This may come as a surprised to people who only follow me here, though that appears to be a distinct minority, but I sometimes play fighting games when the mood strikes me. Not that I am any good at them, but I do have a certain fascination with the genre. At the same time, I also adore superheroes like the ones from Marvel and DC. How do those two facts come together? Well, Injustice: Gods Among Us: Ultimate Edition was $8.40 on PSN a while back. For such a low price, I had to purchase it. Though I have yet to play it with a friend at the time of writing, I have played through the entire story mode. And I feel that I have sunk enough time into the game that I can make an adequate judgment call on.
When it comes to presentation, most fighting games are stuck in this rut where either the whole plot is explained by crawling text, or each character only has one “plot” scene when beating their Arcade mode. Injustice works differently. Rather than use the standard text blocks to explain the story in between battles, Injustice uses cinematics to great effect. The biggest draw is that there are no loading times between cutscenes and fights. When a fight begins, the characters take their combat stance, the black bars on the top and bottom of the screen vanish, then the HUD appears.
The transition is not always completely seamless, as there are some instances where the pre-rendered cutscene graphics and the in-game graphics do not completely match up in terms of quality. The transition from fighting back to cutscenes also suffers a similar problem, but is otherwise of as high quality. Fans of the most recent Mortal Kombat game should recognize this, as it is the same style used in that game. I personally thought that this presentation improved the overall flow of the story, and I would encourage more fighting game developers to use this style. It is much more entertaining than simply having to read tons of text to understand what is going on. Because of this, the player is much more and the fact that a fight could break out at any time, players are much more engaged and attentive than they might otherwise be.
That being said, the most important thing in a fighting game is the actual combat. To that end, the combat is Injustice: Gods Among Us is solid. Most players of Mortal Kombat and other fighting games will be familiar with the basic elements. Each fighter has their own moves, both basic and special. The key is for the player to look for openings in the enemy’s movement and attacks in order to capitalize with their own combos. Generally, it requires some time to practice with and against all sorts of characters to learn their unique command lists and the properties of each command. None of this is new to anyone who has ever played a fighter before, so it is not worth going into much detail.
One of the features that does separate Injustice from its contemporaries is the way the game handles hit points. Most fighting games separate fights by rounds, and the player who wins the most rounds in a best of 3 (or 5) wins. In between rounds, health is completely refilled and fighters reset to a “neutral” position so that the playing field is leveled. In this game, the situation is different. Instead, both combatants have two health meters on the outset of a fight, a white bar on top of a red bar. A round of combat ends when one of the health bars is depleted. Further, damage and player position are carried over between rounds. As a result, while it may be easier for a defeated player in the first round to win the second round of combat, they are left at an overall disadvantage because their opponent will still have an entire health bar in the final round. This system makes the fights more interesting to watch, as comebacks are much more impressive. Having said that, the game, for better or worse, becomes much more tense for the loser of the first round, while the winner has a less stressful time. This one change does affect the overall flow by giving an even greater incentive to play carefully and manage the risk/reward of making bold moves.
Injustice also separates itself from the rest of the crowd with its Clash system. Like other games in the genre, fighters in this game can build up super meter by both giving and receiving attacks. This can be used to fuel special variations of moves and each characters super move. More importantly, this meter can be wagered in a Clash. When one combatant is on their red meter (meaning they have lost a round already) and they have super, they can counter an enemy attack by instantiating a Clash. During this event, both players wager a portion of their super meter discreetly. The one who bet the most wins the Clash. If the one who initiated it wins, the enemy’s move is nullified and the victor recovers lost health in proportion to the difference between gambled super meter. Should the attacker come out on top, the defender will take damage dependent of the same difference. What this system does is force players to better judge how they use their super. Players might not necessarily want to use up all of their super to perform powerful moves because the enemy might capitalize on their lack of super to outmatch them in a Clash. Having some saved up for such an occasion is a much more understandable concept. I do not know if it is enough to really affect the overall flow anyway, as often the damage from pulling off a super is greater than the recovery from a Clash, but it is an interesting attempt at doing so.
One of the biggest things I felt when playing Injustice, and I do not know if this just a personal complaint, is that the fighting felt a bit stiff. It could be because I am used to games like Soul Calibur or Persona 4 Arena, where animations seem very fluid and flow into each other, Injustice feels a lot more rigid. While combos can be developed on the fly in a Soul Calibur game (based on their properties), the combos in this cannot. Any combos were ones completely designed and intended by the designers. Combinations that feel like they otherwise should connect will whiff if they were not one of the predetermined combinations. Whether that is a good or bad thing is dependent on the person playing the game. Some people will adore it, while others like myself dislike it. I do not know if I can call it bad, but I do think that some fluidity would have been nice.

Overall, Injustice: Gods Among Us is a solid game. The DC characters are represented well and the fighting mechanics are solid. Though I did not talk about the story, it is interesting and holds up over its entirety. Bringing in new health and Clash systems helps separate Injustice from other products in the genre. Lastly, the presentation of the game’s single-player campaign gives it a sense of cohesion and spectacle that other fighting games generally do not equal. For fans of Mortal Kombat and/or the DC universe, this is an easy recommendation. Otherwise, you would be okay in skipping it.

Another week, another podcast. Sam, Chris, Garrett, and myself get together to talk about pretty much whatever we want to. I also didn’t realize that I sounded so weird until I listened to it myself. Some people just love their voice, but I hate mine sometimes.
For the record, whenever Chris says he needs to shut his windows, there is a reason for that. He lives really close to train tracks. He hears them quite clearly, and assumes we do as well. Luckily, his microphone is good at ignoring those sounds.

0:00:00 Introductions.
Every single time we do an intro, it ends up like this. It’s just something we do, we can’t help it.

0:01:40 Chris immediately goes into the Deadpool footage leak.
Although I didn’t see it, all the descriptions of the footage sound really awesome. It’s a shame that I don’t really have faith that Fox will be able to pull it off, or even want to.Even still, it’s nice to know that some people are getting Deadpool right.
This conversation quickly turns into a discussion of Deadpool and how he is in the comics. I do wonder how they’ll keep his tone while keeping the movie PG-13.
Then, we discuss Call of Duty for reasons that escape me.
Garrett’s review of the Deadpool game can be found here.

0:10:10 We have viewer questions.
For the unaware, the four of us used to do another podcast before we formed The Texture Pop (and we stopped it for various reasons). Adonisus is an old friend of ours who regularly sent us listener questions. I’m glad he decided to follow us to this new podcast as well. 🙂
When it comes to remembering old games, I’m not all that great because of my youthful vigor. On top of that, I didn’t own an N64, my cousins did. I’d just play it over there.
I’ve also not read many Image comics. Although I have always wanted to get into comics, it always seems intimidating to get into them. There is so much lore and backstory that they expect you to know that it’s a little overwhelming. On top of that, my time is more and more limited as I get older.
Yes, I am named after Brandon Lee. That’s not a joke at all.
It is actually a bit interesting how Destiny can use some of the same tropes of Shadowrun Returns, and just move them into space, and it’s just so boring.

0:24:15 Garrett bought Guild Wars 2
I don’t really know enough about Guild Wars 2 to add anything here. Part of why I don’t play MMOs was because WoW was the first, and WoW’s subscription model always turned me off. After that, I got so into single-player games that I never really looked back.

0:27:28 Garrett has been reading Sandman: Overture.
As we’ve already established, I don’t know much about comics, so I’m useless in this conversation.
We also go into a conversation about Joseph Gordon Levitt and Looper. It’s amazing how often we change topics like that. I’ve also noticed that both Chris and I tend to do most of the derailing.

0:33:00 We talk about all the game’s we NEED to play together.
For those not in the know, Chris and I have a gaming history. As in, I tend to kick his ass in most of the games we play against each other. So far, we’ve both played X-Com: Enemy Unknown and Persona 4 Arena together, and I’ve been the victor. He’s better at Injustice, so he’s itching to turn the tides.

0:35:00 Chris finishes his college and internship.
Another bit of context, Chris was working a white-collar job until it closed down. In order to keep working in that field, he went back to college in order to finish his degree. Now that’s he’s down with his Summer semester, he should go from no free time to 0.01 hours of free time.

0:36:01 Chris has been playing Firefall.
It seems like an interesting game, but I’ve become less and less enamored with Free-To-Play. They usually try too hard to get me to spend money to hold my interest. The only exception so far has been Marvel Puzzle Quest, and even that game has its own problems.
I’m also getting sick of the same tired quest design in these MMO games. Not everything needs to be a fetch quest or a collection quest.

0:47:20 Chris has played more Shovel Knight.
I will get this game at some point, but not right now. Everything I’ve heard about Shovel Knight is really, really interesting. After playing Ducktails awhile back, I’m more than okay with old school 2D platformers.

0:49:55 Chris has been training in Injustice: Gods Among Us.
And I demonstrate my ineptitude regarding fighting games. We then use this as a springboard to talk about Tekken and fighting games in general. The fighting games I tend to play are much more casual in nature, like the Naruto games, Soul Calibur, and Persona 4 Arena.

0:53:30 Chris and Sam talk about Titanfall DLC.
Titanfall is an interesting subject. Previously, I thought that the main appeal of shooters was their multiplayer modes. While I still believe that, Titanfall also serves to demonstrate why it is important to have a single-player mode, especially if the game is being sold for $60. The mental math going on in people’s heads makes the game seem less valuable in comparison to something like a Call of Duty.

0:55:15 I played Kingdom Hearts 1.5: Final Mix.
And Sam happily brings up the trophy issue. I still can’t believe I only have the trophy for finishing the game on Proud. Considering how long a typical Kingdom Hearts 1 is, that’s still a huge slap in the face. I’m probably not going to play through it again for those trophies because I don’t have that kind of time.
Overall though, the game is really, really good. Even though it was a PS2 game, 1.5 ReMIX makes it feel like a current gen game, if not in looks, then in play.
My impressions of Kingdom Hearts are recorded here. I also reiterate a few points from this article I wrote on Kingdom Hearts.

1:03:55 I played Dead Space 3 (and hate it)
That game… sucks so badly.
The story makes no friggin’ sense. The combat is dull and tedious against Space Al-Queda and Space Lobsters alike. The textures on the faces look bad. It’s just a mess. A dull, tedious, repetitious mess that feels like EA rushed it out the door to make a quick buck. And I haven’t even gotten to the crafting system yet.
I don’t want to finish this game, but I almost feel like I have to at this point.
The fact that this game happened in a similar timeframe to Mass Effect 3’s abysmal ending is probably a large portion of the reason why EA is so hated.

1:15:23 I watched a bit of an LP of The Legend of Spyro: A New Beginning
I remember playing those games back in the PS2-era. The games aren’t bad per se. The problem is that they do nothing notable. Both A New Beginning and The Eternal Night are just long corridors of endless enemies to kill. They do nothing to inject variety into the gameplay, which is a shame.
I am generally okay with reboots. However, if you’re going to reboot something, you need to consider why it is being rebooted, and what fans like about. The Legend of Spyro is a decent story, but I do not get the impression that it needed to involve Spyro at all. It doesn’t feel like Spyro in gameplay, story, or even the personalities of the cast. Everything feels off.
We briefly detour to talk about Remember Me. Sam’s review of it can be found here.

1:21:00 I finished Season 1 of The X-Files.
I am eager to dive into Season 2 after watching Season 1. It’s a very solid series and I understand why so many people love it. This show appeals to me in many ways. It combines crime dramas like Castle and The Mentalist with the crazy supernatural shit I can get in a show like Once Upon a Time or those insufferable History Channel alien shows, except good.

1:22:50 Sam finished Yu Yu Hakusho.
I remember watching that show all the time as a teenager, back when Toonami was still a thing. I loved that show, but not enough to go hunting for it. It sucks that the last arc sucks, but truth be told, I excepted that.

1:25:12 Sam plays Counter Strike: GO
The way Sam talks about CS makes me want to stay away from it. I suck at multiplayer shooters, so I’d probably never do anywhere near competent in that game.

1:27:20 Sam plays Velvet Sundown
And challenges us to play it with him. Hopefully, we get to it, but it’s always hard to tell with this group.
From the Giant Bomb Quick Look, the game looks interesting enough to take a look at. Just watch it, it’s worth it.

1:31:15 Sam played some of Gods Will Be Watching.
And he is doing pretty bad at it. Don’t feel bad, it’s not his fault he’s a noob. XD
In all seriousness, I should probably play that game so that I understand his plight.

1:32:55 Sam plays MOBAs. Lots of MOBAs.
We use this as a springboard to talk about implied pedophilia, actual pedophilia, tutorials, and many other issues.
Taking this chance to talk about horrible gaming communities, it’s appalling to me that people can be so hostile to new players coming in and learning the game. Gaming, to me, is supposed to be a very inclusive hobby. I don’t want people to be excluded, I want to invite them in. I mean, we were all new to games at one point. Why can’t we sympathize with people who want in on the fun, but aren’t as skilled.
And as for tutorials, I think the kind of tutorials one responds best to are reliant on what kind of learning one responds best to. Garrett and Sam seem to exhibit really different schools of thought. Garrett appears to learn better by having it explained to him, where Sam seems to learn by experimentation. Neither approach is invalid, but it is important to note that different people learn differently. Personally, I’m with Sam in that I am an experimental-type of learner. Since so many people learn so differently, tutorials are really hard to do properly. This also gets into the complexity of some video games. MOBAs are more complex than they probably need to be. Some people like Garrett are fine with just reading a lot in tutorials and secondary reference materials. Others like Sam and myself, would rather just play and learn as we go. There’s no right answer. It’s completely up to preference.

2:03:50: We finally wrap up the cast.
See you guys next week! 🙂

The fact the I am a fan of the Kingdom Hearts franchise is not much of a secret. Even after my critiques of the series, I still find myself coming back to it over and over again. When I found a copy of Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5: ReMIX for $19.99, I just had to make the purchase. Having spent much of my free time with Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix in particular, thoughts on the game are gathering in the back of my mind. Before I start, I would like to warn readers that I write this assuming you are already familiar with Kingdom Hearts, and have at least played the original release of the game. With that said….
When I started my latest playthrough of the game, I noticed that the Final Mix version of the original Kingdom Hearts changed the initial choices of difficulty. While the first version had only two choices: Normal and Expert, the Final Mix had three options. They were Final Mix: Beginner, Normal, and Final Mix: Proud. Having played Kingdom Hearts many times in the past, I decided to bring in some challenge by tackling the Proud difficulty. This became a choice I would regret at first, because the initial levels in the game are fairly brutal without Guard or Dodge Roll. Once the game opened up a bit, unlocking some magic and abilities, I changed my mind. On Final Mix: Proud, the game becomes much more about timing and positioning. If the player leaves an opening, the enemy will capitalize on it. On Normal mode, attacks do not inflict enough damage to be very worrying. Proud Mode is a different story. Foes can easily take out half of Sora’s health with a single blow. As a result, I found myself utilizing magic and items a lot more than previous playthroughs of Kingdom Hearts, where I would mostly just attack, using Cure for healing. It added to the game in a way that I would have never anticipated.
Another thing I should mention are the scenes they added to the game’s main story. Most of them detail Riku’s involvement with the plot. None of the added scenes are absolutely essential to understanding the story. However, they do add a nice context to Riku’s character and how it evolves over the course of the game. With these scenes, it is much easier to understand exactly why Riku joined up with Maleficent, and how she convinced him to work with her. Also, when Ansem takes over Riku’s body towards the end of the game, the extra scenes help explain how he ends up on the other side of the door to Kingdom Hearts along side King Mickey. None of this is necessary for the plot to make sense, but it is nice to have the game explicitly answer these questions.
Aside from that, the story to the original Kingdom Hearts is all here, and it is as Simple and Clean as it was back then. The first game excelled at telling a simple, Disney-style story. It talks about friendship, heart, and the duality between light and darkness such that anyone in its E for Everyone demographic can understand. While later entries in the series will delve into the more complicated, Final Fantasy-esque storytelling, Kingdom Hearts started out differently, and the writing was better for it.
On a core level, this is the same Kingdom Hearts that I fell in love with way back in 2002. The combat feels grounded. I would not call it “realistic”, but it has a sense of plausibility that later games in the franchise did not quite recapture for me. Even today, the gameplay holds up extremely well. Hit detection is solid and the player has a lot of feedback with regards to when something takes damage or when an attack gets parried.
Having said that, there is key difference that I made a note of. In the original game, when Sora uses a technique like Ars Arcanum or Sonic Blade, he is invincible during both the initial attack and during all of the follow ups. In Final Mix, I noticed that during the follow-ups of either Ars Arcanum or Ragnarok, Sora is open to attacks, making both moves less useful overall compared to Sonic Blade or Strike Raid. I am not sure whether or not I appreciate that change. On one hand, the two moves are not as good as they used to be. On the other hand, not only were they overpowered to begin with, but their reduced effectiveness encouraged me to use other techniques instead. With the addition of new abilities and adjusted level up charts to accommodate them, the game feels fresh even for people who have already played Kingdom Hearts before.
Other notable changes help to bring the game into the modern age. In the original Kingdom Hearts, players needed to scroll down through the attack menu in order to select the contextual commands. The HD version of the Final Mix changes that by mapping them all to the triangle button in much the same way that Reaction Commands work in Kingdom Hearts 2. Follow-up attacks from Keyblade Techniques are also handled this way. Further, at the start of the game, players can choose to either stick with the shoulder button camera controls from the original game, or change it to the right-analog stick. When I saw the prompt, I personally switched it the the right stick as fast as I possibly could. These are both really nice convenience changes that improve upon the game by bringing it into the current gen. Shoulder button camera controls have always had issues, like their limited axis of effectiveness and general unwieldiness. Purists might be turned off, but I welcome the additions.
Kingdom Hearts always had a knack for looking good, even back in the PS2 era. Because of the game’s use of bold colors and a stylized, cartoonish look, the game visually withstood the test of time. With the HD treatment, this is even more true. Everything looks fantastic with the higher resolution. However, given that this is still a PS2-era game, there are some noticeable graphical hiccups that games from that system were known for. For example, they did not have the technical ability to render a character’s high detail face outside of cutscenes. When in gameplay, and even in some cutscenes, the faces on the characters are noticeably of lesser quality. As a port of a PS2 game, this is to be expected. Unfortunately, sometimes the higher resolution works against the game in this case. When uprezzing some of the textures for the character models, there are a few isolated cases where there is noticeable pixelation on them. Thankfully, it is no where near as bad as when Final Fantasy X-2 HD, where most character models had that issue. I only noticed in a few small, highly isolated cases. The pixelation is only a blemish on an otherwise highly polished piece of art.

Overall, Kingdom Hearts: Final Mix alone is well worth the asking price for the 1.5 ReMIX. As of the time of writing, I have yet to complete the boss fight against Unknown that was added to the Final Mix. I do not feel leveled enough to be able to fight him on Proud mode and right now I want to take a break from the game. I also do not currently feel compelled to play through Re: Chain of Memories. When it came out on the PS2, I purchased it and completed it 100%. As fun as that was, I do not feel like I want to do it again after doing it on both the GBA and the PS2. Nonetheless, I am extremely eager to purchase and play through the 2.5 ReMIX when it is released.

This is the premier episode of a new podcast series I will be doing with my friends Sam, Chris, and Garrett. We basically discuss what we have been doing in our spare time. Fortunately for you, this typically results in long conversations on all things geeky.

Fair warning though, this thing is a good 2.5 hours long. Hopefully, you have a long commute to work in which to listen to this.

0:00:00 Introductions
We spent this time talking about the overuse of Hitler, Crispy Creme, and pot in O-High-O. I would say I’m sorry for this, but that’d be a big lie.

0:02:47 I finished Shadowrun Returns: Dragonfall,
I just wrote an article on Shadowrun Returns that came out today, so there’s no point in doing into much further detail about it. Still, I would easily recommend that game. The reason Sam knew what I was going to say about it was that it was our second attempt at recording this podcast.

0:11:19 I finished The Walking Dead: Season 2: Episode 4
I honestly don’t have too much more to say about Season 2. I just wish I had the impression that it was going somewhere. Between that and The Wolf Among Us, TWAU blew this season out of the water. I’d be interested in comparing the sales of both games, because I wonder if they reviews for The Wolf Among Us have been able to give it comparable sales to the hype coming off of the first season of The Walking Dead.
We also talk briefly about post-apocalypse logistics and how much we loved the first season of Telltale’s The Walking Dead.
Also, here’s a link to the imdb of the show that Sam and Chris were talking about during this segment.

0:24:45 DESTINY BURN!

0:25:30 I have been playing Kingdom Hearts 1.5: Final Mix
My fanboy-ism aside, Kingdom Hearts 1 aged very well. One thing I forgot to mention is that many of the bosses were recolored in the Final Mix. Purists would probably be upset, but I thought the recolors really added something to the boss designs.
I do want to add that not adding voices to the new scenes was both really cheap and REALLY lazy on the part of Square-Enix.

0:30:45 We take a brief detour to discuss Extended Play, G4, and Adam Sessler
I do miss that show, but after hearing all of Adam Sessler’s stories of his work on G4, I’m glad that stopped. I don’t need people to go through misery to produce my entertainment. That show had some ups and downs, but it was fun to watch. Again, best of luck to him and the former G4 guys in their current/future endeavors.
Then we go into a few of his “controversies.” Specifically the ones regarding God of War: Ascension.

0:38:10 I started watching Season 1 of The X-Files.
I know that I’m more than a bit behind when it comes to this, but that’s exactly why the internet exists!
And I take this chance to make a stupid pun. I REGRET NOTHING!
The reason I grow quiet in this segment is because the guys start talking about episodes I haven’t seen yet.
I also completely forgot The X-Files had a video game at some point.

0:49:00 MY TURN IS FINALLY OVER!

0:49:34 Garrett bought Guild Wars 2.
And we skip over that without talking a whole lot about Guild Wars.

0:50:15 Garrett played the Destiny Beta (and it’s fuckin’ boring).
I agree with Garrett that the whole Borderlands-esque semi-MMO elements to the game really don’t add a whole lot. As another who has played the Beta, I found it immensely boring.
I should note that all the systems are polished and competently designed. The issue comes from the complete lack of variation. This COULD be reasonably explained by the fact that it’s in Beta. However, if that’s the case, then why release it to the public in that state. After all, this Beta is only to function as a stress test. The core design should be close to finalized by now.
And the plot, from what I have seen, is just too mystical for me to really get into. I can’t help but compare it to Kingdom Hearts and Star Wars in its simplicity.
Sam makes a good point here. At least in Borderlands, although the core mechanic is shooting, each character feels unique thanks to their power set and distinctive silhouette. Even if different classes in Destiny are different, they look the same. Since I didn’t play the other 2 classes, I can’t be 100% sure, but it feels like they aren’t different.

1:25:40 Chris’s turn begins, and he played Shovel Knight
Chris’s comments about Shovel Knight remind me of Egoraptor’s sequelitis videos. Specifically, this one where he makes fun of the industry’s tendency to over-tutorialize. Considering that we mention Game Grumps in this segment, there’s some irony there.
I actually love it when developers make place those kinds of Easter Eggs in their products. It’s a nice little touch.

1:33:25 I detour to talk about Kingdom Hearts again.
To be clear, the Proud Mode from the original Kingdom Hearts is not present in Final Mix. It is completely replaced with Final Mix: Proud. Now that I’m in the late stages of the game, and have access to a lot more skills, this is less of a factor than it was in the early game.
Also, I should learn to never worry about trophies. I don’t know what I was thinking. X_X
Chris is being the smart one here.

1:36:45 Chris plays Sly Cooper: Thieves in Time.
The “uncompressed audio” joke is a reference to Titanfall. That game’s install on PC is 50 GB because all the game’s audio (for all languages) is uncompressed.
As for Sly Cooper: TiT, the game is actually a really good homage to the original trilogy. I’m glad it was released, even if I felt it was a bit easy.
The Spyro and Jak & Daxter concept art in their respective links.

1:43:45 Chris talks a bit about playing Tribes: Ascend.
I don’t have much to add here at all.

1:48:50 Chris discusses his experiences in Titanfall and we go into AI voices.

1:51:55 Chris detours to new information regarding Avengers 2.
And I learn new things about the Marvel Universe.

1:56:00 Continuing with our movie discussion, we all start to talk about how sick we are of grimdark.
I stand behind my theory that darkness in media is partially a reflection of the way we think our world is worse than it actually is. It’s actually pretty sad to think about. Hopefully, we can get some more positive movie messages out there to help counteract all this grimdark.
I should also remember to tell Chris to stop looking at the Escapist forums. No good can possibly come from that.

2:03:30 Sam played Counter Strike: Global Offensive

2:06:55 Sam purchased Gods Will Be Watching

2:08:25 Sam talks about how he lost all of his computer files by install Windows 7.
And the rest of us wonder why he never performed a backup.
This also happens to be how we lost the first of three recordings of this episode. This show was slated to start last week, but we lost the recording.
Like I said in the podcast, losing that many saves and that much progress might cause me to cry and scream. Just one 100% complete save put me in a mad tirade back in middle school. That, might make me stop gaming for a few weeks.

2:23:05 We briefly return to comics to talk about Spawn, Spidey, Cyclops, and other bizarre crap.
To talk a bit about Image Comics. The summery is that Image Comics was originally founded as a safe haven for artists to keep their IP. Then, Todd McFarlene basically destroyed that haven later on.

2:26:30 We end the podcast.
You can find my Shadowrun Returns article here and my game length article here.

In the time I have been writing about video games, I have gone back to play many games from the past. A great portion of those game were old RPGs like the first few Fallout games, Baldur’s Gate, and Planescape: Torment. As a result, I have become familiar with the tropes, designs, mechanics of CRPGs. This is what inspired me to play a game on my Steam list that has been out for a while, but I had never played: Shadowrun Returns. For the record, I am not referring to the shooter called “Shadowrun”, released in 2007. Rather, I am talking about the Kickstarted CRPG developed Harebrained Schemes. Having just completed the Dead Man’s Switch module that came with the game, and the Dragonfall module released later as DLC, my mind is still fresh with thoughts on it.
Given the modular, user-generated content focus of the game, it is great that one of Shadowrun Return’s greatest draws is its setting. I would feel incredibly comfortable saying that the Shadowrun RPG setting is one of the most interesting ones out there. Though this is ignoring some of the finer minutia of the lore, the basic gist of Shadowrun’s world is that our world ran as it normally did, until an event known as the Awakening happened. Afterwards, magic came to the world, along with many of the typical fantasy races such as elves, trolls, and so on. Furthermore, world governments have weakened in power, leaving private corporations to fill the vacuum. Mercenaries called Shadowrunners (which will typically include player characters) get hired by various people in different positions of authority to complete jobs and acquire their next paycheck. Without a doubt, the mix of science fiction and fantasy, combined with the highly political relationships among corporations, lead to a lot of potential for many diverse and interesting modules/campaigns.
And with such potential, it is crucial for Shadowrun Returns to have a robust character creator. Fortunately, the game has exactly that. Whenever the player starts a new module, they must create a new character for that module. If players wish, they can directly spend their initial karma, which is the equivalent of experience points in Shadowrun, on the various skills available to them. Alternatively, they can select one of six pre-made classes to help guide them. The first is the Street Samurai, which focuses on weapon skills. Next is the Mage, who is an expert in spellcasting. After that is the Decker, who can infiltrate the Matrix, a more advanced version of the internet, in order to acquire files and hack various devices in the world. The Shaman can summon totems. A Rigger can control combat drones. And lastly, a Physical Adept can use their chi energy to augment their physical abilities.
As players complete missions in a module, they gain more karma. That karma can be used to enhance attributes, improve old skills, or unlock new skills. It is crucial to develop a character’s stats, because that determines the caps for their skill. For example, Ranged Combat relies on the Quickness stat. If my character has a 4 in Quickness, they can only have a maximum of 4 in Ranged Combat. The fact that both stats and skills are raised with the same resource encourages players to specialize. In general, there are not many “wrong” builds in Shadowrun Returns. Should the player specialize in only a handful of skills, they will generally find themselves able to handle most situations. Even outside of combat, a specialist would usually be able to find a dialog prompt that requires those talents.
On the other hand, what better use is there for your character and their abilities than to fight. Shadowrun Returns utilizes a system extremely similar to the one found in X-Com: Enemy Unknown. In fact, they are so alike that players of the latter will feel quite at home here. Turns have one phase each for the player, the enemy, and any neutral parties. On the player’s turn, their character and any allies accompanying them each get 2 Action Points. AP can be spent completing action like firing a weapon, changing position, casting a spell, or going on Overwatch to intercept an enemy on their phase. Each enemy will also get 2 AP on their phase. Phases will alternate until either all player characters or all enemies have been defeated. At the end of combat, the player party’s most recent wounds will be healed. Both modules contain many interesting and varied enemy formations. Combined with a very solid system, this allows for highly tactic combat. Finding strong positions, taking cover, and keeping pressure on the enemy are key to keeping the player and their entourage in good enough condition to fight on.
However, there is one element that RPGs thrive on above all others, their stories. Fortunately, both the Dead Man’s Switch and Dragonfall modules are extremely strong in this category. To avoid spoilers, I will not speak directly about the plots to either of these games. However, I will say that the writing is top notch. Since the game uses an isometric 2D style, and does not have voice acting, the script has to be strong enough to make up for that. Rather than animate the characters, the dialog box is also filled in with descriptions like “She’s hiding it well, but you can tell she’s clearly out of her element.” It is very literary in the way scenes play out, letting players use their imaginations to great effect. Both stories also have a very steady build-up and pacing. Lasting only about 12 hours each, both narratives take a decent amount of time to clear without overstaying their welcome.
Dead Man’s Switch ends on a bit of a low note with regards to its final dungeon, but it is otherwise very solid, if a bit on the easy side. On the other hand, Dragonfall does a very good job of stepping up the difficulty without being overly frustrating thanks to its smart level layouts and enemy design. It is also much more open than Dead Man’s Switch’s comparatively linear story. While both stories will eventually funnel players to the same end, Dragonfall feels much more organic and responsive to player action than Dead Man’s Switch. There are obvious, yet subtle ways in which the world reacts to what the player does in the game. In any case, both modules have solid stories with intelligent and thoughtful design.

Shadowrun Returns is a truly impressive game in my opinion. I enjoy it so much that I would feel extremely comfortable calling it one of my favorite RPGs of all time, even more than Planescape: Torment. And Dragonfall is an excellent expansion to the game. Given the modular nature of the product, I am excited to see what kinds of creations players have made/will make. The setting and the mechanics are so solid that I rarely found myself in a position where I did not want to keep playing the game. Should you be someone interested in RPGs, I could not recommend Shadowrun Returns enough. You owe it to yourself to check it out if you have not already done so.

As an amateur, avid game critic, I follow gaming news and releases religiously. As I read press statements, game descriptions, and reports on games soon to be released, there is a sentiment that I repeatedly see among them: One that I cannot agree with. There is a notion from publishers, developers, and their fans that the length of a game should be a compelling selling point. A game that has “50 hours of content” should be more compelling than a similar game with “20 hours of content”. I see why this is an easy mistake to make. Nonetheless, this assumption is incorrect. Length in games cannot, and will not, ever be an indicator of a game’s overall value. This week, I aim to explain exactly why that is.
The biggest reason for this is that the amount of content says nothing about the overall quality of that content. I have mentioned this point a few times in earlier pieces, particular a fewpertaining to Assassin’s Creed 3, but it is one that bears both repeating and elaborating on. A game can claim that it contains “40/50 hours of content”, as Watch_Dogs and Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag both famously did. However, that point does not say how good or how bad that content is. For example, Assassin’s Creed 3 is now infamous for how bad it was, especially in comparison to earlier entries in the franchise. Yet it sold itself partially on the claim that it had many untold hours of gameplay.
Hindsight has revealed it to be a pox on the franchise. The tale of Connor Kenway had terrible writing with laughably camp antagonists. Missions were overly linear to the point where even the exact path players took to their assassination was determined by the game. Collectibles and side content did not serve any purpose nor provide an adequate enough challenge/reward to be gathered for their own sake. Lastly, the ending is a standout for bad endings in games, even when the game was released in the same year as Mass Effect 3. Though the game has many, many hours of content, a lot of it is not particularly good. The only real standouts are the parts with Connor’s father, Haytham. Were all, or even most, of the game’s offerings up to snuff, many hours of it could be a fantastic selling point. However, in the context of the game, all that content ends up being a negative. Other games like Watch_Dogs can be said to suffer the same fate in different ways.
That being said, there are other dangers to relying on the length of a game as a measure for value. When it is, the temptation arises for developers to artificially add more content into the game. As a direct result of these additions, the game’s pacing can be negatively affected. I posit that happened in the creation of Dragon Age: Origins. I already laid out the premise of The Fade in last week’s post and discussed how it hurt the overall game, along with The Deep Roads. While I cannot be sure of it, I am willing to claim that at least The Fade was added in after the fact in order to reach some artificial length for an average playthrough. It is the kind of section that has almost no bearing on anything else in the game, not even in the Circle of Magi module that it is a part of. Modders have proven this to be true thanks to “Skip the Fade”. There are other such examples of content that feels artificial even in other games, like the Navajo scene in Beyond: Two Souls or latex nuns in Hitman: Absolution. Most of them contribute adversely to the narrative pacing.
My final reason for why length of a game does not make for a good measure of quality is that using it in such a way could end up lowering the overall quality of a game’s content. My logic for this is as follows: A developer who believes that quantity is important will attempt to provide as much content for their consumers as they possibly can. Creating all this content requires the developer to spread their resources thin so that more content can be created. When content is created with such limited resources, it will be lesser in terms of quality. Therefore, creating as much content as possible will result in at least some of that content being not as good as it otherwise could have been. While treating length as the end-all-be-all does not necessarily imply that a game will be poor, I would be willing to make the claim that, using this logic, it is safe to conclude that it raises the odds of a lesser quality.

As a final note to this piece, I want to say that I do not mean to say that length should not be a factor in purchasing decisions. What I actually mean is that it should not be treated as the most, or even one of the most, important considerations. When a developer says that there is game “has X hours of play”, you should sit down and think for a second. You should wonder if the game’s design was affected just so that the publisher could use that length as a talking point when discussing the final product. Marketers do count on us being easy to manipulate. That is just the nature of their job. It is the responsibility of us, the audience and the consumers, to be aware and to think about why and how our games were designed the way they are.

It has been some time since I finished my adventures in the world of Dragon Age: Origins and its various DLC packs. To that end, I have been comparing my experiences with that game to others that I have played. What I was pondering through this introspection is the question of narrative pacing in the world of video games. As with most properties of storytelling, the general rules governing narrative pacing undergo changes when applied to this new realm of media. Since a lot of my problems in Dragon Age: Origins came from its pacing, and Awakening felt better because it improved said pacing, it would be pertinent to contemplate the topic in this week’s post.
One of the things that stands out most to me with regards to video game pacing is how players are willing to wait a little longer for the plot to advance, in comparison to consumers of other media. In a book, if the plot was about solving a murder mystery, and then the author spent an entire chapter discussing the philosophical nature of crime scene investigation and criminology, people would wonder why that decision was made. While that information may certainly be tangentially related to the plot and interesting in and of itself, it would not be relevant to the mystery and the main plot of the book. Film also has this kind of problem. If a movie character in a spy movie was talking to another character, then some random bad guys step into the scene for the protagonist to beat up for five or ten minutes, followed by the protagonist resuming their conversation where they left off, the audience would be completely confused. They would think to themselves what the point of that detour was, why it took so long, and why it was not cut from the final product.
However, this is demonstrably not the case in video games. As players, we accept when a conversation in a video game is interrupted by an attack by random gang-bangers. In fact, that tends to be fairly normal as far as games are concerned. The reason is pretty obvious. People purchase video games so that they may play video games. It is okay for the story to briefly take the backseat, because more often than not it is not the reason players are sitting on their couch with a controller in hand. We can comfortably go dungeon crawling for about an hour or so without any advancement of the main plot until the end. The model of story->gameplay->story->gameplay has been a mainstay in gaming for as long as games began to focus on their narratives. Most other mediums would consider it weird for the plot to go so long without advancing in a meaningful way, but that is so common that it still remains a very ingrained model for game designers.
Less, but still fairly, common is when the story of a game takes a detour in order to prolong the length of a game and allow for more gameplay. These kinds of additions can be hit or miss, depending on their context. For example, Fort Frolic is one of the most loved segments of the original Bioshock game. In terms of the central conflict of Atlas vs. Andrew Ryan, nothing major is accomplished in Fort Frolic and the plot comes to an overall standstill. Having said that, both the environment Fort Frolic and the madness of its master, Sander Cohen, are so interesting that most players either would not notice or would not care. Though it adds nothing to the narrative, the game is richer for the existence of this content.
By contrast, The Fade in Dragon Age: Origins is one of the most reviled example of this going wrong, for good reason. While attempting to rescue the mages in the Circle Tower, the player party is ambushed by a Sloth Abomination and forced into a deep sleep. In the world of Dragon Age, a person’s soul is in a spiritual realm called The Fade, home to both divine and demonic entities alike, when sleeping. This sets up a three hour segment where the protagonist needs to break out of The Fade, rescuing his/her other party members in the process. Like Fort Frolic, it does not serve any real purpose beyond adding length to the game. Unlike Fort Frolic, it is not interesting enough in its own right and drags too long to hold the attention of the player. Along with the Deep Roads, The Fade has a major negative impact on the pacing of the game. It is so reviled that there are mods whose sole purpose is to remove that one section from the game. Regardless of the rest of the game, the mere existence of this content does make Dragon Age: Origins lesser.
There is also the fact that gaming is a unique medium in that the skill of the player can also have a direct impact on the pacing. A skilled, or veteran player will have an easier time completing individual sections of a given game, resulting in an overall faster pace than a newcomer/novice player. Books and films have easier times in pacing themselves because they do not require such skill, thanks to their passive natures. The game has a tougher time because the mechanics need to be paced as much as the plot or any individual gameplay section needs to be. Even then, there always exists the possibility than a player will never finish a game because they just cannot complete a difficult mission. It is a unique challenge that I truly do not know how to overcome.
In the end, it is hard to determine if there is a specific pacing that can appeal to the most people. Like many things in life, it comes down to the individual to decide if a game’s pacing is fit for them or not. Movies and books tend to have very specific formulas for the way they are paced, but that is something others have discussed before. Because each game is so radically different from the next, they call for different structures and styles. Each such structure requires its own unique pacing to best take advantage of that. I do not profess to have concrete answers as to how games should be paced or how developers should consider the type of game they are making when considering pacing. However, I do think it is an interesting question to ask after playing a game like Dragon Age: Origins.

Bioware and I have a very strained relationship. I want to love their games. However, their games have a tendency to do everything they can to irritate me. Though I enjoy their writing more often than not (which is NOT license to tell me how much you love/hate Mass Effect 3), there is almost always an odd quirk or two that comes up so often that it becomes a real issue. This is why it has taken me so long to actually sit down and take the time to play Dragon Age: Origins. Last year’s Steam Summer Sale proved the ideal time to purchase the Ultimate Edition of the game, but I had never actually played it up until now. Having finished my playthrough of Origins, I have quite a bit to say about it.
Let us start with the thing that irritated me the most: the combat. I could not stand the combat in Dragon Age: Origins. Battles take place in real time. When the player party comes close enough to an enemy unit, battle starts instantly. Characters draw their weapons and attack enemies, either with skills that consume mana/stamina or weapon strikes. Tactics can be adjusted by either manipulating the step-by-step procedure each character follows, in a style similar to the gambits from Final Fantasy XII, or by pausing the game to tell them what to do manually. At the end of the fight, health, mana, and stamina is restored.
This seems simple enough on paper. However, even though I was playing on Easy, the system presented a number of issues to me. For example, there were a number of times where I found my allies near death. I paused the game to order them to drink a health potion. More frequently than I would have liked, these actions were interrupted by enemy attacks. That is not where I draw issue. What angered me is that when they get back up, they pretend as if the order to drink a health potion never happened and resume their combat routine. In the period it would take me to pause and reissue the order, the ally would typically get knocked down again. This would continue until they died.
On top of that, the combat even outside of circumstances like the one described above felt much like a chore. With few exceptions, encounters fell into one of two categories. One type of fight was so trivial that just allowing my characters to whack an enemy’s shins until they die was more than enough to take care of them. The other type was tough enough that the player would need to pause almost after every single action so that new orders could be issued and time was not wasted. In either of these cases, it feels more often than not that the game’s battle system should have been Turn-Based, rather than Real Time with Pause.
Turn-Based Combat would give players a greater ability to make tactical decisions than the Real Time with Pause system used in Dragon Age: Origins. This would also free them from the burden of constantly needing to stop and pause the game, switching between characters and fiddling with their orders in just the right way. It brings a much needed layer of precision into the gameplay, allowing players to more accurately plan and perform combat actions without forcing them to repeatedly halt the action. Real Time with Pause did not really work in Baldur’s Gate and it does not work with Dragon Age either. I found that fighting became much more tedious in both games because of that system. Not to say that Real Time with Pause cannot work at all. Rather, I do not think it was a strong fit for Dragon Age.
Though I do dislike the combat, that was not my biggest complaint. The thing that bothered me most was the exploration of the various areas in the game. It is typical RPG fare. Players and their party explore dungeons/forests/towns, completing objectives. Along the way, they can find side quests, treasures, monsters, etc. Traps will also be scattered throughout dungeons for Rogue characters to find and disarm. Classic fantasy RPGs are the main source of inspiration, and it clearly shows.
Unfortunately, this is as much a negative as it is a positive. What I mean by that is that most of the dungeons in the game are far too long. Exploring an area just enough to get through the main story can easily take two or three hours, and that is just one area. Dragon Age: Origins is also infamous for areas that can take much longer than that, like the Fade or the Deep Roads. Unlike most other games I have played, I rarely feel like I have made any significant progress in a single session of Dragon Age. The game feels artificially long because of this. As a gamer, I feel that if a single dungeon takes more than one hour to clear its main quest objective, it is far too long. Anything of greater length than that, for a single dungeon, is disrespectful to my time.
The level design was also made worse in the most of the padding came in the form of unavoidable combat. Were it not for all the many, many fights that I would have to go through to get anything accomplished in Dragon Age: Origins, I might have had a more favorable impression of the battle system. Unfortunately, the game throws waves and waves of enemies at the player. Most exits to individual zones are blocked by foes. Even as a Rogue, it was impossible to sneak around them. However, that has nothing to do with my, or my character’s, ability to sneak. Rather, it is thanks to the way the game registers combat. Being “in combat” or “out of combat” is determined purely by how close the player character is to an enemy. When I walked silently across enemy lines without their knowing, I was still “in combat” because they were close to me. Sadly, players cannot change zones while in combat. Even though they did not see me and I was not attacking anything, I was “in combat” and could not proceed without killing everyone in the room. This can be made even worse when the game fails to see that all enemies have been defeated, and takes too long to transition out of combat.
And all of this begs the question. If I disliked so many aspects of this game, why on Earth did I stick to it long enough to finish? To answer that hypothetical question: I did so because the story and lore of Dragon Age: Origins is really interesting. So much so that I compelled myself to push through the torturous parts of the game to get to the next section of story and dialog. Though a lot of the plot is predictable in its own Bioware-way, there are enough twists and surprises to keep the experience feeling fresh. As one can expect from the development studio, the ensemble cast of characters in the game are very well written and come off as believable people. Player interactions with these characters are interesting and change enough small details that the game feels unique to each individual player. Also, unlike The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Dragon Age: Origins makes the player feel like they are having an impact on the world and its people. The world reacts to events that happen in the game. NPCs even comment on and acknowledge past events and deed.
One of the most interesting ways this is accomplished is through the games various origin stories. Based on the player’s starting gender, race, and character class, different origin story options are available to them. Rather than just be a wall of text, these origin stories serve as the start of the game, leading up to the point where the player character becomes the Grey Warden. I played as a Human Noble, and my origin story was reflected constantly throughout the game. I felt like the game tailored itself to my story and my character, which I have great respect for. The ending is also very different depending on the alliances forged and sides taken during the player’s journey, taking the more positive aspects of old-school RPG design.

Ultimately though, I will probably never play through the other origin stories. Simply because that would imply that I have any interest in going through Dragon Age: Origins a second time. I enjoyed the story exactly enough to finish it one time. I could not possibly bear playing the game again. I see why it is a popular game among RPG enthusiasts. For better or worse, it is a love letter to the old school isometric RPGs brought into 3D space. In many ways, I like and have respect for it. However, the time commitment necessary to finish the game, and the annoyances generated by its combat systems, are simply too great for me to really say that I enjoyed the game. I hear Dragon Age 2 changed things around a bit. Maybe sometime in the future, I will attempt to play that game as well. First, I will need to finish the DLC modules for Origins because I hear Awakening is pretty good. Then, I will need to wash the taste out of my mouth with something more palatable.   

Since nothing of note has come out this week, I decided to look over my backlog for something to do in my spare time. Turning on my PlayStation 3, I remembered that I still had Vagrant Story installed and ready to play. Having never finished my original playthrough of the game, I figured I would give it a second chance to win me over. Although it took a New Game Plus save stolen from GameFAQs, I have finally finished. Combining the experiences of both playthroughs leaves me with a very mixed opinion on what many people consider to be a classic game from the era of the original PlayStation.
Let us begin by discussing the plot of Vagrant Story. The game takes place in Ivalice, which is coincidentally the setting for Final Fantasy XII and Final Fantasy Tactics (although the events of Vagrant Story happen way after those games). Our protagonist is Ashley Riot, an agent working for the Knights of the Peace and candidate for the silliest hair in video game history. Agent Riot is accused of murdering a duke. In order to find out if he really did it, players go through the week of Ashley’s life leading up to the murder. During this mysterious week, he was hunting down the leader of a mysterious cult named Mullenkamp. This search leads him to follow their leader and candidate for the silliest outfit in video game history, Sydney Losstarot, to the abandoned, cursed city of Lea Monde, where dark magic runs free. At the same time, knights of the church, lead by a man named Romeo Guilderstern, are also pursuing Sydney and Lea Monde for their own ends.
This set up does its job of bringing the primary cast of Ashley, Sydney, and Guilderstern together in Lea Monde, and with a supporting cast that is just large enough to support them without getting distracting. Unlike most video game stories at the time, Vagrant Story’s plot was highly political in nature. Rather than discussing personal problems, most the dialog concerns the opposing ideologies of the three characters and the factions they represent. The one exception is Ashley, who mostly serves as a viewpoint character. Fitting this role, his job is mainly to ask questions and consider the answers he gets to those questions. With a rich and interesting lore backing it up, the story is one of the greater tales of the PS1 era.
The gameplay is a bit more hit-or-miss. Revolutionary for its time, Vagrant Story introduced concepts that were relatively new back in the early 2000s. As an action-RPG, players moved about the world freely, with jumping, climbing, and most basic movement mechanics in place. Instead of going to an abstract “fight zone” to do battle, players would fight enemies in the same field they would explore in. When players encounter an enemy, they can press a button to draw their weapon. Once the weapon is out, pressing that same button again pauses the action to reveal a wire-frame sphere surrounding Ashley, indicating his weapon’s range. If an enemy is in range, they are vulnerable to attack. The most unique feature is that player’s could target specific body parts, such as the arms or legs. Damaging any limb enough will break it and impact the enemy’s capabilities. Since the enemies could also do this to Ashley, a lot of depth was added to the game.
Further, the game also had an interesting timing mechanic. When Ashley lands a blow, he can use a chain technique by pressing that technique’s preset button with the correct, and precise timing. These moves can also be further chained into with a different technique, meaning that a combo could go on indefinitely. This is balanced by a stat called Risk. Whenever Ashley performs an attack, his Risk rises. A higher Risk results in a higher critical chance per attack, but lower odds of landing a hit. Therefore, a long combo chain will frequently result in constantly missing attacks. Since Risk lowers gradually over time, players have to decide whether or not they want to go for high hit chains or to take things more slowly. It is a fairly interesting system that no game before or since really attempted, to my knowledge. It merged real-time and turn-based mechanics and forced players to think about their tactics and strategies more than most other games did.
Next, let us discuss another unique element of Vagrant Story. This game is unique in that beating boss battles is one of the only ways to boost Ashley’s stats. The game has no system for experience points and leveling up. Instead, when a boss is defeated, a slot reel pops up on screen. When the player stops the reel, the stat boost it lands on is applied to Ashley for the rest of the game. Aside from that, there are also elixir items that apply these permanent stat boosts in a similar way. These are the only two methods the player has to advance Ashley skills. Though I appreciate the experimental nature of the system, it honestly did not work for me. I often found myself underdeveloped thanks to a series of unlucky spins at the wheel on my first playthrough, among other things.
Lastly, the game featured a semi-Metroidvannia style of exploration in the game world. Some doors were locked with magic sigils or keys. In order to progress, players needed to look for these items in order to break the seals on the doors. More often than not, players would find these items behind either a block puzzle or a boss fight, possibly both. At first, the game’s level design is pretty straightforward. Towards the end, it often becomes hard to keep one’s bearings while traveling through the world. I found that I often got lost, not knowing if the direction I was going was the one the game intended me to go. The game does provide maps, but they tell players where they are, and not where they need to go. As an example, in the game’s final dungeon, I had reached the door to the final boss chamber only to find that it was locked. I had looked for almost twenty minutes until I looked up what went wrong online. As it turns out, my mistake was missing a hard-to-find, well concealed lever in one of the earlier rooms. This switch just happened to open the final door. Needless to say, I was a little upset.
The puzzles also had a similar problem for me. Most of the puzzles in the game are block-based. Being an lifelong gamer, you would expect me to be pretty good at block puzzles. I expected me to be pretty good at block puzzles. However, most of the late game puzzles are either too devious or too tedious for their own good. Again, I found myself leaning much more towards checking the FAQs to solve the puzzles. Alternatively, I would just use the jump boost spells to bypass them altogether. In a game that was breaking the mold in so many ways, these sections seemed almost like a waste.
Lastly, the game had a crafting system. As a Knight, Ashley has training in the maintenance and creation of all kinds of different equipment. With this knowledge, he can use the various magic gems and weapon/armor parts players acquire and put them together at workshops. Each workshop specializes in different material type. A shop that can work leather items might not be able to do the same with steel. Weapons and armor can also be taken apart to salvage their materials. Mastering the nuances of this system is critical to the success of a playthrough of Vagrant Story. Personally, I do not understand it enough to go into any further detail, which is partially why I did not get terribly far into the game on my first playthrough. Most of my knowledge of this system comes from second hand sources.

Vagrant Story is interesting because it was one of the most experimental games I have ever played. Most of the mechanical concepts, gameplay, and even the nature of its plot were wholly unique at the time, and remain so today. Still, that experimentation has its drawbacks. The game expects a lot of the player, and if they do not learn the mechanics quickly, they will find themselves struggling throughout the game. It is designed to cater to the more hardcore gaming crowd: The kind of gamer that stereotypically loves Dark Souls. Until I realized this, I honestly did not like the game all that much. Sure, it was a breath of fresh air, but it was a breath that frequently resulted in a Game Over. Were it not for the save I took from GameFAQs, I probably still would not have finished. Considering how great the story is, that is a bit sad. Still, for all the gripes I had, I understand why critics adored it. For the $6 asking price on PSN, I would still say it is worth it to check out, if only as an examination of game design.

(Warning: Kingdom Hearts 1 and Kingdom Hearts 2 spoilers are present.)
Kingdom Hearts 2 is to be re-released on the PlayStation 3, along with several other games in the franchise in Kingdom Hearts 2.5 Re: Mix. As a direct result of this, I have begun discussing the game with some friends of mine in anticipation. This can sometimes lead to conflict. You see, I am a huge fan of the Kingdom Hearts franchise. Despite that, I have very mixed opinions of Kingdom Hearts 2. Although I generally enjoyed the game, I also feel that it was where the series started to accumulate many of the problems commonly associated with the series. For this reason, I consider it to be one of the weaker games in the franchise. This is seen as strange to many fans of the series, perhaps rightfully so. However, I do have my reasons for thinking this.
My first such reason is the apparently lack of gravity in the world. To be clear, this is not referring to emotion gravity. Rather, I am referring to the physical force which pulls people downward. Kingdom Hearts 2 came out at a very interesting time in Square-Enix’s history. This was the period when the company stared leaning towards the more “cinematic” approach to game design. Sometime during the production of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children, SE began to try to make their games more movie-like. Though I can only speculate, this is what I suspect is behind the “Reaction Commands” present in the second entry of Kingdom Hearts. For the unaware, this was the system of contextual, God of War-style QTE prompts, all mapped to the triangle button. Often, these “Reactions” would result in bombastic and over-the-top action sequences in major boss battles.
This had two effects on the game’s fundamental feeling. First, it reduced the level of interactivity inherent to the game. Instead of using the game’s combat system to do battle, the game would occasionally make players take a break at certain points in a given boss fight in order keep pressing the triangle button so that a cutscene can play, transitioning to the next phase of the boss fight.
The second, and more important effect, is that it took away the weight the combat in the original Kingdom Hearts game had. This is one of those intangibles that crop up in game design. In the first game in the franchise, there was a very real sense of weight when fighting. Though players could stay in the air for fairly long, there was a sense that a force was always pulling them back to the ground. It felt like Sora and company were doing the fantastic things that they do despite being weighted down by the forces of nature.
Contrast that with Kingdom Hearts 2, and that sense is nearly gone. The QTEs, especially later in the game, have Sora and his friends no longer bound by the laws of reality. We see them cutting down skyscrapers in a single slash, punching boulders into enemies, and staying in the air for so long that they can practically fly. Rather than being bound by the forces of nature, they seem more like demi-gods, capable of feats far beyond anything that seems remotely plausible even in the context of a Disney/Final Fantasy crossover. Again, this is difficult to explain in words. It is far easier to just ask you to watch theseclips of combat scenarios in each game, and compare how they feel. You can just sense how float-y and bombastic Kingdom Hearts 2 feels to its predecessor, removing the weight of its combat and world.
The other reason Kingdom Hearts 2 earns a fair degree of my ire is the writing. I know for a fact I am going to get a lot of grief for this: However, the second main game in the franchise is where, in my humble opinion, that the series began to develop many of the issues people typically associate with it. To fully understand this, I would like to once again return to the original Kingdom Hearts. Kingdom Hearts 1’s story was, as befitting its Disney-inspired roots, a relatively simple tale of the struggle of light versus darkness. Villains in the story has relatively simple motivations, if they even have any motivations at all. The heroes are very clearly in the right when it comes to most situations. And at the end of the day, the bad guy is defeated and the world is saved thanks to the power of friendship. Cliche as it is, the story works for the most part. It is consistent in tone, fits well with the subject material and, most importantly, makes logical sense to players of the game.
Kingdom Hearts 2 does not always meet all of these conditions. The biggest hit that it took in the narrative department was in the introduction of far too many elements to the overall plot of the series. This game introduced the concept Nobodies, creatures composed of the body and soul of people who lost their hearts to darkness. To that end, the writers created a group called Organization XIII, which is a group of thirteen (or less) people who have lost their hearts and became Nobodies. Then, it introduced that these people, without hearts, cannot feel human emotion. At the same time, their behavior seems to indicate that they feel emotions, but the game says it is a crude facsimile of actual emotions. Further, we learn that the antagonist of the previous game was an impostor who took someone else’s name and that his nobody is the leader of the organization. We also learn that there are special nobodies formed from special circumstances, that have special powers because of those circumstances.
None of this is particularly hard to explain one piece at a time. The difficult stems from having to store the gestalt of all this information in memory. So much stuff needs explaining that I usually defer friends who ask to the Kingdom Hearts Wiki. Later games would build on this database to the point where it is hard to talk about any one element of the franchise’s overarching story without first going into at least ten different other concepts. Eschewing the Disney-inspired simplicity of the original title, this was the point where Kingdom Hearts began to favor the style of writing more associated with the Final Fantasy side of this crossover. The game simply bogged itself down too much in the details, losing part of what I found charming in the original game.
And in the bogging down lies a bit of irony. While the overarching story had a lot going on in Kingdom Hearts 2, the plots for the individual worlds were much lazier in their writing. Though there are one or two exceptions to this rule, by and large the story-line of a given world is ripped wholesale from the Disney film the world in based on. Only instead of just the hero of the film, it is the hero and three people (Sora, Donald, and Goofy). This results in narratives that really make the protagonists of them look dumb.
One of the most egregious examples of this comes from the Atlantica level, representing The Little Mermaid. In the first game, the story is much more about Sora, Donald, and Goofy trying to blend into the world under the sea. The three have to stay incognito so that they can find and seal the keyhole, saving Atlantica from impending doom. Characters from the Little Mermaid are true to their personalities in the film. However, the story is squarely written around Sora and company. In the end, they discover Ursula is planning to use King Triton’s trident to take over Atlantica and stop her in order to gain the trust of the world’s inhabitants, neatly resolving all the issues brought up in that scenario.
Fast forward to Kingdom Hearts 2, and Atlantica is again a world in the game. Rather than build off the relationships and aftermath of what happened in the first game, the writers decided to just retell the tale of The Little Mermaid, as seen in the Disney classic. (And yes, I am going to ignore the whole “musical level” element to this. It is annoying, but not important to my overall point.) Despite establishing that Ursula is an evil villain in the first game, Ariel still blindly accepts her offer for help, as she did in the movie, without even thinking for a moment about the consequences. This might make sense if they had pretended that Sora never visited Atlantica in the original Kingdom Hearts. However, when the player first arrives, the initial cutscene acknowledges the friendship Ariel forged with Sora in Kingdom Hearts 1. Nobody even calls her out on her blatant stupidity. Beyond sheer laziness on the part of the scenario designers, there is not much of an excuse for this in a game that took five years to develop in the PS2-era.

Ultimately, all this together leads me to appreciate the original game more than Kingdom Hearts 2. Before I wrap up, I want to point out that none of this makes Kingdom Hearts 2 a bad game. It is a very solid action-RPG that I would wholehearted recommend. It is good even by the standards set by other games in the series. It is simply that I feel it began this trend in the franchise that I do not like. That is why I wrote this article and why, despite my liking the game, I cannot help but be bothered by it.
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