#yes i have too many thoughts about this weird jrpg that nobody has played

[lonepower]

feeling EXTREMELY normal about this thanks for asking

[ladala99]

The Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion Rambles - Ending Edition

Yesterday I ended my last session literally one attack from beating the final boss. I did not know it at the time since enemies do not have health bars. But that in itself was about 50 minutes until cutscenes/credits were over, so since I was brushing up against bedtime, it was for the best.

Yes, I have beaten The Legend of Heroes: A Tear of Vermillion. For the first time, actually - last time I played the game, I lost against the final boss and just stopped playing.

Anyway, as usual, spoilers below, so read at your own discretion. Also below is some brainstorming on my next gaming schedule.

I’ll start out by talking about the title of this game. I thought it was named A Tear of Vermillion because of how sad Avin was about losing his red-headed sister and also for the pool of blood that Mile collapsed into. This game is sad and bloody, so tears+red->a tear of vermillion.

But no, the ending explains that tears of vermillion are the bonds of friendship and belief that allow one to exit the land of the dead. Or something to that effect. Nobody was crying at the end (well, Avin did when Mile re-died, but he wasn’t crying when the tears fell). Just everyone’s literal thoughts and prayers descended from the sky as red raindrops and saved the day. ???

Also, Mile was a zombie when he had silver hair. I was unaware of that. But I had previously been confused at the vision in the ice temple where his ghost showed up, since I knew he was alive, and this makes that make more sense.

Speaking of Mile, the ending sequences with Shannon were weird. It’s played for laughs that the poor girl has a huge crush on him, which he doesn’t reciprocate. And it’s just left at that. No breaking it to her, no establishing a different relationship, she just glomps him repeatedly and he acts awkwardly about it.

AvinXRutice I don’t have much to say about other than that I was appreciating how platonic but close their friendship was. Nope, not just friendship after all. My ace brain just likes to see what it likes to see. It makes sense with all they’ve been through, and how they anchor one another.

The credits art was really nice, though I wondered why Archen was there. Avin, Mile, Eimelle, and Rutice were obvious choices. Sage Gawain was reasonable, given he was at the beginning and end of the game, but Archen plays a smaller role than many of the other temporary companions. I guess the artist just liked her. She had a pretty…interesting pose.

And I’m doing all these nitpicks, but really, I enjoy this game so much. The ending left me excited to move onto the next one. Moreso the third game than the second (English order) but that’s probably because in the original order, the third game was next. If the Trails games are anything like this, I can very well see why people binge them.

Still, I’m sticking to my plan of not diving straight into Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch (as that will be my next in this series).

Current plan is:

Detective Pikachu 2 finish Ultra Sun some non-JRPG (Tears of the Kingdom?) finish Octopath Traveler some non-JRPG (Crash N Sane Trilogy?) Pokémon (maybe finish Pokedex stuff in Shield DLC?) some non-JRPG The Legend of Heroes: Prophecy of the Moonlight Witch

And the Scarlet/Violet DLC playthrough being inserted whenever the second half happens to land because new Pokémon games take priority.

So yeah, there is quite a bit to go. A lot of this is cleanup, though, so some shouldn’t take too too long.

But given my renewed interest in the Legend of Heroes, I may change my pattern.

Maybe finish Octopath after Detective Pikachu 2 and make the new JRPG pattern Pokémon->Legend of Heroes->Other.

I have swapped my gameplay schedule from rigid one month one game, two weeks another game, repeat, swapping out games as necessary to: every two weeks, check up on how I feel about my current game. Still engaged in it? Keep playing for two more weeks. Getting a little burnt out? Play something else for two weeks and get back to it. And then anything can interrupt (LoH: AToV did in the first place, and then Detective Pikachu 1 replay and Pokémon SV Mew/Mewtwo event interrupted that temporarily).

Of course, there’s also the fact that Detective Pikachu 2 isn’t quite out yet. This gives me a good chance to play a more relaxing game for the next few days.

Though I’m probably just going to go back to hatching full-time to prepare to bring Pokémon from 3DS up to HOME when the second DLC drops. Datamines indicate my Ribbon Pokémon will be in there, making it the first HOME-compatible game where that is so, and I thus am doing my one-time one-month subscription to bring as much up as I can.

[unclerippuascension]

Autistic infodump about Balan Wonderworld or whatever the fuck

Man it really does suck that Balan Wonderworld fucking crashed and burned because unlike Mighty No. 9 I feel like there was some glimmer of goodness in there. Not in terms of gameplay, that’s borked because Yuji Naka still thinks we’re in the fucking 90s where games had one godamn button gameplay and yet also has 80 powerups (seriously what ganja was he smoking, is he ok?), but I mean the story. Which is so weird because the implimentation of story in this game was so passive agressive, like Yuji Naka didn’t want a story but Square was like “No no, you work at our company, you put a fucking story in your game”

Like... there’s clearly story here, but there’s no dialogue. Not having spoken dialogue isn’t a bad thing, but you need to have story shown off in another way and Balan Wonderworld doesn’t do that. That’s especially bad when your story relies on making us care about the struggles characters have. And the people who made this game knew that because they made a fucking light novel that explains everything about everyone. I just WHAT

Was is it too much for them to have a part of the pause menu where you can get a short biography of the characters you’ve met? Kirby Star Allies did this and that game didn’t have a story as big as Balan Wonderworld’s! Not to mention the novel really pulls a FNAF novel where it explains so much important lore that ain’t NOBODY who isn’t in the fandom is gonna read, hell with how much this game flopped I don’t even think anybody in general is gonan read it. Stuff like: did you know Balan was created by Lance, that weird hentai tentacle guy who’s kind of the Reiali  of this game? (apologies to Nights fans if I fucked up the name) YEAH, ME NEITHER, YUKARI HAD TO TELL ME. Their whole thing is basically this one meme in case you haven’t read the novel like me

I want you really think about how much of a mistake this was. Don’t pull a FNAF novel series if you’re making a game, there are ways to impliment story without it being JRPG levels of involved. Again, just have short blurbs as an option in the pause menu.

Speaking of Balan, they really did my mans dirty. It’s like the one Spongebob meme, “You used me...TO BRING IN PLAYERS”. You do not play as Balan in this game, you do QTEs. I never played Nights, Sonic was my Sega fix, but if I was a Nights fan I would feel so cheated. He’s got so much potential, and he’s probably a more developed character in the light novel, but here? He’s just the hook, and once you bite the rest of the game is just....

yeah.

Again, they could have had stuff for Balan that wasn’t QTEs. Maybe some gameplay like Nights? I get that the game isn’t a Nights game, but maybe have his short segments be little snapshots of that kind of gameplay? Please the game is so horrendous, people would find the game tolerable if they had the gameplay version of that cold glass of water in the middle of a marathon. 

Also maybe cut back on the powerups, do we really need 80 of them? So many of them make other powerups obselete, this isn’t a Megaman game, Mr. Naka. We do not need 80 powerups that are all more or less recolors of each other. It doesn’t help that most of these costumes are ugly as sin, useless (serious, who thought Box Fox was a good thing, I just want to talk), or are just a recolor of another powerup. I heard there were originally going to be 40, but even 40 is too much. Your character has three slots for power-ups, have it be three powerups per world and make them permanent additions and not something you need to re-acquire because yes that’s a thing. To bring up Megaman again, imagine if you were using a powerup and you died, and now you’d have to battle the robot master again to get it back. It’s not exactly like that but its on the same track.

Yukari said this while we were talking about this topic, but Balan does feel like a game that should have been some kind of animated series or something. When this game is in cutscenes it is genuinely impressive with how it handles the conflict of the characters, well the characters who actually have compelling problems that you need to solve by Psychonaut-ing it into their heads. What do I mean? Well one world is around a little girl who’s cat got hit by a car, and the event made her so scared and upset that she is now afraid of cars and streetlights because it reminds her of that tragedy. That’s relatable! Even if the game doesn’t translate that, you’re still theoretically helping a child grieve the loss of a pet! And then the other guy is some smug old fart who got beat by a rival and isn’t the champion of chess anymore. Too my knowledge the game doesn’t really scale these problems like where the problems the characters slowly become more ‘intense’. Like the first guy you help is a farmer, but I feel like the chess guy should have been first because his problem is like... dude just get over it, you’re gonna lose nobody is perfect. 

The worst part about all of this is that Square Enix told Yuji Naka he had one chance to make a platformer, and he pretty much wasted it with how this game was handled. I am pretty damn worried that Balan will be like Geno and Mallow where Square just never fucking uses them again, maybe not AS bad as Geno and Mallow but in that similar ballpark

It really does kinda suck, my guys. I just wanted a cool game with a funky clown-looking dude, man!!!

[press-a-repeatedly]

Zul’s Top 9 Games of 2018

By Zul Edwards

Heyyy it’s me. I’m back! What a year! 2018 has come and gone and many awesome games have been played by everyone here at PAR. The votes were tallied, the results are in, and I am included in that bunch. However, some of the games I played and loved this year were no-shows on our list. Some AMAZING games that I think deserve a little love on our corner on the internet.  So, I thought, if you out there reading this were interested, (spoiler alert, nobody is) here is my OWN personal top nine games of 2018.

So, let’s get this thing started with my number 9!... oh yeah, I only played 9 games in 2018. heh.

9) No Man’s Sky – So I was one of those gamers who was excited for NMS when it was first announced a few years back. Thought the idea of exploring a quintillion planet was awesome. Then the game came out, I heard it sucked, and I ignored it. Enter a couple years later when it was on sale, had a ton of updates and new features: true online with friends, customizable characters, base building, and a brand-new story. However, it wasn’t enough to keep me hooked. Don’t get me wrong, I liked exploring the various galaxies and doing various side quests, engaging in dogfights with pirates and mining for space gold, but overall it just still felt so empty, so repetitious, and so… blah. I guess I still prefer quality over quantity, even if the quantity is in the quintillions.  

8) The Alliance Alive – The first on the list of “Games only Zul played this year”. The Alliance Alive is a 3DS game from the creators of the classic “Legend of Legacy”, literally a game I borrowed from Justin, played for all of 30 minutes, then promptly returned to Justin never to be spoken of again. So, to my surprise when he told me the same studio was making another game, The Alliance Alive, but it was helmed by one of the writers of the Suikoden franchise, I was cautiously optimistic. Much to my (pleasant) surprise, the game was good! A blend of classic JRPG turned based battles with flairs of modernization: skills learned through fighting, increased stats based on the location of fighters in battles, and a darker story not usually found in those classic SNES/PS1 RPGs this seems to emulate.  While the main characters fall into some pretty cliché tropes, the side characters really shine. From giant axe-wielding lizard men that remind me of my own D&D character, to a demon-dog-man butler, to a mad child genius scientist who rides a duck robot, this game has a lot of flavor. I really should go back and finish.

7) Chasm – While it’s no secret that I love Castlevania games, I think it’s fair to say I’m not really a giant fan of Metroidvania games. I prefer the simpler side-scrolling action of Castlevania, constantly moving forward towards a goal of smacking Drac in the face with a metal whip, to the backtracking and map completing chore of most Metroidvania games. With that said, something about the less intense and simpler format of Chasm kept me hooked till the end. I didn’t mind backtracking and completing the map in Chasm because it wasn’t as vast or complicated as other games in the genre. It was colorful, had great music, stellar pixel art and a fun yet challenging battle system and platforming. Overall it was a blast to play, but it just got overshadowed in a year filled with superior games.

6) God of War – “WHAT THE FUCK?” I hear you slam on your keyboards as I place the unrivaled GOTY in a paltry 6th place. Don’t get me wrong, this game is good. In fact, it’s VERY good. However, for whatever reason, I guess this game didn’t hook me like it did for everyone else. I only have a passing familiarity with the GoW series. Even though I’m a diehard SonyBoy, I only ever played GoW 1 and never beat it. Kratos and Atreus are some of the best written and best-acted characters to come out of a video game in this year or any year. Hell, if we had a “best new character” category again this year, I would struggle to not put Atreus in the top 3. The music is amazing, the writing is fantastic, the scope, cinematography and the constant one camera perspective were all stellar achievements in the medium of gaming, not to mention I’m pretty much obsessed with all things Norse… BUT. I dunno. Little things kept taking me out of it. Atreus’s sudden, jarring mood swings. The poor pacing in certain parts. The sudden introduction of major characters and/or story elements, that felt kind of brushed over and/or rushed. The lackluster side content, the padding and the empty worlds. The game is good. But it never felt great to me. Most games that I love, I think about when I’m not playing them, then I rush home from work to play them because I want to complete them, either for the story or because the gameplay is addicting, but this game felt more like a chore sometimes. I didn’t even buy it, I just borrowed it from Butch earlier in the year when it came out. I’m sorry Cory. I tried but I just didn’t love this game.

5) Moonlighter – Now here’s a game I absolutely adored. Flew under my radar and was recommended by Nick. By day you’re a humble shopkeeper, selling various wares and curios. By night, (by… MOONLIGHT) you explore dungeons ala Link to the Past style in a top-down view, into randomly generated maps. Each area has different items to collect & new materials to find, which you bring back to the shop to sell, which with the money you earn, can craft new weapons, which will get you further into dungeons, which will mean you find more items to sell which means you make more gold to spend on armor and weapons, which means you can get better materials to keep delving deeper, WHICH MEANS… ahem. Ah yes. That classic feedback loop. It sucked me in. It’s simple but effective in keeping me engaged. Coupled with a great art style, fluid beautiful pixel graphics and a surprisingly good amount of story for this type of game, Moonlighter took a nice chunk of my time early in the year.

4) Ni No Kuni II: Revenant Kingdom – Another entry in “Games only Zul played this year”, NNK2 was a surprise hit for me. I never played NNK1 and heard rather negative things about it from Nick over the years. I bought NNK2 on a whim months after it came out because it was on sale and I was craving a good JRPG, and it did not disappoint. I loved pretty much everything about this game. The music, the story, the beautiful not quite Ghibli, but practically Ghibli art style, the characters, the mechanics, the town building, the combat… it was everything I was looking for. There were certainly parts in the middle that lagged a bit, and the general “go to town > solve town’s problem > make an alliance with the town” could be considered cliché or predictable, but every town felt unique and its inhabitants all felt genuine. Recruiting citizens into your kingdom and assigning them all a role in your castle was a time sink I didn’t realize I would be so into, but I think I spent more hours on that than anything else in the game. And it also gets marks for being the other child in a video game besides Atreus, King Evan, that I didn’t want to strangle, and in fact by the time the credits rolled, he’d probably be #2 or 3 in Best Character of the Year for me.

3) Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age – Now as far as JRPGS go, Dragon Quest is the ultimate grand-daddy, even more so than Final Fantasy, but it was a series I never really got into. I played some previous games in the series and found passing enjoyment in a couple titles but never enough to ever want to complete a game or seek out other entries in the series. That all kind of changed when I played DQ 11. DQ has never really strayed too far from its classic turn-based JRPG roots. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” would be their mantra I assume, and I love it. In a time when the turn-based system is all but gone from genre giant Final Fantasy, DQ has instead chosen to stick with it, and fully master the dying style. It was hands down the best JRPG I’ve played all year, and probably one of the best I’ve played in several years. It has everything: a great story, compelling characters, awesome music, amazing art style, engaging combat, fun side quests, a challenging yet fair difficulty curve, and it’s actually, really funny on top of all that. While the length might scare people away, (I clocked in right around 120 hours after getting the platinum trophy for 100% completion of the game) it’s some of the best time I spent gaming in a long time. It’s a classic in a modern era. It’s weird, if you said to teenage Zul “one of your favorite JRPGs ever will be Dragon Quest 11, and one of your least favorite JRPGs will be Final Fantasy 15”, he would never have believed you… but here we are.

2) Monster Hunter World – Ah yes. The one oddball in my gaming repertoire. I think we all have one of these, right? That one game/series that for whatever reason, sits outside your normal gaming habits, yet you love it, nonetheless. Maybe you love Halo and FPS games, but you also really like Animal Crossing for some reason. Or maybe you’re a diehard Dark Souls series fan but just can’t get enough of Cooking Mama as well. Variety is the spice of life they say, and while I’m primarily a “character & story first, RPGs, video games are art” kind of dude, something about smashing Monsters in the face with a giant hammer has kept me hooked on the Monster Hunter series for nearly 10 years. I love the challenging but fair battles, the deep customization, the various weapons and armors for both male and female hunters, the varied and unique monsters that all have their own ecology, musical themes, and battle styles you must learn and adapt to if you want to survive. It’s also linking up with friends (or even strangers online) and tackling a beast as a team. For all these reasons and so much more, this series sunk its claws in me from the very first time I played it, and it hasn’t let go. Monster Hunter World is the next-gen, beautifully realized game I’ve wanted for years; and it took the story, art, gameplay, and fun I’ve come to expect from this series to another level.

1) Red Dead Redemption II – I honestly don’t know how to write about this game. I can say all the other things I’ve said up until now about how great the music is (it’s amazing), how varied and alive the characters feel (they’re amazing), how stunningly awe-inspiring the scenery is or how fluid and lifelike the character animations are (they’re amazing), how the story and personal journey of Arthur Morgan literally brought me to tears more than once (he’s #1 in Best Characters btw. And they’re amazing), how rich every side quest is, how fun the mini-games are, how great the dialogue is, or any of the other truly breath-taking aspects of the game, but I don’t think I could do them justice. Hell, I don’t even know how to put them into words myself inside my own head. To me, this is one of those games that surpasses all of that. Yea, it has flaws, every game does, everyTHING does, but to me, it’s perfect, warts and all.  I can’t give it much higher praise than that, and it is absolutely the best game I played in years. When a game can give me an extensional crisis during some of its final moments, I think it’s safe to say that It’ll stick with me and has undoubtedly set a very high bar for all future games. The team at Rockstar outdid themselves and have my thanks for bringing this game into the world.

PHEW. Well, that’s it. Top 9 games of 2018 according to Zully Boy. Another great year in gaming for me personally and here’s to another great year in 2019! Lots to look forward to, and hopefully some hidden gems that’ll surprise me along the way. Happy Gaming everyone!