Working Title

Persona 3

2008-04-26T12:40:00.000-07:00

And now we have a game that really should have caused some controversy but didn't because the mainstream never heard of it. Persona 3 is a game where you fight monsters by committing suicide!

Well, not really. Each character has an "evoker" which for most of them is an item that happens to be shaped exactly like a gun that they put up to their heads and "fire" (makes a gunshot sound, but as far as I can tell doesn't actually shoot a bullet) to summon their Personas. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The opening is rather trippy, and promises an weird game with some possibly drug-induced plotlines. The truth is disappointing and at times painfully mundane, but the game is still an overall enjoyable experience.

The basic premise of the game is balancing the main character (who has no default name, much to my annoyance) battling the evil shadows at night and being a normal high school student by day. There are basically two games shoved together and integrated in some interesting ways.

Battles in the game occur during the Dark Hour--a time every night between midnight and 12:00:01 that most people don't experience. During this time, the moon turns yellow, everything else turns green, random puddles of blood suddenly appear, and the giant tower of Tartarus appears, conveniently, in the place the protagonist's high school is during the day. This was actually a pretty cool idea, I thought, and a clever way to explain how something like this could happen in a contemporary setting. My only complaint is what happens to people who don't experience the Dark Hour--they "transmute into coffins." That seemed contrived and cheesy to me, but other than that it seemed pretty neat. The heroes battle the shadows using the power of their personas--creatures of myth and legend that supposedly reflect the personalities of the summoner. Everyone but the protagonist has a set persona, but he can change his mid battle (the trait that makes him the super-special protagonist--also indicative that he has no personality whatsoever). The battle system has a lot going for it, but is crippled by frustrating and utterly unnecessary problems, which I'll get to in a minute.

The rest of the game happens during the day in the form of a social sim; protagonist goes to school, and hilarity ensues. In order to encourage you to actually participate in the social sim aspects of the game, you have a social link system that determines how quickly your personas level up during the Dark Hour. This could have ended up being an incredibly boring drag on the game, but the characters who make up these social links are well written and, for the most part, interesting enough that I wanted to learn more about them.

That makes a good segue to what I consider to be the game's biggest success; the characters. The plot is fairly standard "save the world with the power of friendship!" and the setting is similar to ones that I've seen several times before, but a lot of time and effort went into fleshing out the characters that populate this world. In the case of the party members, this was augmented by some top notch voice actors. I don't know of any video game voice actor awards out there, but if there were, Junpei's actor (Vic Mignogna, which explains a lot actually) would easily be my pick for best; he sounded spot on throughout the entirety of the game (the other actors did an excellent job, but Junpei seemed to stand out to me). I've yet to see a game do battle voices so well either; each fight, everyone is communicating with each other, mostly shouting words of encouragement that just fit really well. Fuuka got repetitive, but other than that, it just worked.

Combat was mostly the same as it's been in other SMT games, with a few interesting tweaks. Once more, your primary goal is to find a foe's weakness and exploit the hell out of it. If you hit an enemy with their weakness or a critical hit, you knock them down and get to take another turn. Knock all enemies down and you can perform an all-out attack; each party member rushes in and beats the hell out of the enemies. Your characters have weaknesses too, though, and enemies can do the same thing to you (though I don't know if they get an all-out attack, since I made sure to never let all of my party members get knocked down at once). It makes for fast-paced, strategic fights that the series is well known for.

A major problem in the combat system, however, is that the only character you can directly control is the protagonist. Everyone else is controlled by vague orders like "heal/support," "knock down," "conserve SP," and so on. The AI for your party members isn't BAD, but it's not good either. It's sufficient in standard combats usually, since you'll mostly be using "knock down" to try and get AOA's on your enemies, but during boss fights, it's just not enough. If the boss puts up a spell that reflects magic, and you've got your allies set to cast spells, they'll just sit there and do nothing. This happens distressingly often towards endgame. Also, anything that causes the protagonist to be disabled leaves you completely cut out of controlling the battle in any way. Charmed? You get to sit and watch as he kills his allies and they sit and take it. Knocked down? That round you spend getting up is going to hurt. Enemy AI is smart enough at high level that if you leave a weakness out there they can exploit, they will keep him constantly on the ground, and that gets really frustrating. It would have been one thing if allies carried items to get him out of such states, but they don't. There also aren't a lot of ways to become immune to status effects.

Another major problem is that the game forces a really slow pace on you. Major plot events happen every full moon--which gives you a month between them for leveling up. About two weeks into this waiting period, I'm already leveled up and ready to fight, giving me two more weeks to sit around and do nothing (the game has barriers that are taken down after full moons to keep you from wandering into high level areas earlier than they intended). It made things artificially slow to an annoying point. I actually just skipped the last week of the game so I could get to the final encounter--a bad idea before then, because you're supposed to be developing social links during that time. For the final encounter, however, it really didn't matter.

Another problem is that other than the cheap deaths I mentioned above, the game isn't very hard. If the main character dies, its game over (while other party members can be revived easily) but there aren't a lot of enemies that really threaten you unless you slack off in leveling. I was disappointed terribly there; SMT games are usually very difficult.

One more minor complaint... The evokers. It's an interesting image, but there was no follow through on them. For all it mattered to the plot (other than a brief, nervous comment from Junpei) they might as well have been waving wands to summon their personas. I'm not impressed.

The game's music was very hit-or-miss. It had a few hip-hop tracks, which I imagine were there to add to the contemporary air the game has. Unfortunately, said tracks were pretty terrible, especially the one for the protagonist's dorm. When the game moved away from that, however, there was a good mix of soft-rock stuff and orchestral tracks that I really liked. Overall, not as good as the stuff I've heard in previous SMT games, but not horrible either.

There are a lot of things that were done right here. The potential for a great game is there. However, it's bogged down by problems that really could have (and should have) been avoided. Worth a playthough, but I'm not sure I'd play it again if I had other options. 6/10

The un-realized potential of the Wii

2008-02-19T18:01:00.000-08:00

So. I have a Nintendo Wii at home. I absolutely love the premise of the consol, and the potential here is absolutely mind-boggling. The Wiimote really is an impressive piece of technology, working motion sensitivity, rumble, and even small speakers into the mix while Sony claimed it couldn't do both at once at one time (and, due to the massive uproar against rumble's absense, will be fixing that; perhaps another article there). I can think of dozens of crazy things one could do with it that just off the top of my head, and that's before we get to the modular capabilities of the thing.

However, I'm also a gamer. I heasitate to call myself "hardcore" simply because of the arrogance involved, but I'm certainly not casual. The software selection of the Wii as a whole panders to casual gamers, however, and as such I don't have a whole lot to play on it. Super Mario Galaxy, Zelda, Metriod Prime, Paper Mario (which I haven't actually played, but want to) and Guitar Hero. Brawl will be out soon, and I'm sure I will lose many, many hours of my life to it, but until then, a worthwhile library of that many games is not terribly impressive after being out for a year. I'm sure I'm missing a few good games, but the fact remains; the Wii's library is sparse. Most of the games that come out for it are mini-game packs and fail to feel like full games. I got enough of that with Wii Sports, which really didn't do much more than serve as a proof of concept for me.

Really, I think what I want is a Red Steel that doesn't suck. That was an ambitious game, and it gets major points for trying so much right out the door (and promptly loses them for doing it badly, but anyway). The most obvious ways to use the Wiimote in gaming are gun and sword. The gunplay in Red Steel felt pretty good but suffered from stupid enemies, and controls for doing everything else felt sloppy. The sword-fighting felt like a glorified game of rock-paper-scissors. Metroid showed that the gun-fighting aspect can be done, and done well, but I've yet to see such proof for sword fighting. To put it bluntly, the Wii needs a lightsaber game, and it needs it yesterday.

I'm glad Nintendo's attempts to get more groups into the market has panned out. It's great that we're seeing people playing games that had never picked up a controller before. However, this is bad for gamers as a whole in two ways.

Firstly, developers are going to focus on this new group, because there are more of them and therefore they'll spend more money on easy, casual games than gamers will spend on harder games. This means fewer games that are willing to kick your ass, and if it's too easy I'll get bored with it. Case in point: Metriod Prime. I love it, but it was so easy the only time I saw the game over screen was when I walked into the acid rain with the intention of dying so I could see the game over screen.

Secondly, it encourages the view of gaming as a worthless pass time, no more than a diversion. If you called books, music, or films that, most people would call you nuts, but I think games have as much potential for expression and narration as the examples there, easily. The only experience casual gamers with the Wii are playing make no attempt at moving in such directions though, with the possible exception of those who pick up Zelda and Metroid (and neither try for a terribly deep plot). Even without a deep plot or attention to artistic detail, one can still see deep gameplay that is compelling in some ways, but again the Wii has failed to deliver.

There are games coming that I'm looking forward to, but I've lost a lot of my excitement for the Wii. A compelling premise was enough to get me to buy one (well okay my little brother but still) but to keep me interested I have to see some good software.

Odin Sphere

2008-02-07T00:31:00.000-08:00

So, let's get this under way with a game review. Today's topic is Odin Sphere. You'll see a lot of games by Atlus in my blog, and here's another. It takes a lot of balls to put a 2D side-scroller out on a consul today that isn't a fighting game, and that immediately caught my interest. Odin Sphere revives a long-dead genre and does it with just enough of the old to evoke nostalgia while putting enough new things in to make it a unique experience, and putting enough strangeness in to give a few "O_o" moments. For example, at low levels, it is a perfectly viable tactic to plant a seed that will eventually grow sheep. Seriously. As in "Baaa" sheep.

The plot centers around the exploits of five warriors: Gwendolyn the valkyrie, Cornelius the cursed prince, Mercades the new fairy queen, Oswald the shadow knight, and Velvet the forest witch. Each character goes through the same enemies, the same levels, and many of the same bosses, but they play just differently enough that they manage to be unique. Gwendolyn is straightforward, strong, and has decent reach with her spear, and thus is the first character one plays as, to help one get used to the controls. Cornelius is a bit faster, and his broadsword has slightly shorter range, but other than that he and Gwendolyn work much the same. They really mix it up with Mercades, who uses a bow. I'll talk more about her later. Oswald has the shortest reach, but he's fast and strong and moves a lot between combos; he's my personal favorite. Velvet... Again, we'll come back to her.

The action is fast and brutal; there will be so many enemies on the screen at once that the PS2 -actually lags.- It's also quite difficult, and in the case of Mercades and Velvet, not in the good way. With the other three characters, with enough skill one can stun-lock a dozen enemies at once, and you can take a few hits, so with anyone who's not Mercades or Velvet it never gets to a point where it's frustrating. The planting system adds an interesting twist to things... Mid-battle, one can plant seeds. These seeds absorb phozons (small purple lights that enemies release upon death) and grow rapidly. Thus, you can get recovery items mid-battle. Essential in lower levels, but these fruits (or sheep as the case may be) don't heal enough to really be worthwhile in higher levels. Instead, a player would be better suited to gathering the fruits and taking them to a kitchen or cafe, where one can get items combined to form better foods. Most are just automatically eaten on the spot, but the take-out items provide most of the healing in higher levels.

The alchemy system was interesting too. As you go, you find "materials," flasks of stuff labeled 0 - 99. The number in the ones digit determines what kind of items you can make with the materials. When you make an item, it also releases phozons (those purple lights I mentioned before), and the number is determined by the 10's digit; 2 with nothing and 30 at 9.

You level up like in an RPG. Food provides health XP, and absorbing phozons powers up your weapon and allows you to use spells. You have to decide strategically whether to power your weapon or grow food, and that provided a few interesting conundrums. I would have liked more customizability in how a character grows; as is, a character only gets a stronger weapon (more damage) and more HP. I would have liked to have been able to boost defense, magic, speed and the like, and I would have liked to control how those grow in some way. Still, the system is okay, and you really feel it as your character gets higher level.

The voice acting is spot-on, the plot is epic, and the characters are well-written. The dialog has an excellent sense of the dramatic, but never gets to a point where it's difficult to follow. It borders on melodramatic at times, but that's a given for a "save the world" plot anymore. This is definitely a game about the plot; the world is left mostly underdeveloped. The scenery is beautiful, but you're only exploring it in one dimension, and there's only so much one can do with that. Also, the music is beautiful, and once I have my own computer I'll be looking for the soundtrack somewhere.

Naturally, there are weaknesses in the game. I've already mentioned the graphics glitching with things slowing down, but honestly that just makes for more time to react to the 10 poisoned daggers those goblins are throwing. The REAL problems are what I've alluded to with Mercades and Velvet.

So. Mercades, the fairy queen. Her weapon is a crossbow, which seems out of place in this melee-oriented game. I'm not sure what the designers were thinking with her. Playing her, it seems like they said "Lets give them a bow and then make sure they can never get any use out of its range!" Seriously, there are so many things that make a bow unreasonable in this game. Firstly, the player has no control over the camera. To make matters worse, it's zoomed in pretty close except for a few boss battles. The result is that I'm using the tiny mini-map in the top right corner to aim rather than the actual game; otherwise I'd have no idea what I'm shooting at. Also, the melee characters have this power-gauge that depletes as you attack. If that goes to zero, the character is stunned for about five seconds. (A devastating five seconds.) However, if one keeps an eye on it, that won't happen; when it gets low one gets out of melee for a second, and it regenerates. With Mercades, however, there's an ammo gague. As one shoots, it depelets, but unlike power, it doesn't recharge with time. Once it runs out, she has to reload, which means standing completely still and vulnerable for about 1.5 seconds. If there were, say, a reload button I would have no problem with this. However, one can only reload when COMPLETELY OUT of ammo, and it uses the same button as firing. I doubt I need to elaborate on why this is a bad idea. Even worse, the ammo is set up just right so that one can get 2.1 volleys out of it. After the second, however, one must still fire off the two shots left, and it's very easy to go "BANGBANGCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICKCLICK" and not only look like an idiot, but get hit in the process. To cap this all off, she has half as much HP as the other characters. Against bosses and the bruiser-type standard enemies, this means two, maybe three hits. Also, the other characters (Excluding Velvet; more on that in a moment) could move as they attacked; they'd charge into a swing. She has to remain completely stationary to do a volley, and her other attacks do negligable damage. Plus, the further away she is, the less damage she does, completely negating the range advantage. Her plotline was incridibly difficult to go through. To top it all off she's an annoying character plotwise.

Velvet. Her weapon is a chain whip. A sexy lady with a whip should never be a bad thing, but she suffers from some problems similar to Mercades. Firstly, she has about 2/3 the HP of Gwendolyn, Cornelius, and Oswald. This is actually okay; that's 3 or 4 hits with bosses and bruisers, and that gives one enough time to use a healing item. She also does less damage than the other characters, but in theory she makes up for it by having far more attacks in her standard combo. The problem here is that, like Mercades, she cannot move while attacking. This leaves her really open to counter attacks. To make things even worse, her attacks tend to knock enemies back just right so that the next strikes in the combo don't quite reach them. She wasn't nearly as hard to stomach as Mercades, but her battles were difficult for all the wrong reasons.

Overall, Odin Sphere was a great game. However, Mercades and Velvet make things a lot more frustrating, and their plotlines are NOT optional. They alone are where the majority of the points lost are in this. 7.5 out of ten