Mana Khemia 2 is supposed to be released here on Wednesday, and I have my pre-order filed; it’s particularly timely for me because I completed the first Mana Khemia only two weeks ago. The more I think about that game, the more I suspect that– unless I’ve missed something huge– the game was released without being fully completed (perhaps due to a looming deadline?)

Mild spoilers follow, but I’m going to be vague. Those who want to avoid spoilers regarding thematic and/or oblique references to late-game plot are advised not to read further. Due to the nature of the post, comments may contain more severe spoilers; read at your own risk.

I believe that the game may have been conceived to have multiple endings, and that the studio only completed the less complicated “bad ending”, possibly due to a time crunch. My first thought on this was simply that the ending felt rushed and unsophisticated, and admittedly I did not like the protagonist’s choice nor the game’s portrayal of it as a satisfactory conclusion. I find its easy dismissal unrealistic, a quick shortcut to a happy ending. Moreover, though, there were several story elements that seem unresolved.

The biggest thing missing is that Isolde’s revelation about the history of alchemy seems too large for its plot role– disclosure of a shocking and highly forbidden secret that changes the entire face of alchemist-Mana relations, a tremendously complex element used simply in order to provoke Vayne. I understand that the studio is given to complex background world-building, but they are not given to throwing in enormously weighty pieces of information to play trivial roles. And what of the boss in that scene? I find it strange that the game never returned to any of this, and I imagine that if Vayne had not made the choice he did in the ending, there would be plenty of reason to return to it.

There are small things too: the ending itself seemed too simple and too soon after the revelation, and the final choice– though treated as the ideal fix for everything– felt like a snap decision made without a good night’s sleep on the matter. Several of the party members seemed to know the urgency of rushing through the final dungeon, despite not having any clues that they should be in any hurry (unless, I suppose, they were concerned with getting home in time to study for final exams); it felt uncharacteristically forced. Zeppel’s reaction to the campus-wide rumour about Vayne, after his three years of support, was surprising and disappointing as well as thin, but remained unaddressed. There is an extra week on the schedule between the final boss and graduation, which violates everything that has been established about pacing in the game. And God’s Scar has suspiciously epic, unique, final-dungeon-esque music for an unusually simplistic map that is never officially used, in contrast with the real final dungeon, which has an insufficiently epic feel in music as well as in everything else.

An ending that tied up all of the story’s emotional threads would have required more setup and elaboration, and it may be that the studio only had time to finish a quicker, lesser ending. But I wince at the way everyone treats Vayne’s choice as the perfect solution to the problem; as I see it, the choice that was made raises a good many new problems, it pretends there will be no side-effects for Vayne, and it fails to solve the problem that caused the story’s core conflict to begin with when a perfect solution was available at no cost and was even suggested by one of the characters. None of this makes me particularly happy, although I am proud of the characters for graduating in the midst of such personal turmoil.

For what it’s worth, I do think that the game’s primary revelation was handled extremely well; like a good murder mystery, all the evidence is present, but the player is led astray from a truth that is in plain sight. Admittedly, I am very fond of cats. (Judging from the detail and realism in Sulpher’s many animations, I suspect someone on the development team is too.)

I know it’s been ages since I’ve posted in this blog, but that doesn’t mean I don’t still have things to say about video games. So I’m going to defy the irrational little voice in my head saying, “No! It’s been too long, so you shouldn’t post in here!” and do it anyway.

I’ve been playing Steal Princess, which is cute until the gameplay starts. It’s a puzzle game with a fun premise and a promising beginning, as well as an anime intro that visually resembles the love child of Cowboy Bebop’s and Utena’s but has bland music. Unfortunately, after coasting along for a bit, the fun stopped on a dime.

The game is about a female thief who has to become a hero and rescue a kidnapped prince, which is refreshing; and although the title makes no sense in context, I can imagine wanting to use “princess” instead of “prince” to attract little girls who might enjoy a game with a glamorous female protagonist. It’s silly and fourth-wall-breaky, and that was fun at first– but once I got into the puzzle levels, the incessant banter of the characters started to drive me nuts. It interrupted my gameplay for many dialogue boxes of predictable, repetitious wisecracks that are meant to lighten up exposition about the game controls but don’t actually explain them very well. The same joke is only funny so many times. Still, I could have put up with that if the gameplay had been good– which it was, but only for a little while.

It was fun for the first few levels, and then it abruptly became not fun for the sole reason that the controls are awful. If I used the buttons I couldn’t choose where to retarget my whip, and if I used the stylus it didn’t always register my tap even when I think I hit the target dead-on (which is why I hate stylus-based reflex challenges to begin with). My stylus tap wouldn’t register half the time, and then I’d fall into the water and have to start the level over again. To begin with, I’m not thrilled with puzzle games being so dependent on reflex tasks– but when the controls aren’t registering input on a time-sensitive task, that just instantly kills the fun.

Well, that was that. Steal Princess: how to convince little girls that games aren’t fun and they’re no good at them.

I’ve spent most of my gaming time in Second Life recently, so I haven’t had much to blog about, but I did try the SNES game Castlevania IV for the first time. Are this game and Super Ghouls ‘n’ Ghosts completely ripped off from each other? I’m not sure how two games that seem to have come out at approximately the same time can be so similar. Granted, I don’t know how much of this was set up by their respective precursors, as these are the earliest ones of their type I’ve played– but little things like the level advancement screen and even the rotating level are, no pun intended, eerily alike.

I also picked up Suikoden Tierkreis for the DS last week. So far, I’ve been unhappy with the clumsy way that it’s handled predestination; I expected better out of a Suikoden game. The game seems to want to blame every social ill upon the ruling society’s abstract philosophy instead of the corrupt rulers themselves, and that strikes me as being unlikely as well as out of line with the rest of the series. I don’t like the idea of fate any more than the next person, but historical societies that have believed in predestination were aware that it doesn’t work like that. Even if it turns out that the young naive heroes were all wrong, it’s still a strawman.

Well, we’ll see how it goes– hopefully it’ll improve. I do have high standards for the series that cause me to complain whenever it drops the ball, but in fact, the game is fun so far.

Last but not least, a friend and I are slugging through Donkey Kong Country 2 (SNES) bit by bit. Giant hives of bees, oh my.

So, I finished Ar tonelico 2 last week (Cloche’s path, third Reyvateil’s ending). It was a good follow-up to the first and a good bridge for the trilogy, but in my opinion it doesn’t stand well alone.

Initially, I had thought that it had promise to be greater than the first game, but that plateaued around the end of the first phase and it kept up a steady level of similar dramatic tension throughout. Even when the stakes were raised, the emotional investment was not. It was good for world- and character-building, and it probably helped establish some important things in preparation for the third game, but it did not snowball into the high climax that vindicates a 30-hour-minimum work of fiction. I would not recommend it to anyone who had not already finished the first game with the best ending, but it is a worthwhile experience for those who have.

After finishing Ar tonelico 2, I putzed around in the world for a while getting some of the optional things I hadn’t done. Ideally this game needs at least two more playthroughs, three if I want to see every ending, but I need a break before I play it again. Normally I’d even take a break before getting into another RPG, but I had stopped partway through Mother 3, and was eager to get back to it; I’m in chapter 8 closing in on the ending. Since I have a long weekend coming up, I might be able to finish it soon.

I was sick for a while last week, and I couldn’t sleep last night, so I found the rest of the puzzles in Professor Layton and the Curious Village, and unlocked the Riddle Master’s door to get at the last three. Now there’s only one final puzzle behind that door for me to finish and 100% the game– and it’s another sliding block puzzle. Nooooooo! I’ll probably just mess with it until I get the red block out, which is an unsatisfying method of solving puzzles, but I don’t know how to solve this kind (with the differently-shaped blocks) other than brute force or aimless fiddling.

One of my favourite things about the Ar tonelico series is that you can’t dodge the consequences of your actions simply by being the protagonist. You are held accountable to the same moral standards as the enemy, and you can’t just get away with the end justifying the means. Sometimes both sides look like the bad guy, and the game doesn’t try to excuse your side just because you’re on it.

The first game has a little of this, but it was downplayed because the story doesn’t revolve around political factions as much as the second game’s does. AT1 hints at it in the beginning, but you don’t see it really blossom until the end of the game. I think in AT2, the story’s genuine acceptance that both sides have a sincere point, and neither is pure evil but neither is perfect, has finally come into the spotlight.

I’m a big fan of that approach. When I was a kid I didn’t really notice, but nowadays I can’t help being critical of games that oversimplify and let the heroes get away with being as callously destructive as the enemy. Most RPGs tend to let that fly (other than the Suikoden series, which as far as I’m concerned is in a class of its own w.r.t. understanding of politics, morals, and the human heart), and I’m used to putting up with it, but it’s truly refreshing to see a game that applies a consistent set of standards to everyone in the story.

A mini-update, since I know a few of you are big Ar tonelico fans.

Apparently there was some concern that “Musume Power” was going to be translated as “Hymn Code”, which would be weird, completely irrelevant, and misleading since 3rd gens don’t have Hymn Codes. Worry not– it’s actually been translated as “Girl Power”, after all.

Some other translated names: Luca Trulyworth (which I hear is an error, as “waath” is “rebirth” in Hymmnos), Cloche (probably correct), and Jacqli (don’t worry, Ayulsa will brainwash you out of it). Sadly, everyone’s favourite snack is called Funboons.

The reason I’ve blogged so little this month is that I’ve been spending my gaming time on Second Life, which is a lot of fun but mostly doesn’t spark gaming-related thoughts (unless you count thoughts about its user interface for 3-D modelling). My home internet is currently down, though, and my pre-ordered copy of Ar tonelico 2 just arrived. This suggests a certain obvious activity to keep me busy while I can’t get into Lindenworld.

I’ve only played an hour or so into the game, and most of my comments have already been observed by fandom: the dialogue could use less innuendo, the main character is considerably more sensible than Lyner (although perhaps a little too cool to seem honestly comfortable), and so on. The opening is rather fanservicey, but it can also be read as cooperative and nurturing: two Reyvateils working together, not in competition for the dating sim protagonist. As for the opening plus the game beginning, I’m already curious about a few matters and a few flashes of things I’ve briefly seen. If AT1 is any indication, the briefer the glimpse of something, the more important it’ll be in the end.

In the past week, I’ve been playing a ROM of Mother 3/EarthBound 2, with a translation patch by the dedicated people at fobby.net who gave their time to rework this game for the sake of the fandom. As someone who liked EarthBound, but not enough to try to play the sequel with a walkthrough/script or read up on it or anything, I am one of those who would never have experienced the game without their translation. These people have worked hard in their free time without being paid to translate and patch an entire game, just because they cared about it that much, and because of that they’ve been able to bring it to more people who can appreciate it. Such an admirable, dedicated group of fans deserves praise, and I intend to deliver them some, as soon as I dare set foot on the interactive part of their site where spoilers are everywhere.

I have to say I’ve been quite impressed with the translation so far; as I would expect from a group of such dedicated, enthusiastic fans, they’ve done a great job bringing back the feeling of the Mother 2/EarthBound 1 translation. I can’t speak for how close they are to the original, but I trust them to be faithful. Even things like enemy names and English-language puns ring true. These translators deserve a giant helping of applause, and possibly jobs in the industry translating more of our RPGs.

As far as that industry goes, I’m in chapter seven at present, and discovering one major potential reason why Nintendo said they had no plans to bring it over to America: censorship and political concerns. The Magypsies are a group of magic-wielding, millenia-old, flamboyant lipsticked men with five o’clock shadow, and they’re turning out to be a huge part of the plot. They’re sturdily-built limp-wristed men who sit in giant pink heart-shaped glittery chairs. You can’t pretend they aren’t transvestites, and you also can’t pretend they’re really women, no matter what you make the dialogue say. They’re an extremely noticeable, important part of the game, and they are definitely the Good Guys. In Japan, people probably just laugh, but in America’s political climate, I don’t know how Nintendo would bring this game over without a lot of conservative Americans having a fit at the idea that their kids might play a game containing some transvestite characters (and ones who are good people, at that).

Gameplay is a little frustrating because the ROM– and its sound– aren’t perfectly synched with my button-pressing, which makes the rhythm-game aspect of the battles disappointingly chancy. I can actually hear the lag between the sound of my pushing a button and the sound of an enemy getting hit; emulation lag has never been this severe of an issue for me because my timing is often linked to also-lagging cues, but now it’s getting all up in my gameplay by interrupting rhythms that aren’t lagging in my head. Of course, the rhythm isn’t always meant to be smooth, either– the composers have made a great soundtrack full of battle themes that change tempo all the time. Some of these songs are going to take a lot of memorising to begin with. At least I have something to do during the random encounters.

At any rate, I’m enjoying this game (I did mention heaps of appreciation, right?) Due to life circumstances, I might have to put it on hold for a while in January, but part of me wants to just keep on playing.

I don’t usually play MMORPGs– I had a brief flirtation with Final Fantasy XI a few years ago, but my friend’s sister was always on it, which kept me from putting in enough steady time to get addicted. I’m kind of glad I didn’t blow too much time on it, because I don’t think that MMORPGs are my thing: the social world is too full of inarticulate teenagers, and the objectives are insufficiently concrete (and insufficiently motivated) for me to feel like I’m working towards something satisfying.

However, Second Life is an exception. It’s perhaps the only MMO game that doesn’t actually involve combat unless you go out of your way to join an RP group. Most of the focus in the world is one’s personal image and/or artistic creation. In short, it’s one of the few games that actually has creativity as a primary objective– most games, by nature, are not set up for it– and that intrigues me. I don’t play consistently, but every once in a while I pick it up for a bit and spend several days totally immersed in it.

When I first joined Second Life, I felt a little odd about the way it encourages people to spend money on it– even creating content costs you in-game currency for the necessary uploads, and because it’s creative you have a lot of people selling things, so there’s a big emphasis on spending currency to buy things. And the easiest way by far to get the in-game currency is to pay Linden Labs for it in US dollars, because although you can get a job in-game or “camp” to earn money, these things earn you a tiny pittance, and never enough to afford anything good. Although you can certainly play the game without spending any money and you can find lots of nifty things for free, being stingy in-game is not fun, because the nicest things always cost something.

So my biggest disappointment was that I felt like I was paying money to have fun in this game even though it was supposedly free. I have never liked the idea of spending real-world money to buy game items. Admittedly, you don’t have to spend very much in terms of real-world currency to have plenty in-game, and it’s not going to hurt my pocketbook to shell out the equivalent of $2 US to buy a dragon avatar and fly about the world as a giant golden hydra. I simply had some mental resistance to it.

Lately, though, I’ve been seeing signs in Second Life about digital content creators’ associations and about resisting art theft. I think it finally sunk in for me that these people are artists who would like to get paid for their work. And it occurred to me to examine my resistance to spending money in the game. I realised that I was resisting based on an old idea I had about traditional MMORPGs: that equipment should be earned and not purchased with real-world money, and that using your credit card to equip yourself was a cheater’s trick; that if you spent enough time in the game to need good equipment, you should already be spending enough time actually playing the game to afford it with the money you got from quest objectives; and that if you had to spend real-world money to get enough equipment just to survive the beginning quests, then the game itself was poorly calibrated. But that situation was different. That was paying the game owners for your equipment, which you could also be earning by simply playing the game as it was meant to be played for the things that you were meant to enjoy. The situation is different in Second Life, where you’re really paying the digital artists who spent so much time to make these creations, and where my normal objections do not apply. I usually like to support artists and buy things from them because I believe that art is a job that people work hard at and should be paid for what they accomplish. And, now that I reflect on it, it would be good to support the artists of Second Life by making occasional purchases from them, as well.

So I suppose I no longer feel cheated that I might have to shell out actual money if I want to buy something nice in Second Life. I’m not being ripped off or cheating; I’m doing my part to support the hard work that people are putting into making nice things.

I finished Flashback: The Quest For Identity, and I have to say it’s actually quite good. The game mechanics– the graphics and scale, and the motions and puzzles– reminded me a bit of Prince of Persia for the SNES, and that makes me very happy. I loved Prince of Persia, and when they came out with the modern sequels, I was so excited– until I discovered that it involved a lot more fighting, and the series has only gone further in that direction since then. I enjoyed the original for the puzzles, and the focus on fighting made it seem rather mundane and rehashed, rather than the unique thing it was. However, I digress.

Flashback seemed, from the credits, to be mostly the brainchild of the director, who had input in many different areas of the game, and my guess is that said director was a big fan of 80’s sci-fi movies in a certain vein. Visually as well as plotwise and thematically, the game seemed like a mashup of some familiar films. Which was a good thing in my estimation, since I think that kind of sci-fi was quite creative. The one thing that didn’t quite match the image was that some parts of the game were actually prettier and less pessimistic than the stories it was probably lifted from, and honestly I liked that too, since the gritty cynical depressiveness of those stories is the only thing I don’t like about them. In sum, the Flashback world and atmosphere was nice for me; however, I can see other players objecting to the fact that the game is neither this classic tone nor that one, so my praise here should be taken as conditional based on one’s own preferences.

I won’t explain the ending in great detail so as not to spoil it, but I was left thinking it was a little awkward in plausibility– the protagonist is in big trouble unless he has a much better idea of how to pilot and program an alien spacecraft than of how to read their star charts, which seems a little unlikely. Still, it was bittersweet, exciting, and not bad at all.

There is one giant hole in the plot that I can’t quite fill, and that is the Bad Sci-Fi Physics. We are told that the aliens disguise themselves as humans, and the way to tell who they are is that the aliens’ molecular density is a thousand times ours. Therefore, they weigh a thousand times as much for their size. If they were actually a thousand times as heavy as humans, they would crash through the floors of all the elevators, subways, and even second floors of the human buildings, which doesn’t support the premise that their disguise works. Therefore they must be very small– probably no more than 1/2500th the size of a human, unless the architects of the future are designing lifts to a much higher specification than presently– with their disguise being mostly a hologram constructed around them. In this case, why are all the buildings in their homeworld, their spacecraft, and so on constructed for creatures that are roughly human-sized? Inquiring minds want to know.