I hate forests in RPG’s

I’m trying to split my play-time between this and Mass Effect but I keep bumping into one of my most hated and boring RPG cliches: the confusing forest. See, we’re on the way to the White House to stop George Bush from harming more children but we can’t get there without going through this forest. No problem I can handle a forest.

Well we get into it and there’s two paths you can go on so I take north and fight a group of monsters then continues on the path and exit the screen and find a treasure chest at a dead end. Cool. After looting the chest I head back to the fork but first I have to fight the same group of monsters again. Same way with any fork in the forest path – if you have to backtrack (and you will because it’s a freaking confusing forest you know?) then you have to fight the same monsters again. These aren’t quick battles either. Each one takes 4-5 minutes or so which makes this forest absolutely mind-numbingly boring, especially with no save point in sight.

I will get past it either tonight or tomorrow and see what’s what at the White House.  It’s the next major plot area so something interesting should be happening soon.

 

Side quests

Well we worked our way through the 7 levels of the dungeon and found the power supply for the robot. Because we did that, the inventor fixed our airship so we were able to return to the main city, leaving the island and the robot behind. I’m guessing we will run into the robot again at some point.

Once back at the city I had some options. I could continue the main plot or I could do side quests. I chose to do some side quests which turned out to be a fun choice.

Japanese RPG’s are often criticized for being “too linear” and not offering enough choices for players. This can be a valid complaint as some JRPG’s are a straight line connecting several setpieces and boss battles until the game is done. But more linear RPG’s also have the ability to tell a tighter, more focused story and develop characters more thoroughly.

My initial impression of Arc the Lad is that it seems to straddle the line between the two RPG variants pretty well. I spent maybe an hour or two this past week just doing side quests or “jobs” at the Hunter’s Guild. They are fun to do and seem to be more than just “fight these monsters and retrieve this item.” Most of them have a bit of story or background to them. And they all serve to help increase my characters’ levels and abilities. I like having these side quests and suspect I’ll be spending quite a bit of time doing them, especially as I get a better handle on the game’s levelling system.

One of my last tasks was to eliminate one of the Wanted Monsters in the area: the dreaded Slasher. We found The Slasher in the home of the bad guy Gallarno.

As it turns out, Elc was kidnapped as a child and taken to a facility which performed secret experiments on him. He managed to escape but one of the young girls he left behind was turned into a monster and sent out to find him. That was The Slasher but unfortunately she wasn’t very difficult to defeat. In fact, the whole game seems a bit on the easy side, moreso than even Arc I.

I’m now about 6 hours into Arc II and liking it a lot. It’s definitely a different sort of game than Final Fantasy VII and Lunar 2.

 

A Good Beginning

Arc the Lad II is about a young Hunter named Elc. He watched his family get butchered when he was a child and was taken in by his friend/mentor Shu. Now that Elc’s grown, he does various jobs offered by the Hunter’s Guild. One day he is given the job to go to the airstrip and while he’s there he rescues a young lady named Lieza who is being pursued by a mysterious Cabal of no-gooders with wide-brimmed hats.

They manage to escape from the Cabal and head to the town of Indigos where Elc begins to accumulate some money by doing jobs. This is a really fun aspect of the game as you are given a list of jobs you can do and the reward if you do them. One of them was to investigate a haunted building, another was to protect a jewelry store that was being robbed and another was to rescue a dog. I like the fact that they are optional but also how they can be solved in any order.

Later we ended up chasing an airship piloted by Arc from the first game. As I didn’t finish it I’m a little lost and don’t know Arc’s story but I hope that isn’t a problem.  Our airship crash-lands in a tropical area. We investigated a nearby dungeon and rescued a young girl and also found an old robot that was powered down.

The man who can fix Elc’s airship wants the robot so we have to journey deeper into the dungeon to find a power cell for it.

So far I’m two and a half hours into the game and having a great time with it. It’s very different from Lunar 2, though both were translated by Working Designs. I look forward to spending some more time with it later this week and weekend.

 

Arc the Lad II

I had originally thought I might play Persona next but after playing around with it for an hour or so I can tell it’s not for me. First, my copy doesn’t come with a manual and it seems like the sort of game where a manual would be helpful. Second I can’t get used to the movement system: pushing down on the d-pad makes your character move down and to the right, push right and he moves up and to the right. It drove me crazy. And last, it just seems pretty crudely done and unpolished. Supposedly Persona 2 is much better so I’m shelving Persona 1 in favor of Arc the Lad II.

The first Arc the Lad game just didn’t grab me. I found it very boring and simplistic and couldn’t bring myself to continue. By all accounts, Arc II is a much better game. It was released in Japan on November 1, 1996 but didn’t see a North American release until Working Designs’ Arc the Lad Collection came out in April of 2002.

Let’s hope that the second time is a charm.

 

Lunar 2 Review

When I was reading about classic RPG’s I kept hearing people refer warmly to the Lunar games as a landmark series. Now that I’ve finished both of them I can see why. Here are my final thoughts on Lunar 2.

Story

Lunar 1 was characterized by a strong story and Lunar 2 follows suit. A good RPG needs engaging characters and the creators of Lunar have again done a great job bringing these animated sprites to life and making them seem like people. The main story centers around Hiro (okay it’s a stupid name – no question) and Lucia, a mysterious girl he finds one day. She initially is detached and weird and hard to like but as the game progresses we see her become more “human” and begin to develop feelings for Hiro. Other characters go through similar transformations: Jean comes to terms with her past as a secret assassin and looks forward to her future as a dancer (!), Ronfar deals with his guilt and becomes less of a randy goat and Leo changes from an adversary to a friend. Even Ghaleon is redeemed at the end of the game.

The plot wasn’t as strong as the characters however. It basically boiled down to “save the world from the evil being” and often involved a lot of annoying side quests and filler. I think the long initial journey to Pentagulia and the later quest for the four dragons could have been shortened without losing much and it would have resulted in a more focused story.

But the fun of a game like Lunar 2 isn’t in the grand, sweeping plot but more in the small, individual moments. And Lunar 2 was filled with a lot of these. Yes some of the dialog is cheesy and that does detract from the story. While Working Designs did a great overall job bringing the game to us, I really could have done without some of the jarring humor and references to 1990’s current events.

The other exceptional thing about Lunar 2 is the way it follows its prequel and maintains some of the same settings and characters. This really is a game that is good by itself but becomes great when you are aware of the many connections between the two games. I especially enjoyed seeing what happened to Luna, meeting Ramus’ descendants and finding Nall again. It was also fun to travel to many of the same locations and see how they’d changed over the years. I wish more RPGs found a way to continue the story from earlier games in the series.

Overall, Lunar 2’s story was great. I give it an 8 out of 10.

Presentation

One of the first things I noticed about Lunar 2 are the animated cutscenes that are sprinkled throughout the game. They really are well done and serve to flesh out the characters and important story points. As I moved through the game and would approach an important plot point, I knew there was going to be an anime cutscene and I found myself looking forward to them. I actually wouldn’t mind watching an anime series with expanded animation from Lunar 2. It’s really top-notch and adds a lot to the game.

The other thing that I noticed about the game are the 2D graphics and sprites. The visuals are warm and bright with lots of vibrant color. The character sprites are well-modeled and animated. I always knew which character I was looking at from a quick glance at the screen. Other aspects of the graphics were equally well-done. Towns were busy and filled with people who all had something to say. Dungeons were intricate and appropriately creepy and the overworld was filled with lots of interesting things that made me want to investigate more. I do wish the game gave you an option of a large overview map with town names as it could be difficult to find a particular place you needed to visit.

Music, as always, was exceptional. Noriyuki Iwadare has again created a soundtrack that I wanted to listen to and the fact that it was available on CD as part of the game was outstanding. At no point did any of the music become irritating, though I never mind a change of battle music halfway through the game. Any song become irritating after you’ve heard it a hundred or more times. Many of the songs were catchy and I’d find myself humming them at times during the day. Lunar 1 did include a “music video” during the game with Luna singing on the ship about her life and her future. I found myself waiting for something similar in the sequel but its absence is far from a deal-breaker.

Voice acting remains questionable. While many of the actors did a fine job during important scenes, the constant “I’ll take care of this” or “You need a spanking” during battles got old really quickly. I wish there was a way to turn them off or at least make them happen only occasionally as they did become quite irritating after awhile.

Game Arts and Working Designs have again created a game that is beautiful to look at and listen to. I give Lunar 2’s presentation 9 out of 10.

Gameplay

Gameplay in Lunar 2 is a mixed bag. There are some elements that are a lot of fun and others that could be improved. In general, I liked the combat in Lunar 2. The ability to see enemies before you battle them is always welcome and means that there are no random battles. This is one area where Lunar was ahead of its time as the developers could balance the game, knowing you’d be at or near a certain level for some of the major fights. Well most of the time anyway. The combat system is good and I liked the ability to position your characters and how they and the enemies moved around the battlefield. This is the precursor to the combat system in Grandia which was refined to near-perfection.

Lunar 2 is not an easy game. Many of the dungeons are quite difficult and some of the bosses are brutal. I did find I had to spend a play session or two just grinding to make sure I could handle some of the tough fights. I do think the difficulty was more consistent than in the first game which would often surprise me with an out-of-the-blue nasty fight I was completely unprepared for. I would have liked the ability to customize my characters more. I did like equipping rings and crests which gave them new abilities but some way to directly influence the characters’ growth would have also been nice.

The game had some problems with pacing. My total playtime was around 33 hours which isn’t bad but there were some parts that seemed to drag, particularly the initial journey to Pentagulia and the quest to find the four dragons. I would have appreciated a shorter, better-paced game. Minigames were almost entirely absent which was fine with me and would have felt like padding. I think Lunar 1 was better-paced though I suppose some complained that it was too short.

I like the fact that there is an Epilogue to play after the game is finished and I looked forward to resolving the story but I really had my fill of Lunar 2’s gameplay by that point. I might return to it sometime but I didn’t feel compelled to spend more time grinding.

Overall I give Lunar 2’s gameplay a slightly above-average 6 out of 10.

Conclusion

I’m happy that I played the Lunar games. While I liked the first Lunar better than the second in some ways, Lunar 2 seemed to refine and improve many of the first game’s weaknesses. They are both extremely well-done games that are lovely to look at, listen to and a lot of fun to play. They also create very memorable characters that you want to spend time with.

Final score: 7.3

 

Some housekeeping

I twiddled a bit with the Epilogue to Lunar 2 and I think I’m going to pass for now. My initial impression was that it involved a lot of grinding and fetch quests and a glance at a FAQ from GameFAQs backed that up. It recommends being at least level 56 or 57 to do some of the dungeons necessary to finish the Epilogue so I’m looking at 4 or 5 levels of grinding at least to get ready for them. While I liked the game, I’m not prepared right now to do a lot of grinding just to see the “good” ending.

So I’m going to wrap up Lunar 2 and work on my review. I hope to have it up in the next couple of days.

Then I got to thinking about what I would play next and I remembered that I had a Vandal Hearts game in progress from a year or two ago. I loaded that up and messed with it for an hour or so and realized I’m going to have some problems with the strategy RPG’s on my Hit List. First, I really don’t play strategy RPG’s for the story much so that would make writing a narrative pretty boring. I’m afraid it would be a lot of “Then I moved Captain Awesome two spaces forward on the grid and struck Cannon Fodder #4 with my sword and reduced his HP down to 14 and then…” Sounds dreadful.

The other thing is some of these games seem like they haven’t aged very well. Vandal Hearts in particular seems pretty far behind current SRPG’s like Jeanne D’Arc  The traditional RPG’s like Lunar and Grandia and Final Fantasy 7 have aged a lot better, at least where my tastes are concerned. If I keep them on my list I can see them not being a lot of fun to play and me getting frustrated with them.

So I’m going to nuke the strategy RPG’s from my list with a couple of exceptions. I think I have to play Final Fantasy Tactics as it’s consistently referred to as one of the best. I actually bought the PSP remake so I will probably play that, though it will make screenshots pretty much impossible. I also want to play Front Mission 3 as a mecha-based SRPG sounds cool and I actually played it for a couple of hours when it first came out and liked it a lot. And I really want to play Tactics Ogre but I can’t seem to find it at my usual pawn shops or garage sales. Ebay is always an option but it’s currently going for anywhere from $60 – $160 and I just can’t see me paying that. It may be a game I have to acquire from the shadier side of the internet which I don’t like but I think is one of the only sane options left.

So we’ll see what my next game will be. At this point, it’s a toss-up between Persona and Arc the Lad 2.

 

The End… or not

I’ve made a lot of progress in Lunar 2. In fact, I’ve sort of finished the game. More about that in a bit.

First off we needed to deal with the False Althena. We made our way to the fortress where she was hiding out and climbed to the top. This involved lots of annoying enemies and an inevitable boss battle with the False Althena. The interesting thing was a room with a holographic image of the Blue Star.

We found out quite a bit about Lunar and the Blue Star. Apparently all the people used to live on the Blue Star but Zophar began to take over and corrupt the world. Lucia was able to defeat Zophar but only by unleashing armageddon and destroying the world. The remaining people were brought to the moon of Lunar which was converted to a habitable planet for them. Kind of a cool backstory and it certainly explains some things I’ve been wondering about.

Also while we were here Hiro reached level 50 which unlocked his Triple Strike ability. It kicks all kinds of ass, especially when his attack power is boosted by Lemina.

After the False Althena was defeated, Zophar confronted Lucia. She had the opportunity to get rid of Zophar once and for all but only by destroying the world like before. Lucia couldn’t bring herself to do this and was captured by Zophar. This was the end of Disc 2.

Disc 3 began with a battle against Ghaleon. Once he was defeated, his life was spared by Hiro and the others. Ghaleon regrets his sins and hopes for redemption.

This leaves only the final area and the confrontation with Zophar left to do. Our group takes the Dragonship and arrives at the fortress of Zophar. In here are lots of enemies and by the time we reached Zophar everyone was at level 52 or 53.

Zophar was made even more powerful by his capture of Lucia. He ended up having four different forms that had to be defeated. This is pretty much standard final boss battle stuff by now isn’t it? I think if I got to a final boss, defeated him and wasn’t greeted by sinister music and one of my characters saying “Uh-oh… he’s baaack!” then I’d be disappointed.

He wasn’t easy to defeat and I had to have Jean cast White Dragon Protect pretty much every round in order to block his spells. Hiro went wild with Triple Strike and Leminia unleashed Catastrophe while Ronfar healed and restored Jean’s MP and Leo beat Zophar’s head with his special attack. Eventually his fourth and final form went down, Lucia was rescued and the world was saved.

So then began one of the longest and most boring finales I’ve ever sat through. Lots of shots of the dragonship sailing the seas, lots of tearful goodbyes, lots of silly dialogue and at the end Hiro and Lucia look like they’re going to be Best Friends Forever but then she drops the bomb on him that she is returning to the Blue Star to undo the damage she caused there. Hiro gives her a teary-eyed look and pleads for her to stay but she leaves him behind. Hiro then vows that he will find her and that was the end of the game.

Except that wasn’t the end of the game. After the credits I was able to save my game and start playing the Epilogue. This is a cool and unusual feature and I’m guessing it might tie up the loose ends of the story so I think I’ll start on that right away. I’ll report back on the Epilogue soon. If it’s pretty lame I’ll just be done with it.

 

Finished with the dragons

I’m now over 26 hours into Lunar 2. We had to take a detour to resolve Ronfar’s backstory with the love of his life Marui. It seems he gave her a potion some time ago that was supposed to save her but also held some of Zophar’s power in it. So she lived but she became an evil she-bitch from hell. The only way Ronfar could save her was to… well…

Yes it’s the cheesy plot move of doing battle with someone’s inner demons by actually, you know, literally doing battle with someone’s inner demons. Insert groan here.

Anyway she was saved and now we had to free the last dragon’s essence/aura/something. Now I’m sorta confused as Ruby is the Red Dragon but we also had his aura with us and then we fought the Red Fiend who looks like a dragon and then we threw the aura at the crystal which looked like it had a red dragon trapped inside. I’m sure it all makes sense but I’m just happy that Ronfar finally got two attacks per turn. When he’s not busy healing he can dish out some damage.

You would think that now that Ruby is a full-fledged dragon we’d be able to kick serious ass through the rest of the game. Couldn’t he just breathe fire on anything that stood in our way? Yeah I guess that would make the game too easy.

Now that the four dragons are defeated I’m not sure where things are going to go from here. It seems like I should be nearing the end of the game but I know I’m not finished with Disc 2 yet and there’s a third disc still to go.  My characters are nearing level 50 and the game is still quite challenging. Though it’s been awhile since I’ve died, there’s a pretty constant challenge of taking care of the minor enemies in a dungeon while still having enough HP/MP left to take on the boss.

 

Grinding… just grinding…

So here’s the problem I ran into.  This guy kept kicking my butt:

He’s an green little bastard inappropriately named the Blue Fiend. I made it through the dungeon and got to him but fighting all the creatures and healing along the way pretty much tapped me out and the Blue Fiend hurt me plenty. Second try I attempted to conserve my resources and made it back to the Blue Fiend with a lot more MP and I got killed as he kept casting a silencing attack on my group and then healing himself for 1,000+ HP. Damn it.

So I did something I don’t much like to do – I began grinding. I hate fighting just for the sake of gaining more levels in RPG’s. It seems like a waste of time when I could be defeating the foozle or rescuing the princess or stumbling upon a +1 Amazing Item of Usefulness. But I made a sort of uneasy peace with grinding in the Blue Dragon Cave. I started out at around level 36 for my group and I kept grinding until I reached level 40. It took awhile and I hope that’s it for grinding in Lunar 2.

And at level 40 the Blue Fiend was pretty easy work.

We then freed the Blue Dragon and began working our way south only to meet the flying fortress of Neo Vane. It shot down our Dragonship Destiny, leaving us to hoof it on foot. Now it’s off to take care of the Black Dragon.

So here’s the story of Lunar 2 thus far: In Act One you walk a really long fucking way, fighting alot and acquiring group members as you go. Once you get to Act Two in Pentagulia you are then sent on a massive fetch quest to free four dragons.

Am I missing something? This thing better have one amazing ending or I’m going to be pissed.

 

Blue dragon karate defeats all!

So we made it through this long cave in search of the White Dragon. We already know Nall is the White Dragon but we needed to find his aura or essence or mojo or something. At the end of the cave we encountered the White Dragon himself. But wait! It’s a trap!

Wow. That was sure a surprise! Ugh… Insert obligatory boss fight here.

With the White Dragon taken care of we now moved south to the village of Horam. There we were told about a karate championship which made Jean very happy. After all, what’s a delay for one little karate tournament when the fate of the world is resting on your time-sensitive mission?

The thing about this karate tournament is at the top of the ranks sits Master Lunn, the leader of the Shadow Dragon Cult and former mentor to Jean. I think they might have also had a thing going on as well. The romantic tension between them is so thick you could cut it with a well-placed karate chop.

So our group fought their way through three ranks of villains, inching closer to the top of the tournament ladder and Master Lunn. But since Lunn was Jean’s mentor how will she ever defeat him?

Oh. Ok.

They did fight and Jean did win. The third time. Yep I died again on a boss battle. Twice. I hang my head in shame.

But much like a reversed Star Wars, the student defeated the master (with Blue Dragon Karate!!) and things were set right. Lunn realized the folly of his evil ways and, as it turns out, he also possessed the Blue Dragon Aura which he handed over. Now it’s off to another cave to release the Blue Dragon

A side effect of this diversion is Jean’s combat has completely changed. Before she attacked twice from a distance with her weapons but now she moves in close and attacks three times with her awesome kung-fu moves. I think she ends up doing as much damage as Hiro, maybe more.

I’m now about 18 hours into the game.