Put Tokyo Xanadu eX+ on hold and started Atelier Ayesha Plus

…but I don’t like Atelier Ayesha Plus so far. Even though it’s only December of year 1, it’s quite boring. In this game, Ayesha’s sole reason for doing alchemy is to track down her sister, so the joy of doing alchemy for its own sake is non-existent. My great joy in Atelier games, reduced to a pointless preliminary. Oh, the shame!

The alchemy itself isn’t bad, though. They went with all-new designs for most of the items and there are a lot of new items I’ve never made before in all my years of playing, so that’s good. It’s also good that your basket has much more capacity now because of the way items stack, so you can forage much more with less stress. I haven’t gotten the hang of the Ayesha’s alchemy skills yet, i.e. when to use what and why, but I’ll pick it up eventually. Same with the whetstones and dyes, though TBH having to tweak and re-tweak equips to get all the right bonuses and resistances is my least favorite aspect of the games.

I started this game on Hard, but so far it’s just normal. I got too much done in one playthrough in Rorona, Totori and Meruru. The latter two especially left me twiddling my thumbs after a while, so I wanted a slightly more panicked pace this time. Unfortunately Hard mode in Atelier Ayesha Plus seems like they just jacked up some prices (?) and increased the HP of the enemies (?) but they’re not even that hard and stuff isn’t that expensive. I can’t imagine what Normal mode would be like.

Do your best not to be hated by me.

Back to the complaints about the story, I don’t like Ayesha. She’s too faux-cute and ditzy. And I’m not saying they have to give her a carrot or pie or mushroom addiction, but can’t they make her personality stand out somehow? She’s supposed to be chasing this sister of hers, but the sister disappeared before the game even started. I haven’t met her, I’ve barely seen any flashbacks. How am I supposed to get excited about helping someone I don’t care about (Ayesha) look for someone I don’t know (Nio)? Especially when the main character doesn’t care about the stuff I do care about?

Also the playable cast is crap. Too many skinny little twig-like girls. When the game intro started with two grown men instead of little kids, I thought “Yay! No more moe!” but I was so wrong. I want more testosterone! Or at least some different physiques.

Current progress: Average party level of 19, Ayesha’s alchemy level around 20. Nothing much happened for the longest time, but now I’ve been told that if I go south beyond Hallos village I can find someone who will give me the next story trigger, so I’ll work on that now. Need to spend a bit of time grinding up/buying bombs first though. And better whetstones and dyes.

It’s a bit early to be writing this post, but after 6 in-game months I’ve earned the right to complain a little bit. I’m not enjoying Atelier Ayesha Plus. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to enjoy about it. The albums and achievements at every step? They just stress me out. The quests you can’t do half the time because they’re asking for items you don’t have? Items that regular townspeople shouldn’t even know about because alchemy is so arcane?

Or am I supposed to be enjoying the “cute” characters? They’re not cute, they’re not funny, they’re not even that useful in battle. But this could be another Atelier Lina situation where I was playing it all wrong and later have to eat crow while proclaiming my love for the game. I’ll finish the first in-game year and come back for a re-evaluation.

Tokyo Xanadu eX+ isn’t dropped either. I’ve put in at least 10 game hours since I last posted and made a little bit of progress with the story, which is normal for Falcom RPGs. IMO the game is getting kind of stupid right now, but if it ends in the next 10 hours or so, it won’t be so bad. Loving the combat as usual, though the dungeon gimmicks are gradually getting more annoying. Will update once I hit 30 hours, as previously agreed upon. See ya!

Dropped Chaos Rings III and continued Tokyo Xanadu eX+

Chaos Rings III is a nice, colorful game with a simple story and pleasant characters. I have high hopes that it will be a great game once I get some better Genes and a higher MP cap. Right now, though, I just don’t feel like dealing with the magic restrictions and the resulting slow battles, so I’m shelving it for now. It’s not dropped-dropped, but don’t expect to see it here for a while.

Instead I’ve been continuing Tokyo Xanadu eX+, which I started late last year but only recently got serious about. As I said in my initial post on the game, it’s a lot of fun but not the action RPG I was looking for. Instead it’s definitely a Majin-like, the criteria for which are the following:
– Ratio of 90% visual novel to 10% gameplay (Tokyo Xanadu eX+ only goes up to 80-20 if you include optional sidequests).
– Heavy focus on the occult/supernatural.
– Cast skewed heavily towards high school students who do typical anime high schooler stuff. We haven’t had a school festival or a beach/hot spring episode yet, but it’s only a matter of time.

Since I have now accepted that Tokyo Xanadu eX+ is not an ARPG but a visual novel with action combat, this is the last time I will comment on the issue. I will just take the game as it comes. After all, I am enjoying the parts where I roam around town talking to people. Every once in a while you learn something new about a character and get an updated entry in the glossary, which is fun in its own way.

It’s just that if you treat the game as a VN then you start evaluating it by story, characters, dialogue instead of by gameplay, controls, challenge, etc. How does Tokyo Xanadu hold up?

Story: Reminds me a lot of Persona 4, where you have this alternate dimension that people get thrown/drawn into and if you don’t save them quickly they’ll die. But this time our team always gets there in the nick of time – no matter how long we dilly-dally we’ll always get there juuust before the boss attacks the victim. I don’t know how we do it ^_~.

But that’s more like the flow of the game. The real story, i.e. why those dimensions/Eclipses are appearing and what we can do to get at the root of the issue, well after 16 hours and 30 minutes of playing I haven’t gotten one whit closer to an answer. That’s normal for Falcom games though. Waste the first two-thirds of the game with fetchquests and “world building” and then shove the story in hurriedly in the last third of the game.

I wouldn’t be annoyed if it wasn’t for the fact that a lot of characters seem to know what’s going on, or at least have a better idea than the main character does but they’re not sharing anything. Kou Tokisaka is not making much effort to get answers either, but the others are definitely blocking him – and by the extension, the player – from getting to the meat of the story until Falcom is good and ready.

That’s why Kou never asks about the history of Nemesis or of the Eclipses from any of the many shopkeepers who somehow handle Eclipse goods. That’s why he’s stupid enough to actively ignore heavy hints from people like Mitsuki and the antique shop owner. Actively and energetically ignore – often the evidence is right in front of his face and he’s like “Nah, it couldn’t be!” It could be! It IS! You numbskull! Oh Kou, Kou, what am I going to do with you? *shakes head*

Characters: Harmless enough. The high school students are good kids to the point of ridiculousness. Like they’ll beat each other to a pulp one day and the next day they’re the closest buddies ever. Yeah, okay. Even the usual “girl-crazy friend of the protagonist who envies his luck with girls” is more wholesome than such characters usually are and hasn’t once tried to peek in the girls’ locker room. That’s real progress.

The only issue with all this fluffy wholesomeness, if you can call it an issue, is that there’s zero room for doubt about how things will turn out in the end. You know every conflict and problem is going to end well, lots of hugs and tears and “Believe in me who believes in you” talk. Everyone lives happily ever after and repercussions are kept to a minimum. Tension is zero so the story isn’t that interesting. Or maybe it’s just the evil side of me talking. And knowing Falcom, something horrible is bound to happen to Morimiya City towards the end of the game so there’s hope yet!

Everything else that comes to mind: The loading times are a bit long. Probably just my laptop being weaksauce, but it makes exploration suck when you have to wait 15-20 seconds every time you enter or leave a room, a shop or a floor. Note to self: do all future PC gaming on more powerful desktop.

I have 5 playable characters so far, but no one’s as fun to control as Kou and Asuka. What I don’t get is why they can’t both go into battle at the same time. Where is the other one hiding? And why? I don’t know when I’ll ever get used to the “I’m here, but I’m not gonna help” nature of party members in most RPGs, but usually it doesn’t stand out as badly as it does in Tokyo Xanadu eX+ because you have a whole team of party members. Here it’s only one (visible) person doing everything so it feels really weird.

Other comments on the battle system will have to wait until I’m doing with the game, seeing as it isn’t really an ARPG and all. That will be enough time for me to get used to certain things and for others to improve. For example, right now I’m not pleased by how little equipment there is in the game or how there are so many accessories with little to distinguish them from each other. But that might change. The same goes for the useless(?) grid system with its hopelessly weak power-ups. I might get super rare jewels later on that will turn the whole game around.

That’s enough for an early-stage comment on Tokyo Xanadu eX+. Falcom’s games are usually 40-60 hours long, so 16 hours isn’t even halfway through. I’ll be back with an update at the 30-hour mark and maybe 45 hours if I make it in that far. I’m starting to crave something new, though. Might revisit DQ7 or something, we’ll see.

Dropped Luminous Arc Infinity and started Chaos Rings III

I did say Luminous Arc Infinity wasn’t that bad, but it’s not that good either. With my new “It is enough to play a little bit” motto, I don’t see the need to force myself to play the whole thing when I’m not really enjoying it. Everything it does has been done better by Stella Glow, Ar Tonelico, the other Luminous Arc games and basically any other harem RPG in existence. “There’s this guy and all these girls are gonna fall in love with him and then they’re going to save the world.” Aight, I get it. If the battles weren’t so sluggish and the music was actually good like you’d expect of a music-based SRPG I might stick around, but LAI doesn’t have any of that so it’s time to bail.

Currently playing: Chaos Rings III. Normally I like to play games in release order, but I’ve heard very mixed things about the earlier Chaos Rings games so I’m starting from the end and working my way backwards. Except not really because CRIII isn’t impressing me so I’m not motivated to play the others.

When I say “not impressing me,” I don’t mean it sucks. I really like the super-generic “Boy wants to go adventuring” story, and the idea of teaming up with like-minded buddies to explore an unchartered planet is right up my alley. There’s just one small problem – Chaos Rings III was originally a mobile game, so it has some unpleasant mobile game characteristics left over that make it a chore to play.

Chief among them is the fact that MP only recovers at a rate of 1 MP per minute. MINUTE. There are a few MP refilling items but they can’t be bought in stores (yet?) and I have no money anyway. Seems like originally you were supposed to pay real-life money or grind for in-game coins to get around that but 1) You can’t pay money in the offline VITA version and 2) Grind? Me? Don’t you know 2019 is my Year of No Grinding?

I’ve heard of workarounds like resetting your VITA clock for coins and stuff, but I’m not into the game enough to bother with all that. And of course, since MP is majorly time gated, they made the game so magic attacks and hitting enemy weaknesses does much more damage and ends battles much faster than trying to auto-attack your way out. Even more cleverly, instead of your MP cap rising as you level up, it only rises once your party unlocks a certain number of “Genes” (summon cards) – i.e. either spend money or grind, there’s no way around it.

Chances are high that this is the first and last post I’ll make about Chaos Rings III, so I’ll say everything I have to say once and for all. It’s a very charming, by-the-book RPG and they’ve got some good combat ideas like chaining combos and joint-casting magic and stuff. The stages are very colorful in an anime kind of way and all the characters I’ve met so far have been very nice. Even the music and voice-acting is above-average.

It’s just that the MP thing is a near deal-breaker. I understand that this game came out in the early days of mobile game development when developers were still fumbling around for a monetization method. This is better than gacha for sure. But the result is still an awkward mix of regular RPG and irritating time-gating for time-gating’s sake which interferes with the simple fun I’m trying to have. You get all these cool Genes and abilities but can’t use them freely because you’re conserving MP. Or you shoot everything off in the first two or three battles and do scratch damage for the rest of the stage. Either way it sucks.

All that said, there’s the definite possibility that things might improve once I get more powerful Genes and a higher MP cap. Or if I can get enough money to buy some good equipment so I can do real damage with regular attacks. Though, this being a mobile game, the way to get good stuff is clearly to earn it through daily login bonuses, grind for it in the Coliseum (no, please, no) or grind it out in quests. I don’t know if I want to do all that for a nice but very ordinary RPG. Which is why I say I’m most likely done with Chaos Rings III and the rest of the Chaos Rings series. As long as there are other RPGs in my VITA, 3DS and PS2 backlog, I’d rather focus on those and leave the mediocre games for later. Or never, never sounds good.

Games that sucked too much to play in 2018

Sometimes I try a game and it’s so boring or so disappointing that I don’t get far enough to write a proper post about it. I collect all those at the end of the year and write a mass post like this one.

Black Rock Shooter: The Game (PSP): This one probably deserves a full post because I played for 5 hours, dropped it, picked it up again, dropped it again, picked it up again and finally gave up. I really wanted to like it because it was by Imageepoch, but there’s a reason that company went bankrupt: some of their games just stunk. The combat in Black Rock Shooter was a slower, clunkier, messier copy of Last Ranker‘s, which is sad because LR came out first and there was room for improvement, not regression.

The world view was bleak, the stages all looked the same, gameplay was mostly running around in empty space. The last straw was a boring “talk to everyone quest” which was followed by an unskippable motorcyle-riding minigame where you had to slice and dodge enemies. I thought this was supposed to be an RPG. The game was all over the place. It had no idea what story it wanted to tell or what it wanted to play like. Massive waste of time and a huge disappointment.

Sword Art Online: Infinity Moment (PSP): I’m very interested in trying the other Sword Art Online games, but Infinity Moment didn’t work for me. Part of it was an aesthetics issue – everything on the screen was tiny and cramped and hard to see. The bigger issue was the auto-attacking gameplay, where you watch your characters attack until you get the chance to do a special. It’s a bit like Xenoblade, but much more sluggish and harder to follow. After one or two sessions, I was done.

Twelve: Sengoku Fuushinden (PSP): An SRPG set in the warring states era of Japan. IIRC it was about a young man who meets a girl on the run from mysterious pursuers. The gameplay wasn’t exciting, the graphics weren’t all that, the story didn’t seem to be going anywhere. It was bland and boring and the narrator at the start and end of every chapter ruined immersion. Pass.

Puzzle Quest (DS): I played a game a few years ago where you battled opponents through match-3 battles and someone said it reminded them of Puzzle Quest, so I tried Puzzle Quest. And I discovered I suck at Puzzle Quest. But I knew that already. It’s a novel idea but I don’t have the skills to pull it off so I called it quits after three battles.

Enkeltbillet (PSP): Enkeltbillet is a bad otome game about a brain-dead heroine on a misadventure in another country. I mentioned before that it sucked, but I kept trying to give it another chance because it has gameplay, in theory. But actually the game is set up so you can cut out the gameplay entirely and play it as a visual novel instead. In other words it’s just a crappy visual novel with slow progression, creepy love interests and a stupid lead. Why did I waste so much time on it?

Bunmei Kaika Aoiza Ibunroku (PSP): Another boring otome visual novel. This time I knew it was a VN going in, but I gave it a chance because it’s by Furyu and I usually enjoy their games. Not this time, though. This game is about a girl who slips back in time and discovers she has special powers and has to join an evil-fighting group disguised as a theatre troupe, something like that. Frankly the story is boring, the art isn’t my style and the two male characters I might have liked to date were not gettable on a first playthrough. Another waste of time.

Those are all the duds for 2017-2018. Not too many, since I don’t play as many games as I used to. I try fewer ‘random’ games as well, so I at least have a general idea what the game is like before I start. So if a game shows up here, it’s something I was reasonably certain I would like but ultimately didn’t meet my needs. If there’s no 2019 edition, I will be extremely happy indeed, but as long as there’s no surefire way to tell if you’ll like a game until you actually play it, the number of victims will only increase. So see you again (most likely) next year!

Happy New Year! And a few 2019 resolutions

Happy New Year! 2018 seems to have whizzed by amazingly fast. Even faster than usual, maybe because I didn’t do much or go anywhere interesting last year. I still managed to play a lot of games but those don’t really count.

Actually, I was flirting with the idea of making 2019 a No Game year. Just packing all my games into a box and putting them away until 2020. There are lots of things I want/have to do this year and every hour spent gaming is an hour spent not achieving them. Escapist fantasy is all good and nice, but when the credits roll, that mountain of work you were avoiding is still waiting for you.

The only reason I’m not going to is because of my siblings. Specifically the ones who are married with kids and have no time to play games any more. They’re not complaining, mind you, but when I think that a day might come when I can’t even play Candy Crush Soda because my phone has been taken over by “Baby Shark” and “Daddy Finger” then I realize I’ve gotta make hay and kill bosses while the sun shines. So here are my six gaming targets for 2019:

1. Atelier Ayesha Plus (VITA) – I started it briefly after finishing Meruru because I was curious but Atelier is still Atelier in the end so it’s best to leave some months in between games. Is she just pretending or is Ayesha really that ditzy? It’s not cute at all.

2. Atelier Escha & Logy Plus (VITA) – I’ll be playing Ayesha quite early in the year so by the time the second half of the year rolls around, I’ll be craving more Atelier. It sounds like it’ll be really interesting to play first as Logy and then as Escha to see different events or endings. Assuming I have the energy to play twice, that is.

3. One of the Ys action-RPGs (PC) – Any Ys will do. Except Ys DS. I happen to like the words “Felghana” and “Celceta” so I’m fixing to play either one of those first. It’s all because I really like the combat in Tokyo Xanadu eX+ but there just isn’t enough of it. Since the combat is (supposedly) Ys-inspired, I might as well go to the source and check it out.

4. La Corda d’oro 3 (VITA) – It will be hard to let go of my old crew, but I’ve done almost everything worth doing in LC1 and LC2 so it’s time to move on. New settings! New music! New bishies! This should be good. After that I just have to play LC4 and the new Octave game and I’m done with the series. I hope to play one of the Harukanaru Toki no Naka de games as well.

5. Final Fantasy XV (PC) – a.k.a. FF Boyband Edition. I like to play series in release order so I’ll give FFXIII one last, honest try. Especially now that I can use a PS4 controller to play the game. I just can’t get into keyboard controls. So honest try for FFXIII, then FFXV. Even though I’ve heard it’s bad I still want to play it.

6. Sakura Wars 5 (Wii) – Still haven’t played Sakura Taisen 4, but I’m going to prioritize it because it was on last year’s list. Then I can get SW5 out of the way in time for the next game in the series which Sega will eventually release someday, hopefully while I’m still young enough to play it.

That’s it, nothing too ambitious this year because I still have leftovers from last year’s resolutions. Though I did pretty well last year and almost everything I tried was good. The same guiding principle applies: “It’s enough to play just a little bit of a game.” It helped me stay stress-free last year so I think I’ll keep it and apply it to other things like books and movies and the like.

Well that’s enough from me. Enjoy your day and Happy New Year again!