Tales of the Tempest – Dull

Tales of the Tempest is one of those mediocre games I find it difficult to write about. This is my first real attempt at a Tales game (apart from a few hours of Tales of Symphonia long ago), so it’s not like I had any previous standards or super-high expectations. I just wanted to know what all the fuss was about.

After 9:07 hours of play, I still don’t know. I just got to Laymon city, for anyone who knows the game. The hero Caius is level 24, everyone else is 23 or 22. The game is so dull. So little has happened in all that time. The beginning was packed with events for the first hour or so, after that I’ve just been walking along through huge fields and forests and deserts fighting tons and tons of thieves and monsters. I reckon at least 6 of those 9 hours have been spent either fighting or walking.

The remaining 3 hours devoted to story progression have been disappointingly ho-hum. Caius’ adopted dad gets captured for being a Lycanth (beastman) and Rubia’s parents are killed by the same people, so they set out on a rescue/revenge adventure. Eventually they find out the always-evil Church is capturing Lycanth because they’re after special red stones, some of which Caius just happens to possess. So now they’re half looking for the truth, half on the run from the church. That’s how far I’ve gotten and if the story is going to pick up, now would be a good time to do so.

If the battle system wants to pick up, now would be a good time as well. In general I kind of like it, in that it’s simple enough even for someone like me to be able to play. I haven’t been Game Over’ed even once! It’s so easy, just mash A repeatedly, occasionally push B and a direction to unleash set attacks. Move back and use an item if your HP/TP gets low, otherwise bash away until enemies are dead. There are three lines of battle that you can move back and forth between, which lets you target different enemies or escape if you find yourself being ganged up on. There are also things like ultimate attacks and weapon-strengthening options, which I have been half-assing because I don’t really get them.

I think it’s a feature of Tales games in general that you can only control one person in battle. I remember Symphonia being like that, at least. In this game Caius does the most consistent damage so I stick with him. Your other party members are close to useless. Even if you have their AI set to “protect life” your healers will still heal you only when they feel like it. Meanwhile your attackers will hit the enemy a few times, then run to other side of the screen, then run back and hit them a few times, then run away again… none of which helps them stay alive longer or helps the battle to end faster. So I’d like the battle system to make my ally AI not so horrible and my healers not so stingy with their MP. I’m going to experiment with a few more strategy options and see if that helps any.

The encounter rate is pretty high, but there are items that can fix that. I’m just saving them for the final dungeon which is sure to suck, so I have only myself to blame for that.

All the other aspects of the game have been meh-to-bad so far. The music is ordinary, though I do like the opening theme. The characters are mostly inoffensive, but not particularly likeable. Caius and Rubia feel particularly childish, but this isn’t exactly a bad thing. Tilkis and Albert, why do you guys look so girly? As for Forest and Arria they were obviously thrown into the game because it needed more playable characters. They have no real reason for being there, but they don’t get on my nerves either, so they can stick around.

The bad guys are awful though. Albert “I am evil and ambitious”, Lucius “I am not-so-evil and conflicted,” Rommy “I am evil and crazy” and their minions make up the bulk of the serious enemies so far. They go down like pussies in battle though, I can’t believe they ever managed to kill anyone. Bunch of worthless sissies. Gotta hope their true motives will be revealed soon because I’m not impressed by what I’ve seen so far. The writers are not trying at all.

Graphics are the meh-est of the mehs. The fields are needlessly large and extremely bland, which is doubly painful when you realize your grandma moves faster than Caius even without her wheelchair. The trees and other natural features look unnatural. You can’t pass through any forests except one, you have to run around them. You can’t scale any ridges. All the towns have the exact same architecture, just slightly bigger or slightly smaller. Most townspeople have a sickly pink skin color that’s just disturbing. Faces lack detail, even for main characters. Limbs and bodies are blocky and pixelly. Colors aren’t exactly washed out, but they aren’t vibrant either. And so on, and so forth. Again, were they trying?

Tales of the Tempest is not a fun game, but it’s not hard to keep going either, so I guess I’ll keep going and see how it all ends. I remember reading somewhere that it’s pretty short, so maybe I’m about halfway through. This shouldn’t take too long if I keep at it. Wish me luck!

Finished watching Ghost Trick

After giving up on playing Ghost Trick several weeks ago, I decided to skip the frustration of playing it and find out the story through Youtube. I watched chapters 3-17 in quick succession, but it took another 2 weeks before I watched the final chapter and “finished” the game.

Not because it’s bad or anything, but just because Ghost Trick is one of those games where the journey is more interesting than the destination. The process of finding out is fun, but what you actually find out is like, “Hmm. Okay. I see. Thanks for telling me.” Rather than “OMG I can’t believe this is what really happened OMG!!”

Part of it is the character motivations, part of it is the timelines. “You stole my life! So I’m gonna just chill for a couple of years, then I’ll do something bad, then I’ll chill for another couple of years and then I’ll do something bad again.” …Excuse me?

Actually it’s the characters themselves I don’t like. Sissel is cool, I like Sissel. Lynne is boneheaded, pushy and annoying, a terrible combination if there ever was one. And her constant dying got old after the second time. Jowd is…EGAD BAD DAD. I like him, but he’s an idiot. Cabanela? Eh, I don’t see what the fuss is about. The only thing going for him is his dance moves, and Bailey’s got him beat there. Go Bailey! Oh, and Missile. I like Missile, he’s a funny dog. So they were a mixed bunch, all in all. Memorable though. That’s got to count for something.

If I had to pinpoint an exact moment when it all fell apart, I’d say it was chapter 16 and 17 that killed my enthusiasm. First the stupid meteorite zomg alien powers plot twist (BUUUULLLSHIIIIT, BUUUUULLLLSHIIIIITTT) then all that time spent in the stupid submarine fiddling with torpedoes and rising water levels and more torpedoes instead of progressing the story at a critical moment. It was B-O-R-I-N-G. As far as climaxes go, this was more like a speed bump than like Mount Everest. It’s weird that I can accept ghost manipulation powers and time travel but meteorites and submarines just pissed me off, but that’s life for you.

Still, I’m glad I watched it and found out what really happened, even though it wasn’t that exciting. It ended fairly well for everyone, especially? except? Sissel, so I’m happy? not happy? for him. His fate left me with extremely mixed feelings. The whole 10 years ago, Ray, waiting-it-out thing didn’t make a lick of sense to me, but I’m tired of thinking about time travel plotholes, they only make my head hurt.

I’ve got to say this, though: Thank goodness I didn’t keep playing! If I had, by now I would hate this game and all its characters with every fiber of my being. Those puzzles are crazy! How does anyone ever figure them out?! From reading comments and reviews, it sounds like I’m the only one on the planet who had trouble with any of them. Maybe if I kept doing them over and over again I’d figure out the correct answers in the end, but can you imagine the pain and the torture? Besides, the hourglass cheats! I checked the videos against the clock and it isn’t always 4 minutes, sometimes it just jumps to 3 seconds left after barely a minute. No fair! I couldn’t handle that kind of pressure, no way.

So thanks to Zslyzer who uploaded those videos to Youtube for me to watch, pain-free. Now I can move on with happy memories.

Rondo of Swords – Path B Finished (spoilers)!

That took barely any time at all because Rondo of Swords Path B is way easier than Path A. Also Path B Serdic has ZOC, so I could trot him out where angels fear to tread without fearing too much for his life. I gave him a Black Ring (+1 MOV) and went all out. Unfortunately I missed out on getting Alberich because I spoke to him with the wrong person back in the cell (Serdic instead of Yumiluna), but even without him it was a complete cakewalk.

Apart from the ease, Path B also has a few more story elements than Path A. The main thing is that you find out that Serdic is actually a homunculus of the real Prince Serdic, created by Mephreyu, though it’s not explained how he ended up injured in the woods or whether that was just a manufactured memory. Also instead of Gauss and his Four Grands going out like pussies halfway through the same, they persist until the end. For all the good it does them, of course. (see: Stomping, Mudhole)

At some point Gauss got his hand on a Sword of Darkness from goodness-knows-where and planned to use it for goodness-knows-what, but you manage to stop him goodness-knows-how. Something about Igraine and self-sacrifice, I don’t know. Her role in the story was very poorly-explained so I didn’t give a fig what happened to her. Some kind of princess? Priestess? Dunno, dun care.

As a bonus I got to kill Mephreyu two more times. He was a complete walkover compared to the nightmare that was Path A’s ending though. Part of it was because I already knew the best strategy to take him out: Ansom + Holy Favor to clear out the bad guys, Cotton soaks up his MP with ease and finishes him off. I wonder what people without Ansom and Cotton do in these stages, seriously. I guess you could substitute someone strong with Sprint for Ansom and one of the better mages for Cotton, but still, sounds like hell. Mistress Cotton was also the one who took out Ernest most of the time I fought him. Thunder Rampage? Pffft, you’re a funny guy. She also took Gauss out in the first battle against him (the one with all the Grands) with one massive Fire Dragon.

Somehow Gauss seems to have learned his lesson, and in the final battle Fire Dragon barely did 132 damage. Still I only had to fight that battle twice because he was kind enough to come down and face me. The first time he killed Sasha and then used the resulting OB to wipe out everyone in my party. DO NOT LET GAUSS USE HIS OB! It won’t end well! The second time I was on to his tricks, so I got a number of kills early with Serdic and built up his OB gauge to 3. When Gauss waltzed down, I whittled his HP down as best as I could with the others and then let him have it. Simple, and short. My final party was Serdic, Ansom, Yumiluna, Cotton, Izuna and Sasha, by the way. I wasn’t impressed with Alhambra’s performance in Path A.

Ding Dong, the Evil Emperor is dead! Serdic celebrates continental peace by evidently deciding, “What good is becoming Emperor if I can’t get wimmin?” and asking Aegil to marry him. And they all live happily ever after, the end.

So now I’ve finished both Paths of Rondo of Swords and there’s nothing else left to do in this game. All things considered, I had a blast, but I can’t let it off the hook so lightly. There were a number of serious frustrations:

1. The randomness of the shopping system was stupid. When you send someone out, you can’t control what they buy or how much or even if they buy anything at all. BS. Of course, the real good stuff can be got through battles, and your healer exists to cure you anyway, but still. It’s the principle of the thing.

2. The promotion system sucked. You’ll have to play the game at least three or four times if you want to accumulate enough seals and proofs to promote everyone in your party. This time round, I got a Palta Seal pretty early only to discover I was missing a second Hunter Proof, with no way of getting one, and thus couldn’t promote Ansom to his highest level. Crap! And it sucks that your units have to miss a battle to get promoted.

3. Not being able to move and use OB/Magic at the same time is ridiculous. Some say if mages could move and attack at the same time they’d be seriously overpowered. I say there’s gotta be a better way to nerf magic than that. Even Tactical Guild wised up and let you switch to a more intelligent class later (which was indeed overpowered, but that’s Tactical Guild for you).

4. Apart from Marie and Cotton, mages are weak and useless. I’m talking about offensive mages like Selmer/Elmer, Arios, Igraine and Galahad. The only thing offensive about them is how useless they are, with their low MOV and terrible attacks that either hurt your whole party or only hit one enemy. And their low starting MP pools that mean they can only cast a few times before needing to refill. And if they get hit once? Poof! Sure there are ways of getting use out of them, but it’s so much easier to just use Queen Cotton’s Fairy Fire or Fire Dragon which won’t hurt your allies, AND will refill her OB gauge so she can cast magic over and over again. There’s no comparison.

5. The story in both paths was pretty sketchy. The presentation was lazy as well: a few lines of text, a few lines of dialogue, there go you, your next battle. How’s anyone supposed to get excited from that?

6. Not being able to place your troops on the battlefield is killer for a strategy game. Not being able to even see the battlefield and find out  the winning conditions before you pick your troops is even worse. In that respect it’s fortunate I had my preferred party that I just went out and steamrolled the battles with.

7. Wooden characters were wooden. Apart from Serdic, everyone seems to be tagging along for the heck of it. This is always the case in RPGs, but at least try not to make it so obvious, will ya? Character motivations are never delved into in detail, and the short description in the Info panel is all the backstory you’re ever going to get about most of them. Why did Gauss want to take over the continent (lol bicuz hez evul)? What happened to Mephreyu’s friend, when, how? How is releasing the Darkness going to help? Why homunculi? And why a homunculus of Prince Serdic? How was it created? Was Prince Serdic in on the plan? Etc, etc. You’ll never find out, so don’t bother.

But all in all, that stuff didn’t get in the way of my enjoyment. It’s going to take me a while to readjust to normal battle systems after this Route Maneuver business. It was fun, in its own tough, unforgiving way.

Moving on, I started Tales of the Tempest a few days ago, I’m about 4 hours in. It’s…well, I just started so I’ll hold off judgment till now. The weather’s too nice to stay indoors today so I’m heading out to run errands. Toodles!

Rondo of Swords – Path A Finished (spoilers)!

Cotton, savior of a million lives

*huff, wheeze* Phew! *pant, pant* Finally! I finally killed that bloody Mephreyu!

FI-NA-LL-YYYY! Gawd, what a pain in the ass that final stage was. I must have tried it at least 10 times. At least. But it’s all good and nice, I finally managed to put that sucker away for good. Smug bastard, that last hit felt so, so good. Death and Destruction to the Mephreyus of this world! All hail! All hail!

Now then, there’s a famous quote attributed (most likely apocryphally) to Einstein that goes: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” By that definition, the final stage of Rondo of Swords must have sent me stark raving nuts, because I kept trying to use the same strategy and something kept going wrong. Then I’d try again, something would go wrong again. It wasn’t until I gave up and went all medieval on Mephreyu’s behind that I finally managed to beat him. But thinking back, the correct strategy was so obvious! All those wasted hours…

My failed strategy: Team: Altrius (Serdic), Alberich, Cotton, Ansom, Marie, Alhambra. Clear out mages with Ansom, clear out all other bad guys with rest of team. Slowly work way up to the top. Park Altrius and Alhambra at bottom of wide platform to lure reinforcements down and up. Place Cotton by one upper spawn point and Alberich by another. Slowly take out enemies on Mephreyu’s pyramid by having Ansom go up, shoot them and be rescued by Marie’s Holy Favor. Have Ansom take down Mephreyu’s MP by the same method until his MP is gone and half his HP is down. Have Alberich finish him off with OB level 3.

All well and nice, except either Ansom or Marie or Alberich would get themselves killed somehow. This often happened when the linesmen reinforcements refused to play nice by going up instead of down. Or when Ansom accidentally found himself out of range of Marie (my own carelessness, I know), and more than once Alberich’s Null ZOC failed him and he ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time. And on one occasion Altrius got himself critically countered, Game Overing me within a few turns. Even at level 54 he still failed to one-shot some of the level 45 linesmen on occasion, leaving me in a sticky position to say the least. Needless to say I kept him far, far away from Mephreyu.

My successful strategy: Same team as before, same strategy as before except for a few things. Firstly, I had Altrius take the fight to the linesman on the right, standing right on top of the stairs ready to take him out. I also had Alhambra hide in the corner on the top right, keeping the armored guy busy and frustrated. That was all by-the-by, the important thing was, Ansom got killed again. And this time I didn’t restart because I had an epiphany: Cotton. My Queen. Ansom had already cleared all the guys on the platform, and Cotton is strong as hell against magic attacks. If anyone could survive Mephreyu’s attacks it would be her. I’d already used her as a mage killer before, why couldn’t I do it again?

So I tried it, and it worked beautifully. Not only could she survive his attacks with ease (he hit her for 196. Pfft, she’s got over 450HP), but she could hit back as well with Fire Dragon. Hard. That meant she was double-draining his MP every round, all while parked in one spot instead of moving back and forth like Ansom did. She could even take a hit or two from the rogue sniper or linesman without breaking a sweat. AND she could refill her own HP and MP with her OB. I still had Marie standing some distance away using Cure Drop every once in a while, just to be on the safe side. I whittled down Mephy’s MP and then HP to half, then he used an item to refill his MP. Pfft, you’re only prolonging your suffering Mephreyu! Give it up, you can’t win!

At some point Marie wandered into the path of a stray sniper and got taken out, but by that point I’d taken the boss’s MP out completely, so I cornered him with Cotton and Alberich, hit him with Fire Dragon and followed it up with Alberich’s OB 3. Narrow Victory for the win.

So glad that’s over with. That was the most frustrating final boss fight I’ve ever faced, bar none. For all my troubles, the ending was surprisingly perfunctory. Marie becomes Queen, everyone takes off back to wherever they came from and Altrius goes adventuring in parts unknown for reasons unsaid. Roll credits, the end.

About the game itself, though… Once I got used to the Route Maneuver System it was surprisingly fun, and definitely strategic in its own way. I both liked and hated the way you couldn’t just rush into battle blindly but instead had to lure enemies down slowly and carefully. The main downside was that every battle took forever even with super-powered freaks like Ansom and Cotton in the house. My Serdic/Altrius was roided up from taking on all the bad guys in “Escape from Egvard” but after the first 15 chapters or so he was just like everybody else. I shudder to imagine how utterly worthless he would be without all that extra grinding. Worse than unpromoted Roy from Fire Emblem 6, I bet. In any case, this is one game I definitely won’t be whining “It was too easy!” about. Oh, and the music was good too. I say it was good because I must have heard the same themes about a thousand times and I still never turned the sound off. That qualifies as good in my books.

The problem with Rondo of Swords was the story, really. The lack of a story, I mean. Enemies invade, you run, you rally, you turn back and press your way back to your kingdom. At one point most of your allies desert you, then a few chapters later they’re back like nothing ever happened. The Grand Meir villains just invaded because they were evil, no other reason. And Mephreyu’s pissed off because Verona killed his friend, so supposedly he wants to… uhmm… release the Darkness so that…umm… You know, I’m really not clear on that part. Anyway, he was mad about something and wanted to release an ancient evil to solve it, but we stopped him and everyone lived happily ever after. The end. Yeah, I’m not impressed either.

Now for Path B, the path where you kill Marie and Serdic becomes this awesome hardcore emperor dude. I made sure to get two saves when the choice came up, so I don’t have to replay from the start. I’m only two chapters into Path B, but I’m loving this no-nonsense, take-no-prisoners Serdic. I can’t believe the milksop Altrius had this side to him, it’s so cool. It’s hard to get used to being weak again though. This could take a while.

First trailer of Nora to Toki no Koubou

Atlus updated their official website for Nora to Toki no Koubou today, adding a character description for Nora’s companion Keke as well as a two-minute trailer that shows the creation system, but not in detail. All we know for sure is that she manipulates time and uses it to make items somehow. It showed a bit of the battle system as well, but not in any kind of detail. It’ll be probably be like other Gust games where you hire adventurers to accompany you when item foraging, which raises their affection for you. Nora’s “Nani ga toreru kana,” “yatta!”, “dekita!” and “un, kanpeki!” lines gave me serious Atelier flashbacks as well. I’m looking forward to this!

Youtube trailer (the one on the official website is slightly higher quality and less squashed)

In other news, I’m almost done with Rondo of Swords Path A! This would have been an update on it except that bloody Mephreyu just won’t die! I think I’ve figured out how to get him, but both times I tried, I made a careless mistake and got either Ansom or Marie killed. I cannot go on without him so it was back to the  drawing board again. I can’t imagine beating him without either of those two. As for Serdic/Altrius, he’s one of the most useless main characters I have ever been forced to take into battle before. I wish I could kill him off, I really do. *sigh* Okay, time for attempt number three.