Houkago Game Time

Main reasons I love tri-Ace

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I have played a lot of RPGs lately that I didn’t enjoy. I only recently picked up a PS3, and I feverishly bought all the games I had been missing for the last half-decade: Final Fantasy XIII, Trusty Bell, Atelier Meruru, Atelier Ayesha, Dragon’s Crown, Senjou no Valkyria, Demon’s Souls, Tales of Graces f, Cross Edge, Ni no Kuni, and Trinity Universe. I had some other games on Xbox 360, and I did enjoy them, but that is besides the point.

Among all of the aforementioned game soft, only Cross Edge, Dragon’s Crown, and Demon’s Souls managed to hold my interest for more than 20 hours. The rest were dropped within the first 15. This left me desperately searching for RPGs on the 3DS or Vita in hopes to find something that I could sink my teeth into. Pocket Monsters X has a popularity that I do not understand; I find it to be one of the most unrefined and poorly paced Pokemon games since the abysmal generation 3 games. Bravely Default is okay I guess, but it’s a predictable and ultimately easy game. Kakusei is an SRPG, so while fantastic, it doesn’t count.

As I was hopelessly browsing 3DS titles in Famitsu’s database, the cover of Labyrinth no Kanata caught my eye. It wasn’t until I was already invested in the idea of purchasing it that I noticed it was developed by tri-Ace. Yup, instant buy from me. Now, I’ve just put my 3DS down after my first playthrough, and am feeling highly satisfied for the first time in awhile.

If you ask anyone that I talk to regularly, they will be able to tell you that I fawn over Valkyrie Profile and Star Ocean, tri-Ace’s top series, on a daily basis. Why? What draws me so much to this developer? Is it just blind, unquestioned love, or is it something else?

Disclaimer: I enjoy RPGs by many other developers, and many games out there are better than tri-Ace’s worst. But I can almost always count on a tri-Ace game being both inspiring and addicting. They are a developer I am able to consistently trust, which cannot be said about any other RPG developer at this time. Additionally, when tri-Ace are at their best, such as Valkyrie Profile 2 (VP2) or Star Ocean 3 (SO3), they simply cannot be topped.

Real Customization

Valkyrie Profile 2 is a linear game. You essentially trace the dots on the world map until you hit the final dungeon, with two optional side dungeons sprinkled in along the way. Dungeons don’t leave a lot of room for exploration; you hit close to every room in every dungeon just playing naturally, as the game intends you to (although there are some secret chests, etc). This allows the game to deliver a tight experience, with balance properly tuned to your current location. In this respect, it is similar to your standard Final Fantasy title, or almost any other RPG out there.

However, no two people ever play Valkyrie Profile 2 the same way. To illustrate what I mean, let’s first look at Final Fantasy VII. If you pick Cloud, Tifa, and Barrett, but your friend plays with Cloud, Yuffie, and Vincent, you two will still have roughly the same gameplay experience. Strategic differences in your playstyle are not very significant; sure, you select different attacks from the menu and your Limit Breaks have different animations, but the pattern for beating each enemy feels about the same between the different party compositions. Things like upgrades to weapons and equipment come at the same (or similar) nodes; and they don’t change your playstyle, but instead just increase the “Attack” and “Defense” numbers on your status screen. Unfortunately, while Materia is a cool system overall, it isn’t exactly full of strategic depth either.

In Valkyrie Profile 2, things are different. The Einherjar that you choose and party members you play with change your experience drastically. A player that rolls with 2 Light Warriors and 2 Heavy Warriors will have a vastly different game plan than someone who picks 2 Light Warriors, an Archer, and a Mage. The sealstones that you select to restore throughout your play also heavily influence your experience. For example, I have a friend who played with 4 Archers and used the “Stone Hurler Wrath” sealstone, which makes you move very slowly but gives you double damage with ranged attacks. Meanwhile, I used 3 Light Warriors and a Mage for my first playthrough, and restored “Fire Blessing” to deal 1.5x Fire damage. With these simple decisions, our playstyles branched into entirely new areas, and from there we were focused on different equipment and weapons throughout our playthroughs.

Furthermore, the Skill and Attack systems, which allow you to customize what your characters use in battle, allow you to mix different characters and sealstones together to create your own combos. The game quickly becomes depth with many layers to it. But the world progression itself isn’t so different from Final Fantasy VII. It’s simply the mechanics of attacks and gear that open up these sorts of intriguing party composition builds.

I am of the opinion that tri-Ace consistently throws in “enough stuff” for their games to be interesting. There are a very large amount of characters, weapons, equipment, items, sealstones, skills, and attacks in VP2. In this way, complexity can sometimes be synonymous with volume. When you have a lot of layers to configuring your party, you have a lot of room for experimentation and customization. When each of those layers has a high volume of choices under it, players will begin gravitating to different strategies, and attempt to optimize their own compositions. It becomes more about “how can I make my own strategy work the best?” versus the all too common “how can I deal the max damage in the game?” It’s a method for game developers to simultaneously give the players choice and expand on the mechanics of their systems.

Of course, with volume and customization comes false choice. While VP2 suffers from false choice (like literally every other game in existence), many strategies are viable and well-balanced – a player’s investment in their own setup will often completely mask the feeling of “this must be less efficient than something else”. If setup decently, you are still able to clear battles with a party of 4 archers or 4 light warriors, and although it may be a tad bit slower than a truly optimal strategy (like a perfectly setup heavy warrior), it’s just as satisfying, if not more so.

Additionally, while the volume of content may be less than a more expansive game such as The Elder Scrolls IV, the depth and substance of content quickly makes up for it. It’s true that TESIV has a large database of items, but Valkyrie Profile 2 manages to have more items with a high impact on gameplay. I would say that although the progression of VP2 is comparatively linear, there is more freedom in the game system for intriguing depth.

But wait, clearing battles with different compositions doesn’t necessarily make a game interesting; look at recent Pocket Monsters games, you can play with almost any party and beat the game by taping down your “A” button. Is VP2 just easy?

Difficulty

Short answer: No. If an RPG is not challenging, it is most likely fulfilling the “mash A simulator” stereotype that we’re all so tired of hearing. Without challenge, the genre breaks down and instantly shifts from “interesting strategies” to “most boring genre of game soft ever”.

Without challenging boss fights or the risk of death, there is no reason to improve or change your strategy. As soon as you find something that works, repeat it for the rest of the game.

Star Ocean 3: Director’s Cut is a game with a party configuration similar to VP2, on a fundamental level. The game itself is very, very different, but the concept of having lots of choice is the same – party composition changes the way you play drastically, and there’s a voluminous amount of attacks, equips, items, and other variables that affect your strategies for beating the game.

Unfortunately there is a single attack that is completely broken; the main character, Fate Linegod, is able to spam “Side Kick” to victory, all the way up to post-game’s Sphere 211 dungeon. Set your other two characters to Auto, sit on Fate, and O, X, O, X, O, X your way all the way up to Gabriel.

This is an example of degenerate strategy, where a player will find one thing that works in a game, and stick with it throughout. It is also the most prominent example of degenerate strategy that I can think of in a tri-Ace title. It is also a relatively mild case of degenerate strategy when looking at the big picture.

Yes, Side Kick spam will beat the game for you – but, it will take you roughly double the amount of time it takes someone who is playing with any other strategy. In a typical game that’s vulnerable to degenerate play, employing such boring tactics will actually save the player time by removing the need to experiment. Often, the strategies are “good enough” to beat the game, and are just less hassle when compared to a more optimal strategy. But in SO3 the drawback is very real; tedious battles that take way more time than clearing them with a more robust idea. Furthermore, it is a play that will not carry into post-game, so if you intend on fully completing the game, you will be forced to switch up your strategy eventually. You simply can’t Side Kick through Nibelung Valesti or Ether Strike, so you’ll be required to gain some real skill.

Speaking in honest terms, Valkyrie Profile 2 is also the victim of degenerate play; Heavy Warriors are overpowered. But this is due to a certain gear and skill setup, which requires them to be at low HP to enhance their high attack. So while theoretically it is a degenerate strategy to use a Heavy Warrior with the same attacks in every battle, a player would have to be familiar enough with the game to clear every battle with 1HP and various status effects applied to them. In practice, this is completely unreasonable for most players, and they will never attempt to use this strategy throughout their early playthroughs. It is a tactic only employed by speedrunners or min/maxers, both of which are a type of player that will have already beaten the game multiple times.

This is much different than a degenerate play such as, “spam Knights of the Round” or “petrify every monster”; and while significantly higher playtime may not seem like a big deal if you are not speedrunning, the tedium involved in such a style will wear on the nerves of all but the most desperate of players. It’s actually faster to just use your brain for a moment and think of a good setup for a boss.

Games by tri-Ace are too difficult for degenerate play to come up very often, and when it does, a player is actually punishing themselves for exploiting it, or they require high skill in other areas (execution, routing) to pull it off.

Furthermore, their games almost always offer a robust post-game, sometimes with more boss battles than the main story itself. I have found that rich post-game is borderline essential for an RPG – it’s a chance for developers to push the limits of their system without regard to story or an average player’s ability to clear the content. This allows them to create highly unique and long battles that require dedication, experimentation, and, in the case of tri-Ace, skill.

Uniqueness

If you look at the battle systems for Labyrinth no Kanata, Valkyrie Profile, Star Ocean, Frontier Gate Boost+, and End of Eternity, what do they all have in common?

tri-Ace consistently creates systems that are both interesting and unique – something I hold them in very high esteem for. Valkyrie Profile 2 and Star Ocean 3 are both on the same platform, and by the same developer, but are not directly similar to each other in any other way. They are each their own masterpiece.

The only time tri-Ace will reuse a system is for a direct sequel – and even then you can bet that it’ll be highly expanded upon (or, in the case of Star Ocean 4, well uh… at least… different… I guess).

Therefore, I can count on tri-Ace to experiment with the RPG format while also delivering a high level of customization in my play and a decent bar for difficulty. This is the primary reason I gravitate to their games whenever I can.

In Labyrinth no Kanata, I was initially presented with an RPS battle system and instantly became disappointed. In that game, the magic system is about big damage cuts and big damage boosts – sort of similar to the Type system in Pocket Monsters. While I love Pokemon, I’m wary of these of battle systems that have such high advantages and disadvantages relating to elements, because they often limit your strategy rather than enhance.

However, there is a system in place that makes the RPS elements of this battle system strategic. When you use a super effective attack on any enemy, the damage dealt to them is stored in a separate resource pool. Two things can then happen to that pool: Either you turn it into HP and heal yourself with it, or your enemy turns it into HP and undoes all of your progress. The method of converting it to HP, is to use an attack that matches the type that the particular enemy uses. There is no actual RPS-style RNG involved here, it all comes down to the elements of the enemy you’re facing. When you add the other elements of the battle system on top of this mechanic, it opens up a large number of scenarios that may occur, and you must plan each action to prevent your enemy from getting a massive heal.

You also have five characters, four of which are in the shadows commanding and protecting an unnamed girl (whom you see on screen primarily). This gives you two vastly different types of characters in every battle – on one hand you have the vulnerable girl who has her own abilities and playstyle, and on the other hand you have four other characters that act more like traditional PT members, but are also able to protect her. Protecting her sacrifices your member’s HP to defend for her, allowing her to cast longer spells, thus dealing more damage.

There are a lot of layers at work in Labyrinth no Kanata, and the game system is unlike one I’ve ever played. But this isn’t an isolated, experimental game; tri-Ace will take every chance they get to experiment with the RPG format. (* Note: While I feel that to some extent Level 5 is a developer that does this as well, I feel tri-Ace games typically offer much higher complexity and depth in their battle systems).

Lack of Bullshit

This is a bit of a wildcard header that can be summarized as: “a tri-Ace game is rarely full of my personal petpeeves.”

If not for RPGs, I may have fallen out of serious gaming long ago. That said, I enjoy many other types of games; fighter, fps, action, platformer, the list goes on. Among all genres I play, while my favorite, RPGs are also full of the most ridiculous bullshit that I’ve come across in gaming.

Unskippable cutscenes. Long dialogue full of unnatural exposition, building an inconsistent and poorly thought-out storyline. Shallow characters with nonsensical character motives. Limitations on your ability to backtrack or explore the world available to you. Long animations. Poor animations. Long, poor animations.

Inability to work game design into conveyance of your objective. Poor interfaces in a game based around navigating interfaces. Artificial progression of gameplay by increasing numbers rather than strategic options. Refusal to build on own systems throughout the course of the game. A difficulty curve that makes the first boss harder than the final boss (do they just give up on balancing halfway through?). Lack of innovation. Text. Lots of text. Lots of irrelevant, stupid text that ultimately drives the game and your investment in it nowhere.

I could keep going on and on. But the jist is this: RPGs love to waste your time on shallow characters, arbitrary wait times, and worlds that are unable to hold consistency with themselves. Developers love to take the potential of the genre and completely ignore it, foregoing game balance and strategic depth for what appears to be laziness or indifference.

Rather than creating a good game, lately RPG developers seem to capitalize on other parts of the industry they are a part of. This might be because RPGs are relatively easy to make, and if you create a mindless formulaic one, no one seems to really mind (as long as you have an artificial feeling of substance due to numbers increasing and story progressing).

Anime and RPGs have always gone hand-in-hand. Stylistically, RPGs have always been influenced by anime. I find many allures to both RPGs and anime; more than I could count. My passion for both mediums will continue to dictate my actions in all of life.

That said, when the anime boom occurred in the mid/late 2000s, it seems that RPGs simultaneously shifted to using any underhanded tactic they can to make more money, rather than make good games. This was a perfect opportunity for them, because the genre started to stagnate near the end of the PS2 era. Capitalizing on the anime aesthetic and reputation that the RPG genre had, they were able to create poor entries for series; and those poor entries were grandfathered into high sales due to the names attached to them. But something else changed too – even Final Fantasy and Atelier have shoehorned in bikini DLC these days. When trends in anime sell really well, it carries over directly to RPGs. But when implemented in such poor ways, this is not just obnoxious and nonsensical, but it’s also (in my opinion) the greatest contributor to the genre’s current rut. Rather than create solid game experiences, the games will sell based on skin deep content and extra additions like a cameo character or meta cross-over content. Many established developers are using this to their advantage, to essentially “sell-out” their franchises by appealing to something closer to the popular anime industry than the RPG industry. Sales are made based on “skindeep” content rather than being really good games.

Basically, many people buy RPGs because they are stylistically and historically related to anime. Players seem happy to purchase a bad game as long as it has some good illustrations and the word “genteiban” attached to it. I have fallen trap to this many times now, when I am excited for a new title in a series only to find that it is a rehashed game with new characters. While I’m all for good illustrations, this is not what we should be giving game developers 9000円 for.

It seems to be that it would be possible for many developers to instead capitalize on the advantages that the anime boom may bring the medium. But when they aren’t selling out to it, they seem to be running away from it. I love From Software’s Souls series, and Vanillaware’s Dragon’s Crown is great. Capcom’s Dragon’s Dogma is also one of my favorite games of last generation. However, these are all games with a very heavy western influence in setting; they are good games and I think nothing less of them for their choice of setting, but it’s interesting that the majority of Japanese developed RPGs which are actually good are using a non-anime aesthetic recently.

All this to say, tri-Ace seems completely detached from both these growing trends. They have chugged along, continuing to provide an anime aesthetic, but without relying on nonsensical ecchi or cameos to sell their games. Their worlds, stories, and designs are still able to hold a consistency with themselves and make sense. They continue to create unique games with good balance and well-thought out systems. You can tell that the designers behind their games have a love for gaming, rather than a love for making a quick buck off a booming industry. So, Valkyrie Profile 2-III: Silmeria Returns featuring downloadable sukumizu for Lenneth and SAO’s Asuna as a playable light warrior is something that does not exist. For that, I thank tri-Ace with all my heart.

Conclusion

tri-Ace owns.

I have a lot more I could say, but these are the basic points of why that is. Someday, maybe I will get around to completing an in-depth analysis of individual tri-Ace games.