Shadowgate
Year Purchased: 2000 (I think…)
Publisher: Kemco
Gameboy Version Reviewed
There are spoilers for a thirty year old game in this review.
I’m not entirely sure why I remember playing Shadowgate on the NES at my uncle’s house. I was probably four or five, and I didn’t have my own NES. The chance to play an NES was still a special experience, and for whatever reason, the visuals in this particular game stuck out amidst playing the Mario games to death, and that one time I got to try out Vice: Project Doom. I think that was what it was…
Regardless, memory is a strange thing. Finding out that there was a Shadowgate port on the NES was an exciting prospect, one that paralleled my hunt for Metal Gear Solid for Game Boy (otherwise known as Ghost Babel), and it joined my collection at the height of my handheld gaming on the Game Boy Color. I put a lot of time into trying to figure the game out at the time, but the constant death screens due to running out of torches and finding all of the numerous death traps meant that impatient thirteen year old me wasn’t going to go the distance with Shadowgate. Of course, young me couldn’t beat Riven either, and I finally bested that glorious monster last year.
A typical Shadowgate moment
This wasn’t a random attempt to finish the game. Shadowgate met my lovely NES themed GBA SP thanks to the Challenge segment of the Z-Trigger Live Show (which goes live on Friday nights). So, I picked up an existing save, and tried to find my footing in the game once again.
This was a weird and stupid decision. But I’ll get to that.
Shadowgate is a point and click adventure designed by ICOM Simulations for the MacVenture series. It was ported to the NES and Game Boy Color, and was recently remade by the original creators for PC and PS4, featuring new graphics and other updates. Players venture into a devilish castle to hunt down the Warlock Lord who is summoning the Behemoth, a creature capable of wiping out the entire world. It’s a stock story line, right down to the Chosen One protagonist and rewards of a kingdom and your very own arranged marriage to someone’s daughter. It’s as bland as fantasy gets. The real meat of Shadowgate is the puzzle design, riddles, and fact that you die more in this game than in any other point and click adventure game that I’ve ever played.
Get used to seeing this guy a lot.
Players are given a series of options on the bottom of the screen, joined by a movement grid (which is a genuinely helpful navigation tool for quickly backtracking through areas), an image of the room, and the inventory. Players can Look, Hit, Use, Open and Close objects. They can even do things to themselves using these options, which is mostly used to equip items like a cloak and magic glasses. Torches have to be kept lit, or the death screen doth come forth to give you the skeletal finger. The most useful skill in the game is the Look function. I say this because, otherwise, the game tells you nothing about how to achieve your goals.
Shadowgate isn’t a particularly special game. It’s not even one of the best point and click games available. However, my personal, oddly misplaced nostalgia for it kept its memory alive for me long enough to buy it in my teens and finally finish it as an adult. So, given that I don’t have a lot to say about the overall quality of the game (read: it’s alright), I decided that I’d give a little attention to the way this game is built. Not in regards to code, but rather, how it flows for the player.
Shadowgate is divided into hubs, divided by a series of bridges and a courtyard at the middle of the game. Items collected in the first hub are used in coordination with one another in the various rooms to reach the courtyard, which features a few “battles” (use thing on monster), before reaching the second hub. I’ve prepared a few visual treats for this review, and God help your miserable eyeballs if you try to decipher my chicken scratch.
Behold, the reason my teachers hated me.
The first hub is made up of around twenty-five rooms, split off at forks. The first leg of the game is made up of a mere two rooms. In a way, the first ten minutes of Shadowgate make for an effective tutorial about the way that this game operates. The first screen shows the front door of the castle. Screen two has two doors, both of which are locked, and the first torches of the game. Collect the torches, light a second one up to keep the timer under control, and then players are left with the question: how do we proceed? The answer is fairly simple, of course. The key is hidden on the very first screen of the game, requiring players to use the Open function. Screen three reveals the first death trap, a device of which there are over a dozen spread across more than forty-five screens. More keys are added, and the path splits for the first time in the game.
Upon reaching the first fork in the path, we are introduced to the very reason why the Look function is vital to progress. Behind a not-so-hidden door in the back wall of the third screen, there is a room where an arrow is hanging on a wall. Taking the arrow, it is added to the inventory with the bland labeling Arrow. Using the Look function, players learn that it is a Silver Arrow, though the name doesn’t change. Cut to the second half of the game, where our nameless hero climbs to the top of one of the two towers of Shadowgate itself, and finds a woman chained to the wall. This woman isn’t what she appears; she is a werewolf. This puzzle moment could be easily solved if the tag on the time said Silver Arrow, and isn’t complicated as is. But the reality is that I cycled through the weapon items in my inventory. This process can often lead to the death screen, as most things in this game do.
The Dumbest Puzzle
There are also bizarre leaps in logic that required to finish the game. There is a laboratory in the second half of the game that are only slightly hinted at in their item descriptions. For example, a rickety bridge back in the first half of the game can not be crossed on foot. The hero has to levitate to the door. This feat isn’t achieved using any of the five magic spells. Instead, the hero has to use an item called Bottle2, which is described as being incredibly light.’
A bottle is described as being light, and it makes the hero levitate.
This marks the only part of the game that I actually looked up the solution to. Most of the other riddles are spelled out so long as you’re reading the scrolls and books throughout and taking notes. Even the silly serpent puzzle on the other side of the Bottle Chasm makes a degree of sense when you examine the magic wand that is described as being inscribed with a snake, and then discovering that the snake is made of stone. It’s not clear what will take place, but the entire game is predicated on the simple process of Using Things on Things. Rubbing various objects on other objects until something works is usually how progress takes place.
My other complaint about the bridge puzzle is its placement in the flow of the game. Actually mapping out the game in my notebook made navigating the castle much more manageable than attempting to play from memory. Noting incomplete rooms along the way allowed me to go back to those rooms when I thought I might have an object that would help push the game forward. The Bottle Chasm is given a solution in the second half of the game, which means that players can be left completely in the dark if they’d written off the wooden bridge as a mere death trap rather than the location where one of the five key items is located. It adds a layer of messy and unnecessary backtracking to what, in a way, is an otherwise smooth traversal of the games map.
Otherwise, Shadowgate flows well throughout its run time. It’s a short game, made shorter by experience and a knowledge of the way that the game operates. The only other problems I see in this game are just indicators of its age, like the clunky inventory system and lack of buttons on the Game Boy. I can imagine that the Mac original would be an easier experience thanks to hot keys for the functions. Not to mention that point and click games on a D-Pad will never feel as good as using a mouse.
More than anything, Shadowgate helped me relive a time I never really experienced properly in my youth. Video games weren’t entirely something that happened on the console and computer exclusively. The activity of playing a game in that time extended from the screen onto a pad of paper. It was part of the experience, drawing maps, writing down riddles from the in-game lore, and jotting down quick notes about progress. I have been trying to indulge myself when playing games from this era when the time comes to play them. For example, I wrote about seven or eight pages of notes when doing my run through Riven last summer, and I actually dedicated a Moleskine notebook to my last run of Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar (a game I have to restart thanks to Windows 10 trying to murder my laptop a couple of years ago). I am fully aware how pretentious this sounds, but the technological restrictions on some games of the time made for gameplay experiences that are now gone, passed into history with no fanfare at all. I’m not saying that games are worse without, but the level of involvement required in some of these games feels woefully absent in modern games. We’ve traded it out for simplicity, and that’s not always a good thing.
Where else are you going to get a shark pit in a medieval fantasy game?
Recommending Shadowgate thirty years past its release is an interesting prospect. Aside from That One Dumb Puzzle, it’s still a solid experience despite the weak narrative. It’s definitely a product of the era, with its windowed gameplay and trial-and-demand execution, but I personally find the entire experience charming. I have a copy of Deja Vu at the house, a game that runs on the same engine. Now that I’ve toppled the Behemoth, and saved the world from the evils of Shadowgate, I find myself willing to take on that mystery a little bit sooner.
And for a final note, I would love to find a box for my copy. That shiny GBC box design was something to behold at the time.
Resident Evil – Code: Veronica
Publisher: Capcom
Year Acquired: 2002
Dreamcast Version Reviewed.
Capcom’s fourth entry in the Resident Evil franchise holds a fascinating place in the series history. Following Resident Evil 3: Nemesis by a mere three months, Code: Veronica launched on the young Sega Dreamcast to critical acclaim, giving the console another third party hit of the likes most console gamers should dream of. What more can really be said about the history of this game at this point? It’s common knowledge among fans of the series that Sony muscled a 3 off the end of this title, retitling Nemesis in the process. It’s known that Code: Veronica’s status as a console exclusive was short lived, with the PS2 receiving a beefed up port about a year and a half later (featuring a now fairly rare DVD called Wesker’s Report).
Well, like with all games I feature on Backlog Burning, I only have my history with the game to offer. After all, when you’ve been sitting on a game for half of your life, there has to be a reason it’s not finished, right?
Resident Evil – Code: Veronica entered my collection in high school, when my best friend and Z-Trigger co-host Brandon Harris gave me a copy of the game for Christmas. I’d just gotten the system following its discontinuation, along with a slew of superb games, such as Soul Calibur,Shenmue, and Crazy Taxi (along with the best sports games that were ever made), and this was when you could still find a significant selection of Dreamcast games, something that I haven’t seen in many places in the thirteen years since Gamestop stopped carrying them. I quickly jumped into the game, my hype for the game a stratospheric heights after reading far too many issues of Electronic Gaming Monthly to have seen the experience as anything other than pure ecstasy.
My only experiences with the series at the time were the N64 port of Resident Evil 2, a game that still ranks among my favorite video games (somewhere in the top fifteen I’m sure…), and a two day attempt at bashing through the non-Director’s Cut version of RE1 that ended with low ammunition and the need to make a return trip to the Mansion that my buddy Matt Potter and I had left half full of hunters. We did not finish that run, and I didn’t finish the game on my own until college. Code: Veronica marked the moment where I was going into a game unaccompanied by someone who would assist my navigation through the incredulous backtracking, involved item management, and cheesy B-movie writing that I love about the series.
My first run didn’t last very long. Let’s just say I was a bad shot, and spent too much ammo on the hulking yellow bandersnatches.
I probably tried at least two more times in the years that followed, but the twin-disc case bearing those glorious blue discs sat on various shelves for the majority of the decade that followed. It moved to Louisiana with me, and I acquired the Gamecube port of the PS2 version. I finally started another run, but I stuck with the Dreamcast original. After all, this was the version I’d longed to play when the Dreamcast was a console that seemed due to have a glorious future.
Luckily, my skill with the Resident Evil series had sharpened over the years since my initial attempt to blast my way through Rockfort Island, and I reached Antarctica after a few nights of playing the game in short sessions between episodes of Babylon 5. My run of the game was put on hold by…I couldn’t begin to guess, based on the rate of which I was acquiring retro games at the time. Regardless, the game returned to the library after a couple of weeks of keeping it on the active spot on my console shelf, and I wouldn’t pick it up until 2017. I had a hunch that if I dove back in, I would be able to hack through the remainder in a day or so. Well, I was wrong in 2017.
2018 would be a different story.
As part of the my backlog challenge, I was due to tackle this monster. After an hour or two of getting to grips with the game once again, I tackled the remainder of the game over the course of about two weeks, finishing out a thirteen hour run of the game where I died quite a bit more than I’d like to admit, and restarted several times simply to figure out how to get all of the ammo that I didn’t have enough inventory space for. But in the end, I bested Veronica in a grotesque final battle, and escaped from the clutches of the weirdest Resident Evil villain this side of James Marcus and his leech fetisha
You’ll notice that I haven’t addressed much of the game yet, as I usually tend to weave the game review into my story with the game. However, the story of this game deserves its own bit of space. The gameplay? Well, it’s classic Resident Evil. You navigate labyrinthine environment, collecting objects and keys to solve puzzles with linear thinking while conserving resources to fight a collection of monsters including zombies, rotting dogs, colossal spiders, the aforementioned bastardsnatches (forgive my childish portmanteau; I really hate these guys), poisonous moths, and the dull albinoids. The only complaint I could really direct at the experience is that it feels a bit long in the tooth. Sure, more RE isn’t a bad thing, but the flow of the overall experience just isn’t there. What makes Code: Veronica stand out for me, however, is the story.
…
I can hear you laughing, but I’m not joking. I genuinely love the story in Code: Veronica.
After getting arrested for attempting to break into a secret Umbrella facility while searching for her long lost brother Chris, RE2 star Claire Redfield is imprisoned on Rockfort Island right at the beginning of yet another zombie outbreak. After making a quick jailbreak, Claire finds the masterminds…that’s the word I’m going to use, but it doesn’t describe them…the Ashford twins, Alfred and Alexia. She teams up with a metly faced Leonardo DiCaprio look-alike named Steve Burnside to escape from the island and the twins who take pot shots at them with a sniper rifle in between incredibly uncomfortable dialogue.
It’s fairly stock Resident Evil setup, but what sells this one for me are the thematic aspects of the game regarding family, and the effectiveness of the Ashford twins. Sure, they aren’t scary. No RE villain is actually scary unless you count the Baker family in RE7, but even they started making me laugh in between jump scares. What sells the Ashford twins for me is that these cats are Bates family weird. Their relationship is unsettling in a way that the Lannisters would approve of, and the video of them pulling the wings off of a dragonfly early in the game suggest that they’re not altogether sane anyway. I’ll save the reveals for anyone who, like me, has failed to finish this game in the eighteen years since it came out because it’s got some solid twists on the way to the finale.
The other end of what makes the Ashford twins effective is how they reflect Chris and Claire on a thematic level. While Alfred and Alexia fail each other as supportive siblings, Chris and Claire went to drastic extremes to try and save one another. Neither actually saves the other outright in the end; they make for effective co-stars really, further cementing Claire Redfield as a proper badass character in video game history. This shows a level of narrative depth that we don’t really get out of Resident Evil, shallow as it actually is. Still, you have to give credit where credit is due. We would never get writing this…interesting – interesting because I can’t call any RE writing good – for the rest of the franchise.
I genuinely hate that I didn’t play through it sooner, but at the same time, I’m glad I waited. Because we aren’t going to get games like this ever again. The tank controlled classic RE formula was a product of the era, a method with which to allow for controlled game design set against the technological limitations of the era from which it was born. While modern horror games have the benefit of improved 3D controls, the level of craft that was brought to the best of the classic Resident Evil games have allowed them to age gracefully despite the criticisms laid against the tank controls. It’s a matter of design and execution. Go back, practice maneuvering, and then fully indulge in the way Resident Evil and it’s first sequel were designed. What you may find is a measured work of excellence through taut suspense. And goofy writing. Because it has to be goofy.
At least it’s better than RE5/6.
Finishing Code: Veronica marks a somewhat depressing moment in my history as a fan of the Resident Evil games; I’ve finished all of the classics. I’ve finally played through all seven of the tank control laden horror titles and, aside from replaying them (as I have done several times with a few of them), I’ve seen this part of the series through to its end. I know that there will be more Resident Evil games in the future, but Capcom has played this hand to its end, and they have moved on from the style, for better or worse.
This 1996 Lucasarts FPS has long been a thorn in my gaming paw, finding its way into my collection twice in two different forms over the course of the twenty years since I first played it. The most recent pickup was the PS1 port, purchased the utterly amazing Play-N-Trade in Lafayette, LA (if any of you guys are reading this, I do miss you guys. You are all excellent people). Prior to that, it was a big box PC release, with a glorious green shaded cover art, a landscape oriented black and white manual, and a single green CD-ROM with a CG Gammorean guard across from the logo. This still seems odd to me. There aren’t that many Gammoreans in the game.
Dark Forces holds a special place both in gaming history and for myself as a gamer. It was a landmark in the genre at its time for featuring multiple floors in its level layout, and the ability to look up and down. Allow me to remind you that this game came out in 1996 – it was still a big deal back then.
But beyond its technical marvels, Dark Forces was my first FPS. It was the first time I played a game where you stare down the barrel of a gun and blast sprites in a simulation of 3D environments. It was the first game I bought for my first PC, which should make obvious how I’d missed the entire Doom phenomenon as it had occurred. It was among the first games I’d ever played in 3D. So, take some of the things I say in this review with a grain of salt – my history with the game colors my experience to a degree, and I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to pull the nostalgia glasses away to address this game’s numerous problems.
Dark Forces tells a then-untold story about mercenary Kyle Katarn, a gruff dude who the Rebellion hires to steal the plans to the Death Star. Kyle is no longer a canonical Star Wars character, if it wasn’t obvious. Following his murderous heist, he is tasked with tracking down a new Imperial weapon called the Dark Trooper, a towering armored droid carrying a giant rocket launcher/plasma rifle. The story is actually pretty good, considering the time period, following a trail of clues that cross the galaxy to destroy not only the new war machines, but also the sources that produce each of the components of the weapon. The enemy variety contains Imperial officers and storm troopers, of course, but extends several classic monsters and underworld figures. A vast selection of weapons means that you have plenty of options for how to deal the damage. And you will need all of them, because Dark Forces is a pretty tough challenge.
It’s even harder if you play it on the PlayStation.
Anyone who reads this blog already knows that I’m more of a console gamer than anything else. I spend far more time with a controller in my hand than a mouse. So, when Brandon pushed for me to play this as one of my six games, I had every intention to polish off the PS1 port. After all, my PC copy is long since lost to the aether, and I needed to make good on that $6.00 purchase I made several years ago. The learning curve is pretty sharp on the PS1 port, thanks to convoluted controls, so as the difficulty ramped up in the back half of the game, it was taking several weeks to finally muscle through the intricate levels that make up the bulk of Dark Forces.
You’ve never known true gaming panic until you turn the corner and see these guys.
Let me make this as clear as I can for you guys. There are conveyor belt sections in the last level that requires the player to crouch, jump, and navigate a simple maze in order to proceed, and failure means getting dropped into a dark corridor full of storm troopers who will get the jump on you. Pair this with the shaky movement controls that are mapped to the D-Pad (with R1+ directions activating strafing), and Kyle frequently finds himself full of holes.
Each level is a series of complex mazes and switch puzzles, some of which find some logical consistency, some of which will cause you to refer to the map screen with frequency. This is part of what held me up from finishing for such a long time. I can recall playing this game back in 1997, finding the third level nearly impossible to play through. Anoat City features a hub area where players have to select a sewer path to follow, and then use a series of switches to reach their target in a hidden area deep below the gutters. I know you must be shocked to find that the sewer level isn’t fun, but you’ll have to trust me; it’s pretty obnoxious even if you know the solution.
1997 Me got lost in this level so many times…
So with the twin problems of awkward controls and confusing navigation, the fact that I finished this game probably sounds a bit shocking overall. Clearly I’m not that skilled of a gamer, and this one tested skills I don’t frequently break out – namely, those required for playing older shooters. Well, I have one fact that I must reveal about how I endured the challenges of Dark Forces.
I didn’t finish the PS1 version. I switched over to the PC version.
And thank God that I did. The controls on the PC original are quick and intuitive, and even the most irritating parts of the Arc Hammer mission were manageable thanks to controls that don’t require an extra thumb to contend with. I was able to get through incredibly challenging series of Dark Trooper battles near the hangar at the finale on my first run through the PC version. What’s more, I only died once, and that was because I fell into the pit near the start of the level and backed myself into a bad corner when fighting one of the Mk. II Dark Troopers.
Minor gripes aside, Dark Forces has aged rather gracefully. Or, well, the PC version has. While the PS1 port is available on PSN, I can’t exactly recommend it. The PC version can be found over on GOG and Steam, and is worth every penny. It’s a pretty solid Star Wars game from a time when such a label didn’t mean lazy cash in live services shooter. Give it a spin.
I currently lament that my original big box PC copy is lost forever…
Long time readers of this blog probably understand the challenges that this topic represents for me writing it. I’ve been playing Squaresoft and Square-Enix games for the better part of eighteen years now, discovering the publisher at the dizzying heights of their run on the original Playstation. Even stating my love for the PS1 era games colors how you could look at how I’m approaching this topic. I have nostalgia. We all have nostalgia. And I’m not attacking that nostalgia so much as I am the rather cynical means that Square-Enix is utilizing the nostalgia that their fans have for their various games across several franchises. Also, let me put the message up front; I’m not ragging on you for liking the games I’m going to talk about here. I am putting forth my issues with those games and why I’m not going to play them. Hear me out, and you may understand where I’m coming from at the end of this.
THAT DISSIDIA COMMERCIAL:
I must admit that this entire article is somewhat reactionary. It’s the culmination of thoughts and feelings I’ve had about one of my favorite series and what used to be my favorite publisher as well, but it was an advertisement for the latest Dissidia games that pushed me to finally put my thoughts down. Chiming in 8-bit voice, the Final Fantasy Overture plays as the camera pans around someone who is sitting on a couch, playing the very first Final Fantasy on an NES, map unfolded on a table in front of him, the Nintendo Power strategy guide right beneath. His son joins him on the couch. Cut to black. Thirty Years of Beloved Heroes is the caption, and the story continues to unfold, showing the life of one such fan. The ad suggests that Dissidia Opera Omnia is a game for fans. That they are the reason it exists. Sure, that may be true, but let’s cut into this a bit.
This is when we want to hear the 8-Bit FF Overture.
I want to start by pointing out how I see Final Fantasy. It is a series of iterative roleplaying games, featuring a new cast for each entry, and new variations on existing mechanics. These aspects of the series were present throughout each of the games that came out during the first fifteen years of the series. Even the numbered entries in the series would continue this tradition. Spin-offs would even fit the bill, with the Tactics series giving players the world of Ivalice through three different lenses. Note, I’m not including the Final Fantasy Adventure/Legends games in this, as those were the roots of the SaGa/Seiken Densetsu games rebranded for localization.
However, this wouldn’t continue for long after the Enix merger. Philosophies changed within the company, and the first direct sequel arrived on the PS2 with Final Fantasy X-2. The idea of unique Final Fantasy games still seemed to be a goal, but the company considered the option to recycle assets to accelerate game production a valid path to releasing games more quickly. Time would eventually show that they were setting an industry standard for companies like Ubisoft. This practice even extended to the Kingdom Hearts franchise, where once GBA stop-gap Chain of Memories found a new life in 3D utilizing assets from the original Kingdom Hearts.
So, for those of us old bastards who have been playing these games since before the Enix merger, there is a standard in place. The idea existed that each game is about a new cast of characters in an entirely new world used to be expected. I don’t have an option but to call this a formula, as that’s what it was. Use existing nomenclature for the magic, ATB combat where applicable, and then make new stuff for everything else. However, as development of Final Fantasy XII stretched on, Square-Enix needed to fill out a release schedule. This is when Final Fantasy VII was milled for a misguided attempt to expand the story across new games and even the feature length disaster Advent Children. The original story was blurred for the sake of fan service.
Perhaps…but not you. Never you.
Honestly, it took me a long time to replay Final Fantasy VII after the fallout settled from Compilation of Final Fantasy VII. Problems like…everything involving Genesis or Angeal in Crisis Core (a game I enjoyed playing when it wasn’t dealing with these two idiots) made me look at the original differently simply because it was too fresh to ignore their existence when playing the original.
But I digress.
This was the first time Square-Enix tried to repackage the memories of gamers, and they succeeded.
…
Well, they made a lot of money. Continued releases in the Compilation surrounded the collective begging of over half the fan base for a remake of Final Fantasy VII, something that wouldn’t be formally announced until 2015. To some of us, the prospect of the new guard remaking a game as treasured as FFVII was freshly terrifying. The idea that Genesis could show up during a story that was already over a decade old and played by millions was disturbing to say the least.
However, the door was open, and Final Fantasy would never be the same again.
The First Crossover
Final Fantasy Dissidia released for the PSP in 2008. Unlike 1998’s Ehrgeiz, which merely featured FFVII characters alongside a new cast of characters, Dissidia featured a complete cast of favored characters from numerous classic Final Fantasy games, set against a new…er…story…about the gods of Cosmos and Chaos warring with each other. The plot seems inconsequential from the outside, and only operates to bring these characters together. This game started a franchise, including three spectacle laden fighting games and a turn based RPG for mobile. It’s a largely inoffensive product, but the formula was then copied for the Theatrhythm games, which use the ongoing battle between Cosmos and Chaos as an excuse for a rhythm game full of classic Nobuo Uematsu orchestrations. Admittedly, I like this game, but the story is completely worthless.
Other mobile games would follow, including the abysmal cash magnet All the Bravest. Most of these games would follow the same trend; cram in sprites of classic Final Fantasy characters on top of a flimsy excuse to have characters from numerous worlds on the same stage. Count the money. While I’ve heard from various people that they’ve at least started making games underneath this marketing scheme, I find the concept of the mega-crossover game both crass and extremely unappealing.
We Remember it for You…Piecemeal
The reality is this…I’ve been on adventures with these characters. I’ve invested hundreds of hours into the lives of these little piles of pixels and polygons, and I’ve felt for way more of them than is probably logical. I already know their stories, and having those stories retold to me in a new context feels…well…lazy.
We’ve been here before, and it didn’t seem so fake.
Let’s bring in another example of Square-Enix repackaging my gaming memories for money: World of Final Fantasy. This 2016 game fell underneath the shadow of the long awaited Final Fantasy XV, a game I was very pleased with despite some issues (that I’ll be discussing on here in the future). It was an odd move by Square-Enix to release these two titles so close together, but I have a theory about why.
Loads of us old farts want turn based Final Fantasy back.
And we aren’t wrong. The fact is that when I think Final Fantasy, I think ATB combat, massive worlds, and the cheesiest melodrama set against total anime stupidity that a Japanese game development team can throw at me. The more serious everyone is taking the world threatening situation, the better. Hell yes, I love Final Fantasy VIII, and I even wrote about why people need to give that game a break in the past.
So, enter World of Final Fantasy, a game that revives classic ATB combat with a new story. Doesn’t that sound like the Final Fantasy we all know and love?
It’s not. It’s a crossover game.
A Sneak Peek of What I Thought of World of Final Fantasy
First off, it’s a pretty good game. I like one of the two new leads – Reynn could carry this game by herself, but the writers thought we needed “comic relief” (a concept that would be fine if the comedy was actually funny instead of obnoxious). The Pokémon-esque additions to ATB combat are surprisingly solid, rewarding high level play for anyone who indulges in the nuances of the system while remaining accessible for the target audience, which for this game is kids. This is all good stuff, and I’m not even kidding here. World of Final Fantasy is a fun game, and I really dig what Tose Software (the team behind the handheld remakes on GBA/DS) accomplished here. It’s a sight better than the last time Square tried their hand at a Kid’s First Final Fantasy because it actually has some depth to the mechanics. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest this is not.
Seriously, the stacking mechanic is fun stuff. It’s a great damned game.
But much like the crossover games above, the story we are given in World of Final Fantasy is mostly a setup for bringing in all of your favorite characters and stories in lieu of a new adventure for the leads. Sure, they have a story, and despite being only about half through the campaign, it’s unfolded in fairly interesting ways for the most part.
But the plot takes the back seat to revised versions of classic Final Fantasy stories when you start any new location, as we are given an excuse to see a modified version of each characters origin story, changed only to fit the events taking place in this game. This leads to each chapters event, some crossover scenes that can be unlocked as a side challenge, and ultimately, the ability to summon that character in combat.
First off, I don’t really find the idea of “collecting my favorite characters” all that appealing because it seems like it would end up being a cheap tactic in lieu of preparing for combat with a good load out of monsters in my party stack. I know, summons have always been in play, but as I’ve gotten older, I get more kicks out of being able to play the game so well that I don’t use the summons anymore. I mean…have you ever played Final Fantasy VII/VIII without using the summon command outside of the Emerald Weapon battle (because to Hell with fighting that thing any other way)? It’s a far more rewarding game. (See: I’m Old)
Second, and far more noteworthy: this tactic of bringing in existing characters and stories feels like World of Final Fantasy is advertising and exploitation in turn. It’s a means to draw younger gamers into the games that came out in the past while cashing in on the nostalgia of older players. It’s cynical, it’s cold, and it shows a stark lack of creativity from a series that once made a school fly during the second act.
EXCEPT FOR THIS THING. KILL IT WITH FIRE.
See my full review of this game some time in the future. I need to get back to it and finish it. Again, it’s a solid game, and worthy of your time despite the reliance on existing material. I still want to know what happened to Reynn’s parents. Lann can burn in hell with this games horrific stuffed animal exposition machine. They don’t deserve to share screen time with Reynn because Reynn get’s shit done!
Connecting My Dots…or is it Pixels?
I was blessed by my amazing wife (and several friends and family members who pitched in, thank you all so very much) with a Nintendo Switch upon launch day. My library of games (stupidly massive as it already is) contains no less than seven RPGs, six of which are Japanese in origin. Four of those games are attempting to revive the feel of classic JRPGs. I’ve reviewed two of them on this blog, I am Setsuna, and The Longest Five Minutes. No, I’m not done throwing out figures, but be patient with me, we’re getting down to the peanut butter and nougat at the center of this delicious Fast Break bar.
Square-Enix is responsible for three of those RPGs, and all of them are attempting to revive the feel of a 16-Bit game. Turn based combat, loads of text boxes, 2D worlds to explore. Each game is an attempt to draw in players who long for those turn based games from the 90s. Two of these games (I am Setsuna and Lost Sphear) have been hit with widely mixed reviews, due to the their lack of innovation, average story telling, and paint-by-numbers level design. Octopath Traveller has received rave reviews for reasons I’m not even ready to discuss because I’m still working my way through it (in short, play it). I’m not even taking Bravely Default into account, because I’ve not played enough of it to know, but Square-Enix is completely capable of making the kind of games that they made back in the 90s. They have delivered on five wholly unique examples of turn-based RPGs, and, in some of these cases, they have been incredibly successful. Octopath can’t even stay on store shelves in Japan. Let’s add that Japan even received the Seiken Densetsu Collection, a massively desired collection of the first three games in that series, one of which has never seen a proper localization.
Just look at this miraculous game. Currently 41 hours in…
And yet, while Octopath Traveller rakes in high review scores, Dissidia Final Fantasy NT launches to middling review scores, poor sales, and is only keeping up presence due to the drip feed of all of your favorite characters at a slow, scheduled pace. While I can’t confirm any sort of sales figures of Opera Omnia, due to it’s availability as a free-to-play game propped up by microtransactions, the fact that it’s been downloaded to over a million Android devices with an Editor’s Choice award, ranking in the top 500, and #161 on the Apple App Store for RPGs suggests that it’s doing better than its console cousin.
Uncommon Ground
It’s not something that I’ve consciously thought about until recently. It’s more of a reality that settled in on my brain when I recently attended Animazement in Raleigh. There are dozens upon dozens of booths at any of the local conventions that all seem to sell the same products; Pop Vinyl figures and blind box mini toys. It’s the same kind of chintzy crap that I can buy at any GameStop, FYE, and even Barnes and Noble now. There are, in a few cases, detailed statues and the like, which are definitely more interesting than the other products, but for the most part, it’s the cheap disposable toys that cost less than five to ten bucks.
And stores are making a killing off of them.
Pop Vinyl figures are omnipresent at this point. There are blind boxes of countless properties. GameStops are stocking these products and they are selling. I’m not buying, but they are selling. It’s an opportunity to, maybe, just maybe score your favorite character. Which feels pretty lame, and I’m saying this as someone who bought Magic: The Gathering cards for several months (and I have enough of for whenever I want to play a few hands).
It is this section of gaming culture that plays the mobile games. They are the next generation of gamers in the eyes of publishers who frequently see my generation as gamer as becoming obsolete.
The very shape of fandom is alien to me now. Between the shrieking cries of exclusivity coming from ignorant fanboys who are just completely not cool with a woman carrying a Star Wars movie, and the merchandised focused crowds who soak up Pop Vinyl figures en masse, I’m sitting on the outside of it all wondering what the hell I’m doing in this crowd.
I love Star Wars. But I don’t need this kinda crap.
I’m not saying that I’m upset that the crowd is as big as it is – because I’m not. It’s pretty great that we’re living in an age where so many people can find a largely wonderful community in nerdy things because it hasn’t always been that way. Despite the toxic underbelly of so many fandoms, there are so many loving, wonderful people who are there for a good time, and want to share those experiences with others. I know that I’m glad to be around these people because I didn’t get to grow up with that. I had a very small circle of friends, and I got a lot of crap out of people, had a lot of nasty insults thrown my way because I liked weird things and no one understood me. It sucked. And sure, that’s certainly not over. It might even be worse for way too many people, but at least, on a surface level I can see good in the culture despite the horrible things taking place. I’m going to get back on topic now because this isn’t about the politics of fandom so much as it is the marketplace, but I do want to end this section by saying that no matter how you got here, why you like the things you do, I’m glad that you are here. You belong among us, and I want you to be here, no matter how much I may despise your favorite games and anime. This is your culture too, no matter what any –Gate crowd tries to tell you.
A Quick Associated Rant about Anime
I can’t sit back and watch art forms I’ve enjoyed for well over a decade shift into what I deem as mediocre. This isn’t isolated to video games. Anime doesn’t provide the thrills it once did simply because most new series seem to mill the same dumpster; protagonists bearing ridiculous special powers, over-endowed women wearing next to no clothing, paper thin world building, lazy action scenes relying almost entirely on static animation shots, screaming, chibi still shots in lieu of emotion, I could probably go on. I know that fan service has been in anime as long as we’ve been watching it in the West, but one episode of Kill La Kill ruined my patience in the span of about three minutes.
I loved this story so much that I named my Ibanez RG after one of the characters.
Anime used provide a broad selection of interesting stories. Yeah, we had a lot of mecha shows, but there was also stuff like Haibane Renmei, a slice of life story about angelic beings in a purgatory like state. We had The Legend of Black Heaven, an incredibly average show about a middle aged rocker being recruited to fight aliens with the power of rock (no I’m not kidding, go watch it and bask in the silliness). BECK told the story of a teenage rock group coming together before delivering the least satisfying conclusion you could imagine for a music fueled slice of life story. Serial Experiments: Lain meditated on the continuing influence that technology has on our society, and has aged horrifyingly well. The success of shows like Bleach or Inuyashano doubt snuffed out the appeal of these unique, isolated stories from a marketing perspective. I know that there are occasionally new stories that aren’t just repetitive Shonen series (JokerGame was pretty cool), but I don’t hear people talking about these shows. I hear about Attack on Titan, and Kill La Kill. And for the love of God, do not recommend One Punch Man to me because your suggestion will fall on the deafest of ears.
Banish this show to the darkest part of Hell.
I mention this because the popularity of anime in the West and the rise of the popularity of JRPGs parallel. As voice acting became common in JRPGs, anime replaced most attempts of realistic character models for most games in the genre. This is likely because it’s easier to animate lip movement for cell shaded models rather than realistic models. This also means that the stylistic problems of anime have encroached on JRPGs. Take Trails of Cold Steel for example. Trails is a pretty good JRPG, with an involved combat system, and military academy plot that puts Final Fantasy Type-0 to shame. But one of the first scenes of the game sees focal character Rean meeting his female equal (so far as I’m able to tell at 30% into the game) by tripping and planting his face into her cleavage, and then her getting pissed off because he was a klutz. Considering that I saw this trope utilized in Your Lie in April, I feel well within my right to be frustrated by the laziness of character writing in modern Japanese media.
This isn’t funny. This is also not how humans meet.
I want to love anime again, and it’s not working. It’s become a medium for shallow ideas rather than the compelling. Filmmakers such as Makoto Shinkai can still deliver (Your Name was a standout film for 2017 regardless of medium), but on the whole, anime does little but break my heart now.
I’m a Massive Hypocrite
I am part of Square’s nostalgia problem: I’m still holding up their older games as the good ones.
I know about three people just nodded and said “well of course you are; the old ones are better,” and we are all absolutely right. The fact is that, aside from Final Fantasy XV – and even that is a bit of a stretch – there hasn’t been a great Final Fantasy game since the PS2 era, and some would even claim it’s been longer. In that time, the legacy of Final Fantasy VII as been diluted into a muddy blend of terrible-to-average spin offs and one genuinely nonsensical fan bait movie, Final Fantasy XIII damaged the brand with a trilogy of mediocre games, and Final Fantasy XIV launched and relaunched due to a disaster of a first version. It’s been a busy decade and change since Final Fantasy XII arrived.
There was a time when people were excited about this.
And in that time, numerous rereleases and updates of the classics have hit store shelves. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve paid for Final Fantasy IV because it’s embarrassing. I even shelled out for the digital releases of VII/IX (I’m really tired of spelling out the titles, I’m sorry) simply because I wanted the extra challenges that the trophies bring along with that ever-so-pleasing ping when they unlocked. I’ve spent way too much breath telling people that they need to play Final Fantasy VI, or that IX is the greatest of the PS1 era.
I’ve even been realigning my massive video game library, trading in rarely played hardware and games to bulk up my PS1 RPG library because I find myself more interested in that era of gaming than I am in the increasingly homogenized modern era of me-too sandbox games and shooters. I’ve picked up several games, a number of which are from Square, and found that they’re holding up exceptionally well after nearly twenty years.
And it’s still growing…
And, at the end of all of this, I’m not sure what Square-Enix actually thinks about gamers like myself. We are a rare and dying breed, too wound up in the games of the past, and dying for a revival of that era of game design. We are having to take rare pickings from their library, carefully pushing aside games like OperaOmnius in order to pick up games like I am Setsuna, accepting flawed titles because it at least somewhat resembles the company at its heyday. It’s taken Octopath Traveller for them to land a game that fits what I’d like from a throwback game, and I’m happy to have given them my hard earned cash for it. But for Square, I can’t help but wonder what it means for the future of the series, for their company.
Because I doubt it will mean a return to form for the company. The industry is far removed from that of the PS1 era, where new and interesting ideas were risks worth taking (Xenogears would absolutely not happen now). Square-Enix is publishing a sole console RPG that is untethered to a legacy franchise in 2018, and it’s already here. In 1998, SquareSoft (note the distinction of a pre-merger Square) released Parasite Eve, Brave Fencer Musashi, Xenogears, and Western newcomer SaGa Frontier. Three new IPs. One year.
That’s the Square that I’m nostalgic for.
And Where Does That Leave Us?
Again, I’m not going to ask anyone to give up a game that they like simply because it doesn’t fit my image of what I think should be the standards of the company. I helped forge this beast through the purchase of remasters, rereleases and so on. I made this house what it was for you without knowing it, and truthfully, you are enjoying the thing that I hate to have contributed to.
But that doesn’t mean that I can’t hope for change in the future of the studio that I have been so entertained by for the past eighteen years. Hajime Tabata knocked a pretty solid game out with Final Fantasy XV after the game had languished in development hell under the care of Tetsuya Nomura, a director who really doesn’t seem to be capable of the work he keeps being given. Octopath is proving a hit. Tokyo RPG Factor is a thing at all.
I’ve spent over a week revising and expanding this article, and it’s not made me sound any less like a rambling lunatic. However, when I wrote the first draft, I made the claim that I felt like there was no place for me in the JRPG market. That the genre had moved on to trying to appeal to a generation that wasn’t interested in the games that I cut my teeth on throughout the early 2000s. Then, on 8/20/18, GungHo Online announced that they were porting the first entries in the Grandia series to the Nintendo Switch.
I’ve missed this cast so much.
I’m still torn, however. As excited as I am that the Grandia series is resurfacing in any form, it’s a half-measure. I’m thrilled to be able to recommend these superb games to people, but it’s another reissue, another remake. We are still on a slow drip for getting games like Octopath Traveler.
I find some hope in the fact that a publisher sees the potential for a remake of the twenty year old Grandia amidst the seas of Fortnite clones. The Nintendo Switch seems to be a breeding ground for reviving indie titles and classics alike, and I admit that I’m excited every time I see a great game given new life in a hand held, but I won’t be able to claim that we are in this mythical “JRPG Revival” until there are more new games of Octopath caliber. The idea of a JRPG Revival has been tossed around for years, starting with the release of Ni No Kuni back in 2011. I want this to be true, but for now, I don’t think we’re there yet.
WordsThing 