2418: The Bonds of True Friendship

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As someone who, for the most part, tends to put narrative concerns front and centre when considering what to entertain himself with, it probably won’t surprise you to hear that the main thing that draws me to my favourite genre of video game — RPGs — is not the stat-crunching mechanical goodness that goes on behind the scenes (though good mechanics can make a game I’m already emotionally invested in even more satisfying) but the almost overwhelming sense of camaraderie and “all being in it together” that a good ensemble cast brings to the table.

When considering narrative tropes, this sense of comradeship is regarded as “true companions” or sometimes nakama, from a Japanese word that translates to “friend” or “comrade”. Indeed, if you turn the Japanese voices on in many JRPGs, you’ll hear the word nakama used pretty liberally when characters are talking about their friends and travelling companions in the party; it’s a contrast to another Japanese term referring to friendship, tomodachi, which is typically used when talking about friends in a more social, casual manner. To put it crudely, your nakama friends are the ones who travel with you, who will go to the ends of the earth with you, the ones who are closer than family; your tomodachi friends are the ones you go down the pub with once or twice a month and talk about girls or football.

This sense of true companionship is, for me, what defines a great RPG story, and it’s a big part of why I find solitary experiences like Skyrim and Fallout — which, mechanically at least, ought to be right up my alley — so fundamentally unsatisfying: you don’t get that sense of being part of a group of people with complex and interesting relationships.

So with that in mind, I thought I’d share some of my favourite ensemble casts from the past few years. You can probably guess at least one of them.

Neptune and the gang

Yup, you were right! The biggest thing that keeps me coming back to the Neptunia series time after time — and the thing that kept me persevering with the shaky first game in the series — is the wonderful sense of camaraderie between the characters.

Interestingly, Neptunia’s cast can be split into a few different elements, each of which overlap a little and which all have Neptune as their common element.

First up, you have IF and Compa, who will always have an important place in any Neptunia fan’s heart due to them being pretty much the first characters you have a meaningful conversation with in the series. IF and Compa are friends, but also a study in contrasts; IF is somewhat sullen and tsundere (with a secret otaku side) while Compa is feminine, ditzy and honest. They’re good foils for one another, and with the chaotic personality of Neptune in the middle, just these three make for a good cast by themselves, and indeed a significant portion of the original Hyperdimension Neptunia consisted of just these three core cast members fighting alongside one another.

Then you have the more well-known faces of the series, the CPUs Blanc, Noire and Vert. These were introduced in the original Hyperdimension Neptunia almost as antagonistic characters, but over time their personalities have softened somewhat, and the four of them (including Neptune) have become very close friends with one another. Once again, they work as a group because of how they contrast with one another. Noire is determined and driven to a fault, but secretly wishes for close friendships; Vert likes to play the older sister but in many ways is one of the most immature of the group, often disappearing for days at a time to indulge in her hobbies rather than doing her job; Blanc, meanwhile, despite her youthful appearance, seems calm and mature until something — it doesn’t take much — attracts her ire, at which point she becomes a devastating force of fury.

mk2 onwards introduced the sisters of the CPUs to the series, and again, they made heavy use of contrast to make them stand out from one another. Neptune’s sister Nepgear, for example, is the opposite of Neptune in almost every way: she’s smart where Neptune is dim; she’s articulate where Neptune tends to let her mouth run away with herself; yet she’s timid where Neptune is (over)confident. Blanc’s twin sisters Rom and Rom contrast both with each other and with Blanc, with Rom being quiet and shy, while Ram is loud and rambunctious. And Noire’s sister Uni, in her own way, contrasts with the rest of the group altogether by actually being similar to her sister — a little too similar at times, so closely does she follow in her sister’s footsteps.

All together, you have a substantial ensemble cast with a variety of contrasting character types. They often clash with one another, as contrasting personalities tend to do, but their shared hardships and common goals bring them together time after time. The particularly dark mk2/Re;Birth2 story is arguably the catalyst for their closeness, thanks to the especially unpleasant events that occur therein, but by now their relationship has grown so close that each new Neptunia game feels like being reunited with a group of old friends. It’s a delight.

The Witcher

The Witcher series is an unusual case in that they’re not party-based RPGs, but they nonetheless carry a strong sense of camaraderie, friendship and even romance between their major characters. This is helped along in part by the fact that the games are based on some already extensive pre-existing lore from the original novels, but even if you’re unfamiliar with the source material, The Witcher’s relationships are a real highlight of the whole experience.

For starters, despite protagonist Geralt usually working alone for each of the games, there’s a strong sense of comradeship between him and his fellow School of the Wolf witchers, some of the last remaining witchers in the world. Months or even years can pass between them seeing one another in some instances, but when they do meet up with one another, it’s like no time has passed. The Witcher 3 in particular plays with this delightfully in a scene where Geralt and his witcher buddies get absolutely hammered before going to try on the fancy outfits of sorceress Yennefer, Geralt’s significant other (or onetime squeeze, depending on how you’ve chosen to play that particular subplot out) and play with her megascope. In game terms, it’s utterly irrelevant to the main plot and doesn’t give you any mechanical benefits, but it’s a beautifully captured moment that emphasises the fact that despite the work of witchers typically being solitary, they, too, still have need of the ties of friendship.

Then there are the recurring characters like Dandelion the bard and Zoltan Chivay the, um, dwarf. These characters show up throughout the novels and all three games, and their relationship with Geralt is likewise one of close friendship and trust. Indeed, the bond between Dandelion and Geralt is so seemingly close that all the in-game journal entries tracking your quests are written not from Geralt’s perspective or even that of an omniscient third-person non-participant narrator, but as if Dandelion is narrating Geralt’s tale in the past tense to an eager audience. It’s a nice touch.

The Witcher prides itself on shades of grey, though, and this is true for Geralt’s relationships, too. In The Witcher 3 in particular, Geralt will come into contact with a number of people with whom he’s had dealings in the past, many of whom will seem like unquestionable friends if you’re unfamiliar with their history. Yet depending on the choices you make and Geralt’s subsequent actions, their relationships can take some very surprising — sometimes tragic — turns. The arc with former spymaster Dijkstra in The Witcher 3 is particularly interesting to see play out.

The Witcher, then, definitely has an ensemble cast of the kind I find particularly appealing, even if they’re not all there obediently running along behind Geralt for the whole game. In the case of The Witcher 3 in particular, it’s proof positive that it’s more than possible for the Western open-world RPG to pull off this sense of “true companionship” — even without a persistent party — and that Bethesda should consider trying a bit harder in this regard with future Elder Scrolls and Fallout games.

Tales of Xillia

Two of my favourite RPGs in recent years were Tales of Xillia and its sequel, and the strong ties between the party members in those games are what made those games special for me.

The first Xillia had two overlapping storylines that were mostly identical apart from their very beginning and a significant chunk in the middle. The two protagonists were Jude, a somewhat idealistic young medical student who gets swept up in a series of rather peculiar events, and Milla, a mysterious young woman who claims to be the earthly incarnation of the deity Maxwell.

The journey through the two Xillias is very long, but its epic nature works to its benefit, because it allows us to get to know the two protagonists and the party members they gather around them very well indeed. There’s Jude’s childhood friend Leia, who is clumsy but charming; there’s butler Rowen, who turns out to be a highly regarded former general; there’s the cynical mercenary Alvin who seems like a pleasant enough “big brother” type but is clearly hiding something; and there’s young girl Elize, who captures the feeling of a young girl being alone in the world and finally finding people who understand her perfectly.

Xillia’s cast works because of the game’s frequent use of “skits”, where action stops for a moment and the party members have a quick chat about something. This might be important to the plot, or it might be seemingly irrelevant information, but all of it is essential to the characterisation of the group as a whole. In the first game in particular, Milla is the centrepiece of the group, and we come to understand the world of Rieze Maxia through her eyes, with her party members explaining and supporting her along the way. That said, Milla isn’t a helpless waif by any means; on the contrary, on more than one occasion her companions have to hold her back from getting a little too inappropriate with her explorations of life among the humans.

Xillia 2 takes an unusual step in this day and age by actually being a direct sequel to the first game. All the characters from the original make a reappearance, along with a couple of new ones — just enough to keep it feeling a bit different from the original, while still familiar and recognisable as a continuation of the same story. Interestingly, Xillia 2 introduces a new protagonist named Ludger, and for your first playthrough he’s an almost entirely silent protagonist, his contributions mostly being limited to grunts and gasps. (Calm down.) There is a narrative-related reason for this that I shan’t spoil for you here, but the use of a silent protagonist is also often a way of making the player feel like “they” are in the world rather than just controlling a character who isn’t them.

Regardless of the reasons for his silence, Ludger forms a suitable nucleus for the party in much the same way as Milla did in the first Xillia game, and once again we’re treated to a variety of enjoyable skits on a variety of subjects, both plot-relevant and inconsequential. By the end of the two games, you really feel like you’ve been on a lengthy journey with a group of people who have come to be close friends.

Persona 3 and 4

Shin Megami Tensei purists may thumb their nose at the later installments in the Persona series, but for me the thing that made them special to me is their strong emphasis on the bonds between people.

In both Persona 3 and 4, these bonds take many forms. They might be the bond between the protagonist and a member of an extracurricular club he attends, who gradually grows comfortable enough to open up a bit about their own concerns. Or they might be the bond between party members who come to understand one another as events start spiralling out of control around them.

In Persona 4 this latter case is particularly true, given that the majority of the dungeons are themed around one of the characters confronting their “true self” and admitting something that they would previously rather keep quiet about for one reason or another. The game goes to some surprisingly daring places in terms of subject matter, though it also leaves a few bits and pieces just ambiguous enough for you to come to your own interpretation of what you just witnessed.

Like Xillia, one of the biggest strengths of both Persona 3 and Persona 4 is the sheer amount of time their respective quests take — and the fact that, in both games, you can actually see how much virtual time you’ve spent in the world thanks to the ever-present readout of the in-game date, which also acts as a reminder that each month, you are on a tight deadline to ensure things don’t go horribly wrong for someone you know.

The sheer amount of time you spend with the characters in both Persona 3 and 4 coupled with the game’s setting in a school and its surroundings means that you really come to think of these characters as friends by the end of the game. This makes a relatively minor aspect of Persona 4’s ending, where you leave on a train and see all the people whose lives you touched standing on the platform to see you off, incredibly touching and borderline heartbreaking. It is likely no coincidence that one of the most frequently heard pieces of music on the soundtrack is called Heartbeat, Heartbreak.

The Witch and the Hundred Knight

This is an unusual one in that it’s an action RPG in which you play a distinctly non-human silent protagonist and don’t actually have a party gathered around you at all times, but nonetheless it manages to have that strong sense of “true companions”, with numerous characters who go through significant developmental arcs over the course of the complete narrative.

In The Witch and the Hundred Knight, you play the Hundred Knight, a mythological creature that turned out to be a bit disappointing in the flesh. You were summoned by the witch Metallia, who lives by herself in a swamp and is pretty much a psychopath. Your stated aim at the outset of the game is to spread Metallia’s swamp across the land so she is able to move freely and dominate the world — she can’t go far from her swamp — but over time things become much, much more complex.

The Hundred Knight, despite being the playable protagonist, is in many ways the least important part of the plot, though his actions do serve as the catalyst for most of the major plot beats throughout the narrative. Instead, the story is about Metallia: why she is so angry, why she is so violent — and why she is so sad. The tale itself features some gut-wrenchingly horrible moments to depict Metallia’s seemingly “beyond redemption” status, but her growth as a character across the entire narrative — a process witnessed and helped along by a young cursed noblewoman called Visco, who eventually becomes very important to Metallia — and the three possible finales, none of which can be called particularly “happy”, makes for a game that takes the unusual step of being an outright tragedy in terms of its narrative.

The story works, once again, because of the close bonds between the characters. We see how horrible Metallia is at the beginning of the game, and we see how poorly she treats Visco. But we see how Visco keeps coming back for more, obviously seeing something in Metallia that others don’t, and we see how Metallia, despite continuing to be foul-mouthed and aggressive, softens a little as she realises that she is developing feelings of friendship — arguably more — for this young woman cursed with the face of a dog. I shan’t spoil the “bad” ending (which is actually the most significant ending, despite the game’s terminology) but suffice to say the Metallia at the end of the game is a completely different person from the one at the beginning, and as the Hundred Knight, we’ve been there to see that whole process.

Fairy Fencer F

And perhaps most relevantly, given that I’m still playing through it at the moment, I was delighted to discover that Fairy Fencer F has a wonderful ensemble cast, too — and despite its aesthetic similarities to the Neptunia series thanks to artist Tsunako on character design duty, it has an overall darker tone to its stablemate, allowing for its characters to share hardships and sadness as well as good times with one another.

Like Neptunia, FFF’s cast can be split into a number of components. There’s the core cast of playable characters who centre around protagonist Fang, who is initially lazy and cynical, but later turns out to be far more responsible and caring than he would care to admit. Then each of these characters has a companion fairy, who form a sub-cast of their own who are usually with their human partners, but sometimes get the chance to do things by themselves. Then there’s a cast of villains, too, but without spoiling too much, let’s just say that on the Goddess route, at least — the narrative path that comprised the original Fairy Fencer F, rather than one of the two new ones introduced for the PlayStation 4 version — the lines between “good” and “evil” are frequently blurred to quite a significant degree.

An crucial moment at the midpoint of Fairy Fencer F carries more emotional weight than I’ve ever seen from a Compile Heart game, eschewing the company’s usually breezy comedy and satire — both of which are present in Fairy Fencer F when appropriate, make no mistake — in the name of something truly awful happening as a catalyst for one of the three subsequent divergent narrative paths that follow. This moment only works because of the first half of the game, in which we get to know Fang and his ragtag group of companions very well indeed, and because of its sharp, surprising contrast with what we, the player, had been led to expect would happen at that point in the story.

I haven’t yet seen how things turn out. I can guess, but given that this game has already surprised me more than once with the direction its narrative takes — mostly with regard to how dark it gets at times — I’m not going to believe it until I actually see it. It’s been an enjoyable journey so far, though, so I’m looking forward to seeing how it ends. And then seeing the other two ways in which it ends after that.

2131: It Builds Character

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[For some reason this failed to publish when I wrote it yesterday. Apologies.]

“Tell us about a favorite character from film, theater, or literature, with whom you’d like to have a heart-to-heart. What would you talk about?”

From the Daily Post writing prompt, It Builds Character.

There are any number of interesting characters from a variety of media I’d like to do this with, so in order to prevent analysis paralysis I’ll simply go with the character that popped into my head immediately when I saw this prompt: Milla Maxwell from Tales of Xillia.

Milla was a big part of why I enjoyed Tales of Xillia and its sequel so much. She was a well-defined, very distinctive character, both visually and in terms of her personality — and even so far as her slightly lisping English voice acting went — who has stuck with me long after I was done with those games.

Milla, for those unfamiliar with Xillia is… well, to be honest, it’s a long and complicated tale that is explained over the course of two games, but suffice it to say that she’s not quite “normal” in that she’s lived in isolation from human society for a very long time and has mysterious, quasi-magical powers thanks to her ability to commune with the Great Spirits.

All this stuff isn’t why I’d want to hang out with Milla, though. I’d want to hang out with her simply because she’s cool, and smart, and funny — but endearingly naive about lots of things. Her isolation from human society leads her to ask interesting but not always entirely socially acceptable questions, and her curiosity about the world is infectious. She knows how to get things done when the occasion demands it, but she also knows that it is important to enjoy yourself and indulge your body and mind’s demands when you’re aware of them.

Mostly, she just seems like a nice person, and someone I’d enjoy spending time with. There’s not a single point in either of the Xillia games where Milla has a mean word to say about anyone — the cast as a whole is pretty closely-knit and pleasant, but Milla stands out even among them — and even when confronting her enemies, she’s keen to understand them and why they are the way they are.

What would we talk about, though? Well, Milla’s naivete means that we’d almost certainly have a lot to talk about, particularly if I were to introduce her to things with which she wasn’t overly familiar. Perhaps I’d play some music for her, and attempt to explain the emotional power that sound has over us. Perhaps I’d show her some video games — I could show her her own game, that’d raise an interesting conversation, I’m sure — or sit her down and attempt to engage her interest with a board game. All of these activities would doubtless prompt the question “why?”, and one of the nice things about Milla is that when she asks this, she’s not being facetious, sullen or passive-aggressive about not wanting to do something; she genuinely wants to know and understand why people choose to partake in particular activities. And I think helping her with those big questions would make for some absolutely fascinating conversations.

So, Milla Maxwell, if you ever feel like stopping by, well, I’m pretty sure I can keep you occupied, entertained and intrigued for quite some time, and that’s not something I can say with confidence to many people!

1693: Rieze Maxia-Elympios Relations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1369: Closing Tales

Finally closing in on the end of my second playthrough of Tales of Xillia, and it’s led to some interesting observations.

First up, Xillia’s handling of New Game Plus is well-implemented, enjoyable and unusual. As you play, you unlock a number of “Titles” by completing various in-game achievements such as using certain abilities a particular number of times, completing various numbers of sidequests and passing various milestones in the story. Depending on the difficulty of (or endurance/patience required for) each of these titles, you’re awarded various amounts of “Grade” points. These are useless until you’ve completed the game once, at which point you can spend them when you start a New Game Plus.

The things you can spend them on vary from carrying across various things like items, levels, money, shop levels and so on, or they can be spent on bonuses such as boosters to experience and money gain. By carefully spending your Grade, you can put together a “package” of bonuses that makes your subsequent playthroughs of the game work the way you want them to.

Personally, I’m playing through with 10x the normal amount of experience, double the normal amount of money gained and carrying over the “Devil’s Arms” special weapons that I acquired through a sidequest in the first playthrough. This made the game quite easy, so I bumped up the difficulty to Hard, and it’s now providing a suitably-paced challenge even though I’ve been well over the recommended levels for most of the game, and will cap out at 99 before taking on the final boss in my second playthrough.

What’s also interesting about Xillia is its two-protagonist structure. For probably about 80% of the time, the game is the same regardless of whether you chose Jude or Milla at the outset of the game, but the points where it splits are interestingly distinct from one another. For those who are yet to play the game but who are planning to, I strongly recommend you play Jude’s storyline first, if only for the fact that a certain event that occurs partway through the story is infinitely more dramatic from Jude’s perspective than it is from Milla’s. I’ll spare you the details in the name of spoiler avoidance, however.

Playing both stories gives you an interesting amount of context and insight into the two characters, though. Jude’s story gives you a good understanding of the overall events of the game, while Milla’s focuses a little more on her as an individual character — thankfully, she’s an interesting character in her own right who is more than worthy of a little specific exploration.

Reviews of Xillia criticised it somewhat for being “clichéd” or “typical JRPG” in its narrative, but this is a lazy descriptor that tends to be levelled at pretty much every JRPG out there — and I’m not even sure how true it is, anyway. Xillia’s cast is unconventional and interesting, consisting as it does of a broad mix of ages from 12 to 62, male and female. The adventure they go on boils down to the usual “do a couple of laps of the world” but the setting is interesting and well-realised, and by the end of it you have a thorough understanding of the setting’s culture, spiritual beliefs and society. It’s a convincing game world that it’s easy to immerse yourself in; it feels like far more than just a backdrop to cutscenes, though I would argue that the areas between the major towns are a bit bland at times.

By far the highlight of the game, though, is the sense of companionship and camaraderie between the party members, emphasised by the optional “skits” that pop up in response to your actions throughout the game. There’s a real sense of these characters being real people, real friends and sometimes rivals, and they’ve been written with a wonderful sense of chemistry between them. It’s one of the most enjoyable RPG casts I’ve had the pleasure of hanging out with for 90 hours or so, and I’ll be sorry to leave them behind; but, of course, at least some of them will be back in the upcoming Tales of Xillia 2, so all is not lost.

Should polish off the rest of Xillia tomorrow, and then I can finally get back to Hyperdimension Neptunia Victory, which I was really enjoying prior to me having to play Xillia for review.

1360: Lord of Spirits

After going back and forth on whether or not I really felt like doing it, I’ve decided to go for a Platinum trophy on Tales of Xillia. As I wrote some time back, I’ve started thinking of trophies (though not so much Achievements, for some reason) as a means of showing my appreciation for a particularly good game. Working on the assumption that developers and publishers are looking at trophies and achievements as some sort of metric as much as they’re intended as a metagame for players, I’m happy to put in a bit of extra effort to show I liked the game enough to devour every bit of content it had to offer.

My hesitation with Tales of Xillia’s trophies is that although the game itself is excellent, the trophy list was rather uninspiring and distinctly grindy. A significant proportion of the trophies consist of “use [x] character’s [y] ability [z] times”, and there’s one frustratingly missable trophy that’s going to require a second playthrough to get. (Fortunately, I was intending on doing that anyway, since Tales of Xillia gives you the option to run through the story as one of two different main characters.)

What I’ve found in the course of going for some of these trophies, though, is that they’re slightly more enjoyable than they might have suggested. The most interesting thing about a lot of them is that they’re seemingly designed to give you a deeper appreciation of the battle system and how it works — sure, you can knock the difficulty down to Easy and basically hack-and-slash your way through, but go for some trophies and you’ll come to understand that each character handles noticeably differently, and has special abilities that are suited to various situations, many of which require actual skill to pull off. Jude, for example, has an ability called “Snap Pivot” where if you block and backstep at the right moment, you’ll zip around behind an enemy for some uninterrupted pummelling for a moment; performing the same move with Leia, meanwhile, causes her staff to extend, giving her a greater reach for a few moments.

The way the trophies help you understand the battle system extends beyond the ones where you have to actively trigger skills, though. Each character has a “link skill” that they perform when you’re not actively controlling them, but you partner them up with your active character. Achieving some of the trophies requires that you understand how, why and when these link skills are triggered: Jude heals you if you get knocked down (assuming he wasn’t knocked down as well); Leia steals from enemies if you knock them down, requiring you to figure out which skills are reliable knockdown providers; Rowen protects you from magic; Alvin breaks guards; and Milla can “bind” enemies.

I’ve still got a way to go yet — including a whole other playthrough, which hopefully shouldn’t take too long, given that I’m cleaning up as many of the time-consuming trophies as possible in the post-game section of my first run — but I’m still enjoying myself, and given how consistently good Xillia has been, I’m happy to show it my appreciation by striving for a Platinum.

1309: Dress-Up

A guilty pleasure of mine that I’ve always had is playing dress-up. It doesn’t matter if it’s in reality or in some sort of virtual world (more commonly the latter these days, to be honest) — I love picking out outfits and accessories and attempting to coordinate and/or clash them horribly. It’s ironic, really, given my own complete lack of interest in fashion — though this comes about more from being a big guy who can’t get any decent clothes that fit than anything else.

A number of different interactive experiences have scratched my dress-up itch over the years. Most recently, I’ve been having fun with the “attachments” feature in Namco Bandai’s Tales of Xillia, which allows you to deface all of your party members with various accessories, extra bits of hair and glasses, then enjoy your monstrous creations in battle, in the field and in cutscenes. Despite the potential for mischief, though, I’ve stayed largely restrained and sensible: protagonist Milla is sporting a pair of elf ears (that really suit both her looks and personality); “childhood friend” character Leia is sporting some adorable pigtails and half-rim glasses; young girl Eliza has her adorability factor amped up to 11 with the addition of wiggly rabbit ears and a fluffy tail.

Final Fantasy XIV has its share of amusement value from clothing and appearance options, too. I spent quite a long time on creating the look of my character this time around, eventually settling on a Hyur (human) female with red hair (of course) with some bright highlights giving her a slightly “frosted” look — very Final Fantasy. XIV’s character creation tools give you a wealth of options to play with, some of which you’ll only ever see in cutscenes, but it’s nice to be able to take advantage of them. My character, for example, has a small heart-shaped tattoo on her cheek that is all but invisible unless you look closely, and also has odd-coloured eyes. No-one I’m playing the game with will notice those things as, generally speaking, you don’t get close enough to other players to see that much detail. But when I see her doing her thing in cutscenes, I’ll see those little details I added and she’ll feel like my avatar, rather than something arbitrarily chosen for me.

I used to play on a roleplaying server for World of Warcraft, which meant a significant proportion of my time in the game was spent sitting around talking to other players and pretending to actually be our characters. It was a lot of fun, particularly as WoW offered you a few “non-combat” outfits that you could dress in. Since my character was a skilled tailor, she’d managed to make herself a nice array of different dresses to suit various occasions, and it was always fun to show up in a new outfit and have it acknowledged.

This particular guilty pleasure of mine means that there’s one type of DLC I have a total weakness for, even with my general like of nickel-and-dime pointless DLC that doesn’t add anything to the experience, and that’s costume DLC. If I have the option to customise my characters’ appearances further with new downloadable costumes, chances are I will take that opportunity. This likewise means that if a game provides the opportunity to earn a new costume by completing various challenges, I will generally drop everything I’m doing to try and earn that costume. I recall a ridiculous amount of grinding in Dark Chronicle (aka Dark Cloud 2 to earn a leopard-print bikini, but man, it felt good to finally earn it and subsequently take on the final boss in a woefully underdressed state.

Anyway. I digress, before I start getting into a lengthy discussion of how immensely fashionable my Second Life avatars were in their heyday…