Niahak's Place

I said I might be getting a video capture device soon, and it happened. Who would’ve thought?

As I’m sure you may have guessed, I finished Skies of Arcadia and have moved on to other pastures.

My adventures have taken me into Tactical RPG land, more specifically.   I can’t really decide how I feel about the genre, but that’s a whole separate topic.

In December, I played and beat Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (the GC one, I believe it’s the 9th).  I found it was a lot of fun, and far better than a few TRPGs I’ve played.  My only complaint about the game is that you have 10-20 units to manage in the later scenarios which becomes a bit tedious.   The one particularly good thing about FE: PoR is the storytelling; though in retrospect, the story is not really complex, the way it’s presented and the smaller side stories of certain characters keep it entertaining.

For Christmas, I got the PS2 RPG Stella Deus (thanks!).  I actually started it right after Fire Emblem; I’d heard nothing about the game and I wanted a fresh experience.

I’m split about the game, really.  If I had the patience to stick to it, I think I would really enjoy it.  The art style is sort of halfway between post-apocalyptic and medieval (I’m planning to get a screen capture device soon; I’ll probably grab a few samples then).  Characters are often covered in various pieces of incongruous heavy metal armor, for example.  The character designer apparently went on to work on Persona 3, which explains why main character Spero looks like a taller version of P3’s Ken.

The world is pretty neat, too.  It’s near-apocalyptic; a miasma of doom/death/etc is making its way toward the scattered settlements.  Too bad I got 10 hours in and still had no idea where exactly this miasma was, how quickly it was spreading, or why the hell Grey wore these really weird bracers.  A few characters were good, but some others seemed to have no apparent personality beyond their stereotype.

Even the battle system is decently innovative.  It’s sort of halfway between the (early) X-Coms and Final Fantasy Tactics.  Once a character reaches 100 AP, they can spend those points on actions until they end their turn.  These actions could be 3 attacks, could be a spell and movement, etc.  However, they may end their turn early.  Which means you can set up a situation where you move twice in between two enemy moves, darting in and out of combat.  Or you can set your healers to go immediately after the enemy to decrease risk.

So, if it’s this neat, why would I give it up, right?  Unfortunately, for about an hour of story battles, you have to spend an hour leveling in the Catacombs of Trial, which are (supposedly) an optional set of maps.  Despite leveling in said Catacombs and being only slightly below the enemies’ level, Spero was killed by a boss in a single hit.  I figured it would take multiple hours to get to a reasonable enough level to beat the boss, so I figured my time was better spent elsewhere.   I may pick up Stella Deus again later, but I don’t see the point at the moment.

I’ve moved on to Growlanser 5: Heritage of War.  So far it’s pretty good.

I’m still playing Skies of Arcadia.

Even when Super Mario Galaxy (which is excellent by the way) ate into my time, Skies was in the back of my mind.

When my old addiction to the Three Kingdoms games kicked back in, Skies was still lurking about somewhere.

Even after two LAN parties, I still had an occasional urge to play it.

I’m now about 25 hours in.  I can’t say other games haven’t done this (Persona 3 and Lunar 2: Eternal Blue being the other two in recent memory), but Skies of Arcadia ranks up there among the highest current-gen games I’ve played.

And yet, I’m not sure why.  The battle system is sort of neat, but it’s all been done before, more or less.  It’s not particularly interesting.  The music is okay, but lurks around the level of “ambient”; instead of evoking emotions, it just emphasizes what you’re supposed to be feeling.  Two of the characters, at least, have shown very little depth.  Two more have been entertaining, but somewhat cliched.  The final two are sort of fleshed out so far.  It’s nothing on the level of the Personas, but it’s better than some RPGs.

I think it’s the world (see previous posts) and the situations that have kept me into the game.  I’ve reached the point where there’s a lot of exploration.  Even to find where you’re supposed to be going, which doesn’t often happen in games.  Even WA5, in which wandering around on the world map was vaguely pleasurable at times, you didn’t get the vague directions of “Oh, it’s rumored to be on the other side of this giant whirling vortex nobody’s been past.  Good luck!”.  I actually felt somewhat like a seasoned explorer after finding my way through said giant whirling vortex, to say nothing of how I felt once I actually found the place on the other side.

Not much else to say, really, other than I recommend that everyone who reads this try this game sometime.  It may not be for you.  But I’m not big on exploration normally (for example, the “exploring” systems in WA3 and F really just frustrated me), but Skies feels absolutely great.

I have also rediscovered my love of Kohan: Immortal Sovereigns.  Just about once a year (since I picked it up for $10) I play through the campaign.  It’s another game with a world that really does feel real (if not realistic); it’s got a good deal of history that ties into the campaign, as well as some pretty good voicing and some cool situations.  If Zelazny’s Amber series were made into a game, I would love it to feel like Kohan.

Not the sequel, though.  Please, not like the sequel.

I’m usually not a huge fan of lists and rankings.  When I try to rank games myself, I always go back and change the scores up later – like back when I thought WA:ACF was the awesomest thing ever, or when I thought the first Suikoden was better than Suikoden III.  Of course, I could always use the “I was young and stupid” approach, but this was within the past year or so.

However, this post at GAF caught my eye: a top 100 list as voted by readers of Japan’s biggest videogame magazine Famitsu.

Granted, it’s not a great list; I could name a half-dozen games offhand that I think belong on there, but then I’m not Tanaka Six-pack.  I actually doubt such a list voted by, say, readers of Electronic Gaming Monthly would be better.

So instead, I thought it was more interesting to look at what was on there that I didn’t expect.

I’ve been continuing Skies of Arcadia.  I still love the flowing islandscape-of-sky.  Sadly, other addictions have burst in on this one, shutting down my gameplay of it…

First is Super Mario Galaxy.  Though I’m still not convinced it is the greatest game ever, it’s the best Wii game I’ve played so far (since the only other ones I’ve played are Sports and Super Monkey Ball, this isn’t saying much).  It actually has a feel vaguely like Skies, since it takes place on islands in space.  The perspective issues (where you, say, go upside-down but the camera angle remains unchanged) annoy me, but everything else about this game is great, for a platformer.  I’m only a little ways in so far, though.

After all, my other addiction has set in.  I finally caved in after I saw Romance of the Three Kingdoms XI used for $30.  Though the manual smelled vaguely like smoke and the game wasn’t in great shape, it plays fine – all too fine.  I started a game on easy to get used to it; playing Sun Jian in the Anti-Dong Zhuo Coalition, I’ve leapfrogged up from Jiang Dong to central China in order to confront Dong Zhuo early.  I managed to split his forces in half, but now I’m trapped holding two gates against Dong Zhuo’s stronger Western half while praying Cao Cao manages to seize Luoyang.  The combat in this game is nearly as intense as in IX; planning is essential, and having a decent supply line is key.

I’m looking forward to confronting Yuan Shao once Dong Zhuo’s taken care of, though.  He’s set himself up almost exactly as in history, and I’m guessing he’ll start whittling Gongsun Zan down to size before long.

Even though I bought Ys 3 for SNES recently, I haven’t managed to beat it yet due to these games stepping in and stealing my free time.  Maybe I’ll get a chance this weekend.

Oh, you may not have noticed but I just created a smallish section for Destiny of an Editor, an officer editing tool for the NES classic (in the minds of about a dozen people, myself included) Destiny of an Emperor.