Category: ARPG

Posted on

Game Ramblings #88.3 – Revisiting Kingdom Hearts – Kingdom Hearts 3

More Info from Square-Enix

  • Genre: Action RPG
  • Platform: PS4

I finally got around to KH3. Ya I skipped some of the side games, and ya I should go back and play Birth by Sleep on a TV, but frankly I was ready to get this one off the list. KH3 was a bit of an oddball – it combines bits and pieces of all the past games while adding a ton of cinematic flare now possible on current generation hardware. What comes out of it falls somewhere between great and complete disaster, which I suppose could be said for a lot of this series as a whole.

This is really the game that finally feels like a modern experience. If there’s one thing that really speaks next-gen to me, it’s not necessarily new complex gameplay elements, or flashy new effects, but of worlds that feel alive and cinematic scenes that look like the game world. Kingdom Hearts 3 finally delivers on that. Visually, it’s definitely a looker, but importantly the worlds feel believable. Whether it’s San Fransokyo from Big Hero 6 or the world of Toy Story, these worlds no longer feel reminiscent of the movies, but actually feel exactly like the movies. It’s completely uncanny. The style also lends well to spectacular cinematic elements in traversal, such as wall running up Mount Olympus during a boss fight, dodging fire and rocks, instead of simply being somewhere vaguely in the area.

It’s also worth noting that this is probably the best mix of pure new content and pure Disney fandom experience that I think I’ve seen in the series. As a fan of KH, it was great to finally have visibility on both the Keyblade Graveyard, as well as some of the worlds behind Xehanort, and they gave a LOT of time at the end to him. At the same time, they quite literally remade Let it Go within the lore of KH3, which is a huge shot of Disney fandom adrenaline to be hit by. Every moment felt like I was seeing some new cool thing that brought me back to a movie or character I wanted to see more of, and given the lore of the series I was frankly surprised at how well it pulled together.

What gets lost in all of this though is the Final Fantasy connection. The folks from FF10 are nowhere to be seen on Destiny Islands. The FF cast members in Radiant Garden no longer appear. There’s no resolution to the plot between Cloud and Sephiroth in KH2. While the progression of the game lore kind of forces it in this direction, this game is now more accurately described as Disney + Square, not Disney + Final Fantasy. It’s not a deal breaker, but it’s definitely a disappointment.

Combat is a bit of a mixed bag, and it’s definitely a mash up of past games.

  • Core combat is still how it’s been since KH1, and it still has its issues with targeting and lock ons. It’s straight hack and slash, but the combo count trends more towards KH2 so it’s generally effective and easy to pull off.
  • Your partners are still kind of useless, but now your party occasionally grows up to 5 characters, which is kind of neat.
  • Magic and mana regen has been pulled in from KH2, which is a huge perk.
  • The Flowmotion system from Dream Drop Distance is there again, but it’s been neutered by the removal of most of its triggers, so it’s kind of useless.
  • Dream Eaters have been merged into the Summon system from past games, and the summons use both a full mana bar and are still kind of useless.
  • The dark form from KH2 still pops up from time to time, and is still kind of annoying when it shows up. Since it now gets in the way of triggering other group attacks, it’s particularly flow breaking.
  • Fortunately the dark form is hilariously effective against bosses, so when it pops up in a boss fight it’s pretty much an instant win.

Basically, mixed bag.

However, it’s the special attacks like the tea cups above that are the most egregious. These are basically triggered group attacks that do a ton of damage and effectively provide you with immunity. They are hilariously overpowered and completely unbalance combat in most situations. There are encounters where it’s pretty obvious that things were balanced around these, so it’s particularly bad that they become a bit of a necessity. In Kingdom Hearts fashion, it’s another case of something that is flashy and cool that gets used way too much, and quickly becomes annoying and necessary.

In good news, the non-standard stuff is way better in this game. The Gummi ship sequence is now a pseudo open space experience. Combat is triggered by the player by chasing after Heartless ships, and some of the sequences turn into large scale boss fights. It provides a lot more gameplay than simply the annoying experience flying between worlds, and becomes an entire great change of pace after a bunch of RPG combat. Some worlds also provide their own entire experiences. The obvious example is the Caribbean world, which now has an entire Assassin’s Creed 4-style pirate ship gameplay experience, including ship upgrades, boat to boat combat, and plenty of small islands to hop off at and explore for treasure.

The improvements to the meta experience are really what make this feel like that modern experience. The game goes back and forth between extremely linear sequences and semi-open exploration, so there’s enough of a change in pace going on to allow for some breathing room as I went through the game.

So, many games and more hours than I care to admit later, I’ve gotten through the Xehanort story. I still couldn’t tell you most of what happened, because quite frankly the lore is batshit. I couldn’t tell you I really enjoyed the gameplay a lot of the time, because quite frankly the combat really isn’t that good. But did I enjoy it all anyway? Hell ya I did. These games are the most spectacularly stupid mix of Disney and JRPG aesthetic possible, and now that technology has caught up to that, it was a sight to behold.

Posted on

Game Ramblings #91 – Dragon Quest Builders 2

More Info from Square-Enix

  • Genre: Action RPG / Sandbox Builder
  • Platform: Switch
  • Also Available On: PS4

Playing this game was all sorts of breaking my usual tendencies. I would typically buy this game on PS4 for better performance, but opted for the Switch for handheld convenience. I don’t really like builders like Minecraft, but the story and goal-focused gameplay really looked interesting to me. I would typically shelve a game after reaching end credits, but I’m already hours past that point and still playing. Really I think all of those things and the quality of the core game itself have helped me to really enjoy this game a lot more than I really expected I would.

This game was a relaxing pleasure. Sometimes there’s combat, sometimes there’s building, and sometimes you just sit there and work on your community.

Where the first Builders was a sequel to Dragon Quest 1, this is a sequel to Dragon Quest 2. It picks up some time after the original game, the player becomes friends with the resurrected final boss of that game, and a buddy copy adventure ensues, with the player being the builder and Malroth being the smasher. It’s all a little bit absurd, and it provides just enough of a grounding to the DQ world to really drive the fact that this game has goals and progress and a reason to march forward.

I’ve never really been a big fan of Minecraft, which makes this game perhaps a weird target for me to play. I just never really dealt well with the open ended nature of the game, and never really felt like putting together my own list of goals to move toward. DQB2 solves a lot of that for me by providing even a small overlay of goals to head towards. I’ll just do a quick walk through of the sort of opening little bit of time in the game where you learn to build basics, learn to gather followers, and learn to farm to provide yourself food. How it works in this game is important to why it clicked more than Minecraft.

Automation through your villagers becomes super important to the improved flow of this game over your typical building-type games. Focus on what’s important next, not what you’ve already done.

Eating to keep away from hunger is important in both games, as is the act of creating farms to sustain this growth. The first part is building farms, and importantly equipment for it. In Minecraft? You’ve got to know some recipe or figure it out, then build out some stuff with an interface that is cool to see a few times, but becomes tedious over time. In DQB2? You learn recipes and automatically batch build them in an easy to use menu. Cool, you’ve got a farm. In Minecraft? Manually grab things every time. In DQB2? Recruit followers to your island who will keep the farm in shape, plant new crops, pick grown crops, and put them in storage for you. Cool, now you’ve got some food, and can eat it raw or cook it. In Minecraft? Get on that yourself. In DQB2? Cook a thing once to learn it, then have a cooking follower do it for you, and grab from storage as needed.

I suppose the high level of all of this is that once you do something once, and it becomes automated. This allows you to focus on what’s next, instead of having an ever growing list of things that you have to do on routine. You learn to farm, setup the basics, then automate it. You later learn to mine, setup the basics, then automate it. Hell, as you start to explore smaller side islands you can gain perks that give you infinite resources of some types, which completely removes the tedious nature of having to find more and more and more of basic resources. The nature of all this is that the repetition is removed, and you’re basically focused on always doing new cool things.

The fact that this ties into a light action RPG layer also helps a lot. In general exploration, there’s simple party-based hack and slash combat. You’ve got some light gearing to provide a nice power curve. You’ve got some tools to provide enhanced exploration as the game goes on. Basically, that progression curve of action RPGs is there enough to provide a push forward. Where this really comes into play is the base defenses that grow more complex as the game goes on.

Base defense becomes really important later in the game, to the point where it becomes the focal point of a large segment of building.

The base defenses are effectively tower defense while mobile. On your side, you’ve got your base defenses and your base followers. Followers can be geared up using the same recipes used to create player gear to make them more effective. Base defenses are the real meat though. This runs the gamut from simple spikes and ballistas to more fun magic traps, whether it’s fire, wind, or ice. These provide a really fun way to meld customizing your base through the heavy builder gameplay with the combat mechanics and more typical ARPG elements. As distractions along the way they also provided periods of strategy and pace changing that broke up the monotony of exploring and digging for resources.

Sometimes the food even comes to you.

I think at the end of it all, I’m surprised how well just a few small changes to the core Minecraft loop got me to play the game in a different disguise. Giving me goals, giving me a story, automating monotony – those are all things that are small in theory but huge in practice. Having played the original Builders, this is also a huge push forward just for this series. The first one felt like a half step in this direction, but the sequel really smoothed out the game. It’s gone from being a neat variant on an idea to being something that I don’t want to put down, and honestly I can’t say that I saw that coming.

Posted on

Game Ramblings #88.2 – Revisiting Kingdom Hearts – Kingdom Hearts: Dream Drop Distance HD

Read Part 2 here.

More Info from Square Enix

  • Genre: Action RPG
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: 3DS

Dream Drop Distance is one of those classic games where I started it, played a whole bunch of it, then just…..stopped. I didn’t stop for any reason other than getting distracted. What I’d played I’d enjoyed, but it just never really gave me a reason to get back to it. In playing it again on the big screen, I’ve come around to this one more than I think I would have trying to replay this on the 3DS, and in doing so at the very least checked another game off on the way to playing KH3.

Summons have been replaced by a Pokemon-style collection system. I didn’t really use this a whole hell of a lot, but they’re pretty dang adorable.

Playing Dream Drop Distance after II definitely makes this game feel worse to some extent, but in the grand scheme of things this still played well. Like other KH games, it’s got a few tweaks to combat – some that worked well, some that didn’t – and a completely bat shit character split that does more harm than good in gameplay, but provides a pretty good grounding to the story. Realistically, the Kingdom Hearts series as a whole has always been a some things work, some things don’t and DDD isn’t any different.

Combat changes are really the key here, and the changes really fall into three main categories – reduction in chains, much greater use of the environment in combat, and changes to mana (again). The first feels purely like a change made for the limitations for the portable experience, and after KH2 it feels really unfortunate. Combos may last three or four hits on their own. On face value it feels sloppy but in practice it really encourages and forces the use of other new combat mechanics. Mana also sees some changes in this game, in so much as it no longer exists. In place of the recharging mana bar from KH2 are individually recharigng abilities that can be stacked into a scrolling list. This list grows as the player levels, giving a nice mix of flexibility in building out the active spec and some of the nice gains from the recharging bar of KH2.

Flowmotion and Reality Shift make the world a lot more of an interactive experience in combat, and it’s pretty key to being effective at avoiding damage in larger fights.

The real meat of the combat changes are around the Flowmotion system. The tl;dr here is that dodge rolling into pretty much any environment section (walls, poles, etc) or large enemies will put the player into a quick combo action. For walls, this is a linear flight move into a large attack. For poles, the player will circle around the poll and jump off into a tornado-like move. Different flowmotion attacks do different things and most of these moves provide some amount of immunity frames so this becomes the sort of default way to fight.

Unfortunately this is kind of a mixed bag. The moves are definitely super flashy and they’re entirely effective. However, it trivializes a lot of combat situations in really negative ways. On the other side though, the lack of combo attacks and boss fight patterns really makes it feel like there’s no other effective way to fight that doesn’t involve grinding and overpowering. It’s definitely a bit of good and bad, and it can get really repetitive during boss fights, but it’s at least still fun to watch.

The other mixed bag is the way the meta progression occurs in the game. The minimal spoiler version is that this game takes place around Sora and Riku trying to become key blade masters. In doing so, the two get split up in alternate dimension versions of the same world, with each needing to complete their version of the world to meet up at the end of the game. In practice, the switch between characters happens in a time-based forced switch. Realistically, this just feels shitty. There’s things you can do to slow down the countdown and give the other person boosts during their story segment, but even with that it kind of just feels like it always forces a switch at the worst time. I really like the story aspect for having this system too, but I’d so much rather it just switch characters at the end of the world, or let players switch as they want and simply introduce blocking points at a couple sections along the way. The worst part of all of this is that they HAVE those blocking points at a few spots along the way, so you have both the countdown AND progress blocking at the same time and the user never really has good control of their wanted flow.

If nothing else, this game still has sick costumes. I’ll take musketeer Mickey on my team any day.

Dream Drop Distance continued the pattern that we’ve been seeing. Kingdom Hearts will attempt some new things. Some of it worked, some of it didn’t. At its release, this game proved that portable KH in Birth by Sleep was perhaps not a fluke in being a really deep experience, but on the TV it felt both more easily playable but also less forgiving in how its gameplay loop really worked out. Overall this is still a pretty entertaining game, and if nothing else this was at least a better sidetrack on the path to KH3 than when I went off track to Chain of Memories.