Tag: switch

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Game Ramblings #114 – Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition

More Info from Nintendo

  • Genre: JRPG
  • Platform: Switch
  • Originally Available On: Wii, 3DS

So, this is admittedly the third time I’ve played this game. I knew I would enjoy it, I knew it would take a long time, and I knew what the experience would be like. However, it was interesting playing it after Xenoblade 2. It didn’t necessarily make the remake better or worse, but the big changes in combat for Xenoblade 2 are something that I think I now appreciate more having gone back to the older combat style. My ramblings here are generally going to reflect seeing the changes the series has gone through now that I’ve played the two book ends sort of back to back.

Combat in the remake is the same as it was in the original. Your artes are lined up in a row to be used. Some artes are attacks, some are buffs or debuffs, some are defensive maneuvers, etc. Some of them are based on positioning (ex: bonus damage if attacking from behind). Some are used in tandem to effect the enemy (ex: Break -> Topple -> Stun). The basics that are there are the same that have been in the Xenoblade series the whole time.

What surprised me going back now that I’ve played Xenoblade 2 is how much I wish they’d have applied that game’s combat system to the remake. Ignoring some of the features that are definitely tied to the Xeno 2 story, the core change to that combat is that instead of a bar of artes that you scroll through, each attack is tied to a hard button – either on the d-pad or on the face buttons. This would have made the combat in this remake so much more fluid. You’ve got 8 buttons that could be used, 8 artes that you can assign anyway, and then a center activation on each character that could easily be applied to one of the shoulder buttons. Instead, you’re stuck doing a scroll to get to the arte that you want to use, while at the same time trying to juggle movement.

It also caught me a bit off guard that I never hit a point where I really felt a need to grind. I’m not sure if this is just because I’m generally familiar with the game, or if they did a rebalance pass, but balance was almost always in line with my expectations. Bosses felt reasonably balanced for where I expected to be in the game. If I was hitting a point where I was feeling a bit pressured, there was generally enough side quests around to give me boosts. I was generally collecting enough general stuff to keep up with money needed to grab the relevant current set of gear. It was just kind of a nice level playing field for the bulk of the game. I admittedly dropped it down to easy at the end, but not because I was frustrated of the grind like 2 or X. I was simply at a point where I wanted to see the remastered finish and epilogue content, rather than go through a boss gauntlet I’d already been through before.

On the other hand, boy do I really not miss the complexity of the systems in place in Xenoblade 2. That’s not to say that this game was ever really that simple, but it still only has three real forms of progression – XP for levels, AP for leveling up artes, and SP for leveling up passive skills. This is a far simpler game than the Excel simulation that Xeno 2 ultimately became. If there’s anything that really is still a bit of a chore to manage, it’s the amount of side questing involved.

That said, the overall UX for this is much improved over the original game anyway. Getting to your quest list is super fast (d-pad down). The in-world indication of where quest items or quest kills are is significantly improved. Generally speaking, it’s a lot more obvious what I should be doing at any point, and far quicker for me to change my focus to a different side quest with a few clicks.

There’s also some bonus points for how easy it was for me to change the cosmetic look of the party in the remake. Buying a piece of gear once permanently allows you to equip its cosmetic look to the characters it applies to. This is a super nice change, since your party can very rapidly turn into a multicolor shit show with all the random gear you’ll end up finding. I set my party’s look pretty early on to be consistent with roughly where they started, with a few minor color variations that I preferred, and stuck with it. On the surface, this may seem like a small feature, but I was always more of a fan of the numbers behind gear in JRPGs, and typically less of a fan of the visual impact in games that supported it, so finding my look and sticking to it is one of those things I really appreciate.

However, the real reason I suspect most people will want to replay this is for the Future Connected epilogue. This one was interesting in that it’s substantial, but not nearly as substantial as the Torna expansion for 2. It provides some nice story closure specifically for Melia, but not much else for the rest of the gang. It adds an interesting mechanic with the Nopon Ponspector horde that replaces chain attacks, but also significantly scales back your party flexibility. I suppose ultimately, it was a nice way for me to wrap up my gameplay of the remake, but it left me wanting to see more of what happened to the rest of the party. There may be some potential for them to add more of these epilogues to the game if they need to stretch the schedule before whatever Xeno project comes next, but I’m not sure if I’d recommend playing through an entire long JRPG again unless you’re really as big a fan of the series as I am.

Remakes are always a tough one, but in cases like Xenoblade I’m pretty happy about it. Beyond exposing the game to a much different audience than the previous go arounds, it’s just nice to hop into a game I loved in a way that is significantly better looking. This has continued my sort of run of JRPG remakes that I’ve been doing lately, and this is probably the safest of my recent bunch, sticking to the original framework entirely – FF7R was a distinct explosion, and Trials of Mana was similar in gameplay, but much different in visual style. However, it being safer didn’t make it worse. The game largely still works great. Would I have liked to see them take some risks and make combat smoother with lessons learned from 2? Ya. Am I glad to see that they didn’t add heaps of new systems? Even larger ya. This game wasn’t accidentally a 92 metacritic its first go around, and that shows. This game has aged remarkably well, and with a fresh coat of paint it’s still going to be worth playing for newcomers, and returning players may just take it as an opportunity to revisit a game they loved.

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Mini Ramblings #4 – Gap Fillers

I had a bit of time to fill in between Dark Cloud 2 and the release of Final Fantasy VII Remake, so I took the opportunity to run through a whole slew of short games on my backlog. Below are some of the random notes about the ones I selected.

Gorogoa

  • Genre: Puzzle
  • Platform: Switch
  • Also Available On: Windows, iOS, PS4, Xbox One

Ultimately this is a really well crafted puzzle game that is meant for touch screens or mice, so I’m glad I played it on Switch. Originally released for Windows and iOS, the Switch version came over with full touch screen support, and that’s how I ended up playing it.

The core loop involves a 2×2 square board where interactive tiles can be moved around, layered on top of each other, pulled apart, and more. As a player, you end up interacting with multiple of these tiles at once to try and find the connections between them and move the story forward. This could be as simple as changing the zoom on a couple tiles until they can be placed next to each other, allowing a person to walk between tiles. This could be something like lining up two tiles with parts of a gear in order to rotate a third tile and find a new way to zoom into the interaction.

In practice, it’s incredible how much the game finds ways to just keep the interaction moving. At the start of the game you have one tile, and until the end of the game, you’ll never be at zero tiles. It sounds so simple to have a puzzle game of 2×2 tiles, but the amount of interactions that come out of it was astounding. This is all helped by a really vibrant art style that really pushes color as a helper for finding those puzzle connections. All of that made this a really enjoyable couple hour experience that I think is worth playing, particularly on a touch screen.

The Garden’s Between

  • Genre: Puzzle
  • Platform: Switch
  • Also Available On: Linux, macOS, Windows, PS4, Xbox One, iOS

This was another surprising puzzle game that I pulled out of the pile. The core idea is that you manipulate time to move the main characters through a linear level. The only other thing you really can do is interact with a handful of in-level objects that can move around, or pick up torches to clear away some obstacles.

The bulk of the puzzles involve generally passing the torch around in a fairly common pattern, moving time forward to grab the torch, backing up to get it to some important thing that is moving around or needs to be cleared, then moving time forward again through the new path. On the surface, it sounds simple but it’s an effective pattern that is used in surprisingly varied ways.

This was a pretty quick play through in about an hour and a half or so, but was an enjoyable experience that didn’t overstay its welcome.

Old Man’s Journey

  • Genre: Adventure
  • Platform: Switch
  • Also Available On: Android, iOS, macOS, Windows, PS4, Xbox One

This was my complete relaxation game during this whole stretch. While it’s technically an adventure game, and technically has puzzles, the game is really best thought of as a relaxing visual journey. The only real mechanic at play is the ability to drag the landscape in different directions, opening up the path for the title’s old man to move around.

Beyond the core mechanic, this was just a really relaxing little adventure. It tells a light story about an old man travelling to see an ex before her passing, but really it’s a replay of his memories along the way. If you’ve got an hour to kill, and want something to hit on the same relaxation level of a book, this is a good place to end up.

Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX

  • Genre: Action/Platformer
  • Platform: Switch
  • Also Available On: PS4, Windows, Xbox One

Describing this as anything but Mega Man X would be a complete lie. The gameplay is the same, the pattern of killing bosses to unlock their powers is the same, the game’s structure is the same. Where it’s different though is in how it handles health, and it’s far more forgiving for it.

While there is a standard health pool there, if the player is playing well they won’t ever use it. Core to the experience is a reloadable energy store that powers both an impenetrable shield as well as things like an air dash. It can be reloaded quickly at any time with a quick double tap down, leaving it up to the player to manage it effectively. At its core, the real sway becomes less of a health management game and more of a choice of doing more damage quickly or staying safe.

While this may sound like it’s just making the experience easy, there’s still options for truly skilled players to show off. Avoiding being hit allows a score combo to grow, so truly good players are able to use the score and completion time as true measures, while less skilled players can still complete the game on their own terms. It’s one of the more interesting ways I’ve seen in this style game to open up the experience to more players, and I think it ends up working really well.

Jupiter & Mars

  • Genre: Adventure
  • Platform: PS4

In a lot of ways, this was a modern take on specifically the Dreamcast version of Ecco the Dolphin. You play a dolphin going around trying to save the planet from environmental catastrophe, either shutting down machines or rescuing other animals along the way.

This was ultimately a better experience than it is a game though. There’s nothing particularly offensive about it, but there’s nothing particularly standout either. Controls are alright, but weird since you control a dolphin in first-person. The AI companion that you command generally does what you want, but often gets stuck behind obstacles. Your goal is generally not that clear, but there’s not a ton of exploration to do so you generally end up finding your way. From a gameplay experience, I’d probably describe it as something akin to Flower, but with significantly less polish.

However, this is an absolute standout visually. The entire game takes on a sort of realistic, but also sort of Tron style and it’s generally a sight to behold. Things are already lit up in interesting ways, but then you activate sonar and the whole scene lights up in crazy colors. If there’s anything to point at as a reason to experience this one, it’s easily the visuals.

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Game Ramblings #106 – Splatoon 2 Single Player + Octo Expansion

More Info from Nintendo

  • Genre: Third-person shooter
  • Platform: Switch

I really enjoyed the original Splatoon, despite the fact that I was tragically bad at it in multiplayer. However, the thing that surprised me was how solid the single player experience was for a game where that was clearly not the focus. Some of that may have just been how fresh it was to play what is a third-person shooter in a very new way, but it really left a mark. For Splatoon 2, the initial single player was more of the same. While it was fun, it was a bit disappointing…..until I played the Octo expansion, which was an entirely ambitious push of single player content that I wasn’t expecting.

Mechanically speaking, this is still a fantastic game. This is one of the best shooter experiences I’ve had on console, thanks to it intelligently using motion controls to improve aim, rather than feeling ham fisted. It’s got your typical twin stick movement and aiming, but then you do little tilts of your controller for finessed aiming, and it all just clicks. Large motions go on the right stick, and kills come out of motion, and it’s as effective as any aim assists I’ve ever seen out of more traditional shooters.

The base single player is a pretty by the numbers copy of the original game. You’ve got a handful of worlds where you go through a series of puzzles and light AI combat levels, capped with a boss fight. What it ends up being is basically a tutorial for the core gameplay to lead you into the multiplayer. From that perspective, it’s super solid. From the perspective of a returning player, it’s repetitive. I’ve seen this content before, down to some of the bosses returning with only light mechanical changes. It was nice to see them pushing the lore of the series a bit, but it didn’t feel like something I needed to play again.

That feeling changed when I started the Octo expansion.

From a very high level, the Octo expansion is basically Portal. Like the screenshot above says, you’re literally doing a bunch of test chambers to prove your skill. After you pass through that section, you end up in a fairly linear sequence of levels to escape the facility. If that sounds familiar, it’s definitely intentional.

At its core, the thing that makes the Octo expansion work is the sheer amount of variety to play with. Each test chamber has its own little gameplay tweak to play with. Some levels are straightforward puzzles to get to the end of the level. Sometimes they get a bit cheeky and give you limited amounts of paint to use. Sometimes they force you into stealth segments. Sometimes they don’t give you any weapons at all, and make you traverse intelligently through.

However, it’s when things go off the rails that it’s really fun. There’s levels like the one above where you’re literally playing Breakout with paint. There’s some levels where you’ve got to push a giant billiard ball around the world without knocking it off the level. There’s some levels where you gain a jetpack instead of using the paint to traverse around. There’s even a level where you play Picross 3D to create a box fort shaped like a dog.

It’s the variety and jumps between traditional and fun levels that really give the expansion a really great pace. You’ll do something normal for a bit or hit a really high tension combat level, then be given a breather level to bring down your heart rate. You’ll go from using the typical shooter mechanics to using your paint gun to play tic-tac-toe. It’s all bite sized chunks that are the right length to want you to keep playing just one more level, until suddenly you’re 30 levels in and hours have accidentally gone by.

This is all capped by a fantastic escape sequence that culminates in a boss battle against the giant human statue above, combining all the skills you’ve learned in the single player game into a super intense and super fun sequence filled with platforming and firing.

The whole of the Octo expansion shows a level of creativity that is so typical of Nintendo, and yet was not present in the Splatoon series up to this point. The two games were both fantastically well crafted, but distinctly multiplayer-focused. What the expansion has done is shown that there’s a lot of room for this series to also have a single player tilt. Ya they’re sort of being tongue-in-cheek in riffing on the overarching Portal pattern, but there is so much more content here than that game brought to the table. At its core, Splatoon is an easy recommendation for me anyway just to experience what that multiplayer is like. However, with what I’ve played here, I think it may be worth getting Splatoon 2 + Octo expansion just for the single player experience alone.