November was an interesting month in video games for me because I played some pretty seminal mainstream releases I'd never played before followed by some extremely niche Japanese RPGs, perhaps in an effort to restore my "street cred."
Because, as we all know, one's credibility is determined almost entirely by the number of Japanese RPGs one has completed.
I'd purchased the Nathan Drake Collection in October on a whim because it was on sale and I wanted to try something different from the types of games I normally play. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I really ended up enjoying these games, and even when I came to Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception expecting to like it less due to feedback I'd heard over the years, I still loved it. Sure, it has its problems and weird pacing issues, but it's still a blast to play and features some really jaw-dropping set pieces. I mean, frantically scurrying through the ruins of a sinking ship alone was worth the price of admission for me, but that game has tons of sequences that are just as cool.
Because I liked the first three games so much, I didn't hesitate in picking up Uncharted 4: A Thief's End particularly since it had dropped in price quite a bit since release. Although it's hard to top the total package of Uncharted 2, the final entry in the series is a fantastic sendoff. It's much longer and more involved than previous entries but is always really exciting and engaging. I don't love the plot surrounding Nathan's erstwhile brother, but I do like the characterization surrounding him and that he's voiced by the inimitable Troy Baker.
A big chunk of that game involves exploring the ruins of this secret ancient pirate utopia and that's where the game worked best for me. The mystery and the spectacle of it was really exciting, and I tend to love that kind of exploratory gameplay. It reminded me a lot of something like Horizon Zero Dawn, where so much of the game was just gawking at these gorgeous visuals and just looking around for cool stuff and speculating on where it came from and how things broke down over time. It's a big part of why I enjoyed both of these games, even though they're very different in most other ways.
I'm the kind of person that tends to make a lot of connections in things that I do. If I listen to an album, I tend to like having context. If I really enjoy something, I want to go back and learn about its history. I might listen through other albums from the same artist that came before to see how their sound evolved over time. I apply that same philosophy to movies, books, and video games too. Because I'd just played through four different Naughty Dog games, I thought it was finally time to try The Last of Us, which is a tremendously well-regarded game that people have lots of Opinions about.
My opinion about The Last of Us is that it is good. I don't think it's a perfect game, though, and I think a lot of why I feel that way is colored not only by the ridiculous levels of acclaim it receives but also by my feelings about the game's genre. I feel invested in Joel and Ellie as characters and the plot is interesting, but is structured in a way that is well-worn. It's post-apocalyptic, it has zombies (of a sort), and is a Dad Simulator. I can see why that's very appealing but at the end of the day, it's not my favorite setting. I also don't particularly like the stealth gameplay. It's serviceable, but never as satisfying as I feel like it should be. The story alone carries the game and it's more than worth playing because of it, but even that is not beyond reproach. That's all I will say about it.
I finished out the month by finishing two Japanese games, one of which is significantly more Japanese than the other. The first and more Japanese of the two was Super Robot Wars A Portable, yet another in the list of games in this series that I've now finished. It's pretty clear that I love giant robots and I just hadn't had enough of them after finishing Moon Dwellers a couple months back. Of course, this particular title is a bit different in that it's older and was never officially translated to English. Fortunately, as with Alpha Gaiden and Super Robot Wars J, a fan translation of this game exists and is done extremely well by the fine folks at the Steel Soul team.
Unlike Moon Dwellers, A Portable is another entry "main" entry in the series in that it mashes up various different mecha anime series instead of original characters. The list of series in this one is even less familiar to me than others I've played and seems to skew towards older series overall. It's also dramatically more difficult than other games I've played, which started out very frustrating but ended up being pretty rewarding in the end once I had a better grasp of how to effectively strategize. It's definitely a game that taught me a lot about that series. It also made me want to check out a few of the anime series involved but I didn't actually follow through on that this time. Maybe when I play SRW V that'll actually happen.
The last game I finished in November was the PS4 remake/port of Romancing SaGa 2, an oddball RPG that was originally released for the Super Famicom and to my knowledge was never officially localized until this release. Although I've played a few SaGa games briefly, this was the first I've invested a lot of time into and although it's an undeniably flawed game, it's also an extremely fun and interesting one that I'm really glad I played.
In broad strokes, it's an RPG in which you play the king or queen and recruit a series of subjects to assist you in completing quests and various objectives. There are different classes and races that you have the opportunity to recruit. As you progress through the game and complete events, time passes until eventually the perspective switches to an heir that will inherit stats and abilities. This also happens if your entire party is wiped out in combat. You're always given the opportunity to choose from a list of different unlocked characters to choose as an heir, which is really interesting.
There's also a huge variety of different skills and abilities you have the capability of unlocking throughout the game. Each different class has different aptitudes with different weapons and because of this, the likelihood of learning these skills varies depending on the classes you have. Unlocking abilities is done through a process called "sparking," which is essentially just a random chance to learn a new ability when using certain weapons and skills. It seems very haphazard at times but it's always exciting when someone learns something new and it was fun to unravel exactly what methods worked best to spark new skills.
It's definitely not a perfect game. The difficulty is incredibly unbalanced, the combat is sometimes repetitive, and the plot itself is thin--but it has a couple of really cool ideas that make it more than worth playing, at least for me. One of these days I might play more entries in the SaGa series because there seems to be a recurring theme of oddball ideas in those games.
Well, we're almost caught up. Only one more month to go.
No comments:
Post a Comment