Secret of Mana - Thoughts

Secret of Mana fully embodies "style over substance". It's not a substanceless game but the best part about it by far is its presentation: the graphics are gorgeous, the music is serene, and the menu wheels are inventive. The visuals are so enticing that it'll hide the games faults until about two hours in, when you start to realize it doesn't play quite like you think it should. That doesn't ruin the experience per se, but it won't stop you from musing, "Man, this game should definitely be better than it is."

Perhaps part of this dilemma is that the story does little to detract from the crude gameplay—precisely because there's so little story in the first place. Secret of Mana is a simplistic, by-the-numbers hero's journey where the bad guys are really bad and the good guys are really good. There are a couple of interesting bits here and there (like the mana fortress destroying the ecology to stay afloat) but in the end the game pales in comparison to peers like Final Fantasy and Chrono Trigger. If there's a reason you keep playing the game, the plot will assuredly not be it.

What it might be, however, is the game's charming music. Secret of Mana is host to a bevvy of uplifting and energizing tracks, as well as some more thoughtful, melancholy pieces. I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that it has one of the most unique and electrifying final boss themes, that makes up for the relatively lackluster fight. And even if you're not blown away by the score, the sprite work and animations are fairly impressive. Areas are lively and elaborate, and the massive bosses are vibrant and sometimes—to their chagrin—adorable.

But the combat... good golly the combat. I praised the menu wheel for being a novel addition to the game, but it's cumbersome to navigate for single spells, meaning you probably won't be using them all that much. And when you do opt to dispose of a magically vulnerable foe, the rest of the party is forced to watch in stunned silence as the attack goes off... and occasionally misses due to invulnerability frames with no tell. This will happen every now and then for your spells, but your physical attacks are prone to whiffing. It'll get exhausting watching your fully charged-up attack ineffectually pass over an enemy, especially since the longer attack animations don't translate to, well, longer attacks. While there's a sound cue that goes off for a dodge/block/miss/etc, sometimes it won't go off at all and you'll be left wondering what you did wrong. I feel that it's a major failing of an action RPG to have such loose and slippery action.

The most creative part of the gameplay is that using spells from within a certain magic school will level that school up. So the more you heal, the stronger you healing becomes, which technically helps to diversify your spell list since you'll want at least a couple of strong elemental attacks. But like Final Fantasy II, this only works in theory, as your underleveled (and new!) spells will do such pitiful damage that they won't be worth the mana to cast (unless you're grinding). The weapon system works the same way, so you're likely to see the same attacks over and over unless you want to double your playtime diversifying.

And it's not like you'll need to either. Secret of Mana is far from being a difficult game, so long as your equipment is up to snuff. When it's not, bosses will steamroll over you hilariously fast (enjoy being pinned down by the tiger boss). With proper gear most battles are a cakewalk, and even when foes put up a fight, there's usually a spell that'll keep them stun-locked. Some duels can go on forever when you haven't leveled the boss's weakness (ugh the slime dude) but carrying a stock of walnuts ensures you have enough mana to burn through the opposition. At the end of the game I was skipping nearly every enemy, realizing they're less of a threat and more of a mana sink on the way to the boss. And it's always a bad sign when you want to spend as little time as possible interacting with the game's combat system.

I remember liking Secret of Mana as a kid. It was fun spending time in the crystal forest and the desert, nodding my head along to the sweet music as I gradually leveled Salamando. But coming at it as an adult, it's just so... bare-bones and unrefined. You get more personality from the sprites of the characters than you do the writing, and fighting enemies often feels like throwing blunt darts at a dart board. Secret of Mana has an amazing shell that showcases Square Soft at their best, but the yolk has turned more sour than I expected.
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Images obtained from: blazingcariboustudios.com, nepascene.com, rantingaboutgames.com, geeksundergrace.com

Uncharted: The Lost Legacy - Thoughts

[contains minor spoilers]

I went into Uncharted: The Lost Legacy expecting a brief, action-packed campaign. I walked away from it surprised that I had played yet another nearly full length Uncharted title. I don't know how Naughty Dog was able to churn out an adventure of this quality a year after Uncharted 4 was released, but I must confess that I'm impressed. Chloe Frazer's Indian expedition is a beautiful experience—something that only for this series could be considered "par for the course"—and returns the carefree attitude absent from A Thief's End. The villain is nasty, the player character is quippy, and there's a bunch of explosions and crumbling ruins and trains—Uncharted: The Lost Legacy is Uncharted to its very core. Which can be a good or a bad thing, depending on how you feel.

The bad thing about it, is that the game doesn't bring a lot of new ideas to the table. Sure, you've got the unlikely duo of Chloe (Nate's fiery ex) and Nadine (Uncharted 4's no-nonsense antagonist), but Chloe fills Nate's role very easily and Nadine is... well, Nadine's seriousness is actually fairly entertaining. But the friction between the two can feel a bit forced at times, especially when the biggest point of contention revolves around a decision that occurred offscreen. The banter and acting are enjoyable, but if you've played any of the other games in the series, there's nothing really remarkable about the heroines' interactions, even if the story wants you to get hyped for girl power.

The Lost Legacy is still great though. The Uncharted formula isn't something that invigorates me nearly as much as, say Dark Souls, but I can recognize that what's here is close to the cream of the crop. There's a really cool section of the game that's a miniature open world segment, letting you tackle its three "towers" in any order you wish. There's both optional side battles and observation puzzles, which gives you more of a reason to pay attention to your surroundings. It almost feels like a prototype for a new Uncharted game, but it's refined enough that you won't notice that while playing. And while you can spot some load times masked by muddy hills that are hard to climb, it speaks to Naughty Dog's professionalism that the entire zone is seamless and smooth (or at least was for my playthrough).

Before sitting down to write this entry, I wasn't sure about whether or not I preferred The Lost Legacy to Uncharted 4, but one big factor definitely tipped it over the edge for me: the combat. Nate's final adventure had him fighting in some unique but mazelike locales, whereas The Lost Legacy returns to predictable, flat settings. While buildings may have multiple stories to scope out and the open world section lets you tackle its encounters from any direction, the layouts are accessible and the enemies never exceeded double digits (not in the sandbox scuffles, at least). The biggest sign that I was gelling with the combat was being able to complete an encounter without getting spotted, which would've been an impossible task for me back in Uncharted 4. I may have adjusted to the new gunplay, or slowed my pace because I hadn't played the game before, but either way the fighting definitely clicked with me.

I have to admit that I did receive a smidgen of aid via the generous checkpoint system. And by generous, I mean really generous, as occasionally it would checkpoint me after I had died, whether from a mistimed jump or enemy reinforcements gunning me down. Being able to start ahead of my death saved me a bit of frustration, but it's a shame I wasn't given another chance to prove myself. The only other oddity The Last Legacy has is that the game has two final acts. You'll reach a point where it feels like the story is ready to wrap up... but then it keeps going... and ends on what I can only call a "retread." I guess the final act rug pull is a small subversion of the previous titles, but all it really does is take two very Uncharted-y events and swap their places.

Uncharted: The Last Legacy grants a much needed break from Nathan Drake & co. in favor of tracking a lost treasure through India with two fun gals. If you look under the hood, it's unfortunately not that different from the games that came prior, even with the bold new leads. But if you like carefree adventures, stunning visuals, and colossal architecture, The Last Legacy easily stands toe-to-toe with A Thief's End. Throw in a big fun free-form exploration segment, and you arguably have yourself the best Uncharted experience the PS4 has to offer—as long as you don't mind it being on the shorter side.
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Title image obtained from: geekireland.com

Uncharted 4: A Thief's End - Thoughts

Uncharted has never been a particularly complex or inventive franchise—but it sure as heck has been pretty. Jumping from the PS3 to the PS4, Uncharted 4: A Thief's End flexes Naughty Dog's "new tech" prowess like a professional body builder at a local gym. I thought I would get tired of announcing "wow this is a gorgeous vista!" four entries into the series, but Nathan Drake's final adventure kept me coming back for one more round. While the flabbergast-inducing eye candy is the premier feature of A Thief's End, the game also—surprisingly—diverts its attention away from non-stop gunfights towards more moments that reflect on Nathan Drake's achievements, mistakes, and regrets.

Which sounds cool... except that the narrative fails to capitalize on it.

I felt so disappointed by Uncharted 4's story on the first go-around that I dedicated a whole entry to it. Long story short: I felt A Thief's End was narratively dissonant, building itself (cleverly) towards one ending before closing out on its exact inverse. For this second playthrough, knowing what to expect helped me to focus on smaller bits that I had missed while on my search for the bigger picture. Uncharted 4 has a lot more slower, minor moments where the characters aren't bringing their quippy A-game to the table. That's not to say that they've stopped obsessing with being funny—just that there are a lot more breaths between ideas, as if they're actually thinking through what they're going to say in their head.

Thematically I still think the game is bunk, but I appreciate its narrative more than I used to, especially because A Thief's End could've played it safe like Drake's Deception did. There's a maturity to the series that hasn't been expressed before, something that likely couldn't have been expressed until Naughty Dog went and made The Last of Us. Nathan Drake is older, more conscious of his reckless adventuring lifestyle, and there's a bit more poison to his lies. Not enough, mind you, to turn the series into a fascinating critique on its plucky, mercenary-murdering attitude, but you'll still watch the story unfold with awe, captivated by its firm cinematography and believable acting. It's an engaging tale—but it's also one that lacks any sort of punch.

This ties directly into the blog entry I've already written, but slowing the story down to put Nate's mundane life on display doesn't really amount to anything. Don't get me wrong—it's really cool to see and I appreciate it—but there's no trenchant discoveries unearthed here. The plot twists and shocking reveals serve only as naked tools for drama (like Sully's """betrayal""" in the first game), unable or unwilling to dive any deeper than that. And I get that Uncharted is a lot less serious than The Last of Us, so diving into trauma may be a step too far, but then... why take adventuring so seriously? Why strip away bits of whimsy that the series previously exhibited, just to put more of an emphasis on realism and consequences? The old games may have tried to be too funny at times, but A Thief's End drives itself in the opposite direction, becoming so sober and understated that sometimes you come off of conversations simply feeling nothing.

I'm definitely being a bit too hard on Uncharted 4, but it's largely because I wanted big things from it in a post-The Last of Us world. The only aspect that I wasn't let down by were the visuals: water is gorgeous, character models are immaculately designed, Madagascar is downright breathtaking, the creeping foliage in the latter half of the game is dazzling, etc. etc. It's a lot of fun to stumble around and hop across rocks while paying attention to Nate's animation sequences, and almost every chapter has a great piece of eye candy to look at, whether it's thin seaweed shifting in a trench or a massive clock tower clinking away. The puzzles are also pretty good too, sometimes demanding quite a bit from your spatial reasoning, though they're few and far between.

Combat on the other hand... is not my favorite. If I was to rank the action in the series, I'd probably say 2 > 4 > 3 > 1, but there's a wide gulf between 2 and 4, and a grenade-shaped asterisk between 4 and 3. Besides me not liking the weapons as much and cursing the damage-based recoil, A Thief's End also botches most of its sandbox fights. The open areas you're allowed to fight in are gorgeous, vertical, asymmetrical zones with a lot of nooks and crannies... which all make it hard to keep track of foes without getting detected. And when you inevitably get spotted, you'll run around and shoot manically for a couple of minutes, just to have a shotgun guy to hop down from some unseen ledge and fill your ass with lead. Uncharted 4's wild and nonlinear sandboxes made it impossible to think up a strategy after I had failed them a few times, something that the older games—even if they were more frustrating—would at least allow. Even if the combat in Uncharted 4 is secretly good and I'm stubbornly not understanding it, the gunplay being shelved for the sake of the story meant I hardly had a chance to warm up to what little was there.

Nathan Drake's swansong is a fitting one for the series. I may bemoan a lot of aspects about it here, but Uncharted 4: A Thief's End is a remarkably polished game that delivers entertainment, at the very least. The problem, of course, is that while polish may obscure the blemishes, it can't hide them forever. A Thief's End doesn't feel vestigial like Uncharted 3 does, but its proud ambition doesn't lead anywhere—well, anywhere truly praiseworthy. It's a good game that'll leave you exhausted. It's a beautiful title that frequently loiters about. It's a fitting end for a franchise that always played it safe.
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Title image obtained from: ResetEra.com