With a rather odd name and an appropriately odd concept to go along with it, Theatrythm Final Fantasy is (in my opinion) the latest in the small-but-growing number of non-rerelease/remake 3DS games worth purchasing. It is a hybrid RPG/Rhythm game, using the music from final fantasy games in a very Elite Beat Agents way.
Personally, I think the RPG and Rhythm game elements could be better integrated in this game. The game does a fairly good job of making them relevant to each other, but ultimately doesn't do it in as good a way as you would hope. For instance - the scoring system doesn't care about the RPG elements of the game at all; any character, item, or ability selections that you make for the level are completely irrelevant in terms of your final score. That isn't to say they're completely irrelevant overall - your characters' collective HP (and any defensive items/abilities you choose) determine how many notes you can miss and still live, and various abilities will help you kill monsters more quickly or walk further in different types of levels, giving you better loot or more experience for your characters. It's nice that there is progression for your characters, but the fact that they don't actually help you get the highest scores for each level (other than letting you live longer) is frustrating.
Similarly, in the Dark Note mode, the game is all about character advancement - this mode is much more focused on leveling your characters and collecting loot. You go through a "field" level first, getting some loot and experience and determining which bosses you can then face in the second, "battle" level. You definitely want to kill the bosses in the battle levels, as they drop the best loot - including the crystals that unlock more characters. As you level up, you get dark notes of a higher difficulty that give correspondingly better loot.
As an aside, the dark note sections use a mere 20 of the 70+ songs that come with the game, and never use DLC songs. Personally, I think designing the game this way was a rather foolish choice, especially considering this mode will be one that more hardcore players will sink a *lot* of time into.
In the dark note sections, the two parts of the game are integrated better, but it still isn't perfect. For one, you're still assigned a score based solely on your rhythm game performance, but it isn't saved and is therefore essentially completely irrelevant. However, it does take a combination of RPG prep and rhythm game skill to actually get good loot from this system, which is nice; however, one problem I have is that the battle songs are still of fixed length in this mode, meaning that you finish them without ever getting to the bosses if you stack defensive abilities or simply aren't using high enough level characters - meaning you can "win" without actually getting what you want. Personally, I'd make the songs loop until either your characters or the boss is dead in this mode.
Indeed, I'd consider making the battle music loop until a boss enemy is dead for every mode. Really, the battle levels end up feeling less like battles and more like, well, rhythm game levels in which you happen to be watching some guys beating up some other guys with little investment in the outcome. You do want to kill the enemies to get loot, but really, while you may care a little bit about how your guys are doing, the game really doesn't seem to give a hoot, which is frustrating. No record of how well you did in battles is recorded anywhere, in any mode - only the scores in series and challenge mode, as well as simply if you completed the level or not. In dark note mode, the boss's identity and loot is recorded when you defeat them, but there's really no tangible, lasting reward from defeating bosses beyond loot that they happened to drop when defeated. Mind you, the loot can include new ability scrolls and collectibles that can unlock new characters once you get 8 of them, so there is definitely progression, but there is still a distinct feeling that the game doesn't really care how well you do (which you do care about, in dark note mode especially), and in the dark note mode, doesn't even really care too much if you do win any particular level, as it just throws a new level at you whenever you beat one - which, after you beat 50 or so of them, is kind of underwhelming as a reward.
But it is quite a fun game, most definitely; don't get me wrong. The music quality seems to range from above average to outstanding, the character selection (though I might have fewer unlocked from the get-go, and give them more distinct abilities and stats at level 1) and rpg customization is nice, the difficulty range is very solid (though I might unlock the middle difficulty from the get-go, rather than requiring the, for veterans, yawn-inducing basic difficulty to be defeated first), there is quite a lot of content and rewards for completing it (mostly in the form of new characters, but also other collectibles), and the core gameplay is quite solid as well. I definitely like it, but it has distinct flaws.
On a side note, this isn't the first Rhythm Game/RPG hybrid that I've reviewed here - I have also reveiwed the fun little indie game called "Sequence." Sequence is much heavier on the RPG side of things - it has an actual story, VA's, equipment, and fights that end when the monster dies, rather than when the song ends. Of course, those are just design choices, but I do think that Theatrythm could've benefited from an increased RPG focus, and Sequence shows a way that that could've been done. Similarly, Sequence could've benefited from having more (and better) songs to lay its RPG systems on top of, as well as better and deeper character customization.
Overall, here's my design lessons of the day for this game:
-If you're going to have a mode that the players are going to play over and over, try to make is as varied as possible (while still keeping it true to the game, of course).
-Align the rewards and acknowledgements your game gives with the goals of the players. Oftentimes, this isn't a problem by the structure of the game, but if you have optional objectives that you put in place for the player, be sure to properly acknowledge when the player hits them.
-If you're going to hybridize two genres, make sure you incorporate the best aspects of both (that fits in your concept, obviously), and incorporate them in a way that does them justice, rather than just slapping the trappings of one onto the other.
-While unlocking higher difficulties by beating lower ones isn't a bad idea in principle, forcing players to start at the absolute lowest difficulty and work their way up from there - especially in genres where skills from one game are transferable to other games (rhythm games being among the best examples of this) - is something that should be avoided.
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Thursday, July 5, 2012
Review: Kid Icarus: Uprising
Kid Icarus: Uprising
Kid Icarus: Uprising is an action game that was released a few months ago on the 3DS, and it very quickly became one of my favorite games. It simply has a ton of content, and its basic gameplay mechanics are quite a lot of fun. Add on a relatively solid online multiplayer, you have a real winner. Of course, it's still not without flaws - the online multiplayer isn't as good as it could be, and the controls, while usable, are difficult to use.
First of all, the single-player content is extremely extensive. There are twenty-five levels, most of which consist of one aerial, star-fox ish part, and a ground part which isn't as easily comparable to any other game, but kind of resembles God of War - the closest analogy I can think of is a 3-d Mega Man X. Regardless, both gameplay styles are fairly fast-paced, and both are pretty solid. The controls for the ground section are a bit dodgy, though - aiming and shooting without two joysticks, or a keyboard and mouse, takes some getting used to. Also, holding the 3DS in such a way as to use the controls (and not being extremely uncomfortable after a few minutes), while definitely possible, requires the use of a non-standard grip or using the 3DS stand that came with the game. Personally, I don't really know how they could have improved the controls. They definitely put a lot of effort into making them customizable, and clearly tried to make it work (thus the stand). But they're still awkward, regardless.
But anyway, the actual replayability for the single-player game comes from three things - forging custom weapons (along with collecting weapons and powers), the difficulty slider increasing the difficulty of any level to an extremely high level, and the achievement system. Forging custom weapons typically requires a fair bit of farming to collect weapons with properties, and then finding a way to combine them into something that you want. Fusion is very fickle, though, and to get a weapon with *exactly* what you want, you'll need to do a *lot* of farming. Personally, I generally like how they did it, but I feel that some greater degree of control over the final product would be very helpful. It is almost entirely out of the player's control if a weapon fusion results in anything usable or not, and while that does add replayability, it also really hurts usability. Also, power collection is quite uncontrollable as well - some way to exert some sort of control over the powers you collect would be very helpful.
The difficulty slider in this game is one of my favorite in any game I've ever seen. The difficulty goes from completely trivial (0.0) to brutally difficult (9.0), and everywhere in between. They really nailed it here. The difficulty scale primarily controls how much damage the enemies do, how much health they have, how fast (and how homing) their bullets are, how often they shoot, and how fast they are. Sadly, it very rarely (if ever) changes any abilities that enemies have, and it almost never adds any new ones. It also only rarely increases the number of enemies that spawn. Still, the changes that are there change the game enough to make it a very different experience when you jump up 2 or more full numbers in difficulty. Honestly, I would change extremely little about the difficulty slider. I will say that the bosses have (far) too little health on anything but the highest difficulties, so I'd increase that, and I would probably add a new ability to each boss if they were played on 9.0 difficulty. Still, those are relatively minor changes to a very good system.
Lastly, the achievement system. It's pretty typical stuff, and encourages you to play in ways that you normally wouldn't, making the game more interesting, and rewarding you for your accomplishments. I'd change one or two things about it - one, the trophies (idols, technically) that you receive through achievements can still be found other ways, which I think is silly - they should be exclusive, in order to be more significant rewards - especially the ones that you get by accomplishing some of the most difficult tasks in the game, like boss battles on hard - perhaps the single hardest thing to do in the game, and your only tangible reward for it is a trophy that you're almost guaranteed to already have at that point. Secondly, I'd get rid of the achievements that more or less amount to "Run through this level on 0.0 using a certain weapon." They're not hard, they're not particularly exciting, and I don't think that they really add anything other than a bit of mindless replayability. Don't get me wrong, I was having enough fun with the game that I did them anyway, but there was definitely room for improvement with them.
And, of course, there's the online multiplayer. Fast-paced, fun, with a solid degree of customization - the gameplay itself is great. However, it really suffers from the lack of any sort of ranking system - meaning that without hunting down people to add to your friends list, the level of challenge the online multiplayer gives will vary greatly from game to game. Additionally, a few more modes would have been nice - FFA and Team Vs are nice, but adding in some sort of co-op, ideally in the form of a horde mode, for example, would have been amazing. What's particularly frustrating is that there is a level in the game that is, more or less, a horde mode, and you even do it co-op with a computer-controlled ally. I really surprised that they would have something like that in the game, but then not make the obvious leap to putting it into multiplayer.
In regards to the online ranking system, though, I have one theory as to why they didn't add it - because the game, I think, is not very balanced, and thus the online multiplayer could devolve into using one of a handful of broken strategies (and not always fun ones - extreme homing shots coming through wall, invisible, invincible snipers, etc), or just dying. If this was the case, and there was then an intentional design decision to not put a ranking system in, then I do respect that decision, but I still disagree with it. Even if online multiplayer at high skill/gear levels wasn't very balanced, I still think that having both a ranked and unranked system would be preferable to the current system. I personally (though I haven't tested the system extensively) don't think that the ranked multiplayer at high levels would be too incredibly overcentralized to suck the fun out of the game, and even though there would be less people in unranked multiplayer if there was a ranked option, I think there would be enough that it would be a viable alternative to playing ranked if you didn't want to deal with ranked shenanigans.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game. But it does have its issues, as I've detailed, and I think that it could have been a noticeably better game with a few changes. Here's what I feel I learned from this game:
-Having a *good* difficulty slider (and ideally, a gear system to support it) adds a great deal of replayability to a game.
-Online multiplayer needs a ranked option in order to remain fun over the long-term for anyone that doesn't feel like seeking out people to play with on the internet.
-More multiplayer modes, more better. Having some sort of PvE cooperative multiplayer that emulates the single-player game could be a good way to get people to transition from single-player to multi-player.
Kid Icarus: Uprising is an action game that was released a few months ago on the 3DS, and it very quickly became one of my favorite games. It simply has a ton of content, and its basic gameplay mechanics are quite a lot of fun. Add on a relatively solid online multiplayer, you have a real winner. Of course, it's still not without flaws - the online multiplayer isn't as good as it could be, and the controls, while usable, are difficult to use.
First of all, the single-player content is extremely extensive. There are twenty-five levels, most of which consist of one aerial, star-fox ish part, and a ground part which isn't as easily comparable to any other game, but kind of resembles God of War - the closest analogy I can think of is a 3-d Mega Man X. Regardless, both gameplay styles are fairly fast-paced, and both are pretty solid. The controls for the ground section are a bit dodgy, though - aiming and shooting without two joysticks, or a keyboard and mouse, takes some getting used to. Also, holding the 3DS in such a way as to use the controls (and not being extremely uncomfortable after a few minutes), while definitely possible, requires the use of a non-standard grip or using the 3DS stand that came with the game. Personally, I don't really know how they could have improved the controls. They definitely put a lot of effort into making them customizable, and clearly tried to make it work (thus the stand). But they're still awkward, regardless.
But anyway, the actual replayability for the single-player game comes from three things - forging custom weapons (along with collecting weapons and powers), the difficulty slider increasing the difficulty of any level to an extremely high level, and the achievement system. Forging custom weapons typically requires a fair bit of farming to collect weapons with properties, and then finding a way to combine them into something that you want. Fusion is very fickle, though, and to get a weapon with *exactly* what you want, you'll need to do a *lot* of farming. Personally, I generally like how they did it, but I feel that some greater degree of control over the final product would be very helpful. It is almost entirely out of the player's control if a weapon fusion results in anything usable or not, and while that does add replayability, it also really hurts usability. Also, power collection is quite uncontrollable as well - some way to exert some sort of control over the powers you collect would be very helpful.
The difficulty slider in this game is one of my favorite in any game I've ever seen. The difficulty goes from completely trivial (0.0) to brutally difficult (9.0), and everywhere in between. They really nailed it here. The difficulty scale primarily controls how much damage the enemies do, how much health they have, how fast (and how homing) their bullets are, how often they shoot, and how fast they are. Sadly, it very rarely (if ever) changes any abilities that enemies have, and it almost never adds any new ones. It also only rarely increases the number of enemies that spawn. Still, the changes that are there change the game enough to make it a very different experience when you jump up 2 or more full numbers in difficulty. Honestly, I would change extremely little about the difficulty slider. I will say that the bosses have (far) too little health on anything but the highest difficulties, so I'd increase that, and I would probably add a new ability to each boss if they were played on 9.0 difficulty. Still, those are relatively minor changes to a very good system.
Lastly, the achievement system. It's pretty typical stuff, and encourages you to play in ways that you normally wouldn't, making the game more interesting, and rewarding you for your accomplishments. I'd change one or two things about it - one, the trophies (idols, technically) that you receive through achievements can still be found other ways, which I think is silly - they should be exclusive, in order to be more significant rewards - especially the ones that you get by accomplishing some of the most difficult tasks in the game, like boss battles on hard - perhaps the single hardest thing to do in the game, and your only tangible reward for it is a trophy that you're almost guaranteed to already have at that point. Secondly, I'd get rid of the achievements that more or less amount to "Run through this level on 0.0 using a certain weapon." They're not hard, they're not particularly exciting, and I don't think that they really add anything other than a bit of mindless replayability. Don't get me wrong, I was having enough fun with the game that I did them anyway, but there was definitely room for improvement with them.
And, of course, there's the online multiplayer. Fast-paced, fun, with a solid degree of customization - the gameplay itself is great. However, it really suffers from the lack of any sort of ranking system - meaning that without hunting down people to add to your friends list, the level of challenge the online multiplayer gives will vary greatly from game to game. Additionally, a few more modes would have been nice - FFA and Team Vs are nice, but adding in some sort of co-op, ideally in the form of a horde mode, for example, would have been amazing. What's particularly frustrating is that there is a level in the game that is, more or less, a horde mode, and you even do it co-op with a computer-controlled ally. I really surprised that they would have something like that in the game, but then not make the obvious leap to putting it into multiplayer.
In regards to the online ranking system, though, I have one theory as to why they didn't add it - because the game, I think, is not very balanced, and thus the online multiplayer could devolve into using one of a handful of broken strategies (and not always fun ones - extreme homing shots coming through wall, invisible, invincible snipers, etc), or just dying. If this was the case, and there was then an intentional design decision to not put a ranking system in, then I do respect that decision, but I still disagree with it. Even if online multiplayer at high skill/gear levels wasn't very balanced, I still think that having both a ranked and unranked system would be preferable to the current system. I personally (though I haven't tested the system extensively) don't think that the ranked multiplayer at high levels would be too incredibly overcentralized to suck the fun out of the game, and even though there would be less people in unranked multiplayer if there was a ranked option, I think there would be enough that it would be a viable alternative to playing ranked if you didn't want to deal with ranked shenanigans.
Overall, I really enjoyed this game. But it does have its issues, as I've detailed, and I think that it could have been a noticeably better game with a few changes. Here's what I feel I learned from this game:
-Having a *good* difficulty slider (and ideally, a gear system to support it) adds a great deal of replayability to a game.
-Online multiplayer needs a ranked option in order to remain fun over the long-term for anyone that doesn't feel like seeking out people to play with on the internet.
-More multiplayer modes, more better. Having some sort of PvE cooperative multiplayer that emulates the single-player game could be a good way to get people to transition from single-player to multi-player.
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