Unfinished Look At Ys Origin - Lost Momentum

Considering RPGs are one of my favorite video game genres, there are frightingly many I haven't played. And I'm not even talking about individual games, but entire game series where I haven't played through a single game - eventhough I might have played a bit of a game here or there. Series like Dragon Quest, Secret of Mana, Shin Megami Tensei and Breath of Fire to name a few. A small reason for this is that I didn't play video games at all when a lot of these games were released, and so I've either had to play emulators or buy expensive copies (RPGs always tend to get really expensive over time). Another reason is that eventhough I love RPGs, I rarely have the patience to sit through the 40-some hours they want from me. I guess in the end I am actually quite picky and I've started up countless RPGs just to quit halfway because I got stuck on something lame. FFVI is one such game. And unfortunately so is Ys Origin.

The Ys series is yet another of many that I had never played a game of, until recently when I decided to get a bundle of them on GoG.com and see if they were any fun. I had in fact not even heard of the Ys series at all until a couple of years ago, somehow it's a series that just went under my radar. I asked around about which game to start with, since I had both Ys Origin and Ys I to choose from, but got the recommendation of going with Ys Origin. So I did.

slateman.net

And I liked it at first. I often do. Some RPGs suffer from a really dull opening hour or two of the game, like Suikoden V and Star Ocean 3. But Ys Origin got into the action fairly quickly and I liked the fast paced combat system. The story is dumb as two thick planks, something about some spirits or angels getting lost in a tower and your village goes in to investigate. As far as I understood it the entire game takes place in said tower, because for the 9 hours I played it I never got anywhere else. It looks good enough, but it's hardly thrilling. You get to choose between two different characters to play, a melee and a caster. I chose the caster, Hugo Fact, simply because I had had a streak of playing melee characters in other games up until this point and felt like I wanted to try something else. Apparently that might've been a bad choice since a friend told me Hugo Fact is the less fun of the two. I can't say anything to that since I never tried the melee character, but I thought playing Hugo was alright.

So as mentioned the story was completely uninspiring, the surroundings alright and the combat fairly fun. The game eased you in quite nicely and had some spikes of difficulty here and there that kept you on your toes. The bosses were generally fun and required a bit of tactic in the style of the Zelda games to beat. I remember I died over and over to one boss before I found out that you can actually run (I like being stupid like that) - making that particular fight a walk in the park. So I had a moderate amount of fun with Ys Origin, but as with many other RPGs I have tried to get through it was balancing on the scale, still leaning in on the "fun" side but could so easily slip into the "tedious" side. And then it happened.

I'm guessing I was about half way through the game (but I don't actually have a clue), when I came across a type of enemies that regenerated after you had killed them. You needed a special item to kill them dead - no problem. I found the item and continued on my merry way. Or so I thought. Suddenly I come across the same enemy, but as door guardians. Regular enemies but in a stronger iteration of which you have to kill a certain few to unlock a door, again it reminded me of the Zelda games. In this case it was three. So what was the problem?

I did 1 damage to these enemies. At first I sort of giggled at it. I've come across these kind of enemies in other games before - Castlevania is a good example. Often they're designed either to have a shit ton of health and you require a certain item to deal more damage to them, or they really only have a little health but maybe a dangerous skill or attack that you need to be vary of. These enemies however seemed to have both. They both had a shit-ton of health and they dealt a shit-ton of damage. I easily dealt a hundred damage (that is, a hundred attacks) to one of them without it dying, whereas he killed me in two or three strokes. Now I had to kill three of these guys consecutively, without saving inbetween, or they would just reset and I had to start over. It didn't matter really that I didn't have to take them on all at the same time. The fact that it took several minutes just to deal with one, only to possibly have all that time wasted after a few blows to my character was frustrating beyond words. It was frustrating way beyond fun. (I only found the above video while researching for this post, but I hate having to do cheap tactics to deal with enemies. That is bad design).

All I could think was - "why would you design an enemy like this or an event like this?". As an optional side-quest/kill to get a special item, sure. As a way to progress the story? Hell no.

My mind when I realized what I had to do - gamefaqs.com

At first I was certain I was doing it wrong. Surely there must be some item I needed to make it easier? But if there is, I never figured it out. So I assumed I had to resort to good old grinding. Now, I am not a huge fan of grinding levels in games, but I will definitely get my hands down and dirty with it if I need to. Or rather, if I feel like it's worth it. I have done it in many, many other games and I had already done it a couple of times in Ys Origin before this point in the game. I did try to get another couple of levels, realizing that each level only made the fight against these monsters marginally easier, making the 15-20 minuted I had spent with mindless grinding so not worth it. I decided that enough was enough. The game had its strong points, or at least one strong point in the combat, but nothing else to make me want to put in that level of effort. And even if the combat is fun, if you have no reason to see what happens at the end of a game there is only so far the combat can take you. I had already done 9 hours of combat, it definitely wasn't enough of a motivating factor to make me want to go through this tedious part of the game when I felt like there was no reward to it.

It's unfortunate, because for all its flaws Ys Origin at least had momentum enough to keep me interested on very little for a whole 9 hours. Being able to basically spam your way through enemies was rewarding enough (as any good hack'n'slash will tell you), but that all came crumbling down when the momentum was brought to a literal stop. I don't mind doing a couple of tries on a boss or a tricky area, in fact without a bit of challenge a game is no fun either. But I just felt like this was a cheap trick at wasting my time, and I didn't want any of it.

In the future I might give it another go with the melee character instead, eventhough I really don't think this particular part of the game will be any more easy or fun. For now however, Ys Origin is just another game on my list of "almost fun"-games that I could never bother to get through.

(Ps. There won't be any posts for two weeks, because I am travelling. See you in May!)

Review of Tribloos 2 - Time Management Optional

I've got an ambigious relationship to puzzle games. On the one hand I think they can be an awesome way to spend those tidbits of time you find yourself with here and there, on the other hand I am easily frustrated and pretty much require a simplistic gameplay to stick around. This means I pass over more intricate puzzle games like Braid, Myst and Safecracker immediately whereas I'll play Bejeweled or Tetris as much as the next person. I think where I get frustrated is whether I have to figure what needs to be done to move on or not. Games like Bejeweled or Tetris are extremely straightforward as to what the goal is, doing it as good as possible is the challenge. Games that require logical and/or out of the box thinking are just not for me. It's funny then that eventhough I do enjoy the simplistic puzzlers, I spend exactly zero amount of time on Facebook and smartphone games. I think the cash-grabbiness that haunts 95% of those games has just sucked the fun out of it for me... but that's a topic for another post!

Didn't even hear about the first game...

Then you've got the puzzle games that are a little bit inbetween, like Tribloos 2. And I think in a way they might be the best ones. Because as a time-management game, Tribloos 2 gives you the incentive for careful planning and logical thinking, but the gameplay is designed so that it's not necessary. Getting a good time score is just a bonus to your points, not a requisite to advance in the game. That suits me perfectly.

Funnily enough, my very first thought when starting up Tribloos 2 (I've got it on Steam) was that it looked exactly like a Facebook game. I mean this in the same sense you can recognize a 16-bit or 64-bit game by their aesthetics, you can pretty much spot a Facebook/Ios game by the way they look as well. I had never heard of Tribloos nor Tribloos 2 and I have no idea how it ended up in my Steam library. Probably the same way a lot of other games have, through some bundle or other (I've found surprisingly many good games through bundles).

The story of Tribloos 2 is simple enough and obviously just an excuse to get the puzzling going. You're basically controlling a bunch of Tribloos that need to rebuild various buildings throughout the 75 stages that the game apparently holds (I've currently reached stage 50 or so). At first it reminded me a bit of Lemmings in that you need to manage where to go and what to do with the Tribloos. Different buildings allow you to harvest recourses (there are also resources scattered around the stages) that allow you to build further buildings - in this it reminded me a bit of games like Settlers or Warcraft (without any of the fighting). The challenge lies in managing your recources and Tribloos (technically also a resource), so that they're put to the most effective use throughout the stage.

Tribloos can't breathe underwater, silly buggers

The stages vary from forest, to air, to sea, to underground (at least as far as I've come) and the game throws in new recources and challenges to manage all along. As mentioned, graphically and aesthetically it does what it needs to do without any wow-factor. It gives you information about the stage and is definitely more practical than eye pleasing, but the Tribloos themselves are pretty charming. I find it hilarous that the game actually loads graphics when you start it up, because there can hardly be anything to load.

The game eases you into the concept nice and slow, and personally I don't feel like it ever forces any real challenge on you. This is both its strength and its weakness. If you want to, and don't give a damn about the time score, you can play this game without giving it much thought at all. If you just keep some rule of thumb in mind, like always making sure to build the lumber mill that allows for unlimited planks first, the game rarely throws you any curve balls or tricks you into wasting your resources in the wrong places.

Work work - (3rd-strike.com)

If you do care about the time score however, you'll probably need to scout out the level ahead and plan every step of the way. Some levels throw in an aspect of timing, where you need to deploy your Tribloos at the right time to not waste time. Some levels are basically designed like bonus stages and play a bit with the concept, I definitely prefer the standard levels however. Overall, Tribloos 2 reminds me a bit of Yoshi's Story, or the Hard Modes (not heroic modes) in World of Warcraft. The way you play the game basically decides whether it's going to be any challenge or not. Whether you're going to beat the stage or not is never the issue, whether you're going to do it good and get the extra rewards is however.

I like Tribloos 2, as a game to play for a bit here and there it's alright. It really feels like it's perfectly designed to be played on the go. It's great in the sense that it doesn't matter whether you want a challenge or just something to waste a bit of time with, you decide how the level plays out and this just further emphasises the Facebook-game feel. I wouldn't say it's worth the 9 euro Steam wants for it normally (when posting this it's actually 90% off), because unfortunately the gameplay doesn't feel well enough worked out. Eventhough I enjoy the fact that the game is simple at its core, it's almost too simple, removing a lot of the feeling of satisfaction of completing a stage (a problem I find most Facebook games seem to have). The time score alone doesn't make up for this, personally I would've prefered a more complicated stage layout that required more planning to manage your resources, and not just your time. I am torn between liking that it's not just designed for puzzle nerds, and thinking that that in turn makes it too simple to be worth 9 euro. But if you're into puzzles and have a euro lying around, this might well be worth checking out.

Top 5 Pokémon Battle Themes

Welcome to my list of the Top 5 Pokémon Battle Themes! Let's just state straight away that this list is wholly subjective, biased and completely unprofessional. It also focuses on the battle themes from the main series games, so no anime or spin-off games. Many tunes are simply remixes of older versions but are for this list treated as their own entry which means I've picked the one I prefer. I can say there isn't really any battle theme in the Pokémon series I don't like, so choosing only five for this was actually not an easy task. Overall I feel like the OST for the Poksémon game series is among the strongest game OSTs out there, mostly because they continously hold a high standard and there are just very few outright weak tunes (I can't actually think of one off the top of my head).
Hope you enjoy!

First pokémon many saw and owned - bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net

5. Wild Battle from Red/Blue/Yellow
Not only is this the very first battle tune that was ever heard in any Pokémon game, it's also a damn good one. I love how it makes you feel like it's serious business whether you fight those damn Rattata or a much cooler Scyther. The background baseline implies that you need to give the situation some thought while the high-pitched tune urges you on. It definitely makes all those battles against Zubats a lot less horrible, and makes a good job at not outstaying its welcome. That is no easy feat for a tune heard so often and it requires quite a lot of skill to make it interesting enough to keep your adrenaline going for even the most mundane battles without grating on your patience.

4. Gym/Elite 4 Battle from Fire Red/Leaf Green
This tune starts out so brilliantly, immediately letting you know "ok brace yourself, you're in for a hell of a fight". Eventhough it gives you time to breath and feel like you've got time to think tactically, it keeps up its pace and sense of danger. Overall the pacing is great in this tune, going so smoothly from thrilling to slightly slower and more swaying bits like its nothing, you barely even notice it before you're back in the action again. It really says "ready or not, here I come", which suits this one-on-one tune perfectly.

Don't bring a camel to a shark battle - youtube.com

3. Maxie & Archie Battle from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald
It's something about those trumpets, or whatever instrument it's trying to immitate, that makes this tune manage to balance on the edge of bombastic without tipping over onto pathetic. I love how it's fairly simplistic and in a way generic but I can still listen to it over and over without getting bored. It has all the elements needed for a good boss tune - a cool, slick, crispness, like it doesn't need to do more to make you shit bricks in the presence of these leaders. It only adds to their personality and makes you feel all the more awesome when or if you beat them.

2. Trainer Battle from Ruby/Sapphire/Emerald
It was so close between this one and the trainer battle theme from Fire Red and Leaf Green. I love the arrangement of this tune, it feels like so much thought went into where each part goes and what it does to the feeling of the battle. Listening to it it's easy to imagine two Pokémon duking it out, first flailing wildly, backing off to take a breather, scrutinizing eachother and then at it again. It's a tune that tells a story and it's cleverly balanced so that it will enhance whatever happens in your battle. It takes real skill to be able to write a tune that sounds like it was made exactly to fit the specific battle you're in and still be generic enough to actually fit any.

Must need a lot of wax - pokemon.wikia.com

1. Lysandre Battle from X&Y
This is almost in a league of its own. If you have a playlist of Pokémon tunes and this comes on, not only do you get a bit of a shock at its absolute awesomeness, but my first thought was "wait a minute, is this from Pokémon?". It's such a short part of the entirety of the game that the tune doesn't get anywhere near the exposure it deserves and so it would be easily forgotten if it wasn't for the fact that it is the best of them all. What I really love about this tune is that it could fit pretty much any boss in any RPG and do it justice. Just as with Maxie and Archie's theme, it's fairly simple in its layout, especially compared to some other battle themes in the series. But it immediately grips you and just doesn't let go. And when you've heard it once you're not even sure what just happened and you want to hear it again. And again. It's simply a beautifully composed tune.

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?