Category: PS5

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Game Ramblings #204 – Clair Obscur: Expedition 33

More Info from Sandfall Interactive

  • Genre: Turn-Based RPG
  • Platform: PS5
  • Also Available On: Xbox Series, Windows

All this game really needs to be an all timer for me is more granular gameplay settings.

….ok lemme back up a bit, but this is truly going to be full on rambling today.

This game is simply exhausting. That isn’t necessarily as negative as it sounds. Really what it comes down to is a need to be focused at all times, and that ultimately leads into both the things that really burned me out on the combat in this game, as well as where I think they are a couple tweaks away from being simply a very good game into something that is truly timeless.

This game’s combat is really focused around actively avoiding damage. That’s something that’s been done before in JRPG-style combat, but it’s incredibly present here. Being hit in boss battles is often 20+% in one hit, and bosses often have entire attack chains, and later bosses in particular have multiple turns of entire attack chains, so you are always in a condition where screwing up your dodge/parry timing at the start of a chain is potentially immediately deadly. The problem for me is in how precise this all needs to be, and that’s totally a me problem.

Being extremely precise in this combat is a factor of a few things:

  • Learning the attack tells is part of it.
  • Leaning the specific timing is then part of it.
  • Quickly processing what type of defense you need to do is then part of it – is it a dodge, jump, or parry? You’ve got 4 buttons to choose from very quickly.
  • Consistently achieving that so you aren’t wasting your turns on healing is then part of it.

To some extent I just generally don’t think their combat tells are that well telegraphed. A lot of the animations do this thing where they run incredibly slow to start, then speed up without notice to do the attack. When you combine inherent input latency, frame latency to the screen, and inherent fatigue this can really quickly get to a point where I was just always a couple frames late on attacks. This is something that I think they got a better handle on later in development because later bosses particularly start making much better use of sound as part of the tells instead of pure animation, but it felt somewhat like too little too late. However, that really was not my core problem.

The issue that I consistently ran into was that whether or not I actually enjoyed combat or whether or not I wanted to spike my controller was generally based on how much sleep my 1 and 3 year olds let me get the night before. The very precise timing here both required very good focus, but also good memorization and reflexes. Those go away quickly with weird sleep patterns. That focus then causes me to mentally get exhausted quickly especially when I am already tired, leading to further degradation of my experience. Normally my instinct is to then reduce difficulty a bit, but this game simply has one setting – story mode difficulty. This does a few things, one of which is aggressively increase the dodge/parry timing window. The other is that it basically cuts damage by what felt like 90%. This is not what I want.

I see an opportunity here for the game to very quickly allow the player to tune combat to what their comfort level is:

  • They clearly have the tech to change incoming damage, so rather than being a core nuke on story mode why not allow the player to tune this a bit more? Frankly this isn’t something I wanted to change at all, but being able to tune this separate from timing would allow for more granular tweaks to my gameplay. This also then inherently opens up an opportunity for players that want a harder base level experience to take more damage without necessarily having to go to expert mode.
  • They also clearly have the tech to change the timing window on dodges and parries. I don’t want to tune the timing window all the way to where story mode landed. Really what I wanted was just a couple frames more to account for what felt to me like local latency that I was constantly fighting against.

Ultimately I suppose I think that timing-based gameplay that the user can’t tweak is bad design. It completely ignores the reality that there is a huge disparity in people’s setups that can add a lot of latency. TV screens are wildly different from each other. Adding amps can add latency. Even just the difference between the development environment on low latency PC screens can wildly throw off balance when moving over to a console. It’s pretty frustrating to not be able to modify this a little more specifically when this is not an entirely new thing. Hell, this is entirely why Guitar Hero has their timing configuration screen!

This is something that I really fight for in games I develop. I really hate on/off settings. If I’m putting tech in to modify settings then sure – have a set of easy values that players can just poke at for preconfigured settings. However, the tech is there to give more granularity so use it. It’s such an easy accessibility win that really lets players find the game that they want to play. My vision of where difficulty should land for me? Same damage as normal difficulty, 3 or 4 frames extra window for dodge/parry. Other players may want low damage but precise timing. Other players may just want to really ramp it beyond where even expert difficulty is. The tech is there, so use it.

The entire reason these ramblings came together like this for me was that as the game went on the fights clearly got longer and the rewards relative to time spent in combat clearly got worse. It turned into a grind where the game in its early stages was not. This even extended into boss fights where I was spending 3 or 4 turns effectively waiting while the bosses just got chains of attacks off that I had to be perfect on or wipe before I could have a chance at healing. It was just too much focus required for me outside of very short periods of time, which under normal circumstances is not a great way to even play a game where skill via repetition and remembering is important.

The reason why this is all so frustrating is because this is a game that is absolutely worth playing for the setting alone. This is such a good game from the story to the characters to the world. When the combat works for me it is simply world class in terms of JRPG-style combat. All of that makes it just incredibly frustrating when the difficulty choice for me is so easy I’m bored or maybe I got enough sleep today? The thing that gives me some hope is that they are clearly already tweaking difficulty. A recent patch made story mode even more forgiving on timing, so they are at least poking at it still. I just hope that they take it a step further and really allow players to refine their experience with tech that is already underlying the existing difficulties.

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Shelved It #135.1 – Fantasian: Neo Dimension

More Info from Square-Enix
Original Ramblings

  • Genre: JRPG
  • Platform: PS5
  • Also Available On: iOS, Xbox Series, Windows, Switch

My previous ramblings about part 1 are still 100% my feelings for the way the first half of this game went. Combat is generally incredibly fun, bosses are solid but can sometimes be a bit one-note, and the visuals work well. I never did get around to part 2 on iOS for whatever reason, but I’d seen some ramblings about it not being as good. I’d seen some ramblings about it having balance issues. I’d seen some ramblings about the open world changes not really working out well. And boy are those still the case.

The point at which you transition into part 2 of this game is incredibly obvious because you are just bombarded with new mechanics. The unfortunate thing for the game is that even though this is the effective director’s cut of the game, they couldn’t really fix these mechanics to be present in the whole game because they are so story related.

The first major one of these is the change from a linear game to an open world game. The end of part 1 has you having seen at least most of the major locations in the game, so structurally this makes sense. You’re revisiting old locations for new reasons – finding new items, searching out new people, etc. A lot of the progression through this section feels pretty arbitrary in terms of discovery, but that would be fine in isolation. It just doesn’t work out for the gameplay. Besides going to locations that you’ve already seen and ransacked, you get into awkward mixes of enemies that are at lower levels and enemies that now feel out of place from being high level. It ends up exacerbating what is already some weird balance to really slow down the pace of leveling in a negative fashion.

You are also granted access to the growth map system. This is essentially a skill tree tied to a story-important item for each character. The problem is sort of three-fold here. It feels like it was put in place to address power curve problems past level 30, rather than simply adjusting the power curve of core leveling to be better. It also comes in per-character, so you end up in places where some characters just feel underpowered relative to the rest of the party, relegating them to very specific uses. Finally, the system just doesn’t really give you any points to start with so it’s all based on growth from level 35 on, basically leaving you at an introduction point with no gains. Another mechanic that comes in around this time is gear upgrading. Again, it’s a system that feels like it was added to assist in the power curve above level 30 but because the items tied to the system only come in with the later game enemies and treasures you kind of can’t take advantage of it without grinding. This again continues to exacerbate balance issues.

So the thing that keeps coming up here is balance, and that’s tied to one simple change. Once your characters are past level 35, they gain less XP against “weaker” enemies. Again, in isolation this is not a huge deal and a ton of games do things along these lines. The problem as it were is that the levels of enemies in this section of the game just do not correspond to their power. At the point I shelved this, I was around level 40 going up against bosses that were around level 38 and they were doing AoE attacks that were doing 90+% of my health pool to the entire party in one attack. This just ends in a train of healing that is incredibly boring at best and generally just a slow slog to demise at worst. Assuming you then beat the boss, it’s “low level” so you get almost no XP from it. It’s all effort, no reward, and because of this very same system the walk to the boss also earns almost no XP because the trash are similarly low level, so even the fun Dimengeon mass fights don’t feel worth the effort. It ends up making the gameplay incredibly awkward in that you go to higher level areas to grind, then warp back to low level areas to progress the story even though you are “too strong”. It just does not work out.

Ultimately I suppose that is my problem. I wouldn’t mind a bit of grinding if I felt like I was being rewarded with progress, but part two gets you to a place where you’re just beating your head against the wall for small rewards to get past things that by level are “weak” compared to you, despite them obliterating the party. I just don’t have the time or patience for that anymore. There’s a gem of a game here if a few small changes are made – don’t reduce XP for weak enemies, increase the levels of bosses to make them “correct”, make gear upgrade items more common, grant a bunch of SP when gaining access to the growth map – but this just could not stick the landing. Given the potential shown in the original release of part 1 it’s really just kind of a bummer.

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Game Ramblings #202 – Stellar Blade

More Info from Shift Up

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: PS5
  • Also Available On: PC

I’m not sure what I thought this game was and admittedly I was playing this entirely because it’s an Unreal Engine title on PS5, which is relevant to the fact that I’m largely working on console porting projects right now. In my head it was going to be slightly hornier Nier Automata, and I guess that isn’t entirely wrong. However, it’s generally got a much more deliberate combat pace. It’s got segments of ranged combat that feel far more like Doom 3. The boss fights are full of spectacle and challenge without feeling unfair. Frankly, this ended up being a far better game than I was expecting it to be.

A lot of what I’m going to say probably isn’t going to be much of a surprise for this type of game. When combat works the game is phenomenal, but it starts to fall apart when they throw multiple enemies at you. This has been the case for me in pretty much any melee action RPG – God of War, Ghost of Tsushima, Breath of the Wild, etc. So many of these games work great in singular combat, but the systems just don’t scale up to multiple enemies. They try to UX their way through it with off-screen enemy indicators and things of that nature, but it really doesn’t work well because the enemies all just kind of attack when they want to, so it becomes dodge and parry spam with very few windows to attack. However, the upside of this is that fights like that don’t generally happen in pivotal moments and they start to give you so many tools to knock out multiple things quickly that it becomes much rarer as the game goes on. At that point, combat then gets into the big 1-on-1 fights where the game really shines.

The core tools at your disposal in a 1-on-1 situation are your two levels of melee attacks, parrying, and dodging. I’m going to ignore that you have guns because they are largely irrelevant to boss fights. The big solo fights end up being an incredible back and forth. You do a bit of damage, dodge/parry your way through an enemy attack pattern, then rush back in for the next set of damage. The style of it reminds me in a lot of ways of a slightly more frantic and over the top version of the Ghost of Tsushima 1-on-1 fights.

What these segments do is put a ton of trust in the player to learn and recognize attack patterns. Tells on basic attacks are super obvious, letting the player really lean into timing things properly. Larger attacks are preceded by color coded UI elements, but they aren’t things that can just be button spammed. For example, a blue enemy attack requires the player to dodge forward to avoid large damage, but if they don’t time it properly they will just eat the damage to the face. Some of these are warnings several seconds ahead of time, so it also really forces some patience into the combat pace where the player just should not be doing anything but paying attention to dodge timing. It’s easy during all of this to get tunnel vision on just doing damage, but the game will absolutely 100-0 your health if you get out of control so pulling back on damage in favor of a patient approach does wonders, and in practice it feels so good when you get chains of parries/dodges right to be rewarded with big damage opportunities.

The other part that really worked into this was how well gearing worked into combat. Traditionally I am awful at melee combat timing. However, the game has gear that extended the timing window for these to allow me to play it a bit more safe. Some gear gave me more shield to allow for a bit of safety. Some gear gave me back health on kills to allow trash segments to just flow better. However, the game absolutely gives you tools if you want to be a glass cannon. Some gear gives huge damage increases in favor of also receiving more damage. Some gear will only allow you to get increased damage if your HP is high. Basically, they give you a bunch of tools to play with and let you mold combat into somewhere you’re comfortable being based on your play style, but it all blends so well into the core set of capabilities that they developed from the start.

The rest of the game kind of just exists but worked well enough to push me forward. The overall plot is a pretty standard post-apocalyptic Earth scenario that isn’t frankly that different from a Horizon Zero Dawn where humanity created smart ass robots that inevitably realized that humans are the problem. Exploration and side quests exist as a way to get more upgrade materials, but for me they were largely there for me to find more optional boss encounters to go enjoy. The environment is mostly the same two sets of desert environments from Nier for exploration and city environments from The Last of Us for linear plot segments but both work well to push their style of game. Basically, the wrappings around combat don’t necessarily boost the game, but they also don’t drag it down.

I completely get if the main character’s outfits turn you off of the game because it can get pretty egregious with some of the options. However, for me it ultimately ended up feeling like an obvious marketing choice than anything else. Once I was in the core of combat, the outfit I had on didn’t matter to me and my focus was on the really good combat in front of me. There is a phenomenal action combat loop here that deserves to be brought into a different setting that isn’t blatantly sexualized, because in a lot of ways it felt like it was cracking the code of making parry/dodge based combat work for someone like me who is typically awful at these games without getting rid of possibilities for people who want to just glass cannon through the game with a completely different play style.

It’s pretty easy to read what I wrote and go “this sounds good, but not great” and that’s probably an accurate description. However, I was expecting the combat to also be good but not great and it so completely exceeded my expectations there. This one just ended up being a huge surprise.