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Mega Archive: Part XVI: From Earnest Evans to Two Crude Dudes

Welcome back to the Mega Archive, Sega... heads! Segaheads! That's a term we all use to describe each other and have for years!

We've now entered the interesting but not fascinating console battlefield that is 1992: the Super Nintendo Entertainment System is making a spirited counterattack on the market share that the Sega Genesis/Mega Drive was able to wrest away from the weaker NES in western territories, though Sega's hedgehog-shaped secret weapon has allowed them to keep a thin lead (which they'll maintain, in the US and Europe at least, for the rest of the generation). It's a totally different story in Japan, however, with the Super Famicom vastly outpacing the Mega Drive in sales, releases, and in third-party support. The Genesis/Mega Drive saw 142 new (discrete, so that doesn't include localizations from last year's batch) releases across all regions in 1992, which would be impressive if not for the SFC/SNES's 220. (Of course, that's no indication of overall quality; a fair amount of cheaply-produced shovelware made its way to the SFC. Believe me.)

It's safe to say that the Genesis had the attention of almost every major western developer at this time and many of those 142 new releases will be North American or European-derived, several hopping over from the popular home computer platforms of the era. As for the year's biggest games, most are going to be arcade ports and superior sequels, though there's a few new faces this year that will carve out their own legacies on the Genesis platform and the ones to follow.

There's also the matter of the Sega CD. Released in Japan late in 1991, it would have its first full year of support in 1992 (as well as its American debut) with something in the region of 35 new games, including gimmicky FMV titles like Night Trap, Sewer Shark, and the "Make My Video" series as well as fledgling CD-ROM stars like Lunar: The Silver Star, Robo Aleste, and a chunky The Secret of Monkey Island port. I'd like to eventually get around to exploring those releases too, as the Sega CD played a major role in the success of the Genesis as a state-of-the-art rival to Nintendo's complacency.

OH! I forgot to mention, I'm sprucing up all the pages of the below Genesis games on our wiki and this is kind of a rundown of what they're all about, where you can get them, and whether they've held up at all. That's this feature. It's been a while, figured I should reiterate. Be sure to catch up with previous entries here:

Part XVI: 241-255 (January '92 - February '92)

241: Earnest Evans

No Caption Provided
  • Developer: Wolf Team
  • Publisher: Wolf Team (JP) / Renovation (NA)
  • JP Release: 1991-12-20*
  • NA Release: 1992
  • EU Release: N/A
  • Franchise: Earnest Evans
  • Genre: Action
  • Theme: Archeological Study
  • Premise: Earnest Evans, the third of his name, seeks to complete his grandfather's mission to keep three mystical idols out of the hands of evil, in his case a bounty hunter by the totally normal occidental name of Brady Tresidder. (In the Japanese version, their Earnest Evans is the original.)
  • Availability: Nope. I assume Bandai Namco picked up the El Viento IP along with Wolf Team itself, and it's not like they're short of better retro games to re-release ad nauseam.
  • Preservation: I wanted to start on an auspicious note, and the sheer weirdness and ambition of Earnest Evans is how it's managed to endure even if its awkward controls and zero chill leave much to be desired. The sequel to El Viento (#183), it was released in late December 1991 in Japan but only as a Mega CD game (hence the asterisk) with its cartridge-format NA localization showing up on some unknown date in 1992. Like its predecessor, the game plays vaguely like Valis with its speedy brawler-like energy, though the choice of animation style - where each of Evans's limbs is its own sprite - creates an especially uncanny effect whenever he moves or attacks. It also does that annoying thing where enemy damage is applied per frame of contact, so your health can be drained in an instant. The Mega CD version has CD audio and a smattering of anime cutscenes, which the cartridge version sadly (but understandably) lacks.

242: Rings of Power

No Caption Provided
  • Developer: Naughty Dog
  • Publisher: Electronic Arts
  • JP Release: N/A
  • NA Release: January 1992
  • EU Release: February 1992
  • Franchise: N/A
  • Genre: RPG
  • Theme: Tolkienism
  • Premise: Aid a little dude in a cloak and his fellowship in recovering the one ring, as well as a bunch of others, from... zombie Slash from GNR?
  • Availability: Nope. I half-suspect Naughty Dog would prefer us all to believe that Crash Bandicoot was the first game they ever put out.
  • Preservation: Oh hey there, Naughty Dog. Your first (and only) Sega console game is an isometric LOTR knock-off that skipped the PC platform? With a nude code? You scamps. Hearing about the development of this game, it sounds like the fledgling Naughty Dog - though they'd been around earlier as JAM Software, this was only their second game with the new label - kept butting heads with the publishers, EA, and the latter's decision first to bump the game from home computers (Amiga and PC) to the Genesis because EA saw those platforms as "weak," and their refusal to reprint the game after it sold out in several stores (which I'm in no hurry to believe actually happened) because non-sports games were also "weak." They make EA sound a totally inept, Trump-ian, divorced-from-reality, divorced-from-the-zeitgeist conglomerate of artless, oblivious moneymen, which honestly tracks with everything we know about them. II'd bet an almost identical back-and-forth happened with BioWare and Anthem in 2019. RoP is a bit meander-y and tough, but respect to Naughty Dog for putting out a huge, non-linear, open-world isometric RPG when that was far from the norm, even if they didn't try very hard to come up with an original story and setting.

243: Chibi Maruko-Chan: Waku Waku Shopping

No Caption Provided
  • Developer: Namco
  • Publisher: Namco
  • JP Release: 1992-01-14
  • NA Release: N/A
  • EU Release: N/A
  • Franchise: Chibi Maruko-Chan
  • Genre: Board Game
  • Theme: Slice of Life Anime
  • Premise: Maruko-chan decides to do some shopping, but it all gets a little too waku waku if you catch my meaning.
  • Availability: Nope. Quickie licensed game so forget about it.
  • Preservation: Chibi Maruko-chan must've been a big deal in her time, because the grade-schooler manga and anime has no less than fifteen game adaptations from multiple developers. This is her only Mega Drive appearance (though she'll pop up again in a Konami Saturn game) and like many of her tie-ins it's a board/party game intended for a younger audience. Like almost every other Japanese board video game, it's based on the Game of Life and is therefore an arbitrary mess of big numbers going up and down. What grade-schooler anime fan doesn't like math, though?

244: Super Fantasy Zone

No Caption Provided
  • Developer: Sunsoft
  • Publisher: Sunsoft
  • JP Release: 1992-01-14
  • NA Release: N/A
  • EU Release: 1993
  • Franchise: Fantasy Zone
  • Genre: Shoot 'em Up
  • Theme: ...Fantasy?
  • Premise: Opa-Opa needs your helpa-helpa murdering the cute monsters that killed his father, (no kidding) O-papa.
  • Availability: It's on the Genesis Mini (all regions).
  • Preservation: Sunsoft was given custodianship over Sega's day-glo shoot 'em up for its NES ports, since Sega employees turned to ash whenever they got close to Nintendo's Osaka headquarters back then. That led to Sunsoft taking charge on this semi-sequel/reboot for the Mega Drive. Curiously, the game skipped over North America: they could only get it digitally for the longest time, first via the Sega Channel and then eventually through the Wii Virtual Console. Like many other Mega Drive-exclusive "sequels" to classic Sega arcade games, it's not really a progression but an adaptation. Sunsoft knew better than to mess with perfection.

245: Tecmo World Cup '92

No Caption Provided
  • Developer: SIMS
  • Publisher: SIMS (JP) / Atlus (NA)
  • JP Release: 1992-01-31 (as Tecmo World Cup '92)
  • NA Release: December 1992 (as Tecmo World Cup)
  • EU Release: N/A
  • Franchise: Tecmo World Cup
  • Genre: Soccer
  • Theme: Pro Sports
  • Premise: Put the round thing past the rectangle thing more times than the other guys.
  • Availability: Nope. Sports games age like fine milk.
  • Preservation: So here's the thing - there is no World Cup '92. There was a Euro '92, but the World Cup is every other two years (same as the Summer Olympics). Reason for the name is that this is a port of a two-year-old arcade soccer game, and it still couldn't get the list of qualifying teams right after all that time. I guess what I'm saying is that I'm not impressed so far, and that's even before factoring in my apathy for sports games and soccer in particular.

246: Toki: Going Ape Spit

No Caption Provided
  • Developer: Santos / Sega
  • Publisher: Sega
  • JP Release: 1992-01-31
  • NA Release: Spring of 1992
  • EU Release: March 1992
  • Franchise: Toki
  • Genre: Platformer
  • Theme: Simianulator
  • Premise: Rescue your kidnapped girlfriend and undo your monkey curse as the "expector-Ape" himself, Toki.
  • Availability: This enhanced Mega Drive port is lost to time, but the game itself was graphically remastered just recently for Steam, Switch, Xbox One, and PS4 by Microids (the Syberia people?!).
  • Preservation: Toki's a real weird game to research. It originated in arcades in 1989, developed by the Japanese developers TAD Corp, and the appeal of an apathetic ape who spits at animals must've caught on because it showed up on everything after that. Even got itself a shiny new graphical remaster.. It's not a remarkable game or anything, so I guess there must be some kind of atavistic appeal to an ape that spits fireballs. After all, were we all not ourselves fireball-spitting apes at one point in the distant past?

247: Wani Wani World

No Caption Provided
  • Developer: Kaneko
  • Publisher: Kaneko
  • JP Release: 1992-01-31
  • NA Release: N/A
  • EU Release: N/A
  • Franchise: N/A
  • Genre: Platformer / Puzzle
  • Theme: Alligators
  • Premise: Cutesy hammer murder
  • Availability: Nope. More like Kan't-eko.
  • Preservation: I mean, this is just Lode Runner with a cartoon gator. You can't fool me. What's perplexing is where this came from; Kaneko adapted it from an earlier arcade game of theirs called Berlin no Kabe (or Berlin Wall, which was something else people were hitting with hammers around this time) but switched out the protagonist from some clown-looking kid. Alligators with hammers were something established elsewhere in the arcades: Namco's ubiquitous Wani Wani Panic, an animatronic "whack-a-croc" game which had you smack the alligators yourself. Seems a bit cheeky to riff on another developer's intellectual property, but it's far from the worst thing Kaneko's done where the Mega Drive's concerned (DJ Boy, for instance).

248: Alisia Dragoon

No Caption Provided
  • Developer: Game Arts
  • Publisher: Game Arts
  • JP Release: 1992-04-24
  • NA Release: February 1992
  • EU Release: April 1992
  • Franchise: N/A
  • Genre: Action
  • Theme: A Frank Frazetta Painting Come to Life
  • Premise: A warrior maiden, Alisia, sets out to avenge her father (a lot of patricide this entry...) by defeating evil forces from beyond the stars.
  • Availability: It's on the Genesis Mini (all regions).
  • Preservation: Game Arts appeared before (they'd previously commissioned Yellow Horn for a mahjong manga tie-in (#84)) but this is the first Mega Drive game they developed on their own. They would become much more prominent on the Sega CD and Saturn, where they'll create two of the best-loved JRPG series of the CD-ROM era: Lunar and Grandia. Alisia Dragoon resembles yet another barbarian action game like Rastan Saga II or Dahna, but the actual mechanics have a completely different dynamic to them: Alisia relies on her powerful enemy-seeking lightning magic and companions, but you can't keep the fire button pressed too long or you'll hit an "overheat" stage and be quickly overwhelmed by enemy forces. You'll also need to turn around to hit those chasing you. It feels like a tense multi-directional crowd-control shooter with platforming, and a bit of an exploration emphasis as you hunt around for upgrades and power-ups to help weather the storm (and the impressive bosses). Despite not being a huge seller in its day, it's one of a handful of games to appear on the Mega Drive Mini purely due to its reputation. (Another odd characteristic is that Game Arts, who can usually handle story stuff just fine given their famous games are all RPGs, actually brought in Gainax to work on the art and story of Alisia Dragoon.)

249: Paperboy

No Caption Provided
  • Developer: MotiveTime
  • Publisher: Tengen
  • JP Release: 1992-06-26
  • NA Release: February 1992
  • EU Release: April 1992
  • Franchise: Paperboy
  • Genre: Action
  • Theme: Part-time Drudgery
  • Premise: Deliver them papers, son.
  • Availability: I dunno, try iOS? Paperboy ports are like rats; you're never more than five feet away from one.
  • Preservation: I wasn't aware of who MotiveTime was, but apparently it was the name Elite went by for a while. Elite's another UK games company like Ocean that reprogrammed and published a huge number of era-contemporary arcade games for home computers like the ZX Spectrum, Commodore Amiga, and Atari ST. They'd already worked on a home computer version of Paperboy, and were natural choices for the Genesis port. Otherwise, this is your run of the mill Paperboy game: deliver papers, watch out for dogs and mowers, try to cycle on that mythical sweet spot near the curb where nothing can reach you that a kid at school once told you about.

250: The Terminator

No Caption Provided
  • Developer: Probe Entertainment
  • Publisher: Virgin Games
  • JP Release: N/A
  • NA Release: February 1992
  • EU Release: June 1992
  • Franchise: The Terminator
  • Genre: Side-scrolling Shooter
  • Theme: "Technology Bad"
  • Premise: Dun-dun dun dun-dun. Hear that? That's a metal man on his way to steal yo' girl.
  • Availability: Nope. Last copy must've got dipped in molten steel or something.
  • Preservation: There are so many Terminator games, and it runs into that odd issue - more prevalent in this era of pre-ESRB - where a premise is so cool that you can sell it to kids, even though they should not be allowed anywhere near the original source material until they can at least grow themselves some face fuzz. Termie didn't get an incongruous Saturday morning cartoon like RoboCop or the Toxic Avenger did, but this colorful bloopy shooter featuring everyone's favoite pre-ordained motherfucker Kyle Reese is clearly meant for a younger audience.

251: Winter Challenge

No Caption Provided
  • Developer: MindSpan
  • Publisher: Ballistic
  • JP Release: N/A
  • NA Release: February 1992
  • EU Release: 1992
  • Franchise: N/A
  • Genre: Sports
  • Theme: Sports
  • Premise: Sports
  • Availability: Nope. But if you're jonesing for some Olympiad action, you could always wait until this summer for the... oh, right.
  • Preservation: Talking of sports games that don't have anything to do with any major global sporting events, wink wink, Winter Challenge is a winter sports compilation released the same year as a Winter Olympics (1992, Albertville) but based on a different, also unaffiliated, DOS game from the late 80s that was more likely released to coincide with a different Winter Olympics (1988, Calgary). This economic recycling could only come from Accolade, who are once again up to their old tricks by manufacturing unlicensed Mega Drive carts on the cheap through their Ballistic label. Winter Challenge did eventually get a "legit" rerelease a little while later, post-lawsuits.

252: Sorcerer's Kingdom / Sorcer Kingdom

No Caption Provided
  • Developer: Masaya
  • Publisher: Masaya (JP) / Treco (NA)
  • JP Release: 1992-02-07 (as Sorcer Kingdom)
  • NA Release: August 1993 (as Sorcerer's Kingdom)
  • EU Release: N/A
  • Franchise: N/A
  • Genre: RPG
  • Theme: Fantasy
  • Premise: Make a name for yourself as a hero as you run around solving everyone's problems in this vague and directionless game.
  • Availability: Nope. Maybe Dracue Software, the ones behind the Assault Suits Leynos remake, could try remaking a few other Masaya games? ...They're out of business you say? Well this turned into a bummer fast.
  • Preservation: Our old friends Masaya with another tactical RPG. The last game of theirs we encountered was Warsong/Langrisser, and Sorcerer's Kingdom has a similar combat system if not progression structure, with combat turning into a grid-based strategy affair only once roaming enemies get close enough. However, it decided to follow Final Fantasy II (a bad idea in general) by having specific stats improve after using them repeatedly. Beyond that it's a little on the plain side, but at least Masaya never sticks to one idea for too long.

253: Syd of Valis / Valis SD

No Caption Provided
  • Developer: Telenet Japan
  • Publisher: Laser Soft (JP) / Renovation (NA)
  • JP Release: 1992-02-14 (as Valis SD)
  • NA Release: April 1992 (as Syd of Valis)
  • EU Release: N/A
  • Franchise: Valis
  • Genre: Action
  • Theme: Fantasy Leering
  • Premise: It's Valis, so it's probably something to do with half-dressed chosen warrior maidens and creepy masked anime dudes, only now they're all chibi and shit.
  • Availability: Nope. The Valis franchise was... handled somewhat irresponsibly, let's say, and I doubt anyone wants to wade through the muck to save it.
  • Preservation: I can't get over the fact that Renovation chose to localize "Valis SD" as "Syd of Valis", even changing the name of series-wide heroine Yuko to Syd in cutscenes (but not in the manual?), because that was easier than trying to explain to a western audience what "SD" meant. Anime fans are familiar with "super deformation" - turning normally proportioned characters into tiny, crudely drawn babies for comedic effect - and that's pretty much what's going on with this game, which is a goofier retelling of Valis II with a lot more levity. If Renovation's localization uh-ohs weren't enough, they chose an unrelated PC Engine game's box art for the NA release. The mind truly boggles. There has to be a fun story out there somewhere about how little time and resources they had.

254: Traysia

No Caption Provided
  • Developer: Telenet Japan
  • Publisher: Riot (JP) / Renovation (NA)
  • JP Release: 1992-02-14
  • NA Release: April 1992
  • EU Release: N/A
  • Franchise: N/A
  • Genre: RPG
  • Theme: Fantasy
  • Premise: Courageous hero Roy is itching for adventure, and finds it when he accompanies his travelling merchant of an uncle across the world.
  • Availability: Nope.
  • Preservation: I get that every other fantasy RPG has a woman's name that has since fallen out of common use, but "Traysia" might be stretching a little (apologies to all the Traysias out there). This RPG is much like Masaya's Sorcerer's Kingdom, above, in that its combat predominantly uses a SRPG-type grid. Other than that it's as generic as they come, and Telenet Japan probably figured it'd be easier to sell something so mediocre to an RPG desert like the Mega Drive than try to break into the well-represented SNES JRPG market, which at the time was building up hype for Dragon Quest V and Final Fantasy V. At least Renovation picked out some germane box art for the game this time, rather than finding a random piece of manga art and calling it a day.

255: Two Crude Dudes

No Caption Provided
  • Developer: ISCO
  • Publisher: Data East
  • JP Release: 1992-02-28 (as Crude Buster)
  • NA Release: 1992 (as Two Crude Dudes)
  • EU Release: May 1993 (as Two Crude Dudes)
  • Franchise: N/A
  • Genre: Brawler
  • Theme: Post-Apocalyptic
  • Premise: New York has been nuked, gangs have taken over (I guess the fallout doesn't bother them), and the US government - like the current administration - cares so little for its biggest city that it sends in two jocks with bad haircuts to save the day.
  • Availability: No rereleases for the Mega Drive port, but the original arcade version is in the Data East Arcade Classics compilation for Wii.
  • Preservation: Our last game for this entry is Two Crude Dudes, or Crude Buster, a mildly popular Data East brawler that found more success with its Mega Drive port. Possibly related to the Bad Dudes, the Crude Dudes are post-apocalyptic New York City's best shot at clearing out the Big Valley gang of hoodlums and mutants that have moved into the burned out buildings and molten streets after the nukes. I'm honestly not sure why anyone wants this version of New York back; it's not exactly in the best condition for re-habitation. I guess it's the principle of the thing? No-one wants to see a three-armed goon spraypaint obscenities on the side of the Empire State Building, in theory at least.
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Indie Game of the Week 165: Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap

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It feels like a prudent thing to do in stressful and strange times is to keep to comfortable and familiar haunts, which in my case is playing no end of Indie explormers and writing about them. However, Wonder Boy: The Dragon's Trap is a rare case of an explormer remaster: there are so few cases of 20th century explormers outside of the requisite Metroids and Castlevanias, and yet French developers Lizardcube found one in the guise of Westone's third (sorta) Wonder Boy game, which originally released on the Sega Master System and Game Gear systems back in 1989.

The Wonder Boy series went through a few evolutions in its lifespan, from simple action games to hybrid RPGs, eventually dropping Wonder Boy himself by the time they got to the last game in the series Monster World IV; however, Dragon's Trap was the first to embrace an open-world format full of secrets to find and progress blockers to overcome with the right tools. "Tools," in this case, is almost exclusively represented as cursed animal forms that the protagonist (who can either be a Wonder Boy or a Wonder Girl in this remake) transmogrifies into after defeating a boss. Each form confers its own unique abilities: for example, Mouse-Man is small enough to fit through narrow passages and walk across checkered blocks; Piranha-Man can swim freely in water; and Hawk-Man is blessed with flight. Equipment that the player can find and purchase will give each form a different amount of defense and offense, with some gear only benefiting specific forms, and most are well-hidden or prohibitively expensive.

Pig Vendor's always been a Wonder Boy dark horse favorite, and I'm glad to see him even more surly and sarcastic in this game.
Pig Vendor's always been a Wonder Boy dark horse favorite, and I'm glad to see him even more surly and sarcastic in this game.

The Dragon's Trap (the remake, that is) is a curiosity largely because it doesn't seek to remake the game but simply beautify it, barring only a small handful of seamless modern conveniences. Many of the original game's quirks feel antiquated even when presented in this new form, including a lack of checkpoints (the village hub is fairly central, at least), an emphasis on farming resources to buy everything from stronger gear to health restoration (Medicare-for-all has yet to reach Wonder Boy's kingdom also), and some iffy sprite collision detection that can make combat a bit rough in spots. In fact, that last area is one where the new hand-drawn graphical overhaul - which is otherwise excellent, as are the new orchestral remixes of the original BGM, either or both of which can be switched back to the "retro" originals at any time - can cause a slight bit of visual confusion as to where you need to be to hit or guard against flying bats and fast-moving projectiles. The level design for the dungeons always boils down to a long, linear path full of enemies that acts more like an endurance gauntlet, whittling down your health and limited supply of healing potions before the boss, than something a bit more elaborate with dead-end treasure rooms and puzzles to solve. It's that ever-tricky dilemma with remakes to "over-fix" - rendering the game unrecognizable to long-time fans of the original who might be disappointed with an "in name only" reboot - or to leave too much of the archaic design in place, making it a hard sell to those with many modern, more accommodating alternatives. I don't think there are any quick-and-easy answers here, so I'm reluctant to be too critical about the decisions Lizardcube made.

Wonder Girl mode makes very little difference to the game, as you spend most of the time as an androgynous anthro, but it's cool that they bothered to include the option.
Wonder Girl mode makes very little difference to the game, as you spend most of the time as an androgynous anthro, but it's cool that they bothered to include the option.

The Dragon's Trap is ultimately a gorgeously animated and scored game that's otherwise very light in terms of complexity and variety, as might be expected of a faithful retread of a 31-year-old game. However, the simplicity also works in its favor to some degree: there's no immense map (or any map at all, not that it's needed), no overwhelming amount of power-ups and equipment to find though certainly enough secrets to buoy the 5-6 hour runtime, and the combat consists entirely of slashing directly forward and using consumable ranged items whenever you find yourself with a stockpile. It's thus very friendly and uncomplicated to neophytes, unless you're playing on Hard mode where it saps your health every thirty seconds (an early mainstay of the Wonder Boy franchise that was also continued by its "spin-off" Adventure Island), though it can be a bit grindy if you decide you need a full collection of gear. There's something kind of neat (if cheeky) about lifting an ancient, underrated game directly out of relative obscurity rather than obtusely referencing it and the era it hailed from with a new IP. I suspect we won't see the end of "restoration projects" like this any time soon; after all, I'm writing this review the day after the Final Fantasy VII Remake released.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

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Indie Game of the Week 164: Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom

No Caption Provided

Strap yourselves in, folks, because this one's gonna be a bummer. Shiness: The Lightning Kingdom is one of those not-uncommon cases of an overly ambitious Indie game project that went to Kickstarter for the extra funds needed to realize its vision. The vision, in this case, is a full-sized open-world RPG with an elaborate real-time combat system in a similar vein as Bandai Namco's Tales franchise. However, Bamco's juggernaut JRPG franchise has benefitted from years of small, iterative alterations to its central "LMB System" and growing expertise in crafting bespoke fantasy universes that occupy their own sense of place and logical consistency. It's not always the easiest series to break into as a result, but anyone who has played more of the breadth of the series as opposed to the occasional one that breaks through into the mainstream (like Symphonia and Vesperia) knows that there's a discipline, honed through many instances over several decades, behind each game's construction. I don't say this to demean the developers of Shiness and their decision to shoot for the moon, only that the fledgling studio (French studio Enigami, which sadly shuttered a few months after the game's release) clearly bit off a lot more than it could chew.

Shiness is about a world governed by martial arts and mysticism, populated by various races: the three most prominent of the "civilized" races include standard humans, the towering bestial Shelks, and the diminutive rodent-like Wakis. The protagonist, a bolder-than-usual Waki named Chado, is blessed with the unusual gift of being able to see and communicate with Shiness: elemental spirits that govern each of the world's continents. It's with their assistance and insight that he's seeking the fabled "Land of Life" hidden somewhere across the world, eventually falling in with a mysterious waif and her retinue after an unexpected airship crash. I can't say I know much more about where the plot is going, because after almost ten hours I'm still in the opening areas of the game: part of Shiness's ambition was to equal the length of its RPG influences.

The game is a looker when it wants to be, though most environments are fairly drab.
The game is a looker when it wants to be, though most environments are fairly drab.

The facet of Shiness that clearly saw the most work, along with the world-building, is the fighter-style combat system. As with Tales, the real-time battles move fast and can overwhelm you quickly, and part of preparation process is to equip combat and magic skills that complement each other. Each of the game's five characters has four main melee skills and a considerable number of magical skills, the latter of which are beholden to elements. Players can choose to prioritize melee or magic with any character - and some enemies are easier with one or the other - but each carries its own challenges. Melee, for example, requires becoming an expert at parrying moves, breaking guards, and closing the distance on magic-using enemies. Magic-users, meanwhile, must carve out moments in battle where they can recharge their mana (called Shi in-game) by noting the elemental bias of the arena at that moment: the walls of the combat arena, which also serve to enclose the battle, will flash between colors intermittently and when it's the same color as your preferred element that element's Shi will charge that much faster. The combat simplifies itself a little by only ever being a one-on-one battle with a Marvel vs. Capcom style tagging system: both you and the enemy can substitute in other team members to give the current fighter a break (they'll slowly regen health while inactive).

I'm sad to say that I despise the combat system, for as much as I appreciate what it's trying to do. I thought the Legaia games, which are perhaps closer to Shiness's combat system than even Tales, were underappreciated for trying to inject some fighter game inputs and systems into an RPG because it made even basic combat against mobs that much more engaging. However, despite only ever having a single opponent to worry about, I found it frequently difficult to track where they were if they left the bottom of the screen, and a lot of the controls are extremely sluggish and unresponsive: absolutely not what you want from a combat system aping a fighter. The "switch character" button in particular would rarely save someone in the midst of an enemy combo, which meant losing that character for the remainder of the fight. The difficulty of the combat fluctuates wildly between sections of the game: upon entering the Meos Forest, the second overworld area, I find myself barely able to scrape through most battles despite whizzing through most normal battles in the previous dungeon. Magic is nigh impossible to guard or dodge, given the speed at which those projectiles are formed and hit especially if you're trying to get in close for melee, and you can lose half your health bar with a single lapse in timing. Parrying is also attached to a gauge named "tension" which rises when you attack normally and can be spent to either parry an enemy combo and leave them open for a counter-assault, use a special technique, or spend the entire tension bar for a "hyper" move: essentially the game's take on Tales's mystic artes or Final Fantasy's limit breaks. If an enemy is too aggressive, it's easy for the constant parries to drain tension completely without you noticing, leaving you to take several punches in the face before you switch to guarding and taking chip damage. Each battle thus becomes this internecine exercise of waiting for a moment when you aren't getting pummelled and can hopefully defeat the enemy team before they wipe you out or force you to use too many restoratives (which, thankfully, are fairly ubiquitous). The enemy aggression and lack of responsiveness have really made fights a slog where I'm at in the game, eliminating much of my desire to continue.

Here I am, getting my ass handed to me by some kind of tree creature. Note the Street Fighter IV-like font treatment.
Here I am, getting my ass handed to me by some kind of tree creature. Note the Street Fighter IV-like font treatment.

The other problems with the game are a bit more quotidian: it's jank as hell. If you're not getting caught on the geometry or spotting visual glitches every few moments, you're having to deal with a very poorly localized script that is replete with typos, words that should be capitalized but aren't, and frequent turns of phrases that don't sound right whatsoever. The script and localization are often the first to be sacrificed on the altar of diminishing resources when it comes to game development crunch, but it's an unfortunate element to depreciate when so much of Shiness's appeal is in its setting, story, and characterization. It's hard to identify and relate to characters when they all talk like Google Translate, turns out, and I find myself unable to even care about the otherwise strong narrative aspects of the game either. Other fine ideas, which are features I'd probably appreciate more in a superior game, include: a Final Fantasy IX style equipment mastery system where you can permanently learn a weapon's skill if you use it enough; some minor hunting and crafting systems; a Gambit support system where you set coding-based conditions ("if ally has <50% health, then use heal") for currently inactive members to follow; and character-specific overworld skills used to solve puzzles like levitating objects out of the way or summoning rocks to push down pressure plates.

Erroneously using
Erroneously using "depth" and "translation" in this specific context of telepathically moving objects ironically highlights the lack of depth in the game's translation.

Do not misunderstand: I wanted to like Shiness a lot. I don't see many other games - Indie or otherwise - attempt to make an RPG with the mechanical and narrative size and scope of Tales on a shoestring budget. The setting, where anthro hamsters and bootleg DBZ characters perform elemental kung fu like a cross between Sonic the Hedgehog and Avatar: The Last Airbender has potential, and I admire the moxie in every extra system and idea that the developers thought to implement, regardless of whether they had the time and resources to make it work. It's just that nothing functions all that well, including vital core components like the combat, and my admiration for its chutzpah has long since been superseded by my antipathy with trying to contend with its many structural problems and lack of finesse. Turns out it's a lot harder to make a Tales game than anyone outside of Namco Tales Studio knew.

Rating: 3 out of 5.

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Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in: Whatever Bloats Your Notes

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With my second blog on Xenoblade Chronicles 2, I figured I'd shine a light on the game's expansive number of side-quests, activities, development tools, bonus objectives, and other non-combat features through the lens of all the overly-fastidious note-taking I've been doing. Most note-takers I know tend to open Google Spreadsheet or Excel if they have it, if the current Twitter trend of recording every angle of discovery in Animal Crossing: New Horizons is any indication, but I usually stick to Notepad like a low-tech sucker. It's a timeworn practice whenever I play an explormer where I want to record where I need to backtrack to and with what probable upgrade, and I usually bust it out if a game has an achievement list that's on the right side of reasonable, but then there are games like Xenoblade Chronicles 2 where before long a document begins to resemble an eighty page manifesto someone might send to a national newspaper if they suddenly wanted a whole lot of police attention. It's not pretty, in so many words, but it does help keep track of an awful lot of data.

I intimated it last time when I unsuccessfully attempted to describe the nuances of the combat system in 10,000 words or fewer, but Xenoblade Chronicles 2 can be ridiculous to the point of overbearing when it comes to its systems and features. So many of these are interconnected, of course, and generally serve to benefit the core gameplay - the combat, exploration, and character development - but there's a certain degree of "opt-in" where you can go from casually playing the game like any other RPG - keep following the critical quest objective on the map tracker, perhaps buying new gear whenever you reach a new town or checking in occasionally on the character development screens - to total bugfuck, coffee-jittery, "corkboard full of strings tied to pins" territory tout de suite. I am presently in that full-on "who is Pepe Silvia?" stage of the process, and even though the game's denouement is literally a single door away I find myself compelled to finish out everything the game has left in store, up to and possibly including all these enormous end-game superbosses that just showed up like they own the place.

This is just a morsel of what I'm working with. I have lost control of my life.
This is just a morsel of what I'm working with. I have lost control of my life.

At any rate, I wanted to go through each of my notepad sub-headers in turn, tell you a little about what they are, how they benefit the playthrough or character builds, and how I'm just about managing to track them for the sake of... honestly, just so all this meticulous journalizing can have value in retrospect. I am not an accomplished man, these days least of all, but perhaps I can still salvage something out of all this; even if it's only a cautionary tale to others currently mousing over their own chosen word processor tool with a determined look.

(Quick primer on some XC2-specific terminology:

  • Drivers are playable characters and Blades are their "equipment" which can be switched around but are also characters in their own right. I've taken to thinking of Blades like Pokemon, since the currently equipped one determines your fighting strength, elemental bias, and range of combat skills.
  • Blades are broken up into: Commons, which are procedurally generated and all look the same; and Rares, which are unique individuals with their own distinct appearances, personalities, skill trees, and questlines. True to their name, Rares are very hard to obtain and usually require a lot of luck in the game's gacha-style Blade bonding system.
  • Heart-to-hearts are optional cutscenes between Drivers and Blades that are usually comedic asides, similar to the skits of Tales.
  • Titans are really big monsters everyone decided it was OK to live on. Every region of the game is a separate Titan, with a handful of exceptions.)

Side-Quests

The ever-helpful map, here to track your side-quest destinations. They're in there somewhere.
The ever-helpful map, here to track your side-quest destinations. They're in there somewhere.

The original reason I opened up a text document on that cold spring morn. The in-game side-quest tracking is fairly decent -even taking multiple stages into account - but it doesn't follow more than one SQ simultaneously. NPCs and areas vital to other SQs will still have a blue exclamation mark (a blue question mark, meanwhile, indicates that a side-quest is available here) when you get close enough to them but only one can ever appear on the game's compass at a time.

As you can imagine, this ain't so hot when you have multiple quests across multiple Titans, so I needed some way to corral them by area and by requirements to keep from bouncing around too much. Progress in SQs is often stymied by skill checks in particular, which I'll get into in a little bit.

Brief shout-out to the way the game withholds side-quest experience and deposits it in a bank you access by sleeping at an inn. Good for letting completionist types like myself not overlevel before the next story dungeon, provided we go by the honor system and don't just gorge on whatever XP we have in reserve at every opportunity. Dunno if I've seen that in an open-world RPG before now, but I can think of several where it might've been handy.

Driver Affinity Charts

You call that a skill tree?
You call that a skill tree?

The Affinity Charts, which are Xenoblade's version of skill trees, are this game's meat and potatoes as far as character development goes, but the Driver charts are relatively straightforward and considerably smaller than the Blade affinity charts. They are, however, an early indication of just how elaborate XC2's character development can get, as it uses the first of the game's four separate types of experience earned from battle to activate nodes across its fan-shaped grids (SP, or skill points, as opposed to XP, WP, or Trust).

I took to recording which skills I wanted to buy next so I could quickly scan through each character's Affinity Chart and check if their respective SP totals were sufficient enough to afford them. It's arguably a faster process than checking skills manually, and "arguably beneficial" is usually enough reason for me to go through with something time-demanding.

To circle back around to those "four types of XP," which is like the quattro formaggi pizza of character development, I should explain that WP are Weapon Points. Every Blade has a specific weapon type - laser-katanas, hammer-axes, an electrified Blitzball, i.e. the usual shit - and characters earn WP for those weapon types as a whole, which are spent on upgrading the four Driver skills (called Arts, or at least they were in XC1) that are attached to each type. It means if a Driver has been using someone with a katana for a while and decides to switch Blades, they might benefit from using another katana-wielder because they already have some training with its accompanying skillset. Tracking weapon art mastery is some real deep "in the weeds" business though, and I've not gone so far as to note which of my Drivers are primarily using which weapons. Just another example of how details-obsessive you could get with this game.

Blade Affinity Charts

This is a skill tree.
This is a skill tree.

Blade Affinity Charts are where you start losing your damn mind. They're filled with skill nodes to activate in the same manner as the Driver affinity charts, but there's no currency to unlock most of them. The one exception is "Trust," which builds as you use Blades in battle and also when you complete side-quests, discover new locations, and watch heart-to-hearts while they're equipped.

Instead, every single node on a Blade affinity chart - and there's usually anywhere between 20 and 50 - requires a milestone achievement, fetch quest, or some other bonus objective. Kill certain enemies, perform a certain number of feats in combat, use their favorite "pouch items" (store-bought temporary boosts that can be anything from food and drink to musical instruments), acquire cash, or complete specific side-quests that they're involved in. Not only do all the unique Blades have these, but so does every "common" Blade in the game: for the latter, these node goals are randomly determined along with the Blades themselves. Imagine a game that procedurally generated an achievement list from a near endless pool of possibilities every time you played, and you'd get a sense of how in-depth the Blade affinity system can be.

Because of this, I've taken to tracking these goals by category, rather than by Blade. I have a list of enemies to hunt, a list of pouch items that Blades request (as well as recording any favorites I've found), and whether or not I've accomplished their side-quests yet. As I keep finding new Blades or upgrading the old, I keep appending the data. It's... well, you need to keep yourself busy these days.

Skill Checks

When you aren't sturdy enough to open a box.
When you aren't sturdy enough to open a box.

Across the world there are chests, doors, passageways, eddies, and other barriers that require skill checks to surpass. These skills could be elemental - almost every Blade has a "Mastery" skill for their particular element - but might also include lockpicking, fortitude, leaping, superstrength, and many others depending on the type of barrier. Rare Blades frequently carry up to three of these skills, but they need levelling up like pretty much everything else. Fortunately, multiple equipped Blades can pool their expertise together if you're a little short.

Anyway, there's a lot of these early on where you simply won't have the range of Blades and Blade skills to complete them. Most lead to chests with valuables that you can find anywhere else, but a few lead to secret areas (great for resource gathering) and side-quest specific items. The game's map system helpfully records those you've found and the skills you need for them, but I took to jotting down the information as a convenience.

Rare Blade Rundowns

Those ?s haunt me. Each one will be another dozen or so objectives to complete, if the game ever lets me see them.
Those ?s haunt me. Each one will be another dozen or so objectives to complete, if the game ever lets me see them.

Here's where my extracurricular nonsense takes a sharp left turn into death cult level insanity, building an elaborate table for each rare Blade in my possession and everything I still need to do with them: their current level of affinity, the amount of nodes completed, the number of monster hunts and pouch items they need, and an outline of their skills for the sake of the Skill Checks above. Once you have more than twenty of these rare Blades, it gets hard to track whom has what and which needs some attention as they fall behind the Blades used more regularly. I also track elements: when building a party for attacking certain high-level foes, it's good to either have a mix of elemental types or a focus on one element in particular. The game's not too dissimilar to Pokemon in this regard.

I update the table at the end of every play session, and use it to judge who to take with me next. I'm already individually tracking hunts and items elsewhere on the document, but this table makes it easy at a glance to know where I should focus my energies. Of course, there's still a number of conspicuous gaps... the game's gacha system of acquiring new Blades gets more parsimonious with Rare Blades the more of them you have on your team.

Unbought Stores

Why buy the milk when you can get the store for free*? (*actually a lot of money.)
Why buy the milk when you can get the store for free*? (*actually a lot of money.)

Another system, one easy to miss, is that you can own almost every store in the game. This involves buying one of every product sold there and then buying the company, President of Remington style. The benefits are an unusual collection of highly valuable passive boosts that stick with you for the rest of the game, which include earning more money, more experience, more items, magnetizes item drops to you from further away, decreases enemy detection range, and so on. Each deeds purchase does cost a lot of money though, so you need to keep a fat wallet on you.

I'm just logging which ones I haven't bought at this point. Stores get new inventory as the game progresses, whenever you increase a region's development level (raised by buying things and completing side-quests), and when you complete certain mercenary missions.

Oh right, development levels and mercenary missions. I'm not tracking either of those, but the former is the best way to unlock the latter, and the latter is how you quickly raise Blades you aren't using. They're a bit like those missions in Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood where you send off goons and wait for them to come back and report an hour or so later in real-time.

Aux Core Set-Up

If I was just a little more off my rocker, I'd be tracking my Accessories and Aux Cores more closely too. They naturally get buried in menus along with everything else, but they both serve as essential boosts to Drivers (accessories) and Blades (aux cores) alike and it's necessary to keep them up to date. If I were a truly desperate individual looking for an edge against a challenging foe, I might be farming some of the high-level items from the final dungeon to ensure everyone's weapons and gear are in peak form or taking the time to find the right accessories to minimize a nasty status effect, but I'm hoping it won't come to that. I get enough farming and grinding done upgrading all these Blades so for now I'm working with whatever I've found so far.

Now that I'm getting into theoretical topics to keep notes on, I've almost certainly passed the OCD Rubicon and should probably draw this thing to a close before I start alphabetizing my sock drawer. (NB: To be clear, I have not gone stir crazy. I have always been this level of crazy.) Thanks for reading, and let me know in the comments what kind of games have had you scrivening away like a literary hermit. Did you have reams of arcane symbols jotted down playing Fez? Needed to keep track of what to give whom in Stardew Valley whenever birthdays rolled around? Were you playing games back when drawing your own maps was common practice?

As for XC2, I've got one more piece in the tank - despite being close to the end I'm not close to being done with it, if you catch my meaning - and then it might be time to resume an old favorite blog feature of mine; one that will serve to keep me distracted (and hopefully some of you) from cold, hard reality for a spell. See you again soon.

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Indie Game of the Week 163: The Hex

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It's been a while since I last visited Daniel Mullins Games with Pony Island (IGotW #10) and after playing his most recent game, 2018's The Hex, I have to wonder how draughty that dude's house is with every fourth wall missing. As in Pony Island, The Hex is predominantly a game about creating video games, and an imagined tumultuous relationship between a creator and his creations, with the player caught in the middle like a bystander awkwardly watching a married couple bicker. Opening up on a creaky, crumbling tavern where a selection of has-been video game characters are drinking away their woes, the elderly proprietor gets a phone call warning them that one of the patrons is planning to murder someone later that evening. With this central mystery, the player bounces from one patron to another, reliving their glory days and downfalls via flashbacks that each pertain to a different video game genre (platformers, fighters, turn-based RPGs, etc.), and moving the central mystery along while creating no end of additional threads that weave in and out of everyone's backstories. The games of this world are all created by a central "The Gameworks" utility, a stand-in for the Unity engine (which was used to make this game), and each character runs afoul of the administration of this toolset in turn, becoming blacklisted or corrupted in the process. It's the universe of Wreck-It Ralph reimagined as an oppressive system where bootlickers succeed and dissidents are punished with dissatisfying genre transfers, exile, or worse.

I really enjoyed the layered plot of the game, its deep dives into each character's interiority, and the hints - later made overt with a deliciously knowing self-centered "developer's commentary" during the game's inevitable "walking simulator" chapter - of the type of noxious, short-sighted, and arrogant personality behind their creation. It's definitely a game like Fez or Undertale or, indeed, Pony Island where the developers have hidden lots of secrets and "forbidden knowledge" in the margins of the game's code, and reading the achievement list (which I'd recommend waiting to do until after completing game, just for the sheer amount of "I could've done that?!") gives you a clear sense of how much the developers were hoping meticulous players would take the time to find and later disseminate what they'd learned. If you've played any ARG-heavy video game with an elaborate "mythos", The Hex is very much wading through those same Byzantine waters.

Ideas like
Ideas like "this game is currently being livestreamed" start off as obnoxious as you'd expect, but when the "chat" starts giving you solutions to riddles you have no other way of figuring out it becomes a pretty clever addition. Gotta feel for MODERATOR_JOSH though...

However, as might reasonably be expected given the amount of genre-crossing going on, The Hex falters most when it actually has to be a video game. Most of the time the gameplay is perfunctory but unexceptional - the goal for each chapter's chosen genre visit isn't so much to provide a mechanically rich experience, given that it'll only persist until the story moves onto something else - but will occasionally demonstrate bursts of meta brilliance. An example of the latter would be the Waste World chapter, where the game becomes something like a Fallout or The Banner Saga tactical RPG, except the in-universe lore is that this game was never completed by its procrastinating, resources-light developer and was finished with the help of community mod support, which drops the quality of the writing immensely, disrupts the continuity, and introduces a cheat engine that the player can use to give their units infinite movement or damage. It's a chaotic chapter where the gameplay and story (or rather, the overarching meta story, as opposed to Waste World's story) are in perfect unison.

Then there are the more action-oriented cases like the dull platformer Super Weasel World or the awful shooter Vicious Galaxy, the latter of which was literally broken for me and necessitated skipping ahead using a built-in chapter select feature. (It's another case of the Unity engine not working properly on weaker systems, which seems to happen more frequently these days: not only does this produce lag and create visual glitches, but the programming itself appears to mutate and generate warped scenarios the developer never intended. Given how the narrative frequently deals with glitchy, incomplete, or unoptimized games-within-a-game, it was kinda difficult to parse which of these issues were on purpose.)

Ignore Rorie's review, this particular chapter's not all that exciting.
Ignore Rorie's review, this particular chapter's not all that exciting.

If I was forced to liken this game to another, it'd be last year's Horace from Paul Helman and Sean Scaplehorn. Horace had a wonderfully deep storyline and frequently crossed genre barriers for an unpredictable free-flow narrative that could lurch into a new side-plot or flight of fancy at any given moment, and was also somewhat let down by the parts where it was supposed to be a video game with a lack of optimization that made it a real challenge to progress through at times. Despite my frustration with both, I feel inclined to let them off the hook for the ambitious stories they're trying to tell. In both cases I persevered because I wanted to see where they would go next and how everything would shake out.

It isn't without its problems, but if you played Pony Island and were bowled over (in a good way) with some of the decisions it made and the ideas it explored, The Hex is every bit a worthy follow-up. The frequent genre switches can make for an uneven experience, and if you really struggled with Pony Island's "coding puzzles" expect more of those here too, but I'm honestly glad that games like this continue to explore what it means to make games and the responsibilities and obligations, if any, a successful developer has to their fanbase (and to their own characters, for that matter). And even if meta "media about making that kind of media" stories are a little too self-indulgent a topic for your liking, the game's twists, intrigue, dark sense of humor, and flashes of inspired game design should be sufficient incentive instead.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

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Timesink, Inc.

There have been certain games from which I've had to ween myself off because it was affecting my productivity, as limited as it already was, but given the current circumstances I find I have a little more free time to fritter away on an endless cycle of Skinner box mechanics and little dopamine kicks.

What follows are some groupings of games I could happily play forever, or at least until I eventually ran out of things to do many weeks later. Some of these already have hundreds of hours recorded on whatever client app trackers are there to measure my chagrin, and not a day goes by when I don't think about booting them up again to keep chasing that digital dragon. It's only because I have a sizeable enough backlog of enormous unplayed games to keep me going that I'm not more tempted.

Since I'm somehow less shameful about enabling others, I've thrown a list together of the games that should hold you over this tumultuous and stressful period, in case the one hour of Animal Crossing: New Horizons per day doesn't suffice. These aren't just long games; they're games built to be played almost indefinitely.

(NB: I should probably add a disclaimer somewhere to suggest not burning yourself out on video games too early in this self-isolation process, and perhaps enjoy a few other avenues of passing the time concurrently. Pfft, disclaimers.)

(NB2: For the sake of keeping this list manageable, I've excluded MMOs because I don't know enough about them and which ones tend to charge through the roof on a monthly basis, and effectively endless session- and skill-based games like fighters, sports, or online shooters where a player's level of retainment is based on their desire to improve.)

Builders

Sometimes you just gotta put a block on top of another block and keep going.

  • Terraria: The Nostalgic Man's Minecraft, Terraria is absolutely the kind of game I could, and have, sunk hundreds of hours into, between its robust treasure library, varied biomes, potential construction projects, colossal boss fights, and an impressive list of crap to do that the devs have continued to expand for nearly a decade. (Availability: Get it on Steam - it's cheap, you can mod it, and no-one's PC is so awful that they can't run it (though it may chug when zoomed out).)
  • Minecraft: Since I included Pepsi, I should probably mention Coca Cola. Minecraft's more or less the grandfather of this format (if we momentarily forget Lego exists) and easily the most popular. If you've never tried it, now might be a good time? There's only ten million grade-schoolers who'd be further behind on the curve. (Availability: Everywhere.)
  • Dragon Quest Builders: It took Dragon Quest for me to finally "get" Musou, with Dragon Quest Heroes, and a similar thing could be said about the two Dragon Quest Builders games and this genre. (Availability: PlayStation 3 and PS4 and Vita and Switch for DQB1 / PS4 and Switch and PC for DQB2.)
  • Starbound: Despite featuring space travel and an orbital ship hub it's still a lesser Terraria, but it's also seen constant updates since its 2016 release and is assuredly better now than the last time you tried it. (Availability: PC, Xbox One, and PS4.)
  • Rust/ARK: I know so little about these games beyond their notable popularity. Seems like if you were going to take the time to figure them out, now's that time. (Availability: PC seems to be the way to go.)

Warlords

If only we could command our own white blood cells as easily and effectively as all these virtual armies.

  • Stellaris: Paradox's space-faring sorta-spiritual-successor to the Master of Orion games is an extremely deep game that might take a lifetime to master. Or, well, several weeks spare. Looks we have those, though. (Availability: Steam, but there was a semi-recent console version for PS4 and XB1 that's supposedly adequate.)
  • Civilization IV/V: The original Empire Sim, modernized several times over. Depending on who you ask, Civilization IV is either the unmatched peak of the series or Civilization V has finally caught up to it with its many expansions. Doesn't feel like you can go too wrong with either, though. (Availability: PC only. Make sure to grab as many expansions as possible.)
  • Master of Magic: An oldie but a goodie, while MoM is busted in some significant ways (don't expect savvy AI decisions) the sheer versatility of its magic system and multiple fantasy races gives the game a longevity that's still hard to beat today. (Availability: PC only. Previously exclusive to GOG, there's a Steam version too now and it has some bonus content I'd be curious to see.)
  • Endless Legend: The only self-described Master of Magic pretender that has come close to living up to that claim in my view, hewing close to modern Civilization games with its multiple scenario approach and hexagonal town development. Warlock: Master of the Arcane isn't too bad either. (Availability: PC only.)
  • Total War: Not too acquainted with these, but they seem to be the best armchair general games around if the Paradox grand strategy stuff is a little too intense. Pick your poison: Rome, China, Japan, UK, and wherever the hell Warhammer is set. Diecastia, maybe. (Availability: PC only.)

Astroprivateers

Perhaps you'd like to escape to the one place that hasn't been corrupted by the coronavirus... SPACE!

  • No Man's Sky: I'm not kidding when I say this game is almost unrecognizable compared to where it was two, three or four years ago. A giddying array of things to build, or shoot, or photo, or mine, or... (Availability: PC, XB1, and PS4.)
  • Elite: Dangerous: The modern incarnation of the first and best space trader game there ever was. (Availability: Also PC, XB1, and PS4.)
  • Rebel Galaxy Outlaw: For those who want to do all their space truckin' to an appropriate soundtrack. (Availability: Just PC for right now.)
  • EVE Online: I feel like NASA has dedicated servers towards figuring this game out. Maybe you can beat them to it? Maybe you already have. Maybe you're an economist for the Icelandic government and are very happy that I'm bringing it up. (Availability: PC only. I'd love to see what a simplified console port looks like though.)
  • Star Citizen: Look... we don't know how long this current situation will last. Star Citizen might be out before the quarantine ends, but there's really no promises either way. (Availability: Maybe 2023?)

Farmers

Throw your food garbage into an area. They get all rotty. A fly has a baby. Dirt is born. Share this moment with me.

  • Stardew Valley: The game that swallowed a lot of peoples' 2016, my own included. Now its insidious powers of compulsion can be put to good purposes. (Availability: Everywhere.)
  • Rune Factory 4 Special: If you wanted to sound all superior to the Stardew Valley kids, might as well grab this recent remake of the franchise Stardew borrowed most of its ideas from. (Availability: The "Special" version of RF4 is Switch-only, though there's also Rune Factory 5 sometime later this year. Oh, except I think that's Switch only too.)
  • My Time at Portia: Like a 3D Stardew Valley, kinda. Just came out of Early Access last year, if you were waiting for a completed version. (Availability: Everywhere.)
  • Farming Simulator: Of course, you can dispense with the cutesy sim-people and optional socializing and crafting and just go for pure farming nirvana. It might not hurt to learn how to grow our own food... (Availability: FS19 came out on PC, XB1, and PS4. FS20 was a mobile and Switch only thing, and didn't review as well.)
  • Animal Crossing: New Horizons: There's more to AC than just farming, in theory, except my entire Twitter timeline the past week has been people trying to find fruit trees to plant in their town. The entire timeline. (Availability: Switch only.)

Cooperators

You're probably going to want to play the online versions of these...

  • Deep Rock Galactic: Watching the Giant Bomb guys play this made it seem like a fun, hectic time with friends. Partly the Horde mode of every online shooter, partly a cooperative treasure-gathering excursion. The latter's more compelling to me, but I guess there'd be no conflict without the former. (Availability: PC and Xbox One.)
  • Divinity: Original Sin II: I'd love to see Giant Bomb take on a multiplayer co-op playthrough of this enormous and excellent strategic RPG, perhaps with someone seasoned in the lead (like Rorie). It wouldn't be easygoing, but I think everyone would get heavily invested into their characters and their plights by the end. Of course, you could try it yourself with your own group of CRPG diehards. (Availability: As of last September, it's out on every current system.)
  • Overcooked! 2: Cooking is a relaxing pastime, though not with all the hazards and obstacles in these kitchens. Admittedly, the truest hazard is one's own incompetence. (Availability: Everywhere.)
  • Heave Ho: Of course, if you wanted to like the people you're trapped inside with even less... (Availability: PC and Switch.)
  • Apex Legends: I figured I should include one free Battle Royale game, and I liked this more than Fortnite. Get a couple of friends together to slay some fools, or annoy some randos by pointing out every landmark with your ping tool. "Look over here!" "Is it ammo?" "No, it's a cloud shaped like a muffin!" (Availability: PC, XB1, and PS4.)

Commanders

If you're in charge of these paramilitary squads, I might suggest practicing some social distancing just so they don't all get taken out by the same grenade.

  • XCOM 2: War of the Chosen: I've been meaning to get back into XCOM proper, and this expansion to the sequel sounds like the way to go. Man, if the Martians can be taken out by a common cold, they're shit out of luck right now. (Availability: PC, XB1, and PS4.)
  • Wasteland 3: I get it, enough of the apocalyptic stuff. If you can't hold on two more months for Wasteland 3, there's always Wasteland 2. (Availability: In May 2020, for PC, XB1, and PS4. Wasteland 2 is also out for those systems, as well as Switch.)
  • Into the Breach: Fight a neverending time-loop war against monstrous bug kaiju in this clever roguelike take on grid-based strategy games. I said no roguelikes, but I can have one. (Availability: PC and Switch.)
  • Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall: My personal favorite of the three Shadowrun Returns games (followed by Hong Kong and then the original); get all your cyberpunking out of your system in this distinct hybrid sci-fi/fantasy setting before you-know-what gets delayed again. (Availability: PC only for all three.)
  • Disgaea: But if we're here to talk strategy RPGs that might actually take you forever, Disgaea is really the only game in town. Disgaea is to time what Cookie Monster is to cookies. (Availability: Disgaea 5, the most recent one, is available for PC, PS4, and Switch. There was also a recent remaster of the first, Disgaea 1 Complete, for PS4 and Switch.)

Workers

My commiserations if your job is presently on hold, but below are some ways you can emulate hard labor without getting paid for it. Enticing prospect, right?

  • Viscera Cleanup Detail: Cleaning space marine brain off the ceiling is a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it. (Availability: PC only.)
  • House Flipper: A fixer-upper game for the fixer-upper careerperson, put off spring-cleaning your own place by working on someone else's. Could be worse, you could be one of those Airbnb flippers who are really facing the music right now. (Availability: PC, XB1, and PS4.)
  • My Summer Car: There's a few games where you're putting a vehicle together piece by piece, but this one seems to have the most personality. Is it the '70s or the present? Is this Finland or the Deep South? Why are there so many hotdogs in the kitchen? (Availability: PC only.)
  • Satisfactory: Vinny and Giant Bomb have done a better job selling an audience on this early access multiplayer ode to relentless capitalist industry than I could ever do. Just don't drive the trucks off a cliff; the corporation's not likely to spring for a new one without garnishing your paycheck. (Availability: PC only. No clue when the finished version is out.)
  • Hardspace: Shipbreaker: Sorry, it's another game that's not quite out yet, but the premise - (carefully!) deconstruct obsolete spacecraft without them or you exploding - sounds absolutely riveting in the weirdest way. (Availability: Out "Summer," unless they decide to release an EA version early.)

Looters

Sometimes the classics are best, and the classics want you to descend into a musty dungeon over and over and steal everything that isn't nailed down.

  • Diablo 3: No idea when Diablo 4 is out, so might as well go back to the well (of souls) and keep smacking that big red dude around. (Availability: Everywhere.)
  • Path of Exile: PoE's skill tree makes the FFX Sphere Grid look like Baby's First Lite-Brite. If your secret passion isn't looting but deciphering the indecipherable, this seems like the best alternative to Diablo. (Availability: PC, XB1, and PS4.)
  • Grim Dawn: Yet to play this, but it sounds like a very serviceable clone for those who played the former two games to death. Made by the Titan Quest guys, so try that series out too if Grim Dawn's your bag (of loot). (Availability: PC only.)
  • Victor Vran: Another top-down vaguely gothic looty-shooty, but with a bit more dexterity involved. You can jump! You're not allowed to jump in loot RPGs, what the heck?! (Availability: Everywhere.)
  • Wolcen: Lords of Mayhem: This is still new and prone to no small amount of issues and bugs, but it might be fun to get in on the ground floor now with an enthusiastic community. (Availability: PC only. No idea when it'll be "complete.")

Onion Knights

You know what else are long-ass games just in general? JRPGs. Fuss your hair until you have a perfect ahoge, and flop-sweat your way through a few of these longer-than-most anime adventures.

  • Xenoblade Chronicles 2: I'm playing XC2 right now and I could let this thing absorb my entire life if I let it. I'm penning another blog about its extracurricular opportunities for the near future, but suffice it to say all three of these games are a lot. If you have systems set up that can play the earlier two, be sure to try those as well. (Availability: Xenoblade Chronicles 1 is Wii and 3DS (though a Switch remake is coming this year). Xenoblade Chronicles X is Wii U only. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is Switch only.)
  • Dark Cloud 2: One of my favorite gaming comfort foods, DC2's mix of dungeoneering, town-building, photography, fishing, golf, and a bunch of other stuff is a potent mix that will last and last. If you actually do finish it, grab Rogue Galaxy or Fantasy Life and start over. (Availability: Digitally on PS4, as is Rogue Galaxy. Fantasy Life is 3DS only.)
  • Yakuza 0: Pick a Yakuza, preferably the earliest chronologically you've yet to play (that'd be Yakuza 0 for those coming into it fresh), and let yourself become immersed in an urban world very unlike the one we currently know: Japanese food outlets, violent gangs, mahjong and shogi parlors down shady back-streets, Sega arcades, and areas where multiple people are allowed to be in the same place. (Availability: The whole series is on PS4 in one form or another, along with its spin-off Judgment. For PC players, currently it's just Yakuza 0, Yakuza Kiwami, and Yakuza Kiwami 2. Xbox One will also get those three, but right now just has Yakuza 0.)
  • Persona 5 Royal: Had your misgivings about P5 or just didn't get around to it? Its enhanced sequel is just around the corner (as in, a week away) and might be the perfect replacement for a suddenly vacant social calendar. (Availability: PS4 only.)
  • Trails in the Sky FC: The localized version of the eighth game in the Trails mega-franchise just came out, so what better time than now to start from Trails in the Sky FC and work your way up? No guarantees that when you eventually leave your house after the credits roll on Trails of Cold Steel III it won't look like the end of Army of Darkness out there. (Availability: OK, here we go... IN ENGLISH, Trails in the Sky 1 and 2 are available on Steam and PSP only, and on Steam only for Trails in the Sky 3. Trails of Zero/Azure have not been localized, but have fan patches for their PC versions. Trails of Cold Steel 1 and 2 are on Steam, PS3, Vita, and PS4. Cold Steel 3 is on Steam and PS4 and soon for Switch too for some reason. Cold Steel 4 hasn't been localized yet, but will eventually. Phew.)

Anyway, that's enough to get be getting on with. Stay safe out there? There are many avenues through which to wait these tiny pointy bastards out, so go do that and don't give up hope. (And let me know what your own preferred gaming black holes are in the comments below.)

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Indie Game of the Week 162: A Short Hike

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I think we all need to slow down, cool off, and chill with a pleasant stroll somewhere remote, and that's what A Short Hike both promises and delivers. As melon-headed bird-person Claire, A Short Hike is not too dissimilar from Animal Crossing beyond some parallels with the character design: it tasks you with doing as much or as little as you feel like doing on its easygoing island, either chasing around collectibles, angling for valuable fish, playing mini-games with some friendly NPCs, or just climbing as high as possible and taking in the view when you get there. The game's only upgrade system are golden feathers: collectibles usually found in challenging locations to reach or given by NPCs for certain tasks. Each one expands the amount of time you can climb walls, or gain altitude while gliding, or running around the island; in effect, a similar steady progression of more impressive physical feats that Breath of the Wild's upgradeable stamina affords you. A certain amount of golden feathers are necessary for climbing to the very top of the island, which is more or less the game's only goal.

A Short Hike builds this sizeable island (and a few smaller isles nearby) for you to freely explore, but doesn't really track much in the way of completion or progress. There's no in-game total for shells and feathers, there were no achievements in the version I played as a list of possible secondary objectives to pursue, and I ceased finding anywhere to spend my growing stack of cash after buying a stylish ranger hat, so instead it seems more like a "explore until you feel like you're done exploring" situation, at which point you can return to your aunt's cabin where you started the game and have a nap, causing the credits to roll.

I played the Epic Game Store version, which meant no achievements, no screenshots, and no compatibility with this Steam Controller doorstop. At least it was free?
I played the Epic Game Store version, which meant no achievements, no screenshots, and no compatibility with this Steam Controller doorstop. At least it was free?

On the one hand I'm put out by not having a bunch of numbers and progress trackers constantly growing and feeding that lizard brain part of my whole being like a carrot on a stick dangling in front of me, but on the other I respect the game's unhurried and relaxed philosophy of not stressing the small stuff extending even as far as the meta gameplay. I'm sure I didn't find nearly every golden feather or area of note or NPC that needed a task doing, yet once I'd reached the top I felt like I was ready to call it a day and play something else. Maybe that's a knock against the game for lacking the usual staying power of collectible-heavy platformers, or maybe that feeling of ephemerality and non-commitment was part of the game's mission statement from the outset.

Instead, if I think about this game again it'll be to recall the distinctive, slightly fuzzy cel-shaded aesthetic, the wit of its wholesome script, and soaring through the air looking for the next point of interest to collect or dig up or fish or explore. In fewer words, the game is simply a pleasant way to spend a couple of hours. My time with it may have been brief, but then it's not like they called the game An Interminable Hike.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

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Indie Game of the Week 161: Downfall

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I realize there's been something of a lugubrious global mood of late, and I've gone on record before in saying that since games tend to be effective emotional metronomes I generally stay away from any that cause more depression than I can handle, but despite all this I've nonetheless found myself booting up another game from the delightfully twisted minds at Harvester Games, they behind the (mostly) monochromatic supernatural horror point and click adventure game The Cat Lady. The Polish developer has been tweaking their particular formula for emotionally deep and bleakly stark horror fiction for a while now, starting with The Cat Lady in 2012 and most recently with last year's Lorelei (which I've wishlisted for some future IGotW). I say The Cat Lady was their first, but from what I've been able to ascertain with a little research their actual first game was a prototypical version of this game, Downfall, which had a character or two that later made their way into The Cat Lady as some disquieted specters. This 2016 release is a more confident remake of that freshman effort, utilizing the experience the studio garnered from their commercial debut.

Downfall concerns a married couple - Joe and Ivy Davis - whose marriage is on the rocks. Joe impulsively books them a weekend retreat at the Quiet Haven hotel to see if he can salvage what they once had, but wouldn't you know it? The hotel's haunted by some malicious spooks who kidnap Ivy almost as soon as the pair arrive. The denizens of the hotel range from explicitly hostile monsters to deranged visitors who are possibly allied in your goal to escape the accursed place, requiring that Joe be careful about what he says around whom. Beyond that, the game has a familiar adventure game structure where Joe finds new floors and rooms to roam for items and hotspots, using the former on the latter to solve puzzles and progress the story. Though there's no real "action" in the gameplay sense, at least none I've found so far, the game still has a few staples of survival horror: sometimes you'll activate something and produce an unexpected result, sometimes you'll suddenly get trapped in a flashback or nightmare hallucination, and sometimes you have to run and hide from entities beyond your ken, but it's all mostly dramatic flourishes to serve the narrative than anything too gameplay-intensive.

Look, it was a long car ride over here, all right?
Look, it was a long car ride over here, all right?

The game certainly likes its macabre flights of fancy, and the developers went all out courting lesser-known talent for artistic contributions to the game, from the voice acting to the eerie artwork on the Quiet Haven's walls to the many musicians included in the game's eclectic soundtrack. The first of those is easily the worst: any game created in a non-English speaking country is going to suffer trying to find the right intonations and pronunciations of specific words and phrases, but I might attach a silver lining to it by suggesting this linguistic discordance is germane to the game's already disturbed and otherworldly energy (not quite the reverse-talking little person of Twin Peaks, but not far off either). It also doesn't apply to the script itself, which I've found to be fairly decent: creepy and unnerving and coarse and vulgar when it means to be, but sharp enough to understand its characters and the various ills they're suffering. Speaking of which, this game - like The Cat Lady - has some pretty serious themes that it juggles with some degree of tact and aplomb, once again building its supernatural world around the idea of figurative inner demons becoming literal outer ones; a scene early on suggests Ivy has some manner of mental unwellness and has suffered from bulimia in the past, and at least one antagonist of the game appears to be a bloated, infernal, mirror universe representation of that psychosis.

The game also has some odd glitches, possibly relating to the quirks of the Adventure Game Studio engine used to create the game. For one, the game is purely keyboard driven: arrow or WASD keys for movement (except down, which is used to access the inventory) and return to confirm. The mouse is disabled throughout the game including, annoyingly, the in-game shift-tab community overlay. The aspect ratio also appears to be fixed to a boxy 4:3, causing some odd visual glitches at the two margins whenever Steam's UI pops up with a notification. It's nothing that affects gameplay, but does make the game feel a little less tidy and professional, as well as interfering with its immersive potential. I'm glad to say that the game hasn't been overly obtuse as of yet with most puzzles and accessible areas limited to a handful of possible combinations, and even then the solutions I've encountered haven't ever been beyond the realm of logical deduction. Adventure games tend to benefit more when they sacrifice puzzle difficulty for the sake of a more immersive storytelling process, and for now Downfall's been adept at finding that balance (unfortunately, due to other commitments this week relating to a certain pandemic, I've not been able to play a huge amount; I'd estimate I'm about halfway through the game so far). If you enjoyed The Cat Lady, Downfall's been an adequate follow-up from what I've seen; maybe a little less narratively bold and intriguing, as it's hewing close to The Shining (literally, given there's axes involved) than The Crow-esque cycle of resurrection and revenge of The Cat Lady, but every bit as intense and perturbing. Looking forward to seeing how it plays out later tonight - it's Friday the 13th, after all, so there's no better time to scare oneself silly.

Rating: 4 out of 5. (Post-completion update: Nothing much to add, except this might be the ultimate Wife Guy: The Game.)

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Xenoblade Chronicles 2 in: Systems Shock

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There's a common apprehension against what are colloquially referred to as anime fighters for their surfeit of mechanical complexity, leading to a longer than usual learning curve, that will often have players - even seasoned fighter game pros - running for the hills after one air juggle super cancel tutorial or superfluous charge gauge explanation too many. It's not that these games are necessarily difficult to pick up, but they are initially intimidating and unless you're approaching from the angle of having played several similar games it'll no doubt involve a decent amount of time until you're confident you have at least the basics down, and that's before you start learning individual characters and who best to draw them against.

There could be several reasons for why these games adopt prohibitively high levels of complexity, but a common one is that the genre - due to its popularity - has continued tweaking and evolving based on the mainstays that have come before. Any Guilty Gear or BlazBlue or an Arc Systems Works fighter of your choosing is the result of a fandom with decades of Capcom and SNK fighters and thousands of hours spent in same to master their every aspect. Fighters are fairly niche, so they've long since joined the likes of shoot 'em ups as games that are generally played by those already deeply invested in them and are thus always looking for the next level of challenge. (Of course, there are exceptions, and any game that goes out of its way to be "entry-level friendly" seems to do fine also.)

You could apply the pattern to RPGs, specifically Japanese ones. Though their drop in appeal isn't quite as precipitious as the many hand-wringing "the death of the JRPG" article would have you believe, we've long passed their peak era of the mid-90s to early-00s, around the time when Final Fantasy VII captured the global mainstream zeitgeist like no other JRPG had done before. I'm not going to sit here and claim there aren't newbie-friendly JRPGs coming out every year, but a significant portion of that industry has determined that it makes better business sense to pander to the established base, either through copious amounts of fanservice, a steady creep in mechanical complexity, or both.

All the above is just my half-educated musing about why it is that Xenoblade Chronicles 2, even more so than its already mechanically dense forebears, has so many layers of mechanical depth going on. In a sense, it's not too dissimilar to Bandai Namco's Tales franchise: a series that continues to see tweaks to its core real-time combat system (the legendary LMBS) with each new entry, with these advancements only having significance to the people who buy each new game and maybe less so to an unversed player who maybe only views the series as a homogenous mass of anime tropes. Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has its fair share of anime angst also, but I wanted to discuss specifically how long it takes to figure out its battle system and the many approaches and features and menus you need to be cognizant of if you intend to make any serious progress quickly and not get trapped in a series of overly long fights with inconsequential mobs. While the game only beats my ass down when I wander off the beaten path and get attacked by something several dozen levels higher than my party, it's taken a while for me to figure out how to end random battles at a fair clip - and the game hasn't stopped rolling out features yet. I suspect the two types of comment I'll get from this are "what the hell does any of this mean?" and "oh yeah, of course, it's all pretty simple stuff when you get the hang of it, my dear idiot".

The Titans are a little more animate in this game than the colossi were in XC1. It's a little disconcerting to see their gigantic heads bobbing around or their tails wagging in your periphery.
The Titans are a little more animate in this game than the colossi were in XC1. It's a little disconcerting to see their gigantic heads bobbing around or their tails wagging in your periphery.

The Basics, or "I Coulda Done That Blindfolded!"

The Xenoblade series are pseudo-MMOs, so the combat is a mix of real-time auto-attacking and occasional tactical consideration. Characters attack automatically when in range of their quarry, but it's down to the player to decide when to use the stronger "Arts" (which covers both spells and special attacks). Arts regenerate their charge through normal attacks. There are also "ether" attacks that are dependent on the element of the character's Blade.

Blades are an unusual combination of summons and weapons. Characters able to use Blades (called Drivers) will swing weapons based on the type of Blade they're using, and Blades can also have one of three roles in battle: Healer, Tank, and Attacker (or DPS). The type of weapon the Driver uses, the elemental damage they do, and the combat role they perform are all determined by the character's currently equipped Blade. Drivers can have up to three Blades equipped at a time, switching between them in a battle to suit the current foe: for example, if you have a fire-based Blade out while fighting a fire-based enemy, it might be prudent to switch to a water-based Blade for the elemental superiority.

Otherwise, the conceit of the MMO trinity holds true: Tanks soak up aggro, drawing enemy attacks which they can whether through defensive skills or their higher than usual HP and defense stats; Attackers use the distraction to position themselves to do the most amount of damage to end battles quickly; Healers keep the other two alive through curative skills, and can hopefully contribute to damage when no-one is in need of intensive care.

This UI is... well, it's a lot. At least initially. I mostly know what all these HUD icons do/mean now. Mostly.
This UI is... well, it's a lot. At least initially. I mostly know what all these HUD icons do/mean now. Mostly.

The Intermediate Stage, or "Let's Not Lose Our Heads, Though!"

All right, so we've established that combat follows the standard MMO pattern of a trinity of basic classes and explained what Blades are. To speed up battles there's a few avenues:

The first are Blade Arts and combos. Similar to Driver Arts, these are built up through performing auto-attacks, but they can continue building up past one tier all the way up to four. If a character uses a lower tier attack, a different character can follow it up with the next tier, and so on through the group. Each successive tier does more damage, but the level IV Blade Art can also be devastating too if you decide to save up for it. Like the Blades, these Blade Arts are all elemental themes, which also determines which ones can flow into others (a Fire-based Blade Art can be followed by a Water-based one to produce a "Steam Bomb", for example).

Then you have a system brought over from the first Xenoblade Chronicles, where you manage the enemy's condition through a successive process of knocking them down and setting them up to be stomped. This starts with a "Break" condition that makes the enemy unstable and susceptible to being "Toppled". Toppled enemies cannot attack and instead lie there for a few seconds while you drop damage on them. However, you could also follow Toppled with "Launch" - you need a burly Driver/Blade for this - which sends them flying into the air. You then have a very short window to use a "Smash" attack, which brings them crashing back down to earth and completes the series. Smash attacks do an incredible amount of damage, but obviously the difficulty is cycling through all four stages in a relatively brisk timeframe. Worse is that certain stronger enemies seem to be resistant to any of those four states. I've not found anyone with a Smash Art yet, but seeing enemies Launched is already pretty amusing. They really go flying.

Then you have Chain Attacks. There's a three-block gauge, up in the top left corner, that slowly builds in combat and can be used to resurrect fallen party members once per block. However, filling all three blocks allows you to pause the battle for a Chain Attack: this involves all three characters landing a special Art one after the other to create a chain. Chains will end after everyone's attacked once, but there's a way to extend it further.

Then there's some minor but still effective battle tips like cancelling an auto-attack at the right moment to use an Art, maneuvering to the enemy's flank or rear for specific Arts' damage boosts, remembering to kite enemies from afar so you aren't stuck fighting them in groups, and so on.

It's taken some time, but I've just about got the hang of all the above. They do speed battle along somewhat, as you start doing several thousand damage with the right conditions, but you'll still do marginal harm if you haven't bothered to go into your menus for some vital character customization and development. I've been picking up on the importance of the following:

  • Driver Affinity Charts: These are Driver specific passive skills that can significantly boost stats, immediately unlock specific Arts at the start of combat (rather than building up to them through normal attacks), build resistances, and other techniques. These use an exclusive development currency to build up called WP. Drivers can also individually upgrade their Arts (per Blade) via a different currency, SP. SP seems to accumulate for each equipped Blade individually, so there's no need to stockpile it.
  • Blade Affinity Charts: Far more extensive than the Driver charts for some reason, Blade charts aren't increased through spending points but by completing objectives. These might be as benign as talking to people, finding resources, using Blade arts, defeating certain monster types, or using pouch items (more on those in a second). However, upper echelons of the skill tree aren't available until you've gained enough "trust" between the Blade and the Driver (which increases slowly over time, though it goes faster if you complete side-quests).
  • Core Chips and Auxiliary Chips: Blades are like digital computer people, or something, so if you feed them specific computer chips they acquire stat boosts. When used, core chips make significant changes to the weapon associated to the Blade, often vastly increasing damage output and stats like critical chance and block rate. Auxiliary chips are more like accessories that you can equip and unequip.
  • Pouch Items: Xenoblade Chronicles 2 has a huge amount of temporary buff items, which can range from food and drink to stuff like artwork, musical instruments, books, and textiles (I've no idea why these are consumable, but non-food items will last up to a couple of real-time hours). Blades all have their own pouch item preferences, increasing the gain they get from those specific items. Fortunately, the Blade's affinity chart gives you some hint as to what they're into. I'm usually resistant to worrying about temporary gains - I'm the type of guy who hoards healing items "in case I need them later" - but it's not a system you can afford to ignore here.
The key to Blade development is going out of your way for these mini-achievements. Much is still currently locked until I've spent more time with this big fluffy cat.
The key to Blade development is going out of your way for these mini-achievements. Much is still currently locked until I've spent more time with this big fluffy cat.

The Advanced Stage, or "It's Fine! We'll Get 'Em Yet!"

So a lot of this game is still a mystery to me, even some fifteen hours in. There's an option on the main menu I can't access currently (I'm in Chapter 3) and I've yet to unlock the third Blade slot, meaning my characters can only march into battle with two each - the exception being the nopon Tora, who cannot use normal Blades and had to create an artificial one. From what I've read, the game insists on some strict limits while it's in the process of teaching you the ropes, making every local enemy damage sponges to encourage you to master the above intermediate mechanics to end battles faster.

There are hints of the madness yet to come, however. Crafting auxiliary chips (each needs to be "fed" a bunch of resource items before you can use them), acquiring storefront properties to earn various passive bonuses, playing the salvage mini-game to gain money quickly as long as you're adept at QTEs, completing Blade affinity chart objectives to fast-track their growth, completing side-quests to earn XP, spending bonus XP while resting to earn the lion's share of your levelling (it's an odd system where side-quest XP is stored here instead of given to you directly, but I've read that it's like an honor system to prevent power-levelling - if you're already smashing through story encounters, you can save that XP for a time when you aren't). The game has a massive number of Blades you can acquire, from generic "commons" to special "rares" - the rares all have unique personalities, appearances, and sometimes voice actors.

Economy plays a huge part in XC2, and most population centers seem to have at least a dozen storefronts with distinct stock to sell. By improving the economy by helping the populace and buying stuff, these storefronts gain even more inventory.
Economy plays a huge part in XC2, and most population centers seem to have at least a dozen storefronts with distinct stock to sell. By improving the economy by helping the populace and buying stuff, these storefronts gain even more inventory.

It's an especially deep game that has yet to give up all its secrets, making this blog seem premature given that I'm still in the learning phase. However, my goal here was to demonstrate just how much information XC2 has to throw at you at a turning point in the game where the training wheels are about ready to come off. Unlike fighters, RPGs have the benefit of accommodating a long learning curve into an already long narrative process, so you can spend tens of hours and still be introduced to new systems. Of course, there's a way to bungle this up: Final Fantasy XIII is a fairly excellent game (mechanically, let's say) once it's done teaching you everything, but it's a very long and not particularly interesting road to get there because of how slowly it chooses to dole out those mechanics. XC2's not quite as cautious, but it's also in no mood to drop an enormous infodump on you and instead rolls out what it's got in increments that you can more easily absorb. It's a delicate decision process for a designer who maybe put too much game in their game, but I believe players benefit more when there's more to learn and more to integrate into their playstyles and more viable approaches to challenges in their path. Versatility hurts no-one, though too much all at once will just push players away.

Anyway, I still feel like I have a lot to learn, but I'm loving everything I've encountered so far. The characters are appealing (though I wish the VAs hadn't leaned so hard into nopon characters exclaiming a very Eric Cartman-esque "meeeeh" so much), having multiple titans to explore instead of two gigantic colossi makes for some more varied landscapes, the odd focus on commerce and Blade-raising micromanagement is an overall boon to the series if only because it helps set it apart from its predecessors, and it obviously looks and sounds great as I imagined a HD Xenoblade game would with most of the same production values and talent behind it as the original game. I'll be playing it almost throughout the entirety of March, I suspect, but it's been a fine companion so far.

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Indie Game of the Week 160: Chronicles of Teddy

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It might surprise you all to learn that I played another explormer this week. In my defense, however, it's the sequel to a game that was decidedly not exploration or platforming focused. Chronicles of Teddy: Harmony of Exidus (also known as Finding Teddy II) is a 2D explormer that, in addition to its genre roots, feels part Zelda II (the heroine can perform up-stabs and down-stabs), part Fez (there's a whole in-game language that you learn in pieces, the mastery of which can lead to a lot of goodies), and part an Amiga platformer (the artist loves gradient fills and weird Roger Dean-style colossal creatures in its backdrops, and the synthy ambient soundtrack is reminiscent of that old sound hardware also).

When I played Finding Teddy some seven years back, I remarked that it had a certain distinctiveness. Adventure games don't generally truck with entire fake musical languages - the only other example I can think of is Loom, and it's not quite the same execution - but communication was integral to solving a lot of Finding Teddy's puzzles. Now that the girl's old enough to wield a sword and shield, and the game's become a little more homogeneous as far as what the Indie crowd is into making, I might argue that it's lost a bit of its unique magic. However, it still retains that fictional language mechanic and doles out the various phonemes at a slow rate, hiding them in special treasure chests. Most of the time you're learning new words from speaking to NPCs and then applying it to those few times where you need to (nicely!) tell a guardian - a colossal creature guarding the gates to the local dungeon - to get out of the way. Sometimes you can learn command words that operate the same as traversal upgrades: there are doors and chests covered in crystals, for example, which can be removed by voicing the right command word to a nearby crystal cluster. It's a system marginally less sophisticated than, say, the musical instruments and tunes of the Zelda series but the game still finds some intriguing applications for it, from figuring out door passwords to reciting songs back to fireflies "Simon Says" style as a form of collectible. The story's perfunctory in comparison: in Finding Teddy a nameless little girl is teleported to a magical world when her teddy is kidnapped by a lonely tyrant that the girl eventually befriends, and this game starts a few years later with the slightly older girl fighting the evil wizard that usurped her friend's throne.

I have no idea what this is, but it's very bigh.
I have no idea what this is, but it's very bigh.

Chronicles of Teddy also an impressively large game. The action is split up between a library nexus and four moderately-sized worlds that are contained within its books. Each of these worlds has an overworld area and a dungeon area, and the former has puzzles and challenges that eventually lead to entering the latter, where you defeat a boss and collect a plot-vital magic egg needed to access the final boss. While you can explore any dungeon in its entirety on your first visit - in true Zelda style, you can collect one or more traversal upgrades that give you access to the entire place - the overworlds are full of barriers and secrets you can optionally backtrack to once you have the right gear and knowledge to surpass them. There's a currency in the game, through which you get most of the game's more quotidian upgrades: more health, more armor, more offense, etc. though the game has this unfortunate fail state where it halves your current money total if you should happen to perish. Because the vast amount of the money you find comes from chests - they can spit out anywhere between fifty to several hundred, while most enemies drop around a tenth of that - that also limits how easy it is to make money for some of the pricier upgrades, as chests don't respawn. I've almost cleaned the store out after three worlds though, so I think there's enough slack if you screw up or twice. I've taken to saving before bosses and quitting to the main menu without saving after a death and reloading from there, and that lets me hold onto whatever I was carrying. I don't really think that fail state was necessary, or if they have to insist on some sort of penalty they might've considered Shovel Knight's approach and give the player a chance to recover their lucre with a corpse run.

Honestly, beyond the fictional language thing and the always-welcome Zelda II combat moves, Chronicles of Teddy is - as I said before - not quite as distinctive as its forebear, even if it is considerably more involved and overall a perfectly acceptable explormer game. I'm having my usual fun noting down places to backtrack to and screenshotting my maps, and as the below image attests to the game has some very accommodating navigation tools even if the way the map connects rooms can be a little inexplicable. The platforming's adequate with the usual double-jump and wall-kick upgrades, but the combat can suffer from the incredibly short range of the heroine's knife weapon (upgrades just improve damage, not reach) and obtuse enemy hitboxes that makes bosses especially kind of annoying to hit without taking damage yourself. It rectifies this to some degree with the aforementioned Zelda II mechanics, which in addition to the vertical stabs also has a lot of enemy types that require a bit of finesse to overcome, attacking from an angle that the enemy isn't currently guarding. I've a lot of fondness for the game's art direction and the music, though the main character sprite looks like this hunched over insomniac; possibly an intentional character quirk, as the same heroine in the first game had this sort of lugubrious tiny goth appearance. She's evidently been through some shit either way.

The map system might be regarded as being a little too free with its secrets, but color-coding certain areas based on their content - blue means there's optional chests/collectibles there, gold has more valuable chests containing upgrades or key items - is super handy when backtracking.
The map system might be regarded as being a little too free with its secrets, but color-coding certain areas based on their content - blue means there's optional chests/collectibles there, gold has more valuable chests containing upgrades or key items - is super handy when backtracking.

It probably comes off as damning with faint praise to call Chronicles of Teddy an inoffensive and agreeable game of its very specific and well-represented type, but that is what it is. It certainly deserves better than the "mixed" reviews it has on Steam, which I can only assume came about from the developers publicly decrying anime tiddies or fascism or something else that sets off that particular throng. I've enjoyed my time exploring its worlds and taking down its bosses, and the unusual visuals and language puzzles does put it a little above the truly generic explormer fare out there even if I sometimes wish it played a little better.

Rating: 4 out of 5.

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