Lots of things planned, lots of art to and projects to finish - also a big update to my folio website coming soon!
Got another couple of games finished to write about as well, firstly:
Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland ( PS3 )
(Cover Art)
I've played Atelier Iris 1 and 2 so I went into this game knowing basically how this game should play out - and was pleasantly surprised after a few hours of play!
In a nutshell, its an awesome game, loads of replayability with different endings. It looks amazing, sounds amazing and crafting is super addictive, I just wish the game wasn't time restricted!!!
Graphics: Quite simply, it looks awesome. The 2d portraits by Mel Kishida used in conversations and story cut scenes are amazing, the characters are so clean, clear and full of expression.
The 3d character models are also flawless, high resolutions and amazing hand painted textures really make them pop. The enemies are equally as impressive, brimming with detail and expertly crafted. Its clear the character team did a really great job here.
(Conversation between Totori and Mimi one of the characters she meets on her adventure)
I noticed the environments are slightly lower in quality than the characters - there's a lack of Ambient occlusion in some areas which really pop out from the areas that do have it and the polycounts look much lower in general.
The odd texture seam here and there doesn't do them any favors either. I wouldn't say the explorable areas are uninspiring in design, but they certainly aren't taking my breath away, it seems as though the direction for the environment team was not as strong as it was for the characters.
I thought the color palette was almost a perfect match to the 2d Illustrations that Mel Kishida did for the original characters, which is not something you see everyday!!
The combat effects are amazing, and the super moves remind me a little of the 'over the top' final fantasy summon effects.
The font is super easy to read and the ui and menus are clean, clear and well designed.
Really no BIG issues with the graphics, its all very consistent, and I'm a sucker for awesome hand painted work.
Something else worthy of note is the expert shader work on the characters, some of the best cell shaded work Ive seen so far. The hair deserves an extra special mention - the anisotropic specular is easily the best I've ever seen done in this style, really top notch stuff.
Story: Without spoiling it, the story is really quite simple, Totori wants to become an adventurer so she can be strong enough to go and find her mom who was also an adventurer but disappeared when Totori was very young.
To become an adventurer like her mom, Totori needs to get an adventurers license, and to keep the license she needs to do a certain amount of jobs for people within a given time frame.
You'll meet a whole host of characters who want to help Totori on her way, and you'll have to choose who to take with you, which in turn will craft quite a unique little story. There is so much room for replayability here its not even funny!!
(Rorona, Totori & Sterk dialogue)
Of worthy note is the dialogue, not only is it really well written, its been expertly translated - no 'engrish' here.
Gameplay: Firstly the story is presented in 2d story cut scenes which is usually a painted background with emotive character portraits that slide in from both sides of the screen as well as voice overs to tell the story. The majority of Atelier Totori is played in full 3d and you have no control over the camera - this wasn't really a problem though, as I cant recall ever really needing to adjust it.
Loading screens separate all movement from area to area or movement from town to world map and vice versa but they are very quick and not jarring at all. IE you can run around in the main street in town, but walk up to a shop door = quick loading screen to pop you into the interior.
The main gameplay happens in 4 'areas':
An Atelier in town, where you will spend your time crafting in your cauldron, saving your game, checking reagents and taking part in many character building and story progressing conversations with various people.
A Town with people you can talk to, shop to buy things, pubs to find jobs and accept errands.
The World Map which shows you an overview of where you are able to explore and labels explorable areas.
Explorable areas where you will fight enemies and gather reagents for crafting.
(World map - the gold rings indicate explorable areas. It costs time to move between them!)
The goal of the game is to help Totori on her way to becoming a fully fledged adventurer. This essentially means taking requests and doing jobs for people, which is usually either crafting something, hunting a specific monster, or tracking down top quality reagents.
Once you've done enough jobs, you can upgrade your license, which unlocks more areas on the world map and increases the distance you can explore, and of course unlocks more difficult enemies and so on. This goes on for many years of game time. ( Sounds like a lot of time, but trust me its not )
Crafting is really what the atelier games are all about, and you can spend eons of time doing this alone as each reagent you find comes with a set of augments that are rated from E through A and S being SUPER great. Don't like this B grade water ? Find an A grade well!!
Crafting requires a recipe, (which you can purchase in stores or obtain from npc's) and reagents, (found by foraging out in the field or through defeating enemies). You'll want to try and find the highest quality reagents to make the best quality stuff IE explosive combat items that do more damage or armor that has more defensive capability and so on. All but the most basic of Armor, Weapons and items are crafted, so to make it easier your going to have to craft!
Combat is great in the Atelier games, its always been fast and responsive, something which in many rpg's can become really tedious after 20 hours or so. I thought due to the 3d nature of this game it would have been much slower than the strictly sprite based Atelier Iris 1 and 2, but they really nailed it. I can easily stab away at issuing my commands and speed combat up by skipping epic moves and so on - super handy when I bump into some low level beasties.
Combat is not random, its initiated by running into enemies or you can try hitting them with your staff for a chance at a surprise attack.
Once initiated, you issue commands to Totori + 2 other characters of your choice and like many traditional rpg's you wont actually control the characters or move them around the battle screen.
Each supportive character has HP and MP for health and magic and an action bar that accumulates with each action they take. It can be used to assist Totori in her attacks or defend Totori from incoming attacks. If unused, the bar fills right up and once full, unlocks that particular supportive characters super move. There are epic boss fights that will test an underdeveloped party!!
(Sterk busts out his super move 'Lichtschneiden'!!!)
Defeating enemies nets you a little cash, and some enemy specific reagents - that means farming aplenty!
The other way to accumulate reagents is to forage at foraging points inside one of the explorable areas on the world map. Foraging points are indicated with a speech bubble that pops up only if your near enough, which I thought was a nice touch. A little icon inside the speech bubble will give you some idea of how rare the ingredients area in that forage point.
Exiting the area and re-entering it will reset the enemies of any explorable area and the contents of the forage points - but that uses up more time! that means more farming!
Controlling Totori feels really good, props to the animators for getting that run speed both looking and feeling just right. The animation all round is spot on, especially on some of the massive creatures - props to the rigging / skinning guys for great work.
My biggest issue with Atelier Totori is that the whole game is time based. Combat, foraging, moving from a town to a foraging area on the world map, crafting etc etc it all takes time, thereby limiting the amount of things you can potentially do in any given amount of time.
12 months to achieve x - sounds like a lot of time but the fact is you can burn through 1 month just crafting a few things before heading out on an adventure!!! So believe me, choose wisely! Don't waste your time!
The kicker about this was that I felt that once the map really opened up and there was dozens and dozens of places for me to explore I wanted to spend more time, looting, plundering and whacking monsters. I think the designers should have opened it up to complete wandering free of time, upon completion of the game!
Audio: Quite simply, its awesome. The English voice over's are much better than I expected, and there is an all round quality to everything from combat sounds, effect sounds and music that to be brutally honest just wasn't there in the first 2 Atelier games.
Length: The game doesn't end if you die in combat, your simply resurrected and you loose some time recovering. But it does end, if you don't meet your license requirements for that time allotment. Therefor there are so many 'endings' to get based on choices you make in the time allotted. Thankfully, one play through can be done in probably 10 - 12 hours if your being thorough and taking your time. I've watched 2 play throughs of the game now and they yielded VERY drastically different 'endings'.
Overall: I like this game, it looks great, sounds great and it has oodles of replayability. Its a well crafted piece of art, and my hat goes off to the development team. If it wasn't time constrained and I was able to explore the world more, this would be a contender for my top 50 games of all time.
I also finished Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together over the Xmas break so Ill write something up about that shortly!
Happy New Year :)
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