This game is hard to review. See, I love SPRGs. As we've been through before, I'll play a bad SRPG for ages because it's an SRPG. They're addicting, to me.
I love some of the aspects of the game. It has a wide cast of characters to choose from (unfortunately only 6 can go into combat with you) and you customize your characters via giving them skills, which is something I love. The game has also managed to innovate - And have mechanics that no other game has (At least, as far as I'm aware, and I've played a damn lot of SRPGs). The prime example of this is that there is no attack option in this game. There is only movement. That sounds weird, I know, but moving through an enemy square is how you attack. Thus, you can attack movement-1 enemies in a turn. This makes defensive walls impossible, kinda. There's another new concept that the game has which makes them possible. See, each character has a 'momentum gauge', which indicates how big of a target they are. This isn't anything new, as all SRPGs have this behind the scenes. However, in this game, it's manipulatable. There are rings that increase or decrease your base MC, killing enemies increases it, there are skills to increase or decrease it... So, you can very easily manipulate who the AI will attack. Combine this with another element the game has, Zone of Control (ZoC), where you can not be moved through. This is a very rare skill, but a character with high defense, manipulated MC, and ZoC can stop an entire attacking force from hitting your weak and squishy casters.
So, this is why I decided to play through the game, despite its very obvious flaws. The game... had bad QA, or something like that. There's a number of glitches that I encountered - Stupid things, like characters managing to end their turn on top of each other, breaking both of them. You also cannot rearrange the starting location of your characters in combat. ... Mostly. If you mess around with who you use and the order of selecting them, you can kind of influence it. Which is really, really stupid.
The way the game utterly fucks up errands... Oof. This is going to be so long it deserves a paragraph. Errands are things your characters can do instead of going into combat. You can train them (Give them small stat boosts), send them on trials (PROMOTION!), send them on Quests, or send them shopping. Shopping is done in a ... really dumb way, unfortunately. You send a person out with money, they come back with item types you specified. There is no way of knowing what they'll come back with. Yeaaaah. Now, quests. There are 3 major types of quests. Card quests, Smith Quests, everything else. Everything else gives you rewards (Promotion items and gold earning items are the noted ones). Each character can only go on a certain number of Card Quests and Smith Quests combined. This is never mentioned. Card Quests, once you've gone on a certain number, bestow each character with a certain bonus. This is never mentioned *nor* does it tell you when you get the bonus. Furthermore, the game gives no indication of characters having said bonus or the amount of Card/Smith quests they've done. If the game is trying to obfuscate its mechanics, it succeeded masterfully.
Some other minor things are just ... annoying. Assigning quests is a pain, as you can't see who is going on what quest once you do and you can't cancel one quest, you have to cancel every quest people are going on. Actions can be very easily messed up - If an enemy counter attacks, you get bounced. There's been a number of times I've had to restart due to that. It's part of the system, I suppose, more than a real flaw.
Fix these problems and you would have a game that really shined. As is? It's... decent. Would I recommend other people to play it? Only if you really like SRPGs and can handle difficulty. It's not an easy game, by a long shot, but it's also easier than Fire Emblem. Characters don't perma-death, after all. If a character dies in combat, they're just Hurt, which means they have halved stats next fight and can't do errands. So... Judge for yourself if you'd like it.
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin.
So, I think I'm done with the game for a little while, so I can write my thoughts about it down. This isn't going to be a long entry, I don't think. Shows what I know.
So... Portrait of Ruin. Gameplaywise, it's Castlevania. If you've played one in the last decade, you've got the main idea. Explore maps, kill things, level up, get new equipment. The major addition is that you have two main characters. In both the main mode and Richter mode, you have both a melee person (Jonathon/Richter) and a caster (Charlotte/Maria). In Normal mode, Charlotte's spells replace subweapons. They have a casting time, so after hitting the subweapon activation, a charge bar appears. You can charge up to spell going off or a stronger version going off and cancel out of at any time.
You can swap between both characters, summon one to just attack, or have both out so the AI controls one. This almost gives you two very different ways to play. ... Almost.
The game seems designed for you to play as Jonathon. And, stupidly, actively penalizes you for not. See, any enemy that you hurt with a subweapon gives points to the subweapon that level it up. This means that Charlotte tends to be forced into the spot of being secondary character, which is a pity, as she was much more fun to play through the game as. (I ended up grinding up a few of the better subweapons near the end of the game, after buying 2 rings that double the rate you get skill points, via a glitch. A very acceptable use of a glitch, in this case, methinks).
So, the game is incredibly short. I beat the game, my first time through, in roughly 6 hours. I then beat the optional portrait (read: area) and got 1000% map completion and did all the quests (There's a person that gives you quests. You achieve some goal (Usually grinding to kill enemies for their drops) and you get a reward) in another 4 hours. This ... is pretty bad.
The shortness is due to the weirdness of design of the castle, that I didn't particularly like. You explore the castle to find Portraits, which you have to go in to and defeat a boss. You find 4 of these as you explore the castle... Then all of the sudden, you end up having access to 4. The castle is very small and lacking in variety. The portraits aren't bad, though. I'd prefer a single larger castle, methinks. There are an amusingly high number of shortcuts you can unlock, though, that you will never use. There are teleporters in the castle everywhere and you never revisit half the places you go to (... yeah, which kinda sucks), so I wonder why they're there.
However, the game does have a saving grace: A multitude of hard modes and optional modes!
The Hard modes come in 3 major varieties: Max level of 50, 25, and 1. Yes. You can choose to put the game on Hard mode (Where you deal less damage and ... enemeis deal weird damage. I want to say the damage that enemies do is something like just add 100 to it, as beginning of the game enemies did about 100-110 damage and end game enemies did like 140-150, with the same equipment) and not be able to level up. Of course, you do NG+ in Hard Mode, so you start with the best equipment in the game, and, inportantly, all the HP Max Up and MP Max Up items you find. Doing these modes gets you a stat boost that applies to any NG+ you do from that game on. The bonuses are Luck, Int, and Str, respectively. Hard Max Level 1 is ... hard, but doable. With heavy abuse of glitches and armor only useful in that mode(Every hit deals 10% max HP), at any rate. So, the big glitch of the game is that you can get quest rewards infinitely. This includes Max HP/MP Up (Limited to 32 of them, total) and things you can sell for money. There's a ring you get that boosts your attack by 1 per 100,000 gold you have. It's 20 minutes of boredom to get 900k gold to get +90 attack power. For reference, the best sword in the game gives you about +40 attack power and being level 50 gives you about 80 attack power. The game is pretty glitchy, but in this case, it takes away the fact that Metroidvanias have the shittiest money situation ever. So, awesome!
Richter Mode, you play as Richter and Maria. They can sequence break galore, but the mode seems a bit ... odd. See, you don't have equipment or items (Hell, you can't even go to the menu screen. Which is utterly stupid, as there are things like maps of all areas, the bestiary, the button config, in the menu.), which means you scale entirely on level and HP/MP Ups and you cannot heal. That I went through the normal game at what seemed to be way under level did not bode well for this mode. I beat Normal mode at 38. I got to Drac in Richter mode at 32. My horribly underleveled ass got schooled by Dracula repeatedly. I tried to the optional area, got about halfway through, got to level 36. Still can barely touch Drac. Geh. GFAQs, by the by, seems to recommend 45-50 for Drac. ... Whaaaa? So, I never beat Richter mode, as even learning Drac's patterns only goes so far. I'm not ninja enough to avoid every one of the attacks.
Still my second and third run through of the game did give me another good 10-15 hours out of the game, putting us at about 20-25 hours, which is much more respectable. It also does an amusing shift on the difficulty focus. Both Hard Mode and Richter mode tend to be a fight from save point to save point, hoping you don't die to the random enemies, but the bosses (Which are the much harder part in Normal) are a breeze, as you tend to have something in your repertoire that can easily defeat them.
Heh... I've entirely talked about gameplay. What of story, what of graphics, what of sound? THIS IS A CASTLEVANIA, FOLKS. Which means the story is throwaway (Drac is reviving! Wait, twist! Bad ending unless you do something specific! Wait, another twist! Kill Dracula! End.), the graphics are spritebased 2D (And, hey, pretty good), and the music was good (Which is a bad outing for the series).
Overall, a decent outing for the series. Not the best Metroidvania. I don't think I can call it the worst, though.
So... Portrait of Ruin. Gameplaywise, it's Castlevania. If you've played one in the last decade, you've got the main idea. Explore maps, kill things, level up, get new equipment. The major addition is that you have two main characters. In both the main mode and Richter mode, you have both a melee person (Jonathon/Richter) and a caster (Charlotte/Maria). In Normal mode, Charlotte's spells replace subweapons. They have a casting time, so after hitting the subweapon activation, a charge bar appears. You can charge up to spell going off or a stronger version going off and cancel out of at any time.
You can swap between both characters, summon one to just attack, or have both out so the AI controls one. This almost gives you two very different ways to play. ... Almost.
The game seems designed for you to play as Jonathon. And, stupidly, actively penalizes you for not. See, any enemy that you hurt with a subweapon gives points to the subweapon that level it up. This means that Charlotte tends to be forced into the spot of being secondary character, which is a pity, as she was much more fun to play through the game as. (I ended up grinding up a few of the better subweapons near the end of the game, after buying 2 rings that double the rate you get skill points, via a glitch. A very acceptable use of a glitch, in this case, methinks).
So, the game is incredibly short. I beat the game, my first time through, in roughly 6 hours. I then beat the optional portrait (read: area) and got 1000% map completion and did all the quests (There's a person that gives you quests. You achieve some goal (Usually grinding to kill enemies for their drops) and you get a reward) in another 4 hours. This ... is pretty bad.
The shortness is due to the weirdness of design of the castle, that I didn't particularly like. You explore the castle to find Portraits, which you have to go in to and defeat a boss. You find 4 of these as you explore the castle... Then all of the sudden, you end up having access to 4. The castle is very small and lacking in variety. The portraits aren't bad, though. I'd prefer a single larger castle, methinks. There are an amusingly high number of shortcuts you can unlock, though, that you will never use. There are teleporters in the castle everywhere and you never revisit half the places you go to (... yeah, which kinda sucks), so I wonder why they're there.
However, the game does have a saving grace: A multitude of hard modes and optional modes!
The Hard modes come in 3 major varieties: Max level of 50, 25, and 1. Yes. You can choose to put the game on Hard mode (Where you deal less damage and ... enemeis deal weird damage. I want to say the damage that enemies do is something like just add 100 to it, as beginning of the game enemies did about 100-110 damage and end game enemies did like 140-150, with the same equipment) and not be able to level up. Of course, you do NG+ in Hard Mode, so you start with the best equipment in the game, and, inportantly, all the HP Max Up and MP Max Up items you find. Doing these modes gets you a stat boost that applies to any NG+ you do from that game on. The bonuses are Luck, Int, and Str, respectively. Hard Max Level 1 is ... hard, but doable. With heavy abuse of glitches and armor only useful in that mode(Every hit deals 10% max HP), at any rate. So, the big glitch of the game is that you can get quest rewards infinitely. This includes Max HP/MP Up (Limited to 32 of them, total) and things you can sell for money. There's a ring you get that boosts your attack by 1 per 100,000 gold you have. It's 20 minutes of boredom to get 900k gold to get +90 attack power. For reference, the best sword in the game gives you about +40 attack power and being level 50 gives you about 80 attack power. The game is pretty glitchy, but in this case, it takes away the fact that Metroidvanias have the shittiest money situation ever. So, awesome!
Richter Mode, you play as Richter and Maria. They can sequence break galore, but the mode seems a bit ... odd. See, you don't have equipment or items (Hell, you can't even go to the menu screen. Which is utterly stupid, as there are things like maps of all areas, the bestiary, the button config, in the menu.), which means you scale entirely on level and HP/MP Ups and you cannot heal. That I went through the normal game at what seemed to be way under level did not bode well for this mode. I beat Normal mode at 38. I got to Drac in Richter mode at 32. My horribly underleveled ass got schooled by Dracula repeatedly. I tried to the optional area, got about halfway through, got to level 36. Still can barely touch Drac. Geh. GFAQs, by the by, seems to recommend 45-50 for Drac. ... Whaaaa? So, I never beat Richter mode, as even learning Drac's patterns only goes so far. I'm not ninja enough to avoid every one of the attacks.
Still my second and third run through of the game did give me another good 10-15 hours out of the game, putting us at about 20-25 hours, which is much more respectable. It also does an amusing shift on the difficulty focus. Both Hard Mode and Richter mode tend to be a fight from save point to save point, hoping you don't die to the random enemies, but the bosses (Which are the much harder part in Normal) are a breeze, as you tend to have something in your repertoire that can easily defeat them.
Heh... I've entirely talked about gameplay. What of story, what of graphics, what of sound? THIS IS A CASTLEVANIA, FOLKS. Which means the story is throwaway (Drac is reviving! Wait, twist! Bad ending unless you do something specific! Wait, another twist! Kill Dracula! End.), the graphics are spritebased 2D (And, hey, pretty good), and the music was good (Which is a bad outing for the series).
Overall, a decent outing for the series. Not the best Metroidvania. I don't think I can call it the worst, though.
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