Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari – 14 hours in

Quite a bit has changed since I last posted about this game. I was 7 hours in then, now I’m 14 hours along. My party was around level 18, now they’re between levels 30 and 34. I’ve found out more about the story, why Sabi Chantier machines keep attacking people, why it’s so important to rescue townspeople and what my final solution is to all this fighting.

My party has changed as well. I decided that I needed a healer because healing items were costing me a fortune, so I switched Mallarme out for Ceres (very, very reluctantly). Ceres appears to be one of those characters who are useless until they learn their best attacks at very high levels. She only just learned her first All attack, and while it’ll probably be powerful once I’ve maxed it out, I’m not impressed at all right now.

In any case, training up low-level characters is hard in this game. It’s been several hours and several levels later, and Cain and Ceres haven’t quite caught up to Wolf and Rushdie yet. Cain is close, Ceres is about 4 levels behind. So you have to pick a party quickly and stick with it, none of this trying to keep everyone evenly-leveled stuff. Unless you really, really, really like grinding.

It’s mainly your equipment and skills that make the greatest difference to your death or survival in battle, but you can’t get skills without leveling up, so they’re linked. Skills work like this: every time you level up, you get a point to assign to a certain skill. Leveling up certain skills allows you to unlock other ones, and so it goes. It’s not a new system, but Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari is more forgiving than most similar systems, in that it allows you to easily reset and reassign your points any time you like. In exchange for a hefty amount of money, but what’s money when your characters are getting killed?

Now that by trial and error I have chanced upon attack and support skill configurations that work great for me, battles are relatively easier now. I recommended getting Astral Edge in the last post, but now I realize Defense Line (gotten by leveling up Wolf’s Sword Taunt a few times) is better for all but emergency cases, so get that instead.

For random battles, I leveled up Rushdie’s  Sleep Attack (暗示：碧) and got the updated version (暗示：翠) which hits all enemies. I have it maxed right now. Words can’t express just how life-saving it is to put even one enemy in a gang to sleep. Since Rushdie almost always goes first (with a little help from accessories), he can strike with it right at the beginning of the battle, and he’ll usually get at least half of the enemies, usually more.  Just bring it, bad guys! He had an equivalent that paralyses enemies (暗示：緋), but even grunts tend to be resistant to paralysis so I cancelled that and redistributed the points.

That’s not the only reason why Rushdie is my favorite party member, though. Apart from his speed and his sleep attack, he also has an ice attack, Tsumi no Rakuin II (罪の烙印II) that hits every enemy on the field. The attack description said it only hits one, so I ignored the move for a long time, then I tried it on a whim and WHOA! My attack pattern now goes: first turn, put most of them to sleep, second turn, put them on ice. For weak enemies, this is a one-hit kill. Enemies that survive will almost certainly be picked off by my other party members in rapid succession.

When it comes to boss battles, though, Cain does the most damage, hands down. His fire attack (揺らめく紅刃) hits even bosses for a minimum of 300 when maxed out, and his HP and VIT are only second to Wolf’s. In fact, he still has all his SP intact because he doesn’t go down easy. At first his low MP was a liability, but it’s come up quite a bit now. I also have a lot of MP refilling items I haven’t had a chance to use, and in a pinch I can always use his SP move to refill everyone’s MP. He’s pretty awesome.

It’s rare to find RPGs where physical and magical attacks are perfectly balanced and do equal damage. Usually one will dominate throughout, or be more powerful at the beginning and get weaker as the game progresses. In this game “pure” physicals were better at first, but now magic and magic-based physicals are overwhelmingly more powerful. When you level up or when you rest your MP is automatically refilled, so you don’t have to hold back on the heavy stuff either.

Okay, I’m definitely getting cocky now. I’m almost done with the West Gate, then there’s the Main Gate to go through, which should be the final dungeon unless they pull a surprise on me. Maybe the enemies there will kick my attitude back into shape. Or maybe I’ll ride roughshod over them in my usual manner. No clue who the final boss or the mastermind behind the war is so far, but the final confrontation should be fun either way.

Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari – 7 hours in

Also known as Final Promise Story, imageepoch’s first release under their “jprg” brand. I won’t say it’s one of the reasons why I bought a PSP, but it certainly helped. I try not to follow game development too closely, because then when it comes out you’re not surprised or impressed at all, but I liked the little I saw of this, so I started playing it a few days ago.

I haven’t gotten too far yet, just finished killing the boss in the screenshot way down below. He doesn’t have a name but BOY does he pack a punch. I grinded Wolf from level 14 to 18 and switched out Gyro for Mallarme before I could take him down without losing any SP. That screenshot down there is probably from very early in the development process, firstly because that annoying Lissete is missing, and also because Ceres hasn’t joined your party at that point. By the way, it’s blatantly obvious who’s going to join and who’s not, because they all have rooms in your headquarters from the start. Thanks for spoiling, imageepoch.

About the game itself, Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari is a dungeon crawler. A pretty, glorified dungeon crawler, but a dungeon crawler nevertheless. It’s about Yggdra, a country on the verge of ruin and the last survivors currently making their last stand in one part of the stupidly vast castle. The main character Wolf Stingray (yes, that’s really his name) and his team are charged with rescuing the last 2,000 civilians and bringing them to safety. So the game consists of taking a mission – go save these guys – running down looooong corridors for ages and ages, finding the NPC(s) you need to save and fighting off the enemies attacking them. Then you go back and repeat the process again.

Every time you finish a mission, time passes. Every couple of missions Lissete (your controller/navigator/manager) will come up with a mission that progresses the story, you’ll do it, and then it’s back to grunt missions again. It’s very repetitive, but that’s a dungeon crawler for you. I’m astonished by the relative lack of urgency in this game, though. Your country is mostly destroyed and 90% of the citizens have been wiped out, but still everyone in the Grand Hall is just chilling. There are soldiers all over the place guarding empty rooms or just chatting in the hallway. I was seriously expecting a scene out of Gone with the Wind or something – injured soldiers, harried nurses, wailing relatives, etc etc, but even the people you save are just like, “Hey, y’all, wassup?” Well, maybe not so casual but not quite panicky either.

Anyway, it’s a dungeon crawler, which means the battle system is the most important thing. You take four characters into battle, and you get a first-person perspective like old-school Dragon Quest. It looks like this:

I only chose this development screenshot so I could show you the boss that kicked my ass so hard. In the finalized battle system, there’s this annoying girl perched in the top right corner who just repeats the same words over and over and over again: “The enemy had changed its target! The enemy has changed its target! The enemy has changed its target!” ad nauseam. There she is, right there:

Btw, “The enemy has changed its target” indicates that the enemy is going to attack whoever attacked it or healed last. They especially like to gang up on anyone who uses healing magic or items, which makes healers like Sasha pretty hard to use until Wolf is strong enough to draw all their attention. Ideally you want enemies to attack Wolf at all times because he has the highest HP and Defence. He even has two skills, Sword Taunt and Astral Edge, that gets the enemy to focus on him. If you play this, try to get Astral Edge as soon as possible. It consumes SP, but it’s so useful I use it regardless. I’ll stop when Wolf’s SP goes down to 20.

The overriding principle in the battles is this: You have to keep your allies from being KO’ed if at all possible. Imageepoch heavily promoted Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari‘s “Death is Permanent” system, but that’s not quite the case. See the SP stat under HP and MP? When your allies get hit after they’re KO’ed, it starts to go down. When it reaches 0, they release one final, mighty attack and then they kick the bucket for good. Incidentally this refills the SP of all your other members, so I’m thinking of sacrificing Sasha whenever it becomes necessary. I hate her. I hate Ceres more, but I’m positive I’d be Game Over’ed if I knocked her off, so too bad.

I am not a fan of the female characters in this game. Lissete would be okay if she didn’t keep harassing me in battle. My kingdom for a “Shut Lissete up” option. Ceres’s high-pitched squeal grates on my ears and her “naive princess trying to be strong” gimmick was old eleven years ago in FF9. I’ve taken to muting the PSP whenever she opens her mouth. And WTF is wrong with her, switching from a sensible uniform to a horrid frilly white dress with blue ribbons? Dress your age! I just got Mallarme a while ago, and her poor dress sense and fake flirting act (if she really liked me, she’d let me sleep in her bed!) rub me the wrong way, but if she continues to kick ass in battle like she’s doing then all will be forgiven.

That’s what happened with me and Cain, anyway. Mouth off all you like, just get the job done when it counts. Presently my favorite character is Rushdie because he’s fast and accurate on the battlefield and calm, collected and supportive off it. As a result I’m really worried he’s going to betray me at some point. It’s always the nicest guys who turn traitor, after all. And doesn’t his portrait make him look like he’s constantly smirking? Very suspicious. I’ll never forgive him if he turns Judas though.

Enough gaming for one day, on to other things.

Shepherd’s Crossing – General impressions

Since I enjoyed Shepherd’s Crossing 2 for the DS so much, I decided to make Shepherd’s Crossing the first game I played when I got my new PSP. Yes, I finally caved in and bought one. The release of Final Promise Story (Saigo no Yakusoku no Monogatari) made me sit down and take stock, and I realized there are over 75 games I’d like to play on the PSP. I’m too impatient to wait for a price drop when the NGP comes out, so I figured now was as good a time as ever to get one.

I needed something calming after my Tales of the Tempest experience, but I’m not sure Shepherd’s Crossing was really it. This is what happens when you play the sequel before the original and find the sequel has so many great improvements that the original sucks mightily in comparison. Don’t get me wrong. Shepherd’s Crossing isn’t all bad. It just has a number of frustrating elements that make it a tedious chore to play.

Firstly, I finally appreciate how much the clearly demarcated fields helped in Shepherd’s Crossing 2. It was still disorganized, but you could at least plan things: I’m going to fence my animals in here, I’m going to plant cabbages here, and tomatoes there and put a couple of trees there. This game is a complete mishmash, just a wide field with no clear markings at all. It’s so messy! There are many different types of fences, blocks and pickets you can use to pen your animals or fence your crops, but they’re SO hard to place correctly. And every time some animals show up to wreck your farm (which is often), your animals escape anyway and you have to round them up again.

Even worse there are so many things you can’t do in this game: you can’t chop down trees, you can’t explore your house, you can’t leave your farm except to go to the market, you can’t butcher your own animals, you can’t cook or process produce, you can’t get married or have kids, etc, etc. It’s far more limited than 2, especially since you can only hold 3 items at a time. And here I thought 5 items was bad.

You can hunt, though, which is a fun diversion from the main game. It’s a simple turn-based interface where you raise dogs and other attack animals, teach them some attacks and sic them on the local wildlife. Don’t worry, they deserve it. For your reward you get things like pelts and meat as well as points to trade in for items. It’s pretty fun, except they also give you these little statues that teach you stuff, and that you can’t get rid of even after learning the skills. They’re taking up space in my storehouse and it’s pissing me off! Oh wait, it looks like I can put them in the trash can. Just hope it doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass.

Back to the flaws, though, the biggest one for me is the non-existence of money. There’s a reason mankind moved from the barter system to a cash-based society pretty quickly, and that’s because bartering sucks. But at least in real life bartering is a bit flexible. In this game you can only trade specific items for specific other items, and forget about trading that item you have plenty of for that other item you really really need right now, it’s not going to happen. I’ve been forced to drag out my game a little longer because I need to grow wheat to proceed. Only the trading process to get wheat seed is so long (raise rabbits, grow cabbage, feed rabbit cabbage, get rabbit fur) and the wheat is so reluctant to grow that it all died the previous year and I’m having to start the process all over again. RRRGGGGH.

Oh, and my PSP screwed me royally last night. In a stunning incidence of poor design, the battery indicator is placed right under your right palm when you’re playing. In other words, unless you move your hand away frequently (and why would you do that?) you won’t notice when your battery is about to run out. Even if you do move your hand, the low-battery indicator is a slow green flash, so you won’t get the message without staring at it for a few seconds. Next thing you know, fwip. There goes your game and any progress you’ve made in the last couple of hours. I reckon I must have lost about 12 days of progress last night. RRRRRGHHH again. Wait… I just turned my PSP on and it looks like I didn’t lose anything. Phew, and yippee!

Anyway, I’m only two years into the game right now. If things pick up, I’ll let y’all know.

Tales of the Tempest – Mercifully short

I killed the final boss and finished the game about 15 minutes ago and I’m still waiting for the usual feeling of relief to hit me. I don’t think it’s coming this time. Tales of the Tempest couldn’t even do the final battle right, that’s how useless a game it is.

Not like the battle itself was bad or anything, it was tough in its own way and I died twice (let me skip the talking scenes, dammit!) before realizing that letting Arria waste her MP on Tempest wasn’t such a bright idea. Now that I think of it, if I had taken control of her and spammed Nurse endlessly, the final battle would have been even easier. Luckily the (nameless) final boss had a pitiful amount of HP, so he went down pretty quickly and…stayed down? Huh? I was waiting with bated breath for his real transformation where he would show me his true power gained over 100 years of manipulating humans but nope. He lay there while my party gloated, “Nyaah nyaah, we beat you ‘cuz we have friends and you don’t!” Then he winked out of existence, presumably from sheer embarrassment, and that was that. Pitiful.

In some ways, playing Tales of the Tempest was a real education. I got to experience once again how the inclusion or omission of a few basic things can be enough to ruin a gaming experience. For example Tempest‘s story was weak all around, but it would have been almost passable if it didn’t contain so many cliched and predictable elements. Oh hey Caius, Lucius looks exactly like you! Wouldn’t it be funny if you two were twins separated at birth? And if the pope was your dad, wouldn’t that be funny too? Wait, WTF? That’s what really happened?! Excuse me, this calls for a song. Ahem *clears throat* A-one, a-two, a one-two-three-four:

BBBUUUULLLLSHIIIIITTTT
BBBUUUULLLLSHIIIIITTTT
BBBUUUULLLLSHIIIIITTTT
BBBUUUULLLLSHIIIIITTTT
(repeat till end of game)

I’m not even going to touch the whole speciesism thing or the whole Arria “I was a spy, but now I’m not, so you guys have to instantly forgive me for everything, because you were too stupid to notice I was suspicious from the start” twist (BBBUUUULLLLSHIIIIITTTT). And the pope and Rommy, “I’m not really evil, I was just possessed by spots. Yes, spots” thing (BBBUUUULLLLSHIIIIITTTT) doesn’t even deserve a mention. What a weak cast of characters. The only ones who get any character development are Rubia and Arria and in both cases it goes like, “I am a wishy-washy insult to all females. Oh wait, no I’m not.” *yaaawn* I wager by this time next month I’ll have forgotten all their names and faces.

I finished the game at around 15 hours, since my last save says 14:47h. I’m not kidding when I estimate at least 8 of those hours were spent walking or fighting. In fact, that’s probably an underestimation. Here the basic things that were missing were: a) A way to walk or run faster, or b) A means of land or air transport, or, c) A way to warp back to places you’ve already been to. All these things were missing, so most of Tales of the Tempest consists of slow, random-battle-filled crawls from one place to another. Apart from artificially inflating the game time, this also prevented me from doing most of the sidequests because most towns and cities were too far out of my way. That the few I did do had crap rewards didn’t exactly help either.

The menu was hard to figure out, which is weird because menus are the most basic of basics. The letters were frequently tiny and hard to see, and the interface was just messed up. For one thing, instead of having all your equipment options obvious at a glance, first you have to press Equipment, which gives you the Equipment/Title options, then you can go to Weapons/Armor/Accessories. Was there really no way they make all those options display at once? It’s just so unwieldy.

So, crap story, crap characters, crap world map, crap movement, crap menus, crap game. Was there anything good about it? The battle system was okay, I guess. Tales series fans must find it pathetically easy, though. I’m not exaggerating when I say I’m bad at action RPGs, and even I made it all the way to the final boss without dying even once (which he quickly corrected). And I did it just by mashing A, B and the directional buttons. I almost never blocked, and I certainly never figured out how to use 奥義s and 必殺技s. So it’s all right for newbies, but probably a slap in the face for any veteran Tales player. Unless they’re all that easy, in which case, bring them on!

On top of that, being able to customize your weapon was helpful for fighting certain enemies, and it was nice of them to add a cooking option. One that I almost never used because I never needed to, but it’s the thought that counts. And it was nice of them to keep it short. When a game sucks this much, keeping it short is like a mercy-killing, ending things quickly instead of prolonging the suffering unnecessarily. Thanks to this solitary act of kindness, I am now free to explore other games, which I will proceed to do with gusto. Adieu, Tales of the Tempest.

Tales of the Tempest – Dull

Tales of the Tempest is one of those mediocre games I find it difficult to write about. This is my first real attempt at a Tales game (apart from a few hours of Tales of Symphonia long ago), so it’s not like I had any previous standards or super-high expectations. I just wanted to know what all the fuss was about.

After 9:07 hours of play, I still don’t know. I just got to Laymon city, for anyone who knows the game. The hero Caius is level 24, everyone else is 23 or 22. The game is so dull. So little has happened in all that time. The beginning was packed with events for the first hour or so, after that I’ve just been walking along through huge fields and forests and deserts fighting tons and tons of thieves and monsters. I reckon at least 6 of those 9 hours have been spent either fighting or walking.

The remaining 3 hours devoted to story progression have been disappointingly ho-hum. Caius’ adopted dad gets captured for being a Lycanth (beastman) and Rubia’s parents are killed by the same people, so they set out on a rescue/revenge adventure. Eventually they find out the always-evil Church is capturing Lycanth because they’re after special red stones, some of which Caius just happens to possess. So now they’re half looking for the truth, half on the run from the church. That’s how far I’ve gotten and if the story is going to pick up, now would be a good time to do so.

If the battle system wants to pick up, now would be a good time as well. In general I kind of like it, in that it’s simple enough even for someone like me to be able to play. I haven’t been Game Over’ed even once! It’s so easy, just mash A repeatedly, occasionally push B and a direction to unleash set attacks. Move back and use an item if your HP/TP gets low, otherwise bash away until enemies are dead. There are three lines of battle that you can move back and forth between, which lets you target different enemies or escape if you find yourself being ganged up on. There are also things like ultimate attacks and weapon-strengthening options, which I have been half-assing because I don’t really get them.

I think it’s a feature of Tales games in general that you can only control one person in battle. I remember Symphonia being like that, at least. In this game Caius does the most consistent damage so I stick with him. Your other party members are close to useless. Even if you have their AI set to “protect life” your healers will still heal you only when they feel like it. Meanwhile your attackers will hit the enemy a few times, then run to other side of the screen, then run back and hit them a few times, then run away again… none of which helps them stay alive longer or helps the battle to end faster. So I’d like the battle system to make my ally AI not so horrible and my healers not so stingy with their MP. I’m going to experiment with a few more strategy options and see if that helps any.

The encounter rate is pretty high, but there are items that can fix that. I’m just saving them for the final dungeon which is sure to suck, so I have only myself to blame for that.

All the other aspects of the game have been meh-to-bad so far. The music is ordinary, though I do like the opening theme. The characters are mostly inoffensive, but not particularly likeable. Caius and Rubia feel particularly childish, but this isn’t exactly a bad thing. Tilkis and Albert, why do you guys look so girly? As for Forest and Arria they were obviously thrown into the game because it needed more playable characters. They have no real reason for being there, but they don’t get on my nerves either, so they can stick around.

The bad guys are awful though. Albert “I am evil and ambitious”, Lucius “I am not-so-evil and conflicted,” Rommy “I am evil and crazy” and their minions make up the bulk of the serious enemies so far. They go down like pussies in battle though, I can’t believe they ever managed to kill anyone. Bunch of worthless sissies. Gotta hope their true motives will be revealed soon because I’m not impressed by what I’ve seen so far. The writers are not trying at all.

Graphics are the meh-est of the mehs. The fields are needlessly large and extremely bland, which is doubly painful when you realize your grandma moves faster than Caius even without her wheelchair. The trees and other natural features look unnatural. You can’t pass through any forests except one, you have to run around them. You can’t scale any ridges. All the towns have the exact same architecture, just slightly bigger or slightly smaller. Most townspeople have a sickly pink skin color that’s just disturbing. Faces lack detail, even for main characters. Limbs and bodies are blocky and pixelly. Colors aren’t exactly washed out, but they aren’t vibrant either. And so on, and so forth. Again, were they trying?

Tales of the Tempest is not a fun game, but it’s not hard to keep going either, so I guess I’ll keep going and see how it all ends. I remember reading somewhere that it’s pretty short, so maybe I’m about halfway through. This shouldn’t take too long if I keep at it. Wish me luck!