Bloggily Default: Frustrated Fan (and other wonderful uses of time and money)

Hey guys. How's it going? It's going okay, thanks for asking. I'm just a little bummed right now. You see, there's this game called “Dark Souls 2” that everyone is talking about, and I can't play it until April 25^th, which might as well be a trillion years away with all of the school junk that I will have to inflict upon myself until then. Oh well, if it's any solace, I have these other video games to play, and thanks to these games I was able to focus long enough to actually get some school work done, thus ensuring my continued survival and sense of self-esteem. What does it say about these games in question? I'm glad you asked. Let me tell you. With words.

Wasteland 2 Beta

Those of you who have followed me over the years know that I like me some classical computer role-playing games, which is why I backed Wasteland 2 like two whole years ago during the magical ti. However, since the most recent update hinted that the game in question was still more than 3 months away, I took it upon myself to take advantage of the beta by plunking down another $10. That... was not a mistake. Now I have a pretty clear idea of what Wasteland 2 is, and what I see is a game that is like those other games that I hold so dearly. Is it on the level of such classics as Fallout? 8 hours or so in, I'm not sure if I can answer that. And not just because the game crashes or locks up every now and again.

I clearly was playing a beta. That much is evidenced by the part where the game is unoptimized, crashes frequently, and still has its fair share of unimplemented content, placeholder interface design, and straight up jank. So while I'm hesitant to make any sort of broad qualitative judgments right now, what I can say is that I've enjoyed my time with it thus far. It's a RPG very much in the style of something that would've been released in the late 90s or early 2000s, which just so happens to be my jam. Despite Fallout comparisons being very much warranted, it should be mentioned that this is not the second coming of old-school Fallout. Unsurprisingly for a game called Wasteland 2, it seems to take a lot of its cues from the 1988 game it is ostensibly a sequel to. Skills that would be paired together in more modern games are separated into different parts. You use Lockpicking for picking locks and Safecracking for opening safes and of course you need 3 different persuasion skills. Simple, really. Throw in such specific gems as “Animal Whisperer” and “Toaster Repair” (because I'm sure some hilariously overpowered weapon will be hidden in a toaster and you can only get it if you max out the skill) and one gets the impression that InXile is trying to make sure that you can't and won't be able to cover everything in one playthrough, even with 4 party members and a handful of NPCs. That's fine. I like motivation to replay a game. For my part, I think the combat is coming along pretty nicely (turn-based, not dissimilar to Shadowrun Returns or XCOM) and the game has done pretty well in regards to reacting to my choices (though that seems sort of broken right now). Good enough I'll say. Though I'll also be real here and say that Pillars of Eternity is still my number one kickstarter backed thing.

Diablo 3 is throwing legendary items at me like crazy, so let's just say that I approve of Loot 2.0 and may even play the expansion. Also Demon Hunters are still a fun class.

Self explanatory. But seriously, I also played some Path of Exile and that game seemed totally okay. But it wasn't dropping ridiculous amounts of loot at me, nor am I much into using skill points to increase numbers in a passive and incremental fashion (nor am I into having my active skills limited by what appear to be quest rewards and random drops) But hey, it's free. Not even Torchlight 2 can brag about that (Torchlight 2 is also totally okay, but it never grabbed my interest for very long). I guess my problem with most of these loot games is that they try too hard to chase the long shadow of Diablo II, and if I wanted to play Diablo II I would play Diablo II. Also, mindless clicking etc etc. Remember Diablo 1? Remember how surprisingly brutal that game was? They should make a modern rendition of that. Less loot, more dungeon crawl.

Bravely Default is a terrible name for a video game. Even if it makes sense in the context of the plot, it's still an engrishy misuse of words on the same level as "Donkey Kong"

I should love Bravely Default more than I do. Its gameplay can essentially be described as “Final Fantasy V dialed up to eleven”, and if you know anything about my taste in Japanese Role-Playing games, I think Final Fantasy V is the shiznit. Unfortunately, like the game it draws a large amount of influence from, its story is clichéd beyond redemption and its characters are about as interesting as an ensemble of cardboard cutouts. It tries more than FFV ever did, and it's clear that there was an earnest localization effort in the writing (not the voice acting. The English voice acting was bad enough that I switched it to Japanese and never looked back), but no amount of polishing can salvage what is ultimately a mish-mash of half a dozen JRPG tropes. There are crystals! There are comically over-the-top villains. There is a really obvious twist near the end (Spoilers: the protagonists are idiots). There are Tales style character interaction skits where the game really drives in how one-note everyone is. Tiz is a naïve bumpkin who stalks Anges, Anges is a naïve priestess who says “Unacceptable!” a lot (because catch-phrases), Ringabel is an amnesiac ladies man and Edea is his foil (also MRGRGR). I'll give them some credit though, when the game is beating you over the head that Airy Lies, our merry band of gullible idiots clearly recognize something isn't right, even if getting the true ending requires getting duped over and over again.

But for me none of that matters too much, because the gameplay is so good. Unlike the job-system Final Fantasy games where it draws most of its influence from, all of the jobs in Bravely Default are useful to some extent. No "bard" equivalent, basically. Like Final Fantasy V, you mix and match skills from different jobs, though unlike that game you can't make everyone in your party a Jack-of-all-trades steamroller by the end. Offensive magic seems a bit underpowered (summons especially), but having a dedicated healer is incredibly important. Time Magic? What's that. Then you throw in the Brave/Default system and things start to get crazy. Being able to take four turns at a time allows you to break the game in some interesting ways, especially later on when you've mastered enough jobs to have some weird skill synergies going on. Like the passive skill that doubles your max HP at the beginning of battle, combined with the “damage equal to missing health” skill of the Dark Knight and the “Do your HP as damage, leaving you with 1 HP” skill of the monk. If the damage wasn't capped out at 9999 that would be even better, but as it stood, doing that sort of damage 4 times in a row with one character does tend to wipe out bosses rather quickly. I played the entire game on hard, and I'd say the most that does is make the beginning a lot more grindy in a RPG that is already plenty grindy on its own (though you can trivialize it later on). Still, for that first 40 or so hours, I was convinced that Bravely Default was a game seemingly aimed specifically at me.

Then I reached chapter 5 and... yeah. Let's just say that the game takes a notable dip in quality from that point forward. For those who don't know, chapters 5 through 8 are essentially nothing more than glorified boss rushes. The encounters with these bosses are usually re-framed in a story context (and by chapter 7 they start to get a little goofy, giving silly justifications for pairing different enemies together), but it's not just gruelingly repetitive, it's also soul-crushingly lazy. If they did it once before moving forward, I would've been fine with that. If they did it twice, I would tolerate it. But as it stands, you have to fight the same handful of bosses 4 more times in order to progress in the story and also have the opportunity to fight the 23 bosses representing each of the jobs (except freelancer) 4 more times. It's as if the developers ran out of money at the halfway point and decided the best way to continue with the game was to fill it up with recycled fluff. Is there a story justification for this? Yes. Do I totally not care? You bet I don't. If the game wasn't so earnest, I'd think it was a commentary on the repetitive nature of JRPGs, but since it isn't deliberate it verges into self-parody territory instead. Is the combat and character development still fun to mess around with? Certainly. But much like how no one was convinced that slightly altering the level geometry made the levels in Dragon Age 2 not recycled, so too do these last four chapters of the game reek of lazy padding for the sake of padding. The finale is actually pretty great, given that you finally get to beat the hell out of Airy and also Not-Galactus while incorporating the social aspects in a clever way, but at that point the damage was already done. If you want a decent reflection of my emotional state playing through the last chunk of this game, feel free to check out @fluxwavez write up about it. He and I seem to be on the same page here. And it's a shame. It's a damn shame that it had to be this way. If it weren't for this shoddy back end, I'd recommend Bravely Default unilaterally to anyone with fond memories of old Final Fantasy or anyone who likes crazy battle systems. As it stands, I still think its first 2/3rds is worth the price of admission, just don't be surprised when the game starts feeling like a chore by the end. The soundtrack is pretty good though. Just thought I'd throw that in there.