1846: Akiba’s Tripped

Finished Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed this evening. Planning on posting some more detailed thoughts over at MoeGamer at some point in the coming week, but I thought I’d post some immediate impressions here while it’s fresh in my mind — I literally beat it not five minutes ago. Well, one of its routes, anyway.

Akiba’s Trip is quite an unusual game, although perhaps not by Japanese standards. Combining elements of dating sims, visual novels, RPGs, brawlers and open-world action adventures, it all adds up to a curiously satisfying experience that, while relatively brief compared to some other games — my first playthrough took me about 20 hours, and that was with doing pretty much all of the available sidequests as well as a bit of fiddling around trying to level my skills up and collect some collectable things — proved to be highly enjoyable.

A highlight, as with many Japanese games, is the care and attention which has been poured into characterisation, both visually and in terms of writing. The localisation team at Xseed has to take some of the credit for the amount of personality the game has, too; as translations go, this is absolutely exemplary, remaining (so far as I can make out with my limited knowledge of Japanese) reasonably true to the original script while simultaneously incorporating plenty of cultural elements that will be familiar to Westerners.

A particular highlight is the main character, who is handled somewhat like the player’s character in the Persona series, in that he doesn’t speak out loud all that much — although he does have a couple of lines here and there, they’re mostly confined to inner monologue — but the player is frequently given the option of how to respond to a particular situation. In many cases, the options given all lead to the same outcome, but the available choices are frequently hilarious; there are some real crackers towards the end of the game in particular, with my favourites being “It’s dangerous to go alone! Take thi– I mean me!” and “I’m going to turn his dark utopia into a dark u-nope-ia!”. (You kind of have to be there.)

These dialogue options do occasionally have a purpose, however, and that’s the choice of route and subsequent ending that you get. Partway through the game, the story splits in a few different directions according to the various different heroines you encounter. I haven’t seen how different these routes are yet — and I’m disappointed that there isn’t a route for Kati Raikonnen, an incredibly endearing member of the main cast who, being “foreign”, has a tendency to speak in what is represented as “Engrish” by the translation — but I’m keen to find out. It appears that this will be a painless process, too, since after clearing the game once you can turn on the option to specifically mark the dialogue options that will change affection levels between you and the heroines. Not only that, but there’s no real need to do sidequests after your first runthrough — indeed, there’s no real need to do sidequests at all if you don’t care about trophies, though the money they get you is nice — and so you can zip through subsequent playthroughs pretty quickly, especially if you’ve taken the time to upgrade your weapons and clothing and carry them over into your New Game Plus.

I really wasn’t sure what to expect when I booted up Akiba’s Trip. I think I was expecting some sort of fairly straightforward brawler set in Akihabara, but what I actually got was far more akin to something like Yakuza. A surprising amount of depth, in other words, and an extremely well-realised setting that makes a great backdrop for the various stories within.

I hope we get the opportunity to revisit Akihabara at some point in the future; given that this version is actually the second game to bear the Akiba’s Trip title — the first never made it out of Japan — that’s not beyond the realm of possibility. I’ll be there if and when it happens!

1840: Further Tales from Akihabara

When I’ve not been playing Final Fantasy XIV or Final Fantasy II, my game of choice has been Final Fant– no, wait, Akiba’s Trip: Undead and Undressed. I talked a little about this game a few days ago and, after a few more hours with it, I can confirm that I really, really like it a lot.

It’s a very peculiar game by modern standards. Not quite RPG, not quite adventure, not quite dating sim, not quite open-world sandbox game, Akiba’s Trip is a thoroughly interesting experience that seems to get more rewarding the longer I continue playing it.

One thing that sprang to mind while I was playing it the other day is something I also felt when playing games that are spiritually somewhat similar: Shenmue and Yakuza being the two that I think of immediately. The thing I thought about was how nice it is to have a game world that is small, but dense. Akiba’s Trip unfolds in a single district of Tokyo, split (in the Vita version, anyway) into maybe ten or so different areas, all of which are interlinked in various ways. Yakuza was the same, unfolding in a single district, and Shenmue saw you progressing through just a few different areas of a town. (Shenmue II got a little more ambitious, but still split its story into several distinct “chapters”, each of which unfolded in a relatively small geographic area.)

If you take this approach and do it well, it gives an extremely strong sense of place to the setting. The setting almost becomes a character in its own right, as you start to recognise distinctive landmarks in each area, and know that if you want [x] you need to go to [y]. It also encourages the player to wander round, explore and drink in the atmosphere: although Akiba’s Trip features a fast-travel system, for example, I’ve found myself deliberately walking from one end of the map to the other just so I can get a stronger feel of this lovingly modelled setting.

Okay, Akiba’s Trip in particular has some technical limitations holding it back — the poor old Vita can’t cope with all that many people wandering down the streets at the same time as you, for example, and the shops that you can go “in” tend to amount to a simple buy/sell menu rather than a further environment you can explore — but the combination of visuals, sound and personality that the game boasts makes it an experience where it’s fun to just wander around and see what you can see — particularly when unexpected things happen.

This isn’t even getting into the meat of the game, though: there’s a strong and interesting story surrounding the man-made vampire-like “Synthister” creatures; there’s plenty of mystery surrounding several of the central characters; there’s an entertaining series of sidequests involving the main character and his hikikomori (shut-in) little sister; and even the non-plot-related sidequests help to flesh out the world by bringing you into contact with a diverse and fun array of incidental, supporting characters.

Plus, why on Earth wouldn’t you want to play a game where you defeat enemies by pulling off their trousers? 🙂

1798: Starlight Vigil

Today I participated in something that I had only previously heard about: an entire online community coming together to pay its respects to someone.

That “someone” was a person whom I only knew as Codex Vahlda, a Final Fantasy XIV player on the Gilgamesh server whom I became aware of this morning after a casual browse of Twitter.

I didn’t know Codex at all. I don’t even play on his server, so it’s unlikely I would have come into contact with him unless he randomly showed up in a Duty Finder group for running a dungeon, since those pull players from several servers to make complete groups.

Sadly, I’ll never have the opportunity to know Codex, as he passed away recently due to complications from renal failure. Both he and his family and friends seemingly knew that he was going to pass on, and it was as he lay on what was to become his deathbed that Final Fantasy XIV players from around the world, and from several different servers, all gathered in the same place — the beach in Ward 1 of the player housing district Mist — and held their own vigil for our fallen adventuring comrade.

Normally, this sort of thing is an event that you tend to hear about after the fact, but I happened to be online just as someone on Twitter was posting about the vigil taking place on Ultros, the Final Fantasy XIV server which I call home. Largely out of curiosity, I logged in to take a look at what was happening, ran down to the beach and, sure enough, found a line of players facing out to sea, “wind-up sun” minions out, bathing the group in a soft light, contemplating whatever they chose to be contemplating as they paid their respects to Codex. I joined them.

After a moment of quiet reflection, people spontaneously began letting off fireworks and balloons — these are items you can acquire in the game and are intended for use upon celebratory occasions such as seasonal events or the newly added “Eternal Bond” wedding system. It was a celebration not only of Codex’s life, but also of how one stranger could bring all these disparate people from all over the world together in one place to do the same thing. It was a really, really beautiful moment, and extremely moving.

It’s easy to think of the Internet at large, social media and online games in particular, as utterly “toxic” (that’s a favourite word of critics at the moment) environments in which everyone is constantly at one another’s throats. But every so often something happens that reminds you that an awful lot of human beings are fundamentally decent people, and that regardless of where you’re from or what — if anything — you happen to believe in spiritually, the cycle of life and death is, pretty much without fail, something that will always bring us closer together with one another.

Rest in peace, Codex; I never knew you, but I hope wherever you are now, you feel the love of all the strangers who came together to celebrate your life today. May you forever walk in the light of the crystal.

1751: Speaking in Tongues

My Final Fantasy XIV Free Company was afflicted with something that seems to come to all MMORPG guilds at one point or another recently: that which is colloquially referred to as “drama”.

Ultimately, the drama itself wasn’t particularly serious — no-one was hurt and no damage was done, though arguably an ill-thought-out prank by an outgoing member was not the best means of handling the situation — but what I found interesting was the discussions that followed it up.

Essentially, the conclusion that many of us came to is that communication is important. It may sound like a simple piece of advice — common sense, obvious, even — but it’s so easy to forget, even in an inherently social situation like a massively multiplayer online game. In a Free Company the size of ours, it’s inevitable that cliques form, friendships blossom and smaller subgroups start doing things together. That’s the natural way of things, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing at all. That is, until it starts having a negative impact on the group as a whole for whatever reason — perhaps some members see these smaller subgroups as somewhat exclusionary; perhaps the subgroups find it difficult to relate to other people; perhaps everyone could just stand to be a bit more open and honest with one another.

There were a number of contributing factors in this instance that I won’t bore you with now, but suffice to say that a lack of communication was the root cause of the issues we suffered. And, positively, said lack of communication was correctly identified quickly as the root cause of these issues, and people have been making determined efforts to try and make things right. Although the initial “drama” wasn’t particularly pleasant or fun to witness, it turns out it ultimately had a positive impact; people are talking more, cooperating more and doing more things together. Plans have been put in place for more organised cooperation on the more difficult things the game has to offer, and people are just generally being more helpful and pleasant towards one another.

It’s testament to the overall quality of people we have in the Free Company as a whole that the active members — many of whom could be argued to be implicated in the whole exclusivity/lack of communication thing — have taken this stuff happening on the chin, haven’t got angry and upset and have done something positive from it: they’ve learned from it, identified things that we can do better and differently for one another, and ultimately the Free Company will hopefully be a far more pleasant place overall as a result.

Me, I’m mostly just glad it all seems to be over and done with for now. I hate to see friends fighting with one another, or — in this case — just misunderstanding one another. It’s a great pity that the situation led us to lose a few Free Company members who had been with us since the beginning — and people I enjoyed playing with, moreover — but these things happen, and ultimately we’ll be a stronger group as a result.

Now let’s all just enjoy the game!

1745: Dreams of Ice

Andie and I journeyed all the way back from Aberdeen to Southampton today — a trip that took somewhere in the region of 11 hours altogether. I offered to drive some of the way, but Andie decided that she would be just as comfortable driving as she would be in the passenger seat, so I was relegated to the position of passenger and entertainment-chooser. (We have plumbed the very depths of everything the BBC Radio iPlayer catalogue has to offer.)

We were both quite keen to get back today due to the release of Final Fantasy XIV’s fourth major patch, dubbed Dreams of Ice. This is the penultimate big patch in the series before the full-scale expansion drops next year, and as such the main storyline is starting to build to a climax. Alongside that, one of the principal “side stories” — that of the super-difficult endgame dungeons The Binding Coil of Bahamut — finally comes to an end in this patch, so the most dedicated of raiders can take on what is effectively the game’s “true final boss” with their friends. Meanwhile, there is plenty of other stuff to keep slightly less hardcore players occupied.

I haven’t done everything yet, not by a long shot, and I wasn’t expecting to in the space of a few hours this evening. I have, however, had the opportunity to check out two of the new dungeons — Snowcloak and The Sunken Temple of Qarn (Hard) — and play through roughly half of the new episode of the main storyline. I haven’t yet taken on this patch’s “big fight” against ice queen Shiva, but that’s coming up, and since my friends and I are yet to clear the Second Coil of Bahamut, the Final Coil of Bahamut is probably some weeks or even months away yet.

There’s plenty of new stuff to get stuck into, though, and once the initial excitement of brand-new content has worn off in a few days, there’s a lot of gear to set my sights on. The addition of a new endgame currency (and the retirement of one) has led to a new “tier” of equipment being added to the game, and I’m looking forward to seeing the impact that has on the already spectacular amount of damage that my Black Mage puts out without breaking a sweat. I’m also intending on gearing up my Paladin a decent amount, too, because 1) it’s already catching up with Black Mage and 2) I’m really enjoying the tanking I’ve been doing. With our regular group seemingly putting me in one of the tank roles for the Second Coil of Bahamut, it will probably pay to have some better gear, too, anyway.

But now it is 2:45am and I am very tired. Both Andie and I rallied a bit once we got home and started playing, but now I am abundantly ready to go to sleep and hopefully wake up rather late and reasonably refreshed tomorrow. I have the rest of the week off, so I intend to enjoy it fully by bumming around not doing very much at all except playing Final Fantasy XIV. No change there then, huh?

1722: Shared Hardship on the Shores of La Noscea

I had an enjoyably bizarre experience in Final Fantasy XIV earlier on — and it’s the sort of thing that couldn’t possibly have been planned; the kind of emergent weirdness that only comes about when you put the unpredictability of humans into the mix with a set of systems that always play by set rules, regardless of context.

In order to explain the situation for those unfamiliar with Final Fantasy XIV, indulge me a moment, veterans, while I define a few things.

One of the main systems in Final Fantasy XIV is known as the Full Active Time Event (or FATE) system. These are essentially “public quests” that spawn at predictable points on the map, but on an unpredictable schedule. Some spawn more frequently than others; some are required to progress in certain quests; some are more “popular” than others owing to their convenient location or rewards on offer.

There are three important things to note about FATEs: firstly, they’re time limited, usually providing you 15 minutes to complete the main objective, which is generally plenty of time; secondly, if you are standing inside the blue circle that represents the FATE area on the map and hit just one enemy once — even if it’s just a glancing, accidental blow from a weapon better suited for channeling powerful magics than melee combat — you are considered to have “participated” in that FATE; thirdly, the number of people who participated in a FATE the previous time it spawned determines how difficult it is the next time around: in other words, at peak periods, FATEs are designed to be challenging for larger groups of people, whereas if the last time a FATE spawned no-one took part in it at all, the next time it appears it will probably be completable by a (well-geared) solo adventurer, perhaps with a chocobo companion in tow.

Completely separate from FATEs is a newer system called The Hunt, in which each area in the game has three Elite Marks that players can hunt down for substantial rewards: a B-rank mark, which you can fight solo, and which only offers rewards if you have a specific Mark Bill inviting you to hunt it down; an A-rank mark, which requires about 4-8 people minimum to take down, but which offers rewards according to how much you (and, in most cases, your party) contributed to the kill; and an S-rank mark, which is much more powerful but works along the same lines as the A-rank marks in terms of rewards. We’re mostly concerned with A-rank marks here, since S-rank marks have special conditions that need to be fulfilled before they’ll show up in most cases, whereas A-rank marks will just show up regardless.

A-rank marks spawn on predictable schedules — you can see the timers ticking away for the server I play on right here, for example — and appear roughly once every four hours. What normally happens is that hunting parties will gather when the first marks on the list are approaching the “four hours since last killed” mark, then spread out and start looking for the beasts to respawn. There then follows a phenomenon that has become known as the “A-Train”, where hunting parties move from zone to zone and pick off all the A-rank marks on the list one at a time until they’re all dead, at which point the parties will all disband — unless there’s the possibility of an S-rank showing up — and reconvene again when the first timer on the list hits four hours. It’s like clockwork; it’s perhaps not how the designers intended the system to work when it was first designed — and indeed, it’s been tweaked and reorganised several times since it launched — but if you can get involved (which is usually as simple as throwing up a Party Finder ad with the word “Hunt” in it) it can be both fun and rewarding, if not particularly challenging in most cases.

Anyway, the point here is that when an A-rank mark shows up, a horde of players normally follows — and I do mean a horde. We’re talking maybe 30 or so people minimum, and usually much more than that.

When I was sauntering around the lands of Western La Noscea earlier today, hacking and slashing my way through some FATEs in an attempt to collect the very last Atma crystal I needed to upgrade my Paladin’s relic weapon into its Atma form, I happened to stumble across one of these gatherings, who had showed up to fight the giant crab Nahn. Nahn, as it turned out, had spawned right in the middle of the FATE I had actually run to this area to complete, and as such there was something in the region of 50 people standing around, killing Sahagin indiscriminately to clear the area ready for the big group push towards Nahn. The important thing to note here is that the Sahagin they were hacking, slashing, punching and setting fire to (depending on class) were parts of the FATE I had shown up to complete, so as far as the game was concerned, when that FATE’s boss fell, over 50 people had participated in it.

I’m sure you can imagine what happened a little later, after Nahn was defeated and after I returned to the area to complete the same FATE again as it happened to appear while I was passing through.

Yes, believing that 50 players being in the area, battering Sahagin left, right and centre, was a representative example of the zone’s population at that particular hour, the game adjusted the difficulty of the FATE to cater not to little old me and the two other people who happened to wander into the FATE at the same time as me — oh no — but instead to the 50+ people who were no longer present, now doubtless considerably further down the tracks of this particular run of the A-Train.

I didn’t notice this initially. I thought that the “trash” enemies that you have to defeat before the main boss monster showed up were a little stronger than I remembered, but I thought nothing of it. My companions and I slaughtered our way through them until the boss showed up, at which point I, as the Paladin — a protector “tank” type — got its attention by smacking it firmly upside the chops with my shield, and then began inserting my sword into various parts of its anatomy while my companions got busy with magic spells and poking it with a spear respectively.

I figured something was amiss when the health bar of the boss was moving very slowly despite us all unleashing our most powerful attacks. To put it in context, the boss’ health was declining at roughly the same speed as a well-geared party taking on Ramuh Extreme, currently one of the most challenging fights in the game. Fortunately, the boss didn’t receive a damage buff at the same time as his vastly increased hit points, otherwise we would have been in real trouble.

We persisted, though, shaving away a tiny sliver of health with each hit. Andie happened to be passing by at one point, and joined the fray to contribute a bit of extra damage from her Bard class. We were making progress, a tiny bit at a time, though the longer the fight was going on the more exhausted my Paladin was getting, my ever-declining TP (Tactical Points, used for triggering physical attacks) getting perilously close to the zero mark. I had the boss’ attention pretty firmly, though, so I eased off the powerful attacks and let my (TP-free) automatic basic attack do its work for a little while.

The timer ticked down. We were into single digits of minutes remaining, despite the fact that we’d all entered the fray with the full 15 minutes on the clock. The boss was barely at 50% of his HP, and I was starting to doubt whether or not we’d be able to beat it. Still we persisted.

“DIE DAMMIT!” I typed in frustration, on the /say channel so that my companions (whom, aside from Andie, I didn’t know) could “hear” me.

“for real!!!” came back the response from one of them. We’d shared a moment. It was nice. Still we fought on.

My TP had recovered a bit by now, so I triggered my Fight or Flight ability — which temporarily increases my Paladin’s damage output — and started hacking away with a bit more gusto once again. I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination, but the boss’ health bar seemed to be going down noticeably faster. It looked as if we might just make it.

In fact, it was beginning to look like we’d make it just as the timer hit zero. Would we pull it off?

Sadly not. At less that 1% HP remaining, the timer expired and we failed the FATE. Our characters all fell to our knees and wept for the 15 minutes of effort we’d just put in — and, of course, to add insult to injury, I didn’t get an Atma crystal from that FATE either.

I don’t regret the experience, though. As I say, I shared a moment with those other people who were there at the same time as me, all doubtless thinking the same things, willing their characters to do just that little bit more damage. When I happened to run into them again doing another FATE in the area about half an hour later, we exchanged pleasantries and had a laugh about how the new FATE was quite a bit easier than our earlier tragedy. Then we went our separate ways. It was a real “ships in the night” moment, but it made what would have otherwise been a frustrating experience into something highly memorable — and, indeed, something I ended up wanting to write about at length.

I’ve got one more Atma crystal to go before my Paladin’s weapon and shield can be upgraded, hot on the heels of my Black Mage’s weapon reaching the powerful Novus (second-to-top) upgrade phase recently. If I can have more experiences like the one I just described, though, I really don’t mind it taking a little longer; shared hardships like that — while fairly trivial in this instance — can bring people closer together, even if it’s just for a moment or two.

1700: Showing Your Skills

One of the reasons I think I’ve stuck with Square Enix’s excellent MMO Final Fantasy XIV for as long as I have now — I’ve been playing since the beta, which means my dear character Amarysse is now well over a year old — is that I actually feel like I’m quite good at it. This is a nice feeling.

I’m not saying I’m the best at it, or anything, and I’m certainly not one of those players who makes passive-aggressive comments in the vague direction of those they believe to be “beneath” their skill level (aside: earlier today there was one such jerk in 24-player raid Syrcus Tower berating a newbie tank for what he perceived as a lack of skills, and I was gratified to see all 23 other players admonish him for being an “Internet tough guy”; he shut up shortly afterwards) but I do feel pretty confident that I know how most of the things in the game works, and I’m comfortable helping and advising newcomers with how best to proceed.

As I say, this is a nice feeling, and it occurs to me that there haven’t been all that many games — or indeed activities in general over the years — that I can honestly say that about. I like board games, for example, but I wouldn’t say I’m an expert at, say, Agricola (as my unbroken losing streak will back up), Carcassonne or Catan. Likewise, I like performing music, but I’m realistic about my own abilities; I know there are plenty of people out there who are much better than I am. And likewise, I enjoy writing, too, but again, know that there are a lot of people who are better at that than me, too.

Final Fantasy XIV, though, I feel like I’m largely on top of my game. Sure, I haven’t cleared everything yet — The Second Coil of Bahamut still remains elusive, though this is more a scheduling issue than anything else right now — but I have completed some of the most difficult content, such as The Binding Coil of Bahamut, Turn 5 and the Extreme difficulty version of the Ramuh boss fight. I have a damage-dealer, healer and tank class to level 50 and at least reasonably well-geared in all cases — very well-geared in the case of my “main”, which is the Black Mage damage-dealer class. I know all the dungeons inside out because I’ve run them so many times. I know most of the Primal fights pretty well — with the exception of the Extreme mode variants, which I’ve only done once each — and I’m confident I could talk newcomers through most of The Binding Coil of Bahamut.

Knowing that I’m actually not some newbie scrub who constantly needs help from other people has actually helped me in a personal sense. Being able to complete all this content and even lead expeditions into some of the game’s most challenging dungeons and encounters has meant that I’ve developed my own sense of confidence and assertiveness. I still have some way to go — I’m hesitant about asking people multiple times for something I really want to do, because I don’t want to be a bother, for example — but I’m a lot better than I was.

This particularly comes to mind with regard to the game system added in patch 2.3, known as The Hunt. The Hunt is a take on Final Fantasy XII’s system whereby you’re given “marks” to find out in the world, then substantial rewards for beating them. In the case of Final Fantasy XIV’s take on this system, there are three “tiers”: B-rank, A-rank and S-rank. B-rank hunts can be soloed and you only need to do one per week to get a decent reward. A- and S-rank, meanwhile, require groups of people to beat.

The Hunt is, frankly, one of the most poorly implemented things in the whole of the otherwise pretty consistently excellent Final Fantasy XIV. It offers rewards that are much too big, and it is designed in such a way as to encourage enormous groups to power through it rather than smaller parties being able to take on these challenging monsters without being hassled by others. There’s something of a reputation of A- and S-rank monsters getting “zerg rushed” by hordes of players looking to make some quick endgame currency, and on occasion the sheer number of people showing up for the more lucrative marks can cause game crashes and freezes. Not so good.

By far the worst thing, though, was the fact that it caused a fair amount of tension in the community because, at least initially, no-one quite seemed able to agree how they should be handled. Should the person who found a hunt mark be allowed to engage it in combat whenever they felt ready, or should they wait for other people to turn up first? Is it acceptable for someone to call out a “pull time” for a hunt, even if they weren’t the person who found the monster? Is it acceptable to “reset” a monster (by moving it far enough from its spawn point that it restores all its HP and the fight effectively starts over again) in the name of giving people who haven’t arrived yet the chance to get some credit for the kill? (In the latter case, the official answer to that is “no”; it’s regarded as harassment due to the fact that doing so not only resets the monster’s HP but also individual players’ hidden “contribution points” to slaying the mark, which could potentially affect the rewards they receive.)

Said tension led to arguments — bitter, public, loud ones, as players formerly happy to cooperate with one another were suddenly at each other’s throats over how they wanted to play the game. A number of people decided to take charge and say that this was how things were going to be done from now on, and if you didn’t follow their arbitrary rules, they’d do their best to get you blacklisted by as many other players as possible. Not pleasant… and certainly not conducive to someone like me, who still suffers a certain degree of social anxiety in an online environment, wanting to join in the “fun”.

However, the other day, I can’t remember why, but I bit the bullet and gave it a go. I joined a hunt party and killed some monsters with them. And I had fun. The people involved were nice. No-one was yelling at each other or accusing others of “doing it wrong”. (It helped that it was relatively early in the day in server terms, and consequently there were fewer people online.) It inspired me to go back again and get some more rewards. And then to make my own party and lead it — something I wouldn’t even have considered even just a few weeks ago.

Having conquered that anxiety-inducing hurdle, I feel like I’m in a good place; I’m happy with my own level of skill at the game, and happy that I can help others out. I’m also happy to have a positive influence on those around me — I’ve defused more than a few potential arguments among hot-headed players in parties I’ve been involved with — and generally be a good member of the game’s overall community.

Can’t really ask for more than that, can you? And it’s that feeling that means that, even as I have somewhat less time to play now that I have a full-time job, I’ll be sticking with Final Fantasy XIV for quite some time to come, yet.

1693: Rieze Maxia-Elympios Relations

Even after spending a week writing in great detail about it over on MoeGamer, I’m still having an absolute blast with Bandai Namco’s (or is it Namco Bandai? I lose track) Tales of Xillia 2, the direct sequel to one of my favourite recent console role-playing games.

Direct sequels are quite rare in the Japanese role-playing game space; long running series like Tales of and Final Fantasy typically take each new installment as a completely new experience, with the only things each have in common being perhaps some story themes, some item and skill names, maybe a few character names or references, and little else.

There’s a fairly good reason that direct sequels are pretty rare in this particular genre, of course: they’re damned difficult to do well, and if you’re not altogether careful you’ll open yourself up to accusations of simply recycling old content. This is a criticism that has been levelled at Xillia 2 and not altogether unjustifiably — the majority of towns, field areas and dungeons you’ll visit in the early part of the game are lifted wholesale from the original Tales of Xillia with very few changes.

It’s what you do with that recycled content that counts, though, and in the relatively few examples of direct sequels in the JRPG space, it’s been handled pretty well. Final Fantasy X-2, for example, eschewed its predecessor’s very linear path around the world in favour of having everywhere open from the outset, and multiple things available for you to work on at any given time. Final Fantasy XIII-2, meanwhile, fragmented its experience into a slightly messy tale of time travel with a non-linear narrative, completely at odds with the much-maligned linearity of its predecessor. And Tales of Xillia 2 effectively starts you at the other end of the world from its predecessor, showing life in the games’ unusual setting from a pleasantly different perspective.

That’s not all, though. While Xillia 1’s world was relatively open to exploration, you still unlocked things in a fairly linear progression and tended not to go places until you were told to. In Xillia 2, meanwhile, you still unlock areas of the world according to your progression through the main story, but on regular occasions you are left to your own devices to explore, take on sidequests — many of which are repeatable or randomly generated — and simply do as you see fit in the world.

In this sense, Xillia 2 actually ends up feeling a lot more like a crossbreed between traditionally Eastern and Western approaches to role-playing games. You have the tight, linear, character-driven narrative of a Japanese role-playing game coupled with the freedom to go and see what’s over that hill, in that cave, through those wood as seen in Western titles like the Elder Scrolls series.

In fact, Xillia 2 also takes some heavy cues from Japanese role-playing games that do things a little differently, too — most notably the latter two Persona games. Like those two classics, Tales of Xillia 2’s protagonist is pretty much silent, though he does have plenty of personality despite not saying all that much. And like those games, your party members have their own unique individual storylines that are ascribed almost as much importance as the main narrative.

One of the strongest things about the original Xillia was the feeling that this was a real group of characters that had their own individual personalities, feelings and opinions on everything. Offhand comments in the field, frequently hilarious post-battle mini-scenes and the Tales series’ trademark Skits all helped contribute to an atmosphere of these characters feeling like real people that you were meant to care about rather than collections of stats. (Mechanically, they’re all very distinct, too, as it happens, but for me it’s the personality of them all that really shines.) Xillia 2 continues this with aplomb, this time giving you somewhat more freedom to make choices as to how the main character responds to things. Certain choices will affect your relationship values with your party members, while other choices will change the outcome of scenes. It’s an interesting change from Xillia 1’s very “hands-off” approach to story, and it works well, particularly in the context of making the sequel feel distinct from its predecessor despite reusing a lot of content.

I’m yet to beat the game — I’m juggling it with the ever-present Final Fantasy XIV at the moment — but I’m looking forward to seeing how it all concludes. If you enjoyed (and beat!) the previous one, I can strongly recommend Xillia 2; as a sequel, it hits all the right notes, and you absolutely will not be disappointed with the opportunity to spend more time with these wonderful characters.

If you never played Xillia 1? Well, get that sorted right now, soldier; you’re missing out.

1627: Further Enthusing on the Subject of Alchemy

Finally got around to finishing a playthrough of Atelier Rorona Plus today — thanks in part to picking up a copy of the Vita version, which allows you to transfer your save across from the PS3 version, and playing it in the coffee shop when I felt like a change of scenery during a fit of particularly bleak depression earlier in the day. My opinion of it hasn’t changed, but I thought I would enthuse about it once again for those who haven’t yet tasted of its joys.

Rorona Plus is an interesting game, and one with good pacing. Beginning with simple tasks for which the time limit you’re given is ample — leaving you with plenty of time to take on other tasks to build up your relationships and reputation in the town — the game gradually progresses in such a way that what is the same amount of in-game time starts to feel more and more claustrophobic. The things you’re tasked with making start taking longer to produce, and the journeys outside the workshop to gather ingredients and battle monsters take up longer stretches of time, too.

Fortunately, to counterbalance this, you have a number of additional systems open up as you progress — you’re able to “wholesale” items to the shops around town, allowing you to simply purchase useful “intermediate step” ingredients for more complex recipes rather than having to make them every time, and Rorona gets an assistant who can either be sent out to gather ingredients or craft items independently or Rorona. I must confess I didn’t make nearly enough use of these facilities in my first playthrough, but you live and learn; I now recognise that in order to get everything done to such a standard as to unlock the numerous alternative endings to the game, it’s necessary to make heavy use of them.

Herein lies the interesting thing about Rorona Plus: despite having the trappings of a conventional Japanese role-playing game, the meat of the gameplay is actually more about management and strategy. In order to see the most success, you’ll need to plan your time effectively, and set up systems in order to save time whenever possible. Some of these can be constructed yourself — a furnishing system added in the Plus version allows you to build various items that confer helpful benefits on Rorona and her party — while others, such as the aforementioned wholesale and assistant systems, unlock naturally as you progress in the game, though some can be unlocked sooner if you trigger certain events more quickly.

I’m looking forward to playing through the game again knowing what I know now — plus I believe some stuff can be carried over to another playthrough — and seeking out the other endings. Whether or not I’ll go for all of them remains to be seen — I’m keen to play the rest of the series, after all! — but I’ve had a blast so far, and I’m happy that there’s plenty more where that came from.

1614: Remastered

One thing I’m growing to quite dislike about the new generation of games consoles is the number of times it seems they’re going to try and sell us the same games we’ve already played under the pretense that it’ll somehow be a new experience to see them in slightly higher resolution and at a better framerate. (Pro-Tip: if you played them on PC — obviously impossible for exclusives, but for everything else, a viable option — then you have already had this “new” experience.) It’s already happened with Tomb Raider, it’s happening soon with The Last of Us, Halo and numerous others.

There’s a sound argument for these releases, of course: some people might be coming to video games with the new generation and thus may have never had the opportunity to play things from the PS3/360 era — so why shouldn’t they be able to play these games in their “definitive edition”, as Tomb Raider called it? In the case of Halo, the upcoming Master Chief Collection will bring together games from two generations of consoles on one platform and allow players to jump straight to favourite moments rather than having to play all the way through four games. (It also misses out the two games widely regarded to be among the strongest installments in the series — ODST and Reach — but never mind, eh.)

I do find myself resenting the idea of a game that didn’t come out all that long ago — The Last of Us — getting a “remastered” release, though. As I say, I understand the reasons for it, it just feels a little… I don’t know, cheap. Particularly given that most of the truly exciting, original titles for PS4 and Xbox One aren’t coming until next year at the earliest — this leaves 2014 as, as one of my soon-to-be-former colleagues put it, The Year of the Remaster.

Twist: At least, I thought I resented the idea of a remaster. Until I purchased a copy of Atelier Rorona Plus recently — a remake of a game that didn’t come out all that long ago that hasn’t even jumped generation: it’s being released on the same platform it was originally released on!

Atelier Rorona Plus is, as the name suggests, a rerelease of Atelier Rorona, the alchemy-themed RPG/strategy game from Gust that I started playing a while back then had to stop due to review commitments. But this is far from a straight remaster — there would be little point rereleasing it on the same platform otherwise. No, Atelier Rorona Plus instead rebuilds pretty much the whole game in a number of ways.

Visually, it’s had an overhaul. While the environments and 2D art are mostly the same, the 3D polygonal characters have been totally revamped to be more in line with their 2D counterparts — in the original, the polygonal characters looked far too young in comparison to the hand-drawn art and, while it wasn’t a dealbreaker by any means, it was a little distracting. The new character models look gorgeous, and bring the game much more in line with its more recent sequels.

But, notably, it’s not just the visuals that have had an overhaul. The gameplay has been tweaked and adjusted, too, with a whole ton of nice little features that make the whole experience more streamlined and smooth to play without sacrificing any of its depth. The battle system has been redone, the crafting system around which the game revolves has been revamped, the quest system is clearer, there’s less aimless running around… basically everything that needed fixing has, so far as I can make out, been fixed.

Now that’s how you do a remake. Full review coming soon as one of my last pieces on USgamer.