Trails in the Sky – Finally over! (spoilers)

“Heaven has no rage, like love to hatred turned…” – William Congreve

I’ve played a lot of RPGs in my life and I have never been so glad to put a game behind me as I was when the credits finally rolled on Snails in the Sky. The credits rolled, but the game didn’t exactly end. Joshua remembered his past and went dashing off for revenge and Estelle is going to spend the next game looking for him. And Falcom actually expects me to spend money on that. **** THAT. If I never see those two again it will be too soon!

Like I said before, it’s not that Trails in the Sky is bad, it’s just that it drags a 10 hour story out to 40 hours by means of extreme padding, pointless scenes, pointless side plots, pointless characters, pointless walking, pointless quests and pointless battles. The end result left me mentally chafed in ways I didn’t even know were possible.

And speaking of repetition, does anyone remember the scene in I, Claudius where Augustus roars, “IS THERE ANYONE IN ROME WHO HAS NOT SLEPT WITH MY DAUGHTER?!” I felt the same way after scene upon scene of character upon character going on and on about how wonderful Cassius Bright was. “IS THERE ANYONE IN LIBERL WHO IS NOT IN LOVE WITH MY FATHER?!” In fact, several characters (most notably Zane and Agate) are only in the game because “Cassius asked me to help.” It’s a wonder any of them can talk with their mouths so full of Cassius Bright’s <bleep>.

And then that blasted Cassius had the nerve to show up right when I was putting the finishing touches on the final boss. Blasted scene-stealer. Glory hound. It wasn’t enough for you to ruin the game, now you’ve got to take the final boss as well? I hate you. WILL NO ONE RID ME OF THIS TROUBLESOME DAD?!

Of course, I’m not entirely unsympathetic to Falcom’s dilemma. They have a previous trilogy which presumably made them a lot of money. So even if they barely have a story, they still have to stretch it out to fill three full-sized games. I’m not one of those people who complain if a game is too short, but it’s common in the fandom so I know where’s they’re coming from. But seriously, they could still have condensed Trails in the Sky into a 10 hour storyline, added 10 hours hours worth of fights, sidequests and silly plotlines and ended up with a classic. 40 hours of nothing is way too much.

One more thing: I really must register my dissatisfaction with how boring the kingdom of Liberl was. Apart from a few cliffs, all the terrain was basically the same. The architecture was the same, the people dressed the same, talked the same, acted the same, etc. Even Britain, the king of the boring nations, has a lot of different locations and accents and cultural practices. This is fiction. Don’t make me keep walking though woods and manicured lawns for 40 hours when you could throw in a couple of deserts and icy wastes and ruined jungles. Lie to me!

Luckily, all bad things must come to an end. As a final act of mercy, I will now proceed to spoil the story: everything was a plot by Colonel Richards of the Intelligence Division to take over the country so he could get at the artifact hidden under Grancel Castle. Only it wasn’t really him, it was the really bad guys, who planted ideas in his head. No one in the game is bad, it’s always “The really bad guys made me do it. I have amnesia!” (BUULLSHIITTT) Oh, and Professor Alba is one of the really bad guys. And Joshua used to be an assassin who got taken in by Cassius Bright after Joshua failed to assassinate CB. Did I miss anything? See, that wasn’t anything that couldn’t be cleared up in 10 hours, was it?

Moving on, I usually like to put a little space between games of the same series, but I really want to play Persona 2: Innocent Sin now, so I’m not going to wait any longer. UnchainBlades Rexx has been out for a while, but the reviews are quite horrible. I’m going to go into it with extremely low expectations and maybe I’ll be able to salvage something from that. I also want to finish the second story of Blue Roses to see how things end, but that’s the lowest thing on my priority list right now. And finally Will O’ Wisp has shown me that otome game visual novels don’t necessarily have to suck, so I’m thinking of trying another one of those in the near future. It’s going to be a busy rest-of-2011.

The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky – Interminable

Or, more accurately, The Legend of Heroes: Snails in the Sky. I’ve been playing this game for ages. Barely anything has happened and the game drags on like you wouldn’t believe. Won’t it ever end?

Incidentally this is why I like to write posts at various stages of the playing process. If I’d written this post at the 5 or even 10-hour mark, I would have raved about the sense of adventure and the fine soundtrack and bright palette and so on and so forth. Now it’s just like “Please Lord, let it be over soon.”

Trails in the Sky is one of the best turn-based RPGs the PSP has turned out so far, which really isn’t saying much because the PSP’s selection of RPGs is worse than I’d expected when I bought one. The barely-moving story is fairly interesting (when anything happens) and the characters are interesting enough when the game isn’t hammering their characteristics in repeatedly. Joshua is secretive, Joshua is secretive, Estelle is naive, Estelle is naive, Olivier talks too much, Olivier talks too much. OKAY OKAY, WE GET IT! It’s a pretty decent offering, all things considered.

It’s just, too much of a good thing, you know? The best RPGs I’ve played made me wish they’d never end, but those are precisely the ones that quit while they were ahead. Just ask Chrono Trigger. It had a simple story to tell, it told it sharpish and then it buggered off. I hear T.I.T.S. is the first of a trilogy, but even the first game in the Xenosaga trilogy had the decency to cap off at around 20 hours. You want to leave the player begging for more, not throwing up by the door.

Well, at least Trails in the Sky is somewhat improved over the previous two Legend of Heroes offerings I tried. The soundtrack is pretty good, if a bit generic (though I’m positive I’ve heard that main theme before) and the battles are slightly more interesting because they rip-off Grandia‘s system without, alas, also copying the dynamism that made Grandia’s battles so epic. So the end result is just a turn-based battle system where the characters go running around the screen…but in turns.

It looks good on paper, but in practice every character having to run a marathon just to strike an enemy makes the battles clunky and slow like you wouldn’t believe. And either you don’t hit very hard or the enemies have a ton of HP, because even simple random battles take a long time to finish. On top of all that, the EXP gains are pathetic, even for beating bosses. I beat Lt. Lorence in the castle and got 80 EXP. 8-0. Even the random chest monsters in the next dungeon gave more experience than that!

I’ve been convinced I’m almost done for the past 5 hours, but it’s still going on. After a long, tedious tournament and the most annoying stealth mission in history, I now have at least one more stage to get through before I can finally put this game behind me. Things move so slowly that all this will probably take another 10 hours. I’m so tired. I get even more tired when I look back on all the unnecessary things I had to do to progress the game: killing farm pests, taking part in a school play (that was spectacularly stupid), fixing a hot spring, the aforementioned tournament… And that’s not counting all the technically-optional-but-then-you-won’t-get-any-money sidequests you have to fulfill as part of being a junior bracer. Half the events are unnecessary, as are half the characters. Only a few things have happened in all that time: the Special Ops are evil, Daddy’s missing and there’s a black orbment out there with special powers. They could have told this story in 10 hours, maybe less.

*sigh* Sunken costs and all that. I’ll just finish it. See you later…

Harvest Moon: Hajimari no Daichi (3DS)

Harvest Moon for the 3DS, coming out early 2012, blah blah blah. If I know my Marvelous, there’ll be at least one delay before it comes out, so Summer 2012 is a safer bet.

Is it just me or are those some huge-ass vegetables? How are you going to harvest those? And would anyone seriously eat those monsters?

The stuff I’m hearing about the game isn’t setting my world on fire, though. Lay out your farm however you want? Design your own character? Change your hairstyle? This isn’t Animal Crossing, but fine. But what I really want to hear about is the farming system. Those neat rows from Two Towns seems to be missing now, and your farm looks a little plain. And I’ve been planting those same cabbages and eggplants and sweet potatoes since…since. What’s new this time? I’m seeing something about a “field levels” (段々畑) system that takes advantage of the 3D gimmick, but I’m not clear on how that works yet.

Until any really exciting news comes out about this one (or about Rune Factory 4!! Do want!), I won’t be shopping for a 3DS just yet.

I want a new Shepherd’s Crossing… ‘_’

Neo Angelique not-so-Special

I finished it now, but I still hate it. It’s boring as hell.

I don’t even know what to write here. Let’s start with a list of synonyms for “boring”.

drudging
dull
ho hum
humdrum
insipid
lifeless
monotonous
routine
spiritless
stale
tedious
tiresome
tiring
unexciting
uninteresting

Using high-powered arcane magic that man was never meant to dabble in, Koei took this accursed list and summoned it to life in the form of a video game. They named it Neo Angelique Special and proceeded to sell it to unsuspecting innocents for $70 a pop.

Feast your eyes on the earthly embodiment of boredom!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hmm? You want me to get serious? I’m deadly serious, I assure you. Okay, okay. *sigh* I played it. I’ll talk about it. Sheesh…

First of all, Koei has this series of otome games called Angelique. I’ve only played the first two games, but the basic premise is that you’re given a continent/universe to develop. You have to do this while competing against a rival and simultaneously trying to raise the affections of several bishie Guardians. It’s much better than it sounds, but even the best formula gets stale after a while.

After  number of permutations, spin-offs and remakes, Koei decided to reboot the series. I’d like to say it’s the thought that counts, but in this case the thought should have lived and died as a thought, because the reality is cold and cruel. In fact, I’m going to go out on a very sturdy limb and claim this: Koei was making a new otome game, realized it sucked donkey balls and slapped the Angelique label on it so donkey-ball-suckers would buy it.

My proof? The game has NOTHING in common with the other Angelique games. There’s a story element where Ange has special powers and is supposed to become the Queen of the World, but that could be any game at all. The world-building element is missing. The guardians are reduced to glorified escorts. There’s no rival. There’s a primitive battle system that’s an insult to any serious gamer. The game is easy beyond imagination.

The real Angelique games have goals to meet and regular reviews. They have daily, weekly and monthly structures, but how exactly to achieve things is entirely up to you. Neo Angelique has no proper structure. Story progression happens when you stumble across the next flag without meaning to. Sometimes you go to the salon and nothing happens. Next time you to go the salon, bam, the story moves on. Your life consists of fulfilling monotonous quests in the hope that you will somehow trip across the next story element. Does that sound like a recipe for fun or does that sound like donkey balls? If you say both, you need help.

This review is all over the place, isn’t it? That’s just like the game. Let’s try and get some order in here. First, the story. There are these bad creatures called Thanatos that make people very unhappy. Luckily a girl named Ange (that’s you) and four bishies have the power to purify these baddies, so they hang out in a fancy mansion drinking tea and having dinner parties (no, seriously) and helping people out once in a while. Eventually you find out there’s this Erebus guy that’s causing all the trouble, so you get in a flying ship and go beat him up. Then you can either become Queen of the World or go back to having tea parties. Decisions, decisions.

Up next, gameplay. Talk to your guardians until they like you. Not much different from the standard Angelique games, except now you have to “unlock” conversation topics by visiting certain places or taking certain missions. Get enough of the right topics and you win the conversation bingo (no seriously, the topics are laid out like a bingo card) and your relationship progresses to the next level. Presumably if you do this enough you’ll get the guy at the end. Pssh, as if I’d want any guy that could be won in a bingo game. Occasionally you’ll have dinner parties and chat the guys up all together. Not as much fun as it sounds. Not any fun at all, in fact.

Urge to keep writing, fading fast… Not like there’s anything left to note. You chat with guys non-stop, you wander around the planet in the hopes of triggering the next event, eventually you trigger it, story continues. There’s also a very rustic, primitive battle system, the kind they put in games for people who’ve never played RPGs before (see Arabians Lost for another example) It’s a bit like Chrono Cross with all the color attacks, and just like Chrono Cross it’s almost impossible to lose a battle unless you try really hard. That’s the last boss there. He makes even Yu Yevon look tough.

So, long story short, Neo Angelique was a massive waste of time. The bishies weren’t that bishie, the story wasn’t very interesting, story progression was lul randum, the battle system was a joke, the music was okay, the background art was GORGEOUS, gotta give credit where credit is due, and while it wasn’t short, it didn’t take that long to finish. No way in hell am I ever playing this again, nor can I recommend it to anyone. Find an artbook (seriously, the background art is really nice) and call it a day.

Will o’ Wisp DS review

I finished my first ever visual novel!

Will O’ Wisp is about a girl named Hanna who finds a life-sized doll in her basement after her dollmaker grandfather dies. She winds him up and he introduces himself as Will, an elemental doll. That basically means he’s alive and he belongs to her. As the game goes on, Hanna will discover more about the other elemental dolls, her own special powers, and the role she is destined to fulfill. You know, the usual twaddle. It’s cliched, but short enough to stay interesting.

Will O’ Wisp DS comes with a sequel of sorts called “The Miracle of Easter”, but I was sick of the game by the time I finished the main story so I passed on that. Plus it retcons the ending of the original game. In the ending I got, Gyl turned human, Hanna lost her powers and they lived happily ever after together. In “The Miracle of Easter”, all the dolls were rendered lifeless at the end. Work done = 0.

I’m pretty chuffed that I actually managed to finish Will O’ Wisp. I’ve tried many visual novels, but I’ve never made it all the way to the end of one before. To be honest I don’t even recognize visual novels as “games”, but on the other hand they’re often substandard as far as reading material goes, so it’s no-win situation any way I look at it.

Will O’ Wisp was a little better, since the story was okay-ish, and things moved at a cracking pace – at first. By Chapter 3, though, every scene started dragging on, Hanna’s internal monologues grew longer and longer, and the characters went over the same things ad nauseam: “Alvin is crazy, Alvin is crazy, Alvin is crazy, do you want to be released, do you want to be released, do you want to be released” again and again and again. To tell the truth, I used the Skip option to fast-forward from middle of Chapter 3 all the way to the final showdown with Ignis, then read from there. But a finish is a finish, and I did watch the ending credits, so I count that as “completed.”

If I had to hazard a few guesses as to why I was able to finish Will O’ Wisp in particular, it would be:

1. The art is nice. I’m a sucker for nice character designs. The CGs were fine to look at as well, though I wouldn’t have minded a few more. There were relatively few backgrounds, but the story moved fast enough that you were always shuffling between them, so it wasn’t so bad.

2. The scenes moved fast. This is the biggest reason why I can’t play VNs. Each trivial scene drags on interminably. Up till chapter 3 Will o’ Wisp kept things flowing: make a point and move on. Make a point and move on. Then it fell apart, but that’s what the “Skip” option was for.

3. The story’s pretty interesting, for a Rozen Maiden rip-off. Dolls and owners and they were all made by the same person and they’ve been alive for hundreds of years and they’re dressed Victorian-style and they fight, etc. But stories about dolls coming to life are much older than Rozen Maiden, so I’ll give them a pass. And they’ve got nice bishies, that’s gotta count for something.

4. The story develops quickly. Something’s happening at almost every stage, and it all leads to a logical conclusion. Not much time is wasted on petty arguments or comic scenes. Until chapter 3 and onwards, of course.

5. It’s not that long. There’s no timer in the game, but I don’t think it would take more than 4 or 5 hours to finish a route, even without skipping all the dialogue. I don’t have a lot of patience for reading endlessly, so that’s about my limit anyway.

6. Feedback is almost instantaneous. Accidentally selecting the wrong option and dooming yourself to a bad end/locking yourself out of a certain route is another thing I hate about visual novels. “What do you want on your bread?” A: Butter B: Jam C: Nothing. YOU PICKED BUTTER? Welcome to BAD END. Yaahh… Will o’ Wisp has none of that. If you select the right thing, you get a blue glow. Wrong thing, no blue glow. And you can check the affection level of your chosen doll any time you want, so you know you’re on the right track. There’s no way to fail. Heck, even if you don’t speak Japanese you can play this pretty easily.

7. Gyl is hot, in a girly kind of way. I did his route, and he wasn’t exactly hard on the eyes. I liked it best when he stopped wearing drag at the end.

8. Ignis is voiced by Takehito Koyasu. Actually I keep mixing up Koyasu and Kenyuu Horiuchi, so I didn’t know which one of them it was until I read the credits at the end. It wasn’t a very passionate performance either, Mr. Koyasu was clearly phoning it in this time. But I knew it was a voice I liked, so that counted for something. Come to think of it, the only voice actors I can recognize without fail are Norio Wakamoto and Shuichi Ikeda (mitometakunai mono da na). They should do more games.

So you see, so it’s not that hard to make a visual novel even I will like. Just keep the story moving fast, make the bishies hot and tell me when I’m going wrong so I don’t need a FAQ to find my way around. If you do that, I’ll even ignore stuff like 60% of the cast being obnoxious and the main character being a weak-willed lily and the story getting bogged down in the middle and the music grating on the ears. I’m a generous soul, after all.

Now that I’m rapidly running out of actual games to play on my PSP and DS, I might be forced to try more of these in the future, so I hope I can find more stuff that meets these simple requirements.