Dark Cloud 2 & Devil Survivor 2

A company mixup led to me going without electricity for three days. 👿 It wasn’t too much trouble to keep my laptop and phone charged, but as a principle my consoles and handhelds don’t leave my bedroom, much less my house, so I haven’t got much gaming down in the past couple of days. I still managed to get Dark Cloud 2 and Devil Survivor 2 started, but only barely.

Dark Cloud 2 – Very barely started, like 30 minutes in. I did the prologue, escaped the evil circus master, entered the water channel, fought a few rats and then the game froze. o___o I haven’t heard any reports of serious bugs in the game, so it’s probably my PS2 acting up again. Hang in there a little longer, PS2, I think I’m going to like this game. What other game lets me power up my weapons by infusing them with the spirit of…bread? The only thing that might stop me now, apart from a caput PS2, would be the combat turning out to be too hard. From the three battles or so I’ve faced so far, I think I’ll be okay if I have enough healing items. We’ll see.

Devil Survivor 2 –  Played about 2 hours and 30 minutes. Day 2, Osaka, around 12:30 IIRC. I’m not really enjoying myself, but it is kind of scratching my SRPG itch, so I might hang in there a little longer. TBH it’s a little too much of a Devil Survivor retread for my liking. There are things I liked about DS that I didn’t particularly care to experience again. The demon auction, for example. The constant need to fuse for new demons. Skill cracking. The MC’s cowardly male friend and vapid, helpless female friend. The “suddenly, demons!” storyline. Meaningless conversation choices every 3 sentences. I’ve seen it all before. Once was good, twice? I’m not that bored yet.

Having said that, it doesn’t look like such a long game. Unless something radically annoying happens or I start a better SRPG, I’m probably going to finish it.

“Finished” EarthBound. Well, I fought the last boss at any rate.

GiygasI made one failed attempt at beating Giygas. I was going to go back and try again, but first I decided to call my brother and ask for tips. He pressured me into playing EarthBound in the first place. He claims it’s his favorite RPG. He’s gotta know how to finish it, right? WRONG. Turn out he never even finished Fourside! He stopped playing right after Moonside and was “too busy” to ever go back!

Of course you don’t have to finish a game to know you love it, just like you don’t have to finish it to know you hate it. But you’re definitely calling your fan-ness into question when you can walk away from your so-called favorite game so easily. You’re also making me feel like an idiot for trying so hard to get into a game that even you couldn’t successfully get into.

So I “finished” the rest of the game by reading a Let’s Play and called it a day. Two can play at this quitting game, you know. And so it ended between me and EarthBound.

Thoughts

I’m glad I played it, if only to shut him and several people up, but I didn’t enjoy it too much. I didn’t not enjoy it either, but apart from the music, the funny NPCs and enemies and the art style I’d be at a loss if you asked me what I liked about this game.

Umm…

Gee, this is awkward.

I can’t remember the last time I had this much difficulty finding something to write about a game. Especially after spending at least 20 hours on it. Umm, there wasn’t much backtracking, I guess? And the story was pretty straightforward too. The ending seemed nice, though it sucks that Pokey got away. The Runaway Five were amusing. And, umm… yeah. I’m done here.

What’s next

I was supposed to play Dark Cloud 2 in September, but I skipped it over because I wasn’t done with this game. Guess I’ll start with that. Devil Survivor 2 is on the list for October, but I don’t know whether I want to play it or not. The first Devil Survivor was about being trapped in Tokyo, and I just finished playing 7th Dragon 2020, which takes place entirely in Tokyo. I’ve had enough of Tokyo. I’ve never even been there so I have 0 attachment to the place. I know it’s Japan’s capital city and all, but can I be trapped in Okinawa or Sapporo next time? Or better yet, not be trapped at all? Anyway, I’ll start Devil Survivor 2 and put it on hold if it turns out I need to wait a bit.

7th Dragon 2020 review – Didn’t live up to my expectations (spoilers)

7th dragon last bossAll my worst fears from the last post came true, and I just got more and more bored and more and more frustrated until it was all I could do to finish 7th Dragon 2020 at the 34-hour mark. That’s the last boss over there on the right. He wasn’t so tough. Spamming EX-attacks is totally a valid strategy and totally not cheating at all. A bonus dungeon opened up after the credits rolled, but I can count on one hand the number of games I’ve liked enough to do the post-game content for, and 2020 won’t be entering that Hall of Fame in this lifetime.

I think it’s fair to attribute most of my dissatisfaction with this game to the fact that I played the prequel not that long ago. It would be nice, in an ideal world, if I could play every game in a complete vacuum without thinking back to anything else I’ve played before. Unfortunately I have yet to master that exotic art. And seeing as I play a large number of games in a very limited number of genres, it is unlikely that I ever will. So the ghost of 7th Dragon did unfortunately haunt 7th Dragon 2020 and affect my ability to enjoy the game to its fullest.

Do please go on, this is most interesting →

7th Dragon 2020 – This is why dungeon crawlers don’t need stories

7th dragon classesThey always get carried away and mess it up. Just give me a Mario-style motivation and leave me be. I’m in the situation now where I want to go out and kill dragons, but the NPCs are holding me up with meeting after meeting after speech after speech about how we need to kill those dragons. Guys, seriously, I’m on it! Let me go!

I hate to be “that reviewer” who is always bringing up the previous games in a series and whining about how much better they are, but sometimes it can’t be helped. Sometimes the older games just ‘get it’. 7th Dragon 2020 has improved upon almost all the major flaws of its predecessor, but they also removed the freedom and self-determination that made 7th Dragon so enjoyable for me.

Game progression is slow, linear and rigid because I’m always tied to a mission from headquarters. I can’t go where I like, I can’t fight who I want, I can’t take on the dragons in Shibuya until headquarters lets me, I can’t challenge the subway boss until headquarters lets me, the list goes on and on. Let’s clarify this once and for all: who’s the dragon expert here, them or me? Hint: it’s not them. So let me handle things my own way. If I want to punch above my weight, let me do it. If I get my ass handed to me, fine. It’s my ass, not yours.

7th dragon skill menuIt’s a shame that this is bothering me so much, because 2020 gets so many things right. For example, the mood is suitably dreary this time. In 7th Dragon, apart from one ruined village, the other citizens of the world were having a great time in their little hamlets, just chillin’ and groovin’ like their world wasn’t on a giant dragon’s dinner menu. 7th Dragon 2020 does a much better job of showing the pain and destruction and deprivation that would occur if man-eating monsters suddenly rained down from the sky on major cities of the world. They went a little too far in the opposite direction, though, to the point where they’ve killed so many NPCs that the emotional impact of a death is basically zero.

Another thing I’m enjoying is the ability to switch classes, cutting your levels in half. To be honest I can’t really see any advantages to doing so apart from a marginal stat boost (so marginal I can’t tell if it’s there) and the ability to redistribute SP. What’s good is that low levels make the dungeons and the dragons an actual challenge instead of a joke. Or maybe it’s the other way round and the developers expected gamers to switch down at level 30 and adjusted the difficulty of the game accordingly. I’m finding the difficulty level just right when I’m roughly 10 levels behind where I should be, so it’s probably the latter.

As for the story, that pathetic excuse to lecture and railroad me, any septic tank would be proud to be full of it. But I’ve long since given up expecting anything better from Imageepoch. I just wish they wouldn’t take so long to tell what’s a very simple story. And they take it so seriously too. It would be quite laughable if it wasn’t so boring. Anyway, 24 hours gone, 75 dragons left. Let’s finish this!

EarthBound – Are we there yet?

Ness is level 53-ish, the rest of my party ranges from level 48 to level 36. Just reached Tenda Village, everyone claims to be too shy to help me. I probably shouldn’t write a post so soon after finishing what I can only hope is the worst stage in the game (Deep Darkness) but I will anyway.

Except… I still don’t have anything to say. When I play it I have fun, but when I don’t play it I have even more fun playing other stuff. Well okay, I guess like the pacing of the game. One thing leads to another, which leads to another, and so on. There’s very little time spent standing around wondering what to do. Right now I have to find a book to help the Tendas cure their shyness, but I’m sure the solution will be somewhere close by and easy to find. Apart from that bit around Fourside and the Desert, there’s been very little backtracking in this game, which I also like.

What I’d really like, though, is for the game to end soon. In the next three or four hours kind of soon. I won’t lie and say it’s been wonderful or anything, but it’s been okay, at least. In all respects EarthBound is either decent or above-average (except inventory management, but even that’s not so bad), so if they can just keep the game length to a similarly moderate level then everything will be nice and even and we can all go home with smiles on our faces.