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.
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
Friday, October 17, 2008
Sin and Punishment
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"...
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
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.
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.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Megaman Starforce 2: Giga Class Cards
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.
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
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.
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.
Sunday, October 12, 2008
Lost Woods mazes
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.
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
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.
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.
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