Let's shift gears for a moment and take a look at a game that until recently had been languishing in my backlog for several years. That game is Tactics Ogre: Knight of Lodis, the lone Game Boy Advance game on my list still left to complete. I'd originally decided to tackle the game so many years ago for two reasons: one, I'm a huge strategy RPG fan; and two, I'm a tremendous fan of Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly caliber, one of the best games on the N64 and one of the few RPG representatives on the console. Of course, despite the two games being entries into the same series, their gameplay is very different.
Knight of Lodis is a strategy RPG more in the tradition of Final Fantasy Tactics--but it is perhaps more accurate to say it follows the tradition of its direct predecessor, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together from the Super Famicom. This game of course predated Final Fantasy Tactics and was perhaps unfairly unrecognized (at least in the West) for its influence on Japanese SRPGs. I haven't played LUCT extensively so I feel unqualified to comment, but it seems impossible to deny just how heavily it influenced Final Fantasy Tactics. Due to my inexperience, I can only really compare it to other SRPGs I've played. I do plan to play through Let Us Cling Together, but it'll definitely be the PSP version.
Knight of Lodis is an SRPG featuring a class system and many unique story characters as well as playable monsters, demihumans, and undead creatures. Like many games in the genre, positioning and terrain are both very important to succeed in combat. In fact, its almost impossible to successfully attack opponents from the front. It's an even worse idea in melee since all attacks made from the front will be met with automatic counterattacks. It's entirely possible to whiff an attack and then get countered for fatal damage. For this reason, units with high mobility are very useful on the battlefield, increasing the value of flying units like hawkmen and angel knights.
Because accuracy is such an issue, I found myself prioritizing magic attacks that hit without fail and melee units that could easily get behind opponents. Early on, I made a lot of use of the ninja class with its ability to walk on water and travel long distances. Wizards and sirens, with their ability to cast elemental magic with 100% success rates, were also a staple of my early strategy. Later on, I equipped a couple of my characters (including the protagonist as a swordmaster) with items that allowed them to teleport around the battlefield, ignoring terrain.
Knight of Lodis is not a game that features stunning class variety (at least not in comparison to Final Fantasy Tactics) but it does make your choices important. Unlocking new classes requires a certain set of minimum stats and frequently a specific Emblem. Emblems are obtained through performing special actions in combat. Most Emblems benefit characters by imparting statistical bonuses, but others only serve to unlock new classes. The Lancer Emblem is obtained by striking two foes in a line with a spear, for instance, and is required to unlock the Valkyrie class, with its balanced stat growths and propensity for spears and magic. Each class in Knight of Lodis has its own stat growths. Planning out the chain of classes a certain character will use as they level up will determine how quickly you unlock more powerful classes. Some of the game's most powerful classes can only be unlocked by dying in combat!
Still, each of the game's classes essentially boils down to a bundle of stats combined with possibly one or two special abilities. Many non-wizard classes can also equip magic, of which there is a decent variety, ranging from low-accuracy projectiles, accurate area-of-effect spells, and devastating multi-hit summons. Many of the game's unique characters can equip these summons and to be honest they made up the bulk of my army by the end of the game.
Overall, I really enjoyed Knight of Lodis despite longing for a little more complexity and variety of choices. The plot, which is largely political until rumblings of an ancient sacred spear come into play, is also well done but admittedly not something I became very invested in. The soundtrack is also very good and echoes themes from Ogre Battle 64. I'm not at all surprised that Hitoshi Sakimoto (of Final Fantasy Tactics and Vagrant Story) fame had a hand in it. It's definitely one of the best games in the Game Boy Advance library. It makes me want to revisit some games I never got around to--which primarily consists of Golden Sun 2, honestly.
Saturday, July 25, 2015
Friday, July 24, 2015
Another dimension of Final Fantasy
I've been compiling documents at work in hopes that I would cobble together some of those notes to write some actual entries for this blog. So far, that hasn't really happened for the most part. It might make more sense to just straight up write blog entries from work and maybe finish them when I get home. On really slow days, I might just get them completely done while I'm there, even if the productivity of such an action is extremely questionable.
I've been meaning to write about Final Fantasy Dimensions for some time now even though I completed it pretty early this month. I played through it pretty quickly considering the length of the game. This was at least partially because I was eager to be done with it, if I'm being honest. Dimensions comes from the same developer as the Final Fantasy III and IV enhanced remakes as well as Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, an immensely flawed (but still often enjoyable) episodic RPG. Dimensions is also episodic, but instead of focusing on individual characters in their own chapters, Dimensions jumps back and forth between two sets of parties composed of characters split up near the beginning of the game. These are the Warriors of Light and the Warriors of Darkness.
I'm generally a fan of games in which a group of separated characters deal with conflicts on the way to an ultimate objective in which the groups unite their powers. It's been done time and time again in different ways over the years, but I'm generally excited by working towards that point where my characters come together. Games like Dragon Quest IV and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn come to mind. Of course, those games mostly consist of static characters that learn abilities at predetermined levels. In each playthrough, they'll mostly be the same characters. Replay value comes from experimenting with different combinations of the characters available. In the case of Final Fantasy Dimensions, the abilities and strengths of the characters are left almost entirely up to the player.
What makes this take on the format interesting is the fact that the Warriors of Light and Warriors of Darkness have access to a different pool of classes. They share the basic classes like warrior, monk, white mage, and black mage--but the light warriors get jobs like paladin and memorist, whereas the dark warriors get ninja and dark knights. Once the two parties reunite, it's left entirely up to the player how to combine the light and dark warriors into a unified party and which classes to take into the final encounters.
Conceptually, all of this is very sound and it seems like it should come together to make a truly excellent game. However, it's not all good. The plot and characters are almost entirely forgettable and the combat is not always exciting. The random encounter rate in just about every location it exists is unforgivably high--and it's often the case that an immense amount of grinding is required to progress to the next location. I found myself relying on Auto Battle more often than not to slog my way through most of the game's dungeons. I can at least say that Naoshi Mizuta's soundtrack is solid, although certainly derivative of the Final Fantasy series as a whole. Whether an intentional homage or not, the boss battle theme echoes Final Fantasy VIII's "Force Your Way" pretty clearly.
Although the game does feature a nice variety of job classes with which to experiment, it doesn't seem to offer a lot of variety in terms of strategy. Negative status effects are almost universally ineffective against bosses (a trait shared by Bravely Default, if I recall correctly), whereas Final Fantasy IV bosses were almost always susceptible to being slowed, at the very least. Almost every tough boss fight eventually boils down to pooping out as much damage as possible while healing the party to full with 1-2 characters per turn. Buffing the party is, at the very least, an effective strategy, but interacting with the enemy in any other way but damage is pointless. This renders spells like Slow, Poison, Bio, Stop, and Silence to be almost completely useless outside of random encounters. Of course, this is not an uncommon thing in Final Fantasy games, but I posit that this should not be the case.
If there's anything about Final Fantasy Dimensions that really made me enjoy it in the end, it was that feeling in the final dungeon of having reached my "end game fantasy." I really chase that feeling at the end of a lot of RPGs in which you've unlocked the most powerful upgrades, abilities, and weapons, and can conceivably tear through anything the game has to offer. That feeling of being powerful after building up for a long period of time is a feeling I look for in just about every RPG I play. Dimensions did at least deliver in that aspect.
I've been meaning to write about Final Fantasy Dimensions for some time now even though I completed it pretty early this month. I played through it pretty quickly considering the length of the game. This was at least partially because I was eager to be done with it, if I'm being honest. Dimensions comes from the same developer as the Final Fantasy III and IV enhanced remakes as well as Final Fantasy IV: The After Years, an immensely flawed (but still often enjoyable) episodic RPG. Dimensions is also episodic, but instead of focusing on individual characters in their own chapters, Dimensions jumps back and forth between two sets of parties composed of characters split up near the beginning of the game. These are the Warriors of Light and the Warriors of Darkness.
I'm generally a fan of games in which a group of separated characters deal with conflicts on the way to an ultimate objective in which the groups unite their powers. It's been done time and time again in different ways over the years, but I'm generally excited by working towards that point where my characters come together. Games like Dragon Quest IV and Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn come to mind. Of course, those games mostly consist of static characters that learn abilities at predetermined levels. In each playthrough, they'll mostly be the same characters. Replay value comes from experimenting with different combinations of the characters available. In the case of Final Fantasy Dimensions, the abilities and strengths of the characters are left almost entirely up to the player.
What makes this take on the format interesting is the fact that the Warriors of Light and Warriors of Darkness have access to a different pool of classes. They share the basic classes like warrior, monk, white mage, and black mage--but the light warriors get jobs like paladin and memorist, whereas the dark warriors get ninja and dark knights. Once the two parties reunite, it's left entirely up to the player how to combine the light and dark warriors into a unified party and which classes to take into the final encounters.
Conceptually, all of this is very sound and it seems like it should come together to make a truly excellent game. However, it's not all good. The plot and characters are almost entirely forgettable and the combat is not always exciting. The random encounter rate in just about every location it exists is unforgivably high--and it's often the case that an immense amount of grinding is required to progress to the next location. I found myself relying on Auto Battle more often than not to slog my way through most of the game's dungeons. I can at least say that Naoshi Mizuta's soundtrack is solid, although certainly derivative of the Final Fantasy series as a whole. Whether an intentional homage or not, the boss battle theme echoes Final Fantasy VIII's "Force Your Way" pretty clearly.
Although the game does feature a nice variety of job classes with which to experiment, it doesn't seem to offer a lot of variety in terms of strategy. Negative status effects are almost universally ineffective against bosses (a trait shared by Bravely Default, if I recall correctly), whereas Final Fantasy IV bosses were almost always susceptible to being slowed, at the very least. Almost every tough boss fight eventually boils down to pooping out as much damage as possible while healing the party to full with 1-2 characters per turn. Buffing the party is, at the very least, an effective strategy, but interacting with the enemy in any other way but damage is pointless. This renders spells like Slow, Poison, Bio, Stop, and Silence to be almost completely useless outside of random encounters. Of course, this is not an uncommon thing in Final Fantasy games, but I posit that this should not be the case.
If there's anything about Final Fantasy Dimensions that really made me enjoy it in the end, it was that feeling in the final dungeon of having reached my "end game fantasy." I really chase that feeling at the end of a lot of RPGs in which you've unlocked the most powerful upgrades, abilities, and weapons, and can conceivably tear through anything the game has to offer. That feeling of being powerful after building up for a long period of time is a feeling I look for in just about every RPG I play. Dimensions did at least deliver in that aspect.
Tuesday, July 14, 2015
The Legend of the Doughy Weakling
I've found that I frequently lose motivation to write when I get home either due to being tired after a day of work or something more psychological than that. I associate being at home with unwinding and resting and writing frequently feels like work--even though it should not. If I could more easily organize my thoughts into something coherent then I think I could start enjoying it again, but I've gotten out of practice. Writing every day was fantastic for keeping me self aware and organized in my thoughts. The skills I built up over that year and a half have certainly atrophied. I wonder frequently if I should begin the process anew because my original plan to produce entries of much higher quality on an occasional basis has failed.
I've not been entirely unproductive in the time I've spent avoiding writing. I've gotten stricter with my diet. I'm consuming more protein and fewer carbs, I'm riding my bike every day, and I'm trying to lift free weights every other day or so. My body aches with even this very minor effort but my ambitions to lift heavy were thwarted quite dramatically at the gym a couple of days ago. It was. . .actually pretty embarrassing.
I'd managed to get myself thoroughly pumped up to embark on a new workout plan as laid out for me on Bodybuilding.com. The routine was heralded as an effective way to lose body fat. I was intrigued by this idea because even though I've lost a surprising amount of weight this year, I still can't help but feel I'm very pudgy and doughy. The first day of the plan involved the bench press, chin ups, and a lot of other scary stuff. I had to admit it sounded like exercise a little outside my fitness level but I was determined to try anyway.
I got up absurdly early on Sunday morning (at around 6:30) and fully intended to ride my bike for about a mile and a half--and I'm sure I would have, too, but it started to rain and I didn't want to get my bike too wet. I called it quits after only a couple minutes. This was a setback for the first day of my new routine but I was determined not to give up! I returned my bike to my living room and made myself a protein-packed meal of a pile of eggs and parmesan cheese. (I'm still a vegetarian, even though eggs feel questionable to me.) My energy newly renewed, I headed to the gym feeling pretty confident.
Since it was an early Sunday morning, there were very few other gym-goers around. I headed straight for the bench without considering the fact I'd done very little research on the exercise beforehand. It seemed pretty simple to me--lift the barbell off the thing, bring it down, and lift it back up. Do that until you're done. Simple. I laid down on the bench and extended my arms to the barbell and exerted a pretty significant amount of force on it, or so I thought. It didn't budge. It did not move an inch. Well, I thought, maybe one hundred pounds is a little too much for a beginner. (I didn't know at the time that the bar itself probably weighed 40-50 pounds alone.)
I decided fifty pounds might be more my speed (although fifty pounds of weight results in a much higher total, I didn't know this at the time) and removed a couple of the twenty-five pound weights and tried again. Success! I lifted the bar from its receptacle and felt confident I could do this! Unfortunately, I dropped the bar immediately to my chest and found I could no longer lift it. Momentarily panicking, I awkwardly rolled the bar down to my waist and sat up with a colossal effort. Summoning forth what meager strength I had left, I reversed my grip on the bar and managed to gently lower it to the floor while scanning the gym to see who might be laughing at my weakness. No one was paying attention, of course--or at least they were doing a good job of hiding their mirth.
I managed to--just barely--return the bar to the lower receptacle and I hastily removed myself from the area. I pretended to look at my phone for a period of about five minutes, did some crunches (on a machine that offered me one hundred pounds of resistance) and made a beeline for the exit, bewildered and defeated. Am I really that weak, I wondered? Granted, sitting at home and playing video games all day doesn't go a long way toward building strength. I decided that maybe I was going to have to build up some strength before I tackled those tougher exercises--so I came home and did some military presses with much lighter free weights. Of course, even the amount of force required to lift that barbell in the gym had sapped my strength, so I found the free weights very difficult as well. I'm still aching from that three days later, although I dismissed my pain and did some curls today. I'm determined to keep up with some kind of routine. It's just a matter of what I can actually accomplish.
By the way, I was 193 at my last weigh-in. I never did write about the milestone of going below 200, even though I was really excited about it at the time. I had originally intended to write about fitness every week, but I became disillusioned with the idea after experiencing so much dissatisfaction with my body and the way I look. I'm glad I've finally decided to ramp things up. I've managed to easily stick to my diet for pretty much this entire year, but since that's become easy, I have to add in regular exercise. When that becomes easy, I'll dial up the intensity. It's a process. Let's hope I eventually reach a point of which I can feel proud.
I've not been entirely unproductive in the time I've spent avoiding writing. I've gotten stricter with my diet. I'm consuming more protein and fewer carbs, I'm riding my bike every day, and I'm trying to lift free weights every other day or so. My body aches with even this very minor effort but my ambitions to lift heavy were thwarted quite dramatically at the gym a couple of days ago. It was. . .actually pretty embarrassing.
I'd managed to get myself thoroughly pumped up to embark on a new workout plan as laid out for me on Bodybuilding.com. The routine was heralded as an effective way to lose body fat. I was intrigued by this idea because even though I've lost a surprising amount of weight this year, I still can't help but feel I'm very pudgy and doughy. The first day of the plan involved the bench press, chin ups, and a lot of other scary stuff. I had to admit it sounded like exercise a little outside my fitness level but I was determined to try anyway.
I got up absurdly early on Sunday morning (at around 6:30) and fully intended to ride my bike for about a mile and a half--and I'm sure I would have, too, but it started to rain and I didn't want to get my bike too wet. I called it quits after only a couple minutes. This was a setback for the first day of my new routine but I was determined not to give up! I returned my bike to my living room and made myself a protein-packed meal of a pile of eggs and parmesan cheese. (I'm still a vegetarian, even though eggs feel questionable to me.) My energy newly renewed, I headed to the gym feeling pretty confident.
Since it was an early Sunday morning, there were very few other gym-goers around. I headed straight for the bench without considering the fact I'd done very little research on the exercise beforehand. It seemed pretty simple to me--lift the barbell off the thing, bring it down, and lift it back up. Do that until you're done. Simple. I laid down on the bench and extended my arms to the barbell and exerted a pretty significant amount of force on it, or so I thought. It didn't budge. It did not move an inch. Well, I thought, maybe one hundred pounds is a little too much for a beginner. (I didn't know at the time that the bar itself probably weighed 40-50 pounds alone.)
I decided fifty pounds might be more my speed (although fifty pounds of weight results in a much higher total, I didn't know this at the time) and removed a couple of the twenty-five pound weights and tried again. Success! I lifted the bar from its receptacle and felt confident I could do this! Unfortunately, I dropped the bar immediately to my chest and found I could no longer lift it. Momentarily panicking, I awkwardly rolled the bar down to my waist and sat up with a colossal effort. Summoning forth what meager strength I had left, I reversed my grip on the bar and managed to gently lower it to the floor while scanning the gym to see who might be laughing at my weakness. No one was paying attention, of course--or at least they were doing a good job of hiding their mirth.
I managed to--just barely--return the bar to the lower receptacle and I hastily removed myself from the area. I pretended to look at my phone for a period of about five minutes, did some crunches (on a machine that offered me one hundred pounds of resistance) and made a beeline for the exit, bewildered and defeated. Am I really that weak, I wondered? Granted, sitting at home and playing video games all day doesn't go a long way toward building strength. I decided that maybe I was going to have to build up some strength before I tackled those tougher exercises--so I came home and did some military presses with much lighter free weights. Of course, even the amount of force required to lift that barbell in the gym had sapped my strength, so I found the free weights very difficult as well. I'm still aching from that three days later, although I dismissed my pain and did some curls today. I'm determined to keep up with some kind of routine. It's just a matter of what I can actually accomplish.
By the way, I was 193 at my last weigh-in. I never did write about the milestone of going below 200, even though I was really excited about it at the time. I had originally intended to write about fitness every week, but I became disillusioned with the idea after experiencing so much dissatisfaction with my body and the way I look. I'm glad I've finally decided to ramp things up. I've managed to easily stick to my diet for pretty much this entire year, but since that's become easy, I have to add in regular exercise. When that becomes easy, I'll dial up the intensity. It's a process. Let's hope I eventually reach a point of which I can feel proud.
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