AJ 1/17/21 AJ 1/17/21

Chrono Trigger - Ocean Palace

It has been a while since I last played Chrono Trigger. I had severely underestimated the amount of time I would need to finish this. All the vacations and road trips have come and gone. Even though I am pretty close to the end, I had originally thought I was going to be deep into NG+ mode by now. As it happens, I am yet to face Lavos for the first time.

The way to the Ocean Palace is through the Zeal Palace. Our friends find no obstacles as they enter the kingdom. Even the sky elevators have turned back on. There is no one guarding the palace, and for the second time we find ourselves inside the giant throne room. Only this time none of the royalty are present, but the trash bag made human that goes by the name of Dalton is still here.

Dalton has more confidence than he has fighting ability, so this turned out to be an easy fight. I loved wiping the floor with Dalton’s smug face. The only downside was he ran away before I could finish the job. This guy is turning out to be a real thorn in Crono’s side. Everyone else has already gone over to wherever the Mammon Machine is, and we will be heading that way shortly. A gate opens up in the throne room once Dalton escapes. Crono and his friends take it and emerge in the Ocean Palace.

There are quite a few strong enemies here, but I think I have over levelled my characters. I beat all of them with ease. Crono finds his way around until he can get to the stairs and go deeper. This place reminds me of the Fiendlord’s Keep. Magus must have seen this place when he was younger. He probably came here with his mother and Schala. When it was time for him to build his own castle, he ended up imitating the only other ominous palace he had known.

There is less water in Ocean Palace than I anticipated.

As Crono and others are fighting hordes of enemies and climbing down the stairs, we get a cutscene of the Queen activating the Mammon Machine. She demands Schala crank the power up all the way. If she keeps this up, the whole place is going to start falling apart. Crono, sensing the Machine coming online, hurries on to put a stop to it before Lavos is summoned. The Queen herself seems to have no regard for the lives of her children or her subjects. All she is focused on is achieving immortality.

The death of the King of Zeal has shaken her to the core. She had not had to face the fragility of her own existence until the death of her loved one. The Queen probably felt the magic would protect her from death just as it had helped her live a privileged life. When she saw the King could not delay death, however strong his magical powers were, she had to come to terms with her own mortality. Instead of accepting the inevitability of death, she started looking for a way to avoid it at all costs.

This is her motivation for tinkering with the Mammon Machine. Even though she is smart enough to know what disaster messing with the powers of Lavos would bring, she can not stop herself. Power of Lavos gives these people their magical abilities so they are already comfortable with relying on a dangerous power source to some degree. It probably did not take her long to justify the use Mammon Machine to herself. Then she banished every single adviser who tried to warn her of the danger she was putting all her kingdom in.

The name Mammon is aptly used here. The machine is used to create magic that has generated immense wealth and class for those exploiting it. These people have become so rich and powerful they live on islands that float in the sky. Instead of working they sleep away, lost in the dreams. These magic users have cut off their brethren who can not use magic by leaving them on the ground, wallowing in poverty. For them, only their material wealth is important. They choose to ignore the plight of less fortunate. Their worship of the machine and the parasite it represents will only bring ruin and disaster for them. But they can not stop themselves. They even have a false prophet who is accelerating the collapse of their society, and they recognize he is a harbinger of their end. Yet they can not find enough courage to abandon their ways.

Crono finally arrives at an elevator that takes him down to the where everyone is. There are quite a few enemies who pop up on the elevator, but they are dispensed away with ease. Before we can go in and destroy the machine, Dalton shows his ugly face again. After the beating he took last time, he is a little more reluctant to fight himself. Instead, he sends out his pets, the Golem sisters to fight for him.

As much as the Mammon Machine foreshadows the calamity that is about to befall the people of Zeal, these golems are the subversion of the golem that protected the chosen people. Here there are two of them and they will not be able to save these people, even though they are one of the tougher fights in the game. My party included Crono, Robo, and Ayla. Robo was my healer. The Heal beam was again great at keeping everyone alive and well. Ayla gave out some physical damage, unless I needed her to heal a member who was dangerously low. My main damage dealer was Crono with his Lumianaire. This is going to be the last time I will be using it for while so I might as well use it as much as I can. The golems copied my attacks and gave it back as hard as they got. But with this party combination, I was able to finish them off without having any party member die on me.

01-15-2021

Nothing good has ever happened in the history of raising the output to the limit.

AJ 1/15/21 AJ 1/15/21

Resident Evil 2 Remake - Claire’s Story

I restarted RE2. I wasn’t too deep into it, so it was not much of a loss. I just could not get over the fact that I had wasted too many bullets in the gas station. With the ammo scarcity, Resident Evil series has trained me to value ammo over everything else. As an added bonus I was able to get my wife to see the disgusting blood and gore in the beginning (and the cheeseburger. I can not get over how gross that looked). I had a feeling she would like it based on how much she loves horror movies.

After the car blows up inside Racoon City, Claire finds herself out in the open with all of the zombies converging, being alerted by the giant explosion. Both, Claire and Leon are fine but there is a wall of flames between them. Each one sets out with a plan to get back together in the safety of the police station. Claire is only a short distance away from it, but still barely makes it inside. All the zombies are left outside the gate, clawing to get a piece of her brains. The whole station is boarded up and shut down. It also seems deserted, which is odd considering all the announcements we have heard asking people to seek shelter at the police station. Did none of them make it here? Or did they all make it but still turned once they were inside? Most of the doors are locked so Claire can not investigate the place properly. Since she is no master of unlocking, she is going to have to find a different way to get past the locks.

The front desk has some more ammo and a typewriter. Saving will have to be done the old fashioned way, but at least there is no longer any need for the typewriter ribbons. The monitor is displaying a video feed from somewhere inside the police station. It shows one of the officers being chased by someone and asking for help. Leon has not shown up yet, so Claire will have to go help this man on her own. There is a shutter leading to the inside of the station, but it is partly jammed. Claire has to crawl through the blood and disgusting water to get to the other side (which is steeped in darkness). Crawling through blood and under a half open shutter is my new phobia. It is truly commendable how many new situations this game finds to make the player uncomfortable and at a loss of control. Claire is halfway under a shutter which may fall on her and break her back. She can not look behind her, nor can she see anything in front because of the darkness. I felt a twinge of panic each time I went under this door (and this is just the beginning).

The place is as deserted as it is dark, but I see zombies lurking in every shadow, and around every corner. Claire knows she is getting closer because she can hear the officer screaming. Inside the office, the police officer is just on the other side of another shutter, and this one will not open all the way either. Just enough of the shutter is open to let the guy crawl through, but as he tries, my worst fears come true. Something on the other side starts ripping him apart. By the time Claire pulls him through, the lower half of his body is gone. There is a small notebook in his hand with some clues on how to solve a puzzle in the main hall. Claire is shaken up, but not enough to leave the notebook behind.

A pamphlet found in one of the rooms explains why there are so many oddities in a police station. This building used to house the Raccoon City Museum, and some of the weird artifacts are holdovers from that time. This is still does not explain who would turn a museum into a police station. It also does not help when Claire herself asks the same question. Even as a museum, it must have been a hassle to solve puzzles to get around in the building. Maybe the next time they remake it, the pamphlet can say this place used to be a large escape room (which got turned into a police station because the pandemic destroyed all escape room businesses).

Claire makes a run for the main hall. All the screaming dying police officer did, has brought out zombies from all the corners of the station. I died a few times here because I kept getting turned around in the dark. It is probably better to die a few times while figuring out the optimal path to safety and then make a run for it. It is better than wasting a bunch of bullets and making out on the other side with low health. As Claire crawls through the door, an undead hand grabs at her ankle and starts pulling her back. Another officer walks calmly up to the door and shuts the door on the zombie hand.

Claire is relieved to have made it out in one piece. After calming down, she takes a better look at the man who saved her. This is Marvin Branaugh and he seems to be injured. Marvin gives the first piece of good news that Claire has heard ever since she came to RC. Chris is not here. He is on vacation somewhere in Europe. As great as it is that Chris is not in this zombie infested city, it is a little odd he went on a vacation without telling anyone where he is going. Maybe he is on a top secret mission to rescue the President’s daughter from a cult. I should look up the timeline of these games.

I have a feeling I will be seeing this a whole lot

Marvin tells Claire to get out of this godforsaken place while she can. He knows it is already too late for him. The implication is he is carrying wounds from zombie bites and is only moments away from turning himself. His advice is to shoot whoever comes for her regardless of who they used to be. The player already knows why he is saying this, but for Claire this must have been a confusing advice. She has yet to see a normal person transform into an undead husk of their former self.

Claire knows Chris is not here which means there is no reason for her to stay in Raccoon City anymore. Leon has not shown up here yet. The only question is should she wait for him here or try to make her way out of here and look for Leon on the outside. Either way, it is quickly becoming apparent Claire’s problems are only beginning.

01-03-2021

AJ 1/14/21 AJ 1/14/21

Final Fantasy VIII - A Different kind of Final Fantasy

Recently, I noticed RPGs are the largest chunk of all the games I play. This is not restricted to any one kind but represents a broad mix from western to Japanese and everything in the middle. I have also started way more games than I should have. Today, I started one more, Final Fantasy VIII. It is not the first time I have played this game, but I never get past the first hour or two. Hopefully, I will be able to finish it this time. The Steam version comes with built in cheats which can be turned on and off. I figure if I have to brute force my way past a particularly tough part, those should help.

Of all the JRPG series, Final Fantasy is the one I am most familiar with. It is the most famous outside of Japan. FF VII was the first role playing game I played seriously, FFX was the first one I bought, and FFVI was the first one I finished multiple times. Final Fantasy VIII is probably the one I have tried and failed to play more times than any other game.

FFVIII came right in the middle of one of the most successful periods of Square. They were churning out a game a year. It was the middle game of the three on Playstation. In a way it became a middle child of the series. Final Fantasy VII made RPGs popular in North America, IX was a throwback to the SNES era Final Fantasy. But VIII was different. Grinding made it harder, magic spells had to be extracted from the enemies. There were guardians and Junctions and tutorials. For the people who had fallen in love with VII, this was a bridge too far. It was not well liked by the new fans who wanted more Cloud and materia.

The ones who liked FFVIII, really loved it. To this day it has its defenders. They will take every opportunity to let everyone know how much better it is. Mechanically it feels complicated, but that just means there are more opportunities to figure out builds that break the game in the most fun way possible.

The magic consists of spells that need to be stolen from the enemy. The players can store these and use them at a later time. Anyone can use the spells as long as they have loaded up the Magic option to their menu. Attack is the default option, but each player can choose between Magic, Draw, Item, GF, etc. The Guardian Forces or GFs are the summons here, but they also need to be equipped to allow the character to truly customize with all the other options. Different spells can also be equipped or Junctioned to the character to get attack and defense boosts. It all sounds complicated, but after having seen those tutorials multiple times, I am getting the hang of it.

Since the enemies scale with the player levels, grinding actually makes the game tougher. This is different from all the other ones where player can always grind to make the game easier. AP is more important here and overall getting more EXP is actually worse. With AP the guardian abilities can be upgraded, but EXP levels up the player characters which consequently means enemies are stronger as well.

The cheats in the Steam version allow the players to hit harder, or max out, etc. I wish there was a no encounter cheat also because my tolerance for random encounters is not what it used to be. Walking five steps only to see the screen tear up and then a slow pan into the battle tends to get aggravating pretty quickly. The battles also seem slow as well. Especially when compared to the ones in Persona 4 and 5. Some of it is probably because Playstation would have a hard time loading everything quickly. That may be why there were so many slow pans into the fights.

The graphics are nothing to write home about, but they still seem to be better than the original Playstation version. The beginning looks absolutely gorgeous. I think it was an FMV in the original. There is a song playing over a dramatic looking fight between Seifer and Squall, which ends with Seifer giving him a scar across the face. Squall then wake up in the infirmary bed (and the graphics take a major. The doctor is annoyed, they took the training to far but relieved he will be ok. Although the scar is not going away an time soon. She calls Quistis, the instructor, to come take her student away.

This is definitely going to lead up to Ifrit

Quistis is a remarkably patient and overly friendly teacher. I wonder how her relationship with Squall will pan out in the game. There is definitely one other mysterious girl we saw while Squall was in the infirmary. Nobody else seems to know who she was and there is a distinct possibility Squall is just hallucinating from the brain damage he took at the hands of Siefer. Regardless, there is an exam coming up and we have more important things to worry about.

The story so far (as I have understood it) revolves around cadets at a military academy. All of these students are training to become soldiers. Both Squall and Siefer have advanced far enough to take their final exam which will make them proper soldiers in this school’s private army. Before Squall can go take the exam, he does have to visit one of the caves full of monsters and complete a test battle in there. He was going to go earlier today but got tangled up with Siefer and ended in the hospital. Quistis offers to accompany him and evaluate his visit. This is the tutorial section of the game. She will go over multiple different combat related tutorials as we fight Ifrit. Once beaten Ifrit is too embarrassed to live freely and decides to join Squall. After completing the pre-requisite battle, Squall is almost ready to go take his final SeeD exam. All he has to do is change into his uniforms. He just has to go find Quistis and ask about his assignment.

Like I said before, I did not have as much trouble with the tutorials this time around. Most of the Junction related things are not too hard to understand. Levelling up the GFs is simpler than I imagined as well. It reminded me of Espers from Final Fantasy VI.

I am looking forward to finally playing this game past the first two hours. It has been the most divisive game in the series. I have bounced off of it enough times to know all the things players do not like about it (too many tutorial, no MP for magic, GFs ruin the games, etc.). What I want to know is why it is loved by so many other players. This was the one Square experimented with the most, and I would love to see what they got right.

And maybe if I finish this one, then I can also play IX which I have never even attempted to play.

01-11-21

There is definite improvement over the original

AJ 1/13/21 AJ 1/13/21

The Secret of Monkey Island - Just Point and Click

My introduction to point-and-click adventures was when I borrowed Quest for Glory 2 from a friend. At the time, it was the only game my computer could run. At the time I did not find the game to be as fun as my friend seemed to think so. The emulators were just starting to take off and there was a glut of previously untried games I had access to. The adventure games quickly ended up on a dusty back shelf of my memory.

When I became interested in retro games, the name of Lucas Arts kept coming up. Multiple podcasts talked of them being the developer that made the best adventure games. More recently TellTale Games led the revival of Point-and-Click adventure genre. After playing Life is Strange, I had newfound appreciation for these types of games. For those of us who value story above mechanics in games, these can be vehicles for some of the most immersive storytelling.

At the time of its release, Secret of Monkey Island was lauded for its humor and clever puzzles. It was also not unnecessarily punishing the way Sierra adventures tended to be. Ron Gilbert, the man behind Monkey Island wanted to make adventure games which were fun to play. He certainly did not appreciate the game becoming unbeatable without telling the player, the way some Sierra games of the time did. He wrote a piece on requirements on making a fun puzzle game. It is still an extremely relevant piece of writing. (https://grumpygamer.com/why_adventure_games_suck it is still a great read).

Gilbert enumerates the Rules of Thumb that are needed to make a good adventure game. These include:

The End Goal should be clear.

The game needs to be broken up into sub-goals. All of these need to be obvious.

Menu fills the bottom fourth of the screen. No need to cycle through verbs

The player should not have to die and restart to make progress.

The solution of the puzzle should not be found before the player encounters the puzzle itself. This also gets rid of one of the worst aspects of Sierra games. No puzzle should become unsolvable because the player did not pick something up in the past. This made many of the Sierra adventure games unfinishable.

Puzzles should only be in service of the story. Each puzzle should be moving the plot of the game along. If not, then it should be contributing to the story of the game. There should not be a disconnect between the puzzle and the story itself.

There are more rules (the piece itself is quite exhaustive) but these are the ones that have stuck to me. Whenever I feel I’m not having fun with a game, regardless of genre, I tend to examine it in the light of these rules. More often than not, One of Gilbert’s rules are not being followed.

For a while the only way to play the Monkey Island games wasa through dubious means. The good news is Secret of the Monkey Island is no longer abandonware. The new enhanced version is now available on Steam, among other platforms. This new version has voice acting and graphics have been redone from ground up. While I certainly appreciate being able to play it without jumping through hoops, I am not really a fan of the new look. There is still a way to emulate it online. Maybe not for the entirety of the game, but for at least the introduction, I want to play both versions side by side comparison.

We play as an affable loser named Guybrush Threepwood who aspires to be a pirate. He shows up to a bar for guidance where he is told to complete three tasks and drink grog with them to complete his initiation into the brotherhood of pirates. While at the bar Guybrush finds out the story of fearsome pirate Le Chuck. He was invited to dinner with the governor and fell in love with her right away. He refused to leave the governor’s mansion, and she was annoyed enough to tell him to drop dead. He promptly did so and then started haunting the seas around Melee Island.

All of this meant none of the pirates could go out to the sea and resume their pirating ways. Now they are about to run out of grog. In walks Threepwood with his dream to be a pirate. And maybe he can be manipulated into going up against Le Chuck.

Le Chuck has his ship anchored in what looks to be the depths of hell. A skeletal member of his crew comes in to let him know of the new development at the Melee Island. Namely there is a new and upcoming pirate who may be a hindrance in their plans. Chuck decides to take care of this problem himself.

The humor of Monkey Island is on display on get go. Guybrush walks up to the Melee Island Watch, and immediately realizes the watch guard is blind. He reminded me of Blinkin being on watch for the Men in Tights. Later on, Guy has to wrest a fish away from a sea gull, which turns out to be a literal red herring. The whole game is supposed to be about 6 to 8 hours long. That is an ideal length to finish the adventure in one or two sittings. I am looking forward to experiencing this game for the first time.

01-02-2021

Too much blue in Le Chuck’s ship though.

AJ 1/12/21 AJ 1/12/21

Persona 5 - Path to the Holy Grail

With the gang re-assembled and Morgana remembering her reason for existence, people are starting to remember the Phantom Thieves again. Heartened by this turn of events, Joker and his friends head back into the depths of the Mementos. They don’t have to step into the Metaverse anymore because the two worlds are merged now. Before we can get to the Holy Grail again, Joker has to face the minions of the God of Malevolence. Once the Heralds start dying off, people start waking up to the danger they are in.

Meanwhile, our heroes keep heading towards the temple. These mini bosses are some of the hardest fights in the game, but still don’t hold a candle to the final boss. The final battle is still the Holy Grail itself. It has existed because of the indecisiveness of the humankind. People do not want to make the hard decision of making choices which give the Holy Grail the power over them. This time we know the blood pumping lines have to be cut to stop the Grail from healing. The enemy also knows the Thieves are aware of its weakness. The three will have to distract the grail while the fourth member goes to cut the arteries.

Without the arteries, the Grail does not receive the strength of the inmates. Without it, the damn cup cannot heal itself anymore, but it still hits really hard. The team perseveres through the pain to hand it a strong blow. Beaten but not defeated, the Holy Grail transforms into its true form. This is the God of Control, Yaldobaoth.

There has not been a tougher battle in the game before this one. The first time I faced Yaldobaoth, I died so many times, I seriously considered bumping the difficulty down to very easy. The problem is different parts of him reflect different attacks. If the player does not keep track of what is in play, the team essentially commits suicide by hitting different parts of the Yaldobaoth with wrong attacks. It also does not help when the boss gets multiple hits in before we can attack it.

The battle was much easier this time around because I went in better prepared. My team was maxed out at level 99 so they could handle much more of the punishment. I also wrote down what each arm does and used it as a cheat sheet. The Personas I had also made it easier for Joker to survive and deal damage no matter what arm he was attacking. Lastly, I did not hold back on the items. This above all made this battle a lot less frustrating. Even with all of that, the fight lasted more than half and hour. By the end my palms were still sweaty, and my controller was at the verge of breaking.

There are two boss battles that prepare us for this one. The Madarame one is more important. It gets the player to understand attacking all the parts of the boss with the same attack may not be a good idea every time. Madarame also regenerated different body parts, which is common with Yaldobaoth. The Shido battle also had an important lesson for us. The enemy can take multiple turns before the player gets a turn. This necessitates planning multiple turns ahead.

Even with all the power at their disposal, the Phantom Thieves are not strong enough to withstand the God of Control. They are beaten. But then something magical happens. The people start waking up to the nightmare they are in and remembering how Phantom Thieves had fought for social justice. These people have had their lives changed for the better by the actions of Joker and his freinds. They cheer our heroes and tell them how much the Thieves matter to them. Heartened by the voices of their supporters, the Thieves rise up once more.

Something stirs inside Joker. The chains holding the Trickster God break, and he transforms into the demon lord Satanael. In an ultimate show of subversion, Joker is helped by a demon to destroy a god and bring salvation to humanity. There is only one bullet in the chamber of Satanael, but it is enough. Yaldobaoth is no match for Satanael and the Thieves triumph over the God of Control.

I had previously remembered, incorrectly, Joker going to jail after defeating Shido, but those scenes take place here. He is asked by Sae to turn himself in and spends a night with his true love before going to jail. I think I need to play it again to see how many of the events I am remembering out of order. Sae does come through on her promise and Joker is acquitted. The term is also over, and it is time for him to head back home. With his innocence proven, Joker’s parents are ready to take him back. Maybe he should look to moving in with Sojiro permanently. Over the course of the game, he has proven himself to be a better guardian than permanently absent parents.

Before he can leave, Joker gets a chance to say goodbye to all the Confidants he has maxed out. It is a bittersweet moment to realize my time with these characters is coming to an end. This was my second run through the game, and I had spent upwards of 130 hours here. Even then I keep getting a hankering to play this game one more time whenever it is brought up. At the time of writing this, I am about six months removed from having played this game. I will most likely start another play next month. This time around, I will concentrate on finishing up all the confidants so I can add those stories here.

Turn-based RPGs are now considered too stale of an idea to be viable. The new JRPGs are more action oriented. We saw Square Enix move away from the turn based formula with Final Fantasy XV. That was followed up by Kingdom Hearts, but the series was always action RPG. The remake of FFVII finally came out and that was also action based. Even as action based role playing games gain popularity, Persona 5 has stood out as the most successful of Atlus games. It finally brought the Shin Megami Tensei series into the mainstream outside of Japan. The game was so popular, it prompted Sega to re-release Persona 4. The Steam release of P4 saw enough success that there are now consistent rumors pf Persona 3 re-release.

Success of Persona 5 is due to the fact it does most of the things very well. From 3 onwards, Persona series has been refining the formula and 5 has been the best version of it. I have talked about so many things the game has done right, so let me first talk about the weakest aspect of the game.

The story of the game is (in my opinion) not as good as the one for Persona 4. Although that does not mean it is bad by any means. In fact it is one of the most socially aware pieces of narrative I have come by in any video game. It highlights multiple problems with the Japanese society, but all of those problems are relevant to all the western societies. It is only weak in comparison to every other aspect of the game.

The music is one of the best I have heard in a long time. For me this was the best post-SNES JRPG in terms of music. I was never bored of listening to the battle theme, even after upwards of hundred hours of play. The characters as well as dungeon designs were also some of the best in the series. As far as characters go, Persona 4 gives it a tough fight but there is no game in the series with bespoke dungeons. Which makes them streets ahead of the procedurally generated ones. Each palace reflects the nature of the boss. The puzzles are fun for the most part and the place does not seem empty the way they do in the earlier games.

The menu style made the game pop. They are so unique anyone can recognize the game from screenshots (which makes the fact we can not take screenshots extra annoying). After the jaundiced look of Persona 4, I am in love with the red and black theme of this one. I was never bored of looking at or listening to this game. It was one of the few highlights of last year for me, and I can see myself play this game multiple times in the future. I can not wait to get back into it again!