hexyz force PSP

[abigsmurf]

A fairly traditional RPG from Sting (who did Riveria), I'm quite enjoying it so far.

It's USP is that you can choose from two characters whose story you get to play out. Unlike most games with this gimmick, you do genuinely do two separate quests with different sets of characters, only very briefly meeting up with the other sets at a few points (these interactions are quite funny).

I picked Levant's quest. It's a fairly generic setup, royal knight, a kind emperor who suddenly turns evil but after a bland couple of hours, once the scenerio is established, the characters themselves start to shine. After the immensely dislikeable FFXIII cast(aside from Sazh), it's refreshing to have a fairly charming set of characters and nice light hearted conversations. I get the impression the other path has even stronger character interactions.

The battle system is fairly standard turn based. There's an attempt to give it some depth with a force charge system where certain spells become stronger depending on if what elements you've used. To be honest it's too hard to understand to take advantage of and I've gone 15 hours so far without paying any attention to it.

Like other Sting games, there's no shops or money. You get items and (limited use) weapons purely through crafting. To be honest, the weapons are largely useless, you're far better off using your main weapons (ragnafacts) which don't wear out. Instead the crafting is best used for equipment and healing items.

The character's main weapons, the Ragnafacts, can be upgraded by spending force points. You can upgrade the power, add (pre determined) spells or lower the amount of MP needed for spells. It's a nice bit of customisation that helps keep the game interesting.

Bad points:

-Bland featureless mazes as dungeons. Expect to get very lost when you save the game, go back to it and forget which way you were going. The mazes are fairly well designed, channelling you subtly in the right direction despite their complexity but if you lose track of which way you came from, you're in trouble.

-limited range of enemies. Expect to see the same dozen or so enemies throughout (but with palette swaps)

-small selection of playable characters. I briefly got a new member but she only stayed with the party for about an hour. Other than that, it's just been the same 3. Also haven't received any other ragnafacts (I didn't even know you could swap and change them between characters until a short time ago).

-slightly too easy, the battles would be challenging (the enemies hit hard, do lots of status attacks and healing is tricky) if they were longer. Sadly most boss battles are over in about a minute. Doubling their health would add real challenge to the game.

Overall not earth shattering but it's a fun, charming RPG that will sadly probably get ignored

[briareos_kerensky]

Will pop this in my PSP this evening, I'll probably go with the girl's route (Cecilia?).
The short battles sound more like a good point to me, I liked how Riviera managed random encounters and battle progression in general.

[briareos_kerensky]

Completed Cecilia's first chapter yesterday evening.
Battles are fast and most enemies go down with a couple of hits, which is good for random dungeon battles but make bosses a bit disappointing.
I do prefer this pacing though, there's no risk for battles to overstay their welcome, which, considering that this is a portable game, is not a bad thing. Unfortunately Hexyz Force still relies on standard save points before each dungeon and boss...this is something it has to go, especially on a portable game..

At the end of the chapter my actions were evaluated on a salvation/destruction scale, based on battles , sidequests completed and choices during dialogues. How (and if) this scale affects the game outside the possible endings, I don't know.

Graphics are cute, if a bit bland. Characters are represented in super deformed 3D models that remind me of Dokapon and yes, the number or recolors is huge; some enemies share animations, too (fairies/pixies and small winged demons) and the result comes of as cheap. There's a distinct Dreamcast/PS2 feeling to the graphics, not only polygonal models but menus too and I can't shake the feeling that whoever planned the menus was in love with Grandia 2's own.
Graphics load fast and transitions to and from battles are almost seamless, but you pay this for extremely bare environments. The last dungeon in Cecilia's 1st chapter

->Open Spoiler<-

is a series of corridors on a black background

, not exactly an exciting view.

On the plus side, navigation between menus is easy and are easy to read even if just like any other Sting game there's a huge amount of information thrown at the player, with three "divine alignments" arranged in a Fire Emblem-esque triangle (plus an outsider), the usual array of element attributes, status changes and so on...at first it's overwhelming but then battles end in less than a minute with almost no harm done (at each level up characters fully recover and the first 10 levels come FAST).
However those are impressions based on the first chapter, it's unlike of Sting to build up a complex system and then leave it be.

[briareos_kerensky]

Spent some more time with the game, probably around half on the second chapter with Cecilia. Like with abigsmurf and Levant's quest the game gives you a third party member and shortly after it's back with a two-person party.

In this second chapter battles got harder and bosses/mid bosses (like treasure chest mimics and enemies guarding restoration points) offer a decent challenge with Spirifacts (weapons with limited use) carving their niche in the combat system.
Random encounters are a bit longer as most enemies get a HP boost and are usually faster than party characters; unfortunately enemy types and battle formations within the same zone/dungeon repeat themselves over and over and it feels like doing exactly the same battle over and over.

The main structure isn't far from traditional JRPGs: plot, dungeon, boss, repeat.
So far I've met the other main character, Levant, once and the two parties exchanged a few lines of text before I was thrown into an other dungeon.

It's disappointing that Sting decided to go with a rather normal structure and repetitive gameplay after they come up with something like Riviera (which wasn't groundbreaking but had its share of good ideas - and to limit myself to "proper" JRPGs).

The combat system is nice, but it's underused. The main idea is to form a chain of divine aspects to keep the damage output higher than normal by switching between Ragnafacts and Spirifacts while exploiting enemies' elemental weaknesses.
It works in theory, but not all characters can equip all weapons and the materials to Spirifacts are limited, but are also the main way to link two characters with differently aligned Ragnafacts, and this kind of strategy is usually left for bosses...and most of the time it's easier to go with the most powerful attack available ignoring this divine chain.
There are other nuances to the combat system, like party formation, but again there's no real need to explore its possibilities.

[abigsmurf]

I'm starting to max out ragnafacts now so I suspect I'm in the latter stages of the game (although there's a lot unresolved still).

It's slightly dissapointing they didn't get creative with the gameplay like they did with riviera but at the same time, it's nice to have a fairly traditional RPG occasionally.