The World Ends With You: Psych Pins

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.

Lost Odyssey: Mortals and Immortals

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.

Grandia: Characters Leaving the Party

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: Ultimate Jutsu

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.

Transformation Costs (Another View)

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

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.

Megaman Starforce 2: BrotherBands Part 2 (Gameplay)

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)

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.

Final Fantasy VI: Rages and the Veldt

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.

Megaman Starforce 2: Best Combo

As I continue my discussion of the various game system elements in Megaman Starforce 2, I think it is time to discuss the "Best Combo" system.

One of the most significant side-effects of the change from the Megaman Battle Network "Battle Chip" system to the Megaman Starforce "Battle Card" system is that it removed the structure that made the special chip combinations called "Program Advances" possible. With a Program Advance, it was possible to do things like combine three Cannon chips into a much more powerful GigaCannon attack, but this is only possible by combining the letter codes in certain specific orders, and as such the system is simply incompatible with the Battle Card system that does not use letter codes. Program Advances that relied on using battle chips of different types at the same time would be even harder to create and use in the Battle Card system. As such, Program Advances needed to be replaced, and the resulting system is the new Best Combo system.

The basic idea of the Best Combo is that, if you achieve certain conditions within certain battles, the player can record a chain of battle cards he used in battle as a "Best Combo", which allows that sequence of attacks to be used again as an unstoppable super-attack at a later time. Unlike the pre-built Program Advances, Best Combo attacks are designed by the person playing the game, giving them a lot of variety (though at the cost of making them less flashy and distinct). Of particular note is the fact that this system is thoroughly connected with the BrotherBand system, and encourages sharing Best Combo attacks with other players, so your own chosen "Personal Best Combo" becomes a way of showing off your own battle style and accomplishments to other players in a very useful and fun way. I love the basic concept of this system, but it does have a few flaws that still need to be sorted out.

One problem is that acquiring new Best Combo attacks can be extremely tricky. In Megaman Starforce 2, the rules for acquiring them are a bit unclear (as always, better documentation would have helped), and the changes in these rules from Starforce 1 have made it harder to deliberately set up an intricate combo, since an enemy attack will break the attack chain you are trying to put together. Also, the fact that you can only create a Best Combo against an EX or SP boss means that you can't create them early in the game. Fortunatley, these problems are minor, and it is easy enough to create decent Best Combos simply as a byproduct of fighting a boss well, so I will not complain too much about this.

A much bigger problem is that, in Megaman Starforce 2, there is almost no real practical way to make use of Best Combo attacks. In Megaman Starforce 1, it was possible to use a friend's Best Combo through the "On Air" system, but since the On Air system was removed from Starforce 2, you can only use Best Combo attacks through Legend Cards, cards that can be bothersome or expensive to acquire and disappear after a single use. As a result, it is simply impossible to make regular use of Best Combo attacks in this game, since valuable Legend Cards are only really worth using in SP boss battles and the occasional difficult plot battle. I don't think this is the best situation, so something should change. Simple solutions would be to either link Best Combos to Brother Cards again as they were with the On Air system, or to remove the unusual "can only use once" limit from Legend Cards. Since a freely-useable Legend Card would be about equal to a Giga Class card (which like Legend Cards is also limited to a single card per folder), I think it would work well enough with the latter solution. Certainly, the current situation, which limits the Best Combo system so much that it is nearly useless, is far from ideal.

Megaman Starforce 2: Tribe On

As has been the case for every iteration of the Megaman Battle Network/Starforce series since Battle Network 2, the hero of Megaman Starforce 2 can transform into several different special forms that are unique to this particular entry in the series. This time around, the system is called the "Tribe On" system, in which Megaman can fuse with an artifact left behind by one of the "Tribes" in order to transform into a more powerful state. At the surface level, it looks like a cheap gimmick like some previous versions of the concept, but it actually works quite well, and I like the system quite a bit. It has some flaws, but it does add some value to the game.

Before I go any further, I have to say that I think the particular "Tribes" that are used in this game are all ridiculous. I'd admit that I think ninjas, dinosaurs, and medieval berserkers are all cool things just as readily as the next guy, but throwing them all together with no rhyme or reason like they do in this game is just cheesy, and it gets worse when you start using the "Double Tribe" system to get Ninja Dinosaur Megaman. The game has enough trouble trying to replace the coherent and fun constellation-based naming scheme and alien-based plot established in Starforce 1 with some plot based around a tenuous connection between the lost civilization of Mu and UMAs like the Abominable Snowman and the Loch Ness monster, and adding a group of randomly selected "Tribes" with no clear connection to anything else does not help that uphill battle in the least. If the Tribes were rooted in UMA creatures and ancient or mythical civilizations like the Mayans or Atlantis, it might have worked, but as it stands it just doesn't. Fortunately, once the poor naming scheme is safely ignored, we are left with one of the best Megaman transformation systems to date.

The advantages of the Tribe On system start with the actual mechanism used to enter the form. Starforce 1 used a clunky system of "Starforce Cards" in which you had a single Battle Card in your folder that let you transform if you got lucky enough to draw it, which became rarer and rarer as you slowly acquire things like Brother Cards and Legend Cards that dilute your Folder. Starforce 2 replaces this by linking the Tribe On ability to Brother Cards, so you actually greatly increase your odds of transforming by forming more BrotherBands, which is far more appropriate given the themes of the Starforce series and is a lot more fun. In addition to this, Starforce 2 gives you an optional ability that lets you start every battle in Tribe On form, which adds to the visibility and usability of the form.

Starforce 2's system has a few more advantages over the Starforce 1 system in that different forms actually have enough variation and power in order to make using the different forms worthwhile. These forms combine the traditional abilities like passive elemental bonuses, the "Super Armor" and ninja substitution abilities, the ability to charge Battle Cards to get new effects, and modified Megabuster charge shots with Starforce 1's incredibly fun Star Force Big Bang attacks to get a very solid result. These forms have weaknesses, but they are unquestionably worth using, and just as importantly they are all clearly differentiate enough that each Tribe On form has its own unique value and can be used with its own strategy. While this is not unique to Starforce 2, it is certainly an improvement over Starforce 1's lackluster forms.

My biggest praise, though, goes to the development of the "Double Tribe" system, which strikes a fine balance between giving proper emphasis to the Tribe form corresponding to the player's version that is important to the story and allowing the player to experiment with the abilities of the other Tribes. With this scheme, you can add the power of a Brother's Tribe on top of the Tribe determined by which version you are using, so if you choose "Saurian" as your Tribe you can use the base Fire Saurian form, as well as the Saurian Ninja and Saurian Zerker forms that use the element and weapon of Ninja or Zerker but use the same basic powers as Saurian. As a whole, this system has the same focus on a specific form that some older Battle Network games had, such as Battle Network 6's focus on the Gregar and Falzar forms, which helps keep the story and gameplay in sync and makes version important (avoiding the pitfall of Starforce 1 where, once you form a few BrotherBands, you can use forms from different versions equally well). At the same time, it gives you a fair amount of flexibility and rewards forming BrotherBands with people of different versions. I particularly like the way Megaman's character model and abilities are different depending on whether he is in Saurian Ninja or Ninja Saurian forms. The only flaw I can think of with this set-up is in the Double Tribe Link force Big Bang attacks, because they don't make the distinction between whether you are Zerker Ninja or Ninja Zerker, which leads to problems like the fact that I can never make use of the Zerker-style triple slash Big Bang attack, or the fact that Ninja Saurian uses a shuriken volley even though he is not holding any shuriken (and is using the Dino Cannon instead).

Finally, I have to mention the Tribe King, the ultimate form you achieve by combining all three Tribes. This is probably the first form in the history of the Megaman franchise that really deserves the term "ultimate form" (I always found Megaman X's "Ultimate Armor" to be more bark than bite). The fact that it has all of the abilities of the three Tribes combined, a very powerful Megabuster charged shot, and an unstoppable Big Bang attack would be enough to cement that title, but the Tribe King's ability to double the power of every Battle Card goes well over the top and wanders into the realm of "much too powerful". I like the fact that it makes gathering all three tribes worth the effort, and I like that an "ultimate form" actually exists, but it is just a little bit too much. Getting Tribe King essentially means instant victory, which means a boss fight or multiplayer match can be decided simply by a player getting a little bit of luck. Also, I am sure the game artists put in a valiant effort, but any attempt at making a fusion of Megaman (himself a fusion between a kid and an alien), a dinosaur, a ninja, and a medieval warrior look impressive and cool was doomed from the start.

Final Fantasy III DS: The Job System

After a few failed attempts at defeating the final boss, I finally managed to complete Final Fantasy III yesterday. Other than a frustrating lack of save points and a few truly annoying enemies (things as powerful as the Red Dragons should not just sneak up on you at random), the final part of that game was quite a bit of fun and I enjoyed the game as a whole. Now that I am done with the game, I want to write a bit about the game's defining element: the Job System.

The Job System is one of the greatest systems to ever emerge from the Final Fantasy series. It allows characters to change their abilities around in a highly customizable fashion, so even a small, unchanging central cast of characters can be as versatile as an army of characters, which helps greatly in enabling variety in the gameplay while keeping the main cast steady (which can really help the plot). And, unlike many of Square's later game systems that also aim for that same goal (like the FF7 Materia system or FF8 Junction system), it presents character options in manageable chunks, so the player doesn't have to get bogged down with micromanaging a large number of small, independent elements. To put it plainly, it is much easier and more meaningful to make the choice between making a character a Knight or a Black Mage than it is to choose between assigning Firaga spells to a character's Strength or assigning them to his Hit Points. When a Job System is implemented well, it can provide a very good gameplay experience.

In the particular case of Final Fantasy III, though, I am not sure if the Job System really is implemented well or not. Certainly, later games such as Final Fantasy V and Final Fantasy Tactics made radical improvements to the framework established in Final Fantasy III, and as a result the earlier game suffers from the comparison. At the very least, there were many times throughout my playthrough of Final Fantasy III that I wished I could change the equipped abilities of a Job like I could in Final Fantasy V (it would certainly have made some endgame choices a bit easier). At the same time, Final Fantasy III does have a number of unique elements that could not be replicated in later versions of the Job System that work well in this game, such as the distinct tradeoff between lasting power and flexibility seen in the Magus/Devout vs. Sage comparison. Since I can't really say whether the system as a whole works well or not, I guess all I can do is ramble on about some of the smaller details...

1) I don't like the transition period characters undergo after changing Jobs, in which they have reduced stats for a set number of battles while they "learn" the new Job. Because it doesn't really accomplish anything that isn't already controlled by other factors (switching in and out of mage Jobs is limited by the way it affects current MP, etc), and it can be completely bypassed through careful planning and high Job Levels, all it does is get in the player's way and impose some arbitrary connections between certain Jobs.

2) While I prefer some of the ways this is implemented in later games, I do like the simple fact that you get better with a Job the more you use it (the higher your Job Level rises). It creates a reason for a character to stick to a Job for a long period of time, so Jobs become long-term investments rather than a temporary state designed to defeat a single boss with a particular strategy. Without this, there would be no reason for a player to always turn to the same character whenever he needs a White Mage. Of course, it would have been better if the mechanics of raising Job Level and benefits for doing so were laid out more explicitly.

3) I don't like the fact that spending a large amount of time raising Job Levels in one Job becomes meaningless once that character switches to a different class, particularly in the case of "upgrade" Job pairs like the White Mage/Devout pair or Monk/Black Belt pair. When the Black Belt Job become available, the Monk Job becomes obsolete, so any levels dedicated to that class (and thus all of the time the player spent raising those levels) completely go to waste. There should be some sort of global benefit linked to raising a Job's Level high, even if the Job itself doesn't have any more use.

4) I like the way that you never really need any one Job for any given situation, so you always have choices. Every Job performs various roles in a unique way, so there are an incredible variety of viable teams. Certainly, some Jobs are just better than others (I can't imagine a use for the Scholar, and the Red Mage might outclass every other starting Job), so there are balance issues, but this is a game where I was able to effectively use both a Ninja/Summoner/Sage/Black Belt team and a Knight/Devout/Bard/Black Belt team in various attempts at beating the final boss (the former was close but the latter succeeded), so the game clearly allows for a variety of styles and strategies, an essential quality for a fun game.

5) I think you just get Jobs too late into the game. You are stuck with a very limited set of Jobs for the first fourth of the game, and by the time you get the final set of Jobs you are already at the entrance to the final dungeon. I think it would have just been more fun to be able to play around with some of these classes for longer periods of time. After all, I did like the fact that, in Final Fantasy V, you get all but one Job by the end of the first third of the game. Even better is the Final Fantasy Tactics approach, where the player can essentially determine for himself how quickly he unlocks most of the jobs.

6) I like the amount of detail the designers put into making each character look unique for each Job. This works better with some Jobs than others (earlier Jobs like the White Mage tend to have greater variation for each character than later Jobs like the Dark Knight), but it is a nice touch.

I really don't think I have much left to say. Overall, once you begin to understand the system the game holds up surprisingly well for an NES-era RPG, and I am glad I played through the game.

Beyond Oasis

I recently played through a short game released on the Sega Genesis many years ago called Beyond Oasis using my Wii's Virtual Console. I never owned a Genesis, so I never knew anything about this game until I played it. It really isn't a bad game at all. It is a nice action/adventure/RPG hybrid with well-designed puzzles, a fun combat system, and solid execution. If the game was a little longer, a lot less linear, and had better music, it might have been able to stand as an equal to the Legend of Zelda series.

One of the most important aspects of Beyond Oasis is its spirit summoning system, which is central to almost all of the puzzles and tactics in the game. Basically, as you progress through the game you acquire four spirits who you can summon using the "Light Ball" released from the hero's magical Gold Armlet. If the Light Ball strikes water you will summon the water spirit, if it strikes fire you will summon the fire spirit, etc. The game designers were pretty impressively thorough with this, too. You can summon the water spirit by hitting a slime monster with the Light Ball or even summon the fire spirit by hitting an enemy mage's flame shot. There are even a few odd ways to summon a spirit like hitting the elder of a town with the Light Ball to earn the shadow spirit (it doesn't work when I hit other humans, so I am still trying to figure out the logic), so the game rewards experimentation and creativity. There are many places where creative choices on when to summon which spirit are necessary to solve the puzzles. As a whole, this system works very well, and my only complaint is that there are far too few ways to summon the plant spirit compared to the others (it seems odd that I can't summon the plant spirit by hitting grass or trees when the others are far less restrictive).

Another thing I find interesting about the spirit system is that the spirits are both under your control and somewhat autonomous. Once summoned, the spirits can move around on their own (though usually sticking close to the hero) and can attack on their own, though the degree to which they do this varies widely depending on the spirit. At the same time, you can order the spirits to cast various spells that they will unleash from their position. This semi-autonomous nature can be both good and bad. Certainly, it makes quick and precise aiming of magical effects like the Water Bubble or Fire Breath almost impossible, to the point that I needed to use an expensive wide area explosion spell to light torches, but at the same time the automatic attacks from the fire spirit are strong, quick, and accurate and don't require any of the player's attention. All of the plant and shadow spirit moves work well (since you control their movements precisely, though the plant spirit attacks on its own), but only the water spirit's healing move (which thankfully automatically seeks out the hero) and the fire spirit's big explosion and automatic attacks are reliable under normal conditions. The frustrating fire spirit racing minigame is one place in particular where I desperately wished for a way to manually control the movements of one of the spirits. Overall, I think the game would have been a bit better if either the designers got rid of the moves that required you to precisely position a spirit that is eager to move around on its own, or enabled the spirits to move themselves into position to attack accurately when ordered.

Anyways, I do like the different focuses they gave each of the spirits. The water spirit heals and stuns enemies, so you use it to recover from injuries, reduce damage, and give yourself an opening to attack with your own weapons. The fire spirit aggressively attacks on its own and is particularly effective against certain enemies (like zombies), so it is great in a tough fight against a swarm of foes, or when you don't have the freedom to attack yourself. The shadow spirit negates hits and catches you when you fall, so you use it when you are at risk of taking a lot of attacks you can't dodge. The plant spirit can utterly destroy every enemy that gets too close to it, so it is great for holding positions and clearing out waves of enemies. Each spirit has it own strategy, either defensive or offensive, and the same battle can be fought in very different ways depending on which spirit you bring to it. This kind of tactical variety is really great, and helps a lot with keeping the battles in Beyond oasis exciting until the end.

There are probably a few more things I could take about regarding the game, like its items (limited inventory encourages use and foresight, but at the same time you just get way more great items than you really need), weapons (limited use weapons work surprisingly well here, other than bows), the rank system (too random and the hearts fade too quickly), and finding jewels (a great consistent and useful puzzle reward), but none of those aspects of the game are unique or notable enough to really get into detail about.

Overall, not a bad game at all. I just wish I knew where those last seventeen jewels were, since I thought I was a lot more thorough than that...

Kingdom Hearts II: Drive System limitations

I started a second play-through of Kingdom Hearts II for the PS2 yesterday. I am intending to do try a few new things on this second play-through, such as finally watching the bonus ending movie. In particular, I am hoping to utilize Kingdom Hearts II's drive system a lot more than I did my first time through the game. So far, it is working out for me pretty well. I have already gotten used to to activating Valor Drive a lot more than I ever did before.

In my first go-through of Kingdom Hearts II, I used the various Drive transformations quite sparingly, and for good reason. The Drive gauge builds up fairly slowly, even if the player is collecting many Drive Gauge restoration orbs. Therefore, it is impossible to use a Drive transformation in every battle. At best, it can only be done every two to three battles, and is likely to require more battles than that. Now then, if the player uses up his Drive Gauge fighting a minor battle just before a major fight or boss fight, than the player can't use one of his best weapons when he needs it the most. Since it is really hard to estimate when one is going to fight a major battle, the player is encouraged to use Drive transformations conservatively. In addition, Summon commands also use up the Drive Gauge, forcing the player to make opportunity cost decisions between his strongest powers. This time though, I am discovering that I can use Drive a lot more than I originally expected. However, I do have some fore-knowledge of the game's events this time around, which is helping my ability to estimate how much I can use the Drive command a lot.

If it was just the Drive Gauge limiting the use of Drive transformations, I would have no problem with the system. Unfortunately, there are a few more factors limiting the players use of it. First off, Drive transformations require either 1 specific party member or both party members to be absorbed in order to activate, depending on the individual Drive command. What this means is that Sora cannot use Drive if he is the only character currently fighting. However, I am quickly being reminded that this is a fairly common occurrence. Many of the major scripted battles in the game involve Sora fighting alone or alongside a single ally (who is not one of the two characters involved in 1-ally Drives). So, in many of the battles where the player could get the most advantage out of Drive commands, the battles that the player saves his Drive Gauge for, he can't actually use it. This even includes most of the multi-part final boss battle.

The other limitation of the Drive command comes in the form of Anti-Sora. Every time Sora transforms, there is a certain chance that he will accidentally transform into Anti-Sora, a form with little real combat power and half the defense of base Sora. Since the factor that determines the chance of becoming Anti-Sora increases every time the Drive command is used, Anti-Sora encourages the player to use Drive forms sparingly. However, Drive forms can only be leveled up by using them consistently, which encourages the player to use Drive forms as often as possible. Obviously, this means the game design is working at cross-purposes, which only serves to frustrate the player. On top of that, Anti-Sora's chance of appearing increases dramatically during major boss fights. This means that the player is likely to end up a dead Anti-Sora if he uses one of his coolest abilities during a boss fight. I can't really say that does anything to increase the fun-factor of the game at all.

I would probably have used Drive abilities a lot more on my first play-through if the game developers had relied solely on the Drive Gauge to restrict use of the Drive command, instead of adding on several more layers of limitation. The Anti-Sora form in particular only makes the game experience more frustrating. A special power really only needs one controlling factor and some opportunity costs to balance it out. Throwing on too many limiting factors only frustrates the player.

Persona 3 FES: Personas

The title creatures of Persona 3, the Personas, are certainly an important part of the game. Acquiring them, building them up, and fusing them together to create new Personas are all activities that take up quite a lot of time and energy. Almost every choice made in the progress of the game is reflected by the incredible variability of the Persona system. This system, the Persona series' inheritance from the broader Megami Tensei series, is essential to the experience of the game. In many ways, Persona 3's adherence to the traditional Megami Tensei system is both a great strength and a great weakness for the game.

The basic scheme of the Persona/Megami Tensei system is very similar to monster-collection games, though a bit less so in Persona than in the main Megami Tensei series because Personas don't fight directly and you can't build teams of them. One of the biggest differences, though, is that unlike more typical monster collection games such as Pokemon, the Megami Tensei makes holding on to your "monsters" and raising their level a less-than-optimal choice. Personas level at about half the rate that the hero does even if you put all of your effort into raising their levels, and raising the hero's level lets you acquire even more powerful Personas who have even stronger abilities, so it is most beneficial to use low-level Personas for fusion than to try to level them up. This means that the player will only use any particular Persona for a very limited time, and there is a clear progression of ever-stronger Personas. In many ways, it is a far simpler system for the player to use than other kinds of monster collection game because the basic choice of what monster to use is so much more clear. It is particularly good for a game like Persona 3 in which the "monsters" do not take center stage, because it makes it a lot easier for the player to make use of a great variety of "monsters" without having to spend a lot of effort acquiring them and individually raising their levels. Because of this, the basic system works very well for Persona 3, though there are flaws in the details.

One of the most noticeable flaws of the system is actually in the designs of the different Personas. In that area, Persona 3 may have taken a bit too much from the greater Megami Tensei series. All of the Personas used by your allies and enemies in Persona 3, from Junpei's Hermes to Aigis's Athena, all have a really great unified look to them, mixing human-like forms with surreal elements to create creatures that look like they are subconscious echos of the Persona-users, and they quite nicely incorporate a lot of the same design elements seen in the enemy Shadows (some Shadows, like The Reaper and some of the Twelve Shadows would actually make great Personas themselves), but the problem is that only three out of more than a hundred and seventy Personas available to the hero use that look (Orpheus, Thanatos, and Messiah). The rest of the hero's Personas all take their designs (and possibly models) directly from other Persona games, and don't look like anything else in Persona 3. I suppose the fair way to interpret this is that the designers wanted to keep the looks of the creatures the same between all Megami Tensei games for brand reasons (the unfair interpretation is that they were just lazy), but I don't think it was the best choice. The difference is just too glaring.

Another flaw is actually related to the three Personas that actually do match the rest of the game's aesthetics. These three, the hero's first Persona "Orpheus", the plot-central Persona "Thanatos", and the ultimate Persona "Messiah", are all among the most important Personas in the game, but in the end they are treated just like any other Persona. Orpheus is incredibly weak and should be abandoned quickly, Thanatos is just another Persona who will be acquired and traded out eventually (despite his important symbolic role in the game's plot), and as far as I am aware Messiah is just acquired normally and treated like just another Persona (even though he appears on the game DVD and in the credits). I admit that this is only arguably a flaw, but it just seems that these three Personas simply don't get the kind of special treatment they deserve. They seem to be the hero's equivalents to the Personas that everyone else in the game uses, so I wonder if it would have been better if they worked more like Junpei's Hermes or Aigis's Athena, which level up along with the Persona-user and transform with the plot, and less like normal Personas. If nothing else, it would have provided a reliable "always available" Persona (or three), which would at least be useful for showing off the hero's Persona abilities in plot scenes.

A much more pressing concern about the Persona system is that fusing Personas is just too time-consuming and annoying. My brother touched on this a while back, but one of the biggest flaws is the random nature of passing on skills through Fusion. Passing on good skills is essential, but it can take dozens of random combinations before a good combination of skills can be passed on (and even then passing on ideal skill sets is nearly impossible). In addition, it is impossible to even know what kinds of skills a fused Persona can acquire from its component Personas unless you go through this tedious process a few times. Trying to pass on a rare and powerful skill like Samsara or Thunder Reign through several generations of Personas can be difficult even without trying to pass on skills like Hama Boost or Elec Amp that are needed to get the most out of them. Trying to pass on great combinations involving three or more skills (like Auto-Maraku + Auto-Mataru + Auto-Masuku) is almost impossible. This issue just amplifies the annoying fact that it is hard to figure out what skills to give to a Persona that does not have a central theme to its innate skills. The whole thing would have been a lot better if the game was more explicit about the ability-transfer rules and it was possible to simply select the skills you want to pass on from a list.

One final point where the game has some room for improvement is the way experience is handed out to Personas. I think it would just be better if every Persona gained at least some experience from battle, rather than only the Persona you end battle with. There are ways around this limitation (such as the Growth skills), and the game does not really need it to function, so all it does is force the player to give the Growth skill to Personas he wants to build up a bit (a major annoyance given the system I just described above), or for him to use particular Personas in battle far more than necessary (and to the exclusion of many others). It simply intrudes upon the basic flexibility the hero has in being able to easily switch Personas in battle, and makes it harder to actually make full use of a full team of well-built Personas.

Anyways, I want to end this by saying that I really do like almost everything about the hero's Persona system. It adds an incredible amount of customizability and tactical variety to the game system, and can be a lot of fun. If it were just a bit more user-friendly, it would be an ideal game system for people like me who enjoy seeing the benefits of putting a lot of thought into building characters, and an equally ideal system for the plot and themes of the Persona series.