Earlier today (or possibly yesterday, I think), a former colleague posted a piece on a site I used to work for bemoaning, not for the first time, the amount of “ecchi” content in modern Japanese games, particularly dungeon-crawling RPGs. (I’m not going to link to it.)
The piece did have an interesting point to make, which was to conjecture that many creators are interested in making sexually explicit — outright pornographic — games rather than just flashing the odd pair of panties like they do nowadays, and that it’s the current strict censorship laws in Japan coupled with the platform holders’ stranglehold on what sort of content does and doesn’t get approved for sale that is holding this back from happening. I’m not sure I entirely agree with this — the nature of ecchi as opposed to hentai is to tease and titillate rather than be outright explicit, erotic, masturbation material — but it was an interesting point to consider.
Unfortunately, he then went off the deep end with accusations of games like Dungeon Travelers 2 — a game that, by all accounts from people who have played it and not pontificated for thousands of words about How Bad And Wrong Anime Panties Are, is very good indeed — being “borderline child pornography”. When called out about it on social media and in comments, he then took to his personal blog to wag his fingers and make some snide remark about the current situation with former “Face of Subway” Jared pleading guilty to numerous child sex-related charges and how, given that situation, people really shouldn’t be defending games that “advocate child molestation”.
For fuck’s sake.
I feel like I have written this post a thousand times over by now, but it seems that I need to write it again, if only to blow off the steam I’ve had building up inside my head all day. So this may get a little bit angry, and for that I make no apologies whatsoever.
For fuck’s sake.
The “child pornography” line is one that is usually trotted out by people who want to criticise Japanese media without knowing anything about it. Yes, Japan has plenty of morally questionable material — to Western sensibilities — readily available. Yes, Japan was somewhat “late to the party” when it came to legislating against this sort of thing. Yes, Japanese creators still produce media that would simply be illegal in Western countries. But Japan is also a different culture. And this isn’t excusing any of the things that I personally find morally repugnant — because there are plenty of things I want nothing to do with, just as there are plenty of aspects of Western culture I want nothing to do with — but it is worth considering when contemplating whether or not you should tarnish an entire country’s cultural output with as scathing a brush as “paedophilia”.
The assumption that “if you’re into ecchi games, you’re a paedophile” makes — mistakenly — is that people who enjoy this sort of thing cannot distinguish between fantasy and reality. I can guarantee you — speaking from experience — that a considerable proportion of people who like to take a walk on the ecchi side of life are doing so because it entertains them, not because it arouses them. Ecchi games are refreshingly frank, honest and open; ecchi games often have strong characterisation and realistic depictions of how relationships progress — including sexual encounters (or implied sexual encounters at the very least); ecchi games are completely up-front about what they are, and unashamed of that fact. More often than not, ecchi games are having fun with sex. They’re using it in a cheeky way, or in some cases as a means of exploring characters. (Criminal Girls is a great example of the latter, with the characters’ reactions to the light S&M scenes throughout changing as they grow and mature as people, and their relationship with the protagonist changes.)
What these games are emphatically not is a means for people who want to abuse children to get their rocks off. And this also means that people who enjoy these games are emphatically not paedophiles, or “advocates for child molestation”. Do you seriously fucking believe that because someone made use of a silly game mechanic in Omega Labyrinth that they’re going to go out and start squeezing the tits of random girls on the streets? Do you seriously fucking believe that someone finding a hand-drawn character in a game — with nothing whatsoever real about them except their voice actor, who is inevitably an adult — attractive in some way means that they’re going to be pulling up a dirty old van outside schools and kidnapping children?
In other words, if you must acknowledge them at all, how about you criticise things you don’t like without fucking insulting the people who do like them? That would be simply lovely.
I am absofuckinglutely sick of having to defend my hobby against people who take the lazy, “moral majority” approach and decry something they don’t like as being “sleazy” or “skeevy” or, as we’ve seen above, far worse. In my experience, the Japanese games and anime enthusiast community are some of the nicest, most articulate, most friendly, most passionate people I have ever met. Through my coverage of Japanese games back when I was on USgamer — I’m sure fucking glad all the time and effort I spent on that wasn’t a complete fucking waste of time — I’ve made some great and doubtless lifelong friends. And, moreover, I’ve been exposed to some really, genuinely great games — and not one of them has made me want to go out and fuck kids. Not even a little bit. How about that?
Compare and contrast with these puritanical fuckwits who just want to brand everything not on their Pre-Approved List of Things That Are Super-Rad!! as somehow Bad, Wrong and Problematic, and, well, I know which side I’d rather be on. I’ll be over here with my fellow deviants, thank you very much.
Interesting indie game time? Interesting indie game time.
I’m a big fan of the doujin (independently-developed) games that Playism brings to the West. Japanese indie games have a very distinctive character about them; they’re rarely the most technically impressive games in the world (though there are exceptions, like wonderfully gorgeous shoot ’em up Astebreed) but it’s rare to find one that doesn’t feel like it’s been infused with heart, soul and love. The doujin culture in Japan breeds people who are passionate and enthusiastic about their work; these aren’t people who are making games to prove a point, these are people who are making games because they love making games.
One of Playism’s most recent releases is a peculiar little platformer called Starchaser: Priestess of the Night Sky. This is the work of a doujin circle called Nonlinear, and the designer’s philosophy behind the game is an interesting one: he wanted to make a 3D game where the concept of 3D actually mattered. He has a point; there’s a lot of games out there that are presented in 3D, but which actually only practically play in two dimensions at once. Even renowned games like Super Mario 3D Land/World tend to only have the player worrying about two dimensions at a time for the most part; it’s rare you have to worry about the width, length and height of an environment at the same time in a Mario game, and that format works well for its accessible, family-friendly formula.
Starchaser, then, takes a slightly different approach to 3D platforming. Unfolding through a series of levels on both the inside and outside faces of a series of cubes, you control a young girl as she learns to commune with the stars by navigating through several perilous labyrinths of these cubes. The game starts very simple, but it’s not long before it introduces one of its core mechanics: gravity floors. These checkerboard cubes have their own gravitational pull, so if you’re airborne (through jumping, falling or walking off the side of something) you’ll be sucked towards the nearest one if you’re within its zone of influence. This may well be at a completely different angle to where you were standing a moment ago; Starchaser’s levels unfold making full use of all three dimensions, and you’ll have to look around in every direction carefully to negotiate a pathway towards your destination, making quick-witted use of the gravity mechanic and more conventional platform skills in order to survive.
It’s actually a really delightful game to play. It reminds me somewhat of PS1-era puzzlers like Kula World, Kurushi Final and the like. At least part of this is due to its somewhat… functional presentation (it won’t run in 1920×1080, and it won’t exceed 30 frames per second) but even with its (apparently deliberate) technical limitations, it’s a joy to play, once you get used to the peculiar control scheme. It’s a very distinctive, original take on the 3D platformer, and a great game to dip in and out of when you fancy banging your brain against some fiendish environmental puzzles and enjoyable boss fights.
Starchaser is available now either direct from Playism or on Steam — buy on Playism and you get a Steam key for free.
Brave Frontier has some lovely and distinctive artwork; screenshots in this post are all from it.
I’ve been highly resistant to mobile free-to-play games for some time now, a fact I primarily attribute to the extremely well-paid but soul-crushing period I spent reviewing them for the industry-facing sites Inside Mobile Apps and Inside Social Games, both of which have subsequently been folded into AdWeek’s SocialTimes blog.
I describe this period as “soul-crushing” not because I disliked the work or the people I worked for — on the contrary, it was an enjoyable opportunity to work with some fun people — but because it was just so utterly disheartening, as a fan of “games as art”, to see the cynical money-machine games being churned out by the boatload, with no-one truly having the confidence to innovate, instead simply reskinning established systems with a different theme and hoping no-one would notice.
Amid the dross churned out by companies like Zynga, King and their ilk, there were the occasional little gems, though, and they almost always hailed from our Eastern cousins in Korea, Japan and other nearby regions. Eastern mobile game development was by no means infallible, of course — titles which grew to inexplicable popularity, such as Rage of Bahamut, were often just as vapid as their Western counterparts — but on the whole, when a genuinely good free-to-play mobile game hit the app stores, it was, more often than not (and with a few notable exceptions) of Eastern origin.
This feisty lady is the pride of my party at present.
Fast forward to today and I find myself enjoying not one, not two, but three separate free-to-play mobile games, and there’s a fourth that I had some fun with but have left alone for a while now. All of these games are, once again, of Eastern origin; meanwhile, offerings from established Western big hitters like Zynga, King, Nimblebit, Gameloft and EA all fail to hold my attention because they’re still relying on the same old crap they were a few years back when I was reviewing them.
So what’s the difference with these Eastern-developed games? Well, primarily it’s the amount of effort that appears to have been put into them — and the fact that they’re fun.
Brave Frontier, which I’ve talked about in a few previous entries, for example, is an enjoyable battle-centric RPG in which you assemble a party of collectible heroes, power them up and send them on quests — either story-free “Vortex” quests which are themed each day of the week and allow you to acquire specific items more easily, or a lengthy, story-driven campaign that, while cliched, has actually proven to be surprisingly compelling so far.
Puzzle and Dragons, meanwhile, takes the Puzzle Quest formula of combining casual colour-matching puzzle gameplay with Pokemon-esque collection and levelling mechanics, creating an engaging, enjoyable game that blends the best bits of RPGs and puzzlers.
Love Live! School Idol Festival, on the other hand,not only serves as wonderful fanservice for the anime show itself — which I’m currently in the middle of watching, and am enjoying a great deal — but is also a really fun rhythm action game.
Finally, I don’t play much of Valkyrie Crusade any more, but it made enough of an impact on me to want to write about it in a bit more detail over on MoeGamer.
Interestingly, all four of these games are based on the same basic system — something which I criticised Western-developed free-to-play mobile games for above — but manage to distinguish themselves from one another by the additional elements they stack on top of this basic structure. Western free-to-play games, conversely, tend to adopt one system and stick with it, without adding anything in particular to the formula.
There are a few common systems in use in Western mobile free-to-play games.
There’s the “citybuilder” genre, which superficially resembles simulation classics like SimCity and Transport Tycoon, but actually requires no strategic thought or knowledge of human geography. Instead, these games effectively act as a simple toy set in which you wait for timers to expire, then tap on buildings to get money out of them, which you then subsequently invest in more buildings so you end up with more timers to wait to expire and then tap on. Paying up in these games can skip timers — which are often ridiculously lengthy — and allow you to get more currency without having to actually “grind” to acquire it. Examples of this type of game include Nimblebit’s Tiny Tower, EA’s The Simpsons: Tapped Out and numerous attempts to stomp SimCity into the ground,Fox’s Family Guy: The Quest for Stuff and Gameloft’s My Little Pony. Farming games such as SuperCell’s Hay Day and Zynga’s own FarmVille are also pretty much the same as citybuilders, too, except they involve building up a small farm instead of a whole city. Mechanically, however, they’re exactly the same.
There’s the “casual puzzler” genre, which generally rips off PopCap’s Bejeweled by challenging you to swap coloured gems/sweets/fruits/farm animals around to make lines of three or more like-coloured gems/sweets/fruits/farm animals, at which point they disappear and more take their place. These generally involve a linear sequence of levels, and paid options in the games generally take the form of additional “lives” to continue playing after failing a level several times — lives otherwise regenerate over a long period of real time — and, in many cases, power-ups to make the game significantly easier, to a game-breaking degree in some cases.
Then there’s the “midcore strategy” game, which, in the same way as the “citybuilder” genre bears only a superficial resemblance to the original SimCity, bears only the most cursory of resemblances to actual strategy games. Midcore strategy games generally involve building a base through a similar means to a citybuilding game — yes, that means more timers to tap on, this time to get resources — and recruiting units, which also take varying periods of real time to build. There’s usually a competitive element to them, though, where you can take your recruited units to another player’s base and throw them at it in the hope that they might be able to do some damage. While these sequences tend to resemble classic real-time strategy games such as Command & Conquer and StarCraft, the lack of input you generally have means that coming up with a “strategy” is next to impossible, so it becomes more a matter of a numbers game: how many powerful units can you afford to throw at your foes? Payment options in these games are generally similar to citybuilders — speed up timers, buy currency, acquire exclusive units and buildings to give yourself an advantage over other players.
There are other types of Western-developed mobile free-to-play games, but these three types are by far the most widespread. The thing they all have in common is that the paid options deliberately break the game; they’re effectively paid cheats. The most egregious example of this is the ability to simply buy in-game currency rather than having to earn it: it effectively removes any need for the player to develop any sort of “money-making engine”, which has been a core part of simulation and strategy games involving resource management since the early days. But “power-ups” such as those seen in King’s games are almost as bad; in some cases, these power-ups even allow you to completely skip a level, meaning you’re effectively paying not to play the game. (Powerups like this are inevitably paired with unreasonable difficulty spikes or nigh-unbeatable levels, forcing many players into a position where they feel they have to pay up if they want to continue playing.)
The three Eastern games I mentioned above, as I noted previously, are all ostensibly based on the same system, known as gacha. This is a system based on those capsule toy machines that you see in supermarkets, and which are rather popular in places like Japan. Essentially, using either a currency earned in-game or one that you purchase with real money, you can “draw” something to add to your collection — a playable character in Brave Frontier’s case; a monster to add to your party in Puzzle & Dragons’ case; a card depicting one of the Love Live! cast in the case of School Idol Festival. Generally speaking, the things you draw using the “hard” currency — the one you can pay for — are better than the ones you acquire using the currency you earn in-game (which usually takes the form of a “social currency”, earned through interacting with other players in a rather limited manner). This may sound game-breaking in the same way as buying a power-up in Candy Crush Saga or buying currency in CityVille, but there’s a key difference: you still have to do something with the things you acquire by paying, and they’re not an immediate “win” button. Sometimes you’re not even able to use them right away.
Take Brave Frontier as an example. While it may be tempting to simply throw money at the game in an attempt to recruit an entire party of five- and six-star heroes, this simply won’t work early in the game due to the “cost” limit placed on your party, which increases as you level up your player. Not only that, but these five- and six-star heroes still start at level 1, so you’ll still need to actually play the game in order to level them up and get them fighting at their maximum potential; otherwise, they simply look cool.
Notably, these games generally also allow you to acquire the “hard” currency at a slow rate and enjoy a trickle-feed of these high-quality heroes/monsters/adorable wannabe idols. And, in fact, this makes acquiring one feel more meaningful and more of an event; it actually makes it feel less like the game is trying to force you to spend money, and instead inviting you to do so if you’d like to enjoy more of the same. I don’t mind admitting that I tossed a fiver at Brave Frontier during a special “you might get one of these special heroes!” event the other day because I’ve been enjoying playing it; I certainly haven’t, at any point, felt like I need to spend money on it to enjoy it, however; my current party (which is pretty kick-ass, I have to say) has been assembled entirely for free.
The big contrast between Eastern and Western philosophy with these games, then, appears to be the attitude towards getting the player to pay up. Western games, in my experience, are fond of creating what is rather horrendously called “fun pain”, which can be alleviated by paying up; in other words, inconveniencing the player in an otherwise fun experience to such a degree that they reach for the credit card just to shut the game up. Eastern games, meanwhile, appear to provide paid items as an optional extra that is, under no circumstances, required to have an enjoyable experience with the game.
The other thing that’s interesting is that Eastern games appear to be more open to the idea of combining different gameplay types together — Puzzle & Dragons, for example, combines an interesting twist on match-3 puzzlers with RPG and gacha mechanics, while Valkyrie Crusade features gacha, turn-based RPG combat, deckbuilding and optimisation, and even citybuilding, the difference in its use of the latter aspect being that while you’re waiting for your wait timers you have other things to do rather than twiddling your thumbs or reaching for the credit card.
There are exceptions to both of these rules, of course; there are great Western free-to-play mobile games just as there are horrible, shitty, exploitative Eastern free-to-play mobile games. But on the whole, in my experience, it would appear to be the Eastern-developed games that have the right idea — creating a fun experience and hoping at least a few people will be happy to pay up in gratitude for a fun experience — while the Western free-to-play mobile market, more concerned with making a quick buck, seems to be floundering somewhat.
I’m a big fan of the work of Carpe Fulgur, the small, independent localisation team previously responsible for bringing English-speaking audiences the excellent Recettear, its predecessor Chantelise and the charming Metroidvania-ish Fortune Summoners, and who have most recently been working on the sprawling behemoth that is Trails in the Sky: Second Chapter alongside Xseed Games.
I was pretty intrigued, then, when Andrew Dice of Carpe Fulgur proudly announced the team’s fifth project: a peculiar affair called This Starry Midnight We Make. Unlike Carpe Fulgur’s previous output, it’s not a role-playing game. It is… well, it’s kind of baffling, to be honest. I guess technically it’s a puzzle game of sorts, but I actually want to describe it more as a game about experimentation.
I sat down and played the demo version — available now on Steam, with the full version coming later this month — and recorded my experiences, bewilderment and all. Here’s what happened when I had a go:
As you can see if you watched the video, the game blends visual novel-style storytelling with its main mechanic: creating “stars” in a magical basin that appears to influence what happens in Kyoto according to the astrological phenomena you create.
The basic format of the game involves plopping stones into this basin and watching them do stuff, then figuring out how to make them do other stuff. The basin is split into five elemental areas, represented by faint swirling coloured gases, and the combination of the elemental area you drop a stone into and the type of stone you drop determines what happens next.
As you progress through the game, you’re tasked with a series of quests that ask you to create specific phenomena. What’s interesting is that after an initial, rather brief and unenlightening tutorial, you’re pretty much left to figure everything out for yourself. How, exactly, do you create a nebula? The game sure isn’t going to tell you right off the bat, though it will record the phenomenon in your notebook once you’ve created it once, allowing you to refer back to it and check how you did it if you’re not sure.
Beginning with the simple task of creating individual stars, the quests later start demanding that you create evolved forms of stars that involve mixing different types together, manipulating the amount of elemental gas in an area of the basin and even using “clay stars” to fuse others together. Beyond that, you’re tasked with creating “constellations” using specific combinations of stars that you’ve created, and the game hints that once these have been created, they’ll be used as “tools” to further manipulate your astral creations, though the demo stops before you get to see what this means for yourself.
What I found initially offputting but subsequently rather compelling about This Starry Midnight We Make is what I hinted at above: you have to figure out everything for yourself. And this is a huge adjustment from a lot of modern games, which spend much of their early hours walking you through every step of the mechanics you might be using throughout the game until you’re absolutely sure you know what you’re supposed to be doing. Not so in This Starry Midnight We Make. You are, in effect, a scientist, given some interesting things to fiddle around with and left to your own devices to try things out and see what happens. Some of the things you do will work — and these form genuine “Eureka!” moments, since you’ve figured them out for yourself — and others will not work, forcing you to analyse your “mistakes” and learn from them… or perhaps determine what caused an unexpected reaction to happen.
I find it difficult to envision how the game will carry this strange concept through a full-length narrative, but I’m kind of intrigued to find out. It’s a slow burn of a game, for sure, and its obtuseness will doubtless put many people off within about ten minutes of starting, but if you put some time in and make the effort to actually experiment with it yourself, you’ll find a strangely compelling experience waiting for you.
Do I recommend it? I’m hesitant to do so before seeing the full version, but I can at least recommend that you give the demo a try for yourself to see what you think and whether it might be for you. It’s available now from Steam.
One of the central themes of Idea Factory and Compile Heart’s new PlayStation 4 RPG Omega Quintet is the contrast between the private lives of those looked up to as “idols” and the public face they put on display.
This concept is actually, to some observers, a key aspect of Japanese culture at large. It’s known as honne and tatemae and, specifically, describes the contrast between your true feelings and desires (honne) and the facade you put up to the public (tatemae). It accounts for a lot of things, particularly in popular culture — media like anime and video games are, among other things, a means of exploring and engaging with honne without having to crack tatemae.
It may sound like a strange concept, but in fact a lot of us do it without even thinking: ponder, if you will, the things you’ve looked at on the Internet in the last week, and how likely you are to talk about them with other people. It may be that you’re fortunate enough to have open-minded friends and relatives who are more than happy to discuss anything and everything with you — or perhaps you simply don’t care what people think of you — but there are bound to be at least some situations where you know to keep your mouth shut about things you find interesting, whether they’re some form of fucked up pornography or unpopular sociopolitical ideas. Any time you bite your tongue and think better of “oversharing”? Well, that’s the closest we have to tatemae in the West.
But I digress. We’re here to talk about the Omega Quintet girls, and I did have a point to make: each of them display both honne and tatemae to varying degrees, and, through necessity, in a far more exaggerated manner than your average citizen. Due to the protagonist’s role in the story as the girls’ manager — and the player’s adoption of that role — you get to see both sides: the honne aspect when they’re hanging out and talking among themselves, and the tatemae aspect they display when they’re being broadcast to the public.
Otoha is arguably the “leading” heroine in the story due to the fact that she’s introduced alongside the protagonist Takt. Otoha is a cheerful, positive, upbeat young girl who has always looked at idol culture — or, in the context of Omega Quintet, “Verse Maiden” culture — with starry-eyed awe. Although Omega Quintet’s world is post-apocalyptic and in many ways both bleak and dystopian, Otoha’s infectious energy allows her to bring a sense of brightness and lightness to even dark situations; fellow Quintet member Aria even says as much in a rare moment of lucidity.
Otoha struggles the most with honne and tatemae. She’s a ditz, to put it bluntly, and she often lets this aspect come across even when she’s on camera. The first time she attempts to make her “debut”, she is literally pushed to the ground and upstaged by Kyouka, who is, at this point, working independently. She struggles for the longest time to get the Verse Maidens’ fans to even remember her name and, over time, comes to recognise that her talents don’t always match up to her enthusiasm.
That doesn’t stop her, though; despite numerous setbacks, she remains determined to realise her dream of being a successful Verse Maiden, and her determination proves inspirational and infectious to her comrades. Even the rather dour Takt is swept along by her energy at times, though he’d never admit it; after all, in the game’s earliest moments, it is Otoha who saves Takt from an unpleasant end at the hands of the Blare.
Kanadeko, meanwhile, is another energetic character. While Otoha is passionate and determined, Kanadeko is more concerned with having fun and being friends with everyone. This is reflected through everything from her perpetually wide-eyed facial expressions to her seeming inability to stand still and her loud voice. She’s keen to do a good job as a Verse Maiden not because she’s especially passionate about it in the same way as Otoha — though she is dedicated to her work — but because she thinks it will be a fun thing to do.
Kanadeko is the most naturally at home on stage, too. She has natural presence and an energetic aura about her, and in fact she is, in many ways, the character who displays the least difference between her honne and her tatemae. Both on and off the stage, she’s confident, loud and, while she recognises that she may not be the best at what she does, she both enjoys it and is keen for others to enjoy it along with her.
Kanadeko’s perpetual companion is Nene, who in many ways is the polar opposite of her loudmouthed counterpart. Nene is shy, awkward and has a tendency to babble incoherently when she’s feeling nervous — which is quite frequently. In extreme cases, this trait exhibits itself through her blurting out some things that make people feel a little uncomfortable — such as her enjoyment of and enthusiasm for firearms — usually closely followed up by some embarrassed awkwardness as she apologises for saying “strange” things.
In contrast to Kanadeko, Nene has probably the largest difference between her honne and her tatemae. On stage, she almost becomes a different person. She channels her nervous energy into projecting a confident appearance to the world and, despite both her own shortcomings and her lack of belief in her own abilities, she does a good job. Off the stage, meanwhile, she struggles with depression and anxiety, particularly in social situations, and tries to stick close to Kanadeko whenever she can for two reasons: she trusts Kanadeko, as the two have been together for some time at the story’s outset, and she knows that Kanadeko is more than capable of distracting people so she can slip quietly into the background.
Kyouka, meanwhile is the character that is probably most directly concerned with her honne and tatemae. As a “class president” sort of character, Kyouka is serious and determined and almost painfully tsun at times, but she sees her lack of confidence in her performance abilities as a failing, and consequently tries to do something about them. She is also very concerned with what people think about her; she spends quite some time worried that her former mentor Shiori hates her for coming to join the other Verse Maidens, and it takes a reluctant intervention by Takt to help the pair at least start to realise that neither of them really resents the other, though they both find that impossible to admit.
Kyouka wants to be the best, and she finds it inordinately frustrating that Aria is a more natural performer seemingly without realising it or even being aware that she’s doing it. She channels that frustration into working herself hard, and indeed it’s this determination that brings her together with the other Verse Maidens in the first place: her desire to be the best even at the expense of her own personal welfare sees her throwing herself into a battle she can’t possibly win alone, only to be helped out by her soon-to-be-friends.
Kyouka’s harsh exterior occasionally slips around the other girls and Takt, however; the first time Takt comes to her room, he’s surprised to discover that it’s a mess, with notes pinned to the wall, clothes on the floor and rubbish overflowing out of the bin. Kyouka initially thinks nothing of this until it’s pointed out to her by Takt and some of the other girls, then becomes extremely embarrassed about it. Several days later, Takt returns to her room only to discover it’s in exactly the same state as the last time he saw it; she admits that she eventually concluded it wasn’t worth the hassle and that she was more comfortable this way. It’s a rare moment of clarity and honesty from Kyouka, and helps to humanise her a great deal.
Finally, Aria is the most enigmatic of the Verse Maidens. Initially introduced as a happy-go-lucky, cheerful girl whom Kanadeko and Nene knew when they first joined the group long before Otoha and Takt came along, we subsequently discover that she suffered greatly at the hands of the Blare and went into hiding. When she re-emerges, she’s seemingly emotionless — but not cold — and seemingly not quite aware of everything that’s going on around her. The damage to her mind by the Blare, it seems, was severe.
Or was it? The interesting thing about Aria is that despite her habits of speaking very slowly and hesitantly or referring to people she’s talking directly to in the third person, she’s clearly one of the more insightful members of the cast, often pointing out things the others don’t see. And, because the damage to her mind also seemingly removed any sense of tact, she’ll say things bluntly and honestly, sometimes without realising that they might be interpreted as hurtful. At the other end of the spectrum, she frequently tries to make jokes, but her stony-faced expression and emotionless voice often make people misinterpret them as something rather more horrifying — particularly when she jokes about subjects like suicide.
Aria’s intriguing to me because she presents an interesting reflection on what it’s like to live with depression. Nene does this to a certain degree, too — I find her social anxiety particularly relatable — but Aria’s floating through life in her own little world, observing and commenting on things and seemingly being surprised when people notice or acknowledge her, is actually a fairly accurate (if exaggerated) representation of what it feels like some days when depression takes over your perception of the world. You don’t quite feel “connected” to anyone; you don’t quite feel “real”; sometimes you’re not even sure how to interact with others — or if you want to. It’s likely no coincidence that her colours are the darkest of all the Verse Maidens — black and purple — and that these colours are shared with the Blare, the source of her trauma.
I’m yet to beat the game so I don’t know how these girls’ personal stories continue and conclude, but I’m very interested to find out. It’s a great ensemble cast overall, and one from which it’s very difficult to pick a favourite.
If I had to be pressed for one, though? Nene. Even if she is occasionally terrifying.
I’ve started updating my Japanese gaming site MoeGamer again. I’d taken something of a break from it for a while, partly due to a general sense of disillusionment with the whole “writing about games” thing — the whole “getting unceremoniously ditched by the publication I’d loyally written for since its inception because I wasn’t American” thing didn’t help (and yes, that really was the reason I was given for my redundancy), and neither did my well-documented distaste for the way the mainstream games press at large tends to treat Japanese games — and partly simply due to the fact that I didn’t feel I had a lot of time any more.
Having a “normal” job kind of sucks like that, in that it’s a lot harder to find the time to do the things you want to do or that you know you enjoy. I always manage to find time to write this blog each day, of course — though sometimes it’s late in the evening when I publish something, and sometimes that something is a barely coherent mess — but keeping MoeGamer up to date was proving to be somewhat more difficult, at least partly because of the expectation I’d set for myself that everything I put on there would be erring on the slightly more long-form side of things rather than quick, snappy posts. (I’m firmly of the belief that there are plenty of people on the Internet who are capable or reading more than 250 words at a time, and it saddens me to see so many sites dumbing themselves down to cater to people with some sort of attention-deficit disorder.)
That dumbass IGN JRPG article from the other day (which I think I’ve already linked to more than enough; check out my response on MoeGamerto find out more) spurred me into action, though; I wasn’t going to let such an ill-informed piece slide, so I guess I should be thankful to Colin Moriarty for that if nothing else.
From writing that piece, though — which was actually, I must confess, adapted from something I’d written a few months back but never gotten around to publishing — I felt the old bug biting again. I enjoy writing about games; not necessarily for profit, pageviews or comments, but purely for the enjoyment of expressing myself about things that I love. I have no particular desire to be a professional games critic or journalist any more — not now I’ve experienced firsthand how shittily many of us get treated, and certainly not now that the whole GamerGate situation has put the games press as a whole under more intense scrutiny than ever before — but I do still like writing about games, and I enjoy it when people stumble across my sites for whatever reason, like what I’ve written and decide to say hi. A number of people have dropped by either here or MoeGamer recently and said that they miss my work on USgamer; I’m happy to hear that, because it means that what I was trying to do with my JPgamer column paid off in at least a small way: it gave an often-ignored, often-ostracised subsection of the gaming community something that they could feel like was written for them. And I can say that with some confidence, because I count myself among that subsection of the gaming community, and I wrote those pieces — and indeed everything on MoeGamer — for me.
Going forward, then, I hope to be able to post at least one or two things on MoeGamer a week. I’m not going to attempt to stick to any sort of schedule nor beat myself up if I don’t manage to post something — I’m not trying to make it into a business or even make a bit of pocket money from it — but I am going to use it as a place to post my thoughts about games I’ve enjoyed or am currently enjoying. And I hope other people will continue to enjoy it in that respect, too.
One of the best things about the Japanese games I tend to play in preference to anything else is simultaneously one of the most frustrating things.
I’m referring to the question of game length.
In an age where the public are seemingly ever more likely to rate interactive entertainment in terms of a “money per hours” ratio — look at the drubbing Gone Home got from certain quarters who felt that $20 was too expensive for the 2-3 hours of gameplay it offered — it should be abundantly clear to anyone who plays them that Japanese games, for the most part, consistently offer the absolute best value in terms of bang for your buck on the market.
Take Senran Kagura Burst, for example, which I finally pummelled into submission and 100% completion over the weekend during downtime between activities. This is a game that is essentially a spiritual successor to the arcade brawlers of yore — games like Final Fight, Streets of Rage, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Asterix: The Arcade Game and The Simpsons Arcade Game, to name but a few favourites from my own youth.
Unlike those brawlers, however, which typically tended to be no more than four or five levels long — they needed to theoretically be completable on a single coin credit and in a single sitting, after all — it took me in excess of 50 hours to complete all the levels in Senran Kagura Burst, and there’s plenty more I could do after completing all the levels once: try for an A-rank on all of them; try and level up all the characters to 50; try and unlock all the characters’ “balance” modes through using them in different ways; try to complete all the levels in the challenging “Frantic” mode; try to beat all the bosses with special moves; and try to see all the bosses’ special moves without dying. Were I to tackle some of those additional challenges — and I’m not ruling out the possibility, as I enjoyed Senran Kagura Burst one hell of a lot — I’m sure that could easily put a significant number of extra hours on the clock.
Notably, though, a lot of this “extra” stuff is optional. You can romp through the main storyline of Senran Kagura Burst, ignoring all side missions and some of the clever things you can do with the characters, in probably about 10 hours or so, if that. (Most of that time will be reading the game’s lengthy visual novel sections, which are skippable after you’ve completed that mission at least once.) And in doing so, you’ll have had a satisfyingly complete experience from start to finish — particularly as the game’s structure effectively feels like you’re getting two (rather similar) games for the price of one thanks to the story unfolding from two different, parallel perspectives that meet up at various points.
The same is true for many other Japanese games, with RPGs being the clearest example. Your average Japanese RPG these days will take anywhere between 20 and 100 hours to clear first time through, assuming you don’t just plough straight through to the ending, and that you take on a bit of side content and spend a bit of time fine-tuning your characters. After that, though, you have a choice: set it aside, satisfied that you’ve seen the conclusion to the story, or continue playing in the hope of enjoying everything else the game has to offer — often referred to as “post-game”. Many modern RPGs also offer a “New Game Plus” mode, in which you can carry across certain things from your previous playthrough into a new run — the exact things you can carry across vary according to the game, but often include things like character levels, unlocked skills, equipment, secret areas uncovered and all manner of other goodies. This tends to turn you into a satisfyingly unstoppable powerhouse at the outset of your second playthrough as your buffed-up character cuts through enemies like butter, but is often necessary to take on some of the biggest challenges the game has to offer. Some games even withhold their toughest bosses and dungeons until post-game or New Game Plus, providing you with an incentive to continue playing even after the credits have rolled.
Even seemingly “short” Japanese games have a massive amount of longevity, too; take your average “bullet hell” shooter, for example, which typically follows the arcade machine structure of theoretically allowing someone to clear it on a single credit and in a single sitting. The true challenge of these games, however, comes from perfecting your game — achieving that single-credit clear (often known as a 1CC — 1 Credit Clear), beating your last high score, topping the worldwide leaderboards. The latter aspect in particular can become enormously competitive, and in the case of many shmups, requires you to fathom out an initially Byzantine-seeming scoring system in order to take maximum advantage of it.
And this isn’t even getting into the truly, directly competitive titles such as fighting games, which have potentially limitless replayability if you’re actually any good at them. (I am not, so I tend to play through the story mode, if there is one, and then be done, perhaps with an occasional two-player local match with friends if they’re up for it.) Or driving games with ongoing online competition. Or all manner of other joyful experiences.
I’m not saying Western games don’t offer any of this longevity — anyone who’s super-into Call of Duty’s multiplayer mode is doubtless raising their hand and going “Um…” right now — but for my money, and particularly in the single-player space, Japanese games can’t be beaten for value in terms of how much entertainment you’ll get for your £40.
What I’m about to write would have been enormously unprofessional a few months ago, but since I’m no longer a member of the games press, nor do I have any intention of going back any time soon, I am more than happy to express myself freely.
My statement is simple: If you’re that cynical about video games, find something else — anything — to write about.
I say this after a day in which not one but two utterly dreadful articles were brought to my attention — I’m not going to link to either; you can seek them out yourself if you’re that interested.
First up was the review of Fairy Fencer F over on my former stomping grounds of USgamer. After witnessing… the reviewer in question’s review style on a couple of other Japanese role-playing game titles — most notably the actually rather excellent Tales of Xillia 2, which he panned — and the fact that, back when I was still on the staff, he wouldn’t review Atelier Rorona Plus on the grounds that a Google Image Search for the game looked “creepy”, I wasn’t altogether surprised to see that he tore this title to shreds, also. And he did so in such a way that told me three things: 1) he had a pre-existing dislike of the company that produced the game (Compile Heart) 2) he hadn’t taken the time to engage with the game on anything more than the most superficial level and 3) he simply didn’t give a shit about JRPGs as they exist in 2014.
I haven’t yet played Fairy Fencer F, but given the way in which the review in question was expressed — telling people who might actually be interested in the game absolutely nothing about the game, its story or its characters and instead bashing Compile Heart and its parent company Idea Factory, bemoaning easily ignored technical issues and generally looking down its nose at people who might want to play it — I don’t have much faith in it as a whole. I intend to give the game a fair shot myself once I have time to settle down with it, and when I do I intend to provide some detailed thoughts on the subject over at MoeGamer, much as I did with Tales of Xillia 2 recently.
Now, games journos will often point out how stupid it is to disagree with a review, which is, after all, a subjective opinion. And it kind of is; if you like something which someone else hates, then great; more power to you. But what we had here was more than that — it was an outright unhelpful review, instead more concerned with scrawling “I Hate Compile Heart” over everything than actually providing any sort of interesting, helpful analysis or criticism. It actually felt borderline insulting at times — though thankfully not so much as the site’s notorious Hatsune Miku Project Diva F review, which was so offensive to fans of Japanese games that emphatic complaints from me and my then-colleague Cassandra led to the formation of my JPgamer column.
If this was a one-off, I wouldn’t mind so much, but the reviewer in question has now done this several times — leading me to question the motivations for assigning him (or him stepping forward; I don’t know which way round it was) to these titles in the first place. As the former staffer who single-handedly built up a ton of goodwill with fans of niche titles that get ignored at best, marginalised or even ridiculed at worst by other sites, I can’t deny that it smarts a little to see all that goodwill getting well and truly pissed up the wall by giving the sort of games that I would have been all over — and that my fellow enthusiasts would have loved to hear more about — to someone who clearly and obviously hates them. Something that helped make USgamer unique has been lost; now it’s just another site with a predictable “loljapan” attitude about it. I would rather the site simply didn’t review these titles at all than let this joyless arse anywhere near one ever again, but sadly it’s not up to me. How very disappointing.
But let’s not get too hung up on Fairy Fencer F because this was, surprisingly, not the most stupid thing posted today. No, that honour goes to the epic-length editorial over on Polygon about finding the tutorial to the new Lord of the Rings game troubling. Why? Because at one point, you sneak up on your wife and kiss her, using the same control scheme and animations as you use later in the game to assassinate people and monsters. Somehow this bizarre objection was spun out to somewhere in the region of 1,500 words — an impressive achievement on the part of the author to take that long to say absolutely nothing, I must admit. (Although frankly, given the state of some of the entries on this blog, I’m probably not one to talk. But eh; there’s a difference between a professional, commercial games site and a personal blog I use as an outlet for mental detritus.)
Polygon has been going down the toilet for a long time; I can’t say I’ve ever been a particular fan of their uniquely pretentious brand of games journalism, nor the sanctimonious attitude of several of its staff writers, but since ditching their features staff a while back — the one part of the site that actually had anything meaningful or interesting to say — it really has been circling the drain. I wasn’t surprised or angry to read this article today after someone pointed me in its direction earlier; my only real reaction was a sigh and a shake of the head. Games journalism in 2014, ladies and gentlemen; better to say 1,500 words of nothing at all about the week’s big release than, you know, say nothing at all. Because if you make people angry you’ll at least get some page hits as people share it indignantly.
Today has been one of numerous days that I’ve looked back on my time with the games press and thought “That was fun while it lasted, but I don’t want to go anywhere near that ever again.” If a prerequisite for being a member of the games press of 2014 is being a joyless wanker who can’t find the fun in anything, then count me out. Give me a call when you ditch the clickbait business model, fire all these miserable tossers and start bringing on board people who are actually enthusiastic — even passionate — about this exciting medium. I won’t be sitting by the phone waiting for your call, however; I’ve got better things to do.
You know, like playing games… and actually enjoying them.
The poor shopkeeper doesn’t have it easy, whatever form they take. If they’re a retail monkey working for minimum wage in some sweaty hell-hole where chavs repeatedly come up and ask if the nearly-black garment they have in their hands is available in black, then they’re probably losing the will to live by the second. If they’re working in a, shall we say, “premium” retail environment they’re probably having a better time but rapidly growing sick of the fixed grins they’re forced to wear, not to mention the stock phrases that spew forth from their mouths like some form of verbal effluvia.
And then there’s the poor, downtrodden RPG merchant, forced to sell all manner of crap, apparently only to adventurers, who then helpfully restock them with an endless supply of boar intestines, bits of wood, crystal chippings and used swords that they don’t need any more. It must be a difficult life. And frequently a tedious one, as anyone who entered the online world of Ultima Online with lofty ambitions of owning a huge retail empire will attest.
It’s this odd premise that quirky Japanese indie game Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale (available on Steam, as well as directly from the distributor’s website) decides to explore in great depth. Playing the role of Recette, an adorable young girl with an absentee father, it’s the player’s job to help her run a successful RPG item store and make enough money to pay off the debt her father left her with. She’s not in it alone, of course. She has a fairy assistant named Tear. Tear works for the financial institution with which Recette’s father took out the loan, “because fairies are good at administration” and is there to help Recette pay off the debt she’s been saddled with. The two become friends quickly, but should Recette be unable to make any of the weekly payments she’s required to, Tear will quickly repossess her house and leave the poor girl living in a box.
So far, so Animal Crossing, you might say. And you’d kind of be right. Except not. There really isn’t another game quite like Recettear out there. There are games which focus on individual elements of the game, sure. But none which blend together such peculiar and diverse elements with such successful results.
The game is split into three main sections. Firstly, there’s the item shop itself. Recette can dump anything from her inventory onto the shelves in the store. Stuff in the window is likely to attract customers. If she chooses to open the shop, she has to deal with a flow of customers coming in and asking for things. If they’re on display, all she has to do is agree a suitable price with the customer. If they agree, cha-ching. If they disagree, Recette has one chance to make a more reasonable offer before they leave.
Simple enough. As the game progresses, though, more elements are added to this formula. For starters, in true RPG tradition, people start selling stuff to Recette, too. This can be a good way for her to build up stock, as she can often get stuff for knock-down prices with a bit of shrewd haggling. Then people will place special orders, requesting that she deliver, say, three hats in two days’ time. Recette has to not only make sure she has the hats in stock but also remember to have the store open when the customer plans to return. And finally, some customers will come in not quite sure of what they want, and Recette will have to make recommendations from the stock she has on display and in her inventory.
It’s a straightforward mechanic, and you soon get to know how much certain customers are willing to pay over base prices. A few twists come in later with a news ticker informing Recette of increased or decreased prices in the market, but it’s mostly a case of buy low, sell high.
If Recette chooses to leave the store, she can wander around town and occasionally bump into the people who frequent her store. These come in the form of random townsfolk and adventurers. Completing requests for adventurers will sometimes net her their Guild Card, which enables her to make use of them for expeditions to the local dungeons.
Yes, there are dungeons. Because sometimes the local markets just don’t have the things people want to buy. When that’s the case, Recette is free to pop down to the local Adventurers’ Guild and hire one of the guildies she’s made friends with. It’s then into an action-RPG dungeon crawler to kick monster booty and gather lots of crap that people might want to buy.
It works, brilliantly well. The item shop stuff occurs quickly enough that it never gets tiresome. The storytelling scenes feature attractive artwork and a truly excellent localisation from the Japanese. And the dungeon-crawling, while simplistic, is fun and satisfying, broken up by regular boss battles and in-dungeon special events.
The whole game is distinctly adorable, but deceptive. The artwork, music and squeaky-voiced Japanese girls make it look like something which should be incredibly embarrassing and cringeworthy to play. But in fact, there’s a distinctly acidic sense of humour underneath all the sweetness, and a large number of the dialogue exchanges are genuinely laugh-out-loud funny. The kawaii presentation coupled with fairly sophisticated, intelligent humour and a wonderfully self-aware nature reminds me a lot of the Disgaea series.
I’m probably about halfway through the game now, having made two of Recette’s repayments successfully. There’s the hints of a bigger plot at work, and a bunch of new characters have been introduced, most of whom will presumably end up being playable adventurers for the dungeoneering sections.
If you’re after something that is both comfortably familiar and quite different to any JRPG you’ve ever played, then Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale is well worth checking out. I fully intend on posting a full review somewhere once I’ve beaten it.
Earlier today (or possibly yesterday, I think), a former colleague posted a piece on a site I used to work for bemoaning, not for the first time, the amount of “ecchi” content in modern Japanese games, particularly dungeon-crawling RPGs. (I’m not going to link to it.)
