Look, I’m the person who pre-odered FFVII Remake from Game Stop just for the Shinra dogtags —
–wait…Key card?? When did THAT change? Goddamnit, GameStop.
I feel like I’m the person that this game was aimed to ensnare, which is precisely why this demo was so disappointing.
I loved the atmosphere, the character models, (much of) the dialogue, the dynamic and orchestrated music, and the delight of seeing the little Lego people transformed into actual people. I’ve been looking forward to this game for a long time, because I loved FFVII, and I’ve always wanted a more fleshed-out version of the world with a translation that made a bit more sense (I didn’t actually understand Cloud’s story until years later when I played Crisis Core).
However, I loathe the Remake battle system, and I’m a bit upset about it. It’s worse than FFXV’s system (a game which I would like to play but still haven’t for more than two hours because the system is so frustrating to me). Now, I’m a bit biased when it comes to these sorts of action systems, because I have tendonitis, and games that are not turn-based are very difficult for me to play, even with the controller I’ve modded for the purpose. Final Fantasy games are generally a delight for me, because it’s everything I want in a game paired with gameplay that doesn’t mess up my hands. So the idea of “updating” a classic turn-based RPG that I am able to play so well with this button-mashy nightmare is very irritating. I held out hope for the Classic mode, but that’s barely approaching actual turn-based combat, although I’m going to play through the demo again from the beginning with Classic mode enabled from the start to get a better feel for it. Playing it on Normal was a fairly miserable, slightly painful experience for me. The target-switching in particular is a very tricky maneuver with how I have to hold the controller, and it made the boss fight against the Scorpion tank an interminable, four-try slog.
Good question, Barret! The answer: slowly, painfully, and with a lot of loud cussing.
I’m annoyed at SquareEnix’s (and Nomura’s) general trend towards action systems, and indeed, the general JRPG trend towards action systems. There are only so many ways to mash buttons.
There are endless, fascinating permutations of turn-based systems. The interconnected stat management and optimization present in RPGs is most satisfying and evident when a battle moves slowly enough that you can appreciate the effects.
So who is this game for? Those who have a nostalgic glow for FFVII, as I do, presumably also have nostalgia for the turn-based combat. There are a lot of interesting updates Square could have made to FFVII’s original battle system without scrapping it all together. The kind of people who like action games, are they interested in this kind of beautifully rendered trip back to the 90s?
Hopefully I can get used to Classic mode, even though it just feels like button mashing with training wheels. I physically can’t play the whole game on Normal.
If I wanted to play Kingdom Hearts, I would just play Kingdom Hearts.
It’s not hard to find material online about the inevitable, impending death of the 3DS as a handheld console. After all, Nintendo’s got the Switch, their strange handheld/home console Frankenstein’s monster of a machine. The company has completely stopped producing New 3DS units in lieu of the somewhat cheaper 2DS, and the list of upcoming 2018 North American 3DS releases is woefully short. Myself, I hope it stubbornly clings to life for awhile longer, as the 3DS continues to be my favorite handheld console of all time, although the apparent abandonment of the 3-D part of the 3DS pains me greatly. While I understand that many eyeballs do not deal well with prolonged stereoscopic screen use, I have no issues with it, and I never play a 3DS game without the 3-D unless I’m running low on battery life.
Despite the fact that the 3DS appears to be nearing the end of its natural lifecycle, the sheer volume of amazing 3DS titles that exist means that I have a huge backlog of titles to work through, as does anyone else with the predilection to do so. Not even counting the games I keep meaning to buy (Boyfriend recently alerted me to the existence of Rhythm Thief & the Emperor’s Treasure, which will be my next purchase), I have a cartridge case full of 3DS games that I’ve yet to beat.
I’ve actually only beaten one other game in this case…
But that one in the middle there? Stella Glow? (A game I have been in the process of playing for over a year?) I can knock that off the list, because I just beat the hell out of it, and I’m here to tell you that you should do the same. It’s got a compelling story, interesting, sympathetic characters, and a turn-based strategy battle system that is comfortably streamlined without losing any tactical depth. It’s one of most enjoyable strategy RPGs I’ve played in years, and it may be the best one I’ve played since Level-5‘s masterpiece Jeanne d’Arc.
Stella Glow’s existence as a game is a bit of a tragic story. The studio that developed it, Imageepoch, imploded and filed for bankruptcy right as the game was about to see release, and the only reason it was released at all is that Sega bought the game and Atlus published it. (Heidi Kemps, a games journalist who blogs at GamingMoe, posted this fascinating article back in 2015 about the history of Imageepoch releases; it’s definitely worth a read.) I’ve never played a single other game developed by the studio, as pretty much all of them have received mediocre to downright terrible reviews. I don’t know what they did differently with Stella Glow, but it’s too bad they didn’t do it earlier, because it might have saved the studio. As it stands, Stella Glow remains as an unexpectedly excellent swan song by an otherwise forgettable RPG developer.
What most influenced my purchase of this game was its demo, which you can still download from the Nintendo 3DS eShop, and which basically allows you to play through the first hour or so of the game. That hour really sold me on the game’s interesting premise, excellent music, and colorful graphics with beautifully layered 3D effects. I am pleased to report that the rest of the game carries through its promising start.
Any RPG is only as good as its story and characters, and Stella Glow succeeds admirably in crafting an interesting setting populated by a variety of characters who are by and large appealing and well-rounded. The story revolves around a young, amnesiac man named Alto whose village is destroyed by the cruel and mysterious Lunar Witch Hilda.
Despite the fact that Amnesic Hero + Tragedy Befalling His Small Village = The Opening Premise for at Least Half of the JRPGs in Existence, Stella Glow manages to expand on this well-worn formula in some meaningful ways. This is not apparent at first. Alto has an Important Destiny (surprise!), and it’s soon revealed that he is the “Conductor”, a hero with the power to “Tune” witches. Evidently, at some point in the past, god took song from humanity as a punishment. Witches are the only people in the world of Stella Glow who can sing, and their songs create magic. Alto’s quest is to collect the witches, tune them, and save the world. This predictable plot seemed poised to deliver a steaming heap of irritating harem anime tropes. I fully expected to have to deal with playing a male protagonist surrounded by a party of sexed-up ladies constantly throwing themselves at him and saying suggestive things. This is not to say that this doesn’t happen.
Because it does.
And this is not to say that many of the women in the game don’t appear in weird, impractical, and needlessly revealing costumes.
Because.
They.
Do.
What keeps the game from descending into an uninteresting mire of regressive dating sim cliches is its surprising sense of self-awareness and the unexpected psychological depth of its characters. For instance, the game isn’t afraid to poke fun at itself.
And despite the fact that the characters are based on predictable stereotypes – the sweet girl next door, the sexy & sassy one, the womanizing rogue, the stodgy tank, etc – both the writing and the surprisingly excellent voice acting go a long way towards making these characters believable and sympathetic. Take, for instance, Popo.
Dear God, look at her. A green, frilly whirlwind of moe bullshit. She has a super kawaii animal mascot, a “migratory pig” (seriously) named BuBu. She talks with the peculiarly piercing tone of an obnoxious kid sister, and she speaks in the goddamn third person.
The most heinous of dialogue sins.
I was so prepared to hate Popo with a violent passion. But then, as the story advanced and I learned more about her, it turned out that she’d lived alone her entire life while being emotionally manipulated by a bully of a man who was taking advantage of her magic to further his illegal drug empire. Seriously. That’s some pretty heavy shit for what appeared at first glance to be a flirty and light-hearted MacGuffin hunt. In fact, all of Stella Glow’s witches and many of its other characters are made to endure and cope with a great deal of trauma during the course of the game’s 60+ hours of story, and the script treats this with a surprisingly earnest gravitas. People die. People grieve. It’s all very heartfelt.
Even Alto, who runs the clear and present danger of being the boring Everyman protagonist of many a waifu game, is unexpectedly endearing. He’s unceasingly and uncommonly kind to absolutely everyone, and it’s charming. He’s honest to a fault. He tries and largely succeeds at helping his friends through their various traumas with patient and supportive conversation. He attempts to talk opponents down before fighting, and he extends forgiveness unconditionally.
This is a legitimately supportive thing to say to someone in both video games and real life.
The larger story is interesting enough, and although the broad arcs of the plot are fairly predictable, the details are delightfully bizarre and I won’t spoil them here. But it’s the characters that really sell this game’s narrative, and it’s therefore appropriate that getting to know these characters is a key component of the gameplay.
The system borrows shamelessly from the Persona’s Social Links, albeit in a much simpler form of execution. You get a pre-determined number of blocks of Free Time in each chapter of the game, and you can use that Free Time to hang out with your party members. Each time you do so, you learn more about your companions, your relationships level up, and you unlock new bonus combat abilities for your team. For your knights like Rusty and Archibald, these affinity rank perks are things like movement and ability bonuses. Your relationships with your witches are a little more complicated. As you get to know them better and your affinity grows, you’ll have to help them address deep-seated insecurities and past trauma, and by entering the world of their souls and doing battle with their inner demons, you’ll help them learn more Song Magic. As you become closer to your party members, you unlock more possibilities in the game’s combat system. It’s a satisfying loop. Of course, in another Persona-esque twist, it’s impossible for you to max out the affinities of all your party members in a single playthrough. To unlock everything, you’ll have to start over in New Game+.
The battles themselves stand alone as an excellent centerpiece of this RPG experience. What starts out as very basic grid- and turn-based combat slowly morphs into a series of satisfying strategic encounters that never become overburdened by needless complexity. Strategy RPG mainstays like Final Fantasy Tactics, Disgaea, and Tactics Ogre are many wonderful things, but “approachable” is not one of them. I love RPG fiddly bits, but I also like to have fun, and in many strategy RPGs, combat can sometimes become an onerous chore. It’s not uncommon for SRPG battles to drag on for over an hour, and while there are some very long battles to be had in this game, Stella Glow’s combat system is refreshingly straightforward.
Each character learns a finite number of abilities over the course of the game, but each of those abilities have wildly different resource costs, areas of effect, damage outputs, and status ailment possibilities. Many area effects damage allies, so unit placement is key. MP is a finite resource and HP numbers stay relatively low (especially compared to those of your foes), but leveling up instantly restores a character to max HP/MP, so managing which characters deal killing blows when becomes a crucial part of your strategy.
The process of equipping your characters retains a similarly refreshing degree of simplicity. Buying each character the strongest weapon you can afford is pretty much the one and only consideration. I do enjoy the strategic wrinkle having to equip items for use in battle; each character can only take two items into each fight, and it will take some foresight to decide whether you want to have your tank carry two healing potions or one healing potion and a status ailment cure or one status ailment cure and one of your rare elixirs.
The one real option that you have to customize your characters is to equip Orbs on their weapons, jewels that do things like adding status effects to weapon damage or unlocking the ability to counterattack. Different weapons have different numbers of orb slots, and you can create and upgrade orbs in town. By the end of the game, I had tricked out my main tank with orbs that let him teleport around the battlefield, absorb some of the damage from his attacks as HP, and take another turn if he killed an enemy, making him into a nigh-unstoppable force of destruction.
By far the most unique thing about Stella Glow’s battle system is your ability to use Song Magic. Song Magic abilities are governed by the song gauge in the top right corner of the battle screen.
Here, it’s almost completely full.
The gauge fills when you damage or defeat enemies, and your witches can spend the gauge to power their Song Magic abilities. Each witch learns several songs during the course of the game, and some of them are little songs that use one or two points of the gauge to do things like healing surrounding allies or damaging nearby enemies with fire. However, the real muscle of the song gauge comes in the form of the super moves that each witch can perform in conjunction with Alto in his function as the Conductor. This requires some strategy to pull off because the song gauge has to be nearly or completely full, Alto and the witch in question have to be positioned adjacent to one another on the battlefield, and Alto must take his entire turn to activate the ability, but the results are more than worth it.
In this trailer released by NIS America, Alto Conducts the Fire Witch Sakuya in a rendition of her song, “Cherry Blossom.” For her next three turns, Sakuya’s song grants all allies a significant boost in critical hits. Each witch’s songs do different things — one heals all allies for three turns, another cancels all enemy actions for one round — and each one is a game-changer that has the potential to turn the tide of a battle. From a mechanical perspective, it’s a really fun addition to the game, but more importantly, it means that Stella Glow’s soundtrack is fucking amazing.
Each witch has two song-based super moves, and instead of, I don’t know, just playing a clip of music over the animation of a singing witch and then returning to the regular battle theme, Imageepoch instead decided to record an entire J-pop song for each super attack. So presumably they either hired someone to write these or they licensed close to a dozen unique and enjoyable full-length songs that loop while the witches sing during battles. And because you have to max out a witch’s affinity in order to unlock her second song, unless you play this game through twice, you’re not even going to hear most of these songs. For instance, I never got to experience Popo’s second song “Volt Shower” during the course of my game, but now that I’ve been listening to the soundtrack, it’s one of my favorites.
The soundtrack of this game represents a staggering amount of effort that baffles me even as I enjoy it. This cannot have been a cheap design choice, and I wonder if the decision helped the developer towards bankruptcy. The rest of the game’s music outside of the song magic is also amazing, probably because the fabulous Yasunori Mitsuda served as head composer. Mitsuda is one of the JRPG music greats, right up there with Uematsu himself, and he’s most famous for his work on Chrono Trigger and the Xeno series. I absolutely love Mitsuda’s music, and while it’s not clear how many of the vocal tracks were his doing, his hand in some of the boss themes is characteristically unmistakable and awesome.
As a woman who is still playing the boringly easy Blue Dragon off and on solely because of the quality of Uematsu’s score, I’m definitely guilty of occasionally playing games just for the music. Stella Glow’s fantastic soundtrack is a thick layer of high-quality icing coating a rich cake of enjoyable game play and exciting story, an admittedly labored metaphor that is making me hungry. It’s an easily-missed gem of a game that I worry many people won’t even think to try playing. Do yourself a favor and don’t miss out.
Over the holiday season of 2015, I went back home to Virginia to visit my family. It was great to see everyone, but in many respects, it was a pretty miserable trip. For one thing, there are no lattes in my hometown, but the larger issue was that I didn’t really get any sleep for the entirety of my stay. The three hour time difference between Virginia and the West Coast, the fact that my parents’ house was so full of relatives that I had to sleep on a mattress in the living room, and the fact that I was feeling awful because I had been forced by necessity to travel without my medication conspired in a perfect storm of insomnia that prevented me from getting more than two or three hours of sleep a night. This meant that I had a lot of wee-morning hours to kill, and while I spent a lot of them taking long, solitary walks on the nearby golf course while talking to then-brand-new Boyfriend on the phone, I needed something to do in the rest of my downtime.
One of my recently-graduated students sent me a Steam Key for the game during Steam’s Winter Sale. It wasn’t uncommon for me to receive Steam games from some of my ex-students; as soon as the small cadre of nerds in my college writing class discovered that I was a gamer, they clamored to add me to their friends list, something I had only allowed once they graduated and which I celebrated by sending them graduation gifts of weird Steam games (including Hatoful Boyfriend and Secret of the Magic Crystals). They responded by sending me some weird games in return (notably Shower With Your Dad Simulator and There’s Poop in My Soup), but one student thoughtfully sent me a key for Undertale, a game with which I had only a passing familiarity.
I knew it had been getting nothing but glowing press, though, so I installed it, began it, and it enthralled me all through the long dark of my sleepless nights. I loved the idea of an RPG in which you didn’t have to kill anyone or anything, and I thouroughly enjoyed the quirky characters, the font-based humor, and the gorgeous music. (I would in fact occasionally take the raft to the waterfall level and let the music just play while I caught a few elusive hours of fitful sleep.)
The waterfall level was as nice to look at as it was to hear.
Really, everything about the game was charming, but after I beat it, I never really went back to it to get any of the other endings.
All of this perhaps explains why I was so damn excited when Fangamer announced that they would be releasing an Undertale Collector’s Edition, which I immediately preordered for my PS4.
I think it’s pretty great that Fangamer exists to bring physical editions of popular digital games to the masses, as well as posters, t-shirts, and other assorted collectables. It’s a pretty great time to be a gamer, and the fact that companies like Fangamer can thrive is really indicative of that. They certainly know how to make this girl part with her money.
Worth the parting.
It was the offer of a music box that sealed the deal for me.
Especially an attractively packaged music box.
I’ve always enjoyed the tinkling, nostalgic, slightly creepy tone of music boxes. And this one definitely sounds a little creepy.
I don’t know whether the dissonant tone is by design or whether I just got one that is slightly off kilter, but I kind of like it. Certainly I appreciate the level of detail. It’s hard to see on the video, but BEST FRIENDS FOREVER is etched into the inside of the locket.
The locket is definitely the coolest thing in the package.
The Annoying Dog is one of my particular favorites from the game, and I was consequently thrilled to find my very own Annoying Dog vinyl decal in the package.
As well as an attractive art card, which I think I have since misplaced. I was too excited about the Dog.
I stuck it on my bike at once.
Right next to my Southern Poverty Law sticker.
The game disc came packaged with a small storybook modeled after the beloved Little Golden Books of my childhood.
I had been under the impression that the book was going to be telling me something new about the story of the game, but, alas, it is simply the opening cutscene of the game in a shiny new storybook format. Still cute.
The real pièce de résistance turns out to have been the two-disc collector’s edition soundtrack.
Which comes packaged with a fold-out booklet of sheet music that is sprinkled with comments from developer and composer Toby Fox.
Despite the fact that I can’t play any instruments, this is still really cool.
Parenthetically related:
I’m a little perplexed by the fact that searching “Toby Fox” in Google brings up this list of frequently searched questions, all of which seem perfectly logical things to ask aside from the first.
Anyway, the soundtrack is deeply excellent. I’ve been listening to it in exclusive rotation with my Hamilton original cast recording for the past few weeks. Not only is the music a veritable feast for the ears, it’s a 107-course feast because that’s how many damn tracks are on those discs. Granted, a few of those tracks are 10-20 seconds long, but most of them are substantial, amazing compositions that have seen me through several long nights of both cleaning my apartment and copyediting. So far, I’d say the purchase was worth it if only just for the soundtrack.
I’ve spent almost a thousand words on all of the stuff that came with the game without saying much about the game itself, but you can click on the first link in the post if you’d like to read my original 2015 impressions of my first playthrough. I am replaying the game on my PS4, and the port is perfectly serviceable with no issues. It’s got PSN trophies, if you’re into that (which I am). It also deals with the aspect ratio difference by providing the option to use surprisingly attractive frames around the gameplay screen, giving you the choice of a dynamic frame that changes as your location changes…
…or an objectively beautiful sepia-toned floral frame.
I’m playing with the dynamic border because I’m curious to see how it changes as the game progresses, but I was sorely tempted by the sepia border because it’s so nice to look at. I seriously sat thinking about the decision for about five minutes and had to ask Boyfriend’s input on this crucial choice.
By far my favorite thing about playing Undertale on my PS4 is the fact that I can painlessly use my arcade stick to control it. The game practically seems designed for the stick. It only requires two input buttons in addition to the joystick, and using the stick to dodge incoming bullet attacks makes me marginally better at the battle system.
But only marginally. I am objectively terrible at this game, and I love it anyway.
This new control scheme makes the gameplay feel more novel, and I’m consequently enjoying my second playthrough very much. I’m starting out pacifist again. We’ll see if my deep-seated sense of virtual guilt allows me to make it through a genocide run.
Anyway, TL;DR: The Undertale Collector’s Edition is absolutely worth picking up if you’re a fan of the game and you happen to have an extra 64 bux lying around. Especially for the soundtrack. Which I am going to go listen to right now. For the tenth or twelfth time.
I didn’t post anything last month because August was Persona Month. And oh, what a month. I had trouble doing anything with my free time that was not playing Persona. And then, at long last…
That’s a lot of goddamn hours. I’ll probably be up to 200 after New Game +.
Now that I’m done with this mammoth undertaking, I seek to tackle my considerable backlog of games. There’s just one problem:
Oh. Right.
Persona 5 was pretty easy to play with the controller on my lap, but there are a lot of other games I’m hoping to play (or finish playing) that would be very difficult to manage. Besides this, a DualShock 4 isn’t really designed to sit on a lap. Well, I thought, they do make controllers designed for laps. Maybe I should get one.
Thus did I enter into the confusing world of arcade sticks. Or fight sticks, as they are also called, since they are primarily used for fighters. I don’t play fighters often, and I’m bad to mediocre with them (though it might be cool to finally play my Persona Arena games), but it occurred to me that you don’t HAVE to play a fighter on a fight stick. It is just a controller, but bigger. And for laps. That about sums up the things I knew about fight sticks.
I have now learned that fight sticks are really expensive. Like the cheapest one I could find was $60. Most are in the $150 range, but a few strayed into $250 territory. I also learned that arcade sticks do not have all the buttons that one might desire, but each arcade stick also seems to have a different number of buttons. In addition, some fight sticks have “square gates” and others have “octagonal gates.” Some fight sticks have parts that can be swapped out for “Sanwa parts,” which are apparently very exciting parts. I was more than a little bewildered.
After collecting a variety of opinions from the Reddit hive mind, I settled on the Mad Catz Street Fighter V Fightstick Alpha, not because I particularly care for Street Fighter, but because it is the only entry-level option that comes equipped with a stick toggle switch, three buttons that allow you to tell the joystick to function as the left analog stick, the d-pad, or the right analog stick. While switching the stick function would be cumbersome, I reasoned, it would still be less cumbersome than holding a DualShock on my lap. Best of all, the model was available refurbished on Amazon with Prime shipping, so I could save sixteen bux and have it in my malfunctioning hands within two days. I ordered it.
It arrived in a very colorful box festooned with some very angry Street Fighter combatants.
Chun-Li’s legs always seem to be twice as large as the rest of her, which seems anatomically problematic. I mean, her feet are bigger than her head.
The box was labeled on the bottom with an official-looking Amazon inspection label, which I expected to guarantee some level of quality.
Just gaze upon that super official check mark!
The thing was even packaged in what looked like the original plastic, complete with instruction pamphlet.
It also came with a set of different-sized Mad Catz stickers, I guess so you could put more logos on your arcade stick if you wanted to do that for some reason?
I just stuck the big one on my bike instead.
I wasted no time in plugging it into my PS4 to try it out. No fight stick under the $250 price point has a wireless connection, but the Alpha comes with a fairly lengthy cord. My living room is pretty big, so it reaches my couch, but just barely. This creates a very exciting trip wire booby trap for Boyfriend to navigate while I’m using it, but I prefer to think of this as a feature rather than a bug, as it’s very funny. (He has long legs. He can deal.)
The PS home button doesn’t turn on the PS4 like a DualShock does, but that’s a minor quibble. I fired up the system and got ready to try out Exist Archive with a fightstick. But when I tried to navigate over to the game’s icon in the menu, nothing happened. I wiggled the stick in all directions, and I got no response. I tried it in every mode. Nothing. I plugged the thing into my PS3 and then my Steam Link. Nada. I sighed in resigned irritation. Apparently that Amazon “INSPECTED” sticker doesn’t mean very much.
Luckily, Amazon’s returns process is fairly straightforward. I packed the fightstick back in it’s colorful little box, hoping they wouldn’t mind that I had already used one of the stickers. The UPS man came to my door to pick it up the next morning. It took about two and a half weeks to process the damn refund, but I got it, and then I used it to buy a brand new stick of the same make and model. It arrived, oddly, on a Sunday afternoon (has Amazon somehow bribed the postal service to deliver its shit on Sundays, too?).
They didn’t bother sending it in a separate box this time around. A greener choice, I guess?
Finally, almost three weeks after the initial purchase, I had a completely functional stick.
I understand that it’s pretty small for a fightstick, but I’m a pretty small human, so I prefer to think of it as RPGRabbit-sized. Reviews online complained that it was too small to fit comfortably on a lap, but it does pretty well on my lap. I do think that a larger person might not find this model very comfortable to use. I like the pleasant clicking noises that the stick and the buttons make when I press them. I wasn’t allowed to visit many arcades as a child, but my favorite part was the big, clicky buttons on the machines, and this brings back some of that nostalgia. The matte finish on the surrounding surface has a nice tactile feeling to it, and it has the bonus effect of likely remaining smudge- and finger-print free.
Conveniently, the thing includes a color-changing lightbar that corresponds with player (ala the DualShock4) and even a share button. The toggle switch gives me right and left stick and d-pad function and there’s two small buttons to the right of the lightbar for R2 and L2, but I’m missing R3 and L3 inputs, and there’s no touchpad.
Experimentation has taught me that the fightstick is perfect for Exist Archive. While it’s going to take a little time to get used to the button configuration, navigation through the world is much easier, and I only need to toggle the stick function when I have to use the menu. It’s also great for platformers, and I can use it in Persona 5 if so inclined, though swapping to the right stick for camera function in dungeons is something I’m not sure I can get used to. I tried to play Final Fantasy XV, and it kind of worked okay, but since the touch pad is what opens the damn menu, that seems like a no go. I’m not actually sure I can play FFXV at all now, but I also wasn’t actually sure I wanted to, so that’s probably not the end of the world.
The stick functions perfectly well on the Steam Link, though I’m still trying to figure out if I can make Steam recognize the stick toggle switch function. I can play Hyper Light Drifter again, but the learning curve is going to be high, especially when it comes to aiming the gun. I expect it’s going to make playing Overcookedmuch easier. I’m looking forward to trying out Transistor and Bastion with the fightstick, and maybe I could even pick up Pyre. I haven’t tried the stick on the PS3 yet, but I know it’s going to be great for the P4 Arena games, and I’m hopeful that I’ll be able to pick up Dragon’s Crown (aka The Quest for Lady Bigboobs) and play more of that with Boyfriend.
Dealing with slightly crippled hands as a gamer is a huge pain in the ass, but I think this fight stick will help me get back to some of the games I’ve had to avoid. Overall, I’m pleased with the purchase.
TL;DR – The Mad Catz FightStick Alpha seems like a pretty good entry level fightstick for relatively small humans, but don’t buy one Amazon refurbished, no matter how many “INSPECTED” stickers they slap on the damn box.
Update 9/23/17: Playing Dragon’s Crown with the fightstick is a blast. It took me a few dungeon runs to get used to it, but once I did, I think it’s actually more fun with the stick. I can’t cast rune magic, since that requires use of R3, but since I only play the game co-op with Boyfriend, I can make him do all the rune magic. I played some Persona 4 Arena, too. I still have no idea what the hell I am doing in that game, but button mashing is a lot more fun when you have big, clicky buttons to mash.
Update 9/29/17: Amazon dropped the price of this stick about a week after I purchased it to around the price of their refurbished model because Amazon is made entirely of butts.
It may be unsurprising to learn that I spend approximately 90% of my waking life typing, crafting, and playing video games. It was, however, a surprise to me when I discovered to my chagrin that this amount of hand-based activity can cause a repetitive stress injury at age 31. I went to the doctor, and the conversation went like this:
DOCTOR: So how much do you do with your right hand?
ME: Well, I’m right-handed, so a lot. I type a lot for work. I do crafts with kids as part of my job. I sew. I play video games.
DOCTOR: How many hours a day do you play video games?
ME: Uuuuh…I don’t know. Three? Four?
DOCTOR: THAT IS TOO MANY HOURS. STOP IT.
Pictured: me “stopping it”.
Luckily for me, I discovered that it is absolutely possible to play Persona 5 with one hand. So I did that for about two months, waiting for my hand to heal. The doctor also told me to type as little as possible outside of work; hence the lack of posts. I mean, I’m not the most prolific of bloggers, but over two months is a little much even for me. However, my hands and I have advanced to the point that I have switched to using compression gloves rather than a brace.
Which are both more comfortable and more stylish.
It’s nice to be able to hold a controller normally once again! I appreciate my hands very much now, having had to go so long without using my dominant hand in a normal fashion.
It was excellent timing, actually: I was going to spend all of my gaming time playing Persona 5 from April onward anyway, so if I had to lose the use of my right hand, this was the time in which to do so. I am not, however, going to write a blog post about Persona 5. I really don’t think I need to. Everyone who follows anynews about games has heard allabout how awesome Persona 5 is. I agree completely. Persona 5 is an absolutely perfect RPG. I have enjoyed every single minute of it. The story, the presentation, the dungeons, the music, the mechanics: they are all perfect. Literally. The only bad thing I can think of to say about Persona 5 is that your fucking mom-cat makes you go to bed too early.
STAAAAAHP.
If you like JRPGs and you do not yet own Persona 5, what the hell is wrong with you? Remedy this shortcoming at once.
No, instead, let’s talk about the other kind of game I have been able to play one-handed: the VR game.
Boyfriend and I picked up one of these things during a T-Mobile deal this past Black Friday. Boyfriend was getting His First Smartphone (TM), and we decided to go big and get him a fancy-pants Samsung Galaxy 7. T-Moblie was running a deal that if you got a Galaxy 7 on contract with them on Black Friday, they’d send you a coupon for a free Samsung VR. These buggers cost about a hundred bux new, so I was all like YES PLZ. It was an enormous pain in the ass to redeem the coupon, and we didn’t end up getting the damn thing until six weeks later, but hey, it was FREE.
Unfortunately, it was also kind of an enormous pain in the ass to play. You snap your phone into the front like so:
This necessitates taking said phone out of the phone case that you most certainly keep it in because the damn thing is worth like 800 bux. You also better hope your phone is completely charged, because the VR games suck the battery bone dry much more quickly than one might expect, unless, of course, the phone overheats first. WHICH IT WILL.
All this being said, the experience of having an actual affordable VR experience in my own home would have been worth every bit of the considerable ass pain were it not for the fact that the default controls on this thing are absolute shit. This is your control pad:
I mean, I understand why you might want to design it like this from a manufacturing cost perspective. It’s really nice to have it all as one unit. But this requires you to play with your arm upraised, repeatedly poking the side of your face. It is comfortable for neither your arm nor your face. Boyfriend and I messed around with the headset a few times, but the controls were so frustrating and unsatisfying that we ended up just letting the thing languish about the apartment, lonely and unused. I kept half-intending to buy a Bluetooth controller, and I kept not bothering, because there wasn’t anything I desired to play so much that I wanted to drop fifty bux on a controller that I wouldn’t use for anything else.
And then Samsung released these:
Isn’t it cute? It’s got motion and touch controls, like a baby Wiimote or a decidedly inferior second-cousin to the Oculus Touch. However, it’s explicitly designed to work with the system, it’s cheaper than most decent Bluetooth gamepads, and it was slightly on sale during Amazon Prime Day, so I finally picked one up. This controller was exactly what the Samsung VR was lacking.
It’s not perfect, but it improves the VR experience to the point that I am willing to go through the complicated rigamarole of set up in order to play for the thirty to forty minutes I can get before the phone overheats. It pairs to the phone through Bluetooth. Well, at least it pairs sometimes. My primary issue with the way the controller functions is that there does not appear to be a way to pair (or re-pair) the controller while within the VR app itself. Instead, you have to remove the headset, take out the phone, open the Bluetooth settings, and pair the stupid thing before replacing the phone and rebooting the VR app. This issue aside, though, the controller is very functional and quite comfortable to hold. It does frequently require a recentering of the motion controls, but that’s a simple matter of holding down a button with your arm outstretched in front of you. This can be accomplished in-game at any time, although if you’re having to shoot at things quickly, it can really throw off your groove. It hasn’t greatly interfered with any of my gameplay, however.
I’ve been using my new controller to try out all kinds of games and demos that weren’t fun to play before, but I keep returning to the same three games, and if you have a Samsung VR and you haven’t tried these games, you are missing out.
Wands is a game about…wands, yes. Specifically the magic wand that you use as a steampunk wizard of some kind. Really, none of the premise here is well-explained, but it doesn’t really need explaining, does it? You are a wizard, you have a wand, you use it to fight other wizards.
A wizard needs spells, though, so first off you get to choose which of several spell modules you are going to load into your wand, because steampunk wizards only get five spells at a time. This is pretty straightforward; you grab a module, read its description, and then load it into your wand. Once done, you can head into your wizard basement to try out your spell modules on a hapless combat dummy. Once you grow bored of this (which you will, and quickly), it’s time to hop through your portal to go meet another wizard and duel the fuck out of them.
The portal will spit you out in one of several really beautiful locations to face off with a rival wizard. A match consists of a few moments of frenetic teleportation around the space, turning your head wildly to catch a glimpse of your opponent, flinging spells at them as quickly as possible before they teleport away, and attempting to dodge or flee the spells they have lobbed at you. It’s stressful, fast-paced, and fun.
You choose your spells from a wheel with one button and shoot them with another. Before the VR controller, this was almost impossible to do with accuracy and required a great deal of desperate fumbling on the side of your face, inevitably resulting in you picking the wrong spell, cussing very loudly, and disturbing your long-suffering boyfriend. With the VR controller, it actually feels like you’re wielding a wand, allowing you to fulfill all the Harry Potter dueling fantasies that you absolutely had after reading Chamber of Secrets.
The biggest problem with this game, though, is that it’s multiplayer-only, and the last two times I’ve tried to play, I’ve had to wait two to five minutes for an opponent. Play at the wrong time, and you probably won’t be able to find an opponent at all. I don’t know if this is a server problem or a symptom of a user base that is too small, but it’s annoying. You can only zap that test dummy in your wizard basement for like a minute before it gets tedious, and that is literally the only other thing to do. I know this is a free game, but I really would appreciate an AI opponent with whom I could have practice matches. Still, it’s worth a download, because FREE. Also, if you start playing, maybe I’ll actually manage to get a match in the next time I boot up the app.
THIS. GAME. IS. GORGEOUS.
Land’s End is a very simple puzzle exploration game. It’s been wonderful to play while my hand has been out of commission, because you simply turn your head and look at things to move and manipulate the environment around you. It’s perfectly intuitive. The puzzles are relatively simple, at least in the levels I’ve played so far, but it doesn’t matter, because everything is so beautiful and magical. Come for the puzzles, stay for the atmosphere.
This is the sort of thing that VR is for — the ability to transport yourself into another world and explore it. Definitely play this one with headphones. The sound design is amazing, and the calls of seabirds and the crash of water add so much to the immersion. Of course, if you do wear headphones, your boyfriend might sneak up on you and take videos. Fair warning.
Land’s End is like 3 bux. Worth every penny.
Finally, Smash Hit: the game I cannot stop playing. OMG, people, THIS GAME. This game makes owning a VR headset worth it. This game makes setting up the headset worth it. This game is the most fun I’ve ever had in a mobile game. Period.
The premise is simple: you smash shit. Really, the devs could stand to add that second “s” to the title, because it’s perfectly apt.
I guess it’s technically a rail shooter, but since it’s in VR, it’s the most exciting on-rail shooter that has ever existed. You fly through the levels, turning your head to aim and hitting any button on the controller to shoot metal balls at panes, pillars, and other obstacles made of glass, which shatter in a satisfying and physics-appropriate manner. If you don’t smash an obstacle in time, you smash into it, and you must forfeit some of your balls. You can get more balls by smashing blue pyramids, diamonds, and stars, but if you run out of balls, it’s game over.
This gloriously simple premise has entertained me for hours. Part of the attraction may be that I don’t have easy access to any roller coasters now that I live in the Pacific Northwest, and this game’s forward momentum, sense of vertigo, and exciting twists and turns in some ways scratch that itch. I regularly play this game until the phone overheats. I run out of balls over and over and restart from the last checkpoint with zero sense of frustration, because playing the level over is just as fun as playing a new level. When I finish all of the levels, I will probably go back to the beginning and play them all again. At 3 bux, this game is absolute VR necessity.
Now that I’m done praising it, I’m off to play it. I’m never going to be able to smash enough shit in Smash Hit.
…and yes, I was waiting for the whole post to make that terrible joke. You’re welcome.
MegaTen is my favorite franchise next to Final Fantasy. It’s hard for me to decide which franchise I like more, though I’ve never bothered to try and obtain the super-deluxe premium edition of a Final Fantasy game, so maybe that says something.
The Persona 5 Take Your Heart Premium Edition will set you back $89.99, and that’s a lot of bux. (It will probably set you back a whole bunch more bux if you didn’t preorder it.) Is it worth that many bux? Well, the standard launch edition is $69.99, and there’s a lot of stuff in the Take Your Heart edition, so yes. It is worth that many bux.
Everything comes packaged inside of this attractive laminated cardboard box. It’s got a fancy magnetic clasp.
Opening the box reveals an exciting smorgasbord of fangirl delights.
Le front.
Obviously, we have the game itself. It comes in this super neat steelbook. I believe you also get the steelbook if you ordered the standard launch edition.
Le back.
I’m a big fan of steelbooks. I think they look cool, they’re shiny, and they’re much more durable than a plastic case. Even the inside is attractive.
Next, we have this hardcover art book entitled Persona 5: The Aesthetics.
I appreciate the hard cover. It’s going to look very nice on my shelf. The pages inside are matte rather than glossy, but the art is crisp and colorful.
Paging through it is going to be fun, and if I decide that I’m going to need to do some cosplay, this is going to be an excellent reference.
It’s a Persona game, so it goes without saying that the soundtrack is going to be awesome.
Haven’t listened to it yet, but I’m looking forward to rocking out to it in my car. It seems to me that if you’re selling your collector’s edition for 90 bux that you could spring for the extra 75 cents or whatever for a jewel case for your soundtrack CD instead of a cardstock envelope, but I guess it gets the job done. A lyrics booklet would have been cool, though.
One of my favorite inclusions is the Morgana plush.
As you can see, she’s not very big. My hand is here for size reference, but disclaimer: I have very small hands. So she’s probably even smaller than you’re thinking. She’s cute, though, and I’m really excited about this particular mascot character. Persona 3’s Koromaru was stupid adorable, and Persona 4’s Teddy was creepy as hell, but a talking kitty named after a powerful and dangerous Arthurian sorceress? YES PLEASE.
Speaking of danger, Morgana comes with her own disclaimer.
Huh. Apparently she’s both flammable and unsuitable for children. Sounds like my kind of cat.
Last, but certainly not least, we’ve got a Shujin Academy school bag.
I was expecting the bag to be on the small side and probably cheaply made, and I was correct on both counts. It’s too small for my (admittedly huge) laptop, but I could keep my Dungeons and Dragons stuff in it. Also, it will be great for the aforementioned cosplay. I was pleasantly surprised to see that it’s lined inside.
There are no interior pockets or anything, which is a little disappointing, but not unexpected. It’s really not a bad little bag. I could use it as a purse. Bonus: I’m pretty sure it’s waterproof.
So there you have it. The Persona 5 Take Your Heart Premium Collector’s Edition. Worth it? I would say so. Worth it now that you’ll have to pay a scalper’s price on eBay? …Ehhh, maybe? But I’m satisfied. Boyfriend’s satisfied.
Boyfriend even got a bonus in the form of the bag in which Amazon wraps its gift purchases. He has re-appropriated it as a super creepy face mask.
See? The Take Your Heart edition has something in it for everyone.
UPDATE 7/26/17: So it took me 20-30 hours of gameplay to realize that Morgana…is male? Neither the name nor the English voice actor in any way made that clear, but, uh, sure? I mean, I guess he keeps talking about how hot Ann is, and I guess a lesbian or bisexual mascot character was too much to hope for, BUT STILL. Disappointing. And confusing.
Also, contrary to my expectations, that academy bag is remarkably durable and roomy, as it turns out. I’ve been using it as a rehearsal bag for the summer Shakespeare play in which I’m performing, and I can fit my script, my 20-pound Norton Shakespeare Complete Works, two paperbacks, ten comic books, pens, pencils, and a tupperware snack container in there with a little room left over.
Since my parents weren’t the kind of parents who let me play video games or watch T.V. through most of my childhood, they had to find other ways to keep me entertained. This meant, among other things, that I went to dance classes. And not unwillingly, mind you. My smaller self was all about ballerinas. I dreamed the dream that I imagine many uninformed little girls dream about being a ballerina, a dream that persisted until I was old enough to understand exactly how much goddamn work goes into being an actual ballerina. From then on, I just thought it was fun to make my body do neat things while getting to wear a costume with a fuckload of sequins on it.
My favorite thing in ballet class was the part where we got to take turns practicing a single kind of step across the entire dance floor. I liked to try and make each grand jete or chasse or…uh, the leg-changy jumpy thingie? (It’s been awhile.)…look better than the last. My least favorite part of dance class was the dreaded combination. Our instructor would stand up in front of the class and model a set of steps that we were supposed to be able to repeat. As long as she was standing in front of me, doing the movements with her back to me in the same direction as I was doing them, I was fine. I was a great dancer. I was in the groove.
The minute she turned around to face us, or worse! the minute she started calling out the movements with directions (“Left! Now right!”), I transformed from what I imagined as a graceful gazelle into a stubby-legged giraffe with six left feet tied in knots.
Dramatization.
I don’t know if other people have this problem, but I don’t understand how someone can hear the word “Left!” and instantly know which way to go. How do you know which way is left? Do “left” and “right” have a feeling? I have no idea. I have to really think about it every time I want to know which way is which. “Left!” shouts the dance teacher. Okay, I think. Okay, so which hand do I write with? I wiggle both hands. Oh, okay, it’s this one. Okay, so now the OTHER way is left! Go that way! But by the time I am done thinking that, everyone else is already two steps ahead and going a different way! It makes learning choreography a bit challenging. When I was still young enough to not care what other people thought, my mom draw a big L on my left ballet slipper, but once my sense of shame grew in, I stopped letting her do that. While I do enjoy just dancing to music in my own groove, there is something intensely satisfying about moving in choreographed steps that perfectly match a song, and I really did like doing it when I could get it right. I could do okay with a lot of practice, but as much as I loved dancing, it was very stressful to try to remember choreography while also desperately thinking, Right or left? Right or left?! RIGHT OR LEFT!!!?
Well, I can’t tell my left from my right, but I can follow arrows.
You see where this is going.
I love DDR because it lets me dance in a way that feels choreographed without my having to remember every step or which way is left. I just get to move. And, oh, how I can move now!
Boyfriend texted me this image while I was at work:
I was in a meeting, so I had to not make high-pitched noises of excitement, but it was a near thing. I have discussed my DDR dance pad travails at somelength on this blog. I’ve been through a lot of pads in the past three years. After my Red Octane pad starting ghosting, I bought a foam core DDR Game Energy pad, and it had a misfiring left arrow out of the box. Same thing happened with its replacement. I had some better luck with DDR Game’s Tough Universal Dance Pad, but although I didn’t have issues with ghost-stepping, its thin and unsatisfying dance surface was irritating, and I had to readjust its position after every song. This past Christmas, my grandmother sent me some money and told me to buy something really nice for myself with it. So I did.
Behold the Omega 4X Precision Dance Pad:
Precision Dance Pads is a mom-and-pop-style operation which appears to be the culmination of one man’s dream: to make a durable DDR pad that didn’t ghost, didn’t require extensive knowledge of electrical wiring to maintain, and didn’t weight 300 pounds. I heard about the company through the Crypt of the Necrodancer devs, who have a plug for the company’s custom Necrodancer pads on their website. My interest was piqued, and after doing some research, I desperately wanted one, but I didn’t have an extra $365 lying around until I was able to match Grandma’s generous Christmas contribution this past December. Finally, it has arrived! So let’s talk about it.
First off, let’s get this out of the way: this is not a cheap pad. $365 is a lot of dollars. That’s why it took me almost two years to finally get around to buying one of these things. However, let’s put that price in perspective. The aforementioned Tough Universal pad set me back about $75. While this is a considerably lower price, I expect to get a maximum of six to eight months of moderate use out of a good soft pad before it starts ghosting. That adds up after awhile. There are a lot of metal pads out there, but they’re not cheap, either, and where the hell do you store that thing? Boyfriend and I live in a tiny one-bedroom apartment. A metal pad would take up like 20% of our total available space. Ergo: $365 seemed a fair price.
Once the purchase was made, there was a good, long wait. I expected a good, long wait — it does say on their website somewhere to expect at least six weeks processing time — but they apparently had a fire in their warehouse in December, and this bumped things back even further. By this point, I had already waited years for a dance pad that didn’t suck, so an extra month or so didn’t seem like a big deal. I guess if you’re the kind of person who is used to Amazon Prime, the potential wait might drive you a little crazy, but it’s my understanding that these people make each pad to order. While this adds to processing time, it also makes it possible for them to do custom images. I seriously considered getting Boyfriend to help me make a bunny-, Totoro-, or Zelda-themed design using their template, but the company already offers a startling number of customization options on their website, including two Necrodancer designs, a pad that looks like a SNES d-pad, a design involving a disco ball for some reason, and also a…squirrel?
I am admittedly perplexed as to the genesis of this design, but it’s stupid adorable, and considering the colors, I just went ahead and decided in my heart that this was secretly a custom Squirrel Girl skin.
The color scheme is even consistent!
So there’s the first point in its favor: this is, without a doubt, the cutest dance pad in the history of ever.
Yesterday evening, when I arrived home from work, the glorious package was waiting for me. I dragged it into the room with the computer, and proceeded to tear into it. It was a surprisingly labor-intensive package to open. The pad appeared to have been wrapped in a flattened cardboard box and then covered in an entire roll of packing tape.
A bit unconventional, but it got the job done. The pad arrived in perfect condition. In addition to the pad itself, the package contained a bubble-wrapped packet protecting the control box.
This is another ingenious customization option that the company offers. They build their own control boxes, and they are modular, so you can select the control box that works the best for you. Despite the fact that I mostly play Stepmania on Boyfriend’s fancy PC, I also have a PS2 copy of In the Groove that I like whipping out every once in awhile to take advantage of its far superior workout mode, so I opted to pay a little bit extra for the multi-tap control box.
This allows me to connect the pad to a PC, PS2, Xbox, or Gamecube. According to the company’s hilariously snarky FAQ, you can get PS3, Xbox 360, or PS4 control boxes on special order. So, if Sony starts putting out new DDR games, I have the option to get a second control box for my PS4. Swapping the box is as simple as plugging in an ethernet cable. My multi-tap control box seems solidly built and likely to last, but if anything were to happen to it, I can easily purchase a replacement on the website. They have replacement sensor pads, too. I’m a big fan of companies that sell replacement parts. It usually means that they expect their product to last.
The pad is less than an inch thick, but it’s surprisingly hefty. The pad’s smooth graphical surface is held onto the plywood backing with heavy-duty velcro.
Though I haven’t taken it apart to look at the sensor plates inside, it’s clear that I could do so easily should the need arise. The backing is much more functional than fancy.
It’s just a piece of plywood that’s been painted black. It makes the pad heavier than I expected, but it’s still perfectly manageable for this relatively small woman to handle, and because it’s so thin, it slides right behind the couch and against the wall for storage. I suppose some tech aficionados might take issue with the lack of polish, but again, mom-and-pop operation. These people are clearly more interested in function than they are with form.
Let’s talk about that function, shall we?
Set up was stupidly easy. Plug and play. The drivers had no trouble installing, and while I reflexively went into Stepmania’s joypad config menu to set it up, it seemed like all of the buttons were already properly configured. Time to start dancing!
This pad is so, so good. So good. It took about two songs for me to get used to the new surface. It’s weirdly smooth for a dance pad. Arcade pads have arrow buttons surrounded by a metal lip and probably some screws, and they are so obvious you can feel them through your sneakers. The pad I’ve been using for the past six months, the Tough Universal pad, has textured arrows that are incredibly comfortable to feel through both socks and shoes, though I didn’t like using it barefoot. This new pad feels like a slightly springy wooden dance floor, and it’s almost perfectly smooth. You can kind of feel the sensors, but finding them mostly comes down to reflex. For this reason, I think this might be a tricky pad to use for a beginner, but once I made the adjustment, I loved it.
I like hard pads because you can so clearly hear the rhythm you are tapping out with your feet, but I dislike having to stomp like you do at the arcade. It’s satisfying and fun for a few rounds, but it starts to wear on me for long-term play. I like being able to glide from arrow to arrow on a soft pad, but a soft pad lacks the satisfying tap-tap-tap of the rhythm. This pad gives me the best of both worlds.
I played for about an hour and a half last night. After an hour or so, my feet started to hurt a bit. I was in socks, so I tried putting on my sneakers to see how that might affect play. While shoes made things more comfortable, and also made it sound like I was tap-dancing (which was awesome), I sacrificed some accuracy because I couldn’t feel the arrows. I tried shedding both shoes and socks, but I could only get through half a song barefoot, so I went back to my socks. The company’s FAQ suggests putting some foam under the pad if you find it uncomfortable, and since I kept the interlocking foam from my last broken foam core pad, I think I’ll try that tonight.
Are there any drawbacks to this pad, other than a price that some people might be unable to afford? Not for me. The pad did randomly disconnect a few times last night during play, but only while I was in the menu. While that might be something to do with the control box, I am inclined to think it’s because Boyfriend has too much crap plugged into his USB ports. If the issue persists, I might have do do some troubleshooting, but as of now, it hasn’t affected play.
Speaking of Boyfriend, he seems to have found the only true problem with this pad, and this may be a problem unique only to him and his very tall brethren: if you have size 16 feet, hitting arrows accurately seems to be a bit tricky. Now to be fair, this is a problem that Boyfriend has always had when playing DDR, as let’s be real, nothing is designed with size 16 feet in mind. (Like not even shoes. We have to special order all of his shoes online.) However, with most dance pads, he can feel out where the arrows are enough to mostly keep his feet in line. He had a lot of trouble keeping his feet on the correct arrows while using this pad. This morning, when he came home from work, he asked wistfully, “If those dance pad people make all their dance pads themselves, do you think they could make me a big foot dance pad?” Perhaps that’s something we’ll have to pursue.
In the meantime, though, the point is moot. He’s not going to be able to pry me off of my Precision Dance Pad long enough to get a turn himself. In fact, it’s ridiculous that I’ve spent so much time writing this blog post. That’s two hours I could have spent playing DDR.
My inner child will never be a ballerina. But playing DDR on a pad this good? That almost makes up for it.
Well, I’ve finally managed to stop playing long enough. It only took a few weeks.
While it’s true that my desire to own a PS4 was primarily driven by the need to play Persona 5 in its purest form, I’m not letting the system lie dormant until April. Instead, I’ve been obsessively playing both World of Final Fantasy and Gravity Rush for the past few weeks. and while I am enjoying both games immensely, it’s World of Final Fantasy that’s really got me hooked. It pushes every single one of my gamer buttons in the best ways possible while delivering a charmingly nonsensical plot built upon adorable piles of nostalgia.
Although this game represents the maiden voyage of first-time game director Hiroki Chiba, Tetsuya Nomura designed many of the characters original to the game, so it’s unsurprising that many of them look like they could have escaped from a Kingdom Hearts game.
They’re named like Kingdom Hearts characters, too.
The plot is also like something out of a Kingdom Hearts game. Don’t get me wrong, I love Kingdom Hearts. I’ve played most of the games in the franchise. But that plot, y’all. If you can call it a plot. It might be more accurate to describe it as a fever dream made mostly of keyblades and awkwardly positioned zippers.
The plot of your game might be too complicated if it requires flowcharts to explain.
So in World of Final Fantasy, the story follows a pair of twins named Lann and Reynn who have lived in a timeless pocket dimension for some unspecified number of years.
^ Reynn Lann^
One day, a talking white fox with a crown on its butt appears on Lann’s head while he serves coffee at Totally-Not-Starbucks to a mysterious woman who may or may not be God.
The face of God…?
Reynn and Lann discover that they are Pokemon Trainers…I mean, mirage keepers, and they must journey through the mysterious land of Grymoire, a world full of Final Fantasy franchise characters, monsters, locations, and spells. The kingdoms of Grymoire are being annexed by the (clearly evil) Bahamutian Federation. There are a bunch of equally mysterious and clearly evil bad guys in improbable costumes lurking about and muttering ominous things about prophecies.
I wonder how long it takes that knight to put on her parrot cosplay every morning.
Reynn and Lann must embark on an adventure through the kingdoms, running into as many Final Fantasy cameos as possible, capturing mirages, and rediscovering their pasts.
I love it.
The systems underpinning this silly romp through the land of nostalgia are deeply satisfying to the classic JRPG gamer in me. It’s turn-based menu combat, for one thing, which is, as far as I am concerned, the hallmark of a Final Fantasy game (looking askance at you, Final Fantasy XIII and XV).
The Active Time Battle system makes a triumphant return. You can adjust the speed and you can even turn it off, if you like, but I’ve been playing on the second-fastest speed, and I’ve been pleased by the pleasant challenge that this offers, particularly if you’re facing off against a large mob of monsters who are throwing a barrage of attacks at you as you scroll desperately through your menu to select the most effective abilities to defeat your enemies as efficiently as possible. At slower speeds, the ATB drags painfully, and turning the battles from Active to Wait makes them boring, so I would definitely recommend playing them at as fast a speed as you are comfortable.
Most of the strategy, however, comes from organizing your stacks. Your party is comprised of Reynn, Lann, and four of their captured mirages configured into two “stacks.” Basically, you wear adorable renderings of classic Final Fantasy baddies as hats. It’s all very silly.
Alternately, while you are in Lilikin form, large mirages can wear you as a hat. I’m not sure which is sillier.
Despite the undeniable silliness, the whole thing is wonderfully complicated and interesting. By changing which mirages are within which stacks, you are able to completely change the stats, skill load-outs, strengths, and weaknesses of your stacks as a whole. Abilities “stack” as well, meaning that, for example, if you have two mirages in your stack who know Fire, you can cast Fira. It’s an addictive and endlessly customizable system. Especially once you add in the exciting fact that every mirage has its own tiny sphere grid!
*heavy breathing*
Mechanically-speaking, it’s a very solid game. As for the aforementioned plot? Well, it’s a hot mess of madness made even weirder by some cheerfully hammy voice acting and a localization that appears to have been crafted by slightly tipsy hipster nerds. I don’t know if things are a little more sedate in the Japanese voice tracks, but the English version is unilaterally crazypants bananas. When Lann isn’t making a nonsensical non-joke, he is misunderstanding every situation and statement directed towards him, usually in head-scratchingly stupid ways that would only make sense if he were catastrophically stoned 100% of the time.
The rest of the dialogue is equally weird. Tama (the fox with a crown on its butt) speaks the-with the “adorable” the-quirk of adding the word “the”in front of random the-words. Some mirages make up entirely new words.
Some mirages speak in hilariously inappropriate slang.
Even the mirage descriptions climb aboard the redonk train, making terrible puns, Final Fantasy in-jokes, and the occasional American pop-culture reference.
Now, I just want to be clear: I am not complaining. It’s endlessly fascinating to see what weird-ass thing the localization is going to do next. The cutscenes are constant, but they are never boring, because there is a 100% guarantee that someone will say something completely ridiculous. I admire the aplomb and gravitas with which these (presumably) professional, adult voice actors read some of these lines.
The game is quite nice to look at, with a colorful, cartoon-y style and bright, attractive colors. The chibi re-imaginings of classic Final Fantasy characters are more than tolerably charming.
Look at tiny Yuna’s tiny, adorable, angry eyebrows!
The backgrounds are full of depth and rich color, and the monster designs are attractive and varied, though it wouldn’t be a Final Fantasy game without the occasional palette swap.
I have few real complaints about this game thus far. I wish the music were better, but holding the soundtrack of every game up to the Uematsu gold standard is probably unreasonable. There’s nothing in the game’s soundtrack that is bad, exactly, it’s just bland. It sounds a bit like the slow pianos of Kingdom Hearts, but without the groove, and with more lame remixing of old Final Fantasy tunes. Other than this minor gripe, I am having a blast. It’s doing everything I want a game to do, and it’s doing those things pretty well.
Playing World of Final Fantasy is like snorting pixie stix of nostalgia — it’s colorful, saccharine, and kind of weird, but it tastes pretty great.
Also, animated cutscenes. Did I mentioned animated cutscenes? Because animated cutscenes.
It’s not every day that you play a video game that cheerfully makes fun of you for being fat. I feel like I ought to be offended. Instead, I’m finding its unapologetic insults and unexpectedly solid mechanics incredibly fun.
Perhaps you’ve never heard of the mobile game Burn Your Fat With Me, which is available for both Android and iOS. I certainly had not.
It’s a Japanese visual novel dating sim in which you advance your romantic relationships with cute anime girls by accomplishing basic fitness goals, like doing fifty sit-ups in ninety seconds. Completing these goals earns “moevation” points (which is, by the way, a hilarious pun). This unlocks further episodes of the story and advances your romantic…advances. It’s a cute idea. I’m a big fan of gamified fitness, and this seems to do an admirable job of doing just that. Alas, as adorable as these anime girls appear to be, I’m more into guys, so I didn’t think this game would be for me. But then I discovered that there’s a version for girls.
Descriptively called Burn Your Fat With Me For Girls
Well! A fitness app with sexy anime men to drool over? YES PLEASE. Of course I installed it immediately. When I booted it up, this is how it greeted me:
Uh…this is a…good start?
So the premise of the game is that you’re a pudgy manga artist whose mother forced you to audition for a prestigious theatre academy. A sexy man named Kei decides that he is going to help you get your fat ass into shape by forcing you to do sit-ups with him every day. In order to advance the plot, you have to do actual, real-world sit-ups.
The manner in which the game accomplishes this is actually fairly clever. You assume the sit-up position and balance your phone on your knees. The sexy anime man counts your reps, and you do sit-ups, tapping the screen once for each rep. It works surprisingly well, even if my phone in its unbalanced wallet case has a tendency to slip of off my knees.
I appreciate the amusing episode titles.
The game is episodic in nature. To unlock further episodes, you have to earn the aforementioned “moevation” points. To accomplish this, you must use the Training Mode, doing a set number of sit-ups in a set period of time.
The concept is a clever one, and the execution is surprisingly excellent. The first two episodes include some really good voice acting (though in order to unlock voice overs for the rest of the episodes, you have to fork over a chunk of cash). I hope you like the song that plays in the background, because that is the only song you are going to hear, but the writing is pretty enjoyable, the art is nice, and the plot is interesting enough that it’s kept me playing.
Even with the constant disparaging comments about my weight.
And I do mean constant.
As supportive as I am of the idea of body acceptance, and as potentially problematic as I find the constant reminders of the importance of being thin (Kei constantly repeats, “You’d be a beauty if you lost some weight!” while you’re doing sit-ups), the game is oddly compelling.
Part of the attraction for me, I think, is the strong identification I feel with the protagonist. My greatest passion (besides video games) is theatre. From the time I was a teenager to my mid-twenties, I was a pretty big girl, due to a perfect storm of medication side-effects, poor diet, and lack of exercise. At the time, I was also trying to be an actor, and I learned the hard way (i.e., the depressing way) that it’s pretty difficult for a woman who isn’t conventionally attractive (read: “thin”) to be cast in anything approaching a good role. I’m still super into theatre as a hobby, and once I lost a ton of weight, I found that I was consistently cast in much better roles.
A thing I wish I had actually heard as a younger woman…
I’m no longer obese, but I could certainly stand to lose a few pounds (like most Americans, I suspect). I’m vegan and a lot more active (DDR, anyone?), but I have an ongoing affair with cookies (and cake…and pie…), so I’m enjoying having a sexy anime man-carrot dangled in front of me to encourage some strength training in addition to my usual cardio.
While I’m still not sure how I feel about a game constantly reminding its players how fat they are, I just did 100 sit-ups in three minutes, so I guess the game is accomplishing what it set out to do. I’m also genuinely curious about how the story will turn out, and I’m really hoping I learn more about the play in which my fictional self is appearing.
Because it evidently involves armor, bare-chested men in bandages, and…singing nuns?
If you’re into the idea of sexy anime man badgering you into doing sit-ups, check out BYFWM (FG). Because you’d be a beauty if you lost some weight!
‘Cause you’ve got the touch! You’ve got the tower! When all hell’s breakin’ loose, you’ll be right in the eye of the storm! Out of nowhere, Rydia appears, all grown up and stronger than ever. She swoops in to save the day, but nobody could anticipate Golbez and his Gauntlet of Crystal Grabbing! With only […]
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