Hexyz Force (game)

Platform: PSP
Developer: Sting Entertainment
Genre: RPG
ESRB Rating: Teen
Release Date: May 25th, 2010

The PSP has a fair number of RPG's, so it's easy for a lower key title to get lost in the shuffle. Hexyz Force is one I'd never heard of before I came across it and decided to play it. It doesn't stand out enough to really make a big impact, but Hexyz Force is unique enough to be worth a playthrough.

A long time ago, the Goddess of Creation descended with the Holy Vessall and created the land of Berge. But eventually, disaster struck and a group of the divine had to fight off Delgaia, the god of Destruction. The world was reborn under one condition; that one day an hour of judgement would come to pass and the chosen would choose the future of creation or destruction. You play as those tasked with this decision; only you can stop those who wish for Destruction over Creation.

One thing of note with this game is that you have some measure of choice here. There are two main playable characters and you will choose one at the start. Each has their own story to play through. This offsets the fact that this RPG is fairly linear; there's only so much to see and do - side quests in particular are few and far between - but it's easier to go along with this when the game offers you two twenty to thirty hour plot paths to play through.

The battle system of the game is unique. When you boil it down, it's a big old game of rock, paper, scissors. Each weapon has one of the three different forces, each of which has a strength and weakness. If you coordinate your attacks so the elements are used in order, the damage you do - and even the amount of health you heal - is multiplied. Monsters must also be taken into account, as their attacks add to the multiplier and they also get the damage bonus. Use the wrong force type and the chain will be broken, requiring you to start over again.

It's a system I welcome, because it requires some semblance of strategy. The key to defeating a boss quickly is proper use of this mechanic; if you just attempt to power through boss battles without keeping an eye on your multiplier percentage, there's a good chance they'll massacre you. Even some of the stronger common monsters can take you down if you don't keep an eye on things. You won't be holding the button down on "fight" like in other RPG's.

I liked the music in the game well enough. It's not on the level of an Uematsu, but each song fits the area it corresponds to well. You won't find yourself humming the melodies or anything but some might stick in your head. Pretty respectable overall.

The Score: 7.5 out of 10

A perfectly respectable RPG to kill time. There are several ways it could have improved - more to do in the world not related to the main quests is one particular way - but it's otherwise a solid game. Feel free to rent it from your service of choice.

Shin Megami Tensei: Persona (video game)

Platform: PSP
Developer: Atlus
Genre: RPG
ESRB Rating: T
Release Date: September 22nd, 2009

Can we all agree that the Playstation era was a bitchin' time for RPG's? Seems like that system had a truckload of classics in the genre. Many of them hold up pretty well to this day, despite now antiquated graphics*.

Today, I'm going to talk about one that hasn't aged gracefully; this game's the equivalent of a hundred year old man who's nothing but skin and bones kept alive through an IV drip and an oxygen mask.

The story is that you're a group of students at a local high school. In this school rumors about gaining magical powers by circling a room are apparently taken at face value, so you find yourself goaded into doing this by the class jerkoff. Shockingly, it works and each student finds themselves with a "Persona", or basically some spirit thing that gives them abilities and determines their strengths and weaknesses.

Because this is clearly not something to be overly concerned with, they then proceed to a hospital to check on a friend. Then demons invade because what the hell else were you going to use your Persona for, cooking? Clearly, this must be stopped, so off you go to find some baddies to stomp.

This PSP port is billed as a remake, but the truth is that it's really more of an upgrade. When I think remake, I think rebuilt from the ground up. When you look at screenshots of the original and this, however, it's obvious that little has really changed. The graphics are essentially the same - even the neat first person dungeon crawling view has it's early Playstation pixelation intact - the gameplay hasn't really changed - which is the real shame - and the music seems the same. That's... a lot of things left as is for a "remake".

So what has changed? The script, mostly; while I haven't played the original localization, what I've seen makes it clear the new translation is leagues ahead of it. There's less Americanization as well. Hell, they even kept Mark as a goofy white graffiti artist instead of randomly changing his race. There's an entirely separate quest line available that was never localized in the original edition. Cut scenes were apparently touched up too, switched over to more of a cel shaded look - they still look like really bad early CG animation with a new coat of paint though.

The graphics are... well, dated. The isometric view for rooms with NPC's and battle scenes look alright for their age, but the first person dungeon crawling definitely retains that old "early Playstation" look. Oh, have I mentioned the cutscenes? I really do not get why, if they were serious about the "remake" aspect, they didn't give it a facelift or redo this stuff entirely. Say what you want about Square, but if this was one of their projects the visuals would have been rebuilt from the ground up.

The gameplay is where this old game just falls apart. It's clear the developers were going for something different with this game, but clearly forgot that different doesn't necessarily mean good. Each character has different weapons and skills, all of which have attack ranges. You place your characters anywhere on a grid on your side. Neat idea, but far from practical; if a character doesn't have an enemy in range of any of his attacks, he's going to sit there like a doofus unless you waste a turn switching the positions up.

The result is a combat system that feels boring. Mix with the fact that this is one of those "two or three steps before a random encounter" games and you've got a recipe for trouble. The battle system wears out its welcome before the halfway mark. I'm usually not averse to level grinding, but games like this make the process extremely tedious.

Speaking of leveling, that's another problem. This game went with the lovely idea of having experience for each party member depend on how much damage they've done. You probably know where I'm going with this. Eventually, a party member is going to lag behind the others in level pretty significantly. This party member is usually Mark, who sucks. So they end up being little more than canon fodder for a turn or two. This is not the best leveling system I've ever encountered.

Oh, there's the phases of the moon thing, too. As you play the game, it cycles through the different phases. In theory, this is supposed to give different advantages and disadvantages depending on the phase. In practice, it does little of value. Aside from giving you a bit of a head start on negotiations with the monsters during a certain phase, it really doesn't affect the game much at all, or at least not in a way that's very apparent, making it a worthless feature.

It's not all bad though; occasionally there's a good idea hidden in the rough. In this game, you're able to contact your enemies and try to befriend them, with the rewards ranging from spell cards used to conjure up new personas to items. Each characters has different ways of interacting with monsters and not all of them will appreciate the same responses. Obviously, if you fail, there are drawbacks, but it adds an interesting wrinkle. Why not just talk your way out of a situation from time to time, right?

I also liked the fact that, depending on your choices, you can basically pick your fifth party member. Unfortunately, you can't mix and match your party with the available options - otherwise, Mark would be the first to go given his general uselessness - but the option is nice to have and was still relatively novel in RPG's back in '96. It just didn't happen very often - in the RPG's people actually played, at least - barring a notable exception or two.

A lot of other mechanics are kind of confusing, though. The game does allow you to have guided creation of personas, but manual is like an odd puzzle without a clear solution. You really don't know what will affect what and the possibility of creating fusion accidents is frustrating. There are so many variables involved with it that even the basic instructions given to you don't help much, leaving guided fusion as the preferable option.

Mechanics like this seem to come with the expectation that you were probably going to drop a twenty on a strategy guide - remember those days? - to help you grasp it. Even with free game FAQs readily available online, I still don't care for needlessly obtuse things like this. The kind of guesswork required by things like the manual fusion of this game is not the fun kind.

Sounds a bit iffy as well. The voiceovers are pretty iffy for an upgrade made about a year ago - I assume they didn't bother redubbing - and sometimes some of the music can get a bit grating. Usually video game music is fantastic and easy to listen to over and over again. This game uses some ambient scores with plenty of j-pop. Listening to a battle song over and over every time you have a random battle is much easier when there aren't vocals.

The Score: 6 out of 10

I'm afraid I can't really recommend it. I'm interested in some of the ideas put forth here, so I'll be back for the sequels, but this game doesn't really stand the test of time. Why Atlus didn't just go the full remake route, I haven't a clue, because this game has aged badly. It's very easy to find yourself bored around the halfway mark. It's probably only worth it if you're a die-hard Persona fan; otherwise it's a relic that was probably better left buried.

* Antiquated is my way of being nice. Seriously, I cannot believe the crap we used to think was stunning back in the late nineties. Back then 3D models were the new, shiny thing, so it was a big step forward, but good lord do some of those games look like ass. I suppose time's affected my opinion on this though; I'm used to the HD era, which is a stark contrast to the blockiness of early 3D modeled games. They just don't hold up like 2D sprites do, but back then it was an exciting new frontier. Ah well.

Sonic Rivals (video game)

Platform: PSP
Developers: Backbone Entertainment
Genre: Racing
ESRB Rating: E
Release Date: November 24th, 2006

No kidding? Sonic has a game on the PSP? Who woulda thunk it? Anyone with a firing synapse, actually. It's not like Sonic has missed a console since Sega went third party. So here we are with his first PSP outing. Is it any good?

First off, I'm actually kind of surprised it took so long for Sega to put out a game like this. Rivals is less "action platformer" and more a racing game with platforming elements. It echoes some of the familiar bits of gameplay from the 2D classics filtered through a race to the finish line. Seems like a no brainer, dunnit? I mean, hell, Sega had done the concept before with multiplayer of the classic Sonics, making it surprising they hadn't tried a full game of it before.

So, you know, Eggman's up to his dirty tricks again. Apparently he went out and bought himself a spiffy new camera at Best Buy or whatever store he hasn't been thrown out of yet. Naturally the first thing he's going to do is piss off his nemesis with it. Only, gasp, this camera turns whatever it takes a picture of into a little card, including Amy and Tails. Now, Sonic doesn't think this is really the way his friends should be treated, so it's time to go beat up fat people again. But then, a twist; now a bunch of Sonic wannabe's plus Knuckles are after him too, so naturally the way to settle this is by racing.

The term "team-up" is apparently lost on all of them.

The story's alright for what it is. It's really just an excuse to get four characters to race one another. It kind of makes everyone look pretty dumb though. I mean, they're all after a fat dude with a hilarious mustache. A couple of them are friends or at least on decent terms. Shouldn't they be helping each other, or at least not getting in each others way? Shouldn't they at least try to have a conversation before deciding "ha ha, I'm totally faster than you, I'll catch him first"? Apparently this doesn't occur to them until the rotund doctor decides he's going to turn the planet into a card.

I guess in Sonics world, love interests, best friends and huge gems being turned into trading cards isn't reason enough to work together. Nope, racing is clearly the superior option. It's all fun and games until somebody turns the planet into a card. If you ask me their priorities are a little screwed up.

Music and sound fare alright. None of it's really spectacular, but the actual stage music is pretty nice. There are also some sound clips, but they're not a big deal; it's a shock to get a voice clip with more than one word. At the very least, Tails is a card for most of the game, so I don't have to worry about wanting to strangle him as previously. The graphics are decent, but ultimately far from noteworthy.

The gameplay's technically sound, but while the basics work out, the other stuff does it's best to sink it. For one thing, this games a rubber band racer. No matter what you do, no matter how well you play, that sum bitch is going to catch up to you and kick you in the shins. Whoever is in second place suddenly becomes faster than the guy in first, so even if you play perfectly chances are good he's going to catch up.

There are power-ups to help keep them from passing you, but they don't always help. I really hate this kind of crap because it just takes skill out of the equation. When this sort of thing is done, it's usually done under the guise of keeping the challenge up or the game fair, but it's an artificial fix that actually makes things worse. I hate it when racing games do it, so you can imagine how much I cared for it here.

The level design this go around is pretty respectable. They usually have three different paths to go by - top, middle and lowest - similar to the classics, only streamlined for racing. This only succeeds in making them less interesting, but for racing tracks, they're not horrible. A bonus is that bottomless pits are less of a hassle here; the only real penalty for falling in one is losing a couple seconds while you respawn, a far cry from the pain they usually are.

Here's where the trouble really starts. You've got four playable characters - including Silver, a character whom Sonic '06 was in the process of ensuring we probably won't see again - each with their own story. But aside from a signature power-up-triggered move, that's the only thing different about them. They all play exactly the same, with no strengths or weaknesses among them. It's a problem the franchise had for a while, in that the developers never seemed to understand that having multiple playable characters meant nothing if they played exactly the same.

Compounding the problem is that the levels are exactly the same for each of them, with no variations whatsoever. If you want to play through all four storylines, you essentially have to play through the game four times, through the exact same levels in the exact same order. Since the levels aren't interesting enough to be worth replaying much, this means you're going to get bored around when you finish your second run through with another character.

There isn't the now-traditional last story in this game either, which means the only incentive for completing all four is to play as Metal Sonic. He doesn't even have his own story, so it's not really much of a prize. The game tries to add replay value through collectible cards, but it doesn't quite get the job done, since the game itself gives little reason to want to play more to get them all. There are challenge modes for each stage as well, but it's difficult enough just to force your way through the six levels four times for each story, so it's not exactly an attractive option. Add in an utterly worthless Grand Prix mode - to unlock a cup, you literally have to complete every single challenge for a level - and you have a game that tries to add replay value but utterly fails.

The game is enjoyable for a bit though. The first playthrough is at least mildly entertaining. I get the feeling this game would have been more enjoyable if it were a more traditional Sonic platformer, however. The sixth and final level, you race against time instead of a "rival", so it feels more like a regular Sonic stage. The time limit is relatively strict, but still, it feels different and a bit more enjoyable. What could have been.

The Score: 6 out of 10

In all, there's about an afternoons worth of fun here, but that's about it. You're really best served just playing it for Sonic story and then putting it down, because you'll have seen most of the game. It may be worth a rental. I just wouldn't recommend buying it unless you found it for dirt cheap.