2396: The Many Final Fantasies You Haven’t Played

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One thing that really, really bugs me about people who say they “don’t like Final Fantasy” is that they’re showing a spectacular lack of awareness of what the series actually is and how it has evolved over the years.

I’ve previously remarked on how the mainline numbered series has radically reinvented itself with each installment, and how it is thus dumb as hell to refuse to play any of them on the grounds that you didn’t like one of them, but one aspect of the series that doesn’t get brought up nearly as much is the fact that there are numerous entries outside of those main numbered entries that represent even more diversity in gameplay styles, aesthetics and overall “feel” while still remaining recognisably “Final Fantasy” at their core.

Just off the top of my head, here are some examples — this is not, by any means, an exhaustive list, either:

Final Fantasy Adventure (Game Boy) — actually part of the Seiken Densetsu/Mana series if we’re being picky, but it has Final Fantasy on the box in Western territories, so it totally counts. This is an action RPG a bit like the older top-down Zelda games with the addition of more explicitly RPG-style mechanics and systems such as experience points and levelling up.
Final Fantasy Legend I, II, III (Game Boy) — like its stablemate, this is actually part of a different series, in this case SaGa, but once again, since it has Final Fantasy on the box in Western territories, it counts as a Final Fantasy spinoff. While initially appearing fairly similar to the early Final Fantasy games in terms of mechanics, the three Final Fantasy Legend games had some rather quirky, unconventional methods of powering up your characters, including feeding monster-type characters meat, praying to the random number gods in the sky that mutants would naturally grow the stats you wanted and simply finding stat-increasing items. Their narratives also blended fantasy and sci-fi in a way that will be very familiar to fans of later Final Fantasy games in particular.
Final Fantasy Mystic Quest (SNES) — a simplified take on the RPG that is regarded with a certain degree of scorn by many Final Fantasy fans, Mystic Quest is a reasonably solid game in its own right with a great soundtrack, but is very easy. It was intended to be a gentle introduction to RPGs, and in that regard it succeeds admirably. Just don’t go in expecting deep, complex mechanics, because there aren’t any.
Final Fantasy Tactics (PS1, PSP, mobile) — one of the greatest games ever made, and also one of the most complex, stat-crunching monstrosities of game mechanics you’ll ever encounter this side of a Nippon Ichi game. Final Fantasy Tactics takes the familiar Jobs and abilities of Final Fantasy and transplants the action to an isometric, turn-based strategic battlefield. It also ties it together with a borderline-incomprehensible but enormously ambitious plot that introduces us to the land of Ivalice, a game world that would form the backdrop for several future Final Fantasy games. Final Fantasy Tactics was subsequently followed up by a number of sequels for Nintendo handhelds.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles (Gamecube) — a bizarre multiplayer affair in which four players had to control their characters using Game Boy Advances hooked up to a Gamecube, giving them “second screen” functionality long before the Wii U, Smartglass and Sony’s cross-platform functionality with Vita and mobile. Truly cooperative, it demanded that one player carry a special item to keep a deadly “miasma” away, while the other three players fended off hordes of monsters and slowly advanced. An enormously ambitious idea somewhat hobbled by the necessity of having 1) friends, 2) friends willing to commit time to play a computer game with you, 3) friends with Game Boy Advances; I never got to play very far in it for reasons that fall somewhat into all three columns.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a King (Wii) — a download-only title for Wii, this game had very little to do with the original Crystal Chronicles and instead was an interesting take on the “god game” genre. As King, you oversaw the construction of a city and the recruitment of adventurers to delve into the dungeons of your land. You didn’t actually go into the dungeons with the adventurers yourself, however; you simply sent them off to do their thing and read reports of what they got up to when they returned. If they returned. Surprisingly compelling.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life as a Darklord (Wii) — while it would have been easy to just reskin My Life as a King with a more evil theme, My Life as a Darklord is instead a tower defense title in which you, as the titular Darklord, must defend your mobile tower base from incoming enemies.
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers (Wii) — an action-adventure for Wii in which the enemies don’t so much power up in terms of stats as you progress, but start using more advanced tactics and AI.
Final Fantasy: The 4 Heroes of Light (Nintendo DS) — the predecessor to the 3DS’ Bravely Default, 4 Heroes of Light is a relatively conventional RPG for the DS, but does incorporate some interesting cooperative multiplayer functionality.
Final Fantasy Dimensions (Mobile) — a full, original, old-school Final Fantasy released on mobile episodically. To date not available anywhere but mobile, much to the chagrin of people who don’t like playing games on mobile.
Final Fantasy Brave Exvius (Mobile) — a traditional-feeling take on Final Fantasy fused with the popular “gacha” mechanics of modern free-to-play mobile games, this game, put together by the developers of the excellent Brave Frontier, is a fine way to waste time on the toilet.
Mobius Final Fantasy (Mobile) — one of the most technically impressive games on mobile, this game likewise incorporates free-to-play gacha mechanics but instead focuses on a single character with some highly interactive, board/card game-style turn-based combat.
Chocobo Racing (PS1) — Final Fantasy Kart. What more do you need to know?

The reason these numerous spinoffs come to mind is that I’ve spent a goodly portion of this evening playing one of them that I haven’t mentioned above: Final Fantasy Fables: Chocobo’s Dungeon for Wii. I picked this up for a couple of quid from CEX a few months back, and decided to give it a go this evening.

It’s one of the most charming games I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing.

Taking on the role of a chocobo called Chocobo, you explore numerous randomly generated dungeons, fight turn-based battles against enemies, find phat lewt, get cursed by some of it, play the local moogle at card games and, when you feel like it, rescue the town of Lostime from whatever awful apocalyptic disaster caused it to disappear from the known world and everyone to forget everything that was ever important to them every time the Bell of Oblivion rings.

I’m very early in the game so far so I’m loathe to say too much about its mechanics and story, but it’s already charmed me with a combination of series fanservice (particularly in the music department) and some solid roguelike-esque gameplay. I’m looking forward to playing more, and this will doubtless be my main distraction tomorrow while I endure the long wait for No Man’s Sky to finally unlock on Steam!

The moral of this story, then, is that you (yes, you) don’t hate Final Fantasy. You hate Final Fantasy VII. Or VIII. Or XII (how could you, you monster). Or XIII. Or XIV. Or “the NES ones”. Or… you get the idea.

What I’m trying to say, then, is that if you’ve previously written the series off in this way… don’t. The series as a whole, including its non-numbered spinoffs, represents one of the most interesting and diverse selections of games out there — not to mention a great cross-section of gaming’s evolution from the NES era right up until today.

Now I’m off to go explore some more dungeons with brave little Chocobo. DONNNNNG.

2239: Now’s a Great Time to Buy PS3, 360 and Wii Games

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It’s a new generation of console hardware, and has been for a while! Woohoo!

However, more than ever with this generational changeover in particular, the previous generation of consoles are far from irrelevant, and in fact if you’re a thrifty gamer now is a very good time to start building out your PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii libraries.

Why? Because it’s damn cheap to do so… for the most part, anyway. Thanks to stores that specialise in preowned games and the dropping prices of new, factory-sealed games due to perceived “irrelevance”, you can now pick up formerly £40 games for considerably less than their launch price — often even single-digit prices, which I find enormously entertaining as someone who remembers buying budget, cassette-only releases for 8-bit computers in the ’80s and ’90s.

I say this having bought a few games at CEX earlier today: I managed to score copies of Lollipop Chainsaw, Bayonetta 2, Xenosaga Episode II, Kingdom Hearts II HD and Enchanted Arms for considerably less than their original asking price. All of them are in good condition — I think all of them even have their manuals, which is reasonably rare when it comes to preowned games.

Right now, then, is the ideal time to invest in games that you’ve always meant to add to your 360, PS3 and Wii collections, but never got around to. We’re at that time when the games are declining in value because the hardware is still readily available and people are still trading them in, but we’re not yet at the point where the games are no longer being made and certain titles are becoming more and more rare. In other words, this means it’s pretty rare to find games retailing for more than their original asking price, though as the new generation of hardware continues and the old guard fall more and more out of favour, this situation will start to arise more and more, particularly for niche-interest, limited run titles such as Japanese role-playing games.

So if you still have a 360, PS3 or Wii knocking around — and if not, why not? They’re all still great systems! — do be sure to take a trip down to your local used game store and see what they have to offer. And if you see something you’ve always meant to have a go at, but have never gotten around to, it’s well worth taking that chance now, because with each passing year, that game you never got around to playing will be getting rarer and rarer, until eventually your only choice if you want to play it will be to pay overinflated eBay and Amazon seller prices. And you don’t want to do that, do you? (Although I must admit paying well over the odds for a rare game does make for a good collector’s “war story”; some of my most treasured games include Space Channel 5 Part 2 on PS2, which had a ridiculously limited run here in Europe, and Fire Emblem Whatever The One on the Gamecube Was Called, which is likewise apparently rather hard to find these days.)

I anticipate, having recently realised all this myself, that my 360 and PS3 collections are going to grow quite considerably in the next few months…

2161: Story is About More Than Cutscenes

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One of the most common complaints I’ve read about Xenoblade Chronicles X recently is that “the story isn’t as good as Xenoblade Chronicles“. And, if you look at it in a somewhat superficial manner, that’s true to an extent; it suffers a little from the open-world RPG’s perennial problem that is putting Important Things on hold while you go and pick flowers or whatever.

You may feel this way until you get your head into the mindset of Xenoblade Chronicles X. It’s not a typical JRPG with a fast-paced, completely linear storyline that you can then break completely when the game opens up towards the end. With a few exceptions — most notably the giant mech “Skells” and, later, the ability to fly in them — much of the game is open to you from the very outset, and the whole game is designed around the concept of “what would happen if you (and the rest of humanity’s survivors) were stranded on an alien planet with no hope of getting away any time soon?”

In that sense, Xenoblade Chronicles X‘s narrative — and the way it is told — starts to make a whole lot more sense. The story isn’t just about the “story quests” and the cutscenes they incorporate; there’s only twelve chapters to the main story, after all. Instead, the complete Xenoblade Chronicles X narrative consists of a blend of all the game’s elements: your freeform career as a BLADE operative and the emergent narrative that comes from your adventures in the field; the simple, short stories that come from the Normal Missions and give context to many of the NPCs in the world — and, in many cases, have significant impacts on the world as a whole; the more in-depth, character-centric stories of the Affinity Missions — which also have cutscenes and are fully voiced, unlike the Normal Missions; the conversations you overhear from NPCs you meet in town and in the field; the implied, non-explicit narrative you can deduce from the scenery of the world; and, finally, the “main” story itself.

I mentioned at the beginning the open world RPG’s curse of the party putting saving the world (or equivalent activities) on hold while they went to pick flowers, but in fact Xenoblade Chronicles X has been designed with that very criticism in mind. It’s strongly implied that a fair amount of time passes between each of the story missions, since there are numerous references to time-consuming things happening “off-screen” throughout. Rather than simply asking you to accept that several days/weeks/months have passed, however, it’s more than likely that, unless you’re taking a “critical path” approach to racing through the storyline as fast as you can, a significant amount of time probably will have passed between each of the story missions. And it’s in those “in between” moments that Xenoblade Chronicles X has some of its most interesting moments.

The aforementioned Normal Missions, for example. While these may appear to have had less attention lavished on them than the cutscene-heavy Affinity and Story Missions, in actual fact they tend to have more noticeable impacts on the world as a whole. As a result of Normal Missions and your choices therein, characters move around and live or die; buildings are built or destroyed; relationships between characters change; and, in the most drastic example of things changing as a result of your actions, new alien races move into the human city of New Los Angeles, meaning that you can then see them wandering around the streets as random crowd NPCs, talking to named members of their species and even accepting missions from them. As you play through the game, your understanding of Mira — and the wider universe outside the planet — begins to grow, as you get a feel for who the Ma-non, Zaruboggan, Prone and numerous others are, and, more importantly, how they feel about both one another and humanity.

The complete picture you build up in your mind as you play is one of the most comprehensively detailed pieces of worldbuilding I’ve seen for a very long time. It brings to mind the whole idea of “extended universes” for things like Star Trek and Star Wars, only in this instance, the “extended” universe is right there in the game for you to discover if you see fit. There’s no obligation to do most of this stuff — though some story missions have prerequisite Affinity or other missions before you can proceed — but doing so makes the game several orders of magnitude more rewarding, as it starts to tell its story in all manner of different ways rather than simply through cutscenes.

As the year draws to a close, there’s no doubt in my mind that Xenoblade Chronicles X is absolutely my “game of the year”. It’s full of all the things that I love, and, while its way of doing things may not to be everyone’s taste — particularly the complexity of its systems and the subtleties in its storytelling — I feel pretty confident in saying that it’s a landmark game that deserves to be counted among the greats of not just the RPG style of game, nor just the sci-fi genre of narrative games, but of gaming as a whole.

2137: Nintendoes

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I’ve been playing almost exclusively Nintendo games for the past week or two. This wasn’t entirely deliberate, but it’s just sort of happened. And it’s allowing me to rediscover my appreciation of what Nintendo does well.

Nintendo, more than pretty much any other company out there, puts out games that feel satisfyingly complete. They don’t come out of the door half-baked, lacking in content or riddled with bugs; they’re ready to play, bursting with things to do and full of enjoyment waiting to be discovered. And this is how they’ve always been, even since the days of the NES.

The other thing I rather like about Nintendo is that their work has a very distinctive “voice”. This is partly the job of the localisation teams who work on the various properties, but the overall “tone” of most Nintendo works is so very consistent — and has been for many years — that I find it difficult to believe that this is purely a regional thing. Rather, I feel that Nintendo almost certainly makes very careful decisions about how it’s going to localise things and make them accessible and tonally appropriate in territories around the world. This even goes as far as making the British/European English and American English versions of games different to quite a considerable degree in some cases, which always feels like a pleasantly “personal” touch.

Now, Nintendo have attracted the ire of a number of people over the last few years thanks to what these folks see as unnecessarily “butchered” translations of games such as Fire Emblem Awakening and Xenoblade Chronicles X. And, for sure, some notable changes have been made from the original scripts — and, in a number of cases, content has been edited or even cut to be in keeping with the perceived values of a particular territory. Memorable examples in recent memory include the shot of Tharja’s panties-clad bum in Fire Emblem Awakening (which featured a curtain being pulled across it in the English version, inadvertently making it look more lewd by hiding her panties altogether) and the inexplicable removal of the breast size slider from Xenoblade Chronicles X‘s character creation tool.

These sorts of edits are nothing new, however. The Legend of Zelda series, for example, has a somewhat different tone in Japan to in the West, particularly in installments such as A Link to the Past on Super NES. In the Japanese original A Link to the Past, for example, the story touched on religious themes, with one of the main villains being a priest. In the English versions, however, religious references were removed, and the “priest” became a “wizard”.

Why does Nintendo do this? For an attempt at inclusivity, I guess; the company has a carefully curated “family-friendly” image to uphold, after all, and “family-friendly” means different things in different territories. From its localisation decisions, we can interpret that Nintendo believes here in the West that “family-friendly” means something that the whole family can sit down and enjoy together without any material provoking arguments or awkwardness between one another. We’ve seen on all too many occasions that discussions and material relating to both religion and sexuality are very much capable of inducing arguments and awkwardness, so out the window they go. It’s kind of a shame for those who prefer their translations to be more literal and true to the original Japanese texts, but it is, after all, what Nintendo has always done — and, I have to admit, that warm, friendly tone most of their localisations tend to have is rather comforting, and quite unlike anything from other localised Japanese works.

This is even apparent in games such as New Style Boutique 2 and Animal Crossing, where there was unlikely to be any real “offensive” content in the first place; both have been localised in such a way as to be as inclusive and welcoming as possible to a broad audience; they’re games that invite you in to enjoy the experience rather than insist you must be this skilled to ride, or whatever. And that’s rather nice, really. Not something that every game needs, of course — some games are all the better for their laser-sharp focus on a very specific, niche-interest audience — but, to be honest, I find it hard to get too riled up about censorship talk when it comes to Nintendo games, simply because I’ve grown up with that warm, friendly, familiar tone of their localisations, and it would feel kind of strange for that to change now.

Anyway. I’m enjoying my Nintendo period right now: currently playing Zelda 3, Hyrule Warriors and New Style Boutique 2. All are very different games from one another. All are simply marvellous. All are proof that Nintendo doesn’t give a shit what its competitors are doing, because they’re quite happy doing their own thing, even if it ends up causing their sales figures to look dismal in comparison to those of Sony and Microsoft.

I hope this Nintendo never goes away. They’re an important part of gaming, and it would be sad to see them go the way of Sega, becoming just another third-party publisher.

1897: Ruins of the Moon

It occurs to me that I never gave some final thoughts on Fragile Dreams after I finished it the other day, so I shall do my best to rectify that right now. There will be spoilers ahead!

Fragile Dreams wasn’t a particularly outstanding game from a mechanical perspective — its use of the Wii Remote and Nunchuk combo made combat in particular extremely cumbersome, a fact not helped by the extremely limited repertoire of moves available for each weapon and the seeming inability to dodge quickly — but it nonetheless proved to be a consistently compelling experience from start to finish.

Fragile Dreams also didn’t quite match up to its own ambition in storytelling: the final hours descend somewhat into your fairly typical “madman wants to destroy the world” (in this case, destroy the world again) scenario, and the overall plot itself is riddled with holes and inconsistencies. But again, this certainly didn’t diminish from the overall experience.

Fragile Dreams was an oddly beautiful game. Despite being a low-resolution Wii title, it looked good. It had a distinctive aesthetic all of its own, and immediately set itself apart from other post-apocalyptic adventures by the simple use of colour and contrast throughout. There’s a fair amount of crawling around in the dark by torchlight, but the game sensibly breaks this up with some colourful segments. Escape from a subway system earlier in the game and you’re treated to the gorgeous, rich colours of dawn in the sky. Pick your way through a forest to a secluded hotel and you’re surrounded by lush greenery. It’s a far cry from the greys and browns that usually come with the post-apocalyptic territory, and it made the game less of a chore to play than the trudging through endless wastelands of something like the Fallout series.

There were some interesting characters, too. Much of the story is about protagonist Seto’s desire to find someone with whom he can share his experiences — to laugh, to cry, to point out how beautiful something is. The characters he does run into throughout the course of the story all provide him with a certain degree of companionship, but none are quite the same as actual human company.

First he runs into what appears to be a piece of military hardware called “Personal Frame” or “PF”, which has its own artificial intelligence and personality. PF provides good company for Seto for a few hours as he explores, and it’s clear that Seto starts thinking of “her” (for although she looks like a backpack-mounted radio, she has a female voice) as a friend. This friendship is cut short, however, when PF’s battery runs out and she “dies”, leaving Seto all alone once again.

Then he runs into Crow, a somewhat androgynous-looking boy who appears to have cats’ eyes and fangs. Crow initially antagonises Seto by stealing his locket — which is full of precious memories, including a screw he took from PF’s “body” — and this results in a chase all over the abandoned theme park Crow calls home. Crow eventually admits defeat after taking a nasty fall from the park’s Ferris wheel; seemingly against all odds, he survives, and claims to accept Seto as a friend, even going so far as to steal his first kiss because “that’s what friends do” — something which Seto is somewhat surprised by, but which he doesn’t reject outright. It becomes clear that all is not quite right with Crow, however, as many of the things he says are direct quotations from a children’s storybook Seto finds a little earlier; indeed, Crow’s true nature is revealed later when Seto discovers him slumped in a room with hundreds of discarded robotic bodies: Crow is indeed a robot, and their budding friendship is once again cut short as his batteries expire, leaving him, like PF, as an empty shell devoid of life and consciousness.

Seto’s next encounter is with Sai, the ghost of a young woman who appears to have committed suicide or at least succumbed to a drug addiction; this isn’t made outright explicit, but can be easily inferred from the pills scattered around her dead body and the syringes, tourniquets and other paraphernalia littering the room. Sai doesn’t mention this and Seto clearly doesn’t understand it, so nothing more is said; the two develop a close and honest friendship as a result, with Sai accompanying Seto for most of the rest of the game from this point onwards. Again, though, although Sai and Seto become fast friends, it’s not quite the same as real human company for Seto; in a heartfelt speech to Sai, Seto admits that he just wants to share his experiences with someone else, to feel their warmth, to feel like he isn’t alone, and for that, a ghost just isn’t going to cut it, hence his game-long search for the mysterious silver-haired girl Ren.

The characters are all interesting, unconventional and have plenty left open to interpretation, and this is something of a pattern for the game as a whole. One of the strongest pieces of narrative design in the game comes through the use of “memory items”; bits and pieces of junk that Seto comes across in his journey that have the last memories of the dying world’s inhabitants infused into them somehow. Some of these are mundane, some of them are profound, some of them form part of a larger story, some of them hint at the truth behind the situation in which the world finds itself. There’s a sequences of recollections between a young woman whose legs became paralysed when she was a little girl and her botany-obsessed childhood sweetheart Mao that is particularly heartbreaking, for example.

After a while, then, you start to build up a very vivid mental picture of the game world both as it exists now and as it existed prior to the disaster that wiped everyone out. It’s pretty bleak and lonely, but also fascinating to explore, and one of the most interesting things about the experience is how many unanswered questions it leaves at the end. Whether this is intentional or simply due to the writers not having thought about it — a bit of both, I feel, if an interview I read a few days ago is anything to go by — doesn’t really matter in the end, since it’s this thought-provoking nature that will keep you thinking about Fragile Dreams long after you’ve finished it.

1891: Fragile Dreams

I fancied playing something a bit… different tonight, so I went to my shelves, bulging with backlog bounty, and looked at a few possible titles to give a go to. I didn’t feel like starting a traditional RPG just yet, so quite a few things were out, but my eye eventually stopped on a Wii title I knew nothing about but owned a copy of: Namco Bandai’s Fragile Dreams.

You may wonder why I own a copy of a game I know nothing about. Well, it was from a while back, when UK retail chain Game was in a bunch of trouble and looked like it might be folding; they were selling off a ton of their stock at ridiculously low prices, so I took the opportunity to grab lots of things that looked even a little bit interesting with a mind to eventually playing them at some point in the future. Fragile Dreams was one of them.

So how is it? Well, pretty damn cool so far. I’m not entirely sure what I was expecting, but I don’t think it was a feels-heavy action-RPG survival horror adventure game featuring the same “your Wii Remote is a torch” mechanic that worked so well in Silent Hill Shattered Memories. There’s actually a touch of Silent Hill in the game’s atmosphere, though in the case of Fragile Dreams it’s not so much about psychological horror as an ever-present sense of loneliness and abandonment.

At the outset of the game, the old man whom protagonist Seto has been living with dies, leaving him all alone in what appears to be a post-apocalyptic landscape. We don’t know anything about what has happened to humanity as the game begins, but little bits and pieces are revealed as you make your way through the game, both through elements of the environment that can be examined and “memory items” that allow you to hear the final thoughts of the world’s former inhabitants when you take a rest to restore your HP and save.

Seto isn’t completely alone in the world, despite initial appearances. Very early on, he encounters a silver-haired girl and proceeds to spend the next few hours (and, I’m guessing, going by my experiences so far, most of the game) chasing after her in an attempt to find out who she might be. Along the way he encounters some sort of sentient computerised backpack with mild self-esteem issues called PF, a not-quite-human person called Crow, a dead little girl with a penchant for cheating at hide-and-seek… and I don’t doubt there will be more strange and wonderful characters to encounter before the story has reached its conclusion.

It’s been a really interesting ride so far. The combat kind of sucks, but it’s a relatively minor part of the game, and the “survival horror” elements of having limited inventory space and weapons that have finite usage before they break add a bit of tension to the experience. It’s not been particularly scary so far, despite the presence of ghosts and whatnot, but it has been thought-provoking and emotional, even just four or so hours in. The emphasis appears to be more on the general atmosphere and feelings of loneliness than on outright trying to scare and disturb the player, and I’m fine with that.

There’s a lot of subtle charm to the game, too. Seto is just a kid forced to find his own way in the world well before he would have normally had to, and while he handles his task with a certain degree of maturity that you might not expect from someone whose voice hasn’t broken yet, his childlike qualities come through in game elements such as the automap which, rather than being a bland, clinical but clear affair, is presented as childish scribblings, complete with notes and doodles about scary and awesome things you’ve come across in your travels. Likewise, the baffling inclusion of lots of cats around the game world who can be tempted to come and play with you through the use of a cat toy makes for a welcome break from hitting ghosts with improvised weaponry, or trying to track down that one key you really need right now.

There’s clearly a lot about Fragile Dreams I don’t yet understand. But I’m very glad I chose to take a chance on it and see what it was all about; it’s shaping up to be a fascinating, deeply memorable experience. I hope it manages to keep this up until the end.

1154: Operation Successful

I beat Trauma Team this evening, and I am very happy with the way it all played out. Despite having a touch of that recognisable Atlus craziness about it, the team did kind of keep to their promise of providing a more “realistic” experience that veered less into the realms of sci-fi and more into the realms of vaguely plausible… I don’t know what you’d call it, really. Disease horror?

Of course, that realism doesn’t extend to the operation sequences being in any way “authentic” — the Trauma Center series has always been about being quick and skilful rather than accurately simulating real-life surgical procedures — but it really doesn’t matter too much. The six different styles of gameplay all complement each other very well, and the pace of the narrative is such that you never really get bogged down in a single discipline for too long — unless of course you choose to do so in the non-linear first half of the game.

As I predicted even before I played the game, I think the Dr Naomi forensics sequences were my favourite aspect. These combined some lightweight adventure game-style gameplay with a lot of lateral, logical thinking and some great character development. There was a wonderful sense of piecing together a narrative in these cases, even though you didn’t directly see any of it unfold until you’d “solved” it all. Instead, Dr Naomi’s habit of thinking out loud fulfils the same narrative function as things like Phoenix Wright’s internal monologues in the Ace Attorney series, of the narration text in a more traditional visual novel. You have to use your imagination a fair bit, but somehow this doesn’t diminish from the emotional impact of some of the tales told. The very nature of Dr Naomi’s specialism means that there was always going to be a degree of darkness about her cases, but I was quite surprised how far they went in a few cases.

Trauma Team manages to be so emotionally engaging throughout thanks to its strong cast of characters. The focus is very much on them instead of the patients — indeed, in the surgery sequences, patients are always represented as abstract mannequin-like figures — and the game has a strong character-led story as a result. If we were getting bogged down in the individual tales of each and every patient these doctors came into contact with, the impact of the game’s “true” story (which unlocks after you’ve completed all the individual episodes for each of the six doctors) would be somewhat diminished. Instead, each of the doctors’ episodes is to do with their own sense of personal growth and coming to understand something about themselves, or about life, or about each other. By the end of the game, it’s very clear that they’re all better people in one way or another.

I think this point above is why I like the Trauma Center series so much. I was initially drawn to it by the fact that games about surgery are something you don’t see very often, but it quickly became apparent that these aren’t really games that are overly concerned with providing a realistic depiction of life in a busy hospital — though Trauma Team does a much better job of that than its predecessors. No, instead, they’re games about the characters, and about the overarching plot, which is usually fairly ridiculous in nature but somehow seems perfectly reasonable in context.

Atlus’ skill at storytelling — achieved through its excellent character artists, talented music team and skilled writers (and localisers, for that matter) — has pretty much earned them a “free pass” from me for anything they put out in the future. Between strong offerings like the Trauma Center and Persona series plus quirky one-offs like Catherine, they’re easily one of my favourite developers, and I hope they continue to make great games for years to come.

Now, let’s have a new Trauma Center game for Wii U, hmm?

1153: Reasons to Own a Wii

Poor old Wii. Despite being one of the biggest-selling consoles of all time and bringing new people who never would have considered gaming before to the hobby, it doesn’t have the best reputation among self-professed “hardcore” gamers. In fact, it’s not really taken seriously by the press or public alike in most cases, with Wii titles often being noticeably absent from “best of the generation” lists and people often forgetting that it is, in fact, home to some astonishingly good games.

What’s also worth noting is that if you’ve picked up a Wii U recently, you have access to all of these previous-generation games and can discover them for the first time if you’ve never checked them out.

I’m going to share some of my favourite Wii games now, and none of them are going to be Mario or Zelda games. They are, however, all excellent games, and you should absolutely check them out. If the sole reason you haven’t checked them out is because the Wii runs in 480p resolution, get over yourself and stop being so shallow. You’re missing out on some fantastic experiences.

So without further ado and in no particular order, here we go:

Xenoblade Chronicles

First of the three “Operation Rainfall” games, Xenoblade Chronicles is a sprawling Japanese role-playing game that bucks almost every convention of the genre to create an experience that should get even the most hardened, grizzled Western RPG veteran to sit up and pay attention. The game features a sprawling open world populated with hundreds of unique NPCs, many of whom have quests to give you; an awesome real-time(ish) MMO-style combat system with some fantastic party AI; some brilliant British voice acting (and the option for Japanese if you prefer); a decent story in a highly imaginative setting; and a rockin’ soundtrack, Xenoblade Chronicles is an absolute winner that will keep you busy for well over a hundred hours in total.

The only real criticisms you can level at it are that there’s a bit of filler content (that you can easily ignore), the character faces are a bit blurry and facial animations are a bit inconsistent. The latter two are side-effects of the game being produced on a much smaller budget than a game of this magnitude would require on HD consoles, and as such are easily forgiven.

The Last Story

The second of the three “Operation Rainfall” role-playing games, The Last Story is a cinematic JRPG with a resolutely linear storyline that is over and done with within 25-30 hours, making it something you can play and enjoy without having to dedicate a month or two to it. It has interesting and unconventional characters, a well-realised “hub town”, a cool story, an interesting combat system and the pedigree of Hironobu “Final Fantasy” Sakaguchi behind it.

Common criticisms include the prevalence of brown in the graphics (a deliberate stylistic choice to sepia-tint the whole thing that you’ll either be into or not), the fact that some parts are pushing the Wii a little too hard, leading to drops in frame rate, and the fact the unusual real-time combat system takes a little while to get interesting. Still well worth a punt, though. There’s also a multiplayer mode, bizarrely, though I’d be surprised if anyone’s still playing.

Pandora’s Tower

The third of the three “Operation Rainfall” games, and the most unconventional of the lot. Unfolding more like a cross between Zelda, Ico and Shadow of the Colossus than a typical Japanese role-playing game, Pandora’s Tower is an emotional tale of a young man trying desperately to save the woman he loves from a horrific curse — and the pair of them doing anything it takes to survive the ordeal. By turns romantic and horrific, Pandora’s Tower is simultaneously epic and intimate, with a wonderful sense of atmosphere and excellent use of the Wii’s unique control scheme.

Trauma Center: Second Opinion

Despite the name, this was the first Trauma Center game to hit the Wii; the Second Opinion part of the title refers to the fact that it is a remake of the first Trauma Center game: Under the Knife for Nintendo DS. The plot tells the tale of rookie surgeon Dr Derek Stiles and his assistant Angie as they attempt to rid the world of a mysterious illness known as GUILT, and the Wii version adds some new story material to the mix courtesy of newcomer Dr Naomi Kimishima and her assistant Navel.

Gameplay is a peculiar fusion of visual novel sequences and frantic, terrifying, arcade-like surgery sequences in which your skill with the Wii Remote and its unique capabilities will be well and truly put to the test. Don’t be fooled into thinking this is a realistic medical drama — this is entertaining Japanese sci-fi at its finest, and you’ll find yourself doing everything from performing relatively conventional surgical procedures to battling mutant viruses and defusing bombs with your surgical implements. It’s not perfect — lack of 16:9 aspect ratio support is a sticking point for some — but it’s still worth playing. As is its sequel.

Trauma Center: New Blood

The first all-new Trauma Center game to hit the Wii brings a whole new cast, a new storyline and a new disease to battle against. It also adds 16:9 aspect ratio support, a rather unnecessary (and not particularly well-implemented) two-player cooperative mode, full speech for the story sequences and generally a nice refinement of the formula. The main theme tune also sounds like it was ripped off from House.

Trauma Team

The ultimate refinement of the Trauma Center formula, Trauma Team features not only the surgery gameplay of the previous two games, but also adds a variety of other gameplay styles — the frantic pace of First Response missions, the tense, skill-based gameplay of Orthopedics, the Descent-style first-person exploration of Endoscopy, and two distinct adventure game-style components in Diagnosis and Forensics. Each of the game’s characters has their own distinct plotline to follow, and they all come together for a seriously epic final episode towards the end of the game. The traditional visual novel presentation of the earlier games has been replaced by a fantastic “motion comic” style, and the whole experience is absolutely gripping.

Fire Emblem: Radiant Dawn

I must confess to not having played this yet, but you can’t go wrong with Fire Emblem. Radiant Dawn is the direct sequel to Gamecube title Path of Radiance, and continues the series’ iconic strategy-RPG gameplay.

Zack & Wiki: Quest for Barbaros’ Treasure

This unusual and all-but-unknown offering from Capcom is a curious fusion of traditional point and click adventure and puzzle game, and has a huge amount of visual charm. Deceptively simple gameplay — point at things with the Wii Remote and click on them — belies some absolutely fiendish puzzles that alternate between slow-paced headscratchers and tests of reflexes.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

Arguably one of the best Silent Hill games, and one of the most thought-provoking games out there. Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is a complete reimagining of the first Silent Hill game (and consequently requires no knowledge of the franchise) and features some immensely clever psychological tricks and treats over the course of its narrative. It’s also noteworthy for featuring no combat whatsoever, instead replacing the fighting and gunplay of the other games in the series with “running frantically away in the dark” sequences that aren’t entirely successful, but do evoke a pleasing feeling of panic.

Honourable Mentions (that I haven’t played but have on my shelf)

No More Heroes/No More Heroes 2
Sin and Punishment
Resident Evil 4
Cursed Mountain

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Got any more to share that don’t have Mario or Zelda in the name? Feel free to comment!

1150: Further Enthusing Regarding Trauma Team

It’s not an exaggeration to say that I have been eagerly anticipating the ability to play Trauma Team ever since it was first announced, and I have been inordinately frustrated until recently at Atlus’ complete lack of a regular European distributor meaning that it never got an official release on this side of the pond. Now that I am happily playing my North American copy on my hacked Wii, you’ll hopefully forgive me if I perhaps dedicate a few posts to the awesome things about this game I’ve been waiting to play for a very long time — because judging by the bit I played tonight (I know I said I wouldn’t, but I am weak) there are going to be a lot of them.

I specifically wanted to talk about the Forensics missions today, because they’re one of the reasons I was so interested to play this game. A friend of mine described the presence of these missions as “you got Ace Attorney in my Trauma Center” — and if you know me well, you’ll know that that sounds like a match made in heaven for me. I’m pleased to note that these missions very much lived up to their promise.

In a Forensics mission, you take on the role of Dr Naomi Kimishima, a character who occasionally showed up in Trauma Center: Second Opinion. Naomi is a forensics specialist with a curious (and secret) talent — when she enters a crime scene, she can hear the victim’s dying words on her phone. Exactly why this is the case hasn’t been explained yet, but given that we’re dealing with a game in which an orthopaedic surgeon is also a superhero and the hospital’s resident endoscopy specialist comes from a long line of ninjas, I’m not entirely surprised by this turn of events.

Anyway. Gameplay in a Forensics mission involves nipping back and forth between Naomi’s office, the evidence room that houses the corpse and their personal effects, and the crime scene itself. By examining various items and pointing out abnormalities, Naomi collects “cards” that represent items of evidence or thoughts about the situation. By combining these cards together or sending them off for analysis to her FBI partner “Little Guy” (rather charmingly represented as a Mii avatar on her computer — this is a Wii game after all) she can inch them closer to being “solid evidence”. When all the cards she has in her possession are “solid evidence,” the case is solved, and you have to point out the relevant cards as she does her police procedural-style “wrap up” of the end of the case.

It’s not quite that simple, though. You effectively have to “show your working” as you deduce various things about the situation by answering multiple-choice questions. These generally ask what you, the player, have deduced from the items of evidence you’ve observed or combined. Most of the time, thinking logically through them will get you through, but there have already been a few headscratchers and pieces of misdirection along the way — plus you have to make sure you remember plenty of details about the case as you go along. You can’t just try every answer until you get it right, either — make too many mistakes and you’ll fail the mission.

The whole thing was brilliantly presented with some atmospheric music, excellent visuals and decent voice acting, and it’s exactly the sort of thing I’d like to see more of in the console space. Essentially, it was nothing more than a kind of point and click adventure, but it was hugely fun and massively engaging. I’m looking forward to seeing more of Naomi — and of seeing how her story ties in with that of the other doctors, as so far she’s been largely separate from the rest of them. Trauma Team has a very interesting narrative structure, but that’s something I’ll save talking about until a later time when I’m a bit further on.

This sort of experience is exactly why I love Atlus, and why I love the Trauma Center series in particular. I’m doing things in this game that I have never done in any other game before — not just in Naomi’s forensics section, but also in the diagnostic and surgery components, too. The game is also a fantastic use of the Wii’s distinctive control scheme, making brilliant use of all the Wii Remote and Nunchuk’s features, ranging from their accelerometers to the pointer function and even the speaker in the handset. It’s a game that really couldn’t be done in the same way on any other platform — perhaps PlayStation Move, though making a Move-exclusive title is pretty much commercial suicide — and a fantastic experience that I would very much like to jam in the face of anyone who complains that the Wii doesn’t have any good games.

1149: Let’s Begin the Operation

I really love the Trauma Center games, and have done ever since I first picked up Under the Knife on a whim early in the lifetime of my Nintendo DS. (As a matter of fact, it was a combination of Under the Knife and Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney that convinced me to pick up a DS in the first place, thereby proving that there most definitely is a market of at least one person for games based around relatively “mundane” things.) I loyally picked up all the subsequent entries that made it to the UK, these being the Wii remake of Under the Knife (known as Second Opinion) and the official sequel (on Wii again) New Blood. To my knowledge, Under the Knife 2 for DS never made it other here, and neither did Trauma Team. It’s the latter I’d like to talk about today, as I’ve had a brief play with it for the first time this evening.

The early Trauma Center games, lest you’re unfamiliar, were curious beasts, somewhere between medical procedural drama, simulation, visual novel, arcade game and batshit crazy sci-fi extravaganza. Essentially they unfolded with lots of talking head scenes between the main characters and others who were involved in the story, and were frequently punctuated with frankly terrifying surgery sequences in which you had to perform various lifesaving procedures with a considerable degree of gusto. Time limits were tight, vital signs were constantly dropping and the dramatic music didn’t help matters. To date, I’ve never played any games that set me so delightfully on edge.

The format didn’t change a huge amount between the three games that made it to the UK. Sure, it jumped from the touchscreen interface of the DS to the “pointer” control of the Wii (which I actually preferred, I think) but for the most part, you were doing fairly similar procedures. In a sense, this was a strength of the series’ gameplay — by learning how to do these relatively straightforward procedures (and learning to recognise when you needed to perform each one) you could eventually end up as some sort of lightning-fast surgery god by the end of each game. It was immensely satisfying to, say, complete a heart operation within the space of about 30 seconds while any astonished onlookers gaze, bewildered, at your frantically-wiggling hands. And by golly, did you need those skills by the end of each game. Each Trauma Center’s final boss (yes, they had final bosses — I told you they were batshit sci-fi crazy) was an immensely challenging piece of game design that forced you to use all the techniques you’d learned as quickly and efficiently as possible, and it felt good when you finally took them down.

A common criticism of the early games was their drift away from recognisable (if “arcadified”) medical procedures and a reliance on made-up diseases that were best treated by playing Space Invaders inside someone’s lungs. (I exaggerate. But you get my drift.) Trauma Team was set to be a rethink of the series, though. To quote Atlus themselves:

“Trauma Team is a subtle departure from the standard Trauma Center game experience. By moving the experience away from a sci-fi concept and making the situations more realistic, our new focus is on the characters and the sense of accomplishment that stems from having saved a life instead of simply beating a stage. It’s our intention to provide you with a medical drama more immersive and fulfilling than any you’ve ever experienced.”

Of course, two pages later in the manual we have this:

“This young surgeon was apparently involved in a biochemical attack on Cumberland University that killed several people, during which he lost his memory but not his impressive surgical skills. While serving a 250-year sentence for the atrocity he can’t remember committing, he was approached by the government with an unusual offer…”

…but then it just wouldn’t be Atlus if there wasn’t a touch of crazy in there. (See also: the orthopaedic surgeon who is also a superhero.)

Trauma Team takes the focus off the surgery (although that’s still present) and adds a bunch of different specialisms that you can flip back and forth between at will. In total, you’ll find yourself indulging in “regular” surgery (hah), first response (improvised surgery with limited tools and multiple patients), endoscopy (first-person perspective bowel ulcer-blasting), orthopaedic surgery (banging nails into things?), diagnosis and forensics. This evening, I tried a touch of the endoscopy and diagnosis, and both were pleasingly distinctive experiences.

In endoscopy, you take control of an endoscope and must carefully thread it through the patient by fine-tuning its angle with the Nunchuk stick and pushing it forward by holding buttons and pushing the Wii Remote towards the TV. Along the way, you’ll run into various symptoms that need to be treated — blood pools need to be drained, ulcers need medicine injecting into them, injuries need haemostatic forceps applying to them. While doing all this, you need to make sure you don’t bang into any walls, and on occasion you’ll find yourself having to thrust your endoscope through various pulsating sphincters without getting caught. The introductory mission wasn’t too tough, but I can see this being good old Trauma Center edge-of-the-seat stuff later on.

Diagnosis was really interesting, though. Rather than being “actiony” like the various surgery sequences, diagnostic sequences are much more adventure gamey. In the episode I played this evening, a teenage girl came in complaining of shortness of breath and it was up to me to determine what was wrong with her. Coming to a diagnosis is achieved through a pleasingly authentic-feeling procedure in which you must question the patient, point out statements that include abnormalities, perform an examination with a stethoscope, review CT, MRI and another type of scan I’ve forgotten the name of results and finally determine what the hell is wrong with the person. There’s even a fun House-style deduction minigame in which your computerised assistant presents you with a bunch of possible diseases, and you have to match the symptoms you’ve found with the various descriptions to whittle it down to a definitive diagnosis.

I’m yet to try the other specialisms, but I can already tell I’m going to like this game a lot. The past games had interesting characters and fun (if insane) stories, and I’m looking forward to seeing where they go with this one. Plus the Trauma Center team is one of the few series where I’ve found myself actively wanting to go back and improve my scores/ratings.

Before I play any further, though, I should probably complete something else. I’m coming up on the end of Kira Kira, so once that’s done I’ll be able to play Trauma Team without guilt alonside Ar Tonelico 2 and SimCity!