RPG Rabbit Fightsticks It to Amazon

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 Overcooked much 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.

 

RPG Rabbit Still Plays Too Many Games at Once

I’m great at buying video games. I’m even better at playing them. I’m terrible at beating them. Consequently, I end up playing a lot of games at once. In no particular order, here are my current impressions of a handful of the RPGs that I am juggling at the moment.

 

Yep. I am still playing Fire Emblem: Awakening on my 3DS, and I won’t let myself buy Fates: Conquest until I beat this one. The game is still amazing, the characters are still great…but because my pride refuses to allow me to play the game on Casual mode and because my attachment to my party members refuses to let me allow anyone to succumb to permadeath, the game has become a bit of a frustrating exercise in constantly restarting battles. Also, the “Fight the evil empire! Because…evil!” plot is wearing a little thin at this point. I’m going to get there eventually, though…

 

Yo-Kai Watch is my go-to for when I want to game, but I don’t want to have to pay too much attention to it. When I want to watch Boyfriend play a game, I’ll often have Yo-Kai Watch going on my 3DS to play while he’s doing something in his game that isn’t plot-related or super-interesting. Yo-Kai Watch is an adorable, charming, highly-polished little time-waster by one of my favorite developers. It’s a Pokemon game if Pokemon games were somewhat interesting. It has a plot, but the plot is less important to me than exploring the richly-detailed and whimsical city of Springdale, collecting wacky monsters, and naming them after Shakespeare characters.

 

Speaking of Pokemon, let’s go ahead and get this one out of the way: of course I am playing Pokemon Go. I love Pokemon Go. (Team Mystic FTW.) I played Ingress when I first got my smartphone, but I tired of it quickly. Pokemon Go takes everything that was appealing about Ingress and adds Pokemon, which, let’s be real, was absolutely the thing that Ingress was missing. Pokemon Go is essentially guilt-free gaming; it’s hard to feel like you’re wasting time when you’re getting exercise. I’ve walked almost 45 miles over the course of this month. This app is well on its way to single-handedly solving America’s obesity problem.

 

I enjoyed Bravely Default quite a bit, so it is perhaps unsurprising that I preordered Bravely Second. However, I’m not enjoying it quite as much as I expected. Much of the charm of the first game is lost, though this second iteration remains just as polished and beautiful to behold as its predecessor. It seems as if the developers were just trying too hard to make the plot and the characters seem as wacky as possible, and the forced whimsy is falling a little flat. Beyond this, the combat got boring and repetitive much more quickly than it did the last time around. The dungeons feel too long, too repetitive, the enemy mobs too similar. Some reviews have hinted that the story will eventually become more interesting, but I can tell that it’s going to take me awhile to get to that point. This may end up being another playing-while-watching-Boyfriend-playing-a-thing sort of game. Though, as an aside, I have to admit that some of the puns are amusing, despite being over-used.

Question #2, #bravelysecond: With how much giggling did the localization team create as many "Ba'al-busting" puns as humanely possible?

— Yanna Usagi (@RPGRabbit) July 25, 2016

 

This one was a Boyfriend recommendation. Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura (which, let me say, is easily the best subtitle of any game ever) is a PC RPG that regularly appears on toplists of the best PC RPGs. Boyfriend tells me that the plot, the world, and the writing are staggeringly amazing. I am sure that they are. However, I’m finding myself having a similar attitude towards this game as I have towards Planescape in that I really want to like and play this game, but I’m having some trouble actually doing it. The dialogue is well-written, the world fascinating and fully-realized, but I just can’t seem to get past the clunky controls and weird combat. Some aspects of PC RPGs are hard for this JRPG girl to grasp, but I’m going to keep trying.

 

This weird little gem is one of Boyfriend’s Steam games. I’m not actually certain that one would describe Kentucky Route Zero as an RPG exactly — I suppose it’s more of an adventure game? — but there haven’t been any puzzles yet, just surreal dialogue options accompanied by dreamlike visuals, moody music, and quirky characters. I have no idea what this game is about, but I know that I like it.

 

 

I have been wanting to play Transistor for ages, as I really enjoyed Supergiant’s first foray, Bastion, despite the fact that I suck at it and have yet to finish it. I’ve owned Transistor for quite some time, but Archimedes, my clunky, elderly tank of a laptop, was unable to run it. Boyfriend, however, owns a custom gaming PC with impressive horsepower, so now I can play the game without issue on the highest graphical settings. (Thanks, Boyfriend!) The game was well worth waiting for. The story unfolds organically as the silent protagonist, a singer who has lost her voice, explores a mysterious technologically-advanced city that appears similar to Bioshock’s Rapture by way of Tron, de-rezzing enemies made of code with strategic action RPG mechanics, and equipping skills that may or may not be the souls of dead people. The battles are tense but fun, the game is gorgeous, and I love the idea of a silent protagonist that actually has a compelling reason to be silent.

 

GUYS. CAN WE TALK ABOUT SKIES OF ARCADIA. I never had a Dreamcast or a GameCube, so I missed out on this game and had never really thought to seek it out. The other day, Boyfriend sat me down in front of the TV, put a controller in my hand, and informed me that I was going to play this game. I was sold as soon as the opening video finished and obsessed after about thirty minutes of gameplay. Skies of Arcadia is charming, exciting, exuberant, colorful, and absolutely everything I want in a JRPG. Many recent JRPGs seem to be lacking a certain unencumbered sense of joy, bogged down in self-referential tropes and overly jaded self-awareness. I don’t dislike that sort of thing, mind you, but I was surprised to discover how much I missed the innocent fun of a classic JRPG. The characters are varied, the random encounters are fast and often challenging, there is an entirely separate system governing airship battles, and I’m genuinely interested to see where the story is going. Boyfriend is enjoying watching me play it as much as I enjoy actually playing it. If you haven’t experienced this game, do yourself a favor and do the same.

 

The last game on today’s roundup is Stella Glow. I have been playing this game in demo form. I don’t usually count demos as “games I am playing,” but this particular demo deserves special mention. It’s an unusually long demo, for one thing, allowing the player to experience the first hour or so of the game, and I have found myself unable to put it down. I’m not entirely sure what about this game I am finding so compelling, as the plot appears to be pretty standard JRPG-fare — amnesiac male hero and cute female childhood/love interest friend must save their village from certain doom — but the extreme polish, fully-voiced dialogue of unusual quality,  and crisp, beautiful artwork make the cliched story much more palatable. The battles are streamlined,  scripted encounters that move along with surprising speed, a rarity in grid-based strategy RPGs. The magical girl “witches” are clearly channeling Madoka Magica, but Madoka Magica is far and away my favorite anime of recent years, so I’m not complaining. As much as I absolutely do not need another video game to beat, I’m not sure I’m going to be able to resist picking this one up…

I need to admit that I have a problem.