Category: Switch

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Game Ramblings #40 – I am Setsuna

More Info from Square-Enix

  • Genre: JRPG
  • Platform: Switch
  • Also Available On: Vita, PS4, Steam (Windows)

TL;DR

  • Despite the story being thematically similar to FFX, holds its own well enough to make the game worth playing.
  • Battle system was well done.  Easily possible to break the game with certain skill and gear combos, but the positioning additions to the ATB system were well placed.
  • Doesn’t do anything egregiously bad, but there’s some obvious flaws in most parts of the game
  • Game in general showed signs of being either incomplete or rushed to completion, but the core that is there is really strong.

I am Setsuna is definitely a JRPG that points back to the kinds of games Square was releasing back in the 90s and early 00s.  It directly uses a very Final Fantasy styled ATB battle system, uses a very Final Fantasy styled story, and has the same sort of mage/healer/melee/assassin character archetypes that the Final Fantasy games used.  While there are some definite places where the game has some pretty major flaws, the base that is there shows a lot of promise for the next title by Tokyo RPG Factory, Lost Sphear.

Since it’s realistically the thing that any JRPG spends the most time in, let’s talk about the battle system.  If you’ve played anything between about FF4 through 9, you’ll recognize the ATB system in place.   The battle runs in real-time, filling a meter.  When it’s full, that person can attack.  Faster characters attack more often, rinse and repeat.  In general the system has worked fine for 25 years, and in this game it’s no different.

The big things that I am Setsuna really does well that are kind of atypical usually have to do with positioning.  Rather than being fixed on one side of the screen, both friendly and enemy characters can move around the play field.  This allows for some interesting setups in hitting multiple enemies at once, whether it’s with AoE magic, melee swipes, or pass through projectiles.  This also means that party buffs, healing, and more can also take advantage of the AoE nature in order to optimize spell use.  There’s also a number of combo skills with multiple party members that take advantage of this, allowing you to line up multiple enemies in one go for much larger damage.

However, the battle system also shows one of the biggest signs of lack of polish in the game.  In general, the boss fights were a lot of single mechanics.  Put on the right gear, find the right party members, and you’re guaranteed an easy victory.  Because skills are equippable, the amount of flexibility is astounding, but can lead to some extreme breaking of the game’s difficulty curve.  For example, the Counter skill blocks ALL physical damage, so phsyical-only bosses revolved around one party member doing nothing but staying in Counter, one party member casting a Taunt skill on the Counter person, and a third party member being there to grind out damage.  It got so bad that by the end of the game, I was using three very specific party members for everything.  The title character Setsuna had a skill that did massive AoE damage + AoE Heal.  I equipped her with MP drain on damage taken and MP drain on damage dealt passive abilities, effectively meaning she did everything at next to no cost.  The second character cast a party Protect spell, and the third just did damage.  It made the game trivial, but it also seemed like what the game was balanced for given the incoming damage numbers.

The game’s presentation was the next point where there were some big highs, and also big lows.

A normal view within the I am Setsuna overworld.

For one thing, the game is astoundingly gorgeous.  The overworld takes on a very painteresque feel, with billboarded mountains and trees over a simple 3D landscape.  The main problem here is that there are no battles in the overworld at all, so you’re just running through from point A to B as fast as possible.  The little details as you walk around in the environment, from the snow falling out of trees to the trails you leave in the snow are also always well done.  However, that’s the big problem; EVERYTHING IS SNOW.  There’s effectively no environmental variety, so the towns all look similar, the forests all look similar, the caves all look similar, and they are all frozen over.

In a nice touch, the snow trails fade over time as you wander through the environment.

The soundtrack was also a bit of a mixed bag.  While the piano-only focus of the soundtrack works fantastically well in emotional moments, high tension moments lack any sort of depth to the soundtrack, with a high pace and high volume piano not really ever being enough to carry through.  The fact that the battle music adds in a bass line and some light percussion makes this even more frustrating, because they clearly put at least some thought into expanding out the landscape of the music they were writing.  It definitely didn’t need to be fully orchestrated, but adding a bit more depth in places to the music would have greatly benefited the game’s exciting moments.

Having a pixel art styled developer thanks island was a nice touch in the end game.

The little details were the last place where things were a bit of a mixed bag.  Once you get the air ship, you can run into a developer island that shows a clear nod to the team’s past games.  It’s entirely pixel art, with classic 16-bit music and visuals.  However, there’s a lot of places where things seem like they were left unfinished, with numerous empty houses in the overworld, bath houses with no meaning, and worst of all, gaining a new party member quite literally at the door to the final boss room.  There’s also a number of high level dungeons and scattered encounters that would be great to fight post-game, but can be a big pain to get to due to some of the traversal back through long linear dungeons. I hate to say the game feels unfinished, but there’s some things that definitely give me the impression that the team’s budget couldn’t quite match their ambition.

In general, I am Setsuna is a game that JRPG fans should at the very least check out.  There’s better out there for people new to the genre, but for folks looking for an ATB-system throw back, this is a pretty solid one.  For a game that’s regularly under $30, you can do much worse.  However, don’t expect a perfect game.  It definitely has its flaws, but for me it was worth overlooking them to experience what had been done here.

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Game Ramblings #35 – The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild

More Information from Nintendo

  • Genre: Action/Adventure
  • Platform: Switch
  • Also Available On: Wii U

I kind of expected this one to not live up to the hype, especially given the reviews it was getting up to release.  However, for me it definitely nailed it.  Even given the quality of past Zelda games, this is a tremendously special game.

As far as open world games go, there’s a certain set of expectations involved with what you’re going to see as a player.  Most of them have some form of collecathon of things all around the world, a relatively loose structure in how you get between different quests, and more recently, some way to reveal portions of the map to the player as they explore.  Breath of the Wild certainly sticks to some of these conventions, but in doing so they’ve also shaped the conventions in a way that make the game still feel distinctly Zelda.

Nintendo went all the way with the story being entirely open world.  Once you finish the tutorial you’re given a couple quests as is typical of the genre.  What isn’t typical is that one of them is literally to go kill Ganon.  From this point forward, you can either explore and do things that will expand your repertoire, or you can literally go finish the game.  More than any other open world game I’ve played, this very quickly establishes the expectation here.  You can do whatever you want, whenever you want, and finish the game whenever you feel like it’s time to do so.  Everything else that is typical of Zelda games falls into this setup.  What also isn’t typical is that the tutorial gives you all of the items and skills you will earn within the game, upgrades not withstanding.

Despite some of the lead in news, dungeons are there, but you have to earn your way to them, and they can be done in any order.  The dungeons themselves focus more on puzzles than combat, and tend to be somewhat shorter than past games.  However, what they lack in length, they make up for in quality.  The core theme here is puzzles tied to environment manipulation.  Upon completion of the core puzzle, there is of course a boss fight, this time acting as proof of mastery of the skills earned at the start of the game.  While not being a necessity anymore, the quality of the dungeons absolutely made them worth completing, if for no other reason than the story elements they provide showing the past of the world.

It’s also worth nothing that despite the reduction in dungeon count and size, the world itself provides more than enough to cover this missing element.  Within the world you can find over 100 individual shrines to complete, as well as towers that provide the map viewing coverage typical of open world games.  While these things do provide the way to fast travel, these are also the main puzzle element present in Breath of the Wild.  Each tower tended to focus one on specific skill in manipulating the environment to get to the point where you could climb and complete the tower.  On the other hand, each shrine effectively acts as a fantastic mini dungeon, with a huge variety in what is available.  These ran the gamut of what was available in the game.  Some of the shrines were just simple combat rooms.  Some shrines had a focus on individual skills like manipulation of air for gliding, or the use of fire-based weapons to burn a path to the end.  Still some of them were there purely for amusement, like one physics-based minigolf shrine.  While completing the shrines did ultimately give rewards that resulted in heart and stamina upgrades, they also provided a nice way to break up the game as I traveled around the world of Hyrule.

Despite all the changes from the usual Zelda formula, the one that was most striking to me is how they changed the use of music in the game.  Outside of towns, there is hardly any music, apart from some sporadic piano melodies.  Even within towns, the music was typically fairly subdued, and the bulk of what could be called the soundtrack was composed of ambient noise from the abundant wildlife throughout the environment.  When the music does kick in though, they definitely aren’t shy about bringing in some hints of the past whether it’s night or day.  Overall while it’s not as in your face as is typical, this soundtrack is another memorable one in the books for this series.

What became quickly apparent playing this game was just how polished it was, and it’s always in the little details.  There’s a ton of wildlife around, and it’s not just there for show.  It can be hunted, and the supplies you earn from doing so can be cooked into food to heal Link in battle.  Because you CAN climb anywhere, you end up climbing just for the sake of it.  Because shrines are then typically glowing orange against the background, climbing anywhere typically gives you new goals on the horizon to go for, further providing you with new things to do.  Large scale bow aiming with the analog stick is there, but subtle motion controls provide an extremely fast and precise way to accurately aim in small amounts for things far in the distance.  Camps of enemies can be cleared in straightforward combat, but it’s also just as practical to roll a rock down a hill onto the group, send fire arrows into explosive barrels, or lead enemies into traps by chucking bombs into their midst.  Those are all little separate things, but I hope it’s making my point here.  The amount of polish in place is of a level that only a few other companies ever attempt to approach. This is on a level typical of companies like Naughty Dog or Rockstar, and I’d dare to say it surpasses them.

All that said, weapons that can break are still a terrible idea.  It’s not that weapons are hard to find in BotW, but when you’re trying to fight a boss and you run out of weapons from lack of preparation, it can be extremely frustrating.  This did push me to collecting Korok seeds to upgrade my inventory, and by the end of the game was a non-issue, but boy were early large scale fights super obnoxious when weapons started running out.

I’m the type of person that will pretty much buy hardware on launch without fail.  Regardless of how many games are coming out, there’s going to be something in there I want to play.  What is rare is that I recommend other people to buy hardware just for one game.  Breath of the Wild is one of those.  If you have neither a Wii U or a Switch, you should get one just for this game.  Go grab a system for yourself or go grab one from a friend.  Just find a way to go play this.