2235: Give Flame Over a Go with This Month's PlayStation Plus Games

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Idiots, as we all know, love complaining. And some of the loudest, most complain-happy idiots are those who whinge about the monthly games on offer via Sony's subscription service PlayStation Plus.

For those unfamiliar, PlayStation Plus is a service you pay a monthly fee to for, among other things, the privilege of playing multiplayer games on the PlayStation 4 platform. Unless you're a die-hard multiplayer gamer, though, the far more attractive things that PlayStation Plus gets you is discounted prices on PlayStation Store digital downloads, and "free" games every month — I put "free" in inverted commas since you only get to keep them for as long as you keep paying the subscription; they deactivate if you stop paying, though you can get them back again by resubscribing.

In recent months, the aforementioned complain-happy idiots have been very keen to point out that the monthly games on offer have tended to err on the side of smaller-scale, independently developed titles rather than triple-A games, the latter of which were originally positioned as a selling point for the service. However, I actually prefer things this way around, since it gives me the opportunity to give games a go that I've perhaps liked the look of, but not enough to want to drop £10-£15 on them at the time.

Enter Flame Over from Laughing Jackal, a firefighting roguelike that I've had my eye on for a while, but somehow never got around to picking up. This month, it's one of the PlayStation Plus games, so now I don't need to agonise over whether or not it will be a worthwhile purchase for me: I just have a copy for as long as I'm a PlayStation Plus member, and since it's a digital download-only game, it's not a game I feel obliged to pick up a physical copy of — I do love my physical copies, as regular readers will know — because a physical copy doesn't exist.

As it turns out, Flame Over is a very good game indeed and I should have picked it up sooner, but oh well; I have it now.

Flame Over casts you in the role of a firefighter with no visible eyes, a big helmet and an impressive moustache. It's your job to enter a 16-floor building with your trusty hose and extinguisher, put out all the fires and rescue as many people and cats as possible before… well, dying. It is a roguelike of sorts, after all, so yes, despite the cartoonish, slapstick visual humour, the overall tone is oddly bleak, if truthful: fire doesn't care who you are, and it will kill you if you don't respect it.

Gameplay is simple and reminiscent of a classic computer or console game from the 8-bit era. You have a ticking clock, you have a maze-like level to negotiate — randomly generated, hence the "roguelike" descriptor — and you have high scores to beat, here represented as money that you can subsequently spend on powerups and permanent improvements to make your future runs a bit easier.

Putting out fires is a simple case of squirting them with your hose or extinguisher. The hose has a longer range and makes things wet so fire is less likely to spread, while the extinguisher covers a wider area and is the only way to put out electrical fires, which are prone to flaring up again after you've put them out once. You can also completely negate electrical fires by finding the fusebox on each floor, but this will inevitably be beyond a room that has come to resemble one of the lower circles of Hell, so you'll need to clear a pathway through first.

The interesting thing about Flame Over is that it makes things deliberately just a little bit awkward for the player to keep things interesting. The camera angle isn't quite top-down, which means that things on the "bottom" wall on-screen can often be hidden, necessitating rotation of the camera in order to make sure you haven't missed anything. This is an additional thing to think about in the heat (no pun intended) of the moment, and with flames flaring up all around you, it contributes considerably to the rather wonderful growing sense of panic that the game creates.

That timer is a distinctly old-school touch, too; you can extend it by rescuing people, and when it runs out it's not immediately the end of the game: rather, in a manner somewhat similar to seriously old-school games like Spelunker and Bubble Bobble, running out of time triggers the appearance of a difficult to avoid (but absolutely avoidable) enemy who will immediately end your game if you come into contact with him. In this case, said unavoidable enemy is Death himself, further driving home the game's point about mortality.

Oh my goodness me is it an addictive little bugger, though. It's simple to play, repetitive, sometimes awkward and regularly frustrating — but it's fun. It's a "pure" game, designed not to tell a meaningful story or make bold, sweeping sociopolitical statements; it's a game designed to test your skills and patience, and as someone who grew up with games when they were nothing but tests of your skills and patience, Flame Over feels like a rather wonderful callback to those good old days; a game that, were it not for its 60fps 1080p polygonal graphics, would probably have been eminently at home on the Atari 8-bit computers or Commodore 64. And that is absolutely a compliment.

So anyway. Next time you're disappointed that PlayStation Plus isn't giving you a free copy of Call of Duty or some other such shit, take a moment to check out the things you might not have heard of: you might just find yourself pleasantly surprised by the charming games on offer, and discover some new favourites in the process.

2234: Is VR Really Going to Take Off?

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I have, believe it or not, a friend. I have several, in fact, but this friend's name is Tom. Tom primarily spends his money on bits and pieces for his PC, and is extremely excited about the impending virtual reality revolution — so much so that he's bought an incredible "gaming chair" with attached steering wheel, pedals and HOTAS (Hands On Throttle And Stick) control scheme, ready to play everything from Elite: Dangerous to a variety of racing games in glorious, stereoscopic, head-tracking 3D.

Me, I'm yet to be convinced by the value of VR. I know that theoretically it should be enormously exciting, but at present, there are two big things that put me off: firstly, the cost, which, for however much HTC and Oculus might try to argue that they're making VR more mainstream, is well out of the budget of most people; and secondly the fact that there's still a fundamental disconnect between yourself and the virtual reality into which you're trying to immerse yourself.

There's not a lot to say about the cost, really — it's a lot, I can't afford it, because I'd have to upgrade my PC as well as buy all the hardware, that's about it — so I'll focus on the latter aspect, because that's what bothers me about the technology long-term.

There are certain applications for which VR seems ideally suited. Something like Elite: Dangerous, for example, will likely be very good indeed, because the entire Elite experience is based on you sitting in a chair in your spaceship cockpit, flipping switches and jiggling joysticks in order to fly around and do spacey things. Likewise, driving games will also be very good, since again, the experience is based around you sitting in a chair holding on to a steering wheel for dear life. In other words, the experiences that my friend Tom is already pretty much set up for will probably be pretty good, though I do still find myself wondering how you'll find the right buttons to press with a bloody great helmet attached to your face — particularly if you're not using a fancy-pants HOTAS setup.

It's when we get into other types of experience that I feel the disconnect between the real and the virtual will be somewhat more jarring. Anything first-person would theoretically be excellent in VR, were it not for the fact that you're not actually going anywhere; the lack of physicality to motion through the world seems like something that would be very disconcerting indeed. There are companies that are attempting to get around this very issue, most notably with a big-ass treadmill-like thing that allows you to actually physically walk in order to control your motion through the game world, but at this point you're escalating the already substantial costs of VR even further just to get the feeling of immersion that VR is theoretically supposed to provide.

I don't know. I think my issue is that I'm yet to see a true "killer app" for VR; something which, without a doubt, shows that VR is the absolute only way to do this. Until that killer app comes along — or technology improves to allow things like true haptic feedback and a true feeling of physically inhabiting "another world" — then I shall remain both cautious and skeptical about the whole thing, and very surprised if it takes off with anyone but the most dedicated enthusiasts of expensive lumps of plastic wired up to their computer.

2233: MegaNep's True Ending: A Love Letter to the Dreamcast, and to the Player

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I cleared Megadimension Neptunia VII's True Ending path this evening, after a horrible moment where I thought I hadn't triggered it and would have to do the whole thing through again (which is actually not quite as monumental an undertaking as you might think) — and I was very impressed with one of the most satisfying finales I've seen in a story-based game for quite some time.

Mild spoilers ahead.

At the core of MegaNep's overarching narrative is the story of Uzume Tennouboshi, a new character to the series who, like the series regulars, embodies a games console — in this case, Sega's ahead-of-its-time Dreamcast. For those unfamiliar with their gaming hardware history, the Dreamcast was a 128-bit console that came out towards the tail end of the console generation that was primarily 32- and 64-bit: that of the original PlayStation and the Nintendo 64. It was astronomically powerful in comparison to its contemporaries and was home to some wonderful games, many of which are still fondly remembered today. But for one reason or another, it was regarded as a commercial failure, and both it and its games dropped out of mainstream distribution after just a couple of years, with the 128-bit era only starting in earnest once the PlayStation 2 shattered all expectations of what console gaming was all about following its launch in 2000.

Uzume's identity and background is initially a mystery to Neptune and company, but over the source of MegaNep's complete story, her past comes to light. Having once been a goddess to what is now Neptune's domain of Planeptune, she was voluntarily sealed away due to the fact that she was unable to control her "illusion" power and largely forgotten about; an allegory for the Dreamcast being released onto the market too early and developers and publishers alike arguably not being sure how to make best use of this new power on offer.

The main villain of the piece is revealed very late in the story to be the darker side of Uzume, representing her irrational hatred and bitterness at feeling abandoned by her people. Through a complicated series of happenings too twisty-turny to describe in detail here, Neptune and her friends eventually manage to help Uzume come to terms with her past and realise that her memories have become tainted by hatred and regret; her people, in fact, loved her and cherished her, and it was with a heavy heart that they saw her sealed away for the protection of everyone.

There are two endings to MegaNep: one in which Uzume sacrifices herself to ensure her dark counterpart is not able to send a horde of monsters from her delusional "Heart Dimension" into Neptune's Hyper Dimension, and another in which Neptune and her friends refuse to leave her to die, and ultimately help her to overcome her darkness. This latter one is the True ending, and it demonstrates beyond a shadow of a doubt that the team at Idea Factory and Compile Heart hold the Dreamcast in considerable esteem; the truth about Uzume's past is described with such a wonderfully warm feeling of fondness that it's hard not to feel extremely nostalgic if you happened to be there when it all happened in our world, and the Neptunia series' biggest strength — characterisation and the feeling of bonds between these characters — really shines through as everyone expresses their love for Uzume and she, likewise, expresses her love for them.

What also made the ending satisfying, aside from this wonderfully genuine-feeling appreciation for the Dreamcast and its games, was the Neptunia series trademark "Thank You Corner", where the cast completely break the fourth wall and address the player directly, thanking them for playing and showering them with praise for beating the game. This is always a lovely moment in every Neptunia game, but in the case of MegaNep it feels particularly heartfelt; it's obvious that the words coming out of the mouths of the characters are actually those of the series' creators, expressing their gratitude for the series having gone from strength to strength over the years, overcoming the adversity of its early installments' poor reviews, widespread ignorance from the press and self-professed RPG "experts" that persists to this day, and ultimately becoming a genuinely rather wonderful franchise that I really don't want to see the back of any time soon.

In many ways, it was like a "curtain call" for the game, and while previous Neptunia games have handled this in much the same way, there was something about this moment in MegaNep that made it more satisfying and touching than it's ever been before. It's a rare and wonderful feeling for a creative work to seem like it's talking directly to you, but the Neptunia series has always felt that way, and never more so than with Megadimension Neptunia VII.

Onwards to the post-game, then; I have trophies to clean up and Colosseum battles to fight! (And in the meantime, I promise I'll find something new to write about soon.)

2232: Pondering Postgame

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I feel like I've become much more conscious of a lot of single-player games incorporating an almost MMO-like "endgame" these days, though pondering the matter a little further I'm not sure it's as new a concept as I initially thought it was.

My musings on this subject are inspired by my second playthrough of Megadimension Neptunia VII, which is going considerably quicker than my 62-hour first playthrough of it thanks to its myriad of rather lovely New Game Plus features — faster run speed, higher jump height, ability to turn off random encounters and a bunch of other things besides, including the ability to instantly skip story scenes you've seen before — and in which I'm taking aim for the "true" ending and the subsequent postgame, which allows you to continue playing after the credits have rolled to clean up whatever it is you still want to get out of the game.

In the case of Megadimension Neptunia and numerous other games like it — largely JRPGs, with a few exceptions — the postgame is often designed with trophy collecting in mind, with some of the most challenging trophies requiring dedicated effort well above and beyond what the main story of the game demanded. In most cases, you're not actually missing out on any story by pursuing these additional objectives; you're simply expressing a desire to see everything the game has to offer, and to push your knowledge of its mechanics to the limit.

This is where the MMO endgame comparison comes in. Take my particular brand of MMO poison as an example: Final Fantasy XIV has a linear main scenario that takes you from level 1 to level 60 naturally, telling an interesting tale while equipping you with the skills you'll need for high-level play. Once you reach level 60 and beat the main story you have a few choices: you can put the game down, satisfied that you've "finished" it; you can keep playing it to see what the new episodes of the story added in each new content patch add to the overall narrative; or you can delve into the endgame proper, which often relies less on story and more on mechanics and grinding, with the promise of significant increases in your character's power as a reward.

This is exactly the case with modern single-player games that offer postgame content, too. In the case of Megadimension Neptunia VII, there are hidden treasures to hunt down, additional monsters to fight, challenging dungeons to clear and collectibles to… you know. There's no actual obligation for you to take these extra challenges on if you're satisfied with how the main story concluded, but the option is there for those who want to spend a bit more time with the game without having to worry about whether they'll lock themselves out of something by advancing the plot too far.

As I say, I'd got into my head that this was a somewhat recent concept; when I think back to titles that I spent a lot of time with in years gone by, in many cases you had to take care of any and all of your business before you beat the final boss and rolled the credits. Take something like Final Fantasy VII, for example; once you unlock the final dungeon, pretty much the whole world is open to you, and there are a bunch of optional sidequests you can go and complete for some fairly significant rewards if you see fit, though none of them are essential to the plot, and none of them are necessary to beat the final boss. Once you do beat that final boss, though, that's the end of the game — in RPGs of that era, you often didn't even get to save a "clear file" to start a New Game Plus and carry over some of your achievements to a new runthrough.

But when I consider things in a bit more depth, the idea of the postgame — of an ostensibly narrative-based game remaining relevant and interesting to play even after you've seen the story's finale — has been around for quite some time. Konami's PS1 and PS2-era games, for example, often featured a ranking/score screen at the end of the game, challenging you to try it again, but do it faster/better/taking fewer hits. Other games unlocked new difficulty settings, or unlocked alternative (sometimes joke) endings. Capcom's Resident Evil 2 took the ambitious approach of having multiple ways to experience the narrative: you could play it once as Claire, then see what Leon was up to while Claire was doing her thing; then you could play it "for the first time" again as Leon, then see what Claire was up to while Leon was doing his thing. Each of these four playthroughs, while similar, had its own unique content, making the game worth replaying — and once you'd done all that, there were the super-secret paths such as Hunk and Tofu, which mostly acted as a reward for those who had put in enough time and effort to master the game.

MMO players often describe reaching the level cap of their game of choice as "just the beginning" of your experience. And it's very much true; pre-Heavensward Final Fantasy XIV sat at level 50 for a good couple of years, but managed to feel like it was progressing at a regular, steady rate, both in terms of new content and character power levels — and it's doubtless the same with other MMOs that keep adding new stuff to keep level-cap players interested and engaged.

What I find interesting is the idea that a game designed primarily to tell a story — to have a clear end — can have so much beyond that story content, even if it's a single-player game that isn't expanded over time with new content, DLC or the like. It's one of the many things that sets games apart from non-interactive forms of entertainment, and it's an opportunity to enjoy a different side of a game you've taken pleasure in engaging with: having worked your way through the narrative, you're now focusing on mastering the mechanics until you're satisfied you've got everything you're going to out of the game in question.

I never used to do multiple playthroughs of games — except for Final Fantasy VII, which my friends and I were borderline obsessed with in our teens — but these days, I very much enjoy exploring the postgame, trophy hunting and seeing multiple endings. Once I'm done with Megadimension Neptunia VII, I'm particularly looking forward to Dungeon Travelers 2's postgame; from everything I've heard about it, it very much takes the MMO approach of "finishing the story is just the beginning… now prove you really know how to play this game. If, you know, you want to." — and that is something that has come to appeal to me very much over the years, even as many of my peers are getting less and less patient with lengthy, time-consuming games. I wonder what made me go the other way?

Oh well. Time for bed now; tomorrow I will find out if I've actually done all the arbitrary triggers that ensure I will get Megadimension Neptunia VII's "true" ending, or if I need to do the whole bloody thing through for a third time. (That's not actually too bad; to put it in context, while my first playthrough took 62 hours, my second playthrough has probably been no more than 3 hours so far, and I'm just coming into the third and final story arc, which puts me maybe an hour away from the "ending".)

2231: Initial Impressions on Alexander: Midas

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Tonight, we cleared the last area of the new raid dungeon in Final Fantasy XIV… in its "normal" incarnation, anyway. Savage is likely to prove a somewhat stiffer challenge, but regular ol' vanilla had plenty of hurdles to overcome, too.

Now that we've been through all four of the new raids, I thought I'd ponder how I felt about them, and about Alexander as a whole compared to The Binding Coil of Bahamut.

The first thing to note about Alexander is that the overall tone of the whole thing is very different to Coil. Coil represented one of the most serious, dramatic parts of Final Fantasy XIV's story, and over its entirety revealed some very significant background lore about the Allagans and the Meracydians, both of whom we'd seen mentioned (and occasionally explored the relics of) but never encountered, mostly due to them both being long dead.

Alexander, meanwhile, largely concerns the goblins, and much like their Final Fantasy XI counterparts, goblins in Final Fantasy XIV are rather silly, afflicted with distinctive speech patterns and, for the most part, there for comic relief. They're not very threatening, in other words, so for them to be introduced as the main villains of the new raid cycle was… interesting, to say the least.

The overall aesthetic of Alexander is very different to Coil, too. Coil began as an expedition into the bowels of the earth and gradually gave way into a combination of fantastic, otherworldly scenery and pure sci-fi, futuristic environments, many of which were absolutely breathtaking in their scale. Alexander, conversely, has a pretty consistent "steampunk" look throughout its entirety, though Midas does a somewhat better job than Gordias in terms of presenting a bit of variety in the way things look.

This difference in aesthetic extends to the main attraction of the raids, too: the bosses. In Coil, you fought a wide variety of foes, ranging from a giant genetically modified snake to a fearsome dragon god via technologically advanced defence systems, a bioengineered lamia, a robot treant and, of course, the reincarnation of Final Fantasy XIV 1.0's main villain, Nael van Darnus, now going by Nael deus Darnus having apparently changed gender and gone a bit, well, dragonish.

Alexander, conversely, sees you fighting a lot of things in a similar mould: in Gordias, you fight a large steampunk robot thing, followed by a swarm of goblins and large steampunk robot things, followed by a squishy Pepsiman wannabe in what appears to be a sewage outlet, concluding with a battle against The Manipulator, which is a large steampunk robot thing. Midas is a bit better: first you fight a mad scientist goblin who keeps drinking his own concoctions and growing to Hulk-like proportions, then you fight a series of four large steampunk robot things, then you fight the main villain of the plot arc (and his cat), then finally you fight five large steampunk robot things — four of which you fought earlier in the raid — that then combine to make one enormous steampunk robot thing.

While I still like Alexander less than Coil in terms of its aesthetic and enemy designs, Midas is a big step in a better direction. Everything about it is better, from the variety between the four areas to the background plot that is revealed as you progress, which was rather lacking and forgettable in Gordias. It still lacks some of the outright drama that Coil had — the final boss of this particular cycle is an intense fight, but it's more chaotically humorous than terrifying like Twintania, Nael and Bahamut were — but things are improving a lot.

Of particular note is the boss music for the final boss, which I present with some pleasure for you below, in all its '70s anime glory:

Happy with how things have turned out with 3.2. I was getting concerned the game was losing its magic, but it's well and truly back on target.

2230: A Reminder that Dungeon Travelers 2 is Excellent

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I forget why I paused my playthrough of Dungeon Travelers 2 a while back, but it certainly wasn't because I didn't like it. On the contrary, I absolutely love it, and have been really enjoying getting back into it sporadically in the evenings over the last week or so.

For those who missed my previous enthusings on the subject of this game, allow me to explain.

Dungeon Travelers 2 is an old-school "gridder" dungeon crawler for PlayStation Vita, developed by Sting and published by Atlus. Absolutely no-one would have heard of it were it not for Polygon's Phil Kollar writing an indignant article called "Atlus can do better than this creepy, porn-lite dungeon crawler" a while back, after which everyone who thought Kollar was being a shallow, judgemental douchebag promptly preordered the game and eagerly awaited its arrival. While a lot of this immediate backlash was simply to spite Kollar's terrible article — which didn't even make an effort to understand anything about the game beyond "it has somewhat suggestive images in it" — those in the know were quick to point out that developer Sting has an impeccable pedigree when it comes to mechanically solid and interesting role-playing games that are often just a little bit unusual, making them very memorable.

Structurally, Dungeon Travelers 2 is fairly business as usual for the gridder genre; it's the moment to moment gameplay where it shines, and particularly the variety of ways in which it's possible to play. Heavily based on party composition and character classes, the frequent combat in the game is not the sort of thing you can get through by mashing the "Attack" button — indeed, this is a game that will happily obliterate your entire party in the very first dungeon if you don't take appropriate precautions and play cautiously, remembering that in dungeon crawlers, it is usually inadvisable to attempt to clear out an entire dungeon in one single expedition.

No, rather Dungeon Travelers 2's combat is based very much on making appropriate use of your party's abilities, both active and passive. There's a certain amount of MMO-style conceit in there, too; unlike many turn-based RPGs, it is absolutely possible to have a tank up front maintaining the attention of the enemies as much as possible, while the back row rains down death from a distance.

Timing is absolutely key, too, even though the game is strictly turn-based. Spells and certain abilities don't cast immediately; they have a period of time during which the caster has to chant the spell or song, and it's only after this that it activates. Spells can be interrupted by a significant amount of damage or being afflicted with a status effect such as Stun or Silence — see, told you it was MMO-ish.

A lot of the passive abilities are really interesting, too. There's one of the Berserker tank abilities that afflicts enemies with some significant stat debuffs when they hit you, and others that counterattack with nasty status effects or even outright damage in return. Certain buffs and debuffs can make these procs (there I go with the MMO lingo again) more or less likely to trigger, so effective combat is a case of judging the situation and making your party handle it in the most efficient manner.

A good example comes from the Girimekhala boss I fought in my last play session. She had a bunch of really unpleasant abilities, including a heavy physical attack on a whole row of party members, another heavy physical attack on characters adjacent in the turn order, a dance that lowered party stats and inflicted damage every round, and an ability similar to the Berserker's counter-debuff mentioned above.

The first couple of times I fought Girimekhala, I went all-out attack and was quickly obliterated; tanks can't tank very well if their stats are shot to shit, and once they went down, the back line quickly followed.

What I ended up doing was have Alisia the Valkyrie (defense tank) use her Cover ability for a one-off (until recast) chance to take damage in place of a party member, her Parry ability to completely nullify damage from one physical attack, and her Material Barrier ability to shield the entire party against physical damage. I then activated Grishna's Blood Rage ability to boost her maximum HP so she could soak up some damage, too; as a Berserker, her defence isn't anywhere near as good as a Valkyrie, but she makes up for this with her auto-debuff ability and strong offensive abilities which, while not very useful in this battle as they would always be countered, are often a big help.

Meanwhile, the back row got to work. Melvy the Witch (one of the strongest caster classes) repeatedly cast heavy damage single-target spells on Girimekhala, and acted as the main DPS (or DPT if we're being picky, I guess) of the group. Fiora the Priestess, meanwhile, simply acted as a healbot, throwing out Circle Heal every turn to cure any damage that had managed to get through Alisia's monstrous physical resistance. And Conette the Diva (support class) sang a song that helped Melvy and Fiora to chant their spells more quickly as well as using her Cook ability from her base Maid class to keep everyone's TP (needed to use abilities or cast spells) topped up.

Puzzling this out and putting the plan into action was extremely satisfying, and much more interesting than simply throwing attacks out and occasionally healing. This fight simply wasn't possible to win with an all-out attack strategy; as you'll see from my description above, only one out of my five party members was inflicting damage on the boss, with the others all simply supporting the group in various ways. Thankfully Melvy's magic damage as a Witch is absolutely astronomical, so her burst damage more than made up for the relative infrequency of hits on the boss.

To cut a long story short, Phil Kollar could not have been more wrong about Dungeon Travelers 2. While it is filled with suggestive artwork and distinctly ecchi scenes both involving the main characters and when you defeat the monstergirl bosses, that's certainly not a reason to write it off or wag your finger at publisher Atlus, telling them they "can do better". In fact, it's absolutely one of the best examples of the dungeon crawler genre I've had the pleasure of playing to date, although be ready for a seriously stiff challenge, particularly once you start getting into the optional dungeons and boss fights.

2229: The Fist of the Son and The Cuff of the Son

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Been taking my time getting through the new Alexander raid (just the normal version) in Final Fantasy XIV over the last couple of evenings, and thought I'd write down a walkthrough for the first two floors, largely to refresh my own memory and perhaps to provide a convenient service to anyone passing by who wants to know such things.

As with Alexander: Gordias, Alexander: Midas is split into four areas, each of which allows you to get one piece of loot per week. These pieces of loot are tokens that can be exchanged for gear in Idyllshire in the same place you turn in Allagan Tomestones of Esoterics and Lore; like the gear from Gordias, you need varying numbers of tokens for different pieces of gear. Accessories require one bolt, so are the easiest to get, but are also often the smallest upgrade.

The Fist of the Son

Available loot: Bolt (1 needed for accessory), chain (1 needed for belt), pedal (2 needed for boots)

Run through the first area, and use the steam vents to jump up to the top of the room. Pass through the doorway and you'll be confronted with not one but two Fausts. They're much easier to handle than the one in The Fist of the Father, though; one tank take each, keep them together, focus down one at a time.

It's not over, though! After the second Faust drops, a pulsing AoE marker will appear on the floor. Get away from it, as Hummelfaust is going to drop down, dealing more damage the closer you are to its drop spot.

One tank should take Hummelfaust, the other should switch to DPSing and simply batter him down as quickly as possible. Much like OG Faust, this is designed as a DPS check to ensure that your group is going to be up to the job of toppling the subsequent bosses.

Once Hummelfaust is down, hop onto the conveyor belt to reach the boss room.

BOSS: Ratfinx Twinkledinks

This fight initially seems utterly bewildering, but it's actually fairly straightforward. You need to pay close attention to what is happening at all times, though; you might find it helpful to Focus Target Ratfinx to help keep an eye on what he's up to in case you need to target something else.

Before you start, mark the back-left corner of the room as A and the front-right corner as B. You'll be tanking Ratfinx at A, while B is set aside as a no-go area for a later mechanic.

Start the fight. Ratfinx will be reluctant to move as the battle begins, so take the opportunity to establish solid aggro if you're a tank. Once he transforms into his giant form, then you can move him over to A.

Ratfinx will proceed to pummel the main tank about the head, inflicting stacks of Headache, which increases damage taken. When Headache reaches 4 stacks, it becomes Concussion, which stuns you completely. When this happens, you'll see Ratfinx wind up for a big punch much like the one Sephirot does; at this point, the off-tank should immediately use Provoke and hit Ratfinx to take aggro from the original tank, and take the imminent big hit, which is slightly less big if you don't have Headache or Concussion.

Throughout the fight, Ratfinx will cast Bomb's Away, which brings one or more large bombs into the arena. When this happens, someone near the centre of the room should stand in the purple circle to activate the machinery, then at least one person should run to the red pool that forms to the side of the arena. Stepping in this turns you into a gorilla with just two abilities, the first of which allows you to punch bombs away with ease, and the second of which allows you to transform back into your normal form. Punch the bombs to B to keep them safely away from everyone, then change back and return to your normal role.

At various points throughout the battle, Ratfinx will mark a player and cast Glubgloop (or something similar). The marked player should get well out of the way of A, B and where the pools form under the syringes; after the AoE marker appears, a persistent puddle of goop will drop on the floor and stick around for a little while, so keep it out of the way, probably in one of the unmarked corners.

From his second giant transformation onwards, Ratfinx will start casting Boost. When he does this, a player needs to activate the machine in the middle and all players (including the tank) need to rush to the purple puddle to turn into a bird. By flying, you avoid his devastating ground-pound attack; once he's finished doing this, you can use Apothecary to change back into your normal form once again.

Repeat the process, with tanks keeping a careful eye out for Concussion and everyone else watching for Bomb's Away and Boost, and it won't be long before he's down. There are a few additional beasties that show up throughout the fight, but the off-tank can pick these up easily and they don't present much of a threat.

The Cuff of the Son

Available loot: Bolt (1 needed for accessory), pedal (2 needed for boots), lens (2 needed for headpiece)

Run forwards and engage the initial group of enemies. To take a bit of pressure off the main tank, the off-tank may want to take one of the two Gobwalkers. Burn down the enemies as quickly as possible and proceed down the corridor, where you'll be accosted by a number of Goblin Gliders. Tank and spank these, then jump down the passageway on the right of the corridor to be flung into the boss room, where you'll fight four bosses in succession. Don't worry; if you take one down, it stays down.

BOSS: Blaster

Blaster has two main attacks. The first is to drop mines in the arena. These will show AoE markers where they drop, and will continue to pulse afterwards. Do not stand on them, as they deal heavy damage and inflict various status effects in an area.

Blaster's second attack is to mark players; after a moment, he'll drop a Mirage version of himself on them, and after another moment or so, these will charge across the arena in the direction they're facing. Don't be in their way.

DPS down Blaster while avoiding these two mechanics and he'll fall easily.

BOSS: Brawler

Brawler has three attacks that don't have cast bars: you have to rely entirely on visual cues. These cues are related to the fists he holds up when he charges himself with energy; after the blue flash of light around both hands you'll see him have either a red fist, a blue fist or both fists, and you'll have a couple of seconds to handle the mechanic appropriately.

If he raises the red fist, a random player is going to get targeted and damaged. Everyone move away from the boss to minimise this damage; it declines with distance.

If he raises the blue fist, the off-tank should use Provoke to take aggro from the main tank, while the main tank gets behind the boss. Shortly after, the new main tank will take a big hit, but not as massive as the one the original tank would have taken with the Vulnerability debuff Brawler applies!

If he raises both fists, the current tank should turn Brawler around to face the rest of the party; he'll fire a massive dual laser whose damage is split between everyone it hits.

Best way to handle this is to have everyone stacked or lined up directly behind Brawler as the main tank tanks him, then move according to the mechanics. After a mechanic is finished, get back into position and continue.

BOSS: Swindler

This is a weird one that requires you to be observant, but it's not that complicated.

The main mechanic here is Swindlers High and Low Mathematicks debuffs that he applies to various players. High Mathematicks is a purple-coloured debuff icon, while Low Mathematicks is a red-coloured debuff icon. When you receive one of these, stand on a floor tile according to your debuff: if you have Low Mathematicks (red), stand on a red, elevated tile; if you have High Mathematicks, stand on a grey, normal tile. Note that the arrangement of the tiles will shift several times during the battle.

The only other mechanic for this fight sees a player marked with a circle around themselves and a number of orbs above their head. A number of people matching the number of orbs need to be in the circle to prevent horrible messy death.

Dance around according to the debuffs and you'll be good for the final battle.

BOSS: Vortexer

Vortexer will inflict a stacking Vulnerability debuff on whoever is tanking it; the off-tank should use Provoke and take aggro when this reaches two stacks.

Circle AoEs indicate that pools of fiery sludge (similar to Bahamut's attack in Turn 13) will be dropping in these places. Stay out of them, and don't run through them, as they debuff you while you're in them. Also make sure you don't have your back to one.

Super Cyclone is a massive knockback on everyone, centred on the boss. Position yourself so you won't get knocked back into a pool of sludge.

When a player gets marked, they'll drop a waterspout after a few moments. Position this somewhere near-ish and behind the boss.

Several players will get Shiva-style blizzard markers on and around them. At least one person needs to drop this with its circle over the waterspout to freeze it into a block of ice. These will leave a patch of Frostbite-inflicting ice on the ground for a short period, but these will dissipate after a few moments.

When Vortexer starts casting Ultra Flash, everyone (including the tank) needs to hide behind the frozen waterspout and break line-of-sight with Vortexer to avoid being instakilled. After this, the ice block will shatter and the process repeats. Once Vortexer is down, you're done!

2228: MegaNep: Thoughts After a First Playthrough

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Well, I finally finished Megadimension Neptunia VII for the first time. Took about 62 hours or so in the end; that was taking it fairly leisurely through the game and taking the time to unlock stuff here and there that I perhaps didn't need to do on a first playthrough. Next up for me is a New Game Plus run in which I go for the "true" ending, which leads on to a post-game segment during which you can clean up any bits and pieces you didn't finish off first time around. Or trophy hunt.

For now, though, I want to talk about my experiences with the game after a complete playthrough.

The first thing to say about the game is that, as I've mentioned before, this is Compile Heart's finest work to date. There are no significant technical issues beyond a couple of very minor frame drops in a few places; the script and translation is excellent (although there are a few more typos than there should be); and the gameplay is satisfying, enjoyable and well-balanced.

The first and last points there address two of the biggest criticisms the Neptunia series has had since its inception. From the original PS3 game onwards, the series — and Compile Heart's work in general — had been plagued with technical issues, most notably atrocious framerates that weren't really justifiable given the relative simplicity of the graphics compared to bigger-budget titles that ran a whole lot better. And, again, from the original game onwards, game balance has been an off-and-on problem: the original game (and the total overhaul Re;Birth1) was inconsistent in its difficulty, erring on the side of "suddenly way too hard" without warning; sequel mk2 and its Re;Birth counterpart was much too easy (and rather short, although it does still have the widest variety of endings in the series); Victory and Re;Birth3, meanwhile, got the closest to nailing the formula, but still had a few elements that could be a bit of a pain, most notably the heavily RNG-based Scout system.

So how does MegaNep counter these original problems? Well, in the case of the technical issues, it seems that Compile Heart is significantly more comfortable developing for PS4 than PS3. MegaNep runs at a pretty consistent 60fps pretty much all of the time; the only time it drops is in particularly busy scenes such as the "sakura"-style dungeons with cherry blossoms everywhere. MegaNep is even an improvement over the company's last game Omega Quintet, which ran very nicely in battle scenes, but which juddered a little bit in the (admirably large and sprawling) field areas. It's not going to win any awards for looking amazing, of course, but the graphics are perfectly acceptable and, as is the norm for the series, the character models and animations are very nice indeed.

As for the gameplay balancing, Compile Heart really feel like they've nailed it this time around. At no point did I feel like the game was too easy or too difficult, and progression was paced well. It's not a game that you need to grind to level 99 to be able to beat the last boss, either; my clear party consisted of characters between levels 40-60 (Nepgear being the highest at 60, not that I show her any favouritism, nosirree) and they dispatched the last boss without any difficulty. In other words, it's a game that you can stumble your way through from start to finish without running into too much trouble, but if you go a little off the beaten track from the linear storyline, there are plenty of ways to challenge yourself — and plenty of things to do in New Game Plus, too.

The game systems, having been significantly revamped from the Victory/Re;Birth formula, work extremely well. Skills don't feel over- or under-powered, and the basic combo attacks each character can perform are actually useful for things other than building up the EXE Drive meter now, too. Each character feels unique, too, with a variety of different skills, weapon types, combo arrangements and multi-person formation attacks to play with; there are a clearly number of "optimal" party setups that provide you with the most flexibility in terms of formation and partner moves in particular, but the systems are balanced well enough that you can take pretty much any combination you like into battle and have a good time. Oh, and while there are a few recycled dungeons from past games — it's series tradition by this point — there's also a ton of brand new, original content, including the wonderfully inventive (and infuriating) Neplunker dungeons as well as the mapless Senmuu Labyrinth.

Now, narrative and characterisation has never really been an issue for the Neptunia series, though my one criticism has been that it tends to have slightly weedy finales, particularly the final boss fights, which have previously been quite underwhelming at times. Pleasingly, MegaNep's finale (at least in the ending I got) is spectacular, dramatic and even emotional; it really tugs on the heartstrings as you see what these characters — characters who many players have spent many hours with — are going through to resolve the latest crisis.

The story in general is very good; split into three distinct acts, each with their own focus and expanding scale, it's interesting, enjoyable, varied and clever. It's not a rehash of the previous games' stories at all and it has worthwhile things to say, but it's never forgotten the series' roots in satire and parody. It's laugh-out-loud funny in places, tearjerkingly emotional in others. It's the best script the Neptunia characters have ever had to work with, and, like so much else about this game, feels like such a magnificent step up from the previous games that it's a delight to see. I'll talk more about this after I've seen the "true" ending and how it resolves things in an alternative manner.

In other words, it's not just a great Neptunia game, it's a great RPG, period. The only thing that saddens me is the fact that so many people will write it off without even giving it a shot for themselves; still, I guess that makes it all the more special for those of us in the know who can enjoy and appreciate it, both on its own merits and as, to date, the absolute pinnacle of the series.

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2226: Sephirot, The Fiend

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Final Fantasy XIV's new patch came out today, bringing with it some new dungeons and a spectacular new boss fight against Sephirot, The Fiend, one of the Warring Triad previously seen in Final Fantasy VI.

Unlike most of the other Trials that have been in the game so far, the Sephirot battle is separate from the main questline, and having a pop at it earlier revealed why: it's surprisingly tough! Once you know what you're doing, though, it's pretty straightforward. As such, I thought I'd share my observations from a couple of goes today in the hope of helping out anyone struggling with it.

Note that this isn't intended to be a particularly comprehensive guide and I can't remember the exact names of many abilities, but given that the Sephirot fight is largely dependent on observing animations and visual cues rather than cast bars, ability names aren't actually terribly helpful here.

So then. Here's how it works. I think.

Phase 1: That's Not Sephiroth

First phase is pretty straightforward. Main tank should pull Sephirot and turn him away from the rest of the group as normal and proceed to wail on him. Apply DoTs and AoE DoTs as appropriate.

Sephirot has a few different attacks in this phase. He has a conal AoE in front of him called Triple Trial, so this is the main reason the tank faces him away from the group. It doesn't do a lot of damage, but you'll want to keep the MT's HP as high as possible. MT should save cooldowns for the moment though.

Next is a jumping attack away from the MT onto a random player, after which he returns to the MT. Again, the damage isn't horrific, but keep on top of things. Priority after the jump should be topping off and shielding the MT for what comes next.

Sephirot will pull his left arm back ready to deliver a powerful punch. (Note that if you are tanking him, his left arm will be on the right of your screen, as you're facing him.) When this happens, MT should blow a suitable defensive cooldown (Shadow Skin or Rampart is enough) and Convalescence if you want to help out your healers a bit. When the animation completes, the big punch Sephirot was winding up for will deliver a powerful tankbuster in the region of 16-17k or so, though this can be reduced with cooldowns and shields.

Other than this, Sephirot has a large AoE that he blasts out towards a non-tank member of the group, which should be healed through.

At around 60%, Sephirot will become untargetable and spawn a bunch of adds. Both tanks should pick them up and pull them all together for DPS to AoE them. Prioritise the larger adds first, as they hit a bit harder and have more HP. As one set gets close to being killed a second set will spawn, so be ready to pick them up and bring them to the group.

When the adds are down, Sephirot will do his ultimate. You have quite a long time to prepare for this, so make the best use of the time. Sephirot will fall backwards off the platform and nothing will happen for a few seconds. Use the time to heal everyone up, then when you see Sephirot's newly giant hand grab the platform to pull himself up, drop Sacred Soil or other suitable defences ready for the incoming damage.

Phase 2: He Got Big

Tanking Sephirot is less important here, since he stays in one place and fires out mechanics at random players rather than whoever has aggro. Tanks should feel free to switch to DPS stance and wail on him as much as possible.

Note that Sephirot's hitbox is huge and you don't need to be standing anywhere near his model to actually hit him. Target him and stand on the edge of the circle on the ground and you'll hit him no problem; this is important for one of his main abilities in the phase.

At intervals throughout Phase 2, Sephirot will drop blue puddles on the ground. After these have sat there for a moment, he'll slam his fist down on the puddle, knocking everyone backwards. To counter this, stand near (not in) the puddle with your back to the side of the arena furthest away from you — think the final boss of Neverreap. He'll do this three times, so run back into position after being knocked back: first one is always directly in front of himself, then on the left, then on the right.

For Sephirot's other attacks, you once again need to watch his animations rather than cast bars. When he lowers himself down so his head is level with the platform, he's preparing to do a huge raid-wide knockback, so stand in front of him with plenty of space behind you to avoid falling off.

Immediately after the knockback, three adds will spawn: two that you've seen before and one tornadoey whirlwind thing. DPS down the tornadoey whirlwind thing as quickly as possible and it will drop a (harmless) tornado marker on the ground: this will be important in a moment. Then kill the other two adds. Shortly after you've done this, a big flashing arrow marker will appear over the tornado marker, so get in it. Sephirot will probably do a small knockback on you while you're getting into position, so make sure you immediately move back into the tornado: the reason you do this is so that the tornado blows you up in the air to avoid Sephirot's devastating arm-sweep attack, which is an instant KO if you get hit by it.

When Sephirot seems to charge energy into his chest, everyone should spread out because people are about to get hit by energy blasts with splash damage. Simple enough to avoid.

When two players are marked with shining silver markers — the same as in Turn 13 if you've done that — these two players should move to the sides of the arena to bait Sephirot's Earthshaker line AoE move away from the rest of the group. (Yes, this is indeed the exact same Earthshaker that Bahamut Prime does.)

When Sephirot holds two orbs out in front of him… I must confess I'm not entirely 100% on what this mechanic does, but it appears to be something similar to the Angra Mainyu fight in World of Darkness in that the arena is split into two different coloured sections, and you need to stand in the correct one. Perhaps someone can clarify in the comments if you have a better idea.

Shortly before or after the two orbs, Sephirot will summon two towers similar to those seen in later stages of Turn 13. Like those towers, you need to stand in them to minimise raid-wide Bad Stuff happening. Only one person needs to stand in each tower.

After that, these mechanics just repeat, though Sephirot will be flinging small circle AoEs around the place while all this is going on too, but these are easy enough to dodge.

Congratulations, you've toppled The Fiend!

2225: People Asking for "Literal" Translations of Games Aren't Looking for Google Translate

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There's been a lot of discussion over this topic on Twitter recently, thanks in part to the recent release of Fire Emblem Fates and its somewhat controversial localisation by Nintendo of America. There's a lot of noise and ill-informed opinion being thrown around by both "sides" of the debate, so I thought it would be a good time to stick my own oar in and muddy the waters still further.

There are basically two sides to the argument over Fire Emblem specifically. It's actually a little more complicated than that, but for the sake of simplicity we'll look at two core beliefs.

On one side, you have people who are arguing that they want a literal, authentic recreation of the Japanese original, only in the English language. They want character names to stay the same; they want conversations to unfold in the same way; they want all the same content that the Japanese players had in the game.

On the other, you have people who are arguing that during the localisation process, changes are both necessary and inevitable in order to fit the needs of the new market. The exact definition of these needs varies according to who you speak to — some suggest it's to do with a corporation (Nintendo of America in this case) wanting to continue curating a very specific brand image, while others suggest it's a cultural thing: things that are acceptable, palatable or recognisable to the original Japanese audience may mean nothing to an English-speaking demographic.

Both sides have their points. I've enjoyed localised games that err very much on one side or the other. Slice-of-life visual novels, for example, very much benefit from remaining true to the original Japanese as much as possible: interpersonal relationships in particular unfold in very different ways in Japan, and maintaining things like the honorifics in a text help to reflect the different ways people defer to one another according to perceived social hierarchy. Along the same lines, role-playing games that are very much steeped in Japanese culture — the Persona series is a good example — also benefit from remaining as true as possible to the original Japanese script as much as possible, since, like visual novels, the relationships between characters are often dependent on Japanese societal norms rather than Western ones.

On the other side of the fence, some more drastic localisations have been very good, too. Few people would argue that the Ace Attorney series is extraordinarily well written in its English incarnation, but it's very different to its Japanese counterpart, largely because a lot of the puns and jokes in the original Japanese simply wouldn't make sense in English. Same with the Neptunia series, whose original translation by NIS America is the source of some ire for more die-hard fans, but which has also remained the standard by which the series continues to be localised today. And the same with Final Fantasy XIV, whose floridly Shakespearean script was so good in English a lot of the changes actually ended up backported into Japanese.

Personally speaking, my priority for the most part is getting to play games that I wouldn't otherwise have the chance to play. I don't like content being cut and I don't like feeling that the experience I'm having is noticeably inferior to the Japanese original, but if it's a game I want to play and the changes are relatively unobtrusive — Dungeon Travelers 2 is a good example, since this is technically "censored" in places through the modification of a few images, but the changes are minor at best, and the game probably wouldn't have seen release if they hadn't been made — then I'll happily support the efforts of companies who attempt to bring games over as unscathed as possible.

I can't say I feel massively strongly about Fire Emblem Fates in particular because I have no real attachment to the series, but there are a number of issues with the localisation that I really don't like. One is the removal of content that wasn't offensive in the first place — the "head-patting" minigame, which is a reflection of the Japanese tendency to use head-pats as a sign of affection — not necessarily attraction or lust — between characters. Another is the outright butchering of the script that has taken place in a number of parts, most notably the support conversation between two characters which was an in-depth discussion of finding common ground, honour among thieves and whatnot in Japanese, but which has been replaced with four screens of them going "…" to each other in English. That is not, in any way, acceptable localisation, because it's completely changing the original intent of the scene.

Now onto the point I wanted to make with the title of this post: the "localisation means changes" brigade have a couple of favourite arguments. Let's take them in turn.

You want a literal translation? Run the script through Google Translate and see how you like it.

This is by far the most common, and it's based on a flawed assumption: the fact that people asking for a "literal" translation are literally asking for a literal translation, when they're not. In a way, it's their own fault for using the word "literal" perhaps incorrectly; "authentic" or "true to the original" might be a better description, but "literal" is the term that people tend to prefer to use, so let's stick with that for now.

No, as I discussed above, the people who want a "literal" translation are not asking for the text to be run through Google Translate, because, among other reasons, the differences in grammar between languages butchers the original intent of the scene beyond all recognition. What they are asking for is the scene to be correctly translated into its closest possible English equivalent, without any changes based on perceived appropriateness according to Western cultural norms. What they are also asking for is the maintaining of the text's "Japaneseness" as much as possible: that means maintaining the use of honorifics and concepts with no direct translation such as senpai and the use of onii-san/onee-san to people who aren't your brother/sister.

That's not a particularly unreasonable ask, is it? Doesn't that show a degree of respect to the original creators, an awareness of your audience and also has the added benefit of potentially teaching people about another culture? Some games actually run with this concept; visual novel Steins;Gate, for example, features an interactive hyperlinked glossary of Japanese terminology used in the game, including Japanese Internet memes and slang as well as more widespread cultural concepts.

So no. People asking for a "literal" translation aren't asking for the script to be fed through the mangler that is Google Translate. So stop responding to arguments they aren't making.

You want the authentic experience? Just learn Japanese. Oh, I forgot, learning a language is more difficult than complaining.

The whole point of localisation is so that new audiences have access to works from other cultures. Through a culture's art, we can learn about them, understand them, appreciate them — or, in some cases, be happy with what we've got ourselves! By mangling the cultural authenticity of a text, be it by inserting random Internet memes — which not only spoil the character of the piece in most cases, they also date it horribly — or by stripping out elements that made it authentically "Japanese" in the first place, you're doing a disservice to the original work, and to the audience who wants to know more about another culture that they find fascinating.

Moreover, a lot of people who argue in favour of drastic localisation changes are the same people who are constantly bleating on about buzzword of the moment "diversity" — used here to mean "celebrating anything that isn't by a white man". Isn't stomping all over the text of another culture using Western sensibilities the very antithesis of the "diversity" that seems to be the Holy Grail among progressive types at the moment?

Anyway. Asking people to learn Japanese isn't a terrible argument: not only does it let you play the original versions of localised games, it also gives you access to a huge library of titles that never make it across the ocean. But it's also not a particularly practical option for a lot of people. Japanese is a complicated language that takes a long time to learn, and some people simply don't have the right kind of mindset to effectively study a new language, particularly if they're a little older and their brain finds it more difficult to take in entirely new language-related information. Should people who are unable to study Japanese for whatever reason be denied access to authentic experiences? No, of course not.

I've seen both sides of this argument unfolding recently and it's frankly getting rather tiresome — mostly because many of the arguments, as we've seen above, are based on mistaken assumptions. This has been a worryingly growing trend over the last few years, and it's this, in part, that has led to the overwhelmingly negative atmosphere a lot of online interactions carry over their heads these days; everyone is afraid to offend everyone else.

In this instance, I would be inclined to defer to the opinions of people who passionately consume Japanese games and other media, and who want an authentic experience from their localised material. It's not as if we're short of Western experiences for people who find heavily Japanese titles "too Japanese" or otherwise inaccessible for some reason, and ultimately keeping things as true to their original form as possible helps everyone to understand each other that little bit better, which is surely the best possible outcome to all this.

But I'm sure this argument will keep raging and no-one will pay any attention to what I've said here, so what do I know…