Niahak's Place

I’ve been playing Phantasy Star II on Virtual Console.

PS2 is the first “true” RPG to be released on VC – I don’t count Paper Mario, since it’s just too simple, and I don’t count probably a half dozen games Jay would yell at me for because they’re SRPGs (Shining Force) or Action RPGs (Landstalker).

PS2 is also really freaking grindy.  But that’s a good thing, in some ways.

Let me explain.  Imagine you’re making a trip to the Amazon rainforest.  You’re going into the deepest parts, and you know you’re going to be facing all kinds of nasty critters, including piranhas, various poisonous insects, enormous snakes, et cetera.  If you don’t prepare, you’re going to die.  That’s all there is to it.

In this sense, Phantasy Star 2 is an Amazon expedition simulator.  You prepare a ton when it’s safe, and then you enter a dungeon.  The individual enemies in a dungeon are no problem, but each one is going to take its toll – 5 HP here, 10 HP there – and if you prepared, you’ll be able to last a good while.  Between an inventory full of healing items and healing spells, you can last long enough to explore every branch of the early dungeons.

The later dungeons pretty much require infinite patience or maps.  I recommend the Climatrol map for a good idea of what a mid-game dungeon is like.  All those little X marks are lava/poison squares.  Look at the 6th and 7th floors (3rd and 2nd image from the bottom).  Each D is a down stair, each U an up stair.  If you don’t plan your route, you’d better be high-leveled or you will die.  In fact, at the top of this dungeon is a boss (one of two in the whole game!) who killed my weakest party member in one shot; by the time I won, only my two strongest members were alive, and they’d used up every healing item worthy of the name.

In other words, this is a good “intense” tough game, rather than a nasty or unfair game as I would characterize SMT: Nocturne or even Ys 3.  Both are also grindy, but in the sense that even with grinding, you are eventually going to run up against a simply unfair situation which will murder your party.  These can occur in PS2, but I have had them happen only twice, whereas potentially unfair situations crop up about once every 20 minutes in SMT… the entire final dungeon is unfair in Ys.

Thus far, I think I’m about 25 hours into PS2 and I’d say its status as a classic is well-deserved.  It’s a little bit inaccessible if your biggest conquest is Final Fantasy X, but it isn’t any harder than Dragon Warrior 7 and is only somewhat tougher than Dragon Quest 8.

So if you’ve got a Wii, and you’re looking for something RPGish… and you’re willing to put up with a bit of tedium for some tricky battles, labyrinthine dungeons and occasionally coherent sci-fi story, it’s definitely a good bet.

The NES had so many goofy oddball games, it’s nearly impossible to keep track of them all.  Snake Rattle ‘n Roll stands out from the hordes via upbeat jazz music, a bizarre (therefore original) sense of style, and fun cooperative gameplay.

You play the snake(s) appropriately named Rattle (and Roll).  To get through the stages, you avoid or defeat strange, snake-hating enemies, from water-dwelling sharks to razor blade traps to giant, snake-crushing disembodied feet.  Your objective is to get to the moon for reasons unknown.  Placed at specific points in the level are pellet dispensers, which shoot out pellets which you can eat.  The pellets try to avoid you in a different way each level; the early ones simply roll or walk, while later ones will bounce or fly away.  In an interesting touch, the walking pellets have tiny white feet; after your snake consumes one, it spits out said feet.  Likewise with the later wings, et cetera.

Eating serves a couple different purposes.  The first is that it lets you survive a bit longer against easy enemies.  As you eat, you get additional segments added to your body, and if you’re hit you lose one.  The second purpose is that it’s the only way to beat levels (aside from the warps scattered throughout early levels).  Your snake has to reach its maximum weight, then stand on a scale to open a door.  After going through the door, you’ve beaten the level.

The first purpose of pellets is quickly defeated.  The game is full of spikes, the evil giant feet, anvils, and other evil things that kill in one hit.  Jumping puzzles are quite tricky, especially in later levels.  Dying to spikes or pits, however, is entertaining as your snake will make a high-pitched, plaintive “Aaaaaaaarrrrrgg” complete with text coming out as it falls.

Though it’s tough to beat, Snake Rattle ‘n Roll is a great little bit of entertainment.  It was among Rare’s first games, and is definitely one of the cooler cooperative NES games,  So long as your buddy doesn’t hog all of the tongue upgrades.

There are few games that can inspire a sense of true exploration; a feeling of awe at how large or detailed they can be.  Fewer still are the games that can bring out that feeling even after you’ve beaten them.  For some reason, despite being only a so-so game in nearly every other respect, Drakkhen (of a few systems, though most notably the SNES) still holds uncounted mysteries in my mind.

The most likely source of this awe is simply that the game is so abominably random.  I never owned the instruction book, and the introduction only gives vagaries as to the plot (blah blah, 4 elements, 2 poles of power).  Fact is, you create a party and start in the middle of the Earth area with little direction.  You’re told that you have to collect 8 Tears of Power, and that you should check at the nearby castle first.   Oh, the introductory information tells you a decent amount about the game’s system.  What it *doesn’t* tell you, though, is what’s ironically most important.

For example, observe.

This mysterious black dog head will attack you if you bump into a grave.  Any grave.  It will also pretty much kill your entire party if you blunder into it before you’re level 15 or so – better have the best equipment just in case.

Combat in general is quite random.  You move your selected character around, and if you walk into enemies he or she will occasionally attack.  It’s vaguely like the Gauntlets, but more just painful.  To be fair, if you know what you’re doing the game’s none too rough – you can get all your equipment from the various castles, and it regenerates if you move two areas away, so you can max out on the Power Armor as soon as you find it (in one of the Water castles, I think).  Bows are crucial for the late-game as yet another random encounter starts popping up – at night, if you look at the constellations funny, they come down and start attacking you.  Yes, the constellations will beat the crap out of your party – often, if you don’t have bows.  If that weren’t enough, you have all sorts of bizarre and occasionally unfair random encounters, like giants crawling out of the ground or slimes that will crush any early-game party.

As if the game weren’t random enough, I distinctly remember the early-game: after you go into Hordkhen’s castle and talk to him, he sends you to the other side of the Earth area.  There is a huge verboten line across the whole Earth continent for some hellish reason, and if you try to cross it you’ll get stopped by a guard.  This guard manages to simultaneously be everywhere along the line at once.  The solution?

Yes, the solution is to go around the line.  There’s an area just perfect to slip by – not far enough into the other region that you’re in danger, but enough outside the line the soldier can’t stop you.  I have played few games where the solutions I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to use feel so jury-rigged.

Even the merchants in the game are random encounters – old men who teleport in and have goods based on the area.  Sometimes they just want to chat, though.  Never had a random encounter in any other game where some batty old wizard pops in, says one line of dialogue, then warps out.

All in all, though, despite how raw the game feels, it’s quite natural.  You can save wherever you want, so it’s not especially unfair either.  It’s not that the game was made to be unforgiving – it’s that the world you live in hates humans in general.  Even though I’ve beaten it twice, every so often this game still calls out to me, as if there are still areas I haven’t explored, constellations I haven’t conquered, and loot hiding in the dungeon of a castle I haven’t plundered yet.  Every so often I hear the soft, calming music while wandering the world map, avoiding sharks on drawbridges (oh yeah, watch out for that second castle)… ahh, great memories.

I would never recommend this game to someone who was looking for anything easy or logical, but it’s entertaining enough and has pretty good music, too.  It’d score about average on a fair rating scale, but it’s enjoyable enough and not very long if you FAQ a bit instead of wondering what to do.

No, I’m not bringing back Game of the Day.  I have neither enough games nor enough motivation, but I’m planning to cover random games as I remember them.

I don’t write as much about books as I should, but then I don’t read as many books as I used to.

I often find myself reading the same series over again – Eddings’ Belgariad, Mallorean, Elenium and Tamuli, Zelazny’s Amber and occasionally Tolkien’s various works are among my most re-read.  It’s not often that I try to branch out and give a new series a shot, but Weis and Hickman’s Death Gate Cycle came at a co-workers recommendation.

I’ve beaten Growlanser: Heritage of War. Review will likely follow on videolamer, but for a short summary: It’s good, but not amazing. In fact, I’d say it’s the best Growlanser I’ve played – I’m in the minority that didn’t like the second, and while the third is good, HoW makes several engine improvements and keeps a fairly solid plot. The good: Suikoden III-style multiple viewpoints, enjoyable characters and quick random battles. The bad: Cheesy dialogue, slow pacing early on, and a somewhat weak-feeling finale.

Since GL: HoW, I have started Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. It’s the first core SMT game I’ve been able to get into, although I’ve been a fan of the Persona spinoffs. So far it’s been a bit rough in places – one of the early bosses, the Matador, was particularly difficult to fully prepare for. Speaking of which, the flow of the game is pretty much explore, find a boss, die, and figure out what you should’ve done. It’s a bit rough, but the game gives a few hints as to where you should save.

The other frustration is that random battles are almost everywhere. Towns are no safe haven, which is different (although Final Fantasy Legend 2 had this in a single town in Ashura’s World). I’m used to towns being a 10-15 minute break from combat – go around, talk to random people who usually say nothing useful, rest at the inn, get new equipment (one explanation as to why Lunar 2: Eternal Blue is one of my favorite games). Getting into a battle I could die in – an instant game over – between the healer’s room and the save point is a little bit too intense for me most of the time. I’m willing to tolerate it as long as it doesn’t happen, which it hasn’t yet. Pictures beyond, to save load time and frustration.