1138: Song Magic

Been playing some more Ar Tonelico 2 this evening, and I'm liking it a great deal. Like its predecessor, it has a very pleasing system of "feature creep" whereby it starts out feeling rather straightforward but gradually, over the course of the early stages of the game, introduces more and more new and interesting mechanics until you have something that is very, very distinctive.

In the original Ar Tonelico, we were introduced to the basic combat system; then the way it worked when you have the magic-using Reyvateil characters in your party; the Dive system, in which you could explore the inner recesses of the heroine's mental "cosmosphere" worlds; the "bedtime conversations" system whereby the protagonist and the heroines could get to know each other a bit better (and subsequently unlock deeper levels in the cosmosphere); the "Grathmeld" crafting system, whereby you could take all the junk you'd acquired from the hundreds of NYO?!s you'd killed and turn them into various items, then enjoy some amusing scenes as the heroines try and convince you to let them name the item something ridiculous; and the "Install" system, whereby you're able to insert crystals into the heroines (and yes, they relish the opportunity for innuendo inherent in this process) to power up their various abilities and customise the effect of their spells.

In Ar Tonelico 2, meanwhile, we're first of all introduced to a new and rather odd combat system in which the two sides in the combat alternate attacking and defending for a set period of time — when attacking, you have to press buttons corresponding to the party member you'd like to attack and combine it with a directional button to do a specific move; when defending, you have to time button presses carefully to protect the back-line Reyvateil "mages" from attack, if they're present. The way the Reyvateils work is then introduced — a weird meter in the corner of the screen reflects what they want the front line to do, and fulfilling their demands provides bonuses, helping them to cast more effective spells more quickly. Then, once again, we have the Dive system, which works largely as it did before, albeit with a lot more multiple-choice bits where you have to say the right thing to proceed. Then we have the "I.P.D." system, whereby part of the plot dictates that you have to subdue and capture Reyvateils that are infected with I.P.D., which hasn't been explained yet. Then we have a slightly different crafting system, whereby certain items can only be crafted in certain places (you can only make food in a restaurant kitchen, for example), and the same recipe has different outcomes depending on which heroine you get to help.

Then things get a little odd. "Dualstalling" replaces the "Install" system from the previous game, and is the only way of levelling up Reyvateils, who no longer gain experience normally. Instead, at regular opportunities, you have to let them take a bath in water infused with crystals you've collected or purchased. During the bath (which looks rather large and luxurious, I must say), they wander around a bit, and if they pass over one of the crystals they dropped in, they gain a temporary special effect until the next time they bathe. And if you drop in toys (bath toys, you pervert) and scented oils, different effects might emerge. Oh, and if both heroines are bathing together, they'll often chat about things, too, which helps improve their "sync" value, which in turn helps them fight more effectively together in combat.

Then we have the "Dive Therapy" system, which I was introduced to in tonight's session. Now the subdued I.P.D.-infected Reyvateils have a purpose — they can be "cured" by one of the characters, who is a Dive therapist. Indulging in Dive Therapy involves talking to the Reyvateil and attempting to manipulate her mood to its ideal level on a meter at the top of the screen. Administering various treatments can affect the rate at which this meter changes with each response you give to their statements. Some responses increase the meter, others drop it, and each infected Reyvateil has a "sweet spot" where the meter needs to be in order to be cured.

That's not all you can do with them, though. The cured Reyvateils then bugger off and scatter themselves around the world to form a fan club for one of the heroines, and their affection for her increases as they see her doing cool stuff. When their affection maxes out, they will help out — exactly how, I'm not sure yet, but we'll see.

Oh, and also through the "Girl Power" system you can "equip" rescued Reyvateils to help the protagonist out in various ways. They then level up and improve their abilities and… waah, my head hurts.

All these weird and wonderful mechanics may sound overwhelming, but they're introduced at just the right rate. You're shown a new concept, then given a period of time in which to explore it in practical terms. Then another one comes along, and you can explore that. And so it continues. The nice thing is that only a few of these mechanics are "spoiled" in the game's manual, meaning the existence of things like the Dive Therapy system and various other bits and pieces are a nice surprise when you come across them for the first time. (Unless you've read this post first, of course.)

On the one hand, it's nice to be ready for all the game's mechanics and be able to refer back to a manual when you need to. But on the other, it's quite interesting (and oddly liberating) to play a game that trusts you to experiment a bit and figure out what on Earth (Metafalss?) is going on. Take the Dualstalling system, for example — while the help menu in the game explains roughly how it works, it's only by fiddling around with various arrangements of bathtime goodies that you'll figure out the most effective means of letting your mage-ladies wash their stinky bits and level up.

Basically, Ar Tonelico 2's more esoteric features are something you'll either be on board with or not. As you've probably gathered, I love them — and besides, are they really any more weird than summoning giant chariot-riding penis demons by fusing cards together, or sucking the magic out of monsters to somehow attach to your own strength? No. No they're not. So shush.

1136: Thoughts on RPG Maker

I read this piece by Robert Boyd of Zeboyd Games earlier. Now, I normally agree with Mr. Werezompire on a lot of things, but I take issue with a few things he says about RPG Maker in this article, which was posted shortly after the latest version RPG Maker VX Ace hit the Steam store a while back.

Boyd is quite right to note that this is the first time a piece of software such as RPG Maker has hit a mainstream digital download storefront for PC — past iterations of the software were sold directly by the publisher via a rather cumbersome e-commerce solution, so to get it on Steam is a big step forward in both accessibility and visibility. Boyd is also right to note that lowering the barrier of entry to creating games through tools such as RPG Maker also encourages everyone to want to have a go — and that this can result in a glut of "incomplete, buggy, generic, or downright awful games". (It also results in people who are otherwise unable to get their heads around programming becoming empowered to realise their own digital dreams and creativity.)

What I take a certain degree of umbrage to is his assertion that it is a "general RPG maker" and thus ill-suited to producing anything more than the most generic JRPG possible. While it is true that the default art assets and music provided with the game are aimed at people who want to get a fairly generic JRPG up and running quickly, the very nature of the software is that it is completely customisable depending on how much "individuality" you want to give your project. You can have something fairly convincing up and running in a matter of minutes using the default assets… but with a bit of time and artistic talent (or at least creativity), you can completely revamp the default "look" to anything you please. Not only that, but by using its built-in Ruby-based scripting language, you can completely overhaul the way the game works — battle system, menus, method of moving around the game world, anything can be modified or added if you know what you're doing. And even if you don't, there's a lively and active community out there that has put together plenty of free scripts for anyone to make use of.

This isn't "trying to modify RPG Maker to do things it wasn't really intended to do," as Boyd asserts. This is, in fact, using RPG Maker in the manner in which it was intended for power users — and it also aptly demonstrates one of the most admirable things about the application: the fact that it is simple and accessible enough for beginners to use, yet powerful and flexible enough for more advanced users to take complete control of. You only have to look at examples like To The Moon and Cherry Tree High Comedy Club, both of which were created in RPG Maker XP (two versions previous to the current edition) to see what is possible — and to be fair to Boyd, he does at least mention these titles in his post.

Boyd makes some fair points in the article, but what I don't like much is the underlying tone that "if you're using RPG Maker rather than programming it yourself, you're doing it wrong." While it is undoubtedly more satisfying to program your own engine from scratch and see a complete game come together from literally nothing, not everyone has the time, ability and/or C#-speaking friends to be able to do that. Plus if there's a perfectly good tool already out there to realise what you want to do… why shouldn't you use it?

1135: Melody of... The Other Place

As I noted yesterday, I completed Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia. So naturally, having discovered a new RPG series that I like very much, what's a boy to do but to make an immediate start on the sequel, much to the delight of my Ar Tonelico-adoring friend who convinced me to play the damn things in the first place?

Ar Tonelico 2: Melody of Metafalica is a surprisingly different beast to its predecessor in many ways. Its Japanese incarnation came out in the same year as the first Ar Tonelico hit Western shores, but it wouldn't be until 2009 that North American and European players would get their hands on it. That actually makes it a surprisingly recent game, released in the twilight of the PS2 era. This might explain why I never really paid it much mind first time around (besides being unfamiliar with the prequel, obviously) — everyone (including me) was already well and truly enraptured by "next gen" by that point, though games like Persona 4 (which also came out in 2009 in Europe) had shown me that the previous generation still had plenty to offer.

The whole Ar Tonelico experience has had a complete overhaul in Ar Tonelico 2. Gone are the distinctly PS1-ish isometric-perspective graphics (though I actually sort of miss them now), replaced with hand-drawn backdrops in towns and a pleasing combination of polygons, flat objects and fixed camera angles to create "3D" dungeons. The sprites, too, have had a bit of a change in aesthetic — they have peculiar, stylised proportions now, which frankly has taken a little adjusting to, but the improved amount of emotive animation on them makes up for the fact that everyone has really, really distractingly massive hands.

The biggest change is in the battle system, however. I liked Ar Tonelico's battle system, as it combined conventional JRPG turn-based battling with an interesting magic system that encouraged you to find creative ways to finish battles "well" rather than quickly. It was a bit repetitive by the end, however, and it was consistently way too easy pretty much all the way through the entire game.

Ar Tonelico 2's battle system, meanwhile, is a completely different beast. It's still sort of turn-based, but not in the same way as its predecessor. Instead, the two sides in the conflict each take turns to attack and defend. When it's your turn to attack, you have a limited amount of time to use your two "vanguard" (front line) characters to attack; when it's your turn to defend you have to carefully time button presses to protect the back line Reyvateils from taking damage. The Reyvateils make demands on you during battle, too, requesting that you perform specific attack moves by pressing the button for the corresponding front line character and a particular direction. Fulfilling these demands gives you various bonuses that make the battle turn in your favour. It's interesting, as it means you have to really concentrate on every battle rather than just mashing the "attack" button, but I'm yet to have a significantly challenging battle to show its full potential just yet.

The "Dive" system makes a return, and is almost identical to its predecessor. You get to know the game's heroines in the real world by talking to them at campsites and inns, then "dive" into their mental "Cosmosphere" world to find out more about their various inner struggles and problems. Overcoming these problems helps them craft new Song Magic which you can then use in battle — plus these are entertaining mini-stories in their own right. Diving is mostly the same, though there are a lot more situations where you're given a choice of responses to a particular situation and must pick the correct one rather than simply following it through.

In "new, weird gameplay mechanics" news we have the new Dualstall system, which replaces the "Install" mechanic from the previous game (which allowed you to boost a Reyvateil's abilities by plugging various crystals into her… spells in a rather suggestive manner). Dualstalling essentially means flinging the game's two heroines into a bath infused with magic crystals, nice-smelling bath oils and bath toys and letting the attached abilities, uh, be absorbed. The heroines will also have a good chat in the bath, so this is a good way of building up their "Sync" gauge, which helps them work together better in battle.

So far I'm about four hours into the new game and enjoying it a lot so far. The change in aesthetic and gameplay style gave me a bit of "culture shock" initially but that thankfully soon faded, and I'm now enjoying the story and characters just as before. It's interesting to note that the game still feels recognisable as an Ar Tonelico game, yet has a different setting (albeit in the same overall world), different characters and different gameplay mechanics. I'm assuming that the third game (which is where the series made the jump to PS3) will be "similarly different", too, judging by a quick flick through the manual.

Further reports as events warrant.

1134: Melody of Elemia

I completed Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia this evening. What a fine, fine game that was. I'll be writing somewhat more "professionally" for want of a better word about it this Wednesday over on Games Are Evil, but for now I just wanted to enthuse a little about the great experience that was that game. There may be some spoilers ahead; be forewarned.

The most immediately striking thing about Ar Tonelico for a new player coming to it for the first time in 2013 is that it looks old. It's also worth noting that it came out in 2007, so it actually looked pretty old when it first came out. That said, after a few hours of play, the low-resolution isometric-perspective sprite-based graphics cease to matter on a technical level, and the amount of character and personality in them starts to shine through. A friend of mine just noted that the visual style is actually something of a successor to stuff like Secret of Mana and the like and that's a great comparision — I'm kicking myself for not figuring that out sooner.

Outside of the in-game graphics, Ar Tonelico has some absolutely lovely character designs. Lyner may look fairly "generic JRPG hero" in his stylings, but at least he has some personality about him. The two heroines Aurica and Misha are both attractive and appealing in completely different ways, and a plot twist I won't go into here sees you interacting with Misha in both her "spunky young girl" and "equally spunky young woman" forms. The third Reyvateil introduced later in the game also proves herself to be an interesting character in her own right, again with her own unique visual style and "appeal elements".

One of the most interesting things about the game to me — and the thing I'm intending to write about this Wednesday — is the game's multi-route, multi-ending structure. Now, this could very easily be a recipe for disaster, as multiple endings in lengthy RPGs are often a good method to ensure your players won't see all of the awesome story content you made. That's not necessarily a bad thing — it's kind of cool when you can discuss a game with a friend and discover they had a completely different experience to you — but it's also frustrating to some people who like to know they've got everything they can out of a game before moving on.

Ar Tonelico's multiple endings and routes are handled in a rather peculiar manner. There are three "phases" to the game, each of which is a complete story arc in and of itself, complete with final boss confrontation at the end of each. Early in the second "phase", you have the opportunity to go with one of the two heroines and experience their story. Aurica's story gives you an overall view of what is going on in the overarching plot of the game, while Misha's story gives you a more personal view of what is going on with her and how she is relevant to everything. If you play Misha's route first, there are a number of scenes you see completely without context that don't really make sense. If you play Aurica's route, however, you play an important part in these scenes. The two paths then converge towards the end of the second phase, and the game then apparently ends — the credits roll and everything.

There's a twist, though. In a post-credits sequence, you get to run around and do all the usual JRPG "our party's splitting up, say goodbye" business, but once you've done all that, you're presented with another choice: live a happy life with [insert girl you chose here], or refuse to accept that as "the end" and move on. If the latter option is chosen, you find yourself entering a completely optional third phase that is about 20 hours by itself, and which leads to the "true" ending.

Except in that third phase, there are four possible endings, three of which relate to one of the three heroine characters — the latter of whom only becomes a major player in this third phase. The third phase is pretty much identical regardless of which girl you picked earlier, but the very end — if you fulfilled some very precise conditions — allows you to pick between the girl you chose earlier and the new addition. There's also a "bad" ending relatively early in the third phase that basically says "I can't be bothered with all this sidequesting, let's just get this over with".

So that's a total of… hang on… (counts) six endings? Fortunately, there's absolutely no need to play through the game six times to see all of them — instead, you can play through once, save before the "big decision" in phase 2, play one route to either the end of phase 2 or to complete completion in phase 3, then go back and do the other route, stopping wherever you didn't stop first time around. In my case, I played Aurica's route through to total completion, then played Misha's route to the natural end at the conclusion of phase 2. I don't feel like I missed out on anything, and it only required me to play less than 10 hours over and above what I'd already played anyway. And I feel rewarded for having done so — I have a deeper understanding of the story as a whole, and particularly the characters.

So that's Ar Tonelico — a really, really excellent JRPG and surprisingly thought-provoking if you can look past the notorious innuendo (of which there isn't anywhere near as much as people make out). It's also in possession of I think the best soundtrack I think I've ever heard in a JRPG… though I'm about to start Ar Tonelico 2 as I type this, so I may well be revising that statement in the near future!

1130: Pour One Out for 1up.com

The "digital age" brings with it many benefits — most of which relate somehow to the concept of "convenience" — but an unfortunate side-effect of it is that things aren't as permanent as they once were. Sites grow, change and relaunch, and occasionally die altogether.

Today it emerged that Ziff Davis, former owners of 1up.com until it was sold to IGN, and now the company that owns IGN (and consequently 1up.com again… yes, it's confusing) would be shuttering three sites, including 1up.com.

This is immensely sad news for a number of reasons. Today I will primarily be outlining my own personal feelings about that site; I'm sure a number of people reading this will have their own opinions and thoughts about the site and the changes it's gone through over the years, so feel free to share them in the comments.

I first became aware of 1up.com while my brother was working at Ziff Davis on Electronic Gaming Monthly and the Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine (I think I've got that chronology right). He played an important role in shaping the site and its content, and it became a regular hangout for me not just because of me supporting my bro, but also because I really liked what it was doing. It was my first real contact with what was to become "social networking", and I found myself really enjoying making use of all the site features — the ability to blog, the forums, the ability for users to create clubs and communities as part of the main site. My 1up blog was one of the first places where I wrote about games regularly, primarily for myself but also in an attempt to keep myself in "practice" should I ever find myself in a situation where I'd be able to do so professionally.

My main reason for thinking so fondly of 1up.com is the Squadron of Shame. I've told this story before, but it doesn't hurt to tell it again.

The Squadron of Shame was a group of people who came together as the result of a fairly throwaway feature on one of 1up's podcasts. The podcast participants had got talking about their "Pile of Shame" — all the games they owned but had never got around to finishing (or even playing in some cases) — and discussion had turned to Tim Schafer's cult classic Psychonauts. The intention was for the Pile of Shame to become a regular feature on the podcast as the participants played through the games together and gave their thoughts on more obscure titles that people might have missed out on.

It was a short-lived feature, and quickly abandoned on the show — but a bunch of people on the 1up forums really liked the idea and thus decided to come together and finish the job they'd started. We checked out Psychonauts and had a blast playing through it together. Then we started talking about other games that people might have missed — System Shock 2, Psi Ops, Odin Sphere and all manner of other titles. For each one, we made a thread on the forums for discussion, played through it together and got to know each other a bit better in the process. It was a fantastic experience, and I made a lot of very good friends in the process — friends who I still "talk" to on a daily basis even today.

Trouble was on the horizon, though. The once-sprawling 1up.com forums, which used to be split into a wide variety of distinct sections, were merged into simple "Games" and "Not Games" categories. The Squadron of Shame's threads used to call the "1up Radio" forum home — this forum primarily related to the site's podcasts and the features therein, and was generally a home of more mature, respectful discussion than other parts of the forums as a whole. Suddenly, though, our thoughtful threads — which often included long posts with members writing mini-essays on their experiences with the games we were playing — were lumped in with all the "wot iz ur favorit wepon in halo" threads from the hoi polloi of the site. Consequently, on at least one occasion we found ourselves being rather unpleasantly trolled by users who, for some inexplicable reason, took great umbrage to our writing of posts that included more than five words, knew how to use paragraphs and punctuated properly, and discussion wasn't quite so easy any more.

Around that time, the "club" pages on 1up got an overhaul; there used to be a "communal blog" where individual members could post in a linear fashion, but this was replaced by a dedicated forum just for that club. We made use of that for a while, but further trouble was on the horizon with the event which became known as the Great Upheaval, when a huge proportion of the talent from the site was laid off as part of the transition to new owners UGO. The site wasn't the same after that, so a lot of people drifted away from the community, mostly to places such as Twitter.

It was around this time that we started producing the Squadron of Shame SquadCast, an irregularly-occurring podcast that continues the Squad's original mission in earnest. To this day, we still have a small but dedicated following keen to tune in and hear our thoughtful, mature (and lengthy!) discussions on obscure games and gaming-related topics. It's something I'm really happy to be a part of, and something that still feels me with great pride any time I hear someone from outside my core friendship group talking about — people like Garnett Lee, one of the original 1up podcasters who gave us the idea in the first place.

Today, the Squad primarily lives on Google+, which seems to be a good home for our discussions. You can check out and join our community here. Prior to that, a healthy amount of discussion also took place on the "Squawkbox", a WordPress site we set up to emulate the old-school "club journal" format from the original 1up.com club, but which is now primarily used as a site linking to the SquadCast's archives. There have been plans on and off to make a "proper" Squad site for many years now (including a nice-looking mockup), but they're yet to come to fruition. One day…?

Anyway, I'm drifting off the point somewhat. The main thing I wanted to say is that none of this would have happened without 1up.com. Without 1up.com, I never would have met this disparate group of people from all over the world and made a group of friends with whom I really feel that I can be "myself". Without 1up.com, I wouldn't have as solid a "support network" as I feel I do today. Without 1up.com, there's every chance that I'd be a lot more lonely than I am today. I feel privileged and honoured to have met everyone who came together as a result of the Squad, and am glad that we're still attracting new members a few at a time every so often, many of whom are fast becoming just as good friends as those who I have known since those early days of the group. I now have a solid group of international friends that I trust and depend on, and without 1up.com I simply wouldn't have that. (Of course, there's every chance that I would have made a similar group of friends on a different website, but, you know.)

So it's for this reason I'm sorry to see 1up.com go. The loss of the articles and writing talent on the site is sad too, of course, but for me it will always be the community side of things that captured my heart and imagination, and showed me that my passion for video games was not something to be embarrassed or ashamed about, but instead celebrated and explored.

So thanks for the memories, 1up. You'll be sorely missed.

1126: Ah! Tonelico

I've been continuing to play through Ar Tonelico, and it's certainly pushing all my buttons in all the right ways. I've stopped noticing the "subpar" (compared to its contemporaries) graphics and accepted them as quaint and charming, and have found myself able to concentrate on the story and characters, both of which are great stuff.

The highlight of the game by a long shot is still the Dive system, which I believe I mentioned in a previous post on the subject. Just in case I didn't, though (I'm tired and can't be bothered to go back and check, all right?) let me explain once again.

One of the key plot concepts in the Ar Tonelico universe is the relationship between humans and the Reyvateil, the latter of whom are the only ones able to make use of "Song Magic". A Reyvateil and her partner, known as an Oracle, share a close personal bond — so close, in fact, that it's possible for her Oracle to "Dive" into her mind and explore the worlds inside her imagination, known as her Cosmosphere.

Note that I said "worlds," not "world" — each Reyvateil has multiple similar but not identical worlds inside her head, each of which reflect a particular facet of her personality, something she has had to deal with (or repress) and struggles she is yet to overcome. As the Oracle delves deeper into her mind, the worlds become increasingly strange and twisted, and the problems that the Reyvateil must overcome more deep-seated and difficult to resolve.

Inside the Cosmosphere, the player character Lyner comes across numerous different incarnations of the Reyvateil he's diving into. On one level, she might be a shrine maiden who wants to protect people, but who is anxious about being able to do so. On another, she might be a schoolgirl with no faith in her abilities, who believes she'll never be able to live up to her peers. On another, she might be sexually aggressive and dominant. Sometimes incarnations from other levels put in an appearance, too, and their interactions reflect the Reyvateil's inner struggles between clashing emotions and ideals.

Alongside the incarnations of the Reyvateil, Lyner also encounters characters whom he (and the Reyvateil) know in the real world. But there's often something a bit "off" about these characters, something not quite right. It transpires that these projections of familiar characters reflect how the Reyvateil sees them, not necessarily how they actually are. This provides yet another interesting perspective on the Reyvateil's personality — not only do we see her internal struggles, but also her own attempts to deal with how she thinks other people see her.

I love this kind of thing. It's one of the reasons I adore Persona 3 and particularly 4 so much. Games are a brilliant medium through which the inner workings of a character's mind can be explored, and games that do just that are among my most fondly-remembered titles — stretching right back to The Adventures of Alundra on PS1 and its "nightmare dungeons". Ar Tonelico is certainly scratching that itch very nicely — and it helps massively that the characters involved are entertaining and fun to be around. Plus it seems there's a very obvious "split" just after the halfway point, so after I've finished it once I can go back and focus on the other Reyvateil to see what her subconscious has to say about herself. Looking forward to it.

I haven't touched on the series' endearing use of innuendo, which is seemingly the main thing it's known for, but I'll save that discussion for another day — perhaps when I've played the apparently increasingly-shameless sequels!

(Comics back tomorrow.)

1117: Another Game with a Barely-Pronounceable Title

If you had no idea what genre a game called Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia fell into, it's highly likely that you'd guess that it was a JRPG. And you'd be absolutely correct. It's a title that doesn't make a whole lot of sense if you know nothing about the game, though to its credit, unlike many other barely-pronounceable game names, its relevance does become apparent almost immediately. However, it's still pretty much the exact opposite of the rather literal naming conventions adopted by social and mobile games these days, which tend to be called things like "City Wars" and "Farm Town" and "Slots".

Strange name aside… yes, I've been playing the PS2 game Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia, hereafter referred to as Ar Tonelico to save me typing out that whole title every time. I knew literally nothing about this game prior to firing it up for the first time, but had been urged to do so by a friend over at the Squadron of Shame who has been accompanying on my journey through the oddest and quirkiest undiscovered treasures that the Japanese role-playing game genre has to offer. I promised him that the next game I played after I completed the crap out of Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 would be Ar Tonelico, so here I am.

So what's it all about? Well, if you live in the UK, don't count on any help from the box or manual — the game never saw an official release in the UK despite being fully-translated into English, and instead your best bet for a copy these days is Italy, of all places. It's rather peculiar to think of Italians playing JRPGs, but there you go.

Anyway. Ar Tonelico initially appears to be a rather straightforward JRPG with a floppy-haired, youthful protagonist wandering around the world seeking adventure on a Grand Quest to Save the World. And on the one hand, it is. On the other hand, however, it does a lot of very, very interesting things that have really made me sit up and pay attention, even only about four hours into the whole experience.

For starters, there's a deep crafting system to explore. This is a game from Gust, developers of the Atelier series (which I am yet to try but have all the PS3 incarnations of on my shelf), and their specialism is deep crafting systems. In Ar Tonelico's case, it takes the form of the peculiarly-named "Grathmeld" system, in which you have to find recipe cards around the world and in shops, find ingredients inside chests, shops and monsters and then fuse them all together using crystals. When you craft, you get a fun little animated sequence of your character Lyner assembling whatever item it is, then if it's a new item he has a fun little conversation with one of the other characters about it, and a discussion often ensues about what the new item should be called. You can't freely rename items, which is a shame, but you do get to choose between a couple of different suggestions, and the game then tracks which character named which item, which is a nice touch.

Perhaps the most bewildering aspect of the game is its battle system. For the first hour or two, it's a very conventional turn-based "attack, magic, item" affair. But as soon as you encounter the "Reyvateil" characters, also known as Song Maidens, things start to get interesting.

Reyvateils sit in the back row of your party and don't follow the usual turn order. Instead, they act like a mage or priest in an MMO, sitting behind the front row of fighters charging up spells (or Songs, in this case) to have various effects, while at the same time the front row is knocking seven shades of shit out of the enemy and ensuring the Reyvateil doesn't take damage. A strong focus is placed on the party's "harmonics" with the Reyvateil, with this represented by a bifurcated horizontal meter at the bottom of the screen. The left half of the bar fills when the front row lands successful attacks and drops when they take damage. The right half of the bar fills as the Reyvateil chants to charge up a spell. Should the two halves meet, the whole party goes up a "Harmonic level", which means the Reyvateil's spellcasting speeds up and the front row gain access to stronger attacks. The Harmonic level at the end of the battle also determines what rewards you receive.

There's another consideration in that system, which is the cap on the Harmonic level. At the start of each battle, you can only level the Harmonics up to 2; to increase the cap, you have to let the Reyvateil unleash her magic and deal enough damage for a separate bar to fill and open up the next level cap. The trouble is, at least early in the game, most enemies are absolutely obliterated by the Reyvateil's Song Magic, so you'll sometimes find yourself deliberately pulling your punches a little in an attempt to earn some higher Harmonic levels. It's an interesting system that will doubtless come into its own in more difficult battles later.

By far my favorite part of the game so far, however, has been the "Dive" system, where the protagonist Lyner is able to enter the subconscious of a Reyvateil and learn more about her. A Reyvateil's subconscious is split into ten distinct levels, each of which is made up of a number of different locations. Lyner must spend "Dive Points" earned through battle — which represent the trust the Reyvateil holds in him — to trigger various events, with revelations and strange happenings often unlocking new spells for the Reyvateil to cast in the real world. These vary from simple attack magic to "green magic" spells which can be cast outside of battle, usually to solve puzzles.

In gameplay terms, it's an elaborate means of unlocking abilities. But in story terms, it's a way of literally doing a deep dive into a character and discovering their innermost secrets. The scenes I've seen already have been heartfelt, interesting and help make me interested in the character. I'm very intrigued to see how they continue as the game progresses, as it's clear that the whole point of the "Dive" system is to help the Reyvateil come to terms with repressed memories and emotions in a vaguely similar manner to Persona 4's "Midnight Channel" — or perhaps just to peek in on some embarrassing things they'd rather forget about.

At four hours in, that's about all I can say so far, but I'm enjoying it a great deal. It looks super-dated — it's in 4:3 aspect ratio running on the PS2 and it pretty much looked like a PS1 game in the first place — but none of that matters to me. It is worth noting that it has an astonishingly good soundtrack, and that the English dub appears to be handled by the entire cast of Persona 3, which is fine by me — if a little odd to hear voices I recognise playing characters I'm less familiar with. (If you're wondering why I'm not playing with the Japanese voices, which are also included on the disc, it's because the FMV sequences in the game use the English voices, and it would be somewhat jarring to go back and forth between the two. The game also isn't fully-voiced, either, so it doesn't make as much difference as it would have in, say Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2.)

I'll be sticking with this one, then — though I may well be splitting my time between it and the Gamecube version of Fire Emblem when that eventually arrives. (The new 3DS version isn't out here until April, and I'm told I should play the Gamecube version before the Wii version that I scored for a song when Game was in trouble a while back.)

1116: Neptunia Master System mk2

I finally completed the shit out of Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2 tonight. And by that I mean I did pretty much everything it was possible to do in that game. I feel confident in saying it's one of the most consistently fun JRPGs I've played for quite some time — not necessarily the best, no, but certainly one that most definitely has its heart in the right place.

It was a really interesting game on the whole, and one that clearly knew its (small, niche) audience very well. I found it particularly interesting that instead of making a direct sequel to the first game, which apparently sold pretty well in Japan but bombed over here due to appalling review scores, they instead chose to reboot the setting and characters, creating a game which newcomers could happily start with but which those who played through its predecessor could appreciate on a deeper level. Neptunia mk2 wasn't a retelling of the first game's story — it was a completely new tale that pretty much assumed the first game didn't happen. This was a little jarring at first, as characters showed up whom I thought should know each other having played the first game, and the characters IF and Compa were obviously retconned to be childhood friends. Over time it ceased to matter, though, and it became clear that Neptunia mk2 was intended to be taken on its own merits without the baggage of its predecessor — a sensible choice, I'm inclined to think.

Besides proving to be a good jumping-on point for the series (the physical package's apparent rarity aside), Neptunia mk2 also dialed back its reliance on rather forced game and anime references for its humour, instead opting to focus on its distinctive and entertaining (if rather archetypal) characters. The one notable exception to this was in the game's "true ending" path, where there's a wonderful scene shortly before the final boss that features the "older sister" characters (meant to personify the seventh-generation consoles plus the ditzy Neptune/Sega, who has no idea what she's doing and is more interested in cookies than ruling the world) arguing over whose console is best, while the "younger sisters" (who are really the main characters of the game, and who personify the current-generation handheld systems… and, err, the Game Gear) sit and play Monster Hunter together while talking about how awesome Shenmue was.

A side-effect of the above is that the game's endearing sense of humour can be enjoyed by pretty much anyone, regardless of your knowledge of the video games industry as a whole. Those who have been playing for a long time, however, will appreciate the numerous sly nods and winks throughout — an area called Atari Marsh; a city called Sim City; characters called Cave and Falcom; and enemies that resemble everything from Tetris blocks to Dr Kawashima's freaky floating head from the Brain Age/Brain Training series.

The overall plot, which is essentially an anti-piracy, pro-"reward the creators of the content you enjoy" parable, initially appears to be a bit heavy-handed with its message, but this is nicely subverted by the time the previous game's protagonist Neptune puts in an appearance and berates the other characters for "sounding a bit preachy and stuff". It has a good narrative arc, building to a suitably dramatic conclusion and one of seven different endings — including a shockingly dark one that is quite impressive in its brutality. (Though it could possibly have gone even a bit further than it did.)

One of the most interesting things about it is its female-centric nature. While there's a lot of fanservice in it — within five minutes of starting, there are three quasi-"bondage" scenes; several characters are prone to flashing their panties at every opportunity (and the in-game camera is happy to encourage this); and a number of the "event" pictures feature a childishly amusing "jiggle" feature that… well, you can probably imagine — it's difficult to look on the game as being particularly anti-women.

In fact, it's very positive about a lot of things to do with sex and gender. The whole (enormous) party of playable characters is made up of women, for starters, and while many of these use anime archetypes as the basis for their personality, they're all their own individual characters with their own quirks and ways of interacting with each other rather than being nothing but shallow stereotypes. This team of ass-kicking women doesn't once rely on a man to help them out throughout the course of the entire story — and in fact, the few faceless appearances that men do make throughout the plot tend to depict them as shallow, image-obsessed borderline sex pests, with the exception of the boss character Brave, who is more of a Transformer than a man anyway. (Any good that Brave does for the male gender's representation in the game is immediately undone by Trick, however, who it's not an exaggeration to say is a revolting robotic paedophile, and one of the most delightfully odious characters I've had the pleasure of virtually beating up for a long time.)

There are also no unnecessary romantic scenes in the game, though there's a subtle implication that all the main characters in the story are gay and that there's nothing wrong with this whatsoever. (Because, you know, there isn't.) This doesn't mean lesbian melodrama or anything, either; rather, it's simply accepted that some of these girls like each other a bit more than others, and this is depicted in the way that they interact with one another with obvious tenderness and care. It's clear that these characters and their relationships have been written with genuine affection and a desire to make them believable people rather than just tits and arse, and I came away from the experience feeling like I had a good understanding of who they were, who they got along with the best and who they clashed with. It was one of those experiences where the final credits rolled and I felt like I was going to miss the characters, which is always a good sign.

So that's that. It's all done. No more Neptunia… at least until March, when the third game in the series arrives and I will inevitably become obsessed all over again.

1110: The Collector

Reading this post from Matt Mason earlier made me think somewhat about my own game buying and playing habits and how they have evolved over time. I've come to the conclusion that I'm becoming something of a "collector", particularly when it comes to more obscure games that almost inevitably become hard to find if you don't snag them immediately upon release.

This doesn't mean that I pay over the odds to get "Collector's Editions" of games, though, because I tend to think that for the most part those are a waste of time — or perhaps it's just that I've never really had a Collector's Edition for a game that I felt particularly passionately about. Had I known how much I was going to love Hyperdimension Neptunia mk2, for example, I might have seriously considered spending a bit more and picking up the swanky limited edition that came with a soundtrack CD, an art book and some playing cards. (Yeah, I know the cards are a bit lame, but I love soundtrack CDs.)

More often than not, though, the super-expensive limited edition versions are for games I have no interest in, like Call of Duty, Assassin's Creed and Skyrim. For sure, these limited editions are often cool, but there's only so many gigantic statuettes that you can scatter around your house before people start asking questions. (Particularly if one of those statuettes is a gory female torso… but let's not open that can of worms again.)

I'm actually fine with this, though, because I've been tending to find that the games I'm most interested in playing are the ones that maintain their value the best — simply because they're often not put out in particularly large quantities and thus often become quite hard to find after a little while. As such, I've come to accept that taking a chance on a new game like this often involves an outlay of at least £20 and may, in a few isolated cases, require payment of a price considerably inflated from what it would have cost when the game was first released. (I ordered a copy of Fire Emblem for Gamecube recently, for example… I'm pretty sure that's not what it cost when it first came out.) The fact that I've had to hunt for these games and occasionally pay a bit more for them than something of an equivalent age that had a wider release makes them feel somehow more "valuable", and makes me feel like my growing collection is something that I can be proud of. I know they're "just" games, but they represent a hobby that I truly love and which inspires me to do other things.

What this "collector's" attitude has meant in practical terms is that I'm now much more inclined to pick up interesting-sounding titles as soon as I become aware of them, rather than when I know I have time for them. This inevitably leads to an ever-growing backlog, of course, but it also means that I have things to look forward to. It's also an approach which works for my personal circumstances at present. In other words, I don't spend a lot of money on other "vices" — I don't drink, I don't smoke, I don't buy DVDs (with the exception of anime that can't be found for streaming online), I don't tend to travel a lot and, by the end of this month, I won't have any car expenses either (apart from any contributions I make to help Andie out with hers). This means that I tend to have a fair bit of disposable income that I don't feel guilty about splurging on my collection, and still have plenty left over for living expenses and to do nice things for Andie.

I like having physical things that I collect. My bulging Steam library also counts as part of my collection, but somehow that big list of games inevitably acquired for a couple of quid during a holiday sale isn't quite as satisfying as seeing that big shelf full of cases. Downloadable games feel more "disposable" somehow, like they won't last; I often find myself worrying what will happen to all these games when, say, Steam or PSN or Xbox Live don't exist any more. How will future generations be able to play awesome stuff like Flower, or Journey, or any of the other titles which everyone raves about now but which are only available via download? (I got around this issue with some of the visual novels I own by burning a copy to disc and printing my own inlay for the DVD case. Sad? Perhaps. But it means I can add them to my shelf with some degree of pride.)

The unfortunate side-effect of collecting physical things, of course, is that you have to find space for all of them, and if you get into full-on "hoarding" mode, where you don't want to trade anything in, ever, then you need more and more space as time goes on. I've currently still got a few shelves free on the other bookcase, but it's starting to get a little bit tight… and then what? Creative packing time.

If you're curious, here's my game shelf as it stands right now. (The fairy lights were Andie's idea, but they are pretty sweet.) If you click to embiggen and zoom in on the image, you might even be able to see individual titles of at least some of the games. I haven't played all of these, not by a long shot, but they each — even the array of PS2 SingStar titles — represent something with genuine meaning to me. And that's pretty neat to think about.

1106: Nepgagaga Complete... Mk2

I beat Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2 tonight, and have now seen one of its seven endings. The one I got tonight was the most fiddly and awkward to get — those who have played the game will know it as the "Conquest Ending" — and was also very, very, dark. Said darkness was all the more effective considering how light and breezy the rest of the game had been; after some 20-odd hours of all-female yuri moe shenanigans in the party, to suddenly be confronted by something that was quite genuinely emotionally affecting was testament to what a good job the game had done in building up its characters' personalities and relationships.

But I shan't talk too much more about the plot for fear of getting into spoiler territory. I do, however, want to make a point of talking about the game itself a bit more, and reiterating a few things I have previously said about it.

The main thing that I would like to say about it is that it's quite possibly the most fun I've had with a JRPG in ages. It was consistently fun, didn't outstay its welcome (a single playthrough clocks in at under 30 hours on your first time through and is considerably quicker if you New Game+ it up after that) and made use of some great (and quite original) systems. It then wrapped the whole experience in a plot that, while a little preachy at times, provided a great opportunity for the characters and setting to shine and show that the world of Hyperdimension Neptunia was far more than just a one-trick pony of self-referential humour relating to anime and games.

It's a stark contrast to the first Hyperdimension Neptunia; I had a huge amount of fun with the original game, but any time I talk about it I feel the need to add a disclaimer that I'm aware of all its flaws and that it was critically panned on release. And that's at least partly justified; if you don't get into the plot, setting and characters of the first Hyperdimension Neptunia, there's little more than a mediocre dungeon crawler with an interesting combat system underneath — probably not enough to hold the interest of someone who is not fully invested in the experience.

The second installment, meanwhile, is quite simply a good game. While it's still got its cheeky, innuendo-filled self-referential sense of humour intact and its tongue firmly planted in its cheek for most of the way through, it doesn't rely on cheap gags and references alone to carry the experience. Beneath the silliness is a rock-solid JRPG with some really cool mechanics.

Let's start with the combat system. Unlike the previous game, which followed a fairly conventional turn-based system coupled with a Xenogears-style combo-making mechanic, Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2's battle system brings in some additional tactical elements that really change things up.

In the first game, each character had a set amount of "action points" (AP) to expend on their combos each turn, and various achievements such as breaking an enemy's guard or performing a special "combo link" move would give some of these points back, allowing a single turn to last for longer. You could also switch the currently-active member with one who was in the off-screen "back row" using certain special combo finishers, effectively allowing you a free turn if you were careful about your AP expenditure.

The second game maintains the AP system, but provides a degree more flexibility. Each character has a base amount of AP that top up to full at the start of each turn if they used them all the previous turn, but AP can also "overflow" over their maximum if the character deliberately finishes their turn early. This is a necessary tactic to unleash some of the more effective "EX combos" — special moves triggered by specific button combinations, some of which require more than a full AP bar's worth of AP to use.

Alongside the AP system is a new stat called Skill Points (SP). This is a mechanic in which hitting an enemy and taking damage adds to a bar which gradually counts up to 300. Characters' unique skills — now selectable from a separate menu rather than having to be incorporated into a combo — all cost a particular number of AP and SP to unleash, with the more devastating moves requiring more SP. SP skills vary from powerful attacks on a single enemy to area or line attacks, or buff/healing skills to benefit the party. Protagonist Nepgear and the other "CPU Candidate" characters can also transform into their "Hard Drive Divinity" goddess forms by spending 100 SP, but the remaining SP after the 100 ticks down each turn, and they revert to human when SP runs out completely.

There are three different types of move that can be performed in combat: fast moves hit multiple times and thus build up the SP bar faster, hard moves inflict more damage and are often magical in nature, and breaker moves concentrate on damaging the enemy's "guard" bar, which, when depleted, allows the player characters to do more damage than usual. Fighting effectively is a case of knowing what moves to use when — some enemies are more susceptible to magical hard attacks, for example, while others take more damage from multi-hit combos. Building up a big combo also helps Nepgear and her friends to maintain their goddess forms for longer.

Oh, you can move around in combat, too. It's surprising what a huge difference this makes; the simple addition of a mechanic whereby attacks affect a physical area rather than a specific enemy/character means that positioning is very important.

So that's the combat system. The other interesting mechanic is the "shares" system, which was also present in the first game but never explained at all, despite its manipulation being necessary to attain the "true" ending. The amount of control the game's four "friendly" nations and the antagonist faction have over the game world is reflected by the shares, and forms an interesting (if lightweight) strategic metagame atop the whole experience. There's an overall "world control" chart, which shows which faction has the upper hand — initially the antagonists by a considerable degree — and localised charts corresponding to each nation's capital and smaller, non-interactive towns around their landmass.

You can manipulate the shares by doing quests. Each quest has a sponsor city somewhere on the map — either one of the four capitals or one of each nation's smaller towns — and will increase one faction's shares in that area while depleting another's by the corresponding amount. By manipulating the shares, you can effectively change which faction controls each area, and which area has greater dominance over the world as a whole. It's not always simple, though — sometimes you'll have to run one quest to wrest an area's control away from the antagonists and into its native hands, then another to give these shares to another territory if necessary.

While it may be tempting to simply plough all your efforts into increasing Nepgear's native Planeptune shares as high as possible, this isn't necessarily advisable — controlling more than 55% of the world by a particular point in the story unlocks the aforementioned "Conquest" ending, which is rather traumatic if you're not ready for it!

The shares are used for a number of different purposes. Firstly, they affect various characters' stats — if you're using one of the "goddess" characters from the land of Lastation, for example, increasing Lastation's world share will make these characters stronger while others become weaker. It is possible to keep things nicely balanced if you want to use all the goddesses in your party — you'll just have to eradicate the antagonist's faction altogether to do that.

The second function of the shares is to help determine the ending you get. I've already mentioned the 55% world share that Planeptune requires for the "Conquest" ending; that's by far the hardest one to get, as it involves effectively taking over the other countries through a whole bunch of careful questing. Other endings have less stringent requirements; faction-specific endings simply require that particular capital cities have a strong majority control by their native territory as well as Nepgear having a good relationship with the goddess characters of the area, while the "human" ending requires that you avoid any sort of dominance whatsoever. Finally, the "true" ending, which goes on for a whole extra chapter after the game usually ends, requires that the world is divided up nice and neatly between the four factions, and that the antagonists are wiped out as much as possible.

You'll notice I've barely mentioned the plot at all in this post, and that's because I want to make a point about Hyperdimension Neptunia Mk2 — even without its big-eyed anime girl shenanigans, it would be a rock-solid game. It's a crying shame that so many people I've spoken to won't even consider playing it because of 1) its predecessor's poor reputation and 2) its aesthetic and character design. Hopefully the things I've said in this post have at least piqued your curiosity a little — it's a great game and genuinely well worth your time, and if you don't feel like you can stomach the first in the series (which I maintain is fun and entertaining despite its myriad flaws) it's perfectly accessible to newcomers.

I'll see you in Gamindustri!