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Mar 8th, 2008 at 06:36:47 - Suikoden V (PS2) |
GAMEPLAY (2)
So, after some serious story developments happen (I hate spoilers and am annoyed by those who don't warn you about them, so no way I'm ever going to put spoilers in my GameLogs, especially those that some people HAVE to read...if you play(ed) the game, you'll know what I mean), the game begins to open up slowly in terms of gameplay; meanwhile, the story begins to slow down a bit (or at least you have more stuff you can do in-between). Some people call this "getting over the hump" of this game into the actual gameplay. Of course, as previously mentioned, I enjoy the story and characters immensely as well as the gameplay, so for me it was more like a smooth, fun, and thrilling dive into the world of the game.
Anyways, the story and character development continue well as the game progresses, even though it slows down. Also, more story-central characters are introduced and the player can begin recruiting the optional Stars of Destiny; this causes the character development to be spread around more, and thus thinner as well. The main characters and other main-story involved Stars of Destiny (which are usually automatically recruited) usually get more development and depth than the optional Stars of Destiny (SoD from now on); the optional SoD usually only get developed during their recruitment sequence/events and are more cliched, some are even joke-like comic reliefs or have exaggerated personalities, etc. I don't really expect a game to tackle the stupendous feat of developing 108 characters all very well, and Suikoden games have always focused on a group of SoD involved in the main story more. It is enough for me that the main group of characters continue developing and maintain my interest/like for them.
In the meantime, in addition to the sidequesty-like tasks one can do to recruit optional SoD, many other gameplay options open up with the acquiring/evolution of your base (a Suikoden staple). More characters and Rune options make battles more interesting overall, but they remain relatively simple, short, and easy affairs. Duals and army battles change it up a bit sometimes too. This is all better for expanded discussion in...
DESIGN
First of all, the battle systems in most Suikodens have been relatively simple compared to most RPGs. Suikoden V's is completely turn based, with speed affecting only the order allies and enemies act each turn (which is still important to think about of course) and you select all team members actions for the overall larger "turn" at once. Also, if your battle members have anywhere near the proper level of equipment, battles are usually very easy; bosses are usually the only fights you'll ever feel any pressure on your survival, there are exceptions for rare monsters/places you can sometimes reach where you aren't supposed to be yet. Special character combination attacks, thinking of/forming awesome rune combinations, and (new to Suikoden V) choosing formations/using formation skills all add some fun and spice into combat, but are also strictly unnecessary for victory.
Tied to this is the leveling system in most Suikodens, which vastly changes the amount of experience a character receives from a defeated enemy based in the difference between the character's level and the enemy's level. No, we're not talking about a little boosted experience for lower leveled party members here, and allowing experience point scaling to take care of the rest; we're talking about characters say, 20 levels behind, gaining around 5 levels in one battle. This is actually a great way to encourage players to try out new characters in battle, since it might otherwise be daunting to pick five or so characters (even worse, in Suikoden IV it was only three) other than the hero to devote time to leveling up - out of usually more than half of the 108 SoD which you can choose from to use in battle. However, it does make leveling up to a competitive strength trivial, and powerleveling is almost impossible since characters around 5 or so levels above the enemies start gaining tiny amounts of experience. I believe Suikoden V added skills to reward more dedicated fighting, but these overall have varying usefulness, and some require way too much work for a small gain. These skills are also the only real way players can play around with characters beyond upgrading their equipment and changing their runes. Once again, this is likely because of the size of the cast, and thus the player should simply "choose" the right characters for their battle needs rather than "making" the right character. Some skills are also neat in that they are active even when the character is in your "entourage" (basically your reserves you can carry around), some non-battle characters can also be put in your entourage only for their skills. Different players will react differently to the overall scheme, but overall Suikodens have never been about tough/challenging battles or grinding, but more about...
Ally collecting. As mentioned previously, many of the 108 SoD play a role in the plot, and optional ones may be recruited with certain requirements. As with all Suikodens, the larger incentive to collect SoD other than learning side-stories and expanding your options/base, is to affect the ending. With only a few more SoD than the amount given to you automatically by the plot (usually quite a few actually out of the 108 are mandatory), the player will get the "sort-of bad" ending. Have a healthy amount of optional SoD, and you get the "normal" ending. A perfect set of 108 Stars will net you the "best" ending. (Interestingly, some players prefer the "normal" endings since the "best" endings are "too happy/perfect" and the "normal" endings are more sad and realistic). A few "bad" endings can also be gotten that end the game prematurely by selecting certain choices or losing certain duals etc. It is also sometimes annoyingly hard to not miss some optional SoD due to short recruitment windows/hard requirements/whatever. One's best bet is to scour every corner of the world you can reach after every main story event...also, look for characters with names/character portraits...and be nice to them/try to do whatever for them.
Another aspect all Suikodens have had is "the base". Hey, with 108 Stars, you gotta have somewhere to put them. This has been around since Suikoden I, and some other games have done the "base" idea well, like Skies of Arcadia, but Suikoden was one of the first games, if not the first game, to have the idea of a player having their own base that evolved with recruiting new allies. This adds another reason to get new SoD to improve and fill up your base. Also, after it starts getting filled and cozy, it really gives a wonderful sense of "home" in a game, which many RPGs do not have (some other games are built around this idea of course). I mean, a lot of RPGs have the "airship" or whatnot, but those don't boast 108 possible residents or have beds, baths, a library, a vegetable garden, shops, a restaurant, your own room you can decorate, a teleporter mirror complete with cute, spacy teleportress, a half-crazy guy who will play checkers with you, etc. Granted, all of these have limited interaction here, but the point is it feels like HOME. You want to recruit that chef because you know it'll be awesome to have a restaurant inside your base; also, you want to get seeds for the guy taking care of your vegetable garden, so the chef can use the vegetables you grow for new dishes etc. It opens up a lot of side stuff to do/gives you reason to do side stuff like scouring shops for new seeds. Also, what better to do after a tiring day of battling than to go play some Blind Man's Bluff, take a hot bath, and go to sleep in your room?
To wrap up some stuff here, a nitpick would be the game has strange instances of user unfriendliness, more likely just programming oversights, such as the cursor defaulting to "New Game" every time you boot up the game, even if you a memory card with save data inserted. On the other hand, options like the "auto-battle" command make up for it in increasing user friendliness. Also, I won't go over these in detail, but the duals (which are similar in most Suikodens) and army battles (which are completely different in most Suikodens) add nice changes of pace from normal battles, but have their own quirks. Getting more allies also helps for having more options in army/war battles.
Anyway, Suikoden V's strengths lie in its Story and Characters, as well as its ally collecting and base development aspects...not in its battle or character growth systems, which are the core of gameplay in most RPGs. If one can take this change of pace, they may yet find the beauty of the Water Margin.
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Mar 8th, 2008 at 03:13:23 - Suikoden V (PS2) |
NOTE
Since we got to choose the game for our final Gamelog instead of it being another "classics list" assignment (I believe this was changed sometime in the middle of the quarter), I'll give my usual RPG schpeel: As with my other RPG logs, I started this game around the vague vicinity of the indicated date and I am still in the middle of it. I developed a bad habit of not finishing my current RPG before I started another one in the last few years, and now I'm trying to finish them all... Again, I am sure of my ability to remember my impressions and experiences from even the beginning of the game, since I am still in the middle of it. I will once again split my entries based on memories of my initial impressions of the game and then later developments while playing the game. Also, sorry Odin Sphere...you were my runner-up.
SUMMARY
Suikoden V is the fifth game in the main line of Suikoden turn-based, console RPGs. Once again, it takes place in the same huge "world" of Suikoden, but separated by large amounts of time/distance from the other entries; as such, like the other Suikoden games, it is fine to play it stand-alone, but there are tiny connections to/recurring elements and characters from other games in the series for fans. As always, the story centers around one of the True Runes and the 108 Stars of Destiny involved in its story. Overall, Suikoden V is a return to Suikoden's old roots in Suikoden I and II, after the interesting experiments in Suikoden III and the arguable low-point in the main series, Suikoden IV.
GAMEPLAY
A nice boot-up video once again for this Suikoden game (gosh darn it, why don't we get the Suikogaidens over here?)... One will soon notice upon starting a new game that the graphics are not exactly top-notch; however, they have a nice style and the characters are very expressive in the anime-style way. Also, I was ecstatic that the silent hero this time actually has facial expressions! The silent hero convention (aka. the main character whose supposed to be you and thus says nothing except for the conversation choices you pick) works fine for me when it's done well, but I hated how in Suikoden IV the protagonist had the same poker face on all the time regardless of whether or not you had just selected "I love you to death and want to hug you every time I see you!" or "I absolutely hate you and want to stab you in the face!". Obviously that's a made-up example, but it's much more satisfying to have a main player avatar that actually looks like they're expressing your choices/reacting naturally to a situation rather than looking like a robot all the time...
Anyways, I'm getting off track here, so as for how the game starts off, it is very story driven at the beginning. Thanks to having an unstoppable level 20 party member for most of the game's start, battles go by even quicker and easier than usual. You are quickly thrust into a situation that shows the devastating power of the Sun Rune; and then learn of its connection to the ruling family and you, the hero, as the prince of that family. However, the viewpoint is instead an uncommon sidelines sort of view, since the kingdom of Falena has a matriarchy-like system...very interesting choice, and well done, by the designers.
I usually do not dive into story and character development until later (2nd entry), but I have to for Suikoden V since that is practically the main component of the entire game beginning. Thanks to this, the story and character development ramp up very fast at the start (especially compared to most RPGs), and there are only small segments of easy battles and limited exploring interspersed in-between. I could see some people disliking this constant stream of story at the beginning, a-la Xenosaga style with less impressive cutscenes. I, however, loved this relaxed entry into a game that also immediately began to cause me to form attachments to the world and characters.
For that matter, Suikoden V has the character development style I love, especially at the beginning. That is, you don't just see characters develop in crucial story moments and some text inside towns, but also see a bit of them in their everyday life and situation (usually tied more loosely to the actual story arc). This, for some reason, gives a more realistic and "warm" feel for characters. It annoyed me that Xenosaga: Episode 1 was criticized for what little it had of this, and thus there was even less in later episodes of such scenes...a little tangent rant there. The characters do have their cliches, but their development is so plentiful at the beginning that they quickly cease to be confined by these stereotypes and begin to gain depth right at the start of the game.
The character development is not only helped by the well-done character animations and facial expressions, but also by the superb voice acting. As rarely happens for some games, I held back my hope at the beginning that such a low-budget game could have such great voice acting; but as the excellence continued, I was once again amazed at the English voice acting that was on par with games like Xenosaga and FF XII. I hereby give mad props to the English voice actors and the localization team that helped them for Suikoden V. Some of the voices suit the characters arguably better than the Japanese voices; luckily, since there is no Japanese voice option (I heard the Japanese voices from some vids).
Thanks to all this, I got involved in the story and grew quite attached to many characters very quickly; if this kind of opening turns some players away, so be it. The start of Suikoden V remains one of the best parts of the game for me, and possibly one of my favorite experiences overall in my life of RPG gaming so far. There is not much else to do at the start of the game, but you don't need anything else.
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Feb 21st, 2008 at 18:49:31 - Wii Sports (Wii) |
GAMEPLAY (2)
Being the type of game it is, my opinion of Wii Sports did not change much upon a few more sessions with it. Once again, playing for a short while with others was fun, but not exactly memorable. As a single player experience, it certainly did not hold my attention for long. However, a more recent experience with it made me give it some more value.
This happened to be the first time I was in the position of the introducer (for this game). The roles of the first time I played Wii Sports were reversed, only this time the other person was my oldest sister - who primarily only plays games in the vein of Tetris and Spider Solitaire. She was quite reluctant to try out Wii Sports; after all, the time when I convinced her to play Myst, a game I thought she might like, did not turn out exactly well...though it was quite interesting and amusing, but that's another story for another time.
So after much convincing that it would be fun and easy to get into, we decided to try, of course, Wii-tennis - since it was, again, the easiest to get into. Although my crazy situation was much less likely to happen with my oldest sister, I promptly informed her about the almighty importance of timing, and timing only in the game as soon as I noticed her having difficulties. I'm still not sure if she assumed some of the same stuff as me or if she was just getting used to the timing, but informing her about it quickly certainly helped. Also, the replays were surprisingly useful in telling her stuff like "You swung too soon there, see?" or "Swing just a little bit before that." etc. She soon got the hang of it.
Interestingly, the only part of the Wii-tennis that had come to me naturally the first time I played, the serving, gave my oldest sister more trouble since it was more complex. I was so used to this part of the game, and it had come to me so much easier since it was the only part that felt more like actual tennis to me, that it was a change of perspective to see my sister having the opposite reaction to it. Granted, that was because she thought underhanded serves could be done, and while explaining and watching her, I had the strange experience of consciously realizing that any two consecutive swings (properly timed of course) of the Wii-mote would work as a serve; I say "consciously" because unconsciously I already knew this must be the case, since the Wii-tennis game did not take into account swing direction in any other case. I had always used the actual overhand swing motion (up-down, much like the one done by the player's Mii) since it was natural to me; it was only now I realized the first swing sent up the ball, and the second swing, well, swung. It was funky watching my sister successfully serving with a left-right motion or, even weirder, a down-up motion.
In the end, it was fun and great to be having a close Wii-tennis match with my oldest sister after she quickly learned how to play the game. Also, she found the cartoony graphics and replays of screw-ups hilarious, and it rubbed off on me since I had always thought they were funny too. We had quite a few matches, full of cracking up at our Mii's crazy screwed-up dives and swings, as well as the always bouncing, cheering crowd which seemed happy regardless of if a ball had just hit them in the face. She was reluctant to try out another "sport" and we had limited time anyway, so we just continued playing and laughing through tennis matches...
DESIGN
As my experiences highlight, the core of Wii-Sports' design, as well as its main strength and weakness, is its accessibility and simplicity. It easy to get anyone into the games, especially the simpler ones, and have a good time. On the other hand, the lack of depth does not make it good for extended play. In other words it has a lot of the first seduction (especially because of it being packaged with the Wii, it is automatically gotten and almost "bypasses", in a loophole fashion, having to get the player to have enough interest in the game to buy it.), but not enough of the second seduction.
This is also because the single player options are meager even for a game made for multi-player (such as fighting games, racers, or party games). Game genres like these are simply better suited for multi-player, but often can cover there bases pretty well with good single player modes or options. Some games even have such-well designed single player modes that the single-player experience can arguably exceed the multi-player experience (I'm told Soul Caliber III does just that). This game only attempts that with (at least I'm told) an increasing AI difficulty to match your Mii's "skill" level.
Also, another part of some multi-player games is the semi-concealed depth some of them offer, a sort of emergent complexity that comes from becoming more experienced with the game. This is present in many fighters of course, including the Super Smash Brothers series of fighter/party game hybrids, and some racers as well, Mario Kart series included. Nintendo has proven it can do this with those two series, but perhaps it was more difficult to get that into this sort of game, because it seems to be lacking that depth as far as I can tell.
To end this not sounding like I hate the game, I'll just say again that the game is great to get into and get others into for a short, fun romp. The graphics may not be great, but at least they're cartoony and funny. Also, the Wii-mote is certainly great to play with; although other Wii-games may do it just as well (or possibly better), this is as good a game as any to introduce someone to the Wii "experience". Although some of the games (*cough*...tennis...*cough*) may not simulate the actual sport very well, they are still fun to play with the Wii-mote, while others actually sort-of feel like the real activity (like bowling). Anyways, I don't want the line to blur too much between the Wii console's strengths and this game's actual strengths. In summary, play this in short bursts with friends or newcomers to games/the Wii/whatever.
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Feb 21st, 2008 at 16:48:44 - Wii Sports (Wii) |
NOTE
I first experienced this game a while ago, around the indicated start time. I have only played it occasionally in various situations since then. I will document my two most important sessions with the game in terms of how they affected my opinion of the game.
SUMMARY
Wii Sports is the game that originally came packaged with new Wii consoles (actually I have no idea if this is still the case - it may very well be), and thus is likely the most widespread Wii game out there. The game allows multiple players to play video-game versions of tennis, baseball, bowling, golf, and boxing using the spiffy motion-sensing capabilities of the Wii-mote. This game might as well be a tech-demo for the Wii-mote, but at least it's a fun, cartoony, and user-friendly way to learn about the Wii's motion-sensing gameplay, which separates it from the other next-gen (really by now they're current-gen) consoles out there.
GAMEPLAY
Luckily, the first time I played Wii Sports was with my middle sister; I say this because I personally think this game is only truly fun with others. She had also played it before, and thus could guide me into it...At least that's what I would say for most games (I guide her into RPGs sometimes), but Wii Sports hardly needs an introduction, its beauty is in its pick-up-and-play accessibility; however, my sister certainly helped in correcting some false assumptions I had at first...
She suggested we try tennis first since it was easy to get into and fun. Ironically (and hilariously), I was initially confused as I tried to figure out the "intricacies" of the gameplay, as was habit from playing games like RPGs all the time. I grew baffled and frustrated as I did horribly in the game: Wait, so I can't move from left to right? How do you control both team members? Why does the guy in front dive for it stupidly when I want the guy in the back to go up and make a nice, easy swing? How come when I swing faster and harder the ball doesn't travel faster? Wait, I'm doing a backhand swing - shouldn't that make it go right - and not left to out of bounds? Okay, the ball is right above me, I should slam it down towards the other side - no, don't hit it to the right, where the out of bounds line is two feet away! Man, do I suck at this game or what? My sister, noticing my troubled look and poor performance, questioned me; I of course answered with a few of the thoughts going through my head... She gave me a wonderfully funny look, laughed a little, and informed me that the only thing that mattered was the timing of the swing. *Insert awkward enlightened silence* "Oh...", I said as I laughed at myself a little. After a few explanations on how timing affected everything, I got into the "groove" of the game and it was fun having a heated "match" with my sister.
Perhaps worried after the previous escapade that the simplicity of Wii-tennis would get to me, my sister soon suggested we move to bowling, which was a little more complex. Overall, I felt it simulated bowling itself better - taking in right or left standing position, ball release time, and throw direction to the right or left. Although it was less fast paced than tennis, getting a strike felt far more rewarding than say, getting the almost-random steaming fast ball effect in tennis, because it felt like it one had better control over it. In the end, it was not as fast and funny as tennis, but was closer to the actual, relaxed feeling of bowling...which was nice.
Lastly, my first play of Wii Sports ended with boxing, which my sister said I should play against the AI since it was more fun (since it was less likely to take forever). It had a few complex controls that were not entirely as intuitive as the bowling. In the end, I found my sister's suggestion of being ultra-aggressive to be the most effective. Swinging in different ways and patterns of hooks, uppercuts, etc. seemed to be more effective; but although it was nice the game seemed to detect these differences, it also seemed a little random. It was certainly the most tiring of the three I tried that day, and left me with a strange mixed feeling of fun, yet doubt of what was really going on in the game. Overall, my first session of Wii Sports was fun, but completely forgettable as well, if it weren't for the funny misconceptions I had about Wii-tennis.
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