For those averse to Japanese video games, turn away now.
By Video_Game_King 6 Comments
Star Ocean: The Second Story
(Unfortunately, you're gonna miss out on some good games.) For those not averse, just keep reading. Undoubtedly, the first thing you noticed about the first game I'm reviewing is that it's a sequel. However, the original Star Ocean was a Japan only game for quite some time, making this one of the ballsiest games out there. Don't think the balls stop at the title, as this game makes it well known that it's a sequel: one of the characters is from that game, the story continues that of the previous game, and.....well, that's all the joke I can get out of this. No, wait, here's another: I would not have been surprised if Enix decided to include a pair of truck nuts with each copy of the game. OK, that's all.
And to be perfectly honest, the game doesn't rip off Final Fantasy VII as much as you'd think from that description. Star Ocean 2 does a lot to separate itself from many JRPGs out there, the most noticeable separation being in the battle system. Rather than a turn based system, this game employs a real time battle system, and it works really well. Rather than depending on a statistic to inform you of whether or not your attack connected, you have to make sure it actually hits the enemy. It may not sound like much, but trust me, this becomes really important when you use attacks that issue 20 hits to the same enemy.
While you think that would solve a lot of the problems people have with JRPG combat, the reality is that it doesn't. If you're the type of person who thinks that the combat in these games consists of nothing more than mashing attack, then this game won't really change your mind (but Lost Odyssey will). In a lot of battles, I found myself just hammering on the killer move button until everything in front of me was dead. Boss battles require more strategy, but for the most part, combat consisted of sending my three fighters to gang up on one enemy, kill it, and repeating for nearby foes. There's also magic, but since many spells don't work in real time, I'd rather take my chances with three fighters. Nothing against spellcasters, it's just that they interrupted the flow of battle.
Speaking of characters, the amount of characters you can choose from is actually fairly large and varied. There are the aforementioned three characters, but there's also the little spellcasting kid, the guy with two dragons on his back, the animal lover (not Claude), and several others. Add in the various relationships each character can have with each other and how this affects the ending, and the amount of time you will spend on this game could potentially skyrocket to some high number. However, there is one problem that threatens to bring this down: the character development, or lack thereof. Aside from the two protagonists (and anybody related to them), the only growth they receive is mostly through the few cutscenes around the time you recruit them. There are Private Actions to fix this, but I feel like it's one of those features that you need a walkthrough to fully exploit, so for the most part, I ignored them.
However, there was one thing I liked about the story: the second half. Just about everything improves from the second disc onward. The sci-fi part is much more fleshed out; there's an actual set of villains and something at stake (as opposed to the first discs' "find this globe thing" mission); and overall, everything is just better when you insert the second disc. The only problem I had was that it didn't fix all the problems I mentioned before, like character development or really long cutscenes (not much to say on that), but I still found it to be more enjoyable than the first half of the game.
Well, I guess that's the end of the review. I covered the story, the combat, what else is th-oh wait, I forgot! The item/ability system! Just like the real time 3D combat, Star Ocean 2 also distinguishes itself from other games with how it works items. When you level up in combat, you gain a certain amount of skill points that you can allocate to whatever ability you want, whether that's cooking, conducting music, or pissing off the enemies (that is a real skill, I am not kidding). I can see why they'd put this into the game: make the items mean something (example: restoring MP with foie gras instead of an elixir), and the age-old conundrum of trying to customize yor characters down to every little detail. On that last one, though, the game falls flat on its face, since it seems each character is made for a certain task, and finding that one task is mostly trial and error. Even late in the game, when my characters had many of their skills at the maximum level, they were still making crap items like Crumpled Paper, Bounced Checks, and Weird Lumps.
However, there was one skill I found to be really fun to use: Pickpocketing. Level this ability up as high as possible as early as possible, and each town will become a dungeon in itself, each person a treasure chest waiting to be plundered. Hilarity will ensue in some cases (like the few listed in my gallery). Confusion will also ensue, like the example I am about to list. At one point in the game, you're stuck in a room with all your companions, allowing you to rob them of their precious items. When I did this, I found that I had stolen weapons from my allies, and that these weapons were far better than anything I had seen up to that point. This raises many questions, like "Where the hell did they get these things?", "Why didn't they get any for me?", "Why weren't any of you pricks using these?", but most importantly, "How could Enix/tri-Ace see no logical problems with this?" If anybody can answer these questions for me, then you're probably the type of person with more important things to do than waste your time reading an amateur gaming blog. So go cure cancer or discover how to manufacture uranium-laced bullets for our next World War, while I sit here, giving games like this the Apathy to Paradoxes Award.
Keeping with the tradition of blurring the line between dimensions, here's a cool video I found on GameTrailers.
Umihara Kawase
(The title is Japanese for "Fucking Brutal.") But that aspect shall be fleshed out later; now is the time to elaborate on just what the hell an Umihara Kawase is. After reading this blog, I decided to find out what the game was and what it was about. Apparently, it's a Bionic Commando-esque game starring a 19 year old schoolgirl. There's no story given to you, so, as always, I made one up: she's trying to get to school (obviously), and somehow tripped into another dimension, where fish are trying to kill her, and she must swing around on a fishing rod until she reaches a door. Will it lead her back to her own world? Of course not! It's just going to drop her in another level.
And in that other level, she must do what she just did: grapple about with her fishing rod. This is where the game gets good and sets itself apart from similar games. As I just said, your weapon in UK is a fishing rod, which allows for many things that a grappling hook wouldn't allow, like bending around corners and manually controlling the length of your line. UK pulls this off amazingly well, with creative level design and wacky physics, the latter being a major part of the game. I've heard that the physics engine in this game pushed the SNES to the limits, and I believe it. The swinging mechanics in this game can range from "barely moving" (although you never stop moving, a major physics flaw) to "I'm surprised the line hasn't snapped." Control over your line is integral to completing this game.
Oddly enough, the necessity of control over your character is also where the game starts to spiral downward in quality. As I stated in the first sentence, this game is fucking brutal. Many of the levels assume you have COMPLETELY mastered the swinging concept, and because of this, introduce challenging aspects like having to swing yourself up shafts, grabbing small objects with incredible accuracy, and grappling onto something midflight. And remember the controls I mentioned earlier? Turns out they could use some work. Pressing down pulls the line into you and up lets more out, which can be confusing when you're dangling in the air on said line. Worse yet, it makes it somewhat hard to extend/contract your line, since pressing vertical and horizontal directions simultaneously (which you shall do, there is no doubt) will result in a kind of awkward diagonal.
And don't think the developers didn't know that the game is hard; if anything, that was just their little joke on the player. For example, if you take too long trying to swing to a particular platform, UK will pull the old Darius trick on you, by which I mean it'll place enemies right where you wish to go. Even if you're not swinging towards a platform, enemies can still be there, which while in itself isn't annoying, produces results that are. You can grapple onto enemies as well, but they're dragged towards you, meaning if you latch onto one by mistake (instead of the wall nearby), you'll plunge to your untimely death. Bosses are also difficult, since the goal isn't to beat them, but rather to avoid them (and the minions they summon). Then again, I only fought one boss, mainly because the game became impatient and dumped me in the final level before I could reach other bosses.
I do have other complaints about the game, like how the graphics are a bit too pastel-y for my tastes, but my main criticism rests with the difficulty. If you are able to complete levels like these as if they're nothing, then you're probably friends with the same jerk from before who knows why my party members in Star Ocean 2 weren't using those super-powerful weapons they had hidden away at all times. The only thing harder than this game is the sequel, which I've heard is in 3D. If that's true, then it has reached a level of difficulty that cannot be allayed even by sacrificing your soul to Satan................It's a hard game, OK? That's the whole point of this, so I'll give it the Hardest Game Ever Award. *looks at blog* Wow, that was a longer blog than I thought it would be. No idea if it's any good or not (a weird quirk of mine). For now, I'll take a break with a Legaia stint. *runs off to reluctantly play Legend of Legaia*
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