Me and my big mouth. I think I jinxed Tokyo Majin Kenpuuchou
Worse than that, the first arc took 13 episodes and the ‘real story’ is going to take another 13, but the game overall only has about 14-15 episodes worth of story. To fill the gap they’re doing a stretch-job of Dragonball-sized proportions. If you’ve never experienced pointless filler in a JRPG, this is your chance. You’ll get plenty of episodes that seem to have almost nothing to do with the main story, except at the end they throw out a loooong piece of exposition (i.e. “See, dudes, that was totally relevant”) then the episode ends and the next filler episode begins.
It’s been dragging on so long that I’ve started tuning most of it out. The most important things seems to be
1) My main character is the chosen one who is going to save Tokyo
2) There’s another chosen one who is being manipulated by the ultimate bad guy.
3) Everything that has happened so far was all a setup by the ultimate bad guy to stir things up and make the chosen ones appear faster.
And some other stuff. And then there’s been lots of occult babbling and the writers have brought up every item of Japanese mythology they can think of (you can tell they didn’t expect the game to do well enough to get a sequel) and now at long last we’re heading towards a proper showdown. I hope.
Imagine the poopstorm if the genders were reversed. Then again, this IS a Japanese game…
Honestly I have disconnected myself from much of the story. It doesn’t help that with two exceptions the characters have remained exactly the same since episode one. I compared the game to a sitcom last time, but even the worst sitcoms try to mix up their jokes a little. The first time you hear a funny joke you laugh uproariously. The second time “Haha… I heard that joke last week, but it’s still funny.” But from the third time onwards it’s just “. . . . . .”
That’s what’s happened to me and Tokyo Majin. I can predict almost every line before I read it: Kyoichi says something perverted. Kyoichi insults the girls and gets punched/slapped. Komaki is mad at Kyoichi. Anko is greedy for a story and is also mad at Kyoichi. And then at some point someone will suggest going out for ramen and then the story will take off. They can still get a smile out of me once in a while (Kyoichi in his boxers made me cringe and chuckle at the same time) but mostly I’m just like “Yeah yeah, get on with it.”
I’m crying too because I had to see this.
And so to soothe myself over the suckiness of the story I’ve been playing the bonus dungeon more and more, which makes the main story battles ridiculously easy, which is bad. If you go into the bonus dungeon even once you will be overlevelled for the rest of the game. But if you don’t go, then you’ll have to put up with hundreds of lines of juvenile bickering and occult babble with very little gameplay relief. I just wish the bonus dungeon was harder, but I can’t do anything about that short of taking off all my weapons and armor, so I’m just going to push on through.
In other game news I haven’t started Dragon Shadow Spell yet. I’m still wrestling with myself over whether to give Wild Arms 5 one last chance and whether to pick Tales of Legendia up again or not. Besides I’m already playing an SRPG so I don’t feel the itch. On my PSP Shining Ark is still being its colorful, delightful self, only I’ve reached a chapter called “The Bitter Truth” which may or may not be the point where Sega ruins everything. Based on Phantasy Star Portable, 7th Dragon and Sakura Taisen I have great faith in their ability to design fun games, but when it comes to stories, hmmm… well, we’ll see.
The “women being hysterical, gets slapped by dude” trope still exists in Japan I think. Also probably being phrased out but probably less “whoa people are becoming super enlightened” and more “phrasing out of male characters in female character-focused media” (can’t have any male on female slaps if there’s literally no men around) and less serious pieces of fiction being created (Women hitting men = “automagically funny” is the constant formula all the way back to Ranma 1/2)
That being said, that CG is rather off-putting to me for some reason. Probably because the slapper has kind of a serious case of manface going on (what is up with those lips!?) and the one being slapped has the sort of exaggerated face like he’s intentionally mugging for the camera.
Kyoichi IS mugging for the camera and Anko DOES have a man-face. That’s the game’s idea of “funny”.
Excessive length is one of the most annoying flaws of modern gaming, if you ask me. It is hard to find a game that doesn’t try to pad things somehow and ends up dabbling in fake longevity, especially in RPG-dom. I’d rather have a short but deeply fulfilling game that I will be inclined to replay over and over than a long but watered-down game that will bore me to tears before the credits roll.
Agree completely. I don’t mind a 99 hour game as long as the game legitimately has 99 hours worth of content. What you more often get is a 20-hour game stretched out into 60, but some games are going back to more sensible lengths. Shining Ark is a very respectable 38 hours, for example.