So, since I was feeling so “Meh” towards Disgaea 2, I decided to start playing Growlanser II. And I enjoyed it a lot more than Disgaea 2, because while the story had humour in it, the game seemed far more focused and consistent in tone than Disgaea 2. I pushed through it a lot and eventually saved after one part where the MC had to do a fight alone and used up all his MP and then headed on to the next battle … which was a massive boss battle. Which I was underlevelled for. So the immediate answer would be to simply level up a little more — as I did for other battles — and then tackle it. Except that about the only way I knew to recharge MP was at an inn … and the game had cut me off from the previous areas and, more importantly, from towns with inns. And I only had one save, and the auto-save had advanced past that point. So, my choices were to restart the game from the beginning or to ditch it. I was tempted to restart — since the game was fun enough — but then something came along that freed up my TV from the thrall of “Dark Shadows”, and so I decided instead to move on to “Mass Effect”. Which I started last night, getting only to the first combat scene with my character based on Helena Cain from the new Battlestar Galactica (whom, I guess, will end up going Renegade as I walk through the series).
So, let me talk a bit about Growlanser II, and compare it a bit to games in the same vein like Disgaea 2 and Record of Agarest War. Unlike the latter two, Growlanser II is based around random encounters to gain XP. So in order to level up, you generally have to walk around a lot to trigger encounters that you can then win to get XP, while in both of the other games you can basically trigger fights as you want them. So, Growlanser II is a bit annoying that way. It’s also annoying that you don’t gain very much XP from winning fights, but from attacking and killing things in the fights. This is actually a fairly nice way to generate XP … except that if you have one character that is better at doing that — Hans was that for me, with rapid attacks that did a lot of damage to weaker characters — they will gain XP a lot faster than anyone else. Add to it that for magic-focused characters for even remotely even fights you aren’t going to put them into the front lines to attack anyone, that means that you need them to cast spells to get XP. But casting spells takes time and uses MP. Which means that you’ll have to go to inns to pay to get that restored. Which is a bit annoying when for the small fights you’re in, you may not need to use spells, but need to just to level characters up. And if the enemies are weaker, the stronger characters might kill them too quickly for the other characters to get attacks off, especially if they have ranged attacks. Unless you just sit them out of the fight, of course. But that might make the fight too hard. So it’s a bit of a conundrum.
That being said, the fights are challenging and will require a knowledge of tactics and a use of the proper equipment without being as overwhelming on it and presenting as overwhelming a set of choices as Record of Agarest War, which is why I was able to proceed so far in it. The story is interesting enough, although it often seems a bit rushed, with major events starting and then ending in a very short period of in-game time. And there are a lot of character interactions to explore that you might miss if you don’t stop to check everything out. But it is interesting enough and certainly moves along quickly enough that you don’t get bored, and it is definitely a game that I will pick up again at some point in the future.
New Nocturnal Pursuits …
May 13, 2013So, last week I wandered downtown to get some exercise and do some shopping, and ended up picking up a number of new games … including Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne. Now, it’s well-known that I’m a huge fan of the Persona series, especially Persona 3 and Persona 4. Persona 2 was okay but I just wasn’t that interested in continuing with it, and so moved on to other games (I really should pick it up again at some point). So seeing a brand new copy of the game for the PS2 was something that really caught my attention, especially since with the hockey playoffs being on and my getting into watching Star Trek: TNG and Star Trek: DS9 again it would be nice to have something to play that I can play while watching TV. So Nocturne might fill that role.
Except that, so far at least, it really isn’t the sort of game that can do that, because it suffers from some common flaws that plague JRPGs.
I’ve commented in other places about my tendency to get lost. If you run random encounters like most JRPGs do — as you wander around every so often an encounter shows up and you’re sucked into a fight — then looking for the right way to go becomes incredibly annoying. You wander around for a bit, hit a crossroads, wonder if you’ve taken that one before, start towards it … and get sucked into a fight. Finish the fight, and then try to remember what you were doing. Rinse, repeat. Add in the subgenre of JRPGs that make it difficult in some way to figure out where to go, and those that have save points that are far apart, and you have a recipe for annoyance.
The problem with the fights is always this: either they are simple and so no challenge, or they are actually a challenge. If it’s the former, then they’re just annoying: you get no resources from them, no XP, and they take no thought on your part. They’re boring busywork, there only because the game system generates random encounters that way. Sometimes, however, they’re actually a challenge. Which means that they drain resources — MP, potions, abilities, etc — while all you’re doing is trying to find your way to the end. Which is often an end boss. So you use up the things you’d want to save for the end boss just getting there, and not because the game seems designed to do that but because you have a tendency to get lost wandering around the place.
Nocturne has all of this in spades. The encounters vary between trivial and really hard — in the same section. So sometimes you’re using resources, and sometimes you aren’t. And you can’t predict this in advance, so if you save a medicine because the fight isn’t going to be hard you might find yourself in trouble when it suddenly is hard. The areas are often confusing and have strange barriers, and loop back in on each other. There’s also a wide open city to explore and some of the new events are far away from the others, which also have some strange barriers. Random encounters are frequent, even when you’re just going somewhere. And when you exit a room, the view switches so that it is incredibly easy to end up heading back the exact way you came instead of proceeding down the hall … but you want to enter every room because that way you’ll get all the chests and spirits that you might need to advance the game. Finally, throughout the entire game I have found exactly two save points, both in the hospital … which is on the other side of the city from the park and shopping area that I’m hunting around now. I spent a long time looking for a save point, and then finally had to trek all the way back there, just to save so that I could stop for the night. Getting random encounters all the way.
So far, the story is interesting but seems a bit undeveloped. The intro was interesting but probably told too much about your relationship with your teacher, and when you finally track down one of your friends you get what amounts to a non-interactive cutscene she heads off into demon-infested areas to try to find more survivors. Maybe if I’d said something else things might have changed, but there were no obvious indications of what to say. That was very anti-climactic for such an important scene. So even the story isn’t encouraging me to play it again.
I may give it another try, but with the above annoyances it doesn’t seem like it fits as an evening game, and I already have TOR and ME1 to cover off the games I want to play while there’s nothing good on TV.
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