PlayStation 4

Posted: 2024-04-10

This is a banger. My problems with this game are nitpicky, which is a great sign. (ෆ˙ᵕ˙ෆ)

Ff7 remake has an incredible amount of polish. Not a surprise considering that ff7 has been the flagship ip of squeenix basically since its release. The music is fantastic and the visuals are stunning. This game has clearly received a lot of resources and attention during development. This has mostly paid off, but there are some details where this has been a detriment to the final product. I'll get to this later

The gameplay is pretty solid. Remake reintroduced the ATB, but re-imagined for a more modern AAA game. Regular attacks are unrestricted, but all other actions such as magic, special moves, and item use require the ATB to use. This is not a hinderance as the ATB fills continually, and fills faster using regular attacks. The limit break also makes a comeback.

The player can also switch characters on the fly. Compared to ffxv, switching is much better here. The controls are the same across all characters, and you’re free to command any character at any point. Even though the player is restricted to Cloud outside of combat (thus, automatically switching back if you were controlling another character) it does not feel as disorienting as it did in ffxv. They kept it simple and uniform, making for a better experience.

A modernized gameplay is nice and all, but the REAL crown jewel of the remake is the setting. Midgar is recreated with a loving eye. The plot points related to the class divide is preserved, and those themes are clearly well understood by the remake team. It would have been so easy for squeenix to try and soften the edge in a misguided attempt to make the game appeal to broader audiences or whatever, but that didn’t really happen. The OG ffvii plot/setting was a banger, and its still a banger in remake.

Remake did a great job depicting the scale of midar. When under the plate, the underside of the plate dominates the skybox. It looms like a threat. The underside, inside, and top of the plate seem to go on forever. It’s an engineering marvel, and so clearly a hostile to anyone unlucky enough to live under the plate.

Remake is not one-to-one to the original. This game expands on/changes several details. The AVALANCHE crew get expanded character arcs, for one. Jesse, Biggs, and Wedge each get their own mini character episodes. These are fantastic additions to the game. The settings are much more alive as well. The various sectors and areas are loaded with NPCs that help set the tone for the game. Basically, the ramake took what the og game already did, and went into greater detail.

The main cast were well executed. I can almost feel how much the staff loved these characters. Aerith in particular stuck out to me. The game paid special attention to Cloud and Aerith’s meeting and time together.

I have a lot of praises for this game, but it’s not all sunshine and rainbows.

There was more than one boss fight that felt unnecessarily drawn out. It was like the only way the game increased difficulty was by increasing enemy HP bars. The stupid Hell House was irritating for this kind of thing. (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ You don’t even have the luxury of a full party when you fight it. Aside from Cloud, you only get Aerith and she’s not exactly a heavy hitter. (=A=')

The final boss gauntlet was also a little unforgiving. I remember dying a few times and getting pretty tilted that there were no checkpoints between phases. I really felt the pressure toward the end bc i didn’t want to risk having to redo such a long segment eugh (‘=n=)

As much as I loved that a lot of the plot and setting retained its edge, there were some changes I was less enthusiastic about.

If you don’t know, ffvii remake is only a remake up to the end of disc one. In the og game, Sephiroth basically never shows up in disc one. There is a lot of mystery and intrigue surrounding him. I like that Sephiroth is treated like a boogeyman. It does a great job of increasing the tension of the plot.

Like, in the og game, the leadup to the climax has the party find a gruesome trail of blood in the upper floors of Shinra tower, only to find president Shinra freshly assassinated at his desk. Iirc you never encounter Sephiroth once in this segment. Part of what made Sephiroth an intriguing villain is that you only learned about him through the pieces you have to put together after the fact. You hardly ever encounter the guy in person, you only see the bloody and horrifying trail of destruction left in his wake. Dude is practically a ghost and that is one of the reasons his connection to Cloud is so threatening. You chase his down and fall for every trap he sets out.

In the remake, Sephiroth shows up in the first five minutes. Its like the game was self-conscious in its presentation. Almost as if it didn’t trust players would be interested in playing remake unless it said “Look, we have Sephiroth in this game! You like Sephiroth right???” It’s a very fanservice moment that completely undoes what made chasing down Sephiroth interesting and fun in the og game.

Also, it just occurred to me, why would Sephiroth try to kill Cloud at the end of remake? Did I miss something here? It’s like his only motive is to show up and go “heegh! Its me!” and then he fuckin shanks you!

The OTHER major plot change i disagree with is that the ending reveals Zack is alive. I LOVE (ෆ˙ᵕ˙ෆ) °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖° this character. He’s easily my favourite across the entire franchise, so I’m a little torn. I’m a total slut for more content of this character, and I’m happy to have a playable version of this guy in a game that doesn’t have completely batshit combat mechanics. On the other hand, making this guy playable in the remake series completely undermines a lot of big and important plot points. Like, Cloud’s entire character arc kinda hinges on what happens to this guy?

I dunno, man. I’ve mentioned it in a blog entry, but I really don’t see how the remake series could make it so that Zack is alive and also not completely change the plot for the worse. Like, a huge reason that remake worked so well is that the devs didn’t change what was already a banger of a plot.

I mean, fundamentally, the whole multiverse plot tends to be a fanfic trope for a reason. It’s used as a vehicle for wish fulfillment that will often set the plot aside for said wish fulfillment. This pretty acceptable in fanfic, but I’m sure I don’t have to explain to you why that might raise a few red flags in a big ticket, AAA video game, right???? (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻

GameCube

Posted: 2024-04-09

I played Crystal Chronicles for nostalgia. I was able to get a lot further in the game than i did as a kid, but unfourtunately i've decided to drop this game for one reason:

This is a co-op game through and through.

Solo play eventually turns into a miserable slog. This is otherwise a great game, but there are almost no compensations for solo players. People willing to min/max their play will be able to get through the game fine, but its tough trying to do a more casual playthrough.

The controls arent an issue. Left bumper scrolls through action/spell selection which is the same as right bumper. According to my co-worker, spell selection is easier w a gba connection. I have no way to test this but im fascinated with how gba controls would differ from gamepad controls. But alas, I have no way to know playing solo.

Crystal Chronicles assumes you have at least one other person who will reliably play with you for every play session. The deliberately slow pace of combat is set so multiple people can co-ordinate their movements and attacks. The most egregious aspect is that casting spells happen at a snails pace. This is to help avoid misfiring spells when multiple people are involved in casting.

That's right! Multiple players can combine spells to make more powerful spells. If two players cast the same spell, they will cast ara level (mid level) spells. Solo players are allowed to link two spells to achieve the same effect. Unfoutunately, solo players will be locked out of casting aga (high level) spells. You need to play co-op to do that.

When I say CC assumes you will play co-op for every play session, that's not an exaggeration. If one person plays ahead, any inactive playable characters will not gain any levels/stats. If a player jumps back in after missing one session, the level gap between the returning player and the next dungeon is a setup for a frustrating time. CC locks cleared dungeons for a couple of in-game years, so its not like you can revisit old dungeons to help a other players catch up. Dungeons change as the game progresses, and levels are only gained after dungeon clears, so there are increasing barriers if players cannot reliably play together.

I remember playing CC with a neighbour as a kid, and this problem made itself known pretty early on. If my neighbour played ahead because i couldnt come over, then my character was too under powered to stay alive or attack effectively. It gets real disheartening real fast.

So, CC is really only suitable for people who already live together to play. So, siblings, roommates, partners and what have you. Don't get me wrong, I love couch play as much as anyone else, but CC is not a great game to return to for someone like me who prefers to live alone and game solo.

Its a real shame this game dissuades solo play, because behind this fundamental design choice, is a great game. The style, storytelling, visuals, music, and gameplay are all fantastic.

The 2.5D style for dungeon layouts with fixed camera positions was such a smart choice. Since there's no camera to worry about, players can focus on the gameplay while adventuring through a gorgeous and expertly laid out settings.

The world building and lore is intriguing and heartbreaking. If you're familiar with LotR, CC has a little bit of that End of the Third Age vibe. If you don't know what that means, CC is very obviously after the fall of a golden age in the world.

Each of the 4 fantasy races tell you their various histories. All 4 races either directly state or imply some sort of severe downfall in the recent past. The narrative has a very storybook feel, being told literally from a book presumably from the perspective of an older player character in the future. The narration varies from lighthearted stories to horrifying cautionary tales, depending on the dungeon. The music ties it all together to give the game a very folksy feel.

I may give the crystal chronicles series another chance, but im gonna need to do a bit or research to figure out which one. Some of the games are on consoles i dont own, and i get the impression other CC games have radically different play styles. Dont hold your breath, i have games i bought literally over 10 yrs ago that i gotta get to first lmao

PC (2015)

Posted: 2024-03-30

Seems like this review is just as much a retrospective on MapleStory as it is a review of MapleLegends. I will also touch on one other server i tried.

The thing about gaming as a hobby is that some games are the sticky tar pits of the gaming world. I don’t necessarily mean they’re bad games, I mean they’re hard to get out of and leave. Sometimes a game feels more like a bad habit rather than a relaxing hobby. MMORPGs and a lot of PVP multi-player games usually fit this category to a tee. This is what playing ML is like. There were a lot of days when i would rather play literally anything else, but my brain basically made it impossible to enjoy any game that wasn’t ML. There were a few months there that i was really into the thick of it. Rare was the day i didn’t log on at least once. I cannot stress enough that I think ML is a good game. Its just that some games put a curse on you, and ML is one of those games. Now that the curse is lifted, I can properly enjoy other games again. It also means I’m more comfortable reviewing this mmo. (ෆ˙ᵕ˙ෆ)

I dunno if you’ve picked up on this vibe from me yet, but I Do Not like multi-player games. (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ Whether it be co-op or pve it doesn’t matter. I especially dislike anything pvp. An excellent video essay by fellow Calgarian Dan Olson titled Why It's Rude to Suck at Warcraft pretty succinctly explains everything i dislike about MMOs and more broadly multi-player games in general.

MapleStory is my one exception strictly for nostalgia’s sake. The music is so chill and peaceful it’s like 90% of the reason i wanted to go back to revisit the game. The modern version of MapleStory is about as unappealing as any other mmorpg out there, so i decided to find out if there were any private servers over older versions of the game.

This is where MapleLegends comes in. It’s based on ver .62 of the game, which came out right around the time my family stopped playing the game, which turned out to be exactly what I’m looking for in a server. From what i gather, this is the oldest version private servers will base their servers on. ML doesn’t restrict itself to v.62, it also includes areas and features from later versions.

A widely universal problem across private servers is that the game stagnates pretty easily. Most MS servers seem to have populations anywhere from a couple dosen to two thousand players. ML’s population typically hovers at around 800 concurrent players (most of whom are AFK at any given moment). Most of these players are people in the late game. What this means is that in-game economies suffer inflated priced on items when there are almost no new players to offset the market. It also makes it harder for new players to recruit others for lower level party quests. For someone like me, the majority of my chat is filled with server wide announcements for people buying, selling, and looking for players to pq. Some aspects of the meta change for the worse when the ‘massive’ part of the mmorpg cannot be replicated on a private server. ¯\_(σ ‸ σ)_/¯

As an aside, i know for a fact that anyone who is afk is an active player lmao They are not legacy players who left their account logged in for years on end. Over the course of the past few months that I’ve been active, the server has closed for maintenance/updates roughly once a month for events. All ~800 of those players have to download the new version and log on every time that happens. Not to mention people who dc naturally as a consequence of shaky internet or what have you.

I don’t know if this is/was a common thing in mmos, but for some reason in MapleStory, different regional servers had different extra areas available to them. Like. Why. (=A='') MapleStory SEA (South East Asia) had a lot of exclusive content that wasn’t available in GMS (Global MapleStory). As far as I understand, these regional differences were pretty superficial, as the base game was identical. Any private server remedies this by integrating any exclusive content into their servers.

As of this writing, I have a lvl 86 ranger in ML. So im decently far into the midgame. My goals with this character is tourism and childhood wish fulfillment. I don’t really intend to dive into the late game like at all. My play style is pretty much solo all the way through.

Part of that wish fulfillment aspect is that most private servers (as i understand, anyways) give players free access to the cash shop. In the official MS, these are exclusive game items you can pay for with real world currency micro-transaction style. Private servers lets you buy cashshop items in exchange for voting for their server. Obviously no one ever enjoys micro-transactions, so being able to access cosmetics and pets without needing to pay is a pretty big draw. You can still donate money to the ML server and get cash shop items that way, but since ML only includes cosmetics and pets, this removes any pay2win problems that occur in official MS. As a result, there are basically no high lvl players who aren’t completely decked out in cosmetics. Everyone gets to wear that cute dress we always wanted to as a kid. I don’t mind this at all.

Seeing as this is a pretty early version of the game (circa 2008), the pace for levelling up is pretty slow. ML features x2 exp and x3 quest and even then the game moves at a leisurely pace. As a weirdo who likes grinding as a way to chill out, this is ideal. Servers based on slightly newer versions of MapleStory will usually sport higher multiplying factors to exp as part of their appeal and feature content that expedites levelling that render old quest lines entirely obsolete. Modern MapleStory is pretty egregious with the latter, in that one of the selling points is that players can practically skip to level 200 within a few months of starting the game. For some players, this is a make-or-break QOL feature. For me, it feels like a shallow appeal to players at the cost of the journey.

The difficulty humps and slowdowns as a character levels up is, in my humble opinion, part of the experience of the game. It feels less meaningful when characters practically skip through lvls 20-30 bc they get a buttload of exp just talking to npcs. I mean, its kinda special when a bro you meet at lvl 40 is still active in the guild at lvl 100 six months later.

My older brother got me to try out a server that just launched a couple of weeks ago. ScaniaMS is based on ver .83 of MS, and sports a lot of the changes and features of another popular server DreamMS. A huge reason i didn’t like that server is because it removes aspects of the game i consider essential to the game feel. This server, and servers like it replicate a lot of the issues i have with updates to official MS. :T

Speaking of QOL, ML adjusts some features, but seems to keep a lot of the base game intact. Once again, this appeals to my nostalgia. I understand if a lot of players view some of these legacy quirks as things that should be fixed, but to me, they’re important to the game feel. The 2 biggest examples that stick out to me is traversal and bosses.

Travelling through the maple world will often require the player to board ferries to get to various areas. The largest voyage was connecting Ellinia to Orbis, in MS this took 30 real world minutes. If you just miss the ship, you’re shit out of luck until the next boat arrives 30 minutes later. If the ship gets ambushed while you’re outside, there’s a really good chance your character will die and spawn you back at the start. It wasn’t unusual for characters to get stranded or go broke as this trip cost 10k mesos. ML retains this feature, but removes the cost and shortens the voyage to 10 minutes. Smaller journeys were reduced to 5 minute voyages. A welcome change, as the population of the server means most journeys will only have a single occupant. Back in the day, the voyage on channel 1 usually carried hundreds of players across the world and meant it was easy enough to occupy your time socializing with other players. In ML, boarding a ship with one other player is a rarity.

Bosses retain their rarity in ML. Bosses have a cooldown timer anywhere from 2 hours to resetting once daily. With only 6 channels and hundreds of players, some bosses are harder to come by as other players will likely have killed them before you get a chance to find them. I like this about boss hunting. Getting lucky finding a boss, or noticing which bosses are almost always taken out by other players is part of the meta. Finding a less popular boss thats off the beaten path has a special kind of satisfaction when you have free reign to wipe out the boss on all 6 channels.

When these aspects of the game are cited as ‘inconveniences’ and are removed from the game, I consider that a negative. Sure, a mandatory 10 minute wait to arrive at your destination sounds like a bad thing, but the break from the game removes pressure and urgency that tends to crop up in other games. Sure, not being able to hunt bosses whenever you want sounds like a stupid limitation, but I like discovering and recognizing the patterns in player behaviours and needing to plan around that. Even though im a solo player through and through, i still want to feel the impact of other people in this virtual world.

A lot of what I talked about just now speaks to my personal taste, and thats great. I don’t wanna yuck anyone’s yum if they prefer servers with slightly newer versions of the game. My point is that game feel is really important to me, and I’ll play retro games and forego QOL just for that alone.

There is also a series of benefits and drawbacks to playing a fresh server. There’s a chance to break into the top 100 player rank if you play early on, for one. On the other hand, playing on a server that has been around for several years has had a chance to develop a stable game and community. I know this should not count as a point against ScaniaMS, but playing a game that has way more polish and then switching to a version that struggles to render properly at modern resolutions is a downgrade that did colour my experience. Buggy autobans or npc dialogue with incorrect information adds up fast.

But the fattest nail in the coffin was ScaniaMS had no community forum. They used a discord server as a replacement. This is a growing trend on the broader internet and its a change for the worse. (ノಠ益ಠ)ノ彡┻━┻ Having discussions on a forum meant that information was publically available to anyone. Being able to plug a specific issue into a seach engine and have the answer on a forum is part of what made the early internet a more agreeable place to navigate. Now, a lot of useful information is gated behind a chat client.

In addition to a forum with information relevant to the specific server, over the years, players of ML have developed tools outside of the game for others to use. From what I can tell, ML’s free market has pretty stable for a few years now (if a little inaccessible to new players). The reason I know this is because OwlRepo has existed as a tool for players to upload and search market prices since 2020. I’ve seen discussions of a market fluctuations when a bunch of new players joined during covid lockdown lmao

Now, I’m gonna awkwardly pivot to talking about something else (^-^')7

The monster book is a feature introduced to MS after i stopped playing, but it perfectly complements my play style. It’s easily my favourite part of the game. (ෆ˙ᵕ˙ෆ) I think i would have dropped playing ML a long time ago had it not been for the monster book. The monster book is a virtual card collecting quest. Different species of monster have different drop rates for their card. Collecting five of the same card completes a set. This basically gave me a collect-a-thon mission that would allow me to justify grinding solo and justify visiting and exploring obscure maps for fun. °˖✧◝(⁰▿⁰)◜✧˖° Most players wait till after 4th job advancement (lvl 120) to start card hunting, but i basically started card hunting as early as lvl 30.

The monster book is the only thing I liked better in ScaniaMS. Even though it’s my favourite feature, in the end, it did not overshadow all of the things i liked better in ML. Now, i don’t know what is true to the original MS, but the two servers have different rewards for the monster book. In ML, every 30 card sets completed allows the player to upgrade a ring for better stat bonuses. In Scania, there is a hp/mp stat bonus applied after every card set. Card drops are more common in Scania, and being a later version of the game means more monster types to collect.

Now that im writing about it, the monster ring in ML is still better. ML’s monster ring may only be upgraded every 30 card sets, but at least it also gives bonuses to the 4 base stats in addition to hp/mp boosts. Scania might also do this, but i didn’t play far enough into it to find out. Basically, not even an expanded monster book could sway me from my preference for an older feeling, slower paced version of the game. d(￣◇￣)b

I mentioned the community on ML has stabilized, but I have a theory that a major factor in why interactions with people in game have been mostly pleasant and reasonable is because there’s hardly anyone under the age of 30 playing on MS private servers. I've had several lovely interations with complete strangers. It's not uncommon for passers by to say hello (^u^)/

This next bit is all personal anecdote. The review is basically over lol

Despite being a solo player, i somehow managed to stumble ass backwards into founding a new guild. For a brief stint, I managed to get my brother to play on ML with me (this was a little bit before ScaniaMS launched). We ran into a very kind player who gave us directions (i had forgotten where a few job specific npcs were) and outfitted my bother with some nice gear. My brother wasnt able to play much more as life got in the way, but i ended up running into the same player weeks later as we got mass recruited into the same guild.

Generally, my policy with guild invites was flat out rejection i've had one person cuss me out and call me rude for rejecting an unsolicited invitation, but the guild’s defacto leader found me while i was card hunting and managed to persuade me. (“Why?” i asked. “Why not?” he said.) Since everyone was mass recruited, no one in the guild really knew anyone save me and the buddy who help my brother out.

Another few weeks go by and i get a pm from the buddy. He pitches to me an idea of forming a new guild. Tells me i could rejoin the old one after the new one is formed. I decided ‘ehhh, i knew this guy slightly longer. He’s been kind and reasonable so far, I may as well help him out.’ While we sort out forming a new guild, we get to gossiping. He tells me he got booted unceremoniously from the last guild for trying to recruit people for pqs. Apparently the leader of that guild was quite rude.

Buddy promotes me to jr. master on account that i am a founding member. We decide as a rule we don’t mass recruit.

A day goes by. We join a guild alliance and it turns out A FUKIN LOT of people dislike the defacto leader of that other guild. I get a few stray bits of gossip about it. It’s hella funny. XD

I take a break from ML for a few months. I log in and the only people active in the guild are myself and an entirely different founding member. She managed to get to lvl 120 in the interim. Despite being a solo player and only ever card hunting (its a very inefficient grinding method d(￣◇￣)b), i manage to to become the second highest level player in the guild. I’m still baffled that i basically failed upwards into being a founding member and jr. master of a guild lmaoo Nice to know being polite can get you places

Like I told my fellow jr. master, my primary goal in playing ML is tourism. If i keep playing ML on and off for the next bit, chances are I’ll either complete the monster book, or get to 4th job advancement and then I’ll likely quit the game for good.