NOTE: Rachel pointed out in the comments that I've been abbreviating Infinite Undiscovery "ID" rather than "IU". I have no reason for this...the best excuse I could give is that the game's title is so nonsensical, I got confused and never caught the error. Whatever, I'm sticking with ID.
I've mentioned before that Achievements can have either a positive or a negative influence on one's enjoyment of a game, depending on how they're used. ID is a fantastic example of the dark side of Achievements. If it had featured an ordinary set (or no Achievements at all), I would have played through the game once on the normal difficulty, enjoyed the crafting and Capell's character development, disliked the story and the AI, and probably walked away thinking "Eh, below average but not terrible." Instead, I engaged in a 250 hour death struggle with this demonic entity disguised as a simple piece of software, leaving it dead and me mortally wounded (or at least psychologically wounded). To illustrate this point, I'm going to go through the requirements for some of the Achievements in ID (divided into GOOD, BAD, and UGLY). There are Spoilers in here, so proceed at your own risk!
"Guardian" - GOOD
During one of the game's events, you need to escort some villagers across a monster-infested desert so they can found a new town. If you perform this task without allowing any villagers to die, you get Guardian. This Achievement is well-designed, because it's easy to lose a villager if you aren't paying attention, but with careful planning and a watchful eye, it isn't too difficult.
"Time for Glasses?" - BAD
Play the game for 40 hours. These "play for X hours" Achievements are not uncommon, and I don't really understand them. Is this supposed to be an accomplishment? What if I can beat the game in under 40 hours...should I just stand in a corner until the award pops? Of course, if you want to complete the set then this one won't be an issue.
"Filthy Rich" - UGLY
You get this one by accumulating the maximum amount of cash (ID calls it "Fol") that can be carried - 99,999,999 Fol. Okay kids, time for some math. After you beat the game you can go down into an optional dungeon. On the fourth floor, past a small group of enemies, is a side room with a monster disguised as a chest. If you kill it, it drops about 60,000 Fol, the maximum monetary drop for any recurring (i.e. not a boss) enemy. Then you can leave the floor and come back - voila, it respawns! If you're really clever and make use of Capell's enchanting techniques, you can (temporarily) create an effect that triples cash drops, thus earning 180,000 each time. It takes an average of about two minutes to defeat the enemies, kill the chest monster, and run back to the teleporter that takes you to the previous floor. So that's 90,000 Fol per minute, not including time spent fighting down to the fourth floor and back when you need more supplies or just want to quit the game for a while. So to accumulate max gold, it would take 1111 minutes, or about 18.5 hours. Again, that's just the "killing the same chest over and over" portion.
Here's my question - why such an insanely high number??? When I finished the game, I had about 7 million Fol, plenty to buy everything in the game. 100 million Fol might as well be infinity, because there isn't even anything you can buy with all that money. This is just a stupid, arbitrary challenge thrown in to be obnoxious. It's like some kind of reverse-intelligence test (one that I failed miserably) in which accomplishing the goal proves that you're an idiot for trying in the first place. "Filthy Rich" is the Achievement system at it's worst...it's not creative, it adds nothing to the game, it's just tortuous.
"Big Daddy's Back" - GOOD
In the same dungeon with the respawning chest, you can find your dead teammate Sigmund. If you beat him in a one-on-one battle with Capell, he'll then rejoin your team and you get this oddly titled award. Here we have an Achievement that rewards exploration (finding the optional boss) and strategy (must win a solo fight, the only one in the game besides the tutorial). Plus there's good reason to want to do this one, because Sigmund is a powerful ally. If they could only all be like this!
"Seraphic Gatekeeper" - BAD
To get this one, you have to defeat the Ethereal Queen (the game's hardest boss, at the end of the optional dungeon) on Infinity difficulty. On the surface, this one seems similar to "Big Daddy's Back", so why is this one bad? Because of those tricky little words "on Infinity difficulty". That is, the hardest difficulty setting. Which is only unlocked after beating the game on Hard difficulty. Which, in turn, is only unlocked after beating the game on Normal difficulty. So what this Achievement is basically saying is: beat this moderately long (and not very fun) game THREE times and then you can take a crack at earning this award. I think it should be fairly clear why the full set took me 250 hours to finish.
"Compulsive" - UGLY
It's like tri-Ace is taunting me with the Achievement names. Rachel mentioned in a previous comment that I was using pages of material while working on this game, and she wasn't kidding. For this one, you need to have possessed (and in just one playthrough) every item in the game. There are 880 different items, and no way to know (without a checklist, hence the papers) what you've found and what you're missing. But beyond the sheer number of items, it's essentially impossible to collect all the items without foreknowledge of the game. Consider:
- At least one town is wiped off the map during the game, and any unique items available in its shops or through side quests there will be lost if you haven't found them.
- The items available in other shops change over time, so you can miss items if you wait too long.
- Some items are in "one time only/can never return" dungeons. Even worse, some are in chests that can only be reached by one specific character (out of the 15 you could have selected to accompany you). Better choose wisely!
- Finally, some items are dropped by specific enemies with rare frequency. For example, there's a fight involving three giants (and a bunch of random soldiers) during a castle assault. The giants have a small (say 20%) chance of dropping a "Giant Wristband". It's the only place in the game where you could possibly get one, as there are no other similar giants and no way to buy or craft Giant Wristbands. What are the odds that a person unaware of this fact would happen to get the wristband they needed just by chance? And that's not the only instance where you can miss a unique drop.
There's a big difference between Difficult and Unfair when it comes to Achievements. "Compulsive" is the definition of UNFAIR. Even knowing the exact location of every item in the game, it still took a 20 page checklist and MANY HOURS of work to accomplish it.
My only consolation? I'm done with this stupid game forever. Now I can move on to some other ridiculous Achievement set that will drive me crazy...
Showing posts with label infinite undiscovery. Show all posts
Showing posts with label infinite undiscovery. Show all posts
Friday, February 19, 2010
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Infinite Undiscovery - Gameplay Mechanics
Combat is only one aspect of an RPG. In this post, I'll look at some of the other gameplay mechanics in ID.
Story Progression/Exploration
RPGs range from wide open worlds (Oblivion, Fallout) to strictly linear adventures (Eternal Sonata, Enchanted Arms). Which you prefer is a matter of taste, although even largely linear games can feature some side quests and optional dungeons for the completionists to explore. ID is heavily skewed towards the linear end of the scale, with a plot that drags you from one task to the next and minimal side tracks to be found. There are some optional quests (often well hidden...see below) but they're understated and the rewards are largely inconsequential. Also, ID only has one optional dungeon and it's not available until you beat the game, so there's not much value to exploration.
Crafting
Unlike exploration/side questing, the crafting system is thorough and very useful. Enemies drop components that can be used by your various teammates to synthesize weapons, armor, and other items. Some of the most powerful equipment in the game is available solely through crafting, so it's a good idea to work on your team's skills early and often (hint: especially Edward's blacksmith skills!). Crafting is also a good way to drum up some quick cash by turning less valuable components into pricier items. Overall the system is well constructed, though the success rate on rare items is gratingly low (your attempts at synthesis can fail) even if your characters are high level crafters. Still, I'd count this as something the designers got right.
Leveling
Kill enemies and go up levels. There's not much more to it than that. You can't assign skills to your characters or control how their attribute points are distributed. The entire process is automated. It's nice that your characters get stronger over time, but it's not something you'll give much thought unless you get to an area where you're clearly under-leveled.
Event Challenges
To mix things up, the game will occasionally give you little events with specific requirements to proceed. Examples include defending a convoy of villagers as they move through a monster infested desert, firing catapults at a well-defended enemy castle, and rescuing a child from a flying monster by shooting it with an arrow. I found these challenges to be more annoying than anything, but I'm willing to concede that the designers were just trying to throw a few curveballs for fun and that's an admirable goal. None of them are overly difficult so even if you don't like them, you shouldn't really be impeded for long.
Interacting with the Townsfolk
And now we come to the big one...the DUMBEST design decision I've ever seen in an RPG. Here's how this works: if you want bonus items and side quests, you need to talk to all the people in the various towns. A given town could have anywhere from 10 to 30 people with whom you can converse. So far so good...that's pretty standard stuff. But wait! Most of the time, the person won't give the side quest or bonus item to you (Capell)...they'll only cough up the goods if you're linked to one of your teammates. You accomplish this by finding said teammate in town and pushing a couple buttons to tell them that they should follow you around. And when I say "linked to one of your teammates", I mean ONE SPECIFIC character. That's right...if you talk to a guard wandering around in the courtyard by yourself, he'll talk about the weather, or the health of the king, or his sore bunions, or whatever. Same deal if you're linked to Edward, or Eugene, or Aya, etc. But if you're linked to Rucha? Now he suddenly remembers the super-important quest he was going to ask you to do for a reward.
So let's say you wanted to be thorough and try every combination of teammate links and villagers in conversation. There are 17 people on the team that can link with Capell, plus he can chat with villagers by himself, for a total of 18 different combinations. With an average of 20 people to a town, you'd have to initiate 360 (the irony) conversations to be sure that you weren't missing any secrets. Now bear in mind that there are several towns spread out over the game, and you're starting to get a handle on how ridiculous this task is. Hold it though, because things get much worse. Some quests can only be initiated AFTER specific plot events. That means that you'll need to go through all those combinations MULTIPLE times just to be sure that the guy who had nothing of interest to say earlier has suddenly come up with an important task for you. All told, you'd need to go through a couple thousand conversations just to have a chance at finding every side quest and secret item in the game.
Or...you can just read a walkthrough, which is what anyone with sense will do.
I'm sorry, but any system in which the special quests are so well hidden that you'd never know they were there except by random chance is a dumb one, and you can't tell me otherwise.
That concludes most of what I have to say about Infinite Undiscovery, except for one more vital section. Next time: The Achievements!
Story Progression/Exploration
RPGs range from wide open worlds (Oblivion, Fallout) to strictly linear adventures (Eternal Sonata, Enchanted Arms). Which you prefer is a matter of taste, although even largely linear games can feature some side quests and optional dungeons for the completionists to explore. ID is heavily skewed towards the linear end of the scale, with a plot that drags you from one task to the next and minimal side tracks to be found. There are some optional quests (often well hidden...see below) but they're understated and the rewards are largely inconsequential. Also, ID only has one optional dungeon and it's not available until you beat the game, so there's not much value to exploration.
Crafting
Unlike exploration/side questing, the crafting system is thorough and very useful. Enemies drop components that can be used by your various teammates to synthesize weapons, armor, and other items. Some of the most powerful equipment in the game is available solely through crafting, so it's a good idea to work on your team's skills early and often (hint: especially Edward's blacksmith skills!). Crafting is also a good way to drum up some quick cash by turning less valuable components into pricier items. Overall the system is well constructed, though the success rate on rare items is gratingly low (your attempts at synthesis can fail) even if your characters are high level crafters. Still, I'd count this as something the designers got right.
Leveling
Kill enemies and go up levels. There's not much more to it than that. You can't assign skills to your characters or control how their attribute points are distributed. The entire process is automated. It's nice that your characters get stronger over time, but it's not something you'll give much thought unless you get to an area where you're clearly under-leveled.
Event Challenges
To mix things up, the game will occasionally give you little events with specific requirements to proceed. Examples include defending a convoy of villagers as they move through a monster infested desert, firing catapults at a well-defended enemy castle, and rescuing a child from a flying monster by shooting it with an arrow. I found these challenges to be more annoying than anything, but I'm willing to concede that the designers were just trying to throw a few curveballs for fun and that's an admirable goal. None of them are overly difficult so even if you don't like them, you shouldn't really be impeded for long.
Interacting with the Townsfolk
And now we come to the big one...the DUMBEST design decision I've ever seen in an RPG. Here's how this works: if you want bonus items and side quests, you need to talk to all the people in the various towns. A given town could have anywhere from 10 to 30 people with whom you can converse. So far so good...that's pretty standard stuff. But wait! Most of the time, the person won't give the side quest or bonus item to you (Capell)...they'll only cough up the goods if you're linked to one of your teammates. You accomplish this by finding said teammate in town and pushing a couple buttons to tell them that they should follow you around. And when I say "linked to one of your teammates", I mean ONE SPECIFIC character. That's right...if you talk to a guard wandering around in the courtyard by yourself, he'll talk about the weather, or the health of the king, or his sore bunions, or whatever. Same deal if you're linked to Edward, or Eugene, or Aya, etc. But if you're linked to Rucha? Now he suddenly remembers the super-important quest he was going to ask you to do for a reward.
So let's say you wanted to be thorough and try every combination of teammate links and villagers in conversation. There are 17 people on the team that can link with Capell, plus he can chat with villagers by himself, for a total of 18 different combinations. With an average of 20 people to a town, you'd have to initiate 360 (the irony) conversations to be sure that you weren't missing any secrets. Now bear in mind that there are several towns spread out over the game, and you're starting to get a handle on how ridiculous this task is. Hold it though, because things get much worse. Some quests can only be initiated AFTER specific plot events. That means that you'll need to go through all those combinations MULTIPLE times just to be sure that the guy who had nothing of interest to say earlier has suddenly come up with an important task for you. All told, you'd need to go through a couple thousand conversations just to have a chance at finding every side quest and secret item in the game.
Or...you can just read a walkthrough, which is what anyone with sense will do.
I'm sorry, but any system in which the special quests are so well hidden that you'd never know they were there except by random chance is a dumb one, and you can't tell me otherwise.
That concludes most of what I have to say about Infinite Undiscovery, except for one more vital section. Next time: The Achievements!
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Infinite Undiscovery - Battle Mechanics
ID is an action RPG. There's none of that sissy "you take your turn and I take mine" stuff here. If you want to swing your sword, you press a button. Special attack? That's another button. Battle technique? You have to hold a button down. Though ID may be an RPG, the fighting system has more in common with Soul Caliber than Final Fantasy.
I don't have a problem with that. Turn based combat can be pretty dull in these Japanese style RPGs. The Western trend towards action based combat as seen in Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fable 2 is a positive direction for the genre. But there's a big difference between those games and ID. In the examples I listed, you play a single character fighting on his or her own. In ID, you have a party of four (usually), and the number and strength of enemies reflects that. Since you can only effectively control one person at a time, that means you get to deal with the AI. And that's exactly where the system breaks down...
The first thing to understand is that you have almost no control over your teammates. You can't tell them who to attack, when to use magic, when to get out of harm's way because they're about to die...nothing. The best you can do is give vague group based instructions like "don't use magic ever" or "always attack what I'm attacking". Then you cross your fingers and hope they listen.
But they don't. At least not consistently. Instead they go chasing after enemies before you've recovered from the last fight. They charge headlong into enemies that are about to unleash super attacks, even while you're desperately trying to get out of the way. They don't bother to heal themselves or each other, even when they're close to death. And God forbid anything should happen to Capell. If you fall in battle, then you get to play a fun game I call "Is one of these retards going to notice I'm dead and fix me up?"
The AI is just plain terrible in this game, and the worst part is that you're pretty much forced to count on your teammates anyway. Particularly at the highest difficulty levels, groups of enemies are too powerful to handle unless your squad is pulling its weight. Boss monsters can often kill you with one ill-timed combo attack, leaving you little option but to hope that one of your teammates will give you a hand.
The irony is that because your party is so hell-bent on diving into the fray and getting themselves killed while ignoring any pretense of teamwork, the best role for you to play is often babysitter. Just stand back from the fight and revive your stricken allies while they do the work. Playing this game on the highest difficulty is like chaperoning three 12 year old kids through an amusement park after they've polished off a case of Mountain Dew.
To add to the frustration, all aspects of battle are in real time. That means that if you open your item menu to use a healing item, the enemies still smack you around as you look through the list. This leads to annoying situations where you realize that your teammates are all down and the enemies are swarming straight at you - you can't fight without your allies but you can't revive them without surfing through the menu for a minute, during which time you'll be killed anyway. All of this could have been solved if the designers would have thought to put some shortcuts or hotkeys in the game. Say, pressing right bumpers uses a revive potion or something. But no, you can't even SORT your items to put the useful ones at the top! You have to open the menu, pick the Items tab, then scroll way down the list until you find whatever you need, all while getting battered by enemies.
Other complaints:
- There's only two settings for your allies use of their abilities - never use them or ALL THE TIME. They never conserve magic points against weaker enemies or ones that are already almost dead.
- Every time someone uses an ability, they shout it's name. I heard the phrase "Grinn Valesti!" so many times that I swear I hear it in my sleep.
- There's a ton of backtracking in this game, and low-level enemies will continue to harass you long after it's worthwhile to fight them. There are a TON of enemies in this game, so going anywhere is a chore.
- Characters in your group get twice as much experience as characters sitting the bench. That makes sense, but it becomes all the more unnecessary to have a dozen people on the team. After all, most of them are going to fall behind and become useless anyway.
- Finally, Capell can use his flute in battle (remember, he's a musician). Theoretically this has beneficial effects. In reality, it's mostly useless and occasionally a pain in the butt. For example, there's a certain type of enemy that is invisible until Capell plays his flute near them (usually while getting whacked by said enemy). Then your teammates can attack it. But Capell still can't...if you want to help then you need to focus on one of your teammates, then hold down a button to activate a special move and wait for it to charge, and THEN you can join the fight. Only by that point, the enemy is probably invisible again, so you have to start the process over. I eventually gave up and just let the invisible guys pummel me while I played the flute nonstop, allowing my teammates to finish the baddies.
I wish that was it, but the design flaws don't end there. Next time, I'll talk about one of the dumbest game mechanics I've ever encountered.
I don't have a problem with that. Turn based combat can be pretty dull in these Japanese style RPGs. The Western trend towards action based combat as seen in Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fable 2 is a positive direction for the genre. But there's a big difference between those games and ID. In the examples I listed, you play a single character fighting on his or her own. In ID, you have a party of four (usually), and the number and strength of enemies reflects that. Since you can only effectively control one person at a time, that means you get to deal with the AI. And that's exactly where the system breaks down...
The first thing to understand is that you have almost no control over your teammates. You can't tell them who to attack, when to use magic, when to get out of harm's way because they're about to die...nothing. The best you can do is give vague group based instructions like "don't use magic ever" or "always attack what I'm attacking". Then you cross your fingers and hope they listen.
But they don't. At least not consistently. Instead they go chasing after enemies before you've recovered from the last fight. They charge headlong into enemies that are about to unleash super attacks, even while you're desperately trying to get out of the way. They don't bother to heal themselves or each other, even when they're close to death. And God forbid anything should happen to Capell. If you fall in battle, then you get to play a fun game I call "Is one of these retards going to notice I'm dead and fix me up?"
The AI is just plain terrible in this game, and the worst part is that you're pretty much forced to count on your teammates anyway. Particularly at the highest difficulty levels, groups of enemies are too powerful to handle unless your squad is pulling its weight. Boss monsters can often kill you with one ill-timed combo attack, leaving you little option but to hope that one of your teammates will give you a hand.
The irony is that because your party is so hell-bent on diving into the fray and getting themselves killed while ignoring any pretense of teamwork, the best role for you to play is often babysitter. Just stand back from the fight and revive your stricken allies while they do the work. Playing this game on the highest difficulty is like chaperoning three 12 year old kids through an amusement park after they've polished off a case of Mountain Dew.
To add to the frustration, all aspects of battle are in real time. That means that if you open your item menu to use a healing item, the enemies still smack you around as you look through the list. This leads to annoying situations where you realize that your teammates are all down and the enemies are swarming straight at you - you can't fight without your allies but you can't revive them without surfing through the menu for a minute, during which time you'll be killed anyway. All of this could have been solved if the designers would have thought to put some shortcuts or hotkeys in the game. Say, pressing right bumpers uses a revive potion or something. But no, you can't even SORT your items to put the useful ones at the top! You have to open the menu, pick the Items tab, then scroll way down the list until you find whatever you need, all while getting battered by enemies.
Other complaints:
- There's only two settings for your allies use of their abilities - never use them or ALL THE TIME. They never conserve magic points against weaker enemies or ones that are already almost dead.
- Every time someone uses an ability, they shout it's name. I heard the phrase "Grinn Valesti!" so many times that I swear I hear it in my sleep.
- There's a ton of backtracking in this game, and low-level enemies will continue to harass you long after it's worthwhile to fight them. There are a TON of enemies in this game, so going anywhere is a chore.
- Characters in your group get twice as much experience as characters sitting the bench. That makes sense, but it becomes all the more unnecessary to have a dozen people on the team. After all, most of them are going to fall behind and become useless anyway.
- Finally, Capell can use his flute in battle (remember, he's a musician). Theoretically this has beneficial effects. In reality, it's mostly useless and occasionally a pain in the butt. For example, there's a certain type of enemy that is invisible until Capell plays his flute near them (usually while getting whacked by said enemy). Then your teammates can attack it. But Capell still can't...if you want to help then you need to focus on one of your teammates, then hold down a button to activate a special move and wait for it to charge, and THEN you can join the fight. Only by that point, the enemy is probably invisible again, so you have to start the process over. I eventually gave up and just let the invisible guys pummel me while I played the flute nonstop, allowing my teammates to finish the baddies.
I wish that was it, but the design flaws don't end there. Next time, I'll talk about one of the dumbest game mechanics I've ever encountered.
Monday, February 15, 2010
Infinite Undiscovery - Plot and Characters
250 hours. That's how long it took to finish Infinite Undiscovery with 1000 Achievement points. That's more time than it took to finish Oblivion AND Fallout 3, two notoriously lengthy (not to mention better) games. If there was ever any doubt that Achievements are driving me to madness, Infinite Undiscovery represents indisputable evidence.
Over the course of the week I'll be putting up some posts about the game. Mostly, I'll be talking about the NUMEROUS ways that it went wrong. Bear in mind that ID was not made by some fledgling company taking their first crack at a mainstream RPG. It was developed by Tri-Ace, the company that made the much-beloved Star Ocean series and is responsible for several other under-the-radar RPG gems, plus it was published by Square-Enix, a company best known for a little series called FINAL FANTASY...perhaps you've heard of it? With that combined track record, you'd expect them to be make a great game.
ID is not a great game. It's not even a good one. As is always the case with RPGs, it starts with the story. ID takes place in the kind of fantasy setting that makes perfect sense to Final Fantasy devotees and nobody else. It's a world where people use swords and bows to fight monsters but have magical teleporters to move from one area to another. Where towns are made up of an inn, an item shop, three little houses, and a gigantic castle in which the king lives. Where three paces away from town there are dangerous monsters just hanging out waiting to attack your characters.
In this world, the moon sprinkles magical beams (which look a lot like bright yellow rain) down on the earth. The moon magic is thus transferred to the people, with the amount of power received proportional to the phase of the moon at the time of their birth. Born under a full moon? You're going to be a mighty hero. New moon? Sorry, no magic powers for you, but can we interest you in a lifetime of prejudice and servitude?
Anyway, an evil empire has risen (because all video game empires are evil) and is siphoning away the power of the moon for themselves. To do this, they have built huge CHAINS that stretch from the surface of the planet to the moon. I have no idea how the chains steal moon power (maybe they hold it in place over the evil nation?) or how they were built in the first place, but that idea is really stupid both in terms of astronomy and practicality. Plus they just look ridiculous. The main plot thread of the game follows a group led by Sigmund, the mightiest hero in the land, that is attempting to "liberate" the moon by traveling around the world and destroying the chains.
That description makes it sound like Sigmund is our main protagonist. He's not. Enter Capell, a penniless musician who was born under a new moon. Capell is utterly unremarkable except for one bizarre coincidence...he looks EXACTLY like Sigmund. As in, they could be twins. Of course, Capell is a weakling and a coward, not a great hero like Sigmund. It should come as no big surprise that mistaken identity ensues and Capell gets dragged into the conflict against his will.
At this point, I'd like to give ID some rare praise - I liked the way they handled Capell as a character. He's your standard reluctant hero, a cowering whiner with a bit of a selfish streak. But there's two reasons why he works better than most reluctant heroes. First, he has good reason to be reluctant. After all, he's a musician, not a warrior. The first time he has to use a sword to defend himself, he holds it as one might hold a snake which may or may not be poisonous. Since he was born under a new moon, he has no powers and is portrayed as weaker than most average townspeople. When he says things like "I try to avoid trouble at all times" it seems like a pretty logical position for him to take. The other reason Capell works is that his transition from weakling to warrior is slow and believable. Even well into the second disc, Capell is unsure of himself. It takes a number of traumatic experiences to really inspire him into action. I'm sure a lot of people got tired of his whimpy attitude, but I found it more realistic than "zero to hero" in a few easy cutscenes.
SPOILERS HERE...SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WANT THE STORY RUINED.
The big twist comes at the end of the first disc, when Sigmund falls in battle (during a very confusing cutscene) against the top bad guy from the empire . The team decides that Sigmund's death will cause people to lose hope, and they need the support of the remaining nations that oppose the empire. But hey, here's a guy that recently joined our ranks and happens to look just like Sigmund...is that a plan formulating? Capell has to pose as Sigmund and "lead" the team while anyone is watching. Despite the fact that Capell doesn't sound or act like Sigmund in any way, their plan works perfectly and every major world leader is completely fooled into thinking that he's Sigmund. As you might guess, eventually the truth comes out and Capell is forced to put his cowardly ways behind him and step forward to be the leader he never thought blah, blah, blah. The last half of the second disc is contrived and predictable, right down to the big showdown that finishes the game. SIDE NOTE: What you might NOT expect is that the final showdown occurs on the moon, which the team travels to by JOGGING UP ONE OF THE CHAINS. Good thing they weren't too tired from their little space jaunt to fight the bad guys at the top.
So to summarize, the plot to this game is both dull and rife with cliches. The whole thing really boils down to a long hike around the world to break some chains (each with requisite dungeon and boss battle) capped off by one last boss fight in an improbable locale. By RPG standards, that's not breaking any new ground. The game could work as a character-driven meditation on Capell's "coming of age", but unfortunately that doesn't work very well either. The problem is that while Capell is a pretty well-written character, the rest of the team (and there are a LOT of them) are boring, one-dimensional caricatures masquerading as a supporting cast. You've got the bossy love interest who turns out to be a princess. The swordsman with an attitude who doesn't want to follow orders. The big muscle guy who drinks and breaks things. The annoying kids who's mother thought they'd be safer with me (no child services in this world I guess). The egg-headed mage (Rachel felt bad for him because he carried a big pack with all our gear). The token female with enormous breasts. And on and on and on. Every time you get a handle on all the characters, some more show up to join the team out of nowhere. Christ, there's a big scene near the end where everyone talks about their individual motivations to fight (because apparently we're too thick to work it out by context) and I kept thinking "Who are all these people?" A note to Tri-Ace: I'd prefer four fully developed characters to a dozen half-baked ones.
So we've got an RPG with a dumb story and bad characters. Not a rousing beginning. Next time: gameplay aggravations. Hooray!
Over the course of the week I'll be putting up some posts about the game. Mostly, I'll be talking about the NUMEROUS ways that it went wrong. Bear in mind that ID was not made by some fledgling company taking their first crack at a mainstream RPG. It was developed by Tri-Ace, the company that made the much-beloved Star Ocean series and is responsible for several other under-the-radar RPG gems, plus it was published by Square-Enix, a company best known for a little series called FINAL FANTASY...perhaps you've heard of it? With that combined track record, you'd expect them to be make a great game.
ID is not a great game. It's not even a good one. As is always the case with RPGs, it starts with the story. ID takes place in the kind of fantasy setting that makes perfect sense to Final Fantasy devotees and nobody else. It's a world where people use swords and bows to fight monsters but have magical teleporters to move from one area to another. Where towns are made up of an inn, an item shop, three little houses, and a gigantic castle in which the king lives. Where three paces away from town there are dangerous monsters just hanging out waiting to attack your characters.
In this world, the moon sprinkles magical beams (which look a lot like bright yellow rain) down on the earth. The moon magic is thus transferred to the people, with the amount of power received proportional to the phase of the moon at the time of their birth. Born under a full moon? You're going to be a mighty hero. New moon? Sorry, no magic powers for you, but can we interest you in a lifetime of prejudice and servitude?
Anyway, an evil empire has risen (because all video game empires are evil) and is siphoning away the power of the moon for themselves. To do this, they have built huge CHAINS that stretch from the surface of the planet to the moon. I have no idea how the chains steal moon power (maybe they hold it in place over the evil nation?) or how they were built in the first place, but that idea is really stupid both in terms of astronomy and practicality. Plus they just look ridiculous. The main plot thread of the game follows a group led by Sigmund, the mightiest hero in the land, that is attempting to "liberate" the moon by traveling around the world and destroying the chains.
That description makes it sound like Sigmund is our main protagonist. He's not. Enter Capell, a penniless musician who was born under a new moon. Capell is utterly unremarkable except for one bizarre coincidence...he looks EXACTLY like Sigmund. As in, they could be twins. Of course, Capell is a weakling and a coward, not a great hero like Sigmund. It should come as no big surprise that mistaken identity ensues and Capell gets dragged into the conflict against his will.
At this point, I'd like to give ID some rare praise - I liked the way they handled Capell as a character. He's your standard reluctant hero, a cowering whiner with a bit of a selfish streak. But there's two reasons why he works better than most reluctant heroes. First, he has good reason to be reluctant. After all, he's a musician, not a warrior. The first time he has to use a sword to defend himself, he holds it as one might hold a snake which may or may not be poisonous. Since he was born under a new moon, he has no powers and is portrayed as weaker than most average townspeople. When he says things like "I try to avoid trouble at all times" it seems like a pretty logical position for him to take. The other reason Capell works is that his transition from weakling to warrior is slow and believable. Even well into the second disc, Capell is unsure of himself. It takes a number of traumatic experiences to really inspire him into action. I'm sure a lot of people got tired of his whimpy attitude, but I found it more realistic than "zero to hero" in a few easy cutscenes.
SPOILERS HERE...SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU DON'T WANT THE STORY RUINED.
The big twist comes at the end of the first disc, when Sigmund falls in battle (during a very confusing cutscene) against the top bad guy from the empire . The team decides that Sigmund's death will cause people to lose hope, and they need the support of the remaining nations that oppose the empire. But hey, here's a guy that recently joined our ranks and happens to look just like Sigmund...is that a plan formulating? Capell has to pose as Sigmund and "lead" the team while anyone is watching. Despite the fact that Capell doesn't sound or act like Sigmund in any way, their plan works perfectly and every major world leader is completely fooled into thinking that he's Sigmund. As you might guess, eventually the truth comes out and Capell is forced to put his cowardly ways behind him and step forward to be the leader he never thought blah, blah, blah. The last half of the second disc is contrived and predictable, right down to the big showdown that finishes the game. SIDE NOTE: What you might NOT expect is that the final showdown occurs on the moon, which the team travels to by JOGGING UP ONE OF THE CHAINS. Good thing they weren't too tired from their little space jaunt to fight the bad guys at the top.
So to summarize, the plot to this game is both dull and rife with cliches. The whole thing really boils down to a long hike around the world to break some chains (each with requisite dungeon and boss battle) capped off by one last boss fight in an improbable locale. By RPG standards, that's not breaking any new ground. The game could work as a character-driven meditation on Capell's "coming of age", but unfortunately that doesn't work very well either. The problem is that while Capell is a pretty well-written character, the rest of the team (and there are a LOT of them) are boring, one-dimensional caricatures masquerading as a supporting cast. You've got the bossy love interest who turns out to be a princess. The swordsman with an attitude who doesn't want to follow orders. The big muscle guy who drinks and breaks things. The annoying kids who's mother thought they'd be safer with me (no child services in this world I guess). The egg-headed mage (Rachel felt bad for him because he carried a big pack with all our gear). The token female with enormous breasts. And on and on and on. Every time you get a handle on all the characters, some more show up to join the team out of nowhere. Christ, there's a big scene near the end where everyone talks about their individual motivations to fight (because apparently we're too thick to work it out by context) and I kept thinking "Who are all these people?" A note to Tri-Ace: I'd prefer four fully developed characters to a dozen half-baked ones.
So we've got an RPG with a dumb story and bad characters. Not a rousing beginning. Next time: gameplay aggravations. Hooray!
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