Kessen II (2001) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / December 28, 2014

Anyone familiar with this game series is undoubtedly familiar with Dynasty Warriors by the same developer (Koei). Like that ever-popular series, Kessen II is based on the same (highly romanticized) history. And believe it or not, the story in Kessen II is even more romanticized. So, those familiar with Dynasty Warriors will have to adjust their expectations.

            You control Liu Bei who’s in love with Diao Chan…uh, what? Yeah, so just roll with it. He’s saved during battle by reinforcements from warlord Cao Cao. So they become instant buddies, but Cao Cao has other plans. He decimates Liu Bei’s forces and kidnaps Diao Chan. Liu Bei retreats with his sworn brothers Guan Yu and Zhang Fei and what’s left of his army. Inspired by his comrades, he decides to stand up to Cao Cao and sacrifice his troops so he can get laid and save Diao Chan.

            My feelings regarding the story are twofold: on the one hand, it’s all incredibly over the top—lots of eye rolling, but on the other hand, there’s an undeniable sense of epicness to the proceedings that’s conveyed well. Plus, after you beat the game, you have the option of replaying the story from Cao Cao’s point of view. So, you get the story from a new perspective and get more gameplay. Granted, most of these battles are the same, except this time fought against Liu Bei. However, this results in new possible tactics and several battles unique to Cao Cao’s storyline.

            The gameplay is nothing like Dynasty Warriors. It inhabits a middle ground between the completely strategy-centered Dynasty Tactics 2 and the non-strategy showcased in Dynasty Warriors. Let’s just say it’s like the lite version of Rome: Total War. Before every battle you’ll choose one of several overall strategies presented by your loyal subjects; this involves choosing unit formations and overall battle plans, though you aren’t limited to these strategies: you can alter units’ orders during battle. Real combat commences once two units clash. You can watch from a distance or take control of the unit commander. Depending on the commander, you’ll also be able to use tactics (troop charges, magic, etc). This is one of the best parts, because you adopt a bird’s eye view to select the ‘area of effect’ ensuring the tactic hurts as many enemy troops as possible. Then you watch the carnage unfold after which you’re rewarded with a screen that shows the number of enemy troops rapidly decreasing. Watching that number quickly go from 13000 to something like 7000 is pretty sweet, let me tell you. On the other hand, tactics are pretty broken. If you adequately use your tactics, you’ll win every battle. Let’s say your unit of 10000 troops clash with a similar enemy unit. If you immediately use your tactics, you’ll eliminate roughly half the troops. And because the AI is hesitant to use tactics (at least on normal difficulty), you’ll win most fights on numbers alone. But there’s something highly addictive about utilizing tactics in the best possible way. It’s something you could only know by playing it. In between battles, you’ll enter the story phase and strategic phase during which you’ll be able to choose between upgrades: hiring commanders, teaching new skills to a commander, increasing troops, etc. Though this all seems huge, the changes are quite minimal. The important thing is that the strategic combat feels strategic.

            All’s not well however. Gameplay tends to feel stiff, particularly when navigating units. You’ll try to squeeze between two units, so you can join the fight, only to find your route blocked by an invisible wall even though you’d think you could pass through. What’s worse, during naval combat you aren’t even able to directly navigate your units beyond giving them orders on where to go or who to attack. Also, sometimes you’ll order a unit to retreat and it’ll take them ages to do so. What’s worse, once they retreat chances are they’ll be overtaken by the same enemy before long, making retreating only useful to buy time.

            The score is also fantastic. Whether it’s the softer, atmospheric music during strategic phases or the battle music, it always gets me in the mood to strategize and fight. When that music kicks off the final battle…chills every time.

            The voice acting is kind of meh. While some voices are well-judged—strategist Zhuge Liang sounds appropriately ‘wise’—other voices are failed attempts at comic relief. Lip syncing is even worse. Sometimes a small ‘cutscene’ during a battle will show someone’s face talking and the mouth will keep flapping, sometimes several seconds after the line’s been spoken. This is mostly likely the effect of bad localization and anyone familiar with Koei’s Dynasty Warriors 3 will know how hilariously bad that can get.

            Overall, I really like this game despite its flaws and believe me, they are myriad. There are issues on virtually every front and yet I find myself occasionally dusting off the ol’ PS2 so I can play it. The strategic gameplay, though actually quite limited, does something absolutely right and the result is addictive. For those of you who are knee-deep in Dynasty Warriors games, consider this an alternative if you’re looking for an epic, strategic version of Dynasty Warriors.

Dragon’s Dogma Review: Or How I Learned To Share These Roads With Travelling Peddlers, Guardsmen And Other Folk

Lucas Versantvoort / December 23, 2014

Dragon’s Dogma is one of those games that’s deeply flawed and yet a lot of fun to play. For every bad game design choice, there’s just as many good ones.

            The story begins with how every classic hero’s story starts: at a peaceful little village. But of course, peace doesn’t last and it’s not long before a dragon attacks your village and…steals your heart. However, you’re not dead. You wake up with a large scar across your chest and the dragon’s voice emanating from within: “If you would face me, take up arms, newly Arisen.” So you take up arms and start your journey to take back what was stolen from you and simultaneously save the world.

            The basic story is…well…basic: everything is peaceful when your happy life is disrupted by the Big Bad and you go out to restore order. That being said, the story does have a few nice plot twists up its sleeve. It’s hard to suggest the nature of these twists without giving it all away, so I’ll try to be deliberately vague: it’s a variation on the cycle of life theme. It lends an air of melancholy to everything that’s happened (and will happen) once you figure it out and subsequent playthroughs are actually tied into the narrative. It’s a great twist on the whole typical, medieval fantasy save-the-world fare…which is more than I can say for Dragon Age: Inquisition, a game I reviewed recently, hence the random comparison…

The problems regarding the narrative don’t lie with the story itself however, but with the telling of the story. The sections where the story picks up are great, but there’s a whole lot of nothing in between which is more a direct consequence of the open world-style of the game. The story starts with a bang and only takes off again in short increments (usually when the dragon reappears) before ending spectacularly. But all the narrative content in between is ploddingly executed. This is only punctuated by the poor handling of the important characters. The keywords here are: wasted potential. There were possibilities here to create some well-written characters, but save for a few scenes dedicated to most of them, they have nothing to do. Take Mercedes for example: a captain who has to lead others despite actually being insecure about herself and her abilities, a feeling only strengthened when you start making a name for yourself. In the right hands, this could’ve made for interesting stories, but she’s underwritten and underused. It’s obvious there’s a wealth of histories to these characters and lots of lore, but the game doesn’t do justice to any of it. All characters are written just well enough to rise above being one-note caricatures, but not nearly enough to be considered fully three-dimensional, to speak nothing of the bafflingly poor handling of romances, a system so shoddily executed, it’s almost nonexistent. It just makes me wish a company capable of writing stories and characters would’ve produced this, because well-written characters can drastically increase immersion. Do you really think the Mass Effect series became so popular because of its main storyline? No, it’s because people cared about the characters that they cared about the rest, a notion that seems to confound the people at Capcom.

Strength in numbers, Arisen.
Strength in numbers, Arisen.
Strength in numbers, Arisen.

            Speaking of terrible characters, this brings me to the Pawns, your companions. Pawns aren’t just your typical everyday companions however. They do justice to their namesake, because they come from a strange realm of sorts with their only purpose being to serve you…whilst being completely devoid of individual character traits. Ironically, their key characteristic is their lack of personality. Instead, they’ll constantly—and I mean constantly—make random observations about where you are, enemies, quests, etc. This seems fun the first time. After all, it does make you feel like a hero when companions make observations and give you advice, but after you start travelling through areas you’ve already visited, it dawns on you: Pawns will repeat the same shit ad nauseam. How can anyone consider this and think: yeah, this isn’t going to annoy the player at all? It’s all made worse by the fact that they make the same observations in reverse depending on where you’re going. Let’s say you’re going from city A to B. Pawns will make observations x-y-z. Now afterwards, let’s say you’re travelling back from city B to A. The pawns will then make the same observations in reverse, which occasionally makes zero sense. When you near a city gate, a pawn might say, “let’s have that gate open.” Makes sense, right? But he’ll also make that same comment when leaving the city, which makes no sense. Though they tie in to the main story in a significant way, I cannot help but feel Pawns were designed this way to avoid spending half the budget on voice acting and actually writing interesting companions à la Dragon Age: Origins.

This does mean however that most of the budget was spent on what is easily the game’s true saving grace: the gameplay and that’s saying something coming from someone who easily gets bored with games lacking interesting stories and characters. The first thing you’ll notice gameplay-wise is the wonderfully deep character creation screen. I’m the kind of guy who’ll spend way too much time tweaking my character, so needless to say, I had to restart a few times once I was disappointed with how my character turned out when viewed in natural daylight. The awesomeness that is character creation continues when you discover the vast array of clothing, armor and weapons available from shops or as loot. Some of these are incapable of being worn depending on your class. Speaking of classes, there’s a total of nine, each allowing for drastically different play styles. And you’ll need them, since many enemies require different tactics. Some enemies are very weak to certain elements, while chasing after nimble enemies with a sluggish longsword isn’t exactly a great idea. So, ensuring you’ve the proper skills and equipment and the right Pawns for the job is crucial.

            The other great aspect of gameplay is exploration, the key to any open world game. While the world of Gransys isn’t massive, it’s large enough that you’ll feel the length you have to travel. Some of my fondest memories playing Dragon’s Dogma are from just wandering about in the wilderness, finding loot, defeating enemies etc. It’s extra tense during nighttime, because your lantern (which you have to buy, equip and provide with oil) will only illuminate a small area around you. So, you might be wandering about when you hear an enemy in the distance. Your pawns shriek something along the lines of, “careful, an ogre,” and you’ll tensely look around you to locate the threat. These scenarios arise naturally from however you decide to play and are, as a direct consequence, more impactful…at least more than anything the story’s throwing your way anyway.

            However, these kinds of scenarios are only effective in areas with enemies that are equal to you in level which brings me to the major downsides of exploration. Enemy formations rarely, if ever, change. Combine this with the amount of backtracking you’ll have to do and you’ll mostly find yourself sprinting through the same areas with the exact same enemies. Needless to say, you’ll find yourself running past them most of the time, especially once you’ve surpassed them in skill levels. This is where travel becomes cumbersome. Rather than allowing the player to ride a horse, the game utilizes magical stones that allow you to teleport yourself to areas visited earlier. However, these items are rare and cost a moderate amount of gold. I get that only teleporting all the time would reduce immersion and ‘realism’, but I would be able to deal with travelling if only there were some new enemy formations or other surprises, anything to deal with the monotony.

            Then again, travelling can be a lot of fun. The environments are wonderfully realized and every corner can hide either treasure chests or enemies. The graphics, while not stunning by today’s standards, look good and are most of all atmospheric. A soft lighting scheme pervades the entire world and it all feels more believable as a result. The music is also quite noteworthy. While most tracks are quite short, they do their job just fine, whether its conveying the beauty of Gransys or the tension of a brutal fight with enemies like Cyclopes, chimeras, etc. Indeed, it’s the orchestration of these tracks that makes you notice the score, which isn’t a surprise as this was handled by Jonne Valtonen and Roger Wanamo, the same dynamic duo that’s been involved with some of the best orchestral video game music concerts of the past ten years (Symphonic Fantasies, Final Symphony, etc).

            All in all, if you like emotional narratives with your medieval fantasy epics, you’re not going to find it here. The story itself definitely has its strengths, but it falls completely flat in terms of pacing and characters. Rather, it’s the gameplay and character customization that has kept me—and will probably have you—coming back for more.

Fahrenheit / Indigo Prophecy (2005) Review

Lucas Versantvoort / December 15, 2014

Ah, the memories. I must have been about 14/15 years old when I first played Fahrenheit—or if you’re American, Indigo Prophecy. Naturally, the game blew my mind. I had been playing games for quite a few years, but Fahrenheit was more cinematic than anything I’d experienced up to that point. The ‘daily life’ gameplay Quantic Dream is famous for was for me quite a revelation back then, the graphics were atmospheric, the voice acting was good, the choice and consequence system was exciting, the dialogue system kept you on your toes and the story was well presented…if only the developers didn’t jump the shark at the end.

            The game starts with some nice aerial shots of snowy New York City, accompanied by Angelo Badalamenti’s melancholy music. The camera zooms in on the place where all great adventures start, a diner’s restroom. Our protagonist, Lucas Kane, is being possessed by ‘something’ and murders another man. You take control and—in a Hitchcockian moment—have to quickly clean up the crime scene before anyone else walks in. Afterwards, you flee the scene and the police show up. Someone’s bound to notice a dead body in a diner’s restroom after all. The two policemen that are assigned the case are Carla Valenti and Tyler Miles. Already the game shows promise by allowing you to take control of Carla and later Tyler. (You spend the rest of the game taking turns controlling these characters.) Lucas tries to forget the ordeal, but is haunted by strange creatures only he can see. He thus decides he has to find a way to figure out what happened to him and why, with Carla and Tyler hot on his trail.

            A pretty basic setup, but the reason I still vividly remember this game is its cinematic nature. Developer Quantic Dream sped up the dialogue system. Whereas in most games you could have your glass-eyed protagonist stare blankly at his conversational partner ad infinitum while you thoroughly analyze every convo option, Fahrenheit presents you with the more cinematic option, a time limit: quickly select the option that seems most appropriate. The game also allows has these 'slice of life' sections where you can explore your apartment and just do things, interact with objects or people. Rather than slowing the game down to a crawl, these segments always felt really wonderful. Usually, games were all about moving from one action set piece to the next, so these sections were a breath of fresh air.

How does a game go from this...

...to this!?

The story and its presentation are also wonderfully done, but they’re also the game’s greatest weakness. While I thoroughly enjoyed controlling Lucas/Carla/Tyler and have them interact with their environments, the longer the story goes on, the more it you realize it’s taking a one way trip to Jumping the Shark Ville. I still find it downright sad to remember how such an engagingly presented story went full retard and make no mistake, it does with fucking aplomb, though I suppose I should’ve seen it coming as the very game begins with Lucas being possessed. Indeed, the game doesn’t hide its supernatural themes, but a lot of the gameplay felt so grounded that I could deal with it. But then some hooded guy stalks you, who turns out to be some ancient dude who’s been possessing people, having them kill others so he could extend his own lifespan. Why? Because he seeks the Indigo Child. Wait, what’s an Indigo Child? Some kid with special powers that mustn’t fall into the wrong hands. As it turns out, another cult or two are also after the Indigo Child and you have to protect her more or less. And then the end of the world is coming, etc. All this is told with a straight face, mind you! How, in merciful fuck, does a story screw up this bad? It would have been so much better had the story replaced all the supernatural nonsense and Matrix-styled fight scenes with a more ‘normal’ story, more focus on the three main characters and more ‘grounded’ gameplay. It says it all that it’s the little things I remember most dearly; working on the case in the police station with Carla and Tyler, questioning the waitress in the restaurant, walking around Lucas/Carla/Tyler’s apartments and doing stuff, thinking on my feet as I decide how to answer people's questions. It’s the kind of gameplay that let me take the story in on my own terms and pace and allowed me to slowly get to know these characters.

It’s a game I have fond memories of, but that storyline just defies belief. I recently discovered some people are clamoring over an HD remake of Fahrenheit. If Quantic Dream decides to make one, which I doubt, then the first things they need to do is fully rewrite the second half of the story, if not all of it.

Stray observations:

Fahrenheit was one of those games that was a bit controversial because of its sexual content. This was more of an issue in America, so the American version was censored, but not the European version. What I find most hilarious however, are the differences between the two sex scenes. One is just a cutscene, but the other allows you to…get interactive. I have no idea how the people over at Quantic Dream thought that was a good idea. Watching pixelated people—on the PS2 mind you—get it on is awkward enough without the game instructing me to ‘push up to thrust’…