I decided to give Xenoblade another try this weekend. It does a lot of things very well like exploration and scope but as a designer, I have a natural tendency to focus on the flaws. And one thing that particularly bothered me was how it feels like the game has complexity simply for the sake of having complexity. Consider the player’s options for character & team customization:
The player can have 3 characters in battle at a time.
Each character has 1 weapon slot and 5 armor slots.
Depending on the equipment being used, they also have up to 8 accessory (gem) slots.
Each character has 8 slots for abilities. Points can be spent to upgrade abilities (increase their power, lower cooldowns, etc.).
Characters have several passive ability trees they can choose from. Characters can also add passive abilities from other characters but only if they have enough Affinity Coins AND their affinity with that character is high enough AND the ability has the right arbitrary shape.
I look at that and think, is all this really necessary? Does the game really benefit from having up to 14 equipment slots (weapon, armor, and gems)? Couldn’t basically the same thing be achieved with say a weapon slot, 1-3 armor slots, and 1-3 accessory slot, and just make the individual pieces of equipment do more? As it is, a large percentage of the player’s time is spent in nitty-gritty min-maxing which is not helped by the game’s clunky menus. Likewise, is it really necessary to have so many rules regarding passive ability sharing? The developer could have easily just stuck with one of the rules and that would have made for a fine easy-to-understand system. Instead, you need points AND affinity AND the right shape and something that should be simple (equip passive abilities from other characters!) becomes almost hilariously complicated.
And this is just one aspect of the game. Similar instances of overcomplification can be found in other aspects like the combat. And yet despite the high level of complexity, I can’t say that the gameplay is any deeper than more straightforward RPG series like Dragon Quest, Final Fantasy, or even Shin Megami Tensei. And due to the near-constant need in Xenoblade to switch out new equipment or check and see if I should upgrade an ability, the overall pacing of the game is slowed and the story’s flow is weakened.
I understand some gamers like to pour over hundreds of stats and figure out how to break complicated systems. For that matter, sometimes I do too. However, each new system or complication you add to a game makes that game that much less user friendly. One complicated system added to a traditional RPG format can make for an interesting brain teaser. Five complicated interconnecting systems can just end up as frustrating.
Plus, something that I think developers and longtime fans of RPGs sometimes forget is that even traditional no-frills RPG gameplay can be moderately complicated just based on the scenarios & abilities presented. Great care should be taken when adding new systems. The goal should be “easy to learn, fun to master,” but so many RPGs seem to be going for “hard to learn, tedious to master.”
For the combat system, I feel like the amount that you need to dive into its complexities of min-maxing correlates highly with how far you actually want to go in the game.
If for you, beating the game means defeating the final STORY boss and just following the STORY without fighting any UMs, then you really don’t need to get too far into the combat system. You’ll have to know a vague idea of each character’s “role” in a group (which is fairly obvious once you’re at the 50+ hour time mark), you probably need to know how to level artes (which the game does a very nice job of explaining), and knowing how to gem (even only on a very basic level) would probably be helpful, but you by no means have to go into the world of affinity coins to complete the main story assuming you are a player of average skill and ability level, nor do you have to feel the innate need to update your character’s equipment every 5 minutes (unless if you’re preparing for a boss encounter).
If you would like to continue though, and you think completing the game means killing that Level 120 dragon on Three Sage Summit, then that’s a different story. To kill that dragon, most players have to use the combat system to its fullest potential (once again, assuming you are a player of average skill). You have to know not only how to gem effectively, but what gems you need to use in order to kill this boss. You have to not only know how to use affinity coins, but have to farm a fairly large number of them (which can take a while). You even may have to farm some arte manuals in order to level some critical artes (say, toppling abilities for instance) in order to succeed. The game caps you at 99 so that it FORCES you to use its complex min-maxing system (simply because… no matter HOW lucky you are or HOW good you are at this game, you can’t hit a level 120 monster in the dark as a level 99 without night vision gems).
I had a different experience myself with this game. I would say my biggest issue of two issues I have is that doing side quests was a lot more of a hassle than it really needed to be. Having quests keep opening up in towns as the game keeps going on is annoying, because a lot of towns, especially the last one on the first giant, were just a headache and a half to run around 50 times to find all the quest givers and then to turn in said quests. That was a complexity that should not of been there and made me turn the game off halfway through the second giant because I was burnt out. I am a completionist, i want everything done that I can do in my first play-through. If they had created a guild system where people brought their quests, or had people with quests have a hub they can converge on at different hours, instead of forcing me to run every single place for quests, I would of enjoyed the game 10 times more.
My other gripe is the difficulty was severely lacking in 99 percent of the game I did play through, which was probably around 85 percent of the game. The only thing that really gave me a hard time were the rare named monsters you could find. They were more fun for me than actual bosses, its a shame to say. They provided a challenge the bosses lacked.
As for the gearing, I had no problem with it. I like systems like that though. I like being able to tweak my characters as I see fit. I really liked keeping a pair of shoes with the faster walking speed gems in them to toss on when I am trying to get around. I like being able to put effects on my weapons and armor through gem slots. I always get severely annoyed when a game gives me 1 weapon slot, 1 armor slot, and 1 accessory slot. I am currently playing Mugen Souls on the PS3, and I was starting to get annoyed with its lack of customization slots, then I found a place in the game where you spend your Mugen points you build up, and listed there was the option to open up 3 or 4 more armor slots. That made me happy.
As for the group skills, well, I had an easy time with them pretty much. Sure, occasionally I would have to spend 5ish minutes setting stuff up, but then I wouldn’t have to change a thing for hours afterwards. I think the biggest reason that they did the game that way is due to their focus on character relationships. This game is half about how your characters interact with each other, and just having them get all lovey dovey with each other without any build-up would seem odd, so tying it to battle and other ways to bump up relationship points added a way of complementing the story, in my book at least.
Oh, and I absolutely loved how each character played a bit different than the other characters. If you get bored of playing one person, switch toons and you get a new fighting style to learn.
I’m kinda weird in that I really enjoy a heavily mechanically complex RPG like that frequently. I like having a lot of options I can considered to tailor my characters exactly to how I want them to play.
I can see where you’re coming from Robert. I played the game when it came out, I dropped ~250 hours into it and did literally everything I could. I regret not just playing the 40-50 hour plot and just finishing the game, because I wanted to like it, but I was thoroughly exhausted by it and the game itself just didn’t do it for me. (I have difficult to overcome OCD about completion in RPGs). At first, I also found the system overwhelming, and everything I’d been reading at Operation Rainfall made me apprehensive- I always get apprehensive about systems described as very complex. But ultimately I think the complexity is mostly superficial and works pretty well.
For the overcomplication you cite, I found some simple ways to mostly overcome it. First you really need to just decide what type of character you want each of them to be- high damage output, high defense, magic user, etc. Every character often gets several varieties of equipment (especially Seven), but most of it you can just ignore and find the equipment that is better in the area you want. The gem slots are another beast, as you have less control of how many you have, and it takes a lot to balance right since there are a lot of choices, especially late in the game. Ultimately, I did with gems like I did with equipment, I found a few I liked and stuck with them (unless specific areas or bosses called for a change). And the skill trees and having others borrow skills was a pretty cool feature, but I thought was the most time-consuming and difficult to do. Once you really get the hang of it all though, you can invent some very brutal tactics like Topple-locking your enemies. Although there is even more to it- the type of enemy makes a difference in your tactics, which I don’t think you mentioned.
When you learn the system and your characters, the battles flow fast and well- I’d liken the game to FF12 with well designed tactics set up. However you also mention the menus being clunky. I can’t disagree, although you do get used to it. What I didn’t like more than the unwieldy menus was stuff you could do in them that wasn’t explained as far as I could tell (maybe in the manual I don’t recall). Things like giving gifts to your team members to boost affinity with them would have made a big difference for me if I didn’t find it almost near the end of the game.
Overall for me though, it was a decent game, but the hype was overblown and it just didn’t meet what I’ve been looking for in a jRPG for awhile. I can see why people love the game though, and I really liked the story (something I rarely say for jRPGs…).
““but for gods’ sakes don’t make it an impenetrable tangle of micromanagement just to put some equipment on my freaking characters.”
Ooops sorry, not a gem. All I had to do was equip the equipment I had in my inventory.
“but for gods’ sakes don’t make it an impenetrable tangle of micromanagement just to put some equipment on my freaking characters.”
I don’t know what game you were playing but all I had to do was attach a gem.
Xenoblade is all about giving the player a choice. The battle system is easy to understand, but want to change things up? Having trouble defeating a certain enemy? Then switch party members, dip a little deeper into the battle system, learn about skills links, upgrade your arts, craft gems, but the game never forces you to do any of it, but it’s there for the player who wants a deeper system & a different way to defeat a certain enemy. There is no one way to go about things & YOU have the choice in what you use & how & when you use it, it’s very flexible & I think this kind of design is what RPG games should be striving for. Giving the player a choice. You don’t HAVE to use any of it, if only marginally, but it’s there if you want it & I sure do.
Also, Xenoblade is all about choice. The battle system is cleverly designed, and implements a hidden depth that you can CHOOSE to dig further into. But, this doesn’t mean you HAVE to. The game manages to mould this in, without it feeling invasive.
“I realize that some people don’t like things to stay the same, but as the old saying goes you shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken.”
Yes because linear progression & hallways didn’t need to be fixed did they.
“The player can have 3 characters in battle at a time.”
Oh shit. Don’t poo yourself.
“that would have made for a fine easy-to-understand system.”
No way, give it to me hard man, you want your games nice & easy we can see that, but it was awesome that throughout the game I was learning more & more about the battle system, stuff I had no clue I could do as the game progressed. The tutorials at the start of the game taught me the basics (enough for me to hold my own) & it was up to me to experiment.
“the overall pacing of the game is slowed and the story’s flow is weakened.”
Because you NEED to constantly change equipment? Nobody said you need to. This is the thing, I personally think you’re the one overcomplicating the game.
The goal should be “easy to learn, fun to master,” but so many RPGs seem to be going for “hard to learn, tedious to master.”
Sorry, but this is bullshit. Not everybody wants stuff handed to them on a plate. Some people (like me) want and like challenge. I want stuff to be hard to learn, because once you finally learn it, you really do feel like the master, and you feel as though you’ve really succeeded in something.
What’s the point in mastering something that’s easy? Jeez.
Personally, I didn’t find Xenoblade complex; I thought everything was really well balanced. I get this feeling that ‘gamers’ these days are too lazy and don’t want to use their brains, and then when they’re required to, they get frustrated.
I really enjoyed customizing my characters, and I thought it added an extra sense of freedom to the game. Not only that, but it was charming too; I would of hated it if I equipped a sword, or a piece of armor but none of it changed in-game. It’s little things like that, that really make a game for me. I mean, it’s 2012, not 1998 anymore.
This line,
…is a great insight into the connection between gameplay and story, and how in RPGs the two are actually (on some mystical level) the same thing.
I have noticed that your games have fewer item slots. Fewer even than Dragon Quest. I really appreciate the simple complexity( oxymoron I know) which lets me focus my time and effort on other things. But I also miss the feeling of more micro rewards. Micro rewards are one of the things video games can do better than almost anything else, and I think it is essentially what I’m really interested in. Sure, 5 Xenosaga is too complex, but it is fun to be able to but a leather helmet before you afford the chain mail boots, and have little achievements every few minutes.
Some games have done a fun job with this, like Xmen Legends, by having an “auto-level” and “auto-equip” feature. Basically you tell the game generally how to pick abilities and equip items, and if you find a new item or go up a level, it does it for you I. the background, and after a while if you want, you can later go in and micromanage. Civilization does this well with their city resource management.
Ideally, I’d like something as complex as Dragon Quest 8 or Final Fantasy 5 but with an auto button.
When you first started talking about the equipment set up, I was reminded of Final Fantasy 7 with the Materia slots. It’s one of the very few things I liked about the game. But as your description goes on, it becomes clear it’s nothing like that at all.
I agree completely that it comes off very convoluted and this is something I’ve seen happening with a fair number of AAA RPGs over the last few years. I realize that some people don’t like things to stay the same, but as the old saying goes you shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken. Change the storylines around, change the gameplay around, but for gods’ sakes don’t make it an impenetrable tangle of micromanagement just to put some equipment on my freaking characters.
I feel that it probably is trying to be complex solely for the sake of being so, and that’s never a good idea. It’s like “tossed in” Multiplayer, really.