Category: ARPG

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Game Ramblings #33 – The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages

More Info from Wikipedia

  • Platform: Game Boy Color
  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Also Available On: 3DS Virtual Console

I figured it was about time to start getting into the Zelda spirit again.  I’ve always been a big fan of the portable Legend of Zelda titles, going back to getting Link’s Awakening as a pack-in with my original Game Boy.  Back when the two Oracle titles came out, I made the effectively random call to buy Seasons, and never really made it back around to playing Ages.  With the upcoming release of the Switch and Breath of the Wild, I figured it was a good time to get back to it.

As classic as it is, the base gameplay of the top down Zelda games has always been pretty much the same, and Ages is certainly no different in that regard.  You’ve still got a pretty decent sized overworld, with movement restrictions slowly opening up as you gain more items.  Combat is still simple, with four-direction sword attacks and a series of combat items that can also be used for damage.  However, Ages does have some of the more interesting takes on items in the series.  Rather than a hook shot to pull you to places, you have a switch hook that switches the locations of Link and the object he hits, giving an effective reposition mechanic against both enemies and environmental obstacles.  Rather than a bow and arrow, you gain a seed shooter, which can shoot a variety of seeds with different effects, and importantly can shoot in eight directions.  And then there’s the Cane of Somaria which….makes boxes (yes, it’s actually useful).

Like Link to the Past’s Dark World, there’s a second form of the world, this time centered around a past/present time travelling mechanic.  Initially the two versions of the world simply act as a way to enter individual dungeons in specific time areas.  However, as Link gains more ability to freely travel through time, puzzles start spanning across both time zones as plants grow, islands move, and later generations of people flourish.  There’s also a number of spots where actions in the past influence changes in the world of the present, giving some of the better logic puzzles that any of the games, both 2D and 3D, have had in the series.

Given its age, this game has really aged quite well.  For as good as the 2D Zelda games have typically been, I would be pretty confident putting the Oracle games at least close in quality to A Link to the Past, and certainly better in quality than the rest of the 2D entires.  Even now the game is absolutely worth playing, with both high quality gameplay, and a well put together world.  Visually it’s pretty obviously an old Game Boy game, but the emphasis the development team put on smart color use and clean sprite designs has meant that everything still looks pretty damn good to this day.

Do yourself a favor and pick this up on the 3DS Virtual Console, as well as both Oracle of Seasons and Link’s Awakening DX.  If you’re looking to scratch that 2D adventure itch, you aren’t going to find better than these.

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Game Ramblings #27 – Final Fantasy XV

More Info from Square Enix

  • Genre: ARPG/JRPG
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Xbox One

This is a very special game.  It may not be the kind of Final Fantasy a lot of people would have wanted, but as usual Square Enix has put in all the effort typical of their top effort titles.  While some performance and balance issues show the scars of its long development cycle, the game they have created is easily one of, if not the best RPG I’ve played this year.

It’s been a long time since I universally liked the story and characters of a Final Fantasy game.  There have been high points in most of the recent games, but the last few sets of FF characters have always had at least a couple people that just annoyed the hell out of me the entire time, even when the stories weren’t complete nonsense.  In FF XV’s case, this is the exact opposite.  Right from the very beginning you start off with the entire effective party, and the growth of the group as a team, and the interactions between them as they go on their adventure are fantastic.  I so wish I could spoil things here, because there were moments that surpassed the death of FF7’s Aerith for me in their emotional impact.  Also of note, the use of the song Stand By Me as both the intro and credits scene could not have been a more perfect choice to end the misadventure of this crew.

Now that said, the battle system is definitely rubbing a lot of people the wrong way.  It’s been since FF9 that we have seen the same battle system used twice in a row.  That game was the end of the long-used ATB system.  FF10 used a more traditional turn-based system.  FF11 and 14 were MMOs, with 12 using a very much MMO-styled real-time system.  13 then followed those all up with an ATB-like system, with some key changes in how it queued up events.

15 has thrown all that away, going for easily the most action-focused battle system they’ve ever done in a mainline title.  Gone are menus, gone are spells, gone are waiting times between turns.  In this one you have an attack button, a pseudo-dodge button, a warp button, and a jump button.  The combination of those actions, and the ability to switch between weapons and a handful of element-based attacks gives you your entire range of functionality.  You only control one character, with the other three members of the party being AI-based, mostly ending up being support characters by the end of the game.  Rather than the skill of the game being asset management, this brings timing to the forefront as the main skill to the game.  The primary dodge and attack buttons are both hold to execute, so attack chains don’t require button spamming, and dodge can be held to automatically avoid a lot of simple attacks.  In the end, the flow of battle is dictated more by which button you are holding down, rather than the more frantic button combo systems that a lot of ARPG games use.  The closest comparison I can really give is the Tales of series, but even then I don’t think it’s an adequate comparison to the system in place here.

FF XV has also shown quite a lot of western influence, particularly with the Elder Scrolls series, in the design of the overall gameplay flow.  If you were to just rush the story, I suspect this game could be easily completed in 15 hours or less.  However, the overarching story is that the group is on a road trip, and the game definitely plays to that.  Rather than fast travelling around the world, the group initially drives around the world, radio blaring, going from town to town.  Each town and rest stop typically acts as a quest hub, giving a number of general side quests, as well as typically more challenging creature hunts.  There are also fishing areas scattered around the world, and a number of hidden dungeons to explore for extra treasure.  In doing this, you can easily spend the bulk of your time playing this game just hopping around the world doing absolutely everything but the main story, giving lots of longevity to the game outside of the typical story loop.

So, in the end, this game and its universe are easily something I would recommend.  There is also some good additional content that will help give light to some of the world’s backstory in the Kingsglaive movie and Brotherhood anime.  That said, the core of the universe is definitely the game, and it’s a good one.  It’s likely to go down as one of the most controversial games in the Final Fantasy series, simply due to its departure from the style of the past, but I think Square has made a good decision here in reestablishing that Final Fantasy are at their core extraordinarily well produced games of any style at their core, and not just RPGs that have stick to a set of conventions to get by.

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Shelved It #2 – Dragon Quest Swords: The Masked Queen and the Tower of Mirrors

More Info from the Dragon Quest Wiki

  • Genre: On-Rails Action / RPG
  • Platform: Wii
  • Shelved At: End of Chapter 5 of 8
  • Reason for Shelving: JRPG grind without the JRPG gameplay

This is actually a fairly curious game.  It’s absolutely a Dragon Quest game through and through.  All your standard enemies are there, the character design is very obviously tied to the series, and the world itself is the fairly standard fantasy-based setting typical of the series.  However, rather than being a JRPG, it’s effectively styled as an on-rails shooter, but with sword swinging instead of guns.

Going into the game, I was kind of suspicious the gameplay would work at all.  However, they were fairly smart with the design of the game to take advantage of the Wii controls.  Everything input-related uses the Wii Remote to activate actions.  Swingingthe Remote activates sword swipes, while jabbing it will stab directly at enemies.  Holding the B button activates a shield that can be moved around with the pointer functionality of the Remote.  Movement is on the D-Pad, and setting a swipe focus point is on the A button.  Overall it’s a very intuitive control scheme, and works fairly well.  The main downfall is the swipe functionality itself.  Since this game predates the release of the Wii MotionPlus and subsequent Wii Remote Plus, the actual accuracy of your swipes is fairly low, leading to some frustration in points where you need to be fairly specific with the angle of your swipes.

At the point where I ended up shelving the game, I had just gotten through a boss fight where I was fighting a constant refreshed party of 6 minions and the boss itself.  Individually they weren’t a huge issue, but taking out the minions efficiently to concentrate on the boss required much more precision with the swipe mechanic than I could reasonably achieve.  My closest comparison is really something along the lines of The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, where swipe direction was also important, but was easy to manage throughout.

While in general this wasn’t a huge issue, boss fights became a bigger issue.  In most on-rails games, I tend to expect that increases in player skill are the driving factor in the difficulty curve of the game.   I would typically be getting better at the game to chase new high scores, or play at higher difficulties, but the NPC strength is relatively fixed. However, in this case, the player is also leveling in a fashion typical of JRPGs, as well as buying and upgrading your typical set of gear.  All that being said, it felt like the game was pushing me to grind in order to progress, rather than simply being better at the game.  The last boss I faced was effectively a health wall, and the damage I was doing was barely lowering his health for the amount of hits I was having to do.  While the high score system typical of these games was there, the scores necessary for the highest rewards were easily eclipsed via new gear or higher levels, which is pretty atypical of the genre.

Overall this is at least a curious experiment for Square to have pulled off.  While it definitely has its problems, it’s an entertaining side note in the Dragon Quest series, and one of the more curious uses of on-rail mechanics that I’ve seen.  While it’s probably not going to necessarily satisfy either JRPG or rail shooter fans, at the right price, it’s the type of game you can keep coming back to for short rounds, if for no other reason than to chase that illusive high score again.