Quest series is a text-book example of all of this done right.

Persona 4: The New March of Time

2009-01-20T22:39:00.001-08:00

I am now quite a bit further into Persona 4, so it is about time I actually write about the basic flow of the game. Like its predecessor, Persona 4 is built around choosing how to manage your daily activities as time slowly moves forward. You choose when you dive into the dungeons of the game, but whether you choose to do so or not days will still slowly pass until events occur in the plot. However, rather than just using a direct copy of Persona 3's structure, Persona 4 implements the same idea in a very different manner.

The biggest change in Persona 4 is its much greater focus upon the dungeons you explore. In Persona 3, you go into Tartarus primarily to raise your level and gain the equipment you need for the event bosses, but the major events of the game and the battles against the event bosses are controlled by the date (the rise of the full moon), not how far you go into Tartarus. You don't even need to finish climbing the available areas of Tartarus before the next major event. In Persona 4, however, you must reach the end of every dungeon within the alloted time (before the fog sets in), since otherwise you fail your goal and get a Game Over. Instead of being something you do to prepare for inevitable battles that will happen regardless of what you do, going into the dungeons and defeating the boss in the dungeons' depths is your true goal in the game.

The changes made to the system are a big improvement, in my opinion. I once described Persona 3's Tartarus as a "Plot Desert", but because of Persona 4's changes the TV World dungeons are the stage for many of the most important events in the game. You must reach the end of every dungeon within a certain timeframe, so, unlike in Persona 3, the game designers know both when you are going into the dungeon and what characters are available. It also just feels more rewarding and natural to have the most difficult battle at the deepest level of the dungeon be an important story battle, rather than a meaningless battle against a generic foe. The structure of Persona 3 is ill-suited to putting a large number of important plot sequences in Tartarus, but a few slight changes to that structure reverses that flaw entirely.

Another important and beneficial consequence of the change is that it adds to the feeling that the main characters (and thus the player), are actively achieving something by doing what they do. Persona 3 is a great game, but the nature of the way the main characters fight their conflict is very passive. In that game, all you can do is just wait for the next full moon. Even if you complete your climb of Tartarus early, you must still wait for any plot events to happen. Once you fight and defeat the boss that emerges every full moon, the only thing left to you is to get ready for the next full moon, since the characters' only goal is the broad idea of "get rid of Tartarus and the Dark Hour" and every month's battle is only one more small step toward that goal. In Persona 4, though, your goals are almost always much more immediate, so you will either achieve your goal or fail to do so within a limited time-span after the goal appears. Because of this, there are periods of relative peace and tranquility between crisis periods, in which all of your goals are met and there is no new threat and dungeon coming up on the horizon. At the same time, the crisis periods are more focused upon a limited period of time, and the stakes seem higher, so they have a greater degree of tension. As such, the game fluctuates more greatly between periods of high tension (in which your goal is to reach the bottom of the newest dungeon as quickly as possible) and very low tension (in which you are free to pursue a number of optional objectives throughout the older dungeons at a relaxed pace). This helps the game a lot, I think.

Another important part of this change that I haven't touched on is the difference between the goal-posts used for measuring time in the game. Persona 3 is built around the lunar cycle, so every phase of the game lasts around 28 days, which is extremely predictable with no room for significant deviation. Persona 4 is built around the risk of "the fog coming in", which doesn't have a set and predictable cycle. This means that there is a widely variable amount of time that occur between crisis periods in the game, and once a crisis starts you can only really guess at how long you have before you run out of time. This improves the relaxed pace between crises, adds to the tension of a crises period, and, most importantly of all, gives the game designers a lot more flexibility regarding how the calendar is scheduled, which helps a lot regarding things like holiday schedules, unusual events, and exam weeks.

However, mentioning calendars is reminding me of how useful it was having one in Persona 3. The lack of one in Persona 4 is a bit annoying, even though I know it wouldn't be useful in determining how long I have left until the fog sets in. At least Persona 4 more than makes up for it by letting you roll back time if you can't achieve your goal, which prevents the nightmare scenario of being unable to progress any further, and thus having to start the entire game all over again, that is possible (if unlikely) in Persona 3.

Devil May Cry 4: Son of Sparda difficulty

2009-01-20T22:39:00.000-08:00

A couple days ago, I started the Son of Sparda difficulty mode in Devil May Cry 4. I haven't played it for very long, but it has already surprised me. Relatively early in Mission 2, I encountered a group of Assaults, a fairly vicious enemy that was only introduced in Mission 8 on Devil Hunter (Normal) mode. In Mission 3, I encountered a pack of Basilisks, which was the very last regular enemy to be introduced in Devil Hunter mode. As a result, the early missions have felt very different than they did on my first go through of the game. I think this is a great idea, since it has given me fresh and new challenges that I haven't seen before in the game. It is a much better method of differentiating difficulty levels than just tweaking the enemies' AI or stats.

The original Devil May Cry did something similar. If you go through the game on Easy Automatic mode (like I first did), several of the strongest types of regular enemy, including Frosts and Fetishes, do not appear at all. Since I didn't encounter them on my first go-through of Devil May Cry, I was pretty surprised to encounter brand new enemies on Normal mode. I think it was a pretty interesting idea. It gave someone who already beat the game once something to look forward to on a second go-through. In a series like Devil May Cry, where the player is expected to defeat lower difficulty modes before moving on to the higher ones, keeping the experience new is important. Otherwise, the game can get frustrating and dull when moving on to higher difficulty modes.

Goldeneye for the N64 did something kinda similar: it added new mission objectives on higher difficulty settings. For example, on the lowest difficulty setting, the player can clear a certain mission just by fighting his way through to an exit point. On a higher difficulty setting, the player is required to steal some files and destroy some alarms before making his way to the exit point. It made missions play out in a completely different manner, and put the player through more demanding situations.

I vastly prefer this kind of approach to creating different difficulty settings. Not only does it make playing the same game feel different depending on what difficulty the game is set to, it works as a very obvious indicator that the player has moved on to a genuinely more difficult challenge. If anything, I would have liked to have seen the game developers for Devil May Cry 4 hold some enemies or bosses in reserve until Son of Sparda mode.

As a side note, I like the naming scheme for the Devil May Cry 4 difficulty modes. They are just fun.

Lost Odyssey: Mortals and Immortals

2009-01-13T22:54:00.000-08:00

After clearing Grandia last week, the game that I have been playing the most of has been Lost Odyssey for the XBox 360. Honestly, it feels more like a Final Fantasy game than Final Fantasy XII does, so I have been enjoying it quite a bit. The main premise of the game is that the main character, like several other major characters, is an immortal who has lived unchanging for one thousand years. However, while Lost Odyssey has plenty of game mechanics in place to help tell the story of immortal characters traversing the ages and a strong base concept, it doesn't seem to really take advantage of what it has in place.

Lost Odyssey splits all party members into two groups: immortals and mortals, and uses different mechanics to determine what skills and abilities they have. Mortals are pretty straight-forward: they gain new spell levels, skills, and passive abilities as part of leveling up. For example, Cooke gains White Magic spells and abilities to augment her healing magic as she levels up. On the other hand, Immortals acquire Skills through two methods: learning a skill that a Mortal knows by fighting alongside that Mortal, and permanently learning a Skill from an equipped accessory. Furthermore, Immortals acquire more Skill Slots (and thus the ability to equip more learned Skills) by using items called Slot Seeds. As a result, Immortals tend to be much more flexible than Mortals, with greater access to passive abilities and complex combinations of abilities. Between the Immortals' added versatility and potential power over Mortal characters and the strong story emphasis on them, the Immortal characters tend to stand out as main characters over the Mortals. In many ways, the game system seems perfectly suited to telling a multi-generational story, where you have a fixed number of Immortal characters in the party at all times, and a large cast of Mortal characters who enter and leave the party as the story progresses and the years flow by. Unfortunately, that is not what the game designers opted to do.

Instead of telling a story that crosses the ages, Lost Odyssey has so far played out like a fairly ordinary RPG. Despite the fact that Kaim Argonar and the other Immortals have a thousand years of history behind them, most of the major plot points seem to have taken place within the last thirty or so years of the game. At the same time, most of the major character development for the Immortals took place in the unseen past. Most of this backstory is conveyed to the player through the "Thousand Years of Dreams", a collection of short stories written in the first person that can be viewed whenever the party rests at an inn. However, almost all of the dreams that I have viewed are stories more focused on various people Kaim has met across his journeys, instead of on Kaim's own character development. So, Lost Odyssey has so far felt like a game with a typical RPG plot and limited character development for the central characters. I am hoping this will change as the game goes.

I think a multigenerational story would have worked much better. That way, the player could watch the character development of the Immortals first hand, as opposed to learning about it after the fact. The game's story as a whole would have stood out much more as well. The real shame is that the game system seems so perfectly suited for such a story that it feels like wasted potential.

Persona 4: Down, Dizzy, and All Out

2009-01-13T22:39:00.000-08:00

Well, here I am, writing about a Persona game again. Persona 3 was easily my favorite thing to write about last year, so this was probably inevitable. Actually, I think I may be addicted to Persona 4 already. In many ways, it even manages to surpass its predecessor, which already stood as one of my favorite RPGs of all time. Persona 3 and Persona 4 are extremely similar games regarding their game structures, battle systems, and such, but their similarities only highlights the large number of little improvements made in the newer game.

One such improvement is the change to the way the Down condition works. I really liked the One More/Down/All-Out Attack system in Persona 3, so I was surprised and disappointed when I read in the manual that they actually changed it for Persona 4, but when I actually played the game I was impressed to see how well the change works. You see, in Persona 3, whenever you hit an enemy with either a critical hit or an element that enemy is vulnerable to, that enemy is knocked down and the character who made the attack can take another action. An enemy who is knocked down wastes a turn getting back to their feet (unless they get attacked, which means they stand up), and if all enemies are knocked down you can launch a powerful All-Out Attack, which does a lot of damage to all foes but also returns all enemies to their feet. This creates a great trade-off between relying on All-Out Attacks for damage and knocking enemies down in order to prevent them from attacking, and made targeting enemy weaknesses a very important strategy.

Persona 4 keeps that system, but changes it in three very important ways. The first is that knocking an enemy down no longer forces that enemy to waste a turn getting up, the second is that hitting an enemy who is already down doesn't cause them to get back up, and the third is that you can hit an enemy who has been knocked down in order to trigger the dizzy condition, which causes the enemy to lose a turn and remain in the vulnerable downed state until the start of the turn after the lost one. All-Out Attacks still returns all enemies to their feet, though. The reason I first thought that this new system was worse was because I didn't know about the second change, but with that change it vastly improves the choice to not make an All-Out Attack.

With the Persona 3 system, you pretty much have to hold back on attacking downed enemies and only attack standing enemies with their elemental weakness if you want to use the down condition to prevent enemies from attacking, but by doing so you can totally shut down their ability to attack. In the Persona 4 system, you can only prevent every other attack (because the Dizzy condition only ends at the beginning of a character's turn), but you can attack freely while the enemy is down and dizzy (and can deal a lot of extra damage that way). The value of All-Out Attacks is the same in either game, but now the alternative is a lot more fun. After all, it always more fun to go wild and attack rather than to sit back and wait for the enemy to get back up. At the same time, it adds a bit to the challenge because it is impossible to completely shut down an enemy just by using elemental attacks. It also adds some extra flexibility to enemy and boss design, because a boss can be allowed to be knocked down without fear of it being totally crippled, which means it is not as problematic to give bosses elemental weaknesses. The fact that down and dizzy are separate conditions, so an enemy may be susceptible to being downed but not dizzied, only adds to the flexibility.

I also have to mention that this change is also an improvement when you consider how it changes the way allies are affected by critical hits and hits against their weaknesses. In Persona 3, getting knocked down by an enemy is one of the most annoying situations you run across frequently. It means that either the character lost their turn, or you have an ally waste a turn in order to get rid of a condition that only makes you lose one turn. The skill that clears the down condition, Re Patra, is a waste of a valuable skill slot in that game. In Persona 4, however, merely getting knocked down is not a problem at all, since it won't cause an ally to lose a turn, but getting knocked dizzy causes an ally to both lose a turn and be vulnerable to attack for a period of time, making it worse than the old knocked down condition. As such, a skill like Re Patra isn't really needed to restore the down condition, but might actually be worth using to help a dizzy ally. Far more importantly, unless an enemy is particularly aggressive in attacking a downed ally, allies losing turns is a rarer occurrence in Persona 4 than in Persona 3, which helps reduce the chance that a single enemy attack can damage the team beyond their ability to recover and thus lead to a Game Over. This seems like a pretty good design move to me.

As a final side note, I have to say that I am happy that they changed it so you can get a One More attack even if you hit a weakness with an all-enemy attack. It makes enemies that use such attacks a bit more dangerous, but it also avoids a number of frustrating situations and slight ability imbalances that plagued Persona 3. It is amazing how much these minor changes can affect the game.

Grandia: Story

2009-01-09T23:06:00.000-08:00

After more than a month or so, I finally finished the original Grandia early this week. It is a game that has a few issue and shows its age, but it is a game that certainly has some great moments. Sadly, most of the moments took place in the first half of the game. While the first half of Grandia was brimming with a unique charm, the second half of the game ended up reducing the plot into a recycled cliche. In many ways, Grandia would have been better off if the developers had tossed out the Gaia plot in favor of focusing the story more strongly on Justin as an adventurer and explorer.

In the first disc of the game, the plot is centered on a very simple concept: Justin's long and difficult journey to discover the truth of the mythical civilization of Angelou and the enigmatic Icarians who were depicted in its art; a journey that is inseparable from Justin's own growth and coming of age. From the outset of the game, the plot sets up these elements: in the very beginning, Justin is just a bratty and energetic kid who dreams of becoming a famous adventurer like his father and grandfather and is fascinated by the myths of the ancient Angelou civilization. When he stumbles upon a device left behind by Angelou in an old ruin that gives him a clue to the existence of the Angelounian city of Alent, he sets out on his journey. The structure of the game from there on does a lot to emphasize the "journey": the first disk is defined by a number of points in the story where Justin makes a crossing into a new land, leaving the old places he has visited behind forever. The most remarkable of these is where Justin and company climb the End of the World, a massive wall dividing a continent no one before had ever successfully crossed on foot.

In the first half of the game, most of the fun comes from this journey and the sense of being the first one to see these things and meet these strange tribes of people. For me, one of the most memorable events in the game is when Justin and Feena (Justin's love interest) are roped into agreeing to be the couple of honor for a festival, only to discover that they just agreed to be sacrificed to a dragon. Justin's dauntless personality drives the spirit of the game early on, since while he is constantly getting the party into trouble with his reckless abandon, he also spurs the other characters on to accomplish things they never felt possible before.

Sadly, the entire mood of the game changes drastically early in the second disk. Instead, the plot begins to revolve around the ancient monster Gaia, a creature that was only vaguely hinted at in two or three scenes in the first disk. Now then, Gaia does fulfill a role: it serves as an explanation for why the Angelou civilization was destroyed and is the big bad evil thing that the heroes have to kill to get the ending credits to roll. Unfortunately, that is all that Gaia ever really is, and it ends up dragging the rest of the game down with it. Apparently, the developers thought that they needed a powerful, world-destroying evil in order to have an appropriate final boss. So, they spent most of the second disk building up Gaia as a threat by showing off towns that have been destroyed by Gaia turning everything into stone.

However, the emphasis on Gaia and the plot-lines surrounding it comes at the expense of the spirit of the game itself. There are no more grand journeys into unknown lands in the second disk: the entire thing takes place in a single area that all of the locals are pretty familiar with. Character development suffers as a whole, since the usually talkative and interesting Feena falls into a quiet, depressed mood for most of the latter half of the game, and Justin himself goes from being the driving force behind the party to being someone who needs other people to constantly be telling him where to go and what to do. The point where it becomes absolutely clear that the plot of the game has become twisted is when a certain character asks Justin why he is going to Angelou. The player has three choices: "I don't know", "To find answers about the secrets of Angelou", and "To save the world"; "To save the world" is the only correct choice. When Justin and his friends finally reach the lost Angelounian city of Alent, what should have been the grand culmination of Justin's entire journey is nothing more than a brief stop-over where the heroes don't learn anything they didn't already know.

I don't think that a "save the world from destruction" plot necessarily adds anything to a game. Grandia would have been a lot better off if had focused on a the more personal story of Justin and his journey to uncover the secrets of Angelou and become a legendary adventurer.

Armored Core For Answer: Enemy Types

2009-01-09T23:05:00.000-08:00

One thing I really like in Armored Core For Answer is the wide variety of enemy types that the player must fight across the game's many missions. Each mission offers a distinct combination of different enemies, from the puny MTs to the colossal Arm Forts, and as a result the game presents a variety of challenges the player needs to overcome. This is particularly important considering the game's focus on NEXT customizations, since each type of enemy requires different strategies and weaponry. While a skilled sniper NEXT armed with nothing but long-range rifles will work surprisingly well against an enemy NEXT, its slow rate of fire and limited ammo makes it a somewhat poor choice against large numbers of MTs or Normals, and most Arm Forts could ignore its attacks completely. The difference in enemy types encourages the player to experiment with NEXT customization, and makes each stage an entirely different experience than the last.

Anyways, here are some thoughts on each major enemy type:

Normals: These are the most basic enemy grunts in the game. They move around at a slow pace, but have boosters and can fly if need be, and some can even be quite fast. They can take a few hits, but not many. Some are powerful long-range snipers, while others carry melee weapons. Just about anything works on them, but they can pose a threat regardless. These guys are just tough enough to make high attack-power weapons like blades and plasma cannons meaningful, but common enough to make ammo matter. They are great opponents, since they balance being tough enough to be significant with being weak enough to come in large numbers so well.

MTs: These are the weakest enemy type, coming in somewhat large numbers but always at very low power. If they move, they hardly do so, and most can't fly and will die if you send them falling into the water or something. They are supposed to serve as cheap cannon fodder that can be destroyed in vast numbers, but most of the time they don't show up in big numbers at all, with the exception of only two stages or so (Escorting the Red Berets and the attack on Cabracan). Also, their total lack of mobility makes them seem too much like fixed guns, rather than an actual vehicle. I can't say that they are really used to their fullest in the game.

Ships and Traditional Aircraft: These show up in several missions, but they feel almost out of place alongside the less realistic Normals, NEXTs, and Arm Forts. I do like a lot of the aircraft, since they either fill the role the MTs should have, or act like larger, aerial Normals. On the other hand, the ships seem too much like immobile floating gun turrets, are mostly too small, and suffer horribly in comparison to the Arm Forts. Still, all of these kind of craft serve as a good excuse to use the heavy weaponry of the game, without being too much of a threat to the player, so they can be a lot of fun.

Small Arm Forts: These mostly include the Arm Forts like the Land Crab or the Eclipse, the smaller kinds that show up several times across the game. Other than the fact that they are often too easily destroyed (some seem to go down as quickly as an enemy Normal), they have an impressive presence on the battlefield due to their large size, impressive weaponry, and large numbers of support Normals, so they can have a strong impact on a mission. They are always a lot of fun, and one of my few complaints about them is that there are simply not enough missions in the game where you have to fight off a large number of these things. Also, these things really are on a much smaller scale than the larger Arm Forts, and fill a very different role in the game, so I wonder if they really should share the same name...

Large Arm Forts: These things are true monsters, and are always a stage in of themselves. They tower above the landscape and possess truly frightening destructive power, which makes any battle against them a memorable experience. As far as I am aware, For Answer is the first game in the Armored Core series to have such enemies, and they make a fantastic addition. Any problems with them is limited to specifics about each one, though those issues can be significant. For example, one of the strongest and most notable Arm Forts, the Answerer, requires an excessively specific kind of NEXT configuration in order to fight, doesn't broadcast its weaknesses well, and the fight against it ends too suddenly and anti-climactically. Still, the concept is sound, and it was certainly a good idea to put them in such a prominent position in the game's story and achievement selection.

NEXTs: This is easily the most diverse category of foes, and a particularly important one since almost every named character in the game is a NEXT pilot. NEXTs are unbelievably fast, possess Primal Armor capability, and have incredibly accurate and powerful attacks of every imaginable type, which means that they are both uniquely powerful opponents and can avoid or negate many kinds of attack that would be effective against lesser enemies. To top it all off, even an average NEXT has more resistance to damage than an Arm Fort. Ultimately, every enemy NEXT is built with the same system that the player's NEXT is built with, so enemy NEXTs fight with all the same power that the player uses to wipe out Arm Forts and destroy dozens of Normals. These guys can be very frustrating opponents, and missions in which you have to fight NEXTs can be terribly repetitive, but the game would not be anywhere near as fun without them.

Devil May Cry 4: Guns and Devil Arms

2009-01-04T23:37:00.000-08:00

One of the best parts of the Devil May Cry series is that you get to kill enemies using a wide variety of cool weapons, each of which has it's own quirks. While Devil May Cry 4 doesn't quite have the same number of weapons as Devil May Cry 3, it does have a few really distinct and fun ones. So, here are my thoughts on the various weapons in DMC4:

Red Queen:
Nero's basic sword is a fun weapon to play around with. The developers did a good job of differentiating it from Dante's Rebellion, even though it still has a lot of the same basic functionality. Most notably, Red Queen probably has the largest and most elaborate list of upgrades in the entire game, with several new combos, four special moves (several of which with upgrades), and upgrades to the Exceed ability for the player to buy. However, while the basic combos of Red Queen are fun to use, it's exceed function just doesn't seem to do enough to warrant using it. While it is pretty difficult to build up the Exceed gauge mid-battle, it is pretty easy to waste it, since it takes only a single mistimed press of the Y button to waste one gauge. Furthermore, no enemy in the game seems to have any particular weakness to Exceed attacks. So while the EX special attacks are pretty cool and fun to occasionally play around with, there is little motivation for the player to use them. Adding some enemies with a weakness to Exceed attacks and making it possible to get more attacks out of the Exceed gauge would have helped the system a lot.

Blue Rose:
While Red Queen feels like a fun variant on Dante's sword, Blue Rose just feels like a weaker version of Ebony and Ivory with none of the cool special tricks. Even more aggravating is the complete lack of upgrades for Blue Rose; the only abilities to buy for it are it's three levels of Charge Shot. Now then, the concept behind Blue Rose's charge shot is pretty cool and distinct, since each level of charge adds a new special quality to the bullet: the first level adds a knock-back effect, the second sets the target on fire, and the third adds a time-delayed explosion. Unfortunately, charging the gun takes forever. By the time the gun reaches even it's second level of charge, I could have hit an enemy with several melee combo chains. While it is possible to charge the gun while fighting normally, doing so requires holding the X button down while still trying to press the Y, B, and A buttons with precise timing. My hand just can't do that. Blue Rose really needs more special tricks, and more ways of being differentiated from Dante's gun. The developers could increase the guns knockback and stunning capabilities more, or perhaps give Nero the ability to load and fire various kinds of special round.

Devil Bringer:
As I said in an earlier post, Devil Bringer needs a lot more functions, seeing as how it is Nero's distinguishing ability. The fact that the only purchasable upgrades for it are moderate increases to Snatch's range is pretty disappointing. The developers might want to look at how Grab and Throw was improved between Zone of the Enders and Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner for some inspiration. Still, it is surprising fun to use despite how simple it is.

Yamato (Nero):
Having a weapon available only while Devil Triggered is a really interesting concept, and I think it is pretty well executed. Some more special attacks would be a little nice, and I think it would be cool to somehow be able to expend some of the magic gauge to draw the sword and execute a big attack (such as the attack Dante uses) while in normal form.

Rebellion:
What is there to say? It's Dante's main sword, and handles exactly like expected for the most part. I do think the newly added red glow is a nice touch, since it makes the sword look more like a powerful magical weapon. It might actually be a match in terms of coolness for Alastor now. The fact that the Stinger attack transforms into a very different attack while Dante is Devil Triggered is really cool. I am a little disappointed that his other attacks don't seem to receive any similar upgrade. However, Rebellion's chargable special moves (Round Trip and Drive), suffer from some of the same criticisms I leveled at Blue Rose: the charging takes too long and is impossible to do while actually fighting.

Ebony & Ivory:
Just as good as they have always been. They still have a lot of tricks, though mostly thanks to Gunslinger style. Suffers the problem that almost every other gun in the game does: the only upgrades are increasing how long you can charge the gun.

Coyote-A:
It's nice to see that a gun that has been in Dante's arsenal since DMC1 finally get a name. See Ebony and Ivory for most of my comments for this gun. It fills a useful niche, but could use more special tricks.

Gilgamesh:
It is a pretty nice varient on the tried and true Dante hand-to-hand weapon. However, it is missing a lot of the tricks that Beowulf had, particularly in the realm of ranged attacks. Like so many other weapons in the game, it suffers from few decent upgrades as well. The ability to charge every ground attack is pretty cool, but since it takes so long it is only situationally useful,and even then I can only justify charging to the first level. Still, not bad. However, I think the mask is a little much for the look of the weapon.

Pandora:
Pandora is quite easily the best concept to come out of Devil May Cry 4, and is certainly a weapon that I am hoping to see come back in later iterations of the series. If expanded upon, the transforming gun Pandora could easily serve as a character's only firearm. In fact, the weapon almost seems like a better fit for Nero than Dante, since using it correctly involves building up a special gauge to bring out more powerful attacks. This is one weapon where I would have really liked to see more upgrades for, since it is really disappointing that there is only one chain of transformations available for the gun. I would have liked to see several different branching chains of transformations. Easily my favorite gun in the entire Devil May Cry series.

Lucifer:
Lucifer is a very interesting weapon. The fact that it can chain infinitely by default, with several different finishers is a cool touch. Impaling an enemy with explosive harpoons is a pretty fun effect too, though I wish the developers had mapped a different button input to trigger the detonation. Away plus Y while locked on to an enemy can be surprising awkward if Dante is surrounded by enemies. I think the developers could also have done more with the wing-like look of the weapon, and given it an attack where Dante actually throws a blade into an enemy.

Yamato (Dante):
While I am a big fan of the Slash Dimension attack, Yamato feels way too much like a one-trick pony. Since Yamato cannot be used with any Style (since it's its own Style), nor can it be upgraded in any way, it feels very limited in use. Still, the idea of a style where Dante uses a second weapon in addition to his main equipped one is a solid one.

I may come back and give my updated thoughts on these weapons when I finally get around to going through Devil May Cry 4 again.

Armored Core For Answer: Weapons and Parts

2009-01-04T23:04:00.000-08:00

While combat and missions play a very large part of Armored Core, one of the more distinctive and time-consuming aspects of the game is the NEXT customization system in which you built your NEXT from various parts and and tune its fighting capabilities in order to suit your preferences. Thanks to the wide variety of weapons and parts, you can build everything from a lightweight aerial combat skirmisher focused on short-range machine guns to a fortress on tank-treads that incinerates everything in its path with grenades and missiles. As I mentioned a few posts ago, there is a pretty steep learning curve for this complicated system, but it is very flexible and fun to play around with.

One of my favorite aspects of the system is the fact that the designers tried to balance out every part. There is no clear and simple progression from the weak parts to the strong parts, like in Square's Front Mission series (which has a very similar customization system, if a bit less flexible of one). Instead, the parts that may come pre-installed in your starting NEXT can be useful throughout the game. Every part has its advantages, but also has its drawbacks, which means that there are very few parts that are unquestionably better or worse than others (though there do seem to be a few, I admit). For example, even though the Moonlight laser blade is a rare part that has to be won from a dangerous opponent and has a potent mix of high attack strength and long reach that separates it from any other laser blade, it still has such a high weight and large energy cost that it is completely unsuitable for many kinds of NEXT, even some pure melee-combat NEXTs (like the one I often use). Because there are so many weapons and parts that are very good, but only under specific conditions and in combination were certain other parts, there is a very wide assortment of possible strong NEXT configurations.

The piecewise construction system of Armored Core NEXTs has its issues, though. You can only directly compare parts one at a time, so both comparing a single part against multiple alternatives and comparing entire NEXT configurations against each other in detail are fairly difficult tasks. I often find myself making alterations to a NEXT one part at a time and praying that the sum of the individual alterations leads to a net benefit. This gets even harder when comparing the effects of parts that interfere with or compliment each other, but don't share the same slot, like comparing hand-held weapons to integrated weapon-arms, or trying to manage the complex set of main boosters, side boosters, back boosters, integrated tank-leg boosters, and back or shoulder mounted optional boosters. In such cases, it can be all too easy for minor drawbacks, like a slight energy cost increase on each part, to slowly add up beneath the player's notice until it becomes a serious flaw with no easy solution. A lot of this could be avoided with a few additional interface options, such as the ability to look at you NEXT's full specs in greater detail and compare those specs to another NEXT's.

Still, I don't want to say that the game doesn't provide the player with any useful guidance on designing NEXTs. The game provides a very comprehensive library of NEXT designs that you can load and use yourself, including the designs for every set of parts with the same name (like the Tellus or Lancel), as well as one for every last enemy NEXT in the game. If you are having trouble creating an effective aerial combat NEXT, you can always load the design of a powerful aerial enemy, like CUBE's Fragile, and either use it directly or take it as the basis for a new NEXT. This is easily one of the best features in the game, really, since it both makes NEXT design a lot easier and lets you try out what it is like to use any of the NEXTs you have fought against in the game. Actually, I should probably try this out some more myself. I've been wondering how Otsdarva's Stasis handles...

Limited Inventory Space

2009-01-02T22:47:00.000-08:00

Earlier today, Grandia's inventory system really ruined a game session for me. Grandia uses a limited inventory system, where each character in the party can only carry twelve items, not counting equipped weapons and armor, with no team reserve. I was exploring a section of what could be the final dungeon when I found a Spirit Helm: most likely the strongest helmet in the game. Unfortunately, all of my characters had full inventories, so I was asked what to do with the Helm I just picked up. In a tragic turn of events, I accidentally chose the "Discard Found Item" option instead of the "Discard Item in Inventory" option, and permanently lost out on one of the most powerful pieces of equipment in the game. Needless to say, I had no choice but to turn off my PS2 without saving, and now I am facing the prospect of not only retracing my steps up to that point, but trekking all of the way out of the dungeon just to drop some of the junk in my inventory into storage. This entire incident is a perfect example of some of the flaws in character limited inventory systems.

There is plenty of good reason in limiting the number of items a player has access to in an RPG. In a typical RPG, such as in most Final Fantasy games, every player-controlled character has access to a massive inventory with a potentially nigh-limitless number of healing items and possibly even attack items. With an inventory full of sufficiently powerful healing items, it becomes easy for a player to keep his characters healed during a long battle. So, limiting the player's usable inventory is a valid means of adjusting the difficulty of a game.

Unfortunately, limiting inventory space has a lot of other effects on gameplay. Most RPGs typically hand out a lot of treasure in dungeons: be it more potions, new and improved equipment, or items destined to be sold at the next shop. In a game where the player only has ready access to a limited inventory, the player has to budget a large part of his inventory space to store those items, or else start throwing old items away in order to make room. Thankfully, most games with limited inventory have some means of storing unneeded items, but such games rarely let the player send things into that storage space from inside the dungeon, causing the player to still have to make tough decisions about what to keep and what to throw away. I remember having to throw away a lot of unidentified weapons and armor in Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter because of that games' limited inventory. Having to throw items away like that is frustrating, since it feels so wasteful.

A particular problem of Grandia's system is that characters keep all of their items when they leave the party temporarily. So, I have been put in situations where one character leaves for a dungeon, and takes the main character's only axe with him, limiting my weapon choices. This particular problem could have been avoided if the player was given the chance to redistribute items between characters when someone leaves the party, or at the very least the character's items were dumped into storage (as is the case for characters who leave permanently).

Another effect of limited inventories is that it usually limits what items the player will actually use to just the bare essentials. Grandia's shops are full of various non-healing battle items, such as bombs that are effective on certain types of enemies, items that boost various stats, and items that drop various enemy stats. Unfortunately, I never could justify bringing those items with me into a dungeon. I could only ever afford to bring four or five items per character into a new area; any more and I risked having to start throwing stuff away. Since that included one or two spare weapons per character, I had to prioritize bringing the most essential items: revival potion and only my most powerful all-character HP and MP restoration items. I simply had no room to bring anything else, which left 70% of the items in the game a waste of inventory space. It is a real shame.

My favorite inventory system of all time has to be Kingdom Hearts' hybrid inventory system. In Kingdom Hearts, each character keeps their own inventory of items, and each character is differentiated by the maximum number of items they can carry. At the same time, there is a shared party inventory that can carry the typical large number of items, with the exception that it can't be accessed during battle. In addition, items in a character's inventory can be set to be automatically restocked from the party inventory after a battle, which helps cut down on the number of minor tasks the player has to worry about. So all told, the Kingdom Hearts inventory system has the advantage of limiting the player's inventory for balance purposes, but at the same time it helps distinguish different characters' strengths, limits needless hassle, and prevents the problem of having to worry about throwing stuff away to make room for new items. If a game designer wants to implement a limited inventory system, that is the example I would recommend looking at.

Armored Core For Answer: Missions and Story

2009-01-02T22:39:00.000-08:00

After some dedicated playing (and probably an excessive amount of time spent rebuilding my NEXT into new configurations), I completed my first playthrough of Armored Core For Answer earlier today. Actually, I am already a significant distance into my second playthrough already. It is surprisingly fun to play through old missions using a new NEXT configuration and different strategies, but the real fun of the second playthrough is to be found in the game's large number of missions and branching story. After all, I completed only around half of the missions available in the game and saw only the first of three different endings. This game has a fair amount of replay value.

One thing I really do like about the game is that it actually has found a good structure that combines a classic and flexible formula in which you choose your next mission from a list with a story that progresses forward and branches out. In this system, you choose from a number of missions for each of the chapters of the game, unlocking more missions as you complete earlier ones. After completing a certain number of missions, the remaining missions become unavailable, and you must choose between a small number of particularly difficult and plot-important missions as the final mission for the chapter. Completing that mission ends the chapter, progresses the timeline, and begins the next chapter. As far as I can tell, what chapter-end missions become available is determined by your starting affiliation and what missions you completed in the chapter, and which chapter-end mission you choose determines what plot branches you fall into. All told, this seems like a great system for telling a story in a structure designed to let the player have a significant choice regarding what missions he plays.

The problem with Armored Core For Answer is that it has a lot of trouble actually using missions and the chapter structure to actually tell an interesting story. As I mentioned in my last post, this game could really use a glossary of terms and organizations, and after completing the game I think it could probably use a better glossary of characters, too. To be perfectly honest, I really had no clue who I was fighting in the final battles of the game, and even less of an idea of why they were attacking the place that I was defending. I know that some organization called ORCA came out of nowhere and attacked the "Cradles" that are important in the game's story, but it is never clear why they are doing what they are doing. I know that ORCA is endangering the lives of countless people, and I know that the League that controls the Cradles seems vaguely sinister, but beyond that I don't understand the conflict at all (after I already beat the game!). It makes it hard to relate to a story and make a meaningful choice between different sides and branching plot paths if the reasons for the games central conflict, as well as the goals and personalities of the most important characters, are totally opaque to the player.

I suppose the main problem is that the game is entirely built around missions, and yet the game designers really didn't put a lot of work into telling a story in the missions themselves. About all the plot you get from the missions themselves are a few lines of dialogue, but thee game doesn't provide you enough context to make these bits of dialogue coherent. One of the best places for developing a story would be in the mission briefings, but those are a total wash. I mean, the penultimate battle of my first playthrough was against a pair of powerful NEXTs being piloted by top officers of ORCA (I think), but all the mission briefing did was tell me about the location of the mission, and didn't even mention that I would be fighting NEXTs, let alone who was piloting them. In the battle itself, the different characters participating said some things that should have been interesting, but since I had neither any idea who the enemy pilots were or what they were trying to achieve, everything they said was essentially incoherent and meaningless babble. Ultimately, the plot of the game is entirely told through the short pieces of narration that occur between every chapter, but those are so short, distant, and lacking in detail that they don't really convey the real depth of the story at all.

The most frustrating part of all of this is that I know that someone created a fairly sophisticated and entertaining story for this game. It has a detailed, unique setting and a number of characters with personality and goals, and all of this changes across a number of significant events. However, the game doesn't make a serious attempt to actually tell that story, so the player is left with a bare-bones summary of the plot and a few brief but fleeting glimpses into the story's true depth.

As one final complaint, I will say that the ending I got on my first playthrough is probably not the ending I would have chosen, and the path I may be leading towards on my second playthrough is not what I would expect given what I have chosen so far. As a whole, there is a pretty huge gap between the nature of most missions and the plot consequences of choosing between those missions, which means that it is very difficult for the player to choose his own fate unless he already understands the game and its plot very well. I would consider this to be a severe mistake on the game designers' part.

Armored Core For Answer: Learning the Game

2008-12-31T23:31:00.000-08:00

One of the new games I got as a Christmas present to accompany my brother and I's new Xbox 360 was Armored Core For Answer, a mech action game. This is the first game in that series that I have ever owned, and only the second I have ever played for more than a moment (the previous one being Armored Core 2 Another Age). I was a bit nervous about the game, really, since I disliked the controls and clunkiness of Armored Core 2, but after getting used to For Answer, I am really beginning to like it. However, my original concerns were not completely without merit, since it has taken me several hours with the game to even begin to feel like I have a grasp on it, and there are still things that occasionally crop up and give me difficulties. This game has an awful learning curve.

Controlling your NEXT (the powerful humanoid war machines in the game) can be an incredibly daunting task at first. I suppose someone more familiar with FPS games would be a bit more comfortable with the movement/aiming/turning controls, but added on top of that is the unusual combination of the jump/flight button and the boost button, so that the same button can either make you move over the ground more quickly than usual or make you fly into the air, which takes some practice to master. The real trick, though, is adapting to managing the slow turn speed, the lack of a reliable lock-on function, the easily misled camera, and the differing walking, boosting, flying, and quick boosting speeds in order to use a relatively clunky machine to fight incredibly high speed battles. Enemy NEXT units are important foes, and they can move incredibly fast. Unless you can move just a fast and still retain a high degree of control, the game can be brutally difficult and frustrating. This difficulty made earlier Armored Core games fairly unapproachable for me, and it took me hours to really get the hang of this one, even though I think it is a bit easier to manage the NEXTs of For Answer than the Armored Cores of older games.

The reason that the game controls have such a high learning curve is because the game designers probably wanted to give the player a number of tactical options and wanted to make the experience seem a bit more realistic, but this method does have downsides. I mean, having a difference between a NEXT's walking speed and ground-boosting speed creates an important choice for the sake of walking in order to resupply energy more quickly or boosting in order to move more quickly and avoid shots, but since walking is suicidally slow, you pretty much need to be at least boosting at all times in order to get anywhere and avoid fire. This means that, in anything other than the limited "simple" control set-up, you pretty much need to be holding down the boost button at all times, which seems a bit redundant, creates the annoying dual role of the boost/flight button, and gets in the way of using my index finger to switch my active left weapon. The need to switch between arm weapons and shoulder weapons, and the associated time delay, seems to be another oddity of the game controls. Other features, like the ability to disengage lock-on by depressing the left control stick or the ability to purge weapons by hitting three buttons at the same time, just seem more like traps designed to occasionally interfere with the player than useful control options. Trying to add more features and controls than the console's controller can actually easily support is never a good idea.

Beyond the learning curve of the combat control scheme, there is also a steep learning curve built into the game's NEXT customization system. This system is an incredibly important part of the game, and by its nature is going to have some kind of learning curve, but the game designers really didn't do anything at all to address that issue. Most importantly, my eternal nemesis of poor documentation has risen its head again... The game really doesn't even try to explain what the dozens and dozens of stats given to the weapons and parts in the game are for. Sure, some of them are reasonably obvious, like "Blast Radius" or "Ballistic Defense", but countless others can take a bit of work and effort to figure out. Fortunately, the game designers implemented a color coded part comparison system so you at least know if increasing a number is good or bad, since without that it would have been impossible for me to figure out as much as I have. I still don't have a clue what the "Parallel Processing" stat does, though. Still, even though I am beginning to understand what each of the individual stats means, I don't really get how they all add together to affect gameplay.

For example, look at the Stabilizer customization option. You can add all kinds of stabilizer parts to adjust the stability of your NEXT along with two different axes, which also adds to your Control Calibration stat, but I don't really know how these attributes affect actual battles. It seems like it should be important, given that affixing stabilizers might be even more complicated than assembling the body of a NEXT, but I don't have a clue what having a top-heavy mech or one with a heavier right side than left side even does. Does it affect the NEXT's mobility? Does it throw your aim off? I don't know, and I have even less of an idea what Control Calibration does. The manual seems to imply that you might want to adjust stability to something other than a zero-zero center of balance, but it doesn't say why you might want to, which defeats the entire purpose. I would say that it is nice that they at least gave you the choice to automatically set stabilizers, but that function doesn't ask for input and can't even figure out how to get the NEXT to a zero-zero center of balance, so it seems useless. The whole thing presents itself as being incredibly important, and it can take a lot of time to get a NEXT tuned "right" (which must be redone every time you configure a new set of weapons or parts), but I really don't know why I am doing it, which makes it a chore rather than something interesting. At least it occasionally helps add to the aesthetics of the NEXT...

Finally, even the plot of the game could use a bit more explanation. A glossary or something would be nice, since the game likes throwing out terms like "Lynx", "AMS compatibility", and the like with surprising frequency, but it never really explains them. Even more annoyingly, the only place where game describes some of the important factions that are central to the plot in detail is in a burst of text that appears if a mission takes an unusual amount of time to load, and those fade too quickly to read. I know there is quite a bit of world detail and plot in this game, but the game doesn't do much to really present it to the player properly.

Overall, this game really doesn't do anything to make it approachable to new players, even though there is a very sophisticated and fun game behind the high learning curve. It really is a shame.

Devil May Cry 4: Nero

2008-12-31T23:28:00.000-08:00

Introducing a new main character into an established and popular franchise is very tough. The poor fan reception of Raiden from Metal Gear Solid 2 is proof of that. However, I think Capcom did a very good job of bringing in Nero and selling him as a cool character. I think that this is in large part due to how the developers went out of their way to emphasize that Nero is a very different character than Dante, as opposed to being a clone or a replacement.

From the beginning, it is obvious to any long-time fan of the Devil May Cry series that Nero plays very differently from Dante. While he still uses both a rapid-fire gun and multi-hit sword combos, Nero's specific combos and special moves work very differently than Dante's. Furthermore, instead of copying Dante's styles or ability to weapon change, Nero uses the Exceed system and the very powerful Devil Bringer. The Devil Bringer in particular differentiates Nero and Dante, since it forms the core of Nero's fighting style, especially against bosses. In fact, even though Nero and Dante will both fight the same bosses, it is noticeable that very different tactics are needed. While Dante can count on superior mobility and long-range firepower, most of Nero's strategy focuses on finding opportunities to hit enemies with his Devil Bringer's Breaker attack. The two character's Devil Trigger abilities and appearance are even significantly different.

The Devil Bringer is certainly a fun weapon, particularly since there are custom animations when Nero uses it against bosses or various normal enemies. Nero's Exceed ability, which let's him charge up his sword to get more powerful sword attacks, allows for some pretty spectacular combos as well. Unfortunately, it is pretty obvious that these powers are new additions to the series, and thus need some more refinement. Despite being the power that distinguishes Nero the most, there is surprising little to do with Devil Bringer. The player can pretty much just use Snatch to close the distance with the enemy and Breaker to unleash a punishing throw. While Nero later on gains the ability to hold an enemy as a shield, that rarely seems to work like it is supposed to and ends up feeling like a minor side-note. I would have liked to see a lot more functions and upgrades for the Devil Bringer, such as the ability to throw an enemy away from Nero, choke an enemy, or something else like that. Exceed can also use a little more work, since I ended up forgetting about it more than half the time. While it is possible to easily build up a single level of the Exceed gauge by using Exact, that isn't enough to allow use of the more powerful Exceed 2 or Exceed 3 abilities. And while Exceed attacks look cool, no enemy seems to have a particular weakness to them, so there often isn't a whole lot of point to building up the Exceed gauge. Still, Nero's abilities were well-executed enough that I actually missed having them when time came to switch to Dante.

The game developers also did a pretty good job of differentiating Nero and Dante's personalities, even though they are both generally cut from the same mold. Even though both characters fought many of the same bosses, their banter with the bosses and general behavior is very distinct. While they are both cocky and confident, Nero tends to be short-tempered, straight to the point, and serious, while Dante tends to be relaxed, joking, and generally more of a show-off.

Finally, I think the story of Devil May Cry 4 did a good job in making Nero feel like an interesting and important character. Metal Gear Solid 2's big mistake was in hyping Solid Snake as the main character in most of the promotional material for the game, making him the starting playable character, and then doing the surprise character swap to Raiden a quarter of the way into the game. That process made Raiden into an unexpected and unwanted replacement for Solid Snake. In Devil May Cry 4 though, Nero was very much at the forefront of the trailers and demos for the game, so players went into the game expecting that there would be a new playable character. Making Nero the starting character also gave him a chance to establish himself and his role in the story early. The end result is that even someone like me, who is a big fan of Dante after playing the previous games in the series, ended up liking Nero a lot.

Devil May Cry 4: Continues and Gold Orbs

2008-12-27T23:04:00.000-08:00

I got Devil May Cry 4 for Christmas, and I have already cleared through the end of Chapter 9 already. Despite some early worries about the game's difficulty, Devil May Cry 4 has proven itself just as exciting and intense as it's predecessors. In fact, the designers at Capcom have made some noticeable improvements to the game that make the game's difficulty not nearly as big of a pain as in Devil May Cry 3, by bringing back an improvement made in Devil May Cry 3's Special Edition.

In the original version of Devil May Cry 3, as well as in the first Devil May Cry, the player needed to use up rare and expensive items called Yellow Orbs in order to continue from a checkpoint. This was always the thing that frustrated the most in Devil May Cry 3. The bosses in Devil May Cry 3 were almost always located at the end of long and difficult stages. At the same time, every major boss in DMC3 was very dangerous and difficult in its own right. For example, I originally died to Virgil four or five times, which means that I had to trudge through his stage five or six times in a row. Now then, I am someone who enjoys difficulty, but having to replay the same stage all of the way through multiple times is more annoying than fun. I have always felt that tough challenges are always more fun if you have the chance to try it again immediately after you fail.

The Gold Orb system, which was added as an option in Devil May Cry 3 Special Edition and returned in Devil May Cry 4, gives the player the ability to continue from a checkpoint as many times as he likes. It really came in handy for me when I challenged Bael, the boss of Chapter 4 in DMC4. I probably fought Bael around seven times before I finally managed to crush him for good. If that fight was in DMC3, I would have had to trudge through the entire stage over again after dying. Instead, I got to fight him seven or so times in a row without interruption. Not only did it take less time with less frustration, but it let me focus on experimenting and fine-tuning my strategy. In Devil May Cry 3, I usually just gave up after a point and ended up using items to help me beat a boss and just avoid the frustration; but in Devil May Cry 4, I was free to enjoy the challenge of the fight itself more.

At the same time though, Devil May Cry 4 still rewards those players who get through a stage without dying. After my seven consecutive fights against Bael, my score for Chapter 4 was absolutely terrible: I only got a D rank. Compared to my typical A and B ranks, that D is a blight on my record. So to improve my overall score, I will probably go back and challange Bael again, this time armed with knowledge gained from my earlier hard-fought victory. So, the challenge of beating a stage without dying still exists in Devil May Cry 4, but it is no longer a requirement for progressing through the game. I think that this is how it should be.

Samurai Warriors 2 Empires: Battles

2008-12-27T22:33:00.000-08:00

I really should finish talking about Samurai Warriors, even though I have been pretty thoroughly distracted by Christmas stuff as of late...

The battles in Samurai Warriors 2: Empires are quite a lot of fun. They combine action and strategy elements in a very effective way, so that both are extremely important to success. Because battles can only be won if you control bases, it means you can't just wander around killing every enemy you come across. Instead, you need to strike a balance between attacking enemy strongholds and protecting your own, which means that the nature of the battle is constantly changing and you need to stay on your toes in order to keep up with it. That ever-changing and unpredictable nature of the Samurai Warriors battles is what makes them so exhilarating.

Of course, it is more than just the struggle over bases that keeps battles unpredictable. The formation system, in which you and the enemy have competing formations that can add a lot to the strength of either army, but only for the team with the stronger formation, means that the entire tide of battle can be turned around amazingly quickly when formations change, so making good use of the system is essential. Also, each of the many maps of the game is distinct and memorable, with battles on open fields, mountains, the decks of ships, and sprawling castles. What is more, the attacking and defending positions are almost always totally asymmetrical, so even the same map can behave very differently depending on which side you are on. The changing conditions of each battle, with everything from cannon-fire to erupting volcanoes affecting the situation, also adds a lot of variety. Of course, the large number of characters with fun and diverse fighting styles and capabilities helps a lot, too. This really is the game series that sets the bar for adding variety and tactical depth to action games.

Still, despite how much I like the game, nothing is perfect. For one thing, I really don't like the fact that you immediately lose the battle when the player is defeated. While forcing the player to sit back and wait to re-spawn isn't exactly ideal, since there is nothing worse than being forced to sit back and do nothing in a game, it seems like there could be some penalty that didn't lead to total defeat (particularly with how penalizing defeat is in Empire Mode). This problem is exaggerated by how difficult it is to even fight normal grunts with some characters, especially anyone who is low-level and doesn't have almost any moves yet. Actually, the raw imbalances with the effectiveness of some characters, particularly with the ability to deal with large groups of soldiers or multiple enemy officers, is a pretty major problem in its own right. Far too often, it seems that I just get caught in a hopeless juggling game between multiple enemy officers and soldiers, and my health vanishes incredibly quickly, yet some characters can fight themselves out of such a situation without a lot of trouble.

I think that about sums it up. I already returned the game to the rental shop, so I will need to wait until I actually own a game in the series and have played it some more in order to say anything more detailed.

Samurai Warriors 2 Empires: Empire Mode

2008-12-24T22:49:00.000-08:00

Wow, it has been a while since I last blogged...

In order to tide me over the last few days until Christmas, I rented Samurai Warriors 2 Empires a few days ago. This is actually the first time I have ever played a game from Koei's "Musou" series, and the first game in the imperial strategy genre I have played since a few really old and pretty bad SNES games. I was pleasantly surprised with how fun and addicting this game is, on both its strategic empire management level and its tactical action game level.

Focusing on the strategic side for now, I am truly surprised that they created an empire management game other than Civilization 4 that has actually managed to grab me enough that I completed an entire scenario and unified all of Japan in two days. Buying Romance of the Three Kingdoms IV for the Virtual Console was a recent reminder of how much I really used to get bored and frustrated with the genre, and why I lost interest in it years ago, but now I realize I may not have been giving the evolution and refinement of the genre enough credit.

There are a lot of reasons this game in particular works so well. For one, the strategic side of the game is fairly streamlined and focused, and is built entirely around acquiring, managing, and improving the soldiers and resources you need in order to fight the tactical battles that are at the game's core. Details like food supplies and the happiness of the citizenry, which at best only have a minor effect on the actual tactical battles, are extremely simplified and reduced down to being minor and easily managed numbers. Having troop numbers be a property of officers, so you can manage the replenishment and movement of troops simply by working with the officers in command is also a nice touch, that keeps the emphasis on the way battles are fought and keeps the system easy to use, and gaining additional troops is a nice side benefit of leveling up officers. Finally, the "Consult" system that gives you get good advice, lets you accomplish more, and manage your empire more quickly by listening to your officers works very well. All told, the system is a lot of fun, though that does not mean it is perfect.

The game certainly has a few issues that can get bothersome. For one thing, you can only freely "Decree" most kinds of policy only after one of your generals has carried out that command using the "Consult" system, which can be extremely frustrating when you realize that there were some great policies available that simply never came up. Even more annoyingly, you can only use various Tactics in Free Mode after purchasing said tactic using "Consult", even if you acquired that tactic as a reward for victory and used it in an Empire Mode battle, which brings me to the problem that you pretty much need to acquire everything in Empire Mode in order to use it in Free Mode. That makes the main advantage of Free Mode, the versatility, a little bit more annoying, though it isn't as problematic as the unnecessarily confusing way character growth carried over from different sessions of Empire Mode into Free Mode, or even vice versa (or even between different playthroughs of Empire Mode, which seems to defeat half the point).

Actually, the character growth problem only aggravates an even more significant problem for the game: the raw difficulty in just sitting down and having a few fun battles with your favorite characters. This can only be done in Free Mode, but in order to unlock every character for use in Free Mode you need to play through the full unification of Japan at least twice, in two different time periods. Because some characters only appear in one time period, the carry-over of stats can be a bit problematic when half the characters you want to use in the second time period start at level one, while everyone else is a monster (and yes, I know you can turn that off, but there are consequences to that I can't quite predict). The fact that some characters from the first playthrough ended up a monsters and others simply did not makes it even more complicated (and I don't even know how to correct that). Beyond just unlocking these characters, simply trying to use them can be hard. There are only two dozen or so characters that have unique character models and abilities (the fun and effective characters), but there are hundreds of generic characters who share the same role, and the game doesn't do enough to let you easily distinguish them. Even in Free Mode you need to scroll through the complete list of hundreds in order to even find one of the fun characters, and in Empire Mode they can be painfully hard to track down and acquire. If nothing else, there are three specific factions of Empire Mode that have a large number of distinct characters and at least a dozen more factions that are filled with nothing but generic officers, and the game doesn't give a new player any guidelines on which are the "good" options. Not to mention I haven't even seen Miyamoto Musashi yet... Ultimately, thanks to the amount of work you need to do, setting up a given Free Mode battles is too much trouble to really even be good way of having a good random match even if you have unlocked everyone for that mode (some more automation would be nice).

My last major complaint is that the game doesn't even really try to pretend that the player and the CPU both abide by the same rules. The CPU doesn't share the player's officer limit and CPU officers don't need to participate in a battle to gain experience like the player's do (another place where carrying over experience growth is problematic, though this one is weird even in across a single Empire Mode playthrough as you acquire more former enemies as player officers). Alliances with CPU opponents can be one-sided in their favor, since they can call on the player to help fight their battles but you can't call on them (if there is a way, I haven't found it yet). If you defeat an enemy province or push back an enemy assault, you would be lucky to have captured one or two enemy officers across the course of the battle, but if the enemy defeats you, then you stand a chance of watching nearly every officer who participated in that fight (and some who didn't) get captured, and since the CPU doesn't have a real officer limit, it means the enemy is likely to hire every good soldier in your army (including the fun and loyal officers you heavily depend upon). The last one is particularly bad, since it means losing isn't even an option you can really accept in the game, and it means there is a severe inequity in how easy it is to acquire new officers (particularly the powerful and fun unique ones).

One final, and fairly minor complaint I have about the strategic side of the game also extends into the tactical side. Namely, I can't seem to figure out if there is any kind of reasonable difference between generals and lieutenants. You bring an equal number of both into battle, so it is not that one outnumbers the other, and it is not really a reflection of power either, since you can assign any officer to be either a general or lieutenant. Only generals can give advice for the "Consult" option, but because you have so many the game tends to clog that option up with a bunch of generic characters (making the notable leanings individual characters have toward particular policies harder to sort out). It doesn't affect what they do in battle, since they all seem to act equally anyways. It seems like is either an unnecessary distinction or a failed opportunity, and if it is neither than it really hasn't come across in the game at all.

Still, I have been having a lot of fun with the game, so it certainly shines despite the flaws. Unless I get caught up with the games I will be getting as presents tomorrow, I will probably write about the combat side of the game next time. But for now...

Merry Christmas!

Grandia: Enemy Diversity

2008-12-11T21:44:00.000-08:00

While watching my brother play through Grandia over the last few weeks, one thing I notice is that, in certain parts of the game, there simply isn't a lot of variety to the enemies. Many field areas and dungeons in the game average have an average of four or so enemy types, a fairly reasonable number, if perhaps a bit small, but some places are far worse than that.

The places in the game with the worst enemy variety are almost always military bases full of soldiers. It seems to be a rule in that game that every dungeon or major scene that has soldiers as enemies will have exactly one kind of soldier for you to fight, that will always show up in groups of three. They don't even show up in multiples of three, even though up to nine enemies can be present in a single battle, and instead just stick to groups of three. Other games that feature battles against soldiers tend to mix up the kinds of soldier that you fight, mix in other kinds of creature with the soldiers, and change up the numbers, but that doesn't happen at all in Grandia. You don't even get to fight the tanks that are seen everywhere in these dungeons. Even worse, every solider in the game uses a recolor of the same soldier sprite, and the soldiers all tend to fight using similar attacks and relative stats, so every solider-based dungeon involves battles just like the previous soldier-based dungeon. It is an incredibly boring lack of variety.

Soldier dungeons are not the only places with that problem, as well. One other place in the game, the Twin Towers dungeon, has only two kinds of enemies, and one kind is found in a single room that is visited briefly by a single character. The rest of the dungeon is filled entirely with weird medusa creatures and nothing else. This is all the more remarkable because this dungeon is technically occupied by the same soldiers you fight elsewhere in the game, but you can't break up the monotony and fight them there.

A somewhat less extreme, but still relevant example is the Typhoon Tower, an important dungeon in the middle section of the game. This tower is broken up into three sections: the path to the tower, the area around the entrance to the tower, and Typhoon Tower itself. The path to the tower is filled with nothing but a single type of monstrous plant enemy, and is thus about as boring as a soldier dungeon. The area around the tower is actually halfway decent, combining the plant enemies with new "Klepp Soldiers" (a type of bird-man monster) and Lizard Riders (Klepps that ride lizards). The tower itself is filled with six types of enemies, but these are broken up into three types of Klepp soldiers and three types of lizard riders. This would not necessarily be bad, but each kind of Klepp solider comes in the same numbers as the other kinds of Klepp soldiers, tends to have similar stats as other Klepp soldiers, and uses the same attacks as other Klepp soldiers. They are technically different, but only in the most minor ways. The three kinds of Lizard Rider are equivalently similar to each other. Thus, they may be technically different, but fighting an Elite Klepp doesn't provide much in the way of a new experience compared to fighting a basic Klepp Soldier. Thus, even though there is quite a bit of variety of enemy type in the dungeon, it still ends up feeling very monotonous and dull. The first stretch involves fight a lot of plants, and the latter stretch involves fighting countless Klepps that all fight alike, so other than the initial introduction of the Klepps there really is a lot of repetition and little variety.

The truly depressing part of all of this is that some other parts of the game have quite a bit more variety. For example, despite its small size the Castle of Dreams has five enemy types, all of which are completely different from each other and four of which were never seen before that dungeon. They range from high-HP, low-defense zombies that are weak to fire and use status attacks to low-HP phantom mages that are highly resistant to attack and use powerful attack magic, with everything in-between being equally distinct. What is more, these enemies show up in varying numbers and practically each room has its own combination of enemy types, so there is a fair amount of unpredictability and diversity. Yet, the Castle of Dreams is a small optional area, while the monotonous zones are large and important to the story.

I will admit that Grandia makes such repetitive combat more interesting than some other games, because the player needs to constantly build up different stats and has a fairly wide variety of ways of doing that which you may need to cycle through, but it is easy to get sick of seeing a particular enemy group when you have done nothing but fight that one kind of enemy for two hours of gameplay. Even the best combat system gets dull if you don't get to fight new things once and a while.

The Fear of Over-leveling

2008-12-11T21:36:00.000-08:00

Strangely enough, one of the things I am afraid of most when playing RPGs is becoming over-leveled. This can have odd effects on my playing habits; for example, I often try to avoid normal battles when back-tracking through areas I have already cleared, just to avoid gaining unnecessary experience points. However, this fear of over-leveling comes directly from my love for a challenging experience. In many RPGs, in order to maintain a consistently high degree of challenge, the player has to keep his levels as low as possible, which I think can be a big headache.

In an RPG, the difficulty of an encounter is dependent on the relative levels of the PCs and the monsters. If the heroes have higher levels than the enemies, the battle will be comparatively easy, and if the heroes have lower levels than the enemies, than the battle will be comparatively hard. Now then, if the player finds an opponent to be too difficult to defeat, it is usually possible to gain a few more levels by fighting random enemies, which will make it easier to overcome the hard opponent. But if the player finds that a particular challenge is too easy, it is usually impossible to lose levels and make it easier short of starting the game over from the beginning. So once a player has over-leveled, it is hard to go back.

It can be surprisingly easy to become over-leveled as well. Nowadays, many RPGs are designed such that it is possible to beat the game without level grinding, even if the player goes straight towards his next destination constantly. At the same time, RPGs are usually full of side-roads and optional areas to explore, backtracking through old areas to do, and side-quests to undertake. However, exploring optional areas and taking on sidequests exposes the player to more random battles, which means more experience points and levels. So, if the game is designed to be beatable even if the player doesn't go on sidequests, then a player who does take on sidequests will find his characters to be over-leveled. Furthermore, since many RPGs don't give the player very many clues (or deceptive clues) about what level range is appropriate for specific areas, a player may not even realize they are becoming over-leveled until it is too late.

There are few different ways to avoid this problem. First off, the game designers can design the game such that the player has to normally level grind in order to clear the game's main challenges, as was the case in many older RPGs. Unfortunately, level grinding is itself a problem to be avoided, since it is simply not fun most of the time. A second option is to let players who want a greater challenge actually give up levels. This has been done in a few games: late in Wild ARMs IV and V it becomes possible to give up levels in exchange for rare items and equipment, and in Disgaea games it is possible to reduce characters back to level one in order to gain better stat growths. This can work, particularly if it become available early in the game and required level ranges are well advertised, though I have yet to see a perfect execution. Finally, one can design a game so the PCs level growth is strongly tied to plot progression. For example, in Chrono Cross, the stats of the characters are strongly linked to how many bosses the player has beaten. This is one of my favorite solutions, since it eliminates the problems of over-leveling and level grinding at the same time.

I guess the biggest contributing problem is that RPGs don't have difficulty settings often enough. If character level is the one and only factor determining game difficulty, then it makes the problem of over-leveling that much more prominent.

Grandia: Characters Leaving the Party

2008-12-02T22:04:00.000-08:00

Grandia is an unusual RPG in that it features a fairly complex system of building up characters and at the same time has multiple characters that leave the party permanently. Normally, it is very disappointing and disheartening when a character you have spent hours building up properly leaves, but Grandia has an interesting mechanic that helps alleviate this problem.

Grandia's ability system is built around building up a characters skill levels in their weapons and in the game's four magic elements. By building these skill levels up to certain pre-determined levels, a character can learn new special moves or magic spells. However, doing so can involve putting in a lot of dedicated effort and intentionally dragging out fights to acquire more skill experience points. Furthermore, giving a character access to one of the four magical elements requires the player to trade in a Mana Egg, a rather rare and valuable item. So, building up a character requires the expenditure of a lot of time and limited resources.

Normally, it is advantageous for a player in an RPG to neglect spending valuable resources on temporary characters. However, even knowing beforehand that certain characters in Grandia were going to leave the party at the end of the first disc, I still ended up building them up. I felt comfortable doing so because Grandia gives a consolation prize of sorts when a party member leaves for good: skill books that can be used to transfer part a fraction of the old character's skill levels to another character. So, if I spend a lot of effort building up the stats of a party member who will leave, I can give a part of those stats to either help a new party member catch up or to help a character get a high level move late in the game. In that way, building up a character who is going to leave becomes advantageous in the long-term, since if you don't spend the time building that character up in the first place, you won't have any skill levels to pass on to other characters.

Grandia II does something very similar to the original in this regard, but at an even better deal. When one of the game's characters leaves the party for good, the player gets a skill book that transfers that character's accumulated skill points and magic points in total to another character of the player's choice to do with as the player pleases. I think this approach to handling leaving party members is a lot more interesting than what happens in games like Final Fantasy V, where the party member who leaves is replaced by a carbon copy clone stat-wise.

There is a lot of story potential to be had from a main character leaving the party, and it would be a shame to let a game's ability system get in the way of that. However, you don't want the player getting too upset about a character leaving for game mechanic reasons, and giving the player a reward for putting time and resources into a temporary character is a great way to ward that problem off. It encourages the player to become more invested in every character, irregardless of how long the character is in the party.

Naruto Ultimate Ninja 3: Single-Player Modes

2008-11-24T21:39:00.000-08:00

Naruto Ultimate Ninja has two single-player modes, "Hero's History" mode and "Ultimate Contest Mode". Both could be described as story modes, with "Hero's History" mode being an extremely abbreviated adaptation of the Naruto manga's storyline and key battles, and "Ultimate Contest" mode depicting an original story. There is nothing like a traditional arcade mode, so you if you want to play the game, you only really have these two modes and the versus mode. As a whole, I found these choices to be pretty lackluster.

First off, when I say that "Hero's History" mode is abbreviated, I really mean it. This mode supposedly covers the entire first part of the Naruto manga and anime, but it cuts out a very large number of events and battles, so the entire thing can be settled in about an hour of play. Most of the characters in the game don't even show up in it at all, the focus is very clearly placed on Naruto Uzumaki's battles to the exclusion of most others, and there are no branching paths or alternate versions of events at all, so it is fairly unimaginative and pretty much has no replay value. It is obvious that this was not the main focus of the game.

"Ultimate Contest", on the other hand, is fairly elaborate. Rather than being a linear series of events, it lets you freely control Naruto as he explores the Hidden leaf Village and participates in the original story. This could have been really fun, if it were not for the fact that the original story is a fairly simplistic tournament plot and you really have nowhere to explore except the village. The plot really is just a shallow excuse for a number of battles against other ninja, which would be fine (this is a fighting game after all), if it were not for the fact that the set-up limited the player to using Naruto almost exclusively, made him fight pretty much nothing but the other Leaf and sand ninja that are his own age, and placed all of the battles in an extremely limited sub-set of the game's many fun battlefields. So, the main plot of the "Ultimate Contest" mode has no real variety and a boring plot.

In addition to the tournament plot, "Ultimate Contest" mode features a number of events and missions you can undertake, which help you gather money you need to unlock bonus material (voice samples, movie clips, etc) as well as expand your repertoire of jutsu for the customization system. Fortunately, you can actually use any ninja you have unlocked for this mode in the event and mission battles, but unfortunately the events and missions don't really focus on battle at all. An event is just as likely to be a mix of completely brainless fetch quests (AKA scavenger hunts where the items you need to find show up on your map) and minigames as it is likely to contain a battle (and battles are often combined with fetch quests and minigames). What is more, most of the rarest and most important items you can acquire, the ones that allow customization of each character's strongest Ultimate Jutsu, never require battle at all. Some of the challenge battles found in this mode can be fairly fun, but as a whole, despite this being a fighting game, there simply isn't a lot of fighting, certainly nowhere enough to let the player try out all of the game's characters, Ultimate Jutsu, and customization options.

"Ultimate Contest" mode also has an experience system that lets ninja level up through battle and completing missions, but this system never really seems to matter (most battles can be won as easily with a low-level ninja as a high-level one). Actually, since other than the battles where you have to use Naruto there are practically as many battles as there are characters and most of the time every character gains experience at the same rate, there really isn't a lot of purpose to trying to raise levels for anyone.

The one thing I want out of the single-player modes of any fighting game is a chance to fight a number of battles using all of the different characters in the game. In both original fighting games like Street Fighter, Soul Calibur, or Guilty Gear and high-quality licensed fighting games like the DBZ Budokai series, a variety of arcade modes and versatile story modes fill this niche very well. Despite the strength of its battle system, Naruto Ultimate Ninja 3 just doesn't have this as an option, and thus falls flat. At least it has a decent versus mode...

Grandia: Conversations in Town

2008-11-24T21:37:00.000-08:00

Every year in the month or so leading up to Christmas, I end up pulling a game that I haven't played in years out of the depths of my collection. This year, I decided to restart the Playstation version of Grandia (a game I have mentioned on this blog before) and finally sit down and beat it. It didn't take me long to be reminded how long it takes to talk to everyone in a town in this game. Since a town can have two or three dozen characters, and each character has anywhere from one to five things they say, it can easily take an hour or more to properly talk to everyone in a town. In the first ten hours of the game, I spent significantly more time talking to people than exploring dungeons or fighting monsters. Yet, I don't regret doing so in the least, since the NPC conversations in Grandia are almost always entertaining.

Unlike in many RPGs, where NPCs just give a few lines of generic back-ground information to the player when talked to, talking to NPCs in Grandia is used to help flesh out and develop the main characters. Instead of just quietly listening to the NPCs, the main characters of Grandia talk to the NPCs, ask them questions, and make jokes to each other. If an NPC mentions a future dungeon, Justin (Grandia's energetic main hero) will respond and talk about how excited he is at the prospect of going there. Seeing the characters' reactions to this kind of information really helps flesh out their motivations, interests, histories, and random personality quirks, without dumping all of this information on the player as part of the story. Since the main characters talk to each other too, it helps develop what the relationships between the main characters are like as well.

The NPC conversations in Grandia also do an unusual good job of revealing how famous the main characters are in the community and what their reputation is. The NPCs always address the main characters directly, often by name (if they know it), and often talk about what they know or think about the characters' actions. For example, when the party first arrives in a town, most of the locals point out that the main characters look like they are not locals, and the main characters are usually full of questions about the town. However, after some events and dungeons, the locals have become more familiar with the main characters and their exploits. They become more familiar with the main characters and start praising them for their heroic actions. Since the main characters are generally treated with the levels of respect and recognition that they deserve in these conversations, there is something very genuine about them that makes the world of the game more engaging. It also helps reinforce to the player that his actions have had an effect on the game's world.

Finally, the conversations in Grandia are entertaining because they are usually hilarious. Like in many Game Arts games, the characters in Grandia run the gamut from cooky to eccentric to downright insane. The witty, light-hearted nature of Grandia is one of the reasons I enjoy it so much.

Shadow of the Colossus: Pathfinding and Exploration

2008-11-21T21:13:00.000-08:00

It is safe to say that a player will likely spend a longer amount of time riding around on horseback in search of the Colossi than actually fighting them. Fortunately, this is actually a pretty fun experience. Even though there are no enemies to fight or puzzles to solve outside of the Colossus battles, the simple act of exploring the game world, seeking out one's targets, is very enjoyable in of itself. If anything, adding unnecessary complications would have detracted from this experience.

A great deal of the enjoyment I have derived from Shadow of the Colossus's exploration comes from the lack of guidance given to the player on how to proceed. Since the game's map is not marked with destination markers and is vague enough to be nearly useless, the payer is given only two clues on finding his next target: a short, cryptic description of the area by Dormi, and the Light of Guidence, which shines from the player's sword in the direction of the next Colossus. However, since the Light of Guidance needs to be actively checked by the player, only works when the hero is standing in strong sunlight, and only points in the relative direction of the next target and not the best path to reach it, the player often has to expend a lot of energy searching for his next destination. I have gotten lost numerous times while searching for a Colossus, and I often end up taking the long winding route instead of the short route. I have had to back-track, guess my way through winding canyon roads, climb up tall objects in a forest to find good sun-light, and so on numerous times in my search for the Colossi. Yet, I have often had a lot of fun doing so, since the act of trailblazing and pathfinding through a sprawling world is such a novel experience for me. Far too often, game developers make it far too obvious where the player's next destination is, or make it impossible to go too far off-track. This approach destroys the chance for the player to enjoy the search itself.

The lack of dangers and monsters in the game helps keep the focus of the experience on the journey itself. As it is, while riding around on Argo, I sometimes was reminded of stories of heroes riding great distances through forests and over mountains on a quest. If I had to get off my horse and kill goblins every few minutes, it would have broken that trance-like feeling. It would have also turned exploring the game world into a repetitive chore. Right now, Shadow of the Colossus is not a very repetitive game. Each Colossus provides a different challenge than the last, and each journey in search of a Colossus is different as well. Adding in minor enemies to populate the world would have required the player to fight the same meaningless battle over each time he passed through a certain area, which would have distracted from the newness of the journey itself. It would have dragged the travel portions of the game out too much as well.

Another thing I like about the exploration elements of Shadow of the Colossus is that it rewards the player for experimenting. During my search for the third Colossus, I noticed a lizard running across the canyon floor nearby. Seeing as how I had a bow, I decided to see if the game would let me hunt and kill the lizard, which it did. It even left a tail behind, which I could pick up. Later on, I discovered a lizard with an unusual white, glowing tail. When I killed that lizard and picked up the tail left behind, I discovered that my grip gauge had increased slightly. The game's manual hadn't even mentioned that there were power-ups in the game, so this was a pretty big discovery for me. After a bit more exploration and experimentation, I found fruit hanging from the branches of a tree that I could shoot down with a arrow and eat to increase my maximum health. These benefits are so slight, they are unlikely to turn the tide in an actual Colossus battle, but they do serve as a very effective reward for a player who takes the time to experiment and explore the game world. In particular, I like these rewards since they reward the player for doing what a person in that world itself would realistically do: hunt animals and gather edible fruit for food.

One final aspect of the exploration element of Shadow of the Colossus that I enjoy is the way Argo, the hero's horse, behaves. When the hero is riding Argo, the player doesn't directly control Argo's movement, he controls the way the hero commands Argo. So, getting Argo to turn the direction you want, get up to a full gallop, or stop can sometimes involve frustration and perseverance. On the other hand, Argo is also capable of following winding, narrow trails and such without a single button press from the player. In fact, it is sometimes easier to navigate by gently nudging Argo in the right direction, then letting him make the turn by himself. This make Argo seem like a real animal, instead of just a vehicle, which is a first in my experience.

It is very rare for me to find a game like Shadow of the Colossus where getting to your destination really is half the fun.

Naruto Ultimate Ninja 3: Ultimate Jutsu

2008-11-21T21:01:00.000-08:00

Recently, I rented a copy of Naruto Ultimate Ninja 3, which I have been curious about for a while now. It is a pretty fun game, though it doesn't really break a lot of new ground (it is very similar to the DBZ Budokai series, after all). The core combat system of the game is very good, and they do a lot of interesting things to keep things interesting and stay true to the series. I particularly like the variety of thrown weapons (especially the character specific ones) and the fact that even a character's basic attack combos make use of far more than just basic punches and kicks (like Naruto's long-range Shadow Clone attacks and Tayuya's wide-area flute attacks). This does a lot to give the game far more variety than the typical anime tie-in fighting game and keeps true to the wide variety of fighting styles seen in the manga and anime (one of the manga's strengths). There are a wide variety of more powerful and cinematic "jutsu" attacks that you can give to the characters with the customization system, but you can can only equip three to a character at once, so the variety in basic combat ability is really important.

I would touch on the existence of a system to customize jutsu for each character, but it is fairly simplistic in this game, if refreshingly flexible, so I think I will instead write about the more powerful "Ultimate Jutsu" attacks that each character possesses. Most characters have several of these moves, of which they can only equip one at a time. They are hard to hit with, and once you actually hit with one you go into a button-pressing contest against your opponent while watching the attack animation, which affects the effectiveness of the attack. Also, after the attack hits, many ultimate jutsu cause the user to either transform or enter into a temporary state of heightened ability, or causes the target to enter into a weakened state. This set-up is fairly good, but there are a fairly large number of flaws.

One of the first flaws is due to an eternal source of frustration for me: poor documentation. In the customization screen where you equip Ultimate Jutsu you can see how much damage the jutsu will inflict and how many bars of the Chakra Gauge it will consume, but you can't see whether it enters the character into a powered-up state, what that state would be, and what the effects of that state are. This gets particularly frustrating when a character has at least three different powered-up states, six to eight different Ultimate Jutsu, and not all of his jutsu trigger powered-up states, like Sasuke Uchiha. I know "Curse Mark Activated" and "Curse Mark Chidori" activate "Curse Mark Mode" (and I have a general grasp on what that mode does), and I have memorized that "Ominous Chidori" activates the "Curse Mark Mode 2" transformation (which is completely different than the Curse Mark Mode in every possible way), but while I know that "Sharingan Activated" activates the "Sharingan Mode" (which copies the enemy's move-set), there is no easy way for me to remember whether it is "Lion's Barrage" or "Chidori" that also activates "Sharingan Mode". This gets even harder with something like Temari's "Cyclone Scythe" attack causing her to enter into something called "Heaven Dance Mode", which isn't even directly related to something from the manga or anime (and I have no clue what it actually does). I don't even want to mention my confusion regarding Kiba's "Two-Headed Wolf" attack and transformation... Needless to say, more documentation and possibly some cleaner design could have helped this mess quite a bit.

Another complaint concerns the button-hitting contest that occurs when an Ultimate Jutsu is triggered. This feature is pretty useful, since it lets the person being hit by an Ultimate Jutsu do something to defend himself even after the blow connects, and I like the way the contest is balanced towards either hitting at normal power (in most situations) or being slightly weakened (if the defender is slightly successful), with the more extreme situations (critical damage or attack interrupt) only occurring if one side dominates the contest completely, making it far more fair than the "either it hits or it doesn't" mentality that made similar competitions in some of the DBZ Budokai games so frustrating. The real complaint is that this essential competition takes place while the attack animation is in progress, forcing the player to pay attention to a small corner of the screen and miss parts of the attack. A small complaint, but it seems like a waste to have such detailed animations and then punish the player for paying attention to it. Even putting the contest cues at the center of the screen rather than the corner would have helped.

One thing that seems strange to me about the Ultimate Jutsu/Transformation system of the game is that it often feels unnatural to transform into a form after launching that form's ultimate attack. "Ominous Chidori" is Sasuke's Curse Mark Mode 2 form's ultimate attack from the manga and anime, but you use it before entering that form and you can't ever use it after transforming (since transforming disables Ultimate Jutsu). It just doesn't seem to go in the order it should. Certainly, this order works well for the "Sharingan Activated" and "Nine-Tailed Power" attacks that portray a character transforming, as well as moves that inflict a penalty like Itachi's "Tsukiyomi" attacks, but not for the true ultimate attacks.

One final problem is that it seems too limiting to only be able to equip one Ultimate Jutsu for each fight. There are around 140 Ultimate Jutsu spread unevenly amongst the 40 or so characters, often resulting in some characters having far more Ultimate Jutsu than they can actually use across any reasonable number of battles. More importantly, the limitation of only being able to use a single kind of Ultimate Jutsu in any given battles means there is no opportunity for the player to make important strategic decisions in the middle of battle. The only choice is whether to use the Ultimate Jutsu you equipped or not. This seems particularly limiting since several characters have whole chains of Ultimate Jutsu that would logically be chained together. For example, Rock Lee has his "Primary Lotus" attack, followed by three increasingly powerful "Hidden Lotus" attacks that follow the "8 Inner Gates" progression from the manga. The Hidden Lotus attacks portray a series of moves in which Lee is increasing his power one stage at a time, each move following the last, but you can only equip and use one in any given battle. Naruto's three "Rasengan" attacks work in a similar manner, with each being the strongest attack of one of Naruto's three main states. If the game actually had a system that let the characters iteratively improve their power and change their currently equipped Ultimate Jutsu accordingly, which would work well with many of the Ultimate Jutsu attacks and reflect the way battles are fought in the source material, then the last two problems I complained about would go away.

Still, problems aside, I have to say that the designers behind the Ultimate Ninja games know how to create really impressive attack animations. The music and art style of this game is great.

Shadow of the Colossus: The Experience of Fighting a Giant

2008-11-19T22:44:00.000-08:00

I recently got my hands on a copy of Shadow of the Colossus for the first time a few days ago, and it has completely blown me away. Shadow of the Colossus provides only one major gameplay experience: fighting giant monsters by climbing onto their backs and stabbing weak points. However, by focusing on polishing that one gameplay element to perfection, the developers have created a real masterpiece of a game. From beginning to end, one of the fights against a Colossus reveals the tremendous amount of effort that has been put into making that one experience enjoyable.

I have fought and defeated six Colossi so far in the game, but I am still impressed by the size of the monsters every time. Intellectually, I realize that most of them are all about the same size, but I am somehow fooled into thinking each one is bigger than the previous one. Part of this effect is probably due to how hard it is to see the entire body of a Colossus at once. As long as you are reasonably close to one, its entire body will not fit into the screen. If you are far enough away to see the entire body of the Colossus, then it is easy to be surprised at how much bigger it looks when it finally draws close. Furthermore, the game's camera is usually around the same height off the ground as the hero is when the hero is standing on the ground. So, the game camera has to tilt upwards to view a Colossus, magnifying the appearance of its height. Another trick they used to magnify the already considerable size of the Colossi is by filling the game world with terrain that dwarfs the hero, and then making the Colossi even bigger than that terrain. I am pretty sure they are slightly upping the size of the Colossi as the game proceeds too in order to keep the "wow!" factor going.

The one area where the developer's careful eye to detail really shines is in the physics and movement of Wander and the Colossi. The hero's movements are not stiff or simple. Rather, he is always stumbling as he gets up after a jump, walking unsteadily across a moving surface, and being thrown around like a rag doll as he desperately holds onto a gigantic monster's shaking back for dear life. The way the Colossi walk around, shake their heads and backs, and flinch from bow or sword hits is also very natural looking and life-like; the Colossi convincingly behave like living creatures. Furthermore, the way they visibly tear the ground apart with each step and create massive screen-blurring shockwaves with their attacks strongly emphasizes the incredible power that their size gives them. The physics of the game is important to this overall effect too, since the hero really can be pitched from the back of a Colossus if the player makes a single misstep.

Most of all, the experience of fighting a Colossus is so strong and exciting because it is an honest, fun challenge. Fighting a Colossus has all of the elements of a boss-fight, a platformer stage, and a puzzle rolled into one fluid package. Since the Colossi are always moving, reacting, and attacking, the player has to constantly stay alert and keep his eyes on what it is doing. At the same time, getting into position to attack a Colossus's weakpoint is never a simple process since it involves exploiting the terrain, tricking the Colossus into doing something stupid, and/or hampering the Colossus with well-placed attacks. The game also has incredible platformer elements: while I have made a lot of jumps in a lot of videogames, I have never made a death-defying jump from a monster's swinging elbow to its waist before. Shadow of the Colossus expertly melds all of these game elements into a single fast-paced, visually stunning thrill ride.

Equipment vs. Accessories

2008-11-19T22:15:00.000-08:00

In my last post I condemned the "equipment tax" in RPGs, the situation where most of the wealth acquired by the player is spent on maintaining the status quo, so now it is time for me to praise the exact opposite situation, where most of the wealth acquired by the player is spent on resources that change the status quo, particularly things that give the player new abilities and add new strategies to the game. This kind of situation is relatively rare in RPGs, but it is not unheard of.

To start thing off, I want to say that I have always been incredibly fond of the stereotypical "Accessory" equipment slot seen in many RPGs. Accessories are classically the one kind of equipment that gives you cool things, rather than just add to numbers. Even if it is something as simple as giving a character immunity to a status effect, accessories actually have the potential to change the way you fight battles. What is more, their value tends to be much more even across the length of a game than equipment that exists only to modify math. Even the cheapest status effect immunity accessory found in the first shop in the game can be invaluable at the end if there is an enemy who uses that status effect. Accessories only become more valuable in the rare case where you can equip multiple, allowing you to combine their effects in any number of possible ways, such as with the great Final Fantasy VI "Relic" system.

Usually, the kind of equipment that modifies numbers only becomes interesting when it also has the kind of effect you usually see with accessories. For example, while the equipment in Persona 3 is otherwise a textbook example of the "equipment tax" at work, most items in that game have additional effects that boost evasion against certain elements, improve stats, give resistance to certain elements, or let you add status effects to your attacks, and these side benefits tend to become more common and powerful as you rise in level. The equipment tax effect limits the potential of this system, since ultimately you need to replace items with good effects with items that have higher mathematical power, but it still has some advantages. Even though the mathematical strength of the highest-level items is just one more iteration of a geometric progression, they are none-the-less more interesting because they have new, flashy, and powerful abilities attached to them, such as the ability to inflict every status condition at once or a large bonus to every stat. Some rare weapons even replace their usual physical damage with elemental magic damage. Because these effects are powerful and rare, it makes these weapons feel unique and interesting, even if their stats are nothing special.

Actually, I think just about every really good "ultimate weapon" in RPGs has some effect like those in Persona 3. The Atma/Ultima Weapon from the Final Fantasy series often breaks the normal math and bases damage on level and how injured the wielder is. The Ragnarok and Illumina swords of Final Fantasy VI add all kinds of special properties to attacks in addition to giving large stat boosts and having high attack power in order to secure the "ultimate weapon" position. The ultimate weapons of Final Fantasy VII are unique in having a full set of 8 paired Materia slots, in addition to possessing abilities that modify damage based on HP and MP totals. Even something as simple as the Rainbow's base 70% critical hit rate in Chrono Trigger can mean a lot. It is things like this that make "ultimate weapons" into something more than being merely the last weapons you acquire.

I really think that RPGs would be a lot better off if they simply replace the "iterative mathematical improvement" scheme with something much more valuable, where equipment provides interesting effects rather than large numbers. After all, Final Fantasy X used just that kind of system, and it worked incredibly well in that game. That game has all of the same properties as an "equipment tax" RPG, where new weapons are available at every stop and you progress from weak beginning weapons (those without any properties) to ultimate "Celestial Weapons" (that have incredibly strong abilities), but it works entirely on providing the player with different options and encouraging the player to buy things because he thinks they are worthwhile, not because they are strictly necessary. It is an excellent example of how well that kind of scheme can work, and I think it should be more widely emulated. Certainly, future Final Fantasy games and RPGs in general would be better off following in Final Fantasy X's footsteps, rather than go the path of Final Fantasy XII, with a central character customization system that exists to emphasize the equipment tax rather than actually enable customization.

Dokapon Kingdom: The Mid-Game Gap

2008-11-15T22:02:00.000-08:00

Just past the mid-point in Dokapon Kingdom, my brother has been caught in a trap of sorts caused by a flaw in the board layout of Dokapon Kingdom. Because the fifth continent of the game does not have a weapon shop of its own, it is really easy for a character who was behind the curve during the fourth continent to fall almost hopelessly behind the game's frontrunners, which may take characters out of the game disappointingly early.

The problem has its roots in the nigh-inaccessible nature of the fourth continent, the game's analog to South America. Not only does the player have to cross through three other continents to reach the fourth continent, but the fourth continent is cut off from the rest of the board by a forest dungeon that is approximately the size of a continent in of itself. Since the fourth continent is so far away from the rest of the board, a player can't afford to go there lightly. Now then, the fifth continent is connected directly to the early parts of the third continent, and is thus easy to access from the main part of the game board. However, since the fifth continent has no weapon store of its own, a player who wants to purchase new weapons during Chapter Five has to abandon the fifth continent and trek all the way back to the fourth continent's weapon store, placing that character very far behind the rest of the pack.

Because of the way Dokapon Kingdom's Story Mode is structured, two of the four players in my current game have been placed in this bad situation. During Chapter Four, when the towns on the fourth continent became up for grabs, Player 3 (a CPU) never even made it onto the fourth continent due to bad luck on movement rolls and in combat. Furthermore, my brother (Player 1) never got the right rolls to make it to the Weapon Store, even though he spent some time on the fourth continent. On the other hand, Player 4 (another CPU) and I did get out hands on up to date weapons and shields. Unfortunately for my brother, he didn't have time to stick around and buy weapons because Chapter 4's end of chapter event forced all of the players to quickly scramble back to earlier areas. Once that was completed, the fifth continent was open for business and became the focal point of the game, making the trip back to the fourth continent too time consuming to be worth it.

Unfortunately for my brother, not having up to date equipment is a serious draw-back. First off, it is very hard to take on the new, more powerful monsters of the fifth continent with weapons and shields from the third continent, and if a player can't kill those monsters, he will fall behind the level curve and be unable to capture towns. While it may be possible for such a character to beat some monsters, level up, and take a town, a character with better equipment will do those things faster and with less effort. Compounding the problem, it is nearly impossible for a under-leveled and under-equipped character to take on another player in direct combat. So, Chapter 5 has so far led to a significant widening of small gaps between players that opened up based on relative luck in Chapter 4. At this point, Player 3 has almost been completely shut out of the game, and my brother is going through hard times.

While it is necessary for a competitive game to eventually solidify the standings, this is much too early in the game for that. There are still two whole continents to go before the game is decided. Games like this are a lot more fun when it is a close race and most of the players have fair odds of taking the lead. Even though I am now in the lead, the current situation just isn't very satisfying. While it still remains to be seen whether or not Chapter 6 will give a chance for those who are behind to catch up, it might still be a very difficult task for those who have fallen behind due to the increasing power of enemies and the vast gains the leaders have made. What it all comes down to is that the game would have had a much more level playing field if the fifth continent had just had a Weapon Shop.

The Equipment Tax

2008-11-15T22:00:00.000-08:00

When you reach a new town in a new part of the world, you need to go to the weapon and armor stores in order to upgrade all of your equipment. It is a simple routine, and it has been part of almost every RPG I have ever played, going all the way back to Dragon Quest. This need to upgrade equipment at every new town occasionally gets altered, made more complicated, or even completely subverted, but far more often it is not. At its most basic, every character will get a new weapon and new armor at every town, and the growth in power of those items will scale perfectly in proportion with every other character's new weapons and armor. While this is perhaps the most common model for how characters upgrade equipment across the course of the game, it usually detracts from a game more than it helps.

In a situation where new, more powerful equipment becomes incrementally available as the player progresses through the game, the cost of this equipment will inevitably become little more than a tax the player has to pay. In such a structure, the game designer must design the game under the assumption that the player will always have the best equipment available. This means that a player who, for some reason or another, doesn't have the latest equipment will be at a disadvantage and have a more difficult time with the game. At the same time, acquiring the new equipment doesn't give the player any kind of new advantage (since the enemies will have equivalent increases in power to match) or new kind of strategic option (for this post, I am assuming that equipment only grants the usual bonuses to attack and defense, and new equipment only gives bigger bonuses), so acquiring new equipment only maintains the status quo. As such, the cost of the equipment is little more than the minimum amount of money (or whatever) that the player needs to pay in order to avoid a penalty and keep things the same as they were previously. In many cases, the need to pay off this "tax" can simply be a source of frustration and stress for the player (this has happened to me countless times), and may result in the player feeling required to spend a lot of time on boring activities (AKA money-farming/grinding) in order to progress.

If new equipment is little more than a tax to be paid in order to avoid a penalty, then it would be better off it that entire aspect of the game were removed entirely. After all, I have never actually missed the act of buying equipment in games that didn't feature it (Xenosaga Ep. II comes to mind). More importantly, it seems like it would be easier for the designers if there was no equipment, since it means they don't need to guarantee that there is enough money (or whatever) available for the player to pay the "equipment tax", it would mean that there would be fewer variables in character balancing, etc. If equipment is simply going to be improved incrementally, then there is no advantage to having it that would justify adding all that complexity. If there is some aspect of an equipment system that justifies its existence, it is usually only limited by an incremental upgrade system (for example, a rare and difficult-to-acquire weapon being completely replaced by a weapon found in an ordinary shop later in the game).

There are many games I can think of in which equipment adds a lot to the game experience, but none of these games have the stereotypical "buy new equipment for every character at every town" system. The Fire Emblem scheme, where weapons will eventually break and most of your equipment for the entire game is comprised of simple iron and steel weapons, makes equipment management an extremely important part of strategy and makes unusual weapons extremely important and memorable. In SaGa Frontier, pretty much all the equipment you will ever see is available to be bought from the start, but cash is so limited that you need one of the game's several infinite money tricks in order to ever buy anything, making the items you acquire through luck and exploration extremely important. In Final Fantasy III, inequality in the availability of viable equipment can be annoying, but at the same time it forces the player to adapt by trying out new classes and strategies. Both the Suikoden and the Super Robot Taisen games combine non-transferable equipment upgrades with very large teams of characters, so it is impossible to upgrade everyone, forcing the player to make tough decisions. There are many ways to make equipment work, but just buying a new, mathematically-superior weapon at every town is not the way to do it.

Dokapon Kingdom: Wandering the Map

2008-11-13T22:51:00.000-08:00

My brother and I have been playing a lot of Atlus's RPG/Party Game hybrid Dokapon Kingdom lately. So far, it has been quite a lot of fun. It has been a while since I have been hit so severely by the "one more turn" effect. Unfortunately, I seem to be chronically stuck in last place in the Story Mode run we are playing through currently...

One thing that strikes me about the game is that the game designers had a very good appreciation for the importance of movement in this game. Using items or field magic doesn't take up your turn, so unless you start your turn in the middle of a fight or are stuck for some reason or another, you will always be able to move, which is certainly nice. Also, items that affect movement form a very large fraction of the number of items in the game, ranging from common and cheap "1 Crystals" that let you move one space, to rare and expensive "Multi Crystals", "Super Spinners", and "Guided Warps" that greatly improve your movement capabilities in various ways and provide a powerful advantage (one CPU player recently got a huge head start and took first place thanks to a single Super Spinner). Since moving is what lets you actually do things in the game, and choosing where to move is probably the most important thing you do every turn, the fact that you are given many options that let you modify movement and don't have to worry about sacrificing movement in order to do other things help the game quite a bit.

I suppose that such would be attention natural though, considering that the mechanism for movement and the division of the map into spaces are the most significant "party game" elements in Dokapon Kingdom. The act of spinning the spinner to determine which space you land on is what makes it feel like a board game. When the game is working at its best, you can twirl the spinner, get any result, and figure out which space you land on would be the most advantageous, playing the game entirely by ear. For a lot of the time, the design of the world map really compliments this kind of play. Because the map has so many inter-connecting paths, small loops, wide loops, and a fairly interesting variety of towns, loot spaces, field spaces, and other special locations, you almost always have several interesting places to choose to move to. Unfortunately, the random element of the spinner has some severe drawbacks, as well, and this is revealed whenever you can't just play the game by ear and go where the spinner takes you.

One of the single most glaring flaws with the game is that it is both frequently very important to the game that you move to a single, particular space on the map, and nearly impossible to actually do so thanks to the randomness of the spinner. For example, you need to go to the single Dokapon Castle space fairly often across the course of the game (to deliver items, change jobs, get Pranks cleared, etc), and even if you happen to be on the correct side of the map (that castle really should be more centrally located), you still need to land on the castle space. The small, asymmetrical loop right in front of the castle means that you can usually reach the castle with 2 or 3 different results on the spinner if you are close enough, but even with that you can end up futilely trying to reach the castle for many turns. If the space you need to land on doesn't have a convenient asymmetrical loop right next to it, or even worse is stuck in the middle of a linear path with no branches, then you have no choice but to wait for a lucky one-in-seven chance and hope that the spinner doesn't catapult you far away from your target space. If the target space you need to reach is far away, then you need to hope that you don't get stuck with low numbers on the spinner for several turns straight. In these cases, items that modify the spinner go from being useful to being absolutely necessary, and the game can become pretty frustrating.

A large part of why this is a problem is that many, aspects of the game are time/turn sensitive. Every turn you are stuck trying to get into Dokapon Castle is a turn your rival players are using to capture towns, become wealthier, and grow stronger in a more lucrative location. Every turn you spend trying to land on the one space you need to land on in order to escape the Casino Cave is a turn where a time limit you have may be counting down, and an opportunity is slowly being wasted. Most importantly, every turn you are trying to do such a thing is a turn that you could have been spending doing something more interesting. Luck should be a factor in the game, but it should not be something that determines whether you are having fun or not.

Unfortunately, there isn't really any kind of easy solution to this. Items that modify movement help a lot, but they can't be acquired reliably (the only way to get one reliably is to seek out an Item Shop, which brings up the very problem that needs to be solved). Good map design, like the asymmetrical small loop in front of Dokapon castle, also helps a bit, but it is a bit inconsistent and doesn't really solve the fundamental problem. One solution would be to get rid of the randomness entirely, but that would sacrifice an important element that keeps the game fun. Perhaps a better one would be to minimize the importance of unique spaces, like Dokapon castle, dungeon entrances, shops, and the temples. If you didn't need to do things like go to Dokapon Castle in order to class change, go to a particular shop to buy the latest weapons, or go to a temple in order to reset your revival point, but instead could get those services from a larger number of spaces (the same way you could heal HP at any of the many towns), then a lot of the problem would go away. If you had a chance at being able to buy up-to-date equipment almost regardless of your current position, then the game would be much more supportive of just rolling with whatever number the Spinner gives you, which would be a lot more fun.

Dokapon Kingdom: Required Game Time

2008-11-13T22:27:00.000-08:00

My brother and I have been sinking a lot of time into the multiplayer party-RPG Dokapon Kingdom over the last week or so. It is a pretty fun and addicting game, with a lot of elements designed to encourage an exciting and competitive multiplayer environment. Unfortunately, right now I am concerned that that despite its billing as a party game, Dokapon Kingdom requires too much game time. Since even a limited game requires several hours to see through to completion, organizing a group of people to play a full game could be problematic.

To begin with, the game's story mode is certainly designed to be played consistently over a longer period of time. In the Story Mode go-through right my brother and I are playing right now, we are just short of the halfway point after playing for around ten hours. Playing through Story Mode to completion is probably a twenty to thirty hour task, which makes it pretty unsuitable for a party environment. Rather, Story Mode seems to be designed for a situation like ours: several family members playing the game together for short chunks of time over several days.

It is pretty clear that Normal Mode and Battle Royal Mode are the main game modes designed for party-style play. Even then, they can still be long affairs. A Normal Mode game set to length of 12 weeks (84 turns) took the two of us about 3 or 4 hours to get through. That means that a Normal Mode game of Dokapon Kingdom is pretty comparable in length to a fairly complex traditional board game: something someone has to devote an entire evening to. It really isn't suitable to be played for only and hour or two; a game lasting only a few weeks is too short for anything decisive to happen. Because of this, Dokapon Kingdom is a good choice for a gaming club or a group of friends with a free afternoon, but it isn't suitable for a short 1-hour game while waiting for other people to arrive at a club meeting.

Unfortunately, while Dokapon Kingdom can be played for only a few hours, even that much time is not really enough to get into the real meat of the game. The game world of Dokapon Kingdom is very large with a lot of depth; there is no way for a group of people to really take advantage of everything there is to offer in only a few hours. In particular, the class changing system of the game is very unlikely to come into play in a typical Normal Mode game. After ten hours in Story Mode, I have finally been able to access a second tier job, and from what I have seen it is unlikely that jobs can be acquired at a faster rate in Normal Mode. So, people playing Normal Mode are probably limited to playing the three staring jobs out of a list of about a dozen total classes. So a lot of the material that is in the game feels like it is going to waste in reasonably short games.

I admit that I do need some more experience playing Normal Mode and Battle Royal Mode games, but I currently do have some big concerns about how well the game will work in an environment like my old college gaming club. Still, I will probably give it a try some time, since the game can be a lot of fun. I will blog about it here when that happens.

Drama and Boss Battles

2008-11-11T22:14:00.000-08:00

Boss battles serve a lot of functions in videogames. They are a means of providing a gameplay experience that can't be found elsewhere in the game. They can serve as checkpoints to ensure that they player has built up his characters' stats or developed his own skills to the necessary degree in order to tackle future challenges. However, perhaps the most important function of a boss fight is to serve as the dramatic climax to a section of gameplay. A boss fight that is too short, easy, long, or boring can destroy the dramatic build up and leave the player disappointed with the game experience.

First off, a major boss fight shouldn't die too easily. If the player ends up killing a boss in only a few attacks, the entire boss fight will feel anticlimactic. One recent example that comes to mind is the final battle against Kefka in Final Fantasy VI. When my brother finally made it to Kefka's final form, Kefka began to dramatically charge up a powerful attack, only to die before executing it even once. That victory felt too hollow, and I was pretty disappointed by it. I am not saying that every boss in a game needs to be nail-bitingly hard, but they shouldn't be too short. At the very least, a boss should last long enough to show off its abilities and make the player feel like he has to work to defeat it. If Kefka had possessed the same stats as normal but had two or three times the number of hit-points, it probably would have been a much more exciting boss fight.

Conversely, a boss fight should not be too long. If the player is stuck fighting a boss for half an hour or more, he may end up forgetting about all of the build up and anticipation and end up bored or frustrated. A good example of this is the battle against Anubis in Zone of the Enders: The Second Runner. When fighting Anubis, the player alternates between long periods of dodging and waiting and very brief opportunities to attack Anubis. While this is not necessarily bad in of itself, Anubis has an incredible amount of health; more than enough to absorb a few dozen attack combos. What this means is that the player has to repeat the same maneuvers again and again and again over the course of a really long period of time, which is simply boring. The fight would have been much more exciting if Anubis had half of his current health or less, balanced by an increased power level.

Striking a careful balance in terms of a battle's length and difficulty is a difficult process, However, there are ways to maintain a boss battle's dramatic tension, or even to build tension, within the boss battle itself. If a boss is constantly changing attack patterns and evolving its strategy as the fight progresses, the player will remain engaged and excited. This can be further enhanced by having dialogue and short plot-sequences intermixed with the boss battle. A great example of these devices in action is the final showdown with Ganondorf at the end of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. As the fight progresses, Ganondorf slowly figures out Link's fighting style and starts blocking attacks that worked earlier in the fight, forcing the player to come up with new strategies of his own. The battle pretty comes in three phases, starting with Zelda giving Link some assistance using the Light Arrow, then a phase where Zelda is knocked out cold and Link has to fight on his own, and finally moving on to a phase where Link a Zelda have devised a strategy of bouncing Light Arrows off of Link's Mirror Shield. In a sense, the boss battle has a story in of itself that progresses as the battle progresses. By making a boss battle into an evolving story, the scene remains dramatic, even if the battle itself is fairly lengthy.

In the end, I think it is safer to lean on the side of a longer boss battle, but to spice up boss battles with evolving elements and some degree of internal story. That way, one can avoid the problem of a boss battle being anticlimactic or boring.

Transformation Costs (Another View)

2008-11-11T22:13:00.000-08:00

It is pretty rare for this to happen, but I really disagreed with certain elements of my brother's last post concerning transformation abilities in various videogames. For various reasons, I like many of the transformations systems that he didn't like and don't like a lot of the systems that he did.

For example, I love Shadow Hearts' demon transformation system. It is a system that lets the main hero, Yuri, be both the most flexible character in the game and still prevents him from being able to do everything at once. If you transform into a powerful Light form like Sandalphon, then you gain access to strong light-elemental attack and get vastly improved magical defense, and if you transform into a Fire form like Forron you can use fire spells and get greatly improved physical strength. In his base form, Yuri can only either use a basic attack or transform, so these specialized demon forms and their unique powers make up the entirety of his ability set. They cost Sanity Points, which are fully restored at the end of each battle, but because it is actually much harder to restore Sanity Points during a battle than something like HP or Magic Points, and powerful transformation cost very large amounts of Sanity, it means that you can't freely switch forms in the midst of a fight. Once you have transformed, your SP will be too low to risk another transformation. Thus, the real cost of each form is the opportunity cost of the abilities granted by every other form, which works very well since each individual form has an incredibly limited array of moves. Rather than being an ability too costly to use often, Yuri's demon transformation is the core of his power.

As for the entire "dramatic tension for boss battles" argument, I will pretty much completely disagree. Just because Yuri can use his strongest transformations in every battle doesn't mean that his transformations can't add a lot of dramatic tension to a boss battle. For one thing, my brother forgot to mention the one use for Sanity other than transforming: warding off the "Berserk" state. Every turn each character's Sanity decreases slightly, and when it runs out that character loses it and goes "Berserk". This really doesn't come into play for any character during normal battles, but it is a major factor in every boss battle. Depending on various factors, Yuri's demon transformation ability can make him extremely susceptible to this (using the penultimate Amon form frequently reduced Yuri to merely 3 Sanity when it was new, even with a cost-reducing accessory equipped). The boss fights are difficult enough that Yuri needs to use his strongest (and most costly) forms in order to win, so even though he has far more Sanity than almost anyone else, his transformations level the playing field so he is in the same tense situation as everyone else. Also, the fact that Yuri needs to use his strongest forms and powers magnifies a slightly hidden cost to using powerful transformations: the cost of the powers granted to each form.

Yuri's third-tier Dark form, Czernoborg, is much stronger than his first-tier Dark form, Death Emperor. Also, Czernoborg's main attack spell, Revelation, is much stronger than Death Emperor's Dark Messenger spell. However, just as the Czernoborg transformation costs nearly four times as much Sanity as the Death Emperor transformation, the Revelation spell costs nearly four times as much MP as the Dark Messenger spell. In addition, Revelation is a much more difficult spell to successfully cast, thanks to the game's Judgement Ring system. Revelation is the kind of spell you need to use in many of the game's later battles, but because Mp doesn't get restored between battles, it is just too costly and tricky to use often against normal enemies. If you want to actually use attack spells in normal battles, a weaker form with cheaper spells is a better strategy. Also, the powerful stat-boosting spells that define the different elements are only really useful in boss battles. As such, there was a pretty clear difference in both the forms I used and the way I used transformations between normal battles and boss battles.

Finally, I will say that the fact that you can use Yuri's demon transformation in every battle is a valuable benefit in of itself. If a character has a particularly defining ability, especially one that requires a lot of effort to manage and develop, then that ability should be useable as often as possible. If you work hard to unlock an ability, then you should be able to use that ability more than once. Since unlocking new demon forms for Yuri can be time consuming and tricky, that effort should be rewarded. If you could only justify using such forms in boss battles, then you get the situation where you have only four chances to use one of six different forms, which means a lot of effort can go to waste.

For many reasons related to why I like the Shadow Hearts demon transformation system, I don't really like the Breath of Fire 3 and 4 dragon transformation system. Where Shadow Hearts elegantly separates the cost of transforming and the cost of using a form's abilities so they use different resources, in the Breath of Fire games they both share the same resource, often leading to the transformation ending too quickly and many abilities being too costly (both transformation cost and ability cost increasing with more powerful forms is practically double-penalizing the player in such a situation). Also, particularly with Breath of Fire 3, the Dragon Gene system is a fairly large sub-system of the game that can result in countless forms, but you never really have a chance to use that many across the course of the game (the poor balance between the forms adds to this issue, since only a limited few forms are any good). As a whole, it results in a game where you simply can't use your main character's most distinctive abilities (or hardly any abilities at all), except for just a few rounds out of the occasional boss fight, and even then you will usually only be launching cheap, ordinary attacks.

As for some of the other things my brother mentioned, I agree that Knight Blazer is a good transformation (it is not central to the character's combat ability, so the fact that you can only really use it rarely works well, and the music change is a nice touch), and that Devil May Cry's Devil Trigger is nearly perfect. I just don't agree that Metis's Neo Orgia Mode is bad, though. I think my brother underestimates the real opportunity cost of the way Metis's AI routines change while in that mode, but I do agree that the fact you can't use it until the end of a boss battle is a bit problematic (it might be better if there was a finite limit to how often it could be used in a given battle, rather than the "Metis becomes helpless afterwards" limitation). I think that about covers it...

The Cost of Transformations

2008-11-03T19:11:00.001-08:00

Special transformations are pretty common in many videogames, particularly in RPGs, these days. By "special transformation", I mean the ability of a character to enter into a special state where they possess increased stats and/or more powerful abilities compared to normal. Including this kind of effect in a game can add a lot of variety to gameplay, and help make major battles more dramatic and exciting. However, if the price that the player pays in order to use the transformation is wrong, it can have a negative effect on gameplay. If the cost is too cheap, the player will use the transformation in every battle; too expensive, and the player will never use it all.

The reason that I thought of this topic is that I noticed that my brother occasionally kicked himself for not using Metis' Neo Orgia Mode during regular battles in Persona 3 FES. Neo Orgia Mode is a pretty potent transformation: it significantly increases Metis' stats, renders her immune to most status effects, and makes all of her spells and special attacks free, and it only has two limiting factors: it can only be used for four or so turns, and Metis operates under a more limited AI routine during Orgia mode. The turn limit doesn't really do much to limit Neo Orgia mode's use, since most regular battles in Persona 3 can easily be cleared in one to three turns. The turn limit only really applies in boss battles; since Metis becomes unable to act and vulnerable to attack after the timer runs out, the player is limited to using Orgia mode only at the end of a boss battle, often when the battle is in wrap-up mode. The main reason not to use Orgia mode in regular battles is that Metis doesn't fight very effectively while powered up. In my opinion, the added power and free use of spells more than makes up for that most of the time.

A game with a transformation system that works similarly is Shadow Hearts. In that game, the main character, Yuri, can transform into a demon to gain increased stats, elemental affinity and access to powerful magical spells. Whenever Yuri transforms, he has to pay a price in Sanity points based on the power of his demon form, as well as an upkeep cost at the end of every turn. However, since Sanity points fully recover at the end of every fight, and there are no other abilities which cost Sanity points, Yuri's demon transformations function in more or less the same way as Metis' Orgia Mode: a turn limit the player doesn't want to go over. Because of that, there is literally no reason for the player to not transform during every battle.

Is being able to transform during every battle a bad thing? In my opinion, it takes away from a very important effect transformations can have on a game: dramatic tension. Beyond just serving as challenging tests, boss fights are exciting because they are the dramatic climax to a stage or story sequence in a videogame. The player going all out with the abilities and powers at his disposal is a big part of the excitement and drama that occurs during a boss fight, and special transformations are a way to give the player a very tangible way of feeling like he is holding nothing back. So there would be nothing wrong with transformation systems that can be used all of the time like Persona 3's or Shadow Hearts' if they gave the player access to bigger and stronger transformations than usual during boss fights. Unfortunately, they do the opposite: the player has to hold back more than usual during a boss fight.

One system that gets it more of less right is the Dragon transformation systems from Breath of Fire 3 and 4. In both of these games, Ryu can transform into a powerful dragon form by paying a flat Ability Point cost during initial transformation, followed by a smaller upkeep cost every turn. Unlike Sanity Points in Shadow Hearts, a Breath of Fire character's Ability Point total is kept between fights, so the player can't go around freely using transformations if he wants to still be able to do so during the next boss battle. However, since the player has access to several levels of transformation with various costs, it is possible to afford using a weaker transformation during a tough regular fight. The biggest flaw of this system is that Ability Points are also what Ryu uses to cast spells, both in and out of his transformed state. So if the player wants to use Ryu's regular magic spells, he can't afford to transform (this was particularly problematic in BoF 3, where Ryu was the best healer in the game).

A very different system that also works well is one where the player has to spend turns accumulating power in order to transform. A good example of this is in Wild ARMS 2, where the player can spend 100 Force Points in order to transform Ashley into the powerful KnightBlazer. A similar example is Xenogears, where a mech has a certain chance to enter Hyper Mode after making a non-deathblow attack once it has achieved Attack Level 3. Both of these cases share two things in common: activating the transformation requires several turns of effort, and attempting to transform involves holding back with some other power. What this means is that, while the player can use the transformation in any battle, it is usually quicker to beat regular enemies with more mundane means. However, these transformations are a major factor in any long-lasting boss fight.

One factor that I like about transformations that are not designed to be used in every fight is that they can be used as a safety net of sorts if the player runs into a really tough random battle. For example, my brother used KnightBlazer to bail himself out of trouble when a random battle went against him quite a few times. It is somewhat comforting to have a powerful trump card to fall back on when an enemy turns out to be surprisingly difficult.

Perhaps the single best transformation system I have ever seen is Devil May Cry's Devil Trigger system though. In DMC, the player has a Devil Trigger gauge that is used for transformation. As long as Dante has at least 3 gauges filled, he can transform at any time, and once he transforms, the gauge begins to empty. The genius of it is that the gauge recovers quickly enough that the player can afford to use it during battles against tough groups of regular enemies, and even use it multiple times during a boss fight. However, the gauge recovers slowly enough, coupled with the minimum energy requirement, that the payer is strongly encouraged to be conservative with the Devil Trigger gauge. The system works beautifully.

There are a few ways to make transformation systems way too expensive to use. In particular, the price of giving up actions is not to be underestimated. Even if the price of transforming is simply giving up a turn for the player to actually transform, that may be enough for the player to choose against using the transformation, particularly if the player is in a crisis situation. Even more problematic is forcing the player to use only one character out of an entire party during a transformation as is the case with Breath of Fire 3's Behemoth transformation or with Final Fantasy X's Aeon summons. Going from three characters to just one results in significantly reduced combat power and adaptability. Unless the resulting transformation is extremely powerful, it generally isn't worth it.

A kind of transformation that is particularly bad is the kind that the player has no control over. Final Fantasy IX's Trance system is particularly bad, since it is an ability that takes a long time to build up, only to activate when the player least needs it. Another game with a similar system is Tales of Symphonia with its Break system.

There is a lot more material I could talk about, but I think I will cut it short here. My brother and I will probably be talking about this topic some more over the course of this week.

Persona 3 FES: The Story of The Answer

2008-11-03T19:11:00.000-08:00

I completed The Answer yesterday, and thus I have finally seen the entire story of Persona 3 FES. It has taken me a surprising amount of time to reach this point, especially considering that Persona 4 is slated to be released in just over a month from now, but it has been well worth it. Persona 3's story has been fun the entire way.

Other than the opening section that introduces Metis and the threat of the Abyss of Time and the final section, the plot of The Answer is built around looking into the various characters' pasts using the doors found at the end of every section of the dungeon. Because of this, even though The Answer is an epilogue to the main game it ends up putting a lot of focus on stories that occurred before those characters became important to the events of the game. As a result, these windows let you see previously hidden parts of the story and unknown character motivations. Many of these, such as the revelation that Junpei's father was an alcoholic and the effect it had upon Junpei, cast a new light on events from the main game, and they all add to the incredible depth and complexity of the Persona 3 cast. However, as much as they add depth to the characters, these scenes don't really do a lot to progress the story of The Answer itself.

One of the most important ideas of The Answer is that the characters are unable to move forward with their lives because they have lingering doubts and regrets concerning the death of the main hero at the end of the main game. In essence, the Answer is a story about grief, the loss of loved ones, and how to deal with that kind of pain. This theme is very powerful in the most important moments of The Answer, and it is brilliantly merged into the game with the constant pursuit of the main hero's shadow throughout the Abyss of Time, but it simply does not play into any of the "scenes of the past" other than Aigis's. As a result, the main theme doesn't show up in the only real plot sequences you see for the majority of the 30 hours or so of gameplay you need to progress through in The Answer. This is really the only significant complain I have about the game's story, and I think the rest is pretty impressive. Well, it gets a bit preachy towards the end, I would have liked to see more elaboration on and reaction to the revelation that Personas are just tamed Shadows (which was similarly understated in the Old Documents of the main game), and the ending is a bit weak compared to the ending of the main game (which was a hard act to follow indeed), but those are minor complaints at best.

One thing that deserves particular praise is the way the complete disintegration of the party and subsequent battle between former allies was handled. This kind of sequence can very easily feel forced or illogical, but here it is surprisingly believable and realistic, given all the complexities of the various characters. The schism in the team is portrayed equally as both a tragic mistake that the characters recognize as such, and a necessity born from the different perspectives the characters cannot reconcile, and is certainly the high point in The Answer's story. Also, the battles against your teammates are a lot of fun and fairly challenging, which helps.

Another thing I really liked was Metis. Beyond being a valuable new ally in the game, she was simply a likable character who played an essential role in the story.

Since this is probably going to be my last post concerning Persona 3 itself, I might as well say that I really liked exploring the Abyss of Time more than Tartarus, mostly because it was less monotonous than Tartarus was. Unlike the blocks of Tartarus that remained uniform throughout, the different sections of the Abyss of Time changed from time to time as you passed through them. Perhaps more importantly, the actual music playing in the background changed from time to time, so you aren't stuck with a single background track for the entire game, like in Tartarus. This helps make the game feel less repetitive, which is a much needed improvement. It probably doesn't go far enough (both dungeons are far too thoroughly built upon a limited number of possible corridors and rooms), but it does help.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Melee Stages

2008-10-29T23:46:00.000-07:00

Several of the stages in Super Smash Bros. Brawl are exact copies of stages from Super Smash Bros. Melee, carrying on a tradition started when Melee included three stages from the very first Super Smash Bros. game. However, I can't help but feel disappointed in how they went about bringing back past stages. Instead of simply re-using a handful of stages from Melee in their original form, I would have preferred it if the developers had completely remade stages using the improved graphical resources of the Wii and had kept more true to some of the stage traditions of the first two games. As it is, it feels like Brawl has abandoned too many of the classic stages of the previous games.

One big reason that I don't like the treatment of the Melee stages is that they feel far too cut off from most of the game. To start with, they are placed on a second stage-selection screen, which makes them harder to get to and remember than the new Brawl stages. Furthermore, none of the Melee stages appear in the games Classic or All-Star game modes. The older age of the appearance of the stages also contributes to their segregation from the rest of the game. The game designer's probably left the stages as they were because they wanted to retain a nostalgic quality from Melee for these stages. That unfortunately didn't work, because there are significant differences between the Melee stages in Brawl and their original incarnations in Melee itself, particularly in the real of stage boundaries and camera behavior. So instead of feeling nostalgic about these stages, I am constantly reminded about how they are only flawed emulations.

I think that it would have been much better if the developers had followed the other examples of how Melee converted stages from the original Super Smash Bros. game. Several stages in Melee were re-imagined or updated versions of stages from the first game, including Corneria, Brinstar, and Green Greens (three of the Melee stages in Brawl). Corneria in particular is a complete duplicate of the Sector Z stage from the first game; the only differences between the two is that Corneria has a different background and slightly updated graphics. Similarly, Brinstar is directly based on Planet Zebes, albeit with a modified platform layout and new interactive element (although the central gimmick, rising levels of lava, remains the same). Green Greens is directly based on the original Dream Land stage in that it features the classic Kirby boss Wispy Woods using wind to sow chaos on the battlefield. Furthermore, the Mushroom Kingdom stage in Melee uses a lot of the same design elements that defined a stage with the same name from the first game. So Super Smash Bros. Melee reimagined and updated stages more often than it simply re-issued them.

I think Brawl would have been better off if it had given the Melee stages this same treatment. Instead of emulating the Melee Corneria stage, inferior graphics and all, it could have updated the look of the stage based on the appearance of the Great Fox from Star Fox Assault, the most recent game it has been in. Brawl did do this for a few classic stages; Battlefield, Final Destination, Yoshi's Island, Pokemon Stadium 2, and Port Town Aero Dive are all re-imaginings or faithful recreations of previous stages using Brawls full graphical capabilities. Since the developers had the resources to create a massive single player adventure mode, there was no reason they couldn't have rebuilt the returning Melee stages completely.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl: Scores

2008-10-25T23:21:00.001-07:00

My brother and I have been playing a lot of Super Smash Bros. Brawl lately. We finally got around to seriously pursuing the task of collecting all of the character trophies. This has been giving me a lot of opportunities to try and play through Classic mode and All-Star mode to see if I can get high scores. However, in doing so, I have noticed one big problem in Brawl: the scores that the game hands out have no direct correlation to a player's performance. If anything, the game rewards a poor performance better than a really good one.

In Brawl, the player is given a score in Classic mode based on two factors: how much time is remaining on the clock, and how much damage the player did to his opponents during the match. If the player does a lot of damage to his opponents, he will get a higher score, and if the player wins the match quickly he will get a higher score. Unfortunately, these two factors work somewhat in opposition to each other. If the player wants to rack up a high damage score, he needs to deal a lot of damage to his opponents before knocking them out of the ring, but doing so requires time. So it is generally impossible to get both really high time and damage scores. In order to get a good score, the player needs to aim for some sort of equilibrium between the two, which involves fighting using an artificial style instead of a normal winning strategy.

In other words, Super Smash Bros. Brawl's scoring system doesn't reward the player for fighting a near-perfect match. The problem is even worse in All-Star mode, where time isn't a factor and thus the only way to score points is by doing damage to an opponent. Recently, I managed to K.O. an opponent in All-Star mode in one shot only a few seconds into the match, a near picture-perfect victory. However, I only got a tenth of the score I would otherwise get, since I didn't do any damage to my opponent at all before walloping him off the screen. And this has been a general trend: in my attempts on Classic mode where I felt like I was struggling or doing poorly, I often got higher scores than the attempts where I defeated my opponents easily.

The entire point of a score in a videogame is to serve as quantifiable evidence of how well a player did. If the scores a game hands out have no correlation to a player's performance, than those scores are completely meaningless. Under this light, the scoring system in Super Smash Bros. Brawl fails completely. The only place way it gives any direct indication of a player's skill is by halving the player's score if the player uses a continue, but since the original score is faulty, this only allows for a very crude estimate. Simply listing how many continues the player required would have been more accurate.

Brawl's scoring system could probably have been improved radically if it had continued the system of handing out bonus points that was used in Melee. While the bonuses were often arbitrary in Melee, they often did give a good sense of how well a player fought. Furthermore, since special bonuses can be custom-designed for specific situations, they can be designed to better fit a wide range of match types than a simple scoring scheme based on only one or two factors. The special bonus titles handed out in Melee were a lot more entertaining in of themselves too.

Persona 3 FES: Boss Battles

2008-10-25T23:21:00.000-07:00

One thing I have always liked about Persona 3 is its boss battles. Because there is a boss guarding each major checkpoint in both Tartarus and the Abyss of Time, as well as a number of story battles, there are quite a few of these in the game. The quality of these battles can vary greatly (some are fun, others boring), as does the difficulty (some boss battles are a cakewalk, but others are unfairly punishing), so there are some issues with consistency, but as a whole these battles add a lot of challenge and excitement to the game. They take an incredibly solid core combat system and push it to its limit, making them far more tactically engaging and fun than typical fare.

However, any praise I may give the boss battles of Persona 3 doesn't apply to the various Full Moon bosses and other story battles. For the most part, these battles are far too easy, since if you have reached the target floor in Tartarus that month, then the Full Moon boss is too weak for your current ability level (as a rule, the bosses you need to clear in order to make that target are stronger than that month's plot boss). Also, these bosses tend to overly rely on unusual gimmicks that eat up their turns, so they are usually only challenging if you accidentally stumble into the "bad" way to fight them, and are otherwise poorly designed. For example, one boss is split into two parts, one of which can revive the other, but while they are combined any damage is split between then evenly. As a result, by the time one of them is weak enough for the revival ability to matter, the one with the revival power is just as doomed as the other. In addition, there is no particular advantage for them when they are combined, so their entire gimmick of combining and separating is just a liability that adds little to the fight. Some other boss battles, such as those against enemy Persona-users, simply lack either complication or challenge, even though they are some of the most important to the plot. As a whole, many of these battles are disappointing.

If the story battles are disappointing because of an over-reliance on gimmicks and low difficulty, the battles in Tartarus may swing too far in the other direction. These battles are just straightforward battles against normal-looking enemies who don't make use of anything but normal attacks and ordinary elemental immunities, but they make use of these attacks and immunities in amazingly creative ways in order to provide difficult challenges. Unlike normal enemies and story bosses, you can't analyze a Tartarus boss's strengths and weaknesses, so they need to be determined through experimentation, adding a sometimes frustrating but often fun part of the battle (something resembling the Megaman "which weapon works?" game). In addition, these enemies play with the idea of what it means for something to be a "weakness". Rarely, they just have a normal weakness, which lets you abuse the "One More" and "All-Out Attack" abilities to defeat them quickly. Other times, they don't have a weakness at all, and you need to rely on critical hits in order to get All-Out Attacks. At other times, an enemy has so many resistances that the one thing they are not resistant to can be exploited as a "weakness". In some battles, the enemy has a weakness, but their attack power is so unfairly high that your only choice is to knock them all down and forego an All-Out Attack in order to leave them on the ground, slowly eating away at their health while keeping healed. A few bosses protect weaknesses behind active defensive spells like Tetrakarn and Makarakarn, which reflect physical or magical damage. At least one boss bends the idea of "weakness" so far that it actually takes almost no damage at all from the element it is weak to, so you are forced to make a decision between dealing damage and knocking it down. Many more rely on eating up player actions through status effects. Most of these tricks are used by normal enemies, so these boss battles are really nothing more than scaled up normal fights, but the raw offensive power of these bosses, which can destroy even a good team in only a few turns, combined with their large hitpoint totals, forces the player to carefully balance offense and defense in an efficient strategy in order to even survive, let alone win. Unlike far too many other games I have played, these battles really reward (or even require) good tactics and strategy, and their high difficulty adds a lot of excitement.

Of course, one issue about these boss battles is that they can sometimes be a little too brutal. Bosses that have no weaknesses and constantly attack with "Megido" spells (powerful attacks that hit all characters and have no element, meaning there is no defense against them) are unbelievably frustrating and far less fun than others. I suppose this is because there is literally no other way to beat such enemies other than to have raw power or get lucky. An important aspect of other bosses is that it is possible to prepare for them. Against enemies that use Fire attacks, you can bring Junpei and Koromaru (who resist Fire attacks), equip Fire-resistance items, and equip a Persona on the hero that resists Fire, which helps even out the battle against these foes. Against an enemy that uses Charm attacks, you can bring Personas that are immune to Charm and items to resist Charm. If an enemy has a Lightning weakness, you can bring Akihiko and equip a Persona with Lightning attacls. Unlike other games, doing this kind of preparation doesn't make the battle easy; it just makes the battle possible. This is because a lot of these abilities are restricted to the point where you can't just give them to every character, giving the team an incomplete defense that helps, but is still vulnerable. One of the strnegths of this game is that most boss battles are won or lost in preparation, and because of this the few bosses that you can't prepare for are simply overwhelming and unfun.

Anyways, the reason I delayed in making this post for so long is because I wanted to see the bosses in The Answer before making final conclusions, and I am glad I did so, because the boss battles of the Abyss of Time are even better than the Tartarus bosses. A major limitation of Tartarus bosses is that they come in homogenous groups. If you are attacked by a group of bosses all at once in Tartarus, you are guaranteed to fight a group of three identical enemies (all bosses other than the last one in each section are like this). This is more interesting than fighting single enemies all the time, but it is nowhere near as interesting as the non-homogenous boss groups in The Answer. In addition to making the "what is it weak to?" game more important, this adds prioritizing targets to the realm of strategies the player needs to consider (I never used the "Assign Target" command once in the main game, but it is important in The Answer). You have to choose between attacking weak enemies (who might get replaced by a bigger enemy's summon skill), killing a larger enemy, trying to kill them all evenly, killing the healer first, killing the status-effect monster first, etc. Often, even figuring out which enemies are the easiest to kill can be tricky. All of this makes good tactics even more important, and makes these battles very fun. What is more, The Answer doesn't seem to contain any unfair bosses that can't be fought with good preparation and strategy (with maybe one exception, but it doesn't use Megido), making the whole thing a lot more fun. I have not enjoyed battles like these in a console RPG for far too long.

Before I finish up, I want to make a special mention of The Reaper. That was one of the best optional super-boss battles I have ever seen. It was both incredibly difficult, but because tactics play such an important part of the game I managed to defeat it about 20 levels before I probably should have thanks to a good strategy and a little luck. That kind of thing is what I consider to be the best possible sign that a game is giving the right type of challenge.

Are Casual and Hardcore Good Distinctions?

2008-10-22T22:24:00.000-07:00

For the last couple of years, the biggest buzzwords in the videogame industry have been "casual" and "hardcore", which have been used to both describe general kinds of gamer, and the games that those gamers play. Supposedly, hardcore gamers are the people who spend most of their leisure time and disposable income on videogames, while casual gamers are those gamers who only play games occasionally. However, are these terms really accurate or useful? Despite how commonplace these terms are today, I can't help but feel that they serve more to obscure than to illuminate.

A big problem I have with these terms is that "casual" is really just another way of saying "not hardcore". Hardcore gamers are quite visible and well known in the videogame industry. Hardcore gamers supposedly make up the majority of console videogame players who have been playing for the last several generations, and their main genres include the major standbys of the last decade or so: FPSs, RPGs, and other games with complex plots and mechanics. The word casual sprung up in the last couple of years to describe the large influx of new gamers from the last several years who seem to ignore the big name games that the hardcore audience enjoys and prefer simpler games. The implication is that casual gamers and hardcore gamers are two completely separate markets.

However, I can't help but feel that there is a lot that is very misleading about the use of the casual like this. For example, the RPG genre is usually considered to be a hardcore genre. Yet, I have heard a lot of different stories about how a lot of people who generally don't play a lot of videogames are big fans of the Dragon Quest series of RPGs. Furthermore, I recently noticed on the Wii's Nintendo channel that Street Fighter II: The World Warrior is considered to be a hardcore game. Yet, back in the 90s, Street Fighter II introduced a lot of people who never played fighting games before into the genre. We also see examples like the Super Mario Bros games, which are typically rated as being Casual games despite their huge popularity among hardcore gamers. So it is nearly impossible to make a meaningful or clear distinction about the two groups.

The only common baseline about the difference between casual and hardcore games is that casual games are simpler to play than hardcore ones. Yet, this difference is really just a difference in how accessible a game is. Something that the industry seems to commonly overlook is that some games in a genre are more accessible than others. For example, most Dragon Quest games have much simpler gameplay and character customization than other RPGs. Someone new to RPGs could probably pick up and learn how to play Dragon Quest IV much faster than a game like Final Fantasy Tactics, which is so complicated that it has one of the most extensive tutorials in videogame history. SImilarly, it is much easier to learn how to play Street Fighter II than it is to learn how to play Guilty Gear X2. The talk about Casual and Hardcore games as different things obscures this fact.

Furthermore, much of the talk about casual and hardcore ignores that there are many different kinds of hardcore gamer. Nowadays, features like leaderboards, achievements, and the like are commonly added to games in an attempt to appeal to hardcore gamers. However, I am the kind of gamer who has never had any interest in those features, despite being a hardcore gamer by any other metric. The term "hardcore gamer" really describes a wide range of types of gamer, and many of these gamers have very opposing interests and play-styles. So it is impossible to design a game or game feature for hardcore gamers, which in turn means that the term "hardcore gamer" is not really useful from a game designer's standpoint.

The entire reason I started writing this article is that I stumbled across an article about the CCG, Magic the Gathering, written by one of its senior designers, Mark Rosewater. The article talked about how the Wizards of the Coast R&D team divides up their player base. From a quick glance, it is easy to assume that all Magic the Gathering players can be roughly divided into casual players who play the game occasionally and don't spend much money on it, and the hardcore players who show up to tournaments and purchase cards by the box. Yet, the designers of the game don't split up their players along these lines. Instead, the designers categorize their players as having one or more of three profiles: Timmy, Johnny, and Spike. Roughly speaking, Timmy players enjoy winning with big creatures, Johnny players enjoy creating and fine-tuning distinctive decks with special tricks, and Spike players just enjoy winning, by any means necessary. Some people also believe that there is a fourth kind of player, who play the game because they like the art and stories of the game. Now then, none of these categories really correspond to the concepts of casual and hardcore, since it is understood that there are both new, low-skill, low-dedication and experience, high-skill, high-dedication versions of all of these archetypes. However, these profiles are much more useful to the R&D team since they can actually design cards particularly for one of these groups.

I think that the videogame industry is missing something by just focusing on the terms casual and hardcore. They are simply not as useful of terms for designing games as some of the terms used by Wizards of the Coast for the players of Magic the Gathering. I think the game industry is going to need to develop a much more nuanced image of gamers as a whole.

Persona 3 FES: The Answer

2008-10-21T22:17:00.000-07:00

After a few months of distraction, I have finally got around to playing through "The Answer", the bonus epilogue story for Persona 3 that was added in the FES version. It has been a lot of fun getting back into the game, but I am surprised at how much a few changes can make to the game experience. The Answer has no passage of time, no Social Links, no Persona Compendium, none of Elizabeth's requests, and even no need to worry about character condition. The only goal is to reach the end of the new dungeon, the Abyss of Time, and every other distraction is simply gone. It makes the game a lot more focused, which matches well with the fact that The Answer is supposed to be a shorter extension to the main game, but also makes it a lot more repetitive. If it were not for Persona 3's great combat system and tactical variety, it would get boring.

Of all the changes between the main game and The Answer, one of the most notable is the fact that the story is now told from the perspective of former teammate Aigis, rather than the original protagonist. Using a different main character is necessary because of the story, but Aigis is an interesting choice. Based on the story of the main game, I would have expected Junpei or Yukari to have taken on that role. However, with the story being told in The Answer, it makes a lot sense for Aigis to take the lead, so it works well. I am glad that they gave Aigis the ability to use multiple Personas, just like the main hero did, since otherwise the game would be nearly impossible, but I wish that I didn't have to lose Aigis' Athena Persona in doing so. Giving Aigis a reliable fallback that leveled up with her would have helped differentiate her as a new main character a bit more, and would have helped balance out the fact that she can't make use of a lot of the tricks that made the original main hero so powerful. Of course, being able to ambush Shadows with a gun is nice, and I don't really mind the loss of Aigis' Orgia Mode thanks to Metis joining.

Metis is certainly one of the aspects of The Answer that I was not expecting. I knew that the character existed, but I had no idea that she would join the team, and I am glad she did. She has similar abilities to Shinjiro (heavy emphasis on raw power and physical skills, uses and axe), as well as access to multiple kinds of elemental magic and status attacks, which makes her very distinct from any other available character, adding something fresh and new to the game experience (which was very much needed). The fact that she uses Strike-damage Axes and Rods helps balance the weapons out a bit (since otherwise only Akihiko would have one), and the introduction of another user of wind and ice means that all four attack elements finally have two different people to use them. Rather than being a replacement for Aigis, Metis balances out the team perfectly in her own unique way, adding a lot. Also, her Neo Orgia Mode works beautifully, since the added ability to have free skill use and longer timer balance out an ability that was already too heavily limited by reduced control and limited time, turning Orgia Mode from something I forgot exists into something I regularly use in battle. Finally, mechanics aside, Metis is simply a good character who brings a new perspective to the characters and story that makes the small bursts of plot throughout The Answer more fun.

Another thing I was not expecting in The Answer was the fact that the Abyss of Time simply does not work the same way that Tartarus did. In Tartarus, bosses were always found immediately after shortcuts that let you freely move between that floor and the entrance (where you automatically healed and could save), so you could always fight a boss at peak condition. However, in the Abyss of Time, you need to defeat the bosses in order to reach the equivalent shortcut, which means that attrition brought on by fighting through the previous floors stays with you for the boss fights, so if you had to ditch a character on a previous floor, or your main healer has no SP left, defeating the boss may be impossible. Fortunately, boss fights come with some warning and you can save beforehand, so you don't need to worry about getting ambushed by one or having to fight your way down to one again because you lost, but it still adds a new element to the game that changes things up and adds to the challenge. It is not as hard as it would have been if the main game had this set-up, since there are much fewer floors to climb in each section of The Answer, but it does make me worry about saving SP a lot more than I used to.

Thanks to all of these changes, and my desire to finish this up before Persona 4 comes out, I have actually been getting through The Answer very quickly. It took me well more than 120 hours to clear the main game, but I cleared half of The Answer in only around 12 hours. This is mostly because The Answer is more focused and shorter than the main game, but it is also because the added focus has pretty much removed my desire to do anything but progress forward. In the main game, I constantly wandered aimlessly and worked hard to clear every optional objective and keep my whole team leveled up, but I don't see any reason to do that in The Answer. There are no side-objectives and Metis balances out my favorite Yukari/Aigis/Junpei team so well that I do nothing but progress onwards with that one team. It goes by quickly, but that speed is the one thing that keeps The Answer from becoming annoyingly repetitive.

Sin and Punishment

2008-10-17T23:12:00.000-07:00

I finally got around to downloading Sin and Punishment onto my Wii's Virtual Console yesterday. I have been curious about this game for a while now, but I don't think I was really prepared for what I was getting into. Certainly, I was not expecting the game to be so short. I downloaded the game yesterday and played through it for an hour or so, and restarted this morning (because I wanted another chance to make sense of the story) only to find that my original stopping point was more than halfway through the game, and I beat the game on my second session of playing it today. Normally I do not really mind short games, but in this case it seemed incredibly unsatisfying.

I suppose a large part of reason I dislike the length of this game is because it really limits what would otherwise be a really interesting story. Sin and Punishment's story is pretty complicated, involving an evil military force, an enigmatic "savior" with twisted schemes, rampaging monsters, a growing romance between the two main characters, and the monstrous power of the "blood of Achi" that links all of these together. However, this entire complex story is thrown at the player in a game that only takes two hours or so to beat, and suffers for it. The game doesn't even really have any kind of proper exposition, and the plot starts with the complete destruction of the rebel group the heroes are part of at the hands of the "Volunteer Army", a force that is hunting down a monster leading another group of monsters (a monster that seems to be a former lover of the Army's leader before she transformed into a dog thing), before the heroes decide to go steal a military transport for some unexplained reason. Also, the entire first stage of the game seems to be a dream sequence. The game progresses at such a rapid pace that the leader of the Army was explaining that he received his power from Achi before I even realized that this "Achi" person was the girl who was following the main characters around the whole time (I was around a third of the way through the game at this point). The ending of the game might be even more truncated than the beginning, since it feels like it suddenly transitions directly from a normal stage (which is pretty much just running through some fields) directly into the epic final battle (against some kind of evil Earth?), leaving a lot of the plot completely unresolved. There is simply too much going on in too short of a game. In addition, the game isn't really helped any by the often-incomprehensible dialog (I think this may just be poor sound quality on the voice-acting) and lack of English subtitles (seriously, every game with voice-acted cut-scenes needs subtitles).

Complaints about the story and length aside, this game is pretty good. It combines a classic rail-shooter with a free-moving character to a surprising degree of success. As the stage scrolls automatically, you can run from side to side or jump while freely targeting anything on the screen. The controls are a bit unintuitive (I had to switch from the default controls to an alternative just to keep myself from jumping when I meant to step right), and far too often the movement of both the character and the targeting cursor seems sluggish, but for the most part it works well, and a lot of my problems probably stem from the fact that the controls were designed with the N64 controller in mind, not the Wii Classic Controller. One thing that is certainly a problem, though, is the lock-on firing mode. In that mode, it can sometimes be pretty hard to actually lock onto a target, and once you do the slightest touch of the control stick will break the lock, pretty much defeating the point of having a lock-on mode (and what is more, some sources say that the lock-on mode does less damage than the free-shooting mode). Also, it would have been nice to have some visual indication of whether or not an enemy is in range of the sword attack.

Still, controls aside, I am amazed at how well the game designers at Treasure were able to use the basic system to provide so many different game experiences. The most common and basic type of area is the classic rail-shooter, where you are either running forward or standing still while there are a lot of enemies to shoot in front of you (in this case, running back and forth is used to dodge attacks and obstacles). In some cases, such as parts of the training mode or the "rescue Achi" boss battle, the game practically becomes a "rail-platformer", in which you have to quickly move to dodge pillars and jump to climb walls and clear chasms. At other times, all of the enemies move into the same 2D plane that the hero is running around in, and the game begins to feel more like a conventional 2D game (other than the cursor and the fact that enemies appear in the background and foreground). I do think that the game is at its best while the player is moving forward automatically as a rail-shooter, rather than as a 2D game, though, and I really question the decision to make the entire last level in the 2D style.

Overall, I would say that Sin and Punishment is a game that needed to have slightly more refined controls and quite a bit more length to help flesh out the story and give more time to expand on the different possibilities the game had to offer. I would have loved to play through a full level as "Monster Saki"...

Megaman 9: In the Image of the Old

2008-10-17T23:04:00.000-07:00

I downloaded Megaman 9 on virtual console yesterday, and I have been playing it quite a bit since. I have already managed to defeat all eight Robot Masters, and have made a couple of attempts on Wily's Fortress. There is something very nostalgic about playing a game deliberately made in the image of games from twenty years ago. The similarities go well beyond graphics: Megaman 9's gameplay is firmly based on the early Megaman games. However, there are also clear signs in the gameplay that Megaman 9 is not an actual NES game, and draws upon innovations and developments made in later entries in the franchise.

One way that Megaman 9 does strongly resemble the games it was based on is in its stage layout. All eight main stages in Megaman 9 generally scroll from left to right as the player advances, with occasional stretches of having to climb or descend vertically. There are no large maze-like structures, alternate rooms, or separate paths branching off from a central hub, which are all somewhat common level design features in later entries of the franchise. There are also no stages built around an unusual form of transportation (first appeared in Megaman 6, but popularized by X4). So the overall flow of the stages feels just like it did in the original games. One design element in particular that gave me a strong sense of nostalgia was having to jump down into pits in order to advance onward, going through a single intermediary room before reaching a new horizontally-scrolling area. I haven't seen something like that in any of the recent games.

Perhaps the biggest way that Megaman 9 emulates the original series is in its enemy AI, particularly in the way bosses fight. As the Megaman series advanced, bosses tended to have more attacks, more distinct weaknesses, and much more complicated AI routines. Megaman 9 returns to the era when many bosses just ran back and forth in their room, jumping and spamming their one weapon (ironically, these kinds of bosses are much harder to fight than smart ones). Unlike in later games, none of these bosses change their attack patterns and capabilities based on their remaining health or if they are hit by certain weapons. Finally, the only sign that a weapon is effective is that it does more damage than other choices, unlike in later games where a boss would often have a special damage animation.

However, there are a couple of ways in which Megaman 9 is clearly a later installment of the Megaman series; most notably, the addition of the shop and special challenges. The shop is clearly at odds with the 8-bit design of Megaman 9, since only Megaman 7 (SNES) and Megaman 8 (PSX, Saturn) have previously had shops. However, the addition of the shop itself is pretty, minor; it is the presence of bolts (currency) in the stages that really stands out. In particular, the sound made by game when Megaman picks up a bolt is not one of the sounds found in the original 8-bit games, which actually threw my brother off a couple of times (once, he thought I had picked up an extra-life instead). Of course, the challenges also stand-out as being new, since they are a completely new addition to the series.

A less obvious, but much more significant, difference can be found in the presentation of the game's story. The opening cinematic of the game is itself much longer and more involved than is typical for an old-school Megaman game. What really stands out though is the presence of several cut-scenes that occur as Megaman vanquishes the Robot Masters, in which Megaman recovers pieces of the defeated Robot Masters to be analyzed. This kind of sequence first began to appear prominently in the series in Playstation era. Furthermore, the game's story also involves the morally ambiguous fact that robots get shut down and dismantled after a certain term of service, a plot element that is much more similar to entries in the X and Zero series than the normally happy and carefree original series.

Overall, while Megaman 9 embraces the design of the earliest Megaman games, there are still tell-tale signs that it is a later product of the franchise. So Megaman 9 really represents a really interesting hybrid of the new and the old. With the apparent success of Megaman 9, I am curious if other franchises will be given this kind of retro treatment.

Megaman Starforce 2: Giga Class Cards

2008-10-14T23:14:00.000-07:00

All battle cards in Megaman Starforce 1 and 2, like the battle chips from the Battle Network series, are organized into three categories: Standard Class, Mega Class, and Giga Class. Of these, Giga Class battle cards are the most powerful and rare in the game. A player can normally equip only one Giga-card in his folder at a time, and the Giga-cards can only be found near the very end of the game. Unfortunately, despite their rarity and overall power, the Giga Class cards in the two Starforce games have been disappointing so far. While they have power, they just are not very visually impressive or cool enough to match all of the hype built into the concept of the Giga-class cards.

A big part of the problem is that many of the Giga-cards in the Starforce games are based on the attacks of the various bosses from across the game. The problem is that all of the more than 40 Mega-class cards are exclusively based on boss enemies too. For example, Taurus Fire has a set of three Mega-cards named after him that execute a spreading fire attack that does various amounts of damage, ranging from 100 to over 200 points, based on the specific Mega-card. However, there is also a Giga-card called Ox Tackle in both Starforce games that is also based on Taurus Fire. This card executes a linear charging attack that does around 500 points of attack. This just seems weird though, since both of these attacks are fairly basic attacks used by the same boss. If anything, Taurus Fire's spreading fire attack feels a lot more like his ultimate attack, particularly since there is nothing flashy or impressive about watching Taurus Fire shoulder charge an opponent.

In comparison, almost none of the Megaman Battle Network Giga-chips were based on regular bosses. Instead, Giga-chips were based on the most powerful and distinctive enemies in the series: the optional super-bosses Bass and Serenade, the various final bosses, and Megaman's powerful rivals Protoman and Colonel. So while a Giga-card would be historically appropriate for a character like Rogue (who both channels a lot of Bass and Protoman's style and is the most powerful enemy in Starforce 2), it makes a lot less sense for a minor throwaway villain character like Blizzard Yeti to be associated with a Giga-card.

Another problem is that the list of Starforce Giga-cards contains a lot of really bland choices such as Aqua +50, a battle card that increases the power of another Aqua element card by 50 points. While this card can be very useful in certain situations, it completely lacks any kind of style. There were support type battle cards in the Battle Network series, but those were cards like Folder Back, which had the unique effect of restocking the player's folder (allowing the player to repeatedly use powerful combos), and Hub.bat, which was not only based on a long-standing plot element from the series but also completely supercharged the user's stats.

A problem particular to Starforce 2 is the lack of a version-themed Battle-card. Ever since Battle Network 4, the player has usually received a Giga-chip/card that was based on the particular version of the game as part of the plot. For example, a player going through Megaman Starforce 1 version Leo will receive a Leo Kingdom GX Giga-card as part of the plot. I have always liked this tradition, since these Giga-chips have often been the coolest and most thematically appropriate Giga-chips of them all. In Starforce 2 though, the player gets a bland boss-themed Battle card in place of one of these.

Here are a few ideas on how to improve the Giga-card selection in future Starforce games:
1) Drop the boss-themed Giga Class cards. Rogue gets an exception.
2) Make the three Admin cards from Starforce 1 recurring. They were cool cards that are based on characters that are still out there somewhere.
3) Create more Giga cards that work off of the themes of the various games: constellations in SF1 and ancient civilization in SF2.
4) Make the cards based on the Final boss into normally available Giga-cards instead of rare tournament prizes that regular players never get to see. Version specific Le Mu cards that used Le Mu's vulcan, sword, or drill arm attacks would have been very cool.
5) Create interesting and flashy cards like the Phoenix/Death Phoenix pair from Battle Network 6.

Getting Giga Class chips or cards often takes putting in hours of work in a game's post-game section. The end reward should not disappoint. So every Giga card should be cool and exciting.

Megaman Starforce 2: Post-Game

2008-10-14T23:12:00.000-07:00

Just like with every previous entry in the Megaman Battle Network/Starforce series, just because you complete the main story of Megaman Starforce 2 doesn't mean you have seen everything the game has to offer. I beat the final boss over a week ago, and I have been playing the post-game since. While this may not be the first of these post game sequences that I have played through, it has certainly turned out to be an interesting one.

Every post-game in the series has been very different from the others. Battle Network 2 had a hidden dungeon area filled with a series of secret bosses that culminated in a second ending. Battle Network 3 had an extensive mass of labyrinthine areas, several normal secret bosses, two extremely powerful special bosses, and a whole series of special challenges that culminates in a rematch against an vastly improved version of the game's final boss. Battle Network 4 had... something I never qualified to see (thanks to a severely flawed game structure). They all differ greatly, and how much I have played through these different post-game sequences varies just as much. I almost completely cleared Battle Network 2's post-game (other than unnecessary 100% chip collection), I went very far into Battle Network 3's massive post-game, but couldn't beat BassGS and never saw the Serenade Time Trials, and I never really got into it for other games. A large factor in determining how far I made it was difficulty (such as the previously mentioned difficult BassGS fight, and the similarly hard BassBX fight in BN 6), but at other times there have been other factors involved. For example, I never even really started Battle Network 5's ambitious post-game simply because it forces you to acquire close to two-thirds of all the battle chips in the game in a very short period of time. These post-game sequences are always a lot of fun because of the focus on intense difficulty and big rewards, which helps balance out the sometimes too-easy main game, but they can be uneven in execution.

Megaman Starforce 2's post-game is probably one of my favorites so far. It is longer than Starforce 1's disappointingly short post-game, but much more manageable in size than something like Battle Network 3's post game. Also, unlike some, it paces out the difficulty properly so you don't have to force your way through an extremely difficult fight (like BassGS) in order to see large sections of it. Instead, almost the entire post-game is focused on a side-plot that is introduced right after you complete the game, progresses through a rematch with a powered-up "IF" version of every boss, and culminates in an appropriately difficult battle against a totally new enemy. The actual size of the post-game special area (the Alternate Future and Trans-Dimension zones) is much larger than ever before, which helps spread out the large number of new viruses better than before, making it easier to gather every standard battle card (a typical requirement for progressing through the post-game).

One particularly good feature of the Starforce 2 post-game is the way it has organized the "challenge gates" that are typical to the series. In most previous games, you had to pass through a series of doors that can only be opened by completing certain challenges, such as S-ranking every boss, gathering every card of a certain type, or acquiring every available transformation. These doors have typically been arranged so that you need to clear every one in order to reach the end of the post-game, but Starforce 2 changes it so that almost all of them are optional. Instead of unlocking them in order to progress, you unlock them to get special prizes, such as Giga-class Cards and powerful Abilities. In addition, a lot more of them have been added, including some with an incredibly high level of difficulty (defeat every SP boss in under ten seconds?!), transforming them from bothersome obstacles into fun optional goals.

If I have a complaint about this post-game, it is that the requirements needed to progress can be a bit too vague at times. The post-game starts by giving you a clue that leads you to the key needed to enter the post-game area, but how you are supposed to actually use that key is left vague, and is in fact very counter-intuitive, even if it is easy to do by accident. Much more notably, after defeating the boss of the Trans-Dimension you are instructed to find the 6 badges in order to find "true despair", but you don't get any hints on where to find these badges. The first five are easy enough to get (gather all Standard, Mega, and Giga battle cards, beat the game, and complete the Trans-Dimension plot), and are mostly gathered in the process of getting that hint, but the sixth isn't hinted at all. In order to get that one, you need to gather the first five badges and re-challenge the final boss, who has transformed into a much more powerful foe. This is not the kind of thing that you are likely to stumble across just by exploring the game world (particularly since I originally thought you needed all six badges to even fight the improved final boss), and I only found out about it thanks to looking it up at GameFAQs. This kind of poor hinting is something where just a small addition to the game can prevent a lot of frustration for the player, and the game mostly avoided the problem, so I was rather disappointed to run across it.

Other than that, my only other complaint is that the ultimate challenge of the game, the battle against RogueSX, is put in a bad place. In order to even reach this battle, you need to collect all six badges, defeat the improved final boss again, and fight RogueSX after the credit roll. Since you can't save between the boss battle and the RogueSX battle, it means you need to win one of the hardest battles in the entire game over and over again every time you even want to challenge RogueSX. Since it took me four tries to beat the powered-up final boss, and another four in order to beat him again and challenge RogueSX (a battle I quickly lost), I simply don't have the will to keep going at it any more. The entire thing is simply too tedious to bother with.

Still, this is the first Battle Network/Starforce game where I have even seen the improved final boss, let alone beaten it and collected all of the star badges, so I feel pretty happy with the game. The entire post-game simply had a much more graceful difficulty curve and more manageable challenges than any Megaman game before it, which made it a lot more fun.

Lost Woods mazes

2008-10-12T23:19:00.001-07:00

One of the later challenges in Megaman Star Force 2 is the Bermuda maze: a fog-filled maze where each room had four exits, but only by going through the correct exit can the player advance. This kind of maze, where the player has to follow a specific route to pass through a repeating maze, has been around since the Lost Woods maze in the original Legend of Zelda on the NES. It remains a very popular kind of puzzle, having appeared in numerous games, such as Devil May Cry 1 and 3, numerous Zelda titles, Brave Fencer Musashi, and many more. It is an iconic kind of obstacle that has a lot of advantages and gives game designers a lot of options to play with.

It is a really interesting kind of maze since it is nearly impossible for the player to guess his way through. Most of these mazes are created by simply warping the player back into the same room he just exited, so it is impossible to tell if you are making progress or not until you either stumble back outside or find your way to the exit. So, a Lost Woods style maze is really more of a puzzle than a true maze, since the game designer needs to give the player some kind of clue in order to pass through the maze. Because of that feature, this kind of maze can also function as a good way to limit the player's access to an area until the story has progressed to a certain point.

One way of handling a lost woods maze is to make it unsolvable until the player is given a solution at one point. For example, the original Lost Woods could only be passed through by going North, West, South, and then finally West again. The instructions are given to the player by an old man hiding out in one of the dungeons. As a functionally identical alternative to giving the player a set of directions, some games give the player an NPC (often an animal) to act as a guide through the repeating maze.

The problem with this kind of maze is that it can be bothersome having to remember the instructions every time you pass through the maze, particularly if the maze blacks access to commonly visited areas. However, this can be made less bothersome if you make the solution fairly simple. A good example can be found in the Mu branch of the Bermuda Maze in Megaman Star Force 2. When it was time to first take that path, I was given straightforward instructions on how to get through: up right, down right, down left, up right, up left. I thought that it was going to be pain to remember those instructions, but then my brother pointed out that the instructions masked a simple solution: all I had to do was turn right at every intersection in the maze. That made passing through the Bermuda Maze a very simple process on subsequent passes.

The second common way of handling a Lost Woods style maze is to build a clue into the maze itself. A good example can be found in the Room of Rites, found at the end of both Oracle Legend of Zelda games. In this maze, there are eight or so statues, whose eyes will point in random directions every time the player enters the room. If the player is just entering or on the right path, none of the eyes will point in the direction of the correct path. However, if the player wanders off the correct route, the eyes will randomly point in all four direction. By looking for this behavior, the player can find his way to the exit. Personally, I prefer this kind of Lost Woods maze, since it is much more mentally engaging than just following a list of directions.

A major pitfall to this second kind of Lost Woods maze is that the clue needs to be possible to figure out (a common problem of puzzles I mentioned before). In Lunar Silver Star Story Complete for the PSX, there is dungeon called Myght's tower that had a Lost Woods maze. At one point the player is dumped into a room with four exits, each of which is marked with a distinct symbol (sun moon, star, planet). As far as I know, there are no clues past those symbols. I ended up getting lucky and stumbling through the maze by moving randomly. A lack of solid clues like that can bring a game to screeching halt, leaving the player to run to GameFAQs in order to progress.

A particular feature of Lost Woods mazes that I haven't mentioned is that they can easily lead to more than one destination if the player follows an alternate route. This lets the developers get multiple challenges out of a single maze, which can be very useful.

All told, I fully expect this kind of maze to show up in videogames for years and years to come. It is both very simple in concept, but allows for countless variations.

Megaman Starforce 2: Mega Buster

2008-10-12T23:19:00.000-07:00

At this point, it seems like the only aspect of Megaman Starforce's game system I haven't talked about is the Mega Buster, Megaman's "main weapon" that is seen in every Megaman game. Of course, calling it his main weapon in the Battle Network/Starforce series is a bit flawed, since it is classically very weak in these games. The Mega Buster/X Buster/whatever may be extremely powerful in some Megaman (the X series comes to mind, where it tends to overshadow the boss weapons), but in Starforce it is little more than a weak side-arm that you only use when all of your Battle Cards run out. However, other that a few flaws, Starforce has the best version of the side-arm style Mega Buster that I have yet seen.

One thing that works well with the Megaman Starforce and Starforce 2 Mega Buster is that it is easier to control than in older Megaman games. The Mega Buster fires at full speed while you hold the button and charges while the button is released. It both plays to the basic assumption of using the Mega Buster (that you are charging whenever you are not shooting) without asking you to wear out your thumb holding the button down, and lets you shoot rapid-fire at full speed without forcing you to rapidly button mash. Because you don't need to hold down the button to charge, you don't need to be paying attention to your secondary weapon while using your primary weapon, the Battle Cards, and you can freely mix the two types of attacks with little effort. Other than the fact that it can be a little hard to tell whether you have a charged shot ready or not, the controls work beautifully.

Another new idea in the Starforce games is the ability to add on additional properties to the Mega Buster so it can do things other than raw damage. Megaman Starforce had several "Mega Weapons" (equipable parts that change the properties of the Mega Buster, essentially a simplified version of the more flexible Megaman Legends Buster Parts system) that add a negative status condition (like confusion, blindness, or gradual HP drain) to an enemy target. Thus, you could turn your Mega Buster into either a powerful attack weapon or a tool that let you disable enemies until you could activate more Battle Chips. Megaman Starforce 2 adds on to that even more, by adding new kinds Abilities that let you turn a Mega Buster shot into a spread weapon or use it to transform battlefield panels into Ice panels, Grass panels, or the like. With all of these properties, the Mega Buster is a versatile tool that can be modified in many different ways to become an important part of game strategies in a way it never has been before, at least in theory.

An overriding problem with the Starforce 2 Mega Buster is that its different modifications come from different subsystems of the game that don't interact and often contradict each other in unusual ways. The Mega Buster's basic damage capabilities and ability to inflict status comes from the equipped Mega Weapon, but spread capability and ability to transform panels comes from Link Power Abilities. Tribe On form greatly modifies the very nature of the Mega Buster charged shot, altering the basic statistics of the Mega Weapon and, much more problematically, completely overriding the ability to inflict status or equipped spread abilities. As such, while you are in Tribe On form (the default state for the latter half of the game), you can't take advantage of a lot of the Mega Buster's more strategic features, even if you are spending Link Power or giving up a lot of attack power in order to equip them.

One thing that could be done is to remove the entire Mega Weapon subsystem. It existed in Starforce to replace part of the Program subsystem from the Battle Network games, but since Link Power Abilities were designed to be a much more thorough replacement for that system in Starforce 2, Mega Weapons are no longer needed; everything they do can be folded into Link Power Abilities. Also, the modified Buster attacks of the various transformed forms should have been designed to be compatible with the spread modifications, and the fact that status conditions don't work with Mega Buster attacks is simply a mistake.

Megaman Starforce 2: Side Jobs

2008-10-07T23:24:00.000-07:00

Like many games, Megaman Starforce 2 contains a number of optional jobs that you can undertake throughout the game in order to earn better stuff. You take on these jobs by talking to characters while in Megaman form, and there is one for almost every character in the game. It is a pretty common kind of thing, but there are many elements of this system that just annoy me in this game.

For starters, simply taking on these jobs requires an unnecessary amount of time. In order to take on the job, you need to talk to someone in Megaman form, but to actually find out what the job is and what you need to do, you need to talk to that person as Geo. Since you can't just transform between the two freely, this can involve a lot of walking, and probably a few random battles. This system also means that you really have no idea about the specifics of a job before you actually take it on, which means that it is easy to get stuck doing a difficult job when there were several much easier jobs available in that same area. The most annoying thing about this is that the entire process simply feels redundant. It would have been just as easy to skip one of the steps (looking at the person's Star Carrier as Megaman or talking to the person as Geo), and let the player either actually start the job as Megaman or take on the job as Geo.

What makes that problem even worse is that you can only take on one job at a time, and you can't cancel them. As I just mentioned above, this leads directly to problems like getting stuck on one job and thus being unable to take any others on. It also means that completing several jobs can eat up a lot of time. For example, take two jobs that both start in Echo Ridge and require the player to visit Loch Mess (one of the longer distances to travel in the game, particularly when the route first opens). If you could take multiple jobs at once, it would be easy to take them both on, make the trip to Loch Mess once, and get them both done with. Instead, you have to take on one job, switch to Geo to start it, switch back to Megaman to make the journey, complete whatever was necessary in Loch Mess, switch back to Geo to finish the job, switch to Megaman to take on the second, switch to Geo to start it, switch to Megaman to make the second journey, spend another long trip to Loch Mess, complete the task, head back, and switch to Geo in order to finish. Regardless of what the actual task is, this simply requires too much of the player's time that could have been spent on something more fun.

Yet another problem of the side jobs in Starforce 2 is that they often don't give rewards to match the effort the player puts into them. Several times I have spent quite a bit of time on a job that only rewards me a Battle Card that I already have, or a minor cheap item that I don't need. Such jobs almost never give something unique or valuable. What is more, the few jobs that actually tend to give useful things are often the easiest ones that require the least time and effort, while the hardest to complete jobs will often give the smallest rewards.

Overall, this is one aspect of the game that I really don't have any praise for. Compared to much more interesting versions of the same concept, such as Elizabeth's Requests from Persona 3, or the Hunter's Guild jobs in the Arc the Lad games (something I need to write about another day), the jobs in Megaman Starforce 2 are simply bad.

The Megaman Formula

2008-10-07T23:22:00.000-07:00

It is impossible to ignore the fact that all Megaman games follow a common formula. With very little exception, almost every core Megaman title follows the same structure: beat eight bosses in any order, steal their powers, then challenge the final dungeon, where Megaman has to defeat all of the bosses over again before challenging the final boss. With some variation, that formula has remained the same for all 24 core Megaman games (which includes the original series, X series, Zero series, and both ZX games). Yet, this formula has never diminished my enjoyment of the Megaman series. If anything, the Megaman formula is one of the key elements that makes the Megaman series so successful.

The basic formula of the Megaman series has quite a few inherent strengths that have helped make it so enduring. The basic premise of letting the player tackle the game's stages in any order allows for a lot of freedom. If the player finds one stage too difficult or frustrating, the player can just leave and return later with more experience under his belt and new abilities. The free selection of stages also gives Megaman games a high replayability factor, because a player can get a different experience out of tackling the game in a different order. Personally, I greatly enjoy the process of working out which bosses are easy to kill first and which bosses are vulnerable to which weapons. It isn't something that can be experienced in a linearly structured action game.

Furthermore, just because the Megaman series has had the same basic formula for over twenty years doesn't mean that the series has gone stagnant. From the get-go, there has been a lot of experimentation, elaboration, and incremental improvement done on the game structure. The expansion from six bosses to eight, hidden upgrades, introductory stages, mid-game story stages, mini-bosses, optional missions, mission objectives, side-quests, stores, more than one controllable character; almost every iteration of the series has added something to the formula. Certain games have also experimented with radical variations on the formula, such as Megaman X5, which added a time limit to the game, alternative means to reach the final dungeon, and multiple endings. Later Megaman games such as Megaman Zero also used a mission based structure that both stayed true to the original formula and allowed for more varied stage designs. So while the basic formula has stayed the same, it has also evolved considerably over the years.

Being formulaic also doesn't mean that Megaman games lack plot, characters, or fun gameplay. Over the years, the game designers for the Megaman franchise have learned how to write interesting stories that can be presented effectively alongside the game's structure. The Zero and ZX games in particular manage to tell good stories with fun characters without breaking down the basic formula of the series.

If anything, the formulaic structure of the Megaman series gives it certain strengths. The Megaman formula is familiar to anyone who has played a Megaman game. For me, there is an element of nostalgia when I play a Megaman game that harkens back to the days when I played the series as a child. There is something familiar and comfortable about the series. It is no wonder that the Megaman series has cultivated a strong following over the years that became very excited over the recent release of Megaman 9.

Even though the Megaman series is very formulaic, I don't see that as a bad thing. As a long as a series continues to incrementally improve on itself, staying true to its roots can actually be a strength.

Game Mechanics and Character Quirks

2008-10-05T23:41:00.000-07:00

One thing that I am always glad to see is when game designers put in the effort to make characters, enemies, bosses, and NPCs more than just a collection of dialogue and basic statistics. One of the best ways to reinforce this is to give characters special statistics or AI routines that reflect their personality and individual character quirks. These kind of things can be small in the greater scheme of things, but can go a long ways towards making a character stand out in the player's memory.

This topic came to mind after I read some information on the recently released (in Japan) Super Robot Wars Z. In that game, every character has a bonus they give their squad-mates if they are the squad leader. One of the characters in the game, Kei, is a serious flirt and womanizer, so the game developers made his squad leader bonus a 20% bonus to damage when fighting men, and a 20% penalty to damage when fighting women. It is a small thing, but it suits his personality perfectly.

A similar example can be found in Final Fantasy 8, in the form of Raijin. When the party fights him in a boss battle, Raijin will generally not attack any female party member, thanks to a customized AI routine. This does a lot to reinforce aspects of his personality.

Another thing that I have seen done to great effect in various RPGs is giving characters specific characteristics or vulnerabilities that go outside the regular range of effects seen in the game system. For example, the is character in Wild ARMs 3 named Todd who has an Afro hair style. Todd also has the unique vulnerability that his afro can be lit on fire with any fire element spell, which causes him to lose hit points every round of combat. When I first discovered that quirk, I found it to be hilarious, and I still remember him for it.

A good example for traits like this in a non-RPG game is Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. In various boss fights, the player can draw out various personality quirks and vulnerabilities from most of the bosses. It is possible to impress Ocelot if you perform fancy tricks with the Single Action Army revolver. It is possible to distract and annoy Volgin in any number of ways, such as by throwing certain mushrooms at him. And most famously, it is possible to beat The End by letting him die of old age. All of these characteristics do a lot towards making these characters feel fleshed out and real, as opposed to just challenges dropped in the player's path.

I think that adding in small details like this to flesh out characters in a videogame is an excellent means of making a game more enjoyable and memorable.

Megaman Starforce 2: BrotherBands Part 2 (Gameplay)

2008-10-03T23:18:00.000-07:00

As I mentioned at the end of my last post, the mechanics behind the BrotherBand system make it so the player's own experience of the game matches with the basic theme of the Megaman Starforce games that having friends makes a person stronger. You just need to register a friend's copy of the game as a Brother over either a wireless link or a Wi-Fi connection, and you get some great benefits. The basic concept is simple, but it works elegantly. However, a lot of the details of this system differ between the two Starforce games, and many specific aspects of the system work better than others, so for the sake of having something interesting to write about I am going to examine some aspects of the system one by one.

The "On Air" System: This feature was only included in Megaman Starforce 1. It allowed a group of people who shared a BrotherBand to connect their games to each other wirelessly or over Wi-Fi so they were connected constantly during gameplay. In addition to allowing quick access to multiplayer battles, card trading, and the game's email system, this allowed special benefits such as free access to a Brother's Best Combo attack and improved power of chips that were equipped at the same time, making the single-player mode a lot easier. All of these benefits were very interesting, but the problem was that it could be very hard to coordinate, since it required two people or more to be playing through the single-player mode at the same time. Even organizing that with just my twin brother who I see all the time could get bothersome, and I imagine it was simply too cumbersome to bother with for many people, so I can see why this aspect was not implemented in Starforce 2.

Brother Cards: As I may have mentioned in an earlier post, one feature of the BrotherBand system is that you can access a Brother's Favorite Cards using a "Brother Card" that is created for each BrotherBand you form. In Starforce 2, these cards also allow you to transform. These cards are a bit unreliable, since the Favorite Card you get is chosen randomly, but they work well to make BrotherBands distinct from each other and important to battle.

Sharing Transformations: In both games, having a BrotherBand with a player using a different version of the game lets you use that version's unique transformation modes. Overall, this is a great benefit. I am pretty sure I already covered the rest of this system's details earlier, so I will move on.

Game Character Brothers: One of the notable improvements of Megaman Starforce 2's BrotherBand system over the original is the way it separates the "Game" BrotherBands from the "Real" BrotherBands. In both games, characters in the game can form a BrotherBand with the main character which gives very similar benefits to a BrotherBand formed with another player. In the first game, though, these Game BrotherBands took up the same limited number of slots that are also used for Real BrotherBands, which lead to some unnecessary problems and dilemmas. In Starforce 2, the four Game Brothers have dedicated slots, which leaves six slots completely free for Real Brothers, so there is no longer a need to choose between them. At the same time, though, they changed it so that Game Brothers no longer give the player Brother Cards, which I believe was a mistake. I can understand that they probably did not want Game Brothers to match or surpass Real Brothers, and wanted to prevent the player from utilizing an excessive quantity of Brother Cards (which may imbalance the Tribe On system), but there were probably better options that did not reduce Game Brothers to be merely sources of Link Power and nothing else.

Abilities and Link Power: This is another place where Starforce 2 brought nothing but improvement. In the original Starforce, special abilities that were mainstays of the Megaman Battle Network series, such as "Super Armor" (which prevents Megaman from flinching when hit) and "FloatShoes" (which negates harmful panels), were tied directly to the Game Brothers, so that they were in constant effect so long as the associated BrotherBand was still in effect. This was certainly interesting and appropriate, but there was no real trade-off being made other than the problematic dilemma of choosing between Real BrotherBands and Game BrotherBands. Megaman Starforce 2 replaced all of this with the Link Power system, in which every BrotherBand has an associated Link Power value that increases as the game progresses. This value is used as the maximum capacity for equipping Abilities that are acquired throughout the game. It preserves all of the important thematic elements of the original system, in which you gain power through bonds with friends, and also extends that to Real BrotherBands and adds a degree of customizability and need to make trade-offs, which makes the game that much more interesting.

Auto-Brothers: This is one of the additions made in Starforce 2 that I am not impressed with. Put simply, Starforce 2 lets you form a BrotherBand with an entity called an "Auto-Brother" that you name at the start of the game and is associated with the other version of the game that is loaded on the cartridge (so if you choose Saurian at the beginning of the game, your Auto-Brother is Zerker). This is an outgrowth of Capcom's change to putting multiple "versions" on the same cartridge, and allows a group of players to use the Tribe King form using only two copies of the game (or Double-Tribe using only one copy), so this system has a few very good benefits, but it suffers greatly because the Auto-Brothers themselves are incredibly generic characters that practically break the continuity of the game when they briefly enter into the plot. In my opinion, it would have worked a lot better if they simply gave the cross-version role to one or two of the Game Brothers.

Megaman Starforce 2: BrotherBands Part 1 (Story)

2008-10-01T23:40:00.000-07:00

I believe games should have strong central themes that gets integrated into their mechanics, and the two Megaman Starforce games are examples that only reinforce this belief. These are games that are built around the ideas of loneliness, friendship, and the struggle between the human need to be accepted and the all too real ease with which people can hurt each other and push each other away, and these powerful themes find a perfect reflection in the BrotherBand system. This system, which exists as both an element of the game's setting and an extremely important game mechanic, works as a bond that lets friends give each other additional power. People who haven't formed any BrotherBands are isolated, miserable, and often helpless against the evils of the world, while people who have many BrotherBands are happy and strong, and this applies equally well to the player as it does to any of the game characters. It may seem a bit simplistic and overly exaggerated at times, but it works amazingly well to create an endearing story.

One of the most important roles Brotherbands have in the game story is the impact their existence within the setting has on the way characters act and think. Everyone in the world of Megaman Starforce is absolutely obsessed with the idea of BrotherBands. It seems like every character talks about nothing but the BrotherBands they have formed, BrotherBands they want to form, their difficulties in forming Brotherbands, etc. As a result, the subject of the importance of friendship is brought up almost constantly throughout the course of the game. The player has no choice but to think about the topic almost every time he plays the game. The idea that friendships are important is made clear to the player from the very beginning.

The constant discussion of BrotherBands is taken to new levels in Starforce 2, where the addition of "Link Power", a numerical rating of the strength of a person's BrotherBands (which you can see displayed for every character in the game), adds whole new levels to the obsession. Among many other things, in that world someone can apparently get discounts on bus fares, VIP treatment at hotels, and preferred seating at theaters simply by having a lot of close friends. Because Link Power, a numerical value for the "power of friendship", is portrayed as providing the various material goods that many people associate with "being happy", the game is pretty putting forward the idea that friendship is the thing that gives people the things that make them happy. This is only expressed more strongly when Link Power is put forward as being more important than money in various parts of the game (such as the snow resort chapter in which a man who tries to get everything he wants with money is the villain trying to force a man with very high Link Power out of business). And of course, the player has a Link Power score as well, and building this value up is necessary for a lot of the fun things in the game.

With a world built upon BrotherBands and Link Power, it is no surprise that the villains of the Starforce games embrace the idea of loneliness. The villains of the original game, the FM-ians, are alien entities that take over the bodies of those who are consumed by loneliness. Every boss battle in the original Megaman Starforce is a battle against someone who has essentially been eaten away by their own suffering and turned into a monster against their own will. Thus, the FM-ians (and their monstrous weapon Andromeda) are essentially metaphors for the destructive effects of loneliness, as well as the terrible mix of emotions that both lead to that feeling and result from it, such as fear, despair, anger, jealousy, and paranoia. Megaman Starforce 2 continues the trend by including a villain (appropriately named Solo) who has rejected the world and hates even the idea of friendship, though I have not yet reached the end of the game so it is hard to say any more about him. In every case, loneliness is portrayed as the worst possible state a person can be in, something that eats away at the soul and leads nothing but hatred for the world, and worse still is the situation for those who reject what friendship is offered to them.

Surpassing all of these elements, though, is the basic story of the main hero, Geo Stellar, in his growth from being a lonely kid who has no friends to help him get through the misery of the loss of his father to becoming a hero who helps others and has many close friends to rely on. Having the main hero start out without any friends at all was one of the great decisions made by the game designers, and even greater still was the way they link progressing through the main plot to Geo's slow acquisition of BrotherBands (and strengthening those bonds further in Starforce 2, which is the reason the addition of Link Power to the BrotherBand system in Starforce 2 was so good). Still, the greatest aspect of Geo's story is that it isn't simple, straight path from "lonely" to "happy"; it is filled with ups and downs in which his attempts to open up and find new friends hurt him almost as much as they help. It portrays the act of forging meaningful bonds with other people as a terrible struggle (both directly and metaphorically), but one that must be fought and has great rewards awaiting at the end. This message, that it is important to open up and understand others despite very real difficulties, is the heart of the Starforce series.

It seems that I might have wandered a little bit away from the whole "story and mechanics are integrated" idea that I started with, but that assertion is still true. Just as Geo's story is built upon the idea that it is essential to have friends, the game mechanics are built around the idea that the player should have friends, and that having friends makes the player stronger. However, this post is probably long enough already, so I will focus on that aspect a bit more next time.

Rewards based on Battle Performance

2008-10-01T23:38:00.000-07:00

In most RPGs, rewards from battle are usually handed out simply for beating an opponent. Most RPGs will reward the player with a fixed quantity of experience points and money based on what enemy he just defeated, with a completely random chance of finding an item after the battle. However, there are some RPGs that have experimented with rewarding the player based on how he performs during battle, which has produced some very interesting results.

This practice is actually fairly common among action games, particularly ones with some RPG elements. A good example is Devil May Cry, which rewards the player for maintaining a high style rating by rewarding the player with a much greater number of Red Orbs, which can be used to purchase items and equipment upgrades. Similarly, Drakengard rewards long attack chains with health restoring orbs and other power-ups. However, it is much rarer to see this practice among RPGs.

One such example can be found in the action RPG Megaman Battle Network. In every entry in the Battle Network series (including the two Star Force games), the player is given a busting rank at the end of each battle. This busting rank goes from one to ten, with a special rank of S for a performance better than a 10. It is based on a number of factors: how many times the player took damage, how quickly the player defeated the enemy, if the player deleted more than one enemy in a single attack, and so forth. Busting rank does more than just tell the player how well he fought though; it determines what prize the player receives at the end of combat. A high busting rank means that the player will have a higher chance of earning a powerful battle chip at the end of combat, while a player with a low busting rank can expect to receive a piddling amount of money. So, the game encourages the player to fight every random battle as efficiently as possible. As a result, common strategies in the Battle Network series involve trying to wipe out every enemy with a single opening move.

The PS2 RPG Ar Tonelico also rewards the player with different items based on battle performance. Every enemy in Ar Tonelico has four items that they may drop, based on the maximum synchronization level the party achieves during the combat. A player who fails to raise the synchronization level will only acquire the enemy's least valuable item after the fight, while a player who manages to raise the level to it's maximum will receive all four of the enemies' items after the fight. So, the player is strongly encouraged to put in the effort to maximize synchronization in most fights. Furthermore, performing certain actions mid-battle (such as casting powerful spells) rewards the player with Dive Points, which can be used to augment the powers of certain characters.

While Final Fantasy X stays true to the more established rewards scheme for the most part, it does give the player some rewards for doing well. If the player manages to do significantly more damage to a monster than it's max hit points, that monster will be Overkilled, and that monster will be much more likely to drop any rare items in its drop table.

I like systems such as these for two simple reasons:

1) These systems give the player something to do during regular battles other than mindlessly killing monsters. If the player is rewarded for killing monsters faster, then the player has the goal of killing every monster more quickly. This has the overall effect of making routine battles more intellectually engaging, and thus more fun.

2) These systems give the player the ability to strive after acquiring an item, as opposed to just relying on dumb luck. For example, someone hunting after a battle card in Megaman Star Force can rebuild his deck to take advantage of his target's weaknesses in order to increase his odds of getting an S rank and earning his prize. This allows for item hunts to be much more interesting than the mind-numbing farming that occurs if an item is just dropped randomly. It also makes the player feel that he earned his reward based on his effort, as opposed to mere good fortune.

I wouldn't mind seeing systems like these become more common in the future.

Final Fantasy VI: Transparency of Math

2008-09-21T23:11:00.000-07:00

A couple days ago, I was looking at an algorithm FAQ for Final Fantasy VI on GameFAQs. Looking at the game's actual damage and hit formulas really reminded me who opaque the game's mechanics are to the player. In many ways, Final Fantasy VI can be very frustrating to play thanks to this lack of transparency, since unless the player does some in-depth research, it can be nearly impossible for the player to accurately predict the outcomes of his decisions.

Let's look at three Relics that can be equipped on a character in order to increase that character's physical attack power: the Hyper Wrist, the Atlas Armlet, and the Gauntlet. The Hyper Wrist boosts a character's Vigor stat, which is one of the attributes that determines attack power. The Atlas Armlet's description says that equipping it will boost the character's Fight damage. And finally, the Gauntlet doubles the Battle Power of the character's equipped weapon by wielding it with both hands. What is not clear at all is how effective these various Relics are in comparison to each other. While the Gauntlet sounds like it should double the damage output of the character equipped with it, the actual increase in damage is significantly less than that. So appraising which of these Relics is the right one to equip on a character is really difficult.

Another area where trouble arises is in determining which stats a character should raise. There are four main stats: Vigor, Speed, Stamina, and Magic Power. However, the game itself is tight-lipped on what each one does. Of these, the only one whose name is self-explanatory is Magic Power (Speed is a distant second). However, since the player can only guess at what each stat does, it is impossible to build stats up intelligently. The player can really only stumble around in the dark. Apparently, based on the FAQs I have read, the stats are not even all equally important. Stamina in particular gives only minor benefits, despite being listed alongside Vigor and Magic Power, which are really important stats. So the lack of info creates major traps that an unassuming player can walk right into.

Another major problem is that the game doesn't really tell the player which stats will affect which abilities or attacks. For example, I am still unsure which stats are important to Sabin's Blitz attacks, even after reading a detailed FAQ. It is unclear whether equipping him with better weapons will improve his damage, whether or not Vigor or Magic Power are used to calculate his Blitz's attack power, or even if it varies based on the individual Blitz. Since Sabin is obviously a big fighter type, and he has naturally high Vigor and low magic Power, it would make sense that Vigor is the pertinent stat and that Magic Power can be safely ignored. However, that common sense conclusion might not be the correct one.

All told, the lack of transparency about the math that Final Fantasy VI is built upon can make it very easy for a player to unintentionally gimp a character, and then leave that player struggling to figure out what went wrong. An RPG needs to be straightforward and clear about what statistics do what, the exact effects of equipment, and which stats abilities are dependent on. It is only with that knowledge can a player make reasonably informed decisions.

Final Fantasy VI: MP Damage

2008-09-18T22:25:00.001-07:00

As my brother mentioned in an earlier post, I have been spending a lot of time lately playing through Final Fantasy VI again (using the Final Fantasy Anthology version). Amazingly enough, I really don't have a lot to say about the game. I have played it so much that I pretty much hold it as the archetypical console RPG, so I find it difficult to actually look at the game critically. However, one element of the game that I don't think I really payed much attention to before has been bugging me.

In Final Fantasy VI, one strategy that is available to the player is to use attacks that damage the enemies' MP, rather than their HP. In many ways this is usually a poor choice, since enemies tend to have very large MP totals and MP damage tends to be very low, so even using unreliable status conditions like Mute, Imp, or Stop would be a better option. However, the designers built into the game a few places where using MP damaging spells like Rasp is just as effective, if not better, than using a more straightforward form of attack, and he most important of these are the enemies who die if their MP total falls to zero.

The most famous enemy in Final Fantasy VI who is vulnerable to MP Damage is probably Atma Weapon, since using Rasp on him is listed as the best strategy in both an old Nintendo Power article and in the Final Fantasy Anthology Bestiary. Of course, why this is the best strategy is never explained, but from my own observations it is related to the fact that he has reasonably low MP and tends to use more powerful attacks as his HP decreases, and does not have an overly large MP total. As such, using the Rasp spell to lower Atma Weapon's MP will result in a battle of reasonable length in which Atma Weapon never uses his strongest attacks. This is actually a great example of building complexities and hidden strategies into a game, so battles don't end up all playing out the same way, but there is one big problem: it is almost impossible to figure out this strategy simply by playing the game. This is partly because the battle AI that controls Atma Weapon is hidden to the player (which is not really a problem, though sometimes making this more transparent helps), but this is largely due to the fact that the player has no way at all of knowing that Atma Weapon will die when his MP falls to zero. Certainly, Atma Weapon mentions at the start of the battle that he is "made of pure energy", but that is about it.

The Atma Weapon example is pretty typical of the strengths and flaws of MP damage in Final Fantasy VI. It is a great strategy for the player to use, but only if you know which enemies to use it on beforehand. This is due to the fact that the "dies when MP = 0" property is limited to only a fraction of the enemies and can not be detected with the games Scan spell. What is more, unlike the way all monsters with the "undead" property (essentially, the "HP restoration becomes damage" property) all tend to have a bony look, ghastly color scheme, or use "Zombie" attacks, monsters with the "dies when MP = 0" property don't have a clear unifying theme. The only real way to tell if an enemy will die when hit by a Rasp attack is to experiment, which means this strategy simply won't come up very often (why experiment to see if Rasp will kill it when a good physical or elemental attack will work just fine?). On the plus side, it was a very good idea to make Rasp such a cheap spell to use, since it means that every time you encounter an enemy vulnerable to MP damage Rasp becomes an inherently better choice than more expensive elemental attack spells.

A lot of problems with this element of the game could have been cleared up simply by adding the "dies when MP = 0" property to the list of things mentioned by the Scan spell, but other solutions exist. For example, in the game Star Ocean: Till the End of Time, every enemy has the "dies when MP = 0" property, and the game has a much wider array of attacks that deal MP damage, so using this particular strategy comes up much more often, is more interesting than casting the same spell over and over, and will work to some extent or another on every enemy. Actually, because MP damage is such an important strategy in Till the End of Time, the issue in that game is more built around imbalances between those characters who have MP damaging moves and those who do not. While that particular solution may not be a perfect fit for Final fantasy VI, it is nonetheless an improvement.

Final Fantasy VI: Rages and the Veldt

2008-09-18T22:25:00.000-07:00

Gau from Final Fantasy VI is one of the most unique characters in RPG history thanks to his distinctive Rage ability. Instead of making basic attacks, Gau has the ability to enter a berserk-like state and thus emulate the characteristics of almost any monster in the game. If used properly, this ability can make Gau the most versatile and powerful character in the game. However, it seems that most players never discover this. Back when I was first playing FF VI, I rarely used Gau, particularly for major battles and dungeons. This contradiction comes from how user-unfriendly the Rage command is.

The Rage command has two major stumbling blocks that really prevented it from being really accessible: the process of acquiring rages on the Veldt, and being able to choose the correct Rage. First off, Gau could only acquire new Rages by encountering enemies on the Veldt (a place where all seen random monster encounters in the game can occur) and using the Leap command. Unfortunately, this is a very time-consuming and tedious process. Even early in the game, searching for a specific random encounter could take hours of work, and the process becomes even more difficult as the game progresses and the player encounters even more types of monster. While the monsters appear in a loose progression, going through a complete cycle can take an hour or more, and the player may need to go through several cycles in order to encounter the monster he is looking for. So while a dedicated player armed with foreknowledge about the Veldt's workings may be able to track down the best Rages by putting in hours of work, an inexperienced player who has no real clue to how the Veldt works will more than likely become daunted by the task and just give up and write off Gau completely (just as I originally did).

The other problem comes from how hard it is to actually use Rages once they are acquired. While there are 252 available Rages in Final Fantasy 6, the game itself gives no information to the player about what each individual Rage does. The player's only choice is to experiment and see what each Rage does individually. However, while this approach will yield knowledge about the Rage's special ability and automatic status effects in just one or two uses, discovering each Rage's built-in elemental affinities and Status immunities would require the payer to perform lots of dedicated testing (particularly since it is impossible to even get all of that information out of regular enemies). In addition to this lack of information about what Rage does what, the Rages are listed by the game in a single massive list, apparently in a completely random order. So just sorting through the list can take a minute or two.

So, two things need to be done to improve the Rage command so that more people would give a character like Gau a chance: it should be easier to acquire Rages, and it should be easier for the player to know what Rages do and use them in combat. So, here are various thoughts on ways to modify the system to be easier to use, in no particular order:

1) Sub-dividing the Veldt into separate zones, each with their own random encounter chart, would make it easier for the player to perform more focused searches for individual monsters. There could be a a forest section full of forest-type monsters, for example.

2) It might make a lot more sense for each family of monster (all monsters that are recolors of each other) to have a Rage instead of each individual monster. That way, the number of Rages could be cut down significantly, which would make things easier to track and cut down on the amount of overlap between individual Rages.

3) Letting the player look up information on his known Rages would not hurt the game. Heck, letting the player use Scan on Gau to get detailed information (as was possible in some later Final Fantasy games) would have been an improvement.

4) Letting the player manually re-order the Rage list, like is possible for the item list in most FFs and the magic list in FF IV, would have let the player categorize and rank his Rages based on his preferences. It would have been nice to have been able to move more commonly used Rages to the top of the list too.

5) As an alternative to the Veldt, it might not be a bad idea to let the player acquire new Rages anywhere in the world. Perhaps instead of using a command like Leap, the player could kill an enemy using a certain special attack (like Morph or Eat in other FF installments)?

I would love to see a new version of Rage appear in a future Final Fantasy game. Many similar abilities, such as Geomancy and Blue Magic, have improved significantly over the years as they were refined with each new version. It is a bit of a shame that an ability as unique and powerful as Rage hasn't been revisited once yet.