- When Anime meets
video game
Here we are
finally back again after a month-long break. This will be my new
format, one a month till 2014. I'll re-evaluate then. My thought
process is that I'll say more per post but they will be less often.
I'm also going to be adding in other categories than Games and
Movies, but more on that in the coming months. I found that in a few
movie reviews I was unable to properly say everything I wanted to in
the time restraint that I gave myself along with my one page maximum
limit. So away with the page limit and now with a month between.
Oooh, so many words.
It's
not every day that you get to play a game that is entirely animated
by a huge animation company, especially one as famous as Studio Ghibli (famous for such works as Grave of Fireflies (1988), Porco Rosso (1992) and The Secret World of Arrietty (2010), some of my personal
favourites from that studio). When I heard the studio animated a
game by Level-5 and published by Namco Bandai, I jumped at the chance
to play it.
Now
if you're any bit familiar with studio Ghibli, you probably have an
idea of what to expect from the game, but a brief explanation for
those who do not. You play the role of Oliver, a young boy who lives
in the town called Motorcity with his mother and his best friend
named Phil. Tragedy strikes poor Oliver and as fate would have it
the young boy is whisked away to another world, one that faces great
peril that only he can put a stop to. Really the only surprising
thing for any Studio Ghibli fan is that the main protagonist isn't a
young girl.
The
game's finer details deal with love and loss, and ultimately, the
heart. The story deals with a great evil named Shader who takes
pieces of heart away from people such as “love” or “restraint”,
so ultimately people don't know how to love or stop eating, for
example. Oliver has the ability to take people's extra overflowing
emotions and give it to the people in need. He also gains the
ability to use familiars, those who will fight for Oliver in battle
for him, like a duck-dinosaur hybrid or spider with a huge grin on
it's face. It's here that the game really gets into the Pokemon
stereotype of “gotta collect them all”. Through feeding special
items to your familiars there is a metamorphosis process that enables
the capture and use of over 300 familiars to gather in your quest to
defeat Shader and you just aren't going to know what one is useful
and what ones are junk until you try (or you know, look it up
online). The story can be easily seen for a large portion of the
game as a fantasy that Oliver creates to ignore the harsh reality of
life, but as you continue to play the game, the lines get blurred
more and more and maybe just maybe, poor Oliver might just be a
wizard.
 |
| Using wooden utensils with your frying pan is just smart. |
The
game play is that of a Role-Playing-Game (RPG). It is the
actual game mechanics of the game that are the only real hindrance to
the game, truth be told. After finishing the game, the story was
fantastic with only minor annoyances at best. The story would have
made a great 120-140 minute anime by Studio Ghibli. Combat in the
game is dicey at best. I'm going to get really game technical here,
so if you're not up for it, skip this paragraph. Ready? Lets go.
Eventually when you gain party members you'll only be directly
controlling one. Changing characters is poor to say the least, as is
issuing commands to your comrades during battle. When you change
characters, their familiars are sent back so you need to select them
again, even if it was the exact one that was out. Annoying if you
wanted to quickly cast a spell to win the fight. You can however
give quick suggestions to your teammates “All-Out Attack!” and
“All-Out Defence!” Defending is really essential to the game as
it reduces damage taken to 1/3 and can enable quick little special
attacks that can rapidly turn the tides of battle. However your AI
controlled partners are incredibly poor at using the defend, even
when told to do so, so that often they will take the full hit,
draining their health away too quickly to counter. Healing is also
done on a rolling basis so even if you got the heal spell to connect,
your health will roll up to max if you take a hit while it is rolling
and you are low, you can still die. Even if you totally got the spell
off. I can go on as there are many other problems but I've spent
enough time on this and you need to be aware that combat can easily
go upside down even if you're totally the bees knees at the game,
failure is always around the corner.
I
found to counteract this Level-5, just as they did in a previous game
Dragon Quest VIII, they have enemies that give such an unequalled
amount of experience that finding them and defeating them just a
handful of times will sway future battles in your favour for quite a
few hours even ignoring the problems in combat. They are located in
various places and the enemies you seek contain the name 'Toko'.
It's fun to hunt them down, if you're into that but it's an
incredible grind sometimes having to do something to have a fighting
chance. Bumping the experience of all enemies a bit and having away
with these speciality fights would be more to my liking but I feel as
if the “collect 'em all” play style doesn't actually want
anything to be fun and enjoyable in this way but in a fun and
enjoyable way if you like spending many hours trying to find
one thing that will only lead you to wanting one more thing. Those
who play games for collecting and want to collect, you're looking at
a minimum of 80 hours to have 100% in the game, I know as I clocked
in at 86 hours and 34 minutes over 13 days to get the platinum
trophy. I mention this just to prove I'm not trashing the game here,
I put the time in and enjoyed it, but I'm aware that this isn't quite
for everyone.
 |
| Toko: Why must you kill me so much? |
To
summarize this lengthy review I think it was enjoyable, I don't mind
the odd huge collection game once and awhile, and the main story was
really quite fun though some side characters weren't as enjoyable.
Shader and the White Witch however, stand as really enjoyable
characters within the game and are probably worth giving the game a
chance.
I
give it 7/10
PS:
I finished the main game in 39 hours, so 30 to 35 hours minimum hours
to see the end credits for those of you who just need to get to the
end.
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