Tag: PS4

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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.

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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.

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Game Ramblings #90 – Super Neptunia RPG

More Info from Idea Factory

  • Genre: JRPG
  • Platform: PS4
  • Also Available On: Switch, Steam

I’ve played a bunch of the Neptunia games, and they’re always a nice breather from my typical run of titles. They tend to take a known genre, craft a story around it that makes fun of the genre, and still manage to make a game that more often than not is shallow, but fun. Unsurprisingly, Super Neptunia RPG is more of that style. In this case, they take the 2D overworld movement of something like Muramasa, give it a battle system like any normal 2D JRPG, and manage to spit out a game that works, even with some grinding flaws. In this case, the Neptunia gang get transported to a place in which 3D games are banned, and the entire world is now 2D – and that’s about as serious as this series is ever going to be.

This screen will become your friend throughout the entire game. It gives you everything you need to quickly clear enemies.

Combat is the real focus here, and the entire flow of the game is built around the combat system. The closest description I can come up with is basically this: take the ATB system from SNES Final Fantasies, apply that to your entire party so they share the pool, and have the weakness exploiting of Shin Megami Tensei recharge your ATB pool if you land a weak hit. That combination of mechanics basically has the game working in vastly different ways depending on whether you’re in a trash or boss fight.

For trash fights, the name of the game is completing the battle as quickly as possible by exploiting as many weaknesses as possible. Hit the weakness, keep your ATB, and immediately spam the next attack. By doing this, you can generally complete any weakness-focused battle in seconds. However, this does have a significant problem in the late game.

Ratasteam? Ratasnow? Rataspell? Definitely not Rattata.

Near the end of the game, a lot of the enemies simply stopped having weak points. Any trash fight without weak points plain and simply sucked. Your attack numbers were never really high enough to do large chunking damage on their own, and the ATB meter charging isn’t super fast. Because the meter is shared amongst the entire party, you’re never in a situation in these kinds of fights where you can attack with multiple people. The enemies themselves were generally never dangerous enough to make a risk/reward interesting in whether or not to save ATB charges, so the fights simply dragged out. My tendency ended up being to run from fights without weaknesses, avoid entire regions of battle, and then go to areas with known weaknesses to grind if needed. It just dragged the pace of the last 3-4 hours so much that I wish they’d have balanced the weakness system better to have it be used always at a cost of not being as powerful.

On the other hand, bosses generally had no weaknesses, but were often dangerous, so the risk/reward of saving ATB charges really came into play here. More often than not, I was saving nearly a full meter within a boss fight, then activating either a full attack combo, or some mix of buffs, heals, and spot attacks. This slowed the pace of the fights way down, but also brought them into a place where the strategy more typical of a JRPG was really combing into focus. I wouldn’t say the bosses were ever all that hard, but they were definitely the more interesting of the fights even without exploiting the weakness setup.

Mix Dragon Quest Slimes with Goombas and avoid getting sued? Sure why not.

Luckily, non-battle gameplay was also fairly entertaining. The traversal mechanics and level setup are basically a straight rip of the Vanillaware-style 2D game. Visually, the game has the same sort of hand-drawn-ish, but still very smooth Flash animated characters. The backgrounds are all super colorful with a bunch of parallax layers to fill out the scene. Movement is fast, and with the right amount of exploration you’ll find hidden items or entire hidden areas. As you play through the game, you end up earning more traversal abilities, so going back and revisiting areas has added benefits. If the combat had been in real-time, this would easily have fit in against Odin Sphere or Muramasa, even if it wouldn’t be anywhere on the level of seriousness of those games.

There’s also a bunch of added depth simply in gearing your squad. This game takes the modern Tales of approach of adding acquireable skills to gear, and once earned the skills can be permanently equipped. Their weapons are unique equips, but accessory gear is often shared between party members. In this way I was always playing a balance between finding skills that fit the character’s strengths, while also trying to rush skills that I knew would be beneficial to the entire party. As an example, by end game I’d earned a permanent HP refresh (1% heal per ATB bar generated) across my entire party, so rather than having to have a dedicated full time healer, I was able to craft my party into a mixed physical/magical damage rush party with only weak heals to fill out during burst damage times.

All that being said, there’s really not a whole lot of depth to the rest of the experience. The gameplay is all solid, but the game is less than 20 hours long. There’s definitely a lot of side quests, but they’re all of the gather x thing / kill y enemy variety. You could probably entirely ignore them and get by just fine. Even in combat, you could squeak by without paying any attention at all to the weakness system, although it would probably take a significantly longer amount of time to finish. However, as a breather between serious games this one really hit a good mark. It’s enough of a game to still be fun to play, strong enough mechanically to be interesting enough, and have a stupid enough story to let me just enjoy the comedy for what it is. Is this going to win any game of the years? Unlikely. However, it does exactly what it needed to do – be fun.