schenksmill

2017-07-30

Game Ramblings #43 – Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age

Genre: JRPG
Platform: PS4
Originally Released On: PS2

TL;DR

Battle system is still going to be hit or miss for people. If you enjoy the idea of programming the AI, you’ll likely enjoy this.
Story hasn’t aged too bad. Vaan being the up front starting main character is still weird.
Modifications to the license system for upgrades are neither a big positive or negative to me. Still like the general system overall.

Final Fantasy XII was at the time a pretty controversial game for the series. It came on the heals of a long gap since X, with an MMO in between. Even though on the surface the battle system seemed hugely different, it was still an ATB-based battle system, just with some potential for automating tasks thrown in. However, it was that change that in a lot of ways threw a players for a loop. Looking at this again 11 years later, I’m still a huge fan of the way the game was put together, even if some of the details still leave me grumbling at times.

Back when I originally played this, I never really understood a lot of the criticism thrown at the battle system. At its core, it’s still the ATB-style system that had been in place for a number of years for the SNES and PS1 entries to the series. Time bar fills, action can be taken, rinse and repeat. To me, the ability to automate what the other party members were doing, and the ability to freely run around in real-time didn’t hugely differentiate the core of the system that much. From my perspective, the biggest change was that battles were no longer random, and simply started up when an enemy was approached. The fact that I could program out the party through the Gambit system meant that I could concentrate on fixing things when they went sideways, and leave the obvious things up to happen on their own. It’s a given that I’m always going to attack, when some party member’s health drops I’m going to throw Cure, when debuffs are out I’m going to use Esuna or some variant, if the enemy is weak to an element I’m going to use magic. The system in place here let me preset the entire party to do the obvious, and simply handle jumping in when adjustments needed to be done on the fly. By and large, that system still works fantastically, and gets you through a lot of the game. Boss battles are where I tend to jump in to manual actions the most, but even then I tended to spend more time adjusting my Gambits to suit the needs of the fight, and having fun doing that.

However, the Gambit system does have a few noticeable gaps that the programmer in me really wants more control over. Target prioritization in general was typical pretty poor. While there’s a lot of flexibility in how the target gets selected (nearest, furthest, X% HP, party leader’s target, etc), there was no way to use a priority to select a target, then stay locked on that target until they were killed. Because of this, group fights can get really hairy really quickly if I was fully automated, with targets swapping almost every attack, rather than grinding down one enemy at a time. It would also have been nice for some sort of binary system to place more stringent conditions on target selection (Ex: If leader is dead, use nearest target; else use leader’s target). I also wish there was a concept of group-based conditions. I ended up placing group spells like Cura on single-target “oh shit” conditions, and just manually triggering group buff type spells as necessary. For example, Cura was fired on my group if ANY ally was below 30% health. Ideally this would have been in a place where I could have done something to the effect of average group health, or similar condition.

The other real big change over normal Final Fantasy with this game was the License system. The short version here is that while weapons, armor, magic, and skills are purchased in shops, they also have to have a corresponding License purchased. In the original release, all characters had the same base License Board layout, with a different starting point in the board. For the International release, as well as for The Zodiac Age, this has been replaced by job-style boards. To be perfectly honest, there’s things I like about both and ended up not really having a preference as to which system was used. In the original release, there was a ton of flexibility as the board filled, since all characters theoretically had access to everything. I could very easily do high melee damage white mages, or a black mage that used gun attacks, or a ninja tank. Characters in The Zodiac Age can still do this to some extent with a primary and secondary board, but the build out is significantly more focused, and the flexibility in class layout has to be determined at board purchase time, rather than being able to swap the character style at any point. The flexibility of the original was nice, but being able to focus on a core build throughout the entire game in this place also simplified the nature of using the License Board system, so I ended up enjoying it just as well.

All in all, I enjoyed the hell out of the original release, and I still enjoyed the hell out of it the second time around. This is definitely the kind of game that if you didn’t like it before, it’s not going to convince you to play it this time either. The inclusion of an always on fast forward feature also meant that getting through the game was significantly quicker, clocking in at about 40 hours for me to complete the story, as well as a fairly large chunk of the hunt and side quest content, so the time commitment was significantly lower than in the past. End of the day, the only thing replaying this did for me was convincing me that it’s still one of my favorite RPGs, and one that has aged pretty well since it came out two console generations ago.

2017-07-19

Game Ramblings #42 – Ever Oasis

More Info from Nintendo

Genre: ARPG
Platform: 3DS

TL;DR

Simple, but entertaining combat reminiscent of developer’s previous work on Mana series
Nice city management/maintenance systems based around shop upkeep through resource gathering
Tedious party swap system made questionable by ability to warp back to town at any point

This is the latest game by Grezzo, a studio let by the the creator of the Manas series. It’s easy to see the influences of those games when playing Ever Oasis. Ya, it’s in 3D, and ya there’s a city management layer there, but the core of the game is still killing things and gathering resources in real time. The battle system is a simple affair, based largely on minimizing damage instead of doing flashy combos, and it generally works really well. While there’s definitely some tedious problems when swapping in and out characters for specific skills while exploring, the game largely ends up being a fun affair throughout.

Since this is an ARPG, combat itself is the obvious focus, and it’s here that a lot of the connection to the Mana series shows up. Like that series, the actual combat is pretty simple, in this case having (effectively) only a weak and strong attack button. Ya there’s some basic combos to throw, and some passive skills that can be gained, but the core is based around just laying in some attacks. Where this really separates from its base source is the addition of lock on and dodge rolls, both things that are to be expected in 3D games at this point, but add a lot of life to the game. Particularly in boss battles, it becomes a quick job of learning the handful of attacks, then consistently executing on the appropriate attack->dodge sequences to minimize damage taken, while maximizing how far into your combo you get for the best damage. In that sense, the combat is more about reducing damage to a optimizing DPS while keeping damage to a minimum, rather than just simply wailing on enemies like a lot of ARPGs tend to go. While it is ultimately simple, it’s a hell of a lot of fun, and each little fight has its own nuances to learn.

Killing enemies and finding resources in the environment via this system then feeds back into the second core part of the game, the oasis management. This is a pretty hefty system that players can either dip their toes into for progression purposes, or really get deeply involved in as a main task. This basically breaks down into three sections; finding new residents, opening new shops, and growing the shops through resource gathering. The systems in place here end up in a pretty satisfying loop. You’ll gather a clue about the whereabouts of a new potential resident, find them while out exploring, have them visit your town, hit some checklist of things for them to move in, then in many cases working with the resident to start and grow and maintain the shop. Where I really dug into this was in the eventual use of non-shop characters to maintain my resource gathering. Groups of non-shop owners could be sent out of monster kill or resource gather missions, supplementing the exploration I was doing and allowing for me to rapidly grow my oasis without falling behind on maintaining the shops that already exist.

The resources also supplemented the gear system, which is entirely based around crafting. While there are some options to purchase some base weapons from merchants, the vast majority of gear is crafted via specific resources. This further positively reinforced the need to invest in the shop and resident systems, giving you more potential AI explorers, more reason to keep resources, and most importantly more reason to be out exploring new areas. Unfortunately, the exploration is where the biggest flaw of the game came into place, specific to the party management.

The short version here is that other than the main character you can only bring 2 residents out of the oasis at a time, and the party can only be changed while in the oasis. The problem here is that each character has a skill that allows them to take a specific action in the field. There’s ends up being about 10 different skills that can be used, ranging from resource gathering (mining, digging, etc), traversal (clear cobwebs, hammer through boulders, etc), or puzzle solving (turn into a ball to fit through holes). This means you often have to pick between having practical traversal groups over resource gathering groups. Unfortunately, it’s often the case that you need more than the two skills allowed.

The fact that the party swap mechanic is in place is questionable given the main character has a teleport back to town that can be used at any time. This is further confusing in the fact that the player can then immediately warp back to the exact location they just left once the party swap has been done. While there are benefits to returning to town at any one point (Ex: XP is only gained when returning to town), the party swap could have been something done at any time, eliminating a serious drag on the game pace, while still keeping the other benefits to returning to town in place.

Fortunately the tedium of swapping party members did not present a huge barrier in completing the game. Combat was still fun. The oasis building mechanic and areas around it were still engaging. The fact that I had to actively go after resources to build out my gear set also meant that I was actively engaged in exploring for specific things while out in the field. Overall it seems like a fairly natural progression to the gameplay present in the Mana series, even if there are some things to be smoothed out in the next title.

2017-07-112018-01-13

Shelved It #6 – Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom

More Info from Enigami

Genre: ARPG
Platform: PC
Also Available On: PS4, Xbox One
Main Reason for Shelving: Questionable combat system decisions

I’m starting this one off with a screenshot, because it immediately gets into my theme here of wasted potential. This scene is the first thing you see when you take control of the game, and the scenery you see continues to be at this level of quality. This is a phenomenally beautiful game with good music, a good cast of characters, and an enjoyable, if simple story. When the combat works, it’s also a ton of fun, with great pace, decent combos, and a nice mix of melee and ranged abilities. However, as the game ramps up the difficulty, the combat very quickly goes from extremely fun to occasionally unfair to downright bad, and it’s really a consequence of one main issue; bad resource generation.

I guess first to set the stage, a bit about how the battle system actually works. Base melee attacks are comprised of kicks and punches, which can be comboed together. Ranged attacks are comprised of four sets of elemental attacks that use individual element-based resources. For avoidance, the player can dodge or parry. Parry uses the Tension resource, while dodge does not, which is a somewhat strange decision from a high level point of view, but makes sense in practice given how ineffective dodging is against melee attacks. Finally, Tension can also be used to throw a set of more powerful combo moves, or stored to throw what is effectively an ultimate power move.

So then, let’s start with magic generation since it’s the less frustrating of the two. While fighting in an arena, there’s a color-coded barrier that periodically changes. By standing still, you can activate a recharge. The element color that matches the barrier quickly recharges, while the non-matching elements recharge excruciatingly slow. This presents two main problems. For one, you have to stand still. In a combat system that is heavily based around quick combos and high action, this means that you have to be at high range to even think about recharging. It also means that characters have to be built for all elements in mind, as fights that don’t cycle between the elemental colors you want effectively negate the use of those elements. While yes, non-matching elements recharge, it’s so slow as to be impractical in practice.

Unfortunately, Tension is an even worse resource. It gets generated through melee attacks, but typically requires three or so hits to generate one bar of tension. Unfortunately, this also puts you in range of enemy melee attacks, which means you’ll be in melee range of enemies, requiring heavy use of parry to avoid damage. Unfortunately parry itself requires a full bar of Tension. Generally speaking you can expect an enemy to start a melee chain sooner than you can get in three hits, so you end up generally just having to eat massive amounts of damage. This is compounded by the fact that stronger enemies tend to have some form of stun lock-style maneuver with little to no tell, so you’re hoping that the moves you decide to parry vs. the moves you decide to eat damage end up being the right choice. Worst of all, a successful parry does not give any Tension back, so you can very quickly run dry if you have to dodge two or three hits in a row by the enemy. Changing this alone to give Tension for a successful parry could have saved the battle system, giving an advantage for well timed dodges through the system.

This is compounded by poor choices in the combo maneuvers. Standard combos tend to only use one or two bars of Tension, but also tend to be short range and missable, so the price of using one is more than just the loss of a potential parry. There is also then a super move which uses the entire tension bar, but can easily be interrupted by the enemies you’re facing. When the super move is typically a 5 button chain, it’s simply not worth the price of admission to use them and lose all Tension for potentially no gain. In general, I ended up avoiding use of the combo moves altogether, because they simply were not worth losing the resource that I could be using to parry and avoid taking more damage, particularly when one missed parry could be a 100-0 death chain.

The unfortunate thing is that a handful of changes could have been done to establish the quick pace while making things actually fair and challenging, rather than unforgiving. Outside of the stun locks, enemies just were not challenging, so it felt like all challenge was put into catastrophically fucking the player over. The stun locks should have been outright removed. They’re just not fun, especially when a single miss can be a 100-0 situation. Ideally parry should not be on a shared resource with combo moves, and realistically should not be a on a resource at all. Even if it had its own resource, generating that for a successful parry would encourage well timed moves there instead of button spam. With parry in a better place, and the 100-0 stun locks removed, the enemies could then have their overall difficulty adjusted up to make the skill of the fights all about constantly timing parry properly, rather than a guessing game of when you were about to be screwed the most.

I suppose I’ll close with an example here that basically killed the game for me. The second real main boss that you hit is a multi-stage battle against some mobs, then a sub-boss, then a main boss controlling said sub-boss. In between rounds of killing and reviving the sub-boss, the main guy would throw an orb of magic at me, which could be parried back to deal damage. It was 100% the Ganon baseball fight from Ocarina of Time. Unfortunately, it also meant that I needed tension to win, and the amount I needed inherently ramped up each time I hit the main boss. Because I needed Tension, I had to eat damage, but mechanics started ramping up to include floor traps that slowed my movement and attacks, AoE magic, sub-boss throwing magic spells, etc. In general it became more of a fight where I was dodging constantly until the opportunity for one or two hits arrived, while minimizing the damage I was taking as much as possible. Sure I used healing spells and healing items to survive, but quite frankly the fight was just a chore.

The developer has shown some willingness to respond to feedback, so I’m hoping some things can be changed to ultimately rescue the game, but the things I suspect need changing may be too core to really do too much here. The unfortunate result there is a lot of wasted potential. This is the type of high quality ARPG that you usually don’t see from a small developer, because quite frankly they’re hard to make enough content for in a reasonable time. Unfortunately a few highly questionable decisions in the combat mechanics ultimately ground this game, and prevent it from really reaching the potential it shows.