Kat Bailey
Articles by Kat Bailey
Vita and 3DS give RPGs a chance to shine at E3
This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs has to offer. Next week, representatives from Nintendo and Sony will take the stage at E3 with the goal of fostering excitement for the Vita and 3DS. When it comes time for the sizzle reels and the assurances of publisher support, watch closely. For Japanese RPG developers, the time is now to make a splash.By any measure, Japanese-developed RPGs play an important role on mobile devices dedicated to gaming. It's not just that Monster Hunter dominated the PSP. Many of the best Japanese-developed RPGs of the past few years, The World Ends With You and Dragon Quest IX among them, have been handheld. With the 3DS exploding in Japan, there's little reason to believe that will change any time soon.
Among Japanese developers, Sting quietly thrives
This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs has to offer. In late 2008, Sony released the PSP-3000, giving me the perfect excuse to finally pick one up. When I got home later that day, I did what anyone with a new system does – I started downloading demos.Yggdra Union was among that early handful of downloads. I picked it because I liked the art style, not knowing what I was getting into. I soon discovered Yggdra Union is quite the complicated strategy RPG. There are different character types, and there are cards that dictate movement and status effects, and positioning matters too. And it didn't help that I was trying to play it in its native Japanese (though I eventually relented and found an English copy).As I later discovered, Yggdra Union is the rule rather than the exception to Sting Entertainment's ... unique design sensibilities. Almost every modern Sting RPG has some sort of interesting twist on the traditional RPG formula. Riviera: The Promised Land is part dating sim and part menu-driven point-and-click adventure, for example. Knights in the Nightmare is a strategy RPG, but it also has sequences in which you must guide a tiny wisp while avoiding a hail of bullets. Rather than simply going with what works, or the cheapest alternative, Sting has traditionally been extremely experimental, and its reward has been a small but fervent fanbase.%Gallery-152941%
Great Moment: Climbing Final Fantasy IV's Mt. Ordeals
This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs has to offer. I find Cecil interesting, which is not something I can say for many other video game protagonists. For instance, he's in a solid, mature relationship with a strong woman right off the bat. And from the very beginning, he's grappling with a clear moral dilemma--break his oath and step down or continue slaughtering innocents in the name of the Empire? It's evident that Cecil has a lot in his mind right from the beginning, which is all the more impressive for the fact that he's only a tiny 16-bit sprite.In fact, there was a lot going on with Final Fantasy IV's story in general. The cast is huge, and the heroic sacrifices and heroic twists almost constant. But the best moment happens early on, when Cecil climbs Mt. Ordeals with the twin mages Palom and Porum in a quest to shed his darker half and become a Paladin.
The creative maturity of Hironobu Sakaguchi's Last Story
There must be a fascinating behind-the-scenes story as to how XSEED managed to get a hold of the localization rights for The Last Story. Ordinarily, Nintendo has a death grip on the rights to its games: If they don't localize it, no one does. XSEED, for their part, say they "got lucky."The Last Story is the most recent RPG by Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, as well as the natural companion to Xenoblade Chronicles, which arrived last month. Both headlined last year's Operation Rainfall petition, along with Pandora's Tower, forever joining them at the hip. Much like Monolith Soft's opus Chronicles, Sakaguchi seems determined to say something new about the genre he once helped create.%Gallery-107120%
Why Xenoblade Chronicles represents the past, present, and future of Japanese gaming
This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs has to offer. If you want to know where Xenoblade Chronicles came from, you need only look toward two sources. There's Monster Hunter, which is the inspiration for seemingly every modern JRPG from Dragon Quest IX to more blatant knockoffs like God Eater. And there are MMORPGs, which have come to exercise a great deal of influence over Japanese gaming culture as a whole.Xenoblade Chronicles, and Monster Hunter too, are like this for a reason. Work and school start early and end late in Japan, and any time at home is usually either devoted to the family, or sleeping. Many gamers have migrated to manga cafes, which have been dominated by MMORPGs like Lineage for about a decade now. MMOs have in turn influenced loot-centric cooperative handheld games like Monster Hunter, which serve as the other alternative for busy students and salarymen.This trend presents a dilemma for Japanese developers. Japan simply can't get enough Monster Hunter and its ilk, which is all the more reason for developers to keep cranking them out. Global audiences, however, have been slow to embrace co-op RPGs. That's where Xenoblade Chronicles comes in – an RPG with all the trappings of an MMO or a Monster Hunter, but wrapped in a traditional, single-player JRPG.%Gallery-152491%
Rethinking the JRPG protagonist
This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs has to offer. It's been more than a decade now, but I'm pretty sure my favorite JRPG protagonist is Lenneth Valkyrie of Valkyrie Profile.Lenneth stands out to me not just as a strong leading lady, but as a professional. She spends much of the game recruiting the world's most fearsome warriors, and she's not afraid to condemn those she doesn't like to the Nordic version of hell. Not even a love interest -- the comparatively wimpy Lucian -- is enough to dull her edge.In the succeeding years since the original Valkyrie Profile, I've mostly been disappointed by the leading men and women of JRPGs. From Final Fantasy XIII's Lightning to Valkyrie Profile: Silmeria's Alicia, relatively empty archetypes have become the order of the day. It's no wonder critics are so consistently down on the genre.I wonder though if we can't build a better JRPG protagonist ourselves, using Lenneth as a baseline. Given the opportunity, here are some other characteristics I might borrow from other JRPG heroes through the ages.
Building the Mt. Rushmore of Japanese RPG devs
This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs has to offer. Here's a question for you: if you were building a Mt. Rushmore for Japanese RPG developers, who would be on it? I'm partly borrowing this idea from sportswriter Bill Simmons, who once sat down to build a "Mt. Rapmore." He, in turn, got the idea from the Internet. So no, this is not a new question, but it does help put the history of the genre in proper perspective. Personally, I love asking myself these questions, because I'm an incorrigible nerd. So let's get to work building our own shrine to JRPGs, shall we?
Yakuza: Dead Souls review: What a twist!
I've got to hand it to Yakuza: Dead Souls. It resurrects an old antagonist with a prosthetic gun-arm, unleashes a zombie apocalypse on Tokyo and still manages to take itself seriously. The only real difference between Dead Souls and Yakuza 4 is some thoroughly mediocre gunplay and, well, the living dead.It's not a terrible idea when it comes down to it. Half the fun is seeing how Yakuza's eclectic cast deals with being recast in what amounts to a Resident Evil game. It has resident psychopath Goro Majima waging a one-man war against the undead horde. It has Kazuma Kiryu punching out a zombie for heaven's sake. It's all good fun, particularly for existing fans of the series.%Gallery-135830%
Final thoughts from GDC: How JRPGS can dance to Reisuke Ishida's beat
This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs has to offer. For all the discussion about the dire straits the Japanese game industry finds itself in, my lasting image of GDC 2012 will be of a Japanese developer who got so excited about his projects that he literally started dancing at his podium.That developer was Taito's Reisuke Ishida (Space Invaders Infinity Gene), and he was in town to host a talk titled simply, 'Five Techniques for Making an Unforgettable Game.' No self-flagellation about the declining quality of Japanese gaming here; just Ishida running between the two screens on either side of his podium as he danced to the trailer of Groove Coaster. I find Reisuke Ishida's enthusiasm for the craft infectious, to say the least.
These games inspired Cliff Bleszinski, John Romero, Will Wright, and Sid Meier
Everyone in the industry has a story about their formative experiences with video games, but Jon-Paul Dyson, the director of the International Center for the History of Electronic Games, was a bit more blunt than most."Great artists don't borrow. They steal," Dyson said, borrowing a quote from Pablo Picasso as he introduced Wil Wright, Sid Meier, John Romero, and Cliff Bleszinski. Speaking in front of a packed house at GDC, the four industry luminaries shared the games that inspired them as creators, and continue to influence them today.
Capcom's Kawata on bringing Resident Evil back to its roots on 3DS
When a new platform hits the market, designers inevitably start thinking about how to exploit all of the new possibilities at their disposal. For producer Masachika Kawata, it was a chance to take Resident Evil back to its roots. "We all agreed that, this time around, we wanted to make a scary Resident Evil similar to the original," Kawata said during a GDC talk that broke down the development of the recent 3DS survival horror game. That might bring a slightly rueful smile to the faces of longtime fans. Resident Evil 4 gets a lot of love among mainstream gamers and critics; but by admitting that he wanted to make a "scary" game, Kawata seems to be tacitly admitting what many older fans have felt for a while now -- Resident Evil had become an action series.
What can Japanese RPG developers learn from Rayman: Origins?
This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs has to offer. I wish more Japanese RPGs were like Rayman: Origins.Alright, I'll give you a moment to wrap your brain around that statement, then I'll explain. As most of you know, Rayman: Origins is a completely beautiful platformer that captures everything that is great about the genre -- precise controls, expansive levels, and high challenge. It's at the forefront of the genre's mini-renaissance, which has been ongoing for a few years now.I want all that for Japanese RPGs. More to the point, I think that it can happen, if only an enterprising publisher or developer were to pick up the baton.At the moment, I think there's something of a taboo against the classic form, at least among the larger developers. Even Dragon Quest -- long the bastion of reliability -- has been shaking things up with its multiplayer innovations. The unspoken mandate is that the genre must evolve or die.
So far, so good: Why the Vita rises where the PSP fell
When my PS Vita arrived the middle of last week, I had no intention of buying any games for it.Of course, it didn't work out that way. As soon as I got my Vita all set up, I logged into the PlayStation Store to download some PSP games that I had already purchased. Moments later, I had Rayman: Origins and Super Stardust Delta as well. It was the rare triple whammy: a credit card, a new game system, and an easily accessible online store.Originally, the Vita was an impulse purchase. A system that I could use for work and write off on my taxes. Now though, I wonder if Sony might finally be on to something here.To better understand where the Vita is today, it would help to look back at the PSP's launch.Seven years ago, I walked into a store and asked if I could see one of the then-new PlayStation Portables. I had been skeptical to that point, but I'm as much a technophile as any gamer. I needed to hold a PSP in my hands. Finally I had my chance to get hands-on at a retail store. If I had tried out Lumines or Wipeout Pulse, I might have been more impressed. Instead, I was playing Twisted Metal: Head-On, a muddy brown game with irritating load times that looked like it was trying but failing to be a PS2 title. I put the PSP away and never looked back.
When Genres Collide: Why Devil Survivor 2 works so well (and Namco x Capcom doesn't)
This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs has to offer. One of the dullest strategy RPGs ever made is Namco x Capcom, a forgotten Japan-only release for the PlayStation 2 in 2005. Playing the crossover was about as exciting as banging your head against the wall -- the two activities are equally repetitive.The reason it fails so completely is paradoxically the very reason that it looks so appealing in trailers: the active, combo-based combat. Namco x Capcom's combat isn't too bad at first, but it quickly becomes a series of using the same combos again and again, across maps that take ages to clear out. I've had math tests that were more fun. But now we have Devil Survivor 2, which manages to succeed in every way that Namco x Capcom's battle system failed.The key here is that, as far as I can tell, Devil Survivor is the only SRPG spinoff that retains some semblance of what made the original so popular in the first place. Now hear me out before you start typing that angry comment. Final Fantasy Tactics is a fine strategy RPG, but it has much more in common with Tactics Ogre than most mainline Final Fantasy games (Final Fantasy XII notwithstanding). Replace the jobs with more generic classes, switch out the Chocobos for horses, and you'd hardly know the difference.It's easy enough, I suppose, to shoehorn an existing universe into the basic framework provided by the likes of Tactics Ogre. But speaking the language of the genre without sacrificing the spirit of the original game is considerably harder. That's why I'm so impressed with Devil Survivor and its sequel, which manage to translate the battle system of a traditional RPG into an SRPG setting without missing a beat. Just how impressed was I by Devil Survivor 2, specifically? Just read my review to find out.%Gallery-149047%
Devil Survivor 2 review: Neon Genesis strategy
If you need any proof that Japan is still madly in love with Neon Genesis Evangelion, you need look no further than Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor 2. Both show, if anything, that gifted teens, massive supernatural monsters, and religious symbolism remain enduring tropes in Japanese pop culture.If you want to know the truth, I don't mind that it borrows so liberally from Hideaki Anno's seminal anime. It's just a reminder that Shin Megami Tensei is designed with a certain demographic in mind -- the kind of people who went through the trouble to see Rebuild of Evangelion in the theaters. People like me, if you want to know.%Gallery-149047%
Persona 3, Tactics Ogre, and other PSP RPGs that will live on my Vita
This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs have to offer. A PlayStation Vita will be arriving on my doorstep some time on Thursday. It will be arriving courtesy of Amazon rather than Sony, in case you're wondering, so I did in fact spend money on the thing. I do not, however, plan to purchase any games for it. At least not yet.As I perused the list of PSP games available for download, I realized that I already had quite a few titles to choose from. So rather than try to justify spending money on Lumines or Uncharted -- both fine games but not my cup of tea -- I decided I would revisit some of my favorite PSP RPGs on the Vita's big, beautiful screen.It's really a pity the PSP never experienced the renaissance over here that it did in Japan, since it means quality RPGs like Valkyria Chronicles 3 may never be localized. It's only thanks to XSEED that Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky ever saw the light of day in the US, as well as Vanillaware's coming North American launch for Grand Knights History. A select few have made it stateside, and I'm happy to see them available on PSN. Here are the ones that will be making their way to my Vita, and to yours as well, I hope.
Do Japanese RPGs need good stories?
This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs have to offer. I'm going to sum up all of the cliches about Final Fantasy XIII in one sentence: "The battle system is pretty good, but the story is laughable." Gamasutra's Christian Nutt even went so far as to compare the direction of the series to the Star Wars prequels. I wish I could disagree. For all that though, I'm willing to stick out Final Fantasy XIII-2's jaunt through time and space, banal anime archetypes and all. Whenever one of the cutscenes pop up, I just go and check my email. Either that, or I pick up a book. It's mostly the battles that keep me going. I'm also a big fan of putting hats on monsters, and Final Fantasy XIII-2 has that in spades. The dirty secret is that I've always been more fascinated by RPG battle systems than the story within the game. In many ways, a character's mechanical growth is a story in and of itself. When the game begins, your character is a scrub with a wooden sword and a few potions. By the end, they can call down comets from the heavens and instigate supernovas. That's what I call a character arc.
Warp: From a hypothetical question to an interesting puzzle game
Warp is one of those instances in which one "What if" question has blossomed into an entire game. In this case, the question is, "What if we had the power to teleport through objects at will? Wouldn't that be cool?" Yes, I do think it's pretty cool, even if I'd rather be able to forgo the twelve hour flight to Europe than warp around my house. But then, I'm not in a Martian lab desperately trying to escape annihilation, in which case I imagine even short-range teleportation would be preferable to nothing at all. That's the premise of Warp, though that wasn't the case from the beginning. "The inception point had nothing to do with stealth," Trapdoor founder Ken Schacter told me during the demo. "Our prototype was a cylinder where we just played around with warping."
Why Soul Calibur Still (Quietly) Burns After More than a Decade
Soul Calibur has always been the everyman fighter. Of all the major fighting game series on the market, Soul Calibur is the game that you would probably feel most comfortable playing with your non-gaming friends or significant other. And a lot of that has to do with the weapons.The Soul series wasn't the first fighting game to feature weapons, of course. In the early days of the genre, Samurai Shodown distinguished itself with its detailed sprites, gore, and katanas. Battle Arena Toshinden, meanwhile, distinguished itself as the first 3D weapons fighter, close to a year before the original Soul Edge hit the arcades.Soul Edge, for its part, was Namco's way of testing uncharted waters. It was positioned as an alternative to Tekken and Virtua Fighter, which dominated 3D fighting at that time, and its weapons were a big part of its appeal. Apart from feeling smoother than the stiff Tekken, the strategic concept of weapon range was more intuitive than the combo-heavy 3D fighters that had preceded it.The reason it's so easy to understand is that the concept is built into the visual vocabulary of the game. When you look at Siegfried, you see a large knight with a gigantic blade. It's instantly apparent that he has longer reach than, say, the lightweight ninja Taki. And a good player knows how to put that advantage to good use, or to minimize it in its turn.Today, Soul Edge is largely forgotten outside of a small cadre of dedicated fans, but it did its part to lay down the foundation for the series by introducing the story as well as familiar characters like Mitsurugi. Soulcalibur V director Daishi Odashima certainly seems to have some affection for the original game. He even argued in favor of naming the upcoming sequel "Soul Edge 2," but was overruled.
Building a better game in Shank 2
For insight on how to develop a successful game, you need only look to Klei Entertainment CEO Jamie Cheng's approach to Shank 2. Aware that the main knock against the first game was its repetition, Cheng and the rest of the development team decided to rethink their approach to the design."When we started work on Shank, we had never built a brawler or fighting game before," Cheng told me. "We tried to provide the best scenario possible, but when we looked at the game as a whole, we realized that a lot of the scenarios tended to repeat themselves."As a result, Cheng said, the team decided to take a more holistic approach to the design of Shank 2. Enemies have been designed in such a way that they can't be defeated using the same tactics, and the mechanics have been tweaked. Blocking, meanwhile, has been removed entirely, which makes the combat flow even better and helps emphasize dodge rolls and the new counters.