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.
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!
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.
27.12.11 / Idea Factory, Japanese, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: review, wand of fortune portable
Nothing like a little romance for Christmas…
A little romance. Most of your relationships in this game are more like friendships, and the game ends when the real romance is about to begin. I liked all the guys on offer, but my first playthrough took so long and was so tedious that I have lost all the will to play any more of this game.
Story: Lulu, the protagonist, enrolls in Mils Clea Magic Academy to fulfill her dream of becoming a magician like her grandmother. In their world, everyone belongs to one of six elements, but preliminary tests show Lulu doesn’t have an element at all. Not to worry though, hanging out with someone long enough naturally dyes you in their colors. Now Lulu has six months to find an element while raising her INT, DEX and MP stats, or her magic will be sealed forever.
Characters: Six bishies, three teachers, one room mate, four classmates. A small cast for a game set in an academy, and the lack of people to interact with hurts the game in the long run. The bishies are Julius (wind), Noel (earth), Bilal (water), Lagi (Fire), Alvaro (Light) and Est (Dark). Studying with them raises your affiliation with that element, while talking to and going out of dates with them raises their affection for you. Lulu herself is like the reincarnation of Pollyanna with an added sweets fetish. She is relentlessly positive and never gets down for more than a little while. I thought I’d find her annoying, but she’s so unwavering in her positivity that she’s hard to dislike.
Y U mad tho
For this playthrough I decided to go after Lagi. Unlike the others, Lagi can’t use magic. He’s at the Academy as a research subject, because he turns into a baby dragon every time a girl bumps into him. This is because he’s half-dragon, and the time is fast approaching when he’ll have to pick whether to be a dragon or a human for life.
When he first meets Lulu he’s cranky and prickly, just the sort of guy that’s fun to tease. Slowly but surely she wears him down, but he’s still more tsun than dere towards her until the final confession. In the end it turns out his affliction was all in his mind, ‘cos he didn’t want to pick. In order to save Lulu from a salamander he turns into a dragon, but instead of leaving the academy, he decides to hang around a little longer and confesses to Lulu at the end. Aww.
Lagi’s route was fun enough. He was involved in some very comical events. And his baby dragon form is cute. However if I hadn’t picked him, I’d have gone for Est, the short sarcastic shota. He’s obviously suffering from some kind of existential angst, and Lulu’s just the girl to help him get over himself. I’ll be Ike to your Soren any day, Est baby!
I wants your body, Mr. Elbart. I don't care if you're still using it!
Truth be told, though, the guy I really wanted to get with was my clumsy awkward teacher Mr. Elbart. But you can’t go for the forbidden relationship right off the bat, it’s just not done. I mean, what will people say about my Lulu? I was going to save him for my next playthrough, but I haven’t got it in me any more. Lulu gets to stay unsullied… for now.
Gameplay: Take lessons to raise your stats. Study with guys to raise your affiliation. Talk with them to make them like you. Solve mysteries and help people on the weekend. Go out on dates with the guy you like. Go shopping when you get the chance. That’s…about it, really.
The good stuff first:
1) It’s a dating sim/visual novel hybrid. There’s more to it than just non-stop reading. Not much more, but it’s the thought that counts.
2) You can check affection levels and your parameters at any time
3) You can skip dialogue and events forcefully, unless you are required to make a choice. Unfortunately you have to make choices every single day, so skipping goes in fits and starts.
4) Affection, affiliation and magic stats are all very easy to raise. Just by playing normally, you can make a guy fall fully in love with you within 3 or 4 months.
5) The art is very nice and the few CGs you get are cool. Dunno why they ration out the CGs over the course of the game and then suddenly dump 5 on you in the last hours, but a CG is a CG so I’ll take ‘em.
6) The voice acting is okay. Est sounded suitably shota, Alvaro was appropriately smarmy, Julius could be nerdy and serious in turns, etc. Nobody really stood out, but nothing was bad either.
7) There’s an interesting card mini-game you can play. The guys have fixed patterns of play, so it’s easy enough to beat them. But it’s a nice diversion from the usual.
Lulu is hungry for Lagi's 'special' meat
The bad stuff.
1) This game is TEDIOUS. AS. HELL. Every single day you’re forced to watch Lulu wake up, talk to someone in the lobby, pick a class/guy to talk to, help someone, talk to someone on the way home, pick someone to talk to again, go to bed and fall asleep. 6 months x 28 days = 168 times! Every couple of weeks something interesting happens and shakes up the routine, but otherwise you have to watch the exact same scenes over and over again.
2) Not enough exploration or adventure. It’s set in a Magic Academy, but anyone expecting Mana Khemia-style adventures will be sorely disappointed. You rarely leave school even on weekends, so all your activities take place in the same few locations. You rarely interact with the townspeople and most other students are black silhouettes. It’s a very boring academy, and thus a very boring game.
3) The game is too long. I know I’ve put at least 15 hours into this game, possibly more, and I don’t think I’ve gotten enough out of it.
4) The final arc had waaaaaaay too much talking. I was okay until that point, because the scenes kept switching and things moved along quite quickly. But the last arc was just dull. Characters taking forever to figure out stuff I already knew. Having the same arguments. Saying the same things in different words.
5) Without a guide you might end up with the wrong stats for the guy you want to woo. A fortuneteller in town told me I need to raise MP for Lagi, but she didn’t tell me how much. I finished the game with 53 MP, 26 INT and 26 DEX and got the ending all right, but what if I had needed 60 or 65 MP instead? I’d have been screwed.
Conclusion: I liked the characters, I liked the art, I liked the setting, I liked the story. But I intensely disliked the gameplay. So much so that it overwhelmed all the positive parts of the game and left me exhausted and more than a little irritated by the end. I enjoyed my one playthrough of Wand of Fortune, but there’s no character I like enough to want to play the game again. Lagi end is canon! There are no other endings! On to the next game!
23.12.11 / Sony PSP, Square-Enix, Strategy RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (3)
Tags: review, tactics ogre let us cling together
Bwahahahahaha!
Finally finished what is apparently the “Law” route.
I had a bad feeling! This is not the way!
I started out liking this game, but now I’m just glad it’s over. By the end of the game everything was tedious beyond belief. I finally got a few challenging story battles where I was supposed to wipe out all the enemies or where the enemy commander hung back like he was supposed to, but those were few and far between.
- Angelo had the personality of a wet sack of sand till the end. Except it’s not just him, everyone else in the game is wooden and stoic. Their motivations frequently make no sense. Catiua is shrill and crazy about her brother, but why? Evil Lanselot wants to conquer the world, but why? MC is going along with everything, but why? He doesn’t think about his family unless anyone reminds him. In Chapter 3 he finds out his father is still alive, but in Chapter 4 he’s more concerned with rescuing Good Lanselot. At some point someone mentioned his dad was there and his reaction was close to, “Who? My father? O-oh, right, that guy!”
- Anyone with character who joins your party will immediately lose any and all of it. During one battle Vyce piped up, “That guy killed my dad!” and I was like, “WTF, you’re still here?”
Heeeheeehahahaha, stop it, you're killing me!
- The story is a rather trivial tale of continent liberation which is meant to be grand and interesting, but is instead bogged down by the flat, emotionless characters with their static portraits and highfalutin’ fancy speeches. Of course the few times Angelo tried to show emotion, I laughed so hard I nearly peed myself, so it’s just as well. Come to think of it, most SRPG stories boil down to one form of liberation or another, so maybe I shouldn’t come down too hard on TOLUCT for that. But they could at least have made it a little more interesting.
- Half the story is told through the Warren Report. Whatever happened to Show, not Tell? I appreciate a bit of extra information but it’s far more interesting to let me discover things for myself as I play the game than to just tell me. And yet the WR still failed to explain to me exactly what all the factions are and what they represent. What’s Lodis? Where’s Xenobia? Where’d the Dark Knight organization come from?
- Ah, Square-Enix and their ridiculous “When we were kids we all played together but then you forgot but now you magically remember” plot twists.
- Ah, Square-Enix and their final bosses that come out of nowhere. TOLUCT is a little better in that there’s some foreshadowing done through flashbacks and the Warren Report, but I hadn’t read the Warren Report it would have been like huh, what? Ogre? Huh? Btw, what did Martym and Barbas want to do with Dorgalua anyway?
- Every battle has you climbing up- or downhill. I know Japan is mountainous. I know it makes tactical sense. I also know it makes for boring one-pattern gameplay. In most battles the real enemy is the terrain, not the people on it.
- The class system making leveling up new classes a pain. Characters don’t level up in TOLUCT, classes do. If you get a new archer when your other archers are level 20, he’ll be level 20 automatically. But if you switch him to, say, dragoon, and you have no other dragoons, he’ll be level 1. And he’ll grow so slowly that after 10 battles or so, he’ll probably be only level 11. I’m saying this from experience, after trying to level up Hobyrim and Vyce, and after foolishly switching Angelo’s class to Lord near the end of the game. You spend 30 minutes in a battle with LV.22 mobs, finish it, and your LV.4 Lord goes up to LV.5. Rrrggghhh… And how come my level 12 Ranger gets more EXP than my level 7 Lord in the screenshot on the right?
- That final dungeon. I lost track of how many consecutive battles I had to fight, what a fricking pain.
- That ending. Well, I should have expected that I’d be assassinated after all the bad things I did…n’t even do. See, that’s why I wanted to do all the murdering and looting and raping myself, but the game wouldn’t let me!
- Non-story battles near the end of the game take forever. It’s a shame because a lot of interesting-sounding sidequests opened up near the end, but each fight was taking upwards of 30 minutes each. I didn’t have that much patience left by Chapter 4.
Blah blah blah blah blah
- Speaking of chapters, were 4 really necessary? Quite a number of the battles in this game were filler battles against unimportant mooks that could have been taken out with ease. They could have done it in 3 short chapters; one to free Walister from the Galgastani, one to take over Galgastan and one to finally turn your claws on the Bakram and the Black Knights, which is what the story was about from the beginning.
- Too many items. I always groan when I have to use anything more than healing items in a battle.
- Too many worthless skills. You’ve only got 10 slots to spare. Every time I save up enough SP to learn something I have to scroll through a ton of dross to get to the few good ones. All the Resist, Augment, Attenuate, Damage and Recruitment skills could have and should have been pared down to one each for greater efficiency.
- Too many specialized skills. If you want to do proper damage you have to equip the right skill for it. Draconology for Dragons, Herpetology for reptiles, Anatomy for humans, etc.
- At the same time, the game doesn’t tell you which enemies you’ll be facing or how they’ll be placed until after you start the battle. If you get to the field and find it’s full of golems, your only choice is to retreat, reload or try to tough it out. Proper preparation is part of strategy too, Squeenix!
- Crafting in this game is, to put it nicely, a piece of shit. This isn’t Atelier Tactics, why do you have to start from scratch when you’re just modifying standard items? And why can’t you synthesize in bulk? Wouldn’t any sensible storekeeper just pre-make the ingots and sell them to you at premium? Why do you have to watch the little animation every single time? And what’s with the cheering audience, is making an iron ingot really that wonderful? And the whole point of having success rates so that they can be modified or improved with experience or with items. Here they can’t be changed, so obviously their only purpose to make you save and reload and save and reload just for kicks.
- When buying equipment I can’t tell whether one item is better than another or not. I can’t even know without memorizing or without leaving the store what my characters are currently wearing. I can’t tell whether the character I’m buying the armor for can even wear it or not. It’s like Tactical Guild all over again, except TG didn’t pretend to be a good game.
- Crafting complicates things because while I can compare a Buckler to a Pelta shield, I have no way of telling whether a Buckler+1 shield is better than a Pelta or whether an Aspis+1 shield is better than a Tower Shield+1.
- You can’t equip certain items till you get to certain levels. When you buy, you’re told this upfront. When you craft, you’re on your own. You might spend 10 minutes improving your Wakizashi only to find that you can’t use it any more. The crafting system just sucks, period.
- The user interface relies too heavily on icons. It’s hard to figure out what does what at a glance.
- Etc, etc, etc.
I don’t usually come down this harshly on SRPGs. Even when the story and characters are lacking I still find a way to enjoy it (Tactics Layer, Tactical Guild, Jeanne d’Arc, Rondo of Swords, heck most SRPGS), and if the gameplay is that terrible I simply stop playing (Hoshigami Remix). TOLUCT had the distinct position of being bad and yet not quite bad enough to give up. The music was okay, the sprites were cute even when they were killing each other, and the pace of battle was much faster than in other S-E offerings like FFT, TA and TA2. As a result I probably played more than I should have, and now I’m madder than I should be. I have only myself to blame.
Anyway, it’s over. I’m not going to spend even one more minute dwelling on it. On to the next game!
13.12.11 / Sony PSP, Square-Enix, Strategy RPG, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (5)
Tags: review, tactics ogre let us cling together
Ah, I love a good SRPG. Heck, I even love a bad one, but Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together is definitely one of the good ones. It can cling to me any day!
Beyond “it’s good,” though, there’s not much to say about it. It doesn’t do anything too different from other games in the genre, and it looks, feels and plays a lot like the original Final Fantasy Tactics. So it’s fun, but not particularly world-changing. And that’s just fine with me.
I’ve played for 14 hours, a few battles into Chapter 3. It is really easy so for, but then again I thought FFT was easy too, until I met Wiegraf and he… he… *snf* N-no, it’s okay. I’m over that now. It…it’s all in the past.
So maybe the real battles are yet to come, and maybe TOLUCT has some funky special battle mechanics I haven’t explored yet because I haven’t been forced to. Otherwise the only really “new” thing about it is that you can learn magic by using scrolls in battle. And that when enemies die and drop loot, other enemies can take them instead. I used to try and scurry ahead and grab them for myself, but now it doesn’t matter. I’m going to kill them anyway, they might as well have one last moment of pleasure.
I’m used to doing sick amounts of damage with mages, so I’m a little bummed at how useless they are here. Archers are easily the most useful class in this game, as was also the case in Jeanne d’Arc, Stella Deus and Path of Radiance to name a few, so it must be an SRPG thing. I’ve got three of them, Canopus, Sara and Asha, and I never leave home without them. In fact, my other units just get in the way, because most of the time they don’t even get to see any action.
Battle starts, C S and A smack everything within reach while heading for higher ground, supported by the rest of the troops. If I already occupy higher ground, I just wait for the enemies to come in range and smack them to the ground. Once they get a hit or two in, they’re able to fire critical hits with a skill called Tremendous Shot, which usually OHKOs enemy wizards, clerics and bowmen and does serious damage to everything except monsters. I hate monsters. I went into a random battle in the woods with nothing but dragons in it, and I just turned around and backed away slooowly.
Random battles are where the real challenge is at, seriously. In the story, most battles can be ended early by vanquishing your objective. If your Victory Condition is “Vanquish Wynoa”, you can end the battle in a turn or two by marching straight up to her and shooting her in the face. On the (very) few occasions that I have dutifully obliged them, I seem (?) to have gotten the same EXP I would have earned otherwise, so this is probably the “ideal” way to play the game. In fact the game is keeping a running tally of all the people I’ve killed and where they came from, so my Kill Everything approach might just come bite me in the gluteus maximus one of these days. Heh, bring it on.
So in short, fighting is so straightforward I haven’t had to bring out my full power yet. There’s things like Recruitment where you can get enemies to join your side, and a “Chariot” system where you can rewind turns (basically cheating. No true SRPG fan would ever touch such a thing), but when the game is this simple, what’s the point?
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining at all. I like a good easy game, and if a game comes pre-broken like TOLUCT does, all the better. It’s just that it makes all other features of the game next to useless because you don’t need them to survive. Storyline-wise my resistance is allegedly at a major disadvantage, but you’d never know it by the way I crush my enemies and ravish their womenfolk.
Come to think of it, maybe the game is that easy because Square-Enix wants you to focus on the story instead. Well, if that’s the case then that’s too bad, because the story is the part I’m enjoying the least. First off, I don’t like intricate political intrigue storylines to begin with. The game starts out with so many different terms and factions it just makes my head swim. There’s these kids, and these knights torch their village, so instead of getting revenge on those knights, they start fighting this other kingdom, and at some point they even toady up to the same village-toasting baddies, and then to get back at the other kingdom who didn’t burn their village, they burn another village and…Huh?
Secondly, I don’t like the language. It’s a little too “I spent a lot of money on this English major dammit, and I’m going to prove it!” It does a good job of setting the mood, if the mood you’re looking for is Washed Up Shakespearan Actor. Thirdly, and this is really petty, I don’t like the uppercase font they use. All-Caps flies in the face of every readability guide known to man. In short, the story’s hard to follow, hard to understand and hard to read. It’s only now in Chapter 3 that I’m kiiiiiinda getting an idea of who all the different factions represent and who belongs to what, where, why. Kiiiiinda.
Worse than the story, though, is the main character. He hasn’t made a single real decision in the whole game. He’s always just going along with someone else’s plan, whether it’s Vyce’s or the Duke’s or Leonar’s, he doesn’t have a single original idea. Then to make things even more pathetic, he manages to convince himself and tries to convince others that he thinks it’s a good idea and it’s what he would have done anyway, even though he knows, and we know, that whatever it is is a stupid plan. He’s like the middle manager that gets all his ideas from the higher ups then tries to pass them off as his own. Dude we know you’re just a lackey, so do us a favor cut the BS.
… All right fine, you got me. That’s not what I’m really mad about at all. A little self-delusion never hurt anyone, anyway. And I’m sure the rest of the game will be about him growing a pair and learning to take charge of his own destiny. No, what’s really getting my goat is that I haven’t been allowed to actually carry out any of those tremendously bad ideas myself.
For example, I choose a massacre at the end of Chapter 1 just for shits and giggles. Imagine my shock when I was denied the chance to slaughter civilians myself and instead forced watch it in a cutscene. And then I got blamed for it anyway! All the pain and none of the enjoyment, WTF? Again there was an assassination plot in Chapter 2 and again I had to watch, even though I was itching to do it myself. Tch. “There is Blood on my Hands” my bottom, this is a scam! I long for a character like Serdic in Rondo of Swords Path B, who can do the nasty deed himself and then go on to say, “Yeah I killed her, so what?” Massive props. Too bad they softened him up after a bit, I was loving that Cold Emperor gimmick.
Aaaaaannyyyywaaaaaaay. The game isn’t over yet. Still plenty of time to commit more atrocities and make more bad decisions. I hear there are 3 different routes in this game, so depending on how things go, I might play the game again and take the road not taken. Good game so far, though.
04.12.11 / imageepoch, Japanese, Nippon Ichi Software, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: criminal girls, review, true ending
Finished the game for real this time, at 29:43h. That includes the regular ending, true ending and extra dungeon. It was like a full-course meal with a hearty dessert at the end of it. I’m very satisfied right now. The true ending wasn’t much better than the regular one, except the girls all end up in the same school somehow, with you as their teacher. Realistic ending this is not, but I’ll let them off lightly just this once.
Final thoughts? It was an excellent game. Not perfect by any means, but with no major deal-breaking flaws. 30 hours is just right for a game with a story this shallow, and you have the chance to quit at 20 hours with the girl of your choice if you’ve had enough. Imageepoch and NIS score extra points with me by making it blatantly clear that this is not the final ending, and by making both the true ending and extra dungeon easy to access without a FAQ.
The game maintained a healthy level of challenge throughout – not too easy for veterans and not too hard for newcomers either. You’ll always be the right level if you just progress normally and run from a minimum of battles. And if you feel you need that extra boost, there are a number of grind-friendly skills like Sako’s “Yell” that summons enemies and Tomoe’s “Return” that warps you back to camp. The Escape command is fairly reliable, the Encounter rate is reasonable and Ran has a command that repels enemies for a while. The game balance is just right.
As a dungeon crawler, repetitive levels are part of the deal, but for once I didn’t have to deal with stupid puzzles. Even when you’re send to do X or fetch Y, the game helpfully tells you exactly where to get it and even marks it for you on the map with an exclamation point or a heart. While such hand-holding might piss off more experienced players, you know and I know that needless puzzles only serve to slow down gameplay, reduce enjoyment and clog up gaming forums with duplicate “I’m stuck, how do I do XXX” threads. Playing Criminal Girls is a quick, smooth, pain-free experience because all the unnecessary dross has been cut away, leaving you free to focus on the important things: your characters.
Happily enough, my worries about anything going wrong the longer the game dragged on turned out to be completely unfounded. By the end of the game not only did I still like them all, but I’d even befriended the last boss and my nasty abusive supervisor. The only thing that maybe (very maybe) should have been done differently would be to space out the introduction of the girls a little bit. I started with four and got the last three shortly afterwards, which left little room for future surprises.
For the superficial stuff (music, graphics, sfx), nothing much to say. I thought the “sexy” CGs ended up more awkward than erotic half the time, and whoever did the final CGs was clearly slacking. The OP and ED themes were bad. Scraping the bottom of the barrel of low-budget j-pop kinda bad. The in-game music was good. Each girl had her own theme, and apart from one stage, all the dungeons had good tunes. The voice-acting was top-notch. I’ve never heard of any of these actresses before, but they did a great job conveying the girls’ gradually-changing emotions very convincingly.
But like I said, it’s not a perfect game. Since Imageepoch has struck out on its own now, the chances of ever getting a Criminal Girls 2 are as slim as the chances of getting a Luminous Arc 4. Nippon Ichi might commission a new one (gimme Criminal Boys, gimme gimme), but it just won’t be the same with another developer. Still, if they ever do make another, here are a couple of things they might want to fix:
1. Dat Walking Speed. The game badly needed a Dash command. If the dungeons hadn’t been as small and straightforward as they were, things would have been really painful.
Good heavens, Yuko, what happened to your crotch?
2. Dat Lack of equipment. I suppose it’s refreshing not to have to fiddle with weapons and armor and accessories. Dragoneer’s Aria‘s confusing system is enough to put one off equipment for good, honestly. But I do like buying stuff for my party members and seeing their sprites change accordingly, so I hope they include that next time.
3. Dat Backtracking. I like optional backtracking, where you can choose to return to previous levels to explore/grind/pick up treasure. I hate forced backtracking. Done once or twice it’s okay, but I really, really prefer new dungeons instead.
4. Dem Minigames. “Punishment” takes the form of minigames, some of which are okay and some of which are arduous chores. Especially considering you have to do each one at least 8 times per girl x 7 girls = 56 times each to max it out. More games and fewer reps would have been better. Also that Tickling game just has to go.
5. Dem Cheap Status Effects. Common to all RPGs, not just Criminal Girls. In fact this game was more generous than others in that most bosses could be poisoned, debuffed and paralyzed. It was just far easier for them to do it to you than to them. Paralyze prevents your party member from acting 90% of the time, versus 30% for the enemies. Poison hurts you more than it hurts them. Etc, etc, no fair.
6. Dem Endings. All the endings are good and happy, but they don’t make much sense. If the girls were dead and just came back to life, how could they just resume their lives so easily? Even assuming the whole adventure took place in a special dimension so only a few seconds passed between death and resurrection (which we’re not told, I’m just guessing), a dead girl magically popping back to life is bound to cause some shock. And then they all went to the same school and the player somehow started teaching there? When did he pass his Teacher’s Cert anyway? Plus, if you finish the true end dungeon, that means you essentially broke the system. Isn’t that unfair to any bad girls who die in future?
7. Dem Origins. How did those girls die anyway? Healthy-looking teenagers do very occasionally drop dead suddenly, but you mean to tell me all of them died cleanly and suddenly at the same time? It wouldn’t have been that hard to make up appropriate deaths (uhhh, as appropriate as death can be anyway) for each girl, but I guess then they’d have had to take the “How can they just come back to life so easily” question more seriously. Next time they might want to avoid the “Hell” premise entirely and just make it a juvenile facility or something.
Anyway, yay, it’s over! Good game was good! Moving on, I’m doing Fumiko Yanagi’s route in Tokimeki Memorial 4 so I can put that game to rest for good. After that I want to take a shot at finishing Dragoneer’s Aria. I’ve decided to make Persona 2 my first game of 2012 (God-willing), so if I still have time after that, I might play an SRPG or something.
25.11.11 / imageepoch, Japanese, Nippon Ichi Software, RPG, Sony PSP, Video game / Author: Kina / Comments: (0)
Tags: criminal girls, review
I racked my brain for a while and still couldn’t figure out why I was playing Dragoneer’s Aria, so *toss* it went back on the shelf and I started Criminal Girls instead. Criminal Girls is a dungeon crawler brought to us by the developer-publisher team of imageepoch and Nippon Ichi Software. My experience with Final Promise Story was so horrific that it rewrote history and plum wiped out my memory, but now I finally remember why Imageepoch used to be one of my favorite game developers. This game is GREAT!
The story is simple, as dungeon crawler stories tend to be. You play a nameless protagonist who shows up for his first day of work at a prison only to find out that this prison is actually in Hell. Instead of regular prisoners, your charges are “half-criminals”, bad girls who died before they could turn into full criminals. Your mission is to reform them by leading them through four separate dungeons, after which they’ll be given the chance to resurrect.
Unfortunately things start going wrong almost immediately: the girls won’t listen to a word you say, oddly strong enemies start popping up all over the place, your supervisor can’t get in touch with headquarters and to top it all off, she goes missing herself while badly injured. It’s up to you now to carry out your job while looking for clues about what’s really going on in the prison.
So your first point of order: getting those girls to do what you say. The way you go about this is what has led to Criminal Girls‘ unfortunate (but totally justified) designation as “That game where you torture girls.” Yup, you’ve gotta torture them into submission, using a variety of implements ranging from whips to cattle prods to feather dusters.
What happens is that you earn OP (oshioki points) in battle or in chests (they also function as currency). When you get back to camp, you can select the “Punish” command to play a little mini-game. As you abuse them and block your ears to their cries and screams of pain and dismay, you also get to enjoy glimpses of the girls in all kinds of compromising positions. How well you do determines how quickly the girl learns the attack/skill you’re trying to teach her as well as how much of the “sexy” CG you get to see. For the spanking minigame you have to press O at the right moment. For the cattle prod, you have to mash buttons in order, etc.
But you’re not just doing this for fun, oh no, perish the thought. You’re only doing this because it’s the only way to get the girls to learn new moves in battle. You see, in Criminal Girls, you don’t command the girls. Instead they give you suggestions each turn based on their skillsets and you select the one skill/move/ability that you think is best for that turn. One suggestion per girl = four suggestions per turn, from which you pick one. It follows that if you choose to heal, you can’t attack that turn, and so on, making each choice strategic. You also get to use items and switch out party members once per turn, and all surviving party members get equal EXP regardless of participation.
In a sense it’s the perfect dungeon crawler for me. What I hated in the ones I played most recently (UBR, Wizman’s World, Final Promise Story) is the long, drawn out dungeons and the dungeons I’ve been through so far have had 4 floors at most, all of them quite small. I also hated having to solve stupid puzzles to progress, but there’s none of that here. I also appreciate the chance to try out different party members and switch them in as I need them. Normally you’re either stuck with a set party or you have to stick with one voluntarily while the others fall behind.
The cherry on top of the cake is the reasonable game difficulty. With the right strategy and right decisions you can make your way through each dungeon with a minimum of hurt, but can never just relax and press buttons blindly either. They got the challenge level just right. Plus when you have so many characters with so many skills, most of them turn out to be useless. But here they all have their role to play and you can always find a suitable move to use every turn. Even items aren’t completely worthless yet. I’m only halfway through, of course, but at this point I think it’s a fantastic game.
So you see, Criminal Girls isn’t all about the non-stop Abu Ghraib-ing of innocent girls. That’s just a gimmick they added to get perverts to buy the game. At its core Criminal Girls is an interesting, involving and moderately challenging dungeon RPG with a very charming cast. I can understand why they had to add the titillating content, though. When you release a game this late in a console/handheld’s lifespan, there’s the sense that gamers have already “seen it all.” You need something “extra” to market the game, especially when it’s a dungeon crawler, a genre populated largely by very tedious games. That’s why UnchainBlades Rexx went all out with an all-star illustrator cast and added the monster-capturing mechanic, for example. And so some deviant at imageepoch or Nippon Ichi came up with the “punishment” idea and congratulations, they got the publicity they wanted.
Having said all that though, there’s no denying the truth. This is a game structured around the regular and forceful molestation of young teenagers. Whatever your reasons are, you’re still a dirtbag, and the game makes sure you know it by throwing in characters that don’t deserve to be maltreated. You’re not going to get away with claiming they were all bad girls. ‘Cos you know, any RPG gamer has got at least one party member they’d love to punch in the kisser. I can think of several off the top of my head: Rinoa, Garnet, Junpei when he was being an ass, that harridan from Final Promise Story… Of the 7 girls I’ve gotten so far, 4 of them fall into that category, what with their bad attitudes and rude language. But the other three are so sweet! I really don’t wanna hurt them. There should at least be a reward system for the good ones. *sigh*
Not that I’m going to stop playing just because a few pixels lay a guilt trip on me or anything. Between yesterday when I started writing this and now, I’ve gone through most of the third dungeon as well, meaning things should come to a climax soon. In for a penny, in for a pound, I’m going to see this all the way through to the end.