2497: The Further Adventures of Class Zero

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After some further time with Final Fantasy Type-0, I’m now 100% on board with what it has to offer. It’s a slow burn, to be sure — its rather drab early hours don’t really sell it all that well, but by the time it’s flinging Alexander, Bahamut Zero and Gilgamesh (including the correct music) around with gay abandon it’s hard not to enjoy the ride.

I’m planning a Final Fantasy month over at MoeGamer at some point in the near future, so I’ll write more about this then, but I did want to comment a little on the game’s tone, because it’s markedly different from the mainline Final Fantasy series, and makes this abundantly clear from the outset.

Mainline Final Fantasy games are benchmark JRPGs for many people; they’re regarded as the quintessential example of “young hero gathers a band of companions and saves the world”, despite a number of installments deviating from this stereotypical formula. One thing you can say with a reasonable amount of confidence, however, is that, on balance, they’re optimistic affairs, all about bonds of friendship and love overcoming great evil and that sort of thing. This isn’t to say that the series doesn’t have its dark moments — in fact, several installments’ darkest moments make up some of the most iconic and influential moments in all of gaming history — but on the whole, it’s a series designed to make you feel like part of a heroic epic with all the optimism that involves.

Type-0, meanwhile, occupies the complete other end of the spectrum. I talked a little yesterday about how it de-emphasises the role of the individual in favour of a large cast of characters, and the further you play, the more this becomes apparent. Part of Type-0‘s background lore is the fact that when someone dies, anyone who knew them forgets who they were, even if they were very close. This is one of many reflections the game makes on the horrors of war; a very literal interpretation of Stalin’s supposed (and possibly misattributed) quote “when one dies, it is a tragedy; when a million die, it is a statistic”.

Type-0 lays it on fairly thick with its depictions of the brutality and the senselessness of war. It doesn’t do so in a particularly preachy manner, however; the game’s setup is such that it’s fair to spend some time pondering whether anyone — including the side you’re on — are the “good guys” in the conflict depicted. Instead, we simply see various horrors unfolding, both through the eyes of Class Zero on the ground, and through the distant detachment of the narrator during the documentary-style cutscenes that punctuate the main beats of the narrative as a whole.

One particularly chilling moment comes in the aftermath of a mission late in the game, which culminates with your side in the conflict summoning Alexander as an ultimate weapon of mass destruction; in order to do so, many of your allies give up their lives as they channel their magic and life force into the summoning. The devastation that Alexander wreaks is immense, presented to you in simple, cold statistics — white text on a black screen — after the battle is over. While in the heat of the moment, Alexander’s summoning is pure Final Fantasy fanservice, the realisation that the spectacular light show you just witnessed cost the lives of many people on both sides of the conflict makes you wonder whether or not it was worth it.

I’m nearing the end of the game now, I think; just two more chapters to go. I’ll be interested to see how it ends — particularly if it concludes on as bleak a note as its opening sequence, featuring a seriously wounded soldier trying his best to reach his destination with his also wounded chocobo, then finally dying, forgotten, on the streets as the conflict continues to rage around him. I’m also interested to do a second playthrough once I’ve beaten it once; not only are you at a more suitable level to tackle the optional “Expert Trials” on a second playthrough, there are also additional missions called “Code Crimson” which add additional details and context to the story.

Considering Type-0 is a spinoff game in the Final Fantasy series rather than a mainline installment — and considering it originated as a Japan-only, handheld-only title — it’s impressive quite how much lore has been packed into this game, all of it reviewable through an in-game encyclopaedia. You don’t need to know most of it to appreciate the story, mind you; it’s simply there as “additional reading” if you find it interesting. While I wasn’t sure about Type-0 when I first started playing it, the longer I spend with it, the more fascinating I find this war-torn world that seems to be on a collision course with absolute disaster, so I very much welcome this additional content, particularly as some of it comes in the form of cutscenes that explain what happens to a number of minor characters along the way.

I’ll have definitely beaten it at least once by the time Final Fantasy XV rolls around; whether I’ll have made it through any more of that remains to be seen, but now I’m familiar with how it all works and got to know the characters, I’m certainly up for a bit of New Game Plus.

2496: Type Zero

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In anticipation of the imminent Final Fantasy XV — a game which I am getting increasingly desperate to play the closer its release date creeps — I decided to boot up a game I’ve had on my shelf for a while, but haven’t really done anything with: Final Fantasy Type-0 HD for PlayStation 4.

I had pretty much no idea what I was in for when I fired it up for the first time. I just knew, prior to its release, that it was a well-regarded game for PSP that had previously been confined to Japan, and that people had been clamouring for a localisation for quite some time. In fact, so desperate were English speakers for an English version of the game that there was already a decent quality fan translation of the PSP version available, though in order to play that you’d need to 1) know how to “do” PSP homebrew and 2) be willing to “do” PSP homebrew.

In other words, Final Fantasy Type-0 was a mystery to me when I first started it. After about 15 or so hours with it so far, I think I’ve kind of got my head around what it’s all about and where it sits in relation to other Final Fantasy spinoff games — and the mainline series, for that matter.

Type-0 (formerly Final Fantasy Agito XIII) is part of the overly ambitious Fabula Nova Crystallis series which also includes the Final Fantasy XIII games and the upcoming Final Fantasy XV (formerly Final Fantasy Versus XIII), though since the series was first conceived each of the projects kind of diverged off in its own direction — hence the name changes, abandoning the direct links to XIII — so that now they only have the loosest of thematic and stylistic connections with one another.

That said, Type-0‘s mythology is quite closely related to that of Final Fantasy XIII despite unfolding in a different world, with particular regard to the existence of “l’Cie”, individuals who have submitted themselves to the will of a superior entity (in FFXIII’s case, powerful godlike beings called fal’Cie; in Type-0, the “peristylium” crystals that form the centrepieces of the game world Orience’s various city-states) and an obligation to fulfil some grand purpose called a Focus in exchange for kinda-sorta immortality and badass magical powers. Unlike Final Fantasy XIII, you don’t play l’Cie in Type-0; they’re part of the backdrop of the ongoing story.

Type-0’s narrative focuses on the dominion of Rubrum and its elite training facility Akademeia. Across thirteen classes, Akademeia trains young people to become Agito, the best of the best when it comes to martial and magical prowess. Among the classes, the cream of the crop is found in Class Zero, a unit of youngsters with particularly exceptional powers that has, until the events at the start of the game, been kept somewhat secret from the rest of Akademeia.

Class Zero is brought out of hiding and into immediate active service as Agito Cadets when the Militesi Empire invades Rubrum’s capital and Akademeia itself. Against rather improbable odds — including a l’Cie — they manage to push back the imperial incursion and retake Akademeia, giving Rubrum the opportunity to pick itself up and start planning a counter-offensive. From here, Class Zero plays a leading role in helping Rubrum to expand its territory, push the Militesi Empire back and prevent them from deploying any more of their weapons of mass destruction, such as the Ultima Bomb which devastated one of the other city-states of Orience.

If this all sounds highly political and like the setup for a strategy game such as Final Fantasy Tactics… well, you’d be wrong, technically, but there is something to that comparison, which we’ll get onto in a moment.

In actual fact, Type-0 is an action RPG in which you control a single member of Class Zero at once — accompanied by up to two of their classmates, depending on the situation — as they attempt to complete missions for Rubrum and, in between mission days, wander the dominion generally helping out and making life miserable for the Militesi Empire. Unlike mainline Final Fantasy games (with the possible exception of XII) where the emphasis tends to be on the core cast’s personal stories, Type-0’s plot is less about individuals and more about the ongoing conflict between Rubrum and Militesi.

Each member of Class Zero is unique in their capabilities. Each one wields a different weapon, which all handle very differently from one another, and each one has a unique skill tree, though there is some overlap in common abilities between numerous class members. Some are better at dealing or taking physical damage, some are ranged attackers, others have particularly strong magical capabilities. Ultimately, the best approach to playing the game is to try and keep the entire squad levelled up pretty evenly, which means you’re going to need to get comfortable with playing at least a few of the characters, and perhaps bring the ones you don’t like so much in the AI-controlled slots so they still get some experience.

The reason I mention Final Fantasy Tactics earlier is that the way you set up your characters in Type-0 bears more than a passing resemblance, albeit without the deep and complex Job system that Tactics has. In Tactics, each character had the ability to equip two different “Job commands” at the same time, allowing them to mix abilities and spells from two classes at the same time. In Type-0, your character has two main ability slots, up to one of which can contain a spell — though some characters can unlock an ability to equip two spells — and the other of which can contain one of their unique abilities. There’s also a third ability slot dedicated to defensive magic and abilities, allowing characters to equip curative spells, protective spells or physical abilities such as blocking damage.

In order to succeed in Type-0’s missions, you ideally need a mix of different capabilities, since you’ll run into enemies that are strong or weak against particular types of attacks, and sometimes you’ll encounter enemies that are out of melee reach — on balconies, for example — necessitating ranged attacks. In other words, it’s not simply a case of equipping all of your cadets with equipment and abilities that boosts their physical attack power as high as possible; you need to understand which ones are intended as mages, outfit them accordingly and them complement them with physical melee and ranged attackers to cover every eventuality.

The combat system itself takes a little getting used to. You control a single character at a time, and the face buttons on the PlayStation controller are mapped to normal attack with your weapon (Square), abilities and spells (Triangle and X) and defensive abilities (Circle). You can “lock on” to enemies and keep them in sight by holding the right shoulder button, and dodge with Circle while moving.

Notably, attacking doesn’t require button-mashing; characters instead continuously attack while you hold down Square. Some characters have different moves available if you push forward or backward on the analog stick while holding square; Sice, for example, has a gap-closing leaping slash forwards when you push forward, an attack behind her when you push backwards and a standard melee combo if you just hold the button without a direction.

The different weapons are all very… well, different, and in order to succeed with a character you need to familiarise yourself with not just the abilities you can equip, but the amount of time the character’s various animations take to complete. This is because Type-0’s combat is heavy on timed hits; while locked on to an enemy, they will occasionally show a weakness, usually right after an attack or if they’re knocked off balance. During this time, depending on the enemy’s remaining HP, your lock on reticle will turn either yellow (Breaksight) or red (Killsight), and if you land a successful hit with either a physical attack or magic while either of these is active, you’ll do enormous damage, even killing the enemy immediately in the case of Killsight.

Just hitting the attack button as soon as you see the markers isn’t generally enough, however; most characters have a bit of a wind-up to their attacks, meaning if you start an attack when the marker appears, you’ll probably miss the window by the time it actually impacts the enemy. Instead, you need to watch the enemy animations to anticipate when Breaksight or Killsight are going to appear, and over time you’ll come to recognise how different enemy types behave in order to take maximum advantage of this feature. Pudding-type enemies, for example, rear back before they swipe at a foe; when you see them do this, dodging to the side to avoid the strike then immediately launching a forward+Square attack with most characters is a good way to hit their Killsight window perfectly every time.

Type-0 is very much a mechanics-focused game rather than a story-centric game, which puts it somewhat at odds with the mainline Final Fantasy series, but firmly in keeping with many of the spin-off titles such as the aforementioned Final Fantasy Tactics. That’s not to say the story is bad — I’m not that far in so far, but it’s been a suitably dramatic “wartime epic” so far, with many of its important moments presented in an appealing “documentary” style — but rather it’s a game in which its individual characters are of significantly lesser importance than the big picture.

It’s an acquired taste, in other words. I wasn’t sure I was going to like it all that much when I first started playing, and indeed I know a few people who bounced off it quite quickly. However, give it some time and get to know how the combat works, and it becomes quite rewarding and satisfying. There’s plenty of side content to do besides the main missions, and it’s one of the most replayable Final Fantasy games I’ve ever seen, with a second playthrough not only seeing your Cadets at a suitable level to tackle tougher challenges, but also rewarding you with additional story material at various points.

Give it a chance if you haven’t already. It’s not the best game to ever bear the Final Fantasy name, but it’s a solid, interesting game in its own right that demonstrates, once again, that Square Enix isn’t at all afraid to experiment and do all manner of strange, wonderful things beneath the Final Fantasy banner.

1963: Cold Steel

XSEED Games, localisation specialists extraordinaire, made a number of delightful announcements for fans of Japanese games earlier today. Firstly was the entirely expected but now thankfully confirmed news that Senran Kagura Estival Versus is coming to Western PS4s and Vitas later in the year — I’m supremely happy about this, as Senran Kagura is a fantastic series with some of the best characterisation out there.

Secondly, the more “major” news for many was the announcement that Trails of Cold Steel — known to Japanese fans as Sen no Kiseki or its previous unofficial English moniker Trails in the Flash — is also coming West. Not only that, the first of its two chapters is pretty much finished and almost ready to go.

For the unfamiliar, Trails of Cold Steel is part of the Legend of Heroes series by Falcom, a long-running and deeply, deeply respected series of role-playing games. We haven’t had a lot of them over here in the West, but PSP (and later PC) installmentTrails in the Sky First Chapter came out a few years back to critical acclaim — I wrote some words about it here — and its own Second Chapter is coming shortly having nearly killed poor Andrew Dice of Carpe Fulgur, who worked on the mammoth job of translating its extremely substantial script.

After the initial joy at the announcement came some concern from long-standing series fans who had played Trails in the Sky’s follow-up games Zero no Kiseki, Ao no Kiseki and Trails in the Sky Third Chapter. Unlike many of the previous Legend of Heroes games, the Kiseki games have a deep relationship with one another, with each of the three “groups” of games (Trails in the Sky, Zero/Ao no Kiseki and Trails of Cold Steel) unfolding on a different part of the same continent. The games all refer to one another and act as “prequels” to one another, so some fans were concerned that newcomers to Trails of Cold Steel would be thrown in at the deep end having missed three whole games’ worth of lore and background. And the Kiseki series is not what you’d call light on lore; in fact, it features some of the most well-realised worldbuilding of any RPG I’ve played.

Brittany “Hatsuu” Avery of Xseed, one of my absolute favourite people in the games industry, took to the Xseed blog to address some of these concerns. And she’s certainly set my mind at rest.

To summarise, the reasons why we’re not getting Zero and Ao — yet, anyway, since there’s a strong suggestion that they will come at a later date, probably on PC — is partly due to technological and marketing concerns. Zero and Ao are PSP games, you see, and while there are still a few PSP games trickling out here and there due to their Vita compatibility — Trails in the Sky Second Chapter will be one — the PSP as a platform has technically been “dead” for some time. As such, it makes sense to push out Trails of Cold Steel for PS3 and Vita, since both of those platforms are still relevant at this time — PS3 is on the decline somewhat, but while developers such as Idea Factory/Compile Heart, Nippon Ichi and Square Enix have made the transition to PS4, there are still a number of PS3 titles incoming for the next year or two at least. Vita, meanwhile, for all the press’ attempts to declare it “dead” every few weeks, is enjoying a small-scale but successful existence as the go-to platform for fans of role-playing games and other Japanese fare.

Hatsuu also notes that Xseed took this decision with the full approval of the games’ original developers Falcom, whose original intention was always that the three sub-series of the overarching Kiseki storyline could stand on their own and be played in any order. In fact, what you’d get from playing them “out of order” would be an experience and perspective on the overall story unique to Western players and different to what Japan had. Kind of like the difference between watching the Star Wars films in chronological order of release or watching them in “canonical” order from I-VI.

Trails in the Sky First Chapter was a stunning game that I enjoyed very much, and I’m glad to see the rest of this highly regarded series is coming West. It may not be in the “right” order and that may have a few snooty fans being a bit salty, but I’m more than happy to support Xseed taking on ambitious projects of this magnitude and delivering them with aplomb. Xseed are one of my favourite developer-publisher-localisation outfits right now, and they deserve the support of anyone who loves Japanese games.

1831: Second Fantasy

When I’ve had a free moment to sit down with the Vita, I’ve been continuing my Final Fantasy marathon with the second game, the imaginatively titled Final Fantasy II.

Final Fantasy II came to Western shores considerably after its original release; it wasn’t until the PlayStation release of Final Fantasy Origins that we’d get to play it in English for the first time, but, like its predecessor, it’s subsequently been enhanced and ported to a variety of different platforms. I’ve been playing the PSP version via the Vita, which, again like its predecessor, incorporates a bunch of extra content, though I’m yet to encounter any of it aside from the entrance to an ominous-sounding (and huge-looking) optional dungeon.

Final Fantasy II is thought of in somewhat mixed terms by many people, to put it politely. It’s absolutely hated by others, and those who like it are in something of a minority. I’m one of them, though; it’s an interesting game, and while its mechanics don’t quite work as well as they could, it was a bold experiment whose systems we can still see at work today in games like The Elder Scrolls and its ilk.

Final Fantasy II’s unique selling point was that it had no experience points and no levels. Instead, you levelled up individual skills and stats by making use of them. Want to get stronger? Hit things. Want to get better at casting spells? Cast more spells. Want to be able to take more damage? Take some damage. It’s quite logical when you think about it, though it does tend to encourage a certain degree of gaming the system, and there’s a number of glaring flaws in it, too, such as the fact that characters in the back row of your party (which one of them is in by default at the start of the game) will never take any damage except from things that affect the whole party, and thus their HP counts will be left trailing considerably behind the rest of the group. The game is also somewhat notorious for seemingly encouraging players to attack their own party members in the name of boosting their HP quickly.

The PSP version maintains this peculiar levelling system, but so far I haven’t really encountered a major issue with it, and like the PSP version of Final Fantasy I, the pacing feels like it may have been tweaked slightly, though this is only my gut feeling rather than being based on any research. But it certainly feels like the game’s been made to push you onwards rather than force you to grind; fight a number of battles, and your characters’ HP totals will increase naturally, for example, even if they haven’t taken any damage recently. You still need to make use of appropriate actions to build up your stats, but there’s a certain degree of natural progression that comes from just playing the game.

The interesting thing about Final Fantasy II’s system is that it essentially allows you to build your own characters — something that wasn’t really possible in its predecessor aside from choosing which three of the four available spells for each magic level your White and Black Mages got to choose from — by naturally moulding them to fit your play style. Because of the flexibility of the system, this also means that you can create unstoppable, multi-talented characters who are strong, tough and capable of flinging devastating magic spells around when required. (In fact, the game’s ultimate magic requires that your character has advanced in as many different areas as possible in order to power itself up.) In practice, though, you’ll probably tend to find that the characters naturally evolve according to how you use them.

In my party, for example, I have protagonist Firion as a fighter/white mage type character, or probably a Paladin in Final Fantasy terms. He is good at fighting with swords and using shields, but is also able to cast White Magic spells such as Cure, Life and Protect. Several of these spells start off being next to useless — Protect often “misses”, for example — so you need to get him to “practice” them in the field to make them worthwhile additions to your arsenal. Taking the time to do that is eminently worth it, however.

The other interesting thing about Final Fantasy II that is unrelated to its unusual progression system is the fact that it’s so story-heavy compared to its predecessor. Final Fantasy I was essentially a case of “Bad shit is happening in the world! Go explore and stop it!” and little else; Final Fantasy II, meanwhile, has named characters, events, cutscenes and a genuinely interesting ongoing plot. It’s not what you might expect from your typical NES-era game, in other words; and with its new coat of paint in its more recent PlayStation and PSP incarnations, it actually stands up pretty well as a modern RPG.

I’m enjoying it, in other words, but I still have a long way to go yet!

1824: First Fantasy

I finished Final Fantasy I last night, bringing the first chapter in my Final Fantasy marathon to a close. And you know what? I really, really enjoyed it.

This may have something to do with the fact that I was playing the PSP version, also known as Final Fantasy Anniversary Edition, which has been substantially tweaked and rebalanced from both the original NES release and the subsequent enhanced PSone Final Fantasy Origins version, which I played last time I beat this first installment.

While there’s an argument that it’s worth experiencing the game in its original, purest, grind-heavy and rather difficult form — complete with its Vancian Magic system, just one of many influences the game drew from Dungeons & Dragons — the PSP version proved to be a lot more enjoyable generally. The pacing was better, there was a lot less running around in circles grinding — the original required you to do this to even beat the first boss, which appeared before the game’s title screen — and the more traditional Magic Points system made some of the more lengthy encounters and dungeons later in the game somewhat more feasible.

Those late-game dungeons — four of which were added in the Game Boy Advance Dawn of Souls release of the game and the last of which was added in the Anniversary Edition release — proved to be really great, if a little bizarre. Collectively dubbed the Soul of Chaos, the first four extra dungeons live up to their name by tasking you with exploring 5, 10, 20 and 40 floors that feature set layouts but randomised floor orders and available treasures. There’s not really a coherent theme to the dungeon floors as such — although the less interesting floors tend to be of an appropriate element to the dungeon’s name: fiery caverns in Hellfire Chasm, for example — but the chaotic, unpredictable nature of them is what makes them interesting. On one floor you might be exploring a cave; the next you might be paddling a canoe around a flooded village; on the next, you might be attempting to navigate a maze of bookshelves while scholars mumble about their research and get in your way.

The final new dungeon, known as the Labyrinth of Time, was the most interesting by far, however. The Labyrinth of Time creates a new dungeon each time by picking ten different “puzzle floors” out of a selection of 30, then challenging you to beat these puzzles against the clock and with one or more of your abilities sealed off. The more abilities you seal off — and the more useful they are — the more time you have available to complete a floor. Run out of time and a dark miasma descends, damaging you every second and increasing the number of monsters you encounter.

The puzzles vary from simple observation puzzles, in which you have to answer questions about something you’ve just seen, to challenging physical tasks such as marching in line with a group of NPC soldiers. Like the Soul of Chaos dungeons, they have little to do with the overall Final Fantasy story — what little story it has anyway — but they’re immensely enjoyable and challenging to complete. And then at the end of it all you have Chronodia, one of the toughest bosses in the game, to fight for ultimate bragging rights… oh, and the best sword in the game, too.

The first time I played Final Fantasy I, with the Origins release, I did so in order to understand the series’ roots, and sort of had a good time, but found it a bit of a chore after a while. The PSP version, meanwhile, I found genuinely enjoyable, even from a modern perspective, and was inspired to go on and complete the game’s most challenging content. I have absolutely no hesitation in recommending it to anyone looking for a fun portable RPG experience — and those of you without a PSP can even play it on your phone.

Onwards to Final Fantasy II, then, which I remember enjoying quite a lot the first time I tried it (again, with Origins) but which is widely regarded to be one of the worst installments in the whole series thanks to its bafflingly bizarre mechanics. For Fynn! Wild Rose!

1804: First Fantasy

PSN finally came back up after some “hacker”-induced downtime over the Christmas period, so I took the opportunity to start filling my brand new 64GB memory card with Final Fantasy games — specifically, I-IX and Tactics, though there will also be a copy of the X/X-2 remasters added to that shortly, particularly if they end up in the PSN store’s sale.

I made a start on Final Fantasy today. I’ve played this a couple of times over the years, though never the original NES version. Rather, my past forays into it have been on the Final Fantasy Origins version on PlayStation 1, an upgraded port with 16-bit-style visuals and a significantly enhanced soundtrack over the bleepy, blurpy NES chiptunes of the original. (It was also bundled with a similarly upgraded port of Final Fantasy II, which was also the first time that game had ever made it outside of Japan.)

This time around, however, I’m playing the PSP version on my Vita. I wasn’t expecting anything particularly different from the Origins version, but already something feels a little different. The pacing feels better when it comes to levelling; it seems to take a lot less time to gain a level, leading to significantly less running around in circles fighting armies of wolves just to beef yourself up enough to enter the first dungeon. The magic system’s adoption of a more traditional magic points system rather than the NES original’s D&D-style “you can only cast this level of spells this many times” mechanic also makes White and Black Mages seem somewhat less useless, which is nice.

The original Final Fantasy is an odd beast, really. It’s unmistakeably a Japanese role-playing game in look and feel, but it’s clearly heavily inspired by Western fantasy, even going so far as to directly reference numerous Dungeons and Dragons elements such as monsters, races and the like. It’s abundantly clear that Final Fantasy is Dungeons and Dragons through a Japanese lens, in other words, and it works rather well. It’s actually relatively rare for Japanese role-playing games to play the fantasy tropes completely straight these days, as they often tend to incorporate elements of sci-fi along the way, making for a curiously distinctive mix of influences. Nowhere is this more apparent in the evolution of the Final Fantasy series over the years, which has all but abandoned its roots with the most recent installments — with the exception of XIV, which is deliberately very true to said roots, directly referencing past games at numerous junctures throughout.

The limitations of video game storytelling in the era when it was originally released are still apparent in the PSP rerelease, but the gameplay additions at least make it significantly more playable to a modern audience. I’ll be interested to see what tweaks — if any — have been made to the somewhat idiosyncratic Final Fantasy II for its PSP incarnation, but I have quite a journey ahead of me before I can start that particular adventure.

For now, it’s time to let Garland try and knock me all down… I have a suspicion he will be unsuccessful in his efforts, and the lovely Princess Sarah will be returned to her rightful place in Cornelia Castle before long.

1689: Revving Up

Once I’ve finished writing this blog post, I’m going to go and play Velocity 2X on my Vita, a game that I’ve been looking forward to for quite some time.

Lest you’re unfamiliar, Velocity 2X is the sequel to Velocity (and its Vita remake Velocity Ultra), the brainchild of a UK-based developer called FuturLab who are some of the nicest people in the industry.

I’ll talk more about Velocity 2X when I’ve had a chance to sit down and play it for a while — I have played an early version, but I haven’t even booted up the final release yet. Today, then, I wanted to talk a little about its predecessor, and why it means I’m excited to play 2X.

Velocity was a curious hybrid of genres, and it drifted and changed through different play styles as you progressed through it. Sometimes it was a vertically scrolling shoot ’em up. Sometimes it was a vertically scrolling racing game in which you had to fly efficiently and carefully in order to survive. Sometimes it was a clever puzzle game in which you had to teleport back and forth throughout the level in order to unlock the path to the exist. And more often than not, it was a beautiful, seamless combination of all these things.

The whole thing was wrapped in a wonderfully distinctive shell, too; an aesthetic that combined sharp-edged, flat-shaded vector graphics with Amiga-style background music to produce something that felt simultaneously retro-inspired but also thoroughly modern. The game regularly brought to mind 16-bit computer titles of my youth such as Goldrunner, but obviously it was quite a bit better than those. The atmosphere was there, though, and the understanding of what makes a truly satisfying, addictive game.

Velocity was a brilliant handheld game, too. Its levels were short, but very replayable in pursuit of the elusive “Perfect” ratings. Its leaderboard functionality perhaps left something to be desired — it wasn’t at all clear how scoring worked, and it was ultimately fairly irrelevant since getting a “Perfect” rating would probably mean you got a very similar score to everyone else with the same rating anyway — but it wasn’t really about competing against other people. Rather, it was you against the game; a series of increasingly fiendish, well-designed challenges that made great use of the game’s simple to understand mechanics amid levels of greater and greater complexity.

Velocity 2X, if you were wondering, takes the basic formula of Velocity and adds an interesting twist to it all: platforming. Rather than being confined to your ship in a top-down perspective throughout the whole game, 2X incorporates side-on platformer segments, too. When I played the early version, these were already implemented well, and I understand they’ve only improved since then. I’m very much looking forward to giving it a try.

So that’s exactly what I’m going to go and do right now. If you have a Vita and/or a PS4, I can say with some confidence that you should probably download Velocity 2X and enjoy it — yes, I say that with some confidence having admitted above that I haven’t played the finished version yet. I have absolute faith in FuturLab bringing an ambitious project to fruition, though, so I wish them every success with their new release.

Further thoughts on the new game tomorrow!

1670: At Your Side

[Edit, 16/08: Apologies for those who missed this yesterday — it seems I composed an entry and then didn’t publish it properly. I present it now, better late than never. As if you care.]

So I finally finished Sweet Fuse this evening and I’m very happy I did.

For those disinclined to look back over my previous entries about this game, here’s the quick version: it’s a visual novel for PSP (Vita-compatible) in which you play Saki Inafune, niece of Mega Man designer Keiji Inafune, as she gets trapped in a theme park at the behest of a terrorist dressed as a pig. Along the way, she encounters a selection of fine-looking gentlemen and, over the course of seven days, gets to know at least one of them very well indeed.

Sweet Fuse has an utterly ridiculous premise, but ultimately it’s little more than a gimmick or hook to draw you in to the game proper: the story itself plays itself admirably and consistently straight throughout, not being afraid to tone down the light-hearted humour in favour of some pathos or outright tragedy at times. Saki herself is at times a little ill-defined as a character, but such is the nature of the visual novel protagonist, whether they’re male or female: they have to be flexible enough to make the various routes through the narrative plausible, and also non-specific enough to make them identifiable with for a wide proportion of the audience.

The nice thing about Sweet Fuse’s story is that you don’t get the whole truth in a single playthrough. In fact, depending on which of the game’s cast members you choose to pursue, you might not get the truth at all. Follow the path for Towa Wakasa, young boy band idol, and you’ll have an enjoyably romantic little tale in which you find out a bit about Wakasa himself — and how Saki feels about him — but you’ll learn almost nothing about the motivations behind Hogstein’s hijack of the park and the deadly game he makes the cast play. (You do, however, get a tiny teaser which is easily missed if you’re not paying attention.) Conversely, play through the route for Subaru Shidou, detective originally intended to be in charge of the park’s security on its opening day, and you’ll get tantalisingly close to the complete truth without revealing absolutely everything. It’s not until you play the route for the “secret” character, which only opens up from a second playthrough onwards, that you get a full, final and complete explanation of what has truly been going on.

And, without spoiling it here, I was surprised at the nature of the truth. As previously noted, the expectation for Sweet Fuse, given its premise and setup, is for the story to be rather light-hearted in nature — and indeed, there’s a lot of self-consciously ridiculous stuff that goes on. But ultimately there’s a serious core to what has been going on — and it doesn’t feel out of place, despite the fact that the villain you’re pursuing throughout the narrative is almost constantly dressed as a cigar-smoking pig with a disco ball around his neck.

Ultimately, your response to Sweet Fuse will depend on how much you care for the rather “hands-off” nature of most visual novels: despite the premise of the game being somewhat akin to the Zero Escape series, there are no real “puzzles” to solve as such; the most you have to do throughout the game is pick the right choice when one comes up, or occasionally pick out the most important word or phrase from a monologue in order to proceed. In other words, the game is extremely light on “gameplay” and this may disappoint a few people — particularly given that the theme park that forms the game’s setting is supposed to be based on video games — but it works and, on reflection, is probably a sensible choice; breaking up the game with, well, “gameplay”, would break its flow and run the risk of you not being able to proceed due to, to put it politely, a deficit in your own skills. By handling it this way, anyone can see the story through to its conclusion, and thanks to convenient quicksave, fast-forward and rewind functions, going back to see other possible outcomes to various scenarios is quick and painless, too. I played through two whole routes in a single day today, albeit fast-forwarding through the first three “common route” chapters and just making the appropriate choices where necessary. That still left four unique chapters per character, though.

I’m glad I played through Sweet Fuse, as it ended up being really, surprisingly good. I was immediately intrigued by the premise — and I love seeing the face of people when I explain it to them — but what I found was actually rather different from what I expected, in a very positive way.

If you have a Vita or a PSP and are hungry for an interesting story-based game to while away some time with, you could do far worse than a copy of Sweet Fuse, then. Highly recommended.

1668: Gentleman Friends

Longtime readers may recall that some time ago I extolled the virtues of a (Vita-compatible) PSP game called Sweet Fuse — a game that I’ve recently returned to in order to clean up some endings I missed.

This peculiar game is a visual novel-cum-dating sim in which you take on the role of Saki Inafune, niece of legendary game designer Keiji Inafune (of Mega Man and Mighty No. 9 fame), as she gets caught up in a plot led by a terrorist dressed as a pig to take over the video game-inspired theme park Inafune-san designed. Along the way Saki (and you) will encounter several gentleman friends, each of whom has their own unique narrative path that branches off in the latter half of the game after a shared beginning.

Sweet Fuse is what’s known as an otome game, meaning it’s primarily aimed at a heterosexual female audience — or at least depicts heterosexual romances from the perspective of a female protagonist. Such games are relatively widespread in their native Japan, but it’s quite rare to get them localised for the Western market, which still seems to assume for the most part that the majority of gamers out there are testosterone-filled heterosexual men. As such, Sweet Fuse immediately sets itself apart from other games of its type — and this is without taking its unusual premise into account.

Speaking as a heterosexual gentleman who has played his fair share of bishoujo games (visual novels and dating sims aimed at a heterosexual male audience) I initially wasn’t quite sure what to make of Sweet Fuse. In this type of game you’re often encouraged to put yourself in the shoes of the protagonist to such a degree that they rarely appear on-screen and, when they speak, their dialogue is unvoiced. This is, in theory, to allow the player to project themselves onto the protagonist and imagine it’s themselves embroiled in the situations depicted throughout — be they fantastic, romantic, erotic, strange or just plain messed up. It’s an effective device that tends to work well. But, I found myself questioning before I started playing the game for the first time, will this still work if the protagonist is a different gender to me?

The question of whether male players can “identify” with female protagonists is often mocked among the more social justice-happy members of the games press, but in the dating sim and visual novel space, where you’re encouraged to inhabit the role of the lead character a lot more intimately than in other types of interactive entertainment, it’s an important consideration. Part of the way these games work on an emotional level is down to your own personal opinions and tastes — who do you find attractive or desirable, physically, sexually, emotionally and in terms of their personality? If you’re outside the target audience of a work, inhabiting the headspace of a protagonist that pointedly is not you, and considering potential partners that are contrary to your own usual sexual preferences, can that really “work”?

Well, of course it can; most of us have read books, seen films, watched TV series where we’ve rooted for characters to get together, even if they don’t match our own characteristics or preferences — and for female fans of games, they have to do this a lot of the time anyway. All this is, I’ve found, abundantly true with Sweet Fuse. As a heterosexual dude, it’s liberating to play the role of Saki and consider the virtues and vices of these different men as I choose which of the narrative paths to pursue. And, it turns out, it’s not all that difficult to put yourself in Saki’s shoes and contemplate which one is most attractive or desirable. (Urabe. Without a doubt.)

Like any good visual novel, Sweet Fuse’s various narrative paths are all unique, but all feed into a single interpretation of what is going on. Pursuing a single character and then putting the game down gives you a satisfying ending to the story, sure, but in some cases doesn’t reveal any of the truth behind the bizarre situation that forms the basis for the game. Others provide teases of information; others still are clearly the “main” routes that provide the most information. All are worth exploring — and it’s for this reason that I’ve picked up Sweet Fuse again after quite some time not playing it.

With, I think, two routes left to go (plus possibly a refresher on the others I’ve previously completed) I still haven’t got to the bottom of the mystery surrounding Count Hogstein and his apparent vendetta against the main cast. I’m very much looking forward to discovering the truth — the paths I’ve played to date have been by turns heartwarming, touching, intriguing and thrilling; now, it’s time to see Saki’s saga through to its conclusion, and wonder if we’ll ever see a game quite like Sweet Fuse in the West again.

1352: Critical Urgency

I can’t remember if I’ve talked about Velocity here before, so here I am talking about Velocity.

Velocity, in case you’ve never come across it before, is a game from the Brighton-based indie developer FuturLab. It began its life as a PlayStation Minis title for PS3 and PSP, then was subsequently ported to Vita with numerous enhancements as Velocity Ultra. So positive was the reception to the first game, it seems, that the team at FuturLab is currently in the process of putting together a sequel — a sequel that’s looking rather fab, if the early version I had the good fortune to play at the recent <a href=”http://www.usgamer.net/articles/egx-turning-up-the-velocity” target=”_blank”>Eurogamer Expo</a> is anything to go by.

But I want to talk about the original today, or rather Velocity Ultra. I reviewed Velocity Ultra a while back for USgamer and enjoyed it a lot, but I must confess that in the process of reviewing it, I didn’t make it through every little bit of content it had to offer — largely because doing so would have taken significantly longer than I had time for, and also because I’d already seen a lot of it in Velocity’s previous incarnation as a PlayStation Minis title.

I’ve been going back to clean up what I missed in the game recently, though, and I’m reminded of what a fantastic game it is. Beginning as what appears to be a relatively straightforward top-down shooter, the game gradually evolves, changes and grows in complexity as it progresses; firstly, you get the ability to teleport over short distances (including through walls); then you get the ability to drop telepods at strategic points in the level in order to teleport over long distances and take alternative routes. By the time you get through all 50 of the game’s main levels, you’re practically playing a different game.

Things are mixed up along the way, too. Sometimes you’ll have levels that are filled with enemies; other times they’ll be complex maps with multiple paths. Other times still you’ll have a very tight time limit and have to get through as quickly as possible. Different types of level require different strategies.

Where the truly addictive gameplay in Velocity comes in, though, is medal-chasing. Upon completion of a level, you’re ranked according to how many survivors you rescued, how many points you scored and how quickly you successfully completed the level. Attain the highest accolade in all of these categories without dying once and you’ll earn a “perfect” medal, and it’s chasing these “perfects” that is so ridiculously addictive. The reason for this is that the difficulty of achieving the goals is pitched just perfectly; it’s always just tantalisingly out of reach rather than seemingly impossible. Pretty much anyone with a good handle on the mechanics will be able to attain at least a few Perfects along the way, though it does get significantly more difficult as the levels become more complex.

And then there are the secret levels. Secret levels! I can’t remember the last modern game I played that had secret levels, and yet here they are in Velocity, unlocked through getting your tiny Quarp Jet into places you wouldn’t normally expect it to go, usually as a result of checking the map and spotting something out of place. There are a further 20 secret levels on top of the 50 main levels, and not all of them use the standard game mechanics. There’s a 10-level Thrust-inspired minigame, for example; there’s a twist on FuturLab’s earlier game Coconut Dodge; there’s even a version of Snake. Successfully contend with all those and you have the incredibly challenging but rewarding and addictive “Red Zone” and “Blue Zone” levels in which time limits are tight, the pathways tighter and the slightest clipping of a wall will destroy you.

I was delighted that the upcoming Velocity 2X felt so much like the first Velocity when I played it at Eurogamer Expo — and particularly pleased that the brand new sections where you get out of your ship and run around for some platforming sections make use of pretty much the same mechanics, with the only real difference being that you’re now affected by gravity. I’m really looking forward to playing the sequel, but in the meantime, I’ve got a whole bunch of Perfect medals to try and attain, so if you’ll excuse me I’m going to challenge a few more before I go to sleep.