Alpha Protocol (2010) - Review

Some times games don't manage to make you feel as much as you or the developers hoped for. Alpha Protocol has a lot going for it, but falls a bit short of being a good game. As it is now, it's ok. Good enough to waste some time on, if all you were going to do was scroll through Youtube Reels anyway. But probably not something you're going to think too much about once you've turned it off.

Which is unfortunate because on paper Alpha Protocol has a lot going for it. Developed by Obsidian ( Knight of the Old Republic, Fallout: New Vegas, Outer Wilds) and published by SEGA (needs no introduction) in 2010, it presents itself as an action role-playing shooter and could fool anyone that it was picking up the baton from Deus Ex after Deus Ex sort of fumbled and lost it.

It's clear that is what it is trying to do, with the main character introduction and gameplay being very similar. You play as Mike Thorton, and at the beginning of the game it's not entirely clear why you are where you are. But you are quickly thrust into the action as you run, stealth and shoot your way through different set pieces. After only a handful of missions you end up embroiled in a plot twist, Bourne-style, and need to keep working to figure things out. It's a story about corporate greed, shifting alliances and plenty of backstabbing, if you choose to. The pacing is high and the story cuts back and forth between the present and the future. 

The game allows you to tackle missions in a variety of ways - when you start the game you can choose what kind of agent you want to be, and it affects how your agent will be able to solve different problems and presumably more or less how you are going to play through the game. Each time you level up you can choose to improve different weapon skills, stealthing, technical aptitude and more typical RPG stuff. You also unlock skills on cooldowns which you can trigger to improve your situation in different ways. I found some of those skills absolutely mandatory, like the skill that allows you to track enemies even when you can't visibly see them. That skill starts out on a cooldown but if you invest enough points into it, it becomes permanent and made the levels way easier to get through.

A big reason for this is because the stealth sections aren't very well realized, but that could also be because I didn't put many points into this. I found it hard to judge how visible Thorton was in any given moment, and often found myself confused when I was spotted by someone. After having played games like Thief and aforementioned Deus Ex, I just know there are much better ways to inform your player of these things, but on the other hand games like Assassins Creed struggle with this also.

Running and gunning works fine however. Your weapons have different recoil, different bullets and different addons you can attach to improve their stats. You can take cover behind things and throughout the levels there are a lot of computers to hack and locks to pick if you want to. All of these things usually give you some sort of small upper edge, like disabling cameras or extra loot.

The game has a neat, optional, tutorial in the beginning - which I completely butchered. The people assisting me were delicate about my lack of skill however. The game never felt hard though, and even though I often messed up because the controls aren't always precise enough, it was usually not difficult to get myself out of the situations I had put myself into. Enemies are often contained in segments, even within a level, meaning that once you've shot off a certain few in an area, the rest will be just as unaware as ever. 

In fact, let's talk a bit more about this part. I played this on PC with keyboard, but it really felt like the game was made for a control pad, the way you're supposed to interact with the environment and even with menus just was a bit unintuitive and clunky. For instance, to select between different cooldowns or gadgets (grenades, first aids) you press Z or C and choose from a radial menu as default, rather than them being bound to different keys. And the interface doesn't always react to where the mouse cursor is, in that weird way that you only understand if you've experienced it.

The AI is not the best, actually among the most stupid I have seen in a game of this time. Several bosses I managed to unintentionally cheese simply because their heads were poking out behind some cover and they wouldn't react when I laid in to them. I guess the AI thought they were behind cover and just couldn't figure why they were still taking damage. And when I shot someone, it didn't matter where it happened, everyone in the vicinity knows my exact location immediately and run through corridors and up and down stairs to find me without trouble. What is up with the homing tracking? Then they run towards me like lambs to slaughter, so some times it will work in my favor. And this is not the kind of game where you have to worry about leaving bodies visibly anywhere, AI does not react to this at all.

Obsidian has put a lot of effort into making a slick feeling game in other areas though. The game tracks your reputation with most of the characters you meet, which in turn affects how they react to different situations and conversations. It's explained early on that a good reputation isn't always beneficial, because a bad reputation can make someone annoyed with you which in the world of covert operation can be used to your advantage. When they explained this I was intrigued by how this was going to showcase itself in the game. Often during conversation a wheel of reactions will pop-up. You have a few seconds to choose how Thorton is going to react to what is being talked about. The options are often only described with an adjective, "angry", "flirty", "professional", and it's some times difficult to predict exactly what each option means. It happened fairly often that I chose something only to feel like that wasn't what I was going for at all.

Between missions you spend time in a base of operations which allows you to tinker with your gear and otherwise prepare for your mission. One interesting feature is the option to buy "intel", that will give you different benefits in your upcoming missions. This can be everything from a map of the area you're going to, information on the characters you're meeting or even giving you optional ways to go around the place. You can choose in which order you play through missions which in turn affect how some people around you react. There are a lot of variables to play around with and they feel like they matter. Your choices are some times very weighty and not always easy to make.

I've only played through the game once, but it definitely gives you the impression that the choices you make and the way you handle situations impact how you move forward, meaning you can have a wholly different experience on a second playthrough. I can't say how well this is realized, but it felt impressive and enticing. After a few hours with the game I couldn't help but see the layered onion that it was trying to be, and I liked it.

It's really too bad the main character is such an uninteresting sausage of a person. The poor guy doing the voice acting sounds bored half the time and confused the other half, like he doesn't really understand what he is saying. And unfortunately this goes for most of the characters of the game, where pretty much all of them sound like they are phoning it it. The only guy who sounds like he is having fun is Steven Heck, but then Heck is a special kind of psycho. I rarely even react to voice acting performances, even less complain about them, but in this game it is so bad it actually detracts from the overall experience.

Overall, and to reiterate, Alpha Protocol has some interesting highs and lows. It's almost like two different teams worked on it, or they ended putting so much effort into the writing that they didn't have any money left for the gameplay. It's far from a bad game, and easy enough to rarely annoy you. In the end it's just kind of... forgettable.

Wasteland 2 Director's Cut (PC, 2015)

I've played and really enjoyed Fallout 1, 2, Tactics, 3 and New Vegas. It felt then like an obvious step to go full circle and try out Wasteland 2, seeing as the Fallout series was inspired by the very first Wasteland game released in 1988. While that game looked a bit dated for my patience, Wasteland 2 looked like a good alternate version of a Fallout game. It is inevitable that I am going to compare these two games then, seeing as they seem to be (un?)willingly intertwined.

Wasteland 2 was released in 2014 and the Director's Cut that I have played was released the year after with some enhanced gameplay. Unlike Fallout, Wasteland never created a franchise, so it took them 26 years to finally manage to come out with a sequel. Wasteland 2 has some interesting people attached to it, first and foremost the original creator of Wasteland Brian Fargo. Adding to this were people attached to Fallout 1 & 2, like the game designer Jason Anderson and composer Mark Morgan. Then came Chris Avellone and Colin McComb whom had worked on Planescape: Torment among other things and it really looked like Wasteland 2 could only turn out to be the perfect Apocalyptic adventure, a true hero to carry on the Fallout flag.

Just like in Fallout, the game starts out with the player in the remains of America after a devastating nuclear war with the Soviet Union (China in Fallout). People have bonded together in different factions, some are intent on spreading law, some are intent on spreading death. You control a group of newbie ranger recruits who are tasked to find out what or who has killed a fellow ranger. You get tasked a lot of other things, helping out nearby settlements for instance, and you quickly get many reasons to travel across the desert landscape. Just in Fallout, your party is represented by a symbol on the map and you can come across random encounters which you can choose to engage, or not, depending on your skill.

Your characters have stats which influence your capabilities and can further improve their qualities with skills and perks. Skills can range from how to handle different weapons to being able to remove bombs, repair items, speak to animals, or handle people to mention a few. Perks often allow you to improve certain areas of gameplay, like carry capacity, health, resilience or the efficiency of your skills. You always feel like you aren't quite good enough at doing anything. Some (most?) bigger quests require that you have a certain level of skill to be able to complete it satisfactorily. But you also need to use those precious points to be able to hit anything with your weapons (more on that below). Some things are probably, definitely, more useful to put your points into than others but it's complete trial and error to figure out what they are.

So I run out into the literal wasteland and try to get to work at helping people. Turns out I am not overly good at that. Wherever I go new mysteries crop up that I have to solve in order to keep people happy, or, as is often the case around here, alive. I realize that some of my choices are mutually exclusive, meaning that if I fail to finish a task a certain way or at all, it changes my options up ahead. Nothing wrong with that and I think it works well enough although I often realize after the fact that I messed something up and can't fix it again. Quick save and quick load are your friend here. 

I do quickly find that there is a lot of running back and forth though. And I constantly get lost. I am not sure it is to the benefit of the game that I am capable to turn the camera all the way around, because while it helps me see around corners, it often gets me lost in the directions. Fitting to the wasteland, but less fun to play is the constant scrounging for resources. I feel a frustration between the cost of each shot I make against an enemy, compared to how weak most weapons feel. Not to mention all the missing. I ended up trying to teach most of my characters melee weapons to save on ammo, and often times I ended up doing way more damage with melee weapons than with guns simply because shooting cost more AP and missed more often.

A word about the combat system. If you've played Fallout 1 or 2 you know pretty much how it goes. Each character has a set of Action Points, or AP, that they can freely allocate on different actions, like attacking (with different weapons requiring different amount of AP as mentioned), using a skill (like bandaging), hiding, reloading and so on. I think it is a great system and there is nothing wrong with it here either. In fact, Wasteland 2 is helpful enough to give you a great overlay of the combat area, showing you exactly how far you can move if you still want to have enough AP for a shot.

The problem arises in the calculating of success, which is less often than desirable (albeit nowhere near as frustratingly rare as in The Temple of Elemental Evil). And even when your characters finally hit, they usually only put a small dent in the enemy. Most enemies require a lot of whacking, or wasting of precious bullets, before they go down. In the meantime your own characters easily take a lot of damage and wasting of precious bandages to keep alive.

Wasteland 2, to its credit, has a generous fail system, in which your characters don't immediately die when they go down. You have a certain window of opportunity to resuscitate them and save them back to life. On the other hand, once dead the character stays dead and you can't ever get them back. I fortunately didn't end up in this situation, but I got close a few times.

Overall the combat system is a lot more frustrating than it is fun, even though the core system is good. The end result is often just a lot of flailing and bullet spraying, which just isn't a fun way to spend your evening (unless you're playing Quake 2). Add to this other environmental mechanics, like exploding seed pods that infect your characters with hard to treat diseases and debuffs and there is a lot of quick saving and quick loading, as mentioned. Even then a lot of time is spent having to run back to some safer area to restack on bullets and bandages, to which you might not even have enough money anyway. The combat in Wasteland 2 makes me feel frustrated and anxious in a way that leaves a bad taste. After 8 hours I turned it down to easy, and that only helped so much. It's stiff, even for a turn based system.

The game has an odd claustrophobic feeling as well. Every area you enter only has one or two exit points, meaning if what you need is at the other end you have to run all the way there and back to do your business and be about your way. I don't recall this being the case in Fallout, where you could exit a town from any side straight out into the desert hellscape. Here, everything I have encountered so far (~10 hours) is enclosed by mountains or the like.

Fallout took the concept that Wasteland set up and improved on it in many ways. I had hoped that Wasteland 2 could maybe take yet another step and improve on what Fallout (especially Fallout 2) left behind. I realize now that maybe that was a hard act to follow and Wasteland 2 instead ends up feeling like a step back - like everything is just that tiny bit of a chore instead of fun.

If you're yearning for more isometric role-playing apocalypse, and there aren't too many of those out there, you could definitely get worse than Wasteland 2. But I can't help feeling like Sisyphus pushing the rock up that hill, praying it will just this once stay up there rather than roll back over my face (as the fable goes). While I am having fun with Wasteland 2, it does make me miss Fallout 2.

Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption - Review

Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption is not a good game, really. The characters are boring, the dialogue laughable. The story is cliché and the controls... oh sweet Vukodlak, the controls are way beyond redemption, if you pardon my pun.

I guess VTMR, as I am going to call it, has got to live in the shadow of its, supposedly, better sibling VTM: Bloodlines. I haven't played that one yet so I can't say, but I know the bar is pretty low. Before playing Redemption I had heard very little about it, whereas I seem to come across some Bloodlines reference every here and there. 

You actually start out as a human, Christof. It's the middle ages of Europe and you're a knight of the crusade battling evil. I knew my character was going to become a vampire before long because, A: I was playing a vampire game and B: you can see the character as a vampire on the cover art. You get hurt in battle and nursed back to health by a nun called Anezka at the local monastery. You immediately fall madly in love with this nun, though you are both vowed to celibacy, and this serves as the foundation for the entire story of VTMR. After the first dungeon which serves as a sort of learning experience you get turned into a vampire by one of the many clans in VTM - the brujah. I can't say I am well versed in VTM lore, but I know the clans differ quite a lot. In VTMR you don't get to choose which clan you belong to but you get to fight several of them.

Christof, who only speaks with "thy" and "thee" throughout the entire game, learns that his "beloved Anezka" has been turned into a ghoul by another faction of vampires. They also aim to raise some sort of mega-demon from hell to allow vampires to rule the earth once more. For some reason some vampires are against this. There is quite a lot of dialogue explaining all this in the game but things move around so quickly and the dialogue is quite tiresome it left my brain about as soon as I had read it. I realized it was all really just an excuse to get to slaughter some vampires and demons.

The quest log is ok but the map is absolutely useless.

Through events you will eventually get transported from the middle ages to "modern" times, i.e when the game was made around 2000. The end goal is of course to find and free your Anezka though it is unclear whether she actually wants to, and also to prevent the coming of the Vukodlak. The way to do this is by going through different dungeon-settings and whacking the heck out of the enemies. Even though the settings differ and give some nice variety, very little else does - they all play out exactly the same. Enter, go through a few levels, kill boss at the end. 

Between dungeons you will get the opportunity to sell your loot to buy new loot. There are swords, halberds, shotguns, rocket launchers and everything in-between. They're all pretty much equally bad, you end up either flailing your swords or flailing your pistols. That is if you can even get in position to attack in the first place, but more about that soon. You collect a "coterie" of fellow vampires who decide to join you for one reason or other, most extremely vague and along the lines of "because I feel like it". Some will swap out, and always without any warning and taking every piece of item they had in their inventory with them. I always reloaded at these points to strip them down naked, I've fought hard for those items!

There is a lot of dialogue, little of it interesting.

You also get the chance to skill up your characters. There are plenty of stats to choose from, and even more spells. It's hard to notice that up-ing my stats makes any difference in combat, other than that it allows me to cast new spells. What does having 20 more perception even do? Do I hit harder with 30 more strength? If that is the case I really can't tell. There is a plethora of magic schools to play around with and each school has a handful of different spells. Some seem to be absolutely useless, like subduing animals. There hardly are any animals in the game and they're all bad at fighting anyway. Other spells seemed absolutely mandatory, like having fire spells. Some enemies died from two fire spells or 25 flailings of my sword. I am sure I couldn't have beaten the game at all if I hadn't at least one character with fire spells. 

You gain new schools by leveling up or by finding books around the dungeons. Tough luck if you taught a character a school who then leaves your coterie. After the first time that happened I just ended up teaching my main character every book I came across, unless he knew it already. Spells are cast by using your "blood pool" and when you reach 0 you die. There are many ways to enhance your blood pool though, and many enemies to refill your blood pool from. Overall I think this system is interesting and works, or at least would work if it wasn't for other parts of the combat being broken (more about that soon).

You'll get items like poison and disease antidotes but I never ended up needing them.

The game is extremely linear, but so is Super Mario. It doesn't have to be a problem if other aspects of the game are either built around it or at least fun in their own respect. I often prefer games that offer some linearity since I like the sense of clear progression they often offer. And the dungeons aren't too bad. Like I said they're actually fairly varied, going through sewers, monasteries, caves, the secret Setite temple underneath a night club... Enemies are varied too, within the lore. You'll fight different kinds of vampires who throw a bunch of different skills your way, some way more annoying and devastating than others.

While a lot of aspects about VTMR are weak, they at least work decently. The main issue with VTMR however are the controls, and they are a pretty big issue. You'll spend more time fighting the controls when you enter combat than you will fighting the enemies. The main issue is probably that everything is controlled by clicking. You click where you walk and where you attack. This meant some times accidentally clicking innocent bystanders because I was actually trying to walk past them. That instantly had my entire coterie attack them which in turn had all the guards attack me and... reload. 

I can't even count the times this happened, leading me to target the wrong enemy or executing the wrong attack or just plain running to the wrong place. I can't count the times my coterie members stood in my way or thought I was standing in the way or decided to unload their bullets into a wall because an enemy was slightly obstructed. Sometimes I'd notice one of them was missing and find them way back just standing staring into a wall. I often decided to give my comrades ranged weapons just so they wouldn't get stuck somewhere or stand in my way. Trying to suck blood from an enemy I often accidentally clicked one of my friends standing in the way, leaving us both useless and exposed in the combat until I could cancel the skill. My character often struggled to walk through doorways if I didn't carefully click him around the door. It's a horrible mix of abysmal path-finding and terrible AI.

Even though you get many interesting skills, you can only equip six of them at any given time. I tried going into my spellbook mid-combat for some fights but targeting enemies was difficult enough without a huge inventory screen in the way. 

You can swap between characters at any time, and as soon as you let one of them go back to their AI they go full on stupid-mode again. It often felt like herding a bunch of crazy toddlers and the only reason I kept them around was to not feel so lonely... and also for cannon fodder.

The subject matter means spending a lot of time in the dark. I constantly had trouble seeing what was going on or where I was going.

All this meant I was save-scumming my way through this game and I feel zero shame. I had to reload so many times because my entire party died from standing in a poison cloud in some corner or run straight into sunlight like they've forgotten what they are. Or waste their blood pool on skills that are basically useless. It's fortunate then that it seems like my version was updated with the possibility to save at any time. I saw what seemed to be save spots in the game, hinting at a version where you could only save at certain areas in the game and honestly - the game would've been unplayable that way. You just die to unfair stuff way too often.

So how do I explain that I still spent over 20 hours with this game? I tortured myself all the way to the end after all, so it can't have been all bad, right? I guess even though there are a lot of unnecessary deaths and combat controls are about as smooth as a drunk refrigerator, with the help of save-scumming the game at least manages to have some sort of forward momentum that kept my interest throughout. Even with the horrible controls I can't really say that it's a difficult game and it would've been extremely easy with good combat controls so maybe that's one way to look at it. 

Yet I can't recommend anyone to play Vampire the Masquerade: Redemption. It won't offer you anything that another game doesn't do better, so unless you have an affinity for the VTM lore or a fetish for vampires I'd say it's better to go get some sunlight.

Tales of Symphonia #3 - Everyone Is An Angel

It's been a while since I last mentioned Tales of Symphonia but yes, I am still playing it. What were you expecting? It's an 80 hour JRPG and I have no time to play, this game is going to take me years to complete!

Actually, I thought I was getting close to the end. Story-wise it sort of gave me that feeling, but then I looked at my time played and saw I hadn't even crossed the 40 hour line. Guess I am only about half-way, though it feels crazy that I could expect more than double what I've already been through.

Then I watched a video of the place I am in because one of the puzzles was doing my head in (how unexpected). And in that video they had over 70 hours of game time, though the characters were the same level roughly as mine. How is that even possible? My first thought was that I must've missed a huge chunk of the game. Like is there a hidden continent of content somewhere that just flew under my radar? But how would you then explain the fact that our levels are the same?

I am thinking, hoping, that this particular let's player has just played it extremely slowly. I can't imagine how slow, because I have definitely not been rushing through content. Or at least not been trying to, since it's my first playthrough I have been playing things as they come and as I solve them, which is not very quickly usually. I also don't shy away from combat encounters as they are quite fun and I hate being under-leveled. 

I also don't want to check any other let's player or a walkthrough to see how far I am actually through the game yet. I want to go through this as un-spoiled as possible and have only been watching guides to get me through specific puzzles in the game. The dungeons have started becoming increasingly harsh in this department with some proper tedious puzzle segments. The kind where you go "heh, that was pretty cool. Now I never want to do that again".

I wasn't wrong about the twists and turns though. In true JRPG fashion the story just gets weirder and more convoluted as you go and at some point you start to wonder if they had even thought everything out from the start or just started to make things up half way. I can almost see the pitch meeting where the creators suggest a game with this and that story and the head boss goes "yeah but it needs 80 hours of content". Creator - "But the story is about 20 hours of content". Boss - "Yeah so make something up." Creator - "ok...".

I love the characters though and I also love how they're all well balanced and fun to use in combat (except Sheena, not too keen on her). You also definitely want Raine, the best healer, to be part of any group fighting a boss. There is love and loss and some deep themes but I sometimes feel like they could've been a much bigger part of the story in their own right rather than almost being glossed over or mentioned in the passing. There is a whole thing with Persea and Regal and you don't get to know enough about that at all. Sheena caused a catastrophe at her village of Mizuho which still haunts her and that isn't fully developed either. Maybe there are so many characters and trying to build depth to them all means none of them get enough. But also maybe this is where the other 40 hours of gameplay I presumably haven't gone through yet will come in and sort it.

In my previous post I made some story predictions, so let's see how right or wrong I was;

"Colette is turning less and less human with each seal that we destroy."
Not so much a prediction as an observation, but it turns out Colette was actually slowly turning in to an angel. Not only that, but into a lifeless body-vessel for the goddess Martel who was actually also a regular human (or half-elf turned angel?) at some point. Yeah I don't know either. But we've saved Colette from that fate, for now. Instead Colette has been struck with some sort of cruxis crystal poisoning, slowly turning into a crystal.

"Genis and Raine seem to be hiding the fact that they aren't real elves, for whatever reason."
Turns out they are actually half-elves. I guess they had to hide it because half-elves are the evil ones at the beginning of the game.

"Sheena, the character who started out by attacking us but has now joined forces with us, seems to be hinting that she is actually from another dimension (?)."
Sheena is in fact from Tethe'alla, the sister planet to Sylvarant where Lloyd and Colette come from. We later find out that Genis and Raine are also from Tethe'alla, and so are Zelos, Regal and Presea.

"Kratos the mercenary says he is only in it for the money, but is he really?"
Heh, no. Kratos is a half-elf angel who ventured with Mithos the summoner 4000 years ago and for reasons unknown or just not understood by me he was part of splitting the world in to their two current forms.

"it seems like both my birth parents were something special. I don't know what but I am sure to find out soon."
Nope, still don't have a clue. I know Lloyds father killed his mother because she was possessed by a Cruxis Crystal, but that's about it.

The story isn't a masterpiece that will stick with me forever, but the characters are very endearing. There is just no way not to love Zelos and his caricature womanizing (to the point where he can get items just from talking to random women in towns, very useful skill!). Kratos who is your on-again-off-again frenemy throughout the game and keeps you guessing as to his motivations. I also keep guessing who is my actual enemy in this game because first it was the Desians but then some of them were off-shoot Renegades and they were sort of on our side but then everyone turned out to be angels but they're also half-elves which is nothing like elves and... yeah, it gets really confusing really fast. There is no way I could write a synopsis that doesn't also take 80 hours to read.

The game is fun in all the right places though and I wouldn't mind spending another 40 hours with it. I can't imagine where they could possible take this story in another 40 hours but that just makes it more fun.

I Am Playing Tales of Symphonia

 RPG's is one of my favorite game genres so it gives me the hives whenever I think about all the RPG series out there that I have barely even touched on. Ys, Dragon Quest, Monster Hunter, Shin Megami Tensei (and Persona) to mention a very few. And also, of course, the Tales of-series.

I have played Tales of Phantasia though, I even own a Japanese copy even though I don't own a Super Famicom. I can barely remember anything about it but I remember two things clearly - I had fun with it and I especially enjoyed the combat.

My knowledge of the Tales of-series doesn't stretch much further than knowing that there are many of them at the moment, and that they hold a pretty good standard overall with some few low points. I don't exactly know which games are considered high or low points in the series though, but everything I have heard about Tales of Symphonia have been good things.

I remember watching my brother play it way back when it was released, he would've been around 15 and me around 18, and even though he seemed to have a great time with it and I thought it looked like fun I never got around to trying it myself. I have no idea what 18-year old me spent all days doing to be honest, but it should've been playing more video games for sure. Then he went on to sell the Gamecube and the game and regretting it ever since.

I got myself a copy quite a while back, with the thought in my head to redeem myself and get around to playing this game that I should've played already long ago. Well, I finally got around to it and I quite like it so far.

I am just over 7 hours in, though that doesn't mean much since I've come to realize that ToS is a game that does require a fair bit of grinding. I don't remember that ever being a thing in Tales of Phantasia! I don't mind though as the combat is as solid in ToS as I remember it being in ToP. 

For you people who don't remember the combat or get it confused with similar styles in the Star Ocean and Grandia series, the combat in ToS is in 2,5D (you can't control you character up and down but it will automatically follow enemies who move there). You control a party of up to four characters and they fight independently until you choose to give them commands. It works pretty well for the most part. Some times you're weaker ranged characters will decide to go all full contact MMA with a boss who three-shots them and some times they use their strongest and most expensive attack on an enemy that is easily killed anyway. But while you don't have much control over their direct movements you have a lot of control over their decisions so I feel it mostly comes down to how much you want to micro manage them.

The combat is definitely not on the easy side either. You not only can but should choose between a wide variety of attacks, and of course block and dodge things. Blocking and dodging is absolutely crucial to not become minced meat. There are often tactical choices to be made regarding which of the up to four (or more?!) enemies you should handle first and of course there are weaknesses and resistances to take into account as well. It might sound like much, but instead it makes every fight full of action and fun.

It definitely does help that combat is not random in this game. The enemies are always visible on the map, like in Grandia for instance, and you can in theory avoid almost every fight if you're sneaky and quick enough. In reality the game absolutely forces you in to a lot of combat, and it's really for the best. The enemies are quite tough and getting money for new gear does not happen quickly - if you want to be prepared for the dungeons to come you are going to have to do a lot of grinding ahead.

If the combat is the game's strong point the story and characters are about as trope as they come. You play as young sword fighter Lloyd Irving, a rascal who doesn't pay attention in school but also quite charming. Your adventure starts when one of your best friends, Colette, who happens to be the chosen one, requires your aid to get to different seals on her pilgrimage and some bad guys are trying to stop her for unknown reasons and... yeah I won't bore you further. You could copy the story from any 500 previous JRPGs and you know what this is all about. 

Kratos is so cool.

You collect a pretty ragshag team who, at least as far as I have come, all bring an interesting variety to combat and also all feel about equally useful (though definitely not equally interesting). Kratos, voiced by none other than Cam Clarke of Leonardo the Ninja Turtle fame, is a mercenary who is quite overpowered when he first joins you. He is also the only one who dabbles in all schools of fighting, he is strong in both offense, defense and healing and absolutely invaluable in the team. Then there is Colette whom I've already mentioned. She is the typical bit of a wonky girl character who keeps falling over on the battle field. She seems to be the weakest character when you start out but it is clear she will become stronger and stronger as the game moves on. Then we've got the "elf" siblings Raine and Genis. I say "elf" because it is hinted so far in the game that they are actually half-elf. Why they would hide this fact is unknown to me.

The enemies of the game are very anonymous so far. All I know is that they're half-elves called Desians (or along those lines), so maybe Raine and Genis used to belong to them and left, or something? Time will tell. They keep human farms where they... actually seem to farm humans, for unclear purpose. Collette is a descendant from an angel who needs to unlock seals to "heal the world". Like I said, the story isn't really the compelling part of the game. Just as with Grandia, what keeps me interested and entertained is mainly a really fun gameplay. The characters are growing on me though, and they're all quite endearing if nothing else.

The game has some other neat features that makes it easy to like, other than the fact that it doesn't have random battles (I can't stress how grateful I am that it doesn't have random battles). For instance it has a "long-range" mode on the world map which makes it slightly easier to traverse. Even more helpful is the "synopsis" feature which in short sentences wraps up where you're at in the story and what you need to do next. So awesomely necessary for a forgetful mind like mine, now I don't need to spend the first ~15 minutes of each session trying to remember what I was doing next, nor keep handwritten notes next to the game.

There is a lot more to say but I think I have been going on for long enough so I will keep that for future posts. Long story short, I am enjoying this game so far. It has really fun combat, decent characters and a story that I think might have some tricks up its sleeve. And even if it doesn't I think I'll have fun nonetheless.

Images from youtube.com, wikipedia.com, aselia.fandom.com.

Anachronox #15 - The End?

I thought I knew this game by now, I thought it couldn't throw me any curve balls anymore. I thought wrong. The end of Anachronox offers up some exhausting material and now that I feel like I've closed it down for the final time I don't even know how to wrap up my thoughts. What did I even experience? What did I just go through?

It's a roller coaster for sure and while the end is probably the games' weakest point it doesn't leave me unfulfilled. No wait, that is not entirely true. In many ways it does exactly that. I can't explain it without going in to major spoiler territory, but I guess we've already passed that in all my previous posts.

Detta's castle/fortress/home base is another maze. But I've got to hand it to them, even though almost every place I have gone to in this game has been some sort of maze, at least they've been pretty inventive with the areas. I still don't feel like it's repeating itself, too much. 

PAL works alone.

For Detta's the schtick is that we've got the entire team with us for once, which means we split up in three teams that you can easily swap between. Sly heads one and Stiletto heads one and PAL is on his own. The teams need to solve different puzzles in order to open up paths for each other and it's a fun experience. 

I think overall they've done a good job with keeping the same concept interesting, because as I've probably mentioned a couple of times the general idea is that you go through some sort of maze like structure, solve puzzles and fight some enemies. But the variety, both in settings, enemies and puzzles is good and it doesn't bore me.

And dark. Don't forget dark.

Of course the characters and the story is the real highlight of the game and there is a lot of potential here. I wish there was more of it, even after almost 40 hours of playtime. By more I mean more world building, it's a really interesting place that we get to explore here and I would love to see more of it.

Once we get towards the end of the game they've made several choices that give me reason to be frustrated though. First of all, the difficulty ramps up significantly. I guess when my team mates told me they needed better weapons they weren't lying. The final bosses, because spoiler there are two, are silly difficult compared to what I have been fighting so far. And honestly I really don't like it when games does this. I played another game recently, though I can't remember which, which was quite easy on regular enemies and extremely difficult on bosses. Anachronox has been fairly easy throughout though, and throws me off a cliff right at the end. Not cool.

You're not a true mob boss without an indoor pool.

The boss fight with Detta sees my team dead except for Sly (unfortunately I am forced to bring Stiletto with me for this fight and she is easily my worst team mate). Detta does an attack that just about halves my hp, so every other turn I need to throw a full heal and every other turn I can do an attack. But only my special attack does damage to Detta, my regular one always misses. This means I can only do damage to Detta every four turns (because the special attack needs recharging). And Detta himself does an attack that literally takes 30 seconds of cut scene every. single. time.

I have no happy memories of this room.

After Detta is defeated it seems like we're about to win the game. But then... it turns out Grumpos had been on the side of the bad guys all along. No I am not talking about Detta, but the actual BIG BAD that has been threatening to destroy the universe. Thanks a lot Grumpos!

I never understood how these people could get henchmen anyway, doesn't Grumpos realize that he is part of this universe too? He is kind of putting himself in the same danger. But apparently Grumpos still thinks he's better off helping the bad guy than trying to stand against him. Coward.

So instead of throwing the Key Stone into the energy well like he is supposed to, to destroy it, he activates it and summons the bad guy on our confused and shocked asses. And then it is time for another, even worse, boss fight.

Ok ok, this fight maybe actually isn't so bad. It's just that I haven't been allowed to save at any point since I beat Detta and the fight is confusing as heck. This time we get to fight with all six of our remaining characters (Grumpos not being with us for obvious reasons, traitor). Mr Evil as I will call him since I can't recall his actual name (though it is bound to be along those lines) fights on a platform with six colorful orbs around him. Ok, I think. I probably need to destroy those orbs first in order to do damage to him. This turns out to be only partially correct. And the bit I got wrong is pretty dang important.

For some reason I can only attack him with three of my six characters, though this also means only these three characters take damage. Again unfortunately Stiletto is on my team and again unfortunately she is still useless. Each turn every single one of the six orbs do an attack on one of my characters, while they don't do much damage it is extremely tedious to have to sit through. And as soon as I destroy one and start to focus on the others it respawns again. Ok, I think. So I have to destroy them all at the same time?

Again, only almost correct. After I manage to do that, which also is extremely tedious and time consuming I realize that that isn't doing what I was hoping it would do at all. I don't do more damage to the boss and the orbs almost instantly reappear. At that point my play session has been going on for way too long and I actually need to go to bed. Should I leave the game on for 24 hours and continue the day after? I choose not to do this but simply close it down, mostly out of nerd rage reasons to be honest.

So how am I supposed to beat that sucker then? Oh, apparently you need to move your characters into position whenever you destroy an orb, so that they can't respawn. Of course... I wish I had looked that up before my annoyance got the better off me and now I probably have to do the really frustrating fight with Detta all over again too.

They look as disappointed as I feel.

Nah.

Especially since I now also know the game doesn't even end, even after you manage to beat that guy. It's intentionally open-ended because the creators wanted to make a sequel. But we know that is never going to happen. And if they ever do announce one I will go back and do those fights again, maybe. Because dang, they were some horrible fights.

Everything up until that point was really good though, and I think that is the reason I am so disappointed with the ending. I guess I could live with the non-ending if the difficulty didn't karate chop me so hard over the neck though. That's just not cool, it's like they didn't actually want me to see the end once I got there.

It's so unfortunate because I have had ~35 hours of great fun with this game and then the lasting feeling with me ends up being some of disappointment, frustration and pure "oh come on!". Like that one time I went to a birthday party at a restaurant and we had an amazing time but one of my shrimp must've been a bit off because I got really sick and all I can think of now is how unwell I got, not how much fun I had beforehand.

But those last couple of boss fights were definitely some sort of bad shrimp and I still can't shake how frustrated they made me feel, unlike anything else in the game.

I'll get over it, I hope. And I hope I will remember the game for what it really is. An extremely underrated, funny as hell, well written and well played out little gem that I definitely recommend anyone to play through. And I wish there would be a sequel, that would be amazing. Because I actually think this world and these people have a lot more to tell before I get bored.

Anachronox #14 - The Battle of Limbus

Limbus is Fifty Shades of Brown. It might be understandable though since it has apparently been the battleground between what can essentially be coined as "good and evil" (in this game it's "chaos" and "order" though) for a long, long time. We're just in time for another round it seems.

It looks like someone had a bad curry in here.

But first we mess up the front guard of the people who are safeguarding the Universe, woopsie. This is actually one of the more difficult fights I've done in this game and I have to use several of my resurrects before they finally go down. The boss, of which there are in fact six, have a clever system where only three of them fight at any one time, and three are in the back row (behind a force field and untargetable) healing. Then they constantly swap back and forth meaning you have to focus your fire if you want to ever get them down.

They're not as stupid as they look.

Killing the guard means I can get into the town of the people who guard the galaxy, you might even call them the Guardians of the Galaxy, I guess. They are surprisingly un-furious considering what I just did, though they do chew me out a bit for it. It doesn't help that the probe that the space-flower just sent down turns out to be another wave of bad guys trying to achieve something that will allow them to destroy the Universe. I get to replace the front guard with one of my own (Rho) and also the back door (Democratus) in case they choose to come that way (they do). The people give each character some cannon fodder of their own to help out as well and that's going to come in handy because the enemies pack a punch.

Their thing is unpronouncable names.

Boots on the other hand gets the honorable duty of manning the massive planetary defense gun with which I get to shoot down enemy landing parties. Why they would leave such an incredibly important task in the hands of someone who has clearly already done a huge mistake is curious, though I guess it helps that it seems Boots is the Chosen One fabled in some wall paintings.

The prophets even knew what I was going to wear.

The fighting starts and we start kicking ass. I was picturing something along the lines of the little tactical event in FFVII where you get to place troops on a map, but it's nothing like that. Rho and Democratus get attacked in turn and it's just regular battles. Not overly difficult either, fortunately, though I feel like it's a lot down to my little aides who take pretty much all my fire. I don't want the Universe to be destroyed.

We are victorious, of course. But it's only temporary. We still have to prevent the bad guys from entering our universe and tear it up (what we have been fighting has been some sort of front force). The main guy of the Limbus people tells me to go talk to some special agent named Roweidekhalicon (yeah I had to look up the spelling on that) who happens to be in South Anachronox (which is where we started the game). In fact he turns out to be Rowdy who owns the bar from which Boots did his work before we got caught up in this whole "save the universe" business.

So many casualties.

Rowdy tells us that to close the portal that would allow Chaos to enter our universe we need the keystone. The keystone is somewhere in the Mystech Tunnels. Remember when we went down there and found some sort of weird stone that the mob boss took from us? Yeah, that thing.

That means it is time to settle the score with the mob boss, named Detta. He pretty much runs Anachronox and has had Boots under his thumb for a long time. If I understood it correctly he is also the indirect cause to Fatima's untimely death. We have many reasons to go after him.

On the way to deal with him though we run in to Rukh, the cool looking detective that we have been lending a hand a couple of times throughout the game. He asks us to meet up at the hotel in South Anachronox to help out with one more thing. When we get there though it turns out someone got there first. Nooo, not Rukh! He was the coolest, especially considering he was barely even in the game. He should have his own spin-off.

Destroy the universe, fine. But don't mess with my Rukh.

Our only lead is a picture of the attacker that Rukh managed to take just before he was attacked. You'd think that's a pretty good lead, but I have no idea who it is. I happened to have Rho in my party and she mentions she saw the guy somewhere on Sender Station Station. But on SSS it's still night so practically everyone is gone.

Instead of going off on a wild goose chase I decide to deal with Detta first. As much as I want to get vengeance for Rukh I feel like saving the universe has some sort of precedence, I am sure he would understand. The closer I get to Detta though, the more it feels like this is going to be some sort of final conflict. Especially when the game straight up tells me "are you ready for this because there is no turning back?". Uh, I guess Rukh will have to be revenged in some other playthrough then, I am sorry Rukh. 

Every character has also told me they need better weapons. Do they mean need them or do they sort of just want to imply that there is a better weapon? How dire is this need? How difficult is Detta going to be? It's not like anyone gives me any kind of hint on where their best weapon could be either. Your best option is to revisit all old areas with all your characters (though you can only bring three at a time) and talk to everyone you meet, again. While this sounds like so much fun I just... don't want to do that. 

The game is very good at getting a balance between us lazy people and the people who might find that completionist business fun though. If you do happen to put in the man hours and run around to find better weapons you'll have access to them earlier, but as a lazy person I can also wait to a little bit later in the game and most of the weapons will be accessible in the shop. I am ok with that. Unfortunately there is no such system for finding more skills, but I hope I've got the most important ones already.

Detta, I am coming for you.

Anachronox #12 - Rictus Spaceship

And some orange.

Rictus spaceship is all hues of purple and also a huge puzzle. It takes me a while to figure out but I get there, without any help I might add! You get some sort of map of the area, but I've rarely seen a less helpful map in all my life, I have trouble seeing how it is useful in any way. It's actually quite a fun puzzle though, involving the order of rooms, what enemies are in those rooms and what 3d objects you find in those rooms. Pretty straight forward really, especially once you get it, but not too simple. And this is one point where the camera actually comes in handy, since it allows me to take snap shots of the rooms and what is in it, which my shitty memory would never be able to handle on its own.

Ok so I go here and then...

Rictus himself isn't very difficult, but that is probably because when I think I've beaten him... I actually haven't. Sly remembers too late that Rictus actually has a second form, or something, and we get thrown into super hero jail, along with a big bunch of other super heroes who have tried to take Rictus on and failed. Now we need to figure out a way to get out of this jail.

No biggie.

Want to know how to do it? Of course you do, it's as good of an example of how this game works and thinks as you're ever going to get.

Well, first you need to talk to everyone of course. You find out that some of the super heroes are locked up in cells whereas the weaker ones, like you, are free to roam the little room you have at your disposal. You need a code to break out one of the stronger super heroes, named the Fist, so that he can smash through the wall for you. To get the code you need to talk to a super hero named Headbreaker, or something along those lines, and get him to give you the ability to read minds. With that ability you can read the mind of Dr Hush-Hush who knows part of the code. The other part of the code you need to get from Invisolad, but unfortunately he is permanently invisible and hiding somewhere in the room (he has also gone mad from this, just like Invisible Man). To find Invisolad you need to get help from Krapto the Dog, who can sniff him out. But Krapto is really thirsty, so you need to find him a drink. Fortunately there is another large alien super hero maggot looking thing that needs to get its "sacks milked" and problem solved. Krapto sniffs out Invisolad for us, we read Invisolads mind and free the Fist. Easy, right?

At least its clean.

Unfortunately the Fist is now a depressed drunkard and not at all interested in saving us or the Universe. We give up on him and are about to see if we can find another way out when Invisolad decides to press the button that flushes everyone in the room out in to space (why there is such a button in the room is anyones guess). Like I said, he is mad. Things are looking really grim for us when Democratus, with unprecedented speed, unanimously votes to save our hides by going back to original size. 

Unhelpful.

This means Rictus space ship is immediately destroyed and everyone who hasn't already succumbed to the vacuum, radiation and cold of space are now running around somewhere on the planet surface. That includes our little team.

Atmospheric and cold.

We don't all end up in the same place of course, that would be too easy. We know where Democratus is for obvious reasons, so question is where Rho and the Fist ends up (and Rictus?). And where are we? Sly ends up in a small, snowy town called Whitendon which instantly makes me think of Thief. We get approached by a guy who tells us that they've got a problem with people disappearing and maybe I should go talk to the mayor and see if I can assist them? Yes, maybe I should. As I talk to people around town it seems they are confusing me for some guy named "Pete" who is an inhabitant of this town. Did I take over his body? That wouldn't make any sense. I probably just look a lot like that guy.

This game just went from a comic book to a detective mystery (hey, that should suit us!) in less time than it takes me to choke on my tea from laughter. I did just not see that coming at all and it is absolutely brilliant.

Now let's see if I can solve these disappearances.

Anachronox #11 - The Mysterious Levant

Spoiler alert, Sister Angela was the culprit. Fortunately for us, her partner in crime is completely incompetent and leaves the stolen goods just lying around in the open. We get the necessary evidence against her and problem solved. I am starting to suspect that you were only ever able to bring Stiletto and Grumpos to Hephaestus, though the game made a good job at making me think this was accidental. Now that we get to read the library, Grumpos goes to work. He learns how to untap the hidden potential in Mystech and tries to teach blockhead Sly (ergo, us) how to do it. It's good that he explains it slowly and in laymans terms because I still don't get it.

Choose your henchmen carefully.

Remember those heaps of bugs that were lying around everywhere? I mentioned them before and how I had no idea what they were for even though you could interact with them. Well up until now we have thought they were just mounds of disgusting bugs. Now we know better. The bugs are tuned to the Mystech and by attaching them on to it and also feeding them petals of flowers that grow around the place we can increase the strength by our Mystech (quite a lot it turns out). Yeah I don't really get it either, but I just tinker around and the end result is pretty awesome.

I get about as little as Sly does.

Now that Grumpos has read up on Mystech he also wants to have a word with the big honcho himself. The abbot informs us that they don't want to talk to us until we've... you guessed it, help them with another task. This one is a bit bigger though, we have to go deep into the underbelly of the monastery and make the pump work again. 

Walls or tunnels, who can tell?

This place is a maze like every other place, but it's also extra dark making it a bit more difficult for me to find my way around. Where is my Cat's Eye potion when I need it? The task is straightforward as usual, and only really requires you to go through the area and interact with whatever you can interact with. At one point however it took me embarrassingly long (read: around 30 min) to find the path I needed to go to continue. I even had to go look at a walkthrough, but the walkthrough was so blurry it was even more difficult to make anything out! It didn't really help me, it only confirmed what I already knew, there was a path somewhere I needed to take and for some reason my eyes refused to acknowledge its existence. If I ever have any complaint about this game, it would be that it's too damn dark!

If only they were all as obvious as this one.

I also accidentally read in this walkthrough *cough* that there are weapons to find for Grumpos and Stiletto, but unlike before they're not just lying about but have to be found by talking to the right person. There is just no way I could figure these things out by myself, and I'll be damned if I am going to talk to every person with every person in my team! Some of them give little clues though so I guess I just need to be more alert about them. I can't get Grumpos new weapon however because my Yammer skill isn't high enough, yet another thing I have missed to improve on somehow. I am hoping the weapons can be bought in the store once this is over, as the other ones have been.

The enemies down here aren't too difficult fortunately, even with my apparently subpar team skills, especially since Grumpos has an aoe-heal-all which feels quite overpowered. The reason the pump is working turns out to be because a massive lava-monster has decided to live in it, or something. Either way, it's boss time again and also again it has a gimmick in which you can pull some levers that blow cold air on the monster for a very high damage attack. I do like the tactical aspect to the fight, where each turn you have several options and you often have to weigh them against each other and choose the right one for the right time. Since I mentioned about the combat being a bit too simple it's definitely ramped up and is now at a pretty good level where you can't just mash a button and win but have to give some thought to your actions, but without too much worry about death around each corner.

What is the opposite of "burn baby, burn"?

Enemies only respawn once you leave an area, and what counts as "leaving an area" is something that isn't entirely logical and can't be explained, you'll learn as you play the game and will get a feeling for it. Overall this means that as long as you are in an area doing your thing you won't have to be in many battles. If you ever leave an area you'll know exactly where the battles are and what enemies you meet too. It's a pretty good system because it allows you to grind levels if you want to, or just focus on problem solving (once you've done away with the enemies) if you want to.

Once we've solved the problem with the pump we get to talk to the main guy and he tells us something about how Chaos has escaped and is causing all the trouble. Seems like a tall order for little Sly to save the universe, but apparently that's his destiny or something. Next up is going to the planet Limbus, not that we know how that is going to help but that's the only clue we've got so far.

It seems like a good idea to revisit areas when you have the opportunity, the game sort of hints at it as well. A guy gives me a side quest to go to Anachronox and back there I find another guy who gives me the master level of Democratus tractor beam. So that is how that works ey? The fact that you can revisit areas is a pretty good hint that they've left things lying around for you to do, once you've got new characters with new abilities. It's not entirely easy to figure out exactly what these are though, so either you've got to be a bit lucky or literally run through the entire areas again to see what you come across.

Flying to Limbus I bring Rho and Democratus with me. Again I am not sure if I actually have a choice in the matter of team mates, but the game makes another good job at making me believe I do. But the cut scenes all involve Rho and Democratus, so either they've got cut scenes for all possible team configurations or I've been set up, again. 

I'd read that.

Before we get there though, the massivest space ship ever recorded (according to Democratus) shows up and swallows us into its belly. The game keeps throwing us curve-balls because yet again something happens that I just couldn't have anticipated even in my wildest fever-dreams. Sly immediately recognizes that the ship belongs to a "super-villain" (his words) called Rictus. Apparently there are comic books across the galaxy about some people called the Kratons and they're based on actual real people. Rictus is part of this somehow. No, it doesn't make sense to me either.

They like charming fellows.

Even weirder, the game decides to go comic-book mode, and the entire exposition cut scene is in a comic book style, think like Scott Pilgrim. The game hardly even takes itself seriously at this point and I love that. I have no idea what is coming next and I love that too.