I went to PAX East, and had the opportunity to show off Suikogaiden (sadly, just the publicly available demo) on real hardware to a good-sized group, including a couple of game journalism celebrities whose writing I thoroughly enjoy.  Met some really cool people, saw a good friend for the first time in 7 years, and played some generally underwhelming demos of upcoming games.  Although it was a great experience, I’m still not sure about PAX Prime (Seattle) this year.  Seattle has a great layout near the convention center, and the center itself is more navigable than Boston’s, but the PAX experience is pretty overwhelming for me and the panels and audience generally seem to be better at Boston.

Xenoblade came out that same weekend, and I’ve been gradually making my way through that (reasons to follow).  It is an incredibly beautiful game – much like Opoona, it thrives in spite of the hardware in large part due to its attention to detail.  Xenoblade allows the player to explore practically anywhere that can be seen, and the sheer spectacle of the game itself is enough to keep me playing.  It isn’t so much the variety of environments as the open space, the detailed background work, and the overall atmosphere.  The game itself (thus far) takes place on the surface of a giant ancient being called the Bionis, and the characters gradually work their way up it.  In the distance of most sections, one can see other limbs of the Bionis or those of its opposing also-ancient being, the Mechonis.

So in case it isn’t clear, I highly recommend Xenoblade.  It is mechanically solid (MMO-style mechanics, light action-RPG controls), has good music, great voice acting (the English is far superior to the original Japanese in my brief switching between the two) and plenty of content.  By the point I’ve reached, it has started to slow down a bit – potentially requiring the player to do some quests – but to me, the game is simply so enjoyable I can continue on regardless.

Also, the (North American) Demon’s Souls servers are going down on May 31st.  This means that next month is the final opportunity to enjoy Demon’s Souls as it is meant to be played – with the potential threat of Invasion from other players, as well as co-operation in most areas (less common than Dark Souls’) and the message/bloodstain mechanics.  I didn’t give Demon’s Souls much of a chance, but have finally started by creating two characters (one “Conan” build and one sorcerer build).  I’m about 2/3 of the way through the game, and I can definitely say that Dark Souls is the better game of the two.  Demon’s Souls takes a less structured approach to progress, with stages all branching out from a single hub.  Dark Souls is designed much more like a Castlevania or Metroid game, with clearly defined progression (and small pieces of non-linearity).  The bonfire mechanic is also a significant improvement, and stage design is considerably better as well.  The only things I’ve seen that Demon’s Souls do better are magic acquisition (trading boss drops for magic/miracles) and the harsh, unforgiving and hopeless tone of the Tower of Latria (to give an idea – the first stage is a prison filled with the no-longer-sane wailing of the convicted, patrolled by dark octopus-faced wardens who carry chimes and suck the life out of those who get in their way).

I call it an anti-review because I haven’t completed the game.  Even in the case of a game that I don’t enjoy – take Fragile Dreams for Wii, for instance – if I feel I must talk about it, I beat the game to get the full picture.  I cannot bear to continue playing FFXIII-2.

It’s not the battle system – at least, not exactly.  By itself, it’s reasonably fun.  Monster raising was a good addition, and adds much-needed variety.  The changes to the leveling system, though, give you a dichotomy: focus on a COM/RAV build, making all random battles a cakewalk, or diversify for boss battles, making random battles longer and less profitable.  Regardless, the vast majority of battles end up being “X to victory” once again, with paradigm shifts only occasionally being necessary.

Boring battle systems and poorly balanced leveling mechanics can be forgiven, if there is enough substance to the rest of the game.  I can think of plenty of simpler games I’ve played and enjoyed.  Unfortunately, Final Fantasy XIII-2 has no substance.  It has been forsaken entirely for style.

One need only look at the interactions between the characters for a perfect example: very short exchanges, with occasional dialogue choices.  The few interactions that take longer are usually punctuated with action, whether it’s the sudden appearance of unexpected enemies or the in-cutscene take-down of a large monster (with a Quick Time Event, usually).  It’s like playing the equivalent of a Michael Bay movie.  When the game is loaded, you get a little “The Story So Far” cutscene – just like in a bad anime or TV series (“In last night’s episode…”) – although I only played a subset of the game, The Story So Far was consistently filled with explosions, sword-swinging and very little, um, story.

The straw that broke the camel’s back may in fact have been the most clear-spoken character in the game: the mascot character, Mog.  Unfortunately, Mog is also unbearable conceptually; not only is he totally unexplained, but he’s also consistently a centerpiece of initial conversation (“oh my, do you have a toy moogle?!”) and a focus of exploration (necessary to find hidden items and advance to new areas).  He has no point whatsoever except to be cute, yet is a constant fixture in cutscenes, as if the designer wanted to kill suspension of disbelief every five minutes.

I’m not going to claim that the genre has been much better; but it’s certainly placed a greater emphasis on subtlety, simplicity, and quality.  If this is going to be a trend-setter for JRPGs, I think I’ll stick to older games.

However, I had an experience today with a security question and answer that I initially enjoyed.  Soon afterward, I was shocked and dismayed.

I found myself unable to log into a website, having forgotten my username (and my password, though I was not as sure of that).  Said website did not allow me to rediscover my username – although there was the feature, it asked me to call a toll-free number to do so.

Being a dutiful customer, I obliged.  I had the following exchange when I got to a representative.

Me: I seem to have misplaced my username.  Could you help me recover it?

Rep: Sure thing.  We just have to verify against your security question.  Let me look it up.

Rep: “What is the *mumble*”

Me: Sorry, could you repeat that?

Rep: “What is the favorite haunt of the most respectable brother?”

What the hell kind of question is that?  I probably got it from a novel or something.  “Most respectable brother” is a hint – that implies there are multiple, so it was probably the Amber series (which appropriately begins with Nine Princes in Amber).    So, then, it was a matter of which was most respectable.  That’s probably Eric, from a governmental perspective, which meant…

Me: Uh, “Amber”?

Rep: I’m sorry, that’s not what I have here.  Let’s verify something else.

Damn!  Okay, so “most respectable” was probably Benedict, who avoided involvement in politics.  When Corwin finally tracked him down, he mentioned that he had been in…

Me: Ah, I just thought of it.  It’s “Avalon”. [the question was actually different, but less specific in context]

Rep: That’s it!

We continued on our merry way, and my newly-relearned account was set up with its new password.  As the conversation ended,

Rep: By the way, you have a great security question.

Don’t I, though?

This was, unfortunately, the end of Act III of my little tragedy.

When I logged into my account, I was faced with the reason I couldn’t look up my username online: They changed security question policies.

So now I was faced with a dozen or so options, all of them the same bland stuff:

• What is your [extended family member]‘s middle/maiden name?
• What was the name of your first pet?
• What street did you grow up on?
• Where did you go for [elementary/junior/high] school?

The worst part was that I had to pick multiple.  By the time I had narrowed down the questions which weren’t blindingly obvious from just about any social networking site, or alumni information one could find by googling, and so on, I had picked the best questions.  They were still awful.

The worst part is, they had found the perfect solution for me.  I now recall (since I have a little more context) gleefully picking a question that was so obscure that only I (or perhaps immediate family, if they did some research) could answer.  In fact, it was difficult enough that I couldn’t on the first attempt, because it constrained the subject matter to a specific interpretation.  And the company changed it (possibly because people had picked expletive-filled questions so that representatives would have to say them).

However, from my point of view, the point of a security question is security.  I’m a weird guy (if you can’t tell from the site), so I could answer a question like this on-the-fly.  But, more importantly, nobody else could.

And it’s not like only I could create a question like this.  A more sociable person might ask a question about where they met a good friend.  A Lord of the Rings buff could ask who survived a victorious single combat with a Balrog (hint: not actually Gandalf, since he didn’t survive).  A statistician might ask “What is the simplest explanation for the answer to the Monty Hall problem?” (Assuming they could reliably come up with “You have more information.”).  My siblings could probably ask “What is your grandmother’s favorite expression?” (to which there are multiple colorful, correct, and secure responses).

Asking what your first pet’s name is may be a good question – from the perspective that most people (in the US) probably have an answer.  But it’s not secure, since there is a heavy skew towards certain names (Bowser, Spot, Fluffykins McGee).  And asking which highschool you went to is just asking for some facebook stalking.  Even googling might get you that information.

We’ve seen the system as implemented elsewhere fail multiple times – most notably when Sarah Palin’s home email address was hijacked because the answer to her secret question was public knowledge.

So my request to anyone making an authentication system that includes security questions – let me write my own.  Please?  I have so much fun with it.  It’s like writing trivia tailored to myself.

However, Journal #10′s 7th Saga segment, posted just today, has in my view wronged a game.  I do not protest the overall treatment; I agree fully with the overall premise that 7th Saga is bad.

However, since I played the game to completion for the first time just a few months ago, I feel obligated to point out some incorrect or overblown parts of Jake Alley’s article.

First off, the article points out that because 7th Saga didn’t sell very well, we didn’t get actually good games like Dragon Quests, Terranigma, and so on.  This is a perfectly good opportunity for the article to be written as a tragedy – because Elnard, which became 7th Saga in the US, was actually a much more bearable game.  Its difficulty was magnified three to four times.  My guess is that it was partly on purpose and partly on accident – and, because Enix did not localize the game correctly, it received appropriately poor reviews and thus they didn’t localize more games.

I would argue, though, that the game not only has redeeming qualities, there are worse games.  Arcana, for example, is a grind-fest every bit as simplistic as 7th Saga mechanically.  Its story starts out dark, but asymptotically approaches the ultimate bland point of RPG plot.  7th Saga at least has a few decent betrayal scenes scattered throughout as well as a couple of randomly generated events that can spice things up.

I’ll address a few points that I particularly think are debatable, and then leave it alone.

Part 2 claims that 7th Saga “has no heart” because it is completely unlike the lively, happy worlds of other games.  To me, this is its draw.  A minimalist world, with small patches of humanity surviving here and there amongst monsters that actually look monstrous is different from other games in a good way.  The concept of each of the characters being entirely selfish is something that should make you think.  It was intentional – even the priest character starts to lose his faith when confronted with the unbridled self-interest of his companions.  The elf starts on the journey as a flight of fancy, and has to adjust quickly when things start getting serious.  This plot is there if you look for it – there is a heart, although it is told one line at a time.  The character development is brief, but dark by design.

Part 4 claims that all boss battles are one-on-one, and scale to your level.  Setting aside the localization difference (which screwed up the scaling) and the argument about status effects (other than de-buffs, there is one status effect in the game – de-buffs are effective against all enemies including bosses), this implies the fact that duels between adventurers are “boss battles” when only two are required in the entire game.  Real boss battles don’t scale at all.

Part 5 is absolutely true, and I posted specifically about it in September.  This is the primary reason the article should have the tragedy of 7th Saga, and not an excuse to bash a game that deserves our pity rather than ire.  I will point out, though, that the middle third of the game flows very differently for Lux and Esuna than it does for the other characters, and there are inherent character compatibilities that can make replays varied.  Among other things, your chosen companion can betray you when you get a rune if you are incompatible.

Part 6 claims that the game doubles in size at its “halfway point” – which was closer to the four-fifths point for me – and that you “lose your companion”.  You absolutely do not lose your companion for the final section of the game.  The game difficulty does spike significantly, especially in the US version, but the world is not exactly the same.  If you’re piling on reasons to hate a game, there is no reason to make things up (or misremember them, and not look up what actually happens).

Is 7th Saga a bad game?  Yes, absolutely.  But I don’t think it is the worst game on the system by any means.

However, some games in particular deserve mention for being especially outstanding.  I managed to only write three articles at www.videolamer.com last year, so I guess I’ll have to branch out from those.

Dark Souls (PS3/XBox 360)

I cannot possibly praise this game enough.  It presents a concept of utter simplicity: explore, fight, learn.  At the same time, it gradually reveals a heavily nuanced plot that, much like one of my favorite games, is revealed only gradually through NPCs and item descriptions.  Most NPCs can’t be fully trusted; there are only a few of them who seem actually interested in your well-being, while many pursue their own goals and (often) come to bad ends as a result.  The combat system has plenty of depth, so you will find that as your character increases in ability, so too will your knowledge of the art of combat.  Far too rarely does this happen in video games.

Dark Souls also features the interesting multiplayer system of its predecessor, Demon’s Souls: Although the core game is single player, you can find messages left by other players and summon others to aid you in most areas of the game.  You must be careful not to stay in human form all the time, though, as other players may invade your game as well!  Despite the relatively sparse multiplayer scene while I was playing (pre-1.05 patch), Every single multiplayer experience I had was memorable in its own way.  I will include here my ritual apology to one “Xmas33″, who guided me through much of Blighttown (by far the nastiest portion of the game) and then watched in horror as I ascended halfway up an elevator, mis-stepped, and fell to my doom, leaving him/her largely without reward.  I must assume Xmas33 is not an English speaker, though, as he/she has not yet responded to my profuse thanks/apology message.

Note that Dark Souls is not to be confused with Dark Souls, the somewhat sketchy RPGMaker game I commented on some years ago.

Radiant Historia (DS)

If I had to recommend one portable game, it would be this one.  It is Chrono Trigger, much reduced in scope of time, but much enhanced in terms of theme.  The primary character is a renowned warrior working for his country’s internal affairs department, and has a tendency towards paranoia.  He takes little nonsense and comes to conclusions quickly.  If that alone doesn’t sell it, it also has a decent location-based combat system.  The music was composed by Yoko Shimomora, who is known for her work on Legend of Mana.

As the story of Radiant Historia progresses, it does become considerably more cliched; on the other hand, some aspects of it display heavy amounts of nuance (a trait sorely lacking in the entire genre, which is obsessed with straightforward, feel-good stories).  I would go into more detail, but cannot without severe spoilers.  Suffice it to say, Radiant Historia has a good thing going for it 80% of the time, with some heavy politics, large-scale conflict, and several dubious NPCs.

Catherine (PS3/XBox 360)

The premise of Catherine may well be unique: Vincent, a man in his early thirties, on a slow path towards marriage, is seduced while intoxicated.  He starts to have second thoughts about his girlfriend while, at the same time, his new companion gets continually more aggressive.  After the first night with ‘Catherine’, his seducer-to-be, he begins to have dreams in which he, and others who appear to him as sheep, climb towers of blocks that collapse from the bottom up.

At its mechanical heart an action puzzle game, Catherine is nonetheless also an Atlus game (a point that becomes increasingly clear as one nears the end of the game).  Through interactions with friends and acquaintances at the local bar, it becomes clear that Vincent is not alone in his struggles against his demons.  How he reacts to his girlfriend and his new mistress is entirely up to the player.

Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor – Overclocked (3DS)

It may be cheating to have a remake in here, so I’ll keep it short: This is the best version of an already fantastic game.  The two “8th day” scenarios I played are vaguely similar to each other, but nonetheless showed the more nuanced view of the “good guys” while demonstrating a generally positive view of how humanity reacts when pushed into a corner.  The VA work grew on me despite initially being annoying.

Various Indie Games (PC)

I dislike not being able to have a ‘named’ header, but there were several indie games this year worthy of mention.  My favorite is SpaceChem, a Finite State Machine problem-solving game with chemistry.  It’s puzzle-like in nature, but also gradually reveals some very strange events in its between-stage story.

Atom Zombie Smasher is also worth a quick mention, as a zombie infection simulator is always good fun.

Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves The World are both very good JRPG-style games that make fun of the cliches of the genre while simultaneously following them.  The developers are clearly knowledgeable enough about the genre to be dangerous and are now developing the next Penny-Arcade game.

Sequence is to Stepmania or DDR what Puzzle Quest is to Bejeweled: A game that takes a simple mechanic and builds an RPG out of it.  What is most surprising about Sequence is the consistently entertaining and interesting writing: although I enjoyed the gameplay, I also wanted to advance the story.  I will be watching to see what Iridium Studios does next.

Finally, Terraria, clearly inspired by Minecraft, is a great clone of the system without losing its own identity.  It involves a good deal of exploration, but the combat is clearly the meat of the game and it shows.  It has seen some pretty substantial updates since release as well.

Some earlier games I did not get to play until 2011, but thoroughly enjoyed:

Fallout: New Vegas, 9 Hours, 9 Persons, 9 Doors, Rune Factory 3, The Last Remnant

Finally, a few disappointments (in italics to differentiate them):

Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny

Another console Rune Factory disappoints.  It has a quick-moving combat system, some additional exploration systems, and some really nice graphics, but they are all offset by the fact that advancement is slower than a molasses glacier and the crop-growing system was simplified, making it more “Action RPG with Crafting” than “Sim with Action RPG”.  This was especially difficult to play after Rune Factory 3, which improved upon every axis of the series.

Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls

I want to like this game’s premise very badly.  I enjoy Etrian Odyssey and even nearly finished Class of Heroes on the PSP – but the latter was only because Wizardry was so disappointing and I wanted a similar game.  Like Rune Factory: Tides of Destiny, it suffers from a poorly designed advancement system; in particular, advancement is brisk up until a certain point, at which enemies are bound to kill your party in two or three attacks.  Class of Heroes would be my recommendation for someone seeking an old-school turn based dungeon crawler; Wizardry is based upon the same engine, but CoH has more detail and more flavor.

Earth Defense Force: Insect Armageddon

I think this is a good game.  It really is.  But after EDF 2017 it was disappointing.  EDF:IA is simply lacking in the audacity that 2017 had.  It has neither the Monty Python caliber quotes nor the tight action of its predecessor.  It does significantly improve upon the co-op mechanics, but its short campaign and the attempt at a more “gritty” atmosphere make it not quite as fun.

So, you (the hypothetical and likely nonexistent reader) may ask – why now?  Ultimately, the answer becomes “I had no choice, aside from replaying old games forever, and even I don’t want to do that”.  One must keep with the times.  Since Atlus has largely been producing remakes or non-RPGs for the past couple of years, and Konami refused (until recently) to release another Suikoden, I had no significant prospects.  Since Arc Rise Fantasia – which seemed promising at first – turned into a grindfest, and even Rune Factory games bore me half to death, I decided to finally try out Ar Tonelico when I saw it for sale at PAX.

While it may not be the best game I’ve played recently, it’s certainly a breath (a gust, if you will) of fresh air.  While Radiant Historia seemed to be trying everything in its power to seem different – while, ultimately, transitioning into a cliche-filled finale, Ar Tonelico makes no effort in the first place.  One is not surprised when a character that looks elaborately evil turns out to be – surprise, surprise – evil.  When the game appears to practically sell its innuendo on the back of the box, it’s hard to complain when there turns out to be an entire scene filled with it.  I assure you it was most accurately translated, and I have no doubt it’s incredibly uncomfortable in Japanese even for non-speakers.

And yet – in terms of anime stereotypes – Ar Tonelico is surprisingly different.  Not only is the main character’s father alive, he survives the entire set of proceedings (oops, spoilers).  The two female leads are not simply different aspects of superhuman, but neither are they endlessly weak and useless characters – they grow significantly throughout the game (partially due to one of the creepier aspects of the game, “Diving”).  The church-knight character, Radolf, is not forced through a crisis of faith as nearly every other religious character is – to the contrary, he rises to the occasion in a situation where other such characters would be left helpless.  The tendency to call a 21-year-old character “old” is a little disheartening, but otherwise Ar Tonelico manages to be surprisingly mature in its storytelling.

On the other end of the Gusty spectrum is the Atelier series.  Also unabashedly anime-themed, but much less standard – the focus in the game is not on combat, but on achieving one’s goals, whatever they may be.  Adventuring is merely one aspect of a game focused on alchemy and interactions with other characters.  I’m not finished with Atelier Totori, so I can’t say a whole lot about it – but it’s very clear that the Atelier series was a huge inspiration for the Doujin game Recettear.  That alone is enough reason to consider the series, to me.

The first thing you will notice about Paladin’s Quest (titled Lennus in Japan) is that the design is pretty wild.  You’ll find 7 or 8 distinct races throughout Paladin’s Quest, and while every one is humanoid, not a single one is human.  Many have twirly eyebrows, fins for ears, etc, etc.  The most wild example is a late-game mercenary, who is clearly a hybrid of a few races – he has cat whiskers, a beard, some stubble *and* twirly eyebrows.  He was, of course, my MVP in the final battle.  It’s not just the characters who have interesting designs, either.  The trees have circular tops, bringing to mind stories of The Lorax and Sneetches.  You’ll find towns surrounded by magma, suspended by giant kites, and even – in one area – consisting of giant eggs with doorways.

Where the game unfortunately falls short is its music.  After 7th Saga – with its several distinct and memorable town themes, on top of multiple battle and overworld themes, the soundtrack for Paladin’s Quest sounds alternately relaxed and grating.  It didn’t quite reach the point where I wanted to turn off the sound entirely, but it came fairly close.

The core of the game, though, is good.  In a break from traditional RPG mechanics, Paladin’s Quest has no MP – only HP, which is consumed for spells.  It follows, then, that there are no healing spells whatsoever.  One might justifiably ask if this can possibly be balanced – and the answer is that it can and is.  Paladin’s Quest has surprisingly good balance from start to finish, with the only hiccup occurring right at the end of the game.  PQ uses a mechanic which limits the number of healing items you can receive and use at a time – you fill bottles with medicine in towns.  This goes well with a companion mechanic – no “item” menu in battle.  You can only use what’s on your character, which might include one such bottle.

One mechanic I found interesting enough to place in a separate paragraph (!) was the magic system.  As you progress, the primary characters (Chezni and Midia) gain access to new elements.  Elements combine to make spells (e.g. Fire + Air makes “Fire All”).  When you use elements in battle, the caster will gradually become more proficient.  Most important of all, though, increased proficiency makes a character more resistant to that element when attacked.  This means that unlike many RPGs with complex growth mechanics – Shin Megami Tensei, Suikoden 3, etc – one cannot ignore classes of spells entirely if one wants to make a character powerful.

Another system that I found interesting, especially just having played 7th Saga, was the mercenary system.  You have four character slots, but only two are filled by permanent characters.  The other two are filled with mercenaries – characters you recruit, usually for money, and dump when they’re no longer useful.  Sometimes they’re plot related, but for much of the game they’re just side characters that add some flavor.

“Chezni” is an even better main character name than “Rooks”.

At this point, it’s hard to tell whether you will actually enjoy this game.  It depends on your taste in RPGs – while Paladin’s Quest is certainly interesting and different, it is extremely light on story up until the end, and much of that story is optional “world” story level stuff.  The premise will be familiar to many: your character does something very bad, and spends the rest of the game trying to make up for it.

Ultimately, of course, Paladin’s Quest is a product of its time.  It is unpolished, a little clunky, has a few mistranslated bits (hell, the word “Paladin” never even comes up, to say nothing of the concept)… but it will give you a warm gooey sense of nostalgia – even if, like me, you never made it past the first couple sections when it came out.

First off – it is a difficult game, but only in its form as The 7th Saga.  The 7th Saga is a cruel, unforgiving grind-fest of a game which will offer only a few lines of dialogue for every hour of wasting time fighting the same enemies over and over.  I spent 16 hours trying to play this game in its “original” US format, and I got perhaps a third of the way through.  More than ten hours were spent not trying to progress – not even exploring, or side-questing, or talking to villagers – merely trying to survive in the new area where suddenly I was once again in grave danger of dying in every single battle.

Elnard, the game which 7th Saga is “based on” (the wording from the credits, not my own), was by comparison a much easier game.  Most enemies had considerably lower stats.  Although certain areas scaled up quite a bit, and some grinding is certainly still required, level-ups improved considerably later on – to the point where, at level 30, you would be gaining two or even three levels’ worth of stats – +3 points to each relevant stat – compared to what you would normally gain.

How much of the transition was accident and how much was intention is hard to determine.  My guess, since monster data is pretty hard to screw up, is that monster stats were buffed intentionally.  Maybe the game was reviled in Japan for its low difficulty, or the producer decided to do some tweaking independently for the US release (given that games like Phantasy Star and the first Final Fantasy did fairly well, and the Western RPG scene was known for Wizardry in particular in Japan, “the US likes hard games” isn’t an impossible conclusion).  The leveling scheme seems more likely a mistake, because it wasn’t done consistently.  Other apprentices gain the bonuses even though the player doesn’t.  Some data was moved around in the transition, so it’s not impossible for someone involved in the process to overwrite something that didn’t look important…

For those that might be interested at this point, there is a patch out there that restores monster stats and does some initial leveling growth fixes. it doesn’t fully restore the leveling bonuses, though.

So, on its own, 7th Saga isn’t Elnard – the original was, at its core, if not plot-driven (haha, with its 10 minutes of actual story), at least more exploration focused than 7th Saga.  With the difficulty patch it becomes clear that exploration while leveling is not suicidal – far from it, it’s actually fairly easy to do!

But wait, if 7th Saga may actually not be a terrible game fundamentally, what’s so great about it?  What does it do that no other game* of its time and genre bothered with?

7th Saga introduced the concept of other “players” in the form of your rival apprentices.  Although the core of the story is the same, each character has their own motivations.  Not only do natural friendships form between characters with similar motivations – Esuna, Kamil, and Valsu, for example, who are predisposed to be friendly to one another – events over the course of the game will form a slightly different narrative each time.  Since you can recruit one other apprentice to fight on your side, your party makeup will often differ – in my initial play-through, Lux joined me, but in my second, he refused to even consider it.

For example, the castle town of Patrof is taken over by an apprentice gone rogue – the Rune it once guarded seized, and its townspeople living in fear – but which apprentice it is can differ from game to game, with certain limitations.  Dialogue with the apprentice in question is always the same, but the characterwill be dead upon completion of the Patrof section of the game, and will never return.  Another example – If you’re particularly brave, and join forces with a rival with totally different motivations (Valsu/Lejes, for example, the priest and demon characters), there’s even a chance that your companion will betray you and try to steal your runes.

Finally, some sections of the game even differ based on your primary or companion character.  Olvan, the dwarf, can go to his hometown and find out about a hidden passage in a secret cave (although other characters can find the cave, you must have Olvan in your party to pass to the final area).  Lux and Esuna twice get ‘breaks’ in the form of free rides to certain places, while other characters have to pay money or go through dungeons.

Before you get your hopes up, this isn’t a totally emergent experience.  The order of runes, aside from a few which can be gotten in any order, will always be the same.  The dungeons will, with only a couple exceptions, come in exactly the same order for every character.  The ending is the same no matter who you choose, and your companion character will never speak (unless he/she betrays you!).

Even with all those caveats, 7th Saga actually has some really cool ideas – and, if characterization were especially good (like in, say, The Spirit Engine 2 which has a few ‘emergent’ moments), such a narrative could be really powerful.  In the 7th Saga, characters (and their reactions to you) do change slightly over the course of the game – however, tracking them down to figure out how they’re doing is not just tedious, it’s dangerous.  By the halfway point, most characters will simply challenge you to a duel.  And why not – you have the most runes!  Imagine what a modern game could do with this concept, though – modern games like Space Rangers and Mount & Blade point at the same idea – give the player rivals – but go fully emergent in nature, with the narrative ultimately suffering (and most rivals being faceless by the end).

When you factor in its sorta-post-apocalyptic lonely world, complete with demons, aliens, 30 or so 5,000-year-old amnesiac robots (okay, Tetsujin) wandering around (one of which is a primary character), you kind of see what kind of story 7th Saga was going for.  It’s not typical, and this is absolutely a good thing.

Oh, and of course it has good variety in music – four overworld themes, several totally distinct town themes, four battle themes.  Not all of them are great, but I found them memorable.  Decent games always have good music.

Is 7th Saga worth playing?  Maybe if the Elnard patch gets finalized, or if the player is dedicated enough to modify their save-states manually (*cough*).  If one has enough free time, or a turbo button, the original might be okay.  The game’s atmosphere may not totally be unique, but its 7-archetype-rivals system sets it apart enough for me.  7th Saga may not be worth playing, but in my book it’s worth thinking about.

*Well, to say no game of its time built its narrative this way might be an overstatement.  Inindo did this sort of thing – better mechanically, but worse in terms of story – when it built its strategy-game-in-the-background system, with dozens of adventurers wandering Japan at the same time.  Too bad Inindo’s otherwise much less compelling!

I don’t usually visit the big booths on the Expo Hall floor, since – by and large – the same content is out in a few weeks, and coverage on it is out in a few days.  I did try out the intro for Mass Effect 3, which was fun enough, but not worth the 2-hour wait.  The best under-the-radar game I saw there was Shoot Many Robots – a co-operative, 1-4 player shoot-em-up, which feels like a post-apocalyptic, hick-themed Metal Slug.  Some brief bits follow:

• Got to (briefly) meet Rob Boyd of Zeboyd Games, developers of Breath of Death VII and Cthulhu Saves the World – and, soon, Penny Arcade Adventures 3.
• Tried out League of Legends: Dominion.  It’s faster, but still LoL.  I think they’ll have a hard time balancing it, but it is definitely a good way to keep the game fresh.
• Good Old Games was passing out cookies.  They recently released Ultima I-III ($6), and Ultima IV (free!).
• Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker 2′s demo indicates (to a non-Monsters vet) that it is like Pokemon, but with a much more adaptable leveling system.  I think it’s worth a look.  The free shirt I got cannot be worn in public by a guy with any sense of shame.
• Wakfu, a free tactical MMORPG long in development, is nearing release.  It promises an EVE-esque fully player-driven economy and world.  The demo indicates there will be lots of beating up of cute bunnies, but the lengthy class list does seem interesting, and the art style is certainly unique.
• Saw some pretty good cosplay, including a particularly awesome Recette (from Recettear).
• World of Tanks was there.  Didn’t visit the booth, but I did get to see a guy in WW2 gear swigging a beer while sitting in the cupola of a tank.
• Retronauts’ panel, the only one I actually made it to, was awesome.  Didn’t get to hear why Suikoden II is awful (sad), but I did get to see mass confusion when someone claimed the NES’ Rockin’ Cats was their favorite game.  I may have been one of a few people in the room who played it – and I don’t remember much.  Otherwise, the panel was mostly much-repeated complaints about well-known games (for example, FF6 is buggy as hell and has several irrelevant characters).  I enjoy Retronauts as much for the banter as anything else, though, so that was fine – it’s also awesome to see the well-versed people in the panel doing so well in the industry.

Finally, a couple of low points.

I missed out on the League of Legends tournament this year.  Signups were available Friday and Saturday, but both days the entry lines were poorly organized (a flyer at the hotel basically said “hey, line up anywhere you want!” but there was only one entry line).  I doubt our team would’ve done that well, but we have 2/3 of our 3rd place team from last year, so we wouldn’t have died off that easily.

This may be strange for someone who’s “only” been to three PAX events, but they are getting noticeably more commercial.  Part of this is growth – which is natural, and not too bad.  All that part does is make badges sell out months ahead of time and crowd the Expo Hall.  But since game companies are increasingly making major announcements at PAX, it becomes as much a media event as a gamers’ event.  I saw more media badges than ever, and I know they’re not that hard to get.  I could probably get one for this site, crappy and bare-bones as it is, if I wanted to fill out the paperwork – much less a more formal site like videolamer.  In 2009 and 2010 – and even 2011 East – the convention felt more informal – something organized from the roots of gamer society up.  Seeing the ever-larger displays like Firefall, Skyrim, Mass Effect 3 and The Old Republic makes it seem fully organized by their respective developers.  Even League of Legends and World of Tanks had huge, flash-and-microphone-heavy booths.  Nintendo’s was actually quite tame and felt more appropriate for a gamers’ convention – just the demos, please, no need to make a big deal out of everything.

That said, I would still continue going to PAX for the atmosphere and the attendees.  It’s not often I get to see cool cosplay, chat with people in lines, randomly come across indie developers, and do Pokemon or Dragon Quest multiplayer.  With a couple panels like Retronauts or Kajiya Productions’ on localization, it’s a really cool event even if you don’t set foot into the expo hall.  I do wish they had a PAX Midwest, but I don’t think any cities out here have an atmosphere like Seattle’s or Boston’s.

Kawazu has a long history of working on the SaGa games, and it is entirely reasonable to call TLR a stealth entry in the series, since it has many of the hallmarks.  Aside from standard battle system/plot dichotomy, there’s a wonderfully imaginative world that very little is actually done with, entertaining side characters that never really break into the third dimension, incredibly good music that has only bits and pieces of substance to go with, and enough sidequests to deliberately avoid the main story for hour on end.  Atmosphere is fed in small spoonfuls for completing hour-long quests, while stat increases are passed out like candy on Halloween after every single battle.

After all of that negative stuff said about both SaGa and this game, I still really enjoyed much of my time spent on it.  Of that enjoyed time, perhaps 10% was actually plot – the parts that are most enjoyable, of course, are totally independent of the reckless, clueless main character (appropriately named Rush) and focus instead on Marquis David of Athlum and his subordinates, as they struggle to deal with the political realities of the world.  The other 90% was spent chasing various rabbits cleverly disguised as sidequests; find this dungeon somewhere on the world map, often via dungeons, and then explore it until you fight a boss.  Along the way you’ll gather materials, adjust unit layouts to deal with new enemies, acquire various items, find optional bosses and so on.  At least half of the dungeons are fully optional and many of them can be accessed not long into the game – although if you spend a long time leveling up your initial characters, you’ll run into difficulty when you get new ones that are either more relevant or are better long-term.

The battle system includes lots of bars and numbers.  It will make you feel important.

The battle system, of course, is the best part of the game.  It’s an unusual approach to making the game feel larger-scale; rather than individual characters fighting, you organize people into groups (Unions) with combined health, give them high-level commands (Attack with Combat Arts!) and point them at the enemy.  They’ll do their best to follow your commands, but they might get intercepted by an enemy unit and have to readjust.  Other mechanics, such as deadlocking (once two units are engaged, neither can move to attack others until one of them disengages deliberately), long-range attacks, formations, a morale system, and so on lend more credence to this large-scale approach.  In the end, the result is much the same as a standard RPG; if you win, you get rewards and occasionally stat increases to individual units.  Since this is, of course, a modern RPG, and casting spells or using items between battles is simply barbaric, TLR restores all health between battles.  The only penalty for losing a unit entirely is that nobody in that group will improve for that battle.

Unfortunately, The Last Remnant went the standard Kawazu route for difficulty balance and made enemies scale with a “battle level” which measures your progress.  This means that grinding will often not help you overcome a particularly hard boss.  In the PC version, at least, it rarely hurts you – but it’s not like it will help you move through the game faster if you spend 10 hours sidequesting before continuing with your plot.  Many optional bosses will be incredibly difficult until you reach a certain point – and even then, will require very specific strategies to overcome.  Storyline bosses, meanwhile, will still slaughter any unit sent in to deadlock them, which makes even storyline boss battles an endless loop of resurrecting your dead unions while putting up enough of a wall to hold the lines.  This constant life on the edge during battles makes the victory in the end sweeter, but it also makes it feel totally ridiculous and somewhat random.

One of the later dungeons in TLR.  Lots of variety in dungeons, which is good since that’s where most of your time will be spent.

Luckily for the PC player, The Last Remnant is not only available on PC, it is by far the better version of the game.  It has good gamepad support, adjustable graphics, dual-language voice options, and the most important part – a turbo mode for battles, which makes them easily three times faster.  Although a casual PC gamer may not have the specs to run the game, anyone trying to keep up – even on less graphically intensive genres – will probably have a machine capable of running it.  Still better, since it’s on Steam, it can be bought on the cheap at least twice a year – and still seems to be fairly popular.

Since I make a habit of doing a quick plot overview pretty much all the time, I may as well give TLR the benefit of the doubt – someone may be intrigued enough by my summary to consider the game.  Rush is a guy living on an island with his (adoptive? they’re vague) sister.  She gets kidnapped by a guy with a flying Remnant (oh yeah, Remnants are ancient, mysterious tools that can do many things and are bound to people).  His parents are busy on the continent doing Important Remnant Research and totally impossible to contact, so Rush runs off on his own to find his sister.  He runs into the middle of a battlefield where David Athlum is beating down some monsters.  Upon introduction, David recognizes his last name and decides to help him out for no adequately explained reason.  Much of the rest of the game is spent taking on increasingly unrealistic challenges, coupled with revelations about who wields true political power in a world filled with destructive and/or beneficial ancient tools that nobody really understands.  Only in the end, of course, does the title become relevant.  There is a Remnant, and it is The Last One.  The end.  The entire game is full of people with poorly explained or simply unexplained reasons for the decisions they make.  There are a couple of cool cutscenes, but there is nothing redeemable in the plot.

To be honest, though, it’s not like the plot is that bad.  It is no Final Fantasy, filled to the brim with melodrama and with endlessly intertwining backstories.  Nor is it a Dragon Quest, filled with standard vignettes to fill the space between dungeons.  There is plot, and while it is not good, neither is it unbearable.  It merely is, and if the player can simply go with the flow and let it wash over them, it can be fully ignored and the battle and item customization systems enjoyed for their own sake.