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freohrweohnatakausta · 1 year

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Backrooms

The Backrooms became super popular a while back and just became discount SCP with “unimaginable horrors” lurking there chasing all who ventured in.

but that’s not the true horror of the backrooms. There’s no demon lurking in the shadows, no mysterious grime leaking from the ceiling, no, the true horror of the backrooms are the backrooms themselves.

The Backrooms are an immense, infinite maze of rooms; each one comprised of occasionally flickering fluorescent lights, off-white wallpaper of differing- but uniform- designs, and slightly soggy off-white carpeting.

The Backrooms are seemingly abandoned, almost as if the people who once lived or worked there vanished or left, leaving only the lights on. Sometimes, the carpet is packed down in such a way it looks like a heavy desk or shelf once stood there.

The Backrooms are quiet. Quiet in such a way that what background noise there is makes it even quieter. The sounds of air rushing through the vents, of fans spinning forever in place, of air conditioners turning on and off, of hidden pipes rattling with unseen contents, of fluorescent lights humming and flickering.

The Backrooms never end, each new room, each wall passed, always different from the last. Never the same, not even going backwards would the rooms stay the same. Minor differences, the wallpaper changing, the carpet a different shade of off-white, the ceiling tiles in different patterns, all look the same, they blend together, as if they were all one room.

The true horror of The Backrooms isn’t what’s there, it’s what isn’t there. It’s the things long forgotten and unremembered, the things that tickle memory, the things that give pause, the things that make eyes wander, that make ears perk, the things that make the heart stop. The things that make you want to explore, that make you fear.

There are no monsters in The Backrooms.

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demonfox38 · 9 months

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Completed: Okage: Shadow King

I think the game would prefer to speak for itself.

In my previous game evaluations, you may have seen me mention my best friend classified co-conspirator @jeannettegray. As of writing right now, her avatar on multiple services is this:

This would be an image of Rosalyn, one of the lead characters of today's evaluation. Having been given this knowledge, I bet you can put two and two together to figure out how I ended up playing "Okage: Shadow King." Because, let me tell you. I might be a nut for niche RPGs, but I definitely wouldn't have heard of this title without her influence. So, thanks again, JG!

"Okage: Shadow King" is a 2001 PlayStation 2 turn-based RPG developed by Zener Works. It (arguably) stars Ari, a young boy most known for…well. Nothing. Really! That's his schtick. Not that he doesn't have his own personality, but he's literally overshadowed by a bombastic set of characters hell-bent on taking over the world, reforming it to their desires, or stopping the chaos around them with their own tilted bents. To free his sister from a peculiar curse, Ari forms a pact with Stan, the titular Shadow (Evil) King, traveling around the world and defeating other Evil Kings to restore his power. Along the way, he picks up additional characters (including a handful of said Evil Kings, a dipshit scientist, and a mortified hero) and discovers the true nature of the world, all while finding a way to…well, step out of the shadows of others, I suppose.

Possibly by being the most sarcastic bitch in the world!

Now, if you read "2001", "PlayStation 2", and "RPG" above, you may pre-emptively have come to some conclusions about why this game is so damn niche. I checked the release dates just to confirm our mutual suspicions. This had a two months' head start on "Final Fantasy X" and was released in what appears to be the best month for it to come out (more on that in a bit.) So, I wouldn't say definitively that one game ate the other's supper. But, realistically, it only had a couple of months in the spotlight before went into…you know. Components of its own name.

There is definitely something weird to "Okage: Shadow King." I mean, weird beyond the intended vibes. I did some reading on Zener Works to see exactly what they are, as that's not a company familiar to me. It seems like they had a handful of titles in the late 2000s, as well as some mobile game properties (and a pending lawsuit against another company, if Google Translate was correct on their website.) This game is not only their only PS2 game, but seems to be the only RPG they ever built. Additionally, some general information on Wikipedia claims this was originally intended to be a PlayStation release but was then asked to be moved to the PlayStation 2 literally a day before the console's existence was revealed to the world at large.

I’m bringing up the development history because I don't want you to start playing this game and come to the conclusion that your PlayStation 2 is dying. (I mean, they are frailer than race horses, but it's not the console's fault exclusively that things are acting strangely.)

This isn't to say the game looks bad. Anything but! (Well, I guess there's some general distance fog, occasional camera issues, and Madril's kind of an ugly town, but stick with me here!) Honestly, given the character design for this game, I thought that perhaps there was some creative staff overlap with those that worked on stop-motion film/Hot Topic darling "Nightmare Before Christmas." This doesn't seem to be the case. Somebody in the design team was just a major nerd for that film. Like, blatantly stole the hill from that movie kind of nerd. The design team had their inspiration, and damned if they didn't nail it. So, if you're into the aesthetics of that film in particular, this game is a must play for that alone.

Also, one of the character modelers went on to work on "Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night." You know you've got the charming spooky look nailed when the former design team for several "Castlevania" games wants you in their company!

Honestly, the music is pretty good, too. There's a couple of tracks that go a little too heavy on the use of chanting or bagpipes for my taste, but otherwise? Solid. Also? It reacts to you being inside/outside a building and whether or not you are about to die in battle. Responsive music programming! I love that!

The major attraction for this game is its writing, bar none. It's the world's most sarcastic RPG, and I say that with full affection. Like, all of your dialogue options can be boiled down to good/bad/sarcastic. There's no sane man in this universe. They've all been run down and driven to frothing vengeance by those in manic passion for power. Hell, the only thing that even remotely restores sanity in this game is giving up power.

Even with the game's bombastic nature, it can come out swinging with its plot twists. Like, you'll catch some. Obviously, there's a reason that the girl with demon horns and a pink miniskirt has aspirations for becoming a pop icon. Some seem obvious after the fact, like, "Of course, you can't trust butlers for anything. That's always how it goes!" Even the nature of the world itself will explain some issues you rub up against gameplay-wise. The one that really caught me off-guard was the opening for Chapter 5. Like…I don't want to spoil it for you, so I won't get into it too much. But, let's say the bit with Ari having to stand up for himself and regain some sense of personality and appearance was surprisingly resonant for me.

So, this makes a pretty good YouTube longplay video, especially if you're listening to one sans commentary. How about the game part?

Well…how much do you like "Quest 64?"

Not that the two games are all that alike. (Well, actually, maybe in the good music/character design bit.) But, I bring up my tolerance for "Quest 64" in that I love that game despite its online reputation as being the worst RPG on the Nintendo 64. (I mean, have people even seen the opening cutscene for "Aidyn Chronicles"? JFC.) I have a great deal of tolerance for funky RPGs is what I'm trying to say. For me to call an RPG bad, you'd literally have to present something like "Hoshi wo Miru Hito" to my face. Like, poorly functioning, poor audio, and having no final boss bad.

This is a novice RPG written relatively new into its console's library. It's got issues.

If you're gonna play it, you're going to need to have patience with it.

Looking at how it operates, I suspect the game designers were fans of "Megami Tensei" games (like "Shin Megami Tensei" or possibly the "Persona" series, although the timeline isn't quite the smoothest for the latter.) At least, the occasional Stan chats prior to combat, the focus on supernatural entities, the enemy abuse of curses, buffing/debuffing importance, and HP consuming moves are screaming that to me. There are some tweaks to it that are odd. For example, characters share a special ability pool (LP) instead of having their own points to spend on special moves or magic. This seems to fluctuate based on who is in your party and how magically gifted they are. There may also be some "Chrono Trigger" influence? Maybe? Possibly? I mean, you've got a party of three that trails you and can join up with you to attack a single target. It feels familiar for a reason.

Also, it's one of those RPGs where you can't trade the main character out of the party. And, if he dies, it's an instant game over. Yep. Like, there's an implied plot reason for why this could be so, but damned if it isn't irritating as hell.

Some of the mechanic focus is strange to me as well. Like, there are several levels of curses (think poison/sleep/confusion/reward penalties), and some of these curses can be stacked multiple times to have more severe effects. Meanwhile, the elemental system is just a triangle. It is also a strange triangle if you think too long about it. It's better just to think blue > red, yellow > blue, red > yellow instead of wondering how exactly fire defeats lightning and how ice works almost opposite to every other RPG on the planet. It also has a distribution issue both within your party and the monster populace at large. Like, you only get one fire elemental guy. But, to compensate for this, most of your cast will learn spells to cover the elements that they aren't. And then, it seems like there's not the most even balance of enemies out there, anyway? Like, it seemed mostly blue/red early on, with yellow appearing towards the end to be a pain in the ass. I don't know. It was weird. Like, "Fire Emblem" handing you so many sword dudes when there are so few axes to grind and more spears to dodge. It could be personal bias, but you know that feeling, right? Not as rough as taking a fire starter in Pokémon, but maybe taking a water starter.

Pacing is also a weird issue in this game. Like, there are some dungeons where you step one foot into and can win instantly, and others that require grinding for 10 levels. Your party member pool is strapped to the same three people for almost half of the game. (Trust me when I say you want Kisling out ASAP. Dude's a creep and a dud.) Hell, in trying to get my party evened out to level 60 for use in the final dungeon, I accidentally ended up gaining, like, 37 levels for the main character. Also, Chapters 4 and 5 seem to be significantly bloated, with a great deal of fighting taking place in or around the second town. It's like, blink and Chapters 1 and 6 are gone. Very odd.

So, okay. I've got a few creative differences with the dev team. What I really don't get is how the loading issues, audio volume multiplier, and save erasing bug made it into the wild. Like, I know. Novice game made by inexperienced team on new hardware. But, c'mon. Sony had a QA team on this. They had to pick this up.

What's frustrating about these items is that I could see both how to fix them and how they just weren't fixed. Like…

The game loads fine when it's one large horizontal map. The loading issues come into play with more multi-roomed environments like homes, dungeons, and towns. Other games work around this by having multiple chunks on one map, then teleporting the player around as they enter and exit spaces. Or, hell, implement a visibility flag and turn that on/off as needed. Could the maps not be congealed, for some reason? Couldn't someone at least give the player a loading screen so I’m not sitting there wondering if my PlayStation 2 is having optical drive issues?

The audio volume multiplier is a weird event where a single sound is being played many times, usually when multiple of the same attacks or spells land at once. All that requires to fix, theoretically, would be implementing a volume maximum to not be played over, then making that volume be whatever the default value for the base sound is.

I saw the save erasing bug happen a whopping 3 times over 40 hours of gameplay, and I had been rotating my saves like a good girl. So, it wasn't something I couldn't recover from. But, holy shit. No. Absolutely not. That could have been real bad. Like, I can only guess what's happening here, but it seems like a file is being purposefully deleted before some new file is written in its place (as opposed to some file updating process) and that the writing process subsequently screws up. This would prevent bad progress flags from being recorded, I suppose, but the opposing situation of losing an entire damn file isn't pleasant, either.

Considering how much dicking around the publishers asked for in getting this game on the PlayStation 2, I'm going to assume that they're also to blame for these issues getting out. As in, "Well, we've got to ship this by October!" and wham! Bugs pressed.

Even with all of the quirks to the game, it's not the hardest RPG to get through. About the roughest time I had was with Big Bull, and the troubles there involved dealing with Ari dying in two hits and Kisling just generally being unhelpful. Honestly, most of the problems in the game can be solved by ganging up on weak enemies and having a dedicated healing item spammer. (Healing items are super cheap, so might as well cram as many as you can in your pockets!) The rest is just talking to as many people as you can and reading as many signs as possible.

Also, here. Just take this video guide on gear locations. Life is short; don't trouble yourself with something as silly as gear hunting blindly. (At least it's not as silly of a side quest as dodging lightning 100 times or learning a new sport!)

I feel a little bad for coming down on "Okage" as hard as I did at the end. It's funny, thought provoking, and respectful of the player's time. For as fresh and different as it is, I'd play this over several contemporary members of its library. But, for some of its quirks, it does require a little patience. You've just got to know whether or not you've got that on hand.

Frankly, for its price, "Okage: Shadow King" is quite the bargain, too. Hell, it's even available on the PlayStation store! Can't argue with the fair distribution it has in a modern market.

And, hey! Now I know more about JG's icon! So, it's always nice to have some additional context, especially when characters and stories are important to your friends. But, I do have to wonder how Rosalyn won over Stan for that place of honor. I mean, other than by being classified as a hero.

Then again, it might be a little disturbing being followed by something like this online.

#post game evaluation #okage: shadow king #okage shadow king #minor ending jumpscare?

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