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Jun. 15th, 2007 11:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amethyst73I've been playing more Zelda - surprise! The last(?) of the Twilight is banished from the land, and Link is in human form once more.
The huz wanted to play Ocarina the other night, and since I felt like playing a game as well, I loaded up Xenogears for the first time in a few months. It was a distinctly strange experience in a few different ways.
First, in Zelda and other (at least semi-) real-time battle systems (e.g. Vagrant Story or Chrono Trigger),
the player gets to see all possible enemies on the screen and often has the option of simply not fighting them. The random battle system of Xenogears feels distinctly weird. It disrupts the player's orientation to the walkaround world, and attempting to escape battles works only sometimes. In some turn-based RPGs, escape isn't even an option (e.g. Final Fantasy 7 for most of the game).
As a corollary, there are simply too many random battles. The sequence of events the other night seemed to consist of: Take a step, maybe two. Bam - enter random battle! This sequence grew tiresome rather rapidly. Now admittedly not all areas of the game are quite this bad and there have been times when I've been keen for XP or money when I wished the fights would happen more often rather than less. I think the real issue is one of control: in Zelda, I have a choice about whether I fight some of the time , and I can see the possible fights coming most of the time.
The second difference is going to sound very weird to anyone who's familiar with my computer game habits. I used to swear by turn-based RPGs (and similar games such as - heaven help us - Rogue), because I preferred games that depended on the character's ability to swing a sword rather than my ability to push buttons. But I have to admit after a few months of playing Zelda that there's a certain immersive quality, an immediacy, that results from real-time battling. The player pushes a button (or swings the Wiimote or shakes the nunchuk) and Link does his thing with minimal delay, giving a very strong feeling that it is the player himself who is carrying out the action. The typical fight sequence in an RPG generally goes something like this : Press buttons to choose action (attack, spell). Press more buttons to choose sub-action (attack or spell type). Press yet more buttons to choose opponent. Then the onscreen character does whatever you've told it to. Fun though it is to see your giant robot (or character of whatever sort) whack those baddies, it doesn't feel very much like the player is doing the whacking.
Finally, the whole focus of gameplay is very different. In Xenogears and other RPGs, there's not a lot of puzzle-solving. There is a bit, here and there, but for the vast majority of the time, the idea is to get into fights and kill monsters, thus increasing your characters' stats, getting them goodies, and advancing the plot. Which is fine - as far as it goes. But as I've mentioned previously, there's quite a mix of gaming elements in Zelda. For someone who never put much stock in being able to mash buttons, I find (much to my surprise) that I kind of like the occasional bit of platform-like play, and I've enjoyed most of the puzzles I've come across so far. And, well, low-level monsters aren't bad to fight - or I can just run away. The variability itself is really rather nice.
Don't get me wrong. The final dungeon in Xenogears WILL be pwned! I'm too close to done, and I want to see how the game ends. I bet it will be nifty.
... After I've taken care of this stupid horseback sequence in Zelda.
Good Zelda stuff:
• You don't need to have fairy in active inventory for it to activate if you lose all your hearts. Wolfie was dealing with the last dark insect (big bug! biiiiiiiiigg bug!) and had just taken yet another hit from the creature, when he slipped into the water and all his hearts mysteriously came back. I thought it might be a magical lake property, but the huz suggested differently. Lo and behold, the fairy bottle was empty next time I looked.
• Castle Town rocks. The fortuneteller is astonishingly useful, the shop run by the Gorons is amusing (they use regional pricing schemes), and you can play fetch with the dogs in town. There's no particular goal to playing fetch with the dogs - it's just a fun thing to do! The dogs are super-eager to have you play with them. :) Haven't tried playing fetch with the kitties yet.
• You don't need to have fairy in active inventory for it to activate if you lose all your hearts. Wolfie was dealing with the last dark insect (big bug! biiiiiiiiigg bug!) and had just taken yet another hit from the creature, when he slipped into the water and all his hearts mysteriously came back. I thought it might be a magical lake property, but the huz suggested differently. Lo and behold, the fairy bottle was empty next time I looked.
• Castle Town rocks. The fortuneteller is astonishingly useful, the shop run by the Gorons is amusing (they use regional pricing schemes), and you can play fetch with the dogs in town. There's no particular goal to playing fetch with the dogs - it's just a fun thing to do! The dogs are super-eager to have you play with them. :) Haven't tried playing fetch with the kitties yet.
Bad Zelda stuff:
• In Castle Town, the player cannot rotate the view at will.
• I failed to go off and see everything around the district before going to the next plot point. (EDIT: See below.)
• I'm really seriously un-fond of plot-required horseback fights.
• This one (the burning cart run) requires a bit more coordination than I've currently got. A good horseback rider could control Epona with his knees and feet, leaving both hands free to shoot arrows or throw the boomerang or whatever. I have trouble with moving and keeping up; every time I Dash, it puts away whatever tool I had out. And I have yet to convince my left thumb to keep me moving well with the analog stick while my left index finger is Z-targeting, and my right hand is trying to aim the dratted boomerang..
• The burning cart run is a time trial in addition to being a coordination trial. This makes the coordination part feel harder.
• If you fail the task and the cart burns up (game over) and choose to try again, Link comes back with only 3 hearts, as if he'd died and was trying again. This is annoying and unfair. Link does not get damaged by the cart burning, dangit.
• It's a multi-stage puzzle/sequence (sort of like the Kidnapping horseback business, which I peeved about here), so that even if you successfully complete the first leg of the trip, if you then fail the second, it'll put you back at the beginning of the first leg if you choose to try again immediately.
• EDIT: I went and loaded Zelda up again last night... and even though I'd quite distinctly saved after the run-on-the-bridge that comes right before the burning cart run, it put me back to just before the plot point twhose action starts with run-on-the-bridge. Rrrrrrgh. Games should let you save after ANY puzzle or task or apparent stop point in the middle thereof!
• Since it's going to take a good continuous hour or so to do this task, and I didn't think I had that time before the huz got back from work, I went wandering around more. Went and blew up everything in my way to the Zora Domain. Did the rafting/bomb rocks task, and have a new bomb bag. So now I think I've seen more of the district. Haven't seen the famous fishing hole. Haven't wandered into snow-land, since I have no marked path.
• In Castle Town, the player cannot rotate the view at will.
• I failed to go off and see everything around the district before going to the next plot point. (EDIT: See below.)
• I'm really seriously un-fond of plot-required horseback fights.
• This one (the burning cart run) requires a bit more coordination than I've currently got. A good horseback rider could control Epona with his knees and feet, leaving both hands free to shoot arrows or throw the boomerang or whatever. I have trouble with moving and keeping up; every time I Dash, it puts away whatever tool I had out. And I have yet to convince my left thumb to keep me moving well with the analog stick while my left index finger is Z-targeting, and my right hand is trying to aim the dratted boomerang..
• The burning cart run is a time trial in addition to being a coordination trial. This makes the coordination part feel harder.
• If you fail the task and the cart burns up (game over) and choose to try again, Link comes back with only 3 hearts, as if he'd died and was trying again. This is annoying and unfair. Link does not get damaged by the cart burning, dangit.
• It's a multi-stage puzzle/sequence (sort of like the Kidnapping horseback business, which I peeved about here), so that even if you successfully complete the first leg of the trip, if you then fail the second, it'll put you back at the beginning of the first leg if you choose to try again immediately.
• EDIT: I went and loaded Zelda up again last night... and even though I'd quite distinctly saved after the run-on-the-bridge that comes right before the burning cart run, it put me back to just before the plot point twhose action starts with run-on-the-bridge. Rrrrrrgh. Games should let you save after ANY puzzle or task or apparent stop point in the middle thereof!
• Since it's going to take a good continuous hour or so to do this task, and I didn't think I had that time before the huz got back from work, I went wandering around more. Went and blew up everything in my way to the Zora Domain. Did the rafting/bomb rocks task, and have a new bomb bag. So now I think I've seen more of the district. Haven't seen the famous fishing hole. Haven't wandered into snow-land, since I have no marked path.
The huz wanted to play Ocarina the other night, and since I felt like playing a game as well, I loaded up Xenogears for the first time in a few months. It was a distinctly strange experience in a few different ways.
First, in Zelda and other (at least semi-) real-time battle systems (e.g. Vagrant Story or Chrono Trigger),
the player gets to see all possible enemies on the screen and often has the option of simply not fighting them. The random battle system of Xenogears feels distinctly weird. It disrupts the player's orientation to the walkaround world, and attempting to escape battles works only sometimes. In some turn-based RPGs, escape isn't even an option (e.g. Final Fantasy 7 for most of the game).
As a corollary, there are simply too many random battles. The sequence of events the other night seemed to consist of: Take a step, maybe two. Bam - enter random battle! This sequence grew tiresome rather rapidly. Now admittedly not all areas of the game are quite this bad and there have been times when I've been keen for XP or money when I wished the fights would happen more often rather than less. I think the real issue is one of control: in Zelda, I have a choice about whether I fight some of the time , and I can see the possible fights coming most of the time.
The second difference is going to sound very weird to anyone who's familiar with my computer game habits. I used to swear by turn-based RPGs (and similar games such as - heaven help us - Rogue), because I preferred games that depended on the character's ability to swing a sword rather than my ability to push buttons. But I have to admit after a few months of playing Zelda that there's a certain immersive quality, an immediacy, that results from real-time battling. The player pushes a button (or swings the Wiimote or shakes the nunchuk) and Link does his thing with minimal delay, giving a very strong feeling that it is the player himself who is carrying out the action. The typical fight sequence in an RPG generally goes something like this : Press buttons to choose action (attack, spell). Press more buttons to choose sub-action (attack or spell type). Press yet more buttons to choose opponent. Then the onscreen character does whatever you've told it to. Fun though it is to see your giant robot (or character of whatever sort) whack those baddies, it doesn't feel very much like the player is doing the whacking.
Finally, the whole focus of gameplay is very different. In Xenogears and other RPGs, there's not a lot of puzzle-solving. There is a bit, here and there, but for the vast majority of the time, the idea is to get into fights and kill monsters, thus increasing your characters' stats, getting them goodies, and advancing the plot. Which is fine - as far as it goes. But as I've mentioned previously, there's quite a mix of gaming elements in Zelda. For someone who never put much stock in being able to mash buttons, I find (much to my surprise) that I kind of like the occasional bit of platform-like play, and I've enjoyed most of the puzzles I've come across so far. And, well, low-level monsters aren't bad to fight - or I can just run away. The variability itself is really rather nice.
Don't get me wrong. The final dungeon in Xenogears WILL be pwned! I'm too close to done, and I want to see how the game ends. I bet it will be nifty.
... After I've taken care of this stupid horseback sequence in Zelda.
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Date: 2007-06-15 07:10 pm (UTC)Also, Xenogears had some crazy dungeons.
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Date: 2007-06-15 09:27 pm (UTC)I started playing that a number of years ago, and was engaged for a while. But after collecting just way the heck too many tertiary characters, I got tired of the magic system. I had, however, forgotten that you could *always* run.
And yeah, Xenogears has had a couple of really nutty dungeons. Babel Tower comes to mind as a prime example.