One Hour Review: Tales of Vesperia – an hour is enough 👍

Continuing the One Hour Review series. Just a few more titles to go. Yesterday I tried an hour of Tales of Vesperia: Definitive Edition on the Switch. It was just the right length of time to meet the two main characters, get into plenty of trouble, fight a number of battles, escape the first city and make my way to Deidon Hold, the first real town area in the game.

It was a nice, round self-contained experience, but as I said in the title, an hour of Tales of Vesperia is enough. It’s enough for me to see what my boy Yuri Lowell is really like in his own game. He’s one of the first characters I got when I started Granblue Fantasy, and he was a staple of my Dark team for the longest time. I never read any of the collab stories so I had no idea of his personality. He’s more childish than I’d thought. His whole character screams “trying to be cool” with that faux-nonchalant attitude and drawling speech… but I don’t dislike him. The ditzy princess Estellise is right out, though. Never want to see her again. She’s a big reason why I want to quit while I’m ahead.

The even bigger reason is that I can already tell that the plot of Tales of Vesperia is going to be stupid, just like the rest of the Tales games. Tales fans are going to jump down my throat for saying that. Well, “Aaaaah!” Come on down! Y’all’s favorite series has dumb plots. I played Tales of the Tempest, bless my soul, and I almost finished Tales of Hearts. Thanks to those bitter experiences, I can see the signs in Vesperia right from the beginning:

  • Blastia cores are so vital to the fountain’s operation. They are also prohibitively expensive. And yet they are easily removed and completely unsecured even in the commoner’s area. Riiiight.
  • The comical levels of discrimination from nobles towards commoners, despite living a literal stone’s throw away. I can see this leading to many preaching sessions from Yuri and the princess. *screech* We are all equal~ We need to work together~*screech* Please. Spare me.

  • Commits crimes.
    *gets arrested*
    *shocked Pikachu face*

    The idiotic main character who assaults guards in broad daylight, sneaks into a mansion in broad daylight, walks out in broad daylight and then is somehow astonished when he’s stopped and arrested. And despite all that, he still tries to act cool. “There is more hope for a fool than for a man who is wise in his own eyes.”

  • The idiotic main character who really believes he can sneak out of a jail and be back the next morning without anyone noticing. Without even bothering to close the jail door or leave a decoy in his bed. And then he’s somehow surprised that a manhunt starts for him. What did he even need to break out so urgently for? If he really thought he was that indispensable to the commoners then maybe, just maybe, he shouldn’t have gotten himself arrested? TBH it’s already unbelieveable that he was sentenced to just 10 days in jail for breaking and entry and stealing a big bag of money.
  • The idiotic naive princess (?) character, full of meaningless ideals, devoid of any common sense. At least she can heal in battle, that’s always a plus. Running around in a frilly dress. Then she decides to change into something easier to move in. And the resulting outfit is even more eye-catching. And all this takes place in the middle of a thrilling escape from the castle. Who knows how many more such nonsensical scenes are lined up in the future?
  • The idiotic random enemy who bursts into Flynn’s room and attacks whoever is inside just because. Like, okay. Sure. And even though we clearly beat him, he still got away and will definitely return for even more idiotic hijinks down the road. Why do games still pull this crap?

I only played an hour and every 5 minutes I was going “This is dumb… This is dumb… This is really dumb…” And then you realize most Tales games are 30-40 hours long at a minimum. My patience isn’t gonna last that long. Thus it’s better to quit Tales of Vesperia while I still have a slightly positive view of it. At least the graphics were nice, the combat is snappy and not too hard, Repede is a cute dg and the colors are bright and happy. If the characters and plot were a little more promising I would keep it on my backlog. But as it is, I know myself and I know what I’ve been through with Tales games. An hour of Tales of Vesperia is enough.

One Hour Review: Octopath Traveler – It’s good!

Long-time readers of My RPG Blog may remember a brief period of time two years ago when I co-owned a Nintendo Switch. I managed to finish Xenoblade Chronicles 2 and even played the Octopath Traveler demo before the ownership partnership was dissolved due to scheduling conflicts. To be honest, Xenoblade 2 was the only thing I super wanted to play, so I haven’t really thought about the Switch in a while. But recently one thing led to another and I ended up borrowing the Switch for a while.

So if you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for the past two weeks or so, I’ve been playing Picross S4. Along with my usual casual fare like Atelier Online, of course. I’ve played all the normal puzzles, now I’m working on Mega Picross. After that S4 also has Color Picross, which I haven’t seen since the DS days. And once I’m done with all the S4 has to offer, naturally I will have to revisit S, then play S2, S3, and also Picross e8 and e9 on the 3DS…

But I felt like playing only Picross all the time might make me sick of it, so I decided to cut in with some “regular” video games as well. Apart from Picross and Octopath Traveler, my bro also owns fine games such as Tales of Vesperia, Ys VIII and Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition (I want to play it but I don’t want to play it). There might be other titles as well, dunno.

All that background to say, I’ve played about two hours of Octopath Traveler now and it’s pretty nice. I started with H’aanit and almost quit, though.

Firstly because of the weird accent they gave her which was just like WHAT IS THIS. I couldn’t imagine playing a whole game full of such garbled nonsense. Luckily it’s only H’aanit and her people who speak that way.

Second reason, her Chapter 1 was really boring. Talk talk talk, walk through forest, kill monster, back to town, more talk. Practically nothing happened. They could have just let her set out straight to look for her master and nothing would have been lost.

Third reason, the game’s battle system is very boring when your character is weak and alone. Every battle takes a long time and you’re just spamming the same moves. It’s interesting to see that this is a direct reversal of how I felt when I played the demo. Nowadays I don’t have the patience for any video game system that feels like unnecessary work. If it’ll take party members to make the battles move faster, bring ’em on!

showing how little damage characters do in octopath traveler

Such puny numbers

Once I got out of S’warkii and met up with Therion in the next town, things got more interesting. The weird accents have gone away, Therion’s adventure was funnier (way to walk into a totally obvious trap, dude) and now that I have two party members, I feel invincible. Especially since I’m finally getting some use out of H’aanit’s Capture skill with more useful enemies. It’s pretty great. Tip: get as many Ice Sentinels as you can in the Ravus Manor. They make short work of the boss on Therion’s chapter 1.

This is why you should really give games at least one hour if possible. Now I’m about 2 hours into Octopath Traveler and starting to really enjoy it. Just arrived in Clearbrook and saw another story character. Once I recruit him and have three characters in my party, battles should become faster. I hope. It’s a bit of a pain having to target weakness and Break enemies all the time. Sometimes you just want to steamroll the easy field mobs, y’know? But that’s the only problem I still have with the game. Apart from that, Square-Enix fixed all the complaints I had about the demo, so I’m looking forward to exploring the rest of the Octopath world.

Before that, though, more Picross! And more One Hour Reviews of the rest of the Switch games, just as a formality. Though I do have some expectations from Ys VIII. What about the Tokyo Xanadu eX+ I was enthusiastically playing until recently? Picross happened. I was really enjoying it, though. I should post something about it sometime, but I keep feeling like I’m almost done. Also I don’t plan to hang on to the Switch for very long (I learned a bitter lesson about borrowing consoles some years ago) so I’ll go back to TX soon enough.

I really want to play more Octopath Traveler as well, though… I’ll try to finish at least one character’s full route before returning the Switch.

One Hour Review: Atelier Lulua – Rather boring start

As we all know, I was scheduled to play Atelier Lydie & Scumbag after finishing Atelier Firis, in order to round off the Mysterious series of games. But for various reasons I am shelving it for the meantime and will return after I’ve finished Atelier Lulua and maybe Ryza and maybe replayed one or two other games.

So I tried Atelier Lulua ~The Scion of Arland~ for an hour last night and… nothing really happened. Yeah, it’s only the first hour and nothing much is supposed to happen, but still it was extremely bland. Long introductions of Lulua, Arklys and Fellsgalaxen, as is common for the Arland series – that took around 10 minutes of the total time. Then gathering, walking around, fighting once or twice, synthesized one Craft, got to meet Lulua’s mentor Piana, then just like that the hour was over.

I suppose it’s a good thing. Even though I didn’t particularly enjoy that first hour, when it was over I felt like it wasn’t nearly enough and I wanted to play for another hour. None of the characters turned me off, the battle system is nothing new, and for some reason I really like the font they used for everything. Why the font? I dunno, but I liked it. The alchemy system was a bit confusing, but I may get used to it as I keep playing. Or I might be confused all the way and still muddle through somehow, you never know. It’s too early to tell.

Alchemy in Atelier Lulua

I don’t understand a single thing I just read

Because of the early experience with Lydie & Scumbag, I was little apprehensive when there was a scene about giving Father Benon a piece of their minds. I thought it would end up with them giving him a piece of their feet instead, but luckily Lulua is seems to have a normal brain and to be fairly well brought up. Guess I’ve got nothing to worry about.

Is the Atelier series misandrist?! Nah.

Another scruffy, ineffectual father figure? Someone at Gust has daddy issues!

Since Atelier Lulua is the game I feel the most like continuing, once I’m done with Tokyo Xanadu eX+ (which is going swimmingly), I’ll jump back into it and then decide where to go from there. See ya.

One Hour Review: Atelier Lydie & Suelle – What the hell

Aight, so I mentioned a while ago that I wanted to try Atelier Lydie & Suelle ~The Alchemists and the Mysterious Paintings~ because I pulled Suelle in Atelier Online and she looked cute. BIG MISTAKE. Don’t judge a character by her cutesy design. What the hell is wrong with this girl’s head, and what is wrong with the Gust writers who put this insanity on my screen and expected me to like it?

I only played one hour, as previously agreed upon. An hour doesn’t seem like very long, but it was more than enough time to meet some major characters, see the town, get an idea of the story, go through tutorials about gathering and synthesis and even fight my first battle.

Up till right before I quit, I thought it was an okay-ish game. It still runs sluggishly on my desktop so I’ll have to Google some fixes, but I’ll get round to that sometime. The tiny town reminds me uncomfortably of Atelier Sophie, that garbage game, and I’ve already heard that the scale of the game is much smaller than Atelier Firis. That’s not necessarily a bad thing as long as it’s not too small. And really, as long as there’s enough alchemy and the story isn’t too annoying I don’t mind the size of the world map much.

The problem came right before the hour expired. All along I’d been bothered by how rude Suelle was towards her father, even calling him “dummy-daddy” like it’s funny or something. But I figured the writers were just trying to create a “livelier” and “spunkier” heroine in contrast to the bland Sophie and cutesy Firis. And some people do have this casual, faux-adversarial relationship with their parents, I don’t get it myself but whatever.

Someone wash her mouth out with soap

So far so bad, but then right after Lydie and Suelle got back from the world of the painting, the game went crazy. There was a scene where their father Roger spent all their money – a measly 300 cole – on paint and then Suelle… I couldn’t believe it… that crazy cow KICKED HER OWN FATHER!

Don’t go “Guwah!” Thrash some sense into the little brat!

No “poked,” not “picked,” not “tricked.” K I C K E D! Kicked her own father. When did fathers turn into footballs for any brat to kick them around anyhow they please?

What kind of no-good, low-level low-life do you have to be to kick another human being?

What kind of ill-bred, disrespectful, putrid piece of garbage do you have to be to raise your foot against your own father?

And not for any good reason but over 300 cole?!! I thought I was hallucinating or something, maybe I sniffed too many paint fumes from the game. I mean, HOW????? I can’t stop shaking my head. Haa…🤦

So that soured me on the game in a major way. You can’t just kick people like that. I wouldn’t even kick my neighbor’s dog, and he’s a bad dog. Bark bark bark from morning to evening, bark bark bark even at 2am. But the night a burglar stole my laptop, it slept like a baby, zzzz. Even then, I wouldn’t kick that hellhound. How much more my own family member, the father who raised me from birth. This is nuts…

From now on, this game is no longer called Atelier Lydie & Suelle; it’s called Lydie & Scumbag. As for whether I’ll continue to play it or not… ugh, I don’t wanna. I’m probably going to, eventually, but I’ve moved it to the back of the queue automatically. I’ll play the more sensible ones with heroines with an actual moral compass first, then I’ll circle back to Lydie & Scumbag in the future. See ya!

One Hour Retry: Tokyo Xanadu eX+ (minor spoilers)

tokyo xanadu ex+ banner headerHiiiii guys~ Remember two days ago when I said I would be playing various games for an hour each? Yeahhh, that plan is kinda on hold now~ Just for a little while so I can finish or definitively give up on Tokyo Xanadu eX+. Don’t blame me, blame Atelier Lydie & Suelle. I was trying to install and run it on my laptop and it was giving me all kinds of troubles. Slow framerate, controls not working, flat out not responding to anything.

I blame the laptop mostly, but either way it was a frustrating experience. Eventually I put the game aside and concentrated on getting the controller working. And after that, naturally I had to test the controller. And Tokyo Xanadu eX+ was right there on the desktop. So I set the alarm for an hour and dived back in and now I’m hooked again.

After all, it’s not like I dropped the game because I disliked it. My save file reads 25 hours for a good reason. When the game actually lets you play, combat is a lot of fun. Enemy density is a bit low, but the dungeon lengths are getting nice and long and the puzzles aren’t too annoying yet, so I look forward to every dive into the Eclipse. When they let me dive, that is. I timed today’s session and approximately 20 minutes of it was spend in the dungeon while the other 40 was spent watching cutscenes before and after the dungeon run. That’s rough.

IIRC the reason I stopped playing was because I took a long break, and when I came back I couldn’t remember any of the controls, or any of the story. I still barely remember the story except we’re trying to save an idol singer from ‘angel’ possession. And we’ve formed some kind of monster-busting team. Now I think of it, I was very annoyed back then because Falcom made me play for 20 hours THEN began to introduce the main story. But that’s just Falcom’s way, so I dunno why I bothered being upset.

So anyway, if not for the one hour alarm, I would have felt too lazy to jump back into Tokyo Xanadu eX+. This is like the third or fourth time I’ve walked away and every time I have to memorize all the controls again. This means jump, this plus this means jump attack, this is a power attack, this is a strike, and on and on and on and on. I’m terrible at keeping those kinds of things in mind. I prefer the Rune Factory kind of “mash X to slash” attack. But, as with most good ARPGs, once you do master the controls, it feels amazing running and dashing and hitting, racking up the combos and finally, finally shaving that last point of HP off a boss. There’s nothing like a good ARPG boss battle.

All this is to explain why I have to put the One Hour Review plan on hold so I can finish/drop Tokyo Xanadu eX+. I will play and comment on Atelier Lydie & Suelle ASAP if I can get it to run on my desktop. However if I wait too long, I’ll forget the controls in TX for the umpteenth time. Sure I could still go ahead and try other games for an hour like I said I would, but I don’t see the point. After all, the ultimate goal of the exercise was to find something I wanted to play, and I found something I want to play. Better to clear this out of the way first and then continue.

Also to be perfectly honest, I really don’t want to play FFXIII again. And The Alliance Alive, eh, if it weren’t from Furyu I wouldn’t touch it. That chibi graphical style reminds me too much of games like Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles, Final Fantasy 3 DS, Bravely Default and Legend of Legacy. All of those memories churn up unpleasant feelings in me, so I’m not so hot on reliving them again by playing AA. I’m better off using the 3DS to play Picross e8 and e9 instead. Ooh, Picross💕

In summary: Tokyo Xanadu eX+ time! See you later!