Author Archives: St. Elmo's Fire

Subnautica

  02/18/2023       St. Elmo's Fire      1 Comment

Subnautica is perhaps the best survival game I have played, but in the process I’ve come to believe a lot of the things I dislike about survival games are intractable problems with the genre. You play as the sole survivor of a starship that crash-landed on an alien ocean planet. You start with nothing but a crafting bench, and eventually work your way up to elaborate vehicles and bases, including, ultimately, an escape rocket. In the process you have to manage hunger, thirst, and, of course, oxygen as you must dive deeper and deeper to gather better materials.

If you enjoy survival games you’ll enjoy this, but I have a few nuances to discuss.

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   Recommendations, Survival, Video Games     

Shin Megami Tensei III: Nocturne

  02/04/2023       St. Elmo's Fire      4 Comments

This was the first main series title to get an international release, I guess because the moral guardians finally quieted down enough for Atlus to feel comfortable floating their screed about the many evils of Christianity to the rest of the world. But did you know it’s actually not the first entry in the overall franchise to get such a privilege? A few spinoff games got American releases earlier, where the series title was localized as Revelations. That’s genuinely such a great title. “Resurrection of the Goddess” may be literally accurate to the Japanese title, but it’s an artifact title with no meaning for most of the games. But “Revelations” so neatly encapsulates what the games are about both literally and symbolically on so many levels, and it’s a Bible reference!

So of course when it came time to finally bring a main series title international they decided to throw that in the garbage so they could not bother translating the title at all instead, because what is localization.

So it’s time to explore Revelations Untranslated Word Salad III: Nocturne, the third numbered entry which is actually the fourth entry, or sixth if you count the pre-reboot Megami Tensei games. The franchisening has truly begun.

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   Monster Collector, RPGs, Shin Megami Tensei Series, Video Games     

Shin Megami Tensei: SNES Trilogy

  12/25/2022       St. Elmo's Fire      14 Comments

Time to spice up this Christmas with some good old-fashioned blasphemy! A while back I reviewed and mostly enjoyed the Devil Survivor games, which are a spinoff of the Shin Megami Tensei series (or Resurrection of the Goddess if you’re not a weeb who thinks leaving things untranslated makes them cooler). The main series is also highly praised, so I decided to check it out, especially since as a Pokemon fan I’m interested in monster-catching games, and this one actually predates Pokemon by a significant margin! I chose to skip the NES Megami Tensei games and start with the SNES Shin Megami Tensei trilogy.

Sidenote: Every game starts with a standard “Any similarity between our characters and real people or organizations is purely coincidental” disclaimer, which, LOL. LOLOLOLOL.

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   Monster Collector, Recommendations, RPGs, Shin Megami Tensei Series, Video Games     

Quantum Conundrum

  10/08/2022       St. Elmo's Fire      Add Comment

This is a Portal clone, but, unlike Gravitas, not a good one. It’s a physics puzzler where you must navigate a mad scientist’s lab while a sardonic narrator comments on your every action, all clear elements of Portal. Unfortunately, it doesn’t seem to understand what made those elements so effective in Portal, and completely fumbles the execution.

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   Puzzle, Video Games     

Knights of the Old Republic, and Author Dialogues

  09/24/2022       St. Elmo's Fire      7 Comments

Recently I decided to play Knights of the Old Republic, a wRPG set in the Star Wars universe. I initially ignored it because I’m not into Star Wars, but I decided to give it a shot to see what all the fuss is about; it’s supposedly one of the Great Story RPGs.

There are in fact two KOTOR games, and I found them a fascinating study in contrasts. The first was made by Bioware (the Dragon Age guys), and the second was made by Obsidian (the Planescape: Torment guys), making them a uniquely perfect comparison point between the two RPG giants.

The Bioware one is garbage. The Obsidian one is a fascinating deconstruction of the franchise that understands stories need to have themes and an actual point. But there’s actually a third side also worth examining here, which is audience reaction. See, after KOTOR2’s director said outright that one of the characters is his mouthpiece, a lot of players accused the game of being a one-sided author screed. This is despite the fact that, to me, he couldn’t have been more obvious telegraphing his intent to have a dialogue with the player, not a monologue. I think it’s worth analyzing what contributed to that reaction, and I think it’s related to the differences between Bioware and Obsidian.

(As games, they are both agonizingly terrible and Obsidian should just give up on trying to attach game mechanics to their stories. Seriously, how did everyone say “Combat is so tedious we need to automate it” and not realize something had gone horribly, horribly wrong. Someone please kill D&D with fire it is so bad and I hate it so much.)

Spoilers for both games if you care, but I was spoiled for KOTOR2’s major twists and it didn’t harm my enjoyment of the story. It actually even mocks the idea of revolving around a central plot twist.

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   On Writing, Recommendations, Video Games      ,

Child of Light

  08/26/2022       St. Elmo's Fire      3 Comments

Child of Light is an RPG whose battle system intrigued me. It expands on Final Fantasy‘s ATB system to make it more tactical and engaging instead of just a reskinned initiative system — though, in the circular nature of things, it actually bears a lot of similarity to FF4’s original ATB system. I’ll tentatively recommend it, but only if you’re particularly interested in RPG battle systems.

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   Recommendations, RPGs, Video Games     

Fallout: New Vegas

  08/14/2022       St. Elmo's Fire      11 Comments

Another oldie I’m finally getting around to.

Like all of Obsidian’s catalog, Fallout: New Vegas is a beautifully-written game that should have been a visual novel. The RPG elements, the shootouts with random suicidal raiders, and the endless trekking through acres of samey wasteland and copy/pasted buildings full of useless garbage items so thick you stop paying attention to item pickups altogether, add nothing to the experience. The Hardcore survival mechanics were an interesting idea, but are rendered meaningless by the fact the wasteland is a veritable Eden of endlessly-replenishing food, to the point you’ll probably accumulate more than you’ll ever need just by wandering around the starting areas.

But in between the chaff, the story is, as per usual with Obsidian, exceptional.

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   Action, Recommendations, RPGs, Video Games      ,

Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling

  08/03/2022       St. Elmo's Fire      2 Comments

Bug Fables: The Everlasting Sapling is a love letter to the Paper Mario series, which I previously reviewed and greatly enjoyed. It has the same papercraft art style and gameplay centered around action commands, but offers several new ideas of its own, such as a setting full of adorable bug people and non-silent protagonists.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t live up to the hype. On its own merits, it’s… okay? But it does not live up to its inspiration. I liked some of the gameplay changes but disliked others, and the writing is a mess.

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   RPGs, Video Games