Review: Resident Evil: Director's Cut

Resident Evil: Director's Cut

The term survival horror didn't exist before 1996, at least not when referring to a video game genre. It wasn't until Resident Evil that an entire genre was devoted to what equated to be horror films, but for video games. It wasn't the first game to try and scare us, or even the first horror game by Capcom, but it was the most popular at the time, and the one that got most of the important aspects right. So what started out at a message upon entering the game's setting again, became something more and a genre was born.

"You have once again stepped into the world of survival horror"

Gameplay is all about survival. You have a limited inventory with a few health recovery items and some firepower, and you're job is to survive until the end. Running from room to room, piecing together puzzles and dispatching the undead creatures that lurk the halls. However, fighting isn't always the best option when running around. You have to conserve ammo and pick your battles in order to survive. It's one of the staples of the survival horror genre that you're not meant to just run in and clear the zone. Every encounter has some weight to it, and makes you consider your options on how to move forward.

To make sure you couldn't just run and gun your way through the game, the controls limited you from moving and shooting at the same time. Either an early gaming limitation or an intentional design choice, it did assist the horror aspect the creator's were going for.

With limited mobility and limited view of your area thanks to carefully-placed, static camera angles, you are always dreading what might be around the next corner. Some other elements added to the suspense are notes written by the mansions former inhabitants-turned-zombie or corpse and a decent score to compliment the mood.

Health items can be gathered and combined to make strong health items, and your arsenal ranges from a knife to a rocket launcher. But the catch is, you could only carry 6 - 8 items depending on which character you're playing as. This means you have to prepare for the worst case scenario and take what's needed to progress through the game. Any excessive or unneeded items are kept in a box that appears throughout the game in save rooms, and always has what you put into it at any point in the game.

Progression is largely dictated by your ability to solve the Spencer Mansion's and its outlying areas' many puzzles, which boil down to some adventure gaming mechanics. You hunt down one item that has to be used to get another item which then gives you the key to open some more doors. This keeps the pacing from sprinting, but that's the point. The game is supposed to be slow-building and the puzzles are a nice way to facilitate that.

The creators were smart enough to balance out all the running around with some zombie encounters and the eventual boss battles which consist of a giant snake, a giant plant, a giant spider and a giant tyrant. While not the most creative cast of bosses, they do manage to fill you with some terror since they're faster and stronger than most of the enemies that you're used to at that point.

Even the aspect of saving is done in such a way to make you uneasy. You save only in certain, designated areas by using a typewriter and a limited supply of ink ribbons. While you're highly unlikely to run out of ink ribbons, the fact that there's only a limited number of them makes you think you could at some point, and this causes distress.

The voice acting is... memorable to say the least. There is almost no point in the dialog where I wasn't wincing or chuckling. This isn't a professional product of Resident Evil, this is amateur hour with interns. It's that special kind of bad, that it's so awful that it's funny. The script doesn't help things at all, it's just as bad if not worse than the voice acting.

The dialog is silly and awkward consistently throughout the game. Both do manage create some unintentional contrast between the moments where you're running through the various areas, trying to survive. But once Barry, Wesker, Chris, Jill or anyone else open their mouths, all tension and suspense are gone. You can't skip any of the in-game cut-scenes, but with gold like "Jill sandwich" and "master of unlocking", why would you want to?

I would say the performances are a shame, but the story doesn't help either. Zombies show up because of some experimentations by an evil organization which results in a desperate escape. It's all a formula that we've seen before, but it's entertaining at least. I can't even go into the characters because of before-mentioned silliness, but one thing is done right about them: they add to the horror.

Survival horror is only scary when you don't have something or someone to rely on, which is why multi-player survival horror doesn't exist. If you have someone to support you, you're not really scared. So when Resident Evil gives us a supporting cast, they're created to be unreliable. Playing as Jill, you frequently encounter Barry around the game, but he gradually starts behaving in slightly off ways to make you suspicious of him. The rest of the cast either disappears or has met some grisly end (the exception being Rebecca). This is what true terror is about, creating an environment that makes you uncomfortable and Resident Evil got it right in the beginning.

The graphics work for the time but haven't aged well. All the background are pre-rendered and very well-lit and characters look blocky. You can tell it was the first entry in the series and how it would later evolve to create more and more unsettling settings and greater character detail. The monsters in the game can still stress you out when they're on screen, but that's mostly due to their ability to cause massive damage to you and not how they look.

CGI cut-scenes are placed throughout the game except for the opening, which is completely live-action and clearly a nod to George Romero.

Talking specifically about the Director's Cut version now; you get more difficulty settings and bonuses. There's an advanced mode of the game (arranged mode for North Americans) and you can unlock an unlimited ammo Colt Python. Advanced Mode will also switch around some camera angles in certain areas and rearranged the items to make what should be familiar, unfamiliar again. It was a nice touch by the creators to create some uneasiness for those who might've played the game through over and over again so it doesn't lose it's tension.

The Director's Cut also support analog movement, if you have the dual shock release, although it doesn't work cohesively with the tank controls which were built with a d-pad in mind. It's functional but always feels weird to me.

All in all, it's still fun to play. You'll get startled sometimes when a monster decides to make a sudden appearance, but it won't give you nightmares like it used to.

Review: The Last Story

The Last Story

the limited edition packaging

The Last Story is another game that took a few petitions from a dedicated fan base to get over here, much like Xenoblade. The instant allure for fans are the two big names tied to this game: Hironobu Sakaguchi and Nobuo Uematsu. The former being the father of the Final Fantasy series and the other being the musical genius behind many of the Final Fantasy games. Both having departed Square Enix have found each other again, working under this Mistwalker game. Having Hironobu Sakaguchi on board also explains the similarities between 'The Last Story' and 'Final Fantasy' titles.

On a minor note: it's nice to see both their names actually appear on the box art. They deserve recognition for all the work they've put into gaming. Anyone who is familiar with the genre knows having them there is a huge selling point.

I'll start off with what the designers wanted to be the centerpiece for this game: the story. From the packaging of the limited edition version, to the use of a narrator, and breaking the game up into chapters, the creators wanted you to know where your attention should be. And for the most part, the story shines where it needs to. It does well to stay away from fantasy and anime cliches for the most part, but there are a few of the melodramatic moments and events that seem to come out of nowhere and leave no explanation. But overall, it's a tale that endeared me to the characters and their struggles.

The cast of characters is made up of a bunch of rag-tag mercenaries that find their way into Lazulis island where they have various encounters with the guards, the royal family and the citizens. All of which get caught up in a giant power struggle between humans and an outcast race known as the Gurak. It's up to your band of merry people to sort out all the political deception and bring peace to the land by using teamwork and the power of the Outsider.

If it sounds like this is a big epic tale, I assure you it's not. The entire game is primarily focused around one town and it's outlying areas. You never really get a feel for how large the world is or that two entire races are really at war with each other since your point of view is limited to this one island and the Gurak island.

That's not to say this is a bad thing; it's better to concentrate on developing and polishing what you have than spread your story and characters out too thin and have everything fall flat. But at the same time it's hard to not have the words 'Wii limitations' in the back of your mind. But for what's there, it's good. So I can't complain about the scope and size of the story when a lot of care and attention went into writing it.

The best parts of the story are seeing the characters interact with one another. Over the course of the 20-some odd hour game, you'll really get a feel for the band of mercenaries. They feel like they've known each other for years and years, and treat each other like family. You'll see them get into arguments and strife but also see them share tender moments together. I felt myself really growing attached to them the more and more I played.

JRPGs tend to forget to do this: make the player care about the characters. You can't just throw some people into a situation and have the player already be invested in their plight, you have to take the time to introduce us to the characters and show us why we should care. And that's what The Last Story does, it lets the cast grow on you. All those moments where they talk and interact mean something to the story and pay off down the road.

In summation, the story didn't want to be something big and expansive. It was meant as a small story. Each part carefully crafted with each character playing a key role. So while this may not be the epic tale found in Skyrim or Mass Effect, it does leave a lasting impression. This is the story you'll remember years from now.

Graphically, the game does well to max out the potential of the Wii. Everything is rendered with enough detail to make the story come alive. My only criticism is with the color palette. All the colors for most of the game seem very desaturated and blend together. That's not to say there aren't a few vibrant areas or effects, but overall the game looks the same from start to finish. All the characters animate well and the environments look nice, but a little more variety would've been welcome. There are some awkward moments with General Ashtor's conversation model though: his mouth tends to go into spasms when trying to smile.

The difference maker with this game is the battle system. There's nothing quite like it, at least as far as I've played, and that was the whole point behind the design of it. Sakaguchi wanted to get away from the active time battle system that has been apart of the Final Fantasy series since Final Fantasy IV.

Instead of a turn-based or an active-time system, you have real-time. Your character will move around the battle field, dodging enemy fire, blocking, shooting arrows and using the environment to unleash attacks. It takes a while to get used to, but once you do, it is interesting to play with. The way you approach a battle was also changed up. You can sometimes use stealth to pick off enemies one by one, or just take them head on, the choice is up to you.

You attack automatically, or using the A-button if you use the different controller configuration, by moving the analog stick in a certain direction, and that determines where you attack. Since the analog stick pulls double-duty of character movement and attack direction, holding the B-button will put you in a guard stance, and allow you to move around the battlefield without auto-attacking everything along the way. While moving around while holding the B-button, your character can also move over obstacles like chest-high walls and other characters, ensuring you can get where you want to go with little trouble.

Each character gets about 3-4 abilities to use, and they all have value in battle. Much like the story, a limited approach was taken to determining what abilities people had so every ability would see some use eventually. There's also context moves for the main character like a charge attack, or running up a wall and striking downward onto an enemy that see just about as much use. Each character also has an SP meter that, when full, can activate a strong attack, defensive ability or increase your battle speed, but in order to use it again, you'll need to either sustain damage or deal damage to recharge the meter back to full.

Magic in this game has the unique property of leaving area of effect conditions on the battle field when cast. A small, colored ring will appear on the battlefield which can then be targeted with another area of attack ability to create an environment condition like having the enemies slip or take away their ability to guard. There aren't many combinations of conditions, but they are all useful.

Bosses really shine in this game. Rarely are there two alike and they all do a great job of getting away from the run-up-and-bash-them battle strategy. Each one needs a different utilization of the battle system to defeat. For those who still want to just hack away, there is that option too, but it just takes longer.

Since everything does take a while to get used to in battle: you have 5 lives before you game over. Every time your HP drops to 0, you consume one life. When all the main characters lives are gone, it's game over. Each party member has their own stock of lives, and when they're gone, the ally is downed for the remainder of the battle. The game auto-saves at certain points, so getting a game over just means going back to before the battle and trying again.

To revive allies, you can activate the power of the Outsider. While in this mode, all of the enemy fire will be direct towards you, and when you run near a downed ally, they'll revive. Also, each connected attack on an opponent will restore some health to the main character. There's no limit to how many times you can activate the power, but it does wear off eventually, so you'll need to reapply if you want to continuously use it.

After each battle, your lives and HP all getting filled back up. Like Xenoblade, there are no battle items at all. So there's no fumbling around with menus when trying to unleash attacks or heal your party. Leveling is relatively easy to the point where you don't ever have to stay in an area and grind out EXP. This contributes to the nice pacing of the game.

More options for directing your party around would've been nice. Sometimes healers strayed too far away in the larger arenas, or characters would just constantly stand in the line of enemy fire. But since the lives system gives you a lot of leeway, it's not that big of a problem. You can charge your skill gauge which will allow you to give direct commands to your allies as far as what ability they will use next so you can plan a coordinated assault.

As you gather gear, you'll have the option to upgrade them up to a certain tier. Upgrading is simple and easy to do. The most you'll need is money and a few ingredients which can be found going through most of the game's dungeons. Upgrading weapons and armor can lead to some nice bonus attributes like faster movement speed or increase damage reduction while guarding.

Most of the levels are pretty linear, only the hub town really lets you run around and explore. It would've been nice to see some more open-ended areas since you'll be stuck in a corridor while running around the dungeons. But the town is nicely detailed with alleys and townsfolk to pick up extra side quests or shop.

Some of the environmental context functions like ducking behind a wall or opening a chest can get annoying since they all use the same button. I found myself trying to open treasure chests but end up getting stuck to a wall and entering sneaking mode. The frustration level is minimal, but it still happened on occasion.

Nobuo Uematsu puts together one of his best works yet. Listening to the standalone soundtrack, you can hear how his work has evolved. I got a sense of a more theatrical tone and structure from his compositions, as if he was trying to channel Harry Gregson-Williams but still keeping his signature melodic touches that makes his songs stay with you even after you've finished the game. There are a few tracks that have odd choices made in them, but they don't take away from what is overall, a great musical achievement.

Voice acting for The Last Story, much like Xenoblade, was localized in Europe, so get ready for a lot of English mannerisms and accents. It's not distracting from an American perspective, it's just amusing every time someone gets called a 'git'. Unlike Xenoblade, there is no option to change the voices back to their original Japanese recording, but I doubt there was a huge audience for that (or a huge audience for this game for that matter). The English cast does a fine job giving life and personality to the characters. I can't think of a weak point in the entire cast.

This is perhaps the one game I'll ever complain about not having enough Wii-mote support. I know that sounds stupid, but hear me out. When you hold down the Z-button, you go into first person mode. You'd think this would allow you to point the Wii-mote at the screen and move your field of vision around, but no. You use the analog stick to move around. It doesn't take away from the game, but it is odd that they left that out. But then again, there is no motion controls or gimicks at all, so maybe this is just the control design being consistent.

Speaking of odd behaviors, I recommend playing this game with the Wii-mote and not the classic controller. The less amount of buttons works in the Wii-mote's favor. The classic controller really doesn't add too much and the button layout isn't the greatest. You'll definitely want simpler over familiar with this game. The loss of easier camera control doesn't make a difference since it'll auto-position behind the main character most of the time.

I did find that, during battle, the camera can work against you a lot of the time. Since you can't change the vertical positioning of the camera, no matter what controller you use, there will be moments where your view is obstructed by miscellaneous battle set pieces or characters being in the way which can be frustrating.

Once you've beaten the game, you'll be treated with a new game plus option. There's also multi-player battles, but I avoided it. I heard it was enjoyable and functional, but I wanted to enjoy this game for the solo campaign.

Unfortunately, I get the feeling The Last Story will largely remain unnoticed and, because XSeed is the publisher, it will probably go out of print before too long so make sure you pick it up as soon as possible. It's a great game and shouldn't be missed. For me, it was definitely an acquired taste: getting used to the battle system and the setting. But once everything settled in, I couldn't put it down.

All images were taken by me and are open to use by whomever, where ever.

Tutorials

Tutorials

Because the audience for video games has broadened, development teams seem to suspect that people who didn't grow up playing video games will not have a clue on what to do after they've turned on the console (I'm aware there are people like this, I just refuse to believe they're the majority or target audience). There's a point when the hand-holding becomes too much, and you're no longer explaining how to play the game, you're explaining how to play EVERY video game.

I strongly believe that good level design can teach a player most of the necessary things, if not all, to complete the game. However, I further believe that what ideas cannot be conveyed through game play design for any reason can be further explained in manuals. In either case, the use of in-game tutorials that obstruct players from actually playing the game are not needed.

I was inspired to rant on this issue while playing a demo of Gravity Rush for the Playstation Vita. The game opens up with a tutorial explaining the L-stick being the movement control for the character and the R-stick being the camera movement controller. I tried to picture the person dumb enough to actually require these instructions. I wasn't so much being informed about the game as I was being insulted by the game designers.

I envision two different scenarios which this could've played out differently without the need for such an idiotic gaming moment:

Let's say you have never picked up a gaming controller in your life and were suddenly handed a Vita, and at that moment you were utterly intoxicated. I imagine that you would still have the mental capacity to instinctively try pressing all the buttons on the handheld to see what they individually do. Which then would eventually lead you to discover that: the L-stick controls player movement and the R-stick controls camera movement.

Now let's say that you're not inebriated and have never picked up a game controller in your life and someone just handed a Vita. I suspect you would put together the basic design philosophy behind the modern, analog-stick-based controller to some degree. Keeping in mind that your goal is to move around a character in a two or possibly three dimensional space, one would need a controller input to allow for these movements, far exceeding the functionality of a normal button. Upon this realization, you then look down at the controller and 1) notice the directional pad and 2) notice the analog sticks. 'Gee, in order to control a character, how about I try these things that look like directions or hey, how about that thing that moves back and forth', you say because you're an intelligent human being who can grasp stuff like this.

In either scenario, I outlined when no method of tutorial is used and the process of trial and error takes over. I remember this was the case when I was a kid (not the intoxicated part), we didn't have in-game text tutorials telling you what to do (not in the games I played). The game had to be designed around the fact that stuff wasn't obvious and part of playing the game was to teach you how to play the game. But even in the worst case scenarios, when first playing a game, there was always press all the buttons and see what they do. I managed to figure that out as a kid, I fathom that even the most casual gamer can figure that out today.

As long as the developers don't act like high-functioning marsupials, all your needs should just be a single button press away, more if you're a fighting game enthusiast and have to string together ridiculous combos. Unless something was mapped to the function of hold select and press R (I swear there was a game that did that), this shouldn't be rocket science.
 Now some examples:

A great example of using level design to teach the player is the opening level to Mega Man X. It is essentially a giant tutorial level, but the game never flat out tells you what to do. You're left with level design that will not let you progress until you learn what you need to. Anyone remember the first mini-boss which landed you at the bottom of the highway? How did you get out? You used the level design to teach yourself how to wall jump.

A game that gracefully introduced the third dimension to us as well as all the concepts and ideas that could be employed throughout the game was Tomb Raider, surprisingly enough. There was a training ground area outside of Lara's mansion that the player was free to test all the buttons and maneuvers in a controlled environment free of consequences. It's a shame the actual game play sucked, but at least they had the decency to let you discover how badly it sucked on your own.

A good example of a strategy game using in-game tutorials well is Final Fantasy Tactics. That game kept the tutorials in the options menu away from the main game. It was always there if you needed it, but it also knew to stay out of your way when you didn't. Now, the first battle was an introduction level, which I frown upon, but it didn't obstruct the game as much as it could have.

A not so great example: Final Fantasy VII was probably the first game to use in-game tutorials that I played. Since role-playing games have more complex ideas than the standard platformer or fighting game, there had to be more complex and clever ways to convey those ideas through game play. Or you could just do what SquareSoft did and just flat out tell the player what to do with paragraphs of text. After the first mission in Final Fantasy VII, we're treated to a tutorial on the materia system which is the basis for augmenting your characters for combat. The problem with this method is, it completely breaks the flow of the game and takes you out of the immersion. The status screen was supposed to be an abstract idea that exists outside the setting of the game. So when the game references it, it creates an awkward moment where the game is basically reminding you you're playing a game.

The worst game, by far, to go completely overboard with tutorials was the Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. I've ranted on the various different ways the game insults the player's intelligence, but for those who need a quick recap: video tutorials (4 of them) on how to work the Wiimote, in-game tutorials on how to climb and run, Fi (I really hate her, I really do), and having an option to leave a map of the controller on screen at all times (to get rid of this feature is called advanced mode... I bet in expert Fi just disappears from the game entirely). I promise you Nintendo, no one is that dumb, not even kids.

These tutorials may have the means of educating a broader audience, but they're only alienating the core audience. And just because someone has never played a video game, doesn't mean they don't have the mental capacity to recognize basic game play patterns like moving around and jumping. If they figured out how to turn on the console / handheld, they're probably going to be just fine.

The Legend of Dragoon Review

If one is participating in a conversation about the best role-playing games on the Playstation 1, the conversation will most likely be dominated by Final Fantasy VII and other product from SquareSoft. But every now-and-then, a voices rises above the rabble and mentions Legend of Dragoon, followed by people validating the notion that this game deserved to be mentioned in the same discussion as the more popular, great games of that time.

I bring this up because until this year (2012), I had not played the Legend of Dragoon. In fact, my only experience with it was a short demo I got from my beloved Official Playstation Magazine. Even then, I never went back and played it thinking it was exceptional. That was about 12 years ago and all that time trolling through 'greatest RPG' forum topics and discussions, my curiosity finally peaked. I had to seek out this game and see if it was truly worthy of all the praise people gave it. What I found out was thus...

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo....oooo...

The Legend of Dragoon is a shameless parody of a role-playing game that aims to exploit the fan base of a genre that boomed on the Playstation 1. It washed up on our shores much like other games that tried to cash in on this phenomenon, riding a wave of putrid, toxic water on a log of crap.

Let's cut right to the funny, the translation; or as I like to call it, the systematic defiling of your intelligence. This is a text book example of what NOT to do with a localization of a foreign language. I have the suspicion that the brain children that made up the localization team decided to preserve the Japanese script by directly translating everything word for word.

The big problem with this is English and Japanese are two very different languages that have their own unique methods of conveying information. Apparently this team didn't get that and the result is nothing short of comedy. Not only is the translation practically 'engrish', but there are numerous grammar and spelling mistakes in the dialog that the quality assurance team clearly spent way too much time huffing glue to notice. If at any point you felt sucked into this game, try not having the fourth wall be blown to bits when they spell "I'm" "I'mm", or accidentally repeat the character's name that sits on the edge of the dialog box to let you know who's talking.

Honestly, the writers from Resident Evil would've been embarrassed to pen such a script. Some lines in this game either make no sense or are just plain daffy. The worst part is, the game takes itself entirely too seriously. So you can imagine all these characters delivering these lines with a straight face, meaning there's no awareness of how bad everything actually is by the creators.

But the fun of translation hell doesn't stop there. Because the script is so mind-numbingly bad, that means any character archetypes get thrown completely out the window and splattered on whatever pavement they land on. There's no sense of personality or human-quality to any of the cast. I don't know if it was originally just bad writing or just bad translation but none of these characters feel like actual people. They're more like pieces of wood with eyes drawn on them that somehow learned how to move around and hold weapons. I wasn't exactly expecting art here, but if you're going to give me bad, own the bad and make it awesomely bad.

They're so bland I actually wish they would stoop to being just stereotypes. Don't get me wrong, they definitely have their cliches: like the martial artist, the people with troubled pasts, the childhood friend, the magical girl, but that's all really just their set up. They don't grow or develop at all. Those cliches barely come through in the dialog. When the game attempts to give them some character resolution or portray some epiphany, it's so mishandled it either feels forced or just plain confusing.

Legend of Dragoon also has some down-right, god-awful, seriously-bad, moments in writing. I can honestly say that, even though I've played Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy X, it is THIS game that I find the writing to be the worst. If you thought character revelations in Final Fantasy VIII came out of nowhere, or story progression with attention to time and place were bonkers in Final Fantasy X, Legend of Dragoon makes those other games look like genius.

I will submit to you two scenarios late in the game, when the plot decided to kick into overdrive and the game really started to vomit up some real pieces of work; mostly they involve the passage of time being royally screwed in the rear.

When tasked to kill a dragon, I marched through the woods and up the mountain and killed the dragon. Then I marched down the mountain, back through the forest and into town. And, apparently, during the time it took me to march down the mountain and back into town, which took me 5 minutes to do in real time, an entire week has passed in the game. I'm sorry, but 5 minutes to me cannot be an entire week in game when there were no temporal transition sequences or moments that actually felt like that much time had passed.

Another golden moment was transitioning from disc 3 to disc 4 where not only do you not start disc 4 where you were in disc 3, but it's also several days later. Hello plot holes, how did I get there, why was I going where I was and what happened during those few days? Care to explain anything?

It doesn't help the entire plot is a "sentai", which is a word used when describing the structure and flow of a story like power rangers. You have, usually, 5 colorized heroes (7 in the case of Legend of Dragoon) that need to save the world from the ultimate evil. This is essentially Legend of Dragoon at it's core. You're leader wears red, everyone else gets assigned a color and then you go off chasing the enemy.

But even when chasing something cliche like that, there are so many plot holes; I spent half the game yelling at the screen and making obscene jesters to convey my level of nonacceptance for what the game was trying to force me to believe. Trust me when I say I only know one phrase in sign language, and boy did it get some mileage with this game. To list them all, I would have to just read a plot synopsis straight up. I wouldn't make such a big deal about this but this is a role-playing game: plot and characters are essential to the experience.

Translation issues don't stop there either. Even the menus in this game are badly translated. Equip became Armed, Use Item became Use It, Cannot Enter became No Entry, and so much more. You'll find many choices don't fully add up to what they're trying to get across. When something as simple as basic menu items are botched, that takes talent. A special kind of talent that rides a short bus.

In a rare moment, I have to complain about the user interface design. Almost every choice presented in the game has the negative choice first. Meaning, you'll have the action choice that does nothing as your initial starting point. So when the shopkeeper asks you if you want to buy anything, you automatically start on 'no' instead of 'yes'. This becomes increasingly frustrating over the 30-some odd hours it takes to beat this game.

There are also little details that the development team overlooked, like being able to select your characters individually when using an item or assigning gear. Instead of the normal process, you have to go through the character roster. Item organization is also overly simplified and there are multiple menu options that ultimately give you the same result. They also put stats as the first choice on the menu screen instead of item or equi- I'm sorry, I mean 'armed'.

Voice acting is second only to translation as a source of comedy. You'll have your standard fair of uninspiring performances, awkward lines, and poor lip-syncing; the trifecta of terrible. The sound mixing of all things is the worst. Often, you'll hear the characters voices during attacks, but they're always overpowered by sound effects and background music so you don't really know what they're saying. The same thing goes on during all the cut-scenes, so what may be vital plot information *snort* is practically inaudible.


The soundtrack is noteworthy based on it's incompetence alone.When a track isn't just filling up background space, it's contrasting the tone of every scene. There are many musical scores that just don't add up with the scene they're put against. The worst is the music used for every menu screen in the entire game. It's like nothing I've ever heard before; it sounds like a mix between porn and ambient, airy music.

Graphics in this game run into the same issues as most PS1 games in that: while close up, everything looks fine and detailed, but when you zoom out, it becomes a mess of pixels; Final Fantasy IX ran into this same issue. It mostly has to do with the character models and how the game spends most of the time zoomed far away from them. There are very few moments where you can actually make out the distinct features that individualize the characters. Several times I found myself saying 'oh, that's what they look like' when a scene finally zooms in only after using that character for several hours. I actually didn't even realize they had lip movements during in-game cut-scenes. It's nice when stupidity completely trumps effort put into details.

It's a shame the extras in the game didn't get the same level of detail as the main cast. Common denizens in the game look bland and overly simplified in contract to the detail and complexity of the main characters which is jarring.

There's also a color palette issue where some pre-rendered backgrounds don't have enough contrast or are washed out. This happens mostly in towns where there's a lot of white present including some cities you'll be revisiting multiple times. But in all honesty, most of the more surreal backgrounds look really nice. When the designers actually went somewhere off reality, the result was pretty good, like Chrono Cross good.

It's also funny to note that the actual in-game renderings of villages on the world map look better than the pre-rendered portraits the game gives you. Apparently the idea that your showcase should look better than what it actually looks like was wasted on these artists.

Like most role-playing games by this time, there are computer generated sequences and those actually look pretty decent. But you know they had to screw up something, and here it is: often times these scenes will not be effectively used. Sometimes either an event just doesn't warrant it or the game doesn't properly set up the context that the scene takes place in.

The inventory design is baffling: your entire item inventory is capped at only 32 items. And none of the items stack. You have to constantly manage space for healing items, MP-restoring items, revival items, magical attack items, etc. What's strange is, while your inventory for items is capped at 32, your equipment inventory is capped at 255; and at no point in the game was I ever close to reaching the equipment cap and I barely ever sold any gear. Not sure what qualifications my healing items needed to occupy the empty space I had reserved for gear, but if it meant I had to wear a potion on my head, I'd do it.

Originally, I thought capped the amount of battle items we could use was done to balance out the combat, but I ended several boss battles with left over healing items. The only thing the cap manages to accomplish is to ensure you'll be skipping treasure chests because you'll be constantly lugging around 32 items and you don't want to discard an item just to see what a treasure chest has just in case it's a downgrade in some way. Legend of Dragoon actually manages to strip away one of the basic game play functions of role-playing by designing against our instinct to hunt out as much treasure as we can. This is nothing short of a betrayal to the genre and the development team should feel ashamed of themselves.

Combat in Legend of Dragoon is turned-based, which sounds like a simple enough mechanic to build a game around, but Legend of Dragoon manages to drop the ball and trip on it a few times. Strategy is hampered by the fact that there's no indication of who's turn is coming up. There's no consistency in battle, sometimes a character will get two turns in a row, sometimes the boss will get 3 turns in a row, all within the same battle. This inconsistency makes it hard to judge when exactly is the optimal time to unleash all your power or play is more conservatively and defend / heal.

The bulk of the combat is split between using Additions and transforming into a dragoon to unleash more powerful attacks and gives you access to your magical attacks. Additions boil down to you performing timed button presses to increase the amount of attacks in your combo, which increases the damage you do. Each Addition also fills up your SP meter, which determines when and for how long you are allowed to be in dragoon mode.

While Additions sound like a decent idea, and for the first 10 minutes of game play, they are, they quickly become too routine. For one, you're only allowed to have access to 1 Addition per battle, so attacking becomes extremely monotonous. The Additions will level up the more you use them, up to 5 levels. Leveling Additions will increase their damage output and give access to new Additions, but the game never indicates when an Addition levels up so you have to constantly check the status screen.

Every now and then an enemy will be able to counter your attack, which changes what button you have to press when going through the timed sequences. This can be a huge pain if consecutive button presses are close together and there's not enough time to first realize that a new button is needed and then press it during the correct time. It wouldn't be so bad if the game didn't punish you for not blocking the counter. If mis-timed, the counter will end your combo and damage you in the process. The frustration reaches a boiling point with later additions that require a rapid succession of presses and there's just no time to react to a counter.

Turning into a dragoon will not only provide you with a lengthy transformation sequence, which can be shortened in the configuration, but also give you access to your only supply of magical abilities and reduce all damage you take by half. Being that the only time you can use magic, it just takes away from the parts of the battle you're not a dragoon. But your fun is always cut short with your SP meter. Your meter is based on 100 points. For every 100 points, you get to stay in dragoon mode for another turn with a cap of 500 points. Once you run out of SP, you turn back into your normal self.

Attacking in dragoon mode replaces one timed button pressing sequence with another, so nothing new is really experienced. Magic in Legend of Dragoon can be summarized as animated sequences that take way to long to perform. Everything is nice and colorful for the first few times, but as you begin to implement these spells into your normal boss battle routine, they quickly become boring.

If all your characters are maxed out in SP, then you can go into a special mode where everyone transforms during the same turn and the background starts to trip balls. If you look closely, you can actually seen the same background that can be found on the title screen. I'm not sure what significance that has but it is kinda weird. Also, the character that initiated the special will get free max attack combos while still in dragoon mode so you don't have to do the button timing stuff.

But dragoon mode isn't exactly all coolness. While in dragoon mode, you're not allowed to run away, block, use items or exit dragoon mode. Meaning your best moments in battle actually limit your flexibility. I can philosophize many reasons why the creators chose to do this: perhaps it was to illustrate absolute power corrupts absolutely and that when given that level of destructiveness, it's all we end up being able to do. Or maybe the developers were a pack of lobotomized chimpanzees who never played a role-playing game in their lives. Either or.

Bosses in the latter parts of the game start using very overly-elaborately animated attacks that ultimately serve no other purpose but to make it all look cooler. This wouldn't be a bad thing if you could just skip them.

If the over-the-top animated sequences weren't enough to slow down battles, the hit points of the enemies early on are. And if you still feel that the battle system is salvageable, the game has brief moments of loading between turns. There will actually be pauses in the action where neither side is doing anything but waiting for the game to figure out whose turn is next. Never before in a video game have I seen this.

I also have the pleasure to report that later in the game, normal enemies get access to instant death attacks. Have fun reviving your characters with items found in your limited inventory. Actually, Legend of Dragoon does have some interesting programming where the enemy will unleash their more powerful attacks only when they're below 50% HP. Interesting being interchangeable with BAFFLING. All this does is force you to plan out killing an enemy with a round of turns which is nearly impossible since the game DOESN'T TELL YOU WHICH TURNS ARE COMING UP.

As I calm down, the game also has another arrow in battle which indicates how low enemy and ally HP levels are with 3 colors: blue, yellow and red. I found this useful so let's put one-check mark in the good idea column and hope it doesn't get too lonely there... because there might not be any more.

Since you can't use your restorative magic outside of dragoon mode, and there's a limit on healing items, the game makes blocking also restore 10% of your health. This sounds like a neat way to balance everything out, but really it just extends the already prolonged battle experience. If you thought drawing magic in Final Fantasy VIII was boring, try blocking round after round just to survive or get your HP high enough to tackle a boss. At least drawing magic meant you were progressing towards being stronger.

There will also be moments in the game where your party gets mysteriously switched around when going from story event to story event, even when a character left or was added that wasn't in the party you were using anyways. I keep thinking this was meant to make me use characters that the game wanted me to in some passive aggressive way.

Exploration is non-existent. The world is just a map with game-board wooden edges and straight lines for paths to connect one location to the next. The world is also called Endiness. Sounds like something Colbert would make up.

It's rare I get to complain about level design in a role-playing game, but this is Legend of Dragoon we're talking about here. This game does nothing but excel in all the wrong ways. One of the ancient ruins later in the game has to be one of the most convoluted towns I've ever played. The entire exploration process can be described as reversing a law, getting that law prepared, and then enacting that law so it can go into effect. A level that combines both the thrill of the DMV and our congressional procedures was clearly inspired by excellence and compelling game play.

Also, someone on the team had a real fetish for teleporters and it really shows with the last few levels. They really tried to shoe-horn a teleportation device anywhere they could including making travel completely based on it in some cases. The problem is, there's never any indication of where you're going to be transported. So instead of exploration, you get trial and error.

Over the course of playing this awful-fest, I began making studious parallels between another role-playing game from that generation, Final Fantasy VII. Thus, I have compiled a list of things that both games have, but ultimately Final Fantasy VII did exponentially better.

1. A planetarium scene. While Final Fantasy VII used their version to not only articulate the relationship of life with the planet while also displaying full motion video spliced in with in-game character models, Legend of Dragoon throws it in for the hell of it. The actual sequence of stars orbiting around in Legend of Dragoon's version is just sad to watch.

2. Arrows noting character position and identifying exits into new areas. Final Fantasy VII understood that maybe some of their backgrounds may not always be visually recognizable right away or have an exit's view obstructed by something else, and thus had arrows that would always display on top of the graphics to let you know where you were and where you should go. But this feature was never used often enough and really was there for new-comers to the genre.

In this regard, Legend of Dragoon follows the same idea, but actually managed to expand upon it. You have 3 different modes of arrows to choose from: mode 1 has no arrows, mode 2 has arrows for only 5 seconds, and mode 3 has them on screen at all times. And trust me, you'll be using these arrows a lot because there are many areas where you'll have no indication where your character is or what exactly constitutes as an exit. There were moments when I arrived on a new map, I couldn't visually locate my character either due to the camera not focusing on where I started out, or my character just being obscured by something in the background. This will mean sometimes you'll just move around to see where you are and end up accidentally backtracking.

The same arrow also indicates how close you are in encountering a random encounter. It'll start off blue then yellow and then red which means a battle is about to ensue.

3. Party members merging into you while traveling. It was weird in Final Fantasy VII when your party would just walk towards you and seemingly disappear, and it's weird in Legend of Dragoon. But while Final Fantasy VII was made in 1997, Legend of Dragoon was 2000 and by then Final Fantasy VIII was out which had party members just follow behind you.

4. Swooping cameras at the start of each battle. Since the PS1-era was the official start of 3D gaming, it was cool to see battles go from 2D to a three dimensional environment. SquareSoft decide to focus on this new way of preparing battle screens by creating a new way to introduce them to the playing which was with various camera movements. This may have been innovative when Final Fantasy VII came out, but it quickly grows stale in Legend of Dragoon and only plays to the problem of battles being overly elongated. 

5. Blue backgrounds in text boxes. Both games have them, I don't know what else to say about that.

Strangely enough, as I found more and more comparisons, I started finding other similarities to a game that was be made after Legend of Dragoon, which was Baten Kaitos. This is interesting because while Final Fantasy VII was made by SquareSoft and Legend of Stupidity by Sony, Baten Kaitos was made by Monolith Software. Now Monolith was founded in 1999 by ex-Square employees who previously worked on Xenogears and Chrono Cross. So while Sony was copying Square, Monolith was coping Sony. That's rather messed up.

So here's a brand new list of things I found Baten Kaitos took from Legend of Dragoon.

1. Action markers. Both games have nearly identical marks to indicate an action can be taken by pressing the action button.

2. Haunted ship sequence. While voyaging from one town to the next, Legend of Dragoon has a haunted ship sequence that's inhabited by spirits. Baten Kaitos also has a sequence that involves a haunted ship with spiritual inhabitants.

3. Color palettes. A weird one but many of the various color palettes, especially when rendering nature settings reminds me of Chrono Cross and Baten Kaitos. This is about the only compliment I can give Legend of Dragoon with a straight face.

4. Character models. The dragoon character models and the Baten Kaitos combat character models look very, very, very similar in terms of wing design and facial design. And not just basic things like the mechanics of the wings, facial structure and color choices are almost spot on.

I really need to lay off playing RPGs is what I'm getting at here. When I start making observations like these without assistance, I goes from being a hobby to a drug addiction. Maybe there's a patch for that.

Strange findings and all awfulness aside, Legend of Dragoon is finally the game that made me lower my standards. After playing this game, I have a whole new appreciation for other role-playing games just because they weren't as bad as this (I'm talking about Final Fantasy XIII). Sometimes you don't know what's really bad until you find a game that hits rock bottom several times in so many ways.

Even though this game was the first attempt from Sony at an RPG, that is no excuse to put forth this little of effort. So for all those people who dare bring up the name of Legend of Dragoon in a discussion about greatness, be sure to give them the verbal slap down for their stupidity. And if they need proof, I just gave you over 50 paragraphs of material.

I dedicate this review to all the braincells that died in the process of playing this game.

Tales of Eternia Review

I'd like to start out this review with a much-needed truth. Pre-Symphonia Tales of games are bad. They're just not that well designed. Phantasia was tolerable because it was their first game, but everything in between was bad. Somehow, I forgot that and picked up Tales of Destiny 2. Except it wasn't Tales of Destiny 2. In fact, there are 2 Tales of Destiny 2 games because localizing real titles is hard. Just ask Square.

In reality, the original title of the game is Tales of Eternia, but since Eternia is He-Man territory, there was some copyright issue so they made it seem like a sequel to Tales of Destiny which was released 3 years prior. Except it gets confusing now because they did eventually release a real sequel to Tales of Destiny afterwards on the Playstation 2. Confused much? So let me be clear, I'm reviewing Tales of Eternia for the Playstation which came out in 2000, and it is bad. I wish I had played Tales of Destiny 2 on the Playstation 2, which is probably better.

One of the main reasons pre-Symphonia Tales of games sucked so badly was because of the combat. It was frantic and uncontrollable. Attacking involves you automatically running forward, hitting the enemy, and then running back. However, this motion is largely ineffective and you'll just be holding down the direction pad some more and attacking or chaining abilities. I'm not sure why the automated running is necessary but you'll be fighting it the entire game.

While all that is going on, battles tend to get clustered pretty quickly. When all the spells and abilities are flying around, it gets really hard to tell what is going on. Or enemies will gang up on you, launching attack after attack which will stun-lock you into dying. Often times, a group of enemies can be handled with ease one time, and then will destroy you the next encounter, making battles spontaneous at times. But don't worry, you'll get a lot of practice with the stupid-high encounter rate.

Dodging enemy fire can be difficult since almost no enemy clearly telegraphs its attack well enough for you to react. I found myself getting into a pattern of using a few moves and then blocking, hoping to absorb some impending damage.

Since this is a bad game (I double-checked, it is), the AI has to be stupid. It's practically law that if your game sucks, the AI must suck. Basically the programmers couldn't program anything smarter than themselves, which in this game is near rock-bottom, which leads to mages running up to the front lines for no real reason, or healers that insist on standing next to or within the enemy's attack range. They'll get hit, stand up, and stay in the same spot, casting, only to get hit again. Watching this process repeat itself throughout the battle might cause you to develop a twitch.

The story has more holes in it than a screen door. After a while, it gets hard to care about. It's poorly written and poorly developed. The characters don't do much for me either. You learn about them, but they don't really change or grow, their presence just wears on your soul more and more.

There has to be something said about some of the dungeon designs, as they are terrible. There are the straight-forward ones which are customary in role-playing games, go through the area, find the treasure, kill the boss, simple. Tales of Eternia decided to take it one step forward and splice in some annoying.

One level has you solving a variation of the same problem/solution 10 times in a row, and another level is more like a game board that has you spinning a game piece to advance. Now, it would be fine if any of these things were implemented correctly, but they weren't. The 10 levels of problem solving gets tedious after 3 levels and the game board is so random, that the entire dungeon is based on luck. Turns will have you going backwards, and some points won't let you advance until you roll and arbitrary number range with each wrong role taking away more and more HP. Others will having you solving puzzles, most of which aren't self-explanatory as to what the goal is.

There are two voice options, English and the mute button and I can't recommend that mute button enough. The English dubbing is nails-on-chalkboard awful. With the exception of a few minor characters, every line is just pure stupidity. None of the actors seem to get into character, ever. The closest we get to effort is Meredy, who sounds like a lobotomized koala. So like I said, the mute button is your friend, don't stray far from it.

My favorite line in the entire game went something like: 'she's trying to destroy the world.... and that's bad.' The game was almost worth it for that spoken line. Almost.

The whole game might as well be on mute, the soundtrack ranges from mediocre to awful. The underwater music is literally a few noises put in a loop. What's worse is the first note is accented, so once the loop is done, you have a few seconds of quiet before it comes startling back. The pause is just long enough to lull you into a false sense of thinking 'maybe it'll just be peace and quiet' and then the loop starts up again. There was just no effort here. I think someone rooted through the stock music pile and threw random tracks against the wall and went with what stuck.

Graphics are colorful enough. Most things make sense when you look at them, like a 32bit version of an SNES game, which isn't inherently bad. But the one thing I have to complain about, and this is in the top 5 weirdest things I've ever complained about: almost every single map is designed to have you running at an angle.

Very rarely will you find yourself running straight up and down or left and right, it'll almost always be a diagonal. Now you wonder, why is that a complaint? Because the game doesn't support analog sticks. Can I explain further? Yes I will. You see, before analog sticks, people had to use the directional pad to move around, usually in 4 basic directions plus the 4 diagonal directions. Pressing your finger down on one directional button is fine. Pressing your finger down on two directional buttons is uncomfortable. Pressing your finger down on two directional buttons for 20 hours is downright PAINFUL.

It's also very hard to maneuver your character around, which is odd. There's a lot of things your character can get stuck on just by grazing it. I've honestly never had this much trouble just trying to run around in a game. Every pathway either seems very restrictive or has that one stray pixel that'll grab on to you.

The game will run you about 25-30 hours and about a week of therapy. Is it a terrible game? No. Is it worth playing? Only to those with a fetish for pain. If you're looking for a Tales of game to play, Symphonia, Vesperia, the Abyss and Graces are all out there. Track one of those down and enjoy yourself.

Xenoblade Chronicles Review

It's rather easy to call Xenoblade Chronicles the best Japanese role-playing game of the decade simply because of the lack of quality in said genre. Even the entries that get a North American release generally follow a worn-out formula that does nothing to progress the experience forward in this generation of gaming. But then there are those rare games that not only advance the JRPG formula, but also have great ideas that the industry itself needs to take notice of (I'm basically talking about Xenoblade and Radiant Historia here and that's it). Xenoblade Chronicles is gaming done right.

So I'll start out this review by listing all the bad things I found in the game so I can let my unbridled joy run rampant for the remaining paragraphs.

The lip syncing is off 50% of the time. It's understandable since I doubt the game had a large budget, and the fact that a western release wasn't even planned originally; but it's an issue that's hard to ignore so we check this off in the negative column.

The concept of a bounty of side quests finally makes it into a JRPG, but Xenoblade Chronicles follows the World of Warcraft model of kill enemy, fetch item, find NPC template and rarely strays from it. Meaning, you'll be doing the same kinds of quests over and over again which can get tedious; but I still managed to gleefully quest for hours, so maybe that's not that big an issue.

Certain battle mechanics hamper the flow and intensity of combat. Also, in rapid succession, these mechanics can become annoying as opposed to helpful. Some boss battles and frantic normal fights can cause quite a bit of lag so it feels like everything is being fought in Matrix slow-motion.

Lag continues in menu navigating when switching gear, it's really noticeable at first but becomes less after a while. Playing another game might give you menu whiplash though.

Graphics are pushing the Wii to their limits, which isn't that far. Everything is low resolution and looks like it could've been for the Playstation 2.

Limited inventory space for collectables, normal items, gear and gems is a pain. I, again, blame this on the hardware rather than the actual game design. In fact, you'll be telling yourself 'this game should've been on the Playstation 3' throughout the game.

In battle, there's a hidden tension meter which increases with successful hits leading to more critical chances, and misses decreases the tension. If the tension is low enough, characters need a morale boost or they'll just keep missing. It's obnoxious to have to babysit characters during a battle.

And that's all folks. Let the gushing begin!

Holy crap, take a lesson here video game world on how ART DIRECTION can make up for TECHNICAL LIMITATIONS like its nobody's business. These environments are low-resolution gold. Almost every single area is dressed to impress from the start of the game to the final seconds. Some areas simply blew me away at the shear beauty the Wii can produce when some effort is put forth into making them. The color palettes, the architecture, and size of some of these areas are all candidates to be studied. Maybe then western role-playing games wouldn't look like some muddy, English countryside all the time if more people played this game. Not since Baten Kaitos (another game Monolith Software made) and Chrono Cross have I see colors this vibrant.

Going back to the size of some of these areas, this game puts Final Fantasy XIII to shame in terms of gaming environments. Instead of forcing players down a one-way corridor, the develop team at Monolith got the memo that this isn't compelling gameplay, and instead gives you a wide-open space to run and explore through. And not just having big areas for the sake of having them, there are secret vantage points and corners tucked away that offer a little something to those who go off the beaten path. This is one game where you won't be saying 'oh, it gets better 20 hours in'. The good parts of the game are all within the first 20 minutes and the good times keep rolling in from there.

Along the way, you'll run into check points. These serve an important combat purpose (which will be detailed later) but mostly serve as warp points so you can fast travel all the areas of the world you've already visited, which is given to you right at the beginning of the game, whereas most games tend to wait to give you things like this. Letting check points follow you along your journey is a great way to feel a sense of accomplishment when touring a new region of land.

You can jump without weird, blue circles telling you the designated jumping spots on the terrain (seriously Final Fantasy XIII, those were stupid). You can fall off edges and take damage that way. You can swim. This game was designed to let you explore and thankfully stays away from any platforming what-so-ever.

And while you explore, the game has items sprinkled around each area for you to collect by running into them which is constantly rewarding since these items are used in quests and completing your collection book. The game rewards you when you keep playing, a concept not always embraced for some reason.

The game also has a day and night transition along with different weather conditions. You're actually able to control the time of day, so those quest NPCs that only come out at night can be easily met.

I'll take a moment to point out the brilliant menu design. Instead of instantly going to another screen while scrolling through a menu, it just pops up and the bottom of the screen and you're free to still run around. The game waits until the very last moment to take you away from the game play. And every menu option that is in heavy use is the first option to be selected. Details like this really go a long way in a game you're bound to spend over 50 hours with.

The combat system feels like a spiritual successor to Final Fantasy XII, meaning, all battles take place on the same map that exploration takes place, using the MMO-style of combat. Everything from parties of enemies, unexpected aggro, special enemies are all present here.

Combat is in real-time and uses arts which act as special abilities, often unique to whatever character you're using. Instead of using a menu system like Final Fantasy XII, all the arts are laid out before you at the bottom of the screen and you can cycle through them with the directional pad. You're limited on the amount of arts allocated to one character which keeps the arts bar from being a hassle to navigate and let's you strategically choose which arts to take into battle. Once an art has been used, it has the MMO-style recast timer that needs to be refilled before its next use. Arts can also be leveled when a manual (a book) corresponding to that art is discovered and new arts can be learned the same way. The rest of the battle is spent auto-attacking, but doesn't feel like the controls were taken away from you.

Chain attacks can be using once your battle meter is filled up, which is done through successful uses of abilities like Shulk's behind-the-enemy art, and offers a chance to link together arts between characters for extra damage. Striking in front of the enemy with before-mentioned Shulk ability will not count towards filling the meter. There are other various methods of filling the meter, but the main one is through arts.

Some arts have different status effects allocated to them. You can break an enemy, which can lead to toppling and enemy, which can lead to dazing an enemy, which results in incapacitating an enemy from attacking. The AI is pretty good at following up with an attack that will progress the status effect to the next level, but never feels like you have to use this. It's similar to the stagger meter in FFXIII, but much more enjoyable to work with.

Like I said, arts are character-unique abilities and help define out class roles in battle. While each character has their own play style, not all characters are useful. There's really only one great tank character and one great healer, so you'll be using them most of the time, and you'll be switching out that third character mostly out of your own curiosity.

The game itself is centered around the legendary sword know as the Monado, which grants the user special abilities like being able to see into the future. Someone at Monolith Software got another memo that game play and story should go hand-in-hand which is rarely the case with JRPGs, but that foresight ability is present in battle.

The Monado lets you know if the next ability will KO a character, and let's you work toward changing that outcome by you telling your battle colleagues what ability to use to avoid it. This is the part of the battle system that can slow things down a bit, since you first have to see the enemy using the attack and how much damage will be done. Occurring once in a while is no problem, but when it gets triggered multiple times in the same fight, it can drag things down. And only enemy abilities will trigger this foresight to happen, normal enemy auto-attacks will not.

You can issue commands to your comrades like attack the same enemy as me, attack your own targets at will, and gather around the leader. I found all 3 commands to be useful and intuitive to use. It's quite startling how many games use AI partners but don't give you the means to control where they are in battle. Looking at you FFXII and FFXIII.

To further distinguish characters from each other, there's a gem system. Gems can be crafted either in-town or on the road after a certain quest which enhance your characters' stats, abilities, and traits. Everything from boosting your strength, making you run faster or leveling faster, there seems to be a gem for everything (take notes Legend of Heroes). Materials are constantly being gather from enemy drops and materials fall into 5 tiers. Higher tier materials makes for higher tier gems.

Gem crafting is done with two characters, and enhanced by your affinity with each character (I'll go into detail about this feature in a few paragraphs). You select either up to 8 materials or until a single trait gets to 100% and then start crafting with a furnace. Multiple traits can be augmented at the same time, not all have to reach 100% before the crafting begins. The quality of flame during crafting dictates the increase in trait %. Since only one trait can be augmented at a time, and you have a limited amount of turns to augment them, you'll want to select the fewest amount of traits possible since the game randomly decides which one will be augmented per turn. It's not as complicated as I'm making it sound, it's just different. If you had a trait that was only 99% after the crafting, this remains in material form. If a trait is above 100%, it becomes a gem. If a trait exceeds 200%, that trait gem get raised 1 tier higher. If the trait exceeds even higher than that, multiple gems will be produced with that one trait.

The magnificent thing about gems are, they can be attached and removed from your gear, giving you a lot of flexibility to experiment with and build your characters the way you want. It's interesting to note that the limited inventory space for gem materials will keep you crafting; I often wonder if it was intentional.

Let it be clear, there are no battle-usable items in this game at all. I'm not sure why, but I didn't even occur to me until I was already several hours in that there were no potions. The game is so balanced in combat that items just aren't needed. It's good to see a JRPG that doesn't just take the old template of gaming and is willing to try new things.

Now comes the obvious question, how do you revive fallen comrades? With the battle meter I mentioned a few paragraphs ago. There are 3 sections of the meter and you can use your foresight or revive a character by consuming 1 section. This brilliant feature keeps battles from being tedious. You'll be trying to keep this gauge up for if you're party leader falls with an empty gauge, it's game over.

Game overs aren't that bad, you get sent back to the last check point of the game with all your items, gear and exp you gathered along the way. This keeps the game moving along at a great pace and doesn't waste your time.

While most JRPGs are stingy with their experience points, Xenoblade Chronicles knows how to keep rewarding the player. Xenoblade moves away from the tradition Japanese game design philosophy of, punish ignorance; they adopt more of a western style of game design philosophy of reward players. Finding new areas, beating enemies, discovering new areas, completing quests all yield decent experience, meaning you'll be prone to actually doing these things more and more.

Another game play mechanic that should be firmly locked in on is the character affinity system. Xenoblade Chronicles takes relationship-building down the path it needs to stay on and away from the dialog-tree driven design that Bioware and Bethesda keep churning out. Raising a character's affinity is done by simply spending time with them. Either by having them in your party, or finding vantage points in the game where you can share a scene with them. It feels very natural and easy to keep tabs on as opposed to the dialog-tree method which sometimes gives you responses that weren't foreseeable. Each character also has skill trees which unlock passive traits. The higher your affinity with a character, the more skill traits you can borrow from them

It's worth noting that each character is different and memorable, but they tend to go a little too anime-inspired sometimes; and the same thing can be said about the plot. The setting is brilliant, but the plot still ends up being a group of teenagers trying to kill god... again. We've seen that formula before, but it's the setting that sets it apart here. The exposition does give you the false hope of being in a final boss moment, only to stretch the game out for another few hours, but being able to play more isn't a bad thing. The world geography and history is all explained and makes everything more believable... as far as legendary god sword plots go that is.

There's also a fair bit of terminology you'll learn along the way, but the game always gives you the right context when dropping in a new word like Monado or Homs. There's none of this glossary-driven story-telling where you're bombarded with stupid words like Final Fantasy XIII tried to make you learn just to know what the heck was going on. In Xenoblade, the meanings of terminology introduced in the game are made obvious, and even is based on a logical language structure. Organic creates are from the Bionis (note the word bio in there), and mechanical creatures are from Mechonis (note the word mech in there).

While lip syncing is laughable, the voice actors are all decent. Even if you hate them and their British accents (no one bothered to localize using American voice actors), there's an option to switch to the original Japanese cast which is a clear nod of understanding to the American anime fan, and will be much appreciated.

Regrettably, I mention the soundtrack this far deep into the review, but once again, Yasunori Mitsuda (composer from Xenogears, Chrono Cross), along with some others, put together another amazing series of songs which compliment the mood completely. You'll notice these songs for all the right reasons.

One final bonus to the game, the cover is reversible. I wish more games did this. The alternate box art is fantastic and really sets it a part from others games.

Xenoblade Alternate Box Art

Which game stands out for you?

The game lasted about 70 hours for me, and that didn't include doing even half the side quests or exploring all possible areas. There is a lot of game here. And everything can be explored again in new game plus which carries over a decent amount of stuff for you to make everything ridiculously easy; and there are achievements to unlock while playing through the game. Another sign of adopting a modern, gaming concept I'm glad to see a developing group take note of.

It's sad to think that Monolith games have a bad sales track record, rarely getting over 150,000 units sold in North America. Xenoblade really should be put into the gaming spotlight for its achievements. It successfully combines the ideas from the last decade and changes tradition. If you love JRPGs, do yourself a favor and buy this game. There's classic controller support and no motion controls.

This game is what Final Fantasy XIII should've been, and it gives other developers a map to better game design based off of old and new ideas. And it did it all on the Wii of all things.

The Road to Catching Them All

Sex, Drugs, Money and Everything Else on
The Road to Catching Them All

A Tale of One Man's Journey for Power and Glory

Chapter 1 - End Of My Childhood 

The road began during a time I remember through the filter of nostalgia, of which only the best moments permeate to the here and now. The filter that causes us to forget everything we sacrificed and the people we hurt for one more level, to evolve beyond mere children, into battle-harden men. I now look back on those times with more experienced eyes and wipe away the spots to reveal the madness. There were one hundred and fifty of them in the beginning, one hundred fifty-one if you were good and could glitch the game, and each had to be obtained at all costs. But we were never told why. That was life. From the moment I could walk, I was fed dreams of grandeur and power, controlling beasts that could harness the power of nature, and the world was densely inhabited by them.

To some people, these creatures were pets, to others they were tools to wage catastrophic fights for pleasure and self-gratification. Each one was different, some passive and friendly, some aggressive and deadly; ranging from being able to be held in your hands, to towering above the trees. How could anyone possibly control such forces? Well I tried and I did and much was sacrificed along the way. They became my friends in a world I sought to defend from evil.. but at what cost?

My mother told me early one morning that all children have to leave the home one day, the TV had told her so. It's disturbing to me now that she took parenting skills from, above all else, the television which was always on the exact same channel showing the exact same program. The world was mad and I felt like the only sane one. I was called to the lab, my mother said he was looking for me; he said he studied them, his name was Oak. He asked me my name, I said Ash. He introduced me to his grandson, Gary.

I've known Gary since I was younger than I was when this journey began. He was a vivacious young boy whom I had always clashed with in some on-going power struggle, though there was very little power to be wielded at that time. However, at that moment I thought it was odd that the professor introduced me to his grandson when I had already known him all this time. There was also a mental stutter when trying to remember Gary's name. He seemed to look to me to fill in what he couldn't recall himself. At least he didn't ask me if I was a boy or girl, that would've been silly. What kind of man was this Oak? He said to me that my own adventure was about to unfold, that a world of dreams and adventures with these creatures awaited. As I look back now, I realize how absurd the whole situation was.

As I walked in, his aides stood parallel in the giant lab, it had looked much smaller from the outside. They both spoke the same thing when I approached them. Two different people almost the mirror image of each other, I was too young to understand what surreal meant, but that's what it was. It's strange though, I never saw these two performing any tasks, just standing in the same spot, always staring, always standing. Through the aisles of book cases, I moved my way to the back of the lab which stood Gary and a table. Even though the Professor had requested my presence, he was no where to be found. I would've had to force small talk with my rival, but I saw it there on the table.

A round, two-toned ball on the table which had a circular plateau along the line where the two colors met. I had seen these before at the market, they were used as capture devices, and these three were full. That meant, inside each ball which was no more than 4 inches in diameter, held a living, breathing creature. The logistics were baffling. Growing weary of these strange surroundings, I left to the grass outside of town. But before I could take more than 3 steps, Oak stopped me. In my haste to venture from this town, I had accidentally wandered into the wild grass which was the prowling ground of these creatures. No sooner had he grabbed me that a wild Pikachu had appeared!

Oak acted fast and threw one of those balls at it. As it struck the creatures body, it flew bad some and beamed out a light which hit the creature, turning it's entire body into the same shade of light as it was draw into the ball which was partially opened and came to a close. I stood there and stared at the ball as it moved around 3 times and then lay still.

Still feeling the haze fear shrouds on your mind, the ground and houses blurred as we made our way back to his lab. Without wasting any time he pointed at the ball I previously noticed on the table and told me to take it. Gary in a selfish act decided it was better for him to snatch it, and so he did. Oak did nothing to stop him. Adults were useless in this world and were just as stupid. Instead he gave me the one that had attacked me. I was now paired with the creature that would've felled me had there been no intervention. He handed me a wild creature-infused ball. Not only was I to work with this creature, but it would act as a defender from the rest of them in the wild. The madness was too much, I had to leave immediately. "Wait!", Gary had said. He demanded that we initiate a battle between our two creatures. Why I thought? These creatures probably didn't even know each other, and I had no personal quarrel to settle. But the battle took place, and Oak remained useless to save me a second time.

Instinctively, these two creatures took position and what ensued was the end of my childhood. I had to tell this creature how to faint another living thing. My hands were stained. Gary had no reservations about battling, but I felt the cold swelling of disgust in my stomach. Gary wanted more, he wanted to become stronger, I wanted to stop but before I knew it, the battle was over, I had won. Gary left to pursue what the world said was right, that power and glory were the only ways to live, I just left.