Took down all posts about Criminal Girls

Criminal Girls PSP coverLet’s get straight to the point, for once. I feel like a reprobate for liking and recommending a game about torturing teenage girls for the gamer’s sexual pleasure, so I’m taking down all my posts about Criminal Girls. I still like the game a lot – revisionist history can only go so far – but I don’t want to be involved in anyone’s decision to buy it, so I’ll keep my thoughts to myself.

I played a lot of dungeon crawlers in 2011, and Criminal Girls was my favorite of the lot. Compared to the others it was short, it had simple, straightforward dungeons, the challenge level was just right, the suggestion-based battle system never got old, there were a lot gamer-friendly features like instant warps back to camp and, most of all, I loved the cast of characters, loved their individual personalities, loved watching them grow, loved watching them interact. What I did not love were the torture minigames, but I was able to hold my nose enough to enjoy the rest of the game.

Now, it hasn’t happened very often, but occasionally a game I play that I think will never get localized does get localized. I think it’s only happened to Unchained Blades and Ragnarok Tactics so far, and in both cases when I heard the announcement I was like “What, really?” then it came out and it was like “Hey, cool” and that was the end of that.

With Criminal Girls on the other hand, the whole censorship thing with NISA and their “This game is bad and you should feel bad” attitude towards the contents got me thinking, is the game really all that bad? And if I’m honest with myself, the answer is “Yeah, kinda.” The execution may be more silly than sensual most of the time, but the idea behind the game is pretty reprehensible once you think about it.

“But that’s no call to delete all your posts!” you say. Maybe. But I feel better this way.

“When we start self-censoring the terrorists win!” Maybe. But I feel better this way.

“Ah come on, it’s just a game.” Definitely. But I feel better this way.

“This is pretty sudden.” It’s been bothering me for a while. My choices were Delete/Ignore/Rewrite. I went with Ignore for a while, but now I just want this thing off my chest.

“This is really selfish of you.” I’m sorry. You can vent in the comments if you’d like. The posts are gone for good, though.

Dragoneer’s Aria – Very long and very slow

What I asked for: A short, English RPG to act as a rest stop between UnchainBlades Rexx and Persona 2

What I got: Dragoneer’s Aria. Well, it’s in English all right. And it’s definitely an RPG. But at 89 hours and counting, it is hands down the longest RPG I’ve played this year. And it’s not just long, it’s slow. In fact it’s long because it’s slow. When the hell will this thing ever end?

[EDIT: I just found out that there’s an error with the PSP clock in this game: it keeps track of time even when the PSP is asleep, meaning I probably played only about 20-30 hours. Disregard future references to 89 hours.]

The Story: An evil black dragon who was sealed away has broken free and is going to destroy the world. But he can wait a couple of hours while the heroes tramp over the world trying to stop him. I’ve only seen ol’ Nidhogg twice in the whole game, and both times he wasn’t that scary. I only have the game’s word for it at this point that he’s trouble, but that’s how RPGs usually go. Aaaaanyway, our protagonist, a ladyboy named Valen, has to team up with a healer named Euphe, a loli pirate named Mary and an unpleasant elf named Ruslan to find the secret to Nidhogg’s powers so they can stop him once and for all.

The Slowass Battle System: Make it stop. Please. Somebody. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I estimate a full 80 of those 89 hours so far have either been spent running around fields or wasted on the most sluggish battle system I’ve ever faced in my life. It’s hard to describe length verbally, so I looked around Youtube to see if I could find an average battle. i found this minor battle which takes 10 minutes to complete:

It was only that short because there was one enemy. Take note of how every single move by every single character is sllooowly animated, how it takes 15 seconds for each magical attack to be charged up, executed and to hit its target. How each character has to recite a spell “Magic Shot Aspersion! Sicken!” before finally releasing the magic. How much time is wasted by the camera showing each character attacking/defending/being hit individually instead of showing them all together.

The Mana/Energy bar at the top acts as your MP bar. Regular attacks and successful Guards fill it up and Mana (magic, special skill, dragon skill) attacks drain it. The guy in the video plays a lot more defensively than I do and spends a lot of time on guarding and using buffs/debuffs. Level ups are plentiful and refill your HP to full, so I prefer to attack wherever possible.

Using Mary’s Mana Boost skill means I never have to guard to build up Mana either. I don’t think I’ve ever guarded in the entire game. But even with my Attacking mentality, the average field battle takes upwards of 5 minutes to complete and most boss battles take between 15 and 60 minutes (rrgh, Great Spirit). And there are plenty of both in Dragoneer’s Aria. The enemies have high HP, high defence and high attack power, and sometimes they’ll even heal themselves just to mess with you. It’s only in the last few hours or so, now that my characters have hit level 60-ish, that battles are “only” taking 2 or 3 minutes each, and even then I still have to sit through the same slow animations. This sucks.

The Slowass Everything Else: Everyone talks like the player is hard of hearing: slowly, carefully, pronouncing every word, with long pauses between each sentence. Even when something “dramatic” is happening, they take sweet time getting it out. And each line must be punctuated by some kind of look, or gesture, or head toss, which also takes a while to play out. Half the time they aren’t even saying anything worthwhile, just bickering among each other or making snide comments. *sigh*

The story is slow too. I thought T.I.T.S. was bad, but now I bow before the true masters of long drawn-out storytelling. I was very happy when the evil black dragon showed up and laid waste to the city within 5 minutes of the game starting. I thought for sure I’d make a few rounds, find out a few secrets and then kill the boss and that’d be it. More fool me, I am making a few rounds and I have found out a few secrets, but because of the slow battles and long treks, that’s taken me 89 hours. And what I’ve found out isn’t that interesting either. Why am I still doing this?

Hmm. Why am I still playing this game? Hmmmmmmmmm… I’ll have to think on that one.

UnchainBlades Rexx – Finished!

How I felt a few days ago

I was ill for a couple of days after my last post. I’m all better now, but for a while I didn’t have the energy for anything more rigorous than lying in bed and whining, so it took a while to get round to finishing this game. I killed the last boss at around 4pm yesterday, clearing the game and unlocking the 101-floor bonus dungeon. I’m not interested in post-game content though, so that’s it for me.

All in all UnchainBlades ReXX was a fun but very repetitive dungeon crawler. Definitely not for beginners, and definitely not for anyone who hates forced grind, but I can handle stuff like that in moderation, so I had a good time. The first few stages were really hard, but after that it was fairly easy. It’s like it was made for me, with all the complaining I’ve been doing about easy games these days. Some way or another I ended up hopelessly overlevelled in the last dungeon, and I used a lot of monster-repelling items before doing my usual tapdance over the final boss’s face.

This game, like any dungeon crawler, is more about patience, endurance and a high tolerance for extreme repetitiveness than about skill or strategy or anything like that. My personal experience was positive, but anyone considering buying the game should be very, very certain that they like grinding, very very certain that they’re not expecting a good story or good characters and super-duper certain that they can stomach spending hours and hours in exploring the same dungeon to the same tunes.  They tried to lighten things up a bit by adding quests and foraging and alchemy, but it was just more tediousness in the end. I myself had a few moments where I considered throwing in the towel, but those came towards the end when I was almost done anyway, so I was able to push myself to finish it. I don’t think I could do this again any time soon, though.

When the credits rolled, I noticed that the main theme was apparently composed by Nobuo Uematsu. I had no idea. Or more like, I have no idea which one the main theme was. None of the songs stuck in my mind, but apart from the horrible rock-theme in the fire dungeon, none of them were terrible either.

Alchemy system = FAIL

The story was stupid till the end though. Apart from Nico and a pair of NPCs, everyone else wasted their wishes either on invalid wishes, on worthless crap or on undoing other people’s wishes. They’re going to be really sorry when they get home to find out everyone’s been wiped out by an earthquake or something. Should I spoil it in detail? Hmm. Hmmm… No, I’ll let it off this time.

And of course, they had the usual mandatory “Friends makes you stronger, you’re nothing without friends” JRPG moral. Why are Japanese game makers so hung up on friendship anyway? After the 100th iteration you’ve gotta wonder who they’re really trying to convince: us, or themselves? It’s not like “friendship power” doesn’t appear in non-Japanese works as well, but there it’s usually aimed at kids, not grown men and women. What motivates this message? There’s a masters’ thesis in here somewhere, if anyone cares to look.

Enough about UBR. Now comes the formidable task of figuring out what to play next. I’m going to delay Persona 2 for just a little longer and I’ve given up on completing Blue Roses, so my schedule is wide open. Ideally I’d like to play a short, normal RPG in English, so I’ll poke around a bit and see what I can find. See ya!

UnchainBlades Rexx – Almost done (spoilers)

I said in my last post that I was putting UnchainBlades Rexx away, but then I thought “Just one more run” and got sucked in again, so here we are 20 hours later. Addictive dungeon crawler is addictive! I finally got all three parties put together, which increased my monster limit to 100 and my item limit to 60. Now I can stay out all day exploring if I want, which puts a whole new perspective on things.

The gameplay is getting more and more fun, but the story is getting dumber with every passing moment. I know, I know, it’s a dungeon RPG, not an Oscar-winning movie. Dumb is still dumb, though. Seeing as the point is dungeon exploration, you don’t necessarily have to have a reason for all the crawling, but when you do, the least it can do is not be insulting. Spending 5 painful hours exploring a dungeon just so [SPOILER!] my party member with a lolita complex can wish for my other underage party member to like him [END SPOILER] is wrong on so many levels I don’t even know where to start. The wish didn’t even come true, but [SPOILER!]I felt dirty just having him in my party, so I replaced him at the first opportunity.[END SPOILER] Anyway, the one who really needs help is the writer who thought it would be a good idea and the rest of the game company who sat back and watched it happen. Bunch of sickos, all of them.

The rest of the characters seem to have similarly frivolous wishes. Like “I wanna be less ditzy” or “I wanna become a dragon because a dragon saved me once.” or “I don’t want to be afraid of men.” Ma’am, I’m not climbing for 6 hours just so you can get a boyfriend. Save that crap for Dragon Ball. Only two characters seem to have any proper wishes, and it’s weird because the game makes the wishes out to be so serious and urgent, but then one of them gets the chance to wish and passes it up twice. What could those wishes possibly be? I’m looking forward to finding out.

Apart from that, nothing new on the gaming front. UnchainBlades Rexx is all I did this weekend. I forgot to mention a few more things about the battle system. The first one is Judgment Battles. Judgment Battles are the whole reason why I frequently had to stop and catch monsters just to proceed, so I can’t believe I forgot to say anything about them last time.

Judgment Battles: Battles between your monsters and the local monsters in the dungeon. You are forced to do them at least twice per dungeon, and there are several optional fights as well. Judgment Battles are carried out DDR-style by pressing the directional buttons at the correct times. At random points, a master (i.e. one of your party members) can step in and give support. This happens in a very short window and if you fail to press the correct button your chance is gone. There is also the occasional “Single Combat” chance, which is basically “Mash O to win.” I suck at button-mashing, but it doesn’t matter because all Judgment Battles are won and lost by the number, strength and level of your unchained monsters.

That’s why they serve as a roadblock, because your monsters become useless so quickly you’ll be stuck without adding at least a few high-level monsters to your party. But! If they’re high-level, they’ll be incredibly difficult to unchain – especially since you’ll be trying to stay alive while unchaining them. Now you see why I had to roam around for 3 hours unchaining monsters before I could continue? I hate Judgment Battles.

Anima: I mentioned Link Skills last time and said they were a pain to use because you had to get monsters with the same Anima as the skill you wanted to use. What I didn’t add was that there’s a way to give certain Anima to monsters. If you level up a monster to its Max level and then dismiss it, it leaves one of its Animas behind, which can be equipped to other monsters. E.g. If Monster A drops the “Lightning” anima, you can give it to Monster B in addition to what it already has.

The reason I hadn’t bothered with this before now was because it wasn’t practical. For much of the game, you have a 30 monster limit. Because of the aforementioned Judgment Battles, you have to make sure they’re always the strongest, highest-level monsters you can get. Since monsters level up so slowly, it was easier and faster to catch new ones than to grind weaklings to their max level.

Merging parties in chapters 4 and 5 solved that, however. First it raised my monster limit to 60, then to 100, and more importantly it brought several weak monsters into the fold who could be leveled up much quicker by fighting high level monsters. Plus right now my party (Fang, Lucius, Marie and Lapis) is strong enough that it doesn’t have to depend on friendly monsters taking the occasional hit for them.

They’re strong enough, in fact, that I’m still not bothering with Link Attacks, because I can get the battles done just fine without them. The only one I need is Marie’s Sleep Song, which has a very high chance of putting every enemy on the screen to sleep. I learned that lesson from Final Promise Story: sleep attacks are the best! And they don’t ever wake up unless you hit them, so the battles are far less difficult now. *sniff* I’m so happy…

Sheesh, I’m not sure why I’m going into so much detail about a game that’s never going to cross the Pacific, but whatever. I’m having fun. I’m almost done with what is probably the last-but-one dungeon (they say it’s the last one, which means there’s gotta be one more left), so I should be done soon. Awwww…

UnchainBlades Rexx – Hope you like grinding!

I finally hit my limit and will be putting this game away briefly while I recuperate with less grindsome games. I’m 24 hours in, probably around the halfway mark. Very, very little has happened except I fought a lot of random battles and killed two bosses. Two bosses in 24 hours.

Still, if you like grinding and first-person dungeon crawling, you could do a lot worse than UnchainBlades Rexx. In fact, you might even like it. But this game is not for everyone, and before you pick it up there are a few questions you should ask yourself.

1. Do you like being prevented from progressing with a story until you go catch monsters for 3 hours?

2. For that matter, do you like grinding in the same small patch of dungeon for 3 hours?

3. On that note, do you like spending hours catching monsters that become obsolete almost as fast as you can catch them?

4. While we’re at it, do you like unimaginative monster designs and lots of palette swaps?

5. Do you like climbing through several vast, twisty, similar-looking dungeon floors?

6. Do you like making a little progress, warping out to save, coming back and starting all over again, making a little more progress and repeating the process 200 times to complete a dungeon?

7. Do you enjoy raising a party from zero to hero only to have them snatched from you and replaced with level 1 weaklings?

8. If yes, would you enjoy doing it twice in a row?

9. Answer the following question: I enjoy listening to mediocre, slightly grating background music, Y/N?

10. Do you like item fusion systems that require you to go foraging with highly breakable shovels, saws and pickaxes, and that taunt you by showing items you can’t possibly make at that stage in the game?

The Goddess of Tacky Outfits

If you answered “No” to more than a few of these questions, you shouldn’t even be playing a dungeon crawler in the first place. Repetition is the name of the game for that genre, so if you want lots of different locations, tons of NPCs to interact with, or basically any variety of any sort, you’re barking up the wrong tree. For me, #1, #2, #7 and #8 are kind of bothering me, but not enough to make me dislike the game. Yet.

The story: UnchainBlades Rexx is set in a world where the Goddess Clunea can grant any one wish – provided you can get to her. The game starts with our super-strong protagonist Fang making his way to her only to insult her. She retaliates by stripping him of his immense powers, whereupon he decides to go back there and teach her a thing or two. A moment’s reflection suggests that she’s just going to strip him of his powers again, but Fang is a fighter, not a philosopher, so that’s your story. Elsewhere on the continent are several other people with wishes of their own, and the game switches from one set of people to another every chapter. Presumably they’ll all come together at the end.

The gameplay: It’s a simple, but repetitive process of going to a dungeon, exploring till you get too weak, warping out to save and recover and coming back to do it all over again until you finish the dungeon. The two dungeon bosses I fought were fairly tough, so you can be proud by the time you finish. Your party will be strong and you’ll have lots of money and items… which is why it’s really going to suck when they take all that away in the next chapter and force you to start afresh with a new level 1 party.

The game is called UnchainBlades because as you go along, you can “Unchain” monsters. This consists of beating a monster to within an inch of its life, and then playing a little mini-game with a shrinking circle to see if you can catch it or not. That part is not hard. The hard part is weakening the monster enough without killing it and then hoping it will let you unchain it, all while it whacks away at your party. Hard. ‘Unchainability’ is random and depends on your level and quite a bit of luck. It follows, then, that any monster weak enough to be easily recruited will become useless almost immediately, but you do get lucky once in a while.

I spent at least 3 hours running around this little patch of dungeon

The battle system: Standard speed-based turns. Speed counts for a lot in this game. You have your basic attacks, skills, items, defend, escape. Escape works in all battles except event-battles. Party members have a Burst gauge that fills up as they get attacked. When it’s full they can unleash a super-powerful attack. Nothing new there. UBR does only two new things with the battle system.

Firstly, the monsters you unchain can be set as “Followers” and if they like you at all, they will randomly either take blows for you or carry out follow-up attacks. Depending on your performance in battle, you may gain Charisma Points and rank up in Charisma. This will allow you to equip more followers and will improve the mood of those you’ve already got on. Additionally, your monsters will occasionally ask you questions after battle, and depending on your answer your Charisma/their mood can go up or down (trying to be nice to them is usually counterproductive. They are monsters, after all).

The second new thing UBR has is Link Skills. Link Skills are attacks activated by having certain monsters with certain Anima as followers. If Skill A needs Earth, Wind and Fire to become usable, you have to find monsters with that Anima and put them on. In my experience this is way too much trouble for regular battles. And for boss battles it’s more important to have monsters who love you enough to take hits for you. But it’s still early days yet, so I might revise this opinion depending on what skills I get later.

Character growth: You level up normally, but with every level up your party members get 2 Skill points to use on the Skill Map. Skill Map, Sphere Grid, Ether Grid, whatever, you know the drill. This is the only way to get new attacks, Link Skills, passive abilities, etc. These grids are huge, and you only get 2 SP per level up so filling out the whole thing is probably impossible on one playthrough. I started out going blindly, but now my advice to new players would be: 1. Head straight for the Burst Gauge nodes. These will give you access to stronger burst attacks. 2. Ignore Link skills unless they’re buffs 3. Get useful passive skills 4. Speed! Speed! Speed!

Where I am right now: On my third real dungeon and third party. Being robbed of my powerful party was not okay the first time, but I adjusted. But this time I don’t even have a party, I just have one lone swordsman. That means if he gets wiped out, it’s game over. That’s not a problem because he’s actually quite strong – the problem is he’s so strong, in fact, that he’s one-shotting monsters instead of recruiting them. It’s just all kinds of frustrating right now, which is why I’m taking a break. I’ll be back soon enough. This game is pretty addictive, in its own way.