4847 replies to this topic

[Giggidy]

Professor Layton is basically a visual novel where you occasionally have to do a puzzle to advance the plot. If the amount of reading in Phoenix Wright bothered you there, it'll certainly bother you here as well.

The stories are (mostly) good and the puzzles are (mostly) good, but the critical flaw in Layton is the puzzles and story are very rarely interconnected. It's impossible to pin down what puzzle happens at what point in which game because they're always completely irrelevant. It's like the story and puzzles were written by two entirely separate teams and then hastily crammed into the same game within an hour.

The Layton games from best to worst (IMO) are:

Unwound Future (#3)
Diabolical Box (#2)
Last Specter (#4)
Curious Village (#1)

They're all great games though, and the stories are mostly self-contained. They steadily get better over time, until Last Specter which suffers from... more than a few narrative problems.

1. The story is supposedly about Layton and Luke's first case together, but the story doesn't focus on them at all after the first 30 minutes and instead focuses on brand new characters whom we the audience simply aren't going to be nearly as attached to. Somehow Unwound Future provides a lot more insight into the main characters and their relationship with each other, even though the game wasn't supposed to be about that.

2. It simply tries way too hard to one-up Unwound Future the way Unwound Future one-ups Diabolical box. The endings in both of those games were genuinely heart-warming (and Unwound Future's actually tearjerking) but Last Specter's ending tries so hard to be even sadder that it comes off as just plain sappy and glurchy.

3. It blatantly violates the genre conventions set by the first three games in ways that I can't really describe without spoiling anything, so I'll put it in a spoiler tag:

Spoiler

The Layton setting is very clear that, although fantastic technologies like giant mecha and brain uploads exist, there's nothing outright supernatural. The ending of Last Specter involves literal magic. The Eternal Diva has the same damned problem.

Edited by Giggidy, 09 October 2012 - 05:01 PM.

[The Satellite]

Professor Layton is basically a visual novel where you occasionally have to do a puzzle to advance the plot. If the amount of reading in Phoenix Wright bothered you there, it'll certainly bother you here as well.

Well, it wasn't just the amount of text that bugged me, it was how slow it progressed, so let's see how the message speed in Layton goes. Plus, the puzzle element is more gamelike than Phoenix Wright, so that part will hopefully be appealing enough.

Some positive things I didn't say about Phoenix Wright though: The writing, characterization, and the soundtrack (minus a track or two) were all rather well-done and enjoyable. It was just the presentation (visual novel style, constant dialogue and moving around (with almost labyrinthine methods of moving sometimes)) that I'm not a fan of.

[Russ]

I'd argue you about Last Specter a bit, actually, because I liked it more than Diabolical Box. You could say it doesn't focus enough on Layton and Luke's relationship, and you might be right, but there was enough there for me. I actually did really like the new characters, so it didn't bother me too much. I might agree that the ending tried to hard, but ya know what, it honestly made me cry. Diabolical Box didn't (although it did make me feel all emotional inside). It was sappy, yeah, but it was the right kind of sappy. As for the last point...

Spoiler

Literal magic? I don't see how. The Golden Garden wasn't "magic", really, it was just pure, untainted, the perfect atmosphere to cure the girl whose name I forget's disease. Granted, yeah, it's a stretch, but I'd buy. Eternal Diva... you could argue it both ways. I mean, Luke speculated that what's her name might be the reincarnation of other what's her name, but it's not outright stated, and it could just be coincidence. The song itself too could be argued to not be magic; the ancient civilization (whose name I forget, I'm terrible with names) could have set up a mechanical structure that responds to the song. I dunno.

And on an aside note, about the puzzles not being connected the story at all, while it's very true of the first game, I thought they started getting more interconnected as the game went along. Heck, unless I remember wrong, almost every puzzle in the last few chapters of Unwound Future was tied directly into the plot.

Edit: No ninja'ing allowed. >

[Giggidy]

I'd argue you about Last Specter a bit, actually, because I liked it more than Diabolical Box. You could say it doesn't focus enough on Layton and Luke's relationship, and you might be right, but there was enough there for me. I actually did really like the new characters, so it didn't bother me too much. I might agree that the ending tried to hard, but ya know what, it honestly made me cry. Diabolical Box didn't (although it did make me feel all emotional inside). It was sappy, yeah, but it was the right kind of sappy. As for the last point...

Spoiler

Literal magic? I don't see how. The Golden Garden wasn't "magic", really, it was just pure, untainted, the perfect atmosphere to cure the girl whose name I forget's disease. Granted, yeah, it's a stretch, but I'd buy. Eternal Diva... you could argue it both ways. I mean, Luke speculated that what's her name might be the reincarnation of other what's her name, but it's not outright stated, and it could just be coincidence. The song itself too could be argued to not be magic; the ancient civilization (whose name I forget, I'm terrible with names) could have set up a mechanical structure that responds to the song. I dunno.

Spoiler

I was referring specifically to Loosha just... existing. Plus that whole magic flute thing. The reason why the ending didn't work for me is I simply did not care that much about about Loosha or Little Miss Cancer Patient (I don't even remember her name, that's how much I don't care). Plus while you could argue the ending of Diabolical Box has the same problem, DB builds up a tragic love story that it slowly reveals over the course of the game and culminates in the resolution of the final mystery of Folsense and the Elysian Box. Last Specter's story is just a total mess with a whole bunch of things going on at once that doesn't really mesh together all that well by the end. Diabolical Box's ending feels like a conclusion whereas Last Specter just feels like the point where the writers ran out of ideas.

And on an aside note, about the puzzles not being connected the story at all, while it's very true of the first game, I thought they started getting more interconnected as the game went along. Heck, unless I remember wrong, almost every puzzle in the last few chapters of Unwound Future was tied directly into the plot.

It did get better, but still, there's maybe 20 plot-relevant puzzles in Unwound Future out of 160 total?

[Dawnlight]

I started playing Code of Princess for 3DS today. So far, the game is alright. The gameplay actually reminds me of Persona 4 Arena. My only complaint so far is the frame rate. It is just terrible. Period.

[RyanBlazeheart]

Dissidia Duodecim: I managed to get Smiting Soul for Iai Strike earlier today. Now I'm working on a full set. It works pretty well in the Low 90's with my current Booster accessories too.

[SpacemanDan]

Switched from Front Mission over to Pokemon Black 2. The U.C.S. campaign is kinda brutal in Front Mission...Then again, the start of the O.C.U. campaign was fairly difficult too...Eh. I'll get back to it...eventually. ):

I've also started playing Front Mission - Gun Hazard on the SNES. I found out there was an English patch, so I snatched that up and gave it a whirl. It's kinda underwhelming at the moment, but I like the idea and think it could become something more, so I'll stick with it for now.

[The Satellite]

Decided to forego Layton and continue my old Pokémon White file from a while back, might as well catch up. But... since I really didn't feel like investigating legitimate time into this game (nor do I feel like familiarizing myself with terrible Gen V Pokémon), I used Pokégen to hack in my entire SoulSilver team (with some modifications from suggestions by Kas), so that way I'll spend even less time on it since I can breeze through it. Don't worry; when I get to White 2 I already have a legitimate team planned out from the available Pokémon, so I'll play that one legit (if DeSmuMe counts as legit >.>) when I get there. I just don't feel like wasting the time on White right now, especially when there's a new one out anyway.

[Giggidy]

Just uninstalled Assassin's Creed 2 in disgust.

To be fair, I really did like the game... at first. It was fun watching Ezio climb around and occasionally kill a guard while he's not looking. I spent about 10 hours or so just dicking around, finding collectibles and mostly ignoring the plot.

After I got bored of that, I decided to buckle down and start doing the story missions and... oh, my, fucking, god, it's absolutely horrid. The controls are unplayable for anything more serious than dicking around (like trying to do anything while under a time limit), the combat is a broken button masher at best and a boring waitfest at worst, the stealth mechanics are never actually used outside of the tutorials due to the nature of how the game's designed, and the story plays like a fucking broken record. Kill a guy, do some pointless filler quests to be allowed to approach the next guy, kill him while getting a preview shot of the next target, rinse and repeat.

It might help if the villains weren't all copy-pastes of one another and the protagonists were anything more than 1 dimensional cardboard cutouts of stereotypical video game protagonists. Ezio has no real motivation to be doing much of anything after the first couple of missions, you only keep killing people because the game says you have to, and he has no flaws or distinguishable character traits except "Gets lots of pussy." News flash Ubisoft, that's an adolescent fantasy, not an interesting character!!

I slogged through it just for the sake of finishing it. I mean, I had already come 10 hours in, I couldn't just quit then, right?

Then I got to the Carnival games.

Fuck you Ubisoft. Fuck. You. Christ, those god damned carnival games are a thesis on why a game's focus should be as tight as possible and trying to apply your mechanics to things they obviously weren't designed for will lead to nothing but frustration and horror. I couldn't do it. I couldn't bear to deal with the bile, putrid mess of a game it had degenerated into any longer. Deleted, never looking back.

[Dawnlight]

Then I got to the Carnival games.

Fuck you Ubisoft. Fuck. You. Christ, those god damned carnival games are a thesis on why a game's focus should be as tight as possible and trying to apply your mechanics to things they obviously weren't designed for will lead to nothing but frustration and horror. I couldn't do it. I couldn't bear to deal with the bile, putrid mess of a game it had degenerated into any longer. Deleted, never looking back.

And it haunts me today that this game sold very well.

[The Satellite]

I literally had none of those problems with the game. Maybe the PC controls had a bad effect, but I thought the story progressed well, and Ezio's motive? To find answers while following in his family's footsteps. The carnival games? A bit out there but far from unbearable. Combat is a little clunky and repetitive, granted; this is something they fixed in Brotherhood. And if you thought this game had repetitive missions, well... have you ever played or seen a walkthrough of the first Assassin's Creed?

[HylianGlaceon]

Well, as I have no access at the moment to an actual computer (Posting via 3DS), I went through my old DS games and came across Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Blue that I hadn't played in ages.

So, I started a file on that now that I got the preferred starter. I still never understood why you had to be a girl to be able to get Eevee. I'll be stuck with pink borders on everything, but I think it's worth it. If I get stuck, I always have the GBA one I can use to rescue myself.

I was considering playing PMD2 instead, but in all honestly, PMD1 was much better in my opinion. PMD2 really ruined a lot of things PMD1 did right and I hope PMD4 (Or whatever it'll be considered when it comes out) will be more like PMD1 than PMD2. I think PMD3 was a WiiWare only title in Japan from what I remember too.

I can't say I really like the 3D models of the Pokemon that much either. The 2D ones really have more of a charm to me than the others. It's a little disappointing PMD4 will have those 3D ones.

[Orithan]

I was considering playing PMD2 instead, but in all honestly, PMD1 was much better in my opinion

I disagree there. PMD2 was much better than 1 because it is more well polished, there are more pokemon to use, there was less frustration than in 1 (recruting the legendaries? You can only bring in your character and doing that is frustrating) and the Gen IV move mechanics work a lot better than Gen III's (or anything before that) for pokemon. and the music *cries tears of joy for Primal Dialga's theme*.
The main thing that PMD1 has over 2 is more of a challenge but that has no effect on the actual quality.

Speaking of this, I am planning to get Explorers of the Sky a little while after getting White 2 because I somehow still don't own a legit copy of a PMD game and I don't want to use my DS1 for games anymore.

[Giggidy]

I literally had none of those problems with the game. Maybe the PC controls had a bad effect

I'm using a 360 controller to play it with the default configuration, so the controls should be exactly the same as they were on the consoles. Given how lazy the port is in other aspects I wouldn't be surprised if it were just bugged, but it's still inexcusably bad.

but I thought the story progressed well, and Ezio's motive? To find answers while following in his family's footsteps.

His initial thing is to get revenge for his family's deaths, but this is resolved after you kill Alberto. The reason you go after the Pazzi is because "Uncle Mario said so" and the reason you go after everyone else is "They're Templars and I'm an Assassin so I kill them because... just because." Why does he care so much about killing the Templars? He could easily just retire at any point and live a quiet life in peace, yet he still goes on killing them for a reason that is never explained (or at least WASN'T explained before I quit). The best reason I can come up with is "My father wanted to kill them, so I do as well because I'm blindly loyal to my family" but this is the blandest, most boring motivation for a protagonist that's possible. Even Mario and Link have the justification of maybe getting some action with the princess after they're rescued. How does Super Mario Bros. have a more complex and interesting protagonist?

And if you thought this game had repetitive missions, well... have you ever played or seen a walkthrough of the first Assassin's Creed?

I have not, I started with the sequel because it was more or less universally acclaimed as being strictly superior to the first game. I'd hate to see what AC1 is like.

[RyanBlazeheart]

When they stopped playing Keeping the Peace on the World Map upon reaching the Land of Discord and started playing An Undocumented Battle in Confessions of the Creator my heart skipped a beat, but that was like over 2 days ago. Man Latin music can be calming and freaky at the same time. Firion is my most played Character in Dissidia Duodecim. Sometimes I'll take a nap to catch up on some sleep I didn't get because, I'm addicted to this game.