The Worst Battle Theme Of All Time

 

Metaphor ReFantazio is an upcoming game with a stupid title from the boys over at ATLUS that I'm actually quite exicted for.  It looks like a neo-persona game, right down to the main chracter and Mitsuru-elf but its set in some weird fantasy kingdom full of monsters that look like abstract paintings come to life.  I'm avoiding most of the news and updates regarding it, as I do with most games, so that when I do get my hands on it I'm not tainted by hype or marketing but one thing crossed my path from this game that's so batshit that I can't help but want to talk about it.

A video popped up in a Megami Tensei group I lurk in that featured the games battle theme.  I'll embed it here so that you can hear it for yourself. 

At the start it sounds fine, just a sort of generic orchestra dollar store tier Nier wannabe music but then the male vocals kick and it sweet mother of baby Demifiend what the FUCK is that actual shit?  It sounds ridiculous.  Maybe if it was some kind of real world language being used then I might not think it so laughable but it just sounds like some guy doing opera gibberish.  It's distracting and sounds fucking awful, I have no idea how I am going to be able to take any of the combat seriously if this starts playing every time I get into a fight.

But when I look at the comments for this track, people seem to be praising it but I have an idea as to why I'm having such an adverse reaction to it.  Back when I was a child there was a panel show on British television called Shooting Stars.  The hosts of the show, Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer would sometimes do a "club singing" round, where Vic would sing a very distorted and silly version of a song and the contestants had to guess what it was.  Example below

And this is the problem, when those vocals kick in for that battle theme all I can see in my minds eye is Vic Reeves fucking club singing.  Hell, given the pace and the flow of the song it almost sounds as if it's Vic Reeves club singing the rap from Persona 3's Mass Destruction.  So maybe if you're British and of a certain age then the Metaphor battle theme will tickle a very silly bit of your brain and if you aren't then maybe it sounds just fine.  That's my theory as to why I and a few of my friends have had such an adverse reaction to it.

To give credit where it's due though, its certainly a memorable song.  Nobuo Uematsu came out recently saying something along the lines of modern game OSTs being a bit boring and I agree with that statement.  There's tons of games with great soundtracks all the way up to the PS3 but I don't think there's many current or last-gen games that you could name where I could just instantly start humming or singing a tunes from their soundtracks, it's all become sort of orchestral mush.  Even games that have good soundtracks like Final Fantasy 7 have them ruined by this grand orchestra bullshit as seen in the likes of Remake and Rebirth.  When I think of JENOVA, my brain defaults to that glorious, high energy PS1 version and not that absolute white-noise trash found in Rebirth.  So despite me calling it the worst battle theme of all time, it at least stands out.  It's so silly that I sometimes find myself in the kitchen singing it as I cut meat and vegetables for dinner, it has wormed its way into my brain and will not leave.

Either way, maybe in the context of the game it won't sound as silly and I'm not about to let Vic Reeves of all people ruin my enjoyment of an upcoming release.  Let's be honest, anyway, you know and I know that I'm gonna be singing along to this shit when I inevitably stream it anyway.  Bring on October, I can't wait.

ATLUS Piss Me Off

 

When I got home from work this evening I came face to face with an announcement for Shin Megami Tensei 5 Vengeance.  In fairness, SMT V probably needed a bit of a re-do.  While I didn't hate it on the Switch it felt a little half baked, especially in the story department and it sort of ran like complete garbage with weird frame drops when doing basic stuff like opening the menu so moving it to PC is probably a good idea.

But what pisses me off is that this sort of initial release followed by a "real" release is a thing that ATLUS has been doing that really pisses me off.  A good example is with Persona 3 all the way back on PS2.  Persona 3 comes out in 2006 and then in 2007 they drop an updated version, Persona 3 FES, in 2007 which is basically the same game but better.  Then they do it again with Persona 4 on PS2 and then Persona 4 Golden on Vita where P4G is basically identical to the base game but with just more stuff.  Persona 5 is also guilty of this shitty practice with base P5 and then Persona 5 Royale coming out a year or two later.

You might think that mainline MegaTen is free from this practice since the only thing that seems to come close before this announcement is SMT 4 but 4A is a sequel to 4, its an entirely different game.  But what you may not know is that Nocturne did this shit a couple years prior but it was only in Japan so most players weren't aware.  There was a initial release of Nocturne and then this was followed up with Nocturne Maniax which is the version we got in the west with the True Demon ending and the fiends and all that good shit.  If you were a Japanese player though, you might have got fucked by buying the initial version because its basically the same game just with less shit.  Then they released it AGAIN with a version called Chronicle where its basically the same as Maniax just with Raidou instead of Dante (from Devil May Cry).  

It's not just the double releasing to leech money out of fans that pisses me off though, their DLC policies are horrendous.  When SMT V first dropped it came with a whole bunch of DLC.  Demons, quests, a secret boss fight all locked behind a paywall instead of just being in the game so some scumfuck suits can make a line go up.  Even worse than that you could just pay for levels and money with another set of DLC and what made the whole thing super annoying was that you couldn't just buy the demons and secret boss, it was all or nothing.  It took me way longer than needed for me to get the DLC because I had to painstakingly buy the "good" DLC one by one in order to avoid that pay to win magatama dogshit.  The DLC side of things gets especially shitty with the release of Soul Hackers 2

Fucking iconic demons like Mara and Satan locked behind a 10 pound day 1 DLC.  Absolutely fucking disgusting considering that the game is (still) 50 fucking pounds.  Shoutouts to BOOK OFF for selling me the PS4 version for the yen equivalent of 5 pounds.

I fucking love Shin Megami Tensei and I'm of course thrilled to be getting more of it.  I just wish whoever is in charge of the more business side of the franchise would just fuck off forever because I'm sick of being nickle and dimed with one of the only IPs I'm still passionate about.  

Also bring back SMT Imagine, ATLUS, you fucking cowards

Sweet Language Based Vindication

Hell is about to freeze over.  The dead are about to rise from their graves.  The moons have aligned.  The Elder Gods are on their way.  Dogs and cats living together, MASS HYSTERIA!  There's an article on Polygon I actually think is really good!

https://www.polygon.com/2017/4/20/15356026/persona-5-translation-localization

Now granted it was written a year ago but I stay away from games "journalism"  so hard that it flew right under my radar.  Read it, now, it's really good.

Just for some context on my end, I played Persona 5 in Japanese roughly around the time of release here.  When the English version came out and I watched some of my friends play it I remember pointing out certain bits of the game didn't really match up with what was being said in the Japanese or that certain lines of dialogue were a little "off".  The nicer people that I know were willing to brush it off as just "oh well Localization!" and others responded by calling me a shitty weaboo piece of shit.

Turns out though I'm not the only one who felt this.  That Polygon article is just one of MANY if you Google it.  I think the one take I get from having a quick look around all the other articles (which I'll read in detail after posting this) say kind of the same thing.  It's not that it's outright bad (mostly) but it's amateurish and filled to the brim with stilted dialogue.

Take that line above for example.  It's a throw away comment in the middle of a fight that you might not really notice when you're playing it but if you take a moment to stop, slow down and think about it, it's a bit strange.  It's not "wrong" per se but it's a bit unnatural.  It's the kind of translation you might expect from an anime fansub group or a small group of passionate fans working on it to bring it to a nice western playerbase.  But Persona 5 isn't that, it's a full priced game (Costing 2000 yen more than your average new game here in Japan, by the way) that had a large team of translators and editors behind it and THIS is what we got. 

One thing that a majority of people still might disagree with me on, a topic I might go into in a later article is the voice work.  Not only was the localization bad but the performance was also atrocious.  I guess it's something we've come to expect with western anime voice actors but while in Persona 4 it was just a bit cheesy and campy in P5 it really ruined some things for me.  For example, in the English version of Persona 5, Ryuji doesn't sound like Ryuji in this game.  It sounds like a guy who played P4 and then tried to do a Kanji Mk2 rather than actually stay true to the personality of the character.  But Japanese voices were an option from the get go with P5 so I guess that's why no one gives a shit.

A good script and a good delivery of that script are important parts of story heavy games like this.  People shouldn't just settle for bullshit just because it's sort of expected of the genre.  ESPECIALLY from a company like ATLUS which we have seen do absolutely incredible jobs of localization with a lot of their other games.  Demand better quality for your hard earned money, goddamnit.

Dragons Crown: Money Grub Edition

So I was talking with my friend the other day and he said that all I do is complain on here, like I'm full of nothing but rage and negativity.  This may be partly true so I planned a bunch of blog topics so that the next handful of posts would be nothing but sunshine and rainbows but then I saw this and now I can't help complaining again.

Dragons Crown is a game that was released in 2013 for the PS3 and Vita and was a bit of a side scrolly hack and slashy affair and if there's one thing I can't be mad about it's the game itself.  If you haven't played Dragons Crown I would totally suggest picking up a copy and giving it a spin, it's really fucking fun. 

So ATLUS did this a while ago with a similar game called Odin Sphere which was awesome.  The original Odin Sphere came out on PS2 and playing a PS2 game on a modern TV can look a bit crappy, which was a shame for a game with such a beautiful art style.  Not only did it get a bit of a facelift though, it came with some extra content and tweaks to game play which made it worth buying.  I have no problem re releasing an older game if it has some, even just a little, extra or different shit in it to warrant the purchase.

Dragons Crown on the other hand is a different tale.  This is a game from just the last generation that looks just fine on the PS3.   It's not like the PS4 can do all that much to improve the look of that game really, the generational face lift is not needed here.  It feels like that sort of pointless remake that's put out just  to milk a bit of extra money from the fans, kind of like the "HD" version of The Last of Us.  Not only that though but from what I can tell after reading some of the news stories about this game, there is NOTHING new in terms of content.  The only thing I can find is that it contains all the original games original features.  It's a fucking sad day when the fact that we're not having anything removed from a remake is noteworthy.

Unless for some weird reason you don't own a PS3 (or a Vita), don't buy the £50 pro edition of the game.  Just go find a PS3 or Vita version in a store or on Amazon or something.  At time of writing the original PS3 version is available on Amazon for like £30 so save yourself the money and get the exact same game at a much lower price.

Finally the thing that irks me is the name.  It's not Dragons Crown: Remaster, it's Dragons Crown Pro Edition.  With a name like that you'd expect it to be tweaked to be harder or something.  Like, the PS2 SMT RPG Lucifer's Call (Or Nocturne depending on where you're from) in Japan has something called a "maniacs edition".  This is the version that featured slightly tougher combat, an extra hard as fuck side quest and Dante from Devil May Cry.  There's nothing "pro" about this version over the other one, it's just the same fucking game with some slightly better graphics.

Anyway, go try Dragons Crown because it's fucking sick, just don't pay out the nose for this version and grab it on PS3.  ATLUS have been good in the past with shit like P4G so don't let them get away with this crap.

Some Persona Fans Piss Me Off

I can feel the hate mail coming just from the title so hold your fucking horses and let me start with a clarifying statement.  I fucking love Persona 5, it was an amazing experience with both style and substance and is probably my personal favorite game on the PS4 right now with very little chance of being overthrown any time soon.  I'm also a big fan of Persona 3 and Persona 4, also great games that I sunk many many hours into and loved dearly.  Persona 4 Golden (and Dancing all Night) was pretty much the entire reason I bought a Vita.

But with that said, god DAMN some of you Persona "fans" on the internet piss me the fuck off.  Now I'm not talking about the legions of Weaboos that seem to make up the games fanbase, that's just sort of par for the course when it comes to titles like this and while they are cringy as fuck their slightly overzealous enjoyment of games in this style aren't really the problem.  My problem comes when I see posts from supposed "fans" shitting on mainline SMT or Persona 1 and 2.

First I think it's important to understand where I am with this series.  Way back when I lived in the UK, I remember my mum telling me about this game called Lucifer's Call on the PS2.  God knows how she came across it but it piqued my interest and I grabbed a copy and went from there.  This game blew my goddamn mind.  It was a bit like Pokemon but instead of shitty little woodland animals coming out of my balls and winning the day with friendship the whole game was basically a struggle to survive in a harsh world of demons that you had been thrown into (there's more to it than that, but for another day).  So I played the fuck out of that and then I don't remember playing much of the series until Persona 3.  It wasn't until that game that I realized that I wasn't just playing "Persona 3" but I was playing "Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3".  So I did some research on the series at large and the obsession grew from there.

Now the reason I can't stand the people who shit on Persona's 1 and 2 is just because I'm a ponce.  Those games are harder and a bit dated but it just seems silly to shit over the first two games and then go around the internet touting yourself as "a fan of the series".  Let's face it folks, Personas 3 and up and designed for ages 3 and up.  Easy mode SMT for people new to the series, a nice little way to break you in.  It's a great place to start if you've never played a MegaTen game before (although I'd argue that Digital Devil Saga is better) but by ignoring the rest of the series because it's "too hard" for you is just a crying shame.  As Souls fans say, "Git gud" because you're really missing out on so much and if you just spent even a LITTLE bit of time learning the basics of these games even notoriously hard entries like Strange Journey won't seem so impossible.

The people who get my back up though are the ones who shit on SMT as a whole.  The ones who are elated to point out the fact that ATLUS dropped the "Shin Megami Tensei" off the front of Persona 5.  The ones who will type out pages and pages of stupid, backward reasons about why the series sucks and Persona is the only thing keeping it alive (untrue).  These people are a bunch of stupid fucks that need to shove a Mara up their gaping assholes.

I can get why one might say "I don't like these games, they are hard and dated" because they are.  I'm currently replaying Megami Tensei on the NES (not even Shin) and coming off the back of P5 GODDAMN it's taken some readjusting.  But to turn around and say that SMT sucks is just fucking stupid.  Without SMT there wouldn't even be a Persona and as much as you probably don't want to admit it you are just playing easy mode MegaTen.  Hell, you could rename Persona "Shin Megami Tensei USA" because that's almost what they are at this point.

For those of you who didn't get the joke

Persona as we know it today wouldn't even be a thing if it wasn't for a very specific Shin Megami Tensei game called Shin Megami Tensei If...

It wasn't a hugely successful or popular title but two things in this game were direct inspirations for Persona.  First was the high school setting and the second was the guardian spirit system but if you think Persona 1 and 2 are dated you don't stand a chance with SMT: If...  The point is, everything that you love about the later Persona games has been tried, tested and perfected throughout the rest of the series at various points.  Disliking it is fine but shitting on it just makes you look like a fucking moron.

If you've tried the games and felt that they are dated or too hard, I implore you to go give them another try.  Use a guide if you have to or play the next best entry game after Persona in terms of difficulty, Digital Devil Saga.  If you think that SMT in general just sucks and you aren't willing to try again or even accept the massive impact its had on your so called "favorite" game, then have Morgana put you to bed and then do the world a favor by never waking up.

ATLUS Blocking P5 Streams

I think I may have talked about this when Persona 5 first got released in Japan where I discovered that you cannot stream Persona 5 AT ALL past the opening scene.  The entire game is blocked for streaming directly from PS4 and there were rumblings about people using capture cards and the like having their shit taken down and whatnot.

Well I was hoping that this was because ATLUS wanted to keep a sort of air of mystery around the title until it got the worldwide release and that the block on streaming would be lifted after the western release.  Well that was nothing but wishful thinking because the English language version of the game was released recently but the game is still blocked.

Not only is it still blocked but ATLUS have released a bunch of fucking guidelines on what you can and cannot do.  Here it is

http://atlus.com/note-persona-5-streaming/

Now I love ATLUS, and I've loved ATLUS for as long as I can remember but this is complete and utter bullshit on a level that I can't quite comprehend.  The logic is that Persona 5 is a "Japanese game with a single playthrough story" so they don't want you streaming it/making videos of it so that people don't get spoiled.  You ARE allowed to stream/share up to the first major boss fight but after that you risk getting content ID strikes on your account.

Now I'm aware it's their game and they are well within their rights to do whatever the fuck they want with it but issuing such heavy punishments for anyone trying to share their experience with the game is just stupid.  If it was just a case of taking a video down, having that content they don't want removed then fine but trying to ruin someones ENTIRE channel or stream just because they showed a bit of the game past the first major story arc is just mean spirited.

Also the argument that it's to avoid people getting spoiled is the flat out stupidest thing I've ever heard.  I'm going to do an entire post on what I think about spoilers at a later date but if you're stupid enough to catch spoilers for a fucking niche JRPG then maybe you shouldn't be using a computer.  If someone is dumb enough to go into a Twitch stream for P5 or watch a YouTube video of a playthrough and then gets mad when they walk face first into a spoiler then that's their own fucking fault.  Also, being 70 hours in, I don't really see how you could deliver a spoiler in a quick simple sentence that would catch someone out like that, there's A LOT of explaining to be done behind each plot point.

Because of all these bullshit guidelines my head is filled with horrible ideas such as going on the ATLUS USA Facebook page and sending PMs to anyone who comments on P5 shit with major story spoilers or recording key cutscenes on my phone in short clips and spamming them on twitter.  The reality is I would never do anything like that really because I still quite like ATLUS and P5 is one of the best RPGs EVER FUCKING MADE that I feel that everyone should at experience and I wouldn't ever want to remove the impact of some of those key scenes.

Avoiding spoilers for anything is the easiest thing in the goddamn world and I can't help but feel this overly controlling attitude of ATLUS may sour the opinion of some people.  Personally though, despite this bullshit I find it hard to stay mad at the company that gave us SMT, Trauma Centre, Etrian Odyssey and many other heavy hits.  I guess I'm a little bit of a fanboy in that regard.

Etrian Odyssey: Not as Hard As You Think

Very recently I replayed and finished a game called Etrian Odyssey on the DS.  The game was released in 2007 and is a dungeon crawler where the player is tasked with entering a labyrinth and solving its mysteries as they progress down 25 floors of danger.  The game came out in 2007 so this isn't going to be a review but I want to address something people have always said about it's difficulty.

Etrian Odyssey can be a challenging game to a new player, you have a number of classes to pick from who each have their own unique skills.  Then once you've made your team you have to gear them out, go into the dungeon and start to get them to a higher level.  Once you level up you get points to put into a skill and the lists of skills are so long that it would surely overwhelm a lot of new players, it sure as hell did for me my first time round.

So the things I hear the most regarding difficulty is that the encounters can be tough and dying makes you lose a lot of progress.  Well the second one might be true, since save points inside the dungeon are quite few and far between death can me a pretty hefty setback depending on how long you were exploring but encounters, even the special enemies and bosses become disgustingly easy once you get your head round the characters skills.

In my replay I managed to remember all the points required for the best skills and I realized that a great deal of the skills on the characters list are completely useless.  For example, the games version of the warrior has all these skills called things like "stunner" or some whirlwind thing that hits adjacent enemies but it's all crap.  Max out the attack, HP and All Slash skills and he can deal with most of the standard encounters alone.  Another example would be the survivalist who only really needs one skill called Apollon which does massive damage after 3 turns to a single foe.  You can take such a massive chunk of health from a boss in such a short time that the fight becomes almost trivial.  Couple that with a medic who has a maxed Salve 2 and the the game becomes almost too easy.

Granted, you would never know to do all that shit the first time round but I went back to this game with memories of having a hard time but my replay was just pathetically easy.  Even the final boss stood absolutely no chance and I beat him stood in line for a ride at a theme park and barely paying attention.

So what I discovered essentially is that a number of the skills are a bit unbalanced and break the combat a little bit and once you figure out what those skills are the game becomes a cake walk.  I'd recommend Etrian Odyssey since its a great little RPG and fans of dungeon crawl games might get a kick out of the whole draw your own map feature using the DS's lower screen.  It's become a big series too and I've not played a lot of the later ones so I'm curious to see if the later titles are as easily broken as this one.

Persona 4: Dancing All Night

Every so often a certain game comes along that makes me super happy that I bought a Vita and this is one of those games.  Persona 4 as you may already know is a spin off Shin Megami Tensei game that originally came out for PS2 and was later ported to the Vita under the title Persona 4 Golden.  While Persona 4 was an RPG with monster breeding elements, Dancing All Night is, as you can probably tell from the title, a rhythm game.

Unlike most rhythm games though, Persona 4 isn't just the soundtrack remixed and packaged as a rhythm game, it has a story mode.  The story follows all the characters from the original persona and one additional new character as they prepare for some kind of music festival that they will be performing at.  However shit swiftly hits the fan as a number of members of the lead idol group get kidnapped into the Midnight Stage and it's up to MC (now given a name, Yu Narukami) and his buddies to dance their way out of the problem.

Shadows in the midnight stage can't be beaten with weapons and magic spells so instead you have to put on a dance show in order to show them that maybe life isn't as shitty as they think it is.  This is where the rhythm game segment comes and as far as these kind of games go it's pretty standard.  You have a 6 button layout and you hit the notes in time with the music.  Hit the notes good and you clear the stage, miss too much and you fail.  The real selling point here is the fact that the game features a pretty hefty number of tracks from the Persona 4 soundtrack with a whole ton of cool remixes.  So if you really like the P4 OST (and it's a really good soundtrack) then this game is an absolute must for you.

Aside from the story mode there is also a free dance mode which just lets you play whatever song you like provided you unlocked it.  There's also a shop where you can buy outfits and items that will make clearing songs easier or harder via note modifiers.  There's also a collection thing where you get to see in game models and artwork but I've not looked much at that. 

I have one major gripe about the game however.  The first is that it's too fucking easy, even on hard mode.  I'm no crazy IIDX Another playing lunatic but I've got quite a lot of experience with rhythm games and on hard this isn't posing much of a challenge.  The life gauge is a bit quick to drain so occasionally I'll fail due to missing a couple of notes near the end of a song on the first try but it'll never take more than 2 tries to get an initial clear.  There IS an extra mode past hard call "All Night" mode but to unlock that you have to buy EVERYTHING in the games shop which takes a fair amount of time.  If you're looking for an entry point into the rhythm game genre then this is a good place to start but veterans may be left a little disappointed.

Still though, the music is cool and I'm getting my rocks off watching my favorite P4 characters do bad ass dance routines so it's not much of a deal breaker. If you're a fan of P4 then absolutely buy this game. If you like rhythm games but don't care too much for P4 then approach it with a bit more caution because you could do much better than this in terms of just core rhythm game play.

NOBODY PANIC! Atlus seems to be fine!

Atlus, if you are not familiar with who they are, have given us some really great games.  Shin Megami Tensei, Persona, Trauma Centre and many many more, but recently there has been some news that has made people a little worried.

Do a quick google search for "Index company bankruptcy" and you'll find that parent company to Atlus have basically fucked up big time and now they are doing the Japanese equivalent of filing for bankruptcy.

This may have you freaking your shit thinking that the future of franchises like Shin Megami Tensei or the releases of games like Dragons Crown are in danger, but strangely enough they are not.  I have no idea how the fuck big business works, but if you follow up your google searches you'll find that for our friends at Atlus it's all business as usual.

Dragons Crown is going to be getting released just fine, SMT4 is getting a western release and really they don't seem to be having any trouble making games.  So let's all not panic just yet, everything seems OK and we don't have to give up on that SMTxFire Emblem game just yet, but if you are a fan make sure you buy SMT4 and Dragons Crown, make sure they get the funds to make more great games.

Free Game Friday: Pandora Saga: Weapons of Balance first impressions (Level 1-10)

So another Friday means another free game for you to piss away those weekend hours on.  This week I bring to you a free MMORPG available on Steam called Pandora Saga: Weapons of Balance.  Due to the fact I've been playing other games and I've been keeping busy with my job and such, I've only had a chance to reach level 10, so I'll give you the story so far.

First, this is a game developed by Atlus Online, the company that also gave us the likes of Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online.  Quite frankly, last time I played SMT: Imagine, it sucked so fucking hard I wanted to rip my own fingernails out.  I'm a huge fan of that series and even I was bored to death grinding through its boring world and uninteresting dungeons.

Luckily for us, Pandora Saga is nothing like SMT: Imagine and the first 10 levels have actually been pretty good so far.  So the story so far is as follows, I started playing on Monday and I created a elf spellcaster.  Now here lies my first issue with the game, not a huge dealbreaker but a issue none the less.

This is what a male elf looks like.  The reason I picked an elf is because they are naturally adept at magic, and being a spellcasting class I thought this would be a good choice.  The only problem is, all the elves look like fucking children and there is no way to de-shit a Pandora Saga elf.  That said there are quite a few playable races (off the top of my head I think it's 5) and the elf is the only really stupid looking one.  For those that have played the game and are reading this anyway, yes, the elf has a shitter design than those silly little dog bastards.

Anyway, so when you fire the game up you don't get bogged down in stupid long winded tutorials, your in town, surrounded by a load of high level players selling shit, and your only direction is to go talk to the city guard guy and get a quest.  The game basically tells you nothing and has you figure most of it's shit out for yourself, which SOUNDS like a bad thing, but it's not so involved that you can't figure it out with a bit of common sense.

So the quests in this game are standard free MMO fare, "go kill X amount of bastard Y for item Z" etc. but what more do you expect from these kind of games really?  For the first 10 levels that's all I've really been doing, but it doesn't feel like a grind because you're never asked to kill huge numbers of monsters and the rewards are big enough to give you a level each time.  However I have run into a few technical issues with monsters clipping into the scenery and when they do that you can't hit them.  It's just been a mild annoyance now but I've got a horrible feeling it's going to fuck me over hard later.

 Also, this picture is a little small and it's kind of hard to see, but that is a level 44 stray wolf just milling around the first quest area.  Sure, this doesn't seem like much of an issue at first but putting an enemy this high level at the start of the game makes me question how big the world is going to end up being.  I can't seem to find a complete world map, but then again I've not looked very hard for one.  Aside from that, the gameplay is smooth and it plays a little bit like Lineage 2 which is a game I used to have a massive MMO boner for but even if you weren't part of the old L2 crowd I still think there is some enjoyment to be had here.

The other thing I want to touch on here is the skill system in this game.

 It's a pretty cool idea where every level you get a certain number of Stat and Skill points.  With the stat points you can really fuck yourself over if you go drooling all over your keyboard and put them into parameters you don't need.  But if you don't have severe brain damage this really isn't a problem.  The real cool thing is the skill points.  Every level you get a skill point to apply to one of your abilities, in my case the various schools of magic.  Once you learn a skill from that area, you can then level up that area further by using those skills.  This means, that even if you go make a load of stupid choices early on with your skill loadout, it can be fixed with enough grind.  It's a cool idea and I can't wait to see how it plays out later on.

There is also a shitton of other systems such as horse mounted combat and a warring nations as well as guilds and PVP etc.  but I've yet to try any of this out so hopefully I'll have more on that when I do another post when I hit 20 (providing I don't quit before then).  There is also a cash shop but I've not even looked at it, no idea what's in there or how it may help/break the game or whatever, but I've been doing fine without it.  Finally, the game is plagued with gold spammers that sometimes makes chatting to other players impossible.  Luckily these fuckbends come and go so it's not a problem that is present 100% of the time and hopefully ATLUS will do something about it eventually (Not fucking likely).

Anyway, that's a little overview of Pandora Saga, check it out, it's worth a chuckle or two at least.