{"id":298,"date":"2017-09-02T15:12:26","date_gmt":"2017-09-02T19:12:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=298"},"modified":"2017-09-02T15:12:36","modified_gmt":"2017-09-02T19:12:36","slug":"nights-of-azure","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=298","title":{"rendered":"Game Ramblings #48 &#8211; Nights of Azure"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.koeitecmoamerica.com\/nightsofazure\/\">More Info from Koei Tecmo<\/a><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Genre<\/strong>: ARPG<\/li>\n<li><strong>Platform<\/strong>: PS4<\/li>\n<li><strong>Also Available On<\/strong>: Windows, Japan Only &#8211; PS3, Vita<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>TL;DR<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Solid combat with multiple fighting styles<\/li>\n<li>Good exploration mechanics that encourage taking risks without huge penalties<\/li>\n<li>Small demon collection aspect that ends up giving a lot of party flexibility, adding good depth to combat<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Nights of Azure\u00a0<\/em>is one of those games that I can best describe as being entirely competent. \u00a0It&#8217;s a game with solid combat, an entertaining enough story, and some nice systems to flesh things out. \u00a0It ends quick enough that it doesn&#8217;t wear out its welcome, and in doing so doesn&#8217;t do anything egregious to piss me off. \u00a0The visuals were decent, and it was clear what was going on. \u00a0The soundtrack hit the emotional notes of the story&#8217;s current progress, and the battle music kicked into high gear when necessary. \u00a0Given it was developed by Gust, this should come as no great surprise. \u00a0The DNA of their other more famous series (Atelier series, Ar Tonelico\/Nosurge series) is definitely in place here, and the game benefits a lot from it.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_300\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-300\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/azure_combat.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-300\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/azure_combat-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/azure_combat-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/azure_combat-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/azure_combat-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/azure_combat.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-300\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">There&#8217;s a lot on screen during combat, but you learn to look at important info quickly.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Being an ARPG, the most important thing in general is going to be the combat, and\u00a0<em>Azure<\/em> definitely brings some solid combat to this. \u00a0In a lot of ways it can be described as a sort of\u00a0<em>Tales-<\/em>lite system. \u00a0You&#8217;ve got a small party, some core melee combos, and some SP-based skills. \u00a0However, the party members revolve around a Pokemon style collection system instead of being core NPCs. \u00a0The other main thing that adds a lot of depth is that there are 4 different combat styles, giving some flexibility in picking the style that works best for the user.<\/p>\n<p>However, the best thing that came out of all of this is the leveling system. \u00a0While it&#8217;s definitely a consequence of the game&#8217;s short length (&lt; 20 hours for the core story), I ended up finishing the game around level 8, and my demons at their max level of 10. \u00a0Because of this, getting a level felt extremely important. \u00a0Each stat bump that came with it, as well as skills gained from leveling all had an obvious impact on my character, which is a nice change from the usual 50+ level slog of more high budget ARPGs and JRPGs. \u00a0The resource used for leveling was also a nice touch. \u00a0Killing enemies results in Blue Blood being gained, which can be used for leveling, summoning new demons for your party, as well as purchasing items from demon vendors throughout the game. \u00a0This gave a lot more consequence to the use of the resource, particularly because you could not use the blood you gained until you returned back to home base.<\/p>\n<p>While that last note may sound scary, the game has other systems in place to encourage exploration, rather than making the resource gathering feel like a huge risk. \u00a0The main bonus here is that you can teleport instantly back to base at any point, and most quests also typically teleport you back to base for story reasons after finishing the goal. \u00a0The second thing they do is checkpoint your progress at the beginning of a room. \u00a0If you die, you lose all the resources you gained specifically within the current area, but you don&#8217;t lose everything from your current exploration session, and can choose to immediately go home, or pick up where you checkpointed. \u00a0In general, this allowed me to be slightly gung ho about going down side paths, because I knew at most I was only going to lose a few minutes progress, with the potential for a huge payoff defeating something optional.<\/p>\n<p>I suppose my final note is that this definitely felt like a portable title, rather than a typical console title, and it being released on the Vita in Japan points to that. \u00a0Exploration was done with a time limit of 15 minutes, after which you&#8217;d teleport back to base. \u00a0However, I never really got close to that time limit, and the tasks I was chasing were typically done within a 10 minute or less window. \u00a0This would have been a perfect amount of time for a typical portable experience, and the sequel being aimed at the Switch leads me to believe they&#8217;re sticking with the system. \u00a0However, even on console the game loop there worked pretty effectively, letting me jump in in short bursts.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_301\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-301\" style=\"width: 474px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/azure_outfits.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-large wp-image-301\" src=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/azure_outfits-1024x576.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"474\" height=\"267\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/azure_outfits-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/azure_outfits-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/azure_outfits-768x432.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/azure_outfits.jpg 2048w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 474px) 100vw, 474px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-301\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">The outfit choices were sometimes questionable, and generally got a laugh out of me for their absurdity.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>In a lot of ways, this was definitely a very typical Gust title. \u00a0 The plot was very female-focused, the interaction between the two main characters was personal and positive, and the end of the game left it open for the since-announced sequel. \u00a0The outfit choices in some of the cutscenes (as seen above) were also generally pretty hilarious in how little was being worn. \u00a0However, it was more often than not hilarious in its lack of care, rather than being risque or offensive in any way. \u00a0End of the day, this was a game that was a lot of fun to play, even if it&#8217;s not chasing the AAA titles for game of the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More Info from Koei Tecmo Genre: ARPG Platform: PS4 Also Available On: Windows, Japan Only &#8211; PS3, Vita TL;DR Solid combat with multiple fighting styles Good exploration mechanics that encourage taking risks without huge penalties Small demon collection aspect that ends up giving a lot of party flexibility, adding good depth to combat Nights of &hellip; <\/p>\n<p class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/?p=298\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Game Ramblings #48 &#8211; Nights of Azure&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":304,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,6],"tags":[48,115,114,29],"class_list":["post-298","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arpg","category-ps4","tag-arpg","tag-gust","tag-nights-of-azure","tag-ps4"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=298"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":305,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298\/revisions\/305"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=298"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=298"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.blog.dwgames.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=298"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}