First Impressions of Final Fantasy XIII-2, Asura's Wrath, and Bastion

As a break from the routine of reviewing games, which I have been assembling a backlog of, I decided to give my first impressions on a couple of games.  Two of them are demos that hit the Xbox Live Marketplace on 10/1/12, the other one is a critically acclaimed indie hit that was universally praised, but I beg to differ.  Now there will not be scores, mostly because I don’t like giving a numerical value towards a brief experience.  Hit the jump and and Just Go For It!

 Before I begin, I would like to say that I will no longer be posting images on the site, mostly because Blogger has an awful interface when it comes to posting pictures, or perhaps it's just with Macs.

Let’s talk about Final Fantasy XIII-2.  The segment opens with a boss fight of sorts where you fight a giant hand and see the new combat system.  You now have only two main party members from what I can tell, each of them have access to all of the classes from the first game.  I actually really like this, you have all the classes right from the get-go and can develop your characters in whatever way you want.  It is very reminiscent of Final Fantasy II , where you have a trio of blank states and interchanging a fourth party member with one who has a designated class.  That fourth character is also in XIII-2 in the form of monsters who you can capture and develop.  

They have a limited level and they only have one class, so you’d end up changing your team often and it helped the demo remain very fresh.  They also upped the difficulty, namely in how the characters feel a lot weaker, but combat is assisted by the Healer class and it does not feel as if you are missing MP and it feels more natural to use magic without reprecussion, as apposed to Final Fantasy XIII.  Oh, and there are quicktime events done during cutscenes and for some special moves that your captured monsters can perform.  The problem being that they often are either to fast to complete in due time, or the movements seem to be random.

The area I was in also felt very lively compared to Final Fantasy XIII, no more hallways, you can actually talk to people, and quests exist outside of one area.  However, the bits and pieces of the plot worry me.  It seems to just be more of the same, except time travel is involved.  While I do believe that time travel is a plot device that can be used well, if the same writing staff from Final Fantasy XIII is working on it, I can only assume that it will be far, far worse.

I also noticed a change in the music’s tone, with a lot more rock and a lot less ambiance.  Although, you may not be able to tell this due to a character who spouts pseudo-philosophical crap while you’re just walking around.  It breaks the mood, but with the odd art style and music combination it is hard to even establish one.  Both of them are good, but so are frosting and pizza.  Two great things mixed together don’t taste always great together.  
Overall, the base gameplay seems very enjoyable, while the aesthetics are a mix of both good and bad aspects, I’d recommend playing the demo, but don’t expect for it to set your world on fire.




Asura’s Wrath is a game where you blow up gods who are bigger than earth by punching them.  Such insanity is a spectacle, with the most outrageous Dragon-Ball-Z-like battles being the norm, except here it not longer takes 3 hours to finish a single fight, it’s more like one 15 minute badass battle after another, constantly topping itself every time.  It is amplified by unique character design and very nice graphics and animations.  

The gameplay is oddly done, about half the fight scene that is the entire game from what I can tell, is quicktime events, except hell has frozen over, because a developer actually made them fun to perform.  This is due to the button and stick movements corresponding to to the actions you Asura, the playable character, does.  Rapidly press B to punch a lot or push something back, with your six metallic arms, move the sticks to grab things, and press Y to either dodge or use a more powerful punch.  

The non Quicktime gameplay includes a sort of Wild Guns like shooter scene.  I guess I would describe it as a 2D third person shooter, either way it’s fun, but seems fairly underdeveloped.  It could be that this was an early level and you’ll get more toys to play with, but there isn’t really anything bad about it, other than the fact that Asura rarely uses projectiles out of this scene, and never in the show cutscenes, so what’s the point?

The other form is as standard third person action game where you dodge and punch thing, while keeping you enemy’s giant health bar lower than your giant health bar.  It is not all that unique, with the exception of a recovery button press that you can do whenever you are hit or sent through the air.  It remains jolly good thing, but maybe that’s because the location of this gameplay section is the bloody moon!  

This is the kind of game that from an actual game point seems underwhelming, but the insanity of it all makes it fun at worth playing.  I doubt it will justify a $60 purchase though, and it’s story seems generic after you take away the 56 pounds manly drama that the game is filled with like a jelly in a doughnut.  But this is a game where the earth gets impaled by a sword, so to hell with all of your logic.


Bastion
After receiving glowing reviews and numerous awards, I was expecting to love Bastion, and I really, really don’t.  My first problem revolves around the art style, while I do like the world that constantly builds itself and is made mostly of squares, the actual style seems like it was ripped from a well done browser based RPG.  Not to say that it’s bad, just bland.  My eyes gloss over it and just look for things to break, but I can never tell if I’m annoying the game designers by doing that, because it feels like I only have partial control over my character, I feel like I only physically control him while his mind operates from the narrative.  Now I am fine with this done in most games, but when you are trying to be artsy and merge story and gameplay together, I must complain.  

Speaking of which, the story is actually given to you while you are bashing monsters from an overhead perspective and observing a destroyed world.  The problem with the environments and how they are once destroyed stems from the fact that I have no idea what they are suppose to look like.  A ruined city means something because you know what it should look like, I haven’t the slightest idea what the artist pictured for the normal villages.  The art, while gorgeous to some degree, tends to repeat itself all the time, there are only about 6 enemies in the majority of the game, and the area designer didn’t place as much emotion into the environments as the story tries to.

Speaking of the story, I have to say that is is really good, it sends a small child who had a hard life through a world that is destroying itself in this thing called the Calamity.  You need to take the remnants of the world and build a Bastion for some sort of new world.  But what is interesting it that it is all delivered by a single, wonderfully voiced character and holds a lot of depth onto itself.
Perhaps I just dislike how serious the game takes itself, when I’m not used to taking the gameplay it uses very seriously at all.  I tend to expect catchy music, while this game favors a more atmospheric soundtrack.  And there is nothing wrong with that, but it tends to clash with gameplay, where you fight 40 enemies at once.  

Bastion seems like is a mix of good ideas, but as I said with Final Fantasy XIII-2, they don’t always blend well.  I do realize that the fact that this is a game is a big deal to some people, but I think it would make a better art heavy motion comic than a game.  I just don’t get the big deal with this game, I will eventually beat it, but for now, goodbye until next week, where I’ll review the Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning demo and Mass Effect 1.