Review #491: Beyond Good & Evil

 Beyond expectations for a sequel & disappointment for a prequel.

Both the game's cover and its mechanics make great job integrating the camera into their designs.

 Everyone knows about BG&E by now, critically praised yet criminally undersold, people have been clamoring for a sequel yet were only rewarded with a prequel. But I digress, often compared to The Legend of Zelda, Beyond Good & Evil is an adventure game that's only similar in the genre but not in anything else.

 You play as Jade, a reporter turned Resistance member in a futuristic world, inhabited by humans and anthropomorphic animal aliens, that's been suffering the invasion of the Domz while the valiant Alpha forces protect the populace. Or do they? That's Jade's job to find out. The story isn't anything to write home about, but what really deserves praise is the entire world of Beyond Good & Evil. There're a lot of different alien species to find, and photograph, a lot of different, colorful and appealing locales to visit and the game does an spectacular job of setting the mood with cartoony, yet lovingly built graphics and a top-notch soundtrack that gives every area its own personality. Beyond Good & Evil's world is an amazing place to visit.

Wonder if she wears green because she's called Jade or if she's called Jade because she wears gree!

 Most of the adventure is confined to a few islands and zones, and you travel most of the world by way of your Hovercraft. Your hovercraft must be upgraded in order to gain the ability to land lock-shots and jump and thus get to new areas, later in the game you'll also get a spaceship. Both vehicles feel great to control and I think it would've been amazing to add more focus to both of them. Most of the not-so optional content is gated behind naval and spatial exploration, but still...

 That only holds true for world exploration, since the game features a single big town and three different 'dungeon's that are explored on foot. Jade's able to crawl, dash, fight with her staff, shoot discs(Must be acquired), jump automatically and take photos with her camera. One of the surprisingly best features in the game is taking pictures, you're award money for photographing different species of bio-organisms, and while it sounds dumb, it grew addicting, so much so that when I fought new alien species I had to make it my job to sneak in a picture. Jade will be accompanied by a friendly NPC throughout most of her adventure, and they must be used on a few context-sensitive obstacles that only they can clear. There's a nasty 'Missing Partner' bug, luckily I didn't come across it, but it can make the entire game unwinnable, so be sure to

Hit their green tanks, that's their Achilles' heel!

 Combat is the area in which the game suffers the most, being repetitive, boring and kinda lame. When you fight enemies, Jade will automatically target her nearest enemy, and she can dodge with Square or attack with X. Many times I dodged an attack and then pressed X only to have Jade hit thin air, even though I was aiming with the left stick against my enemy. It's particularly boring since you'll be fighting Alpha forces most of the times, and their shields forces you to wait until they try to attack with their hammer and only then can you counter attack. Alien species are a bit more fun since you don't need to be on the defensive, but after a short while you'll have seen every single enemy type, and combat never evolves.

 There're also a few stealth sections, some you can go in guns ablazing. others implement a few turrets that instantly kill you if you are spotted by guards to make them mandatory. Honestly, there were few times in which there was more than a single correct 'route' to solve them, but I felt pretty proud of myself on the few occasions I managed to exploit the AI and kill every guard on those mandatory sections, even if it took a couple of retries.

You can hog all Health upgrades if you want, death is a slap in the wrist after all.

 In order to upgrade your Hovercraft you will need to collect Pearls. While you'll be gifted a few, the rest must be found. The problem is... upgrades are mandatory to progress the plot. I regularly dabbled in side-content, because it was fun, so I was never in want of pearls... until I got to the end game and you're demanded a whopping 50 pearls in order to continue. It sounds worse than it really is since you can get a bunch of pearls from a few choice sidequests, but it's still kinda crappy. And I understand why they did it, without the padding the game would've been really short, but this sort of grinding cheapens the overall experience. And I was having fun fulfilling all sidequests, some which can be relatively lengthy, and puzzles, but some of that fun is lost when you're doing it because you're required to proceed instead of being allowed to do it if you want.

 Lastly, the game doesn't perform very well on the PS2, the framerate frequently tanks, although not to an overly annoying degree. That said, the game runs poorly on certain PS2 slims, in my case I got the common audio bugs that make certain sounds loop until the game loads another area, and also had trouble loading The Crypt while close to the end, it froze twice before it finally loaded the next scene. But I've heard that the game won't even run on certain models, which definitely sucks.

You can shoot disks on their green tasks to distract them and stealthily go past guards... or finish them off with a swift kick. 

 Beyond Good & Evil is a pretty good game, but even laying aside all the technical issues present with the PS2 port it can't be denied that combat is pretty poor and lackluster, and the forced grind for pearls kinda puts a damper on an otherwise enjoyable adventure. The game could've also expanded on the vehicle exploration aspect on the game, since controlling vehicles was sorta fun. In the end, I wouldn't necessarily call it a classic or an underrated game, but it's definitely worth a look.
 7.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Beyond Good and Evil

 It's kinda growing on me. Kinda.

She can take my picture any time.

 Alright, so time for another game that I used to play back when I was younger. I'm pretty sure that I bought it because of the hype surrounding it. Anyways, I don't quite remember how far I got, but certainly not very far, and I don't remember how much I liked it or not either.

 I've played a little bit, got inside the mines and got Pey'J's tool and that's about it. While I'm not impressed, and the busted framerate doesn't help, I feel like I'm slowly starting to like it. The world seems very interesting and lively, even though it applies stereotypes up the wazzoo, and they seem to have mixed the Italian stereotype with the Spanish one....

 But the part that sucks the most? I'm playing on a Slim PS2, which means... I'm subject to the infamous sound bug. It's quite annoying.

Review #490: Rygar - The Legendary Adventure

 A Greek and Roman fusion of melodrama with a dash of Onimusha and God of War.

Of shields and gods and titans.

 Rygar - The Legendary Adventure is a bit of forgotten little game. it did the greek-action game-with-chained weapons thing years before God of War was a thing, and closely followed in the footsteps of Onimusha and Devil May Cry. I can't say for sure why it was forgotten by time, although the Wii-remake with motion controls and a white-haired ridiculous replacement for Rygar probably didn't help its reputation, but I can say that the game stand the test of time quite well.

 In the game you play as the eponymous Rygar, a gladiator in a world that's a fusion of Roman and Greek culture. He's about to be rewarded by a sort-of princess, who gets kidnapped and Rygar thrown to the pits of the colosseum. But it's alright, a deity confers Rygar with the Diskarmor, a shield with an edge that's chained to Rygar's arm, which works for both offense and defense, armed with it Rygar now ventures forth to brave the gods and titans and whatever stands in his way. The story is alright, but the voice acting, dialogue and script is... Horrible. Seriously, it's bad, it's cheesy and it takes itself seriously, characters will spit exposition just because and it makes no sense. Sadly, while I'm the kind of person that adores ridiculous, over-the-top stories... this one doesn't quite hit that sweetspot of 'so bad it's good', so it's just dumb. And if you die, which you probably will, you can't skip cutscenes... although you can skip the credits. And did I mention that there's a Britney Spears look-alike that performs a musical number near the end of the game? That's a thing that happened.

Worms are considered Titans in this game, and you'll be slaying a lot of those.

 The game borrows a lot from Onimusha and Devil May Cry, meaning fixed camera angles and a mixture of exploration and combat. As you play through the game you'll come across obstacles that you can't clear, such as long gaps or switches you can't press... but advancing through the game will earn you the abilities you need, such as turning your disk armor into a grappling hook or stomping on switches. Backtracking is never needed, the few times you are sent back to previous areas you have immediate access to new roads, but re-exploring previous areas with new abilities will usually reward you with collectibles to enhance your abilities or unlock stuff in the gallery.

 While it has a combo-counter, the game is more Onimusha than Devil May Cry, so no fancy juggling, even though you get various different combos, some that must be found, and two attack buttons(Square for weak attacks, Triangle for stronger moves). You can block with the R1 button, but there's no dodging, although I found the slide move useful to dodge some boss' projectiles. There's also a magic gauge that can be used to summon monsters, but I found their damage output to be pathetic in comparison to the damage I could do with combos, so in the end I just used my magic to heal, once I found the ability, and only used summons on the second-to-last-boss which requires you to do so.

The game looks beautiful, and there's a lot of different environments to traverse.

 You'll find three different disk armors, and each one has a different use. The Hades shield is for long-range attacks, the Heaven disk is very slow but covers a wide area and the Sea diskarmor is very fast, but has pathetic range and does little damage. Every shield feels different, and I did switch between them(L2/R2) throughout the game, because the game presented situations that favored different disks. For instance, while I favor the Sea diskarmor, it was risky closing in on some bosses so I had to use the Hades shield, and at times there were too many enemies and I couldn't dispatch them quickly enough with the Sea diskarmor, so I had to switch to the Heaven shield and deal with them. The three disks were implemented brilliantly, so kudos for that.

 You can level up Rygar stats(Life, Attack and Defense) by finding collectibles, some are hidden behind objects or hidden walls, but sometimes enemies will drop these too. There's a separate currency, Sfaira, that can be found in the same way, but these are used to power up your shields. Your shields will be maxed before you know it, so don't worry about grinding. Lastly, hidden in the game are Mystic stones that you can equip on your shields for extra abilities, like healing with L1 and square, more attack power, more defense, changing how some attacks work, etc. It's a fairly neat addition, and some stones can only be found on certain difficulty settings!

When in doubt, flee.

 The game starts off rather tough, but as you level up Rygar it'll get easier, trust me. You also need to get used to how the game works, since combat against bosses is more... methodical. Don't expect to pull-off entire combos, instead, you'll probably have to look for small openings, land in a few hits and retreat. You'll also need to figure out what can be blocked and what must be dodged and how. You can't just mash buttons willy-nilly either, since once you throw the first attack you'll be locked in that direction for the duration of the combo. It's not perfect, it's a bit stiff, but you can get used to it. The game runs for about 4 hours, probably more if you are more meticulous with your exploration.

 Rygar the Legendary Adventure is a good little game that fell through the cracks of most gamer's radars even though critical reception at the time was fairly positive. Which is a shame, since the game was pretty good at its time, and it's still really good now. It's most glaring detriment, probably, is that nothing about it is noteworthy and how much it lacks in visual spectacle, because as good as the environments are, there's little memorable about the action itself.
 7.5 out of 10

Now Playing: Rygar - The Legendary Adventure

 That's definitely Britney Spears.

The halo over his head is kinda an overkill, ain't it?

 Since I played a game I hadn't played before from a franchise I used to play when I was younger(Way of the Samurai 1 and 2!), now it's time to play a game I actually used to play when I was younger. I don't remember how far I got, but I do remember defeating the blue-winged guy and getting both Diskarmors. I think I used to like the Skyblue one and hated the yellow one. I think.

 Anyways, I just defeated the first boss and entered the Elysium Shrine(Or something like that) and I kinda like it. Combat is kinda limited, it feels like a mixture of God of War's chain-styled combat(Although this game came first!) with Onimusha's exploration and set-up. I'm also amassing points but the game didn't let me spend them yet.

 It seems like the game will be kinda tough, considering that the first boss killed me once. The first boss! But the stages themselves are easy, at least so far. What really struck me as odd is the fact that there's no dodging, only blocking. Which probably didn't seem weird at the time, but man, it's hard getting used to it!

Review #489: Samurai Western

  Don't bring a sword to a gunfight.... unless you're a Samurai.

Character design and art-direction gets an A+.

 Have you ever wondered who'd win in a fight between a Cowboy and a Samurai? Acquire set out to answer that question, and them being Japanese won't give them any bias towards the winner... or not. Often called a Way of the Samurai spin-off, Samurai Western is a very different game that was clearly made on a tight budget.

 You play as Gojiro, a Samurai in search of his missing brother, albeit on a mission of revenge. His tracks lead Gojiro to the wild, wild west where he'll have to duke it out with gunmen and outlaws and his missing brother, who has forsaken the way of the sword in exchange for a couple of six-shooters. The story is very cheesy, characters are ridiculous and the situations are very over the top. I loved it. Cutscenes preface and give closure to each stage and they are fairly interesting to watch... as ugly as the graphics are.

It looks really cool... most of the time.

 The game is divided into 16 stages, with 5 bonus unlockable stages for a total of 21. Be forewarned, the game is very short. Your first playthrough will take about 3 hours, if you don't skip cutscenes, but as I replayed the game on Hard, skipping cutscenes, I realized how quickly I was plowing through the game. There's a lot of replayability thanks to the many unlockables, a Survival Mode as well as a Hard difficulty setting... that lets you unlock other characters(They play just as Gojiro, but it's still a nice bonus), not to mention the dozens upon dozens of different accessories you can find to customize Gojiro(Or the other characters) as well as different swords. Oh, and there's co-op, albeit with some limitations, the camera follows player 1, the second player must play as Ralph the cowboy and Ralph fights with a gun, which is admittedly lamer than Gojiro's combo-based gameplay.

 Alright, so how does the game play? Square is your attack button, X jumps and circle can be used to either dodge or deflect bullets. Your square attacks can also reflect bullets if you time it right. You can also grab boxes and other small objects and throw them around, but it's pretty ineffective. Landing blows increases a 'master' gauge beneath your life bar, which is used to enter Master mode by pressing L1, which lasts for as long as you have energy on this gauge, depending on your weapon you'll gain different perks and bonuses. But you can also wait for it to fill completely, in which case you can enter Ultimate Master Mode, which makes you invulnerable and grants you one-hit kills on common enemies. There's also a bizarre first person camera by tapping R2 which is... it's something else, but I guess it can lend itself to a few laughs.

Get ready to fend off hordes of identical looking gunmen.

 Swords you earn give Gojiro different stances, like one-handed letting you double jump, or double swords in which case you lose the ability to grab stuff. Honestly, it's mostly minutiae, but at least they put some work in. Playing the game you'll be able to level up your equipped accessories and your equipped blade, which is a good thing since it will give you better stat bonuses. Gojiro himself levels up as you finish stages and you can allocate bonus stat points in either extending your Health, extending your Master gauge, increasing your damage or defense. The accessory system is pretty neat since you can relocate, rotate or change the size of every accessory you equip.

 Sadly the game is simple to a fault. You'll be doing little more than mashing square button as you defeat the same enemies over and over and over again. Even stages are reused, sometimes changing the time of the day. Sometimes. Bosses have very memorable appearances and personalities, but as far as the fights go... they are pretty lame, and Raddo, Gojiro's brother, is a pain in the butt to fight, clearly they should've designed his fight better than to have the player perform 1-2 slashes in fear of getting counter-attacked. The game itself also feels rough around the edges, like the terrible dodging animation or how poor collision detection works with stairs, don't be surprised if you go through them back to the floor, happened to me twice.

The way of the sword is a deadly one.

 Samurai Western has a lot of soul, but the small budget really hurt it. And you can tell that they tried to make up for what it lacked in substance with extras, like a silly, but functional, two player mode or the copious amount of accessories to put on Gojiro. Samurai Western has more bad things than good things, but the bad is never TOO bad, my time with the game was a fun one but the game needed more work, more variety and a bigger budget.
 6.0 out of 10

Now Playing: Samurai Western

 Screams of low budget.

I love the artwork

 You've probably heard of Samurai Western, you've never played it but you've probably heard of it. People either love it or hate it and... I'm up to stage five and I neither love it nor hate it. The game's been called a Way of the Samurai spin-off, but frankly, I don't see the resemblance.

 Anyways, the game feels like a low budget game thanks to its poor graphics, poor animations(Cutscenes and gameplay both) and wonky gameplay. This one time I was going up some stairs and I just fell through them to the floor. The mechanics are also pretty barebones: You mash the square buttons and defeat enemies until the game decides you've killed enough, don't worry, they don't stop spawning. Ever. And that's the game in a nutshell.

 There're a few extras, like customizing your character with accessories and different swords with different stances, but they are just fluff.

Review #488: Final Fantasy XII

 The beginning of the end.

Way too many blonde characters.

 Could you believe me if I told you that at some point in time it felt good to be a Final Fantasy fan? I remember back in the early 2000's when Square just went and announced Final Fantasy IX, X(Featuring a brown-haired Tidus!) and XI. And it was hype. Final Fantasy really meant something. And then XIII happened and it ruined the franchise forever, even XV couldn't fix everything that was broken. But what... what if I told you that everything started falling apart with XII? It was, at the time, the Final Fantasy that spent the most time in development hell, and while it doesn't really show it does still present flaws that would eventually be XIII's downfall.

 The story centers around the Sky Pirate Balthier and the princess Amalia(Ashe), even though the real protagonist is the land of Ivalice. The game's cast is probably the weakest it's ever been, which is surprising considering that there are only 6 characters: Vaan, the guy that you start playing as and is front-and-center on the game's cover but has minimal impact on the plot, Penelo, his friend who is just as relevant and receives as much development(Zero), Balthier and Fran, sky pirates who are the game's most interesting characters, Basch, the soldier who was imprisoned with treachery and Ashe, the princess that wants to stop the, erm, 'Empire' from taking over the land of Dalmasca. People have said that the story is more 'subtle' in this one, and more about politics and... and they are pretty much Rick and Morty fans telling you that FFXII's plot is for smart people. Which it's not. Want a game that gets political intrigue between warring kingdoms right? Play Suikoden. And mind you, I'm not saying the plot is bad, it simply is uninteresting and the main ensemble cast are but tools to move the plot forward and don't get as much development as they could.

There'll be a lot of grinding on your path to victory.

 A little MMORPG game called Final Fantasy XI happened between Final Fantasy X and XII, and as luck would have it, XI performed very well for Square. This translated into making XII borrow elements from MMORPGs. I hate MMORPGs. Which kinda sucks because the entire game plays like a MMORPG with story elements. You'll notice the MMORPG elements immediately, as towns are large and environments are massive.... and it also takes a long while to go from point A to point B. You can unlock a few fast-travel options between orange save crystals or town's aerodromes but there's still a lot of walking involved. And you're encouraged to travel on foot since the game is a grindfest, like pretty much any other MMORPG.

 For instance, take the game's main sidequest repertoire: Hunts. First you have to find a bar and read the notice board. Now, instead of hunting the monster, you have to track down the NPC and then you have to track down the monster, easier said than done, since a few monsters have unexplained spawn conditions. Like clearing the entire area of enemies and waiting for five minutes. FIVE MINUTES. Or sometimes you have to enter-and-exit an area and hope that the enemy spawns. Or enter-and-exit an area until it rains or there's a sandstorm so that the monster might spawn. And after beating it you have to return to the NPC to claim your reward.

Character design is mediocre, but monsters are pretty alright.

 And boy, are in you in for a treat if you want to get the ultimate equipment. These weapons can only be bought after selling certain amount of certain loot. Oh, did I mention that enemies don't carry money enemy more? You have to hope that they drop valuable loot, instead of pebbles, and then sell it for money. Anyways, you have to sell certain amount of very hard to find loot. This loot might require you to exploit one-time elite enemies, making them spawn(They have something like 40% spawn rate), stealing from them(6% chance of success every time you use the steal command!) and then run away, make them de-spawn and then return and make them respawn, doing this until you have enough material. Other times you might have to hope for 6% drops out of 40% spawn chance enemies. You'll be grinding. A lot.

 Which is kinda OK, since in order to do anything in the game you need License points. Want new techniques or spells? Buying them is not enough, you have to buy their license. Want to equip anything? Gotta get the correct license. Even the Gambit system, of which I'll talk later, has you acquire slot-by-slot on the license board. It's gonna take a while to max your characters. And while eventually every character will be able to do everything, their stats do push them in certain directions. Vaan's good at everything, while Fran is bad at everything. No, seriously, Fran has the worst stats in the game. And, as if it was a cruel joke, Balthier comes equipped with a gun and Fran with a bow, but they have slower animations than any other character with those weapons. Absolutely brilliant.

Making it like a MMORPG probably was the wrong direction to take the series in

 And now let me talk about other quirks, like chests. Chests have different spawn rates, and even after they spawn, they have a chance of having Gil or an item, and even then, there's only a couple of different weapons they could contain. It's a very weird design choice. Heck, the game's best weapon, the Zodiac Spear, will probably be forsaken by most players, since it requires a few very specific, very easy to find chests to be kept closed. And did I mention that there're invisible traps on the ground that could kill your characters or inflict status effects? There're accessories that make you immune to them, but why waste your only accessory slot? You could also cast Libra on any character and be able to see them, but that's annoying. In the end I kept Ashe equipped with her bangle item, that put her in a permanent state of Libra. Dumb. And even though you will dodge traps, even though you can see them on the floor... the AI companions love stepping on them and taking down the team with them.

 And, this being a MMORPG-styled game, how does it deal with the player going where he or she isn't supposed to? By making everything based on your equipment. It doesn't matter how overleveled you are(If you go after hunts you'll be overleveled pretty fast), it doesn't matter how good your strategy is: You will receive a ton of damage and deal negligible amounts of. That's because your equipment sucks, so if you can't handle an optional boss just advance the plot further and unlock the next tier of equipment and watch that bastard burn.

If there's something to be praised, it's the graphics, Square has always been meticulous on that front.

 Alright, let's finally delve into the combat system. Random encounters are a thing of the past, now enemies will be roaming the environments and most of them will engage you if they see you. Combat is in real time, albeit autoattacks are automatic. You can press X at any moment to halt the battle and issue commands to any of your three party members. It feels too automatic for my taste, and the game implements the ATB(You have to wait for a gauge to fill before your actions go through) which makes it look kinda silly when your characters stand around doing nothing while they wait for the ATB to fill and finally use their autoattack. Characters on reserve don't receive experience points, although they do gain License points, and you can switch characters almost at any time. As a matter of fact, if your entire party falls, you can switch to the other three and keep going.

 On their own, CPU allies will do nothing unless instructed, which is why you can customize Gambits. Gambits are the game's way of not having to program a smart AI, you can issue 9 different instructions and lay them in a priority order. You select an object(Ally: Any, Ally Health < 40%, Ally mana < 30%, Ally: Poison, Enemy: Protect, Enemy: Highest HP, etc) and an action(Attack, Heal, Magic Spell, Item). Back in the day many people praised it since 'Eventually you can just put the joystick down and watch everything happen'. And it's because of them that Final Fantasy XIII was such a disaster that played itself. Thanks for nothing. And the best part about this system? Gambit slots must be unlocked with license points, unless you want to be restricted to a useless pair of slots, and the different Objects and Actions must be found or bought. Which means that it's not until late in the game that you can finally make in-depth strategies. Ridiculous.

Fret not, Bombs aren't as lethal as they've been in previous games

 Limit breaks are here too, called 'Quickenings' and each one consumes a third out of your entire mana(Actually, every time you learn a quickening on the license board(Of course) you get a new segment of mana, up to three) and can be chained together with other quickenings. Chaining quickenings takes a long time, because you can't skip them, they are visually unimpressive and how many you can chain together is pretty much dependent on luck. They are pretty much only useful to finish off a boss since you'll be left without mana afterwards. Speaking of bosses, high-level bonus bosses and final bosses will start using Perfect Defense when near death which makes them invulnerable for about a minute. IT'S SO MUCH FUN HAVING TO WAIT FOR IT TO RUN OUT.

 I don't think Final Fantasy XII is a good game, but, BUT even though I've nothing but complaints, even though I don't think the game does anything well... I still had fun with it. It has that grandiose Final Fantasy-ish feel to it that makes it feel special, that makes it feel unlike other JRPGs. So while I can't say that I liked it, while I can't say that it's a good game... It's still somewhat fun to play, whenever you aren't grinding or wasting your time that is.
 6.0 out of 10