A few thoughts on a few games.

Well then, there's a couple games that I got recently that I feel I should give my thoughts on.

Ys Seven: Holy Shit! Yes, Yes, Yes!

Dear god I love the Ys games, and usually I have to go through some kind of fancy import and patch ritual to get them running in my goddamn language. I still hold the belief that if you combined VI's story, weapon system, and super attacks with Oath in Felghana's battle, magic, and power-up gem systems you'd have a hack-n-slash that would probably make it into my top 10, maybe even top 5.

As it stands I think Ys VII may be my new favorite game in the series. It's not the combination I was hoping for, but it's pretty damn awesome. It may make my top 10 but we'll have to wait and see because it is a pretty tough list to contend with. It's not without it's problems of course, but the good generally outweighs the bad.

Let's start with the bad first though for kicks. You can't jump, which doesn't seem like it would be a big issue, but after being able to jump in the last few games it's a bit awkward for them just to remove it, luckily the Dodge maneuver works well and after a bit of gameplay you won't have a problem with not being able to jump anymore. This game also marks the first time Adol's in a party. 3 members strong at any given time, it's quite strange to have AI partners following you around, but it's nice to see Dogi in action, and their different strengths are taken far more advantage of than Ys VI's tragically underutilized elemental system.

A spot where this game falters without a counter argument though is the opening. It quite honestly sucks. They give you a tutorial on every little damn thing and they take their sweet time setting up a story while you're stuck wandering around town with nothing to do. Now I know I'm going to be called a hypocrite later since Majora's Mask is one of my favorite openings, but the difference is that the entire game world exists around Clock Town. It is the single most important place in the game, and the game is built around side quests to reach the same length as OoT and many of them stem from Clock Town. The game requires and wants you (the player) to form attachments to all the people of the town. By contrast Ys is a damn hack-n-slash RPG, let me get to the action, Ys stories are cool and all, but it's the game and the music that everyone is there for. Don't just dangle it out of our reach for 20 minutes.

The final issue I have with the game is the graphics. They suck. Really really bad. Now everything is a low-poly model. This is as opposed to the fantastic sprites and backgrounds of the previous games with passable polygonal backgrounds and boss models for the time in VI and OiF. Also the whole art direction of the previous games was fantastic, where as it seems a little less so in Ys Seven. The bosses are a little lackluster, the enemies are a little generic, and the weapons aren't anything  fancy. It's kind of disappointing really. I haven't played Ys Origin though, but I've heard that the sprite work is still nice even if the art direction is a little lackluster.

Now onto the good. The gameplay is fantastic. It's fantastically paced with your characters moving quick but not so much that you can't keep track, the combo system works well since you can chain regular attacks into skills and cancel into dodges, the skill system is good too forcing you to balance which skills to use and when to charge up for a focus attack without being too restricting, and the bosses are fun to fight and challenging as always. You also have to go out collecting herbs, metals, other plant parts and enemy body parts in order to improve your weapons and armor. So yeah, this game is kind of like Monster Hunter... only it isn't boring as shit. The only real issue I have with the game is that the Super Attacks you get take waaaaaaay too long to charge up. I wouldn't mind them being a bit weaker if I could use them more than once a boss fight, maybe twice if I have a full charge going in.

So for those of you still wondering: It's Monster Hunter meets, oh I don't know, Lunar Knights, and it is freaking glorious.

Second game: Ultimate Knight Windom XP

Sure does look exciting now doesn't it? Well it is, but it's not worth the $20. Why? Just go get the prequely prototypey thing Bootfighter Windom XP SP2. Trust me, you're not missing out on much. Don't get me wrong, I'm happy with Ultimate Knight, but I'm a giant robot whore. It only adds three new mechs, the ability to power up specific categories of your mechs, the ability to change their colors, and an arcade mode. Oh and a new soundtracks, but that's actually pretty good. Problems? Well the power-up thing screws with the balance, the Arcade mode kind of sucks but you have to do it to unlock all the mechs, and the game hasn't fixed any of it's problems. The sound is still kind of glitchy, Blitz Tactics mode is still coded like a monkey took a wrench to it and lags like crap, and the gameplay hasn't improved one bit, all it did was replace the bars with some shiny new ones. Bootfighter's gameplay is fun, but it's still incredibly unpolished. The knockdown system is broken, the mechs could stand to give you a little more control over their movement, and it's way too easy to get stun-locked. 

They really need to fix these issues if they want the game to be worth buying over just downloading Bootfighter. You're selling the game for money now, the quality has to match.

The Legend Begins

Felt like doing something simple

OK, sorry this took so long, been playing other games, moving, going to school, going to work. You know, life. I actually finished Zelda one about a week and a half ago and already started on Zelda two a bit, though I've also gotten really into the Banjo games again, maybe I'll do a review of those too.

So, The Legend of Zelda, what can I say? It's fun, really fun, and no matter how much criticism I give it that's what's important. Even when I was dying, even when I was astounded by the crazy prices of some things, even when my Big Shield was getting eaten and Wizzrobes were shredding me like a cheese grater I was still having fun.

Released in 1986 as the big launch title for the Famicom Disc System, and in 1988 in the US as the first game to have a battery backup allowing players to perform the task now taken for granted, saving your game. The quakes sent out by this game had to have been huge, and I only wish I was alive at the time, I know how I felt about saving your game when I first played this one since it was my first game that allowed saving, but it probably wasn't nearly the same.

First file select screen ever. For the record, in my file my name was Zilla (my Zelda 2's is Gamera), and my death count was around 30.

So anyways, this game is a classic, and an important milestone in modern gaming history, but how does it stack up? Seeing as it was my first time playing it in about 14 years my memory of it was fuzzy at best. Well, when I first turned it on, I picked up the sword, and then proceeded to get totally lost.

Yep, it's one of those games.

I eventually found two pieces of heart and then stumbled my way into Level 3, which I quickly exited and then remembered where Level 1 was.

Before dungeons though, let's talk about the overall game itself. If you're going to play Zelda 1 and you're only experience with the 2-D games is A Link to the Past or any of the Gameboy ones you need to immediately throw out everything you know. For starters, Zelda 1 moves on a psuedo-grid, meaning only four directions, and Link only stabs, he doesn't slash across a quarter of the screen. You have no idea how difficult that makes the game in comparison to the others. On top of that, Link moves relatively slowly, there are a lot of enemies on most screens, you can only block attacks while standing still, gathering rupees takes incredibly long amounts of time unless you get lucky or know the trick to Money Making Game, things are expensive, you can only carry two full heal potions at once and they're expensive to buy, Arrows drain from your rupee supply, you can only carry 8 bombs (though you can get up to 16 if you, you guessed it, pay a high amount), bombable things have no indication you can bomb them, and bosses are usually the easiest part of a dungeon, to the point where you fight three of the level 2 boss in level 3.

And yet you're surprisingly not screwed. Turns out all Dodongos dislike smoke.

And despite, or perhaps because of all that, the game is amazingly fun and charming. Unlike later Zelda games cash is never really useless, the challenge is real, but it doesn't feel like an issue, and combat is the main focus of the game.

The reason the challenge never becomes overwhelming in this game, is the same reason the lack of challenge can become rather tedious in the later games, and it comes from one brilliant design choice. No matter how many times you die every life gains you progress. Any doors you opened stay open, any items you got you keep, any keys you got you keep, any rupees are kept. If you die in a dungeon a few times you can just leave, go grab the blue ring or Magical Sword, or a potion and then run back in and try again. Everything will be there just the way you left it. This means no matter how challenging it gets, you never lose, you just need to dust yourself off and keep going, and with saving you can take a break and come back to it later.

So I keep talking about the challenge, and I talked about the restricted movement and limited potions, but why else is it challenging? Simply put, the regular enemies. Some of them are tough, really tough, and rooms are swamped with them. Examples:

This is a Blue Darknut. It can appear in groups of up to I believe eight. It takes several hits to kill, it can only be hit from the side or back, it likes to chase you, it moves faster than you, it does multiple hearts of damage, and it is often fought in claustrophobic obstacle heavy rooms where you NEED to kill all of the Darknuts to progress. If you don't have your sword beams then these guys, while not impossible, or freaking tough. Good luck with that

These are Wizzrobes. They teleport or move invincibly, they shoot attacks that do lots of damage and they come in fairly large groups. Their attacks require you to either move quickly or stand still to not die, and they can only be blocked with a big shield. They are often paired with:

Like Likes. These guys eat your big shield if you didn't know. It's never a good idea to stand still OR  move haphazardly around a Like Like. Good luck with that.

This is Ganon. He's a boss, not a regular enemy though I'm sure you knew that. I'm just mentioning him because in this game Ganon is invisible while you fight him. Good luck with that.

So yeah, Zelda is hard (although Zelda 2 is so far tougher than I remember it), and it's some of the most fun I've had with a game in the past few months. I've been playing plenty of great games so it's strange isn't it? I wasn't playing easy games at all so the challenge isn't the reason, but it was just so unexpectedly difficult due to an unfamiliarity with the controls. I was having an easier time with Ninja Gaiden. The reason I had fun with it though, is the simplicity. The game starts right away, and kicks you into the adventure. No opening cutscene, just some text scroll if you wait. No bullshit training level, no stupid scenes when you enter an area, no loading screens, nothing bogging it down, and the game comes out all the better for it in a gaming world populated with overemphasis on garnish.

So I'm going to have to give Zelda one a Play. You don't have to play it all the way through, but if you haven't played it yet you do need to get off your butt and see what gaming is like without all the fancy stuff over top. Don't get me wrong, that stuff has its place, definitely, and in the later games I'm definitely going to start going over the strength of the intro and story, but every once in a while you just need to embrace the simplicity.

For the record:
1) I didn't beat Second Quest. Darknut's in the second dungeon? Guys that take away your heart containers? No thanks.
2) I was playing this old school with my Top Loader, and trust me, I tried it on an emulator but the NES controller really does make a difference.

So, see you next time.