The History of the Elder Scrolls Series

Today the Elder Scrolls is one of the most popular role-playing game series on the market. Beginning over 20 years ago, it has so far spanned five main line games, a slew of spinoffs, and an MMORPG. The games have helped to popularize large, open worlds, and has become something that many other developers strive for when creating their own games to take place in sprawling landscapes.

This article will be taking a look back at the series from its early days in the mid 90s right up to the end of 2015.

ARENA

Everything began when Bethesda released The Elder Scrolls: Arena in 1994. At first, it wasn’t the intention of the developers to even make an RPG. Their original plan was to create a game where a band of gladiators traveled from one town to the next fighting other gladiators in hopes of eventually becoming champions of the world in this rather bloody competition, hence how the name Arena came about. However, that was eventually scrapped in favor of making a first-person perspective action RPG, bringing us the game we know today, whereby pretty much everything but the name got the boot.

It was a very ambitious project. A big priority for the team was to create a large, open world that players could explore at their leisure doing quests and slaying monsters along the way. There were a few other games that attempted to present fairly expansive worlds to wander before this. For example, Might and Magic: World of Xeen was considered colossal by most people’s standards back then.

The folks at Bethesda wanted something much, much grander, though. Whether or not they’d be able to pull it off was a big question at the time. The people at Sir-Tech, who were working on Wizardry: Crusaders of the Dark Savant at the time, actually laughed at them when they found out what the team was planning with Arena. Ultimately, they did succeed, giving players the largest game world that they had ever seen.

In Arena, players were able to explore the entirety of Tamriel, as opposed to subsequent games in the series that focused on a particular province within the Empire. It was actually necessary to use fast travel in order to travel from town to town since the world was so big. The wilderness outside of any given city was created via algorithms and went on for miles and miles. While there was adventure to be had in those places, getting to the next major settlement wasn’t an option there. Players would need to hop on a horse instead.

The story was simple enough. Emperor Uriel Septim VII was banished to an alternate dimension by the battlemage Jagar Tharn who had his eye on taking over the Empire. However, his apprentice, Ria Silmane, caught wind of this and tried to go to the Elder Council to warn them of what was happening. Unfortunately for her, Jagar knew what she was trying to do and had her killed. From here, the player has several encounters with Ria’s spirit as she tries to guide them through finding all of the pieces of a shattered artifact that, once reassembled, can be used to open a portal to the alternate dimension and rescue the Emperor.

The whole time, the game was far from linear. There was no rush to go and save Uriel, and there was a great big world waiting to be explored, so what was the hurry? On top of this, there was a slew of side quests to go on. As a result, players could wander Tamriel at their leisure, soaking in the sights and sounds, helping the locals along the way without feeling rushed to go rescue the Emperor. Even many of the NPCs were created through algorithms. While many of them said the same thing, it did make the world feel much more populated, enticing players to wander around and talk to people all the more.

While Tamriel’s great outdoors tended to be procedurally generated, the dungeons of the game were handmade. Exploring these, players could see the attention to detail. These would often times be quite large and very complex, reflecting the far more elaborate dungeon designs that were the norm in games of this period.

The game even had an early sort of day / night cycle. As time passed, the sun would go down, shops in towns would close for the night, and the streets would become a dangerous place with the town folk at home safe in their beds and monsters now lurking the thoroughfares.

As exciting as all of this was, Arena did gain a reputation for being hard on newcomers. Right from the start, players were dumped in a dungeon with hardly anything in the way of equipment. They had to wander it looking for some basic loot that they could arm themselves with and make a beeline for the exit, all the while fighting rats and goblins, and sometimes more powerful enemies if they lingered too long in the labyrinth. For people new to the game, it could sometimes be a brutal system as they would get pummeled again and again, being forced to load old saves, hoping against hope that at some point they’d be able to escape that terrible place.

Over time, though, the game would become much more manageable. Once players finally got a hold of some decent gear and developed a better understanding of the game, their journey started to feel a little bit easier as some of the daunting difficulties from earlier melted away.

It didn’t take much time with Arena to see what its influences were. Pen and Paper RPGs as well as computer role-playing games such as Ultima Underworld and Legends of Valor were quite visible in Arena. These were other examples of players going into some sort of game world and having the freedom to more or less do as they pleased, or in the very least not be on the rails so much, forced to follow a very set path carved out by some designers. Bethesda tried to take the relative freedom and immersive first person perspective of these games and enhance it as players ventured throughout Tamriel.

All of this being said, Arena got off to a rocky start. Originally, the game was planned for a Christmas 1993 release but got delayed by several months. When it finally did come out, the thing had quite a few bugs still. As a result, critics were not all that impressed with what they saw. Making matters worse, only about 3,000 copies shipped in the original release. Things were not looking good for the game. Luckily, Arena got a lot of positive word of mouth, allowing it to slowly develop a cult following as the months wore on. In the end, the game managed to do quite well for itself. No one had seen such a huge, living world before in a video game, and what Bethesda did with this game started pushing people to think about RPGs a little differently and wonder about the possibilities if designers continued in this direction.

DAGGERFALL

A couple of years later, the team put out their second Elder Scrolls game, Daggerfall. Continuing what they had started in Arena, this was another very large game with a huge number of places for players to explore. However, this go around the adventure would center on the province of  Daggerfall, even though when the game was in its very early stages of development the team was looking at having it take place in Morrowind instead.

Looking to build upon what they did in Arena, Bethesda added a slew of new features for Daggerfall. Magic was highly customizable with players able to create their own spells. Players could buy their own house. It was possible to become a vampire, wereboar, or werewolf. A dynamic political system was also implemented, a favorite with players. This brought about a sort of faction system whereby how players dealt with and helped one group could have an impact on how other groups would react when encountered. We also saw a change to how characters leveled as the game did away with traditional systems of purely accumulating experience and then spending points on abilities upon leveling up, and instead characters’ abilities grew stronger depending on whether or not players actually used them.

In this game, players had been sent to Daggerfall by the Emperor for a couple of reasons. First, they had to free the ghost of the dead King Lysandus, whose spirit had been shackled to this realm. Second, one had to figure out what happened to a letter sent by the Emperor to Blades spy in the region. As the story unfolded, players would see many of the inner workings of the Empire and begin to understand why the letter was so important. Depending on how one tackled the main quest, the game had six different endings, adding quite a bit of replay value.  Of course, there were plenty of side quests too, so players could wander off doing their own thing in this world for quite some time while barely touching the main quest if they were so inclined.

With all of these different places to go and all of these different things to do, a lot of work had to go into making Daggerfall a reality. The result was a grueling development cycle. For example, only three of about 20 artists to contribute to the game managed to survive through the whole of the game’s creation while the rest tossed in their towels and went elsewhere.

Nonetheless, the game released on schedule in August of 1996.  Again, the game was criticized for an abundance of bugs in it, but this time it was much easier for developers to address the problems via patches. That being said, this did give the team pause and got them thinking more about their development schedules and what they could do to prevent such buggy releases in the future. Despite the less than perfect release, the game once again was embraced by its players and word of mouth ensured that would be a success.

BATTLESPIRE

In 1997, Bethesda began to take a break from the mainline Elder Scrolls games and experiment a bit with a couple of spin-offs. The first of these was Battlespire, a game released under the “Elder Scrolls Adventures” banner. Originally planned as an expansion for Daggerfall, it eventually became its own standalone game.

Taking place in the Battlespire, an academy of the Empire for training battle mages to join the imperial legion, players took on the role of an apprentice who was supposed to be on their final day of training. However, it was discovered that the place had been invaded by the Daedra Mehrunes Dagon and his army. Players had to travel through the realm of Oblivion in order to fight these legions of baddies and put a stop to the daedra’s plans while also rescuing their partner who had been captured.

Compared to Arena and Daggerfall, this was a much simpler game. There were only six races to choose from: Dark Elf, Wood Elf, High Elf, Norn, Breton, and Redguard. There was no rest feature, and shops and gold were removed, necessitating players acquire items from fallen enemies and the like, also enemies didn’t respawn, nor were they randomized.

Interestingly, the game included an online multiplayer mode. Here players could either tackle the single player story in a coop environment, or go head-to-head in a two-player versus mode.

Unfortunately, the game didn’t go over well with either fans or critics, as both felt that the it lacked in scope and simply didn’t impress like Elder Scrolls I&II did.

REDGUARD

A year later, the studio went in a slightly different direction with 1998’s Redguard. This game was an action-adventure much more similar to the likes of Tomb Raider than the RPGs that had comprised the series up to this point, and was again released under the “Elder Scrolls Adventure” label.

Taking place 400 years after Arena, players followed the story of Cyrus, a Redguard who had come to the island of Stros M’Kai in search of his missing sister. The game remained non-linear like its predecessors but it was also a lot more contained with it taking place on such a small landmass.

One can actually see the beginnings of a change in design philosophy with this game that would continue with future installments of the Elder Scrolls. Up to this point, creating large amounts of the game world through algorithms had been heavily used in the series, but in a 1998 interview with series producer Todd Howard, he discussed how those games were really big, but sometimes this lead to a certain amount of samey-ness depending on what the algorithm spat out. With Redguard, he chose to create the world by hand as an attempt to move away from this. Hence the game taking place on the tiny island that it did, and the relatively small number of NPCs to interact with, as the game tried to go for a less is more approach.

If you look carefully, you can see the foreshadowing of future Elder Scrolls games in Redguard's opening.

There was actually plans for a sequel to Redguard at one point revolving around the Eye of Argonia, but that never came to light. However, more observant players will notice a little bit of foreshadowing for the series in the game’s opening cinematic where one can see a bookshelf where tomes named The Elder Scrolls: Arena, The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion are sitting. Given the actual path that the main series took in the years to come, one can see that the team had been planning this stuff out well in advance.

MORROWIND

In the wake of Battlespire and Redguard, things weren’t looking good at Bethesda. Neither game managed to sell very well and the studio was facing serious financial difficulty. Being brought into Zenimax in 1999 provided the company a stay of execution, but their next game would have to be a bonafide hit if they were to survive. With that, the studio got to work on Morrowind. So dire was the situation that there were only six people working on the game initially. In a sense, Bethesda was facing a Final Fantasy moment where their next project would either make or break the company.

With that, Morrowind turned into a game where the development team took a lot more risks in what they implemented. They took an almost nihilistic mindset heading into the project, tossing all sorts of ideas at it figuring, “What’s the worst that can happen? We lose our jobs?” It was a rather extreme attitude to take, but it worked. To this day, Morrowind is one of the most unique entries in the Elder Scrolls series.

Right from a very early point in the game, players are greeted by a strange event. After creating their character, wandering around the starting village, and picking up some supplies, one will usually head into the world to see what’s out there. Assuming they took the main road, they’ll have barely walked a few steps out of the village when suddenly a wizard comes falling out of the sky right in front of them, slamming into the ground, dying instantly. This leaves players wondering what the hell just happened. You just don’t see wizards raining from the sky in RPGs, or any other genre for that matter. As players wander further and spend more time getting to know Morrowind, it becomes clear that the event is like a message from the game’s developers telling them to expect the unexpected and that this run-in with the wizard is just the tip of the iceberg for what's in store from the game.

The province of Morrowind was always regarded as a strange, exotic place by the other regions of Tamriel. From the wildlife, to the flora, to the architecture, there were countless signs that this was a very different land.  Walking around the edge of town and seeing a silt strider for the first time, seeing all of the peculiar dome-shaped houses, trying to strike up conversations with the secretive, standoff-ish dark elves, the whole flavour of the game felt very different from the vast majority of other RPGs being released at the time where more often than not a European fantasy motif was employed.

All the while, the game looked quite pretty for the time. While today, some may feel that Morrowind hasn’t aged very well when run without mods, when it first came out people marveled at what was happening on-screen. The environments were filled with details, there was real-time weather effects, something you just didn’t see in 2001, when the game first came out, and glass armor was much sought after so people could just stop and oggle it in all of its green, shiny glory. About the only question players had about the visuals was, “How could such a pretty game have such an ugly citizenry?” Because character models’ faces were far from elegant back then.

Character progression built upon what was done in Daggerfall whereby skills were increased through practice, study, and training, resulting in countless players endlessly jumping down the road in order to level acrobatics, because why not? Frustratingly for some, however, dice rolls played a part in determining whether an attack would land as well, so no matter how much one trained axes, for example, if the dice weren’t cooperating, it didn’t really matter.

Adopting a similar philosophy to what they did in Redguard, the developers went for a smaller, handmade world. This was the first mainline entry in the series to do away with algorithmically created areas. Instead, the team sat down and made everything themselves. The world was still very large compared to anything else out there, but everything felt more fleshed out and like it had purpose since it was actually created by a human.

The plot of the game centers around a prophecy in Morrowind that says one day the reincarnation of Indoril Nerevar, known as “The Nerevarine”, would one day return to the land in order to defeat Dagoth Ur and his followers. Players first arrive in the province as a convicted criminal largely forced to work for the emperor and investigate this prophecy. Compared to Arena and Daggerfall, Morrowind’s story felt more fleshed out, but there were also far more side quests. The game was designed more to try and intertwine these such that players really interacted with the world and got a better sense of all the layers of intrigue and political battles going on behind the scenes among the various factions and noble houses of the province.

Factions played a very important role in the game, as there were several pitted against one another in Morrowind and because the player was an outsider, it became all the more important to win them over. Everyone refers to you as “Outlander”. You’re constantly reminded that you’re not of this part of the world, and you’re going to have to work very hard to gain the dark elves’ trust. As the player interacts with the various groups at play, it becomes apparent that Morrowind is a very complicated place.

This was the first Elder Scrolls game to get a console release, coming out for the original Xbox, and marks the series first steps toward garnering greater mainstream success, being its first multi-million seller. The game was also extremely well-received by critics, garnering very high review scores. The size of the world and the attention to detail in creating it were highly praised in reviews, and held up by fans as some of the best aspects of Morrowind.

It did so well that Morrowind got two expansions: Tribunal and Bloodmoon. Tribunal was the first of these. It took place in the walled city of Mournhold, completely cut off from the main game’s world, requiring players to be teleported to it. The expansion continued the story of the Tribunal deities as well as including some minor improvements to the game proper, such as tweaks to the journal system. Bloodmoon came next and reintroduced lycanthropy into the game, with players eagerly running off to become werewolves. It was also a larger expansion than Tribunal with quite a few more quests and adding more land to the main game with a large, tundra region to the north.

Morrowind was also the first game in the series to have its music handled by Jeremy Soule, still an up and coming composer at the time, having garnered quite a bit of attention for his work on Total Annihilation and the Icewind Dale series a short time earlier. He would stay on for future installments in the series, thus making its soundtrack one more thing that the Elder Scrolls series became known for.

Finally, the inclusion of the Morrowind Construction Set resulted in the game being heavily supported by modders, a feature that would become vital to the series going forward. With this we saw reams of user created content for the game. Whether it was armor, audio tweaks, new buildings, or entire quest lines, there was no lack of new features to come about from this editor. To this day, people still make stuff for the game, with a massive overhaul to the game’s visuals being one of the more notable additions in recent year.

THE NGAGE GAMES

In 2003 and 2004 we saw the Elder Scrolls take an unexpected turn with a trio of titles being released on the N-Gage, Nokia’s “totally side-talking” hybrid of a cell phone and handheld game console that came and went years before mobile gaming became the juggernaut that it is today.

These all came out under the moniker “The Elder Scrolls Travels” and were called Stormhold, Dawnstar, and Shadowkey, respectively. None of these games were developed internally, instead being handled by Vir2L Studios. The games allowed up to four player cooperative play as they explored surprisingly large game worlds as far as portable games went.

Unfortunately, they were heavily criticized for their lack of draw distance as objects and enemies would only appear with short notice in many instances, and the games are largely forgotten today.

OBLIVION

2006 saw the return of the main series with Oblivion, though development started in 2002 directly after the release of Morrowind.

The story takes place after the events of Morrowind and has players trying to stop a fanatical cult calling itself the Mystic Dawn from opening the gates to the realm of Oblivion. Taking place in Cyrodiil, one can see the seat of imperial power first hand. Once more, the game is huge, with tons to explore as one tries to put a stop to the cult. Narrative was a much bigger focus during development, so there was quite a lot in the way of story in Oblivion. That being said, it was set in a much more traditional European fantasy world than what we saw in Morrowind and met with mixed opinions, where some people loved it and others didn’t much care for the aesthetic.

Bethesda also implemented their Radiant AI System for the first time with Oblivion in an attempt to make NPCs behave more realistically. Often times in games, these types of characters would have fairly fixed roles like guards maintaining the peace, merchants selling their wares, or would be characters who had very specific goals to complete or assign, like a quest giver. Even if they had a lot of conversation paths when talking to them, their overall behavior was still quite rigid as they adhered to the basic role that they had been assigned. Radiant AI was created to make NPCs grow beyond this, developing their own quirks that would make them more than just the guy you sold cheese wheels to or whatever.

The end result was modest with these characters making baby steps toward becoming their own people. As much as it was hyped up, Radiant AI didn’t make a huge difference in behavior but it was a start, and maybe for the best. Developers had stories of the system working a little bit too well during testing with one quest giver constantly getting killed because he was also a skooma dealer and the local addicts kept killing him so they could steal his supply and get their fix. As interesting of a scenario as it might have been, the developers felt it would be better to dial things back for Oblivion until they’d managed to get a better handle on this new AI system.

Character development for Oblivion was somewhat simplified with it not being quite as in-depth as the previous game. This contributed to a debate that The Elder Scrolls was allegedly being “dumbed down” in order to appeal to a wider audience with things like fast travel and a dilution in the importance of factions and politics also included in this argument. As the months passed after release, there was a heated back and forth where some felt that the series was becoming too simple and should return to the more complex elements found in previous games, while others welcomed the changes viewing them as much needed quality of life improvements for the series.

Oblivion also courted controversy for being one of the first games to introduce paid DLC that got mainstream traction thanks to its horse armor. Many were incensed by this and worried that this would be the thin edge of the wedge for the business practice to get a foothold and become increasingly popular in the years to come.

Like its predecessor, the game received a pair of expansions: Knights of the Nine and The Shivering Isles. Knights of the Nine was the first of these, releasing late in 2006 and had players helping a new faction of the same name. In it, one had to find the Crusader’s Relics and use them to defeat the sorcerer king, Umaril who wanted to destroy the Nine Divines. The Shivering Isles came out in 2007, and had players deal with everyone’s favorite mischievous Daedric Prince, Shoegorath. As anyone familiar with him can guess, what unfolded was a very strange, yet very interesting adventure.  One of the biggest draws of the expansion was its level design as it was very unique, and a vast departure from the comparatively bland environments of the main game.

Just like Morrowind, mods became a crucial part of enjoying Oblivion for many with several of these becoming quite popular, performing tasks like graphical overhauls and changes to the how enemies in the game leveled up.

SKYRIM

In November of 2011, we saw the fifth installment in the series with Skyrim, as players headed to the frozen north to frolic among the Nords, a decidedly unfrolicky race among all the peoples of Tamriel.

From the moment it loaded up, one could see that this was a very pretty game. Even today the game looks beautiful. It had a very strong Norse theme to its architecture and mountainous, wooded terrain for miles. One of the main things that Bethesda wanted to achieve with this game was to encourage exploration and bring a greater sense of discovery. Players would constantly be tempted by caves, ruins, keeps, and the like as they wandered Skyrim. By late in the game, one’s map would be riddled with icons of places they had visited. It was hard not to be curious about what one might find when in some ruins, a heavily guarded keep, or an inconspicuous cave with abandoned armor outside.

Even if the player didn’t feel like wandering an ancient crypt, the game looked so good that a big part of the experience was just wandering around, enjoying the journey, and becoming a bit of a tourist. Whether it was just standing on the edge of a lake, walking around a city, or climbing to the top of a snow swept mountain, there was a very simple pleasure to exploring Skyrim and savoring its sights. Ultimately, the combination of such good graphics and so many places to go visit left a lot of people constantly asking themselves, “I wonder what’s in that cave?” “I wonder what’s at the top of that mountain?” And “I wonder where my House Carl went? She was right behind me a minute ago…”

Like Oblivion, gameplay was more simplified compared to earlier games, but wasn’t received with anywhere near the level of backlash that its predecessor suffered from. Among the more notable gameplay improvements to make their way into Skyrim was the ability to wield weapons and spells at the same time. For example, now players could have a knife in their right hand slashing away at enemies, while their left would constantly be casting healing spells or blasting fireballs. It was a nice touch that helped to streamline combat to an extent. Also, we saw the inclusion of a perks system whereby players had new means by which to further customize their characters each time they leveled up.

Taking place 200 years after Oblivion, players were faced with two major narratives in Skyrim. First, there was the Nord rebellion, as Ulfric Stormcloak and his forces were trying to free the region of Imperial rule. This left players with a choice: support the Stormcloak rebellion or help the Empire to quell it. Second, the player would discover that they’re something called the Dragonborn, a rare, legendary figure in Nord history that is born with the blood and soul of a dragon, but the body of a mortal. This leads to one learning more about the Dragonborn as players are educated in their gift and better learn to wield their new found powers. Ultimately, this leads to a confrontation with Alduin, an ancient dragon who has returned to destroy the world.

With Skyrim, we saw the game get three expansions: Dawnguard, Hearthfire, and Dragonborn. First, there was Dawnguard which was all about vampires giving players the choice of joining a particularly ancient family of these blood suckers and helping in their nefarious plans or becoming a vampire hunter and stopping said plans instead.

Next, we had Hearthfire, which was more of a mini expansion. In it, players were given the ability to build their own house instead of just decorating whatever lodgings that they had in the various keeps around Skyrim. These were much more customizable houses that could be big or small with all sorts of rooms to choose from. Players were also able to adopt up to two orphans in the expansion, giving them a home, and becoming absentee parents as they went on adventures in this or that cave or ruin, only to return to their attention-starved child weeks later and giving them some bauble that they found, hoping it would be enough to smooth things over.

Finally, there was Dragonborn, the final expansion, where players would head to the dark elf island of Solstheim, which in many ways felt like a nostalgic trip back to Morrowind thanks to all of the Dunmer architecture and music from that game. Here players had to defeat Miraak, the first Dragonborn, now corrupted and bent on taking over the world.

With Skyrim, we saw more mods than ever before thanks to the implementation of hte Steam Workshop. With this, legions of mods were created that could do just about anything whether it was improving the graphics, adding new quests, new weapons, or entirely new areas of the world. The game has a seemingly bottomless pit of mods that are constantly breathing new life into Skyrim.

That being said, this feature was hit with a fair bit of controversy in 2015 when it became possible for people to charge money for their mods on Steam. This resulted in a huge backlash as many felt that mods should be free and the system itself wasn’t very well-implemented. Eventually, the decision was reversed and Skyrim’s mods returned to being free, but some damage had been done. The game got so many bad user reviews that it got pushed down significantly in the rankings for that metric, as players expressed their anger by down voting the game.

Ultimately, though, Skyrim is by far the most universally well-received entry in the Elder Scrolls series. Critics praised its visuals, exploration, quests, and gameplay, while fans to this day adore the game. It’s also sold far more copies than any other installment in the series, cracking the 20 million units mark. Even now, it’s still one of the most played games on Steam when checking the “current players” charts on the service, and continues to be a top seller whenever there is a Steam sale. At this point, Skyrim is for many the high point in the series.

ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE

In 2012, Zenimax got the idea to do something different with the Elder Scrolls and decided to make an MMORPG with the franchise. It was a risky move considering how many other companies had tried this and failed. Blizzard was still the dominant force here with World of Warcraft, but Zenimax seemed confident that their series was popular enough for it to work. Unfortunately, the game’s announcement was met with mixed to indifferent responses. Outside of diehard fans of the series, there was a lot of skepticism regarding Elder Scrolls Online.

The game was developed internally at Zenimax rather than by Bethesda. Taking place during the second era before the reign of Tiber Septim, it was a very different world than previous Elder Scrolls games, opening it up to explore a lot of relatively untouched lore. It gave players the chance to see first hand some of the things that they may have read about in the books they had found in previous games. It would also be possible to travel all across Tamriel, something that hadn’t been possible in an Elder Scrolls game for years.

By the time the game finally released, it had managed to peak enough people’s curiosity to sell reasonably well, which was impressive in a time when subscription based MMOs were a dying breed. However, the player base didn’t remain consistent with many letting their subscriptions expire. To address this, Zenimax eventually dropped the subscription all together, making it a buy to play game. This combined with console ports to the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One helped to ensure that ESO would do reasonably well as it eventually found a stable audience that is sticking around more now.

And with that, we end this look back at the Elder Scrolls. It’s been over 20 years since the first game was released, and the series is easily more popular than it has ever been. The big question now is where will the series go from here. They do have a collectible card game in the works with Elder Scrolls: Legends, but beyond that we just don’t know what the series will do next. Will we get an announcement for The Elder Scrolls VI soon? Only time will tell...

Project X Zone 2: Better Than the First

Back when the first Project X Zone came out, I was really looking forward to it. Having been a fan of Super Robot Taisen OG Saga Endless Frontier, I'd already gotten a taste of the juggling combat and the story was fun, so the prospect of a new game in that vein with the added bonus of a cavalcade of popular video game characters was quite enticing. Unfortunately, the original X Zone only delivered on half of this. The combat I knew and loved was there with some interesting tweaks. However, the story, that was a mess. When there are a lot of cameos in a game, movie, or whatever, the narrative can get really bogged down introducing everyone impacting the pace and diluting the story as a whole. A sizable chunk of the first X Zone felt like some drawn out version of the fight scenes from the Anchorman movies. Hours were spent introducing one character after the next with the story not going anywhere and after a time the whole thing got boring. Thankfully, with Project X Zone 2 this has been remedied since we have a lot of the same characters, so they already know each other, saving us a lot of time, and new characters are introduced a lot more quickly, as the developers seem to have learned their lesson from the last game.

With this game, the writers made a point of centering the plot more around one person, in this case Ryo from the Shenmue games. M. Bison and Saya are up to no good and part of their plan involves steeling a family heirloom from Ryo, so a short ways into the game he meets up with Chun Li and Xiaoyu who agree to help him out and before long he's joined the full group led by Reiji and Xiaomu as they muster a bigger and bigger force to deal with both the forces of Shadaloo and Ouma (not to mention any random evildoers they come across). Keeping the plot on track like this is much better than the first game and it's nice not having to spend so much time being introduced to all of the characters. That being said, story is still the weakest part of the game. It's not going to turn any heads, and it's only been elevated from paper thin to something on par with corrugated cardboard, but at least this time it manages to be entertaining. It should be said that this is a standalone story, so people who haven't played the first game can hope right in and won't feel lost here.

While the story itself is only so-so, one of the fun things to do is watching how the characters interact with one another. Since your little army is divided into smaller groups where you'll have a frontline assault force with a support unit attached for help, these people get along differently depending on who is matched with who. The things someone like Ryo will say while paired with Chun Li and Xiaoyu will be quite different than if you stick him with Morrigan and Demitri. Then there's Segata Sanshiro, who is fun to try matching with just about anyone.

Combat-wise, at this point I think one needs to be a fan of this type of battle system to enjoy it. If you've tried the previous game before or possibly OG Saga and didn't care for the combat, this game isn't suddenly going to change your mind. There are some minor changes to the combat here, but it's still all about the tactical elements as one places units on the map, then hopping into battles where the goal is to keep enemies airborne as much as possible, ideally only executing new attacks at the last possible moment in order to trigger critical hits. Doing this while calling in support units that trigger Cross Attacks where both groups are pummeling an enemy simultaneously is very satisfying. I'm a sucker for watching numbers flying by on-screen as a battle ensues with stuff flashing and fancy little animated scenes, so, for me, these battles are great.

I've never been terribly enamored with the aesthetic of these games, though. They have a very functional approach with simplistic maps and character designs while slapping up some anime-styled character art when people are talking. It gets the job done but isn't anything special. However, there's something about the use of music in this game that really tugs at my heart strings. Whenever a unit is selected a theme from the game that the people are from plays and this really cranks up the nostalgia. On more than a few occasions I was really tempted to stop what I was doing so that I could fire up something like Streets of Rage or Strider because music from those games started to play.

At this point, Project X Zone 2 is what it is. The combat is interesting, but you'll need to have a taste for it. If you weren't fond of the combat in the first game, you won't enjoy it any more in this one. However, if you are craving a JRPG with a different sort of battle system, then this is one to consider. Now that the story is borderline tolerable, X Zone 2 makes for an enjoyable experience with a fun mix of popular game characters from a bunch of different series, this time managing not to get bogged down by introductions.

Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen - Final Thoughts

After gushing about this game in a preliminary article a short while ago, it felt a good time to come back with some closing thoughts on Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen's PC port now that I've finished the game. Long story short, it's quite a good game, and the effort that Capcom put into this port is commendable, but it isn't without its flaws. On the one hand, environments, monsters, and characters look amazing, the pawn system is interesting, combat is solid, and fights against larger foes genuinely deserve the adjective "epic". However, the world doesn't feel truly alive, much of what happens in the story is seriously lacking in context, and after a time players will notice that they are retreading the same paths again and again.

Just spending a few minutes gazing at the screen with settings turned up, it's hard not to feel that Dark Arisen is a very pretty game, even with it being a few years old now. Climbing to any high vantage point then taking a look at whatever vistas are in the area are always impressive. It's some mighty fine eye candy and if there's anything of interest in sight, a sudden urge to go there begins to swell. Characters look very good as well, and they have quite a lot of customization options thanks to all of the different gear that they can wear, not to mention the insanely detailed character creator. Unfortunately, there isn't an option for an aesthetic set of gear to display while your actual equipment is underneath. Still, there is a lot of stuff to wear and at higher levels you'll be hard pressed not to look like a badass while gallivanting around the countryside.

The real standouts are the larger enemies, though. Run-ins with ogres, cyclops, griffons, hydras, cockatrices, dragons, and the like feel like something out Shadow of the Colossus. A lot of detail has been poured into their designs and animations. Cyclops lumber around slowly, lugging their club around. Dragons soar above the canopy of trees as you make your way to this or that destination, only to swoop down in front of you. Just seeing one of these big monsters in the distance while exploring the over world can either give pause as you ponder whether or not to engage it or a sense of elation, throwing danger to the wind and dive headlong into battle.

These monsters have their own unique weaknesses and strategies for taking them down. Moreover, they can all be climbed, so you may need to scale up the tale of a griffon or dragon and be taken for a ride, or scoot up the back of a cyclops in order to poke it in the eye. While the comparison to Shadow of the Colossus is certainly a fair one, it should be said that these fights are simpler on the whole. Regardless, locking horns with these creatures is a highlight of Dark Arisen.

It really should be said that the combat in this game is quite good. Movement is fluid and controls are intuitive. Both going with a controller or keyboard and mouse feel comfortable, so it's really up to the player what they go with. Personally, I liked using a controller when going with a straight-up brawler class like a warrior or fighter, then used a keyboard and mouse as an assassin so to have better fine control while aiming a bow as I'm just not used to controllers when it comes to that sort of thing. All the while, combat feels fast and fluid. Clunky is most certainly not a word that I would use to describe combat in this game. Zip around as a rogue-ish class, blast magic from afar as some kind of mage, or stand toe-to-toe with enemies as a warrior. Even classes like warriors and fighters, which wear the heaviest gear and wield the biggest weapons don't feel all that bogged down. If anything, there's a sense of momentum and power as they swing their weapons.

A nice thing about the game is that players can change classes when talking with certain NPCs. Tired of lugging around a sword and leading the life of a fighter? Why not try assassins and whip out the daggers and bows instead? Or maybe dawning the robes and staff of a mage seems more interesting? Players can bounce around between classes as they progress through the game. Each class awards different distributions of stats with every new level, so min-maxers will need to keep that in mind. Those who bounce around willy nilly will have a more generalist character at higher levels, and this is totally fine. You won't gimp yourself into a corner by doing this. However, if you really want to accentuate aspects of your character it's better to pick a side of the fence between magic users and non-magic users. Doing this will result in either a physical attack powerhouse, or the game's equivalent of Gandalf at high levels as your character's stats climb. Your primary pawn can also have it's stats changed by the same NPCs, so players can adjust its class as well when tweaking of party composition is necessary.

And this brings me to pawns. They're helpers that swear fealty to your character who, in the lore of the game, is referred to as the Arisen, someone who has been touched by the dragon (more on this later). Players will have one of their own and be able to recruit two more into their party. What's interesting here is that the other pawns that one recruits actually belong to other players and your own pawn can be used by others as well. Players earn a specific type of currency for renting out these pawns at a one-time fee and can release them whenever they like only to find a new one to take their spot. All you need to do is give some thought to what kind of party composition you would like and then grab pawns in the desired classes. They can be recruited by visiting a rift stone and being teleported to another realm where a number of pawns in your level range will present themselves for your consideration. If they aren't to your liking, there are more selection and search options in this plane to help find a pawn more up your alley. These beings can also be recruited while wandering the game world as they can be seen wandering the major roads and loitering in the cities. In this situation one can only recruit on a case-by-case basis, stumbling across pawns that seem interesting.

What's nice is that these guys are extremely useful in battle. While not perfect, they tend to make reasonably decent decisions, learning how to fight different monsters better, making good decisions on what spells to use, and even holding baddies down so that other party members can wail on them hassle-free. Even their pathfinding is pretty good. Watching these guys do their thing, I couldn't help but think of all the time that I had spent wandering Skyrim with my house carls, marveling at the seemingly non-stop cavalcade of bad decisions that they were capable of. These pawns by comparison are brilliant, and I hope other developers that insist on having NPC helpers take some cues from this game.

As much as it may seem that I'm gushing about Dark Arisen, one area of the game that consistently felt lacking was the story. Basically, your character starts as a simple villager by the sea and is then attacked by an ancient dragon that takes his heart and tells the protagonist to come find him if he wants it back. From there, you find yourself doing odd jobs for NPCs and slightly fancier ones for the Duke, who apparently runs the Duchy of Gransys. Eventually this leads to a showdown with the dragon, but all the while things keep happening and it's hard to understand why. The narrative in this game is seriously lacking in context. At one point, the main character is somehow involved in an affair with the Duke's wife without much explanation as to why. There's a strange cult running around that worships the dragon for reasons that are never really explained, and in the end the story becomes some sort of take on the circle of life. It's something that could have worked if the game did a better job of explaining why all of this was happening.

It's also a bit weird how the world doesn't feel alive. There are people wandering around doing their thing, but they come off as cardboard cutouts. I'll visit the capital and see the same kids running around day or night, and a lot of the stores there seem to never close. Since the only inhabited areas are Gran Sorem, Cassardis, and the keeps peppered throughout the land, it doesn't feel like a very fleshed out world. Players don't have the experience of being on a long journey and coming upon the welcoming lights of an inn or other small inhabited area while exploring Dragon's Dogma. You always know that those places are behind you and not in front since there are so few towns, which can make the game feel lonely at times.

Moreover, while running around doing random quests for everyone at first it's pretty mesmerizing wandering the countryside, taking in the sights and sounds of the game, figuring out where all of the holds, bandit hideouts, and chimera stomping grounds are. After a while, though, you start to notice that the game asks players to revisit these places quite a bit and many of them feel pretty samey. Even Skyrim, a game that some criticized for having overly similar architecture and locales, feels more varied than what Dragon's Dogma has on offer.

This is somewhat offset by Bitter Black Isle, an area that is unlocked not to far into the game, but isn't really worth visiting until after one has unlocked New Game Plus mode. It's a kind of Dark Souls Lite castle that players can explore at higher levels containing very powerful enemies and gear. Exploring this place seldom gets old. It's a very large zone with multiple areas and there's always a sense of foreboding while wandering its halls. It looks ancient and you never know when you'll run across something dangerous. Bosses here will get you thinking, "That's a lot of hit points!" and they take a fair bit more strategy than others in the game. An interesting feature here is that some bosses will randomly spawn, as they're attracted by the carrion that you create by killing the lesser enemies of the castle. This can be particularly troublesome should this happen while already fighting a standard boss. Farming gear here can take a while because the items are a bit randomized and the treasure chests only respawn every four days in-game, so players have to wait before hitting them up again. There are exploit strategies floating around the internet for those so inclined, however.

One the whole, Capcom's PC port of Dragon's Dogma: Dark Arisen is well worth a look for fans of series like Elder Scrolls, Risen, or The Witcher. It's an interesting take on these sorts of games from a Japanese developer. The combat is excellent, the game looks amazing, and the monsters are really well done. I just wish I better understood what's supposed to be going on story-wise half the time and that there were more towns to visit. That aside, this is definitely a game to look into for fans of open world fantasy RPGs.

Get This at Green Man Gaming ($29.99US last I checked)
Dragons Dogma: Dark Arisen

Wild Arms Revival Incoming?

One of the earliest JRPGs on the original PlayStation was Wild Arms. For a lot of early adopters of the system, it was what kept them busy as they waited for Final Fantasy VII to come out. What they discovered, though, was that the game was actually pretty good. While simple, it handled 3D visuals reasonably well, and the Old West aesthetic was a setting that just wasn't coming into play in the genre (or any other genre for that matter). With that, Wild Arms became a reasonably successful series, resulting in five mainline games and a tactical strategy RPG. However, we haven't seen a new entry in the series since 2007.

Now there's reason to be excited as the series creator, Akifumi Kaneko, tweeted about meetings he was having with Sony regarding Wild Arms' 20th anniversary. Gematsu has a translation here, and it looks like the series composer, Michiko Naruke, was there as well. That's all we have to go on right now, but it does open the door to some interesting speculation.

Will this just be a remaster of one of the early games, possibly with some new arranged music tracks a la Final Fantasy X / X-2 Remaster? Maybe a bit of fanfare for the Wild Arms PS2 games before they become available on the PS4? If it was a new game in the series, I could see people being pretty happy about that. There've been rumors floating around that Sony has two JRPGs in development for the PlayStation 4 with one possibly by Level-5, but we don't know what the other is. For all we know, it could be a new Wild Arms.

For now, though, all we can do is wait and see if any more information trickles out. I for one wouldn't complain if the series came back. The Western theme always struck me as unique and the games are something I've closely tied with the PS1 and PS2. Star Ocean managed to stick around, making an appearance last generation. However, Wild Arms just disappeared. It could all be a pipe dream, but it would be nice if this is a beginning to actually reviving the series.

So, Final Fantasy IX on the PC...

A week or so ago, Square-Enix let slip that they're planning to bring Final Fantasy IX to the PC in 2016. It's a move that isn't all that surprising when you look at all of the other games in that series which they've been steadily porting to it over the years. At this point it's largely a matter of speculation as to which of the remain games in the franchise will be ported next rather than if it will be ported. (I'm honestly surprised that Tactics isn't on PC yet.)

Now that we know IX is coming our way shortly, we're also beginning to learn about some of the changes being made to the port. When the Steam page went active, one of the first things that I noticed was that the game is going to require 20GB of storage space. For a port of a game that originally released on the first PlayStation, that's a lot of real estate. As a point of reference, Final Fantasy VII only requires 3GB while VIII needs 4GBs. So, we're seeing quite the jump here which suggests a lot of changes.

I have to assume that the majority of these 20GBs comes from all of the high resolution movies that the developers are promising. Cut scenes were a big contributor to why the various iterations of XIII gobble up so much hard drive space. This move isn't exactly going to win brownie points with me, as I've come out in the past expressing my concern with the continuing bloat of game size in recent years.

For those who like their graphics extra pretty, FFIX is getting a bit of a discombobulated upgrade. As mentioned, the cut scenes are getting the HD treatment (whatever that means), and character models are getting polished up a bit as well. Unfortunately, backgrounds are not. You can thank Japanese design ethos of the 80s and 90s for this, when companies didn't make a point of keeping back-ups of all assets for that. So, for this release the most players can hope for is a bit of upscaling on the environments which, while not terrible, kinda stick out judging by the screenshots making the rounds.

Another thing we'll be seeing in this edition of the game is a number of methods by which players can speed things along. We know that there'll be a "high speed" mode that pretty much does as one would expect, speeding up actual battles, as well as a "no encounter" mode which eliminates all random encounters from the game. It sounds like there'll be more modes, but it's hard to be sure, and it is funny because they really do showcase one of the Achilles heels of traditional, old school JRPGs: random battles. They're often so tedious that revisiting them now almost necessitates accelerated modes of play like these.

Of course, there will be stuff like achievements and autosave features implemented as well, so a decent amounts of bits and bobs added for the PC release. Personally, that 20GBs of hard drive space is making the game a bit of a hard sell for me, even with all of the new stuff being added, and granted I do have the PS1 version of the game that I can play whenever I feel like it, so there isn't exactly a huge urge welling up inside of me to play this. Nonetheless, Final Fantasy IX is pretty much up there as one of the best games in the series as far as I'm concerned (alongside IV, VI, and XII), so I can see quite a few people snapping it up when the game releases. It's won't be lacking for demand at any rate.

Tons of RPGs are Coming in 2016

As a fan of role-playing games it can be an exciting / daunting thing when there are lots of games coming out in the genre that look interesting. Part of me wants to play all of them, but then I realize just how much of a time commitment that would be and quickly back down from the idea. Nonetheless, 2016 has tons of RPGs due for release that look like they could be fun, so let's run down the list and start getting sad that there's no way we'll ever have the time for all of them.

Note - This isn't going to be some utterly comprehensive list, as we'd be here forever doing that. I'll just be talking about the games that have caught my eye.

Darkest Dungeon

This one sort of has my attention, but not in a huge way. I'm curious how the whole gameplay mechanic of party members getting scared will impact the game. Darkest Dungeon seems to be reasonably well-received from what people have said of the game in its Early Access form, so it has that going for it. It's also a rogue-like, which makes it something I'd probably be more inclined to spend some time with since I find those sorts of games far more palatable these days than the notion of having to dive into a 50+ hour juggernaut of a game.

Fire Emblem: Fates

It's getting to be that time again. With most people having gotten Awakening out of their systems, strategy RPG fans are getting thirsty for a new Fire Emblem game, and they'll be getting that with Fates. The game looks like what one would expect from an entry in the series with a fantasy setting, plenty of permadeath for those who like going that route, and a new Phoenix Mode for those who not only despise permadeath but want their characters revived by the next turn. The game is actually planned to be massive as it has two versions: Birthright/Conquest and Revelations. Both take place in the same story, but each has it's story focused on one of the two factions with side characters and the like tossed in. It can be handled by getting two physical games, but it looks like it may be cheaper to go a DLC route for folks that want to do all the things, however. Bare in mind that if you do want to experience every last thing to be done in Fates, I'm hearing the full game with both factions and such is expected to be three times the size of Fire Emblem: Awakenings, so that could take a while to get through.

Stranger of Sword City

I'm a sucker for dungeon crawls. From the moment I first played Wizardry: Proving Grounds of the Mad Overlord on the family Apple IIe as a kid, I was hooked. So, it should come as no surprise that I'm pretty hyped for this. It's a game that initially came out in Japan on the 360 a few years ago, but thanks to some Steam release leaks it's looking highly probable that we'll be seeing it later this year on PC. Give me some interesting races, monsters, classes, and weapons, toss me in a bunch of dungeons, and I'm happy.

Masquerada: Songs and Shadows

Like pause-able real-time tactical RPGs a la Baldur's Gate? Have a thing for stylistic art direction? I know I do. That's what we're getting with Masquerada. Toss in the fact that the game takes place in a Venice-inspired fantasy world where magic comes from masks, and we have a potentially quite interesting game here.

Horizon Zero Dawn

There are a couple of games coming out this year that would get me seriously considering picking up a PS4. This is one of them. While a lot of post-apocolyptic games take place in worlds shortly after a disaster, war, or some such happened, with mutants, deserts, and hopelessness everywhere, Horizon appears to be set in a world well after the fall of human society. There are still cities in ruin, but nature has long since retaken those places covering them with plant life. On top of this, it looks like machines are a major threat to humans, but they've taken the form of wildlife with strange, animal-like contraptions roaming in herds and being hunted by the humans. Now, slap all of this into a very pretty package with a big, open world and we have plenty to be excited about.

Nier: Automata

This would be the other game that could get me looking closer at the PS4. I liked the original Nier. It was a fun little action RPG with interesting environments and some impressive swearing. So, now, with a sequel on the way I'm kind of intrigued by it, especially with Platinum working on it. I'm a sucker for their approach to combat, so that has gotten my ears all the more perked for Automata.

Project Setsuna

Centering around a mercenary who is escorting a girl named Setsuna to be sacrificed in order to appease some demons, this game is sure to be a real heart warmer. The developers are going for a decidedly retro approach to combat here siting games from the 90s like Chrono Trigger as inspiration, so as someone who grew up on games like that, this is music to my ears. The visuals also look quite nice going for an oil paint aesthetic.

Torment: Tides of Numenera

It was probably wishful thinking that this game would get released in 2015, but now it's a pretty safe bet that we'll see the game out this year. Planescape: Torment is one of my all time favorite RPGs, so I've been pretty excited about this new Torment game for some time now. Sure, it's going to have a lot to live up to, but so far what's been shown of the game looks promising.

Persona 5

Well, I guess I better toss this in as one more game that could get force my hand in getting a PS4. I do quite like the Persona and Shin Megami Tensei games that I've had time to play, so diving into Persona 5 when it comes along is quite tempting. It looks like the developers are going with an "if it's not broken, don't fix it" approach with the game, and I'm fine with that. The Persona games have always had good dungeons and interesting stories, and it's hard to think of a reason to deviate from that formula.

World of Final Fantasy

This is a game more intended to introduce younger audiences to the Final Fantasy universe, but after seeing the trailer I can't help but feel that the game looks so charming. It's tempting to snap this up and wander the lands meeting all the folks from various Final Fantasies while going on an adventure. It also helps that the combat looks pretty neat.

World of Final Fantasy Trailer

Square-Enix announced that they were working on World of Final Fantasy at this year's E3, discussing how it will be aimed at younger players to introduce them to the series. It'll have a chibi art style to the main characters with quite a lot of monster collecting, as they will help the party fight in battle. It's planned for both the PS4 and Vita with cross play support to help with the monster collecting.

All things considered, it sounds like a pretty safe way of going about things. Adopt a cute, inviting visual style with simplified battles and toss in some vaguely Pokemon-esque monster hunting, and it seems like a good way to try and get the young'uns interested in the series.

With Jump Festa 2016 underway, the company has now released a lengthy trailer for the game. So far it looks pretty good in terms of environment and character designs. Now it's a matter of speculating what the full roster of characters and monsters will be. Square-Enix tends to be quite thorough with games that span the entire Final Fantasy series, so I expect quite a lot of popular choices will make the cut as well as some more unexpected ones.

With that, does it make me a bad person to be looking forward to this more than Final Fantasy XV or the Final Fantasy VII remake?

Some Thoughts: Age of Ishtaria (Android / iOS)

It looks like it's happened. I may have become a bit of a filthy casual. Earlier in the year, I'd picked up a small tablet on the cheap and hadn't been doing much with it besides streaming anime while playing Final Fantasy XIV on my laptop. A couple of weeks ago, though, I got curious about the games I could play on the thing so went and installed a bunch. Mostly RPGs and strategy games, mostly of the gatcha variety, and mostly with a suspiciously anime-inspired artistic motif.

There were a few that managed to hold my attention. Terra Battle is neat, Chain Chronicle has its moments, and Dragon Blaze seems alright, but the majority of my time up until now has been spent playing Age of Ishtaria. Surprisingly, it's by the same studio that developed Bravely Default Flying Fairy. I wasn't aware that they were doing mobile games since it's a realm of gaming that I've not paid much attention to before now.

Not surprisingly, it's a very simple game where one collects cards which act as the player's party characters and one embarks on a very simplified RPG. You go through one dungeon after the next which is just a straight line with a few points along the way marketed as a circle where players fight a group of monsters. Dungeon maps actually look more like subway maps because of this. So far the majority of dungeons I've been through have been ones with five encounters before completing them, but now that I'm hitting somewhat higher levels the places are capping around six or seven.

I think the main reason I keep playing this game is for the part where I can get new cards and the anticipation to see what the game gives me. Cards are divided into seven ranks, 1-star to 7-star, where 1 is the weakest and 7 is the strongest. So, seeing what one gets can be pretty exciting. Will I get something with five or so stars or a bunch of duds? More than likely you won't get much about a five, but the fun of getting new cards is still there. It actually reminds me of the only thing I like about Hearthstone: opening new packs. There's something about the process that taps into people's basic pleasure centers for getting shiny new things.

The cards themselves can be leveled up and enhanced in various ways, but it can get pretty grindy. For leveling, this is done by picking the card that you want to level up, then choosing other cards that will be sacrificed as XP toward said card. The game also gives various grimoires that can be used for the same purpose. You'll be doing this a lot throughout the game, pouring trash cards that you receive in dungeons toward leveling others that are actually valuable. Cards can also be enhanced by combining two of the same card, which raises it to a new tier, making it more powerful.

This is all well and good, but the problem comes in trying to get multiples of the six and seven star cards. It's hard enough to get one. Getting a second or third requires the stars to align just so. Up until now, I've managed to get one of each and I have a feeling that it's only because there was a thing going on where there was a special promotion going on that allegedly bumps up the likelihood of getting one of these by about 10X. Even then, I did this twice and on only one of these occasions did I get anything good. The really fancy cards don't exactly grow on trees in Age of Ishtaria. The publisher does throw players a bone occasionally, having recently given everyone a seven star card to celebrate two million downloads of the game, as well as another high rank card for signing in for a certain amount of days but this isn't terribly common.

They don't feel absolutely necessary from what I've played, though, and going into a dungeon with a well put together deck of 5-star characters is very doable, especially if you level them up a fair bit. Nonetheless, the higher end cards are nice to have and once they get going they can hit like a truck.

The things' designs definitely go the titillation route as most of the characters are of the well-endowed anime girl variety with the occasional lolita complex jail bait tossed in. There are a few male characters as well but they don't come up often and seem to have a thing for wearing glasses. I almost feel compelled to hold on to those cards just to make sure that there's at least a couple of guys amidst the legions of comely lasses that the game keeps throwing at me.

When it comes to the actual combat, things are very simple. All one needs to do is decide what combination to have the party members attack in.  They'll be divided into three classes and the order in which they strike will impact the enemies in different ways doing things like making them lighter for better juggling, reducing their defenses for a turn, or making them attack for less. With this it becomes a race to take down the monsters as fast as one can, as they have a clock icon with a number next to it indicating how many turns until they attack. In some cases, if they aren't dealt with quickly, this could lead to powerful enemies really putting a dent in a party's hit points. So, it's all about efficiency during battles.

Occasionally, characters will use special abilities that make this a lot easier but they are by and large RNG and you don't have much control as to when they're unleashed. Each character has one special that actually can be used when their portrait begins to glow, but even the glowing is RNG so there's no way to completely escape it. Still, the abilities get used with a reasonable amount of frequency once a character learns it, so they are still quite useful.

What surprised me is how much all of this sucked me in. It's so simple, but I do enjoy firing the game up for a little bit each night so that I can stomp through some dungeons, level up my party to support more / better cards, level up said card, and earn points to get new cards. The whole thing just taps right into a very primal element of my psyche all while being conveniently ensconced in an anime veneer. It just makes for a nice time waster when I'm too tired to do anything else at the end of the night. Now I'm left wondering if this will just turn into a slippery slope where I start really diving down the rabbit whole that is Japanese gatcha games.