Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

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Title: Star Fox Zero

Platform: Wii U

What is it?: A remake of the N64 classic Star Fox 64 (which itself was a remake of the much more rudimentary SNES original).

Level of completion: Unlocked all the extra routes, levels, and events, so I've beaten pretty much the entire game. Did not get the highest score on every level, however.

What I liked:

• The fun animated short that was included that functions as a prologue to the story in the game. It's not going to blow anyone away, but I always find cross-media storytelling techniques like this to be, if nothing else, quite interesting.
• So, in this game, you have two viewpoints: one on the TV that's third-person and gives you a sense of where your ship is, like in a traditional Star Fox game, and then one on the GamePad that's in first-person. Aiming in this game is totally liberated from the manner in which you fly your ship, so you use gyro controls to aim your blaster. And, despite my significant misgivings with this dual-screen set-up, I'll say that I really found the gyro aiming to be responsive and fun to use. As always, Nintendo reveals themselves to be the masters of the effective use of motion controls in gaming.
• Ditching single-screen gameplay allows you to pull off some interesting maneuvers, such as shooting at a target while flying away from it, for example. It also allows you to have interesting camera viewpoints in some of the huge boss battles, instead of the game forcing the camera to stay locked behind the Arwing the entire time.
• Some of the unlockable content is interesting. For example, there's one level that you can go back to after you receive a certain upgrade to your Arwing, and you can unlock a level where you play as Peppy Hare and take on a gigantic enemy battleship by yourself. It's not the best thing ever, but stuff like this is fun. You can also unlock some extra matches against Star Wolf's crew.

What I disliked:

Oh boy...

So there are problems in virtually every area of this game. I'll just start with the dual-screen set-up, which is the most immediate and obvious issue with this game: the unwieldy dual-screen set-up. Maintaining a sense of awareness of both is crucial, considering aiming is far too imprecise on the TV, but you still need to reference it to make sure you're not into obstacles or whatnot. This makes it where your attention is constantly split between the two screens, which is pretty much constantly stressful, even after you learn to adapt to it somewhat. Unlike a game on the Nintendo DS, where the two screens are extremely close, you're having to look down in your hands to up at a TV, back and forth, as you play. It's extremely unpleasant. What this does is rob this rail shooter of the operational simplicity that is the biggest appeal and hallmark of the rail shooter in the first place. It inserts this big, middling control issue directly in-between you and the game, and even after you learn how to manage it enough to complete levels easily, it definitely saps most of the fun out of the experience. It's even worse in free-range levels, with a lot of movement and dodging, as with certain bosses, where I constantly felt like I was fighting the controls more than the enemy itself.

That's hardly the end of this game's issues, though. For one thing, it's incredibly derivative. A lot of the missions in this game are just straight up lifted, aesthetics and all, from Star Fox 64, and, unlike that game, it almost never successfully introduces new level designs or engaging mechanics. There's a sense of "been there, done that" the whole way through. It's incredibly uninspired.

When the game does attempt to do new things, it's pretty much always to its detriment. One area where this becomes especially clear is when the game introduces new vehicles to the mix. The worst of these is the Gyrowing, which is a clunky, difficult to control, and slow moving helicopter of sorts where you spend the majority of a level awkwardly navigating your way from one boring environmental puzzle to another. I'm not sure what the game is going for in these levels, but it's pretty much the opposite of what you'd want or expect from a high-speed space shooter. The walker (or, as I call it, the Star Chicken, because it looks disturbingly similar to a chicken) itself is a total nightmare to control, and any level that employees it heavily often sees me frequently crash into walls as I try to navigate the level geometry. The game pushes Star Chicken transformations in boss battles, but, more often than not, I find it to be such a hindrance that I'll opt for the Arwing even when its not suited for a level. This becomes especially the case in the obnoxious final boss encounter with Andross, where the challenge really comes from trying to juggle multiple different styles of control simultaneously to even do something as simple as move, aim at the boss, and shoot where you want. Apparently the Star Chicken was introduced in Star Fox 2 on the SNES, but, having never played that, I don't know if it's any more tolerable there.

Visually, the game is bland, and reminds me of what a launch GameCube game might look like upscaled to 720p. This is probably due to the game streaming two different views of the game at all times, which must be costly in terms of resource requirements. Of course, the game doesn't do nearly enough new stuff with this to justify moving away from the series' traditionally single-screen gameplay.

The narrative presentation is especially unambitious and does nothing that the original Star Fox 64 didn't already do decades ago. The music is serviceable, but the best tracks are all taken directly from SF64.It fails as a story, fails as a tech showcase, and even fails the basic test of being a fun, approachable rail shooter.

Final thoughts: Innovative in ways that didn't require innovation and unchanged in ways that make it feel stale, this game represents a solid backward step for the franchise as a whole. I really wanted to like it, but I just didn't. Definitely not the worst game ever made, but I do think it deserved to be savaged the way it did. This lack of polish is totally unacceptable for a major Nintendo property.

Score: 4/10

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Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - Torna: The Golden Country

Platform: Nintendo Switch

What is it: An expansive DLC prequel to Xenoblade Chronicles 2. You play as Lora, an orphaned Driver who is searching for her mother alongside her two trusted Blade companions, Jin and Haze. Through circumstance, she becomes involved in a wider-scale quest to help save civilization from a legendary Blade called Malos who is intent on wiping out human life.

Level of completion: The entirety of the main plot alongside the vast majority of side-quests. By the end, I logged about 30 hours into the game.

Thoughts:

• First, this game is an expansion in the truest sense. While the game's 25 - 30 hour play time (longer if you want to complete everything) is a fraction of the time it'll take you to beat the epic base game (XC2 took me 105 hours to complete, and that didn't include most of the game's side-content; it could potentially take hundreds of hours to see everything), it's still incredibly impressive for a DLC campaign and compares favorably to the playtime of most AAA retail releases. More crucially, the game mostly puts this playtime to good use, and I was enthralled by the story from beginning to end. In any other genre, this would be a full-fat retail game. This feeling of "fullness" extends to almost every aspect of the production.
• Arguably the defining aspect of this DLC, and its most controversial feature, is the extreme degree to which it puts an emphasis on side-quests. The two explorable titans in this game (for those unacquainted with XC2, the landmasses in these games are enormous flying creatures called Titans) play host to a large number of characters, and the majority of them are unique, named people who you'll help over the course of the game. The focus on sidequests is so central that there are several times that the game will stop you from progressing the "main plot" until you've completed a certain number of them (this is framed as adding people to your community: helping people via side-quests will win them over to your 'side,' to to speak, and this is depicted in its own sub-menu as an expanding circle of trust). While this is seen as a crippling flaw by some people, it didn't bother me too much.
• Speaking of side-quests... they're excellent here. This is easily the best set of side-quests I've encountered in any Xenoblade game to date. Almost every one is substantive to some degree, so there's almost nothing in the way of plain fetch quests here. I mean, you might have to go fetch something, but it's to do something, and it ties into a character's life, and it's incredibly well presented. Also really neat, given this game's focus on community and learning about the lives of others, is gradually figuring out how the people you encounter throughout the game are related. This is all done very organically, so you get a lot of moments where you're surprised by a connection you hadn't seen before. "Oh, so this person is behaving this way because of the person I encountered in a side-quest hours ago." It's very neat.
• The battle system has been revamped and streamlined. While combat isn't quite as deep as it was in the base game, it also seems much more intuitive now. Battles are generally faster and more thrilling. There's a cool "tag" system where drivers and blades take turns actively battling with enemies. Their "swap arts" can have different effects (if you've inflicted "break" on any enemy, for example, main character Lora can swap with her Blade, Jin, who will topple the enemy, temporarily subduing them and setting them up for a longer driver combo). Swapping with a character, in a neat, Bloodborne-esque twist, can also help recover recently lost health, encouraging the player to continually cycle between blades and drivers to keep their health up and continually set up new combos, especially for chain attacks. It's all very dynamic.
• The weird fanservice moments and more risque character designs from the base game seem to be almost entirely absent. I'm apathetic about this, but it might make some people happy (or, hell, disappointed).
• The soundtrack is still high quality stuff, although a bit conservative insofar as it uses a lot of the music from the base game. Still, the new battle theme is positively sexy, and older Gormott has a fantastic remix for its theme.
• Torna has seen some sort of change in its graphics engine that has resulted in somewhat more stable performance and a higher level of detail in environments. The game is simply stunning on the TV, and I didn't notice huge resolution and framerate dips when the game was docked. This, unfortunately, is not the case in handheld mode, but it still fares better than the base game when undocked: things could get fuzzy in the midst of really heated battles with multiple enemies and flashy skills going off, but I never noticed the game reducing itself to an impressionistic smear on the screen when just adventuring around a large environment, as happened to frequently in the XC2.
• The structure of the game is sort of brilliant, and reminds me, in a way, of the classic Nintendo game "The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask." As I mentioned before, a significant portion of the experience is structured around side-quests that allow you to help and befriend the people of (old) Gormott and Torna. The plot is also, as mentioned, building up to an incredibly tragic climax. As in Majora's Mask, it's a game where you continually insinuate yourself into the lives of people you know are soon going to have their worlds quite literally torn apart. This brings a sense of irony and sadness to even the game's silliest segments. The constant harmony between love and sadness, lighthearted reverie and crushing sadness help to give Torna: The Golden Country its very unique feel.
• The final main story boss fight is more engaging than it was in the base game, and introduces a neat mechanic that helps boost the sense of urgency as you fight. And then the true final boss fight happens, and it helps bring closure to an element of the game you thought had been abandoned near the beginning. It also helps develop another aspect of the story that becomes more relevant in the base game.
• Gort is actually a pretty good villain. Sometimes the most satisfying monsters to slay are the ones who live closest to home, as opposed to the ones who objectively pose the biggest threat.

Verdict: I loved everything about this game. This is the first Xenoblade game I can say I've well and truly fully enjoyed with almost no reservations about the game design. It simply excels on every level and, if it were longer, I would call it my favorite entry in the series. As it stands, I think it has to be considered alongside the base game it sprung from, which certainly elevates my already pretty high opinion of Xenoblade 2.

9.5/10

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Two completions recently:

Bravely Second: End Layer: I absolutely LOVED this game. While I wouldn't say that it's 100% essential to play Bravely Default first, it's a definite benefit; this game often references events in that game, particularly if you engage in the side quests. Two of the playable characters from the previous game also return as part of your party.

Positives

• While the plot wasn't award-winning, it was definitely entertaining and well done overall. The nice thing about the Bravely series as a whole is that there isn't a lot of clear-cut good guy/bad guy, black/white scenarios. There are a ton of gray areas. The motives of those in the antagonistic faction, the Glanz Empire, in this game are explored quite well. I also love how they went into more detail about the events surrounding the Great Plague and what led up to it. The plot DOES get pretty weird near the end, but it's by no means bad.
• Like the previous game, the main playable characters AND antagonists are fleshed out quite well. Reading their interactions, learning their likes and dislikes, their motives, and their eccentricities really turns them into more than just pretty faces. The side quests also serve to further expand upon some characters from Bravely Default as well.
• The side quests themselves are, on the whole, well-written and entertaining in many cases. None of these are essential, but completing them will earn the player jobs that were available in the previous game.
• Experimenting with jobs in this title is more fun (and easier, more on that in a sec) than ever. Many of the new jobs are fun and useful. A few jobs from the previous game are missing (I particularly miss Arcanist, but that combined with another job was borderline broken. XD), but the new jobs more than make up for that.
• Combat is quite fun for a RPG and can be chained to make leveling the characters and their jobs much faster. The Brave and Default system is back and just as exploitable as ever, and the wild card that is Bravely Second also has its uses...particularly with bosses later in the game.
• The musical score is quite a pleasure to listen to, and a couple of tunes jump immediately into my mind: Path to the Celestial Realm, Gathelatio's theme, and Tiz's theme.
• This game, as well as its predecessor, is among the most visually pleasing on the Nintendo 3DS. Where the art really shines is when the player is in a city or another important area. Some of these assets are reused from the previous game, but great care was made to portray the vastness, majesty, or foreboding edifices of many areas of the game. This is truly one of those games where I think playing in 3D is to the player's benefit.
• The fourth wall breaking. Hoooo boy, this game takes that to a whole new level.

Neutral

• This game reuses many dungeons from Bravely Default, but most of these are completely avoidable if the player avoids side quests. Even so, there are items to gather here and, for Bestiary completionists, new monsters to beat up. The game does introduce some new dungeons.

Negative (These are more personal nitpicks than true negatives; clearly some will feel differently.)

• I sort of feel like Yoko was shoehorned into the plot. Her backstory is interesting, sure, but I don't feel like she contributed very much overall other than some foreshadowing and her asterisk. The part where she appeared in the main plot sort of seemed like filler.
• I wish we had learned more about Ringabel's involvement with the multi-dimensional organization he was in, but that was mostly explored in a side quest. Maybe this could be expanded upon in another game in the series? If I recall, a third game has more or less been confirmed to be in development....

In short, BS: EL is how you do a sequel right. I highly recommend this to any JRPG fan, but I encourage anyone interested in this game to play through Bravely Default first.

Super Castlevania IV - Shorter game, shorter impressions. I enjoyed this game overall, though some later stages seem to exist to annoy you more than anything.

Positives

• The music was definitely my favorite thing about this game. The tracks were well-done. Very atmospheric and catchy. Go 90s!
• The backgrounds and some of the enemies, when considering the time period this game released in, have aged pretty well visually. They definitely nailed the Gothic atmosphere. Simon himself seems pretty blurry, but that could just be how the game is rendered on my TV screen. (I played this one on the SNES Classic)
• They had some pretty cool mechanics in the backgrounds and stages here. That rotating trap level (Stage IV?) was especially cool. The game certainly must've put the original SNES through its paces.
• The combat/gameplay here was pretty fun overall. Not only can you throw various weapons and use some pretty cool artifacts besides, but the whip definitely has more functionality here. I'll be honest: I've never been able to get into the first three Castlevania titles due to their sheer trolling difficulty.

Negatives

• Minus a few cases, most of the boss fights just weren't that exciting for me; I found them annoying more than anything. There were only two that I truly enjoyed: The lovers/dancing couple and Dracula himself.
• Personal nitpick: While I know that this game is by no means meant to be a cakewalk, I still found some of the borderline trolling in later stages to be annoying; I do not enjoy being repeatedly knocked off of a stage and to my death due to a fireball that JUST edged its way in where it wouldn't at other times or because some enemy was lucky enough to throw a bone through the floor. The game usually didn't feel unfair, but there were a few times where that did seem to be the case.

Overall, I recommend this game to someone who's looking for something a bit dark and challenging. Again, it normally doesn't feel unfair, but some later stages can certainly seem that way.