Category: PS4

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Game Ramblings #48 – Nights of Azure

More Info from Koei Tecmo

  • Genre: ARPG
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Windows, Japan Only – PS3, Vita

TL;DR

  • Solid combat with multiple fighting styles
  • Good exploration mechanics that encourage taking risks without huge penalties
  • Small demon collection aspect that ends up giving a lot of party flexibility, adding good depth to combat

Nights of Azure is one of those games that I can best describe as being entirely competent.  It’s a game with solid combat, an entertaining enough story, and some nice systems to flesh things out.  It ends quick enough that it doesn’t wear out its welcome, and in doing so doesn’t do anything egregious to piss me off.  The visuals were decent, and it was clear what was going on.  The soundtrack hit the emotional notes of the story’s current progress, and the battle music kicked into high gear when necessary.  Given it was developed by Gust, this should come as no great surprise.  The DNA of their other more famous series (Atelier series, Ar Tonelico/Nosurge series) is definitely in place here, and the game benefits a lot from it.

There’s a lot on screen during combat, but you learn to look at important info quickly.

Being an ARPG, the most important thing in general is going to be the combat, and Azure definitely brings some solid combat to this.  In a lot of ways it can be described as a sort of Tales-lite system.  You’ve got a small party, some core melee combos, and some SP-based skills.  However, the party members revolve around a Pokemon style collection system instead of being core NPCs.  The other main thing that adds a lot of depth is that there are 4 different combat styles, giving some flexibility in picking the style that works best for the user.

However, the best thing that came out of all of this is the leveling system.  While it’s definitely a consequence of the game’s short length (< 20 hours for the core story), I ended up finishing the game around level 8, and my demons at their max level of 10.  Because of this, getting a level felt extremely important.  Each stat bump that came with it, as well as skills gained from leveling all had an obvious impact on my character, which is a nice change from the usual 50+ level slog of more high budget ARPGs and JRPGs.  The resource used for leveling was also a nice touch.  Killing enemies results in Blue Blood being gained, which can be used for leveling, summoning new demons for your party, as well as purchasing items from demon vendors throughout the game.  This gave a lot more consequence to the use of the resource, particularly because you could not use the blood you gained until you returned back to home base.

While that last note may sound scary, the game has other systems in place to encourage exploration, rather than making the resource gathering feel like a huge risk.  The main bonus here is that you can teleport instantly back to base at any point, and most quests also typically teleport you back to base for story reasons after finishing the goal.  The second thing they do is checkpoint your progress at the beginning of a room.  If you die, you lose all the resources you gained specifically within the current area, but you don’t lose everything from your current exploration session, and can choose to immediately go home, or pick up where you checkpointed.  In general, this allowed me to be slightly gung ho about going down side paths, because I knew at most I was only going to lose a few minutes progress, with the potential for a huge payoff defeating something optional.

I suppose my final note is that this definitely felt like a portable title, rather than a typical console title, and it being released on the Vita in Japan points to that.  Exploration was done with a time limit of 15 minutes, after which you’d teleport back to base.  However, I never really got close to that time limit, and the tasks I was chasing were typically done within a 10 minute or less window.  This would have been a perfect amount of time for a typical portable experience, and the sequel being aimed at the Switch leads me to believe they’re sticking with the system.  However, even on console the game loop there worked pretty effectively, letting me jump in in short bursts.

The outfit choices were sometimes questionable, and generally got a laugh out of me for their absurdity.

In a lot of ways, this was definitely a very typical Gust title.   The plot was very female-focused, the interaction between the two main characters was personal and positive, and the end of the game left it open for the since-announced sequel.  The outfit choices in some of the cutscenes (as seen above) were also generally pretty hilarious in how little was being worn.  However, it was more often than not hilarious in its lack of care, rather than being risque or offensive in any way.  End of the day, this was a game that was a lot of fun to play, even if it’s not chasing the AAA titles for game of the year.

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Game Ramblings #47 – Wonder Boy: The Dragon’s Trap

More Information from DotEmu

  • Genre: Platformer
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Switch, Xbox One, Windows, Linux, Mac
  • Original Version On: Sega Master System, Game Gear, TurboGrafx-16

Right from the start I could see that this game is a lovingly made remake of Wonder Boy III.  This remake feels like the original, if the original was made in 2017 with fantastically drawn visuals.  While that means that it doesn’t lose its original charm, it also means that it carries some finicky mechanics from the late 80s with it.  However, the quality of the original still comes through, and being able to play it without having to break out the old consoles is still worth the experience, and the polish in place to transition between the old and new is absolutely impressive.

The hand drawn style is a standout, particularly against the original primitive pixel visuals.

The most obvious thing that’s been changed here are the visuals.  Rather than going the easy route and sticking with an upgraded 8-bit Master System style, DotEmu went all out with a full visual refresh of the original game.  Every character, NPC, and world area has been redrawn over the original geometry, maintaining the original gameplay space, but giving it a fantastically modern look.  If it wasn’t for Cuphead finally being ready to release, this one would probably be a runaway winner for me in terms of flat out best looking pure 2D platformer.

Transition between styles is immediate, and can be done at any time.

However, the more impressive trick is that you can go between the original and modern looks at any time, and most importantly, the original sprites maintain the aspect ratio of the remake on modern platforms, giving a nice mix between the look of the old and the practical functionality between the two.  You simply press R2, the screen wipes side to side, and you’re right in the old style without having to pause the game.  This can also be done with R3, changing the music between the old and new, giving you the option to mix and match your preferred styles for sound and visuals at any time.  This is particularly important, because it has some surprising gameplay ramifications as well.

The hit boxes in modern graphics are…vague.

One of the biggest issues I continued to have was that the hit boxes in modern style were not that precise to the actual visuals of the character.  In some cases they matched pretty well to the general shape of the enemies, but in a lot of cases they were often much smaller than I was expecting.  For single enemies this wasn’t a huge deal, but for packs of enemies, it meant I was often swinging and missing, then getting stuck in situations where I would take a lot of unnecessary damage.  However, the hit boxes in the original game were generally much more precise, so by the tail end of the game, I was often switching to the old visuals purely for collision convenience, and minimizing my damage taken simply due to the more instinct-precise way of attacking.

Mechanically speaking, there’s also a few warts that were fine in the 80s, but at this point are kind of just moderate annoyances.  There’s a lot of situations where enemies can stun lock you into corners and walls.  While I wouldn’t take damage after a hit until I finally landed, it was annoying getting endlessly juggled into a corner until an enemy decided to finally turn around and back off.  For the bosses, they were mostly fairly trivial as well, with each boss generally having one attack and a single hit zone that was generally placed in the most obnoxious place to attack, while trying to avoid relatively quick and low damage attacks.  Jump physics are generally fairly precise, but mid-air control is definitely not as good as some more modern takes on the genre like Shovel Knight.  Generally speaking, this was a pretty high quality game mechanically when it originally came out, and the remake benefits from being able to start with that solid base.  While everything here is still pretty solid, it definitely plays like an 80s game, for better or worse.

All that said, this is a great take on an older title.  In doing the port, they avoided the trap that a lot of remakes do in trying to reimagine an old title.  This one is as straight a gameplay port as I’ve ever seen, particularly since the old title runs permanently emulated in the background.  The modern visuals and audio, as well as the fantastic feature to switch to the originals in real time is a nice touch that I wish more remakes would take advantage of.  End of the day, if it comes down to breaking out an old console, or playing this remake on a modern platform, I’d say throw out the few bucks and go this way, it’s worth it just for the visuals.

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Game Ramblings #46 – Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles

More Info from Prideful Sloth

  • Genre: Adventure
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Steam

TL;DR

  • Fantastically gorgeous environment and great soundtrack
  • Main quest line that’s entertaining to play, and gives you the right amount of push to continue seeing the new environments
  • High end crafting and side quests are fundamentally problematic with the game loop as implemented

Yonder is a game that at its core feels like it was made by a group of artists.  The attention to detail in the environment is up there with some of the best games available this generation.  The soundtrack backing it is the right level of ambient orchestral music without getting in the way.  All of this is tied into a fantastic implementation of a day/night cycle very reminiscent of its use in Breath of the Wild.  However, once you go beyond the core story quest line, the lack of real depth to the game systems in place, and a crafting system that is more menu and resource frustration really shows the problems that come out in the game loop that’s available.

One of the first areas you see in the game.

Right off the bat, it’s clear that this is going to be a beautiful game experience.  After an initial intro scene and cave crawl, you immediately get out into an open field that gives you a vista of a large part of the island the game takes place on, and it’s astoundingly beautiful.  The characters and animals around have a simple but effective style, and everything is fairly recognizable right off the bat.  Each area that you go to throughout the game then has its own core visual theme, whether it’s the snowy areas as you climb the central mountain, the palm trees near the beach, or the sparse rock formations in the desert.  Each area is just as great looking as the one you just had left.

Night time looks just as great.

Things look just as great when you hit night time.  The sky grows dawk, constellations fill it, and the player’s character breaks out a torch to give some local dynamic lighting around.  At the same time, the music drops in intensity, and you really feel the encroachment of night time around you.

The core gameplay itself is built around an effective set of collection and crafting quests.  The main line is pretty straightforward, with a series of quests that basically lead you into visiting each area, collecting Sprite creatures to clear off the Murk attacking the island, and collecting parts to fix the Cloud Catcher from the title.  By and large these serve as a way to get you to the towns that hold the various crafting type masters, and allow you to expand your repertoire or skills, which lead into further use through side quests.  While there are some systems in place on the side dealing with farming, it’s not deep enough to serve as a long term distraction.  This along with the nature of the side quests really starts becoming the main problem in exposing the larger issues with the core of the game’s systems.

The side quests take the core collect/craft mechanic of the main story line, and ramp it up to 11.  The problem is that the crafting system in general is just not that good, and the collecting of resources in the environment is kind of a hassle.

Materials used to craft a single bridge…

As an example, I created the above list to try and wrap my head around what I needed to craft a single bridge.  At the highest level, this thing required somewhere around 300 stone, and a bunch of other various ingredients.  The big problem is that stones can either be found solo on the ground, or in groups of 4 that can be mined out of a single boulder.  Just from a length of time to collect, this then becomes rather time prohibitive.  It also means hopping around to a ton of different areas in the crafting menu to craft individual pieces, then larger pieces, then larger pieces where each tab in was another level down in the crafting sequence.  For me, there was also the fundamental problem of not really understanding why something that uses parts made out of stone then requires MORE stone.  Even as it currently exists, being able to pick the high level item (say a stone arch), getting a total list of ALL resources needed to build it, then being able to one shot complete the project would have significantly improved the experience, as opposed to the current mess of crafting large items.

Scenes like this pushed me to keep playing.

End of the day, the main reason why this was not another entry into Shelved It has more to do with the fact that the game was abrupt in finishing, and I wanted to see what else the environment team had put together.  While the base that is there has potential, there’s too many fundamental problems with the crafting and collecting systems that are the core of the game to really consider this one worthy of high praise.  On the other hand, given the lack of content, a few changes to the way these work could fairly quickly elevate this one to a pretty entertaining and relaxing adventure title.  However, if you really want to see a gorgeous game, it may be worth taking a look at anyway.