Gaming Weekend: Feels Like the Old Days Edition
I mentioned last week that I was anticipating the arrival of my newest Goozex score, Etrian Odyssey II. I had been hankering for a dungeon crawler, something like a PC role-playing experience perhaps along the lines of Oblivion. Depth, you know? I don’t want to wander too far into a tangent already, but I keep trying these Japanese-style role-playing games and aside from the tactical ones, I find them insufferable. I guess I’m the one who changed and not the games (though my recent stint into FF VI suggests the games themselves are a bit different as well) and maybe it’s just that the “real-time battle systems” turn me off, perhaps explaining why the tactical variants aren’t as painful. But considering the fact that turn-based RPGs are outnumbered by real time variants something like 60 to 1, it strikes me as not surprising that I was feeling like it was a game type I wanted to re-connect with again.
Anyway, Etrian Odyssey II. I wish I knew where to start. The game itself has gotten pretty strong reviews, and yet it’s something that I suspect will fly far beneath most gamers’ radar. It works a lot like older PC dungeon crawlers. It’s turn-based, although the pace can be particularly brisk if you choose, so each step you take in the dungeon counts as a turn. Encounters are, for the most part, random although you do have a gauge that indicates the likelihood of an attack on the next turn. It’s not precise, but it does give a pretty good indicator of when to heal up if necessary. And there are a few enemies that are visible, usually boss-type creatures. These can occasionally be circumvented and usually avoided by judicious retreat. But a huge part of the game is the cartography, which is where most of the game’s DS functionality comes into play. Since it’s turn based you can avoid a Foe (the visible boss creatures) and mark your map to note its location for later. The mapping options are surprisingly robust all around, and enjoyable enough that they’ve somehow managed to make me go back to drawing maps by hand and I’m happy about it.
Aside from the turn-based aspect and mapping, there is also a clever class and advancement system: You earn experience for random encounters in keeping with the genre standards, but there is no accompanying financial reward. At least not directly and certainly not assuredly. Instead you get various trophies from certain critters you’ve vanquished, which can be sold for an almost universally paltry sum at the town shop. They then charge exorbitant prices for the goods you value. Meanwhile the experience points accumulate as you’d expect, and after a particular cache of them has been accumulated you level up. Except unlike most RPGs, the leveling process isn’t gifted, with automatic generosity in terms of extra HP, magic and attribute bonuses along with maybe some sort of tech tree. I mean, there is a tech tree unique to each class and you can choose how to progress within it, but you get either a skill or a single trait bonus. Each level.
Let me put it another way: In order for your Medic to earn the Revive skill, which brings a character back from 0 HP, you need no fewer than six level advancements which provide no additional bonuses to combat or defensive capabilities. It’s this kind of treatment of a player that gives the game its reputation for being punishing (check a few reviews to see what people think about it) but it feels so much to me like the older games that had little patience for sissy gamers who wanted to step into the game as a minor deity and exit the game as something analog to the champion of the universe.
There was a time when I spent a whole summer on a dungeon crawler, fighting and re-fighting my way through sections getting satisfaction from the minor victories. There is so much about those halcyon days that is captured in this game, and it is just what I wanted. The platform makes it compatible with my adult life, the anachronism makes it feel like something that maybe shouldn’t even exist in these times. I want to find the person responsible for this game and give them a hug. Of course I’d quickly end the embrace and clear my throat, offering a firm handshake instead. There are appearances to maintain, after all.
The List
- Blood Bowl - We wrapped up the pre-season tournament on Wednesday with a match that ended up deciding the championship. Dave’s 2-0-1 Orktown Aggravators squared off against the 3-0-0 Cleaveland Browns. We let Dave decide if he wanted the championship to be in his hands; a couple of other teams had outside chances of winning but they would need the Browns to lose for that to happen. Of those teams, the Aggravators had the best chance of taking the top spot if they had a strong game against them. Instead the Browns pounded them 3-0 and readily won the prize. Meanwhile in a less important battle I held out for my first win of the tournament against Aaron’s Skaven team, 2-1. I was rolling very well which helped me clear the pitch for much of the second half, letting me push slowly down the field to score late and seal the game.
On Saturday Thom and I played the first match of the real league, RMBBL, facing my Undead team against his Goblins. He took the match 2-1 but I felt I played pretty well overall. I scored a couple of casualties, and managed to get an extra skill for a Wight I ran in for a TD so he’ll start the next game with Guard.
What’s interesting is that the league is using the Rules Review from 2007, which clarifies a few wordings on some basic LRB5 rules but in the experimental section it adjusts some of the undead-style team lists. This directly relates to the discussion from last week’s Parting Shot. Specifically it changes the Khemri teams so they no longer get up to four mummies, swapping them for similar but less overpowering Tomb Guardians and, significantly for me, alters the profile on Skeletons. Used to be they cost 10K less than a zombie and had one more movement and one less armor. Now they cost the same, but they’ve added Thick Skull to compensate. I think this is ideal because it means the two basic units are no longer obviously disparate: It ultimately depends on your style of play to determine which you prefer to put on the field. Players with AV 8 are far less likely to be injured (statistically) but they aren’t very fast moving. If you prefer a more mobile team (like me), you can do so without essentially getting a free re-roll in return but at least you don’t have to fret quite as much over having your players exiting the field right and left. - Etrian Odyssey II: The Heroes of Lagaard - Clearly, from above, I love this game. However, it isn’t without its faults. For one thing the presentation is kind of crummy: The anime character and enemy portraits are cute and fun, but the 3D dungeon modeling is sloppy and unattractive. The biggest problem is in the interface which, in keeping with the rest of the game, is uninterested in being at all helpful to the player. The cartography features are vast and welcome, but they’re also littered with indecipherable options and zero aids. There are elements to the game that simply aren’t explained: I got the game from Goozex and while I didn’t get the full case the sender was at least kind enough to ship the instruction manual along with it. Even reading that (something I haven’t done in ages) provides precious little insight into some of the more mysterious elements. There is an item on a character’s status page marked “Force.” The manual references it once saying that when it reaches 100 it activates a Force Power. But it doesn’t explain how Force is earned or what the power does. By trial and error and with the help from Thom who’s been playing for a few weeks now I determined that it builds as you fight through encounters, but it disappears if you reach 100 and exit the dungeon without using it. Other elements like the passage of time, the way search skills work and the behavior of various Foes is all left up to experimentation. In a way this merely reinforces the old school vibe the game oozes, but at the same time while I appreciate the adherence to some traditions, certain things have become industry standards for a reason and I think at this point we should be past mysterious interface as a valid gameplay element.
- Rock Band - Still playing a few tracks with Nik now and then, we’ve officially stalled on our quest for World Tour Mode supremacy since Nik is reluctant to bother with the Hard level on guitar. In our practice sessions I hit on the idea of having her play bass on Hard to get a feel for the extra button and speed without all the funky chord changes and such. She survived the song but didn’t seem to have much fun so we abandoned that idea.
In other RB news, the song I’ve found to be the most consistently fun instrumentally is Boston’s “More Than a Feeling.” Playing a rare guitar part on Hard I couldn’t wipe the grin from my face as I rocked out like a plastic-toy wielding goofball for five minutes. I’d call it easily the best download I’ve made in the game, and I’m not even especially enamored with the song itself outside this context. - Professor Layton and the Curious Village - It seems unlikely now that I’m fully hooked on EO that I’ll find my way back to this game any time soon. It still strikes me as a game I don’t fully understand, especially in terms of intended audience and marketing, but I can’t complain about it since I’ve had fun with it. I will say though that even had I not found another game to take its place, the regular progression of advancing the story one half step and then getting stuck for a day or two on a puzzle before finally working it out was making the pace glacial so I would have likely sought a break for something more readily rewarding. You know, like Etrian Odyssey.
- FBI - I’ve found in this game a form of play that I think of as “peer-induced.” I no longer think the game is pointless and dull. Playing with four or five players can be enjoyable, but I examine the game and find it lacks just enough that I file under one of those games that I don’t reach for when I’m looking for something to play. I grant that I tend to gravitate toward longer, more complex board games, but I even enjoy card or dice games so long as they have an element to them I can latch onto. Pikomino, for example, is a quick and accessible game I enjoy because it appeals to my sense of enjoyment in theme and mechanics. Where I think FBI fails is that it has a theme that I’d enjoy, if it were done sincerely. Instead of fitting the play to the theme, the game is interchangeably a trick-gathering card game that uses a very loose cops n’ crooks metaphor. For me, that’s kind of a deal breaker. I enjoy the game for itself, in terms of how it’s played, but the setup and execution is clunky (games that involve a lot of picking up cards laid alone and flat on the table annoy me) and I don’t get any kind of sense of being an FBI agent when I play. Abstraction is fine, but it seems like other people tolerate the abstraction in this game more than I do and as a result I’ve played it more than I probably would have had it not been a mild hit with the rest of my group.
Hobby Update
I finished basing the last few figures on the Undead team on Thursday, and wrapped up nearly all the remaining paint I wanted to do. That includes re-doing part of the green harpy, so I felt confident enough to do a team picture day and snap a few shots of them. I only got a couple pictures I was happy enough with not to delete, but that should be good for now. I still have a couple nagging figures I’d like to do some more work on: I’m not completely happy with two of my three mummies, for example. But I think that I’ll give myself until I pull the trigger on the next team models to do any last touch-ups and then I’m putting a seal on them. They’ve already started showing wear from being unvarnished so I need to just stop being an AR perfectionist and call them completed. When I have a new team to worry about, that ought to be enough to convince me to stop obsessing.
Meanwhile I tried another approach on a Van Saar model this week: I took a Juve and dropped Midnight Blue as the basecoat, then I drybrushed the Steel Grey over it and applied the Blue Wash as a finishing touch. I thought it came out pretty well, although the Wash really covers and darkens the Grey. But Nik still thought it was too much blue, so I’m kind of at a loss. I think I may try the Steel Grey basecoat/Ghost Grey drybrush with the Blue Wash over the top on the other Juve next week to see if that’s less dark, and if that doesn’t work I think I’ll add another drybrushed layer of Ghost Grey on this week’s Juve to better match the Leader (who’s looking a little better with some flesh tones to his face and some orangeish brown highlights on the hair) and run with whichever comes out the best.
And lastly I made an uncharacteristic return to my 40K Chaos models this week. Right before I stopped worrying about my Chaos army’s appearance I picked up a couple of random Eldar models in a box of assorted 40K stuff. I took one of them and used some green stuff to stretch him out over the ‘dozer blade on one of my Rhinos. It looked cool, except the green stuff was, well, green. The Eldar figure (or at least the part of him that I left intact) was kind of janky, too. So my big contribution to the army this week was to base over the green stuff and figure in black, but it’s progress so I guess that counts for something.
Parting Shot
I tried to register with TalkBloodBowl.com a couple of weeks ago. I really like NAF, but the forums there aren’t the most active in the world and even then they, like the site, are mostly focused on tournaments and leagues. Now, NAF I had to pay for which I’m okay with because I get the custom block dice and access to STARS which is far superior to any excel-based team roster I’ve found (even if it lacks support for the experimental rules from the 2007 Rules Review I talked about above).
TBB, on the other hand, is free but then again, it’s just a forum. Now I sort of understand the “locked forum” concept because small, controlled communities are far superior to the wild and wooly ones you can find on a lot of video gaming sites. What happened is this: I signed up, and it sent me an email saying my registration had been received and it just needed to be activated by an admin. Okay, fine so far. So I waited for the follow-up email and… nothing. It never arrived.
So today I try my login and no dice. I check my email and sure enough I never got the second confirmation message. So I email the webmaster/admin just asking what happened. I don’t mean to suggest the email was snotty because tone in email is always dicey but it was at least terse and directed me to a publicly accessible thread that said there were some reports of second confirmation emails being lost in the mail and the solution was to keep trying to log in. The reason was that if you had an activated account but didn’t log in within seven days, your account would be deleted as a suspected spam activation. Bottom line, I was approved, didn’t get the message and therefore didn’t log in so I got canned as spam.
Right. My problem is this: I don’t think the burden of research and effort should be on the new community member. It’s certainly not my fault that the messaging system is malfunctioning. I fail to see why I should have been expected to read a thread titled “Announcements” just to join (I wasn’t joining for the public announcements, I wanted to read about Blood Bowl); nor do I see why I need to “keep trying” for up to a week. If your site is broken, fix it. Don’t ask me as a potential community member to do your work for you. That’s just bad form. And my real bewilderment comes in the form of being utterly baffled as to why a community like this even needs these extra layers of security. Is Blood Bowl discussion really so vital as to require such heinous barriers to entry? Wouldn’t it be better served by having judicious moderation of the actual forums instead? Putting the onus on the interested party seems, at best, elitist.
I went ahead and tried again. I’ll attempt my login as many times as possible but at this point if I forget or it doesn’t work, I’ll move on. I’d love a more active discussion board relating to my favorite game, but I don’t need the hassle to get a few minutes wasted per day talking about how nerfed the Ogres are in LRB5 or whatever. For a hobby/game that is directly benefited by having the most robust community it can possibly have, this isn’t the best foot forward as they say.