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Game Ramblings #38 – Ray Gigant

More Info from Wikipedia

  • Genre: JRPG
  • Platform: PS TV / Vita
  • Also Available On: Windows (Steam)

TL;DR

  • Decent battle system, a few changes not typical of the genre w/ move cost and HP regen made battles feel a lot more impactful
  • Battle animation was a clear focus for the visual needs of the game
  • Outside of the battle system, the game is significantly more average
  • Story works, but not much to write home about

Ray Gigant is for the most part a pretty standard first-person dungeon crawler JRPG.  It’s got a normal mapping system that generates as you wander around the dungeons.  The battles are for the most part a standard turn-based affair.  The visual-novel styled story hits a lot of points that are by and large not unusual for a sort of post-apocalyptic games out of Japan.  However, there are a few things that it does that are at least of note, even if they don’t really elevate this to anything more than average for the genre.

The biggest problem that I really had with this game is that it didn’t really do much with the dungeon crawling aspect.   The environments that I was walking through had occasional puzzles (forced teleports, one way entrances, etc), but they were never that challenging.  The art and enemies used for each story arc was the same the entire time, so once you did the first run for an arc, you knew what you were seeing.  The lack of being able to draw on the map was also a deterrent compared to 3DS games like the Etrian Odyssey series, where I could directly put traps and notes on the map as I progressed.  In general it was pretty clear that for as simple as the first-person dungeon crawling was, it was also the area that received the least amount of love, so by the end of a story arc, I was typically doing what I could just to rush through dungeons to get to the good parts.

Since this is a JRPG, the core of the gameplay is in its battle system.  This is where they really do some of the things that are less standard for the genre.  There’s a pretty basic elemental system, as well as differentiation between ground, air, and undead enemies, giving a nice amount of flexibility in how you take advantage of each character’s move set to get through the battles as quick as possible.  This is backed up by everything being based on an Attack Point value, rather than a more typical mana cost.  The AP regenerates by either waiting a turn with a character, or by taking damage, so the harder battles had an interesting play between preserving AP, using heals to keep the party going, then going all out in an attack pattern to get your bulk damage in at once.  The system also resets all HP in between fights, so each fight feels more impactful, rather than becoming more of a resource-management slog that a lot of dungeon crawlers fall into.

The visual treatment of the battles is also worth noting.  All the characters have pretty decent idle animations, both the player and non-player characters.  While it doesn’t extend to the basic attack animations, it adds a nice flourish to the battle while you’re setting up your turn.

This also extends into the Slash Beat system used for a generally boss-only massive special attack.  For reasons known only to the development team, the game turns into a rhythm game at this point, but it works out shockingly well as a distraction in the middle of larger fights.

The core leveling system also takes a bit of an unexpected turn.  There’s no XP to be had at all in the game, and tied to that there are also no distinct item drops.  All fights drop one of three types of core resources, ones used for upgrading gear, ones used for purchasing skills, and ones used for purchasing character levels.  Since these drop from any fight, there’s a really quick feedback loop between the fights you’re engaging in, and the upgrades the characters receive.  It also ends up allowing for highly flexible team builds.  Taking too much damage and need defense? Spend resources into the character’s shield upgrades and get better gear, or use the skill purchase resources to get damage mitigation.  Need more attack damage? Spend resources into the character’s weapons or purchase character levels in physical damage.  Rather than being on the fairly preset path typical of most JRPGs, this feels a lot closer in style to more western RPGs, where gear builds are typically more fine grained.

However, the little details start to show where the game lacks the polish of larger budget titles.  Aside from the environment art repetition mentioned above, the story itself leaves a lot to be desired.  It pretty much follows most character tropes (broody male that doesn’t want to interact with people, airhead girl that doesn’t pay attention to things around her, obviously evil older mustached guy, etc) without going into any interesting territory.  Although there are three distinct story arcs, each one is over within a few hours, so the characters don’t have the time to grow, even if they had been written to do so.  There’s also a subsystem in battles called Parasitism that activates periodically, changing attack cost from AP to character HP.  In general it activates at inopportune times during boss battles, but can be immediately cleared with a Slash Beat attack.  It seems to serve no purpose other than linking into the story and being annoying.

Overall this was fairly average, but a nice distraction from what I’ve been playing recently.  It definitely doesn’t do anything out of the ordinary, and there are far better dungeon crawlers out there for people being introduced to the genre.  However, it scratched the itch for me without getting heavily in the way, and at least had a few nice surprises for me along the way.

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Game Ramblings #22.1 – Forza Horizon 3: Hot Wheels

See original post covering Forza Horizon 3

  • Genre: Open World Racing
  • Platform: Windows 10 (Microsoft Store – Digital Only)
  • Also Available On: Xbox One

This screenshot is the best quick peak I can really give to describe this expansion.  There’s a loop in the back left, some obligatory fire in the right, and an entire mountain covered in looping track in the center.  This is as close as you’ll get to your childhood fantasy of driving a full size Hot Wheels car in a full size Hot Wheels universe, and damn is it a lot of fun.

This is the second expansion released as post-release content for Forza Horizon 3.  The first one, Blizzard Mountain, added a bunch of snow-focused rally events that were solid but didn’t stray too far from the core gameplay established in the base game.  Horizon Hot Wheels throws the idea of the base game out the window.  All of the expectations of a Hot Wheels theme are there.  There’s brightly colored blue and orange track (with the all important little side walls) built in impossible angles to drive around on.  There’s soaring banks and loops that seem impossible to drive on (and yes, you can fall off if you’re going too slow at the top of a loop).  There’s gigantic jumps everywhere, most of the time preceded by a little black boost pad to really get you up to speed.  There’s even an occasional T-Rex there just to make sure things stay grounded in reality.  Despite it all, this still works as a solid Forza experience.

While Horizon has always leaned distinctly more towards arcade than the core Forza titles, it still had a relatively realistic feel to driving, and that’s maintained here.  The best times are still going to be had by paying attention to your breaking lines and properly hitting corners.  However, the track designs greatly changed how I approached racing.  My preferred setup has always been the cockpit view, and the ability to see where I’m going in a standard car on standard roads was never a problem.  What I didn’t take into account is the fact that I may be turning UP, instead of left and right, and that’s the biggest gameplay change that the Hot Wheels expansion brings to the table.  Because of the significant inclusion of things like loops or Immelmann loops, I tended to heavily lean on cars that either had significantly large windshields, or cars that were roll cage only, giving me a lot more ability to see where the corners were approaching in a completely foreign direction from what I was used to.

That said, not everything worked out fantastically.  The Hot Wheels cars themselves were unsurprisingly bad at being cars.  The designs have always been hilariously impractical as actual car designs, but having the cool looking toy and actually trying to drive the cars are two different things.  This is especially bad when you can’t actually see where you’re going:

Yep, that’s a big ol engine block in the way.  The designs that are there are definitely authentic to the originals, but I tended to stick with normal cars when I could just for playability.  The AI also was having some significant problems adjusting to the strange track designs, particularly in high speed banks where turning really wasn’t that important.  I can’t recall more than a handful of times where I really saw the AI ever flip over in the base game, but it was pretty routine to see multiple cars in a race go flying off the track to their doom here.  The AI also felt like it had some adjustments to its rubberbanding since I last played, because the AI was often pulling off impossible feats in acceleration to pass me.  I’ve never driven the Halo Warthog, but I king of suspect it can’t out accelerate a Jaguar F-Type.

However, the things I found wrong were at best minor nitpicks.  They’re immediately forgotten the first time you go off a blind jump through a fire hoop, see the car tilting up, and just watch the sky for seconds at a time not really knowing when you’re going to land.  It’s those kinds of outlandish moments that make this feel like playing in a giant Hot Wheels set, despite still feeling like Forza.

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Shelved It #4 – Persona 5

More Info from Atlas

  • Genre: JRPG
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: PS3

Admittedly this is a shelved it, kinda sorta.  I fully intend to play through the rest of this in some form, even if it involves just turning down the difficulty to get through boss fights.  I’m at a point where my lack of patience for the boss fight structure makes me not care about spending the effort to get through the fights, but the world that was built for this game is so good that I still feel compelled to see it.  However, given I’m bending the rules to move forward, I felt like it was worth writing about this as a normal shelving incident.

I’ve played a lot of the Megami Tensei games, whether it’s the mainline titles, Persona titles, or even tangentially related ones like Tokyo Mirage Sessions. It’s worth noting in particular that Tokyo Mirage is probably the best straight JRPG I played in 2016. The biggest core problem that I typically run into is that while the shared battle system encourages smart planning to chain moves in killing enemies, it simultaneously encourages the enemies to have extremely high damage and the same chaining abilities as a balance point. The end result is a mix of fights where the difference between an extremely easy fight and one where I get one turn wiped is one that doesn’t involve player skill at all.

In general I like the battle system that these games use.  The general setup is that you have a collection of demons with varying stats, strengths, weaknesses, and abilities, as well as core physical attacks.  By taking advantage of the range of capabilities at your disposal, you can maximize damage and knock down enemies through attacking opposition weaknesses.  In doing so, you gain extra attacks for hitting these weaknesses, giving the ability to chain attacks through the entire enemy party.  Once they are all down, the group can attack the entire opposition at once, generally resulting in a complete wipe of the enemies.  This system works fantastically well for your normal trash fights, and I could generally do most trash fights without ever being attacked, let alone taking damage.  First times against new demons up being an interesting puzzle-solving opportunity in figuring out what weaknesses can be exposed, then further fights are usually a quick mop up.  Getting through dungeons generally then becomes limited more by a lack of resources, or a need to go buy more SP items, rather than a need to run away for safety reasons.

Boss fights in the game generally involve the same fight pattern, with the obvious difference of not being able to one shot the fight.  I’d go in with some assumed set of gear that I kind of hoped would be close to functional, then either win with no trouble or wipe immediately to some form of chain attack.  If I wiped, I’d reshuffle gear, make sure I had different Personas equipped, and generally get through the phase where I died.  This cycle would continue until the boss ran out of new mechanics and I won.  My problem with this is that at no point did I feel the challenge was actually in finishing the boss fights.  It was entirely in getting arbitrary gear to block mechanics, and having no trouble once those were covered.  Rather than wipes being something that were caused by lack of skill, wipes were something I fixed by changing my accessories.  The cycle of discovery in this was not something I was doing for fun, but something I was doing because the battle system actively seeks to punish you for not having specific setups.  Once that setup is achieved, the boss fights lose their challenge, and end up being simple rotation fights that are not any different than big number trash fights.

The unfortunate thing is that the world surrounding this is fantastic.  Persona games have always been good at mixing relatively believable characters with the Japanese lore-based fantasy and this one is no exception.  The cast of characters that I had seen thus far covered a pretty wide range of personalities from your jocks to the more reserved, as well as their typical animal that talks stand-in.  The visual style, particularly within the dungeons, is also about as fantastically stylish as you’ll see in a JRPG.  This is backed by another fantastic soundtrack that pretty seamlessly flows between rock and acid jazz to fit the situation.  On its own I don’t know that we’re going to see another game this year that will be so iconic in its visual and audio design as Persona 5.

Ultimately I’m not that surprised I’m at this point.  Since I’ve played this series before, I knew what my problems were going to be with the battle system going in.  I guess if there’s anything I’m surprised about, it’s that I’ve already hit the point where I stopped caring without being anywhere near the finish.