Complaining About Final Fantasy Tactics Advance

February 15th, 2013

Over the past 3 months, I’ve invested about 50 hours into Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together. I usually don’t play portable games out in the wild, but my PSP has proven to be a great companion on the subway, particularly as I can charge it via USB when I get to work. The game itself has rekindled my love of SRPGs and prompted me to write a small pile of notes on the genre. I’m not quite ready to share those ideas, but I would like to talk about Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, which has a strong lineage with Tactics Ogre and its designers. Playing Tactics Ogre:LUCT reminded me of why I dislike Final Fantasy Tactics Advance so much. Because I haven’t played this game in years and don’t currently have the cart on me, I’m going to have to rely on memory, so don’t think of this post as being “proper” analysis. At times, I may be a bit loose with the facts, so if I’m feeling unsure, I’ll indicate so by ending the sentence with “I think” in parenthesis.

Laws

The core difference between the original Final Fantasy Tactics and the later games is laws. Each battle is governed by a set of arbitrary rules (I’m not sure if they’re preset or selected randomly, probably depends on battle type). These regulations prevent the player from using various abilities or weapons. If the player breaks a rule, they’re given a yellow or red card, depending on how serious the violation. Acquire too many of these and the party member in question is hauled off to jail and must sit out a few battles (I think you can pay money to reduce their sentence).

I guess that the intent behind law cards is to challenge the player to play in particular ways. They certainly do that. However, the specifics of the law system, quickly put the process on the nose. The rules can be viewed any time during a battle (and are shown at the start, I think). Yet, although they’re clear and unambiguous, it’s easy to forget that your archer is wielding a bow and not a crossbow, or your knight is equipped with a sword and not an axe (these are theoretical examples). And so mid-battle, I’d unknowingly break a law or two and have several party members instantly leave the battlefield, prompting me to reset my GBA and try the battle again. If I held on and eventually won the match, then I wouldn’t be able to use half of my party in the proceeding fight. If the prohibited abilities were marked in the selection screen, then there’d be much more clarity and the player wouldn’t find themselves losing units in the midst of an epic duel. More warning pre-battle, when the player’s selecting which units to send out, would help them avoid putting party members with banned abilities into play in the first place. A list of how the laws affect the individual units would be nice.

Final Fantasy Tactics Advance also does a poor job of contextually justifying laws. It’s ridiculous that a law master (a knight on a Chocobo), a formal member of some government or association, would oversee every random, spontaneous battle that occurred between two groups of mercenaries.

Sending Units Off on Missions

Missions are the units of progression. Each tavern on the world map has a list of missions which the player can choose to take on. The idea is that the player’s party is a group of mercenaries for hire (I think). There are two types of missions: regular missions, which the player does directly, and adhoc missions, where the player sends out a unit or small team of units to go and fight independently. After a few days, the unit(s) returns and the player’s told the results of the battle. I found the adhoc battles to be intrusive and unnecessary. To accept these missions, the unit(s) needs to meet the level requirement. Initially, I had a designated gimp which I sent out to do all the side missions. Despite some initial success, it was quickly under-leveled, even though I’d included it in some of the regular battles too. Near the end of the game, the adhoc missions were draining my party of key units, but I had to do them in order to unlock the story missions. Because some of the adhoc battles require the player to complete X number real battles before the units return, I’d often be forced to go into battles with an incomplete team.

The other problem with the adhoc missions is that the player has no involvement in them, so it’s really hard to care about them.

Trail of Missions

The player needs to complete certain missions in order to unlock more missions and keep the game going. Although they’re told which missions they need to beat, figuring out how to access them can be tricky, as each tavern offers their own set of missions and if the player fails a mission, it might not come back around for some time. Factor in that some of these missions may themselves need to be unlocked (or the player needs to beat certain adhoc missions or have a certain item, I think) and the progression system quickly divulges into a tangle of loose ends. The last 20 hours of my time with this game was dedicated to untangling leads and heavy reading of GameFAQs.

Few Story Missions

The best missions are the story missions, where the map, enemy composition and layout, and laws are tuned to create deep and rewarding play. Unfortunately, there are only a handful of story missions in the entire game. Most missions are random battles in a preset location, where the enemies are randomly selected and positioned based on a few parameters.

Races

In Final Fantasy Tactics, any unit can change to any job, so long as they meet the conditions to do so. In Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, each character belongs to a race, with each race being a container that houses a particular set of jobs. So, if you want a unit to have a certain job, they need to belong to the right race. This adds a layer of complexity to the job system.

I don’t like the races for two reasons. The first is that I don’t personally find the appearance and dialects of the races to be particularly interesting. The second is that the race system restricts party customisation and cross-pollination between jobs, the core asset of the RPG side of the game.

Story

Although the game’s premise of the characters being stuck in their friend’s dream is neat, the narrative is sparse to the point of near absence. I much prefer the dense political intrigue of the original Final Fantasy Tactics and Tactics Ogre: LUCT. You don’t get a lot of medieval politics in video games.

So, as you can see, basically everything I don’t like about this game is everything they changed from the original Final Fantasy Tactics.

A Few Comments on Resident Evil 4

February 15th, 2013

Last year, my brother played Resident Evil 4 for the first time. After he finished the game, we discussed it over IM. Here are some of the key points from our conversation:

Moving and Shooting

Not being able to move and shoot does several things to the gameplay:

it forces the player to find a spot and bunker down, creating a stop ‘n pop style of shooting.
it makes Leon vulnerable, forcing the player to consider the surrounding environment and locations of the enemies and formulate a plan of attack.
it creates a tug of war over the ground between Leon and the enemies (spatial dynamic). The player wants Leon to keep his distance, while the enemies attempt to close in on him. This push-pull relationship contributes to the inhale-exhale flow of the shoot-outs.
it removes the clutter of moving while shooting (as moving throws off aiming).

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Spatial Dynamic and Fly-Kicking

The closer the enemies are to Leon, the easier they are to shoot, but the more likely they are to attack him (spatial dynamic and risk/reward).
Leon can gain ground by stunning and then fly-kicking enemies, but they need to be close to him/he needs to run over to them to execute the attack (risk/reward).
The cool down after the fly-kick, where the player has no control over Leon, balances the mechanic and extends the risk/reward.

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Tension

The game builds tension by either:

limiting the size of the play area and thereby the distance between Leon and the enemies
adding more enemies to overwhelm the player
increasing the Ganado’s armour (interplay)
increasing the number of directions enemies can approach from (adaption skills, multitasking)

These methods squeeze more skill out of the player.

Camera and Viewpoint

The camera is brought in close so that it’s both claustrophobic and functional. This is a neat throwback to the fixed camera angles of the original games.
The laser sight helps to distinguish depth.

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Interplay

Most shooters have weak interplay: you just shoot an enemy and they die, and if they don’t die, you shoot them a few more times to make sure. In Resident Evil 4, the player can shoot to stun, which then opens up opportunities to execute special attacks.
The enemies also have interplay with one another. For example, if a Ganado is knocked into a group of other Ganados, it’ll push the whole group backwards.
The organic interactions between enemies feeds back into the interplay between Leon and the enemies, creating deeper and more emergent interactions.
Because each body part causes the enemy to react differently when shot, the body maps the potential interplay and strategic options. The designers can then tweak the availability of certain strings of interactions by covering up certain parts of the body (armour plates, for instance).

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Game Speed

The game speed is slowed right down so as to give the player enough time to deal with the hordes of Gonados. The large number of enemies make the relative time faster. So although the player has more time, they need to do more in that time.

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Quick Time Events

QTEs are only used in contextual situations or when regular interactions aren’t possible (ie. cutscenes). In this way, they add more interactivity to the game. Many games now tend to use QTEs to subtract interactivity.

If you liked Resident Evil 4, then you should totally check out Vanquish. It’s a different type of shooter, but you can certainly feel the lineage between the two games. I’ll be writing about that game soon enough.

Posted in Game Discussion | Comments (2)
Tags: resident evil, resident evil 4

Real-Life Game Dynamics

February 14th, 2013

A game dynamic is a variable which affects two or more areas of a game system. For example, in many Japanese SRPGs, height is a dynamic. It affects the attack and movement range of units and the damage one unit gives to another. So, higher units have more range and slightly stronger attacks than lower units. The height dynamic allocates strategic advantage and disadvantage to certain areas of the battlefield, encouraging the player to plan their tactics around the map’s topography. In this way, dynamics make games more engaging. You can read more about dynamics here and here.

When writing about dynamics for my book on Wario Land 4, my thoughts drifted from game dynamics to real-life dynamics and how the dynamics that make life interesting could be emulated in a video game. Below are some theoretical examples that I’ve come up with. I found it quite fun putting these together, so feel free to share any of your own ideas in the comments.

Energy

Energy is an artificial game dynamic.
It can determine the speed of the avatar’s walk/run.
It can limit the avatar’s actions and movement range in one turn.
It can act as a decaying dynamic—as in Harvest Moon, where each action takes some energy—so that the avatar can only make so many actions before they need a rest.
The restrictions of the former two dot points prompt the player to carefully consider their actions. That is to say, they add a strategic element.
It can determine how long the avatar sleeps and therefore how much time they have available the next day.

Drunkenness

Drunkenness is an artificial game dynamic.
It can rise the more the avatar has to drink.
It can determine options available in dialogue trees (the drunker, the less polite).
It can cause the avatar to stagger (I think GTA4 does this).
It can smear and blur the screen and make HUD elements wander from their default positions.
It can cause NPCs to look at you.

Noise

Noise is an organic game dynamic.
It can obscure the player’s ability to hear and therefore respond to NPCs.
Different places can have different noise levels.
It can determine whether or not an NPC hears something the avatar says to another NPC (like a secret).
Noise could be the core dynamic of an aural version of Magic Eye, where the player must listen to audio until they hear a secret message.
Different surfaces can make different noises when the avatar steps on them (Metal Gear).

Need to go to the Toilet

This is an artificial dynamic.
The more the avatar eats/drinks, the stronger the dynamic.
Like energy in Harvest Moon, the need to go to the toilet can force the player to schedule their actions.
When the need to go to the toilet reaches a certain threshold, the avatar could be given a run ability and the player could be prompted to engage in a short button-mashing exercise to “hold it in”. The greater the need, the more intense and frequent the button mashing sequences.
The greater the need, the longer the avatar spends in the toilet.

Sweat

Sweat is an artificial dynamic.
It can be presented on the avatar itself, form fits function.
Being too sweaty can cause the NPCs around the avatar to act negatively towards them.
On the other hand, sweat can be a positive attribute in some places, like the gym. It might cause NPCs to start a conversation with the avatar.
It can persuade the player not to abuse the run mechanic.
It can dynamically change depending on the seasons.
Taking a shower resets the sweat dynamic.

Oxygen

Oxygen is an artificial dynamic.
Oxygen is quite common in games already, but instead of just being designated to swimming sequences, it can be used in other contexts too. Such as escaping a burning building. When the avatar stands next to smoke, their oxygen level goes down.
It can be an indication of air quality, represented visually through smog, the colour of the sky, and whether or not NPCs wear breathing masks (I have no idea what these things are called in English. They’re called 口罩 kǒu zhào in China).
Continuing with air quality, oxygen can determine the avatar’s running distance.

Bright Light

Light is an organic dynamic.
Resident Evil 5 incorporates light and shade into its gameplay, but from what I can tell, it isn’t really that deep—admittedly, I haven’t played much of the game, can anyone offer a second opinion? >_>
When the avatar moves from shaded to bright areas, and vice versa, the game simulates the eye’s adjustment to lighting levels. The game designer or enemy AI can explicitly use this dynamic to obscure the player’s view.
Looking into the sun stuns the player.
Enemies/the player can use high-intensity lights or torches to temporarily blind the other party.
Sunglasses reduce the effectiveness of bright lights.
Enemies can detect shadows, and the player can use shadows to determine an enemy’s location.

What are some unique game dynamics in games you’ve played?

Posted in Editorial | Comments (0)
Tags: game dynamics

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