Final Boredom XIII

 

              As a person who enjoys J-RPGs I have to concede to some of the reasons why people don't like my favorite sub genre.  I have heard it all such as boring gameplay, bad characters, and horrible story; And like this review it is all opinion of course.  And I will admit there are J-RPGs where I hate one of those aspects while enjoyed others.  Take Final Fantasy V for example, it is has a slightly entertaining but over all boring story.  Yet it has gameplay that brings me back over and over again.  Unlike Final Fantasy XIII which personally is so horrid on so many different facets that I am amazed and a bit scared that this was created.  For me Final Fantasy XIII should be a case study in all the things that doesn't work in a J-RPG.

                It's hard for me to pinpoint what offends me about this game the most, but I would have to say the characters are the worst offenders.  Every character in this game is ripped right out of the "Japanese Anime Character Stereotype How To" book.  Lighting the angsty solder sadly has the most growth out of the cast even if it's just "I accept you as my brother in law".  The rest of the cast for the most part made me want to beat me head in.  I grew sick of Snow acting like a moron while not seeing how his actions can affect other people and learning from them; all while being angsty about his girlfriend being a crystal.  Hope who won't shut up about his dead mother and angst about it throughout a good portion of the game.  Vanille who acts bubbly while hiding her own angst of turning a kid into crystal, while her friend Fang is a live and let live type.  Last is Sazh, which pretty much went "My son is crystal", "You made my son crystal, you shall die", and "Killing you won't do anything, lets finish our focus".  Not much growth since he just went from an emotional outburst to a rational conclusion in the span of one cutscene.  I was so numbed from how awful the heroes were I somehow got it in my head they where the bad guys, and I blame that on how bad the plot was.

                The plotting in this game is awful and feels like it is full of holes the whole way through.  The story constantly implying you were the "bad guys" then reversing it so much I thought the game was having a bi-polar attack.  What made it worse was that the game kept dumping datalogs on me after each story moment to understand what happened.  Why the hell do I need to read extra datalogs to explain a cut-scene that just happened.  It's like if Mass Effect had a scene talking about the Reapers being bad yet good then vomiting a datalog on me to say "Oh no they are bad because raisins".  I don't even want to talk about the villain who is so pathetic that he wants you to kill him, all that was missing was a ball gag in his mouth.  I get that his overall goal, but it is odd that if he was made to perform a task wouldn't that imply that his task is to destroy cocoon?  Also in the end he tells the  heroes that he wants to be killed.  In response the group says no, so just talks his army into killing him.  Which in turn causes our brave heroes to want to stop the army, but fighting and killing the big baddie in the process.  Sadly playing the game felt like a metaphor for cradle to spike covered grave, I honestly wished for my disc to explode so it would give me some excitement.

                Having to view this masterwork of storytelling I believe is my new personal hell.  I have never found a game to point to when people ask "How come no one likes J-RPGs".  But this game hits all the complaints people have with the sub genre, slams a bell on your head and beats you with a hammer.  This game should really be called a corridor RPG, much like corridor shooters that have come out in recent years.  Only difference is a corridor shooter will require more brain cells then smacking the X button when a bar is full.  "Clip-clop clip-clopping" down hall ways and narrow paths having to hear your footsteps the whole time.  I honestly think someone saw the scene in "Monty        Python Quest for the Holy Grail" where the guy was clapping coconuts for horse steps and thought that was something to have in the whole damn game.  The only relief is during battles where you can take a nap if you manage to set up a sippy bird to smack the X button for you every seven seconds.  Ninety percent of battles had me scan then just smack auto-battle until I hit a new enemy.  When it does get hairy I just have to swap pre-defined roles I had to set up like a mother trying to get her five year old ready for school.  So now it is smack auto-battle, and if my health is low I swap to a medic team auto-heal and switch back.  After you fight enough battles and get your angst high enough you get to spend time in the Crystarium to level up.  And it's not like the Sphere Grid system or the License system where you pick how you want to grow, it's just moving a node to predefined slots.  So there is no choice just tedium and worse off it gates you so you can't over power yourself until you get to a certain point.

                All and all this was a depressing fantasy I would love to leave for reality.  I much rather just play one of the older Final Fantasy games or a current gen game like Lost Odyssey.  This game is just crap in a very pretty and thin wrapper.

A Review Between Words

     Me and The Legend of Zelda series has had a strained relationship, it feels over the years I've grown to hate the 3D games more and more yet the 2D games I love.  I wasn't honestly worried about it being bad because it's a 2D Zelda game, I was worried because of all the changes to the core aspects.  Shockingly besides once again playing as a mute nitwit who just hits things with swords because raisins it's a really fun game.  Once again we are playing as Link who as always is sleeping off a massive hang over, shockingly woken up to deliver a sword to the captain of the Hyrule Knights.  As always bad things happens and a princess like person is kidnapped so it's up to Link to steal the sword he was SUPPOSE to deliver and save the princess.

     The story around Link and the good guys is honestly boring, I was more interested in the evil lady  who her only goal was to turn people into paintings and make the world "beautiful".  Wait that's a guy, are you sure?  Ok well the bad guy is cool with the power to put people in paintings, it's very interesting compared to Ganon I have to admit.  After trying to save the princess you are defeated and saved by a weird rabbit man who gives you a bracelet for free rent in your house.  He is bit of a ass honestly given that he does this without a yes or no from Link, but honestly we would have to imply that answer (And deep down we would all take advantage of him).  So once again our young hero treks out to save the princess and loses again and is forced on the wall as a painting.  You know this makes me worry that Link is more of a mindless goon he gets by on pure luck, because it just so happens that bracelet lets you jump in and out of the walls.  This revelation leads us into one of the few changes in this game that defies series staples.

     The core mechanic of this game is wall jumping, Link goes into a wall and can move around said wall with limitations of course.  For some reason light fixtures can hinder my movement making me unable to continue.  But oddly enough Nintendo satisfies one thing people would have tried to do with this power and that's sneak into a women's house while she is changing.  Yet like all weird things instead of calling royal guards she just blows Link....a kiss.  Besides breaking and entering on a whole different level with the Zelda games a new feature introduced is "rent to own" items.  Where instead of going to a dungeon and getting the same tired items you can rent them from the rabbit man who set up shop in your house (My money is on it's a front for Romani Milk).  I honestly like this because I can explore the world out the gate without it saying I didn't get an item in dungeon X provided I can afford it.  Because of this dying causes me to lose my items, so it's on my head giving death a little bit more of a bite.  That is until you break enough pots to own said items which then makes death a minor inconvenience that you can brush off, outside of a number that most likely only you and a few weird people on forums care about.  The last major addition to the game that I love is fast travel and save points.  I love being able to fast travel without having to remember a song to teleport me.  And with these spots being save points it feels more definite, where I don't worry that I didn't really save or not.  But with the more open world nature of the game the dungeons are flat lined in terms of puzzle difficulty, not that dungeons in Zelda games where hard to begin with.  I never cared for the puzzles that involved items, it was the wall puzzles that felt more unique and required more than two brain cells.

"yet like all weird things instead of calling royal guards she just blows Link....a kiss."

     With all these new additions Link finally ends up in Lorule, haha I see what you did there...*sigh*  It's reverse of Hyrule but it's more alive than the version in A Link to the Past, instead of just bandits and petty people it's a true kingdom.  They even have a leader who isn't a deranged power hungry nut job, who craves ultimate power to rule everyone.  The need for the Tri-Force isn't for power more so to protect and restore their own world they ruined trying to protect it.  I honestly felt sorry for the villain and her plight to fix a legacy her ancestors left for her to handle.  She really felt like a queen trying to take charge unlike Zelda who is just there for the most part to be kidnapped.  After Link stumbles into his victory we learn the rabbit seller was no other then Dark Link, who I was waiting to pop up somewhere for me to fight.  Shockingly no, this Link has personality and is more interesting.  He is pretty much a coward who ran instead of fighting, I honestly want to play a game with this version of Link.

     With all the good, I don't honestly seeing myself playing this game again, it doesn't have that hook that makes me want to play it multiple times.  It still follows the 3 dungeons to get master sword and more to piddle around in.  It even has that metaverse from Ocarina of Time the sages you save hang out at.  Adding a hard mode alone isn't enough to get me to explore this world again.  It isn't Minish Cap where it's a world only known to kids and it feels different, or Wind Waker where the ocean feels grand.  A Link Between Worlds "Dark World" feels like the autumn skin of Super Mario World, and that really isn't enough to bring me back.  Take that as you will, I enjoyed my time as a fly on the wall but I don't think I'm going to stay a wall flower for this game.

Silent Protagonists and the Great Snore

I love playing RPGs, they are my favorite genre to play in all of video games genres.  But when I play an RPG(Or other genre of games games for that matter) I get sick of controlling a character who doesn't talk.  It never makes any sense to play as a character who doesn't talk in a game where everyone else spews their life story at you.  Note I'm not talking about games where you build your group of heroes from scratch since part of the idea of those games is that it's your story (Etrian Odyssey is a good example of this), I'm talking about games where you have established characters to experience the story.  It feels like game designers want to make the main hero to be the proxy for the player to be immersed in the story that is heavy in atmosphere already, and it's something I've been questioning as of late.

A great example is the MCs from Persona 3 and 4, they are suppose to be our proxy's to the story being told around them yet they feel flat.  They are both in wonderful worlds where the supernatural is around them destroying their perception of what they thought was normal, yet they are dead pan the entire time only making slight remarks when they are asked something.  What annoyed me the most with this is when the MC from Persona 3 sacrificed himself, and I really didn't feel anything about his death.  And this is why the proxy idea falls flat for me, if you don't have a personal point of reference how do you know what to feel?

Which is weird because a character death can be emotional to me, Nanako from Persona 4 had a really powerful death scene because you had a point of reference that they provided.  The scene was powerful because how everyone around her was sadden by her death.  We have a group of people who fought countless demons but the death of a friend they couldn't save broke them all down.  Yet the MC was pretty much "...", I would love to know what he was thinking at that moment.  Yeah he would have been sad but what would he have said?  Would he curse the person who put her in the TV, or would he have been mad at himself for not saving her in time.  We only have our own imagination to fill in for this, which would be ok if the game didn't give us a bad ending for thinking he would get revenge.

Another example would be Issac Clark from Dead Space, before the sequels we played as an engineer who slips on the action shooter helmet and we never hear him speak (A problem with most games of its ilk).  And part of the plot of this game was based around finding your wife who may or may not be dead, and it is lame because Issac never speaks and the game just tells us we should feel bad for him.  Why can't Issac speak so we know what he is thinking instead of being bold faced told?  This is a huge contrast to Solid Snake, who's "death scene" still haunts me.  Even if he didn't kill himself seeing him trying to build the courage to do it, and with the fear he was facing to pull that trigger was powerful image.

I have other examples like how Golden Sun has the "hero" be a mute and the "anti hero" talks, however in the sequel the "hero" finds the ability to talk and the "anti hero" loses the ability to talk for some reason or another.  Problem is I love the worlds these games can build, and the supporting cast that lives in it.  But when the person who is suppose to be the driving force has dialog that pretty much consists of motions and snippets of dialog choices it's not interesting.

Pokemon Has Evolved to the Third-Dimension

Ever since the beginning I've been a fan of Pokemon.  I still remember eavesdropping on a classmates conversation about the game and going to K-Mart that same day to get a copy of Pokemon Blue.  The game had entranced me and ever since then I've had become a fan and played each generation ever since.  Now that Pokemon X and Y is out it not only introduced a new generation of kids to the series, but introduced the main series to the third dimension.  The question now is did this series now evolve into a Dragonite or a Bibarel.




Pokemon has never been known for it's stories.  With just a basic framework of get 8 badges, beat Team [Insert Name Here], then beat the Elite Four.  It's served Game Freaks for years and there is nothing wrong with it, but there is no good glue to hold the bits together.  As always you are a ten year old trainer tasked to solve a mystery more suited for a scientist then a child but child labor is cheaper though.  Eventually you run into more story related people, first is Lysandre who's outfit screams "I am leader of Team Not Rocket" and the other is Diantha who foreshadows that she is the champion.  After getting a few badges from the everyone is a winner league, you run into Team Flare who is the evil group of this region.  Which opens a few interesting themes the creators could inject into the story.  Going from how Team Flare talks they want to kill off most people to conserve resources in a very crazy population control scheme.  There is a subtle theme of classism in the story given how only Team Flare would survive while everyone will die with an absurd entry fee to join.  But the story trips over itself snapping its legs though with plot holes and bringing up plot points but barely touching it.  Why is it I had to fight for the right to use Mega Evolutions, yet three other people also some how have the ability.  Which is compounded even more when Lysandre himself uses it as reason for his plan, saying "There was only one and you had to fight for the resource".

I like how no one in game seems to think he isn't evil.

What is the point of the legendary outside of a power source for a weapon that looks like a nuke.  What was with the tall guy who only shows up three times, we know he was the king who launched a nuke yet almost nothing else.  All this screams "we will expand upon these points when we make Pokemon Z".  The reason why I harp on the story is that in a RPG people normally play for the story.  And it feels like they want to touch on a lot of interesting concepts, but they want to leave holes open to fill in for the "third version" of this set of games.  And I know this is gear towards kids, but kids are not that stupid.

The three big things Gamefreaks gave us is the new Fairy type, Mega Evolution, and the game is now in 3D.  Fairy types changes the type match up and allows some pokemon who was not as good to have some worth.  Bringing in Fairy type curb has stomped Dragon types, and it makes me giggle knowing if I could take a fairy type to fight lance in Red and Blue he would be crushed.  Being only weak to Steel and Poison types and strong against Fighting, Dark, and Bug (while immune to Dragon) it seems that Fairy types will be "hard" to kill in the metagame.  I just like it because I can make my joke about having a male Gardevoir named Bridget even funnier.  Mega Evolution sounds interesting but how it is now it's just a gimmick, my key issue is that not enough pokemon can use it.  It feels they just picked pokemon they could make look "cooler" and ran with it.  It mostly feels like a situational tactic to use, and with so many pokemon that can't use it versus that can use it I wonder how useful it really is in the online battles.   But what most people who played pokemon might notice is after so many years pokemon is now in 3D.  Which I'm glad because I'm honestly sick of the whining from fans for it seeing how the DS could not render 3D without ugly textures, yet fans wanted it for that system.  No one seems to sit back and think about how many DS games that use 3D didn't look that great.  But for me the big changes was EXP Share, the changes in breeding, EV training, and I can customize my character.  Being able to train a bunch of pokemon quickly is a massive plus for me and knowing their EV and being able to directly train them makes playing the meta much more approachable.  Having better control over the stats via breeding shows Game Freaks wants to get rid of any need to hack pokemon.  The last feature is character creation and I just love how I can now make a trainer closer to my look giving it a more personal journey through the game.  Not much with it besides you can change how you look so like most games with the feature it's just there.  Even with these changes pokemon is still pokemon, so if you hated pokemon before this won't change you.

After finishing the story I couldn't really find an excuse to want to start over outside of playing through it again with a challenge imposed on myself seeing how boring the story is.  Even post game feels a bit boring seeing how I can only hunt for mega evolution stones only between a certain hour.  And it feels very sparse for what you can do after you beat the story.  After all is said and done it's not a bad game doing what it is trying to do just fine, but if your bored of pokemon or never liked it I would honestly skip it.

Uncharted Golden Abyss Should It Belong in a Museum or Secured by "Top Men"?

To me the first Uncharted game was a fun and exciting adventure through the jungles looking for long lost treasure, which on retrospect should have stayed lost given what it did.  The problem I had with the reveal was the villain who seemed to wanted to weaponize the lost powers these ancient people had.  It really hit home when I was at the climax of Uncharted Golden Abyss and found out what the treasure was and why it was lost.  The odd thing was out of all the ways I was getting around this old ruins that should have collapsed on my head this was the most grounded part of the game.  Enough of this though, I have my pick ax lets see what this game is like.

Graphics: Normally graphics are not a selling point of a game for me but wow did this game show off what it could do.  The promise was a console experience in your hand and they did hit that, it is a shame that if it where on a console it would look like a budget game without the budget price.  While the textures and character models look good there is this odd "phase in" thing objects would do, which on a technical level makes sense but from a game play perspective it just make me think we should be hunting for the magic fern that phases in and out of reality instead of a bunch of gold.  A major issue I had with the graphics was since the screen is smaller on the PSVita everything else is smaller.  Which the developers most have realized seeing how every climbable ledge is bright yellow, and this just raises a question that did this ancient civilization chose this stone knowing some annoying moron would be climbing around hundred of years later.  In short while the graphics do look nice and it is something to show off, for a game like this where graphics are a key aspect it needs to be on a TV.

Story: Like I said in the opening paragraph I like how grounded the reason was for why the treasure needed to be lost.  In Golden Abyss the treasure is gold, just a lot of gold.  But wait what is the reason why it should stay lost?  Well the simple reason is that it is radioactive.  I was honestly able to enjoy why this was a bad idea, it wasn't that man couldn't control this mystical power.  It was because if sold on the market it could be used in a lot of things everyday applications that would expose the world to radiation.  This was a real concern, and Dante was pretty much "Won't care got mine" instead of a insane person who his hordes of gun wielding henchmen should have stopped following.  As much of a dick he is he is the best written character out of the group sadly.  First have Robert Guerro who's sole motivation in this plot is funding his militia for his revolution, but what the hell is he fighting though.  We know nothing about his reasons for doing this and his only true role in this story is to be a mustache twirling villain who has a army to send at Drake.  Which is a moot point seeing how Dante later on hires a PMC which is swap-able for Guerro's army. But while Guerro has next to no motivation for his actions we have Marisa who's sole motivation is to finish what her grandfather started.  That's it, she is just a annoying person who while is knowledgeable in history seems to have no experience in adventuring yet makes smart ass remarks back at Drake.  The every punching bag known as Drake is still his Hollywood "flawed" character who while looks and acts perfect seems to be crap at everything he does.  And I question if this was done on purpose because my reaction to dying in this game was "haha served him right".  I question his motives to because he seems to just want to solve puzzles instead of find artifacts to bring to modern society for others to learn from.  Which I question his skills in puzzle solving seeing how when ever someone is with him they tell him when he got a piece right or not.

Game Play: This is where the game falls apart for me.  The issue with the game play is that this was a major launch title for the PSVita, and that means shovel in as many features to show off the hardware.  I already talked about the graphics and how it showed off what the PSVita can do in that respect, but there is much more that was done poorly.  First I'm going to harp on the fact I had to point my PSVita at light to burn a image on paper.  One this barely worked and second it was only used once and I kinda burned the image of the light so for a bit I was shooting a light bulb that wasn't their.  The fact I had to stand right under a light source and kept moving showed to me that this just doesn't work at all.  While that was a one time deal the one thing I hated was having to rub items.  Rub the dirt off this, rub the image on to this, rub this rock formation till maggots shoot out, rub your stomach and shoot more of Guerros men.  It didn't make the game more immersive for me it just pulled me out knowing I had to keep rubbing objects until the game told me I did well.  Which while I felt was show stopping on important cut scenes it wasn't as bad as during hectic action scenes.  For some reason the developers thought QTE with buttons was last gen so why not make QSE (Quick Swipe Events) for fight scenes and the two boss fights.  So for every melee combo you have to end it with a QSE or you screwed up, which is not bad since it's easier to just cap the guy in the face.  It fell apart during the final boss fights where you had to swipe your fat finger over the screen blocking the action.  To put it plainly this was a very bad idea because it block the view, and I know the devlopers have shoved their heads up their asses with this because during these "fights" you have 3 misses yet during the middle of the Guerro fight they take away those misses so out of no where so if you fucked up there you start the whole fight all over with him.  It's like one game developer got pissed off that he wasn't invited to a party or something and removed the lives out of spite.

Conclusion: I honestly could not recommend this game to someone if I had played this at launch because the price was fifty dollars.  Luckily I was able to get this for seventeen dollars used so I didn't regret my purchase that much.  But personally at the launch price it would have been more suited to have console controllers and been released as a budget side story for the series.  Bottom note if you like the Uncharted series and can find this on the cheap I say go for it.  But you could do a lot worse on the PSVita, you could buy a iPad game released for it that was given the full handheld console price.

Man Mobile Gaming Isn't Real Gaming

I never understood the mindset that gaming on a mobile device isn't really gaming.  I've seen people say iOS/Android gaming is fake while 3DS gaming is real gaming before and it honestly made me go "What the hell?"  The big sticking point in this reasoning is that the lack of buttons on the hardware, kinda not of a good reason for these games to be looked down on.  I didn't even think how stupid that reasoning is until I was playing Ikaruga on my Nexus 7, a popular shmup made for Arcade then ported to XBLA, Gamecube, and Dreamcast. 

Plays pretty damn good to me.

The funny thing is I think it was pretty damn good on a tablet, and I was so floored about how well it played I bought other shmups for my tablet and they pretty much played better then using a arcade joystick.  Something about controlling a ship with your finger feels like you have a much more precise control over your ship in all honesty.  Now don't get me wrong there are games that don't play well with touch controls, but to be fair that can be said about any game with any method of control.  With all the gimmicks we have had in the past to control games it's surprising that we draw the line at touch screens.  I mean we have had IR, camera, motion, light gun, "mind control" (yes that was a thing in the works), and touchless controls; yet people stop at a touch screen.  But with the growth of the tablets and gaming on it this raises a fun question. Would games like Metal Slug, Sonic, Final Fantasy not be considered real games anymore because they are on tablet going by what the "hardcore" (which I say with disgust because these people make me wanna distance myself from gaming)?  Hell what does this say about Nintendo DS and its games that use stylus only controls, if you get a stylus with a point to it (hard to find but they do have them) for a tablet would a touch screen only game for the Nintendo DS not be considered a real game because it can be done on a tablet (like The World Ends With You)?  I mean if we are talking how a game plays I much rather play a tablet game like Ikaruga then something like Kid Icarus Uprising for the 3DS, because as a leftie it had horrible controls.  I think gamers need to stop whining about the method a game is controlled by and worry if it plays well with the control system given.  Because if we can tolerate the gimmicky way a game could have been played in the 80's/90's when a game wasn't even built with that method in mind, we can learn to play a game that was built for a touch screen and not instantly dismiss it just because it uses a certain method of control.

Persona 4 Golden Review "Let Me into the Shadow World to Reach Out to the Truth"

Disclaimer:I only got Bad Ending #1 and #2 I have other games I would like to beat, but will
gladly come back to this game soon enough.  Also the person behind the murders wasn't that much of a shock, kinda figured that out 5 hours in.

Persona 4 Golden(P4G) is a port of Persona 4(P4) on the PS2, a long line of games based on the game spin off Shin Megami Tensi if...  It's a game who's theme is facing your true self, with that said can I face my true feelings for this game?  Lets find out.