Blade Dancer: Lineage of Shite (spoilers)

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 Blade Dancer 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 somber stuff. “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 developers 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.

Happy New Year! + Gaming Resolutions!

Happy New Year! This was the quietest New Year’s Eve I’d ever spent in my life, thousands of miles away from friends and family. I didn’t even notice when the clock struck twelve because I was too busy reading morbid articles about pythons swallowing people. Don’t ask.

Still, yay, 2012! There’s something nice and round about that number that makes it seem like it’ll be a good year, right? So happy new year to everyone!

Now, back to the important stuff. For the past couple of days I’ve been playing Blade Dancer: Lineage of Light, which like Tactics Ogre: LUCT, is not quite bad enough to quit playing over. I’ll write something about it when I either finish it or give up, whichever one comes first.

Since I don’t plan to buy a 3DS, Vita, 360 or PS3 any time soon, the games I plan to play this year are mostly games from my massive backlog dating back at least 10 years. Twelve games should be reasonable enough.

1. Persona 2: Innocent Sin (PSP) – I started it last year and didn’t get far. I’ll try and finish it once and for all in 2012. No news of an Eternal Punishment remake so far, so I might jump straight into the PSX version of that when I’m done.

2. Summon Night 3 (PS2) – First PS2 troubles then TV-unavailability problems kept me from playing this last year, but this time I’ll try to make it happen. I’d like to play SN4 too, but first things first.

3. Dragon Quest VI (NDS) – On Feb 14th it’ll have been exactly one year since I finished Dragon Quest V, making it as good a time as any to move on to the next one. I’ll probably be desperate for a good, old-school RPG by that point anyway.

4. Tales of Innocence (NDS) – I played this very briefly after finishing Tales of the Tempest. To be honest I thought it was even worse, all the flaws of ToTT but with some reincarnation bullshit thrown in on top. But I only played an hour, so I’m going to restart and give it a proper chance later this year.

5. Wild Arms 2 (PSX) – I haven’t touched my PSOne in years. I think it’s still working, but I’m not going to risk it, so I’ll just play this on an emulator. I played WA1 almost 10 years ago and liked it. Now I’ll get to see if the rest of the series is worth bothering with.

6. Suikoden 2 (PSX) – Same deal as with Wild Arms 2, except I skipped S2 and played S3 and it was really kinda bad. Still, Suikoden 2 is one of those legendary “OMG you have to play this, I can’t believe you haven’t played it yet” games. It should be playable, at the very least.

7. Atelier Elie (PSX) – Also to be emulated. It’s the only “main” Atelier game I have yet to play, apart from Lilie, which I dropped after a few hours because it was frustrating. Atelier Marie was my favorite one of the “real” Atelier games, and Elie is supposed to be a much-improved sequel, so this should be good.

8. Disgaea (PS2) – I’ve had this game for years. I’ve tried to play it several times, but I always quit before too long. Too much stuff to think about, not enough excitement. This year I’m going to give it the mother of all college tries to find out once and for all whether the game is just not for me or whether it’s really as bad as I’ve felt it to be so far.

9. 7th Dragon (NDS) – My love/hate affair with ImageEpoch continues. Luminous Arc 3 was amazing, Criminal Girls was fantastic, Sands of Destruction was so-so, Final Promise Story made me want to nuke Tokyo. What will 7th Dragon be like? I’m quite excited about this game, tbh. There’s a PSP sequel, so if I like this I’ll order that as well.

10. Ni no Kuni: Shikkoku no Madoushi (NDS) – I’ve been waiting and waiting for this to come out in the West. That’s obviously not going to happen any more so I’ll have to import it. And when it’s time to import something, I always ask myself, “Okay, do I really want this game that badly?” Thus far the answer’s been “No” but I think this is the year I’ll finally take the plunge. Maybe.

11. Shining Hearts (PSP) – It looks nice. The heart-collection system sounds…different, I guess? And I haven’t played anything Shining since Shining Force Feather in 2008, so I might as well.

12. Phantasy Star Portable (PSP) – Phantasy Star, this, Phantasy Star, that. I’ve been hearing about you for years. Bring it on, let’s see what you’ve got.

Aaand that’s it. Of course I’m being super-optimistic and just taking it for granted that I’ll have the life, health, time and resources to play all these, but if you can’t be over-optimistic on the first day of the year, when can you be? As for life resolutions, I only have three. One, go to church more often (I only went twice in 2011, for shame), Two, buy more and pirate less, and Three, spend less time playing video games! One hour less a month still counts as less, right? ;-D

Wand of Fortune Portable – Lagi GET!

Nothing like a little romance for Christmas…

A little romance. Most of your relationships in Wand of Fortune Portable 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 on 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 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 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 magic 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.

I like a girl with an appetite

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 would 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 Portable, 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!

 

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (3)

Bwahahahahaha!

Finally finished what is apparently the “Law” route.

I had a bad feeling! This is not the way!

I started out liking Tactics Ogre, 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 a personality 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, “WTH, 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, Don’t 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. Tactics Ogre is a little better in that there’s some foreshadowing done through flashbacks and the Warren Report, but if 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 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 crap. 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 Tactical Guild 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). Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together 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!

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (2)

21:39 hours in and no end in sight. I just started Chapter 4, “Let Us Cling Together,” so that’s probably the last one. I’m tired.

I’m going to say this as gently as I can: This game is a massive joke.

After my last post, I got tired of killing all my enemies just to hear them scream and started aiming for the leader instead. I never noticed until I started gunning for them just how weak, incompetent and STUPID the leaders are.

Call me crazy, but if their death would mean an automatic loss for their side, wouldn’t any sensible leader try to hide or cower a bit to make my task harder? Or hang out at the back and let their troops wear my side down first? Or at the very least, if they had to come out fighting, shouldn’t they’d have higher defense and HP to make them harder to bump off?

None of these things happen. For knights and other fighting types it might make a liiiiittle bit of sense for them to move. But you’re a wizard. Or a cleric. Or a bowman. Why would you want to saunter down in front in Canopus singing “Hit me with your Rhythm Stick”?

Still, that makes the story move that much faster. I have no idea which path I’m going down, but Galgastan is no more now, so I must be doing something right. Only the strong survive. The choices in this game are kinda weird: they all look the same but produce very different results. For example I conquered this castle place and they asked me if I thought they were enemies. Choice A: “Of course not.” Choice B: “How could you be?” Hang on, what’s the difference? They’re almost the same thing. But I chose A, went on my way, and next thing I knew the guy in the castle had committed suicide. Wait, what? But I just said you weren’t– Sheesh.

By the way, even at this late point of the game, my MC (default name Denam, but renamed ‘Angelo’ to suit his pansy nature) STILL has no policy or ideology of his own. He just parrots what others tell him or reacts to what others say, but from the start he never had a clear vision of what he wanted to achieve. And he probably doesn’t have the faintest idea of how to rule a country. Which is fine enough since there are almost no peasants to rule anywhere. The only people you ever get to see are your allies and your enemies, and the occasional dead body when a town is torched, so I don’t even know who I’m doing all this for. Until an enemy mentioned him, Angelo had even forgotten all about his dad he was supposed to be getting revenge for. Sheesh.

For all that, I’m still enjoying mowing down troops with my party and staying alive against fields of dragons. The random battles and sidequests are the best part of the game IMHO. I should be done fairly soon, and then I can decide whether to try and get another ending or to just call it a day.

On a final, happy note, my sister Catiua has parted ways with my company to become the princess of another country. I wish her all the best in her future endeavors. If I get the chance to face her in battle I will not immediately shoot her in the face. I will let a few turns pass first.