(no subject)
So yesterday I picked up MadWorld, Avalon Code, and, because it was on the shelf and taunting me and I seem to have a weak spot the size of Manhattan for the series, Phantasy Star Portable.
No, I guess I couldn't just wait for Zero and yes I know I didn't like PSU that much. Shut up it has Casts and I don't have to play through 20935780293 hours of story before getting to make my own goddamn character. >:
I reserved Zero while I was there though. :D
ANYWAY. I haven't played MadWorld yet because lol RPGs are shinier. So on the other two.
Avalon Code is an RPG in which the world is ending soon, so the protagonist (a boy or girl at the choice of the player) is chosen to use the Book of Prophecy to record things about the current world and shape the new world that will be made in its place. The Book (read: menu) grants the player the ability to view and alter the essences (codes) that make up things in the world. Toss fire codes onto a sword to gain an elemental attack, remove a code for sickness from a person to heal them, combine codes for interesting effects, yada yada. You're not quite god, but you're pretty damn close.
Avalon Code's code system is as shiny as expected. What's even shinier than expected is one of my favorite things to see in any RPG evar - MASSIVE COLLECTIONS!!! :D :D :D See this is why obsessive-compulsive tendencies plus slight perfectionism plus video games is awesome bad. Because give me 20938460927093470569 items/monsters/characters/data blurbs to collect and I WILL GO NUTS.
Only... the game's kinda sloppily executed, really. The concept and setup of messing with the codes that make up everything in the world (and the style in which the book menu is set up) are fantastic. Collecting stuff is fantastic. Not as many things are scannable as I initially thought would be, but what's there is nonetheless ample. Only... well, every single area in the game (as in screen, so this comes down to A LOT) has a number of areas on it that are examinable, just like any other RPG ever. Only here, you're rewarded points for pressing A at things, kinda like in Blue Dragon. Remember how much I loved that feature in Blue Dragon?
Well, at least in BD the things you could push A at are OBVIOUS. In Avalon Code? Notsomuch. Sure the game tracks your progress for these points and will even tell you how many examinable areas are left on a screen, but in complete seriousness, RANDOM PATCH OF PERFECTLY NORMAL GROUND IN THE MIDDLE OF A SCREEN MADE OF 95% THAT TYPE OF PERFECTLY NORMAL GROUND can easily be an examinable spot. WAT. The examinable areas are finicky to boot; some of them require you to press A when standing at THIS EXACT SPOT and if you're one pixel off, no dice. (or so it seems to me anyway. >|) STRATEGY GUIDE PLZ there's no way in hell even I'm gonna run through each screen pressing A on each and every goddamn spot just to beef up my page points.
The battle system's pretty okay (action-based, basic buttonmashing with easy-to-execute specials/magic thrown in) until you realize a few things. Like how your character is way too slow to recover from doing pretty much anything (even and especially the dodge-roll maneuver) and how while enemies have numerical hit points, you have a number-of-hits system. DOES NOT MIX. >( Seriously. It's not fair that Monster X can have 1500 hit points but I die after five hits no matter what. Even given the ability to yoink an enemy's data and mess with it until their stats are nerfed in the middle of battle, this is a pain!
Also so far there appear to be no holdable healing items. Well, there's bread and stuff that you can scan and record, but it only seems to be there to offer you its codes. (Given, I haven't tried tapping the item itself yet, which is how you use useable items. So perhaps I should try the obvious first. Given that recorded items never vanish from your book, I'm guessing it would cost me MP just like manifesting items to give to NPCs does. And I have a pathetic amount of MP.) Anyway, regardless of this. There are insta-use healing items to be found by breaking open objects in dungeons, but said breakables are scarce. What the game wants you to do is gain healing items by using a special move to repeatedly bounce an enemy until they fly high enough to enter the stratosphere and explode for... no adequately explored reason, but hey, you can explode things, cool.
What's not cool: you don't get the healing items unless you successfully bounce them to said point of explosion. You bounce them a little higher each hit, and it's a timing game. With a wildly zooming in and out camera. Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh. Enemies NEVER drop anything if you just defeat them normally either; this is the ONLY way to get heals when you're stranded without breakables or an inn!
Also dungeons are really just series of rooms with timed minigames/challenges in each one. Um, I have nothing against puzzles in dungeons, but can this be just a bit less gimmicky, plz? It made sense with the training dude's minidungeon; that was some guy attempting to train you. It doesn't make sense in Random Cave Full of Monsters.
By the way, said training dude, the guy who's teaching the main character swordsmanship from your home town? Yeah. He's totally Luxord, I swear to god. XD Only he's a weird AU Luxord from Hyrule because he totally teaches you Link's spin attack. THIS IS A HILARIOUS COMBINATION AND IT'S ONLY MORE HILARIOUS WHEN THE PROTAGONIST IS ZOMGIMPRESSED! BY IT.
By far the sloppiest, most grave error the game makes, however, is its complete and utter failure to explain certain key mechanics and abilities to you. When you're thrown into your very first battle, no one even mentions what the freakin' attack button is, leaving me utterly confused as to why neither A nor B was doing anything. (X and Y are the attack buttons, each controlling one hand. You wield a sword in each hand, which IS freakin' awesome, btw.) This is not good. >: Other things that no one told me how to do but I figured out on my own: Dodge rolling (L or R), pushing and pulling blocks (and only CERTAIN blocks, mind you, press and hold A at one side and use the d-pad to move), jumping up and grabbing small ledges (just move towards the ledge), actually executing the special attack (hold down an attack button until it charges, then release), the fact that you can cause special item recipes to appear by completing the data search on certain areas. It's only made worse by the fact that in many of these cases, the game TELLS you to do these things (omg gaiz bonus points in this room if you dodge roll five times!) but NEVER SO MUCH AS GIVES YOU A HINT AS TO HOW. Especially sinful in that it will, say, mention you can get bonus points for doing X in a room you're in BEFORE YOU EVEN ARE ABLE TO DO X. And it leads you on by explaining SOME things (like how to cast magic and use the code system) and then totally leaving you hanging on these others! ASdkfgjlaskdhfgkljsldkj KILL. If I hadn't played 20935702938029 RPGs before this one, I wouldn't have had the first clue as to how to do any of those! It only came natural because I AM such a nut for the genre! I also suspect there's some sort of jump (or wtfever, who even knows) function that I'm totally missing, because I came across a room with spiked pits I couldn't get over. :|
Anyway how about some more positive stuff now. This game does have a romance feature where you can increase your affection with various characters and eventually enter a relationship with one of them. (No gay options though, from what it sounds like, booo. Oh well. XD) From what the manual tells me (because I totally only read the parts that sounded interesting... really, the manual should NOT be a requirement to play the game properly.) it even sounds like you can do this with one of the four elemental guardian spirits who come with the Book! :D Human/nonhuman relationships are totally my thing so this is AWESOME.
Let's talk about the spirits for a second. They're on the game case's art, and I immediately recognized them as some sort of elemental spirits. There's two guys and two girls, naturally, and the first three - fire, forest, water/ice - are pretty obvious as to what their elements are. (I don't think I ever saw a subtle fire-elemental though, lol.) But the last... well, they're all in this spiffy wallpaper here, check it out. I thought maybe he was Earth or Wind or something, whatever. But my first reaction to looking at them was to zero right in on that mystery-elemental and be all "OH HAY I LIKE HIM. 8D HE'S KINDA HOT."
...guess what. He's Lightning.
Yeeeeeeeeeeah. I homed in on my favorite element evar once again without even knowing it. orz BUT HEY AWESOME. Too bad it sounds like he's the last you acquire, but at least I have the sassy fire spirit and his snarking in the meantime. <3
...oh hey it just occurred to me that maybe having elements on the brain is why I had that crazy Digital Devil Saga dream last night. Derpaderp.
ANYWAY tl;dr, Avalon Code is annoyingly rough around the edges, but still worth playing. Now, about finding that strategy guide...
Oh, and I turned on PS...P (har har, I see what u did thar, Sega) and messed with the character creation for like an hour, then got frustrated by my own indecisiveness and shut it off. XD; WAT CHARACTER SHOULD I MAEK, GAIZ? >:
No, I guess I couldn't just wait for Zero and yes I know I didn't like PSU that much. Shut up it has Casts and I don't have to play through 20935780293 hours of story before getting to make my own goddamn character. >:
I reserved Zero while I was there though. :D
ANYWAY. I haven't played MadWorld yet because lol RPGs are shinier. So on the other two.
Avalon Code is an RPG in which the world is ending soon, so the protagonist (a boy or girl at the choice of the player) is chosen to use the Book of Prophecy to record things about the current world and shape the new world that will be made in its place. The Book (read: menu) grants the player the ability to view and alter the essences (codes) that make up things in the world. Toss fire codes onto a sword to gain an elemental attack, remove a code for sickness from a person to heal them, combine codes for interesting effects, yada yada. You're not quite god, but you're pretty damn close.
Avalon Code's code system is as shiny as expected. What's even shinier than expected is one of my favorite things to see in any RPG evar - MASSIVE COLLECTIONS!!! :D :D :D See this is why obsessive-compulsive tendencies plus slight perfectionism plus video games is awesome bad. Because give me 20938460927093470569 items/monsters/characters/data blurbs to collect and I WILL GO NUTS.
Only... the game's kinda sloppily executed, really. The concept and setup of messing with the codes that make up everything in the world (and the style in which the book menu is set up) are fantastic. Collecting stuff is fantastic. Not as many things are scannable as I initially thought would be, but what's there is nonetheless ample. Only... well, every single area in the game (as in screen, so this comes down to A LOT) has a number of areas on it that are examinable, just like any other RPG ever. Only here, you're rewarded points for pressing A at things, kinda like in Blue Dragon. Remember how much I loved that feature in Blue Dragon?
Well, at least in BD the things you could push A at are OBVIOUS. In Avalon Code? Notsomuch. Sure the game tracks your progress for these points and will even tell you how many examinable areas are left on a screen, but in complete seriousness, RANDOM PATCH OF PERFECTLY NORMAL GROUND IN THE MIDDLE OF A SCREEN MADE OF 95% THAT TYPE OF PERFECTLY NORMAL GROUND can easily be an examinable spot. WAT. The examinable areas are finicky to boot; some of them require you to press A when standing at THIS EXACT SPOT and if you're one pixel off, no dice. (or so it seems to me anyway. >|) STRATEGY GUIDE PLZ there's no way in hell even I'm gonna run through each screen pressing A on each and every goddamn spot just to beef up my page points.
The battle system's pretty okay (action-based, basic buttonmashing with easy-to-execute specials/magic thrown in) until you realize a few things. Like how your character is way too slow to recover from doing pretty much anything (even and especially the dodge-roll maneuver) and how while enemies have numerical hit points, you have a number-of-hits system. DOES NOT MIX. >( Seriously. It's not fair that Monster X can have 1500 hit points but I die after five hits no matter what. Even given the ability to yoink an enemy's data and mess with it until their stats are nerfed in the middle of battle, this is a pain!
Also so far there appear to be no holdable healing items. Well, there's bread and stuff that you can scan and record, but it only seems to be there to offer you its codes. (Given, I haven't tried tapping the item itself yet, which is how you use useable items. So perhaps I should try the obvious first. Given that recorded items never vanish from your book, I'm guessing it would cost me MP just like manifesting items to give to NPCs does. And I have a pathetic amount of MP.) Anyway, regardless of this. There are insta-use healing items to be found by breaking open objects in dungeons, but said breakables are scarce. What the game wants you to do is gain healing items by using a special move to repeatedly bounce an enemy until they fly high enough to enter the stratosphere and explode for... no adequately explored reason, but hey, you can explode things, cool.
What's not cool: you don't get the healing items unless you successfully bounce them to said point of explosion. You bounce them a little higher each hit, and it's a timing game. With a wildly zooming in and out camera. Arrrrrrrrrrrrgh. Enemies NEVER drop anything if you just defeat them normally either; this is the ONLY way to get heals when you're stranded without breakables or an inn!
Also dungeons are really just series of rooms with timed minigames/challenges in each one. Um, I have nothing against puzzles in dungeons, but can this be just a bit less gimmicky, plz? It made sense with the training dude's minidungeon; that was some guy attempting to train you. It doesn't make sense in Random Cave Full of Monsters.
By the way, said training dude, the guy who's teaching the main character swordsmanship from your home town? Yeah. He's totally Luxord, I swear to god. XD Only he's a weird AU Luxord from Hyrule because he totally teaches you Link's spin attack. THIS IS A HILARIOUS COMBINATION AND IT'S ONLY MORE HILARIOUS WHEN THE PROTAGONIST IS ZOMGIMPRESSED! BY IT.
By far the sloppiest, most grave error the game makes, however, is its complete and utter failure to explain certain key mechanics and abilities to you. When you're thrown into your very first battle, no one even mentions what the freakin' attack button is, leaving me utterly confused as to why neither A nor B was doing anything. (X and Y are the attack buttons, each controlling one hand. You wield a sword in each hand, which IS freakin' awesome, btw.) This is not good. >: Other things that no one told me how to do but I figured out on my own: Dodge rolling (L or R), pushing and pulling blocks (and only CERTAIN blocks, mind you, press and hold A at one side and use the d-pad to move), jumping up and grabbing small ledges (just move towards the ledge), actually executing the special attack (hold down an attack button until it charges, then release), the fact that you can cause special item recipes to appear by completing the data search on certain areas. It's only made worse by the fact that in many of these cases, the game TELLS you to do these things (omg gaiz bonus points in this room if you dodge roll five times!) but NEVER SO MUCH AS GIVES YOU A HINT AS TO HOW. Especially sinful in that it will, say, mention you can get bonus points for doing X in a room you're in BEFORE YOU EVEN ARE ABLE TO DO X. And it leads you on by explaining SOME things (like how to cast magic and use the code system) and then totally leaving you hanging on these others! ASdkfgjlaskdhfgkljsldkj KILL. If I hadn't played 20935702938029 RPGs before this one, I wouldn't have had the first clue as to how to do any of those! It only came natural because I AM such a nut for the genre! I also suspect there's some sort of jump (or wtfever, who even knows) function that I'm totally missing, because I came across a room with spiked pits I couldn't get over. :|
Anyway how about some more positive stuff now. This game does have a romance feature where you can increase your affection with various characters and eventually enter a relationship with one of them. (No gay options though, from what it sounds like, booo. Oh well. XD) From what the manual tells me (because I totally only read the parts that sounded interesting... really, the manual should NOT be a requirement to play the game properly.) it even sounds like you can do this with one of the four elemental guardian spirits who come with the Book! :D Human/nonhuman relationships are totally my thing so this is AWESOME.
Let's talk about the spirits for a second. They're on the game case's art, and I immediately recognized them as some sort of elemental spirits. There's two guys and two girls, naturally, and the first three - fire, forest, water/ice - are pretty obvious as to what their elements are. (I don't think I ever saw a subtle fire-elemental though, lol.) But the last... well, they're all in this spiffy wallpaper here, check it out. I thought maybe he was Earth or Wind or something, whatever. But my first reaction to looking at them was to zero right in on that mystery-elemental and be all "OH HAY I LIKE HIM. 8D HE'S KINDA HOT."
...guess what. He's Lightning.
Yeeeeeeeeeeah. I homed in on my favorite element evar once again without even knowing it. orz BUT HEY AWESOME. Too bad it sounds like he's the last you acquire, but at least I have the sassy fire spirit and his snarking in the meantime. <3
...oh hey it just occurred to me that maybe having elements on the brain is why I had that crazy Digital Devil Saga dream last night. Derpaderp.
ANYWAY tl;dr, Avalon Code is annoyingly rough around the edges, but still worth playing. Now, about finding that strategy guide...
Oh, and I turned on PS...P (har har, I see what u did thar, Sega) and messed with the character creation for like an hour, then got frustrated by my own indecisiveness and shut it off. XD; WAT CHARACTER SHOULD I MAEK, GAIZ? >: