Zero Punctuation: The World Ends With You
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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I wish game designers would look at some of these reviews, it might help them understand that gamers do have at least some intellect, and that you don't need a whole cutscene or speech to explain it if they can't figure it out. And seeing these reviews might help other game reviewers break from the game reviewing mold a bit, focusing less on numbers and hours of gameplay and more on the game elements itself. Number of hours of gameplay hardly matters, as long as it's fun. Perfect example: Witcher vs Portal, 80 hours of boredom vs 2-3 hours of pure fun.
Hmm...with all the hor-ribble reading you had to go through, I would be pretty scared to see your review of a Phoenix Wright game. I like the game, but I actually found the gameplay to be oversimplistic (since I happen to just press left/right all the time while making scribbles as if I F'ING LOVE COLORING!!!). And being an avid anime fan (and since I've read DeathNote), I was ok with the dialouge except for the constant inner monologue overtaking actual human speech.
Although, I still gotta finish the game. /(^_^)'
Although, I still gotta finish the game. /(^_^)'
I really liked the review and i dont know if it has been said, but i think you used the song, its the end of the world as we know it twice now
I don't think it's fair to say angst is indicative of a JRPG. I mean, you are going to have angst in just about any sort of game involving drama and personal relationships. I mean, Mass Effect has angst.Boredom13 said:
But angst in and of itself isn't especially unique to Japan. Look at all the US comicbook characters. Angst plays a big part in batman and Spiderman and Iron Man. (I'm not going to list every comicbook character I can think of who's angsty because that might very well be all of them.)
Yahtzee did manage to hit on the one core component that really makes a JRPG a JRPG: A linear narrative. All of the other stuff is ancilliary to that core component- Ultimately, you are just doing what it takes to advance the story, with little or no choice in how you advance it.
I mean, I've seen more spreadsheets for WoW than I ever saw for Final Fantasy (Insert number here).
Batman is single handedly more angsty than Cloud, Sephiroth, and every other lead JRPG character rolled up into one. For christ sake, he's a spoiled rich kid who watches his parents get gunned down and then decides to dress up like a bat and beat the bad people up!
As far as the female water magic users/healers- Well, most societies look as women as healers and whathaveyou. Without going into some sort of girlpower niche, that's what you are going to get. Admittedly, there are solid female non-healy leads out there, but the archetype exists beyond and defined genre.
And personally, I identify with the huge spiky hair as I have huge spiky hair. So sod off.
EDIT: people was supposed to be beat.
I felt most of Yahtzee's entertaining rant was about JRPG's, instead of about TWEWY good/bad qualities. I don't even think of TWEWY being a JRPG, even if it was styled by Nomura, and made by Jupiter/Square-Enix.
Actual points:
1) Bad Storytelling Storytelling/dialog is merely wheeling around the characters, not having dialog choices; not interactive storytelling ("just reading".) It's just visual novels/which he doesn't like. Though most play like bad choose your own adventure books. (Which begs the question: what is interactive storytelling, let alone good/bad interactive storytelling?)
2) Story and game play should go hand in hand.
3) Getting through cutscenes is like eating wallpaper paste/the combat is the best part
4) TWEWY has problems with specific motions of the stylus
5) Many pins, but only a handful are useful together
6) Two screens, hard to play at the same time
7) The fashion system doesn't seem to do much
8) It's a "grind sandwich"
Response:
1) Simple: this is a linear story. There is dialog/question boxes/a few additional tasks to perform before doing the main ones. In all linear games, one wheels around a character, watches an event, gets info, and goes onto the next event (give me a main character with dialog in a game over a mute any day.)
2) How? Dialog and visual cutscenes in between exploration and combat modes? How should this go hand in hand?
3) Hold left or right shoulder buttons to fast forward the dialog. Combat is indeed the fun part of game play.
4) This is true, and through trial and error, not a bad thing. You can always "sub" pins so that holding left or right shoulder buttons allows for specific pins to be active/inactive in combat.
5) The same kinds of pins sometimes upgrade/one finds better versions of their type. Of course there are over 300 kinds; mix and match as you like.
6) True, but you can configure how you want to use the 2nd character/how difficult you want each battle to be. (Based on 4 levels of difficultly, and a slider which controls drop rate/HP, without punishing the player, and only rewarding them.)
7) False. The fashion system adds/subtracts/nullifies attack, defense, HP, Exp. gain, PP gain, knock back, special move bonus, and HP replenishment values. Each sector allows for 4 different +/- effects based on the fashion one wears.
8) It's a delicious grind sandwich. Some pins upgrade, you get 4 new item drops per enemy/difficulty level. But isn't any action game a grind? I don't put this on the same JRPG level as say a Persona title, although the visual and audio style is unique. I barely consider it an RPG. Exp. levels go up to 99 (the only stat that seems to effect is HP (I could be wrong.)) If it gets tiresome, turn it off; come back later, and you'll find the number of minutes off is equivalent to PP they gain. And why grind, when you can turn the difficulty down?
Actual points:
1) Bad Storytelling Storytelling/dialog is merely wheeling around the characters, not having dialog choices; not interactive storytelling ("just reading".) It's just visual novels/which he doesn't like. Though most play like bad choose your own adventure books. (Which begs the question: what is interactive storytelling, let alone good/bad interactive storytelling?)
2) Story and game play should go hand in hand.
3) Getting through cutscenes is like eating wallpaper paste/the combat is the best part
4) TWEWY has problems with specific motions of the stylus
5) Many pins, but only a handful are useful together
6) Two screens, hard to play at the same time
7) The fashion system doesn't seem to do much
8) It's a "grind sandwich"
Response:
1) Simple: this is a linear story. There is dialog/question boxes/a few additional tasks to perform before doing the main ones. In all linear games, one wheels around a character, watches an event, gets info, and goes onto the next event (give me a main character with dialog in a game over a mute any day.)
2) How? Dialog and visual cutscenes in between exploration and combat modes? How should this go hand in hand?
3) Hold left or right shoulder buttons to fast forward the dialog. Combat is indeed the fun part of game play.
4) This is true, and through trial and error, not a bad thing. You can always "sub" pins so that holding left or right shoulder buttons allows for specific pins to be active/inactive in combat.
5) The same kinds of pins sometimes upgrade/one finds better versions of their type. Of course there are over 300 kinds; mix and match as you like.
6) True, but you can configure how you want to use the 2nd character/how difficult you want each battle to be. (Based on 4 levels of difficultly, and a slider which controls drop rate/HP, without punishing the player, and only rewarding them.)
7) False. The fashion system adds/subtracts/nullifies attack, defense, HP, Exp. gain, PP gain, knock back, special move bonus, and HP replenishment values. Each sector allows for 4 different +/- effects based on the fashion one wears.
8) It's a delicious grind sandwich. Some pins upgrade, you get 4 new item drops per enemy/difficulty level. But isn't any action game a grind? I don't put this on the same JRPG level as say a Persona title, although the visual and audio style is unique. I barely consider it an RPG. Exp. levels go up to 99 (the only stat that seems to effect is HP (I could be wrong.)) If it gets tiresome, turn it off; come back later, and you'll find the number of minutes off is equivalent to PP they gain. And why grind, when you can turn the difficulty down?
Not a fan of JRPGs, except Persona 3. Problem with most JRPGS is that they rely way too much on the "teen aesthetic" (enter Logan's Run reference here), often have horrible dialog, endless dialog screens that instead of propelling the story forward just grinds it to a halt. Not to mention yawn filled turn-based combat that erupts whenever you walk more than two feet in any direction.
Well it's nice to see people are ready to come up with a well constructed, well thought out response. Heven forbid should you acctually supply an evidence to back up your claim. Just in case I didn't clarify why I said what I did...dabura667 said:
One of the central themes in TWEWY is about social dissconnection and communication (or lack therof) suggested through the devices of mind reading, being able to observe without directly participating, the idea of coperate or die and the use of cel phones as a gameplay device. In context of this is make sense that the main character is a self styled social outcast. His choice of dress is to seperate himself from others, because he doesn't want anything to do with other people; which is reflected in his attitude.
This seperates him from Cloud, Squall, Riku et al; his characterizetion played into a core theme of the story. It wasn't just because the story creator percived that the attitude was cool.
I wish I had 'Wrong About Japan' around so I could read up on what Grant had said about Cosplay as a subculture movement in Japan. So I don't. I probably saved me from writing another paragraph for somone to brush off anyway
The first good JRPG? What, Yahtzee didn't like Earthbound or Final Fantasy VI or Super Mario... okay, maybe he wouldn't like Super Mario RPG, I don't know. But all are turn-based SNES RPG classics from Japan and I don't know what I'd do without them. I'd probably think RPGs from Japan are the worst thing to hit the video game world since FPSs seeing as FFVII and FFX would be the only games I'd hear about from all the fanboys online and I simply wouldn't know any better.
...
Oh, and I don't really know much about FPS games outside of Halo but that only adds to my underlying point.
Point aside, the JRPGs I like are the ones with good gameplay. I view storyline as icing on a cake, along with graphics and music. I actually prefer to have better music in an RPG instead of story. This is why I enjoyed the GBA version of Final Fantasy I so much. The gameplay was quick, the fights were fun, the dungeons were interesting, the music was great, and the story never got in the way (seeing as there wasn't much of one).
...
Oh, and I don't really know much about FPS games outside of Halo but that only adds to my underlying point.
Point aside, the JRPGs I like are the ones with good gameplay. I view storyline as icing on a cake, along with graphics and music. I actually prefer to have better music in an RPG instead of story. This is why I enjoyed the GBA version of Final Fantasy I so much. The gameplay was quick, the fights were fun, the dungeons were interesting, the music was great, and the story never got in the way (seeing as there wasn't much of one).
Opening song for the Tabula Rasa video.TheMusrich888 said:
Hooray for wikiquote!
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Zero_Punctuation
I have to say he's almost right on with this one. Certainly the story gets highly frustrating at times, when I want to yell blindingly obvious conclusions at the characters. The two-screen combat, though, I eventually ended up getting used to. While at the start it's absurdly unintuitive, by the end of the first week I was battling rather competently and having a good time. That's one of the annoying parts of the game, though, that as soon as you get used to the control scheme they decide to completely switch it up, without fail.
The other parts about level customization and difficulty selection, though, those are some very intriguing and good elements to this game, and I'm a bit bummed he didn't decide to address them. I'd think that sort of thing would be up his alley.
The other parts about level customization and difficulty selection, though, those are some very intriguing and good elements to this game, and I'm a bit bummed he didn't decide to address them. I'd think that sort of thing would be up his alley.