Retro Retro (Demon's Souls pt. 3)

Alright, back to what's really important.

So I knew that I was fast approaching the point in the game where I would have no choice but to tackle World 5: the Valley of Defilement. For anyone over 30 you may remember World 5 as being the pain in the dick world from every Nintendo game. The same is true here.

4.2 The Same Thing. Over and Over.

Of course, instead of leaping straight to World 5 and getting it over with I decided to tackle some of the easier levels first. Since I had such an easy job of 4.1 I decided 4.2 was the next logical choice.

This level cheats like a motherfucker. And that has totally nothing to do with my ability to work the controller. Probably.

Here is a transcription of the things going through my head during the many, many times I died:

• Since when did flying Manta Rays hang out right outside the door?!
• Fuck, a grim reaper!
• Goddammit woman! Don't step forward while you're swinging! That's a cliff!
• When did gold skeletons get an aggro range of three miles?!
• I did not walk off that bridge. Musta been the controller.
• Fuck! He respawned!
• Where the fuck is the grim reaper now?!
• Fuck, another another grim reaper!
• Where the fuck is the other grim reaper?!
• Fuck, a grenade! No, fuck, a group of fucking giant attack maggots! 

After finally making it to the Boss Chamber and spending a moment recovering from the shame of how badly I had just performed, I prepared to face the Old Hero.

His special attack is swinging wildly in the wrong direction.

 The Old Hero is a lot like the Flamelurker, only slow, blind, and, well, once you factor 'can not see things' into the equation anything else becomes sorta irrelevant.

While meleeing him is probably entirely possible, the Old Hero is so asking-for-it exploitable I can't imagine why anyone would want to bother. Especially being such an easy target after such a harrowing-ass gauntlet of a level with no shortcuts. That'd be like cancelling a resort vacation you've been planning for months because the hotel accidentally booked you in a smoking room.

5.1 The City of Eyestrain and Bottomless Pits

I zoned into the first level of the Valley of Defilement. The level is a poorly lit nightmare of camouflaged goons, bottomless pits, confusing walkways, camera obstructing scenery, and fucking plague rats that are too small to hit with anything but magic provided you remembered to save some. Which I never do.

Remembering all of this I suddenly had an amazing idea.

1.3 The Brightly Lit Castle of Normal Bad Shit

I would further put off the inevitable stress headache the Valley always gives me by beating up more zombies and Fat Officials.

Level three of this World is nothing much more than a slightly more labyrinthine version of the second level with stronger goons.

Having, for once, remembered to stock up on arrows I had no real problems with this level, as this game is so damn easy, provided you don't mind sniping everything from two area codes away.

 After opening the shortcut, I backtracked and released an NPC called Biorr, a level 50 Hypersomniac that specializes in attacking the nearest foe with his face, falling asleep, and being easy to capture.

The point is that Biorr, after being rescued and taking a nap after all of the excitement of someone killing the guard and opening his cell tuckers him plumb out, helps out in the next couple of boss fights.

Speaking of Boss fights, I was now at the Boss fight.

Penetrator, most phallic among men.

The Penetrator is another big knight like the Tower Knight, only he focuses on attack as opposed to defense. This is fairly obvious as he wields a Final Fantasy sized sword.

Luckily Biorr's strategy of screaming at the Boss, being knocked down, and having 6 million hit points worked long enough to handily dispatch the boss.

5.1 For Real This Time

Remember the character Goofy from the Disney cartoons? The goons in this level look like zombied him to me for some reason.

Having said that: fuck this level. Fuck this goddamn level forever.

Aside from the already mentioned surprise enemies, holes, and eyestrain there are also giant goofy's that always end up being way harder to beat than they seem like they should be.

Also: Fucking plague rats. One bit me and I wound up dying before I could even locate my anti-plague herbs.

After a seemingly endless amount of time spent fail-spamming my way through the level I finally came to the door of the Boss Chamber. The Boss of this particular level is called the Leechmonger.

Yes, it is a shit monster made out of monster shit and leeches.

There are two general strategies for tackling this thing. The first is to drain your own health, equip the Clever Rat Ring and Morion Sword to boost your attack while in critical health, and shoot the shit out of him from the doorway, which is just beyond his attack range.

The reason the attack boost is necessary is because the yucky motherfucker not only has regenerating armor, but regenerating health as well. I think this is because demon leeches eat waste instead of blood and he's standing at the entrance to the sewer of the world. I'm not exaggerating, this World is where all of the piss, shit, abortions, and diseased of the world drain out to.

Anyway, since by this point I had become acclimated to masochism I decided to try a direct assault against the filth spewing giant composed of shit worms. Somehow it worked.

Note to self: Somehow I'm better at bosses and worse at levels than I remember being before.

5.2 The Level Fucking No One Likes

Except for me, apparently. After the eyestrain migraines and frustration of the previous level, being constantly poisoned and slowed down was a walk in the park. It'd be suicide to move above a crawl through this level, anyway.

I had no real problems with the poison swamp itself, as halfway decent preparation takes care of 90% of the difficulty: cure poison miracle, firespray spell for mosquitoes, resist poison gear, MP potions, arrows. That's it, really.

My main gripe with this level was the second half, after the swamp. That part found me back on more goddamn confusing catwalks with more goddamn junk blocking the camera and more goddamn goofies blending into the environment.

Luckily this level also had a shortcut allowing me to bypass the swamp portion of the level so I could switch out gear before the Dirty Colossus Boss and not have to sludge through the entire level again. I did manage to fall off of the bridge though because the fucking mosquitoes got me disoriented.

This guy is...what the fuck am I looking at here?

The Dirty Colossus is a giant...something made out of elephant carcass, old barrels,  and spikes that shoots swarms of poisonous insects to augment it's normal attacks.

I think it's sort of a weird decision that FROM decides to constantly put these anti-climactic bosses at the end of fucking nightmare levels. I mean, after all of the precision gameplay and strategy and care I just spent on the swamp it was kind of disappointing facing a boss where the entire fight can be summed up as

1. Apply turpentine to weapon.
2. Wail on Boss like a motherfucker.
3. Win.

 5.3 Whoever Thought This Up Needs Counseling

I figured I might as well press on into the Plague Swamp, the most fucked up of these fucked up levels. As the name implies, it's a swamp filled with more poisonous filth than the last one. Also: Zombie aborted babies. Fucking infinity of them.

The World is lorded, well, ladyied over by Maiden Astraea, some sort of exiled apostate guilty of some crime too heinous to name (too heinous to name, mind you, in a world with waterfalls of demon sewage and animated baby corpses,) that wound up here, caring for poor, lost legions of undead babies and monster Disney characters. Which would almost be touching if it wasn't buried under such a Japanese level of Fucked Up.

The Maiden herself is guarded by her lover Garl Vinland, the real Boss of the level, as he's the one that puts up a fight. He's also one of the trickier bosses as he combines Tower Knight's defense, Penetrator's offense and Maneater's on-a-narrow-walkway-ness.

On the plus side he's really slow, as his weapon of preference is a 600 pound lump of metal bigger than he is. He's also really, really easy to kite.

After beating Garl the Maiden suicided after I talked to her, the selfish bitch.

4.3 A Clearly Impossible Creature

I know asking for realism in these kinds of games is usually a wish best left ungranted, as it usually leads to tedious shit like farming simulators, first person shooters and every EA sports game, but for some reason I just really, really, really don't buy the flying manta rays that constantly shoot bone spears.

I mean, there's nothing to indicate that they're intelligent, so the flying and the spears aren't magic. And even if they're undead, other undead animals like the face bugs and zombie dogs don't have any kind of super powers that weren't just augmented versions of their alive powers. They just don't make any sense.

I mean, they're shaped like manta rays. That is not a shape associated with the sky. So much so that in reality they are so not capable of flight that the uppest they normally get is beneath sea level.

Anyway, the Storm Castle World Boss is a giant one of these called the Storm King.

That should not fucking work! Those aren't wings! They're fins!

 The Storm King hangs out in a big field with dozens of storm...peasants? Serfs? Storm smaller manta rays, whatever their rank. He can also be an almost impossible boss if someone doesn't know what to do.

Like the Dragon God, the Storm King has decided to spend his existence hanging out 50 feet away from the one weapon guaranteed to kill it: The Storm Ruler Sword, which shoots giant, manta ray eradicating shock waves into the sky when used in this level.

So the basic strategy is this: Cast whatever they call their Protect spell, dash to the sword, dash to the safe area next to the ruined building, massacre the goons before the King shows up, massacre the King.

Here's how it went for me: Forget to cast the Protect spell, get massacred. Cast the Protect spell, dash towards the sword, impulsively chase after a lizard, get massacred. Cast Protect spell, dash to the sword, get disorientated, get massacred. Cast Protect spell, dash to safe spot, stop to breathe, get massacred because I forgot it's only a safe spot for the actual Storm King attacks. Ragequit.

Later, after calming down, I tried again and managed to take out all of the goons and the Storm King on my second try. Which now that I think about it seems really fucking unfair for the bad guys. I mean, they can kill me all day and I keep respawning every 2 minutes, and they only get to die once. Now, if this game was truly Nintendo hard, then dying more than twice would send me back to the tutorial level with zero everything.

Anyway, at this point I fucked around for a while and completed most of the world tendency events, which mostly involve killing people, suiciding a few times, and then killing their ghost.

1.4 A Random Dead Chick Murders Everyone in the World

The final level of World One is basically just a long path full of mini-bosses.

Right away I ran into the somehow human forms of Phalanx, Tower Knight and Penetrator, which would have probably wrecked my shit if I wasn't still pissed off about the Storm King and not in the mood to fuck around with melee to prove a point.

As it turns out the trio are, just like fucking everything else in the game, weak against arrows from outside their aggro range.

Past a couple of black knights I came to the second dragon which, like the first dragon, seems to spend his entire life spraying fire on bridges if anyone tries to use him. He flew off before realizing he could have easily sprayed fire into the doorway I was standing in and not be slowly plinked to death by arrows.

Past another Fat Official I came to the next bridge the dragon had decided to guard, where Biorr was fighting the dragon using the strategy of screaming, charging directly into a fireball, and then that again.

I remembered from previous playthroughs that there was a certain angle to dash through to avoid the flames. After guessing wrong and slogging back through the level I guessed right and slowly killed the dragon, which was too stubborn to adapt his strategy for a foe from a slightly different angle and too stupid to fly away when its life was in jeopardy because of that.

The final mini-boss was the black phantom of Ostrava, the prince of Boletaria. Which brought me finally to the last real Boss of the game, the False King.

Fuck this guy.

The False King is a fucking nightmare in melee. Not only does he utilize the Flamelurker approach to combat, which involves charging at and instantly vaporizing his opponent's defenses with the force of his attacks, he even has an attack that drains levels off of your character. Since I was both hungry and cranky by this point I decided to be a man and man up and approach the False King like a man and cast poison cloud on him and wander off to make a sandwich while the Boss slowly died over the course of the next several minutes.

The End of the Game

The final level and Boss of Demon's Souls are kind of a joke. It's a corridor inside of a big tree with no enemies that leads to the Real King Allant, which turns out to be a pathetic, almost completely defenseless blob.

So that's Demon's Souls. Overall, it's a lot more challenging than most games that come out these days, but not that hard for someone raised on 8-bit systems.

Playing through it I could kind of tell that this game was made on a budget. Especially after playing through Dark Souls. Don't get me wrong, it's an excellent game, but in comparison one can almost see all of the cut corners and content that had to be jettisoned prior to and during development. And that's good, because it led to a fairly well-balanced and extremely engaging and fun game.

It's not perfect. There are parts that seem really empty, like the Latrian Prison, and parts that feel rushed and incomplete, like the lack of variety in Boletaria and some of the Bosses. And of course the Old One level, while nice to look at, had literally nothing in it. But if you have a Playstation 3 and 20 bucks and haven't played this game, then I can almost guarantee that this would be the best use of your money.

Retro Retro (Demon's Souls pt. 2)

The great thing about Demon's Souls is that once you stop sucking at it and start making progress it lights up the reward center of the brain like the Vegas Strip. For a recovering drug addict that's like a legal drug that doesn't cost any money and only results in minor consequences, like the loss of friends, lovers, weight, sleep and employment, which can all be replaced.

2-3 The Underwhelming Whelp

Usually the last level of a world is just a corridor leading to a boss fight. Since the Dragon God is by far the easiest world boss in the game I decided to prove how easy this game is in the game's one mandatory semi-stealth section.

You can't melee him. Lucky for him.

The corridor involves hiding behind pillars until the Dragon God looks in the other direction, and then running to the next pillar. Some of the pillars block the path and have to be smashed.

Side note: The Dragon God is actually the Boletarian God of Crap Security Guards. He is the patron deity of those whose jobs entail looking slowly back and forth between whichever monitor doesn't contain the ninja infiltrator.

After reaching the far ledge I used the why-is-this-here giant arrow siege engine to take off  45% of the Boss's health. Why in the fuck a Dragon God would want to spend its entire existence hanging out in a room with the only weapon that can kill it placed near the door, armed, and pointing directly at its head is a mystery I've not yet solved.

After creeping across to the siege weapon on the other side of the room, firing it, and dispatching the crippled and helpless Dragon God, I zoned out, fucked around for a while, and went back to the Castle World.

1.2 The Overwhelming Whelp

Upon zoning in, I charged forward into the next chamber and was promptly almost massacred by a herd of Phalanx goons that I swear weren't there the last time I played the game.

Being a little more fucking careful I made my way out to the bridge where I knew that the dragon that roasted me before was about to try to roast me again. He did so. Not because the game is hard or because I'm bad at it, but because I got distracted by my character's ass and timed the dash wrong. That's what happened.

After making the next dash with no problems I had further no problems for the rest of the level as it's basically just a tube with zombies in it. I decided it was time to slay another dragon.

Climbing on top of a turret thing with my bow I took aim and loosed every single arrow I had into the scaly beast's face.

I am now out of arrows and the dragon is very not dead. Fuck.

Kicking myself for forgetting to upgrade my bow and buy more arrows before doing this, I made my way back to the teleporter and totally wasn't roasted alive again when I timed the dash wrong. Again.

After grinding more money that I needed because of my repeated case of dragon breath, I upgraded my bow to a sticky bow. Which is both silly and disgusting sounding, but it's like the best weapon in the game if you're a fan of cheap bitch tactics like I am.

After finally dispatching the dragon I made my way to the Boss chamber, which was the Tower Knight.

See how this fellow is bravely challenging the knight to a fair fight? I'm still not doing that.

The secret to a stress free existence with this Boss is to climb up the walls, murder the archers, rain arcane death on the Tower Knight when he drops his guard during his comically slow wind up animation, then take a step backwards when he shoots back.

This game is so easy. Providing you don't mind being the asshole kid that always picked Sub-Zero and relied entirely on the freezeball+uppercut stunlock to win.

3.1 The Oddly-Designed Prison of Tedious Jailbreaks

Remembering that goon-strength spikes significantly in 1.3, I decided to run through The Prison level of the Other Castle World.

The Prison of Latria has excellent atmosphere, and was really effective at making me feel filthy and hopeless and surrounded by tentacle monsters. For about ten minutes. Then it just became tedious back-and-forthing with me occasionally falling into a hole that wasn't there last time.

Whoever designed this prison does not pay his guards hourly, as they'd be well into overtime by the time they made it to the time clock, and I can't imagine a prison containing three prisoners and 70 caged zombies over the space of 950 square miles has much of an operating budget.

Halfway up the final (senselessly long,) corridor leading to the Boss chamber, I was attacked by a black phantom, which is like a goon but with high stats and better AI. I think they're supposed to simulate the random invaders that popup during online play, but I don't play online because I hate people, competition, teenagers, surprises, acknowledging the existence of people that type things like "fag nigger is fag," and being interrupted during masturbatory escapist fantasies: all of which are synonyms for online gaming.

After circling each other for fucking ages in a level that already has too much nothing happening in it, something in my brain broke off and I started flailing wildly at the phantom's shield. It was at this point that I remembered that this phantom is a stealth character, and as such is deft at executing back stabs.

After cursing my way back to the phantom and this time winning I proceeded to the boss, the Fool's Idol.

Whatever she's reading must be a goddamn good book. She doesn't stop reading even while being arrowed to death.

The Fool's Idol isn't as straightforward as most of the other Boss fights, which mostly involve either being charged by an enraged giant demon, or hiding just outside of the Boss's aggro range and plinking it with arrows or poison spells and hoping it doesn't become enraged and charge.

For the Fool's Idol, the fight mostly relies on cunning, but not very well implemented traps, such as tiles that paralyze your character while she blasts you with magic, the Idol copying herself leading the player to run around whacking dopplegangers, and the best trick: A zombie not even in the Boss's chamber casting resurrection spells on her.

These kind of fall apart, as the floor tiles are few and small, the zombie cleric is the one you probably noticed before coming into the Boss chamber, as he was the one in a magic circle surrounded by glowing light and swearing up and down and he wasn't doing anything suspicious, honest, you can trust me, guv, I'm a right ole honest undead, I am, wouldn't 'urt a flea, now would I?

As far as the Boss herself, she just sat there, facing away from the door. Literally. She seems more boreder with this level than I did.  So the entire fight involved shooting at her and ducking behind a pillar while she slowly turned around.

Returning to base, I decided to take a shot at the Ruined Castle World.

4.1 Fucking Robot Skeletons

That's what the primary goons look like in this world, anyway.

I spent quite a while running around pillaging the level for all of the awesome weaponry that, oddly, was just lying around next to goons that could have easily used them to make my life quite a bit more difficult for me.

After that I decided it was time to give The Vanguard, the Tutorial Boss from the beginning of the game, his comeuppance via my fucking sword in his fucking ankle!

See how this fellow is bravely challenging the Vanguard to single combat? SO DID I!

It went really well too, right up to the point where he somehow, perhaps by using game glitching wizardry, managed to get his gigantic axe past my defense and liquify me.

Luckily this level is reasonably sized and is made up mostly of shortcuts, so I didn't spend the next half hour inching my way back to try again. Trying again worked.

After meandering through the rest of the level and only occasionally being impaled by a spear shot out of an improbable flying manta rays, I made it to the Boss Chamber.

Really skinny goons, really fat bosses.

Luckily the Adjudicator has been ignoring his diet since the fall of the whatever kingdom this is. As a result his only real attack options involve a slow, clumsy chop at the small area in front of him that isn't stomach, and falling down, leaving his wrecked vagina of a head open for axe attacks.

If you've ever played Mike Tyson's Punch-Out, it's almost the exact same strategy used by King Hippo: 1. Make no attempt to disguise your very obvious weak spot. 2. When your weak spot is attacked, drop all defenses while your opponent hacks off a third of your health bar.

Now that I've turned myself into a walking declaration of war, it's time to switch back to the Other Castle World.

3.2 Castle In the Sky

Latria, at least those parts of it that aren't endless prison, is composed entirely of narrow walkways and bridges with no safety rails surrounding a central tower powered by a giant heart. Seriously, you can't design a castle like this and not expect it to be overrun by tentacle demons and giant scorpions with human faces.

Anyway, I remember this level being way more of a pain in the ass than it turned out to be this time. Maybe my already impossibly good video game skills have somehow gotten even better. Of course it's also possible that the 15 or so hours I spent two years ago falling into holes and being knocked off of the same three ledges by gargoyles was buried so deeply in my subconscious that I can now run this level blindfolded.

Since I have to wait until I have pure white world tendency to unlock all of the extras in this level I decided to just make a crazed dash for the Boss Chamber. Since this involves charging at full speed past giant, flying gargoyles over several miles of narrow walkways, and then charging past acid spitting face bugs in a poorly lit bog of narrow walkways there was no way in hell it could possibly work.

Except it did. But it goddamn shouldn't have. I was tempted to throw myself into a hole to see if I had somehow accidentally turned God Mode on.

Anyway, that brought me to the boss, The Maneater. Even though it's a them, and they're snakes that eat Gargoyles and wear them like suits.

Gargoyleseaters doesn't really roll off the tongue. But neither does Demon's Souls.

A fact almost as widely known as the second Maneater that swoops in halfway through the battle is that the first Maneater can be arrowed to death through the door of its chamber. However, I'd been having so much luck...I mean skill in the past few levels I decided a direct, frontal assault was called for. And on the off chance I died I could always come back and kill the motherfucker from the other side of an impassible barrier the way nature intended.

Somehow this worked too. So for anyone wondering how to win at this game: Take the most suicidal, least likely to work strategy and perform it as quickly as possible before the game realizes you're daring it to kill you.

3.3 The Curse of the Lazy Development Monks

The Final Boss of Latria is another sorta unimpressive one, as it's another black phantom. In the online mode the game actually yoinks in another player to do battle with you, but since this game's online community speaks solely in an impenetrable and terrifying language of capitalized consonants and Internet Troll involving phrases like "GW and DBS? You're worse than the uchi push lock noobs! Try HoG and CRR solo against FKA!" I'd be damned if I'm gonna try my luck against someone that takes games that seriously.

Instead I fought the AI phantom, which is like a regular goon, only he has a goofy hat and randomly shoots homing missiles that hurt like a motherfucker. I avoided these by cleverly hiding behind chairs.

The actual Boss is the robe. Immortal witch queen, gargoyle eating snake demons, and a robe.

Next Up: I Tackle the Levels That Really Are Hard

Retro Retro (Demon's Souls pt. 1)

It was just announced that Dark Souls will be released as a PC port this summer. Dark souls was the not-sequel to Demon's Souls, the 17th best game ever made according to the arbitrary list that lives in my brain and changes constantly depending on my mood and if it was a game I only played as a child and/or while drunk and may be way better or worser than I remember.

Yes, dragons and wizards and shit.

Demon's Souls, despite being a pain in the ass to enunciate, became a huge sleeper hit, largely because of it's difficulty. Words like 'punishing,' and 'brutal,' and 'fuck you, this game sucks,' were constantly paraded around in reviews, despite the game not being that hard.

Sure, it was a lot harder than most games from the last five years, but most modern games are way easy. So much so that most strategy guides are a single page that reads:

1. Turn power on.
2. Have eyeballs.
3. Have thumbs.
4. Be awake.
5. Congratulations!

And Demon's Souls was a nice break from that, even though it was not nearly as hard as it was made out to be, and certainly not Nintendo Hard. Play Friday the 13th or Ghosts 'n Goblins and you'll see what I mean. The only reason those games weren't half an hour long was because instead of padding the story out with bullshit, the developers chose the easy route of killing the player repeatedly and gleefully, then sending him to the beginning of the game until he stopped sniveling and memorized the exact sequence of 73 timed jumps and 94 attack patterns needed to finish the zone like a big boy.

Tiny naked man vs. giant armored punch monsters? That's balanced gameplay!

Demon's Souls wasn't that hard. But it did follow the same Bizzaro logic that asked players to learn how to push buttons effectively and remember where the bad guys are.

Just to prove what a not-hard game it was and how superior my opinion of myself is I decided to give it another playthrough. Here's what happened.

1.1 This Shit is SO Easy

After mowing through the first few zombie guards, and feeling very proud of myself for being so awesome at parrying after only playing the game for about 150 hours when it came out, I fell into a hole while performing a flawless roll to avoid an arrow.

Seeing as the hole clearly wasn't my fault as I didn't give it permission to be bottomless OR to even be there in the first place, I tested my prowess on an even field with a black knight guarding a mausoleum. Despite my peerless strategy of creeping forward, panicking and fleeing out of aggro range when he spotted me, almost damaging him, and fleeing again I somehow died.

Next, I was roasted by a dragon that I knew was there! Clearly the game must have auto-updated when I wasn't looking to patch 1.Harder.

Having finally come to the boss fight I proved to myself and the world just how easy this game is by not dying at the boss which, to be fair, is one of the easiest things in the level, if not the game. The boss, Phalanx, incorporates a strategy of being completely defenseless and unable to attack once his slow-moving, move-telegraphing goons are dispatched. The goons are also weak to fire, magic, all weapons, and being slowly walked away from.

Boss Strategy: Attack him. That's it, really.

2.1 In the Mines of Cheap Bitch Fireball Throwing Fat Guys

I decided to switch to the mine level since the game flows sorta horizontally. Plus you have to beat world 2.2 to unlock the good weapon upgrades. Not that I need good weapons, as I could no doubt beat the game on level 1, naked, armed with nothing but brass knuckles and throwing daggers if I wanted to. It just so happens that I don't want to.

After immediately falling off of a cliff that I swear moved towards me while failing to kill a cowardly lizard, I made my way into the mine where I activated the first elevator, which I rode up to meet the first bitch-ass, laughing-ass, pain-in-the-ass-ass Fat Official, who I bested readily despite nearly dying when I forgot that he could throw fireballs, and then almost dying again when I immediately forgot that he could throw fireballs.

I managed to not nearly perish again until yards later while trying to fight off the lungey, jumpy fucking zombie dog enemies that shouldn't be allowed to attack in packs like that.

After opening the gate, which is sort of the first check point in this level, I was snuck attacked by fire lizards that I could have sworn were supposed to flee from my towering femininity.

I should probably mention that I always try to play a female in these games, because if I'm going to be staring at cartoon ass for 70 hours, it had damn well better be girl cartoon ass. Plus girls have access to the cool looking armor.

After carefully retracing my steps, I made it marginally further into the corridor where, doubtless because of the mystery patch, I was ambushed by a group of deceptively fast slow-moving lizard men that were cunningly hiding in plain sight directly in front of me.

After carefully retracing my steps again, I managed to activate the second elevator, which shortcut back tot he beginning of the level and opens up the blacksmith's shop.

Side note: all of the merchants in this game are assholes.

Returning to the main path I fell in battle while valiantly slaughtering two of the 90 lizard folk that shouldn't have been able to be that quiet while hiding around a corner.

After carefully retracing my steps again again, I vanquished the horde of lizard men by using the tactic of sneaking across the building above them and running away. This soon led me to the Boss fight.

The Armor Spider is, as the name would suggest, a spider that is armored. He also attacks by shooting webs and flaming somethings in a pattern that can best be summed up as fucking haywire. Calling on my inner knighthood-dom-ness I bravely charged halfway up the corridor leading to his chamber, hid nobly hid behind a corpse, and threw shit at him until he stopped moving. Told you I was good at this game.

See how this fellow is bravely challenging the spider to a fair fight? That's not what I did at all.

2.2 The Bad Guys are Now Much More Stronger Than Me

After soldiering onward and promptly being exploded by a mine cart, I realized that my current weaponry would be no match for the powered-up fatasses, lizard miners, rock tentacles, exploding lava cockroaches, and on-fire everything in the upcoming level.

At this point I went back to 1.1 to farm upgrade stones and grab an anti-fire spell..

Returning to 2.2 I was, in quick succession, almost pickaxed to death by a miner, exploded by a second cart, and almost fireballed to death by another Fat Official. After weighing my options and deciding 'fuck this,' I decided to backtrack and take the short cut.

The short cut involves dropping down a succession of inexplicably placed bridges in a shaft to bypass the level. After only plummeting to my death a dozen times I decided to cheat and watch a YouTube video to help jog my memory of the correct sequence.

The correct sequence, it turns out, is one I could have sworn I had tried, only it worked somehow this time. Which only proves that the game was cheating, so that made things even between us.

I realized that I was probably no match for the Flamelurker Boss. Not because I wasn't a total badass at this game but because I had, objectively, shit gear, low levels, and a habit of panicking when things that are on fire punch at me.

The Flamelurker, by the way, is a giant fire monster that attacks using fire, punches, lunges and fucking lunacy. Then he aggros further when his health hits a certain point, upping his overall dangerousness to offshore oil refinery levels.

Still, after casting water veil, entering the chamber, and praying to Richard Dawkins, I some-fucking-how managed to win out in melee combat on the first attempt.

Not pictured: Me, crying in the next room.

At this point, gloating to my pet plastic cacti (that I named God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit to avoid arguments with mouthbreathing rednecks,) about how fucking great I am and how kinda easy this game is, I turned the Boss soul into the blacksmith to unlock better weapon upgrades and decided to take a break.

Next Time: I'm Still Awesome and All Deaths Are Well Within The Margin of Error

Jer Pigs VII (Part One: Chapter One: The Beginning: Startenings.)

Role Playing Games, particularly Japanese Role Playing Games, suck now. Over the past several years the American mainstream gaming media, as well as American gamers themselves, have grown increasingly indifferent, dismissive, jaded and openly hostile towards the once-beloved genre. For example, Final Fantasy VI (released as III in 1994, then re-released as VI in 1999 when we figured out how Roman numerals worked, then again in 2006, then again again in 2011,) is one of the most highly praised games in the genre's history. To quote one American internet goer: "Epic Win for Sony!!! Lol!!!!"-some dumbass on a message board, probably Gamefaqs. Now take Final Fantasy XIII, released in 2010, which is like Final Fantasy VI but with a nigh-unlimited budget, no deadlines and the engine replaced with a warp core. What could go wrong? Everything, apparently. Reviews ranged from unimpressive to openly psychotic. To quote a review from a message board: "Fail game is fail. Meh."-Probably the same dumbass from Gamefaqs.
Here is a masturbatory list of why I think that is.

1. I'm Not Fucking Rain Man 

Tutorial levels haven't evolved. "Bring up your menu, select ITEM, press X, select POTION, press X" and "select ATTACK to attack," still happens almost verbatim in current games, despite the fact that anyone not knowing how to operate a menu AND playing games rated, usually, E10-Mature, would have to be impossibly stupid and imaginary, and yet YOU, game developers, believe that somehow make-believe cavemen are falling out of time rifts, picking up your game, installing it on a hard drive, and navigating through character creation without knowing what buttons or words are.

Yet, at the very same time, in the very same games, you leave the explanation of the majority of the game mechanics to that dumbass on Gamefaqs. For the past three generations, you've added new game mechanics, metagames, alchemy/blacksmithing/runecrafting/moral choice systems, weather/time/hunger/stamina penalties and bonuses and god knows what else. Don't patronize us by explaining how your game is like other games, explain how it's not. I'm pretty sure things like 'broadsword=a sword that is broad,' 'HP=hit points' and 'save/load= save or load your game' are universal givens in RPGs. How about you spend your time and resources explaining whether or not identical +exp rings stack, or why the inexplicable stars next to the name of this piece of armor are there and if it means wear it.

And finally, for the love of Satan, either don't allow the tutorial to break narrative flow or give us the option to skip it. I bought your game because I want to play it, not because I like having every action for the first two hours interrupted by some condescending asshole that feels it's necessary to explain that a hard attack is an attack that is harder than a normal attack, sacrificing speed for power, watch your opponents and time your attacks when they aren't blocking, don't leave yourself open and remember, every time you think I'm finally done explaining the obvious, my twin sister Captain Obviousette will rise in my place to further talk down to you, you mouth-breathing simian, good luck with the sphere-shift-grid-ultra game mechanic that appears in about 6 hours, I'll be long gone by then and you'll have to puzzle that shit out through trial and error.

A good tutorial either asks if you want it (like most competent JRPGs,) or works with the gameplay as, for example, an unobtrusive popup (like most competent WRPGs.) The absolute worst tutorials explain the game through a series of endless, overly-verbose cutscenes that are either unskippable or worse, skippable but containing so much tertiary information regarding the plot, the game universe and your mission in it that taking the skip option fucks you over in an entirely unexpected direction. Star Ocean 3, I'm looking at you.

2. Put Your Shit in Order

Here's how an effective role playing narrative goes: You, Chopsocker the Lumberjack, are traveling home from the forest where you have spent the day jacking lumber. You come across a wounded adventurer along the path who says "Goblins!...Took my non-gender-specific but probably not gay companion...Cave...To the east...Take this...Ack! I am dead!" Taking the crude key you set off for the cave, killing wolves, slimes and probably giant spiders along the way, after first sensibly leaving a note for any other travelers along the path to send for help from the village Woodshere, because really, who runs off to fight a hoard of goblins alone to rescue a stranger at the bequest of another stranger? After slaying the goblins, probably giant spiders and definitely rats and rescuing the Slave Girl and an obscene amount of shitty weapons, she asks you to escort her to the port town of Boatshere, for which you will be well compensated when she is reunited with her family. And so on.

Here's how an effective narrative goes for game designers: "Gosh Generus, I, GenerisB, need to tell you that Empress Evilia sure has gotten the kingdom of Madeupwordia into a fix with the Madeupnouns of the kingdom of Totallynottolkienderivativetopia over the mining rights for Maguffin-ore, which they say is the bones of the dead god Ominousia, Lord of the Tertiary Plane. They say the Madeupnouns even had the Empress' daughter, WeepysidekickB, kidnapped by goblins and held in some cave in the rural province of Rusticfolkia. My sister, GenerisA sure must be tired of waiting on this loaf of bread. See Ya!"[take three steps] "Ho, Generus, and you, GenerisB! Don't run off just yet. How is your sister? Generus, as you know, when your parents, nearly dead from the pillaging of the Alsotolkienderivative's 16 years ago left you on the doorstep of I, OldguywithasecretA's doorstep 16 years ago I pledged to raise you as if you were my own. You should know that the Tertiary Plane is a realm of madness and despair, lorded over by the dead god Ominousia, where he waits for reunification of the Maguffin-ore, once used for purely religious observations but now used for mad magi-science by Empress Evilia's secret coven of Wizard Scientists, The Order Of The No Good Wizards. See Ya!" [take three more steps] "Hey watch where you're going! I know I, SpunkysidekickA, just bumped into you, but you should always keep a look out for obvious troublemakers charging blindly through the street looking behind them! See Ya!" [take another three more steps] "Gosh, Generus, I, Generis B, think that SpunkysidekickA may have stolen your coinpurse. And by coinpurse, I mean balls because you're inevitably going to turn into a moon-eyed hippie crying because you had to kill a named bad guy and ignoring the corridor of bad guy corpses you waded through to get to him when she becomes further involved with the narrative. You're hitherto unexplained Gem of Plot Device is glowing! The guards are after her! We should help her defy the established law of her and our people and kill the shit out of local authority figures in lawful execution of their duty to crown and country to help her escape the city of our birth!" And so on.

There is a lot of story in most role playing games. A lot of story, characters, characterization, culture, history. For fans of the genre, this is one of the attractions. As technology has advanced, games have gotten bigger, and with bigger games comes more fully realized worlds, characters, motivations, depth and scope. Unfortunately, some game makers don't realize that more words don't necessarily equal better understanding. I can't tell you how many times I've screamed at my TV "I get it! It's like Otherland, but longer, boring, and poorly written! It's 2000 and fucking 4! I know what emails, message boards AND online games are!! Fucking let me kill goblins you selfish fuck!!!" during the first two and a half hours of .hack Infection, in which time I watched my character accompany Captain Obvious and Captain Obviousette through one of the worst examples of Shitty Tutorial Level I've ever witnessed. Or best. Whichever.

My point is that the more information you throw at the gamer at the beginning of the game, the less the gamer will remember. If you introduce one or two NPCs, one dungeon, one town and maybe three or four ancillary characters necessary for the immediate plot I'm far far more likely to not only remember their names, but to develop an attachment to the narrative than if you feel the need to explain every fucking name character in the game, the massive political struggle, the history of the church and have me meet every fucking member of your family tree in the first 5 hours. I'm not going to remember any of that. Especially since I'm given absolutely no frame of reference for any of it. We're in the middle of a civil war. Okay, is that more important than my job as an errand boy? Because that's what I'm doing. Errand boying. Why the fuck should I care if the Captain of the Guard sided with the King's Brother, Duke Whoever of Wherever? Don't tell me all that and then send me out to fetch your groceries so I can suffer through a barter tutorial, ass.

Video games aren't movies. They aren't books. Video games are in the unique position, along with comics, of weaving a deep and engrossing epic, visually, over the period of dozens of hours. Every conversation doesn't have to play out like someone with a bad memory explaining the plot of The Watchmen. If you want me to fetch bread, fine I'll fetch bread. I have enough trust in both your skill and my judgement to believe that I didn't accidentally pick up Stockboy3: The Dark Ages. Let the plot happen when it happens.

I don't need to know every subtle nuance of the sociopolitical situation to enjoy a world. Some of the best game universes relied on the game itself, along with the player's imagination, to tell the story. Give the people that play your game enough credit to make a few logical deductions. I remember, right now, that Boletaria is the kingdom Demon's Souls takes place in, that Ostrava is really the prince and that Patches the Hyena is a shithead. What I don't remember is the name of a single location in Final Fantasy XII, whether the 13 year old boy in my party turned out to be a bad guy or not or how I, mighty stock boy Vaan, went from fetching wine to fighting undeads a continent away surrounded by sky pirates, princesses and whatever the fuck the black chick is supposed to be. Here's the kicker though: I've played FFXII more recently than Demon's Souls.

Bunny Elf? That's what she was, right? A Bunny Elf?

3. Don't Tell Me How I Feel

If you're going to kill off my best friend/girlfriend/parents/village, don't forget to give me at least one goddamn reason to care. Likewise, if I'm out saving the world from the forces of evil and wizards and probably a dragon at some point, don't forget to give me a believable motivation to do so. Finally, if you're going to give me a moral choice system then you're going to have to deliver on a couple of things: A) moral gray area, and B) believable human reactions. If I'm on a message board reading a list of appropriate responses to every choice in the game so I can unlock the best shield 30 hours from now then you did something fucking wrong. I'm not an obsessive-completionist gamer. I'm an 'I want to escape reality for a while' gamer.

Remember how big it was when Aerith died in Final Fantasy VII? So does everyone else. Especially the people who make RPGs. Also writers of creepy fanfiction. They remember so hard they try to shoehorn it into every single fucking game whether it needs it or not. Remember how big it was when your shipmates were turned to stone in Final Fantasy IX? Of course not, they were a bunch of one dimensional throw-away characters with exactly two personality traits each, one of which was 'kind of a dick.' And that's my motivation to keep fighting the good fight? Fuck you, game. Fuck you and your frilly little girl of a monkey boy.

Don't ever assume people will be attached to your characters or your story just because you say they should. In fact, do the opposite of that. Every time you assume I give a shit about your lazy writing I want you to remember that you are wrong and a bad person. And for fuck's sake, don't use 'Because," to explain things. "Because," is only an acceptable explanation when dealing with a four year old. People have been writing compelling stories with identifiable, likeable characters for centuries. There are books on the subject. Colleges offer courses in it. If you're not good at it go find someone who is.

"You are the chosen one, you must slay the Demon King," might have been enough plot for a NES game, but a Nintendo game's idea of a moral choice system was "Wilt thou help us?" "No." "But thou must! Wilt thou help us?" "No." "But thou must! Wilt thou help us?" ad infinitum. According to the nearest bookstore's fantasy/sci-fi section, moving a plot forward is not a hard thing to do. I played Tales of Symphonia until my Gamecube broke. Years later I bought another gamecube at a garage sale for exactly one reason: to play Tales of Symphonia. You know why? It had a kickass plot. And why did I give a shit? Simple, I identified with the main character. At least in the beginning. He turned into kind of a weepy bitch later, but by then there were other characters I liked more anyway. The point is, I got Lloyd. He constantly failed to see the bigger picture. Just like a real person. He tried to protect a nice old lady on the way home from school and doomed his village to slavery, leading to his exile and his obsession with revenge on the half-elves. Good intentions, blame, anger, prejudice, limited intelligence, acting on bad information; those are real shortcomings that motivate real people.

At the other end of this Belle Curve we have Final Fantasy XIII, which I played for almost three hours. And here is what I had to say, verbatim:

1. Why is there a mini-map? I'm in a corridor. I've been in a corridor. There are exactly 2 directions I could possibly go.
2. I really hope that's a girl. It looks, sounds and acts like a girl, but after XII it doesn't pay to assume.
3. Alright, this one has that weird, skin-colored facial hair college kids always try to pass off as a beard, so he must be a boy.
4. "We're the good guys!" Really? So far I've broken out of a prison transport, killed every authority figure I've come across and participated in a violent revolt against established authority for no defined reason. Forgive me for being skeptical, as this is the exact opposite of what good guys do. In fact, this is what The Joker and Harley Quinn did in Arkham Asylum.
5. "Hero's don't need a plan!" Yes! a direct, frontal assault to your numerous heavily-armed, well-organized,  and properly trained enemies with your ragtag team of escaped prisoners, children and terrible haircuts! They'll never suspect that! If only because it's far too stupid to possibly work.
6. Hey! Five stars again! For just spamming auto-attack over and over! It was an effort, and I thank you for rewarding me for my almost-effort, Game.
7. Also, thank you for explaining what the X button is in yet another tutorial, Game. This is so much easier than screaming commands at the television.
8. I seriously just unlocked a trophy by watching a cut scene. I've seen screen-savers that were harder to win at than this game.
9. Why is the black guy the jive-talking comedy relief? I appreciate that at least it's not another entire game of skinny, bug-eyed white teenagers being plucky, but did Square-Enix learn about black people from Michael Bay movies?
10. It's nice to see that the writer's from those old Mattel and Captain Planet cartoons can still find work polluting my TV with their monochromatic, retardedly oversimplified worldview. I missed thinking like an 8 year old.
11. Move forward, mash X, watch cut-scene, repeat. This isn't a game, it's a DVD menu.

As one would surmise, I was not impressed, especially since this bloated, self-righteous piece of shit was hogging Cavia masterpiece Nier's spotlight and was published by the same goddamn company. Idiots.

My point is, I can put up with the molly-coddling tutorials, the endless fucking cutscenes of boss fights I don't get to participate in, the turn-based combat (why is that even still a thing?) but what I just cannot put up with is you expecting me to treat this corny fucking puerile fucking adolescent fucking dialogue with anything other than contempt and you not giving me a single reason not to attack the next group of soldier's bullets with my face.

Except I'm not given that choice. Which brings me to my next subtopic: Moral choice systems. Morality systems have been one of the most consistently disappointing children in RPG designers' marriage to Bigger. Like the middle child that gets worse grades than his older brother and doesn't play sports like his little sister, and is a picky eater, and probably is really the mailman's kid, but would be such a great kid if he would just DO WHAT HE'S SUPPOSED TO!

95 percent of the time a 'moral' choice comes down to one of three options. When asked to save a village from ogres, or the space station from space ogres or whatever, you'll get to select either A) save the day and ask for nothing in return because you're that guy. Fuck that guy. B) Kill the villager for even asking, rob her corpse and rape her house, because evil for evil's sake happens so often in the real world. I haven't once in my life met a rotten person that wasn't thoroughly convinced that he was one of the good guys. And finally, the only option that makes sense outside of either Sunday School for the Children of Pussies or Legion of Doom board meetings: C) Goods or monies received for services rendered. Which is so boring I don't even have a snarky little joke for it.

Occasionally a game will make me think about my next move. Very very occasionally. In fact, "parts of Dragon Age," is exactly every time. Which seems impossible, since there are so many morally gray areas in real life. You'd think applying that to a fantasy narrative would be easy. Take an ethics class. Read a newspaper. Replace the nouns with 'ogre' and 'dwarf.'

Writing the story seems like it'd be the easy part, right? Even given the added difficulty of linking reactions to actions in a nonlinear story it can't possibly be harder or more expensive than rendering the environments or balancing the stats. "If we defy the King's wishes for an open boarder, and fortify ourselves from the barbarian hoards, we gain the benefit of of superior defenses, but run the risk of having a new foe at our backs and no way to receive supplies. Not to mention the people of the next village over; We don't want to sentence them to death by barbarianing and we can't afford to take in refugees." See, right there you have like a dozen different choices, none of which are "Fuck you die now!"

4. Fucking Scene! Cut!

Game developers seem to want their games to be cinematic. Somehow, someway, they seem to forget one of the most fundamental differences between video games and movies: VIDEO GAMES ARE NOT MOVIES! I can't believe this should even be a thing on current gen hardware. Movies are not interactive. Games are not two hours long (RPGs aren't, anyway.) Action scenes in movies turn your brain off. Action scenes in games turn your brain on. Romance in movies works (sometimes.) Romance in games never works (always. MMORPG weirdos aside).

One of the things people with selective memories always remember about FFVII were the CGI cutscenes. And I'll admit, they were awesome. At the time. In 1997. When 3D meant "everything is made of cereal boxes." Back then it had the novelty of being new. Back then movie sequences and actual audio files longer than 2 seconds were the flying cars and thought activated sex-bots of today. I can tell you this: When I first played FFVII, 17-year-old me wasn't thinking "Every game should have cutscenes!" No, he was thinking "Every game should LOOK LIKE these cutscenes!" And guess what? We're there. There is absolutely no fucking reason to leave the game engine so you can show me a marginally better bloom or particle effect.

The only thing harder than getting a new idea into a video game is getting an old one out. Remember Shadow of the Colossus? God of War? From last generation? There is no excuse for you to show me a movie of an epic, live action boss fight instead of a boss fight. Remember Fallout? From 1997? The same year Final Fantasy: Cutscenes Forever was released? If you wanted more information you asked for it. When things blew up and shit got heavy it happened to you, in game. Fallout only had about three colors: cigarette ash, coffee grounds and radioactive, and a barely animated avatar for some name characters. And it was brilliant! There is no excuse to break immersion to further the plot.

You may have noticed that I've hinted around at having a problem with rolling cutscenes piling up at the beginning of the game. If you haven't, then let me say this: I have a problem with rolling cutscenes piling up at the beginning of a game, or at any point before the denouement for that matter. If you want to make a CGI movie, make a CGI movie. Don't try to build a video game around one, because you wind up with a shitty movie AND a shitty video game at the same time. To this day I have not been able to get more than 4 hours into .hack Infection, Star Ocean: Til the End of Time, or Final Fantasy XIII because they all share that problem (along with FFXIII's many other problems.)

Having said all that, I'm not totally against cutscenes. I'm against TOO MANY cutscenes. Sacred 2 had the perfect amount of cutscenes: intro movie, motherfucking sweet Blind Guardian video, outro movie. Everything else was handled in game, by me, the player, not you, Mr. I Take Fucking Two Hours To Restate What You Read On The Back Of The Box Because I Suck At Things.

Up Next: Jer Pigs VII (Part Two: Chapter Two: The End: Closureing-Finale of the Second Part)

White Knight Chronicles International Edition (Review of the Review)

Jagged. Like really really jagged. Seriously.

Since I've recently dumped 60 hours of my life into this game I thought I'd review it. The main reason I'm doing this is to justify dumping 60 hours of my life into this (or any,) game when I could be out in the fresh air with real, live humans, fishing or barbecuing or... watching football... or... whatever it is people do when they're not updating their Facebook.

The ever-petulant/entitled/whingy reviewers over at IGN gave this game a 5.1 out of 10, their readers, being normal-ish humans that don't get paid to play video games, gave it an 8.1. IGN's review can be found here: http://ps3.ign.com/articles/106/1066138p1.html

The reader's reviews can be summed up here: Decent. If you're looking for an old story with new twists, like Skinner Box reward system grinding, enjoy the idea of killing dragons with your friends, and are too hip to play pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons, go ahead and buy it.

IGN's review being reviewed by me can be found under this sentence.

Although it took years for White Knight Chronicles to arrive in the United States, it was still eagerly anticipated by RPG fans.

 In real person time it took about 14 months, from it's Japanese launch in December of 2008 to it's North American launch in February of 2010. I can understand the reviewer's confusion, since 10 is two more than eight, and nobody can be expected to count individual months, since that would take up to multiple seconds.

Unfortunately, White Knight Chronicles...is one of the first major disappointments of 2010.

 Right after Dark Void, Army of Two: The 40th Day, Bayonetta, MAG, and Thexder NEO, all of which were released in January to much hype while the cries of "How can you screw this idea up this much?!" echoed in TV rooms across the country.

The end result, which is far removed from the promise of the original concept trailer, not only looks far worse...

 If final-product games looked like the concept trailers mocked up by developers to generate buzz, they would come on blu-rays the size of vinyl records, would take 2 days to install, would crash every five minutes, and would cost $800. It's the same reason the greasy, lukewarm cow-product you're eating doesn't look like the mouth-watering, steaming hot, perfectly grilled delicacy on the drive-through menu.

Giant robot. Fuck whatever you want to call it.

...but has a flawed battle system, poorly-told story and a number of technical issues.

 In Composition 101, students learn about essay writing. One of the first lessons learned about essays is the 'opening paragraph,' in which, the essayer states a general overview of whatever it is they think is important enough to write down, followed by a sentence previewing what will be discussed in the following paragraphs, such as: no it doesn't, no it isn't and I agree but so does everything. They also teach students not to start paragraphs with prepositions.

...there are a number of narrative crutches that are used throughout. The most obvious of these is the introduction of special telepathic birds that can be used as holo-phones. Yes, you read that correctly. These super birds lead me to believe that the developers couldn't come up with anything clever for allowing the characters to communicate across long distances...

 Yes, they did come up with something clever. They came up with telepathic birds that can be used as holo-phones. That's a fucking awesome idea.

When it comes to the actual gameplay, White Knight Chronicles is a mix between a traditional JRPG and an MMO.

When it comes to actual gameplay, WKC is a mix of Phantasy Star Online and Final Fantasy XII. Just say it. That is exactly what the gameplay is. What you just described sounds like Dragon Warrior crossed with Farmville.

Oldboy, wondering where he left his claw hammer.

This dynamic is certainly appetizing, but the pieces that make up the experience just don't work well. The battle system is the main reason behind this failed effort, because it's not only boring but flawed.

 The pieces that you don't think work well being JRPGs and MMO[RPG]s. Why, exactly, are you reviewing an online role playing game from Japan? For the record, I think holding two pieces of wood together for an hour while waiting for the glue to dry is boring, while some carpenters think C-SPAN is boring. Boring doesn't tell me anything except that you think an abstract concept, like what you think is boring, should be used to tell me what to spend my money on.
Also: The battle system is not flawed. It involves quite a bit of learning, experimentation and a LOT of grinding to excel at, but that doesn't mean it's inherently defective.

...players control one character at a time while the AI handles the remaining two. Occasionally a fourth guest character will join the group, but that's neither here nor there.

No, it is here and there. Here in the review you have written about the game you played over there. If it's irrelevant don't write it. If you felt it needed mentioning don't dismiss it as irrelevant.

Every action is governed by the Command Circle, which is essentially a cool-down meter near the middle of the screen. Players must wait for this circle to fill up before executing an action, then wait again after the action is performed -- and the wait times are almost always the same. This process is repeated ad nauseum

Translation: I have never played a JRPG before.

My overriding complaint with the game -- one that dampers the entire experience -- lies in the game's measurement of distance. In White Knight Chronicles, distance is irrelevant to your enemies. Monsters can attack your characters with a close-range attack from across rooms...If your characters are forced to play by the rules but your enemies are not, this is called a "gameplay imbalance."

 Translation: I'm the kid that throws the controller at the screen and yells "This stupid game cheats!" when I walk into a Goomba.

there have been countless occasions where my characters will be running through a valley and suddenly a horde of monsters will pop into existence around my party.

 Although not well-versed in the nature of MMORPGs myself, I have been alive and awake enough to know that one of the standard features is a concept called "re-spawning mobs." Without this strange and television smashingly unfair mechanic World of Warcraft would have been online about three hours, two of which would have been a half-dozen spazzy Korean kids sending each other smiley faces at having successfully killed every monster in the game ever.

...I stumbled upon two separate occasions of the game freezing, and one occasion of my controls locking up during battle. This might not happen to you, but one of my colleagues also experienced the same control problem, which is troubling. There were also a select few NPCs in the game that didn't have complete text bubbles when spoken to. Unusual indeed.

 Great Scott! Troubling Game Freezes?! The sincerity of your humble complaint does you justice sir! Thank the Christ the developers of Dragon Age: Origins(8.5,) Fallout 3 GOTY (9.4,) Falout: New Vegas (8.5,) and  TES4: Oblivion GOTY(9.2,) didn't allow slop like that into their games. They would most certainly be unfit for the title of Game of the Year, or justify Collector's Editions re-releases. As for the incomplete text bubbles I'm not sure exactly what he's talking about. I think maybe he's unfamiliar with the idea of figurants, in that not every body on a given map is to be interacted with, but to add color, character and depth to the world without having to write dozens of pages of dialogue that all boil down to "go to the cave and fight the dragon."

How dirty! Come! Wash your face!

With all these complaints leveled at the game, it might be hard to imagine that any enjoyment could be gleaned from the experience...

 Yes indeed. Especially since almost every complaint you've leveled came across as "I like cars that are fast!" or "Why am I not good at punching things hard?!"

I must give special credit to the design of Greede -- a sprawling industrial city built upon the back of a gigantic monster. The architecture, music and culture built around Greede were certainly highlights of the White Knight Chronicles experience for me.

 Oddly enough, Greede was my biggest complaint in the game. It featured one of the things I would personally outlaw in an RPG Bill of Rights: the tedious, back and forth, poorly explained, totally unnecessary, fucking-long-ass fetch quest. This one involved having to acquire a statue from a black market. Had to have a pass to enter the black market. Had to wonder around the motherfucking 'sprawling' city until someone mentioned asking at one of the pubs. had to get honey to trade for pass. had to wonder around the goddamnit-they-didn't-have-to-make-this-place-so-goddamn 'sprawling' city until you find the other pub. had to get jewel to get statue. had to wander around the Jesus-fucking-Christ-this-shit-never-ends 'sprawling' city to find a retired adventurer to find out where to find the jewel. had to revisit the previous dungeon. had to drop down a hidden pitfall into a cave to get the jewel. had to go back to the black market in the city. And just so we're clear here: the city is divided into several sections, each one having to be traveled to by monorail. Every time you get on the monorail the game treats you to two cutscenes: one of the monorail departing and another of it arriving. Thanks Game! I would have gotten confused if you hadn't attempted to play those EVERY FUCKING TIME I CHANGE ZONES!

The music in White Knight Chronicles is generally quite good and the English voice acting is also commendable. There is some serious talent contributing to the cast, so it's unfortunate that the lip synching technology behind White Knight Chronicles is so abysmal.

 See what he did there? He pretended to give the game a compliment, then negated the compliment with his next insult. It's officially recognized in the Book Of Things as 'Shitty Parenting Approach #6: Tell them you love them even though they're repulsive, horrible failures.'

I was extremely excited for White Knight Chronicles.

 We know. Reading your review was like watching Virginal New Inmate Day at the Prison For Violent Butt Rapists Who Enjoy Raping Virginal New Inmates' Butts.

Nier PS3 Review (also a review of the reviews)

Since it's the weekend and for me the weekend means "Like weekdays, but with boredom," I decided to write another review.

Suare Enix: Because Namco Bandai won't port Tales of Vesperia

!

Gamespot gave this game 5/10, because they're idiots; IGN gave it 7/10 because they're idiots that live in some fantasy world where "Low budget, high concept" means "Should look like Modern Warfare 2."

Square Enix certainly didn't help matters by releasing this directly in the shadow of it's Final Fantasy XIII gargantuasaur, in effect begging reviewers for direct comparisons to arguably the most overrated franchise in video gamery (the other half of the argument being every Nintendo character.)

I'll start right now by saying that, even with it's shortcomings, this is one of the best action RPGs this generation. Of course, there are only like four action RPGs on the market right now, but I stand by it.

Graphics: 7/10
As I said in my Sacred 2 review: FPS games are a blight on console gaming that have turned America into a nation of entitled whingy bitches. Role-playing games aren't about graphics. Or shouldn't be. Pretty pictures are a bonus, not mandatory. That being said, there's nothing wrong with the graphics. The bad guys (snicker,) get somewhat repetitive, as do the dungeons, but this is very obviously a budget issue, not a lazy developer looking for a quick cash-in issue. The village, named The Village, looks like a village, the seaport, named The Seaport, looks like a seaport. There isn't a whole lot of world to explore, but what world there is is well developed and believable. The boss monsters are epic, the cut-scenes engaging. The only complaint from me, graphically, is the characters getting fuzzy in extreme closeups.

Alleged shitty graphics

I may have just realized that the negative reviews were written by a bunch of pervs trying to look down (lingerie-clad party member and other,) Kaine's top. Ha!

Story/dialogue: 10/10
If any game needed spoiler alerts it's this one. I'll openly admit I cried repeatedly during this game. Then after the first ending I, look, just play the game.

Short story is this: unyielding protagonist and old guy Nier fights to find a cure for his daughter's fatal illness in a dying world. He is aided in his struggles by Grimoire Weiss, a sentient book and *SPOILER*, as well as potty mouthed *SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER* Kaine and *SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER* Emil.

I'm not clear on the details, but I think the Japanese version came with a companion book called Grimoire Nier that adds a lot of details to the already detailed story. In true internet awesomeness there is already a fan translation online here:
https://docs.google.com/View?id=dgvmkf89_228fxgghgg3#Introduction_873823421104661_5_07030576661278776
Do NOT click on that link if you haven't played through ending D and also don't click on it if you aren't comfortable with your own sexuality. Especially if you were one of the suckers trying to look down Kaine's top.

Pretty sexy, right?

Replay/fun/addictiveness: 7/10
The main story is split into two halves, and after finishing the game, returns to the start of the second half with new content unlocked and the difficulty hiked considerably. It does this through 4 endings, the fourth of which can only be unlocked by completing a certain requirement. After the fourth ending I had no desire to play through it again. This is not a complaint, as the game will take 15-30 hours to play through once depending on side quests and how much grinding you enjoy.

The gameplay is diverse enough to stay interesting throughout, although I will admit that by the third playthrough I was just spamming the jump slam attack and Dark Hand (one of the spells,) for most of the mobs. For the obsessive types (Hi! We're alike!) there are a lot of words to collect which act as modifiers, increasing damage, defense, experience gain, etc. as well as 30 or so weapons to be collected and modified. There are a LOT of side quests. Unfortunately, given the size of the world these stop being interesting fairly quickly as they almost all revolve around running between the same 5 or 6 areas to fetch things. It does do something I think should be against the law in video games like this, which is making the mini-games mandatory. The fishing mini-game isn't bad once you realize that the in-game tutorial is full of shit. Which is odd given the stellar quality of writing everywhere else, and the farming mini-game is great for coming up with quick money once you realize that the harvest cycle is tied directly to the Playstation's system clock.

Most of the bad guys are this. BUT FOR A REASON!

Gameplay/execution: 8/10
As I said before, the combat system is fun and diverse. Initially I wondered about the lack of auto-target, but after playing for a while realized that this added to the challenge and kept me from just sitting back and mashing the attack buttons until bad guys weren't.

One of the interesting gameplay mechanics was the decision to pay homage (rip off,) other game styles. The camera would occasionally switch to overhead hack n' slash, then side scrolling platformer, then bullet hell, then over the shoulder, then text-based adventure. Most of the people I know don't even know what that last one is, but some of the last games I enjoyed playing on a computer were the Zork games for DOS.
The game works. Which is more than I can say for a lot of the recent RPGs that seem to treat customers as unpaid beta testers. Nier does a lot of things well, but nothing exceptionally well gameplay-wise.

Serious motherfucker right there.

Sound/voice acting: 10/10
The soundtrack is superb. I say that as a semi-professional music nerd. This is what the game says music will be a thousand years after the end of the world and I believe it. I've never bought a video game soundtrack, because I don't want to be That Guy, but if I did it would be this one.

The voice acting, like everything else in this game, is great, but not what you'd expect. Every actor delivered. Whether it be an experience like watching a child waste away from illness, or a loved one consumed by madness, or light-hearted banter between traveling companions, everything sold. Also: Kaine cusses better than I do.

Overall this game is worth it. It doesn't suffer from most of the things that make some RPGs suck, whether it's Oblivion's lack of direction, or Eternal Sonata's linearity, or Valkyria Chronicles ENDLESS GODDAMN CHEERY FUCKING RPG KIDS! It doesn't hold your hand and explain everything like Fallout 3, but it doesn't throw you to the wolves like Demon's Souls. Everything about this game is different without being alien. Everything seems slightly surreal and washed out, yet there is a reason for it and I can't tell you why because *SPOILER*

Bottom line is this: if this game had come out on Playstation 2 it would have been one of the defining games of the generation. If a bunch of spoiled, chickenshit reviewers can't appreciate innovation, characterization and storytelling in a genre that thrives off of innovation, characterization and storytelling they should go back to their hi-res shooty games and stay safe until a soulless, one-eyed, lunatic demon screaming about his daughter kicks in the door and cuts their man-tits off. (spoiler alert.)