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You know what I love? RPGs. You know what they have? Grinding, most of the time. And there's a lot of it here. The further back you go the more grinding there is! There are many different ways that grinding is implemented. At its heart the main goal is to gain levels, but sometimes this is a secondary goal. Because of the difference in philosophies, even going back to near the dawn of RPG games period, I have thought long and hard on different styles of grinding. I have four to discuss with the class today.
Grinding Style 1: Levels
Call it a level grind, or an experience points (EXP, XP, whatever) grind depending on the way the game handles its leveling system. This is the most common style of grinding, and it dates back to the earliest college mainframe RPG MUDs and earliest PC RPGs. Wizardry is a prime early example of needing levels to get further in the game, usually having an invisible wall where enemies get much stronger and harder, but with better rewards.
This style of game usually gives you more money than experience in terms of need that is, so gear is usually quite easy to obtain in the natural progression of the game. Just moving over the world and grinding in the dungeon should give the player enough money to deck out their party at the next town, maybe with some help from a boss drop or stolen item. Final Fantasy games are a good example of this. If you spend a little bit of time building some levels between towns then the first trip to the next one will be the big weapon and armor buy up, probably with enough left over to restock on healing items.
With some more difficult level based games, like the Shin Megami Tensei and Wizardry series, it puts less emphasis on the new gear your characters can use, and instead focuses on the natural strength of the stats. Getting a new weapon might only lead to a slight damage increase, so good control, strategy, and tactics come into play. Or you could stay with the lower level monsters and work to afford the best gear.
Having great music helps alleviate the pain.
All this talk about money leads me into my next part of the lesson.
Grinding Style 2: Gold
Sometimes a game limits the amount of money that drops from each and every battle. This completely reverses the dynamic I went over above. Dragon Quest is an excellent series in this regard. Experience and money start off fairly evenly, but soon enough experience outpaces money besides certain monsters. This series is more of a hybrid of both styles introduced so far. Even though you get more experience per battle it still takes quite a bit of time to level up as you get stronger and stronger. But, it seems the level grind is always secondary to getting enough money to fully deck out your entire party with the best gear. The level gains just happen while you save up your gold.
There are as many examples of the money grind as the level grind. Phantasy Star is Sega's vision in this philosophy. The first one was recently featured as an RFGeneration Playthrough, so some more people there should understand the way the series starts off. It stays this way through the Genesis games for those that haven't played them. You don't worry about grinding levels, you just get enough money to buy the new equipment when you find some.
Money is necessary in all RPGs though, so even in games centered around any other style of grinding, you may find yourself having to stop and kill monsters for a half hour or so to afford a piece of equipment or two if you've been blasting through the game by being overleveled for some period of time. Eventually you exhaust your resources and have to stop to start it all over again. Grinding is a vicious cycle that some of us just can't stop.
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Give me all your gold!
Grinding Style 3: Skill
Some games offer the ability to use skills, and by gaining extra points to learn them or level them up, you create a much more powerful party than any other style of leveling. Final Fantasy IX has skills that you can learn by equipping certain items and gaining AP to learn the skills. You can then use skill points to equip these learned or learning skills to give bonuses, learn spells, gain immunities, and add certain behaviors to your characters. The skill system is quite deep, and the player retains complete control over the entire party to see this skill grinding come to fruition as you level. Final Fantasy VI, VII, and VIII have similar systems with the Esper, Materia, and Guardian Force systems respectively. My least favorite Final Fantasy, Final Fantasy II has a system where you use a spell repeatedly to level it up as well. This is also the backbone of all the games in the Final Fantasy series that feature the Jobs system.
Legend of Dragoon has a skill system that involves using combat combos in order to level up your Additions. Each character gains their Ultimate Addition by leveling all the other ones up to their maximum level. This creates a paradigm while playing through the game of whether you stick with a level 4 addition to finish leveling it, or start with a brand new level 1 addition you just unlocked. I usually stick with the weaker one so I never have to go back to it. You consistently get stronger this way even if you take a temporary dip of damage output.
Many tactical and real time RPGs have a similar system. The Star Ocean series has a system where you can earn skill points when you level up. These are allocated to skills that you want to level up, but this method by itself will fall far behind what can be done with a literal interpretation of skill point grinding. By gathering multiple parties of enemies together in one battle you will gain a green gem to add to the Bonus Board, and end up with extra skill points at the end of each battle.
Even Mario is guilty of this.
Grinding Style 4: Item
Item grinding is essentially the cornerstone of the endgame for every single MMO. When you no longer need experience and money flows like water, and you have maxed out skills, all that is left is to grind for rare items. These can be mini grinds in many other games, such as an item only being dropped by one monster before specific events happen. This happens with some of the runes in Suikoden II, they can only be obtained in short windows.
Item grinding probably leads to the most types of sub-grinds, but these all lead back to actually having the items to fulfill these obligations. MMORPGs commonly feature this idea. You can use items to increase your level of crafting skills, increase your reputation with certain factions, sell for money to just stockpile it or buy very expensive skills or weapons with, get better gear for your character, or help your guild out. There are many possibilities but all center around killing hundreds of monsters for a handful of items.
Farming felcloth made you insane in the membrane.
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When it comes to my collection list of wants I have two RPGs for the major 16 bit systems up very high on this list. Shadowrun for the SNES and the completely different game of the same name for the Sega Genesis. These games are examples of the very few Western developed RPGs released for these systems, at least ones that weren't ported from the PC that is. Both versions are considered good games, with the SNES game widely being considered ahead of its time with its noir style narrative and tactical gameplay. It was a critical darling when it released, but commercially flopped.
Fast forward two decades and we have Kickstarter. This is one of the best tools for a small team to completely fund and develop a game from the ground up. I'm sure most of us are aware of what it is and does for developers. They basically pitch their game to their final customers while development is either very early, or still in the planning stages. Customers then throw money at the project, if the developers make their goal then they can start development. If they surpass their goal then they implement 'stretch goals' which basically add ideas or staff to the process of development. The Kings of Kickstarter, at least in the video game world, are Tim Schafer and Brian Fargo, the latter of which has two massively successful projects.
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Good ol' Jake Armitage even returns for the Ripper investigation!
Harebrained Schemes also had a very successful Kickstarter with their project, Shadowrun Returns. This project ended with over $1.8 million of funding. So now the game has been out for awhile and I picked it up while it was on sale. Shadowrun is one of my absolute favorite tabletop settings. It takes our real world and completely flips it upside down with an event called the 'Awakening'. Earth is now covered with humans, elves, dwarves, orks, and trolls in various quantities. At its heart it is cyberpunk with the ability to use technological enhancements as well as magic to build stronger characters, and the Deckers' ability to physically jack into the internet (or as the game calls it, The Matrix).
Anyway, as of this review there are two different official campaigns to choose from, the original one Dead Man's Switch, and the latest one released as DLC, Dragonfall. Dead Man's Switch takes place in the Free City of Seattle, while Dragonfall takes place in Berlin. The game is presented in an isometric perspective reminiscent of the SNES Shadowrun as well as Interplay and Bioware RPGs around the turn of the century.
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The game is easy to control, click where you want to go and who you want to talk to. Combat is actually more in the style of XCOM than other RPGs. There are various items and decorations to use as cover, there's even Overwatch in the game. To keep with its RPG roots your stats influence your chance to hit as a percentage, get close to the enemy and the percentage increases, use buffs to get that even higher. I rolled as a shaman with Eagle Totem, so I could buff everybody's chance to hit in a small radius, as well as cast Haste on my various party members. By the end of the game this meant that at any one time half the party had double the Action Points, and could easily have over 85% chance to hit as long as they were close to my PC. Combine all this with a spirit that shamans can summon for an extra party member and its easy to see why this support class is completely awesome.
I have beaten Dead Man's Switch, and its set up as a murder mystery. You get a message from one of your fellow Shadowrunners Sam Watts, your main character is down on his/her luck at this moment but this message promises a huge payout for you to find your friend's killer. He's already dead by the time the message gets to you, hence the name Dead Man's Switch. You go on a long journey through the city of Seattle's underbelly in the 2050's. This story ends up tying in with the events that lead to the downfall of Chicago in the novel Burning Bright and sourcebook Bug City. You also get to have the completely awesome immortal elf Harlequin in your group during the end game, as well as meet a representative of the Dragon Lofwyr who hails from Berlin, tying Dead Man's Switch into Dragonfall.
While the game is simple to play and fun when it works I did run into crippling, near game breaking problems. There were times when my main character would just get frozen in combat. She couldn't move, but she could still cast spells, heal, and control her spirit. When I tried to move the game completely froze for a few minutes. I could still control the rest of my team though. I ran into this problem in 2nd half of this campaign, even the final battle. But, with Harlequin and Coyote I managed to win and brought justice to Sam's killer.
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Dead Man's Switch was not long, even with this problem I managed to beat it in about 16 hours. It was just incredibly annoying to have the game lock up, freeze, and then have to find workarounds to still win said game. If you decide to try this game and do not run into the problem I did (which a majority seem to not run into) then you might be able to shave an hour or two off of my completion time. I also missed a couple side quests when I went back to check walkthroughs for what I missed.
If you're interested in science fiction and want a different, near future take on the genre, mixed with heaping doses of fantasy and warped reality then Shadowrun might scratch that itch. Your chances of running into the problems I had are quite low after all the forum research I did to find a solution. If you're already familiar with some of the lore from Shadowrun this should fit in quite nicely, especially if you're familiar with the tie ins I already mentioned. If you're skeptical then you might want to wait until it goes on sale again.
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Tales of Xillia is a role playing game developed and published by Bandai Namco. It did not take me long to start enjoying Tales of Xillia. The characters are quite memorable, which in today's world of RPGs seems to be less common. Or they focus so heavy on characters that they make a bland, boring, and repetitive world (looking at you Bioware). Xillia manages to avoid both of these shortcomings to create a memorable cast of characters, and a wondrous, magical filled world to explore. Artes, Rieze Maxia's form of spirit channeled magic, help fuel everything from a healthy ecosystem to the architecture of cities, even an area's local climate, and passing of the seasons.
The game starts with the ability to choose which side of the story you want to view. You're able to pick between Jude Mathis or Milla Maxwell. They're pretty much the same for over 90% of the game, but there are a few moments when the party splits up and bad things happen. Number 1 rule of RPGs, be they video game or tabletop, never split up. That's how people get hurt, or die.
Anyway, I started with Jude's story. He lives in the city of Fennmont, blessed under a cover of eternal night, and the capital of a country called Rashugal. Jude is studying at the Talim Medical School to be a doctor, following in his father's footsteps. He wanders out to find the teacher he's doing slave labor, I mean graduate study work for. He makes his way to the Laforte Research Center, where outside he sees a strange woman who can walk on water with ease. He grows curious and follows her, and she claims to be the Lord of Spirits Maxwell in a human form. Milla has control of the Four Great Spirits, and begrudgingly decides to let Jude travel through the Research Center with her since he insists on finding his professor.
For those of you familiar with the Tales series you'll know that the combat system is where the real meat of the game is, having a nice story and interesting world are wonderful add ons. The combat system for Tales of Xillia is a real time system. Enemies appear on the screen, and the player has the option of how they approach the enemy. Do you run and strike them behind for some damage? Do you give them the run around until they stop chasing and hit them from behind for even more damage and a stun? Or do you gather up enemies to fight a big group all at once for added EXP and money? I usually chose the latter option as it coupled well with EXP and money boosting food buffs.
You can customize your combo system, using the left stick + circle button, just the right stick, or pressing down L1 for a second set of combos. Each character also controls completely differently. Jude is a very fast fisticuffs brawler, smacking enemies around the screen with his gauntlets. Milla uses a shortsword to dispatch enemies, and is great to use as an aerial combatant. Alvin is the heavy physical damage dealer, swinging a greatsword around like its nothing, as well as using a gun for added distance. Elize is primarily an artes user, being a great healer as well as an area of effect threat. Rowen is a great arte user for single target spells, the Fireball spam is strong with him. Leia shares many combos with Jude, but uses a staff for extended reach and different attacks.
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And you can create pretty princesses with various fashion items!
Whoever you're playing as can link up with another character, and as you build a battle gauge on the side of the screen you can unleash combos by pressing R2 and certain combos while linked with a specific character. The skills you must use are predetermined, and some links are more fruitful than others. When you've climbed this ladder enough you have the ability to unleash as many of these Link Attacks as possible in a given timeframe, even if you switch who you're linked with in the middle of the timeframe. This game's combat is incredibly satisfying, and I found myself turning the difficulty up to hard so I could enjoy longer fights.
This combat system is deep and incredibly satisfying. You feel like you're in complete control as the player, and you can even customize your ally's AI to help support you by healing, or go all out with their strongest attacks, or anything in between.
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One of my favorite parts about this game are the villains. In a game of war, politics, intrigue, and quickly advancing military technology each antagonist has his own goals and a defined personality. Each one is much more complex than a stereotypical mustache twirling, world conquering, or slaughtering menace. Nachtigal, King of Rashugal rules through a military junta and is investing heavily in powerful technology that could be Rieze Maxia's Weapon of Mass Destruction. Gaius, another king who has united the country of Auj Oule, united warring clans by force and has consolidated his rule by winning the hearts and minds of his most common subjects. These two powerful kings and some other unforeseen players are all ready to strike in the name of glory, power, and survival.
In the end the goal is not conquest, or destruction, but merely an ideal for how the world should be. The game's story and narrative are centered more around philosophical quandaries amongst Rieze Maxia's most ambitious people, be they king or a medical student on the lam. As such I feel this story is a true sign of the evolution of video gaming as a whole, growing from nonexistent stories to one of an ultimate, nonsensical evil being hell bent on world destruction or domination, with no real follow up plan. If you're a fan of RPGs you owe it to yourself to play this game and discover some well rounded characters and a world of mixed fantasy and science fiction. I am anxiously waiting for the sequel to be localized!
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NO! THAT'S NOT WHY I'M SO EXCITED! MY EYES ARE BURNING!
Its been brought to my attention that I might be the only one able to post blogs. Well, not really able, I've just discovered a little trick to getting around all the PHP errors. I actually discovered this a couple years back when I would post a new entry but it would not show up on the sidebar for a new blog post. I've found it also works in the era of the PHP Error Wall of Death.
First, hover your mouse cursor over the Blogs button on the very top toolbar, then click on My Blog. You should see a mostly blank page with the Blog Controls toolbar. Click on Edit Entries. Even if your post hasn't shown up on the sidebar it should still be showing up as one of your entries. Simply click on the one that hasn't shown up on the sidebar as if you want to edit it. Move to the bottom of the page and click on Save and Publish again. It should make it to the sidebar now if its original date is new enough to make it. I don't know if an entry older than the bottom most post would show up as a brand new one on the top, so let's assume that it doesn't unless I'm proven wrong.
Happy blogging, and Happy Easter!
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Posted on Apr 18th 2014 at 08:38:01 PM by ( SirPsycho) Posted under soundtrack, zx spectrum, commodore 64, c64, amiga, windows, nes, snes, silver surfer, plok, ecco the dolphin, ecco, lemmings |
Tim Follin is one of the most influential Western composers in the history of the industry. He was rather young to be part of the earliest pioneers, but landed his first job in the video game industry working for Insight Studios at the tender age of 15. During his childhood he had no formal music training but attended a year of Liverpool's Sandown Music College. That was all he needed.
At first he was making arrangements for ports of arcade games with his first work being on his brother Mike's game Subterranen Stryker for the ZX Spectrum. He kept working with his brother for the first part of his career. Their second game was a Galaxian inspired shooter called Star Firebirds for the Spectrum, in which he learned how to use a 2 channel driver. His first 3 channel driver game was Vectron. For his fourth game, he also programmed one of the mini games, as well as the sound for Future Games.
After these first four games Tim and Mike were hired on at Software Creations. There he worked on arrangements for Spectrum and Commodore 64 games such as Agent X I and II, Chronos, Scumball, The Sentinel, Bubble Bobble, Renegade, Bionic Commando and various others. Many of these were nothing more than arrangements to fit onto the ZX Spectrum or C64 for ports of popular arcade games. One exception is the Agent X games.
This trend would mostly continue as the various computers of the late 80s were filled with arcade ports, and Software Creations did a lot of them. He worked on arrangements for ports such as Peter Pack Rat, Ghouls'n Ghosts, and got his first experienced on the NES with the arrangement for Flying Shark which we know as Sky Shark.
Tim Follin was still spending most of his time with the C64 and Spectrum despite his work with the ever popular NES. This could have something to do with the NES not being as popular in Europe as it was in Japan and North America. These PCs of the time were reigning supreme. He did compose the music for Target: Renegade for the NES, then composed for Chester Field, Magic Johnson's Fast Break, and Qix before his last PC game, until later Windows compositions, came in 1991, Gauntlet III for the C64, Amiga, and Spectrum.
A little bit before this he finally moved to the NES full time, composing the soundtrack for Solstice and one of the best for the entire system, Silver Surfer. Say what you will about whether or not the game is actually good, you cannot say anything bad about the soundtrack. He also worked on Kiwi Kraze, Treasure Master, Pictionary, and the Taito version of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade before mostly moving onto the Super Nintendo.
One last game he worked on before going to the Super full time were the handheld and Master System ports of The Incredible Crash Dummies. For most of the Super Nintendo titles he worked on he was assisted by another one of his brothers, Geoff Follin. His first SNES game he composed for was Spider-Man/X-Men: Arcade's Revenge. Next he would create music for Leland's Super Off Road, Plok, Equinox, Silicon & Synapse's (Early Blizzard) Rock N' Roll Racing, Thomas the Tank Engine & Friends, the completed but unreleased Moto-X, and Ken Griffey Jr. Presents Major League Baseball. For the Genesis he also composed the unreleased Time Trax, which managed to leak onto the web in 2013.
After this incredibly busy period of his career it took a downturn. He left Software Creations in 1993 and began freelancing. Despite this incredible resume work was slow and sporadic, with the most done in the following two years. He finished his 16 bit days composing the soundtracks for Batman Forever for Genesis and SNES, and Ultraverse Prime for the Sega CD, then a cancelled PC game Firearm. Afterwards he had a few years off before coming back for the Playstation's Batman & Robin, in which he only arranged pieces from the film's score. The 20th Century would end with arrangement for Bust-A-Move 4's Game Boy Color port.
The 21st Century started with Tim working with Appaloosa Interactive for their revival of the Ecco the Dolphin series, with Defender of the Future for the Dreamcast and later Playstation 2. It would take another few years before his next piece of work, Starsky & Hutch in 2003 for all 3 major systems and PC of the time. Ford Racing 2 and 3 were composed by him as well as Future Tactics: The Uprising. His very last game before he officially retired from video game composition, citing irregular work patterns, was the remake of Lemmings for PSP, released in 2006. His work, from its earliest days, inspired many other European composers, as he was able to do things with early soundchips that nobody thought was even possible.
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Gungrave is a high octane third person shooter that is heavy on style. It was developed by Red Entertainment and published by themselves in Japan, Sega in North America, and Activision in Europe. The game is heavy on style, looking completely awesome and giving setpieces that feel right at home in what is a nearly mindless action game.
The Gungrave series was created by Yasuhiro Nightow. He might not sound too familiar to the video game crowd, but the anime fans will instantly recognize his style from his popular creation Trigun. I love Trigun, and its one of the reasons I've been tracking this game down for years despite mediocre reviews.
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Graphically, the game resembles anime. The characters are cel-shaded and the animation is quite fluid. This is a result of Nightow's experience as an animator. The cutscenes are fluid and in most cases, action packed. All of these scenes tell a story of a drug dealing Syndicate, which the main character is on the warpath against because of a thirst for vengeance.
The gameplay is a bit flawed, and some parts of the game feel almost broken. Technical issues really hurt the overall experience and could have turned this game into a stylish classic in the vein of Killer7 or XIII. There is an unforgivably high amount of slowdown in the game. When there are a lot of enemies on screen with projectiles then the game can grind to a standstill. There's not this much slowdown in freaking Gradius III!
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Despite all the slowdown the game is still quite short. I managed to beat it in less than 2.5 hours. That's not a typo. The game has unlockables which you can earn through multiple playthroughs, and the story might make a little bit more sense, but that it is the extent of the game and its story. The extras are actually cool to look through. The enemies in the game are collected and shown off like action figures, still in their original packaging and everything! On higher difficulties you can unlock concept art and just more stuff to mess around with in the game.
This game could have been much more, with some polish it could have been more fun to play. The animations were quite enjoyable, highly detailed and quite fluid. For the most part they were quite short, leaving a bit more to be desired. The ending was rather underwhelming as well. It was a cliche save the girl and ride a motorcycle into the sunset ending. I'm not even trying to crack a joke here.
All in all this game is still rather interesting, with a nice premise behind the story. The gameplay was underwhelming, but the style was certainly there and was presented in a satisfactory way. The story is a bit cryptic at first, but there is a sequel, and anime, that came out after Gungrave. While the game is short at least it is mostly sweet, and doesn't drag on and on like Dirge of Cerberus.
Alongside Radiant Silvergun Sakimoto composed the arcade shooter Armed Police Batrider before moving over to the Nintendo 64 for Ogre Battle 64: Person of Lordly Caliber, working with the Quest Trio alongside Hayato Matsuo and longtime colleague Masaharu Iwata. The following year, rounding out the 20th century. The new millenium started with a bang, with a solo composition for the much beloved game Vagrant Story.
The follow up to Vagrant Story included Iwata and Sakimoto composing the soundtrack for Tactics Ogre: The Knight of Lodis, a solo composition for Kuusen, and then moving onto Legaia 2: Duel Saga with Yasunori Mitsuda and Michiru Oshima. Next was Tekken Advance before he got to work with Capcom on Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter. At about this time Sakimoto, Iwata, and Manabu Namiki founded their own company called Basiscape, which has grown into the largest company of freelance composers.
In 2003 Sakimoto worked with Squaresoft once again on the long awaited follow up to Final Fantasy Tactics, FFT Advance for the Game Boy Advance. He got the chance to work with Ayako Saso, Kaori Ohkoshi, and the legendary Nobuo Uematsu on this project. The next year he worked with Treasure and Konami on Gradius V, then on Stella Deus for Atlus along with Iwata. With is Basiscape crew he helped compose the Cave shooter Mushihimesama, making 2004 a busy year.
His schedule let up a bit in 2005, but then kicked into full gear in 2006. For the former year Basiscape composed Wizardry Gaiden: Prisoners of the Battles, Bleach: Heat the Soul 2, and Zoids: Full Metal Clash. By now many of the games would be credited to the quickly growing Basiscape. In the latter year the list just gets longer, with the Basiscape credits including Monster Kingdom: Jewel Summoner, Digimon Battle Terminal, Digimon World Beta Squad, Battle Stadium D.O.N., and Fantasy Earth: Zero. Last but certainly not least was his contribution to the soundtrack of Final Fantasy XII along with the rest of the Quest Trio, Taro Hasuke, Yuji Toriyama, and Uematsu once again!
Basiscape continued to get many contracts in 2007, and Sakimoto is credited on Bleach: Heat the Soul 4, GrimGrimoire, Odin Sphere, Opoona, Deltora Quest, and continued with his Final Fantasy compositions with Final Fantasy XII: Revenant Wings, the PSP FFT remake War of the Lions, and the sequel to FF Tactics Advance, Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift. His days beyond the PS2, GBA, and PSP would include the PS3 instant classic Valkyria Chronicles in 2008.
This year would continue with some different games that Basiscape worked on. The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road for the DS was one of them, along with Elminage, and Coded Soul. The following year saw the company work on Elminage II, Tekken 6, Lord of Vermillion II, and Muramasa: The Demon Blade.
2010 saw a return of the old, as well as some newer faces in Sakimoto's life. Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together was remastered and re-released for the PSP late in the year. But there was also Lord of Arcana that he worked on with Uematsu, and Valkyria Chronicles II as a solo effort. Valkyria Chronicles III released in the following year along with Rikishi: Legend of Paper Wrestling.
I want this game translated so bad.
Most recently he has worked on games such as Dragon's Crown, Crimson Shroud, and The Denpa Men series. An upcoming game with his compositions listed is Unsung Story: Tale of the Guardians.
Hitoshi Sakimoto has had quite a long and storied career. Unlike many in this series he was able to land a job in the video game composition world quite early in his life. He began creating his own games while in Junior High with a group of close friends after taking a big interest in the growing video game industry. At the age of 16 he was enlisted along with his friend Masaharu Iwata to compose the soundtrack for the shooter Revolter for the popular Japanese PC-8801, which released in 1988. Its easy to see how this game could easily make a career.
The sheer number of games that Sakimoto and Iwata worked on early in their career is hard to gauge, some of the more popular games they worked on were more PC-88/98 games like Carat and Starship Rendezvous. By himself Sakimoto composed the Game Boy port of Bubble Ghost.
1991 was the first sampling of what the Sakimoto and Iwata combo could produce. Devilish released with a solo Sakimoto soundtrack, but the duo combined for other games like Verytex, King Breeder, Metal Orange and the Turbografx-16 Holy Grail Magical Chase. Magical Chase is one of those examples of a rare game that is actually an insanely good game that should have sold well.
Not much happened the following year, but 1993 was a year which greatly diversified his resume. He got to work on his first licensed property, Super Back to the Future. No, not the version you played, but the good, Japanese exclusive Super Famicom version! Throw in Gauntlet IV and Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen and this year makes good montage material.
The following year he worked on a handful of games, one with a new teammate Hayato Matsuo, who he first worked with on Ogre Battle. Sword Maniac, or as we might know it X-Kaliber 2097 released in 1994 for the SFC and SNES. With his old buddy Iwata he worked on the arcade game Kingdom Grand Prix, an interesting shooter and racing hybrid. It was ported to the Saturn 2 years later but remains a Japanese exclusive. By himself he composed the soundtracks to Pile Up March and Moldorian: Hikari to Yami no Shisutaa.
The Ogre Battle trio came back to work on Quest's newest game, Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. He did not leave the older Super Nintendo behind though, composing with a big team on the Japanese exclusive Sting developed game Treasure Hunter G. RPGs were not his only genre however, as he would compose the soundtrack for Terra Diver, a game that was on basically everything out in 1996 and '97.
The next couple years was another gold plated run by Sakimoto and Iwata. They worked with a few others on the original arcade compositions for Bloody Roar. They followed that up with Final Fantasy Tactics, going with the mostly intact remnants from Quest over to Squaresoft. Solo he composed the soundtrack for the consistently expensive Radiant Silvergun!
Banished is the current indie darling in the gaming world, but for reasons quite a bit different than many other indie titles in active development. Banished is a city building and management game released on February 18, 2014. It is developed by Shining Rock Software, which is one man who spend three years developing and polishing the game. With the current trend of early access games getting funding to help with early development and receive feedback from players during the active development process, similar to the way Minecraft was before their official release.
Banished is quite different than many other city sims on the market, and if you're still looking for something to wash the taste of last year's SimCity disaster out of your mouth then Banished might just be for you. You will need some time to figure this game out though. There are no tech trees, no buying blueprints or trading for ideas. There's not even form of currency, only a trade system based on goods bartering.
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The early game is brutal as you will quickly learn the most important needs for your villagers, food, firewood, and housing. Even if you have two of the three you can expect to watch your village die off in the first or second winter. The weather is absolutely brutal in this game. Difficulty selection allows you to experience the game in completely different ways. Playing on easy or normal will give you access to at least one type of seed for farming and at least one for orchards. You will also have a higher starting population to build on faster. On hard you have no starting building resources, just some food, tools, and clothes in a rickety cart. You have no seeds for farming anything.
You must trade for seeds and probably some other goods as you build your industry up. It will take time though, as you must wait for children to grow up, and must have housing for young families to move into so they can make a bunch of babies. Fast expansion of a population might seem like an easy fix, but soon you will be begging for food, clothes, tools, and firewood while you watch your village die off.
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Anyway, the UI is incredibly crisp and clean. You can pull up windows when you want to view them, or toggle them on to view them all the time. They can be dragged anywhere you want them to rest. Reminds me of some good old Rollercoaster Tycoon times, pull up that lazy Handyman and watch him in the corner, make sure he's emptying those trash cans.
Luke is working on mod tools so people can add their own changes, tools, buildings, features, and changes to the game that they see fit. After three years of development its not hard to see why the guy would be tired and not willing to develop his own DLC for the game, but it hasn't been completely ruled out yet. This is a game that had an instant community build around it, so the mods should be good to expand on the game.
The learning curve is incredibly steep. It took me about 6 hours of total failure before I managed to build a rather successful town. I experimented with year 2 trade builds and managed to score seeds by year 8 and start farming somewhat early.
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There are an incredible amount of somewhat hidden mechanics in the game. Markets are important to make sure people have an even distribution of food in their houses, otherwise they stockpile whatever they can find. Town Halls keep track of various statistics and let you accept nomads into your village. Trading posts can be used for trading materials of course, but also as a form of emergency storage planning.
The main resources involve wood, stone, and iron. You'll need them build pretty much anything and everything. Villagers can be tasked to jobs at anytime with one of the various UI windows. This game is deep but rather limiting in the late game. By then you should have plenty of food and resource production to prevent massive die offs. There are many other resources that villagers need to be happy, such as clothes, tools, firewood, and food. I can't tell you how many times I had towns die off because of a lack of firewood or food in less than a year.
This is a game that is deceptively simple. There is plenty of depth to be found for one who enjoys exploring. If you're a simulation fan and want something that will cleanse your palate, this little one man indie effort might be able to. Banished is $19.99 on Steam and Shining Rock Software's website.
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The Stick of Truth was probably one of the most anticipated RPGs of the year. Its based on the popular Comedy Central show known for its crude animation style, rude characters, profanity, and insightful satire. Matt Stone and Trey Parker are two of the best writers in the show business today, including their smash hit musical The Book of Mormon, South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut, and the beloved classic BASEketball on their resumes its easy to see how the legions of South Park fans would flock to a game written by the show's actual creators and lead writers.
The game was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, themselves known for being excellent writers and world designers. They also have a nasty reputation for releasing broken and buggy games. Is this true with The Stick of Truth? There are some bugs I experienced, but they didn't really hinder gameplay. A few design decisions hurt the overall experience more than a graphics bug and the one crash I experienced.
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The graphics bug involves alt-tabbing without pressing Escape first. It could lead to the characters bugging in and out of existence and was fixed by quitting the game and restarting. It was rather annoying, but didn't completely break the game. The save design hurts the game more than anything. It seems to be a save anywhere type of system when it is really a checkpoint based system. So, saving right after a cutscene was usually fine, but saving halfway down the street would mean the reload would put you back at the beginning of the street.
The actual game itself is quite beautiful. The art makes it feel like you're playing through a short season of different episodes. You play through different days, with all the kids having to go to bed once the sun goes down. These days are built around plot events, not the passage of real time, which flows well with the way the game is written. The world is open, but feels more like a side scroller since you can only cross streets at crosswalks. South Park is not a large town though, its always been referred to as a little mountain town somewhere in Colorado. Some areas seem to be left out, but every building has something to do in it. Well, except the bank. And you can probably figure out what happens there if you're a fan of the show.
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The game's writing is spectacular, and the RPG design leaves even more room for references namely in gray junk items. Everything from Alabama Man to Space Cash is there to be found somewhere. The characters are just as they are on the show, with attacks based on their history. For example, Kyle has an Elemental Summon attack which is nothing more than Kick the Baby.
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Or the most feared attack of all, Mr. Slave's ass.
The timing attacks and defenses in battle will remind long time gamers of RPGs like Super Mario RPG, Mario & Luigi, Paper Mario, and some more real time battle systems like the Tales and Star Ocean series. Combat is rather easy though. I played on the hardest difficulty and still found myself rolling through the game by spamming armor lowering attacks. I played as Jew, so my main attack against bosses and defense heavy enemies was Circum-Scythe, it was quite satisfying to use that attack against enemies such Pedophile and Meth Head.
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As a whole, The Stick of Truth is a very well done game. If you're not a fan I would still recommend it as the writing is absolutely hilarious and vile at times. I found myself laughing hysterically at certain events, and smiling through most of the game as a fan. This game should go down in history as one of the best licensed games out there. Stiff competition in that category I know, but it really is that good and probably the best overall game in terms of technical issues, writing and story, and overall gameplay polish that Obsidian has released so far.
It doesn't matter what I write. As long as I type it with passion along with a certain researched and practiced intellectuality. I don't want to play unless I'm hooked like a fish. Dangle an action packed introduction that serves as a focused crash course on the basic game mechanics like I'm a catfish hungry for Kool-Aid dipped hot dogs. Also big words. Long sentences. That's no lie. The hook brings you back. Press that power button and pick up the controller. Now for the harmonica solo.
Where is the best place for a game to dangle its bait soaked hook in front of the player? Well, at the beginning of course. Great designers know this, so in more linear gameplay and narrative driven games some of the best writing and content occurs in the first few hours. How often have the guys at the newly departed Irrational introduced a deep mystery to the player only to give them a satisfying bread crumb trail that gives them detail after detail at an almost agonizingly slow pace. But you keep going. You have to see how this crazy tale of this megalomaniac Andrew Ryan ends! You have to stop SHODAN!
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How many people got hooked to Final Fantasy VII as a result of its action packed intro, essentially putting all the story and character development on hold for the first hour while you infiltrate the Sector 1 Reactor and blow it to smithereens. The rest of Midgar can get quite strange, from Wall Market crossdressing to a talking dog like creature. In FF8 you watch a nice swordfight, and it can get you pumped up if its your first time playing. Unlike the predecessor you watch the action, then wake up and spend a quiet day at school before doing anything based on action, and then you're rudely interrupted by tutorials! Its quite a contrast compared to the sudden, jarring start of FF7.
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Shut up!
Shigeru Miyamoto has said that the most important part of a video game is the first thirty minutes. There needs to be something in the first few minutes of a game to really get the player pumped up and eager to play. Pick up almost any game designed or lead by Miyamoto and you can see how true he sticks to this philosophy, from Donkey Kong, to Star Fox, to New Super Mario Bros.
For a game designed around fast and precise gameplay this seems a bit more simple, just let the player play the game. A long, narrative based game like an RPG presents another challenge though. The story might not really kick in for 10 to 30 hours, maybe not until the final act. An action packed start such as the one I mentioned in FF7 or the slaughter of the Unicorn Brigade at the beginning of Suikoden II can really get the player on the side of the protagonists, or questioning them. A slower paced character driven introduction can be just as effective though. If you're playing an RPG you're probably doing it for the story after all.
Some games have been so painfully slow for me that continuing would probably leave me with a perpetual scowl than any sort of accomplishment. Yes. I am looking at my copy of Grandia III. Three hours and nothing has happened. Nothing! I haven't even left town yet! Grandia II is much quicker in comparison, with action in the first half hour and great character introductions.
Even the first two Fallouts have introductions that can almost cause ulcers, and those are two of my favorite games of all time! In the first one the first thing you do once you've left Vault 13 is kill a bunch of rats while leaving the cave that Vault 13 is in. Good for experience, but dull from a player's perspective. Fallout 2 isn't much different, except switch rats out with little radscorpions and giant ants inside the Temple of Trials. The first thing you do in the Fallout universe is play exterminator.
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One thing that bugs me about games anymore is the inclusion of a mandatory tutorial. They have been around for some time, but they serve no narrative purpose and always break the fourth wall by telling you what button to press. I know what the X button does! I've been playing Playstation since before they were numbered! I remember a time before analog sticks and Dualshock! Get off my lawn! If I need to know what the buttons do then I'll read the manual. But they don't make those anymore, now I'm looking at Tales of Xillia.
When a game like Thief: The Dark Project makes the tutorial an option on the main menu its quite refreshing. You know it exists seperate from the game world because you don't play the tutorial after selecting "Start Game". Besides, a mandatory tutorial kills replay value as it is a guaranteed 20 minutes to an hour of just sitting there mashing the buttons to make the text go away. Final Fantasy VIII is an example of hellish tutorials. That time could be spent on an excellent cinematic scene that blows the player away from the moment they select "New Game". A tutorial is not a hook. It is not bait. It is boredom. Don't force us to keep playing tutorials. They should always be optional.
So what are some of your favorite gaming introductions and hooks? Least favorites? Have any gripes about modern games that you can't avoid? Rant about them here!
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I am unsure if Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch is the RPG I would use to introduce the genre to a child or not. I was planning on showing my eventual offspring the classics first, maybe start with some Dragon Quest and lead into some SNES Squaresoft. I am still leaning towards Ni no Kuni as a launchpad as it throws Dragon Quest, Monster Rancher, Pokemon, and My Neighbor Totoro in a blender and just lets it all puree for hours. Glorious hours. Level-5 and Studio Ghibli have crafted a beautiful world with wonderful characters that show a child's journey from the worst circumstances you could imagine into a strong and independent leader.
Oliver is a resident of the post-war Americana inspired peaceful town of Motorville. Early on in the game Oliver's mother dies, saving her son from drowning after he test drives his friend Phillip's hand made car. He holds onto a stuffed animal that his mother made for him and begins to cry on it. When his tears hit the stuffed doll Studio Ghibli happens and the stuffed animal is granted life, becoming Lord High Lord of the Fairies Drippy. Drippy gives a bunch of information to Oliver about another world where people's hearts are connected. If somebody exists in Motorville, they will exist in this world, so his mother could still be alive there!
Not long into the adventure in this new world Oliver is granted the spell to create a familiar from the power of his heart. Oliver creates the Milites Mitey Mite. You as the player have the ability to feed and grow your familiars as you see fit, and get the ability to catch your own once Esthar is recruited into the party later. Swaine has the ability to steal items and cause status ailments with his gun. Marcassin is recruited late in the game and is another powerful spellcaster to add to the mix of Oliver and Esthar.
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That's a tidy pose, ent'it?
You'll really get your power from familiars, as they can take up roles that just don't fit your main characters. Early on Mitey is a pretty good tank and does decent damage, but attacks slowly. Mitey is not very useful after the halfway point, his stats start to flatten. There will be plenty of options for a replacement though, assuming you've been singing to catchable familiars with Esthar! This is a Level-5 game, so expect item alchemy as well.
Combat itself is fairly straightforward, attack, use skills and magic, and you can stagger your enemies and cancel their attacks with proper timing. Familiars with fast attack speed are better at staggering and canceling than slow attackers like Mitey. Staggering can lead to a possible golden glim, which gives the familiar a form of super ability. It could be an offensive ability, healing, or a buff. The combat is turn based, so the feel of attacking and the experience gains give the feeling of Dragon Quest influence.
The music is fantastic, being composed by Studio Ghibli veteran Joe Hisaishi and Rei Kendoh. All the music was performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. The music was first compressed so it could fit on a DS cart, a 4 gig cart though. The PS3 soundtrack is the full orchestral performance.
The world really feels like an old school RPG world though. For every kingdom or large landmass there only seems to be one town to visit. There you stock up on items, move the story forward, run errands for people for items and money, and take monster bounties. For the most part of the game I found the errands and bounties to be the best way to stock up on money, as monsters just didn't seem to drop enough. It really felt more balanced around the fact that you do run all the errands while playing through the game.
This really slows down the midgame, as you end up devoting entire play sessions, multiple hours each time, to simply running errands and taking out bounties. Otherwise you can't afford new weapons and armor and lag even further behind! Eventually the errands start to bottleneck as you're running out of new pieces of heart to take and give to other people, so it doesn't take long towards the endgame.
The game quickens pace towards the end and leads straight to the final showdown with the White Witch. After completing the game the player has the option of creating a cleared save file and returning to the world to complete more errands, bounties. You can also do some more side quests like win stuff at the casino, finish the Solosseum, and make all the hidden and powerful alchemy recipes. As sweet and magical as this game is, this post game content might just be hard to resist.
I would give a strong recommendation to this game for anybody that is an RPG fan and has been looking for a classic styled game that is just modern enough, challenging, and tells a strong enough story to keep you hooked. The characters in this game are not the same tired clichs that have been running rampant in the genre for the past decade, so their performances and development should leave you satisfied.
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Hotline Miami is the game that got me to pay attention to the current indie scene. I had played some recent indies beforehand such as Minecraft, Geometry Wars, and its ilk, but this game really made me watch avenues such as Steam Greenlight and Kickstarter for indie or crowdfunded games. Hell, there's even a Suikoden fangame that I'm watching at the moment (are you even surprised by this?)
I've seen Hotline Miami described as a top down 'fuck'em up' by Eurogamer and that description is quite accurate. You play as a nameless character that the community has named Jacket as he wears a letter jacket. The gameplay revolves around slaughtering everybody on the floor you're running around on to a kickass soundtrack. Jacket wears a mask to disguise his identity, but each mask has a certain feature that changes gameplay slightly.
In terms of style Hotline Miami is a modernized version of the Playstation game Loaded, but with pixel based graphics and an even better soundtrack. You could point out elements to even old top down arcade shooters from the mid-late 80s like Ikari Warriors, Commando, Iron Tank, and many others as inspiration for some elements of design. Hotline Miami is more of a free roaming game though, with full movement and with the ability to scroll any direction you desire.
In terms of story this game can only be described as a stream of consciousness descent into sanity. The music is right at home in a dance club but some just feel deeper, and with all the face stomping and brain bashing it creates a unique dynamic.
The game even goes into a spin based on alternate timelines and how the story evolves from there. At a certain point in the game there's a confrontation between Jacket and a man wearing a motorcycle helmet. After completing Jacket's story the game switches perspective to the slain motorcycle man and lets the player control him, following the events until the confrontation with Jacket and showing what would happen if the motorcycle man won that fight and killed Jacket.
This version of 1980's Miami will leave you craving more. With a sequel on the way I am anxiously awaiting this follow up to a wonderful indie game that took some old ideas and made them stylish and new. It normally retails for $9.99 on a variety of platforms, from Windows, OSX, Linux, and with Crossplay support on PS3 and Vita. On the PC front it often goes on sale for $2.50, which is the price I paid for it. It was worth every penny.
Empire: Total War
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We have not ventured out of Europe in quite some time, so with Empire the idea was focused on the Eurocentric days of colonialism and early imperialism. Outside of Spain, England, and France most main campaign countries have little outside of Europe and the Near East. Empire is nothing if not ambitious.
The game differs in the previous fare by greatly enlarging the sheer scope of the entire game. You can conquer everything from the Rocky Mountains to the far Eastern edge of India. But there is still plenty of war to be had in all of these theaters.
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Thankfully, The Creative Assembly not only put the campaign of the Americas and India but also factions native to this area. Well, you can play as the Maratha in their early years before they displaced the Mughals in India.Native American tribes are added to the game through the game's DLC expansion, The Warpath. This adds playable Iroquois, Cherokee, Huron, Pueblo, and Plains nations on a smaller map focused on North America.
Some changes occur on the campaign map in this release. Villages dot the countryside, and more are built as prosperity increases and time passes. These villages are specialized. Coastal villages can be turned into ports, inland villages can become farms or take advantage of local or imported resources for industry. Schools can be used for research.
Now let's talk about some major gameplay changes that this entry to the series brought to the fray. First and foremost is the introduction of personally controlled naval battles. Before Empire all naval battles could only be auto-resolved, now you can take control of your ship-of-the-lines, sloops, galleys, and other cannon based ships to victory against other nations.
A research tree is added to the game too. Any faction which controls a school is allowed to use it to research their way up the tech tree. Each school can focus on one technology until they're all gone, which takes a long time.
As a result of these changes there were tweaks to the agent system as well. One of the most useful is the Gentleman.
Gentlemen can quite politely duel other Gentlemen to the death, with fairly foppish wigs, frilly clothes, and inaccurate pistoles indeed. They are best used by garrisoning them inside a school to increase your research points, or decrease research time is another way of putting it.
Rakes are hybrid spies and assassins. You can use them as everything spies used to do, as well as sabotage and assassinate leaders. These names change based upon factions, so Muslim factions refer to Rakes as Hashashin, while the Marathans call them Thugee.
Missionaries are the game's religious unit. For Christian kings these can take one of three forms, Catholic, Orthodox, or the quite new and wildly spreading ideal, Protestants. Muslims still use the Imam while the Marathans use the Brahmin.
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Gameplay is changed quite incredibly, as the focus is still primarily on the tactics of the military battles. Now; instead of like Shogun and both Medieval games where gunpowder is a late game, expensive, and still unexplored deployment of soldiers, gunpowder units are available from the start and special care must be placed on any melee units. Still, Native Warriors and Pikemen can be worth it in the early game, pikes especially to push back cavalry. Native Warriors are quite fast and powerful in ambushes against gunpowder units, making them worth the investment in the Americas. Also, instead of more long term siege equipment like catapults, battering rams, and burrowing sappers you now have plenty of cannons at your disposal to blast walls and gates down quite quickly.
While it seems like Empire is a great game while describing its changes, setting, and what it adds to the fore of Total War seems appealing at face value and based on my explanations it has many problems. The game released with all kinds of technical issues, and many remain unresolved to this day (mods are the best fixes). It remains quite unoptimized, and runs at 25-40 fps on my PC at the campaign map, let alone battles. Because of many of the bugfixes this is one of the only games in the series where DarthMod is recommended above all others. Richard Beddow was the composer for Empire: Total War, breaking Jeff van Dyck's winning streak.
The game was quite simply rushed. While almost every Total War launch has been horrid and unbelievably bad the games usually end up in playable states by the time the final patch hits. While Empire is playable it is debatable about whether it is enjoyable. One of the reasons it was rushed is due to it having a brand new engine, Warscape, which is still the engine in use in the latest release. While Sega purchased The Creative Assembly after Rome was finished the bad management and forced rushed development cycle was not felt until Empire. Empire could have been so much more, but it was not meant to be.
Napoleon: Total War
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I'm not entirely sure what there is to say about Napoleon. In terms of timeline it is the most recent Total War game, taking place in the early 19th Century and following the campaigns of the namesake, Napoleon Bonaparte.
Napoleon feels like what Empire should have been, but this game only focuses on the European theater from Spain and North Africa all the way to Russia and Persia. Much of what I warned about at the end of the Empire review has been fixed and/or polished for Napoleon. Outside of hardcore Empire fans most of the Total War fanbase will agree that Napoleon is the better of these two installments, even if it is not one of their favorites.
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One of the main complaints about Napoleon is that it feels more like an expansion pack that was released at full retail. Pretty much everything remains the same at face value in Napoleon compared to Empire.
Napoleon allows you to follow the leader's campaigns from his early years to his reign as Emperor of France in a series of smaller, mini campaigns. There's not much to be said about Napoleon that hasn't been already been mentioned above in the Empire review.
Next time: We return to the Land of the Rising Sun and travel far to the West to conquer in the name of Roma once more.
A war of all against all.
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A new era was beginning. Finally, average PCs were becoming strong enough to allow hundreds of 3D models to be displayed on a single screen. They may not be as high resolution as a game that only displays a few dozen, but it was possible to do without much lag. The Creative Assembly took advantage of this and created a brand new engine to power its newest and most ambitious game in their flagship Total War series. This new game turned back the clock from Medieval, but kept the geography in Europe.
Mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam. A thousand roads lead men forever to Rome. This was especially true of the third game in the Total War franchise: Rome: Total War which released in September of 2004.
Rome is a seminal game not only in the series, but for the entire umbrella genre of strategy games, changing the entire dynamic of future games to be less of advancements from Shogun or Medieval, to using Rome as its benchmark.
Everything is in 3D, gone is the flat 2D styled campaign map, and in comes a fully 3D realized map with mountains, rivers, fords, plains, forests, roads, hills, beaches, ports, cliffs, deserts, and more.
The unit roster is much larger, and most factions are truly unique. There are 3 Roman factions that are all identical with technology, but many other factions exist that are unlockable. Some notable units include Carthaginian, Seleucid, and Parthian elephants. Some factions also include chariots, such as Pontus, The Seleucid Empire, Ptolomaic Egypt, and the Britons.
Overall there is just a much larger unit variety, and maps are much larger to allow for even bigger armies than the first two games could possibly allow!
The Pope is essentially replaced by Senatus Populusque Romanus, SPQR, the Senate and People of Rome. Many Total War fans just know them as Scumbag Senate. The focus on religion is completely gone from this game, which is rather sensible in comparison with Medieval, where Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Islam all collided to form easy excuses to go to war and ostracize an unruly king. This allows the game to focus more fully on war!
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Agents have been fairly simplified for this game. There are only 3 available to all factions, spies, diplomats, and assassins. Diplomats have had the most additions though, with many new options to give diplomacy a much larger role in the game. However, AI factions tend to be pretty dumb when it comes to handling diplomacy.
Trade agreements are the most lucrative, as you can make money off of them, they're most useful with your surrounding neighbors, as overseas trade is a long process to get running.
Fog of war becomes a big factor in the game too, with provinces being large and the player no longer able to just magically see not only their entire province, but have information on the surrounding ones, it helps to build some infrastructure like watchtowers and forts to see and block choke points.
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If its not apparent this game is seen as one of the greatest strategy games of all time not just because of its options, but its growth compared to its predecessors. Rome: Total War is what all sequels strive to be, and few attain, great advancement and growth in comparison to its preceding games.
Rome: Total War was not the first to receive support from the modding community, but its legacy is so long lasting that mods still trickle out for this game nearly a decade after its initial release. Some of the most beloved ones include Europa Barbarorum, Rome: Total Realism (not really realistic), and DarthMod.
Rome: Total War received not one, but two expansions. The first one, Barbarian Invasion, continues the tradition of some random place being invaded by outside forces. This takes place after the Roman Empire had been split into an Eastern and Western Empire. The player can choose to try and keep their empire intact while holding off the invasions of the 5th Century and look to expand their lands once they've been dealt with! Or you can play as some of the various invaders, such as the Franks, Goths, Huns, and others vying to expand their lands and place their foothold into the rich Roman world.
The 2nd expansion; Rome: Total War Alexander, is a recreation of the conquests of the legendary Macedonian king Alexander III. You get to control the living myth while he marches into Asia Minor and onto Achaemenid Persia to found many cities in his name and create the greatest empire in history to that point in time. It is a short campaign meant to challenge the player in a sort of blitzkreig of antiquity. How much can you conquer between Greece and India in 100 turns?
Medieval II: Total War
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Medieval II marked the first time that a setting had been revisted with an updated engine. The base of the game is built on the code of Rome, and the map is nearly identical, focusing on the later Christian and Muslim Kingdoms of Europe.
Crusades return and are just as annoying as in the first one. The Pope will always declare one when you're too small and poor to do anything about it. Scumbag Pope. Unlike the first Medieval this one goes late enough to allow for the discovery of the New World, and some weird movements by the AI have even lead to things such as the Aztecs colonizing Ireland.
As with the first Medieval there is a large emphasis on religion, with the vanilla game giving a few major religions to influence and change each faction's overall strategy. There are Catholic, Orthodox, and Muslim factions, but there are still pockets of paganism in parts of Eastern Europe around the Baltic and Prussia at this point in time.
A few graphical changes allowed Medieval II to be the most cinematic in the series upon its release. Individual troops in the same unit will have different colored clothes, different designs on their shields, some might have beards while others do not, etc. Jeff van Dyck returns to lead the musical efforts of both Rome and Medieval II.
A couple of agents have been added from Rome, the only brand new one being the merchant. The merchant is able to post himself on a trade resource and generate money, he's also able to buy out other merchants but could be bought out himself. The Princess returns from the first Medieval, and can be used to broker an alliance or as a free diplomat in the early game. Priests and Imams convert a province to their respective religion, and can level up by prosecuting heretics who pop up in provinces with heretical thinking.
Medieval received one expansion, and it was a big one! Four smaller campaigns were added in Medieval II: Total War Kingdoms, these smaller campaigns are the British Isles in the 13th century, the Crusades during 12th century, the Teutonic crusades in the 13th century, and the Spanish conquest of central America and the southern United States in the 15th century.
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As a result of all the changes and the stability of the game after Kingdoms released, Medieval II has become the golden child of mods for the entire series still to this date. Some of the most notable ones include the direct Middle Earth conversion Third Age: Total War, the historical fiction of The Last Kingdom, Stainless Steel, the ever popular DarthMod, and Roma Surrectum, a remake of Rome: Total War using Medieval II's changes.
Next time: We colonize the Americas and India!
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