Tales of Vesperia: A Reprieve

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I was about to set Tales of Vesperia aside and move on to another game this weekend. At about 10 hours in I was finding both the game's combat system and story to be less than satisfying. I am now 18 hours in, so what happened? Two things changed on Sunday night, I broke down and read a FAQ on the combat system, and the story took off.

I generally do not like to read FAQ's as they feel like cheating, but I find in RPGs, especially JRPGs, that FAQs are often the only way to get a true explanation of how a game's systems work. This proved to be especially true with Tales of Vesperia. The game never really explains to you how combos work, and the tutorial sections are not especially helpful since there is no way to exit, change your character setup, and come back in to try it out. They also do not allow for enough repetition to truly understand what works. I understand that the Tales series is largely a niche within a niche, and that it has a core group of fans that it caters to, but it seems to assume you already know many of the core concepts of how the combat system works. It is especially odd to assume that a player has played a previous game in your JRPG series when you release it on Xbox only.

The FAQ cleared up a whole bunch of confusion about how the different types of Artes worked, how combos work, and that there was still a lot of capabilities to be unlocked in the combat system (you get the ability to chain together much larger combos as the game goes on). This last point is true to the extent that I know realize that this game has an almost FFXIII pace in unveiling its game systems. Anyway, combat is much more fun now and I am looking forward to the full system unlocking.

The story has also shifted from being a bunch of losers wandering aimlessly while looking for a rock to something more political. There is now intrigue involving the throne and the guilds. While it is still fairly silly anime stuff, it does have a bit more depth and edge to it. I do wonder why they waited until 12 hours in to get there though.

The game remains very linear, you basically just walk from town to town with little to no chance of getting sidetracked, I am hoping this opens up a bit as well.

Final Fantasy XII and Tales of Vesperia Update

The fun continues with Final Fantasy XII, I am really enjoying this game. I have just defeated the two living walls in The Tomb of Raithwall and I am pausing progression to deal with some hunts and to grind out some licenses. I am right about level 22 with most characters and the game has really come into its own. As you gain access to more Gambit options the system opens up and tuning your Gambits becomes another, non-power-related, chance to advance and customize your character. Working out strategies for your group, especially with six characters to play with, is a blast. The game really feels like a single player version of FFXI, and I mean that in the best possible way, combat has a cool teamwork feel to it. I am just plain enjoying playing the game, especially the combat system.

The Yensa Sandsea area is proving to be a good place to level and get LPs, so I am taking the time to progress my characters in the augmentation area of the license board. I already have all three mist charges with all characters, this dramatically changes the way you play, the extra MP means you can cast spells almost constantly in combat. This is enhanced further by many of the augmentations. The story is kind of just there, but the gameplay is excellent.

Things are not going as well with Tales of Vesperia, I am about 11 hours in and there is not a lot going on in this game. The characters are pretty standard, insipid, anime fair; Karol is especially annoying. The story is like a NES-era Dragon Quest game, you go to a town, grind until you can afford the weapons, solve that towns problem and walk to the next one. The cut scenes are particularly annoying, not only are they poorly written, you also have to hit "A" after every line of dialogue, even when there is voice acting.

The combat system, the Tales series claim to fame, is not really anything to write home about. Commentor Matteo mentioned that I needed to make some AI changes in order to keep the enemies from ganging up on me, and this worked very well. The problem is, there just isn't that much to the combat, I use the same combo over and over, no matter what the situation. I just do three hits and then a Wolf Strike, this seems to work for everything. Recently the game introduced the concepts of Fatal Strikes and Burst Arts, but so far neither has seen much use. Perhaps this game would be better if it had some kind of training mode where I could try out different combos on a dummy and experiment with the system a bit. Many fighting games have this sort of thing now, it can be hard to tell what is causing things to happen during fights. The screen gets crowded and the fights are over fast. Once I got the AI sorted out the game is no longer hard, so maybe I am doing the right thing. I am going to give it a few more hours tonight, but there isn't much holding me to this one. Do not be surprised if I pull the plug on Tales of Vesperia. I bought several Tales games a month or so ago during a PSN sale, I will at least try all of them.

Final Fantasy X-2 Review

As I mentioned previously, I enjoyed Final Fantasy X quite a bit, sadly I found its sequel to be deeply flawed. I understand, and even applaud what Square was going for with FFX-2. They were aiming to make a more lighthearted, faster moving game, and in many ways they succeeded. Unfortunately, the effort is marred by extensive reuse of assets, a shallow story awkwardly divided into chapters, and a interesting, but flawed, combat system.

FFX-2's story picks up two years after the end of FFX and the apparent death of Tidus. Yuna and Rikku had a post pilgrimage career (job?) change and are now Sphere Hunters. They have been joined by Paine, a Lulu replacement. Sphere Hunters are basically adventurers who search the ruins of Spira for artifacts, many of which reveal secrets from the past. Meanwhile, Spira is undergoing an awkward time of change as the populace comes to terms with the events of FFX and the revelations about Yevon.

Yuna, Rikku and Lulu make up a Charlie's Angels like group called the Gullwings. They hunt spheres for fame, fortune and, in Yuna's case, clues to the location of the missing Tidus. Yuna and Rikku have had a drastic cosmetic makeover since the first game in order to fit in with the second game's more modern style. The Gullwings spend the first part of the game feuding with the Leblanc Syndicate, another group of Sphere Hunters, though they eventually join forces to fight the main evil in the game. The main plot revolves around the conflict between New Yevon and the Youth League, the two main power groups in the post-Calm world, over who will control Spira.

While the setup manages to be both lighthearted and politically intrigued, the story falls short in execution. This is largely a structural problem, the game is divided into chapters and once you move on to another chapter, many of the events in the previous chapters, like sidequests, are no longer available. This is a problem for three reasons, some important exposition is in these sidequests, the existence of the sidequests is not always obvious (some show up on the map, some do not), and it isn't always clear when you will trigger a chapter change. These problems have mechanical implications as well, sometimes proper advancement can be tough if you miss sidequests. These problems really undermine both the story and the mechanics of the game. I do not mind having some missable content in a game, especially when it makes sense from a story perspective, but most of this game is missable. Beyond the structural problems, the characterizations are not great, Yuna comes across as pretty shallow and goofy after being a much stronger character in the first game. Rikku is still Rikku. Paine is a bit more interesting, and is actually more connected to the overall plot than the others.

Another problem is the heavy reuse of assets from the first game. You will be travelling to places that you have been before and seeing monsters and people that you have seen before. While I understand the desire to reuse assets to control cost and time, it felt excessive in this game. It felt like most of the areas were repeats from FFX, and they hadn't done enough new with these areas to make them interesting again. Reuse of assets in a sequel like this is always a tough issue, so I don't want to beat up on it too much over this.

The final problem is the combat system, which is inspired, yet flawed. The combat system in FFX-2 is much more action-oriented that FFX's system, and features a job swapping, Dress Sphere System. Both of these additions are great ideas, I enjoyed the faster pace of combat, and loved swapping jobs on the fly to set up combination attacks. The execution, again, was lacking and it was ultimately frustration arising out of the combat system that caused me to walk away from the game. One of the first problems is the game's high random encounter rate. I know this was standard for the era, but this game came as we were moving out of that phase of JRPGs and it sticks out like a sore thumb next to the much more modern feeling battle system. For a more action-oriented game the costume changes (they are skippable) and some of the skills take way too long to execute. This can really break up the pace of the battle and often makes for a skill triggering after its need has been overcome by events. Related to that issue is the high occurrence of monsters with status effect powers, many of which are instant death or incapacitate. This leads to a lot of cheap game over screens.  Finally, you can miss many of the jobs, either by not seeing a hidden chest or by not going on a side quest. Again, there is no real indication that this is going to happen, or that it has happened, adding to the frustration.

FFX-2 is not a bad game, I stayed with it almost until the end, and it has a lot of really good ideas in it. The combat system is a direct ancestor to FFXIII's system, which I loved, but wasn't quite up to the task. More new assets, or more clever reuse of existing assets would have been nice, but the game's biggest problem is its chapter structure. You can just miss too much of the game. I played this game this winter, immediately after FFX, maybe I would have like it more if there had been more time between them, or I had waited for the HD remake. It isn't a bad game, but you probably don't need to seek it out.

Weekly Update

It is really Investors & Illithids

I did not get to game at all this week due to a training conference at work, but I did get to read a really cool book called Designers and Dragons: '90-'99. This book covers the tabletop RPG industry during the '90s and is very interesting. The name of the book would lead you to believe that it focuses on the design side of gaming, but really it is centered on the business. The book does discuss certain game mechanics choices made by the companies covered, but spends most of its page count discussing the rise and fall of the different companies that contributed to RPGs in the '90s.

It is part of a series of 4 books, one book covers the '70s, one the '80s, one the '90s, and one the '00s. Each chapter covers one company, counter to what you might think the chapter covers the entire history of a company, not just its activities during the '90s. So there is no chapter discussing TSR, it is covered in the '70s when it started, although it does get covered in the Wizards of the Coast chapter for obvious reasons.

The author starts with a discussion of White Wolf, the makers of Vampire, this is a smart choice as that company defined the overall feel of '90s gaming, even if you never played one of their games. It covers the company from its founding, all the way through to the unfortunate events involving CCP. The book also spends a considerable amount of time on WoTC, the architects of the CCG boom, and the eventual owners of D&D.

While many of the business stories are well known to me, especially the story of how TSR was purchased, others are completely new. Many mysteries from my teen and early adult years are solved, like what happened to Traveller and why Guardians of Order just seemed to vanish. Many companies were also connected in interesting ways that I never realized until reading the book. It is a fascinating tale of buyouts and bankruptcies. I ordered the rest of the series immediately after finishing this book.

As this is a long weekend, and my family has nothing planned, I expect I will get a good amount of gaming done.  

Weekly Update

This week I concentrated on Final Fantasy XII and Tales of Vesperia. I have started Final Fantasy XII twice before and I really do enjoy it. Outside interruptions have always caused me to fail to complete the game in the past, not my opinion of the game itself. I am working with a guide this time, not to cheat in the main story, but to plan out my license buys and find some of the more obscure side quests. I don't feel bad about this since I have completed more than half the game twice in the past. I really want to work on exploring the battle system a bit more this time. I just completed the rescue of Ashe from the Empire and I currently have at least one mist charge on each character, one (Basch) with all three, and another (Ashe) with two. My main party up until this point: Balthier, Vaan, and Fran only have one mist charge a piece because I have to strategically spend their license points to get through the early game (equipment, spells etc.). Now that I have Basch, Ashe, and Penello, I can make a beeline for their mist charges without heeding other requirements. 

I am enjoying Tales of Vesperia so far, but I am having a bit of trouble adapting to the combat system. I usually control Yuri, and I am constantly getting swarmed. I can't seem to combo for more than about three swings in a row without getting jacked. While I do pretty well against regular enemies, basically through hit and run, the last boss I fought, some kind of winged dog thing, creamed me. It does seem like some elements of the combat system are still being introduced, I only have had Overlimits for an hour or so, so perhaps as more features unlock I will be able to do better. It is also possible that I just don't understand how it works.

I started up Star Ocean: Second Evolution on my PSP after abandoning Lunar, so far it is good, but it has some long cut scenes so it may not be all that conductive to playing on the train.

I have a few reviews in the works for games I have completed like FFX-2, FFXIII-2, Star Ocean, and Valiant Hearts. I will be pushing hard to complete Final Fantasy games over the summer as I have several that I have never completed and I would like to be up-to-date before FFXV drops. That line up currently looks like: FFIII, FFV, FFVIII, Crisis Core, FFXIII Lightning Returns, and Type 0 HD. Main series games will be the first priority, I am not sure that I can stomach FFIII, but I will give it a try. I am really tempted to play FFVII and FFIX again, I haven't played them since I beat them at release, and I really enjoyed both. Of course, this will hurt my backlog process.

Ni No Kuni Review

My history with the game

While there are no previous Ni No Kuni games for me to have a history with, Level 5 is one of my favorite developers. Dragon Quest 8 was my favorite RPG of the PS2 generation, I enjoyed its graphical style, voice acting, and expansive world riper for exploration. I also enjoyed Dark Cloud, and the portions of Dark Cloud 2 and Rogue Galaxy that I had time to play. I am aware that the White Knight Chronicles series received mediocre reviews, but I have not played them. In general, I have found that Level 5’s games have a great sense of character and personality due to their use of cell shading and the extra care paid to voice acting. I have also found that Level 5’s games offer very generous amounts of content both as part of the main quest and in end game activities.

Gameplay

I will start the discussion of Ni No Kuni’s gameplay elements with an admission, I have never played Pokemon or any of its imitators. I was slightly too old for the Pokemon explosion of the late ‘90s and I have never picked one up in the years since. As a result, this is my first “monster collecting” game. I have played a few games, like Dragon Quest 8, that featured some amount of monster collection as a side pursuit, but never one where the system was this robust or a central feature of the game.

I also want to get a discussion of the game’s AI out of the way, the AI is not great. Your party members do not always make great decisions during battles, they often deploy a familiar that does not make sense given the tactical situation, or choose to battle without a familiar when they are “squishy” and in melee range. While I cannot think of any fights that I lost solely due to the bad AI, it did cause resource management issues. The AI burns through Magic Points at a staggering rate, mostly due to all the extra self-healing it has to do. In fact, I spent most boss battles dispensing potions and heals rather than directly attacking the boss. So while enemy AI is not Mickey Mousecapades bad, it will cause some frustrations.

The gameplay is a cross between Dragon Quest, Pokemon, and a more active game like Star Ocean. The game follows the traditional Dragon Quest path of having the hero go to a town, solve the inhabitants’ problems, and move on to the next town. The interesting twist of collecting monsters, called familiars, and raising them is added to the Dragon Quest formula. The player collects monsters by defeating them in battles, occasionally a defeated monster will not die, but instead will gaze at your party in adoration for a while. During this phase you can serenade the love-struck beastie and convince it to become your familiar. Once a familiar has joined your party you can raise its level by adding it to your active party and give it additional stat boosts by feeding it, and eventually can change its form by feeding it magical drops. These familiars will be doing most of the fighting.

The fighting system is superficially like a traditional Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy game. The enemies line up on one side of the field and your party on another, you select actions for your character from a menu list. The combat system is actually very different from traditional games, it is far more actin oriented and has more in common with Final Fantasy XIII or Star Ocean than Dragon Quest. The action takes place in real time, although it does pause for some action selections, and you only directly control one character at a time. 

You swap out your familiars to take advantage of their different skills, you can only use each familiar for a limited amount of time before swapping it out. Some of your familiars are better at physical combat, some at defense, and others excel at attack or healing magic. You can see an example of a fight in the YouTube video below.

You will collect a lot of these familiars throughout the game, possibly in the hundreds. Each character can only have three active familiars at any one time, you can also have three more familiars tagging along to be swapped in to your line up between fights. 

The fighting remains challenging and interesting throughout the game. My only real issue with the combat system were the teammate AI problems that caused resources to get used at an alarming rate. Restoration items are fairly expensive for much of the game, so this is not a trivial problem.

The game also includes a robust crafting system. I feel like I only scratched the surface of it in my play through, mostly only making restoration items. I did find it to be less opaque than these sorts of systems tend to be in console RPGs. The in game wizard's book contains many recipes and guidance on how the system works. I can see myself messing around with this more in the post game content.

There is a whole familiar arena battle that I did not even touch during my play through, I will comment on it if I go through the post game content.

Sound

The voice acting is wonderful, it is not quire up to the standards set by Dragon Quest VIII, but it is very close. There are no annoying JRPG cliche characters with squeaky voices. The soundtrack is fantastic, I would rank it ahead of the Dragon Quest VIII soundtrack. Joe Hisaishi of Studio Ghibli composed most of the soundtrack, and while it is fully orchestrated, it is video game music. I mean that in the best possible sense, it has charming repeating loops that you can easily listen to, and enjoy, for the 50 to 60 hours it will take to complete the game. I place this soundtrack on par with Final Fantasy XI, one of my all time favorite game soundtracks. 

Graphics

The graphics are gorgeous, Level 5 and Studio Ghibli have taken the formula that worked for Level 5 on Dragon Quest VIII and injected it full of personality and charm. The game really does look like an animated feature, I feel like they have achieved what the Tales series has been attempting for years. All of the characters are memorable and instantly recognizable, the took cartoon logic and ran with it, allowing for a wide variety of characters. This is important due to the large number of familiars. There is some pallet swapping for the monsters, and some monsters that just get features added to form a new monster, but there is not an excessive amount of this. The monster families give an in game reason for this to happen anyway. The environments are excellent and draw you in to the world. My three-year-old watched me play the game as though it was a movie.

Story

I want to avoid any spoilers, so I will keep this short.  Oliver, a young boy in a world much like our own, and his friend build a homemade car and take it for a test drive. During their test drive there is a horrible accident and Oliver's mom dies saving him from drowning. Oliver learns, from a stuffed toy named Mr. Drippy, that his mother has a soul mate in another world and that his mother could be saved by saving her soul mate. Oliver and Mr. Drippy travel to this other world to defeat the evil menace, Shadar, and save his mother. Throughout the game Oliver, Mr. Drippy, and their companions travel from town to town. In each town they help the people overcome local problems and, in turn, are helped with their larger quest. The themes of teamwork and mutual benefit are deeply woven into the game. 

Oliver discovers that he is a wizard and has the ability to cast spells and command familiars. He also discovers that he has the ability to borrow virtues like courage or love from people who are strong in them, and bolster those who are weak. This is used to strengthen the themes of community and compassion in the story more than it is used as a puzzle element. 

The story is charming, well told, and bittersweet. Level 5 has done a lot more with the Dragon Quest formula, and this still very much follows the Dragon Quest formula, than I have seen a developer do before. The writers did a good job calling back to characters in towns you left behind, and give you reason to return. The interaction between the party members is believable and entertaining. 

Verdict

If pressed to decide my favorite game of the PS3/360 generation I would say the Mass Effect trilogy. But, if I was forced to choose a single, stand-alone game, this is it. This is my favorite RPG since Dragon Quest VIII, it delivered everything I was looking for when I bought it.  

Farewell Lunar

They haven't experienced the load times yet.

Last night I decided to give up on Lunar: Silver Song Harmony for the PSP, it just wasn't that good. The load times, unavoidable battles, and endless backtracking wore me down to the point that I did not want to play anymore. The straw that broke the camel's back was my attempt to catch a pink bug in Iluk, I basically had to walk through every screen twice, since the enemies re-spawn when you leave the screen, this is incredibly annoying. I just finished dealing with this during my three pointless trips through the Meryod Woods. Here is my short review.

My History With the Game: I first encountered Lunar when I got it for my PS1 years ago. It came in a beautiful package with a hardcover hint book and was billed as one of the top games people who did not have a Sega CD had missed. I only played a few hours of it before something else drew me away. My little brother did beat it and loved it. I picked up a copy for the PSP cheap on Amazon a few years ago. That is the version that I played for this review.

Lunar has a long history of being re-released. It was originally released in 1992 for the Sega CD, saw a re-release for the Sega Saturn in 1996, another for the Sony Playstation in 1999, there was a Gameboy Advance version in 2002, and finally this PSP version in 2009.

Gameplay: There is not a lot going on here. There wasn't even all that much going by the standards of the late '90s when it was released for the PS1. Even examining the game in light of its original 1992 release date reveals a very traditional RPG. The main features that would have set it apart from other early '90s RPGs are the use of CD-ROM, the ability to avoid fights on the field, and the fact that characters move around on the battlefield. One of these features does not effect gameplay, and the other two are junk.

Even on the PSP the only features in the game that require the use of crazy, multimedia, CD-ROM technology are real voices, enhanced music, and animated cut scenes. Everything else is straight out of the standard cartridge JRPG handbook.

You can theoretically avoid battles in this game by dodging enemies in the dungeons. Unlike other games of the period there are no random battles, you can see enemies while you are walking around and try to avoid them. I say "try" because in practice it is very difficult. You are generally in very narrow corridors and the enemies move fast; this is compounded by the fact that when you come out of a fight other enemies in the area rush you and you wind up right back in a fight again. There is a painful loading delay before the battle starts, the enemies re-spawn when you leave the screen, each screen is small, and you backtrack... a lot.

Once you are in a battle, your party and the monsters line up on opposite sides of the screen for turn based combat. The difference between Lunar and its contemporaries is that the characters and monsters do not stay in these lines and run all around the battlefield. This could add an interesting tactical element into the battles, but they left that on the table during implementation. The game does not signal you in any way as to what order actions will occur in, this means that you are constantly wasting AOE attacks when the enemy moves right before you cast. The game also does not allow you to choose which enemy you attack if your target dies, this means your character will often waste their attack running across the screen. Finally, position is never really exploited. You line up your melee characters in front of your casters, but the enemies just run right past them, suffering no ill effects, to attack your mages. Character movement does not add an interesting tactical element, it just makes battles longer (something the game does not need). It does not make the battles harder, just longer. The way the game handles character movement does not add depth, just chaos. Adding movement without control is the gameplay equivalent of hiring Jeffster to play your wedding.

No enemies are in range of this AOE.

Ultimately these gameplay shortcomings, that might be otherwise be excusable in a game of this vintage, combine with the absurd amount of loading in this version to ruin the game.

Story: There isn't much to say here that you couldn't guess by looking at the cover art and title font. Alex is a young man in a farming village who dreams of a life of adventure. Luna is the young woman who grew up with him, she is like his sister, but they are starting to feel something more. Alex sets off on a journey to become a Dragonmaster. Luna gets kidnapped. He meets a sassy tomboy, a lecherous barbarian, a stuck up mage and a wallflower. The dragons are tied to the elements. Blah, blah, blah. The story didn't bother me, it is exactly what I expect from a game of this era, although I found most of the characters more annoying than the norm, it just needed to be stronger to make up for the gameplay shortcomings.

Graphics: I don't have a lot to say about these either. They have been improved for the PSP version, the sprites are a little bigger and more detailed, but there is nothing special here. It is pretty much your basic PSP upscale of a 16-bit RPG.

Sound: The soundtrack is quite good, I actually listened to the CD that came with the game for years. I suggest you listen to it:

Verdict: Skip it. There is not much here, and even that is ruined by the load times.