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Game Ramblings #200 – The Plucky Squire

More Info from All Possible Futures

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: PS5
  • Also Available On: Xbox Series, Windows, Switch

My initial instinct was to go “well this is an expanded version of Link Between Worlds” and….I guess that isn’t entirely accurate. This game absolutely pulls a lot of mechanics from the top-down Legend of Zelda games. However, it’s not simply a Zelda-style game. It pulls mechanics from all sorts of games of the NES and SNES era. This game is an absolute celebration of late 80s/early 90s games tied together in a modern package.

The core gameplay of the game is very much Legend of Zelda though it feels a bit simplified Link to the Past in terms of complexity. You’ve got some basic sword attacks (melee, charge spin attack). Rather than secondary items, you can throw the sword and use a basic jump attack. However, combat is often not the core focus of the game – or at least this style combat is not. It’s there for story reasons, but most of your time is spent elsewhere.

The first place it really strays is the 2D/3D switching mechanic. You can pop in and out of the story book, and the core gameplay doesn’t change much between the two. However, that switch is often used for what are puzzle types that feel unique to this game. Flipping pages to return to past parts of the game for items is an interesting mechanical use of this. Tilting the book to move things around in the book world is an interesting use of this. Pulling items out of 2D space into 3D space to use them in new ways (for example, a jetpack) is an interesting use of this. Adding stamps to the book in 3D space to stop the movement of things in the book is an interesting use of this. It’s all these little things where it becomes clear the book isn’t just set dressing but is instead a core integrated part of the game. These are all puzzle types that are directly in line with this being a “Zelda” experience but end of being completely unique to this game.

It was also visually impressive just how consistent the styles are. Enemy silhouettes are always incredibly important to combat so having these be immediately recognizable in multiple visual styles without thinking is an impressive thing to pull off, even with the simplicity involved. The green guys with pointy hats are obviously ranged in both cases. Yellow guys are obviously melee in both cases. Orange guys obviously throw bombs in both cases. Mice and snakes are obviously the same in both cases. You just look and know how to react despite the changes in gameplay between the two scenarios.

However, the boss fights were the thing that impressed me the most and were also the thing I was not anticipating. Put simply, the boss fights are not Zelda gameplay, and this was probably the smartest decision they could have made. By making the boss fights entirely different, the core combat in the rest of the game was able to be simplified and reduced to only a small necessary segment leaving room for puzzles and unique boss mechanics to shine.

So what do I mean by this not being Zelda gameplay? Well, there’s a boss fight that is entirely the mechanics of Punchout. There’s a boss fight that pulled in Puzzle Bobble mechanics with no direct combat. There’s segments that are side scrolling shooter gameplay wrapping around a bucket. There’s a bullet hell air combat fight. Basically, the bosses are uniquely tied to mechanics that are simultaneously some classic gameplay setup and tied directly to the boss’ visual and story design. It makes an incredible amount of sense to do it this way because each boss can shine independent of the rest of the game, while also allowing it to further reinforce the 2D/3D swapping. It’s something that I didn’t expect going in and completely blew me away.

This was a delightful surprise. It exists as the perfect combination of mechanics pulled from other titles tied together in a package that only makes sense because of the game they ended up in. Rather than feeling like it lacked originality, it felt like the originality came from the team putting together a total package that can only work because of how they constructed it. It’s the type of game that you just sit down and have fun with from front to back and wonder why nobody had ever managed to do this before. It’s simply worth playing.

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Game Ramblings #199 – Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth

More Info from Sega

  • Genre: JRPG
  • Platform: PS5
  • Also Available On: PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series, Windows

The original mainline Yakuza series showed a very distinct progression in the quality of its gameplay through the series. The PS2 entries were good, but the PS3 entries were clearly better, and the PS4 entries better still. The combat got more refined. The power curve of the player and enemies got smoother. Grinding was reduced and friction points were reduced. That’s where I feel like this one landed relative to Like a Dragon.

Sequels should be similar, but refined and this definitely fits the bill. In my ramblings about the original Like a Dragon I made note of a few places where the game felt grindy, and I think that’s as good a place to begin as any.

My first point about grinding was specifically around equipment. In the previous title, I felt like I capped out too early on purchases and crafting was too expensive. This game definitely addressed that. I hit the end of the crafting shop investment before end game, but because I still had plenty of gear to purchase out in the world I never really hit a point where I felt like I capped out there. The gear I had wasn’t necessarily end game and could be beneficial to upgrade more for optional content, but for the golden path it felt appropriate. The actual cost of everything was also lower overall combined with significantly higher drop rates. In the previous title I was getting 3-5k yen for near end game trash fights. Here I’m getting more like 50-100k yen in Japan and $1000+ in Hawaii. You are simply getting wildly more money to play with.

I also made note of needing to XP grind. There’s a few things that felt like they addressed that problem here. For one thing, bosses are simply more in line with the levels of everything around them. They aren’t wildly jumping ahead in levels compared to trash mobs, so I don’t have to overlevel just to be on even ground with them. In addition, trash mobs are giving significantly more XP – rather than 1-2k per fight, I’m getting more like 5kl or upwards of 20k for special repeatable world boss fights. It’s a huge difference in terms of time allocated to simply fighting, allowing me to spend more time doing “time waste” side content while also keeping up with the rest of the game.

The rest of combat is similar, but again at least feels more refined. The game still has combo attacks and follow-up attacks with your party, but at least compared to my memory they happen more often so the squad feels more like an actual squad with good interpersonal relationships that you built. MP-based attacks – and importantly, MP regen – feels more consistent, really pushing me to use them more often to take down squads quickly. There’s some cool expanded options around tag teams and huge specials that feel like they’re tuned to really nuke bosses quick, giving a really cool power fantasy and payoff to your squad’s growth. Basically, it’s similar but again feels more refined.

And because this is a Yakuza title, I have to talk about side content. I don’t think it’s quite as good as past entries, but there are two standouts that I need to talk about. The first is Crazy Delivery which is a straight food delivery ripoff of Crazy Taxi. It’s stupid, it’s bright and colorful, it fundamentally makes no sense, but it totally fits in this series.

However, the standout is Sujimon. In the previous game it was basically a Pokedex-only system to collate the people you fought into a Sujidex. This game goes the full Pokemon treatment. You now capture Sujimon and add them to a party, with an entire set of Sujimon side quests. This goes the full Pokemon route with gym fights and badges, leveling, 3v3 battles, weaknesses and strengths, and an entire Pokemon Stadium side content block. It’s a completely ridiculous and over the top set of content, and frankly I would have spent more time on this than the main game if I wasn’t so hooked on the story.

I don’t really want to talk more about the game because I think the story is worth experiencing completely without spoilers, and it would be tough to talk more about the game without getting too deep into that side of things. However I can easily recommend this one. It takes what I thought was already a really solid JRPG transition for the Yakuza series and begins its iteration that the previous action-focused titles did. You can tell that they took feedback from the previous game seriously, and it shows that the next however many titles we get in this style are simply going to be instant plays.

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Game Ramblings #198 – Hogwarts Legacy

More Info from WB Games

  • Genre: Action RPG
  • Platform: Xbox Series
  • Also Available On: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, PC, Switch

This IP is obviously complicated by the fact that the original author has turned out to be a piece of shit and that wasn’t something I wanted to support, so I waited. I waited until it was so cheap that I would effectively not be putting money into the IP. I waited until I had a practical need to play it as a developer. However, it was time for me to get around to playing it and I’m glad I did. The team at Avalanche put something together that is pretty obvious on paper – make an open world RPG third person shooter – and unsurprisingly it works well. The level of polish behind this game puts it right up there with the best of AAA experiences I’ve played over the last several years.

There’s a really interesting push and pull here between childhood nostalgia of what Hogwarts is from the books and movies against what is expected of a playable videogame experience, and this one does a surprisingly good job of playing that balance. There’s sections that are heavy on puzzles that really lean into the lore. You’ll be solving puzzles created by Merlin or finding important objects to the universe or capturing magical creatures. There’s sections that are then heavy on combat where you’re fighting dark wizards and trolls and goblins. The game does a good job of balancing that back and forth to where you’re never doing one for a particularly long time back to back so you get into natural sort of peaks and valleys of action that allow rest between.

Underlying all of this is how it ties together the overall story with simply being a student. Yes, you’re doing something larger than Hogwarts as the meta experience, but within that are chunks of distinct classroom experiences. You’ll be given tasks by the professors that need to be completed. For example – use a specific potion and defeat enemies, capture some specific magical creature, defeat enemies with particular spell combos, etc. Those lessons then result in you learning new spells to use further in the game. It’s got a very Nintendo quality to it in that it’s naturally tutorializing parts of the game without being overtly in your face about it, then rewarding you with a new toy to play with.

None of this would work if the action that followed was bad, but that works extremely well. Ultimately, the closest thing I could compare it to would be something like Mass Effect. At the end of the day this is a third person shooter full of projectiles flying everywhere, but each attack is based in magic. Where Mass Effect would have a magnetic shield, this has Protego. Where Mass Effect would throw grenades at range, this has Bombarda. Where Mass Effect has cryo weaponry, this has Glacius spells. Where Mass Effect has poison dots, this has curses from Crucio.

From an experience standpoint it all just feels natural as a result. This may be an 1800s magic game, but it feels like something that almost any core gamer has played before. The control scheme is similar, the results of actions are similar, and the moment to moment gameplay is similar. That may sound a lot like “well it’s been done before”, and I suppose there is some truth to that. The thing that’s impressive is that it doesn’t feel like a retread, but instead feels like a perfectly natural blend of known gameplay and a completely unrelated IP.

However, they also really do hit that nostalgia hard in this. The thing about Hogwarts that was always pressed into my brain was how much it was a maze and this absolutely feels like a maze. There’s spiral staircases and unnecessary hallways and hidden hallways and all sorts of chaos, and at first it’s overwhelming. However, the game does a great job of leading the player via a “spell” that shows them the path to where they’re trying to go. Then over time as you explore you start to recognize spots and it continues to be a maze, but it’s a maze you know and in that sense you then start to appreciate how well put together the entire school sandbox is to feel so much like my expectations and yet still allow me to easily get around.

Places like Hogsmeade are the same. IT feels like an overwhelming place to walk into. All of the buildings are a little rickety and feel like they may fall over at any time. Places like Honeydukes look like an explosion of treats. Ollivander’s is floor to ceiling stacks of wands. The Three Broomsticks looks like the perfect pub to hop into on a cold day. Basically, it all works to hit that nostalgia of the series, but it also works incredibly well as the core upgrade hub of the game. Where Hogwarts is the place where you learn new stuff, Hogsmeade is where you improve things. You’re there to sell unused gear and get money to grab new potion recipes or conjuring spells or broom upgrades or combat items. What it ends up being is that you kind of end up hopping back and forth between the two in natural waves where Hogwarts kind of becomes a hub to learn for a while, then you’re off in the world and hopping back to Hogsmeade to bring your power curve up. In that sense, it’s gamifying nostalgia in a way that just works.

In continuing to play to both the game and nostalgia aspects, this ends up being one of the most impressive licensed titles that I’ve likely ever played. Licensed games are often hard to get right because the IP ends up having to be important enough to sell the game. In this case, I think the game benefited a lot from not having to tie itself to Harry Potter. It could simply be a game in the overall lore of the IP and live on its own in an impressive way. It took pieces that were important in the setting and the very loose lore of witches and wizards existing and crafted a game that naturally worked around that. The game is not appreciably different than it would be if it was not Hogwarts, but in doing so it allowed itself to be attached to something that was going to simply sell more with the same game, and in doing so it opened a path forward for the studio that had seemingly been left to die after the end of Disney Infinity.