Y'know, when I was thinking about the Wild Arms series as a whole the other day, I realized something odd--the female characters in the series are way more compelling than the male ones. Now sure, there are plenty of individual games out there for which this is true, as well, and it's not really that noteworthy for them--the characters in them that are the most interesting and have the most depth just happen to be girls. But this is the case overwhelmingly with every game in the WA series to date. I mean, let's look at these things individually.
WA1: Now honestly, I can't say I'm really a significant fan of any of this game's characters. None are bad characters, I guess, but the general cast is just overall bland. Rudy's got all the characterization that having no dialog usually entails, Jack's just there most of the time and his development, which could have been quite compelling with better execution, just comes off as run-of-the-mill, and Cecilia's just another boring magical princess. The villains are no better, just being a collection standard evil-doing demons. Still, if there's one character that stands out in the game, it's Jane. While not a great character, the few poignant moments of the game are pretty much all centered on her, and she certainly has a lot more personality than everyone else.
Good Females: 1 (1 Total)
Great Females: 0 (0 Total)
Good Males: 0 (0 Total)
Great Males: 0 (0 Total)
WA2: Again, not much of a noteworthy cast in general, just your average RPG characters with a little development here and there that doesn't go anywhere you haven't gone before. I suppose Brad is decent enough, and Irving's okay. But the two characters who really make any impression on you are Anastasia and Antenora. Anastasia's a rather neat heroine who has a rather neat and different take on heroism and desire that gives you something to think about, a new perspective to consider. As for Antenora, I've done a previous rant about why she's a pretty cool and different villainess, so check that out for the details. Marivel is also a fairly decent character, so that's another for the girls.
Good Females: 2 (3 Total)
Great Females: 1 (1 Total)
Good Males: 2 (2 Total)
Great Males: 0 (0 Total)
WA3: Ah, my favorite in the series. Hell, the only one I actually really like at all. This game's got some pretty good male characters, actually--I like Clive, Gallows has some good characterization, Asgard is cool, Alfred is neat, Werner's got an interesting gimmick going on (even though he's mostly just there for the protagonist's development), and all 3 of the prophets (2 of which are male) are interesting villains for both their petty, weak human natures leading them to evil and for the fact that they're actually more or less the underdogs the whole time they're villain-ing it up. But even still, the true draw of this game is the main character, Virginia. She's pretty much one of the greatest heroes of the entire RPG genre, characterized beautifully, unique, full of personality, and always being developed, from start to finish of the game. Virginia by herself is about 2/3 of why this game is so good, not only because she's such an excellent character, but because she's so totally immersed in the game's story--everything else in the game that's good becomes better because she interacts and reacts to it, be it plot, character development, or themes. And there's also Maya, Virginia's antagonistic rival, who perfectly compliments and contrasts Virginia, she has some pretty decent characterization herself (which is a nice change for an RPG rival), and has a crazily appealing personality--I've yet to meet a WA3 player who did not love Maya. There may be a lot of decent male characters in WA3, but Virginia and Maya just completely overshadow them in quality and appeal.
Good Females: 1 (4 Total)
Great Females: 2 (3 Total)
Good Males: 7 (9 Total)
Great Males: 0 (0 Total)
WA4: God I hate this game. The characters sucked, the villains sucked, the NPCs sucked. Gawn was decent, but nothing special. However, as terrible as the rest of the cast is, Racquel is such a great, original, and even inspiring character that she almost balances them all out. She's not only the best character in the game, she's its ONLY virtue.
Good Females: 0 (4 Total)
Great Females: 1 (4 Total)
Good Males: 1 (10 Total)
Great Males: 0 (0 Total)
WA5: Once again, a game without many characters that evoke strong feelings (well, besides Dean and Volsung, but I meant POSITIVE strong feelings). Still, if there are any characters that are anything more than standard and boring, I would say they're probably Avril (sure, she does the tired old "Magical Girl with a Faulty Memory and Lack of Understanding of People/the World," but she does it better than most, and she's moderately likable) for the heroes and Persephone for the villains (on the grounds that she's the only villain with any depth at all, even if it's really only a little, and/or the only villain who has depth that is not laughable and stupid).
Good Females: 2 (6 Total)
Great Females: 0 (4 Total)
Good Males: 0 (10 Total)
Great Males: 0 (0 Total)
So yeah. While there are some decent male characters in the series (mostly all found in one installment that's focused on its main females anyway), the female characters are consistently the ones worth noticing in each game, and the best characters in the series are all women.
Why am I bringing this up? I dunno; no reason, really. Just seemed like an interesting quirk when I thought of it, something I don't think any other RPG series does, and made all the stranger by the fact that the WA series purports itself (very falsely) to be a Wild West-style series, which would make you think that the really important and good characters (note the qualifier "and," important and sucky ones don't count) would be male.
Friday, February 13, 2009
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Startropics 1's Ending's Worth
Startropics 1 was a terrifically fun game with a lot of heart to it, one of my favorite NES games of all time. It was a very decent action RPG that had a strong devotion to its story, along with a rather unique RPG setting. Its most enjoyable aspect, the humorous and silly dialog and light overall mood, is what makes it notable in RPG history, because it was one of the earliest examples, if not the earliest example plain and simple, of the all too rare humor RPG. Fun, challenging, and silly in a nice way, the game's definitely worth checking out if you ever feel like kickin' it up old school. Or older school, I guess; I think we now consider SNES and PSX1 eras to be "old school."
There is one part of Startropics 1, though, that I feel is largely and unfairly forgotten and under-appreciated: its ending, and the perspective it puts on the game's adventure's purpose. A little refresher on the ending for those of you who haven't played it in a little while (and severe warning to those of you who haven't played it at all not to read further! Startropics 1's close enough to my heart that I don't want anyone to spoil it for themselves): after single-handedly beating the alien warlord Zoda, taking out an entire space ship full of world-conquering, technologically advanced alien invaders, and blowing said ship up, Mike returns to C-Island and brings the three delicious-looking alien sugar cubes to his uncle, who had insisted that they were artifacts important enough for his teenage nephew to take on a world-destroying group of aliens while armed with naught but a yo-yo in order to get them. They put the cubes together, there are some flashy effects (to the extent that the ol' NES can produce flashy effects, at any rate), and 7 kids suddenly appear. Mike and company discover that these children are the last survivors of Argonia, an alien civilization that had been otherwise utterly obliterated by Zoda and his bunch. Mike did more than just beat up bad guys and save his uncle--he preserved the last of an entire civilization from final ruin.
This is something that really impressed me about the game, that it would, at the end, make the otherwise relatively small (and often silly) adventure into something truly significant, arguably as epic a quest as any Save The World RPG plot; perhaps more, even. It doesn't seem that many people really think about this strong moment when they recall Startropics 1, even the many fans, who usually only think of and talk about the game's plot in terms of its fun and light atmosphere. Not that I can blame them entirely, of course, since the ending itself jumps immediately from finding out that Mike saved the remnants of an entire planet's people to someone making a joke and everyone going fishing, but still. It's a neat and fairly moving RPG moment, and I felt it deserved note.
There is one part of Startropics 1, though, that I feel is largely and unfairly forgotten and under-appreciated: its ending, and the perspective it puts on the game's adventure's purpose. A little refresher on the ending for those of you who haven't played it in a little while (and severe warning to those of you who haven't played it at all not to read further! Startropics 1's close enough to my heart that I don't want anyone to spoil it for themselves): after single-handedly beating the alien warlord Zoda, taking out an entire space ship full of world-conquering, technologically advanced alien invaders, and blowing said ship up, Mike returns to C-Island and brings the three delicious-looking alien sugar cubes to his uncle, who had insisted that they were artifacts important enough for his teenage nephew to take on a world-destroying group of aliens while armed with naught but a yo-yo in order to get them. They put the cubes together, there are some flashy effects (to the extent that the ol' NES can produce flashy effects, at any rate), and 7 kids suddenly appear. Mike and company discover that these children are the last survivors of Argonia, an alien civilization that had been otherwise utterly obliterated by Zoda and his bunch. Mike did more than just beat up bad guys and save his uncle--he preserved the last of an entire civilization from final ruin.
This is something that really impressed me about the game, that it would, at the end, make the otherwise relatively small (and often silly) adventure into something truly significant, arguably as epic a quest as any Save The World RPG plot; perhaps more, even. It doesn't seem that many people really think about this strong moment when they recall Startropics 1, even the many fans, who usually only think of and talk about the game's plot in terms of its fun and light atmosphere. Not that I can blame them entirely, of course, since the ending itself jumps immediately from finding out that Mike saved the remnants of an entire planet's people to someone making a joke and everyone going fishing, but still. It's a neat and fairly moving RPG moment, and I felt it deserved note.
Thursday, January 1, 2009
Mass Effect 1's Sex Scene's Inequality
Alright, so, old news: Mass Effect's plot can, with a little effort made to develop a romantic relationship between the protagonist Shepard and one of three of his/her party members, involve a sex scene. How scandalous. This fact caused a bit of a stir for a little while, until people finally realized that there's less adult content in the scene than there is in some "We Are Heavily Implying Sex Is Happening" moments in PG-13 movies, and that the people making the fuss were making a lot of stuff up because they liked attention. Seriously, the scene in Xenogears where Elly's naked, vaguely-defined little sprite gets out of bed after supposedly having (undoubtedly unsatisfying and awkward) sex with Fei shows more and better qualifies as adult content.
Now me, I think that the scene's done tastefully enough, and is relevantly inserted into the plot and characters' relationship's progression well enough, that it's a good, reasonable, and worthwhile part of the game, not excessive or gratuitous. Opened can of worms that it may be to say so, I actually wish a few more RPGs included sex (in this relevant, not excessive way, mind) in their plots, because it IS a consideration for most people in relationships and their average lives--it adds to the relationship of Mass Effect, it helps to nurture the culmination of love and significance in the Aeon Social Link in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES,* and its less romantic, more casual and corrupt nature in the Fallout games helps to reinforce the savage setting and often amoral people of Fallout.
However, there is something about the situation that irks me greatly. It's been complained about by various people before, but now it's my turn to gripe: Why does the player have the option to pursue a heterosexual and gay female relationship, but not a gay male one?
Now look, I admit, it's not a scenario I would especially want to pursue, myself. But limiting the player's options to heterosexual or lesbian ones cheapens the whole affair. Obviously a significant portion of gamers are heterosexual males, so they're only going to be interested in one of those two options (and you can probably guess which one is going to be more popular with them).** But pandering to the larger audience and ignoring the smaller one this way makes the whole thing look like it's just a cheap, degrading attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator shamelessly, like something Final Fantasy 10-2 would do.
This is the kind of insulting pandering the comic book industry specializes in--pretending to be forward-thinking by including a few homosexual characters, but then making sure that pretty much all the ones that are in any way significant are hot girls. Want a Super Hero who's gay, actually important, and has characterization relating to but also going beyond his sexual preference? Apparently you have to go read a book about a kid named Thom Creed, because you sure as hell won't find an example in the genre's primary mediums.
Look, I want to believe that Mass Effect's sex scene and romantic relationship options were about more than fanservice. All other signs say that they were! But it's hard to argue that opinion with this kind of suspicious omission. I hope that ME2 will correct this with the additional option to pursue a gay male relationship. Heck, even just eliminating the lesbian option would almost be better--I'd rather have homosexuality included as an option in the game, being open-minded and all that jazz, but including one and not the other like this is not a step for equality.
* Look, the way I figure it, having Minato leave a small imprint of his DNA in her core CPU doohickey is, for an android like Aigis, most definitely a sexual encounter. Which brings me to a question I've had for a while that some of you (mostly just Trippy) will no doubt want to weigh in on: is it implied (or even canon) that Minato has sex with each girl that he completes a romantic Social Link with? I had originally thought he didn't, and that people were just, as is almost always the case, inappropriately reading more into it than was there...but since the last and most important romance ends with the robot equivalent of poignant love-making, it occurs to me that the others might have meant to imply sex, too. Thoughts?
** I admit that the lesbian relationship's usually the one I pursue, too, but in my defense, the male Shepard sounds like an idiot and comes off as a high school bully given an automatic weapon, Kaiden (the male romantic interest possibility for female Shepard) is a nice but ultimately kind of boring character, and Liara (the female romantic interest who likes Shepard regardless of gender) is a good character whose romantic relationship with Shepard is the sweetest, to me. Then again, maybe I'm just a horny idiot who rationalizes better than most others.
Now me, I think that the scene's done tastefully enough, and is relevantly inserted into the plot and characters' relationship's progression well enough, that it's a good, reasonable, and worthwhile part of the game, not excessive or gratuitous. Opened can of worms that it may be to say so, I actually wish a few more RPGs included sex (in this relevant, not excessive way, mind) in their plots, because it IS a consideration for most people in relationships and their average lives--it adds to the relationship of Mass Effect, it helps to nurture the culmination of love and significance in the Aeon Social Link in Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES,* and its less romantic, more casual and corrupt nature in the Fallout games helps to reinforce the savage setting and often amoral people of Fallout.
However, there is something about the situation that irks me greatly. It's been complained about by various people before, but now it's my turn to gripe: Why does the player have the option to pursue a heterosexual and gay female relationship, but not a gay male one?
Now look, I admit, it's not a scenario I would especially want to pursue, myself. But limiting the player's options to heterosexual or lesbian ones cheapens the whole affair. Obviously a significant portion of gamers are heterosexual males, so they're only going to be interested in one of those two options (and you can probably guess which one is going to be more popular with them).** But pandering to the larger audience and ignoring the smaller one this way makes the whole thing look like it's just a cheap, degrading attempt to appeal to the lowest common denominator shamelessly, like something Final Fantasy 10-2 would do.
This is the kind of insulting pandering the comic book industry specializes in--pretending to be forward-thinking by including a few homosexual characters, but then making sure that pretty much all the ones that are in any way significant are hot girls. Want a Super Hero who's gay, actually important, and has characterization relating to but also going beyond his sexual preference? Apparently you have to go read a book about a kid named Thom Creed, because you sure as hell won't find an example in the genre's primary mediums.
Look, I want to believe that Mass Effect's sex scene and romantic relationship options were about more than fanservice. All other signs say that they were! But it's hard to argue that opinion with this kind of suspicious omission. I hope that ME2 will correct this with the additional option to pursue a gay male relationship. Heck, even just eliminating the lesbian option would almost be better--I'd rather have homosexuality included as an option in the game, being open-minded and all that jazz, but including one and not the other like this is not a step for equality.
* Look, the way I figure it, having Minato leave a small imprint of his DNA in her core CPU doohickey is, for an android like Aigis, most definitely a sexual encounter. Which brings me to a question I've had for a while that some of you (mostly just Trippy) will no doubt want to weigh in on: is it implied (or even canon) that Minato has sex with each girl that he completes a romantic Social Link with? I had originally thought he didn't, and that people were just, as is almost always the case, inappropriately reading more into it than was there...but since the last and most important romance ends with the robot equivalent of poignant love-making, it occurs to me that the others might have meant to imply sex, too. Thoughts?
** I admit that the lesbian relationship's usually the one I pursue, too, but in my defense, the male Shepard sounds like an idiot and comes off as a high school bully given an automatic weapon, Kaiden (the male romantic interest possibility for female Shepard) is a nice but ultimately kind of boring character, and Liara (the female romantic interest who likes Shepard regardless of gender) is a good character whose romantic relationship with Shepard is the sweetest, to me. Then again, maybe I'm just a horny idiot who rationalizes better than most others.
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Annual Summary: 2008
Another year has come and gone, folks. I'm particularly sad about this one leaving, because 8 is totally my favorite number. But that's life. The RPGs I played this year, in alphabetical rather than chronological order, are:
Baroque (PS2)
Fallout 3 (PC)
Golden Sun 1 (GBA)
Golden Sun 2 (GBA)
Mass Effect (PC)
Phantasy Star Universe (PS2)
Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald (GBA)
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES (PS2)
Shining Force EXA (PS2)
Suikoden 4 (PS2)
Suikoden Tactics (PS2)
Tales of Legendia (PS2)
Wild Arms 5 (PS2)
You may notice that there are significantly fewer games on that list than there were last year. There are several reasons for this. First of all, I started to work 2 full time jobs back around March, 1 related to the career I want to get into (Teaching) and the other related to the fact that I want to actually be able to pay my bills until someone hires me on as a regular teacher instead of a Substitute one. So that equals a lot of time lost. Another reason is Super Smash Brothers Brawl--those of you who know it and have it don't need an explanation on how that interrupts one's focus on other things. Third reason would be spending a lot of time with my sister, showing her awesome stuff like Wild Arms 3, Tales of Legendia (as a replay), and Futurama, along with her getting me into House M.D., 30 Rock, and, oddly enough, Ouran High School Host Club (so sue me, I can't help but love parodies of stupid fangirls and stupider anime trends). So that's a lot of time gone.
I also re-watched and re-contemplated every episode of Revolutionary Girl Utena, and the movie. This is an RPG-only blog, so I don't often say much at length on animes save the (often annoying) correlations they have with RPGs, but I gotta just make a note here: Man, if anything proves that anime can be an art form, it's RGU; I could make a blog that updates once a week just talking about that show and movie and manage to keep it going for at least 5 years. It's like one of the best classic novels ever written in visual form. So that's more time there, anyways.
And lastly, me compulsively searching every corner, bookshelf, and suspicious pile of rubble in Fallout 3. Damn that game's immense map and explorable nature. Thank heavens I'm not doing a second run of Fallout 3, or I probably wouldn't get a new RPG played until next Spring.
So yeah. Sadly not as much time this year for RPGs.
Still, it was a pretty good year. It didn't start especially auspiciously, with the first game I finished being the coma-inducing Suikoden 4, but things got better when I was happily surprised to find that Phantasy Star Universe didn't suck contrary to what Meteor9 had told me, Shining Force EXA was actually really nice despite being nearly totally unknown and looking like it would be as bland as could be, and Wild Arms 5 not sucking nearly as much as I thought it would. Also, a good friend who goes on Gaia by the name of Cross Knight Byuu recommended Tales of Legendia to me, and much to my (very reluctant) surprise, it turned out to be pretty awesome.* And of course, playing Mass Effect and Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES right in the middle made the year shine very favorably for me, RPG-wise (heck, just finding out that they ended up making Mass Effect for the PC instead of keeping it exclusive to the X-Box 360 was like an early Christmas; I nearly bought that stupid system just for that one game). Ending it with Fallout 3, which is pretty darned good, also makes the year feel pretty satisfying.
One unfortunate trend of 2008 for me, though, was the Endings aspect. While Suikoden 4 having a pointless and boring ending was no surprise, given the game, Wild Arms 5's final scenes and ending are so stupid that they would actually make Wild Arms 4 look worse, let alone a WA game that isn't totally horrible. Fallout 3's ending seems to be reversely proportional in detail and length (unless we count the insanely long credits) as the game itself is. And Golden Sun 2's ending doesn't seem to know what the hell it wants to do--it introduces 3 separate problems that sound important during its course, and then almost immediately after makes each one meaningless. Here's how they break down:
1. "Oh no! Alex is unsurprisingly a bad guy! And he could do evil things with the power that we have unwittingly made available to him!"
A FEW MINUTES LATER
Alex: I AM ALL POWERFUL!!!! Wait hang on, no I'm not. Well dang.
2. "Oh no! The people near the elemental towers will all be killed by them exploding and such!"
NEXT SCENE
"Oh good, everyone knows to get away from them, so they will probably be okay."
3. "Oh no! My family is not within eyesight, so they must be dead! I'm finally receiving character development because of this! NOOOOOOOOOO WHYYYYYY NOOOO SOB SOB"
3 SECONDS LATER IN THE SAME SCENE
"Oh wait, you guys are fine! I just needed to turn my head a little to the right to notice. Silly me!"
I didn't dive into as many unknown game series this year as last time, more just sticking to ones I knew already. Golden Sun was the only totally new one for me--although maybe not in spirit, since GS tends to be pretty standard RPG fare. Still, Phantasy Star Universe, and Shining Force EXA are pretty drastic reinventions of their series, and Fallout 3's fairly different from the previous 2 Fallouts, as well, so it wasn't all just more of the same.
But if I didn't do much venturing out in terms of series, the games I did play this year were often very different themselves. Mass Effect and Fallout 3 both created a new kind of Action RPG, a mix of RPG elements with a First Person Shooter game rather than the roving beat-em-up close-combat kind of game that most Action RPGs, with their swords and other melee weapons, focus on. While Breath of Fire 5's use of player death predates Baroque's by several years, Baroque's way of telling its story is almost as unique as the story itself is. And Tales of Legendia is really odd--it has 2 major stories in it, and the first, which is what the game considers the "Main Quest," leaves many loose ends to be tied up later, isn't half as epic as the second half, isn't as interesting (I didn't even really like the game until the second half began), and almost feels more like a long prologue intended to establish the great characters (which are not the main guy and gal; game's got major Love Hina Syndrome).
Okay, that's it for the real ranting, so as with last year, let's go bulletin-style for the end.
RPG Moments of Interest in 2008:
1. After years of eager waiting by we cult-like Fallout fans, Fallout 3 has finally come out. I've seen largely mixed reception from fans, and fans on both sides of the Good or Bad issue generally seem to have completely ridiculous and illogical biases that they form their opinions from, but hey, the important thing is, Fallout 3 exists. That would be a memorable event even if the game did suck, which it doesn't.
2. Me having to officially say the following: Tales of series, I am sorry. I have often accused you of being uncreative, pointless, dumb, and so full of anime cliches that it makes me physically ill. I said this based on the fact that it is true for Tales of Phantasia and Tales of Symphonia, and dismissed Tales of the Abyss's high quality as a fluke. But now, with Tales of Legendia, half of the Tales of series that I've played has been as interesting and neat as the other half has been crappy and boring. So until I play the next Tales of game and find it to be dull, I have no ground to criticize the series as a whole. I currently apologize for my previous statements.
3. Seeing that the Shin Megami Tensei series can be almost as thorough, inventive, and fascinating in treating other beliefs and mystical cultures as it was with Christianity (see previous rant for details) with SMT Persona 3's working its plot, characters, playing style, and general flow and progression around the Tarot deck. Pretty neat.
4. Fallout 3's Liberty Prime is totally the best robot since Knights of the Old Republic's HK-47.
5. Saving Wild Arms 4's Raquel in Wild Arms 5 (WA5 has all sorts of cameos of previous games' characters) from her debilitating illness. I mean, it's nice that I can finally do it, cuz I seriously love Raquel, but...why the hell couldn't we have seen Raquel cured in the game she was actually a character for? Why the fuck did she have to, in spite of the game practically promising us otherwise, die in her very own game?
Oh, and the process of saving her in WA5 confirms my suspicions that Arnaud, AKA Captain Moron, just didn't try hard enough to do it in WA4. Because, see, the process apparently is Captain Moron sending out a random group of well-meaning, less-than-bright teens to find a magical item to do the job while he sits on his goddamn lazy ass in a restaurant doing nothing. 'She needs him there' my ASS, she needs him OUT THERE finding a CURE for the DISEASE that is GOING TO KILL HER faster than not having him around to administer chicken soup every hour! I tell you, WA4 is so bad it's revolutionary at being crap--you actually can find NEW ways to hate it retroactively by playing OTHER games!
Best Sequel/Prequel of 2008:
Winner: Golden Sun 2
I didn't really think much of Golden Sun 2 (or GS1, for that matter). However, of the real Sequels/Prequels I've played this year, it ties itself to the previous title the best--not only does the story more or less just pick up right where GS1 ended, it also allows the player to transfer his or her data from GS1 to GS2 via link cable or password, allowing the player's game of GS2 to be influenced by some of the sidequests done and decisions made in the first game, along with getting to keep all the cool stuff and hard-earned levels of GS1. That's certainly a strong connection between original and sequel, one which I appreciate.
Runners-Up: Fallout 3, Suikoden Tactics
Fallout 3 and Suikoden Tactics are both fine fare as far as sequels go, each one having direct plot ties to a game/games before them (Fallout 1 and 2, and Suikoden 4, respectively). Still, while fine continuations of their origins' universes, each is just telling a new story with pre-established concepts. There's not a great amount of further exploration of those concepts; they're mostly just launch pads for new stuff. That's fine, but it's not noteworthy.
Biggest Disappointment of 2008:
Loser: Golden Sun 1
Let's be clear: I don't hate GS1 and 2. And I wasn't horribly disappointed by either. They just happen to have had the bad luck to be played during a year where most games I played with low expectations turned out to be good, and the bad games I played I went into with the expectation that they'd suck. Granted, Suikoden 4 sucked way worse than I'd dreamed, but that was simply because of my lack of imagination on how boring a game could be. Golden Sun is the only series of games that I went into thinking they'd be great and came out of without having my expectations met. So...yeah. Sorry, GS1.
Almost As Bad: Golden Sun 2, Suikoden 4
See above explanation.
Worst RPG of 2008:
Loser: Suikoden 4
Yeah, okay, just...see my rant on it. And on Sailing.
Almost As Bad: Wild Arms 5
Whether by luck or simply by how few RPGs I played this year, only 2 of them I count as actually being bad. And really, WA5 isn't really that terrible. Sure, most of the characters are empty and pointless, the plot is kind of dumb most of the time, the main character only becomes tolerable after about 20 hours of gameplay, there are a lot of painfully contrived events, most of the finale is one of the stupidest I've ever seen, and the Monowheel exists, but....uh.......you know, on second thought, I was right the first time. This game blows.
Most Improved of its Series of 2008:
Winner: Suikoden Tactics
Being that Suikoden Tactics is a sequel to Suikoden 4 that does NOT rival tranquilizer darts as a means of sedation, it is almost immeasurably improved on its series's previous installment.
Runners-Up: Tales of Legendia, Wild Arms 5
Yes, yes, I know that I said Wild Arms 5 sucks, but just by sucking in a normal way it is a HUGE improvement on Wild Arms 4. And it does have some moments that are kinda nice and good, I guess. Who knows, maybe WA6 will actually be average...or, unlikely though it might seem, good. As for ToL, well, I've mentioned my feelings on it as a part of the Tales of series already. It manages to make anime cliches into really neat characters and themes explored in new ways, while Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Phantasia make anime cliches into...cliches that have been overdone one more time.
Most Creative of 2008:
Winner: Mass Effect
Mass Effect is an incredible sci-fi RPG. It imagines its setting with great and careful detail, going to huge lengths to develop a universe that, in my opinion, has greater potential for science fiction adventures than Star Trek or even Star Wars--if only because they're already doing so much to develop it from the get-go.
Runners-Up: Baroque, Fallout 3, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES
Doubtless several people, one of them tomato-related, are going to contest that Baroque is more creative than Mass Effect. I don't blame them. It was extremely hard to choose one over the other--Baroque just slaps you right in the face with individuality and crazily original ideas. The only real reason I chose Mass Effect over Baroque for sheer creativity is that Mass Effect really, really works for every bit of the stuff it comes up with, making ideas and then detailing them fairly extensively, while Baroque, while awesome, just flings original ideas and themes at you without getting into that extreme level of detail about them, making a lot of the plot's neat ideas somewhat vague. I know that's often what the game intends, but I still better respect the author who creates and then works to detail his ideas rather than the one who creates, tosses the audience the idea, and then immediately wanders off to make another. Oh, and yes, Fallout 3 is very creative in many ways, and SMTP3FES even more so.
Stupidest Weapon of 2008:
Loser: Dean's Ridiculous Sword-Pistol Things (Wild Arms 5)
I don't know if I'll ever have this category again, but really, these things are too stupid not to say something. Aside from looking ridiculous and being totally impractical as weapons (at least with Final Fantasy 8's Squall's stupid Gunblade, the weapon could be held sort of like a real sword--the blades of Dean's pistols come out of the handle going downward. Hell, all you'd have to do is push Dean's arms down a little and his damn blades would get stuck in the ground), they're rarely even used as guns to begin with. Dean will fire at things outside of battle with them, but when an enemy actually attacks, it seems he forgets how to pull a trigger unless it's a Critical Attack. You can't even imagine that he uses the impractical blades because they do more damage like some people theorize about Squall, because his critical hits show his guns going sub-machine gun-style and do huge damage. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Almost As Bad: Grune's Vase (Tales of Legendia), Norma's Bubble Straw (Tales of Legendia), Shirley's Writing Utensils (Tales of Legendia...Again)
No goddamn wonder mages can't attack for shit. Did anyone ever consider giving a magic-user a sword or spear or SOMETHING?
Best Voice Acting of 2008:
Winner: Tales of Legendia
Fantastic voice acting nearly all around; everyone's voice is well-suited for their character, and many of the characters wouldn't be as convincing and endearing without the actors' skill. Moses, Norma, and Grune are especially well-played, and of course, having Cam Clarke in the cast is icing on the cake. ToL isn't perfect--Shirley's voice acting is about half of why she's unbelievably annoying, the other half being everything else there is about her--but it's darned great all the same.
Runners-Up: Mass Effect; Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES; Shining Force EXA
SMTP3FES provides major competition to ToL, frankly, and putting one above the other in terms of voice acting talent might necessarily rely more on personal preference than objective comparison of skill. Mass Effect is done very well, as seems to be the norm for RPGs created on this continent (Fallout 3's also pretty good, and the KotOR series's voice talent is excellent). SFEXA actually surprised me--not only is it actually a pretty good game, but I really, really liked a lot of the voice actors' work in it. Everyone seems very well-chosen for the role, and in many cases, the acting is exceptional. Cyrille, 1 of the 2 protagonists, was particularly surprising in how appealing her voice acting was--she has, more or less, a somewhat average-sounding teen girl voice and speaking manner (I hear multiple girls chatting in class that sound very similar quite often when I sub), yet the dialog and her distinct inflections and delivery really sell the character to me and make her voice memorable.
Best Villain of 2008:
Winner: Sovereign (Mass Effect)
Sovereign's pretty cool--a massive, living machine that serves as a harbinger of doom for the Milky Way galaxy, using an ultimately irresistible mind control over sentient beings to bring about their own downfall in a calculated, ever-repeating cycle of galactic civilizations' destruction. Older possibly than the universe itself, on a level of consciousness unlike that of mortals or even the gods they worship, Sovereign's kind is beyond understanding, beyond reasoning with, and almost beyond resistance. They are simply the end.
Runners-Up: Death (Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES), Schwartz (Tales of Legendia)
As usual, not many villains this year that I'd consider all that good--I've mentioned before that RPGs just don't seem to get all that many good villains. Death was done really well in SMTP3FES, though, I gotta say. And Schwartz's role of world-ender isn't new or different, but she pulls it off with a convincing level of style and seriousness, so kudos to her.
Best Character of 2008:
Winner: Aigis (Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES)
Y'know, Aigis's character type is not especially new--she is more or less another Unemotional Girl Who Doesn't Know Anything About Humanity--But Learns To Understand And Value It.** But Aigis is the second robot lady I've ever seen to pull it off believably, and more than just that, get me emotionally involved in her struggles, really feeling the empathy for her that I'm meant to (Tio from Grandia 2 is the first, and still the best, but darn if Aigis ain't close). Aigis's transformation is lovely to watch, as is her relationship with the main character, which I believe is by far the most touching love story in the game (even though Mitsuru's was nice). Aigis is so great that I'd say she accounts for almost half of what makes the game so damn good.
Runners-Up: Chloe (Tales of Legendia), Will (Tales of Legendia), Wrex (Mass Effect)
Although none of them compete with Aigis for character excellence, each of these three are really great characters with (often quite surprisingly) a lot of depth.
Best Game of 2008:
Winner: Mass Effect
Make some room, Knights of the Old Republic: there's a new Science Fiction RPG franchise in town from the West to shame stuff like Xenosaga and Star Ocean with superior plot, characters, and creativity. Seriously, folks: play this game. Whatever hardware upgrades you make to your computer or price you pay for a 360 are worth it.
Runners-Up: Baroque, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES, Tales of Legendia
While the actual playing experience is repetitive as anything, Baroque's pretty darned cool. And even if the first half is kinda average, Tales of Legendia ends up being a game you love with characters you're guaranteed to remember fondly. As for SMT3FES, well, it seems to have become the Final Fantasy 7 of the SMT series--it has a crapload of hype, it seems like everyone's either played it or has 5 friends who have, and you can't hear its name 3 times without someone describing it as the best RPG ever. So like FF7, I think it's overrated. But also like FF7, I don't think it's overrated by very much. If you haven't already, go get it.
And that's it for this year! On with the RPGs of 2009. Looks to have a promising start; I've got Mother 3, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4, and Paper Mario to start with, and I've heard promising things about them all. See all'y'all next year, folks.
* I was reluctant to be pleasantly surprised in this case, because it means that I can no longer count Tales of the Abyss being a fluke in the series for being good. I've said several uncomplimentary things about the Tales of series based mostly on Tales of Phantasia and Tales of Symphonia, but now that half of the Tales of games I've played turned out to be really good, I can't dismiss Namco's little RPG series as unimaginative crap...at least, not until I play another of their games and it turns out to be bad. Curse you, CK Byuu!
** I hear there's a fine that Japanese writers have to pay if they write a female robot who DOESN'T fit this archetype.***
*** I wonder what Phantasy Star 4's creators had to pay for Demi.****
**** Because she was so vapid and meaningless a character that even the laziest minimum of Wanting To Be Human characterization would have quadrupled her near-nonexistent personality, Hand Maid May's writers got off the hook with mandated Community Service.*****
***** Which was 3 dozen panty shots per episode.******
****** This will be the last time I abuse these page-bottom note thingies this rant. Promise.*******
******* I lied.
Baroque (PS2)
Fallout 3 (PC)
Golden Sun 1 (GBA)
Golden Sun 2 (GBA)
Mass Effect (PC)
Phantasy Star Universe (PS2)
Pokemon Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald (GBA)
Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES (PS2)
Shining Force EXA (PS2)
Suikoden 4 (PS2)
Suikoden Tactics (PS2)
Tales of Legendia (PS2)
Wild Arms 5 (PS2)
You may notice that there are significantly fewer games on that list than there were last year. There are several reasons for this. First of all, I started to work 2 full time jobs back around March, 1 related to the career I want to get into (Teaching) and the other related to the fact that I want to actually be able to pay my bills until someone hires me on as a regular teacher instead of a Substitute one. So that equals a lot of time lost. Another reason is Super Smash Brothers Brawl--those of you who know it and have it don't need an explanation on how that interrupts one's focus on other things. Third reason would be spending a lot of time with my sister, showing her awesome stuff like Wild Arms 3, Tales of Legendia (as a replay), and Futurama, along with her getting me into House M.D., 30 Rock, and, oddly enough, Ouran High School Host Club (so sue me, I can't help but love parodies of stupid fangirls and stupider anime trends). So that's a lot of time gone.
I also re-watched and re-contemplated every episode of Revolutionary Girl Utena, and the movie. This is an RPG-only blog, so I don't often say much at length on animes save the (often annoying) correlations they have with RPGs, but I gotta just make a note here: Man, if anything proves that anime can be an art form, it's RGU; I could make a blog that updates once a week just talking about that show and movie and manage to keep it going for at least 5 years. It's like one of the best classic novels ever written in visual form. So that's more time there, anyways.
And lastly, me compulsively searching every corner, bookshelf, and suspicious pile of rubble in Fallout 3. Damn that game's immense map and explorable nature. Thank heavens I'm not doing a second run of Fallout 3, or I probably wouldn't get a new RPG played until next Spring.
So yeah. Sadly not as much time this year for RPGs.
Still, it was a pretty good year. It didn't start especially auspiciously, with the first game I finished being the coma-inducing Suikoden 4, but things got better when I was happily surprised to find that Phantasy Star Universe didn't suck contrary to what Meteor9 had told me, Shining Force EXA was actually really nice despite being nearly totally unknown and looking like it would be as bland as could be, and Wild Arms 5 not sucking nearly as much as I thought it would. Also, a good friend who goes on Gaia by the name of Cross Knight Byuu recommended Tales of Legendia to me, and much to my (very reluctant) surprise, it turned out to be pretty awesome.* And of course, playing Mass Effect and Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES right in the middle made the year shine very favorably for me, RPG-wise (heck, just finding out that they ended up making Mass Effect for the PC instead of keeping it exclusive to the X-Box 360 was like an early Christmas; I nearly bought that stupid system just for that one game). Ending it with Fallout 3, which is pretty darned good, also makes the year feel pretty satisfying.
One unfortunate trend of 2008 for me, though, was the Endings aspect. While Suikoden 4 having a pointless and boring ending was no surprise, given the game, Wild Arms 5's final scenes and ending are so stupid that they would actually make Wild Arms 4 look worse, let alone a WA game that isn't totally horrible. Fallout 3's ending seems to be reversely proportional in detail and length (unless we count the insanely long credits) as the game itself is. And Golden Sun 2's ending doesn't seem to know what the hell it wants to do--it introduces 3 separate problems that sound important during its course, and then almost immediately after makes each one meaningless. Here's how they break down:
1. "Oh no! Alex is unsurprisingly a bad guy! And he could do evil things with the power that we have unwittingly made available to him!"
A FEW MINUTES LATER
Alex: I AM ALL POWERFUL!!!! Wait hang on, no I'm not. Well dang.
2. "Oh no! The people near the elemental towers will all be killed by them exploding and such!"
NEXT SCENE
"Oh good, everyone knows to get away from them, so they will probably be okay."
3. "Oh no! My family is not within eyesight, so they must be dead! I'm finally receiving character development because of this! NOOOOOOOOOO WHYYYYYY NOOOO SOB SOB"
3 SECONDS LATER IN THE SAME SCENE
"Oh wait, you guys are fine! I just needed to turn my head a little to the right to notice. Silly me!"
I didn't dive into as many unknown game series this year as last time, more just sticking to ones I knew already. Golden Sun was the only totally new one for me--although maybe not in spirit, since GS tends to be pretty standard RPG fare. Still, Phantasy Star Universe, and Shining Force EXA are pretty drastic reinventions of their series, and Fallout 3's fairly different from the previous 2 Fallouts, as well, so it wasn't all just more of the same.
But if I didn't do much venturing out in terms of series, the games I did play this year were often very different themselves. Mass Effect and Fallout 3 both created a new kind of Action RPG, a mix of RPG elements with a First Person Shooter game rather than the roving beat-em-up close-combat kind of game that most Action RPGs, with their swords and other melee weapons, focus on. While Breath of Fire 5's use of player death predates Baroque's by several years, Baroque's way of telling its story is almost as unique as the story itself is. And Tales of Legendia is really odd--it has 2 major stories in it, and the first, which is what the game considers the "Main Quest," leaves many loose ends to be tied up later, isn't half as epic as the second half, isn't as interesting (I didn't even really like the game until the second half began), and almost feels more like a long prologue intended to establish the great characters (which are not the main guy and gal; game's got major Love Hina Syndrome).
Okay, that's it for the real ranting, so as with last year, let's go bulletin-style for the end.
RPG Moments of Interest in 2008:
1. After years of eager waiting by we cult-like Fallout fans, Fallout 3 has finally come out. I've seen largely mixed reception from fans, and fans on both sides of the Good or Bad issue generally seem to have completely ridiculous and illogical biases that they form their opinions from, but hey, the important thing is, Fallout 3 exists. That would be a memorable event even if the game did suck, which it doesn't.
2. Me having to officially say the following: Tales of series, I am sorry. I have often accused you of being uncreative, pointless, dumb, and so full of anime cliches that it makes me physically ill. I said this based on the fact that it is true for Tales of Phantasia and Tales of Symphonia, and dismissed Tales of the Abyss's high quality as a fluke. But now, with Tales of Legendia, half of the Tales of series that I've played has been as interesting and neat as the other half has been crappy and boring. So until I play the next Tales of game and find it to be dull, I have no ground to criticize the series as a whole. I currently apologize for my previous statements.
3. Seeing that the Shin Megami Tensei series can be almost as thorough, inventive, and fascinating in treating other beliefs and mystical cultures as it was with Christianity (see previous rant for details) with SMT Persona 3's working its plot, characters, playing style, and general flow and progression around the Tarot deck. Pretty neat.
4. Fallout 3's Liberty Prime is totally the best robot since Knights of the Old Republic's HK-47.
5. Saving Wild Arms 4's Raquel in Wild Arms 5 (WA5 has all sorts of cameos of previous games' characters) from her debilitating illness. I mean, it's nice that I can finally do it, cuz I seriously love Raquel, but...why the hell couldn't we have seen Raquel cured in the game she was actually a character for? Why the fuck did she have to, in spite of the game practically promising us otherwise, die in her very own game?
Oh, and the process of saving her in WA5 confirms my suspicions that Arnaud, AKA Captain Moron, just didn't try hard enough to do it in WA4. Because, see, the process apparently is Captain Moron sending out a random group of well-meaning, less-than-bright teens to find a magical item to do the job while he sits on his goddamn lazy ass in a restaurant doing nothing. 'She needs him there' my ASS, she needs him OUT THERE finding a CURE for the DISEASE that is GOING TO KILL HER faster than not having him around to administer chicken soup every hour! I tell you, WA4 is so bad it's revolutionary at being crap--you actually can find NEW ways to hate it retroactively by playing OTHER games!
Best Sequel/Prequel of 2008:
Winner: Golden Sun 2
I didn't really think much of Golden Sun 2 (or GS1, for that matter). However, of the real Sequels/Prequels I've played this year, it ties itself to the previous title the best--not only does the story more or less just pick up right where GS1 ended, it also allows the player to transfer his or her data from GS1 to GS2 via link cable or password, allowing the player's game of GS2 to be influenced by some of the sidequests done and decisions made in the first game, along with getting to keep all the cool stuff and hard-earned levels of GS1. That's certainly a strong connection between original and sequel, one which I appreciate.
Runners-Up: Fallout 3, Suikoden Tactics
Fallout 3 and Suikoden Tactics are both fine fare as far as sequels go, each one having direct plot ties to a game/games before them (Fallout 1 and 2, and Suikoden 4, respectively). Still, while fine continuations of their origins' universes, each is just telling a new story with pre-established concepts. There's not a great amount of further exploration of those concepts; they're mostly just launch pads for new stuff. That's fine, but it's not noteworthy.
Biggest Disappointment of 2008:
Loser: Golden Sun 1
Let's be clear: I don't hate GS1 and 2. And I wasn't horribly disappointed by either. They just happen to have had the bad luck to be played during a year where most games I played with low expectations turned out to be good, and the bad games I played I went into with the expectation that they'd suck. Granted, Suikoden 4 sucked way worse than I'd dreamed, but that was simply because of my lack of imagination on how boring a game could be. Golden Sun is the only series of games that I went into thinking they'd be great and came out of without having my expectations met. So...yeah. Sorry, GS1.
Almost As Bad: Golden Sun 2, Suikoden 4
See above explanation.
Worst RPG of 2008:
Loser: Suikoden 4
Yeah, okay, just...see my rant on it. And on Sailing.
Almost As Bad: Wild Arms 5
Whether by luck or simply by how few RPGs I played this year, only 2 of them I count as actually being bad. And really, WA5 isn't really that terrible. Sure, most of the characters are empty and pointless, the plot is kind of dumb most of the time, the main character only becomes tolerable after about 20 hours of gameplay, there are a lot of painfully contrived events, most of the finale is one of the stupidest I've ever seen, and the Monowheel exists, but....uh.......you know, on second thought, I was right the first time. This game blows.
Most Improved of its Series of 2008:
Winner: Suikoden Tactics
Being that Suikoden Tactics is a sequel to Suikoden 4 that does NOT rival tranquilizer darts as a means of sedation, it is almost immeasurably improved on its series's previous installment.
Runners-Up: Tales of Legendia, Wild Arms 5
Yes, yes, I know that I said Wild Arms 5 sucks, but just by sucking in a normal way it is a HUGE improvement on Wild Arms 4. And it does have some moments that are kinda nice and good, I guess. Who knows, maybe WA6 will actually be average...or, unlikely though it might seem, good. As for ToL, well, I've mentioned my feelings on it as a part of the Tales of series already. It manages to make anime cliches into really neat characters and themes explored in new ways, while Tales of Symphonia and Tales of Phantasia make anime cliches into...cliches that have been overdone one more time.
Most Creative of 2008:
Winner: Mass Effect
Mass Effect is an incredible sci-fi RPG. It imagines its setting with great and careful detail, going to huge lengths to develop a universe that, in my opinion, has greater potential for science fiction adventures than Star Trek or even Star Wars--if only because they're already doing so much to develop it from the get-go.
Runners-Up: Baroque, Fallout 3, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES
Doubtless several people, one of them tomato-related, are going to contest that Baroque is more creative than Mass Effect. I don't blame them. It was extremely hard to choose one over the other--Baroque just slaps you right in the face with individuality and crazily original ideas. The only real reason I chose Mass Effect over Baroque for sheer creativity is that Mass Effect really, really works for every bit of the stuff it comes up with, making ideas and then detailing them fairly extensively, while Baroque, while awesome, just flings original ideas and themes at you without getting into that extreme level of detail about them, making a lot of the plot's neat ideas somewhat vague. I know that's often what the game intends, but I still better respect the author who creates and then works to detail his ideas rather than the one who creates, tosses the audience the idea, and then immediately wanders off to make another. Oh, and yes, Fallout 3 is very creative in many ways, and SMTP3FES even more so.
Stupidest Weapon of 2008:
Loser: Dean's Ridiculous Sword-Pistol Things (Wild Arms 5)
I don't know if I'll ever have this category again, but really, these things are too stupid not to say something. Aside from looking ridiculous and being totally impractical as weapons (at least with Final Fantasy 8's Squall's stupid Gunblade, the weapon could be held sort of like a real sword--the blades of Dean's pistols come out of the handle going downward. Hell, all you'd have to do is push Dean's arms down a little and his damn blades would get stuck in the ground), they're rarely even used as guns to begin with. Dean will fire at things outside of battle with them, but when an enemy actually attacks, it seems he forgets how to pull a trigger unless it's a Critical Attack. You can't even imagine that he uses the impractical blades because they do more damage like some people theorize about Squall, because his critical hits show his guns going sub-machine gun-style and do huge damage. Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Almost As Bad: Grune's Vase (Tales of Legendia), Norma's Bubble Straw (Tales of Legendia), Shirley's Writing Utensils (Tales of Legendia...Again)
No goddamn wonder mages can't attack for shit. Did anyone ever consider giving a magic-user a sword or spear or SOMETHING?
Best Voice Acting of 2008:
Winner: Tales of Legendia
Fantastic voice acting nearly all around; everyone's voice is well-suited for their character, and many of the characters wouldn't be as convincing and endearing without the actors' skill. Moses, Norma, and Grune are especially well-played, and of course, having Cam Clarke in the cast is icing on the cake. ToL isn't perfect--Shirley's voice acting is about half of why she's unbelievably annoying, the other half being everything else there is about her--but it's darned great all the same.
Runners-Up: Mass Effect; Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES; Shining Force EXA
SMTP3FES provides major competition to ToL, frankly, and putting one above the other in terms of voice acting talent might necessarily rely more on personal preference than objective comparison of skill. Mass Effect is done very well, as seems to be the norm for RPGs created on this continent (Fallout 3's also pretty good, and the KotOR series's voice talent is excellent). SFEXA actually surprised me--not only is it actually a pretty good game, but I really, really liked a lot of the voice actors' work in it. Everyone seems very well-chosen for the role, and in many cases, the acting is exceptional. Cyrille, 1 of the 2 protagonists, was particularly surprising in how appealing her voice acting was--she has, more or less, a somewhat average-sounding teen girl voice and speaking manner (I hear multiple girls chatting in class that sound very similar quite often when I sub), yet the dialog and her distinct inflections and delivery really sell the character to me and make her voice memorable.
Best Villain of 2008:
Winner: Sovereign (Mass Effect)
Sovereign's pretty cool--a massive, living machine that serves as a harbinger of doom for the Milky Way galaxy, using an ultimately irresistible mind control over sentient beings to bring about their own downfall in a calculated, ever-repeating cycle of galactic civilizations' destruction. Older possibly than the universe itself, on a level of consciousness unlike that of mortals or even the gods they worship, Sovereign's kind is beyond understanding, beyond reasoning with, and almost beyond resistance. They are simply the end.
Runners-Up: Death (Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES), Schwartz (Tales of Legendia)
As usual, not many villains this year that I'd consider all that good--I've mentioned before that RPGs just don't seem to get all that many good villains. Death was done really well in SMTP3FES, though, I gotta say. And Schwartz's role of world-ender isn't new or different, but she pulls it off with a convincing level of style and seriousness, so kudos to her.
Best Character of 2008:
Winner: Aigis (Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES)
Y'know, Aigis's character type is not especially new--she is more or less another Unemotional Girl Who Doesn't Know Anything About Humanity--But Learns To Understand And Value It.** But Aigis is the second robot lady I've ever seen to pull it off believably, and more than just that, get me emotionally involved in her struggles, really feeling the empathy for her that I'm meant to (Tio from Grandia 2 is the first, and still the best, but darn if Aigis ain't close). Aigis's transformation is lovely to watch, as is her relationship with the main character, which I believe is by far the most touching love story in the game (even though Mitsuru's was nice). Aigis is so great that I'd say she accounts for almost half of what makes the game so damn good.
Runners-Up: Chloe (Tales of Legendia), Will (Tales of Legendia), Wrex (Mass Effect)
Although none of them compete with Aigis for character excellence, each of these three are really great characters with (often quite surprisingly) a lot of depth.
Best Game of 2008:
Winner: Mass Effect
Make some room, Knights of the Old Republic: there's a new Science Fiction RPG franchise in town from the West to shame stuff like Xenosaga and Star Ocean with superior plot, characters, and creativity. Seriously, folks: play this game. Whatever hardware upgrades you make to your computer or price you pay for a 360 are worth it.
Runners-Up: Baroque, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 FES, Tales of Legendia
While the actual playing experience is repetitive as anything, Baroque's pretty darned cool. And even if the first half is kinda average, Tales of Legendia ends up being a game you love with characters you're guaranteed to remember fondly. As for SMT3FES, well, it seems to have become the Final Fantasy 7 of the SMT series--it has a crapload of hype, it seems like everyone's either played it or has 5 friends who have, and you can't hear its name 3 times without someone describing it as the best RPG ever. So like FF7, I think it's overrated. But also like FF7, I don't think it's overrated by very much. If you haven't already, go get it.
And that's it for this year! On with the RPGs of 2009. Looks to have a promising start; I've got Mother 3, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4, and Paper Mario to start with, and I've heard promising things about them all. See all'y'all next year, folks.
* I was reluctant to be pleasantly surprised in this case, because it means that I can no longer count Tales of the Abyss being a fluke in the series for being good. I've said several uncomplimentary things about the Tales of series based mostly on Tales of Phantasia and Tales of Symphonia, but now that half of the Tales of games I've played turned out to be really good, I can't dismiss Namco's little RPG series as unimaginative crap...at least, not until I play another of their games and it turns out to be bad. Curse you, CK Byuu!
** I hear there's a fine that Japanese writers have to pay if they write a female robot who DOESN'T fit this archetype.***
*** I wonder what Phantasy Star 4's creators had to pay for Demi.****
**** Because she was so vapid and meaningless a character that even the laziest minimum of Wanting To Be Human characterization would have quadrupled her near-nonexistent personality, Hand Maid May's writers got off the hook with mandated Community Service.*****
***** Which was 3 dozen panty shots per episode.******
****** This will be the last time I abuse these page-bottom note thingies this rant. Promise.*******
******* I lied.
Monday, December 8, 2008
General RPG Lists: Most Overpowered Characters
Every now and then, you come across an RPG party member who is so ridiculously impossible to beat/ridiculously powerful, he/she/it seems to just plain be a living cheat code. Today, we look at the ones I think are the most over-powered of all.
UPDATE 12/11/2024: Gen (Child of Light) added; Georg (Suikoden 5) has been bumped off.
5. Chisato (Star Ocean 2)
Chisato is awesome in battle. I can't see why the Star Ocean 2 community as a whole hasn't quite caught on to this yet. Her regular attack does damage twice each time, which is nice since her attack stat is very high, and doesn't take so long to perform and have such a limited range that enemies often manage to move/attack before it can actually hit, like the attacks of the unfathomably more popular Dias. Her running speed around the battlefield is practically twice that of other characters, which means that she has a better chance of retreating for a moment to heal without the enemy effectively pursuing her. Her best attack, Tear Gas, is nearly inescapable, hits at least 10 times for good damage each hit, and has a chance, I believe, of poisoning its target. It's also easy to link with another of her more effective skills, Flamethrower, adding several more hits to the mix. Finally, Chisato is one of only 2 characters in SO2 (and, since the other character is the brainless, exasperating Final Fantasy 10 Rikku prototype, Precis, Chisato is the only 1 of the 2 that you would actually WANT to have around) that can equip the almighty Algol Shield. This shield basically can randomly Petrify any enemy that attacks its wearer--and with SO2, Petrify is synonymous with Instant Kill with enemies. The best part of this is, though, that almost no enemy in the game is immune to Petrify--this includes bosses, insanely powerful secret bosses, and even a boss that you are scripted to lose against. Frankly, if it weren't for SO2 having such a poorly-executed battle system that works with a high difficulty level to frustrate the player, Chisato would be number 2 on this list, easy. However, since the game is difficult both by design and by design incompetence, Chisato is not as crazily over-powered for her game as the others below, so she remains in at the bottom of this list.
4. Juan (Suikoden 3)
The Suikoden series has more than its fair share of over-powered characters--Georg from Suikoden 5 was also previously on this list for over a decade before eventually being bumped off by a new character's addition, and if I did a longer list, I would not only have Georg and Juan, but would also most likely include Suikoden 5's Zerase and Suikoden 3's Nei, too. I'd probably consider Lazlo in Suikoden Tactics, too.
Juan is a beast. He SEEMS useless at first, because he's a lazy oaf who starts off every battle asleep. But all you need to do is equip him with Sleep-blocking accessory or armor to remedy that. And once he's awake, he's just devastating. His innate combat skills allow you to make his attacks extremely powerful, AND they have him hit multiple times each round of combat--it's been a little while since I played, but I think he was getting 5 - 7 attacks each round. Think about that. In your average RPG, just giving your weak HEALING MAGE character 5 attacks a round would put them in the same physical damage class as your top attackers--and Juan's the latter. The icing on the cake is that another of his skills allows him to retarget new opponents once the one he's attacking is dead, so if he kills an enemy on, say, his 3rd punch in a turn, you won't lose the rest of the strikes he would have delivered to them normally--he'll just find the next baddie and pummel them with the extra. He doesn't have the tank-like staying power that (previous contender for this list) Suikoden 5's Georg does, but he obliterates everything so fast that it doesn't make a difference in regular battles, and he doesn't require any more healing aid in prolonged boss battles than anyone else normally would.
3. Gen (Child of Light)
Any character who can paralyze an
entire group of enemies, including several bosses, is powerful. Any
character who can do that reliably, such as the combination of
Salve-Maker and Phantom in Bravely Default 2, is incredible. But a
character who can paralyze all enemies, and I do mean all of them, including the final boss, for a full
and unyielding 10 seconds, in a game whose battle system
makes managing turn orders and delaying enemies' ability to act the
number 1 priority for effective combat, is godlike. Heal your party, get in several free and devastating hits on your foes, hell, take the opportunity to knock them further back in the turn order, the world is your oyster! As a bonus, if you've only got 1 major foe to fight, she also can just do a single-target version of this ability to save MP, which fires off a little faster!
And unlike a few similar abilities in other RPGs, there are no strings
attached to this one--you don't have to recharge it over a period of
time like with that group ability in Tales of Legendia, it doesn't require so
much battling to learn that it's probably useless when you get it like
Feena's Time Gate in Grandia 1 (and on the note of Time Gate, Feena's
the only one still active when she uses that move, limiting just how much you can take advantage of it; Gen's whole
team can do as they like when she uses Paralyze All). Just make sure Gen can hit your foes again when her turn comes around again, before they break out of it, and keep'em stun-locked for as long as you need; the 10 second timer resets if they get hit again while still paralyzed!
As if that weren't enough, Gen's even got access to a passive ability that increases her own speed by 70%
when her HP is low, meaning that even should the flow of combat somehow
still turn against you, she's almost certain to get her turn fast
enough to freeze all your enemies in place and give you a moment to
regroup. Hell, you could probably just keep her at low HP on purpose to make absolutely sure your foes will never get their turn. It's crazy!
2. Orlandu (Final Fantasy Tactics)
Ah, Orlandu. Patron saint of the Over-Powered Characters. His attack stats are crazily high, he can normally equip most of the best armor and weapons in the game, he has decent movement, and his skills are a combination of the most immediately powerful decently-ranged Job Class in the game (Holy Knight, with its powerful semi-magical physical attacks that not only have range and easy-to-work-with area affect, but also can cause status effects on enemies that they don't just instantly destroy), one of the more tactically useful Job Classes in the game (Divine Knight, which, while lacking very slightly the Holy Knight's power and range, can destroy enemies' equipment with each strong attack), and one of the most self-sustaining Job Classes in the game (Dark Knight, which has a ranged attack that not only deals strong damage, but heals the user at the same time). Not only that, but he automatically comes with an extremely powerful sword that automatically casts Haste on him, giving him the speed to rain destruction down on his enemies one turn after another before they can even react. Using Orlandu can make you feel dirty, he's that over-powered.
1. Sailor Pluto (Sailor Moon: Another Story)
Sailor Pluto has lousy staying power. Her defense is bad, her HP ain't great, she more or less can be pretty easily put down for the count by one relatively powerful boss-level attack. Her attack power is even worse. Unless you specifically devote the best attack items to her, her regular attacks and special abilities will quite often be dealing 1 damage to enemies--and even with the attack items, she's mediocre at best.
So why is she the most over-powered RPG character ever? Because she can stop time. Or, more specifically, freeze your opponent in time for 3 turns. Your opponent will sit there, doing nothing, for, again, multiple turns while you dish out damage, heal allies, and point and laugh. And Pluto does this for EVERY bad guy in the game, up to and including--you guessed it--the final boss. And it's fully repeatable; all you need to do is make sure that Sailor Pluto's MP is restored during one of the turns that your enemy's frozen, and she's ready to cast it again immediately. This means that, so long as the enemy doesn't manage to kill her between spell casts, Sailor Pluto basically makes it impossible to lose!
Now, you may be thinking this all sounds a bit familiar. Because it's all basically what I said about Gen. So why is Sailor Pluto so much higher? A few reasons: A, 3 turns is a LOT longer of a window of opportunity to do whatever you like than Gen's 10 seconds. B, Sailor Moon: Another Story has a combat party of 5, while you're limited to 2 characters onscreen at any given time in Child of Light, so there's a LOT more teammates to take full advantage of Time Stop than there are to get the most out of Paralyze All. And C, maybe most importantly, MP restoration in Child of Light is a more restrictive economy--it takes more work (and ally turns, which, related to point B, are in scarcer supply in CoL) to keep Gen fully gassed up and ready to go than it does Sailor Pluto, as, by the time she joins you, SMAS's nature of necessitating grinding means that you've almost definitely got an inventory filled to bursting with MP restoration items. Gen's still amazingly overpowered, but her level of game-breaking power still requires some care and skill to maintain, and has its potential limits. Sailor Pluto, though, is a goddamn time-freezing nuke.
Honorable Mention: Mewtwo (Pokemon Blue/Red/Yellow)
Back in the good old days of Pokemon, Psychic was where it was at. Their only weaknesses were Ghost Pokemon, which was no weakness at all because there weren't any real Ghost Type attacks and all the Ghost Pokemon were part Poison, which made them weak to Psychic anyway, and Bug Pokemon which was also not a weakness since Bug Type attacks all sucked and the Bug Pokemon were all also part Poison like the Ghost ones were. And at the top of the Psychic ranks was Mewtwo. He had the best stats, learned or could learn most of the best moves, and was more or less invulnerable to everything. He was about as over-powered as it got; Orlandu looks like a sissy by comparison.
Sadly, the creations of proper Ghost Type attacks, Ghost Pokemon who weren't naturally weak to Psychic ones, lame other super powerful Pokemon like Deoxys and that idiotic flying chicken Ho-oh, and the disgracefully stupid, unnecessary, and random Dark Type, have all evened the playing field, and Mewtwo is no longer the unequaled master of power that he was always meant to be. Still great, of course, just not distinctively so. But if not a place on the actual list, he certainly deserves mention for what he was.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
General RPGs' Romantic Pacing
Today's rant is not about an RPG-only problem. RPGs have this problem, yes. But it is only natural that they would, because all the forms of media closest to them (other video games, TV shows/anime/cartoons, movies, even many books) have the exact same problem. It's an annoyance to me in general, but the blog's about RPGs, so I'll just focus on the problem in them.
This problem is the pacing of romance in RPGs. Now, don't get me wrong--I love a good courtship-under-fire, that situation where a guy and a gal (not that a guy and a guy or a gal and a gal wouldn't be fine, but RPGs haven't quite eased their way that far into the topic of homosexuality yet) fall deeply in love with each other while running around in constant, life-threatening danger on a long and complicated quest to save their country, world, galaxy, universe, or whatever. Their quickly-formed bonds of love will form over the course of the game (and often wind up somehow absolutely essential to the plot), and by the end or at least near end of the game they'll finally seem to accept that they're meant to be together, whether they actually speak the words "I love you," or, strangely often, just kind of reach some unspoken agreement about it. Sure, it sounds stupid, and, well, it actually quite often IS stupid, along with lazily and incompetently written and portrayed...but it does often work, too, giving us really lovely, heart-warming love stories like Tidus and Yuna's (Final Fantasy 10), Dagger and Zidane's (Final Fantasy 9), and Bastila and Revan's (Knights of the Old Republic 1), among many others.
The problem I have, though, is that this is more or less the ONLY romantic pacing shown--the "Boy Meets Girl, Boy and Girl Develop Attraction, Boy and Girl Finally Establish Themselves as a Couple, The End" formula is more or less the only love plot ever shown to any significant degree in an RPG. The "relationship" they show isn't actually a relationship until the last moments of the game. Just about never do we see an RPG where a main character actually is IN a relationship, whether it existed before the game or came about during the game's events. Some smaller, side characters might have boyfriends/girlfriends or husbands/wives, but they're shown as secondary. Actually, hell, scratch that--they're never even shown secondary attention. That's given to side characters who are ALSO working their way into a relationship. Any side character who's happily involved/married gets just about nothing. Most of the time, any romantic scene they get can be summed up by:
Party Member: Hello, dutiful husband or much-more-likely wife. It's me, your wife or much-more-likely husband. I'm going to have to leave on a dangerous journey with a group of people who call me old just because I've been able to legally consume alcohol for a year now, because they need my help with fighting or thinking, as I am either a renowned warrior or much-more-likely renowned scholar.
Spouse: Okay! Love you! Bye! I'll keep the house tidy!
Party Member: Your support means all the world to me. Thank you.
Spouse: Okay! Love you! Bye! I'll keep the house tidy!
Party Member: I'll be thinking about you the whole time, darling. I only have my courage by knowing I have something, and someone, to come back to. Goodbye.
Spouse: Okay! Love you! Bye! I'll keep the house tidy!
RPG writers never seem to want to deal with the task of writing two people who are in love with each other and actually KNOW it. There are 3 reasons I can think of for this, but only 1 that I really buy.
Reason 1: Pandering to their audience. Just like Quesada's decision to break up Spiderman's marriage, the RPG writers have determined that their audience is a collection of anti-social losers who are incapable of finding love due to being enormous tools, so the writers give them the only side of romance that they can relate to--the build-up to getting together with someone, except that they usually throw in the happy ending that the gamers imagine and strive for but never themselves reach. The game ends before any specifics of how the relationship works are shown because the gamers themselves have no understanding of it.
Actually, that's not exactly like Quesada's plan to insultingly pander--the RPG writers probably aren't projecting their own misery and psychological issues.
Reason 2: The conflict of a burgeoning romance. The conflicts and difficulties of hooking up with the person you like are always interesting to an audience, and of course you can't show those in a relationship where you have hooked up with that person already.
Reason 3: Just about no one in any popular form of media shows stable, happy relationships. Even in cases where two people ARE together and are focused on by the show/movie/whatever, their relationship immediately becomes all about outside forces trying to tear it apart (and usually succeeding...we wouldn't even have daytime television if not). A happy relationship's aspects and hurdles aren't ever shown in other media, so RPG writers have a whole new world available to them if they want to show a relationship in progress rather than starting...and the newness scares the dickens out of them.
I don't think that the first reason's the case, because you can usually spot the RPGs out there that are insultingly pandering to their target audience pretty easily (shallow teen stereotypes involved in empty, meaningless friendships and won't-last-a-week romances with each other in Final Fantasy 8, crappy writing desperately trying to hide behind lame and stupid jokes and women who qualify as naked even when fully clothed in Shadow Hearts 3...that sort of thing). And I don't really think that the second reason's the case, either, because really, most of the RPG romances come about with relatively little resistance from either side beyond occasional stupid anime "I'll do everything humanly possible to deny that I have a crush on someone because it's shamefully embarrassing, somehow!" stuff. I mean, sure, sometimes the guy and gal have to work stuff out to hook up, like with Dagger and Zidane, but in general, RPG couples just kind of hit it off from the start and cruise their way into each other's arms.
So I'm left with the third reason. It's annoying, because until a significant amount of people are willing to take the plunge into the creative waters of portraying a stable relationship, it's not going to become anything more than a rarity.
And for clarification, I don't mean cases where you're told there's a stable relationship, but never seem to actually see it for yourself. Senel and Shirley in Tales of Legendia may be involved with each other in the second half of the game, once they hook up at the end of the first half via standard RPG love story pacing, but they live separate lives in general, and when they're together (which is almost invariably while they're with the rest of the party anyway), little to no mention or development of their relationship occurs. Ark and Elle (underground version, I mean) in Terranigma might be an item, but since Ark's away from her for about 98% of the game, it doesn't count. And while Shadow Hearts 2 shows some rather touching moments of the love between Yuri and Alice established in the first game, I don't think you can really count it in this case since it's Yuri being grieved over Alice's death. I mean, I guess you don't get much more stable than death, but...not what I'm talking about here.
(Not to say, incidentally, that I don't think SH2 does a truly great job with Yuri and Alice, and that I don't think it's an uncommon thing to show in such detail in an RPG--it does and is. It's just not what we're looking for in this rant).
I would say that of all the RPGs I've played, the only ones that significantly show an actual relationship for a fair amount of time are Dragon Quest 5, in which you spend a lot of the long and tedious game wandering the world with your wife, and later children, Monstania, which has the main character Fron and his main squeeze Tia already established as boyfriend and girlfriend, and Lufia 2, which shows main character Maxim hook up with and marry Selan, a woman he meets in his travels.
DQ5 doesn't really go into the details (surprise, surprise) of the relationship it shows after the wedding (heck, it barely shows the details of the relationship beforehand, and that's if you the girl the hero chooses is the one he actually knew before wandering into town the day before), with the hero's wife more or less just blindly and cheerfully following the hero and popping out a couple of kids (good old Dragon Quest, always keeping up with tradition!). Monstania, though, is rather nice, showing Fron and Tia knowing each other, sticking by one another, having the occasional argument that's not serious, and quietly reaffirming their bond through actions and small, non-dramatic words and gestures. It's not a moving, epic story of Love Conquers All by a long shot, but it's different, nice, and believable.
I think Lufia 2 does it best Maxim and Selan fall in love in rather typical, somewhat-odd-but-we'll-roll-with-it RPG fashion probably about 1/3 through the game. They get married, and the player sees a few scenes of them living a happy married life as husband and wife, fellow warriors, and equals. After these scenes, the adventure picks up again, and they go off together to save the world. During this quest, they engage in light-hearted banter, deal with issues of trust and faithfulness, act on the desire to protect their child's future, and share tender moments together when circumstances allow...things real wedded couples do, from what I've seen of'em. It's interesting, it's touching (heck, moreso than probably the majority of average RPG romances), and the quality and appeal of the relationship doesn't suffer at all for actually being there. It's a shame we don't see more relationships like this in the genre.
This problem is the pacing of romance in RPGs. Now, don't get me wrong--I love a good courtship-under-fire, that situation where a guy and a gal (not that a guy and a guy or a gal and a gal wouldn't be fine, but RPGs haven't quite eased their way that far into the topic of homosexuality yet) fall deeply in love with each other while running around in constant, life-threatening danger on a long and complicated quest to save their country, world, galaxy, universe, or whatever. Their quickly-formed bonds of love will form over the course of the game (and often wind up somehow absolutely essential to the plot), and by the end or at least near end of the game they'll finally seem to accept that they're meant to be together, whether they actually speak the words "I love you," or, strangely often, just kind of reach some unspoken agreement about it. Sure, it sounds stupid, and, well, it actually quite often IS stupid, along with lazily and incompetently written and portrayed...but it does often work, too, giving us really lovely, heart-warming love stories like Tidus and Yuna's (Final Fantasy 10), Dagger and Zidane's (Final Fantasy 9), and Bastila and Revan's (Knights of the Old Republic 1), among many others.
The problem I have, though, is that this is more or less the ONLY romantic pacing shown--the "Boy Meets Girl, Boy and Girl Develop Attraction, Boy and Girl Finally Establish Themselves as a Couple, The End" formula is more or less the only love plot ever shown to any significant degree in an RPG. The "relationship" they show isn't actually a relationship until the last moments of the game. Just about never do we see an RPG where a main character actually is IN a relationship, whether it existed before the game or came about during the game's events. Some smaller, side characters might have boyfriends/girlfriends or husbands/wives, but they're shown as secondary. Actually, hell, scratch that--they're never even shown secondary attention. That's given to side characters who are ALSO working their way into a relationship. Any side character who's happily involved/married gets just about nothing. Most of the time, any romantic scene they get can be summed up by:
Party Member: Hello, dutiful husband or much-more-likely wife. It's me, your wife or much-more-likely husband. I'm going to have to leave on a dangerous journey with a group of people who call me old just because I've been able to legally consume alcohol for a year now, because they need my help with fighting or thinking, as I am either a renowned warrior or much-more-likely renowned scholar.
Spouse: Okay! Love you! Bye! I'll keep the house tidy!
Party Member: Your support means all the world to me. Thank you.
Spouse: Okay! Love you! Bye! I'll keep the house tidy!
Party Member: I'll be thinking about you the whole time, darling. I only have my courage by knowing I have something, and someone, to come back to. Goodbye.
Spouse: Okay! Love you! Bye! I'll keep the house tidy!
RPG writers never seem to want to deal with the task of writing two people who are in love with each other and actually KNOW it. There are 3 reasons I can think of for this, but only 1 that I really buy.
Reason 1: Pandering to their audience. Just like Quesada's decision to break up Spiderman's marriage, the RPG writers have determined that their audience is a collection of anti-social losers who are incapable of finding love due to being enormous tools, so the writers give them the only side of romance that they can relate to--the build-up to getting together with someone, except that they usually throw in the happy ending that the gamers imagine and strive for but never themselves reach. The game ends before any specifics of how the relationship works are shown because the gamers themselves have no understanding of it.
Actually, that's not exactly like Quesada's plan to insultingly pander--the RPG writers probably aren't projecting their own misery and psychological issues.
Reason 2: The conflict of a burgeoning romance. The conflicts and difficulties of hooking up with the person you like are always interesting to an audience, and of course you can't show those in a relationship where you have hooked up with that person already.
Reason 3: Just about no one in any popular form of media shows stable, happy relationships. Even in cases where two people ARE together and are focused on by the show/movie/whatever, their relationship immediately becomes all about outside forces trying to tear it apart (and usually succeeding...we wouldn't even have daytime television if not). A happy relationship's aspects and hurdles aren't ever shown in other media, so RPG writers have a whole new world available to them if they want to show a relationship in progress rather than starting...and the newness scares the dickens out of them.
I don't think that the first reason's the case, because you can usually spot the RPGs out there that are insultingly pandering to their target audience pretty easily (shallow teen stereotypes involved in empty, meaningless friendships and won't-last-a-week romances with each other in Final Fantasy 8, crappy writing desperately trying to hide behind lame and stupid jokes and women who qualify as naked even when fully clothed in Shadow Hearts 3...that sort of thing). And I don't really think that the second reason's the case, either, because really, most of the RPG romances come about with relatively little resistance from either side beyond occasional stupid anime "I'll do everything humanly possible to deny that I have a crush on someone because it's shamefully embarrassing, somehow!" stuff. I mean, sure, sometimes the guy and gal have to work stuff out to hook up, like with Dagger and Zidane, but in general, RPG couples just kind of hit it off from the start and cruise their way into each other's arms.
So I'm left with the third reason. It's annoying, because until a significant amount of people are willing to take the plunge into the creative waters of portraying a stable relationship, it's not going to become anything more than a rarity.
And for clarification, I don't mean cases where you're told there's a stable relationship, but never seem to actually see it for yourself. Senel and Shirley in Tales of Legendia may be involved with each other in the second half of the game, once they hook up at the end of the first half via standard RPG love story pacing, but they live separate lives in general, and when they're together (which is almost invariably while they're with the rest of the party anyway), little to no mention or development of their relationship occurs. Ark and Elle (underground version, I mean) in Terranigma might be an item, but since Ark's away from her for about 98% of the game, it doesn't count. And while Shadow Hearts 2 shows some rather touching moments of the love between Yuri and Alice established in the first game, I don't think you can really count it in this case since it's Yuri being grieved over Alice's death. I mean, I guess you don't get much more stable than death, but...not what I'm talking about here.
(Not to say, incidentally, that I don't think SH2 does a truly great job with Yuri and Alice, and that I don't think it's an uncommon thing to show in such detail in an RPG--it does and is. It's just not what we're looking for in this rant).
I would say that of all the RPGs I've played, the only ones that significantly show an actual relationship for a fair amount of time are Dragon Quest 5, in which you spend a lot of the long and tedious game wandering the world with your wife, and later children, Monstania, which has the main character Fron and his main squeeze Tia already established as boyfriend and girlfriend, and Lufia 2, which shows main character Maxim hook up with and marry Selan, a woman he meets in his travels.
DQ5 doesn't really go into the details (surprise, surprise) of the relationship it shows after the wedding (heck, it barely shows the details of the relationship beforehand, and that's if you the girl the hero chooses is the one he actually knew before wandering into town the day before), with the hero's wife more or less just blindly and cheerfully following the hero and popping out a couple of kids (good old Dragon Quest, always keeping up with tradition!). Monstania, though, is rather nice, showing Fron and Tia knowing each other, sticking by one another, having the occasional argument that's not serious, and quietly reaffirming their bond through actions and small, non-dramatic words and gestures. It's not a moving, epic story of Love Conquers All by a long shot, but it's different, nice, and believable.
I think Lufia 2 does it best Maxim and Selan fall in love in rather typical, somewhat-odd-but-we'll-roll-with-it RPG fashion probably about 1/3 through the game. They get married, and the player sees a few scenes of them living a happy married life as husband and wife, fellow warriors, and equals. After these scenes, the adventure picks up again, and they go off together to save the world. During this quest, they engage in light-hearted banter, deal with issues of trust and faithfulness, act on the desire to protect their child's future, and share tender moments together when circumstances allow...things real wedded couples do, from what I've seen of'em. It's interesting, it's touching (heck, moreso than probably the majority of average RPG romances), and the quality and appeal of the relationship doesn't suffer at all for actually being there. It's a shame we don't see more relationships like this in the genre.
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Okage: Shadow King's Humor
Okage: Shadow King is an absolutely delightful, very obscure RPG that looks and behaves something that Tim Burton might come up with while tripping on LSD. Despite having tortuously boring dungeons that focus almost exclusively on a mind-numbingly repetitive battle system, it has an unique sense of fun that makes just about everyone who plays it love it.
What OSK is most known for is its bizarre and zany humor. It's silly through and through, filled with crazy hilarity that more or less stays consistent through to the end. To give you an idea of this, here's how the game opens up: Ari, the main character, finds himself having to leave his village to go on a journey to beat up creatures known as Evil Kings at the demand Lord Stanley Hihat Trinidad XIV, a selfish and short-tempered spirit who has possessed Ari and is currently inhabiting Ari's shadow, who wants to gain their power for himself. Ari, who got into this mess after his family pressured him into selling his soul to Stan in order to save his sister from an embarrassing curse that caused her to only speak in Pig Latin, has to go along with this on the hope that raising Stan to the state of the legendary Great Evil King Gohma, who Stan makes completely unfounded claims of being a reincarnation of, will give Stan the means to create a body of his own, so he can leave poor Ari's shadow alone and stop harassing him.
The game goes on largely in this vein of amusing oddness, with incredibly silly situations, crazy characters, and funny dialog that guarantees enjoyment throughout the game's entirety. It's such a wacky, fun time that you almost don't realize as the game reaches its later stages that you're also experiencing a deep and thought-provoking plot.
This is what separates Okage: Shadow King from other Humor RPGs such as Super Mario RPG and Earthbound, among others, to me. The games of this sadly rare category are all marvelously fun RPGs that appeal to just about anyone who's not too self-important and anal to have a sense of humor, making them often universally loved, but I'd say that OSK is the only one I've encountered that's an all-out humor adventure that has true meaning to impart on the player. Not that it's surprising that such a thing would be a rarity--it's not often we see a product completely devoted to humor that also has something there to make us really think and consider it. I may absolutely love comedy movies like Space Balls and Ghostbusters, and comedy TV shows like Freakazoid and Mystery Science Theater 3000, but when I watch such things that are built around tickling the audience's funny bone, I don't expect to see anything that really gets me thinking.
(Not to say that Comedies shouldn't be held to any standards; they still need creativity and intelligent writing, just focused in a different way. Crude, unimaginative shit like Superbad or the Scary Movies that just cycle through 5 low-brow punchlines over and over like a month of 8-Bit Theater strips condensed into 2 hours aren't excused).
This is probably because actually getting some kind of deeper meaning into a comedy product is more than a little difficult. While the occasional or even frequent joke is a nice way to break up tension without distracting the audience from the important plot stuff in your average movie, game, show, or whatever, it's hard to keep an audience's thoughts and emotions captivated with your creation's depth when 80% of your dialog and situations are trying to get them to laugh.
Okage: Shadow King, however, seamlessly blends the serious with the comic--in fact, rather than competing, the comic and serious tones work together in this game. The comedy keeps you immediately interested and entertained, while softening the drama of the plot and allowing you to experience and appreciate the serious events and themes without becoming mired in them. You'll be chuckling at the silliness even while seeing themes of individuality, independence, and Man Vs. God explored in as interesting and worthwhile a way as any other RPG--in fact, OSK does it a sight better than quite a few of its peers. I can only hope that more humor RPGs will take a cue from this one and experiment with mixing in some deeper meanings to their joke-laced stories, because it can really result in something nifty.
What OSK is most known for is its bizarre and zany humor. It's silly through and through, filled with crazy hilarity that more or less stays consistent through to the end. To give you an idea of this, here's how the game opens up: Ari, the main character, finds himself having to leave his village to go on a journey to beat up creatures known as Evil Kings at the demand Lord Stanley Hihat Trinidad XIV, a selfish and short-tempered spirit who has possessed Ari and is currently inhabiting Ari's shadow, who wants to gain their power for himself. Ari, who got into this mess after his family pressured him into selling his soul to Stan in order to save his sister from an embarrassing curse that caused her to only speak in Pig Latin, has to go along with this on the hope that raising Stan to the state of the legendary Great Evil King Gohma, who Stan makes completely unfounded claims of being a reincarnation of, will give Stan the means to create a body of his own, so he can leave poor Ari's shadow alone and stop harassing him.
The game goes on largely in this vein of amusing oddness, with incredibly silly situations, crazy characters, and funny dialog that guarantees enjoyment throughout the game's entirety. It's such a wacky, fun time that you almost don't realize as the game reaches its later stages that you're also experiencing a deep and thought-provoking plot.
This is what separates Okage: Shadow King from other Humor RPGs such as Super Mario RPG and Earthbound, among others, to me. The games of this sadly rare category are all marvelously fun RPGs that appeal to just about anyone who's not too self-important and anal to have a sense of humor, making them often universally loved, but I'd say that OSK is the only one I've encountered that's an all-out humor adventure that has true meaning to impart on the player. Not that it's surprising that such a thing would be a rarity--it's not often we see a product completely devoted to humor that also has something there to make us really think and consider it. I may absolutely love comedy movies like Space Balls and Ghostbusters, and comedy TV shows like Freakazoid and Mystery Science Theater 3000, but when I watch such things that are built around tickling the audience's funny bone, I don't expect to see anything that really gets me thinking.
(Not to say that Comedies shouldn't be held to any standards; they still need creativity and intelligent writing, just focused in a different way. Crude, unimaginative shit like Superbad or the Scary Movies that just cycle through 5 low-brow punchlines over and over like a month of 8-Bit Theater strips condensed into 2 hours aren't excused).
This is probably because actually getting some kind of deeper meaning into a comedy product is more than a little difficult. While the occasional or even frequent joke is a nice way to break up tension without distracting the audience from the important plot stuff in your average movie, game, show, or whatever, it's hard to keep an audience's thoughts and emotions captivated with your creation's depth when 80% of your dialog and situations are trying to get them to laugh.
Okage: Shadow King, however, seamlessly blends the serious with the comic--in fact, rather than competing, the comic and serious tones work together in this game. The comedy keeps you immediately interested and entertained, while softening the drama of the plot and allowing you to experience and appreciate the serious events and themes without becoming mired in them. You'll be chuckling at the silliness even while seeing themes of individuality, independence, and Man Vs. God explored in as interesting and worthwhile a way as any other RPG--in fact, OSK does it a sight better than quite a few of its peers. I can only hope that more humor RPGs will take a cue from this one and experiment with mixing in some deeper meanings to their joke-laced stories, because it can really result in something nifty.
Friday, October 3, 2008
General RPGs' Combined Gameplay
For the most part, RPGs stick to a certain kind of battle system adamantly. I pretty much divide these up into 3 separate types: Action, Regular, and Tactical. Regular battle systems are what RPG players are probably most familiar with--the menu-surfing standard made almost synonymous with the genre by the infamous Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest series. Action RPGs are practically the exact opposite, having you actually PLAY the game rather than select commands and hit a Confirm button thousands of times. Although not nearly as common as Regular battle systems, Action battle systems are just about as old to RPGs, with games like Crystalis and The Legend of Zelda series in their early history, and only seem to be getting more common. And then there's the Tactical genre, which has you moving units across maps in predetermined distances of movement, where distances, heights, terrain, and ability side-effects are often the true deciding factors in combat. It's hard to explain, but chances are you've encountered more than one before, and if not, well, I dunno, go on Youtube and find a video of someone playing Final Fantasy Tactics or a Fire Emblem. You'll get the idea pretty quick.
Anyway, RPGs pretty solidly stick to one of these genres, in most cases. An action RPG's gameplay is pretty much never gonna deviate from that battle system, save maybe for the occasional annoying minigame here and there. Outside of of wandering around dungeons, towns, and the map, and playing the previously mentioned annoying minigames, you're not going to be getting much real gameplay in a standard RPG, just hundreds of interruptions where you "battle" enemies with menu choices. There's really not a lot of attempts in the RPG world at mixing up the systems themselves, only at adding features and innovations to the existing ones, which often just ends up making them needlessly complicated (the actual, real world is not as complex in its laws and natural balances as Star Ocean 2 and 3's battle systems are) and/or silly (Final Fantasy 12's requiring experience to equip a better suit of armor than they currently have clearance for, even though the skill to put it on would have already had to have been mastered for them to wear the currently-equipped clothing).
However, there IS a certain innovation that I'm fond of that happens on very rare occasions: the use of TWO (or even all three) of the battle systems in a single game. No, I'm not talking about just the fact that you can (and really do have to quite often) open up a menu during an Action battle to give commands, like in the Tales of series or something. I mean real, distinctly different battle systems being used at different times.
The earliest game I know of that did this was the good old NES title, The Magic of Scheherazade. Now, I admit, I am very, very fond of this old treasure, and nostalgia plays a great part in that--I consciously know it's only a fairly good RPG, but darned if I don't just love it to pieces. TMS was pretty unique, though, in that it employed both an Action battle system, AND a regular Menu one. You travel from one screen area to another (just like The Legend of Zelda 1), and on each screen you can encounter enemies that you have to fight off by actively controlling your character and having him move and attack. But, each time you move from one screen to another, there's a chance of you getting attacked, Random Encounter-style, and having to fight an enemy party in a standard (if extremely simple) menu battle. It's neat, the way it's separated, and it breaks up the gameplay a bit so it's not all just the same thing over and over again.
Of course, the most famous example of this combination of RPG genres would probably be the Suikoden series (the numbered ones, at least; Suikoden Tactics predictably only features Tactical combat). Suikoden games primarily employ your standard, menu-based battle system for most of their battles; however, in each game there are many times when you have to win a round of Strategy combat. Though the tactical battles are usually not as complex or developed as the regular ones are (the first Suikoden's strategical warfare is only a few steps up from Rock Paper Scissors), it's a great break that works very closely with the game's plot to help you get drawn into the game's events. In addition, the series has one-on-one battles that actually qualify as an entirely different genre of RPG battling altogether, in my opinion, which further give the player some plot-related variety. It's done very well.
The last game that I can think of immediately that has a combination of gameplay types would be Bahamut Lagoon, for the SNES. I'd also consider it the best example. Battle is a perfect mix between Strategy and Menu battle systems--you move your units across the field and use abilities and terrain just as you would in a regular strategy game, but you can also have a unit personally engage an enemy instead of just attacking on the field. During this personal fight, you get a turn of regular menu combat with your assembled troops. It's all easy, it's all smooth, and it's all connected, yet separated very distinctly. Quite different and innovative.
Of the 3 games/series where I've seen it implemented, all have done it in a way that was overall positive and refreshing. So, really, why don't more companies do it?
Anyway, RPGs pretty solidly stick to one of these genres, in most cases. An action RPG's gameplay is pretty much never gonna deviate from that battle system, save maybe for the occasional annoying minigame here and there. Outside of of wandering around dungeons, towns, and the map, and playing the previously mentioned annoying minigames, you're not going to be getting much real gameplay in a standard RPG, just hundreds of interruptions where you "battle" enemies with menu choices. There's really not a lot of attempts in the RPG world at mixing up the systems themselves, only at adding features and innovations to the existing ones, which often just ends up making them needlessly complicated (the actual, real world is not as complex in its laws and natural balances as Star Ocean 2 and 3's battle systems are) and/or silly (Final Fantasy 12's requiring experience to equip a better suit of armor than they currently have clearance for, even though the skill to put it on would have already had to have been mastered for them to wear the currently-equipped clothing).
However, there IS a certain innovation that I'm fond of that happens on very rare occasions: the use of TWO (or even all three) of the battle systems in a single game. No, I'm not talking about just the fact that you can (and really do have to quite often) open up a menu during an Action battle to give commands, like in the Tales of series or something. I mean real, distinctly different battle systems being used at different times.
The earliest game I know of that did this was the good old NES title, The Magic of Scheherazade. Now, I admit, I am very, very fond of this old treasure, and nostalgia plays a great part in that--I consciously know it's only a fairly good RPG, but darned if I don't just love it to pieces. TMS was pretty unique, though, in that it employed both an Action battle system, AND a regular Menu one. You travel from one screen area to another (just like The Legend of Zelda 1), and on each screen you can encounter enemies that you have to fight off by actively controlling your character and having him move and attack. But, each time you move from one screen to another, there's a chance of you getting attacked, Random Encounter-style, and having to fight an enemy party in a standard (if extremely simple) menu battle. It's neat, the way it's separated, and it breaks up the gameplay a bit so it's not all just the same thing over and over again.
Of course, the most famous example of this combination of RPG genres would probably be the Suikoden series (the numbered ones, at least; Suikoden Tactics predictably only features Tactical combat). Suikoden games primarily employ your standard, menu-based battle system for most of their battles; however, in each game there are many times when you have to win a round of Strategy combat. Though the tactical battles are usually not as complex or developed as the regular ones are (the first Suikoden's strategical warfare is only a few steps up from Rock Paper Scissors), it's a great break that works very closely with the game's plot to help you get drawn into the game's events. In addition, the series has one-on-one battles that actually qualify as an entirely different genre of RPG battling altogether, in my opinion, which further give the player some plot-related variety. It's done very well.
The last game that I can think of immediately that has a combination of gameplay types would be Bahamut Lagoon, for the SNES. I'd also consider it the best example. Battle is a perfect mix between Strategy and Menu battle systems--you move your units across the field and use abilities and terrain just as you would in a regular strategy game, but you can also have a unit personally engage an enemy instead of just attacking on the field. During this personal fight, you get a turn of regular menu combat with your assembled troops. It's all easy, it's all smooth, and it's all connected, yet separated very distinctly. Quite different and innovative.
Of the 3 games/series where I've seen it implemented, all have done it in a way that was overall positive and refreshing. So, really, why don't more companies do it?
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Chrono Trigger's New Game+
EDIT, FROM THE WORLD OF TOMORROW: So, 12 years too late, it has been brought to my recollection that it was, in fact, The Legend of Zelda 2 that pioneered a New Game+ feature (if not by that accepted title), so while a lot of what I say below in credit to Chrono Trigger about the quality of its NG+ is still accurate, the overall assertion that CT is the game that invented the concept altogether, and my lavish praise upon it for such, is not. So anyway, if you want to read the following rant, go right ahead, just view it as less an article of opinion, as it was meant to be, and more a monument to the fallibility and ignorance of its creator.
Honestly, it may very well be far more effective at its new task than it was at its former, anyway.
Over a decade ago, Squaresoft and Enix teamed up to create an RPG. This game would not be like most of the endeavors they would later work together as one company to make, for this would be good. In fact, one of the greatest RPGs ever created, by most accounts, including my own. The game was called Chrono Trigger, and it became one of the most immortal pieces of the genre to date.
Chrono Trigger's creativity, variety, innovation, and colorful presentation has never really been duplicated, in my opinion. No RPG time travel has had quite the same engaging significance and fun, nor has an RPG had as well-done a merging of different time periods, and I'd have to say that I've yet to see any past, present, or future utopia civilization in an RPG that can quite measure up to the mysticism, opulence, and magical majesty of the Kingdom of Zeal. In most cases, I'm fine with this--CT wouldn't stand out and its imagination wouldn't seem as neat if any old game could copy it, and I'm all for other developers coming up with their own twists on preconceived concepts. That's what creates variety in games.
But one of CT's particularly imaginative concepts that's almost never been copied as anything more than a shadow of its original self that I WANT duplicated in full glory is the New Game+ feature. For all 0 of you who aren't familiar with CT, New Game+ is an option on the game's beginning menu that opens up once the game has been beaten once. It allows you to restart the game with all the levels, items, money, weapons, Techs, armors, and accessories that you had in the previous game. This very handy feature allows you to breeze through the game quickly again any time you like, which means that you can watch the game's plot and character development more cohesively, and not have to deal with the stupid tedium of level-grinding and long boss battles (not that CT really needs either of these, being on the easy side of the easiest regular game genre to date, but, y'know, it's the thought that counts). And you're given incentive to give the game at least one more spin by the fact that you can get many alternate, just-for-fun endings to the game by beating the last boss at different times in the plot's progression. Definitely a neat extra.
Now, don't get me wrong. Plenty of games have copied the idea in some way or other. Sometimes it can be in a way that is just stupid and useless, like with Baten Kaitos 2, which, after going through an inordinately long game with an annoyingly complicated and touchy battle system that you have to use in inordinately difficult battles, that include that goddamn Holoholo Bird boss, AKA the Rainbow Sunshine Bird of Satan and its Cute Fluffy Hellspawn, allows you to restart a game with...the records of the cards you've encountered in the game. No levels, no battle abilities or equipment, no money, no items, not a goddamn thing of any use at all. Including the New Game+ this way is a cruel joke more than a replay enticement.
At other times, a New Game+ can be almost as good or even just as good as CT's was in terms of keeping your characters' stuff for the next replay. Mass Effect, for example, lets you start over a game with the exact same character as you completed the game with, levels, credits, equipment, Paragon and Renegade points, abilities and all. I think you might still have to repurchase Grenade and Med Gel upgrades, but, hey, advanced levels and weaponry right from the get-go, along with oodles of extra cash, makes that pretty much alright. The Tales of series has an interesting twist in that you can keep lots of handy things like money and skills in a new game, along with get bonuses like extra HP and doubled Experience, but only if you did well in the previous playthrough--although the measurement of how well you did is only by your success in battle, rather than in any important aspect of the game, so I'm not as enthusiastic as I could be about it. Still, good potential.
The thing is, though, that there's MORE to CT's New Game+ than most games even attempt. Oh, sure, I LOVE the idea of making the replaying of the game much faster and smoother, because if I replay an RPG, it's either because I'm showing its story and characters to my sisters, or because I want to view them myself again. It sure as hell ain't ever because I can't suppress the gleeful desire to move a cursor through a menu and press the Confirm button thousands of times again.
But CT's New Game+ didn't just rely on the game's terrific plot and characters to entice you to play through again--although that would have been and most often was more than enough, to be sure. It gave you a fun extra to keep you going through at least once more: the multiple, amusing endings. They were a fun, imaginative little extra to stick in there that really made you want to go through again just to see them all, even the ones that were little more than glorified remixes of the credits.
See, THAT'S what most of these games with New Game+ knockoffs are missing. They give you the option of experiencing the game again without having to spend as much time or effort on the boring part, but they don't really tempt you to do it with fun extras. Sometimes you get something little here and there, such as Tales of Legendia's option to replace the party members' regular clothing with "Formal" outfits (which are grossly disappointing and stupid, but that's beside the point) or animal costumes, but such small efforts are usually cheap, minor, and don't provide lasting incentive. I mean, using the last example, fighting in animal costumes is only engagingly funny for so long...and then you're just left with characters running around dressed up like those particularly odd team-mascot-outfit-wearing furries for the rest of the game.
I'll grant you, I CAN think of 2 games that have done the New Game+ thing as well as CT did. The first is Chrono Cross--same basic deal, with the added bonus of a way to make the game go twice as fast as normal with everything it does. THAT feature might make CC's New Game+ better, actually, as the faster you can zip through that nonsensical shitstorm, the better. The second is Makai Kingdom--again, you get to restart with all your stuff from the last game, AND there are various fun (and even sometimes informative about the game's events and characters) alternate endings to unlock on the subsequent replays. And unlike Chrono Cross, Makai Kingdom is actually a game you would WANT to play over.
In general, though, games that copy the awesome idea Chrono Trigger introduced to RPGs over a decade ago are only producing second-rate (or worse) replicas. What's the deal?
Honestly, it may very well be far more effective at its new task than it was at its former, anyway.
Over a decade ago, Squaresoft and Enix teamed up to create an RPG. This game would not be like most of the endeavors they would later work together as one company to make, for this would be good. In fact, one of the greatest RPGs ever created, by most accounts, including my own. The game was called Chrono Trigger, and it became one of the most immortal pieces of the genre to date.
Chrono Trigger's creativity, variety, innovation, and colorful presentation has never really been duplicated, in my opinion. No RPG time travel has had quite the same engaging significance and fun, nor has an RPG had as well-done a merging of different time periods, and I'd have to say that I've yet to see any past, present, or future utopia civilization in an RPG that can quite measure up to the mysticism, opulence, and magical majesty of the Kingdom of Zeal. In most cases, I'm fine with this--CT wouldn't stand out and its imagination wouldn't seem as neat if any old game could copy it, and I'm all for other developers coming up with their own twists on preconceived concepts. That's what creates variety in games.
But one of CT's particularly imaginative concepts that's almost never been copied as anything more than a shadow of its original self that I WANT duplicated in full glory is the New Game+ feature. For all 0 of you who aren't familiar with CT, New Game+ is an option on the game's beginning menu that opens up once the game has been beaten once. It allows you to restart the game with all the levels, items, money, weapons, Techs, armors, and accessories that you had in the previous game. This very handy feature allows you to breeze through the game quickly again any time you like, which means that you can watch the game's plot and character development more cohesively, and not have to deal with the stupid tedium of level-grinding and long boss battles (not that CT really needs either of these, being on the easy side of the easiest regular game genre to date, but, y'know, it's the thought that counts). And you're given incentive to give the game at least one more spin by the fact that you can get many alternate, just-for-fun endings to the game by beating the last boss at different times in the plot's progression. Definitely a neat extra.
Now, don't get me wrong. Plenty of games have copied the idea in some way or other. Sometimes it can be in a way that is just stupid and useless, like with Baten Kaitos 2, which, after going through an inordinately long game with an annoyingly complicated and touchy battle system that you have to use in inordinately difficult battles, that include that goddamn Holoholo Bird boss, AKA the Rainbow Sunshine Bird of Satan and its Cute Fluffy Hellspawn, allows you to restart a game with...the records of the cards you've encountered in the game. No levels, no battle abilities or equipment, no money, no items, not a goddamn thing of any use at all. Including the New Game+ this way is a cruel joke more than a replay enticement.
At other times, a New Game+ can be almost as good or even just as good as CT's was in terms of keeping your characters' stuff for the next replay. Mass Effect, for example, lets you start over a game with the exact same character as you completed the game with, levels, credits, equipment, Paragon and Renegade points, abilities and all. I think you might still have to repurchase Grenade and Med Gel upgrades, but, hey, advanced levels and weaponry right from the get-go, along with oodles of extra cash, makes that pretty much alright. The Tales of series has an interesting twist in that you can keep lots of handy things like money and skills in a new game, along with get bonuses like extra HP and doubled Experience, but only if you did well in the previous playthrough--although the measurement of how well you did is only by your success in battle, rather than in any important aspect of the game, so I'm not as enthusiastic as I could be about it. Still, good potential.
The thing is, though, that there's MORE to CT's New Game+ than most games even attempt. Oh, sure, I LOVE the idea of making the replaying of the game much faster and smoother, because if I replay an RPG, it's either because I'm showing its story and characters to my sisters, or because I want to view them myself again. It sure as hell ain't ever because I can't suppress the gleeful desire to move a cursor through a menu and press the Confirm button thousands of times again.
But CT's New Game+ didn't just rely on the game's terrific plot and characters to entice you to play through again--although that would have been and most often was more than enough, to be sure. It gave you a fun extra to keep you going through at least once more: the multiple, amusing endings. They were a fun, imaginative little extra to stick in there that really made you want to go through again just to see them all, even the ones that were little more than glorified remixes of the credits.
See, THAT'S what most of these games with New Game+ knockoffs are missing. They give you the option of experiencing the game again without having to spend as much time or effort on the boring part, but they don't really tempt you to do it with fun extras. Sometimes you get something little here and there, such as Tales of Legendia's option to replace the party members' regular clothing with "Formal" outfits (which are grossly disappointing and stupid, but that's beside the point) or animal costumes, but such small efforts are usually cheap, minor, and don't provide lasting incentive. I mean, using the last example, fighting in animal costumes is only engagingly funny for so long...and then you're just left with characters running around dressed up like those particularly odd team-mascot-outfit-wearing furries for the rest of the game.
I'll grant you, I CAN think of 2 games that have done the New Game+ thing as well as CT did. The first is Chrono Cross--same basic deal, with the added bonus of a way to make the game go twice as fast as normal with everything it does. THAT feature might make CC's New Game+ better, actually, as the faster you can zip through that nonsensical shitstorm, the better. The second is Makai Kingdom--again, you get to restart with all your stuff from the last game, AND there are various fun (and even sometimes informative about the game's events and characters) alternate endings to unlock on the subsequent replays. And unlike Chrono Cross, Makai Kingdom is actually a game you would WANT to play over.
In general, though, games that copy the awesome idea Chrono Trigger introduced to RPGs over a decade ago are only producing second-rate (or worse) replicas. What's the deal?
Monday, August 25, 2008
Final Fantasy 4 Theory: Kain's Bisexuality
Alright, folks, a few people have told me that they actually wanted to hear about this, and most of my ideas for rants lately have been titled "Why God Hates Me (Spoiler: It's Because I Have To Buy A New PC Graphics Card Because Mass Effect Won't Run On My Computer, Which Is Now Refusing To Load Its OS On Reboot So The Graphics Card Is Really A Moot Point At This Point Anyway)" which is altogether too long to use, and "Why God Loves Me (Spoiler: It's Because My Computer Works Again Thanks To Angahith And Mass Effect Is So Fucking Awesome As To Defy Description)", which is also far too long, so here we go. As a note, though, I want to point out that this is nothing more than a theory, based on what is, albeit reasonable and believable, wholly conjecture. I will usually defend the perceptions and beliefs stated in these rants because I've made my conclusions through a lot of thought and looking at hard evidence. This, though, I'm not going to do any more with than throw out there as a possibility.
Alright. Most of us are familiar with Kain. He's the somewhat curt Dragoon of Final Fantasy 4 who joins forces with Cecil, betrays his country, gets lost, rejoins his country, betrays Cecil, rejoins Cecil, betrays Cecil, then rejoins Cecil. If someone like Kain existed prominently in Earth's history, we wouldn't know who the heck Benedict Arnold or Judas were, because Kain clearly has'em trumped. I've never been a huge fan of him, seeing far more appeal and actual depth in most of the rest of the game's cast, but FF4's fans are crazily fond of pretty every aspect of the game, which includes Kain, so he's a reasonably well-liked character in general.
So, after Kain originally betrays Cecil and then is forgiven by the Paladin sucker and allowed to rejoin, it's explained to the gamer that bad guy Golbez used Standard Bad Guy Mind Control to turn Kain against his friends. He did this by exploiting a certain emotional weakness in Kain's mind: his long-held resentment toward his best friend Cecil, who always had the king's favor, was the more popular and respected soldier due to his choosing the path of Dark Knight, and, by far most importantly, had the love of the apple of Kain's eye, Rosa. This jealousy is what makes Kain so incredibly easy for Golbez to manipulate him.
But hey, okay, that's all in the past now, right? Kain recognizes his general and romantic jealousy towards Cecil, and has come to terms with it, making him a nice guy once more and presumably free from any further mind control by Golbez.
Yeah, that doesn't last long.
At the first opportune moment presented, Golbez takes control of Kain once more with no more than a moment's struggle from the man. Kain betrays the party like a total dick again, and trots off to Golbez. Well, thinks the player, Kain must have OTHER inner battles than just the jealousy thing, and Golbez has apparently taken advantage of those ones, this time. Doubtless it will be explained to the player later why Kain fell so immediately a second time.
Except...it never is explained. When Kain rejoins, he makes no attempt whatsoever to explain his last betrayal, gives no insight to how Golbez managed to sucker-punch his mind twice in a row. Nothing. Being an individual who, in a noble and nice way, invites betrayal into his life all the time, Cecil of course has no problem immediately accepting Kain back, despite the lack of explanation this time around.
The plot quickly moves along to its final conclusion of Good vs. Really Pathetic And Lazy Evil That Sits On Its Ass In Its Moonbase And Has Everyone Else Do Its Work For It (a kind of evil which, with the exception of the part about the Moonbase, will show up more than once again later in the series), and whatever questions the player might have about Kain's second betrayal are quickly forgotten. But what could have caused it?
Well, let's look at the material that the game gives us to go on. We know the following to be true:
1. Kain's personality's faults are what gave Golbez an easy in to his psyche the first time.
2. Kain's personality faults that are known to us are both based on jealousy--jealousy of Cecil's success and acclaim, and jealousy of the relationship between Rosa and Cecil.
3. Of these two, it is implied that the romantic jealousy is what really made him a sucker for Golbez.
4. After Kain is released from mind control the first time, he has a full comprehension of these weaknesses of jealousy of Cecil for his success and for having Rosa's love, and how they aided in his corruption. To this effect, it's reasonable to assume that in recognizing them, he has come to terms with them, and thus is not going to be susceptible to Golbez's mind control through these weaknesses again.
5. For no given reason, he still gets brainwashed at the drop of a hat later.
So here's my theory: Kain loves Rosa, and is jealous that Cecil has her love. But Kain also, unknown to him until after his second betrayal, loves Cecil, and is jealous that Rosa has his love.
It's a fairly elegant solution to the plot hole of the second betrayal in a couple ways. It allows Kain to keep his character development regarding his having recognized and resolved the issues that Golbez manipulated the first time, for it explains the second betrayal without having to nullify his understanding his jealousy towards Cecil for Rosa's love. Yet it also allows for the seeming ease with which Golbez regains control over Kain, for Golbez is, the second time, switching from Kain's jealousy for Rosa's love to Kain's jealousy for Cecil's love, two very similar emotional paths for Golbez to take into Kain's head. It's easy to see why Kain wouldn't have recognized this second love initially, as he could have been so focused on his love for Rosa that he would have mistaken the jealousy he felt over Cecil and Rosa's relationship as only being directed to one side, instead of both. And it also helps to explain why he doesn't even try to explain away his second betrayal, because, really, the only thing more awkward and distracting than saying "Hey dude, I betrayed you cuz your girl gives me a second spear, if you know what I mean" is saying "Hey dude, I betrayed you again cuz you also give me a second spear, if you know what I mean." Hell, he's probably still uncomfortably working through his feelings on the issue at that point; he's pretty quiet in general after that point, and he probably hasn't had as much time to come to grips with his second love as he'd had for his first.
So that's my Kain is Bisexual and Loves Rosa AND Cecil theory. Like I said, it's not one I'm going to stand by as clear, logical truth; it relies on circumstantial evidence and guesswork too much. At best, it's an interesting idea that's just as impossible to prove wrong as it is to prove right. And I admit that I haven't played the recent rerelease of FF4, so their completely unnecessary updated translation may have key changes which I'm unaware of that make this hypothesis impossible. But hey, at least I came up with the idea that a main guy in an RPG might be into another dude without once resorting to equating both friendship and rivalry/hostility with love. You gotta admit, THAT isn't something you see often.
Alright. Most of us are familiar with Kain. He's the somewhat curt Dragoon of Final Fantasy 4 who joins forces with Cecil, betrays his country, gets lost, rejoins his country, betrays Cecil, rejoins Cecil, betrays Cecil, then rejoins Cecil. If someone like Kain existed prominently in Earth's history, we wouldn't know who the heck Benedict Arnold or Judas were, because Kain clearly has'em trumped. I've never been a huge fan of him, seeing far more appeal and actual depth in most of the rest of the game's cast, but FF4's fans are crazily fond of pretty every aspect of the game, which includes Kain, so he's a reasonably well-liked character in general.
So, after Kain originally betrays Cecil and then is forgiven by the Paladin sucker and allowed to rejoin, it's explained to the gamer that bad guy Golbez used Standard Bad Guy Mind Control to turn Kain against his friends. He did this by exploiting a certain emotional weakness in Kain's mind: his long-held resentment toward his best friend Cecil, who always had the king's favor, was the more popular and respected soldier due to his choosing the path of Dark Knight, and, by far most importantly, had the love of the apple of Kain's eye, Rosa. This jealousy is what makes Kain so incredibly easy for Golbez to manipulate him.
But hey, okay, that's all in the past now, right? Kain recognizes his general and romantic jealousy towards Cecil, and has come to terms with it, making him a nice guy once more and presumably free from any further mind control by Golbez.
Yeah, that doesn't last long.
At the first opportune moment presented, Golbez takes control of Kain once more with no more than a moment's struggle from the man. Kain betrays the party like a total dick again, and trots off to Golbez. Well, thinks the player, Kain must have OTHER inner battles than just the jealousy thing, and Golbez has apparently taken advantage of those ones, this time. Doubtless it will be explained to the player later why Kain fell so immediately a second time.
Except...it never is explained. When Kain rejoins, he makes no attempt whatsoever to explain his last betrayal, gives no insight to how Golbez managed to sucker-punch his mind twice in a row. Nothing. Being an individual who, in a noble and nice way, invites betrayal into his life all the time, Cecil of course has no problem immediately accepting Kain back, despite the lack of explanation this time around.
The plot quickly moves along to its final conclusion of Good vs. Really Pathetic And Lazy Evil That Sits On Its Ass In Its Moonbase And Has Everyone Else Do Its Work For It (a kind of evil which, with the exception of the part about the Moonbase, will show up more than once again later in the series), and whatever questions the player might have about Kain's second betrayal are quickly forgotten. But what could have caused it?
Well, let's look at the material that the game gives us to go on. We know the following to be true:
1. Kain's personality's faults are what gave Golbez an easy in to his psyche the first time.
2. Kain's personality faults that are known to us are both based on jealousy--jealousy of Cecil's success and acclaim, and jealousy of the relationship between Rosa and Cecil.
3. Of these two, it is implied that the romantic jealousy is what really made him a sucker for Golbez.
4. After Kain is released from mind control the first time, he has a full comprehension of these weaknesses of jealousy of Cecil for his success and for having Rosa's love, and how they aided in his corruption. To this effect, it's reasonable to assume that in recognizing them, he has come to terms with them, and thus is not going to be susceptible to Golbez's mind control through these weaknesses again.
5. For no given reason, he still gets brainwashed at the drop of a hat later.
So here's my theory: Kain loves Rosa, and is jealous that Cecil has her love. But Kain also, unknown to him until after his second betrayal, loves Cecil, and is jealous that Rosa has his love.
It's a fairly elegant solution to the plot hole of the second betrayal in a couple ways. It allows Kain to keep his character development regarding his having recognized and resolved the issues that Golbez manipulated the first time, for it explains the second betrayal without having to nullify his understanding his jealousy towards Cecil for Rosa's love. Yet it also allows for the seeming ease with which Golbez regains control over Kain, for Golbez is, the second time, switching from Kain's jealousy for Rosa's love to Kain's jealousy for Cecil's love, two very similar emotional paths for Golbez to take into Kain's head. It's easy to see why Kain wouldn't have recognized this second love initially, as he could have been so focused on his love for Rosa that he would have mistaken the jealousy he felt over Cecil and Rosa's relationship as only being directed to one side, instead of both. And it also helps to explain why he doesn't even try to explain away his second betrayal, because, really, the only thing more awkward and distracting than saying "Hey dude, I betrayed you cuz your girl gives me a second spear, if you know what I mean" is saying "Hey dude, I betrayed you again cuz you also give me a second spear, if you know what I mean." Hell, he's probably still uncomfortably working through his feelings on the issue at that point; he's pretty quiet in general after that point, and he probably hasn't had as much time to come to grips with his second love as he'd had for his first.
So that's my Kain is Bisexual and Loves Rosa AND Cecil theory. Like I said, it's not one I'm going to stand by as clear, logical truth; it relies on circumstantial evidence and guesswork too much. At best, it's an interesting idea that's just as impossible to prove wrong as it is to prove right. And I admit that I haven't played the recent rerelease of FF4, so their completely unnecessary updated translation may have key changes which I'm unaware of that make this hypothesis impossible. But hey, at least I came up with the idea that a main guy in an RPG might be into another dude without once resorting to equating both friendship and rivalry/hostility with love. You gotta admit, THAT isn't something you see often.
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