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So I played Mugen Souls, and while the mechanics were fun, the character design - and associated
moe exploitation - were a little too much for me. I needed to scale it back a bit. Sure,
I could dig into any Dragon Quest game for a steaming slice of Akira Toriyama, but I
just wasn’t feeling it. I would’ve indulged in some Shigenori Soejima art, but that would
mean either starting to play Persona 3 or 4 again, or coming to grips with the fact
that you can’t really play a good rushdown Chie on 10 minutes of practice a week. And
then I found Growlanser: Wayfarer of time, an interesting little real-time-ish RPG for
the PSP that looked.. well, straight out of the mid-90’s. A little less Spice + Wolf,
a little more Record of Lodoss War. Fitting, because this game’s all about war, and being
a mercenary, and then huge angels coming down from the sky and blowing everything up, and
really well-animated cutscenes.
You play as a standard mysterious orphan adopted by a mercenary outfit, raised in the context
of combat, as per the usual. Everything’s going fine, until some opposing army calls
down THE WRATH OF GOD and manages to scuttle an entire continent, forcing your troop to
*** and eventually disband in favor of directly investigating the disturbance. These angels
are here to erase technological progress, after all, and you have to fight for your
right to 400 cable channels. Or something. And then this assassin kills everyone except
you and the creepy kid what follows you around, so you traverse some ruins, find objects only
you can see (including save points, how pragmatic), and then proceed to bleed from the back, pass
out, and... get drafted. This is certainly from the old school of RPGs, where plot runs
fast and heavy and no one’s life is sacred. However, rather than your standard “line
up and swing” mechanics, you engage in combat through an intuitive - though still complex
- real-time system that blends tactical elements with timing. For example, you want to move
somewhere? Straight lines are for chumps. You can draw your course using a three-node
system, for optimal maneuverability.
Slick as this combat system is, though, it has its drawbacks. For example, casting takes
FOREVER. Not just from a tactical standpoint, either: I’ve clocked some spell animations
- for basic spells, mind - at almost 20 seconds. That’s way too long. Also, while the ring-and-spellstone-centric
ability advancement system is a heck of a lot of fun - almost reminiscent of that Materia
system everyone seems to love so much - I found it a bit tough to parse if you only
have the in-game documentation at your disposal. Also, make sure you’ve got plenty of time
on your hands, because the scope of this game is freakin’ HUGE. Almost every dialog prompt
gives you at least three, and sometimes up to six possible responses, letting you choose
to be the stoic, Squall-style ellipsis-spewing jerkface, OR an emotionally functional human
being. It’s your choice, and there’s an ending for either preference. And about 38
others. Better put on some coffee.