First, The Spirit Engine 2 is now Freeware!  It joins its somewhat more aged predecessor as a standout among free RPGs.  Not only is it *not* RPGMaker (therefore liberating itself from engine and font constraints – both are fantastic), but it’s got a great character-driven and moderately political plot.  There are some significant subplot differences based on which characters you pick, too, so I actually played through it twice in rapid succession.  It’s about 8-10 hours long, I’d estimate, on a first playthrough.

The second is really a group.  Recently I became aware of Daniel Remar‘s various games, and played through a couple of them.

Iji is to me the standout of the two.  An action-RPG similar in some ways to both Super Metroid and System Shock 2, it has a plot that shifts in tone based on your decisions and – more significantly – actions in the game.  The trailer, if nothing else, is worth watching to get an idea what it’s like.  The full game took me a little under 3 hours, but I’ve already replayed it once and plan to go through a third time.

Hero Core is more recent and less polished, but also shorter and probably more accessible than either of the above two games.  It’s a more directly Metroid-ish game, but it actually reminded me a little bit of The Guardian Legend, too.  Lots of nifty optional content, but still takes only a little over an hour to complete and the difficulty is spot-on.  It’s very retro-styled and even contains a “retro” language setting which is really great to read.

All of these are worthwhile games, and none are longer than 10 hours.  The price, of course, is the most reasonable of all.  It’s interesting to note, also – all three of these games (aside from the music) was made by one individual (Mark Pay for TSE2 and Daniel Remar for the others).  That’s some inspiring dedication!

I don’t particularly have the urge to boot it up now, because I might get sucked into it (however briefly).  You play some kid who had his magic kingdom taken over by an evil guy when he was a baby.  His magical dog saved him and made sure he was raised appropriately (I think that’s how it goes), then reveals the truth to him.  Anyway, there’s a lot of fighting, and you have a magic dog, and there are shopkeepers that are entirely too chatty.  That’s about all I remember about the plot.  It’s sort of like a weaker Clash at Demonhead.  It’s anime-inspired, clearly, and there are bizarre goings-on, but they’re just bizarre enough to support the premise of the game.

Similar to 8 Eyes, your dog is a companion who you have limited control over.  He can be helpful, but (again like 8 Eyes’ Cutrus) he is entirely to weak to be your front-line and will likely die quickly.  Unlike 8 Eyes, he cannot be played by a second player, making this game a sad case of could-have-been.

It’s not like it’s a total loss, though.  The reason I still remember this game – and, in fact, what inspired me to post again so quickly – was the song for the first stage, which is unbelievably catchy (and linked below).  The composer credited with this is Masaharu Iwata, a wonderfully prolific and talented composer who is probably best known for his work alongside Hitoshi Sakimoto on games like FFXII and Opoona.   Incidentally, he also composed the music for the original Japanese release of Baroque.

Conquest of the Crystal Palace – Stage 1

Another, more significant part, is that they really rock.  Seriously, these are some damn good games, even when they have a few knocks against them.  It’s not a “they shore don’t make’m like they used ta” feeling, because one of these games is Persona 3.  It’s not even a “this game is good because it was made by X” because I dislike Suikoden 4, Wild Arms 4, Persona 2… and so on.  Simply put, it’s not all fanboyism and it’s not all nostalgia.  A significant amount of the reasons I like these games is because they’re a blast to play.  In some cases, the story is deep or satisfying enough that it doesn’t matter that it’s not.

All these words to say I love SaGa 2 (which, I may add, is actually Final Fantasy Legend 2 in disguise, or vice versa)  I have just written a review for videolamer, as usual, but there I try to pursue some vestiges of professionalism.  This game is fantastic; how many games let you shoot rhinoceroses with a PSI rifle?  How often do you get to battle (scaled up) microphages using a robot with a battle-ax?  The answer is not enough.  The best part of the game is its difficulty; ironic when most of my favorite games are easy.   In SaGa 2, your party is perpetually armed to the hilt with the most up to date weaponry and you are still just barely hanging on against the hordes of flying fish, oversized spiders, goblins, terrorists, the occasional demigod, robots, and so on.  Some of the original SaGa 1 / FF Legend artwork is evocative here:

The original SaGa is perhaps more realistic in feel – a game more in tune with the human condition, you might say.  The Tower evokes the lure of knowledge despite danger, and the characters are clearly adult (unusual for an RPG, sadly).  Perma-death is partially implemented (it is prohibitively expensive to keep someone in your party if they keep dying) and your party has to adapt to survive – I always end up swapping out a party member for a fresh one no matter how hard I try not to.  Other aspects – the hidden wet-world and dry-world in the tower, the fish statue land (this thing STILL exudes mystery to me, the others have some meaning)… it is a more philosophical game than one would think at first glance.

SaGa 2′s anime style fits more with the spirit of adventure.  Rather than a search for meaning, or forbidden knowledge, your main character is looking for their missing father.  In the end, the goal becomes fuzzier but your party is still running around righting wrongs.   The tone is significantly more childish, especially when the main plot-line gets lost and you get sidetracked saving the oppressed peoples of ancient Edo from their banana-banning masters.

Despite this I love SaGa 2 more for its intense combat and more rewarding battle system.  SaGa 1 is a jumbled mess, seemingly a bunch of themes and morals with a game tacked on.  SaGa 2 is also disconnected plot-wise.  “Hey, you know what would be cool?  Frickin’ VALHALLA as a world!  And get this – when you kill Odin he doesn’t give you re-dos on battles anymore!”  There are no consistent themes, very little in the way of overarching plot.  Merely a bunch of worlds just floating around.  Despite all that, it still manages to give me the same feeling of adventure as the more famous Lunar games and Skies of Arcadia.  As Steve Brust has said about his writing style: “…And now I’m going to show you something really cool.”  The game simply keeps getting better as you progress, with your party and the enemies consistently getting stronger and more complex.

So yeah – long story short, I played the DS remake of SaGa 2 – very playable if you have played the original, although katakana and hiragana would be useful for weapon / item names.  It is very much a good extension of the original.  The additions are disconnected, jumbled, occasionally confusing – but they add to the game in much the same way as the plot.  They’re another nifty feature – another weapon – perhaps a chain-sword, rifle, or a rune axe – hanging off the belt of one of the characters.

The DS remake has done justice to some of the only work of Akitoshi Kawazu that I enjoy (and man, do I enjoy it).  Square Enix needs to localize it so I can buy it a second time.

Digital Devil Saga is depressing, but each game is depressing in a different way.  DDS1 deals with death to some degree, but the bulk of the sadness comes from the world rather than individual loss.  The Junkyard is a sparse, desolate place where there is an endless rain.  No sun shines upon it (even when, near the end, the rain actually stops).  Even the clothes its denizens wear are gray, with only a single splash of color to indicate one’s clan.  If things weren’t bland enough, even the pupils of the characters are gray (until certain events start occurring, indicating a resurgence of lost emotion – at which point, naturally, their pupils match their hair color).

The colors aside, the landmarks in the junkyard evoke a similar feeling of desolation.  Though the fortresses of each clan are impressive, they are not in themselves that interesting.  More so are the various non-fortress places you wander; a beached battleship, with a giant rip in its side, a single standing building among several that were torn in half (serving as a temporary hideout), and finally what appears to be an ancient theme park attraction.

Unfortunately, pictures of these areas are not really possible to find via google.

In Digital Devil Saga 2, the focus becomes less on atmosphere (though it is still there) and more on individuals.  The new character, Roland, is an old drunkard who is trying to forget a terrible event in his past.  The old characters are much better fleshed out (aside from Cielo – who remains a comic-relief Jamaican guy throughout.  Apparently there is dialogue that tells his past, but nobody cared enough to mention it in the main story line).  Heat, in particular – who is the most expressive character in the first game – is really interesting.  He has an incredible, bordering on unrealistic, aggressiveness that is suddenly explained all at once (along with the past of most of the characters).  His friendship (?) with Serph becomes strained in most of the first game (he is constantly complaining that Serph is the leader, while he is clearly the strongest).  It really becomes a focus in the second game to great effect.  It turns DDS2 into a very human – albeit depressing – story.

In the past couple weeks, the news got out that Akifumi Kaneko, the lead designer and scenario writer for the entire Wild Arms series, left Media.Vision in 2008. This came a couple years after Michiko Naruke, who had been the primary composer for the first four games, had stopped working on the series due to illness. Although it’s possible that we’ll see more Wild Arms games, these two were the heart of the series – any more we’d see would probably have a completely different feel (though the most recent two had already reached that point). In memory of the loss of the core of the series, I’d like to dwell a little on the best and most innovative elements of the first five games (and F). I exclude XF only because I’ve not yet played it (it’s on my to-do list). I’ll generally avoid major spoilers where I can.

The first Wild Arms game particularly captures a sense of loneliness that no other game has managed. Each of the primary characters in the first game is alone for a different reason: Rudy due to the recent loss of his mentor and father-figure, Jack’s entire kingdom had been destroyed in a demon attack three years prior, and Cecilia’s rank causes people to view her only as royalty and not as a person. Through their searching for a way to defeat the demon resurgence, they each have to confront their inner demons as well.

Wild Arms also conveys a strong sense of powerlessness; the main characters are unable to prevent the destruction of multiple cities despite their attempts. The funeral scene in Adlehyde is particularly powerful; though no game has yet made me cry, this scene has brought me the closest. The helpless feeling is reinforced when your characters are only able to defeat the initial villain through the help of an external force. While (naturally) your characters still grow to be strong enough to protect the world, there is still a sense that the victory is only temporary; while the primary threat to the world is destroyed, the decay of the world will continue.

Wild Arms 2 deals with the ideas of terrorism and nuclear proliferation. For a game created well before terrorism became the watchword for a certain US administration, it manages to capture the fears of the world population and the upper echelons of different governments when confronted by the ideas of extremists (even if they’re idealists rather than just crazy). Unfortunately, to get at these ideas you have to wrestle your way through a translation that’s murky at best and “all your base” at worst.

The third game has a distinct post-apocalyptic atmosphere. While it’s hard to imagine humanity managing to scrape by in a dry, desert world, Wild Arms 3 manages to make it at least somewhat believable. It captures the most Western feel of the series by far, though it is still tinged with the Ancient Ruin Syndrome of the other games. With Skies of Arcadia-esque search system and vehicle battle system, WA3 makes for a solid entry in the series. Its Encounter Cancel system allows you to avoid most battles entirely – great for anyone who doesn’t particularly enjoy them.

Ahh, the fourth game. Thinking back on it, I really don’t think I ever treated it fairly. It’s short, incredibly easy, and dropped the earlier Encounter Cancel system, adding a bit more frustration to dungeons. It might seem like a recipe for disaster, but the primary characters are fun (particularly Arnaud and Raquel), the puzzles are somewhat more action-y, the plot retains the sadness of earlier entries, and the dialogue is entertaining. Not only that, it has the most realistic ending for an RPG I’ve ever seen.

The 5th Vanguard (as the US releases finally adopted the original nomenclature) was, in many ways, an appropriate goodbye for the series. Since it was the 10th anniversary of Media.Vision, they added all the primary characters of the first four games as minor characters. They removed names, but kept the core of the character: Rudy wanders from town to town, appreciating the scenery of towns and musing on human nature (amazing that a silent protagonist would become so long-winded); Cecilia is a noble with a chronic disease, out to discover what the world has to offer before it relapses. None have a major role in the plot, but they add a little flavor to a world that otherwise feels a little one-dimensional (evil nobles versus well-meaning but ignorant commoners). Though it has a lackluster and often confusing plot (I think in the finale, time travel and cryo-stasis made a character infinity years old) its entertaining battle system improves on WA4′s to give it a similar balance to that of the original.

This was originally an article I wrote for videolamer.  Given it’s sort of the material I prefer to post here too, I figured I’d replicate it.  Plus I’m hosting all the music

Rune Factory Frontier is paradise for anyone with ADD.  You will do a dozen different things a day and make no significant progress in any of them.  For me, this was really fun for about a week and a half.  Then sort of boring but enjoyable enough for another week.  And then a few weeks of drudgery akin to World of Warcraft culminating in my farmer committing suicide to escape his hellish existence.

I have since started playing Innocent Life: A Futuristic Harvest Moon on my shiny new PSP.  So far it has the benefits of Rune Factory (spiffy new system, more interesting plot than Harvest Moon) without the disadvantages (requiring ingredients to cook, assembling a dozen different things, raising monsters, managing runeys).  Plus I’m a robot!  But don’t tell anyone.

Black Sigil, on the other hand, is a quite progress-y DS RPG in the vein of the SNES classics.  Except it forgets that the classics were classic because they were accessible, ran quickly, and had just enough combat to be interesting without the player losing grip of the story.  The result is a game that’s alternatingly difficult and frustrating, and ultimately more disappointing than Suikoden Tierkreis, which had incredibly bland (though easy) random battles.

Next I will be tackling Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor, which has gotten rave reviews from a lot of places.  I’m not sure I’ll be so impressed; the only tactical RPG that really amazed me was Final Fantasy Tactics, and there are only a couple others I’d consider replaying (Saiyuki and Vandal-Hearts).  Nearly every other game in the genre has crushed my soul in one way or another and to be honest I’ve been tired of them for a while.  Perhaps some hee-hoo Jack Frosty goodness will manage to rekindle my interest in the genre.

On a completely different note, videolamer’s editor Jay and I have been talking about an entirely-too-serious topic: the rebuilding/recovery of Japan after World War II and its impact on modern war-crime denialism (one of my Japanese culture profs brought in her highschool history textbook; three paragraphs on WW2, which showed Japan in an entirely defensive and reactionary position in the war).  Some estimates of the civilian casualties in East Asia due to Japanese occupation are as high as 30 million, but very little is said about it.  To further my knowledge of this area, I have begun reading John Dower’s Embracing Defeat which discusses the reconstruction in general (which I read some about before) and goes into detail about the cover-up that ensured Emperor Hirohito would never be forced to take responsibility for actions taken during the war.  Interesting stuff.

Dark Souls is an indie RPG, created in the much-maligned RPG maker.  Aside from its oversized font (compare its font and The Spirit Engine 2′s), you wouldn’t be able to tell so easily; it runs quite fast and despite being locked into tiles, it looks good, feels natural, etc.

(Ahh, the difference a font makes.  See how much more natural TSE2′s looks.  One aspect of TSE2 I hadn’t appreciated until now was its use of different fonts, as appropriate, for dialogue, skills, names, etc.  Both games run at a low resolution, windowed, by default; a font of appropriate size makes a huge difference.)

Dark Souls has a pretty good plot, which offsets its soul-crushing difficulty (seriously; in some random battles, if you do not play optimally, you can die the first round).  It’s dark, but not so dark as to be unbelievable.  The main character has been there and done that – rather unusual, particularly since he maintains that attitude throughout – and between him and a pair of the other party members, there’s enough veteran to go around.  The Wild Arms series has been largely unique among commercial games in that it usually has a 30+ character who acts as mentor and guardian to the group (FFX did similar with Auron); but TSE2 and Dark Souls joined that group and took the idea further; in the latter, Gauly takes center stage, complementing the traditional naive-priestess female lead.

Though it’s not perfect, it’s worth experiencing – and fairly short.  Try the demo out and see if you like it (unless you’re a certain someone to whom I lent Baroque.  Play it already!)

Very rarely has a game so short managed to occupy my mind for so long.  Baroque presents a set of mysteries large and small; a world that is at the same time both cohesive and shocking.  I have seen the first pair of Silent Hill games, which are the closest analogue I know of.  Both have strange things happen, but neither bothers with being either coherent or sensical (as I recall, it was either “oh, that’s just Silent Hill and weird things happen there” or “oh, it’s just some ancient demon god resurrecting” depending on your ending).  In the end, Baroque manages to top them because it has a coherent explanation for each weird thing that happens.  But it doesn’t explain things piece by piece except in small parts; the larger picture has to be derived from the events, down to exactly what a baroque is.  The differences between the Malkuth order and the Koriel group are lost in the fact that only rarely is either discussed; you interact with some members of each, but it takes a while to figure out what the goal of each is.  Presumably the less explored areas of the plot are explained in the manga.

But at the same time, Baroque is a short-ish Roguelike.  Played on Easy, it’s quite beatable within 15 hours and is not nearly as punishing as the usual; to hear reviews, Normal is crushing while Hard is… well, probably a lot like Rogue or Nethack.  Play on Easy and you’ll be rewarded with an easy (though occasionally frantic) game attached to an interesting plot.  Play on the other difficulties and I’ve no doubt you’ll find an interesting plot in between running for dear life through a dungeon that wants to kill you.

And yet, despite its depth, there is very little detail to Baroque at all!  The town only contains 6 NPCs; each has only a few significant lines.  Perhaps another half-dozen dwell in the Nerve Tower; most have still fewer lines.  Special events account for the majority of plot development, but even they would be numbered in paragraphs rather than pages.  Sting was able to create a moderately intense plot in Riviera: The Promised Land despite very little dialogue; they reproduced this in Baroque, and made the setting much more interesting to boot. (incidentally, it might be vice-versa, since Baroque was originally made in ’99).

The feel of the game is claustrophobic, oppressive, panicky.  It is at once both lonely like the Metroid games and as frantic as a shooter  My heart rate must’ve gone up by about 10 while playing the game; even Resident Evil and Silent Hill have places of respite.  Baroque has no such safe havens outside the main town; you can be just as easily poisoned from behind while you’re talking to an NPC in the Nerve Tower as anyplace else.  As a real-time action Roguelike, I would expect nothing less.

Baroque has an official website here; despite being in Japanese it is quite navigable without any knowledge of the language.  The link points to the character section, which is probably the most interesting; each has some nifty artwork, a blurb about the character, and a movie with one of their lines.

Another resource would be the scanlated first manga, which is all over the place; one example here.  The second and third volumes have not been translated, probably since they’re so damnably rare or the original translation group lost interest.

I’ve bought the first two manga volumes online; each cost about as much as the game ($20); I wasn’t disappointed by the first, as it maintains the feel of the game.  I can’t argue with Alice travelling with the protagonist, since it’s hard to have an interesting story with only one person.

I wrote more about Uncharted Waters here nearly three years ago.  My, how time flies.

Since my last update, I have played through the first two Valkyrie Profile games; my review of the second is here.  Brief summary: better feel than the first game, slightly worse pacing, more cool revenge subplots.  Closer to the Norse roots than the original as well.

I am now around 20 hours into Suikoden Tierkreis.  I was doubtful for the first five hours or so.  Now I’m thinking it may actually be as good as Suikoden V, although its combat is more painful and less fun.  Definitely the DS game with the most production value I have played.  Reasonably good voices, fantastic music, and colorful dialogue – I highly doubt the DS will get a better RPG and the very thought saddens me.

I have also been playing one of the most popular RPG “classics” of our recently departed generation: Final Fantasy X.  This, no doubt, will give me the internet equivalent of street cred and my blog will now overflow with posts debating whether Sephiroth is the best villain ever.  My review follows.Let me say, first, that this game does rank pretty well in the standard of PS2 Final Fantasy games.  This is not a great metric to go by, though; FFXII was only saved from “unmitigated disaster” on the character front by Balthier, and though the plot was entertaining enough, much of the rest of the game was bland.  The license grid was fun for a while, then got boring and pointless; meanwhile the sphere grid is pointless for a while, and then gets fun.  But as fun as it is to rag on FFXII, this post is about FFX.

Once I got past the first 7 hours, Tidus went out of “whiny Blitzball player” mode and got a little less dense.  This allowed cooler characters (everyone else) to take a bit more of the stage.  Although the others are at times annoying, aside from Auron, all of them are at least unique.  This is one of FFX’s strengths, although none of the characters are compelling.  Unfortunately only Wakka shows any significant growth, and that is mostly because he goes from religious bigot to a somewhat understanding guy with a terrible accent.  Tidus and Yuna improve a bit, but Tidus remains the outwardly-confident inwardly-sensitive JRPG stereotype while Yuna maintains the strength-in-the-face-of-despair bit from start to finish.  Voice-wise, both have either poorly translated lines or shoddy delivery; I’m not sure which, and it could be both.  Auron, Rikku, Lulu, and  Kimahri are the only characters who feel well-voiced, and if they couldn’t do “awesome veteran warrior”, “stereotypical bouncy girl”, “goth girl” and “guy who never talks” right, I would not have bothered playing the game.

The world is definitely FFX’s strongest point.  Spira has all kinds of crazy stuff going on, and the landscapes seem at some times almost Seussian, others something like in Skies of Arcadia; generally, they are fascinating and fantastic.  Unfortunately, the initial wonder the player might feel at seeing something like the Thunder Plains, where a constant thunderstorm roils the landscape and specially placed lightning rods allow moderately safe passage, is almost immediately offset by annoyance.  See, the player has to dodge these lightning bolts in an incredibly annoying fashion, while dealing with the crushingly high standard encounter rate (seriously, once every 10 steps or something).  Likewise, in the somewhat-cliche-though-cool forested area, the player can do an incredibly annoying butterfly catching minigame.  Though there are areas where stupid minigames do not interfere with the dreamy, fantastic feel of Spira, they are few and far between.

Likewise, Spira’s constant assualt by Sin makes for an interesting move.  Much like the post-apocalyptic fourth world of Final Fantasy Legend, full of ruined cities destroyed by a rampaging phoenix, Spira goes through 10-year cycles at the end of which Sin reappears and begins laying waste to the landscape.  Any attempts to stop it by conventional means meet with death on a grand scale.   Sin’s nature (i.e. biology, power, etc) is never fully explored, though it is far better without explanation; all you need to know is that it has a freaking lot of bug things and laser beams it can shoot at you, and that somehow your entire party always survives every assault intact.

It is this lack of follow-through where Final Fantasy X falls apart.  Spira is consistently described as being death-filled; and perhaps it is.  But none of the characters who die have faces.  There are two minor characters – potentially three – who are even remotely likeable and die in the course of the game.  They each have perhaps four lines before their death.  What FFX really needed was for a significant character (preferably Tidus) to die a horribly violent death.  Perhaps getting crushed by Sin’s left pinky-equivalent.  Then the message of death would get through; but no, we can’t have any main characters die, because that’s too cliche.  And before anyone calls me out on a certain character, you should re-read the exact wording in the paragraph.  I know at least one person reading hasn’t played the game yet (yes, I’m sure you are the only one in the world who hasn’t now), and I try to keep this place spoiler-free.