I Still Can't Decide Whether to Be Excited about Final Fantasy XV

Since the very first game, it's been easy for me to get excited for Final Fantasy games thanks to a combination of the series generally being quite good and a borderline unconditional love for JRPGs. However, the more I see of the fifteenth installment currently in development, the more my enthusiasm falters and I find myself not sure what to think of the thing.

A big part of this is probably the protagonists, as the game looks like Pop Idols Go On An Adventure more than anything else. To a degree it smacks of a "design by committee" approach where people in high places that really shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the design process looked at some consumer purchasing statistics, noticed what way the wind was blowing and went in that direction. Part of me wonders if this will devolve into Uta no Prince X Final Fantasy at some point when my cynicism gets going.

On the plus side, I suppose one could look at this as a bit of an about face in terms of character design, though. Instead of going with a cast of buxom beauties that have their tits jutting out, which is often the case in this industry, the game is going for some rather handsome men. So, now the female segment of the series fan base has some characters to oggle, and a slew of FFXV boys love fan art will surely proliferate through Google image search in the coming years. So that's something.

Questionable cast aside, combat is the big thing that makes or breaks an RPG for me, especially if it hails from Japan. There's something so charming about how developers from that part of the world put so much effort into this aspect of their games with unique systems ranging from resource management to party composition to special abilities. The fact that Final Fantasy XIII had a good combat system was one of the very few saving graces of that game, preventing me from completely hating it.

So now I'm left feeling a little bit uncertain about what's planned for this game, as the combat is very action-oriented and very simplified. It's more like something out of Elder Scrolls or Dragon's Dogma, which makes sense as Final Fantasy XV is planned to be an exploration-heavy open world game, just like those two. As such, this action RPG approach seems more logical in the greater context of the game. That being said, part of me can't shake my decades old expectation of a more traditional approach to combat in a JRPG that the Final Fantasy series has been known for. It's obvious bias on my part, but at the same time it leaves me wondering if this will feel like a Final Fantasy game or will it just be an open world action RPG with the Final Fantasy label slapped on the box cover. I don't think this would be such a big thing for me if this wasn't a mainline Final Fantasy, and initially it wasn't since the game was originally supposed to be Final Fantasy Versus, but with a mainline installment in this series comes certain expectations, and a much more robust battle system is one of them.

So, with that, I'm having some very mixed feelings about Final Fantasy XV based on what we know so far. XIII made me very skeptical of the series and XV isn't doing anything to change that so far. It may turn out decent, but the cast of characters look set to be more annoying than Snow, Vanille, and Hope, while the battle system comes of as anything but what I've come to expect from a Final Fantasy game. Square-Enix will have a lot of convincing to do to make me want to try this game when it comes out.

Disgaea on Steam = Yes, Please

It looks like NIS America will be bringing Disgaea to Steam in Febrary 2016, so fans of strategy RPGs can develop legions of characters to their hearts content, bringing them to level 9999 and maybe even try and finish the game at some point.

This is something I certainly wasn't expecting to see happen. It's a series that's had countless iterations on consoles over the years with not a peep about it on PC, but now they've decided to port the first game over with some improvements (UI update and better textures, M/KB support, and they're tossing in Disgaea: Afternoon of Darkness).

There really aren't that many strategy RPGs of this ilk on the PC, so I'm remaining hopeful that this could be the beginning of much more coming to the platform. It's not like NIS is lacking for games in the genre that they could follow up this release with. (La Pucella, Makai Kingdom, and Phantom Brave say hi) I certainly wouldn't complain if this lead to many more console-styled SRPGs coming to PC. Maybe in a perfect world we'd get Tactics Ogre and Final Fantasy Tactics ports as well, but that may be wishful thinking.

For now, I'll just wait patiently for Disgaea, maybe play the DS version to build up my hype, and quietly speculate to myself what other games NIS could port to PC in the future.

Quick Thoughts: Mushihimesama on Steam

A while ago, there was that announcement that Cave's shoot 'em ups were going to start making their way onto Steam. It's been about a week since the first of these appeared there, and they went with Mushihimesama. I was wondering what game they would choose, and figured it would probably be either this or one of their Dodonpachi games since these are their most well known series. Of course, I wasted no time in picking it up because Cave shmups are amazing, and, minor technical issues aside, it's been a lot of fun playing this on my PC.

There are a few game modes including Novice, Normal, and Arrange. They're pretty self explanatory with Novice being a slightly toned down version of the game for those new to bullet hell shooters. Normal is just as you would expect, and Arrange has different music, tons of bullets (but a smaller hit box on your character), and crazy high scores. I've been spending most of my time in Arrange mode because all of the bullets flying around have me thinking, "Weeeeeeee!" the whole time I'm playing, and there's something immensely satisfying about seeing the big numbers flashing on-screen as they're added to my score.

Some folks have run into technical issues, myself included, however. The big thing that I was hit with is trying to get the game to run in fullscreen, as it left my monitor black with sound still working and no way to exit it. Even alt-tabbing had no effect, so there was no alternative but to force the computer to shutdown by holding down the power button. There have also been some issues with frame rate and resolution, but these as well as other problems are already being addressed by Degica. The game is still plenty playable on my end so long as I do so in windowed mode, but it would be nice to see these tweaks get implemented as soon as possible.

Just in terms of soaking in the atmosphere of Mushihimesama, though, it's great. It just screams of the arcades from the art, to the music, and all of the stuff happening on the screen. Whenever I'm in Japan I make a point of playing this game at one of the arcades I like to pop by there, so it's nice to have a legitimate way of experiencing this at home.

It's hard not to smile while dodging all of the bullets are whizzing by, with the music blasting. I'm not very good at these games, but they're exhilarating to play, and pretty darn satisfying as one gets used to them and progress becomes noticeable. I'd even say that Mushihimesama is a pretty good game to look into for people who want something a little more entry level for bullet hell shmups. The Novice mode is great for introducing players to the genre, while Normal is a nice, logical progression to harder content, especially if playing it on Maniac setting or higher.

I'm certainly having a good time with the game, and it's been getting far more play time than a lot of other shmups in my library right now. It's great for a nice time waster or serious progress, depending on how you want to approach the game, or just soak in Mushihimesama's atmosphere. There really is a lot to enjoy here, and it's doing a lot to renew my interest in shoot 'em ups. Now I'm just curious what Cave game will show up on Steam next.

The Irregular at Magic High School Anime Review

I've really got to get out of the habit of checking out anime that are adaptations of light novels only to find out that the show only covers a portion of said books. It always leaves me wanting more, and since I don't live in Japan, and am not fluent enough in the language to read said novels, I'm inevitably left hanging in the end. That is something that I'm left worrying about having recently completed the anime run of The Irregular at Magic High School, as I really enjoyed the show, but it's based on a light novel series and covers only about the first half of it. Granted, it does sound like the anime did quite well for itself sales-wise, so I'm a lot more hopeful that we'll see more of it in the future, unlike Rokka, which I lamented about recently, but still part of me will live in fear that the anime will remain half finished. In the meantime, though, let's chat about the show so far.

In a nutshell, the show focuses on the Shiba siblings, Tatsuya and Miyuki, as they go to the top mage high school in Japan. Sorcery is something that has only recently awakened in humans, and has lead to several wars, so now each country does its best to educate magic-proficient individuals so to include them in their military. The school discriminates between two tiers of students which are kind of like honour students (called Blooms) versus regular ones (called Weeds) where the former exhibit exceptional skills in magic while the latter only average. Miyuki gets accepted as a Bloom, while Tatsuya enters as a weed. As the show progresses, though, we start to see that Tatsuya is hiding his true power and is on a level well beyond anyone in the school, and possibly one of the most powerful magicians in the world. So, the series largely acts as a slow reveal of who Tatsuya is and just what he is capable of with his magic.

This results in Tatsuya gradually earning the respect of his peers through his exceptional engineering skills, and we see the show be a bit of a story of acceptance. While wearing the mantle of a Weed, he has to prove himself on merits and show that these differentiations between magicians isn't necessarily as cut and dry as the establishment would have one believe. Thankfully there are a number of level-headed students who don't share these discriminatory Bloom vs Weed sentiments and are more inclined to judge one on the content of their character. Tatsuya quickly befriends these people, but there are still the stubborn ones that won't accept him simply because he's a Weed, so he has to prove himself to these folks, resulting them very much getting their comeuppance, which is oh so satisfying.

As all of this is going on, we start to see that there's a lot more to our protagonist here than he's letting on, and with that the show feels like a very gradual reveal of just how powerful Tatsuya is. Slowly we see that he is a brilliant engineer with amazing magical powers as we follow him through his day-to-day life in high school. The series ends on a crescendo with Tatsuya using some of his most devastating abilities, and left me hungry for more. This is where it becomes apparent that we're only halfway through the light novel in terms of content covered, but I'm cautiously optimistic that the series will continue at some point.

While Tatsuya is doing all of this, he's meeting plenty of folks at school, of course. It's a bit touch and go in terms of how well developed the rest of the cast is. His sister, Miyuki, is interesting. On the surface she seems like she's just a very powerful magician with a big brother complex but it's through her that we start to understand just how different Tatsuya is as well as the siblings connection to the Yotsuba, one of the most powerful magician families in Japan.

Their friends and classmates are where we see things bounce between reasonably well developed and cardboard. Erika Chiba is probably the most interesting of the bunch, and it could very easily work if someone wanted to make a spin off series based on the Chiba family seeing as they're all very good sword fighters with several of them involved with law enforcement or the military. Meanwhile Mikihiko's whole thing with summoning spirits and the accident that the series hints at suggests there's quite a bit to explore with this character. Leo and Mizuki seem nice enough, and help keep things feeling light from time to time, but they aren't really all that well developed in comparison to Tatsuya and Miyuki's other friends, and, if anything, I get the sense that Mizuki is mostly around for the purpose of fan service.

The student council has its fair share of members that are introduced to us, but only a handful of them get fleshed out in any way. Mari has her moments during action scenes, but it's more Saegusa and Jumonji that are of particular interest since both of their families are two of the other top magician families in Japan, so they get involved in the political side of mage life outside of school.

One person I'd like to learn more about, though, is Masaki Ichijo, as he's the closest thing to a rival that Tatsuya has in The Irregular at Magic High School. While there are a few other people that are straight up evil bad guys that Tatsuya fights from time to time, they were all just cannon fodder. Ichijo is seen as a prodigy at his own high school and the two cross paths at an inter school, magic-oriented sporting event. It was one of the few times where Tatsuya had to work hard to win, and made for some exciting action. There's obviously a lot more backstory to Ichijo, and I'd like to see it.

If anything, it made me more annoyed when the show tried to present Lu Gonghu as some sort of badass, but he wound up getting thumped again and against. For someone with a reputation for being a beast of a fighter, he got soundly whupped on multiple occasions, and not even by seasoned soldiers, but green, inexperienced high school students. The guy quickly devolved from potentially interesting villain to anti-climatic bore.

What with all of the magic getting flung around there are some pretty good action scenes. The showdown between Tatsuya and Ichijo is by far the best, but there are a few other scenes in particular that stood out. Erika gets in a few scraps that are reasonably entertaining, and there's a big multi episode battle towards the end of the series where everyone is fighting pretty much non-stop. They're fun scenes, but the big thing is waiting to see if Tatsuya will pull any particularly big rabbits out of his hat, which happens with increasing frequency toward the end of the series.

The quality of the animation itself helps quite a bit in enhancing the fight scenes (and everything else for that matter), as the show is quite pretty to look at. There's a nice use of color, glowing computer terminals, and, of course, all that magic. So, the series is very easy on the eyes, if a tad heavy on the blue and teal tones.

In the end, though, we're only about halfway through the light novel with a whole lot more that we need to learn about. We've been introduced to a lot of people, and we know that Tatsuya is secretly a freakishly powerful magician and brilliant engineer. There's also still a lot of mystery surrounding his and Miyuki's aunt. So, there's still quite a bit that we need to know. What will Tatsuya do with all that power? How will the world respond to the events of the last few episodes? When will Mr. Zhou be back? Just what is the Yotsuba family scheming behind the scenes? We'll need to see the anime cover the last half of the light novel to get answers to those questions. I'm remaining cautiously optimistic that we'll see more episodes at some point in the future. The anime proved reasonably popular, so there's a monetary incentive for the show to continue. It's just a question of how long it'll be before it returns.

The Warcraft Movie Trailer Looks Pretty Bad

The trailer for the Warcraft movie came out the other day, and I have to say that it didn't impress. Right from the opening visuals, the thing dripped of fantasy cliche as it showed one sweeping vista after the next, orcs that looked kinda flabby, and humans that had armor made out of plastic. Then it gets even worse, we have to listen to some of the dialogue. As it stands, I'm not sure how many people are going to line up and see what is starting to look like a two hour cut scene. Maybe some of the super diehard fans will go watch it, but this is something that probably should have come out five years ago when the franchise was at the height of its popularity.

Looking at the motifs, the movie comes off as a paint by numbers approach to fantasy in the trailer. If anything, it felt like it was aping Lord of the Rings a little too much. Granted, fantasy, and especially fantasy video games, have been doing this for years, but watching how it is approached in the trailer brings it into sharp focus. There was nothing really striking about the places that they were showing, even if they were hinting at major cities of Azeroth in it. I was just left feeling like I'd been drawn through a montage of very traditional fantasy locales and had a lot of trouble mustering any interest in them.

Even worse is that the visuals seem off. The orcs, while huge, had a strangely doughy look to them as if there was an unusually thick layer of fat and flesh covering their muscles. Meanwhile, the scenes of humans were far from impressive and I was left wondering if the studio was going cheap on the armor because it all looked like it was made from plastic. The whole time I watched the trailer, the more grating it was to look at all of this. It also got me wondering why they couldn't just make a CG movie instead of going the live action route. The cinematics that have come along for each expansion for World of Warcraft have been very good, especially for the last couple. I would have been fine if the movie looked like that. Maybe it would have been expensive and time consuming to do, but it would look far better than what we have now.

I'm also wondering how much they're going to try to squeeze into a single movie because the trailer sure seemed to be trying to cram a lot of people, places, and events into it. The whole thing could turn into a confusing onslaught of lore that doesn't get very well explained. Moreover, the dialogue feels really bad. Granted it has always been bad in the games. I only find Warcraft's lore tolerable if I consume it via Wiki articles. Having to sit through actual cutscenes and listen to the characters talk has been a consistent exercise in patience as it has been one cliche after the next with really corny lines for everyone. Now it would seem that this is being brought straight into the movie, which could make any time someone talks in it pretty darn cringe worthy.

As it stands, I'm thoroughly unimpressed with what I've seen of the Warcraft movie judging by the trailer. This is supposed to be making a first impression, and right now that impression is to stay far away from this thing. Part of me really does wonder if this will turn into Blizzard's Spirits Within, and expensive, over-hyped disaster.

Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers Season One Anime Review

With an epic fantasy unfolding, an ensemble cast to dig into, nice art style, and an interesting, somewhat Aztec-esque motif (something you don't see very often in anime), there were a lot of reasons for me to really get sucked in by Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers. The basic premise is something we've seen before where a band of adventurers must assemble to defeat an ancient evil, but the characters had some meat on their bones and the arch of the story evolved into a very interesting "There's a traitor in our midst" sort of thing that had me steamrolling through the whole season eager to find out what would happen next.

Basically, the story is such that a powerful demon king resides on the edge of the continent in which the show takes place. Every few hundred years, it has a resurgence in power and tries to send its army of demons out to conquer the world. To counter this, one of the land's powerful goddesses selects six people to join up and fight the demon king, with each of these individuals being marked by a six-pedaled flower tattoo.

A large chunk of the story revolves around Adlet Myer, one of those selected by the goddess to fight the demon king this generation, who comes off as a bit of an overly confident moron but grows into a much more interesting character with a developed back story that makes him a lot more sympathetic. It isn't just from learning about Adlet's past, though, as his interactions with everyone else makes him all the more endearing. He's the sort that will do his best to work together with others despite constantly claiming to be the strongest man in the world. Even if people don't want to believe him, which is the case for about half of the series, Adlet will do everything he can to bring them on-side.

This was particularly the case between him and Flamie, catapulting him to one of the most likable characters I've come across this year in an anime. It also made me warm up to Flamie herself, who plays the dark loner who pushes everyone away for fear of being betrayed. Sure, it's a character type we've seen many, many times in the past but the back and forth between her and Adlet is great, developing over much of the series. Watching this unfold, it's hard not to cheer for these two as they make progress, occasionally stumbling along the way.

When it comes to the other characters, they don't get nearly as much screen time as Adlet and Flamie, so there isn't the same opportunity for them to grow. There is some basic foundation work done so that we can get a basic idea of what they're like, but we'd need another season or two in order for this to have a chance to transpire (more about this later). Some of the characters suffer from fairly traditional archetyping like Goldof being the serious, loyal soldier and Hans the assassin.

However, Chamo could turn out to be quite interesting. She's the youngest of the heroes, and still quite immature. Maura pretty much has to watch over her and make sure that she behaves. I could see her coming into her own as she has the most to learn of the heroes. Maura herself, though, I'm not sure about. She's supposedly in charge of overseeing all of the Saints of the world, individuals entrusted with the power of the gods. For having such an important responsibility, she struck me as being awfully stubborn and a poor judge of character. Her actions struck me as odd more often than not given her position. Nachetanya as alright. She seemed like a naive princess out in the world for the first time more often than not, and it wasn't until right near the end of the series that we got a good idea of the sort of person she is.

As I mentioned earlier, the ancient South American theme to the civilizations in Rokka struck me as as a pretty neat idea. It's not something we see often and made for some nice settings. The main characters don't reflect this at all and have a much more straightforward fantasy motif to them, which is fine because they look great. I particularly like Adlet and Flamie's designs, but Goldof and Maura also look quite good.

The fight scenes are quite fluid and a lot of fun to watch. There's a particularly intense one between Adlet and Hans at one point that stood out for me and is at least on par with Adlet's skirmishes with Flamie. These smaller scale battles are where the show really excels, as they feel a lot more exciting and well choreographed than the larger encounters against hordes of fiends. In that regard, Rokka does a very good job, providing some very enjoyable fights.

Some folks seem to feel that the show as a bit slow paced, but I never thought so. There was steady action and progression with each episode in my opinion. We got introduced to the characters, learned a bit more about them and their ultimate goal, and had a major arch while they tried to find a traitor in their midst. All things considered, it was a very good first season.

It's just too bad that it seems unlikely that Rokka will get a second one. From everything I've heard, the show just didn't perform all that well and when that happens studios just don't consider continuing on with it, which is a real shame because Rokka finishes on such a huge cliffhanger. There is a fan translation of much of the light novel series on which the show is based, so those that enjoyed it can actually get some closure if they want. Nonetheless, it is a bit of a drag. So, anyone going into Rokka: Braves of the Six Flowers should be prepared. There's a lot to enjoy here, but as of this writing it looks highly unlikely that we'll see the anime go through the entire story. My fingers are crossed that this will change, though.

New Research Shows Continued Stagnation in Console Market

So, the Pew Research Center has some new data for digital device adoption, and the numbers are looking distinctly meh for consoles. Meanwhile, smartphones and tablets continue to skyrocket in popularity. It's something that has been getting more and more frequently discussed, whether consoles in the middle of a terminal decline. This new set of data in the very least suggests that consoles are stagnating in terms of industry wide sales in the US.

The data shows console sales from 2009 to 2015. If one looks at around the time when the latest batch of systems came out, there's barely an upward tick to be seen, even with all of the hoopla about how well the PS4 has sold. Moreover, the percentage of people in the US who own a console has stayed consistent at about 40% while smartphones and tablets have enjoyed rapid increases in ownership.

It's been said many times before, but this survey continues to suggest that we're seeing a generational shift where it's adults in their 20s and 30s who are carrying the console market, while younger people are exhibiting less interest in it, instead gravitating toward mobile platforms.

For now, console adoption seems to have leveled off, but it remains to be seen if adults will continue to invest in such systems indefinitely. Should we see their interest taper off, it stands to reason that mobile will overtake consoles all that much quicker. Then the question will be where developers will focus their attention most.

This could also be impacted as mobile technology continues to advance. While some people will claim that smartphone games are dumbed down cash grabs (and many of them certainly are), I can't help but wonder if they'll just increasingly docked devices at home. Carry the thing around like a phone during the day doing basic activities in a game, then place it in a dock connected to the TV when at home, using a controller of some sort for more involved aspects of the same game. It's a a logical way of approaching mobile gaming in the future, but whether or not developers will pursue it remains to be seen.

As I've said before, mobile gaming is still in its infancy, and has a very long way to go. I don't really see what I suggested happening for at least another decade in any meaningful, widespread fashion for at least another decade. At that point, it seems far more likely that these young people that are helping tablet and smartphone adoption grow so much will be out of college, still interested in games, but want to evolve mobile gaming far beyond what it is now.