Full Review: Weapon Shop de Omasse (3DS)

So I finished Weapon Shop de Omasse the other night, and then I finished it an additional four times the next day, but I will get to that later on.  This game was created by developer Level 5 (Professor Layton series, Starship Damrey) and conceptualized by Japanese comedian Yoshiyuki Hirai and that comedic sense and timing comes across frequently during the game, referencing both video game culture and TV culture; "I stick them with the. . .which end was it?" said one generic NPC during a battle.

Gameplay

As stated a few weeks back, Weapon Shop de Omasse is a comedic blacksmithing parody simulation of traditional JRPGs.  The game is spent between a number of mini-game-esque type tasks. 

1) Smithing: You are able to create various types of weapons (Sword, Dagger, Spear, Axe, Dao, Club, et cetera).  You strike the chunk of heated metal to a musical theme that is associated with a Hero character.  It basically acts like a rhythm matching/mimicking game, but you have to strike the metal in different areas and "carve" away the unwanted material in order to get the shape of the specific weapon you are creating.  While smithing, you also have to keep an eye on the temperature of the metal because if it cools down too much, the metal will not be as malleable and you will fail in your smithing task.

Chaining hammer falls will increase the bonus to whichever attribute
the game currently wants to assign your bonus to.

Smithing is actually where I had the biggest issue.  As you complete a musical phrase, you add a certain attribute (slash, pierce or bludgeon) bonus to that weapon although I was never able to figure out how the game decided to choose which attribute was going to be assigned.  For example, I would be smithing an axe that would need to have a high slashing attribute and the first two "chains" on a musical phrase would add points to slash, but then for the rest of the song, points would go to pierce and bludgeon.  Upon finishing, each weapon is rated (Lame, Not Bad, Good, Great) and if the weapon's primary attribute was rated as "Lame," your weapon would often be classified as "Dull," which is not something you want an axe you crafted for your Grandmother who is questing to find her husband to be swinging around.  I am positive I must have missed something early on in the game when this was explained, so that is my own loss.

2) Polishing: Once a weapon is created or returned, you have to polish it back to its presentable beauty.  Polishing also buffs a weapon's attributes (slash, pierce, bludgeon) by about 10 points in each category., you Weapons of various types and strengths are unlocked as the owner of the shop buys additional materials which allow you to create new weapons as well as your customers who return their rented weapons along with some items used to modify the weapons you make.

The rest of the game is spent keeping track of which weapons you have in stock, which weapons you need to make for heroes who have put in orders to be picked up later, and what materials you currently have in stock to create the aforementioned weapons.

Story

The story in Omasse, is a very stereotypical one for people who have played a JRPG or twelve: Small village near "Starting City" where you play as Yhan, an apprentice to the local master blacksmith, Oyaji where customers come in and rent weapons to complete quests in anticipation of the returning Dark Lord and his minions.  Yuhan and Oyaji have a subtle comedic relationship, but the majority of the laughs come from Oyaji's blunt reaction to characters who enter the shop.

There are a number of hero characters who have their own individual stories, which are fairly amusing and at times I often felt like a bartender, hearing them talk about some aspect of their lives and the particular quest they were going on.  And while you do deal with the hero characters, the other half of the time you deal with generic NPCs (which I found odd that they were all male where as there is one transgender and four female hero characters) who acknowledge the fact that they are not heros by saying things like, "Wouldn't you rather rent this out to a real character?" and "I like repeating the same actions!"

The Grindcast, which you can select a single person to read their feed.
Some characters will also use hashtags like #weaponreviews.

Half of the story is told by the face-t0-face interactions in the store while the other half is through a game mechanic called the "Grindcast."  Grind referring to the JRPG aspect of games grinding for levels between story points and Cast from, I am assuming, podcasts.  The characters are told that there is a device on each weapon that allows the people in the shop to keep track of them on their quest and the weapons.  The Grindcast plays in the background too while you perform various tasks around the shop (smithing, polishing, inventory management) and it can be kind of hard to keep track of what the heros are up to while also paying attention to smithing that wavy-bladed flamberge.  There will also be times when unlabeled and unknown characters' quest updates will appear on the Grindcast, but these are not explained and they come across as just general chatter.

[no_spoilers]There were two separate and unrelated story elements that I was surprised that the game took.  The first I saw coming but was still surprised that it happened, knowing that the "traditional American producer" would say that the audience would not want to see that happen to a character.  The second event I did not see coming at all and felt it was rather abrupt.  Upon later reflection, it made a little bit of sense, but it felt a little out of place.  That is all I will say[/no_spoilers].

Master Blacksmith Oyaji.
Proper protection is necessary around the forge.

Graphics

With the exception of some of the design for one of the hero characters, I was overall very happy with the overall look of the game.  Being on the 3DS, I was not going in expecting modded Skyrim level of graphics, but you could say that based on the title screen, I was expecting something more akin to Akira Toriyama with a little bit less in the spikey hair department.  There was one character who did look like they could have come from a Dragon Warrior game as the best friend or part time sidekick of Loto/Erdrick.

3D Effectiveness

The 3D effect worked very well for the majority of the game.  Most of the time I had the slider at about 50-75%.  My favorite part was looking over the various weapons I had created with the slider on, but seeing as how NPCs or heroes would frequently walk into the shop or I had weapons to forge or polish, there did not leave a whole lot of time (when I thought about it) to admire my handiwork.

Music & Sound

Since at least half of the smithing aspect of the game involved hammering out weapons to music, the music would have to be catchy enough not to become annoying; pretty much what every overworld and battle music in every RPG ever has to strive to achieve.  Each style of weapon would have a specific song associated with it and while the songs became repetitive pretty early on, the rhythm that you had to hammer out changed depending on the level of the weapon; higher level weapons mean a more complicated rhythm.

Some of the songs associated with the characters are rather silly and probably should not be taken too seriously, but if you are already in the mindset that this is a comedic game, then you will be right at home with the tunes.

Something else I found to be interesting was that there was no vocal localization for English speaking countries (not that everything has to be English-centric).  All of the spoken dialogue in the game, which came from Oyaji, is all spoken in Japanese.  I know can make the general sounds associated with "Lame, Not Bad" and "Great."  There are other praises/scolds you are given upon completing each weapon and you can tell by the inflection in Oyaji's voice if he is pleased or not.  You can also assume that a dull weapon should not be part of the store's inventory.  I was and am very glad that the games spoken dialogue was not localized, but then again I tend to favor original language and subtitles over dubbed versions of anything anyhow.

Final Thoughts

So the game took about 15 hours to complete and as far as I can tell, that will be about the average amount it takes in order to beat the game every time as the events are scripted and even if you make weapons faster than I did, it will not mean that they will be rented out and returned any faster.  Some people, who are better blacksmiths than I and better judges of character when choosing which weapon to rent out may not take as long as hero quests are repeated until they succeed and advance their story.

An additional 11 hours have not changed my high recommendation for Weapon Shop de Omasse one bit as I still would recommend it to anyone with a 3DS.  While the game became tedious at points and frustrating trying to figure out why my weapons were coming out dull or when my money became so low that I couldn't afford to but the highest level materials to make the strongest weapons for the higher level quests heros and NPCs needed to accomplish in order to help make the weapon shop money so they could afford to by better materials to make better weapons. . .and so on and so forth.  

But what is a fun and memorable game without a little bit of work and frustration?  Not worth playing in my opinion.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Fighting for Survival

First Impressions (Of Sorts): Weapon Shop de Omasse (3DS)

"In the world of RPGs, many heroes arise, but someone's got to make their weapons."  That's the tagline and hook for the 3DS eShop game, Weapon Shop de Omasse from developers, Level-5 (Professor Layton series).  The premise is a pretty simple one and is stated in the tagline: you are a blacksmith (actually the apprentice to the blacksmith) and are making weapons in a village during a typical JRPG setting: in that the Dark Lord has returned after being defeated 50 years prior.  It's your job to create the weapons (which vary among daggers, swords, spears, axes, katanas and the like).

I credit in large part my history with "traditional" JRPGs such as Final Fantasy, Dragon Warrior/Quest and Paladin's Quest for easily falling into this game, similar to how I was able to buy into the gameplay and aesthetic of Witch and Hero. If you aren't immediately okay with the idea that there is an absolute evil and that there are people out questing AND that the game makes light of this common convention, then this probably won't be the game for you.

Gameplay is a mix between overly simplified blacksmith simulation crossbred with a rhythm game with a bit of multitasking (keeping the temperature of the metal between the correct temperature) thrown in for good measure.  You also have to keep track of your blacksmithing materials, which weapons you have already created and who has which weapon out on a quest.

There are also some rather divergent elements to this game that are not a part of most RPGs.You are in charge of selecting the proper weapon for your customers which means looking at the weakness of the monster they are going after along with their personal preference for a certain type of weapon.  You are also in charge of polishing the weapons after they are made and when they return in order, I think, to help level up the weapons.  The most "different" thing is that weapons are rented as opposed to sold.  It sounds very odd, and even the characters in-game comment on how odd this is for a village blacksmith in an RPG game to be doing, but that's one of the game mechanics and it works pretty well.

There have been times between customers coming into the store that I wish I had time to craft some of the newly available weapons (due to new materials coming into the shop), but the store is just too busy.  Then there's downtime, which is something that exists in nearly every job.  I have created all the weapons that I needed to, all the weapons have been polished, the store is stocked with enough materials for additional smithing if need be. . . there's just nothing to do.  So your character just hangs around the store while you, the player, reads from the Grindcast (a twitterfeed-type device that lets you read about what the heros/NPCs are doing while they're out with one of the weapons they've rented from your store.

Presently, I've put almost four hours into this game and while entertained, there hadn't been that moment that often happens in games where you just sit back and are like, "Wow. . . huh."  That happened last night for me.  I had finished crafting a handful of new weapons, some of which came out dull (and I'm still trying to figure out why) and I knew that my (in-game) Grandma was coming by to pick up a weapon for a specific type of enemy.  Well, she showed up a lot sooner than I had thought, but I had just crafted a new type of axe that would give her a 60% chance of success so I rented it to her.  It wasn't until after she left that I went back to polishing some weapons when I realized that I had rented my Grandmother an unpolished weapon.  I felt shame.  That I had let my Grandmother leave a store that her grandchild worked at with an axe that I had failed to make as presentable as possible (I am just a little bit afraid that she's going to bring this fact up when she returns the weapon).  That was when I knew for sure that this game had it's proverbial hooks in me.

There is still a lot that I have not covered (artwork, music, spoken dialogue, written script, more in depth of the Grindcast, et cetera) and that will have to wait for the Full Review to come whenever I finish the game, which will definitely happen.  The game, unfortunately, is no longer on sale through the eShop, but I would have been happy if I had paid full price, even though the fact that it was on sale is what made me purchase the game, but if you're still on the fence, the demo is available and gives a great example of what the rest of the game would play like.  I highly recommend it.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

One Song We Share

Year In Review: 2014

Ahhhh, 2014 is over and another year of the non-leap variety has begun, this time ending in the newly minted 2015 style.  But seriously, who talks that way!?

2014 was a good year for us here.  I felt our writing has increased quite a bit since we started over two years ago and we continue to be more and more coherent and consistent.  Dr. Potts with his newly NP inspired title Pak Watch which will be seeing further development in the coming year and the creation of Wednesdays' MIDI Week Singles of which both of us are always excited about writing for.

Looking back, I feel that I re-submerged myself in the board game playing industry, mainly towards the end of the year and partly because Conklederp and I got married which brought in some gifts in the board gaming department.  Although, I feel that this re-germinated seed began earlier in the year when Chreekat's mom moved up to Portlandia and we played Settlers of Catan.  Since then, we've played a fair amount of Mansions of Madness, Pandemic, as well as a handful of other games (7 Wonders, Camel Up!, Blokus, DiXit) with some other friends.  Our current year looks to be even more expansive with Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition that I am planning to get started in the coming weeks/months.

I also noticed that I started watching a lot more episodes from both Extra Credits and LoadingReadyRun as well as listening to podcasts of Roosterteeth's The Patch.  Coupled with my reading of Penny-Arcade and the occasional article from PC Gamer and Kotaku, these are my primary sources for gaming news and information (and I guess occasional hilarity) from the past year and 2015 doesn't look to be any different.

Gaming-wise, there's a lot more to cover and after creating a list of the games I had played, finished and stopped playing, I decided not to subjugate our reader to that kind of monotony.  But now that Steam's Winter Sale is over (as of roughly four and-a-half hours ago) and that my 3DS has filled up with games from Nintendo's eShop sale (oddly a lot for Nintendo), I am perfectly content to wallow about in this (I guess technically it's last) years haul which includes old (and a couple newer) titles such as Castle Crashers, Trine 2, Wasteland, Child of Light, VVVVVV, Crimson Shard and Weapon Shop de Omasse [which I am definitely going to write about in the coming week(s)].

With the move that Conklederp and I just completed a few weeks back, we'll be putting in a retro gaming room (SNES, N64 and GameCube) so look for more articles about games that Dr. Potts, Conklederp and I all grew up with.  With any luck, I might be able to acquire the NES from my parents house (once my older sister and I determine custody).  I've also re-installed my magnifying light which means that I will be getting back into painting miniatures, which I am very excited to do again after a three plus year dry spell.

Oh, and I had nearly forgotten that 2014 marked my official foray into the world of online gaming with The Elder Scrolls Online, of which I played for about four months before having to stop due to a lack of incoming income, and Path of Exile, which I am still playing, but appear to be unable to find the time to make my way up and through the Pyramid in a single sitting.  Ah, first world problems.  Amiright!?

So when I am not being all accountable (eh, EH!?) this upcoming school year, I'll be keeping busy with one of many forms of gaming, which I will keep y'all updated on, because that's why we exist here.

Happy 2015.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Instrumental

Monday: The Post About Monday, Because It's Monday.

Have you guessed that it's Monday yet?  If it's not Monday and you are reading this, then you should probably stop and wait until the next Monday, but continue if you must, I won't judge you.

I wasn't entirely sure what to talk about today as there are a number of topics that I would like to talk about with some of those topics not fully formed yet while others may not be encompassing enough to fill their own post.  This is prime location after all.

First off, The Elder Scrolls Online.  That monster had it's "Early Access" begin last Sunday (March 30th, 2014) and I've managed to put some time into it since then.  I do not have any specific numbers since even though I have the game running through Steam, it's not an official "Steam" game so game time is not calculated.  Maybe it's mentioned somewhere in the "Options" menu in-game, I will have to take a look later.  Anyway, what time I've spent in Tamriel (2E 583) has been a lot of fun and not nearly as crowded as I expected it to be considering what I have seen from other MMOs.  I will give more time to this, probably next week after I've managed to put in more time and explored the world a bit more.  I'm also waiting for Conklederp's copy (which I pre-ordered from Gamestop, shipped to us on April 2nd and is supposed to arrive on April 9th; early access began on March 30th and release date was April 4th. . . sigh) so we can quest together, which she's been looking forward to since becoming casually addicted to Skyrim.  So ESO is going very well.

Renegade Kid, down in Austin, TX began a Kickstarter to crowdfund their game Cult County.  It's a game akin to both Moon and the Dementium series and likewise, was originally slated for release on the 3DS but has since outgrown the limits of that system.  Similar to the amount Shadow of the Eternals' unsuccessful Kickstarter, Cult County is looking to raise $580,000 by May 2nd.  They still have a long way to go (only 5% after 6 days) and I am leary about having my heart strings attached to and heaved overboard as it was with SotE.  With Renegade Kids being at PAX East next week, hopefully there will be a surge in interest for the game and we will see the number of funds raised.  We can only hope.

A few weeks back, Steam updated the copy of Ace Combat: Assault Horizon Enhanced Edition so that you no longer have to log in through the Windows LIVE client, but at the same time, there was the chance that it reset all of your previously save data and achievements.  I say "chance" because there were multiple notices about how to recover your game information, even after you start the game up, you are given the option to recover your previous saves.  I chose not to because I had not finished the game yet and thought, "Why not?"  Playing all over again got me thinking again about the things that I did not like about this game and that even on easy/rookie difficulty, I know that I won't be trying anything harder, if I even get around to finishing the absurdly long levels that make up the game.

Rather than end today with a slightly negative paragraph, I will say that the Nintendo eShop game Witch and Hero, which I'll be covering on Friday has been a lot of fun to play.  It's a mix of Dragon Warrior era graphics and music with a game mechanic that I have not seen before.  If you are at all interested, do not be dissuaded by almost every review I've seen (which are mostly negative) and please patiently wait for Friday.  All will be revealed.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

I Would Dazzle You With Brilliance If I Only Had The Knack

"Yeah, I Just Beat Mega Man!"

Like the title says, today I'm going to be talking about Mega Man.  Capcom's 1987 Nintendo Entertainment System release.  Nearly everything about the "history" of the game you can find over on Wikipedia so I'm not even going to attempt to talk about it on that front.  Like the majority of our posts here, I will talk about my experiences with this little bit from a 26 year old video game.  And now,

There's a song by Totally Radd!! called "Victory Pose."  I read it somewhere that the group (person?) said that it was a song that captured the feeling of legitimately beating the first Mega Man, dropping the controller and standing up with your arms raised to the sound of imagined applause.  I must have read that somewhere on Amazon.com, which is where I first heard a snip-it of the song, so here it is in full:

So yes, I did in fact just beat Mega Man on a port that I purchased from Nintendo's eShop and played on my 3DS.  Some may scoff at not having beaten the game on the original console, but let me reassure any and all nay-sayers, that the game is in fact a "direct" port.  All known glitches and ticks with the original cartridge will play havoc with you on the 3DS port as well.  I should probably also elaborate when I say "3DS port" in that it's not a 3D rendering of the original Mega Man and it's not part of Nintendo's 3D Classics line that includes Excitebike, Kid Icarus and Kirby's Dreamland among others.  It's just an eShop game that I played (and BEAT!) on my 3DS.

And now that that's out of the way, let me just say, that this game is pretty goddamn difficult.  I wrote a post last year that included Mega Man as a game that I would probably never complete due to losing those countless slips of paper containing hastily scribbled down passwords.  It almost makes me want to purchase Ninja Gaiden from the eShop and give that game another go.

But back to Mega Man.  Guts Man stage was a pain in the ass.  Those moving/flipping platforms, y'all know what I'm talkin' about.  The disappearing platforms in Ice Man stage.  Pretty much every stage in Dr. Wily's villainous compound.  The game was just brutal.  I don't know how long I spent just in Dr. Wily's Devilish Compound of Villainy, but I spent a total of seven hours, three minutes on this game.  Compare it to someone who knows what they're doing and the game can be completed in just under half-an-hour.  It really took one of my coworkers saying that he would ask me everyday [starting last Friday (6/14/13)] if I'd beaten Mega Man yet to get me off my lazy ass.  Last night, I hunkered down and completed it.  

Like I previously stated, the four stages in Dr. Wily's Hellhole of Excruciating Evil are what helped to rack in the extra hours of gameplay.  Yes, I will admit that I watched a couple of youtube videos for ideas/hints/tactics on how to get through areas and defeat bosses, but I feel that that's only the lowest form of "cheating," if you were the type of person that would consider that to be cheating.  Even with online guidance, I would still have to play the game myself without any kind of modification, say, a Game Genie.  Jumps still have to be timed right, blasts of evil energy still have to be dodged and special weapons that have to be conserved, like a squirrel burying a precious bone.  

And you know what?  I did it.  I beat Mega Man.  Without Game Genie. A game designed by a then young gaming company who had only developed about eight titles for the NES.  That game was hard.  That game had some great music in it.  That game was fun.  And now, onto Mega Man 3.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

Wind Guide You

First Impressions: Gunman Clive

It is fun!


I have however experienced a bug during the second level boss that seems to be a fairly common occurrence.  Hörberg Productions (the creator of Gunman Clive) has issued a forum post saying that they'll be releasing a patch sometime after the holidays in 2013.  The current pre-patch fix is to have the 3D turned off during the boss fight then set back to normal after the boss.  I don't even care I like the game so much.

In the game you can chose to play as either Clive or Ms. Johnson.  As Clive, you're trying to save Ms. Johnson and as Ms. Johnson, you're trying to save Clive who is kidnapped in the exact same way/animation.  The only difference (that I've experienced) is that Ms. Johnson can float as she descends, similar to Princess Toadstool in Super Mario Bros. 2.  Even the ruffles on Ms. Jonson's dress flutter while she's descending.  It's a nice little touch.

The graphics are very brown, as almost everything is in this game.  It also has a sketch look that adds some kind of charm.  I think it does anyway.  I've linked the trailer below (again), because really, really like this game.  Even more so because it was only $1.99, but that's not the only reason.  The game play is simple: Jump w/ B, Shoot w/ Y, Move w/ either the directional pad or the joystick.

Like Contra, there are a number of powered up guns you can collect.  Apart from your single shot pistol, there's a scatter shot gun; there's a "heat" seeking bullet; and lastly (at least through the 2nd level anyway), there's a large slow moving large bullet that does extra damage against the enemies.

I guess I should talk briefly about the enemies.  There are your standard thugs who shoot at you from the ground, windows and blue colored trap doors and all take only one hit to kill.  At times they ride horses at you and sadly, your only defense is to shoot the horse so it jumps over you then stumbles and presumably dies.  Okay, I lied.  You can simply duck and the horse and rider will jump over you, but where's the fun in that?  There are also wolves that charge you, pelicans that drop bombs, jumping rabbits and a duck.  Maybe the duck is a cultural thing?  Maybe they're like the monkeys in Time Splitters?

The music is very nice too.  There's a western flare to it that doesn't come across as unintentionally hokey.  Think of the music in Blazing Saddles.  It knows the genre and what our expectations for a western/cowboy world are and it delivers and all the music I've come across has been catchy.  Kudos to Arne Hörberg for his compositions.

So if you have a 3DS (it's also available on Android and Apple iOS), I highly (highly) recommend Gunman Clive.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Can Still Feel My Toes