Dragon Age: Origins (and a little bit of Mass Effect) - Part 1

Time to do another package deal. I have never written about Mass Effect in this blog even though I have played the first two. I'm pretty sure it happened before starting this blog so I'm not exactly obligated to according to my own rules. Dragon Age on the other hand is a game I have played quite recently, and it has a lot in common with Mass Effect. Might as well throw them all together. I have touched the topic of BioWare games earlier but now it's time to dig a bit deeper into one specific title. As usual I took forever and a half to start this game. I think I first wanted to play it as soon as it was released. I ended up playing it in 2014. Back then I didn't own a very modern PC, and I feared the PS3 version would not give me the same experience. I also had quite recently played a modded version of Baldur's Gate, and figured I might want to mod Dragon Age a bit too. "A bit" turned out to be about 30 individual mods, although most of them were simply graphical or environmental improvements.

1. Can you hear the dice?

For people who didn't like Mass Effect's rather close relatedness to first person shooters, Dragon Age was refreshing news. It promised to return back to the good old times of Baldur's Gate, giving the player control of the entire party from a bird's eye view. Although BG was a bit tedious to play at times, I was still looking forward to this. Although the game draws its inspiration from BG, a lot of things have naturally been modernized. The combat system is also BioWare's own instead of ye good old Dungeons & Dragons (well, Advanced Dungeons & Dragons back in the day). It's not that far removed from, say, the fourth edition of D&D really. Generally it's fair to say that things have been streamlined all over the place. Inspiration has been drawn from my all time favorite source (sarcasm detector says beep!): MMORPGs. Abilities are now cooldown-based with stamina/mana cost added on top.

Back in the day, most abilities, including spells, had limited uses per in-game day. This led to hilarious amounts of resting at times, but as a system it wasn't all that bad. Cooldowns on the other hand are often more spammable, and unfortunately this shows in their design: they are really lackluster. It's nice and all to have a bunch of skills, but you know what's nicer? Skills that have an actual noticeable effect. Sure, most of the higher level skills have noticeable effects, but that still leaves a ton of relatively irrelevant skills to fill the player's action bar. I do like to think there's a reason for this - at least in the source. Having an action bar (or two) full of active abilities gives the player something to do while their character is auto-attacking endless mobs in MMORPGs. Whether pressing buttons in a sequence is interesting or not is another question in itself.

Looking back to Baldur's Gate there actually are not nearly as many active abilities - and most of them have use limits much stricter than cooldowns in modern games. Indeed, most of the combat is about looking at characters auto-attacking mobs. The difference between a modern MMORPG and BG? Well, there's at most six characters for the player to control in BG. The tactical dimension of moving them around more than makes up for the fact that they are mostly just doing basic attacks. So, what happens when we add few handfuls of active abilities with small effects to all characters? Well, mostly it just becomes more tedious to play. When the impact of a single ability is close to zero, activating it feels a lot like an extra hoop to jump through. It's also important to note that impact is not a static property of an ability. Instead, it also depends on the game's enemy and encounter design. More about that a bit later.

As stated, there definitely are abilities in Dragon Age that have a clear impact. Higher level mages can clear mobs with powerful area of effect spells, given suitable conditions. Likewise, higher level rogues have skills that actually increase damage output significantly enough that it can be called burst damage. Yet most abilities are only weak buffs, debuffs or disables etc. They certainly have a statistical effect but its presence is hard to notice in a real-time battle system with 4 party members. The only sensible way to use all these small abilities is to set conditional statements for the AI to use them - at least for the other three party members, but it certainly doesn't hurt to do this for everyone. After these meaningless little skills have been automatized the player can then focus on activating the bigger abilities at opportune moments. However, at this point it's rather questionable to include such meaningless abilities in the game at all.

Basically it comes down to decision-making. If the difference between using a skill off cooldown (i.e. as soon as it comes available) and using it at opportune moments is not significant, then the choice of when to use the skill is not meaningful. There are many ways to deal with this problem: you can turn these skills from active to passive, or proc-based; you could increase their impact and the cost of using them; or you can just remove them. The "how" is ultimately a matter of game balance. The important part is having a suitable amount of meaningful decisions in the game and minimal amount of meaningless decisions. The latter are just noise, and they make the game irritating to play. That's the noise of the dice being rolled way too many times during a simple combat encounter. I guess there is a general phenomenon here at work, somewhere: making it appear like more is happening by dividing all actions into smaller units. Doesn't work. At all.

2. Iconoclastic Hammer of Infernal Devastation (+1 damage)

The rant continues and I'm afraid it won't be done by midnight. I have went on about this topic at least once before but I have the perfect excuse to revisit it. Let's compare equipment in BG and DA! The comparison is slightly unfair as BG enjoys a certain amount of familiarity bias from an old school AD&D nerd like myself. Equipment in DA is very - you guessed it - MMORPG-esque. Well, to be fair, they are a bit more interesting than that. Closer to Diablo 2 I'd say, of all the games I have played and actually remember. There's a lot of numbers. I didn't count exactly, but I wouldn't put 15 different numbers on one item beyond the realm of possibility. Generally speaking, more numbers equals more dimensions along which to compare pieces of equipment. One-dimensional equipment systems are incredibly boring: two pieces are either exactly equal, or one is simply better than the other.

As dimensions increase, player choice increases with them. I might want to wear weaker armor, because it grants other bonuses that I rate higher. However, if multiple dimensions are parallel to each other, meaning diminishes and overt complexity is introduced in its stead. For example, critical hit rate, critical hit chance and percentage-based bonus damage are often different ways to increase average damage per attack. Percentage bonuses are more stable, but over time the net result is the same: a double damage crit with a 15% chance equals 15% bonus damage with enough repetitions (in a simple system at least). Although it might be somewhat up to taste whether you want a higher crit or just more damage, to make an informed decision you'd need to whip out a calculator when two weapons are near enough each other in average damage. Or, you know, just don't give a damn and use the one that looks cooler I guess.

Situational bonuses (e.g. elemental damage, bonus vs enemy type, damage type resistance) are another beast entirely. Strictly speaking, they can be an attractive way to make more items legitimate choices. I mean, if a weapon is better against dragons than any other weapon in the game, it remains situationally useful, does it not? Well... it depends. A lot, actually. In a sense, actually using the item in its situational context is usually not a real choice (after all, it is the best option). However, there may be strategic decisions to make if there is a cost to equip the item - for instance, in Dragon Age the player may have two weapons equipped and swapping them is effortless. In this case the "cost" of equipping any given secondary weapon is that it takes your only secondary slot. So there is a decision: what to equip. Meanwhile, switching between primary and secondary weapons is free from the game mechanics perspective.

The overall cost of messing around with equipment also includes an external cost: effort cost, i.e. how much additional effort the player needs to expend in order to make the switch. For a very simple example, let's say switching to my anti-dragon sword kills a dragon approximately 15 seconds faster. If it takes 20 seconds to actually bring out the damn thing, it's not worth it. Even if it's close, or even slightly faster, it may feel too much of a hassle to be actually bothered with. On the other hand, if the effort cost is zero (e.g. alternative weapons are bound behind different, equally reachable action buttons), it's also a non-decision. Generally speaking, all sorts of effort costs are detrimental to choice, and should not be used as balancing factors in this context. There are other contexts where effort costs are valid balancing factors, especially if they have a skill component.

To summarize: situational equipment only makes sense if  the player has to make meaningful decisions about which to use. Probably the most common approach is to have a limited number of quick access slots coupled with a real cost for reconfiguration (e.g. inventory cannot be opened during combat). In conclusion, situational bonuses are certainly a dimension, but only a secondary factor in deciding a character's main equipment kit. Despite the flood of numbers, most equipment in Dragon Age falls on a neatly tiered scale so ultimately not a whole lot of choice is involved. Although, some armors are so goddamn ugly that I occasionally just had to use a slightly weaker one. Then again, for female characters, that's almost every piece of armor in the game. Which brings us to another important factor that influences equipment choices: player experience.

Let's face it. Despite occasionally having cool names, a collection of numbers doesn't really cut it when it comes to items being cool. So for all their numbers, pieces of equipment in Dragon Age just aren't all that interesting. This is where the AD&D background of BG comes into play - especially in BG2. We can even argue that comparing a sword +1 to a sword +2 is not all that different from comparing two items in DA - the difference is just made more obvious. At the same time, the scale is more visceral. However, the really interesting stuff comes in the form of unique magic items. Named items that clearly differ from anything else in the game. A lot of these items give the player new abilities and truly unique mechanics that are not available anywhere else in the game. The amount of oomph is simply superior to a collection of numbers. While in DA a sword is always used in the same way, in BG a sword might have abilities that create entirely new strategies.

Furthermore, as most of the items come from the well-known AD&D and Forgotten Realms lore, they are already iconic - and their names have meaning. Some of them are also batshit insane, like the Deck of Many Things - an item that's almost a sidequest in itself - or the talking sword (name forgotten). Whether there is more meaningful choice considering equipment in BG is debatable though, as they still mostly fall on a rather tiered scale. However, they are definitely several magnitudes more exciting. They are also much harder and time-consuming to program. It is easy to see why developers these days prefer collections of numbers. Once you have the system down, generating equipment is just a matter of drawing up some numbers - which is something computers are very good at. It's also easy to balance, and effortless to re-balance. Just tweak the numbers.

Sadly, the oomph is gone - equipment has become just another piece in the mathematical character optimization machine. While making choices based on numbers is still meaningful, individual items are not memorable at all, and the excitement of finding new equipment is massively diminished. That's the sad reality as RPGs become games of numbers. In closing, a couple of examples. Borderlands 2 walks the border of numbers and uniqueness quite successfully. While most of its items are indeed just numbers, truly legendary weapons have unique properties that make them behave like no other weapon in the game. Another one is Dark Souls. If you only look at numbers, the equipment system seems really one-dimensional. However, each weapon is truly defined by its attack animations - its player experience - so that choice is first and foremost based on play style preference.


3. There and back again - travel time: eternity and a half


This pretty much continues where I left off with the Tales rant about ridiculous detours in games. Detours are not as much of a prominent problem in Dragon Age. Granted, every faction the player needs to visit to get them pledge their allegiance demands a series of quests before agreeing - so it's basically business as usual. In the very least these are actual subplots with player choices, and in many ways feel much less like hoops to jump through. So what's there to rant about? Well, very briefly: dungeon length. I have touched the topic in the past, but if any game has truly tried my patience with long dungeons, it's Dragon Age. It doesn't even necessarily mean the problem is at its worst here, it just means it feels most aggravating. This is due to several reasons, one of which is the combat system deficiencies outlined before. On its own, even that would be fine though.

The real problem then? The sheer amount of encounters per dungeon. There's a fight in literally every fucking room and corridor in the game. Which, again, in and of itself is not aggravating - just incredibly annoying. I've had my share of these in games before (like Xenogears, omfg). What really makes it toxic is that there are like three different enemies in the game. The variety of encounters is mindbogglingly low, and going through the motions again and again is really tedious - primarily because the game has a fuckton of meaningless abilities and the NPCs tend to have a really hard time staying where you want them to be (or if they do, they don't do anything at all). Although you can make combat more interesting by increasing difficulty, it becomes so time-consuming that it's just not worth it. Most encounters have the same structure anyway: sneak up on soft, deadly targets (mages, archers), then mop up the rest. Rinse and repeat in every room and corridor. Later on in the game you can fortunately use broken AoE combinations to kill enemies before they even reach you.

Mass Effects 1 and 2 suffer largely from the same problem. The amount of fighting really drove me insane - or, well, bored, actually. The problem is the same: there just aren't that many enemy types in the game. I think ME2 did best of the three games in this category. In all games the dungeons are just too long, and too repetitive. In Dragon Age the only real difference you seem to get between most dungeons is new textures in the environment, and new flavor for the same old enemies. I get it, we are supposed to be fighting darkspawn throughout the game because they are everywhere. Just, could there maybe be more than three types of them? No? Ok, I am exaggerating a bit, but three is not *that* far off, unfortunately. It's kind of the same in ME: there's this one race of enemies that forms the major threat in the game, and they have like literally three different types of units. That, and dungeons are effectively just long FPS corridors.

So, here comes the unfair Baldur's Gate comparison again. Admittedly the first Baldur's Gate suffers from many of the same problems (except it's composed of massive amount of outdoor areas and somewhat less dungeons) - largely because the level range 1-7 is in fact quite boring in AD&D in general. BG2 on the other hand is miles ahead. Taking advantage of iconic AD&D monsters, the game offers a far wider variety of challenges in combats. Many of its dungeons are also more interesting with devious traps and puzzles, or optional challenges that yield worthy rewards. Which is another point: if items are not exciting to find, why bother spending any longer in dungeons than is mandatory? Overall, the ratio of meaningful encounters to meaningless ones seems simply much better (or maybe it's the nostalgia talking). The number of enemy types is probably a magnitude or two higher too.

Variety of challenge is the key. In BG2, enemies have abilities that are absolutely bonkers and - as a consequence - very threatening. High level mages have ridiculous protections; vampires drain levels; beholders cast all sorts of crazy shit at you, including instant kills. It's even possible for characters to be entirely erased from the game, permanently. Think about that, and compare it to the watered-down enemies we get in games these days. Since player abilities - especially those of mages - are equally nuts, strategy choices have much higher impact. The games feel so different in comparison. To me, in DA it feels like most of my decisions increase my party's overall effectiveness by like 10%, whereas in BG2 the chance of winning can go from zero to 100% with good strategy. In a way, I could say that in DA everything progresses at a steady pace, whereas BG2 is incredibly explosive in nature - often literally.

All that, and I'm pretty sure BG2 also has shorter dungeons.

Conclusion

So, to summarize this wandering rant, these modern BioWare games - Dragon Age in particular - seems to suffer from everything being watered down. Certainly this makes it a more balanced game than Baldur's Gate 2, but at what cost? Going through the game feels like treading through some gray substance at a steady pace - a really slow pace at that. The game just throws these seemingly endless encounters at the player, each containing a mixture of the same enemies you just killed in the last room. Reaching new levels doesn't feel much like anything as most abilities lack substantial impact. Finding items is reduced to a sense of "wow, better numbers". Quantity over quality, it seems, and it just doesn't work. It never does, not for me. As a game of high fantasy dungeon crawling, DA is just garbage. If there's a mod that removes two thirds of all encounters in the game, I recommend using it - that just might make it work.

In the next part, I'll go through some reasons why I still managed to play through it.

Bioshock Infinite

Alright, time for this. I was really interested in this game from its initial hype although I cannot exactly remember why. I know for certain though that one reason was the introduction of Elizabeth because I'm always into character-driven games. As a game it's not mechanically that different from previous Bioshocks. There are however some things I didn't really write about earlier, and then there's of course the whole issue of Infinite's story - which is something that definitely needs to be discussed. For the record, I once again forfeited getting this game for a long time and then got it as PS+ freebie. I'm such a bad gamer, never getting games for their full price tag (that's not *entirely* true, but close).

1. Battle Arena Infinite

This is the thing I really want to get out of the way first. It felt like Infinite is structured differently (either that, or my memory of Bioshock 2 is not as sharp as I think). Splicers were present in small bunches almost everywhere across Rapture and could often be picked off without attracting the attention of an entire army. Not so in Infinite's Columbia. The player is fighting more organized forces - Columbia's security forces - and because of this each encounter feels more like an arena battle. I actually didn't like this at all because it creates an unwelcome bipolarity - battles are almost completely separated from rest of the gameplay. I wasn't able to pinpoint this earlier, but now that I think about this kind of bothered me in The Last of Us too. However in Infinite the problem seems to escalate just a whole lot more, culminating in the game's horrible final battle.

It's like every encounter in the game is deliberately designed shooter puzzle whereas in Bioshock 2 it felt more like just encountering splicers in their natural habitats. Sure, the fact the player is fighting organized troops does make this kind of design more plausible. Still it feels like no one's really guarding anything in Columbia - everyone is just waiting in position for the player to come along and be entertained. But I wasn't entertained. I tried to follow the game's plot but the game kept constantly interrupting me with these long-ass fights. Encountering an enemy here and there keeps exploration more interesting, but being interrupted by an arena battle at every turn feels like an obstacle course. Some may find this weird coming from a JRPG buff like myself; however, typical JRPG battles are short (and they're kind of the game's main content anyway). Battles in Infinite just seem to take forever.

The fact that Infinite takes place in the living city of Columbia instead of a dead one like Rapture sounded good on paper. However, turns out it means that most enemies will be ordinary soldiers with their ordinary weapons, and suddenly we realize that this right here is a problem. There are a few enemies that use Vigors (the game's magic powers) instead of guns, but there's literally just two types of them. Add another two special enemies: one a walking war machine and another a mechanical hulk... and that's pretty much everything. Variance has never been a strong point of Bioshock enemies, and Infinite only seems to make it worse. Arenas contain all sorts of tricks that try to make things more interesting. Skylines allow fast movement around the battlefield, and for the player to instantly pick off enemy soldiers with skyline attacks. On top of that, Elizabeth can pull things like weapon caches, friendly turrets and additional covers into reality.

Oh, and what's up with the weapons in this game? I have not seen weapons this incredibly boring since... well, I actually cannot remember. The fact that, yes, we do get awesome magic powers, is no excuse to use zero imagination with weapons. It should really be the opposite because there already is some pretty strange technology in the game. We literally get nothing beyond the standard pistol-shotgun-machinegun-rifle-rpg combination (ok, we get a grenade launcher-y thingy) and holy shit these weapons do fuck-all damage (at least on hard, not sure why I even chose that difficulty). We even get two different versions of each basic weapon and they are almost similar to use. What the hell? The biggest plus in this entire system is the fact that while the player can carry ammunition for all types of weapons, only two actual weapons can be carried at a time which at least kinda forces the player to try out most weapons.

The superpowers are pretty cool honestly, although even they felt a bit watered down from Bioshock 2. You can't really fight with just them though because the availability of salt (read: mana) is pretty low at times - so I just ended up using the most cost-efficient powers most of the time. Just overall I did not like fighting in Infinite as much as I did when playing Bioshock 2. I probably make it sound a lot worse than it actually is but you have to remember that the positives from my previous write-up apply. As a side effect of the way weapon carrying capacity is limited, the game actually doesn't suffer as much from the reverse difficulty curve problem. Indeed, the player cannot carry much of anything except ammunition and money. The last battle was actually the most difficult, although perhaps not for reasons I would have liked it to be.

It's worth notice that the battle arena format in itself is not necessarily bad design. It works just fine in many games that emphasize combat above things like progressing the plot and exploration. A couple of very recent examples would be Remember Me and Devil May Cry, or Vanquish if you'd rather compare Infinite to another shooter. Bioshock Infinite just isn't a combat-first game. At least I didn't want it to be and - looking at the amount of effort put into the game's world, plot and Elizabeth - I think neither did the devs. The (excessive) arena battle structure simply doesn't feel right for this game. It's actually something that's really common in games at the moment, and I fear after Infinite it's going to bother me a lot more than it did previously.

2. The balance of exploration

This is another topic that I could have written about a while ago, but it hasn't really occurred to me. It's a Bioshock tradition (inhereted from System Shock) that every corner shall be explored. Every desk, every trash can etc. can be opened and looted for various rewards. Recording devices make it extra worthy to explore because they give more information about the background story and its central characters. This is honestly just fine - I don't mind exploring when I get rewarded. It doesn't even feel too weird, because especially the first two Bioshocks lean into the survival direction and there is no rush to get anywhere. So yes, it does make sense to look around for money, ammunition and other resources. It's a bit of a different story for Infinite because the game is more about getting out of Columbia fast. Anyway it's not that relevant a topic.

I have been wondering about the design considering exploration. Exploration is in a way an interesting concept because at the same time it adds to the game's value through making it longer. Then again, at the same time it does to a certain extent detract from the game's value by making future encounters easier because the time went exploring generally translates into bigger resources. The ratio of this time-to-resources exchange depends heavily on the game as does the actual value of additional resources. The interesting question about this whole exploration dynamic is its balance point. When designing challenges of the game, what's the expected amount of exploration? If the game has a clear "main path", then it would kind of make sense to use resources along that path as a reference. But yeah, I'm just throwing this out there as a question: how designers generally approach this exploration-resource-challenge triangle?

3. Elizabeth

Spoiler alert!

It's hard to not write about Elizabeth. Her role in the game was hyped a lot by the developers and she does indeed play a pivotal role in the game's narrative. Once again I don't exactly remember what we were promised but it is very clear that Elizabeth's role in the game is getting heavy emphasis. She's this weird kind of a mix. In one way she's a fairy tale princess: she has unique powers, and she longs for freedom in the tower she's being held prisoner. In another way she's a self-reliant rogue-like character who can stay out of trouble in fights and scavenge her surroundings for resources. Even stereotypical helpless female characters come with some powers of their own these days as an attempt to make them contribute something beyond tits and ass. In Elizabeth's case clearly more thought has been put into the attempt but she still has the sidekick-y vibe.

The devs have gone perhaps a bit too try-hard though. They really want the player to care about Elizabeth. She gets put into scenes that show off how sweet and innocent she is; she provides her share of witty banter; and... boy does she get captured often. Towards end of the game there's a particularly cheap scene where she is basically tortured in captivity which I just felt was a bit unnecessary. I mean by that time it has been clearly established that Comstock is a twisted fuck, there's no need to underline it further. It's a common problem with game plots - everything needs to be taken into the extreme and stressed to death. I also don't really agree with the decision to make Elizabeth's head bigger than the other characters'. They did so to make her emotions more visible but to me it just made her feel a bit creepy. Besides, it's a shooter, and therefore perhaps 90% or more of Elizabeth's presence in the game is audio.

Basically the devs pull all sorts of tricks when all they would have really needed to do was to leave good enough alone. As a traveling companion I really did like Elizabeth. She has her own personality and pride, and her presence in the game brings it much-needed life. Columbia in itself simply isn't as interesting as Rapture, so the fact that there's a companion really helps. It's sad that she has to become a plot object in many cases.

4. The plot

Spoilers possible.

The game does have an ambitious plot and I think it's kind of the central piece, even more important than Elizabeth. I did like the plot itself. Admittedly I'm easy to entertain when it comes to plots. I don't really actively look for inconsistencies or stuff like that and usually don't give a shit about realism either. There are a lot of game plots that are so obviously stupid they bother even me, but I guess I'm willing to overlook more than the average game critic. So when a game like Infinite starts playing around with alternate dimensions I get in to the positive wtf set of mind, like I do when watching David Lynch movies. Infinite is curious in the sense that it handles its theme and plot with great care but at the same time botches horribly. The biggest problem is the really slow build-up - for most of the game hints are very subtle. Then the game goes and does the worst thing possible: it explains itself in one swift motion, at the end of the game. Although the plot is clever, it's disappointing when it's just laid out like that.

Other than that, the theme is handled well. Even some of the game mechanics are tied to the plot, most remarkably respawning when Elizabeth is not around to revive Booker. Windows to alternate dimensions also explain certain technological advances that are otherwise out of place, as do they explain certain similarities to Rapture. Elizabeth's powers also make use of the alternate dimensions theme and eventually we get to jump between timelines. The amount of dimensional travel is a bit of a letdown because there aren't that many jumps. Most of the game time is spent in one timeline. Likewise, the timeline where we spend the latter half of the game seems to be there just so even more enemies can be thrown at the player. It's not like we take a trip to witness a darker side of Columbia, it's a one-way ticket to a battlefield. The way a huge portion of the back story is told through audio logs is fine as it rewards exploration. At the same time, the fact they are not obtained automatically makes them more special to the player.

All being said, I did find this twine parody of the game incredibly funny (obvious major spoiler alert).

Conclusion

I could describe Infinite as a nice attempt. It's very promising in many respects, but also falls short with most of them. Like the plot which to me was perfectly fine, but then is kinda ruined with horrible storytelling. Another issue is that the game simply isn't structured to portray the story all that well, largely because so much time is spent fighting arena battles. The whole game is actually a bit like that: any progress is constantly halted with distractions. So I guess it's too game-y for its own good while at the same time not being that great as a game. This article was a bit rushed because I really want to move on to writing about Lightning Returns...

Jeanne d'Arc

I'm continuing my excavation of JRPGs you have likely never heard of (still going through this list). The latest title in this series was Jeanne d'Arc, a tactical RPG from Level-5. As the name suggests, it's a heavily rearranged fantasy version of the famous historical figure's story - i.e. it probably has next to nothing to do with the actual Jeanne. No matter, I didn't come here for the plot anyway - I find this a rather health approach to most JRPGs unless they have been specifically lauded for their story (e.g. Nier). I want to get some stuff out of the way before diving into the game's mechanics: my opinion is probably slightly biased due to the game's artistic style which I found a bit repulsive. I also don't have much love for Level-5 RPGs.

1. Classes, rocks, papers and scissors

Since it's a tactical RPG, we should start by going through some of its core mechanics. The game has loosely classed characters - in other words, classes are primarily defined by the weapon they use and their stats. The classes bear a strong resemblance to Fire Emblem - each weapon has unique properties that defines where it shines. Swords are the bread-and-butter, the most average weapon there is - nothing special to them but no particular weaknesses either. Axes are less accurate but deal heavy damage - certain axe skills can also lower defense. Spears are less effective but they hit two squares in front of the wielder, and also have access to a wide variety of area-of-effect attacks and long range jump attacks. Bows are what you might expect from them while knives are more accurate and have a higher chance to crit. Whips are the only melee weapon in the game that can hit diagonally and so on.

Now, unlike Fire Emblem, there's no rock-paper-scissors between the types of weapons. Yet the game does have a very similar RPS system: spirit skills. These are passive skills that grant the bearer levels in either Sol, Stella or Luna. If you guessed that each of these is strong against one other and weak against the remaining one, you would be absolutely correct. In this case Sol beats Stella, Stella beats Luna and Luna beats Sol. Most enemies in the game have been assigned to one of these aspects. Since the aspect is tied to a skill that can be freely equipped by any class at the start of the battle, actual character classes do not play a role in the RPS system. It is kinda good and bad news for the game. On the one hand, the player can customize their favorite characters to suit each battle while on the other hand, there is no real need to ever level up any extra characters. In Jeanne d'Arc though, I feel this lands more on the plus side.

The reason is that - just like the Fire Emblem RPS - these aspects severely increase and decrease both damage and accuracy. Especially later in the game characters are next to useless against the aspect they are weak against. This means that the player needs to examine their enemies and choose characters that can best deal with each threat - and then distribute spirit skills accordingly. In some battles the player can get away with not having one particular spirit at all, and in most there will be one spirit that is generally more useful than the rest. It is also quite common for the boss of a level to be of an aspect that is different from rest of the monsters so that whoever is designated to take the boss down won't be as useful against the rest. Overall this effect is similar to what you get in Fire Emblem - a careful plan is needed to decide who goes where and who is going to fight who.

Although there are numerous similarities between Fire Emblem and this game, the cost of using things is more akin to Tactics Ogre. Skills are fueled by mana that starts at zero and then regenerates every round. In Fire Emblem every weapon and spell has a limited number of uses. This allows even powerful weapons to be given out sparingly early in the game and using one is always a decision with some consequences because eventually it will run out of uses. There is still a cost to using more powerful skills in Jeanne d'Arc, because only the most basic skills and spells can be spammed every turn. Missing with a costly skill usually hurts quite a bit. I am not saying that Jeanne d'Arc should use Fire Emblem's system (if it did, the games would be really similar) - just that there is a clear difference in how "resources" are used - and that it is caused by the game's economy model.

2. Heroes and heroines

One of the most interesting features in Jeanne d'Arc are armlet wielders - heroes and heroines with a bit of extra oomph. Armlet wielders can transform into more powerful forms during battle. It's not the transformation itself that makes this feature interesting though - it is one of the special abilities all these characters gain in their secondary form. The ability allows them to take a full extra turn every time they defeat an enemy. There's no limit to the number of these extra turns - as long as they can dish out enough damage, they can tear through an entire group of enemies. They can also conveniently "bounce" from one enemy to another to reach an otherwise unreachable foe. It is generally easy enough to figure out when this power should be used. Nevertheless it is that little something extra I feel these games often need to keep my attention.

In order to maximize the number of extra turns and thus the damage output of your entire party, other allies should weaken targets for the armlet wielder. There is a downside to this strategy though. Just like in Fire Emblem, in Jeanne d'Arc bulk of the experience is granted to whoever deals the finishing blow. Furthermore experience gains are scaled by level, which means that constantly finishing enemies off with armlet wielders is going to result in diminishing returns. Therefore mopping groups of enemies at once should be preserved for situations where it is absolutely necessary. Fortunately such situations do exist are even somewhat frequent as a result of quite solid level design. A downside to the armlet wielders is that they are quite simply superior to every other character in the game which makes them too obvious picks to pass. Perhaps it would have been better to limit this power to the main heroine who has to be in the party anyway.

The less-advertised benefit of armlet wielders is their ability to heal themselves to full HP through the transformation. Curiously enough, this is actually one of their strongest attributes. After all, healing always costs momentum - lots of it in Jeanne d'Arc - but transforming is free and subsequently increases momentum. Transforming also increases defensive attributes, thus increasing momentum even further. It is a definite tide-turner. Although it's just one feature, it defines much of the gameplay experience.

3. Formations

The importance of formations varies between tactical RPGs as do the mechanics involved. The basic concept of formations is to keep squishy characters protected and as much is true in most games. Jeanne d'Arc does go an extra mile to emphasize formations and positioning in general. This is achieved through two systems. The first and most useful of these systems is the unified guard. As long as characters are adjacent to each other they all gain a defense bonus that is relative to the total number of characters that are linked together. There is a drastic difference between being alone and standing somewhere in a chain of six characters in terms of damage taken. It even increases evasion, allowing characters to negate damage entirely. It is often more desirable to leave an action unused than it is to break a formation to down one extra enemy.

Another system that sees less use but is very powerful when it is used is called burning aura. Any normal melee attack against an enemy creates an aura directly behind the enemy. Attacking from this aura grants bonus damage. Auras only last until the end of the turn in which they were created which makes them sometimes hard to utilize - especially the super aura that is created when a character with an aura also makes a basic attack against an enemy. Once again the difference in damage output is quite drastic. This is especially useful against certain bosses in the game. Curiously enough, the AI of these bosses typically tries to put itself next to a wall to minimize the player's ability to surround it and make use of these auras. It is important to prevent them from doing so, because they typically have high HP regeneration.

As a side note, very high HP regeneration is an interesting mechanic to set the pace of a fight - the player needs to be able to sustain their damage output until the boss is dead. Basically all of the toughest fights in the game were reliant on this mechanic and I think it worked out fairly well.

4. JRPG bullshit rant part 1

As much as I love the genre, it has its share of bullshit. Jeanne d'Arc does not do any better. Let's talk about character development first because it's something the game shares with Fire Emblem. Here's the beef: stat growths are hidden information. Why this is bullshit? There's no way for the player to know the true potential of characters. Sure, there is a rule of thumb: the worse a character looks like when you get them, the more powerful they'll be by the end game. The problem is this is not a hard rule, and it is impossible to know when it holds. Even if this information was transparent this would still be bullshit because characters would not be very equal. Given that difficulty generally ramps towards the end or at least that's what you would expect (usually it's actually not the case - but in Jeanne d'Arc it is), choosing the characters who get most powerful by the end game is a no-brainer.

Then again, poor balance between characters is such a common problem that I've mostly given up on it - and I do prefer imbalance to too much balance any day. That said, hiding such crucial information from the player is just plain bullshit. At least the growth rates are granted in contrast to Fire Emblem where the rates are simply probabilities to have gains in a stat. Doesn't get much more bullshit than that. In Jeanne d'Arc I only learned about this by reading a guide after finishing the game and it turned out I had chosen my characters very poorly (more or less the worst wielder for each weapon). I still managed to beat the game but this still infuriates me because I could have just as well rolled a die to see how difficult the game is going to be for me. An uninformed decision is not any different from blind luck yet somehow I see this bullshit coming up in JRPGs time and again.

The nice thing about designing board games is that you cannot hide rules from the players because if you did, they could not play the freaking game at all. Here's another example from Jeanne d'Arc. There are several battles where enemies spawn and then get to act immediately. Naturally these are the very same battles where you have to protect a fragile NPC (one hit kills him). The game is giving you the finger, there's just no other way to describe this. There is no way to predict this happening at all, and if there was, there would be no information of when or where the new enemies will spawn. The only way is to take that guaranteed failure, wasting 15 minutes of your time and then doing the battle again from start. Fun times. This is like a douchebag board game owner who "remembers" a rule just before he is about to abuse the shit out of it. Seriously, game designers, some transparency plz.

This rant will get a sequel once I have finished what I'm currently playing. Stay tuned.

Conclusion

The usual JRPG bullshit and horrible graphical design aside, Jeanne d'Arc is tactical RPG that proudly stands on its own two feet. It has its share of distinctive mechanics, but most importantly its level design follows an optimal difficulty curve. Maybe, or maybe that was just because I had the worst possible characters in my party. The game does get a bit repetitive at times, largely because the pool of actually useful skills is very small, and most of the enemies can be dealt with using the same strategies. Still if you are looking for a solid TRPG and have already gone through the obvious choices, you could do a lot worse than Jeanne d'Arc.

There will be bit of a break in updates at least as far as digital game are concerned... the game I'm currently playing is effing long. I might write about some analog games next though!

Ninja Gaiden Sigma

Talk about unfinished business... I started Ninja Gaiden Sigma over two years ago. I stopped playing it around halfway through because it was kind of frustrating. Furthermore, Mirror's Edge happened. I never got back to NGS, and actually lost my save when my PS3 hard drive died. Yet for some reason I decided to pick it up again quite recently and managed to complete it. There's not actually that much to write about NGS, especially since not-so-long ago I did a piece on Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance. That piece pretty much contains the most important things to say about the genre in general and Ninja Gaiden Sigma is no exception.

The game is notorious for its difficulty and to a large extent this is true. Unfortunately, as usual, some of the difficulty comes from bad usability. We already covered bad camera. Although the problem is not as agravating in NGS as it is in Revengeance, it still gets pretty bad. Unlike Revengeance, NGS has a 360 degree block which means even stuff that comes from outside the camera angle can be guarded against. At least mostly - there's a bunch of unblockable attacks. The fair amount of unblockable attacks is also what makes a simple guard more interesting in NGS than it is in most other games. Any extended period of guarding gets punished with damaging unblockable attacks like throws. This prevents the game from getting too static. Overall, static is definitely not a word one would use to describe NGS. Staying on the move is the best defense.

It is therefore a bit disappointing that controlling movement is effing frustrating at times. For some reason it often feels like Ryu just plain refuses to register directional inputs correctly, leading to disastrous evasive moves. The feeling of being in control of the action sometimes just is not there. Unlike Devil May Cry or Revengeance, NGS also feels more like designed in such a way that taking damage is not entirely avoidable. Because of these reasons, the game just was not as sharp as those two. It is however much sharper than God of War or Dante's Inferno. Towards the end of the game it also seemed like the enemy designs mostly competed for unfairness rather than trying to provide more interesting challenges. Nevertheless, the game's difficulty peaked around midway, precisely where I quit the last time. This is where most enemies had ranged direct-hit attacks (i.e. not avoidable projectiles).

Although sometimes I felt the player's ability to control Ryu was not what I expected, Ryu's ability to control the pace of combat was pretty much top tier. This is where the game's strength lies: there's tools for everything. Ryu's ability to stay on the offensive is superior, and is achieved through a couple of means. First of all, enemies are staggered properly which makes it possible to actually control even crowds of enemies. Second, certain moves have built-in invincibility frames which allows Ryu to do stuff even when cornered. There's a downside of course: some enemies are best defeated by spamming invincible attacks. Against most enemies, even defense can be quickly turned around into offense with well-timed counter attacks. I'm not the most skilled player so I can only imagine how effective a really good player will be with these tools. My streaks mostly ended when I got tangled up with the controls.

Another thing that is noteworthy in NGS is the usefulness of different weapons. Variations aside, there's basically four different weapons in the game, and each has a distinct use. The basic sword (or the dual katana variant) is your default weapon and it excels in mobility, allowing Ryu to quickly move from enemy to enemy no matter how scattered they are. Staff is a solid choice against groups of enemies because of its wide hit areas and excellent counter attacks. Another good crowd control tool is the heavy sword, but it really shines with its ability to stagger even some of the biggest enemies in the game. Finally there's a nunchaku type flail which is superior against massive swarms of weak enemies and generally good when being static doesn't hurt Ryu too much. All in all, different weapons don't exist just for flavor - a feat a lot of games can't boast about.

Although I felt at times that the game was difficult for the wrong reasons, most of the time it is difficult for the right reasons: everything in the game - Ryu included - hits hard and goes down fast. Even bosses have pretty short life bars, all the way to the final boss. This is something we have gone through time and again, so I won't go into any more ranting about it. In conclusion it can be said that Ninja Gaiden Sigma is mostly deserving of its reputation as a difficult game and is mostly definitely a true game of skill. It might not be my favorite because ultimately it doesn't feel as thought-through as some other titles and also because it's a bit too fast-paced for me. Regardless, although I'm not looking forward to playing it again, I might at some point play the sequel.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning

A lot of mixed reviews have been floating around the internet about this game and I have considered trying it on a few occasions. Although I expected it to quite mediocre, swords are always a plus. When it came available for free through PS+ in June, I decided to give it a spin. As expected, there was nothing revolutionary about it but nevertheless it was quite enjoyable to play. I'll explain how in just a bit. Let it just be said that this game lacks original ideas and its plot is the usual nonsensical teenage fantasy crap (well, R. A. Salvatore was involved in writing it so no surprises there). I am not above enjoying such plots every now and then but the one in Amalur made less sense than most. Anyway, story, not the point.

1. Busywork gaming

Amalur is the perfect excuse to write about busywork gaming. Unfortunately I have forgotten the source for the term but the concept is interesting. It explains the popularity of a lot of genres including a bunch of Facebook games and of course MMOs. Being an offline MMO, Amalur definitely employs a lot of busywork gaming. The appeal of busywork gaming is in stark contrast to what is usually understood as good game design. It is, roughly, progress without challenge. It is totally stress-free, and more or less comparable to watching television. Although Amalur has some degree of challenge on the highest difficulty, much of the game is about constantly doing some small tasks to improve your character.

As such it is a power trip much like Borderlands, but Amalur offers even less variety and space for creativity. Instead, it offers several different systems of busywork. Sidequests are just the start. As usual, there are a) too many of them and b) they are too boring. They don't really provide much of anything either - most of the rewards are just money and experience. The crafting systems are what actually hold more appeal to them because of their more immediate rewards. Amalur is a game ruled by equipment so it is quite easy to see how crafting your own has high appeal - especially when the crafted equipment is actually better than stuff you can find most of the time.

There are actually three different crafting systems, two of which kind of overlap a bit, and one that is entirely separate (alchemy, for potions obviously). This means a lot of collecting, and that is more or less what the player does all game long. Most found equipment goes into the grinder to see what components drop out. Surprisingly there is no grinding involved because stuff is abundant and naturally encountered while going through quests. As some readers might have noticed, I have mixed opinions about crafting systems. Amalur falls mostly into the light side, because crafting doesn't work with recipes. The outcome is the sum of components used, no mystery involved (well, except alchemy, that works with recipes).

It is indeed the fluidity of systems that make busywork in Amalur strangely relaxing. Basically everything is guaranteed to grant progress, be it experience (levels come with new crafting skills) or components. This is what makes it somewhat different from recipe-based crafting systems where new components are only useful if they are part of a recipe the player wants to make. In Amalur each component creates new crafting options - although they are not always actually useful. Customization also grants a greater sense of ownership over the created piece of equipment - and hey, you can name it too. In contrast, recipe-based systems always feel more like obtaining a piece of equipment in unnecessarily small pieces.

So although I do often bash various games about their busywork aspects, I do indeed enjoy it when it is done correctly. I can even somewhat enjoy large grinding efforts if they are done for a greater purpose. Busywork gaming is, all in all, still guaranteed progress. It is suitable for times when even gaming stress is not particularly welcome. We all do all sorts of meaningless things for the sake of progress in meaningless efforts to take our mind off other things. It is my belief that to work, busywork systems indeed have to guarantee progress. Grinding for items with super low drop rates (F U, Demon's Souls) doesn't fit the bill.

I'll try to find the book section or article I used as the source for this, it is more interesting than my rambling about the subject.

2. Sidequest, man, what happened to you?

Another sidequest rant, yay. They are a freaking plague though, someone has to stop the madness. As a concept the sidequest has existed for god knows how long, but somewhere along the line something happened to it. It has become a bureaucracy of faceless tasks. While some games like Borderlands 2 grant a great deal of personality to their sidequests, the whole thing is now a system. You have your quest log with its completion ratios, milestones and cute little check markers for done quests. Every corner of the world has some helpless or ten in need of your help (while you should be busy saving the world).

I don't have a problem with sidequests as a concept. The problem is their modern "quantity over quality" design philosophy. I would not be surprised to find out that some games have generated sidequests and sadly, those would not be that much worse than what we have now. Every RPG seems to want to provide 100 hours of gameplay, regardless of the length of its main content. The most disturbing thing about this pandemic is the flood of new quest logs entries upon entering every single new area. It's just overwhelming. At first you might try to do all just to be sure, then be on the lookout for ones with nice fat rewards and in the end it's just fuck-all, I want to finish this game.

Some sidequests in Amalur are however reminiscent of better days - which is why I included this section in the first place. Remember Baldur's Gate 2 where most sidequests would actually take you to an entirely new place or in the very least have an actual plot of their own? In comparison, modern sidequests are mere tasks at best. Every now and then though, there are ones that make an effort. Amalur has faction quests, a set for each of the game's six or so factions. Unlike your bread and butter tasks, these quests actually form a side plot of multiple quests. Although the quests themselves are equally bland as the rest, the continuity does go a long way toward creating better experience.

I call for a sidequest reform. If a quest doesn't involve any sort of joy of discovery, be it a side plot or, a new area or an exciting enemy, it should not be in the game. Want to add gameplay hours? Make the quests longer, without increasing their number. I take one long quest any day over ten small ones. Of course we all know that creating new content is expensive, which is why they don't do this. So here's a radical idea: don't have sidequests at all if there's no real budget for them. I know the reply will be "but you don't have to do them!" but there never is any indication how optional they really are. Games set different expectations, but it is usually not implied in any way.

This puts the player in a weird position. In one hand, they want to of course get any advantage they can in form of rewards - but, on the other hand, doing too many sidequests is going to make the main quest a cakewalk. BG2 actually had a good indicator for what is enough: once the player had enough gold to proceed in the main story, they were likely to also have enough levels to have an enjoyable challenge in the main quest. Of course a lot of people probably did most of the quests anyway because, you know, they were actually interesting.What purpose do sidequests serve in your game? Perhaps it is something the player would also like to know.

Another thing to consider is sidequest density. The further in the game the player is, the more likely they are bored to death with repetitive sidequests so maybe new ones shouldn't be popping as frequently. It's easy to say "don't do them", but the fact that they are there, in your quest log, is always nagging you. We don't like unfinished business after all. So consider this: after doing sidequests by the bucket, do players really feel like being showered in even more? The busywork appeal only lasts for so long, and after that there's just the nagging. At first there's the excitement of exploring a new world, and sidequests can be good guides - but this does not last forever. 

It feels like this sidequest business is for RPGs what multiplayer is to other genres. You just have to have it, says the publisher. I don't see anyone bashing a game for not having enough sidequests.

3. Ability trees and combat balance

Although an offline MMO by design, Amalur does have a surprisingly decent combat system. As far as action RPGs go though, it is fairly standard. You have your strikes, blocks, dodges and spells - the latter not too many in number, even when playing a mage. It's not a revolution, but it works. At leats on hard difficulty there's even some challenge. This is created by following the basic principles of stagger and recovery mechanics. Everything has a longish recovery time, which opens a careless player to enemy attacks. Enemy attacks stagger, so the player has to go on defensive mode. All in all, a functional system. Now let's talk about abilities.

I have talked about over-conservative skill design before. In general, it means that the designers have been too afraid of imbalances. The end result is that all abilities in the game are rather unremarkable. I did not fully explore the other two trees of course, but at least the Might tree (for warriors, obviously) had mostly abilities that were truly bland. You have your passive number bonuses and a handful of actives. You won't see the effects of most abilities. One active that is supposed to be crowd control has such a long casting time that it becomes almost useless. Another ability doesn't even work as described (which would have made it useful).

What usually happens though is that there is one ability that outshines everything else. It may sound unremarkable on paper, or it might even be disguised. In this case it was disguised by making it look weak on level 1. You can't actually see the upper levels beforehand, so there is no way of knowing. Actually my alarm bells should have rung though, even with the -50% armor penalty on the first level. You see, the ability makes the player immune to stagger. On highest level, the armor penalty is gone too. Now, stagger immunity is huge. The meaning of stagger (aka hit stun) has been discussed before, but let me remind you.

The biggest threat in games like this is often not the damage from a single attack, but the stagger. Groups of enemies are the most dangerous because they can engage the player in a stagger chain. Since being staggered typically prevents and intercepts attacks, it is a big deal. A huge deal really. Stagger is what gives fighting its dynamic and prevents it from becoming a DPS mashfest. Being immune to stagger is a massive advantage to the point that I still consider poise to be broken in Dark Souls. See, if your attacks cannot stagger the enemy, they lose all of their threat. The opponent has no reason to respect your attacks, and attacking becomes a loser's game.

Poise in Dark Souls had drawbacks and it could have been balanced with more consideration. Too few things in the game punished having high poise, and too many rewarded it. Poise made you slow, because only heavy armor granted it. Being slow was not big enough of a deal in the game but it could have been. Fighting in melee against someone with high poise in online was a game you could only win by not playing. Whenever you attacked, they could also attack and possibly follow up with more while laughing your stagger off. The best way to fight them would have been to wait for their attack and parry it, but they had no reason to attack really. So, basically no one had incentive to attack.

Back to Amalur though. So if poise, which wasn't always full stagger immunity mind you, is broken, how would you think of full stagger immunity with no drawbacks? Okay it had a 20 second duration, but that also is quite a long time. However with two linked abilities, this one became absolutely game-breaking. Here is what you can get on top of full stagger immunity, from the same skill: a chance to reflect damage back to the enemy and a chance to steal health. Not only is the threat of stagger gone, you don't actually need to care about most damage either because your uninterruptable attacks will constantly heal you.  This is honestly so ridiculous that I do not see how it got through playtesting. After obtaining this package the game does become a trivial mashfest.

This ability is so dominating that everything else in the tree becomes redundant. It solves every possible situation in the game, for free (practically at leat - there's a mana cost but you can regen it between fights). Furthermore, there is nothing interesting in the ability tree so it's not like there are even any cool alternative ways to play a fighter. There are no drawbacks, so it is impossible to design around it - anyone with full stagger immunity will be at least as good in every situation as  those without, and often better (in Amalur, always better). As I said I didn't try the other two trees but I somehow doubt their ability to compete with this insanely broken ability. It is simply impossible to die with this ability.

In closing, I want to stress this: never ever give stagger immunity to the player for free. Even if it has a cost, make sure the cost is steep enough, because stagger immunity is very likely to break your game. It's good to throw on some enemies if you want to make them really nasty though. Stagger immunity in a nutshell: Enemies yes, players no.

Conclusion

I did enjoy my trip to Amalur for most of its duration. Although the game is really nothing special, it does have enough appeal and can be rushed quite quickly once it starts to get boring. As far as offline MMO experiences go, it is not bad at all. It's got nice scenery. Very lazy dungeon design though, as I was able to recognize certain "building blocks" that were present in many dungeons, looking exactly the same. Should you play it though? If you don't mind the potential time sink factor, you are probably better off playing a solid MMO for much of the same appeal. Likewise, if you are looking for some good sword and sorcery action, there are the Souls and Witchers. However if you are like me and have actually played most of the important titles already and yearn for some heroic, light adventure then go ahead.

inFamous 2

This game has been sitting in my collection for some time. Mostly because there were more urgent games to play. I did like many aspects of the first inFamous. Most importantly the game was very enjoyable to play. I realized that I haven't actually written about inFamous yet (I played it way before starting this blog) so I will touch it a bit as I go.What I remember of it anyway. In short, inFamous 2 is a direct sequel which in video game terms often means "improved version of the first" and I have to say that this is mostly true - again.

1. Being an electric man

Much of the strength of inFamous comes from factors that are very similar to Assassin's Creed. It allows the player to feel how it is like to be a superhero. This is achieved through efficient controls and design of powers that are simple to use yet highly impressive. Curiously the greatest feeling of power in inFamous is not how easily the player can defeat enemies but the various methods that allow them to travel across the city rapidly. It is a game where movement has been made highly enjoyable. Indeed out of somewhat similar games, only Mirror's Edge clearly surpasses inFamous whereas games like Assassin's Creed fall behind. Of course the comparison is a bit unfair - the protagonist Cole McGrath has a handful of movement-related superpowers after all. The biggest mistake in the original game was to give out these powers quite slowly. In inFamous 2, Cole starts with all movement powers from the first game.

He does get even more powerful movement abilities towards the end of the game though. In addition to being able to float in the air and "grind" (move very quickly, like on rails) on electric wires, by the end Cole can launch himself high into the air and use a lightning-themed grappling hook. I actually have no idea how one would do this stuff with electricty (the launch is ice-based though) but it doesn't really matter. What matters is how effectively the player can guide Cole through the city. In a sense it is these feats of movement that truly make Cole feel like a superhero. This is partly due to the surprisingly unimaginative design of combat powers. My biggest issue with the first game was that most of Cole's combat powers worked exactly like firearms. You have your pistol-like basic projectiles, electric grenades and electric rockets (with or without guidance).

inFamous 2 is not much better in this respect. New combat powers are mostly variations of old ones and while they are satisfying to use (especially the redirect rockets) they don't convey the feeling of electricity as well as they could. Sure, electricity courses through steel fences and instantly kills enemies standing in water but that is more or less all there is to it. Although combat powers themselves are perhaps the weakest link in this "electric man simulation", fueling them again enhances the experience; Cole gains his energy and health back by draining it out of nearby electric devices and power sources. This means that the game has an abundance of recovery available. More on this in the next section.I really don't know how electricty-based powers should work, but I'd imagine they would be quite a bit less controllable than firearms.

2. Combat pacing and healing

One interesting topic about game design is how healing affects the overall experience of combat in the game. In the past most games were exercises of sparing limited healing resources and this created a certain suspense but also caused some frustrating save/load sessions. The modern approach on the other hand is to allow players to regain health by simply resting for a while. This approach makes damage less permanent. Neither approach is very realistic, but that is the way of getting damage in combat. The tabletop RPG Hunter: The Reckoning makes a valid point: if a character actually gets injured from a weapon, they often spend weeks or months in the hospital bed. In a tabletop roleplaying game this can be made to work, but obviously it is not very desirable in action packed video games.

This means that once again we can disregard realism. Realism is overrated anyway. Both approaches have their uses, and indeed both are still present in modern games - the resting approach is just much more common. The issue with that approach is that it leaves out the suspense element entirely. It is simply not possible to use limited access to healing as a game design element because healing is ubiquitously available to the player. In inFamous, healing is abundant but not ubiquitous. The city is usually full of sources of electricity - often healing is just around the corner or even already in sight. Indeed, if the player has upgraded Cole's drain speed, he can become almost invulnerable if connected to an infinite power source. Infinite power sources are only available in a few specific missions. However this does mean that Cole can actually heal under gunfire.

Searching for power sources is usually not a desperate effort but rather like pit-stopping during a fight. Just a quick drain and off again. To counterbalance the abundance of healing, Cole actually takes quite a bit of damage from enemies. Staying in open space for too long is quite deadly. This means that the player's health changes very rapidly; taking damage is fast and so is healing. This also translates into how combat flows in the game. When combined with all the movement-related powers, the combat experience is one where the player changes position constantly - hiding to quickly recharge, and popping up from an unexpected direction to unleash a burst of electricity. Cole can easily take out a bunch of enemies quickly if they haven't spread out - but if they have, the player has to switch positions rapidly.

The system works fairly well because no one has a lot of health. At least not in the beginning. The game drops the ball a bit towards the end when it introduces rank-and-file enemies that can take way too much punishment before they drop. The game doesn't really need this either - the increase in difficulty could have been achieved by increasing numbers, or using nastier enemy positioning.

Conclusion

At its base, inFamous 2 is a fairly typical modern game. It uses a lot of the same tropes that are becoming ubiquitous and adds its own twists. Where the game succeeds is in creating the superhero experience for the player. Superpowers in the game are enjoyable to use, although some of them are rather unimaginative re-themings of familiar concepts. As a sequel it is a pretty straightforward iteration in the sense that it has more refined game mechanics. While better as a game, I felt that storywise it was rather lacking. The first game had an interesting story - the sequel really can't keep up to any expectations. I also found the npc role reversal in the final mission of the game a bit cheap. A very minor spoiler here: the bad npc is your ally in the good final mission while the good npc is your ally in the evil version. It felt a bit like they wanted to do a twist so badly, but they really couldn't come up with anything even remotely credible.

Xenoblade Chronicles

For a JRPG buff there are a lot of reasons to be interested in Xenoblade Chronicles, especially since it's been a while since its release. First and foremost, it has the magical Xeno prefix put there to pay homage to the other Xeno-games: Xenogears and Xenosaga. It has been created by Monolith Studios, who also created Xenosaga and (some of them) were involved in the creation of Xenogears. The reason this prefix carries so much weight is that as far as game plots go, both gears and saga are among the most complex. Particularly Xenosaga, which was originaly planned to run for seven episodes in total. Unfortunately it was cut down to three and it shows quite a bit. The third and final episode does tie together the main plot but leaves a lot of unfinished or hastily finished business in its wake.

Second, Xenoblade promised to honor JRPG traditions - the game has a large world and lots and lots of things to do. It also has epic length as I very recently discovered. Finally, the game has had a massively positive response in both reviews and among the gaming community. The biggest reason that was holding me back from playing it was honestly its platform: the Nintendo Wii. Let me just say that Wii is possibly the biggest disservice to the entire industry ever and a joke at best as a gaming system. Having seen how poorly The Last Story performed on the system I was not very enthusiastic towards experiencing Xenoblade Chronicles. Now that I have laid the game down, I will have to immediately say that this game is not worth all the hype. I will however have to admit that it was, in the end, a good JRPG despite its very slow start.

1. Timescale balance

The first topic therefore is what I think is actually quite a common issue in JRPGs in general: they are almost always more interesting after a good many hours into the game. Not always, but often - usually when this is not true, it is because the latter half of the game is botched horribly. What I mean to say is, these games have a tendency to start slow both story and game mechanics wise. Often the very beginning is actually quite fast storywise because something needs to happen to get things going. After this a lot of games start to falter a bit. Either they fail to introduce anything thrilling for quite a while because the characters are resolving the initial issue (which often is not the really interesting part of the plot - interesting twists later in the story are a norm in this genre).

This is what happens with Xenoblade too. The first half of the game is basically spent traveling from point A to B, through a cavalcade of points in between. For me it simply failed to inspire the sense of an epic journey - something Final Fantasy X did for me - which meant it was literally just a series of new places and rather lame subplots. Perhaps the biggest failing plotwise in Xenoblade was however that for the entire first half of the game you could easily guess what the plot twist would be after the destination was finally reached (it is the same twist I referred to in the earlier post about women in games). In a way it just fails to give the player anything to chew on. One of the major advantages of Xenosaga in particular was that it had the player going "wtf" from almost the beginning. Actually the saga's plot is so complex that the player might still be all "wtf" by the end of it but hey, that's another topic entirely. I like the sense that something bigger is clearly going on.

Another, once again rather common problem in all games that have some kind of character development, is that in the beginning the player has very limited options and therefore mechanics can become really boring. This happens in Xenoblade on massive scale - partly because I think there are some flaws in its combat design - in such a way that the game is not exactly the most thrilling to play for the first twenty or so hours either. Quite honestly if I had made this analysis halfway into the game, you would be reading some serious bashing. At this point I actually was of the opinion that the game is utter crap and massively overhyped. A word of warning: if you want to like this game, be patient enough to actually get to the likeable parts. Unless you like the design which I believe a lot of people do, because it is reminescent of another JRPG title that reviewers liked and I find outrageous.

The bottom line is, way too often JRPGs fail to truly spark any interest in the player for the first few hours - this is strangely forgiven by the time players get to the good parts. However if we stop to consider, some of the worst offenders are not particularly good before the player has put in enough time to have beaten most games in any other genre. That is not good design and it is no wonder the genre is no more massively popular. It also outrageously common to have a certain plotline in the game that requires the player to rummage through several dungeons or other places while nothing really happens to move the game forward. "Now we are prepared to face the villain... almost. We just need you to get four pieces of this ancient relic from opposite corners of the world." that kind of thing. Meanwhile, absolutely nothing happens.

2. The single player MMORPG syndrome

This is what links Xenoblade to one of my least favourite JRPGs I have played: Final Fantasy XII. This syndrome is exactly what the name suggests: the game borrows its tropes and mechanics heavily from massively multiplayer online games and tries to make them work in a single player experience. The problem of course is that they just fail miserably. The gameplay mechanics of MMORPGs are - on average - frigging boring, especially in the beginning when there are very few abilities to use. My guess is that they have been optimized for playing with latency and in general to be playable by people who are not so great with their keyboard+mouse-fu. In case you have somehow missed the World of Warcraft school of fantasy combat, it is built around abilities with cooldowns and aggro mechanics.

We will get to the combat in a sec, but first let's talk about another trope that is ubiquitous in MMORPGs: quests. Lots and lots of quests. So it is in Xenoblade; the amount of quests in this game is simply overwhelming. When there are so many quests, it is immediately clear that almost all of them will be of the simple variety: collect items or kill monsters. As if it wasn't enough to have a massive amount of quests, the game also has one annoying aspect: quests are given by people, and in some clumsy attempt to appear more realistic, the people are not always available. Instead some people are only available during certain hours, sometimes only in certain weather. I could maybe understand people missing from the streets at night but making it also dependent on the exact time of the day is just really frustrating. I was already flooded with quests so this didn't bother me that much, except when I tried to turn in some quests and the recipients were not around.

The game does feature the ability to at least fast-forward the game clock. Still this is just not the way to do things. The game also gives horribly little information about the quests - like for instance what god forsaken hours the quest recipient would be as kind to be available. This is one thing I have always hated about JRPGs: some stuff is hidden in such irrational ways that the only sensible way to go about finding it is using a guide. Usually side quests are particular to the area where you get them, but when they are not, the game sure as hell doesn't bother to give information about where it would be possible to find the required items. The world is very large, and each area contains a huge amount of different enemies, so trying to find things is a massive time sink. Which I ultimately opted not to do.

As stated, the battle system in the game is very MMORPG-inspired. Simplified yes, and somewhat conforming to JRPG tropes, but MMORPG nonetheless. The player controls one character while two other party members are AI-controlled. Characters attack automatically when close enough to a target. They can also use abilities called arts, each of which has its cooldown time. Positioning matters but only slightly: attacking from behind or sides affects how some arts work. Another thing that matters is aggro, which is used to determine who the enemies will be targeting. It's not a bad system, but it is kind of boring. There is not that much strategy involved because the effect times of most abilities are way shorter than their cooldowns. The best single mechanic is the break-topple-daze system that allows enemies to be disabled for a while and take more damage.

The single player MMORPG syndrome is not a collection of aspects, but rather a general feeling. In Xenoblade it is very strong, and I think it is a bit lazy design. The biggest problem with the syndrome is that it is definitely not the combat mechanics that keep people playing MMORPGs. It is mostly the MMO and for some players the RP. The design of the G is actually not that exciting - at least not the combat part. I do know that in some MMORPGs the combat design is actually more exciting (e.g. Guild Wars, Tera) but the basic form seen in World of Warcraft is effing boring. It likely gets better later in the game as it eventually does in Xenoblade. However, over 20 hours is a long time for combat to be not that interesting.

3. Conservative RPG design

The real problem with combat in Xenoblade is not its similarity to MMORPG style but rather all the character development aspects that affect it. Xenoblade has a very conservative character development scheme in which advancement is carefully tied to plot progress. Higher levels in arts become available only when the player discovers manuals. Equipment is gradually upgraded in every area. Even the game's built-in crafting system puts limitations on how high leveled gems the player can produce at a given stage in the game due to the availability of materials. The problem with being so conservative is in the fact that it makes half of the things kind of redundant. The game does not really need scaling equipment because their scaling speed is about the same as character level advancement. This is something I have always had trouble understanding: if equipment is just better numbers, why have equipment in the first place.

Granted, there are pieces of equipment that have fixed games attached to them, which gives them special abilities that are usually slightly better than what is possible to produce at that time using slotted inventory and crafted gems. The gem system is mostly fine, although the crafting itself has unnecessary complexity. I found myself using the same two characters to produce every single gem during my game, and was more than happy with the results. The system probably has more to give but I didn't see any way to "jump ahead of the curve" - so to speak. The choices that really matter are which arts to equip and level up, and which gems to equip in slotted equipment. Skill trees are very simple, and the skills themselves are quite conservative in how much they affect the game.

It is not as bad as, say, The Last Story, but I still felt that my control over how my party fought was not the same level as I would have liked it to be. It is true that Xeno games in general have never been outstanding in this sense, but I do feel that some of the Xenosaga episodes did have more strategical options available. As far as options are concerned there is one factor that I found especially weird: practical party compositions are actually pretty limited. It is good that characters have different strengths and in Xenoblade every character has a quite distinct role. However there are two or three cases where this is simply taken too far: only one character can cast a shield against enemy talent arts; only one character can deal serious magic damage; and only one character is good enough at healing to actually have an impact.

The first and second are borderline fine, because there are not that many enemies where you would require their expertise, but the last one is really horrible. The way the game is designed, there tends to be only one way to fight: the slugfest - outlast your enemies. This topic was earlier discussed in this blog and I concluded that games where the slugfest is the only option are rather weak. In slugfests, when fights get prolonged, it is simply impossible to last very long without a healer. This makes that one character a requirement for any serious fights and with a party consisting of three characters, that only leaves two choices for the player. Granted, getting through bread and butter combat can be done without a healer but for every boss encounter you will need this character. There simply is no other way to reduce incoming damage.

Another problem with this whole conservative approach is that the player simply doesn't get the feeling of being in control in fights. There is simply not enough agency. There are some systems in the game that do increase the sense of agency - they will be discussed shortly. Nevertheless the sense of being in control is simply quite diminished. Although you control a character in real time, there is only so much you can do because none of the arts have really drastic effects. The designers have simply done too good a job of making sure the game is in balance - the result is overbalanced. Although the characters are different, the fighting experience is alarmingly similar with every party composition. The only exception is whether you have a healer or not. Controlling other characters yourself also gives a distinct experience, but the overall strategies remain the same.

Xenoblade does get more interesting around the 30 hour mark but it still is simply not as interesting as many other JRPGs that give a better sense of agency. That, and the mechanic itself is not that satisfying to play, largely due to its MMORPG influences. In lot of JRPGs tactical variance is in fact quite low, but usually the tactics are more satisfying to carry out. Often this is linked to how well skills combo with each other. This is another thing that Xenoblade does not do as much as I could have hoped. Monolith Studios does know how to build more intriguing skill systems into a game as was evidenced by Xenosaga 2 and 3 - they have just chosen not to do so.

4. One meter to rule them all

One central mechanic that the game itself somewhat underemphasizes is the party meter. At first I thought it was a bad idea but once I figured how to manipulate it better the game actually became quite a bit more enjoyable. The meter is more or less the lifeblood of your party because it does a variety of things. The meter has three segments, and most things cost one segment. The things you can do with it are: revive an ally; get revived by an ally (if there are no segments left, you lose the battle when the main character falls); warn an ally about an incoming art (see below); perform a tri-attack which uses all three segments. The fact that you need the same bar for both the combo attack and revival made little sense at first because it made combo attacks very suicidal to perform (lose 3 revives/warnings for a combo? No thanks!).

The warning system is noteworthy. Whenever an enemy art would incapacitate or put a character on very low HP or disable them severely, the player is given a foresight of the incoming attack and (usually) 8 seconds to react (12 if it is a talent art). If the player chooses to warn another party member, they can instantly cast one art with the warned character out of normal sequence. Most importantly, even abilities that are on cooldown can be cast, and casting arts from warning doesn't put them on cooldown. So, basically it is a free cast whenever something bad is about to happen. The player can actually warn both allies for the price of two segments. The system is in no way limited to defensive abilities, it can also be used to get a quick powerful attack in hope that it will kill the enemy. It can even be used to activate buffs that are on cooldown.

It is still slightly unclear to me what factors are involved in raising the meter. Three things raise it: critical hits, triggering special effects of some arts and seemingly random affinity moments. The last is a bit unclear because I did not experience anything that controlled when you get the affinity opportunities in battles. The first two are something that the player can actually build a strategy around by using characters with easy access to high critical chance or arts that have easy-to-trigger special effects and low cooldowns. These things allow the use of tri-attacks actually quite frequently. Furthermore, tri-attacks are usually used to cause a break-topple-dazzle combo which incapacitates an enemy for a moment. The daze can also be refreshed when it wears off (the window is quite short) which means you can follow a tri-attack combo with prolonged knockdown.

My basic setup was often able to fill two segments of an empty party meter during this period of daze. This allowed almost non-stop tri-attacks. Some enemies are immune to it though, because they are immune to break. Some enemies also have a defensive mechanism that makes them return a ton of damage when they are attacked while toppled. This effect can be removed temporarily, but only by one character in the entire game. The tactic is somewhat reminescent of Persona 3 Fes where it was possible to keep an enemy in an infinite knockdown loop but better in the sense that the loop cannot be infinite (I think, I haven't tried too hard). The fact that it doesn't always work also makes other tactics useful. Tri-attacks on the other hand are not very useful if they cannot be used to cause a daze, largely because without that temporary lockdown the player will be left entirely without party meter segments for a while.

Especially towards the end of the game, the party meter played a central role in tougher battles. The battle was then more about keeping the meter high, especially because of the warning system that allowed instant free heals for the whole party whenever someone was about to die. The warning system actually has a strong familiriaty to it - it reminds me of the boost system that was used in Xenosaga. It allowed characters to skip ahead in turn order and enabled both reactive plays and ability combinations to be carried out effectively. I am quite fond of systems like this one that allow the player to mess with the normal turn order. Although Xenoblade doesn't use turns what with being real-time and all, the warning system allows the player to ignore ability cooldowns.

5. World exploration

After playing the game I kind of know why it is held in high regard by many. Undeniably the world is interesting. Civilizations existing on top of two dead titans is a concept you don't see every day. Most importantly, this shows in the game. Look up and somewhere in the distance you can see a motionless metallic face. Environments are quite varied, especially on the starting titan. Most importantly, the local fauna on each area is credible. Enemies of very high levels can be found among the normal residents which makes it feels less like everything has been put there for the player. A similar choice was made in the largest area in Final Fantasy XIII. Like in FFXIII, monsters are visible to the player and can be avoided. Battle also takes place on the world map itself, like in FFXII, and prolonged battles can sometimes be joined by wandering monsters.

Enemies are divided into four categories based on how they get aggressive towards the player. The first category never does, they just exist and will only fight if attacked first; the second uses sight to detect the party; the third uses hearing (shorter range, but 360 degree detection); and the last type is drawn to magic being cast. Because the enemies can flock to battles that have already started, some consideration is required from the player before starting to fight. I have a divided opinion of this system - I find it fine when enemy patrol routes are not too long and it is somewhat predictable when more will join the fight. However in some areas there are flying monsters with monstrous patrol ranges that can just pop into a fight. I did find a rather silly way to deal with battles with too many monsters: hit and run.

Battles end when the player runs far enough, and characters recover their hit points very quickly outside of combat. Monsters also recover their health, but dead ones stay dead for quite a long time. Therefore it is possible to run in, kill one enemy and run away to heal. Rinse and repeat. Reminds me of the very old times with dungeon crawling games like Eye of the Beholder where you could literally run in, hit, and quickly run back (one step) to make any retaliation miss. In Xenoblade this strategy is brought about because escaping is quite easy, especially when all three characters are still alive. Once aggro is off the main character, the player can just run out of combat with no risk at all. Bursting down weaker enemies one by one in this way is an effective tactic but I did find it to be rather tedious. Fortunately it was not needed very often.

Unfortunately, besides monsters there is not much in the world to discover. Collectables are scattered here and there randomly (they also respawn randomly) but the only thing that truly drives the player to explore is the scenery. I have to say that I was quite positively suprised by the game's drawing distance. This made the scenery actually look quite impressive, despite the Wii's lack of visual processing power.

Conclusion

Ultimately the biggest issue I had with Xenoblade Chronicles was that it took so long for the game to truly get started. The first 20 to 30 hours simply were not up to the hype because nothing interesting was going on in the story and battle mechanics were not particularly varied yet. Once the game finally upped the stakes by a few notches I found it to be a solid JRPG. However it wasn't particularly spectacular at any point. Most aspects of the game are "only" good. Characters, plot, mechanics... none were really spectacular. Oh and why is that if there is a silly looking race in the game, they have to behave like idiots too? I can understand why a lot of people liked this game. After all, a lot of people also liked FFXII - which is possibly the worst JRPG I have ever played - and Xenoblade does have a lot of similarities.

Curiously enough, the fact that this game was for Wii did not bother me much at all. After the framerate nightmare of The Last Story I was prepared for much worse, but in fact most of the time Xenoblade ran just fine. It is possible that I would have liked this game more in the past. Now it suffered from rather high expectations and simply did not live up to them. The plot was nowhere near the complexity of other Xeno titles. Characters and dialogue were pretty standard stock, and I found voice acting - both English and Japanese - to be really tired. It was not quite as bad as The Last Story, but quite close. I guess the low budget of Wii development carries over to other aspects of the game too. The seriousness of the plot was also hurt by the fact that armor changed character appearance and at some point in the game the best armor - for a really long time too - was practically underwear.

Xenoblade did in many ways resemble JRPGs of the old times. It is just that it retained some things that could have been left into the past, but most importantly I think most of the modernizations were misses. This trend of likening single player RPGs to MMORPGs is a bad direction to head into. Sadly it is quite prevalent. Stop the madness and start making good single player games dammit.

Dragon's Dogma

This game was hyped in some circles quite a bit last year. A Japanese take on Skyrim was one description I remember, another compared it to Dark Souls in some aspects. So, truly, what is there not to get interested in? Well, tbh, the Skyrim part; open world RPGs are not my thing. In a sense the game is a digitalization of old schoold Dungeons & Dragons adventures. A party of four against ever an increasing threat of monsters. Monsters that have escaped from the pages of a D&D manual. With all the awesome games that came out last Autumn, this one did have to wait its turn until Christmas holidays. Nevertheless I truly expected to got into this. Turns out I didn't finish Dragon's Dogma during the holidays, largely because Dota 2 happened, but also because the game has its share of faults.

1. Pawns all around

The biggest distinguishing factor in Dragon's Dogma is its pawn system. It is an interesting concept indeed. At the start of the game, the player creates their own character and also their own pawn. In a sense, the pawn is even more important. Pawns can be summoned by other players to complete their party of 4 characters. This means it is not your main hero but your pawn that represents you in the community. This system sounds intriguing on paper and also raises questions like "can they balance it?". There is no hard limit for pawns that can be summoned, so theoretically you could summon a pawn way ahead of your main hero in levels. However, there is a cost that increases the further ahead a pawn is, so practically you are limited to pawns that are a few levels ahead. Equipment is not a factor in this cost though, which creates a major imbalance: a low level pawn with god-like equipment destroys everything.

A bigger fault with the pawn system is that pawns are by design void of personality. They have their collection of skills, their equipment and appearance (largely dictated by equipment) but that is more or less that. You may instruct your pawn to behave in certain ways, but there is no way to grant them any sort of personality. There is a large bunch of lines in the game that pawns can say, but they all say the same things albeit with a different voice. It is not much of banter unfortunately and gets rather repetitive. Granted it is clear that lack of personality is the intention and the game does not put much focus on character driven drama anyway. The emphasis is on survival in dungeons and the primary purpose of the pawn system is to create a game mechanic around forming a party that can tackle different obstacles. In reality the only reason I ever changed pawns was to keep them up in levels with my hero and primary pawn.

I think the problem is rather deeply rooted in the game's mechanics. Choosing a real-time battle system with AI-controlled allies severely limits what can be expected of said allies. The AI fights smartly, that much is true, and also according to the knowledge that has been gained by the pawn about their enemies. The achilles heel in this system is that skills in the game are rather bland and the difference in performance between pawns is remarkably unnoticeable. Only with casters there is any real difference in what spells they can cast. That aside, the only factor that truly matters in pawn selection is their attack and defense. Even if the game had more complex skill systems, I would not really trust an AI controlled ally to use them effectively. So numbers all the way. The problem is, this basically reduces every single pawn to just a few numbers (and bigger is better).

Another thing about AI controlled allies in Dragon's Dogma is that their equipment and skills are identical to what the player can have. The only difference is that the main hero can be trained in three hybrid classes that are unavailable to pawns. I realize that the purpose is to be able to have any roles your hero doesn't fulfill. The basic problem with this kind of arrangement is that if the pawns played really well, they would likely outshine the player. This I think is pretty bad. Indeed, one spellcaster I recruited at the end of the game downed several powerful bosses at a ridiculous speed. In the time it would have taken for my main hero to take down one health bar from a boss, that pawn took out five. The point here being is that if pawns are on the exact same power scale with the hero they will become more important in fights. The only special power the player really has over pawns is that he can resurrect them back to the fight.

If the pawns were actually on a different power scale and performing more supportive roles things just might work out better. Another approach could be to give the player better control of the overall battle strategy. The three commands in the game were just "go", "help" and "come". The AI handled the rest. While I think that yes, it is kind of cool that the pawns actually act based on what knowledge they have acquired, having the player be just one among four actors in a play might not be the best design. We can see how the increased player control works in Final Fantasy XIII(-2) paradigm system by giving the player more control over the actions their AI allies are limited to doing. Another game where AI allies actually worked as a mechanic is Star Ocean 3, curiously exactly because they were not very bright. However you could disable the AI or switch control during a battle. You also had the additional challenge of developing builds that worked well for the AI.

This is the problem I had in Dragon's Dogma. There just wasn't much of gameplay around the interesting pawn mechanic. Selecting pawns was dumbed down and in battle they were really independent. The important point is that they did not contribute to giving the player more gameplay. There is a thematic appeal to the pawns, and the fact that they do function very independently does create immersion. I am guessing this is what the designers went for. However most of the points I have raised here are not in contradiction to the immersion goal. Oh and the fact that the pawns repeat the same things all over again kind of breaks the immersion, especially because they are all saying the same things. I guess the problem ultimately is that the pawns have no real advantage over regular AI-controlled NPC allies. The disadvantage is that they lack personality and backstory, so it feels like you are traveling with glorified battle bots rather than with companions.

2. Into the unknown

I have been giving the game's primary system quite a trashing so perhaps I should talk about its better points now. The most appealing part of this game was traveling into unknown territory. I am guessing this is the Skyrim appeal. The world looks amazing and you can definitely run into some real trouble by taking a wrong turn. Seeing to the far end of the game world from atop of a mountain somehow always feels nice. Akin to the feeling you when climbing the very highest tower in Assassin's Creed, just because of the view. In Dragon's Dogma viewing the scenery has these "I have traveled all the way from there" and "Oh shit, that place is so far and night is falling" feelings. One of the best moments in the game was when I decided to explore whether the place I was in actually connected to another place I had been in before but through a different route. To my delight it did, and once again contained some amazing scenery.

What I found curious was that I actually really really liked the escort quests in this game. Escort quests are usually horrible but somehow traveling into unknown lands with a frail companion was an even stronger experience than simply exploring places because they are very likely to die if powerful foes are engaged. Running away from a Griffin on open plains and hiding inside a collapsed archway were strong moments in the game. To this end I actually wished the world would have been even larger to afford escort quests that could take hours to complete. And then I started to think about if it was actually possible to build a game that is simply one very long escort quest through this kind of plausible fantasy scenery. There are escort games that I know of (Ico comes to mind) but I don't think there is one in quite this sense.

Dungeons were somewhat less interesting. Fortunately they were also quite small and limited in number. By the way you better like traveling on foot when playing this game because there is not much of instant travel. There are consumables that allow you to teleport back to the world capital and you can later obtain a special waypoint marker that can be placed on the ground in a safe area. The reason I am happy the world was not that large is...

3. Repetition

This. Traveling to a new location is really cool in this game but being force to tread the same paths several times over is not. It is acceptable in some cases but not really cool in the rest. One big part of the problem is that - quest specific encounters aside - nothing changes. Every enemy is placed on the map so you will run into the same goblin ambush every time, usually on your way "there" and also "back again". There is nothing to be afraid of because you always know exactly what enemies you will face and where they are going to be, to a point that you can start figuring out routes where you won't encounter any. In some parts of the game world the whole "it's safer on the roads" is bullshit because they have planted a bunch of encounters specifically on the road. The only variation you get is the different set of enemies on the map at night time. That is all and I find it lazy and inexcusable. How hard it would have been to add randomization?

It gets worse than that though: some dungeons are also repeated. In two sequential plot quests for instance you have to travel to, pretty much the furthest end of the world into a tower and there is no way to make a single run because you have to get back to report the first quest to get the second one. I realize that constructing a world and dungeons is expensive, but really? It is borderline okay to have side quests require repeat visits to locations but plot quests, ouch. I think the main narrative at least should consist of unique trips to new locations and possibly some plausible revisits (if they spice up the journey). Although I think instant travel would have made the game worse in a way, they should have given more thought to the fact that there really is no cheap instant travel here.

Sadly repetition even carries on to the combat which is quite fascinating at the early-mid game but then just never changes. Getting all the skills for a single class doesn't take even a third of the game and after the only changes you will ever get are higher numbers in the form of better equipment (unless you want to change your class). Dunno if my class of choice was particularly dull to play (I chose the ranger type - I haven't played an archer for a long time) because all fights were more or less the same for me: hang back and release thousands of arrows until the enemies are dead. Especially true for boss fights. Occasionally I had to go in to hack a bit with knives or to revive a pawn but that was it. So I was just shooting with a bow for, whatever large amount of hours I spent fighting in the course of the game. I did like the fact that you could actually do that but yeah.

All in all boss fights in the game were bit of a grind. They had some weak points and some of their attacks or defenses could be disabled. You can scale them too like in Shadow of the Colossus (only far less interesting). Still, what it really comes down is that they just have a ton of hit points. I put part of the blame on the mechanic that uses AI allies because the optimal boss design as we have seen in say, Dark Souls, is that they deal a bucketload of damage and the player needs to know how to avoid that instead of tanking it, and they do not actually have that much health. It is just that their insanely powerful attacks make it hard for the player to get hits in. It is much harder to do this with AI controlled characters because the options are: they never avoid those attacks; they always avoid those attacks; they avoid them randomly or based on some rule. The latter is actually fine if the player has control over the factors that affect the outcome.

So boss fights eventually are just prolonged tank fests. Your pawns can even tank damage infinitely because they can be revived. Even your hero can tank damage quite well because healing items are used from a pause menu. You can even heal while stunned or while in the middle of taking a series of blows. There is just no punishment whatsoever for using items during the fight. If you look at Dark Souls again, it was freaking risky to sip that healing bottle because it took time and you could be interrupted and possibly killed while doing that. Not so in Dragon's Dogma; just stock those healing items and you are practically immortal. The only limiting factor is encumbrance which dictates how much stuff your character can carry. That, and availability of items (which is not very limited).

4. And here comes the difficulty card

During the first few hours this game will seem overwhelming. It has all kinds of systems: the pawn system, harvesting and combining materials, enhancing equipment and stuff like that. It also seems very threatening; the loading screen tips constantly remind you of how important it is to have oil in your lantern and how it is a bad idea to go poorly prepared or with the wrong party configuration. It gives the impression that you really need to take advantage of all the systems in the game to survive. Once you have gotten a bit more into the game it turns out that all this talk is just talk, at least on normal difficulty (and you are not given the option to start on hard diffculty for the first game, balls). Because there's really only 6 classes available for pawns and their class means a lot more than their set of skills, putting together a functional party is a no-brainer. Combining materials is hardly needed. The lantern uses oil ridiculously slowly.

I played almost the entire game with the same basic party configuration (me as ranged DPS, my pawn as a tank, one melee DPS pawn and a supportive mage). Most of the items I accumulated went straight into my storage and never saw the daylight again. The only combinations I did was to improve some healing items to more powerful versions (plus some experimentation to find out useful recipes). Enhancing weapons is just a matter of increasing some numbers because they have no real special statistics. This has always been a bummer for me, especially in Disgaea titles. Such a complex equipment system yet all they ever do is get better numbers. Contrast this to for instance Final Fantasy X where you put actual abilities on equipment; indeed, they don't have numbers at all!

I am quite certain that there is a lot you can do with these systems in the game. I have no doubts that a single GameFAQs guide wouldn't be a revelation. The problem is that the game simply does not require you to care about any of these things because it is just too easy. I do not know how hard the hard difficulty is. I would have liked to find out, but it was not available to me from the get-go and I am not going to go through this repetitive game again. You can select an even easier difficulty though, which I find kind of curious. How bad do you need to be to actually need that option? Here is a tip for developers: let people choose whatever difficulty they want right from the get-go. What do you have to lose? A lot of games allow players to change difficulty on the fly, so it's not like players can't tune it down if they get absolutely devastated. Still, I kind of love the policy used by From Software in their Souls games: there will be no easy difficulty - shut up and learn to play.

Conclusion

I have to say I was in many ways disappointed by Dragon's Dogma. I enjoyed the game in the early-mid game after I had gotten over the initial overwhelmingness but the longer the game went on the more bored I got with it. I did see it through, so it was not all bad. It really had a lot of shining moments too, and although there's a lot of rant here, it was far from being bad. You will also have to considered my viewpoint: I always focus heavily on mechanics when it comes to RPGs, especially if they do not have character driven drama (I am a sucker for good dialogue). If you are more exploration inclined, Dragon's Dogma is very likely to give much more to you. If exploration is not your thing, there is not much of a reason to play this game honestly. Although the plot does take some interesting turns towards the end and I kind of liked it, I would not play this game for its plot.