While I was at it with playing PS2 action games that are sequels to games I’d beaten earlier, I thought why not play Klonoa 2 as well. I enjoyed the first Klonoa a fair bit, but it certainly had a fair bit of room for improvement. I’d heard nothing but great things about its sequel here, so I figured it was high time I finally get to checking out what Klonoa’s second big adventure was all about. It took me around 7 hours to beat the game getting all of the doll pieces in each stage, and I played the Japanese version of the game on real hardware.
Klonoa 2’s narrative follows our titular character as he’s pulled into a mysterious dream world to save it from the encroaching forces of darkness. He must help his new friends ring the five bells scattered around the land while constantly keeping the nefarious sky pirates at bay as well. It’s something that very much feels like something out of a Japanese children’s film or OVA series of the era, and it’s got a lot of the same writing beats and such that you’d expect to see as a result, and it does a pretty good job at executing upon them. Learning a valuable lesson from the first Klonoa, it cuts down on the cast a LOT and that does absolute wonders for the narrative as a result. Nonetheless, I still think the game has a bit *too* much text in places, and it makes for some very stop-and-start pacing between the action & story telling that I grew to find grating far before the game’s end point. Though, at least in my case, that may be because the overall themes it’s going for are things I’ve seen quite a few times in other games and done better in them. The story certainly isn’t bad by any means, goodness no, but given how heavily I’d had this game’s story hyped up to me as a super well done emotional narrative, I found it decidedly lesser in that regard for my tastes at least. Mechanically, I can’t really sum it up better than saying that this game is absolutely a successor to the first Klonoa. You still have a 2.5D action platformer centered around grabbing enemies and objects and using them to launch yourself up and around stages. There are 6 special goodies to collect in every stage, and collecting all of them will unlock a couple of far harder challenge stages to play (which unlock you the sound test, just like in Klonoa 1), but that isn’t to say the main game isn’t difficult on its own. While some stages (particularly the burning city) are *far* harder than the rest of the game, the usual source of the game’s difficulty usually comes from how you only have a health bar of 3 hits before you die. The platforming itself isn’t usually that hard (indistinct contrast to Klonoa 1), but that 3 hits between you and death is more often than not what will lead to your death, particularly in boss fights. It’s a very well constructed little platformer with some fun gimmick levels to spice things up, and while it’s overall not quite as hard as Klonoa 1, it’ll still provide more than adequate challenge for any seasoned veteran of the genre looking for something a bit meatier to sink their teeth into. The aesthetics are also very much more Klonoa, but as this is a game with the power of the PS2 (albeit one released barely after the console’s first birthday), we’ve dropped more or less any 2D stuff for all 3D models. Klonoa and friends, all the characters really, have wonderfully adorable designs that my friends watching me play described as having Dreamcast aesthetics (which I’m inclined to agree with). The dream world itself’s designs are also very pretty, and it all makes for a great adventure. Also adding to that is the soundtrack, which is also excellent. Verdict: Recommended. While Klonoa 2 didn’t live up to the super hype it’d been sold to me as, it’s still a quite good game nonetheless. If you’re into 2D action platformers and don’t mind a relatively difficult time, then this is absolutely one you shouldn’t sleep on. However, if you’re someone who is less comfortable with 2D platformers but still love the aesthetics of the game, it might be worth looking at some bits of a playthrough online before you run out and buy the remasters recently released for modern systems.
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I played the first Maximo almost exactly two years ago, and I actually bought this game very soon after, but just never got around to it. The first game was just challenging and awkward enough to play and finish that I never found myself *really* wanting to hop back in and try and complete it for real this time. I wanted a bit of a break from PS1 RPGs, however, so I thought I might as well knock out some of the shorter PS2 action games I had lying around while I was at it, and hits definitely seemed like it fit the bill. It took me around 7 hours to complete the Japanese version of the game on real hardware.
Maximo Vs. Army of Zin is really exactly what it says on the tin in regards to the narrative. Some time after the events of the first Maximo, our titular hero is still traveling around with his good friend Grim the grim reaper trying to find his lost lady love Queen Sophia (dead or alive) after the events of the last game. However, he stumbles into an entirely new conflict, as the nefarious, immortal soul-powered machines called Zin have mysteriously and suddenly returned despite having been sealed underground centuries ago. It’s up to Maximo and Grim to once again don their sword, shield, armor, and heart-print boxers to get out there and save the world from this evil threat! As far as PS2 action game narratives go, it’s nothing really special, but it’s got a lot of character to it, and it makes for very fun set dressing for our larger adventure. It’s overall a bit better done than the first game’s story, having a slightly stronger cast of characters to help it in that regard, and the English VA (for which there is actually no Japanese dub at all) also goes a long way in bringing the story to life too (which makes it even funnier that the dub can't seem to decide if Zin is pronounced with a 'z' sound or a 'j' sound x3). Interestingly, just as there’s no Japanese dub (which is understandable, as a TON of Capcom games from this era have that same quality to them), the Japanese subtitles are also quite bad and really don’t try at all to capture the fun quirkiness of the English dialogue, so that was somewhat of a shame for this particular release at least. The mechanics of the game are really just more Maximo but a bit better polished up than last time. We’re still very much dealing with a 3D revival of Ghouls & Ghosts, complete with Maximo in his Arthur-like heart-print boxers, but with an overall easier approach to its design than the far more viscous older G&G games had. You still hack and slash to defeat enemies, and you also still have several mini-health bars to your armor pieces instead of you just having one hit per armor piece. This game also has some pretty mean platforming sections, particularly in the first half, that really require you to get comfortable with how you have two jumps all the time (even after falling off of a ledge) to actually reach your far-flung destinations. Overall, I’d say it’s all just better put together than the first Maximo was though. Being able to actually control the camera with the right stick this time is a very big reason for that, but it also felt that enemies hit a bit less hard and checkpoints are just a bit more generous than they were in the last game. Getting rid of the hub worlds in favor of just one big world map as well making it so you can effectively never lose your throwable shield were also very significant improvements towards making the game more fun as well as less needlessly punishing. Bosses are still no slouch, mind you, with the final boss in particular being an absolute monster, and 100%-ing stages is something only for the truly brave of heart. There’s also the fact that while yes, you get a lot of money from rescuing villagers and such in stages, but those prizes can only be gotten once a save file, so while you *can* buy power ups and money with in-game gold you collect at merchants, grinding for money is certainly not made easy. That said, I’d still nevertheless say that this is at least a *little* easier and better polished than the first Maximo even if the difficulty is still likely going to be quite a turn off for some. Aesthetically, this is, again, an enhancement on the first Maximo. The art style is still very much a continuation of that game’s, so if you liked that game’s art, you’re gonna like this one’s too. The music is also quite good, with some of the boss fight themes in particular being great. I’m not gonna say it’s one of the best looking games on the PS2, but it’s still quite a good looking game nonetheless, and very much what you’d expect from a big publisher like Capcom in the system’s midlife era. Verdict: Recommended. This is honestly kind of a difficult game to recommend despite the verdict, but I still think it’s a good game worth playing either way. This is absolutely *not* a game to tread lightly with if you aren’t quite comfortable with 3D platformer action games, but if that’s your jam and you’re not afraid of something a bit more unforgiving, then this is totally a game worth checking out. It’s not going to change your life, sure, but I think it’ll still make for a fun weekend for you like it did for me either way~. This is a game I’ve heard called awful and bad for years and years. One of the very first (and of course ultimately one of the only) RPGs on the N64, for some reason I had it in my head that it was a western-developed game for the N64. Only recently did I discover so much more about it, like that it’s both developed and published by Imagineer, a Japanese developer. Not only that, but it was also released in North America *first* by almost a year, and the Japanese version (known by the far less catchy title “Eltale Monsters”) actually has a mentionable amount more polish and content as a result. Now I never went into this game thinking that the Japanese version would be some secret super edition of the game that suddenly turned it into something awesome, and that is absolutely what I found to be the case. Nonetheless, I found Quest 64 to be a far better game than its reputation would lead one to believe, even if it still doesn’t exactly deserve a stellar reputation regardless. It took me about 9 hours to play through the Japanese version of the game on real hardware.
Quest 64 (aka Eltale Monsters in Japan (aka Holy Magic Century in PAL regions)) is the tale of Brian (aka Jean Jacques in Japan (aka Aryon in PAL regions)) and his quest to save the land of Celtland (which the Japanese version does confirm is pronounced with a soft ‘c’ sound). The magic Tome of Eltale has been stolen, and its destructive power could potentially be catastrophic. Though only a novice elementalist of 12 years old, with his father having gone missing on this very same quest, it’s up to Jacques to be the world’s savior and figure out what’s going on here in the first place. Being an N64 game, Quest 64 struggles with a lot of issues that RPGs on the system faced in terms of cutscenes and dialogue storage, and they are very present through a lot of the game’s presentation. One of the more notable things in the Japanese version is a slightly revised script and a completely redone ending, so things are a *little* more polished up here, especially as far as the end of the story goes, but it’s still really nothing special. That’s one reason why talking about the English translation in comparison to the Japanese is a bit difficult. So much is genuinely changed in a way localization couldn’t’ve been responsible for that it’s nearly impossible in a lot of cases to say what might’ve been the result of a bad translation and what is the result of that part of the story simply having been changed since the game had been released in English. Honestly, for a game from 1998/1999, Quest 64 feels far more like something that would’ve been expected nearly a decade earlier on the Famicom. NPCs basically never move (so in-game scripted events are basically nonexistent), the story and adventure are so linear that there are very few returning characters, and the bulk of the plot is defined by the twist at the end. The dialogue is still written quite well, regardless, and there are some memorable characters here and there, but overall, while I wouldn’t call the story “bad”, I’d absolutely say it is immensely underwhelming for the time, and I don’t blame people at all for feeling it was boring then or now. If you hold your expectations accordingly, I still think it can be a fun little adventure, but if you expect something to rival its contemporaries on the PS1 and Saturn, you’re going to be very sorely disappointed. Mechanically, there is a lot that is VERY strange about Quest 64, and in some cases (in)famously so. Running into a lot of hurdles with the N64’s hardware that other RPGs on the system also faced, there are a lot of staples of the genre that are completely or virtually absent here. For example, Quest 64 has no money, it has no shops, it has no equipment items, and it has no party members. While it does have an inventory for you, all items are either found in chests or given to you by NPCs (many of whom will give you an item only if you have completely run out of that item already). This also means inns, which are your save points, are completely free as well. While this *does* mean that you can’t grind up cash to extra healing items or to buy better gear if you’re having a hard time, this isn’t really a problem in large part due to just how easy a game Quest 64 is. A lot of the difficulty is VERY front-loaded, with the first boss of the game being by far its hardest fight, with things getting progressively easier and easier due to how the magic and combat systems function. Your stats are quite weird in Quest 64. To raise your agility, you just run around the world. Raising your attack requires raising your HP as the two are linked, so get bopped on the head and do bops on the head yourself to raise your defense and HP. Your max MP is increased by casting more spells, and you heal MP by either dealing physical damage in battle or by just running around the world. It’s a quite nifty system, almost like a more approachable version of how the old SaGa games worked, but the way your magic works is also quite unconventional. By finding little wisps in the world or just by doing enough battles, you’ll be able to level up one of your four elements of earth, water, air, and fire (up to a max of 50). Upgrading different ones will allow you to mix and match elements (up to three) to cast spells ranging from healing to utility escape spells to buffs to good old attacking magic. The only issue there is that the magic system is designed in such a fashion that there is a very straightforwardly best possible battle strategy and therefore upgrade path. Water + earth is your level 1 healing spell, and adding a level 3 earth on the end there will get you healing level 2. As your MP is healed not just by running around but also bapping things with your mage’s staff (physical attacks), this means that a pretty golden strategy is bap with staff to regain MP, heal, rinse and repeat. There are some times where you’ll need to use some kind of magic to hurt enemies or bosses, but even physical immune enemies are very easily run away from, so you don’t really have any emphasis to not just play the game this way. Sure, random encounters are a bit too common (and they make just how easy it is to get turned around in dungeons even easier as a result) and enemy weaknesses are extremely arbitrary and hard to guess, but factors like this just don’t really matter much in the face of just how easy it is to trivialize basically all combat. I’d love to praise how you kinda have a real-time element to this turn-based game, as you can actually run-around during enemy turns to genuinely avoid their attacks, and that’s a super cool thing in an RPG of this time. I’d also like to praise the game for being a more approachable RPG in an era where a lot of RPGs were generally on the harder end of things still. But it’s hard to do that when so much of the game’s systems just don’t matter in the face of these larger execution problems. As with the story, while I can’t really call the game’s mechanical systems outright bad, their sloppy execution and rough difficulty curve certainly makes people not being enthused with them very understandable. The aesthetics of the game are all around pretty decent for a game released in mid-1998. The graphics are cute and charming, and while the actual environments aren’t terribly impressive (and all often look so similar that getting completely turned around is far too easy with how you actually have 0 manual camera control), the monster and NPC designs are very nicely done.The music is all around pretty good too, although it is very amusing with just how many sound effects sound *extremely* similar to ones also used in Link to the Past x3 Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. Quest 64 is absolutely not a bad game, particularly for the time. That said, it is very far from flawless, and only the most dedicated RPG or N64 fans really have much reason to look back on it nowadays. Seeing the additions and polishes the Japanese version added was a very cool experience, but it still can’t save this game from being a cool historical footnote unable to live up to the ambition it was clearly conceived with. This is another N64 game I bought a fair while ago but just never got around to playing. It’s one I could never beat growing up, and it’s also one of the favorite games of a close friend of mine, so I thought it’d be a load of fun to show them the Japanese version of a game they know really well in English. Having the N64 hooked up again seemed like as great a time as any to finally play through this, so I did! It took me about 6.5 hour to play through the Japanese version of the game on real hardware, and I got 27 of 52 yellow crystals doing it (to see as much of the ending as you’d normally want to).
Mischief Makers (or as the Japanese title calls it, Trouble Makers) is a very oddball story about Marina, a powerful, happy, ditzy maid robot for Professor Cambell. However, on their visit to Planet Nendoro, the professor just can’t seem to stop getting kidnapped, and it’s up to Marina to save him again and again xD. The game is very silly with tons of horrible disaster weirdos everywhere (on both the heroes and villains sides), so the dialogue is always a joy to read. It’s not trying to do anything particularly daring with its narrative, but it’s written in a very fun way and also does have some genuinely sweet moments here and there. It does a more than serviceable job of setting up the action at hand, and it augments it significantly with just how much more fun and memorable it makes the adventure you’re playing through~. The adventure in question is very much what you’d expect of a Treasure game. Almost playing like a spiritual successor to Gunstar Heroes, Mischief Makers is a 2.5D (but mostly 2D) side scrolling action game, but instead of guns like Gunstar Heroes has, you have a very expanded throwing ability. Marina can pick up, shake, and throw (or at least deflect) damn near anything enemies can throw at her. She can also dash in any cardinal direction by double-tapping the D-pad or pressing one of the corresponding C-buttons (though the C-buttons are a little bit slower than using the D-pad). All of that certainly has a not insignificant learning curve attached to it (especially when it comes to platforming), it still makes for a very satisfying and fun experience. Particularly great and Treasure-ful are the boss fights, some of which are (unsurprisingly) balanced a bit too hard, I’d argue, especially with bosses closer to the start of the game actually being a fair bit harder than most bosses in the back half of the game, but they still make for intense and enjoyable fights regardless that have some wicked cool set pieces and just feel awesome to play through. There are some problems here and there with level design in that some levels have puzzles that are just very needlessly plodding or mean, and some bosses just aren’t quite clear enough on how they’re actually fought, but those aren’t issues nearly big enough to dampen the overall experience. There are also the yellow crystals I mentioned earlier. Crystals (other than red ones) are generally your health pick ups. Red crystals, on the other hand, are more like money, as they can buy hints from certain NPCs as well as revive you when you die. Pay more red crystals and you come back with more health bars (or just quit the game from the game over screen and it’ll bump you back to before you even started that level, meaning you never actually lose any money at all from up until that point scrapped attempts, which is a very odd development oversight). Yellow crystals, on the other hand, aren’t just huge health pick ups, they’re also special. There is one in every stage, and they can be hidden anywhere from at the end of a difficult platforming challenge or locked behind defeating a boss without taking a single hit, but collecting them is what gets you the game’s ending. Every one you grab will unlock a few more seconds of the game’s ending, with about 24 or 26 of them being needed to see the “normal” ending, and anything after that unlocking extra gags or silly moments after that. While the overall game is probably one of the easier 2D platformers Treasure has put out over the years, getting all of those crystals is absolutely what makes this game Treasure-levels of hard, and it really isn’t for the faint of heart. Thankfully, getting 20 or so is a relatively manageable thing (especially with a guide pointing you towards their hiding places), so seeing the normal amount of narrative conclusion is far from an insurmountable task. Aesthetically, this game is absolutely gorgeous. Unsurprisingly for a Treasure game, the levels and particularly characters are absolutely oozing with style, and it’s hard not to love them. While both the English and Japanese versions both have character portraits and dialogue in addition to little bits of voice work here and there, something only the Japanese version has is little mid-battle speech bubbles that will appear from enemies, particularly bosses. It gives the overall game just that much more vibe of a gag manga, and it adds a ton of fun character silliness to an already delightfully put together experience that had me laughing a ton. The music is also absolutely excellent, which talking about a Treasure game from the 90’s should also come as no surprise. Verdict: Highly Recommended. While there are a few bosses that are a bit tougher than they should probably be and a couple levels that just kinda suck, this is regardless an all-time classic on the N64. Though a relatively early game on the system (and one that uses the D-pad rather than the joy stick), it still succeeds at being an excellent 2D action game well worth playing. If you’re a fan of 2D action platformers, and especially if you’re a fan of Treasure’s other work, this is yet another Treasure master-work that is well worth your time despite the generally 3D-focused console it happens to find itself on. This is a game I bought aaages ago after I beat the first game, but just never got around to finishing. I had a ton of fun playing the first game on Twitch a couple years back, but I got about halfway through this one on stream before I put it down and just never picked it back up. This game doesn’t record playtime, but I reckon that it took me at least a total 15 hours to play through the normal story mode until I hit credits and then play through nearly all of the post-game stuff. I also played the Japanese version of the game on real hardware.
V2 is a direct sequel to the original Custom Robo that takes place about a year after the events of the first game. Though it takes place in a new town with a new non-verbal player avatar at the helm, the formula is still very similar (and we even have some returning characters from the first game who get new and expanded roles here). You’re going out and starting to play Custom Robo in the new town you just moved to with the help of your new friends, and you get wrapped up in some shady plots by evil figures along the way. It’s still very much of the style of “anime based around a toy” of the time, where everyone just accepts the fact that their world is totally based around these toys and plays it completely straight, which is very fun, so that’s not a problem. Overall, I’d say this game’s campaign mode is easily weaker than the first. It gets into the Mysterious Evil Plot stuff a lot faster, and while it does a better job establishing that overall mystery, it does a far worse job setting up the characters within it (despite the far larger amount of dialogue this game has overall compared to the first game). The conclusion to the story comes VERY fast, and the overall pacing is just really all over the place. It’s certainly neat that this story is *trying* to be something greater and grander than the first, and the way that it shakes up the pacing of the first by getting to the evil organization stuff so much quicker *does* show that they’re genuinely trying here. However, it really just isn’t enough at the end of the day, and while the story here isn’t a burden or bad, it doesn’t surpass the first game’s story for me. Mechanically however, that’s another story. To put it simply, V2 is a very accurate way to describe this game, because it really *is* just the first game with more content. It’s still a one-on-one arena fighter where you fight to reduce the other robo’s health to zero first, but just with more stuff. In addition to finally being able to swap bodies/frames in story mode (whereas in the first game you HAD to use your normal all-arounder Ray body the whole time) so you have a *lot* more builds actually viable, they’ve also added two new body types as well. This comes along with the new blink system (where old frames only had the ability to do extra jumps or dashes in the air, the two new frames can blink around the map instead), as well as a smattering of fun, new weapons and even a ton of new arenas to fight in as well. The fact that you can still so easily test builds after you customize them makes engaging with these new weapons and experimenting with new builds all the easier too, and that feature is just as appreciated here as it was in the first game. This ultimately does make for a much easier experience in the story mode as a result (which extends into the post-game which is just a massive series of tournaments with a bit of little story attached to each), but I feel like that comes more from the fact you just have so many more tools available to you rather than a “dumbing down” of the mechanics or difficulty or whatever. The post-game is also neat in that it’s not only where you unlock a large amount of the weapons and almost all of the frame variants, but it also really pushes you to learn new builds and not stick with what’s comfortable, which is a neat feature to make it good fun worth playing beyond *just* being new robo fights. While it may not replace the first game narratively, Custom Robo V2 lives up to its title and is absolutely just a flat upgrade on the first game mechanically. Aesthetically, the game is basically just a continuation of the first game (which makes sense, as it reuses the same engine). We have very nice 3D battle arenas and well modeled and designed robos among them, and the game almost never has any slowdown as well, though that is indeed *almost* as some of the more texture-heavy battle arenas do get a bit of slowdown unfortunately. The game world is still 2D character sprites in 3D areas, and the character portraits and models are all very fun and cute with great Nintendo-y music on top of it all. As shouldn’t be surprising from a Nintendo-published N64 game, it aesthetically really knocks it out of the park and uses the hardware just about as well as it possibly could. Verdict: Recommended. If you’re a fan of the first game (or even the GameCube game), this is a game well worth checking out. It’s not the most terribly import-friendly title, unfortunately, as it’d make customizing your robot quite difficult, so that’s one thing to keep in mind. However, on its own merits and ignoring the language barrier, Custom Robo V2 absolutely succeeds at being an unconventional fighting game that is a very worthy successor to its predecessor. If you like robot stuff and/or 3D arena fighters, this is absolutely one worth checking out~. In my pursuit to play more of this series as well as more PS1 RPGs, after I finished Wild Arms 1, I hopped straight into Wild Arms 2 (or as it’s called here in Japan, “Wild Arms 2nd Ignition”). Wild Arms 1 had a lot of potential, and given that it came out three years later, I figured the sequel had a lot of opportunity to fulfill that potential. RPGs as a genre evolved quite a bit between 1996 and 1999, after all. I was partially right and partially wrong, it turns out ^^;. It took me about 44 hours to complete the Japanese version of the game on real hardware.
The narrative of Wild Arms 2 is *kinda* a narrative sequel to the first game, but mostly not. I guess it’d be more accurate that it takes place in the far flung future of what was perhaps an alternate version of the events of the first game. In this distant future Falgaia, our story begins by following the stories of Lulika the crest sorcerer, Brad the convict, and Ashley (who is a boy) the soldier. With the opening being Brad sent to maximum security prison, Lulika helping out a struggling frontier town, and Ashley both becoming a war hero and then getting transformed into a horrible monster, things promise to be quite interesting as the three of them are recruited by a mysterious Count Irving into a special military unit: ARMS (Awkward Rush & Mission Savers (yes, really)) to take on the evil terrorist group Odessa. Just from that brief little synopsis of the first seven or so hours, you probably already have a pretty good impression that Wild Arms 2 is a narrative that is trying to do a LOT, and you’re right. This isn’t even the tip of the iceberg (there are even two more main characters and an optional extra one who I didn’t even mention in that summary. Wild Arms 2 is a story about heroes: Who is viewed as a hero? Who gets to be a hero? How does a hero relate to their government or their society? How does a world in peace time handle the heroes who brought them that peace? It promises some pretty interesting setups at the start, but it proves woefully inadequate to fulfilling the task of delivering on those promises. On a very base level, Wild Arms 2 has still not solved the problem it’s predecessor had in terms of the narrative being far too blunt (to the point of feeling patronizing) in how characters express who they are and what they believe. We still very much have a lot of “I am [NAME] and this is what I believe and this is why I believe it” dialogue, and that is barely an exaggeration. However, given that Wild Arms 1 was more of a character-driven piece without much focus on larger philosophical or political themes, this was a bit more easily ignored, and its narrative more or less worked (at least for a game from 1996). Wild Arms 2 on the other hand, which actually *does* try to have a very politically and philosophically focused narrative, is hit much harder by this inability to be subtle. It leaks into virtually every aspect of the writing as well, with characters talking like philosophy majors almost constantly to the point that they do a very poor job of actually feeling like real people. It’s difficult to empathize with or try to read much nuance into characters when they all feel like living philosophy textbooks. I’d estimate at least half if not more of the dialogue spoken by our main characters has this feeling, and while it starts off somewhat charming, it gets grating and boring far before the end of our narrative. This problem is compacted even further by just how poorly Wild Arms 2 is at even exploring these themes. Characters like Brad feel woefully underdeveloped via their actions despite the amount of text that tries to convince us otherwise, and characters like our last main party member feel incredibly rushed and poorly portrayed with how weirdly late they join the party compared to everyone else. The game is far too attached to its few big important set pieces, so it takes almost until the end of disc 1 for *any* catharsis towards fighting our antagonists to take place either, and these antagonists *also* have the misfortune of feeling both far too verbose and paradoxically far too underdeveloped to really have much to contribute thematically. While all of that very terminology-heavy dialogue can be quite difficult to sift through at times, one nice thing about the game being *so* straightforward with its ideology is that it’s actually very clear that they simply have no idea what they’re talking about. This is a story that ultimately has no idea what heroes are or how they relate to society. I’ll admit that it has some very interesting points to make about how heroes are just as much contributors to society as they are scapegoats to society’s problems, but there just isn’t a unifying ideology behind all of those ideas. At the end of the story, we’re left with a world almost identical to the one we started with, and the only things really different are that a few people are dead and the world ending threats have been dealt with. For a game with so much to critique about heroes and society, it is actually one hell of a pro-status quo piece of fiction. It has societal critiques, yes, but in just how aggressively it fails to imagine a world not entirely defined by what it is critiquing, we’re left with a piece of fiction that feels extremely performative in the ideas it’s presenting despite the earnestness with which those ideas are often delivered. Whether this is down to the author’s bad politics (which I would say is at least partially true) or simply his inability as a writer is impossible to say for sure, but what I can pretty easily say for certain is that what he wrote for Wild Arms 2 makes for an experience that is as bloated textually as it is underwhelming thematically. Mechanically, Wild Arms 2 is also quite a mixed bag compared to its predecessor. On a very base level, we still have a very straightforward turn-based RPG. However, there have been quite a lot of interesting new mechanics thrown into the mix to try and make something a bit more engaging. There are a few quality of life changes carried over and/or enhanced from the first game. For example, you can still equip items mid-battle and have it not consume a turn. Given that your party is now more than three members, however, they’ve extended this into also being able to swap characters between the fighting and reserve members all without consuming turns as well, which is also nice. We’ve also kept our tool-based dungeon exploration, and while it’s still hardly Legend of Zelda, this Lufia 2-style item use in dungeons does help mix things up a bit (even if this game still has some puzzles that are ungodly difficult and/or have no qualms about wasting a LOT of your time, very much like the first game did). They’ve also tossed a few interesting gimmicks into world and dungeon exploration as well. As far as world exploration goes, instead of using the whole narrative contrivance of like, “Oh there are a pile of sheep here who don’t want to move, so you just can’t go in this dungeon yet”, we have the dowsing system. On the world map, you can press square to let out a ping, and if there’s a dungeon (or hidden item) nearby within the radius, it’ll appear. The interesting part is that you’ll only uncover a dungeon if you know about it (or it’s narratively time for you to be able to access it), so no going anywhere early. It’s a bit absurd at times how you apparently just can’t see the massive tower that’s allegedly in front of you yet, but it’s a clever design feature regardless. They’ve also given you the ability to avoid most random battles. Before an encounter, a little exclamation mark bubble will appear above your head. If it’s white, pressing X (or doing any action like using a tool or opening your inventory) will avoid the encounter. You still can’t avoid the red exclamation mark bubble encounters, but they stop appearing if you’re a high enough level compared to the enemies around you. It’s another very smart step in making the game just that much nicer to play. The biggest new change, however, is that MP is completely gone. In its place, the FP (Force Point) system from the first game is now doing double duty. Force Points are gained by dealing damage through normal attacks or taking damage yourself. Like in the first game, you will unlock through the course of the story new Force Abilities of rank 1 to 4 that consume FP in multiples of 25 (level 1 consumes 25, level 2 consumes 50, and so on). However, now all of your spells and special abilities are also now linked to FP, but very importantly they do *not* actually consume FP. For example, your basic heal spell has a 5 FP requirement. As long as you have at least 5 FP, you can cast heal as many times as you want and it never consumes FP. Only your big Force Abilities actually consume FP. Removing MP is a very noble endeavor, as it means you get to let loose a lot more in battle, but it has a lot of unfortunate side effects too. First of all we have quite the double edged sword of being able to go as all out as you want in every battle. Because few resources are truly scarce, this means we run into the problem that encounters are eminently solvable. Once you’re powerful enough to just be able to wipe out your enemies before they can get a turn, there’s no reason not to just do that every time, and as the game isn’t terribly hard most of the time, this means random encounters start to feel very time wasty very fast. Additionally, not every character is benefited equally by this bonus. Particularly Ashley and Brad who have their special guns which require ammo, they get no such benefit, and their freedom from MP matters very little when they’re still very much limited by how much ammo you have. While we’re on the topic, the guns (also confusingly still called ARM weapons just like they were in the first game, but no relation to the ARMS group you’re now a part of) really feel like a mechanical afterthought. Whereas in the first game every gun had a limit of upgrades, it was more along the lines of “every gun can have its power, accuracy, and ammo pool upgraded X-many times”, and it made for a nice money sink in the end game, now all guns can only be upgraded ten times across *all* upgrades. This means that Ashley in particular, who lacks a Force Ability like Rodi did in the last game or Brad has in this game to make the gun they fire next have a 100% chance to hit, has his guns double worthless. Not only will they always be some combo of either too weak or too inaccurate due to this baffling new constraint on their power, but given the super form Ashley unlocks quite quickly that he needs a full Force Power bar to activate, it makes his non-FP generating guns all the more worthless. Brad’s guns already feel like a poorly balanced afterthought compared to other character’s special abilities, but Ashley’s really feel beyond pointless and very poorly considered as a mechanic. Speaking of balance, now seems like about a good a time as any to talk about balance. Wild Arms 1 had a decent overall balance. While some bosses were awful difficulty spikes that you had to just get lucky to beat, it had an overall decent difficulty balance if you used your buffs intelligently and kept on top of your healing. It was still overall a bit too easy, as the same strategies worked too often on most things, but it at least required some thought. Here, as Wild Arms 2 seems to love doing with all things, we have that same problem from the first game but amplified even worse. First of all, we have to mention the personal skill system. Every level up you get, you get a personal skill point, and these can be spent at personal skill point stores to give yourself passives. There are all range of passives, but some demand getting as soon as possible while others are basically worthless, and which are the former and which are the latter aren’t always obvious. Sure, it’s obvious that you should get the skill to increase the amount of HP you receive on level up as soon as you can, but it’s a lot less obvious that you’ll need the passives to decrease incoming physical damage and then the ones to do the same for incoming spell damage as soon as possible too. If you don’t have those passives (and even if you do, quite frankly), there are a lot of bosses that are absurdly hard and it feels like you can really do nothing but get lucky enough to damage race them successfully. This is then further amplified as a problem in that, while you can buy basic healing items at the start of the game, after the third or fourth dungeon, they completely disappear from shops. You can actually *never* buy HP healing items of any strength after that point, and you’ll need to get any you might want by grinding them off of enemies. And remember, MP also doesn’t exist, so there’s no healing yourself with spells in between battles either. Combined with how this game still lacks FF-style tents to full heal outside of inns (and also STILL somehow lacks the ability to save on the world map), this is a really mean spirited obstacle that feels like a very unfair disadvantage to the player. Having to ration your healing items like it’s some sort of survival horror game (when the rest of the game really isn’t set up in a way to encourage that) just flat out sucks, full stop. Being that you have no worthwhile consumables to buy nor do you have really meaningful gun upgrades to buy either, it means money overall is damn near worthless the entire game. Being unable to buy more healing items doesn’t make the game particularly harder and it certainly doesn’t make it any more fun. It just makes it more frustrating, and it’s easily the biggest impact on the game’s already very needlessly mean difficulty curve. Aesthetically, this is a pretty well done game. It’s got some *noticeable* loading times. They’re not particularly bad, but you will almost certainly notice how long it takes to get to the world map compared to some other games, and it can be a little grating here and there. Still, character sprites in locations look very nice and have a ton of character to all of their little animations, and 3D models and monster designs are very cool and well done too. The music is also, once again, absolutely excellent, and not slacking on the music is thankfully one thing this game absolutely has in common with its predecessor. Verdict: Hesitantly Recommended. The fact that I’m well aware that the English translation of this game is infamously awful does affect this recommendation level somewhat, but only slightly. Even if the English translation were stellar, I couldn’t recommend this game any higher if I tried. It’s a thoroughly middle of the road RPG in an era where there was no shortage of absolutely stellar RPGs either already out or about to come out, and there’s really just not a ton of reason to play it. It’s not an awful game by any means, but with all of the other PS1 and PS2 RPGs out there you could burn 40 hours on, your time is simply better spent elsewhere. |
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
April 2024
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