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casualotptrash · 4 years ago

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Why the Persona 3 FES vs Portable Debate Makes Me Want to Fly Into the Sun Pt. 1

Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3

Yes, this is an emotionally fueled rant about Persona 3. No, this is not meant to send hate at those who enjoy Persona 3 FES or dislike Persona 3 Portable.

That being said, this discussion mentally pains me. I won’t go into all of my opinions on the matter here (I’ll probably go into it later with more posts), but I will be talking about one of the most prevalent “points” that I see being brought up every time the comparison between FES and Portable is made:

“Just play FES with the controllable party members mod.”

This point, although it doesn’t say so directly, essentially sends the message to anyone who doesn’t know the differences between the two games that the only thing Portable has to offer (besides the obvious changes to the game) is controllable party members. For the sake of this post, I won’t be going into the obvious changes such as having cutscenes and The Answer in FES compared to no cutscenes and a FeMC route in Portable. Instead, I’m going to rant about every other positive change I can remember that no one seems to talk about.

1. Jealousy Mechanic

Unlike in FES, the jealousy mechanic is completely erased in the Male Route. The dialogue/warning will still show up after hanging out with multiple female social links, but the social link will never reverse or break because of this. Social links are already a pain to try and max out in a run, even on NG+ without a guide, so the fact that you don’t have to stop seeing a social link for awhile or focus on just one girl at a time means this will at least be marginally easier in Portable. For those who don’t care about maxing out all of the social links, it’s still a relief because you can hang out with whatever social link you want without any penalty. This doesn’t apply to the Female Route as there isn’t a jealousy mechanic even implemented into that.

2. Fatigue Mechanic

For the pure amount of people I see complain about Tartarus, and don’t get me wrong I’m one of them too, I cannot comprehend how they fail to mention this change. In Portable, the fatigue mechanic is totally gone. Much like the jealousy mechanic, the text is still there where the navigator will say you’re getting tired, but no one actually gets the tired effect until you leave Tartarus completely. This means you can bust out a whole block in one sitting, if you so choose. I found this extremely useful because I hated being in Tartarus and this allowed me to just get it all done quickly instead of having to go back and forth from the Dark Hour multiple times.

3. Various Battle Mechanics

In addition to adding the “direct” command to the tactics menu (allowing controllable party members), Portable also adds the “defend” option. This is akin to the “guard” option in the other games where you use your turn to gain more defense. The combat system has also been improved to function more like P4′s in the way that you can get a 1-more from knocking just one enemy down, it no longer takes a full turn for a party member to get up after being knocked down (so you can stand up and immediately do your turn), party members can follow up with a co-op attack if you knock an enemy down, and after a certain social link event for the team social link party members can take a fatal blow for the MC. Again, I don’t know how people are not talking about any of these changes besides the “direct command” addition while also complaining about how Tartarus is a slog. You know what makes it less like a slog? All of these additions.

4. Equipment Menu

Many of the changes not talked about are tweaks to Tartarus/battle gameplay, and this is another one of them. Although more of a small quality of life change to save some hassle, I personally appreciate any change that makes Tartarus easier to get through. In FES, if you wanted to change your party member’s equipment, you would have to talk to the party member who you wanted to change the equipment for. That means if you wanted to change your whole party you would have to do your own first and then talk to your three other party members individually. Portable changes this so that there is one overarching equipment menu that you can access (like in the future games) and change their equipment there.

5. Fusion skills being items + Personas giving you skill cards

This is probably one of the smaller changes, but it can still be really useful. First off, fusion skills in FES are activated when you have two specific personas needed for the skill, but in Portable fusion skills can be bought as items from a store. They cost “gems” that are collected in Tartarus and I think some can be acquired as rewards for quests. This can be useful if you want to use a fusion skill without needing to have the two specific personas taking up slots. Additionally, every persona now gives the player a skill card once they reach a certain level with them. Skill cards can also be bought for gems in the same store that fusion skill items can be bought from. With how fusion works in P3, in which skills are unable to be specifically selected to pass onto the persona being fused, having skills cards is a pretty good change.

6. More Tartarus events/anomalies

Sometimes when going into Tartarus, “anomalies” can occur. This ranges from entering a floor and having your whole party be separated or entering a floor and having no shadows present. Portable adds four new anomalies, and although they may not add much sometimes they can be pretty helpful. The four new events are experience gain will increase on the floor, enemy items drops will increase, the floor will become dark and the auto-mapping feature in game is temporarily disabled, and upon entering the floor it can be fully mapped by the navigator. I specifically found the increased experience gain to be useful because that really boosted the experience cards and could easily level you up without having to grind for hours.

7. Two more added difficulties + Vision Quest

With the new changes to combat, some people dislike how easy the game can seem. To counteract this, or for people who really just want to play the game for the story, two new difficulties were added to Portable: Beginner and Maniac. Beginner is below Easy and significantly toned down enemy damage, and the player has 30 plumes of dusk (opposed to 10 when starting on Easy). Maniac is above Hard, and it adds a heap of new things to make the game more difficult such as enemies deal 2 times more damage than normal, can gain a higher chance of Enemy Advantage when not taken by surprise, and certain weapon fusions cannot be performed. If this still isn’t hard enough for you...I’m sorry, or something? I personally played on Easy because I was working my way through the Neo-Persona (3-5) games and didn’t want it to take ten years.

If you still want more of a challenge, or a fun time-killer, Portable also added Vision Quest. Like the Monad Depths, it’s accessible through Tartarus. Upon entering there are is a door corresponding to each Full Moon boss (besides the Magician) and five special doors. Each Full Moon boss door can be fought with any party members, but the bosses are much stronger than when they were originally fought. For example, the Hanged Moon boss (last one fought) is level 54 in the base game. In the Vision Quest, the Hanged Moon boss is level 95. I did complete all of the doors in Vision Quest (on my NG+) and this one took me almost as long as the final boss of the game to beat, because of the level and the fact that is has 18,000 hp. Yes, I was around level 95 at the time too because I wanted to fuse Messiah. For reference, the final boss has around 25,500 hp in total and is level 76. The five special doors are more so puzzles rather than standard fights in my opinion because you’re forced into the fight with specific party members and stats. Each special door also has its own strategy to beat it, which is where the puzzle part comes in. An example of what these doors offer ranges from having three strong enemies you can only hit with physical attacks that consistently switch between nulling, being weak to, and absorbing all three kinds of physical attacks (and the three enemies switch at different rates/patterns) to fighting an enemy one on one that you need to kill in a certain amount of turns before they insta-kill you (and there is also a pattern of what these enemies are weak to/null/etc.) If you even try looking up what the Vision Quests are you’ll likely to see a plethora of guides because these fights can be very frustrating if you can’t get the patterns down on your own. However, that’s still good for a challenge. In addition to all of this, if you beat all of the doors you get the option to fight a second secret boss: Margaret (from Persona 4).

8. More part-time jobs

One of the more minor changes, but in Portable there are more places where you can work at for part-time jobs. I don’t know if it follows the same system as FES, but generally the longer you work at a job the more money they will give to you. This can be helpful in the early game if you want to raise a stat by working and gain money at the same time.

9. Soundtrack

This one is tied in directly with the FeMC Route, but a whole new soundtrack is available in this game. You are able to hear almost the full Persona 3 FES soundtrack in this game with the Male Route too, so if you play both routes you won’t miss out on a majority of the songs. Personally, I like a lot of the songs from both soundtracks (and the P3 soundtrack is one of my favorites, if not maybe my number one favorite, of the 3-5 series). I believe it is also widely regarded as a solid soundtrack, and some even like it more than the Male Route one. You could just listen to the soundtrack without playing the game, but again this list is just going through changes from FES to Portable that people don’t often mention.

10. Extra scene at the end of a NG+ run (Spoilers for those who do not know the end of the game)

For everyone out there who likes the dating sim portion of Persona and a heaping of heart-breaking angst, this is for you. On a NG+ run of either route, in the final scene before the credits roll you are able to spend your last moments with whoever you romanced. They each have their own personalized little scene, that is beyond adorable and sad, and the game ends with one last loving comment/sentiment from them before you fade away and Memories of You starts playing. In my opinion, it’s a great little addition, especially for those who like to play multiple runs.

And that’s the last of it I suppose, although there are some other minor changes I probably missed because they’re too small or probably can’t be considered either a “good” or “bad” change. Anyway, asking others for their opinion on the two games is obviously fine, but if you’re someone who boils down the situation with providing the input “Just play FES with the controllable party members mod.” ....don’t. Please :)

#persona 3 #persona 3 portable #p3 #p3p #please god can you all stop saying that phrase #even a simple search on the wiki has most of these changes #im going to quit my major and go into aerospace engineering so i can build a rocket and fly into the sun at this rate

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gascon-en-exil · 5 years ago

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What would you say the limitations for the other games are (Radiant Dawn, Genaeology, Fates) in regard to the ask concerning the story being too big for it to tell?

Genealogy

Note: some of these are true of all the Kaga games, but are especially noticeable in FE4 because of its larger scope.

Hardware limitations to be expected for such an outdated console: a small amount of dialogue relative to the size of the story, no proper support conversations, so many palette swaps for minor character portraits.

Enormous maps with multiple objectives and only map narration in between mean that the majority of story beats have to unfold during battles.

FE’s original breeding meta, while an entertaining mechanic and much better implemented in the plot here than in the 3DS games, hampers characterization in Gen 2 because the child characters have variable fathers leading to all sorts of oddities.

Additionally, the existence of substitutes for the aforementioned children is necessary for gameplay if you don’t pair up characters in Gen 1 but leads to what is essentially a set of knockoffs with weaker connections to the main plot and to the set characters than their child counterparts.

The Thracia arc of Gen 2 was obviously the greatest source of interest for Kaga, so much so that it was spun off into FE5, but its position in the storyline of this game is awkward and serves to make its second half structurally weaker.

Radiant Dawn

Again, no proper support conversations, this time stemming from FE10′s scattered approach to availability and the (probably smart) decision to prioritize gameplay utility over characterization under such a system.

The continental scale of the conflicts in Parts 3 and 4 narrows the focus to only a handful of characters out of the massive playable roster (73, second highest in the series after New Mystery), and because there are no supports minor characters returning from FE9 have to coast on their development from that game whereas new characters are out of luck entirely unless they’re important enough to be in the main cast.

The multi-part story is very tenuously tied together, with Parts 1 and 2 being wholly unrelated to each other and only indirectly building to the rest of the game. I’ve commented before that Tellius’s overall story is so big that it could have easily been three games, with this one split into an interbellum midquel with Parts 1 and 2 and possibly some other content and a third game consisting of Parts 3 and 4 with more room to breathe.

Part 4 is extremely rushed because of how it has to wrap up the entire saga in the space of eleven chapters, leading to an even greater narrowing of focus that pares the number of relevant characters down to only about a dozen, if that. Undoubtedly this is partially because FE10 has the single longest main story campaign in the series at 38 chapters (43 if counting multi-part chapters separately) meaning that even at its actual length it can be a slog to get through the whole thing.

The overall impression is that this game is simultaneously too short and lacking in proper development for its story and cast and too long and structurally bizarre as a gaming experience. It’s an...interesting contradiction.

Fates

This one I know less about the particulars, as it’s my understanding that many of FE14′s underlying (non-localization) writing problems come from one manga writer drawing up an outline of the plot and then a team of other writers stretching that outline into three very different stories.

Most noticeable to me is that all of the routes are of equal length, which harms Revelation the most because it has to cover by far the most narrative ground.

Also no getting around that the kids suck, and were clearly only shoehorned into the game as microwave child soldiers because people liked them in Awakening. Outside of their designated DLC campaign they are completely irrelevant to the plot, and apart from occasionally illuminating certain qualities of their parents they’re not useful for characterization either.

While I believe that Corrin is the best of FE’s Avatars so far they’re still not great, and their contractual mandate to be able to sleep with the entire cast can do weird things to established relationships as it does with every Avatar. Probably the most glaring is that the Hoshido royals can’t really be Corrin’s biological siblings, because FE loves teasing incest but (probably) wouldn’t go that far with a self-insert, but there’s also what it does to pairings like Ryoma/Scarlet or Jakob/Flora that get built up during the story but can’t have an actual resolution outside of Japan-only DLC sort of because one half of each of those pairings is a Corrin-sexual.

#Fire Emblem #FE4 #FE10 #FE14 #Fire Emblem Jugdral #Fire Emblem Tellius #Fire Emblem Fates

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fnlrndcllctv · 4 years ago

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REVIEW: Godzilla - Kaijuu Daikessen (1994)

Toho’s first attempt at a release for the Super Nintendo, 1993’s Super Godzilla, was not received well by critics, as it opted a more strategy-based style of gameplay that resulted in some rather dull and slow gameplay across the board.

So, in an attempt to try and crack into the SNES market one more time, the company turned to Alfa System to develop a new Godzilla-themed fighting game for the console.

This isn’t the first time that Toho had enlisted the services of Alfa System, as they’d previously worked on 1993’s Godzilla: Battle Legends for the somewhat obscure NEC TurboDuo console (read our review of the game here!), so developing a fighting game that featured the iconic kaiju from the Godzilla franchise wasn’t going to be too much of an issue for the company.

A year later, Godzilla: Kaijuu Daikessen (roughly translated as Godzilla: Monster War) was released in Japan for the Super Nintendo, while a planned US release, renamed as Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters, was cancelled.

So, with the new hardware available to them (that utilised a controller that was more suited to the genre), was this follow up any good?

Let’s investigate…

Gameplay

If you’re one of the few gamers who have given the Battle Legends release a try, then Kaijuu Daikessen will feel incredibly familiar. Each monster in the game has a variety of special moves to choose from, each requiring inputs that should already be familiar to fans of the Street Fighter series (along with hundreds of other games!).

A new feature in the game is the stun meter, which works in tandem with a character’s special meter. A full special meter allows for players to execute special moves such as heat blasts, missiles and lightning beams, but if a player’s stun meter fills up and knocks them dizzy, it also empties the special meter instantly, forcing them to immediately go on the defensive upon recovery.

It’s a nice update to change things up from the first game, and having more than two buttons this time around makes the controls feel so much better, even if they are slightly unresponsive at times.

With that being said though, a handful of issues that plagued Godzilla: Battle Legends do make an appearance in this game too. Having to deal with your character being too slow to turn around and face an opponent is still majorly annoying, and the hitboxes for certain characters (especially the flying kaiju) are incredibly sloppy.

Story

Much like its predecessor, Godzilla: Kaijuu Daikessen doesn’t really have a specific story as such, as the single player mode once again focuses on a single monster as they battle their way through each opponent.

The major difference this time around is that players can choose from the majority of the game’s roster instead of just the headline kaiju himself. This gives players more options as to how they approach the game on a technical level.

Luckily, the updated visuals and the updated mechanics that go into fights give the matches a more authentic feel when it comes to re-enacting the famous fights from the movies.

Roster

Godzilla: Kaijuu Diakessen features a roster of 11 fighters;

Godzilla

Anguirus

Gotengo**

King Ghidorah

Gigan

Megalon

Mechagodzilla (old)

Biollante

Mothra

Mechagodzilla (new)*

Super Mechagodzilla**

While the roster this time around is slightly smaller than its predecessor, the game is generally more balanced this time around (with the exception of a couple of fighters). The characters have more moves now, with some pretty entertaining new additions such as Godzilla’s “Uranium Atomic Heat Ray” super special move (although it’s frustratingly easy to counter), Mothra’s “Sealing Energy” attack and Gotengo’s high voltage moveset.

Things start to feel a bit uneven when playing both as and against Biollante. Biollante is the only character in the game that is unable to jump and lacks any successful long range attacks, meaning that they’re pretty much a sitting target for an entire match. This also means that when facing the monster in single player mode, the only way to hit them is getting up close, which is where the range where the vast majority of Biollante’s moveset lies.

Similarly to the first game, the obvious omission of one of the most famous characters in the franchise (last time it was Mothra, this time it’s Rodan) is glaringly obvious.

*Only playable in VS mode.

**Only playable in VS mode via a cheat code.

Graphics

The character sprites in Godzilla: Kaiju Daikessen aren’t majorly different to the first game’s, as they were only a year apart from another, but there are definitely some noticeable little tweaks and changes that help to improve the game somewhat.

First of all, the character sprite animations in the game have been slightly polished, with each character now able to display more personality when executing (and taking hits from) different attacks, and generally making them feel more “lifelike” than their cinematic rubber suit counterparts.

Another key area that has been improved upon is the look of the stages. While not massively spectacular when compared to many other fighting games that came out that year, each stage is more vivid and busy than the ones found in Battle Legends, with the added bonus of some stages including destructible elements.

Stages

There are a total of nine stages to fight on in Godzilla: Kaijuu Daikessen;

Osaka Castle Grounds

Fuji Five Lakes

World Children’s Land

Outskirts of Tokyo

Yokosuka

Wakasa Bay

Minato Mirai 21

Makuhari Bay Area

Tokyo Bay

Each of these stage locations are specifically ripped from the various movies each fight takes place in, and, as mentioned earlier, look pretty good when compared against the previous 2D Godzilla games.

The demolish-able buildings featured in many of the levels are a nice thought, but aren’t as well animated as they could be, making them feel a bit underwhelming. They also reset to normal after each round, making the enjoyment here somewhat fleeting.

As an added bonus for a number of stages, we often get some awesome MIDI renditions of some of the franchise’s most iconic music. I’ll never get tired of hearing the classic “Godzilla Stomp” in whatever form it comes in.

Replayability

As there’s no unlockable content or bonus stages included in Godzilla: Kaijuu Daikessen, there isn’t really much of an incentive to return to the game on a single player basis outside of maybe getting a high sore on the game’s leaderboard, and even then it’s a bit of a slog.

Luckily, the 2-player versus mode is strong enough to keep healthy rivalries going in couch multiplayer sessions, and seeing some of the most ridiculous and fun super special moves in the history of Godzilla games is undeniably worth sticking around for.

Final thoughts & overall score

Godzilla: Kaijuu Daikessen is a fairly enjoyable, yet slightly flawed fighting game that not only manages to improve upon the framework set by its predecessor, but is actually one of the better titles in the long library of Godzilla video games.

There’s plenty of famous kaiju to play as, and the fan service throughout the game is more than enough to please even the most casual of Godzilla fans.

It won’t necessarily win over non-kaiju fans, nor is it anywhere near the best fighting game for the system, but it’s worth your time if you want to re-enact those iconic (and cheesy) battles between giant monsters from the movies in a 16-bit fashion.

Do you agree with our review of Godzilla: Kaijuu Daikessen?

Let us know in the comments section below!

#Review #1994 #Godzilla #Godzilla: Kaijuu Diekessen #Godzilla: Destroy All Monsters #Godzilla Week 2021 #Super Nintendo

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arcadetheatre · 5 years ago

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While it is definitely not a traditional Paper Mario RPG, it looks like The Origami King has perfected the new Action Adventure formula. It genuinely looks like a great experience. Here are some things I noticed along with my thoughts.

I particularly like all the mini-games and collectibles. Figurine Collectibles that are displayed in a museum is one of my favourite types of long-term sidequests in adventure games.

The battle system also looks like it will be fun to engage in. It’s a bummer that Gear has a durability system and can break (Breath of the Wild, Animal Crossing, and now Paper Mario?? Why Nintendo!?), but it is a whole lot better than 1-time-use stickers or cards. Plus, your standard Gear never breaks.

The accessory system also looks like a combination of traditional RPG accessories and Badges from older PM and M&L games - albeit less grand.

It looks like there is still no EXP and battles only reward you with coins and confetti. With the new Gear system, hopefully there will be more of an incentive to fight in battles than in Sticker Star and Colour Splash. Also, confetti is used to repair the damaged landscape - sort of like paint in Colour Splash - so hopefully they balanced this mechanic so that you have to engage in battle more to get the most confetti and cant just rely on finding a ton of it in the environment. Battles also look genuinely enjoyable this time around, so they probably wont be a slog in the first place.

Right now we know that coins are used for purchasing Gear, Items, and buying Battle Time. Hopefully there are some more uses for coins. If not, I hope there is a good balance between how many coins you are given and how much you actually have to spend. Sticker Star and Colour Splash suffered heavily from having next-to-no use for coins due to how broken the gameplay mechanics were.

Partners are one aspect of the game that still alludes me. They have confirmed that Mario will team up with at least 3 partners - Bobby, Kamek, and Professor Toad - and these partners will have battle skills and overworld abilities. What I would really like to know is if these partners are permanent, temporary, or can be switched-out traditionally. I would also like to know if there is going to be more than three partners. Official art makes it seem like Mario will be able to team-up with more of Bowser’s minions and other Toads, but the trailer and website only mention the aforementioned three partners.

I have noticed that there are more unique characters than in the previous two games. It is still not nearly on the level of PM64, TTYD, and SPM in terms of originality, but we can see some fresh faces like Angel Toad, a Geisha Goomba, an Elder Koopa, a Martial Arts Shy Guy, and a Sea Captain Toad along with some others. There will probably be even more. Also, Birdo is briefly shown falling from the sky in one of the scenes...

They never outright said it, but it is basically confirmed that there is no level-select map and that the game has contiguous zones like the traditional Paper Mario games.

It looks like there will also be a large number of boss-battles. We know that “The League of Stationary” - which is basically just sentient “Things” - will serve as Ribbon Guardians. We also know that Four Origami Beasts (based on the Four Auspicious Beasts of Chinese Mythology) will be bosses and then summons through Olivia. We have also seen a giant Pokey, Gooper Blooper, and some other entities that could serve as bosses. The boss-battles also look very strategic and engaging - much like battles that I have seen in-general.

Apparently Luigi is going to play a much larger roll in the game than in Sticker Star and Colour Splash. The website says that he is on a quest to find the keys to Peach’s Castle. Does this mean we will get some awesome Luigi mis-adventures? I hope so. Maybe Luigi will even be a partner at some point?

That’s basically all of my thoughts on the new trailer and other supplemental material that was revealed today. The Origami King really seems like the final nail in the coffin for traditional Paper Mario, but it also looks like a perfection of the new style - cementing itself as a great action adventure. There are still some aspects of the game that I would like more information on, but I am now planning on purchasing the game. Although this decision could change as new information comes out, from what I have seen the game looks like it will be very fun.

#Paper Mario #The Origami King #TOK #PMTOK #Nintendo #Nintendo Switch

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dumb-american · 5 years ago

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The Rebuild of Final Fantasy VII: Your Expectations Will (Not) Be Met

I apologize for the stupid title and I promise I’m going to talk about the Final Fantasy VII Remake, but I have to get this out of the way first. Sometime in the mid 2000s, acclaimed artist and director Hideaki Anno announced that he was going to remake his beloved anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion the way it should have been the first time, free from technical and budgetary restraints. Evangelion had a notoriously strange ending when the original anime aired, consisting of character talking over still images, abstract art, and simple animations. It was highly polarizing and controversial. Anno, for his part, received death threats and the headquarters of the studio that produced the anime was vandalized. Soon after the initial uproar Anno would direct The End of Evangelion, a retelling of the final two episodes of the anime, and that seemed to mostly satisfy the fanbase. Looking back now, The End of Evangelion wasn’t “fixing” something that was “broken,” no, it was a premonition: a vision of things to come. Why remake the ending when you can just remake the whole damn thing?

The mid 2000s also saw the birth of the Compilation of Final Fantasy VII: a sub-series of projects expanding the universe and world of the video game that had “quite possibly the greatest game ever made” proudly printed on the back of its CD case. The Compilation consisted of three games, all on different platforms, and a film. First was Advent Children, a sequel to Final Fantasy VII, where three dudes that look like discarded Sephiroth concept art all have anime fights with our beloved protagonists, culminating in a ridiculous gravity defying sword fight between Cloud and Sephiroth. Before Crisis and Crisis Core are prequels that expand the story of the Turks and Zack Fair, respectively. Then there’s Dirge of Cerberus, an action shooter staring secret party member and former Turk Vincent. Were these projects good? I’d say they were largely forgettable. Crisis Core stood out as the obvious best of the bunch and I think may be worth revisiting.

As a business model, the practice pioneered by the Compilation would continue on and eventually brings us FFXIII (and sequels), FF Versus XIII (which would later become FFXV), and FF Agito XIII (which would later become FF Type-0). If that’s all incredibly confusing to you, I’m sorry, I promise I will begin talking about the Final Fantasy VII Remake soon. Suffice it to say, both Final Fantasy VII and Neon Genesis Evangelion have a certain gravity. They punch above their weight. They are both regarded as absolute classics, flaws and all. And yet, in both cases, the people responsible for their creation decided that their first at bat wasn’t good enough and it was time to recreate them as they were meant to be all along. I think this way of thinking about art is flawed, limitations are as much a part of the creative process as vision and intent. Yet, we find ourselves in a world with a remake of Final Fantasy VII, so I guess we should talk about it.

From this point forward, there’s going to be major spoilers for every Final Fantasy VII related media. So, be warned.

So, is the Final Fantasy VII Remake any good? To me, that’s the least interesting question, but we can get into it. FFVIIR is audacious, that’s for sure. Where Anno condenses and remixes a 26 episode anime series into four feature length films, the FFVIIR team expands an around 5 hour prologue chapter into a 30+ hour entire game. Naturally, there will be some growing pains. The worst example of this is the sewers. The game forces you to slog through an awful sewer level twice, fighting the same boss each time. This expanded sewer level is based on a part of the original game that was only two screens and was never revisited.

Besides the walk from point A to point B, watch a cutscene, fight a boss, repeat that you’d expect from a JRPG, there’s also three chapters where the player can explore and do sidequests. The sidequests are mostly filler, but a select few do accomplish the goal of fleshing out some of the minor characters. You spend way more time with the Avalanche crew, for example. Out of them, only Jesse has something approaching a complete personality or character arc that matters. The main playable cast is practically unchanged which was a bit surprising to me. I figured Square-Enix would tone down Barret’s characterization as Mr. T with a gun for an arm, but they decided, maybe correctly, that Barret is an immutable part of the Final Fantasy VII experience. Also, it’s practically unforgivable that Red XIII was not playable in the remake considering how much time you spend with him. I don’t understand that decision in the slightest.

The game’s general systems and mechanics, materia, combat, weapon upgrades, etc. are all engaging and fun and not much else really needs to be said about it. I found it to be great blend of action/strategy. Materia really was the peak of JPRG creativity in the original FFVII and its recreation here is just as good. The novelty of seeing weird monsters like the Hell House and the “Swordipede” (called the Corvette in the original) make appearances as full on boss fights with mechanics is just weaponized nostalgia. In general, the remake has far more hits than misses, but those misses, like the sewers and some of the tedious sidequests, are big misses. It is a flawed game, but a good one. If I were to pick a favorite part of the game, I’d have to pick updated Train Graveyard section which takes lore from the original game and creates a mini-storyline out of it.

If that was all, however, then honestly writing about Final Fantasy VII Remake wouldn’t be worth my time or yours. The game’s ambition goes way further than just reimagining Midgar as a living, real city. There’s a joke in the JRPG community about the genre that goes something like this: at the start of the game, you kill rats in the sewer and by the end you’re killing God. Well, when all is said and done, the Final Fantasy VII Remake essentially does just that. Narratively, the entire final act of the game is a gigantic mess, but if you know anything about me then you know I’d much rather a work of fiction blast off into orbit and get a little wild than be safe and boring.

In the original games, the Lifestream is a physical substance that contains spirits and memories of every living being. Hence, when a person dies, they “return to the planet”. It flows beneath the surface of the planet like blood flows in a living person’s veins and can gather to heal “wounds” in the planet. In the original game, the antagonist, Sephiroth, seeks to deeply wound the planet with Meteor and then collect all the “spirit energy” the planet musters to heal the wound. The remake builds on this concept by introducing shadowy, hooded beings called Whispers. The Whispers are a physical manifestation of the concept of destiny and they can be found when someone seeks to change their fate, correcting course to the pre-destined outcome. Whispers appear at multiple points throughout the game’s storyline both impeding and aiding the party. The ending focuses heavily on them and the idea that fate and destiny can be changed. We receive visions throughout the game which some will recognize as major story beats and images from the original game. After dealing with Shinra and rescuing Aerith, the game immediately switches over to this battle against destiny and fate that you’re either going to love or hate. The transition is abrupt and jarring. While Cloud has shown flashes of supernatural physical abilities throughout the game, suddenly he has gone full Advent Children mode and is flying around cleaving 15 ton sections of steel in half with his sword. The party previously took on giant mutated monsters, elite soldiers, and horrific science experiments, but now the gloves are off and they’re squaring up against an impossibly huge manifestation of the Planet’s will. Keep in mind, in the narrative of the original FFVII, the Midgar section was rougly 10%, if that, of the game’s full storyline. This is, frankly, insane, but I’d be lying if I didn’t love it.

The Final Fantasy VII Remake, with its goofy JRPG concluding chapter, is forcing the player to participate in the original game’s un-making. We see premonitions of an orb of materia falling to the ground, we see an older Red XIII gallop across the plains, we see a SOLDIER with black hair and Cloud’s Buster Sword make his final stand, we see Cloud waist deep in water holding something or someone. We all know what these images represent, they’ve been part of imaginations for decades. But the Final Fantasy VII Remake allows us (or forces us, depending on perspective, I guess) to kill fate, kill God, and set aside all we thought we knew about how the game would play out post-Midgar. The most obvious effect of our actions is the reveal that Zack survived his final stand against Shinra and instead of leaving Cloud his sword and legacy, helped him get to Midgar safely. I have my doubts and my worries about the future of this series. I’m not sure when the next part of the game will be released or what form it will come in, but I can’t believe I’m as excited as I am to see it.

Of course, part of me wishes they’d just left well enough alone. Remakes are generally complete wastes of time and effort. Not all, but most. Maybe I’m, to borrow a term from pro wrestling lingo, a complete mark here and I just love JRPGs and Final Fantasy VII so much that I’ll countenance close to anything bearing its name. I’ve tried my best to be as critical and fair as possible to the game and I hope that if you’re on the fence and reading this I’ve maybe helped you decide if it’s for you or not. I think the Final Fantasy VII Remake is worth your time if you’re looking for a good, meaty JRPG. It’s not perfect and it’s final act is insane, but that just makes me love it more.

Have you ever wondered what it would be like for Zack, Cloud, and Aerith to face Sephiroth in the Planet’s core? I know 15 year old me did. And he may get his wish.

#final fantasy #ffvii #ffvii remake #review #jrpg

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bonainfasciculis · 4 years ago

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The Legend of Zelda - A Link Between Worlds (2013)

Zelda factored little in my adolescent years, and apart from renting OoT a handful of times for the 64 (and spamming bombs in SSB) this is pretty much the only Zelda experience I've had. It's kind of a blessing and a curse, from what I can tell: I have none of the hangups but equally none of the emotional connection that often seems to accompany the franchise. I really only played this because it had been given to me and came highly recommended.

But this was about as good as introductions get - sure, it helped that this was essentially the first console game I'd played in its entirety in over a decade, but the game is clearly exceptional by all accounts. It seems I love a good gameplay mechanic where it doesn't tip into gimmickry, and the wall merge system I found novel, baffling and satisfying without ever being too frustrating.

I obviously can't speak to the nostalgia aspect of it, but coming to it fresh was a charming experience. It's pretty hard not to be at least casually familiar with aspects of Zelda lore, and I liked that there weren't any lengthy cutscenes (looking at you, Ōkami) or tedious tutorials to slog through. The storytelling is a little naff but not distractingly so, and for me the pretty predictable ending was offset by the fun final boss battle. And you sure do feel good solving some of those puzzles.

I'm not yet game to branch out into the open world of BotW, but I'm pretty glad my maiden Zelda foray was this one instead. More games ought to allow one to become a painting.

Highlights: big bomb flower lols, boss battles that were satisfying / a great relief to complete

#games #games-2020 #games-completed

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senpai-no-lie · 5 years ago

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So I Finally Finished A Route in Three Houses: A Review of Mechanics

I also finished the DLC, but I figured I’d split my thoughts of the DLC, the first route I played, and my general opinions on the mechanics into separate posts for length and coherency reasons

Overall: I liked the idea of a lot of what they tried to do, but the execution was hit and miss. Additionally, some of the stuff that was interesting and new at first quickly became a chore. Purely on mechanics, I would say 3H was worse than both Fates and Awakening; Echoes is a toss-up.

What I Think 3H Improved Upon:

Combat Arts! I loathed how combat arts worked in Echoes. Attached to the weapon? So freaking dumb. I thought there was a good variety of different arts your unit could learn, and if they decided to keep weapon durability, I think having combat arts tie into that was a good idea

Forging. Ugh, do I hate weapons durability, but at least I could repair my weapons pretty easily (outside of the Relics, which I hardly used, as a consequence). Realizing I could craft Levin swords was also a big game changer for me. I also hated how limited and mysterious forging was in Echoes, so I’m glad 3H didn’t hide what the weapon could become behind ???. Still think Awakening had the best forging, as broken as it kinda was lol

Paralogues...? I thought most of the paralogues were a fun challenge and were good opportunities to learn more about the characters who aren’t as vital to the main (meager) story. Sort of wished you could’ve recruited some other the other houses’ members via paralogues (akin to picking up your children from Time Travel/Deep Realm daycare)

Demonic Beasts I liked them. They were a change of pace from regular enemies, which is a plus in my book.

Stat Gains and Level Design, at compared to Echoes. I feel like they borrowed a lot of ideas from Echoes, since that was the last game (excluding Warriors), but with some improvements. The stat gains in Echoes were notoriously awful, and as someone who is a bit...anal at times about evenly leveling all my characters, it was the Literal Worst to put all that work into chumps like Est and Atlas and Clive and they still sucked. Also, the maps in Echoes started to run together and just be like a slog, so good job, 3H, for not being as bad as your predecessor. (Though the general lack of gimmicks in the story chapters and reliance on fairly so-so maps with objectives like route the enemy/defeat the commander over and over could’ve been furthered improved upon)

What Was A Bit Meh:

Timed Activities This is petty, but it just stressed me out when a game put a timer on something. I stopped doing the advice box and didn’t bother with tea parties pretty quickly because while I could suspend the software to have the extra time to look answers, it wasn’t fun or a good use of my time.

So Many Activities During Exploration Too much, in my humble opinion. A good chunk of them were ways to gain support with units or minor increases in skills, so I think it would’ve been better to condense activities. Like, lost items??? I was able to A support every single available unit on my first playthrough without to much difficulty without that. I’d scrap the advice box and also combine seminar with the tutoring in some way.

Classing System It was a neat idea, to have that much freedom with classing units, and tying reclassing to skill level instead of purely level, but it was also equally annoying to spend in game weeks trying over and over to get a character to pass an exam. And the concept of the exams make even less sense post-timeskip. I liked the flexibility, but I think they could’ve scaled it back a bit (especially to make the game less intimidating to new players) so it wasn’t so tedious.

DLC I like the creativity of deciding to just do an entire side story DLC instead of typical bonus maps. However, having completed the DLC side story, outside the notion the chapters were a bit more challenging (which in itself is a balancing act between engaging and tedious), and perhaps giving us more info about Byleth’s mom... it was kind of meh. Story was fairly cookie-cutter and the lack of any animated cutscene was a bit disappointing, those some of the stills were nice.

Things I Just Didn’t Like:

The General Aesthetic Is this a mechanic, not necessarily, but it’s more appropriate to talk about it here than another post. For one, I just never liked how plasticky all the characters look. I commend them, I suppose, for deciding to fully voice act the game like Echoes, but I wish they hadn’t if it meant I had to look at vacant-eyed characters talking in a half-circle before every fight and after every fight. You can’t unnotice that almost every cut scene if all the characters standing perfectly still, talking in a half-circle. Additionally, sometimes their mouths don’t even move when they talk!! The face portraits had maybe a quarter of the personality they’ve had in previous games, and I miss how crits were done in Fates.

Non-Mission Activities Made the Actual Story Chapters Feel Secondary For my first playthrough, I just decided I was going to grind for as many supports as possible, since the first half (or more than half) of each route is exactly the same. However, I noticed that I often felt that having to stop and do the mission was getting in the way of my other aims, or I would more or less forget what was going on in the story by the time I had to do the mission.

Reliance on Using the Monastery as Homebase I know a lot of people ripped on Fates’ My Castle, but I feel like that was a much less intrusive base of operations than the monastery, because none of the things in My Castle had to be acknowledged if you wanted to bulldoze through several chapters in a row or do paralogues or DLC or whatever. I understand they put a lot of work into the Monastery, but it was hell to navigate around (I just fast traveled rather than navigating lol), made a lot of story chapters feel awkward (we’re in the middle of a war, but after every battle we gotta go back to the Monastery and dick around for a month), and really bloated up the game.

Recruitment At first, I was pretty gun-ho about getting all the units I could, and it was exciting to get a bunch of new units based on my efforts to seduce recruit them (especially Ferdinand-- he was such a bastard to get despite being the second unit I tried to recruit), but then you have them all and suddenly Edelgard’s enemy forces feel like a joke (it’s just her and Hubie Dubie, p much) and you realize everyone feels like a flake if they’ll join pretty much any side no matter. Additionally, because of how recruitment works, outside of Byleth and the main lord, and to a lesser extent the retainer, a good chunk of the characters have very limited to no importance to the plot. The rest of your house has about average FE involvement in the plot, such as commentary or exposition dumping, but they don’t feel like they matter when you can feasibly never use them if you recruit enough from the other houses.

#fire emblem three houses #FE 3H #fire emblem 3h #my opinions about fire emblem

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eggoreviews · 6 years ago

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12 ‘Unpopular’ Viddy Game Opinions

I’ve seen this topic floating around a lot, but didn’t think I had enough ‘unpopular but maybe not’ opinions about games to make a post. Turns out I do! So if you see this and I say something blasphemous, remember it’s just my opinion and my personal experiences with the games I list. Hope you enjoy or hey, maybe even agree with some of this!

Note: Can’t stress enough. This is just me. Also, spoilers under the cut!

12. The opening of Kingdom Hearts II isn’t as terrible as everyone says

Okay, so it’s not brilliant, but at the same time, I don’t think it’s the worst. For those not in the know, KH2′s opening is a basically a massive slog where you play as a character you don’t know or care about with seemingly no real link to the events of the previous game. The general consensus is that there’s some interesting stuff in here, but it’s buried among endless dialogue that really doesn’t mean much. And they’re right, but I really think there’s some great stuff here that people tend to gloss over. The music and the motif of Twilight Town is atmospheric, there’s some genuinely intriguing plot elements that are woven into Roxas’ story and believe it or not, the stuff that happens here is intrinsic to the rest of the game. So yeah, it drags on a little, but I don’t think KH2 would be miles better without this opening.

11. I loved Breath of the Wild’s final boss

One of the problems I see talked about with Breath of the Wild is that the boss fights are fairly mediocre, especially the very last one, Dark Beast Ganon. And I couldn’t disagree more. I think every boss in the game is wonderfully crafted, intense, challenging and great for testing you on what you’ve learned throughout the game by encouraging you to make creative use of your slate powers and the flurry rush technique. And while Mr. Pig Man at the end here is sort of easy and short, it serves as a brilliantly epic finale to damn near perfect game. While the difficulty is mostly gone after the mammoth fight with Calamity Ganon, it’s still just as intense as you frantically fire off arrows into the massive beast in front of you. Plus, the design of this thing is one of the best looking monsters in the game, so I really don’t understand the dislike for this ending.

10. I really like Crash of the Titans

Okay, so maybe childhood nostalgia has something to do with this pick, but every Crash fan I’m aware of seems to hate this game. But I don’t really know where the hate comes from! I played the PS2 version of this and I thought it was a genuinely fun 3D platformer with a variety of locations, good visuals, well-designed boss battles and even a vague story you can sort of follow! The game’s main gameplay feature is also brilliantly integrated, as using Aku Aku to possess various monsters throughout the game keeps everything interesting. One thing I will say though, that tiger dude you have to fight about halfway through is the most annoying thing I’ve ever had to endure in a game.

9. Life Is Strange: Before the Storm is BAD

I loved Life Is Strange when it first dropped, so I was beyond excited when they announced a prequel from Chloe’s perspective. But I really think they dropped the ball and they dropped it hard. But everyone else seems to adore this game! For me, this wasn’t a touch on the original. For a start, they dropped out one of the main mechanics of the first game, the time travel, which they then replaced with a much less interesting ‘Backtalk’ feature, which was then only used about twice throughout the game. Instead of interesting, developed characters reacting to genuinely dangerous or heartfelt situations, it felt to me like a bunch of one-dimensional teenagers who are edgy for the sake of being edgy. Chloe spends the majority of the game being a dick to her mother and bunking off class to spend time with Rachel, who she has literally known for like a day and their sudden relationship drops out of nowhere. Not that I didn’t enjoy the emotional moments of their relationship, it just didn’t feel like it stemmed from anywhere, unlike Max and Chloe from the first game. And the game’s attempts at villains were also rubbish compared to the first, with Damien (random scary knife guy who doesn’t really tie into the plot that much) and Eliot (who doesn’t appear for the whole game and suddenly goes full incel on Chloe when she breaks into Rachel’s house). Yeah I think you can tell I had some problems with this one.

8. Dishonored: Death of the Outsider was also a hot mess

I LOVE the Dishonored series. The first game and its DLCs are amazing, the second game was arguably even better. And then this happened. In this one, you play as Billie Lurk, a character I love, and Daud comes back, a character I also love. But both of them are incredibly badly written and it doesn’t feel like there’s any development to them or even much reason for them to do what they’re doing. This entry took the mystery surrounding the Outsider and basically did a big poo on it, giving us the revelation that he was apparently HUMAN this whole time. I think that was the nail in the coffin that made me sort of think this was a bit rubbish. While the combat and side missions were as brilliant as ever, the level designs felt less creative than other entries in the series and lacked variety or colour, all the side characters were entirely forgettable and to wrap it all up, they killed Daud offscreen. Out of nowhere, they just killed him, mentioned it offhand in a cutscene and that was that. If you like this game, fair enough, but it kind of baffles me that more people don’t see this in the game.

7. Mario Galaxy 2 is good. It’s just sort of good

Some people cite this as being one of the best 3D platformers of all time, and that’s fair enough, but I just kind of see this one as ‘good’. Sure, it has a good, satisfying control scheme for the most part, the level design is creative and the bosses and puzzles are pretty standard for a Mario title, but still enjoyable. However, sometimes, the floaty physics and weird knockback effect from jumping into walls led to quite a lot of unfair deaths, especially if I’d been punished for messing up already by losing a life, only to then immediately be punished again by falling into the void. Plus, I found Yoshi near impossible to control at some points with the motion controls. So yeah, this one is genuinely enjoyable, but I don’t think I’d personally put it with the best of all time.

6. I LOVE Dragon Quest IX TO DEATH

This is a game in a legendary franchise that consistently almost always see ranked at the very bottom of the pile in the series. But I really don’t understand how or why. Okay so your protagonist and party are basically silent and don’t have a lot of character, but I don’t see this as a reason to totally write off the game! The side characters, villains and story are all amazing and well-developed, the world is huge, colourful and interesting, the monsters are brilliantly creative and Dragon Quest’s signature lame sense of humour is gratefully carried through the whole game. The music is always brilliant and atmospheric and the bosses are just as memorable as each character you meet. What was everyone’s problem?? This is genuinely one of the best RPGs I’ve ever played and if you haven’t had a chance to pick it up, it is so, so worth it.

5. Sonic Adventure is a broken mess

So before I kick this one off, I’m not someone who hates Sonic and I’m not here to slate the whole franchise, but considering this game is often considered to be one of the best in the series, I thought it was definitely worth addressing. When I first played this, I literally couldn’t believe this was made in 1998, AFTER Mario 64 and yet it’s so broken! The physics and control scheme are totally wonky and hard to control, the unending amount of glitches make a fair amount of the stages almost unplayable, the voice acting and facial animation is cringey and oddly broken and yet, this was all on the Dreamcast. The most powerful console of the time. And I don’t think I even need to mention how boring some of the later stages get, with Big the Cat’s fishing section being the main offender. I can’t vouch for Adventure 2 as I haven’t had a chance to play yet, but I really hope it isn’t like this.

4. Dragon Age Origins is the best Dragon Age

Dragon Age has always been a popular RPG series, but I think it properly shot to fame once Inquisition dropped in 2014. And don’t get me wrong, I liked Inquisition! The world was colourful and expansive and the characters were fairly memorable, but I still think the best experience you can get is in the series’ first entry, Origins. While it’s pretty easy to see that it’s slightly dated considering it’s ten years old now, the best characters and story in the series I think is here. Each companion you recruit is varied and developed and the story wraps up brilliantly in the end with each companion and army you meet playing a different role in the final battle. Plus, I kind of can’t forgive Inquisition for making Leliana lose her sense of humour and making her kinda boring.

3. Oblivion is better than Skyrim

Okay so I’m not sure exactly how unpopular this is, but I just thought Oblivion was miles better than Skyrim ended up being. Just to clear it up, I still love Skyrim and I thought it built on the series’ combat system and variety of enemies really well and still provided an enjoyable experience. But Oblivion feels like more of an adventure you feel at home in. The story is dense and full of twists and turns. The soundtrack has some of the most atmospheric music I’ve ever heard, the world is full of bright colours, each city is vastly different and has its own lore and I found some of this to be absent from Skyrim. I’d go into more detail, but I think the simple fact is that Oblivion had so much more I liked than Skyrim.

2. I don’t think The Witcher III is all that amazing (in some regards)

This by no means says that I don’t like the game, because I do, but I think it has more flaws than people let on. Now, don’t get me wrong, a lot of the stuff people praise about this game is true, the quests are in-depth and masterfully crafted, the characters, especially Geralt, are extremely memorable. In fact, Geralt is one of my favourite game protagonists. But most of the problems I had were in terms of the gameplay. The combat, while fast-paced and satisfying, can sometimes feel a little finicky, so a lot of precision is needed. However, I felt that the world itself didn’t particularly interest me and the music is often ambient but outside of combat, isn’t anything special. Mostly though, the leveling system I found to be a bit wonky. I did absolutely everything I could in the first area of the game; all the side quests, treasure hunts, killed a whole bunch of monsters etc. And then I arrive in the second area and find I’m too underleveled to do literally anything. The majority of the quests have too high a level cap, a lot of the monsters kill me very quickly. And because the bulk of EXP farming is in the quests, I’m sort of stuck in an endless loop of constantly not being strong enough to do anything. On top of that, all my equipment keeps breaking and I’m finding that repair kits are extremely few and far between and that makes me even WEAKER. It’s something I’m gonna need to persevere with I think, but hey, this is just my experience with it.

1. Ocarina of Time, as amazing as it is, may have overstayed its welcome as best game of all time

I reckon this might be the most controversial, so it’s number 1. Let me preface this by saying I really like Ocarina and I agree that it was innovative for the RPG genre at the time. There’s a hell of a lot in this game that we have to thank for the games we have today. But considering how far the gaming industry has come since then and the sheer amount of high quality games we’ve been getting year after year, is still fair to call this the best game ever? When more recent games have taken what Ocarina started and built upon it? Games like Breath of the Wild, Horizon Zero Dawn, Red Dead Redemption II, God of War all gave us expansive, beautiful worlds and a story you can really get stuck into. And all the time, more and more games of this caliber are coming out. So yes, of course Ocarina of Time deserves a place in the hall of fame, it was revolutionary and still holds up really well today! I just can’t help but think there have been plenty of games since then, as flawed as some of them may be, that have improved upon the formula tenfold since Ocarina’s release.

Thanks for reading if you got this far! Just to reiterate, these are all just my opinions and my experiences with the games I mentioned, so pls don’t attack me. Got any viddy game opinions you think are sort of not popular? Drop them down below if you feel like it!

#zelda #loz #nintendo #nintendo switch #kingdom hearts #ocarina of time #botw #breath of the wild #oblivion #skyrim #dragon age #sonic the hedgehog #sonic #dragon quest #mario #Super Mario #Dishonored #life is strange #gaming

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pandoramsbox · 6 years ago

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Game for Gaming: Lost Sphear

Game: Lost Sphear (Tokyo RPG Factory and Square-Enix; Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Microsoft Windows; 2018)

System: Nintendo Switch

Why this game?

Were I to make a list of my all time favorite video games, Square Enix, or as it was previously know Square or Squaresoft, turn based, Japanese role playing games (JRPGs) from the SNES era would factor heavily; namely, “Final Fantasy VI” (or III, in its original US SNES release), “Chrono Trigger,” and “Secret of Mana.” Not surprisingly, when I saw a trailer for the 2017 Switch release of Tokyo RPG Factory and Square-Enix’s homage to this era of gaming, “I Am Setsuna”, I wanted to play it.

Nostalgia definitely clouds my comparison of “I Am Setsuna” to “Chrono Trigger,” the game it most closely resembles in terms of battle and equipment system. Beautiful graphics and music, interesting story and engaging gameplay make “I Am Setsuna” a fine turn based JRPG in the mold of the games that inspired it. "I Am Setsuna” is not one of my favorite games ever, but I enjoyed playing it, would play it again, and do recommend it. As soon as I finished it, or neared finishing it, I wondered if Tokyo RPG Factory was going to come out with a follow up, and as fate would have it they did, and it was about to come out: “Lost Sphear.”

When “Lost Sphear” was released in North American in January of last year though, I didn’t rush out to get it or play it. The reason was two fold: my (still relatively new at the time) job was extremely busy and gaming wise I was completely transfixed by “Fire Emblem Warriors.” “Why spend money on a game I wasn’t going to sit down and play?” I figured. Then come November, and a sale, it made sense to buy it so I had it when I was ready to play it... Then I promptly became obsessed with “Tetris Effect.”

Like many working adults, I have found that finding time to play story heavy games is hard. As a result, I am more apt to favor games that are more action, less talking.

So my first game in this series was a game that I had never given a fair play to, thus I decided to follow it up with a game I wanted to play, but had wound up forgotten in my backlog.

My playtime: approximately 5 hours:

With RPGs, or any games that were cut scene or tutorial heavy, I knew I would need to give the game at least 3 hours. I got into “Lost Sphear” to the point where I gave it closer to 5.

The game opens with a cut scene/plot battle in the ancient past, which turns out to be the reoccurring dream of the protagonist, Kanata. From there, in the grand tradition of most RPGs and fantasy stories, you round up the characters that will make up your starting adventuring party. Sword using Kanata is joined by pugilist Lumina and sniper Locke. The 3 teenage friends are orphans being raised by the village elder, and part of their chores includes defending the town from encroaching monsters and fishing.

After some expository dialogue, getting the sense of the town, and getting a combat tutorial, the party leaves the village on its first mini mission, to go catch a fish. However, when they return, they discover a white void has absorbed and erased their home, along with anyone who was there.

As they attempt to make sense of what happened, they are joined by a mysterious, Goth guy in a long coat whom goes by “Van,” and fights with beam shooting knives. Together they go find shelter for the night at a cabin in the mountains, and while they sleep Kanata has an info dump dream that breaks down the core plot of the game: to recapture what has been “lost” with the power of memories.

Thus the party has to go around and collect memories, which Kanata has the power to manifest into stones/compacted mass/crystals and use to recover the places, people and things that have been lost to the white void.

After saving the village and getting recruited by a representative from the empire to help combat this phenomenon, which is causing havoc throughout the world, Kanata and comrades discover additional nuances to his powers, including the ability to create new things that give boosts in combat.

I played far enough to discover that the game mechanics of collecting ingredients to make food, which also give combat boosts, and magic/special abilities being contingent upon equipping items called spritnite, were carried over from “I Am Setsuna.”

So “Lost Sphear” had a limited learning curve for me, and I was able to spend more time enjoying than mastering new game mechanics. Even if I had not played “I Am Setsuna,” like most games of recent generation, the game is good about succinctly providing tutorials on game mechanics. However, at the point I stopped playing, before writing this post, I had only barely unlocked, thus barely begun to understand, the magical, steam punky vector suits, which are unique to this game.

Conclusions:

Obviously, I like “Lost Sphear,” and will be playing more of it, if I put in more time than what I deemed the minimum requirement to write a post on it. However, as engaged and pleased as I am with it, in the time I played it, I cannot see it overtaking “I Am Setsuna,” or the 1990s SquareSoft SNES games, in my esteem in terms of dialogue, and possibly characters, for me.

The dialogue is simplistic and repetitive. Even keeping in mind that the reading level should be written so as to be accessible to a wide audience, and the fact that it was translated to English from Japanese, the dialogue still comes across as weak relative to other JRPGs I’ve played, including “I Am Setsuna.” It is not simplistically bad in the fun way, like the famous “spoony bard” line from the first English translation of “Final Fantasy IV” (or II, in its original US SNES release). However, the game gives you the option of rewinding or fast forwarding dialogue, which is pretty useful and something that would have been really handy in the preceding games that inspired this one.

Still, slogging through the info dumps on what the game defines as memories and what they do is both tedious and simiotically draining.

In terms of the characters, they’re stock archetypes, and that’s not necessarily bad. Kanata is the pure hearted hero. Lumina is the, at times temperamental, big sister. Locke is the precocious kid who shoots his mouth off, and hates being called out on his inexperience and shortcomings. Van is the blunt expert with a secret. The personality dynamic in the group is good, actually. I am not overly attached to any of the characters though. In fact, I am mostly just offended that the character who is the source of the most repetitive dialogue, and is basically a bratty little kid, shares a name with the romantic thief, I mean “treasure hunter,” from “Final Fantasy VI.”

Really though, the use of archetypical characters in genre and pulp narratives is something I can readily forgive. Sometimes the narrative goes in ways that subvert the archetypes, and sometimes the characters get fleshed out enough to render them into a more unique personality. Only 5 hours of gameplay in, it’s hard to fully assess what may become of the characters in “Lost Sphear.”

In terms of more positive aspects of “Lost Sphear,” it did improve on “I Am Setsuna” in terms of game mechanics. Unlike its spiritual predecessor, inns are available to heal the party. This standard of JRPGs was absent from “I Am Setsuna” and it was extremely inconvenient. Money is no longer as hard or convoluted to come by in “Lost Sphear,” which likely goes hand in hand with inns being part of the game.

In combat, since the combatants move around the battlefield, it is possible to hit more than one party member or monster. In “I Am Setsuna” this mechanic was incidental and could be optimized for maximum impact with practice. In “Lost Sphear,” they introduce the mechanic early on, and let the player see what monsters are being targeted.

This multiple target mechanic warms my tactical and strategy loving heart! And kudos for the listing the button functions at the bottom of the screen; you can either ignore them, or refer to them if you need a refresher.

While the active combat style requires full attention while playing (as it should), I found exploring the different locations and world map peaceful and relaxing. The color palate is warm and the score perfectly accents the scenes. I genuinely like this gaming environment.

For fans of SquareSoft JRPGs from the 1990s, Tokyo RPG Factory games will appeal to your genre sensibilities. It soothes and panders rather than challenges, but sometimes that is exactly the kind of media you want and need, and that’s okay. Frankly, I think it’s cool that the styles and aesthetics of these games can be retranslated with new technology to reach new audiences, while attracting longtime or lapsed fans. It’s something mainstream Hollywood cinema has done for decades, and enables more texts for genre and narrative studies. Plus, you know, it’s just fun.

#game for gaming #video games #videogames #lost sphear

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felidae-charr · 7 years ago

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[Spoilers] Oh ArenaNet, why are you like this?

Again, please note: SPOILERS for the newest living story patch A Bug in the System.

ArenaNet, you are good at many things.

You are very good at world design. Your maps have always been fun to explore, your races have always been relatively diverse and breakaway from industry standard, with quite a lot of character to them. Your story and lore writing has often been intuitive, interesting and engaging, with a few notable flaws here and there and some pacing problems. You managed to design mounts and encourage free-roam exploration almost perfectly and still continue to manage this with relatively few hiccups.

You are good at many things.

But boss fights are, increasingly, not one of them.

For the love of everything holy, stop putting boss fights in my story instances. You aren’t good enough at creating them or balancing them to warrant forcing me to slog through them.

This isn’t the first time this has happened, ArenaNet. You know it. I know it. We all know it. This isn’t the first time that you’ve put a boss in a story instance and it has been abjectly shit; at best, not engaging and at worst downright frustrating and close to unwinnable for certain classes or sometimes even people with vision problems. And let me tell you, the two bosses in Bug in the System both were boring and beyond that, the final one in particular was the worst experience I’ve had in a long time playing your game.

Without going into too much detail, I’m going to bitch and whine about how much I hated the fight(s) against Commander Lonai because it was shit.

1) I’m a Sword/Pistol + Rifle thief. I have zero ability to deal with multiple targets at once. Therefore, Lonai’s Dying Stars was a bullshit mechanic to try and deal with at the same time as trying to kill Lonai to push her into the next phase of a fight.

2) Dying Stars can and will target you through stealth, consistently and constantly, meaning the stealth mechanic of my class is fucking useless because it fundamentally doesn’t work on three of four enemies in the arena. By the way, because I’m only a fucking thief, I don’t have enough health to be eating constant homing in attacks that will home in on me even when stealthed and hit for 2k each time.

3) Braham’s AI is broken and rarely attacks anything, in addition to not always seeking me out when I go down to revive me. Since I’m not able to avoid going down because half of the attacks can target me even when I’m in stealth and will follow me around the arena until they hit me, this is a huge problem.

4) There’s so much shit going on in all three phases of her fight that it doesn’t even become a test of skill as to how well you fight her, and instead turns into a “I might as well die and tank and spank because I can barely avoid anything anyway”. AoEs that basically take up half of the arena - in a fight against an enemy who has constant AoEs dropping on you and who constantly has three extra enemies summoned that have attacks that home in on you - are bullshit.

5) The Shade mechanic isn’t very well explained at all until she actually summons the first Shade. That doesn’t change the fact her Dying Stars spawn several minutes earlier than the Shade ever will and so you’re dicking around with the volatile star magic whatever bullshit wondering what the fuck you’re meant to be doing with it, only realising much later that it’s only useful for one mechanic.

6) Why do two of these three phases involve mechanics that give you Chill or that otherwise slow you down when this fight is about constant movement all the time. Literally why.

This fight wasn’t fun. It wasn’t engaging. It was fucking horrendous. Lonai had so much HP that it was a grind to try and kill her even as a single-target focused thief. The fact her fight also involves attacks you can’t avoid (even if you stealth) and that her fight is in small arenas with very few places to safely move despite having so much shit to be dodging and that the fight seems to have been deliberately elongated as filler content (we don’t need to be teleported a third time to the Shiverpeaks just because you think it’s cool to show off a Claw of Jormag) made it a horrific experience to play through.

And I hate that. I hate that both boss fights in this living world episode were so bad, because the rest of it was so damn good. The new tribe of Charr, getting involved in Inquest secrets and seeing things backfire, pushing the idea of people in the Inquest not being evil shitheads (which we all knew but it’s nice to see that finally elaborated on) and also to see connections that hearken back to old characters like Kudu of all Asura! The new map being super fun to explore! There’s so much good in this patch that it hurts me how these boss fights were both so catastrophically bad.

STOP DOING THIS, ARENANET. We had this same shit with a boss in PoF who was fucking abysmal to fight if you weren’t a certain class or a certain build with access to quick CC. This has been a plague literally since the start of your game. GW2 is literally infamous for having bad, unfun boss fights. I wouldn’t be sad if you didn’t include tiny bosses every patch in the story, ArenaNet. I’m totally fine with you designing bosses for the open-world content, not instanced ones. I’m fine with boss battles being saved for huge enemies like Joko, or Mordremoth, or other really big bads, so that you have the time and ability to do it right.

#spoilers #GW2 spoilers #A Bug in the System #GW2 A Bug in the System #I'm so frustrated #I loved so much of this patch #but I was made so legitimately angry by the boss fights #they were so unfun #and the last one so close to unwinnable

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saltineofswing · 7 years ago

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Binary Phoenix

“Who, the guy with the red horns? Yeah, we met him. Weird little fella. Never got his name. Wonder where he is now?” -- Attila-5 to Ikora Rey, after the Towerfall event.

Thanks to @sedimentarydearwatson and @ir-anuk for the use of their characters, and thanks to everyone who’s been reading these fics consistently. Please enjoy!

She knew he’d seen it coming by the calm in his voice.

“So it’s this one,” Euclid had murmured, in an idle moment spent lounging in the shade of trees in the Tower courtyard. They spent their recharge periods together frequently, basking in sunlight to allow the solar batteries in their torsos a chance to recharge. Today clouds had blotted out the sky, and the hubbub of activity had made Yarrow suspicious… but not suspicious enough to end one of the precious few breaks they got to go investigating. Euclid had turned to her, given her hand a squeeze, and got to his feet. “We should go.”

“What?” She’d asked, exasperation and amusement playing xylophone with her throat and mouthlights- akin to a dramatic roll of the eyes, which she also performed literally a moment later as she let him haul her to her feet. “Go where?”

“It’s the end of the world,” he’d informed her softly. Questions and disparaging remarks as to the dramatic mystery of his statement bubbled up in her vocalizer, but they were squelched by a resonating thunder out behind the Walls. The clouds broke, and Yarrow’s mouthlights strobed alarm as the Cabal ships roared towards the Tower. She’d heard Euclid hum, curious, and as he tugged her arm and Blinked with her away from the incoming volley of explosive artillery she’d caught one last, passing comment. “A day or so ahead of schedule, too.”

*******

“Of the some two-million simulations I experienced during my sojourn on Venus,” Euclid explained to Yarrow, Jolly, Galatea, and a pair of other Guardians as they tromped through a side-alley, “Approximately forty-seven percent of them involved the destruction of the Tower. Of that forty-seven percent, an impressive half of these ‘Towerfall’ occurrences were perpetrated by Cabal aggressors.” Their group paused at the head of the alley, at Euclid’s behest, and Yarrow’s grip on her Pulse Rifle tightened as a Cabal dropship growled past.

“And you didn’t tell anyone about this because?” Galatea grumbled. “The Vanguard, perhaps?”

“Tell them what? ‘Ah, I th-think the Tower will be attacked, only I can’t tell you when, nor where the assault will originate, nor how, nor whom the perpetrators will be with any degree of certainty’. And that's setting aside explaining to them how-how- er- how I ‘know’ that in the first place!”

“Better to have been prepared for it, at least,” the other Titan traveling with them grumbled.

“To be fair, the Future War Cult has been clamoring about having predicted the fall of the city for decades,” countered the other Warlock.

“Yeah, but those guys are crazy!”

“Quit arguing,” Yarrow snapped at them. “Focus up. We have civilians to exfiltrate.”

They bounded across the street and Yarrow did her best to ignore the battle raging overhead; ships in dogfights, Cabal cruisers spitting drop pods and artillery shells down into the City as something aligned itself to the Traveler. She felt them all watching it in solemn silence, allowing themselves a moment of contemplation.

“What do we think it is?” Jolly asked, unusually quiet.

They all glanced at Euclid, who tilted his head slightly.

“... Well,” he mumbled, picking at his gloves. “I-I don’t know, err, h-how to- I suppose it’s- I mean, m-most likely-“

“It’s okay. Spit it out Euclid,” Yarrow said, patting his back encouragingly. She thought she knew what he was going to say but that didn’t make her feel any better about it.

“It’s m-most likely some sort of, ehh, d-device designed to c-cut us off from the Traveler’s Light.”

The implications made her reel slightly. Was that even possible? How could the Cabal do that? What kind of technology even had that kind of power? The Red Legion was from someplace very far away, indeed, if they had so much ridiculous crap none of them had ever seen before. Everyone else seemed to be speechless as well, until Galatea’s chin rose.

“Our Light is not what makes us Guardians,” she said firmly. “This is still our City. It is still our job to protect it.”

Yarrow almost felt like there had never been a time when this many Guardians had been present in the Last City at once. Shamefully she couldn’t even name the district they were now patrolling; she didn’t know a single civilian that wasn’t employed at the Tower.

The city was seemingly in its death throes, and Yarrow couldn’t help but feel stunned as she witnessed the last gasps of a total stranger.

*******

A Cabal Phalanx’s shield wrenched forcefully from its owners’ hand on a flickering tendril of Void light and careened across the space between two buildings to slam headlong into a Centurion’s jetpack mid-flight. The ensuing ball of fire tumbled down to street level as Galatea and Jolly wheeled out from cover to pepper the defenseless Phalanx trooper with bullets. Euclid flicked his wrist and the sputtering Cabal flew sideways off the roof after its shield.

“Man, when the Cabal say ‘occupation’, they mean it,” Jolly muttered, slapping another clip into her submachine gun. One of the few good things about Shaxx opening up his armory, Euclid reflected, was that Guardians who had appreciation for weapons suddenly had a wide assortment of new toys to enjoy. Like Jolly and Galatea, for example. Jolly had a sidearm at her side and a sniper slung across her back; unfortunately the high-caliber ammunition the sniper required was sparse and hard to come by. Euclid passed her the rest of his ammunition for his submachine gun in exchange for some stray hand cannon ammo she’d come across, and the Awoken Warlock beside him turned with a chuckle to oversee the small caravan of civilians they’d gathered.

“How many of them do you think’ve spent this much time around Guardians before?” He asked, bitterly amused.

“Now now,” Euclid chided mildly as he reloaded his gun. “Not all of us were strangers here, right? I’m, err, s-sure some of us spent quite a b-bit of time in the City.”

The deafening silence from his other five companions made him chuckle uneasily. “… W-well, someone out there m-must have. I mean I’ve heard there are, ah, b-bars and the like that are specifically tailored to Guardians.”

“Anyway,” Galatea interjected. “We’re going to be encountering one of the designated exfiltration zones soon. We should decide who is going and who is staying- we have too many people to fit on one transport.” Euclid patted Yarrow’s shoulder and left the others to figure out their battle-plan- it wasn’t one of his strong suits.

The civilians were wet, tired, and forlorn. Euclid and the other Guardians had been slogging them across the City, up down and around, trying to find an evacuation craft that had not yet departed; he got the impression that it was a long trek for them, but it had only been about a dozen kilometers. Sometimes it was baffling, the differences between Guardians and regular civilians. He supposed it wasn’t their fault; after all, they didn’t have tireless mechanical limbs or armor that injected stimulants into your thigh muscles when you became fatigued, or a Ghost to help your circulatory system cycle unnaturally quickly and efficiently, or-

“M-mister Guardian?”

Euclid did his best not to jerk away as he felt something tug his robes but only half-succeeded, and the instinctive recoil did not seem to do anything for the ardent frown on the face of the child who had been trying to get his attention. He pivoted his body awkwardly to face the small human and crouched down the way he sometimes saw Jolly doing when she encountered a broken shank, to pull it apart for valuables. He was entirely unsure how to handle children; multiple Guardians had explicitly told him that it was probably best he stay away from them whenever possible.

But surely this couldn’t hurt. “How can I help you?”

“I’m tired. Are we gonna make it to the eva-evacliation point soon?”

“The evacuation point,” he corrected gently. “Yes. We are approaching one now. Presuming we arrive and find the exfiltration crews alive and in viable shape, you’ll be loaded onto an outbound transport.”

This did not seem to reassure the child. “But... Where’re we gonna go?”

“I am unsure.” He noted the particularly obvious surprise that blazed a trail across the child’s face. “Standard protocols have not been prepared for a catastrophe of this magnitude, but in similar situations a fallback position- or several- are often set up in designated high-Light-exposure areas outside of dangerous encounter spaces.”

The child was silent, seemingly digesting his words, and Euclid got the feeling many of them had gone over its head. Instead of trying to format an appropriate response it apparently decided to change tack slightly.

“... But you’re not... you’re not scared, right?”

Euclid glanced between the child and the back of Yarrow’s hooded head, wishing now that he had gotten someone else to handle this situation. “Err...” He glanced back at the tiny human and pulled off his helmet, attempting to produce a reassuring smile in his mouthlights that did nothing but gently illuminate the child’s elevated levels of surprise when it realized he was an Exo. “... W-well, of course I am!” He said. “But that doesn’t mean I- oh dear.”

He hurriedly pulled his helmet back onto his head and stood up as the child’s eyes brimmed with tears and it let out a clogged sob, the parents hurrying over firing scathing looks his way as he felt a wash of unease drift over him, and he turned back to the others. He wasn’t sure why, but somehow he knew he’d given the small human the wrong answer.

*****

“FLY FIVE MILES OUT PAST SPLINTERWIND CREEK,” the second Warlock in their group called from the bay of a repurposed cargo transport that was being used to evacuate civilians. “THERE’S A CLEARING OUTSIDE THE RANGE OF CABAL SENSORS WHERE THEY’RE STAGING A SECONDARY FALLBACK POINT.”

“WHAT HAPPENED TO THE PRIMARY?” Jolly called back, cupping her hands over her mouth to make her voice audible over the thundering roar of the cargo hauler’s engines.

The Warlock shook his head, and Jolly winced. Nearby, Galatea was standing with the other Titan, silent and forehead to forehead, neither Guardian apparently fazed by the proximity of their helmets. It was some small Guardian ritual, but Euclid couldn’t begrudge them the scarce moments taken to perform it. His own anxiety was flaring as civilians were loaded onto the ship.

They’d arrived somewhat late. The hauler had been almost full already when they’d gotten to the LZ, and so only about half the civilians in their complement could be squeezed into the ship, packed in tighter than they probably should have been- but there was no time or room for error to find another ship. The two Guardians they had picked up on their way down from the Tower had elected to go with them, in order to keep them safe; as the other Titan caught the Awoken Warlock’s hand and hauled himself up into the ship the Warlock turned back to them. “BY THE WAY,” he shouted, “WE NEVER GOT YOUR NAMES!”

“SAVE IT FOR WHEN WE MEET BACK UP!” Jolly replied, grinning widely. “I’LL BUY YOU BOTH A DRINK!”

“Naive,” Galatea mumbled as she came back over to stand beside Euclid. Yarrow was busy shepherding civilians back towards the City. They’d gotten the coordinates for the next district’s evacuation points and there was, thankfully, one not that far away. “To assume we will ever see them again.” She watched the bay doors close, and Euclid watched her take her helmet off her head. The faceplate was cracked, deeply enough that the internal mechanisms were undoubtedly fried. As she tossed it aside, the ship lifted into the air; Jolly waved after it emphatically with both hands. Her face was impassive as ever as she watched Jolly’s arms fall to her sides, still watching the ship vanish into the smoke and smog. Galatea’s lips tightened ever-so-slightly at the sight of Jolly’s clenched fists, and she closed her eyes with a soft sigh.

“I’ll get her,” she said. “We should get moving.”

“Everybody’s in a bit of a rough mood, but they’re still hopeful,” Yarrow informed him as Galatea strode off to get Jolly. “I am too, for the record. Aster, you got any hard info on our next destination?”

“Not so far off, all things considered!” Aster unfolded from subspace into view by Yarrow’s head, and the two exchanged a brief glance. Even Euclid could detect the faint strain of anxiety in the Ghost’s voice. “I mean, it’s ah... it’s certainly doable! We made it this far, after all.”

“B-barely,” Euclid mumbled sourly. “Th-there have been several instances in w-which our only, ehh, saving g-grace, as it were, has been luck.”

“We got four strapping Guardians here,” Yarrow said, patting Euclid’s shoulder. “I’d say ‘young’ but I know you’re like a hundred and six, and well, I have no clue how old Galatea is.”

“I’m 129.”

“Whatever. Look.” She nodded to her Ghost, who spun out of view, and turned to look at him as Galatea and Jolly approached. “We’ve had harder challenges. Besides; this is what we put on the boots for. If we’re ever going to come back here and stomp these wrinkly toad-headed monsters, we gotta get as many people out as possible. And we will.” She hefted her rifle on her shoulder and turned to look out at the next district. “Don’t worry, Euclid. We’re going to make it.”

*****

“Not going to make it,” she muttered grimly, emptying another clip in her sidearm into a Cabal’s faceplate. “They’re not going to make it.” She could see Jolly cresting the hill as she and her Titan partner brought up the rear of their group; the other Hunter was struggling with her sidearm, and Yarrow saw her drop her rifle, pick up a stone and slingshot it with a burst of desperate golden fire through the torso of one of the Cabal chasing them. Galatea had a civilian under one arm and a shotgun in the other, perched precariously against the crook of her elbow while she jammed more shells into the gun with an animal snarl on her ordinarily stoic and ethereal face. They were moving fast… but they weren’t moving fast enough.

Behind them, the district’s last transport was loading up. All but five of the civilians they’d been guarding were scrabbling unchallenged into the ship, dirty, weary, and finally nearing the end of their long trek. One LZ after another had turned up dry or overrun; and they just didn’t have the time or the supplies to move into the next district over. Already they’d seen artillery shells fall on the City in other districts, passed Guardian holdouts that lay barren under the unstoppable onward march of the Red Legion. To her side, Yarrow heard Euclid let out a tense huff.

“How you holding up, Screwloose?” She called to him, sticking her sidearm back in her belt and dragging her pulse rifle off her back; she checked the mag with a second’s glance and bitterly wished she had about a thousand more bullets before she positioned it properly in her hand. She glanced over to Euclid, who still had a palm clapped firmly over a wound in his side; his mouthlights strobed discomfort, but he flipped the cylinder on his hand-cannon out.

“I’ve been better,” he admitted, “But this is hardly m-my worst day.” The spent casings in his gun shot out and away, and six new bullets filed neatly into the cylinder in its place seemingly of their own accord; Euclid tipped his head sharply and the cylinder spun with a series of soft clicks before he snapped the gun back to the right and the cylinder clacked back into place. He cocked the hammer and turned back to Yarrow. “We need to help J-jolly and Galatea!”

“Easier said than done! You got enough bullets to hold off the Cabal?”

“I’m, err, down to, uhh, m-maybe sixteen.”

“Triffick.” Yarrow’s eyelights narrowed slightly. “I’m almost fresh out on Pulse Rifle clips. Before long I’m going to be down to Sidearm and not much else.” And that was hardly good for a confrontation like this.

She tensed as a pack of the Cabal’s War Beasts came howling towards them, and saw the two straggling Guardians try to hurry the remaining five civilians they were shepherding towards the dropship behind them. Galatea was still loading her shotgun; Jolly skidded to a halt and spun around to her partner, tearing off to intercept the War Beasts. The foremost animal let out a triumphant shriek and tackled her, sinking its teeth into her elbow.

“CARTER!” Galatea roared, dropping the civilian under her arm to try and bring her shotgun to bear- but it wasn’t going to be fast enough, nor would it have the range necessary to stave off the beasts from where she was. Yarrow saw Galatea’s eyes widen in genuine terror, but she didn’t have the energy left to muster more than a few crackling tendrils of lightning.

“Damn it all,” Yarrow grunted; she dropped her Pulse Rifle and snatched Euclid’s Hand-Cannon out of his grasp, drawing a surprised squawk from her companion. She didn’t have time to ask- the weapon burst into flame, and Yarrow leveled the Golden Gun at the beasts about to rip Carter ‘Jolly’ Jackson to shreds. She fanned the hammer desperately, each fiery burst aimed on instinct, and the six slavering beasts fell in six smoldering heaps. Jolly saluted her with two fingers and sped past a thoroughly relieved Galatea to help herd civilians onto the ship. When she went to hand Euclid back his gun she found him hunched over, fingers digging into the seam at his throat.

“Too quiet,” Euclid hissed, fumbling with the clasps of his helmet. “It’s too quiet, too quiet, too- too-“ a seam at his neck hissed as the Obsidian Mind disconnected from his undersuit, and Yarrow felt his other-sight wash across her as the limiters in his helmet shut off. The sudden swell of Light made her drop the hand-cannon in surprise- she’d never have guessed he still had so much power left in him.

Euclid whipped his helmet off his head and tossed it aside; Jolly scooped it up as she ran past, dropping her empty sidearm and clubbing a Psion aside with the obsidian bucket in her hand. Yarrow’s sidearm was already in her hand to cut down the Psion’s Centurion handler with the fullness of her second-to-last clip. Jolly scrambled aboard the transport and climbed to her feet, waving Galatea aboard after her. She pulled the last civilian into the bay and then clasped Galatea’s gauntlet with both hands, straining to haul the heavily-armored Titan aboard. She turned and called something Yarrow couldn’t hear into the dropship, and the engines began to warm up as people scrambled to find seats and strap in.

A trio of Colossi crested the rise and brought their massive guns to bear on the dropship, and their rockets splashed across the ship’s shields. Euclid cast out his arm and threw a Nova Bomb at the rise; it crashed into the chestplate of the lead Colossus and carved a black hole into the world for a moment- but it shrunk and vanished surprisingly quickly for a vortex created by Euclid. Even with so much Light left in him, he must have been growing tired.

“Yarrow!” Jolly’s voice crackled over her comms and snapped her back into focus. “We got everybody onboard. Grab Euclid and let’s go!”

“If those Cabal take the LZ, they’ll turn the ship into slag!” She snapped back, taking a few potshots from cover to keep the incoming Cabal Legionaries honest. “Make sure everybody’s strapped in and ready to go. We’ll- we’ll figure something out.” She clicked the comm off and clacked her jaw shut in irritation. A streak of fire from a Cabal Legionnaire nearly sheared her helmet in half and she winced and threw her now-smoking hood back. When she reached for her belt to find more ammo, a grenade, a knife, anything- she came up empty.

“We can’t hold the line like this!” Yarrow shouted to Euclid, ducking back behind a chunk of rubble big enough to shield both of them. He dropped down next to her with a peculiar expression of contemplation in his throatlights.

“No,” Euclid murmured, turning for a moment to survey the oncoming tide of Cabal with his other-sight. “… No, we can’t.” The staggering reality of facing death- possibly actually permanent death- for the first time struck them both. She knew that not everybody would make it out of this catastrophe. The fall of the Tower. She’d prepared for the possibility of being one of those who were left behind; it hadn’t occurred to her that Euclid might be there with her. Laughable, in hindsight- as if Euclid would ever willingly leave her behind. He turned his head to look at her, seemingly calculating something. He took her head in both hands, and let their foreheads meet for a brief moment.

“COME ON!!” Jolly screamed to them as the transport’s engines spun up from an idle hum to a dull roar. “WE GOTTA GO NOW!”

“It’s the only way to give them time,” he said, his voice so low she could barely hear it. “You know it is. I h-hope you know- I hope-“

She froze a selection of her non-primary functions, letting her optics blink off, and let herself occupy the moment; her hands came up to clasp his shoulders, fingers digging into the seams of his maroon pauldrons, balling in the odd khaki-and-saffron of his robes. He still smelled like his flowers, even after all this time spent away from Venus. “I know,” she muttered back. She allowed herself a moment of sincerely solemn contemplation. “Me too.”

His mouthlights flickered in relief. “G-good.” There was a brief pause as he collected himself. “I’m sorry.”

“What?”

Yarrow didn’t have time to react as Euclid’s hands darted away from her and he shoved her backwards; she didn’t have time to think or process what was happening, but everything seemed sluggish as she continued to move away, away, away- and she realized he hadn’t shoved her with his hands but rather with his Light, and she was hurtling backwards through the air with arms outstretched. When she collided bodily with Jolly time seemed to snap back to its proper progression as the other Hunter let out a heavy ‘Oof!’ and the two were knocked out of the doorway.

She tumbled like a ragdoll into the bay of the transport and rolled back to her feet. She screamed something verbally and with full-throated lights that lit the inside of her visor for a moment before she was sprinting for the exit- but Galatea caught her around the waist. “Don’t be stupid!” the Titan hissed to her. The bay doors were already closing, civilians strapped uncomfortably into their seats.

“What’s he doing?” Jolly asked, panic in her voice as she clutched Euclid’s helmet in her hands.

“Galatea you have a SECOND to drop me before I-“

“Guys, what’s he doing!?”

“Before you WHAT?!” Galatea bellowed, dropping Yarrow and sweeping her arm around the dropship’s stunned-silent complement. Three Guardians, nearly twenty-seven civilians. “You and I both know that if we put up too hard of a fight, the Cabal will call down an orbital strike! Is that what you want?”

Yarrow’s jaw clacked shut angrily as she pushed herself to her feet. “So we’re just going to abandon him?” She shouted back, nearly chestplate-to-chestplate with the taller Titan. “Just gonna say, ‘Oh well! Guess he did his best!’ and let him cark it while we relax in the exfil transport!?”

“You’d just be going to your death!”

“Who CARES!?” Yarrow roared. Her fists knocked against Galatea’s chestplate but the Titan didn’t so much as flinch. “If we’re gonna lose our Light anyway, I’d rather lose it backing him up than moping in some empty warehouse in the Dead Zone! He needs our help!”

Galatea bared gritted teeth, furrowed her brow, but it wasn’t an expression of anger. “So do they,” She implored quietly, desperately, grabbing Yarrow by the shoulders. “Please. I-“

She was cut off by Jolly, standing at the doorway, who had gasped in horror at something outside- they saw her dart forward, but there was a sudden thunderous boom, an ignition of Light like a small sun that quickly spun into a violent purple vortex, and their argument was forgotten as they watched Euclid erupt with power, a Sunsinger and a Voidwalker at once. Yarrow began to move forward again, standing beside Jolly, but this time it was just to make sure she could see him for as long as possible before the bulkhead doors shuddered closed.

*****

As Yarrow careened backwards towards the dropship, Euclid felt as though he’d torn a piece of his internal mechanisms out and sent them with her. He stood as he watched her slam into Jolly, watched the two of them tumble backwards into the bay of the transport, saw Galatea’s surprise fade from her features as she made eye-contact with him. Or, as close as anybody could get, anyway. He nodded, and her face hardened with the realization of his intention. While Yarrow and Jolly were untangling themselves in the back of the dropship Galatea slammed her palm down on the panel beside the doors, and they began to grind shut as she turned her back on him.

It was more affecting than he had anticipated. Euclid hoped Yarrow would forgive him.

Moments later a Cabal slug rifle blasted his head to a thousand discreet pieces.

Before his body had even touched the ground his Light had warmed, sparked, and ignited; the incredible roar of fire and Solar light momentarily eclipsed that of the dropship’s engines as Euclid’s head reassembled itself and a pyre ignited from his collar, engulfing his head in a solar blaze. He pushed himself up with his hands and then rose off the ground without them, drifting into the air and turning to the oncoming Cabal, who had paused in unusual indecision as Euclid’s Light scoured the rubble around him and melted the chunk of metal he and Yarrow had been hunkered down behind.

He held his breath, hands balled into tight, trembling fists as he let every last drop of Light he had in him surge through his body; the fire cooled, swirled, and then leapt violet, the ball of fire engulfing his head becoming a ghostly wisp as Void Light suddenly replaced the inferno and lifted the Cabal’s front line off the ground- alongside every half-melted piece of detritus and rubble in his immediate vicinity. The Void howled counter-clockwise around him and Euclid’s hands snapped open; the foremost Colossus drifting helplessly in front of him dissolved instantly into its derivative molecular components and scattered into the vortex.

He exhaled, and the vortex resolved once more into a raging clockwise inferno that flash-incinerated the rest of the Cabal’s forward line, sending the rest scrambling for cover. Euclid’s extremities tingled, but he felt no discomfort as he dragged the Sun and the Void out of himself at the same time, battering the Cabal’s forces with blooming waves of heat-then-cold-then-heat-then-cold; it left him hovering above a star-glassed crater that superheated and cracked anew when he exhaled the brilliant Sun, and wept molten-hot molecular dust into the hungry dark whenever he held his breath and the Void swept away gravity like a strong causal tide.

Threshers were yanked into the maelstrom and rent asunder, Cabal vaporized or ripped in half or both, and Euclid screamed soundlessly within the wisp as he felt his armor creak and groan, his robes burning to tatters. When the Cabal’s forces had all either fallen back or perished, and the dropship was airborne, he heard something click and buzz in his ear.

“That’s enough, old friend.”

Constant’s voice swept him out of his trance, and Euclid finally collapsed to the ground at the center of a blighted crater.

His optics had burnt out in the extreme discharge of energy. Lights in his mouth and throat sputtered in imitation of a swallow but only about half of them winked on at all. He sighed, his vocals dim and far away. “They made it,” he said; his voice had reduced to a harsh, crackling whisper.

“They did.” He felt Constant spin out into the physical world beside his head and he instinctually lifted his palm, not quite touching his Ghost, to let his fingers curl partway around the crimson shell. “Thanks to you. You did wonderfully.”

His Light was still thundering in pulses out from the middle of the crater, carrying on in aftershocks, a beacon and a warning all at once. As it ballooned outward and upward Euclid could faintly feel something positioned far overhead. He looked up out of reflex, but he didn’t need to see it to know what it was. “How long?” He asked. “Until their artillery is positioned, I mean.”

“A minute,” Constant said solemnly. He felt his Ghost’s segments whir centimeters from his fingers. “Maybe a little less. Euclid, I just-“ The Ghost paused, turned to survey the smoldering and broken skyline of the City. “… You know, I was searching for you for a very long time,” it told him. “I think I was part of one of the earlier waves to be released out into the world.” It stared up to the Traveler, and the machine that was now surrounding it. “I spent a long time looking for the right person.” It turned back to him, and Euclid felt the warmth of its gaze, his Light painting its lower foresegment tipping up in approximate expression of pride. “You are more than I could ever have asked for, Guardian.”

Euclid’s remaining lights flickered out a weak smile. “Thank you, Constant,” He murmured. He let his Light’s tendrils pull back, crossed his ankles, and let his hands rest on his knees. For a moment- just one more moment- he let his other-sight branch outward, taking in as much as he could, and thought of Venus. He imagined the white sand and dark stones in the back room behind his living quarters in a secret part of the Ishtar Academy, the smell of damp stone and old metal, all his maps and books…

“A garden,” he whispered to Constant. “Don’t you think? I think a garden.”

“Yes,” Constant replied, vanishing in a final whisper of molecular translocation. The first sound Euclid had ever heard. “I think so.”

Euclid withdrew. “A beautiful garden.”

The artillery shells fell from sub-orbit and razed the district. Inside the dropship, with both of her hands pressed to the bulkhead, Yarrow felt the swelling pulses of Void and Solar Light gutter and vanish.

*****

"Sight for sore eyes, as they say," Kass calls as the doors to the dropship peel aside to reveal its complement of haggard Guardians and frightened civilians. The presence of Yarrow-15, if not also Jolly and her towering partner Galatea, puts a brass smile on Kass's face. A fighting chance.

She realizes something is off moments later and cranes her neck and also the greedy tendrils of her Void Light, searching for the familiar, eager response and the pair of crimson horns that are never far behind Yarrow in a situation like this. The smile flickers. She notices, now, in the dim, disquiet reaction to her greeting; Jolly's head in her hands, elbows on her knees; Galatea's curt nod (Given, not that unusual- but the grimace on her oft-impassive face is); and Yarrow's strange, stiff spine, the clenched fist at her right side and the familiar black helmet gripped tight at her left.

"Euclid?" She asks, smile altogether gone now. She forces herself out of her stance to step to one side, an artificial performance of an act that tells her something she already knows. Jolly lets out a clenched sigh from behind her hands.

Yarrow shakes her head, jaw tight, mouthlights dead.

#Destiny 2 #Towerfall #Euclid319 #The Write Stuff #yarrow15 #Jolly Jackson #Galatea #Kass

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