1573: Open Book

Finished Steins;Gate completely this evening (apart from one "Tip" which remains at large, but as far as the game is concerned, I have all the achievements and all the CG images, so I'm happy with that) so expect some more in-depth commentary on that next week over on MoeGamer.

For now, I wanted to wax lyrical about the visual novel medium once again, since sitting down and "playing" Steins;Gate for most of today has been an enjoyable, enriching experience — and the majority of the time I've spent with it has been spent reading, unable to influence what's happening on-screen.

Those of us who grew up with video games in the '80s and '90s had the mantra "gameplay is everything" drilled into us from an early age. As technology improved and the CD-ROM era dawned, we started to see more and more reviews pointing this out; more and more reviews highlighting the fact that beautiful presentation counts for jack shit if your game isn't up to snuff.

And for a while, this was actually kind of true. The games that sacrificed "gameplay" in favour of impressive presentation — usually of the prerendered cutscenes or full-motion video variety — tended to suffer in two regards. Firstly, they weren't very fun to play. Secondly, the only other potential redeeming feature they might have had — telling an interesting, enjoyable story — tended to crash and burn due to the low budgets of games at the time. It's all very well having real, live actors in your game, but if they can't act for shit then it doesn't make for much of an interactive movie.

Here's where visual novels contrast with the early '90s interactive movie craze somewhat, even though they started to grow in popularity around the same time. Visual novels embrace the fact that they don't have any "gameplay" — and by that I mean moving a character around a screen, having perceived "freedom" to do what you want and so on — and present themselves as nothing more than interactive stories; effectively little more than multimedia takes on Choose Your Own Adventure books. In fact, in many cases, visual novels are even simpler than Choose Your Own Adventure books in that the vast majority of the narrative is prescribed for you, and you'll make only a few choices over the course of the complete story, rather than one at the end of every page.

And yet this doesn't matter. Not having to deal with the consequences for every possible tiny little thing the player might decide to do in a more "sandboxy" environment frees up visual novel authors to concentrate on the story and the characters who help to tell it. It's perhaps for this reason that so many visual novels tend to go down the romance route; because the virtual relationships you build with visual novel characters are much more intense and intimate than in most other types of game — character-driven RPGs excepted, perhaps — many authors allow the reader a degree of wish-fulfilment through virtual dating. (Of course, at present the vast majority of visual novels are designed to cater to male heterosexual players, but there is an established marked for other players in Japan that is gradually starting to make its way over here; Sweet Fuse on PSP and the Hakuoki series for 3DS and PS3 are good examples of "otome games" designed for heterosexual female players, for example — let's see a few more of these in the future.)

Not every visual novel necessarily revolves around love, though. At one end of the spectrum, we have the phenomenon of the nukige, which are games that deliberately focus on being sexually provocative or exciting, but which tend to still include considerably more characterisation and story (and better acting!) than you'd see in your average Western porn film; at the other, we have visual novels like Steins;Gate, where love might perhaps enter into the narrative at some points, but in which the main point is a different theme or piece of subject matter. (In the case of Steins;Gate it's several different interpretations of time travel and parallel worlds, for example.)

What I find most enjoyable about these games is that there's no "gatekeeping" based on skill or dexterity. You sit down to play a visual novel, you know you'll be able to "finish" it, assuming you set aside the time to do so. Reading a walkthrough doesn't feel like cheating, either, since all you're effectively doing is looking up how to explore the alternative narrative paths. Good visual novels make effective use of multiple endings and narrative paths to further flesh out the story, too; the best ones can even leverage their "bad" endings into a meaningful narrative context, as I touched on yesterday.

What I think I'm saying is that I'd actually be perfectly happy if, for whatever reason, the only games I was able to play were visual novels. There's diverse enough subject matter in them to keep them consistently interesting, and in most cases they're just "gamey" enough in terms of presentation to sate that hunger for multimedia content that most of us have in the modern age.

Am I only going to play visual novels from now on? Of course not; but as a means of enjoying an interactive story, they're hard to beat.

1568: Prepare for To... no, I'm not making that joke

Towerfall! I'd heard good things about this indie-developed game, but had never tried it prior to this weekend. And blow me if the positivity wasn't justified.

Towerfall — not to be confused with Titanfall — is a game for up to four players, available on PC, PlayStation 4 and, oddly enough, Ouya, where it was originally intended to be a flagship title for the ill-conceived Android microconsole. I'm extremely thankful that the developers weren't stubborn about sticking with Ouya exclusivity; this way, a lot more people get to play their game, and no-one has to buy an Ouya.

Anyway. There are two ways to play Towerfall: Versus and Quest. I haven't tried Quest yet, but we played some Versus in between board games over the weekend. And it was a huge amount of fun. The concept is extremely simple: up to four players face off against one another armed with bows and a very limited number of arrows, and must defeat the other players. You can defeat a player by either shooting them or jumping on their head Mario-style, in which case you'll get a point — but if they end up killing themselves thanks to your actions, you won't get a point.

That is, basically, it. The simplicity of the game is what makes it work so well, and everything else that goes on simply builds on this extremely simple formula. Collectible treasures that pop up around the level might replenish your arrows, or might give you a new type of arrow to play with such as arrows that explode or arrows that drill through walls. Or they might just do something weird; particular favourites in this category include one that turns the lights out on the level, meaning it's a lot more difficult to see the platforms and hazards; one that causes the background to start swaying drunkenly and everything to start moving at half-speed; and one that causes the whole level to scroll one whole screen in any of the four cardinal directions. (Levels are wrap-around, so you can run off the left edge and reappear on the right; this scrolling trick really messes with your perception of how this works while it's going on.)

One thing I was particularly impressed with was the "variants" menu when setting up a new game. Rather than being confined to playing the game in just a single way, Towerfall features a huge variety of options for you to tweak the experience. If you want to play without arrows, knock yourself out (by having someone land on your head). If you want to start with the more powerful arrows, great. If you want to be able to come back as a ghost and continue harassing the other players rather than simply being eliminated from a round, that's an option too. There's a huge amount of flexibility, and a bit of experimentation will help make the experience into a game that hopefully everyone participating will be able to enjoy.

The only potential downside to the game is that it's only possible to enjoy its multiplayer delights with other people in the same room as you. Frankly, I greatly prefer this to playing online, but for those who have friends who are difficult to gather in the same place at the same time, this may be a problem. Still, I'm hopeful I'll have the opportunity to play it a whole lot more in the future; when we move into our new house — which is pretty soon now! — we'll have a lot more room for hosting, and even a spare bed. So late night Towerfall sessions are very much a go!

1560: Paradoxes and Worldlines

Time-travel fiction is notoriously difficult to get "right" (for want of a better term) because it brings all sorts of baggage with it, both from established (or at least popular) science as well as conventions of fiction. It can be interesting to see how different works of fiction tackle these aspects — if at all.

The visual novel Steins;Gate jumps in head-first and attempts to spin a plausible example of how time travel might actually work were we to invent it in our lifetime. But despite the heavy science component — Steins;Gate really doesn't hold back on the science side of things, which will delight those who are particularly interested in the "sci" part of "sci-fi" — it is, at heart, a story about people and how they're affected by the strange, unnatural phenomenon of moving through time in a non-linear fashion.

SPOILERS AHEAD for the Suzuha and Faris endings of Steins;Gate — if you're on the front page, hit Continue Reading (or whatever it actually says) to, err, continue reading.

Continue reading "1560: Paradoxes and Worldlines" →

1551: Late-Night Dungeon

I've been dipping in and out of Demon Gaze since I wrote about it a few days ago, and while it has a few issues here and there — the discussion of which I'll save until my review on USgamer, coming next week — I've been really rather impressed with this game.

In fact, that's a bit of an understatement; on more than one occasion now the game has kept me up until well past 3 in the morning after I thought I'd just flip the Vita on for a "quick" game in bed before I went to sleep. (Granted, the last occasion this happened — last night — I had had far too much caffeine throughout the course of the day and was consequently finding it very difficult to sleep, but I could have done anything else with that time, and I chose to spend it lying in bed playing Demon Gaze.)

I've been trying to pin down what's so enjoyable about it and it's honestly quite difficult. It's not that there's no obvious good features about it; it's that they blend together somewhat, and different aspects of the game appeal in different ways according to the conditions under which you're playing.

Playing late at night, as I was, I was particularly enjoying the dungeon-crawling aspect of it. It's not quite as hardcore as the 3DS series it's taking pot-shots at, Etrian Odyssey in that you don't have to map the damn thing by hand, but it's still a game that, from the very outset, doesn't hold you by the hand and expects you not only to work things out for yourself but also to experiment with the mechanics just to see what happens.

The core game structure is based around capturing demons. In order to do this, you must explore the dungeon that is the demon's domain and capture all of the "circles" throughout by tossing a gem into them and then fighting the slobbering monsters that come out. Win, and you'll capture the circle as well as receive an item according to the gem you tossed. Lose, and, well, you're dead and better hope you had a recent save.

For the most part, this isn't an issue. The monsters that come out of the cirlces are usually the same monsters you get in the rest of the dungeon, though sometimes in considerably larger numbers. As such, if your party is well-equipped to batter its way through the monsters in the dungeon, they can probably deal with the groups that come out of the circles.

Until the demon master of the dungeon shows their face unexpectedly, that is. You're set up to believe they won't turn up until you've captured all the circles and found the boss fight location, but in actuality what happens is some time around when you capture about half of the circles in the dungeon, the next one you try for will summon the demon. And it's entirely possible they will smash your face in and then wear your buttocks as a hat, particularly in the first dungeon where your characters likely still aren't all that powerful or well-geared.

The first time this happened, I thought I'd done something horribly wrong. Surely the game balance couldn't be that broken? I experimented a bit; did the demon only come out of one circle, or all of them? (All of them.) Was it every time? (No, but seemingly most of the time.) Did using special abilities help? (A little.) Did levelling up help? (A lot.) Did better equipment help? (Also a lot.) By the time I'd reached my own conclusions — I should have just run away the first time I encountered Mars, then come back better-equipped and better-trained a little later, and probably with a healer in tow — it felt enormously satisfying to take the demon down and effectively clear the dungeon.

There are more subtle things, too. Occasionally you'll find "Loot Maps" as random treasures in battle, for example, and these will give an area name, an X and Y map reference and the name of the "power" you need to reveal the hidden treasure at that location. Trouble is, the area name never matches the actual area names — "Garden of Thorns" becomes "The Vine-y Land" — so you have to use a bit of your own brainpower and deduction to figure out what it's referring to. (Pro-tip: if the grid reference the map is pointing to appears to be a solid wall miles away from anything, you're probably looking at the wrong area.) You also have to figure out which of the demons the "power" names refer to — rather than saying "you need Comet, Mars or Chronos" it'll say something like "requires Dragon power" or the like. Again, there's a wonderful feeling of smug satisfaction when you successfully decipher a map and uncover the treasure hidden in the location — particularly when the treasure in question is something that you've been searching for for hours for a quest.

Demon Gaze doesn't give up its secrets easily, then, but for me, this is proving to be one of the best things about it as it makes your victories feel like genuine accomplishments. I'm looking forward to working my way through the rest of the game not only to see how the interesting story proceeds, but also for more sweet old-school grid-based exploration and treasure-hunting.

It's bringing back fond memories of old titles like Lands of Lore, it of the Patrick Stewart-voiced intro fame, and will be a solid investment for any Vita-toting players who have a penchant for traditional dungeon-crawling. Watch out for it — and my full review — this week.

1549: HOUOUIN KYOUMA

Still not finished Steins;Gate — it's long! — but I wanted to talk about it a bit more, as I played it a whole bunch this evening and think I may be closing in on one of the games several endings.

Like most good visual novels, Steins;Gate does an excellent job of drawing you into its world and helping you understand its protagonist. Despite being entirely composed of static images, character portraits and very occasional "event" images — much like every other visual novel — it manages to craft an extremely convincing setting. Or perhaps, given the game's focus on manipulation of time, the many-worlds interpretation and all manner of other goodness (this isn't a spoiler, by the way; it's a core theme of the whole thing), it would be more accurate to say "settings".

One of the most interesting things about the game is the effort to which Nitroplus (and, by extension, the translators) has gone to ensure that all the background detail in the world is consistent, detailed and, in many instances, based rather obviously on reality. An extensive in-game glossary allows you to look up information on a variety of different keywords that appear throughout the course of the narrative and dialogue — and these cover a range of subjects from real-life scientific theory to popular hypotheses put forward by science fiction, snippets of otaku culture, online culture, and "chuunibyou" conspiracy theories. Although the game takes obvious pains to twist things slightly from their real-life counterparts — IBM becomes IBN, for example; CERN becomes SERN; names of popular anime and manga get similarly bastardised — it's obvious that a lot is based on things from the actual, real world, and consequently it's hard not to feel like the game is subtly sneaking some genuine knowledge into your brain as you play it.

Okay, a lot of it may not be all that useful unless you have an otaku friend who constantly drops references you don't understand (Hi!) or are acquainted with a conspiracy theorist nutjob, but it's interesting that it's in there nonetheless — plus it helps provide a lot of the narrative with an interesting degree of context. It's also just plain cool for a narrative to be based on real-life urban legends such as John Titor and the question of what CERN are really up to with their Large Hadron Collider.

Aside from all that, though, Steins;Gate is simply a phenomenally well-written visual novel. It's long and wordy, sure, but all the exposition in the game's early chapters really pays off with some wonderfully strong character development. The protagonist in particular is a fascinating individual; being a "chuunibyou" conspiracy theorist himself with delusions of being a mad scientist named Hououin Kyouma — a name his voice actor takes considerable delight in bellowing every time it comes up in the script — makes him far more interesting to inhabit the head of than many other "blank slate" protagonist characters seen in other visual novels. Not that there's necessarily anything wrong with those — they often fit well with more "dating sim"-style stories in which the protagonist is usually intended to be a self-insert for the player — but, well, yes. Steins;Gate makes a convincing case for the protagonist being a strong character in their own right.

Anyway, three solid hours of reading earlier have driven my eyes a bit squiffy so I'm off to bed. Further thoughts will doubtless follow when I've finished the damn thing.

1547: Reading Steiner

A lengthy Steins;Gate session this evening coupled with a chat about Saya no Uta (aka Song of Saya, a game I haven't played but am looking forward to trying) with my friend Mark has reminded me both how and why I love the visual novel medium.

I use the word "medium" when referring to visual novels rather than "genre" because in many cases, it's not entirely accurate to call them "games", despite the fact that they tend to be festooned in the trappings of video games. Most tend to include some sort of metagame element, be it a simple checklist of endings, a CG gallery with a completion percentage or, in the case of more complex games like Steins;Gate, even achievements. Most of them are presented in a distinctly game-like fashion, with console-style main menus that make pleasing noises when you click on them, colourful but clear text boxes with a little spinny thing in the corner that tells you when you've reached the end of the current paragraph, and all manner of other things.

And yet they're not games. Not really. They're interactive stories — some having no more than one or two meaningful choices over the course of the entire narrative, and some even eschewing the element of choice whatsoever — that make use of multimedia presentation to distinguish themselves from, you know, reading a book. The combination of static background images, static or lightly animated characters, music, voice acting, sound effects and text all combine to create a very distinctive effect — and one that can be a powerful poke to the imagination.

Books, of course, are the poster childs for stoking the fires of the imagination, but visual novels also do this, albeit in a different way. Whereas in a book it's left largely up to you how you picture the scene unfolding in front of you, in visual novels you tend to get a bit more in the way of audio-visual cues. You can hear the characters' voices (at least you can in recent releases; earlier VNs were text-only), you can see the characters, you can hear the music giving you an idea of the overall mood and, if the scene is a particularly important one, there'll be an "event" image depicting a dramatic moment from whatever is happening.

Far from being an inferior means of stirring the imagination, this approach works in a different way. While books provide the stimulus for mental pictures through descriptive text, visual novels simply use their multimedia element to do so, which allows them to cut back a little on the descriptive text and instead explore the protagonist's innermost thoughts, or engage in some snappy dialogue between characters.

Visual novels present a particularly good means of expressing a first-person narrative. While in first-person perspective books you tend to feel like you're just along for the ride, in visual novels it feels like you're taking a much more active role — even if your influence on the overall story is minimal. You're sitting inside the main character's mind looking out through their eyes and listening to their innermost thoughts — and even if the main character is some sort of awful jerk (as they often are in visual novels) this provides a very good means of exploring that character, why they are an awful jerk and how they may or may not go about changing themselves. Character growth! How about that.

This isn't to say visual novels have to be confined to first-person narratives, however. No; in fact, it can be very effective for a visual novel to "cut away" to another character, or even a complete shift in perspective to third-person. Nitroplus' visual novel Deus Machina Demonbane is a particularly good example of this being used effectively; during its first-person sections, it's something of a film noir tale about a down-on-his-luck detective and how he becomes embroiled in a series of increasingly ridiculous events. During its third-person sections, however, the true scale of what Kujou is involved in becomes apparent thanks to being able to get an overall picture of what is going on — coupled with the authentically overblown and distinctly Lovecraftian narration that accompanies these scenes.

Steins;Gate, also from Nitroplus, is a little more traditional than Demonbane in that it remains firmly stuck inside the protagonist's mind, but my gosh what an interesting head to be stuck inside, for Rintaro Okabe is a strange individual indeed — seemingly convinced he's a mad scientist named Hououin Kyouma (which his voice actor bellows with admirable aplomb every time it comes up in the script) who is being pursued by "The Organisation", it's not entirely clear for a lot of the game whether Okabe genuinely has a screw loose or if he's just playing up for the people around him. The sheer ridiculousness of his statements would seem to suggest the latter, but then he does something so outrageous that you have to wonder about his mental state. And when Steins;Gate's overarching narrative threads start to get moving, things become even more murky.

The upshot of this is that Okabe becomes something of an unreliable narrator. And this is something that visual novels are particularly good at exploring. Saya no Uta is another particularly good example from what little I know of it, but there are countless others, too; when you're observing a narrative from a first-person perspective, after all, you're only getting one person's perspective on it — and how can you be sure that person is telling the truth?

That's the question, huh? Anyway. That's that for now. Check out Steins;Gate if you've got a yawning chasm in your life that can only be filled by utterly fascinating sci-fi; full review coming soon on USgamer.

1546: Gaze This Way

Been playing an unusual Vita game for review recently. Normally I wouldn't blog about games that I'm reviewing, but I already wrote a "first impressions" piece about the game over on USgamer a while back, so, well, these are some second impressions, I guess.

The game in question is Demon Gaze from Kadokawa Games, brought to the West by the ever-reliable NIS America. I didn't know a lot about this game prior to starting to play it save for the fact that it had upset a few people — as many Japanese games tend to — by featuring a selection of pretty anime-style girls with artwork that is occasionally on the suggestive side.

What I wasn't expecting from it was an old-school dungeon-crawler of the Wizardry mould, right down to creating your own party bit by bit as you can afford to, We're talking manually choosing race, class and appearance for your characters, then heading out into a grid-based dungeon to fight lots of monsters, solve some rudimentary puzzles and ultimately complete some quests.

What I also wasn't expecting was a rock-hard level of difficulty almost from the outset. Unlike in some other Japanese role-playing games, a level 1 character in Demon Gaze really is utter shit. Their stats are poor, their HP is low and it's very rare for them to have any useful abilities from their class. This makes life interesting when you can finally afford to recruit an additional party member and they have to start from this position of non-power while the rest of your adventuring brigade are happily chopping the heads off monsters left, right and centre. You have to take care of the newbie until they find their feet a bit, and then only let them step into the front lines when you're absolutely sure they can handle it.

Because this isn't a game that is afraid to kill you and dump you back at the title screen without any ceremony. Step into a fight you can't win and fail to get away quickly enough and there's no "retry" option, no fade-to-black-then-wake-up-back-at-the-inn, it's just Game Over. Reload. I hope you remembered to save every time you get back from an adventure because the game sure as hell isn't going to auto-save for you.

The other thing that is a bit of a culture shock is that the game doesn't hold your hand with regard to quests at all. "Go find this dude," the game will say. "Where are they?" you'll ponder. "Oh, you know," replies the game. "Out there. Somewhere. Come back when you find him." Cue plenty of enjoyable exploration and risk-taking as you search every nook and cranny to complete your objectives. Can the party survive trudging through that poisonous swamp? Only one way to find ou– oh, they're all dead.

In some senses, this old-school difficulty and unforgiving nature is going to put a lot of people off. But that's fine; titles like Dark Souls have proven there's a market for unforgiving games in which you have to take a bit more care than in many other modern titles, and Demon Gaze is seemingly designed along these lines. (That's not the only similarity, either; both Demon Gaze and the Souls series allow you to leave messages for other players that are then shared on the network, though the former lacks the latter's ability for true multiplayer.)

I'm a relatively short way into the game so far, but I'm really enjoying it. It's the sort of thing that feels like it could be a "long-term project" of a game; it's fairly light on the story side of things (though it does have some seriously adorable characters who often greet you and have their own silly little side-plots when you get back from an adventure) and surprisingly friendly to quick play sessions, making it an ideal handheld game for a bit of grinding on the bus or over lunch.

Full review coming towards the end of the month; for now, suffice to say, I like it a lot.

1531: Zodiac Brave

Final Fantasy XIV's second major patch is brilliant stuff, bringing with it an absolute shit-ton of things to do for those who have reached the level cap.

I used to be a little disappointed to hear that MMO expansions and major patches tended to favour endgame players over those working their way up through the levels, but now that I am an endgame player, I completely understand the logic. There's already a bunch of stuff there designed to get people from level 1 to level 50; but the people who have reached level 50 need a constant, continual stream of New Things to Do otherwise they'll simply jump ship and go off to play something else. In a subscription-based game such as Final Fantasy XIV, this is exactly what Square Enix does not want to happen.

Patch 2.1 added a decent amount of new content for endgame players to work through, primarily in the form of new dungeons and Trials (complex boss battles) to play through. Patch 2.2, the most recent one, initially appears to be somewhat similar, but there's a bunch of more subtle tweaks here and there that are designed to keep people invested in the game in the long term rather than simply racing through the new content as quickly as possible, then taking to the forums to whinge that there's not enough to do.

Chief among this time-consuming stuff is the Zodiac Weapons quest. One of the first things you'll want to do upon reaching the level cap in Final Fantasy XIV is complete the "A Relic Reborn" quest, which outfits you with a good weapon for your class that can subsequently be upgraded. The quest is a lengthy affair that demands you work through some of the toughest battles in the game and then participate in enough endgame content to earn the special currency required to purchase some items. Once it's done, it's done, though, and for each class there was previously only really one weapon better than the Relic available, and that was extremely difficult to obtain due to it being secreted in what was formerly the hardest dungeon in the whole game.

Now, though, your Relic can be upgraded further through the new Zodiac Weapons quest. After maxing out your relic, you're then tasked with going on the hunt for twelve "Atmas" — mysterious items that are required to buff up your Relic weapon into something new and shiny. In order to obtain the Atmas, you have to participate in the "FATE" events around Eorzea — little mini-quests that pop up around the world map that anyone in the area can jump in and help out with. For each FATE that you attain a gold medal in, there's about a 5% chance that the Atma for that area will drop, and you need to obtain twelve Atmas in total, so I'm sure you can see how this will take a while.

A grind it may be, but it's had the side-effect of making FATEs relevant again, which is a good thing, since they're a lot of fun and had fallen somewhat into disuse after the rewards from dungeon-crawling became significantly better. Now, though, there's always bands of wandering adventurers crawling around the various areas and stomping through the FATEs, and due to the game's level-sync mechanic, no-one will ever come along and simply overpower them, making it no fun.

Once you've obtained the twelve Atmas, there's then a selection of books to work through, each of which have their own challenges to complete and each of which buff up the Zodiac weapon's stats by a particular amount when you complete them. And then you can do this for each class.

In other words, it's going to take a while to accomplish. Despite the fact it's a fairly unsubtle move to keep endgame players invested in the game in the long-term, having a long-term goal like this is actually rather enjoyable because it brings a wonderful sense of achievement when you do finally accomplish it. I have no doubt that I'll put in the hours required to get a Zodiac weapon for my Black Mage class, and I will probably do it for the other classes I get to 50, too. I'm in this game for the long run, and I'm really enjoying the flow of new challenges that appear every few months.

1529: The Whorleater

I imagine only a few of you reading this will give a toss, but Final Fantasy XIV version 2.2, aka Through the Maelstrom is out today. I haven't had a lot of time to play with it so far, what with having to do pesky work and then go out to Japanese class this evening, but after we've had dinner I'm going to spend some time with it tonight.

I have had the opportunity to at least unlock the Glamour system I talked about a few posts ago, and from there begin assembling my own custom outfits for my high-level classes. So far I've put together some rather fetching ensembles for my Black Mage and White Mage classes — Black Mage looks rather classy in a figure-hugging black skirt, white thigh-highs, black velveteen gloves and a low-cut black coatee with a lacy white collar; White Mage, meanwhile, is clad in what I can only describe as a slightly slutty tennis player's outfit, eschewing the usual frumpy robe of level 50 white mages in favour of a snug-fitting, bone white hempen camise up top and the borderline-indecent Cleric's Culottes (aka the tiniest miniskirt in the world) down below.

I followed my unlocking of the Glamour system with the unlocking of the new dance animations — I know where my priorities are, huh? — and after dinner I'll be delving into some of the more meaty new content. For now, it's time for dinner; I'll update this post with some pics and additional thoughts later.

—

Okay, I forgot to take any pics, but I've done the three new dungeons, and they're a lot of fun. One of the best things about much of Final Fantasy XIV's multiplayer content is how most of it eschews the straight "tank and spank" approach seen in many MMOs. It's a very movement-heavy game, and success in boss battles is dependent on knowing any special mechanics that might be in play along with having the ability to avoid incoming attacks.

A particular highlight was one of the bosses in the new Hard Mode version of the Brayflox's Longstop dungeon. Initially appearing to be a rather simple fight against a tough goblin, it's not long before the fight becomes highly chaotic, with exploding mines dropping into the battlefield and criss-crossing the arena with Bomberman-style cross-shaped explosions. Alongside all this, the boss is hurling stuff at you and summoning additional enemies, each of whom lock their attention on an individual party member, necessitating a quick takedown. You really have to stay on your toes and pay attention.

Another particular highlight was the final boss of the same dungeon, which had several different phases: hurling damage at it, staying out of its way as it careened around the outside of the arena, and using area-effect skills to push back swarms of bombs to create a safe zone in the middle of the area. Again, it's another fight where you really need to pay attention to what's going on around you rather than simply going through the motions of triggering the same skills over and over again.

It's the skill-based part of Final Fantasy XIV that, for me, distinguishes it from other MMOs where you might have a bit more character customisation. Everyone at level 50 in Final Fantasy XIV has the same abilities and probably very similar stats, too; the main distinguishing factors between individual players are pure skill and the equipment they're wearing. A skilled player in slightly lower-level gear will pretty much always beat a well-equipped player that is not very observant or not very good at dodging. We're not talking the level of dexterity and timing required by something like Dark Souls, for example, but it's pretty close in some fights — the challenging battles against Titan being probably the best examples.

So far I've barely scratched the surface of the new content. The three new dungeons were great fun and I can see myself running them lots of times, particularly as the rewards on offer are pretty good. Tomorrow and over the weekend, it's onto the main story content and the long-awaited continuation of the hilarious and bizarre Hildibrand quests, which have proven to be a highlight of the new content in both updates so far.

In case it wasn't clear, I continue to be super-impressed by Final Fantasy XIV. The fresh injections of content, the constant improvements to the game experience in response to player feedback and the great community of players I'm lucky enough to be able to enjoy the game with — it all adds up to one of the most satisfying gaming experiences I've had for years. For those of you thinking of joining the fray when the PlayStation 4 version arrives in April, I look forward to showing you around Eorzea!

1528: Oi, Hyakkihei

Now I've actually written my review for it over on USgamer, I can talk a little more about The Witch and the Hundred Knight, the game I've been playing most recently.

I wasn't quite sure what to make of it initially. It's one of those games where there was a fair amount of negative buzz surrounding it quite early on, led by an early review from IGN that wasn't altogether kind. But if my experiences with Time and Eternity were anything to go by, I knew very well that "popular" opinion was something I was unlikely to mesh with, and thus I went in to The Witch and the Hundred Knight with an open mind.

I was very pleasantly surprised. What we have here is a very unconventional Japanese RPG in every respect. It's not turn-based, it's not party-based, it's not overly moe or ecchi, it's not a comedy. Instead, it's an action RPG with a surprisingly dark, deep storyline, and one of the most interesting main characters I've had the pleasure to hang out with virtually in quite some time.

Metallia, the eponymous Witch, is a horrible person. Or at least she initially puts herself across as one. She's foul-mouthed, she's quick to anger and she's aggressive. She appears to have no qualms about inflicting bloody revenge on those she feels to have wronged her, and she seems utterly miserable and bitter about everything.

Over the course of the game, we learn about her. We get to see her gradually letting new people into her life, and starting to seemingly trust them. We get some hints about where all that bitterness and rage has come from. And, quite early on, we also learn that Metallia is not long for this world — though not why immediately.

We observe all this through the eyes of the Hundred Knight, a supposedly mythical figure that Metallia summons at the outset of the game to do her bidding. The Hundred Knight is the player avatar, though, so you have a certain degree of autonomy from Metallia's wishes, and indeed can express your opinions non-verbally at various points throughout the game. You're still bound to Metallia, so progress in the overall plot is largely determined by eventually fulfilling her wishes of destroying the "Pillars of Temperance" and spreading her swamp around the world, but between those predictable story beats, the Hundred Knight gets involved in a number of distinct adventures, each of which forms itself into a neatly contained episode of the overall narrative.

A particularly effective episode is the seventh chapter in the game. I won't spoil the details for those who are planning on playing the game for themselves, but suffice to say that it tells a complete, surprising and interesting self-contained story with a surprisingly emotional payoff. It explores both Metallia and the other members of the cast who have joined by this point, and blends both humour and pathos to a surprisingly effective degree.

The pathos aspect is what I think I've found most surprising about The Witch and the Hundred Knight so far. Developer Nippon Ichi is typically known for relatively light-hearted fare, though in some cases (ZHP is a good example) there's often a more thought-provoking core underneath the exterior fluff. The Witch and the Hundred Knight is, I think, the first Nippon Ichi game where the "dark" aspect has been very much pushed to the forefront, with any comedic moments being somewhat incidental rather than the other way around. The narrative is bleak and, at times, genuinely sad without resorting to being overly "gritty". It's a stark contrast to what I wrote about a short while ago with regard to triple-A games; compared to Thief, which wants desperately to be treated as an 18-rated movie, The Witch and the Hundred Knight never feels like it's trying too hard and, consequently, ends up coming across as far more genuinely mature than Thief ever did despite being considerably more colourful and stuffed full of stylised, bizarre characters.

Anyway. As I noted in my review for The Witch and the Hundred Knight, I'm sure not everyone will be into the particularly abrasive personality of Metallia and her adventures, but if you're after an interesting action RPG with a compelling, unusual story and some satisfying, challenging game systems, you could certainly do far worse, so check it out if you have the chance.