What I'm Playing (Volume 44): Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7

No, I still haven't finished The Legend of Dragoon, and it's quickly becoming my white whale. But I have been making progress, and think I'll be finishing it up this week, if everything goes as planned. But I've been playing League of Legends again (big trouble for my 50 games in 2018 quest), and got distracted by the game I'm reviewing here, so I've been trying to dedicate a mere 1/2 hour a day to The Legend of Dragoon, with mixed results. But I'm farther today than I was last Tuesday, and will likely be farther next Tuesday than I am today, so that's good.

The Lego games have always been a treat for me ever since I discovered them through the magnificent Lego Batman. I've since played through several of them with my son, and they really scratch an old itch for me, true couch coop that's engaging for people of a wide variety of ages. The basic premise of the Lego games, at least in the modern era of Lego games (post Lego Star Wars), is that you play as Lego-ized characters from different movie/comic book universes, and recreate scenes from the movies or experience new adventures in the universe from the perspective of little Legos. Each different type of character has a different set of skills, and you always play as at least two characters, switching between the two as you need. The missions are primarily about puzzle solving, though there is definitely an amusing combat system involved in between puzzles.

Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 is the second of the Lego Harry Potter games, and I started with it for the most base, treacherous, and immature of reasons: trophies. I had recently begun playing through Lego Harry Potter: Years 1-4 with my wife, but her appetite for video games is less than mine, and I really wanted more Lego games. So I moved on to the second game, saving the first for our collective marital playthrough. I also selfishly refused to play with anyone else, as many of the trophies require having one player only, which is probably my biggest gripe with the game. I'm not quite done with 100% of the game, but finished the campaign and have gotten almost 95% of the stuff in the game, so I feel pretty confident about my ability to review it.

The game succeeds marvelously in the same way as all of the games from the run from Lego Batman to Lego Marvel Superheroes, in that it creates a hilarious, childlike, and reverent homage to the universe which it is mimicking. What's more, the actual gameplay makes it fun and rewarding to play with more than one person, and even simple enough for a child to pick up and play. Lego Batman and Lego Marvel Superheroes in particular were delights to play with my son, as they create simple enough puzzles that he can solve, while also having an adult there to help out with the more challenging parts of the game.

The humor of the game and it's delightful and obvious love of the source material was definitely the high point for me. For example, there is a scene featuring *spoiler alert* Harry trying to get Snape's memories while he's dying. In the book and movie, these memories are poetically depicted as silver tears coming from Snape's eyes as he recalls the pain and anguish of his greatest mistakes. In the more kid friendly Lego version, Harry tries to get the memories by putting onions under Snape's nose to make him cry! *end spoiler*

There's another point in the game that clearly shows the developers' love of the source material. In one mission, there's a little puppet show of Harry fighting Voldemort, a clear tip of the hat to the immensely popular Youtube series Potter Puppet Pals.

The game features tons of content and will definitely keep the Harry Potter fan busy for a long time. You have the whole of Hogwarts castle to explore, as well as lots of missions in various places from the books including the Burrow, the Ministry of Magic, Platform 9 3/4, 4 Privet Drive, and 12 Grimmauld Place. There are 24 missions to play, and boatloads of collectibles to get, with most of them being walled off for a second playthrough, once you've acquired more magic spells and characters with unique abilities. There are over 200 characters in the game, including some VERY deep cuts from the books.

The game has a delightful soundtrack taken from the movies, and has most of the best tracks from said movies, even the down soundtracks from 5 and 6.

The controls are good and gameplay is fun, although the hitbox mechanics in combat are pretty unclear. The system in which you duel is fantastic, though, and was a ton of fun.

The game, like all Lego games, is regrettably buggy. There are some times in which you will simply be stuck in a mission due to a bug, and need to restart. It's not the worst game in the series in this regard (that would go to Lego Batman 2, of the ones I've played), but it caught me several times.

The boss fights are also pretty disappointing, and a wide berth from the fantastic fights in Lego Batman and Lego Marvel Superheroes. Pretty much every fight comes down to fighting little minions, dodging flying debris from a boss, and throwing the last shot of debris back at him. It was fun once, but after you've done it 20 times it's quite dry.

My biggest complaint, as referenced earlier, was with the trophy system. There are probably 10 trophies in the game which require you to play a single player campaign, which completely moves the player away from the most delightful aspect of the game, true coop! Some single player requirements make sense, like making a trophy that requires you to throw 10 touchdowns in Madden, but making you play against AI, rather than against your friend intentionally letting you score. But I just can't see any practical justification for it in this game, as it just really ruins one of the best parts of the game. But if you don't care about trophies, it won't impact you at all.

Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 is a delightful love letter to the Harry Potter series that can be enjoyed by fans of all ages. I'd highly recommend it, warts and all. I'll give it a 8.8/10.

My next game, after The Legend of Dragoon, or maybe concurrent with it when I get bored, is an all-time classic which I've never touched before...

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 37): Speak No Evil

You had me at Wayne Shorter, Freddie Hubbard, and Herbie Hancock. One of the great jazz records of the era, and this track is a true jazz standard in every sense of the term.

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 36): Panama

What a great album cover, and what a great song. By the way, for someone who didn't consciously live through the 80s, "Jump" rules.

-TRO

Social Games for a Reclusive Gamer

An actual picture from a party at a friend's house in the early 2000s ;)

I am a pretty introverted person. I spend most of my day at my desk, talking to no one. It's not that I don't enjoy people's company, but the act is fairly draining to me. As a result, I have to save up my energies for my home life, where I have four kids and a wife who desperately need me on and engaging, and since my home life is important to me, the number of social visits throughout the day become minimal. 

I've always loved video games, and fit some of the stereotypes of the hardcore gamer, while avoiding others. I'm introverted, I know a lot about video games, I find the world of video games a lovely escape from the real world, and I love Mountain Dew. I constantly bemoan how much video games have shifted lately towards exclusively multiplayer experiences, with games like Street Fighter V and Star Wars Battlefront being big disappointments to me, despite their extremely polished mechanics and presentation, due to their lack of serious single player experiences. I've sunk countless hours into single player JRPGs, and cleared enormous amounts of classic single player games in the last year alone, to compensate for the perceived lack of new, single player games (I know that they exist, but tend to be big open world map checklist games that quickly bore me, with the exception of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto V). 

Yet as I was thinking about it the other day, I realized that my despair at the current trend towards modern gaming isn't that it's multiplayer, but that it's not very social, in the true sense of the word. Most of my absolute best gaming memories, and most of my favorite games involve playing with other people. Thus, Super Smash Bros. Melee will almost certainly always be my favorite video game of all time, not because it's flawlessly programmed (it isn't, but the flaws have been exploited charmingly in the meta game), but because I enjoyed it up late at night with friends. Goldeneye will always be one of my favorite first person shooters, not because it's a superb game, but because I enjoyed it with friends. My memories of the NES are predominantly of Super Mario Bros. and Bases Loaded. I would absolutely say that Super Mario Bros. 3 is better than Super Mario Bros., but I remember the first more because I used to play two players with my dad. I remember Bases Loaded not because it's the best baseball game on the NES, but because I can still remember getting mad at my dad for hitting my best player with the pitch, causing him to charge the mound every time, and get ejected. Even the JRPGs I love most I love because I was playing them at the same time as my friends, and we would talk about them all of the time.

The shallow social interaction of online play is predominantly about competition, not socialization, because the truest socialization almost always revolves around physical proximity, or at least it makes it much easier, especially for me. I've played more League of Legends than Diablo III, but my memories of Diablo III are sharper and more treasured simply because I played it on a couch with my family over Christmas time.

So I'm going to try this year to not sink so deeply into bemoaning the lack of single player content, and try to use games as a tool to connect in a fun way with friends and family. I've already finished the campaign of Diddy Kong Racing this year with my wife, a semi-regular tradition of ours (we trade races) and want to just spend time using the medium of video games to build new memories to add to my cherished hall of fame of video games. 

-TRO

Song of the Day (Volume 35): Toxic Garbage Island

I don't know if I've heard a band who has consistently been better produced than Gojira. And when their songwriting matches their production value (which is more often than not), it's something extremely special. This is the one song that gets stuck in my head more than any other, I'm pretty sure.

What I'm Playing (Volume 43): The Final Fantasy Legend

This is the very first role playing game on the Game Boy (that I can find), and is perhaps my very first role playing game experience. I still remember playing one of the Final Fantasy Legend games at a friend's house on his Game Boy, as I can distinctly remember eating the meat to transform my monster into a new one. I'm not sure if it was the first or not, but I did have most of my experience playing the first game in high school, after obtaining a copy. I never beat it, though, and am really trying my best to clear out my oldest backlog last and this year (you're up next, The Legend of Dragoon).

The next few weeks of playing this game was an absolutely delightful mess that one would expect while programming the very first portable RPG. Taking pieces of Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II with a revolutionary new concept and making it handheld could not have been easy in the slightest, and was so different that in Japan this game has no ties to the Final Fantasy brand at all, but is actually the first game in the SaGa series, to which I have little exposure beyond this game.

The story revolves around a world dominated by a dictator, Ashura, whose four fiends are terrorizing the world. The world itself is a fascinating and original concept, with a tower that rises up into the sky, with worlds at certain levels of the tower. Thus the bottom floor is a world with three kings struggling to be the strongest, while another is a watery world, and a third is a post-apocalyptic sci-fi wasteland. The story and setting to the game are remarkably adept for a game as date as The Final Fantasy Legend, and are really a high point for the game.

The music is one of the best early Game Boy sound tracks, composed by none other than the legendary Nobuo Uematsu, who composed the music for all of the early Final Fantasy games. I feel like it's not quite as good as his work on the NES or Super NES, but for a first outing on the Game Boy with its very different sound hardware, it can be considered a standout among its peers.

You control a character who you can name, and can recruit other members to your team from three races, humans, mutants, and monsters. This is the most original and distinct element to the game, because it not only is the case that the capabilities of the races are different, but also that how they grow is dramatically different. Mutants grow in a manner similar to that in Final Fantasy II, that is to say, incrementally by taking certain actions. Getting hit by an attack, thus, might increase your max health or defense, while using a magic scroll will increase your magic power. Humans grow by the purchase of potions which can increase several of the stats, but they never get any sort of magic power, relying entirely on physical attack. Monsters don't grow at all, but rather can eat the meat of defeated monsters to turn into new ones. I didn't use them at all this run, and really wish that I had, because it's a very fun mechanic.

Battle functions most similarly to Dragon Quest in terms of its interface and controls, although there is a small wrinkle added in which each weapon has only a limited number of uses, making your grinding capabilities limited to the amount of remaining weapons you have, and makes supplying yourself before setting out on a new leg of your journey vitally important.

I really enjoyed this game, but it is remarkably messy in a lot of ways. Much of what I just told you about the way the game functions is stuff I had to figure out from internet research, as there is absolutely no way to figure out how the various character archetypes grow in game. It's possible it existed in the manual, but I don't have that, so prepare to do a bit of a deep dive into the mechanics of the game before you begin. For example, on my first run through in high school, I had a party of two mutants, a monster, and a human, but I never figured out that you needed to buy stat boosts for the human, making him pathetic by the end, and making killing the end boss nearly impossible with one useless character. This is why I never finished it, and needed a fresh run as an adult to finally knock it off my list.

The translation is frankly terrible. The dialogue is dreadful at times, but hilariously so. For example, if you get stuck running away in battle, but fail, it will tell you that your character "do nothing". There are probably 50 excellent moments of hilarious Engrish in the game, and while I wouldn't tolerate it now, in the context of burgeoning 80's scene of translating Japanese games to English, it's more amusing than distracting.

There's also definitely a sense that more care was given to the earlier worlds than the later ones, with far more detail being given and far fewer throwaway areas with nothing in them.

There are also a lot of clunky, old school kind of RPG elements that The Final Fantasy Legend adheres to simply out of a kind of path dependent default, just because no one had done them before. For example, the inventory space you get is painfully low, and in a game in which it is really important to carry backup weapons due to their limited uses, this can be extremely challenging. Also, it's got that old school annoyance that if you tell a party member to attack one character, but that character dies, they won't do anything that turn. These tiny irritations are numerous, but also easy to excuse for a game this groundbreaking and early.

The most important thing about the game is the groundwork that it laid, similar to my reviews for Super Mario Kart and Super Mario Land. If any of those three games came out today, I'd be a little upset. They'd need a lot more polish and there were too many risky choices made that didn't pan out in the long run. But for the time, they are absolute titans of their genres, setting up a foundation for greatness down the road. If Miyamoto learned from and built off Donkey Kong and perhaps Pitfall to make his masterpiece Super Mario Bros. that finally ensconced all of the established rules of the genre, then The Final Fantasy Legend can consider one of the games on the ground floor for later and better handheld RPGs like Pokemon. So warts and all, I'd highly recommend that you check out the granddaddy of one of my favorite genres, the handheld RPG. I'll give it a 8.6/10.

Next up for handhelds, I'll be playing the second game in the SaGa series (Final Fantasy Legend II), at least until my next Amazon package arrives, at which point I'll be switching to the following game, which I'll tease below.

-TRO

What I'm Watching (Volume 4): OJ: Made in America

I recently finished OJ: Made in America, a 7 and a half hour long documentary! No, it's not produced by Ken Burns, but is actually a portion of the 30 for 30 documentary series on ESPN, although they documentaries are usually not quite as long. Director Ezra Edelman was unknown to me by name, but upon looking into his filmography a bit, I saw that he had also done the superb Requiem for the Big East for 30 for 30, and was naturally intrigued by the story.

I was 7 when all of the OJ drama was going on, and barely remember it at all. I knew that he was a football player, and remember the white Bronco on TV, and I knew that he was probably guilty, but that he got off due to his money and the skillful defense team the money was able to buy. I turned on the documentary intending to figure out how a self-respecting jury could have ruled the man innocent, given all the evidence against him, but what you actually receive in the film is so much more important and interesting than that relatively uninteresting tale of prosecutorial ineptitude.

The fascinating thing about OJ: Made in America is just how far back it goes, discussing the roots of racism in America and particularly in LA, paralleling it with OJ's own fascinating attempts to be seen as something other than a black man, and be judged entirely on his merit. This is the story you didn't intend to see, but in the skilled hands of Edelman, it's all tied together in a package that makes an enormous amount of sense.

Despite the gargantuan 7 and a half hours worth of content, Edelman manages to keep the narrative whole and intriguing throughout the vast majority of it, although like the Burns films after which this is almost certainly modeled, there are a few ho hum moments that likely could have been cut. But this is a remarkable accomplishment by a skilled director and his team, and I'd recommend it to anyone who is interested in learning more about OJ and the roots that colored his dramatic rise and fall.

I'll give OJ: Made in America a 9.5/10. It's really an excellent documentary that will be interesting to a huge set of people, regardless of your race or interest in sports.

-TRO