(Stella) Glowing Praise from RPG Rabbit

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.

RPG Rabbit Discovers That Buying a New 3DS XL Is a Convoluted Pain in the Ass

Yes, I know that GameStop is evil. Unfortunately, they also have a lot of cool shit for sale, and some of that cool shit is cool shit that no one else sells. I offer as proof of this theory of cool shit the recently-released Hyrule Gold Edition of the New 3DS XL. Well, damn. That is one attractive piece of console hardware. I had promised myself that I would not upgrade to the newest generation until an exciting enough model appeared. Lo and behold, such a thing had appeared. Shiny, shiny gold featuring a beautifully-detailed etching of the Wingcrest? I could not resist. Since the damn thing was both a “GameStop exclusive” and a “limited edition,” I feared that if I waited on this too long, I would not be able to snap one up before they became only available on eBay at exorbitant prices. Besides, GameStop was running a deal! If I traded in my old 3DS, I’d get $100 towards a New 3DS XL! Awesome! And I could transfer all of the data from my old 3DS to my New 3DS! Rad!

Oh, wait, except that I needed both the old and the new system to make the transfer? And I couldn’t trade in the old system without making the transfer first? This was a veritable Ouroboros of a transaction. So I turned to my best friend, the Internet, to solve my dilemma. The Internet delivered an answer of jackass proportions.

Step One: Go buy a New 3DS at full price from GameStop. Take it home.

Step Two: Transfer your data from your old 3DS to your New 3DS. This will take more than two hours.

Step Three: Take both the New 3DS and your old 3DS back to GameStop the next day. Return the New 3DS. Trade in the old 3DS. Immediately re-purchase New 3DS.

Step Four: Profit?

I have followed these steps. I purchased a New 3DS.

I had to admit, it looked even better in person than it did on the box. It is a most pleasing shade of gold and has a slightly different profile than its predecessor.

I then spent a great deal of time waiting for the data transfer to take place.

This was tedious, but at least I could distract myself with a delightful little animated representation of tiny Pikmen fragmenting and rebuilding my files. I mean, I could if I had no life. I read a book instead.

Tomorrow, I get to trek back to GameStop to wave my receipt, return, trade-in, and repurchase this console that I have already customized to my liking in an utterly ridiculous dance of bullshit. What makes this particularly irritating is that it is demonstrably unnecessary. Nintendo is able to remotely restore your account in the event that your 3DS is stolen, and assuming that you have backed up your save data, the new system will function as your old one. The one difference is that you will have to re-download software from the eShop, but that seems slightly more convenient than multiple trips to GameStop and an impressively convoluted merchandise shuffle. Oh, Nintendo. You are like a beloved, elderly uncle that gives us neat presents, but then makes us sit through an interminable, recursive story that is a tedious waste of everyone’s time. This metaphor, though apt, may be slightly labored.

After the transfer, I was pleased to discover that when I opened my New 3DS, it looked like my old system had been cloned. Every program was where it belonged, all my data secure, all matters in order. It was as if the soul of my old 3DS had leapt into a new, more vigorous body. I can’t believe I am waxing poetic about a game system. It was pretty cool is what I am saying.

Is the upgrade worth it? It would be worth it alone for the improved 3D experience. Infrared cameras are able to track your head movements and adjust the 3D accordingly, meaning that you no longer have to hold the system completely still in order to achieve the optimal optical illusion. It makes playing games in 3D for long periods no longer a chore. It’s kind of magical. I have noticed that things load faster, though it’s not such an improvement that I would rhapsodically praise it. I have not yet played something that required the C-stick, but it seems like a potentially useful addition. The screens seem brighter, the speakers are louder, and the cartridge slot is no longer positioned in a way that I will potentially dislodge a game cart during play.

It is going to take some getting used to having the stylus pop out from the front. It’s beyond foolish that an expensive  electronic device doesn’t come packaged with the adapter that charges its battery. Also, the shiny, shiny gold plastic is a fingerprint magnet. It is, however, a lovely object that I am glad to own. As more New 3DS-only titles are released, I hope to be even more excited to own it.

Now, please excuse me. I need to go catch some more Yo-Kai.

RPGRabbit Treats Herself to the Best 3DSXL Case Ever

Once upon a time, my most prized DS Lite accessory was my playthrough case decorated tastefully with an embroidered seal of Hyrule. I used that thing past the point that it fell apart, only abandoning it when I upgraded to the 3DSXL. There weren’t really any 3DSXL cases that I really liked. I ended up with a hideous pink plastic thing that I picked up on clearance. I thought it was dorky, but it was highly functional.

Also, it was only a dollar. That really had more to do with it than anything else.

I wasn’t able to find any other case that I liked as much as my seal of Hyrule case.

UNTIL TODAY:

Behold its majesty. This is probably the nicest game case I’ve ever owned. Although it only has enough cartridge pockets for two games, there’s plenty of room inside of the DS case for a separate cartridge case. I consider this my reward for successfully coding a game. I can finally carry my 3DSXL around in a style appropriate to its excellence.

RPG Rabbit Gives Some Quick Advice About Persona Q

Oh man, guys, I am sorry. I have been crazy busy this last few months with my jobs and my extracurricular performance activities, hence the lack of posts. So here’s a quick one, before I dash off to my next appointment.

Being a busy-as-shit gamer means that my best friend is my 3DS XL.

I love you, cold, unfeeling, Zelda-themed robot friend!

It travels with me in my purse everywhere, both so that I can collect my rare, rural SpotPasses and so that anytime I can grab myself a spare five minutes, I can take a little game break. Right now, I am alternating between Final Fantasy: Theatrhythm Curtain Call and Persona Q: Shadow of the Labyrinth. I got past the first full dungeon in Persona Q, and I’m enjoying myself immensely, as I’m getting to spend a lot of time with my old friends from Persona 3 and 4. And then, this mysterious individual shows up:

Cute outfit, but who the hell are you?

Wait, who the hell is that? I played both requisite games to understand your crossover, Persona Team! What madness is this?

So I looked it up. This, friends, is Marie, and she only appears as a special, new Social Link in the Persona 4 Golden PlayStation Vita re-release of the game. Don’t have a Vita? (Because why would you?) Well, too bad! Then you don’t get to know who this person is! Go buy a Vita, peon!

Well, fuck that, I’m not buying a Vita just to play a re-release of a game I have already played, but worry not! There’s another way to experience Marie’s story without retreading hundreds of hours of gameplay or throwing away a few hundred on a useless handheld. And it’s way more interesting than just reading her Persona wiki entry (although, yes, you could also probably do that).

As it turns out, on the free version of Hulu, you can watch Persona 4 Golden the Animation, a 12-episode anime series that retells the story of Marie’s Social Link. Mind you, don’t watch it unless you actually know the plot of the game, because otherwise you will be terribly lost; the Golden Animation very oddly focuses solely upon Marie, and only barely touches on the larger plot of the game here and there. It’s a pretty enjoyable, if slightly ham-fisted, way to experience Marie’s character arc, and now I feel like I have a pretty good grasp on her relevance.

I suppose it might be similarly possible to eschew playing all of the PS2-generation Persona games all together in favor of watching both Persona 3 The Movie and Persona 4 The Animation in order to understand the background to Persona Q, but why rob yourself of such excellent games? It might be worth a review, though; I found my memory to be very hazy on several key details of the plot of Persona 4, as it has been a few years since I played it.

Now let’s just hope there aren’t a bunch of references to Persona 4 Arena Ultimax later on in the game. When your crossover spin-offs start referencing one another, Persona Team, that’s just going to far down the rabbit hole.

RPG Rabbit Continues to Chronicle the Weird Life of Burn Victim Spree Killer

Burn Victim Spree Killer, aka “Your Death,” has been pretty busy since we last checked in on him. He’s made a few friends, and he’s trying really hard to integrate himself into the community.

Your Death won a decisive rap battle against the Doctor.

Your Death was interviewed for a morning talk show.

Your Death volunteered to be part of a magic show!

Your Death joined a cake-worshiping cult.

One might almost think his spree-killing days were over!

…almost.

 

RPGRabbit Chronicles the Sad, Creepy Life of Burn Victim Spree Killer

So the other night, I let my husband make a Mii for inclusion in my Tomodachi Life game.

I don’t know what I was expecting.

His nickname is Your Death. Your Death does not know his age. 

Your Death lives in a hovel.

Your Death’s favorite foods are schnitzel and fish cakes.

Your Death has no friends.

Your Death walks alone.

Your Death cooked for me today.

He made me saltines.

And also a Popsicle.

Wait, a Popsicle? HOW DID YOU COOK A POPSICLE. WHAT.

 

RPG Rabbit Is Just A Little Too Obsessed With Playing Tomodachi Life

I beat Bravely Default last week. I meant to write a full review, I really did.

But then I bought Tomodachi Life. And that’s pretty much all I have been doing since then.

What is Tomodachi Life? Well, back in April, Nintendo released this very informative completely insane video announcing the game.

Basically, Nintendo thought to themselves, “You know what, we should make a Sims game!” And then Nintendo got really drunk and made Tomodachi Life instead.

I had been wanting the game for awhile, especially after playing the free demo. Then I received a $25 Fred Meyer gift card from work, and while I was at Fred Meyer, I found Tomodachi Life on sale for $25, so it was pretty clear to me that I was meant to own this game, so I bought it.

The set up is simple. You are the owner/deity of a small island, which you can populate with up to twenty-four Miis of your own design. These can be Miis you already have saved on your 3DS, Miis you create specifically for the game, or Miis you download into the game using QR codes. The inhabitants of your tiny island kingdom make requests of you and do ridiculous things, and you watch them, take pictures, and giggle. Repeat ad infinitum.

The first inhabitant of the island is meant to represent you, and is referred to by all of the other islanders as your “look-alike.” The other twenty-three inhabitants are left entirely up to your own imagination. Want to throw a bunch of virtual versions of your friends and family together? Go for it. Ever wanted to see how Beyonce, Wil Wheaton, and Bruce Wayne might get along together? Totally possible. Want to just make up a bunch of people entirely from scratch and see what strange relationships develop? Also an option.

In my case, the first three islanders I made were myself, my husband, and William Shakespeare. Because that’s just how I roll.

The Mii Creator won’t let me set his birth year any farther back than 1900, sadly.

The creator lets you not only determine what they look like, but also what they sound like and act like using a simple, straightforward system of sliders.

I was both surprised and amused to discover how generally accurate this system is despite its simplicity. Most of my friends ended up with pretty spot-on personalities, as did my other celebrity guest.

The Doctor, an outgoing leader? No shit.

Once you’ve created your cast of characters (you can always make more later!), you start caring for these weird little people living in your DS. They make their needs known by shooting up little graphics in their apartment windows.

Maybe they are hungry for Italian food! Maybe they would like to dye their hair! Maybe they would like a breezy new outfit! Maybe they are madly in love with one another! Maybe they would like to play a dorky mini-game with you! It’s your job to sort out their requests as best you can.

Succeed, and your Miis reward you with cash and random stuff. Fail, and…nothing. There aren’t really any penalties for failure. Sometimes the Miis get sad, but then you can just give them baths and play games with them until they feel better.

My favorite feature of the game is your ability to take a photograph of literally anything that is happening on the top screen of your 3DS. The pics are automatically saved to your SD Card. There’s even an in-game application that allows you to use the 3DS internet browser to share the pictures via Twitter or Facebook. Theoretically, this service also extends to Tumblr, but that part doesn’t seem to be working yet.

This feature has allowed me to inundate my Facebook feed with hilarious and bizarre images of in-game versions of my friends doing hilarious and bizarre things.

For instance.

Many of the later additions to the island are friends who saw these pictures on my Facebook feed, were SUPER JEALOUS, and asked to be included in this madness.

Let me tell you, a game like this is an introvert’s dream come true. Don’t get me wrong, I love my friends to bits, but sometimes actually hanging out with, you know, actual people can be very stressful for me. With Tomodachi Life, I can hang out with my friends and feel like I am helping them out with their problems without the stress of dealing with real people!

(The above paragraph was only partly a joke.)

Seriously, Nintendo did an awesome job with this game. Including painless, in-game social media integration was a stroke of genius. Every image I share is just free advertising for them.

So thanks, Nintendo! Keep getting super drunk and making really weird shit. I love it when you do that.

In parting, here’s a picture of Doctor Who and William Shakespeare singing opera together.

This image right here is enough to justify the existence of this game.

RPG Rabbit Plays Radiant Historia

Let’s talk about video games again, instead of childhood trauma! Woo!

So my husband got me this DS game for Christmas. It was one that I remember being excited about when I read reviews online and in my Game Informer…but I was broke when it came out, so I never got around to playing it. I remember hearing good things about its plot and characters, which are two of my favorite things about any RPG, so my interest was piqued. I didn’t remember reading anything about its battle system, which is a pity, because it is surprisingly fun and novel.

Radiant Historia puts you in the role of Stocke, an experienced intelligence agent and soldier in an ongoing and bitter war between two powerful nations, Alistel and Granorg. A large part of this conflict seems to be over the fact that the continent on which both countries exist is rapidly running out of arable land due to desertification. No, seriously. They even call it desertification in-game. Lots of JRPGs feature countries at war, but seldom do those wars hinge on something as practical and real-world as climate change. There’s also a religious dimension to the war, as Alistel answers to an individual named the Prophet Noah, who hands down proclamations through a probably corrupt guy named General Hugo. There’s a lot of politics in this game, enough to remind me of the complex political machinations of Final Fantasy Tactics.

Early on in the game, Stocke’s boss, a steely bastard named Heiss, gives him a mysterious book called the White Chronicle. Stocke almost immediately heads out on a mission and is killed. Instead of a Game Over, however, our protagonist finds himself in the presence of a pair of otherworldly twins named Teo and Lippti, who are apparently all-powerful time travelling fairies of some kind (I don’t know if they are actually fairies, but hey, no one else in this game has elf ears). They explain that Stocke can use the White Chronicle to travel through time and change history so that the world doesn’t end. Only by pushing history into its proper course can that goal be achieved.

The way that this ends up working in game is that whenever Stocke is faced with an important decision, the timeline branches. His first decision upon returning to the real world is to determine whether he wants to continue working as an intelligence officer under Heiss or form a new military brigade with his best friend, Rosch. This creates two related, alternate timelines that Stocke jumps back and forth between for the rest of the game.

So I’m about ten hours in. In the Standard timeline, the one in which Stocke stays an employee of Heiss, he infiltrates enemy territory and is sent on a mission to assassinate one of the princesses of Granorg. In the Alternate timeline, the one in which Stocke joins the Rosch Brigade, he helps to defend strategic points like a mine and an important fortress from the Granorg army. He can travel between the timelines at will using the White Chronicle at save points, and the skills and levels he gains in each carry over to the other.

The timeline is pretty useful, because it has a handy little synopsis of each point on the timeline. Otherwise I think I’d get the two timelines confused pretty easily.

Things that happen in one timeline affect the other. For instance, at one point in the Alternate history there is a surprise bomb attack on the Sand Fortress that Stocke’s brigade is supposed to be defending. The bombs are hidden, though, so even if he goes back in time on that timeline, he can’t find them. Instead, when he returns to the Standard timeline, he meets a group of travelling Satyros performers. The Satyros are a race of beastmen with special powers. One of the young Satyros, a child named Aht, takes a real liking to Stocke and teaches him how to use one of her powers, the power to see hidden things using the force of Mana. Now when he returns to the other timeline, Stocke can use this power to find and disarm the bombs in the Sand Fortress. This back and forth interaction between the two timelines is pretty clever, and forces the player to spend equal time in both timelines. The developers worked to make this constant time travel as convenient as possible – you can travel through time and between timelines at any save point, you can access the timeline for reference from the main menu, and when you return to a dialogue sequence you have experienced before, you can fast forward through it so you don’t have to read the same dialogue sequences over and over again. You can’t fast forward through sprite animations, though, so you will have to watch the same sprite army march out like six or seven times.

I was also impressed with the battle system. For one, encounters are not random. The enemies wander around the map, and if you can approach them without them charging into you, then you have a chance to whack them with your sword. Successful whacking forces the enemies away from you and has a chance to knock them unconscious. Unconscious enemies (indicated, somewhat adorably, with a speech bubble with “zzz”s over their heads) can either be avoided or preemptively attacked, which I founded to be a nice feature. Low on health or mana? Whack enemies into unconsciousness and avoid combat all together!

Battle is turn-based, but very strategic. Turn order is displayed on the top screen. This is important, because characters can select “Change” as an option from the combat menu, and switch their turn with an enemy’s turn. This causes their sprites to flash red and enter a status called, for some inexplicable reason, “Baroque.” When a character is “Baroque,” their defense is lower. So why switch turns at all? Well, it has to do with the intriguing combo system.

Enemies appear on a 3 x 3 grid. Many of your skills can move them around on this grid. For instance, a character can use a Push Assault to push an enemy backwards, or a Left Assault to push them to the left. The goal of all this pushing around is to get as many enemies into one section of the grid as possible, because every attack will hit every enemy in that section of the grid. So in the screenshot above, Stocke is using his action to push that goblin into the same section of the grid as that purple dragon. For the rest of the combo, any attack against that section of the grid will hit both enemies. Success in battle depends upon pushing as many enemies as possible into one section of the grid and then whaling on all of them at once. So reordering your turns to have as many of your characters act one after the other allows you to build punishing combos to murder your enemies as efficiently as possible. This combat system turns every battle into a kind of spatial puzzle, made trickier by the fact that not every character can push enemies in every direction. Stocke can push enemies back, left, and right, but his ally Raynie can only push them back, while Marco can only push back or pull them forward. So turn order becomes very important.

My only gripe about this system is that all of the enemy movement abilities cost mana, and in the early game, mana is in short supply. You will run out frequently, and if you are out of mana healing items while out in the field, you are shit out of luck. Entering a battle without enough mana to move your enemies around and create combos turns the battles into a frustrating, boring slog. You can use mana crystals at save points to completely restore your hit points and mana points, but you only get one of these crystals to start out, and new ones cost a staggering 5,000 gold apiece. By ten hours in, I have amassed enough gold that I can pretty much stay stocked up with tea, the mana-healing item in this game, but for a good chunk of the game up to now, I kept having to escape encounters because I was out of mana.

I am really enjoying this game, though. The characters are engaging, the plot is complicated and full of unexpected twists, and the time travel is a really neat plot device. The sprites and character portraits look really good on my 3DS XL’s giant screens, too. Atlus did a great job with the localization. The music isn’t staggeringly awesome, but it’s good enough. I play my 3DS in lots of situations where I can’t have sound, anyway, so I don’t mourn its loss.

You can pick this game up for about $2o now, so if you see it and you’re a plot-heavy JRPG fan, it is definitely worth your time. And I think that at only ten hours in! I bet things will get even better from here on out, as I learn more and more abilities to make combat even more exciting.

Thanks for another great JRPG, Atlus! You’re my favorite publisher for a reason.

RPG Rabbit Plays the Bravely Default Demo

I am a really big fan of SquareEnix, or as I like to call it, Squeenix. I haven’t played every Final Fantasy game, but I have played a lot of them. The game that made me become obsessed with video games was Final Fantasy X, the first PlayStation 2 game I ever played.

When I moved to the dorms at Radford University in 2004 for undergraduate, the first thing I did was buy a PS2. No, seriously. I arrived, I put down my stuff, I said goodbye to my parents, and I went downtown to explore. There was a small pawnshop on the corner, and in the window was a PS2 for a hundred bucks. I happened to have a hundred bucks, meant for buying furniture for my dorm room, but hey, a PS2 is like furniture, right? And as I was an “independent” adult now, I could play video games without my parents breathing down my neck and declaring how much my brain was rotting RIGHT NOW. So I marched right in and bought that motherfucker. I took it back to my dorm room and hooked it up to my TV before I remembered that I needed games for it to do me any good. So I messaged one of my friends from high school, who was also attending Radford.

God, I loved this thing. Years later, it met an ignoble end when my roommate dropped a TV on it. RIP, PS2.

Me: So I just blew all my spending money in like ten minutes because I decided I needed to buy a PS2.

Friend: OMG YESSSS. Come over right now because I have a game YOU MUST PLAY

The game in question happened to be Final Fantasy X. I had heard of Final Fantasy because I was really into anime, and at anime conventions, you will see an average of 1.5 Final Fantasy cosplayers per second, so I was really excited. I went straight back to my dorm room and played that shit ALL NIGHT LONG.

Next to my Atari 5200 and my cousin’s Sega Genesis and N64, Final Fantasy X was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. It was fully voice acted, had a complicated and interesting plot, and adorable creatures like moogles and chocobos. It was everything I loved about anime, only it was interactive! I was completely hooked.

And that is the story of how I became a gamer and fell in love with Squeenix. Of course, now that I am older and wiser, I know that blitzball is a boring, broken mess, the voice acting is pretty wooden, and Titus is whiny pretty boy. But Yuna still rocks, and Final Fantasy X will always be near and dear to my heart. And I will continue to pay attention whenever Squeenix releases a new RPG, even after the deep disappointments of the FF XIII games.

Bravely Default is a weirdly named RPG that I wasn’t even aware of until a friend (the SAME FRIEND who lent me Final Fantasy X all those years ago) posted the trailer on her Facebook wall. I did a little dance in my cubicle while I watched it, and downloaded the demo from the Nintendo eShop the day it went up.

First of all, this game is absolutely gorgeous. The 3D effects are stunning, the world map is lovely, and Ancheim, the city you get to explore, is insanely detailed. Navigating the city is really cool, because when you enter, you are treated to this amazing long view of the gears and workings of the town, and then when you start to move, the camera zooms in on your character as he moves through the levels of the city. It’s a wonderful visual effect, and I never get tired of it. Sometimes I stop moving to let the camera zoom out so that I can move again to let it go back in. And in my head I go, “Wheeeee!”

There isn’t much to the demo, plot-wise. You don’t get any introduction to the characters, and you have no idea what’s going on or where you are. You are tasked to rebuild Norende, which is apparently Tiz’s hometown, using StreetPass, a function that I haven’t actually been able to use because the only StreetPass tags I get in my rural Southern Oregon town are for Pokemon X/Y from the same two people. But the idea is neat. I believe you can assign your StreetPass-encountered minions to different jobs in the town, building back up after whatever horrible thing happened to it. Luckily, even if you only have one dood to work with, you can slooowly work at rebuilding things. I’ve managed to unlock the weapons shop, the items shop, and the armor shop, and each shop unlocks more items for sale in-game at save points.

The meat of the demo is completing simple quests for townsfolk. And I do mean simple. The “fetch me 6 lizard gizzards for a lame excuse of a reason!” kind of quests. So I’ve been running around the world map, having the same three encounters over and over again. This is surprisingly not as boring as it sounds. The game has a job system, similar to Final Fantasy III or Tactics, and your jobs level separately from your character levels. So there’s a lot of incentive to keep grinding, because every job you level up unlocks more cool abilities.

You can also combine abilities from more than one job. For instance, my Tiz is currently a Ninja. But before I had him be a Ninja, I made him a Swordmaster. So now while he is leveling up his Ninja abilities, he can still use his previously unlocked Swordmaster abilities. There are also Support Abilities that can be assigned from more than one job after you have unlocked them. So there is an excellent amount of character customization possible with this system.

 

 

So you pick your jobs, equip your doods, and then run around on the world map to stirring orchestral music, looking for random encounters. When you are thrust into battle, awesome music with rocking trumpets plays, and you rain down some righteous murder on some monsters. Battle also looks wonderful, by the way, with really nice character sprites and three-dimensional backgrounds that look like they’ve been painted with watercolors. Monster models are also highly detailed and I have not run into any palette swaps yet, although there certainly could be some in the full game.

The battle system is a turned based affair with a twist. In addition to MP, your characters power their abilities with BP, Brave Points. These are a bit like Action Points that you may have encountered in other RPGs, but they work a little differently. Your characters generally enter battle with zero BP, although you have a random chance to start out with 1, much like you often have a random chance to get a preemptive attack. Even if you don’t have any BP, though, you can still choose to spend it, pushing your BP into the negative. This will cause you to skip as many turns as you have negative BP, which sucks, but by spending BP, your characters can take extra actions or fuel powerful abilities. On the other hand, you can chose to have your characters Default, which causes them to skip a turn, but boosts defense and stockpiles BP. This system named the game, and it’s actually pretty cool once you get the hang of it.

So, for example, I am running around the world map when I meet a White Cait and two Venomous Snakes. I am still pretty low level, and I know that asshole of a White Cait is going to cast Aeroga on one of my characters and probably murder them in one hit. So I have Tiz, my Ninja, enter Brave mode, giving him two actions, and I attack the Cait twice. Then I have Agnes, my White Mage, go Default to boost her defense and stockpile some BP in case she has to do a bunch of healing. Ringabel (that is seriously HIS name, snicker), currently a Valkyrie, goes into negative BP to use his Crescent Moon ability, which deals damage to every enemy, and Edea, my Red Mage, enters Brave mode to cast Thunder twice. After assigning actions to every character, I press GO, and death rains down upon mine enemies! Even though most of my characters will have to skip turns after this assault, only one very damaged Venomous Snake remains after all that bludgeoning and Thunder magic, and my Defaulted White Mage finishes him off easily with a whack of her mace. This system opens a lot more strategic possibilities than a traditional turn-based system.

This game, quite simply, looks awesome. I will be honest, I don’t know why it isn’t a Final Fantasy game. It’s got the job system, the classes (White Mage, Red Mage, Ninja, etc), and the spells (Fira, Aero, Cura, etc) like a Final Fantasy game. It’s got the monsters (Cait, Adamantite) like a Final Fantasy game. It is my understanding that there are crystals involved in the plot, as well. Throw in some Moogles and you’ve got a damn fine Final Fantasy game. So I admit to being somewhat mystified as to why Squeenix decided not to use the power of that franchise for this game. Bravely Default has been out for awhile in Japan, and it’s done pretty well. I think this game would have increased confidence in the Final Fantasy franchise after the betrayals of the XIII games and the disastrous MMO release.

Either way, I’m buying it. Tragically, I don’t think I can afford the collector’s edition right now, even though WANT.

It’s not quite as exciting as the Japanese collector’s edition, but it comes with an art book, the soundtrack, and a pack of AR cards. I am happy to see another game using the AR technology. It’s such a cool thing. So, in conclusion, if you’ve got the funds, this game is definitely worth the pre-order. And pick up the demo if you haven’t already! Bravely Default is the Final Fantasy game you’ve been wanting to play, and it’s a game that makes me excited that I own a 3Ds.

 

 

RPG Rabbit Plays Pokemon X

Pokemon is totally an RPG. Granted, you are leveling up small, adorable creatures to do your fighting for you, but there’s experience points and grinding, even equipment! Totally an RPG.

I actually haven’t played much Pokemon prior to this. I dabbled with Pokemon Diamond with my DS Lite, but I got bored with it pretty quickly, and I was also borrowing it from someone, so I had to give it back. I liked how cute the creatures were, but there wasn’t an interesting plot of any kind, so it didn’t really hold my attention.

Once I got my 3DS, though, I started reading a lot about all of the new upgrades to Pokemon X/Y. The biggest one was the full 3D models of every Pokemon. That’s like an entire additional dimension of adorable. Also, I could not only play a girl, but I could also dress her up? Man, sign me up! (Yes, I am occasionally very girly, and I have a deep enjoyment of dressing up my in-game avatars. For instance, most of my resources in Guild Wars were spent on researching and constructing the coolest-looking possible armor set for my necromancer, mixed and matched from all of the armor sets.)

I ended up with Pokemon X instead of Y because that is the version my friend had and was willing to sell to me. So that’s what I got! The legendary deer-looking Pokemon in X looks awesome, anyway.

So this edition of Pokemon is super polished. It’s still essentially the same game with the same plot – Professor Named-After-A-Tree gives you a starter Pokemon and a Pokedex and lets you loose on the Whatever Region to catch as many Pokemon as possible and collect gym badges while thwarting the evil designs of Team Something-To-Do-With-Space and hearing rumors of a legendary Pokemon that you eventually catch with your Master Ball. Or maybe that’s just the plot of the two games I’ve played?

Anyway, this time around, Professor Sycamore gave me the choice of a Chespin, a Fennekin, or a Froakie.

Obviously, I picked the Chespin, because it looks the most like a bunny. SO CUTE! EEEE!

That’s why I keep playing this game, actually. The new 3D models have made this game STUPIDLY cute. Every time I encounter a new Pokemon in tall grass, I squeal and declare that I wish to catch it BECAUSE IT IS SO CUTE. This is further enforced by the Pokemon-Amie system, a set of mini-games in which you get to interact with your Pokemon and play with them and pet them as if they were your fantastical pets. You even get to feed them. WITH THE STYLUS.

It is SO CUTE. Nintendo clearly read my mind and gave me exactly what I wanted in a Pokemon game, because I want a bunch of adorable creatures to be my pets that I can play with and feed, like Tamagotchi, but way more badass. Each Pokemon has a favorite place to be scratched with the stylus, and it rewards you with hearts when you find it. You can feed them Poke Puffs of varying fanciness (fancier ones give more hearts). Leaving aside the dubious nutritional science that went into feeding your Pokemon only fancy sweets that look like creme puffs, it is…can you guess? YES, IT IS SO CUTE. Even the mini games you can play with your Pokemon are pretty fun. I’m really addicted to one called Head It, where you tap with the stylus to bounce yarn balls off your Pokemons’ heads.

There’s even a primitive facial recognition software built into Pokemon-Aime. When the camera recognizes that there is a face in front of it, your Pokemon prompts you to make silly faces at it. It gets really happy and vomits hearts everywhere when you make the right face, but gets soul-crushingly disappointed with you when you don’t. Unfortunately, the camera is really bad at reading my face.

My husband probably thinks I’m really crazy, watching me try to contort my face into what my 3DS will interpret as a “medium smile.” And most of the time I fail to please the cold, unfeeling eye of my camera. Which MAKES MY POKEMON SO SAD. Which makes me feel absurdly guilty. So I don’t play the face game very much. I don’t want to disappoint my virtual fantasy creatures.

There is a practical benefit to all of this Pokemon petting, too. As your Pokemon’s affection levels rise, it becomes more effective in battle. So my favorite Pokemon, my Bunnelby, almost has his affection maxed. Consequently, he sometimes dodges attacks that would otherwise hit him, and often escapes status effects. It’s pretty cool.

ALSO, SO CUTE. I gave him an Everstone, I don’t want him to evolve. His evolution is derpy looking. Observe:

This is NOT A BUNNY. It is a fat thing with dirty ear arms and a furry tutu. DO NOT WANT.

ANYWAY, I have had a lot of fun customizing my avatar. I was a little disappointed when I started the game that there were so few clothing options to begin with, and the ones you are presented with the opportunity to buy early on are prohibitively expensive. However, once you find the Amulet Coin (an item which gives double money from trainer battles) about 10-15 hours in, money is never an issue with this game. I was a little irritated to discover that to change your avatar’s hair, you go and get a “haircut,” which is kind of cute, except that you don’t get to see pictures of the haircuts and choose one, you answer questions about what you want your hair to look like. So you don’t actually know what your hair will end up looking like until after you have paid for your virtual haircut, and if you don’t like it, you have to pay to have it done again.

For once, I can insert an actual screenshot from my actual game, as there are “Picture Spots” sprinkled all over the world of Pokemon X. Pictures of your avatar are then uploaded directly into your 3DS camera program, which you can then easily upload to Facebook. It’s a cute idea, and I wish more 3DS games would take advantage of the ability to take in-game screenshots. If only because it would make writing game reviews much easier.

The new Fairy-type Pokemon are pretty cool. Also, CUTE. I was especially excited about the new Fairy evolution of Eevee. My stated goal for this game is to collect every evolution of Eevee, and one of the first ones I got was Sylveon, the Fairy-type. Mostly because to get Sylveon, all you had to do was play with an Eevee a whole bunch in Pokemon-Amie, something I really wanted to do, because Eevee really is one of the cutest of all the Pokemon. They’re pretty powerful, too, and a nice balance against the Dragon-types. My Sylveon can murder most things with her Moonblast.

An attack which involves a giant pink moon. The Fairy-types are very pink-centric, I have noticed.

Pokemon is a weird game. Without a real plot and with so much to do, everyone plays it slightly differently. My game is very focused on collecting all the cute things, especially Eevees,  pimping my avatar, and playing with my Bunnelby. Someone else could spend all their time farming berries and breeding Pokemon. Or using the really robust online offerings and trading and battling badasses from Japan. I have had a lot of fun with WonderTrade, where you trade one of your Pokemon for a random Pokemon from another random player, but I haven’t traded much on the GTS (everyone seems to want either level 91 or greater or Pokemon I’ve never heard of) and I’ve only played a couple of online battles (my entire team was wiped out by the opposing team’s leader with one hit every time). So Pokemon is hard to review. It’s fun to play with, but it doesn’t hold my attention in the same way that a story-rich offering like To the Moon or Ni No Kuni does. I play Pokemon a lot, but only while I’m doing something else like watching TV or exercising.

I can, however, say with confidence, that this is the richest Pokemon experience ever released. There is so much to do here, and it just looks AMAZING.

Also. IT’S SO CUTE.