27.04.12 / Japanese, Sony PSP, Strategy RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: ragnarok hikari to yami no koujo, review
I haven’t gotten that far into this, but I’ll be busy for the next couple of days so I thought I’d dash something off quickly while I still had the time.
Ragnarok ~Hikari to Yami no Koujo~ is a regular strategy RPG, published by GungHo Online and developed by Chime and Apollosoft, the same guys who brought us Blue Roses. It’s supposed to be related in some way to the Ragnarok Online MMORPG, but since I’ve never played that I have no idea what the similarities are, if any.
The story is the same as for 95% of SRPGs: there’s a war going on between two countries/factions. You’re on one of the sides and you fight till you beat the game. The slight twist this time round is that player character isn’t a prince/princess/army general but is instead a random mercenary you create at the start. As such you have no direct relation to the war going on (you can even choose to side with neither country and keep being a mercenary instead) except as an observer. In fact, apart from one or two story characters on each route, everyone else in the your party is a generic created by you.
So far that hasn’t affected my enjoyment of the game. I’m used to working with whatever fighters a game throws at me, but being able to pour my love and energy out onto my own creations without worrying about them being overshadowed by the story characters is nice in its own way. Right now my MC is a Sniper, I’ve got a second Sniper (as usual archers are slightly broken), two High Priests, an Assassin Cross (basically a thief), a Paladin, a Champion (monk) and a White Smith (axe guy). I wish I could try a couple of the other classes like Clown and Dancer, but you can only field so many characters per battle.
As I said, the gameplay is your standard SRPG fare, speed-based instead of turn-based. Speed seems to be very important, so I’ve been pouring my extra stat points (given at level up) into raising my party’s speed, and I think it’s paying off. You have your regular attacks, skills, overdrive skills and even combos known as Burst Strikes. Battles can be a little slow because the enemies are placed all over the map and generally won’t move until you come near. It makes things easy because you can hang back and buff and heal all you like, but since it’s easy there’s no tension and no real need for thought or strategy. Well, so far, anyway.
After 11 hours, I’m having a good time, but it’s too soon to make up my mind about the game. The only complaints I have right now are
1. The character portraits and background shots are BEAUTIFUL, but the 3D characters look astonishingly bad, especially close up. I’ve gotten used to it, but the massive difference in quality is pretty shocking.
2. Nothing interesting has happened in the story even after 11 hours. I joined the side of Branchard, Aura attacked us, we attacked them back, they counterattacked and took our castle, and that’s where we are. The pace needs to pick up, and soon.
3. Since my character is a complete stranger to both sides, I have no loyalty to any of them, so I feel absolutely nothing no matter how the story goes.
4. Preachy game is preachy! War is terrible! War is terrible! War is terrible! War is terrible! I’m treated to a 5-10 minute lecture on the horrors of war and the meaning of courage before every single battle. Every. Single. Battle. And what hurts most is that the two countries aren’t fighting over anything sensible but over who gets the credit for sealing away the gods and demons a thousand years ago. Honestly, who cares?
5. There are signs that this is shaping up to be yet another one of those stories where some sealed evil needs war and strife on the continent in order to be unsealed. I know I’ve played at least 5 other RPGs like that, though FE:Path of Radiance, FE:Radiant Dawn and Hexyz Force are the ones that come most immediately to mind.
6. The game doesn’t like my screenshot plugin and usually freezes when I try to use it.
7. The biggest one: leveling up your party evenly is hard! The only way to get a good amount of EXP is to kill an enemy. Attacking and healing give you 1-10 EXP at most when you need hundreds per level. This makes Kill Feeding essential, but it’s hard to do it right when 1. The game works on a speed system, so the weaker character you want to feed the kill to might not get a turn when you want them to and 2. You’re not given an estimate of what damage an attack will do, so you might either end up killing the enemy by mistake, or NOT killing them because the character was too weak.
Still I’m managing somehow. My party is between levels 8-10 and I could progress the story faster if I wasn’t so busy fighting free battles. I’ve got high tolerance for crap when it comes to SPRGs, so they just have to avoid doing anything stupid(er than what they’re already doing) and we’ll be fine.
23.04.12 / Nintendo DS, RPG, Square-Enix, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (4)
Tags: dragon quest 6, review
I’ve had enough. I made it to the 35-hour mark, right outside the final boss’s castle, and couldn’t bring myself to move another step. Plus when I think about it, I really don’t have anything personal against Mortamor. I’ve killed his sub-bosses and I’ve opened the way to his lair, so someone else can have the honor of finishing him off. I’m done.
I wasn’t even going to write about it, but… after 35 hours of (dis)service I reckon it deserves a few lines. Here goes:
Things I liked.
1. It can’t have been that terrible if I managed to stick it out for 35 hours… Actually, no, it was that bad. But if I keep telling myself that, maybe one day I’ll believe it 
.
2. The first 8 hours or so when I was hunting down Murdaw were fun.
3. Lots of treasure to find and chests to open. If there’s one thing Dragon Quest always does right, it’s being generous with the treasure. I just love the rich red-and-gold design of the chests.
4. I’ve travelled in a number of unusual game vehicles, but a flying bed and a private island? That’s new.
5. The ability to do things out of sequence after a certain point and go exploring all over the world is good… in theory.
Why I quit.
1. The abysmally high encounter rate.
2. The abysmally high encounter rate.
3-100. The abysmally high encounter rate.
101. The abysmally high encounter rate. I couldn’t enjoy exploring or progressing the story when I had to fight a random battle every 7 or 8 steps. Only Arms’ Heart and P2:Innocent Sin have frustrated me more when it came to random battles.
102. Those darned random battles aren’t even interesting. With everyone except the hero on Auto, they rarely take more than 2 turns, but it’s two turns of everyone using the same attacks on the same enemies.
103. I like the “traditional” order of plot progression in RPGs. You start out just wandering around, do a few quests, kill a few bosses and eventually everything becomes clear. The final boss reveals himself/herself, you go after him/her, struggle a bit and finally succeed, the end. In DQ6, all that played out in the first 8-10 hours, so everything that happened after that felt like one long drawn-out post-game dungeon. From the start of the game, everyone was going Murdaw this, Murdaw that. Let’s beat Murdaw, if you beat Murdaw, everything will be fine. So I was in Murdaw Mode for the first third of the game, I finally beat him and everyone’s happy. In my heart the game ended there.
104. Apart from the Murdaw bit, the rest of the story isn’t very interesting. Murdaw terrorized the entire world (or so they say, but he wasn’t that bad), but the rest of the Dread Fiends stick to petty crime like luring lazy villagers to their doom, squatting in celestial palaces and building undersea dungeons without the proper zoning permits. And the final boss hides in his castle and zaps people every once in a while. Most people in the world don’t even know any of the other fiends exist, that’s how non-threatening they are. I can’t get psyched up to beat bosses like that.
I'm still waiting...
105. I have to gather the legendary items and go to Zenithia again?! Give me a break!
106. No sense of clear direction. Once I beat Murdaw, the world opened up to me, but I had no idea what I was supposed to do or where I was supposed to go next. The original DQ6 came out in the golden age of strategy guides, and it really shows.
107. Weak cast this time round. Apart from Carver, they’re all generic nice folk with largely interchangeable lines in party chat. There were no particularly memorable NPCs either.
108. The Slippin’ Slime mini-game is no fun at all, especially compared to DQ5‘s T’n'T. It’s a relatively minor point, but I had a great time with T’n'T last time, and I was hoping for a similarly enjoyable experience.
Welp, that’s it for Dragon Quest 6. Since all DQs are essentially the same game, I’ll wait… hmm, another year or so and then play DQ7. Another year after that, I might tackle DQ8. Once that’s done, I don’t like the direction the new games (9 and 10) are taking, so that’ll be the end of the series for me.
More immediately, I felt like playing an SRPG, so I started one yesterday. It’s called Ragnarok ~Hikari no Yami no Koujo~ and I’d heard it was bad. Having played a little bit… yeah, it’s kinda bad. But not quite bad enough to quit over, so I’ll put in a few more hours and see how it turns out.
21.04.12 / Nintendo DS, RPG, Square-Enix, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (2)
Tags: dragon quest 6
The stupidly high encounter rate is doing a serious number on my sanity.
Not just that, but I’ve been spoiled rotten by excessively linear games likes Hexyz Force and Phantasy Star Portable so I can’t get used to roaming around for hours and talking to every single NPC to get a clue where to go next.
Then when I do find out where I’m supposed to go, I have to find more random battles to get there, then fight even more to get through it. I don’t think I can take much more of this.
I’m 26 hours in, average level 31, just raised Sorceria. The encounter rate is a lost cause, but if the story doesn’t pick up (i.e. start bloody existing) the time I hit hour 30, I’m quitting.
15.04.12 / Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (10)
Tags: dragon quest 6, grand knights history, saiyuki journey west
The advantage of drawing up gaming resolutions is that I never have to wonder what to play next. I’m going at a good pace, playing at least one of them every month. Innocent Sin, Atelier Elie and Phantasy Star Portable are done and I’m currently working on Dragon Quest 6. If you play one Dragon Quest you’ve played them all, so I don’t feel like talking about it. The characters are spectacularly colorless this time and I’m having difficulty caring about the rest of the game after beating Murdaw twice, but I’m only 14 hours in, so there’s still time for it to pick up.
My original plan after finishing HTND4 and PSP was to play Grand Knights History and Saiyuki Journey West, though.
Grand Knights History: I like Vanillaware’s rich art-style, but Odin’s Sphere and Muramasa were both too hard for me. I was hyped to hear they were making a game I could actually play, and in fact I’ve had the iso of GKH loaded up and ready to play since it came out last year
Then I heard it was coming out in English and thought, “Hmm, maybe I should just buy it.” Only now no one knows if or when it will ever come out because Vanillaware is working on another project and doesn’t have time to fix bugs or something messed up like that. The longer they make me wait, the more time I have to think, and the less certain I get that I’ll actually like it. I’ll wait till May to see if there’s any news on that front, then I’m just going to play it. [Savvy readers might notice a step missing between playing the English version and pirating the Japanese one, but surely they have better things to worry about]
Saiyuki Journey West: Unfortunately the iso I got doesn’t work. Normally I’d just go hunting for another one, but from the videos I’ve seen and reviews I’ve read, I’m reasonably certain I’ll like it. An above-average SPRG, doesn’t really stand out from the crowd but doesn’t have any major flaws either. It’s still available for a reasonable price too, so I’m tossing it on my To Buy list for 2012. Incidentally, that list looks something like this right now:
Phantasy Star Portable 2 (Sega)
Monster Hunter Freedom (Namco-Bandai)
Saiyuki Journey West (Koei)
Grand Knights History (Marvelous)
Frontier Gate (Konami)
Genso Suikoden: Tsumugareshi Hyakunen no Toki (Konami)
Atelier Elkrone (Gust & Idea Factory)
Ni no Kuni DS (Level5)
Shining Blade (Sega)
Kanuchi: Futatsu no Tsubasa (Idea Factory)
Seinarukana (CyberFront)
Conception – Please Bear my Child! (Spike)
Tales of the Heroes: Twin Braves (Namco-Bandai)
Eien no Aselia (CyberFront)
Moonlight Basket (Inutoneko)
Entaku no Seito for PC (Experience Inc.)
Little Witch Parfait (CyberFront)
And this is just for the consoles/handhelds I already own. I’ve been avoiding gaming news lately because they keep coming out with all these attractive-sounding titles.
The titles in bold are those I will almost certainly get sometime this year. Those in italics are games I’m on the fence about. I want to play them, but not that badly. If there’s a good deal going on and I’ve already bought everything else, I’ll take a second look.This whole “buying” thing really makes one think. Having the money is the easy part. Spending it on games when there are more practical uses is not so easy. Still, this is the path I’ve chosen for myself. I’m not complaining.
Now let’s see if I can finish DQ6 sometime this week.