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Wednesday 20 February, 2008
The second play session was a little bit more frustrating. I saved the princess, and the king is so grateful that he builds a bridge to the next continent so that I can continue on my quest. I guess he just didn't feel comfortable having 4 dudes in town that just embarrassed his armed forces. So, after I've achieved the first story goal, I'm supposed to make my way to the next town to solve their problems. Unfortunately, there's a huge forest in between me and that town, and with the random encounters found in that forest, I have to make a few trips back to the original town to heal up at the inn.
This game places a lot of emphasis on levelling up, and buying gear. This surprises me, because its sequels make it very easy to advance the plot, so easy that it's hard to avoid. This one spends a lot of time focusing on random encounters, which you use to advance your characters' stats. I find it tedious, because combat is slow and a little bit clunky. After you pick your actions, there's nearly a minute where the player is not making any decisions, he's just watching the turn play itself out. This isn't awful for the first hour of play, when everything is still new, but when the game forces you to spend lots of time in battle just so you can progress the story, it becomes maddening. An option to process the battle all at once, without animations, would probably make this aspect of the game more fun.
Design:
The game gives you some power to customize your characters, and this lends itself to the player creating stories and personalities around the party members. (The game gave me a new appreciation of 8-bit theater, http://www.nuklearpower.com ). The party members themselves don't actually display any personality in the game, they don't have any speaking lines, and there is no dialogue between you and anybody you talk to, but giving the player control over what each character can do, and making the player invest time in “earning” those abilities, is extremely engaging.
The game also does have a freeform aspect to it. The player can visit past areas, he's even given reason to, because item and inn prices in earlier towns are lower than prices in towns you discover later on. Also, each store has a unique inventory, so you can backtrack to go tweak your characters after you've gained some levels.
The game mixes in medium term rewards (gaining levels) with long term rewards (advancing the plot.) But in the short term, I think it is lacking. You probably gain a level every 20 minutes of adventuring, but there isn't much to do to entertain yourself in the meanwhile. When you advance the plot, you fight a boss monster, one that probably has a fair chance of defeating you, even if your party is at near full strength. As a reward, you get access to a new part of the world, with more difficult random encounters that provide experience points enough to keep levelling at the same pace.
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