JRPG Double-Feature 2018 (Shining Resonance Refrain & Octopath Traveler)

Well, I've been putting it off for long enough. It's time for me to review two Japanese Role-Playing Games (or JRPGs, in layman's terms): one that I quite liked but can't give a great score and one that I thought was great for about two hours before I got bored...and chances are you read the names of the games I'm covering in this double-feature and made an incorrect assumption about which game was which. We'll get to that. As a general rule, I don't dislike JRPGs (after all, Final Fantasy XV and Persona 5 were some of my favorite games of the past few years), it's just that they've had something of an identity crisis since they went 3D. For me, a solid JRPG is one with memorable characters, strong, tactical turn-based combat, and a sense of adventuring with friends (because what JRPG is complete without the power of friendship?). One of the games I'm going to cover meets most of these standards, the other meets none of them. Before we get right into it, a bit of disclosure. I haven't completed either of these games. For one of them it's because the thought of continuing to play makes me start yawning and for the other...well...we'll get to that. So, let's start this thing off by reviewing the one I didn't like.

Octopath Traveler

Available for: Nintendo Switch

Reviewed for: Nintendo Switch

I, like many people, was drawn in by the beautiful visual design and promised old-school mechanics that Octopath Traveler boasted. I was giddy for the entire first couple of hours as I set out on my adventure. Not long afterwards, however, I realized that Octopath Traveler is an empty shell; a good idea rendered meaningless by a lack of substance.
In Octopath Traveler you essentially have 8 potential protagonists. You have Olberic (the warrior), Cyrus (the scholar), Tressa (the merchant), Ophilia (The priestess), Primrose (the assassin), Alfyn (the apothecary), Therion (the thief), and Ha'anit (the huntress). From this list, you choose one to function as the game's "protagonist" (that is, the one you'll be stuck with in your party for the rest of the game). After you make your selection, the other 7 characters will become potential party members. Each character has their own unique storyline, and as far as story for Octopath Traveler goes, that's it. The character stories don't flow together in any way, they just exist in a vacuum, as the characters only band together for the hell of it. Characters join your party because you promise to help them, but any relevant cutscenes only feature the relevant character, so it's as if no other characters are actually involved. I've heard this decision praised and I cannot for the life of me understand why. It completely breaks the immersion to have all but one character drop off the face of the earth during story moments. Do you remember my JRPG standards from the introductory paragraph? This is Octopath Traveler's first sin in that regard: It never once felt like an adventure with a party of friends because the party never so much as speaks to each other outside of one "how about we join you" line of dialogue. There's no power of friendship here! There isn't even any friendship to draw power from! There are a couple of pathetic, forced conversations that have to be manually triggered and which don't seem to even have a setting (the characters will just be in an empty space talking together), but they're too few and far between to make this cast of characters feel like anything other than complete strangers only marginally aware of each other's existence. The stories themselves are, for the most part, fairly compelling, as are the characters themselves. There's some tropes that you can see coming a mile away, some legitimately interesting political intrigue, and some starry-eyed quests for adventure. None of them are anything to write home about, but if it weren't for the total disconnect amongst characters, they might be good enough to compel me to move forward, at least.

But enough about the story, let's talk about the next thing Octopath Traveler does poorly: combat. You know what, dear reader? Maybe I never played a truly classic JRPG. For me, a classic JRPG is something like Shining Force. And you know what? I don't recall having spent 99% of my playtime grinding in Shining Force. I had to position my troops tactically and be careful with what I did in my turns, but my success didn't completely hinge on my amount of items or the numbers behind my characters. Not so in this game. There's a recommended level for each chapter of each individual story, and if you aren't up to snuff yet, you'd best be prepared to run around the teeny tiny (admittedly goregous) areas the game consistently puts you in for hours if you want the inevitable boss battle not to last for hours upon hours upon hours. Octopath Traveler's mission structure consists of using a path action (an npc interaction skill unique to a character), grinding, then a boss fight, and its combat essentially just boils down to "do the exact same thing over and over again...see you in 100 hours." Each character has a certain loadout of weapon/magic types they can use, and literally the entire game is spent picking the kind of weapon/magic that is effective against an enemy. If you're inclined to defend this game, chances are you're gearing up to ask me: "but what's the difference between that and Pokemon, which you love?" The answer is as follows: In Pokemon, this process isn't complete ffffffffffffffff***ing guesswork. Here, it's a complete shot in the dark what each type of enemy is weak against, and for each enemy there can be as many as 5 or more tiers (soldier lv1, soldier lv2, etc), each with their own sets of weaknesses. There's no environmental clues that might give you a hint either, so tactical party selection goes right out the window wherever you go. It wouldn't be such a huge deal if you could survive the game outside of the strength/weakness system, but unfortunately, you're literally hopeless without it! Even utilizing weaknesses, every character deals minuscule damage and the simplest of battles can go on for minutes at a time. If you have no characters in your party with the means to exploit weaknesses, you'd better be prepared to spend a good long while staring into the void...because another stupid idea that Octopath Traveler had was to make it so that you can't see enemy health unless you use up a character's turn to use a specific ability. In what universe is it a good idea to, in a combat system that revolves around tactics, gate off the player's ability to gauge their progress in the battle? It removes most of the player's ability to make on-the-fly decisions about item management, and in turn-based combat, such decisions are incredibly important!
As with any JRPG, there's more to the combat than I've been describing. There's status afflictions, skill point management, ways to change up when characters will take their turns, summons, beast captures for summoning (if using a certain character), ways to earn extra money after a battle, a gauge that increases every turn which you can use to power up your attacks depending on how full it is, etc. So, combat is quite deep, but it could've stood to be a little wider in order to avoid the mind-numbing tedium of the grind.

Unfortunately, Octopath Traveler's problems don't end with its story structure, character interactions, and gameplay. While there have certainly been worse technical packages in this market, Octopath Traveler's relative simplicity still isn't enough to save it from an unstable framerate and shoddy audio mixing. In most games with framerate issues, problems begin to arise as a direct result of too much going on on-screen (one too many enemies or explosions). In Octopath Traveler, framerate dips occur as a result of having characters run. It doesn't always happen, but it happens often enough to be noticeable. On the sound front, certain characters have significantly louder voices than others, and certain attacks have a similar problem. The result is that if you play with the game on a reasonable volume, you'll often find yourself wincing as Tressa screams "here I go!" or as you unleash an "all enemies" attack. But if you lower the relevant sound settings, you'll have to put subtitles on or play the game basically only hearing those aforementioned loud attacks because the other ones are quiet by comparison. If it were just that sound effects in general or voices in general were too loud, I'd still take points off because volume adjusters should exist for preference and not to make the game less painful to play, but it would at least be a manageable problem. However, as I've said, the issue is with certain sound samples within these categories, and as such, the problem cannot be satisfyingly solved by changing audio levels. When all is said and done, these are both really small issues, but in a game as technically undemanding as this one, I tend to expect a bit more polish.

That being said, Octopath Traveler isn't all doom and gloom on the technical front. Animations are far more fluid than they need to be, considering the game's more-or-less retro feel. The world itself has a stunning pop-up book aesthetic, and in my time playing, I found myself actively looking forward to at least seeing new areas. Though there isn't much of it, the voice acting on display here is quite good, especially when you stop to consider that this is an english dub. But Octopath Traveler's greatest strength, by far, is its stellar soundtrack. Does it get a bit repetitive when the same theme is used in 95% of all cave locations? Of course. But in my time with the game I consistently found myself stopping in my tracks to listen to the music. Composer Yasutomo Nishiki strategically makes each track fit its relevant location. City themes are usually teeming with intrigue (considering that most activity you do within cities revolves around investigating) in a way unique to the city's general aesthetic. Open fields and scorching deserts are scored appropriately and in a way that simply spells out adventure. The more reflective themes that play in enclosed spaces like caves are achingly beautiful. This soundtrack is simply one of the best to come out this year. In fact, when i fire up the soundtrack, it makes me want to give the game another chance. I've been listening as I write this section of the review, and I find myself sad as Ophilia's quiet, sweet theme music plays because it reminds me of just how much potential Octopath Traveler had. If the game had been half as good as its music, it could've set the world on fire. 

Folks, it may be that this turns out to be another Bloodborne scenario where I pick up Octopath Traveler again in a year or two, suffer through the grind, and find that it's the greatest game of all time. As it stands, though, every time I think about picking it back up, I'm met with an overwhelming sense of futility and thoughts of "I'll just end up spending the whole night having to grind." Octopath Traveler is a charming game, but charm can only get a title so far. It boasts some of the most stunning art design I've seen in years as well as one of the most varied and enjoyable soundtracks since Undertale. It contains a cast of mostly lovable characters, each with their own unique stories. However, these stories exist within vacuums and don't overlap, lending a truly lonely feeling to the experience (a feeling that should not exist in a game belonging to a genre ruled by the power of friendship). The gameplay is defined by tedium and the story structure in terms of gameplay becomes formulaic too quickly. I wanted to love this game, and I started out as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as nearly everybody who picked this game up did. However, unlike most of those people, I just couldn't stick with it once the initial magic was gone. If you're a die-hard JRPG fan, chances are you've already purchased this and don't need my opinion, but on the off-chance that I'm wrong, I would recommend Octopath Traveler to someone of your tastes. If you're more like me, though, and you're more of a middle-of-the-road kind of JRPG fan, I'd recommend that you wait for the game to go on sale, then pick it up in order to experience the art, the music, and some of the characters before you potentially get bored. Octopath Traveler could've been a great throwback to the JRPGs of old, but instead it's a monument to what was wrong with them, and it contains almost none of what made them good.

Let us review:

No character-to-character payoff - 1

Gameplay is exclusively grinding - 1

Technical issues - 0.5

The final score for Octopath Traveler is...

7.5/10 - Acceptable

Better luck next time, Acquire, better luck next time.

Shining Resonance Refrain

Available for: Playstation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows, Playstation 3

Reviewed for: Nintendo Switch

In what may come as a surprise, the item of discussion in this issue that I actually enjoyed was Shining Resonance Refrain. Just looking at it, you might think of it as your average "spiky-haired teenagers defeating a God with the power of friendship" JRPG....and you'd be absolutely right. To put it another way, Shining Resonance Refrain isn't the kind of game I'd normally go for at all. So, why did I spend my money on it? Because evidently it's a spiritual successor of sorts to the first JRPG I ever played: Shining Force. There have been several spiritual successors to that game, but they never crossed my radar. This one did, and though it looked nothing at all like the classic game I had nostalgic feelings for, I felt that I had to at least give it a shot. Though I quite enjoyed my time with SRR, I can't give it a good score...and you'll understand why as you read. 

First impressions of SRR are...shall we say, not good? Right off the bat there's a ton of exposition and lots of world-specific jargon.

"You! You're the armonic-wielding princess of the Lombardian empire."

"Yes, and I command the three spears, the drachomachina."

"The drachomachina?! Then you serve Deus and stand against the world dragons?"

"Yes, and Deus remains trapped under the shade of the wobbly dum-dum bush, down in dingly-dell!"

It all comes off as really silly at first, but I digress. In this world, there was a battle between the world dragons and a deity called Deus, and the world dragons sealed it away with the help of the most powerful dragon, the Shining Dragon. At the start of the game, two "dragoneers" (warriors who can wield the armonics, weapons of the dragons) break into an imperial prison to rescue our protagonist, Yuma, who is the current vessel of the Shining Dragon. Remember how I said that the game comes off as silly at first? Well, this isn't helped by the fact that Yuma, at the start of the narrative, is the wimpiest little wimpy wimp anime wimpy boy you've ever seen. To describe Yuma, allow me to posit to you a few conversations that he would undoubtedly be a part of if he were an anime protagonist:

Conversation 1:

*after losing a practice battle, with swelling strings in the background*

Yuma, internally: How could I lose? *starting to cry* I let them all down. *faded pictures of his friends flash on the screen* I...I wasn't....I wasn't strong enough...how can I possibly protect my friends against a real threat!

Friend: *holding out hand* Hey, c'mon, man! Y'know what they say, friends have each other's backs!

Yuma, internally: *gasps* That's...that's right! They've always been there for me, no matter how many times I failed. I...I know what I need to do now! I'll get stronger! For them!

Conversation 2:

Girl who has been his love interest for two seasons but hasn't made a move: Y'know, Yuma...I've been thinking, and....I....I lo-

Yuma: *interrupting* Oh, wow, look! Fireflies! Oh..sorry, what were you saying?

Girl: *catastrophically blushing* Oh, I, uh....nothing, never mind.

Conversation 3:

Girl, stark naked and surrounded by neon arrow signs: Hey Yuma, you wanna bend me over a barrel and ravish me like the naughty girl I am for hours upon hours upon hours until I'm caked in sweat?

Yuma: *obliviously and with complete, infuriating sincerity* Oh, that reminds me, Nympho-chan! We need to bring a towel for sports day tomorrow! That was a close one!

That first conversation actually more-or-less happens as this game progresses. Suffice it to say that I took a look at wimpy little wimpy boy Yuma and couldn't help but groan as he, in the midst of being rescued, whined about how useless he was. Yuma's character does grow considerably and satisfyingly as you make your way through the plot, but first impressions are everything, and if my first impression of a character involves my patented "Nympho-chan" scenario, then we have a problem. 

Anywho, the dragoneers and Yuma escape from the imperial prison and make their way to the kingdom of the good guys. From there, they set out on a quest to help Yuma tame the power of the Shining Dragon and collect as many world dragon souls as possible in order to stop a villain that you'll see coming from a mile away. As far as stories go, it doesn't exactly set the world on fire, but it gets the job done. 

If Octopath Traveler suffered from a shocking lack of the power of friendship, then SRR is on the other end of the spectrum. There is so much friendship in this game that it's almost unbearable. Every problem Yuma comes across is solved with the power of friendship. Villain has him nearly beat? Power of friendship! Can't control the shining dragon? Power of friendship! Ran out of food? The pantry gets refilled with the power of friendship! The sun is in his eyes? Shade (and power) of friendship! Slow internet? Power of friendship has wifi! Needs to call his mom? Power of friendship gives you 5 bars all across the map, baby! Needs a tear-resistant substance to implement into armor? There's nothing tighter and harder to break than the good old power of friendship! In need of a new religion? There's never been a better time to bow down to the power of friendship! Friendship everywhere! Power of friendship! So much friendship!

I'm sure you think you get the point, but I'm not sure you do. I get the sense that you read that last section and thought of it as an exaggeration, but dear readers, I'm telling you, there's no word in any vernacular to describe how interwoven the power of friendship is in this story. The power of friendship seeps out of this game's every crevice, flooding into your apartment, getting stuck in your carpet and wood flooring, embracing every inch of you and all your possessions until there's no way to distinguish you from the evil-destroying, friendship-powered mass that surrounds you. Long story short, be prepared for a frankly obscene amount of friendship. 

With all this talk of *notices something seeping from the game case*...you know what...it begs the question: are these friends any good? Well, they aren't quite Persona 5 level lovable, but they're still lovable. Sonia is a warrior princess with a heart of gold and a love for her people. Kirika is an elven maiden who worships the shining dragon, and she's voiced by the twins from Persona 5. Rinne is another elf who can be described with the following trope line: "Do you want your dinner? Or your bath? Or maybe...wa *pause* ta *pause* shi?"Agnum is the "cool" guy who plays the electric guitar, and he's voiced by Ryuji from Persona 5, because of course he is. Marion's entire character is wanting to be more girly, and what I wouldn't give to force some of my old liberal arts college classmates to spend time with her. Finally, Lestin is the tactical commander and the sis-con older brother of Kirika. Oh, and all the characters I just named want to *cough* ride Yuma's Shining Dragon. Every last one of them. But we'll get to that. These characters are hardly the most complex of people, but they're entertaining to be around and to talk with and I did care about them, so that alone puts them above most of Mass Effect: Andromeda's cast.

If you remember my standards for a good JRPG from the introductory paragraph, you'll remember that when it comes to gameplay, I look for tactical, turn-based combat. This is the one area in which SRR doesn't match up to my standards. For one thing, the combat is a real-time hack-and-slash affair. Secondly, there's not much in the way of tactics. There's some tactics in as much as applying a water effect to your sword and attacking a firey enemy can be considered tactics, but beyond that, it's more like a modern action game than a traditional JRPG. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, and while combat isn't exactly deep or engaging, it's at least a little cathartic. At its barest, the gameplay of SRR just has you pressing one button to slice away at enemies and occasionally making Yuma turn into his powerful dragon form. At its most fleshed-out, gameplay will have you regularly switching which character in your party you're playing as, switching out traits in the bond diagram, and issuing specific commands to party members in the flow of battle. If you're like me and want an experience somewhere in the middle, you can have that as well. In spite of my playing on easy (because I wasn't sure I was going to enjoy this game), SRR provided me with enough challenge to encourage me to do things like issue orders without making constant character switching a priority. About halfway through the game, however, Yuma's dragon powers get such a significant upgrade that in most cases it's more economical to just spam power attacks in dragon form. But I digress. With some exceptions, your party and level of tactical engagement are up to you...and unfortunately, those exceptions spelled the end of my play time.
You see, there are some story moments that temporarily render certain party members unavailable. This is what we in show business call a "dick move" when it's done in a game that simultaneously emphasizes player choice and requires manually leveling up characters. If a character isn't in your party, they won't receive any experience for battles you win. That makes sense, and it causes players to make choices about their party's strengths and weaknesses. Does the player keep their options open by equally leveling up each character, thus risking being under-leveled for a boss? Or does the player pick out their party of choice and fully dedicate to strengthening it? That's the kind of choice an experience system such as this inevitably forces the player to make. It's less-than-stellar, then, that the game makes party decisions on the player's behalf. The first two or so times SRR did this, I managed to scrape by (with difficulty). However, in the second-to-last chapter of the game, it was different. It chose two characters (max party size is 4), one of which I'd kept in my party and one of which I hadn't used for about 20 levels worth of battles. As a result, the massive wave of enemies I was facing mopped the floor with me all 10-15 times I tried (in spite of being well-stocked on healing items). I was presented with a choice: Either give up or completely roadblock my progress to grind the weaker link up to an acceptable level. The grinding in this game, up until this point, had been disguised in side quests that you might undertake to make progress with your love interest of choice (more on that in a second). Grinding was tolerable because there was usually purpose to it, but in this situation, it was out of necessity in order to make progress, and I had about 20 levels to raise because of the game's decision to choose my party for me. I was too discouraged, and I made the difficult decision to not progress any further. Let me remind you, dear reader, that this was the second-to-last chapter of the game. I was so close to finishing, but this game's poor decisions in terms of player agency turned out to be so devastating that the prospect of meeting the game's expectations wasn't worth the ending I had worked so hard to achieve. Folks, that is a serious problem. It's because of this problem that, even though I enjoyed this game, I can't give it a good score or even fully recommend it...but I'll save that kind of talk for the concluding paragraph.
       

Before I do my usual mini-paragraph about the tech side of things, I'd like to touch on one other major aspect of the game that is given exactly the same weight as combat: the romantic subplot. You may recall that, in my paragraph about your party members, I made one of my patented Right Trigger innuendos about the party members wanting to "ride Yuma's shining dragon?" Well, when it comes to that kind of system, SRR eats a cherry and whipped cream out of Dragon Age II's romantic subplot navel. Every party member is datable, and they don't seem to mind if you're dating anybody else. Normally, when I see systems like this, my first thought is: "Friggin' lazy developers," but that wasn't the case here. Firstly, Yuma can only be male, so it isn't as if the devs just didn't want to program different love interests for different genders. Secondly, this isn't a Bioware title, so it isn't like I went into this experience expecting a well fleshed-out romantic rollercoaster. Thirdly, and most compellingly, remember the accusations I lobbed at Yuma mere paragraphs ago? We're essentially playing a harem anime, so why not embrace it (even though the fact that you can date both a woman and her older brother at the same time is a little odd)? With that in mind, I decided to set out and "Hmm...Nani?" my way to glory and create the most all-inclusive harem I could...or...at least, that was the plan. As it turned out, however, the dating system here is a little bit more time-consuming than in other titles. You essentially build up your bond with your love interest of choice through dialogue and completing side quests for them. Do this enough and they'll ask you to spend time with them on a "date" in the hub city. Accept, and you'll walk around the city with them to a couple of scenic areas. At the end of this, your date will sort of hint that they're feeling closer to you, to which Yuma will respond obliviously (because of course he will), and voila, you've made some progress. Getting to the first date stage can take a couple of hours (depending on how much you dedicate to it), so it's a bit of a time investment. On top of that, in order to get to what essentially is the final date in the process takes not 3, not 4, but 5-6 dates. So, that's a lot of hours to dedicate to get to the end with one character. If you're more dedicated to setting up the ultimate harem than I was, you're gonna have to drop a lot of time into this game in order to get it. The positive side of the slow pace is that the relationship between you and party member x feels more gradual and organic. So, the journey is fulfilling, but unfortunately, there isn't much payoff for it. Now, I'm not saying I expected to get to *cough* strum my partner's armonics (in fact, that would be shocking in such a predictably "power of friendship"-based title), but Yuma remains an oblivious little wimpy boy right till the end! Would it have been too much to ask to have Yuma at least return the sentiments thrown at him? It's possible that the game handles "payoff" in the same way that the Mass Effect trilogy did. It's possible that Yuma mans up and at least commits right before the end, but...well...*points to previous paragraph* we all know how that turned out, don't we?
   

Now, onto the technical stuff...what do you want? It's a JRPG. The graphics are exactly what you expect, the sound is a combination of electric guitar and strings, and animations are a little janky. That being said, this game's soundtrack is better than it has any right to be. Some of the game's most important story moments are scored with reverb-y choral tracks reminiscent of Dark Souls, and even the less recognizable tracks are at least catchy. Other than this, I never noticed any texture pop-in and never had any crashes or glitches. There are sometimes framerate drops when the action gets too heavy, but that's about it.
   

Folks, Shining Resonance Refrain is a tragic story. There was never any universe in which I could give it a glowing recommendation and the top spot in the end of the year lists, but it was prime real estate for guilty pleasure or underdog status. However, for all that I liked about it, it just wasn't enough to outweigh the drastic, glaring negatives. I enjoyed its characters, its gradually-paced romantic subplot, and its soundtrack. Though combat was nothing to write home about, it was at least somewhat fun to play. With as low a score as this game got on Metacritic, I wasn't expecting to enjoy it as much as I did. However, with a general lack of payoff in the romantic subplot (that I otherwise enjoyed), an instantly unlikable protagonist that left a bad taste in my mouth for most of the game, and a sudden, discouraging roadblock to my progress that spelt the end of my play time, Shining Resonance Refrain ends up having too much wrong with it for even guilty pleasure status. I don't regret the time I spent with SRR, but if you cross paths with it, you might just be better off spending your money on something else.

Let us review:

Laughable opening - 0.5
Wimpy little wimpy boy Yuma - 0.5
Lack of payoff - 0.5
Progress roadblock - 1.0
Technical gripes (framerate, general jank) - 0.3


The final score for Shining Resonance Refrain is...



7.2/10 - Ok
Better luck next time, Sega, better luck next time