Gaming Weekend: Smooth Beauty Edition
I’ve grown wary of linear Japanese-style role-playing games. The last jRPG I played through was Dragon Quest VIII and while I enjoyed that game I did find it to be occasionally anachronistic in its strict adherence to tradition. I guess I kind of welcomed it for that but it certainly didn’t inspire me to rush out and play more jRPGs. As they’ve become more viable on my preferred console platforms, I’ve gravitated toward more Western-styled role-playing games like Oblivion and KotOR.
Which is why I don’t fully comprehend the brouhaha surrounding the recent drops of jRPG titles on the Xbox 360. It started with Eternal Sonata and got more significant in the eyes of the gaming press with Blue Dragon and most recently Lost Odyssey. It continues with the forthcoming Infinite Undiscovery which, naming misfortune aside, is supposed to make American gamers care for whatever reason and simultaneously convince Japanese gamers that the 360 isn’t a cultural pariah.
But while I’ve been burned too often since the release of Final Fantasy VII on jRPGs (most frequently by latter editions of that same series) to feel the same glee I once did on hearing a new Square Enix title was in the works, I may have lumped the whole genre together a bit hastily. Take for example the whim I followed recently to acquire Eternal Sonata. I played the demo a while back (actually closer to a year ago, when I detailed my impressions for the August 12, 2007 edition of Gaming Weekend) but it sort of slipped from my radar in the light of all the Fall madness that began with BioShock, a few weeks after I played ES’ demo.
I said back then that Eternal Sonata was beautiful and I can say now that after putting several hours into the full game, it is hardly just to use common adjectives like beautiful to describe the game’s graphics. They art style is practically an ode to Paul’s sensibilities and they have a colorful, vibrant life to them that reminds me of how video game worlds used to be portrayed. This is a dream world loosely based on the precepts of our physical plane but stylized and brightened and infused with a sort of raw joy that makes me want to stare at them for hours. They may be my favorite graphics on any game to date.
As a game Eternal Sonata is deliberately paced which can easily be interpreted—correctly—as saying “the game moves slowly.” But while a ponderous pace occasionally drives a game out of my console’s disc tray, I don’t mind it so much thus far. There is a fittingly dream-like quality to everything that happens in ES, and the drifting, meandering progression seems almost like a conscious design decision that works well in the game’s context.
Beneath the beauty and calm of the game’s surface is a melancholy tone that works as a counter-point to the otherwise child-friendly presentation. That balance is perfectly reflected in the combat mechanic where you’re provided with both a sense of carefully executed strategy and a pressure to move and react quickly under time constraints. The use of shadow and light in the combat arena is fanciful and welcome, the monster designs are nearly as sharp and arresting as the main character designs… in all it’s a game that makes a fabulous impression.
Other Games
Time was short this weekend and will likely continue to be for the next few weeks as we prepare and execute a move, but I get in gaming where I can.
- Folklore – The worlds presented in Folklore are, like the setting of Eternal Sonata, welcome reprieves from the grim and grimy “realistic” universes presented by more popular titles like Gears of War or Grand Theft Auto. Not that I dislike those harsh realms, but I appreciate the imagination showcased by more fanciful games and, as escapist entertainment goes, I can find more general enjoyment in these kinds of games. I spent most of my Folklore time this weekend working on the optional Quests which mostly involve warping back into previously visited realms and doing light fetch or escort activities. They mostly serve to facilitate the game’s equivalent of a grind which involves meeting the often odd requirements necessary to level up your captured monsters. Many of them are cumulative activities like “destroy 10 Folks with this one” and so on. Since monsters re-spawn each time you visit a screen, you find a good spot and run back and forth between level sections, fighting the game’s sometimes awkward camera controls to meet your requirements. It falls into that place games sometimes visit of half-fun, half-work, where the rewards are dubious trade-offs for the interruption of real progress.
- Jeanne d’Arc – This week’s bedtime game; I didn’t make much tangible progress because I just unlocked the ability to merge skill gems with the weird purple frog that’s been following me around for half the game (it’s a very strange title, all told). So I spent probably too much time messing with that, plus I went on another shopping expedition. When I finally did try the next battle I found it was one in which none of my allies can fall in battle and keeping some of my favored units alive is easier said than done. I’ll be making my second attempt—and probably my third and fourth—during the upcoming week.
- Legend of Zelda: The Phantom Hourglass – I only played for another thirty minutes or so, still finding this mid-point in the progression to be painfully slow and shockingly repetitive of things I’ve done already in this game. I don’t remember Wind Waker ever feeling stale outside the sailing sections but TPH has already had a number of moments that play like retreads of things you just did in the same game. It’s actually pretty ponderous.
- Geometry Wars – I don’t know why but I dusted off GeoWars for a few rounds during a break from Eternal Sonata and Folklore. My best game was a 400,000+ run which isn’t too bad for someone who has gotten pretty rusty in several months of not playing. I realized that what GeoWars has that I miss from Everyday Shooter is a sense of tension and urgency. EDS is a better game, but its sometimes mellow vibe makes for a less addictive experience.
Demo Watch
- Ikaruga – I rented the GameCube version of this game and while I really enjoy top-down shooters and recognize that this game is sublime in that genre, I found its punishing difficulty to be a detriment to the overall quality of the game. I had rented it previously with the intention of buying if it was something I really enjoyed but at the time I couldn’t say I liked it enough to spend thirty or forty dollars on it. For $10 on XBLA, I’m seriously considering it.
- Conflict: Denied Ops – I couldn’t even get past the teaser footage and the main menu. It’s an ugly looking game that offered no compelling reason for me to even give the free sample a taste. I turned it off and threw away the OXM demo disc (after I scored the sweet Portal gamerpics) and went back to Eternal Sonata. I feel pretty good about my decision.