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This is part two of my PC RPG retrospective. Again if you wish to see all the pretty pictures and any video if there is some in the post check it out on the main stage. Exclusive posts are put up for enjoyment as well. http://whydidiplaythis.wordpress.com/
As the mid 80′s came there were plenty of new additions to the RPG scene, many companies would be built or come into their own as a result of success and the quickly growing PC market as a whole.
Origin would continue pushing the storytelling envelope with its own creations in Ultima V. Lord British has essentially been overthrown by his advisor Lord Blackthorn. Blackthorn was possessed and corrupted by power and ambition, skewing the virtues away from the original system of voluntary following as self enrichment and enlightment. Blackthorn has pushed the virtues into the law of the land, causing suspicious behavior and a suppressed populace around Brittania. Garriott really showed how a philosophical system of belief meant to free the minds of a world can be turned on its head and used for less than virtuous purposes.
In 1985 the aforementioned Interplay joined the ranks of the success stories in this genre, releasing The Bards Tale, the same year as Ultima IV, such a wonderful year. While gameplay wise The Bards Tale was quite similar to Wizardry the focus of the story and combat was more focused on magic than most games before it, which featured it as an option that may or may not retain balance in combat depending on party build. Interplay would develop the sequels to The Bards Tale, but since they were forced to change the original intention of the storyline and flow for the series their heart was not really in it, leading to the sequels being considered largely mediocre. Interplays heart would instead go toward the development of an entirely new experience for gaming, the post apocalyptic world. In 1988 Interplay would release Wasteland, a popular and successful endeavor that focused on the politics and rebuilding efforts of survivors of a global thermonuclear war. Interplay loved this idea so much that Fallout would be designed as a spiritual successor to Wasteland. A recent Kickstarter for a true Wasteland 2 was recently funded by Interplays founder Brian Fargo and development will be between his new company InXile and many members of Interplays Renaissance internal team at their new company Obsidian.
Strategic Simulations, Inc. would bring the officially licensed Dungeons and Dragons to the PC market with its series of Gold Box games starting in 1988. While SSI had its own experience beforehand with 1985′s Wizards Crown and 1987′s Eternal Dagger they were the ones who won the bid to license D&D from TSR. The Gold Box games would use the storytelling benchmark set by Temple of Apshai at first, telling its story primarily from print media with in game citations for players to read after completing certain events. SSI and its Gold Box series would top the sales charts through the late 80′s through a combination of crisp design, storytelling, and riding on its D&D license.
1987′s Dungeon Master would bring the first person perspective from early dungeon crawlers such as Wizardry and the dungeon diving in early Ultima games and produce combat in real time. This game can be only be described as ahead of its time, as it offered many seemingly smaller details that combined into a smooth, immersive experience. Players were able to manipulate objects with the mouse. All of these innovations combined into a powerful game that SSI would emulate with its later Gold Box games.
Wizardry would also keep chugging along through the late 80′s, the 4th through 6th entries in the series introducing more story elements, but really keeping the same gameplay intact. But after 3 games before it Sir Tech had their gameplay design largely intact already. All that mattered now was to really balance the first person dungeon crawling, turn based combat, party building, and difficulty, really the difficulty.
To close out the 1980′s we have Might and Magic, a series which began in 1986 and continued until 2006 despite the company who bought the original developers going out of business. While Might and Magic was highly popular for its time it did not really do too much differently than those that came before it, borrowing heavily from other RPG series of its day. But it all came together in a tight experience and made its home in the hearts of many gamers.
By the early 90′s there were so many companies which had success behind them and their various series that the only thing that seemed able to stop them was their own increasing ambition. Well, that is partly true. Technology was advancing at a fast rate, early pseudo-3D was gaining momentum and development times were getting longer as teams got bigger. A few new success stories came about, but of those, few were able to keep their momentum as the declining popularity and shift in market interest was already happening.
Origin made it through the 80′s standing taller than ever, and celebrated the new decade with Ultima VI. Ultima VI introduces a political quandary to the player, showing the consequences of his actions in Ultima IV, namely taking the Codex of Ultimate Wisdom. Demons invade Brittania to reclaim their holy book and are later taught to share.
Ultima VII would be the beginning of a new trilogy, and set it off with a bang. Now a big, bad archdemon is trying to take over Brittania and only the Avatar can stop him! Ultima VI and VII take some inspiration from Dungeon Master in that many objects can be moved around the world, put in your own bags, or dropped wherever the player desires, giving Brittania a huge, new amount of interactivity.
Other than these new Ultima releases the early 90′s were already quieting down, but one more influential release would come about before the True Darkness set in. Betrayal at Krondor was released in 1993 and as far as Im concerned, the Golden Age has already passed by this point, and this is the last gasp of an era passed. Betrayal is based on Raymond Feists Riftwar universe, making it one of the only licensed RPGs up to this point that was not a Gold Box D&D based game. Despite being a solid role playing experience the times had caught up to this game even before release. The graphics were considered outdated at release but heavy RPG fans let this game slip in as a cult classic despite largely forgettable sequels.
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Posted on Oct 18th 2012 at 11:39:39 PM by ( SirPsycho) Posted under RPG, pc game, pc, video game, game, rpg, ultima, rogue, fallout, renaissance, temple of apshai, interplay, origin systems, or |
So this is a series of blog posts I've been putting up on Wordpress and spreading around. If you want to check out the original posts (they have pictures and stuff) then you can find them all here: http://whydidiplaythis.wordpress.com/
In 1997 there was a large shift in the RPG World in general. On the console side the genre was given immense exposure due to the exploding popularity of Squaresoft's Final Fantasy 7, this game would go on to be the second highest selling game for the Playstation. This series is going to be focused on the PC side of things. Fallout: A Post Nuclear Role Playing Game was released by Interplay Entertainment in this same year to widespread critical success and commercial support, selling more than any RPG had in years for the PC. Before Fallout released many industry insiders and long time gamers had essentially given up on the genre, developers were not making many due to rising costs and due to diminishing returns publishers had stopped greenlighting them.
Now by its simplest definition a renaissance is a rebirth or revival, which means there came a time before the release of Fallout where RPGs on the PC were king. So before we step deep into this revival it is imperative that we understand what came before, from what heights had this classical age of PC gaming climbed to? How hard and fast did it fall? What did these gamers get to experience in the days before RPGs shifted to consoles?
In the Dark Ages, for the sake of ease I'm going to label this time period as the late 70's to the mid 80's when most PC games were largely text of ASCII based. A lot of ideas would be pioneered during this time, deep storytelling came about from text adventures and gameplay ideas came from the earliest text based RPGs. Rogue was highly influential in terms of development ideas. This one release popularized the idea of 'randomly generated content' to developers and gamers, leading an entire subgenre of RPG to be labled as 'Roguelike'. This basic design philosophy inspired everybody, from the massively successful Diablo series to the more niche Mystery Dungeon games from Japan.
Temple of Apshai was released in 1979 and was one of the first graphical RPGs to be released on any PC system. Limitations lead to what became a team effort for storytelling that would become prevalant through the late 1980's. Text in the game would give the player a section of literature to read in a printed manual that came with the game. ToA was perhaps the first RPG to do this, and set a true benchmark until technology could catch up.
At this time graphics started to make their appearance more well known on the early Personal Computers, before 1980 most games with detailed graphics were on powerful mainframe systems. Due to technological limitations most of the RPGs that came out in the early 80s were simple representations and retellings of the designers' own tabletop campaigns, mostly Dungeons and Dragons. Wizardry and Ultima would release at roughly the same time, 1981, and both would prove highly popular and influential for the future. Wizardry was built completely around one large dungeon, laying the early groundwork for the modern dungeon crawler. Ultima would also make liberal use of dungeons, but spread them out throughout a world with its own story, the player able to fully explore the overworld before delving into the underground dungeons.
Wizardry would keep its basic design philosophy and continue being fairly successful. The series was the benchmark for character building and those who just wanted to dive into a dungeon and get right to the action. Wizardry would become incredibly influential worldwide, even making quite the splash in Japan where the series would become the most direct inspiration for Dragon Quest according to its creator.
Ultima made a habit of evolving its world, storytelling, and gameplay experience with every new release. Origin Systems and primarily Lord British himself, Richard Garriott, would become the greatest storytellers in gaming history to this point. Many of them even hold up today. Ultima III would really be the first release that truly set the series apart from its contemporaries, introducing plot twists into its story as well as really starting to hash out the mythos for Brittania.
Ultima IV is an entirely different beast though. Where RPGs were largely shallow up to this point (and even after), telling stories centered around ultimate magic artifacts or one stereotypical bad guy bent of world conquest/destruction, Ultima IV would introduce the idea of total freedom, philosophy, and self discovery to gamers. There is a story, but there's no real evil antagonist at all. The world of Brittania is at complete peace after the events of Ultima III, so the main character is summoned by Lord British and educated about a philosophical system based around 8 Virtues and sent around the world to master these virtues. This adventure is a landmark in not only gaming, but the evolution of storytelling in gaming. No game before it was not solely focused on some evil force or mystical artifact, and few have focused solely on the philosophy of a world and belief system as much as Ultima IV since its release, making the game quite an enigma.
This installment is back to basics, and I take a look at Harvest Moon A Wonderful Life, the PS2 version. Virtually all the charm that made the series fun to play has been zapped out of this game, but what specifics can be said about it?
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Posted on Jun 23rd 2012 at 01:24:59 AM by ( SirPsycho) Posted under death |
The topic of todays post has been in the works for quite some time. And the topic of today is When is a console considered dead?
Traditional logic would say that a console is dead as soon as official support for it dries up and no new games come out from the big publishers. In the more recent generations those usually consist of watered down sports games or low budget niche titles that last for a handful of years after the console is no longer manufactured or sold. Well take a look at a few cases which turn this easy to grasp idea on its head.
First off well take a look at a system which keeps selling, which is still being made despite being over 10 years old and no new official games coming out for it. Im talking of course about the monstrous Playstation 2. Brand new systems can still be purchased directly from Sony and even in retail outlets in larger cities. Why is this? It still sells, slowly sure, but it sells consistently and for a hefty profit. For the budget minded gamer or for collectors the Playstation 2 is the best system out right now because of this reason. Brand new systems are still available and there is a massive library of games that can be found online or in stores for $1-15, a starter set of a brand new system and a dozen games can be had for less than $150 easily.
The rest of this post can be read at my offsite blog: http://whydidiplaythis.wordpress.com/
I have some fun now that I've finally finished my new video about the Naki Pro Player. You might remember me asking about some information here a couple months ago. Well now I just decided to show you all if mine works (it does) and some fun we can all have with it!
http://youtu.be/0hcdQ176j7w
So I have an interesting piece of hardware from a local thrift store. All of my Google powers have left me with no information about this strange piece and little more based on the manufacturer. My plan is to give some history of the product (if I can find any) and then review it based on the many things that would be relevant to this style of control scheme.
Do I have you in enough suspense yet? So what am I planning to review you ask? Well its an interesting little arcade stick called the Pro Player. It was manufactured by Naki International in 1993 according the box. What makes it interesting? It is compatible with the SNES, SFC, Genesis, and Mega Drive. So any gamer in the early to mid 90′s would have an easy time finding a use for this stick which was the Choice of Fighting Game Experts! And thats about all the information I have for it, every detail coming from the box I bought it in.
Does anybody have any information on this to help me out? I would like to keep pictures secret until the video comes out so everybody can see how nostalgic the box design is.
http://whydidiplaythis.wordpress.com/
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Posted on Mar 2nd 2012 at 03:47:59 AM by ( SirPsycho) Posted under Beer, beer, booze, pale ale, 8 bit pale ale, 8 bit, 8, bit, pale, ale, awesome, can |
So I visited my place of employment today and go to check the backroom to see if there are any new systems I need to fix that totally aren't Red Rings. My eyes quickly gaze upon a box full of these and my first thought is, "My boss ordered Mario energy drinks?" I pick one up only to find that the truth is much better than I possibly imagined. These were brought in by a local brewing company (so local its in the same town) and I can't wait to film myself trying one of the cans. I grabbed 2, I'm keeping one for posterity. Enjoy.
Today we continue our run through of PS2 games that could have been better. This one is an enhanced version of a PSP game, which makes it even worse than it sounds. Stay tuned for Episode 5 next week!
Favorite Games: Part 1
Planescape: Torment
[img width=468 height=468]http://greatrumbler.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/planescape-torment.jpg[/img]
Now I've been a bit quiet on the blog front for awhile, mostly because my main series so far, 'Why Did I Play This?' has kind of dried up for the time being. It is not that I have not played bad games or remember playing bad games or games I believe are bad, more of a reason that I wish to review something that I freaking love! What better place to start than with the game that made me truly appreciate the power of the PC as an incredible gaming device?
The game I'm referring to is of course the one mentioned in the title. Planescape: Torment was developed by Black Isle Studios and published by the ailing Interplay, it was released in the holiday season of 1999 and was built off of Bioware's Infinity Engine; which is in my opinion the greatest engine ever made for top down, isometric RPGs. I can not give this game enough praise. If you are a fan of the D&D system and wish to visit one of its greatest campaign settings, which is sadly now dead, in the only video game to ever take place in it, there is no way that you will be disappointed with this game. If you love RPGs in general and wish to try a game that really shows off the strengths and weaknesses of the Western variation of the genre and its tabletop adaptations than this is also the greatest example one can find.
[img width=640 height=480]http://www.blogcdn.com/news.bigdownload.com/media/2009/01/pccombatfeaturejan148.jpg[/img]
Surprisingly this game's biggest weakness is the combat itself, going full combat is a viable strategy sure and hacking and slashing will make the game easier. Having a stronger physically based character makes the game much easier to get through and makes the endgame a cakewalk. However the developers famous for the first 2 Fallouts, New Vegas, Icewind Dale, Dark Alliance, and infamous for Alpha Protocol, Star Wars: KOTOR 2, and Neverwinter Nights 2 had a different goal in mind for the avatar of Torment. Their goal was to break as many established RPG conventions as they could, and since this was the era of total dominance of the Japanese console juggernauts such as Squaresoft, tri-Ace, and Enix, it would be an interesting experiment to see how their ideas were implemented, and easy to see what they picked.
[img width=300 height=428]http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/190/196849-so3_fayt_large.jpg[/img]
So what conventions and cliches did Black Isle pick to shatter for this game? Most console based RPGs starred some young boy who was just out of puberty and handled a sword (pause for audience to crack immature jokes and snickering), also most companions were put into cookie cutter archetypes and their personalities built up from there. In Torment only 2 swords exist in the entire game, and one belongs to one of your followers and cannot be unequipped! So that only leaves one sword for the player character to directly equip and control. Most of the weapons are instead things like knives, spears, clubs, axes, crossbows, fists, teeth, and magic; weapons that some will feel comfortable with but have usually taken a backseat for the massive 2,000 pound solid piece of steel. They also went with a unique armor system, characters have the ability to equip tattoos as their armor and stat booster instead of traditional pieces of armor for the most part. Which it is not a different mechanic and serves the same purpose this idea is interesting nonetheless.
[img width=473 height=472]http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TnhAANHHKiM/TIQg1qbXQLI/AAAAAAAAAgw/I0pH4cVEI9I/s1600/planescape-torment_inlay.jpg[/img]
What really makes Torment special though is the main character, his dilemma, past relationships with some companions, and budding relationships with the others he has never met before. The player gets to take on the roll of a mysterious, heavily scarred, blue skinned human known as the Nameless One (Michael T. Weiss). His tale is one which shows immortality as much more of a curse than it is mentioned in popular media, after all, who does not wish for the ability to live forever? TNO's alignment is determined by the player and his actions throughout the game.
The Nameless One can also change class on the fly just by talking to a party member who specializes in whatever you wish to change to, basic classes being figher, mage, and thief. Without a doubt TNO is the most versatile character in the game, but to truly experience the full effect and brilliance of the story the player will want a high charisma and intelligence diplomat build, making mage one of the best classes for him. The game is incredibly heavy on the dialogue, and you can literally talk your way through most fights, even the final boss (voiced by the great Tony Jay) with a high enough charisma! Because of this fact and the philosophical quandaries put forth by this game it makes a diplomat by far the best character class even if you will be weak in battle.
However there is one major flaw with the logic of one being seperated from their own mortality, as is shown in the opening cinematic above. The Nameless One CAN die, just not for long, he wakes up and gets up with a wiped memory everytime that happens. Torment begins with TNO waking up in a mortuary, meeting his first companion Morte, a disembodied skull with a streak of rampant sarcasm and a sharp tongue somehow, wandering around, seeing an incarnation of a previous love who is voiced by none other than everybody's favorite FemShep. This sets the basic outline for what will be the rest of the game, Who is the Nameless One? Where has he been? What has he done? Why can't he remember anything? Why is he covered in amazing tattoos?
[img width=295 height=364]http://planescape.outshine.com/crap.planescape-torment.org/images/symbol/sym5.jpg[/img]
[img width=280 height=268]http://bnbgaming.files.wordpress.com/2011/02/mortepng.png[/img]
While I do not wish to spoil too much of the story for those who have never played it I will go into some detail about the companions and what makes them so unique when being compared to the usual army of cliched RPG followers. I've already mentioned Morte (Rob Paulson), who is a rogue skull with plenty to say who was once a part of an incredibly macabre tower of skulls which functions much the same way as the Internet does today. It is a collection of the best and brightest minds' skulls of all history and is regarded as the center of all knowledge. During his mortal life he was a monk, and then decided that making whoopee was too fun to miss out on so he left the monastic order. Morte's alignment is chaotic good. He attacks by biting which is good for a laugh and is the subject of some whimsical dialogue in the game.
[img width=281 height=441]http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/pc/planescape/images/characters/dak'kon.jpg[/img]
The next follower who is recruited by TNO is a githzerai named Dak'kon (Mitch Pileggi). He is the companion that has the sword, which is known as a karach (chaos-matter) and is the last known one to exist, and in capable hands could destroy the multiverse. So now you see while he is incredibly reluctant to part with it. He fills more of a traditional archetype, resembling the samurai and their bushido as he pretty much just jumps into TNO's party due to past promises. His history goes back far with TNO and going too deeply into it would spoil pivotal plot points so I will just tell you to play to find out! His alignment rests logically at lawful neutral.
[img width=281 height=441]http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/pc/planescape/images/characters/ignus.jpg[/img]
There are two more characters which can be recruited easily in the beginning of the game, Ignus (Charles Adler), and Fall-From-Grace (Jennifer Hale again). I'll start with Ignus, who is EASILY the strangest character in any game I've played. True to his name Ignus is inflicted with a curse which makes him a living conduit of the Fire Elemental Plane, and as such is constantly engulfed in flames. He is the best offensive mage in the game but is incredibly squishy as his flames do not allow for any armor or tattoos to be equipped on him. Because of his curse he is mentally unstable and suffers from constant insanity. His alignment is chaotic-neutral.
[img width=281 height=441]http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/pc/planescape/images/characters/grace.jpg[/img]
If Ignus is the most bizarre character in the game then Fall-From-Grace comes in at a close second. Think about this for a minute. Celibate succubus, owner of a brothel, donning chastity gear, and is a Priest healing class. What? In true Black Isle/Bioware fashion she can ironically be romanced by the player who makes all the right dialogue choices. True to the name of the game she was once a slave to a master of her race's mortal enemies the baatezu, giant satanic demons basically. Using her cunning though she managed to win her freedom and is now in charge of her own brothel, all the while refusing to offer any special services to her loyal customers! Tease...
[img width=281 height=441]http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/pc/planescape/images/characters/annah.jpg[/img]
Moving onto probably my favorite follower in the game, Annah-of-the-Shadows (Sheena Easton). She is the resident thief of the game and gives Morte a good run for his money when it comes to wise cracking! She is a tiefling (half human-half demon hybrid for those needing the education) and as such has been constantly ostracized through her life so far. Her sharp tongue and rough talking is an incredibly interesting design choice, she uses a type of language called Hive-slang don't worry its English, yet many of those slang words are based on working class British slang of the 18th Century. I do not know though what regional slang they chose, that would be the job for a good linguist. She is built to be the easier, default romance option for TNO, and if you're into chicks with tails you can't go wrong with her! She is chaotic neutral and wields punch daggers.
[img width=210 height=330]http://www.brickshelf.com/gallery/SaberScorpion/PlanescapeTorment/nordom_ingame.jpg[/img]
The last 2 companions are entirely optional, and my first play of the game I missed one of them even! I did get Nordom (Dan Castellaneta) but missed Vhailor (Keith David). I know I know. I missed freaking Goliath but recuited Homer Simpson? How dare I! Of course both are interesting characters, as Nordom is referred to as a backwards Modron, a malfunctioning unit seperated from the Modron hive mind. Ironically Modrons are robots, and spell the word 'Modron' backwards and we get another example of the Alucard fallacy. Nordom is chaotic neutral and uses a crossbow as his primary weapon.
[img width=281 height=441]http://shrines.rpgclassics.com/pc/planescape/images/characters/vhailor.jpg[/img]
Vhailor is a Mercykiller, an enchanted suit of armor that is meant to uphold order and justice. Strangely enough his weapon is cursed, so he can also be referred to as a malfunctioning unit even though most of his dialogue involves purging the guilty to protect the innocent. That and his mind seems to be intact for the most part. Because of his stance and the way he carries himself, the fact that he is a bastion of the Golden Age superhero makes him an amazingly well done character. In fact if you pull up dialogue about TNO's past he'll turn on the party! And believe me he's such a powerful fighter that you DO NOT want that as Vhailor can singlehandedly down the final boss if you go the combat route. Vhailor is lawful neutral and wields a massive axe.
I'm stopping here as revealing much more will unleash massive plot points.
In conclusion this game is an incredible feat of storytelling. This is one of the most well written, introspective, philosophical, tight narratives in the history of storytelling in my opinion. My first time playing the game about 7 years ago I was completely blown away by everything in the game. Every dialogue option can serve a purpose and slightly alter TNO's alignment and relationship with the character being talked to. Torment is originally Windows 95/98 compatible but for those wanting to play through my argument for why Bioware is NOT the king of storytelling (they do good work, but Black Isle/Obsidian do it better in my opinion) then you can pick it up DRM free and with full XP, Vista, and 7 compatibility on gog.com for the best $10 you could ever spend as a gamer.
Now go out and find just exactly What can change the nature of a man?
Why Didn't I Play This Sooner?
Volume 1
Grandia
[img width=300 height=300]http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41mvYQ5wLSL._SL500_AA300_.jpg[/img]
Ok, I'm a bit of an RPG fan. One look at my collection will show that's a majority of my console games, but I'm getting better at representing more and more genres! Anyway even though I have a good deal of console and PC RPGs, I started with the Japanese bastardizations of the traditional PC and pen and paper role playing. The two sides of the ocean have different style, I believe that does not mean that one should be put down or discriminated against as there are still fans of both, just that Western ones have been gaining popularity in recent years as PC exclusivity is not pretty much non-existent.
Anyway now that I have that little rant done it is time to get started on this little micro review. Here I'm doing a little twist on my normal format on this blog so far where I kick down a bad game and beat the crap out of it while it is down, and instead find a game that I love and ask the question, Why Didn't I Play This Sooner? And I'm starting off with a console RPG for the PS1, I did not even know about this series until the third one on PS2, but hey, my parents were cheap and I was a child of the 90's, although completely separated from the internet, making it quite a bit harder to hear about some more obscure titles. Anyway, this is Grandia, originally released for the Sega Saturn, only in Japan, and then ported to the Playstation and released internationally. It was developed by Game Arts, the same company behind Lunar, the Sipheed shmups, and GunGriffon mech piloting series, and was published in the USA by SCEA, hence its exclusivity.
[img width=700 height=525]http://www.rpgamer.com/games/grandia/grand/themes/grandia_wallp_1024x768(dragonsquallz).jpg[/img]
I found this in near mint condition, complete, for an incredible price a couple weekends back and have just now started playing it in my free time. And I must say that this is a charming, unique, and fun take on the RPG genre. The battle system is fast paced and fun, making grinding fairly simple early on. Yet the battle system has some depth to it, which is explained as follows. Characters are fairly pre-built, able to equip certain items, most of which I've noticed so far breaks across gender lines, but I'm still pretty early in the game and that might change. It is a turn based system yet it sometimes does not feel that way as characters move on the battlefield depending on their orders and the speed of your other characters.
Send the hero, Justin to attack with his sword while his token childhood friend Sue uses her bow? Well Justin will charge in and slice the enemies while Sue hits them from a distance, and will move away from enemies, showing decent battle AI at least for your characters. You also level up each weapon type you have equipped by using it in battle, which leads to more hits per attack, a nice addition the usual level grind and attack power increase. The game also does away with random battles, instead opting for open spaces occupied by roaming mobs, you touch said mob and you go to the battle screen, meaning you can sometimes fight on your own terms. I'm a grinder though so I'll kill everything, then go back, recover, save, and fight everything again.
The game's camera controls are quite good, taking a cue from Xenogears to let the player use the shoulder buttons to spin it around and get a good angle to look for hidden treasures or NPCs to talk to. Anymore in RPGs I avoid the NPCs as they tend to be totally useless, because of the whimsical and comical nature of this game though, I found myself talking to them again, all of them, and laughing more often than not at what is said. From a man who is fine having nasty, rank B.O., to another man having a hard time coming to terms with the fact that his Sergeant woman boss is beautiful yet harsh, the perfect S&M mistress perhaps?
Now it is time to discuss at least the beginning of the game. You play as Justin, a young troublemaking rogue from the town of Parm, of course the town names will not make any sense, this is a Japanese RPG we're talking about! Anyway Justin has a childhood friend, like 90% of these games, named Sue, she in a twist of originality, has a flying bunny... thing, follow her named Puffy, which may as well be a pokemon.
[img width=558 height=702]http://images.wikia.com/grandia/images/1/14/Sue_Visual.jpg[/img]
These are the two you start off with and the game starts with a treasure search of sorts, the opening has you getting chased off by a man for digging through his shed, then Justin goes back to his archrival Gantz (which is the name of an amazing manga and much less so anime) as they are in the middle of a treasure hunting contest. By now the player should be laughing, oh laughing heartily. The reason I say this is because the voice actors are horrible, absolutely awful, terrible, with inflections completely wrong. But, you can hear from their performances that they are having fun with their jobs of reading these lines, it is horrible, but laughably bad, making the acting and voice overs do a complete 180 spin into the realm of awesomely bad. Something that helps the voice acting become this way is the fact that the writing is actually quite good from what I've seen so far. I mean I can walk up to some random man in Justin's mom's, Lilly's, restaurant and tell him he has B.O. Only for the man to retort that his scent is a manly scent that is brought about by the working of metal, and brawn. Best. Game. Ever.
[img width=640 height=507]http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c42/Stoirmeacha/bra.png[/img]
Now after finding all the treasures you go back to Gantz in time to see him getting scolded, then Justin and Sue run by and escape to Lilly's restaurant. Of course, like every Japanese RPG, Justin's dad is nowhere to be seen, yet he is referenced as a great man and even better treasure hunter. You get this nice dinner scene after a bit where Justin is able to speak to both Sue and Lilly, getting dialogue options. This is actually quite a nice idea to stuff in some light character development between major scenes and acts in the early part of the game, I'm too early to know whether or not it continues until the end, but I'll let experience say that eventually, I get too far away from home to do that on a daily basis.
Justin just dreams to be a great explorer and treasure hunter, so after going for a visit to the local museum and breaking a statue, he gets a nice envelope that lets him into the nearby ruins that are being excavated. Now you head there, first grind, and then head into the ruins, meeting three Sergeants on the way, all women, and all angry and annoyed at everything. They revel in their power to discipline their troops and when Justin approaches them with his letter, one of them rips it up and tosses it down a hole. Not one to give up, Justin goes down into the ruins anyway, probably thinking in his head a less clever way of the words, Disregard Women, Acquire Currency. Here is where I am currently at in the story, not very far in, but since the beginning all I can think is, Why the *^%$& didn't I play this sooner?
[img width=555 height=729]http://troll.me/images/joseph-ducreux/disregard-women-acquire-currency.jpg[/img]
Its still early in my playthrough, but this game did what a good game should do, catch your attention early and keep hold of it with style, wit, and great voice acting. Now I am rather anxious to get hold of Grandia II & III, too bad my local game store has them and wants to charge twice what they're worth. I shall wait and then work my way to getting them through the internet like series of tubes. Until next time, stay classy my friends.
Why Did I Play This: Volume 3
Final Fantasy II
Oh man. Black sheep of classic RPG gaming franchises, you got your Phantasy Star III, the grand ocean faring Suikoden IV, *cough* Dragon Warrior VII, umm Ultima II, and not last nor least, Final Fantasy II. Now I'm not talking about the American FF2, or as we should all know, really FF4, oh no that's a good game. I'm talking about the Japanese NES FF2, or rather the first release it got in America.
[img width=580 height=378]http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110127180018/finalfantasy/images/2/2b/FFII_NES_Logo.jpg[/img]
Oww, even the original logo hurts.
Now at one point in my life I was a Final Fantasy FREAK. I had gotten hold of my second gaming system ever after much parental persuasion, the Sony Playstation. And back when going to Blockbuster to rent movies and games were cool, I tried out many recommendations from friends that also had the system, of which a shortage did not exist. I rented Final Fantasy VIII, yes I was a bit late, but still to this day I've never bought a system at launch, and actually loved it for the time. Looking back I could actually be typing up an entire blog post about FF8 myself, but I chose the earlier entry as I could not stomach it back then, and still cannot now.
[img width=512 height=446]http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20060224060953/finalfantasy/images/c/c7/Final_Fantasy_II_JAP_Battle.png[/img]
Time to get owned.
So we all know that Squaresoft was on its last legs when Hironobu (The Gooch) Sakaguchi saved the company with a little game called Final Fantasy for the Famicom and NES when it came stateside. But they opted out of releasing the second and third entry of that series in the USA. So my first introduction with this game came with the Final Fantasy Origins pack for the PS, as I was at that age where I ate up all of those FF games. I went back to buy FF7 and was blown away like many youngsters were, buying my own copy of FF8, then looked forward to FF9 (which is still my favorite in the series.) Then my first real game hunt began as Final Fantasy Anthology was nowhere to be seen in my locality until we got a couple used games stores open up in the area. I bought the first copy I could find, then waited anxiously for the release of Final Fantasy Chronicles, then Origins.
[img width=597 height=600]http://images.wikia.com/finalfantasy/images/2/23/Ffobox.jpg[/img]
Amano = Awesome
So imagine my surprise, when after I beat Final Fantasy in the Origins pack and go to fire up the second game for the first time and start my epic quest following Firion, Guy, Maria, and Leon... and get my backside beat up and down the first battle screen. Then I get saved by a random badass Princess Hilda, minus Leon, the only decent character out of the four! The Emperor is actually quite the sinister villain, even poisoning an entire city's water supply. This act was so awesome, so intense that it was in fact copied by fan favorite villain Kefka!
So you just run around, fighting the oppression of the evil Empire of Palamecia, going dungeon to dungeon with a random plot based fourth character, some you wanted to keep but were not allowed to, you had to get Leon back in your fighting group. Finally you reunite with Leon after the party and him meet at the Palamecian castle and watch the Emperor turn into El Diablo himself and summon a new home up from the pits of Hades to help him devour this world! Quickly stop him!
[img width=700 height=525]http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-4U1wlPLQ_bk/Te9gPLofU7I/AAAAAAAAAHA/zoQlkj0t9Us/s1600/diablo1st0.jpg[/img]
El Diablo noooooooo!
For the time this was actually a well thought out, very well executed storyline given the technological limitations of the NES. The game was prettied up for re-release after re-release starting with Origins so it was quite easy to look at with pretty, well detailed sprites that barely made the PS even try to think very hard. But this game suffers from such crippling gameplay flaws that I could not even force myself to sit through the story, I kept hitting a brick wall because of something so important to an RPG being completely broken and random half the time!
Yes that's right, leveling is completely broken in this game. In the 8-10 hours I managed to torture myself by playing this game I had no idea how to level up stats, then it finally hit me, you level what you use! But how do you use HP, which all my characters seemed to never have leveling up? You take damage, a lot of damage. I ended up having half the party get killed off during random battles because their HP was so low they would get one shot! The only two worth anything in the game were Firion and Guy because of their high strength to do massive melee damage. Maria literally went half my playtime without once getting an HP boost. What the hell? I think I got as far as the Dreadnought because I kept getting owned and no amount of grinding was helping me. No matter how high your healer's magic score is it does not matter when she literally has 40 HP and gets hit for 60. Even if Guy and Firion are overpowered they will eventually get overwhelmed after I run out of items trying to escape the dungeon.
[img width=512 height=464]http://images.wikia.com/finalfantasy/images/5/5c/Final_Fantasy_Origins_Final_Fantasy_II_Battle.png[/img]
Much prettier, but I'll still die.
The broken leveling was such a deal breaker and let down for me that I have yet to pick up FF2 since I put it down, as my PS2 days came along I went for trying almost any RPG experience I could get my hands on, and I wish I still had them all but hey it gives me future goals of rediscovery. Anyway in conclusion FF2 suffered the problem that many second entries were infected with during the NES days, too much experimentation, cool ideas that could only be poorly executed, all while keeping the overall feel of the original source material. It featured a great story that was bogged down with literally endless grinding as you hoped that you took that extra point of damage or did that extra damage to get your individual stat boost. The most important feature of the game was royally messed up during the experiment of Final Fantasy II, and no amount of nostalgia can save the game as there is literally none for the NES young ones, or even those like me who had a horrible gaming experience on the PS Origins release during the younger years of existence.
Until next time. I might even go back to a game I've long forgotten sometime on this blog and remember how awesome it is.
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Posted on Jun 6th 2011 at 08:37:42 PM by ( SirPsycho) Posted under Rambo, First Strike, Genesis, pony, pink, palette, shy, scared, witch, burn, newt, duck, wood, bagger 288 |
This is the greatest game I've ever played! Crystal is on an epic quest of redemption, the introductory cutscene showing that all of her family and friends are lead off into the pastures of death and mowed down by automatic assault rifle firing. Enraged, Crystal dons a headband and grabs the closest AK-47 she can find, karate chopping a poor Vietcong soldier in two! She goes on the most epic shooting spree ever seen by human eyes, firing what appears to be hundreds of rounds into these pour souls without ever needing to replace her clip. Finally she confronts the evil mystic who communed with the gods and ordered her people exterminated, after giving some made up excuse Crystal pulls out her trusted Desert Eagle and blows the bearded man's brains out.
Ok, it wasn't actually that awesome. And I know exactly what you're thinking, Crystal's Pony Tale? That has to be one of the girliest games known to mankind. Trust me, it is, and they did not spend much time hiding it. So let us dive right in and start off by taking a look at the cover.
[img width=640 height=881]http://image.com.com/gamespot/images/bigboxshots/3/586123_38858_front.jpg[/img]
Well, now you know exactly how girly of a game this is, and as a muscular macho man I had to wash out the taste left behind by this game by playing some Altered Beast. First of all let's take a look at the ponies themselves, in the immediate foreground you'll notice a pink horse (Pilar) looking right at you with an open mouth smile. Right next to her is her brown coated, blonde maned friend Carla, also looking at the player. The pair are trotting along a narrow stone path leading to a bright, happy, suspended purplish castle. I've never understood children's movies and those castles with those narrow stone paths, you wasted more stone building the castle up that high than just building one along a cliff face! Anyway to complete the cover we have a rainbow and pink clouds set to a normal blue sky behind the castle. Girls like pink right?
[img width=600 height=420]http://img.listal.com/image/1283980/600full-crystal%27s-pony-tale-screenshot.jpg[/img]
You will play as Crystal the Mystical, Wondrous Princess and Prettiest Pony in all of Ponyland. The evil, ugly, vile Storm Witch, has just cast a spell that has frozen all the other pretty ponies of Ponyland! Gasp! Oh noes! Conveniently Crystal dodges the lightning bolt and sets out on a quest to find the magical crystals (shocker I know) that will free all the other ponies from their magical prisons.
After starting the game up and navigating past the title screen you'll come to an option screen where you have the options of changing the difficulty, changing the control scheme, and changing the colors of the pony's body, mane, and tail that you'll be playing. That's... actually really cool for this time period in gaming history. Few games up till then had included a difficulty setting. And customizing the look of the character you'll be playing as? Well it might as well have been unheard of then.
[img width=640 height=468]http://www.vizzed.com/vizzedboard/retro/user_screenshots/50637/Crystals%20Pony%20Tale_Oct10%2011_30_24.png[/img]
After finishing up with the options you'll continue to another screen of your pony just standing there, this is the level select screen, letting you pick which level you'll start at between three of them; the Farm, the Dark Forest, and the Storm Witch's Cave. Again, this is a pretty awesome option to have at this point in gaming history.
Once you start playing either of these levels though you'll notice that the bad decisions start showing their ugly heads. The controls are a bit sluggish, even with a wired controller there is some lag between the button presses and the actions that Crystal performs. She also turns and runs away from things that scare her, which is pretty much everything that's not a cute animal, even water; ala Lester the Unlikely for you AVGN fans. What this means is that you'll be running along, then press the jump button to vault over the obstacle and it will register too late so she'll back away from it. Really annoying I know.
You're also pretty much invincible as there is a flaw in the difficulty setting selection, all it does is toggle how much in game help you'll get from the NPCs you run into. So you can turn it onto hard and rear up at everything by hitting the action button until you find out what you're supposed to do. What makes you invincible is the fact that you collect horse shoes much like you would rings from Sonic, but when you run into an enemy you only lose one or two shoes each time. After playing for ten minutes I had almost 40 horseshoes, and going between the level portals eats ten of them, so this game can practically beat itself if anybody wants to take the time to do so.
All in all, its not the worst game. It is stupidly bright and so colorful that it will hurt your eyes looking at it for too long. Crystal's Pony Tale, aside from being an obvious pun, implements some good ideas that stuck in the industry long after its 1994 release date. If you are a man, only get this game if you're a completionist collector. If you have a little sister that for some reason has a hand-me-down Sega Genesis, then she might love this game. But to let you know how hilariously girly this game is, I popped it in and my girlfriend broke into insane laughter.
One thing I'm sure we're all guilty of is playing a few games that we looked at as lackluster, unpolished, unfinished, buggy, glitchy, bad, or all of the above. In this first edition of Why Did I Play This? I, SirPsycho, take a look back at a steaming pile of gong that I got when I purchased what is perhaps my all time favorite game. All I wanted to buy was Planescape: Torment, and I found it for a good price coupled with a little game called Soulbringer, and I decided to install it on my old PC and give it a try. By the gods does the latter game reek of the bad decisions that rocked and eventually toppled the publisher Interplay.
Now there are many things that can anger the typical gamer, even if he/she considers or is known to be a hardcore, especially for the RPG scene. Now on the surface and even underneath it Soulbringer appears to be a normal RPG, you get thrust into a mystical world ripe with strife, ne'er-do-wells, conspiracy, and magic. However, the way the game is presented and played show a struggle of how you trudge through it just leaves much to be desired. For example; even before you get in your first fight you notice the first big design mistake the game made, that is that you cannot see anything more than ten feet away from your character!
Why? Is there a perpetual black haze around every character on that world? With that shot you also get a look at the combat system and how severely outdated it is for a game that was released in 2000, even the graphics look bad compared to most that was out at that time! Why do I have to click on the attack I wish to do in the 21st Century? This was not before the advent of hotkeys or even mouse based combat, so why did it need to be done for this game? Too many questions and not a single answer that would make any logical sense.
The plot is as cookie cutter as you can get for an RPG plot. You would think with the brilliance and success of Black Isle's desire to break the mold that had been cast over the stale RPG genre, that Interplay would try and be a bit pickier about what it decides to green light and publish. But no, this game can literally be summed up as:
*Spoilers*
"Evil magicians are summoning demons and taking over the world! Kill them all!"
/*spoilers*
The camera is so clunky and unfriendly that tweaking the angle during combat is useless as you'll miss out on valuable time to click on your attack and hope that your opponent does not use the perfect counter to send you down to feed the digital worms. The rest of the interface is no better, making navigation more of a chore than an easy way to quit out of the horrid game.
There are some pros to be had about this game. Despite the plot being so generic it hurts, it does trudge on to give any player that does enjoy the title a long, rewarding experience. There are hundreds of side quests to take to fill your wallet and get a better feel for the world of Rathenna, its inhabitants, and their culture. Combat has some depth to it in that you will have to switch weapons out on the fly to play to an enemy's physical weakness instead of there only being a magical weakness. The musical score is also above average, not by much though, and remember you could love it and think it a masterpiece of musical achievement or the perfect example of why this game sucks so hard.
In summary, if the game was release even five years before it was, it could have been considered a mindboggling masterpiece without peer. But since it was developed and came out during the time where Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Fallout, Torment, and others were trying to reinvent, reinvigorate, and renovate the old fashioned RPG house and succeeding, this game from the same publishing head starts backpedaling along all those steps forward. I cannot recommend this to anybody, if you are a completionist then by all means try and see what you can do with this, but do not play this alongside those aforementioned classics if you really wish to play Soulbringer. You'll just leave the crap to the flies and flock to the Sword Coast, you know you will.
Tune in next week for something completely different.
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