What have I been posting at Otaku Gaming?

Lots and lots of things.  First off - thanks for all the looks and comments during E3.  I decided to go with a more ddigest-form or it this year as opposed to last year where I was tossing out some high Twitter traffic and doing just a couple of roundup pages.  I know I got a couple of comments that I managed to highlight a few games that others missed - was my E3 posting of use/interest then by and large or not?

Well, aside from E3 and a lot of the big name announcements, I was surprised at how many other games and companies that were a bit lesser-known were also putting out tons of announcements, and I tried to track a lot of that over on Otaku Gaming.  It wound up being a pretty active week and change on that site for me as well, so here's the breakdown for those who are interested.

We can kick things off with the announcement that Dark Souls will be releasing DLC for consoles to include that extra content coming out for the Prepare to Die PC version.

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Handful of gaming thoughts...

Some items I've been posting on Otaku Gaming:

- Is Record of Agarest War 2 North America bound?  According to a stumble-upon I had on Amazon, it may be, but I haven't seen an official announcement yet.  I am pretty excited about this one and emailed Aksys PR to see if they could give me any other info, as I was a fan of the first Agarest War and it was one of my earliest reviewed titles and also the subject of a re-review by me.

- Persona 4 Arena has been announced for North America as well.  I only ever played the first Persona for the PlayStation years ago, but I really liked it - it struck a very positive note with me and I've been eying the titles for PSP for awhile now, so this caught my eye also.

- I really liked Final Fantasy XIII - I scored it well on my review on the site earlier, and I've been enjoying the sequel.  There's some new info about an upcoming episode to Final Fantasy XIII-2 courtesy of DLC.

- And last but not least, I've talked about my RPG Maker XP project, Summoner on here in the past (I was actually just prodding at that again on Saturday.  Still don't know if I'll ever finish it or not.  If I do, I will likely have to make several sacrifices because I just had too large of a plan for the game for my time to allow it).  That said, RPG Maker VX Ace has a release date and pricing.

Any of these articles of interest to you?  Do you like/dislike/feel indifferent about when I link to another site or blog like this to show details on the articles?  Let me know your thoughts on this - or any of the above - here or at Otaku Gaming.

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Record of Agarest War - Review Revisisted

So, one of my earliest reviews on this blog was the game Record of Agarest War. You can find it here if you are interested, as it was a pretty long review. So, I had first played it on the 360, borrowing it from a friend. There were elements of the game I really liked, but there were things that frustrated me as well. Still, I had an opportunity to pick the game up for the PSN a bit later, and I decided to take that opportunity and visit the world of Agarest one more time. Now, there were a lot of details in that review, but some things I have since found are different than I first thought, and I'm viewing them a bit differently as well. Some things I still stand by, but honestly this is more me picking on myself than defending my earlier comments.

The basics:

This is a turn-based strategy game with some heavy RPG elements.

Graphics:

I scored this a 6 last time, because of a few things: there were limited animations on the battlefield, the scenes in towns and such were very static, using portrait overlays instead of moving video. The characters are sprite-based and a bit fuzzy at times. These were my primary complaints, and they all hold true, but - I would probably edge this a bit higher, maybe 6.5. There were some things I really liked such as the art style - there is a good deal of detail in things such as the menu screen and the character portraits look good. Also, I find that the dungeons look cool in places, even if the proportions can seem a bit odd (especially in the castle screens)

Music & Sound:

I went with a 4 last time, and honestly, that's not changing much. There are a couple of songs I really liked - usually the boss battles. The save screen's music has a nice quality to it as well. I would maybe score up to a 4.5 - maybe 5 at best. Some of the other music still seems horribly misplaced in a fantasy style title like this, and since there's no English voice acting (it's all in Japanese with English text), some of the impact is lost in my opinion.

Gameplay:

I went with 8 before, and I would stand by that, maybe edging that up slightly - maybe not. A few of the things that bugged me before though, that I specifically called out, were in fact wrong and I'm admitting that. Here's the first one:

"the menus are fairly easy to navigate (though would it have killed them to make a ‘page up/page down’ using bumper buttons when going through long lists of items like Titles or Shop Inventories?)" --- turns out, and I have no idea how I never noticed this before, but pressing to the sides actually does a 'page down' option. I somehow missed that. That being said? It would be great if you could sort items or shop menus by different criteria. By the end of the game, I could make a ton of different weapons, but finding the one I wanted was like a need in a haystack.

"However, there is no flanking or backstab damage, so the impact of unit direction is somewhat minimalized." --- Now, nothing about this showed up in the tutorial, but I noticed that later in the game, there was an object or two I hadn't found the first time around that specifically negated directional damage. No other indication it was in the game (but then I played the tutorial to Agarest War Zero, the sequel, where this gets called out). So perhaps the design failure was in communicating this part of the strategy.

" That said, at the end of a generation, you automatically pick the woman you have the most ‘affection’ from. There is already a system in place where the stronger the bond, the stronger the next generation’s character will be. So why not let the player pick who they want to marry, for better or for worse?" --- big wrong on my part, but as of the time I originally wrote this, I had only gotten through the first couple of generations, and you can in fact marry different people if you get their interest in you high enough. I apparently just sucked at this part of the game and only had one girl interested in me both times, but on this last playthrough, I discovered you can in fact have up to 3 different choices in the generations.

Intangibles:

I went with an 8 here before, but probably more of a 9 after having played through again. For starters, I spent more than 100 hours on this playthrough. There's slightly different endings including a 'true end' I completely missed out on before that opens up further content. It's ridiculously hard to get to because you have to juggle a lot of choices along the way, and it's not very transparent how you get there - but it did add a lot of value to it for me. This is probably the game I've come closest to getting a platinum trophy in as well. I'm missing 2 trophies is all, but those last two are just too tedious. Still, I've sunk a ton of time into this game and I liked it enough this last time around to pick up the sequel for the PS3 recently as well.

Overall:

I had scored the game a 6.5 before. I'd probably say I'm closer to a 7 or a 7.5 now. There were definitely things I missed before - and I'm perfectly willing to admit it, but the core game is still the same. It's a very stylized game, and it's not going to appeal to everyone. There's suggestive themes everywhere and the game does nothing to hide those - in fact it flaunts them. But I enjoyed the strategy, sunk a ton of time into it, picked up Agarest Zero (which is a prequel) and am hoping that Agarest War 2 gets localized to North America at some point as well, as I would probably buy it.


So, I'm curious - but even if this particular game does not strike your fancy, does the idea of me doing a Review Revisited down the road appeal to readers? Or is hearing about a title once enough? My thinking is it may bring up titles that newer followers missed my thoughts on, and it gives me a chance to look at how I viewed a game in the past and see if my perspective has changed since that time. I won't do it very often, but once in awhile I'll pick a title up to play again and since I'm investing that time into it, I thought maybe I would share.

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Record of Agarest War - Xbox 360 game review

Record of Agarest War is one of the few turn-based strategy games I’ve played in quite some time. I used to love this particular genre. I first got hooked on them back during Shining Force and Warsong (Or Langrisser as it was known overseas). I love turn-based strategy games – I recently picked up Sonic’s Genesis Collection for my 360 – mainly for the Shining Force and Phantasy Star games.

Record of Agarest War tries to do something a bit different as well though, mixing in something of a ‘dating sim’ aspect. Your lead character winds up in a potential relationship with one of three female characters. The layout is an overworld map that you can traverse where you have towns, battles, quests and events occur. The events are usually cut scenes that help to advance the storyline along, and it’s during these cut scenes where you sometimes have to make decisions . Sometimes it is just a matter of answering someone’s question, other times you make decisions on a path to take. These choices can affect things such as available routes, the affections of the three women you can romance and affect a light/dark gauge.

Let’s break the game down a bit and see how it all plays out.

Graphics – 6:

The artwork of the characters during scenes is nice, and the maps themselves have a nice, painted look to them. Until you realize that they are completely static and that there is not much variety in them. The quest modes have a nice feel to them as well, again continuing with this hand-drawn look, but sometimes there is a lack of clarity as to where you need to go. In the first cavern you visit, for example, the far left upper edge is black and that leads to more of the cavern. This could have been larger or perhaps had more attention drawn to it in some way, because it really did not look much different than the rest of the cave, so I found myself running around in circles for awhile before ‘bumping’ into that spot and being whisked off to the next section. The sprite-based combatants during combat are okay – kind of fuzzy and they feel like they would be right at home on a DS, but they feel a bit underwhelming on the much more powerful Xbox 360. The biggest problem for me is just the lack of variety. Even some sort of parallax background, lighting effects or smoke/fog effects to add some visual interest to the combat fields would have helped a lot.

Music & Sound – 4:

I really liked a handful of the tunes, like on the overworld map and when you start the game. Some of the quest exploration tunes are at least catchy if nothing special. So why the low score? I generally hate most of the battle music. The overworld map has such a full, orchestral sound to it and then you get into the battle maps and it’s less Lord of the Rings and more garage electric guitar. It’s quieter, and it completely feels out of place with the rest of the game’s theme. Additionally, there is a fair amount of voice to be heard during combat – but it’s all in Japanese. They never localized the speaking parts to English, which is a bit grating at times. The sounds are repetitive enough, but the inability to know what they are saying just adds to the frustration. Half the time I played this, I had music playing on my computer instead.

Gameplay – 8:

It seems like there is a lack of explanation at times as you play through the game. There’s just small things that are not explained real clearly or at all. That said, once you have the hang of it, the game is pretty easy to control, the menus are fairly easy to navigate (though would it have killed them to make a ‘page up/page down’ using bumper buttons when going through long lists of items like Titles or Shop Inventories?). There’s a nice fast-forward feature for cut scenes you don’t want to sit through (especially if you’re on a part that has a lengthy dialog before a big fight you have to do over again), but the option to hit ‘start’ and skip those ones that don’t require you make choices would have been quite nice (or a start that takes you to your first choice).

The strategy aspects are pretty good, but not perfect. There is an emphasis on what direction you are facing, because there are blocks that can ‘link’ you to another player – allowing for combined attacks. You don’t get this fundamental early on, but it is really helpful later. However, there is no flanking or backstab damage, so the impact of unit direction is somewhat minimalized. Also, all of the combat takes place on these painted backdrops with flat ground. As far back as there have been strategy games, there have been things impacted by terrain such as damage/defense and range, but there is none of that here. This coupled with the lack of terrain/graphical movement make the maps feel small and somewhat lifeless.

My last real complaint is the dating simulation. The questions can be a bit vague at times – you answer them expecting different results quite often, and that’s fine I guess. It keeps you from metagaming for the best possible results. That said, at the end of a generation, you automatically pick the woman you have the most ‘affection’ from. There is already a system in place where the stronger the bond, the stronger the next generation’s character will be. So why not let the player pick who they want to marry, for better or for worse? Still, the overall impact of this system is pretty cool, and it reminds me of the often underappreciated Phantasy Star III: Generations game I played repeatedly on my Genesis once upon a time (to the point where I had seen all possible endings). There are five generations handled in this fashion, where your relationship with who you marry affects your child not only statistically but with skills and weapon type.

The combat itself is pretty interesting with a fairly decent range of skills and spells of varying ranges. There is also an SP counter that goes up over time when you attack, are attacked or a team member dies. Enemies do have an annoying habit of teaming up on a single character and killing him or her before you can do anything about it, but this allows your chars to return the favor from a powered-up standpoint. Also characters can link together, otherwise attacking creatures that would have been outside of their range, or creating combination attacks – like two double strike attacks equal a quadruple attack that both characters perform together at the same time.

Intangibles – 8:

I already touched on the dating simulation aspect and the varied children you can have as a result. It would be cool if this was somehow more impactful on the storyline. In Phantasy Star III it actually gave you completely different views on events and storylines – in one of the instances if I recall correctly, you could even wind up with twins. The impact here is a bit less as the new character each generation is a neat mix of the two parents, but somehow feels more like a skin to an existing storyline. There are other systems though as well that really help to add to the value.

There is a monster capturing feature as well that feels like a missed opportunity. If you lower a creature’s health far enough (less than 5%) and you have a character with the capture skill, you can attempt to finish the creature off by capturing (notice I said creature – not humanoids but wolves, skeletons, mummies, etc). You can combine monsters to get new ones (sometimes), and you can trade them in for items. I usually do the latter. Their function if you don’t trade them in, is that you can add them to your group as a leveling party member – and here is where I feel like maybe it was a missed opportunity. I have not felt the urge to replace my existing party members with one of these less interesting monsters. It might have been more fun if you could summon them for a few rounds or use them as spells – something that doesn’t take away from your group configuration. Hence, why I trade them in.

Gear can be purchased, found and crafted from various components. The gear can also be enhanced using a type of combat experience exclusively for this process and it improves the stats. There are a wide variety of items, equipment and spells/skills to be created, improved and equipped and I enjoy it quite a bit. These smaller systems all help add some variety to what is a very long game, and without these systems the game could become quite a grind. I have heard a lot of people complain about the length of the game and how repetitive it was, but I guess these side items help add some value to it for me.

The leveling system is nice as well, because you gain points you get to put into different statistical areas. Not all areas are created equal for each character though – a magic user might need only 2 points to improve intelligence, but 4 points to improve vitality. So while you are certainly herded into certain directions, you are not restricted to them and it is a nice bit of customization you can apply to your characters.

All in all, there is quite a bit to do to keep you busy, and it’s capped off with a kind of new game+ for people who want to replay again. You can replay and keep your stuff, and play it again at that difficulty or less (so for example if you opt for normal difficulty (there are 3 to start) – you can do a new game+ on easy or normal – but not difficult).

Overall – 6.5:

It depends on what you want from the game. I’m willing to forgive a game like this for lower quality graphics and sound than I might be a first person shooter where the environment is a big part of the gameplay. Here it is more about tactics, storyline and loot.

I’ve sunk a ton of time into this game already. I’ll probably give it a new game+ just to try out different combinations of decisions, romances and so on. I’ve always been one of those people who can grind and grind and level up with sometimes ridiculous efficiency in both roleplaying and strategy games, and this one feeds into those interests of mine rather nicely. However, there are flaws in this game as well. The music and graphics are substandard overall, and the lack of localized voice just feels lazy. There are a vast number of subsystems, but if you find that you don’t like them or use them often, then the combat could start to feel pretty repetitive. A little variation in the landscapes both visually and strategically would have carried this game so much further and maybe helped edge it into the realm of classics like Shining Force or Final Fantasy Tactics, but instead it lags a bit behind them and it is a shame because I definitely want to see more games like this in the near future.

If you are a fan of turn-based stategy games in fantasy settings, this game might be for you. If those subsystems sound like fun, then you should find plenty to do and the game definitely gives you some mileage - I've read comments from players saying they've gone well over 100 hours on it. However, if action is more your thing and none of the above premises particularly grabbed your attention, then there is not enough technical achievement to probably interest you either as graphics and music have certainly been done better elsewhere. Also, the game does come with a teen rating, so while the sprited characters are cute enough and the gameplay relatively easy for younger players to pick up, there are some alcohol references, mild fantasy violence, mild language, and suggestive themes.

My review was for the Xbox 360 - I've read that there is some additional content out there for the Playstation 3 version but I can't say as I've tried any of it so I did not weigh in on that. All things being equal, I believe that they perform equally (albeit averagely) on both system so if you have access to both, it may be worth getting it on the PS3 (my acquisition price was considerably smaller on the 360 however).

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