Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Phantasy Star Impressions: Real Logic vs. Game Logic

I've spent a lot of time describing the story and what I've done in the game, but I feel like I haven't said anything about the game itself. There are basically four or five different screens in the game, a field or world view, a town view (both of which are seen from a top down perspective), the dungeon view, battle view, and a menu view. The battle and menu are very similar, as is the view used when speaking to NPCs; the last three are all a first-person perspective, with commands on the left side and quick character stats along the bottom. Dungeons have a 3D effect when moving through them, which is noted as the most technically impressive part of the game along with the enemy animations for each attack.
Not impressed? You should see it action.
Like most games of this time there's no tutorial; a player during this era is lucky to get any kind of back story in the game itself before given control. Here we get some reason for going out to explore, and a short term goal, but no explanation on what the menu options are used for. This is all explained in the manual to a point; however, a lot is left to player to discover through trial and error.

An example is the talk command, which isn't used to talk to people in town; it's used to try to talk to enemies in battle (the option is only available in battle). However, this command is useful so infrequently that I had completely forgotten about it during my fight with Dr. Mad where it might have actually worked. Even with that in mind at the time, I probably would not have used it because it takes up the entire party's turn for that round. There are spells that Myau and Noah get to communicate with a wider variety of enemies (Chat and Tele respectively), but they also take a full turn away from everyone. With no way to recover MP in the field, I'm not about to use these spells loosely.
Ooo~! New spell! Tele... port?
Most random encounters will end by mashing the button to select attack. Spells are limited (so far only 2 damage spells and two defense spells), and with few magic points to cast them I find it best to save them all for healing or boss fights. Each character has a set number of MP, and each spells takes a certain amount. That amount isn't displayed anywhere though, so how do we know how much a spell costs? Cast it, and then write it down.

I've run across this before in other games. Trial and error is the norm, and back in the day I would play following these steps: save, try something, and reload if I didn't like it. It's how these games trained me to play. This brings me to a point about learning a game because as players we need to put real world logic aside, and re-learn how things work using the game's logic. Reading about it in the manual is one way (not that much fun), a tutorial that explains it all is another (tiny bit more fun than a manual, or boring if we already know), and trial and error (fun or frustrating) is the fallback. The problem is game developers expected players to have the manual, which wasn't always the case.
I've always wanted a Laser Sled!
A good example of game logic is determining if a sword in the shop is better than the axe I have in my hand. In most simple games one can assume that the more expensive item is better. However, to truly know, we'd need to buy it and try it. This goes for items that have no (or a confusing) description in the shop as well. What does it do? Let's buy it and see. Why do the actions save, buy, try, reload seem like a reasonable solution for designers of this time? I can only think of two reasons: increasing time spent in the game (spent all your money on an item that you don't need, go grind more money), or an attempt to infuse a sense of mystery and discovery. Either way, lingering questions are left unanswered.

In Phantasy Star, it follows the logic that more expensive things have a higher attack or defense, and this is confirmed if we check character stats when equipping each weapon and armor. The abbreviations can make this difficult when I'm looking at the type of thing an item is, but it mostly works. However, there's only way to tell who can use a piece of equipment, try to equip it. A perfect example is a Glove in the weapon shop. Who can use this? I'm not entirely sure, and the only way to find out is for me to buy it and see. Possibly it's a studded glove for Odin to attack with, or replaces his shield, or maybe it's for Noah, or it's an item I need for a later quest, or... who knows. At 3000 mesetas, it's not exactly an easy buy at this point without knowing more.
Just one?
It's inevitable that games are a learning experience. There's ultimately no way around this; I don't believe there should be one. The experience is what makes the game fun, and the game showing that we've learned something is positive reinforcement that our actions are correct. Making uninformed decisions is not fun for me, and trial & error aspects of games aren't much better. As a player, I look forward to decisions where I know the expected outcome; even if it's a rogue-like game where every item is random each time, I'd like to know there's a possibility that I'm holding a scroll of character death or invulnerability. Text is at a premium with older games, so I understand how descriptions get truncated, but with random NPCs telling me useless facts, I'm less forgiving when spells don't list the MP cost or equipment use is left up to the imagination. I guess it comes down to if the decision has risks (will set me back in some way) I'd like to know what the risk is, and the rewards.

13 comments:

  1. I have a problem with games that gives you a bunch of stats, but don't really clearly explain what they do. For example: Tourchlight. You get a Damage per Second rating at the top, but then below it there is a bunch of other stuff. Are those damages included in the dps rating? Or are they on top of that?

    Additionally the game doesn't give you a 'final' rating once you've got other stuff equipped. So you may not notice that if you put a super fast high dps weapon and a slow axe in your other, the fast weapon will become worthless as it slows down to match speed with your axe!

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    1. Your DPS is how much damage your weapon does divided by its speed or something like that. Also, the lack of accounting for dual wielding speeds *is* a bit of a pain and hopefully something they fix in Torchlight 2, whenever that's finished.

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    2. But does it count elemental damage and such? Bonuses from other items?

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  2. That sounds really annoying. It'd almost be better to just hide the stats and have the player figure out since that's what they'll most likely be doing anyway.

    I too have a beef with stats that aren't clear, and the luck stat in most games falls into this category. Most descriptions are, "enhances luck..." Really? I couldn't have guessed.

    I'll keep this in mind as something to point out. Most of these early games only have strength and defense though, and next to no equipment decisions.

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  3. This is a really great post Zenic that goes into detail about how seemingly ridiculous player expectations just become the norm in any given era of gaming. I've never played a Sega or Nintendo game in my life, but I can still appreciate the challenges you're facing due to my experiences on other platforms. Good stuff, well written!

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  4. Thanks for the compliment, I really appreciate it. I feel conflicted though by pulling you away from your blog or playing time. ;)

    I'm glad you're enjoying it, please continue to critique and give me feedback. I truly do take it to heart.

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  5. This is why I feel no shame in checking lists on gamefaqs; they've already done the work for me, so why risk wasting money and time? Also, I think there are very specific places at which the various talk options work and are needed for the plot.

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  6. The manual clearly states that Glove is a special item only for Myau. I know modern gamers think of manuals as ridiculous anachronisms and despise reading, but please criticize games for what they are, not what you think they should be.

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    1. On the contrary, I read the manual whenever available. I couldn't find one for this title, so I was left to interpret the game on its own. I'm not always fortunate to get the games complete, and in this case it was part of a compilation (Sonic's Ultimate Genesis Collection), which doesn't include the manual. So, I believe my criticism of the game as it was released in this iteration isn't without merit (unless I missed a digital manual hidden in another menu).

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  7. IMO you should blame persons responsible for not including the manual in the compilation instead the game creators. I don't think the product has been selling without the manual originally.

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    1. This post wasn't meant to blame anyone about a lack of a manual. It was to discuss the general points with examples from the game I was playing at the time. There are better examples of this where even with the manual a game takes a lot of guess work.

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  8. When I played and loved Phantasy Star back in the game, finding out what everything cost and what it did was part of the exploration process, much like mapping the dungeons, and felt like intended gameplay.

    If I was coming on the game fresh, without nostalgia, though, it would likely infuriate me for the 15 seconds or so to pull a webpage that had the answers.

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    1. I guess I'm one of the weird ones that still enjoys probing a game for answers rather than being fed them.

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