Now Playing: Resonance of Fate

I played Resonance of Fate when it was originally released in 2010 and a friend of mine was kind enough to gift me this PC remaster over Christmas. I got pretty hooked on RoF on its original release, playing through the game twice and completing all of the content and achievements. Returning to the game today, it’s not hard to see why.

The real strength of RoF is its unique combat system. It’s semi-turned based, in the sense that your three party members each take their turn to move, attack or use an item, but enemies can also move and potentially attack when you do. The combat isn’t based around swords and magic, but guns and grenades. On each character turn you can initiate a simple attack by charging your weapon, with each successive charge delivering a more powerful shot.

You can also spend a ‘bezel’ (a segment of a special power bar which you can expand over the course of the game) to initiate a ‘hero’ move which allows you to plot a path across the combat map and attack on the go. This allows you to reposition your party, dodge incoming enemy attacks, or trigger special moves such as a ‘smackdown’ whereby you flip an enemy into the air and repeatedly slam them into the ground.

 

By carefully positioning your characters during these hero moves you’ll gain ‘resonance points’ which you can use to initiate a ‘tri-attack’ whereby all three party members follow a set, triangular path from point to point and attack in turn. But you have to be careful not to waste bezel shards, because if you run out of these you’ll enter a critical state in which you’re unable to perform hero moves.

 

Is everyone still with me? Damage in RoF comes in two forms – scratch and direct. Handguns and grenades do direct damage whilst machine-guns do scratch. Scratch damage doesn’t actually kill an enemy, but severely weakens their health bar which remains ‘scratched’ following the attack. A direct damage attack against the scratched enemy will then reduce their health bar to the level of scratch inflicted.

Direct damage in RoF is very weak and unlikely to destroy enemies on its own unless they’re at a significantly lower level than you. Typically, you’ll approach fights by doing as much scratch damage as you can to an enemy and then following it up with a direct strike to wipe the scratch. That’s not to say that direct damage doesn’t have its uses beyond clearing scratch, as a heavy direct strike against an enemy can also ‘break’ their health bar, temporarily stunning them, or even destroying individual ‘parts’ such as the cannon on a robot, preventing it from using that attack.

 

Every hero move in the game is accompanied by a stylish animation as your character runs, flips and jumps into combat whilst firing their guns or tossing grenades. And the combat maps must also be considered when planning your attack strategy, as some may feature walls, ramps, explosive barrels, or switches that activate defensive bunkers – although I do wish the game did a greater job of mixing up and expanding upon the variety of battle maps and their environmental components.

Every battle in RoF is about planning the most effective and efficient strategy to win. Most enemies have shields to deflect scratch damage, but those shields may not be as strong from one angle to another, so it’s important to look for weaknesses and openings through which to maximise your attack. Enemies can also be weak to various grenade and ammunition types – such as fire, electrical or poison. And there’s a great variety of enemy types to fight ranging from human, robots and monsters.

I’ve written a lot about the combat because it really is the heart of the game and it’s where you’ll spend 90% of your time in RoF. But what about the others aspects? The world? The characters? The story?

The world of RoF is certainly interesting – a clockwork city created to save humanity, but resulting in an oppressive, class based society in which people’s lives and deaths are determined by an automated system. The problem is, the game does a shit job of explaining the world and the plot. Even playing it for the third time, I sill didn’t have much of a clue as to what exactly was going on or why I was fighting certain people.

 

The story aspects of RoF aren’t well presented and honestly, I’d probably just skip them if it wasn’t for the fun character banter. The three heroes of RoF – Vashyron, Zephyr and Leanne – make for a fun little dysfunctional family, and it’s their bond and banter that sees you through a rather poorly presented and not terribly exciting tale.

As you progress through the game you’ll unlock new levels of the city to explore. It’s a hex grid map, and fighting various enemies will grant you new hex pieces in order to unlock new sections. Every chapter will give you a primary mission to complete, but there are also side missions to work through, and by the end of the game these missions will have taken you to every area of the city. There are random encounters on the map, but also dungeons to complete – although these are basically just several combat maps strung together by a common theme.

You can earn money and ‘hunter points’ by completing missions, but you only level your characters by improving their individual weapon stats, so it’s important to rotate weapon types between your characters for maximum effect. And in one of the best features of the game, your weapons can be customised with a variety of crafted attachments.

You can also customise your characters with a lot of different clothing to purchase, but these are purely cosmetic, so unless you really love to play dress-up, it’s not something you really need to bother with.

 

Okay, so the characters are good, the world is interesting but the story is weak. The gameplay is very fun, but it does get quite repetitive as you progress, especially if you intend to clear the optional Arena content, which is a series of fights against increasingly tough groups of enemies – there’s something like 500 of these to clear.

The game can also be a bit of a grind, especially if you intend to clear the final, optional dungeon, which will require a level of at least 120 or so, but you probably won’t be more than level 80 or so by the end of the game, not unless you’ve gone out of your way to grind extra levels as you’ve progressed. I cleared all of this content on the original release, but I’m not sure I have the patience these days to bother.

Overall, Resonance of Fate remains a very unique, interesting and fun game to play. The story is weak, but the characters and world are good. And the combat, once you get the hang of it, is the real star of the show. But it can be a bit of a tedious grind at times, the random battles can get kind of annoying, and it can be pretty repetitive if you intend to work your way through the Arena. It certainly has its flaws, but the good far outweighs the bad, and I’d recommend checking it out.

7/10

Now Watching: Aquaman

Aquaman was good when it was good, but even better when it was bad. I was thoroughly entertained by Aquaman. It’s everything I didn’t know I wanted from a movie about a dude who talks to fish. Aquaman has fun with its concept in a way that’s both respectful to the source material, but also self-aware.

It’s silly enough to enjoy itself, but serious enough to keep you engaged. It’s got some fantastic visuals and most importantly – action. The opening action scene featuring Atlanna (Nicole Kidman) was a perfect combination of stunts, fight choreography, CGI and creative camera work, a winning combination that’s repeated throughout the film.

So it should come as no surprise that Aquaman struggles between fight scenes. Jason Momoa (Aquaman) looks half-asleep during some dialogue segments – and possibly a little drunk during others. And the complete lack of chemistry between him and Mera (Amber Heard) is pretty damn funny. There’s one scene that plays like a parody of a bad romantic comedy. That shit has to be intentional. James Wan knew exactly what he was doing, right down to the way the scene was shot and the choice of music.

As far as the plot goes, it’s pretty much what you’d expect – an unwilling hero who doesn’t believe he’s worthy to lead, but who must seize his destiny to become King. Toss in a villain with bad hair and a quest for a magical MacGuffin and it’s a pretty by the numbers affair.

Did I mention that an octopus plays the drums? Like I said, Aquaman is self-aware enough that it knows when to have fun. It’s silly, but it’s not stupid is the best way I can describe it. It knows exactly what it is and just rolls with it.

I don’t have much more to say about Aquaman. I’m not going to claim it’s a great movie or even a particularly good one, but it’s easily the most fun I’ve had with any of the DC films. It’s a movie about a dude who talks to fish – what more do you expect?

6/10

Now Playing: Supremacy (DLC)

I said at the end of my review of The Vaulters DLC that I hoped the next major DLC for Endless Space 2 wouldn’t just introduce a new faction, but new gameplay mechanics which would change the way the campaign plays for every faction. And with Supremacy, I kind of get my wish . . . but also kind of wish I hadn’t.

Let’s begin with the new faction – the Hissho. As far as unique faction mechanics go, I can’t say I found them as interesting to play as the Vaulters, but they’re still pretty fun. They’re very war focused, and fighting – and more importantly winning – battles isn’t just key to maintaining high public order throughout your systems, but also your expansion.

As you’d expect, the Hissho get some lovely new ship designs, heroes and their own faction quest chain. They also get access to some unique boosts to both fleet performance and system development which are tied to the new Behemoth content – but it’s the Behemoth content where Supremacy runs into trouble.

The Behemoths are a new ship type which can be constructed to focus on 3 specialisations – military, science and economy. They’re very powerful – though not invulnerable – and can be used (when upgraded by various technologies) to support your fleets, mine resources and even terraform worlds you’ve not yet colonised.

 

Regardless of your chosen specialisation, every Behemoth can then be upgraded into one of three classes – Obliterator / Juggernaut (offence) or Citadel (system defence). Although you’re limited to a single Behemoth at the start of the game, you can rapidly expand your fleet with hero skills and system upgrades. How powerful (and important) these ships become as the game progress cannot be understated.

The Juggernaut has the ability to wipe out entire fleets, whilst the Obliterator has the ability to wipe out an entire star system in a single missile strike. This strike may cost significant resources, but can also be fired for free simply by orbiting a friendly star for several turns.

Using my own Obliterators constructed during my campaign, I was able to wipe out three enemy systems on a single turn. I can’t say watching all those enemy planets go Boom! wasn’t particularly fun, but it became clear to me then just how ridiculously overpowered the Behemoths are and when I began a second game, just how much they change the dynamic of the campaign.

 

If the Behemoths were restricted to say, 1 of each type, and were ridiculously expensive to produce, that would help, but they’re actually pretty cheap considering how deadly they are. They’re also not limited to the Hissho – any faction can construct them.

I really think I’d have preferred it if the Behemoths were faction unique to the Hissho. They’d need to be rebalanced, but it would give the Hissho a pretty cool, unique mechanic. Instead, everyone gets access to Behemoths. This is disappointing not only in a gameplay sense, but a visual sense as well, because the Behemoths all look alike regardless of who constructs them. And one of the best things about Endless Space 2 is the unique visual styles of each faction and their ships.

Although I enjoyed playing my Hissho campaign, it was only when I began another game playing as the Empire against several other factions that I realised how much of a negative impact the Behemoths were having on the overall campaign. Within thirty turns I’d encountered four Behemoths – two from the same faction.

I hadn’t constructed any, not because I didn’t have the resources, but because I’d decided not to. But as I quickly realised, I’d need to construct them in order to remain competitive – they’re just too powerful not to use. And then the campaign felt more like a race to construct and upgrade my Behemoths before the AI, so I wasn’t at a disadvantage.

 

To put it simply – the new Behemoth mechanics had completely taken over the campaign. I wouldn’t say that’s necessarily a bad thing, because as I said, I did enjoy playing with them, and I did want to see new content added which changed the campaign dynamic. But as they’re currently implemented, Behemoths become far too much of the focus of the campaign, and because they all look the same, you lose some of that cool uniqueness that makes Endless Space 2 so fun to play.

And here’s the other problem – although you can disable the Behemoths before starting a campaign, they’re unfortunately tied to the Hissho faction mechanics, so if you want to play as or with the Hissho, you’re getting the Behemoths along for the ride. Which means if you don’t want to play with the Behemoths active, you can’t play with the Hissho.

I don’t think the Behemoths are a terrible idea, but I do think they need to be drastically rebalanced. I’d also love to be able to toggle them on and off without losing access to the Hissho, or maybe just making them Hissho exclusive. And if we could get unique Behemoth skins for every faction, that would be pretty great.

Overall, Supremacy is a decent DLC pack with some good content, I just think it’s been poorly incorporated into the campaign. From what I’ve seen, a lot of other people share my concerns, so hopefully the developers will take steps to address these issues.

6/10

Apex Legends

When I heard rumours of a Titanfall ‘Battle Royale’ game I thought they were just a joke. But when Apex Legends was officially revealed, I wasn’t quite sure what to think. If you’ve followed my blog you’ll know I was a big fan of the original Titanfall and its sequel – despite my criticisms of the design direction of the TF2 MP.

The more I thought about a Titanfall BR game the more excited I became. I’ve not played any Battle Royale games – it’s just not a genre I’m particularly interested in. But a Titanfall BR? A BR game with Titanfall movement mechanics, on a map facilitating those mechanics with the addition of Titan combat?

Oh shit, that actually sounds pretty great, doesn’t it? You take the fantastic fluid movement of Titanfall, the cool Titanfall world, and then add Titan combat into the mix – maybe as an unlock for a set number of kills, or perhaps when a certain number of players remain, everyone can call down a Titan and duke it out to win. You could choose to fight in your Titan, or perhaps let it go auto as pilot bait.

The thought of all this got me quite excited about playing a BR game. I loved playing Titanfall and though this isn’t exactly a Titanfall 3, the chance of returning to that world and that unique blend of pilot/titan combat was an exciting prospect. That excitement was, unfortunately, short lived.

Because Apex Legends doesn’t have jet packs or wall running or even bloody titans. It has none of the unique movement mechanics that made Titanfall such a joy to play. From an interview with Eurogamer -

‘The choice to not have those came about because of play-testing against our goals: to have a strategic, learnable, masterable, deep game.’

‘[We had] things like wall running and double jumping for a long time, we had triple jump for a while, they make combat really hard to beat and comprehend. You can’t predict where players come from or you’re pushing them to, and things would happen to you more than you would predict and respond against. So it’s really fun to do, but it’s really bad for combat legibility.’

To be honest, after seeing the design direction of TF2, this attitude shouldn’t exactly surprise me, but I’m still disappointed. They’ve essentially ripped out everything that made Titanfall unique, special and great fun to play. They may stress that Apex Legends isn’t a Titanfall game – hence the name – but it is set within the same world and uses many of the weapon and environmental assets of the Titanfall series.

I wouldn’t be so bothered by this if A) we still knew a Titanfall 3 was in development – but it appears that whatever Titanfall 3 was going to be was then transformed into Apex Legends and B) if I hadn’t thought about how cool an actual Titanfall BR game would be, incorporating the pilot/titan combat of the series with the excellent map design of TF1.

For a few short hours, I was pretty excited about playing that game. But that’s not what Apex Legends is. And I’m not saying that Apex Legends is necessarily a bad game because of that – it’s just not the game that I wanted, that I imagined when I pictured a BG game set within the Titanfall world.

I’m also not a fan of the character designs which look totally out of place in the Titanfall universe. They look more like low budget Overwatch heroes. I did download Apex Legends to give it a shot, to see if it could win me over, but after playing the tutorial I just didn’t want to continue.

The running and sliding felt so good and immediately familiar. And even though I knew I couldn’t wall run, I instinctively had to try. I knew it wouldn’t work, but I had to see it to believe it. It just made me sad, and I just didn’t feel like jumping into a match to play this weird looking, bastardised version of a game series I once loved. Maybe in the future I’ll be willing to give it a fair shake. But not today.

The Division 2 (BETA)

These days, signing up for a BETA even months in advance doesn’t usually mean jack, not when they’re pushing pre-orders to guarantee access or doing key give-aways via social media for promotion. Which is why I was kind of surprised to receive a BETA key for The Division 2. I played the original in BETA and eventually picked up the game in a sale. You can read my review here.

And honestly, after playing my way through this BETA, it feels like I could just repost my review of the original with a few tweaks and get away with it. Everything The Division did well, the Division 2 also does well. And everything The Division didn’t do so well . . .

The Division 2 is set some time after the events of the original. The virus that plagued New York has now spread and society as we know it has almost completely collapsed. The game is set in Washington D.C and like the original, The Division 2 makes good use of its setting. One of the best things about The Division was exploring the world, and the same remains true in the sequel.

The map is broken down into various sectors, each with a level recommendation. The BETA offered a fairly generous quantity of content with three main (story) missions and several side quests to complete. There was no character creator – only a limited randomisation tool – although I must say, I don’t recall the characters in the original looking quite as goofy as they do here.

 

There were three entire sectors to explore, with random events popping up to earn extra experience, and several enemy outposts to capture. Like the original, each sector has a similar pattern of content, so once you’ve completed one, you’ll know exactly what to expect in the next.

And I guess that’s my first real issue with The Division 2 – the lack of surprise. Like the original, the content is structured in a very repetitive manner, as is your progression. This isn’t an issue that’s unique to The Division 2 – I had the same concern about the upcoming Anthem.

The ‘games as a service’ model is about keeping people engaged – keeping them playing. So you build a repetitive gameplay loop which is simple, familiar and fun. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that approach, but it also means your game, your story and its world can never really surprise the player.

One of my criticisms of the original was that the world never really changed – you never really saw any impact as a result of your actions. And whilst The Division 2 has sought to address this by expanding upon the main base and outpost ‘upgrades’ (which can visually change how those locations appear) the world, as a whole, remains static and unchanged as you progress.

 

Because it has to. Because it’s not just a game but a service model designed to keep you playing and engaged. And you can have fun within that model. It’s mindless and repetitive and you know it’s not really going to surprise you or lead you anywhere particularly exciting, but it can be fun.

The original never really wrapped up its story and I doubt The Division 2 will, either. These aren’t the types of games that are designed to ‘end’. And like the original, The Division 2 seems like it’s going to fall a little flat in the story / character aspects, at least from what I’ve seen in this BETA.

Moving onto something more positive is the combat which, like the original, is pretty fun. There’s nothing special about it – it’s a typical cover based third person shooter. But the shooting feels good, the weapons feel good and the movement feels smooth and responsive. What more can I say? I like the shooty shooty bang bang.

 

As you complete missions and kill bad guys you’ll earn experience and level up allowing you to unlock new skills. You’ll discover or purchase new weapons and equipment which, like the original, are rated on the familiar ‘standard – uncommon – rare – legendary’ style colour coded system. You can also mod weapons, although this felt more restricted in this BETA than I recall in the original.

I’ve probably said ‘like in the original’ a dozen or more times in this post. Sorry about that. But the reality is, from what I’ve seen in this BETA, everything The Division did – both good and bad – the Division 2 does exactly the same. It’s essentially the same game in a new location, and I’m sure that’s going to be enough for many fans of the original.

And – just one more, I promise – like the original, it’s a game I’m sure I’ll eventually pick up on sale, play through the main story so I can have fun shooting bad guys in nice locations and then a week or so later, forget I even played it. It’s The Division 2, ladies and gentlemen – it’s exactly what you expected, nothing more, nothing less.

Total War: Three Kingdoms

Total War: Three Kingdoms is set to be released in a month or so, yet I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned it on this blog. That may seem strange because, if you’ve followed this blog, you’ll know I’m a pretty big fan of the series. So why, unlike previous Total War releases, haven’t I shown much interest?

You might think it’s the setting. Am I just not very interested in this period of history? Well, it’s true that I’m not very familiar with it, but I wouldn’t say I’m not interested in learning. No, I think the main reason I’ve had a lack of interest in the title is because of the Total War: Warhammer games.

The Warhammer games are fantastic, offering what I consider to be the most enjoyable battles of the entire Total War series. I just don’t see how historical titles are going to be able to compete with a game full of monsters and magic. No historical title, particularly one set within a single country, is ever going to be able to compete with the massive variety of units and play styles of Warhammer.

In a way, CA is a victim of their own success. They’ve done such a great job with the Warhammer games that it kind of makes the historical games feel rather limited and dull to play in comparison – at least in the battles.

For Three Kingdoms, or any future historical title to really grab my attention in the battle side of things, I think CA really need to up their game and offer us something we haven’t seen before. That’s not to say 3K doesn’t have some new battle features of its own – such as the duels or the character banter – but from what I’ve seen overall, the battles are pretty much exactly what I expected.

They also look pretty rough. There’s a lack of polish to the battles in terms of combat and movement animations that’s very odd to see, especially when compared to how fantastic the battles look in Warhammer. To be fair, we haven’t yet seen a finished build, but it’s strange to see the battles looking as rough as they do at this stage.

Visually, the battles also look odd. In some videos it doesn’t seem as if the shadows are properly enabled, making everything look flat and lifeless. In some, the textures look very low quality. There’s a very heavy depth of field effect applied across all of the battle maps which not only blurs the background to a ridiculous degree, but also makes it appear as if the textures of the map haven’t properly loaded. In some videos there’s a sharpening effect which is way too strong. And in some the graphics look very washed out, as if the saturation levels are set way too high.

It’s just weird to see the battle side of things looking so rough in 3K when they’ve done such a fantastic job with the battles in Warhammer. Oh, and I’m really not a fan of the green and red unit icons – they’re far too garish. I know a lot of players prefer the floating banners as opposed to icons, but I’m okay with icons, as long as they don’t look totally out of place. The current icons in 3K are pretty jarring to look at it. I think they either need to be changed, or at least tone down the colours to a deeper and darker green and red.

This may all sound very negative, but I’ve actually become far more interested in picking up 3K over the last few weeks despite these concerns. Why? Well, I always knew that 3K would struggle to match Warhammer in terms of battles, but if there’s one area it can (and should) surpass Warhammer in, it’s the campaign.

The Warhammer campaign is a pretty streamlined and simple campaign, which I’m okay with because it perfectly facilitates those fantastic battles, which is the real strength of that series. But if 3k can’t match Warhammer for battles, it really needs to step up in the campaign, and from what I’ve seen, that’s exactly what CA have done.

The campaign of 3K is looking great in pretty much every area. In terms of visuals and audio, it may just be the best looking Total War campaign yet. The expanded diplomatic options, the spying mechanic, the focus on characters and their interactions . . . it’s not only a wonderful way to immerse the player within this period, it also mixes up the traditional Total War campaign formula in a new and refreshing way.

It’s the campaign that’s really got me interested in Three Kingdoms, but am I ready to pull the trigger and pre-order? No, not yet. As much as I like what I’ve seen of the campaign, we still haven’t seen how well it operates in practice. And I obviously have my concerns about the battle side of things. But the good news is that we should be seeing far more of both sides of the game prior to release. I’m cautiously optimistic.