Nocturne Post: It's been a little while
Jan. 22nd, 2012 10:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
radio_aspenAnd I'm not going to summarize the story, but I will talk about my overall reaction to it.
Nocturne definitely comes from the design philosophy that story shouldn't get in the way of gameplay. Most of the narrative is really just worldbuilding--told from environment cues or optional conversations with NPCs. It's a very old school of RPG design and one that I'm totally cool with.
What I'm not cool with are the gaping plot holes. Specifically the ones regarding your two friends. I can't take two steps without being assaulted by inexplicably hostile demons the size of houses, but I'm supposed to believe that they can trek across the same lands and through the same dungeons with no means of defense and survive. The only attempt to address this that I'm aware of is a throwaway line from a random NPC about humans being a strong source of Magatsuhi, but even that doesn't account for their safety--just why demons might be less inclined to outright kill them.
(sidenote: I've been using the term Magatsuhi incorrectly somewhat. The GEAR is called Magatama. There's some connection between these things I'm sure, but eh. I've also been reading the word Incense as Noise so maybe I'm just not paying attention to this game at all.)
If I were writing this game, here is what I would do:
From your first meetings with Chiaki and Isamu in the Vortex World, they would start traveling with you. They wouldn't take part in battle, but they would be there to witness everything that you witness, and more importantly they would be able to react to it. This would help to establish their characters and their Reasons, and would make the story a bit more personal. There's really no reason for this not to be the case. "Your human friend was last seen here" is used all the time, but it's never the only or even main reason for you to go to your next destination--a lot of the time you don't even find out about them until you actually get there or you already have a reason to be there.
The other nice thing about getting more into their Reasons early is that the game is a little clumsy about this otherwise. I've already answered several dialogue choices affecting mine, despite pretty much not knowing the details of any of them. I'm not even sure if the concept has been explained, actually (outside of the optional True Demon Ending sidequests--which oddly explains everything about the main game despite not being in the original version).
Gameplay!
The two fiends after Matador are chumps. White Rider is less so but I'll get to that in a moment.
The Five Kalpas are these optional areas relating to the Fiends and the True Demon ending that I mentioned above. They are mazelike dungeons with no save points, and are thus pretty much the most difficult sections of the game. I attempted the second Kalpa today. First run, I got my second non-Matador related game over because my DF got hit with petrification that was also a critical (it was a physical attack skill) and then the follow up targeted him, for instant death. Second round! I spend two hours or so wandering around and doing this really difficult sidequest for an absurd amount of money as a reward and getting all of the experience points and finishing the dungeon and unlocking the next round of fiend fights and trudging my way back through the dungeon to get out because they don't make this easy. And then before I can get to save OR heal I get trapped into the White Rider fight.
...
...
Here's how I understood it to work. After you beat the Second Kalpa, he will appear outside of a specific save terminal and if you refuse to fight him, he will haunt you at every save terminal for the rest of the game until you do.
I don't know what I did, but that's not how it happened at all. Not only did he grab me at the first save terminal I went to, one he wasn't supposed to appear at, but the option to avoid the battle at the beginning didn't work. So there I was with a Fiend fight after some 2 hours of gameplay during which I completed probably the most difficult of all the Kalpas and got a completely absurd amount of money from a very difficult side quest. And unlike the High Priest and the Hell Biker, White Rider is actually challenging. As in he has 100 accuracy instant death expel attack, which my DF happens to be weak to right now.
LUCKILY
I had the two most useful skills for this battle (Tetraja for nulling instant death attacks, and Stone Eye for petrification) even though I had to do some summoning gymnastics to make it work. At the beginning of the battle he summons two Virtues. These things cast Rakunda and generally make nuisances of themselves, however they have a weakness to either death or curse, whichever one Stone Eyes represents. And if you petrify them without killing them, the Rider doesn't summon new ones and they just keep eating up his press turns. Then I just had to keep Tetraja active, as well as lowering all of his stats (because he doesn't have Dekunda for some reason) and the fight was actually not that hard at all. Just harrowing, given my situation ;;
And then I saved and healed and everything was beautiful forever.
Nocturne definitely comes from the design philosophy that story shouldn't get in the way of gameplay. Most of the narrative is really just worldbuilding--told from environment cues or optional conversations with NPCs. It's a very old school of RPG design and one that I'm totally cool with.
What I'm not cool with are the gaping plot holes. Specifically the ones regarding your two friends. I can't take two steps without being assaulted by inexplicably hostile demons the size of houses, but I'm supposed to believe that they can trek across the same lands and through the same dungeons with no means of defense and survive. The only attempt to address this that I'm aware of is a throwaway line from a random NPC about humans being a strong source of Magatsuhi, but even that doesn't account for their safety--just why demons might be less inclined to outright kill them.
(sidenote: I've been using the term Magatsuhi incorrectly somewhat. The GEAR is called Magatama. There's some connection between these things I'm sure, but eh. I've also been reading the word Incense as Noise so maybe I'm just not paying attention to this game at all.)
If I were writing this game, here is what I would do:
From your first meetings with Chiaki and Isamu in the Vortex World, they would start traveling with you. They wouldn't take part in battle, but they would be there to witness everything that you witness, and more importantly they would be able to react to it. This would help to establish their characters and their Reasons, and would make the story a bit more personal. There's really no reason for this not to be the case. "Your human friend was last seen here" is used all the time, but it's never the only or even main reason for you to go to your next destination--a lot of the time you don't even find out about them until you actually get there or you already have a reason to be there.
The other nice thing about getting more into their Reasons early is that the game is a little clumsy about this otherwise. I've already answered several dialogue choices affecting mine, despite pretty much not knowing the details of any of them. I'm not even sure if the concept has been explained, actually (outside of the optional True Demon Ending sidequests--which oddly explains everything about the main game despite not being in the original version).
Gameplay!
The two fiends after Matador are chumps. White Rider is less so but I'll get to that in a moment.
The Five Kalpas are these optional areas relating to the Fiends and the True Demon ending that I mentioned above. They are mazelike dungeons with no save points, and are thus pretty much the most difficult sections of the game. I attempted the second Kalpa today. First run, I got my second non-Matador related game over because my DF got hit with petrification that was also a critical (it was a physical attack skill) and then the follow up targeted him, for instant death. Second round! I spend two hours or so wandering around and doing this really difficult sidequest for an absurd amount of money as a reward and getting all of the experience points and finishing the dungeon and unlocking the next round of fiend fights and trudging my way back through the dungeon to get out because they don't make this easy. And then before I can get to save OR heal I get trapped into the White Rider fight.
...
...
Here's how I understood it to work. After you beat the Second Kalpa, he will appear outside of a specific save terminal and if you refuse to fight him, he will haunt you at every save terminal for the rest of the game until you do.
I don't know what I did, but that's not how it happened at all. Not only did he grab me at the first save terminal I went to, one he wasn't supposed to appear at, but the option to avoid the battle at the beginning didn't work. So there I was with a Fiend fight after some 2 hours of gameplay during which I completed probably the most difficult of all the Kalpas and got a completely absurd amount of money from a very difficult side quest. And unlike the High Priest and the Hell Biker, White Rider is actually challenging. As in he has 100 accuracy instant death expel attack, which my DF happens to be weak to right now.
LUCKILY
I had the two most useful skills for this battle (Tetraja for nulling instant death attacks, and Stone Eye for petrification) even though I had to do some summoning gymnastics to make it work. At the beginning of the battle he summons two Virtues. These things cast Rakunda and generally make nuisances of themselves, however they have a weakness to either death or curse, whichever one Stone Eyes represents. And if you petrify them without killing them, the Rider doesn't summon new ones and they just keep eating up his press turns. Then I just had to keep Tetraja active, as well as lowering all of his stats (because he doesn't have Dekunda for some reason) and the fight was actually not that hard at all. Just harrowing, given my situation ;;
And then I saved and healed and everything was beautiful forever.
