Open World and Levels

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I’m playing some Assassin’s Creed: Origins now.  There’s a lot of good here, which shows that not releasing a game every year is a good path.  It looks amazing, is a massive (MASSIVE!) seamless world, and has some pretty solid mechanics.  I am a huge Egyptian-antiquity fan, and this scratches a good itch.  There are many liberties taken, but overall it does a decent job humazing the time period – specifically the Ptolemic.

Even the tedium is entertaining – hunting various animals, finding treasure, and aligning stars – it all works pretty well.  There’s one nitpick and it’s the trend to apply levels to open world games, as a gating mechanism.

Open Worlds

In this case, I will define an open world as one where most/all of the activities are available at most parts of the game.  You can choose what to do, when you want to.  Ubisoft and Bethesda are the main leads in that front. Legend of Zelda is a great recent example, where the mechanics are open at the start and it’s how you leverage those mechanics to progress.

Story Unlocks

Progress in some open world games is predicated on specific points of the story being complete before moving on.  Nearly all traditional games operate on this concept, where killing a boss opens up the next part of the game.  Traditional Zelda games are like this, where you need say the hookshot in order to progress.  The game grows somewhat organically and it’s the mechanics that modify over time allowing you to go forward.  Some games only have a small handful of these gates (Horizon) to keep the story fresh, while others use the gates to ensure you’re ready for the next challenge (Monster Hunter).

The point here is that you never really feel like you’re held back or hitting a wall, as there’s a logical progression to the game.

Level Unlocks

Progress here is limited to your level.  You can see the area or task, but the underlying numbers prevent you from participating.  You could be level 10 but the enemies are level 20 and kill you in 1 hit.  Many RPGs use this model (FF games with open maps), and plenty of MMOs put “zones” at specific level ranges.  You can access the area, you just can’t do anything once there.

This model can work if the core story/game progress aligns with levels assignment.  What I mean is that if you follow the breadcrumbs of the story line, you can continually progress through levels.  You never feel handicapped level-wise, while participating in the story.  The tail end of Ni No Kuni 2 does a poor job on this front, and there’s a need to grind/side quests to progress in the last 10%.

AC:O does a worse job, since after the first zone, all main-story progress is predicated on you completing ~50% of the nearby side quests to continue.  I don’t know what the level cap is, but after around level 8, this becomes apparent.  The good news is that the side quests/tasks are generally fun.  The bad side is that you’re forced to “explore for ?” to find more of said side activities.  It doesn’t feel natural because they are so far off the main path.  For example, the 2nd zone has you moving North on the main quest.  Half the side quests are actually East/South.  And if you head too far East into the next zone, you get 1 shot.  Ehhh.

Forward

I can see the challenge around providing side tasks in a game that’s level related, to make certain they provide some benefit.  I thought that the solution was already clear – scaling numbers based on your own level.  We all learned that lesson between Oblivion and Skyrim.  That was 7 years ago.

I am truly struggling to see why that model was not applied here, if only because Ubisoft wasn’t able to get the concept of open-world and levels to jive in their operating model.  But the solution exists, so I am in no way worried that this gets addressed in the next iteration.

 

Facebook and Ethics

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Zuckerberg’s face is all of the media right now.  Quite a few items remarking on his poor social abilities.  He’s clearly on the autism spectrum and if I recall it’s more in-line with Asperger’s.

That generally means that the switch inside the head doesn’t register non-vocal feedback, and that the social skills never truly develop.  Socially inept.  We’ve all met people where social cues just go right by.  This is more evident in high school and college settings, where everyone is showing tremendous social growth, while others seem stalled.  As adults, the social aspects are usually screened out during the hiring process.  Or in.  Or the individual has learned some tricks to manage that lack of skill.

Or, they deploy a data harvesting tool with the guise of connection building, and become a billionaire.

Privacy

I work in IT.  Specifically at the intersection of consumer functions and security/privacy controls.  I know more than I should, or at least some days I’d prefer to know less.  First point – if you’re online you are giving up privacy.  Full stop.  Either you pay to control it (part of it at least, or the appearance of control), or you do it for free and give up that control.

There’s a reason it’s so easy to DOX someone.

The internet may be temporary – sites come and go – but it’s all archived somewhere.  It is both permanent and impermanent at the same time, making it really quite hard for people to navigate.  What people were doing 10 years ago is still being used to screen new hires.  That is not going away anytime soon.

Ethics

Ethics are a social construct.  We don’t eat dogs in North America, rarely eat horse.  In other parts of the world it’s a regular meal.  Ethically we have issues with that, while other do not.  That’s at the national level.  Even at the community level this changes.  Find two churches and you’ll find two different sets of ethics.

Now throw in someone who has no ability to understand the social implications of ethics.  They are not un-ethical in the sense that they purposefully go against ethical norms, but more so in that they just don’t understand the nuances of ethics.

For better or worse, this also means that they are immune from international ethics.  Say in one country, it’s entirely acceptable to scrape all user related data to make a giant database of behavior (China).  In another, the company must disclose all private data to the users (Germany).  A company working in both areas has to find the right balance, let alone their corporate policies to manage their service.  That Facebook said it would apply GDPR is a good step.  Considering that they fought it tooth and nail, is more like a thief admitting guilt after caught, but it’s still some progress.

I will say that for all the faults, the EU seems to take this more seriously than most other countries.  Canada would be wise to integrate those policies, as we tend to align the same way.  I mean that in the context of post-national ethics.  We’re all humans before we’re nationals after all, much more alike than dissimilar.

Silicon Valley

Generally run by people with poor social skills focused more on the what can we do, rather than why should we do it.  There’s a really good reason why so many harassment issues have come out of the woodwork in these companies.  A psychopath is someone who lacks empathy – they are not not just serial killers.  A lack of social skills is right in line with that behavior.

Many people are driven by power/money, and once bitten by that bug, it’s hard to go back.  People get blinded by their own agenda that they lose sight of the impacts of their decisions.  Uber simply didn’t care that there were existing markets, they just dropped down illegal cabs, paid a few fines and disrupted an entire market.  There’s only a small difference between that and WalMart moving into a small town, closing all the mom and pop shops, milking the town dry, then closing their shop down for good.

And we let them.  Because it’s practical.  Or it’s cheaper.  We’ll sell our souls to the devil without a blink of an eye.  Most times, we won’t even realize we’re doing it.  Or we think it doesn’t affect us.

Some Progress

The conceptual idea of adding more connections is certainly good.  It’s the foundation of the internet after all.  We are too soon into that space as compared to other social advances, for a web of ethics to have developed.  By breaking down the geographical barriers, we have exposed the sensitive nerves of ethic boundaries.  It’s much easier to ignore dog eating in China if you don’t ever hear about it.  Much harder to do when it’s on the newsfeeds, websites, and social media.

We’re growing.  We’ve taken a long swim in the infinite ocean and lost our footing at times.  The “go local” movement is meant to ensure we have both a foot inside our real space and the virtual one, and a better appreciation for both worlds.  There’s still a lot of work to do.  I’ll be spending my time educating myself and my family on the risk/reward facets of internet use.  Paying more attention to the terms of use, changing permissions on my devices, removing myself from some tools.  Still being involved, but under my terms.

And if it costs me more, or takes more time.  So be it.

Repetition is Key

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Getting better at something means that you need to be doing that thing, multiple times, until it becomes second nature.  Repetition of an activity means you naturally get better at said activity.  This applies to absolutely everything we do.  In some cases, people conflate the thought/research of doing something vs actually doing something.

Simulators are a good example of this.  Many games have simulators that artificially optimize gameplay & statistics in order to provide a ranking of options.  On paper, a DK is better at DPS than a Rogue (example).  Sure, if the entire environment is controlled.  That assumes that the lag is the same, that no movement is required, that they take no damage, that the procs are perfect, and that the player’s timing is perfect.  Let’s even go a step further, where all the variables except the player are the same – the output is absolutely going to be different.  The player skill is one of the ultimate factors.

Sports are also a prime example.  Hitting balls in a batting cage has only a little to do with actually hitting a real-life pitch.  Hitting a hundred shots on the driving range only goes so far on the actual course.  The real-world variables take time for the body to adjust and compensate.

Hockey

This one hits a bit more for me as my eldest daughter is playing hockey as a first year player.  The season is over now and there’s some analysis that always comes from it.  My kid barely knew how to skate to start the season, and the strides forward were significant, but they were despite the actual season.  There were 18 kids on the squad, meaning that in a 50 minute session, she would be on the actual ice for about 7 minutes.  Practices were better, but the coach:player ratio was large, meaning a lack of directed feedback.

I am glad I built a backyard rink.  It gave dozens of hours of skating practice – more time than she had for the entire “team” season.

The good news is that the kids are young, so these things don’t really click with them. The bad news, for the sport at least, is that the kids are not as excited or involved as they could be, and the parents have a hell of a time justifying the cost for the time spent on ice vs pretty much any other activity.

Swimming

Another example I can use my kids for.  They’ve been taking swimming lessons for a few years now.  30 minute sessions, every week.  The last 2 seasons have been just the 2 kids, rather than 6 – again, a lack of actual swimming doesn’t make them progress.

We are lucky in that we can afford travel, luckier still that the travel includes pools.  Cuba, one weekend in a hotel, and another week in Florida gave about 4 hours a day of pool time in 4 months.  That’s about 60 hours of swimming.  That is more time in the pool in 4 months than all the time in swimming classes combined.

Games

One of my gripes with PvP games is the lack of practice due to either mechanics or power curves.  Aimbots and 1-shot-kills mean that you have a very low amount of actual combat gameplay.  Large maps where you spend 3/4 of the time walking around an empty zone is worse when combined with low combat times.  You could spend 20 minutes doing nothing but walking, then get sniped.  Not my definition of fun.

Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate the tactical aspects of the game at elite levels.  But the path to get to the elite level is littered with rookie corpses.  And that’s aside from the abhorrent cultures within the games themselves.  Toxicity breeds more of itself and I’d rather avoid it altogether.

And let’s avoid the paint-chip-eating tutorials that most games implement.

Future Think

My gut tells me that the next gap to be bridged in competitive games is exactly that “starter to ok” mode.  The gap between starter & top tier is a massive gulf of negative junk.  A focus on the core mechanics that allow someone to get better, combined with a social atmosphere that helps with growth is the next logical step.  Guess is that the former will be required before the latter… unless someone really decides to tighten their belt and start having serious repercussions on behavior (positive/negative).

Ni No Kuni 2 – Part 3

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Well, it so happened I was closer to the end than previously thought.  The last bit further shaped my opinion.

Final Acts

The story ends well enough, and with typical JRPG flair.  Spoiler here, but you’re on another plane of existence for the final fight.  There are some logic lapses within the main villain, and the final twist is a bit less fun than I had hoped. Still, as compared to other RPGs, there’s a better story to hand your hat upon.

Oh, I would be remiss to mention Roland’s dream return to his world and the scene with the kid.  That was messed up.

I will say that Evan is no Oliver (main character from the first game). I never felt any agency or connection.  His story line just didn’t work for me.  All the other supporting characters seemed to be painted with a wider brush.

All dem der Options

I’ve mentioned a few times now that NNK let’s you do many activities.  Regular combat, skirmishes, quests, crafting, dimensional doors (mini dungeons), tainted monsters, and kingdom building.

Truthfully, not a single of of those things matters except for the main quest line.  There are a half dozen mandatory skirmishes, that have little bearing on your level and more to do with the ability to understand rock/paper/scissors.  I used the starter Higgildies and that went by just fine (healing is great).  I never needed to craft since all my gear from loot was at least 1 tier better than available.  I would have had to grind my Kingdom for a few more days to get a chance at something better.  Dimensional doors provide an optional kingdom character… after 9 dungeons.  Tainted monsters give a decent loot item and good exp.

And that’s really all that matters for the main quest line.  Core experience.  When I reached the start of the penultimate act, I was within level range (every enemy had a white name).  The last 2 bosses in that act then jumped over me by 12 levels and I needed to get very creative.

The final act itself was 15+ levels above me to start.  Getting experience through normal means (regular battles) is useless. Tainted enemies are the way to go.  The last string of boss fights, I was dramatically underleveled and was 2-3 shot multiple tries.  Good thing I had dozens and dozens of healing items that I had not used once in the entire playthrough.

That final challenge was what I would consider “normal mode” for pretty much any other game.  I needed to pay attention, dive smartly to avoid damage, focus my attacks at a given time.  It was a ton of fun, even if I did die a few times in the attempts.

Next Up

I am putting NNK2 on the shelf.  The remainder of the content is busy work in my eyes, and would provide no real benefit.  I can’t see what’s after the final boss in terms of challenges, and my power level is about as high as it can go without boosting my character levels.

It is really a rare event that I end up putting an RPG on the shelf after the final battle – Mass Effect series aside.  There always seems to be something to do afterwards – be it a battle coliseum, extra hard bosses, or deep dive dungeon.  Maybe I just missed it.

Still, it’s a fun game with a good story.  Little on the low challenge side (until the last bit) and there’s some busy work to be had, that’s entirely optional.

Ni No Kuni 2 – Part 2

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I think I’m most of the way through now.  The game is based on uniting 5 kingdoms, and I’m on the last one now.  Then there’s the final boss, as per RPG custom.  My thoughts on the game have changed a bit since.

JRPG

I prefer this model to the western one – specifically in relation to the tropes that are used.  Guess it’s just since I’ve seen so much of it.  Always seems more imaginative than something set in the D&D universe.  NNK2 has the fantasy setting, but the core storyline doesn’t really work in a JRPG setting.  There are no set backs here, no loss beyond the first 5 minutes of story.  The 5 kingdoms are supposed to be tragic… but the lack of character development (you only see them as bad, until they are not) makes it jarring.

Kingdom Builder

Neat in concept, as it passively boosts all activities.  Tedious in practice, since you are not only time gated, but also power gated as well.  You need 25/50/100 citizens to upgrade.  Or a citizen with a specific attribute (that you have no way of pro-actively finding) to get a specific boost.  Getting to 50 citizens was not possible until after the 4th kingdom, and 100 will not be possible until after the 5th.  Why?  The boosts are negligible as compared to simply leveling in the world and acquiring loot drops.  They either help with side quests, or allow for more Higgildy boosts (which are also optional).

Side Quests

There are 3 types.  Deliver a specific item that’s either a common or rare drop.  Kill a tainted monster.  Win this skirmish.  The last 2 are fun and active.  Tainted monsters are always a blast to take down, mini boss attacks and all.

The delivery quests I could do without.  Having to sail the seas to find a random spot and hope it’s the right fish (assuming I know that’s where it can be) is insanely tedious.  And this rare delivery feels like half of the side quests.  That it further gates the Kingdom Builder aspect is even less fun.

Power Curve

Levels dominate everything.  It feels like there’s a bell curve that says anything 5+ above you is going to squash you.  When you reach that level, assuming your gear is the same (likely, as there are only 6 tiers of gear) you will then feel like a god.  For no statistical reason other than level.  Which is sort of ok, given the JRPG numbers.  Still feels odd in 2018.

Active Combat

I like this part.  Blocking, dodging, timing special attacks for knockdowns.  The bosses are all fun to take on.  Teammate AI isn’t ultra-dumb either.  Understanding enemy tells is really important, especially if there’s a level gap.  For 90% of all battles, it’s a “press Y” affair for heavy attack combos.  Sometimes it changes, like the Kingsmaker battles.  Broadleaf in particular was more like God of War than NNK.

The real fun is taking on a red-level tainted monster.  The tough ones can take you out in 3-4 hits, making for a great challenge.  I don’t mind restarting these battles a dozen times, since the feeling of victory is all the sweeter.

Current Taste

I’m still enjoying the game, just that the good and the bad are taking larger swings in either direction.  I find myself spend more time swapping between activities, rather than focusing on one.  That seems to be the underlying purpose.. that running a kingdom means doing a ton of things at once, good and bad.

My biggest thorn is the kingdom builder aspect.  Perhaps I’m burned out on WoW’s garrisons, or all the other time-gated junk we see around us.  I’d much rather be able to progress my kingdom based on in-game activities/achievements, rather than an artificial clock.  The rest would likely click into place just fine.

Less Boxes

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In interesting news, a few weeks ago EA noted that they would be removing all “power” related items from their lockboxes and going for 100% cosmetics instead.  I don’t quite get how that matters now, or in relation to their abysmal PR team, but it certainly have weight in the overall industry.

Monolith recently announced a step further recently, where all loot boxes are going away.  For reasons.  Reasons that sound good (removes the experience) but also makes you wonder at the fundamentals behind the decision.

For those unawares, SoM has two modes.  The story mode that has you follow an absurd lore-breaking story to a large (and stupid) climax.  The combat power-curve is gradual, and just normal un-focused gameplay is enough to get you through.  Once complete, the “non-stop siege mode”, or more like “perpetual fortress grind mode” is what’s left.  You need to build up your realm with (epic) orcs who have a diverse skill set.  Ad-infinitum.  Acquiring these orcs is either through gameplay or through loot boxes.  They were certainly not required to keep moving forward in the rankings, but they did save a lot of time.

And truthfully, by skipping the “grind” you did lose out on the experience of developing your own tactics.  Understanding how to infiltrate an enemy base without getting squashed by god-like orcs is 99% of the fun of SoM.  Turning on invincible mode defeats that purpose.

Looking Back

I will recall Diablo3 and the real-money auction house (RMAH) debacle that Jay Wilson brought about.  At no point did reason, human psychology, or actual metrics even come into play.  It was launched, made a crap ton of money (I made money on this too), and then managed to burn out the core player base until Jay was shown the door.  Blizzard has tried (and succeeded) at finding the most efficient ways to have games part with their money, but this was a mis-step that thankfully was rectified.

Forward

MMOs and eastern-games aside, this does bode well for the trend against boxes.  It doesn’t solve the financial issues that developers face on a regular basis, and it’s got to be hard to give up the money-cow these suckers provide.  Finding alternative ways to get people to give up their money, without having the government pass laws to prevent you, should be the next frontier.  Should be quite interesting to see how EA manages to find the next big idea to exploit, and get bad press.  Or maybe that’s the cynic in me.

 

Ni No Kuni 2

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I really enjoyed the first one.  It was a nice mix of Pokemon, Ghibli storytelling, and JRPG mechanics.  One of the best RPGs in the past 5 years.  The only real issue here was the tediousness of pet management at the tail end.  I figured NNK2 would be an easy pickup.

While it does scratch that itch, there are some odd parts within.  I’m at Chapter 5 – less than half way I think.

Setting

The art/sound are the similar to before, which is great.  I love Ghibli films, so this is a good itch.  The world-setting is the same as well, though set a few years in the future.  Which is good since there are familiar pieces, but also less good since the themes of the first one seem lost here.  That, and the map is different, which is odd.

The first game dealt with tragic loss, and how the characters dealt with their grief.  Start to end, I enjoyed the story.  This one deals with a deposed (young) king who’s blind ambition for a “world at peace” seems to know no limits.  It’s a noble goal, granted, but the way it’s played out lacks the maturity of the first game.

Mechanics

Pretty much everything changed here, like the Final Fantasy game iterations I suppose.  Combat is real-time, with 1 main character and 2 helpers (that you can swap to). There’s magic (with very finite mana), health points, combos, movement… it’s smooth and easy.  There are Higgles (think forest spirits from Mononoke) that provide passive buffs, and can actively be triggered for effects.  There’s next to no difficulty in any of the mandatory combat – 95% of it you can “face tank” without issue.  Some bosses require movement but nothing fancy.  There are optional bosses to take down, and some of them can be a challenge.

There’s the traditional item-management-mini-game of RPGs here too.  Stat buffs, bonuses, damage, etc… all quite trite.

There are skirmishes, a sort of rock-paper-scissors game where you roam a small map with a mini army, taking out opponents.  In principle it works, in practice the level discrepancies make it hard to focus on.  Most of the battles result in hit-and-run tactics as you’re often flanked and can do nothing about it.  Pretty much all optional.

Finally, there’s the kingdom building aspect.  Literally castle, buildings and finding citizens.   The buildings are staffed and provide numerous benefits (xp, loot, gear, spells, buffs).  It’s all gated by two things – Time and Gold (KG).  The KG part is ok, but the time one is pretty dumb.  Research takes 30-90 minutes, which is a timeframe that means you bookmark play sessions with kingdom activities.  KG comes in over time, enough to fill the limited coffer in 30 minutes.  It’s rarely enough to keep a decent float. I don’t mind time gated mechanics, but the caps are just too low.  Thankfully, 90% of it is optional.

You can farm/raise Higgles in the kingdom as well.  There are 100 to collect, with various benefits.  Extremely time consuming, but also optional.

Gameplay

I will say this, the overall gameplay is fun.  While the main story line is mandatory, the choices in what you do along that line are entirely optional.  Want to make equipment?  Go ahead.  Train Higgles? Sure.  Recruit Citizens?  Go for it.  Do side quests?  Why not.

None are mandatory, and none really have a dramatic impact on gameplay (so far).

It’s a good game, plenty of stuff to see and do.  It just seems overall less focused than the first one.  It got rid of the tedious aspects of the first game, but may have swung the pendulum a bit too far in the other way.

 

SotC – Final Fight

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There are bosses and then the are bosses.  The final colossus is the size of a small town, and will make short work of you before you even reach his feet.  First, getting to him.

SotC uses a neat mechanism to find the colossus.  Hold up your sword (when there’s sunshine) and it will point in a general direction towards the boss.  This works for 1-14.  15 and 16 are in the same line as previous colossi, entirely possible to take the wrong turn.

Getting to 16 requires finding a door, shining light, and then taking Agro along the path.  *spoiler* Things don’t go very well and Agro falls into the water *spolier*.  This was my first time dying in the PS4 version, and I recall the finicky controls of yesterday causing many a death in earlier games.  Following that, you need to climb up a small cliff to finally reach the boss.

Let’s be honest for a moment.  This guy gives goosebumps.  He takes up the entire screen and he’s a mile away.  It’s still something to see how large he his, likely could fit all the other 15 colossi under his armor.

The fight is in 3 stages.

First stage is more about not getting killed by fireballs.  You need to stand behind protection, run and dodge-roll to cover.  The last part of this is the hardest, as he’s quite close and the things come in screeching for your head.

The second stage is the climb.  He’s a tower and it takes a few seconds to make your way to his midsection.  This part is pretty darn cool.  It’s in the middle of a storm, and the rain/cloud effects are something to behold.  Feels like the sky is crying.

The final stage is the bugger of them all, and is burned into my psyche from all those years ago.  It requires a lot of precision and patience.  First, a prick on his back to make his hand come behind.  Then you reverse jump onto the hand.  He’ll bring it up, allowing you to run up his arm and then stab his shoulder.  This causes his other arm to come towards you, and another reverse jump.  So far, pretty obvious if not somewhat challenging.

Now the tricky part.  You need to stab that hand in order to make him lay it flat, then use your bow to attack the opposite shoulder.  He’ll then cringe in pain, bring that hand over, and you need to jump to the shoulder on the way to the head.  This is the frustrating part, as for some reason jumping doesn’t always work here.  It could take 10 minutes to get to this part from the start, and you’d fail and fall to your death.  I didn’t die (thankfully) but it did take a dozen or so tries to get the jump to work.

After that, the soft spot is on the head and it’s game over.

Ending

The game flows directly into the ending after that final strike.  You learn who Dormin is, what the sacrifice cost and the future of the world around you.  It leads well into ICO (the horned-kids and all).  I won’t go into it much, but it’s one of the better game endings out there.  And it looks amazing.

Replay

There’s a new game+, which allows you to do it all over again and stack more HP/stamina for each playthrough (that gets ridiculous after a while).  There’s mirror mode where everything is swapped vertically (your character is left handed).  This is more of a hard mode.

Finally, time trials – normal and hard.  This puts you against the clock on each colossi.  Beat enough, unlock items.  These items can improve power, stamina, change the way fights work out, or add markers to the maps for extra mini-collection quests.  I’ll spend some time here I think.

Overall

The game went by quickly, more so because I remembered the answers to all the puzzles.  For anyone who has never played the game, it is an amazing ride and worth every penny.  For those that have, the PS4 remake looks amazing.  Right up there with Horizon and MHW, but it tends to evoke more emotional response due to the efforts in music/lighting.  It’s a near masterpiece in what gaming can offer.

SotC – Big Guys 11 – 15

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My level of originality is not, ugh, good.  Yay!

Colossus 11

aka. Dumb Bull.

We reach the point in the game now where each colossus has a special gimmick to get the fight started.  #11 is a rather pain to get to, honestly.  I mean it looks great but he isn’t living on the corner road.

In this battle you need to climb a fire tower, and have him charge it, which will drop a fire stick.  Use that stick to force him over a cliff side and break his armor.  I made the mistake of jumping after him.  Bad call.  He gets up much faster than you and there’s nowhere to hide.  Back up to the fighting area again, repeat the fire tower work.  Cept this time, you can jump on his exposed back.

Colossus 12

One of my favorite fights in the game.  A giant fireshooting turtle with teeth on his head. Serious.

This one is not challenging, you simply climb his back, then hit the teeth to steer him towards a tower.  Jump on the tower, he lifts his paws, then jump on his belly.  The hard part is just getting from the starting point of the fight, to his back in order to start the climb.

 

Colossus 13

Back to back awesome fights!  Hands down the coolest fight in the entire game.  A giant flying snake that can also hide in the sand.

He has 3 main sections to the body, top and bottom.  When he’s in the air, you need to shoot the air sacks underneath to make him come down.  Then ride your horse next to his fins, jump on them, climb, wait til he turns, then go to town on 3 spots on his back.  If I recall, it was possible to do all 3 at once, but I was only able to manage 1 per try.

The effect of being in the air, so high and fast, is really quite impressive.  It does an amazing job of showcasing the game.  Amazing fight.

 

Colossus 14

The Domino boss.  It would be hard to keep up with #13, so #14 really does seem disappointing.

Fromt the start, you just climb from tower to tower, waiting for him to charge it twice and knock you to the next one.  The hard part is knowing where the startin point it (exactly where the fight starts).  It’s cool to see the set pieces tumble, but it feels overly long.

 

Colossus 15

This reminds me of the Ewok Adventure, seeing him climb up to face you.  Truly impressive scale.

I dislike puzzles that have an ultra specific solution, rather than a pattern.  This boss suffers from that sadly.  Clearly you need to move up along the walls, but how?  First floor isn’t too bad, he stomps and causes a platform to tilt. The next level though..that took me over 15 minutes.

He will swing his sword at you (slowly) but you need to be at a very specific spot to trigger the next part.  There are 8 alcoves that are possible and the effect only triggers in a specific portion of one of them.  That part done, move up to the top bridge and have him smash it down.  That exposes his head for ~90% of his HP.  Then the 2nd trick.

Drop to his shoulder, stab to make him drop the sword.  Then jump all the way to the ground, wait for him to smash you and jump into his palm.  That’s the last spot.

When you know exactly what to do, it does look really cool.  When you don’t, it’s incredibly frustrating as it is not at all obvious as to what you’re doing wrong.

Last Fight

This is a bugger of a battle. Next post will cover the fight against a colossus the size of a small town.

Colossi 9 & 10

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Didn’t have much time this run.  Late day at work, had to run some errands, fit in a workout. I did get the chance to watch a bit of Hans Zimmer Live (Netflix), which was really an experience.  STAY from Interstellar…still get some goosebumpbs from that one.  I still have parts left to watch.  And re-watch.

Colossus 9

In which the game decides to add complexity and beauty.

The road to this guy is a retread but the last little bit is in a sandstorm.  I recall this from the PS2 days and it feels different here.  Mostly to due with how the fog of war effect is much more noticeable here, since in most cases you can see the horizon.  PS2 had a much smaller draw distance.

The turtle-like boss can shoot fireballs at you, and they hit well enough.  You need to draw him over 1 of 2 gas plumes on the ground.  Then shoot 2 of his feet that are pushed in the air, run to his belly, then wait until he turns over and climb on his back.  It’s a neat effect to be on the side of the creature, then on the back.  The rest of it is rather simple.

 

Colossus 10

Woo does this fight look cool.  The ligh from above comes into the cave, and with all the flying dust, it gives a great visual effect.

My horse got caught on a ledge, so I walked in on my own.  I was trying to figure this out on my feet without any real luck.  Actually, with a fair amount of damage taken from the undersand strikes.  The game has an automated hint system that kicks in every minute or so, and this one mentioned that my feet were not enough.  *click*  Horse time.

Sure enough, leading the horse in front of this sand worm let me shoot his eye (not exaclty easy controls), who then proceeded to crash into a wall for an easy stun.  2 such events was enough to bring him down.

It’s near this point that you really start to notice how dirty/grey the hero has become.  It’s such a gradual effect that you don’t appreciate it at first.  He’s starting to blend in more with the sparse land and has lost the freshness.  I’m sure it’s entirely visual and not mehcanics, but he appears more weary.  Half expecting a limp to show up.

I’ve been including videos in these entries because the game looks and sounds so different from most anything else.  It’s a barebones mechanical system of combat (sword and bow) but because the production values are so high, that gameplay scarcity just amplifies everything else.  I still find myself stopping in the middle of a field, or a climb to just look around.