Category: PS4

2018-11-30

Game Ramblings #77 – Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey

Genre: Action RPG
Platform: PS4
Also Available On: Windows, Xbox One

TL;DR

Another great entry in the series that iterates on the new AC style established in Origins
Stealth was still the most fun way to play, but both melee and bow combat were not detriments
Ancient Greek environment is a lot of fun to run through, especially for history nerds

While it would be easy to look at this game and assume it’s simply a mashup of Origins and the sailing from Black Flag, there’s a lot more going on under the hood here. Where last year’s Origins explored the starting point of the assassins, this year’s Odyssey explores where some of the series artifacts come from. In doing so, the game leans way into the supernatural/alien elements that have been hinted at for so long in the series’ back story, and really give us a game that fans of Greek mythology can dig into.

The place to start really is to just point at my ramblings about Origins last year as it covers a lot of what I normally would have said about combat. That’s not to say that Odyssey is a straight copy, but really this is a solid iteration on the ideas from last year. What this does differently is brings back the large scale sailing of Black Flag and really leans into the RPG side of things through skill trees, even more emphasis on gearing, and a lot less hand holding if you decide to go with the developer’s recommended options.

The game generally gives you an idea of where to go, but it’s up to you to find the goal.

It’s going to sound weird that such a simple change drastically changes the game, but the default style of this game doesn’t really give you goal locations. Because of story reasons, you’ll often have a rough idea of where to, but if something isn’t in the dialog options presented to you, it’s often up to you to find the location. What this ends up doing is really encouraging the thing that Origins started; the push to simply explore. On your way towards a general area, you’ll run into any number of areas that can be cleared out of enemies and treasure, and it’s generally worth going through them. One of the systems that was added to this game to also encourage exploration is a series of hunts against the Cult of Kosmos, which is basically a precursor to the series’ templars.

These cult leaders are the driving force behind the game’s story, and a number of them simply show up as targets during the story. However, the rest have to be found. They might simply be leaders of the various cities. They may be out living on their own, taking care of a fort or a farm. They may also be mercenaries sent to try and kill you. However, behind all of it are clues that you can find by completing the small invasion areas; clues that lead you to the cultists location so you can take them out.

War is active, and it’s up to you to fight in it.

There’s also a large emphasis on war in this game, and you can generally get yourself directly involved in the battles. This game takes place a few decades after the events of the movie 300, and Athens and Sparta are nipping at each other’s heels. One of the consequences of you taking soldiers out is that the regions you’re in become weaker, exposing their leaders to be killed, and eventually the region for invasion. In doing so, you can open up battles like the above screenshot for extra rewards, as well as to potentially turn over the region to the opposite side. It’s a neat system that exists effectively as a distraction, but offers up something to do as a result of all the sneaking around you’re doing.

Mythology comes to life here, including a really fun fight against Medusa.

However, the lore behind the world is also a huge driving factor in exploring. There’s fights against creatures like Medusa or Theseus’ minotaur. There’s an entire segment of lore around the city of Atlantis and how it ties into the greater Assassin’s story. There’s also the historic locations to see like the Parthenon in Athens or the famous people you meet like Sokrates or Hippokrates. Basically, the entire game is a historian buff’s dream, and you’ll consistently be seeing things that you’d only ever seen in books.

All said, this is another great entry in the series. It takes everything that worked about Origins and iterates in great ways. The game has really leaned further into RPG territory than ever before, but it’s working out well for the series. The fact that I can sit here having played it for 80 hours and still want to do more is a testament to them having really perfected their formula. I guess I’m basically recommending this, especially if you liked Origins or Black Flag.

Also for what it’s worth, sync points are still great.

This is a good sync point.https://t.co/0oBdw2BpNL pic.twitter.com/XmCwf7o1EI
— Dan Weiss (@schenksmill) November 11, 2018

2018-10-22

Game Ramblings #76 – Dragon Quest 11: Echoes of an Elusive Age

More Info from Square-Enix

Genre: JRPG
Platform: PS4
Also Available On: Windows, 3DS (Japan Only)

TL;DR

Pretty traditional turn-based JRPG typical of the series, with a few nice modern features brought in
Fantastically gorgeous game thanks to using UE4
Solid story that kept me pushing forward, even if the “true ending” path got unnecessarily grindy

I’m pretty sure I’ve made note of the fact that I’m a sucker for JRPGs in the past, and Dragon Quest 11 is about as JRPG as it gets. The story is nonsense, the battles are strictly turn based, the grind is real, and the characters are still default Akira Toriyama. Despite it all, this is clearly a modernized entry in the series from the visuals to some of the little gameplay elements that improve the overall experience, and it ends up going a long way to finally bringing the series into the current generation.

Combat is definitely familiar to traditional JRPG fans, but there’s a few nice things to minimize the tedious nature of this style.

Since this is a JRPG, I’d be remiss if I didn’t start with combat. This is definitely a very traditional experience, even within the Dragon Quest series. Turn order is based loosely on an effective speed stat. Player characters have their basic attacks, skills, and magic attacks. The general class archetypes of warrior, thief, mage, healer, etc are all present and each character definitely has their strong suit. Behind it all is a skill tree for each character that the player can customize via skill points earned at each level. Basically, it’s what you’d expect from a JRPG.

However, it’s the little things that this game brings that make this game an obviously more modern approach. Auto battle makes its return from DQ9 to keep the pace of individual fights moving along. It allows for setting priorities on how AI react, or can be turned off entirely on a per-character basis if more decision making detail is needed. The party line up AND equipment can be changed at any time from within battle, allowing for very detailed strategies on harder content if a party or equipment setup isn’t working well. Even more importantly, characters not in the active party gain 100% of XP from a fight, allowing the player to focus on the style that makes sense at the time without severely penalizing them for not using all characters at once. In general, this is following a pattern of traditional but modern that is seen in a lot of other areas of the game.

I think most importantly though, this game has auto saves at pretty much every door and cutscene. I couldn’t tell you if this was a technical or gameplay consideration, but simply knowing that I wasn’t going to lose a ton of progress to a boss death was a huge improvement to my overall play. Rather than worrying about finding a save spot before a boss or worrying about my level, I simply always did boss fights. Generally speaking this was fine and I would get through fights. For a good portion of them, it also meant that I was going into fights at a challenging level, rather than grinding a bit more just to be safe. Overall it resulted in two really important changes to my usual JRPG game style; I did a lot less grinding so the game didn’t drag, and because of my level I was able to enjoy the challenge of level-appropriate or even underleveled fights without caring about whether I was going to die. It may sound weird, but it just made the game more enjoyable knowing I was going to play this way.

Visuals are definitely distinctly modern. It’s obviously Dragon Quest, but it’s gorgeous.

The non-gameplay elements also fit well into the traditional but modern approach. Visually, this is probably the best looking JRPG I’ve played, hands down. Games like Final Fantasy 15 brought the flash in an open world setting, but definitely stretched the definition of what a JRPG really is. Dragon Quest 11 doesn’t sacrifice visuals at all while still maintaining the JRPG gameplay. Even better, the modern style allows for all enemies to be seen in the field in ways that make sense, so there are no random battles to be seen. On the other hand, the music side of things is very traditional Dragon Quest. Simply put, the game uses entirely MIDI audio instead of a fully orchestrated soundtrack. Admittedly I enjoyed the hell out of it, but I can see why it’s been rubbing some people the wrong way compared to a lot of expectations of modern games.

It wouldn’t be a JRPG if all bosses were serious. Sometimes you just have to fight a mural.

Overall this was a pretty enjoyable romp. On the story front there wasn’t much new; this is still the story of a convenient hero creating a gang to take out the big world destroying baddy. On the gameplay front it was mostly tweaks to the existing formula. On the artistic side, it was a blend of the old and new. However, the total package is one that really hasn’t been seen at this quality for what has been a genre moving into much different territory at the AAA level. This may be the best example we’re going to see for a long time of a strictly turn-based JRPG, so I can’t do anything but strongly recommend it if that’s what you’re looking for.

2018-09-01

Game Ramblings #36.1 – Horizon: Zero Dawn – The Frozen Wilds

More Info from Guerrilla Games

Original Ramblings

Genre: Open World Action/Adventure
Platform: PS4

Horizon: Zero Dawn – The Frozen Wilds does do a lot to generally continue what was great about the first one. The setting is still fanastic and drop dead gorgeous. The moment to moment combat is still a lot of fun with a lot of variety in ranged weapons. Exploration is still always worth it, with things to find all over the place. Basically, they didn’t screw up what was good. Luckily, they also fixed my two biggest gripes with the base game, and that’s what I’ll talk about here.

This time around you’re running around Yellowstone and the surrounding areas. It’s definitely seen better days.

The end of HZD really annoyed the hell out of me, and it was because of two reasons. The first was the lack of progression with the main melee weapon leaving the end hours of the game focused on much stronger ranged attacks, and the second was the design of many of the boss fights being an effective circular arena fight where you could generally stay safely at range the entire time. While neither of these problems really ended up being a killer in the game’s overall result, they were definitely annoying problems that left me scratching my head a bit.

The melee weapon itself is definitely helped this time around by having an end game upgrade path. One of the first side quests you come upon when entering the new area of the game ends with you upgrading your spear to support the modification system that the ranged weapons all had. While I could definitely gripe about this being hidden behind a side quest, and I could gripe about the spear still not having inherent stat upgrades, this change alone is huge in changing how late game melee combat worked for me against higher level enemies. Now I could build the staff to my play style, whether that’s a pure damage build, one focused on debuffs, or one focused on getting some ticking damage out on enemies. While this was simply using a system that already existed for the ranged weaponry, gaining this system for melee was a huge change for the better.

While boss fights are still in relatively obvious arenas, they are much more varied landscapes, and the bosses themselves are significantly more aggressive against the player.

The handful of bosses in the expansion are also much improved over the base game. While they still take place in relatively obvious arenas, there’s a much better variety in how the arenas are laid out. In the example above, the player is sort of ducking in and around little outcroppings, giving a lot of line of sight breaking when fighting the boss. In general, that is pretty common, allowing the player to fight in a much more stealth-based way. This is really important based on a change in overall design of the boss AI.

The original game suffered from bosses that could generally be kept at range, letting the player just kind of tick away at them with the bow with very little danger. The bosses here feel a lot more like large versions of the world machines instead. They move around a lot to keep the player from being grounded. They do a lot more melee and charge attacks, keeping the player’s dodging finger ready. Even when the bosses are doing ranged projectile attacks, the danger of being hit and knocked down is a lot higher due to the ability of the bosses to close the gap and melee the player while they are down. Overall the fights just feel a lot more dynamic, rather than the circle strafe grinds that the original game suffered from.

Since this is Yellowstone, lava is the name of the game. It looks even better in motion than it does in screenshots.

Overall this was really just a solid expansion. It took what was great about the original and gave you more, and fixed a few of the larger problems while it was at it. The new content was a lot of fun, the new weapons felt impactful and slid naturally into my arsenal (super bonus mention to the energy projectile cannon you get about half way through the expansion), and the handful of new enemies fit into the existing roster really well while giving some new mechanics to watch out for. In general, this one leaves me wanting more of the series than the original game even did, and that leaves me excited for the future of the series going forward.