In which I criticize Phantasy Star Portable 2 for being harder than Phantasy Star Portable

When I said I wanted to play Phantasy Star Portable 2, I lied. I don’t want to play PSP2, I want to go back in time to before I played Phantasy Star Portable and play that again.Phantasy_Star_Portable_2_Cover My dirty little secret is out, but I’m sure I’m not alone. I’m sure many of the fans who clamor for Chrono Trigger 2, or Skies of Arcadia 2, or whatever the nostalgia game of the month is, really just want the same experience again. Preferably with a new story and the major flaws fixed but even that is optional.

So it was with me and Phantasy Star Portable. When I finished it last year, oh how time flies, I noted a couple of things I liked and some other things I hoped they might fix if they ever made a sequel. To their credit Sega and Alfa System seem to have taken a lot of these into account in making PSP2. In the next post I’ll focus on the many things they got right. Today, however, I’m going to complain about the three main things they ruined: 1. Combat difficulty, 2. Loading times and 3. The characters.

Combat is too hard, or Why I liked Phantasy Star Portable for being so easy

As I said in that previous post, the game difficulty of PSP was just right for me, which means it might have been too easy for other gamers. And by “other gamers” I meant those crazy people. Those guys who are all into chains and whips and ball gags and the like. Not normal people like you and me. By catering to the nutsos, Sega has made an action RPG that is really, really good and yet really hard for me to enjoy at the same time.

Let’s look at what they did wrong (i.e. right) in detail.

– You have one common PP meter instead of one each per weapon. This means you can’t spam special moves with one weapon, then switch to the next and spam some more.
– There may be PP-refilling items, but after 15 hours I have yet to see one.
– Enemies hit much harder/your defence is much lower. Either way you’re constantly getting hurt.
– Accuracy has taken a nose-dive. Swinging and missing at enemies right in front of you is incredibly frustrating.
– You actually have to dodge and block this time, you can’t just tank everything.
– Status effects affect you frequently instead of once in a blue moon.
– Monomates are still common, but Dimates, Trimates, Star Atomizers and buffing items are harder to get.
– Weapon and armor drops are terrible.
– Just because you found a B rank item doesn’t mean you can equip it, even if your class can use that item. You have level and type limits.
– There’s a steep rise in open mission difficulty from C to B and onwards.
– Your party members are a lot less stupid, but they’re also a lot less generous. In PSP your partner machine would heal you if you so much as coughed. Now she won’t turn around even if you’re half-dead on the ground.

Liar! *sob*

Liar! *sob*

You still with me? I haven’t even covered everything yet.

Why is the increased difficulty such a problem? This is very personal, but it’s a problem for me because of the main reason why I liked PSP: it was simple and refreshing. PSP was a relaxant, a cleansing medicine from all the lengthy, tiring complicated games I’d been slogging through. Like the gaming equivalent of dry toast and a cold glass of water after a night of hard partying. No need to worry about PP, no need to worry about healing, no need to worry about dying. Just turn it on, run around a bit slaughtering hapless monsters and suddenly all’s right with the world again.

You can’t do that with PSP2. Thanks to all the changes, it’s hard enough that you will die if you don’t pay attention. I’m playing it, and to be honest I’m enjoying it, but I have to stay on my toes every minute. As a consequence it doesn’t have PSP‘s special properties any more. Now it’s just another good but stressful game I have to get through. I’m going to need to detox after this detoxifier.

It may sound odd that I’m criticizing the combat system for being much improved over the previous one. If you think about it, though, there’s nothing contradictory about acknowledging the quality of something while noting that for reasons A, B, C and D it doesn’t quite meet your needs. It’s the same with PSP2. It’s a very good game combat-wise, and objectively speaking they’ve made some great tweaks to the system. I’m just sad that I can’t get the same sense of peace and contentment from it as I did from PSP.

Loading, loading, loading…

The first console I ever bought with my own money was a Playstation. The second was a Playstation 2. Suffice it to say I have very low standards when it comes to loading times. That’s why while I was really impressed with how quickly and smoothly PSP loaded, I’m not particularly heartbroken over the many, many loading screens PSP2 has. I must say, however that 1) It’s very disappointing since I know for a fact they could have done better and 2) It only worsens the stressful feel of the game.

Die, Emilia, Die

“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion?” Yet I asked Sega for likeable characters and they gave me Shizuru and Emilia instead. How ungodly can you get? First Shizuru, the main antagonist and apparent love child of Sephiroth and Kuja:

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One look at him should tell you everything that’s wrong with this waste of megabytes.

Emilia is my partner. She’s bad-tempered, irritable, bellicose, brusque, cantankerous, churlish, contentious, contrary, cross, difficult, disputatious, grouchy, ill-natured, nasty, obnoxious, offensive, out of sorts, peevish, pettish, petulant, querulous, rude, snappy, surly, ugly, unfriendly, ungracious, unlikable, unpleasant, uptight, waspish and whiny.

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And that’s just for starters.

The game is stressful enough without her adding to it with her endless crying and complaining. In typical JRPG fashion she eventually shapes up and learns the meaning of family and friends and blah blah I’m not alone any more, etc etc. Too little too late, I’m afraid. Far be it from me to wish death on any character, but… okay that’s a lie. I want her dead, and I want her dead NOW. Hopefully if I keep choosing the wrong options, the game will take care of business for me.

Bonus complaint: My Phantasy Star Portable save is useless!

I lovingly preserved my PSP save in the hopes of getting a cool bonus once I transferred it. For my trouble I got a powerful saber – that misses all the time. I got my character, who looks NOTHING like he did before. I got a title and an item I can’t even remember.

What I didn’t get was the one thing I really wanted: continuity. Since PSP2 is set in the same universe a few years after PSP, I was hoping for recognition of any kind from other characters I’d previously interacted with. No such luck. I met Tonnio, Liina, Maya, Lou and Vivienne and they all don’t recognize me. That really hurts my feelings. It can’t be that hard to add a few extra lines to each character’s dialogue that triggers if you have an old save loaded. And it would make all the difference in the world to me.

why vivienne whyYou don’t remember me, do you? / You don’t remember me, do you?
It started with a kiss / Never thought it would come to this…

*snf* Vivienne… Now if you’ll excuse me, I must go cry myself to sleep.

Hayate no Gotoku! Ojousama Produce Daisakusen: Bokuiro ni Somare! ~Gakkouhen~

HAYATE no gotoku_frontA short, sweet palate cleanser from the sour aftertaste of Lunar. Hayate no Gotoku! Ojousama Blah Blah ~ What is it with Hata and Long Titles, Anyway?~ is a raising sim slash beauty pageant sim with a little bit of romance rounding it out. I stopped reading Hayate no Gotoku! over a year ago so I decided to play this quickly before I forgot all the characters. It’s my way of saying goodbye.

Story

You’re a new butler (not Hayate). To prove yourself you decide to train one lady to win a beauty contest. The winner gets to wish for anything they want from the legendary tree in the corner of the school campus. I played it twice and won with Maria, who wished for nothing, and Hinagiku, who almost wished for a bigger bust but got angry and threatened the tree into silence instead.

Characters

The usual pre-Greece cast, i.e. no Athena or Ruka or those two girls in the first year whose names I could never remember. Also Hayate barely shows up and Klaus, Tama and the cat only appear in images. For pageant purposes you get to pick Nagi, Maria, Hinagiku, Sakuya and Izumi and Saki to raise. When it’s time to compete, Wataru, Ayumu, Isumi and Yukiji appear as contestants.

Raising sim

Hayate the Combat Butler2From Monday to Friday you raise the girl’s stats by picking three a day for her to focus on. There are 6 types of personality: Cool, Tsundere, Moe, Elegant, Eccentric and Genki, and 12 corresponding types of stats for them to focus on. Raise Pride to boost Tsundereness, raise Wisdom to boost Coolness, raise Strength to boost Genkiness, that sort of thing.

The stats you choose to raise affect the success of her contest appeals and the kind of activities she performs better in, i.e. the more Pride you raise, the easier Pride gets to raise. Raised high enough they also change the girl’s personality. Hinagiku comes with an innate “Cool” personality, but with high Pride she’ll start acting Tsundere. That will affect the way she acts towards you, which can be both interesting and a little disconcerting to watch. For example a Moe Hinagiku will giggle and simper at you in a very un-Hinalike manner.

The game is easy enough that I won 9 out of 10 contests on my first playthrough with Maria just by trying to boost everything equally. The second time I used ‘cheat’ items, which aren’t really cheats since the game sells them from day 1, to uber-boost Hinagiku’s stats. I still won 10/10 contests easily. Basically as long as you raise something every week you’ll be fine.

Romance elements

You get a few CGs where the girl indicates some romantic interest in you. On Saturdays when you go shopping in town, you can visit the park for a date. Not much of one though, just a quick chat and a simple choice with no real consequences. You can touch her in various places on the main screen in order to increase her mood. And at the end she’ll tell you she’s really glad she met you and really likes you. Then you’ll go your separate ways, the end.

Pageant sim

Every Sunday you pick a rival and compete with them on the basis of your popularity with fans of different tastes, represented by colors. In the screenshot on the right, the yellow fans are Tsundere fans and the green ones are Genki fans. You appeal to them in the way they like and they’ll either come over to your side, go to your rival if s/he does better or fall into a pit if they can’t decide (yes, seriously).

hayate contestYou have three kinds of appeals.

1. A regular appeal of one color
2. A special appeal that can a) appeal to two colors at the same time or b) appeal to one color and block another color. E.g. you could take all the Tsunderes while stopping Isumi from taking the Genkis. Will not work if Isumi does not pursue the Genkis.
3. A special attack particular to that character that can only be used once per contest. Has appeal power and also casts debuffs like lowering rival stats and casting Silence on them.

Appeals play out in the form of “cute” performances by the boxy 3D girls, who twirl and pirouette for your viewing pleasure. It might have worked if they had used anime graphics instead of 3D but as it is they just look weird. It’s also unfortunate that all the girls use the same animations. A “Tsundere” appeal from Nagi is the same as one from Hinagiku and the same as one from Maria. That’s probably the best they could do budget-wise but it is somewhat disappointing.

The main strategy involved is in figuring out what kind of attack your rival is going to use and trying to counter it while simultaneously trying to grab as many fans as possible. It helps to know the rival’s personality, it helps to learn what attacks they have equipped (checkable on Saturdays), it helps to use Type 2 attacks early and often. If it wasn’t so easy it is to raise your stats to stratospheric levels in no time, all this might require some real thinking. As the game stands, though, it’s next to impossible to lose a contest. As long as you avoid late-game AI Maria or AI Hinagiku you’ll be fine.

Problems

sys_sat_hd_imgIt would have been 200x better if you controlled Hayate instead of some new non-canon butler. I don’t know about other HnG fans, but what I liked most about the series was watching Hayate’s cute and crazy interactions with his bevy of beauties. I don’t want to live out a ronery otaku’s fantasy by trying to hook up with the girls ‘myself’. It’s not convincing, it’s not satisfying and it robs the game of all potential humor.

The other main problem with Ojousama wo Produce Daisakusen is that it’s not very replayable. After one or two playthroughs you’ll realize it’s the same thing every time. The contests are fun, but too easy to win. Stats are too easy to raise. The girls invariably fall in love with “you” no matter how you treat them. They never wish for anything even if they win. They rarely interact with other characters even when they reasonably should, e.g. Maria and Nagi, Hinagiku and the Student Council trio. As a fan playing an anime game, that’s the sort of thing you’re looking for and that’s precisely what you’re not going to get.

I did learn one thing from this game and from Tactics Layer: beauty pageants are fun! I’d like to play the contest minigame again someday, hopefully with added complexity. Maybe Konami should consider making it a mobile game app? I was entertained for a few hours, but otherwise it’s not a game I can recommend for anyone other than really hardcore and really bored fans of the Hayate no Gotoku series.

Lunar Silver Star Harmony – Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Little Sisters

PCT2003Finished at around 24 hours, about 5 hours too long for the content this game offered.

Things I liked

I liked quite a number of things about Lunar Silver Star Harmony. It’s too bad the few things I didn’t like made up the bulk of the game.

– NPC conversations. I love it that, first, NPCs have more than one line when you speak to them and second, they update their conversations depending on story events and who you have in your party. There are way too few games like that out there. If I was rating Lunar on that feature alone I’d give it 9/10.

– Bright, happy colors. They’re my “thing.”

– The occasional funny line. I thought the writers went overboard at some points, trying too hard to be catchy and clever when a scene would have worked better with simpler, plainer dialogue. Sometimes when everyone’s trying to be funny then no one’s funny. But they did get some laughs out of me, so it’s all good.

Why I’m just glad it’s over

– The combat. I explained why it was affecting my enjoyment in a previous post. Some games start out with a poor battle system that improves as you go along. This wasn’t one of them. However the EXP dropped per boss did increase significantly towards the end, and the last few bosses went down with no effort at all. Next time there needs to be better AI for auto-battling, fewer battles per screen and no respawning when you return.

– Alex and his unbrotherly affections towards Luna. And vice-versa. What’s wrong is wrong, I don’t care if they’re “not blood-related.” What does that even mean? Adoptive siblings are siblings just like any other, no matter what Japan says.

Still, I’m a generous soul. Given half a chance I could have pretended they were just childhood friends. Unfortunately I never got that chance, not with their very own parents constantly rubbing their relationship in my face:

luna and alex luna and alex2

“There! There! You like that, don’t ya? Don’t ya?” No. Please. Just, no.

– I got tired of getting lost. There were some straightforward dungeons, but even more where I had to resort to a FAQ to figure out where I was supposed to go. I’m talking about you, final dungeon. And that place with all the holes. And that tower with all the switches and puzzles. And a couple of other places I’ve purged from my memory.

– Loading times. From screen to screen, from screen to battle and back again. Might have been my memory card, but it was pretty bad. And it was pretty noticeable because the music would cut out for a few seconds before resuming every time.

– Sub-bosses that keep menacing you and escaping because you’re too incompetent to stop them, even though when you finally fight them they’re weaker than a baby’s fart.

– The game’s tendency to beat one point to death before moving on to the next. Alex wants to be Dragon master (x100), Alex wants to save Luna (x200), mankind doesn’t need gods (x400). As a game Lunar doesn’t have much to say, but that’s never stopped anyone before.

– Being preached at like this:

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I have no problem with the concepts themselves, cliched though they are. What bugs me is the heavy-handed way they’re rammed down my throat. It should be possible to make the same points through the characters’ thoughts, actions and attitudes throughout the game. It’s more meaningful, more memorable and more convincing that way. It’s lazy writing to assume you don’t need to justify yourself because all readers will agree with the inherent merit of your ideas. What if I don’t agree that humans don’t need gods to be happy? It should be easy enough to prove that the rule of humans is preferable to the rule of gods, but nobody in Lunar attempts to do so. It’s more like “Well we don’t like it and we’re the good guys, so nyaah.” Their arguments never go beyond staring angrily at the screen and repeating the same lines with minor variations. I heard you the first time, what now?

This isn’t just exclusive to Lunar. Most jRPGs end with cheesy scenes like this, and it bugs me every time. Why must it always boil down to the party forcing their views and ideals on the rest of the world simply because they’ve bought enough equipment and leveled up enough to do so? They’re just like the bad guys.

I’m not saying Ghaleon was necessarily right and the party was wrong. I’m just bristling at the game’s assumptions that I’ll agree with whatever my party does because they’re my party. Alex and co. haven’t proved that they know nor care about the wishes of the world any more than Ghaleon does. They’re ignoring the will of the majority just as much as he is, except they haven’t even given the matter any thought at all. They know what they want (freedom, lonely little sisters in their neighborhood) and they have the means to get it, and that’s all it takes to make their cause right. Just once in my life I’d like to see the heroes take a poll of general opinion before claiming to speak for all mankind.

Well, all that is neither here nor there. For better or worse I’ve finished Lunar Silver Star Harmony. It had some good features and some funny lines, and at least it was short. Those few bright spots notwithstanding, it was a poor experience overall, and I think I’m done with the Lunar series after this.

Need help with PS2 backlog!

PS2-Fat-Console-SetJust when I had all but given up, I managed to get my PS2 limping along again. It wouldn’t read any disks, so I started by cleaning the laser. No use. Then a bit of googling told me there’s a second laser beneath the first one. I had to take the whole array out to get at it, but once I got that dust-free again my good old fatty was back in business.

Nearly, anyway. It still makes a very faint rattling noise , and I suspect it won’t be long before it starts acting up again. That’s why I need to play as many of the games on my backlog as possible before it goes caput for good. I could always buy another PS2 but I’d rather just dump the system altogether and move on if that happens.

So, what should I prioritize? Here’s my backlog of English PS2 games:

[updated. see below]

I hope to play all these eventually but since I’m on borrowed time, what would you play if you could only play one or two? I also have/downloaded some Japanese games, like Atelier Lilie, Sacred Blaze, Tokimeki Memorial 3 and Summon Night 3 (can’t wait to play this), but let’s stick to the English titles for now.

Your thoughts?

UPDATE

Thanks to your suggestions, I’ve re-arranged my list like so:

Steambot Chronicles
Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter (on hold while I find a new copy)
Dark Cloud 2
Arc the Lad – Twilight of the Spirits
Wild Arms 4 (on hold while I find a new copy)
Yakuza 2
Arc the Lad – End of Darkness
Radiata Stories
Shining Tears
Suikoden Tactics
Tales of Legendia
Unlimited Saga
Wild Arms 5
Disgaea 1 & 2

I’m able to this so easily because I don’t have any particular attachment to those games. With very few exceptions I’ve played all the PS2 games I really wanted to play. Everything else is easily-discarded icing on the cake.

In further news, I actually started Steambot Chronicles last week. It looks like something I’d enjoy. I mean, how can you not like a game with Constipatory Tablets as an item? There’s just one tiny problem… I can’t control the Trotmobile AT. ALL. I can barely move in a straight line, and I sure as heck can’t win the tutorial battle. Let’s see how far I can get at this rate.

Doki Doki Majo Shinpan! = Trash

majo shinpan_frontI almost titled this post “Doki Doki Majo S**tpan” but I’m trying to run a clean(er) ship these days. Besides, such a perfectly descriptive name would leave me with nothing left to write about this game, one of the dullest, most joyless things I have ever experienced in my life.

Doki Doki Majo Shinpan! is a game about a boy tasked with rooting out witches and bringing them under heavenly jurisdiction by investigating and fighting them and eventually touching them in suggestive places. Despite the worthlessness of both the premise and the resulting game, the original evidently sold enough to warrant two sequels and a manga. I know it’s pointless but I’m going to ask anyway: WHY?!

The most obvious answer, and the reason I tried this, is that fans must enjoy the silliness and fanservice that comes with touching girls. Heck, they just enjoy touching girls, period. Having actually played for 2 hours and having indecently assaulted two of said girls, I must ask again, WHY?!

To put it plainly, this game simply isn’t fun. For all the controversy about touching little girls and fanservice and stuff, there is surprisingly little titillation available. What there is plenty of is talking. 95% of the game consists of moving around on a tiny little map vainly trying to progress what little story there is. Click on an icon, get a snippet of story, click on another icon, get another little bit. After several in-game days, you catch up to a witch and the other 5% of the game begins. First you defeat her in very simple touchscreen combat and then comes the moment you’ve all been waiting for, the witch-poking part.

Which is sleazy and soulless as hell, and unsexy to boot. First off, if you do it right the procedure takes all of 30 seconds to complete. Even if you stretch it out to fulfill your easily-satisfied sexual(?) desires, what happens barely counts as fanservice. Apart from short skirts and some minor cleavage, the girls are largely covered up. Thus the only fanservice you get are perfunctory moans, weakly fluttering skirts and stiffly bouncing boobs.

Really only 9 years old.

Really only 9 years old.

On top of that, the actual womanhandling process is very pedestrian. In your arsenal you have a hand for poking and stroking, an eye for staring, a mouth for blowing air and a grin for leering. That’s it. I’m not demanding cattle prods and feather dusters a la Criminal Girls, but a tiiiinny smidgen of imagination isn’t too much to ask for, is it?

Most importantly, nobody enjoys it. The girls seemed almost bored at some point. The main character makes no comments at all during the activity, perhaps treating it, sensibly enough, as a routine medical examination. And as the player I really couldn’t see the point. Story-wise, by the time you reach that point you’ve already amassed enough evidence of the girl’s witchcraft. You’ve already beaten her into submission in a magic battle. There’s no room left for denial – and if she tries you can just beat on her some more – and thus no need to “find the witch mark” on the victim. I know I’m being picky, expecting a child molestation game to actually have a sensible reason behind it,  but I can’t help it if I have normal thought processes.

Apart from the sordid gimmick and its disappointing result, the other main attraction of Doki Doki Majo Shinpan! is the characters. Or, more rightly, the character designs. SNK Playmore must have guessed – correctly as it turned out – that a fan of this sort of game wouldn’t about things like personalities and character development and other non-essentials. That’s why the girls in the game are cute and busty and as interesting as a puddle of piss. I can’t help comparing this game to Criminal Girls, which was just as vile gimmick-wise but had rock-solid gameplay and some of the best on-screen character development I had ever seen to make up for its moral failings. S**tpan has nothing to commend it but cute art and half-assed fanservice.

Is that really all it takes to please some people? I’m not trying to position myself as morally superior or somehow ‘above the influence.’ It’s just that after years of gaming one naturally develops some basic standards of quality. Cute art, yes. Everything else, fail, especially the gameplay. It might be worth trying once just to say you did (though why anyone would want to admit that is beyond me) but otherwise give this a miss. Please.