Astonishia Story
Bad title, worse RPG.
Published: June 20, 2006
I'm so goddamn torn right now. On the one hand, I constantly bitch and moan about how Sony Computer Entertainment America doesn't give 2D games any love, that they've helped kill off sprite-based games with beautiful animation and tons of personality that just can't be done with 3D yet. And then, I see that games like this actually passed though the notoriously anti-2D approvals department at SCEA and I wish they just had a blanket anti-2D stance if this is what's going to make it through.
Astonishia Story is simply a weak RPG. It's weak in overall story, it's weak in depth of gameplay and most of all, it's terribly weak in translation. I'm willing to let a lot of things slide in the case of the first two, since this is an early 90s Korean role-playing game being resurrected, and I'm all for old-school RPGs, but there's just no excusing the effort that the localization team made to helping update the game.
The storyline of a imperial guard being sent on a quest to recover a scepter vital to his kingdom is enough of a cliché, but Astonishia Story combats this with plenty of self-referential humor and a little bit of fourth wall-breaking moments that could actually have made it something charming and unique, even despite its run-of-the-mill battles and storyline progression. Instead, stuff like joking about old-school copy protection schemes is just butchered by ham-fisted attempts at translating the game.
To be quite honest (and this is something nobody should say about an RPG), the story isn't really all that important -- or at least it's not crucial here to getting mileage out of the game. The main draw or repulsion, depending on how you take to it, is the battle system, which fuses traditional turn-based moves with a basic grid allowing back and side attacks (inexplicably, only the latter of which actually seems to provide any real strategy), and heavy world exploration. Meeting the characters is supposed to be half the fun, but these are either poorly translated or aren't obvious enough (a fault of the original game, not the port).
The result is an RPG without any real merits. Sure, it gets the job done, but with fairly high encounter rates (the game toggles between seeing enemies on the overworld map and random encounters in smaller areas) and no real strategy to battles (you can pick from a ranged or melee attack, spell or skill), plus townsfolk that are usually boring but necessary since they give you your next quest, there's nothing beyond the most basic RPG draw like leveling your character and seeing them gain new skills.
Even worse, most of the time your party consists of Lloyd, your main character, and a bunch of complete schleps with generic names (seriously, we're talking "Solider 1" here). When you finally do gain someone with not just some decent skill but a personality, it's cause for celebration. If the experience system wasn't so fundamentally busted, you might be able to boost your weaker Generic Party Member Number Three into someone useful with decent attach and hit points, but experience bonuses go to the guys who did the most damage in the battle: your most powerful characters. This means to even the far weaker characters out, you have to babysit them while they poke at enemies with their flabby arms and unsharpened sticks. In the end, they just end up either a) a nuisance, b) monster fodder or c) both.
All of these things could be written off as byproducts of a simpler time for RPGs, but the creeping spectre of technology just adds more pain to the stew as you wade through endless loading screens -- none of which are absolutely horrid, but they add little unnecessary pauses here and there that completely interrupt the flow of the game. Being a 12 year old game, certain things can slide, but injected waiting isn't really one of them.
Luckily, the presentation is. The SNES-era graphics aren't terribly detailed, but when the game does decide to through in some flourishes, the animation or effects are quite well done, and deliver that kind of punch that only hand-animated 2D sprites can deliver. Though you won't see these most of the time (instead the game is usually simple trips through modestly detailed areas with cookie-cutter themes like forests or oceans), the game does have a solid art style that reminded me of how far things have come, design-wise.
The same goes for the audio, which is certainly acceptable (some of the tunes in the game are actually quite good, though the majority of them are entirely forgettable). There's no voice acting or excess sound effects, just simple, basic accompaniments to what's happening on screen. Little monster yelps or sword slashes give your ears something to digest, but it's certainly no feast.
That's Astonishia Story for you: simple, but unable to conjure up any sort of real attachment. Most of the oddball characters and doses of personality are stunted by awkward translation and stuttering load times. I really wanted a game like this to be the RPG that PSP owners could look forward to (how awesome would that be, the first must-have role-playing experience 2D classic?), but instead it's something far worse: a game that shows its age in all the wrong ways while tripping on its own charm.
If only to reinforce that this is not the way to treat a 2D game, don't buy this game. If that means Sony kills off 2D entirely here in the States, it will be a horrible thing, but if this is the kind of game that's going to get through... we'd be better off just remembering the good ol' days with the rose colored glasses of nostalgia.
Astonishia Story is simply a weak RPG. It's weak in overall story, it's weak in depth of gameplay and most of all, it's terribly weak in translation. I'm willing to let a lot of things slide in the case of the first two, since this is an early 90s Korean role-playing game being resurrected, and I'm all for old-school RPGs, but there's just no excusing the effort that the localization team made to helping update the game.
The storyline of a imperial guard being sent on a quest to recover a scepter vital to his kingdom is enough of a cliché, but Astonishia Story combats this with plenty of self-referential humor and a little bit of fourth wall-breaking moments that could actually have made it something charming and unique, even despite its run-of-the-mill battles and storyline progression. Instead, stuff like joking about old-school copy protection schemes is just butchered by ham-fisted attempts at translating the game.
To be quite honest (and this is something nobody should say about an RPG), the story isn't really all that important -- or at least it's not crucial here to getting mileage out of the game. The main draw or repulsion, depending on how you take to it, is the battle system, which fuses traditional turn-based moves with a basic grid allowing back and side attacks (inexplicably, only the latter of which actually seems to provide any real strategy), and heavy world exploration. Meeting the characters is supposed to be half the fun, but these are either poorly translated or aren't obvious enough (a fault of the original game, not the port).
The result is an RPG without any real merits. Sure, it gets the job done, but with fairly high encounter rates (the game toggles between seeing enemies on the overworld map and random encounters in smaller areas) and no real strategy to battles (you can pick from a ranged or melee attack, spell or skill), plus townsfolk that are usually boring but necessary since they give you your next quest, there's nothing beyond the most basic RPG draw like leveling your character and seeing them gain new skills.
Even worse, most of the time your party consists of Lloyd, your main character, and a bunch of complete schleps with generic names (seriously, we're talking "Solider 1" here). When you finally do gain someone with not just some decent skill but a personality, it's cause for celebration. If the experience system wasn't so fundamentally busted, you might be able to boost your weaker Generic Party Member Number Three into someone useful with decent attach and hit points, but experience bonuses go to the guys who did the most damage in the battle: your most powerful characters. This means to even the far weaker characters out, you have to babysit them while they poke at enemies with their flabby arms and unsharpened sticks. In the end, they just end up either a) a nuisance, b) monster fodder or c) both.
All of these things could be written off as byproducts of a simpler time for RPGs, but the creeping spectre of technology just adds more pain to the stew as you wade through endless loading screens -- none of which are absolutely horrid, but they add little unnecessary pauses here and there that completely interrupt the flow of the game. Being a 12 year old game, certain things can slide, but injected waiting isn't really one of them.
Luckily, the presentation is. The SNES-era graphics aren't terribly detailed, but when the game does decide to through in some flourishes, the animation or effects are quite well done, and deliver that kind of punch that only hand-animated 2D sprites can deliver. Though you won't see these most of the time (instead the game is usually simple trips through modestly detailed areas with cookie-cutter themes like forests or oceans), the game does have a solid art style that reminded me of how far things have come, design-wise.
The same goes for the audio, which is certainly acceptable (some of the tunes in the game are actually quite good, though the majority of them are entirely forgettable). There's no voice acting or excess sound effects, just simple, basic accompaniments to what's happening on screen. Little monster yelps or sword slashes give your ears something to digest, but it's certainly no feast.
That's Astonishia Story for you: simple, but unable to conjure up any sort of real attachment. Most of the oddball characters and doses of personality are stunted by awkward translation and stuttering load times. I really wanted a game like this to be the RPG that PSP owners could look forward to (how awesome would that be, the first must-have role-playing experience 2D classic?), but instead it's something far worse: a game that shows its age in all the wrong ways while tripping on its own charm.
If only to reinforce that this is not the way to treat a 2D game, don't buy this game. If that means Sony kills off 2D entirely here in the States, it will be a horrible thing, but if this is the kind of game that's going to get through... we'd be better off just remembering the good ol' days with the rose colored glasses of nostalgia.
