Let's talk about Warriors All-Stars [SPOILERS]

I'm not exactly sure what I was expecting out of this game.  As excited as I was for this whacky cross-overs of mis-matched heroes from various Koei Tecmo games, I imagined the game being a bit more shallow.  I was wrong, and I'm couldn't be happier about it.
 

Warriors All-Stars takes characters from Dynasty Warriors, Toukiden, Opoona, Atelier Sophie, Samurai Warriors, Haruka: Beyond the Stream of Time, Nioh, Ninja Gaiden, Samurai Cats, Dead or Alive, Deception, Rio, and Nights of Azure and thrusts them in an unknown world that is dying.  Heroes from all times and space are summoned to help revive this dying land.  But as the journey begins, the heroes find themselves amongst a three way family feud.  Each one of the family members have a reason for fighting.  The princess Tamaki is the only one with enough energy to restore the power of the world as it once was.  The older brother of the princess Shiki takes on an aggressive stance against his younger sister and cousin with mysterious motives.  The cousin of the two heirs Setsuna sets off to be the one to restore power to the world once more and take his rightful place as King as his father before him had reigned before Tamaki and Shiki's father took over.  So what are the true motives for each of these characters?  Is restoring the energy to the planet the only threat?  I guess you'll have to play it to find out!

So I actually didn't know there was an overarching story involving original characters.  I actually thought this was supposed to be a continuation of the Warriors Orochi series.  It is not.  Other than the base combat and the inclusion of characters from many different games, the game showcases a wide variety of mechanics and design choices that sets it apart from the Warriors Orochi series.

Let's list some differences of All-Stars to Orochi:
- Orochi's theme was darker while All-Stars is bright and colorful.
- Orochi allowed up to 3 main characters in party while All-Stars has 1 main with 4 supports.
- Party building revolved around character types and passives while All-Stars' characters each had active abilities that attacks, buffs, heals or protects the main character in some way.
- The player can freely switch between the 3 characters in Orochi while summoning a support character or using their ability puts them in a cooldown state.
- Orochi mainly focused on characters from Dynasty Warriors and Samurai Warriors while All-Stars had equal representation for all the games involved.

These are just some of the differences.  Needless to say, they are two different games.  You could say that Warriors All-Stars feels familiar, but fresh.

So how the game actually works is a bit different from most Warriors games.  There isn't a linearity to the game, per se, but rather a somewhat open-ended experience that shapes depending on player choices and random chance.  The sanctuary is a central hub that allows you to raise the bond levels between characters, buy/sell/upgrade cards, train character levels, and pick up requests.  On the main map, you can return to the sanctuary, fight of bandits for cards, take on quests to raise money, participate in challenges for experience points, fulfill character requests, or proceed with main missions.  Special quests periodically pop up on the map for a few seconds before disappearing again.  Sometimes, finishing certain main quests will lock you out of other ones.  Giving that freedom to the player was pretty cool, but it also felt like a way to virtually extend the gameplay time as character level and money can be a bit difficult to keep up with.

Once you get into one of the missions, you'll be directed towards various objectives.  Some are optional and can help give bonus items, money or experience points.  But other times, they can be the condition that causes a failure.  One of the new mechanics in the game is the Bravery level (I believe that's what it's called) where the player will always start at level 1 out of 9 at the beginning of each mission.  As the player defeats more opponents and fulfill objectives, their bravery level goes up.  It is safer to be at the same level or above of the bravery level of your opponent before taking them down.  I believe this mechanic was implemented to prevent players from taking their strongest character and diving straight towards the main enemy to try to end the mission immediately.  It can be a bit of a drag sometimes, especially if the mission decides to throw enemies with bravery level 6 or 7 at you right at the beginning.  But it does add a new layer of strategy into the game.  There are number of ways to confront each situation in battle.  If the player is surrounded by a large number of enemies, they can summon their support characters and extend their weapon reach further horizontally up to 5 characters wide (by summoning all 4 support characters).  If a particular general is too difficult to defeat, the player can use their support characters' abilities to raise the advantages in their favor.  If there are too many generals after the player and want to be able to fight all of them at once without the fear of hit-stun lock or juggles, they can activate Musou Rush where minion enemies pour out from all sides of the screen while the support characters perform actions to assist the main character as they enter an invisible state of euphoria where they can hack 'n slash all they want in those 20+ or so seconds without fear of being hit (it's quite cathartic).  Enemies can be pretty relentless if you're not careful, and objectives test the players decision making and time management on the spot.  If you don't pay attention to character conversations or gloss over an important objective, it'll end in failure with possibly restarting the entire mission over again.  Objectives can range from defeating certain enemies, defending a point, escorting an NPC or saving someone in need.  Warriors All-Stars simplicity in direction and depth in party building made the experience quite engaging.

Now that I'm done talking about the main portion of the game, I'd like to mention all the little things about this game that I liked.  Personally, I find it difficult to create a cross-over game that will satisfy fans of each of the franchises as their characters can be vastly contradictory in terms of personality, style of play, or reference.  The developers found a balance that highlights each individual character by showing the player what's so great about them through conversation, gameplay and music while still managing to have them interact in a believable manner.  The very first character that came to mind was Lu Bu of Dynasty Warriors.  This man was a renegade that no one could control.  He betrayed various leaders and always sought to show everyone how fearsome he was.  So my biggest question when starting the game and having him join my party was "how would that make sense?"  At first, he dismissed the idea of helping the indigenous people of the world he was summoned to and began to walk away.  I believe it was Zhou Cang that spoke up and said that "there would be strong fighters from different worlds they'd have to go up against."  This peaked Lu Bu's interest and he agreed to fight if it would entertain him and that "if anyone got in [his] way, he'd take them down too."  The writing for the characters was careful in keeping everything canon and believable whenever it came to having them interact.  Millennia and Laegrinna of the Deception series expressed their hatred for humans and refused to fight alongside the other members.  When they're finally convinced to join them, they would mention in conversations saying that they were thinking of how they would trap each hero based on their abilities.  So not all the characters actually get along with each other, but their interactions (even when hostile) can be perceived as humorous or charming in the context of this world they're stuck in.  One other example is a hero mission in which Lu Bu insists on dueling William from Nioh.  William didn't want to fight Lu Bu and also had a request to fight off bandits.  William tricks Lu Bu by agreeing to his duel and bringing him to where the bandits were.  Each time Lu Bu was ready to fight him, William would point out that a villager needed help.  After fighting off the bandits, Lu Bu becomes enraged and blamed the villagers for getting in the way of their duel.  This charade goes on for a while until William is paid by the villagers for his help and tells Lu Bu that he's too wiped to fight and that he'd probably be dissatisfied with fighting him in such a state.  William makes it up to him by using the money he made to treat him to alcoholic beverages and challenged in who could drink more.  It was just so much fun seeing the ways all the character interacted with each other.

Not all characters come from action games, and that's when they had to be a bit more creative.  With Sophie and Plachta, coming from the JRPG turn-based battle of the Atelier series, their attacks mimics skills and abilities from their game in an action form.  The Deception series is all about setting up traps and having the humans run into them, and so the characters have various traps appear as their attacks in Warriors All-Stars.  The little references and motions from its source material gave respectful homages to each of the games the characters came from.

Aside from the already beautiful recreations of each of the characters' models and graphics, playful dialogues, and fun gameplay, the game had an incredible soundtrack to boot.  There are original songs specifically for the game, and those were really good: melodic, memorable, and moving.  Then we have arranged songs from all the games the characters are from.










The music selection is just so much fun to listen to.  It helps a lot that the source material is already great; however, the way they were able to transform each of those songs into one unifying style while still respecting the source material is truly beautiful.  Before the game released, I got really into listening the music and finding the original songs to compare.  There was one particular song that stood out to me while I was playing the game that I've never heard before:




"What game is this from?  The melody is so beautiful and emotional!"  I have never heard of this game before, but the song capture my heart.  The music was so good that I felt interest in the game.  If it ever got localized, I might give it a shot (btw, it's an otome.  Meaning it's a romance game geared towards females).  Often times, this is what they want in a cross-over game: to get the player interested in all the games the characters are from.  But if you don't represent the character and its franchise very well in the cross-over game, it's much more difficult to convince the player to check it out (I'm hinting towards Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite, and I'll be writing a review on that soon).

I had so much fun playing this game.  The story (though a bit stereotypical) was simple, but a lot of fun to follow.  The characters are full of personality and represented their games faithfully and respectfully.  The gameplay could get repetitive in some parts, but I mostly had fun and really liked all the different teams I was able to form to change the experience of combat.  The art style was easy on the eyes and I loved seeing the capabilities of the PS4 being showcased as opposed to the port of Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate where the game couldn't show of the technological advances the console has made from its predecessor.  I played through the game three times with the first two times as a regular ending and the third time I accidentally stumbled into the true ending.  I'm unsure if I'm going to be playing it more since there's still much I can unlock and discover, but I also have a lot of other games to get through.  I loved it and I'm glad Koei Tecmo brought it over for us.



[STORY SPOILERS]
So if you'd like a quick run-down of the story, here it is:
-Tamaki wants to restore the planet's energy
-Setsuna doesn't actually care about "taking his rightful place as king" and wants to save Tamaki
-The only way to restore the planets power is by sealing yourself  in the fountain
-Setsuna planned on taking Tamaki's place so that she wouldn't be sent to a sealed oblivion
-Shiki was so aggressive because in his father's dying breath, he was told that the sealed monster Yomi had already taken over someone close to him.  He had to find out who
-On the true ending path, Sayo (Tamaki and Shiki's mother) is revealed to be the one controlled
-Continuing farther on the true ending path, it's revealed that Yomi is actually an ancestor in their family
-Rather than slaying her, the heroes were able to purge the darkness out of her and return things as they were
-Essentially, it's one plot twist after another and they're not too surprising.  But I enjoyed it.

Let's talk about NieR: Automata [SPOILERS]

It's actually been two months since I've completed NieR: Automata, and so my thoughts and opinions aren't as fresh as I'd like them to be.  This will probably be a short rant.

Man, what do I say about this game?  I'm not sure if I could call it "Game of the Year".  It certainly was fun and I enjoyed it a lot more than the original game (which I still haven't beaten yet).  But I can see why the game touched so many people beyond it being a fun game.

The whole premise behind the game is that aliens invaded the Earth and their machines stood as a threat to Humanity.  Humanity created androids to save them as mankind was already slowly dying out from a disease.  With the Alien invasion, Humans escaped to the Moon while the Androids formed YoRHa in order to come together and fight off the machines.  Throughout the game, you take the roles of battle android 2B and scouting android 9S.  They take on various tasks of fighting off the machines and finding a way to bring Human back to Earth once more.  All androids of YoRHa takes on the responsibility of serving mankind and saving them from this foreign invaders.  It was their purpose; their reason for being and fighting.  There was a problem though.

Part way through the game, the two androids find the aliens.  They have already long passed.  It seemed as though the true enemies were the machines and not the aliens as the machines killed their creators and sought to kill off the androids.  Determined to see things through and save humanity, the two androids continued their fight.  However, another discovery is made.  By chance, 9S found out that Humanity had been long extinct and androids had already failed to save the mankind.  YoRHa was created to give androids purpose to their lives once more as the fabricated transmissions to the Moon was a beacon of hope for them.  The machines sneak a virus into the android database and all of YoRHa is wiped out.  As 2B and 9S make their escape, the infected YoRHa units pursued them.  2B has 9S' flight camouflage him and send him away from the enemy pursuers.  2B is shot down and continued to fight off her former comrades.  She notices that she was slowing becoming infected.  When it seemed as if she couldn't fight anymore, another android by the name of A2 appears and fights off 2B's attackers.  As the battered and corrupted 2B looks upon A2, she requests her to end her life before she becomes entirely taken over by the virus while defeating the rest of the machines.  A2 fulfills 2B's last request as 9S had just arrived.  Furious and with all hope lost for YoRHa, 9S had lost all reasoning with one last purpose: to kill A2.  The game concludes with A2 and 9S defeating the last remaining main machine only to confront each other in one last fight.  They end up killing each other.  It was a solemn ending that had the player question the time they spent on the game.  "What was the purpose of the androids fighting so hard for something that didn't exist? Couldn't the androids live out their own lives in peace? Did they really need a purpose to live beyond saving humanity?"  It reached deep into the hearts of many players.  I could be wrong, but I interpreted the game in this manner:

We, as humans, may never find our true purpose for existence.

One day, the inevitable extinction of our race may come.

Why do we work so hard for a better future when it may not matter one day?

Perhaps it's not important to our future, but it certainly feels important to us now.

At the very end of the game, after the true ending, the player is presented with a shoot-em-up mini game that's excruciatingly hard.  With each failure, you'll see words of encouragement or sympathy pop-up asking if you'd like to try again.  After a certain amount of failures, the game asks if you would like help from other players.  If you say "yes" many other players appear spinning around you to fight and protect you.  If one of the player is hit, their ship is destroyed and you see their names appear reporting that their save file was permanently deleted.  After completing the mini-game, you have a difficult choice to make: sacrifice your save file in order to help another player in the same way the other players helped you.  It asks you multiple times if you really want to do this: "the one you're helping may not remember your name; they might not be grateful for your help; your sacrifice could even be in vain; even with all those in consideration, do you want to go through with it?"

I agreed and saw the game go through my equipment, my inventory, my 30 hours of effort put into the game being slowly wiped out of existence in front of me little by little.  "What's the purpose of putting so much time into the game when it's going to wipe your progress?  Why did you play the game when it ended the story on such a somber note?"  As painful as it seemed to have my progress wiped at the end of the game, I felt no regrets.  I was happy I played the game.  I enjoyed the combat and was enthralled by the progression of the story.  That was the whole idea behind the game.

To reflect that concept back to what I wrote in italics up above: we often question our existence as a species.  "Where did we come from?  How did we come to be?  What is our purpose here?"  As long as our human history have been recorded, no one knows for sure why we're here or what we're supposed to be doing.  Like all living things in our world, we only know that our instincts compels us to survive and continue our existence.  But what if there is no purpose to our existence?  Do we still want to continue a futile effort of a possible non-existence in the far future of humanity?  The androids of YoRHa seemingly wasted all their time, effort, and lives for something that no longer exists.  All of Humanity's information and proof of existence was sent to a database on the Moon and playing as 9S, you could choose to protect it or not.  For the androids, serving mankind was their purpose.  But what if they didn't have that responsibility?  They would simply exist and be there.  In some subtle sense, I believe Yoko Taro wants to convey the message that "we should live our lives to the fullest and not take for granted the brief time we have.  It may not matter one day, but it matters now.  So until that day comes, see things through."  I spent 30 hours on the game and agreed to have my save filed erased to help another player on the ending Shoot-em-Up mini-game.  I didn't get a happy ending that I wanted, but I'm glad I got to experience the adventure of 2B, 9S and A2.  I have no regrets.  I can only hope I can live my life with that sense of appreciation.

As many players before me have said: "What a beautiful game."

Productivity and Progress

September was quite a busy month with getting audio projects done and getting through some games.  I created a few songs, covers and remixes for fun and practice while most of September was spent working on two remixes that's part of the 4 remix albums I set off towards working on last year.  I wasn't sure if I could even finish the Ninja Gaiden remix before the end of the month when I suddenly got really sick in the stomach and threw up last week.  Thankfully, I made a speed recovery and worked hard on it to get it done so I could enjoy the final product.  I had those two remixes uploaded last night.




I really liked how the Double Dragon remix turned out.  I wanted it to be kind of laid-back, but still be upbeat.  But when I finished the Ninja Gaiden Remix, I felt like it paled in comparison since a lot more thought, work, and inspiration went into it.  I've been wanting to make this remix for a while ever since I started listening to more music from the Synthwave/Retrowave and Darkwave genre.  And it was no surprise that I was going to work on remixes from Ninja Gaiden when I decided to make a Ninja themed remix album.  I was thinking about participating in INKtober this year like I did last year.  But because of the momentum I gained from the work I've done in the past 2 months, I decided I would focus on my own projects throughout October.  After getting the two remixes up last night, I have a bit of leisure time today to write and reflect as I'll probably continue working on Monday after some rest over the weekend.

Aside from work, I've been enjoying the games I've pre-ordered for the month of September and October.  I've been so busy that I haven't had time to write about NieR: Automata.  There are a few games I want to get into an in-depth analysis on, so for now I'm just going to briefly go over some of them.

After completing NieR: Automata and Final Fantasy Type-0 HD back in early August, I wanted to complete a few more games before all the pre-orders started rolling in.  I managed to finish up Touhou Genso Rondo: Bullet Ballet and the original main story of Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate before Warriors All-Stars came in the mail.  What I mean by that is that Warriors Orochi 3 originally had 4 chapters (or was it 5?) and it looks like all the other ones were added afterwards (10 chapters in total).  So I'm probably going to go back to it and try to finish the extra content when I get the chance.  It looks like I managed to finish Koihime Enbu, Necropolis (with a friend), and Kirby Triple Deluxe before I finished Warriors All-Stars.  Nothing much to say about a lot of these games: Touhou was okay, Warriors Orochi 3 Ultimate was a lot of fun, but there's still more I want to get around to playing in it, Koihime Enbu was pretty fun but frustrating sometimes, Necropolis was rather disappointing and bare-bones (not to mention how unreasonably difficult it seemed if we didn't find a ranged weapon that made it much easier), and Kirby Triple Deluxe was mediocre with a ridiculous 7 phase final boss.  Warriors All-Stars is one game I'll probably want to get into a deep discussion about because I absolutely loved the game and had a lot of fun playing it.  I finished Metroid Samus Returns and felt rather conflicted on what I thought about it throughout my playthrough.  That's another game I want to go into detail with.  I finished Story mode of Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite with a lot of disappointment for the entire game, but still like the overall feel of gameplay.  So I'll definitely talk about that game as well since I have a lot to complain about it.  And just a little over a week ago, I downloaded a free Half-Life 1 modded game called "Half-Life: CAGED".  I didn't like it very much.  The puzzles and platforming were pretty good, but combat was quite awful.  It made me want to play Half-Life, so I finally downloaded and played through Half-Life 2: Episode 1; it's a game I bought back in 2011.  I started Half-Life 2: Episode 2 last night.

There's a lot I want to accomplish this month, so I'm sure it'll be interesting.  I'm probably going to be writing quite a bit about the few games I mentioned in the following days or weeks.