December Bonus Review #2: Pokemon Scarlet & Violet

I’ve talked about the Pokémon franchise a lot. Both in anime form and in terms of the games. And why not? It was part of my childhood and it’s a franchise I still regularly revisit for relaxation. Except Sword & Shield as they were rubbish. But let’s look at the latest main instalments. Like with Sword & Shield, I’m not going to discuss Gamefreak’s lazy and consumer unfriendly decision to leave certain Pokémon out of the game. I will however be discussing the sorry state of the games at launch. Let’s get started.

Story:

We open with our protagonist moving to the Paldea region and beginning their new life at The Pokémon Academy. After a brief introduction, our young hero is set loose on a treasure hunt which has them challenging gyms, raiding bases of the seemingly delinquent Team Star and chasing down massive Titan Pokémon for mysterious herbs.

The story in this instalment is actually among the best in the franchise. If not the actual best. All three story arcs are really compelling and feature unexpectedly tragic elements that add some serious depth. They also each have their own climaxes and they come together in a really strong way for the game’s finale.

Characters:

This title has some of the strongest characters in the franchise’s history as well. You have Nemona in the gym challenge, Penny in the Team star story & Arven in the Titan hunt. I’ll be completely honest. At the start, I didn’t much like any of them as characters. They all seemed kind of flat but the game does an excellent job of slowly peeling back that superficial impression and showing you the hidden motivations and layers of the characters.

Nemona, for example, starts out looking like an over-eager battle maniac. However, as you progress it becomes clear that she wanted you to love battling and rise to become a formidable trainer because she feels stifled by success. There isn’t anyone around who can give her a good challenge and that’s gradually causing her to become disinterested in something she used to love. Which is a very interesting take on a strong trainer and a compelling way to tackle burnout. Arven and Penny likewise have some highly interesting layers hiding beneath your initial perception of them. Which I wasn’t anticipating because Pokémon characters are usually exactly what they appear to be.

Gameplay:

Let’s begin with the big aspect that needs to be discussed. The state of the game at launch. This game started out with a lot of bugs, glitches, lag issues (even when playing offline) and crashes. We may live in a world where that isn’t uncommon. Where, in fact, games are frequently released in an incomplete state and patched into a more playable framework. For me, this is still unacceptable. Being able to patch games post-launch does not give companies carte blanche to half-ass their releases.

That isn’t the only issue with the gameplay. The open world may be a good idea but they didn’t execute it well. The issue being that the levels of trainers, Titan Pokémon, & Team Star bases are all stagnant. They don’t change based on where you are in the game, how much you’ve completed or your level. What that means is if you start out going to the right of the Academy and clear out a bunch of events there and return to the left side later, the left side will be far too easy unless you want to completely change your party. Which happened to me. I went right at the start and by the time I headed left I could beat anything in one hit. On the opposite end, you can also go too far while exploring and wind up facing opponents who are virtually impossible. This also happened to me. I nearly got wiped by a trainer with a single Pokémon because it was twenty some levels higher than anything I had.

The game also removed the convenient GTS system where you could deposit a Pokémon for trade and someone could take the trade at any time. Which made it so much simpler to get trade evolutions since you could just put in a Machoke, request a Machoke and both you and your trade partner would get Machamps. Some of the new Pokémon also have really annoying evolution methods. There are multiple monsters that evolve from taking steps while walking with you which is just time consuming. The worst, however, is Gimmighoul. Gimmighoul is basically a mimic Pokémon, if you’re dealing with a really ugly mimic. To evolve it you have to find 999 Gimmighoul coins around the map. What makes it more insulting is that its evolution is bloody hideous. It looks like the mascot for tearaway cheese but you have to get it on your Pokedex if you want to complete it and get the shiny charm.

Let’s move on to the positive aspects. First of all, being able to see the Pokémon wandering around on the map is still a positive improvement. I also really like the movement mechanic of having this legendary Pokémon you use as a mount and helping it regain abilities in order to traverse various areas. It’s a good way of blocking player access to certain areas until they’re ready without resorting to something annoying like HMs. The way they do TMs in this is also a better compromise between giving them unlimited uses and just having them break than they’ve done before. What they do is give you the ability to make TMs using items you find and LP. So, you can make whatever TMs you want so long as you’ve had the TM in question. Though I still would prefer to just have unlimited uses like they did in Sun/Moon. I also appreciate the game giving you prizes throughout for Pokedex completion. It makes it more immediately awarding to go through the whole process of catching them all than just doing the whole thing and hoping they’ll give you a prize after. The whole lecture and testing process at the Academy is also a nice touch. It’s like an optional tutorial that offers you rewards for doing it and doesn’t take up too much time.

Then we have the Terastal mechanic. Honestly, it might be the best new game gimmick the franchise has had in a long time. The way it works is that you can use your tera orb once per battle to change a Pokémon into a specific type, at which point it looks like a crystalline figure, and give it extra damage when using moves of that type. What makes it interesting is that you can change a Pokémon’s Tera type. For instance, you could take Gyarados and make it a ground type with all the weaknesses and strengths thereof. So, it’s not broken and over-powered like getting three powerful attacks that also give you boosts. Nor is it team limiting like Megas were. It’s a lot more strategic.

Art:

The issue with the art is that the game has a lot of weird graphical glitches. They’re especially obvious if you watch random people in the background and their janky movements but you’ll also notice bizarre perspective. Like, you’ll battle a child trainer and the grass behind them will be taller than they are. It’s also disappointing that you can’t buy cute outfits for your trainer. You can buy hats, gloves, shoes, glasses, socks and bags but you don’t get shirts, skirts, trousers. Instead you’re stuck with one of four school uniforms. I miss Sun and Moon where you could change your outfit daily and find all kinds of interesting outfit pieces in the shops.

There are some positives. First off, the important trainers (Elite Four, Gym Leaders, Important NPCs) all look really good and unique. Even if they are a little pandering with characters like Iono, the gym leader who streams. Her design is still fecking adorable. The opening character customisation for hair colour, eye colour and hair style is also really good. The Pokémon models have some very nice details. Unlike Sword/Shield, these ones actually look like they’ve been updated and not just lazily imported from the prior generation. The Tera effect is also really nice looking. Like I said, Tera Pokemon look like crystalline figures with little added flair for the tops of their heads. The animation to Tera is also fairly quick and clean unlike the overblown Dynamax animation.

Sound:

The music is pretty solid. It can get a bit repetitive during longer gaming sessions. While there is some unique music for gym battles and such, you’re going to hear a lot of the same music for travelling, wild battles, random trainer battles and such.

Areas of Improvement:

1. These games never should have released in the state they did. If Gamefreak needed an extra month or two to get everything fixed, they should have pushed back the release date.
2. The game needed the GTS system in place. Especially if they’re going to keep the whole trade evolution mechanic.
3. The game needs a proper open world with scaling difficulty.

Final Thoughts:

For me, the state of the game on release definitely hurts it. The big question is how much does the game itself make amends for that huge misstep? Well, it has one of the strongest stories in the franchise and some of the best characters. It also does take some steps forward and some notable steps backward as well. I would still say these are good games. They’re also a bit disappointing because they could have been masterpieces. With more development and features this could have been one of the best generations. But it released incomplete, suffers from a lack of GTS, improperly executed open world and lack of outfits. I’m still going to give them a 7/10 for everything they do get right. I just really would have liked the effort that went into the story and characters to have translated into effort put into programming.

May Bonus Review: Pokemon Sword & Shield

It’s no secret that I don’t like Pokemon’s Generation 8. But the main grievance I’ve talked about in that regard is the way they ditched a lot of fantastic Pokemon like all the generation 2 starters, Ekans, Houndoom, Misdreavus, Mightyena, Seviper & more and most of what they added to replace them is rubbish like a fucking apple, whipped cream and the worst fossil Pokemon of all time. So, what I’m going to do is discuss the game without any more mentions of the Dexit situation and explain why, even ignoring that, I still think it’s the worst generation of Pokemon games.

Story:

The basic story is one every Pokemon fan knows by rote at this point. You start out in a small town, you obtain your first Pokemon and you take the gym challenge. I don’t really have an issue with the formula. If I did, I wouldn’t have played through every generation of the games with multiple playthroughs for most of them.

I will say the execution is pretty dull and the “evil team” you face throughout the game is the worst in the franchise’s history. Sword & Shield tries to do the same thing as Sun & Moon where the villainous Team you face is kind of pathetic but there’s a more powerful group up to something shady in the background. But in Sun & Moon there was some strong intrigue and even the pathetic Team had some memorable members. Guzma, Plumeria and Gladion. Team Yell is just boring. There are no interesting segments with them that can even come close to comparing to Po Town. And the characters who tie the threads together like Gladion and Guzma don’t exist in Sword and Shield. And all the stuff that Rose is up to is basically ended in ten minutes with very little build up. So it’s all just very half-assed.

Characters:

This may be the first generation of Pokemon games where there aren’t any interesting characters. Sun & Moon had Lusamine, Lillie, Gladion and a Professor who moonlights as a luchador. Just to name a few. X & Y gave you a team of rivals who were all advancing in their own ways and gave you plenty of interesting scenes with them. You also can’t discount Lysandre who was a pretty compelling villain. And every other generation has had their stand out characters. In this one, the rival characters are boring. The villains are rubbish. The only way any characters stand out is via their designs. Again, it’s like they completely half-assed it.

Gameplay:

A lot of the gameplay mechanics are familiar. You have turn-based battles with up to six Pokemon. You encounter wild Pokemon in caves, tall grass and in the water where you can weaken and capture them. Let’s talk about the areas where this generation differs and whether they’re for better or worse.

First of all, you can see wild Pokemon roaming in the world. I know, it started with Let’s Go Eevee and Pikachu, but it is still something new over prior generations. And it is actually an improvement since you can more easily avoid wild Pokemon you don’t feel like dealing with and encounter ones you actually want more easily. There is one problem. Mainly, the game has a central wild area where you can encounter all kinds of Pokemon, but a lot of them are uncatchable unless you have the right badge. Which means that you can run into a Pokemon that’s only a slightly higher level than the ones you’re using but not be able to catch it. Or you could encounter a rare shiny Pokemon that the game won’t let you capture.

Another problem I have with the wild area are Max Raids. Max Raids are basically encounters with wild Dynamax Pokemon that you have to battle with help. They’re really tedious and annoying to go through but doing them is helpful because they give you rare items and the special currency that lets you buy TRs and special Poke Balls, including Quick Balls. TRs are like old TMs from when they broke after one use. Because that was a good mechanic that needed to come back, right? You can get the special currency from raid battles, examining glowing dens and from glowing wild Pokemon. It’s a really grindy element and not in a fun way.

Let’s talk about Dynamax. This may be the worst game mechanic in the history of Pokemon. It’s highly over-powered, making battles far too easy and the graphical flair that goes with it is very overdone. Basically, there are specific battles where you can Dynamax one of your Pokemon for three turns, doubling its health bar, and allowing you to fire off three very powerful attacks that also grant you status boosts, change the weather or set up terrain for you. I only used the Dynamax mechanic in a battle once because the game is way too easy with it. And this is coming from a franchise that’s already really easy.

Mechanics like the Festival Plaza, Poke Pelago and Pokemon Refresh have all been replaced with vastly inferior versions that contribute to making the game significantly less fun. It’s also worth noting that the Surprise Trade mechanic isn’t really worth doing because half the time you get blatantly hacked legendary Pokemon with website nicknames, forty five percent of the time you get super common stuff that you would never want and maybe five percent of the time you get something not hacked that you might actually want to use. You didn’t get nearly that level of hacked shite in the older generations. So, I don’t know if Sword and Shield just have weaker protections or what.

Art:

I have a couple issues with the artwork in this. First off, the Dynamax stuff I already mentioned. Secondly, the graphics are barely an upgrade over the 3DS Pokemon games. You would expect more of a leap forward when you’ve got more advanced hardware. Especially when you consider how much more power the Switch has than its predecessor.

To the game’s credit, there is a nice amount of clothing options and other ways to customise your trainer. I do like being able to do that.

Sound:

I’ll be honest, I turned off the sound after about an hour and listened to something else in the background. Part of it was that the game was just boring and tedious to play but part of it was that the sounds were just kind of in the same vein as every Pokemon game and it’s all stuff I’ve heard before. Since I’ve literally been playing this franchise since 1999.

Areas of Improvement:

1. Put some effort into your story-telling. Just because you have a tried and true formula that’s not a good reason to just throw in the expected beats and toss in a skeletal story that probably took ten minutes to write. Seriously, it’s like somebody wrote a very basic outline and the higher ups at Gamefreak looked it over and said “good enough.
2. Have some characters with personality. It really doesn’t take much to make a character in a Pokemon game memorable. Look at Tierno in X & Y who wants to make a Pokemon dance troupe. Giving him that simple motivation, having various encounters with him and seeing the way he moves when challenging you is enough to remember him. But this game suffers from a “creative” team that just didn’t care.
3. We don’t need Dynamax. Having a simple mechanic like the Z moves was perfectly fine and it gave you a quick, grandiose moment to the battle without being over-powered and overblown.

Final Thoughts:

The folks at Gamefreak clearly didn’t care when they made Sword & Shield. Everything from the poor narrative, lack of interesting antagonists, lack of compelling characters in general and barely improved artwork and animations are characteristic of lazy, unmotivated and un-invested work. When you couple that with some truly terrible game mechanics, you definitely get the worst main line game in the franchise. Possibly the worst game in the franchise in general. I certainly can’t think of a spin-off that’s worse and I have played a lot of the spin-offs. Hell, I a hundred percent completed Conquest.

I can’t say the game is all bad. It does retain some of the gameplay elements that make the franchise enjoyable. You can just find all of them better executed in basically any other game in the franchise. I give Sword and Shield a 3/10. I really can’t recommend it over prior entries and it’s one I’m definitely not going to play through again, personally. If I’m being honest, I probably won’t even put it in my Switch again as I really don’t want to suffer through any more Max Raids or play the DLC.

December Bonus Review #1 7th Dragon III Code VFD

It’s been a while since I’ve done a game review. This time around we have a series of Sega published RPGs that I’d never heard of before I picked up the third one for the 3DS. This was released late 2015 in Japan and a year later in other regions. Let’s have a look.

Story:

The basic story is that you’re recruited by a Tech company that’s also leading the battle against dragons. To do that, you need to complete the dragon chronicle which involves a lot of travel through time and space to slay dragons at various points. The ultimate goal is to stop the prophesied 7th dragon before it can destroy humanity and halt the spread of dragon’s sickness that’s impacting the world.

I actually like the story telling of this quite a bit. The game is really good at introducing you to likable characters in each era to raise the stakes and the whole idea of going around through time and space fighting dragons in preparation for the confrontation with the ultimate dragon is pretty good. And there’s a really interesting reveal late game.

My only real gripe with the story is that the ending is a bit weak. It tries to do the thing where you control your hero and go on a tour of your headquarters, interacting with people but it sort of falls flat in that the vast majority of strong characters you’re actually invested in don’t seem to make an appearance. Theoretically they’ve all gone back to their own eras, but it’s still a bit of a letdown.

Characters:

The way the game handles your playable characters is kind of interesting. It uses the method of having you create your characters but instead of leaving them blank slates you pick a voice actor for the character and that voice actor provides some personality for them with their voice lines. Which ends up making them a bit less than full-fledged characters but significantly better than blank slates.

The main characters who get strong characterisation and development are the ones you encounter but don’t play as. Which, as I mentioned earlier, is a useful tool for building tension and getting you invested in helping the various eras.

Gameplay:

The battle system is pretty traditional for turn-based JRPGs but the game does throw you a curveball with the class system. There are a lot of classes in this that have unique quirks. For example, the duelist class basically gives you a deck of cards and you use combinations of those cards to summon monsters or set traps. The game only gives you three types of cards, fire, ice and lightning so it’s easy to figure out how things work but it’s also a weird system. Someone at Sega was way into Yu-gi-oh. Another interesting class is the Agent. The quirk there is that your best abilities all require you to “hack” the enemy to work. The big fist fighters are called Godhands and their unique attribute is that they have lower powered attacks that inflict layers of “god depth” to opponents and the best attacks require that they have a certain level of god depth inflicted. There’s also the lance class called the banisher. They get a limited number of bombs that you expend when you use your skills and have to replenish. Not all the classes are like that though. You get some like Samurai, Mage, and Runeknight that are pretty ordinary.

One other quirk of the battle system is that you set up multiple teams, by the end of the game you’ll have three, and you’ll only fight with one team but the other teams will gradually build up a support bar that you can use to buff, heal and otherwise benefit your battle party. Your characters gain SP during battles that you can use to purchase new skills and each one gets an “exhaust” skill which is basically like a limit break in that you build it up throughout battle and can activate it to just do a tonne of damage, or healing if you’ve got a fortuner class character.

One thing I liked the idea of, but wish it mattered more, is that you can take other members of your party or important NPCs on dates at the Skylounge in your base. With your other part members, you get a heart gauge that gradually increases and they’ll speak more intimately with you as it does. Why I say that I wish it mattered more is that I didn’t notice any real benefit of increasing my heart gauge or of taking various important NPCs on dates and it didn’t seem to have any effect on the ending because none of my characters were shown to be romantically with other party members they had full hearts with or anything like that. It seemed to be mainly for characterisation. I will say, I don’t think the sex of your partner is taken into account because my party was all female and they dated all the ladies with all the cute, romance implying dialogue intact. I approve.

The game also gives you a cat cafe where you can spend time for benefits and you can ask various party members to make you a bento at the dormitory which you can use to heal in battle.

My biggest problem with the game was with the difficulty of the final boss. It’s one of those ones that has three forms. I beat the first form easily, I had to grind for quite a while to beat the second form and it was still difficult but then I beat the final form with no trouble whatsoever. We’re talking the fight was over in three turns and it did barely any damage. Which is odd because you’d expect that to be the hard one but the second form was the annoyingly difficult one.

Art:

The game is very anime inspired in terms of its character designs. Though they are somewhat simplified. I like the varied aesthetics of various eras and there are some really cool enemy designs. Especially where the dragons are concerned. There are some really cool looking skills, especially the exhaust ones.

Sound:

They got some really good voice actors for this game. Mizuki Nana, Horie Yui, Hikasa Yoko, Inoue Marina and many others. In total, there are forty voice actors you can choose for your characters. Half male, half female. The soundtrack is really well put together as well. The ending song they play over the credit is really nice in particular.

Areas of Improvement:

1. I’d like to see your ending change somewhat based on the way you interact with the other characters. It doesn’t need to be a huge difference, but you could do the Fire Emblem thing where you show two characters who had a strong relationship and just say they’re off doing something together.
2. The final bosses second form is too hard. I shouldn’t have trouble with form two of three and then beat the actual final form easily.
3. If you’re going to let me wander around headquarters for the ending, at least put some characters I care about there instead of having them all be off in their own eras.

Final Thoughts:

This game wasn’t perfect. It definitely had some things that could have been handled better. That being said, I still really liked it. I liked having classes with odd quirks. I liked that you created your own characters but they were given some sense of personality based on the voices you chose for them. And I liked taking my girls back to headquarters after a difficult area and having them go on dates and make bentos for each other. That is very relevant to my interests. So, I’m glad I played this. Ultimately, I’m giving it an 8/10.

August Bonus Review: Pokemon Snap

Pokemon Snap was first released in Japan in early ’99. A year and a half later, we got to play it. It’s been a fan favourite of the franchise since. Let’s take a look and see why.

Story:

You take on the role of a Pokemon photographer challenged with travelling through various locations to get wildlife shots of Pokemon. So, not a story driven game by any means.

Characters: 

There are two characters, the photographer who barely speaks and Professor Oak who looks through your pictures and measures them to make sure the Pokemon you photographed is in the exact centre. Honestly, Oak comes across as kind of an anal old shite in this. You can take a very nice sideways picture or action shot and have him complain because “the Pokemon wasn’t in the centre” or “Wasn’t facing the camera on account of being sideways.” I suspect he might not be much of an expert on photography.

Gameplay:

The game controls very simply. You’re on a rail, going at a consistent pace through various stages. As you progress you unlock items like apples, pester balls and the poke flute to make it possible to get better shots of certain Pokemon, unlock new paths and find secrets.

That’s one of the game’s strong points. There are a lot of secrets to uncover. And, to its credit, there aren’t any that are overly obtuse or finicky. About the most difficult they get is “use an apple to get Pikachu into position, play the poke flute, quickly photograph Zapdos.”

There are, however, enough to make the six main stages highly replayable. Yeah, I know there are technically seven stages. But the last one is just a stretch where you’re getting photos of Mew so I’m not counting it here. You also want to go through stages multiple times to get shots of specific Pokemon since you only have sixty possible pictures per stage and there’s always a certain window you have to get shots of any given Pokemon or special event. Some of which you can’t get in the same run. For instance, if you’re really going for pictures of the Charmander horde at the Volcano, you probably won’t get pictures of Moltres. Or if you’re going for the Arcanine pictures at the end of that stage you won’t get the Charizard pictures.

It really is impressive how much content they crammed into those six main stages.

About the worst thing I can say for the gameplay is that Oak’s ratings can be a bit stupid at times. He basically looks for a few things, the size of the picture, whether the Pokemon is facing you, whether it’s in the centre of the picture and if there are other Pokemon of the same type in the shot. Which can mean some nice looking shots get low ratings.

But it is a very consistent rating system, so you shouldn’t have trouble taking pictures he approves of. And there is the option of saving pictures even if you’re not using them for his Pokemon Report. So, you can keep the nice shots that he isn’t going to like.

Art: 

For the Nintendo 64, this was some very nice artwork. By modern 3DS/ Switch standards, it can look a bit polygonal but for back then, this looked fantastic. For comparison’s sake, when this came out Generation 2 hadn’t been released and the 3D models we were used to for the franchise were from Pokemon Stadium. Which came out shortly before this and looked nowhere near as good.

Sound:

The music is nice and fun. The Pokemon make noises both when they move around and when they cry out. They pretty much nailed the sound design. One interesting aspect is that the poke flute actually plays different melodies at different points. Which is a nice bit of variety.

Final Thoughts:

Pokemon Snap is a fantastic game. The photography element is pretty unique and the exploration is surprisingly deep given the limited stages. I’d give it a 9/10. That being said, I’m sure you all noticed the lack of “Areas of Improvement.” That’s not because the game has none and there’s a reason I’ve been wanting to discuss this game in particular.

In early July, an interview with Game Freak director Masuda Junichi resulted in him basically saying there wasn’t a sequel to this game in the works, because they can’t think of something very unique to do with it. After all, they can’t make the same thing again.

Now, putting aside how absurd that is when the Pokemon franchise itself is built on very small, incremental changes from generation to generation and the most unique they’ve gotten was trading gyms for trials that are basically like gyms only with fewer trainer battles.

We’ll ignore all that and focus on ways they could change up the Snap formula to make it more unique. Now, if anyone from Game Freak happens to see this, these ideas are free. Use all or some of them to your heart’s content. Which is why this time around I’m trading the usual “Areas of Improvement” segment for

Sequel Ideas:

1. Add in various filters. Here’s the thing, I hate all those stupid filters you can put over your photos on your phone or when uploading them. However, a lot of people absolutely love them and I could see people sharing their in game photographs online using the in game filters and just having a grand time.
2. Have various Pokemon in stages that you can feed to befriend. At this point, they can follow you around throughout the stage and do various special things. Imagine having a Growlithe following you, doing backflips and other various cute things you could snap pictures of.
3. Have actual branching paths. I know, the N64 hardware wasn’t really at the level where you could do this. But on the Switch, you could absolutely have points in a stage where you could go down different routes for pictures.
4. Give the photographer a partner Pokemon. I’m not going to say that this should be transferable to other games, but if you had a partner Pokemon they could help open various paths, be sent out to interact with wild Pokemon. Hell, you could even let players dress it up in little outfits. Eevee would be good for that. So would Vulpix.
5. Have a Transforming pod. Here’s what I’m thinking. Give players a ride pod similar to the one you’re in in the first game, but this one can transform into a submarine for underwater stages/ stage segments or into a zeppelin for aerial parts.
6. A proper zoom lens. The first game pretty much has no options for sizing pictures. In this one, let players zoom in a fair amount. This could be used to get some nicer close ups or get good aerial shots of Pokemon on the ground.

So, there you go. Any two of these ideas will give you more of a difference between Snap & Snap 2 than most main franchise Pokemon games have from their closest sequel. You’re welcome.

May Bonus Review: Sonic Chronicles- Dark Brotherhood

Bioware has been having a hard time lately. EA has virtually run the developer directly into the ground and, after the disaster of Anthem, they may very well be on the chopping block. But before they sold themselves to EA, they were good right? Well, let’s look at the last game they developed that wasn’t published by EA. A Sonic RPG for the Nintendo DS.

Story:

So, Eggman has gone missing and is presumed dead. I’m sure that will totally stick for the entire game. In this situation, Sonic gets contacted by Tails and told that the chaos emeralds have been stolen & Knuckles is a prisoner to a mysterious group called the Marauders. Sonic has to go on a journey with friends, and foes against the Marauders, including a mysterious Echidna named Shade.

The story isn’t bad. It’s just not very interesting. It’s one of those kind of standard “hero works with his villains against a new common foe” types of stories. Bioware tries to spice it up a bit with some dialogue options and relationship building, similar to what you might see in Mass Effect except it really doesn’t make any difference and it’s a lot less interesting.

Characters:

We’ve got Sonic’s usual gallery. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Emo Sonic, Rouge, A random robot, Cream, Amy, Eggman, & that shitty obese cat no one likes. They’re joined by Shade the echidna. A classic character so beloved, she’ll never be in anything else.

I say that, but Shade is a decent enough character. The Marauders in general aren’t bad. Although they were similar enough to some of Penders’ comic creations that he filed a lawsuit for infringement.

Gameplay:

This is where Sonic Chronicles really suffers. A relatively lacklustre story might be excusable if the game were fun to play. Unfortunately, this is one of those DS games where the touch screen controls are shite. The over world can be counter-intuitive to navigate at times. The worst part, however, is the combat. Your special attacks require a combination of touching the right spot with your stylus and dragging your stylus across the touch screen. Not only is it really finicky, but some of the abilities demand such a degree of precision and flawless execution that they’re not even worth trying to use. The healing abilities, especially Cream’s, are the worst in that regard.

The final boss is the worst. You have to do a long chase sequences where you have to touch your party to leap over obstacles and it can be a slog because if you hit an obstacle you lose progress and there’s a delay to your inputs. The characters don’t just jump immediately. Which means you have to get used to the timing. This all contributes to make the game decidedly not fun to play. Its one saving grace is that its difficulty level is so low that you can make quite a few mistakes on account of the terrible touch screen controls and still manage to win handily.

Art: 

The art style isn’t bad. The characters, cut scenes and everything look fine. And I can’t really fault Bioware’s efforts in that regard. It might not look as smooth as the actually polished Sonic titles of the time, but they were also on console and this is on the DS.

Sound: 

The music by Steven Sim & Richard Jacques is pretty good. The OST is honestly the element that holds up the best. Is it going to match the classic scores of the Megadrive? Probably not but it’s a worthwhile effort and the sound effects are fine.

Areas of Improvement:

1. Make the combat more traditional turn based. While I appreciate that giving players a more active impact on combat can be a good thing (one just has to look at Legend of the Dragoon, The World Ends With You or even Mass Effect) it doesn’t work here. Bioware clearly had no idea how to use the Touch screen for it. Which is what hurts the game more than anything else. A more traditional turn-based system would have been much more seamless and a lot more fun.
2. Get rid of the chase sequence in the final boss fight. Again, this is an element that’s really not fun and is more frustrating to deal with than anything.
3. No Big the Cat. Seriously, no one likes this character. He’s the worst part of the cast in any Sonic game that features him. You could replace him with any one of the Chaotix and it would be better.

Final Thoughts:

Sonic Chronicles is an unfortunate entry in the franchise as a whole. It may be better than actually broken games like Boom or ’06 but its garbage controls are some of the worst touch screen controls out there and its lacklustre narrative doesn’t do it any favours. Ultimately, I’ll give it a 4/10. It’s not an RPG that’s worth picking up.

November Bonus Review: Detroit- Become Human

Let me begin by just outright saying that I don’t like David Cage. As a writer, I find him pretty damn terrible and every time he talks about his work he comes across as either a pathological liar, someone with his head so far up his own ass he’s getting his food back before it can digest or both. Now, you might wonder why I’m going to talk about one of the games he wrote if I think so little of him.  Well, it’s because I have a lot of problems with this game and it’s been out long enough that I think I can vent about them without all the rabid fans going mad. Plus I don’t do game reviews often so, when I do, it’s always a game that’s been out for a while. I’ll warn you before we get into the gritty details, there will be spoilers.

Story: 

The set up is old hat for science fiction. Androids are an accepted part of daily life but some are gaining emotions, breaking free from their programming and starting to demand rights. We follow three different androids, Markus, Connor and Kara, on their separate but connected paths. Markus starts out serving an elderly artist before becoming robot Jesus. Connor is tasked with finding these deviants and putting a stop to them before they start voting, getting involved sexually with our flesh and blood women and shopping at our organics only stores. Kara is a house keeping android who runs off with a small child to stop her being abused. But it turns out the child is also an android so don’t worry about any “can an android love a human as its own?” story lines. That might have been interesting, if it were written by someone with writing skills.

My first big issue with the game’s story is just how trite the whole narrative is. We’ve seen the “what if AI was sapient” question addressed in a billion different works of media. And every single one of those has done a better job with it than this game. Some big examples have been, but aren’t limited to, Star Trek: Next Generation, The Stories of Ibis, Eve no Jikan, DC’s Metal Men, Astro Boy, The Hitchiker’s Guide, Doctor Who, Red Dwarf, Xenosaga, Transformers, Voyages of the Cerberus, The Twilight Zone, Marvel’s Vision, Blake’s Seven, Steel Angel Kurumi 2, Overwatch, Megaman and so many others I could put together an absurdly long list but I’ve made my point.

What especially annoys me about Detroit in this regard isn’t just that it uses a major story element that’s been done, it’s that David Cage talks about it like he did something completely new and absolutely unheard of. And not just because he deals with sapient machines but because they’re the good guys, for once. You know, if you ignore literally everything I just listed.

Another aspect of the game that annoys me is the heavy-handed slavery metaphor that immediately falls apart if you put ten seconds of thought into it. Because white people did not build black people in a factory nor have black people ever been emotionless.  Frankly, it’s a pretty insulting comparison. David Cage also likes to push this idea that the “proper” way to strike back against an oppressive group in power is through non-violent protest. The only way to save all the named characters you’re supposed to care about is to be non-violent. Which is nonsense. Peaceful protest has its place, but it isn’t easy or relatively painless by any means.

Another annoyance is the Public Opinion system. Throughout the game what you do impacts public opinion but it barely matters to the story. There are all of two characters who will act differently based on public opinion and you don’t see any other impact from it. The story is also full of things that are just stupid. For example, the androids have LEDs in their necks that basically serve to show when they’re getting distressed. Almost like this was an old B-movie where the lead actor can’t emote so they come up with some plot device to do it for them. What’s even dumber is that we find out androids can remove these lights and change their hair colours in order to better pass as human. So, why doesn’t every deviant android do that immediately? Seriously, these things are supposed to be smart but they can’t be bothered to take some simple, obvious steps that would help keep them safe? They deserve to get caught and deactivated.

The only narrative thing I’ll give Detroit some credit for is that it actually has choices that matter. Which does give it something when compared to, for example, a Telltale game. Although you probably won’t want to take more paths cause they’re all badly written.

Characters:

Like the narrative itself, the characters are based off of old, boring stereotypes without anything to make them interesting. Markus is the “saviour” who gains the mysterious power to awaken other androids and has to lead his people to… Silicon heaven, I assume. Where they can hang out with all the calculators. Connor is the eager young recruit. Kara is the motherly woman. Hank is the grizzled old officer and so on. I’ve felt more of an emotional connection to the plastic toys I’ve found in kinder eggs.

Gameplay:

Like most Quantic Dream games, the gameplay is very minimal. You go to places, examine things, do busy work (like laundry), make decisions and there are some shitty quick time events. It’s like Cage wanted to make an animated film but didn’t want every single Razzie so he begrudgingly made a game instead. So, it’s exactly what you expect from Quantic.

Art:

Here’s the one element I can give some actual praise. The artwork in this game is very well done. It uses a realistic, motion-captured style and, unlike any other aspect of the game, actual effort went into making the animation flow smoothly, putting in nice backgrounds and just making it visually appealing. If you paired this artwork with a narrative that wasn’t complete trash and compelling gameplay, you could have a real winner.

Sound:

The music is decent enough. In terms of acting, you can tell that the actors are trying. I can’t say their performances are good. If they had characters with some level of depth to them, they might be able to display emotions and have strong performances instead of an emotion and having kind of sub-par performances. I’m sure part of that is David Cage’s directing since he’s awful at that too.

Areas of Improvement:

Now comes the time where I list three ways the work could be improved, and I am spoiled for choice here because there are so many awful aspects to go after.

1. Tone down the message for some subtlety and nuance. I know that those are two terms David Cage will never comprehend, but for an example of what I’m talking about watch the Next Generation episode, Measure of a Man. In which Data’s rights are at stake and Picard defends those rights as well as his status as a sentient being.
2. Alter the gameplay. As it is, Detroit is basically a shite visual novel with QTEs thrown in. I would say either throw out the busy work & QTEs and make it a straight up VN since those gameplay elements are just obnoxious or put in some gameplay that can fit with a story that has branching paths. Maybe an action RPG since several of those do have choices that matter. And get rid of the QTEs and busy work while you’re at it.
3. Develop the characters beyond stereotypes. As the game is, we’ve seen all of these characters. We’ve also seen them all used as a base for complex characters. Which Cage might’ve done, if he wasn’t a complete hack.

Final Thoughts:

Ultimately, Detroit: Become Human is tripe. The story is a complete mess riddled with clichés on one end and idiotic nonsense on the other. The gameplay is horrid. The characters have nothing to them and it’s just a generally bad experience. A bad experience that looks quite nice but looking nice kind of becomes meaningless when that’s all you have working in your favour. I give it a 3/10. And the only reason I’m going that high is because of the art. If the graphics weren’t so nice, I’d take two points off of that.

December Bonus Review #5 Dragon Quest VII

I’ve reviewed exactly one game before this, Nintendo’s  Miitopia. I was less than impressed with it. To end December’s bonus reviews, I thought I’d go with a game franchise that’s near and dear to my heart, Dragon Quest. We’ll be basing our review on the 3DS remake and not just because it’s the version I was able to buy legally since the Playstation version wasn’t released here. We’re also doing that one because it’ll probably be the easiest for you all to find at a reasonable price.

Story: 

We open on the small island of Estard. Our protagonist, I named him Lulu, is the son of a fisherman. One day, his father brings home a mysterious map fragment. This leads him and his childhood friend, Prince Kiefer, on a quest to open up the door to a strange shrine. They’re quickly joined by their friend Maribel. The three activate an ancient pedestal that leads them through time and space to an island they’ve never seen. They quickly discover that the world was once populated by a great many islands that were, through various machinations of the demon lord, lost. They also discover that through travelling back to pivotal moments they can restore the islands and reshape the world itself. Which may eventually earn them the strength necessary to defeat the demon king himself.

I have two issues with the story, neither of which is a major deal. They’re more of small annoyances. The first is the lack of player agency on the ending. Throughout the game, they ask Lulu questions about things like his plans for the future and how he feels about Maribel (if you’re me you always answer positively because Maribel is amazing) but, ultimately, your answers don’t matter in the slightest. Honestly, this game would have benefited from multiple endings based on your answers. You see the same basic issue with Sir Lysalot, a fraud who you have no real choice but to cover for because the game won’t let you expose him and believe me, I tried. The second issue is also with the ending. So, you get to the end and your party goes through a long victory tour where you stop at various places and find the people you need to talk to to move on to the next place. It gets pretty tedious and, honestly, this part really doesn’t need to be interactive. It actually gains nothing from having you play through it. They could’ve made it quicker and cleaner by just showing the important conversations and then automatically moving you to the next spot.

In a strange way, this narrative reminds me of Doctor Who back when Doctor Who was good. I suppose it’s the journeying through time and space aspect. Plus there’s always some new problem to face our heroes. I actually really like that story set up. I also appreciate that the various islands you go to provide different kinds of obstacles. It’s not always going through dungeons and fighting the big bad. Sometimes it’s more about information gathering or puzzle solving. Which leads to some nice variety. I also like the way the reborn islands differ. In some, you’ll find that your party has become heroes of lore. In others, you’ll be forgotten. In one case, you’re even vilified. And in all the cases the response tells you something about the culture of the island’s people. It’s actually a really effective way to do some world building.

Characters:

Lulu is pretty much like every silent Dragon Quest protagonist. He’s there as the character you project onto. The antagonist is the same kind of thing. He’s the bad guy who wants to exterminate the Almighty and rule. It’s the other playable characters who keep things compelling. Maribel, Aira, Gabo, Melvin & Kiefer all have a strong sense of personality and some interesting arcs. Even some of the more minor characters like Estard’s king or Sefana have a nicely built sense of character.

Honestly, it’s like a lot of other games in the franchise. Provide the kind of blank slate protagonist you get to make decisions for and the big bad who’s just evil while putting effort into making the rest of the party and a bunch of side characters interesting to compensate.

Gameplay:

if you’ve ever played a Dragon Quest title, you know the basics of how the controls work. You’ve got the usual turn-based combat with the usual interface and menus. It also uses the mechanic that the newer games are fond of where monsters appear on the world map and you get into battle by running into them. There are two things that separate VII from a lot of the other games in the franchise. The first is the mechanic of travelling to the past. Which is used to great effect and there are several instances where you need to go back to a specific place in order to find something or get help from a particular person. The second is the job system.

VII isn’t the only game to give you vocations, but it does execute them in an interesting way. Each vocation has levels of mastery where you earn new abilities, some of which carry over. And you gain that in addition to ordinary levels. So, you don’t have to significantly weaken yourself to start a new path. It also features prestige classes, which require certain conditions to change to. Mastering certain classes or gaining specific skills. Perhaps most interesting are the monster vocations. Throughout the game you find monster heart items that enable your characters to take on the aspects of that monster and these come with their own levels of mastery.

In terms of difficulty, VII is pretty challenging. There are times when you may want to pause in your quest to grind up some levels or just go out exploring and gain some more experience in the process. This game does have a massive map with a lot to do in it.

Art:

The designs are what you expect from Toriyama. They look pretty damn good. The 3DS version also updates the sprites when moving across the world map so that they look considerably better than the old school PS versions. One unfortunate side effect of that, however, is that the map itself and the boats you encounter look a bit blocky. The special attacks are also a bit lacklustre. Overall, though, the game does use the 3DS hardware pretty effectively.

Sound:

You’ve gotta give Sugiyama Koichi credit. He’s pretty much done the musical score for every Dragon Quest game and they’ve always been excellent at complementing the atmosphere and just being really good. The sound effects are pretty standard fare.

Final Thoughts:

Dragon Quest VII isn’t the best game in the franchise. It has some things that could definitely be done better. That being said, it’s still an excellent game. If you’re a fan of turn-based RPGs, like I am, then you’ll probably enjoy it quite a bit. The mechanic of going through time and space is really good. The characters have strong senses of personality. The soundtrack and designs are oh so good. My final rating is an enthusiastic 9/10.

Five lesser known Video Games you should find and play

It’s been a while since the last time I talked about video games instead of anime, the other time being my list of characters I’d like to see in Smash. This time I thought I’d talk about some more obscure titles, maybe you’ve heard of them and maybe you haven’t, that you may not have played but you should. These aren’t in any particular order and I’m not putting anything on this list that comes from the current gaming generation. With that in mind, here are the titles.

1. Fire Emblem: Gaiden (NES

   This is one you’ve probably heard of since the Fire Emblem franchise has gained some prominence in more recent years with Blazing Sword and the titles following that one getting international releases, mostly. That being said, this one you probably haven’t played since it’s never been released outside of Japan. It was the second instalment in the franchise and featured some unique elements. For example, you follow two different parties of characters with narratives that are connected but stay separated for quite a while. It was also the first FE title to have multiple classes that a given character could promote into, a feature that was revived in Awakening.

   If you can find a fan translation of it, I suggest playing it. If they release it in your language on the virtual console, I also suggest playing it. The unique elements work well and it has aged very strongly, maybe not graphically but in terms of everything else.

2. Alisia Dragoon (Mega Drive)

   In this platformer you take on the role of Alisia, a young sorceress with lightning magic. With companion familiars by your side, you battle your way through a series of challenging levels with really well drawn battle animation. It was also one of the first games to feature a female protagonist, which is pretty cool. Unfortunately, this game didn’t get much marketing attention and didn’t sell well. I still highly recommend finding and playing it.

3. Threads of Fate (Playstation)

   Don’t ask how I know about this one when it was never officially released here. *shifty eyes* Threads of Fate was a Square title from the late 90s. You can choose one of two protagonists each searching for the same powerful relic. Rue is an altruistic young man who wants to revive his dead friend. Mint is a princess who wants to take her throne back and rule the world. The story is really immersive and unfolds differently for each character, adding a nice level of replay value. The game also has a really good sense of humour and Mint is a delightful character. The game has a great battle system and wonderful music. I understand that the game is available on the PSN if you live in North America. If you’re a European you may have to use other methods. Don’t judge me, I’d buy it if I could.

4. Darkened Skye (Gamecube & PC)

   Darkened Skye is an advertising gimmick made to promote Skittles candies. With that in mind you may be wondering why I’m suggesting it. Well, in spite of being blatantly about the advertising it’s still a good game. Mainly because it unashamedly owns up to what it’s doing and focuses on having fun with it. It makes fun of game tropes, advertising and itself. The whole game has a really tongue-in-cheek sense of humour that’s actually quite endearing. And that’s why I suggest playing it, because it’s a fun, goofy game.

5. Oni (Playstation 2 & PC)

   Oni is an interesting one. It was brought to us by Rockstar and Bungie. It uses a very anime inspired style for its animation and design aesthetic. It’s blends cyberpunk and dystopian elements to great effect and has a really complex combat system. Everything about this game just provides you with really good interactive cyberpunk. The only thing I didn’t like was the voice acting.

   So, those are five games I recommend finding and playing. Maybe I’ll do another list like this some time in future. Feel free to leave a comment with some lesser known games you think people should play or to make comments about my choices.