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[Aeterna but sadly not eternal.]

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TalkBack / Aeterna Noctis (Switch) Review

« on: November 04, 2022, 01:47:42 PM »

Aeterna but sadly not eternal.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/62022/aeterna-noctis-switch-review

I am a fiend when it comes to Metroidvania games. I always seek them out when looking for new games to play and try to search every nook and cranny once one gets its hooks in me. Aeterna Noctis admittingly went under my radar until its Nintendo Switch release, and now having played 5-10 hours I can see why. Much to my chagrin, I have found it to be one of the most mundane, uninspired slogs of an experience that works against what makes this genre so enjoyable.

The game follows the lord of darkness, Chaos, after his defeat by the lord of light in the opening cinematic. The world they inhabit is in an endless loop of conflict between whether light or dark will rule, and this loop has gone on for a while. Since Chaos has lost this round he must regain his powers to challenge the lord of light again. This plot line is about as basic as it gets, and the game doesn’t really do anything interesting with it. Chaos themselves is a boring protagonist and is your typical “everyone is beneath me because I’m so powerful” edgelord. In some ways, his demeanor is kind of hilarious because even the most basic enemy type like bats and slime monsters can easily beat you in battle. It still didn't make the writing any less cringy for my tastes, and with the game's generic, overly dark, and grim gothic aesthetic, I don't feel like the writers were going for an ironic take.

Aeterna Noctis is trying to match that particular visual style with some brutal and challenging combat, but I felt it to be very bland, with most of the more interesting stuff locked way too late into the game to make an impact. One of the first abilities you unlock is a dash that is mostly useless besides moving slightly faster across the environments. You can only dash in the direction you’re facing, so you can't really use it in combat to great effect. The majority of early encounters are really just waiting for an enemy to attack, then closing in and mashing the attack button till they die. You start getting some more combat options like a charged heavy attack and scythe that powers up your healing abilities, but it really doesn’t change up the general combat much because a lot of the enemies outside of bosses don't really require too many strategies. You also have a skill tree that just offers some minor upgrades like more critical attack damage, so even the progression isn’t all that interesting.

While I can let a lackluster story and the slow-to-start progression systems slide, one thing that ultimately led to me not wanting to keep playing Aeterna Noctis is one of its main mechanics. When you die you lose your gained experience and skill points and need to recollect it like in Souls games; however, unlike in those games, once dead you’re put into a state where you can't earn any more experience until you collect that XP again. This means more time spent in an already challenging game where you devote more minutes and hours to backtracking to areas you were already in rather than getting to explore and find new areas, the best part of a Metroidvania. The real reason I come to these games is completely hampered by this system, forcing you to backtrack either to where you died or all the way back to where you started your journey to talk to an NPC to restore you back so that you can start getting experience again. Such a mechanic doesn't make the game hard; it makes it tedious.

Unfortunately, I didn't enjoy my time with Aeterna Noctis and don't see myself wanting to return to it. It’s worth mentioning that the Switch version feels unoptimized for the system. There’s constant loading between each screen transition that breaks up a lot of the pace of the game. If you’ve played any other Metroidvania, just think about hitting a load screen for every single screen transition and you can quickly realize why that can be a real downer. The visuals also feel like they have too much motion blur on them or some kind of video compression effect that just leads to a muddy look. Maybe someone out there can find some enjoyment here and have fun with its edgelord protagonist and odd design choices, but this was just not a game for me.

[A fun, approachable, and beatable rogue-lite.]

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TalkBack / Little Noah: Scion of Paradise

« on: October 19, 2022, 08:14:00 PM »

A fun, approachable, and beatable rogue-lite.

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/61880/little-noah-scion-of-paradise

As much as I really do enjoy rogue-lite games, there are always so many releasing or in early access that it’s hard to keep up with any one of them. I always start one and end up putting it down for other games, and then usually return with little idea of what I was doing or feel overwhelmed by the number of currencies or systems I need to engage with. So I was pleasantly surprised when I hopped into Little Noah: Scion of Paradise with its simple approach to gameplay systems and its unique combat that kept me engaged and wanting to keep playing till the end.

You're thrown right into the fray as Noah Little. She is an up-and-coming alchemist looking for her father and has crash-landed her airship in these mysterious ruins floating in the sky. Early on, you meet a talking cat who has lost his memory and is being attacked by monsters; after saving him, he reluctantly joins you on your quest and acts as the main thrust of the story by trying to reclaim his memories and solve what exactly is going on in these ruins and why these monsters are here. Frankly, this story didn't really grab me, and it ultimately devolves into a somewhat typical good vs evil narrative that was serviceable enough just to get to the gameplay.

With all these monsters running amok, it's a good thing that Noah the alchemist can turn them into familiars to combat them on her journey: this is where Scion of Paradise really shines. As you start a run, you’re given three familiars that act as your weapon or your attacks. These familiars can be any kind of creature, like an ogre with a club, or a tiny green dragon, to chibi-style anime characters like a red-haired lady with a mace or a ninja who launches wind blades across the battlefield. Each of these little guys will be put into a line or a string of attacks you unleash with the attack button. So if you have the ogre first in line, it’ll do a large swipe with its club; if the ninja was next in line their attack would be next, and the familiar after would continue the attack. The more characters you have, the bigger string of attacks you can do for a maximum of five hits.

Some familiars don't have traditional attacks; for instance, there’s a tiny robot familiar that will shoot icicles out of in every direction from its body, and another familiar might appear in the air and strike from above, so the order in which you have these attacks can really make a difference. Fortunately, you can change the order of your familiars’ attacks in the menu at any time during your runs. On top of the five-hit combo, you can also slot any of your familiars into a special skill slot which will potentially give them a more powerful version of their basic attack or a completely new move, depending on the familiar. The red-haired lady with a mace does a powerful overhead swing as her normal attack but her special skill does multiple overhand swings and launches lava rocks with each swing, making for a much more devastating attack. A cooldown period does mean you can’t keep using the special skills constantly, though.

The familiars you collect have star rarities attached to them ranging from one to three stars, with three stars representing the best and most powerful familiars you can have on your team. On a similar rarity scale is the equipment that you can acquire on your run, which mostly give you passive buffs. While some aspects feel inspired by mobile games, there are no actual microtransactions or gacha systems you would see in that genre. I think this is just because Little Noah is developed by Cygames, a prominent mobile game developer known for Granblue & Dragalia Lost.

Being a rogue-lite, there are plenty of systems to upgrade items and abilities. You can collect incense that you can give to your familiars to boost their stats. Other than that, however, there is only a single currency that ties to all your other unlocks and upgrades. This is the mana that you acquire at the end of each run, pass or fail. All the items you acquired on that run are just converted into this currency used to purchase either more equipment items you can find on runs. New familiars are also unlocked with mana and this is also how you permanently increase stats like health and various damage resists and attack damage. I really loved how simple this all was, letting me focus on the combat and doing runs rather than trying to farm currencies or various resources like I’d be doing in other rogue-lites.

I wrapped up Little Noah: Scion of Paradise in around ten hours. It was just such a refreshing feeling to finish up with a game in this style in a short period. I really appreciated the simple gameplay loop of going on a run, finding cool familiars, and figuring out the best order to put them in. I didn't feel bogged down by the systems cause I knew no matter how good or bad a specific run went, I’d still be coming out of one with some currency to work on the next upgrade I wanted. I would have liked some optional modes now that I’m finished with Little Noah, like a daily challenge mode or something, but I still had a fun time and recommend it to anyone curious.

[Is it RPG Time yet?]

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TalkBack / RPG Time: The Legend of Wright (Switch) Review

« on: October 06, 2022, 08:51:37 AM »

Is it RPG Time yet?

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/review/61761/rpg-time-the-legend-of-wright-switch-review

While the acronym is in the name, I wouldn't exactly call RPG Time: The Legend of Wright an RPG in the traditional sense. If anything it’s more like a point-and-click adventure game with some light role-playing elements. However, the way Legend of Wright portrays this adventure through a completely hand-drawn notebook is delightfully creative and full of memorable moments that make it feel like a grand adventure you can enjoy with the family.

You hear the dinging of a bell marking the end of the school day. Your friend Kenta comes up to you and asks now that the day is over, what do you want to do for the rest of the day? Kenta reveals The Legend of Wright, the RPG storybook he’s created, and hopes you’ll give it a go. With your only other option being playing sports, the choice was easy for me as someone with little hand-eye coordination. Kenta pulls out all the stops for this adventure he’s created. Each page of the adventure is a wonderfully hand-drawn scene that you can navigate and interact with. Some are linear paths you walk around; others can be giant mazes or turn-based battles where you’ll strike enemies with your powerful blade, which is actually just a pencil. Kenta pulls out an MP3 player that acts as the game's soundtrack. He has also created cardboard cut-outs of button prompts and even made an entire diorama of props that you can navigate and that act as your world map and pause menu.

Now that the adventure has begun, you take to the role of Wright, a hero in training in the midst of a princess being captured by the evil demon lord Dethgawd. Despite your initial efforts, Dethgawd takes the princess and you need to save her. While this story is absolutely one of the most repeated narrative arcs there’s ever been, Wright’s adventure ends up being quite a bizarre and imaginative one. For instance, the first chapter has you taking down a group of moles that love baseball and e-sports. It’s a bizarre combo but when you have an Inception-style gameplay sequence where you’re sucked into a video game that’s inside an RPG storybook that’s also a video game you’re playing, it really sets the tone for how absurd and silly the adventure is that Kenta is cooking up for you.

As wild as The Legend of Wright can get, I think the point-and-click adventure game aspects can hamper some of the fun moments that happen. There’s no spoken dialogue; it's all text bubbles that are overly abundant and can halt a lot of progress. After the first chapter, the game opens up more by allowing you to explore towns and move from different pages; however, sometimes it feels like you’re stopped in your tracks by text whenever you take five steps. This could be due to introducing some obvious mechanics, which in most cases are simple ones like how to interact with an NPC. It can also be a little mini-game that most of the time doesn't really have any benefit other than interacting with other characters. I do appreciate that when you get these dialogue bubbles you can see Kenta wearing a little headband with the face of the character he is portraying. But as you get deeper into the game, the constant pop-ups really started to grate on me, and RPG Time being only a six or seven-hour game, it was a bummer to feel like I was constantly being slowed down in certain parts of it.

What's unfortunate is that a lot of the RPG elements feel more in service to the story progression rather than gameplay. Most of the levels ups and weapons you acquire are tied to story moments, and you aren't really allocating stats. All the battles really feel more like a puzzle rather than a fight even when it comes to major boss encounters. The first boss you fight is a giant cyclops and all you need to do is attack his eye three times. However, once you strike the eye once, it realizes this and closes its eye. From there, Kenta just tells you to study the surroundings of the battlefield and figure out how to get his eye open to reveal his weak point and strike it. So the turn-based battles really just return to the point-and-click trope of finding the right thing to interact with, and if you don't, you fail. While there is some entertaining dialogue in some of these sequences, it really doesn't feel like an RPG at all and I just hoped with a game that has that acronym in its own name there would have been more stuff for me to engage with when it came to the gameplay side.

As this made-up storybook was created by a young child, I feel that RPG Time: The Legend of Wright is intended for a younger audience or as something a parent can use to introduce video games to their kids. There are even a few times where it recommends you play with an adult. But with the overly hand-holdy approach to some of the gameplay, I fear a lot of younger kids would quickly lose interest when there’s a lot of downtime due to control being taken away or a lot of dialogue. I still think the game has some fun moments that made me chuckle and features a lot of great hand-drawn art, but I find it hard to recommend this as the best option for the first game for a young child.