Bravely Default: The C8 refight slog continues. Third time's the charm for these folks? Or maybe more like 7th time?
Jeanne d'Arc: Okay, I admit it, I'll play even bad SRPGs, because the SRPG is basically the pinnacle of gaming. Quit in disgust by early Chapter 2 ages ago, giving it another shot since a few months ago. Plot & script is still mostly awful, except, strangely enough, the love triangle, which is written well enough. System is mostly fine, but let me whine about the cause of a recent battle loss, and the cause of a near-miss awhile back. JDA battles have a turn limit, which is fine, it encourages aggressive play and reduces some of the issues with a MP & transformation point gain-per-turn system. Don't encourage sitting around waiting for transforms to turn on, good, yay. There's ALSO some good FFT-ish AI that wounded enemies will sometimes run away to the backlines, especially if they have healing, heal themselves up, then return to the fight afterward. ...you see the problem? Yeah, there isn't a "surrender / enemy fled permanently" trigger for such enemies. So you can clean up all the enemies, then spend the rest of your turns futilely chasing the lone surviving healer around the map, then lose because that 1 dude kept running & healing and your mob of 6 characters are clearly doomed by said healing. GRAHHH. (The C3 mission with Richard & Slinker, for those that played the game. After lovelingly murdering the entire map with plenty of time left, too... sigh...)
Child of Light: Finished. It's really good! Not a lot to say. Beautiful art & animation, fantastic music, and excellent gameplay. Go play it yourself.
Okay, I guess I will say a little more. There's an old saw that it's better to end early and leave your audience wanting more than to drag things out and have your audience wondering 'when will it end?' Well, CoL is definitely the former, taunting players like me with sequel possibilities and some hanging plot threads, and being a little TOO short in its gameplay. Oh well!
Other semi-connected thoughts:
* A game designer mentioned Grandia II among their top 5 favorite RPGs (along with the usual suspects in Chrono Trigger / FF6 / FF7). I'm shocked, simply shocked.
* But this game is better than G2, because everything is sculpted around making you care about and manipulate the turn gauge. At least on Expert. Lots of the other usual RPG features are either absent or heavily nerfed (fight-winning status, defensive & offensive buffs), but speed manipulation features heavily - do you want little damage fast or huge damage slowly that might be interrupted? Or do you need to just admit defeat and defend to cut your losses? In something like Grandia 3, where you have 4 allies and 4 enemies, it doesn't really pay to try and think through the flow TOO carefully, you're more just sniping targets of opportunity with cancels & defends when turns come up. CoL gives me good threats, but then gives me the tools to deal with it - Igniculus is a fantastic idea, it's great that I can do key slowdowns of enemies to sneak out slow abilities or get off cancels, and it's equally key I can screw up with Iggy and slow an enemy it's actually *bad* to slow. Just 2 characters keeps things comprehensible too. You *can* get stunlocked and die horribly if you aren't careful, but you can feel like a badass and perfect minibosses if you do everything right. Sweet.
* On that note, I looked at a few YT vids for sanity checks when writing up the boss stats in the stat topic. Lots of people are *awful* at these systems. I've long thought that the designers balanced G1/G2 on the easy side due to how swingy such systems can be; I can totally see why CoL needs a casual mode. (Players using skills they didn't particularly level with their build, players #YOLOing slow charge abilities into enemy turns and not even bothering to Iggy, people noting how they had to spam revive items against bosses, etc.)
* I already said the music was fantastic, but to add on that, something I expect out of video game music is 'excitement' / event tracks - which is fine. Stuff like Uematsu's boss themes. It's usually what your average VG soundtrack does well. CoL, instead, sells *drama* amazingly well, which is much rarer. Which is kinda weird! If you told me "fairy tale game" I'd assume the composer would write a bunch of saccharine feel-good tracks, but no, the tragedy / somberness is strong here. Aurora's Theme is fantastic and gets referenced a bunch, so good times.
* Speaking in verse was weird and definitely something you can only get away with in a short game, but sure it's something different so whynot. Best line, a rather silly joke but I liked it anyway: [What lurks in this box] inside? Homicide! (For a monster-in-a-box, of course.)
* Random rambling: What's the minimum party to complete the game? I *think* that Robert & Norah are the only required recruits, and I'm not even sure about Robert, so I wonder if the dialogue toward the very end changes at all.
Vague spoiler zone:
* The game could definitely have used an extra final dungeon. Which
the game's staff confirmed was intended, as is really obvious -
flying ruined castle in the sky? I'm there - but wasn't included for development time reasons.
* The game did a pretty good of selling some absolutely magical moments.... while not (usually) detracting from the gravity of the game world or the setting. Like, "surprise this key plot element is resolved by deus ex machina" is lame (albeit common in real fairy tales) and detracts from the importance of what you're trying to do. But 'surprise you are now more awesome' is fine, as was completely audacious problems and goals ('sup, the stars & sun & moon are missing, you're on the case). In particular...
the part at the altar where suddenly, you can fly, because, was *great*. I'd forgotten from the ancient previews you even could, and they even force you to do an annoying block-pushing puzzle first, and now you're free! A+. Aurora's aging after defeating the key bosses was neat too and could easily have played for some pretentious symbolism about kids secretly growing up fast when their parents don't notice, although they don't really do that. It was cool anyway, though, and felt like it fit much better here than say what would have happened had this game been made by Japanese rather than Canadians. (The Japanese version would have sexualized this kind of thing way more.)* The Confessions & backstory were really cool... after you've heard the dialogue from the very end of the game to have a clue WTF was going on. [They appeared to be incomprehensible ramblings before.] I get that there's a certain appeal to optional backstory digging that casual players can skip and careful readers can feel like an intellectual badass for puzzling out, but I'd have been happier with putting some of this plotline more front & center, so you can appreciate what the statues are, the names of the places, etc. earlier rather than in retrospect. I suppose I'll have to wait for the sequel.
Definite spoiler zone:
* The flood threat didn't really do it for me. I guess the timelines don't have to match up perfectly between Lemuria & Europe, but I'd kind of assumed they *would* from the backstory, and a flooding threat would be something that would happen over the course of hours, not the days or weeks the adventure takes place over (never mind Aurora's aging, interpret that as you will). Did they build this castle & town at the bottom of a dry lake or something?
* I suppose I can guess why the Duke married Umbra (loneliness), but why'd Umbra want to marry the duke? To get access to kill Aurora? She was already able to kill Aurora's mom without need for that... for that matter why'd she want to kill the Duke, as well? She surely doesn't care about inheritance of wealth or titles back in Europe...
* I think the scriptwriter like Harry Potter with the bit about Aurora's crown & the altar.
* I was kind of surprised Umbra was willing to offer Aurora, whom she killed twice, to be her heir since she's noticed her own daughters are dead. Guess she really is a zealot for "an Explorer's heir must rule?" Maybe there'll be more in the sequel when we find out what exactly was going on with the Rift, the Hollow Pact, and what exactly Umbra's mother's crimes were.
* Umbra also kinda has a point in that the Explorer's line clearly has vast magic beyond the rest of the Lemurians. Doesn't justify being a dick like Umbra, of course. While Aurora & her mother might be champions of the Lemurian people, they definitely are not *of* them, what with the ability to cheat death and the like while the Lemurians suffer normally.
* On that note.. I thought that Aurora reporting Gen's parents death to her was a wonderful and heartbreaking scene, well done. It makes the game world richer to see that not every magical problem is resolved with a handy magical undo button, like the Populi village had. The death of Aurora's father was also fair enough - clearly the scriptwriter was also sick of heroes offering to sacrifice the world for one person's life. However... Aurora's mother is a stranger case. She appears so late it's hard to say what is really going on, and perhaps she was just a spirit / apparition a la Igniculus which would be fine... she's a character most effective dramatically when her death is irreversible. And it'd strain credulity to imagine why she'd want to fake her death and cause so much pain to her family. It was nice to see her again to see the obvious comparison between the mother & daughter at least, but that'd have been fine with her as a spirit. Oh well. If she really is still alive, that crosses a little too far into "plot undercutting deus ex machina" territory for me; you want it to be true, but it can't actually be true.oh hey look I stayed up until 3 AM when I have to get up early rambling about this game to say "a little more." Must have been good. Maybe I'll grab the DLC quest just to support it some.
