• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Sonic the Hedgehog Community |OT2 Battle|

Status
Not open for further replies.

PKrockin

Member
The
enemy horde was annoying in how you were supposed feel like you were supposed to run through just mowing them down, but due to the mechanics you had to stop and strategically fight most of them. Kinda killed the mood and immersion tbh.

I've seen this sentiment before, but...
I kind of was tearing through them. Not without even stopping like bugs on the windshield but I got rid of them really quickly.
 

qq more

Member
You didn't play through the entire thing and didn't have to see the third chapter, though. The third chapter was just one HUGE MacGuffin quest that bored me to tears, and it made me finally learn that this game went 10-15fps in some places!

And you wanted me to waifu Towa instead of Toki. :p

"Which girl should I end with?"
"TOWA! She's soooo much better!"

I know and I'm glad I never touched that dumb game. It looked absolutely painful to play, but at the same time it became painful to watch half of the times.

And I never said it like that! omg stop making me look like one of those peopleeee

I said Towa because she's not as unlikable as everyone else!

FUCK
 
I know and I'm glad I never touched that dumb game. It looked absolutely painful to play, but at the same time it became painful to watch half of the times.

And I never said it like that! omg stop making me look like one of those peopleeee

I said Towa because she's not as unlikable as everyone else!

So this is the true QQ form
 

PKrockin

Member
I don't even remember which one is Toki and which is Tori.

The guys are the worst though and I just wanted both of them to die.

Edit: hold on a second Toki Tori is some other game, one of those is supposed to be Towa right? Holy shit lol i watched that game for hours, it's just so forgettable.
 

Noi

Member
I don't even remember which one is Toki and which is Tori.

The guys are the worst though and I just wanted both of them to die.

Tokitori!?

Toki_Tori_Coverart.png
 

Tizoc

Member
EDIT:

I'm 50% done making the DuckTales Remastered OT, but want someone to help in making Banners. For media I'll just link to the Duckumentaries as well as any officially released videos.
Schalla mind if I PM you the OT I wrote for some corrections please?

Tokitori!?

Toki_Tori_Coverart.png

That little guy's adorable, ya'all should def. check out the two games in the series...although whether
Toki Tori is a cannibal is left in the air...
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
And I never said it like that! omg stop making me look like one of those peopleeee

I said Towa because she's not as unlikable as everyone else!
But in order to waifu Towa, we had to go through some cutscenes with her. You did this.

In all seriousness, the best music in the game were these:
Garden Field Theme
Toki Battle Theme
Towa Battle Theme

Everything else is just disappointing coming from Koshiro. And he is my favourite composer of all time, so it pains me to say that.

And the anime thing was bleh. I think after actually starting the game for real, I disliked it instantly. It looked stupid.

Schala's Draft said:
Imageepoch’s initial idea is interesting, and in the hands of a better developer, it probably would have been neat. Even with that said, the hand-drawn animation aspect of it looks interesting for a few seconds until you realize how poorly-flowing the animations are, how jarring they look in the context of gameplay, and how limited the animations are. The defining idea for this game is pretty half-baked in execution. Satelight (Macross Frontier) did the animation for this game, with designs by VOfan (Bakemonogatari) being completely squandered in favour of looking like something incredibly low-budget.

EDIT:

I'm 50% done making the DuckTales Remastered OT, but want someone to help in making Banners. For media I'll just link to the Duckumentaries as well as any officially released videos.
Schalla mind if I PM you the OT I wrote for some corrections please?
Sure. I don't mind editing at all.
 

PKrockin

Member
lol, I had no idea that game existed until I said Toki and Tori, realized it didn't sound quite right, and googled those words.
 

BlackJace

Member
I thought it wasn't possible, but the final boss theme from Mario & Luigi RPG 3 has been topped. Yoko Shimomura stays winning.

Wow.
 
In all seriousness, the best music in the game were these:
Garden Field Theme
Toki Battle Theme
Towa Battle Theme

Everything else is just disappointing coming from Koshiro. And he is my favourite composer of all time, so it pains me to say that.
Call me crazy, but I rather liked the random island field theme too. Reminded me a lot of Skies of Arcadia, which is a good thing.

Shame it's attached to this game.

And if it's any consolation, while qq more might've found the game painful to watch, I... kinda didn't. Actually, I had a blast riffing the whole thing and lambasting its stupidity. Didn't look fun to play, though, especially with you taking on groups of three enemies or so, one at a time, slowly turning from enemy to enemy as each is felled... blech.
 
Make you wonder how the New series gets stuck with awful tracks.

BAH BAH

And correct me if I'm wrong but
The reason I like the Final Boss theme so much is because I feel like I hear a bit of Bowser's battle theme from the previous game in there which is just incredible. I don't know if it's my imagination or not
 

Tizoc

Member
I thought it wasn't possible, but the final boss theme from Mario & Luigi RPG 3 has been topped. Yoko Shimomura stays winning.

Wow.

Ugh wish I wasn't slacking on playing it ;.;
Well this game's a GotY 2013 candidate for me already anyways.
 
I think its the dark piano rifts that get me. It's so cool.
Those piano sections are the best bits about it along with the organ, very nice but otherwise I just found it kind of standard myself and perhaps a bit unfitting, not that I can really elaborate much further on that point.
But for me it's all about Dreamy Somnom labyrinth and Victory in the Dream World
 

qq more

Member
Is it me or is the enemy placement in Kirby Super Star's Milky Way Wish kind of cheap sometimes? I sometimes get attacked as soon as I enter the next room.

Kind of a minor complaint even though I just got a Game Over because of that. Fun mode otherwise.
 
Is it me or is the enemy placement in Kirby Super Star's Milky Way Wish kind of cheap sometimes? I sometimes get attacked as soon as I enter the next room.

Kind of a minor complaint even though I just got a Game Over because of that. Fun mode otherwise.

There are a lot of enemies in there, I admit...TAC is a literal pest in that mode but since you never permanently lose your powers, that kind of...

You got a GAME OVER? In a KIRBY GAME?!

...such a QQ...
 
A game over in Wind Waker....
I think the closest I ever came to that was inciting the wrath of the giant pig and luring it across Outset Island for my twisted amusement.

I will say that some Kirby games do have an ever annoying habit of dropping enemies on your face that also respawn if you dare to step away, it's like the real gimmick of the great cave offensive.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
Intro: Why are we doing this?

Time & Eternity was supposed to be an ambitious project for Imageepoch. The idea was to combine 3D environments with hand-drawn 2D sprites to create a cohesively-flowing RPG reminiscent of an anime. Now, innovation is excellent. It’s something that every game designer should aspire to doing. This allows us to experience many different things in video games, whether it’s ATB, Trinity Sight Systems, monster rearing, etc. However, there are certainly some cases where the game design and certain ideas may seem okay on paper, but their execution is simply heavily-flawed.

Enter Time & Eternity. One of the most flawed games I have had the misfortune of playing. The promise that Imageepoch had put forth of creating a game that felt like a player-controlled anime with hand-drawn characters roaming a 3D world never became fully-realized, and in essence, the idea is incredibly limiting for players in execution. There are a lot of good ideas in the game, but all of the potential it has is subsequently squandered due to its shortcomings, insipid narrative, unlikeable cast, and unbalanced performance.

Imageepoch’s initial idea is interesting, and in the hands of a better developer, it probably would have been neat. Even with that said, the hand-drawn animation aspect of it looks interesting for a few seconds until you realize how poorly-flowing the animations are, how jarring they look in the context of gameplay, and how limited the animations are. These small numbers of animations are repeated constantly, and they have short loops. The running animations also have short loops, and they’re simply awkward to look at in motion because they look incredibly unpolished. The defining idea for this game is pretty half-baked in execution. Satelight (Macross Frontier) did the animation for this game, with designs by VOfan (Bakemonogatari) being completely squandered in favour of looking like something incredibly low-budget. It looks awkward overall, and even though it’s one of the game’s selling-points, it certainly doesn’t achieve what it has set out to do. Those wishing to play something reminiscent of an anime in terms of aesthetics should really think of playing the plethora of other games that essentially do the same thing.​

Repetitive Narrative and Annoying Characters

In terms of a narrative, Time & Eternity follows Zack, a young man who has not even had his first kiss yet. At the beginning of the game, he is to be wed to Toki, the Princess of Kamza. As you can suspect, things go wrong, Zack dies, and Toki attempts to travel back in time to discover why these things are happening. Zack somehow follows her through time and occupies the body of her pet dragon Drake. He also discovers that Toki has another personality dwelling inside of her in the form of Towa, who’s far more aggressive and physically stronger than Toki. Thus, all three characters attempt to figure out who ordered the attack on their wedding, and try to live happily ever after in the end. The story’s pretty by the numbers. The key word for this game, though, is repetition. The wedding repeating time and time again is one of the draws for this game. Every time Toki/Towa and Drake/Zack fix the issue with their wedding, whether it’s assassins, the undead, etc., another problem arises. While this is an interesting idea, it’s rather awfully-managed, especially when taken in conjunction with other aspects of the game that can also be considered as repetitive. The game uses tired tropes, clichés and jokes over and over, hoping that players and spectators would eventually find them funny. Whenever the game tries to be serious, some jokes are scattered throughout the scene, but those jokes are simply awkward and ill-timed. Truly, there is something awkward about the story planning and scenario planning (and I was astounded to see that the story planner was Shoji Masuda (Emerald Dragon, Over My Dead Body PSP)). Nothing about the narrative seems cohesive at all, outside of—oddly enough—the repetition.

In terms of characterization, I think I have to say that this is one of the most unlikeable casts I have come across in any RPG, ever. Some of these characters are character tropes dialled up to 100, with the voice acting following suit. I’ve heard many of these voice actors before, and these are certainly not their best performances by any means. Regardless, every single character is vapid. They consist of one-note personalities with very little depth. Whenever the narrative tries to recognize some sort of depth for the character, a joke or a trope is recycled in order to maintain the one-dimensional personality that the character has. For instance, the main character Zack/Drake is a complete sex-raving lunatic. The only thing that seems to come out of his mouth is sexual innuendo, or a desire to make it with either Toki, Towa, or one of their friends. I certainly don’t mind my share of innuendo, but when it’s just constantly being brought up in conversation, there’s only so much I can take. It gets really annoying and obnoxious, to the point where I just want to strangle the character to make him shut up.

Most of the men in this game, to be honest, are pretty much like Zack to a degree. Ricardo endlessly flirts with Toki/Towa, and he’s basically a creepy stalker. One of the characters who you meet later on puts you through a trial where the best answers to the questions are the most perverse ones. The list can go on and on, really.

Additionally, Toki is supposed to be demure, quiet, impressionable, and submissive. She isn’t very worldly and simply wants to be an obedient housewife for Zack, and thus she seems like the perfect yin to Zack’s yang, like every other clichéd anime. Towa, by contrast, is the complete opposite, preferring to take the initiative. She’s more dominant, and she tends to get shit done. She’s also a tsundere, which goes without saying. Out of the cast, she’s perhaps the most likeable one, but the bar isn’t exactly high for that.

Toki/Towa’s friends don’t fare better either. Enda’s the loli girl who’s very loud and obnoxious at times, Reijo’s the uptight rich girl with a sad little past, and Wedi’s the busty glasses-wearing girl who trips a lot. And all these people do for most of the game is sit at Toki/Towa and Zack/Drake’s house and have a tea party while periodically sending you on fetch quests or talking about how Toki/Towa should have a shower and Zack/Drake gets the idea to sneak in and try to watch her (while failing until the end of the game where you do a sidequest to get the shower scene you’ve always wanted). They also involve themselves in the story a little bit, too, with each arc corresponding to one friend, but even if these arcs try to give these characters some depth, they end up being rather forgettable and you’re still stuck thinking that these characters are simply one-dimensional.​


Someone Please Hire a Better Cartographer

Okay. The story’s a bit of a bust. But what about the gameplay? Well! The rest of the game… is… not that great. This game is developed by a studio who purport themselves as the Saviours of the JRPG. As such, I assume that their perspective is to go back to traditional RPG game design while trying to attempt new things and build on those traditional game designs. However, everything that the developers have tried to include in this game is incredibly half-baked.

The world map is point-and-click again. The towns, are also point and click. The areas in the town is point and click. So essentially, city traversal is done via a menu. Most of the time, you’ll go through areas looking for people who want to give you subquests. Additionally, you can go to shops, which are run by the most soulless-looking NPC ever, who says the same voice clip repeatedly.

But never fear! There are dungeons to explore! And fields! But these have their share of problems too. The issue with many of the field and dungeons is that it’s plainly bad dungeon design. Now, then, the field HUD is composed of the minimap, and a little gauge on top of the minimap indicating when you’ll have an enemy encounter. This is almost reminiscent of that mechanic in The Legend of Dragoon, except this gauge fills rather quickly, and you’ll find yourself using items that slow down this gauge rather often. This is because the dungeon/field design is too big for its own good. Pathways are very large. The dungeon designs tend to be rather linear with the exception of field environments. The problem is that while most of these areas are too big, they have absolutely nothing of interest for the player. They’re large fields with literally nothing in them except little treasures sprinkled around here and there.

The map designers presumably tried to remedy this by introducing green crystals around the dungeons in order for players to quickly teleport themselves to the areas that they need to return to for a sidequest. However, this doesn’t exactly solve the issue that there is absolutely nothing of note or value in the fields to begin with, and thus it doesn’t warrant any of these dungeons to be as large as they are designed. I almost want to compare it with some of the dungeon designs in older RPGs, where certain maps are large and that provides the illusion that the dungeon is too big, or that enemy encounters are too frequent. Now, Imageepoch probably missed that point entirely, and designed a system where enemy encounters are naturally frequent with fields that are too big simply for the sake of being too big and looking like a spectacle. This, in turn, creates dungeon/fields that simply feel like a major slog, and too lengthy to boot. This is simply bad dungeon design and there is no other way to describe that. None of these dungeons do anything remotely interesting.

The minimap tells you everything you need to know about the dungeon, as does the game’s dungeon map. It marks where every crystal (save, warp, exit, teleport) is, where every treasure chest is, where every sidequest NPC/boss is, and the zones where you can go to for certain enemy encounters for sidequests. This means that there is little to no exploration involved on the player’s part.

Additionally, many of the landscapes are recycled. Many of the assets are, at least. Half of the time when I was streaming, people had to ask whether or not I was on a new map. This is because while most of the maps are different, they use the same backgrounds and assets, only with a filter applied. For the casual viewer or player who doesn’t really pay attention, they could swear that they consistently go through the same areas repeatedly, despite the areas being “new”. So basically, it boils down to feeling like the game has 4 main dungeons, when the reality is that there are more dungeons than that, but they’re all palette swaps of each other. This makes the game feel even more repetitive than it should.​


Character Duality Done Inadequately

Within the dungeons and field areas, you control either Toki or Towa depending on which level you’re at. On odd levels, you can control Toki. On even levels, you can control Towa. There is an item that you can use to switch characters whenever you want in the event that you need one over the other for a boss fight or a Memory Site, but these items are in limited supply. They have different dialogue reflecting of their personalities in story scenes. There was another game that did something similar to this “dual souls residing in one body” thing, and that was Last Rebellion… which was also pretty bad. I liked how Last Rebellion handled this aspect better. Switching characters was something the player could do on the fly, and each character had their own advantages and disadvantages.

Similarly, both Toki and Towa have their share of differences. For instance, Toki is more adept at fire/earth spells, and she is more proficient at firing her rifle. Towa, by contrast, is more adept at lightning/ice spells, and she’s more skilled with a knife. These two have different animations and animation times for certain things (ie: Toki will take longer to cast spells she’s not adept at casting, and her knife combos aren’t as fluid as Towa’s are). In the end, though, these differences don’t even matter. Both characters end up learning the same spellset (outside of the higher-level elemental spells which they have affinities for), and you learn the same Time Spells to alleviate the different animation times for the weapons for which the girls aren’t proficient with.​


Like Punch-Out!! But Not Really

The battle system is something reminiscent of Punch-Out!!. Basically, twitch responses are required in order to dodge enemy attacks, guard against attack, parry attacks, and time your own attacks. There is little change to the battle system over the course of the game in order to make it more difficult or more complex, even when you finally acquire Time Spells. Almost every single enemy you encounter is a palette swap. Even in some dungeons, where an enemy may be introduced for the first time, or a new palette swap is introduced for the first time, you might get another palette swap of that enemy later on in the same dungeon. These palette swaps tend to have the same AI, or the same attack patterns, where it’s easy to predict their next move or their initial attack. They might have been maybe 10-15 enemies in total throughout the whole game, and the rest of them were probably palette swaps. You’re essentially fighting the same enemies ad nauseam, mashing the O button in order to get enough SP to cast a OHKO spell. It’s very monotonous and it doesn’t make for an interesting experience at all.

Now, the battle system could have been interesting, if only it had not gotten trivialized at level three, where you acquire spells. The game has a skill tree, which looks a lot like a job tree, because of how everything is named. Every sidequest, main quest, and every battle will give you a certain amount of GP (gift points) to unlock new “jobs” on the job tree. Jobs aren’t equippable; they simply give you new skills to use. To be honest, I don’t really like this. Every new job basically unlocks one or two new skills for you to use, and you’re not really switching jobs or anything. You’re just combining the assorted skills you’ve unlocked into a deck and using them willy-nilly. Additionally, in order to learn some skills you’ve unlocked by unlocking the job on the job tree, you need to be at a specified level. Most of the time, you’re going to be at that specified level when you unlock the skill. But you have to wait until you level up next time in order to finally learn that skill. It’s pretty silly that instead of unlocking the skill right when you unlock the job, you have to wait until you level up the next time to actually be able to use it as opposed to unlocking it right on the menu as you unlock the job. It’s strange skill progression.

So, when you learn spells, it ends up trivializing the entire battle system. Spells are incredibly overpowered in this game, and typically, they can one-hit kill enemies. Later on, sometimes you’ll need two casts to get rid of enemies quickly, but this can be easily resolved by a split-second buff cast, and casting a higher-order spell. The game further trivializes the battle system by allowing the player to cast Time Spells. There are three major ones: one that speed up time for you, one that rewinds time, and one that freezes time. All of these spells can allow the player to get even more of an advantage that they don’t need. You can easily cheese the final boss with these spells if you really wanted to. The spell that freezes time can grant the player the time they need to cast spells that require a longer charge time. The spell that speeds up time can grant the player the time they need to cast more spells in succession. Finally, the spell that rewinds time can be used to fire two spells in succession as well. Because of how the spells trivialize the twitch-based Punch-Out!!-esque battle system design of the game, it renders the game incredibly easy, even on Normal Mode. Additionally, there is a mechanic called “Chemistry”, where you can combine two spells in order to cast status effects on enemies. For instance, if you cast Stone, and then Flare, you can burn the enemy. Or if you cast Lightning and then Ice, you can cast Silence on the enemy. This renders the game even easier than it already is.

Even without spells, the game’s battles aren’t very difficult to get through. Most of the time, you’ll find yourself dodging every attack, and coming out of battles barely scathed. With that said, it was irritating not being able to cancel an attack into a guard because the animated portrait just didn’t work that way.

There are a few boss battles that allow free movement, but even then, it feels like the character is moving as slow as molasses, and cast times tend to be incredibly slow. The hitboxes in these battles also seem to be inconsistent, where sometimes you think you’re going to be hit, but you aren’t… and others where you don’t think you’ll be hit, but you are.​


Even the Sidequests Are Like Palette Swaps

In terms of sidequests, they are nothing more than mere fetch quests, and even they are repetitive. Most of the time, you’ll be doing fetch quests for the same NPCs throughout the game. And most of the time, they’ll be asking for the same thing. Find 7 of these hamsters (three sidequests like this), find food for my baby/wife (multiple times), take this cake to people, talk to this person, take these writing utensils to this person in the dungeon, bring my son back home because he’s a vampire now, etc. They’re pretty one-note, and they’re all incredibly repetitive, because you’ll probably be doing the same sidequests per chapter. Sometimes you’ll feel the need to do them because they grant more GP than regular battles do. To be honest, because they’re repetitive, it’s probably not best to do them.

In terms of the Affection system, it’s incredibly shallow. If you order Drake to use buffs in-battle, you’ll increase Toki or Towa’s love stat. This affects the Affection meter for both girls. This doesn’t really mean much in the first playthrough, but in the second playthrough, it will affect whether or not you can get the true ending. You can also increase the love stat by talking to Toki/Towa at home during the tea parties, or by going to Memory Sites in dungeons and selecting the proper options (which will usually net you a picture for your gallery). This is also linked to getting lunches from Toki/Towa which you can use in battle to restore HP. Overall, this mechanic is pretty half-baked, too, since there isn’t much you have to do in order to make both girls affectionate towards Drake/Zack.​


Soundtrack Snoozer

Finally, the music. Yuzo Koshiro is my favourite composer of all time, and he contributed to the soundtrack for this game. Some of his compositions are rather decent, such as Garden Field Theme, Toki Battle Theme, Towa Battle Theme, and Archipelago Field Theme. Some of the compositions are rather bombastic, and the battle themes are good at trying to make combat more bearable. But all the other tracks on the soundtrack are either forgettable, or downright terrible. It’s honestly a complete surprise to me, considering Koshiro can do so much better than this. There’s not much else to say here other than to say that I’m incredibly disappointed with the soundtrack overall. There aren’t a lot of tracks to begin with, and because everything in this game tends to be repeated, you’re going to hear the same tracks over and over to the point of just getting sick and tired of them.​


Stay Away

Palette Swap: The Tea Party Game is one of the most repetitive games I’ve played in recent memory. Everything is repetitive, from the sidequests, to the enemy design, to the enemy AI/attack patterns, to the music, to the story arcs, to the dungeon design… everything. Essentially, it feels like you do the same thing ad nauseam until the game decides to end. I feel as though if this game were in the hands of a better development studio, it certainly wouldn’t feel as repetitive or as though it were in the alpha stages of development. I legitimately felt nothing after completing this game, and I still feel absolutely nothing. It’s a broken affair of a game, and I would implore that people spend their money on something worth playing.​


Verdict: Stay the hell away. Don’t even touch. Don’t even look. Run.


Summary:

Pros:
+ Like, 3-4 tracks on the soundtrack were good.
+ Maybe you want to see how much of a trainwreck it is?​

Cons:
-The battle system is half-baked; everything is too easy, especially when using elemental or time spells
-Every enemy, NPC, and even the main characters are palette swaps
-The characters are shallow and insipid
-The narrative’s basic premise is to repeat itself until the end, and it doesn’t allow the player to sympathize with the characters at all
-Repetitive to a fault
-Bad dungeon/field design
-The rest of the soundtrack is poor
-The affection system is incredibly shallow
-Sidequests are nothing but fetch quests, and they’re essentially the same fetch quests throughout the entire game
-The Job/Skill tree isn’t a decent way of doling out new skills as you must learn them on a level up despite being at or past the level specified to learn skill
-Toki/Towa’s differences in battle don’t even matter in the long run
-Just stay away from this game.​
 
Putting the comedy theme on repeat while reading that did a pretty good job of driving home the fact that I should stay the hell away from this game.

Great writeup.
 

Dark Schala

Eloquent Princess
Thank you.

I want to play something I like now.

Let's see...
  • Remember Me
  • Tales of Xillia 2
  • Shin Megami Tensei 4
  • Tales of Innocence R
  • Dragon Quest VII
  • New Super Mario Bros U

Should finish off SMT4 soon, though.
 

qq more

Member
Damn qq, did you forget you can block?
I did as well, but then again, I never got a game over >.>

That was seriously it. I kept forgetting that even existed til near the end of Milky Way Wishes.

On a bright note, I've managed to beat Marx without taking a single damage. ...Not that it was a hard feat or anything, but I guess it makes up for my lousy play style.
 
That was seriously it. I kept forgetting that even existed til near the end of Milky Way Wishes.

On the bright side, I've managed to beat Marx without taking a single damage. ...Not that it was a hard feat or anything, but I guess it makes up for my lousy play style.

Did you actually fight him or did you turn to stone and let your partner do the work?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom