O, silly rabbit,
don't you know Trix are for kids?
Oh! wait, wrong rabbit
Additional Comments:
Here's to hoping I can recall everything I wished to discuss, but considering how much time has elapsed since I finished this game, the details are anyone's guess.
Acquired through Games with Gold, I pounced on this game immediately since there are so few RPGs on the XBox One. There are a couple that came out over a year ago that piqued my interest but just never got around to picking them up. Certainly, making a game free makes it so much easier to nab a game. And though I initially had doubts based on a few pics, after a few quick minutes of in-game footage, I was sold. Old school RPGs seem to be such a rare thing outside of PCs. Why is that? When did console users choose to scorn turn-based RPGs other than the miserable pieces of crap starring the same old emotionally abused androgynous jerk-offs that Squaresoft keeps passing off as Final Fantasy?
Ok, Earthlock technically isn't an old school RPG, but it appears to have far more kinship with RPGs of yore than today's overblown trash. Despite separating itself from its ancestors, especially through the use of 3D maps and environments, Earthlock kept stirring memories of Chrono Trigger. Perhaps it was the same cliché tropes used over and over again, and true, those same old tropes become tiring, but at the same time, they help to invigorate the game through lapses of nostalgia. Unlike numerous other titles that attempt to reap the benefits of creating Chrono Trigger 2.0 or Final Fantasy IV reimagined, Earthlock distanced itself by creating an entirely alien environment. It still rehashed the same old kernels of the old world sowing the way for the new world through magical destruction - here the case being eternal day/eternal night and the same characteristic party sporting the same conventional traits saving the fate of the world by using the tools of the past. It's all been done before, and quite possibly, to death. But there was enough of a rift among the pedestrian RPG outline through imaginative details elsewhere in the world to make it feel different enough.
Unfortunately, Earthlock nearly shot itself in the foot right out of the gate. The beginning of the game felt laborious enough to warrant it undeserving of my time. The initial character we're introduced to, Ive, is a such an eye-rolling, self centered, twat that I nearly put the game down for good before I even made it five minutes in. Throughout the whole of the game, I loathed anytime a cutscene popped or I had to make use of her because of how despicably arrogant she was. Of course, she's the king's daughter, so what can you expect, but still, there's no getting around how off putting a character of this caliber is and having to deal with her the entire game absolutely killed much of the praise the game could have gotten. Ive is easily one of the worst characters I've come across in any game, equatable to Kara from Illusion of Gaia. Given the game's introduction, I had to seriously question the game's intentions when they wished me to rescue her from the wreckage. Fuck her! I don't want that contemptuous bitch in my party. It's moments like these that make me hanker for freedom of choice and lend me to admire many of today's western RPGs. I don't have to suffer through bullshit because of lack of choice. If the choice existed to help Ive or to simply walk away, I would have walked away in a second. Up until that point, or even throughout the rest of the game, there was never a moment that nudged me into accepting her despite her personality deficiencies. And it's hard to invest oneself into a game that has such a disagreeable character. Some level of empathy must exist, especially in story rich or character heavy games, to agree to or accept the circumstances as presented, but when a character like Ive exists, much like Kara, it's hard to overlook and can inevitable affect the enjoyment factor of the game. Although you do get Taika out of the deal, so....
Earthlock was lucky to win me over with a variety of mechanics, namely the talent board and bond system, but characters continued to be a stumbling block for the game. Each one of them felt vapid, and despite all efforts to differentiate themselves from RPG stereotypes, still fell subject to their cliché personalities. Gnart, who may have been the most dynamic characters was also one of the most tiring only because he followed the typical goofball sidekick trope thrown in for comedic effect - sure, he had some knowledge and an intriguing past, but he's liable to open mouth insert foot for a non-quality laugh to help lighten the mood and make us say, "Oh, you silly rabbit. You and your silly stories." It's stale, and it's unfortunate since out of the whole lot, Gnart's histroy, as well as that of his people would easily be the most interesting to read up on.
Olia, on the other hand, comes off as a waste. She brings brute muscle, which from a gameplay aspect is greatly welcomed, but her story is done to death. Squaresoft has given us enough of the brooding heroes who'd rather keep their past to themselves while we as players struggle to connect with these detached individuals. You're giving me nothing to work with here outside of strong-arming the competition. Eh, I suppose that's enough.
But enough of weak character portrayal. Let's delve into actual gameplay. Upon first glance, Earthlock feels a bit too rigid and leans far too much on traditional RPG values. Nothing exactly wrong with that, but it certainly did little to help sell the game. Sure, I started out by whining how so few traditional turn-based RPGs exist these days on consoles, but at the same time, I don't wish to play the same old tiring mechanics. Developers need to integrate new ideas to help invigorate old traditions and Earthlock failed to do that upon initial inspection. But once you get into the game and some of the more interesting mechanics open up, Earthlock begins to set itself apart. True, likenesses of the talent board or bond system have shown up in past titles, but they felt fresh, locked into a combination that helped us to look past the tried and true mechanics of the RPGs of yesteryear.
However, Earthlock definitely made some missteps in its hopes to individualize itself. Crafting was likely the biggest misstep of all as it completely nullified the use of the shop system. Despite my natural tendency to steer clear of shops in RPGs simply to increase the difficulty, I found the shop system in Earthlock to be completely unnecessary. If I can craft anything and everything and I can easily obtain any of the crafting materials from the various denizens of the world, why would I ever stop at the local market? Something few games have ever managed to properly balance is the coexistence of crafting and shop systems. More often than not, one negates the other and Earthlock may have been the greatest example of this problem.
Not only did crafting bring down the world market, but crafting befell its own niggles. At first, I kind of liked the idea of growing a garden from which I could craft various ammos or potions - all items of which I pretty much never used throughout the entire game, but I'll come to that later. It gave the game a tiny slice of a Harvest Moon feel. I hate to admit it, but Harvest Moon, or similar games have a joyfully addicting quality to them, so to see Earthlock integrate this, even on a bare minimum level, was cool. Turns out, I used the garden for nothing more than an achievement hunter effect. When that's the case, it should be blatantly obvious the mechanic was added without much forethought. Honestly, it was boring as hell to sit there clicking on plants for close to an hour or more trying to mutate a certain species only to find out after turning to GameFAQs to see if I was victim of a bug, that for one single mutation, they completely deviated from the norm in that you had to kill an optional boss. What the fuck? If Ive didn't annoy the piss out of me enough, shit like this happens - counter-intuitive garbage that suddenly diverges from everything we've learned up until that point.
What's more, the game suffered from various other counter-intuitive faults. Another one that nearly sent me over the edge was figuring out how to use my fifth through eighth abilities. The tutorials describe, fairly well, how to use the various menus and actions but failed to mention how to reach your next page of abilities. With my abilities tab grayed out, I wouldn't have guessed in a million years that I could still press the tab to find more abilities. Grayed out means the operation has come to an end; there's no more forward momentum here. It's the fucking clock in Where's Waldo? all over again. They're going against everything we've ever learned in gaming over the past 30 years. I only realized how to use those abilities by sheer accident after having left the room for a couple minutes and upon returning, picked up the controller and accidentally nudged the joystick in the right direction. That then led me to spend the next several minutes trying to replicate my accident. All be told, this event didn't happen until well over halfway through the game, so yea, I spent well over half the game believing the tutorial lied to me - that it was written for the PC version and they neglected to translate this one section for the Xbox.
And it doesn't end there! Figuring out how to upgrade Pat to Pat 2,0 was a total nightmare. I have all the necessary ingredients but...I can't craft the fucking token!? Oh! I've got to remove the original tokens. Well, that's real fucking obvious!
It's sad. There's many aspects of the game I loved, but far too often the game hit me out of left field with some half-assedness. And it's simple things they managed to botch. Fortunately, nothing's game breaking, but the annoyance level some of this stuff managed to induce is astronomical. Many of these faults so nearly made me shelve the game, but many of these things happened so late in the game that the time invested would prove nothing but waste and I hated the prospect of walking away from it when I was that far into the game - like I had reached a point of no return and was relegated to accepting my fate. Besides, the good qualities continued to coax me on - qualities like making best strategic use of the various bond configurations or the fact that I was playing a turn-based RPG that didn't rely on cyclical healing. Sure, healing was critical in certain battles, but it wasn't an absolute that I had to rely on throughout the entire game unlike most turn-based RPGs. And while most battles were nothing more than tests to dole out damage as fast as possible, a number of battles popped up that allowed me to make use of some of my other abilities thus forcing some underlying strategy throughout.
However, that being said, many abilities came off as superfluous. As mentioned before, how crafting ammo was a complete waste, I found few battles where a reliance on ammunition was a thing. The trade off for job swaps forcing me to lose a turn typically wasn't worth it, nor was the time spent crafting the ammo to begin with. Same can be said for the other characters. I pretty much ran all the characters on the one job I was comfortable with and stuck with it. The mere fact that that can be done makes the whole system moot. But then, without relying on cyclical healing or some sort of deeper element system, there was never really hope for such a system. If I can dole out enough damage with a sword just as quickly or more so than a gun, so be it. Of course, the argument can me made that it's all there for personalized customization. Fair enough. But I think with the job, or stance, system, the intent was for a more robust strategy allowance, which in my opinion backfired. They could have handled everything just as easily if everything was simply a single set of abilities allowed by a given character. I suppose it can be thought of as an offense/defense stance used in older RPGs, but at least there, you didn't have to waste a turn choosing your stance before you can make use of your allowed abilities. Instead, it seems to help fill out a common theme of implemented mechanics without much forethought.
Finally, on a personal note, I found the graphical style irksome. I loved the locale design and enemy design, but found the character design unnerving. It reminded me of the character design in Twilight Princess. Something about their looks is so off putting, and sadly with a number of characters already annoying me for one reason or another, the art direction made everything all the more tougher to digest.
I'm sure at the time of play a number of other details existed that I could have easily harangued over, but I doubt I'll remember them. They were likely minor anyways, at least compared to what I've covered here. Besides, I know what I have gone over were the major talking points I wished to hit up anyway. Perhaps I should keep a running log as I play, but alas, that would make all of this feel too much like work instead of a hobby with no return.
Suppose the last thing I can hit up is the soundtrack, but honestly, I can't remember a lick of music. I recall the music being sweet on the ears, but nothing really stood out. I know there were a couple tunes in the game I enjoyed but they obviously didn't leave a lasting mark. After refreshing myself with the soundtrack on Eiko's channel, it's sad that that's the case as there are certainly some nice gems stuck in there such as Vast Canyons, Sweltering Desert, or Dreamless Grotto, which after hearing it again I recall this being my favorite track in the game. Ah well, typical RPG fare.
Nano-Win:
One thing I did like about the game was the usage of Kickstarter funders' appellations for the ghost tag side quest. If was always interesting to see what quirky named individuals I'd come across next and a handful of them gave me a good laugh.
Nano-Rant:
Fix your fucking bestiary, and while you're at it, get some decent QA to proofread your text. There's nothing that will drag down the integrity and professionalism of a given game more than spelling and grammar mistakes. *Proofreads above editorial and hides* Eep!
Rating: 3 hogbunnies out of 5
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