Arcane Valves

I should note that I completed this game while also playing Fire Emblem Echoes at almost the same time. I was playing that game on Normal/Classic but, of course, that game has the Turnwheel. My will to deal with losing characters was broken as I did not want to spend the time restarting a whole battle on account of a bad decision. Besides Birthright and Echoes, my first and only other Fire Emblem was Awakening, played on Normal/Classic like a year ago or so. You can read my thoughts on Awakening as of the time I played it: http://arcanevalves.tumblr.com/post/112829125209/fire-emblem-awakening

A DIFFERENT AESTHETIC

I honestly don’t have too much to say about Birthright. I began it after being about 30-40 hours into Echoes and, recognizing that I would soon feel burnt out on Fire Emblem games because of playing Echoes/Birthright almost side-by-side, I made a beeline for the end of the game. If you’re wondering why I was playing like this, I needed a travel game for a trip abroad and Echoes was available at retail (it was that or DQ VII remake.

What I do appreciate about Birthright is its deviation from the normal western fantasy style that, based on playing Awakening/Echoes and seeing screens of other games in the series, seems to dominate the series. This opportunity for the art style to relax and spread out was very cool. The kinshi knights in particular were a neat alternative to the very classical pegasus knight.

UNIT CHOICE AND CLASSES

The core units also being the family also I think drove much of the game for me. Rather than slowly discovering who the best units were or otherwise having them obviously marked (Donnel from Awakening), I suspected that the family would all be key units and I was generally right on this. Some units were untouchable right from the get-go even if they were “prepromotes” (see: Ryoma). I didn’t even know “prepromote” was a term in FE until some people in my chat started bringing up relying on them. I was glad I was able to push through the campaign on Normal/Casual with Ryoma and Mozu without having to incorporate some of the usual FE shenanigans like holding off on class up until maxing out the levels on the current class. I know I’ll eat these words when I start arriving at the FE series from the other end, but I have some time now to enjoy the difficulty options for simple people. While Mozu never was quite a killer like Donnel, she was plenty for the difficulty which suited my flavor purposes just fine.

ESTABLISHED SERIES

I think my biggest takeaway from Birthright is honestly how much of a letdown it was to come back to the FE core mechanics after having Echoes mix things up a bit. I tend not to be much of a series loyalist so the need to always have the same mechanics is something that doesn’t appeal to me. I’d rather throw everything against the wall over and over see what sticks. When I’m streaming on twitch, being a small streamer doing random stuff I’ll often get series die-hards. Usually these folks are nice but the FE ones had some edge to them. One particular chatter told me that no one at school plays him in chess anymore because he’s too good. This is exactly the sort of mentality I’d prefer to avoid in games: it tells me that you’re not willing to help people get better and understand the development and preferences of others and are just interested in feeding your own ego. I don’t mean to imply that FE is expressly full of such fans, but I think anywhere there’s a game with repeated core mechanics that are unintuitive, these sorts of folks can show up. Nevertheless, I look forward to hitting Conquest and Revelations at some point before wrapping around to FE7 in the distant future.

OKAY SO MAYBE THIS IS NOT MY THING

There are two elements here that are very super explicitly not my thing.

The first is the Disney element. Of the worlds visited in the film, I’m only really confident that I remember seeing one movie as a kid (Aladdin) and many of the others I suspect I may have seen as a small child (Peter Pan?) but some I definitely have not seen ever at all (Hercules, Nightmare Before... Christmas? I dunno man). This isn’t to say that these films aren’t good, just that I’m not invested in them. I think a lot of the enjoyment of crossover media comes from seeing disparate elements interact in an officially licensed production (although let’s be honest here, ban copyrights and unleash fan fiction kthx). I did recently watch Hunchback for the first time and it was a pretty all right film? The Disney films are just not something that were really a part of my childhood as I have always been too cool for Disney let me assure you this is true. Furthermore, in my adult life, I loathe Disney every day as a company that acquires the rights to popular media (e.g., Star Wars, Marvel, everything it has looted from the public domain) and then advocates for policy that is harmful to the public and is generally very zealous in asserting its rights in a manner similar to your Nintendo or Apple.

The second is the Action RPG element. One of the reasons I like playing RPGs is because there’s an element of playing at my own speed. I can grind levels or do side quests and take my time in an RPG without having to worry about whether I’ve learned some enemy or boss’s attack animations and patterns and hitboxes and hurtboxes. While Kingdom Hearts does have heavy RPG elements, it includes action game elements that, to me, feel reminiscent of Zelda (e.g., spoiler alert I have never finished a Zelda game and have really only played two: Link’s Awakening and Ocarina of Time). While I recognize it is some people’s things (see Dark Souls), I hate dealing with watching animations and figuring out where hitboxes are. This is especially true for the water/flying fights where a lot of the defensive options (combat rolling) are removed because hey, who loves fun (not me). As mentioned above, I was okay with the patterns when I felt like I could try different movements as answers such as in the Riku-Ansem fight. There, I could roll, tech, glide, etc. and really try different things in a fight that took me several tries and where I had a lot of fun. Compare this to the first Ansem fight where that possession thing just keeps, I dunno, swinging until it hits you and then you just hold that L? Or the Chernabog fight where the homing projectiles were mostly unavoidable?

LET ME SAY SOME NICE THINGS THO

Shimomura’s music was fantastic! The music was really good, even though I became annoyed whenever I heard the battle music play because it meant I would be unable to interact with environmental objects to proceed.

It looked real good for a PS2 game re-textured to PS3/4 HD? The Steam version of FFVIII was to me an example of re-texturing making things look a bit odd, but I think the only stuff that really stood out to me here were a lot of the facial expressions which, let’s be honest, were already hard to animate in PS2 era anyway.

Uh, anyway, everyone say KH2 is the real shit and I’ll probably play other KH stuff in the HD collection except on the easiest easy person easy simple mode possible just for the meme.

No video of the ending, but some clips at least of various parts:

https://clips.twitch.tv/BloodyWimpyCakeCharlieBitMe

https://clips.twitch.tv/PoliteMistyShallotDoggo

ONE OF THE BIG BOYS

I had played the original Suikoden while I was in my senior year of undergrad back in 2010. It was enjoyable and I also followed the same approach of using a guide to get all 108 stars, but not quite compelling enough to push me forward to Suikoden II immediately. Years later, starting up my Real Playstation Games quest, Suikoden II was definitely on the short list of games that had been highly recommended to me as a definitive PS1 RPG. I think those putting the game in these terms were right to do so, but that means the cons of the definitive games of this era were also present.

108 STARS OF DESTINY

The biggest asset of this game is the surplus character design required by the need to have 108 recruitable characters. Seeing all these characters is a joy, especially including the many characters who can be used to form the six-person parties. The wide array of characters breathed life into the game moreso than any other element and the sprite art was a joy.

In another sense, though, they are also the game’s greatest liability. The game is completely unplayable blind. It has so many weird moving parts (window sets?) and it is easy to permanently miss out on recruitable characters to even have a shot at the true good ultimate ending. These moving parts are impressive in that they were designed but then also a chore in that someone has to explain them to allow for any accessibility.

108 WAYS TO LEAVE YOUR KINGDOM AFTER THE REBELLION IS OVER

Having jumped through all the hoops to achieve the true ending, I was left wondering what the game was really about? Our hero and Jowy end up leaving to travel to other lands, even though one became king of now defeated Highland and the other could have been king of the newly restored and expanded City-States. I think the best I can draw is a dedicated to rule of law: the protagonist in the true ending sought to restore balance and did not further indulge in striking back at his despairing accomplice Jowy at any time, despite the desperate action that Jowy took to create unified kingdom to eliminate the need for future war.

Suikoden II is impressive in its design and its function as a complex puzzle, but while I marvel at its technical impressiveness, I just don’t know that it resonated with me in the same that a simpler and more joyful adventure like Lunar has. Perhaps that is, though, also part of the goal given the various tragedies and grey areas that occur throughout the course of the plot.

WHAT’S THE DEAL WITH MAJOR BATTLES ANYWAY

Oh, you know what was actually disappointing, though? The Major Battles were mostly just ways to tell the story differently as opposed to really being a separate game mode. I never even rearranged my army units, so I was able to coast through here with the vanilla units. I believe the major battles become more sophisticated for the PS2 Suikoden games but here there was not much to report.

HOW DID I DO THIS AS A KID?

Playing the game as an adult, I was astonished by how much brute force exploration is required to progress the game. Many key HMs simply have to be stumbled into after Celadon City. There were definitely some games that I played with a strategy guide as a kid and this was for sure one of them, but I must not have appreciated the extent to which a guide was necessary to even know what to do. From playing Pokemon Pearl in 2012, my impression is that this is simply an artifact of an older game, but it was still surprising to me.

NO, STATS REALLY DO MATTER

My goal when playing a Pokemon game is usually to complete the 8 gyms and beat the Elite Four or equivalent. Given this modest goal, my plan is usually to assemble a team that has good elemental coverage. With this coverage, hopefully all members will have times when they can contribute and gain experience and from there I will be able to meet future challenges at least well enough to gain experience, drop into a pokemon center, and rinse repeat.

When I played Pearl, I allowed myself to sub into powerful pokemon as I stumbled upon them, including Dialgia. This blinded me to the raw need for stats. Playing Leaf Green, I thought it might be fun to try and ride pokemon like Butterfree and Pidgeot to the end of the game and make it work even if it took a few deaths at the hands of the Elite Four. This was not a good plan, but as I mentioned above, this was a good lesson to learn before tackling other Pokemon games. It is also worth mentioning that I did not really take the time to peruse new areas for wild pokemon since my goal was to get a base team and move forward. In other pokemon games with new pokemon with which I am unfamiliar, I would be inclined to wander a bit more.

OKAY, SO YOU PROBABLY WANT TO KNOW WHAT TEAM I RECKLESSLY TRIED TO HIT THE ELITE FOUR WITH

LAPRAS - Big Sushi

RAICHU - Faraday (actually pretty good at destroying Lorelei)

BUTTERFREE - Jade (a fatal mistake; never again)

PIDGEOT - Birb (also a mistake, but maybe again, was a good birb)

SANDLASH - Muaddib (was perfect in Blue, lots of new passive effects made ground attacks unusable against pokemon like koffing/weezing, still the best tho)

VENUSAUR - Bulby (yeah, Bulby was fine, too, shoutouts to picking the plant starter)

AN EXTENDED EPILOGUE

Trails in the Sky First Chapter and Second Chapter collectively told a story starring Estelle Bright and her adventures in the kingdom of Liberl. Estelle is in 3rd, but instead the sole new supporting character from Second Chapter, Kevin Graham, is the protagonist of 3rd. The central arc of 3rd, in which Kevin’s emotional turmoil becomes wrapped up in the aftermath of events from Second Chapter, is in some sense a metaphor for the 3rd as a whole. The events of 3rd are set into motion when Estelle and company destroy an ancient floating city powered by an ancient super computer called the Aureole. A subsystem of the Aureole, made unstable by the Aureole’s destruction, latches onto Kevin and creates a pocket reality into which Kevin and various heroes are drawn.

The end of Second Chapter was somewhat abrupt. We know the heroes survive and that the Auerole was destroyed. Just as the main arc of the game is dedicated to cleaning up Kevin’s emotional turmoil because it has become entangled with an Aureole subsystem, a substantial portion of the game is dedicated to tying up loose ends and providing backstory as we have become entangled with the world of Trails.

To be honest, I did not find Kevin’s story too compelling, but really only so much of the game was even dedicated to him. Much of 3rd’s story is provided via Astrological Doors that come with requirements to open them, usually bringing a specific character but sometimes more onerous ones. I successfully completed all Sun and Moon Doors, but only did Star Doors 1-12 because Star Door 13 required 400 battles to be completed. There is no in-game battle counter and so I just watched the remaining three doors on youtube.

For someone who played Trails FC and SC and enjoyed them tremendously, this game was substantially more of the same. The ending sequence of the game, rather than showing what happens once the characters escape the pocket reality, instead is framed as the characters saying goodbye as they one-by-one leave the pocket reality. Really and truly they were saying goodbye to us. For an English-speaking fan, this is particularly meaningful as we do not know if the Crossbell Arc will be localized. Many of the side stories featured in the Doors foreshadow elements of the Crossbell Arc. While I recognize that Cold Steel I and II have been localized, I can’t help but feel an interest in playing the games in the order they were published. I can but dream.

S-BREAK

You thought I would write about playing this game, but it was largely the same as FC and SC. Just smash those s-breaks.

SOME PERSONAL BACKGROUND

In my REAL PLAYSTATION GAMES list there are many games that I never played and am simply getting to for the first time now. However, FFVIII is not one of those. FFVIII is a game that I have started several times and simply never finished.

I first played FFVIII not too long after it came out, but I did so by renting it every weekend from Blockbuster for a series of weekends. I got to Disc 4 and found it overwhelming conceptually. I should mention that I had severely gamesharked the snot out of the game and had all the guardian forces at all times. This playthrough left me with such a misinformed impression of the game that even during the [RPG] playthrough I just did, I attempted to draw Doomtrain from the fake president on the train because that’s where I thought you got him.

I later played a portion of the game up until the Missile Base about 9 years ago when I was in college. A college acquaintance started playing the game in a very studious and correct manner (e.g., minimizing XP and maximizing AP, etc.) and I insisted I was going to show her what’s what and proceeded to famously lose Angelo the dog to some random kid in Galbadia Garden and spend like 3 hours trying to get that card back.

FFVIII THE THEMATIC EXPERIENCE

Playing through this again and now mostly for the flavor as I am wont to do with the Real Playstation Games list, FFVIII is unique in that it is so much more interested in storytelling than telling a coherent story. The FMVs aren’t action movie set pieces like they were in FFVII but are here used to show things like Squall and Seifer’s rivalry and visually showing Squall’s attempts to navigate time compression to return home. To be honest, my playthrough is unlikely to inform me enough to produce any worthwhile analysis, but knowing and believing that the vision was there to convey this information in this manner is enough for me.

Squall also reminds me a bit of Noctis in his reluctance to accept the position given to him. I also think Seifer, Squall’s foil, is very helpful in understanding Squall. Seeing how Seifer grasps so lustily for every bit of adoration serves to underscore Squall’s reluctance. I think also Rinoa acts a bit as the representative of the audience in interrogating Squall and trying to understand what makes him tick.

However, the (successful) emphasis on the main duo does mean everyone else suffers. Quistis seems to exist as the world’s thirstiest teacher and it seems like this character wasn’t thought about beyond the design of sexy teacher? The other characters are also similar sketches that don’t develop much beyond an archetype. Irvine somehow manages to channel that one element of Tifa’s personality where he just doesn’t share vital information that everyone has forgotten. He doesn’t develop on account of this.

“We all came from the same orphanage” is a meme in my group now for when there is a plot twist that every major character (typically in a video game, the player characters) all share some commonality from the past. I can’t tell if FFVIII being so prominent on this is a good thing or a bad thing.

FFVIII THE GAMING EXPERIENCE

The idea of harvesting resources to attach them to stats is actually pretty cool, although problematic because it encourages grinding to hoard resources. I’d honestly rather just have a pool of points than having to spend time gathering. The magic boosters were good for this, but the problem with that is that I never bothered to learn about advanced spells (e.g., Meltdown). Like Meltdown or the invincibility status, FFVIII had some weird and unique elements that I hope showed up a in a tutorial somewhere, but I guess I didn’t find them. However, I am a known agent for being bad.

When I had played the game before, I had never used the limit breaks at all because I always believed in keeping health high rather than taking risks. With magic booster Curaga junctioned to health, it was much easier to just let things rip. Using Renzukoken in every fight was fun and Quistis’s blue magic was initially interesting even though it didn’t seem like it scaled well.

I also had never upgraded weapons before and I did manage to do that this time thanks to card mod. I did not get any ultimate weapons because that level of tedium is beyond me, but getting to see some of Squall’s better limit breaks (in particular, blasting zone) was a treat.

I’m going to divide my thoughts into three areas: P5 as art, the thematic content based on the characters, and P5 as a game.

BLESS ART

Whatever negative things I might have to say about P5 in the other sections, it should be emphasized that the visual and auditory design of the game is astounding. While I was initially concerned that the menus might be too visually distracting, I overcame my own bewilderment and appreciated how they flowed and also matched the content. I am not in any way a visual artist, but the way that the game picked out a color scheme and stuck with it (here, mostly red and black) really appealed to me in terms of unifying the game visually. When the game stepped away from this, it was often for compelling reasons that stand out because they broke away from the mold (e.g., many of the All-Out Attack splash screens).

Likewise, the music is very pleasing and Last Surprise is up there with all-time great RPG battle themes. The use of instrumental and vocal versions of songs was also very compelling as I would find myself humming along to a repeated song only to realize that a vocalist had now rolled up on the scene. The use of new songs in the later palaces also helps keep the game fresh. Some of the music does get stale towards the end, but this is perhaps the unavoidable consequence of a 90 hour game. In this it reminded me a bit of Xenogears - an excellent soundtrack made to stretch over a very long game.

CHARACTERS

I am not truly convinced that the character arcs in Persona 5 pay off in the end.  In particular, the main character’s arc is the most anomalous because in the end, none of his confidants really mattered? The narrative presents his criminal record as his greatest problem and, accordingly, the one that is resolved in the final act of the story as the substantial evidence is presented to overturn the record. However, despite the main character’s relationships with the various confidants and player characters and, in particular, a romantic relationship, the main character returns to parents and a hometown that he simply did not appear to miss? The main character never expresses any desire to return home nor any fondness for his parents. Perhaps I am overlooking some assumption that the main character desires to return home, but if any there were any inference I took from the opening, it is that the main character was incensed about receiving unjust treatment from all parties involved, including his parents and hometown.

A critical flaw in the game is, unfortunately, that none of the confidants tie in or pay off in the main narrative except for the ones that are tied to the main plot (Sae, Goro, Morgana, Fool). I happened to pick a romance option in Hifumi who was mostly isolated from the main narrative, but I can imagine choosing Ann or Makoto or Haru or Futaba and feeling somewhat bewildered at various interactions. Furthermore, some of the confidants I simply did not finish and so I feel less able to evaluate their journey because the game’s constrained calendar system simply left me unable to finish them out. Characters like Yusuke, Haru, Chihaya, Makoto just didn’t get finished and I was not going to a NG+ playthrough to discover how their subplots end up. Kawakami I should have finished but apparently her confidant subplot cannot be finished because you can’t do that shit once MC isn’t in school anymore.

As for the characters that I did finish, some were satisfying and some were not? Interestingly, many of the confidants required the use of Mementos to solve some problem and then this clued in that particular character to the Phantom Thief nature of the MC. This wanton use of the Metaverse to solve problems for friends struck me as an even bigger reason that the righteousness of the use of the Metaverse to steal hearts is largely left unexamined. I was initially very excited by the appearance of Goro because I thought he was going to push on this issue because he believed from working within the system. However, Goro is ultimately a clever narrative puzzle (and I did very much enjoy the November surprise) rather than a voice for pushing back on the ideology and actions of the Phantom Thieves. The morality of stealing hearts is ultimately thrown out the window.

Ultimately, the main thematic pull of P5 seems to be on placing blame on all of us collectively for speaking truth to power. The real villain was not any single specific abusive teacher or corrupt politician, but the collective will to accept injustice in exchange for comfort. However, the final dungeon and set of encounters still left me unconvinced what exactly our collective action was to this. How much was the final boss a metaphor for battling the collective will and how much was actual SMT plot exposition that a demon hijacked our collective consciousnesses. I’m not against the idea of putting the onus on all of us together to speak truth to power and perhaps this is exactly what the final subsequent sequence demonstrated: the collective action of the MC’s confidants was enough to overcome the injustice he bore in the form of a criminal record. This is the meaning I can take from the story that is the most satisfying and I think encourages us to rely on our friends and family and push them to not accept injustice in our everyday lives.

Personally, I found the romance with Hifumi to be very satisfying and this path was cemented for me when she appeared as an option on the Hawaii trip. I often find myself segmenting parts of my life apart and Hifumi’s separation from any other character in the game was deeply appealing to me as was her generally reserve demeanor. That dress is also cute, I will not front.

Additional note: P5, which spent some time pointing out examples of oppression very similar to real life, overlooked oppression relating to gender and gay stereotypes. Ann’s appearance and storyline is confused and not at all coherent or satisfying. Kawakami’s is likewise. Lastly, the two men who appear in Shinjuku and at the beach are aberrations and the blackest mark on this game.

P5 AS A GAME

I have only played Persona 1 and have not yet visited any other Persona or SMT game. Generally, I enjoyed the dungeon layouts and navigation and I also further enjoyed the flow of battles as the game initially presents it. What the game, however, fails to tell the player is that in the end game, enemies will have no weaknesses and so, simply, stat buffing and enemy debuffing is simply more important at the end of a long road in which covering elemental weaknesses was more important. I found this to be very frustrating. Coming from mostly playing FF, I often assume that status effects simply do not apply to bosses and so never bother with those and instead look for elemental weaknesses.

Initially, I thought this would be a pleasant game which gave me the opportunity to pace myself and do the dungeon or confidant or social stat building as I enjoyed it. However, by the summer I had begun to realize this was not a leisurely stroll. This was one of the most ridiculous min-max efficiency experiences I’ve ever encountered. Budgeting time to maximize social stats and confidant affection over 90 hours (including looking up the correct confidant responses to maximize confidant efficiency) is ridiculous and I would have been much more happy if the game had simply invented a way for me to repeat days or otherwise get the rest of the social links without having to do an entire NG+ playthrough. Knowing his now, I imagine my approaches to P3 and P4 when I get to them will be with a guide that points out to me these unknowable efficiencies so I can get on with my life.

WHY

As I mentioned before, I did no personal actions because of a button mapping problem I did not realize until near the end of my playthrough. On account of this, my endings (I understand there are.... 87???) were mostly mundane. Celine and Rena were going to get together to write a book about Rena’s healing magic.

My biggest issue, honestly, is why do the Rena/Claude split at all. When I played Kartia, that game had two plots which covered different events while occasionally intersection. The Rena/Claude split covers roughly the same events with only occasional separate moments from the perspective of either Rena or Claude. I understand that this also impacts which characters become available, but that’s less important than having a player play through the game twice to really just pick up tiny bits of extra narrative because of perspective. I’ve generally stuck to single playthroughs so far throughout my RPG experiment and so playing a game where I was deprived of extra characterization both on account of my own misunderstanding as well as the game’s contrived structure was super frustrating.

It is also worth mentioning that the first “disc” of the game is also extremely aimless. The characters go off in search of the Sorcery Orb which seems to be some evil macguffin. A natural disaster, an arena quest, and a battle later, the players end up in evil macguffin territory not having met a single villain except a flying purple batman who does not seem to be the main villain or have a stated purpose. Only at the end of disc 1 do we meet any villains, a collective of ten anime archetypes. 

Disc 2 is much better as it introduces the villains, explains why they’re bad, explains who needs help, puts us through a series of four places to power up, and then we do the deed. Somewhere along the way Claude’s Dad is fucking murdered with space lasers and THIS IS NEVER REVISITED. Also space magic allows the planet Expel, the setting for Disc 1, to be completely and perfectly restored and then Claude, in my ending, just went back to normal space cadet duty without any description of the impact on Expel being considered. Expel was a backwater frontier planet that had forgotten about the rest of the galaxy.

WHY

After my experience with Tales of Berseria, I was hoping this might be a sign that I’m leveling up my action RPG life. A number of friends have told me that Star Ocean 2 was one of their favorite RPGs and so, surely, this game must be a joy to play.

It’s not really at all. As far as I could determine there was no way to lock onto enemies such that pairs of enemies would often do pick and roll plays where I was mashing for a melee character to attack and then he’d end up attacking the 2nd enemy when I wanted the 1st. Many later game bosses demand a steady stream of attacks in order to interrupt magic. While I was at first glad that I could interrupt these spells at all, I soon became frustrated that targeting and pacing of attacks was so impossible with the controls. I made aggressive use of save states especially during the final boss so that when I was lucky enough to interrupt the boss for a period of time, I could simply reload the last save state until I got the appropriate luck again.

Here’s the video of my final boss fight + credits. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/140961178

While I started the game with Rena, I spent most of the game playing as Claude and then Dias since the AI did a fine enough job healing. I generally used regular melee attacks and only sometimes used other special abilities. In retrospect, I think I should have stuck with Claude since some of his abilities for getting in and also his late game weapons were better, but by that time it was too late because backup party members didn’t gain any experience.

WHY

After playing this game, I only had one question for people who liked it. Why?

PURE ADVENTURE

I don’t think I really took any interesting thematic content away from this game, but that’s okay. Lunar was mostly a classic adventure: there used to be some old adventurers that everyone loved and now we’re awaiting a new generation of heroes who are going to meet the day’s crisis. Playing this game in 2017, the Working Designs localizations from the quirky 90s-esque dialogue to the very lofi voice work also added to the charm, although I am confident this game was also very playable even when it came out.

My only real complaint is that apparently if you’re evil and a woman clothes are just forbidden. Luna’s evil outfits are particularly, uh, interesting. And then as soon as she’s done being evil she gets covered up with a white robe. Sure.

MAP ALL YOUR BUTTONS TO FIERCE AND MASH ‘EM

Lunar also had a very simple and limited set of options for playing. Rather than dealing with the abstractions of an inn, statues provided healing. Rather than save points, saving can be done anywhere. Skills are learned by leveling up or, in the case of Alex, getting to the corresponding dragon. The simplicity of being able to save anywhere and then being able to quickly and conveniently try different strategies made the game a real joy to play. I often died on the first attempt of a boss, especially early in the game, but I would usually be able to make it through on the 2nd or 3rd try.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/140955291

WHAT ARE WE EVEN FIGHTING FOR?

Compared to Zestiria, Berseria in general did a better job of explaining the character’s motivations and I think, in general, showed that each character had some desire to buck the normal order of things.

Rokurou both wished to upstage his older brother as well as using the secondary sword fighting technique of his clan. Laphicet, the seraphim, sought to break not only his own enslavement to Theresa, but further ended up giving humans turned to demons a second chance in his role as Maotelus. Magilou read from the script on a frequent basis and then later I guess has a backstory with Melchior. Eizen was a pirate and also someone operating under the burden of an extraordinary curse. Eleanor has a problem with her workplace.

The stories of our heroes compared to the contrary decisions of their antagonists are generally interesting? Artorius and Melchior too often go over to being cartoonishly evil, but the other character such as Innominat, Oscar, and Therea are much more sympathetic. In particular, the surprise twist that Innominat was terminally ill and chose to participate in the sacrifice under Artorius really involves issues of consent that complicate Velvet’s quest in a meaningful way. It’s easy to sympathize with Velvet’s no-holds-barred style in dealing with Artorius’s willingness to sacrifice individuals for the greater good, but does that still hold true when someone who would have otherwise died steps up to self-sacrifice?

Berseria would have been really great, though, if they didn’t that bullshit nonsense “why is she wearing no clothes” “oh it’s because she’s a demon who can’t feel cold how you even ask such a silly question”. If you’re going to include designs like Velvet’s default costume just be honest about it like the Senran Kagura guy.

OH NO ACTION RPG STUFF

I spent a lot of time laming stuff out with armatizations and ranged attacks in Zestiria because the up close combat made no sense to me. While I won’t pretend that I necessarily got better at it this game, the souls and break souls gameplay elements were a lot of fun and I was proficient enough with them to make it through to the end of the game, even through several minutes of mashing stuff out on Innominat’s final form.

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/128833396

OH THE BODY HORROR

When I played Legaia as a kid, I don’t think I really appreciated or understood at the time the ways that anime was showing up in JRPG. Some comparisons were obvious to me as a kid (e.g., Xenogears and NGE), but in retrospect it seems like Legend of Legaia’s main anime is Akira? The main character has a red vest with a flame on the back. A substantial portion of the game involves body horror derived from human beings being absorbed or hijacked by Seru monsters, organic tools that had previously provided humans great convenience before being driven mad by a mist. Even the Ra-Seru that allies with humanity continues to morph and cover greater portions of their hosts.

The story of humanity and the Seru is fairly typical what-is-the-real-cost-of-this-convenience type stuff. Seru leave the world at the conclusion of the story. Seru provided great ease, but then in the midst of a war, experiments by one side led to the discovery that mist could be used to drive the Seru berserk. The power was too great a temptation and led nearly to the end of humanity. The source of the Seru and the mist was simply “some renegade Seru from the Seru homeworld.”

FIGHTING RPG

Legend of Legaia employs two systems in tandem for combat. One is a martial arts system where the player inputs a string of commands where each of up, down, left, and right correspond to a certain attack (high kick, low kick, ra-seru arm, free arm). Certain sequences will unleash various special movies. Taking a turn to defend increases the number of commands that can be input on a later turn. Several bosses provide advance warning of strong attacks and so I often used the intended defend/charge-up and then unload strategy on bosses. The game also allows the player to input multiple special moves by eliding from one art to the next in the input string (i.e., the final input of one special move can be the first input of the next special move). While I did not bother to play minesweeper to brute force out the special moves, the game does provide a list once they have been discovered and I did enjoy cooking up input strings that would invoke multiple arts to unload on bosses. The end game obsoletes this creativity, though, by providing full-bar input strings called “miracle arts” that do way more damage than any custom combo.

TOY LAND, TOY LAND

Guardian’s Crusade is a game about Knight, a young hero that the player actually controls, and Baby, the child of a dragon who isn’t controllable. Apparently, it was possible to feed Baby various items and affect the actions that Baby takes. However, I did not know this and assumed that the only actions I could take regarding Baby were healing Baby. At some point not long past the beginning of the game, Baby began regularly attacking Knight. I assumed this was either (a) the game being buggy or (b) this was Baby’s default behavior. I was wrong. Baby apparently grew to hate Knight so much that Baby constantly attacked Knight during the final boss.

In lieu of normal magic, Knight has “living toys”. The effects of these are varied, but in my first attempts to figure out how they work, one of them was a bomb that hurt both a difficult boss and Knight, destroying much of Knight’s health. I came to regard the LTs suspiciously at that point and so focused on the more reliable but less interesting grinding aspect of the game. Having focused on grinding and upgrading equipment, I soon realized that I hate grinding levels and applied the dr. gameshark to the operation. It was around this time that some viewers came in and told me the game has no level cap and, in fact, crashes after 32767 levels.

A PLOT?

RAISING HELL AND RAISING MONSTERS

Like any monster raising RPG, Digimon focuses on encouraging the player to collect various monsters, including forms that are evolutions of weaker forms. As a kid I watched seasons 1 and 2 of Digimon, but haven’t really done anything Digimon-wise since Digimon season 2 and Digimon World 2. I sought out some season 1 and 2 Digimon but did not have a particular affinity for them.

Instead, I generally let the dominant typing mechanics guide my choices. The game features a rock-paper-scissors mechanics of vaccine-data-virus. Furthermore, I could have 3 active party digimon and up to 8 reserve digimon depending on “memory” (every digimon had a memory value and the sum of the digimon with the player could not exceed the current cap on memory for the player). For much of the mid-game into late-game, my focus was on having effective parties for each of the 3 typings. The typings are substantial because damage is halved when the defender has the favorable typing and doubled when the attacker has the favorable typing. On top of this, a x1.5 multiplier could be applied for a separate set of elemental rock-paper-scissors setups, including water-fire-plant and wind-earth-lightning setups. There was also an advantage given for using holy on dark and vice versa. However, these elemental advantages did not translate into defensive advantages so it was always preferable to focus on the primary typings.

Additionally, some digimon (notably virus types) would had fixed or DEF-penetrating attacks which were exceedingly useful for dealing with enemies who had neutral typing and high defense. A series of bosses in the game (the Eaters) fit this archetype. CannonBeemon, you will live on in my heart forever.

The game was commendably forthcoming with some statistics on how to unlock certain digimon: the stats or levels needed. Where the game was not forthcoming, however, was what the hell the ABI stat was and how it could be modified. Additionally, some digivolutions also required the CAM state to be raised, CAM being short for camaraderie and indicative of how many battles the digimon had been in the active party. This was at least easy to understand if tedious. If some guidance was provided on how ABI improved over the course of digivolutions, that would have been greeeaaaattttt.

TRY SOME COFFEE

Honestly, I don’t think there’s any theme I can take away from Cyber Sleuth. Looking at it in retrospect, it really does appear to be a great number of tropes thrown together in a very good-looking package. Mostly silent protagonists have this effect, where the only real theme is application of will to overcome obstacles.

All the primary characters were apparently part of the same event in cyberspace eight years ago but forgot about it? The ghost of FFVIII stalks us yet.

IS THIS WHAT I’M FIGHTING FOR?

Toxa’s campaign had a wonderful supporting cast, especially considering that among the final five, all four non-Toxa characters are women with interesting character arcs.

Posha began the game as someone who was forced into service to the local defense guild as a means of paying off a debt. She doubted herself as intensely as she admired Lacryma, the stalwart shrine warrior hero of the other campaign that I did not play. Over the course of the game, she is forced into more active support and then leadership roles and ends up the acting leader and confidently succeeds in doing so.

Misty began the game as an enemy before being betrayed and coming to join Toxa. Her romance with Duran is compelling from her point of view as she constantly has doubts about the true, positive feelings of others and expects betrayal at every turn.

Karis first appears as an enigmatic agent of the enemy, but is soon revealed to be a double agent. Her true job is that of an Inquirer for the church. She ends up throwing in her lot with Toxa’s group to see his adventure out.

Alana’s path is maybe the least interesting? She often serves as a reasoned counterbalance to the impulsive Toxa. Alana begins the game doubtful of her path in life and expecting to remain a traveling warrior and entertainer. Later on, she is given the surprise opportunity to become the Baroness of a wealthy estate. She ultimately accepts and chooses to commit to a settled life.

Toxa, on the other hand, does not seem to develop. His story is that of a merchant’s son turned knight who is seeking a cause to devote his life to. At some point, this cause seeking becomes a romantic attachment to Mona, the magical half-elf about whom some of the game’s plot points revolve. He remains impulsive throughout the game and even when chastised by both his companions and the outcomes of events, he does not change.

Trying to come away with some theme from the game is difficult on account of Toxa. There is in the background a larger story about how the Kartia (magic cards used to summon anything and everything including magic soldiers, equipment, food, etc.) are really resources that tax the world of the elves and that these quick and easy shortcuts are a crime against the elven world. However, no real exploration of this device is done and it is hard to tie it in with the arcs of any of the characters.

The Amano artwork was pretty as art, but I am unsure about how effective it was for carrying the whole game.

THE PHANTOM MENACE

As is typical for strategy RPGs in the vein of Fire Emblem, Kartia featured a rock-paper-scissors mechanic in the form of the typing of the phantoms, the summoned enemies created by 2 of the 5 five player characters. Additionally, both phantoms and human characters had varying elemental defenses which were then suitably strong against or vulnerable to the fire, ice, wind, and earth elemental defenses. The game enabled viewing an enemy’s stats during the game and so it was easy to select the maximally damaging element. There was no friendly fire for magic.

The easy availability of the three types of raw Kartia combined with relatively few enemies made the game, generally very easy. While phantoms could be leveled and did carry over from battle to battle, it was often much more effective to make new types of phantoms as they became available, such were the stat differences. A typical mission involved deploying phantoms to take advantage of typings and then having human player characters lob magic from behind the phantoms. It was very much the same rinse repeat for every battle as opposed to the varied missions found in Vandal Hearts. Some battles depended on a certain enemy being defeated and so could be ended quickly.

I CAN’T CONTROL IT

I’ve never played Breath of Fire before and while I’m aware of a few reoccurring elements (Ryu, Nina, animal people), I’m generally not aware of any reoccurring themes. Here, the themes revolved around the power Ryu possessed by virtue of being a member of the brood (i.e., dragon people). Should that power be allowed to exist? Can it be used responsibly? I think the theme is maybe actually less about raw power than it is the capacity for change. I think each of Ryu’s companions struggles to some extent with the effect of Ryu’s power upon them.

Teepo acts as a foil to Ryu (assuming the player chooses to rebel against Myria). He has the same dragon boy lineage, but agrees with Myria that change is bad and the capacity to change is bad.

Rei is someone who very much wants change but tells himself he can’t take responsibility for seeking this change broadly. This is odd given his largely successful prosecution of the vendetta against Makba’s criminal organization, but I think speaks to problems with motivation. With easily identified goals, Rei could act but without those he felt powerless.

Nina’s role is honestly the one I am the least sure about. Throughout the game, Nina is dedicated to advocating for change. She demands her parents treat her as an adult with agency. She also demands that Ryu’s power not be judged as a danger, but instead trust in Ryu’s ability to act appropriately. In some sense, I think Nina speaks to both advocating for the right change and trusting in the capacity of those advocating for the right change to move towards the future.

Garr is someone who personally participated in the suppression of change while wondering what the true possible extent of change was. His buddy Gaist is likewise another variation on this theme of someone who checked out on the argument. Garr comes to realize that this ongoing suppression of change is stagnant. I still don’t know what the fuck Garr was doing in the arena in the beginning of the game tho.

Momo is a disciple who is ready for change and who has trained for this moment. The sequence where she discovers her father’s co-worker having engaged in unethical science is an example of three things: (1) the real danger and possibility of change leading to problems, (2) the capacity of someone to realize this midstream and reject it [Momo’s father], and (3) the capacity to learn from the past and prevent/mitigate damage [Momo’s own role].

Peco represents nature and what I think is really the irrepressible capacity of life to bring about change. For the end game sequence where Yggdrasil acts through Peco to save Ryu’s party from Myria’s magic, a mutant had to form, this mutant had to be defeated by the party, the mutant had to spawn Peco, Peco had to join the party, Peco had to come into contact with Yggdrasil, and then Peco had to rejoin the party again, the party going on to overcome substantial obstacles (the ocean, the desert, etc.) to reach its final destination. This unlikely series of events happens and perhaps would have happened eventually despite Myria’s meddling.

SMALL GAS TANKS, NO GAS CANS

Like some other RPGs of its era, the characters in Breath of Fire 3 have access to a variety of interesting spells, including buff and damage spells among others, but they have limited resources for using these spells and items for replenishing those resources are super rare. Even by the end of the game, I think I had picked up on several Wisdom Fruits (100AP) and maybe half a dozen Wisdom Seeds (20AP). This led to a pattern of trying not to use AP for regular random encounters and instead just setting AP on fire like gasoline during boss fights. This is a part of the reason I ended up with Garr (tank with reasonable physical damage) and Momo (DPS with elemental ammo available early on). While Nina’s magic was useful for the parts where she was in the game, relying upon her magic for later dungeons often meant would have meant showing up to boss fights with depleted tanks and a character with very low physical damage.

Were I playing the game I might swap out Garr for Rei, since Rei was fast and had similar physical damage. Rei also had some buff spells. Buffing in BOFIII turned out to be overpowered as buff spells could be cast multiple times to have the effects stack. The later boss fights in the game could be overcome by casting defensive spells until the damage from bosses became negligible and then switching to physical hits. In particular with Ryu, I would cast the Shield spell to coat the whole party in physical defense, then switch over to the Force+Gross dragon form and hit the boss with about 500 points of physical damage until the boss went down. I did this for at least the last 4 bosses.

As I repeated above, I made no use of the master system. I did at one point look up how to find the faerie who teaches Shadowwalk, but when I figured I had to actually level up 5 levels and then come back, I said screw this and moved on with my life. I realize asking for a 1998 game to have a tutorial is probably asking too much, but I would be curious how much of the master system really shows up in the tutorial. Also, given how not too difficult the end portion of the game was (I beat Myria first try, only boss that killed me first time was Elder dragon), I can only image that successfully making use of the stat bonuses and taught skills would likely make the game trivial.

Spending extra hours to make the end portion of the game trivial has never really been my thing. Sorry.

ART IS COOL

The sprites in this game are very nice! The music is a change of pace although not necessarily memorable. This cover of the battle theme is particularly nice.