(30) Days of RPGs: September 2010

Fans of role-playing games have plenty of options these days. RPGs come from most corners of the world and with different styles. This can make it hard for gamers to makes sense of the multitude of games. But take heart! This monthly column breaks down each month's new RPGs, including gameplay descriptions and word on the street about a game's quality.

Talk about RPG overload. The fall rush starts early for RPG fans, as no less than seven substantial RPGs come out in September, including an MMO giant that isn’t World of Warcraft, a successful crossover franchise coming to the PSP, and a crazy-good first-person dungeon crawler. This is going to be a long one, so buckle up and enjoy the ride.

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The Main Event:

Final Fantasy 14 (PC)
Release Date: September 30

Wait, didn’t we just get a new one of these games? It may seem unreal to some, but we are indeed getting two numbered Final Fantasy games in the same year -- although many people don’t consider massively multiplayer entries like Final Fantasy 11 or 14 to be true mainline games, even with a number on the cover. After all, how can a mere MMO possibly embody the qualities of a Final Fantasy? They forget that FF11 had two key components that put it in line with the rest of the series: an interesting battle system based on the Active Time Battle system and impressive story sequences that connected all the major quests. At the time, it was an impressive fusion of the MMO and a Final Fantasy game.

Final Fantasy 14 looks to try and duplicate that success by upholding the same high standards while making enough significant changes to be considered a distinct entry in the series. We already know this game is beautiful, given the fact that most of the trailers exist solely to show off the graphics. (Of course, given this is a Square Enix game, that was a foregone conclusion.) The gameplay itself looks to be a different experience, with skills being tied to equipment, a simplified leveling system, and numerous tweaks that will make the experience more solo-friendly.

Other aspects of FF14 have critics worried. The fatigue system, which limits the amount of time a person plays at once by slowing their leveling, has been met with controversy. And the open beta had to be delayed due to critical bugs.

That all sounds bad, but bear in mind that this is an MMO. All games in the genre have rough launches that get ironed out in the following months, so even though early adopters will still gain less than those who wait for things to get fixed, it still looks like everyone is going to get an MMO experience several cuts above the rest.

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Most Promising:

Etrian Odyssey 3: The Drowned City (DS)
Release Date: September 21

The Etrian Odyssey games are criminally overlooked mostly because first-person RPGs that aren’t made by Bethesda tend to intimidate the average player. This is a shame, because the genre has produced some excellent games, such as Wizardry and the Might and Magic series.

The bigger disappointment is that the Etrian Odyssey games are actually much more approachable than the more antiquated examples of the genre, with easy-to-understand skill development and battles as streamlined as Dragon Quest. Yet the games don’t hold back, either, crafting bastardly traps and fearsome foes as you dive deeper into the dungeon. Most uniquely, a built-in map-making system utilizing the touchscreen provides a thrill to those who enjoyed drawing their own graph-paper maps for RPGs decades ago.

While the second entry in the series provided few true improvements, the entire formula is receiving a substantial overhaul for the latest game. The dungeon setting this time is the high seas, meaning a somewhat different flow to exploration. As well, classes have been greatly enhanced. In addition to several new classes, a multi-class feature means even more customization of your party members is possible.

But in the end, the heart of this series is the wonder of exploring a large dungeon with a party you created from scratch. Don’t miss out on it a minute longer.

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Biggest Risk:

Cladun: This Is an RPG (PSP)
Release Date: September 21

Cladun’s crimes are very blatantly graphical. It attempts to ride the retro gravy train by displaying graphics in a style reminiscent of games from the NES or SNES era. But where Retro Game Challengeand Half-Minute Hero succeed in this regard, Cladun fails miserably. The player sprites are meant to look like 8-bit ones, but they don’t quite look right when compared to better retro games. Worse still is the fact that they appear in front of 16-bit backgrounds, a visual inconsistency that robs the game of any charm it may have been trying to gain from the style.

And the incongruity doesn’t stop at just the visual elements. The gameplay systems aren’t retro in the slightest, with complexity resembling better games from developer NIS. The core gameplay could still be fun, but the lackluster presentation makes this feel like a cheap cash grab. Plus, the title is NIS taking their patented self-awareness to its dumbest common denominator.

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Also this month:

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep (PSP)
Release Date: September 7

Kingdom Hearts gets flogged by the hardcore on a regular basis. After all, "Disney characters rubbing elbows with Square archetypes in an action RPG" is still a hard sell regardless of how well it sells in mainstream markets, and critics find the games to have repetitive action with little variety. But the many Disney worlds players have visited provide a fun thrill ride packed with fan service from both companies. 

Now that the series is coming to the PSP, that action can be enjoyed on the go. Several new systems have been grafted onto the existing template, suggesting similarities to Chain of Memories, the Game Boy Adavance side story that utilized a deck of cards for attacks. But the question is whether the new parts will be superfluous or not. Magic was pitched as a significant element in the main series, but it was largely unnecessary in most situations.

Even if the new features don’t provide satisfying variety, at least new areas like Stitch’s Hawaii will ensure the thrill-ride aspect will continue.

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Phantasy Star Portable 2 (PSP)
Release Date: September 14

Time has not been kind to the Phantasy Star Online series. Its big comeback, Phantasy Star Universe, was met with indifference and muted groans. The much-touted single player was in fact tepid and annoying, thanks in large part to the pre-existing main character Ethan Waber. Even the main draw, the multiplayer, was roundly ignored thanks to a lack of evolution and an out-of-date pricing model.

Sega tried to correct these mistakes with Phantasy Star Portable, a PSP entry that put more focus on multiplayer. The changes were largely positive and earned the game a fair amount of sales in Japan, but the exclusion of online multiplayer doomed it from ever catching on in the U.S.

The sequel looks to copy the formula of its predecessor while packing in even more content. There’s still no online multiplayer, but at least now Western players can use an ad-hoc connection to get online, though that requires a PS3. Still, one wonders if the franchise can survive when Monster Hunter usurped its throne long ago.

(Meanwhile, the rest of us are waiting for a proper sequel in the actual Phantasy Star series. Four was the best RPG on the Genesis, and we haven’t seen another entry since.)

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DeathSpank: Thongs of Virtue (XBLA/PSN)
Release Date: September 21

Didn’t we have enough déjà vu with Final Fantasy 14? Just two months after the first game’s release,DeathSpank is already getting a sequel.

That’s right. This is a sequel, not an expansion or an add-on pack. Developed in parallel with the first game, Thongs of Virtue looks to be lots more of the same, as it is reported to be 50 percent longer than the first game. One has to wonder if developer Hothead Games is going the episodic route with this series, given their experience with the Penny Arcade games.

Either way, this is good news for those who enjoyed the Diablo-like stylings of the first game.

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Atelier Rorona: The Alchemist of Arland (PS3)
Release Date: September 28

I tend to harsh on NIS around here a lot, but they’re not an irredeemably bad company. The internally-developed games tend to be worth playing, and they occasionally will land an external winner like Sakura Wars. Sadly, most of their external games are complete crap.

Developer Gust falls into the latter group for the most part, with the pandering Ar Tonelico games and the mostly-middling Atelier series -- save forthe firstAtelier Iris game, with its engaging item creation system, charming sprite-based visuals, and solid battle system. The fact that they lost the plot with the two sequels is ten kinds of heartbreaking.

Luckily, Atelier Rorona looks to be more ambitious. It mixes traditional RPG battles and exploration with visual-novel-style sequences and item creation. The passage of time also plays a part, though sections with time limits may grate.

Still, it’s nice to see Gust being so ambitious. And the game is just plain gorgeous, proving they can handle polygons as well as sprites. This might be the first Atelier game in a long time that’s worth a look.

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The rest:

Korean MMO is releasing an expansion calledAssault on Balaurea, which includes additional lands, increased level caps, and new pet characters. In other words, your bog-standard MMO expansion.

The more interesting expansion is SpellForce 2: Faith in Destiny, an expansion to a game that attempted to fuse the real-time strategy game and the RPG, which is worth looking at for the simple fact that you can count the games that try that on one hand.

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