Tag Archives: rpg

Guest Post: One Way Heroics

We haven’t updated in forever! We apologize and bring you a lovely guest post!

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One Way Heroics doesn’t try to bog you down with the kind of grandiose plot commonly associated with JRPGs. The Demon Lord is wreaking havoc and “The Darkness” is sweeping across the land, killing everything it touches. With such a weak context, JRPG fans expecting a quirky narrative will be disappointed. But those looking for a unique side-scrolling experience are in luck.

Thirty seconds after heroic Swordmaster Max is given his quest, he forgets to move right and dies. The tutorial character pops up and ridicules him—or rather, ridicules me—and explains that One Way Heroics is about moving right. Every action causes the screen to move to the right, and if you don’t keep up, the left side of the screen—The Darkness—will instantly and remorselessly murder you. Dead. Game Over.

At first, this forced scrolling mechanic seems punishingly unfair. The first few dungeons are impossible to explore before the screen catches up with you. The good treasure chests take too long to bash open. If you’re impatient or quick to anger, it might only take a single botched run before you wish it were a physical game you could hurl across the room. But One Way Heroics is not a game you win on the first attempt. Or even the second attempt.

If you want to succeed at One Way Heroics, you need to accept one universal truth: the RNG gods are fickle. Max II died in his very first battle. His attack missed, and the enemy wolf double critical hit him for instant death. But quitting is not the answer. In fact, one of the best strategies comes straight from master tactician Zapp Brannigan: simply sending wave after wave of heroes at the enemy will yield progress. Each run awards Hero Points based on stats like distance travelled and number of treasure chests opened. Those points can then unlock new classes, gain new perks, and expand the Dimensional Vault—a persistent, cross-character treasure chest that can be accessed at the start of each run.

Suicide runs are a good way to get familiar with other aspects of the game. Knowing which merchants to speak to and which enemies are tougher than others can save precious time. But it can feel like a tough, lengthy grind before the game actually gets fun. The first two classes—Swordmaster and Knight—are infuriatingly average. Swordmaster draws inspiration from the Fire Emblem class of the same name: hit first, hit often, and do criticals for massive damage. Unfortunately, enemies tend to surround you and simply mosh you to death—assuming the RNG doesn’t screw you first.

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If you can stomach the initial difficulty, One Way Heroics is insanely entertaining. But it can feel somewhat like Dark Souls; until you master it, the game is relentless and crushing. Minor errors can leave you trapped behind a wall, without enough time to smash a hole in it. Being economical with actions is the most important skill to learn. Mastering diagonal movement will also save your life more times than a big sword will.

While there are eight classes to choose from, they are somehow simultaneously completely imbalanced and startling samey. My first run with Roger the Pirate was infinitely more successful than every run with a Max. He smashed his way through enemies, walls, and chests like an angry, eye-patched, out of control steam train. He hit more frequently with his giant axe—which carries an accuracy penalty of 15%—than other classes did with swords and other supposedly more accurate weapons. And yet, One Way Heroics can still find ways to screw you over. Roger axed his way through everything, and the Demon Lord still wiped the floor with him because Roger hadn’t channelled his inner Jack Sparrow enough to recruit party members.

The ability to assign five perks—including stat boosts and special skills—helps mitigate some drawbacks to each class, but ultimately some of the classes are more useful than the others. While the classes are designed to be unique, perks whitewash the differences until they all seem about the same. And when you’re out in the field using scavenged equipment, there’s very little difference between the classes anyway. The largest variation in play style comes from equipment choice, which undermines the point of including classes in the first place.

One Way Heroics isn’t a masterpiece but it is really fun—assuming you aren’t put off by the high difficulty curve and frustrating RNG screwballs. The forced scroll mechanic is novel and provides a lot of challenge and strategy to what might otherwise be a walk in the park. Playing with conventions can sometimes result in something unexpected and enjoyable, and One Way Heroics is proof of that.

Now it’s time to see if Max III can succeed where his ancestors have failed.

Today’s post was brought to you by gaming journalist Dakota “Jiro” Barker, who can also be seen at his own gaming news blog Press Start News.

The Merits of Experimentation

I was recently seized by the desire to play some Final Fantasies so I went back to the beginning and played through I in a couple of days, and then I started II. Now, like Pike when she started it a couple of years ago, I had never played FF2 before now. And like Pike I had heard a lot of polarizing talk about the game, especially with regards to its somewhat unconventional character growth system.

See, in FF2 you don’t gain experience points to level. Instead, much more in the vein of western RPGs like The Elder Scrolls, your characters grow according to what they do in battles. If they take a lot of hits they’ll gain HP and Stamina. If they cast magic, MP and Spirit or Intelligence, depending on whether it’s White or Black magic. Dodge and you gain dodge and agility. You get the idea. This doesn’t just apply to stats though, but also to your weapon proficiencies and magic. Use a particular class of weapon more and you’ll get better with it. Use a particular spell more and it will grow more powerful and more accurate, though also costing more MP.

I’m playing the PSP version which has enjoyed some years of refinement and polish over the original so it’s quite possible that the original’s balance was all out of whack. But I can safely say this system is one of the most engaging I’ve encountered in a JRPG in a long long time. I’m enjoying it tremendously and I cannot even begin to fathom what the complaints are. (I mean, I know what they are because I’ve read them, but if I hadn’t read them I’d never have figured them out by myself.) It’s deeply satisfying to get such feedback and results to how you play and it feels like there’s a lot more freedom here than in typical party-based RPGs.

wow very hate much dissent very opinion
wow
very hate
much dissent
very opinion

But this goes, in my eyes, further than just being a system I am enjoying. What I’m finding is that I’m very naturally finding roles for my party members and that it’s not based on preset things but rather what feels sensible when a role needs to be decided. For instance, at the start of the game Guy, a big dude, seems like the obvious choice for heavy hitter. And he is a pretty heavy hitter. But he’s also loaded with the exact sorts of spells that have moderate, occasional, or intermediate use. I don’t need to stick Teleport on a dedicated mage, and I’d rather have Life on someone with a ton of health. The thing that makes this work is that you can level your spells as well. Guy doesn’t need to spend much time on his magic to still be useful with it. On the other hand Firion is carrying my offensive spells and because the spells grow as you use them, I find myself ensuring I do some casting regularly. I’m still early in the game but it already feels like a much more natural and sensible system than many RPGs manage. It’s a system which influences how I play without dictating it, and a system which rewards investment without being too malleable and having characters end up being very easily swapped because their abilities are tied completely into equippable items. It’s pretty simple to turn Barret into a mage and Aeris into a heavy hitter once you’ve got the materia to do it.

Ultimately what I’m enjoying is that character development fits into this wonderful niche of being freeform and not constricting without simply turning the characters into identikits of each other. By the standards of Final Fantasy this was a highly experimental game and I’m very glad Square made the choices they did with it because it has resulted in a real gem.

What about you guys? Do you have opinions on FF2, or perhaps you’ve come across interesting leveling systems in other games? Feel free to share your opinions, and remember we’re as interested in hearing about games that tried and failed as much as those which succeeded! Not every experiment will succeed, but learning about why one failed is at least as important as why another succeeded.

Bravely Default Is Looking Super Fun So Far

So let’s talk about Bravely Default, aka Final Fantasy But Without The Name For Some Reason.

I haven't seen any chocobos yet either, come to think of it.
I haven’t seen any chocobos yet either, come to think of it.

Now this is a bit of a backwards case where the rest of the known universe managed to get this game before us Yanks did, much to our chagrin and to the rest of the world’s amusement. There is a free demo on the Nintendo eShop, however, and I recently downloaded it and then proceeded to spend the next four hours playing it nonstop.

As I said at the beginning of the post, it’s basically Final Fantasy, right down to most of the jobs and their roles as well as item names. If you’ve played any old-school Final Fantasy game before, you will jump right into Bravely Default with zero issues. Specifically, Bravely Default is a lot like Final Fantasies III, V, or in a way Tactics, because the focus is on jobs and doing fun things with job combinations. Then you go around and beat on things with a dragoon (“valkyrie”, but it’s the same thing) dual-wielding lances just because you can.

Cooler than you.  And everyone else, for that matter.
Cooler than you. And everyone else, for that matter.

There are a couple of new twists thrown in that are rather unlike previous Final Fantasy games. For starters, the first random battle I encountered included a cat in a wizard hat who promptly one-shotted one of my guys. (This resulted in me immediately exclaiming to Mister Adequate that “You need this game because it is the Dark Souls of JRPGs.”) Secondly you have a nifty little mechanic where you can either “Default” – hunker down, defend, and earn a sort of combo point – or “Brave”, where you spend those combo points to attack/cast something/heal/whatever multiple times. Timing these right can be part of your battle tactics, or alternatively you can just have your dragoon use up all his Braves and then destroy everything at the start of the fight. You know, it’s up to you.

It all sounds so simple, and yet it’s somehow very addictive, and anytime I’ve picked it up recently I’ve wound up playing for a lot longer than I expected I would. In short, if you like grindy JRPGs and giving your nondescript Heroes of Light all sorts of fun class combinations then this might be the game for you. Give the demo a try and see what you think. As for me, I think I’m picking this up when it comes out next month.

The Art of the Story-Driven Game

As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve been playing through Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic lately.  Playing through a good RPG is always an interesting experience for me in particular, because the storytelling method is so far removed from that of the strategy games that I’m usually playing.  Something like a strategy game is very open-ended and sandboxy; the story comes entirely out of what you are doing.  RPGs and other story-driven games, on the other hand, are more limited.  There are a set, finite number of stories to be told, even when you’re presented with a multitude of options and endings in classic Bioware style.

SPOILER: Twilight is Darth Revan.

But this isn’t a bad thing.  Rather, it’s a very interesting narrative device.  It’s akin to a movie or book or TV series, but separate from all three.

A movie tends to be just a couple of hours long, for example, whereas the main storyline of a game can easily go on for 30+ hours.  So a video game’s storytelling is more in line with the lengthy tales of a book or TV series, but then you have the interactivity and the subsequent bond you develop with it because of that, and the result is a truly fascinating way to tell a story.

It will be interesting to see where games go from here in terms of being a narrative device.  While I personally believe that features like interactivity and gameplay are of paramount importance in games– that is why games are games, after all– the idea that a game might be considered a great piece of literature some day is a really fantastic one.

Gimme Some o’ That Old Time Grinding

Yesterday I had a really weird, specific gaming urge. Namely, I suddenly felt the urge to gather up a party of stereotypical fantasy characters and go around and hit monsters in the face with swords and fireballs.

…you guys DO know what I’m talking about, right?

Aww jeah.

The original Final Fantasy is straightforward and to the point. You don’t pick up new party members as you go along, you get all of them before you even start. The “story”, as much as there is one, is pretty much laid out at your feet in the first three minutes. Oh, and there’s grinding. There’s a lot of grinding.

Playing the game yesterday went something like this:

  • “Oh hey, I can buy all this armor and magic spells. It’s going to cost a few thousand gil. Kay, guess I’ll go grind monsters for a bit.”
  • Spend about a half hour grinding monsters.  Buy all the armor and magic spells I want.
  • Spend about three minutes traveling to the next town.
  • “Oh hey, I can buy all this upgraded armor and new magic spells.  It’s going to cost a few thousand gil.  Kay, guess I’ll go grind monsters for a bit.”
  • Spend about a half hour grinding monsters.  Buy all the armor and magic spells I want.

And it was at that point that I’d filled my oldschool JRPG grinding quota for the day and I saved and quit for the time being.

Now, you’d think that a system like this wouldn’t have a whole lot of appeal.  I mean, if you’re gonna spend the game grinding, you’d might as well pad it with some story and character development, right?  That’s how most later RPGs work, right?  I mean, if I was gonna play some classic FF, I should’ve picked IV or VI or something.  Right?

Maybe.

But there’s something deliciously simple about forgetting all of that and, just, I dunno… throwing lightning bolts and fireballs around for no reason at all, other than to buy some Potions.

I actually made these, a long time ago.

And besides, who among us can listen to this song with dry eyes?