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Game Ramblings #32 – Tales of Berseria

More Info from Bandai Namco

  • Platform: PS4
  • Genre: JRPG
  • Also Available On: Steam, PS3 (Japan Only)

The Tales of series has been going on for a long time.  Most people’s familiarity with it is directly tied with the GameCube release of Symphonia, but that’s just one of many main line titles in the series.  Berseria in a lot of ways feels like a final act in the PS3 game line and a natural progression of the PS3 titles starting with Xillia.  With this being a direct universe prequel to Zestiria this makes quite a bit of sense.  However, there’s been a number of changes that have pushed the gameplay ever further towards a direct action RPG style.

The biggest high level difference long time Tales of players will notice is that this story is decidedly darker than your typical titles in the series.  The surface level of the story is very direct with this in that you are playing the bad guys.  At its core, your group is basically out to destroy the world, even if their motives are somewhat more selfish than that.  However, beyond the surface layer, there are a number of themes that play on negative psychological aspects that I was surprised to see in such detail.  All that said, the progression and ultimate redemption of the party in the final act is worth the pay off.  Players of Zestiria will also connect a lot of dots about how the game’s shared universe works, and the return of a handful of characters from the previous title adds a nice layer of depth to the universe, even though the thousand year gap between the two games means they are largely disconnected from each other.

At a gameplay level, things are largely as they have been for a while, with some key differences once the battle system is reached.  Like Zestiria and the Xillia titles, there is no distinction between dungeons and a larger scale overworld.  Everything is interconnected using realistic scale environments, so moving between towns, fields, and dungeons is fairly direct.  The environments are scattered with non-random battles that start with interacting with enemies.  There are also your standard assortment of treasure chests, as well as the return of herbs and item spheres that can be collected around.  The only new addition to item pick ups are Katt souls, which serve as a secondary currency for unlocking some specific chests largely filled with outfits and visual accessories.  The end result is that if you’ve played a Tales of  game on PS3 in the last 5 years, you know what you’re getting into here.

Battles are where the gameplay has changed the most.  Pretty much every Tales of game in the past has had standard attacks on one face button, and Artes attacks using a secondary resource on another face button.  This is all gone.  For one thing, all attacks are now set by the player across the four face buttons based on a position within a combo chain.  All attacks and artes now using a single resources that determines how many attacks can be chained in a single combo.  The resource stack grows by applying negative conditions to enemies or properly timing dodges, and shrinks when negative conditions are applied to the player.  With 3+ resources available, the player can also activate a special overdrive-like mode or special attacks, depending on the character, giving a boost to damage as well as a significant heal.  Because of the constant back and forth in changing the active combo length, as well as the layout of the custom combos, the game feels very distinctly like a 3D fighting game in battle.  While these titles have always been very action-focused, the changes here have pushed the game in a direction that is a distinctly fresh take on the gameplay, even if a lot of the core pieces are very recognizable to returning players.

Also of note to the core gameplay loop are some changes to the gearing system.  Stats are still very much there, but the most important aspect to gear is a mastery stat.  Every piece of gear has a mastery stat, which can be anything from flat stats (+x Defense, etc), to type-specific increases (+x% damage to undead), to very specific effects around status conditions (-x% time to applied poisons).  Once an item mastery has been earned, it is permanently applied to the character.  Because of this change, I was typically wearing whatever gear was not mastered, rather than whatever gear was the best.  By the end of the game, the summation of all these individual masteries was easily more important than changes in stats between two pieces of gear, so I was constantly searching both in shops as I got to them, as well as for treasure chests in all the environment areas for new gear that I hadn’t seen before.

Given that we haven’t heard anything about the next Tales of title, my assumption is that they’re now digging in to get going on the true next-gen progression of the series.  While Zestiria and Berseria were on PS4, they were direct ports from PS3 titles released at the same time.  Given the departure that the PS3 titles were from some of the past games, I can only assume that we’re going to see a similar change in gameplay for whatever the next title will be.  However, it feels like the changes have already started here.  The action focus of the battle system is a very distinctly new feel to the series, even if a lot of the core pieces feel the same.  Because of the constant healing and changes to gear mastery, the game felt more focused than ever on the core combo-based action, rather than the number crunching typical of most JRPGs.  Like Final Fantasy 15, it feels like they’re moving further away from what started the series’ popularity, but like FF 15, I’m also pretty confident it’s for the best.  Technology has progressed to the point where we can have the grand adventures, as well as fast paced gameplay, and I feel like we’re only scratching the surface of where this series will be going in the future.

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Game Ramblings #31 – Gravity Rush 2

More Info from Sony

  • Platform: PS4
  • Genre: Action/Adventure

In a lot of ways, Gravity Rush 2 is entirely a sequel by the numbers.  It’s taken both the good and bad of its predecessor and given us what is essentially a larger, more colorful package with a new story.  To some extent the game felt like a couple of separate games plugged together in the middle, with a nice epilogue to round things out.  Ultimately though, this melding of everything worked out and made the game worth playing.

The first thing that fans of the first game will notice is that this game is fantastically colorful.  The new city of Jirga Para Lhao is a huge step up from Hekseville in presentation alone.  Soaring through the sky just running through the city is still the best part of this game, and it’s absolutely more beautiful than ever.  The idea of everything being bigger and brighter sort of becomes the theme of the changes.  Rather than the flat upgrade system of the previous game, there are now non-stat ability upgrades AND talismans, acting like customizable add-ons for Kat.  Rather than just one set of powers, there are now two new forms that supplement Kat’s ability set, giving much needed to the combat system.  Rather than just running around one city, you now get two (as well as a pretty substantial side trek after the first time the credits roll).  Basically, a lot of what made the Vita original so enjoyable is all there, but with some added layers on top of it to expand it into a more typical AAA experience.

However, it’s this idea of bigger and better of the original, rather than better for the sake of being better where things started to sour for me.  In some ways, this sequel feels like they didn’t really learn anything from the original game.

Although entirely due to the nature of the gravity shifting, the camera is still dead awful.  This is combined with boss battles that often lose a noticeable horizon to result in combat that can often be at best disorienting.  The camera also tended to deal with blockers extremely poorly, resulting in Kat disappearing and losing complete sense of direction any time I was near a wall or large enemy.  It’s also worth mentioning that motion controls haven’t really translated that well from the Vita to PS4, though they are entirely optional.  However, using just the right analog to control the camera results in a lot of the lack of precision problems typical of action games on console.  The combination of poor camera and somewhat finicky controls resulted in combat situations again being my least favorite part of the game.

The challenge areas and climb through the World Pillar also make their return in this game, and like the original, they often go on way longer than are necessary.  These areas basically exist to remove core mechanics from the game in order to present players with different gameplay.  However, rather than feeling challenging, they often simply slow the game’s pace down, as there are more than enough other powers to get through the game safely.

Like the first game, the story was what kept me going through the game.  However, this one was somewhat disjointed.  My best non-spoiler description of the story is that it felt like it was supposed to be comprised of at least 2 games the length of the original, with the epilogue chapter being absolutely important, but not large enough to be a third on its own.  The TL;DR here is that the first half of the game is in the new city, the villain is defeated, and you’re off to Hekseville.  The second half of the game has a seemingly new villain, and only at the very end of this portion, and specifically in the credits, are the connections to the first half of the sequel, as well as HUGE revelations to the first game and anime revealed.  The two halves have their ties, but ultimately felt like it was planned as two Vita-sized games that were squeezed together to fit into a PS4 game.

The strangest thing here though is that after the credits roll, the game was not remotely complete.  There’s an entire multi-hour epilogue to the game that wraps up the series’ story, as well as reveals the entirety of Kat’s back story prior to the first game’s start.  Fans of the series absolutely must complete this, as it completes the entire saga across both games.  However, because it wasn’t tied to any of the core story, it kind of exists on the side and can easily be missed if you turn off the game after the credits roll for the first time.

In the end, this was a strange game.  Anything that was a plus or minus in the first is still here, so you kind of know what you’re going into if you’ve played the first game.  The gameplay definitely has some fundamental problems with pacing, controls, and camera, but it’s still a fun game at its core.  The story itself is also great, but feels like it was three independent ideas that were shoved into one game to complete the series.  Given how neatly everything was wrapped up, I suspect this was the last we’ll see of Kat’s adventures, but if it is the end, they did a great job wrapping up the story in a complete fashion.

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Game Ramblings #30 – Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse

More Info from WayForward

  • Platform: PS4
  • Genre: Metroidvania
  • Also Available On: 3DS, Fire TV, Steam, Wii U, Xbox One

The Shantae series has been around for a while, whether as one of the most valuable Game Boy Color games, experimenting with digital distribution on the DSi, or getting Kickstarted for its latest entry.  This time around I played the third in the series, Shantae and the Pirate’s Curse.  As the series has evolved, it’s generally followed a Metroidvania style, with some key twists to stray a bit from the formula.

One of the key differences typical of the series was that Shantae gained Genie transformations, rather than the more typical weapon upgrades of the Metroid series.  However, that went away for Pirate’s Curse for some relatively valid story reasons.  This one uses the more typical gear upgrade path, but with a bit more themed variety.  Since this is ostensibly a game involving pirates, the gear upgrades end up being things like a pirate hat to slow falling, a cannon to allow multi-jump, or pirate boots to allow for speed boosts.  It all ends up feeling much like the Metroid upgrade path, with a very appropriate theme for the game.

Where this game highly differs from the typical style of the genre is that it is level based.  Each piece of gear is found within a dungeon hidden within a themed level.  The typical path is to get to a new level, explore and do some story quests to open up the dungeon, then head on in for an upgrade and a boss fight centered around the new piece of gear.  In a lot of respects, the game feels like it brings in a very Zelda-esque focus there, where the boss fight is clearly themed around the particular item you got.  There is some back and forth going to levels that were already finished for side quests and upgrades, particularly in picking up the effective replacement for health tanks, as some are out of reach without later upgrades.  Overall while the setup is very familiar to the Metroidvania genre, the breakup across different themed levels brings a nice change of pace to each new area as you get to it.

In general this is one of the mechanically better Metroidvanias in recent years that I’ve played.  Traversal is rapid, but easy to control.  Jumping feels extremely tight, and mixes in some of the Mario-style jump height differences based on how long the button is held.  The upgrades all serve noticeable purposes in enhancing the skill set available to get around the environment.  Generally speaking, the core melee attack is going to be the 90% usage, but there’s also upgrades available for it, so there’s a noticeable power curve as the game goes on.  The bosses are all pattern based, and by and large have some amount of challenge, but are fair and typically obvious in their weak points.  Despite its relatively short length (avg 7.5 hours), the time spent in the game will go fast due to its fun play.

All that said, the last dungeon nearly made me shelve the game entirely, and did stop me from completing a 100% run.  The tl;dr here is that its a multi-level dungeon with each level having its own mechanic to complete.  However, they were more often than not based around memorization, rather than pure skill.  One level had me using the boots dash to traverse across a set of spike traps.  Due to the speed of traversal, I basically couldn’t see where I was going, or which path was the valid one until I hit a wall and died.  Another level had me using the multi-jump cannon and destroying blocks in my way as I went through another series of spike traps.  However, there were a few spots where I couldn’t see ahead, and basically had to blindly jump and die until I shot out my perfect path to get through.  Once I got to the boss, everything was fine, but for a game that had to that point been so skill based in its traversal, it felt like a really strange turn right at the end of the game.  My as spoiler free as possible recommendation here is to finish the 100% run as much as possible before entering the last dungeon, as you need to be there to get the true ending.

In the end, the game was still worth playing, especially for fans of Metroidvania style games.  It’s mechanically sound, has a good story and soundtrack, and is visually fantastic.  Given the recent rarity of the genre outside the indie space, you could definitely do worse than to give this series a try.