Day 4 - The Last Remnant and Delve Deeper

The Last Remnant

Square Enix JRPG that looks an awful lot like Final Fantasy 11/14. The first thing I noticed here was that I needed to find my controller. The game supports keyboard, but not mouse, and all the callouts are for an Xbox 360 controller. The game opens up with a large-scale battle and some sort of weapon called the "Gae Bolg", which is pronounced just like my dirty mind expects it to.
You're briefly introduced to the battle system, but it's not until later that any of it makes sense. Characters are played as parts of a unit, which could be 2-6 characters, and you'll control multiple units in one battle. Your actions aren't numerous, at least not at this stage, and you can't control individuals. The unit will take your order and execute them on the battle in somewhat real time, and positioning seems to play somewhat of a part. The game does large-scale battles fairly interestingly, and I'm curious to see how it develops.

I only played for a little under an hour and a half, and this is a JRPG, so naturally the story didn't make any sense at all. The main character, who is searching for his kidnapped sister, doesn't seem to have any idea what he's doing or where he is. The people around him aren't the most informative either. There's a lot of hinting that the Remnants, which appear to be magical weapons, while very useful have a high cost. I'm sure there will be plenty of ethical, moral and philosophical speeches about the Remnants throughout the game.

I'm not crazy about JRPGs, and I only own this because of the Square Enix Complete pack. It looks pretty enough, and aside from the controller issues it feels good on the PC, but I don't think I want to play this any more than I have already.

Delve Deeper

Delve Deeper is a turn-based strategy game with a simple concept: venture down and collect treasure. It played as a multiplayer vs match, where each game has a set number of turns and all players share the same board. You'll control 5 dwarves which fall under three classes: Miner, Warrior and Scout, each with different attack, movement and item-carrying capacities. Each turn allows you to place one tile, to expand the network, and then move each dwarf.

Tunnels have valuable ore in them, depending on how deep you are they get more valuable. Ending a dwarf collects the ore, which can then be sold from your home base or a Teller in the caves. You'll also encounter enemies which can be killed for loot. Tougher enemies appear further down.

I really did not enjoy this game. Your actions per turn are very limited, and the game insist on showing you every other player's actions too. At the default speed that meant about a minute or two in between my turns as all 3 other players and the monsters each played one by one. I raised the speed to the maximum level "Ludicrous", but it still took longer than I'd like. The game itself isn't very deep, and I don't care to go back for it. If you're really in need of dwarven mining, check out Dwarfs!? instead.

Notes

Two uninspiring games of vastly different budgets, but nothing that caught my interest. I wanted to play The Last Remnant more as JRPGs take time to get going, but I found myself drifting to sleep.

11.5 hours down, 188 to go!


Album: Steam Challenge: Day 004