PS Portable & Harutoki 4

This is going to take much longer than I thought, because I’ve been super-busy this week and will be even busier next week. Back when I was in college I used to look down on people who complained about being “busy.” I had SO much time on my hands back then, even after climbing five mountains on my way to school, 7 days a week, uphill both ways in 100 feet of snow, you young people have it easy, blah blah blah. If you’re still in school, enjoy it while it lasts!

Who? In fact, who are you guys?

Phantasy Star Portable: I’ve almost forgotten what the story is, I’m so busy doing the free missions. We’re still chasing the same terrorist we’ve been dealing with since chapter 1. This is shaping up to be the first RPG I’ve ever played where the initial bad guy turned out to be the ultimate baddie after all.

The mindless slashing is just the balm I need after a hard day at work, too. I’m just worried that I’ll spend so much time on this that I’ll burn out and be unable to play an ARPGs for the rest of the year. I should get back to the story missions.

Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 4: Haven’t progressed much from where I left off. Our heroine and her bishie troops are going around defeating the four “gods.” I beat Suzaku and just beat Byakko, so I know what the next couple of hours are going to look like.

I still haven’t found a guy in the game that moves me, and then there’s the little problem of Chihiro being too front-and-center. You’re supposed to be able to put yourself in the heroine’s shoes a little bit in romantic games. This game is more like an ordinary RPG: you either like the protagonist or you don’t (I don’t). Plus she hasn’t shown any romantic interest in anyone yet (or vice-versa, come to think of it) so I’m just going to play it like a normal game and let the chips fall where they may.

I’m going to play an hour or two of PSP now, and then we old people need our sleep.

Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 4 – Hmm…

This is shaping up to be another one of “those” games. Those games I spend hours playing and then can’t write anything about because they didn’t make an impression on me at all. After 7h 40m, very few things have happened and even fewer of them have been important. I’m probably asking for too much, looking for tension and excitement in an otome game. I kind of had hopes for this one too, but oh well.

Harukanaru Toki no Naka de 4 is about a girl named Chihiro who finds out one day that’s she’s the princess of a country in another world. She warps back with her guardians, finds out the place has been conquered by another state and starts a journey to take it back. In typical Neoromance fashion, nearly everyone in the series is a bishie. Even the bad guys are easy on the eyes. The game seems to share an artist with the Angelique series, so it’s got some gorgeous background and character art.

The game itself is billed as an otome game with RPG elements. You have a lot of party members (all bishies), skills, random turn-based battles, boss battles, an overworld, elements, etc. Fighting raises your characters’ affection values for you, and making certain choices in battle, e.g. killing off your enemy early and helping a guy with his, raise them even more. For an otome game it’s very well thought-out and the battles are a joy… when they let you fight. Which is almost never.

95% of the game is a standard visual novel, they just throw an easy fight or two my way every 30 minutes or so to keep me from falling asleep while they prattle on and on and on. I wasn’t surprised to hear they made an anime out of the first game in the series. If it’s anything like this one, it’s very anime-like, especially when it comes to character interactions and the story development.

Aww, look at his widdle ears~

It’s even anime-like in how chicken**** the bad guys are. RPG baddies usually don’t hold back on the terror and tyranny. Burning down villages, stabbing corporate employees at their workplaces, killing people’s girlfriends, that’s how they usually roll. Here, because there’s a gettable guy on the bad side they had to neuter all the evil. The worst the baddies have done so far is bully a few old people and throw a few dissenters in jail. What kind of weaksauce tyranny is that? It makes my job as liberator all the harder, because everyone’s actually pretty well off. The fields are green, the weather is sunny, the villagers are fat and well-fed… I should just pack up and go back to Japan.

Enough whining though, I knew what I was getting into when I picked this up. The more important thing is… which guy will I pick? I’ve got about 8 love interests so far, and I don’t like any of them. There’s a furry shota named Ayuki. I like him the most, but the game won’t let me have him. Second and third best: Tooya and Futsuhiko. Tooya was actually leading the pack until he took off his mask. He should have kept it on a little longer to build up the suspense.

Futsuhiko I don’t have a picture of right now, but his Kofun hairstyle makes him look like he has cat ears, and that’s cute. You know, maybe I just want to play a game about catboys, that’s what the problem is. I wonder if there’s one out there. Something tells me I’ll regret asking that question.

On, on we go. I really wish they’d let me fight though. I could grind on the random battles, but it’s just not the same if they don’t throw any challenging story battles my way. *sigh* Well, that’s what I have Phantasy Star Portable for. I’ll be alternating between the two until I’m done with either/both. When I need more story, I’ll come back to this one. Win/win. I hope.

Phantasy Star Portable – Surprisingly fun!

I thought I would have quit by now. I wasn’t expecting to be still playing this game after 5 hours and three story missions, and I certainly didn’t think I’d be enjoying myself. Proof, if any were needed, that I am a seriously poor judge of my own tastes.

Phantasy Star Portable is billed as an Action RPG. It’s 95% action, 5% RPG, and I’m not even sure about that bit. There’s a story in there somewhere, and you level up and you do play a role as a newly-qualified guardian, but most games have that kind of framing device. This is very close to a pure action game. You show up, they give you your mission, you kill random monsters for 30 minutes, beat the boss, clear the mission, go back for more.

On a normal day I wouldn’t even think twice about tossing this aside. I play video games to relax and unwind, not to stress myself out. And yet somehow Phantasy Star Portable is one of the most relaxing games I’ve played all year. It’s the right game at the right time. After playing several talk-fests in a row, there’s something oddly therapeutic about just running around mashing buttons blindly without anyone getting on my case. And a simple story about a terrorist on the loose and a KOS-MOS clone that wants to know what love is is just what I needed after all those “deep” and “clever” stories.

Plus the game is easy, too. I told myself I’d quit when I saw my first game-over screen, but I haven’t even come close to being wiped out yet. I haven’t had to grind either; it seems just doing all the missions as and when they become available is enough to keep you properly leveled so you can progress. I’ve also got more weapons and healing items than I know what to do with right now. The game is a completionist’s wet dream, with what seem to be hundreds of weapons and items and arts to be collected, but I’m getting by just fine with my basic human fighmaster and his dinky little swords. I’ll still quit if I get wiped out, but it’s looking less and less likely with every passing mission.

Real men fight with meat!

All isn’t rosy in paradise, though. I have a problem with the story. Yes, it’s refreshingly straightforward and concise, but there are two things that are bothering me.

1. The Stranger’s Family Reunion issue. Apparently this is a spin-off of a PS2 game called Phantasy Star Universe, so they throw around terms and make reference to events and characters like I should know them all already. Instead of explaining thing properly, the game just expects me to be familiar with the Gurhal system, the species/races in the system and their mutual relations, whatever SEED are, whoever the Alliance Military are, whoever Captain Curtz is, and so on and so forth. And they have these “emotional” scenes and stuff, featuring people I’ve never even seen before. I feel bad telling them I don’t care, but… I DON’T CARE!!!

2. Visual novel-like choices along the way. The KOS-MOS clone I mentioned is a robot (CAST) named Vivienne, and you’re supposed to help her develop emotionally by making the right conversation choices. Only they don’t tell you what’s right and what’s wrong, or give you any hints so you can figure out what she wants to hear. So far the prevailing wisdom seems to be “Don’t be a douchebag,” but if I get to end and find out I got a bad ending because I picked “Don’t agree” instead of “Agree” at some point, I’m going to be pissed.

So far, so good. I’m still ready to quit at any time if the game gets too hard, but otherwise I’ll keep playing PSP in small doses and report back when I’m done.

Atelier Annie – So-so

I’m supposed to be playing Phantasy Star Portable right around now. But I still hadn’t had enough item synthesis after Atelier Elie last week, so I played Atelier Annie instead.

This is actually my third or fourth playthrough of Annie. I played it quite thoroughly when it first came out in Japanese, but I didn’t (and still don’t) have a very good opinion of it. Still, I wanted to see what NIS did with the English version, and my memory of most of the events was quite hazy, so I gave it one last go.

Playing it immediately after Elie was quite an experience, because they’re so different. I played all the Atelier games out of order so I didn’t notice how radically the items had changed over the time. I’d say roughly 50% of the items in Annie didn’t exist in Elie, and vice-versa, and those that are present have very different designs. Only a few basic staples even look anything like they did back then, mainly the bombs, buffer, pure water and supplements. Very interesting.

That aside… Yeah, I got nothing. While I’m usually a blind fan of anything Atelier, this game has never done it for me. First, there’s Annie herself. I don’t know why NISA picked the game with the least representative heroine for localization. Most of the other Atelier heroines are hardworking, focused and determined. They love alchemy, they have a sense of adventure and their main goals in life do not necessarily involve “marrying a rich guy so I can live in luxury.”  Yet it’s the game starring the whiny, unattractive, gold-digging slacker that made it over. Made it over and poisoned the well so none of the other, better handheld Atelier games could follow it. Way to go.

Second thing I’m not crazy about: the rest of the cast. They’re even pushier and crankier than I remembered, barging into your workshop any time they please with all kinds of unreasonable demands. It’s especially jarring after I just finished Elie, where your friends and party members respect your time. They knock before they come in (and if you’re busy you can ignore them), they don’t touch anything, they state their business quickly and politely and they don’t get mad if you refuse their requests or fail to turn it in on time. It’s the same/similar in all the other Atelier games I’ve played and even Nora was the same. Basic respect and decency cost nothing.

Third problem, and an issue I have with most of the other Atelier games: not enough time for alchemy! They kept me busy from start to finish fulfilling contest assignments, resort quests, guild quests and character quests and grinding in battle to unlock new gathering points and get the other characters to like me. The resort quests were particularly time- and money-consuming and spectacularly unrewarding. Not to mention I dreaded even entering the workshop because for 90% of the game the cast likes to waylay you there and boss you around while talking your ear off. You know it’s really weird, but when your Amity (friendship) level with them goes up to “Best”, all of a sudden they leave you alone and stop hounding you. In other words they were pestering you before because they didn’t like you? What a bunch of ***holes.

Anyway, I’m done with this game. Although I didn’t get to synthesize nearly as much as I wanted to because I was too busy currying favor to get a good ending, I still got the alchemy bug out of my system. The next games I plan to play are, in order, Phantasy Star Portable (already started, will probably soon quit), Harukanaru Toki no naka de 4 and Saiyuki: Journey West (gotta have my SRPG fix). These should keep me busy through the end of March.

Atelier Elie = Fantastic!

Atelier Elie was sooooo much fun. It’s exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to synthesize different items for 20 hours straight, and that’s exactly what I got to do.

That’s why Marie, Elie and M, E & Anis (the Salburg games) are the best Atelier games in the series, period. All the other games since then have had some kind of overriding goal, something you’re supposed to or strongly encouraged to do. E.g. In Viorate you had to run a shop, Lise had the debt to pay off, Annie had some stupid contest thing. But the earlier games just threw you into the game with a little money and a cauldron and left you to your own devices. You want to be an alchemist? Go for it! Do whatever you want, or do nothing, it’s entirely up to you. I just love that completely open-ended nature of the game.

Best of all, with 10 normal endings and 2 bad ones, unless you deliberately plan to suck it’s hard to end up unhappy. You don’t even have to become an alchemist if you don’t want to. You can become a warrior, or a millionaire, or just graduate normally from the academy. Some of the endings need FAQ’ing and planning, but it’s still not like, say, Lise or Nora to Toki no Koubou where I can all but guarantee you a bad ending if you play normally.

The story: There isn’t one, but Elie does have a back story as a girl Marie saved from a deadly illness in Atelier Marie. Out of gratitude and admiration, Elie decides to become an alchemist and enrolls in the same academy Marie was in. You can meet Marie and even hire her as an adventurer if you go to the right place, but the game does not revolve around that little subplot, and Marie is only involved in 2 of the 12 endings. Elie’s days are instead consumed by alchemy, alchemy and more alchemy. When she runs out of stuff to synthesize, she heads out of town to scavenge for more. She also takes jobs at the local pub to pay for reference books and materials.

When she gets a little more skilled, she can hire fairies to do much of the grunt work for her. I realized long ago that the Atelier games with employable fairies were far superior to those without, and Atelier Elie just confirmed that theory. When I pick up a game about item crafting, I want to craft items, DUH. Traveling, looking for items, fighting enemies and filling quests are all fun activities, but they can’t help but waste precious time that could be spent synthesizing instead.

That’s where the wonderful little fairies come in handy, taking all the pain out of both synthesis and foraging. Not only can they work even while you’re away but also they never fail a job, so you can set them to make time consuming items like Comets and Megaflams and take off on a trip around the world without a second thought. I love those little creatures!

Other good stuff about Atelier Elie…

1. Almost fully voiced. Even NPC dialogues are voiced, which is quite an achievement for a 1998 PS1 RPG.

2. Lovely character designs. I don’t know who the designer is, but I liked her Atelier art and character designs best. The current piss-and-watercolor style employed by Rorona and co. isn’t even worth discussing.

3. Very decent drop rates. Even “rare” items are drop more often than not, so you can make just about every item on the list.

4. Cheap battles. Normally this is a bad thing, but this time I gladly abused the Tablets of Time to make fights go by faster.

However I must be objective. Atelier Elie is not a perfect game, because…

1. Since it’s set in the same town as Marie, a lot of the characters, events and locations are the same, so it lacks a bit of freshness. As a character Elie is also simpler and duller than flashy, feisty Marie. I’m glad I let a few years pass between playing the two games.

2. The music can get annoying, especially in your atelier. I already forgot the ending theme and I just finished it a few hours ago.

3. <minor peeve> Traveling to some places takes forever before you get a flying broomstick.

4. Most endings can be gotten normally, but there’s no way you’d even know about some of the others (especially the “Elfir” ending) without a guidebook or FAQ.

5. It’s a teensy-bit too easy. Money’s easy to come by, especially if you don’t care about your reputation. With money comes fairies, with fairies come tons of items, freeing you to craft to your heart’s content. More crafting = more items + higher rank = even more items + even higher ranks, and it just spirals from there. And with the stupidly useful Tablets of Time, even if you do venture outside, no one can stand in your way.

6. Even after fusing and collecting two hundred different items, I still wanted more!

Endings: I got two endings out of one playthrough. First I declined to become a meister at the end of the four years and opened a small studio in Salburg. Then I reloaded and became a meister, which gave me an extra year to fool around and use a FAQ to create those few items the game wouldn’t tell me about. The advent of the internet must have put a real damper on the strategy guide industry.

Alas, all good things must come to an end. I finally finished the game, and since I made almost every item there’s no room for a second playthrough in my mind. When I started Phantasy Star Portable just now, I named my character “Atelier Elie” without even thinking. *sigh* They don’t make games like they used to.