I think it's worthy of note that is one of the few JRPG's where the characters attitudes and appearance fits in with core themes of the game. One of the major themes of TWEWY is level of social disconnection in a world where we talk to each other more than ever. The over the top spiky hair and costume is something that wouldn't be that suprising in the Shibuya district. The main characters dress and attitude makes sense within the context of the game.
Fasion, the 300+ pins, Food and all that other junk seems to be more there as a device to add lots of post story appeal. TWEWY seemed to be designed with post game in mind, which detracts away from some of the systems intially. Clothes and Food especially, only seem to be of any importance post the main story, when you can get the uber clothes you need to perform special battles. That's just bad design, especially when it's a back of the box feature. The pins system worked much better, it felt like a good balance between using pins I like and having to mix up occasionaly for certain battles. It has a good balance between diversity during story play and scope for post game 'twinking' to get all the badges at max.
On the subject of Pins, I noticed in his review Yatzee pointed out that sometimes the DS has trouble telling differant pins appart in battle. One of the features that the game doesn't mention (unless you go looking for it) is that you can 'sub slot' pins, so they are only active when the shoulder button is held. It's not perfect, but you can use it to avoid confusion between a slash type pin and scratch type.
The dual screen battle feature, like fasion, isn't really friendly for first playthrough. Even though the game includes encounters where it attempts to force you to use both screens in unison, I managed to mostly get around it. After about 20-30 hours of gameplay you do get used to it, but intuative, it aint. Especially with the game throwing random caveates for each partner out every hour of gameplay or so.
On the subject of being able to control story in game. It's tricky, especially from a design perspective. Firstly you have to convince the team that what they want to do is create extra content that not all players will experiance throughout the game. Players themselves shouldn't notice this because if they do the illusion of free will is shattered. On the same tangent, you have to do it in a way that lets players know they are making an important choice for the future of the game without it seeming like a choose your own adventure book. Players tend to see through multiple choice dialouge with ease, and just use it as a device to manipulate the game rather than storytelling.
There is of course, gems like Portal and Half Life 2 that make the player feel like events in the game world are directly related to thier actions. This is awesome and all, but it doesn't translate well to RPG's. Because RPG's are about choice. When you only have a gravity gun and a ballistic weapons to hand, it makes sense that the only way to get through the room filled with nueclear waste is to build a bridge out of enviromental objects. In an RPG world you have a miriad of spells and stats, you could have a character with high dexterity jump over the pool of doom, or cast a float spell or a bunch of other DnD inspired options. This makes it very hard to trick the player into believing they are driving the story through thier choices, rather than the story driving them to act a certain way.
Finaly, one thing I was suprised Yatzee didn't mention was the sliding difficulty scale. As far as I know this is the first JRPG, or RPG period that allows you to adjust the level of difficulty and your characters current level at any point. Allowing the player to control thier own level of risk/reward takes a huge chunk of frustration out of the game. If you get stuck on a certain battle, jack the difficulty down and level up and you can breeze right through it. If you like you're RPG's a little more edge of your seat, put the difficulty up and put your level down. It's well balanced enough that you never feel cheated by the lack or rewards or repetative death, respectively.
Fasion, the 300+ pins, Food and all that other junk seems to be more there as a device to add lots of post story appeal. TWEWY seemed to be designed with post game in mind, which detracts away from some of the systems intially. Clothes and Food especially, only seem to be of any importance post the main story, when you can get the uber clothes you need to perform special battles. That's just bad design, especially when it's a back of the box feature. The pins system worked much better, it felt like a good balance between using pins I like and having to mix up occasionaly for certain battles. It has a good balance between diversity during story play and scope for post game 'twinking' to get all the badges at max.
On the subject of Pins, I noticed in his review Yatzee pointed out that sometimes the DS has trouble telling differant pins appart in battle. One of the features that the game doesn't mention (unless you go looking for it) is that you can 'sub slot' pins, so they are only active when the shoulder button is held. It's not perfect, but you can use it to avoid confusion between a slash type pin and scratch type.
The dual screen battle feature, like fasion, isn't really friendly for first playthrough. Even though the game includes encounters where it attempts to force you to use both screens in unison, I managed to mostly get around it. After about 20-30 hours of gameplay you do get used to it, but intuative, it aint. Especially with the game throwing random caveates for each partner out every hour of gameplay or so.
On the subject of being able to control story in game. It's tricky, especially from a design perspective. Firstly you have to convince the team that what they want to do is create extra content that not all players will experiance throughout the game. Players themselves shouldn't notice this because if they do the illusion of free will is shattered. On the same tangent, you have to do it in a way that lets players know they are making an important choice for the future of the game without it seeming like a choose your own adventure book. Players tend to see through multiple choice dialouge with ease, and just use it as a device to manipulate the game rather than storytelling.
There is of course, gems like Portal and Half Life 2 that make the player feel like events in the game world are directly related to thier actions. This is awesome and all, but it doesn't translate well to RPG's. Because RPG's are about choice. When you only have a gravity gun and a ballistic weapons to hand, it makes sense that the only way to get through the room filled with nueclear waste is to build a bridge out of enviromental objects. In an RPG world you have a miriad of spells and stats, you could have a character with high dexterity jump over the pool of doom, or cast a float spell or a bunch of other DnD inspired options. This makes it very hard to trick the player into believing they are driving the story through thier choices, rather than the story driving them to act a certain way.
Finaly, one thing I was suprised Yatzee didn't mention was the sliding difficulty scale. As far as I know this is the first JRPG, or RPG period that allows you to adjust the level of difficulty and your characters current level at any point. Allowing the player to control thier own level of risk/reward takes a huge chunk of frustration out of the game. If you get stuck on a certain battle, jack the difficulty down and level up and you can breeze right through it. If you like you're RPG's a little more edge of your seat, put the difficulty up and put your level down. It's well balanced enough that you never feel cheated by the lack or rewards or repetative death, respectively.
