A look back at: Tenchi Muyo! Game Hen

Sometimes, I wonder why I play the games I play. And this one certainly is no different, as I'm completely unfamiliar with this particular anime and I'm unsure on how this correlates to the game itself.

Gotta say though, I wasn't entirely pleased. It's a Final Fantasy Tactics clone, but it only has the basic parts. The interface is clunky and not too well made, and the enemies always attack you, in other words, the game completely lacks variety other than attacking, buffing, and healing, no status effects or anything too advanced. Perhaps being able to customize who gets to go is interesting, especially with the unique sets of characters. Yeah, using characters that can only move one space per turn is gonna be harder to maintain than using a character that has multiple spaces of movement. And then you factor in characters that can transform and have better abilities, plus a level cap of 8, meaning yeah, there's quite a bit of training to do, although it may or may not be all that necessary given that this game was pretty short, something I'm actually thankful for.

Perhaps what I was most annoyed with in this game was the enemy AI. They tend to get more turns than I do, plus they always move into positions that are disadvantageous for some of my slower characters. To compound this further, they always gang up on the person that is first in my character slot. Although it allows for strategizing the most defensive characters there, the fact that they usually gangbang one character is still annoying. Also the reinforcements tend to show up if you take too long, further prolonging things for battle-weary characters. And speaking of which, yeah, trying to level characters here basically involves specific characters killing enemies. Easy for some, hard for others.

And again, not much in story for this game overall, maybe if I knew more about these characters, I would enjoy this game more. Well, there's at least one original character, but the plot devolves into basic kidnapping of girls and rescuing them from villain, and also finding out villain behind villain and defeating her. Yeah, it's pretty rote.

A look back at: Phantasy Star IV

Character interactions, decent gameplay, good curve. Things that describe Phantasy Star IV, all for the good of it. I'm really glad that I played this, finally. A bit on the short side, but still charming. See, this is the kind of thing I like about some turn-based RPGs. Let's make special skills unrelated to the thing that takes away your TP, except still making it finite but powerful. Develop actually important strategies for certain bosses, like using the Psycho Wand to remove Zio's stupid buff. And the combination of certain techs and skills can all but break the game. Triblaster at the beginning? I'm sold. Grand Cross doing upwards 700 damage to foes whose overall HP value usually doesn't go above 600? Yikes, this game is much easier than the earlier titles. But given how I get annoyed at grinding that is both required and excessive, this felt pretty lukewarm. For once, I didn't grind excessively for cash, which is great too.

I'll admit, it still has some flaws. Why so many instant death attacks? Pretty much every party member in the game gets one, which is ridiculous. And the final stretch still involves a lame fetch quest, except you're not really doing anything but "proving" you're the protectors, which is just eh. It's not completely shoehorned though, thankfully. Alys' death is a surprise, along with the reveal that Dark Force himself isn't entirely the real bad guy behind everything, even though he's been a legacy villain. And gee whiz, look at all those homages to previous games. The Elysdeon scene just makes fans drool with the appearance of all the other characters from before. Rune being Lutz the Fifth is a cool reveal. The town names definitely are something too, with Piata and Uzo on Motavia being familiar (though Uzo was a dungeon in II) while there's a town named Tyler (after the guy that rescues you from Gaira in II, for whatever reason). Also Termi, which is a town fully dedicated to Alis, the original Phantasy Star hero. And let's not forget the survival of the Air Castle and the revival of Lassic, now called Lashiec. It's just all so charming. There's even Myau being alive and large in this game, as well a couple of optional dungeons with homages to Phantasy Star III even. Just so much to ooh and aah at. But these homages aren't too bad and don't feel like "hey we just mentioned things from previous games, notice us", they integrate into whatever story is in as well. What a great game to experience. The one Phantasy Star title I will recommend.

Terrible RPG Battle Music: Part 1

Well I'm bored. Let's look at some music from RPG battles that is, well, bad. I may or may not create a second one, but let's see which RPG battle music is really bad.

Breath of Fire 2 - Hide n' Seek (Roach battle)

Ugh, you do NOT do this for a battle theme. Especially not one with roaches. This theme works for hunting, but not battling. Let's just put it at that. Breath of Fire 2 had absolutely amazing battle themes, and should be remembered for the good ones.

Final Fantasy 3 - Boss battle

For the most part, the battle themes of the entire Final Fantasy series is always good, and even some of the zanier themes are pretty badass. Can't say that I agree when I listen to FF3's boss battle theme. Like the previous one, the issue is that it's a very happy-go-lucky and zany theme that doesn't really fit for some of the nastier-seeming battles. Remember, if it sounds like it belongs in a carnival, it doesn't fit with an actual boss theme.

Chrono Cross - Main battle theme

Thankfully, this one doesn't sound like it could be carnival music, but it just sounds all over the place still. The instrumentation definitely felt overdone, and while I like the violin part and wish that that part of the battle theme would stick, the rest sort of makes me annoyed. It makes me want to go to the Bend of Time and fight random battles there just because the dungeon music is far more listenable than the main battle theme.

Phantasy Star 3 - Basically any battle theme

Hard to pinpoint which battle theme is the least fun, but when you've got music like in Phantasy Star 3, which seems to be incredibly dissonant with how battle themes should sound, you really just can't tell which battle theme is the worst. The time you get sucked into a random battle, it sounds like a racing game soundtrack, and then there's a few other ones, like one which usually happens upon an ambush that, well I don't know or care how it sounds other than it just sounding awful. What's with the one track that sounds like it could be a mix of techno and church music? Ugly. Just ugly.

Dual Orb II - Battle theme

I mean, this is the ONLY battle theme in the entire game, and that hurts this one real bad. On the surface, Dual Orb II's battle theme is, at its very best, just generic as hell. Not really shabby but not really amazingly exciting. It's just, with all the damn grinding I had to do, with all the battles I had to do, and the fact that they didn't even have unique battle music for any of the bosses not even the final boss, it just got on my nerves real quick. And of course that's all I got there.

A look back at: Phantom Brave

Glad to have finally beat the main campaign of Phantom Brave. A very interesting story-driven tactical RPG, where you can just customize almost everything about not just characters, but items too.

It's so weird, with all the customization options, all the random dungeons you can create and go through, all the mana you can collect to forge and fuse items, all the skills you can learn, all the titles you can gain, and so much more. Perhaps the reason I didn't give this the same score as Soul Nomad may be because in all honesty, the amount of customization drowned out all the story due to loads of level grinding and interesting random dungeons and I forgot where I was going. Oh well. One good thing this game does is allow you to replay story battles, although sometimes you fight different enemies on story stages. Like you're not gonna fight Raphael again on a stage that has him. With that in mind, some of the storyline battles tend to have one-time only items. Combine this with certain phantoms with certain obtain rates as well as tough enemies, and actually getting the items is one of the game's biggest challenges apart from the post-game stuff, which I've decided not to do yet.

Characters, well, it's all centered on Marona, the kind, charming, loving, little Chroma girl who tries to be friendly and positive about everything. Yet she's basically a Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer kind of character, basically nobody likes her because she's considered possessed because of Ash being her guardian. Marona seems like a static character, meanwhile as the game's episodes go by, the rest of the characters start to warm up to her good deeds, one by one. One especially notable side character is Walnut, who actually is Endorph from Soul Nomad, except here he's a huge jerk doing the jobs for the money. Beating him multiple times shows that he himself has it much harder, then he makes an ultimate sacrifice at the end (or so you think since he DOES come back in Soul Nomad) for his sister and her new friend. The Putties are cute little mutes who also play a role in the whole "sealing of the evil demon plot". To be frank, while this plot isn't THAT cliche, I kinda get the feel that despite the warming of the characters, it just seemed to drag. Especially at the end since Sulphur just wouldn't die, not after Sprout slays the demon, not after the demon possesses Sprout and Marona has to fight the cursed knight, not after Sprout commits suicide, and not even after Marona defeats Sulphur a second time. It's just one of those moments where it just keeps going.

But overall I liked this Nippon Ichi title, and I can guarantee there's plenty more where it came from. Pretty addicting.

RPGs: Combining fantasy with high tech

You can obviously tell I'm running out of ideas, since I barely if ever update this blog for more than 10 days. Might as well keep running down the list. At our 10th, we reach the Luddite (George Lucas) Rule: Speaking of which, technology is inherently evil and is the exclusive province of the Bad Guys. They're the ones with the robots, factories, cyberpunk megalopolises and floating battle stations, while the Good Guys live in small villages in peaceful harmony with nature. (Although somehow your guns and/or heavily armed airships are exempted from this.)

Well, it's actually quite common, as most JRPGs I played tend to straddle the line between both fantasy and sci-fi. Most Final Fantasies end up doing this. Dual Orb 2 ends up doing this to a tee, while Chrono Trigger and a few other games are completely all over the place. Meanwhile, stuff that blacksmiths create from a fiery forge, as well as medicinal herbs being bought at stores that look like they're not gonna last more than a year in such poor villages are among the things that the good guys end up going to more often. The bad guys, which include all those evil empires, tend to have the biggest technological advancements. Look at Valua in Skies of Arcadia or the Empire in Final Fantasy 6, then compare it to the much more poorer locales everywhere else in those games. Or an even better example, the Kingdom of Zeal and the incredibly poor and famished lands below in Chrono Trigger.

Yep, this is an RPG cliche I see far too often that it makes perfect sense that it's considered one. Even Phantasy Star, an otherwise mostly sci-fi game, has shades of this, with the third game almost seeming like complete fantasy at first but showing some big robots later. And the second game actually replaces biological organisms with robots as the main enemies at the halfway point. Again, it's the ones with the most technology that end up always being the biggest of the bad.

And yeah, your own weapons and airships definitely are exempt from the "inherent evil", most likely because the people who create them (like the numerous Cid's in early Final Fantasy titles) are always good guys, making technology great, unhackable, whatever. Wild Arms tries to oust characters with guns as bad, but given that they stay with the players all the way through and don't do anything outrageous like turn on their users, the guns also are exempt. I can't think of any other examples of technology that's perceived evil but is used for good, but it would also be exempt. So yeah, this is a cliche I pretty much agree with. Especially since it's worded so well.

Dungeon archetypes in RPGs.

Been sick of my life for the past few days. Let's see if I'm sick of the next cliche on our analyzing tour which will probably span into next year because I'm so unmotivated.

"There's always a fire dungeon, an ice dungeon, a sewer maze, a misty forest, a derelict ghost ship, a mine, a glowing crystal maze, an ancient temple full of traps, a magic floating castle, and a technological dungeon."

This certainly qualifies for a boatload of games. Wanna list some examples?

Fire dungeon: Mt. Zublo in Breath of Fire 3, Thor Volcano in Treasure of the Rudras, Thwomp Volcano in Mario & Luigi: Partners in Time.
Ice dungeon: Jokes End in Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga, White Dragon Cave in both Lunar titles, Great Glacier in Final Fantasy VII.
Sewer Maze: Nortune D Block Sewers in Xenogears, Sewer Access in Chrono Trigger, Viper Manor Sewers in Chrono Cross.
Misty Forest: many forests in Legend of Legaia, Guardia Forest in Chrono Trigger, Misty Forest in Grandia
Derelict Ghost Ship: The one from Legend of Dragoon, the Ghost Ship from Dragon Warrior 3, the Ghost Ship from Grandia.
A mine: The mines from Brave Fencer Musashi, Moon Stone Mountain in Skies of Arcadia, Tinto Mines in Suikoden II.
A glowing crystal maze: Abandoned Laine Village in Grandia, Lunar Subterranae in Final Fantasy IV, Crystal Tower in Final Fantasy III.
An ancient temple full of traps: Temple of Memory in Wild Arms, Ankor Wat (sp?) in Illusion of Gaia, Tombs of Amenti in Valkyrie Profile.
A magic floating castle: Doom Island in the Lufia series, Beauty Castle in Rhapsody, Floating Castle in Legend of Legaia.
A technological dungeon: Factory in Breath of Fire 3, Geno Dome in Chrono Trigger, The Grindery in Lunar 1.

So three examples of each. Obviously, not every game has these compulsories, and it's not a bad cliche in the slightest to have any of these. Perhaps the bigger focus would be on how the compulsories can have adverse effects on the battles, such as in Odin Sphere with the fire and ice locations requiring specifically crafted potions that way you won't suffer draining damage wherever.

Happy Freakin' New Year

Yeah, I was busy this entire winter break. Do you expect me to find a few things to blog about? I had family to deal with, a setlist for RPGs to play (while simultaneously still playing one right now), and there's still more to come. Still though, expect this to gain some ground. I'm not gonna be blogging every day of the week, you know. Let's ensure 2019 doesn't suck.