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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 can enjoy it too.  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 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 gains 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 relatively average stats across the board, but also gain an early party-heal skill and can equip whips and boomerangs, making them a relatively versatile class.  Other classes like the Fighter likewise have Skills added from later entries in the franchise, letting them use signature moves like Flying Knee or Leg Sweep to utilize their MP stats.

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 with a few tough bosses and later foes to face.  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.  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 almost 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.

Friday, November 15, 2024

Baldur's Gate: Siege of Dragonspear

A bit of an oddity for sure, Siege of Dragonspear is an interquel/expansion to Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition, released nearly two decades after the original game was on PC and sixteen years after the story was concluded in Throne of Bhaal.  Serving to bridge the gap between the first and second games, it has the protagonist come under attack by a group of assassins under the command of a crusading warrior known as the Shining Lady. who threatens the stability of the Sword Coast.  Imoen is unavailable for much of the game for plot reasons (first poisoned, then in an apprenticeship to explain her new status as a mage in 2), but much of the main cast from the first game returns, as do several new characters exclusive to this expansion.  The progression is very linear - you just hop from one area to the next in each chapter, a small contingent of Flaming Fist soldiers accompanying you, selling you items and storing your equipment, and while there are a few optional missions to undertake, the main story definitely takes precedent.  The story itself is serviceable, if not particularly memorable, but the dialog seems to be trying way too hard to be clever/funny and as a result becomes more annoying than anything.   The voice acting is decent for the most part, with many of the original cast returning (including the late David Warner as "the Hooded Man", whose scenes are easily the highlight of the whole package).  Encounters also strike a middle ground, mostly consisting of stronger variants of enemies from 1 with a few from 2 mixed in and it raises the experience cap to 500,000 - just enough to let you gain an extra level or two without completely disrupting the second game's balance, so it feels like a proper interquel in that regard.  All in all a decent, if not entirely necessary, expansion.

Developer: Beamdog
Publisher: Beamdog, Skybound Games
Released: 2016
Platforms: PC, OS X, Linux, iOS, Android, Switch, PlayStation 4, XBox One

Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin

Continuing the Castlevania franchise's very successful outing on portable platforms, Portrait of Ruin once again serves as a direct followup to an earlier game in the franchise - in this case, the Sega Genesis outing Castlevania: Bloodlines.  But does its new two-character gameplay and a heightened focus on puzzles and sidequests add to the experience, or does the Portrait get ruined by its own ambitions?


The "Metroidvania" style Castlevania games were of course quite popular on the GBA, so when Nintendo's new handheld system rolled around it wasn't long before they began to appear on that platform too.  The first, Dawn of Sorrow, was a direct sequel to Aria of Sorrow, utilizing similar gameplay with a couple new features mapped to the face buttons (being able to swap between two soul and equipment sets on the fly being the notable one) and some touchscreen gimmicks added; most annoyingly requiring you to quickly draw out a seal on the bottom screen or the bosses would regenerate a big chunk of health and continue the fight - a pretty annoying thing when the battles were already pretty difficult to begin with and fumbling with a stylus while focusing on dodging and attacking got to be pretty frustrating.

Portrait of Ruin thankfully largely exhumes the touch screen gimmicks (only utilizing them in a couple of bonus game modes) and instead builds on the idea of having multiple movesets, though this time it's in the form of two separate characters to control.  Jonathan is the more archetypal Castlevania protagonist, utilizing various melee weapons and sub-weapons like throwing daggers, axes and boomerangs (as well as temporary stat-boosting "stances"), while Charlotte is more of a mage-type character, with a weaker primary attack and generally lower physical stats, but with the ability to cast spells that can really lay on the damage (and be charged up for greater effect).  Not all of her spells are offensive, though - some can also heal, cure status effects, buff your characters' stats temporarily or even morph them into different forms.  Both characters share experience levels and the same health and magic meters, but have separate stats and equipment pages, with many items usable by one character but not the other.  Jonathan's subweapons gain SP when enemies are defeated with them, getting a power upgrade when you earn enough points.  These can be a bit grindy if you want full completion, but most players can get by just picking one or two that they like and focusing on using those.  Ironically I found the Shuriken to be one of the most useful sub-weapons despite it being among the quickest to master.

As in some earlier Castlevania titles, you can swap between Jonathan and Charlotte on the fly by pressing the X button, letting you adapt your strategies to traverse certain obstacles or deal with enemies a particular character is more suited to.  However, Portrait of Ruin expands on the concept by giving you a variety of ways to utilize both characters in tandem.  You can call out your partner briefly for one quick attack with the R button, or press A to have both characters active at once - generally to solve various puzzles by having them do things like stand in one spot to activate a switch, help push a heavy object or jump off their shoulders to reach a high ledge.  Pressing Up + A also does a team-up attack that generally drains a large chunk of your magic gauge and roots you to the spot while it's active, but can deal heavy damage when timed well.  While both characters are out only the one you're actively controlling takes damage, though if the other is hit they'll deplete some of your magic gauge instead; if the magic gauge hits 0 they'll be stunned for several seconds, locking you out of any ability to swap out or use any special or team-up moves until they recover.

Shops return once more so you can buy new equipment or potions for the boss battles, but new to this game are sidequests.  These are given to you throughout the game by the "Wind", and are rather bizarrely referred to in the menu as "studies" (and the act of working toward completing one is "studying").  Most of these are optional (you must do the first one to progress as it unlocks a key move), but they are are worth doing because they earn you powerful equipment, items or new skills.

Something else relatively new to the series is that there are multiple areas to explore now; not just one huge map.  Portraits serve as portals to sub-areas, giving the game a wider variety of locales than just "another big labyrinthine castle".  There's nine of them in total, ranging from a twisted circus to an Egyptian pyramid to a medieval village with numerous houses and shops.  Something slightly confusing is that rather than giving each map its own completion percentage, it simply accumulates them all together on the menu; so by the time I was most of the way through my first Portrait the completion counter was over 100% and kept going up as I continued in the game.  It tops out at 1000 once you've explored all ten maps, though you'll have to return to some areas to get items that aren't accessible the first time through, so backtracking is a definite requirement if you want full completion.

Portrait of Ruin is a game I didn't really pay much mind when it released, but giving it another shot on the Dominus collection made me realize I was missing out on something great.  It's a solidly designed game, and unlike Dawn of Sorrow, the new gimmick actually complements the gameplay quite well - swapping between two characters and tactically teaming up to take down foes and get past obstacles is surprisingly fun and intuitive.  The series of course maintains its usual high standards for visuals and music too, with the dark yet fun atmosphere of Castlevania fully represented even in the strange new locales you visit.  Even the voicework is surprisingly good, and of high quality for the DS.  Koji Igarashi strikes gold once again.

 

Developer: Konami
Publisher: Konami
Released: 2006
Platforms: Nintendo DS.  Also rereleased as part of the Castlevania Dominus Collection for PS4, XBox Series, PC and Switch.
Recommended Version:  The Dominus Collection port is an emulation of the DS game, with right-stick (or touchpad) emulation for the touch screen features.