The Legendary Zelda

With the rerelease of several classic N64 Zelda titles on the 3DS, I haven’t been able to help reminiscing about my past with that system. The N64 was a vital bridge of the gap between retro and modern gaming for a lot of people, including me, and the Zelda games available for that system were integral to that transition. I got my N64 simultaneously with the release of the Ocarina of Time, knowing that I could no longer put off the inevitable. Anyone who knows me knows that Zelda titles are must haves for me. Looking at the N64 after I unboxed it was vastly confusing to someone who was used to the Super Nintendo. The way you held the controller…so bizarre! But I soldiered on, my mother watching indulgently as I shoved my golden Ocarina of Time cartridge into my new N64 and got ready to hack and slash away. You can imagine how surprised I was when I stopped staring at the opening sequence in awe and got down to the nuts and bolts of the game. It was nothing like any game I had ever played before, even ones with Zelda in the title.

I spoke of this particular afternoon to my mother a while back, and she asked me to be more specific about it, as she has watched me play dozens of games. I reduced what was an amazing experience for me to a vague statement about climbing a huge tree to kill a giant spider. Given that we both suffer from arachnophobia, I figured that she would remember it. Her eyes brightened immediately and she smiled. That should have been my first warning. She said, “Oh, I remember that game. That was the one where I watched you fall on your face for an hour straight.”

It’s rather disconcerting to know that after all these years, one of the most poignant memories of my gaming youth could be condensed to that. Not my first moments riding a horse, not my hefting the Master Sword, not even beating the game. It’s also quite true. Despite the fact that I have tried to excise this memory from my brain over the years, my first moments in the 64 bit era were horrifying. Having a witness to my first tentative forays into such an open world was not, perhaps, my best idea ever. I remember being awed by the sheer scope of the land around me, which is almost laughable considering the size of the game worlds available today. My depth perception in this brand new world was nonexistent, and I fell more times than I can count. I can’t hear Link’s landing grunt without cringing. I walked through every room tentatively, like a kid trying to sneak out of the house when they know they’re grounded, afraid that a creaking floorboard will give them away. Attacking was nerve-wracking, and jumping was downright terrifying.

As someone who has beaten the Ocarina of Time at least half a dozen times since then, I find this kind of nervousness in the first dungeon humorous, but ultimately understandable. It was present when I first played Super Mario Brothers. It was present when I played my first game on the current generation of systems. The AI is smarter, the controls more precise, but I am the same old me, which means that I need to up my game. All modern handholding aside, the need to adapt is still the same, and in the beginning we are all fish out of water. Some of us are just more ridiculous looking than others, I guess, and feel the need to have an audience. Hopefully I’ve learned my lesson since then.

I haven’t given much love to the N64 on this blog, which is a shame, particularly due to the fact that it had such a profound impact on my life as a gamer. This transitional experience was important, if not more than a little embarrassing. Not only did this system help pave the path between retro and modern gaming for me, it also possessed one of my top five favorite games. Yes, I do mean the Ocarina of Time. I look back on it now as one of the very few games that I have ever played that may very well have attained perfection. I do not say that lightly. Hopefully the people who are reading this have gotten a chance to play the Ocarina of Time on the N64 back in the day. If not, why are you still reading this? You clearly have more important things that you need to be doing.

If you feel like hearing more of my gaming prattle, feel free to follow me on Twitter. You can find me at @bejiita_buruma

A Good Novel

The inimitable Jane Austen once wrote that ‘the person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid’. Being a fan of books in general, I have always considered this to be one of the truest statements ever made by man. Given that JRPGs are, in essence, interactive books, it should therefore come as no surprise that I like them. Their popularity in the west is, unfortunately, more of a recent phenomenon. Suffering from bad translations and even worse PR, the JRPG has only recently received due recognition by an English speaking audience. This particular post has been churning in my brain for days now, due to the fact that I have been working on a joint post with a non-Japanese-speaking friend of mine who is much newer to the genre than I am. The game that we were working on, which will remain nameless due to spoilers, was one of the plethora of JRPGs that was released for the Super Famicom in Japan back in the nineties. When most people hear about Super Famicom RPGs, they think of grand adventures like Final Fantasy VI or quirky cult classics like Mother 2. Rare it is that you think of SNES + RPG = bad. All that I can say is that it actually happens with as much frequency as any other genre, and it got me to thinking about JRPGs in general. What would have happened if that game had been the first JRPG that I had ever played? Would it have been the last? After coming to the conclusion that I have way too much free time on my hands, I decided to write my thoughts down, if only to give myself some peace.

Given the experience that I had with the previously mentioned mystery game, not to mention several of the bad games that I have canvassed for this blog, it wouldn’t surprise me at all that some people would wonder why I love this genre far above all others. I suppose that I love RPGs mainly because they combine two things that are very dear to my heart: reading and winning. Of course there is never enough winning to be had for my taste, but I think that that is a complaint that every gamer would make. Having discussed this particular character flaw of mine in detail in the post The Same Old Grind, I won’t go into it here again. If I’m awake, I need to be distracted, and RPGs are very good at forcing you to organize your thoughts in order to propel your way to that elusive win. Add in a bit of micromanagement without it being tedious, and you can keep my constantly churning brain busy for hours. Perhaps I just enjoy the busywork.

When asked by a friend of mine what I considered to be the ingredients to make a good RPG, my first response was likable characters, both playable and otherwise. As some of you may have noticed in previous posts, I can’t click with a game that doesn’t give me a reason to want to play it. A solid battle system comes in a close second with me. Bells and whistles are nice, but we’re talking about a good RPG, not a great one. A tricked out battle system can quickly devolve into something really irritating. Final Fantasy VIII comes quickly to mind as a game that I would have loved if the battle system had not been so very annoying. Give the likable characters an interesting path to follow in a world that seems alive and you have a good RPG by my standards. Greatness, of course, requires more than this. If you want an example, go play Chrono Trigger instead of reading this nonsense.

My love for the JRPG has been canvassed lightly here, if only to clear my head. I could spend hours rambling on about the sense of majesty created by a truly great game, how games as recent as Ni No Kuni and Tales of Xillia 2 have brought me to tears, but that would be a waste of space. Instead I’ll refer once again to my shelves of games, some twenty years old, a few twenty days. Much like novels, there are the classics, the exciting current bestsellers, and more random games than I could ever remember the stories to. Unfortunately, there are those special few games that, much like the Twilight series, I most fervently wish had never been made. But I keep all of them together in one room, in as safe a condition as is possible, in order to always know that I have the comfort of an adventure close at hand. Be they good, bad, or indifferent, JRPGs are an integral part of my life, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

If you feel like hearing more of my gaming prattle, feel free to follow me on Twitter. You can find me at @bejiita_buruma

Disk 3: Alundra (アランドラ)

Name: Alundra (アランドラ)
Type: Action RPG
Available Languages: Japanese, English

After the strangeness of our last venture, I thought that it might be nice to move back into slightly more familiar territory for a little while. We’re going to take a quick venture into one of my favorite action RPGs this time around, a marvelous game called Alundra. Whether you’re a fan of the Landstalker series or someone who loves the Legend of Zelda games, this is a game that should be played by everyone who loves action RPGs. Dark, difficult, and moving, Alundra is a game that is a pleasure to write about.

This is another game that I have played both in English and in Japanese. As always, I will recommend that you play the game in the original language if you can get it, but this one more so than usual. The company that released Alundra in the United States was often responsible for subpar translations, and this shows particularly glaringly in Alundra. In a game that is supposed to be dark and sometimes disturbing, a bad translation can be extremely jarring. So we will ignore that version entirely.

You begin the game as Alundra, the titular character and classic silent protagonist of the game. He is on a ship, being led toward his destination by a series of dreams that are calling him toward a village in trouble. You can tell this by a cut-scene of the village itself, which looks peaceful enough, but the music belies that. Creepy in the extreme, and accompanied by a disembodied scream, the dream leaves you in no doubt that something is seriously wrong there. You are soon after confronted by Meruzasu, your foe, who has no interest in seeing you meddle in his business. You awaken to the ship that you’re on being caught up in a terrible storm. It crashes, and you are thrown into the ocean. You are rescued by a man, and awaken in the village of Inoa, your original destination. The man is Anzesu, and he will be a big help to you throughout the game.

Alundra’s arrival unfortunately coincides with problems in the village. Disturbing dreams are provoking the villagers and, unlike regular nightmares, these dreams can and do kill. As the game progresses, and more and more people fall, villagers who once welcomed our hero begin to look at him with suspicion. Some support him, others point to him as being an agent of evil. Of course this isn’t enough trouble for Alundra. Another person from Erena, the clan of people who can enter dreams, arrives and begins belittling Alundra’s abilities to the locals. Then there’s the clan of murderous apes that live in the forest to the northwest that want nothing more than to wipe out the village of Inoa entirely. And they aren’t they only group of vicious creatures that want to cause trouble for the humans, either. Poor Alundra has more on his plate than your average hero.

Alundra is typical of its genre in that it offers plenty of hack and slash action and dangerous dungeons to explore. You can collect life vessels and magic seeds to improve your health and magical stats. There are many types of weapons available to you: swords, a huge ball on a chain that can break blocks and cause massive damage, bow and arrows, and several different types of magical staffs. There are multiple types of spells available for you to use as well, in four different elements: earth, water, fire, and wind, with two for each type.

This game opens up to the player rather quickly after Alundra is allowed to leave Inoa. While you may always have some destination or other in mind, you can wander all over the map, as long as you have the items available to proceed forward. Death is quite literally around every corner in this game, but exploration is the key to success in Alundra. Much like the Legend of Zelda series, much of Alundra’s stat boosting is done through items found during exploration. While some might want to try a low health run through this game, I am not one of those brave souls. I know my gaming limitations. So as you progress through the game, it would behoove you to take a look around, carefully, each time you get a new item. You never know what interesting and useful things that you might stumble across. It bears repeating that in this game, every little bit helps.

Alundra is known particularly for its wickedly difficult puzzles. Those who make it to the final dungeon will know what I mean when I say that there is a jumping puzzle there that made me want to throw my controller. I really do believe that Alundra could have benefited from the use of the analog stick, but unfortunately it was released a short time before upgraded controllers were introduced to the PlayStation. As such, you’ll be gritting your teeth and mashing the directional pad with reckless abandon throughout most of the game.

 
I find Alundra’s in game appearance and character designs to be charming, and sometimes downright cheerful looking, which in a way seems to be an almost mocking contrast to the despair that pervades the plot of the game. The music is at one moment upbeat, and at the next moment you will be rattled by a complete change of theme, always accompanied by a disturbing disembodied scream. It is an unnerving plot device that is masterfully done, and even though I have beaten this game multiple times, it never fails to make my skin crawl.

Even if you are normally not drawn toward action RPGs, I can’t recommend Alundra enough. The plot is one of the most dark and fascinating that I have ever had the pleasure of running across. It is most certainly not for children, as it pulls no punches, but it is worth a play through by an adult who likes a good story. I admit that I was rather upset by Alundra’s plight the first time that I played through this game. Characters that you have grown fond of will suddenly end up turning their backs on you, or worse, viciously murdered. No matter how hard you work, it never seems to be good enough for some of the villagers. It says a lot about a game that a player can get indignant on a character’s behalf, particularly one who never has a word to say for himself. Maybe I take my games way too seriously. Or maybe, Alundra is just that good.

If you feel like hearing more of my gaming prattle, feel free to follow me on Twitter. You can find me at @bejiita_buruma