Final Fantasy X HD Remaster (Vita) out now! Impressions/genuine screenshots

FFXHD/FFX-2HD are now out in Japan. I opted for the Vita version. I've played around 4 hours. Just made my way through the jungle that separates Kilika from the the nearby shrine.

I was a little worried about the Vita version as SE has been very tight lipped about it (at times making us even question if it still existed). After playing for a few hours I can't say that it is perfect, but what I've played shows mostly good news; this is a competent higher resolution conversation of the PS2 game with some sensible design choices having been made along the way and just a few niggling issues.

I'm going to show off some screen from the game along with some interesting points I noticed whilst playing (click to expand).

Launcher Menu

This is the first thing you see upon starting FFXHD: the dedicated launcher menu from which you can select FFXHD, The Eternal Calm bonus goodies and other bonus extras. You can also check your game saves from here without booting up the game itself. There is no option to get back into the launcher from the game but you can jump back at any time by pressing L+R+Start.

CG Screenshots
These are captured directly from the Vita and should give you some idea of what the CG looks like. There doesn't seem to be any noticeable compression/upscaling artifacts from what I can tell.

What is also noteworthy is that transition between in-game and CG is really smooth (as is CG playback). There is little in the way of awkward pauses and unlike the PS2 you won't hear your disk drive whirring into action to telegraph a CG sequence.

Tidus Crying Face

Auron pose

Auron pose close-up

Dark Colours Test

Light Colours Test

GRAPHICS (FIDELITY)
The quality of the conversion here is better than that of the MGS HD Collection. Characters exhibit fewer jaggies upon closer examination and even scenes that zoom out on architecture hold up quite well.

Zanarkand Skyscape

The character models in this HD remaster version also exhibit extra details not present in the PS2 version such as the leather effect on Tidus's not-quite-overalls. These effects are often cut from Vita ports (the leather/silk textures in games like Hatsune Miku/DOA5+) but are present and well here.

Smell that leather.

The game also appears not to have taken any shortcuts with shadows. All characters (including NPCs) exhibit correctly shaped shadows. There is no pixelation or flickering readily apparent in the shadows either.

Blitzball's cast shadows :CONFIRMED

The same goes for enemies big and small.

 However some of the graphical limitations from the PS2 version are also apparent here. In the PS2 version the VFX layer used for item/spell effects was the same one used for some of the environmental effects. Long story short sometimes environmental effects disappear for a split second whilst the item/spell effect animates. So far I've only noticed this in underwater segments of the game where the water shimmer will disappear for a split second and making the scene look flat and less convincing for little while.

Also almost none of the objects in the world that look like they should be light sources actually illuminate characters as they pass-by (though baked environmental shadows shade correctly). I can't remember if this was the case with the PS2 version or not (and I don't know if the PS3 version includes this). But something to keep in mind.

Generally speaking the game looks clean, sharp and colourful.
With the exception perhaps of one in-game location I've taken to calling 'Shimmering Hill':

Shimmering Hill

The lack of texture filtering on this scene in the PS2 version made it easily the ugliest spot in the entire game. The shimmering effect is still in the Vita HD version but the smaller screen makes it a little harder to make out.

The pre-rendered sequences in the game also look a little flat (though that was always the case) and not 100% pin-sharp but they don't appear to be a blurry mess either.

Don't go outdoors...it be three-dimensional out there:

Edit:  Graphics Consistency

[Having now completed the game] Other things that have bothered me is that the presentation in the game is inconsistent.  In the original FFX there were 3 types of character models (field, battle, cutscene), whereas in the HD version there are only 2 (field/battle and cutscene).  

The problem is the game mixes and matches them; sometimes you will have one frame in a cutscene with character models of two different qualities standing right next to each other.  In another scene, hilariously enough, I found that the game would alternate back and forth between low-poly fish-eyes Rikku and high-poly green eyes Rikku everytime the camera switched back to her...well, to its credit the game is impressive when it comes to loading different character models in and out but a bit of consistency would be nice here.

Performance

MGSHD was an interesting collection in that it improved the graphics and framerate but the loading times actually increased over the original game (which was near load-less).

FFXHD performs well on the Vita for the most part. The game maintains a solid 30 FPS almost all the time and when coupled with the smooth animations and pretty colours it looks great in motion...99% of the time.

Occasionally the game will hiccup just for a split second whilst it does something new. Sometimes it will be the way 'screen-crack' animation before battles appears to be a little rougher than normal. Once I got a really minor snag when I attempted to summon Valefore. There really isn't any rhyme or reason to it; it happened once under conditions x and I simply couldn't replicate it.

The frame-rate is mostly a smooth 30 but in one scene where there were a lot of NPCs on screen (the scene where Yuna does her first summoning) the game chugged, only to go right back again to a smooth 30 during a close-angle when fewer NPCs were around (and then back to chugging again for a second when it returned to a wide-angle with all the NPCs). I've not seen that happen in any other scene so far and nothing like that during exploration or battle. If you are worried about it being a Jak Trilogy all over again though you can put your fears to rest.

edit: After the first four hours of the game there are actually many sequences where the framerate drops into the 20s. It happens mostly when your entire party plus a few NPCs are all gathered in one place (which in the story is every other scene).  Revisiting the choppy areas in the end-game (when there are fewer NPCs) was silky smooth though.  When there are fewer characters around (highways, battle) the framerate is mostly solid with the exception of when you use the Good Luck move.

The load times are also universally better than the PS2 version (battle-to-field/indoor-to-outdoor/cutscene-game) and actually some of the snappiest loading I've seen on the system. Even loading and saving save games is pretty much instant. There is just...one minor grievance. This thing:

The thing I was am grieving over

This loading screen animation is new to this version of FFX. This animation will appear seemingly at random during scene transitions or when moving between places (never during the field/battle transition). Some of the loads are so fast you'll only see this thing flash up for a split-second and then you are loaded into the next part...making you doubt if you saw it at all. At other times the animating icon will appear during the entirety of the load and at other times it simply won't appear at all and you'll get a graceful black fade-out instead. You can sometimes even pass back and forth between the same doorway having it only appear sometimes but not at others. It is really random. Given how fast the load times are I am not sure why they just didn't stick to a simple (and consistent) fade to black.

Sound

FFXHD is based on the International version of FFX (complete with the advanced sphere grid) but has had the Japanese voices added back in. There is no option to change the text or voice language for the JP release of FFXHD. The game is around 3600MB so maybe they felt they couldn't cram in dual-audio. That also means the game has the same uneven presentation as the original, where NPCs sometimes voice but sometimes don't. It would have been nice to see NPCs get voices added at the very least.

The game also has a reworked soundtrack (with no option for the original) which uses real instruments. It's a mixed bunch but they tend to evoke the right emotions. Parts of the game that didn't hit me the first time I played them (the gunner begging Yuna to allow him to protect Kilika) definitely got me this time around.

There are no options to alter the balance between SE/BGM/Voice but the game seems to have done a good job of balancing them anyway.

Sound effect quality is also mostly good. Even in stereo through headphones it is possible to hear from which direction the deep humming of the podiums in the 'trials' is coming from. Attacks hits such as Tidus's sword attack sounds as convincingly slicey as Yuna's staff swing sounds whimpy. The only sound effect that sounds odd to me so far is the sound of picking up spheres during trials; they make a sound that is a little too high pitched and I detected a bit of cracking.

There is one pretty big fault with the sound though; lip synching. It appears the voice audio and lip synching are ever so slightly out of sync (maybe by a 1/5 of a second). It's pretty distracting. This isn't the first game I've experienced this either (Time Travellers) but given no one else has said anything so I'm inclined to believe this is a quirk of playing the game off a memory card (IIRC Vita memory cards read/write is slower than a Vita game card). I hope that a patch is released for this. It does make me worry a bit about the digital only FFX-2HD Vita release for the English speaking markets though. Get it sorted SE!

Gameplay

It's mostly the same...well, mostly. So it is a shame that there is no option to disable or skip tutorials (come to think of it you can't skip cutscenes either. Don't worry, you'll beat Yunalesca first time...probably).

The biggest change is the 'swipe menu'. It hides off the left side of the screen. Swipe the touch screen right and you pull it out. Swipe left and it slides back out of view.

Swipe Menu

You can summon this menu in the field:

When used in the field you get two options which allow you to insta-heal your entire party in an automated way and so removing the bureaucracy of post-battle healing. You can select to heal using:

1. Healing magic: The game attempts to heal everyone whilst trying to keep from wasting MP.

2. Items: the game prioritises using low quality healing items (potions over hi-potions for example).

After you tap the icon you get a text box in the middle of the screen saying who did the healing (and the MP cost to them) or the items used.

You can also summon this menu mid-battle (screen below) but here it does something different; it lets you toggle between long/short summon animations mid-battle (no skip option unfortunately):

Battle UI

My favourite part of this conversion has to be the battle UI. Many Vita games simply shrink down the UIs of their console counterparts 1:1 with no regard for legibility. FFXHD Vita does not make this mistake. The Vita game has a jumbo-sized UI that makes everything easily readable without cluttering things too much.

The only gripe I have with the battle UI is that there is a split-second period between moving the cursor between menu items that makes it harder to quickly move through lists. This is only in the battle UI and nowhere else (and doesn't appear to be caused by frame issues). Weird. At the moment it isn't a big deal as I don't have many things to choose from but later on in the game it could be a pain.

Edit: After completing the game I found that because I relied on the memory cursor this wasn't a big a deal as I thought it might be.

The rest of the game UI is not quite as jumbo sized. But given that FFX is not text heavy it isn't as big a deal as it could have been (and the UI isn't super tiny either). You can see the examples of the UI here:

Party Menu

Pressing Triangle calls/dismisses the party menu smoothly. It doesn't feel like the game is doing something heavy to get the menu to open at all. It's strange that this particular part of the UI is so plucky when the battle UI isn't.

Sphere Grid

Sphere Grid zoomed-out

Well, those are my impressions so far. If SE can get the lip-synch issue sorted and give us an option to banish the loading-animation I'd say this would be a pretty close to perfect.

Digital Importing: Mandatory game installs a game changer?

I don’t celebrate Christmas, but if I am sure many of you who did got some boxed games as presents.  We love displaying our possessions and having something tangible to claim ownership of.  This goes double for avid importers because just having a game that won’t be out in other parts of the world makes you the envy of those around you (and in my humble opinion, superior to them in almost every way).  You can’t do unboxing porn of a digital game after all.  And owning something marked with scrawling foreign characters just looks cool.

But I have to wonder if, going forward, opting for digital might not become a more popular choice for importers.  I know many people who choose digital as their preferred way to get access to Japanese games on the Vita.  This is thanks in part to the system and network not locking people out from accessing Japanese content.   In addition importers can get access to the games they want on the day of release rather than waiting up to a week or having to contend with pricey mark-ups from dedicated import resellers. 

There are increasingly fewer downsides to importing digitally as the services become more robust; during the PSP days and the inception of PSN many titles never made it to digital; some titles like Crisis Core and Kingdom Hearts are still conspicuously absent.  This is still the case with PS3 games today.  However Sony has taken efforts to ensure that games for the Vita (and PS4 going forward) all get digital counterparts.  Digital versions of games are also coming packed with their own pre-order goodies (FFXHD coming with FFXIII-3 DLC for example) meaning that you don’t miss out as much by not going for a boxed copy or retail; retail being problematic when your closest Yodabashi Camera is an ocean away.  Pricing for games on the JPN PSN has also been quite fair with prices being around 1000 yen lower for digital copies and cheaper in real terms (cheaper than retail).

I’d say the biggest hurdle that puts importers off digital is the poor cost:value ratio for Vita memory cards (read: they are insanely overpriced) and the relatively small size of many PS3 HDDs.  It’s true; storage space is a concern for digital importers who don’t want to deal with the inconvenience of moving content onto their computers or PS3s.  But this got me thinking…given that the PS4 requires all games to be fully installed (including disk based games) doesn’t that make space a non-factor in choosing whether you import physically or digitally?  That 40GB digital game sitting on your HDD is ultimately going to take up the same amount space as the physical version is after it finishes impressing the shape of its install arse-print into the HDD upholstery.  Some people might have capped download limits which make going digital impractical given that PS4 games are in the region of the tens of gigabytes.  But assuming you don’t does this impact your choice to choose digital for importing?

I look forward to the release of Ryuu ga Gotoku Ishin! for the PS4 as right now there isn’t a whole lot to play for the system.  It is going to be the first big Japanese PS4 release and one that looks like it will be a lot of fun going by the trailers.   This I think would mark the first time the RGG series has had a digital release on a home console (given that a digital release is all but a foregone conclusion).

Sure, I don’t get resale value but I’d imagine for many importers selling their games on isn’t something they ever had in mind.  And for those collection enthusiasts who love to display their games physical might still be their preferred choice.  For many though, between the convenience of downloading, the increasingly wider availability of digital games and the fact that storage is not going to be a consideration, they might well start opting for digital importing.

At least, for home console releases I know I will.

Now…if we can only see about getting Sony to work on allowing us to use Paypal to pay off our purchases on the Japanese PSN so we can do away with the points cards middle-men.

Import: Ryuu ga Gotoku 5: Yume Kanaeshi Mono (PS3) Review

Import: Ryuu ga Gotoku 5: Yume Kanaeshi Mono (PS3) Review

So you know the deal, Ryuu Ga Gotoku/Yakuza is a Japanese take on the open world game that is primarily narrative focused.  The open world acts as a setting for various distractions and mini-games rather than a sandbox that lets you chaotically have your way with it; the world is not your oyster but there are plenty of oysters to be found. 

The newest entry is for better and worse a Yakuza game through and through.  It still has the same bizarre mixture of comically absurd machismo and borderline implausible scenarios for side-quests but at the same time the formula is beginning to show its age; it's become obtuse with dozens of game systems that require too much up front explanation, the story and game elements exist (almost) in two different universes and this time around there are a host of technical issues as well. 

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Ryuu Ga Gotoku 5 is a massive game; 5 cities, 5 protagonists and a 40-50 hour story (making the game around twice as long as any other entry in the series).  Each protagonist has their own 10-ish hours long story which details what they have been up to since Yakuza 4 and pushes each of them towards a fateful reunion in Kamurocho.

The Kiryuu and Saejima stories in particular are the highlights of the game.  In Kiryuu’s we get to see him having realistically moved on from the orphanage to living alone under a pseudonym.  His struggle to keep his old identity a secret and just move on means he keeps everyone at arm’s length and it makes for some very interesting character drama; Kiryuu’s stoic character is transformed into something more interesting simply by the change of context.   This culminates in a brilliant battle royale of Dynasty Warriors’ proportions. 

Saejima’s story sees Saejima turn himself into the police to continue serving his sentence from the last game; a kind of self-imposed trial by fire that Saejima sees as necessary to toughen him up before he assumes a big role in the Tojo Clan.  He spends the majority of his time paired with a new character who acts as a little brother to Saejima; this character pairing provides Saejima with the sounding board necessary so that his convictions, acceptance of the Yakuza way of life and sense of honour can be explored.  

Akiyama’s story feels somewhat forced in because…well, I guess you have to find a way to fit someone in when you accidentally make them a fan favourite. 

Newcomer Shinada is one of the most interesting characters of the bunch and his back-and-forths with the antagonistic loan-shark Takasugi makes for some really great screen chemistry between the two.  Unfortunately his story arc is only tangentially related to the core story and it wouldn’t have been that strange had it been entirely omitted.  Shinada is a character you will definitely want to see more of the future though.

Each character has their own fighting style and…well, it’s Yakuza, you know the drill right by now.  There is very little in the way of new game mechanics here that fundamentally mix up how you approach the game; you now have Climax Heat moves (which you can activate after building up a bar powered by regular Heat moves), you can learn how to turn meals into enduring buffs (going over 100% health, ATK up etc) but all of these things simply add more layers onto the same game you’ve been playing.

Fortunately the above changes to the game systems don’t detract from the game itself.  In other areas however, it feels like the side-content and main-content are at war with each other.  For example you get desperate call for help, the music changes to something high tempo and you rush to aid the caller…only to have your route cut off by an obnoxious unavoidable side-quest/new mechanic tutorial. The tutorial in question also happens to be comical, and totally at odds with the serious situation it just interrupted; making it not only pace-killing, but mood-killing as well.

But it gets worse.  NPCs often spend ages unnaturally explaining the mechanics of an upcoming section to you (and in some sections the mechanics are never used again).  Upon entering the gameplay segment the game spits out the same advice again but in the form of a formal text tutorial.  In one section I was tasked with delivering ramen on behalf of an old-man that had slipped on some ice; this was an unsolicited mini-game that I could not avoid.  After receiving an unhelpful double-layered explanation I proceeded to fail at the mini-game (which was over far, far more quickly than the tutorials/explanations) and the side-quest ended with no option to retry.  The whole thing came of as clumsy and over-engineered.

The level of explanation is so great (and cumbersomely presented) that the developers even included the option to toggle the level of text-hints.  And even at the lowest level you are bombarded with them.  This really begins to bog the experience down when you get to take control of Haruka mid-game as all her mechanics and gameplay systems are new which necessitates tutorial after tutorial after tutorial.

It’s perhaps not surprising then that one of the best sections in the game is Saejima’s story; there are almost no side-quests because there are no NPCs to act as side-quest triggers.  The moment he enters a town though, all that goes out of the window.  This is made worse by the huge number of arbitrarily placed invisible walls which limit where you can cross streets (making navigation a chore).  In addition the large number of NPCs in these areas not only drag the framerate down, but make navigation slow and awkward; it is hard to feel immersed in the world when you have to resort to knocking NPCs over like dominos to be able to move along the narrow pathways.

You can’t help but play the game (after it’s mammoth 8GB install) and feel that it is a technical dinosaur.  The NPCs crash the frame rate, indoor and outdoor areas are still separated by load times, and the transition between fights and exploration is awkward.  The developers talked up the new smoother shift between the two but it only works sometimes; you walk into an NPC, the NPC turns around pissed and walks up to you demanding a fight, fists go up and start flying; that is how it is supposed to work and 1/10 times that is how it goes down.  More often than not though you will trigger a fight, the game will freeze for a second and then an NPC will approach you looking angry, the game will freeze again whilst the fight loads, and the NPC will take that opportunity to awkwardly switch to their default expression (normally a really awkward smile), you wait for the HDD and disc to finish chugging the necessary data out and when the game is ready to progress, the NPC, having finished their aggro-break, returns to their fighting expression.

It’s not just from the technical perspective that the seams of the game are really apparent.  Different game mechanics (chasing someone down, fighting, driving) feel like they all exist in their own self-contained boxes and each part feels like it was made separately from everything else.  There are times during the story where events unfold unnaturally so that they inevitably culminate in either a fight or a chase sequence because…well, that’s all the developers have as far as gameplay goes.  Whereas many games these days allow for smooth switching between running, gunning, fisty-cuffs, driving and so on, Yakuza has a different rule set for each style and feels awkwardly outdated for it.

The game feels like it was assembled piece-meal with little regard for how all the pieces would fit together in the end.  If I had to describe Yakuza 5 to someone it would be tell them that it plays the way people who don’t play videogames think videogames play: it’s awkwardly game-y with different ‘game’ elements (exp, button prompts, UI elements) that have all been put together rather haphazardly.  

This is one game that doesn’t need to be localised and makes for a great allegory on how Japanese game development has fallen behind the west.

SCORE: 5/10

The game has some really interesting parts on the story that just about stop it from being an outright bad game, but the technical issues and increasingly outdated presentation drag it down from being good either.  You can probably find something better to do with your time.

The terrifying legion: Why fanboy-ism isn't cute.

So it is well known to many readers that recently I took issue with the way JRPG stalwart developer Nihon Falcom has been conducting its' business.  But today I want to talk about something tangentially related to it; fanboyism.

After taking my opinions to various fansites and forums, expecting to find people who would agree with me on how we fans have been given the rough end of the stick, instead I was met with something that made my stomach churn.  Open hostility? Mass flaming?  All manners of profanities?  Actually no, none of that.

What I found was that the fan-base has actually become a kind of corporate shield for Nihon Falcom.  Fans scrambled to offer up excuses as to why Falcom has conducted itself.  Not explanations; excuses.  These weren't just Nihon Falcom fans, but what I have come to term 'Nihon Falcom Apologists'.  These are people who have taken up the developer's responsibility to conduct PR where the developer has consistently failed to do so.

Now to be fair, this phenomenon exists in all fanbases, but it is normally counter-balanced by the presence of long-term cynical fanbase.  In the case of Nihon Falcom this isn't the case; Fan apologists make up almost the entire fanbase because Nihon Falcom's style of games are built on the premise of accepting compromise (fans agree to overlook the low tech nature of Falcom's games in exchange for the gooey gamey goodness within).  Fans go around apologetically taking up the Falcom mantle but relinquish their role as critics.  A role which is not only expected of them, but a social responsibility and a cornerstone in preventing anti-consumer practice.

The kind of behaviour listed above is a betrayal and reversal of consumer trust.  We trust the consumer base to act as a barrier between abusive corporate practice and ourselves.  We trust that consumer base because, at heart, they share the same interests we do.  But what happens when that consumer base starts setting up a barrier from the corporate side of the fence?  You end up with the fanbase itself perpetuating anti-consumer practice through legitimisation.  Quite why this kind of sentiment is allowed to spread on forums despite being damaging to the community as a whole is beyond me.  In all likelihood most forum administrator's simply don't see the relationship between extreme fandom and perpetuation of anti-consumer sentiment.

I want to state in no unequivocal terms that the consumer has a responsibility (not just an expectation) to side with other consumers.  Ideally that wouldn't necessitate siding against a company, but inevitably there will be times when that is exactly what it entails.

Woe is this blog: Criticism and Negativity. Nihon Falcom vs Fans.

Some people reading this blog, especially the reviews, might have noticed how negative and picky it is.  There is a reason for that; in order to provide good critical coverage of a game it is necessary for me to be extra vigilant in catching problems that most reviewers miss.

The reason most other importers miss things I pick up on could simply be down to their language skills (they can’t review story content or characterisation because their Japanese isn’t strong enough), but I think the privileged access angle is also in play here; many importers are in the privileged position of being able to access games you guys can only dream of playing…or at least that is what they are going to tell you to justify the high price of their imported game.  You, only armed with Google Translate are pretty much at the mercy of what they say.  It’s like someone taunting with you with what they claim is the world’s tastiest baguette…only you can’t have it.  I like to think my reviews act as counter friction to that kind of almost elitist outlook.

But I do sometimes worry that this blog is putting out too much negative karma.  I started it after all because I was excited about these games and wanted to share something I loved with other people.  Somehow that got lost in the sea of critical writing. I am planning to try and write something more positive in the future but today I want to take one more chance to be a downer.

This time though it isn’t a critique of a game that I am being a drag on, it’s a particular game company and their questionable sales practices.  The company in question is Nihon Falcom; developer behind hardcore fan favourites such as Ys and the Legend of Heroes games.  This company has an incredible reputation between its fans (both Japanese and International) for putting out technically modest games that make up for it with rock-solid writing, and engaging gameplay that tickles one with the details into a messy geekgasm.  Being a small company most fans are happy to overlook the rough edges in their games because these games have it where it counts.  I’m not about to detract from that, but I do feel that many people outside of Japan need to have their attention drawn to the Nihon Falcom of recent years which is guilty of numerous accounts of anti-consumer practices.

Many of the West can be forgiven for having never heard of this side of Nihon Falcom because by the time their games are translated and released they have been patched numerous times and bought to a spit shine.  In Japan however the last three major Legend of Heroes releases have all been troubled by bugs (many game breaking) that were so pejorative that one can only draw the conclusion that Nihon Falcom has begun routinely putting out games it knows are broken (to meet quarterly release schedule expectations) at the cost of their most supporting fans.

A quick recap:

-The Legend of Heroes: Ao no Kiseki (PSP) released with a game breaking save glitch bug that kicked in near the end of the game.  Nihon Falcom has not acknowledged this let alone apologised.  To this day fans are using work arounds.

-The Legend of Heroes: Zero no Kiseki Evolution (Vita) was released for the Vita with dozens of game freezing glitches.  Some reports suggest that the problem was so pervasive that many took to manually saving the game after each fight…when they weren’t getting freezes on the save screen that is.  These bugs were extremely common and would appear just as you went about the core story.  In other words, there was no conceivable way they could have been missed in testing: Falcom released the game to paying fans knowing full well it was a broken mess.  A month after release the game was patched and now runs effectively bug free. But it still begs the question as to why this happened.  

-The biggest problem however is the recent release of The Legend of Heroes: Sen no Kiseki (PS3/Vita).  This game has bugs such as voice samples not playing correctly but most worrying is the length of the load times (and the frequency).   The PS3 version has frame rate issues even during cutscenes. It is also pretty bad (especially when you consider the mandatory install) in the load time department but the Vita version is simply inexcusable.  Fans are scrambling to try and enjoy the game; many of them swapping over to SSD drives for the PS3 version. 

Reviews scores on Amazon have completely crashed.  Nihon Falcom could not NOT have known about the game breaking load time issues but released the game again using the logic that they could patch it later.  In fact their Twitter representative has gone on file to say that the first patch (of many!?) is coming out on the 10/3 (tomorrow).  I decided to write this blog now to keep things topical (we will no doubt see a flood of load time comparison videos soon).

We are not really sure if a PS3 version is even coming as the language used was vague.  As of yet there has been no apology; Falcom goes right on ahead, content to patch major issues with games post release rather than being honest with its fans.

Nihon Falcom prides itself on making games for a particular fan base.  Sure its games are a little rough around the edges but they have heart.  Nihon Falcom has that mutual understanding with its small fanbase and that is how it has made its way. But in light of way Falcom has been conducting itself of late many fans are no longer happy to make concessions to Falcom; the relationship, in the eyes of many fans, has become exploitative.

Fans have cheered Falcom on, put up Falcom's promotional banners on their webpages, convinced their friends to try these games and made tear-soaked speeches excusing the rough graphics and animation.  To that Falcom has responded by marketing their games as ‘rough around the edges but good where it counts’; Nihon Falcom has taken fan reveration for their games and spun it into part of their marketing hype, and at the same time released shoddy, even broken products now 3 times in a row.

I for one will not be pre-ordering or buying Falcom games at launch.  I encourage many importers out there to do the same.  Fandom is something earned, not something to be exploited.

Edit: It has come to my attention (after reading one of my sources more carefully) that the PS3 version of the game is also getting patched.  The initial Tweet from Nihon Falcom was vague about this but the cited sources cleared that up.  I hope to see dramatic load time improvements to both versions of the game tomorrow.

Update: Today the game was patched and load times on the Vita version were reduced (the PS3 patch hardly changed anything).  ATM the Vita's load performance is on par with the PS3 version; still very slow.

However when Falcom's Twitter representative was quizzed on whether any of the upcoming patches would reduce the load times further they responded 'We are hard at work on another patch for both the PS3/Vita versions of the game'.  They don't say outright that the patch will improve load times further but it does suggest that.

No details or date for the next patch has been given at this point in time.

Update 2:  Nihon Falcom have announced that the 1.02 patch is set to arrive sometime in the 1st third of November.  The patch will:  
-Further reduce load time
-Reduce frame drops
-Fix typos
-Fix text that is overflowing from text boxes

Update 3: The 1.02 patch went up on the 7th November.  Falcom announced this the day before it went up.  The load times have indeed been reduced (or outright removed in some areas such as between strings cut scenes).

However my impression of playing the game is it still feels slow compared to conventional expectations of load times in 2013.  You wouldn't call it 'fast' by any means.

The game varies from acceptable to 'on the longish side'.  There is still room for improvement but the game in it's current state is eminently playable without being a major drag.  

Yakuza Kenzan! Review (PS3). Yakuza in medieval Japan shouldn't work this well.

Ryuu ga Gotoku, known as Yakuza in the West, is SEGA's on-going crime saga.  And while we are still waiting for news of Yakuza 5's English localisation, Japan has many Yakuza games we still haven't gotten.  One of the most interesting, and most 'Japanese' of them is 'Ryuu ga Gotoku: Kenzan!'.

Kenzan was conceived as a stop-gap game; a way to tide over the audience and experiment with the PS3 hardware and a new game engine whilst development on Yakuza 3 was under way.

What came about was an interesting mix of next-gen ideas and technology that was still half rooted in last-gen (PS2) game design.  This is very much Yakuza 2.5.  And if that was all this game had to offer it would have been a crying shame. Fortunately Kenzan has an interesting setting (The Warring States era Japan in the 1600s) and new characters to go with it (motiffed on characters from the series past).

The story centres around the legendary figure Miyamoto Musashi; a samurai who started from nothing and rose to be a powerful and influential figure (well, so the legend goes).  Musashi, filled with hopes and dreams of becoming a powerful samurai finds himself unable to refuse an invitation to join the military and prove his worth in battle.  But things quickly go very wrong and Musashi is forced into hiding.  He assumes a new identity and lives his life unassumingly until one day fate intervenes.  A girl comes to him with a request; to track down and kill her parents’ killer; Miyamoto Musashi.   Musashi having no recollection of such a killing takes on the request on and so begins the search for his doppelgänger.

Those who are not well versed in the story of Miyamoto Musashi need not worry as this is a very fantastical take on it.  Likewise, those who have never played the Yakuza series before can jump in here quite easily as the game is not attached in any meaningful way to other entries.

The story builds intrigue well by introducing new characters, plot threads and taking time to illuminate the back stories and motivations of the supporting cast.  Sadly, although the game builds intrigue well the final reveal that ties the story threads together comes across as necessary formality to make sense of it all.  Intrigue works well when you are given glimpses of something, and when it is finally revealed it was more than you had anticipated.  With the reveal here you pretty much get what you saw. It is a shame that the reveal that ties together all of the story threads comes across more like air wheezing out of a deflating balloon than an epic bang.    

The story is based around themes such as male friendship (forged in battle, of course), finding someone stronger and other samurai genre cheese.  Most of it comes across believably enough that you can buy into it but there are points where the samurai rationale of doing things is a little too hard empathise with.  Granted, there is a culture and generation gap in values but I felt this was one area that the writers could have spent a little more time on to help the audience truly empathise with the characters.  By the end of the game I couldn’t help but feel that some of the characters’ machismo made them come across like caricatures of themselves. 

Before going any further I have to make a confession.  I tried to complete this game several times, several months apart.  Being well versed in the series I played Hard mode each time and stopped playing a few hours in at more or less the same point.  I made a point to force myself to complete this game recently by setting the game to Easy and rushing through without entertaining the side content.   As a result I can’t speak for all scores of mini-games and sidequests in the game.  This is strictly a review of the main story route through the game.  I can say that I recommend playing the game on Normal as Hard isn’t really particularly more challenging (enemies are massive damage sponges) and Easy is so easy that almost dissuades you from even bothering with the side content.   Normal should strike a good balance between being challenging and simply trying your patience.

As mentioned earlier this is game is running on a new engine build for the PS3.  The previous Yakuza games had you running over static backgrounds played from various isometric camera angles.  Kenzan is the first fully 3D Yakuza game and is done through a behind-the-character 3^rd person view.  This change makes exploring the several hub-areas in the world a lot more convincing.  The game is at its best when it is able to sell you on its’ surroundings and get you to buy into the feel of the world; the sense of oppression ordinary people feel from those in higher positions in society, the importance of one’s standing, the treatment of women in the red light districts and so on.  It is when the game flashes glimpses of the dregs of medieval Japan that it is at its most alluring. 

Although exploring the areas and running into various sidequests is interesting,  getting around is inconvenient; you are often made to run back and forth over long distances and although the in-game transport system helps alleviate that a bit, you will still find yourself impatiently running past enemies and ignoring sidequests simply to get at the meat of the game.  Having the in-game transport allow you to jump to more locations would have been nice.

Still, this is a Yakuza game and as such you’d expect plenty of comical hyper-violence.  That is all intact here but instead of having a massive pool of different moves you have 4 fighting styles; The fast bare-handed style which leaves you open to sword attacks, the single katana style which is has a good balance of speed and power, the 2 katana style which is quite weak but allows you to block attacks on all sides, and finally the broadsword style which allows you to heft around massive weapons, flattening your enemies. 

You can switch between the different styles on the fly with a press of the d-pad but you will find it quite hard to switch between styles in the middle of combat without creating space specifically to do so; the switch between styles doesn’t transition as smoothly as you might think so you won’t be mixing things up mid-combo. Still, when I was fighting away with any one style I really appreciated the juicy feel the slicing has to it thanks to the clear hit sound effects and bright orange cut marks that score enemies bodies on contact; you get very clear audio-visual feedback as to whether you are hitting and how hard.

I found that there didn’t seem as great a variety of moves as in previous games. In Kenzan you are limited to getting moves from watching NPCs who exhibit ‘martial art’ like motions and from dojos.  The levelling up system in the game doesn’t contribute to making you more versatile and is mostly just for decoration; you level up in a linear way and there is no system to assign experience points towards different attributes or skills; you become stronger without becoming more versatile.  Because your default character build is almost static (new skills are normally attributed to a particular fighting style rather than the character, and even then they tend to enhance existing skills rather than giving that style more utility) you don’t really change up your strategy as you learn new skills, so the combat toward the end can start to feel stale.

The fighting in the game feels simplified overall and has an almost arcade feel to it but that isn’t just because of the simplification to levelling up.  As with previous games the Heat gauge builds as you kick ass, get it up high enough and you are granted access to some of the bone-crunching ridiculum this franchise does so well.   Unlike previous games though you don’t have to worry about Heat management as much; tap the square button to do weak attacks and then link a hard attack (triangle) and you pull of an anime-esque enemy crumple (complete with badass pose), hold that triangle button you can hold the pose, during which you will get extra Heat (and a lot of it at that).   The combat here is really more for breaking up the pacing and providing a videogame for the story to take place in.  It’s an accent rather than the attraction.

The main event is the story itself which is for the most part presented beautifully thorough high quality in-game cinemas (using enhanced character models).  The game often dips and back and forth between the high quality cinemas and lower quality in-game assets (mostly for dialogue heavy sequences). The result can be a little jarring.  Every time there is a major plot revelation you can count on the graphics suddenly scaling back so the characters can natter away about it for a few minutes until they reach some kind of resolution, at which point a high quality cinema will kick in again.  This happens constantly, sometimes several times over the course of a single conversation.

It is little presentation blemishes like that make the game feel like it hasn’t fully made the jump to the PS3.  A majority of the non-story dialogue and ambient dialogue from NPCs is delivered in text.   There is no smooth transition between indoor and outdoor locales.  And when you do make the transition the camera placement faces the character head on (great for framing the scene, not so much for the player who can’t see ahead of themselves).   In one part of the game you have to run across a field which is broken down into pitifully small sub-sections (each with loading screen transitions). There are little to no physics in the game; materials like flags which you would expect to be able to walk through impede your progress as if they were made of sheet metal.  This is a game is really more of a taste of what Yakuza would be like on the PS3 rather than an out-and-out example. 

Niggling presentation issues and shallow combat bring the game down a bit but this is still a fun romp through medieval Japan.  If you are new to the series or simply disillusioned with the annual releases you might find Kenzan is just what you need to respark your interest in the series.  It has its shortcomings but at only 18 hours long and a budget price tag it is a small investment of both your time and money.

7/10

Continuing my Imports Collection: Part 2!

Okay it is time for Part 2 of my import games collection.  This time we have two well known JRPGs, a visual novel and an oddity in my collection; a survival horror game.

Xenosaga Episode 1: Der Wille zur Macht

I got Xenosaga Episode 1 from PlayImport; an imports reseller on Amazon who I've come to trust for having decent delivery times and pricing. It set me back £14.62. 

I am about 25 hours into the game but finding the pacing is incredibly slow.  There was even one part where I was in a dungeon for almost 8 hours.  The combat itself is also slow, and despite being able to see enemies on the map you normally can't run past them as they are often placed at choke points.

Final Fantasy XII: International Zodiac Job System

I got Final Fantasy XII International Zodiac Job System in almost brand new condition (along with the bonus making of- DVD) for £29.81.  

I found that I had trouble getting into the game because of the slow pace and lack of story.  You can press one of the trigger buttons to initiate a frame-skip which allows you to speed your way through battles but even then you often feel like you are grinding through to the next sliver on unsatisfying character interaction.

Silent Hill 3

Another game courtesy of my friends at PlayImport at Amazon.  This cost me £21.82.

The cool thing about the Japanese version of this game is that it includes dual-language options. 

Fate Stay/Night [Realta Nua]

This one cost me an arm and a leg. I can't quite track down who I bought it from but it came from an Ebay seller.  The game was around £60. Taking into account the exchange rate at the time it was a fair price, but I ended up getting hit with customs charges as well (another £20 or so).

This game is actually 3 games in one. You can play the original Fate Stay story, or the two alternative takes on the story that were originally released as stand alone games.  You can unlock the alternative episodes from the flow-chart menu, but as I had never played the game I went through in order.  

This game is actually huge.  It took me close well over 80 hours to clear the first two stories.  According to the trailers it includes as much as 60 hours of voice acting; I can believe that.  

It also looks absolutely brilliant on the Vita display; very sharp and colourful.  The Vita is truly a brilliant machine for visual novels.