2375: Mommy Issues

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Overwatch has finally seen the release of its first new hero since launch, in the form of Ana, a new Support character and mother of existing character Pharah.

Ana is an interesting concept for a support character because she's based at least partly around sniping, which in Overwatch terms has traditionally been an approach reserved for Defender-type heroes. As a Support character, however, Ana's role is actually surprisingly well-rounded, comprising both offensive and defensive capabilities and possessing an overall feel quite unlike any of the other heroes on the roster.

Ana's basic ability is a sniper rifle that shoots bolts that either heal allies they hit or damage enemies. In both cases, the healing or damage process isn't immediate — it takes a second or two for the value to affect the character's health, though it's not quite a long-duration damage or heal over time either.

What this essentially means is that Ana is able to heal people from a much greater distance than any of the other Support characters, though the tradeoff in this case is that you have to be reasonably accurate in order to register a hit on the person you're trying to heal. You don't have to be absolutely pinpoint accurate, but your reticle still needs to be roughly in the right area to register a hit, unlike Mercy or Lucio, who lock on to nearby targets and affect all targets around themselves respectively.

Ana's other abilities throw some interesting twists into the mix. Her "E" move allows her to throw a grenade that provides an immediate burst of healing to anyone caught in the blast, along with a temporary buff to healing from all sources while it's active. Like her gun, this grenade also has a negative impact on enemy characters, in this case dealing some damage to them and completely preventing them from being healed for a few seconds.

Her Left-Shift ability, meanwhile, is something of a game-changer: it's a dart, shot out from her sidearm, that puts anyone it hits to sleep, causing them to collapse to the floor and be completely immobile for a few seconds. This is an absolute godsend against characters who can be difficult to push through such as Bastion, since it allows you to take the pressure off for a moment — just long enough to sneak in and finish the job. It's also good for interrupting powerful Ultimate abilities from characters such as Reaper and Pharah.

All in all, Ana seems to be a strong addition to the roster. Her healing capabilities aren't up to Mercy and Lucio's standards, largely due to the accuracy requirement, but they're solid enough, but her real benefit is the addition of some solid offensive skills. Her main weakness is in her mobility; unlike the two previous sniper characters Hanzo and Widowmaker, Ana has no means of easily getting up to higher ground, and so must either do her work from ground level or find more roundabout means of getting to good vantage points.

2374: In Praise of the RPG Maker Community

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I touched on this the other day, but it bears mentioning again, I think: the community surrounding the RPG Maker series of software packages is one of the most interesting, diverse and helpful communities I've had the pleasure of coming across in all of gaming.

Gaming communities can be a variable bunch. Communities that surround online multiplayer games tend to err somewhat on the side of aggressively arguing that their opinions are the "right" ones and that everyone else is wrong — sometimes even putting players at loggerheads with the developers. Retro-gaming communities are keen to celebrate old games but have an often unspoken code of honour about not sharing pirated versions of software — even though this is sadly the only means of getting to play some older or rarer titles these days. And the Steam forums are just… well, no. Nothing good comes of sticking your head in there.

The RPG Maker community, though, they're some of the most cooperative people I've seen ever. Sure, there's an element of the usual supercilious "Search is your friend!" obnoxiousness on the forums when someone asks a question that might have been answered before six years ago, but this is true for pretty much any Internet community out there, and the help and support the community generally offers for the program is second to none.

It helps that RPG Maker has always been extensible — initially just through graphics and sound in the earlier incarnations, but with more recent installments through Ruby scripts and JavaScript plugins to extend and customise the functionality of the basic engine far beyond what it was originally intended for. Many creators provide these additional bits and pieces either under a completely royalty-free license, or under some variation of Creative Commons, which allows people to use them freely so long as they credit the original creator and, in some cases, don't fiddle around with it and pass it off as their own.

This is extraordinarily generous, and it has always amazed me quite how far people are willing to go to help out the community as a whole — though I'm pleased to see with the rise of Patreon that some of these creators are now able to make a bit of money off their creations through pledges from grateful users, something which was very hit-and-miss when going through PayPal as in the pre-Patreon days.

I know that I'm massively grateful to the RPG Maker community as a whole for providing me with all manner of excellent content to extend the functionality of the program — and helping me feel like I can make the best possible game with the resources I have, rather than having to settle for doing something within limitations. While my silly little game that I'm working on at the moment will doubtless never be anything big or exciting — as I've mentioned before, the very reason for its existence is mostly an in-joke that perhaps only four or five people in the world will understand — I am very happy with how it's looking so far, and how unlike the generic, out-of-the-box RPG Maker engine it looks, just with a few simple changes to the basic mechanics and functionality.

I'm thinking I may well spend next month on MoeGamer covering RPG Maker MV, since it's still relatively new, so watch out for that. In the meantime, I've got games to make!

2372: The Lost Art of Puzzle Games

I've been playing some old puzzle games recently. By "old" I mean "predating the smartphone", which in the grand scheme of things isn't all that old, but in technology terms is positively ancient. And, while I've known this for a while, the difference between puzzle games now and puzzle games of then makes it abundantly clear, beyond a doubt, that the modern age has done our collective attention spans no favours whatsoever.

The reason I say this is a simple matter of timing and commitment. The age of mobile and social gaming — Bejeweled Blitz in particular had a lot to do with this, I feel — has redefined the puzzle game as an experience that must be over and done with within 30-60 seconds, lest the participant get bored with the experience. This doesn't necessarily mean it has to be easy, mind you — quite the opposite, in fact, in the case of free-to-play games, where "friction" (ugh) is specifically incorporated into the game design at regular intervals for the sole purpose of extracting money from lazy players.

There are some people who are too stubborn to pay up to get past an artificially difficult level in Candy Crush Bullshit, of course, but these people are in the minority, because the 30-second structure of the levels that are easily beatable trains one to expect a bite-size, painless experience rather than having to actually put in any work or practice. And so for many players, the option to pay up to bypass a particular challenge — or at least make it insultingly easy, for the illusion of them having beaten it themselves — becomes an attractive one.

Compare and contrast with a puzzle game designed in the old mould, then. Rather than being designed as rapid-fire timewasters, puzzle games used to fall into two main categories: those which, like the best arcade games, challenged you to see how long you could last against increasingly challenging odds; or those which, like the other best arcade games, challenged you to demonstrate your superiority over either a computer-controlled or human opponent. In both cases, said challenges took a lot longer than 30 seconds to accomplish — in the former instance in particular, a good run could go on for hours or more if you really got "in the zone".

In other words, puzzle games used to be designed with a mind to keeping a player interested and occupied for considerable periods at a time, rather than allowing them to while away a few minutes — that's what simple shoot 'em ups were for. Everything from the classic Tetris to slightly lesser known gems like Klax and oddities like Breakthru were designed in this way; these games weren't just "something to do" — they were a test of endurance, observational skills, strategy and dexterity, both mental and physical. Having a Tetris game that went on for an hour was a badge of honour rather than an inconvenience; you weren't playing the game until something better came along, the game was the better thing that had come along.

This change in focus for puzzle games is a bit sad, as I miss the old days of them offering substantial, lengthy challenges to tackle over time. That's not to say that there's no place for rapid-fire puzzles, too, but it just disappoints me that 30-second "blitz" challenges are all we have these days.

At least the old games still play just as well as they always did — with them being so graphically light in most cases, puzzle games tend to age a whole lot better than many other types of game.

2370: Hidden Arcade Gems: Elevator Action II

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When I was growing up, my father and brother reviewed various pieces of software for the Atari 8-bit and ST computers. (I did a bit of it too, but I was a bit young to do it too regularly.) This meant we got a whole lot of free games; we had a set of shelves absolutely bulging with Atari ST games in particular, and actually buying a game was a pretty rare occurrence for me until I started getting into console with the Super NES and subsequent generations.

Anyway. One of the earliest Atari ST games I remember playing was called Mission Elevator, and I recall my brother mentioning in his review that it was a clone of a game called Elevator Action. I wasn't familiar with Elevator Action, but looking back on it now… yeah, Mission Elevator was a pretty shameless clone, right down to the animations used.

For the uninitiated, Elevator Action Mission whatever is a game where you play a spy tasked with creeping into a building and nicking Important Stuff, which is hidden behind doors. (Mission Elevator's twist on this formula was that sometimes you'd open a door and amusing or weird things would be happening behind it — or sometimes an agent would just pop out and blow your head off straight away, which was always infuriating.) The building is viewed from a side-on perspective, and getting between the floors is achieved by hopping into the titular elevators, then hopping out at the appropriate floor. The elevators move independently when you're not in them, but when you do get in one you can move it freely up and down to the floor you want to get out at.

Elevators are an integral part of the game. Their absence on your current floor can be an obstacle, meaning you'll have to make a heroic leap across the elevator shaft in order to get to the other side… or just wait for them to turn up. (These buildings apparently weren't built with safety in mind.) And not only could they carry you up and down to the different floors of the building, they could also carry enemy agents to your floor, and getting surrounded was bad news. Also, both you and the enemy agents could be killed through getting squished by an elevator descending onto your head — always satisfying to pull off to your advantage; always disappointing to have happen to you.

Anyway. Elevator Action and its shameless clone were fun, but ultimately quite limited. They got harder as they progressed, but they didn't really change all that much.

Enter Elevator Action II, a game whose existence I was completely unaware of until I read an article about the series (which I also didn't know existed) over on Hardcore Gaming 101. This game takes the basic mechanics and objective of the original game (use elevators to get to red doors, nick stuff from red doors, escape) and transplants it to a variety of different situations. The first level has you doing pretty much what you did in the first game. But then you're finding bombs in an airport and all manner of other things in the subsequent levels.

There are also three different selectable characters, each of whom handle a bit differently, and a level structure that feels a little like a belt-scrolling beat 'em up, particularly after the first level. You'll reach points in the level where there are setpieces you'll need to clear before you can progress; in the airport level, for example, while crossing a catwalk between two buildings, you get accosted by a horde of bad guys with jetpacks and have to fend them all off before you can proceed.

Elevator Action II raises the stakes considerably from the original game with a much wider range of enemies, not all of whom are humans. The whole thing feels like you're playing a terrible but enjoyable '80s action movie — right down to levels being introduced by you crashing through a window with a helicopter and other such silliness — and it's an excellent evolution of the original game's formula. My only real complaint is some mildly clunky controls, but they're easy enough to live with, and the game is sufficient fun that they don't detract from the experience too much.

If you have a chance to give Elevator Action II a go, take it. You won't be disappointed!

2368: Building a World... Again

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Playing with RPG Maker MV as I am at the moment, I'm reminded of quite how much I enjoy building worlds. I don't have the skill or technical knowledge to be able to do so using 3D modelling tools (or even level editors for 3D games) but I've always felt I can put together some interesting 2D maps for RPGs.

There are two main approaches you can take when building a world for a game. You can take the "realistic" approach and attempt to build it to something approaching a believable scale, or you can take the "gamey" approach and try to build something that works well in the context of a game.

In actual fact, I tend to find that the best approach is somewhere between the two. A certain degree of game design is necessary when building a world in order to prevent it feeling like an unfocused mess — many modern open-world games fail miserably at this — while at the same time if your world design is completely divorced from reality your players will constantly be aware that they are playing a game rather than immersing themselves in your fictional world.

This isn't always a bad thing, of course. Some people very much prefer exploring something that has been crafted to be fun, interesting to explore and well-paced. Others, meanwhile, like to wander off the path at every opportunity and see what's in that cave, over that hill, behind that locked door. And some of the most satisfying gaming experiences I've had have come in environments very obviously designed to defy all real-world logic (not to mention architectural principles and, well, physics) — Metroidvania-style titles particularly spring to mind in this regard.

Since the game I'm playing around with at the moment is a kind of grand experiment of sorts, I'm going to play around with a variety of different approaches. The concept of the game sees the party travelling to several different "worlds", so each of them are going to be structured differently. One of them will be a condensed fantasy RPG-style world, with the distinction between "overworld" and "dungeons". Another will be one big dungeon — probably a haunted mansion or something along those lines. Besides those, I'd like to do something interesting with a sci-fi/cyberpunk feel, and either something completely abstract or very much grounded in reality. Or perhaps both.

Unlike past projects, where I've sort of "winged it" as I've gone along, this time around I'm actually taking a bit of time to plan things out to a certain degree. I imagine there will still be an element of winging it as I play around and think of new things I'd like to do, but at the very least I intend to plan out the basic structure and/or map of each of these "worlds" and how the player will interact with them. Then it will be interesting to see how much of a challenge it is to implement each of them using the RPG Maker MV toolset.

So far, the game's introduction has a single, linear "dungeon" to introduce the player to the basic concepts. After that, I intend to allow them to choose how they progress through the initial phases of the game — though I also intend to put in some systems to ensure some jumping back and forth between the different worlds and their corresponding styles is in order. Should keep things interesting. We'll see, I guess.

2366: Bigger Open Worlds Aren't Always Better

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Ubisoft's Assassin's Creed has 420 collectible flags scattered around its open world. They don't actually do anything other than unlock a few achievements — they don't give protagonist Altair any new abilities or open up any fun bonus content in the game. They're just there for the sake of it.

WayForward's Shantae has 12 collectible fireflies scattered around its open world. Collecting all of them is the only way for protagonist Shantae to learn a dance that allows her to heal herself.

Shantae also has 20 collectible Baby Warp Squids hidden in its four dungeons — five per dungeon. Every four Warp Squids allows Shantae to learn a dance that lets her teleport to one of the game's five towns, providing a convenient shortcut across the game world.

With modern games (I know Assassin's Creed isn't that new now, but Ubisoft is still using its basic model for most of its games) it seems the assumption is the bigger the game world, the better — it doesn't matter if there's not all that much to do in the game world, so long as you can spout the tired old PR line about "see that mountain over there? You can actually go to it."

It's not true, though. I mean, a big open world is impressive to look at, particularly if it's rendered in lovely graphics — heavily modded Skyrim and vanilla The Witcher 3 spring to mind here — but if said open world consists of vast tracts of nothingness between areas with actual activities to participate in, then there's really not a lot of point to it all, save to give the player a sense of scale.

Shantae, despite being a Game Boy Color game, is an open world game, presented from a side-on perspective as a platform game: the subgenre commonly referred to these days as "Metroidvania". But the world of her adventure isn't unnecessarily sprawling and filled with vast tracts of nothingness; it's compact and focused, with every area designed around a distinct visual theme, allowing you to immediately know where you are in the world, which eventually loops right around on itself if you get to one of the far edges of it.

This is good design in the context of it being a video game. Sure, the landscapes of Shantae may not be particularly realistic, but they make for a fun game experience that doesn't feel like it's dragging things out unnecessarily. It's also paced such that the player always feels like they're making progress, and the optional sidequests — the Warp Squids and the Fireflies — feel eminently achievable for most players and provide a tangible, genuinely useful reward in both instances. Compare and contrast with Assassin's Creed's 420 flags that don't do anything, where only the most dedicated achievement whores will bother participating in this pointless waste of everyone's time.

Don't get me wrong, I like a big game — I'm enjoying The Witcher 3 a great deal. But if my game is big, there better be something to do or something interesting to see in every square inch of that landscape, otherwise I'm just going to fast travel from one corner of the world to the other. And I'm certainly not going to find all those fucking flags.

2364: More MV

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I've been playing some more with RPG Maker MV today. Despite telling myself before I started fiddling around that I wasn't going to be too ambitious, my project's plugins folder is now full to bursting with all manner of goodies to extend the functionality of the basic engine and basically make it almost unrecognisable from its vanilla form. (This is good, because "it looks like an RPG Maker game" is considered a grave insult by some people on the Internet.)

I'm not going to share any specific details about the game I'm putting together to learn the program as, if it ever gets finished, I want it to be a nice surprise for my friends to enjoy (but hopefully a certain amount of appeal to those of you who don't know me quite so well, also). However, I can talk a bit about some of the plugins and goodies I've been making use of.

An absolutely essential site for those wanting to go beyond the basic functionality of the RPG Maker MV engine is the MV Plugins Master List. It is, in theory, a central repository of links to the most popular RPG Maker MV plugins, along with snippets of information about them. This was my starting point for exploring the world of plugins.

RPG Maker veterans will be familiar with the name Yanfly, no doubt, as he's one of the most active users of the program's various incarnations, and has long been producing some of the most well-regarded plugins and scripts out there. His new site is absolutely rammed with fantastic plugins, all of which are well documented and easy to use. Of particular interest to many people will be his implementations of the popular ATB and CTB battle systems from the Final Fantasy series; when used in conjunction with other plugins to alter how the battle screen looks and works, it's easier than ever to put together a really distinctive looking game with easily understandable mechanics.

Himeworks is another great resource for plugins. Not only does Tsukihime produce some excellent, again well-documented plugins, she (I think?) is also an active member of both the RPG Maker community in general and the community on her own site, offering helpful advice and accepting feedback for her plugins through the comment sections.

Aekashics has some great resources, this time mostly visual ones for use in battle or as appropriate throughout your project. Aekashics has a very distinctive style that is nice and consistent between all the different resources available, and they're all very high quality. If you don't want to use the default RPG Maker monsters but are as cack-handed as me when it comes to producing artwork, Aekashics' site should be your first stop.

Here are a few other cool plugins I've been using:

PrettyGauges – a delightfully simple plugin that allows you to easily customise the rather amateurish-looking default HP, MP and suchlike gauges in RPG Maker MV.
TerraxLighting – a super-cool lighting system that allows you to use events as light sources on your maps. The radius and colour of the light sources can be adjusted, and they can even be made to "flicker" slightly to simulate fire or electronic screens. Using lighting makes a huge difference to how RPG Maker MV's default visuals look.
VictorEngine – a series of useful plugins that run a similar gamut to Yanfly's collection. Where VE wins out over Yanfly is in things like the customisation of visual elements like the battle screen status window and suchlike, whereas many of Yanfly's plugins are more focused on new or optimised functionality.

I'm having a lot of fun so far. Whatever you might think of RPG Maker-produced games, there's no denying that the software itself is an extremely fun, creative tool that allows anyone to put together something that will make them happy. It can also be a great jumping-on point to learn coding principles, even if you're not writing your own JavaScript plugins yourself — the Event system's pseudo-code is a good way of thinking about how things work and how you tell a computer to do things, but is simple and straightforward enough I bet even my friend James (who, when it comes to technology, is borderline retarded, which is strange because he's otherwise a very clever chap) could make an NPC walk around and call the player a bellend.

2363: EmVee

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I love RPG Maker. I've loved it long before I first used it and was extremely jealous of the American PS1 owners who got to use it on console, and I was thrilled when I first discovered the legendary unofficial localisation of RPG Maker 2000 by Don Miguel. The game I made with moral support from my friends at university, The Adventures of Dave Thunder, was shaping up to be a lot of silly fun — albeit probably far too full of in-jokes to be appreciated by anyone outside my circle of friends — but it was unfortunately lost when my computer at the time suffered a catastrophic system failure. I've never quite forgiven myself for not backing it up.

But I've maintained an interest in RPG Maker ever since, and have fiddled around with numerous incarnations over the years. Most recently, I snagged a copy of RPG Maker MV, the latest version, in the recent Steam sale, and I've been having a play with it. It seems like a lot of fun so far, and a good evolution even from VX Ace, the previous edition.

The basic toolset is almost identical. There's a simple tile-based map editor for you to draw your various locations using tilesets — either those included or those you create yourself in an external art program. On top of that is the Event system, which allows you to place objects and triggers on your map and, constructing pseudo-code through a menu-driven interface, make them do all manner of different things, ranging from being a random NPC wandering around spouting bollocks to a lengthy cutscene event that changes depending on your previous actions in the game.

The basic Event system is very powerful and flexible, but for the last few versions of RPG Maker it's also been supported by the ability to use scripting — actual coding — alongside the pseudo-code created in the Event editor. Previously, RPG Maker used a variation on Ruby for its scripting language; in MV, it's made the change to straight JavaScript, arguably a much more widespread (and easier to learn?) language.

What's particularly nice about MV's scripting support is that it's organised in a completely different way to previous incarnations. Instead of having a huge, daunting Script Editor window where it's possible to completely break your whole game with just one little typo, RPG Maker MV works by using JavaScript plugins. Drop these in the appropriate subfolder of your project, activate them within RPG Maker, configure them as appropriate, then off you go.

It's a simple change, but a very effective one. The fact that each plugin is treated as its own module with its own settings means that plugin creators can create a simple list of parameters that less code-savvy RPG makers can tweak and change without having to even look at any JavaScript whatsoever. Many plugins also have "friendly", easily readable Plugin Commands to trigger various functionality, too — no more "this.enemyType(math.random(floor.bollocks));" or whatever, although you still can perform direct script calls if you so desire.

Best of all, the localisers Degica have embraced the most active members of the RPG Maker community over the years and brought them on board to help out with making RPG Maker MV an excellent package. Legendary RPG Maker scripter Yanfly, for example, has produced a huge number of plugins for MV already, and other well-known contributors to the community such as Archeia have played an important and active role in making RPG Maker MV what looks like the definitive version of RPG Maker… until the next one comes out, of course.

I'm just farting around with it at the moment with no real grand plan in mind; I'm putting together a relatively straightforward game using mostly standard assets as a means of getting my "eye" back in as well as learning MV's new features. It's not going to be anything amazing or revolutionary — going by previous experience, it probably won't be finished, either — but it's providing something fun to do when I want to keep my mind occupied.

2362: Geralt's Private Dicking

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I've been enjoying The Witcher 3 so far. It's a lovely looking game with an interesting plot, some great characters and a shitload of things to do.

To a certain extent, I almost wish it was an adventure game rather than an RPG.

The reason I say this is that The Witcher 3, much like its predecessors, is at its absolute finest when presenting protagonist Geralt with quests that are much more complex than "go to x and kill y". Which, to be fair, is most of them, since The Witcher has never really done the whole "bring me 15 squirrel ears" thing, thankfully. However, the real highlights of the game are the quests that involve a lengthy investigation of something strange that has been happening.

These quests, of which there are numerous, play out in a similar manner to something like the enormously underrated Murdered: Soul Suspect, requiring you to comb crime scenes for information (perhaps using Geralt's heightened Witcher Senses) and come to some conclusions of your own as to what happened. Many of these quests have branching paths and different consequences for how you choose to proceed in them, too, making for an interesting experience where you never feel like you've made the "wrong" choice.

Since the world of The Witcher is one of dark fantasy, a lot of the things Geralt ends up investigating are pretty gruesome and horrifying. But, as with most people who deal with the unpleasant on a daily basis, Geralt has both a strong stomach and a wry sense of very black humour.

Herein lies one of the biggest strengths of the whole Witcher series when compared to the interminable tedium of Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series: personality. Despite the fact you can build Geralt's abilities how you see fit as he levels up, he is a strongly written character in his own right. Sure, there's a certain degree of leeway in how much of an asshole you can be to people throughout, mostly in order to allow for various different conclusions to narrative threads, but even with these options available, Geralt is still a well-defined character who maintains a consistent personality throughout the whole game. Whole series, in fact; he's grown and changed over the course of the three games he's been in to date, but he's still recognisably Geralt.

I'm intrigued to see how well-paced the whole game is. It's entirely possible to avoid the story-based quests altogether and just go hooning around the countryside on horseback looking for "points of interest" to clear, which usually involve killing monsters or bandits, but this gets a bit tiresome after a while. Instead, the best way to play, it seems, is to focus on a quest and where it takes you, pick up any other quests you might find on your way between key locations, and perhaps drop in on any points of interest that come up on your journey if they're not too far out of your way. Attempting to "grind" your way through each of the game's maps by methodically clearing out all the points of interest is clearly a way to drive yourself to insanity, and indeed it's precisely because I did this in Oblivion that I grew to hate the Elder Scrolls games. (Well, that coupled with their complete lack of personality and atrocious storytelling, anyway.) Thankfully, it's not necessary; it takes only a thousand experience points to gain each and every level, and completing quests is by far the most efficient means of getting said experience points, so in many ways the game is actively pushing you towards its most interesting things to do, which is absolutely fine by me.

Been playing for 18 hours so far and Geralt hasn't shagged anyone yet, though; wonder if I'm doing something wrong…

2361: Up to Date on Ys

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Just in time to cover it extensively this month over on MoeGamer, I'm finally up to date on the Ys series, as I finished Memories of Celceta tonight.

I'm glad I finally took the time to play through it all, as it really is a remarkable series that has evolved considerably since its humble beginnings. I'll save the history lesson for MoeGamer, though, and talk a bit about Memories of Celceta specifically.

Memories of Celceta builds on what Ys Seven started, and does it very well. While Ys Seven felt a little bit clunky at times — at least partly due to the fact that it was running on the crusty old PSP hardware — Celceta feels much more fluid and refined. It's not perfect — the poor old Vita struggles to keep the framerate up when there's lots happening on screen, but it never really becomes a problem. No, I'm talking more about the gameplay; combat is fluid and satisfying, and the skills each character has all feel a lot more distinct than the rather feeble ones you had for the majority of Seven. Different characters have clear purposes, both in and out of combat, and each one is enjoyable to fight as.

The thing I liked the most about it, I think, was the emphasis on exploration. The central concept of the game is that protagonist Adol is exploring the uncharted forest of Celceta, a job well suited to an adventurer such as he. Indeed, your progress in the game roughly corresponds to your progress uncovering the surprisingly sprawling map, and by the end of the game you'll be at, or at least close to, 100% of the forest being mapped out.

And it's an interesting forest, too, with plenty of distinct areas rather than remaining uniformly green and leafy throughout. There are plains-like clearings, towering mountains, crystalline lakes and damp, soggy marshland. Later in the game there's the Ashen Forest, which is a beautiful, almost otherworldly area bathed in a curious sparkling, purple mist.

I found myself missing the "jump" button from Oath in Felghana and its ilk less in Celceta than I did in Ys Seven. This is because the maps were overall better designed and more interesting to explore. Ys Seven's dungeons in particular weren't bad as such, but it's clear that technological limitations, at times, held Falcom's designers back a bit from making some really interesting levels.

I particularly liked the various "artifacts" you acquire throughout Celceta, many of which provide you with new traversal abilities in true Metroidvania tradition. The Hydra Scales, for example, allow you to swim underwater and reach otherwise inaccessible chests and areas, while the Gale Boots allow you to run incredibly fast, even straight up certain walls. The controls for some of these non-standard means of traversal are occasionally a bit wobbly — steering the Gale Boots is near-impossible, so you better line up before you unleash them, for example, and combat underwater is a terrible experience proving that Falcom, unfortunately, didn't learn anything from Ys Origin's excellent underwater section — but they never get in the way of gameplay, because they're usually required only to bypass a particular obstacle, at which point you can just get back to doing what Adol does best — hacking and slashing through hordes of enemies.

I won't spoil anything, but the finale was fantastic, too. The Ys games have all had excellent finales so far, and Celceta certainly didn't disappoint with a particularly strong final confrontation and the unusual move of having a few things extra to do after the "final" boss. It was dramatic, exciting — and, perhaps most importantly, extremely relevant to the overall Ys lore, which, again, is something that Falcom excels at. By now, the lore of the world of Ys is extremely well-realised, with each new game bringing us new information about a region or country; effectively, we learn about these lands alongside Adol as he continues his quest to see every part of the world "without shortcuts".

I'm a total convert to Ys, then, and you better believe I'll be all over Ys VIII when it inevitably comes West. In the meantime, have a rest, Adol Christin, you've definitely earned it.