An abridged version of Final Fantasy XV that I cannot actually fit in my pocket

For a good chunk of my young adult life, I played every new Final Fantasy game that came out, starting naturally with Final Fantasy VII, then the underappreciated Final Fantasy VIII, and next to Final Fantasy IX, a game I only came around to seeing its conclusion a couple years back. I dabbled in a borrowed copy of Final Fantasy X from a friend in my sophomore year of college, but actually was more focused on schoolwork, dating, and being social than playing videogames. Shocking.

And so it went on, with me skipping out on Final Fantasy X-2 and the online-only Final Fantasy XI. I eventually returned to these hallowed grounds after graduating college, moving into a tiny studio apartment near New York City, and not setting up cable or Internet for a couple months because money was an issue. Thankfully, two games kept me quite busy–Final Fantasy XII and Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King. This is a lot of preamble just to say that the last recent Final Fantasy game I’ve played was Final Fantasy XII back in 2006-ish and that weird side-scrolling beat-em-up…until now.

Yup, move aside official release Final Fantasy XV, with your mega realistic graphics, hours-long epic plotline, and detailed character models and pictures of food that convince you this world and its inhabitants are worth believing in. Because I’m playing Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition, which takes a 50-hour console JRPG and re-imagines it as a 10ish-hour mobile game. Except I’ll add one more wrinkle to the mix–I’m playing this on my laptop, not my cell phone. For this to happen, Square Enix naturally had to murder its darlings, cutting back on story, controls, and graphics to deliver a more shortened and laid-back telling of Prince Noctis’s journey to become king. It actually works though, surprise surprise.

Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition follows the same plot as the original game, as far as I can tell, but eliminates the open world aspect and many sidequests for a more focused experience. Exploration and combat have now been shifted from a behind-the-back view to an isometric overhead perspective with simplified controls more suitable for playing on a touchscreen…or using a mouse and keyboard, as I am doing. Music and voice acting was mostly kept intact, while the graphics were given a makeover with “chibified” character designs. The game is divided into ten chapters; the first chapter is available for free, hooray, and the remaining nine can be purchased individually or as a whole with discounted pricing.

The combat in Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition is more friendly and forgiving though maybe a little uninteresting. When the party enters a fight–no random battles here–the player takes control of Noctis only while his companions do their own thing. Noctis will auto-attack whatever enemy is nearest to him or whatever one you personally select, with opportunities to parry and dodge presented as timed button prompts. As the party gains EXP, Ignis, Prompto, and Gladio gain the same sort of special combat abilities they do in the core version, and there’s a skill tree to unlock other perks, such as using magic or enhancing how much damage your weapon does. Noctis himself has a very special ability called warp, jumping from one enemy to another by clicking on that enemy and holding down the mouse button, getting the drop on the unaware. You can also do this outside of combat, to reach certain areas.

Honestly, I enjoyed my free time in Final Fantasy XV: Pocket Edition‘s first chapter, but I’m not hooked enough to drop any bucks on it and see the remainder of the young prince’s plight. The combat feels inconsequential currently, though perhaps it gets more involved later on once magic and summoning show up. Still, it’ll always be a watered down version, and for some, that is ideal, and others not. I still find the idea of a boys’ roadtrip to be entertaining, even if it eventually does the Final Fantasy thing and end up being about saving the world from plunging into eternal darkness.

Do the Moonwhale’s bidding in Legend of the Skyfish

You can play a good chunk of Legend of the Skyfish for free before the walls go up and you have to drop a wee bit of cash-money to experience more. This happened to me specifically at Mamachi Swamp – Level 04, which felt like an odd place to stop players, but whatever. I feel like I grokked what this game was going for, enjoyed what I played and saw, and am totally okay moving on to something else. That’s not to say I don’t suggest you ignore this level-based puzzle adventure, just that you might get enough from its demo section. The full price on the PC is $7.99 or you can get a mobile version for half that.

Legend of the Skyfish stars a young hooded woman named Little Red Hook, as she journeys with the Moonwhale, the “warden of the seas,” to defeat the monstrous Skyfish. Not a lot of plot to go on, but it is serviceable. She’s armed with a rather unique item, a fishing pole–kind of like how Young in Anodyne wielded a broom instead of a sword. She uses her fishing pole both as a weapon and a grappling hook, and you can upgrade it as you progress through the levels. Of which, there are evidently 45 levels to see, plus giant boss fights. I already told you how far I got in the free-to-start version so I only saw one boss fight.

The levels in this The Legend of Zelda-lite romp are pretty similar from one to the next, slowly upping enemy counts and puzzles as you go further along. Little Red Hook explores screen after screen, flicking switches, and using her fishing rod to return sea horses and puffer-fish back to their ocean home. At the end of every level, she hacks a Skyfish totem to pieces, which I guess affects its plan of total domination. The fishing rod isn’t the only thing our leading lady can use. Little Red Hook’s hookshot tool can be used to snare solid objects, hurling her from island to island, grabbing stone blocks to weigh down ground switches, and yanking enemies across the screen to impale them on spikes, something that Mortal Kombat‘s Scorpion would highly approve of.

I played my little bit of Legend of the Skyfish on the PC, using mouse and keyboard for controls. It worked fine, especially because the game is quite linear, as well as friendly and pretty easy, though I generally prefer a controller for this type of adventuring. You can generally take everything slowly, and that includes engaging with enemies or moving from one island to another. It’s a gorgeous game to look at, from the way Little Red Hook moves through large patches of grass to the ripples in the water to the designs of enemies and the way they react to our leading lady’s presence. It’s quite stunning at times. Less can be said of the action, which is repetitive, with basic combat moves, but I found it relaxing and satisfying at times, and the rousing soundtrack helps keep you hooked, pun totally intended.

Perhaps Legend of the Skyfish will be included in some future Humble Bundle, where I can grab the full thing for a few dollars and see more of this beautiful world, maybe even give this supposedly dastardly Skyfish its just desserts. Time will tell, for sure.

2016 Game Review Haiku, #60 – Make It Rain: The Love of Money

Swipe to make money
Fill your bucket with green stuff
Digitally rich

–

Here we go again. Another year of me attempting to produce quality Japanese poetry about the videogames I complete in three syllable-based phases of 5, 7, and 5. I hope you never tire of this because, as far as I can see into the murky darkness–and leap year–that is 2016, I’ll never tire of it either. Perhaps this’ll be the year I finally cross the one hundred mark. Buckle up–it’s sure to be a bumpy ride. Yoi ryokō o.

Runaway llamas don’t stand a chance in Alto’s Adventure

I think I can confidently say that, of all the winter sports out there, I’d be most inclined to try my hand–or rather feet–at snowboarding. Something about skis and the way your legs move and cross between one another scares the life out of me. Sure, sure…the reality of being locked then to a single board might not be a safer bet, but somewhere in my mind I’ve come to terms with this as the better, easier to grasp option. Granted, I wouldn’t be doing the same death-defying actions as seen in Alto’s Adventure, keeping myself constrained to the bunny slopes and nothing crazier than that.

Here’s a truth-pill to swallow: I downloaded Alto’s Adventure from the Windows 10 store not because it was free, but rather because its logo was stylish as heck and contained a llama inside the letter a. Guess that’s all it takes to hook me deep since I knew next to nothing else about the game at that point. Turns out, it’s an endless runner. Er, endless snowboarder. Endless llama collector? It’s one of those things, and here’s how the developer Snowman pitches it from their website: “Alto’s Adventure is an endless snowboarding odyssey, set against a beautiful and ever changing alpine landscape. The game features fluid physics-based movement, procedurally generated terrain and stunning dynamic lighting and weather effects. The core mechanic centers around an easy to learn, yet difficult to master one button trick system that allows you to chain together increasingly more elaborate trick combos to maximize the players speed and compete for high scores and distances.”

Basically, this is how your time on the mountain goes in Alto’s Adventure. You click start, and your protagonist begins to snowboard towards the right side of the screen. As you zip forward, you want to collect runaway llamas, coins, and power-ups, as well as hit ramps to do tricks and chain together many into a single combo for a hefty amount of points. The mechanic is simple, but tough to learn; press the jump button to land on roofs and ropes to automatically grind, and if you press and hold the jump button, you’ll begin to do a backflip. Knowing when and for how long to hold that jump button is key. When you land a successful trick, you are granted a temporary speed boost and blip of invincibility. There are also obstacles to avoid, such as chasms, rocks, and angry elders that will chase after you for disrupting their…I dunno, elderly sleep.

Visually, Alto’s Adventure is a beast. No, not the domesticated South American camelid kind that you are constantly trying to nab, but rather a discernible powerhouse. The graphics are minimalist, but highly evocative. I won’t say they outshine Journey, but they are hanging out in the same boat, for sure. There’s a full day/night cycle as you do each run, with fully dynamic lighting and weather effects, including thunderstorms, blizzards, fog, rainbows, shooting stars, and more. There is something hauntingly beautiful about racing through the snow as a storm cracks and flashes off in the background and surviving it all to watch the sun rise and cast its warm, orange-yellow rays on every edge of the landscape. Despite the levels being randomly generated from a bunch of similar parts, each run still feels highly unique.

My next favorite aspect besides the visuals is the goals system. It’s pretty much the same idea from Jetpack Joyride, wherein you are tasked with completing three goals while trying to handle your main goal of just getting as far as possible. Sometimes these goals are simple and naturally occurring, such as collecting a number of coins or hitting a specific tier of points, and others are more challenging. The one I’m currently stuck on is asking me to do two triple backflips in one session. Eek. There are evidently 180 goals in total to nail, and doing these level you up, which is how unlocking new characters to play as is gated. Each character controls a little differently too.

I don’t mean this as a slight, but I’ve been enjoying Alto’s Adventure in the same manner that I do my clickers, like Time Clickers and AdVenture Capitalist. It’s something that I play in short bursts, clicking every now and then, and just sort of zoning out and relaxing as things happen around ,e. The early parts of a snowboarding run are especially calming, and I love zipping through a stretch of no obstacles and only sick jumps. There are absolutely moments where you are highly involved in timing your jumps and ensuring you don’t crash, but a lot of Alto’s Adventure‘s fun comes from taking in the sights and seeing how the world changes from one moment to the next, even when that next moment is you zooming headfirst into a pile of rocks hidden at the bottom of a steep slope.