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
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!
I heard a lot about this game’s great and amazing story but it seems it is an excuse to make you grind all the time. I like grinding games so if this game ever gets released in english, I’ll give it a try. You may like SMT: Strange Journey (some kind of amazing portable nocturne succesor).
Short english RPG… Have you played “Sands of destruction” (NDS)? It’s not the ultimate game but it wasn’t bad and quite short. Valkyrie Profile (PSP and PSX) is also great; I recently finished it for the third time and I just love it.
It’s grind-heavy, I can’t stress that enough. That doesn’t mean it’s not fun in its own way, of course. But it does NOT have a great and amazing story. Don’t be fooled for a second.
I’ve already played Strange Journey, almost finished it too (curse you, Mem Aleph). I’ve also finished Sands of Destruction, a game which could have been excellent if they had taken more time to polish the battle system and actually though the story through.
Valkyrie Profile has been on my must-play list for at least 10 years, but I’ve always found an excuse to put it off. I’ll play it one of these days, honest.