Path of Exile came out on PS4 a few days ago and I've been playing it quite a bit since. I last played the game a couple of years back on PC and spent a not inconsiderable amount of time on it. Developer Grinding Gear Games has continued to add more and more content to the game, to the point that the amount of things you can do in it is starting to become pretty ridiculous.
For some background, Path of Exile is an action RPG in the tradition of Diablo II. The narrative surrounding the game is that it's a truer successor to that game than Blizzard's own Diablo 3 actually ended up being. I enjoy both games, but the amount of depth in Path of Exile is truly staggering by comparison and for that reason I prefer it.
To start with, there were three acts in the base game during the initial release. A fourth act was added at a later date and if I'm remembering correctly, the game was scaled to be played through multiple times on different difficulties, just like with most ARPGs of this type. Later on, there was a gargantuan update to the game that expanded the number of acts in the game to a whopping ten, with each set of new acts escalating in difficulty. I love this idea, because I've never been a huge fan of playing through the same content over and over, slightly remixed. The verdicts is still out (for me) on how much these new acts actually change up the game, however.
I love almost everything about the way Path of Exile is designed, from its massive spiderweb of a skill tree ala Final Fantasy X, its emphasis on the management of three important stats, its huge variety of different skills and skill types, and the dizzying variety of different mechanics that are introduced in each new update. Even the currency system is really unique and interesting. If there's anything about the game that I don't love, it's that the art direction is pretty dull and dreary, but the gameplay more than makes up for it.
I'm playing through the game cooperatively with a Shadow, the first Path of Exile class I ever played when I first picked it up years ago. I'm kind of making up my build as I go, but it's currently centered around the Frost Blades skill, which increases your character's melee attack range, deals Cold damage, and fires off a fan of projectiles from your targeted enemies. It's pretty fun and seems to mow down a lot of enemies pretty quickly. My girlfriend and cooperative partner is playing a Witch with a summon-centric build, which I'm always a fan of, even if things do get hectic when the screen is blotted out by an army of zombies, phantasms, and flaming skulls.
It's been a long time since I last played the game so I'm excited to really dive back into it. I want to see all the content I missed, including all the oddball mechanics introduced in previous limited-time Leagues. I'm already confused by stuff like memory nexuses, the ability to seek prophecies, and sacrificing captured animals to a blood altar--but I'm sure I'll figure it out.
Saturday, March 30, 2019
Thursday, March 28, 2019
September 2018 Catchup Part 1 (AKA A Super Robot Wars Mini-Retrospective)
I can't recall what made me finally want to pull the trigger on purchasing Super Robot Wars OG: The Moon Dwellers, but I made the decision to do so at the end of August and then spent a good chunk of September playing through it. What's fascinating about the Super Robot Wars series is that for many years, no game from the series was officially available in English. This is true for a variety of reasons, but chief among them is that releasing a SRW game would be a licensing nightmare. Each of the entries in the main Super Robot Wars series is a strategy RPG crossover of various mecha anime, whether it be something well-known like Gundam or something more obscure like UFO Robot Grendizer. It wasn't until 2006 that a game from the long-running series was localized for release in North America, four years after it came out in Japan. This game was Super Robot Taisen: Original Generation.
Original Generation was unique for the series in that it featured only original characters created by series developer Banpresto. In most Super Robot Wars titles, you'll have a protagonist that is an original character and then every character that joins your army will be from a mecha anime. In some cases, theare are other original characters sprinkled throughout the game that may be returning from previous entries in the series. Regardless, the roster is typically over 90% characters from anime. Original Generation essentially serves as a crossover game featuring previous SRW protagonists and other Banpresto original characters that appeared in those games.
When I played the game myself, I had no idea about any of this. It was the first time any of the games was available in English and I just wanted to play it because it was a strategy RPG that involved robots. And I absolutely loved it. I still consider it (and its sequel) two of the absolute best games on the Game Boy Advance. I loved how wild and over-the-top the combat animations were. I loved how much customization there was for your characters' mechs. I also loved how wacky and convoluted the plot was, and that each of the characters that joined your party were unique named characters with their own extensive backstories, ala Fire Emblem, another series I love with which Super Robot Wars shares a lot of similarities.
Because I was such a fan of Original Generation, I immediately purchased and played through Original Generation 2, which was somehow an even better game. I grew pretty attached to the characters and was sad to let them go--but I hoped to one day be able to revisit them. In 2007, these games were remade for Super Robot Wars Original Generations on PS2 with stunning high-res 2D artwork. I watched hours of YouTube videos on this game, drooling at how flashy the combat effects were and lamenting the fact that I'd never be able to play it in that form. To add salt to the wound, two more games came out for that same series that of course were only ever available in English.
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| Arado Balanga from SRW Original Generations for PS2 |
Fortunately, there's a pretty amazing community of fans for the Super Robot Wars series. As a result, several games from the main series are available to play in English with the help of fan translations. I've now gotten to experience what it's like to play through a "normal" Super Robot Wars game in which you control a series of mecha pulled straight from anime. I haven't watched a lot of them, to be fair, but it's still a really cool thing, and it made me want to actually give some of them a try. It's also interesting to see how tastes and art styles have changed over time, because these games are very faithful about preserving the art style of the original work, which can be pretty disconcerting since there are characters from 1970s animation interacting with characters from modern, currently-running series.
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| Masaki Andoh from SRW Alpha Gaiden for PS1 |
The first fan-translated Super Robot Wars game I ever tried was Super Robot Wars Alpha Gaiden, a PlayStation game that was originally released in 2001. It was made available thanks to the hard work of the long-running translation group Aeon Genesis. I can't emphasize enough just how much work it must be to effectively translate a game like this, because it has a considerable amount of text. All of the games in this series do, because there are so many ridiculously convoluted plot threads that have roots from different anime series--and that's not counting all of the threats that are built into the Super Robot Wars universe. After all, there must be a reason why all of these disparate groups come together, right?
Realistically, Alpha Gaiden came out only one year before Original Generation, which I really loved, but it turned out to be quite a bit different from what I was expecting. The perspective swapped from 2D topdown ala Fire Emblem to isometric, and despite being on a more powerful console, the graphics seemed to lack fidelity in comparison to the Game Boy Advance games. It did give me some good context on what to expect from the rest of the series, though. I originally started it in 2009, but didn't revisit it until about five years later. What really made me want to try more of the series was Super Robot Wars J, another GBA game that plays very similarly to Original Generation but without the "original characters only" stipulation.
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| Sousuke Sagara from Full Metal Panic! in Super Robot Wars J |
SRW J was a really good game for me to try to get a grasp on exactly how the overall series worked, because although I haven't watched a lot of anime, this particular game does feature some characters with which I'm familiar. And that's pretty exciting! The only characters I recognized from the game come from the series Full Metal Panic, which is an anime that I actually enjoy a lot. It made me want to watch some of the other series featured in the game, like Brain Powerd, Martian Successor Nadesico, and Gundam Seed. Getting that extra sense of satisfaction from interacting with characters you're familiar with from other media is part of what makes the series really interesting, and I wanted to see what that was like. I wasn't able to make it through any of those series, but just watching a little bit of them made the game more interesting.
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| Kamille Bidan from Zeta Gundam in SRW Alpha Gaiden |
SRW J was very similar in terms of graphical style and gameplay to the Original Generation games that I liked so much, so it was really easy for me to get into it right out of the gate. I liked it a lot and really wanted to experience more traditional games from the series--so I remembered that I'd started Alpha Gaiden ages ago and decided to revisit it. I buckled down and played through it. It took me a month and a half and I played it quite a bit. That is a really long, slow-paced game. I can totally understand why I had a hard time engaging with it initially. I was also familiar with basically none of the series involved, except for the ones it shared with the aforementioned J. I did like that it featured some appearances from characters that later starred in Original Generation, but most didn't have access to the same awesome robots that they got later, so it just wasn't the same.
Fast-forward to four years later, and I decided to finally pick up Moon Dwellers. I'd heard about it for awhile but was turned off by the fact that the only commercially available translation was almost universally considered low quality. Not only that, but the English release of the game is still an imported title from the Southeast Asia region. Having played the game now, it is a bummer to see just how poor the translation is. It's far from unplayable, but the translation is very stiff and literal. None of these familiar characters have the personalities I remember and I essentially have no
connection to the characters that are new to me.
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| Calvina and Touya, protagonists of SRW OG: The Moon Dwellers |
Having said that, though, the game itself is a lot of fun! And I was really excited to finally get the opportunity to play a Super Robot Wars game with more modern, fluidly animated 2D artwork. It's really a joy to witness all of the ridiculous animations. It was what I was hoping to do all those years ago when I was pining over the PS2 Original Generations game--but amped up to an even higher level. The translation's not great, but the gameplay is as strong as ever, even if I don't necessarily love the twin squad mechanics.
Because there are so many playable characters in Moon Dwellers, it would have been impossible to field them all in one mission. As a result, the game employs a mechanic in which two robots (and their pilots) can occupy one unit in a sort of squad. As a result, when you have sixteen slots provided to you in a mission, what that really means is that you can bring a whopping thirty-two mecha to the fight. This gets really intense to micromanage, especially when you consider that each of the machines at your disposal has the potential for multiple pilots, different loadouts, and different forms. Each of these pilots of these mecha also level up, acquire new skills, and are subject to minor customization. It ends up being pretty exhausting to deal with, especially in some of the later missions.
Even so, it's worth it not only for the strategy and fun, but to see ridiculous animations like these.
I really love the series because it is absolutely bonkers, has a lot of depth, is frequently ridiculously hard, and is a joy to watch. I look forward to playing even more games in the series if I can ever save up enough money to import the newer titles. After writing this up, I'm thinking that'll happen sooner rather than later.
Saturday, March 23, 2019
August 2018 Catchup
In August, I was still very much in the mindset of attempting to finish off my PS4 backlog. There were games I'd purchased right around the time I first got a PS4 that for whatever reason I just never finished. In the case of Tales of Zestiria, it was because it wasn't a stellar entry in that series at all. I also feel like I've become somewhat less interested in Japanese RPGs in general, even though there are a lot of them out there that I still like. Zestiria is so packed to the brim with anime clichés and isn't redeemed by its gameplay whatsoever. Disgaea 5 was another example of a very Japanese game that features those same anime tropes, but when it comes to gameplay, it fares better. What made it difficult for me to progress in originally had more to do with how fatigued I was at the time with Disgaea gameplay in general.
Disgaea is of course a series of Japanese strategy RPGs that started out on the PS2. Most people recognize them as the wacky games with knife-wielding penguins and absurd levels of grinding. It's more than possible to hit the quadruple digits in terms of level, and for post-game, it's typically encouraged. Disgaea 5 is sort of the culmination of this mentality in that it's built around a series of complex system that all encourage grinding for experience. Your characters level, but so do your skills and abilities, your items, and the items themselves have unique entities that exist within them that have their own separate levels. It's even possible to enter procedurally generated dungeons for each specific item you come across in the game. These dungeons, called Item Worlds, can bestow additional levels to the item in question, depending on the number of floors you progress through.
There's a huge emphasis on stat management and leveling in Disgaea, but there's also typically a pretty wide variety of things you can do in combat, which is the main appeal of the games to me. Each type of weapon you equip has access to a unique set of skills, all of which function pretty differently. It's not just about each skill differing in damage output, but it's also about what range they have, what area they effect on the grid-based battlefield, and how they provoke movement for the character in question. The sword skill Blade Rush attacks several squares in front of you, for instance, but you end up blinking to the other side as well. This can be used as a form of traversal and for damage simultaneously, but it's important you don't inadvertently damage allies and that you ensure there's an empty space to land in after you use the skill.
Each game in the series typically retains mechanics from previous entries but also doesn't change up the overall gameplay very much. As a result, it's difficult to play multiple entries in the series too soon after another, since playing through one of them is fatiguing enough. Sure, Disgaea 5 introduced a couple of new things, but it also has a lot of the same stuff as before, so it doesn't feel very new at the end of the day. Combine that with a cast of really sort of annoying and childish characters, and it's easy to see why I didn't engage with it initially. That's not to say it's not a fun game, of course. There's a ton to do and a huge sandbox of mechanics with which to experiment--but it's also overwhelming and frequently annoying on top of that.
The other game I finished in August was Risk of Rain, a 2D action roguelike game that I actually ended up liking a lot. I dismissed it initially because it seemed a little simplistic and not totally my thing, but after giving it a bit more time I came to find it really addicting. It's the kind of game that really escalates as you progress further in a given playthrough and the random nature of the powerups you find as you go gives it a lot of replay value. It reminded me a bit of Downwell in that you're always hoping for just the right sequence of upgrades in order to ensure a good run.
Disgaea is of course a series of Japanese strategy RPGs that started out on the PS2. Most people recognize them as the wacky games with knife-wielding penguins and absurd levels of grinding. It's more than possible to hit the quadruple digits in terms of level, and for post-game, it's typically encouraged. Disgaea 5 is sort of the culmination of this mentality in that it's built around a series of complex system that all encourage grinding for experience. Your characters level, but so do your skills and abilities, your items, and the items themselves have unique entities that exist within them that have their own separate levels. It's even possible to enter procedurally generated dungeons for each specific item you come across in the game. These dungeons, called Item Worlds, can bestow additional levels to the item in question, depending on the number of floors you progress through.
There's a huge emphasis on stat management and leveling in Disgaea, but there's also typically a pretty wide variety of things you can do in combat, which is the main appeal of the games to me. Each type of weapon you equip has access to a unique set of skills, all of which function pretty differently. It's not just about each skill differing in damage output, but it's also about what range they have, what area they effect on the grid-based battlefield, and how they provoke movement for the character in question. The sword skill Blade Rush attacks several squares in front of you, for instance, but you end up blinking to the other side as well. This can be used as a form of traversal and for damage simultaneously, but it's important you don't inadvertently damage allies and that you ensure there's an empty space to land in after you use the skill.
Each game in the series typically retains mechanics from previous entries but also doesn't change up the overall gameplay very much. As a result, it's difficult to play multiple entries in the series too soon after another, since playing through one of them is fatiguing enough. Sure, Disgaea 5 introduced a couple of new things, but it also has a lot of the same stuff as before, so it doesn't feel very new at the end of the day. Combine that with a cast of really sort of annoying and childish characters, and it's easy to see why I didn't engage with it initially. That's not to say it's not a fun game, of course. There's a ton to do and a huge sandbox of mechanics with which to experiment--but it's also overwhelming and frequently annoying on top of that.
The other game I finished in August was Risk of Rain, a 2D action roguelike game that I actually ended up liking a lot. I dismissed it initially because it seemed a little simplistic and not totally my thing, but after giving it a bit more time I came to find it really addicting. It's the kind of game that really escalates as you progress further in a given playthrough and the random nature of the powerups you find as you go gives it a lot of replay value. It reminded me a bit of Downwell in that you're always hoping for just the right sequence of upgrades in order to ensure a good run.
Friday, March 22, 2019
Single-Player Forever
I really love single-player games.
There is something very satisfying about playing through a game that has a narrative--a complete sequence of beginning, middle, and end. So many games these days are built to be never-ending experiences to be played with friends, and that's fine--but those games are not the ones I tend to spend the most time with. I really like that feeling of working toward a conclusion.
Multiplayer games have tons of advantages, of course, in that they're inherently social experiences. It's sometimes more convenient to socialize with friends playing games than any other method. I live in a very rural, isolated area where it's not convenient to hang out with friends in person. Playing games together online is a nice way to hang out and make small talk, perhaps while shooting aliens or hurling magic spells. That crucial aspect certainly can't be ignored and it's definitely something I enjoy, but like with any social interaction, it's an activity after which I need significant decompression.
When asked about what players find valuable or exciting about single-player games, I think a lot of people would cite "immersion" as a primary reason. I'm not sure that's the case for me. I do enjoy the feeling of being drawn into a narrative or into a really fully-realized world, but if that was really my motivating factor, I think I would play games very differently than I do. There's no "true" or "correct" way to play video games, but I certainly don't take a lot of steps to minimize distractions. I don't wear headphones or play horror games in a darkened room, for instance. In fact, I frequently play games while watching Netflix or, most often, while my girlfriend is playing a game simultaneously. I don't mind it. It's nice to have multiple things to focus on.
For me, it's not about immersion. Single-player games have a lot of advantages that don't have a lot to do with that aspect in particular. I think a big part of what I enjoy about them has to do with pacing. I can proceed as quickly or as slowly as I like. In a multiplayer game, your pace is naturally dictated by who you're playing with. Maybe you're playing with someone more experienced than you in a certain dungeon encounter, for instance, and they tend to rush along. As a result, you don't get to experience it the way you want to. A good example would be Final Fantasy XIV, which features lengthy cut scenes before and after boss encounters in dungeons. Because the majority of the player base has seen this content already, most will expect you to skip it--and even if you don't, you're left behind and don't get to participate in the fight. A less extreme example is in Destiny 2, which I've been playing recently, since players rush through Strikes extremely quickly, leaving me frantically trying to catch up.
I don't always play games exhaustively. It really depends on the type of game it is and how I feel about it. In Horizon Zero Dawn, I really took my time and explored every nook and cranny of that world. I found tons of ancient artifacts and hidden treasures. I even took the time to get every trophy in the game. Had this been a cooperative experience, I imagine I would have approached it a lot differently and the game would have suffered as a result. Of course, had the game been designed with that approach in mind, the game itself would have been significantly more shallow to account for catering to every player's experience. It's arguable whether or not an open-world RPG of that nature could really accommodate multiple players and still feel as engaging and narratively sound.
One example of a multiplayer game that still exhaustively caters to narrative and doesn't sacrifice pacing is Divinity: Original Sin. Its helpful in its case that it is designed to be played primarily by two people cooperatively. What's really fascinating about it is that these two characters are entirely separate and capable of interacting with NPCs with complex dialogue choices all their own. Even better is that the two characters can even interact with each other, which has effects on how their individual personalities develop. This is probably the most fascinating example I can think of in which an inherently multiplayer game feels as narratively strong and deep as any single-player RPG. But I think it does require patience on the part of the two players, since it takes countless hours to play through the entire game, and that there is significant dialogue and lengthy combat encounters. I was fortunate enough to experience this game with a friend and felt strongly it encapsulated the kind of multiplayer experience I wish there was more of.
A multiplayer game isn't automatically a shallow one, even when it's cooperative. I think what I really prefer in a good multiplayer game is that it functions pretty well even when played alone. Divinity: Original Sin is still great as a single-player experience and is only enriched by playing cooperatively. Unfortunately, it seems games built to be multi-player experiences as a general rule diminish the quality of the single-player experience I'm personally looking for. I love Super Smash Bros. for instance, but because I tend not to find strictly multi-player games engaging, it's not a game I end up playing very often. If more fun single-player content existed within that framework (other than just battling the CPU), I would end up playing it much more often and still throw in the occasional online match. I'm among a significant minority in that I find story modes in fighting games more interesting than the traditional versus modes.
There has been much doom and gloom over the years about how the tradition of single-player video games is going away and that major companies will eventually focus on putting out primarily multi-player content. At times, it doesn't seem all that far-fetched a fear, but it's hard to deny that the past few years have been packed with tons of great AAA single-player releases, even if they may feature ancillary multi-player modes. I have no concerns that single-player experiences are going away, no matter how many games like Overwatch, Apex Legends, and Fortnite come to the forefront as mega-popular cash cows. There'll always be developers like Ubisoft, Naughty Dog, Square-Enix, and From Software that produce well-received and popular games that serve as primarily single-player experiences.
And hey, if I'm wrong and single-player games do become a rarity, I've got a pretty massive backlog of them to get through.
There is something very satisfying about playing through a game that has a narrative--a complete sequence of beginning, middle, and end. So many games these days are built to be never-ending experiences to be played with friends, and that's fine--but those games are not the ones I tend to spend the most time with. I really like that feeling of working toward a conclusion.
Multiplayer games have tons of advantages, of course, in that they're inherently social experiences. It's sometimes more convenient to socialize with friends playing games than any other method. I live in a very rural, isolated area where it's not convenient to hang out with friends in person. Playing games together online is a nice way to hang out and make small talk, perhaps while shooting aliens or hurling magic spells. That crucial aspect certainly can't be ignored and it's definitely something I enjoy, but like with any social interaction, it's an activity after which I need significant decompression.
When asked about what players find valuable or exciting about single-player games, I think a lot of people would cite "immersion" as a primary reason. I'm not sure that's the case for me. I do enjoy the feeling of being drawn into a narrative or into a really fully-realized world, but if that was really my motivating factor, I think I would play games very differently than I do. There's no "true" or "correct" way to play video games, but I certainly don't take a lot of steps to minimize distractions. I don't wear headphones or play horror games in a darkened room, for instance. In fact, I frequently play games while watching Netflix or, most often, while my girlfriend is playing a game simultaneously. I don't mind it. It's nice to have multiple things to focus on.
For me, it's not about immersion. Single-player games have a lot of advantages that don't have a lot to do with that aspect in particular. I think a big part of what I enjoy about them has to do with pacing. I can proceed as quickly or as slowly as I like. In a multiplayer game, your pace is naturally dictated by who you're playing with. Maybe you're playing with someone more experienced than you in a certain dungeon encounter, for instance, and they tend to rush along. As a result, you don't get to experience it the way you want to. A good example would be Final Fantasy XIV, which features lengthy cut scenes before and after boss encounters in dungeons. Because the majority of the player base has seen this content already, most will expect you to skip it--and even if you don't, you're left behind and don't get to participate in the fight. A less extreme example is in Destiny 2, which I've been playing recently, since players rush through Strikes extremely quickly, leaving me frantically trying to catch up.
I don't always play games exhaustively. It really depends on the type of game it is and how I feel about it. In Horizon Zero Dawn, I really took my time and explored every nook and cranny of that world. I found tons of ancient artifacts and hidden treasures. I even took the time to get every trophy in the game. Had this been a cooperative experience, I imagine I would have approached it a lot differently and the game would have suffered as a result. Of course, had the game been designed with that approach in mind, the game itself would have been significantly more shallow to account for catering to every player's experience. It's arguable whether or not an open-world RPG of that nature could really accommodate multiple players and still feel as engaging and narratively sound.
One example of a multiplayer game that still exhaustively caters to narrative and doesn't sacrifice pacing is Divinity: Original Sin. Its helpful in its case that it is designed to be played primarily by two people cooperatively. What's really fascinating about it is that these two characters are entirely separate and capable of interacting with NPCs with complex dialogue choices all their own. Even better is that the two characters can even interact with each other, which has effects on how their individual personalities develop. This is probably the most fascinating example I can think of in which an inherently multiplayer game feels as narratively strong and deep as any single-player RPG. But I think it does require patience on the part of the two players, since it takes countless hours to play through the entire game, and that there is significant dialogue and lengthy combat encounters. I was fortunate enough to experience this game with a friend and felt strongly it encapsulated the kind of multiplayer experience I wish there was more of.
A multiplayer game isn't automatically a shallow one, even when it's cooperative. I think what I really prefer in a good multiplayer game is that it functions pretty well even when played alone. Divinity: Original Sin is still great as a single-player experience and is only enriched by playing cooperatively. Unfortunately, it seems games built to be multi-player experiences as a general rule diminish the quality of the single-player experience I'm personally looking for. I love Super Smash Bros. for instance, but because I tend not to find strictly multi-player games engaging, it's not a game I end up playing very often. If more fun single-player content existed within that framework (other than just battling the CPU), I would end up playing it much more often and still throw in the occasional online match. I'm among a significant minority in that I find story modes in fighting games more interesting than the traditional versus modes.
There has been much doom and gloom over the years about how the tradition of single-player video games is going away and that major companies will eventually focus on putting out primarily multi-player content. At times, it doesn't seem all that far-fetched a fear, but it's hard to deny that the past few years have been packed with tons of great AAA single-player releases, even if they may feature ancillary multi-player modes. I have no concerns that single-player experiences are going away, no matter how many games like Overwatch, Apex Legends, and Fortnite come to the forefront as mega-popular cash cows. There'll always be developers like Ubisoft, Naughty Dog, Square-Enix, and From Software that produce well-received and popular games that serve as primarily single-player experiences.
And hey, if I'm wrong and single-player games do become a rarity, I've got a pretty massive backlog of them to get through.
Thursday, March 21, 2019
Nintendo Direct (Nindies) 2019
Nintendo announced a lot of new games coming to Nintendo Switch in the coming year, with this particular presentation focusing on indie games. I love indie games for a variety of reasons, whether it be because they tend to have more of a retro aesthetic or because there's a bit more room for innovation when the working with a smaller budget. This presentation is not only interesting to me because I want more indie games on Switch, but because I just want to hear about upcoming indie games in general that I might even purchased on PlayStation 4 instead. What can I say? I like trophies.
The first announcement in the presentation was Cuphead, the until-now Microsoft exclusive side-scrolling shooter with a 1930s cartoon aesthetic. I've never played the game, but I've heard about how fiendishly difficult and clever it is. All I can say is that it looks wonderful in motion and I'm more than happy to support games with detailed 2D artwork and animation. This was one of the few reasons I would ever consider buying an Xbox One, so if Cuphead is a sign that games like Ori and the Blind Forest is also coming to Switch, I'm very much on board.
I'm less interested in Overland, which is a post-apocalyptic tactical survival game. I tend not to dig survival games very much, even if the turn-based strategy elements of it do seem appealing to me. My Friend Pedro is a super wacky 2D action game with bullet-time physics. It seems fun, but definitely not a mandatory purchase either. One of the games that really intrigued me was Neo Cab, a narrative-driven game in which you assume the role of a rideshare driver in a futuristic society. Evidently your character is the last human driver in the city for reasons that are sort of unclear. I really love the art style and character designs, and the concept is really intriguing. I can't help but be reminded of a game like VA11HALLA, which has a similar cyberpunk/simulation theme, but with bartending. I need to play that game too.
I'm not hearing as many folks talk about Red Lantern, which strikes me as a really intriguing idea for a game. It's a first-person narrative adventure game in which you take the role of a woman who picks up her life and travels to Alaska to compete in the Iditarod. Things don't go as planned and she ends up having to fight for her survival in the forbidding frozen wilderness. I'll probably wait for reviews before pulling the trigger on this one but I am pretty intrigued by it. I definitely get Firewatch vibes from it.
Darkwood is a top-down survival horror game which I have precisely zero interest in--but what does look really cool is Katana Zero, a stylish action game in which enemies can be dispatched with a single hit. Of course, your character can die in one hit, too. According to the trailer, it's pretty easy to rewind to the beginning of the level when you die, allowing you to gradually learn the best path through the level. It looks really nice. Ideally, it would be satisfying and challenging in the same way Celeste is, but that remains to be seen.
Yet another appealing game was Rad, a game which has a title I'm just wild about. I say "rad" all the time. Just ask anyone. This is a 3D brawler from the fine folks at Double Fine. This game is drenched in an 80s aesthetic, with radical tunes to match. It's post-apocalyptic, but doesn't seem to take itself seriously at all, which is really fun. It looks like mutating various body parts is important to the gameplay, which sounds pretty... rad.
Creature in the Well has a fantastic name but the actual game looks pretty bizarre. It's a mashup between hack-and-slash and pinball. It looks really hectic and maybe pretty stressful to play. I think I'll give this one pass. I feel similarly about Bloodroots, which does seem to have interesting interactions with the environment in its action combat, but nothing else about it seems particularly engaging from a casual glance. And then there's Pine, which looks shocking similar to Breath of the Wild except with more of an emphasis on trading and survival, which definitely isn't my cup of tea.
I'm somewhat interested in Blaster Master Zero 2 even though I haven't played the first one yet because Inti Creates is a solid developer I have a soft spot for primarily due to Mega Man Zero and Azure Striker Gunvolt. It's not a huge priority for me, though.
What everyone is talking about is of course Cadence of Hyrule, which is simultaneously a sequel to Crypt of the Necrodancer and a new Zelda game! It's really unprecedented to hand over the reins of the Zelda IP to an independent developer but I'm pretty excited that it's happening. I loved Crypt of the Necrodancer and probably unlike just about everyone else in the world, I'm mostly excited just to be getting a sequel to that. But I'm totally on board for 25 remixed Zelda tunes and being able to tackle baddies in rhythmic combat with Link and Zelda themselves.
All in all, it was a super strong Direct and I'm personally interested in getting several of the games. As of right now, I know I'll definitely be getting:
Cuphead
Neo Cab
Katana Zero
Rad
Cadence of Hyrule
And I would consider others if the reviews are good. I definitely have my eye on Red Lantern for sure, and I would pick up Blaster Master Zero 2 if I ended up enjoying the first game.
The first announcement in the presentation was Cuphead, the until-now Microsoft exclusive side-scrolling shooter with a 1930s cartoon aesthetic. I've never played the game, but I've heard about how fiendishly difficult and clever it is. All I can say is that it looks wonderful in motion and I'm more than happy to support games with detailed 2D artwork and animation. This was one of the few reasons I would ever consider buying an Xbox One, so if Cuphead is a sign that games like Ori and the Blind Forest is also coming to Switch, I'm very much on board.
I'm less interested in Overland, which is a post-apocalyptic tactical survival game. I tend not to dig survival games very much, even if the turn-based strategy elements of it do seem appealing to me. My Friend Pedro is a super wacky 2D action game with bullet-time physics. It seems fun, but definitely not a mandatory purchase either. One of the games that really intrigued me was Neo Cab, a narrative-driven game in which you assume the role of a rideshare driver in a futuristic society. Evidently your character is the last human driver in the city for reasons that are sort of unclear. I really love the art style and character designs, and the concept is really intriguing. I can't help but be reminded of a game like VA11HALLA, which has a similar cyberpunk/simulation theme, but with bartending. I need to play that game too.
I'm not hearing as many folks talk about Red Lantern, which strikes me as a really intriguing idea for a game. It's a first-person narrative adventure game in which you take the role of a woman who picks up her life and travels to Alaska to compete in the Iditarod. Things don't go as planned and she ends up having to fight for her survival in the forbidding frozen wilderness. I'll probably wait for reviews before pulling the trigger on this one but I am pretty intrigued by it. I definitely get Firewatch vibes from it.
Darkwood is a top-down survival horror game which I have precisely zero interest in--but what does look really cool is Katana Zero, a stylish action game in which enemies can be dispatched with a single hit. Of course, your character can die in one hit, too. According to the trailer, it's pretty easy to rewind to the beginning of the level when you die, allowing you to gradually learn the best path through the level. It looks really nice. Ideally, it would be satisfying and challenging in the same way Celeste is, but that remains to be seen.
Yet another appealing game was Rad, a game which has a title I'm just wild about. I say "rad" all the time. Just ask anyone. This is a 3D brawler from the fine folks at Double Fine. This game is drenched in an 80s aesthetic, with radical tunes to match. It's post-apocalyptic, but doesn't seem to take itself seriously at all, which is really fun. It looks like mutating various body parts is important to the gameplay, which sounds pretty... rad.
Creature in the Well has a fantastic name but the actual game looks pretty bizarre. It's a mashup between hack-and-slash and pinball. It looks really hectic and maybe pretty stressful to play. I think I'll give this one pass. I feel similarly about Bloodroots, which does seem to have interesting interactions with the environment in its action combat, but nothing else about it seems particularly engaging from a casual glance. And then there's Pine, which looks shocking similar to Breath of the Wild except with more of an emphasis on trading and survival, which definitely isn't my cup of tea.
I'm somewhat interested in Blaster Master Zero 2 even though I haven't played the first one yet because Inti Creates is a solid developer I have a soft spot for primarily due to Mega Man Zero and Azure Striker Gunvolt. It's not a huge priority for me, though.
What everyone is talking about is of course Cadence of Hyrule, which is simultaneously a sequel to Crypt of the Necrodancer and a new Zelda game! It's really unprecedented to hand over the reins of the Zelda IP to an independent developer but I'm pretty excited that it's happening. I loved Crypt of the Necrodancer and probably unlike just about everyone else in the world, I'm mostly excited just to be getting a sequel to that. But I'm totally on board for 25 remixed Zelda tunes and being able to tackle baddies in rhythmic combat with Link and Zelda themselves.
All in all, it was a super strong Direct and I'm personally interested in getting several of the games. As of right now, I know I'll definitely be getting:
Cuphead
Neo Cab
Katana Zero
Rad
Cadence of Hyrule
And I would consider others if the reviews are good. I definitely have my eye on Red Lantern for sure, and I would pick up Blaster Master Zero 2 if I ended up enjoying the first game.
Sunday, March 17, 2019
July 2018 Catchup
July was an interesting month because I played a very diverse set of games. I can't recall exactly what set of circumstances led to this but I imagine I must have really buckled down and committed to single-player experiences again. The first game I finished in July was one I had primarily played in June, however, and that game is Celeste.
Celeste is an absurdly wonderful game that I now consider to be one of my favorite platformers ever. It is unlike other challenging games I've played in that it somehow is designed so ingeniously that even when it is difficult, it is never frustrating. It is constructed masterfully so that it coaxes you into performing platforming feats that you might have never considered yourself capable of doing. I'm not what I would consider a skilled gamer. I'm a fan of some tough games, but I find them very difficult and lament their time-consuming nature. I love Mega Man but even I don't have a lot of fun repeatedly being thwarted by invisible block puzzles or frustrating robot masters. By contrast, Celeste is always serene and enjoyable even after hundreds of deaths.
I think there are a lot of factors to consider when determining exactly why Celeste feels so good to play even in failure. Generous checkpoints certainly play a part, but it's also important that respawning is seamless. There's very little delay between death and trying again. And from every death, you learn something new. Dying is just another piece of the puzzle. Every time you try again, you understand just a little bit more how to tackle the challenge. It never seems cheap or unfair, even if at first glance, the series of obstacles laid before you seem insurmountable.
All of these seemingly impossible challenges also serve as a metaphor for our protagonist, Madeline. Celeste is a mountain that must be climbed. It's a really hard thing to do, just as it is hard to tackle one's personal demons. Anxiety and depression can be just as tough an obstacle to overcome as any tangible, physical thing. Madeline understands that, but she also understands that it's possible, and that every time you fail, you can get back up again, equipped with more knowledge of how to better overcome those obstacles.
I also finished Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation in July, finally picking back up on my intent of playing through that entire series in order. Like the two games before it, Dragon Quest VI is built on a central theme. Dragon Quest IV was built from a series of separate groups of characters that came together 3/4ths of the way through the game. Dragon Quest V followed a hero from birth well into adulthood, through marriage and having children, who also join your party. For VI, the primary theme involves switching between different worlds, not entirely unlike The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past. In Realms of Revelation, the Dream World serves as an alternate reality made up of people's memories and aspirations.
What also sets Dragon Quest VI apart from the previous two games in that series was the return of a job system, which hadn't been seen at that time since Dragon Quest III. The implementation here is virtually identical to how it is later implemented in Dragon Quest VII and is interesting, but pretty flawed. There's no way to level up your classes in the game except by fighting multiple encounters. A static number of said encounters will trigger a level up and unlock new skills and abilities. This never gets any faster as you progress further in the game, even as encounters grow more difficult. Additionally, an extremely large percentage of the abilities you unlock over the course of the game are close to useless, completely invalidating the point of the job system in the first place, aside from modifying your characters' base stats.
It is interesting that each of the game's playable characters are better suited to certain classes over others, minimizing the homogenization issue that job systems tend to cause--but it doesn't change the fact that most jobs are simply stepping stones to the few classes in the game that are actually useful.
Because I became interested in clearing out my PlayStation 4 backlog, I also decided to revisit Tales of Zestiria in July, a game that I'd purchased around release and in which I quickly lost interest. On some levels, I feel like that series if a relic of my past because I struggle to engage with them these days--and if I'm being honest, I always found them tedious in one way or another. They have plots that are chock full to the brim with saccharine anime tropes and tremendous amounts of inane dialogue. The gameplay is frequently never enough to save these games and this is particularly true for Zestiria, in which haphazard camera angles spoil a lot of the fun.
What I did enjoy a lot at the tail end of July, however, was Yakuza Kiwami, an open-world brawler/RPG set in Japan. Kiwami is a remake of the very first entry in that series originally released on PS2. I've heard the series described as a middleground between Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row, but I personally find it more thoughtful than either. Guns aren't at the forefront. It's mostly about bare-knuckle brawling with thugs in the street, completing quests for citizens, and eating a lot of ramen. It can be wacky, but the central plot is pretty affecting.
Sure, the yakuza operate outside of the law, but at least in Kiryu Kazama's case, there is a sense of honor. There is definitely a code of ethics he abides by, and at the end of the day, he's always willing to help out the less fortunate, whether that be the homeless, a worried mother, or just some guy getting mugged on the street. I typically have trouble playing the "bad guy" in video games, but in the case of Yakuza Kiwami, that never feels like what I'm doing.
Celeste is an absurdly wonderful game that I now consider to be one of my favorite platformers ever. It is unlike other challenging games I've played in that it somehow is designed so ingeniously that even when it is difficult, it is never frustrating. It is constructed masterfully so that it coaxes you into performing platforming feats that you might have never considered yourself capable of doing. I'm not what I would consider a skilled gamer. I'm a fan of some tough games, but I find them very difficult and lament their time-consuming nature. I love Mega Man but even I don't have a lot of fun repeatedly being thwarted by invisible block puzzles or frustrating robot masters. By contrast, Celeste is always serene and enjoyable even after hundreds of deaths.
I think there are a lot of factors to consider when determining exactly why Celeste feels so good to play even in failure. Generous checkpoints certainly play a part, but it's also important that respawning is seamless. There's very little delay between death and trying again. And from every death, you learn something new. Dying is just another piece of the puzzle. Every time you try again, you understand just a little bit more how to tackle the challenge. It never seems cheap or unfair, even if at first glance, the series of obstacles laid before you seem insurmountable.
All of these seemingly impossible challenges also serve as a metaphor for our protagonist, Madeline. Celeste is a mountain that must be climbed. It's a really hard thing to do, just as it is hard to tackle one's personal demons. Anxiety and depression can be just as tough an obstacle to overcome as any tangible, physical thing. Madeline understands that, but she also understands that it's possible, and that every time you fail, you can get back up again, equipped with more knowledge of how to better overcome those obstacles.
I also finished Dragon Quest VI: Realms of Revelation in July, finally picking back up on my intent of playing through that entire series in order. Like the two games before it, Dragon Quest VI is built on a central theme. Dragon Quest IV was built from a series of separate groups of characters that came together 3/4ths of the way through the game. Dragon Quest V followed a hero from birth well into adulthood, through marriage and having children, who also join your party. For VI, the primary theme involves switching between different worlds, not entirely unlike The Legend of Zelda: Link to the Past. In Realms of Revelation, the Dream World serves as an alternate reality made up of people's memories and aspirations.
What also sets Dragon Quest VI apart from the previous two games in that series was the return of a job system, which hadn't been seen at that time since Dragon Quest III. The implementation here is virtually identical to how it is later implemented in Dragon Quest VII and is interesting, but pretty flawed. There's no way to level up your classes in the game except by fighting multiple encounters. A static number of said encounters will trigger a level up and unlock new skills and abilities. This never gets any faster as you progress further in the game, even as encounters grow more difficult. Additionally, an extremely large percentage of the abilities you unlock over the course of the game are close to useless, completely invalidating the point of the job system in the first place, aside from modifying your characters' base stats.
It is interesting that each of the game's playable characters are better suited to certain classes over others, minimizing the homogenization issue that job systems tend to cause--but it doesn't change the fact that most jobs are simply stepping stones to the few classes in the game that are actually useful.
Because I became interested in clearing out my PlayStation 4 backlog, I also decided to revisit Tales of Zestiria in July, a game that I'd purchased around release and in which I quickly lost interest. On some levels, I feel like that series if a relic of my past because I struggle to engage with them these days--and if I'm being honest, I always found them tedious in one way or another. They have plots that are chock full to the brim with saccharine anime tropes and tremendous amounts of inane dialogue. The gameplay is frequently never enough to save these games and this is particularly true for Zestiria, in which haphazard camera angles spoil a lot of the fun.
What I did enjoy a lot at the tail end of July, however, was Yakuza Kiwami, an open-world brawler/RPG set in Japan. Kiwami is a remake of the very first entry in that series originally released on PS2. I've heard the series described as a middleground between Grand Theft Auto and Saints Row, but I personally find it more thoughtful than either. Guns aren't at the forefront. It's mostly about bare-knuckle brawling with thugs in the street, completing quests for citizens, and eating a lot of ramen. It can be wacky, but the central plot is pretty affecting.
Sure, the yakuza operate outside of the law, but at least in Kiryu Kazama's case, there is a sense of honor. There is definitely a code of ethics he abides by, and at the end of the day, he's always willing to help out the less fortunate, whether that be the homeless, a worried mother, or just some guy getting mugged on the street. I typically have trouble playing the "bad guy" in video games, but in the case of Yakuza Kiwami, that never feels like what I'm doing.
Thursday, March 14, 2019
June 2018 Catchup (AKA Children of Zodiarcs Deep Dive)
Okay, so I only finished one game in June, which is interesting because it's actually a fairly short game. But it works for me because there's a lot about this game that I want to say. As I mentioned before, I wrote a pretty considerable amount about this game that has, as of yet, gone unpublished. It was at a time in my life where I desperately wanted to break free from this malaise that I was feeling about creative output in general. But I was proud of what I wrote, as unstructured and unpolished as it was, because it represented a desire to break free of what I was feeling.
I think that sense of uncertainty, of apathy, of hopelessness--it's anathema to the creative process. But at the same time that creativity is so helpful in banishing those negative feelings, even when it's hard. Maybe especially when it's hard. I could have published at that time and I'm sad that I didn't have the wherewithal to do so then. But I will now, on this platform.
Children of Zodiarcs is a very interesting game. Broadly, it is a strategy turn-based RPG not altogether dissimilar to Final Fantasy Tactics in gameplay, but differs a in a lot of important ways. There are cards and there are dice rolls, which add an element of RNG which I'd typically greatly dislike. Some reviewers I read around the time I played this game panned it for its reliance on these random elements, but I have to wonder if these reviewers examined the game in the detail it deserved. I also wonder if they were setting expectations for the game that weren't warranted. To be fair, the game's Kickstarter page openly made comparisons to Final Fantasy Tactics, which is a pretty lofty title to aspire to. And it's not the first game to make that mistake.
I have my criticisms of the game, to be sure, but it has so many fascinating elements that I can mostly forgive them. I don't regret my time with Children of Zodiarcs at all, and if there's any principal criticism I can give it, it's that there's not enough of it. It's not a long game and there aren't a lot of things you can do to really experiment with the game's systems. I would have loved to do more with it.
The game features only three playable characters, which of course I don't really dig. Other strategy RPGs that I really like feature a pretty wide cast of playable characters, including the games on which dev Cardboard Utopia was quick to draw comparisons, like Shining Force, Tactics Ogre, and of course, Final Fantasy Tactics. Even games like Fire Emblem and Disgaea afford you with the opportunity to experience a rotating roster of different characters. Zodiarcs instead focuses on three primary characters, but interestingly branches off in a few missions with guest characters over which you have full control but no investment in their growth as characters. You're not customizing them or leveling them up as you are with the primary three. I would have loved if these guest characters were full-featured members of the roster you could build at your leisure.
I would have preferred a little more content in the game in general, to be honest. It's independent developed, and I know resource allocation is a tough thing, but if I'm to examine the game for its strengths and weaknesses, then it's a fair thing to mention. Realistically, the assets necessary for more content are already in the game, though. Those guest characters all have their own skills and acquire new ones as they level--you just have no personal control or involvement in it. I would have felt much more invested in those characters if that was the case.
All of this sounds like heavy criticism for this game, but it really just emphasizes the fact that because I'm so fascinated by the mechanics, I wanted a lot more out of it. Some of the reviews I read even targeted what was described as the game's "paper-thin" plot. I don't personally feel this is an issue at all. Sure, the story is told in broad strokes, but I do feel it was effective. Protagonist Nahmi is a low-born thief skulking around the Shambles, a series of slums below the area where the high-born nobles live. This is a pretty generic statement on class that many games have done before, but what makes it a little more interesting is exactly the path Nahmi takes throughout the game and how she interacts with those she considers allies. Nahmi is pragmatic and willing to do what she must--including dirty work--to rise above the pauper existence she lives. The brash young mage, Brice, who serves as her impromptu sidekick early on in the game feels similarly, but as a contrast to her, is much less careful about how she achieves her goals.
Zodiarcs tackles the conflict between achieving one's goals and doing what is right as well as the consequences for making those decisions. Nahmi is put into a position where everything she is striving for is within reach, but she may lose everything to achieve it, including the support system she has struggled to build while subsisting on scraps in the Shambles. It wasn't a game I felt likely to be emotionally invested in but was surprised at just how much that was the case by the time I finished it.
The plot is certainly interesting, but it wasn't what attracted me to the game in the first place. I'm understandably wary of any game that compares itself to Final Fantasy Tactics, but I wasn't about to fall into the trap of taking those lofty expectations seriously. My expectation upon purchasing the game was "tactical game" and not "game on the level of quality of Final Fantasy Tactics" and I think that was helpful context as I started playing. Like many strategy RPGs I love, Zodiarcs rewards careful positioning and clever combos. It sets itself apart from other games with its customization.
I think a lot of people's eyes glaze over when you mention "card-based combat" because it's a mechanic that pops up from time to time and isn't always done well. I personally love card games, but acknowledge that they don't always mix with RPGs super well, even though I have a secret love for Baten Kaitos. Is it true, though, that the randomness inherent to card games is incompatible with strategy RPG, which reward careful planning and execution? Well, nope. There is ample stragegy involved in card games, as any experienced Magic: the Gathering player will attest. Even just building a deck is an exercise in ensuring what you need to happen will happen. This philosophy is precisely why the customization in Zodiarcs is interesting.
Each of the game's playable characters unlocks new cards as they level up. These cards have a variety of effects but they essentially serve as your characters attacks. No generic attacks exist in Zodiarcs, which is actually kind of nice. Each ability you use in combat has weight and meaning to it. Nahmi's staple attack is Blitz, which deals damage and grants a chance to take an extra turn. In most RPGs, this chance to take an extra turn would be a static percentage or it might be modifiable by your status. In Zodiarcs, there are ways you can absolutely ensure this bonus effect happens, which leads me to discuss the other mechanic in this game that makes me really enjoy it.
I've written before about how I intensely dislike randomness in RPGs, tactical or otherwise, evne in games I really like. I have a gut reaction to things like missing, critical hits, and status effects. It doesn't feel good in Fire Emblem (which features permadeth) to exercise all of your strategic acumen to reach the end of a tough stage and then die suddenly to a critical hit that had a 1% chance of occurring. Theoretically, your characters have that same opportunity to luck out and smash an opponent that's much stronger and that's exciting when it happens, but it's just as unsatisfying when you really need that critical hit to happen for your plans to work and it just doesn't happen, even when you've done everything you can to make it likely that it does.
I brainstormed solutions to the "critical hit problem" at that time and considered a mechanic called Critical Energy, which uses points that build up over time to unleash extra benefits to attacks. Attacks wouldn't normally miss or deal extra damage, but if this extra resource was expended, you could potentially add splashy effects to your abilities or even dodge the attacks of others. The excellent Cosmic Star Heroine has a similar mechanic in its Hyper system. I really like ideas like this because it takes steps to curb an RPG's reliance on randomness. Why, then, would I be wild about a combat system that not only involves randomly drawn cards, but dice-rolling as well? Well, it's because Zodiarcs takes a lot of steps to make sure you have as much control over it as possible.
Cards typically perform a certain function and frequently also feature a bonus effect that triggers based on a dice roll. And do you know what's great about that dice roll? It's not entirely random. It's not percentage-based. Unlike most RPGs in which these calculations are done entirely behind the scenes, Zodiarcs afford the player with the opportunity to physically roll the dice using the analog stick. It feels slightly janky, to be fair, but it is very satisfying to see the dice fall as they may. And you might say "well, whatever--even if you roll the dice, it's still just RNG." And that's partially true. But there's more to it.
I mentioned earlier that Zodiarcs is inventive about the way it handles customization. The primary form of customization lies simply in fine-tuning your characters' decks. You can have anywhere from 3-6 of a particular card in your deck, which makes it more or less likely to draw that particular card when you need it. Just like with Magic and other collectible card games, sometimes it's necessary to include several copies of a particular card to ensure you have it when you need it to execute your strategy. On the other hand, certain cards are more situational and you don't want it to end up in your hand every time. There are even bonus effects on cards that specifically pull a named card from your deck provided you meet certain conditions. This allows you to have maximum control over the randomness. Assuming you plan properly, you can make sure your character functions the way you want every time.
Let's talk about these dice. Just like the cards, these dice can be customized as well. You start out with two of them, but can eventually have six. Each of these dice has six sides, all of which feature different symbols. As you unlock more dice (by clobbering goons), you acquire the ability to customize which symbols appear on these dice. Lower level dice may not allow you to customize many of the sides, but as you progress, you'll be able to customize a lot more and the symbols that appear on them by default will be stronger. This is the other important part of the "controlled randomness" in this game. Although drawing cards and rolling dice are both random events, they are events over which you have control. They're not tied to a static percent figure. It's not "50% chance to get an extra turn," it's "get an extra turn if you roll a star." How do you roll a star? Well, it's partially luck, but it's going to become all but certain if you craft your dice so that you have 1-2 stars per die! And then what happens if you don't roll a star? You're allowed to reroll two of the dice at any point.
Zodiarcs tackles the issue of how frustrating RNG is in RPGs better than almost any other game I can think of. Bad draws exist and bad dice rolls exist, but it equips you with enough tools to fight back against bad luck. It ensures that if you do have bad luck, you were able to take a lot of steps to correct that, which minimizes the frustration of luck ruining your strategy. I cannot say enough about how much I like these mechanics. And of course, stars are not the only symbol on these dice either. You can craft symbols that cause you to draw more cards, deal more damage, reduce counterattack damage, etc. You have other options that allow you to fine-tune what you want your character to do.
This really brings me back to my original point, though, which is that the game lacks content. I absolutely love the toolbox it gives me for building my characters. So much so, in fact, that I desperately wanted to do it with more characters. I want more dice symbols, more cards, more characters. I want character classes, more maps, and secrets. I very much enjoyed the game as a contained experience, but I can see the mechanics (and even the plot) taking it a lot farther than where it went. I can't help but be reminded of I am Setsuna, another short game with an excellent c combat system. That game was even worse in this regard because it was never necessary to explore the depths of that system because there was never hard enough content to warrant it. Zodiarcs doesn't have this issue so much because it's frequently pretty challenging--but it doesn't change the fact that I do want more with which to experiment and more game to play.
I think that sense of uncertainty, of apathy, of hopelessness--it's anathema to the creative process. But at the same time that creativity is so helpful in banishing those negative feelings, even when it's hard. Maybe especially when it's hard. I could have published at that time and I'm sad that I didn't have the wherewithal to do so then. But I will now, on this platform.
Children of Zodiarcs is a very interesting game. Broadly, it is a strategy turn-based RPG not altogether dissimilar to Final Fantasy Tactics in gameplay, but differs a in a lot of important ways. There are cards and there are dice rolls, which add an element of RNG which I'd typically greatly dislike. Some reviewers I read around the time I played this game panned it for its reliance on these random elements, but I have to wonder if these reviewers examined the game in the detail it deserved. I also wonder if they were setting expectations for the game that weren't warranted. To be fair, the game's Kickstarter page openly made comparisons to Final Fantasy Tactics, which is a pretty lofty title to aspire to. And it's not the first game to make that mistake.
I have my criticisms of the game, to be sure, but it has so many fascinating elements that I can mostly forgive them. I don't regret my time with Children of Zodiarcs at all, and if there's any principal criticism I can give it, it's that there's not enough of it. It's not a long game and there aren't a lot of things you can do to really experiment with the game's systems. I would have loved to do more with it.
The game features only three playable characters, which of course I don't really dig. Other strategy RPGs that I really like feature a pretty wide cast of playable characters, including the games on which dev Cardboard Utopia was quick to draw comparisons, like Shining Force, Tactics Ogre, and of course, Final Fantasy Tactics. Even games like Fire Emblem and Disgaea afford you with the opportunity to experience a rotating roster of different characters. Zodiarcs instead focuses on three primary characters, but interestingly branches off in a few missions with guest characters over which you have full control but no investment in their growth as characters. You're not customizing them or leveling them up as you are with the primary three. I would have loved if these guest characters were full-featured members of the roster you could build at your leisure.
I would have preferred a little more content in the game in general, to be honest. It's independent developed, and I know resource allocation is a tough thing, but if I'm to examine the game for its strengths and weaknesses, then it's a fair thing to mention. Realistically, the assets necessary for more content are already in the game, though. Those guest characters all have their own skills and acquire new ones as they level--you just have no personal control or involvement in it. I would have felt much more invested in those characters if that was the case.
All of this sounds like heavy criticism for this game, but it really just emphasizes the fact that because I'm so fascinated by the mechanics, I wanted a lot more out of it. Some of the reviews I read even targeted what was described as the game's "paper-thin" plot. I don't personally feel this is an issue at all. Sure, the story is told in broad strokes, but I do feel it was effective. Protagonist Nahmi is a low-born thief skulking around the Shambles, a series of slums below the area where the high-born nobles live. This is a pretty generic statement on class that many games have done before, but what makes it a little more interesting is exactly the path Nahmi takes throughout the game and how she interacts with those she considers allies. Nahmi is pragmatic and willing to do what she must--including dirty work--to rise above the pauper existence she lives. The brash young mage, Brice, who serves as her impromptu sidekick early on in the game feels similarly, but as a contrast to her, is much less careful about how she achieves her goals.
Zodiarcs tackles the conflict between achieving one's goals and doing what is right as well as the consequences for making those decisions. Nahmi is put into a position where everything she is striving for is within reach, but she may lose everything to achieve it, including the support system she has struggled to build while subsisting on scraps in the Shambles. It wasn't a game I felt likely to be emotionally invested in but was surprised at just how much that was the case by the time I finished it.
The plot is certainly interesting, but it wasn't what attracted me to the game in the first place. I'm understandably wary of any game that compares itself to Final Fantasy Tactics, but I wasn't about to fall into the trap of taking those lofty expectations seriously. My expectation upon purchasing the game was "tactical game" and not "game on the level of quality of Final Fantasy Tactics" and I think that was helpful context as I started playing. Like many strategy RPGs I love, Zodiarcs rewards careful positioning and clever combos. It sets itself apart from other games with its customization.
I think a lot of people's eyes glaze over when you mention "card-based combat" because it's a mechanic that pops up from time to time and isn't always done well. I personally love card games, but acknowledge that they don't always mix with RPGs super well, even though I have a secret love for Baten Kaitos. Is it true, though, that the randomness inherent to card games is incompatible with strategy RPG, which reward careful planning and execution? Well, nope. There is ample stragegy involved in card games, as any experienced Magic: the Gathering player will attest. Even just building a deck is an exercise in ensuring what you need to happen will happen. This philosophy is precisely why the customization in Zodiarcs is interesting.
Each of the game's playable characters unlocks new cards as they level up. These cards have a variety of effects but they essentially serve as your characters attacks. No generic attacks exist in Zodiarcs, which is actually kind of nice. Each ability you use in combat has weight and meaning to it. Nahmi's staple attack is Blitz, which deals damage and grants a chance to take an extra turn. In most RPGs, this chance to take an extra turn would be a static percentage or it might be modifiable by your status. In Zodiarcs, there are ways you can absolutely ensure this bonus effect happens, which leads me to discuss the other mechanic in this game that makes me really enjoy it.
I've written before about how I intensely dislike randomness in RPGs, tactical or otherwise, evne in games I really like. I have a gut reaction to things like missing, critical hits, and status effects. It doesn't feel good in Fire Emblem (which features permadeth) to exercise all of your strategic acumen to reach the end of a tough stage and then die suddenly to a critical hit that had a 1% chance of occurring. Theoretically, your characters have that same opportunity to luck out and smash an opponent that's much stronger and that's exciting when it happens, but it's just as unsatisfying when you really need that critical hit to happen for your plans to work and it just doesn't happen, even when you've done everything you can to make it likely that it does.
I brainstormed solutions to the "critical hit problem" at that time and considered a mechanic called Critical Energy, which uses points that build up over time to unleash extra benefits to attacks. Attacks wouldn't normally miss or deal extra damage, but if this extra resource was expended, you could potentially add splashy effects to your abilities or even dodge the attacks of others. The excellent Cosmic Star Heroine has a similar mechanic in its Hyper system. I really like ideas like this because it takes steps to curb an RPG's reliance on randomness. Why, then, would I be wild about a combat system that not only involves randomly drawn cards, but dice-rolling as well? Well, it's because Zodiarcs takes a lot of steps to make sure you have as much control over it as possible.
Cards typically perform a certain function and frequently also feature a bonus effect that triggers based on a dice roll. And do you know what's great about that dice roll? It's not entirely random. It's not percentage-based. Unlike most RPGs in which these calculations are done entirely behind the scenes, Zodiarcs afford the player with the opportunity to physically roll the dice using the analog stick. It feels slightly janky, to be fair, but it is very satisfying to see the dice fall as they may. And you might say "well, whatever--even if you roll the dice, it's still just RNG." And that's partially true. But there's more to it.
I mentioned earlier that Zodiarcs is inventive about the way it handles customization. The primary form of customization lies simply in fine-tuning your characters' decks. You can have anywhere from 3-6 of a particular card in your deck, which makes it more or less likely to draw that particular card when you need it. Just like with Magic and other collectible card games, sometimes it's necessary to include several copies of a particular card to ensure you have it when you need it to execute your strategy. On the other hand, certain cards are more situational and you don't want it to end up in your hand every time. There are even bonus effects on cards that specifically pull a named card from your deck provided you meet certain conditions. This allows you to have maximum control over the randomness. Assuming you plan properly, you can make sure your character functions the way you want every time.
Let's talk about these dice. Just like the cards, these dice can be customized as well. You start out with two of them, but can eventually have six. Each of these dice has six sides, all of which feature different symbols. As you unlock more dice (by clobbering goons), you acquire the ability to customize which symbols appear on these dice. Lower level dice may not allow you to customize many of the sides, but as you progress, you'll be able to customize a lot more and the symbols that appear on them by default will be stronger. This is the other important part of the "controlled randomness" in this game. Although drawing cards and rolling dice are both random events, they are events over which you have control. They're not tied to a static percent figure. It's not "50% chance to get an extra turn," it's "get an extra turn if you roll a star." How do you roll a star? Well, it's partially luck, but it's going to become all but certain if you craft your dice so that you have 1-2 stars per die! And then what happens if you don't roll a star? You're allowed to reroll two of the dice at any point.
Zodiarcs tackles the issue of how frustrating RNG is in RPGs better than almost any other game I can think of. Bad draws exist and bad dice rolls exist, but it equips you with enough tools to fight back against bad luck. It ensures that if you do have bad luck, you were able to take a lot of steps to correct that, which minimizes the frustration of luck ruining your strategy. I cannot say enough about how much I like these mechanics. And of course, stars are not the only symbol on these dice either. You can craft symbols that cause you to draw more cards, deal more damage, reduce counterattack damage, etc. You have other options that allow you to fine-tune what you want your character to do.
This really brings me back to my original point, though, which is that the game lacks content. I absolutely love the toolbox it gives me for building my characters. So much so, in fact, that I desperately wanted to do it with more characters. I want more dice symbols, more cards, more characters. I want character classes, more maps, and secrets. I very much enjoyed the game as a contained experience, but I can see the mechanics (and even the plot) taking it a lot farther than where it went. I can't help but be reminded of I am Setsuna, another short game with an excellent c combat system. That game was even worse in this regard because it was never necessary to explore the depths of that system because there was never hard enough content to warrant it. Zodiarcs doesn't have this issue so much because it's frequently pretty challenging--but it doesn't change the fact that I do want more with which to experiment and more game to play.
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