Unlimited grinding that is...
Y'know, I liked Unlimited Adventure on the Wii, I liked it a lot. Sure, it was a bit of a grindfest and had framerate issues up the wazoo, but it was
fun. Did you know? It actually had a two-part sequel in Unlimited Cruise 1 and, but they never made it outside Japan and Europe. And here we've got Unlimited World Red, the latest installment in the series and... I think I'll stick with the one on the Wii.
The game starts with the Mugiwaras bringing a raccoon, Pato, back to his home Island, the intro is filled with what looks to be 'running gags', so much so that I suspected the story picked up from where Unlimited Cruise left off, but I was wrong. That was the first
red flag that the story wasn't gonna be very good. As for the rest of the story, it's just excuses to have the Mugiwaras tread old ground from the series, y'know, Skypeia, Arabasta, Ennies Lobby, etc and fight the 'copies' of the enemies, Lucci, Eneru, etc. They even spout some of the same lines they did, even though these copies know that they are copies. It's very
lazy, and kinda dumb considering Unlimited Adventure pulled off a very similar gimmick.
I would've
preferred an entirely new story or a retelling of the series, not this half-backed mishmash of events from the anime and a new storyline. It's a very lazy form of fanservice.
This is a third-person action-adventure game. You bring up to three different characters, the CPU taking over the other two although you can switch at will, and you go through rather open, but linear, areas, breaking stuff for
materials or bashing enemies for experience points. Ah, materials, just as with Unlimited Adventure, this game is a grindfest, albeit an
optional one. Materials are used to enhance words,
equippables on which I will expand later, rebuild the town(To open up shops or galleries) or enhance your tools. It's a
massive grind, but luckily, it's a 100% optional... but if you are somewhat of a completionist, like me, it's gonna affect the way you play. You will have to repeat the same
annoying button-pressing minigames any time you want to fish or catch bugs, which you will
need to in order to get certain upgrades, and have to destroy every single breakable you catch a glimpse of.
The game offers a ton of
optional sidequests, which will reward you with materials, experience and 'Words'. The sidequests are a bit of a chore really, you have to go through the same 7-8 areas, usually looking for a boss to kill. They get old pretty fast, and hard too. But not hard because they require skill, but hard because enemies will start doing too much damage and you too little. Nothing that grinding for experience can't solve. To tilt things in your favor, as you play you'll get the
aforementioned 'Words', which are basically equipment. Words are unique to each character and they raise(And sometimes lower) certain parameters, like attack damage. Then there's item words that function as skills and are used in battle for momentary boosts, or even healing. It's a decent idea, but the rate of acquisition is a bit low, I kept up to date with quests and didn't really have enough words to toy around until near the end of the game.
Repetition is one thing, but it is coupled with how
shallow the game is. Combat is relegated to three main buttons Y is a weak attack, X is a strong attack and A is a context sensitive 'I win button', basically, press it when the game tells you to and you'll avoid
any kind of damage coming your way. Still, the game's engine doesn't lend itself to creativity or combo-making. You just press the buttons, the enemy falls, you wait for it to get up and use another two or three button string.
Rinse and repeat. If you are not gonna have any depth, at least have style, but the game has
neither. For whatever reason, the game feels as if it's running in slow motion the entire time. It's not that the framerate is terrible,
au contraire, there are no framerate issues at all, the animations themselves are very slow, it's hard to explain, but if you look at it you'll notice that something is off. Mind you, the game looks beautiful(Well, the character models anyways), but the animations cycle
veeeeeeeeeeeeery slowly. Even worse, the feedback to your attacks doesn't feel very good,
sometimes it feels
as if you aren't hitting the enemies at all. Oh, and then there's the boss characters that can be used in the Coliseum mode... well, just as with Unlimited Adventure, not all characters are made the same, and most these feel very limited. Instead of remaking them from the ground up, they have the same boss-moveset they have as, well, boss enemies. Which means few moves, and very slow. Take Buggy, or Shanks, they are not very fun to use at all. Not to say that they aren't effective or strong, just that many of them aren't fun to play as.
The 3DS version has a few problems as well. For starters, the camera is too close to the characters back, so at times it can be hard to look at what's ahead, although the camera
mercifully zooms back the moment you engage in a fight. Moving the camera around without a circle pad pro is impossible, so you will have to learn to use the L button to set the camera behind your character's back. Switching characters is done by pressing their tiny buttons on the touchpad, which can be annoying in the heat of battle. You have to look below and tap their small icon. Then there are the 'Item Words', sure you can use the Directional Pad to scroll through your items on the bottom screen... but you are gonna have to look below to see just what you are equipping, which
once again, can be a chore during a battle. Then there's the costumes. Remember how Unlimited Adventure had three costume per character? In this game, if you want characters, you are gonna have to
pay up. The game doesn't even have original redesigns, like both Unlimited Adventure and Unlimited Cruise did.
I don't know if I got my message across, but I didn't really have much fun with the game. It's alright, at times, when it doesn't feel
soulless. Combat is dull and shallow, the tacked-on minigames for when fishing or capturing insects are annoying, the story is lazy at best... And yet,
nothing is fundamentally broken. It's painfully average, but that's all it's gonna get from me.
5.5 out of 10
No comments:
Post a Comment