Cat-eared Odyssey

Since having studied Japanese at university for a little under a year now, my proficiency with the language has developed somewhat. Rather thankfully, considering my interests, it has developed to the extent of me being able to blunder and stumble my way through Japanese language games more successfully. Obviously a great deal of the nuance is lost on me, but the fact I can work out what I'm doing without just assuming or consulting some kind of guide is a rather rewarding experience.

Now, while I've been steadily working my way through Chrono Trigger these past few weeks, I also picked up 7th Dragon, after it became part of a value range. I became interested in the game almost as soon as I'd heard of it. As you may have worked out from a few posts on here, I'm a solid fan of Etrian Odyssey, and some time after the second game came out, 7th Dragon appeared, with a some of the key team members behind it. The main difference that struck me was that the character designer was different, acceptably so. But the real hook for me was that Rieko Kodama was a part of the project, who was involved with a handful of favourites of mine. Most notably, Skies of Arcadia, which is often in steady contention with Chrono Trigger as my favourite RPG.

Plotwise, the events are a bit beyond me at this point, but as for the game itself, I'm very satisfied. The best way to describe it is as if they've taken the core mechanics of Etrian Odyssey and made it more of a JRPG, similar to the early Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy games. The concept of creating a guild and creating all of your party still exists, as does taking quests and developing every skill and ability of your party, but it now takes place with an overworld, towns, dungeons and a top down camera view.

Presentation wise, 7th Dragon is quite easily more impressive than Etrian Odyssey, which I can only assume is due to the budget available for a Sega game as opposed to an Atlus one. While in both games you were able to choose a class and appearance for each of your characters, 7th Dragon has overworld and battle sprites for each and every one, whereas Etrian just had a portrait. I can quite happily accept that that is part of Etrian's appeal, to provide a solid, no frills RPG, and it's perhaps a tad unfair to compare the two so directly, but it's hard not to be swayed by 7th Dragon's abundance of sprites dashing, gesturing and leaping across the screen as the battles play out.

I remember that before Etrian Odyssey 3 was revealed, I was concerned that 7th Dragon had marked the death of the series, as if the team had moved on to create a spiritual successor of sorts. Thankfully, that wasn't the case. Despite that though, now that Etrian looks like it'll continue for some time still, 7th Dragon seems to have been a one off, with no release outside of Japan having been mentioned and, to my limited knowledge, no word of a sequel yet. It's a shame too, as while I'm in the early stages still, it seems as if it's going to be something I'll enjoy.

Pirates were always cooler

With the current generation of consoles, I've been something of a late adopter. With previous generations, I'd often be in some sort of frenzy, eager to get my grubby mitts on the latest pieces of hardware, and then experience a drought of good games for a lengthy duration, extended even further by the fact I had more than one console to provide for. It wasn't an ideal situation. The 360 has benefited from this, as I waited until the hardware was slightly more reliable, and there was a decent selection of games on offer.

For some reason, one particular game I was especially eager to play was Lost Planet. Everyone I knew advised against it, that it was a sluggish game that had very few saving graces, and an awful final boss. They were right. Despite that, I still enjoyed playing through it. I had left it a bit too long, as everyone on the multiplayer side of things knew every single little thing to do, and I essentially just logged in to die quite quickly and unspectacularly. Despite those gripes, I found myself looking forward to the sequel.

As access to the internet has become something of a rarity for me these days, I've taken longer than planned to actually talk about Lost Planet 2. But, as I've finished it during this time, I'm more well informed than I usually am on whatever I choose to write about.

The most notable thing about Lost Planet 2 is that it's definitely aimed at fans of the original, with very little having changed with how the game plays. It's simply moved onto a much larger scale. It also features online and splitscreen multiplayer, so that aspect involves slightly less death for me. Unfortunately, with the splitscreen, it suffers from the same thing that Resident Evil 5 did, in that it's clearly been made for large HD TVs, so there's no point trying it if you don't have access to one of those. Which is a bit odd, as the campaign mode has been made with multiplayer in mind, to the extent of having a lobby even if you're playing solo.

It's also perhaps worth noting that the plot, or excuse for one, is absolute nonsense. I spent the majority of the cutscenes, of which there are plenty, not really knowing what was going on. Action wise, they're impressive, but they mainly exist to justify whatever it is you're doing, if you actually do know what you're doing and why.

As mentioned previously though, it's only really been made for the fans, the people I knew who disliked the original still aren't especially keen on the sequel. But, this brings to mind something that I love about Capcom. If you enjoy one of their series, it seems a relatively safe bet that you'll enjoy the other games in the series, they don't seem to try and change too much of it to appeal to a different market, which is something that seems a waste of time regardless of the medium. While it could be argued that Resident Evil is the exception to this theory, having changed quite radically in recent years, it fits quite well for their other games. I'm a solid fan of Street Fighter, and know that I'll most likely, without a doubt, enjoy the others, while there are very few Megaman games I've enjoyed, and as they actually do seem the same for the most part, I don't approach that series often, if ever.

This style of development is somewhat rare I feel, with a lot of developers catering more towards wider market appeal. Granted, it's all part of business, so I can't and won't whine too much about how developers "should" do something. Obviously, Capcom have had a lot of time to accrue the sort of revenue required to take such risks, even for sequels of games that didn't do spectacularly, but it's nice all the same that a company will make games for their fans. And that is why I love Capcom. Lost Planet 2, on the other hand, I'm still gradually warming up to.

A late arrival to the Garden of Madness

Once again, I've left this blog in limbo. Not to say it had been forgotten, not at all. I simply had the wonderful world of study to contend with. Which sounds a bit better than laziness, which could have potentially played a big part. Regardless, summer holidays have arrived, as has a substantial amount of free time. As such, I now have things I can write about! I've no doubt you've been waiting in mild anticipation for this moment.

Unfortunately, I'm taking this moment to talk about a Wii game. An old Wii game. Having recently come into possession of one, I made sure to pick up No More Heroes shortly afterwards, and as I've now spent most of this week playing it, I'm feeling confident enough to ramble on about it.

The thing is, when you come as late to the party as I have, it's hard to actually say anything valuable about it that hasn't already been said before. Perhaps the most notable thing is that around the time of it's release, I saw a lot of criticism about how tedious and repetitive it is. It may say something about my gaming habits, but I've not actually found that to be the case. Maybe it's because I'm often playing retro games, where there's little to do aside from the core part of the game until the end credits roll, but the supposed tedium hasn't really struck me. There's also quite a strong retro vibe in the game, with score charts, 8-bit sound effects and at one point an old fashioned shmup. With that and the general feel that Suda51 games have, it's really been striking a chord with me.

And on the topic of chords being struck, Masafumi Takada, the game's composer, has really had some room to play around. There's a few soundtracks of his that I'm fond of, but this in particular is wonderful, to the extent that I'm tempted to stick the soundtrack on my mp3 player.

Something that I've not failed to notice however, is that Suda and Takada both seem to have referenced other works. There's a few references to Flower, Sun and Rain in the landscape, along with some other references in advertisements. Takada seems to have some riffs from God Hand in the soundtrack, which are more than welcome. It's odd, as neither game did particularly well sales wise, and neither did No More Heroes.

Impressions and theories aside, No More Heroes is something I've been getting some solid enjoyment from. While it's hardly one of the best games around, it does what it sets out to do, and as I've not finished it just at this moment, it may do more than that. I'm seriously considering picking the sequel up when I've finished with it, only I may already have a stockpile of games that I said I'd finish over summer. With any luck, I'll be making some posts about those in the near future. Or that's the plan, at least.