Dragon Quest 11

 

Hello Everyone. I recently finished Dragon Quest 11's Definitive Edition's postgame and would like to talk about it. Overall, I enjoyed my time with the game would recommend it but some issues did hamper me fully enjoying it. But I feel many of my criticisms, particularly towards navigation and storytelling may be missing the point. From what I can tell, DQ 11 is supposed to be this chill and accessible adventure that happens to have just combat that you can make harder. So often I feel like I'm criticizing Stardew Valley for not being more challenging or deeper. But regardless, I'm going to ignore that context for this review. So if you like chill and accessible JRPGs with a great story and characters, DQ11 is one of the best for that. It's already the best DQ game by a mile. Now lets get more critical.

-Gameplay

The game plays like an old school turn based JRPG, so like every past Dragon Quest game. You explore a massive overworld (in this case, represented as a fully 3D world not seen since DQ8 in 2005) and get into turn based battles when encountering enemies.

Combat is great. With countless spells, weapons, abilities, gear etc to mix and match. It gives you a lot to play around with and it's relatively straightforward to re-spec characters to try out new builds. There are some neat additions to this game that improve combat over its predecessors. Dual Wielding allows once weak weapons like knives to get more of a role as their status effects can potentially trigger twice. Pep Powers (comparable to Limit Breaks in Final Fantasy when activated and still giving you a stat buff when ready for a short while) have been expanded to allow multiple characters to share or use their Pep Powers together for even more effects. And Pep Powers can be carried from battle to battle adding more strategy. The "auto-battle" AI is much better and allows you to offload the less interesting roles to the AI like making healers automatically heal. My favourite trick against tougher bosses is Kerplunk on Hendrick as an emergency and Divine Protection on Serena to keep her going and as an emergency second Kerplunk user. Kerplunk sacrifices the user and all their MP to revive every other party member with full health. Since the user would have no MP left, they are effectively dead weight after the fact even if revived so it's 2 free revives at the cost of max efficiency.

However, combat is still very similar to past DQ games which does make it feel a little boring if you've played them extensively.

The open world/exploration is something I'm a little more mixed on. Yeah, it looks visually amazing but despite being 3D, it's navigated in much the same way as past games. You just, move through linear pathways in between towns until you reach a town, progress the story and set out to traverse the paths to get to whatever dungeon or location is next. There's very little done to mix this up. Like, you can jump now, a first for the series, but you can only jump on specific platforms. The rest you climb automatically using the "interact" command". I was expecting that now that you can jump, you can explore more places and have to be more on the lookout for places you can now reach. Heliodor initially kinda has what I was looking for as you can climb onto rooftops and use a chimney to enter a looked room but that becomes rare after that. You can't even jump over most stairs making the mechanic seem odd. There are some specific dungeons that do have some unique gimmicks. For example, you can ride specific enemies like small dragons and jumping birds and use them to navigate and explore areas in more interesting ways for a while. I wish there was more of this and more varied versions of this because just running or horse riding around does start to get pretty boring. Maybe some puzzles of Dark Souls style shortcuts one can open to make traversal easier. The game very rarely does this making most dungeons just a straight shot to the end with some monsters in the way you can choose to fight. I don't mind something like Pokemon having super simple overworld design because the overworld tends to be much smaller and there aren't many mechanics in the first place, plus there are often environmental puzzles to make up the difference. But DQ11 is bigger, you spend much more time out and about and have many more mechanics and ideas that never get used as much so it feels less engaging.

Like DQ9, you have side quests given to you by some NPCs in many towns. They generally act as fetch quests - "go to a place and bring back a thing" or a challenge - "use this specific pep power on this particular enemy". The Fetch Quests aren't that interesting as you are generally told where to find the item of interest and it's just a matter of getting it. There are some more puzzle-like ones that are quite nice. For example, in the city of Nautica, a mermaid tells you to go to Gondolia to find a boy who sang a song she liked but cannot remember. The quest log tells you to go find this kid in Gondolia and nothing more. But the catch is that, you have to remember from the main quest earlier that Mermaids live for centuries so they perceive time differently. So this kid is instead an old man you have to find. That's clever because it's a bit of a puzzle you have to put together while the pieces are there in front of you. Another side quest has you looking for buried treasure following clues in the open world. This stuff is great and I wish more side quests were like these instead of "go to this place and kill 4 coral monsters to get a gemstone I want". The Pep Power Quests, I am not fond of in principle. Because it's random when you get the pep powers and if that particular monster spawns. I'd much rather the player get pep powers through unlocks, specific items or books like recipes.

Compared to past DQ games, 11 is a lot more convenient and has way more quality of life features. If you get a party wipe, you can choose to load an autosave which doesn't cost any money, you can fast travel using Zoom indoors (only in the 3D version), just about every town now has a bank to store your money. You can sleep at campsites for free to heal up. And that's good. But you do lose some challenge from the navigation and planning aspects. For example, you lose half the money on you when you die. So normally with such a mechanic, you'd think the game would expect you to manage your money properly. Maybe plan that "hey, I am in a big town with a bank and the next several towns don't have any banks. How much of my savings should I bring with me? Knowing that if I die, I lose half of that. And If I don't have enough, I'd have to spend time fighting monsters to make up the difference to buy something I want". But with the way DQ11 is set up, that never comes into play. Every town has a bank. Even those underwater or in the clouds that haven't had any connection with humans in centuries. There are somewhat frequent campsites in between towns so you can fully heal up. And even if those things weren't there, it's easy to fast travel to safe places. So you never need to carefully manage how much money you are carrying at once. So most of the game's challenge comes from the combat side. Which is fine but it makes everything outside of combat feel less interesting to play or engage with since it feels more like a case of "walking from point A to B with little to think about". And since most of the game isn't combat, the game can drag in places.

Crafting is overhauled from past DQ games. Back then, you would just throw items into a pot and get a new item out of it if the correct recipe of items was present (which I wish was still retained as a way to reward crafty players). Now, you need to have the recipe beforehand and play a minigame where you need to select which squares to strike to fill up meters. You have a limited number of energy points, called focus, to spend on the process. You also have different kinds of strikes, like one which fills the meter by a little bit so you don't overshoot the target at the cost of a lot of focus, or one which strikes multiple squares at minimal cost of focus etc. You need to manage the temperature, which also costs focus, and sometimes, a strike may be less or more powerful than normal so you can't just spam the same tactics every time. More difficult items have more squares to fill which requires better use of focus. The better you match squares also means the item can be made even better than its normal variant. This is a neat system that makes the process more involving but can get a little tedious if you want to craft a lot of high quality items at once.

I love that Crafting also encourages more exploration of the open world for recipes and materials and you can buy some missing ingredients when in the crafting menu. Crafting also gives you access to a wider array of gear than what most shops stock and is often cheaper than shops. This makes crafting a viable means of progression and one that is especially important with any Draconian Quest Modifiers on.

Speaking of which, Draconian Quests are additional modifiers you can enable at the start of a new playthrough. And these can be intense. Stuff like even more powerful enemies, you no longer gain xp from weaker enemies, if the hero dies it's game over, you can't flee from battles, you can't wear armour, you can't buy from shops, you or your party may randomly skip a turn, and NPCs lie to you about where to go. Enabling just one thing like "harder enemies" already makes the game much, much more harder so I can't imagine playing with all of them on. Especially the Skipping turns one which feels more unfair than challenging. And NPCs lying to you doesn't really hold up on subsequent playthroughs since you'd already know where to go but catching them on their lies is neat. However, most if not all of these are combat focused. Mostly because, by the game's design, that's the only place where the challenge can exist. Regardless, I wish more games had stuff like this. I'd argue modiifers are a great way at difficulty options because they let you fine tune the experience rather than make broad changes you may not like. For example, in something like Outer Worlds, the hardest difficulty mode, Supernova, gives you a survival mode as well. But what if you want the survival mode without the combat challenge? Or the combat challenge without the survival stuff? You can't. Modifiers allow you to pick what you want. I'd especially love Pokemon games to try experimenting with this.

The Switch version comes with some extra content. A new 2D mode that makes the game play as if it were a SNES game. It’s quite charming. I like it especially because of how much faster it makes navigation. Though, in order to access it you must create a new save at a church and warp back to the start of the chapter while still carrying your current gear and XP. Like a sort of “mid game NG+”. Though, it’s not always clear when a new chapter begins. There’s also an entirely new 2D exclusive questline with these creatures called Tockles that requires you to find “pastwords” while exploring the main world to travel to events from prior DQ games as something is messing with them. These can be a fetch quest like visiting Alltrades Alley from 9 and being told to fetch a book on Bunny Girls from the main world. Or a dungeon like Trodain from DQ8 where you fight through the castle. It’s quite the nostalgic and charming affair. I just wish there were less fetch quests and more dungeons instead.

-The Story

The story is well written and quite enjoyable. It's definitely a bit cliched and I could see most plot twists coming hours before they happened. But it is a neat and simple story and world to soak in. I enjoyed the character arcs and seeing them all interact with each other. The story is great at revealing bits of characters to make them more interesting or funny over time, like with Hendricks and Oogler's Digest.

Bit of a hot take coming but I believe most JRPGs (excluding Chrono Trigger) do not enhance their stories. Like, you could take the stories of every Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy and what have you, make them into a movie or TV show or Anime and have just as good if not a better experience. Most JRPGs' only significant gameplay is turn based combat which doesn't lend itself as much to the stories these games tell which leaves most of the storytelling through cutscenes rather than the game itself. Other gameplay like travelling between points or interacting with stuff feels more like busywork rather than an integral part of the story. That's what made Chrono Trigger so much more interesting as a JRPG and storytelling because even your seemingly trivial actions interacting with objects or talking to NPCs did affect the story in many different ways.

Back to DQ11, there are quite a few places where being the game as it is made the story less enjoyable.

Exhibit 1: There's a section in the town of Snifelheim where the party has just found out the Witch Krystalida has impersonated the Queen and the guards are about to descend upon her but the Queen stands in front of her to protect her and asks everyone to hear here out..... and then the cutscene ends and everyone is awkwardly standing in place. You can talk to guards to get their opinion on the matter and obviously they are like "why is Queen defending her". To progress, you need to go up to and talk to the Queen which progresses the cutscene like nothing happened and it was all one continuous cutscene. So in this case, the player having to interact ruins the flow of what is supposed to be a tense situation. It also doesn't make sense because the player already still has to stand back and listen to what is going on. If this wasn't a game, then there wouldn't be a break like this. And there are these occasional breaks in between important cutscenes that don't add anything in other cutscenes as well though they are uncommon.

Exhibit 2: The fights in Octagonia. There are cutscenes of these amazingly choreographed fights that are a joy to see. Especially between Jade and Erik. But most of the fights are the Turn Based Battles which, while mechanically fun, are disconnected from the cool cutscenes preceding them. If this story was in the form of an anime, at least more of the fight would have been animated instead.

Exhibit 3: There's a lot of walking and travel in between major beats in the story. And very little story development happens in this traversal. If this were another medium, these would either be cut or would have more story beats to compensate.

Again, this isn't to say the story of the game isn't lacking, because it isn't. I enjoyed it. I just feel that it being attached to a JRPG like DQ11 doesn't enhance it. I prefer my JRPGS either take the Chrono Trigger approach and incorporate the gameplay with the story, or take the Pokémon approach and be in the background and give context to the combat and world. DQ11’s middle-ground approach of “splicing an animated tv show in between the combat and traversal” feels less optimal because I’d get a better experience of this already passive story through a passive medium without interruptions or gameplay. I know a common response to this is "you spend more time with the characters in a game" but, you don't spend much time interacting or developing them storywise in a game. Stuff like combat and navigation feels like filler in context with the story.

I don't even feel in control of the main character, who I named "Levin". I get the point of silent protagonists, it helps put you more in their shoes. But Levin already has his own feelings, opinions and thoughts on matters. Characters already treat him like he's polite, cool and level headed. You even see him as a kid who speaks with a British accent. So why maintain him as a silent protagonist instead of letting him actually talk? It limits character interactions significantly

There is one unique feature DQ11 has that could’ve swayed my opinion and made me argue the game has an advantage in telling this story- party chat. With the press of a button you can chat with the party. And they have a response for near every situation. My expectation was that this would make every conversation much more interesting as I love the cutscenes where the party interacts with each other. But the issue is the content of these chats. It's one sentence per character and it's usually just about where to go next and every character almost always has the same opinion on a topic. So instead of full conversations, you generally get 5 reskinned versions of "hey we should do this next". And since Levin is silent, there's not even a back and forth or response. There are some sentences from some points in the story that are more engaging and better characterize the cast. For example, telling the Mermaid about her lover. It's one of the few choices in the game and the party is divided on what to do. Or when Veronica dies and everybody has their own response to the death. I wish there was more of that kind of dialogue.

With all that aside, I still feel the story presented is quite good. However, I feel the story drops from good to passable at best in the post-game. It starts promisingly enough. Levin gets a chance to time travel back to before Mordegon gets the sword to save Veronica. I am always fond of these kinds of premises because of all the what if scenarios that can happen. But the story doesn't do much with the premise. If anything, it removes the interesting stuff that happened previously. You no longer have Sylvando making up with his father and forming the soldiers of smile (you get a reunion with his dad but it lacks the same flair). You don't have Erik dealing with his sister and how he failed her, you just have Erik curing her and quickly moving on. You don't have Hendrik rising as a hero and having a heart to heart with Jasper. You have a small fight hours later which has some of the impact. You don't have Serena growing after Veronica's death, going from being a bit of an airhead to becoming serious and wisened. And there's nothing to really replace that. Even the new villain, Calasmos isn't as threatening or personal as Mordegon. Mordegon managed to mind control the king and used that to mess over Levin's life, he got Cobblestone destroyed, he managed to swoop in and steal the sword of light and steal Levin's Luminary powers and then plunged the world into darkness. The main story sets him up as this serious threat and gives the player plenty of motivation to want to take him down. But with Calasmos, there's nothing. He just shows up as a threat and there's very little direct action he takes against the squad. Even when it's time to fight him the game just goes "go explore the world until you're ready to face him". Yeah, we learn he is the big bad and did some stuff in the past, but without that direct and present action, he's just a dumb robot looking thing sitting in the desert posing no threat.

I honestly feel the story of the post-game could have been melded into the same timeline. Most of the same events happen with the payoff lessened. Have Calasmos be hiding in wait for Mordegon to be defeated since Mordegon managed to trap him so now Calasmos can reign free. The story was basically already hinting at this before. You could even find an excuse to bring back Veronica as a projection of Serena or something if needs be.

There's a video that has a different take on the postgame-

https://youtu.be/fXZaB1TX5QQ

There's a common criticism often thrown around with regards to open world games. It goes like this "Fallout 4 is a game where the main story is urgent and wants you to hurry and rescue your son but the game also wants you to waste precious time doing optional side content". The common point made to resolve this issue is to say "make the game's story less urgent". But I disagree with that and DQ11 is my counter why. The game has both an urgent main story with Mordegon and an non-urgent story with Calasmos and as I've said earlier, Mordegon is more engaging because of all he does which makes him a more threatening villain. In order for a villain to be threatening, he needs to take actions which further his goals. But he can't take action if the story isn't urgent and therefore becomes less threatening and it's less motivating to want to go beat him.

Even from a gameplay perspective, the postgame is lacking. You often just revisit prior areas and re-fight older enemies that are stronger now, despite there no longer being a story reason for that. Drustan’s challenges are a neat idea but often require a ton of grinding beforehand which drastically slows down the pace. I personally feel the game is at its best once the credits roll for the first time and everything afterwards is more repetitive, slow or not as interesting.

Basically what I'm saying is that an urgent and active main story/villain is more engaging than the opposite and I wish this "criticism" wasn't so ubiquitous. So what if there's still side quests to do in both cases? The player can still go and do them while still being invested in the drama of the main story.

To conclude, DQ11 is the best and most refined DQ game that, as a chill JRPG with good combat, exceeds expectations. Perhaps that's all the game wanted to be and it would be unfair to criticize it for not having a complicated world or navigation or challenges in the overworld. I acknowledge that, but I can't deny I was often bored when I wasn't in combat or in cutscenes. I can see the value in its approach generally for many people, but still feel stuff like the post-game was lacking despite that view.

Thanks for reading. Next up for me's probably Assassin's Creed Bloodlines. See you then.

Prince of Persia Forgotten Sands PSP Version.

 

Hello Everyone. Now, The 2010 Prince of Persia game, Forgotten Sands has a lot of versions. The PS3/360/PC version is different to the Wii Version which is different to the PSP version which is different to the DS version. I want to focus on just the PSP version today.

The Story:

This one is quite brief. So there's this fire spirit called Ahihud who has a prophecy that some member the Persian Royal Family will eventually defeat him. So he starts killing them. The Prince is initially told to stay in his tower by Sharaman for his safety. Prince is restless about this, sees this bright blue light outside, follows it despite being told not to. This blue light reveals herself to be a Helem. A spirit of time who spills the deets to Prince and the 2 team up to stop Aihud. They journey to Aihud's magical kingdom, rescue Helem's magical sisters along the way which give the Prince the ability to slow down and speed up certain objects. Prince reaches Aihud who is using magical elixir to make himself immortal. He escapes through a portal to the ethereal realm. Helem sacrifices herself so the portal can open and the Prince faces Aihud without his powers until the other sisters of time come into help him by letting him use his powers again. Helem also turns out to not be dead. Aihud is defeated, the Prince returns to his world, says his goodbyes to Helem, the palace and its denizens are freed and the game ends.

So yeah, most of the story happens in the first and last missions. Stuff like the whole royal family being hunted by assassins, or the fact that an entire mythical kingdom and fire spirit is messing around are just set dressing, Personally, I'm not complaining. I prefer the story to take a backseat to the gameplay which is what happens here so I'm not going to dock marks or anything. But just for the sake of it, here is a critique of the story: the story is functional. The Prince and Helem's banter is entertaining and adds flavour to proceedings and the game would certainly be worse without it. Though, it isn't anything special. Unlike Farah and Prince in Sands of Time, the relationship has no changing progression. And unlike Two Thrones, there's no dynamic or conflict between the 2. This does somewhat hurt the story when Helem makes her sacrifice as there's not as much of a connection between the player and her. Her coming back so soon after "dying" certainly doesn't add much. I'd rather she have stayed dead to add some heat onto Aihud (lol). Because from the player's perspective, they don't really have much of that. Aihud did kill some of the Prince's cousins, but we don't know his cousins. Aihud took over a random kingdom and stole its elixir, but we don't know said kingdom. Having him be responsible in some way for Helem's death gives the player some reason to want to take him down aside from him being the antagonist. Helem's sisters are basically unvoiced and don't even directly interact with the Prince. I think it would have been a lot stronger if they all took over for Helem and when the game was over, thanked the Prince and mourned Helem together.

 

Aihud is about as Saturday Morning Cartoon as you can get for a monster-like antagonist. Though, there is some dramatic irony with his situation seeing as he's doing all this to escape his fate from the Prince of all people and it's his attempt to escape that causes more problems. The icing on the cake is as the Prince defeats him, he says "You can't escape your fate Aihud. There are the consequences for messing with time". Since all the Forgotten Sands Games take place after Sands of Time but before Warriour Within, it rings a bit seeing as the roles are going to be reversed for the Prince in a matter of time.

Also, I have no place to fit this in, but we learn in a cutscene that the world is flat in the POP universe. And I find that hilarious.

Gameplay:

Unlike the console versions of Forgotten Sands and the past PSP POP games, the PSP version of Forgotten Sands is a 2D Side Scroller. It plays like a 2D demake of its big console brethren rather than as a version of the Original POP games. You can run, jump, wall-run, climb and do just about everything you expect only in 2D. And the controls for moving the Prince around are great. The animations are quite detailed. Levels are linear with some hidden rooms for elixir and some levels have alternate pathways and unlockables like new swords.

 

The big new gimmick are the 2 time powers given by the sisters of time. One is being able to speed up things. Which can be used to speed up pillars of sand so they can push things farther or higher, speed up traps and enemies so they can complete their cycles faster. The other is slow stuff down, allowing you to freeze pillars of sand to use them to platform, and freeze enemies and traps. These powers aren't mutually exclusive as some platforming segments require you to combine them. For example, using Speed Up to cause a whirlwind to come up to catch the Prince while using slow to turn other pillars of sand into poles to swing and alternating between the 2. Or freeze one whirlwind, and use Speed Up on another sand pillar to push the frozen whirlwind while maneuvering on said whirlwind to avoid traps. In addition, unlike powers in other POP games, these powers don't just work on specific obstacles in the world. Enemies and traps can also be affected and this can be advantageous. For example, speeding up one blade in a pair of moving blades to offset the pattern to create a way through. Or Freezing one blade so you can navigate through the rest. Don't think that just Slow Down is useful. Speed Up has lots of utilities as some traps move slowly initially. It is a very creative use of a power set and is pushed quite far in levels.

 

Sadly, there are some issues. In some situations, you need to alternate between which of the multiple targets you want to affect. You can use the analogue stick to change targets but it is finicky and frequently results in shifting to a different target or back to your original starting point making precision adjustments frustrating. There are a handful of segments that use this approach and those are some of the low points of the game. The game is better when there are only 2 targets to switch between at a time as you only need to move the stick briefly to switch targets or physically move the Prince and have the game switch for you in something of a Precursor to Rayman Legends' Murphy. Another issue is with some puzzle sections. These require you Speed Up a moving object, then freeze it, then swap to the sand it is shooting out and speed it up so it activates something. And repeat this 4-9 times. These sections are boring and also annoying seeing it's very easy to over and undershoot the correct time to freeze and repeat the cycle.

 

Unlike other versions, the PSP version doesn't have a rewind system for correcting your mistakes. Instead it uses a lives system. If you fail a platforming section, you are automatically rewound to the last safe spot at the cost of one life. Run out of lives and you restart at the last fountain you drank from (as an aside, I find it funny in that past POP games, it's just regular water that heals the Prince, but now he needs to drink from magic fountains). I am not really fond of this. With the classic rewind system, the player is able to choose how far they want to go back. Some players can rewind back in the middle of a failed jump and correct it there to save time and keep their momentum going while others may prefer going back to more safety. There can even be a trade off in some places as rewinding as far back as possible gives you less of a safety net to rewind further. None of that exists with a lives system. If anything, it can make the section feel worse as there are some minute long platforming sections that a single mistake takes you back to the start of the section as that's only the safe ground during the section while the rewind system could have let you go back a couple seconds to immediately try again.

 

Levels themselves have collectibles in the form of Elixir which can be spent at fountains to either upgrade the Prince's health or unlock more combat moves. I find the health upgrades far more useful in tanking mistakes from traps and enemies. More on the combat in the combat section. Completing a level also has the level rank you on 3 factors, how many Elixirs did you collect [The More the better], how long did you take [The Faster The Beatter], and how many times you lost lives [Fewer the Better]. As mentioned previously, collecting more Elixir unlocks upgrades. But not losing lives also rewards you with gems which can unlock extras in the main menu like concept art and music. You don't seem to get any rewards with the time challenge though. You can't replay levels until you beat the game. Some Elixir can't be obtained on a first run since you don't have powers by that point.

Now for the combat, which is by far the worst aspect of this game and drags an otherwise good experience down significantly. Combat in this game might arguably the worst of any modern POP game. There are some positives, the animations look cool and being able to speed up and slow down enemies out of their cycles is neat. Some environments have traps you can speed up or slow onto enemies. Now that's where the positives end. You have a basic combo that ends with a powerful attack that can take out around 20-60% of an enemy (depending on the enemy). You can jump on enemies and then press O to throw them into other enemies or into traps and hazards. But these get repetitive fast and you can't skip combat. Most enemies fight the same so it becomes a case of doing a combo one enemy while freezing the other until they die and then killing the other in rooms without hazards and repeating the process as more respawn. You can't jump over enemies. If you jump on an enemy, you must then press O to throw them or they will throw you. You can't damage them or jump off them afterwards (unless you upgrade to unlock a jump attack). Some flying enemies move out of your way so you need to keep using speed up and slow to get them in the right position to hit them which can take a long while. The worst are big shield enemies. These enemies have a shield so you can't hit them directly and need to wait until they make an attack and attack them afterwards. But only one of their attacks can be countered and if you miss they will do a follow up which will do a lot of damage that you can't avoid. They can't be thrown and are immune to Speed Up and Slow Down and they can heal other enemies. This can drag out combat as you're hitting an opponent and Shield guy here keeps healing them just below how much you can damage them. This all comes to a head in one particular level where you need to fight 2 of these guys at once and it's just a chore. As you damage one, the other heals up the one you are attacking and since they block after every combo, their health is quickly restored. If they do an unblockable combo, you need to dodge away which gives them time to be fully healed. I had to constantly dart back and forth between them and it took forever but I eventually managed to kill one which let the other just be a tedious enemy rather than one who keeps undoing my progress.

This is where the upgrades come in. The first combat upgrade gives you a counterattack that works on one of the shield guys attack. It's only useful here since every other enemy can either be slowed or jumped on or just blocked normally. The other upgrades are less useful. You get a running wall attack which is useless against shield guys. A charge attack which is somewhat useful. That's why I recommend the health upgrades. Because they can help you far more.

Bosses are also lacklustre. They either have very simple patterns but take forever to get to them and you can't use Speed Up on them to get them to go through them faster at more risk or something. The only decent boss is Aihud's Assassin because his gimmick is you have to use the powers on the environment to drop traps on him which is also quite quick and more in your control.

Seriously, combat is by far the worst aspect of this game. At least in other POP games, the combat is usually just tolerable or even skippable, here it's annoying and boring. I feel the game would be a whole letter grade better if it removed combat entirely. There's only one fight I found interesting, where you need to stand on a plate in a room while there is a regular enemy and arrow traps shooting at you since it incorporated the powers and platforming and obstacles in a more interesting way.

Other Stuff:

Occasionally, I found it difficult to see which walls I could wall-run on or when certain whirlwinds were against green slime, particularly when the camera zoomed out. These sections were rare.

Subtitles are inconsistent. Some cutscenes don't have them. Some don't have them for the first half and then they start.

Connecting with the PS3 version of Forgotten Sands gets you 2 upgrade points and the Sands of Time Skin in the PSP version.

Conclusion:

In conclusion, The PSP version of Forgotten Sands is a good game and one I would recommend checking out for not just fans of the Prince but also platformer fans in general. Its story may be little more than set dressing but the levels and gimmicks are worthwhile. It's held back by the lack of a rewind feature and the terrible combat but if you can look past that, it's a worthwhile game.

 

Thanks for reading this. I'd like to hear your thoughts. Next up for me is either Battles of Prince of Persia or Assassin's Creed Bloodlines. See you then

Assassin's Creed Rebellion (an ok Time Waster)

 Assassin's Creed Rebellion is a free to play mobile game developed by Behaviour Interactive and published by Ubisoft. Its wiki describes it as "Historic action-strategy RPG" which, while technically true, isn't as impressive as it sounds.

Rebellion is divided into 2 main modes, on mission and at the meta HQ stuff. Let's talk about the missions first.

Missions work by the player selecting 3 characters to bring with them from the pool of characters they've unlocked. This can include characters from the Spanish Inquisition Setting like Aquilar, or characters from completely different times and settings like Kassandara from 450 BCE before the Assassins were even officially established (and your chosen characters can chat during missions and with targets like nothing is out of the ordinary which is quite funny). Each character can be from one of 3 classes and further specialized into subclasses. The 3 classes are combat (characterized by a pink symbol), stealth (are blue) and support (are green). Subclasses for support include medics who can health other characters and mechanics who can disable traps. Subclasses for the stealth side include characters who can parkour better or those who can parkour well but also use the hidden blade to assassinate enemies. Each mission has a recommended list of which subclasses would be ideal but you can ignore it if you choose to play the mission yourself. You don't need one of every main class. You can totally do a mission with just combat guys or 2 medics and a trap guy regardless of what the mission recommends but it may be harder. On said missions, the level is divided into rooms that have their own specific hazards and obstacles like guards, traps, gaps etc. You have to choose which one of the 3 characters brought along gets sent into the next room to get to the end of the room. If a character runs out of health while moving through the room, you must send someone else to get through the room while that original character is benched for the rest of the level. Depending on the character chosen there can be  different ways to get through the room. In a room with guards, a stealth focused character assassinate guards or parkour their way above them. However, characters only have a certain number of times they can use specific abilities. Like Aquilar can only attempt to Assassinate 4 people in an entire level. After the 4th guy, you can't stealth kill any more enemies. Same for other abilities like better parkour and disabling traps so some amount of resource management is required to get through levels well. You might consider sending in a combat guy to fight enemies to save your stealth guy's stealth kills for a later room for example. Also note that many of these out of combat abilities have a % chance to succeed so it's possible to fail an assassination attempt and then have to fight enemies while also taking a slight health penalty for failing that assassination. Combat works on a turn based system where you and your opponents trade blows and both can use special abilities and attacks after a certain amount of turns pass. Combat abilities don't seem to have a limited number of uses and rely on cooldowns. Levels can be quite sprawling with many different paths through and occasional bonus rooms with some extra loot. Note, you cannot backtrack through a level.

The main issue I have with the missions is that they are quite shallow. It rarely feels like a real strategic operation I'm doing with my squad and more like a simple gauntlet of basic obstacles designed to whittle my team down. It's so simple that it could be automated..... and it is. There is an auto-play button that plays the level for you and the system appears to be decent.

All this means is that this isn't a game to really dive deep into. This is more of a chill time-waster type game. I mostly played this game while my grandparents were sitting with me and watching cooking shows. It was simple enough to keep me occupied while allowing me to chat with them and pay some attention to other stuff. 

The other side of the game is the meta stuff. You have to complete missions to find resources to let you craft gear for your squads, unlock more characters and upgrade your HQ. Your HQ is a collection of rooms that provide you benefits like levelling up your characters, crafting weapons and armour for them, healing them if they are wounded, generating some resources etc. Initially, I expected this to be like Fallout Shelter where I could build my own rooms and fine tune the experience I had in the field. Like, I could make lots of medical rooms so I could brute force through hard missions by always having someone recovering so I could play riskier. But you can only build a select number of each kind room. You don’t even have a choice in the order which you can build rooms since they are unlocked in a preset order based on when you level up as the rooms have a level requirement. Honestly, you could remove the HQ altogether and just have a series of menus that do the job probably faster. Have a menu for crafting and levelling up, you can have tabs telling you how much bonus healing and resources you are gathering. The HQ doesn't really have much more to it. There aren't any interactions or activities you can do with your characters. No Minigames or challenges at base. It really just is a glorified menu.

In addition to that, you have to gather resources to make your characters stronger for later missions. This is where the Free-to-play nature of the game comes in as you'll often have to go back and play older missions to play later ones, or pay to get more intel and resources faster. The game does have a feature where it lets you instantly complete past missions you've gotten a 3 star rank in to get their resources at the cost of some of your squad's health provided you send in members with the recommended subclasses otherwise you won't be allowed to rush the mission and either have to find a mission whose criteria you meet or play it manually.

The Presentation:

In comparison to most AC games which go for a photo realistic style, Rebellion opts for a cute chibi artstyle which I do like. It pops on phones. The soundtrack, sound effects, environments and models are all also well done.

One aspect the game tries to go for is a "gotta catch em all" approach by letting you collect AC characters from across the franchise as part of your squad. While this is kinda cool and fan-service-y, I question its efficacy for more casual fans. With something like Marvel or DC, such an approach works better because there's a massive list of very popular characters people are quite fond off and are even somewhat known by even casual fans. And even less popular characters are still somewhat iconic with cool designs, deep backstories and lore that could make someone unfamiliar with them somewhat curious. With Assassin's Creed, aside from the main protagonists of the games, the side casts aren't as developed or iconic or have that star power to make it cool when you unlock them. I don't imagine many players who unlock Qasim al-Dani, Gershon Deloya or Lupo Gallego will even know who these characters are never mind be excited by them. While the current pool of characters certainly has some iconic faces, the future is somewhat limited by who the games can add and people be willing to pay or play for. It's a somewhat similar issue I have with some RWBY mobile games. Besides the main squad and some of the villains, everybody else has very little to excite me when I unlock them. Though, at least with RWBY, the visual designs of the plethora of side characters at least look more distinct which I cannot say the same for with Rebellion. That's not a knock against the AC games or the franchise. Some franchises don't focus on large ensemble casts that would translate to more iconic ensemble video games. I imagine a GTA or Saints Row style game in this format would also have a similar uphill challenge because the source games are more focused on individual characters who are a jack of all trades rather than an ensemble of heroes.

The Story:

I'm just gonna let the Wiki describe what's going on here:

"Rebellion is an Abstergo Entertainment product created using a mobile version of the Animus 4.3 connected to the Helix servers, which was dubbed the Mobile Animus 4.38. The product was released in November 2018 and primarily dealt with the prelude to and immediate aftermath of the Granada War during the Spanish Reconquista, following Aguilar de Nerha and the Spanish Brotherhood of Assassins as they fought the Spanish Rite of the Templars who operated under the guise of the Inquisition lead by Tomás de Torquemada.

Through Rifts in the simulation, players could experience Events which occurred in other time periods, ranging from the Peloponnesian War to the Roman Empire's rule over Egypt. During its 2018 anniversary Event "Echoes Through the Animus", the product's servers were hacked by an unknown individual using the handle 3P3EC74R, who revealed the next planned Event was to take place in the Golden Age of Piracy. Features included in the product beyond the Helix Rift Events are the Helix Store, Animus Challenges, Animus Bonus Hours, Animus Carousel, and Animus Bounties."

Basically, the story of this game is that this game is a mobile game made by Abstergo (probably in collaboration with Ubisoft) using a mobile version of the new Animus to let users experience the aftermath of the Granada War and have special timed events to see other stuff from the past mostly related to the Assassins side. Which is quite ridiculous. Ironically that explains why the Free-to-Play stuff is so irritating but I do wonder how much of the Assassins and Templars is known in the in-game universe? Since at least AC3 Liberation, Abstergo has been making "Assassin's Creed Games" in-universe thanks to their Animus programs but the benefit of which isn't well used. Like, shouldn't making these in-universe games and products be a bad thing? It's harder to remain a secret organization when you are making video games about your secret organization from your rival's point of view using a device that tell you what was going on in history, albeit with some edits. But those edits seem haphazardly designed. They don't seem to work in convincing people the Assassins are bad or the Templars good or they don't exist or whatever since the edits these games make in-universe don't really cover the truth or skew it well. Like anyone playing Liberation with no context of the Assassins or the Templars beforehand isn't going to come away thinking the Assassins are the bad guys or whatever. If anything, it might make people more sympathetic to the plight of the Assassins. I'm starting to think these are more inside jokes designed to be meta for the sake of it that are carried from game to game rather than some serious aspect of the AC lore that's going to have major impacts. Still I'm quite enjoying them so I certainly hope they continue as they are certainly a better idea than a modern day set of missions. But I do wonder if these could have been integrated better with the other games as a form of storytelling. Imagine if the next Assassin's Creed game is like 4 where you play as an Abstergo employee gathering footage of the American Civil War or something in the modern day and Rebellion gets updates and events showing the progress Abstergo is making in developing and advertising this new project. Or the other way, if the next AC is like Valhalla and you could have outside Assassin cells contacting you and using your mobile Animus to gather intel about the past and even some insight into Layla's team. I imagine that's a tall order and Ubisoft doesn't seem as hands on as something like Disney is with all supplementary projects tying into their current Star Wars EU. Plus, would most players even enjoy such events? Would the game even allow these events to shine or feel like more than just ads for the new game? The current events the game had, like the one with Elvior was a decent bit of fan service even if it made no sense how your characters from the 1600s could chat with Elvior which did end up making it more funny though.

In Conclusion, I'd recommend playing Rebellion as a simple but charming time waster, casually seeing numbers, stats and resources going up as its design is closer to that of an Idle game than a traditional strategy game. To that end, Rebellion accomplishes its goal. Though it is a little sad to see it aim so low. But I guess if I wanted a full on detailed stealth strategy game, I could play Invisible Inc, hopefully that comes out on consoles and iOS one day. But there is potential in Assassin's Creed taking a stab at that design using its own unique elements and I hope that comes to fruition.

Looney Tunes Back in Action - A solid platformer with some missed potential

Looney Tunes Back in Action is a 3d platformer and collect-a-thon developed by EA in 2003 and based on the movie of the same name. However, unlike the movie, the human characters aren't there and it's pretty much just Bugs and Daffy who are in control. The story reflects this as its Bugs and Daffy who have to track down a monkey (spelled "munkey") who stole a giant blue diamond. Each of the major collectibles done by completing an objective gives a munkey who is then later revealed to not be the target munkey.

The game works by giving the player a series of linear objectives to complete in moderately sized locations. As said earlier, completing each objective rewards a munkey and is tied to the story going on in each area. For example, in the first area, WB studios, the first objective is to chase a munkey as Daffy. Completing that objective involves catching that munkey. The second objective when that's done is to play as Bugs and tear down wanted posters for Daffy in the area which rewards another Munkey.

So basically a collecthathon, although, unlike something like Jak and Daxter or Mario, this is a lot more linear with much less flexibility. You don't have multiple main objectives in an area active at once you can switch between and instead have to do them in the order presented. Each world has around 4-8 objectives and once you complete most of them, you can move onto the next world if you have collected enough money from levels (between $2-4000) or stay and complete the final objectives and find any remaining collectibles (which also reward munkeys). The worlds themselves aren't too big, feeling closer to the size of hub worlds in other games. I do wish there was something of a free mode you can toggle to explore freely to find collectibles because the way the game is set up, that's not really doable. You can select individual objectives from areas in the main menu and the objectives after that play out normally. But this can have issues. For example, some collectibles like Acme Bird Seeds Reset every time you leave an area, requiring you to find them all in one go through a world. Others like Svelster and Tweeties require you to find them in order. So suppose you learn that the 3rd and final Svelster is in the area for the 4th objective. You can't just pick the 4th objective from the menu and do the thing. You need to play from Objective 1, get the first 2 Svelvesters and then get the 3rd one when you do the 4th objective. This can make scouring areas quite boring as you have to keep replaying objectives.

As for the minute to minute gameplay, you have 2 major characters, Bugs and Daffy. Both characters can run, jump, roll, attack and swap into costumes. But Bugs can Double jump at the cost of all forward momentum, burrow underground to reach new areas and dig up treasure, wall jump at specific points. Daffy can flutter jump and swim. The 2 can have their own costumes at specific points. Bugs can wear a variety of suits like a Hula or Cowboy suit that are only there for one section to act as a key and never used again. Daffy gets his Duck Danger Suit that gives him invulnerability and lets him participate in specific minigames. Costumes cost around $50 to wear and last for around 30 seconds. You can swap between each character near instantly if they are free Lost Vikings style. Some levels and objectives take advantage of the concept by having puzzles and platforming segments that require the player to place the 2 characters and swap between them as needed using each character's unique abilities. However, the game very rarely does this. Most objectives tend to require one character and it's not until the last 2 worlds that the Lost Viking style design comes into play more often. I found myself playing as Bugs whenever I could as double jumping was more useful than anything Daffy could do. All of that's not really a huge negative because most of the game is paced well. You have solid platforming followed by a fun gimmick objective. Something like platforming to find a Munkey in one objective, followed by a bullfighting minigame, followed by more platforming under a time limit then a tennis with bomb minigame. It keeps the game feeling fresh even if the individual mechanics rarely get a chance to really get pushed to the limits. I remember a while back, I reviewed a game called Spongebob Creature from the Krusty Krab and it kinda had the opposite problem. The actual platforming was quite basic and shallow and levels went on so long that it got boring to play through. Back in Action gets that balance of a simple platformer and licenced game with set pieces much better.

Back to Back in Action, There are some platforming segments I quite like and ones that did try and push the mechanics the game has. In the 5th world, one objective requires the player to save 5 other characters under a time limit. 2 of the characters are in a room only Bugs can access and other is for Daffy so you kinda have to speed through each section somewhat quickly and using each character's unique abilities. I do wish this section was taken further. Maybe had one more version near the end where instead of the 2 rooms being entirely isolated from each other, stuff you do as Bugs affects Daffy's room and vice versa and it becomes a bit of a maze, a puzzle and a platforming challenge as you swap between the 2 characters. That's really my issue with the game, it is pretty short, clocking at around 4 hours for me and much of the gameplay rarely gets a chance to shine. I'd love to see a bigger version of the game where levels are somewhat more sprawling, there are multiple objectives to tackle at once, and you have many tools at your disposal and you have to figure out how to use them to solve some objectives. I also wish the game had some subtitles as my hearing isn't the best and an option to uninvert the camera. But the game itself is quite decent. The biggest praise I have for the game is how it uses the Looney Toons world and humour throughout the levels. The dialogue and scenarios you end up in are quite entertaining. I had fun with the experience, until the end that is.

After you complete the 6th objective of the 5th world, you reach a door. However, Bugs refuses to help Daffy open it saying "we should find more munkeys first so we can change them back". So you need to find 35 munkeys before you can play the final objectives to complete the game. This has several issues. For one, the game has never encouraged you to collect Munkeys until this point. Every past roadblock just required money. Other Collectathons like Jak and Mario 64 had Star Gates early on to encourage the player to collect more and expect roadblocks like this. Not to mention that in Back in Action, if you complete every major objective in every world thus far, you'd be at around 27 munkeys. The rest come from 4 sets of collectibles in every level. You get 1 munkey for finding 3 Svelsters in every level, 1 for paying between $1-3000 to Foghorn, 1 for finding 7 Acme Bird Seeds to play a (admittedly quite fun) minigame where you play as Coyote chasing Road Runner on a rocket, and finally 1 for finding 20 Frog Statues. I, having known there would be such a gate, though not remembering the specific number, was extra thorough in my play and only had 31 munkeys by this point. After paying Fogorn 4 times and finding one extra Svelster I got the 35 but that was quite the pacebreaker. Collecting $6000 and replaying levels to find specific collectibles is quite tedious.

What's more is that this doesn't even make sense in the story. At no point prior to this moment was it established that Munkeys were transformed from other people, hell that moment happens after the door cutscene. The munkeys had just been presented as, random munkeys that were mistaken for the target munkey. Bugs also never showed concern for the munkeys beforehand. His motive had just been "Daffy is looking for this diamond, so might as well tag along".

The content after getting the 35 isn't all that worth it either. You have one short side scrolling section as Bugs, followed by the heroes getting captured, the villain showing up out of nowhere using the diamond to turn everybody else on the planet into munkeys and our target munkey piloting a giant statue mech to stop this. Tweety gets hit with the Diamond Energy and turns into a giant monster to fight the mech in a boxing minigame while Bugs and Daffy offer quite repetitive commentary. Once you win this, a cutscene plays where the place gets destroyed, the heroes all escape, the diamond gets destroyed turning everyone, including Tweety back to normal. Tweety is given all the credit much to Daffy's sadness. It ends with everyone preparing to head to Tweety's movie deal with a cheerful Bugs offering a crying Daffy a ride at a discount with before the fade to black, Daffy shouting "You want how much?!".

While the whole thing is very silly which suits the tone the game had been going for all this time, there are some issues. For one, there isn't a lot of gameplay afterwards. Just one brief side scrolling section and a kinda repetitive boxing minigame. This minigame suffers initially because the controls aren't shown. If you haven't played a boxing game before, you wouldn't know that the controls are now switched to left and right sticks. Pushing a stick forward does an attack in that direction and you have to read the opponent to attack in the direction they are weak to. Pushing both sticks back does a block and pushing both sticks forward when you have landed enough attacks does a POW attack which knocks the enemy back. You win after knocking the opponent off the edge 3 times (even though the cutscene afterwards shows the mech on the platform).

Personally, if I had my way, I would have made the following changes. If the player doesn't have 32 munkeys by the time of reaching the door, Buggs and Daffy are captured by the uncaptured munkeys instead of Acme Chairman who then succeeds in turning the world into munkeys and makes a fortune selling Acme Banana peelers. It can be played for comedy instead of being serious with Bugs and Daffy being unconcerned with the rest of the world being turned into munkeys. This is the "bad ending" of the game. If they have 32, then it proceeds as normal (albeit with a much more meatier platforming and puzzle section) with Bugs and Daffy facing no opposition getting to the chairman who are then accidentally able to get Tweety into monster form to fight the mech (I'd also like if this fight had a bit more to it). This makes getting the munkeys feel more in line with what the game has established so far. The rest can play out the same with just an added control prompt for the boxing match and more varied dialogue from Bugs and Daffy. Though, ideally, I'd have loved it if this entire final section went full MGS4 with the Rex escape and Boss Fight but that may be too much. Having Tweety be the final star is fine. It maintains the silly tone the game has had and even works with a similar theme to the movie.

Graphics:

The game uses a 3D model artstyle that reminds me of that one Simpsons Episode where Homer enters 3D and I'm not fond of this style. I find it looks unappealing and a lot of games based on animated shows go for this. Spongebob Battle for Bikini Bottom and Simpsons Hit and Run have a similar approach as well and I'm not fond of their style either. I'd much rather the graphics either be more detailed or be more cell shaded and cartoony. Regardless, I'm not going to ding the game too much for this.

So in conclusion, Looney Tunes Back in Action is a fun little 3D Collectathon. The controls, platforming and gimmicks are fun if a little undercooked. The ending stumbles a little with the odd gate. I do recommend playing it at your own pace and when getting to the end, watching a lets play instead of backtracking and combing through levels. As a fan of Looney Tunes, there are a lot of references and easter eggs sure to entertain fans.