Category: JRPG

2018-01-132018-01-13

Game Ramblings #62 – Xenoblade Chronicles 2

Genre: JRPG
Platform: Switch

TL;DR

Visually spectacular JRPG filled with large monsters and even larger environments
Overly complicated level and gearing systems that could have worked much better if the UI wasn’t so frustrating
Solid battle system that has been smartly streamlined since the previous titles, but still has late-game issues with overuse of one-hit mechanics

I’m going to open with what nearly had me shelving the game, because it was the same type of weird late-game design pattern that plagued both Xenoblade and Xenoblade X. For reference, I was at 84 hours in and on the final sort of boss run before the end of the game. That late into the game is not the kind of place you want to turn the design on its head.

Throughout the game, I had basically setup my party to where I was a DPS/off heal, one of my characters was a full time tank, and my third was rotating between pure DPS and mixed tank/heal, depending on my needs. Basically, the main character was in no way setup to actually BE a tank, but that’s what the end game expects of you.

The TL;DR without spoilers is that your entire party gets taken away, and two of the main blades that you develop through the story get taken away, leaving the main character on his own to fight a chain of 1v1 boss battles, without the two blades I’d built my gameplay style around, and needing me to scrounge together what blades I had to try and bullshit my way through the boss fights. Looking on Gamefaqs and looking at my roster I barely had what I needed leaving me with one choice; bullshit around mechanics to get through it.

I threw on two hammer tanks that have a shield move containing major block percentage and health regen, swapped between the two of them only attacking while the shield was down and the other blade was recharging, and made the fight trivial. Was it fun? No. Was it doable? Yes. That right there is the main problem. And that’s to say nothing of the final boss, which had some fairly RNG-heavy mechanics that made an otherwise easy fight into a dance of potential instant death.

So with that said, if I’d have known 20 hours ago what to prepare for to avoid having to do that, is this a good game? More or less, but it’s definitely not without its issues.

Xenoblade 2 follows the pattern from the previous titles where it looks way better than most games on the platform, even in portable mode.

Like its predecessors, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a large scale JRPG with huge environments, too many different systems that go into the character’s power, and a somewhat shoddy UI. It uses the same battle system as the others where it’s technically in real-time, but more or less plays like a turn-based RPG in practice. However, it’s streamlined a few things for better overall flow. The biggest problem that it has is that it doesn’t really attempt to fix the problems with its predecessors, instead adding more systems that didn’t feel needed.

While not everything is this large, the scale of the top enemies continues to impress.

Since it is the core of the game, the battle system is the thing that made XC2 last as long as it did, despite some of the problems I mentioned in the opening. The battle system in place is very much a JRPG-style one, but more in the vain of Final Fantasy 12. The player has real-time movement, but doesn’t attack while in active movement. Each player character (driver) is joined by a passive character (blade) and work as a pair in battle. However, it is a deep system, and I’d argue very nearly too complicated for most players. I’m bolding a few things here for reference of how many things are in place. Basic attacks happen automatically, charging up driver artes. Successful driver artes charge up blade arts. Successful blade artes can be chained to apply elemental orbs that can then be used to extend the length of a chain attack. Driver and blade artes are tied to swapping out blades, which can be done in real-time. If this all sounds complicated, it is, but it’s all very easy to activate thanks to some smart changes to the battle system.

Previous Xenoblade titles used a scrolling list to activate artes, so there was always a bit of a fight of scrolling around in menus to activate things. XC2 changes this to be much easier. Blade swapping is on the d-pad. Driver artes are on B/X/Y face buttons. Blade artes are activated with A for the player character, and LZ/RZ for party members, then use small quick time events for success chance. Chain attacks are activated with the Start button, and then use the blade artes for damage. Basically, if there’s a button around, it’s used for an attack. There’s no scrolling, no in and out of menus, no looking around to figure out what’s going on. It’s all extremely fluid, so even with the huge amount of things going on, it’s easy to do what you need to do.

This is backed by continued fantastic variety in what can be done with artes. There’s a whole mix of artes based around damage bonuses for hitting at certain angles. Heals can be either direct for healer blades, or incidental potion spawners for attackers. Tanks have a variety of threat-generation and damage mitigation for good back and forth timing play. Reaching into blades, a wide range of elemental types means that running a wide variety in your party will benefit your ability to maximize damage in any situation.

Despite everything going on, the rhythm of the fights always feels really good. Swapping between blades is fast and used often. Both driver and blade artes charge quickly and always feel impactful. Chain attacks offer a nice way to interrupt the enemy flow, and also offer the player a fun dance in trying to burst elemental orbs and extend the chain attack. Basically, the act of fighting is the best part of the game and will keep you coming back to do all the little side things that can be found.

Blades come in a large variety, though they do have some hilarious outfits.

However, when you start getting into the rest of the game systems, XC2 starts to feel like a game that has added systems just for the sake of adding them. This is best illustrated by all of the different forms of experience-based things that have to be gained to truly increase your party’s power.

There’s core XP from kills that goes into the character levels like most JRPGs. However, there’s also rested XP earned by completing quests and other side items that can only be earned by resting at an inn.
Killing enemies also earns SP, which is a currency for drivers to apply to passive skills, such as core stat boosts, ability to use certain abilities at the start of battle, etc.
Killing enemies ALSO earns WP, which is a currency earned per-blade to increase the level of the driver artes tied to individual blade types.
Every single blade has a unique affinity chart that has to be leveled up. This can be done in any number of ways, whether it be kills on specific enemies, collecting things in the environment, completing blade-unique side quests, and more. However, you have to go into the affinity chart of the blade to activate things they earn; it isn’t automatically activated when earning is complete.
Trust can be earned by completing quests and battling with blades. For most blades, trust is used to unlock new tiers in their affinity charts.
Some blades have multiple forms, which each need to be leveled separately.
For those who don’t care about spoilers, there is a unique leveling scheme:

Spoiler

One driver can also be a blade, but can only level one of those forms at a time.

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One of the main characters also uses an artificial Blade, which as all the normal leveling systems, but also has a unique minigame that has to be completed in order to earn a unique currency that goes into core upgrades specific to these blade forms.
Part way through the game, the player inherits a mercenary guild, opening an option to send out unused blades on missions to earn XP, rewards, and affinity chart leveling. It basically becomes mandatory for leveling more than just your core set of blades.

If all of this doesn’t make your head spin, then you’re probably as much of a JRPG fan as I am. However, the problem is that these systems are all in separate menus found in separate places, and often interrupted by multi-second loads. At best it can be described as clunky, and really adds a lot of unnecessary hassle to a bunch of systems that probably could have been largely combined into passive earning through battle.

It’s a good thing the banter is fun, because some comedy breaks are needed after dealing with endless menus.

That said, the story kept me coming back, even when I wanted to shelve the game near the end. Although playing the first title isn’t necessary, the end of XC2 does tie the two games together nicely. The game’s overarching story is also fairly cliche as far as JRPGs go (boy finds girl, wants to help her achieve her goal, drama, betrayal, etc), but the interplay between characters is generally entertaining enough to rise above it. This is further extended in the return of the Heart-to-Heart segments, where specific drivers and blades act out little skits to the side of the story. It’s a lot like the Tales of series in that regard, but it’s always a nice little break from the rest of the game.

In general, Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a tough game for me to place. I enjoyed the hell out of a lot of it, but the last 10 hours of the game were frustrating as hell for no good reason. I enjoyed the depth of the systems in place, but they make it hard for me to recommend to anyone but core JRPG fans, and the menu systems backing them were clunky as hell. If there’s any single thing I can point at that anyone would enjoy, it’d be the soundtrack. It’s phenomenal. If nothing else, this is another point that Nintendo had one hell of a 2017, giving us one of the best JRPGs of the year, warts and all.

2017-10-15

Game Ramblings #55 – Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga + Bowser’s Minions

More Info from Nintendo

Genre: JRPG
Platform: 3DS
Originally Released on: GBA

TL;DR

Faithful remake with the right mix of visual polish without losing the soul of the original
Battle system still holds up, particularly against the newer entries that went more experimental
Bowser’s Minions portion of the game well made, but feels more suited towards mobile

I suppose the TL;DR really should have read – If you enjoyed the original, you’ll enjoy the remake – because that’s really all there is to it. The fact that this game is enjoyable is not a mystery. In its GBA form it was well received for funny dialogue, a great battle system, and a visual style that brought the world to life. All of that moves itself to the 3DS perfectly well, with some enhancements to the visuals and audio that make this feel a lot more modern. In addition, the new Minions mode does add a particularly nice tie in to what happened to the typical enemy cast of the game while the Mario Bros were out adventuring, even if the mode feels more suited to a mobile device. All in all, this is a solid remake that folks holding onto their 3DS will find worth playing.

For anyone that hasn’t played these games before, like any JRPG the battle system is really the core of what made the gameplay so special, and it’s standard turn based with a twist. Like Super Mario RPG on the SNES, button inputs at the right time can provide both offensive and defensive capabilties, in this case tied to A and B for Mario and Luigi respectively. The combat in place here was probably as simple as the series had, but the simplicity was also its strength. The core moves were easy to pull off and strong (jumps, hammer attacks, and fire/ice ball attacks). Moving up in complexity and strength, the brothers can combine to do Bros Attacks, involving more intricate combo and timing segments to pull off large damage. This pattern of A and B for each brother then goes into the entire game, whether it’s character-specific actions during combo attacks or actions taken in the overworld for traversal purposes.

Speaking of which, the overworld actions are still a lot of fun to use, and end up being the big puzzle push for the game. Most puzzles tend to be fairly basic, and generally involve whatever the latest power the bros gained, but they provided a nice break in the action that wasn’t just straight battle grinding. By the end of the game the brothers had a set of 10 traversal abilities, giving the inevitable Bowser’s Castle run a huge amount of flexibility in the use of different powers.

As far as changes go, there were some dialog changes, a few additional side quests, and the more obvious sound and visual upgrades. However, the big addition was the Bowser’s Minions portion of the game. Within the first couple hours, this mode is unlocked, and then runs as a separate independent mode with its own new (and entertaining story). From a gameplay perspective, it’s a simple mode of assembling a squad of minions and having them faceoff against an enemy squad. They can be one of three types, giving us an advantage triangle not too dissimilar to Fire Emblem. The fight then automatically goes, with the player really only occasionally interfering, whether to block special attacks or do a timed input for a damage bonus.

In general, the mode is mechanically solid, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that it would have worked out a lot better as a phone game, and that’s the biggest problem I had with it. Each battle is a generally quick hitting segment, with maybe a few minutes of story the first time you play, then combat lasting maybe a minute or two per battle. Given the size and number of units you can get, it then encourages you to keep replaying the battles to level up units. Victory grants more units, as well as beans used as a type-specific XP boost, allowing for even more growth of the party. In general, this feels perfect for a phone where you’d fire it up to play a couple levels then be done, and less perfect for the 3DS where it’s still just a sub mode to the much deeper main game. And I’m being serious when I say I’d absolutely play this on my phone because it is a lot of fun.

There’s really not much to say here. If you liked a previous Mario & Luigi or enjoyed the original release at all, this is still a great game. The battle system is really solid, the writing is often times hilarious, and there’s a ton of content to be had here. It also shows that the gameplay of the first couple games in the series is likely what I consider the pinnacle of the series, with a couple of the more experimental entries on the 3DS perhaps going a bit too far away from the core. Hopefully this means Nintendo is considering a more traditional entry looking forward to the Switch, but if the worst we get is another remake then I suppose we’re still doing pretty good.

2017-07-30

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

More Info from Square-Enix

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.