General RPGs' Minigames 10: Auctions

Auction minigames. They’re not all over the place, but there’re plenty of’em to be found in RPGs. Some of them are kind of accurate mimicries of the actual process of an auction, like the one found in the Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor games. Others are no closer to an actual auction than a “Mash the A Button to Eat Soup” minigame is to the actual act of masticating, such as the “auction” in Final Fantasy 6. I mean, that one is really just 2 opportunities to say you will pay a predetermined, unchangeable sum of money for 1 out of about a whole 6 randomly generated items, wherein only the second opportunity to bid actually has any bearing on getting the item. It’s less an auction minigame and more a Will You Buy This or Not minigame.

But even when an auction minigame is made well enough that it actually feels like an auction of sorts...what is the freaking point? The enjoyment of being in a real auction certainly isn’t present. You’re not actually there, you don’t actually get to see the people you’re competing against for the item you want, there’s considerably less of an exciting mysteriousness about what unknown junk and treasures could be put up for sale...sure you’re pleased if it’s some item or such that you could use, but I’d have trouble believing that anyone could achieve the same excitement about an auction minigame’s prizes as they would for the possible spoils of a real auction. And if you find that enjoyable, somehow, then okay, fine. But why would you want to waste time doing so in an RPG for pretend items when you could just hop on EBay, get the same experience of bidding against a faceless rising number, and actually have a chance of getting a real, actual item for your trouble? Don’t need an RPG for that.

Now, I’ll give you that the auction in The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker managed to actually make the whole auction scenario feel fairly realistic. The minigame has Link in a room, with the other bidders being recognizable NPCs from town whom the player likely has some familiarity with, and so it doesn’t seem like you’re just competing against an impersonal number generator, you actually get a better feeling of bidding against someone else. Additionally, as far as I can tell, the NPCs bid in a relatively unpredictable manner, at least more so than most other auction minigames I’ve encountered, so that also adds a bit more realism to the process. So this one, at least, tries to capture the atmosphere of an actual auction, instead of just being a weak mockery of EBay. Still, it’s a time-consuming process for item acquisition that could otherwise have just been handled quickly and efficiently by just buying the damn thing outright, and its novelty only lasts a couple times before it wears off and the process becomes boring.

Auction minigames certainly aren’t as frustrating as many minigames I’ve covered before (fuck Spheda, man), nor as gratingly common and widespread (I’m so goddamn sick of fishing), nor as time-consuming (goddamn Torneko’s stupid-ass weapon shop!), nor are they annoyingly mandatory (stupid hauler beasts), so I don’t have too much hatred for them. Still, they ARE annoying and/or boring, they DO consume more time than they’re worth, and I frankly just don’t see the point.

Xenosaga 3 Mini Rants 2

My goodness, can it really be that it's been 3 months since I last did a rant on the most numerously flawed RPG series ever? Well, let's fix that!

Hey, remember that time I did a series of little rants about Xenosaga 3’s problems instead of a regular-sized rant about only 1 of those issues? I do. It was fun! Well, not exactly, but it wasn’t tortuously awful, either, so what the hell, let’s do it again!


Dying of Plot Plague: So, according to Kevin, Shion’s connection to U-DO (which just seems to be her being able to talk to him/her/it any time she passes out) makes her sick, for some inadequately-explored reason, as it did with her mother. KOS-MOS apparently runs by drawing power from U-DO, a convenient fact which I don’t think has ever been mentioned up until this moment in the series. Thus, because of Shion’s connection to U-DO, her close relationship with KOS-MOS is slowly killing her.

Wait, what? How the hell does that work? Shion just communicates with and gets passing-out headaches from U-DO (which happen whether or not KOS-MOS is nearby, using any unusual amount of energy, or even switched on, so that negative effect has to just be from U-DO in general). She’s not otherwise said or shown to have any particular connection to U-DO. If she did, she should presumably have some sort of negative reaction to Jr.’s abilities, since Jr. is a being specifically designed to combat U-DO (and he’s the strongest of such beings, to boot), but she doesn’t. So why does KOS-MOS running on U-DO juice have any sort of negative effect on Shion? If I’m chatting with my friend Varanus on Skype when an overzealous Red Cross worker bursts into his home, ties him down, jams a needle in his arm, and extracts a gallon of blood, leaving Varanus a withered husk of a human being, I don’t magically start losing MY blood too just because I happened to have a line of communication open with him when it happened. So why is this the case with Shion? Additionally, how does this relate to KOS-MOS and Shion becoming closer and having their wills align? If KOS-MOS uses U-DO as a source of fuel either way, then how will Shion’s condition worsen by deepening her relationship to KOS-MOS? What about that exacerbates the condition? I’m not unwilling to believe that it COULD make the situation worse, but I’m gonna need SOME reason, even if it’s magical sci-fi bullshit, for that to happen. But I won’t get one. Because the game stops directly acknowledging this situation of Shion slowly dying fairly shortly after the scene where it’s introduced. And why is that?

Because Xenosaga, that’s why.

Oh yeah, I love the part after Kevin tells Shion and company about this U-DO-Shion-KOS-MOS death connection stuff, and Jin warns Shion against taking it at face value, even though it “may seem plausible enough.” Does it seem plausible, Jin? Does it really?

What’s He Even Doing, Again?: Kevin wants to save the universe. Kevin wants to destroy the universe. Kevin wants to save the universe BY destroying the universe. Kevin wants to save the universe by destroying the universe, but only for himself and Shion, so for everyone else, he’ll be destroying the universe by destroying the universe. Even by Xenosaga terms, his purpose is about as rational and coherent as the intro for Team Rocket.

Blood Censorship: Censorship is rarely a good thing, but most of the time, I don’t really care if some blood and gore are removed when a game’s transitioning from the too-lax lands of Japan to the too-uptight lands of the USA. The overbearing creative deadzone that is United States Entertainment Culture has not yet managed to kill my imagination off, so if you show a guy getting stabbed with a sword, I don’t necessarily HAVE to see the blood from the wound to know he’s probably not feeling all that great about it. There are, however, some scenes that really HAVE to be free of censorship or else they’re significantly damaged, and the scene in Xenosaga 3 in which Little Shion is futilely, uncomprehendingly trying to catch her murdered mother’s blood in her hands in the hopes of putting it back into her...damn is this ever an example of why censorship is a bad thing. If you watch the scene from an original Japanese copy of the game, it’s very impressive, very emotionally painful and powerfully dark to watch. I’ll give this game credit where it’s due, and here, it’s very due.

Buuuuuuut, try playing an American copy of Xenosaga 3 through to this scene, and...well, the game was censored to have all blood removed from it.* So you sit there and you watch it, and you frown in mild confusion as you see this stricken child making inexplicable hand motions and muttering about putting something back in that doesn’t seem to exist. The entire mood of the scene is destroyed. I’d even go so far as to say that it actually looks silly. Man, even when Xenosaga 3 gets something right, it can’t get it right all across the board.

Voice Acting: The English voice acting in Xenosaga 3 utterly confounds me. I mean, in theory, it should be great. Pretty much every voice is a perfect match for its character. KOS-MOS is appropriately feminine yet robotic. Jr. is appropriately young but gruff. Captain Matthews is appropriately rough. Shion is appropriately normal yet somehow annoying over time. And so on. And a lot of these voice actors have got a lot of talent and experience under their belt, too. The woman who voices Jr., Brianne Siddall, has voiced a ton of lads and done a fine job each time. The guy who voices Margulis, Michael McConnohie, has, I think, voiced roughly one third of all RPG villains to date. Kirk Thornton, who plays Captain Matthews, has been in so many shows and games and such that it might actually be faster to make a list of things he has not done vocal work for. And yet, the voice acting for Xenosaga 3 just plain stinks!

It doesn’t stink in the usual way. I mean, like I said, these people are right for their roles, and they’re pretty much all quite good at what they do. But...I don’t know how to describe this. It’s like they’re doing a good job, but in the wrong way. Let me pose an example to you. Take this sentence: “What are you doing?” Now, there are a LOT of ways you can read that, a lot of scenarios that it can belong to. That could be a question of simple curiosity by someone passing by. Someone could be screaming that in horrified disbelief as they witness a terrible event. You could particularly emphasize any one of the words in it to get a different implication--”What are you doing?” implies extreme puzzlement and likely some dismay or disgust over what the speaker is witnessing, “What are you doing?” has a sort of snobby air to it, “What are you doing?” can imply some disdain for the doer being addressed, as though it’s laughable or unusual for the person to even be present, let alone doing something, and “What are you doing?” implies extra incredulity of some sort of the act itself. You could speak the sentence quickly and with little interest, and it becomes an apathetic moment of slightly sarcastic disregard for the other’s actions.

My point here is that practically any given sentence a voice actor reads can be used in many different situations in many different ways, and thus it needs to be spoken in the right way for the situation’s context. And that consistently does not happen in Xenosaga 3! These well-chosen, competent voice actors are delivering their lines well, but those deliveries are very often inconsistent with the situation in which the characters are speaking them. The inflections and parts emphasized are all over the place, and only seem to hit the mark for the characters’ situation and emotional state half the time, 60% at the most. It’s distracting. I can only assume that the voice actors weren’t properly directed while they were recording, weren’t given the proper context of the lines they were recording and weren’t told to re-record lines that weren’t going to fit in correctly. I can’t really think of any other reason for why this should be such a problem all across the board.

Jr.’s Guns: You know, the last time I did a series of mini-rants for this game, I talked about how useless MOMO seems in the cutscenes, but when I think about it, Jr.’s not a whole lot better. Like MOMO, Jr. is a fine fighter in the game’s actual battles; his abilities and his skills with his handguns are adequately effective, and you can quite easily use him efficiently as a party member. But like MOMO, if you go by all the instances of storytelling--actions taken outside the battle screen, and the content of the cutscenes--Jr. doesn’t seem to be able to do jack squat, at least not with his handguns, which are all he really uses outside of special situations with his fellow URTVs. He fires at giant mech suits, and, predictably enough, does no damage. He fires at T-elos, and does no damage. He fires at Voyager, and does no damage. Any time we see Jr. shooting at anything more than a faceless grunt enemy, there’s no damn effect. Being an effective fighter in the battle screen really doesn’t cut it with Xenosaga, as I mentioned before with MOMO--this is a game series with hours and hours and hours of cutscenes. They are the games’ primary vehicle of storytelling. And as Jr. cannot inflict damage on any significant foe throughout the Xenosaga series’s cutscenes, he comes off as useless to the team’s combat dynamic. It’s not as bad as with MOMO, since at least Jr. gets a chance to TRY to attack enemies here and there, but going by the storytelling sequences of the games, you would think him just as useless as you would think MOMO. They really should’ve given him a more appropriately dangerous armament--antique handguns just don’t cut it in a setting of giant mech suits, super robots, and lasers freakin’ everywhere.

Do You Know What Being Alone Actually Is, Shion?: Uh...okay, if Shion’s greatest fear is, indeed, of being alone, as is indicated by one of her little fireside chats with U-DO, then why does she later want to leave her friends and family to help Kevin? Yes, she’ll have him (and what a fucking prize he is), but in the process she’ll give up everyone else who cares about her and has been there for her. Not only that, but if Kevin were to successfully work his universe reset voodoo, she’d REALLY be alone with him, as they would be the only 2 people in the entire universe! That’s a pretty lonely scenario even with your precious boy-toy by your side, and what if something happens to him again? Seems like a hell of a counter-productive gamble for her to take if her loneliness is her greatest fear.

And Why Did All Of This Happen, Again?: The millennia-spanning ludicrously complex plan of Wilhelm that involves all the hogwash of collecting relics of God and souls of dead Bible women and giving abusive boyfriends superpowers and making little boys who are also sort of God into robot pilots and so on...it all stems from the one, single problem that the universe is, over time, dying. But the game never, to my understanding, has the courtesy to specifically explain to us exactly HOW the universe is dissipating, what’s causing it and why. First it’s blamed on the wills of people who don’t feel like they fit in (the Gnosis), and then it’s blamed on chaos’s existence, but not once do we get any idea of how either of these things, or anything else, actually translates into the end of the universe. What is it about the mere existence of the Gnosis and/or chaos that makes this happen? The Gnosis are fairly destructive in general, but that’s just on the normal human scale, like the way an all-out nuclear war in real life would devastate the society of man and its creations, and wreak havoc on the Earth’s surface, but would not actually, so far as I know, really damage the Earth itself, only the stuff on it. We never see the Gnosis doing anything that could even faintly connect to destroying the universe itself. And chaos is just bumming around, not bothering anyone. So how do either the existence of chaos or the existence of the Gnosis hasten this universal collapse that Wilhelm’s trying to circumvent?

And here’s the other thing about that situation I don’t get. Once Shion and company have defeated Wilhelm’s plans, chaos and Nephilim begin to summon all the Gnosis to them, with the intent of sealing the Gnosis and themselves on Lost Jerusalem (Earth) so that the destruction of the universe can be slowed, to buy humanity enough time to hopefully come up with a true solution to the problem. Well that’s all fine and good, very noble and all that, but, uh, why should that make any difference? I mean, all we can glean from the game’s information about how the universe is dying is that it’s the existence of chaos and/or the Gnosis that causes it--and since chaos is a good guy who would never actively destroy the universe, and as I said we don’t see the Gnosis really do much besides destruction on a human scale or just sit around in space, it seems like the only logical conclusion really is that just chaos and/or the Gnosis existing is all it takes to be detrimental to the life of the universe, even if, as I said, we have no idea why that is or how it is done. But if just existing is enough to bring about the universe’s end eventually, then why does sealing chaos and the Gnosis on Lost Jerusalem make a difference to how fast that happens? Lost though it is, Earth is still IN the universe, so, sealed there or not, the Gnosis and chaos will still be existing in the universe. If their mere existence is enough to hasten destruction, how can it matter which planet that existence happens to be taking place on?

The Ambitions Of Sellers: During the heroes’ final meeting with Sellers, before he just vanishes inexplicably from the plot altogether, the guy makes a bunch of grandiose statements about how he has no loyalties to Ormus or the Federation, and that he’ll happily use any powerful organization as a vehicle to advance his goals. He also talks about how sacrifices are acceptable and trivial in order to accomplish great things. Okay, right, amoral mad scientist schtick. Yet do we ever get any clear idea, anything but the very vaguest of notions, of what those goals and great things are meant to be? I mean, I’m willing to allow for some non-specific mad science-y ambitions, a la Hojo from Final Fantasy 7, but we should be privy to at least a general idea of what it is that Sellers is trying to do. I think we kinda get an idea that he’s trying to surpass his old boss Mizrahi, but in what way? Why? How? What is it that Sellers finds interesting about his work? What are the results he wants to see? What are the results he’s even observing? Again, a case where Show, Don’t Tell would’ve been the right move--Sellers can go on and on all he likes about his goals and ambitions and science crap, but we’re given nothing specific to qualify his statements.

This Guy Are Sick: Most of the time, when a character in Xenosaga says something that doesn’t make any sense, it’s not because it’s badly translated, it’s just because they’re spouting the usual over-complicated nonsense that is the signature of Xenosaga. There are, however, some occasions in the game that are just silly gibberish that doesn’t seem like it could make sense even by that standard.

For example, when Helmer talks about how his planet, Miltia, is evacuating its population as quickly as possible in light of the danger of Abel’s Ark, Canaan says “You humans are hopeless. It’s times like this when you should be working together.” Where the hell did THAT come from? Wouldn’t expedient planetary evacuation imply at least some form of cooperation? Does Canaan mean that they should instead be working together toward some different solution? What the hell does he think Helmer and the regular military and citizenry are going to be able to do? All the bullshit magical hooplah that has to do with Abel’s Ark is way beyond conventional resistance. I have no idea what prompted this statement by Canaan, what the intent of the statement is, or why everyone around him just seems to accept it as valid.

Or as another example, Albedo’s line when he shows up during the confrontation with Yuriev: “I’m so happy to be able to see you again. It’s rather amazing. I feel like thanking the laws of this universe.” What the fuck does that even MEAN? It’s like something some weirdo would say in Earthbound! Granted the laws of the universe are sort of behind anything and everything that happens, so you COULD thank them for virtually anything, but to my knowledge, no one ever goes around doing that. And for that matter, Albedo is only able to see Jr. again here because Wilhelm BROKE the laws of the universe to make it happen--Albedo DIED, and Wilhelm brought him back. If there’s any time where the normal laws of the universe actually weren’t responsible, it’d be this one! But that’s beside the point. The point is, what the fuck are you talking about man.

Well That Was Convenient: After the heroes defeat Citrine and try to stop Yuriev, Yuriev shoots the panel controlling the door he’s exiting from. Now, I understand why he does this--it’s to stop anyone from being able to open the door to follow him. What I don’t understand is why, after he has shot it, the door opens one last time for him? He shoots it while the door’s closed, then it opens for him after the damage has been done to it, and only THEN, after he’s made his getaway, does it seem to realize its control panel has been destroyed and refuse to open. Look, Namco, either shooting the damn thing breaks it or it doesn’t. You can’t change your mind halfway through the scene.


Ehhh, I think that’s enough for today. Hope you’re not getting tired of Xenosaga, though, because there’s more to come.










* I can’t even understand why that is. This is a game made for adults, it features a nonstop barrage of adult themes. There is enough mature-themed shit going down in this series that a little blood should not be the breaking point.

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunoha 2's Superiority to its Predecessor

Well, lads and lasses, it's a brand new year, and I'm back and ready to fill it with the ramblings of a cranky, impossible-to-please fanboy gone senile before his time. And since you're still here, reading this tripe, I guess that means you're back as well, and still somehow unable to find something more interesting to do. I actually feel enthusiastic about this year--there's a lot of really great RPGs on my horizon, and I actually have a fair number of ideas for some rants that I think will be pretty fun and/or cool. Let's get this thing rolling!



Until Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2, the first Raidou Kuzunoha game was the low point in the SMT series for me. That’s not to say that SMT Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunoha vs. The Soulless Army (forevermore known here as SMT Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunoha 1--that’s already more of a mouthful than I like) was a bad RPG or anything like that. That’s certainly not the case. But it’s all relative--Shin Megami Tensei sets its bar extremely high when it comes to story quality and thematic depth. A great game like SMT Persona 4 is dead average by the standards of the 13 SMT games I’ve played to date, so a mere “fairly good” RPG is low on the SMT scale. But SMTDS Raidou Kuzunoha 1 was amusing and fairly fun, and had a few solidly cool parts, and I enjoyed it and found it to be worth my time.

In this way, my expectations for the sequel, SMT Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon (known hereafter round these parts as SMTDSRK2), were both hopeful and low. It’s an SMT game and the first had been decent, so I was expecting a positive experience, but given its predecessor, I also wasn’t expecting anything particularly noteworthy. But I was quite pleasantly surprised by the the time I finished it. Not only did Raidou Kuzunoha’s second game improve on virtually every aspect of the first, but this is actually a game I can fully count as a true Shin Megami Tensei title. And because I like pontificating aimlessly about unimportant subjects, I’m gonna explain how.

First of all, I guess it should be said that the second game has considerably better gameplay, for whatever that’s worth. The first title’s gameplay was actually relatively fun and well-made (though a little too easy, I think), but they really improved on it for Raidou’s second game. The nuances of combat seem slightly more complex in general, and the ability to now have 2 demons on the field helping Raidou instead of 1 puts a lot more power in your court and provides for much more potential for strategic party preparation. But the game’s well-balanced, so that this doubling of demons doesn’t dwindle or destroy the difficulty; if anything, SMTDSRK2 is much more satisfyingly challenging than its predecessor. There’s also a huge increase in the number of different demons in this title; I think the game’s bestiary has to be double what SMTDSRK1’s was, making it about as sizable as any average SMT game.

Of course, that stuff’s all the small junk that doesn’t really matter to me. It’s nice to see it improve, no question about that, but it isn’t a consideration for whether I find this or any other RPG good or bad. That’s left to the storytelling, the plot, and the characters. And they have all improved, as well.

Let’s start by talking about the characters. The secondary characters (Gouto, Narumi, and Tae) in SMTDSRK2 are pretty much the same as they were before, without much done with them one way or another. Towards the end of the game, there’s some slight development for Narumi and Tae with the villain god’s mask thing exposing certain inner turmoils of theirs, but overall they’re just there, doing their thing, moving the plot along. I guess Narumi did have a slight bit of development in SMTDSRK1 with his history that this game doesn’t have, but it’s not much of a step back. This sequel does have some decent new characters, though--I can’t say that Geirin or Akane impressed me overall, but each was at least pretty decent and had some depth, and Nagi is original enough to catch one’s interest and goes through a fair amount of good personal development.

The villains are better, too. Shinado makes a pretty solid true villain, recalling to mind Nyx from SMT Persona 3 in that his attempt to extinguish humanity is born from and relates to people’s own weak spirits and despair, but distanced from Nyx by the fact that his threat is consciously made because of his observations and belief, rather than just being an unquestioning device of armageddon. Dahn makes for a good, real-feeling villain for the majority of the game. Not to say that the villains of the first game were bad; they were just fine, and I did like the way they had the lead villain be the Raidou Kuzunoha from the time period of Shin Megami Tensei 2, loved the way they tied their greatest classic in with Raidou’s game. Still, Dahn is a more relatable, genuine-feeling guy. In fact, he’s realistic enough and sympathetic enough that some players may feel more inclined to side with him than stop him. I certainly did--I recognize that he’s too ignorant of the ramifications of his actions, but I still find myself in agreement with his intent far more than the beliefs of those opposing him. I’m not saying he’s a truly great villain or anything, but he’s a good enough one that a boring mostly-Law-sometimes-Neutral player like me actually advocated Chaos in this SMT as a result.

That brings me to the last point on improved characterization--the Alignment system. By adding Alignments to SMTDSRK2, Atlus has injected a much-needed dose of personality into their titular character. Through the many questions and requested input that the game’s story and narration pose to Raidou to determine whether he’s Lawful, Neutral, or Chaotic, the Alignment system allows the player to better understand why Raidou is doing what he does, how the events surrounding him affect his beliefs and perspective, what he believes, and whether he identifies himself solely by his role as Raidou Kuzunoha XIV, or whether he sees himself still as a unique individual. An interesting thing about this is that the rigidity of the game’s plot (Raidou’s gonna do almost all the same stuff regardless of his alignment) doesn’t hinder how variable Raidou’s character is at all, because whether he’s doing it for himself or for his duty, Raidou’s task is exactly the same--I’m quite fine with the player’s choices for what a protagonist believes having a large impact on the game’s events, but this game shows us that you can have the benefits of a protagonist whose beliefs and personality are set by the player, without it making a big difference in the plot. Kind of different to have a case where the importance is placed on why you believe in the duty you’re performing, not on changing the duty itself. In fact, this might just have made the Alignment system in SMTDSRK2 far more effective at creating a character for Raidou Kuzunoha than it has been for any other SMT Silent Protagonist. In every other SMT game with an Alignment system that I can think of, the resulting alignment of Law, Neutral, or Chaos for the protagonist is aimed at determining which faction the protagonist sides with and thus makes a major difference to the game’s sequence of events. With Raidou Kuzunoha 2, the sequence of events are relatively fixed, so instead of just being a tool to know where the protagonist stands on the issue of order and freedom, the Alignment system is forced to focus on the character more since its regular plot duty is removed.

At any rate, the cast of SMTDSRK2 is definitely improved upon through better villains, solid additional support characters, and allowing for Raidou to have a personality. Nothing’s lost, a lot is gained.

Let’s look at the plot’s execution next. SMTDSRK2 is definitely better in its storytelling than the first game. Again, it’s not that the first Raidou Kuzunoha was bad or anything--this one just improves on it. This is mostly because the weirdness is dialed back just a bit. SMTDSRK1 was...very odd at times. Shooting demons into orbit in a homemade rocket ship, being trapped in an alternate reality for little to no reason, and facing off against a robot Rasputin...it got a little too surreal at times. Fun, but surreal. The sequel seems to take itself a lot more seriously. It’s not that the quirky, weird parts are gone, they’re just fewer, allowing for a more serious and sensible story, and the oddest parts of the game are mostly kept as sidequests, instead of being thrust into the main plot. You still have, for example, a cameo by alternate universe Raidou, but it’s optional, unrelated to the story proper. So the sequel still has the fun feel of the first game as much as it needs it, but as a whole, the story comes off as much more genuine and serious. Raidou Kuzunoha 2 is still a game with the levity of its predecessor, but with a richer and more substantial feel to its main plot that I can appreciate.

And since we’re on the subject, the plot’s also a lot better with the sequel. While keeping track of all the terms can be a little difficult at times, overall the story is a solid save-the-world venture, but with far more substance than the first game. The first Raidou Kuzunoha title was fine, but the only time I can recall it making any impact on me or impressing me was at its very end, going through the awesome final dungeon and seeing the highlights of Raidou’s future, then discovering the identity and motives of the villain. It’s good stuff, but far too little, too late to make the first game particularly interesting. With SMTDSRK2, however, you’ve got a plot with significant creativity (just love the idea of an assassin who kills with bad fortune), a grander feel overall (the presence of good ol’ SMT veteran Lucifer and the foreboding of the Day of Misfortune, and a good expansion of the Raidou Kuzunoha mini-universe (mostly through the introduction and explanation of Geirin Kuzunoha and the Fukoshi clan), combined with the Fiends running amok, does the trick nicely), and a decent exploration into the themes of faith, hope, and despair, the classic SMT Law vs. Chaos question, and Luck and Fortune as a form of belief and even faith. Now, yeah, SMTDSRK2 doesn’t go into those themes in as great depth as many of the other SMTs. Its use of the Law vs. Chaos theme isn’t as strong as it is in SMT Strange Journey, for example, and its investigation into the essence of Luck and people’s faith in it isn’t as complete and thought-provoking as SMT Persona 3’s investigation into the Tarot, or SMT Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2’s use of Hinduism and Buddhism. Nonetheless, Raidou Kuzunoha 2’s use of these themes is very solid, and gave my brain a satisfying meal, and that elevates it leagues above its predecessor--I’m still not really sure what, if anything, SMTDSRK1 is actually about.

And like I said, not only is Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunoha 2 a better game in every important way than its progenitor, it’s also a true Shin Megami Tensei game, at least to me. See, to me, the heart and soul of the SMT series is an examination into the religions, faiths, and belief systems of humanity--understanding them, how they came to be, how they affect us, what place they have in our society and culture, and what place they should have. Plenty of other great stuff is important to the SMT series, too, of course--human nature, how ordered and free society should be, how best to live your life, and so on. But all of the rest of that stuff is the result of the in-depth exploration into faith that is SMT’s core, a byproduct of the main event. Highly debatable, of course, but that’s how I, myself, see Shin Megami Tensei. And SMTDSRK2 definitely fits the bill with its examination into the concept of good and bad Fortune, the ways it affects us and the degrees to which we believe in or deny it. Oh, sure, it’s not as heavy a topic of belief as Christianity (SMT1, 2, 4, Strange Journey, and Devil Survivor 1), Hinduism and Buddhism (SMT Digital Devil Saga 1 and 2), the raw behavior patterns of religions in general (SMT3), or even the Tarot (SMT Persona 3 and 4). All the same, the idea of Fortune, the capricious whims of fate and sometimes karma, is one that nearly everyone I’ve ever encountered believes in to some capacity, and quite deserving, as a concept of belief, of an SMT game devoted to it. Raidou Kuzunoha 2 does so to a perfect degree, giving us plenty of insight and ideas about Luck to consider at length, yet not trying to stretch that analysis and plot attention further than it should (Luck’s too subjective and undefined a subject to warrant the level of investigation that some of the other games give to the other theological themes I mentioned before).

Overall, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunoha 2 is a marked improvement on the original in every significant way, and even in some insignificant ways, as well. It was quite a pleasant surprise for me, and goodness knows I don’t get enough of those. Big props to the SMT team at Atlus for taking something lackluster (for them, anyway) and turning it into something really worthwhile.

Annual Summary: 2013

And so another year draws to a close, and I am still, for some reason, ranting and raving here. Huh. Who would’ve figured?

Anyway. This was a pretty good year for me. I played a good number of RPGs this year, and unlike last year, there were definitely a good handful of titles that were very impressive and/or noteworthy. Not all of them, of course (why the hell do I continue to play Dragon Quest titles?), but quite a few. Once more, I hit up lots of games of various age and system of origin, and although I’m now fully engrossed in the many Western RPGs that I’ve found and purchased from GOG.com, I’ve tried to play enough JRPGs to keep a decent balance. Anyway, here’s what I played this year, in alphabetical order.



Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
Atelier Iris 1
Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden
Betrayal at Krondor
Deus Ex 1
Deus Ex 2
Divinity 1
Dragon Quest 9
The Elder Scrolls 4
Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle
Evoland
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates
Geneforge 1
Heroes of Annihilated Empires
The Last Story
Legend of Grimrock 1
Legend of Mana
Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader
Lunar: Dragon Song
Mega Man Star Force 2
Nox
Return to Krondor
Shin Megami Tensei 4
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunoha 2
Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2
Tales of Destiny 1
Torchlight 1
The Witcher 1
The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road



As always, all SquareEnix games were purchased used or experienced through Youtube Let’s Plays, in keeping with my oath not to support the company until it drastically improves its integrity.

Not a bad number at all, I’d say. I kept busy with other stuff, too. I read several books by authors such as Isaac Asimov, Charlotte Bronte, Agatha Christie, Jaspar Fforde, and The Harvard Lampoon, keeping up with and surpassing my goal of 1 book a month. I know that’s not as high as it should be, but with the number of people in this country who consistently manage to hit their goal of 0 books read per year, I figure I’m doing alright. I’ve continued to keep up with My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, and its immense (but fully justified) fandom, and I also finally, finally watched Firefly and its movie Serenity this year, at last coming to understand why so many people consider it such a tragedy that it didn’t live longer. I also rewatched both Batman: The Animated Series and Gargoyles this year from start to finish, and doing so back-to-back has allowed me to finally conclude, once and for all, which is truly the greatest non-anime cartoon series of all time (it’s Gargoyles). I also continued fooling around with fanfiction. Oh, and both of my jobs. I guess I did spend some time with them, too.

As far as RPGs go, the year started off...not so well. The very first spoken line in the very first RPG I played this year was a space monster telling a 5th grader, “I’ll tell you about your father if you let me use your body, kid!” That is just not a good way to kick off a new year, guys. Thanks for that, Mega Man Star Force 2. And thanks also for the creepy moment that followed soon after in which the adult villain chose a 10-year-old-girl as his damsel and supposed co-ruler. Still, things soon started to look up with Barkley: Shut Up and Jam Gaiden, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura, and Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle. I had a small series of dull games after that, but soon rebounded with the excellence that is Deus Ex 1 and The Witcher 1. Things went along fairly quietly but enjoyably up until the end after that, finishing the year out with Shin Megami Tensei 4, a good-though-not-as-good-as-it-should-be RPG, and Deus Ex 2, which was really very good, a worthy successor to the original. So, overall, everything went well enough, with only pockets of dullness or crap here and there.

I played a lot of RPG series for the first time this year, I notice. Until 2013, I’d never played any of the Atelier games (unless you count Mana Khemia, but I think it’s only tangentially related to the Atelier series, like the way Nippon Ichi games are usually vaguely connected), nor any of the titles from the Witcher, Elder Scrolls, Geneforge, Deus Ex, or Divinity series, either. I found 4 out of these 6 new forays to be at least a little rewarding, so it seems new experiences are indeed a good thing.

So, what stood out in particular this year? Let’s see.



RPG Moments of Interest in 2013:

1. I finally got around to playing Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, one of the first and best known Indie RPGs released over the web. It is gloriously ridiculous, and its glorious ridiculousness is made all the better for how seriously it takes itself. This is both the most insanely hilarious and crazy thing you’ve ever played, AND a totally awesome RPG story in its own right. I’m not sure anything has ever been quite so epic and silly at the same time before.

2. One of the many hidden gems that can be found for cheap at GOG.com, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura is based on an insanely awesome idea: a Dungeons and Dragons-esque world in the midst of its industrial revolution. Victorian England-styled Steampunk is already a fascinating concept when applied to a regular real-life-esque setting, so putting it together with arcane magic and mysticism, elves and dwarves and orcs and so on, just makes for a very cool premise and setting. I also found it a fun coincidence that Chris Avellone, whom I consider basically the greatest RPG writer to ever have lived, started doing a Let’s Play of Arcanum this same year.

3. I came across a hybrid game that is both RPG and Real Time Strategy this year, Heroes of Annihilated Empires, in which you command both regular RTS units and structures on the field, AND a hero or two who level up from fighting enemies to eventually be worth an entire horde of the regular RTS units--yet limited enough that you need both to defend and attack properly. I’ve often thought to myself that you could do great things if you combined these game genres (Command and Conquer mildly dabbled with the concept at times in that some units who got enough kills could be promoted, but dabbling is as far as it went), and HoAE confirms that the mixture works as well as I thought it would. The only downside with the title’s gameplay is that the RTS elements are too simplistic and undeveloped on their own to have explored the concept as well as it should have been. Still, it worked well for what it was. Hope I see this idea come about again some time.

4. Among the unusually high number of Indie RPGs I played this year was Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle. Told by a friend to check it out, I initially thought I’d play it for an hour or so and then move along to something else, never to think of it again. EoWC is, without mincing words, a mostly-lesbian pornographic RPG, and as such I did not expect much from it. But if you read my rant on it earlier this year, you’re aware that I was happily very, very wrong--lewd it may be, but Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle is exceptionally creative, has palpable depth and emotion, and contains several really good characters, concepts, and many touching and emotionally gripping love stories within it, all culminating in a battle of the mind to awaken to the present yet keep the dreams of the future. You really can’t judge a book by its cover--what I thought for sure would be a perverse, insulting waste of time turned out to be one of the great highlights of my year.

5. I also played The Last Story this year, which is the big special masterwork of Hironobu Sakaguchi, the renowned father of the Final Fantasy series. It’s clear from the game that the guy put a lot of heart and soul into it, its setting and presentation just exuding the creative effort that went into the title. Unfortunately...well, for all that effort and care, The Last Story is not bad by any means, and it has some pretty good moments, but ultimately, I found it somewhat underwhelming, merely okay at best. Underneath all its polish, it’s a very generic JRPG story with an equally generic JRPG cast, and it does nothing to keep its archetypes fresh or appealing (unless you’re easily amused enough to be enthralled by the idea of a female character who drinks a lot of alcohol).

6. Return to Krondor wins the award for having the Best Witch Ever.

7. Here’s another entry for the list of the great tragedies of RPG history: Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader. What a sad waste of potential. An RPG by the folks behind the early Fallout games, about an alternate-timeline Europe during the Renaissance period in a world where magic and evil beasts of dark power have existed since the Crusades, featuring a ton of great figures of the past like Leonardo da Vinci, Marco Polo, Galileo, and the like? I’d be hard pressed to think of a cooler game idea than that. And early on in the game, it looks like it’s going to be everything you’d hope for and more, but damn it all, the developing company went out of business and the game had to be rushed out, a mere shell of what it would have been, becoming little more than an uninterrupted slogfest soon after leaving the game’s first city. What a damn shame; this thing could have been so great.

8. Another Indie RPG I played this year was Evoland. Great concept with the evolution of RPG game mechanics figuring into the gameplay, but I can’t help but be very disappointed nonetheless. The plot and characters are so utterly bland and simple. It would have been so much neater if they, too, had evolved as the game went along, starting out simple and barely touched upon in the earliest stages of the game while things are still blocky and 8-bit, and then gradually becoming deeper and more developed in different ways as the game evolves into later generations of game style. Sadly, everything about RPGs that really counts stays boring and childishly facile from start to finish in Evoland. It’s a game that details the evolution of only the superficial parts of RPGs. Too bad.


Best Prequel/Sequel of 2013:
Winner: The Witcher 1
The Witcher 1 is based off of the Witcher books by Andrzej Sapkowski, and so I think it’s safe to consider it a sequel, even if it’s the first game of the RPG series. I haven’t read the books, so I’m probably not qualified to fully judge just how faithful it is, but I can at least say that The Witcher 1 seems to be an interesting and insightful exploration into the world and characters of Sapkowski’s books and the role that his Witchers are meant to play, expanding upon these things in a way that both references and relies on the original source material, yet also is accessibly easy to follow and explanatory for those only entering the series through the game. Geralt’s amnesia is treated with surprising skill in this game, being used just enough to allow for players to be introduced to Geralt’s world as he himself re-learns it and just enough for the players’ choices for Geralt’s actions not to necessarily conflict with his personality from the books, without seeming like the cheap cop-out that amnesia almost always winds up being--Geralt keeps a definitive personality, his past continues to have relevance to him regardless of how much of it he fully remembers, and ultimately the memory loss is never flaunted as a magic wand to fix all possible writing difficulties, only expertly used as a tool to enrich the experience and make it more accessible. The Witcher 1 strikes me, and what small research I’ve done on the books has backed this perspective up, as an RPG very careful to respect its source material, but also bold enough to take some steps forward on its own to examine and expand the universe it borrows.

Runners-Up: Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden; Deus Ex 2; Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunoha 2
Well, like The Witcher 1, Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden is a sequel to a previous non-RPG work (the movie Space Jam), so I reckon it does count as a sequel, and it’s...pretty amazingly awesome and amusing, referencing many of the events of Space Jam as it goes along, so it’s definitely a good sequel. SMTDSRK2 manages to keep the quirky atmosphere of the first Raidou Kuzunoha game, references and builds off of the original game’s events and such, but goes in its own direction with a strong independence. It’s quite good. Deus Ex 2 is a very worthy sequel to the original DE1, taking the events and ideas of DE1 and moving forward with them, providing a new understanding and idealism to DE1’s concepts that’s almost equally fascinating. I’d say that Deus Ex 1 had more going on, a much stronger tie to our actual world, and a longer and better-conceived chain of thought with the concepts it explored, but as a follow-up to all of that, DE2 is darned good and did not disappoint.


Biggest Disappointment of 2013:
Loser: Mass Effect 3
Because Mass Effect 3’s ending is so horrible that it deserves recognition for its failure for the next 20 years or so.

...Oh FINE, have it your way:

Actual Loser: Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader
Like I said above, this was a game with huge potential for being cool, interesting, and creative, and it showed it in the beginning. Sadly, it was all for naught when the developer closed its doors and the product was hurried to shelves prematurely. I almost wish they had canned the damn thing altogether instead of releasing this 10% Real RPG, 90% Wandering Around Randomly Fighting Things mess. I hate failed potential.

Almost as Bad: Evoland; Nox; The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road
Evoland I also spoke about above--for such a creative gameplay concept of using the game itself as a demonstration of RPGs’ evolution, the important parts are terribly primitive. Nox is only a mild disappointment since I didn’t know much about it going into the game, but it still qualifies because after as entertainingly lighthearted an intro as it has, it’s rather a letdown that the game itself is such a by-the-numbers combat-heavy adventure. And I didn’t really know what to expect from the Wizard of Oz RPG, as there’s multiple takes on the world of Oz that it could go by, but I did know I was hoping for appealing and strongly involved characters, a decent plot, a memorable villain, and an ultimately heartwarming adventure. Every significant portrayal of Oz I’ve seen before has managed that much, after all. But this one is just...blah. Light on story, lighter still on character involvement and development, and the stuff it takes away from and adds to the Oz story makes no improvement whatsoever. C’mon, Media Vision, nothing about the Wizard of Oz should be bland!


Best Ending of 2013:
Winner:Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura follows a tried and true formula for endings: the player gets what they put into the game. Like most Fallouts, and Romancing Saga 1, AOSaMO’s ending shows you a series of scenes that give you an idea of how things went down for various locales and people of importance which you encountered and affected during the course of the game, along with wrapping up the main plot threads. It’s a complete and proper conclusion to the game, and it rewards you with closure for the story events you cared to become involved in. Simple, interesting, and satisfying.

Runners-Up: Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle: Flight to Elstwhere Ending; Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle: Nereid Ending; Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle: True Ending
...What? It’s a great game and it has like 20 different endings; you gotta expect there to be some good ones. And good they are. The Nereid Ending is a touching story of a simple but enduring love that calls out across the boundaries of time, while the True Ending is an interesting, satisfying conclusion to Duchess Catherine’s tale of awakening that cleverly makes pretty much all the other endings possible, while giving the protagonist a chance to enact whichever one of them she pleases with her foreknowledge. And frankly, I really wanted to make the Flight to Elstwhere Ending the winner this year, above Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura’s ending, but on principle of what I think an ending should ultimately be, the latter won out. But Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle’s Flight to Elstwhere Ending is still a beautiful, bittersweet conclusion to the lovely romance of Catherine and Carmina (even if Carmina herself says she prefers one of the other endings) that fiercely tugs at the heartstrings.


Worst RPG of 2013:
Loser: Lunar: Dragon Song
I’m hesitant to place Lunar: Dragon Song here, because people are going to assume, if they have any familiarity with the game’s legendarily bad design, that it’s here for gameplay reasons. And don’t get me wrong, if I concerned myself with the actual experience of playing the game, this would definitely be the worst game I’d played this year, decade, lifetime. But I want to make it clear here that unparallelled design flaws aside, Lunar: Dragon Song is a pointless, dumb heap of crap. The characters are uninteresting and often stupid, the plot can only be described as phoned in, the villain is exceptionally poor and essentially just a shitty copy of Lunar 1’s Ghaleon, many parts of it make absolutely no goddamn sense, the game’s conclusion essentially contradicts the canon of the Lunar series, the final confrontation with the main villain is possibly the lamest ever conceived, and the plot supposedly hinges upon a love story that I was not even aware was there until the very end of the game--I’m still not convinced that Jian’s confession of love wasn’t a translation error; lord knows there are plenty of them in this time-sucking disaster! Lunar: Dragon Song is the worst game I played in 2013, not because it’s virtually unplayable, but because its story, characters, and just pretty much everything about it having to do with the writing is just as terrible as the gameplay is.

Almost as Bad: Mega Man Star Force 2; Nox; Torchlight 1
Let me just say first and foremost that I am seriously unable to believe that Dragon Quest 9 managed to avoid this list. But it got out by the narrowest of margins, for there was a single, solitary part of the otherwise uninterrupted boredom and worthlessness of DQ9 that was actually really cool and interesting (the reveal of the history of the goddess and how she became a tree). Everything else was shit, but that tiny, shining moment nonetheless puts it above Nox, which only had a few brief, tiny chuckles in its favor during its intro and ending, and Torchlight 1, which is as by-the-numbers a dungeon crawler in terms of plot and characters as you can possibly imagine. And Mega Man Star Force 2...well, it’s just as inescapably, indescribably dumb as its predecessor. I’ll grant you that there actually IS also a moment (and that is IT) in MMSF2 that I thought was halfway decent, but it doesn’t even come close to being able to balance out the utterly incredible level of pure, unfiltered Dumb the rest of the time. Honestly, it’s still hard for me to accept that I found a worse game to play this year than Mega Man Star Force 2. Just...ugh.


Most Improved of its Series of 2013:
Winner: Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunhoha 2
Also known as SMT Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunoha vs. King Abaddon. I’m not going to go into much detail about this here, because I’ve got a rant planned for the subject, but briefly, the sequel keeps the lighthearted fun and quirkiness of the original SMTDS Raidou Kuzunoha game, but also instils a major dose of meaning and traditional SMT themes to the formula, betters Raidou’s character, and introduces some good new cast members to the mix. This makes for a huge improvement from the first game, and as a result, SMTDSRK2 is a game that the prestigious Shin Megami Tensei series can take pride in.

Runners-Up: Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates; Legend of Mana; Tales of Destiny 1
FFCCRoF surprised me by having an actually halfway decent plot and some rather emotionally gripping scenes to it. It isn’t perfect and it doesn’t always make total sense, but it’s a pretty solid title, which is more than just the vaguely positive aspects of the original FF Crystal Chronicles. Legend of Mana is much the same--not perfect, doesn’t always fully make sense, but there’s a lot of good ideas and emotions to be found in many of its subplots that the Mana games I’ve played previously (Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3) don’t even come close to possessing. As for Tales of Destiny 1, well, it’s a pretty by-the-numbers JRPG without a lot to take note of (although Mary’s character is pretty great once she’s properly revealed) and several problems, but it’s the second game in the Tales of series, and as such it deserves to be here because it is at least a little better than the first Tales of game, Tales of Phantasia, thanks to Mary and a few pretty decent storytelling aspects. Sure as hell ain’t Tales of Legendia or Tales of the Abyss, but you can at least see the series starting to take its first real steps toward its later quality titles.


Most Creative of 2013:
Winner: Barkley, Shut Up and Jam Gaiden
Okay, sorry, but come on, what was possibly going to be more creative than a cyberpunk RPG sequel to the movie Space Jam about a post-apocalyptic New York City where Basketball’s been banned after a slam dunk performed by Charles Barkley 20 years earlier was so powerful that it created a nuclear blast? Goddamn nothing, that’s what. And rather than play it for its comical worth, the creators of BSUaJG played the whole thing straight, wrote the game’s events and dialogue and music and so on out like this was an honest-to-God serious, moody, post-apocalyptic sci-fi story, letting ONLY the actual subject matter and characters, the butthurt save points, and a few enemy visuals betray how utterly absurd the whole thing is meant to be; other than that, it feels and rolls forward like any sincere RPG might. Which just makes it all the more creative and unique, in my opinion.

Runners-Up: Deus Ex 1; Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle; Legend of Mana
There was actually a lot of competition for this category this year, which was a neat change of pace--any other year, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura would have been a shoe-in for this, but ultimately I feel like its storyline doesn’t take enough advantage of its mix of magic and steampunk. Deus Ex 2 was a close contender, too, only losing out because for all its creativity in going forward from DE1’s conclusion, it’s still ultimately derivative of DE1 more than its own creative enterprise (not that there’s anything wrong with that, mind, DE1 is excellent source material). And if Lionheart: Legacy of the Crusader had been developed properly from start to finish, I’m sure it would have had a strong shot at a spot here, too.

Anyway. Deus Ex 1’s mix of cyberpunk and political conspiracies, with a tiny bit of Asimovian social sci-fi, is wildly creative and interesting in its presentation and ideas, and frankly, it almost won this category, save for one thing: looking at what is now common knowledge about the world at the time DE1 was made and looking at our current world political situation nowadays, a significant part of Deus Ex 1 is less “creative” than it is “an accurate assessment” and “prophetic.” Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle is very imaginative in its non-linear ability to nonetheless pursue an evolving story, in the scope of its characters, in the truth of its events as revealed by the supposed real ending and the True Ending, and for its ability to take the Dungeons and Dragons style in yet another direction. That’s not to mention that it’s a near full-length RPG with less than a dozen battles in its entirety, and hell, just the fact that it has and unashamedly uses pornographic visuals and moments in the story, yet is a strong, emotionally deep, involving, and worthwhile intellectual product. Lastly, Legend of Mana’s style and nonlinear way of telling its divided story combines with the subtle and uncommon themes running through it to provide a very unique experience to the player.


Stupidest Weapon of 2013:
Loser: Musical Instruments (Tales of Destiny 1)
I’m just gonna copy-paste a section of my rant on the stupidest RPG weapons ever here: “...then some bard managing to hurt a monster by plucking on a harp is stupid. And using musical instruments to inflict physical trauma is even worse. I'm not anything even approaching knowledgeable about musical instruments, but I'm still fairly certain that they're meant to be reasonably delicate tools relying on careful balance and structure to produce their sounds correctly, so taking your guitar and smashing people over the head with it is going to ruin it for its intended purpose of creating music, and if you don't want to use it for music, then why the hell would you carry it around instead of a club or dagger or something?” Point still stands. Karyl’s decision to use musical instruments as weapons, particularly in a party that’s regularly finding much more effective weaponry like swords and axes and such, weaponry that most of the party doesn’t even bother to use because of the Swordians they have, is dumb.

Almost as Bad: Basketball (Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden); Pot (Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates); Rings (Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle)
While large and specially-shaped ones can increase the damage of one’s punches, rings as a general rule are not really weapons by any conceivable definition. The basketball I’ll give a mulligan to because the game is supposed to be utterly absurd that way and part of that absurdity is to make Basketball some forbidden, mystical power of sorts so using a basketball as a weapon fits the bill. And lastly, for the love of Clispaeth, getting into a pot and rolling around is not an attack.


Best Romance of 2013:
Winner: Carmina and Catherine (Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle)
Granted, this one gets off to a rather...rocky start, which I do have issues with, but I absolutely adore the love story between Carmina and the protagonist of EoWC, I really do. It’s believable and well-developed, yet poetic and beautiful in an otherworldly sense, a courtship through dreams in which they bare their hearts to one another, and exposing their vulnerabilities and loving one another for them as their bond strengthens, until they each understand the other on the deepest level that we see in this entire game of romantic connections. Though Catherine fears she may simply be enthralled by this being of darkness, she trusts her feelings nonetheless, and we come to see that each would risk all and do absolutely anything to preserve the other and make her happy. It’s epic, it’s lovely, and it’s inspiring, a wonderful story of love with all the development and dialogue to make it real, and all the dramatic actions and elements of the fantastic to make it epic.

Runners-Up: Calista and Zael (The Last Story); Catherine and Louni (Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle); Catherine and the Nereid (Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle)
Much like Mass Effect 3 last year, Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle dominated this category this year. Well, it’s a game where romantic (and sexual) connections are a huge deal, and it does them darned well. The Nereid Ending of EoWC takes the Nereid’s otherwise one-dimensional character and really expands her and makes the love between her and Catherine powerful and compelling, and I do like the connection between Catherine and Louni; it’s very different, but touching all the same. And while Calista and Zael are mostly here because there weren’t really any other notable romances I saw this year (I guess Catherine and The Good Dwarf was alright, and I actually am quite fond of Alice and Catherine, but both are just too...understated), and though the initial parts of Calista and Zael’s love story are so Aladdin and Jasmine that I’m surprised Disney hasn’t hauled Sakaguchi’s ass to court over it, it all winds up being okay, as love stories go, and it balances itself well enough as a part of the overall story without suddenly attempting to supplant all other plot threads to become the story’s only focus. It doesn’t stray past its limitations but rather coordinates and meshes with the plot, and overall there’s enough chemistry and development between Zael and Calista that I buy it, so I dub this romance decent.


Best Voice Acting of 2013:
Winner: The Witcher 1
It actually took me a little bit to really get accustomed to Geralt’s voice; for some reason, it just didn’t seem right to me at first. But once I did, I found that the voice actor for him did a very good job of putting feeling into the vocal work and making Geralt sound very genuine, even though you could pretty fairly say that it sounds like he’s just using one single tone of voice for every line and situation. Still, in its subtlety, Geralt’s voice acting is top notch stuff. The rest of the game’s cast does a good job, too, though I’d say that Geralt’s the only one whose vocal work is high above mere competence.

Runners-Up: Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura; Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates; Shin Megami Tensei 4
Honestly, I don’t have a lot to say about SMT4 or FFCCRoF. They all have voice acting that does the job adequately with few to 0 low moments, kudos to them. Arcanum is much the same, although I’d say that it does have a few characters, like Virgil, who have some pretty noteworthy voice acting at times. Overall, though, not a particularly interesting year for me as far as vocal work goes.


Best Villain of 2013:
Winner: Greyghast (Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle)
It really says something for Greyghast to be the winner here, considering that he’s (sort of) dead from the very start of the game on, and never actually serves in the role of antagonist. But though Bad King Greyghast the Terrible is only shown in memories and referenced in the postmortem sense, what glimpses we get at his actions are enough to paint the picture of a monstrously evil and sick tyrant, whose horrifying actions are a legacy that follow Duchess Catherine throughout the game to its very end. The way Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle shows Greyghast’s intense evil is expertly subtle and understated, letting inferences and its traumatic aftershocks that the protagonist will never fully escape from tell the story as much as outright explanation and details do. I’m usually more of a stickler for character depth and having an understanding of a villain’s motivation (which is why Shinado almost won this spot), but sometimes the force and effect of a skilled writer’s villain is too overwhelming to ignore. In Greyghast, we see, even if only in glimpses, some of the darkest, most cruel evil that humanity can offer, and the lasting damage it can cause.

Runners-Up: Dahn (Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunoha 2); Jacques de Aldersberg (The Witcher 1); Shinado (Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunoha 2)
SMTDSRK2 offers us 2 solid villains in Dahn, a hothead out to break a bad system to save his sister at any cost, who is quite easy to empathize with (in fact, he kind of isn’t even really a villain overall, but he’s great for the time that he’s in the role), and Shinado, a dangerous god of misfortune whose conclusions about humanity, hope, and the role Luck plays in them are quite interesting to hear and consider. Shinado perfectly serves as the game’s major antagonist and provides the thematic and philosophical backdrops for the events and obstacles of the story. Jacques de Aldesberg is a decent villain with a goal very similar to that of Suikoden 3’s villain Luc, saving the world from a terrible future he has foreseen by taking steps in the present to prevent it, but doing so through immoral means that cause strife and havoc. I wish the game had explored him and his goals a little more thoroughly--it’s all kind of jammed in at the game’s conclusion--but what’s there is good, and he becomes more interesting when you figure out just who the game is implying he is--puts an interesting twist on some of the scenes and conversations you see in the game with a particular character that you wouldn’t think too deeply upon otherwise.


Best Character of 2013:
Winner: Duchess Catherine (Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle)
Dammit, Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle, stop winning everything! Well, what can you do? I’m gonna do a cop-out and copy-paste what I said about her in my review of the game, because it pretty efficiently sums up my thoughts on her: “Catherine at first seems very simplistic, very damsel-in-distress-esque, very...princess-y, but as you progress through the game, you can begin to recognize some strong depth to her, along with some subtle but solid character development. Her exceptionally dark, tormented back history, her craftiness and more than adept skill at political maneuvering and diplomacy, her enthusiasm and wish to form a positive connection with all those around her, the interesting ambiguity about whether she is, in the end, a good or evil character, her insecurities about her future and related subconscious resentment against princesses, her fleeing from the title of being Greyghast’s heir and whether or not there might be some truth to it...there’s a lot of angles to Catherine’s character, a lot of fronts that she grows as a person on, and nigh all of them are pretty interesting.”

Runners-Up: Geralt (The Witcher 1); Mary (Tales of Destiny 1); Virgil (Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura)
Mary’s history and character development is kind of all dumped on us at the same time, but it’s very good stuff, surprisingly deep and emotionally effective for a game whose cast is otherwise very standard and unremarkable. Most of the party members in Arcanum have some decent depth, but Virgil definitely stands out for his subplot concerning his past. Geralt is a very well-written protagonist in his musings of where he and other Witchers must stand in the more civilized world and the conclusions he draws as the player guides him to whichever side of the game’s political conflict that Geralt eventually stands on, managing to be interesting and true to himself no matter what he comes to believe. I have to say I find myself straddling boredom and annoyance when it comes to Geralt’s James Bond-esque sexual escapades, something that seems completely superfluous, but in general, the guy’s a great and involving character.


Best Game of 2013:
Winner: Deus Ex 1
Bet y’all thought Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle was gonna win this one, too, huh? Well, almost, but not quite. Deus Ex 1’s greatest virtue is in its plot and purpose, an extremely creative, realistic cyberpunk game of conspiracies and tyrannical secret agencies, a gripping adventure and a fascinating look into the subjects of human rights to privacy, freedom vs. security, and the dangers of shadowy tyrants and corporations, all with a heavy dose of philosophy on how these subjects relate to human nature and a mild sprinkling of Christianity symbolism, which is present enough to be interesting, but background enough not to become cumbersome to the narrative. It’s also an excellent cautionary tale which has only become more sharply relevant as time has passed--it’s not just good for people to experience and think upon this game, it’s important for them to do so. Terrific stuff, something everyone should play.

Runners-Up: Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle; Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Summoner Raidou Kuzunoha 2; The Witcher 1
As I’m sure you’ve gathered by now, Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle is a hidden gem amongst hidden gems, and I heartily recommend it to anyone who can look beyond its perverse exterior to appreciate the many fine qualities within--and it’s a simple, free download, to boot. The second Raidou Kuzunoha title in the SMT series is leaps and bounds above its predecessor, to the point where SMTDSRK2 is, to me, as true and worthy an SMT title as any other. I could go into detail here about it, but I won’t, because I plan to spend my next rant on nothing but discussing this great game. Finally, The Witcher 1 is perhaps slightly overrated, but I can certainly understand how so many people can hold this game and its sequel up as some of the greatest RPGs ever made--its storyline is deep and involving, yet completely accessible to those who have no experience with the novels it’s based on, the cast is solid, it does a terrific job with juggling its numerous subplots and how the player’s decisions can affect the story, and it’s overall just a terrifically engrossing fantasy epic.


List Changes of 2013:
Greatest Romances: Carmina and Catherine from Embric of Wulfhammer’s Castle have been added to the list of Greatest Romances, bumping the Grey Warden and Leliana from Dragon Age 1 off.



And that’s all, folks, 2013’s over and done with. I’m actually very much looking forward to 2014. Several of the crowdfunded RPGs I’ve backed will be coming out in 2014, including the sequel to Barkley, Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, the NPC RPG You Are Not the Hero, possibly Cosmic Star Heroine, and even Chris Avellone’s baby Project Eternity and possibly the spiritual successor to Planescape: Torment, Torment: Tides of Numenera. THAT is the kind of gaming that could make 2014 one of the greatest RPG years of my life, right there. On top of that, the Mass Effect Happy Ending Mod, the mod that seeks to give ME3 the good, artistically consistent ending it sorely needs, is set to have its final major update occur some time in 2014, and considering the amazing work that has gone into it already, it is likely going to blow my mind. You can be damn sure I’ll be making a rant about it at that time.

And speaking of rants, I kind of look forward to 2014’s rants, too. I’ve decided that I’m going to make my Shin Megami Tensei Year project into a full year, which means continuing to do an SMT rant every month until July, if I can. So far it’s been quite fun to challenge myself to come up with SMT subjects to rant about, and to make sure those rants are halfway decent. I also look forward to continuing, and concluding, my series of rants about Xenosaga 3, the game with the most numerous flaws of all RPG time. Should be a blast.

At any rate, thanks for bearing with me for another year, you proud, incredibly bored few who actually read these things. Special thanks to my buddy Ecclesiastes and especially my sister for their great contributions to many and most of these rants! Happy holidays, and here’s to seeing you all again in 2014!

Lunar 1's Alex and Luna Romance

Happy Thanksgiving, anyone in the USA. Hope it's a nice day for you. When I realized that my next scheduled rant would be on Thanksgiving (like an hour ago), I thought it would be a nice idea to put up a positive rant, something appreciative of a good aspect of RPGs. Y'know, because it's a day of being thankful, and whatnot. But it turns out that of the 9 finished rants I'm sitting on, all of them are complaining about something. Oh well. I'm a grump, what do you want.

Oh, quick question. I had thought that the new color scheme of the blog was generally positively received, but I've had someone complaining that it hurts their eyes. Anyone else dislike it? And if so, what would make it better? I'm not against adjusting it, but it took me so long to find a color scheme I like that I'd rather have a clear idea of what needs to change before I commit to altering it.

And now, on with the rant.



Ah, Lunar. A “classic” of the Sega CD and Playstation 1 era of RPGs, I’ve always felt that this largely-beloved game more conned its way into players’ good graces with its colorful, high-quality anime cutscenes at a time when such a thing was a rare and impressive treat, than actually earned its accolades. The plot’s thin and listless, the villain’s only notable feature is his voice, and the characters, while distinctive, have very little depth, when they have any at all.

And man, does this game have a case of Love Hina Syndrome.

As a reminder, since I did the rant on LH Syndrome quite a while back, Love Hina Syndrome is a phrase I use to describe a game (or movie, show, anime, comic, whatever) in which the main character and his/her romantic interest are by far the least interesting and worthy characters in the entire cast, but for some unfortunate reason are the ones who completely dominate the story’s focus. The Legend of Dragoon, Rogue Galaxy, Dragon Quest 8, and The Last Story are examples of this, games wherein a number of good (or at least better) supporting characters aren’t given as much focus and time to develop, and it seems to be at least partially because the focal idiots are hogging the spotlight with their inferior blandness.*

Lunar 1’s plot meanders aimlessly for a little while before finally coming to focus squarely on the romance between protagonist Alex and his main squeeze Luna. She gets kidnapped because she’s the goddess Althena in human form, Alex wants her back because he loves her, and the game from that point on (about 1/4th of the way through it) is a journey to confront the bad guys and save Luna. It’s, uh, not a particularly inventive or ambitious idea for a story, so long as you’ve a passing familiarity with 1980s NES titles. Still, an uncreative idea can work just fine if the execution is good. I know I use this as an example all the time, but I once again point to my favorite RPG of all time, Grandia 2, a game that collects a huge bunch of anime and RPG cliches together and then uses them incredibly well to create an amazing work of storytelling art. If Lunar 1 could really sell the Alex and Luna love story, make it believable and touching, then this could really work.

Sadly, this turns out not to be the case. The romance between Alex and Luna sucks, plain and simple. It’s another case of Show, Don’t Tell--the game is eager to Tell us quite often that Alex is in love with Luna, and that she loves him back, but there’s precious little that convincingly Shows this to be true.

First of all, there’s no damn chemistry there. Alex and Luna don’t really act like people who love one another. It’s hard to describe in words, but there’s really not much interaction between them, all said. Alex says very little, Luna’s lines don’t seem to be particularly meaningful, and as a general rule nothing they say to each other has any particular warmth or understanding there. For 2 people who have known each other their entire lives, very little personal rapport, very little emotional connection, is actually expressed between them. Hell, most of the time, what small, lacking personal nuances that Alex or Luna possesses are only ever recognized by Nall or Ramus, their mutual friends. Of course it’s important to establish that Ramus and especially Nall are close to Alex and Luna, having known them for many years, but shouldn’t there be some sort of establishment of emotional intimacy between Alex and Luna, as well?

There’s also precious little in the way of actions that suggest any strong feelings between them--lingering glances, tendency to move closer to one another during periods of conversation or rest, etc. Hey, I know it’s all a bunch of sprites, but you CAN show at least a little relationship personality through that limited medium; plenty of other games have done so. And outside the regular sprite graphics, the cutscenes from the portion of the game where Alex and Luna are traveling together certainly don’t show us any particular connection between them; they’re rarely even present in the same FMV. The only one I can really think of was the boring, long, gratuitous time-waster FMV of Luna singing on the boat. After she’s done wasting half the game’s FMV budget that could have instead been used to illustrate a scene that was interesting in any way whatsoever, the cutscene concludes with Alex standing below her, staring at her. And y’know, this could have worked, it could have been convincing, him standing there in silent, emotional awe at this (supposedly-but-not-actually) beautiful song and outpouring of emotion by his beloved. All that would have been needed to really pull this scene off, make it a compelling moment of watching Alex realize his love for Luna, or at least confirm it, was to give him the right expression, an expression that conveyed the kind of impressed, poignant tenderness of a person as they gaze at the one who stirs their heart in that beautiful, unique way, the expression of silent, radiant love.

This is not that expression. He looks as bored with Luna’s song sequence as I am. For fuck’s sake, the damn magic talking catdragon looks more emotionally moved than Alex does.

There also doesn’t seem to really be any noticeable development of romantic feelings between Alex and Luna. Now, I’ll grant you, their background means there might not have to be. Since they’ve known one another their whole lives, it would be perfectly believable and fine for their romantic feelings to need no development because it was already established before the game’s opening. For example, I rather liked the fact that Monstania’s protagonist was already in a relationship with his love interest when the game began, and so I found it acceptable that the romance didn’t actually develop any further than it started--though their feelings for one another were nonetheless shown quite clearly, so you could say they had romantic development anyway. But as I’ve said, there’s just about no chemistry whatsoever between Alex and Luna; they by and large do not act or seem like people who have feelings for one another when they’re actually together. So this is a romance that DOES need development, because there’s nothing really established beforehand for it. But there really isn’t any. Alex’s love for Luna, which is confirmed much more often by his friends’ mentioning its existence than it is by any statement made or action taken by Alex himself (more Telling instead of Showing), seems to appear out of nowhere once she’s been kidnapped, and once it’s there, it doesn’t seem to deepen or anything. It’s just there, where it didn’t seem to be before--although since Alex just quietly plods along through the plot, we usually can only tell it’s there because other people are mentioning it. Love should not just be a fucking switch that the writers flip when it’s convenient!

Oh, and there’s certainly no development on Luna’s side. Alex, at least, has the game’s focus on his journey, so he can occasionally simulate romantic feelings by saying Luna’s name over and over again (I think half of all his lines are just name repetitions). Luna’s feelings for Alex, after never being believably established due to their lack of chemistry, seem to just be assumed to exist--it feels like she loves him because it’s what the lazy plot wants her to do.

What is it about him that she loves? What does he love about her? I’ll give you that he’ll go to great lengths to save her and protect her, and that deserves a certain amount of respect and lends some verification to their relationship, but what the hell was it that made him so devoted to her to begin with? What was it that made her notice this devotion before the villain provided the opportunity for Alex to prove it? If, for each of them, the feelings of love developed as they grew up together, why do we never see or hear anything of these experiences of the past, never see any special connection or rapport or understanding of one another that this long history would imply? Do either of them make the other happy, cheer them up, support them, make them laugh? Why does the entirety of the game hinge on a love whose only real proof of existence comes at the game’s very end?

It’s not like the writers weren’t capable of at least a passable romance. The love stories between Nash and Mia, and Jessica and Kyle...well, they’re certainly not great or moving, but you can believe that they exist! Kyle and Jessica’s constant bickering is broken up by enough clear expressions of begrudging affection, enough self-confirmations of romantic interest, that they seem to genuinely care for each other. Nash’s affection for Mia is something established before the game’s opening, but unlike Alex, his words actually seem to carry that affection, even when he’s trying to deny it’s there. Someone teases Nash about liking Mia, he’ll get flustered and tell them to stuff it. Someone talks to Alex about how he loves Luna, and he just doesn’t even respond. It’s like an awkward silence of someone who doesn’t know how to break the news that they don’t feel that way after all.

And lastly...frankly, Alex and Luna feeling romantically interested in one another is kind of creepy on some level. I mean, consider this--Alex and Luna have both been raised by Alex’s parents all their lives. Alex’s parents took Luna in when she was still just a baby, so they’ve shared a house, parents, friends, and their whole lives together. So. Um. Doesn’t that essentially mean that Alex wants to bone his sister, and Luna in turn wishes to receive boning from her brother? Yeah, they aren’t related by blood, but in every mental, spiritual, and practical way, they are brother and sister! Raised together in the same home, by the same parents, from the earliest age they can remember...explain to me how their wanting to get it on is not at all creepy.

This is what Luna should’ve been singing during the Boat Song FMV.**

Dear Game Writers: If you’re going to make a love story the major point that your entire plot revolves around, please try to have the characters involved actually seem to be interested in one another; just having the supporting cast occasionally yell out “BOY ALEX U SHUR DO LOVE LUNA HYUCK HYUCK” does not cut it. Please try, game writers, to give us some indication, any at all, of what it is about one another that they like or appreciate, how their feelings develop into something. The emotion of love is a bit more than just an on/off switch to be flipped whenever it’s convenient for the story. And for the love of Ramuh, game writers--and I put this in because Alex x Luna isn’t the first time this has happened in RPGs--please try to stop hooking people up when they’ve been raised in the same household most/all of their lives as adopted siblings. Being brother and sister is very, VERY much less romantic than you people seem to think.










* Now, sometimes this happens in a good game, and it’s not so bad--Tidus and Yuna eventually came to dominate the story of Final Fantasy 10, for example. But it works for the better in FF10, turning it into a very impressive and touching story of love that meshes well with the themes and intended message of the game, rather than discarding them, and the relationship between Tidus and Yuna develops their characters extremely well, elevating them above the rest of the cast, even when at least some of the supporting cast is quite good. This is a case where the main characters have earned their focus, where their dominance of the story has been used to properly develop them and improve the quality of the plot. In this case, it’s not really Love Hina Syndrome, because the idea with LHS is that 1, it’s a bad thing, and 2, the ones hogging the story spotlight from other qualified characters are not themselves good characters. Thus, even though Planescape: Torment, Wild Arms 3, Final Fantasy 10, and Valkyrie Profile: Covenant of the Plume all are cases where a number of good supporting characters aren’t given quite enough time to shine because the main character(s) is/are completely dominating the story focus, they’re not examples of Love Hina Syndrome, because the end result is a good one, because the characters in the spotlight deserve to be there. Sure, I’d LIKE it if those good supporting characters had more time devoted to them, but the sacrifice is at least acceptable because the end result is a definitely positive one.

** Someone please, please, PLEASE grab the Boat Song FMV, maybe splice it up with some other scenes or artwork from the game, and make a Lunar 1 AMV to this song. It will be hilarious, and I will PAY you. A game from GOG.com. 2 games from GOG.com! I would consider it so, so worth it.

General RPGs' Timed Hits

No introductory preamble today. Let’s talk about Timed Hits.

In most RPGs with a standard battle system (that is to say, menu-based combat), using a basic attack against an enemy is a simple case of selecting the Attack option, picking out which enemy you want to damage, and confirming with another button press. Very efficient, very simple (especially considering that Attack is almost always the first option on the menu), which is good, because you’re gonna be doing it maybe 4000 times or so for basically any given RPG.* Of course, as simple and efficient as it is, it’s equally tedious and boring. You all know by now that I consider the actual playing experience of RPGs to generally be boring (I’m in it for the story, characters, and all that jazz, not for the actual gameplay), but even by the standards of someone who for some reason enjoys limiting their gaming experience to moving a cursor up and down through various menus, selecting the Attack command probably starts to get monotonous after the first 500 times.

This is where timed hits come in. Pioneered, I think, by Super Mario RPG on the SNES,** the idea of a timed hit is that it’s an attack or skill which requires the player to enhance the effectiveness of said attack/skill by hitting a button, or multiple buttons, at just the right time and/or in just the right way during the attack/skill’s act. For example, in SMRPG, if you have Mario use a jump ability on an enemy, he leaps into the air and comes down on his enemy’s head in standard Mario fashion. But if you press the A button at just the right moment as he’s landing on the enemy, the attack will do extra damage, or Mario will bounce back up for another jump attack altogether (depending on which variation of the jump attack you’re using). For the sake of convenience, I’m going to use the term Timed Hits to cover both these basic button-pressing occurrences, and other, similar cases where more than just a button press is needed--for example, from the same game, one of Geno’s powers is boosted if you hold the Y button down until a certain time, and then release, and one of Bowser’s abilities is enhanced when, if I remember right, you move in counter-clockwise circles on the direction pad. In a sense, all this sort of thing still has to take place in a certain way in a certain time limit, so you can call it a Timed Hit. Also, for the purposes of simplicity, we’ll assume that a Timed Hit is only something that happens in standard menu-based combat. Timing your attacks and blocks and combos and such in an Action RPG is the norm, not an extra. Hell, I’m not sure how you’d have an Action RPG without timing your actions in some way.

Anyway. There is a right way, and a wrong way to do Timed Hits. Unfortunately, it is much more common to see it done the wrong way than the right one. Let’s take The Legend of Dragoon, for example, because it’s got just about everything wrong with Timed Hits that can be wrong. In TLoD, with the exception of Shana and Miranda, every character’s full normal attack consists of a half dozen or more strikes that can be made if you push a button at the exact right moment during the attack’s sequence. Here’s the first problem--the rapid-fire Timed Hits are frustrating. Where Super Mario RPG had the sense to keep its regular attacks restricted to a single well-timed button tap, your regular attacks in The Legend of Dragoon aren’t going to get you anywhere if you can’t keep up with their pace, something which usually requires more memorization than actual response skills (which just makes it all the more annoying that you’ll have to change their pattern several times during the game’s course as more powerful sequences are found, meaning you have to memorize a whole new set all the time). Look, game, I’m just trying to attack the enemy. I want to do some damage and get done with it. Why the hell do I have to tap 10 times to Dart’s silly sword dance each and every damn time I want to do this, huh? Sony put the work into choreographing all these attack routines; you’d think they’d want us to be able to pay attention to them instead of having to completely focus on the little button prompt box.

I guess I should just be thankful that TLoD’s rapid-fire button ordeal was at least functional. Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood’s special abilities very often required tons of fast-paced buttons pressed and circled and so on, and that crappy game’s stylus control always seems a bit off, or like it doesn’t detect the input right. Ugh. I guess that’s one Timed Hit sin that TLoD doesn’t have--a Timed Hit system that doesn’t work properly.

Next potential problem with Timed Hits that can also be found in The Legend of Dragoon: too much reliance on them. Like I said above, if you aren’t making the most of your Timed Hits for your regular attacks in this game, you’re not getting anywhere. The incredibly weak attackers in the game, Shana and Miranda, aren’t weak because their attack deals less damage than an attack by someone else on the team, they’re weak because it only deals that damage once, when the others can deal it many times over. But that’s the problem--without the Timed Hits, your characters are all doing White Mage damage. Super Mario RPG’s Timed Hits were very useful and made a real difference, but they were not essential. If you didn’t get the timing for a character’s attack, yeah, they’d do noticeably less damage, but it wasn’t so little as to be insignificant. Without Timed Hits, Super Mario RPG would be a little harder, and its battles would all be several turns longer, but you wouldn’t be crippled by the problem. But in The Legend of Dragoon...well, the game already suffered from bad experience balance, and a good-on-paper-terrible-in-practice magic system.*** The Timed Hit attacks were more or less your one and only truly effective, truly reliable combat option in most cases. Where does that leave a person who just doesn’t have a knack for timed button presses? Well and fully fucked, that’s where.

I never had any significant problem with TLoD’s Timed Hit system, incidentally. I did, however, have a problem with Mother 3’s Timed Hits, a mastery of which was almost as essential in that game as it was in TLoD. In order to make your characters’ attacks effective in Mother 3, you had to tap the attack button along to the beat of the background music, something I was absolutely fucking TERRIBLE at. I don’t think most players have that much trouble with it, but I’m apparently just utterly tone-deaf (or however you’d describe it), so I was lucky if I could get even one of the beats right. Like TLoD, Mother 3 seemed to be set up on the assumption that you were at least moderately competent at this timing thing, and this assumption made a game I think was supposed to be only as mildly challenging as its predecessor Earthbound into an excruciating ordeal. You guys may snicker at my insistence on playing games with no regard to how fun or boring or frustrating they may be, but I’m glad I do things the way I do, because if I let the actual gameplay of an RPG bother me, I never would have gotten through Mother 3 and would have missed out on a really great game.

At any rate, my point here is, you should never make a gimmick like this into something so important to your battle system that the game can’t be played adequately without it, because there are going to be some people, even if it’s only a small percentage, who just will not be able to perform it as expected. And it’s an RPG, not Guitar Hero, Parappa the Rapper, or Whack-A-Mole--this is not a skill that a gamer who wants to play an RPG should HAVE to have. You know how much I hate mandatory minigames--well, making Timed Hits too significant a part of effective combat is essentially making the entire battle system a mandatory minigame. A successful Timed Hit should be a bonus, not a necessity.

One more way to do Timed Hits wrong: forgetting why you put it in there to begin with. I started this rant by talking about how monotonous and boring it is to just hit the Attack command over and over again for 50 hours or so. Well, Timed Hits are an uncommon feature that changes how this works, so it’s fairly logical to assume that a developer who puts them into his/her game is doing so with the interest in making the playing experience more interesting, right? Well, here’s the problem--it often doesn’t actually make the battles any more interesting. I mean, the ones in The Legend of Dragoon will throw you for a bit of a loop when you first encounter each new sequence, but after a few battles, you’ve either got a handle on it, or you don’t. If you don’t, things are more interesting, but in a bad way, as you become frustrated with this system that you’re having trouble with. And if you do get used to it, well, the difference between a normal game’s Attack command and The Legend of Dragoon’s is that TLoD requires you to push the confirm button several times more. That’s, uh...that’s more or less it. Is that less dull and repetitive? Is it really?

I don’t hate the idea of Timed Hits and their ilk. Like I said, I found that Super Mario RPG did them fairly well--they were simple and straightforward enough, and if you found yourself unable to perform them, it wasn’t too major a roadblock in your attempt to play the game. Barkley: Shut Up and Jam Gaiden also involved Timed Hits in a pretty decent capacity--while not as forgiving as SMRPG, the Barkley game didn’t need you to time everything perfectly each time to do a reasonable amount of damage, and the timing and necessary actions were quite different for every single attack, so it actually managed to avoid becoming tedious pretty well. Some of the Timed Hits were even fairly creative. Still, it’s a gimmick that’s easy to make into an annoyance instead of a fun feature if someone’s not careful about it. Developers, please keep this in mind in the future. Y’know...because I’m sure you’re all reading this.














* You may think I’m exaggerating, but honestly, I think that number’s probably fairly accurate. I mean, on average you’re gonna engage in combat many hundreds of times, possibly over a thousand, in a given RPG, and I think most of those battles will see you use regular attacks at least a few times. It’s gotta add up into the thousands, wouldn’t you think?

** Although I’d swear there were several spells in Breath of Fire 2, released 2 years prior to SMRPG, that you could guarantee a critical hit from if you pushed the A button at just the moment the damage was being dealt. I’ve looked online at GameFAQs and spoken to other players about this and no one has any idea what I’m talking about, but I just know it’s true. Those spells couldn’t possibly have had such a huge Critical chance during every single one of my half dozen or so playthroughs, right? Someone tell me I’m not freaking crazy here.

*** The enemies consistently gave so little experience that grinding was so time-consuming that it was almost out of the question; if you fought every enemy you encountered between one boss and the other in a large dungeon, you’d usually only level up once, which is NOT a good rate for a standard JRPG. Magic abilities could only activate if you transformed into a Dragoon, after which you’d need to recharge your ability to transform again. Additionally, the only significant way to heal your characters was Shana and Miranda, the ones whose basic attack did about as much damage as an anorexic kitten halfheartedly throwing a marshmallow at the enemy. So if you wanted to have any magical healing, for those rare moments when your magic was actually available to you, you had to go through a battle with 1 of your 3 characters unable to do any serious attack damage, AND unable to access her actual abilities without taking special steps. But with the game’s difficulty and the fact that level grinding was twice as tedious and time-consuming as it usually is, not having that magic healing, unreliable though it was, was all the more difficult.