First item on the work agenda Monday morning: recap Xenosaga 2 play yesterday. Sort of relevant to work...
I finished Xenosaga 1 Saturday night and immediately launched into Xenosaga 2. I'm going to call these X1 and X2 from here on out (and X3 when I get to that one). There are inevitably many things I forgot to mention about X1, and some will probably come up in the entry. I played 7-8 hours of X2, and for starters, I noted everything that was different from X1.
1) Mech battles - There were mechs in X1 called AGWS. They were utterly useless. Mechs weren't mandatory to complete anything. All they did was drain my money when I upgraded them, and I only upgraded them because I thought I might need to use them. They also served to confuse me because I still don't know how to properly equip them or what all their various equipment slots are. There were like 3 weapon slots on each, then for each weapon slot, you could equip L. Shoulder, R. Shoulder, L. Alternate...All in all, it was like 10 different slots, and I never understood which type of weapon went where or anything, so I would just buy one of everything and see if I could equip it anywhere, which I usually could not.
X2 begins with a mech portion, but different mechs called ESes. It seems like these mechs will get more use in X2, if for nothing else than that there are specific mech portions. Also, there is a completely new battle system just for the mechs! I can't say really how it's different because I think I've only been in one, but i know it is. I have, however, done a bunch of normal battles, and I know how those are different than from X1.
2) Reworked battle system - There are a handful of differences. First, the battle gauge is tweaked. It operates mainly the same way except that the empty slot is now a random slot. Oh, and the game in the tutorial actually tells you what the specific effects do. In general, there is a lot more information about mechanics available for X2 over X1, which is a good thing because X1 could be difficult to understand exactly what the various symbols for attacks, elements, and whatnot meant. Anyway, the battle gauge still moves from Critical (+50% chance to crit) to Boost (increase boost gauge more on that attack) to Skill Point (increased skill points if you kill the enemy on this one AND also the only one where the enemy doesn't get a perk for attacking on), and then Random. Random has a few, including nothing, Ether (increased ether attack/healing), and a couple I only saw work once or twice, which are Lose Turn (if a character is attacked, s/he loses a turn) and I don't remember the other one. I like the new random slot because it makes me think even more on my feet. Like the Ether one is a great opportunity to heal or unleash a strong Ether attack. It's also dangerous because the enemy can do the same thing.
Second, you get boost more quickly now, and it's shared among all party members. So no longer are you bound by who can boost, but as long as they aren't currently in queue, they can boost.
Third, you don't guard anymore; you stock. Stocking might increase defense too, but I'm not sure. Everyone has a stock gauge that goes up to 3 (or 300 -- each block represents 100 and there are 3 blocks). Normal actions on turns give 25 stock, so 1/4 of a bar. Taking the stock action gives one bar. These are good for saving up and unleashing powerful attacks, which I'll come back to in a minute.
Fourth, the attack system itself is a bit different now, and I like it better. Everything is labeled clearer and easier to understand. Instead of having to L1 through 3 different layers of what an attack does, you see them all listed all the time, and you see what they do. So now, for example, one of Jr's moves will just say like square, square, physical, ranged, piercing. Or one of chaos's moves will say triangle, square, physical, close, aura. It's so much more streamlined. Tech points and actually learning moves are gone entirely. Instead, all characters have all moves, and they're all available from the beginning.
So in the previous game, you had AP, and you got four per turn and each action was typically two points, so you could attack twice. You would assign different attacks to different buttons, square, triangle or circle (for special attacks). Square was typically near and triangle typically ranged, but not always. And you basically had to memorize what attacks you'd put in each. You had to memorize their distance, their element, their damage type, and which attack followed. It was really complicated. Now, since everything is laid out for you, there's no memorization involved, so you can focus on strategy, of which there is more. Now, enemies have 'break points,' which are combinations of moves you input to break their defenses and cause them to take more damage. They have 3 zones, low, high, and very high, which are A, B, and C. Square is A (low), triangle is high (B), and circle varies. Melee characters don't necessarily have a very high option. You have to figure out each enemy's break point, which might be, for example, AB. So if you use whatever attack is square, triangle, then you break that enemy's defenses for a turn. This is great because you can chain attacks by boosting other characters and by making smart use of the stock gauge. Got 3 boosts and everyone's stock gauge filled to 3? Then you are about to open a can of whoopass on an enemy. Further, some characters' circle attacks knock enemies down or launch them into the air, opening them up for even more damage because they're doubly vulnerable. I think it's an additional 50% damage for breaking them, and another 50% (so 100% total if you cripple them with both) if they're downed or in the air. And even better are new double attacks that you can learn. I've only seen one so far (I have more but haven't had the correct characters in my party to use them yet), but it's a chaos/Jin attack that does a ton of damage. These have requirements, like for example this one each character had to have 2 stock. What you do is on one character's turn, say Jin, you boost the other, say chaos, and select combo attack. If they've both got 2 stock, you get to do the power attack. This is vicious if the enemy's guard is broken and he is downed. So, to sum, there is a huuuuuge potential to plan combos, stock, boost, and battle gauge in X2 that simply was absent in X1.
And one more thing, they introduced positioning relative to enemies, so you can be facing their front or their back (and they yours). This so far has been a pain for me, and I quickly learned that when enemies attack me from behind, I need to kill those pronto. Usually what happens is that two will be in my party's front and one or two will be in their back. Attacking from the back scores more critical hits and/or more damage. Very very dangerous. The Move command is still there for me, but so far it looks like I can move one character around to an enemy's back (it looks like side, but is it the same thing?). I'm not sure how to put the front/back thing to good use yet, but I'll play around with it. It does feel a little cheap that enemies routinely attack me and they get to start at my back. I've never began a battle where I was attacking their backs.
And even one more thing, statuses are a bit different. There are now low and high statuses. Low statuses are your basic low-level poisons and things. They disappear after 5 rounds. High statuses don't go away until you clear them. Poison-L, for example, does 10% HP damage per turn, while Poison-H does 25%. At one point I was in a boss battle with two giant mechs, and I cast Physical Defense Down on one, which I'm pretty sure is a low status, but his robot buddy couldn't dispel it with the low status dispel! I realized at some point, when I thought "Wow, this boss battle is easy" that the other mech spent every single turn attempting to dispel the handicapped one. I laughed pretty good that dispelling the status effect was absolutely the #1 priority of the enemy. As soon as the debuff went away after 5 turns, I cast it again and she went right back to casting dispel over and over.
Overall, the battles are much quicker, but possibly harder, than X1. At one area, I had MOMO, chaos and Jr. MOMO kept on dying. Her HP is still low like in last game, but man, I was using HP and EP potions and Revives like crazy. I'll bring possible reasons up in the skill point section next. Boss battles so far have been easy. I've carried over my Skill Point gauge killing from the previous game, and it's going great. I feel like I'm racking up the points. I also think they made the x4 and x10 multipliers a little more common.
3) Skill points - Okay, I love this change. Tech points are gone. I will miss using leftover tech points to max my stats, but I will not miss using tech points to power up attacks. Since they give you all your attacks in the beginning, there are no tech points. Instead, they've completely reworked the point system. There are also no more Ether points or Skill points in the same way there were last time. This is partly because there is no equipment this time around either, so you can't use Skill points to extract skills from equipment that doesn't exist. Instead, they've merged learning skills, abilities, ether spells, and all that into the new Skill points and Class points system. New Skill points are what you earn after battles instead of getting all 3 different types of points last time. Class points you earn so far from bosses. In X1, there was basically a skill tree that you used Ether points to open up. In X2, there's a new kind of tree. I guess you could call it a solar system, because that's how they've represented it. Let me try to explain.
There are four overarching meta levels for skills. Underneath each meta level there are a number of class levels (8 for meta levels 1-3 and 4 for meta level 4 -- All class levels are called A-H, so Class A, Class B, C, etc). Within each class level are four skills to learn. It costs skill points to learn the skills and class points to unlock the class level. When you learn all the skills in a certain skill level within a class, you unlock the next meta level. Each meta level increases the amount of class points and skill points necessary to learn the more powerful abilities embedded within. It's a deep series of menus, but it's cool. And the solar system thing, each meta level is represented as an orbit around a star, and each class is a planet. Once you complete a class, a planet appears on the orbit around the star. I'm tingling with excitement to see what unlocks when you learn all the available skills and open up the star itself (if that's even possible).
Most classes' skills are available to you, however, some have ????, including all skills in class H. I really, really, really wonder what these are. I have unlocked two so far, and they are badass. One lets you recover 10% EP when you stock. The other I forget, but it was something handy. You unlock these skills from completing side quests, which really aren't side quests anymore since you kind of have to do them to get these skills. I suppose they are optional skills, but it's alluring.
4) Side quests and learning combos - Like I said above, side quests feel mandatory. There weren't really side quests in X1. There were a couple things you could do for a couple NPCs here and there which didn't matter much, and there were some pretty terrible minigames. X2 already does a better job integrating the quests and making me want to do them. This is all tied in with having those teasing ???? in the skill system that I want to uncover because for the quests I've done so far, I've gotten two skills, learned 2 or 3 combo moves for my characters (which seems important for battle) and getting an item. The side quest system is tackled with the Global Samaritan Campaign, a cheery adventure where you need to help people with their problems. There's an inventory icon for it and everything, I think 36 cases for you to solve. So you have to go around talking to people to hear their problems. If you've done it at the right time and with the right character, then the GSC window pops up and you Start your mission for that person. I'm no fan of the 'talk to this person at the correct time with the correct character' but I'll get the ones I can with Shion whenever it's convenient and happens! If I want more later, I can look them up.
5) Characters - Finally, X2 is artistically different than X1. They changed a handful of the character models to make them less anime-looking and more realistic. Shion, KOS-MOS, MOMO, chaos, Jr...they all spent time in wardrobe. I like the new looks, as it mostly makes them look older and more mature. In X1, I didn't really like how MOMO looked like a 6-year-old and Jr. looked a few years older. I understand why they're supposed to look young, but I like that in X2, they bumped the appearances up a few years. MOMO now is more like a tween and Jr. more like a teenager. Shion's is a bit sad though. She looks better, yes, less anime, but at the beginning of the game, Allen accidentally steps on her glasses, so they figured out a way to make her lose the lenses and gave her extra pretty green eyes. It's silly I guess, but it bothers me that they had to make her look prettier. Oh, and there's also a whole lot more 'hey baby' in this game. It shows up once you begin exploring Second Miltia with a handful of NPCs calling her hot or commenting that she's a woman, stuff that wouldn't happen with a male. One of the side quests also involves plastering the city with posters of women in lingerie for the Miss Miltia beauty pageant. It would be one thing if the posters weren't of women in lingerie, another if people didn't continue commenting on how hot Shion is and how she should enter, etc. etc.
Finally, they got some new voice actors. I like MOMO's, as her voice is less whiny. And her battle voice is cool, sounds like it's coming through a CB radio for some reason. KOS-MOS is different and lame. Her voice is too high and she doesn't sound convincing as a robot. She was great last time. Shion's is also different in just a 'worse voice actor' kind of way. Minor gripes. I'm sure I'll get used to them, and I suppose they got some more new ones for X3. The characters on the whole seem more mellow than the last game, although there was one huge and failed attempt at a humorous scene in this one. The story seems a bit more straight-forward, and I feel they've done a good job reminding me of X1 and explaining what is going on now. There's a lot of good backstory, including the beginning ES sequence. You actually play when the Song of Nephilim was first activated during the Miltian Conflict. Cool stuff!
Aaand, I got perks from having save game data from X1. Several characters got swimsuits, not cosmetic :-(, to equip. The swimsuits add +1 agility, which is over 10%! Agility is a super rare stat and goes up to like 7 or 8 on most characters. It affects attack speed. They also do an additional 10-15% damage and gain +10% skill points. Nice!
Looking forward to going through this one in a week and getting a start on X3 soon.
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I just finished Xenosaga, then looked at some walkthroughs to see how much stuff I missed and read a few boss strategies, and then re-read my previous logs for the game. Turns out I did a pretty thorough job for what a normal person would know going through! I got the vast majority of the segment addresses open, did very well with managing character stats and abilities, and got a ton of the special items. The stuff I missed was almost exclusively "secret" where you have to, say, go to a specific spot with a specific character as the leader in your party and perform a specific action, with no hints or anything to do it. Also, from reading my earlier logs, I played this game much less critically than I started out playing it. That's good on one level. I got into it. That whole gender issue faded into the background in the game, but damn if it was obvious in the beginning. And regarding the whole Nietzsche title, yeah...no. Albedo likes to talk about how will is all that matters, and he's certainly chasing power, but other shady people are trying to control him and say that he's not as powerful as he thinks. Yeah so, it's about will and power, but not Nietzsche. There are no more uberpeople than the insane villains of all other RPGs, who are all superior beings of higher consciousness and whatever they've deluded themselves into believing...until you defeat them.
I don't have much to say. It was an awesome game, took me a bit shy of 50 hours. I somehow remember it taking 80 the first time. Perhaps that's because I was obsessed with the card game. **Edit - I read the box back when pulling out Xenosaga 2, and the box boasts 80 hours of gameplay, which is nonsense. On howlongtobeat.com the average is 45 hours to complete the main story and sidequests.** So my previous 80 hours must have been just playing that card game so much. This time I started excitedly playing it when it became available, but it didn't grab me, so I quit bothering with it. I really wish you could have actual opponents in the game instead of just playing against stock decks. It's odd the things you spend time with in a game on multiple playthroughs, and/or 10 years down the road. I don't remember last time paying so much attention to upgrading my characters and killing enemies on skill point modifiers. This time I was meticulous about it, and a good thing too. Those skill point modifiers are amazing and I was able to max out all of Shion's stats with leftover Tech points, give almost every character Medica All and the revive spell, and I got really far in the skills. I don't even know from last time that I could spend Tech points on stats, but it made a huge difference. Max out defense and you take so much less damage. By the end of the game, Shion was a beast. Killing enemies on the modifiers was a little tedious at first, but as the game progressed and I began to have more control over boosting, it typically didn't stretch battles much. It was actually kind of fun and an added challenge to kill enemies only on that one modifier. There were definitely some tense moments in boss fights as I was trying to time the battle slots just right. So yeah, in a sense I feel like I was abusing the point system.
The story is pretty confusing. There are a lot of moving parts, and what I'm going to do next is browse through some story online and see if I can't make more sense of it. Or I'll boot the second game and check the encyclopedia there. If I remember correctly, the second game did a very good job of catching me back up. There was one story bit that was stupid. The party is protecting MOMO, the 100-series Realian, because she's got super universe-maintaining important data in her that all the bad guys are out to get. So what do they do? They LEAVE HER ALONE to help injured people after the Gnosis attack the Kukai Foundation. How freaking stupid can you be? So of course Albedo is there and abducts her. Good job driving the story forward, but that is the most unlikely scenario I can imagine. Do you often leave the key to saving the universe alone and unattended? No. No you don't.
I did good not using walkthroughs. I only had to do it once, and that was this elevator with boxes on it and a panel in the center that you push to take it up. But it was this weird puzzle that I would never have figured out. Once I read the answer, I think it's clever, but I dunno how I'm expected to think in those terms. So there are 6 floors, named 2-7. Each floor has another number next to it. 2 has 3, 3 has 6, 4 has 9, and so on. I got the pattern. Now what to do with it? I had been just shooting boxes and pushing the elevator button when it lit up. Shooting the boxes was somehow tied to being able to raise the elevator and to which floor it went to. I couldn't figure it out. Nothing made a pattern. So I looked it up. Turns out the numbers (3,6,9...) are how many boxes you have to shoot to get the elevator to go to the corresponding floor. Whoa. Now, there aren't just boxes, but different sized boxes that use a single block as a basis for size. So there are boxes that are one block big, two blocks big, three and four. So you've got to just shoot combinations to give you the corresponding number of the floor you want to go to. Spent a lot of time on that one.
One of the biggest realizations I had while playing had to do with managing my EP resource. I had used Shion as my primary support character most of the game. Since I timed killing enemies on the skill point slot, I took a lot of extra damage, so I had to heal a lot. That's a lot of EP! At some point I realized that I could save myself a lot of EP and time. Shion has a Boost +1 skill that just gives someone +1 boost. In minor battles, you often don't build the boost gauge, so if you need to boost to jump ahead in line and attack on the skill point slot, you can't. BUT, if you cast +1 boost immediately, it's the same EP cost as a normal heal and that'll allow you to jump in line and kill enemies on the skill point slot instead of just waiting x number of rounds for it to naturally land there on your turn. Good times.
Okay, so thumbs up for Xenosaga. I'm going to pull out Xenosaga 2 and see how that starts off. According to the internet it's like 25% shorter than Xenosaga 1, and since I took extra long on 1, I imagine 2 will feel relatively short. Hopefully it's good though. I do remember it being less awesome. Onward!
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Mar 31st, 2012 at 09:01:56.
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Why oh why can't I get into adventure games? I don't think I lack patience. The puzzles aren't over my head. They have plenty of humor, engaging stories, lovable characters and beautiful artwork. So what the hell is it?
Adventure games just don't seem to make sense!
When I was a kid, I played a lot of the old LucasArts games like The Dig and Full Throttle, alongside Myst and others. I liked them. I was good at them. I kept journals in Myst and got pretty far. I beat The Dig and I beat Full Throttle over and over because I wanted to be in a motorcycle gang.
Then I grew up and didn't play adventure games.
Then one day I saw Machinarium and oooh'd and aaah'd and clicked "buy now." It was so cool at first, the cute robot, the mean policeman, the mechanical city, the music, the gorgeous backgrounds. I eventually became frustrated by some of the puzzles and relied heavily on a walkthrough to finish.
I've also tried out some Sam & Max, which went similarly. The solutions seemed random and didn't make good sense.
I also downloaded Secret of Monkey Island 1 & 2, and Syberia 1 & 2, the former for being point-and-click classics, and the latter for looking really interesting.
Fast-forward to me being bored on an airplane. I boot up my computer and go to start a point-and-click adventure of The Secret of Monkey Island because I have only a touchpad and can run the game on low power. I'm excited. It's supposed to be one of the most-loved point-and-click games ever. Maybe this one will bring me back to my childhood and reinvigorate my love of adventure games.
Pros: the usual suspects -- like the style, good voiceovers in the special edition, lots of personality, interesting characters and intriguing story and setting...
Cons: clunky interface -- Pushing buttons doesn't always work and I have to push things repeatedly to register sometimes. This can be really annoying for timed events, like carrying a mug of acidic grog and switching mugs before the grog melts the first mug. The button inevitably doesn't work and my mug melts, forcing me to go do the whole thing over. Also, there's a hidden edge to the screen. If you mouse to the apparent edge, the game cursor gets over-riden by the Windows mouse cursor and you can't click on anything. So you can never mouse to the edge of the screen. Want to move to the edge of the screen? Too bad! You have to take baby steps! The clunky buttons also make it so you can rarely skip dialogue that you've heard 20 times and really don't want to listen to anymore. Just mash that Backspace and hope it skips. The voices are great, but they get real old having to listen to the same lines over and over.
And then, the usual suspects -- too many of the solutions don't make any sense! They're not puzzles in this game. There aren't any patterns or anything like that, like I found in Machinarium. There are just objects you use on other objects.
Examples:
My first need for help was when I had to find a helmet so some carnies would let me launch out of a cannon. So I went looking for a helmet. I had a pot I'd found, but I was busy trying to fill it with grog to poison some dogs. It wouldn't fill up. I used the "H" hint system, which told me to give the pot to the carnies. Oh, okay. Yeah I guess a pot could be a helmet. I've seen that. But that particular pot doesn't look like a helmet. And when you get shot out of the cannon, the pot falls off your head anyway. Why did I need it?!
So the pot made some sense. But the next one is why I can't seem to get into these games. There's a part where you have to poison some dogs. I thought I needed to poison some meat I'd found to feed to the dogs to get past them. I'd figured out how to evade the cook and get some meat, figured out how to season the meat, but couldn't figure out how to poison it. There is grog all around, including a barrel of it with a skull on the side, and it's leaking slime green (poison alert?), so I just knew I needed to get some grog on the meat too. There was a chalice elsewhere I couldn't pick up, and the pot-helmet I couldn't use to fill with grog because 'I don't need that much.' So again, nothing left to do. Used H. H tells me to poison the meat with something in my inventory. I look. There is nothing in there. Breath mints. A flower. I use the mints. Nothing. Push H again. "Poison the meat with the yellow flower." What? But why? There is no indication that the flower is poisonous. If you 'look' at it, it just says it has a striking yellow color. How is that intuitive or indicative of poison? Sure, some plants are poisonous, but why would I think this flower is, especially with the presence of the obviously toxic grog? Lame.
At another point, I had to give an object to a troll as a toll to pass his bridge. He wanted food. I'd tried to give him everything under the sun, and finally obtained a carrot cake from a prisoner, who needed a file to get out of his cell. When you inspect the carrot cake, it just says "It's heavy." Okay. So I take it to the troll, who doesn't want it. That's like the 5th piece of food I've tried on him. I can't do anything else so I use H. H says "Look inside the cake." What? Why would I ever decide to look inside the cake? Because it is heavy? It's totally normal for cakes to be heavy. So, really? I can't go on because I didn't figure out to dig into a cake? I can't go on because I didn't figure out to use a flower to poison some meat? I can't go on because I didn't walk to the end of a pier to step on the edge of a plank and flip a bird off a red herring? I thought I could actually scare the bird like a normal person using any variety of things? Nope!
So. I've been using H whenever I get stuck. Usually it just tells me to do what I've already been trying and I then figure out a way to do it slightly differently and quite right. Sometimes I'd rather just play this game like an interactive movie with a walkthrough. It's very frustrating, but I do like the characters and am intrigued by the story.
Le Chuck.
Le sigh.
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