An Unfinished Look At Grandia - Admirably Confusing

Grandia II is one of my favorite J-Rpgs, but considering that, I've spent surprisingly little time with the other instalments of the series. I know absolutely nothing about Grandia III and Grandia Xtreme besides that they exist and until recently that was also true about the first game. Then my bf gave me Grandia for my birthday last year and I was excited to see where Grandia II had come from.

It seems the rule of J-Rpgs to not be direct sequels to eachother, but rather take place in the same world concept - Final Fantasy is a good example of this, Star Ocean another. The characters will be different, the world will be different, but there will be core concepts that are similar. In Final Fantasy it's mogs, someone named Cid and chocobos. For the first two Grandia (because I haven't played the other two and can't say) it seems to be primarily the style of combat, because other than that they don't have very much in common.

defconsoft.co.uk

I haven't finished the game yet, eventhough it's been over half a year since I got it. I definitely don't dislike it, it's actually quite fun but quirky (more about that shortly) but it's currently the only console game I play and so it means setting up a bit before getting started. It's probably the lamest excuse you'll hear all week coming from someone trying to avoid doing something they actually enjoy, but there you have it. Another big factor is that it's true to the J-Rpg style and has save points, something that I am trying to avoid since I'm in a position where I need to quit what I am doing at any given moment. It basically means I need to know that I can devote an hour (the longest I've played without reaching a save point was two hours though) and that just doesn't happen often enough.

I've at least come to the second disc, so you'd think I'd be a good way into the story. What makes Grandia a bit special from your average J-Rpg however is that it has a pretty original way of playing out the story. You play as Justin, a tween something kid who wants to be an adventurer like his father so sets out to fulfil his dream of being one. Early on in the game it turns out Justin has a special artifact left by his dad, which puts him on the track for said adventure and more than a disc in that is still where the story is at. You find out there is an old civilization that's long gone, Justin tries to find it for no other reason than "why not", he finds some friends on the way that don't seem to have much better things to do with their time either and the story doesn't progress much from that point even after 30 hours of gameplay.

I am a bit torn as to whether I love it or don't love it so much. On the one hand I find it extremely refreshing to play a J-Rpg that doesn't cast you as the savior of the universe within the first half hour of playing, where the evil is the evilest there ever was and wants nothing but death and destruction for no reason. In Grandia you play someone who just wants some fun and who finds himself in interesting situations and with interesting people because of it. There isn't really a main antagonist and definitely not an EVIL DARKNESS that you need to collect [insert generic crystals here] to thwart.

At least not yet - of course huge disclaimer for the fact that I haven't actually finished the game yet and so fully expect this storyline to come crashing down on me sooner or later, it is a J-Rpg after all. It is very surprising however how long the game designers decide to hold out on actual suspense. Like I said I am roughly 30 hours into the game and there is still very little to go on. They do some setting up early on that leaves you with promises but it quickly turns into the feeling that this is just a game about exploring.

They also level completely unevenly - gamingbus.com

But like I said, it is far from bad. The combat style I love from Grandia 2 was first used in Grandia. Firstly it means there are no random battles but enemies can be seen and generally avoided on the adventure screen. Once you do enter a battle, your characters and the enemy characters activate depending where they are on a meter. Once the meter reaches the end your character can choose to do all the regular stuff like use a magic or item, attack or run for instance. The big difference to other RPGs of the time like beforementioned Final Fantasy is that your characters aren't stationary but run around (very similar to the "Tales of" games) which adds another level of tactic to the fighting. So far the game has been pretty easy but the fun combat makes sure that you never tire of entering a battle. The game also does a Phantasy Star 4 in that it provides you with a very strong character mid-game, further alleviating exploration. Overall the style of battle seems to encourage an explorative behavior and there are a lot of items lying around waiting to be found.

gamingunion.net

The characters are also very likable. They're not particularly memorable in the way Sephiroth or heck even Millenia from Grandia 2 are. In fact for this post I had to google what their names were because they're so generic you forget them immediately (mainly Justin, Sue and Feena). But they're easygoing and fun, they never grate on you and eventhough the dialogue is simplistic it never makes me ashamed of the writers like in FFX.

The areas are fairly varied yet graphically drab, I don't expect or demand much else from the Playstation however and it's not really something that bothers me or takes away from the gameplay. They've made a lot of the surroundings interactable adding light puzzle elements to the game (and we're talking very light). A lot of other J-Rpgs developers could take note from the travel system - the world map is basically just areas that you've visited and once you've been to a place you can travel back to it from anywhere on same contintent. Running on the world map is such a huge time sink in some Rpgs that they've pretty much completely done away with in this game. There is also an arrow in the game to point you towards your next objective, which is a brilliant idea! Unfortunately it doesn't always update which had me running lost for quite a while before I realized how it worked.

So I am definitely having fun with the game, but I can't help but thinking in the back of my head "what is this game even about?". It feels so without direction I end up both admiring it and get confused by it. It's like the game creators thought to themselves "why can't we do an rpg where you just run around and do fun things, rather than try to avoid cataclysm?". And yeah I guess, why not? We'll see what I think once I am done with it.

Sunday Thoughts - Demos and Shareware

I downloaded and tried out the Yo-Kai Watch demo the other day and thought it was pretty alright. I actually thought the "watch" part referred to watching the yo-kai but apparently the main character has an actual watch... I quite liked the combat system, where you can get as involved as you want to be. Far from Pokémon where a lvl 3 Rattata and a lvl 50 Mewtwo take about as much effort to fight because of menus and text. I think it's a game I would have fun with, but it didn't wow me enough for me to want to buy it right away. The fact that I had just played a demo probably gave me more thought than the actual game did. I tried to remember the last time I played a demo of a game, I can honestly tell you I thought they were an extinct beast of the video game industry because I have completely missed them.

I could be completely wrong about this, but my idea is that demos used to be a thing of the computer game scene and has more or less switched to the console scene. I haven't heard of a computer game demo, or trial if you prefer to call them that, in ages. I could just have been living under a rock regarding that though, maybe they've been around all the time. I know of online-game trial periods of course, in a sense they are definitely like demos, but for some reason limited to the online games nowadays. Back in my day you got demos and sharewares (remember them?) for computer games and you rented games for consoles if you wanted to check them out. I don't recall being able to rent computer games, but maybe that was just a backwater Sweden limitation. I would mention playing games in video game stores, but since they're disappearing as well that is becoming less and less of an option. Not to mention, they might not front the game you're interested in.

REMAKE THIS! - eurospore.forumotion.com

Speaking of shareware, apparently also known as demoware, I haven't really come across that in video games anymore either. It was actually a style I quite liked as it often let you try a lot of, sometimes all of, the features of the program but limit it in some crucial way. My best memory of this was playing Escape Velocity (an amazing game that would get a remake if I ever became president), and if you didn't pay for your copy an enemy space ship would become increasingly annoying until it just flat-out destroyed you, thus making playing the game really difficult. But up until then, which I assume was triggered either by some sort of built-in timer or area in the game, I wasn't limited in any way. I would love this system for modern games, does anyone still do this?

The last demo I can remember playing was Wolfenstein 3D, we're talking mid 90's here! Admittedly my little brother did most of the playing since he was way more into shooting things than I was back then. The demo only contained the first three stages but I'm not even entirely sure that we realized this was only a tiny part of the game because we definitely treated it as a full-length game and played it over and over, yet never asked our parents to buy it. That might be because they probably never would have although I wonder why they let us play the demo in that case... The "final boss" of the demo was a dude so hardcore it required full blasting of the secret miniguns to get down, but he was probably not particularly difficult in actuality.

Always felt sorry for the dogs though - wraithkal.info

And now it seems consoles have taken over the demos, or at least Nintendo has. I think it's great. I often end up watching gameplay videos online before buying something to get an idea of whether the game will be fun for me or not, even if the trailer/information on the game seemed really promising. I've made too many mistakes in the past of judging a game by its cover, getting overly excited about something only to be crushingly disappointed when starting to play (yes I am looking at you Unlimited Saga). So what better than to actually get to try some gameplay? For me it's only win-win.

But I do miss the times when you'd get a demo-CD with your favorite video game magazine, the best thing about that that gets lost a bit with the modern style of downloading demos, is that you got a bunch of games that you might not have tried out otherwise. Since they were on the demo-CD you probably ended up checking them out and so there was a chance to find fun games you'd never look twice at otherwise. I guess the modern equivalent are the bundles in which at least I have found loads of great games I would've never had heard of otherwise (Darkout is a great example).

I don't know why computer games don't do demos anymore, or if they do I don't know why I seem to have completely missed it. All I hear is about pre-ordering stuff. But before I pay 60 euro for a game I might not enjoy, couldn't I get to play it for a little bit?

Toddler & Game - Whip The Hair Back and Forth

My son is almost 2,5 years old and so far I haven't actively encouraged him to play video games. We don't own any kind of tablet and I won't let him use my phone or PC (because he messes everything up!), so he's left to the consoles we have standing around. It's not that I'm worried he'll be too inactive, he spends about 80% of his awake time running around, but rather that I am worried about the well being of my consoles. The level he's been at so far is turning the consoles off and on again and as long as that was the case I prefered him doing other things.

But that is changing, and it is very interesting to see. It started with Yoshi's Story. I'm not sure how he got interested in the game to begin with, I was probably playing it at some point or other - but he loved the intro sequence and especially the music. After that it was impossible for me to try to play the game, he reset the console after the first minute or so of intro, rewatched, reset, rewatched and so on until I told him we'd go do something else (it didn't take long before I felt sorry for my N64). Same thing with Sonic on the Mega Drive (my bfs favorite game).

Eventually he would press a button on the controller, because hey! buttons are totally fun to press. And they are! In video games all kinds of things happen when you press the controller and he quickly figured that one button would make Yoshi eat stuff and the other would make Yoshi jump. So we licked and jumped a lot. But obviously he still had no grasp of the concept of the game, to get to the end of it. And when you're that age you make up your own rules and try out new things all the time. It's one of the most charming aspects of the age and I normally let him to it until he figures something out that he likes. Besides, who says you have to play games a certain way? The main focus is to have fun with them. I used to play Settlers 2 completely without enemies after all, simply because I enjoyed building up a society without the hassle of adversaries.

Sometimes however, I like to try things out and see what he thinks. Because the controller is way big for his wee little hands (they're totally cute), he can't push the buttons and make Yoshi walk at the same time. I decided to see if we could co-op play the game where I would make Yoshi walk and he would jump and eat things. And it was actually really fun! It was a huge challenge for me, since I needed to avoid dangers and make sure to not run into enemies/pits until the son was pressing the right buttons, and he was having a blast getting to eat fruits and jump over pits. Great success. Although resetting the console and watching the intro sequence is still what he enjoys most so far.

He had less trouble when it came to my N3DS, something I have been lending to him only very reluctantly because that is 150 euro of hardware he could decide to throw into the floor at any second. Not to mention my fear that he would accidentally erase some data from it, I've been through that horrible experience before (yes I am looking at you little brother!) As I was sitting next to him and supervising his every move I realized that there is actually a lot more for a toddler to enjoy about a 3DS than I initally thought. For instance I didn't have a clue that most main menu icons are sound triggered, in which they will move faster if you blow or speak into the mic. My son discovered this quickly and will sit yelling at the 3DS for a while before moving on to other things.

Next he discovered my Shantae and the Pirate's Curse in which he could shoot and hair-whip as Shantae, which he loved for some reason. It took him quite some time before he even tried to run around, and because he was at my end-game save he ran straight into the final boss... which he BEAT! I'll be completely honest and admit I activated Pike Ball for him, but other than that I didn't touch a single thing and he managed to finish the final boss of Shantae and the Pirate's Curse just by pressing things randomly (because I really doubt he knew what was actually going on).

He also found a drawing program I didn't even know the 3DS had (turns out it's the Letter Box feature where you can draw your own letters and also replay your drawing, it's quite cool) and the camera. Next time I checked he had taken 20 pictures of his feet and drawn 30 letters full of squigglies.

And that's the level we're at at the moment and it'll be interesting to see how that develops further on. I'm still not in a hurry for him to get any kind of hooked on video games, as I am certain the Minecraft curse will affect him too soon enough. But I am also not against him playing some every now and then as it is in fact interactive entertainment just as with any other toy. Who knows, I might let him inherit my Game Boy Advance SP for his third birthday. He would probably just look at it and wonder why there isn't a touch screen or camera though.

Sunday Thoughts - Year of the Pokémon

I bought and started playing Pokémon Red yesterday, eventhough I already own both Blue and Red on the original cartridge. My reasoning was that I have to use my Game Boy DS to play those and eventhough I really like that console, it's not as handy as my 3DS. Problem solved, thank you Nintendo! But you can pretty much slap the name Pokémon on anything and I will buy it. And it is definitely a good year to be a Pokémon fan. Not only did we get this surprise re-release (I at least had not heard of it until the day before it was released), there is the announcement of Sun and Moon and the already known Pokken and Pokemon Go to get excited about too. I guess I shouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth, but it sure would be cool with another Stadium/Colosseum game as well (as far as I can tell the last one was released 9 years ago!).

The most important choice you'll ever make in a game - nerdist.com

I've never played Red though, when I started out with the whole Pokémon thing I managed to get my hands on the Blue version. Not that they differ much, but I do prefer the exclusive Pokemon for Red than Blue. I was a bit late to the game back then, I was 14 when they were released but didn't get my own Game Boy and game until at least a year later. I swiftly started playing the TCG as well and was a couple of years older than pretty much everyone else playing it. I recall going to the Pokémon Club gatherings (we even had them in backwater Sweden, it says a whole lot about the popularity of the game) and being surrounded by kids 5-12 years of age whereas I was in my late teens. I really miss those times, it was good fun. Heck, I still have my Pokémon decks but no one to play with. I haven't played the TCG for 10 years though so players nowadays would consider my decks archaic at best.

I had partially forgotten how unforgiving the original games were, at least compared to the more recent releases. The Pokémon games were never particularly difficult, but if any of them are it would be the first gen ones. "When do I get my running shoes?" I naïvely asked my bf. "Aww, there aren't any running shoes in these games" he said and patted me on the head. Of course not, I should've remembered that. Nor do you get any starting Poke Balls and poison ticks outside of battle. Item Finder and XP Share were a lot less user friendly than they became in later games. There are no NPC conveniently standing around outside of caves waiting to heal your Pokémon either, you're on your own until you get to a town. I remember getting to Victory Road and giving up because I got stuck in some god forsaken cave and the random encounters were doing my head in. I'm not even sure I ever ended up beating the game. Well, time to rectify that then! The music is still brilliant though, squeezing every ounce of capability out of the Game Boy sound chip. I am already looking forward to getting to Lavender Town and not being able to sleep afterwards.

Mystery Dungeon are good fan service games - gamerant.com

Although I've far from tried every Pokémon spin-off, there are just so many, I've liked all the ones I have tried. Me and my friends played Pokémon Stadium loads, even the half-hearted mini-games, which makes me wonder if there was just nothing better for us to do or if our love for Pokemon also made us blind as to the quality of what we were playing. Pokémon Conquest was a cool crossover spinoff that I quite enjoyed. I don't technically count the Smash Bros games Pokémon spin-offs, but the Pokémon feature quite heavily and they're loads of fun. I've loved the Mystery Dungeon games I've tried, in fact I think they're my favorite Pokémon spin-off series. My only problem with them is the same I have for pretty much any Pokémon game - they're too simple. It says a lot about the quality of the gameplay when you're willing to play hours on end in a game that doesn't actually offer any kind of challenge. It can hardly be for the story either, so what makes Pokémon so compelling? I'm not even going to try and answer that question in what is supposed to be a relatively short post, let's leave that for another day. The funny thing is though, as I've pointed out before, eventhough there is a lot about Pokémon I think could be done better I never get bored and I keep getting back to it more than 15 years later. I can't think of another game series that I love and enjoy that deeply. And I'm hardly alone. If the Pokémon TCG clubs were to re-open, I'd be the 30-something among other 30-somethings.

I don't think Pokémon is going anywhere soon, in case anyone ever thought as much. Nintendo has a real nack for creating long lasting and loved franchises that aren't necessarily RPGs. In a way Pokémon has outgrown even Mario. You've got Pokémon in movies, series, cards (as mentioned), toys, merchandise... I already thought this was going to turn out to be a pretty good year for video gaming, but it has turned out to be a pretty good year to be a Pokémon fan as well.

I've written Pokémon so many times now, the word has lost its meaning...

Sunday Thoughts - Worked Up About The NX

The last issue of Gamesmaster 2015 had the typical "Games we're looking forward to" article, but also a short little tidbit about something that at least I found very interesting - rumours on the next console from Nintendo, currently dubbed the NX.

Eventhough I basically only play their 3DS nowadays, with short forays onto the N64 when the son feels up to it, I used to be all about Nintendo. I didn't get into PC gaming (which is what I mainly do nowadays) until I started playing WoW, and then I was pretty much only playing WoW for 8 years before I decided to check out other PC games. I definitely consider myself a PC gamer now, but it's a fairly recent thing. At the beginning it was almost exclusively Nintendo games (Mario Kart, Mario Party, Smash Bros, Yoshi's Story, Mario 64, Zelda OoT... and Golden Eye of course), sometimes rarely some Playstation game. My first console was the N64, it is what got me into gaming. So eventhough I don't play much of what they release nowadays, I'm still very curious about what they do. I've wanted to get a WiiU for ages, I just find the games too expensive... But back to the NX.

Probably not what it is going to look like - technewstoday.com

There are several things about the rumours that have me excited, in fact pretty much everything. Unfortunately, being rumours it might of course be that none of it will actually be true, but one can dream. Let's take a closer look at some of them;

The fact that Nintendo are talking about NX as a "dedicated game platform with a brand-new concept" isn't what is getting my knickers in a twist. Anything else would've been more of a surprise really since this is the road Nintendo have been driving down very decisively since they started doing video games. Say what you want about Nintendos antics, they've had their ups and downs, their good decisions and their bad decisions. But they stick with their ideals and I admire them for it, mostly. I may not have been a massive fan of everything they've churned out (I really disliked the Wii for instance) but I think everyone can agree that the video game industry would be a much more boring place without Nintendo in it (and definitely a completely different place alltogether). So we know the next console is going to be more of what Nintendo has been doing the last 30 years - originality and stubborness married into a console. It's often very hit or miss. But I have some high hopes for this one because...

Nintendo filed patents for a console without a disk drive in 2014 and 2015.What does this mean? How would a console play games if not from disks!? Cartridges of course. And it makes perfect sense. Nintendo was, and seemingly is, never a fan of the disk system. It took them many years to adapt to it, and first introducing their own little mini-disks (as in little disks, not actual Mini-Disks) with the Gamecube (they were totally cute btw, I loved them) before they finally succumbed and went with regular disks. (Is it disc or disk btw? I'm not sure...) I'd like to say it's because of some sort of nostalgic love Nintendo harbours for the practical little things, but I am pretty sure it's just because cartridges are a lot harder to pirate than discs. Nintendo were always on the sterner side regarding pirating, and that is almost worthy of a post in itself (go read Game Over by David Sheff for a lot of information on this, it's truly a great book).

I on the other hand do harbour a nostalgic love for cartridges and if Nintendo could somehow overcome the old issue of cartridges not being able to hold as much memory as discs, then I am all for it. The major drawback and something that has always bothered me about Nintendo is that it would mean yet another console that isn't backwards compatible, but what the heck... I've gotten used to it by now and I don't own any Wii/WiiU games anyway (yet). I don't know how big the current gen games are and if it's even feasible to put that into a cartridge of some sort, but I do love the idea, especially since it seems like...

Nintendo might do a proper crossover between their stationary and handheld console. In fact, looking at the WiiU controller it looks a lot like a Gameboy already so it seems like another logical step on the Nintendo path to go the whole hog and make both their next consoles parts of eachother. Gameboy has been connectable to the stationary since its inception, but it's always been somewhat wonky and rarely worthwhile (except in games like Pokemon Stadium). Does this mean we can play the same games on the stationary and the handheld? I'm not sure where Nintendo could go with this, nor am I sure I want to use something similar to my 3DS as a controller for my stationary Nintendo console. I haven't really tried the WiiU controller, but it seems clunky. I am sure however that if anyone can find an interesting solution to both those problems, it'd be Nintendo. Yet again, I am loving the idea.

And finally, another thing that has been bothering me about Nintendo and that they might do away with - region locking their consoles. To me it was particularly annoying that they region locked the 3DS. But to be the only console maker to region lock your stationary console in a world that is increasingly global and increasiongly imports games from all over the place? That just tells people you are not reading the market, or don't care - both things Nintendo can be accused of on a regular basis. Sometimes it makes them a much needed and fresh breath of air in the industry, sometimes it just makes you facepalm and wonder if they even want you to buy their things. I feel like the NX will balance on the fine line between those two extremes, as pretty much every other stationary console Nintendo has created has.

Extra big thanks to Gamesmaster #299 for the info!