SCD - Vay

Haiku-Review:

shalt we cross the sea
upon yon maiden's ill wind -
ships are so passé

Additional Comments:

I can't believe I managed two games in a row that placed needless emphasis on breaking wind at one point or another. At least Vay was at worst a little cheeky while Fable was flat out immature. But I digress....

First off, I can't believe it's taken me this long to get a Sega CD title up on Beat All Games. I was floored when I bought one a couple years ago and couldn't wait to start playing some games on it. Growing up, I had a friend that had a Sega CD - bought it right about when it came out. I remember he had a few games, but the only one I vividly recall was Sewer Shark. What a horrible mess that was. Even with Sewer Shark as my only point of reference all these years later, I was still utterly fascinated by the system. A majority of the games seem to be nothing more than crap, FMV-based crap, or ever-so-slightly enhanced versions of Genesis games. There's really nothing to get excited about, not to mention the system itself is pretty dodgy - especially the Rev. 1 which is what I have. However, there is a treasure trove of gems mixed in there if you know where to look. Looking around the net, I kept seeing Vay pop up as one such title. First thing that caught my eye was the Working Designs logo as they've often picked up some genuinely amazing titles and brought them to the US. Unfortunately, like most Working Designs games, they're not exactly cheap or easy to come by. Yea, still trying to track down an SCD Popful Mail for a fair price.

Popped in the disc and instantly I felt like I watching some old Ralph Bakshi production. The narrator's exasperated, almost decrepit tone brought back visions of Wizards and while the animation is more of a montage of choppy stills with clearly pixelated imagery, a certain semblance gave merit to the game's cutscenes as a long lost relative of Bakshi's design. Sadly, like most games in the early "real audio" days, the voice over work leaves much to be desired. Even the initial narration, despite it's ability to cull old movies from memory, allowed for some eye-rolling. It works, but there's an obvious call for overacting thrown in the script notes. Although it's nowhere near as outrageous as any of the later scenes, especially anything involving death.

As for the game itself, it's a basic turn-based RPG. The key word here is basic. This is one of the most stripped down, bare-boned RPG's I've ever seen. Vay makes the original Final Fantasy look complex. That's not entirely true - the two games are pretty comparable as far as depth and detail. If anything, Vay has a much more engrossing story, even if it's completely predictable, but the gameplay is broken down to the absolute essentials and is reliant on linear progression. I'm not saying linear progression is necessarily bad, as I'm not the biggest fan of games going gung ho with side quests, but Vay felt like it was on rails. For example, having just come off Final Fantasy II as well, that game is completely linear, but it never felt like I was being guided involuntarily every step of the way. A little exploration could have benefited this game greatly. The continents are essentially corridors barring any real freedom of movement. The only area void of any sense of claustrophobia was likely Penan, where in fact it took a good while to find Vaygess and then somehow lost track of it after my first explorations into the cavern of the Maytake. But given how necessary grinding is in this game, I welcomed these two strayed excursions with open arms.

After wrapping up Final Fantasy II, it was so refreshing to play an RPG where grinding wasn't the prevalent theme. Sadly, the idea that an RPG should be properly balanced was eviscerated beyond recognition as Vay championed grinding tooth and nail. However, it didn't rear its ugly head until Raxaal, therefore leaving me to believe I was playing another fairly balanced RPG. And I'm not referring to RPG's where death is an impossibility; where I should be able to sweep every floor clean on my first excursion. I expect death, but I don't expect to fall into the usual infinitesimal heal cycles that plague so many other RPG's, at least not on common dungeon cretins. I'll give some slack for bosses, though even there I disagree with the mechanic, but it's ridiculous to blow all your mana on heals after every single battle. The obvious answer is the characters are too weak for that particular point, but up until that point the difficulty grade has been a constant diagonal. Suddenly, it's a giant awkward step, and this happened numerous times throughout the game which resulted in tedious grinding. On a few occasions, namely Treefall, Sentinel, and Danek, I spent anywhere form several hours to a couple days just battling random encounters so my characters were at an acceptable level to take on the required foes ahead.

On a side note, I also spent a few hours grinding after the Danek Base near Mortyr, but did so voluntarily as I hate having all my characters level up at the same time. That's just something that's always annoyed me in RPG's. Essentially, I purposefully killed off half the party or all but Sandor and wrestled a variety of monsters on the overworld until I felt the levels were staggered enough. I know it sounds like I'm just handicapping myself, but trust me, it's not. If anything, it's additional free experience for one or two characters.

Another reason grinding stands out in this game is that the experience gaps between levels are absurd, yet the experience payout never really increases until the very end of the game. Holy shit, kill a Flea Bag and you'll score one hell of an incredible payout. Too bad 99% of those things flee from battle all the time. This is one reason I initially staggered my character's levels and collected experience. Instead of having all four characters wait 100k XP before they level, I have a character leveling every 25k or what have you. For me, there's a greater overall relief if I can have a character level at fairly regular intervals, especially in this game since both the character's HP and MP are reset. I found I could suffer dungeons for far longer because I knew that at least after every 10 or 20 battles, someone's going to level. This additionally helped with battle strategy as far as spells were concerned. Do I really need to cast Restore or Panacea? No, cast a couple Balms if necessary and feed all that MP into a series of Malybu's. By the time I run out of MP, Bam!, leveled up. Otherwise, I'd be counting a long succession of turns before I can improve the party's outlook. Either that or epic usage of Alakazam. Ugh. I hate using any sort of teleportation in any game I play although I'll admit that I succumbed to Alakazam about a half dozen times in Danek as I was grinding out experience. Just another odd quirk about how I personally play games. Heh, if the game made better use of treasures, I would have followed my no shopping rule as well.

However, for having at best an elementary presentation and deliberately focusing on endless grinding, I enjoyed the game thoroughly. Whenever I'm tasked with leveling chores, I typically grow bored and throw the game aside - main reason I steered clear from RPG's for so many years. But here, it never overwhelmed me with needless tedium. Somehow, the game managed to keep my interest going no matter how menial my play sessions became. In some respects, I found this game comparable to 7th Saga - sort of a "fun for all the wrong reasons" experience. And by the time I reached Danek, I felt rewarded for keeping at it just to behold the dark and twisted imagery of that castle alone. Maybe it was the grinding itself - having to toil through throngs of evil denizens for so little gain - that helped keep the interest alive. After all that hard work, I felt a sense of accomplishment every time I tackled the next monstrous obstacle. I know this was especially true for Sentinel and Danek. Hmm, perhaps grinding is a necessary evil after all, but I hesitate to make such a claim as I still feel the idea to be complete bollocks.

Would I recommend the game? Maybe as a worthwhile title for any Sega CD fans, otherwise, no. Vay's a great game, don't get me wrong, but there's no real sense of innovation. There's nothing there that hasn't been seen before in your Final Fantasies, your Dragon Warriors, your Phantasy Stars or countless other 8-bit/16-bit turn-based RPG's. For a fan, sure, why not? Otherwise, it's best to spend that Working Designs size chunk of change elsewhere.

There is some wonderful music tucked in there though. Personal favorites include the Village Theme and Welcome to the Caves (love the digital analog growl at the end of the song). Top honors, however, would have to go to Freak You Out. This song fits perfectly with the nightmarish aesthetics in and around Danek. In fact, I often found myself resting among the bones and horrifically mutilated wall faces just to take in the chilling music the emperor consistently pumped through his castle's halls. Not to mention, it had a kitschy Michael Jackson motif that kept kicking in every now and then. Come to think of it as I find myself listening to all of the music on offer again, I have to say the entire soundtrack is pretty damn solid, which again appears to be a common theme among Working Designs' games.

Nano-Rant:

I was gravely disappointed that I couldn't make use of the casino in Vaygess despite so many NPC's talking the place up. Under most circumstances, I wouldn't even care, but given that some local proprietor's magic chest suddenly defunded my entire wallet, it would have been a nice change of pace to help alleviate my sudden bankruptcy woes.

Nano-Relief:

After about four hopeless turns against Sadoul, thank goodness I suddenly remembered Thyxaal's purpose. I foresaw that battle going south real fast.

Rating: 4 Eediots out of 5