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Mar 23rd, 2016 at 04:23:56 - Xenogears (PS) |
Game Review: Xenogears (1998)
Xenogears, though it is one of the lesser known of Squaresoft's many well-received JRPGs of the era, is an iconic and beautiful addition to the PS1 library of games. It is a single player RPG with a distinctive anime art style that features a detail rich story and a large cast of characters to carry its stereotypically convoluted plot, as well as an innovative extension of the traditional turn-based combat system characteristic of the genre to keep you interested in the progression. The stylization is evident in both the sprite-art and 3D modeling, both of which are used frequently and simultaneously, to create the aesthetic of the game. As with most JRPGs, one can safely take a few liberties when it comes to assuming what to expect out of the game. But, if you are fan of the genre or of dialogue heavy, story-driven experiences, then Xenogears is a memorable experience that has aged well, even from a visual perspective (rare of the early 3D RPG's in my opinion).
Formal Elements:
This game, like many turn-based RPGs, can be boiled down into two main gameplay modes: battle mode, and exploration mode.
In this case, battle mode can be additionally broken down into two simple variations: on-foot battles and in "Gear" (Giant mech)battles. In battle mode, you command each member of your party to take an available action in order to vanquish your foes. Actions range from basic attacks, to magic attacks (use EP, ether points), to items, to escaping (and later recharging). While this is largely typical of the genre, the part of this mechanic that stands out is the replacement of a typical basic attack with a input-based combo system. AP (action points), the resource, has a value that is depleted by the weak, medium, and strong attack by 1, 2, and 3 respectively. This allows you to use a variety of input combinations to achieve the desired patterns of attacks, and the maximum value increases as you level. For instance, if you have a total limit of 5 AP you may input triangle 5 times, or triangle triangle square triangle, or x square. Any combination below available AP is valid. In addition to having more control over the executed attack, many of these combinations result in special moves that are only unlocked after you have reached a certain level and tried the combination in question. These devastating special moves have no limit to their use and are signified by unique attack animation sequences for each of the dozen or more for each party member. The "Gear" battles are very similar to the on-foot battles (which occur for a large part of the game before "Gears" are available) except, while there are generally fewer combinations and room for input variation in Gear fights, there is added depth in the form of yet another resource: fuel. Without fuel, players are forced to remain vulnerable and are greatly limited in terms of available actions. These elements, coupled with other turn based decision mechanics, make for an interesting and fun to repeat (you will be) battle system that is a little different than what you will get from other greats from the genre, such as many of the Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games, Chrono Trigger, and Legend of Dragoon among many more. It is not so different an experience from Legend of Legaia and related titles in terms of combat, however, but they lack in depth what Xenogears is able to achieve overall in my opinion.
In terms of exploration, the game uses a typical top down view with random encounters when wondering the world map between explorable nodes. There isn't much exploration on the over world itself other than finding the boundaries and any possible hidden zones, but each explorable zone (town, dungeon, mountain range, any scene they want to add context to) has quite a bit more detail. This is once again typical of the genre, but one somewhat uncommon feature to this part of exploration is the ability to jump. This allows some additional complexity to level and puzzle design, but I wouldn't say that either of those things were top priority in development anyway.
Dramatic Elements:
Squaresoft (and SquareEnix post-merge), particularly around the time of this game's release, is well-known for their emphasis on telling a compelling a story as well as building a complex universe within which the narrative takes place. The exact line between a dense, compelling, complex story and an oversaturated-with-detail, convoluted, nonsensical (yeah, I said it) story is subjective and highly debated, but I think most fans can agree that it is a line Square dances with and keeps a foot on both sides of. Xenogears is no exception to this. The story is delivered through a combination of spoken dialog (very little, in cutscenes), and written dialog between characters as the player advances the events of the story. This is the primary way the story is delivered, so be prepared to read quite a bit, Commit to playing for long periods of time and save often unless you are able to play on mobile or emulator, as talking sometimes goes on in excess of half an hour and save / stopping points are few and far between. I love the game and have played through multiple times, but I still find it easy to lose myself trying to make sense of the big picture (especially as it is revealed), not unlike the experience digesting the story of Final Fantasy VII. That being said, it introduces many interesting characters and scenarios on the way, and keeps you engrossed in the ever-evolving, ever-complicating plot all the way through the end. The sci-fi heavy origin story of the game involves a mysterious force causing a ship from a very advanced civilization to crash. Without much explanation, one can infer from the onset of the game a large amount of time has passed and any evidence of that civilization is largely lost. Many nations have begun to unearth ancient weapons known as Gears, which are large Gundam like suits of mech armor. The protagonist Fei Fong Wong is inexplicably attacked in his home village at the beginning of the game, forcing him to leave the life he knows behind. He sets out with a trusted advisor in search of truth and partially motivated by anger. Along the way you become familiar with the political struggle across a vast and varied world, meet many interesting characters with many causes, and begin to unravel a plot that involves the concept of reincarnation and a spiritual connection between two people that transcends time. There is a lot of religious and philosophical symbolism, a lot of which is thought provoking and well placed, but often plot points are trying too hard to evoke some sense of profundity. One example is the use (potential spoiler? Not really honestly.) of "Id" as an extremely powerful inner force that is trapped within you that manifests as an alter ego. This is not a very clever way to incorporate that psychological struggle for the character, in my opinion, but it does make for some awesome fight sequences and plot twists. In addition to a good story and excellent world building, the game is accompanied by detailed and sometimes lengthy animated (anime style) cutscenes. Many are drawn simply to the presence of mechs, but it is the surprisingly interesting story and human centered conflict that makes the game memorable. Overall, this is one of the most enjoyable and memorable games in this genre in every way.
Fun fact:
This was actually proposed as the plotline for Final Fantasy VII. It was a favored possibility, but they ultimately went with the arc with which fans of the series are familiar. Instead of being scrapped, Xenogears was published and envisioned as the culmination of a 5 part series. This was never realized, but many elements and namesakes are present in the Xenosaga series (carried out afterward by Namco) and later, even more loosely, Xenoblade. Xenosaga even had many names in common, leaving room for speculation that it could be interpreted as a potential backstory for the never elaborated on "creation story" of Xenogears, and they ultimately might lead the series toward a remake of "episode 5." Xenosaga concluded as a trilogy and remains the spiritual successor to Xenogears rather than an actual s/prequel or spin off like Chrono Cross and Chrono Trigger, however.
The play-through:
This is a title I have played and beaten many times, and I was worried that I would not enjoy getting back into it. Though my memory of the story being a little foggy on the big picture, I was able to get back into the swing of things pretty quickly and get through the introductory part the game (AKA pressing x for an hour and a half while reading dialog, followed by some light adventuring.) After getting Citan, the first available party member, I halted story progression and got way too involved in some good old fashioned grinding. It was entirely unnecessary, but I wondered doing random battles in the initial forest area, leveling and unlocking special moves until my proficiency in special moves far exceeded what was available to me by level. I had mastered X X, a 6 AP move. You start the game with 3 and it would be a long time before I could officially unlock and use it. Even trying to be critical and taking off the nostalgia goggles, I can't deny the fun, and I honestly had to wonder why Square had strayed so far from such simple innovations. The art style is also fun to watch, in contrast to Final Fantasy VII and even VIII which look extremely dated by today's standards. What started as a two session play will probably end with me playing well into the first disc worth of content, if not seeing it all the way through. I highly recommend this game to anyone who is a fan of any of genre or any of the games I have drawn comparison to, as well as anyone who may simply be trying to try out a classic JRPG. I have enjoyed my experience every time I have given it a playthrough.
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Feb 12th, 2016 at 00:38:22 - Pandemic (Other) |
Pandemic is a cooperative board game for 2 - 4 players that can be played in around an hour. A friend and I both learned the rules and played our first games together, and had a surprising amount of fun for two people with little familiarity with board games beyond childhood activities.
Objectives: Players cooperate to cure 4 different diseases that are popping up all over the world. Players each take on 1 of 7 roles (medic, researcher, dispatcher, operations expert, scientist, contingency planner, and quarantine specialist), each with their own unique traits and modifications to the rules, and must travel around containing the disease and preventing outbreak. Players win and the game ends when all 4 cures are found. Players lose if you run out of any color disease tokens, you run out of player cards, or you get to outbreak level 8.
Set up: Initial set up of the board requires the players to draw several cards to determine the board state. After 3 sets of 3 cities are drawn and disease tokens are placed (3, 2, and 1 tokens for each city in each set respectively), players are dealt role cards and draw their initial hand from the player cards stack. The outbreak and infection tokens are set at the starting positions, and then gameplay can begin.
Gameplay turns: In each turn, a player must take 4 actions. Unless it says specifically (such as some role specific perks), you can repeat actions multiple times in a turn. After completing 4 actions, the player must draw two cards from the player card pile and discard cards or play event cards in order to keep the hand at a maximum of 7. If an epidemic card is drawn, the bottom infection card is given 3 disease tokens and discarded, the infection level is raised, and the infection discard pile is shuffled and added back to the top of the deck for the intensifies step. After cards are drawn, the infection phase begins and as many infection cards are drawn as the infection level dictates (starts with 2). Place a disease token in each of the drawn cities from the infection cards, and the turn is completed. If a city has 3 disease tokens, an outbreak occurs instead of adding a fourth token. When an outbreak occurs, the outbreak level increases by one and each adjacent city receives a disease token of the color in question. Outbreaks can cause a chain reaction and can sneak up on you if an unlucky epidemic card is drawn.
Actions: Players can drive to an adjacent city, fly to any city for which they hold the card and discard, fly to any city period if they hold and discard the city which they occupy, and fly between research centers freely. All travel actions simply take one action and any combination can be used in a turn. Players can share knowledge, or give or take any city card to a cooperator as long as they both occupy that city. Players can also treat disease of any city they occupy, removing 1 disease token (unless the disease has been cured), build a research center at the cost of the city card they are occupying, and cure a disease if they are at a research center and discard 5 cards of the same color.
Game 1: In game 1, I was dealt the quarantine specialist role and my friend was dealt the contingency planner. The quarantine specialist prevents disease tokens and outbreaks from occurring within any city they occupy or are adjacent to. The contingency planner has the ability to spend an action to store a discarded action card for later use. We were off to a lucky start and by and large had a false impression of the complexity of the game. We were able to, without ever moving beyond two squares apart from each other, spend our actions primarily traveling single spaces and saving cards since there was no real urgency from the initial board state. With some lucky hands, the share knowledge action allowed us to very quickly cure both the red and the blue disease before the first outbreak even occurred. While our good luck (is that what they call bad shuffling? Yay RNG.) did begin to run out at some point, we were still able to end the game without ever feeling like we were in danger of losing. We made it to outbreak level 4 and got through 3 of 5 epidemic cards, but still had very little reason to feel threatened by the number of disease cubes available. A very good and enjoyable first game, but we'd soon we had a somewhat false impression of how things can go.
Game 2: In game two I drew the operations expert and my friend drew the role I had just played, quarantine specialist. The operations expert has the added abilities to add a research center to any city he occupies without needing the city card itself. They also have the added action of being able to fly from a research center to any city by discarding any city card once per turn. Even from the initial set up we could tell this was going to be a very different game. It was as if the gods of bad shuffling came down to right our wrongs, and show us our folly. We drew three blue cards in the first set, leaving us with prime conditions for a chain reaction outbreak out of the gate. To make matters worse, one of the second set was blue as well. Luckily, the majority of the rest of the initial draw was well distributed, mostly split between red and black and ironically leaving a single token in the yellow region. We spent our first actions traveling to the blue region in order to try and mitigate the situation before we got any more unlucky draws for that area. We luckily did not have to deal with an outbreak in the first turn, but it wasn't long until we had to deal with an epidemic card that resulted in raising our outbreak level to 3 and leaving us in a very bad position and with very little useful in our hand. Now, for the ironic part I mentioned: we spent most of our actions in the initially infected areas and did not notice that our drawn cards had left a nice little trail of yellow across South America. Nothing crazy or in real jeopardy, which is perhaps why we paid it no attention still. It was the next turn that I drew my first epidemic card between both games, and the one that would cause us to quickly lose. It placed 3 disease tokens in Sao Paulo, resulting in a chain reaction of outbreaks after the subsequent infection turn. We were left on the other side of the world and with very few yellow cards. The game ended with only one disease cured by running out of yellow disease tokens on outbreak level 6. We understood better just how little we knew about the general strategy of the game at this point.
I am interested in playing again soon to see how more people affects the complexity and the strategy involved, and whether that appears to make it easier or more difficult. It appears to me that some roles may be more crucial to the difficulty of the game than others, though they are all useful. Whether that is a valid criticism or not, it apparently didn't matter in our game. In my opinion, we had the stronger role combination in game two, but the only thing that seems to matter in the end was the will of the cards. Regardless of the frustrating defeat, we had a good time and even enjoyed the humor involved in the stark contrast between how these two games played out. I recommend it for anyone who hasn't tried it or who is simply wanting to become more interested in board games in general.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Feb 12th, 2016 at 01:30:22.
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