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Sunday, December 8, 2024

Ultima: Kyoryu Teikoku aka Worlds of Ultima: the Savage Empire (Super Famicom)

The last distinct Ultima game I had yet to spend any real time with, in no small part because it only came out in Japan and remained untranslated for nearly thirty years.  The original release of Savage Empire on PC was built on the same engine as Ultima VI, though its SFC does not use the platform's port of that game as a base, but rather the same action-RPG engine used in the SNES port of Ultima VII.  Which means this game has all of SNES Black Gate's problems, further compounded by Savage Empire's sparser design.  The hit detection is awkward and annoyingly inconsistent, even the most basic snake and spider enemies take several hits to kill while taking off a huge chunk of your health every time they land a hit.  Experience is very sparse, requiring you to fell dozens of enemies to gain just one level and gain more HP.   But even that doesn't help you much; the lack of post-hit invincibility and the fact that enemies swarm you on a frequent basis means your only chance of making any real progress is saving every other minute or so.  There also do not seem to be any beds or even bedrolls, so when night falls you'd best have a light spell handy.  The game does surprisingly retain the small crafting elements of the original, including the ability to construct crude firearms and grenades with Dr. Rafkin's aid, and the overall world map and puzzle design remains largely intact, unlike SNES Black Gate.  That said, it's still a pretty underwhelming remake, and the only people will likely have any sliver of interest in it are weird die-hard completionist Ultima nuts like myself.  For anyone else interested in checking out Ultima's short-lived Worlds spinoff series, just grab the original PC releases instead; they're both much more playable than this, and free downloads on GOG besides.

 

Developer: Origin Systems
Publisher: Pony Canyon
Released: 1995
Platforms: Super Famicom

Friday, December 6, 2024

Fantasian: Neo Dimension

A game met with much anticipation as it's been hinted to be their final game project, Fantasian sees Hironobu Sakaguchi return to write and produce and Nobuo Uematsu compose the soundtrack.  But does it serve as a high note to go out on for two legendary names of the industry, or does this final fantasy just not bring the magic?

Mistwalker of course was founded by Hironobu Sakaguchi after his departure from Square Enix in 2003, and while they did produce a few decently-received games for the XBox 360 and Wii, they hadn't really done a high-profile release since 2011, mostly relegating their output to lower-stakes mobile releases.  Fantasian seemed to mark a return to form as a narrative-driven cinematic RPG reminiscent of the old Final Fantasy games, and despite being exclusive to Apple Arcade managed to amass a decent following - enough for Square Enix themselves to codevelop a port with Arzest and give it a wider release on consoles, in effect bringing Sakaguchi and Uematsu's careers full-circle.

Fantasian was also a unique turn for Mistwalker in many respects.  The game was developed in Unity, and rather than simply using CGI backgrounds they actually built dioramas and digitized photos of them for the game, giving them a more realistic yet slightly surreal touch compared to the Playstation-era Final Fantasies.  That said all the characters in the game are still CGI models, so there is a definite and slightly awkward contrast there.  The Neo Dimension port adds voiceover in both English and Japanese, and it's well done in spite of the often-clunky dialog.  The game also invokes Lost Odyssey's Memories with its amnesiac protagonist and frequent flashback scenes told in a sparse, very wordy style with scrolling text effects and voiceover, which are easily the best part of the storytelling.

In terms of design it's a fairly streamlined turn-based RPG experience, with turn-based combat, a small handful of abilities per character, and items to inflict one-off elemental damage or restore HP or MP.  A bit like Chrono Trigger is the fact that most abilities have given ranges - a radius around the cursor or a straight line - and will hit any enemies in their path.  Spells can be angled into curved shots to hit multiple enemies - a useful tactic in many battles, and particularly battles with dozens of enemies.  Exploration is also fairly standard fare, having you wander through the labyrinthine environments in search of hidden treasures, which are often locked behind chests that require specific types of single-use keys.  The sudden camera shifts, paired with the fact you keep moving in the same direction after one unless you completely take your thumb off the stick and then move again, can get a bit jarring, but there is a convenient minimap in the menu to prevent it from becoming disorienting.

Yes, dozens.  There are frequent battles where you'll fight many enemies at once.  Sometimes these are boss battles, but more often they tie into another mechanic called the Dimengion Machine.  Essentially, what this does is store up to 30 enemies you'd normally fight in random encounters, which you can then fight in one big marathon at any time you choose; typically about 10 will be on the field at time, with enemies replacing defeated ones until you've cleared them all.  They do go surprisingly quickly with line and area-clearing skills, though, and one can even tag small crystals that appear on the field with their attacks to get temporary buffs or bonus turns.

The game is fairly basic (and very linear) for its first half, but jarringly adds many new mechanics in the second.  Suddenly you have skill points to unlock character-specific ability trees, not unlike Final Fantasy XII's license boards or Dragon Quest XI's skill panels, equipment crafting, a tension meter as a new combat mechanic that operates somewhat like a Limit Break, and the ability to swap characters mid-battle a la Final Fantasy X.  My guess is that the first half of the game (initially released standalone on Apple Arcade) was criticized for its basic design, so they added many new mechanics to the second half in an attempt to punch it up.  It would have been nice to see them be integrated a bit more smoothly into the Neo Dimension port, but they opted to keep it as originally presented.

Fantasian, for both good and ill, resembles an early '90s era Final Fantasy game more than any other Mistwalker effort I've played - it's got a familiar but enjoyable gameplay loop, an archetypal story with a lot of goofy dialog and contrived plot points, and relatively brisk pacing with enough mechanical intricacies to keep you interested for the entirety of its 20-25 hour runtime.  It doesn't hold a candle to the best of the Final Fantasy games, but I always felt Sakaguchi role in making FF such a legendary series was heavily overstated; yes he invented the franchise and directed its first five entries, but he was always a co-creator, collaborating with several other writers and designers to flesh out their ideas and have them meld together in a satisfying way.  VI, VII and IX - easily the most popular Final Fantasies where he served creatively - were all especially large collaborative projects, and while he was their scenario writer and producer, other big names at Square like Masato Kato, Yoshinori Kitase, Takashi Tokita, Hirohiko Ito, Tetsuya Takahashi and Tetsuya Nomura also played major roles in giving them their identities.  Sakaguchi can certainly make a project come together, but without all those other big talents there to help putty up the cracks, the shortcomings in his writing and design become all the more prominent: they've only become more obvious with the rise of so many other other fantastic talents in the field since his heyday too.  All that said, while Fantasian may not be among the finest games to bear his name, it's an enjoyable, if flawed, capstone to two legendary gaming careers.

 

Developer: Mistwalker, Console ports by Square Enix/Arzest
Publisher: Mistwalker, Console ports by Square Enix
Released: 2021, 2024
Platforms: iOS, macOS, tvOS, Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, PC, XBox Series
Recommended Version:  Neo Fantasian, in addition to the upgraded presentation, adds many balance tweaks, a difficulty select and the option to utilize the battle themes from numerous Final Fantasy titles.

Sunday, November 17, 2024

Dragon Quest III: HD-2D Remake

Dragon Quest III is easily one of the most beloved Japanese RPGs of all time, and has accordingly gotten numerous updates, ports and remakes over the years.  HD-2D Remake is the latest iteration of the legendary title, giving it not just a visual upgrade, but adding in plenty of new content so that long-time players will have new sights to see.  But is this yet another worthy iteration of a legendary title, or is this remake more of an unmaking?

Dragon Quest III, even among western gamers, is regarded as one of the best 8-bit RPGs ever crafted.  With a captivating story, an enormous world to explore and working in a bit of Final Fantasy style custom party building, it has a lot to offer for any genre fan.  It's also one of the most rereleased games in the series, seeing iterations on Super Famicom, Game Boy Color, Wii, 3DS, numerous mobile ports, and even a prior release on the Wii (based on one of said mobile ports), and it's continued to sell well across all of them.

HD-2D Remake is of course yet another iteration, codeveloped by Artdink (who also worked on Triangle Strategy) and updated to use Square Enix's trademark "HD-2D" style - 2D sprites on 3D-rendered backdrops.  I've been pretty critical of it in the past as being overdesigned and honestly pretty ugly (though they did manage to make it look mostly decent in Live a Live's remake).  For my money, though, Dragon Quest III is the best looking game to use the style so far; there's no too-close blurring filters or harsh lighting covering up the beautiful spritework, and the 3D backdrops don't have massive pixels the size of dinner plates that just end up being enormously distracting.  Even the little details like birds flying off as you approach, each character visibly wielding whatever weapon they have equipped on the battle screen and the hero's shadow being off to one side in dungeons (as they carry the lantern in their right hand) are immaculate.  The music (composed by the late Koichi Sugiyama) is now given an orchestral remix and continues to sound fantastic, lending an epic feel to the whole journey.

The game works in many elements of later Dragon Quest games, as well as most of the later iterations of Dragon Quest III itself.  One such addition is the Personality system; as the game opens, you're asked a series of questions that determine your character's Personality, which gives bonuses and penalties to their stats (a bit reminiscent of the Virtue quiz from the Ultima franchise).  Recruited characters likewise have randomized personalities when created.  One can find books along the way to permanently change a character's Personality to another, or temporarily change it by equipping them with certain accessories.  A new element to this version is the fact that you have two accessory slots, and only items equipped to the Primary slot will affect a Personality change; equipping it to the secondary slot just gives any stat bonuses and ignores the Personality swap (unless it's a cursed item, which will always cause the change until the item is removed).  Stats are also reworked and rebalanced now, with Wisdom actively increasing the power of your spells and Luck now factoring into critical hit and random drop chances rather than just granting a miniscule chance to avoid status effects, so finding a particular Personality to match your character's abilities is now a more careful balancing act.

Another addition are two new classes. Thieves were seen in most of the prior remakes and mostly serve as speedy party members who inflict statuses and cause more frequent random drops from foes.  New to HD-2D (but not the series as a whole) is the Monster Wrangler - a class that learns new skills as you find friendly monsters, and indeed has a skill to tell you if such monsters can be found in (or near) the current area.  They have average-to-mediocre stats across the board, but also gain an early party-heal skill and can equip whips and boomerangs, making them a relatively versatile class. Some of their later skills are very powerful, like Boulder Toss (hits all enemies for physical damage) and Wild Side, which effectively gives them two attacks per turn.  Other classes like the Fighter  and Martial Artist likewise have MP and Skills added from later entries in the franchise, letting them use signature moves like Flying Knee or Leg Sweep to give them more combat options.

Friendly monsters lend themselves to another new element to this game (though again, not the series as a whole), the Monster Arena.  In the original game it was largely just a game of chance that one could earn money from; that's still true to a degree here, but it's been significantly expanded and now resembles the one from Dragon Quest VIII, letting the player choose a team of three monsters to fight for them and awarding prize bundles should they manage to win a series of matches.  The player can give them vague commands, but not take direct control of them, so while there is an element of strategy to it, there's also still a large component of luck.  Still, the prize packages are quite nice and can give you a pretty big advantage if you win them as they come, so it's a worthwhile endeavor.  As mentioned, the Monster Wrangler's unique skill can help you to locate recruitable monsters, but talking to NPCs will often give useful hints as well.

Exploration has been made a larger component of the game in general, too.  The map is now much larger to traverse and it's now dotted with plenty of small hidden areas to explore, often containing treasures, recruitable monsters and NPCs that give various clues (as well as the occasional important item like a Mini-Medal).  Numerous "sparkly spots" (as the game's achievement tracker calls them) appear too, giving you a small cache of items and equipment each time you find one, and a trophy for finding at least 100 of them.  There are several instances where one is visible but not reachable until much later in the game, though, so you'll have to do a fair amount of exploring and backtracking if you want to collect them all.

Many newer RPG features are added.  One is that you can transfer characters between saves, which works as a somewhat limited New Game Plus as you can only transfer one character per file; however, they will retain all of their experience, stats and any equipment you give them, though they cannot gain more experience or transfer their equipment to other characters.  Another addition is the Memory system, which lets you 'record' up to 30 NPC lines for later reference so you can keep track of important clues you want to investigate, and an optional map pointer leading you to your next objective.  There are also three difficulty settings now; "Dracky Quest" is effectively a story mode; your party cannot die and you deal more damage. "Dragon Quest" (normal difficulty) is the standard setting for DQ3 - fairly leisurely to start, but it ramps up quite a bit in difficulty as the game progresses.  Draconian Quest is a much tougher challenge, with tougher enemies that give much less experience and gold, your party inflicting less damage per hit and bosses regenerating health every turn, making it much more difficult than even the original NES release.  There is of course also a preorder bonus, giving you a few in-game items available from the start in the form of a few stat-boosting Seeds and some Elevating Shoes.  The latter are a mostly-useless endgame accessory that give 1 XP per step taken in hostile areas, but getting them at the start of the game does allow you to gain a few of your starting levels much more quickly, finally giving them some merit.

HD-2D remake may be yet another iteration of a game that's approaching four decades old, but I dare say it's easily its best one yet, keeping everything that made the original great while adding plenty of new content, tweaking some of its annoying quirks and of course giving it a gorgeous presentation, finally proving that HD-2D style to be a worthy one.  There's enough here to satisfy modern RPG die-hards as well as long-time franchise fans who have already played through the game multiple times, and of course Dragon Quest itself's immaculate level of polish and simple, yet captivating design returns in full force here.  A classic that only got better.

 

Developer: Square Enix, ArtDink
Publisher: Square Enix
Released: 2024
Platforms: PS5, XBox Series, PC, Switch
Recommended Version:  I have only personally played the PS5 version but they all seem to be more or less identical.