Grandia Theft Temps

When I was well into PlayStation 2 RPGs, one I gave a shot was Grandia Xtreme, which was my first delve into the Game Arts franchise, when then I didn't know of its predecessors. Needless to say, it wasn't a totally positive experience given things like the save point starvation and consequentially having to go through long treks through dungeons without being able to recover, leaving you exhausted at the end of said dungeon crawls, although its predecessors seemed better in this regard, despite their PlayStation ports being technical messes. The Grandia HD Collection gave a great opportunity to redeem said issues, but did it?

Both games' narratives occur in completely different universes, with the first focusing on Justin as he yearns to become a great adventurer in search of his father, and the second focusing on a sarcastic Geohound named Ryudo charged with escorting a possessed nun, Elena, to meet the Pope so she can get cleansed. The first game's story is very hackneyed and melodramatic, while the second's is somewhat better in spite of boring cutscenes and borrowing heavily from another Game Arts title, Lunar 2: Eternal Blue. Lackluster translations, lamentably, don't help either game, with GungHo Entertainment apparently not being bothered to update their badly-written scripts.

The first and second Grandias feature variations of the same critically-lauded battle system, although said critics were obvious blind to their myriad flaws, beginning with their encounter systems, which are a huge step from the vastly superior ones like those in EarthBound, with enemies charging the player's party regardless of their strength, and some unfairness occurring with things like blinking and reappearing unexpectedly to surprise the player or in the second entry's case, aerial enemies that are a real pain to get the initiative against in the first place. How the player encounters said foes dictates whether they, the player, or no one gets to go first.

The game mechanics of both games largely follow the same rules, where the player's characters and the enemies all share one turn order gauge along which they move to a stopping point where the latter begin to execute their abilities, and the player decides the formers' commands. One key feature is the ability to cancel enemy commands if the player times their characters' attacks right (though foes can do the same), but both games require an incredible amount of foresight in this regard, given the unpredictability of enemy speed across the turn order gauge. A major thing that bogs down both games' battle systems is the lengthy, unskippable ability animations, which are significantly worse in the second game, and really prevents their gameplay from truly excelling.

Both Grandias have similar gameplay without combat, with players exploring towns and dungeons that are open or close-aired, or a combination of both. There are no explorable overworlds, with each having a rigid linear structure and plot advancement. The menu systems of both games are different and have their flaws, with the first having an annoying limit on item capacity; while the second ditches this, it has a really-irritating spherical menu system. Both, however, have save and recovery points that somewhat ease the pain of long dungeon treks, but they could have easily interacted with players better.

Noriyuki Iwadare composed the soundtracks of both games, which definitely do have their share of good tracks, although their quality is often grossly inconsistent, with some really weird or downright-bad pieces. Players have a choice between English and Japanese voicework for each game, but unfortunately, the first retains the same janitorial staff-quality performances as the PlayStation version. The second game's English voices are easily far better, but still imperfect. In the end, the sound of both games rises above average, but not by a heavy degree.

The first game's graphics were adapted to widescreen, with a world's worth of difference in their quality compared to the original versions, with nice colors and upscaling, looking overall generally gorgeous. However, the sequel is a far different ballpark, with hideous three-dimensional graphics that look every bit as bad as they did on the Dreamcast and PlayStation 2, very easily passing for a late PlayStation 1 game.

Finally, the first Grandia can be really long, up to ninety hours, while its sequel is about half that length, with little lasting appeal in either game.

Overall, while the Grandia HD Collection has a few things going for it like the battle systems (though these are far from perfect unlike mainstream and "fan" video game critics make them out to be) and to a lesser extent the soundtracks, they also have plenty going against them like the horrid control, average narratives, inconsistent voicework quality, and in the second game, the hideous graphics. Both also require a lot of time to complete, which is too much for games that are at best average, so unless they're on sale for a huge discount and your gaming dollars are really tight, you can easily live without experiencing them, as there are far better JRPGs out there.

This Deep Look is based on single playthroughs of both games.

RECOMMENDED?
HESITANTLY

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Not Pixel Perfect, but Still Fun

Although Square, now Square-Enix’s, Final Fantasy series, has been around since 1987 (at least in Japan), it wouldn’t occur to them until the turn of the millennium to develop upgraded rereleases of earlier series entries like rival Enix’s Dragon Quest franchise had since it entered the 16-bit gaming era. When Square did get into the remake game, they initially did so for the doomed portable WonderSwan system before wising up and focusing on more mainstream systems such as the PlayStation. After merging with Enix, they found a cash cow in countless ports and upgrades of older Final Fantasies, a trend that continues today. In 2021, Square-Enix announced another series of upgraded rereleases, the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection, whose release was initially limited to Windows, iOS, and Android; however, they expanded it to the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch. Does this latest round of remakes warrant a playthrough for modern gaming audiences?

As the anthology’s moniker suggests, the primary selling point is its “remastered” visuals, which aim to be more faithful to the graphical styles of the original iterations of the first six Final Fantasies, chiefly regarding the character sprites, while avoiding appearing too dated graphically, and the results are inconsistent. While the sprites, colors, and environments are beautiful, the eponymous pixelation evokes the expression “Beauty is the eye of the beholder” since visual smoothness is rare; however, those who term old-school graphics infallible will appreciate the aesthetics. Regardless, many lazy graphical decisions from the first six games remain, like the player’s characters making no contact with the enemy when using standard attacks, the inanimate foes, and the reskins that recur throughout the collection.

Original series composer Nobuo Uematsu returned to remaster the soundtracks, a consistent high point of the collection, gloriously reorchestrated with contemporary video game instrumentation. Players can switch to the original digitized versions of the music for a more authentic old-school aural experience.

The Pixel Remasters sport numerous quality-of-life improvements that make the first six games more accessible to series newcomers. Among these are autosaving during transitions between areas, diagonal movement, and helpful in-game maps for towns and dungeons, in addition to those for the overworlds, which even indicate how many treasures remain in each visited area. Features from previous versions of the games, like suspend saving, also return.

While all six games have notable differences in their core gameplay, the collection improves them with features across all. Among them is the ability to toggle random encounters on or off outside combat and auto-battling that can speed up battles, soften the temporal burden of grinding, and shave superfluous playtime. New to the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch ports are Boosts that can modify the games’ base difficulties to be lower or higher, chiefly through experience and money acquired from combat victory.

The central narratives of the collection’s entries remain unchanged (although the third game’s Pixel Remaster reverts to the plot of the original 8-bit version instead of retaining the DS remake’s), and their translations contain plenty of polish.

The collection features appeal in the form of PlayStation Trophies and whatever sidequests are within each game.

Overall, the Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster collection does warrant a playthrough from modern gaming audiences, especially the PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch versions, given the added options to modify the difficulty to accommodate their skill level. Granted, those who deem previous iterations of the game to be infallible or have exhausted themselves on said prior versions won’t find much to celebrate by reexperiencing the titles. The remastered soundtracks are inarguably the highlight of the anthology, but depending on how one looks at them, the visual remastery doesn’t always excel, given the lazy graphical aspects retained from the original versions of the games. Even so, the Pixel Remasters are the definitive versions of the first six Final Fantasies, making them far more accessible to mainstream gamers than ever.

This deep look is based on playthroughs of digital copies of all six remasters purchased and downloaded to the reviewer's PlayStation 4 to their standard endings.

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RECOMMENDED?
YES

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Tears of Disappointment

Let me begin this deep look by saying I do not like Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series, and consider it one of the most overrated franchises in gaming history. There are a few entries that I enjoyed, such as the Triforce of the Gods games (A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds), but I believe that the franchise especially went downhill when it leaped from two to three dimensions. Even then, I didn’t care much for Ocarina of Time or its rerelease on the Nintendo 3DS. I remember buying a Nintendo Switch because of Breath of the Wild’s “universally positive” reception, but I still didn’t like it. The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom continues the open-world direction the franchise has headed in, and while I really wanted to like the game, it just didn’t love me back.

Tears of the Kingdom occurs several years after Breath of the Wild, with Link and Zelda exploring the caves below Hyrule Castle, from which toxic Gloom has been sickening citizens of the kingdom. After encountering a mysterious mummy, an event known as the Upheaval occurs that results in Link losing the power that he had acquired in the game’s predecessor, with floating islands and poisonous Depths appearing as well. Some of the backstory is good, but the narrative doesn’t really strike any new ground, and in general, once you’ve experienced one Zelda game’s plot, you’ve pretty much experienced them all. The translation is legible, but Nintendo of America, as in recent years, didn’t really put much effort into making it sound realistic and fitting for a fantasy game, also annoyingly using the acronym OK instead of “okay” among other things.

Many elements from Breath of the Wild return, such as Link being able to find different kinds of melee/ranged weapons and shields that break after excessive use, with an initial limit as to how many he can carry at a time, but players late into the game can use Korok Seeds strewn throughout Hyrule to increase these limitations, which I only found out about via the internet. Shrines return, where Link, in most cases, must solve a complex puzzle to receive a Light of Blessing, four of which he can use to extend his life or stamina meters at Goddess Statues. Link can also obtain additional Hearts at points, including finishing one of the main Temples necessary to advance the storyline.

Players can outfit Link with clothing for his head, body, and legs for defensive power and increase it at Great Fairy Fountains throughout Hyrule; however, gaining access to their power is difficult without a guide. Certain clothes are necessary to traverse areas with extreme heat or cold without suffering damage, sometimes available in the regions where such conditions occur. Combat largely remains the same as in prior three-dimensional Zeldas, with Link able to lock on to an enemy within his view, attack it, block its attacks with his shield, and execute moves such as side jumps and backflips.

Lamentably, the same problems in combat carry over from prior 3-D Zelda installments, where switching a target necessitates that the player release the targeting button, get close to another enemy, and hold the same button. Moreover, the minimap doesn’t show enemy locations on the battlefield, which leaves Link completely blind from behind. Furthermore, if his back is near a wall, the camera can go haywire, and Link can leap and grab said wall, making him vulnerable to the enemy. Most of the time, killing enemies nets Link parts and armaments he can seize for himself.

Throughout his lengthy journey, Link gains several powers instrumental in solving the myriad puzzles present in most series predecessors. First is Ultrahand, which allows Link to telekinetically move an object around and rotate it in any direction except port or starboard, which leads to many annoying moments. Players can attach movable objects to one another and break one piece from another by wiggling the right stick. This ability plays significantly into advancing through the Temples Link accesses and completing Shrines scattered throughout Hyrule. However, I found it incredibly difficult to discover many Shrines and solve their respective puzzles, if present, without the internet.

Another ability Link acquires includes Fuse, which can allow him to fuse one of his breakable melee weapons and shields with a specific material gotten from defeating monsters or battlefield objects such as wooden crates or boulders, which renders it unchangeable until it breaks. He can also attach materials to arrows he can shoot from one of the bows he can carry to provide effects such as homing guidance towards enemies, which can fare well against those with unpredictable movement patterns. Sometimes, Link can pick the arrows he fires back up if they fail to strike a monster, provided the player can track them down.

Link also gains the Recall ability, which can target a single object and reverse its movement, be it one he has moved through Ultrahand or a moving part of an environment such as a giant cog, often necessary to solve some Shrine puzzles. Furthermore, players can photograph monsters and most weapons, shields, bows, and items they drop to note them in the various compendia, a tedious task when other roleplaying games automatically do so. The Ascend ability allows him to leap through a ceiling if it isn’t too high above and emerge at the top.

While Tears of the Kingdom has its fun moments, given the various killer moves Link can execute, there exist many issues aside from those mentioned that prevent it from being wholly enjoyable, especially toward the end when he must traverse the Depths for the endgame sequence and risk losing maximum life due to Gloom that infests the underworld which seems to exist solely to artificially make the game longer than it needs to be, with the potential to go into the final battles with a low number of Hearts. While there are food recipes that can cure Gloom taint, players will need to go through hoops to get the ingredients to make them, which again can necessitate the internet, which is the only possible way to get through the game in a reasonable time.

Moving to control, while players can theoretically record their progress anywhere, they cannot simply quit in the middle of a drawn-out puzzle and expect progress to remain, with the frequent load times, inexcusable in a cartridge game, not helping, and the autosave feature can be unreliable. Another major problem is the absence of automapping, which would have made discovering the Shrines and other locales of Hyrule easier, with segments of the country mapped entirely alongside no indicator of where the player has been when Link visits one of the Skyview Towers. Even then, Link sometimes must go through hoops to activate them in the first place. The teleportation between Shrines is a godsend, but Tears of the Kingdom could have been more user-friendly.

Like Breath of the Wild, the sequel has a minimalistic musical presentation. While there are some decent tracks, the aurals rely too much upon ambiance. The sound effects are good, but the quality of the voicework is mixed, with some annoying performances and lots of annoying grunting during cutscenes not fully voiced. Thus, one could get away with muting the volume and listening to other music while playing the game.

The visuals are mostly the same as in Breath of the Wild, with a cel-shaded style that superficially appears decent, and the lighting effects and colors are genuinely beautiful. However, there are many technical hiccups, including a choppy framerate, environmental pop-up, blurry and pixilated texturing, and jaggies. Moreover, Link eating phantom food whenever the player uses food items in the game menus looks asinine. Ultimately, the game is only graphically acceptable.

When ceasing to play the Breath of the Wild sequel, my playtime numbered around seventy-two hours, with plenty of Shrines yet to discover and many sidequests left incomplete. While the supplemental content would theoretically enhance the lasting appeal, only those who somehow enjoy the game would want to play onward.

Overall, Tears of the Kingdom, like Breath of the Wild before it, was for me a massive letdown, given its tedious gameplay and control, hackneyed writing, and average audiovisual presentation, with the Zelda series and open worlds, in my opinion, going together as well as a fish and a bicycle. However, if you liked the first Nintendo Switch Zelda, you would probably enjoy its sequel, but there are far better open-world RPGs. Those in search of the definitive Zelda experience would be far better off playing one of the genuine classics of the franchise like A Link to the Past and A Link Between Worlds. Regardless, if I could use Link’s Recall ability on the time I spent with the game, I would do so in a heartbeat.

This deep look is based on an incomplete playthrough of around seventy-two hours to the “Destroy Ganondorf” quest.

Bravely Frustrating

In 2012, Square-Enix published the Nintendo 3DS title Bravely Default, which many videogame critics hailed as a throwback to instalments of the Final Fantasy franchise of old. It would receive a sequel for the system, Bravely Second, which continued the story of its precursor. The Nintendo Switch would take the 3DS’s place as a hybrid handheld and home console, with the company releasing Bravely Default II, which has no connection to the original game or its direct sequel, and continues the franchise’s tradition of turn-based battles with an emphasis on classes. It also sports some interesting changes, but are they for the better?

As mentioned, Bravely Default II, much akin to its brethren franchise Final Fantasy, has no narrative connections to other games in the franchise, and follows four playable protagonists: the enigmatic main character Seth, the refugee princess Gloria, the traveling scholar Elvis, and the mercenary Adelle. They embark on a quest to retrieve four elemental crystals while dealing with adversaries who utilize Asterisks, giving characters the ability to change classes. The sequel isn’t shy about its story’s resemblance to that of the original Final Fantasy, and is one of its primary detriments, although the background is decent.

The localization is mostly legible, although terrible decisions such as naming one of the protagonists “Elvis” really distracts from its okay quality, along with unnatural dialogue like “Protect! Protect! Protect!” and so on. The old-world speak is decent, and there’s a notable deficit of spelling and grammar errors, but the translation team could have given this aspect a once-over.

That leaves the gameplay to shoulder the burden, with the general mechanics containing many similarities to the prior two entries of the series. Rather than having an adjustable encounter rate, however, this entry contains visible enemies wandering dungeons and the overworld, with fights naturally triggered through contact, Seth able to slash foes on the field to give his party the advantage. Battles start with Seth’s party facing an entourage of enemies, with speed determining turn order, this mechanic somewhat different from the traditional turn-based structure of prior games. Characters and foes instantly execute their commands, akin to titles such as Final Fantasy X.

Rather than having a turn order gauge, however, Bravely Default II opts for having enemies show exclamation point icons to indicate their turns are imminent, with Seth and his party having active time gauges that determine which character goes when, and given some necessary foresight, an actual meter showing command order would have definitely been welcome. The sequel sports mechanics bequeathed from its precursors such as being able to Default, which serves as defense and accumulating one Brave Point, characters and enemies able to have a maximum of three Brave Points, and able to get extra commands within their turns.

As in prior entries, the game caps the number of executable orders per character and enemy turn at four, and it’s possible for both sides to have negative Brave Points, where they have to wait until reaching zero, recovering one Brave Point per turn, until they are able to execute another command. Much of the gameplay meat comes from the Asterisks the player acquires from defeating bosses who have them, which allows Seth and his companions to change classes, each with twelve abilities, passive and active, that they learn through leveling the class until mastery at level twelve for each vocation.

Characters have standard experience levels alongside class levels, with victory against the toughest bosses far more dependent upon which abilities the player has from their classes. Commands aside from Defaulting and executing supplemental turns include attacking with equipped weapons, using HP or MP-consuming abilities obtained through class mastery, using consumable items, or attempting to escape from the enemy, which naturally doesn’t work all the time, particularly against foes whose levels are on par or higher than the player’s. Victory nets all characters who are still alive base level and class experience, as one would expect.

Outside battle, characters can equip a subclass in addition to a primary class, which allows them to access that subclass’s abilities provided they have acquired a few levels in the vocation. For instance, players can have a fighting monk that can cast the white mage’s healing spells. Furthermore, the player can adjust the difficulty level, although even on Casual mode, bosses can still be walls preventing players from advancing the main storyline, having tons of HP, powerful enemies fighting alongside them, lots of cheap tricks, and taking upwards to an hour to complete, with failure resulting in an unceremonious Game Over and trip back to the title screen, largely necessitating online guides for strategies.

Control is superficially decent, with a fair save system, skippable cutscenes, clear direction on how to advance the central storyline and even subquests, auto-dash, the ability to see how prospective equipment affects stats before purchasing it, easy menus, a skill allowing to see how many treasure chests remain in an area, and so forth, although dungeons would have seriously benefitted from maps, their absence inexcusable given that even games from several generations past such as The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past had this feature. There are also plentiful load times, unskippable startup company screens, and the absence of a soft-reset or actual ability to pause the game, but in the end the controls are passable at best.

The soundtrack is probably the strongest aspect of Bravely Default II, with a number of solid tracks such as the overworld theme’s variations, the town themes, the battle music, and so forth. Sound effects are believable as one would expect from a game of its time, and there is voice acting as well, though its quality is somewhat mixed, especially in the case of a few annoying accented characters such as Elvis, who sounds somewhat like the eponymous ogre from the Shrek films.

The visuals are more of a mixed bag, with a three-dimensional chibi style similar to prior games in the franchise, which generally look decent, although there are some hiccups such as the player’s characters and enemies not making contact when attacking one another, some blurry and pixilated texturing, and a great deal of choppiness that somewhat bring them down.

As I didn’t complete the game, I can’t accurately gauge the time necessary to play it to completion, although at twenty-three hours, I was still partway through the second of seven chapters, so one can expect to spend quite a while if they wish to see it through to the end.

In the end, Bravely Default II is another Japanese RPG that I really wanted to like, but it just didn’t love me in return, given the various JRPG screw-yous in its gameplay mechanics, control issues such as the total lack of maps for dungeons, the generic narrative, mixed voice acting, and average visuals. It does have a few positive aspects such as its music, although frankly, that’s reason to purchase a soundtrack, not a videogame, and I can safely say there are far better Nintendo Switch RPGs out there, and won’t be revisiting this franchise anytime soon.

RECOMMENDED?
NO

Better than Emulation, but Not Flawless

During the sixteen-bit era of videogaming, the Super NES and Sega Genesis were the dominant consoles in North America, the latter aimed at older audiences and the former striving to be “family-friendly,” given Nintendo America’s draconian censorship policies. Both systems would receive their share of respective RPGs, chiefly the Final Fantasy franchise on the SNES, and the Shining and Phantasy Star series on the Genesis, most of which would see many ports during future console generations. Among the latest releases of the Shining titles is Shining Force Classics for the iOS, bringing along with the core games some contemporary enhancements.

The very first Shining game, Shining in the Darkness, is a first-person dungeon crawler with randomly-encountered turn-based combat in the main massive dungeon fought by three protagonists. A single town serves as a hub for performing functions such as resting to recover strength and purchasing new equipment, with navigation being a rather simple affair. While the inaugural Shining title does have some things going for it, such as a great soundtrack and good art direction, the chief game mechanics somewhat mar the experience, given the often-sluggish, generic combat and ease of losing oneself within the voluminous labyrinth.

The franchise would shift to the strategy RPG subgenre with Shining Force: The Legacy of Great Intention, divided into chapters with turn-based tactical battles necessary to advance the central storyline, a change that was certainly for the better, given the straightforwardness of the game mechanics, although there is a bit of character fatigue, some user-unfriendliness, a lackluster localization, and limited lasting appeal. However, story was decent for its time, and there are other positives such as a nice soundtrack and pretty visuals, and overall, the original Shining Force is a competent, if generic, strategy RPG.

The first numbered sequel, Shining Force II, is too a strategy RPG, although the developers didn’t divide it into chapters like the first game, given the less linear progression, which admittedly can lead to some instances where the player can lose themselves on the overworld figuring out what to do next, and there is again a deal of user-unfriendliness and spotty translation. However, it builds upon its precursor’s strategic gameplay for the better, has an original storyline, and has nice aural and visual presentation, although on the whole, it doesn’t quite achieve greatness.

Ultimately, Shining Force Classics is an okay collection of games that somewhat show their age, even with contemporary enhancements like save states. Shining in the Darkness is perhaps the low point of the anthology, given its genericness, although the shift from traditional roleplaying game to strategy RPG was for the better, both Shining Forces being more enjoyable, though they aren’t without their flaws. Those wishing to experience the original Shining Force would be better off playing the Gameboy Advance remake, and the collection needs not rank high in one’s gaming playlist.

This deep look is based on a playthrough to completion of all three games in the anthology.

Recommended?
Hesitantly