The Walking Dead - Season 2

Yes, it's time for another post nobody will care about.

And yes, I mean the game. I have no idea about the comic nor the TV series.

So, I bought this ages ago, yet I only finished it now (or rather, I had just finished it when I wrote this. Then I forgot to publish it 'til now). I was quite busy with Bloodorne actually what the hell I didn't write about that what's wrong with me and I had to play this on my PS3 since Season 2 uses the old saves of Season 1 for something.

I've talked to some people who don't know anything about TWD these past few days, and what they think to know is wrong. So let me get this straight: The Walking Dead is not about zombies. Yes, there are "walkers" that are... well, zombies, basically; and yes, it's set in a post-apocalyptic world where there are just a bunch survivors left.

Yet TWD is not about zombies.
In fact it's about humans. Or better yet, it's about humans' relationships.

I mean, just try to imagine the situation for a moment: you're left alone in a world where surviving isn't a given, but you have to actually earn it. You fight dead corpses that move around and are extremely tough and numerous (though also very stupid). You have to find food, water, shelter and weapons.
Then suppose one day you meet another survivor.
Who's this guy? How did he manage to survive? What does he want?
Imagine he asks for your help. He says he's injured and asks you for some medicine.
Would you be willing to spare some? What if he's been bitten and he's already done for? What if it's a trap and he just wants to rob you?
And what if he's actually fine and sincerely in need of your help?

That's not even all. Because in a hostile world such as this you wouldn't last much by yourself, so usually survivors hang out in groups.
Say you join one. Someone will maybe like you, some other won't probably share that feeling. What if you can't keep up with the others and you're dead weight who's slowing everyone down? Some will probably point that out and say you have to leave, even though that'd mean certain death for you.

Or maybe you're good. You actually manage to be useful. You're nice to the others too, so nobody complains. As if.
Then eventually someone is bitten, or left behind, or dies for whatever reason. Maybe you had to kill them because you had no option left.
Maybe they had a family. They obviously will get very angry at you, because you technically killed their loved ones. So seeds of distrust begin to take root, and eventually someone will do something stupid and someone else will die.

There, that's TWD in a nutshell. Hopefully these weird examples will make you understand why I said that TWD isn't about zombies.

Oh, I should probably mention that it's a game from Telltale, and like every other game of theirs (I think?), TWD is an interactive story. This means the gameplay is barely there, and the biggest actions of the player will be pressing a botton to pick an answer during the dialogues. There are also a handful of action scene, but again, all you have to do is move the left stick (if you're playing with a pad) within a second or two or continuing to press the X button like a madman. So yeah, gameplay is not really the reason to play this.

And speaking of choices, maybe you're wondering if they actually change the outcome of the story. Let me spoiler you this, they don't.
Or well, the vast majority of the choices affect your relations with the other characters, but all the major events will still happen. The only exception to this is the ending.
Still, does it feel like you actually affect the story? Hell yes. Kudos to Telltale for that.

Anyway, as always I ended up writing far more than expected. At the very least I hope I persuaded some of you to at least take a look at this (and of course to Season 1). I can consider myself satisfied if I managed.

Ar Tonelico II: Melody of Metafalica

Listening to: Click me and do yourself a favour

(Warning: the following post doesn't try too hard even try to explain some things to the layman, so while I'll avoid spoilers as always, if you don't know already the series, you can just skip this and go play Ar Tonelico I)

So, after more or less forever I finally played and finished AT2 as well as the first one.
Considering how much I liked the latter, I have to say I was pretty hyped up for this. But as it's often the case, the hype backfired at me.
There are some things I want to consider so I'm just gonna make a hopefully short list of good and bad things:

Better game balance
In the AT1 post I pointed out how its biggest problem is that the game's too easy. Although AT2 still kinda is - the only fights where I had problems were a few level 9 I.P.D.s, battles that are definitely optional anyway - bosses at least put up a decent fight.
Speaking of which, another good thing was...

Akiko Shikata performs in it
Wait no, I didn't want to say this. Although this is probably the most valid point.

Better battle system
The other reason I didn't mind fights as much as in AT1 is because the battles were ultimately fun. Not perfect, mind you: things like being able to cure yourself at the start of the battle just to run away (with a 100% success rate) right after that, effectively making healing items almost useless, probably make it broken and definitely a bit worse than the system in AT1. Still, overall I'd consider this as a good thing seeing how I enjoyed battles.

Soundtrack is as good as AT1
Which means it's exceptionally good. Not much more to say. 

Akiko Shikata performs in it
This is just one of the reasons of the point above. But I wanted to make it clear and give it the importante it deserves.

And I think that's actually it. Now for the funnier part of commenting what was bad (or worse than in AT1 anyway):

The new synthesis system sucks hard compared to Grathmeld
In AT1 you traveled across the world, found recipe cards in dungeon and cities, then you enjoyed your stay at an inn where you had fun staying in the girls' room 'til late to talk and making new shiny things with Grathmeld.
Now this doesn't happen anymore. You don't find recipe cards during your travels, nor you can make shiny things at every savepoint/inn. Now you have to progress the plot a little, then go back to every freakin' shop, where you'll have unlocked one or two cutscenes which will result in the shopkeeper giving you a recipe card.
Come again?
This is just stupid. Things like cutscenes for every recipe card given to you and the fact that you can craft more than one kind of item from every recipe card (since it depends on the girl you choose to help you out) might be entertaining and make some sense, but the fact that I have to go back at every shop after every dungeon to craft items of dubious usefulness is just a huge fail.
Gimme back muh Grathmeld.

No more crystals for weapons/armors
This is another case of "fixing what ain't broken". In AT1 I had lots of fun searching for and using the best crystals to put in weapons and armors. So why the hell did they have to remove them altogether in here?
At first I thought it was a failed attempt to make the game a little harder, but then they put things like Replekia (unlocked quite early in the game too) that basically throw the game's balance out of the window. Also if increased difficulty was the reason, they could have just made the enemies more powerful in the first place, so it's not probably that.
So it's just a stupid thing to do.

Plot is meh~ish
To be honest I'm not 100% sure the problem here is the plot or the characters, but I can't say I enjoyed the story that much, that's for sure. And speaking of which...

Characters are incosistent with themselves
Now this is a problem you don't want in your (J)RPG. Especially in the first parts of the game, characters sometimes don't really make sense (yes Luca I'm looking at you most of all).
It might be due to NISA's acknowledged bad localization rather than the screenwriters' fault, but unless you understand Japanese this is a moot point.

Story "phases" don't really make sense
This is probably not very important for most people, but I liked how in AT1 every phase was almost a story of its own. You could take a (long) break at the end of each of them, resume some time afterward, and it'd almost feel like what nowadays would be a DLC. It was nice.
In AT2 this doesn't apply. Every phase is strictly related to the previous one, and they're probably there just to give you an idea of how much you've progressed into the game. 

Voice acting is almost non-existent
In AT2, as in its predecessor, you can select between Japanese and English voice acting. It's kinda useless though, since the voiced scenes in both languages are very, very few, especially considering the amount of text the game has.

Phase 2
No seriously what was that. It felt like the game devs woke up a morning and decided to put random mini-games for whatever reason, only to resume normal game mechanics in the next 3 phases. Just... no.

As you can see, ultimately the downsides weight way more than the upsides. Or well, at least they do for me. Which makes it hard for me to suggest an approach to the Ar Tonelico series.
I'm tempted to say to play AT2 first, so that the first one won't ruin it for you, but going back to AT1 battle system after AT2's might feel awkward, and you'd miss some cameos and references too, so you're kinda screwed in any case.

But maybe it's just me. Maybe for some reason I didn't enjoy this very much but others did/would. I guess the only way to be sure is to give it a shot yourself.