Star Ocean: Second Evolution – Irritating

star ocean 2 end screenFinished Star Ocean Second Evolution after about 26 hours. Got an ending where Claude and Jeanne went treasure-hunting while Rena and everyone else ended up forever alone. Like I care. With game characters, as with human beings, when you don’t like someone, nothing they do can ever please you. The supporting cast was decent but the mains just annoyed me non-stop. And the game was so sluggish. The talking parts were a pain because a character would say a line, then walk slowly for 30 seconds, say another line, then “. . . . . .” slowly for another 5 seconds, etc etc. The battles were fast-paced and frequent even with Scouting on max, but level ups were plentiful and I liked distributing SP so that wasn’t a problem. I mained Claude throughout until the final battle, then switched to Rena and spammed healing items and magic till the last boss died.

Normally when I play a game I don’t like very much I claim I won’t say much about it, then I end up writing several paragraphs regardless. Not this time though. I’m just sorry I didn’t quit Star Ocean 2 earlier and move on to something else. Sure the battles were fun, but there are bound to be other games with equally good battles and less annoying characters. Anyway, it’s over. I’m moving on immediately. …But I don’t feel like playing another RPG so soon, so I’m going to skip Valkyrie Profile Lenneth and play Princess Maker 3 then come back. Or maybe I should do Tokimeki Memorial 2 instead. Hmm. No, I haven’t played a Princess Maker in a while. PM3 it is.

Star Ocean Second Evolution – Inferior sequel with annoying characters

star ocean2_frontIt plays 99% like the first Star Ocean, only Square-Enix took all the cool characters out and replaced them with whiny teens. I’m about 6 hours in and things have gotten a little better since I added Ashton to my party simply because the whole Creepy ‘n’ Weepy saga is pretty funny. But that’s all optional content I’m pursuing because it amuses me. I still can’t stand Claude and his goofy face and I don’t like Rena as much as I thought I would when I picked her story. Every time she starts talking about Dias and every time Claude gets all mopey-wopey I just want to punch them in the mouth.

Visually and gameplay-wise Star Ocean Second Evolution is just First Departure with new battle attacks. Instead of AWAKEN! DRAGON FROM BEYOND THE CLOUDS! You have stuff like Cross Slash and Twin Thrust and some other stuff I haven’t really listened to because I usually keep the game on mute because the voices annoy me. Even the high encounter rate is still present, and Scouting still does zip and nil to fix that. The failure rate for skills like Appraising and Cooking is also as high as ever, but this time I know enough not to waste precious Skill points on them.

Also the pacing of this game is much, much slower. After 6 hours virtually nothing has happened. We’re supposed to go examine some big ball or another, but we haven’t even gotten close to the continent where it’s happening, much less the actual location. Part of that is my fault for turning around at Harley and going back to Salva to hunt dragons, but even that didn’t take that much time. By itself 6 hours of nothing wouldn’t be such a bad deal for an RPG, but when I compare Second Evolution to the first game and all the crazy things that happened there in the first hour alone, I can’t help finding this a major letdown.

Which is not to say I dislike the game, mind you. I’m quite enjoying myself. I wouldn’t be going out of my way to do a  long sidequest if I wasn’t. But this game lacks plenty when compared to its predecessor. It’s disappointing, because I was told SO2 was an improvement over SO in every single way. Maybe this was true of the originals, but the remakes are basically the same game, only SO2 got the ‘teenaged angst’ story. Maybe that’s why it’s so popular. Dunno, dun care. As with SO1, I won’t be doing the PAs (too tedious) and I’ll only do any sidequests that really interest me. This shouldn’t take too long.

Bleh. I don’t feel like playing anything.

I have a bad cold and my wrist hurts, so I don’t feel like playing anything right now.

When I’m better, I’ll be playing the following over the next couple of months. New Year’s Resolutions? What New Year’s Resolution?

1. Star Ocean Second Evolution
2. Valkyrie Profile Lenneth
3. Princess Maker 3
4. Last Bullet – Already started. Rather boring visual novel
5. Avalon Code & Shiren the Wanderer – giving them a second chance like I’d promised.

Blehhh… zzzz… So who won the World Cup, btw?

Disgaea DS – I’ve played enough, thank you.

disgaea ds_frontAfter the last post I made about Disgaea, I received some very helpful comments that made me decide to give the game one last chance. To that end I also switched from the PS2 version to the DS version in the hopes that this would make the game feel more accessible.

Changes I had to make to be able to play this game:

– Ignore Dark Assembly apart from picking up canon fodder at the start
– Ignore Item World apart from the mandatory trip in Chapter 3
– Ignore Geo Symbols as much as possible
– Laharl basically solos. The rest toss him Candy or distract enemies long enough for Laharl to heal.

Thanks to these changes I was able to make it to an all-time high of 5 hours and 30 minutes played. I reached Episode 5 (Jotunheim) for anyone who is familiar with the game. Unfortunately being able to play that far just deepened my realization that Disgaea just isn’t for me. I still don’t know what it is about the game that I dislike so much, but at this point I’ve given up on finding out.

Since I had to completely gut and neuter the system to make it even remotely playable, however, I suspect it might have something to do with my innate dislike for fussy battle systems, especially in SRPGs. I’m also not that crazy about grinding, so the idea that I’d have to dive into all my weapons and armor (the shops never seemed to update) and fight at least 10 battles each to power them up just a little bit is off-putting, to say the least. The story and the characters were also a little too kiddy for me. What is love~ Baby don’t hurt me~ don’t hurt me~ no more~♫

No need to kick a game while it’s down. Thanks to all who helped me figure out a way to play a little more of this before quitting. I’m sorry all your efforts were in vain, but I gave it my best shot. I really did. And now, at last, it’s time to move on.

Izuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja – Hurray for easy rogue-likes!

izuna front coverIzuna: Legend of the Unemployed Ninja was developed and published by Success and Ninja Studio, the same publisher-developer team that brought us the wonderful must-play title Tactical Guild. Luckily for us all, the two games don’t have anything else in common. For one thing Izuna is actually pretty good. I’m going to borrow the plot description from Wikipedia to save myself some time:

Izuna and her ninja clan are looking for a place to settle down after their old master Mugen decided that ninjas were obsolete, and booted them from his castle. Upon arriving at a village that’s suitably out of the way for their “Grandboss”, Gen-An, they decide to stay at an inn when Grandboss wanders off. While trying to find Grandboss, Izuna manages to offend the gods of the village, and everyone in the area starts behaving strangely. Now Izuna has to descend into the various shrines for the gods in order to set things right.

And that’s all the plot any rogue-like ever needs. Izuna is similar to other rogue-likes in most ways: randomly generated dungeons, enemies make a move when you make a move, item drops galore in the dungeons, lose all items and money when you die. Do please go on, this is most interesting →