Hexyz Force – Levant’s Tale (spoilers)

An ordinary turn-based RPG from Sting. 5 years is a long time to hold a grudge, so I decided to try another game they developed, the more “normal” the better.

Unfortunately Hexyz Force is perhaps a little too normal, making it hard to write about. I didn’t not enjoy it, but I wasn’t crazy about it either. I’ll list a few of the good and bad points and then call it a day. Before you read any further, just note that it says “spoilers” at the top for a reason. I won’t be holding back.

Oh wait, the story. Hexyz Force features two stories, one with a cleric named Cecilia and another with a knight called Levant. They live on a continent where various races are at war, and every couple of centuries there’s an Hour of Judgment that determines whether the world will be wiped out or allowed to continue. In Levant’s Tale, the emperor he serves basically goes nuts and plans to wipe out all the other races. It’s up to Levant and his friends to find out what went wrong and try to bring peace in their own way. Not a bad story in general, though it’s astonishing how quickly and easily the emperor is forgiven in the end after burning and slashing his way across half the world.

Good points

  • The game is fast-paced, because you can press the R button to fast-forward all cutscenes (except FMVs) and battles, boss battles included. All RPGs should have such a button.
  • Levant’s Tale is fairly short, clocking in at around 20 hours IIRC.
  • With one exception, all dungeon and town maps are displayed in full, preventing wasted trips down dead ends. They look like this:
  • No random battles. Enemies can be seen on the map. They aren’t always easy to avoid though.
  • Battles are easy. This is both a good and a bad point, as I shall elaborate upon below.
  • Levant and his party members are easy to get along with. His portrait makes him look a little arrogant, while Irene’s makes her look spoiled and high maintenance, but actually they’re all very nice people. When bad things happen they mope a little, but then they snap out very quickly and move on. I admire that. I also like the fact that while Irene and Levant have a romantic relationship from the start, it’s never allowed to take over the series, and Levant never has one of those idiotic “Trade the world away to get my main squeeze back” moments.
  • Not too preachy or heavy-handed. There are a few “Never underestimate the power of people” and “You are not alone” lines, but for the most part they gave the usual RPG dialogue cliches a miss.
  • Linear plot progression. Usually it’s a bad thing for me, but in this case I liked being able to progress quickly and efficiently.

Bad points

  • The story. The missing bits. Because they divided the game into two, there are a number of things in Levant’s Tale that do not make sense and are never sufficiently explained. At the end of the game Cecilia’s party joins you and they trot out lines like “Grandz at Altair” and “the Force Stone” as if the player knows them already. Unless you play both routes (and maybe even not then) you’ll be left in the dark.
  • The story. The cryptic crap. This is why I hate stories with mysteries in them, because there’s always one or more characters who know what’s going on or know more than they’re letting on, but just won’t say it. This numbskull named Philia always promises to “explain everything later”, but she never does.

My feelings exactly!

Hint: it’s not a good idea to remind the player how stupid your story is

  • The story. The futility of it all. As you progress the story, you are confronted with choices that determine whether the balance of the world will tilt towards Creation or Destruction. It’s bad enough that the game doesn’t give you any clue which choice does what. It’s even worse that you get to the final boss and find out that he was going to gimmick the balance to tilt towards Destruction no matter what you did. For 99% of the game I was unwillingly and unwittingly doing everything Azul wanted me to do.

    Way to make me feel like a genius, Sting.

  • The battle system. It’s nice that the battles are simple and go by quickly, but sadly that means the battle system goes largely untested. There’s a damage bonus system affected by the elements you use, a weapon-leveling system and tons of items and accessories and status effects, but all of them can be safely ignored in favor of just whacking away with your strongest attacks from start to finish. It’s a bit of a shame, because I thought they had some good ideas in there.
  • The fusion system. I don’t know which game pioneered item fusion in RPGs (Star Ocean, maybe?) but they’ve done the world a great disservice. It is rarely done well. Either it’s a completely unnecessary addition, or the source materials are hard to find (as in this game) or the process is tedious and fraught with failure or all three. The problem is compounded in Hexyz Force because there are no shops and you have to fuse all weapons, items, armor and accessories from scratch. It’s just as well that the game is so easy you can get by with a few basic items.
  • The endgame. You go through most of the game with Levant and three other characters, then the game dumps about 5 new party members and a ton of new weapons on you in the last hour.  And they’re under-leveled to boot. What am I supposed to do with these? The game’s pacing could be a lot better.

Aaaand that’s about it. It’s not a bad game at all. The story is the worst part, and even that isn’t a deal breaker, mainly because the game is short. In fact I’m not entirely opposed to replaying the game to see Cecilia’s route later on. Right now it’s almost March I haven’t finished a single thing from my Resolutions list, and it’s all that durned Persona 2‘s fault for holding me up. I’m going to concentrate on finishing it (if possible) so I can move on.

[Returned to my original WP theme now. I feel so much better]

Wand of Fortune ~Mirai e no Prologue~

The Wand of Fortune fandisc, useful only to those who have played the original and liked it. I’m sort of, kind of in that category, so I downloaded it and gave it a brief spin.

Can’t say I enjoyed it though. It’s too strict in terms of the choices you’re allowed to make. You’re locked into or out of certain routes depending on the first three choices you make at the beginning. You can do everything right after that and still end up getting the teachers’ ending.

The fandisc is divided into three sections: an original scenario called “Edgar’s Mysterious Loupe” featuring a new character, a long boring story about Cynthia (the blonde-haired Julius freak) and a section where you see what happened between Lulu and her chosen guy after the end of the first game. That’s the only part worth playing IMO. Edgar’s loupe deals with Lulu’s crisis of confidence after getting the “All” element in the first game, and a mopey depressed Lulu isn’t Lulu at all.

Still, I played “Edgar’s Mysterious Loupe” a couple of times. Got Edgar’s, Est’s, Lagi’s and Noel’s endings naturally, then used a FAQ to get Elbart (now known as “Elbert”, what gives) and the “True” Ending. In the process I discovered that I don’t really like Lagi as much as I thought I did, that Noel and Est are awesome and that Mr. E is still my number one. Elbie4Lyfe.

Getting those endings unlocked the post-original scenarios for Est, Lagi, Noel and Elbe/art, allowing me to see how they’re getting on with Lulu. Err, sort of. Apart from Elbert’s route, I fast-forwarded through the others because they were dragging on.

Elbert and Lulu: they aren’t getting on too well because Elbert is embarrassed to admit their relationship in public. As well he should be, the ephebophile. If you’re going to date a student, you should at least take a leaf from Himurocchi’s book and choose a day-school so you can date them outside school on weekends. At least they were both clever enough to pick a school where the principals are okay with it.

In the end Lulu gets tired of him pushing her away and plants a kiss on him, the end. Heh heh, I love it when they get all embarrassed like that. Unfortunately I don’t see much of a future for E&L as long as Elbert continues to be so ball-less. Sorry darling, but it’s the truth.

When we get married, I’m burning this outfit first

Lagi and Lulu: they’re having issues because he can’t hug her and is nice to every other girl but her. Lagi’s a twit for making my Lulu sad, and I’ve had it up to here with his cranky, childish attitude. They did share a nice kiss towards the end, but I have no idea how they got there because I was fast-forwarding my way through.

Noel and Lulu: more awkwardness, more unhappy Lulu. She wants him to be more affectionate and he’s too nervous to do so. Unlike Elbert he doesn’t even have his position as an excuse. I like Noel, he’s a funny guy, but this is unacceptable.

Est and Lulu: have a surprisingly sweet relationship, but I don’t remember much else of what happened in there. Something about him hiding secrets from her, blah blah, I want to share your pain, blah blah, and your colds and fevers too, blah blah blah.  Fast forward for the win.

The older I grow, the shorter my attention span gets, so this outcome was perhaps inevitable. Moreover, while I liked the previous game, I’m still a little burned out from how long and tedious it was, so my opinion doesn’t count for much. Fans of Wand of Fortune won’t go wrong with this fandisc though. It’s nice to find out exactly what happened once they started dating, because a confession doesn’t automatically mean everything’s hunky-dory. The disc also has several new CGs as well as “dream sequences” with all the characters, and each route in each section is fairly short, especially compared to the original. It’s worth at least one playthrough.

Riviera: The Promised Land

I got nostalgic for Riviera: The Promised Land, so I’ve been playing it on and off for the past couple of months. I just finished my third and a half playthrough of this game and got Serene’s ending for the second time.

Since I’ve played it so often, I don’t have much to say about it. I first picked this up in… 2005-ish? Summer of 2005, I believe. It was my first “dating sim-ish” kind of game, the first time my attitude towards my party members had actually affected the ending I got. I had no idea things would turn out that way, but I just went along being nice to Lina and before I knew it, I’d gotten a treasure hunter ending with her. I was hooked!

I immediately started a new game, which also makes Riviera the first game I ever did back-to-back playthroughs for. This time I went for Serene because, like, who doesn’t go for Serene? Got her, yippee, then right away I started another playthrough! I was going for Cierra this time, but then I stopped myself halfway though like, “WTH are you doing? How can you play the same game three times in a row like this? Stop touching that game. Stop it!”

You’ve gotta understand, that was the first time a game had ever had that effect on me, I thought I was going crazy or something. So, believe it or not, I forced myself to stop playing and lent the game to a friend I knew wouldn’t return it. And that was it for Riviera and me until now. Looking back, what the heck was wrong with me?

Anyway, so I got a little wistful late last year and got a rom and played it. It was surprisingly hard to get through, for an unexpected reason: I remember just about everything that ever happened in the game. It’s been almost 7 years, but I still remembered most of the dungeons, most of the skits, the soundtracks, even which way to go and which way not to go. I guess I did play it 2.5 times, it’s only to be expected. The nostalgia trip was fun, though. And now I know I wasn’t crazy. It’s not the best game in the world – the story is cheesy as hell, the Practice Battle system makes things a little too easy and that 15-item limit just has to go. But even after all these years I had a blast with the characters and their interactions, the soundtrack, all the hidden items and traps… All still fun for me to explore after all this time.

I also got to reminisce about the days when I thought Sting was a great developer, based on just this game alone. That was before I went on to play Yggdra Union… Stupidly confusing stupidly complicated randomly hard battle system… no, we won’t talk about that game today. It’s like the same way Imageepoch publicly soiled themselves with Final Promise Story. Except I forgave them once I played Criminal Girls while Sting has yet to redeem itself. They’ve got other things like Blaze Union and Gloria Union, but I’m not touching them. A while ago I was downloading random ISOs and came across an SRPG called Gungnir. Oh, a new SRPG, downloaded, fired it up… Sting. *florporplorpl* my gaming boner wilted on the spot.

Yes, I Mad. Although I suppose 6 years is a rather long time to hold a grudge… And maybe I just sucked at YU… No, forget it, I Still Mad. …Yeah, definitely still mad.

Well, that was a nice trip down Memory Lane, but I can’t stay in the past forever. Next up, I’ve been exploring the Wand of Fortune fandisc, Mirai e no Prologue. More about that once I’ve fooled around with it a little more.

The Idolm@ster: Dearly Stars – Not my kind of game

Just finished Hidaka Ai’s route. Meh. Just glad it’s over, that’s all.

The Idolm@ster Dearly Stars disappointed me in nearly every aspect I could think of:

As a raising/life sim

There are only three stats to manage, plus tiredness. All of them are very easy to raise and keep high. You’d expect that as a teenaged idol you’d have to balance your school life with performances while finding time for training and taking care of your health and getting enough food and rest, that sort of thing, but there are no schedules to worry about or deadlines to meet in Dearly Stars. When you have an audition lined up, your rivals and the organizers will wait as many days and weeks as it takes for you to get your act together. There’s no tension at all.

As a music/rhythm game

Dearly Stars is a game about a musician, but it’s not really a music game, per se. What music there is is pretty bad and the songs your idol can sing are fixed, as are her dance and vocal performances for each one. The player’s involvement consists of picking out outfits, adding a few moves and helping her “memorize” lyrics and “learn” dances through minigames. After all that effort, though, your idol’s success in auditions still depends largely on luck. You might as well not even bother.

I’m not a fan of cutesy-poppy idol music in general, and Ai’s voice grated on me. The same songs sung by the other playable idols are slightly more bearable. Ryo has a soothing, boyish voice (being a trap and all) and Eri’s voice is high and sweet, but Ai is just loud, bordering on screechy. Quite a disappointing experience.

As a dress-up game

Idols are supposed to be cute and fashionable, right? Right, Namco? Oh, you didn’t get the memo? Ah, that explains why your idols only have three outfits with a few palette swaps, some ratty-looking accessories and no hairstyle changes at all. There’s no way to buy outfit or accessories either, you have to wait till Sunday and pray a fan sends you one. Just how poor is Studio 876 anyway?

As a minigame collection

The bulk of the “gameplay” consists of using the touchscreen and stylus to give Ai “lessons” through mini-games. To improve your Vocal skills, you have to fill in missing lyrics in hiragana as in the screenshot on the right. To raise Visual expression, you have to tap little smiley faces (I hate that game) and for Dance skills you have to tap out the correct steps when they reach a particular mark. It’s hard to explain.

I appreciated having something to do other than read long conversations and listen to bad music, and the games even grew on me after a while. It’s just that it’s the same three mini-games from beginning to end. No new games, no new levels, no added difficulty, no surprises. Plus Ai just won’t shut up during them, so you’re playing the same things, getting the same results and hearing the same loud comments throughout the game. And at the end of the day none of your hard work even matters, because the auditions are largely down to luck and probability. Waste of effort.

As a visual novel

The point of the Idolm@ster games, as far as I can tell, is to chronicle the rise of an idol from a nobody to a superstar. To make them more interesting, each girl (or trap) has her own story that plays out over the course of the game. Ai’s story is that her mother is a retired famous idol and so she grew up with a complex about it. As the game goes along, her mother returns to the entertainment world and challenges her, and they have a great showdown at the end of it all.

Good, that’s all well and nice. It’s a bit of a shame that I have to compete with her, because IMO her mom Mai is the greater star. We never get to see her perform, but from what I can see, Mai has better looks, a better sense of style, greater charisma, greater magnetism and just all-around greater “star power.” Ai’s just a loud noisy kid with everyday looks, a squeaky grating voice, average dancing skills and a large head. Hmm, then again apart from the large head part, I just described Japan’s reigning queen of pop Ayumi Hamasaki, so maybe Namco’s on to something here.

That’s just an aside, back to the story. Little things that make visual novels more comfortable to play, like quick saves, quick loading and text-skipping are missing. When you talk to someone and a choice comes up and you get it wrong, they don’t tell you what you did wrong so you can fix it next time. Then there’s the usual visual novel answer choices based purely on guesswork. E.g. “What were you doing?” A. Looking at the boats B. Looking at the sea C. Looking at the whales. Okay, you might guess that C is a little over the top, but why is B “correct” and A “wrong”? And why does it matter what I was looking at?

That’s all minor stuff though. Major problems, I had two. First one: the Stranger’s Family Reunion issue. This is where the game takes things that are new and foreign to the player for granted and doesn’t bother to explain them. Along the way, you’ll meet other idols like Haruka, Yukiho, Makoto, Ami and Azusa that Ai gushes over like they’re the greatest stars on the planet. These events mean nothing to me because I don’t know any of these people. Maybe they’re from previous games or the anime, but how should I know and why should I care?

So anyway, the game goes along, and Ai competes against some of them and gets down on herself on how they’re so much better than her in terms of looks, singing ability, energy etc. That’s easy to believe because Ai sucks so much but still, how should I know? That’s where the second problem comes in: Show, Don’t Tell. Show us their performances, let us hear them sing, let me decide for myself if they’re that awesome or not, don’t make up my mind for me.

Quite frankly, the construction of the game makes these “super-idols” look terrible anyway. If they’re so famous and fantastic, how can Ai stumble her way through the auditions and fall flat on her face several times while performing the same tired songs in the same tired clothes and still beat them handily every time? If I were a fan of those older idols, I’d be quite pissed.

What’s more, since it’s so hard to believe they’re any good at all, the parts of the story that focus on helping Ai work through her inferiority complex and beat these glamorous idols (i.e. the whole game) come across as false and disingenuous. It makes Ai seem like a fraud, like she’s being falsely modest and fishing for compliments when she puts herself down. I just can’t get into a story like that.

Of course, the one time when they did show something, it was completely unimpressive. They make a huge fuss about Hidaka Mai’s hit song “ALIVE” being the greatest song ever, and when you finally get to hear it, it’s a dull, droning Disney-type ballad. Poorly delivered by Ai’s voice actress to boot, like all the other songs before it. That one I could have done without.

Putting my doubts about the way the story was delivered to one side, I must also take issue with the story itself. Not with the ultimate goal of overcoming her mother’s legacy. That part is fine. It’s all the people she faces along the way I have a problem with. They’re not just talentless idols, they’re also lame characters. Why the heck are they so friendly and helpful to their rival? They’re all so eager to compete with her on an even level. They give her advice, they cheer her up when she’s down, they accept their losses like champs.

Damn it, how am I supposed to feel good about my progress when they’re all so kind and generous and my character is a no-talent loudmouth bobblehead? As a result of their cookie-cutter uniform niceness, the only person who did show a bit of personality, Hidaka Mai, became by far the most exciting person in the game. Instead of being all sugar and spice, she could be catty, boastful, playful, mean and crazy in turn. It’s sad when the “last boss” of the game is the one you’re most rooting for by the end.

Conclusion

Whew. I sure wrote a lot for a game I didn’t even enjoy all that much. This is where I add my usual “It wasn’t that bad” disclaimer, and it’s true, it wasn’t that bad. It wasn’t that good either, and the longer it dragged on, the more “not that good” it got. An Idolm@ster with more things to do, better songs, a more likeable main character and a more colorful supporting staff might be a really good game.

I don’t know if the other Idolm@ster games where you play a producer instead of the idol themselves are better at resolving these issues, but I’m not in the mood to find out. I got to see for myself what Idolm@ster is all about, and I’ll have to be satisfied with that.

On to the next game!

The Idolm@ster: Dearly Stars – Hmm…

I wanted something with absolutely no random battles in it, and I haven’t started a new raising sim in a while so… here we are.

The Idolm@ster: Dearly Stars has you playing as a wannabe idol singer who grows from a complete nobody into a famous id0l. I picked Hidaka Ai, the one in the middle, and I’ve currently got her up to a Rank D idol (over 100,000 fans).

The gameplay is simple enough. You have three stats, Vocal, Dance and Visual (looks), and you raise them through lessons that take the form of annoying touchscreen mini-games. Additionally you pick a song and an outfit depending on which one of the three stats is trending that week, then you carry out promotions that help you build up “memories.” After a few of these, you qualify to take part in an audition where you use those “memories” to hold the judges’ interest long enough to pass. Pass, rank up, next audition, pass rank up, etc.

I haven’t watched the Idolm@ster anime, and this is the first IM game I’m playing but I hear they’re all quite similar. While this isn’t quite the experience I was hoping for, I can (sort of) see what the attraction of this game would be. It’s like the anti-Princess Maker, made for people who find “regular” raising sims long, tiring and/or confusing. They just want to play with a cute girl and they already know what they want her to be. No need to mess with all those stats and jobs and lessons and multiple endings and stress and time limits and stuff like that. Just a linear story, simple mini-games and lots of anime girls to ogle. Makes sense.

It’s not really for me though. I’m going to finish it and everything, but it’s not really doing anything for me. The foregone conclusion (Ai wins “Idol Ultimate” and becomes a top star like her mother) is painful enough without adding the repetitive gameplay and the vaguely irritating story to the mix. At each stage they try to throw an obstacle in Ai’s way, but with the player at the helm and the auditions so easy to win, they just end up looking ridiculous. For example right now I have to beat an idol named Hoshii Miki in an audition. There’s no way I’m going to lose as long as I take lessons and follow the trends, but the game is acting like it’s this insurmountable obstacle that I could never overcome in a million years, blah blah blah. Pathetic.

Anyway, I’m going to finish it. Apart from being piss-easy and highly repetitive, it’s not exactly bad, and it shouldn’t take too long at the rate I’m going. After this I still won’t be ready to take on any random battles, so… hmm… I’ll probably pick up an otome game.