Saturday, June 4, 2011

Wild Arms 2's Kanon's Abilities

I've seen a lot of methods that RPGs employ to determine how the characters in the player's party learn new abilities. They're quite numerous, really...sometimes characters just learn new moves when they level up, sometimes there are separate experience points devoted to leveling up special attacks, some games have spots on a grid of sorts that you can activate to learn new powers, and plenty of games actually just sell the new skills in stores. Plenty of times, 1 or 2 abilities are only learned from certain quests or completing specific plot events. One of the ideas that I actually really liked (for reasons I can't quite explain) was Final Fantasy 9's system of having most abilities learned from going through enough battles while wearing a certain piece of equipment.* Sometimes these ways of having characters learn new talents is creative (spell creation in Treasure of the Rudras, Plume usage in Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume), and sometimes it's not (level-up learning in Dragon Age 1, Tech Points in Chrono Trigger), just as it sometimes provides a game with balance and provides diverse battle roles for characters (pre-established Sphere Grid areas in Final Fantasy 10, ability slot limitations in any given Shin Megami Tensei title), and sometimes is unbalanced and stupidly just makes every character in the game interchangeable (Materia in Final Fantasy 7, Job Classes in Final Fantasy 5). But despite a fairly strong variety in how games handle the process of gaining abilities, it's a rare occasion when I find a system that I really can't stand.

Wild Arms 2, however, is that rare occasion. Or rather, the character Kanon is. In WA2, most every character has their own unique way of gaining abilities. Plot events provide a few for everyone, Brad and Ashley get the rest of theirs from finding certain items, Lilka goes to a shop for hers, Marivel gets her abilities by draining them from the right enemies, and Tim adds to his move set when he kills enemies with a certain summon monster equipped. Some of these are more time-consuming and annoying than others (Tim and Marivel), but they're all pretty functional and basic methods. Kanon, however...basically, she gains new abilities when she uses her current ones.

Now, at first glance, this COULD be functional, if it were measured in constants. What I mean is, if the system was set up where Kanon would get, say, Super Slash 2 after using the ability Super Slash 1 a certain amount of times, then this would be fine. You could count out how many more uses you would need until you gained her next move. Simple. A little time-consuming no doubt, but simple.

But it's not constant. It's random. Any time you use Super Slash 1, there's a certain percent chance that Kanon will learn Super Slash 2 after using it. This is not such a big deal with the first of her abilities to learn, since they've got chances of 1/4 and 1/12, which are pretty good--a few uses and you'll probably get the next abilities fast enough. But her best abilities, Phalanx and Eagle Claw? The chance that you'll learn them from using her abilities are, at any given use, 1/48 and 1/96, respectively. One out of NINETY-SIX. That means that out of 96 uses of Phalanx, you can only reasonably expect 1 of them to result in Kanon learning her final ability.

That by itself is totally unreasonable, of course, particularly since there's actually no guarantee that you won't be exceptionally unlucky and still not have gotten Eagle Claw after 96 tries. But, my friends, the terrible nature of this process does not end there. One must also consider the circumstances necessary to use the high-powered attacks that you need to in order to potentially activate Kanon's Eagle Claw. You see, in Wild Arms 2, there is not MP, persay--there are Force Points. You basically start every battle with a Force Point total equaling your character's level, and the way to get more during battle are:


Attack
Get hit by an attack
Use a very rare FP restoration item
Use 1 certain summoned monster's ability


So to raise your FP, you're going to be, one way or another, involved in a battle that takes multiple turns. And the cost for the ability Phalanx, which you need to use to get Eagle Claw, is...90 FP. This means that until Kanon has reached level 90, which is something like 35 levels higher than you need to be to comfortably beat the entire game, you have to be in combat for at least a couple turns to use Phalanx at all. What does that mean? It means that if you want to pursue Eagle Claw during normal enemy encounters, you're going to have to increase the amount of time you spend in random battles by at least twice. And with that comes the consideration that normal enemies are only going to take one hit from Phalanx before dying, as it's rather powerful, you're going to be increasing the time you fight normal enemies by at least 100% just for the opportunity to try for the new ability 3 times or so. That SUCKS.

The other option you can take is to use the only battles that you'll normally get Kanon 90 FP in due to their length--boss battles--to spam the move over and over. This is almost as annoying, though, because if you're just hitting the boss with one move every turn, you're still increasing the amount of time you're spending in monotonous RPG combat, and if you're using any attacks more than Phalanx, the boss dies too quickly for Kanon to have used the move often enough to have any chance of learning the damn Eagle Claw ability.

In my replay of WA2 a few months ago, I did both methods--the only attack I used against bosses was Phalanx, and I increased the length of several normal enemy encounters so that I could have Kanon fire off Phalanx a couple times (and I'd just like to note, in case it's been forgotten, that just getting the Phalanx ability is an annoying, random, time-consuming process in itself!). You know when I finally learned the goddamn Eagle Claw ability? Second to last dungeon. That's, what, a THIRD of the game that you can spend waiting for this damn ability to show up, hindering your progress the entire time?

And yes, I do realize that I could have just stopped with Phalanx and (apparently) gotten through the game just fine with it alone. Not only do I realize that, I heartily recommend it--hell, I think Phalanx by itself is too much of a pain in the ass to learn for Kanon, so anyone planning to play the game, just stick to the other abilities she can learn. But whether a player CAN make do with a less-effective work-around is not the point--the point is that the player should not HAVE to avoid this tedious idiocy.












* Final Fantasy 6 actually had this idea first, but it was tragically underused, almost completely eclipsed by the far less interesting Magicite system of learning magic, which ruined most of the game's characters' battle individuality.

10 comments:

  1. Ecc here.

    This sounds like a lazy way to test a player's understanding of the battle system, and a cheap way to pad the game. A reasonable approach would allow a player to increase the odds, up to near-inevitable odds, increasing with the usage of the base skill. But for the sake of conciseness, I'll agree that FFIX had the most logical and balanced progression. you really can't break the game by learning skills ASAP, or run into nightmare scenarios where skills refuse to be acquired.


    And...yes, FFVI had a number of interesting and fresh gameplay ideas, that have been forgotten by Square and the JRPG genre as a whole. It's not the best game evar, but by god, it shouldn't be as relatively complex as it still is.

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  2. Double post, sorry.

    Don't mean to be a gameplay whore here, but going solely off of my WA4 experience, no one hits 90 FP without the clear intention of killing the opposition in the next two turns. This system sounds classy.

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  3. With fairness to...who made WA2 again? MediaVision? With fairness to whoever, Kanon's ability learning mechanic seems less like lazy, cheap padding to me, and more like a concept that just wasn't thought completely through. Whether that's really any better, I couldn't say.

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  4. Fair enough. I won't deny I'm getting cynical in my old age.

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  5. Tch. You really don't know the beauty of it. And you call yourself a RPG-player? You really make me laugh, dude. No offense. But I really DO laughing when reading your reasoning (or perhaps it's more like a complain?). Why? Well, you can get a very EASY way to get Eagle Claw. I found this method myself. Still consuming time, but it's guaranteed in ONE normal battle. The key is how to keep enemy coming in one battle and this condition can be fulfilled if you know what the enemy is. You should know, right? The enemy that can "Summon heroes" unlimitedly. Problem solved! Plus, you can get tons of EXP aftermath!

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    Replies
    1. I'm quite aware of that trick. What is amusing to ME is that this idea you advocate does not in any way lessen my complaint. What you're proposing is to take all the time wasted in trying to get the move and condense it into a single interminably long battle instead of an interminably long series of battles. But the time spent doesn't really CHANGE. You're still spending a long, tedious, repetitive time trying to get the move either way, and that was my complaint.

      In fact, the way you propose might actually be worse, since, after spending who knows how long just trying over and over to appease the Random Number Generation Gods, you're no further along in the game than you were before you started. At least with the conventional methods I employed, I wasn't adding hours and hours onto my game time for no reason.

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    2. Very interesting. I did say that my trick is STILL consuming time, didn't I? But, then again, how about your "must raise your FP every time" complaint? I think my trick is solving THAT, at least. So, by any logics in the universe, it will REDUCE your time spending.

      BTW, this trick will be executable anytime in the game after you get Kanon. As a true RPG-player, don't you have a feeling of urgency that you MUST OBTAIN strongest attack as early as possible? (You surely remember how true RPG-players are WILLING to spend their playtime in Triple Triad JUST to get Lionheart in Disc 1-FF8?-Methhod other than hunting Elnoyle cards is very unlikely because you have to raise your average party level to 30).
      So, if you use my trick, you will get:
      1. Every Kanon's moves in one battle
      2. Every Tim's magic in one battle (while hunting Phalanx, you can just use Vortex Cut, and finish the Summon Hero with Tim so the credit goes to him-as you may know, this enemy has 2000 HP)
      3. TONS of EXP, doubled with Lucky Card. In my case, i just spent ONLY about 4 hours to get Eagle Claw, and in the end I got my character's level raised by 7 level!

      See? Three profits in one shot!
      Doesn't it answering your complaint?

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    3. "But, then again, how about your "must raise your FP every time" complaint? I think my trick is solving THAT, at least. So, by any logics in the universe, it will REDUCE your time spending."

      I suppose this is true, but as I mentioned, your method then means that after sitting through that one inestimably long battle, you're no further along in the game at all. That's hours of time (4, in your case) that have disappeared solely for the purpose of learning a single special ability. Regardless of how much extra time and annoyance the conventional method may necessitate, at least it occurs over the course of battles that one would have fought anyway.

      "As a true RPG-player, don't you have a feeling of urgency that you MUST OBTAIN strongest attack as early as possible?"

      Not if it adds 4 hours of mindless busywork onto a game already filled with such, no. I may not place enough value on my own time, but even I know it's worth more than that.

      "So, if you use my trick, you will get:
      1. Every Kanon's moves in one battle
      2. Every Tim's magic in one battle (while hunting Phalanx, you can just use Vortex Cut, and finish the Summon Hero with Tim so the credit goes to him-as you may know, this enemy has 2000 HP)"

      Again, your method is no less tedious, and comes at the cost of adding several filler hours of combat to a game already necessitating somewhere around 10 to 20 filler hours of combat. No thanks.

      "3. TONS of EXP, doubled with Lucky Card. In my case, i just spent ONLY about 4 hours to get Eagle Claw, and in the end I got my character's level raised by 7 level!"

      ...So? There are more time-efficient ways to beef one's levels up in WA2, and there's only a couple of times where it's really needed.

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  6. Wow. You truly a genius indeed. In reasoning your belief, that is.

    By any chance, have you beaten Ragu O Ragula?

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