2295: You Should Play Aselia the Eternal

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JAST USA recently released Aselia the Eternal on Steam. The game’s been around for a good few years now — its original Japanese version for even longer — but its release on Steam will doubtless allow a whole new audience to (hopefully) enjoy it. I will now attempt to explain why it is worth giving it a go.

Aselia the Eternal is a combination of a visual novel and a strategy game. The overall balance is very much in favour of the story side of things — it’s a good six hours of reading before you get to the game’s first strategy battle sequence — but when you do get to the strategic aspect, it’s a game that puts up a good fight.

The narrative concerns the player-protagonist Yuuto, who finds himself drawn into another world populated by people who speak a completely different language to him. Unable to find his way home, he gradually learns to communicate with these people — the ones with whom he’s staying known as “Spirits” — and finds himself recruited into the army as an “Etranger”, a wielder of a powerful, sentient sword that regularly threatens to eat his soul.

Gradually, as Yuuto becomes more and more involved in the lives of the Spirits, he starts to worry less and less about trying to find his way back home and more about helping to resolve the conflict that threatens to tear this fantasy world apart. As such, the narrative becomes very much a high fantasy sort of affair — war on a grand scale, magic and mayhem around every corner, transcendence of humanity not at all out of the question — and builds to a thoroughly exciting conclusion that I won’t spoil here.

The story is compelling, interesting, well-written and well-translated, but it’s the gameplay part that is perhaps the most interesting thing about it, since it’s one of the most original takes on strategic RPG-style combat I’ve seen. Virtually eliminating all luck from the equation, combat in Aselia the Eternal is actually about putting units together in small squads to perform most effectively according to what type of unit they are — and by doing this correctly you can effectively guarantee that you’ll win a conflict before you reach it. The tricky part is in finding those suitable combinations in the first place.

The basic rules of engagement have each of your squads made up of three ranks — a frontline fighter, a mid-range tank and a support fighter bringing up the rear. Each of the different types of Spirits perform best in a particular slot: Blue Spirits (such as the eponymous heroine) do their best work as speedy damage dealers in the front row; Green Spirits tend to have the highest defense and HP, so sit in the middle; Red Spirits often have support abilities that can damage an entire enemy squad or provide suitable benefits to your own, so sit at the back. You’re not limited to this arrangement — and indeed, with Yuuto in the mix, who is none of those things, you’ll have at least one squad with an unconventional lineup — but there are clearly optimal ways to do things, making each of the battles in the game as much of a puzzle as a strategic RPG experience.

Aselia the Eternal comes together so nicely because everything it does is in service to its narrative and worldbuilding. Despite not having an open world you can freely explore, its excellent storytelling and descriptive narration builds a wonderfully convincing setting that gives the strategic sequences genuine meaning and drama. And, as a result of that worldbuilding, your units in the strategic sequences become more than just sets of stats and abilities; they become people. People who you don’t want to see die, because yes, this game has permadeath.

The question of being “more than just a soldier” is one of the main narrative themes explored in the game, and it’s a rather wonderful moment when you realise that you, the player, are having the same epiphany that the characters in the game are. There are some wonderfully touching sequences with Yuuto and the Spirits as they get to know one another, and you’re right there with them. And, as the narrative ramps up and you bring more and more allies with you, the tension becomes palpable as you take them into battles that you really don’t want to see them lose.

I don’t want to say too much more because part of the wonder of Aselia the Eternal is exploring the experience for yourself and discovering everything this remarkable work has to offer. Suffice to say if you enjoy in-depth storytelling — and lots of if — and aren’t averse to a bit of red-hot strategy action, you should most certainly check it out. And then strongly consider supporting JAST’s recent release of the sequel Seinarukana, which I’ll be investigating for myself in the near future!

1016: A Few More Aselia Thoughts

I finished my first playthrough of Aselia the Eternal this evening. Clocking in at about 54 hours, this $30 title is certainly good value for money in terms of its dollars-to-hours ratio.

It’s also a very, very good game, though one that will undoubtedly not be to everyone’s taste. Simply put, if you enjoy the narrative being the focus of a game rather than its gameplay, you will dig Aselia the Eternal. If you’re the sort of person who skips cutscenes even if you haven’t seen them before, you will not like Aselia the Eternal.

This is not to say that Aselia the Eternal is as “gameplay-free” as most other visual novels, however — in fact, it plays host to an excellent strategy-RPG component as well as its decision-based visual novel aspect — but you have to be willing and able to deal with the fact that the game will frequently break without warning in mid-“mission” for a considerable amount of plot exposition. I love that the game does this, as it gives a nice feeling of “coherence” to the experience rather than sharply demarcating where “plot” and “game” are. Equally, it will doubtless annoy some others. If it sounds like it might annoy you, you will probably not appreciate Aselia the Eternal.

There are eight endings to the game. I have now seen one of them. After the break, some spoileriffic thoughts on the whole playthrough.

MAHOOSIVE SPOILERS AHEAD, in case that wasn’t already clear.

Continue reading “1016: A Few More Aselia Thoughts” →

1014: Aselia the Exceedingly Lengthy but Still Well Worth Playing

Back in early October, I did an initial blog on my impressions regaring a Japanese-developed visual novel known as Aselia the Eternal. Since that time, I’ve written two columns on the subject for Games Are Evil — one about the game itself, the other about how it creates a convincing, coherent-feeling game world mostly through words — and there’s still a huge amount more to say about it. So I’ll brain-dump it all here and you can sift through at your leisure.

The first thing I want to say is that it’s a pity more people won’t play this. I can shout its name from the rooftops all I like, but I know for a fact that most of you reading this are not even considering picking it up and trying it out. This is the one failing of the video games medium becoming so broad and wide-ranging in recent years — no-one has time to play everything, so the vast majority of people concentrate on the recognisable names, the new releases, the triple-A blockbusters and the “indie darlings” of the moment, leaving titles like Aselia to — relatively speaking — flounder. Take a look at this great article by Rowan Kaiser, for example, in which he suggests a variety of games to give a gaming newbie a “crash course” in what the medium is all about. Everything on that list is, I’d argue, mainstream or at least “well-known”, and yes, I include titles like Journey and Papo and Yo in that description. They’re all “safe” options — and that’s not a particularly bad thing, especially when trying to introduce someone new to the medium — but a lot of people don’t ever step out of this comfort zone because there’s no real need to.

On the plus side, however, this means that the fans of these particularly niche games are almost infinitely more passionate and willing to discuss them than someone who has completed, say, Assassin’s Creed III. (There are exceptions, of course — I know I follow several people on Twitter who are obsessed with Ezio di whateverhisfullnameis and the overly-complicated lore of the Assassin’s Creed series to an unhealthy degree — but I’d argue the people who care that much are in the relative minority.) And, of course, there’s the fact that titles like Aselia represent “mainstream PC gaming” in Japan, so if you can actually speak Japanese (I’m working on it… slowly!) you’ll find like-minded people out there.

But anyway. If you have played Aselia the Eternal (or indeed any other visual novels) and want to enthuse about them with me, please feel free to do so at any time.

Now. To business. Indulge me a moment while I explain what it is that makes Aselia the Eternal particularly noteworthy or at least “interesting” to look at.

First of all, a little history. Aselia the Eternal was originally released in 2003 on PC as an 18+ eroge called Eien no Aselia – The Spirit of Eternity Sword. In 2005, it was stripped of its erotic content and released on PlayStation 2 as Eien no Aselia – Kono Daichi no Hate De (Aselia the Eternal: At the Ends of this Earth). Rather than the excision of the erotic content making it a “gutted” experience, however, the game was rewritten to make it more friendly to a wider audience. This “all-ages” version was later backported to PC in 2010, and translated into English by JAST USA in 2011, leaving us with the version we have today. JAST took the decision to translate the “all-ages” version rather than the 18+ original due to content which would have proven “problematic” to get around the censors — specifically, there are a number of characters who look very young (despite, as with most eroge, character ages not being made explicit anywhere), which makes erotic content involving said characters out of the question to Western audiences; and also, the original carried an “evil path” through the story which featured graphic scenes of violence and sexual assault — also deemed unpalatable to Western players.

The upshot of all that is that the version of Aselia the Eternal you can buy legally today is not compromised in any way from the vision of its writers, but equally it does not feature any content that you might not want anyone viewing over your shoulder. In other words, this is not a hentai game; rather, it is simply a Japanese visual novel/strategy game/RPG type thing sans bonking.

It’s the peculiar blend of genres in its gameplay that makes Aselia the Eternal an interesting one, though. Initially appearing to be a fairly conventional visual novel involving a cast of high school students, a pair of (foster) siblings with a mildly questionable relationship and the occasional innocuous-seeming choice that you just know will have surprisingly far-reaching ramifications, the game gets truly interesting after about 5-6 hours of pure exposition — 5-6 hours that will determine whether or not you’re in it for the long haul. The game’s player-protagonist Yuuto as well as several other characters get spirited away to a mysterious fantasy world, and a battle for survival begins. From this point on, you’ll be splitting your time between the number-crunching of a strategy RPG and the plot-heavy relationship manipulation of a visual novel. The two aren’t necessarily clearly demarcated, either — the game frequently breaks in mid-mission for 30-60 minutes of plot advancement — but this actually works in the game’s favour as it tries to tell its story, and stops story feeling like a “reward” and instead like everything you do is part of the ongoing narrative.

It helps, of course, that the actual gameplay in the strategic side of things is extremely solid. Here’s how it works.

As you progress through the game, you gain control of a wide variety of female “spirits” of different colours, as well as the protagonist. Differently-coloured spirits have different specialisms — blue spirits are good at direct attacks, for example, while green spirits tend to have higher HP and defense. Red spirits, meanwhile, are good at magic, while black spirits are a bit of a “jack of all trades, master of none” class, with good HP and defense, decent attack power and some useful enemy-crippling abilities.

Your forces are split into four “squads” of up to three units each. The unit in the first position of the squad is the Attacker, the second is the Defender and the third is the Supporter. The Attacker’s job is to… well, attack… the Defender’s job is to soak up damage and prevent critical hits, and the Supporter’s job usually involves casting spells of some description, which might be direct attacks, buffs or debuffs. Each unit has up to three equipped skills for each of the three different squad positions, for a total of nine skills at any one time. I say “at any one time” because as they level up, abilities get overwritten — sometimes this is your choice, other times, “Limited Skills” mean that you must overwrite a previous level of a skill when you earn a new one. Only one skill from each category may be “set” at once — this is the one which will be used in battle — and each skill only has a limited number of uses before the unit needs to return to a friendly town to rest and recharge.

You move around the “campaign map” via preset pathways, one “space” per turn. If you move onto an enemy, you attack them. Before the battle resolves itself, you can see the lineup of the enemy squad (including HP and abilities), and you then have the opportunity to rearrange your squad members and set the abilities you would like them to use in the upcoming battle — this is an immensely important step that can mean the difference between life and death — and then it’s into combat.

Battle unfolds in several phases. First of all, the attacking side’s Supporter casts an “Attack Support” spell if it has one set — these include buffs or some healing spells. Then the other side gets to do the same. Then the attacking side’s Attacker gets to make an attack, which is usually intercepted by the Defender if there is one, then the Supporter, then the Attacker finally. Certain skills allow units to target specific units other than the Defender — this can be particularly useful if the Supporter has a nasty spell ready, but not many HP left.

Following the first attack, the Supporter gets to cast a Divine Magic spell if they didn’t already case an Attack Support spell. These are mostly offensive in nature. Then the defending side gets to attack, then Divine Magic. This then repeats until all the units involved in the battle have expended the number of “actions” for the skills they have set. Certain skills may be used more than once per battle, and this can be used to your advantage — if, for example, the enemy Defender can only use their damage reduction skill once per battle and you have a powerful attack that can be used twice, that second attack will connect and do “critical” damage.

There’s an added twist with the Attack Support and Divine Magic spells — blue spirits have the special “Ice Banisher” ability when in the Supporter role, which can interrupt certain spells. Naturally, there’s a trade-off — blue spirits are also the strongest Attackers, so having one in the Supporter slot means that they’re not doing damage, but making effective use of Ice Banisher is essential to survival as the enemy gains access to stronger spells.

It’s a system that initially appears rather complex and confusing, but becomes second nature after no time. It’s actually a very elegant system that forces you to think carefully about which characters would be most useful in dealing with the situation in front of you, and requires that you manage your army carefully to ensure they’re strong enough to take on the challenges ahead of them. It also means that there are often a number of ways of getting past seemingly insurmountable challenges — that boss who is giving you grief may hit hard, but he only has two uses of his attack skill before he’s left unable to damage you, so if you can just keep your green spirit alive for two turns, you can then exact bloody revenge at your leisure.

Pleasingly, there’s no grinding in Aselia the Eternal. While you’re wandering the game world, your captured towns are converting their stored “mana” to “ether” at a rate dependent on how many Ether Refinery buildings you’ve constructed. The more towns you have, the more mana in your pool, but mana can’t be used in its raw state — it has to be converted to ether first. Once you have ether, however, this can be spent on constructing new buildings or, most importantly, levelling up spirits and the protagonist. To do this, they must be located in a town which has a Training Facility constructed, and their entire squad must rest while the individual unit trains. You gain access to various different trainers with different specialisms as the story progresses, putting an effective “cap” on your progress as you go through — but sometimes you hear rumours of trainers in far-off locations, and can enlist their services if you send a squad to go and pick them up.

So Aselia the Eternal would be an interesting strategy game even if it didn’t have the plot attached to it. What makes it a remarkable experience, however, is how the plot makes you feel about those units scampering around the world map. Because you get to know all the people in your squads in various story scenes, not just the main characters, you care about them and you don’t want them to die. Letting a unit die means that you’ll never see them again in the story, because there are no revive skills until very late in the game. When you see how many little subplots involving these seemingly “unimportant characters” are weaved into the overall narrative, you’ll very much want to be “that guy” and reload every time someone kicks the bucket. After all, Halion promised you that she’d bake some special treats for you in her shop when the war is over… you can’t let her die, now, can you?

And goodness me. The Feels. Aselia the Eternal has them by the bucketload, particularly when it comes to chapter finales. This is a game that doesn’t hold back on the emotional manipulation at all, and does its very best to make you feel terrible about every virtual life you take. The overarching story is at once both epic in scale and very personal to the protagonist, and the romantic subplots are expertly weaved into the narrative as a whole rather than serving as the sole focus as in some other visual novels.

I have one more chapter of the story to go, and I’m very interested to see how it concludes. Hopefully that will happen sometime this week.

But I feel I should probably stop there, as I’ve wittered on for over two thousand words. I won’t tell you to buy and play Aselia the Eternal because I know that probably 95% of you aren’t going to, but if, on the off-chance, you do, be sure to come and enthuse about it with me sometime.

#oneaday Day 997: Rally the Troops

While the world and his dog is playing XCOM (which I fully intend to at some point — just not yet) it’s been quite interesting to contrast the experience of playing Aselia the Eternal, which I first mentioned a few days back. At first glance, you might not think there’s much to connect these two games, but after about 6 or 7 hours of Aselia’s visual novel stuff (which is good in and of itself — but more on that in a future READ.ME column on Games Are Evil) you get into a surprisingly hardcore strategy RPG type thing, where you have a big scary overworld map, squads of warriors, buildings, resources and a need to actually think about what you do.

But there’s an interesting side-effect to the fact that you’ve spent 6 hours reading before you get to pick up a sword and start twatting things — you develop an emotional investment in these characters. And this is where the XCOM comparison (or, more accurately, contrast) comes in. In XCOM, people typically rename their characters to customise them and feel like they’re playing with people they “know” or have designed. The simple act of renaming a character, in most cases, is enough to develop a degree of “attachment”.

In Aselia, meanwhile, you don’t get to rename the characters, but you do get to see what they’re like off the battlefield — and not just in a training room sort of scenario. No, a big part of Aselia involves having conversations and seeing these characters going about their daily lives. We learn a lot about their attitude towards combat, and even more about the game world’s social hierarchy.

This means that when you go into battle with Aselia, Esperia and Orpha, you know who these people are, you care about them and you want them to succeed. You want them to come back safely — and not just because in most cases allowing one of the main characters to die causes an immediate Game Over. You’re cheering for them as they take on increasingly-improbable odds, and you nurture them, training them up to be as badass as they can possibly be in order to take on these rising challenges. I can only assume this feeling of attachment will increase as the game progresses and the romantic subplots start.

It’s one of the most interesting things about Aselia the Eternal, in fact. Like most visual novels, it’s primarily been designed as a storytelling vehicle, in which the gameplay serves the narrative. The “battle” gameplay will frequently break for the characters to have a moment of soul-searching (or, more often, the protagonist to have some sort of at least partially-justified mental breakdown). Between battles there may be several hours of sitting around talking, drinking tea and bouncing underage-looking girls on your knee. But there’s a great feeling of coherence to the game, helped partly by the fact that even though the strategy component is broken into discrete missions, there is persistence in the game world — any character improvements, buildings and other business you did in a previous mission will still be there when you next hit the battlefield.

It’s clear, in short, that the game is someone’s vision rather than something that’s been focus-grouped. While this means it undoubtedly won’t be universally appealing — not everyone enjoys spending six hours reading before they get to “do” anything — it makes for an experience that is dripping with personality and a feeling of authorial ownership. Someone wrote this as a story rather than designing it as a game, and it’s a very interesting contrast to titles where the lines between narrative and gameplay are more clearly demarcated.

Further thoughts as I continue — it’s a lengthy game, so expect at least one or two more posts on the subject.

#oneaday Day 990: Aselia the Eternal, Early Impressions

For an upcoming READ.ME column over on Games Are Evil, I’m going to be covering a game called Aselia the Eternal. Depending on how much progress I make before Sunday, said column will either be this week or, more realistically, next week. But I thought I’d take a bit of time to share some less formal initial impressions on the game for those who are interested, or simply curious.

Aselia the Eternal is a visual novel for PC (and PSP in Japan, I believe). There are actually two versions available — an 18+ edition with H-scenes and a 15+ version without. Only the 15+ version has officially made it to Western-speaking territories due to some of said H-scenes supposedly being in questionable taste — and also because of Western publisher/localiser JAST USA’s desire to start putting out a few “all ages” titles as well as their myriad 18+ shag-happy offerings.

The basic premise of Aselia the Eternal is thus: Protagonist Yuuto lives alone with his little sister Kaori. Their parents died a while back in an accident, but Kaori was spared thanks to Yuuto imploring anyone who would listen to give him a miracle and save his sister. It turns out someone was listening — the spirit of the sword “Desire,” which, as these things tend to do, claims ownership over Yuuto’s soul in exchange for his sister’s life and, at an unexpected point after several hours of fairly typical high school drama, sucks Yuuto into another world where All Is Not Well. War is brewing, and Yuuto is about to become embroiled in it as part of a force of “spirits” — seemingly human creatures with strong bonds to their swords who are treated as nothing but weapons by the actual humans. Since humans make spirits (and “Etrangers” from another world such as Yuuto) do all their fighting, most places have little hesitation in going to war because there’s actually very little risk to the “real” people, and as such Yuuto arrives just as It Is All Kicking Off, as it were.

The interesting thing about Aselia the Eternal is that rather than representing the conflicts and battles that Yuuto and his spirit companions get into purely through narrative text, there’s actually a very competent strategy game built in alongside all the visual novel stuff. When it’s time for Yuuto and his allies to saddle up and hit the road to complete a mission, gameplay switches from the usual “read, read, read, read, read, make a choice” to a tactical map view, at which point you need to put your strategic hat well and truly on if you’re going to survive.

The world map of Aselia the Eternal’s battles is node-based in nature. Player units, each of which may contain up to three members, may move one space per turn, as may the enemy. If a unit enters a contested space occupied by an enemy unit, a battle begins, at which point the makeup of the teams becomes important.

Each unit has an attacker, a defender and a supporter. The attacker makes use of direct-damage skills. The defender tends to mitigate damage. The supporter either casts damage spells or adds useful effects. Each individual character has their own set of skills that changes according to what slot they’re in — the eponymous Aselia, for example, may attack with her sword twice in a battle if she is in the attacking position, whereas if she is in the supporter position she is able to block enemy spells and prevent them from causing damage. The “colour” of each unit also has an impact on their effectiveness — green spirits are best in defensive positions, blue spirits are best in attacking and red ones are best in support, though according to the enemy’s abilities (which can be previewed before battle is resolved) you may wish to switch them around a bit. Each character only has a set number of uses of each of their skills before they either need to switch them around or go back to a friendly-occupied town or base to refresh themselves.

It’s an unusual, original, simple and elegant system that works extremely well, offering a degree of tactical flexibility while rewarding those who think carefully about the best way to approach a particular situation. The node-based nature of the world map means that it’s relatively accessible to strategic newcomers, but still offers the potential for pulling off clever tactics, particularly later in the game when you get access to additional characters and, by extension, units. It’s surprisingly tough and unforgiving, too — lose a main character in battle and it’s an immediate game over. No Phoenix Downs here. (Also, SAVE!)

What’s surprising about the inclusion of this aspect of gameplay is not that it’s in there at all — there are a number of visual novels that incorporate minigames — it’s that despite it being there, the game is still a storytelling vehicle first and foremost. It’s not a strategy game/RPG with lengthy story sequences, it’s a visual novel with occasional strategic battles. This might not sound like a big difference, but it’s the difference between playing something like, say, Final Fantasy Tactics, where the story sequences sometimes feel like they’re just rushing you through towards the next battle as soon as possible, and what we have here, which is an unfolding story in which you occasionally have to fight. The “pace”, for want of a better word, is a lot slower — though that’s not necessarily a bad thing, as it gives you plenty of time to get to know and become attached to these characters before walking into battle with them.

In fact, what the experience really feels like is the developers sitting down and thinking “this is the story we want to tell. There are battles at this point, this point and this point because they serve the story.” rather than “we are making a strategy RPG. We need gameplay to be 75% strategic battles, 25% story.” It feels very much like something that has been designed primarily as a narrative, in short, rather than a game — and that’s rather interesting, because I can’t imagine any Western publisher greenlighting a game with such a seemingly skewed ratio of traditional gameplay to sitting back and just reading. (Of course, I can’t imagine any Western publisher greenlighting a visual novel full stop, but that’s beside the point.)

I like what I’ve seen so far. The story is quite slow to get going but it already has some interesting characters involved, and I’m intrigued to see where it goes next. Watch out for further thoughts when I’ve played a little further.