I reviewed The Witcher Adventure Game as a freelance writer for JBG News… which has since disappeared. As a result, trying to follow the old links currently results in an error. (I’m going to edit them all, but if you find any broken links lying around that I missed, let me know!)
So, let’s talk again about The Witcher Adventure Game.
When I played and reviews this game, I was a complete newcomer to the Witcher series. I hadn’t even read The Last Wish yet. I’m not a big player of board games, either. Therefore, I asked questions like:
Can you play The Witcher Adventure Game if you’re unfamiliar with the Witcher series?
Can you play The Witcher Adventure Game if you’re unfamiliar with board games?
As a result, I cautioned readers not to come to my review looking for comparisons to other board games or details on how it fits into the Witcher lore.
If you’re new, however, I can say the Witcher Adventure Game is accessible.
From a lore perspective, this is easy to see. It has no story of its own and only references to places and characters from the Witcher universe. From a gameplay perspective, you might not see it as accessible at first. The tutorial is confusing–although there’s a more in-depth tutorial I only found later, which cleared up my lingering confusion about a few points–and when you start playing it seems like a thousand things are happening at once.
The best way to learn The Witcher Adventure Game is to play it. You might be overwhelmed at first, but the mechanics slowly become clear. You can take a look at my first playthrough to watch my clueless muddling become more and more confident the longer the game goes on.
As you can see, game sessions tend to be rather lengthy, so make sure you have a solid block of time if you plan to play online with other people. A patch added an auto-save feature for single-player games, so if you’re playing against the AI, you no longer have to do it in a single sitting.
Some players find it to be a mean game, as it sometimes seems impossible to do anything without something horrible happening to you. It can be challenging, but once you learn the strengths of each character, you can use strategy to avoid the worst fates and come out victorious.
Now, all of my comments have been based on the digital video game version, sold by GOG.com and Steam. The Witcher Adventure Game also comes as a physical board game, if you prefer to have a real copy on the table in front of you.
Let me know your thoughts on the Witcher Adventure Game, and if you caught my review in its original form, don’t worry–I’ve got fresh reviews lined up for the rest of the week.
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In addition to all the 3D platformers inspired by classic games like Banjo-Kazooie, from A Hat in Time to Clive ‘N’ Wrench to Playtonic’s spiritual successor, rumors have been in the air for a while now that Microsoft and Rare are working on a real Banjo-Kazooie game… whether “Banjo-Threeie” or something else.
These rumors were aided last October, when Microsoft’s Phil Spencer said in an interview that Microsoft had some fan-favorite games in the works. This came in response to the following list of games requested by fans (for games that already have sequels, I assume fans are hoping for a new entry in the series):
Halo Wars 2
Alan Wake 2
MechAssault
Conker 3
Blinx the Time Sweeper
Fusion Frenzy
Banjo-Kazooie
Kameo 2
High Heat Baseball
Otogi
Knights of the Old Republic
Shenmue
Spencer said, “There are a couple of games on that list that we’re doing some work on.” Later in the interview, he expressed his admiration for Rare, which also served to fuel hopes that a Rare sequel was in development.
Well, it’s not Conker.
Conker’s arrival in Project Spark led to some debate over whether this meant he was getting a true game of his own, or if this was it. Spencer cleared up the matter by confirming this was it.
So what about Rare?
Rare is working on something, although what that something is, we don’t know. And that brings us back to our original topic: Nintendo 64 classics.
On its community site, Rare is conducting a poll asking fans what their favorite Nintendo 64 Rare games are. Right now, Banjo-Kazooie and Conker’s Bad Fur Day are leagues ahead of everyone else. Head on over to cast your vote–you can probably guess what mine was.
Does this mean Rare is working on a game from that list? Probably not. But it sure can’t hurt to let the company know which of its games you like the most.
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Two weeks ago, Tales of Symphonia’s villain ripped out my heart and steamrolled it. Consequently, I now like him more than ever.
I’m not going to spoil anything about Tales of Symphonia, although it’s quickly becoming my favorite RPG (if not my favorite game) of all time. Instead, I’m going to talk a little bit about villains and then take this opportunity to cover one of my favorite topics–how much I hated Final Fantasy XIII! Consequently, this post WILL contain Final Fantasy XIII spoilers, and while I didn’t appreciate its story, you might not want it spoiled for you. If so, why not read about an RPG I liked, instead?
Hero, antihero, or villain, we love Raist either way.
Someday, I’ll write a full rant review/discussion of FFXIII, but today I just want to talk about its villain. Because FFXIII’s villain is awful. See, good villains make you feel emotion–any emotion. It can be sadness and anger, like my experience with Symphonia. It can be fear or uneasiness, as I’ve mentioned in the past. Maybe you love the villain’s humor or style. Maybe you sympathize with the character and wish things could work out differently. Maybe you feel hatred so strong, you just can’t wait to take down the villain.
But you should feel something.
Raistlin Majere, from Dragonlance is a great example of a villain who causes many different emotions all at once. He might be the most beloved character in the series, even when he’s evil. (Raistlin resides on a revolving door between antiheroism and villainy.) Even characters in-universe comment on how everyone can sympathize with him and his motives for the terrible things he does.
There are many villains out there like Raistlin, and maybe it’s a misguided attempt to balance this that leaves us with villains like Final Fantasy XIII’s Barthandelus, who makes the audience feel nothing at all.
Okay, I’m sure Barthandelus has his fans. But for my part, I felt nothing. I didn’t love him. I didn’t hate him.
I just didn’t care.
Let’s start by taking a look at how we first meet Barthandelus, or rather–and here begin the spoilers–Primarch Dysley.
All right, so at this point in the story, we’ve seen the guy trying to kill us, so it’s obvious he’s the (or at least a) villain. Thanks to Sazh, we even know who he is. Plus he gets a Datalog entry, so we can learn stuff they didn’t otherwise know how to tell us:
Galenth Dysley is the Primarch–the human representative of the Sanctum. Acting as a bridge between the fal’Cie Eden and a citizen-elected council, he facilitates the government of Cocoon.
“Until now, he has been seen as a conservative leader, never forcing the direction of the council, and always having the best interests of the people at heart. But with the discovery of the Pulse fal’Cie in Bodhum, his leadership becomes ruthless and oppressive, with the Purge policy being instigated over the span of a single night.”
That really seems like the sort of thing we should have learned through the storytelling… but I suppose without any TOWNS, FFXIII couldn’t really show us how people viewed the Primarch. (Imagine how Tales of Symphonia would struggle to introduce us to the Desians without NPC townspeople to guide our impressions. We’ll get back to this.)
Clunky though its handling is, FFXIII’s structure has shown us a villain. From this point on, he should be a major, compelling villain, right? So, when’s the next time we see him?
Gotta give him a little credit–Dysley really wants to be sinister here. I think he might even want to be Chancellor Palpatine executing Order 66. Since we’ve seen him for all of 30 seconds, though, it fails to carry the same weight.
All right, time for the big reveal!
There is a major problem here. This is supposed to be a huge twist–Primarch Dysley is actually the fal’Cie Barthandelus. But why should we CARE? It would be one thing if he’d been presented as a good guy or at least an antihero. It would even work if he’d had a strong role in the story as a villain before this, a long-running nemesis suddenly revealing his true power. Or maybe if we thought the fal’Cie were the good guys, it would be a shock to realize the villain is one of them.
But this? An evil human we’ve seen only twice before reveals himself as an evil demigod. The biggest twist in this scene is that he kills his own second-in-command (because… uh… evil?), which doubles as a disappointment since Jihl Nabaat already had the potential to be a more interesting villain than him.
So, Barthandelus has manipulated us into becoming l’Cie to force us to kill the fal’Cie Orphan, which will bring about the destruction of Cocoon and revive the Maker. This leads to the crux of the plot–trying to find a way to save Cocoon even though we’re being forced to follow Barthandelus’s plans. I actually like that. For all I complain about FFXIII’s story, I think it had real potential. This plot premise should put us in a real moral quandary and make us hate Barthandelus.
And maybe it would if the game made us care about Cocoon.
Destroying Cocoon is a bad thing. Lots of people will die. That’s bad.
I just wish the game had made me more attached to Cocoon, so I could feel something other than the objective knowledge that people will die and that’s wrong. Remember how I said Tales of Symphonia’s towns help us understand the Desians? They also make us care about the world.
Without towns, without notable NPC actions, without exploration, I felt no connection to Final Fantasy XIII’s world. I had no personal stake in the fight against Barthandelus. Even in his subsequent appearances, he never did anything to make me care.
Now, I’m not saying every game needs a compelling villain. Some focus on gameplay instead of story, and then it’s just fine to have bad guy you fight just because it’s the bad guy. However, Final Fantasy is a story-driven series in a traditionally story-driven genre, and Final Fantasy XIII is no different. It even sacrificed gameplay to lock the player into a rigid plot structure (essentially the opposite of what Sticker Star did), but it didn’t follow through with a worthy story.
Final Fantasy XIII’s Barthandelus is not a complex enough character to make us care about him, and the game’s storytelling fails to make us care about his actions. All in all, he’s one of the worst villains I’ve ever seen. Someday, I’ll play Final Fantasy XIII-2 and see whether its villain is much of an improvement. He certainly couldn’t be worse.
All right, Barthandelus fans, feel free to tell me how I’m wrong. Everyone else, share with us the villains that have disappointed you the most. In the meantime, I’ll go back to playing Tales of Symphonia.
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