Fight Item Run

Tumblr may be 'ded'... but so is blogging about games.

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You Just Had To Open Your Stupid Mouth...

In the introduction to Xenoblade Chronicles, we meet the Mechon as a race of killing machines that swarm like ants, killing and eating Homs (humans), with no indication of their motivations. They are mysterious and scary. When we encounter them again, we fight one with a face... and it’s a big deal... he doesn’t talk... and we can’t beat him... he’s scary. We call him “metal face”. Creepy.

Then we meet a different Mechon with a face. He talks. His name is Xord. He talks like a pirate. He tells us how much he enjoyed eating people... and how much he wants to eat us. It’s over the top, and silly... We kill him.

Then we meet Metal Face again. Now he talks. His name is still Metal Face, but he talks like an overacting villain.

I’m pretty sure I know who he’s supposed to be.

Anyway... the Mechon have lost that “alien-ness” that made them so scary earlier in the story...

–Rich

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Distractions - Final Fantasy XIV

I look so bad-ass.

So my first major distraction from Xenoblade Chronicles turned out to be a return to the MMORPG, Final Fantasy XIV. I originally started this game last year when it’s fourth expansion (Shadowbringers) was released. Some friends from work were planning to play the new expansion, and I started playing to join them. We did play some “leveling dungeons” together, but for the most part, we played separately while chatting with each other in discord. Mainly because we were all in different parts of the story.

While I started playing FFXIV with friends, it ended up going by the wayside as those friends started to lose interest, either because they finished Shadowbringers, or because they moved on to play other things. (WoW Classic claimed a couple.) I myself managed to get about a quarter of the way through the first expansion story (Heavensward) before I tired of the game and cancelled my subscription.

But a couple weeks ago, I was looking for something casual to do... and... after trying some different things... I decided to reactivate FFXIV... and go fishing.

I had a soft spot for fishing in FFXI (Final Fantasy’s earlier MMORPG) years ago, where I had joined a Linkshell (it’s like a guild?) called “The Fishing Guild” not because I was super interested in fishing, but because it seemed like it would be a chill low-stress group. I was right, but I also ended up doing a lot of fishing, with the guild members helping me earn the best fishing rod in the game. I didn’t find a group like that here, but fishing was an activity that is easy to do while watching YouTube or listening to podcasts. Of course... when I wanted to do something more, I got back into the story.

I only learned the term recently, but FFXIV is called a “Theme Park MMO”, as opposed to a “Sandbox MMO”. This means that you are expected to mostly play through the content in order and that content doesn’t change if you do it over again. It’s mostly used as a derogatory term by proponents of Sandbox MMOs, but I like this approach. This allows the game to be very story focused. And while I originally joined to play with friends, the game is still fun to play alone. Most of the game is single player PvE. You pick up missions, you go to places, you kill things. The dungeons and raids are multiplayer, but there is a queuing system that matches you automatically with other players. (There is an incentive system for players to queue up for a random dungeon that they have already completed to get bonus gold and xp.) I keep wanting to start the next quest, because I want to know what happens next. I really like this kind of quest structure that was common in earlier Bioware games like Neverwinter Nights.

Anyway, I’ve finished Heavensward, and am now starting the third expansion (Stormblood). I will probably slow down and lose interest before finishing Stormblood, and will return to Xenoblade Chronicles. But I know I’ll probably pick it back up later when it’s fresh again.

–Rich

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I am Setsuna.

I’m still working my way through Xenoblade Chronicles, so I thought I might make a post about a game that I completed recently. It’s also a complete Let’s Play on my YouTube; I’ll post a link at the end.

Tokyo RPG Factory is a subsidiary of Square Enix that is focused on making story driven turn based RPGs inspired by the JRPGs of the 1990s. Their first game, “I am Setsuna.” is a sort of spiritual successor to the much acclaimed “Chrono Trigger”.

The things that it shares with Chrono Trigger are a overworld map with no encounters, and area maps where set enemy encounters are visible and potentially avoidable. I has double and triple techniques that can be learned. Also, the game is pretty short. I finished the game in less than 30 hours, although there is some extra post-game content that can stretch it out to 45 hours.

I actually kinda like the shorter length. An RPG that sinks less than 80 hours is a bit refreshing these days. It also allows you to focus on the story with less meaningless filler added to pad out the play time. And I really do like the story...

But the game does have it’s flaws... The environments get very samey, you can only handle so much snow. There’s also a lot of palette swapped enemies. (There are even extra-tough enemies that can only be told apart because they are palette swapped.) There are also some unbalanced double and triple techs that pretty much become the go-to one-hit battle enders for most of the game. It’s especially unbalanced when you can equip items that refill your “magic points” so that you can spam these endlessly. You really see me abuse this in the later episodes of my let’s play.

Anyway, I did enjoy the game, and it’s short length makes it easy to look past it’s flaws. I do recommend it if you are, like me, of the opinion that the 90′s were the golden age of JRPGs. Tokyo RPG Factory’s later games, “Lost Sphear” and “Oninaki”, are in my queue to play in the near future.

–Rich

P.S. - Let’s Play I am Setsuna.

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Xenoblade Chronicles - Leaving the Village

Back when I finished Xenogears, I tried to get a friend to play the game, I thought he’d really enjoy it. A couple months later I asked him how he was liking it, and he told me, “I haven’t gotten out of the starting village.” I couldn’t understand! It’s such a good game, how could he not get hooked?!

A couple years ago, I was bored one evening, and I thought I’d try an start playing Xenogears again. (I had bought it on PSN for my Vita.) I slogged through some opening story stuff, and then gained control of the hero. Then I was told to talk to everyone in the village... Then I understood. It was boring, and I had to do this before I could move on with the more interesting stuff... and I didn’t have time for it that night, I just wanted a quick fix.

You see, the “hook” of the game, the part of the story that grabs you and pulls you along. Does not happen until after you talk to everybody and trigger the next plot event. And if you’re not committed to play through it, it’s very easy to put the game down and try something else.

Xenoblade Chronicles, at least, does not expect you to talk to everyone in town to move the story along. In fact, if you just do what the game tells you to, you can walk right out of the village and onto the event that really gets the story moving. But... you’d have to pass on all those side quests.

This game has a lot of side quests, and I generally like games with side quests. But this game starts you with so many in the first area! Side quests that are geared toward your starting level. So naturally you want to do them all! Some are simple, kill X number of Y monster, or kill that notorious monster. Some are a pain, find X number of items that are random among the hundreds of sparkly points scattered throughout the very large map. Most annoying are quests where you have to interact with certain NPCs that are only active a certain times of the day! Back when I tried to play this on the Wii, I had to keep a laptop with GameFAQs nearby so I could figure out what times I needed to find certain NPCs... It really slowed things down...

The Definitive Edition is a bit kinder. All active quest objectives show up on the map for you to find. Even nicer, you can set a quest to be “active” and it will direct you to where you need to go to find the target. It even shows which of the sparkly bits are the ones you need! Some people might find this to be too much hand holding, but it was a gift to me. I was able to quickly work my way through the quests, and felt like I was able to leave the village without feeling like I left something behind.

–Rich

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Starting Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Edition

So I’m a bit ashamed to admit that I have bought this game three times over the past years.

I’ve had an interest in the ‘Xeno-’ series ever since I played and beat Xenogears back when I was in college. Of the Xenosaga trilogy, I’ve completed the first game, and gotten about halfway through the second. So of course I was interested back when Xenoblade Chronicles was announced for the Wii back in 2009.

But at first, it seemed that it was not meant to be. The game was released at the end of the Wii’s life cycle in Japan, and even though it got an English translation in Europe, Nintendo decided not to release the game in North America. It may have been only thanks to a fan campaign dubbed “Operation Rainfall” that Nintendo reversed it’s decision and released the game in North America in 2012.

I, of course, snapped up the game. But it had one major problem... It was on the Wii. At the time, my Wii was not generally the console that was in general use in my apartment. I did dust it off to play some of the beginning of the game, but I didn’t get very far. (I’ll make a post on why at a later date.)

Fast forward to 2015. The game was ported to the “New” 3DS, which I had bought for some reason or another. And I bought the game again, thinking, “Finally it’s on a convenient system, I’ll play it now.” I started it... and it just felt... small. The screen on the 3DS, just did not do this game justice. I found myself wanting to play it on the Wii (wait... that thing is in a closet somewhere...) or the Wii U (I still need to find the wii-motes and sensor bar...).

I was in early 2020 that I found myself really wanting to play a Xenoblade game again. I considered dragging the Wii out of mothballs so that I could attempt to play the game for my YouTube channel. But then I heard that it would be coming to the Switch soon. (I did play some of Xenoblade Chronicles X on the Wii U for the channel. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFy8uDN9g-pGZvYDtjLTiyUOgtjXskxbu )

Well now that time has come, and I’m starting it up on the Switch. Maybe it’s finally on the right system at the right time.

--Rich

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Previously, on Fight Item Run

A funny thing happened on the way to not really being a gamer anymore: I kind of got super into video games again. The proliferation of cheap (and not so cheap) emulation handhelds rekindled my interest in gaming significantly, as the handheld experience has always been my favorite.

And since I have a lot more time to myself, I’m really starting to dig into some game experiences, both playing and watching.  I have a Switch Lite and a modest library of titles, and this summer I will also have a GPD Win Max as my “Windows Switch” machine.  I’m kind of committing to the gamer girl lifestyle.

I don’t know if I’ll post on here forever, but I have a bee in my bonnet about games right now, and I definitely want to do something creative with my friend again, so here I am!

—Stephanie

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It’s been a long time...

Sometimes you need to escape from current events...

Perhaps we were too ambitious way back then. After only a couple months, Stephanie and I kinda fell off of keeping our “try a game a week” schedule. Looking at our personal and professional lives it should have been expected. A lot has changed since then. I weathered some serious anxiety issues, and now I’m married!

But one thing never changed, I have always had a strange desire to document my gaming experience. Before we tried this blog, Stephanie and I tried to make a podcast. Then we tried this blog, but it too fell by the wayside. Perhaps at that point, I realized that coordinating with another person was a bit too difficult.

For over a year now, I have been running a Let’s Play channel on YouTube. It’s been fun, but as a means to actually play games it is quite slow. With a full time job and a wife at home, I just don’t have the time to record gameplay with commentary for hours at a time. Playing huge 80+ hour RPG games 30 minutes at a time is just not tenable. And sometimes... it starts to feel like work.

So this week I made the decision to put most of my Let’s Play channel on indefinite hiatus. Which left me with the problem of how to scratch that itch to document my gameplay... Then I found this old blog. I read through all the old posts, and realized that maybe, for me at least, this was the best format.

So I’m doing it. It will be a little different; no random game of the week. Just occasional posts about what I happen to be playing these days. It will probably be just me for now. I don’t think Stephanie is as into gaming as she once was. I’m just going to play it by ear. Probably nobody will read, but this is mostly for me anyway.

See you later.

—Rich

P.S. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUNwOiXdZC7VbcOIbgAnsnA/

This is going to be fun.

—Stephanie

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Crazy Round #1

We’ve done four random games from our shared backlog; now it’s time for the crazy round.  We’ve each chosen a game from the other’s backlog that we don’t share, so we’ll be playing two different games at once.

Stephanie: My choice for you is Ni No Kuni, which I’m kind of envious that you get to play.  I wanted to play it a lot when it came out but couldn’t afford a PS3.  I imagine if the game gets a PS4 remaster, I’ll pick it up.

Rich: Yeah, it seems like most of my list of games that don’t overlap with yours are games from the PS3 and Wii-U, which you don’t own. But with Ni No Kuni 2 coming out in the next year or so for the PS4, I won’t be surprised if there is a port to PS4 of the original. At least you got to play a little here when you visited for the weekend.

Stephanie: It was really enjoyable, despite my making fun of “Mr Drippy”.  I would give it a Maybe if I owned it.  How much of the game had you played before?

Rich: I hadn’t even gotten through the intro. I bought a PS3 late in it’s cycle. (I have a Slim version.) and I got the game with a bunch of others at the same time. I guess I went on to play something else. So this will be new territory for me.

So the game I picked for you is Xenogears, for PS1. I beat this game when it came out back in college, so I am recommending it.

Stephanie: I played this in college as well; it was one of a few games I rented with my roommates on weekends.  I thought I owned an original copy, but I might have sold it to pay for my Dreamcast when I bought it in 2000.  I don’t think I made it far, but I do remember enjoying the heck out of the game, so it was a no-brainer to re-buy when it came out on PSN.  I hope it holds up after all this time.  The Xeno- series seems to be a collection of ambitious but flawed gems.

Rich: Yeah, there are quite a few now with the Xenosaga and Xenoblade series being spiritual sequels. Luckily in this case, Xenogears stands on its own.

So this time, because of the holiday weekend we’re getting a late start, and will be playing these games (as well as any personal game play) for ten days, until the weekend after next.

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Secret of Mana - Wrap-Up

Stephanie: I really shot myself in the foot with my emulation talk. Man, I did not like the port of this game at all.  I only made it 17 minutes in before I pulled the ripcord.

Rich: Hah, based on some chats we had I was figuring that would be the case, I fared a bit better as I played about an hour and a half (for a total of 3 and a half hours), but I can see how the touch screen controls are really difficult to get used to.

Stephanie: I tried every mind trick I could to get used to the virtual d-pad, but it was no use.  I kept sliding too much.

Rich: It’s a shame that we didn’t pick Adventure of Mana if we were going to play a Mana game on iOS. That game was made specifically for mobile so it’s not as clunky.

Stephanie: Them’s the breaks with random.org; I agree, Adventure of Mana is actually enjoyable to play on mobile.  I definitely feel like all of my issues with Secret of Mana originate with the iOS port, but because that’s the only version I own and can play (until the 3DS gets it, or maybe the Switch if I get that), I kind of have to put the game on ice.  I like the look and feel of the game, and obviously, from previous encounters with it on SNES emulators, I like the game itself, but I don’t want to add it to my backlog if I don’t have the equipment to play it.

Rich: So the thing for me, is that in the past, I have already sorta beat the game. I played through chunks of the game as a second player, including the ending. Also, on my own I have played a very large portion in the past.

So the verdict for me is that I’m removing it from my backlog, however, I’m not planning to delete it, and maybe I’ll play a little bit here and there on the phone, at least until it stops working after I update the phone or something.

Stephanie: I’m also removing it because of the port, but I’d be willing to give it a Maybe if it comes to a convenient platform like 3DS.

Our first no’s of the project, which is a bit bittersweet.

SECRET OF MANA – DECISION

Stephanie: No

Rich: No

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Spiky Tiger

I just beat the first hard boss in the game.

Spiky Tiger will hit you like a wrecking ball, knock your characters unconscious and chew on them, and occasionally jump up to where you can’t reach him and breath fire on you. It’s made extra difficult because you haven’t unlocked magic yet.

The last time I played this game on the iPhone, I couldn’t beat him, and stopped playing for a while. When I picked the game back up for the blog, I spent some time grinding a few levels and getting back used to the controls, and was able to beat him (still had to carefully monitor my allies and be quick with the healing items).

Things will be easier once I unlock magic, which is the next step in the game. In the SNES version there was an exploit where you could, with careful timing, lock a monster’s movement with the magic casting animation and cast a bunch of spells in rapid succession without the monster being able to do anything. I believe that has been fixed in the iOS version.

—Rich

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The Problem with iOS Ports

No, I’m not talking about the non-tactile on-screen controls, although that’s often a problem. I’m talking about Apple’s wanton disregard for breaking software with their OS updates.

Now, to be fair to the fruit company, the updates are often critical in addressing bugs and security flaws, as well as big feature updates. But developers are on their own to make sure that their software continues to work, and since patching older games costs money that could be put to better use in creating new games that bring in new income, as opposed to keeping older customers happy with software they’ve already paid for. It’s a very tough decision to have to make, and just as often as a game broken by an update gets patched, it quietly disappears from the App Store.

Chaos Rings, I’m looking at you...

Secret of Mana was broken on iOS for a period of time, but they saw fit to release a patch to fix it. However, Chaos Rings 1 and 2, their flagship iOS original game series, has become buggy and been removed from the App Store.

What it boils down to is that you can’t count on a game that you buy on your phone being a game you can play forever into the future, even if it’s a relatively more expensive “premium” title like those from Square-Enix.

—Rich

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Secret of Mana

Once again, we implore the oracles at random.org for direction, and once again they respond.  This week’s selection is Square’s 1993 opus, Secret of Mana.

Stephanie: I’m not a big Action RPG person, so this game is barely in my backlog… of course, the last time I said something like that, I ended up obsessed.  As I recall, you really like the series, though.

Rich: I definitely liked Legend of Mana, the only game in the series I’ve beat. But I have fond memories of Secret of Mana on the SNES. A friend of mine in middle school had the game and since a second player could control one of the other two characters, I’d played bits and pieces of it that way. But since then, I’ve tried to play on several occasions, but have never completed it.

Stephanie: I do have some experience with the series as well; I once traded two Transformers and a copy of Roland’s Quest to a neighbor kid for a copy of Final Fantasy Adventure, but both my parents and his parents made us trade back after a week.  I enjoyed the game well enough, but obviously didn’t have time to beat it.  And Seiken Densetsu 3 was a favorite of mine to show of my laptop’s emulation powers back in 2000.  But again, never beat it… you know what, since I’ve never beaten, like, ANY game ever, I’m just going to stop mentioning that.

Rich: I actually know one of the guys on the fan translation team for Seiken Densetsu 3. 

Stephanie: Send them my compliments; it was a great translation.

Rich: Anyway, a couple years ago Squeenix released Secret of Mana on mobile, and I picked it up on day one… and played about 2 hours. For the blog I’m planning to pick it up from there.

Stephanie: I’m also going to play the iOS version, as well, but I’m pretty sure we’re kind of handicapping ourselves by going this route.  I just never owned a SNES myself, so I don’t have any other means to play it except through emulation.  And in my opinion, emulation kind of short circuits the idea of our backlog.  It’s not a wishlist, just games we bought.

Rich: Yeah, Secret of Mana made it into our list because the list I started with when we were initially planning this project (back when it was a podcast) was from an article online of “The Only 26 JRPGs You Absolutely Have to Play”. We eliminated a few because we didn’t own or want them (I’m looking at you Dark Souls; I’m sure you’re awesome, just not my thing). But some like Secret of Mana stayed because we did have ‘some method’ to play. It’s also on Virtual Console, but for the Wii only.

As for the iOS experience, I played a wee bit before we got together to write this post, and the touch controls aren’t bad. They take a bit of getting used to, but I’ve played with far worse. Also, the translation is better on mobile, because of space and time constraints on the original SNES localization.

Stephanie: That’s encouraging.  And frankly, the game has such a pedigree that it’s a no-brainer to have it on the list.  I didn’t buy the game day one, but I bought it today.  I’m looking forward to giving it a try, but maybe… just maybe… this is the first game I say “no” to.

Rich: LOL, we’ll see.

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SMT: Strange Journey Wrap-Up

Stephanie: So I really got into this one.  Put in over six hours, which I definitely didn’t expect going in.

Rich: Yeah, you really seemed to take off on this one. I only put in 3 hours this week.

Stephanie:  I honestly was looking forward to dumping a game!  If this is how this is going to go for all of them, my backlog is in serious trouble.  But the mechanics of this game are really polished, and the look and feel really benefit from the “modified Etrian Odyssey” engine.  I guess it just hit my sweet spot.

Rich: While I see the Etrian Odyssey engine at work graphically, it’s very solidly a Shin Megami Tensei game in its mechanics. If you liked this I’m curious to see how you’ll like Persona (which is more like a main line SMT game than the later Personas like 3 and 4).

Stephanie: Yeah, I’ll be curious.  There’s a couple of mechanical holdovers like the “enemy closeness” sensor, which is probably my favorite EO mechanic.  But yeah, they make a lot of modifications to the feel.  I wish we’d already played an EO game on the blog, because I could talk about how much better the level size is for compulsive play than EO (which can feel more grindy because of things like where heal and save points are placed).

Rich: Now you actually made it to the first “real” boss. Did it operate like an FOE?

Stephanie: Kind of, but the boss wasn’t mobile.  When you entered the level, you saw it was there via some short cutscene, but that’s it.  Plus, the boss was way more forgiving than an FOE.  It didn’t attack as aggressively, and took a lot longer to kill.  Usually with an FOE you kill it quickly or die quickly.  Of course, my horribly fused party may have had something to do with that, but the first boss was a 15-round grind of my guy hitting, my knocker spamming ice spells, and my two pixies healing us.  I probably could have handled that better.

Rich: So let’s talk about the meat of any SMT game. What did you think of the demon collecting aspects of the game?

Stephanie: Personally, I really liked them.  At first I was intimidated by the conversation mechanic, but when I realized I had lots of opportunities to try, it got easier.  But, I am probably the worst Demon Wrangler of all time.  I’m not great at convincing them to join, and my fusion choices are way more based on whether the portrait is pretty rather than actual mechanics like Alignment.

I’m pretty neutral as a character, but I keep fusing Law characters, which means no super combos when you hit an enemy in their weakness.  That, of course, is the most potent early strategy for combat.  So I generally succeeded only in making the game more difficult for myself.

But despite being bad at the demon mechanic, it’s still so much fun.  I could still make progress with my disagreeable group at the end of the first sector.  But it looks like I’ll have to capture and raise some more low-level demons to try again.  Which doesn’t actually sound like a chore.

You’ve played more SMT games than I have; is this demon collecting mechanic easier in Strange Journey, or are they all basically the same?

Rich: The conversation mechanic is basically the same in the main line SMT games I’ve played (which is not many) and it’s in Persona. It did seem a bit more forgiving and intuitive than in earlier games, as you could often discern the correct response based on the personality of the demon in its speech.

Stephanie: I wonder if that also comes down to better translations; Atlus of the 2000’s really did a good job of giving naturalistic translations, whereas Atlus of the 1990’s was much more stiff and transliterative.

Rich: Probably both. I tried playing SMT 1 on iOS, which is a port of the original SNES game, and I was unable to recruit a single demon.

Stephanie: Yeah that game was diamond-hard for the 30 minutes I played it.  That might have colored my expectations for Strange Journey.  I’m glad for the blog in that respect, because I probably wouldn’t have committed an hour to an SMT game again otherwise.

So we know my opinion, but what’s your final verdict on the game?

Rich: Well, I’m a huge fan of the SMT series so I knew it was going to be a maybe at worst, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how engaging the game is, so it’s definitely a keeper. What I’m curious about it, given how well you’ve taken to it, whether you plan to keep playing this game as we move on in the blog, or put it down for later?

Stephanie: That is a tough one, because the time I put in this week was in lieu of nearly every other hobby I have, so I don’t know if I want to do that for another couple of months to finish the game or not.  But, while I have been playing it, it has been the most fun thing out of anything I could be doing (aside from watching The Crown, but I only have two episodes left).  I’m not going to rule it out; maybe I’ll add some gaming time at lunchtime to keep up with it.  I think if I set it down, I’ll break the spell, and I don’t want to do that.

Rich: I know what you mean; I’m playing Trails of Cold Steel in the background of the blog, and I often have to choose between playing the game for the blog or that. But I don’t want to lose momentum on it.

Anyway, there you have it, another double win.

Stephanie: My backlog, she cries... but it’s worth it.

SHIN MEGAMI TENSEI: STRANGE JOURNEY – DECISION

Stephanie: Keep

Rich: Keep

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Shin Megami Tensei Series

Shin Megami Tensei is a sprawling series of games from Atlus that’s been very popular in Japan, and has seen a surge of popularity worldwide with the spread of the Persona spinoff series. A dark apocalyptic setting and “demon” collection are a common thread throughout the series.

Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey is an installment of the core SMT series and was the first non-spinoff game in the series that I ever played. The original 2 entries in the series were released on the SNES and were never released outside Japan until the port of SMT 1 on mobile. (I’ve played it a bit, but it’s very difficult and feels old.) SMT 3 was released on PS2, and in North America as Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne.

Strange Journey, while not a numbered game, lies firmly in the main series. (It was originally intended to be released as SMT 4, but the atypical sci-fi setting led the developer to subtitle it as Strange Journey, and save the number 4 for a later installment released on the 3DS.)

There are many SMT games in our backlog currently, including Nocturne and IV, as well as the spinoffs Digital Devil Saga, Devil Survivor, and of course Persona. I hope you like demon collecting, because there’s a lot of that to come.

--Rich

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Tension and Pacing

It’s only Wednesday, and already I’m more than four hours into this game.  While I like the mechanics (I’ve always been a fan of first-person dungeon crawlers like Etrian Odyssey), and the aforementioned 80′s sci-fi atmosphere is thick in the air, it’s the pacing that really has me hooked.

I definitely don’t mean the pacing of the first half-hour, which is a bit of a slog through still-screen cutscenes.  I can see why I only got 11 minutes in last time (just long enough to name my character); there’s a ton to digest, and some of it is frankly preposterous.  But, if you buy in you’re rewarded at the other end with perfect pacing through focused, tense, meaningful missions.

When the game starts in earnest, your transport vehicle is stranded, damaged, alone.  All those cutscenes telling you about the neat technology you’ll have at your disposal serve to ratchet the tension when they’re taken from you before you have a chance to use them.  Your first two missions introduce you to the combat engine, fighting demons who have infiltrated the ship.  After that, though, you’re forced to venture into the outside world.

The missions are bite-sized, but at the end of each one, you can talk to the crew members in the various stations on your ship, which drives you on.  They have doubts about the mission.  You have chances to reassure them, or to agree with their fears.  Though these decisions aren’t major (they do affect your alignment, but nothing more), they add a layer of role play that isn’t in other Etrian Odyssey entries of the DS era.

I am reminded of my favorite scenes in Aliens, after the space marines have been slaughtered, and they hold up in the medical bay to rest and figure out their next move.  They feel no safety, the danger around them is real, and there’s this existential dread in all the characters (especially Bill Paxton’s Hudson) that is held at bay by the immediate tactical needs of the next task.  The work keeps them from thinking too hard about the hopelessness of their mission.

The missions are perfectly sized, and the next mission almost instantly assigned when the current one is completed.  It’s technically a tutorial, but so perfectly integrated into the lore and plot of the story, you feel like it’s a real fight for survival in a hostile world.  Only after four shorter missions are you given the larger “find the exit out of the multi-floor dungeon” mission.  But even this mission is given to smaller play sessions by virtue of save points and health restore points on every floor (something Etrian Odyssey-style games typically eschew).

It was unexpectedly satisfying to plow through those first four missions.  I’m in the middle of the fifth mission, and expect to finish it before the week is out.  I want to know what my crew will encounter next.  I kind of need to know now.

—Stephanie

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Late 70s - Early 80s Sci-Fi Movie Inspiration

So it doesn’t take a visit to Wikipedia to catch the John Carpenter’s The Thing influences on SMT: Strange Journey, with the isolation and antarctic setting.

Wikipedia did however introduce me to the more direct influence of a late seventies sci-fi movie, Damnation Alley, which is definitely the inspiration for the land ships that serves as your base of operations in the game.

--Rich

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Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey

What, oh what, has random.org given us this week?  Why, it’s Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey, for the Nintendo DS!

Stephanie: I played 11 minutes of this game in 2010.  I’m probably not a font of trivia for our previous experience.

Rich: I’m not much better; I only played for 20 minutes or so. But I do remember the context of making this purchase. It came out for the DS a bit after I had really gotten hooked on Persona 3 and 4 on the PS2. Since the Persona series was a spinoff from the Shin Megami Tensei series it seemed like a must-buy. This was also around the time we were convinced that Atlus could do no wrong.

Stephanie: I see the phrase “Modified Etrian Odyssey engine” in the Wikipedia entry, and remember now why I purchased the game.  One of the reasons I thought Atlus could do no wrong was that they were in the middle of releasing the Etrian Odyssey games, and that style of dungeon crawler was right up my alley back then.  This might be a good indicator of whether it still is my cup of tea.

Rich: Well, in the time since then Atlus has disappointed me more than once. Also, while I love the Persona games (Persona 3 is the only game in the Megami Tensei franchise I’ve beaten), the only non-Persona entry I’ve played much at all was Digital Devil Saga, which I got pretty deep into when I was in grad school.

Stephanie: To be honest, Atlus is one of those companies that’s caused my backlog pain the most, because I’ve bought so many games on the company’s reputation, only to play them ten minutes each.  Not that I dislike Atlus or anything, because I love that they bring esoteric titles to the west, but it looks like maybe their PS2/DS output was the aberration, this string of hits in the middle of their usual hit-or-miss record.

Rich: Anyway, this will be interesting, to see if I’m a fan of Shin Megami Tensei, or just Persona.

Stephanie: Definitely; this is the first game I honestly don’t know if I’ll like it or not.