There's a knock at the door!

Those who know me will most likely know that I'm a fan of RPGs, Japanese ones in particular. Admittedly my interest is marginally less rabid than it used to be, but I still have a large interest in the genre. But, a couple that I've been playing through lately got me thinking. Just a short while ago, I finished Devil Survivor. Generally, games in the Shin Megami Tensei series are harder than most other RPGs, in my experience at least, with frequent difficulty spikes being the lesser of evils to worry about.

It's certainly more of a challenge than Final Fantasy, which seems to steadily get easier as time goes by. Best example I can think of is in X, where your party is healed for using a save point, which is located right outside an inn. Traditionally inns are used to heal your party, which means you can simply heal your party without the penalty of paying to use the inn. Not only that, save points littered throughout dungeons, so you're pretty safe.

Which is something that really gets to me, on the really nerdy levels, because I've always perceived an adventure as something where the characters put themselves at risk for the sake of saving the world. Now, with that previous example of Final Fantasy X, there's little to no risk. If I were to use the example of Shin Megami Tensei 3, where a boss appears towards the end of a dungeon right before a save point, then there's certainly some risk involved there. Both games are on PS2 and came out within a few years of each other, so it's a fair comparison to make.

But, this is beside the point really. Neither of these games are what I want to talk about. What I really want to mention is Phantasy Star 2, another JRPG that came out over a decade before those two. Thanks to the Mega Drive Collection on 360, I've revisited a lot of older games. Now, I've played it before via emulation, but I always find that anything I emulate is rarely seen through to completion. No point in getting my money's worth I suppose. But this time I'm determined to at least see the later stages of the game.

But you know what? It's already doing it's best to stop me before the midway point. Usually in JRPGs, if a section is difficult, you can simply train for a bit and return with stronger characters, but even that proves to be challenging at times, with my characters frequently getting wiped out, and with weapons and armour being priced incredibly highly, that simple boost is out of my reach quite often.

The thing is though, I'm finding it addictive. The simple notion of my characters being weak, being frequently defeated when I'm moving from one town to another, or dreading each and every encounter as I try to escape a dungeon with only one, injured party member keeps me coming back for more. So much more than being overpowered and facing no challenge. Certainly, it can be argued that RPGs are plot centric, but these are still games, and therefore have to be played to be experienced.

I do find it reassuring though that older games such as these can be easily played thanks to collections and emulation. At least that way no matter how advanced new technology gets, the things that made me take an interest in the first place will always be around. I'm not really sure if there was much point to this post beyond "older games are really tough" and "I like challenge", but it's just been on my mind for a while now. Writing this out has also made me consider a few other things along a similar vein, so chances are I'll have a few more introspective posts like this in the near future.

Burning my dread (again)

Bit of a surprise announcement today, Persona 3 is being ported to the PSP, with the imaginative title of Persona 3 Portable. So far, little is known. It seems to allow you to play with a female lead character this time, or that's the assumption, as she's accompanied by a female version of the original lead character's persona. It's also apparently going to have the battle system from Persona 4, which is a nice addition as that gave you the ability to directly control your team, rather than hoping they did something you needed them to do. It's also out in November! So they wasted no time.

It does make me wonder though. Persona 1 has received an enhanced port to the PSP, Persona 3 is due out on the PSP soon, but there's been no news at all of Persona 2 being ported to it, when something like that would make sense. But as Persona 2 was a two parter, maybe they have something special planned for that. Plus! I've got to wonder if Persona 4 will be receiving the portable treatment. Not only that, maybe it gives hints as to what platform Persona 5 will be appearing on. Finally, I never thought I'd type "persona" so much in one paragraph.

Despite not knowing exactly how this deal with the new character will work, and having not seen any screenshots at all, I'm already sold on this. I mean, honestly, I'm not the sort of person who is able to turn down the prospect of slightly altered cutscenes in a game I've played through multiple times already. I know I've said it before, but I'm sure I choose the wrong hobbies sometimes.

A disjointed series of injokes

I'm never really sure what I think of Suda51's games. The story is usually odd for the sake of being odd, the gameplay itself is never really that impressive, sometimes intentionally bad, and there's often a lot of subtext that's hidden away which can be a major part of understanding what's going on. Usually, these either turn me away from a game. With Suda, I find myself drawn to them. So, along comes Flower, Sun & Rain on the DS. First time available in English, ported from the PS2 to the DS, and my second Suda game, the first being Killer7.

First off, the game itself features a great deal of walking. You'll often spend time walking down a motorway or a beach for up to five minutes at a time, sometimes more. You'll also have characters happily tell you how much you'll be walking more and more as the game progresses, and as the pedometer in the top corner steadily increases, you'll find you get better abilities. It's a bit like an RPG where you improve your character by walking. There are no shortcuts or modes of transport beyond walking and running, which does feel a bit like padding at times, but thankfully the lead character, Sumio Mondo, shows some annoyance about what he has to do. It's nice to have someone share the pain in a sense. The other major mechanic in the game is puzzle solving, which is entirely number based. Now, I've never been that great with numbers, but this is a game that features puzzles such as: lospass = 0445644; lunatics = ?, so I knew I was going to struggle.

However, I found my enjoyment doesn't come from actually doing those things. There are a lot of puzzles in this, all number based with some really obscure solutions (for example, the one I listed above is solved by counting the right angles in the letters), but I found myself enjoying how the solution to a puzzle is discovered along with interacting with the characters. For a lot of puzzles, you will receive a somewhat vague hint, and then you'll have to look in the hotel's guidebook (where else would you find a solution but in a guidebook, after all) and find a subtle reference to the vague hint, and then work the puzzle out from there. The other thing I enjoyed was how good the script is and how the characters are defined.

The story itself is centered about Sumio's latest job, where he's been called to Lospass Island to stop a terrorist planting a bomb on a plane. Upon arriving at the Hotel Flower, Sun & Rain and reaching his hotel room, he glances out the window to see the plane explode. Then he has a dream about a young girl trying to find her pink crocodile. Waking up the next morning due to a phone call from the front desk, he's told that breakfast is ready. Then he stumbles out of bed, quite literally, and reflects on what a strange dream he just had, and that he'd better stop the terrorist blowing up the plane.

From then on, the game is determined to prevent you from reaching your goal, with a resident of the hotel asking you to find something for them, followed by the plane exploding and you waking up back in your room the next day, determined to stop that plane exploding. You may have realised already, but this is a rather surreal game. But as it's by Suda51, that is to be expected. Music wise, it's also a bit of an oddity. Masafumi Takada, who usually seems to work with Suda has kind of done most of the music this time. I say most of, as the music generally consists of remixes of works by famous composers such as Debussy and Bach, with there being very few original songs in it. The game makes sure to point out that this is a pretty cheap decision by the designers.

I do kind of feel like I'm neglecting to mention something about Flower, Sun & Rain, but I also don't want to go too much into it, as a game focused on such a confusing mystery like this really needs to be experienced first hand to get the most out of it. That, and I can often go on endlessly about a game I'm really taken with. It's an odd one, but it's also an experience that I don't think I'd find anywhere else.