Wiping the blood from your claws Tuesday, Feb 24 2009

Sacred Blaze is a hodge-podge but it seems to work. You play as God and watch a small band of heroes try to battle back the darkness which vanquished you 100 years ago. This is a decent setting but you play as the good guys so many time times I kind of wish you could play as the side of evil to keep repressing the world. You have a choice between following the story of the lawful knight lord Alecseed whose concept unpleasantly reminded me too much of Wein from Dragon Force, and Kiyora the chaotic samurai princess.  My dear readers can surely guess which one I picked. I suspect that there won’t be that much difference in the overall nature of the game regardless of who you pick. Eventually you probably still fight on all the same maps anyway as well. But when a golden werewolf named “Vilan” who can recover his health by eating one of his “dark beast” servants (your randomly generated mook allies) joins you in a chase across the countryside to kill a giant oni for revenge then you know that Kiyora really does have a more chaotic story. I’ll check out Alecseed’s intro briefly but it seemed like it was going to be blowjobs and incest lollipops which isn’t my thing.

In case anyone is curious about the level of Japanese in the game I’d have to say that it would be prohibitive to play if you don’t know any. The dialogue is not at that high of a level and most of the story scenes are voiced even for the NPCs so you can always look things up. However the game play info like Brave’s Oaths in battles and skill descriptions on the status screen are not readily apparent. Even the single most interesting aspect of battles would be a bit baffling if you had no idea what it all said.

Since you are actually playing as the God of light and goodness guiding the fortunes of your chosen agent (代行者) you are able to create some miracles to help the troops out. You start out with being able to use a weak healing spell for battle with an AOE of 5. This ability is probably the difference between victory and defeat even in the early stage of the game. You also have the ability to ressurect a fallen comrade outside of battle. I’m hoping that eventually this will also work in battle but we’ll see. After clearing the first area you’re rewarded with a couple of new miracles to use, and I imagine that this pattern will remain consistent through the game.

Other than that it doesn’t seem like there are any new developments for Flight Plan that have any originality. I think that they switched to a traditional “level up after getting 100 points” EXP system in  Poison Pink. Previously they used a system wherein you were awarded a pool of EXP to be dispensed as you wished after battle. In general there was great incentive to boost only a few characters and just leave most of the allies you received at their default level. Which is really stupid considering how many characters their games tend to have. Flight Plan’s “group attack” system also makes a return but now it has the restriction of only being usable by a Master (like Kiyora) and at least 3 of their servants (in her case Samurai) rather than being usable by your whole party like in DSS. I have to see this as a downgrade even though its power isn’t to be trifled with. Although it was pretty tedious to link your party all the damn time in DSS. Now that I think about it this change to a more traditional co-op attack might have to do with the standard exp system. It would have been pretty easy to abuse the system for leveling if everyone could use it I suppose.

Anyway even the miracle system reminds me of other games that I didn’t play. The whole game also puts me in mind of the classic action/city building god simulator ActRaiser. That game is almost 20 years old now though so I’m sure that plenty of people weren’t alive or old enough to play games at that time anyway. It’s been available on Virtual Console for a while now if you want to check it out. I always sucked at the action part of it but anyway the one system that’s really similar is how your “braves” in this game will pledge certain tasks to god which you as the player have to see out. For example Kiyora’s early pledge is to defeat 150 enemies which will probably take a fair bit of grinding. But in the 3rd battle (I kept thinking it was weird there was no 1-2 but I think that was the event battle officially so it makes sense you can’t repeat that) Kiyora pledges to not let any allies fall. You can always choose to accept or deny this request. Accepting it gives you small boosts like invoking the character’s divine self-boost skill automatically and completing it gives you… OK I didn’t pay attention much but I think it further boosts Faith points (which are otherwise boosted slightly by leveling up and using miracles on characters). Those play a part in the points you get for creating miracles and later doing other stuff. I’ll have to check but I think that 1/10 of the total Faith Points you have received are usable as Force Points which is what gets used up by miracles.

That’s enough to write about this game for now right? Oh the graphics. Flight Plan always has attractive character portraits but so far these ones seem a little less ridiculous than their past couple of games. At least Kiyora is a lot less annoying than Kaito from Dragon Shadow Spell which I’ve also written about exhaustively. The battle graphics do not impress me. Battles take place in full isometric squallor. The locations look OK, and starting the game on top of a burning Japanese style castle was pretty dramatic. But the super deformed pixelated characters don’t impress me. The game is probably an improvement over Poison Pink/Eternal Poison but Dragon Shadow Spell’s visuals are more to my taste. It occurs to me that they went the 3D route because it was easier to create some variance in all the random soldiers you use in the course of the game. It’s also the easiest way to clearly display changed equipment since all they need to do is create some 3D models which can then be moved any which way instead of totally re-drawing all the sprites. Speaking of that you have a small level of customization as accessories/helmet crests become available to you for characters and this causes a slight change in their appearance. After you clear the first area Kiyora gets an interesting head band  which is apparently made out of the fangs (I don’t think it was the horns) of the oni that killed her family and destroyed her country. This gives her the appearance of an oni herself and makes an interesting statement about her character don’t you think?

I guess I could have summarized the game with the phrase adequate gameplay and distinct character in a bearable visual package. That’s good enough for an SRPG fan right? I still don’t think that this game will see release outside of Japan but other than being slightly difficult (I could see people getting wiped out in the 2nd battle) it’s more mainstream and less religious than I thought it would be.  So there’s a chance. I don’t think it would be that easy to localize since the game is voiced extensively (when will they realize they can save so much time and money by just leaving the vocals and not bothering with dubbing?), and there are a lot of visual intricacies which were clearly not made with the intention of being converted to another language (this is why you don’t see elaborate Japanese in Square Enix games).

I am considering getting a hold of a few older PS2 games but since my hands are giving out (I was wondering if the Wii would be viable for me or not since I can still move my arms),  and this is the last PS2 game to be released that I had any knowledge of I think Sacred Blaze will be the last new PS2 game for me.  It’s been 9 years since the PS2 came out in Japan and I can’t believe it’s hung around for this long. I haven’t even bothered to buy the latest generation of consoles since all the games I was interested in kept coming out for the PS2 anyway. So many damn games came out for this system. I don’t really think that there’s much ground left to cover.

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I didn’t care for the eggs Monday, Feb 9 2009

I have thrust myself deep into other projects at this time and that leaves me with no desire to put any effort into this kind of personal writing. Even when dramatic things happen like a person I know getting arrested for doing stupid things. I guess the moral of that story is that if you’re stupid then avoid the police or anyone who would call the police on you.

In the little time I’ve had otherwise I’ve been playing Ar Tonelico 2.  I had started to think the game might not come out in English but it did. Then when my pre-ordered copy got back-ordered I feared I would not receive it but I did. Of course I didn’t think I’d get around to playing it much either but I have. At the moment I think that I’m 1/3 of the way through the game and it’s decent despite being somewhat inconsistent. The localisation might have been rushed as there are lots of shoddy grammatical errors. In particular I think that every instance which should be “your” is written as “you’re” even though the opposite mistake is not made. I lambasted Eternal Eden for this and whoever fucked up here deserves a reaming too. I know that there were issues with getting this game out and by the time they finally got the go-ahead there was probably a need to rush but the fact that the people working on this game either didn’t notice or didn’t care that a lot of the dialogue makes no sense and is rife with errors is just disgusting.

Other than that the game play is OK. Only concepts remain from the last game as even cosmosphere diving ends out having a different feel to it and just about everything else is different. Battles are much more active and the game is somewhat harder if you are poor at the timing elements like I am. The overall pace is faster but early on locations are not very diverse and in order to get everything you have to do a lot of back-tracking and checking around. Which is pretty tedious. Something else that annoyed me is the poor spacing of equipment upgrades early on. Hopefully this trend will not continue throughout the game but if it does it will suck. Keeping up with synthesis is also more difficult in this game and reminds me more of the way things were in Atelier Iris which is the only non-AT Gust game I’ve played.

The plot of the game is more convoluted than the first one as well and to me the story seems at least much more cynical if not necessarily darker. I find the characters less likeable early on but as the plot develops and the reasons for their pathos become apparent they are more sympathetic. Right off the bat I noticed what a marked improvement the new protagonist Croix was over the previous one Lyner though. Lyner was the sort of stereotypical moronic/optimistic/courageous (is there really a difference?) male lead that is usually in (harem) love comedies and I thought he was definitely the weak point of that game. Croix is not the opposite of Lyner but he is more serious and… Actually now that I think about it the best way to put it is that Lyner was bokke and Croix is tsubokke! I guess put another way Lyner is a doofus and Croix is a “straight-man” which is where my preferences lie. The writers do a poor job of getting you to like Luca or Cloche early on though. The two definitely have more obscure characters when compared to the girls in the last game but this also seems contrived.

The most annoying thing in the game is actually something that makes a lot of sense. Your party members constantly come and go. There were various times when this doesn’t really make sense but a lot of the times it does. Usually it doesn’t matter that much but since you can only synthesize with certain reyvateils at certain shops and there are other subquests involving them that makes a big difference. Just as you get into the swing of that is when you start having to split a lot really. I suppose that this serves as extra incentive to encourage you to play through the game multiple times by actually having some things that are different though so whatever. Honestly I kept meaning to but I never did complete my second playthrough of the first game since it just wasn’t that big of a deal. With the impending release of AT2 I felt that I should go and finish it up but I did not, and now in the full swing of this game I’d rather just beat it first. After doing that I might go back to the first and finish it. What the hell right?

Seeing as it’s actually been two calender years since the second game came out in Japan and I haven’t heard anything about it, on top of the reshuffling of Banpresto (what the hell did they do in this game exactly?) into Namco Bandai games, there might not be a 3rd game. That might be OK. There is definitely more they could do with this series but it’s hard to imagine a game with the same formula would be dramatically different.

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Where lies the end of infinity is unknown but we are always standing upon its frontier Thursday, May 29 2008

So. 無限のフロンティアスーパーロボト大戦OGサーガ (mugen no frontier super robot taisen OG saga: Endless Frontier: super robot wars OG (original generation) saga) is out today for the japanese Nintendo DS. I’ve played it a bit and my initial impression is disappointment as usual. I have to blame a lot of this on the limitations of the Nintendo DS hardware but as far as visuals go the developer Monolith Soft (best known for the Xenosaga series which had fair visuals but other issues were abound) really does kind of suck with sprite graphics. Namco X Capcom on PS2 had some damned ugly battle sprites at times,  I’m particularly reminded of Ryu and Ken’s combination attack where they appear to have pig faces in their end pose. Monolith Soft sucking at sprites raises the question of why they’re making such games but that doesn’t really matter. The early game play is fair but I find the interface uninspiring. The plot is wonky SF crap like most of the SRW series but with even more emphasis on the comedic than usual and a sort of Leiji Matsumoto esque romantic retro sf feel (generally the SRW OG games are hard SF). That said what saves the game from being a step above trash (it’s still better than a lot of DS games though) are the amusing characters and their interactions. Since the characters are intentionally based off of other original banpresto characters in various ways and those characters are basically at best homages to mecha character stereotypes I can’t really give points for originality but the whole thing works in a way that amuses me.

And that’s the whole point of playing a game; to be amused. I should really figure out how to use the ; properly. Anyway the game is easy, the visuals are questionable, the gameplay is a step above uninspired and repetitive (which is a big step up for the boring and repetitive srw series), the characters are unoriginal, the plot is uninspired rehash, and the dialogue is great in a slapstick absurd kind of way. So make of that what you will. In the end I’d say if you’re a fan of monolith soft, banpresto, the japanese language, or the srw series then it’s worth picking up but other than that you’d have to be a really hardcore handheld rpg fan for it to be worth a purchase.

To float back to something I recall mentioning recently about the DS, this is a good example of how even when it seems like the dual screens are being well utilized there’s almost no reason why the same things wouldn’t work on a single full sized screen that was split however. In fact if developers made more use of the right analog sticks on PS(whatever) games there would be almost no limit besides human attention which is quite a bottleneck indeed. whatever.

Just in case anyone has the wrong idea I am talking about a Japanese video game that’s in japanese here. I do not know if the game will be released outside of japan or not, and I also don’t know if the game will be released in a different language. There are often “asian” versions of SRW games but I’ve never been clear exactly what those are and they’re just japanese games with at best a little printout in other languages what the controls are. There is a certain potential that the game will be released in america since the two GBA OG games were, although the PS2 OG games have not been and possibly will not be, but a European release seems extremely unlikely to me even if there is an american release. I would say a large obstacle to the potential release outside of japan aside from the small prospective client base (most people who want srw games outside of japan buy them in japanese anyway and probably will not buy the same game twice, or they just pirate them and wouldn’t buy a commercial version anyway) would be how japanese the humor in the games are, revolving mostly around language that isn’t translatable. Like the way Lamia talks which I personally can not explain. There is also voice in mugen no frontier and there definitely isn’t enough room on a DS cartridge for dual language but the dubbing would be terrible. I think it’s the copious amount of voice in the PS OG games that kept them from an american release more than anything. I always think that otaku will just want the original japanese anyway but if you’re limiting yourself to the otaku fanbase then it’s hard to make money.

Well I’ll write more about the game some other time. If for no other reason than I’m possibly the only one using the tag “mugen no frontier”.

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IF (you can touch the rainbow with your toe) Tuesday, May 27 2008

Well I finally got around to beating the japanese playstation 2 game Dragon Shadow Spell. I have written about the game various times while playing it so I don’t feel like doing a full review but to summarize here are the things I liked and disliked about it.

Likes: the designs, the graphics, some of the characters, the mission select, the humor, the depth of character interaction from the bonus missions and private conversations, the world the game takes place in, certain aspects of the battle system, some of the music, being able to carry things over on repeat plays, the game’s charm.

Dislikes: the main character, the main character’s special ability which cripples him, the convoluted plot, no status or inventory menu during free movement, the broken platform jumping elements of the free movement, how hard it is to gain new skills (beat an enemy to get code for yourself and cumulative matrix, as the matrix for a type of enemy fills up you can learn various stat increases and abilities but for most of the enemies you won’t get more than 20 points through the normal course of the game), the broken experience system which discourages the use of more than 6 characters on a regular basis, the heavily imbalanced stats, the steep jump in enemy difficulty at the end of the game, the turn limit in the Heaven’s door free battles, the controls for the ZERO mini game, the extreme difficulty of making “money”, having to buy expensive items to let you carry things into a replay that do not work until that replay (I have yet to confirm whether items bought in a replay game work right away or force you to once again beat the game before you can use them), how easy it is to miss character events and how tedious it is to try and get them all, the ending, the fact that nothing changes through the course of the game based on your actions (meeting a character in a bonus scenario or event but having there be no recognition in a mission scenario), the lack of closure for a lot of characters, the bonus characters  (who you can’t use until a replay anyway) starting at level one in a replay game.

So yeah there are quite a few more dislikes than likes on my part. That’s just my way. All in all I enjoyed the game and it’s not like the ending was bad, the game brought itself together at least. It just seemed like so much of it didn’t matter and that was frustrating. By my end of the game I couldn’t tell whether I couldn’t have a conversation with certain characters (who happened to be ones I’d stopped using) during the last mission (which is supposed to be the way to decide whose ending ou get but…) because I had missed some of their events or because their levels weren’t high enough or I didn’t use them enough or what. My motivation to replay the game at this point is pretty low. Since the last mission throws you into 3 of the longest battles in the game my motivation to replay that alone 9 times or even the 5 times available to me is particularly low let alone the 30 or so mission battles in the game (maybe). I imagine that it’s because of there being individual endings that there aren’t scenes to show what happens to even groups of characters afterwards but this really leaves NPCs hanging in the wind.

Probably the thing that disappoints me so much is that I played the ZERO mini game a bunch of times to make money for the replay items AFTER I locked myself in for the… supposedly “true” ending which apparently only lets you get the ending of one NPC no matter what you do. I feel like this was a huge flaw, rather than forcing you into that they could have easily had the last choice you get in the game, whether there’s someone you want to talk to or not, decide that. Although things would not have been clear that was how to get that ending, it’s not like most other things were clear anyway.

So saying I guess that “disappointment” is the main thing I’m feeling. I dumped so many hours into this game and I feel like I wasn’t really rewarded. Now if I ignore these immediate feelings I did enjoy playing the game. Probably I would have enjoyed it more either if the main character didn’t suck so much or he didn’t have such a lousy (it’s nasally and whiny, since the character is like that it’s even worse) voice. There is some question in my mind whether or not this will turn into some sort of series. I find it highly doubtful that the same cast would be assembled again but it’s easy to imagine a game using the same world.

One last note related to the experience system. There is basically a finite amount of experience available in the game. Characters do not level up in battle but instead you are given EXP to your pool at the end of battle which is also the only time you’re allowed to level characters and only the ones that were in the battle. Using only what’s given to you in the missions, including the 7 quests (not that you got much for those either), I’m not sure that by spreading the exp out evenly between all characters they would be strong enough to comfortably beat the end bosses. It should be possible, but I had a hard enough time after going through all 40 available free battles to reasonably beat the final boss. The main problem is that by the end of the game the offensive stats of enemies are proportionally much greater than those of your characters but that’s another matter. Anyway the game was passable quality wise but it was annoying and broken so it’s no wonder that it hasn’t been and probably will not be released outside of japan.

And so after beating the game I find myself only able to recommend it to hardcore SRPG fans, which is nearly the only type of srpg fan anyway, and among those only the ones who have a fair understanding of japanese (without the charm of the game’s character scenes it would be a real chore) and are also fans of convoluted fantasy anime/manga. Yeah convoluted fantasy, that’s how I would describe the genre for sure. to tack a number on it I’ll give it a 7.5 but let me say that if it weren’t for a variety of flaws, or possibly if the game was a lot shorter and had branching story lines, then it could have been a 9. That hour wasted (that’s how much I suck more than how hard it actually is to some extent) trying to make jumps on the bridge to get to the stones (money) really grated on me…

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laugh along with your ghost Saturday, Mar 1 2008

I’ve been watching the new anime series 墓場鬼太郎 Hakaba Kitarou (graveyard Kitarou) which actually is based on a manga series that’s almost 50 years old now. The original kitarou anime “gegege no kitarou” is 40 years old so I wonder if they released this version to commemorate that. Well anyway it’s somewhat of an interesting series on a number of levels which I’ll detail since I have a bit of time.

First of all the story is pretty ruthless. Although the overall tone is somewhat offhanded, it is actually a horror series with people dying and strange things happen ing. The series takes place in the japan of 40-50 years ago which is a fairly unique setting for a work these days. Most of the plot revolves around creatures from traditional japanese folklore, but what with “Dracula the 4th” popping up in one episode one can assume that contemporary occidental horror isn’t off limits.

The animation style really stands out. The series almost looks like a roughly drawn manga that’s been transposed onto the screen. I’m not entirely certain whether things are just drawn like this in the first place or if it’s some sort of visual effect. There are definitely other visual effects, like the vague luminescence of Kitarou’s vest, so it wouldn’t surprise me. Having seen a lot of animation I’ve seen some of these stylings and techniques used before, but the overall presentation results in a unique experience. I think it looks pretty good, and more importantly it creates an atmosphere that’s perfect for the series, but ascetically it’s not really that attractive.

I think that the overall audio experience stands out too. It’s got a vague, catchy, techno pop opening which basically has three lines or something and reminds me a little too much of the disco (I think this might be the first time I’ve mentioned disco here) hit song “funkytown”.The ending song is a pretty average pop tune that I have nothing to say about. I could be wrong but I suspect that at least some of the music used in the series are redone versions of music from past Kitarou anime. That suspicion is based on a certain similarity I noticed between some of the background music and the old “gegege” theme’s music so I could be way off. But the music fits the show well in any case. I think some of the characters are portrayed by some notable voice actors but I’m not actually sure of who any of the cast members are (the only names I remember are writers and musicians), just that they are fairly similar to past Kitarou voice actors. In my mind. Could I make any more assumptions about this series?

Well the last thing I’ll say about it is that to me the key to the series is the relationship between the “spirit being” (yuurei, typically translated as ghost but Kitarou is clearly corporeal while ghosts are not so I don’t feel that’s appropriate) Kitarou and the human Mizuki (presumably named after the creator shigeru mizuki). It’s really somewhat of a subtle thing but I think it’s worth paying attention to. By the way in case you can’t tell I like the series but at best I would call it “fair” and “mildly interesting” at this point. I will reserve full judgment until I’ve seen the whole thing.

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ready to kill for you to die Sunday, Sep 23 2007

I think the strongest impression left on me this year was when in the wake of the “Virginia Tech shooting” a group of students belonging to a gun club or something said that if only they’d been allowed to have guns on campus things would have turned out differently. I can’t remember exactly what was said. But my impression was that they were saying that they would be willing to kill. In theory we’re not just talking about killing someone for the hell of it, but rather killing in some sort of defense. Nonetheless, it just really struck me, the intensity of their conviction that there are circumstances that warrant the killing of another person.

Let me again state that this was the impression I got, nothing was so directly stated. In fact there have been times this year when people have made direct statements about a willingness to inflict death and destruction in one way or another. Some were in fact promises, some were as it happened fulfilled. But those didn’t leave such a strong impression on me either before or after. And though I’m trying to determine why that is, I can’t seem to come up with an answer. It just did.

Well, I think killing is wrong regardless of the circumstances.  There is a difference between justice and morality. The right way to live isn’t the right way to exist. I don’t think that it’s irresponsible of me to say that if you can get through your life without killing then you should. From my perspective, the moment you create justification for something in your mind you are encouraging others to do it even outside of that justification. Something like “if someone hits you first then you should hit them back”. This is an old argument which people don’t often change sides on multiple times. That if you answer with an eye for an eye we will all end out blind. Perhaps that is in fact the situation right now in the world? Anyway, the other side of that being that you can’t let people get away with things, can’t let people push you around/take advantage of you. The thing is that you don’t need violence to achieve that, it’s simply the most straight forward to answer like with like. Violence with violence, money with money, betrayal with betrayal.

It doesn’t matter. Humanity is about coping with imperfection right? If I had a clearer impression of death I might change my views though. If I knew that nothing mattered, or that there are rewards and punishments, whatever. Maybe for the world in general. Yes that goes to show you how important morality is to me. Convince me that killing really doesn’t matter and I’d stop caring. I think the chances of that being the case are pretty low though, pretty low.

Just like the chance that China was actually going to win the Women’s World Cup.

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