Topic: Games You Recently Beat?

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Some plot spoilers in this post for the game I'm going to discuss, since they're intimately connected to the premise and gameplay.

Clock Tower 3

Platform: PS2

Completion Status: Finished the game nearly 100% on my first go. Collected 240,000 rooder points (whatever those are). Played around a bit with the optional costumes.

The Clock Tower series began life as a 1995 Japan-only horror game on the SNES. A classic point-and-click adventure game, it distinguished itself with a focus on multiple endings, gameplay that encourages the player to run and hide to avoid danger (a design choice that has become more popular in the West with the advent of indie horror games like Outlast and Alien: Isolation), and, most iconically, a garden shear-wielding slasher appropriately dubbed "Scissorman." A 1996 PS1 sequel (which was localized as just "Clock Tower") made it overseas and continued the story of the first game. A spinoff (marketed as a sequel overseas) also released on the PS1 in 1998, but was disconnected from the mythology of the original. It wasn't until a few years later, in 2002, that a true numbered sequel released for the series.

Clock Tower 3 distinguishes itself from these earlier entries in a number of ways. Perhaps the most immediately notable change is how it ditched the point-and-click adventure gameplay of previous entries in favor of (then) contemporary survival horror game design, with (limited) combat interactions, an emphasis on creative fixed camera angles, and full 3D movement of the character.

In Clock Tower 3, you play as Alyssa Hamilton, a teenaged boarding school student on the cusp of her fifteenth birthday, who returns to her family's mansion to try and find her mother, who had mailed Alyssa an alarming letter instructing her to go into hiding. She encounters a sinister black-clad man, who claims to have kidnapped her mother, and through her exploration of the mansion discovers a bizarre family history that involves travelling through time to combat an evil, supernatural underworld.

There's really not a lot to do in this mansion. Instead, it's a hub world of sorts. Like Peach's Castle in Super Mario 64, it contains a series of portals that transport you to other points in space and time, where you (as Alyssa) will explore a mystery and encounter a stalker.

Unlike the more grounded, giallo film-esque atmosphere and plots of previous Clock Tower games, this entry is pure urban fantasy. If you've ever watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, then the plot should sound familiar: young women in Alyssa's family actually have superpowers of sorts. Termed "Rooders," they have, for countless generations, protected the world from Subordinates, evil Entities who infect humans and drive them to murder. There's a fairly convoluted mythology that is introduced in this game, involving numerous ranks of supernatural monstrosities, bizarre heart-eating rituals, resurrected Victorian-era noblemen, and time travel. Actually, that last bit is relevant to the discussion about the gameplay I'm leading into, because apparently these supernatural warrior girls travel through time to defeat their enemies, and the portals you'll be travelling through will transport you to various points in England's 20th century history.

When you enter a portal and time travel to whatever point in history you're going, you'll explore a small, but dense set of environments as you discover the Subordinate you're looking for and dig into the history of certain victims of his. Functionally, this plays out a lot like a Resident Evil game, as you explore environments and read documents and notes left behind by the deceased and, usually, end up accessing the memories of a victim. Other than the primary stalker in the given level, you'll encounter various angry ghosts of people who died violently. There's an interesting puzzle element here, as, while you can't fight these spirits, you can find some memento from their past life, reunite it with their corpse, and 'defeat' them by granting them some measure of peace, which will cause them to travel to the afterlife.

The main attraction when it comes to the enemies in this game are, of course, the Subordinates who will stalk you throughout each level. Previous games features a lot of run-and-hide style gameplay, but, curiously, the threat level of any given stalker in this game is curiously limited. They'll obviously kill you if you don't escape from them, of course, but you can still solve puzzles when they're chasing you, which removes the immediacy of needing to shake them, and their AI is often dumb enough that you can take advantage of the level design to leave them in the dust, or even have some fun at their expense (in the first portal world, I discovered a small bridge I could crawl under, and, hilariously, every time I tried to leave my hiding spot on one side or the other, the stalker would furiously start running around a small portion of the level to try and catch me, so I had some fun and kept crawling back and forth between the two sides of the bridge to troll the AI and have a cheap laugh at its expense).

The stalker in any given level is almost always going to be faster than you, so it's not unusual for them to catch up with you but, unlike previous games, you have a reliable way to slip out of trouble. A refillable vat of holy water will temporarily stun your stalker any time you use it on them, so there's not usually too much of a reason for them to permanently corner you. In classic Clock Tower fashion, there are places to hide from these enemies so you can ditch them, but they're not hugely prevalent, and you won't spend an enormous amount of time hiding in this game. And, as I pointed out earlier, the enemy AI is dumb, which removes most of the tension when you are hiding from them. I can literally hide behind a thin curtain right as the stalker is entering the room, and it won't think to look in the most obvious place imaginable to find me.

The game does have some cheap jumpscares, though, and, in certain scripted locations, the enemy will jump out from a hidden spot on the screen (remember, the camera angles are fixed) and scare the bejeesus out of poor Alyssa. This is when the panic meter comes into play. See, the stalker won't usually be able to kill you when she's in a normal frame of mind, but one too many close skirmishes with her attacker will cause her to enter a state of panic. This leads to visual distortion of the screen, of course, but, in a supremely irritating design choice, she will also randomly stop and shiver for a couple of seconds at a time. Oh, and if the Subordinate attacks Alyssa when she's in this state, it's an instakill. So, combine random pausing for several seconds at a time, an enemy that is faster than you, and attacks that lead to instant death, and you should probably be able to see how this game can become irritating quickly in certain scenarios. Thankfully, Alyssa will be able to hoard some sort of stress relief item that you can use to calm her down so a scripted jumpscare doesn't lead to her getting herself killed over and over and over again because of the game's sparse save points and lack of a checkpoint system.

The subordinates themselves are... well, I won't spoil them too much, except to say that they are almost uniformly ridiculous. This game turns lack of subtlety into an art, so you'll see this villainous scoundrels do a lot of dancing and evil laughing as they engage in their evil deeds. It's ridiculous, and if this game doesn't sound scary, well... that's because it isn't. I'm not entirely convinced this was even meant to be a horror game. Almost every second of this experience is loud and utterly bizarre. This extends to the few human characters you encounter throughout the game as well. The most prominent one is a childhood friend named Dennis, a coward who will nevertheless thirstily follow Alyssa into hell for no particular reason. The weirdness of everything is hugely amplified by the game's extremely notable (for the time) reliance on mocap technology for the animation of the character models in cutscenes, which leads to almost everybody flailing and throwing themselves around like they're in the middle of a seizure or something. It's impressive given this a PS2 game (and the game itself is visually top of the line for something on that system), but prepare to be disturbed by this game's frequent cutscenes in all the wrong ways.

Nowhere is the... err... "distinctness" of this entry better represented, though, than in the game's boss fights. So, first, and most crucially: the game has boss fights. In a Clock Tower game. It's very weird. Not content to leave it at this, however, Alyssa will transform into a sort of magical girl when it comes time to fight the entity that has has obnoxiously been following you around for an entire level. She fights with what look to be light arrows, like Princess Zelda might use at the end of a Legend of Zelda game. The aiming mechanics are horrendous, unfortunately, because as soon as you aim, you're unable to adjust your aim at all. Instead, you'll have to lower you bow and raise it back up. Now, do this multiple times with enemies that are usually moving around, and you might see why this can be irritating. The way to get around this is to wait for the stalker, who will keep trying to attack you throughout the fight, to trigger an attack animation, which will usually keep them planted in one spot for a few seconds. This is enough time to start chipping at their health.

If the stars align properly, sometimes enemies will both stop for a period of time AND immediately begin running at you from that same angle, which means you'll have enough time to charge up your arrow. Arrows do marginally more damage the longer you charge them, but the real fun begins when you charge it long enough that your arrow tethers them to the ground. This will usually keep them grounded long enough to fire off more charged tether arrows and then, finally, if all goes right and you tether them three or four times, you can pull off a ridiculous looking super-attack. When this activates, Alyssa will fire off an arrow into the sky, and it'll rocketing down towards the enemy like a comet and cause a massive explosion that will either kill or gravely wound your enemy in the process.

If that description isn't sufficient, please look for yourself:

The magical girl protagonist in my horror video game looks like Sephiroth from FF7 summoning Meteor, sans the three minutes of watching the solar system blow up.

Anyway, there are also special binding arrows that will, if they hit true, automatically trigger a tether, as well as arrows that cause more damage than normal. You only collect a small handful of these, though, it appears to be impossible to cycle between them, meaning you'll have to use them in whatever order you collected them throughout the game.

It might be tempting to let fly with these against some of the game's more obnoxious normal bosses, but please, resist the temptation, because you'll want as many special items as possible to use against the ridiculously OP final boss, who has multiple life bars, can inflict tethers on Alyssa, and so quickly cycles between powerful attacks that force you to move that she barely even gets time to fire uncharged arrows at him. Even if you trigger a super attack on the final boss, it'll take off less than half of his health, but, again, every little bit helps.

What else to say? Once you beat the game, you'll gain access to a number of unlockable outfits for Alyssa to wear throughout the game (although these obviously don't show up in the pre-rendered cutscenes). In general, they're sort of sexualized, with one of them being a tight leather outfit with a breast window, a skimpy cowboy-themed one, one that shows off her legs (including her underwear if you crawl around, like you frequently need to in this game to get through holes and whatnot). There doesn't appear to be much else of significance, however. Like I noted earlier, the game tells you that you earned a certain number of "rooder points" by the end, but I have no idea what the significance of those are, how you collect more of them, etc.

So, what do I think about this game? It's hard to say. Despite the high production values, this feels like a cult production of sorts due to the large number of weird design choices the developers went with. It's hard to recommend this to people: it's a horror game that's not scary, and the animation/acting in it are distractingly over-the-top most of the time. It's a survival horror game without weapons or health management. I can't, in good conscience, say it's a good game, but as someone who seeks out different experiences, I was reasonably happy with how refreshingly bizarre the whole thing was.

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A couple of weeks ago I finished up the Order: 1886, a launch era PS4 exclusive shooter set in an alternate history London.

Ready for an outing, old chap?

Gameplay:

• The core gameplay mechanics revolve around being a third person cover shooter. I imagine that if you've played anything similar over the past couple generations, you have the gist of what to expect here, as it doesn't really shake up genre conventions, though it does deliver them with the kind of big budget polish you'd expect from a first party Playstation release.
• In terms of armaments you have pretty much everything you'd expect of it's contemporaries (pistols, rifles, shotguns, machine guns, bazookas & the like), plus a few more unique firearms such as the Arc Gun (fires charged bolts of electricity) and my personal favorite, the Thermite Gun (with R2 you spray an area with a powdery substance, then with R1 launch a flair that ignites it, incinerating all within).
• You switch out weapons with the D-Pad (left equips sidearm, right main weapon, up smoke grenade, & down explosive grenade). One small catch, as you may have noticed is that you have to switch out your firearm in order to use a grenade (rather than there being a dedicated grenade button). It's a bit of an annoyance (as you'll likely only want to use one when overwhelmed with foes anyways), but I guess can't be helped when some of the main weapons (such as the aforementioned Thermite Gun) require the use of multiple shoulder buttons. It's not a huge mark against the game overall, though.
• When not shooting things the game tries to break things up in various ways. The most common of these is simply cutscenes to flesh out the story (in fact a few of the shortest missions consist of only a few cutscenes, only interrupted by you having to walk once or twice), though there are also a few "investigation" scenarios (you have to walk around a room and interact with highlighted objects, looking over them with the right analogue stick, seemingly just to show off how detailed the PS4 can render things), the kind of "ledge platforming" so commonly seen in Sony's releases (though it's used even lighter here than usual), and the occasional QTE (in fact, the few boss encounters the game has completely eschew the shooting mechanics in favor of QTE slugfests).
  
  "ledge platforming"
• Make no mistake, the game has a lot of shooting, and what is there is very polished & can get quite intense, but whenever your first shootout doesn't occur until halfway through the second mission (and the third mission is one of those short talky ones), the game's reputation as something you watch more than you play isn't completely unfounded, at least at it's onset, and exemplifies the stereotypes that surround Sony's exclusives moreso than something like God of War.

Audio/Visual:

• It's made by the same studio (or a subset of it) that brought the wonderfully detailed world of God of War to life, and it shows. Despite the fact that it's a launch era game, it looks fantastic, at least from a technical point of view.
• Unfortunately I think it's adherence to realism is it's greatest drawback, however. The fact of the matter is that you're scuttling about the back alleys & sewers of 19th century London, mixed in with a tone that mixes in some horror elements (without making an effort to actually be scary), resulting in a very dreary game world. There was some hope with it's steampunk elements, but other than one mission on a luxury blimp, they play the world mostly straight.
• Making things a tad worse is that it's a very dark game in terms of lighting. Probably exasperated by the light filter on the screen that makes things look like it's being captured on old time film, it can be unbearably dark to the detriment to the gameplay in parts. At one stealth section in the game's second half I turned the game's brightness to max (a setting I usually don't mess with), and it made things a lot better
  
  Trying to shoot enemies that bum rush you in the darkness can be trying.

Story:

• You're put in the role of Sir Gallahad, a member of a clandestine knighthood (directly linked to the Arthurian Knights of the Round Table) designed to protect the Crown from rebel insurrections & more importantly, from the things that go bump in the night. However (despite the fact that in terms of gameplay you'll be facing firearm toting humans rather than the occult more often than not), while investigating the Jack the Ripper murders he quickly notices that supernatural activity is way up in London, and despite some pushback from his higher ups, he investigates and discovers things aren't as they seem.
• It's not a wholly original narrative, with some of the twists being pretty easy to guess, but as with most things in the game, it's presented with a high polish. Plus, in this secretive organization Nikola Tesla (yes, that one) is the Q to Gallahad's Bond, suiting up the Order with all sorts of high tech weapons & communication equipment (explaining the presence of more modern weapons, & sci-fi ones, that otherwise shouldn't exist), which is a fun connection I wish they would have played with more.

Conclusion:

• I know it sounds like I'm being harsh on it, but that's just because it has such potential. The core gameplay is solid (especially if you like shooters), but I think if they had made the "downtime" gameplay a bit more engaging & upped the ante in terms the steampunk & supernatural elements, it could have been something special, and now it probably won't get the sequel it obviously sets up. Still worth a punt at the bargain bin prices it regularly finds itself at (I got it for $5).
  
  It's been a long day.

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Recently finished up Daemon X Machina (Switch), a mech game in the vein of Armored Core (in fact, it's handled by many of the same key people), but with the financial support of Nintendo, likely had a higher budget than any of it's niche contemporaries.

Let's get ready to roll out.

Gameplay:

• Essentially a really action focused third person shooter (though you can go with a melee focused build), it sees you taking on just over 70 missions (I'd say there's about a 60%-40% split amongst required story missions & optional "free" missions), tearing things up on the ground & in the air in a mech of your own design.
• Most missions take place in large open battle areas surrounded by a yellow warning area (you'll have 20 seconds to return to the battle area if you pass it, and fail the mission instantly if you pass a further out red boundary. This is a change from the original "Prototype Missions" demo, in which you were bounced back into the mission area if you hit the boundary, which caused issues with the boss featured in the demo), though there are also a number of missions that take place in high tech tunnel systems, offering more focused, linear objectives.
• Mission areas are filled with destructible objects, such as skyscrapers (which can damage you if you're hit by the debris), as well as items you can pick up & throw. Some of these are explosive like cars, which can be used to damage enemies, as well as containers that create a temporary health refilling barrier when destroyed (so make sure these don't get destroyed in the fighting when you don't need them).
• In terms of enemies there are tons of riffraff such as drones, helicopters, tanks, jets, and anti-air armaments, and while they can be annoying in escort missions if they overwhelm what you're supposed to be protecting, outside of early missions they're relatively harmless once you get to grips with things, and largely become fodder for ammo (which they constantly drop when defeated) for when you're fighting more fearsome foes such as the bosses or fellow mercenaries.
• While there will be a few generic mechs mixed in with the other regular enemies you face (and they are a few notches tougher in terms of difficulty), your greatest foes will more often than not be other mercenaries. These are main characters that have unique mechs, and it won't be too long before most main story missions pit you against them. They're almost always engaging affairs, so you never want to let your guard down, especially if the mission objective doesn't actually require you to defeat them (they tend to be tougher than normal, though not impossible to beat in such scenarios, which may be worth the gamble if you want their equipment). They have the best equipment to loot though, and you often have a couple AI partners yourself to help even the odds.
• Next I'll mention the stamina & Femto gauges. Stamina is pretty self explanatory and depletes whenever you're boosting, though it refills immediately when your not (if you deplete it you can't boost or fly until it's fully refilled. Otherwise flying doesn't drain it). Femto is an in game energy source. You can use it to create an AI controlled double of yourself which is very useful (though it drains Femto rapidly), to revive fallen ally mechs, to enter different "stances" (I never did this, but you're able to increase your attack at the expense of defense, and other battle configurations like that, in the middle of battle), and all lazer weapons expend it as well (rather than having ammo). It does refill on it's own when not in use, but there are also "Femto zones" scattered about mission areas which refill it rapidly (probably useful in Femto heavy builds, such if you have lots of lazer weapons).
• When most objectives essentially boil down to fly around and shoot everything that moves, it has the kind of gameplay loop that can become repetitive, but it does it's best to mitigate that. It regularly rotates between "eliminate all enemies", "destroy a certain object(s)", & "defend/escort something" type objectives, not to mention the massive boss encounters, and the occasional one off scenario, such as one where you have to infiltrate a base on foot and commandeer an enemy mech, one where you have to protect buildings from a meteorite shower, and even one where you're put in control of a massive boss type mech.
  
  
  Facing down a (defeated) boss up top, and controlling one down below (note the tiny looking mech at the bottom, which is actually an ally in a standard size mech).
• As you may have guessed based on one of those mission objectives, you are able to jump out of your mech & run around as a human. There are a few missions where you have to be out on foot (while intimidating at first, they are built around this & aren't so bad in practice), but otherwise you have no reason to do this. You are automatically ejected if your mech is defeated, giving you a last ditch effort at survival, but 99 times out of 100 you'll get creamed if you're up against even one mech (it's not all useless though, as I managed to finish off the final boss of all things in such a scenario).
• Of course it wouldn't be an Armored Core-like without mech customization, and it has it in spades. Mech parts come in 5 different categories (head, body, right arm, left arm, and legs), which all effect your dozens of different stats in different ways, and have different focuses (heads, for example, largely effect radar & lock on range, as well as lock on speed). Plus, there's all the equipment you can equip as well, such as right & left weapons (this category consists of weapons such as guns, swords, bazookas, shields, flamethrowers, & more, and are equipped to the right & left arms), right & left pilons (same category of weapons, just carried on your back to be swapped out with your right & left arm weapons on the fly in combat), shoulder weapon (missiles, cannons, & support equipment that can cure status ailments or heal health), and auxiliary equipment (grenades, flairs to help you avoid missiles, stamina doubling equipment, etc.). Absolutely everything you equip affects your overall stats (keep in mind things like weight), and while it can seem daunting, it's really not. Just mess around with what seems fun, and stick with something you like (there are memory constraints, so you can't just go willy nilly with your equipment & build).
• You obtain new mech parts & equipment by looting them from fallen enemy mechs or buy buying them from the shop in the out of mission hub area (though outside of a few memory upgrades, I never bought equipment, only ever using what I looted). If you have an open slot whenever you loot something it will be equipped automatically (lets say you loot a bazooka, if your right pilon is empty it will be equipped there), if not it will be sent back to base. Once you loot a part you can't loose it (even if an arm is destroyed during a mission, something that only happened to me once, you're just charged a repair cost that is deducted from your mission reward).
• You can upgrade your human avatar as well, with a Lab in the hub area which allows you to get surgical enhancements that boost your abilities both outside & inside your mech. While picking certain upgrades will set you on a certain path, you're able to reset to default at any point, allowing you to reallocate your upgrades to a different build if you so wish (there's no punishment for this as far as I'm aware). However, the more you upgrade your avatar the more robotic they themselves become, so keep that in mind.
• Also, there is an Ice Cream shop in the hub area which you can eat at which will earn you temporary buffs for the next mission. I never used it, but it goes to show there are a lot of options when it comes to getting ahead.
• There are lots of cosmetic options as well, as you're free to choose your mech's color pallet, and by completing certain objectives/milestones & scanning graffiti found within mission areas, you can earn new design patterns & decals for your mech. You are also able to change your avatar's appearance at any time as well (though keep in mind if you have them upgraded to any degree they'll be so mechanical you may not as well be able to).
• As referenced in other points, there is a little hub area you can run around in (as a human) between missions. The only things to interact with here are two computer terminals & the aforementioned Lab & Ice Cream Shop. The large terminal lets you access single player missions, mech customization, the shop, check in-game messages, and game settings, and the smaller one lets you access multiplayer modes, which I never bothered with, as I don't have NSO. Everything else here is purely cosmetic, with your current mech build on display in the center of the area, and the walls of the area will slowly be decorated with all the new weapon/equipment types you collect.
• Before I finish up on gameplay I should mention that you can fully customize controller layout, including the use of gyro for aiming. I never deviated from the default, but it's nice knowing the option is there.
• Oh, and there's free Witcher III DLC, for those who want to dress up their avatar as Geralt, for whatever reason.

Audio/Visual:

• It has a very vivid & colorful pallet, and while I was at first worried about sensory overload with all the moving objects/effects, the busy HUD, and vivid colors, I actually grew used to it really quickly & never found it to be an issue. Though it took a bit to get used to the odd shading on the human faces (their faces are light, and are ringed by darkening layers), the tech designs were all really slick & the environments all looked really cool, which is what you'll be looking at 85-90% of the time.
  
  
  
  
  The environments, seen here in in-engine cutscenes, look really good.
• Despite everything that goes on in the game, I never experienced a single dropped frame, even during massive boss fights with all sorts of effects flashing around. This is quite the noticeable improvement over the "Prototype Missions" demo, which could be quite choppy. A great performing game all around.
• From what little I played this way, it performs greatly in portable mode too, and it's the mode I ultimately beat the final boss in, too. Looks native res portable as well, as far as I could tell.
• It kind of has a serious rockish soundtrack. Nothing that'll get stuck in your head, but it gets the job done.

Story:

• After some accident, part of the Moon fell to Earth screwing things up, but it also introduced a very powerful yet toxic energy source to the Earth known as Femto. To protect the world at large from it's effects, the Moon's wreckage is surrounded by a protective layer known as the Oval Link. 3 Consortiums have been set up inside the Oval Link to collect & refine Femto for the Earth's energy consumption, and they are regulated by a governing body known as Orbital, which tries to keep all 3 entities at an even playing field to prevent one from getting too much power. Things are complicated by the fact that rouge AI known as Immortals have decided to go all "Terminator" on humanity, and are interrupting the Consortiums' Femto collection efforts. That's where mech piloting mercenaries such as yourself come into play. Piloted by a new breed of human resistant to the toxic effects of Femto, these mech mercenaries take on jobs within the Oval Link in order to protect Femto collection projects from the Immortals. Of course, with the 3 different Consortiums & 7 different Mercenary groups, each with their own unique goals, it's a tale of politics, backstabbing, and technobabble that's all very anime. There's so many characters it's impossible to get particularly attached to any (which renders certain late game moments & revelations moot), though if you sort of roll with it, it works to hold things together.
• Every story mission starts with a briefing session where characters converse via text boxes (these can be quite lengthy), though there are often in-engine cutscenes as well (usually whenever mercenaries or a boss show up or are defeated). Everything is fully voiced, though.
• I'm usually not too bothered by silent protagonists, but it can be a tad annoying here, if only because the other mercenaries take to calling you "the Rookie", even by end game when it's clear you're the most skilled around & humanity's only hope.
• I really don't have any major issues with the story though. Really not anything worse than what you'd get with something like Ace Combat, and it's really not the main reason you'd pick a game like this up.

Conclusion:

• I actually really enjoyed my time with this. There's just a certain cool factor about flying around blowing things up as a giant robot, and this delivers that with a solid gameplay loop with lots of playstyle choice, great performance, and a vivid neon infused art direction. It's likely not the kind of game that'll sit up there with the absolute best games on the system, but even so I think it was hurt massively by a very rough early demo, which made it even easier to ignore when it was sent out to die amongst the hype trains of Astral Chain, Dragon Quest XI S, & Link's Awakening (each of which may just make that shortlist "best games on the system"). Just because it's not quite that good doesn't mean it's not worth a play however, especially considering how much they improved upon the Prototype Missions demo.
  
  I'm the best there is, but at what cost?

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Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King (3DS)

Bear with me, this write-up will be a bit of a doozy, befitting this title's length. XD I reached the end credits near the beginning of the month and then spent some time messing around with the post-game content. All told, I spent roughly 75-80 hours with the game, which includes the main story and a lot of side content.

Positives

• The story, for the most part, is entertaining, easily engages the player, and much of the writing is top-notch. Through it, you unravel the fall of the kingdom of Trodain, the motivations of Dhoulmagus, and the true machinations and peril behind all the events in the story. It does take a slight turn for the weird when Leopold is added to the proceedings, but I suppose that isn't completely unexpected.
• The party members, as well as many NPCs, are fully fleshed out and brimming with personality. I also like many of their designs; Akira Toriyama's artwork has missed very few beats here.
• By extension, adding both Red and Morrie as recruitable party members opens up some new strategies and other entertainment to the proceedings.
• I consider Dhoulmagus to be a tragic character. That doesn't excuse what he did in order to get a hold of the Scepter of Trodain, but the player is led to understand his motivations. As soon as he left that sealed area, he was nothing more than a puppet.
• Marcello is an interesting character indeed, almost an anti-hero in some respects. While I understand his desires to prove himself and to elevate himself beyond his societal status, I feel like he went way too far by murdering the Lord High Priest. He does redeem himself a little later in some side content.
• Charmles is characterized well. I doubt there are many people who like the guy in OR outside of the game.
• There's so much to see and do in this game; I rarely became bored when exploring. There are new places to see, items to find, secrets to discover, new monsters to discover and fight, metal slimes to send into oblivion...
• Many of the sidequests are very much worth your time. You can unlock new areas, story tidbits, useful items, etc.
• For a PS2 game, particularly one that has been moved to the 3DS, the overworld is vast and beautiful. There are a few hiccups to be sure (see the Neutral section), but overall the vistas, monuments, and other visuals here are quite nice.
• Many of the tunes here were nostalgic Dragon Quest pieces, and I enjoyed them. However, I've also heard that the game's original soundtrack is fully orchestrated, and that it couldn't properly be translated to the 3DS. Such a pity ( )....I'll have to search for it.
• Combat is typical turn-based JRPG fare, though I also like the risk/reward of using the Tension system to try and factor in more powerful hits. Some abilities that are unlocked through the skill trees (Such as Yangus's Golden Oldies ability, or the Hero's Gigagash) are simultaneously satisfying and entertaining.
• Ability trees are also fun to play around with, though you have to decide early on how you want to set up each character. There's a fallacy to this system (see the Negatives/Nitpicks section).
• I like how monster encounters are visible in this version (dropping the randomness) and can be avoided or engaged accordingly. This saved me from a few emergency wipes and made grinding a little easier.
• I really, REALLY enjoyed the final boss fight. Rhapthorne's final form isn't anything to sneeze at (MAAAAN is he ugly!), and the first part of the fight where you have to simply pray to the staff reminds me of the final boss fight in Earthbound.
• Sabrecat mounts are amazing and very, VERY useful. Particularly because going anywhere on foot, even if you obtain Zoom early, becomes a bit boring after awhile.
• The Alchemy Pot is really fun to experiment with. It can be used to make many useful items; I don't recommend selling most items unless you're absolutely sure you won't need them, as many useless things can be used in the pot to create better ones.
• The post-game in this title is worth playing if you're in it for some extra story pieces, alternate endings, and testing your mettle against challenging, tough-as-nails bosses. The story here especially expands on the Hero's origins and explains why he's immune to curses throughout the whole game, and why Munchie isn't exactly a normal mouse.
• As usual, the myriad of puns in any Dragon Quest game are more than welcome. XD
• COR BLIMEY! This never got old.

Neutral

• Some of this is likely due to the original hardware vs. the current hardware that the game is running on, but a few textures and assets in the environment definitely show their age. There was also some occasional pop-in with monsters and NPCs. This wasn't nearly enough to ruin my enjoyment of the game, but it was slightly noticeable at times.
• This game is pretty wonderful in 2D, but I also think it would look quite nice with the 3D effect as well. I've read that this was due to how much the game was pushing the 3DS's hardware to the limit already, so they didn't bother with the 3D effect. I understand their reasoning, but still...it would have been nice.
• I didn't really go out of my way to fulfill the Cameron's Codex (or photo) missions other than in passing during the story. These net you a useful item when filling up a stamp card (each mission earns you a different number of stamps), but I didn't find that to be enough to encourage me to seek out every single one. I can see how this could be fun for returning players and completionists.
• The casinos in this series do nothing for me and seem to be wastes of time in an already long game, but more power to those who enjoy them.

Negatives/Nitpicks (Mostly nitpicks)

• Once a character's skill points are allocated to a certain tree, they can't be reassigned other than by restarting the game. This is a bit of a blow to newer players who don't realize this and want to experiment around with the different skill trees. There were a couple of skill investments that I didn't realize, until after reading up online, don't really benefit their user outside of early game scenarios. I REALLY wish I could recoup some of those Boomerang points on the Hero....
• While I enjoy using the Godbird's Soulstone, I find the controls to be a bit finicky.
• There are a couple translation errors related to NPC names, but these were hilarious more than anything else.

Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King is a must-play for any JRPG fan, and in some ways (though not all), I'd call this the definitive version of the game. It's certainly a long haul, but you will rarely, if ever, be bored. There's so much to do, see, and discover in the vast world of this game. It's only my third DQ game as of this writing (IV and V on the DS being the other two I've played and beaten), but I daresay it's my current favorite. The story in V ever so slightly edges out this one in my opinion, but in everything else it wins in spades.