It's been a while, Ezio.

I started playing Assassin’s Creed Revelations the other day.  I really loved Assassin’s Creed 2, and enjoyed Brotherhood.  But Revelations…just isn’t doing it for me.  I only played for about 45 minutes though…maybe I just need to get back into the groove of things.

It’s just that, after coming from games like Arkham City, which do a lot of what Revelations does better than Revelations itself, suddenly this latest Assassin’s Creed entry feels super dated.  It doesn’t help that I know I don’t have much to look forward to in regards to new toys.

I don’t know if I’m gonna write a review for it.  I know I won’t score it, because I only intend to go through the singleplayer, as I’ve been meaning to.

In other news, Gamefly has Catherine on sale.  I think I’ll buy it.   I couldn’t afford to when I played it, but that game is really good, and I don’t like letting really good games get away from me.

I also played a little bit of Civilization V last weekend.  I just can’t express how phenomenally addictive that game is.  I already won my scientific victory, now I’m playing the part of the global bouncer, and have started my campaign against Siam, who’ve been bullying just about everyone BUT me (because I’m so much bigger and more prosperous than them).  The plan is to basically leave Siam’s original territory a nuclear wasteland, while liberating the Japanese cities.

If I had known that you could continue playing after winning (I really should have guessed), I would have destroyed Siam a lot sooner.  They were getting too big for their britches.

A Note on Xenoblade Chronicles

So recently, this game called Xenoblade Chronicles was granted a quiet localization by Nintendo.  People wouldn't stop raving about it, so I convinced myself to dust off my Wii (which I had thought for sure I would never turn on again) and give it a shot.  I'm glad I did.

I'm not going to write a review for the game, because I literally do not have enough time to spare on it (it's a huge game; like Dark Cloud 2 huge).  But I wanted to take some time mention that it really is one of the better JRPGs of the generation.

From what I could tell from the couple of hours I put into it, Xenoblade Chronicles doesn't really try to do anything brand new, gameplay wise.  Instead, it takes traditional ideas and simply focuses on executing them well.  There's fetch quests, yeah.  But the game helps you separate quest items (even items that aren't actually quest items yet because you haven't accepted the related quest) with markers.  It also gives most quest givers a name and a bit of background.  Every named NPC shows up on a big ol' relationship chart that fills out itself as you talk to more people.  Small things like these add up to put a fresh spin on stale mechanics.  Xenoblade also adopts the modern JRPG trend of reducing player reliance on items and inns by not having items and having your health rapidly recharge outside of battle.

What actually hooked me, and what made me finally decide to give Xenoblade Chronicles a shot was the story and setting, however.  The game spans the bodies of two giant titans--Bionis and Mechonis--who have been fighting since the beginning of time.  One supports organic life, and the other machines, known as Mechons.  Just like the beings on which they reside, humans are locked in an eternal conflict with Mechons, who invade from Mechonis periodically to murder and kidnap people for seemingly no reason.  The story revolves around Shulk, who comes to possess a powerful, mysterious anti-Mechon weapon called the Monado, and decides to use it strike back against the Mechons.

It's not often you play a game with such a unique setting.  Hearing Gametrailers' review describe it, I found myself instantly hooked.  It doesn't hurt the characters and the way they interact with each other is well-written and feels genuine.  The game was originally localized for Europe, so the voice acting is permeated by British accents; but this only helps further separate Xenoblade from the rest of its contemporaries, as anyone who's played a fair number of JRPGs in English will know that the genre pulls from a fairly small pool of dubbing actors.

So I'm glad I gave this game a chance.  It's really neat and I'd recommend it to anyone who's interested in JRPGs.  Unless you didn't like Final Fantasy 12.  It does feel very similar to that game.

Tales of Graces f

Despite rarely gaining as much attention as other JRPG classics like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest, Namco’s Tales series is actually quite prolific.  The series’ claim to fame has always been exciting combat coupled with a colorful cast and strong character interaction, rather than deep stories or unique visual elements.  Unfortunately only a fraction of the Tales games are available in English, but Namco Bandai has seen fit to add one more to the stateside roster; Tales of Graces f.

Tales of Graces f is actually an enhanced port of Tales of Graces, a Wii game.  This PS3 version includes new gameplay features, but most importantly, adds an epilogue to the main story, known as “Lineage and Legacies”, or the “Future arc” (see where the “f” comes from?).

Every Tales game’s story tends to revolve around a central theme or concept.  With Tales of Graces, it’s friendship.  The narrative begins in the childhood of our main character Asbel Lhant.  Asbel and his younger brother Hubert live in the peaceful town of Lhant, whiling away their days exploring.  During one of their playful expeditions, they come across a young girl lying in a meadow.  The girl is revealed to have amnesia, having no idea who she is or where she came from.  The group takes her back to town, and while deciding what to do with her, settles on the name “Sophie”, after the sopheria flowers they had found her lying in.  Sophie and Asbel become fast friends.

When the young Prince Richard comes to Lhant, Asbel and friends sneak into his room and invite him out to play.  Richard is suspicious at first, explaining that everyone who’s ever been friendly to him only did so because they wanted something from him.  But after a day filled with fun and adventure, Asbel and Sophie convince him otherwise.  The three form a friendship pact, vowing that whatever happens, they’ll always be friends.

This prologue, while perhaps a bit too long, lays the groundwork for the game’s main story arc, which takes place seven years later.  Asbel is now a knight-in-training, and a skilled swordsman.  When Prince Richard goes rogue, it’s up to him to find out what happened to his best friend.  So begins an epic quest in the name of eternal friendship.

While it has its moments (the friendship pact scene was surprisingly moving) the story in ToGf won’t win any awards for its complexity or level of engagement.  Many of the plot twists can be seen coming from a mile away.  Fortunately, the plot is saved by its characters.  Not all of the cast is perfect—Asbel is as generic as you can get—but you can expect some great personalities.  Special notice should go to Pascal, a young female engineer who manages to be dumb as a doorknob, brilliantly intelligent, and hilarious; often all at the same time.

Where the plot falls, skits and a veritable horde of sub-events pick up the slack.  Skits, a Tales series staple for some time now, are basically small optional cutscenes where you watch the characters chat about all manner of things (often not relevant to the plot in the slightest).  This usually leads to silly things happening like Hubert getting his pants in a twist over Cheria’s skirt length, and Pascal and Richard plotting to make a law that requires every citizen to eat natto for breakfast.  Though they probably aren’t for everybody, skits help flesh the characters out immensely, and keep the atmosphere fun and lighthearted throughout the game.  In short, they’re great.

Tales of Graces f’s real shining factor, however, is its combat.  As mentioned before, Tales has always been known for its combat, and Graces delivers on this more than any game in the series so far.  Essentially, each character has two fighting styles (known as A and B artes) that you switch between on the fly mid-combat.   The A-artes are linked together into a single combo tree, not unlike an action game or beat ‘em up in the vein of Bayonetta or even God of War.  B-artes are more traditional, allowing you to map several arts to the Circle button (in combination with the left stick).

For example, Asbel is a straightforward melee attacker, who uses a sword.  In his A-arte tree, he fights with his sword sheathed, in a series of focused, quick strikes.  With his B-arte tree, he draws his sword and gains access to wider range attacks that are more powerful.  Hubert uses a blade staff (think Darth Maul) and dual pistols as his A and B artes, respectively.  Sophie uses fast, acrobatic hand-to-hand martial arts in her A-arte tree, but switches to powerful light-based magic with her B-artes.

Each character plays vastly differently, due in part to subtle quirks that are unique to them.  When Asbel draws his sword, for instance, he is unable to be staggered for a certain number of hits.  The hit counter resets however, when he sheathes his sword again.  However, depending on how many hits he dished out with his sword unsheathed, he also gains a health boost when he sheathes.  Thus you find yourself thinking of the best ways to switch between sheathed and unsheathed frequently, mid-combo while maximizing your benefits.

Sophie and Hubert are melee attackers much like Asbel, but whereas Asbel benefits from an aggressive approach, Hubert can back out of close quarters to spray an enemy with gunfire before dashing back in to slice them up with his dualblade.   Sophie’s attacks, on the other hand are powerful but often fast and wild.  Some of her most potent attacks travel very far, leaving her out of the fray and forcing the player to think about how to follow up if they don’t want to lose their combo or end up in a vulnerable position.

Combat takes place in a 3D arena, but you move on a 2D plane.  You can hold L2 to Free Run, but it’s slower than normal movement and you can’t attack.  Otherwise, you change your “alignment” by sidestepping, dashing, and backstepping.  Of course, this is also how you dodge attacks.

Most of your actions in combat, whether it’s attacking with a B-arte, A-arte, or even dodging, are governed by a single resource known as Chain Capacity, or CC.  This manifests as a large number beside your health bar.  There is no TP, or “mana” bar.  Only CC.  Each attack costs a certain amount of CC to execute (generally, the more powerful the attack is, the more it will cost).  Once you’re out of CC, you can’t attack until it recharges (which happens rapidly).  The first step in becoming an effective fighter in Tales of Graces f is learning how to manage your CC, squeezing as much out of your allocated amount as possible.

I have to say, Tales of Graces f might have the most fun combat system I’ve ever experienced.  It’s difficult to explain in words, and it takes a pretty long time before you’re really allowed to stretch your legs (you don’t have B-artes at all throughout the couple hour-long childhood arc and not enough CC to experiment with combos until around 10 hours in, at least).  However, once the combat hits its stride, it never stops getting better.  Just when you think you’ve got everything down and you think your enjoyment is plateauing, the game introduces or suggests a new mechanic or facet to keep things fresh and engaging.  Once you wrap your head around switching between A and B artes, then you have combos to learn about.  Once you learn combos, you have mystic artes (flashy super moves you can pull off under special circumstances) to toy around with.  Once you’ve learned a few mystic artes, you have attributes to consider.  Even after the main arc has finished and you’ve started the future arc, the game throws another mechanic at you in the form of Accel mode.  And that’s if you only play one character throughout the entire game.  Every character has a completely different A-arte tree, a completely different set of B-artes, and often requires a different approach as well.  There is a learning curve to each character (some more than others), but it’s fun to experiment and see which ones suit your play style most.  I personally rotate between Hubert, Pascal and Sophie regularly.

The fun only multiplies when you add in extra players.  Like most other Tales games, Tales of Graces f supports 4 player co-op, with each player controlling one character.  You can also switch between characters mid-combat on the fly using the D-pad.  Unfortunately, it takes a while to get used to this game’s combat, and there’s no place especially designed for co-op (even the ‘coliseum’ in the game is restricted to one character at a time).  I haven’t had the best luck finding friends willing to sit down with me long enough to really get into the game’s combat like I have, but best of luck to you.

When you defeat enemies, you gain two resources: XP and SP.  As in most RPGs, XP increases your level once enough is gained, which in turn increases your HP and base stats.  However, much of your character progression in Tales of Graces f will also be handled by SP and Titles.  Titles are somewhat like achievements that you can individually equip on each character.  There are dozens of titles to unlock for each character for doing a range of things, from using certain skills often to simply talking to a certain number of people.  Of course, you’ll also unlock a number of titles simply as you progress through the story.  In addition to an active perk gained from having the title equipped, each title has five levels you can progress through by gaining SP.  With each level comes a new skill, benefit or even a new A or B arte to use in battle.  Most titles even come with stat buffs that you can gain from them.  The benefits you gain from a title are permanent, even after you unequip the title to work on another one.  In this way, the title system drives character progression even more so than the traditional levels gained from XP.

Titles and XP are one way to give yourself an edge in battle.  The other way is Dualizing.  With Dualizing, Namco has managed to consolidate the traditional cooking, crafting, and upgrading systems often present in other JRPGs into one.  The premise of Dualizing couldn’t be simpler.  You take two items, put them together and they become one new item.  Sometimes those two items are ingredients to a pie or cooking dish.  Sometimes they’re crafting materials.  Other times they’re a weapon and an upgrade shard.  What matters is that you only need two compatible items to Dualize.  The Dualizing system has a lot more to it than meets the eye (especially once you get into making gems), but like with many of its mechanics, the game encourages experimentation rather than dumping information on you expanding on the system’s intricacies.

When it comes to production values, Tales of Graces f is mostly average in every way.  Much of it probably has to do with the game’s origins as a Wii game.  The visuals, while very colorful (whether it’s the environments, the characters or their flashy moves) aren’t technically great.  The animations are stiff and simple, but serviceable.  The areas and dungeons are large and varied, but empty and sometimes bland.  Generally, the game runs at a steady clip and has been completely devoid of any glitches so far, but later on in the game where everyone has access to high level artes, you’ll find that the game’s engine sometimes has trouble rendering so many special effects at once, resulting in a dip in framerate.  The game’s plot is bolstered by several anime cutscenes in full HD, at least.

The music is nothing to write home about; there’s even one instance where I’m certain the BGM is being looped every few seconds.  The dubbing is pretty good overall, though I imagine some people will find Sophie’s voice grating.

There’s no denying that in a lot of ways, Tales of Graces f isn’t much more than a typical JRPG.  You’ve got your colorful cast, generic theme, and JPop opening.  There’s even a beach segment.  But if you’re okay with all that, you should know that you’re in for one of the most entertaining JRPGs the PS3 has to offer.  An 8.5/10

Final Fantasy XIII-2: I give up.

I was chugging through Final Fantasy XIII-2.  I really was.  But eventually, I just stopped.  I didn't want to play it anymore.

And still feel kinda conflicted about it.

I liked Final Fantasy XIII.  Whereas everyone else thought it was terrible and disappointing, I thought it was refreshing and fun.  So I was hesitantly interested in XIII-2, despite some concerns I had.

And then I played it.  Here's where the problem lies: while there honestly isn't much I can say I don't like about this game, I can't bring myself to call it fun.  The interest just isn't there.  But let's talk about the good stuff first.

From a mechanical standpoint, FF13-2 ranges from completely competent to stellar, and it's safe to say that it's an improvement on its predecessor in a lot of ways.  It's structured far better, to begin with, featuring vast open environments connected together in a web by an easily navigable hub known as the Historia Crux.

It's also still one of the better looking games out there.  Models are sharply detailed and display constant and expressive animation (the faces in particular are surprisingly well done) both in and outside battle.  As mentioned before, the areas you explore are expansive, colorful and suitably varied.  There's a lot of palette swapping on the enemies, but there aren't a lot of RPGs that don't use the ol' color swap trick to get away with duplicating assets.

The audio is also excellent.  Aside from some odd additions (including a heavy metal track complete with screaming), the soundtrack is still phenomenal, and the dubbing is well done; which is to say the voice actors do what they can with the script.

I can't even really complain about the gameplay, which is completely solid.  The battle system, one of the highlights from FF13, returns mostly unchanged, but now instead of a full party of actual characters, you get two characters and one monster.  I have a fundamental dislike for monster recruiting as a mechanic, because I firmly believe that it's nothing more than a show of laziness.  But I can't deny that the system is well executed here.  The only newly introduced mechanic I do not like is the concept of wounding.  Often you'll encounter enemies who can hit you so hard they literally reduce your maximum HP for the duration of the battle, limiting how long you can fight before it's simply no longer feasible to continue on.  It's not unlike having an enemy cast Doom on you in that it places an arbitrary limit on how long you can fight before it's pretty much game over.

Still, the Paradigm system is probably the best thing FF13-2 has going for it.  I love this system a lot, and battles in this and FF13 make a statement about archaic traditional JRPG combat has become.  Instead of navigating through static menus to command a grid of sprites to attack a formation of enemies opposite them using simple and/or repetitive animations, battles in 13-2 are filled with motion.  The camera is constantly on the move to provide dynamic angles, as the characters move and attack constantly with vigor and expression.
 Not to mention the UI is as simple as it can be while still maintaining functionality.  I think the genre could learn a lot from how the Fabula Nova Crystallis games do combat.

There's loads of sidequests in the game, though for the most part they consist entirely of fetch tasks.  The game puts a spin on this however, by often asking you to hunt down something from another time.  Like I said, in a lot of ways it's a substantial improvement over 13.

The problem is the story.  I've never experienced a game that did so much right but still managed to be so aggressively uninteresting.  The premise is that at the end of FF13, Lightning is more or less whisked away into another time and dimension, and everyone's memory of her is altered so that they think she joined Fang and Vanille in the crystal.  Sarah, Lightning's younger sister, is the only one who remembers what really happened.  The game opens as Lightning fights some epic (and admittedly random) battle with the game's apparent antagonist, Caius.  Some dude from the future named Noel appears, and Lightning sends him on his way to find Sarah and bring her to him.  Noel finds Sarah, and the two begin the journey, traveling through time and solving people's problems in the various eras they visit.

The problem is that none of this is interesting or engaging.  Serah wasn't really a character in FF13.  She spends 98% of the game crystallized.  Noel's just some dude.  I don't know what Caius's goals are, why he's being a dick to people.  I don't know why Lightning's in Valhalla and commanding an army of beasts in some never-ending war.   And I can't bring myself to care.  Maybe the issue is that the game gives you so many things to wonder and ponder about, and fails to explain a single one of them for such an incredible length of time that after a while you just give up.  You don't care what the answers are to all your questions anymore.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a great game wrapped around a terrible story.  Normally this would not be a bad thing.  Plenty of games get away with having terrible stories (Just Cause 2, for example).  But that doesn't work in an RPG, where the story encompasses much of the entire experience.

I'm not going to finish Final Fantasy XII-2.  Maybe if I had more free time, I'd consider working through it more, but I can't justify playing it when I could be having fun with other games.  If you can muster some enjoyment from the plot though, you should be in for a solid experience.

Working on a review for XIII-2

It's been a while, but I'm not dead, and I have been playing games.

I've been playing Final Fantasy XIII-2, Dark Souls, Resident Evil 4, and Civilization 5, mainly.  Of those, the only one I plan to do a write up for is XIII-2.  It's a good game, I'll say that right now.  There isn't a lot that I don't like about it, but the story is so boring and uninteresting that, despite the gameplay ranging from fully competent to great, I'm not inspired to finish it.  But I want to finish it, and write about it.

I bought Dark Souls when it came out in October, but it was probably a full month or so before I took the shrinkwrap off.  Even so, I stopped playing for a couple of months after I beat the gargoyles in Undead Parish.  Now I've picked it up again, and I'm playing the hell out of it.  Truth be told, I could have beaten it weeks ago, but I have an overbearing tendency to stop in every new location and sit there for hours, days even, doing co-op.  And I mean EVERY location.  I stopped in Undead Parish, I stopped in the Depths, I stopped in Blighttown, I stopped in Anor Londo, I stopped in the Duke's Archive, I stopped in the Painted World, I stopped in the Tomb of Giants, and I stopped for a full week in the Demon Ruins and Lost Izalith.  I would be chilling in New Londo with my sign down too, but the pickings aren't too great there.  Might be the final boss is my last hope for co-op.  Over 80 hours on my character, and I haven't even killed all four lords on my first playthrough, yet.  I've been dicking around, for sure.

No review for Civilization V.  That game is amazing.  If you have the cash and like turn based strategy, go buy it.

Resident Evil 4 I'm playing through for the first time on PS3.  It's cool, though I'm in the minority in preferring 5.  I think the gameplay is smoother, though that's to be expected.  And a lot of the enemy encounters in RE4 are just painfully typical.  You walk into a room, the doors lock behind you, and a mob of guys run in.  Repeat ad nauseum.  It's also a very stressful game, but that just goes to show how well they crafted item management.

I was going to do a writeup for Costume Quest, but I deleted it off my PS3 promptly after beating it.  That in itself is kind of a sign, I guess.  It's different, and it's pleasant, but it's also just a little bit repetitive, and gets boring towards the end.  Because I have such an excess of space on my system, I rarely delete games, but after I beat Costume Quest I instantly knew deep down that I wasn't going to play it again.