Reckoning

I was very much looking forward to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, in fact it was one the titles I was most interested in post holiday season. Being a long time gamer I have a very soft spot for new IPs, anything to break up the sequelits that is inevitable in my favorite pastime. This game has all sorts of potential, from Todd McFarlane to R.A. Salvatore, and a team of accomplished developers, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that this is 38 studio’s first release.

It is hard for me to say bad things about this game because there is very little that I find “wrong” about it. The combat is fast paced, action oriented (a lot like a Darksiders) but flawed in my opinion. It is easy to get too deep into a combo, and be stuck in an animation when you need to dodge. This becomes increasingly annoying because the only way the game seems to create difficulty is by throwing more bad guys, and more combinations of bad guys at you. Each monster type seems to have a Punchout style approach to them, you learn their attacks and once you do you are easily able to completely mitigate them, until of course, the screen is full of different kinds of monsters, and animations and spell effects, to the point where you can’t even really see the queues anymore. This is assuming of course you can get them all on-screen so you can see the ranged attacks coming. The camera is really frustrating in these instances because more often than not, you don’t get to see these attacks coming at all. The only real way to deal with it is to load up on potions and use them liberally. But again, it’s not broken, it could easily be said that this was their intention, and if that’s the case they’ve nailed it. The combat is quite fun when I feel like I’m not being taken advantage of by the systems in place. One last note about the combat; I’m playing a full sorcerer on PS3, in the console version you cast spells by holding down R1 (rb), and using the face buttons, when you get to the final tier of the talents, you have more than 4 spells that are useful and you have no way to use them all in combat despite the fact that they are all still useful. Pretty frustrating when I’m spec’d for full shields, and healing leaving only 2 offense abilities to use during combat. It would have been better if it was less cumbersome to remap the abilities so that they can be used out of combat easier, but they aren’t. It’s a quality of life thing but it really does get pretty frustrating when healing up and re-shielding myself out of combat takes a couple of minutes after every encounter.

I don’t have many good things to say about the story so far, most of it has been throw away, a collection of short stories that last 2-3 quests. I’m supposed to be a hero, a “fateless” one, who can change the world. but I am stuck doing trivial tasks or fetch quests not unlike you would in an MMO. Of course the argument is that they are building an MMO, of course they are going to use systems that could be reused in their upcoming project. But if you think about it that way, what you’re playing here is a single player beta next gen action MMORPG. It’s funny because I’ve said that I can’t wait for the next gen MMOs to come out because they are going to look something like reckoning. As it turns out, I don’t think I want that anymore. The questing can be described as make busy work, they have you running all over the place, instead of defined quest hubs where you get quests to do in the area, the quests often span multiple areas which involved a lot of running around. Yes they allow you to fast travel to places you have already been. That caveat it what slows it down.

To say this game is not worth the money is a lie, there is so much content here that if you have a tight gaming budget and you need something that will give you hours upon hours of content this is an excellent value. Sadly in the twenty hours of this game that I’ve played so far there has been 1 moment that I found truly exceptional, and it was the one part of the game that had a very guided narrative, a long combat sequence, and a fun (but not all that challenging) boss fight. It is a shame that it took so long to get to this point because if there were more moments like this one I would likely be more eager to continue playing this game. As stands now, I’m finding that my MMO fatigue that is preventing me from playing SWTOR, is also preventing me from playing Reckoning, and bring into question my whole desire for the next gen action MMORPG.

It is very unlikely that I will finish this game, but I felt that I needed to explain why. It’s not because the game is bad, it certainly isn’t, but the MMO style questing and leveling system is something that I’ve grown tired of in my many years as an MMO player, and if you haven’t, I imagine you can have a fantastic time with this game.

Final Fantasy XIII-2

Although not a first for the franchise, but the first that I’ve played, Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a rare direct sequel to a Final Fantasy game. The producers at Square felt that the world and lore that was created for Final Fantasy XIII had more story to tell and after putting more than 100 hours into FF13 myself in 2 complete playthroughs I didn’t disagree with them on that at all. At the end of 13 even the most annoying of characters developed to a point where I actually liked them, or at least accepted them for who they are, and the conflict had resolved to a point of being a satisfying ending. The question is does XIII-2 improve on the perceived flaws of its predecessor. As a bit of a warning I find it very hard to talk about XIII-2 on it’s own merits like I do with most sequels, and this review is going to be a little more referential than I’d like.

I’ve said this before, but I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention it here; I play Final Fantasy games foremost for the story, starting with Final Fantasy 4 (2 in North America) I had a new appreciation for storytelling in video games and I’ve followed the franchise closely ever since. And I’m sad to report that the story told in XIII-2 did not live up to my expectations. I feel like in an effort to improve the flaws cited by fans it became difficult to have a guided, well told experience. Not to mention shorter; I finished XIII-2 in about 25 hours, less than half the time it took me to finish XIII which was practically all story. They gave the players a gated freedom to choose their path (which I will get to later) that resulted at least in terms of story telling, in a ‘villain of the week’ television series model. Where you go to an area, complete the main objective which rarely has much to do with the over-arching plot, you are then rewarded with a bit of information to advance the story. As a gamer primarily interested in the story, there were only 3 moments in the game that I thought were really well told, and only one of those that was really powerful, the ‘reveal’ was excellent, but it definitely didn’t make up for the rest. One other note on length, while I did finish the main story in about 25 hours, that only included 41 of the 160 fragments to be gathered, so in a sense only represents a quarter of the game. fragments are collected by completing main and side quests, finding hidden treasures and killing certain monsters. At the time of this writing I have collected 78/160 and my play time is somewhere between 34-38 hours though much of that was spent in the casino with a button stuck down playing slots (yes I did collect a fragment from this as well). As you can imagine there is a lot of game time here for completionists who are not necessarily motivated by story.

Many fans criticised 13 for linearity, and I agree that the corridors definitely felt tedious at times but I definitely wasn’t as down on the game about it as most. XIII-2 aimed to improve this by introducing the Historia Crux. To me the Historia Crux felt much like a Mario world map, where you unlock new levels by completing objectives in the levels that came before it. In each area you’ll find artefacts that unlock gates found in the area that will open up new, times/locations in the Historia Crux. This is supplemented by gates that are opened using ‘Wild Artefacts’ which gives the player some choice as to which areas they open up next, though it seemed to me that those choices were inconsequential. So while there are some freedoms here, it is just the illusion of freedom since there is still only one way to advance the plot. In a sense, a return to form that many fans of the franchise will be happy to see but I do not believe it was worth the apparent sacrifice to the story telling.

The paradigm combat system remained mostly unchanged, but unlike 13 where you have a whole slew of characters to choose from who are more or less limited to the roles they can fill, your party in 13-2 consists of only 2 characters, Serah and Noel, who don’t really develop at all unlike in 13, and really don’t have any other motivation than to track down lightning by resolving time paradoxes. In 13 there was a certain amount of strategy involved in which characters you put into your battle party since they all contained a different combination of roles and so you couldn’t necessarily have all the representation that you wanted. In 13-2 you fill out your 3 person battle team with monsters. Each monster only has 1 role, but out of combat you establish a paradigm pack of 3 monsters. This gives you a lot of freedom with regards to how you build your team since you are not limited by the roles of a certain character, but the sacrifice there is that some of the strategy is gone. These monsters are randomly collected by beating them in combat. That aspect of it is actually pretty fun in a pokemon sort of way, and collectors are going to have a good/frustrating time trying to “catch ‘em all”. That said most of the monsters I used in my deck I obtained early on and used them for most of the game, I never really felt obligated to switch them out for ‘better’ ones. This is partially due to the Crystarium system which I will get to in a bit. The most disappointing thing to me about the combat system in 13-2 in general however is that the significance of the Saboteur and Synergist roles has been drastically reduced. In 13 I felt like it was crazy to even consider going into a boss battle without the ability to buff/debuff, and in my opinion it was one of the best implementations of those roles because they felt significant. One other change to the combat is the introduction of ”Cinematic Action”, read quick time events, which are implemented in 2 ways. First, via a monster’s ‘Feral Link’ ability, which relies on a chain meter that builds up during combat, once full can be unleashed to perform a monster specific ability that is often (but not always) related to their role. For example, I had a synergist that  would cast a whole slew of buffs, successfully completing the quick time event grants a percentage bonus to the ability. I’m not entirely sure but I believe in the case of the synergist previously mention it modified the duration of those buffs. The second implementation of quick time events is at the end of boss battles, I hate QTEs implemented in this scenario since it takes away from watching some of the best cinematics, luckily these seem to inexplicably taper off in the second half of the game.

The Crystarium system returns though it has been changed dramatically. For the characters, Instead of choosing a role, and getting stats and abilities from nodes within the role, you have 1 set of nodes. Nodes come in different sizes, and you basically assign a role to the node, depending on the size of the node, you get more stats based on the role you’ve selected. For example, if you select commando, your attack will go up, while if you select ravager it will be magic. It’s not 1 to 1 like that though, you will often get ‘some’ points in each, hp, magic and attack, but the stat for role you select gets more. Abilities are unlocked after set amount of nodes have been selected for the role. Monsters also use the Crystarium system though it is slightly different, instead of using CP earned in battle like the characters, monsters use items that you find or buy. These items have stats assigned to them, so you can use ‘magic’ items to improve the magic abilities for the monster for example. I found the items to be a bit scarce when it comes to the later tiers as well as cost prohibitive, which is why I used the same monsters for most of the game. I feel as though it was a missed opportunity to add an element of strategy to the paradigm packs.

I should also mention that mini-games are back, there are some puzzles, and a casino with slots and chocobo racing, and does add a bit of variety to the gameplay and serves as a nice distraction once in a while.

All and all I had an ok time with the game, but I think it went in the wrong direction. It clearly tries to appease those who were disappointed with 13, by adding some of the missing features but in doing so it feels as though it alienated those of us who appreciated 13 for what it was. I’m hoping that there is some sort of proper conclusion by way of DLC as opposed to the full on sequel as the 13-3 rumors are suggesting, because as it stands I have a hard time recommending this game to Final Fantasy fans like myself who are looking for an epic story. The game is not broken by any means and there is some fun to be had to be sure, but it is definitely on my short list of disappointing Final Fantasy games.

Final Fantasy XIII-2

To say I’m having mixed feelings about Final Fantasy XIII-2 would be an understatement. It seems like they took the fans criticisms to heart, and brought back some of the staples that many people loved about Final Fantasy games in the past. Sounds good right?

I know I was in the minority when I said that I didn’t mind the corridors in Final Fantasy 13, the story was compelling enough to encourage me to push forward. My playthrough was 50 hours without the need to dilute the experience with aimless exploration. What appears to have happened is that they bring back exploring by way of hiding fragments within various sandboxes. You don’t explore a world at all, you explore small segments of a world and you can select which segment you want to explore via the ‘Historia Crux’. The Historia Crux feels like a Super Mario world map, as you get through areas you unlock new ones to explore. Here’s the thing, this is not the type of exploration that Final Fantasy is known for, it’s kind of a joke. I’m sure later in the game when it makes sense to revisit some of these areas because they have changed due to your actions it might be a little more engaging but as it stands now I feel this ‘addition’ has taken away my primary motivation in FF games, that is to say the story suffers.

While there is an over arching story that has Serah searching through time to find her sister, each of the areas in the Historia Crux feels like its own episode. Like any piece of episodic content, there will be good and bad parts, but in many cases you’re left with one piece of information to advance, or flesh out the over arching story. The problem with this in my mind is that the sub-plots here feels like most of these are insignificant or forgettable so far. I’m still early on so maybe this will improve with time but there isn’t a ton of motivation for me in this game.

There have been some neat changes to the paradigm combat system, first is the fact that you only have 2 characters to develop, to fill out the group however you get to add 3 monsters to your deck. Each monster has 1 of the classes assigned to them, so you get a little bit more control over which classes are available to you, provided that you have monsters of the type you’re looking for. Monsters are levelled up via the crystarium system just like the character, however instead of earning CP, they progress by using specific items that you can find or buy to level. The combat itself feels a little more reactive, or rather, you have less time to react, and it’s more about watching the opponents animations, it’s sort of neat but I’m not totally used to it yet.

I’m not going to talk about the Crystarium system at the moment because I don’t really feel like I understand it. Suffice to say it is different from the last game, in that you don’t seem to have separate crystals per class and it isn’t nearly as obvious what you’re getting when you spend your CP in the new system. I hope this makes more sense later but it just feels like clicking buttons at this point.

You know, despite all that, I’m still having some fun here, and I’m going to continue playing, I just unlocked the casino before turning in last night, and it’s just as tiresome as it was in FF7. I’m hopeful that some of this stuff evolves pretty soon though particularly the story.