The Clan of the Cave Bague

Frederic Chopin lies on his deathbed dreaming his final dream. And for some peculiar reason, he’s dreaming about cutesy Anime characters fighting monsters and trying to save the world from the taxman!

If this is an indication of where RPGs are going, then I’m a very happy bunny. The storytelling is beautiful, as is the presentation. The audio is rich, the voice acting (with the possible exception of the terminally irritating Polka) is spot on, and the combat mechanic is both innovate and solid.

Ok, so I’ve barely done the prelude – I have two seperate parties at the moment, but as both have just decided to head to Castle Forte, I suspect I’m going to have one larger party very soon.

And – hooray! At each major interlude, it unlocks one of Chopin’s piano pieces which can be listened to outwith the game. Not that I don’t already have them on other media, but – well – if it brings his music to a new audience, then that can only be a good thing. Personally, I’m hoping the second movement of Piano Concerto #1 makes an appearance, but I think it may just be unaccompanied works.

I wonder what was going through the developers’ heads when they were designing this game. After playing last night, I sat musing for a while, and I reckon the developer meetings must have sounded something like this:

“Hey, I have an idea! Let’s liberally spread instant death situations all over the place so that the only way to get through an area is by trial and error and memorizing hazards the can’t be seen before hand!”

“Nah, that wouldn’t be very fair. People would get really annoyed by having to go back to the save point.”

“No, we’ll not make them go all the way back. We’ll just put them back a minute or so, so it’s not a long haul. That way we can make them do the same thing over and over and over again and still have clear consciences.”

“Hrm, ok. But only if we can liberally scatter really really stupid obscure object puzzles around, just so we can show off the physics engine.”

“Ok, deal!”

I suspect Alone in the Dark will be getting traded in very soon.

Well, the gambit system is growing on me now – it’s still essentially turn based, but feels a lot more fluid. Anyway, I think I’m going to have to break a long tradition and actually read the manual – the gambit system and the license system seem to be fairly complex – it’s an odd juxtapose playing this at the same time as FFTA2. The mechanic in Tactics has been streamlined and tweaked with absolutely meticulous care, whereas FF12 has the full on detail for the stat addict (of which I am, admittedly, one).

Anyway, I’ve been out of the city, retrieved a sunstone and am now heading into the waterways. Just over two hours in and, I suspect, still doing the introduction.

And here’s birthday post part two. This has been out for aaaaaages but I’ve put it off and put it off, as I tend to do. Anyway, popped it in the drive and (as is usual for a squeenix title) my jaw dropped at the cinematics. Again, only an hour or so in, but loving it so far. It has a very different mechanic from the FF games I’m used to. It’s still effectively turn based (or, at least, active time based) but it all runs much more fluidly. Also, there are no random battles, but everything is visible on the world map – in fact all the action takes place on the world map. This is largely a positive thing – you can go hunting when you need to gain a few levels, and you can avoid enemies when you just want to get from A to B.

Downside – no fanfare at the end of combat. WRONGNESS.

Well, I’ve had a longer go now and can safely say this is ACEBEST. It’s kinda like a cross between football manager and sim city, but very much simpler than both. Basically, you build a city, hire and train adventurers and send them out to do random stuff. I’m only a short way into it, but so far it’s proving to be one of those incredibly annoying “Just another day” type games.

Stupid name, though – hence the shortened version in the title of this post.

I’ve not played this long enough to give any kind of gameplay description – just sufficient to spot a gotcha which may be helpful to others, and to say that it’s very cutesy.

The gotcha – if the game seems to hang on the “Create Save Game” screen and not respond to keypresses, check if you have a GameCube controller attached. Cos if the game finds one, it will ignore all other inputs and expect you to use that. Took me ages to work that out

Death == DEAD. As Deaths go, he was pretty easy really. Only two forms (this time round – let’s face it, he’s not actually dead and will reappear later in the game). Anyway, as I was saying – two forms – a dark and a light. Dark is pretty much invulnerable to melee attacks, so nuking him with the girly’s thunder spells did the damage. Light form, unsurprisingly, was weak to melee attacks, so whippeding with the rose-stem whip did for him.

Two additional points of interest. The clock tower is as rotten and evil as ever, but much easier to navigate than Harmony of Dissonance, that’s for sure.  Secondly, I’m not at all sure of the whole two character mechanic. It really just gets in the way and adds complexity which the game just doesn’t need.

With the news that there’s a new DS Castlevania game in the making, my explorey juices have started flowing again. This always seems to happen, and it usually results in me playing through all the others in anticipation. Having left Portrait of Ruin unfinished last time, though, means I have to do that first. Sometimes I think I’m borderline OCD. Anyhoo, I discovered (to my joy) that I’d left off just before Legion, who happens to be my favourite game boss of all time, so that eased me in gently. Then it was back to the castle, whippeding some skullotons, and then beating up an evil vampire girly. Then it’s off to the FOREST OF DOOM, which – despite the name – is mainly an indoor area, but never mind.

The Forest is a pretty small level, all things considered, but the end of level boss is a pain in the neck. It’s a combined frog-fishy thing and it has an orrible breath weapon that it seems impossible to avoid. I’ll get it in the end though.

This is probably the best game I’ve played on the DS to date, but it would have worked just as well on the GBA. In fact, given that I’ve been happily playing this game in rogue/hack/nethack/angband/zangband form for near enough twenty years, I’m pretty sure it would work just as well on any platform you care to mention.

Simply put, Mystery Dungeon is a roguelike. This means it’s a completely turn based (and by that, I mean everything is turn based, not just the combat) dungeon crawler where the dungeons are randomly generated. It also features the permanent death (with a few exceptions) system that appears in all other roguelikes. The exceptions are that you have the facility to store items in various warehouses throughout the dungeons so those items are available for future incarnations of yourself. You can also request a rescue from someone on your friends list, so they can go on an adventure to recover your stuff and then send you a revive scroll. Other than that, though – if your HP falls to zero, it’s back to level one with no items. And that’s the way it should be.

This type of playstyle leads to the careful planning that other roguelikes involve, such as levelling up a weapon over many sessions but not carrying it with you (keeping it in the warehouse), but instead keeping it for a future uberrun. It also encourages some defensive planning – last night I wandered into a room where there was an enemy on every tile. I didn’t have any sleep or AoE scrolls, and so died very quickly. I’ll make sure I have a scroll in future.

Reading reviews of this game don’t give you an idea of what it’s like – the reviews I’ve read are conclusive proof that the reviewers just don’t get the genre (IGN 6.5/10, GameSpot 6/10) and their repeated moans about the “lack of save function” reveals that they think the point is to get to the end of the story, not to master the dungeon. It’s telling that the reader reviews for both those sites are 8/10 and 8.5/10 respectively.

One reviewer in particular came out with the following:

ChunSoft certainly has managed to get the randomization thing down, but that just makes the entire dungeon experience hit-or-miss. Random does not equal good. Far too often the dungeon’s exit would appear in the same room we started (or even in the very next space), thus negating any need to explore that floor.

This is, I think, all the evidence needed that the reviewer is either 12 years old, has never played anything except Final Fantasy, or has completely missed the point of Mystery Dungeon.

Anyway, as roguelikes go, it sacrifices the complexity of Zangband for the action of Nethack. It’s awesomely good. So far, my character has reached level 8 before the aforemention roomful of monsters. Another humiliating death was caused on Pegasus Ridge – don’t let the spirit of the evil bloke get into a Rice Changer. It turns the Rice Changer into a Rice Boss who, in turn, turns you into a Rice Cake and kills you. Not pretty.

Yet another embarrassing death, or “Why it’s important to research your class”. Ok, so a new character, level two, rummaging around in the first level of the dungeon. Suddenley I’m hungry. Oh dear, think I, I’ve been too busy playing with the magic system and learning spells that I’ve neglected to eat. Oh! I have no food! That’s strange, I’d better nip back to the surface and buy some. DEAD.

Hmmm what happened there? Oh – that’s right – I decided to try out a Vampire. Which is why I didn’t have any food. Oh, it’s daytime!