Really Late Game Reviews: Risen
May 16, 2011 – 3:50 am
Finished Risen the other day, so figured I’d do one of these and maybe save people some potential disappointment.
Game took about 36 hours to finish doing pretty much everything possible in a single playthrough. Considering this was another relatively cheap Steam sale purchase, not a bad deal at that length.
The graphics often seem to be drooled over, but I’m not sure why exactly. The scenery is quite nice. Overall no complaints about the landscapes and backdrops and such (although people have actually made mods to make improvements: http://kamrades.com/en/index.php?m=games), but the people all look really odd. It’s like, the models are really simple and kind of clumsy, big round heads, club feet and such, but then they are covered with these really detailed and trying to be realistic/gritty skins, which creates this weird effect where you have this round-headed hero who kind of looks like the guy on the box art if he doubled his weight and possibly had a birth defect.
Nice scenery in Risen, contrasted by ugly, ugly people
Hi! Look at my huge head!
Hello modelling from the 1990's
The game has great music, although it was wildly inappropriate at times as a lot of the “wandering the countryside” music sounded a whole lot like “OMG SOMETHING BITING YOUR FACE OFF” music at certain points, which ended up with me suddenly jumping at a drum beat and swinging around wildly looking for whatever horror was trying to eat me when there was nothing around for miles. This was made all the worse because some of the enemies really blended in with the scenery well, and you didn’t realize they were there until you stepped on them and they repaid you by gnawing on your spleen.
At around 2m35s in this video you get an idea of the type of sudden change in theme of the music. This is just the general wandering around tralala music.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmlxb0o4hI8#t=2m35s[/youtube]
The music for some specific areas is even worse in terms of the whole messing up the tone thing:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AozHZDEuRhw[/youtube]
Dialogue and script are actually okay overall. The combat is difficult as rumored, until you realize that magic and the crossbow are king and cannot be blocked unlike 99% of your melee attacks and weapons. The physics seem to weird out sometimes where corpses would fly across the map when I shot them with the crossbow or go sliding around so I had to chase a corpse to loot it. Physics also affected the jumping and climbing which was clunky. The game also seemed to be struggling with how realistic it wanted to be with annoying “realistic” stuff like some of the things below or being able to take a bath, and then silly unrealistic stuff like taking a bath fully clothed in your armor and with your sword still on. Also some weird camera angles, where you have cutscenes with someone talking who is not on screen.
A talking chair! Speaking character, nowhere to be seen...
There is also an annoying tendency, which I can only assume is intended to stretch out the playtime or just a horrendous oversight, for the NPCs to be using various crafting and other things at the exact moment you want to use them. Crafting a sword has 4 steps, use the forge, use the anvil, use the water trough, use the sharpening wheel, but the npc blacksmiths will be using whichever of those items when you need it, and you will have to wait. Then when you finally get to use it, and finish, they will be using the next item you want, because for some reason the NPCs take a LOT longer to do the same stuff as you. And for some stupid reason, you can interrupt them, but they don’t stop using it until they are done. There is no option to just talk to them and say “hey, get out of my way, I’m the PC here!”.
So overall the game was a fairly mediocre RPG with some annoying bits to start, then it started to get tiring at the end. I only managed to finish it because I was pretty sure there wasn’t that much left to the game when I started to get bored of it, but they could probably easily chop 10 hours out of it and do no real harm. After awhile, a lot of the stuff started to feel like it was intentionally put in just to make the game drag out and have a longer playthrough time.
On top of that the endgame, final boss fight and ending were all terrible, making what would have been an okay, if not fantastic, gaming experience, into something that left me feeling cheated and regretful.
(More spoilerrific specific complaints below!!!!!)
Display spoilers
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2PaduvpYPA[/youtube]
ALERT! Urgent incoming messages from the corporate alliance!
Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO Bount Hunter Video
March 5, 2011 – 3:48 pm
New bounty hunter video up. I’m afraid this game will devour my life when it comes out :0
Moved the video behind the jump because the autoplay everytime the site loads is annoying =)
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ALERT! Incoming Transmission!
Another Catherine Trailer
September 30, 2010 – 6:29 pm
Atlus presented a second trailer at the TGS for the new Persona HD game, Catherine. While Persona has always had an emphasis on the psychology of the characters and how it applied to their interactions and the world, the new game promised to step it up a notch. Both graphically and gratuitously. And while I’ll probably still buy this (If by some miracle it makes it to NA), I will have to hold my head low with shame. Or order it online.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0gYle_iZt-k[/youtube]
P3P – Strike Three, You’re Out!
September 11, 2010 – 6:03 pm
I am throughly under the impression that Atlas has brilliant marketing. Mostly because the alternative would mean that I was incredibly stupid. It took me less than a week to break down and buy the new(old) release of Persona 3 on the PSP. Once the feelings of bitter recrimination and self loathing had subsided, I booted the game up to check it out.
The first thing I noticed was the snazzy new opening, which seems now to be a given in every new rerelease of the game. I was pleased that they included the original opening as well. After actually starting the game, I was faced with a dilemma however. I had a choice between choosing a male and a female main character. The game was kind enough to assure me that picking the female option didn’t mean anything. Feeling reassured of my masculinity, I selected the female character. I had already played through the game as a male character and the goal was to see what was different after all. Upon making my selection, it immediately switched to an interface of hot pink. It also doesn’t help that the the female main character was especially feminine. Normally this wouldn’t be a huge issue, but the protagonists in Persona are supposed to be blank slates that you impress yourself on. So despite the games warnings, it made me feel incredibly gay.
As I played the game, I found myself with a vastly different perspective than I had originally envisioned. Rather than laying my personality over the main character like I did in previous versions, I instead became protective of my female main character. I was a lot more concerned with what friends Violet (my protagonist’s name) was making and in particular who she decided to date. As options became available, I thought about whether or not they were good enough for Violet. It was a sharp departure from my perspective in previous games, which was to date as many available ladies as possible (all for the social links I swear). I was mostly OK when she decided to date Akihiko, since he seems to be a fairly upstanding boy, but was concerned when she was becoming friends with Junpei (I didn’t want my character dating some deadbeat kid).
From a technical standpoint, I was fairly impressed with how well the port was done. To save space, they removed most of the cutscenes and used a series of still shots. In the actual game, the world is rendered as images with sprites rather than 3D models, with the exception of Tartarus (the main dungeon). This helps preserve the feel of the original game while keeping the visuals looking nice. It also gives off a stronger visual novel vibe than the previous versions of the game. This also apparently allowed them to save enough space to add extra vocal lines and new music, rather than remove them, which was a pleasant surprise.
The story also changed a lot more than I was anticipating. Aside from redoing all the references from him to her, they also added whole new dialogue paths and have redone many of the reactions and responses of characters to be more suitable to a female lead. For example, when Junpei’s complains about your character taking the lead, it takes on less of a resentment feel and moves more towards a display of insecurity, hidden behind a veil of light sexism. The mass amount of changes didn’t affect the core of the story, but gave a new, fresh perspective on the game that made playing it a 3rd time enjoyable, rather than tedious.
With the port comes a host of game play improvements as well. The battle system has been revamped to be more in line with the games successor, Persona 4. This includes the ability to control all party members and the guard command. One new limitation that was added is that the protagonist can no longer use any weapon, being restricted to swords swords (males), or certain pole arms (female). As well, the knockdown mechanic has been changed to be less punishing to both your party and the monsters. Some other changes include the removal of the fusion spells which were replaced with fusion cards. I found this to be both mixed advantage/disadvantage. On the one hand, you no longer need to carry persona simply to be able to use the fusion spells, but on the other hand, you are now much more limited in how often you can use them.
Overall, I found the game to be a solid release. Between the new mode and other tweaks, as well as the ability to be able to play an excellent RPG on the move, the game provides enough new content and features to justify purchasing it, especially if you’re a fan of the series.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JB4WyHe-HRM[/youtube]
