A Week in Gaming 2nd Quest #18: 5/1 – 5/7

The penultimate week of the Spring 2011 semester was this past week, and I’m genuinely surprised at the ease at which I handled finishing three classes. I’ve still got two more class days to go, as my World History Since 1500 class actually has a final, but beyond that final exam and one last bit of homework for creative writing I am done! An entire glorious summer to spend time on losing weight, exercising, making bead sprites, and taking down that huge Unfinished count.

Surprisingly, I managed to take down three games this past week! Yet with the math laid it, I’ve practically made no progress. Traded Tales of the Abyss to my local friend Will in return for a new copy of Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection. -1 Unfinished, +3 Unfinished. I beat both Final Fantasy IV and Final Fantasy IV: -Interlude- this week, then later completed Mega Man Network Transmission. +3 Unfinished, +2 Beaten, +1 Completed, and we’re back to a starting point. Ah well, read on and hear me gush about these games.

Final Fantasy IV (PSP)

I’m a “hardcore” Final Fantasy IV fan. It was my first RPG and still remains one of my favorites to this day, despite the version. I’m only missing the Super Nintendo cartridge to have all of the American/NTSC releases. After all the prior versions, each with their faults, playing this PSP remake/update feels right. It feels completely and utterly right. The game has been around for twenty years, so I won’t bore you with the details of the game itself. Rather, I’ll detail the changes made to this version that really stood out to me.

The graphics. Yes, I know. “lol graphics y u care so much about dem lol” and what have you. The visuals are drop-dead gorgeous in this, though. Character portraits are high-res drawings modeled after the original version’s portraits, so we don’t suffer from the GBA or NDS version’s portraits (especially Rosa GBA and her nose!). The world and locations look sharp, and I especially liked how each castle on the overworld was individualized to some degree. Each character sprite is detailed and larger, menus are crisp and sharp, and small things like the Lunar Whale look great with this update.

What really stood out to me in the graphics came in two pieces, though: the enemy sprites and the spell effects. Each and every enemy looks like they’ve come out of a painting. They look positively incredible, from the lowly Goblins and Sahagins to that incredible Golbez sprite (check out the video below). Every enemy looks like a work of art and it was great to see them all get a fresh coat of paint. Plus, some of the touch-ups and animated effects to certain enemies further made them visually appealing! The Mist Dragon looks like it has mist around it, and glitters with an aura. The Mom Bomb actually explodes and you see the three Gray Bombs and three Bombs form out of this explosions. Cagnazzo’s water actually flows around him, the Giant’s CPU rotates and reflects the background “lights” off of its shiny spherical form… I could go on and on.

The spell and attack animations are just as good. Summons are animated, and spells shine with the work put into them. Anyone who hasn’t played this yet: wait until you have access to Firaga and Blizzaga. Firaga is my favorite spell, visually, and thought it should have been the animation for Flare. Flare disappointed me, as did Bio, but that’s more waxing nostalgic for the older animations and being disappointed with how lackluster these two are. Beyond that, these animations are great and only serve to enrich the high visual aesthetic that the game provides.

Then there are all the little touches they made to the game that really enrich the playing experience. So many of these changes made me say to myself “It’s like common sense to have these in here, why weren’t they in games earlier?” Having portraits on your character menus in battle to better and easier identify who you’re using. Pressing Select to activate “Auto-Battle”, which uses the last command your characters used and will speed up the battles, made grinding and getting through easier areas so much better. Pressing Select on the world map or on a save point would bring up a box saying “Would you like to use a Tent?”! No more digging through my menu! And while I’m in the menu, pressing L or R would show how much experience every member of my party needed to level! YES! No more digging through my menu! And the Bestiary? That functions by displaying every enemy – and the amount of each you’ve killed – over the accumulated number of saved files you have for Final Fantasy IV. Missable enemies aren’t truly missable now, especially if you make extra saves in those points of no return (I’m staring at you, Babil).

In short, I’m in love with this game and this version feels like what every other ought to have been. I did like the Augments in Final Fantasy IV DS, but that felt too different from what I expected and Final Fantasy IV PSP restored a love that had been lukewarm with the last version of the game.

Final Fantasy IV: -Interlude- (PSP)

-Interlude- was designed to be a scenario that bridges Final Fantasy IV with The After Years. Something to fill in that large time span between the two games. If it was meant to do this, why did it fall severely short of expectations and leave me with more questions than anything? I’ll elaborate: Interlude is a rapid series of forced progression wherein you move from recycled point to recycled point until you ultimate end up inside the Tower of Babil again, fighting the equivalent of a boss rush at the end of this all. Your party cycles through ten separate characters during these two hours it takes to beat Interlude. There’s only 73 enemies in the Bestiary, most of which the player will probably never encounter.

The biggest events this entire thing has to offer lie in two distinct camps: Seeing or hearing about characters from The After Years being born, and visiting the Developer’s Room for this version of the game. That’s it. That interconnecting plot? The Tales in The After Years had more substance to them, and took longer to beat. Interlude left me with more questions than any answer, used nothing but old assets from Final Fantasy IV shuffled around to resemble a “new scenario”, and took me as long to beat as getting to Mt. Hobs in the original game actually took. Final Fantasy IV was great, -Interlude- was a huge disappointment. And as of this day, I still haven’t found a Bomb for my Bestiary.

Mega Man Network Transmission (GameCube)

And now for something completely different! Taking place between the first and second Battle Network games, Network Transmission was an attempt to fuse the RPG and card-collecting elements of those games with the traditional classic Mega Man series gameplay. And just like that fusion of old and new, I have a fusion of love and hate with this game.

I loved the folder building aspect, since I find it addicting and fun to constantly update and perfect a roster of attacks. That’s one of the major things I love about the Battle Network series, and being able to take that concept and use it in classic Mega Man style was enjoyable. I also loved the cel-shaded visual look that the characters had; the series was cartoon-like and was vibrant in color and Network Transmission didn’t skimp on either. I’m also a huge fan of classic (and X) Mega Man gameplay, so trading Metal Blade and Shotgun Ice for M-Cannons and Recov300 chips was enjoyable.

I hated the inconsistent difficulty. Early in the game felt extremely hard due to lack of chips and Power Ups for Mega Man, and the difficulty would continue like a wave. At some points it would be extremely easy (like with Needle Man and his stage), at other times ludicrously hard (Quick Man’s stage, fighting Bright Man and Star Man). The fight with bonus boss Bass was terrible and felt forced in because people seem to have a fetish for a dark angsty character whose only attribute is that they are beyond comprehension in terms of strength. Collecting all the chips became a chore that required repetition and forcing yourself to constantly adapt to situations to get the “best rank” on killing an enemy just for one or two of their best chip. The voice acting was also incredibly irritating; there was only Japanese voices in the game, and being young men for characters meant that both Lan and Mega Man were high-pitched squeaky ear drills meant to drive you mad.

But all of this was adaptable, easy to overcome, or just easy to ignore. The thing that really irked me was what I thought a failure in translation from the Battle Network games to here: Auras. Shields that required a minimum amount of damage to break and requiring even more specific setting up to get chips from these enemies. See, I have a problem with this because of how Network Transmission handles in contrast to Battle Network. In the BN games, you have your entire folder of chips at your disposal per fight, and they’re restored after every fight. On top of that, you can customize your folder and settings to where you can get that series of attacks you need to take out those Life Aura-covered enemies with only a measure of difficulty. In NT, your entire folder is used from during your stay on the ‘net. Enemies respawn, your chips do not. What you could depend on in other games becomes extremely scarce in Network Transmission and only serves to frustrate what is otherwise a good challenge. And that doesn’t even cover the enemies who have a regenerating aura. Did I mention you only have that max number of chips throughout each time you jack into a location? Yep, if you wasted all those M-Cannons getting through a few Life Aura-clad enemies, sucks to be you when you have to fight more of them.

Then there’s that whole other complaint about load screens everywhere, yada yada. Beyond the gripes I had above, I really loved this game. I want to love it more, but the hated aspects seem to bring down the enjoyment or only served to pad the game length. Don’t believe me about padding game length? Try and get a PopUp chip, or three more Rolls to round out the two you get with plot progression. It’ll drive you to… well, boredom. Maybe madness with the PopUps.

Do I recommend it? Yes. Does it work for everyone? Not like classic or X series Mega Man games. Is it at least different from all the cookie cutter sequels in the Battle Network series, and thus worthy of attention? Yep! Is it better than the StarForce series? You bet your ass it is. If you see this for under $15, I’d recommend snagging it if you like both Battle Network and Mega Man to some degree. In the end, Network Transmission was worth it.

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That’s all for me this week. Next week I begin my summer vacation, and the huge amount of gaming that comes with it! Until then folks, keep on havin’ fun. o/