March 21, 2014
Wild ARMs 2 so far
I’ve been slowly making my way through Wild ARMs 2 as I have been majorly distracted by a multitude of other games. Even so, at the 12-ish hour point I feel like I should have already found something to care about in this game. However, I struggle to say a lot of positive things about this Wild ARMs.
There’s nothing particularly wrong with this game. The music is fine. The battle system is a pretty standard turn-based system, where you select your commands at the beginning of the turn and watch them play out. The puzzles are fine and the dungeons are short (so far). Actually, for a PS1 game there’s a decent number of save points (though you can’t save on the world map). You can cheat the encounter rate somewhat by using the square button (to scan on the world map or to use your tool) to block the regular, white encounters. Wild ARMs 3 is pretty much the same as Wild ARMs 2 in many ways, and I really liked that game.
However, I struggle to care about the cast. Idealistic young men and women as the main cast is nothing new to JRPGs, but I find that this is usually counteracted by some more mature or at least pessimistic outlook by others. Instead, people are just being so obviously used and extreme things happen and your party is just cool with all that? Wild ARMs 4 had a lot of “stupidity” in its plot but at least it was acknowledged? I guess a lot of people prefer the fact that this party, unlike in many other JRPGs, doesn’t really gab a lot. At the same time, the characters are so flat that I need them to talk so I can find things about them to care about. Maybe something in the plot will change my mind, but right now it’s looking like Wild ARMs 2 is headed towards the bottom of my RPG rankings (one day I’ll actually make one…).
In addition, this game has so far been way too easy. If I follow the storyline, I have yet to find enemies that I cannot kill in one normal attack with at least one of my characters. That’s fine in the beginning of the game since you don’t have much health and you don’t always go first and you don’t have a pile of like 50+ heal berries, but later on it just seems so ridiculous. I mean, Lilka doesn’t even need to exploit elemental weaknesses most of the time. Boss battles are somewhat interesting but still mostly achievable by normal attacks + some healing. I think 10 hours in this really should have changed and is a much bigger negative than the lack of characters I care about, since that part is more subjective.
Anyway, I play this game while eating breakfast and it’s not really a chore to get through, so I still plan to beat it. I just hope (and believe) the original game is way better than this.
March 11, 2014
Very Initial Sol Trigger Thoughts
I just started up Sol Trigger (after getting 3 more endings in Hana Ki Sou and realizing I died super early in my first playthrough of the game…) and it begins with a long animated movie. WITHOUT SUBTITLES! As someone who figures out Japanese best with audio and text, it meant I really didn’t know what was going on. I mean, things were happening, but why?
I think of other portable games I have played that had movies without subtitles – Persona 4 Golden and Suikoden Tsumugareshi Hyakunen no Toki. I just wonder why they do this? Especially for a portable game, you’d think people sometimes are playing these games in public where they can’t do the audio, right? I guess I can’t just get away with learning to read Japanese then…
Anyway, Sol Trigger certainly looks to be an interesting game. If I understood anything from the beginning of the game, the group of you are like “terrorists” or “rebels” (depends on how you look at them) in a society which was about to sacrifice some people, you bombed the power sources and freed the sacrifices? Someone in your group dies within the first half hour. Also I think all the ladies of the group are attracted to you to some degree – you have childhood supportive friend, young girl who also kind of looks at you as an older brother as well, and the maybe-older lady who is interested in your “golden sol” or whatever that is. Yes, I don’t really get what “Sol”, “Sol Trigger” and all that is yet, even though the game has made some explanations for it. Just goes over my head at the moment.
Other than explanations for terminology I don’t understand, the language used in the game is pretty straightforward. No “over-the-top” usage of kanji as in Hana Ki Sou and not quite the military terminology of Suikoden Tsumugareshi Hyakunen no Toki yet. Hopefully I’ll get to spend a good chunk of the game playing it and not next to a dictionary.
I guess I should touch upon the battle system, but it is so early that I know it will change on me. But anyway, it is turn-based with the view being first-person or where you don’t see your characters until they do an attack (visually like DQ8). You can see which order people will get their turns (up to 5 icons at the moment?) and how soon your next turn will be based on what action you plan to take. You can have up to 4 characters in your battle party. I don’t think you can do a front or back row? Anyway you have skills and you level them up by using them. Leveling them up means you can power them up even more when you want to use them by expanding a bit more “sol” (the apparent equivalent of MP or TP). I think the armor saleslady said that skills can change depending on your weapon? I will confirm that for you later.
So once again, I’m intrigued by the game but I wish I understood more of it! I sense a bit of anime trope-ness in the characters and their relationships, but the premise and world certainly look interesting. Now that I’ve passed my exams (only a few things I need to do to get that Ph.D.), I can slack some more and play games without feeling guilty!
August 11, 2013
Tales of Xillia so far
I’m not that far in Tales of Xillia but I feel like blogging more often so the 2 people who read my blog have more things to read. So far so good. I can’t really comment on the quality of the game as a whole but it does start off a bit slowly. I’m still getting tutorials 4 hours in and I only have 3 characters. I don’t feel like a ton has happened in the plot yet either. I started off as Milla but supposedly Jude’s story path is more straightforward, so I am strongly considering starting a new playthrough with him. Even if I think I’ll like Milla better as a character in the end.
Battle system so far is smooth overall but I find having a TP and a CC gauge to be pretty confusing. At this point I have paid no attention to the CC gauge and worry about my TP. The way I’ve been growing my Lilion for each character (has been a pretty general start from the center and spiral outward for the most part), I’ve been getting new artes that take up a good chunk of my TP. Auto-item is nice since you can have your characters auto-use orange gels (or other items) up until you only have a certain number of orange gels left. I haven’t changed strategy for my other party members yet as battles have been pretty easy for the most part. I’ve moved up to Moderate but I may go higher so battles take more than 20 seconds of hitting X. Linking is cool so far but it seems that I haven’t unlocked its true potential yet. Mostly linking has been great for the special artes you can unleash once you fill up certain amounts of the link gauge and for regaining your linked partner’s TP (or your own, depending on how you play) faster. Jude seems to drain out his TP all the time for some reason…
Characters-wise, Jude is like the typical Tales protagonist (young, idealistic, asking questions) but at least he also comes with some book smarts. Alvin must find Jude incredibly “cute” as he seems to manhandle Jude all the time Inigo of FE:A would be incredibly jealous. Milla so far is “not so human” but done in a good way. Unlike some previous non-human Tales characters, she doesn’t suffer from “amnesia” and isn’t a child; she has an interesting way of seeing the world/thinking that comes off as logical even though it is different. Her voice was weird at first but I like it a lot now. Milla in general takes some time to get used to, both in an audiovisual sense and gameplay-wise. I haven’t tried the others yet as I still find Milla interesting to use.
I love how they did the map for this game. It marks down the spawn points and the treasure chests you have used, so it can be fun to mark the map. It doesn’t seem to mark chests that you have opened but didn’t take the things out of, which is a little unfortunate. So far those chests have only contained Apple gels for me, which seem to be dropped in high frequency from monsters.
Titles give you Grade in this game, so I guess it’s useful later. Lilion (Tales’ answer to the sphere grid) is the way to enhance your characters’ stats and learn skills. At 3 GP per level gained, you can learn new skills and artes almost every level and not have the capacity to equip all the skills. I guess that’s a better problem to have then to have not enough skills and artes to play around with.
Music-wise, I don’t really care for it. The regular battle theme is kind of mediocre. I am hoping that the soundtrack is better than Tales of Graces’, but I can’t tell so early on.
And that’s it for now! I’m more focused on Wild ARMs 3 than Tales of Xillia so I may not have updated thoughts on Xillia for a while. As for Wild ARMs 3, I feel like it started off much better than 4 and 5, and I’m enjoying it a lot. I can certainly feel the Wild ARMs style coming through, which makes me confident that I’ll enjoy 1 and 2 when that time comes.
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