dawn after castlevania: symphony of the night

the much-lauded castlevania: symphony of the night has long been on my list of games to finish partly because it’s so iconic and partly because i want to check out the rest of the series which has been a major presence on nintendo platforms. it’s kind of hard to believe that the last castlevania game i finished was the first N64 release (which i enjoyed) more than five years ago, but somehow the gothic theme of the series just doesn’t really appeal to me that much. i had gotten a fair amount of the way through SOTN years ago but had gotten stuck at the part with the wooden bridge in the caves, but this time with a little help from gamefaqs after a long hiatus i finally barreled my way through to the end.

i can see why the game has been well regarded. there’s a lot of polish (great enemy design; the overall aesthetic reminded me of classic sega games), and the coupling of the traditional action-oriented castlevania gameplay with the exploration of the metroid series is fairly successful (although as a long-time metroid fan the gameplay can’t help but pale in comparison). the RPG elements definitely help with the pacing. the upgrades include some pretty standard ones (e.g. one opens all the blue doors), but there are also some more-unique ones involving alucard’s three transformations. the other unique addition was the introduction of “familiars” who follow you around and generally help fight enemies and who also level up and gain new powers (although their development is much slower than yours). although there’s a lot of content overall, much of it falls into the “so useless you’ll never even bother with them”, such as the bevy of single-use items, spells that you can execute with complicated button sequences, and a bestiary that tracks the enemies’ item drops that you’ve encountered that could be a major time suck if you tried to complete it. i appreciated the little details that were put into the game, such as your bat familiar being confused when you change from a bat back into a human, and so i suppose you could think of all that “useless” content as extra details that help flesh out the game’s world.

the thing that made the game really worthwhile to me, though, was the huge surprise halfway through that by now probably everyone knows about but must have been mind-blowing at the time. like final fantasy 6 it comes just when you think you’re finishing up the game, and also like that game it still feels fresh today. the second half, again as with FF6, doesn’t completely fulfill the potential of the initial reveal, but it still made the game a unique and memorable experience for me.

in terms of putting the game into its historical context, jeremy parish’s write-up on gamespite was the most informative. he presents it as a game intended to be a swan song to the series, a 2-D game during a time when 2-D was shunned in favor of the new chunky, polygonal 3-D games. he writes that the creators “were crafting a game for love, not churning out an assembly-line product” and says:

That’s where historians get it wrong. These days, Symphony is seen as the first modern Castlevania, the moment where the franchise broke loose of its legacy tethers. … No, Symphony simply embraces some of Castlevania’s less familiar traditions, highlighting the series’ underlying concepts — and it does so strictly for the sake of creating the ultimate Castlevania game, the culmination of everything the games to that point had embodied.

In short, Symphony of the Night is a tour-de-force: the summation of a classic franchise, crammed with self-referential fan service yet bursting with new ideas. It strikes a perfect balance between old and new, faithful to the series’ essence while unafraid to forge ahead.

i definitely wouldn’t rank this among my favorite games of all time since the core gameplay is so familiar, but the game is significant as it marked a new direction for the castlevania series. the only problem there, though, is that it seems all the subsequent games of the series have strayed minimally from the formula of SOTN. i’ll have to see for myself if that’s the case since you could say that about pretty much all series, but i’m not too optimistic since parish says, “the series has limped along for more than a decade since Symphony’s arrival. … Igarashi managed to wrangle Symphony into a template, a formula, but the original game’s greatest success was that it so boldy defied expectation, that it so elegantly exceeded preconception.” stay tuned …

the sun rises over these castlevania: symphony of the night links:
- there’s certainly no shortage of links to info on SOTN. the section at vgmuseum.com and the entry at castlevania.wikia.com are a good starting point
- FAQ at gamefaqs and walkthrough at shrines.rpgclassics.com
- PDF of instruction manual at replacementdocs.com
- wallpapers at castlevaniacrypt.com

wii rampaged

as promised last post, here’s the recap of rampage: total destruction for wii. it always interests me to see remakes of classic games, but this is a dud in almost every way. every review i’ve read is in pretty much complete agreement, and this review at gamezone.com is typical.

where to start? the game is basically a lazy port of a sloppy remake that first appeared on the PS2 and gamecube (although somewhat astoundingly according to the entry on wikipedia: “Despite the less than positive reaction, the game has sold over one million units according to Midway and the GameCube version has earned Player’s Choice status”). the core game tries to update the classic gameplay but just slaps on modern graphics that were passable on the gamecube and PS2 but just look mediocre on wii. more disappointing is that the game does nothing to improve the monotony of the original’s gameplay, aside from making it less intuitive and easy to control and adding completely pointless goals (such as, eat 10 bicyclists, or find the items hidden in the various buildings) and dull “boss” battles. the addition of special moves may have spiced things up a bit, but every monster has the exact same set of three, which makes the monsters themselves feel like little more than palette swaps. added to that are the completely obscure ways the developers have set up the unlockables: for example, every monster has a special move that can only be earned on one stage, meaning that the chances of you finding it without plowing through the entire campaign mode with every monster or using a FAQ is next to nil. the cityscape graphics are the best part of the game and have a good amount of detail and variety, and the sound effects are decent, although the voice clips quickly wear out their welcome and the lack of music is a big drawback. the wii version suffers from shoehorned-in motion controls, and as everyone has noted, although the nunchuk + wiimote mode is barely tolerable (swinging the remote to do special attacks gets old fast), the solo wiimote mode is completely broken. i tried that mode several times, with zero success; it’s impossible for me to imagine that anyone at midway could have actually mastered that control scheme, unless they happen to be employing virtuoso theremin players.

all in all this was just another failed attempt at remaking a classic. the only plus to the game is that it includes the original arcade version and its N64/playstation-era sequel, rampage: world tour. that game seems like it would be more worthwhile than either of the other two games, although that’s not saying much, although by the time i got to it i was all rampaged out and have left it for another day (definitely not in the near future).

rampage through these rampage: total destruction links!
- i’m completely astounded that anyone would have played through all of this game, let alone written a comprehensive FAQ on it, but here’s a sickeningly thorough FAQ of the gamecube version, on gamefaqs
- apparently there was a rampage-themed puzzle game for GBA. whaaa–??

a feeling of doom

i’m not a big fan of FPS games, but i thought i’d go back and play a classic of the genre, doom. i still haven’t gotten much into PC gaming since i stare at a computer screen all day at work, so instead i opted for the playstation version (the first of two actually) entitled ultimate doom which contains versions of the original doom as well as doom II.

i was surprised at how smoothly the game ran on the PSX, and i enjoyed zipping through the corridors. the graphics are serviceable, and although the gameplay is pretty basic by today’s standards (although not having to fiddle with aiming up and down is kind of nice actually), multiple weapons and having limited ammunition, some more-non-linear maps, and stats shown of kills, items found, and “secrets” found after each level kept me interested for a decent amount. but the game quickly got repetitive for me due to the lack of variety in the gameplay and enemies. the levels themselves had a decent amount of cosmetic differences, but the repetitive core gameplay overrode those slight variations. the game also walks a fine line between “try and die” gameplay versus actual skill, and the strobe-lighted and unlighted areas were more annoying than not. the “secrets” are somewhat pointless (the retrospective at 101 videogames puts it well: “I remember spending most of the game rubbing up against walls while fumbling with the ‘open’ button”, haha), but overall this was an enjoyable trip to the past, although i was happy to keep my visit short.

i feel … an impending sense of … doom links:
- entry at wikipedia, which includes a section on versions and ports. turns out there’s a GBA version. that might be fun to try out, although i suppose i should try out the SNES and N64 versions as well.
- page at doom.wikia.com
- classicdoom.com is a great site that includes images of all the maps and locations of all the secrets, as well as a comparison of all the different versions (not a small feat)
- endings of part 1 and part 2 on youtube

heroic guitar-playing

in another case of starting at the very, very beginning, i picked up the original guitar hero for PS2. to be honest i wasn’t even that interested in the game since i actually own and play a real guitar and had already spent a fair amount of time playing later iterations of the game at friends’ places, but i thought i should sit down and spend some more time with one of the games on my own before casting it aside forever.

i wasn’t expecting much in the way of surprises, and even after playing through all of the hard mode i didn’t encounter many. my main complaint about the game is very similar to the one that i had about donkey konga (which, incidentally preceded guitar hero by more than a year), namely, that patterns that don’t fall within the beats or that are really fast are just too hard to follow, esp. if you don’t know the song. guitar hero‘s sequel remedies this problem with a practice mode, but in this game the harder-rated songs just get too frustrating to be fun. added to this is the hard-to-follow interface for hammer-ons and pull-offs, which is where you finger more than one note on one strum. apparently this was also changed in the sequel, so i’ll have to wait and see how much they managed to improve that feature. it’s also somewhat annoying that the part you play shifts between instrumental parts in the song, although again in the sequel guitar and bass parts are clearly separated which, although no doubt leading to more repetitive gameplay, makes things more logical and co-op play more, well, cooperative. songs in general also had a tendency to feel overlong due to the requirements of playing the same riffs over and over again, but again this is just another artifact of the premise and not much they could have done about it.

i’ve gotten fairly bored with music games in general (rhythm tengoku being a great recent exception), so there wasn’t much about this game that i found very compelling. since i already know what it feels like to play a guitar there wasn’t much to draw me in outside of the tracklist perhaps, and, yeah, you guessed it, i hadn’t previously heard the majority of the tracks. i appreciated the variety, though, and the inclusion of some more-recent indie-ish fare.

there’s no denying the series’ cultural impact, though. the series’ gameplay isn’t revolutionary by any means, but its success must partly be due to its timing, when video games were undergoing a shift away from the unshaven fanboys in their basements back to the living room. the series has contributed to that shift as well, no doubt. and even though i’m not wowed by the game i definitely don’t begrudge the enjoyment had by many others. there has been a fair amount of debate about the value (or lack thereof) of mastering a game like guitar hero versus actually learning to play the guitar yourself, and after spending some time with the game i actually have to side with the game and claim that it seems to encourage interest in music and making music rather than taking interest away. [long drone-y discussion to follow. feel free to skip to the last paragraph.]

coming from the perspective of someone who grew up playing instruments and video games (and still do both), i’ve definitely been worried that the game and others like it discourage people from learning instruments, but i’ve found that their design actually would help make people more interested in music for several reasons. there’s the “feel of being a superstar” that people have mentioned to me. also, just the mechanics of pushing the buttons down and strumming give you a decent feel for playing the guitar (likewise for drums/bass) and makes the whole experience less intimidating than it might be for some. the progression from the easy to the harder levels is natural, and for the harder modes for guitar and bass you have to learn how to shift positions up and down and/or extend to reach the orange key, just as you would on a real instrument. so even though you’re not literally playing chords or chord shapes, you’re definitely getting a simplified feel for how you actually would play a guitar (or any other stringed instrument for that matter). and there’s no question that your rhythm also improves from playing the game.

there’s also a really interesting depth of understanding about a particular song that you gain by “playing along” with it. it’s like the difference watching a play and acting in it yourself, or between reading a poem and memorizing it. while playing along to the song you really listen differently and hear the separate instruments’ parts while concentrating on your own part, as well as noticing the lyrics more closely than just through casual listening. you also learn to follow the repetitions in the riffs or chord figures and that gives you a better understanding of the song’s structure and song structures in general.

all this is from my perspective, and i don’t know if the average person would get the same things that i think he/she should get. my bf and my sister have both played the game a couple of times and concluded that it doesn’t really feel like playing the guitar, but since neither of them have played the game for any length of time i’m not entirely convinced by their opinions and i think they could very well change over time. i’d be interested in what someone who plays drums would say about the drum playing in these games and see if he/she would come to a similar conclusion as i have. [end drone-y discussion.]

so anyway, to wrap up, clearly i’m not the intended audience for this type of game, and i really can’t say that i’m at all excited about playing this game again or any of its numerous sequels. i’ll probably play through the first sequel at least, but maybe if i pick up one of the games that has drums (which i know nothing about) i’ll get more out of the experience. we’ll see.

heroic guitar links:
- entry at wikipedia, including the songlist
- FAQ at gamefaqs.com that includes score requirements
- somewhat interesting survey about guitar hero at gamasutra although it seems the pool of respondents was skewed and included more core gamers

somewhat iconic ico

the word “innovative” is among the most attention-grabbing adjectives for a video game to me, and that word often gets used when discussing the PS2 adventure game ico. although it didn’t make much of an impact when it was released in september 2001 (despite great reviews), it has gone on to achieve a significant amount of attention since then from critics, gamers, as well as designers.

i came to the game pretty much completely fresh, and the first thing one notices (aside from the great visuals) is the fact the game has minimized all of the usual trappings such as a prologue, tutorial, dialogue, NPCs, story, and even background music and the character’s status and inventory. the title character and the girl, yorda, he soon meets and who accompanies him for the rest of the game have no life bar, and ico only only uses three different sword-like weapons throughout the game. the game only ends when ico falls from a great height or if he fails to rescue his companion from being abducted by the small variety of shadowy creatures that serve as the game’s only enemies.

given the lack of flashy game elements, the game gets boiled down to such a degree that almost all the focus is on the “puzzles” and the “action”. much of the game’s attention seems to come from this stripping away to the barest essentials, and although i definitely appreciate that school of design it certainly wasn’t enough to bowl me over. the game certainly has a unique feel, but i was initially disappointed that the game’s core mechanics felt very much like prince of persia: the sands of time, which i played a couple of years ago. that game had followed ico by a couple of years, so some of its uniqueness may have originated with this game (although much of it can probably be traced further back to the original prince of persia games); but as with sands of times i got a bit bored by the fact that in ico the “puzzles” don’t really require much thought and oftentimes they reveal themselves pretty straightforwardly once you survey the area and take note of where the levers, crates, ledges, and ropes are for you to push, pull, and climb up on. likewise after the first few fights the rest are pretty much equally forgettable.

once i realized my attention wasn’t going to be focused much on the gameplay, i ended up noticing and then admiring the world of the game instead. the character design is fantastic: the boyish gawkiness of the main character is reflected in all of his movements and makes a great contrast to the quiet presence of his ethereal companion. the game’s central gameplay mechanic, having ico grab yorda’s hand to lead her to safety, is simple but so pervasive that it becomes more and more poignant through repetition and the passing of time and the further they travel in their attempts to escape the castle that imprisons them. the castle itself also feels like a real place and provides a memorable backdrop.

all of this was still not convincing me that this was a good game, let alone a great one, however. it wasn’t until the last third of the game that i suddenly began to truly enjoy the game. part of it may have just been the accumulated appreciation of all of the game’s tiny details that made the whole experience more than the sum of its parts. but part of it is that despite the game’s minimal amounts of character and story there are some beautifully memorable moments later in the game (most of which unfold through cutscenes) and a fantastic ending.

despite a memorable ending, after having finished the game i’m still not entirely convinced that the game deserves all the superlatives it’s been given. but it’s still an enjoyable experience, particularly if you haven’t played any of the more-recent prince of persia games. i had a taster of its “spiritual sequel”, shadow of the colossus, which gets similarly praised. i definitely enjoyed my experience with that game so far, and it may prove to be the more truly “innovative” game. the search for innovation continues …

some ico-nic links:
- entry at wikipedia which includes the far-superior european boxart
- guide at IGN
- the PAL release had several extra features including this special ending. this FAQ at gamefaqs mentions and alludes to some of the other changes. it also includes all of the game script.
- gamespite.net recently included this game in their top games of all-time review. their article is pretty typical of the kind of lavish praise the game gets, although i’m still not quite convinced. time may tell.

checking out soul blade‘s caliber

completist that i am, instead of starting in on soul calibur i went back to the very first release of the series, called soul blade for the original playstation. the game was highly praised when it came out, although the series’ first success has since been eclipsed by its hugely popular sequels.

i’ve dipped into some of the soulcalibur games a bit, but for the most part i came into this game without too many preconceptions. i hadn’t played any of the tekken (also by namco) games either, and apparently the two series are similar. both series were part of the time period when fighters ramped up the difficulties of the street fighter games and also when it became customary to include practice modes and command lists in games. i’ve grown to rather enjoy fighters, and so i didn’t have any problems getting into this one. one thing i found annoying is that you have to use separate blocks for low attacks vs high/mid attacks. also, another thing that was somewhat annoying is that this was the first fighter where i felt that the button combinations require you to either hold the controller in an unnatural way or get an arcade-type controller. i’m sure many people find it absolutely normal to use an arcade-type controller for a console fighting game, but i’m not into them enough to actually go out and get one anytime soon.

anyway, i played through the normal level with all the characters and for the most part found the experience to be enjoyable. the graphics are quite good for the time and have actually aged fairly well, and the character design is also notable. i found that in general the actual movesets ended up not feeling like they had that much variety, although there are some definite exceptions, including voldo and cervantes. i was also surprised there were so many korean characters, which i think is the first for a video game that i’ve played.

the game has a weapon gauge where your weapon can break, leaving you to fight with your bare fists, but that mechanic is underused. and i don’t really see the point in the extra weapons you can accrue which for the most part have only minor differences in stats (strength, durability, etc.). the story mode’s challenges added some nice variety, even though the stories themselves weren’t particularly memorable. the only other main complaint i had about the game is that the game puts too much emphasis on knocking down your opponent and then following through with an attack. not being able to immediately recover when you’re knocked down and knowing your opponent is always going to get another hit in just feels like some sort of pointless combo and it slows the game down and makes the pacing of the matches feel jerky. after i played through this game for awhile i tried out soul calibur again and that game has eliminated this long delay after a character gets knocked down, and as a result feels much more responsive and natural. i’ll definitely be exploring that game more in the future, although i enjoyed this one enough to come back to it as well. oh, and if anyone wants to know, i focused on mitsurugi this time around, although i just chose him randomly. he’s pretty cool, but i’m probably not going to continue with him in soul calibur even though it would be interesting to compare the movesets.

soul blade links for the fighting soul:
- good FAQ on unlockables, endings, etc. at gamefaqs.com
- here’s a very thorough movelist including the type of each attack (high, middle, low) and the amount of damage
- review at videogamecritic.net
- entry at wikipedia

lumines illuminated

i’ve had a PS2 for a while, but nintendo fanboy that i am i really haven’t been motivated to spend much time playing it; it just doesn’t have many games that i’m interested in playing. the first one that i ended up spending a significant amount of time on was actually the PSP port of lumines, called lumines plus. i’m even less interested in the PSP’s library of games, but the original lumines got such glowing reviews that it piqued my interest, despite my lackluster response to the same company Q entertainment’s second puzzle game, meteos for DS.

i came across a review of the PSP version on living social that says the following, which i completely agree with (apologies to him, but living social doesn’t include links to individual reviews):

There really isn’t any variety to Lumines’ gameplay. Every level is the same, just with different songs and rhythms (while these make the difficultly variable, it makes the game feel repetative. There are very few ways to unlock new skins, and once you play until you lose it’s hard to beat your high score and open the higher skins. If you are a completion gamer like my self, you will find it hard to sit down for over an hour with your PSP just to unlock 1 or 2 skins. Also the Multiplayer experience, while innovative, is absolutely retarded. By dividing the same play screen in two and lettting the players fight over who has control over the majority of the level, it effectively criples the lossing player causing them to crash and burn way to quickly.

i’m a fan of tetris-like puzzle games in general, so there was a lot i enjoyed about lumines. the gameplay is satisfying, much more so than its sibling meteos, and its presentation is successfully hypnotic. both games are stylish and have a lot of polish, but both suffer in terms of their core gameplay which just isn’t deep enough to sustain the lack of variety inherent in all tetris-like puzzle games. meteos is more shallow, but it’s helped by the amount of (mostly trivial) unlockables. in the end neither has nearly as much longevity as the games that have become the lodestone against which all other puzzle games must be compared, namely panel de pon and puyo puyo. both of those games have sophisticated combo systems that provide a depth that lumines just can’t match. lumines includes a puzzle mode, where you use the blocks to create pixel art, that is mildly diverting but doesn’t really add anything to the whole package. so all in all the game is enjoyable, but it’s definitely not one that inspires rabid devotion in me; i won’t be tracking down all the sequels to this one anytime soon. which is just as well, considering the ever-increasing stack of games i have to get through …

some luminous links:
- reviews of the PS2 version at 1up and IGN. for comparison, IGN’s review of the original PSP version can be found here.
- lumines plus doesn’t include any tutorial on puzzle mode, so if you’re like me you may be at a loss as to how they work. there are a ton of videos of that mode on youtube, and here’s one from the XBLA version of the game.
- the page at strategywiki.org has a listing of all the skins. not sure it’s completely accurate, though, b/c parts of it are inconsistent compared to this list of unlockables at gamefaqs.com.
- FAQ of the PSP version at gamefaqs, inc. the puzzles from puzzle mode
- review of the newest iteration, lumines supernova, for PS3 on IGN. doesn’t look like much has changed, though.

the legends of gauntlet

i’ve been really slow about playing N64 games, but i finished gauntlet legends a couple of days ago. i was actually surprised at how much i enjoyed this game. it seems one of the main complaints about the game is that it’s so easy, but after having played some more effortful games recently it was actually nice to have something completely mindless. it was also one of the few games i could not only coerce the bf to play with me once but that he enjoyed enough to play with me a second time.

i haven’t played a whole lot of hack ‘n slash games and no doubt the genre has evolved a lot since the 8-bit gauntlet days, but there was a lot i liked about this, the series’ first 3D iteration. first off, a lot of the elements of the original 8-bit gauntlet (and its sequels) that you know and love are intact, including the 4 characters (warrior, valkyrie, wizard, and archer) who are all still distinct, and the great voice samples (“i like food!” being one of the clear favorites, although we don’t get to hear my favorite line from the 8-bit days which was “wizard has shot the food!” since, thankfully, you’re not able to shoot food in this game).

in terms of additions, unlike the original game and the arcade version of legends the console versions don’t have your life ticking away every second. this of course makes the game much easier, as does the addition of turbo moves (your “turbo” meter continually recharges), a whole slew of powerups, and, most importantly, the ability to level up and buy stat upgrades (i.e. strength, speed, magic, and armor). so although the four character classes have varied starting stats and growths, over time the differences become much less apparent. the game also lets you pick the color of your character, which changes its model, and also includes animal skins of the four classes (e.g. falconess for the valkyrie) which, while not really adding anything, are kind of a nice little addition.

the game includes a world hub where you can choose any level you’ve already unlocked, and so the game becomes trivially easy since you can level up as much as you want before tackling harder levels. but even with its two harder difficulty settings (which didn’t seem that different to me when i took a cursory look at them) the game would still be pretty easy. a lot of this seems to come from the fact you can take out most enemy generators from far away before they’ve had time to spawn many enemies; in this game generators don’t spawn enemies until you get near to them, but i believe in the original 8-bit games they spawned enemies as soon as you start the stage, thus building up oceans of enemies for you to tediously plow through. and if you save the powerups you get and sell them instead of use them, you won’t have to spend much time level-grinding, if at all. i didn’t start off being very methodical about traversing the stages, so i ended up repeating a fair number of the levels because there are hidden items you have to find to beat the game (i.e. “obelisks” which allow you to enter other worlds, and “runes” which allow you to tackle the final boss) as well as optional items (e.g. the secret characters, weapons for use against the bosses). and you’ll find yourself wanting to repeat easier levels just to collect more health. without those repeats the game would’ve been more of a challenge, but the fun of the game really isn’t about the difficulty anyway.

another thing that people complain about is the graphics, which despite being N64-level didn’t bother me at all (although apparently the dreamcast version is better). the game does make use of the N64 expansion pack though. given that the screen could be full of enemies and up to 4 players, all in 3D, the sprites aren’t incredibly detailed, but they work much better than most of the screenshots would suggest. i also found the progression of the levels to be well paced: the first world contains levels that are mostly linear; the second world contains levels that are more maze-like, like the original gauntlet; the third world contains more large open field-like areas where you’ll find yourself surrounded by enemies on multiple sides, along with a fun level climbing up and down the rigging of an airship; and the fourth and final worlds are twistier and generally much less linear with more back-tracking. in the latter levels there are some areas where you’ll be a bit lost, but that generally comes more from the confusion from the graphics and areas looking too similar to one another than anything else. the automatic camera in general also works pretty well, and the music is fine although not particularly memorable. the enemies aren’t quite varied enough, but they’re serviceable. my primary complaint, and one shared by others, is the inclusion of boss battles; they’re mostly pointless, mainly because the bosses all have attacks that are completely unavoidable and unblockable.

so overall this one was a pleasant surprise and has lead me to spending a lot more digital ink on it than many other games i’ve played this year. i actually found it to be more enjoyable than the x-men legends game i played a couple of years ago, i think largely due to it having more variety and level design. there’s a remake with more levels and characters called dark legacy that came out on the gamecube that i’ll def. have to pick up at some point. and if you’re wondering, in terms of the three console versions of gauntlet legends IGN rated them in this order: dreamcast: 8.4, N64: 7.7, and PS1: 7.2. it looks like the PS1 version, while taking the hardest hit in the graphics department, has the inclusion of 4 additional hard levels after you beat the game.

you are now entering the dungeon of links!
- gamespot featured an interesting series of interviews when the game came out described thus: “Not only do these cover the current consumer titles, they also look at the evolution of Gauntlet, from the original coin-op in 1985 through the latest coin-op version – Gauntlet Legends – and onto the N64 and the PlayStation.”
- some cheats and a nice set of videos at IGN
- entry at wikipedia.org
- entry at strategywiki.org
- youtube video of first level (as the yellow wizard)
- pretty good FAQ at IGN and one at gamefaqs
- instruction manual of the PS1 version

final fantasy tactics tackled

fiiiiinally finished the endless game i’ve been plodding my way through, final fantasy tactics for the original playstation. i’d been aware of the game ever since i began my obsession with the fire emblem series, and also b/c the follow-up on the GBA seems to regularly get mentioned in “top GBA games of all time” lists.

having been focused solely on fire emblem there were a lot of adjustments i had to make to playing FF tactics. there’s the isometric view, and the way the battle time advances took some getting used to since you have to constantly check the menus and time meters to see whose turn is coming up next and remind yourself of what commands the enemy has already entered in. one of the main differences between FE and FF tactics is that characters can die but aren’t permanently lost unless they miss three of their turns without being brought back to life. the other main difference is that the majority of your time is spent using “generic” characters who take no part in the story. (although you do get more unique, named characters with their own special abilities later, and eventually they can completely replace your original party if you choose.)

despite the learning curve in general i think my FE experience helped and i didn’t have much of a problem beating the game, although the game seemed to drag on and on. looking back it prob. didn’t take any more time than a FE game, but there were quite a few drawbacks that made the game a chore to finish. i agree with a lot of what the entry on wikipedia says:

Criticism is made on gameplay, plot and the localization effort. One of the reviews of RPGFan criticized the difficulty of the game as being inconsistent with each encounter against enemy units. The factors that influence the difficulty of the game include overpowered enemy units or party members, and time had to be taken to level up before any progress can be made. Though in-depth, IGN also noted that the game’s plot was confusing at times … The game’s localization effort was criticized by reviewers as poorly written, being rife with grammatical mistakes that almost stopped players from enjoying the storyline.

of those complaints, the main one for me was that the story is so lousy. half the time i didn’t really know who was doing what to whom, nor did i ever care. on top of that the localization is one of the absolute worst i’ve ever encountered with tons of awkward as well as flat-out incorrect writing, which is a major problem for a text-heavy RPG. as for the level grinding, this wasn’t too much of a problem and i sort of expected it since the game has a fair amount of emphasis on random battles (unlike almost all the FE games where there are no random battles). the main exception to my general feeling that the amount of level grinding is tolerable is that at one point about halfway through i inadvertently overlevelled the main character, ramza, and everyone else in my party was way underlevelled in comparison. i hadn’t realized that random encounters base the enemies’ stats on your most powerful character, so i was pretty much screwed fighting stupidly tough random battles until i was able to bring the rest of the party up to ramza’s level. one other thing that annoyed me was that unlike FE you don’t get to preview the map before you start it, so you can’t adjust your equipment or characters at all. even setting the start positions of your characters is a virtually completely blind process.

quite a number of complaints, but as for the good stuff the graphics, although more cartoon-y than i’m used to, are generally well done, with great character design, pretty good environments, and some great battle effects. the gameplay is pretty solid, although i was surprised that the central game mechanic isn’t the battle system so much as the game’s character class system, which is robust and well designed. basically every generic character starts off as either a squire or a chemist. after you reach a certain level you can then change class (a squire can become a knight or an archer and a chemist can become a priest or a wizard). after you reach a certain level in those classes you can change to even more advanced classes. this built-in progression of classes keeps the game feeling fresh, and it’s a lot of fun to experiment with the different classes and combine the abilities of the various classes, although some of the classes and their abilities def. seem like useless padding. there are also a ton of other extra game elements that i didn’t bother getting into b/c they just seemed useless, namely the “propositions” in which you send some of your party away for some time to fulfill missions that you don’t monitor at all and get only paltry rewards for completing; the monster recruitment where you can get monsters to join your party but who don’t change classes and generally don’t have many useful abilities; and the monster “poaching” where you can sell monsters you’ve killed for special items. there are also two lengthy sidequests (the deep dungeon and the quest to get cloud from FFVII) that i had absolutely no interest in embarking upon.

phew! even though i’m ecstatic that i can finally stop playing this game the game was actually pretty good overall; a better story would’ve been a major improvement. i’ll keep the GBA FF tactics on my list of games to play, although from what i’ve read it doesn’t sound like there’s much of a story there either so it’ll prob. be quite some time before i try it out. may try one of the tactics ogre games instead.

finally! some fantastically tactical links:
- battle mechanics guide: indispensible reference for the underlying equations for the game engine
- great fan site at squarehaven.com with tons of great stuff, inc. a great guide to all the jobs, the full script, and official jobs artwork and summons artwork.
- pretty good general FAQ: with class info, battle strategies, and more
- another good FAQ
- youtube video of the main parts of the cloud sidequest
- useful FAQ on what the brave and faith stats do

how to spot a video game deal a mile away

still slogging my way through this endless game (which i hope to be done with in at least two weeks). so i just thought i’d post about a site i find useful and end up wasting time on, videogamepricecharts.com. if there’s one thing i love almost as much as lists, it’s charts. haha. the numbers seem to be fairly accurate, so it’s a great way to find out if you’re getting a deal or not; although keep in mind that they’re tracking averages, so if you’re patient you should be able to get a better deal than the average price. what i find interesting (and this is my geekiness coming through, prepare yourself) is seeing how particular events are reflected in immediate changes in price. for example, the chart for fire emblem: path of radiance is interesting b/c you can see the huge spike in price from november to december 2007 right before brawl was released; the game, of course, showcased path of radiance’s central protagonist, ike. and when you look at the chart of clubhouse games for the DS you see how the price stayed pretty high as the game became more rare, but then dropped drastically when the game was rereleased recently. it boggles my mind that publishers don’t use tools like this to rerelease games that are clearly in demand, e.g. tetris DS.

something that could use some more study is how the release of a game on the virtual console affects the selling price of the actual game. from my random spot checks it doesn’t seem like it affects it much at all, which leads me to believe that the people who are buying these retro games are for the most part retro fans who want to buy the actual cartridge to play on their actual systems (i.e. geeky people like me). the original harvest moon, on the SNES, was released on the VC in february 2008 and its price continued to rise steadily afterwards, the same as it had been doing before. the price of castlevania: symphony of the night, available on both XBLA and PSN, has been dropping steadily, but it was doing so even before the rereleases (march and july 2007 respectively). in contrast, though, the price of zelda: ocarina of time dipped sharply a couple of months after its february 2007 VC release, which could be b/c of all the un-nostalgic people who were happy with their VC copy and sold their old N64 copies. clearly there are a lot of factors at work here, but it would be, dare i say it, fascinating to see a more in-depth study that tried to make sense of at least some of the many variables. i read somewhere that annually video game prices tend to be their lowest during the summer, but i’ve forgotten where i read that, so if anyone has that link handy feel free to email me. [update: the vg price charts man himself posted a message saying that november is actually the best time to buy used games. i also just found out that he's been running a whole series of articles on price trends on the site's blog. sweet! more time wastage!]

the creator of the videogamepricecharts.com put together an article for vintagecomputing.com that looks at how much of a deal VC games are overall, given that they’re all consistently priced per platform on the VC even though some have become much rarer than others in the non-virtual world. his conclusion?

“The original Nintendo is the only system where buying the cartridges would be cheaper than buying the virtual games because many games for the NES would cost less than a dollar. Every other system, especially the TurboGrafx-16, boasts higher average prices for the cartridges than the Wii’s VC downloads.”

ah, if only i weren’t such a retro gamer i’d buy way more of these VC releases instead of shelling out $40+ for used copies of games like super mario RPG (only $8 on the VC!). but there’s nothing like the smell of dusty old nintendo cartridges in the mornin’! mm hm!