1335: Perrrrssssppp

Hello! We fixed our Internet, no thanks to BT; Andie called ’em up earlier and they wanted to spend several days “testing our line” before calling us back on Tuesday, presumably with an engineer visit to follow after that if necessary — which it probably would be, since it appeared to be our fibre modem that was borked. Thankfully, a past example of BT’s incompetence meant that we did, in fact, actually have two fibre modems, so we tried the old one and it turns out it still works. Win.

Anyway, enough of that. What I want to talk about today is the PSP.

The PSP came out in 2005, some five years after the launch of the PS2 and a year before the PS3. It failed to make a significant impact in the West upon its original launch and has sometimes been considered one of the problem children of Sony’s lineup. There’s a degree of justification for that — its reliance on a proprietary physical media format (UMDs); a laudable but ultimately doomed attempt to jump into the “all-digital” future well before the world was ready for it (PSP Go); a distinct lack of prominent marketing — but in the intervening years since its original launch, the PSP has actually become one of my favourite systems.

Perhaps the most impressive thing about it is the fact that after eight years, it’s still relevant and doesn’t show any sign of going away any time soon — and it has the Vita to thank for that. Vita is the best way to play PSP games due to its lovely OLED screen and its second thumbstick — which, when playing PSP games, can be assigned to emulate buttons, allowing for a fairly convincing fudging of dual-stick control for games that previously only supported a single stick — and as such has, in many cases, given the surprisingly vast PSP library of games a whole new lease of life.

This isn’t a case of “it’s backward compatible so you can still play old games” either — people are legitimately still making brand new games for the PSP. Just recently we’ve had Sweet Fuse, for example, and JRPG fans were all aflutter recently when it was announced that Xseed and Carpe Fulgur would be bringing the second part of the magnificent Trails in the Sky to English speakers in the near future.

Access to the entire PSP digital library is, for me, a convincing enough reason in itself to own a Vita — as I noted above, PSP games look and play great on Vita, with the only slight issue being that you can’t play physical versions of games due to Vita’s lack of a UMD drive. It’s also something you can point to any time people complain that Vita has no games — a complaint which is getting more and more inaccurate by the day, incidentally.

So although the PSP is very much one of Sony’s more troublesome children, I have to give the company a huge amount of credit for creating a platform that has endured as long as it has. The PSP has some fantastic games, if you’ve never explored them for yourself, and you might just find yourself discovering some new favourites. And with the impending release of Vita TV — which I’ll be very surprised if we don’t see in the West — all those of you who don’t like playing on handhelds for whatever reason will be able to play these great games on your TV, too. Which sounds pretty great to me.

Now I’m going to go sit in bed and play Sweet Fuse.

1332: Sweet Otome

I started playing the PSP game Sweet Fuse: At Your Side after finishing Corpse Party and it’s been an interesting experience, particularly given my gaming background.

Sweet Fuse is what’s known as an “otome game”, you see — in stark contrast to “bishoujo games” that tend to have a male protagonist and a veritable harem of dateable female characters, otome games are the complete opposite: female protagonist, veritable harem of dateable male characters. (There are also yuri variations where the female protagonist can date female characters, much as there are yaoi titles for men, where a male protagonist can date male characters. But let’s not get off the point: Sweet Fuse is an otome game in its purest sense.)

I was somewhat intrigued by the prospect of playing Sweet Fuse since although I’m no stranger to playing female characters in games, where romantic options exist I will still generally pair up my heroine with another woman in preference to anything else — my Dragon Age character made a beeline for Leliana, for example, while my LadyHawke in Dragon Age II went for Merrill, as I recall. Sweet Fuse, being an otome game, was going to make me (or rather, my female protagonist) date a male character and like it. And although I’m fairly open-minded about such things, I confess I did feel somewhat skeptical about whether or not I’d feel the same degree of emotional engagement seeing a relationship grow from the opposite way around to how it’s usually depicted in this sort of game.

Why shouldn’t I, though? In your average dating sim or visual novel, you are not playing as the protagonist; you’re along for the ride and making occasional decisions on their behalf. You see stuff unfold and occasionally get frustrated at the protagonist not doing things exactly as you would have done them — but therein lies a sense of dramatic tension. In practice, the only thing that is different between a bishoujo game and an otome game is the fact that the voices are all female in one and all male in the other; and the same for the on-screen portraits of other characters.

That is a reasonably big difference, to be fair, but the fact is that in both cases, you’re still watching two people who aren’t you get together rather than pretending to get off with some virtual girl/dude from the first person. In that sense, it’s not really any different to reading a novel with a love story, or watching a movie with love scenes. So why should playing as a protagonist of the opposite sex who becomes attracted to people who are the same sex as you make you feel weird?

Answer: it doesn’t. In the admittedly limited time I’ve spent following the adventures of Saki Inafune and her six gentlemen friends as they attempt to defuse the bombs a terrorist who is also a pig secreted in her uncle Keiji Inafune’s theme park — yes, that is indeed the creator of Mega Man — I’ve been surprised to find myself feeling much the same as I do when playing a bishoujo game.

Specifically, I’ve found myself playing “favourites” with the cast of dateable characters. I can’t quite pin down if it’s due to actually finding them attractive, or simply liking their characters, but I’ve naturally found myself gravitating towards one of the characters in my first playthrough, much like I would in a typical bishoujo game. (I tend to “go with my gut” for my first playthrough of this type of game, then go back and systematically pursue the remainder of the cast/endings one at a time in order to see everything the game and its stories have to offer.)

It helps that Sweet Fuse has a cast of male characters easily as diverse — possibly more so, even — than your average bishoujo game. There’s the cold, stern detective; the young boy band idol; the aggressive, overly-compensating male escort (who reminds me of Kanji from Persona 4 to a distracting degree); the world-weary reporter; the shut-in; and the “mystical guy”. The latter, a guy named Urabe, is the one I have my eye on for this first playthrough, but we’ll see where it goes.

I’m only on the second “stage” of my first playthrough so far so there’s probably quite a way to go yet. There’s some interesting mechanics in the game that I’ll talk about a bit more on another occasion. In the meantime, if you have the slightest interest in character-centric, story-focused games — and a PSP or Vita — then you could certainly do far worse than check out Sweet Fuse. Full review coming soon over on USgamer.

1330: Closed Book

Andie (and some of you, I’m sure) will undoubtedly be delighted to hear that I finished Corpse Party: Book of Shadows last night, which means I will no longer be sitting in the dark before going to sleep with the sounds of Japanese schoolgirls screaming emanating from my headphones.

So what of Book of Shadows as a whole? Well, I enjoyed it — as much as it is possible to “enjoy” a Corpse Party game, anyway — and, as I noted the other day, I particularly appreciated its unconventional narrative structure. For those who didn’t read that post the other day and are too lazy to click on that link, Book of Shadows essentially acts as a collection of “deleted scenes” and alternate endings to the original Corpse Party for the most part, with each chapter focusing on a different group of characters and either exploring “what if?” scenarios if things had gone differently in the original game, or acting as a means of expanding on and exploring the stories of a number of incidental characters who were either already dead by the time the first Corpse Party’s story unfolded, or who showed up in the game’s “Extra” chapters after you’d finished it.

One of the strengths of the original Corpse Party was how well-realised all of the characters were, and this continues in Book of Shadows, even in the chapters that explore characters other than the main cast of the first game. Each character is an interesting person to spend time with, and the fact the game is structured as more of a visual novel than the original game was means that there’s a lot more in the way of narration from each chapter’s protagonist than there was in the original. This lets you get inside the head of these characters to a much greater degree than previously, and this, coupled with the again fantastic Japanese voice acting, makes for an experience where you really get a strong sense of who these characters are, what they’re like and how they’re handling the horrific situation in which they find themselves. And, as I noted in my previous post, there’s not usually a happy ending, since by the time the cast of the first Corpse Party arrive at Heavenly Host Elementary School, most of the people they come across are dead.

Once you’ve worked your way through all the main chapters of Book of Shadows, you unlock a hidden final chapter called Blood Drive. (If you’ve finished the game and haven’t unlocked this, you either need save data from the original Corpse Party on your memory card or to see all of the Wrong Ends from all the previous chapters before it will unlock.)

Blood Drive is the “true” sequel to the original Corpse Party, following on directly from where the previous game left off. Unfortunately, the chapter Blood Drive is but a preview for the game Blood Drive, which is not yet even out in Japan, meaning that the game ends on one hell of a cliffhanger that won’t be getting resolved in the immediate future. Still, the amount of “oh NO!” I felt as the credits rolled for the last time is testament to how engaging I found the game as a whole — I liked these characters, enjoyed spending time with them and felt bad for them when they suffered, and I really, really want to see how the story continues (or ends?) in Blood Drive.

Unfortunately, I’ll be waiting a while yet. Still, it’s not as if I’m short of other things to play right now — not least of which is Idea Factory’s Sweet Fuse, which I’ve been looking forward to for a while.

Sachiko-san, onegaishimasu. Sachiko-san, onegaishimasu. Sachik– shit, how many times was I supposed to chant it again?

1326: Books with Shadows In Them

I have — I believe — two more chapters to go on Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, the sequel to one of my favourite PSP games, and, like its predecessor, one of the most emotionally engaging games I’ve ever played.

Book of Shadows is much more of a visual novel than its predecessor was — the RPG-style wandering around and pressing X on things is all gone now, to be replaced with either straight-up “read many, many pages of narration and dialogue” or, slightly less frequently, with some first-person perspective wandering and mild point and click adventuring.

The change in gameplay style isn’t the most interesting thing about Book of Shadows, though; instead, it’s the narrative structure. Rather than telling one continuous story like its predecessor, Book of Shadows is more of a spin-off than a true sequel — at least, as I understand it, anyway, until the final chapter — and instead chooses to spend its time telling self-contained stories that are either prequels to the events of Corpse Party, or “alternate universe” tales that answer a number of hypothetical “what if?” scenarios. For example, one scenario explores what would have happened if a character who died in the original Corpse Party had instead been rescued; another fleshes out one of the original game’s “wrong ends” by showing you exactly what unpleasantness happened to a particular character; another still looks at the story of some incidental characters from one of Corpse Party’s “extra” scenarios.

The fact that the game is being so experimental and exploratory in its various “short stories” is, in itself, interesting, but an even more intriguing thing about it is that the “correct” ending for each of the chapters is not necessarily a “good” one. Indeed, in many cases, all of the possible outcomes are filled with death, pain and suffering, but only one of them is the “correct” one that allows you to proceed to the next chapter. It’s honestly surprising to see something really quite horrible happen to a particular character — even though I was expecting it, given the context — and for the game to then cheerfully announce that I had “cleared” that particular chapter.

This idea of a conclusion to a chapter not necessarily being a happy one is something the first game played with — the “true” ending to the first chapter of the original Corpse Party often has people reaching for the “reload” button the first time they see it — but Book of Shadows really runs with it. It’s something that it’s interesting to see games experimenting with, since most games still take the “happy ending” as the default, “best” or only option, and it’s pretty rare to play something that genuinely ends on a downer. (Of course, I don’t know how Book of Shadows as a whole concludes, but I have the distinct impression that at least one or more of the characters will probably not get out unscathed.) There are a few exceptions, of course — Conker’s Bad Fur Day being one of the most surprising, best examples I can remember — but for the most part it’s still quite rare to come across something deliberately designed to bum you out. (You have achieved a trophy: “Pass the Kleenex.” Wait, that sounds wrong.)

Anyway, two more chapters and I can stop freaking myself out with this game — there’s a deliciously uncomfortable, oppressive atmosphere about the whole game that makes it quite “hard work” to play, but it’s enjoyable in that perverse sort of way good horror is. Next on the agenda, portable-wise, anyway, is Sweet Fuse, aka That Game Where You Play as Keiji Inafune’s Niece.

1302: ZETTAI RYOUI– I mean HERO

Have I mentioned ZHP, aka Zettai Hero Project: Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman on these pages yet? I forget. If not, I’m about to. If I am about to repeat myself, eh, whatever.

ZHP, as I will refer to it from now on to save my sanity, is an RPG from Nippon Ichi for PSP (Vita compatible). Its aesthetic and style is strongly reminiscent of NIS’ flagship strategy RPG series Disgaea, but it’s a very different sort of game — rather than being a turn-based strategy RPG, it’s a turn-based sort-of-roguelike in which you control a single character.

The concept of ZHP is pleasingly ridiculous. The Earth’s hero, the Unlosing Ranger, is on the way to save the world from villain Darkdeath Evilman when he gets run over. As he dies, he passes on his powers to the silent protagonist you spend the rest of the game playing. You, as the new Unlosing Ranger, are immediately thrown into NES-style turn-based RPG combat against Darkdeath Evilman and are defeated almost as quickly as combat begins. Thus begins a lengthy adventure to “train” yourself how to be a proper hero.

I’m only about 10 hours or so into the game so far so I can’t comment with any authority on how the game progresses, but I’m really enjoying it. It’s pleasantly portable friendly while at the same time being deep enough to also encourage hefty play sessions if you’ve got the time or inclination. Despite being turn-based, the dungeon crawling, exploration and combat feels very fast-paced and enjoyable. There’s a lot of loot to collect, all of which is reflected on your character’s appearance when you equip it, but a lot of it is very temporary — items have very limited durability, and thus become all but useless after a while.

Progression in ZHP is unconventional and bizarre. Unlike a traditional roguelike, there’s no permadeath — instead, being defeated in a dungeon tots up all the levels you gained on that particular run and adds them to your “Total Level”. This, in turn, provides bonuses to your base statistics, which means that “level 1” the next time you go into a dungeon is a significantly better “level 1” than it was at the start of the game. This progression can be supplemented by inserting various objects into your body, at which point they become “chips” that affect your base statistics. Then there’s Hero Energy to direct around, booster items to plug into your chips and all manner of other nonsense. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever seen before, but it seems to work really well.

At the stage I’ve just got to in the game, I’ve just unlocked a 60-floor dungeon that is clearly intended for grinding purposes. Given that the maps, enemies and even environments are randomly generated each time you enter, the whole game could have been this enormous dungeon and I’d have been happy, but there’s a fun and surprisingly “nice” story running alongside it all too — part of the game’s concept is that by running through the dungeons in “Bizarro World” you’re helping solve the problems of “real” people back on Earth while simultaneously powering yourself up enough to battle Darkdeath Evilman.

Anyway. If you need a portable RPG — and one that’s both toilet- and commute-friendly — then it’s well worth a look. Don’t let the Disgaea-esque aesthetic put you off if you weren’t a fan of that series — ZHP is a very different beast indeed and well worth your time.

1296: Repeated Fear

After re-finishing Corpse Party for the second time (and this time around actually playing through all the bonus chapters) I moved straight on to its sort-of-sequel Corpse Party: Book of Shadows, a game which I’ve owned for quite some time but haven’t got around to because I wanted to replay Corpse Party first.

So far, I’m very impressed. Book of Shadows maintains the things that were great about Corpse Party — its dark, mature storyline; its realistically flawed but likeable characters; its unusual but startlingly effective soundtrack; and its incredible, incredible sound design and voice acting — while making a few significant and notable changes.

The most notable change from the previous Corpse Party is that it’s no longer a top-down RPG-style affair and has instead become a first-person perspective point and click adventure with lengthy visual novel-style sequences to advance the plot. I’m fine with this, but I was also fine with the top-down nature of the original. I actually really liked the fact that the first Corpse Party had all the trappings of a JRPG — top-down perspective, a menu you pop up with the triangle button, hit points — without any fighting whatsoever. (That said, the PC-98 original version of Corpse Party, of which the PSP version is one of several remakes, concluded with a boss fight.)

Book of Shadows’ shift to the first person is an interesting one, because despite the change in perspective and despite the change from tile-based backdrops to hand-drawn environments, it’s still recognisable as Heavenly Host Elementary School. The map is the same; the rooms are laid out the same; you’re just seeing them from a different perspective. This gives a pleasing degree of consistency to the experience.

The concept is peculiar but kind of neat, too. One of the “wrong ends” of the original Corpse Party saw the band of unfortunate teens travel back in time after successfully reversing the charm that had got them into the school in the first place, only to find themselves repeating the same events exactly as they were before — thereby dooming themselves to the same fate. Book of Shadows runs with the idea that the characters being aware of this “time loop” might see them try to cheat their fate, and the first chapter at least explores what happens if a particular tragedy that occurred early in the first game was averted. In doing so, we get a chance to spend a lot more time with characters who didn’t get a great deal of screen time in the original game (because they were the first to be unpleasantly murdered) and gain a greater understanding of both them and their relationships with others in the process.

I’m digging it so far. The palpable sense of menace of the original is very much intact in this new game, as is the wince-inducing violence — though as with the previous game, Book of Shadows has a wonderful understanding of the concept of “less is more” when it comes to horror. The most effective scares come from the imagination rather than gory scenes on the screen — and while Book of Shadows, like its predecessor, certainly isn’t afraid to show the aftermath of a violent event, the actual instance of something unpleasant happening tends to be depicted through nothing more than text and sound.

Book of Shadows deserves particularly special mention for its sound. The original Corpse Party made magnificent use of fake 3D effects in the stereo field to make it sound like people were whispering in your ear, standing behind you and all manner of other things. Book of Shadows continues this and somehow manages to be even more effective. In an early scene, for example, you’re playing the role of the character Naomi, who finds herself in bed with her possibly-a-lesbian best friend Seiko, who is over for a sleepover. When the lights go out and Seiko falls asleep, you can hear her soft breathing and occasional murmuring to herself in your left ear while Naomi ponders things to herself; when Seiko is roused by Naomi’s mumbling, her voice sounds like she’s lying right next to you. It’s unnerving in its realism, but startlingly effective for immersing you in the game world and story.

I’m partway through the second chapter of Book of Shadows so far. I’m enjoying the “what if?” nature of these chapters, but what I’m really looking forward to is the not-so-secret final chapter that actually acts as a sequel of sorts to the original story. I’m intrigued to see where the story goes, and despite the fact it’s such a consistently unpleasant, depressing series, I really hope we see more in the future.

1084: Darkdeath Evilman

So, I seem to have jumped down something of a rabbit-hole with regard to my current gaming. Specifically, I seem to have jumped down the NIS America rabbit-hole, which means lots of brightly-colored anime-style JRPGs with heavy degrees of ridiculousness. Hyperdimension Neptunia, which I discussed yesterday (and which I’m aware is developed by Idea Factory rather than Nippon Ichi themselves), is a fine example of said ridiculousness being taken to the extreme with its personifications of gaming platforms and companies as cute anime girls with a habit of flashing their panties.

I decided to start something on portable in parallel, though, so I had something to play on the toilet/in bed/in coffee shops. I wanted to pick something that was portable-friendly — i.e. something you could dip into in short sessions rather than feeling like you need to spend hours at a time playing, but which would last a good long while in total. The game I picked for this purpose was the rather gloriously-titled Z.H.P. Unlosing Ranger vs. Darkdeath Evilman for the PSP/Vita, a game from the Disgaea team and one which wears its influences on its sleeve.

Z.H.P. (as it shall be known from hereon) is an isometric-perspective tactical roguelike RPG that plays somewhat like Disgaea (which is normally a strategy game somewhat akin to Final Fantasy Tactics, if you’re unfamiliar) would play if you only controlled one character and could only move them one space at a time per turn. It follows the traditional style of roguelike gameplay, in other words — you move, the enemies move, but between moves you can stand still and contemplate what to do next without fear of getting twatted while you come to your decision. As per usual for the genre, you find yourself exploring a series of increasingly-difficult, increasingly-complex randomly-generated dungeons in an attempt to become as strong as possible and eventually take down the titular bad guy Darkdeath Evilman.

There’s a bit of a twist on the usual formula, though. Rather than featuring a permadeath system that forces you to start over when you bite the big one in a dungeon, Z.H.P. instead features a rather odd levelling system whereby each time you enter a dungeon, you start at level 1, but your total levels gained over your lifetime playing the game determines your base statistics. If you die, you lose all the loot you acquired on that particular dungeon run, but any levels you gained are added on to your total level count, boosting your base statistics by a little and meaning that the next time you start a dungeon run, you’ll be slightly stronger even though you’re still technically level 1. If that makes your head hurt, don’t worry — it starts to make sense after playing for only a short period.

The eventual aim of the game is to work your way through the story and make the nameless, voiceless protagonist (who, rather endearingly, is canonically named simply Main Character) into the hero he was supposed to replace — the Unlosing Ranger, the only one who can defeat Darkdeath Evilman. Every so often in the story, you’ll find yourself returning to Earth from the Bizarro Earth in which you’ve been doing all your dungeon-crawling, and thrust into a traditional JRPG-style battle against Darkdeath Evilman, who is your stereotypical “final boss” sort of character. As the game progresses, these battle sequences become increasingly elaborate — they start with a first-person 8-bit sequence somewhat reminiscent of the end of the original Phantasy Star and gradually progress to… well, I’m not sure yet as I haven’t got that far.

There are some fun additions to the basic roguelike formula, and it’s here that the Disgaea influences are apparent. You can pick up enemies and fling them around, for example, though disappointingly you can’t simply lob them off the edge of a precarious platform into the lava below. You can also throw items from your inventory, many of which have special effects. It also provides a use for items that have degraded to a durability level of 0%, meaning that the bonuses they normally provide are completely ineffective until repaired. If you don’t want to spend your limited funds on repair bills, simply throw them at the enemies.

Then there’s the guest appearances from the Prinnies, the weird explosive penguin-like things from Disgaea. Early in the game, you inexplicably find yourself married to one and gain the once-per-expedition special ability to summon your “wife” and have her bring you a lunchbox to restore your endurance points.

I could go on, but I would like to play the game a bit more before I talk about it too much. Early impressions are very positive, though, and if it’s anything like Disgaea this will be a game designed to keep one occupied for a frighteningly long time. If you’re looking for something endearingly bizarre but which backs up that bizarreness with solid gameplay and good presentation, you could do far worse than check out Z.H.P. — it works on Vita, too, so you can just download it from the PSN store rather than attempting to track down a physical copy.

See you in the dungeon, dood!

1075: Those Trails in the Sky Get Longer

[Author’s note: See, I resisted the temptation to make another “Tits” joke in the headline. You should be proud of me.]

After a bit of a break to play some other stuff, mainly Persona 3: FES, I am back on my Vita and proceeding nicely with Trails in the Sky.

Trails in the Sky, for those who missed the earlier post I made about it, is a role-playing game for the PSP and Vita from Falcom. It also happens to be one of the best role-playing games I’ve played in recent memory, for a diverse array of reasons, some of which I’ve already talked about and others of which I will touch on today.

Plot-wise, Trails in the Sky isn’t your conventional JRPG. I’m over 30 hours in now and there’s been no trace of any villain wanting to take over the world, call down a meteor, kompress time [sic], sit inside a mountain going “MWAHAHAHAHA” or indeed any of the other things that JRPG villains typically want to do. In fact, I’d be hard-pushed to identify a single “villain” as yet — there have been villainous groups and individuals, sure, but not a single character that I’d particularly identify as a specific “antagonist”. No-one with silvery-white hair flowing down their back; no-one with a good line in evil laughs; no “evil empire” to fight back against. The closest we’ve had is a few men clad in black, and they’re clearly working for someone.

While this may cause you to worry about the game being directionless — what’s an epic RPG without an antagonist taunting you throughout making that final boss smackdown all the more satisfying? — in actual fact the opposite is true. The focus may be different, but there’s most definitely a plot with direction and good pace going on here.

The focus in this case is the relationship between the two lead characters Estelle and Joshua, foster siblings and a classic case of a “will they, won’t they” relationship that will undoubtedly come to smooches by the end of the game’s 50-hour quest. The main thrust of the game’s story is the pair’s journey around the game world, training their abilities and learning more about themselves, each other and the way they feel about one another. Third and fourth party members come and go, but Estelle and Joshua are permanent fixtures, with the player taking direct control of Estelle for the vast majority of the game.

Estelle is a great lead character, largely because she’s not a traditional female protagonist. She may be pretty cute visually — as a redhead/brunette with twintails, she’s seemingly designed to appeal specifically to me — but personality-wise, she’s certainly far from demure, cute or helpless. She’s spunky, loud, opinionated, brash, sarcastic and quick to anger. At the same time, she doesn’t deny her feminine side to herself — even if she seemingly tries to hide it when others are around. There are a number of scenes, particularly late in the game, where she tries to come to terms with her own feelings towards Joshua that give us some interesting insight into what she’s really thinking behind her slightly-abrasive facade.

The side-effect of Estelle’s somewhat tomboyish nature when she’s around other people is that said other people tend not to treat her in a particularly “girlish” manner, often deriding her for not particularly conforming to gender stereotypes and acting in a “mannish” or “boyish” manner. She takes it in her stride throughout, often swiping such comments aside with a sarcastic rebuttal or two of her own, and you get the impression that she is someone who is thoroughly comfortable in who she is — or at least comfortable with the “public face” she shows to people. Despite her self-assuredness, though, a sure-fire way to make Estelle skittish and nervous is to bring up the possibility of her getting together with Joshua, which in many cases makes her literally want to run away or furiously deny any such accusations, even if it’s blatantly obvious that she’s thought about it more than once in her life.

I’m looking forward to seeing the game through to its conclusion. It’s structured very nicely in that you always feel like you’re doing something, and grinding has been absolutely non-existent so far. Wandering monsters provide relatively trivial amounts of experience points, and are primarily used to acquire the “Sepith” gems used to craft new special ability items called Orbments, and if you’re that way inclined, you can race through most of the game without stopping to have random encounters at all if you don’t want to — though you may find yourself struggling to acquire better spells if you do so.

In short, it’s nice to play a JRPG that focuses on the good things about the genre — exploration, discovery, questing, character development and narrative — and doesn’t force players to live with frustrating and outdated conventions like grinding. If you’re an RPG fan toting a PSP or Vita, you should consider Trails in the Sky an essential purchase, as it is a fine example of how the genre is alive, well and more than happy to not follow the traditional Final Fantasy “OMG WORLD IS ENDING” route. (That’s not to say that doesn’t have a place, of course — I still love saving the world, but I’m well aware many others are sick of it.)

Check out the official website to find out more — and I believe there’s a sequel inbound at some point in the near future, too.

1074: Loving the Vita

It’s fashionable to bash Sony’s latest handheld, the Vita. This is partly justified, because it hasn’t been selling particularly well — especially when compared to Nintendo’s latest powerhouse the 3DS, which seems entirely likely to repeat the success of its predecessor the DS family. The poor sales can be attributed to its relatively high price and the fact that its proprietary memory cards are unnecessarily expensive and can’t be used in anything else, unlike the standard SD cards that the 3DS uses.

But even though I know these criticisms are valid and warranted, it still bugs me a little that this means people are quickly writing off the Vita as a no-hoper, as a stillborn, with some even going so far as to compare it to disastrous past industry efforts such as Nintendo’s dreadful Virtual Boy. That’s just ridiculous.

Fact is, the Vita is a wonderful piece of kit. For your money, you get a gorgeous shiny gadget with a deliciously bright, big, high-resolution LED screen, two not-very-good-but-functional cameras (front and back) and not one but two touch-sensitive surfaces (again, front and back). Games specifically designed for Vita look beautiful on that big shiny screen, and the system runs downloadable PSP titles perfectly — though the lack of UMD drive means that those who have an extensive collection of physical PSP games will either need to keep their old handheld around or re-purchase their games as downloadable versions.

The PSP support is an aspect of the Vita that I can’t help but feel is understated. I know, I know, you could buy a used PSP for a fraction of the price of a new Vita, but how great the games look on that LED screen shouldn’t be underestimated — plus with the latest system firmware, it’s possible to apply bilinear filtering to the games to smooth out edges without making them look overly-blurry, and assign the Vita’s right stick and touchscreen to various functions. You’d be surprised quite how much more comfortable it is using the right stick to move the camera in games that previously used the shoulder buttons for this purpose — the PSP, let’s not forget, didn’t have a right stick and had that peculiar and uncomfortable “nub” instead of an actual stick on the left.

The other aspect of that PSP compatibility is that it makes the old “Vita has no games” argument sort of invalid — because not only do you have a healthy selection of largely good-quality Vita titles to draw on, you also have a huge selection of downloadable PSP titles to work your way through, too. If you’re a JRPG or SRPG fan in particular, the Vita is a fantastic system. The first three Persona games; Trails in the Sky; all the Final Fantasy games up to IX plus spinoffs Final Fantasy Tactics and Dissidia Final Fantasy; Tactics Ogre; the list goes on. (It goes on longer if you’re American, because you also have titles like Growlanser and Gungnir to enjoy, too. Damn you, Atlus, for not having a European arm.)

As for the actual Vita games themselves, there are some real gems there. Everybody’s Golf/Hot Shots Golf is fantastic fun, and packed with content. Gravity Rush is a beautiful, stylish, challenging game that makes good use of the Vita’s accelerometers alongside a more traditional control scheme. The Vita version of Need for Speed Most Wanted is a very good one, ideal for a quick race on the go. Lumines Electronic Symphony is a fantastic puzzle game — though not very toilet-friendly, as sessions tend to go on for quite a while. LittleBigPlanet is an ideal fit for the Vita’s interface and touchscreen. And then there are a bunch of cheaper download-only games that are also fantastic — the strange and abstract world of Sound Shapes; the John Cleese-voiced, Unreal Engine-powered brain training of Smart As…; the freebies like that ecosystem game I’ve forgotten the name of and hilarious pass-and-play party game Frobisher Says.

And then you have PlayStation Minis, which is home to some surprisingly brilliant games — Velocity by FuturLab being one in particular you should really check out. And then there’s the newly-added support for PlayStation Mobile, which offers super-cheap ports of some of the best iOS and Android games out there.

Need I go on? Yes, the cost of entry may be higher than a 3DS or a PSP, but the Vita is packed with a ton of possibilities that people just aren’t talking about enough. “The story” about the Vita always seems to be that it’s “Sony’s big failure” — and while that may end up being true, it’d be nice to see, just once, a feature in the professional press detailing the many things this system does wonderfully well rather than yet another predictable article heralding its apparently-imminent doom. We’ve all seen this article many times over — so how about ditching the negativity for a bit and exploring the many good things the system does offer so those of us who do have one can unearth some of the platform’s hidden gems — because they’re out there.

If you happened to get a Vita (or PS3, for that matter) for Christmas, do feel free to add “Angry_Jedi” to your PSN friends list!

#oneaday Day 942: Trails in the Sky

[Aside: This is the one-thousandth post on this blog. Hooray! Another 58 days until I’ve completed a thousand days of daily blogging, however.]

My current gaming “jam”, as I believe the kids are saying nowadays, is Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky, just Trails in the Sky or its immensely entertaining acronym TitS for short. It’s a Vita-compatible PSP game from Falcom, published by Xseed in the States and Ghostlight in the UK, and it was originally available for Windows PCs in Japan, though in the West I believe we’ve only seen the PSP release.

It’s good. Real good. And, like recent RPGs that I’ve had a particular blast with — Xenoblade Chronicles, The Last Story, Pandora’s Tower — it is good due to its willingness to dispense with the conventions of the JRPG genre and to incorporate good ideas from both Western RPGs and the more specialist strategy/tactical RPG subgenre. This exhibits itself in two main ways: its battle system and its game structure.

Battles in Trails in the Sky are a slightly more involved affair than your stereotypical “line up in front of each other and take it in turns to slap one another” JRPG combat system. Instead, battles take place on a grid, and characters have to actually move around as well as use their skills. Certain skills can affect areas, too, meaning that positioning is more than just a gimmick. This system is combined with a mechanic similar to the “Conditional Turn-Based Battle” system seen in Final Fantasy X, whereby the turn order for the next few rounds is displayed at the side of the screen and can be affected by various factors.

The game’s “Craft” special ability system also allows player characters to “jump the queue” in the turn order at times if their “Craft Points” bar is full, allowing the player to manipulate the turn order to their advantage. This is an important aspect to gameplay, as certain turns are marked with symbols that denote various bonuses to the active character — a guaranteed critical hit, increased damage, a small amount of healing.

Structurally, the game is somewhere between a traditional JRPG and a more freeform Western title. The game’s main plot is rigidly linear and leads the party through various locales which then become their “base” for a while. But while they are there, they have the opportunity to take on a bunch of optional quests which range from defeating tough monsters to delivering packages or locating ingredients. They’re generally pretty simple stuff, but each is bookended by a short story sequence for context, giving the player a greater feeling of immersion in the game world by allowing them to get to know some of the incidental characters a bit better. It also makes the game feel less linear, as these optional quests can be tackled in any order — though some will expire if too much progress is made on the main plot before completing them.

There’s another reason to do these quests: they’re one of the few ways to make money. Rather than monsters inexplicably dropping fountains of gold when they expire, they instead drop crystals that can be used to synthesise new special abilities at a special location in towns, or sold for a profit. Questing is a much more reliable source of income, however, as it’s better to save up the crystals for upgrading characters.

Mechanically, then, Trails in the Sky is interesting if not quite “revolutionary” — it’s certainly enjoyable to play. But the highlight for me so far has been the excellent localisation. Characters are well-defined and have a strong sense of personality even though there’s no speech or any real animation. Through a simple combination of well-written text and mood portraits, you get a real feel for who these people are and how they relate to one another. Particular praise should be given to the interplay between the two main protagonists Estelle and Joshua, who have clearly been set up to have a ridiculous amount of sexual tension between them for the duration of the game despite being polar opposites in terms of personality. It’s also surprising to see an openly bisexual character making an appearance, though he is treated somewhat less than respectfully by Estelle, as she refers to him as a “pervert” within minutes of finding out about his preferences. (To be fair to her, though, he kind of is a bit of a pervert, though not because of his sexuality. His stalkerish lusting after Joshua seconds after meeting him for the first time is a bit creepy.)

I’m only about 10 hours in to the game so far but it claims to be about 50 hours in total. That’s a decent size for a handheld RPG — hell, it’s a decent size for an RPG generally. Any more than that and it can become a bit of a slog. I hope the excellent characterisation and fun battles continue throughout, as it’s been a blast so far — so if you have a PSP or Vita and are looking for some top-quality questing, give it a shot.