05.02.12 / Atlus, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: innocent sin, persona 2, review, shin megami tensei
Thanks. I heard you the first 2000 times too.
I held out as long as I could, but the absurdly high encounter rate finally did me in. I’m supposed to visit a couple of temples and take back the crystal skulls, but I just got out of grueling crawls at Mt. Katatsumuri and Caracol. I don’t know how long any of these temples are or if I’ll be any closer to finally, finally finishing this game.
I’ve played a number of dungeon crawlers in the past couple of months (UnchainBlades Rexx, Criminal Girls, WiZman’s World, etc.), and Innocent Sin is easily the most unpleasant of the lot. Piss-poor variety of enemies, piss-poor variety of conversation options, no way to change personas until you finish the dungeon, no way to warp out before you’re done, same old horrible battle music from start to finish… At some point I started to contemplate throwing the PSP at the wall, and that was when I knew I needed help.
There’s a spell called Estoma that was supposed to help, but it only drives away enemies lower than your party’s level. Since I’ve been spending most of the game 9-12 levels behind the enemies, it does diddly-squat. So back on the shelf with Innocent Sin while I play something that has few to no random battles in it. If I never have to see another attacking screen again, it will be too soon.
Ah, right. Before I forget. Following on from the previous post, I did go to Alaya Shrine and from there to Mt. Iwato, where my party did finally tell me “everything.” As I’d feared, it did turn out to be “some FF8-style bullshit about how they all played together as kids but then they all got *gasp* amnesia.” I don’t know why it was (rightfully) considered a crappy plot device when FF8 did it, but when IS did it it became “ZOMG BEST STORY EVER” *spit* but whatever. Shit is shit. Come to think of it, it’s around that point that I started to find the game unbearably tedious.
[As promised, I did murder something small and fluffy. Fear of prosecution prevents me from posting pictures of the actual victim, but this is a representative shot (contents may offend sensitive viewers). May its soul rest in peace.]
Just in case it wasn't clear from the game, we've prepared this whole dungeon to really hammer the point in.
The thing that made the other dungeon crawlers easier to bear was that the story was usually just a framing device for your dungeon adventures. In Innocent Sin the makers have an actual story they want to tell, they just don’t want to tell it too quickly, so they use the dungeons as a stumbling block to slow things down. “Newsflash, rumors come true! Now why don’t you go into this 3-hour dungeon and mull that over while we think up the next development?” It works about as well as you might expect.
And when I think about it, they don’t really have that much story to tell, so they just stretch each development out until you’re sick of it, then throw something else into the mix.
“Rumors come true, rumors come true!” Example 1, example 2, examples 3-500, okay okay, I get it!
“Dreams are meant to be achieved, not given. Dreams are meant to be achieved, not given.” Example 1, example 2, examples 3-infinity. No, no, you don’t have to go that far, I get it already.
“There’s an arsonist on the loose! There’s an arsonist on the loose!” Example, example 2… OKAY I GET IT!
How wonderfully convenient.
“Jun is our friend! Jun is our friend! Jun is our friend! Jun is our friend! Jun is our friend!” AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGGGGHH, I get it I get it, really I do! Just… enough!
At least it turns out that I was wrong and the story was about all their pasts, not just Tatsuya and Maya’s. Only it’s kinda stupid how much they go on about Jun. I mean, just how good a friend was he if they all forgot about him so easily? Pure total memory wipeout on command. “Amnesia due to trauma, and the bad guy made us forget” is Maya, Eikichi and Lisa’s flimsy-ass excuse (on the same level as “GFs made us forget” tbh), but what about Tatsuya? He didn’t take part in the “sin” of locking Maya in the shrine that burned down, he doesn’t show any sign of trauma and an early flashback shows that he does remember Jun. In fact, I’m entertaining a pet theory that says he knew everything that was going on from that start and kept quiet just to be a dick. Now that’s a sin if there ever was one.
Anyway, the game is only on hold, not dropped. I’m going to play a couple of other things, do some non-game activities and come back in a couple of weeks to finish this off. I thought of quitting entirely, but apart from Strange Journey, I’ve finished every SMT/spin-off game I’ve played so far, and even in SJ I made it to the last boss, so my gamer’s pride is kinda on the line here. I’ll finish this…someday.
02.02.12 / Atlus, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: innocent sin, persona 2
I thought I’d be done by now, but this game is longer than I’d thought. I checked the time and I’m 19 hours in, but it feels like 190.
Part of it is my fault for just not having the time, and for spending what little time I got on the theater missions.
This shit. Cut it out.
Some of it is also just Innocent Sin taking for-f’ing-ever to get to the point. And they’ve been doing that thing I hate: “Is she…no, don’t tell me…” “It must be… no, it couldn’t be… could it?” WTF JUST SPIT IT OUT ALREADY, DAMMIT! I hate cryptic hints. If IS were a book or a movie I would have skipped to the end by now.
Not that I’m not enjoying myself or anything, now that the story has finally gotten going. Just finished the Aerospace Museum (with Pegasus Strike taking 415HP per round off the boss’s life, that didn’t take long), about to head off to the Alaya Shrine, where Lisa promises to tell me “everything”. If it turns out to be some FF8-style bullshit about how they all played together as kids but then they all got *gasp* amnesia, I swear I’ll murder something small and fluffy.
In any case, I think the game wasted far too much time in the beginning with Eikichi and Ginko’s stories. As far as I can tell, the bulk of the story revolves around Tatsuya and Maya and whatever relationship they had or didn’t have in the past. The other party members are just bit players, so it’s annoying that I had to spend the first 15 or so hours on them.
SPOILERS
Turns out "dependant" is the bastardized American spelling of "dependent." What are journalism schools teaching their students these days?
Ginko’s was especially bad because she’s such an idiot. “I don’t want to be an idol, I don’t want to be an idol” but she ended up debuting anyway. And she was supposed to root out information about the Masked Circle in the process, but instead she nearly got taken in by them. I thought it would turn out that she was just pretending to be going along with the whole thing, but she acted genuinely shocked when the producer turned out to be bad. Just how stupid can one be?
Then with her friends she was all like “They’re not really my friends, they’re just using me” but then when the dumb cows get turned into shadowmen, she goes “Oh no, if only I’d believed in them!” If only you’d believed in them, then what? Newsflash, they may be your friends, but they were just using you. Plus! On top of all her other sins, she also helped the bad guys get one step closer to their evil goal by singing their “foreign song.” Girl, iz you crazy? Guess what they say about dumb blondes was true all along.
SPOILERS OVER
Anyway, so far so good. I think I finally “paid my dues” by slogging through the dross, so soon I should be rewarded with that “wonderful story” that everyone keeps going on about. To be honest I care a lot when stories turn out to be bad but otherwise *shrug*. Just don’t piss me off in the end, that’s all I ask.
28.01.12 / Atlus, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (15)
Tags: innocent sin, persona 2
Back to my roots~ Back to my roo-woo-woo-woo-woots~ It’s time to go back to… wait, where was I going again?
I totally forgot what I was supposed to do after beating the headmaster, and I didn’t want to check a FAQ. So I just spent several hours playing poker in the casino and doing a sidequest in the movie theater.
The sidequest was a little on the long drawn-out side, but the Demon Headmaster-like scenario was several shades more interesting than what’s currently going on in the game. I’m getting dizzy trying to keep up with all the rumors in the main story, plus all that whining about which school badmouthed which is childish and trivial beyond words. I’ll go back and play “part two” of the sidequest once I clear the dungeon I’m currently in.
The quest confirmed one thing for me though: Innocent Sin is the easiest jRPG ever made. Not the easiest Persona, not the easiest Atlus game. It’s the easiest RPG on Planet Earth. Ar Tonelico and Rhapsody DS are like The 7th Saga compared to this game. I’d challenge you to find an easier game, but then the universe would explode and I’d never be able to get this done.
In what other RPG can you go into a dungeon at level 6 armed only with your starting armor and personae, with 6 medicines and 1 antidote to your name, and curb-stomp enemies 3 or 4 times your level wit da greatest of ease? On the Hard setting, no less? Sure I was using the shockingly overpowered fusion spells, but in a normal RPG I wouldn’t even survive long enough to get one of those off. In IS, when an enemy manages to hit me for 10 damage I’m like “Whoa, he’s a strong one,” it’s that bad.
I’m kinda happy about this though, since it means I won’t have to grind. I just have to look into enemy repelling items so I can focus on where the story is going/not going. See you all in a couple of days.
25.01.12 / Japanese, Nintendo DS, RPG, Strategy RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (6)
Tags: Hero's Saga Laevatein Tactics, wiZman's world
They were blocking my path to gaming pleasure. For the past few days I’ve been in a state of not wanting to play these games and at the same time not wanting to start anything else until they were done. Obviously something had to give.
Hero’s Saga: Made it to the last boss and fought him once. He’s a cheating bastard, but I outwaited him and he came down to fight me around turn 10. I beat him fair and square, and what did he do? He came back to life with his skills returned and his Valhalla Gauge refilled. Cheater! Cheater! I’d already lost a number of troops to his cheating ways, so I decided to grind a little, strategize a little better, and take him on again. That’s what I thought four days ago, and I haven’t been able to muster up the interest since. The last boss was kind enough to blab the rest of the story before recovering, and I don’t really care what happens to everyone at the end, so… *toss*
WiZman’s World: I don’t really want to drop this. I like it a lot. Sadly it’s time to admit to myself that I don’t have the energy to finish it. I’m about halfway through the last dungeon, and it’s one of those warp dungeons. The map is all but useless and it pains me to realize that I’m putting in all this trouble to go face the final boss just to get killed. Because I just know I’m going to be killed the first time no matter how much preparation I do. Get killed, waste several more hours re-preparing, possibly get killed again, finally kill the boss… I’m tired. I want to finish it, but not at the expense of that much time and effort.
I could put them merely on “hiatus” but then they’d still be there as a mental stumbling block, begging me to come back. No, we can’t just be friends. A clean break is best for us all. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a date with Persona 2.
18.01.12 / Nintendo DS, Strategy RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (2)
Tags: Hero's Saga Laevatein Tactics
I’m at it again. SRPG No. 2893. I don’t know what it is about me and SRPGs, but no matter how badly they treat me I keep coming back for more.
I’m supposed to be finishing up WiZman’s World right about now so I can put 2011′s games behind me. Unfortunately I came down with a case of Last Dungeon Syndrome and can’t bring myself to continue, which is where this new game comes in.
Hero’s Saga is as generic as generic SRPGS come. The main character is a prince of a small country threatened by an empire, he wields a sword, there are mysterious legendary weapons, the Empire has the super-powerful (in name only) generals, you recruit NPCs as you go, storyline characters join you from time to time, etc etc.
The story: some undead attack the hero’s friend. Some mysterious girl gives him a sword that can beat them. The evil Empire wants the sword. The hero decides that not only is he not going to hand it over, but he’s also going slash and burn his way to the Empire’s capital and give them what’s for. Bloodthirsty little bugger. And that’s how far I’ve gotten.
The only thing slightly unusual about the story is that it seems to be based on real-life Spain (Valencia) and France (Galia). This leads to the heroes and villains throwing gratuitous French and Spanish around like a lost episode of ‘Allo ‘Allo: hermano, señor, merde (my understanding is that ‘merde’ is considered extremely rude in French, but luckily no one at the ESRB can speak French), diable, that sort of thing. Right now it’s the Valencia vs. Galia, but the threat of the undead hasn’t been addressed yet, so I’m sure they’ll band together to take down the real bad guys before too long.
Gameplay-wise, while you can see your characters as individuals on the map, once you get into battle every “hero” has troops under them that help with attacking and defending. Archaic Sealed Heat tried to implement a similar thing, but the game itself was such a cluster**** that I never got deep into the system.
There’s the normal Attack and Defend, then there’s Charge, a high-powered low accuracy volley, and Phalanx, which is a low-powered attack that never misses and raises accuracy. Some troops may also have the Defend and Evade command, depending on their classes. I’m still exploring the advantages and disadvantages of each class. Magic-users are the strongest so far, but very frail. Melee units are meh. Archers are the worst ever. This is the first tactics game I’ve ever played where the archer class was the most useless, so that’s new. Changing class is as simple as changing weapons, so I’ll keep experimenting for a while.
Hero’s Saga also has bases scattered over the map that you can take control of. It’s a bit like in Advance Wars, but without that charming little ‘boing-boing’ thing they do. Standing on top of one of these refills your life and adds troops if you’re missing any. Characters in range also gain a boost to their Morale, which improves their accuracy.
As of 9:38h in, there are four main things that are bothering me about this game.
1. The enemies are way too passive. Most of them won’t move unless you come into range, and sometimes not even then.
2. 99% of all stages have the same “Eradicate enemy or take over castle” goal as their victory condition. Taking over the castle is almost impossible without first eradicating the enemy anyway.
3. You can only take 6 allies max into battle. I’ve got so many good characters and interesting weapons I want to try out but the game won’t give me the chance.
4. Valhalla Gauge attacks (this game’s equivalent of limit breaks) are too broken. One hit will wipe out most parties or leave them barely alive. It’s painful when they do it to you and dull when you do it to them.
On the plus side:
1. All NPCs have their own little bios, a nice touch.
2. Battles don’t take too long. Maps aren’t that big and don’t take that long to cross
3. Characters have skills and innate talents that range from moderately useful to WTF BROKEN. Makes a lot of difference when putting together a party.
4. Not too much blathering about morality. As far as I can tell both sides are wrong and Might makes Right. I hope it stays that way.
5. I appreciate attempts to shake up the same old SRPG formula. Something tells me I’m going to tire of watching the animations soon, but for now I’m enjoying.
I’m sure a couple more plusses and minuses will pop up before it’s over. An above average game so far.
14.01.12 / Nintendo DS, Simulation game, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (6)
Tags: review, virtual villagers
Your villagers look nothing like these
Since Konami won’t release another Lost in Blue game, I’ve been forced to look for acceptable substitutes. Candidate number one: Virtual Villagers: A New Home for the Nintendo DS.
A group of villagers from an island destroyed by a volcano settle on a new island. It’s up to you to make sure they can survive.
Controls are usually done via the touchscreen+stylus. Drag and drop villagers next to an item and they’ll carry out a related item. E.g. drop them next to the ocean and they’ll start fishing. Drop them next to a hut that needs repair and they’ll start fixing it. And drop a male and female on top of each other (under the right conditions) and they’ll head off to a hut to make babies.
It’s a simple game, with two major flaws that made me quit after two days. The first one is its very simplicity. There simply aren’t that many actions your characters can take. Fish, farm, build, research, breed, worship, take care of kids, that’s pretty much it. While they require “food”, they don’t actually eat or sleep.
That lying cover on the right shows a guy offering a girl a fish. That doesn’t happen. It shows a boy lighting a fire. That hasn’t happened in my game so far. Nobody has picked up a monkey either. Nobody’s blonde or red-haired or tanned either. About the only accurate thing in that picture is the woman carrying a basket of berries. That’s what my villagers have subsisted on for 53 years: berries and fish. Nutrition? Wat dat?
Almost all the things you’d need to worry about on a desert island are ignored in this game.
A Safe source of water? Your villagers don’t drink.
A Balanced diet? Safe sources of food? Like I said, berries and fish and later bananas. Presumably eaten raw.
Shelter? They build huts, but they don’t live in them, even in bad weather. Sunstroke? Wat dat?
Fire? Light? They hang around outside even through the middle of the night. Presumably they can see in the dark.
Dangerous animals? None.
Sanitation? Nobody poops or pees. Or showers, for that matter.
Inbreeding? You start out with 6 villagers. It’s a necessary evil. They’re prudish enough not to mate before 18, but fathers, mothers, brothers, uncles, everything that moves is fair game.
Seriously, my villagers have got things good. Which is good for them and bad for me, because they’re not very exciting to manage.
The second, and main flaw of the game is the time lapse system coupled with the sheer stupidity of the AI. Building huts, making babies, researching technology all takes so long that it’s pointless to just sit there and watch them. Since time passes even when the game is turned off, in an ideal world you could set everyone a task, leave for a bit and come back to find them completed. That’s in the ideal world. On Planet Earth, when you turn Virtual Villagers on the next morning, you’re far more likely discover half your villagers dead and the other half deadly sick. Anyone who isn’t sick will either be goofing off or doing a task you never asked them to do anyway. Even if you train a couple of healers, they’ll just stand by and let the others die. Builders will hang around while the huts fall into disrepair. Men and women will laze about when they should be breeding. So that’s where all the challenge went: keeping your moronic populace from dying of idiotus nobrainus syndrome.
The killing blow for me was the arbitrary set of “puzzles” you had to solve to progress. If “progress” is indeed the word. For one of them, I needed an expert builder to knock down a door so I could explore the rest of the island. Btw, the game never tells you this. You have to drag characters of various occupations all over the island until somebody triggers something somehow. Or, more sensibly, read a FAQ. So I set my adept builder to work on a hut, turned the game off, and then I came back he’d reached expert builder and died almost immediately after just to spite me.
Anyway, I stuck it out for a little longer. Got that door open eventually, explored a bit, got 16 villagers now, but all the fun is gone. In fact it was never there to begin with, and I was just deceiving myself. I have a lot of other games to play this year, and there are some great games coming out on PSP in the next few weeks (Suikoden Hyakunen, Atelier Elkrone(!!), Tales of the Heroes, Shining Blade) so I can’t afford to waste time here. Good luck on the island, folks!
13.01.12 / Japanese, Konami, Nintendo DS, Romance game, Video game, Visual novel / Author: Kina / Comments: (20)
Tags: anime, Boku ga Romeo de Romeo ga Boku de, Hayate no Gotoku
Yes, even monkeys fall from trees. And even normally careful gamers forget to keep backup saves and accidentally overwrite precious New Game+ data with an actual new game save.
In most games this wouldn’t be a problem because each route would be (mostly) separate. But in Hayate no Gotoku, the only way to unlock Maria as a romantic partner is to clear all the other girls. No cleared save data = No Maria. No Maria = No point in continuing. And I just had Isumi to go before getting her, what a pity.
On to the next game!
10.01.12 / Japanese, Konami, Nintendo DS, Simulation game, Video game, Visual novel / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: anime, Gokujou!! Mecha Mote Iinchou: Mecha Mote Days, review
Konami is the company responsible for some of my favorite games on the DS: Tokimemo GS 1-3, Lost in Blue 1-3 (moaaarr), and more. Even monkeys fall from trees, as the Japanese saying goes. And even good companies make bad games every once in a while. It’s when it’s every time that it becomes a problem (*cough* Nippon Ichi *cough*).
That being the case, I see no need to go on at length about Gokujou! Mecha Iinchou, the dress up game based on the popular shoujo manga/anime of the same name. It’s aimed at pre- and early teen girls, and I’m old enough to have kids that fit that description, so I’m not even the target demographic in the first place.
Plus the general rule of anime-based games is that they’re not for people who aren’t fans of the original. I couldn’t be arsed to check out the show, and even if I had I’m not sure I would have enjoyed it. It’s only natural that I couldn’t follow along, then.
The game: Your character is the class rep, and at the end of the year there’s a beauty contest of sorts for class reps. Your job is to shape her up over the course of the year so she can win that competition. I’ve been playing this on and off since around August, waiting for the big payoff, but when I think of all the other games I could be playing instead, it’s hard to justify spending time on this silliness. *toss*
It could have been good, if the game had given you a certain amount of freedom to shape your character as you saw fit. Since what we got in the end is a kiddy, pedestrian affair where you spend 90% of your time playing mini-games and listening to heavy-handed beauty lectures from your so-called rival while trying to fulfill easy monthly objectives, it’s barely even worth writing about.
A typical month goes like this: you have a trip to the beach planned. You go to school in the mornings (nothing much happens there). You do a few mini-games to earn cash, buy some beach-appropriate clothes, everyone gushes over how lovely you look, the end. Repeat with a different challenge the next month. If the graphics were any good, maaaaybe dressing up the main character would have been fun, but since everything is jagged,small and garishly colored, and the outfit designs are uniformly hideous… *toss*.
The description of the anime also says something about a “bad boy trio” your character has to deal with, but either they don’t exist in the game or they were all given lobotomies, because everyone fawns slavishly over you no matter what you do or wear. Your rival wants to, nay, insists on helping you achieve your goals every month, so you don’t even have the joy of sticking it to the usual snooty rival.
Summary: Good premise poorly executed. Story only fans care about. Dull gameplay. No autonomy. Servile characters. Awful graphics.
Conclusion: Bad game. Avoid like cancer. If you want to play a dress-up game on the DS, try something like the Oshare Princess games instead.
08.01.12 / Japanese, Konami, Nintendo DS, Romance game, Video game, Visual novel / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: anime, Boku ga Romeo de Romeo ga Boku de, Hayate no Gotoku, review
It’s been a while since my DS saw any action. And I’m a little disgusted with my PSP after that Blade Dancer experience, so for a change of mood I decided to play something lighter and funnier.
Hayate no Gotoku – Romeo ga Boku de, Boku ga Romeo is the first of three handheld games based on a shonen manga about a debt-ridden butler named Ayasaki Hayate. If you haven’t read it, I’m in two minds as to whether to recommend it or not. On one hand it’s a very funny, charming series with a great cast of characters, but on the other hand the story hasn’t gone anywhere in ages and even I have stopped reading it, so… Eh. The game is for fans only, so if you don’t know the series you can skip the rest of this post.
Since this game came out in 2007 before anything really earth-shattering happened in the manga (Greece arc, A-tan), it still has that silly, gag-filled atmosphere that drew me in in the first place. As such Romeo ga Boku is the kind of story that would work well as a filler episode in the anime. Hakuo Academy is going to stage a play, and one way or another Hayate is going to be cast as one of the leads together with one of his many, many love interests. You have your choice of Nagi, Hinagiku, Ayumu, Sakuya, Isumi, Maria and a “secret character” (I’ll let you find out who that is).
The game is a visual novel 95% of the time, with the occasional save break that allows you to play mini-games to earn Pathos points. Pathos points can be used to unlock special outfits for the girls and also to unlock alternative answer choices during the main game. Apart from that you pick your girl, watch the scenes play out, pick an answer when given the option, hope you get a bad ending because those are hilarious and generally just make your way to the end of the game. Along the way you will also unlock voice clips and CGs that unfortunately I can’t show you because unlike the PSP, the DS does not have a screenshot plugin (I stole these ones from the internet).
Now then, although I normally dislike visual novels, the fact that the game features characters I already know and like, and the fact that each route is short and frequently funny has lead to me pouring more effort into this than I normally do with this kind of game. Right now I’ve gotten Nagi, Hinagiku and Ayumu’s endings. I just started Sakuya’s route and I’m kinda regretting it because I don’t like. But after her I’ll get Isumi, then finally Maria.
Hinagiku: Her play is “Snow White” and nothing much happens on her route until the end, where you have to battle your way up an RPG-style tower to rescue a puppy. She spends the whole play agonizing over what will happen during the kissing scene at the end, but then she panics so much that she sits up before Hayate can kiss her and the play ends there. Bummer. Hinagiku is as twitchy as ever, so her route has quite a few bad endings. That’s all part of the fun, of course.
Ayumu: She’s boring, so her route is boring too. At least she only has one Bad End. Her play is “Romeo and Juliet.” The “climax” of her story occurs when her father spots her practicing in the park at night with Hayate and sets his zombie coworkers on them. You might be wondering how Ayumu got to star in a Hakuo Academy play when she doesn’t even attend that school… well, don’t sweat the small stuff.
Yes, elephantiasis is a horrible disease.
Nagi: The most romantic of the three routes so far, because a magical statue actively tries to bring them together. Nagi’s play is “Cinderella.” Or more like Cinderella mixed with Dance Dance Revolution mixed with Fist of the North Star. Come on, it’s Nagi. The crisis on her route involves Nagi being kidnapped and held for ransom by the same guys that tried to hijack Sakuya’s ship way back when.
It’s been a while since I saw Nagi’s old mansion and bedroom, so this route was a nice trip down memory lane. Speaking of Nagi and her mansion, the realization Hayate would be a dick to end up with anyone else but the girl who loved him enough to throw away her zillion-dollar fortune is part of the reason why I stopped reading the manga. Foregone conclusions are no fun at all.
So that’s how far I’ve gotten. Graphically and musically this game isn’t much to write home about, but it’s cute and it’s funny and it helps pass the time, so that’s good enough for me. I am getting a leeetle bit tired though, especially of the “Tiger’s Den” scenes where Hayate has to try desperately to please these overly-sensitive girls. I might take a little break before continuing with the rest of the characters.
05.01.12 / Nippon Ichi Software, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (6)
Tags: blade dancer lineage of light, review
Damn.
They got me. They really got me.
Worst… Ending… EVER.
Ending spoilers first: This game ends with you losing to the final boss. That’s it. So long, see ya, have fun wherever! The credits roll, the game is over. If you’ve ever run a marathon just to have someone kick you in the teeth and piss in your face when you reached the finish line, then you know what it’s like to finish Blade Dancer.
First Dragoneer’s Aria, now this? To steal a line from pro wrestling, if you put an S in front of Hitmaker, you’ll know exactly what I think of the company that made this game. Don’t play it. Not even for free. It’s not worth your time.
And the sad thing is, right until that final battle against the Dark Lord, I was all set to write, well, not a glowing review, but at least a few cautiously positive lines about how Blade Dancer is not as bad as people make it out to be. The game isn’t, anyway. But that ending? Who can I sue for this?
The story goes like this: There’s this Dark Lord who was sealed away 1000 years ago. Lance is the reincarnation of the only guy who could fight against that Dark Lord. Along the way, Lance picks up a girl named Tess who used to be the Dark Lord’s slave and who, for various reasons, cannot disobey his commands. So we go up against him at the end, she leaves the party, and then we layeth the smacketh down on his ass. At the end of the battle he uses his boss hax powers to leave us all with 1HP, then flounces off laughing with Tess in tow. Okay then, now we’ll just go through the final dungeon and rescue Tess and then– Huh? Wait. Why are the credits rolling? No. You can’t mean… This can’t be… NOOOOOOO!
Gwahaha. The end.
Nippon Ichi Software. Hitmaker. Would it have killed you to have added just ONE more dungeon to the game? Or heck, scrap that. Just add one more scene where Tess shakes off his mind control, then we all beat him down, then roll the credits. An extra 15 to 20 minutes, that’s all. Is that so hard? Is that really so much to ask for in exchange for 25 hours and 58 minutes of my life?
That was your one chance to make things right, because it’s not like the game is all that good anyway. Most people probably don’t even get that far, because the game is chockful of flaws from start to finish. The biggest one is having to walk everywhere because warp points are few and far between. Another one is the long loading times. A third one is the high random failure rate of crafting. Then there’s the low-quality graphics and the cartoony character designs. Plus the story is as shallow as a plate of air. And we haven’t even gotten into the highly breakable weapons or the great number of non-stackable items when space in your pack is severely limited.
None of that stuff was enough to deter me. In fact I was almost enjoying myself. I liked the characters. Gozen and Felis were likeable filler, and Lance’s irreverent attitude to his mighty destiny was a nice change from the usual. “I’m the Blade Dancer? Ya don’t say. So when’s the next fight?” I liked that the NPCs changed their lines as the game went along. I didn’t mind the breakable weapons at all, since it just meant you had to do extra preparation before setting out, and I got the chance to refashion nearly worn-out weapons as newer, stronger ones. All the makers had to do was end the game well and I would have been satisfied.
What hurts all the more is that this isn’t even sequel material. There’s nothing to make a sequel about. You can compare this to Trails in the Sky, which also ended on a cliffhanger. There they evidently took the decision to milk the game early on, so they introduced mysteries right from the start and left some plotlines unresolved at the end. To be honest I still don’t think they have enough material for a sequel, but at least it didn’t come out of nowhere. Blade Dancer has nothing left to achieve (that the player cares to do anyway).
Plus let’s not forget, necessary or not, a sequel to Trails in the Sky did come out. Sure it’s not localized yet, but if you start learning Japanese this very second, you’ll be good enough to import and play it long before it ever comes out in the West. I do hope no one’s holding their breath. Meanwhile, in the almost 6 years since Blade Dancer came out, Nippon Ichi hasn’t even released a post-game drama CD or comic to tell us how it ended. And there’s a “Comics” section on the official site, so it’s not like they didn’t have the chance. Not even a few lines on the game website saying “And this is what happened after that.”
You know what, I’m not going to waste my energy talking about this any more. It’s too early in the year to get riled up like this. Those 25 hours aren’t going to come back just because I whine about them. And Criminal Girls was admittedly excellent, so maybe NIS learned a lesson or two from this fiasco. *sigh* Yeah, all right. Moving on.