Suikoden: Hyakunen – So far, so-so (slight spoilers)

Genso_Suikoden_~Tsumugareshi_Hyakunen_no_Toki~_Cover_ArtThe full title is Genso Suikoden: Tsumugareshi Hyakunen no Toki, which has something to do with time spun over a hundred years or something like that. Sounds more impressive than it really is, seriously. If I hadn’t played Shining Blade already, this would be my blah-est game of the year. I’ve had a pretty good 2013, all things considered, but I knew I couldn’t get away without a few clunkers.

Story so far

I’m only 12 hours in and just got a strategist, so things might change. My protagonist lives in a world where deadly monsters show up every 100 years and, of course, this is the 100th year. Finding the monsters too much for them to take on, they warp back into the past with the aid of a magic tree and get training from the heroes of 100 years ago on how to fight the monsters. It then turns out that a group, the Crimson Axe is manipulating these monsters with the aim of overthrowing the Aonian Empire. MC and his gang don’t trust either group, so they strike out on their own to defeat the Crimson Axe and their monsters and bring back peace to the world.

It looks nice on paper, as stories like this tend to do. But just like business is all about location, location, location, stories are all about execution, execution, execution. Once my party discovers how to travel into the past, their solution to every single problem is always “Travel back 100 years and get someone to help us fix it.” It makes them look weak and lame when they can’t stand on their own two feet and are constantly running back crying to the heroes of yesteryear. That leads to:

Problem 1: The older heroes are far more colorful, far more heroic and far, far more reliable than my gang of wet-behind-the-ears village kids. It’s not because they’re all at level 50; they just happen to be better characters. Cheerful, easy-going Troward is a much better main character than dull, goody two-shoes Trunks (not his name, but I should totally have named him that). Troward’s best friend Rolf is a much nicer fellow than cranky tsundere mage Myura. And so on it goes for the whole cast. The reason why the game immediately rules out importing any of those ancient heroes to the future is because that’s the first thing any sensible gamer would do. There’s simply no contest.

Do please go on, this is most interesting →

EarthBound, the early days

EarthBound_BoxThe game doesn’t keep an hour count, but my MC (Ness?) has reached level 20 and I’ve just gotten my second party member, so this is as good a time as any to write something about EarthBound. Except I don’t know what to write, because it’s more Earth-Bland than anything else right now. I’m liking it well enough, but nothing really pushes me to play it. I might have left it a little late, in that it doesn’t seem that fresh or interesting to me because I’ve played a lot of Dragon Quests and a lot of Pokemons and this seems like a cross between the two. Blasphemy for EarthBound fans, I know. I’ll see myself out…

…but before I go, what I’m liking about EarthBound, at least:

– The rolling HP gauge. Totally saved my life when a tree randomly exploded on me.
– The NPCs are very amusing.
– Best Dad ever, but how did he know I’d got Polly in my party? Is he spying on me?
– The penalty for being KO’ed is pretty light. I’ve played enough DQ to know enough to keep all my money in the bank, so death is a slap on the wrist.
– The cartoony graphics are cute.
– I kinda like the music.

So far, so good, really. I’m sure it will pick up tremendously once I have my whole party together. Right now I have a dilemma to solve involving a wad of bills, a singing troupe in debt and a tunnel I can only pass through while playing funky music. Hmm, how to put the three together? <_< >_> I don’t know a single spoilerrific thing about EarthBound, and I intend to keep it that way, so I’m grateful that the writers make it easy to figure out what to do next without holding my hand. I’ll report back once I’ve gotten a little further.

Fuurai no Shiren 4: Kami no Hitomi to Akuma no Heso – The most playable of the lot

fuurai no shiren4_frontI skipped playing Shiren 3 on the Wii, because somehow I can’t wrap my mind around playing a rogue-like on a console. The earlier games have spoiled me. Besides, it doesn’t matter which one I play or what I play it on, my play style is simple: go out there and die until I’m tired of dying. My Fuurai no Shiren 4 record is 24 adventures (and about as many deaths) in 14 hours and 8 minutes. This is longer than I lasted for games 1 and 2, so I’m slightly proud of myself.

My highest level is 23 and 23 is also the highest floor I’ve made it to so far. Part of me wants to try for 30 while part of me wants to quit while I still have happy memories of this game. I’ll wrestle with myself a little longer, but even if I do go back I don’t think I’ll have anything new to add, which is why I’m writing this now.

Chunsoft made a few changes this time to make things both easier and more interesting. Or maybe they were in the other games all along and I never noticed because I never got far.

– Night and day system. This definitely wasn’t in the earlier games. Daylight enemies are your regular fellows that respond to regular attacks. Night time enemies hit like cement trucks and can only be affected by special attacks. You also need torches or scrolls to even see them.

The special attacks usually OHKO the enemies (otherwise they OHKO you), and any skills you learn from leveling up or NPCs are saved even if you die. I wish there was a way to use more than 8 attacks per floor, but there’s a certain masochistic thrill you get from desperately avoiding enemies while waiting and praying for dawn to break. When an NPC first explained the system to me, it sounded incredibly tough and complicated, but it’s simple enough to switch back and forth between the different modes of play once you get the hang of it.

Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Dekitate High School – Just because you did something ‘first’ doesn’t mean you did it well

220px-Dekitate-high-school-sfcWhen Dekitate High School came out on the SNES in 1995, it marketed itself as “the first high school simulation game on the SNES.” According to j-wiki, this wasn’t true because a game called Houkago in Beppin Jogakuin (After School in the Beautiful Girl’s Academy)  had come out a few months before. It was also a meaningless achievement, because the vastly superior Tokimeki Memorial was already making waves on the PC at the time and was ported to the SNES shortly afterwards.

Once you realize all that, it shouldn’t come as any surprise that Dekitate High School is a half-assed joke of a game. The premise is that you’re the heir to a rich family. As part of your training, your grandfather establishes a school and asks you to manage it for three years while disguised as a regular teacher. That’s right, you’re a teacher, not a student. This puts any dating between you and your students firmly in unethical territory, which is why, to its credit, DHS never lets you date anyone.

So despite the misleading cover, this is not a dating sim but a school development sim, and a poor one at that. The way you develop your school is by raising your student’s educational stats to match or exceed the national average.

The only way to do this is to build classroom after classroom after classroom higgledy-piggledy on your compound. Ignore aesthetics, pay no mind to accessibility, just build facilities on every square inch of ground and your students will automatically perform better. In theory.

Do please go on, this is most interesting →

Finished Arc Rise Fantasia. It was pretty good! (ending spoilers)

larc-serge-alf-rastan-nikoIt only took about 65 hours, more if you include all the times I got wiped out and had to redo a boss fight. I had a good run, all things considered. Arc Rise Fantasia is the sort of game that makes me want to go back and start afresh with all the knowledge I’ve gained on how to manipulate the battle system in my favor. If I had to play again, I would definitely:

– Reset and reconfigure my magic orbs way earlier. Once you have even one level 3-4 magic orb, it’s time to think about upgrading and ditching lvls 1 and 2 magic. How much easier the Verct Skywalk boss battles would have been if I’d known this.
– Take whatever weapon does the job best into battle and not worry too much about letting WP go to waste.
– Fight to the death for Rufunga on the beach. I had no idea that battle was winnable. “Darn it!” as L’arc would say.
– Fight Eesa before Allul. Eesa was a cakewalk in comparison, which greatly lessened the euphoria I felt after the final battle.
– Abuse the Above and Beyond spell (double-cast of Life Force) to hell and back. Battles get so much better when you’re not stuck in an endless loop of defending and healing.
– Steal more from bosses. I bet they had all kinds of good stuff, but I was too obsessed with staying alive to try.
– Actually use those status-preventing, mag-def boosting accessories much earlier. Focusing on stat-raising accessories for so long was a big mistake.
– Learn about Excel Trinities earlier. Because I’m a psychic and can figure out things the game absolutely does not tell you about unless you pore through the glossary.

And so on and so forth. The game does lend itself to at least one more replay. I would do it if only they’d let me skip all the walking and talking and just warp me from boss battle to boss battle.

Do please go on, this is most interesting →