The Top Shelf: Case Files 116-125: "The Blood of the Covenant"

by mento

Welcome to The Top Shelf, a weekly feature wherein I sort through my extensive PS2 collection for the diamonds in the rough. My goal here is to narrow down a library of 185 games to a svelte 44: the number of spaces on my bookshelf set aside for my PS2 collection. That means a whole lot of vetting and a whole lot of science that needs to be done, ten games at a time. Be sure to check out the Ca...

Case File 116: Nautilus's Shadow Hearts: Covenant

Original Release (JP): 19/02/2004
PS2 Exclusive!

There's no denying that the PS2 was a JRPG powerhouse. For its generation, it was the port of call if you had been ensorcelled by the likes of Final Fantasy and wanted to continue exploring rich veins of storytelling predicated upon teenagers saving the world with ridiculous anime hair. That is to say, they would use swords and spells and the like, but do so while also maintaining ridiculous anime hair, not that the hair itself would be saving the... this is all immaterial. My point is, it takes a really special JRPG to get noticed in the crowd, and Shadow Hearts Covenant is one of those rare elites in a saturated market. The sequel to Sacnoth's Shadow Hearts (Sacnoth and Nautilus are the same company, far as I can tell), the sequel expands on the Judgment Ring-enhanced combat and adds more characters and settings and greatly fleshes out all of them to the extent that it feels like it has two whole games' worth of geography and plot to enjoy. I mean, it literally had two DVD-ROMs in the case, so you don't have to take my word for it. More than simply giving the players a double dose of the old Shadow Hearts, however, Covenant is one of those special sequels that was keenly aware of the strengths and the shortcomings of its predecessor and manages to expand on the former while smoothing over the latter. Character models look way better, the soundtrack could be industrially sinister and intense as balls but each track also expertly injects personality into each region and boss they pertain to, the game really gets fun with its 1910s historical cameos (Rasputin! Lawrence of Arabia! The Great Gama!), and you actually get to spend more time with characters that aren't Yuri or the female deuteragonist, where even comic relief side characters like the dog Blanca or Joachim Valentine the frozen-tuna-wielding pro-wrestling vampire (you heard me) get their own massive side-quest chains that lets them have the limelight for a few hours. We begrudge longer games for demanding more of our time unnecessarily, but that's usually because they're ridiculously padded out with recycled or proc-gen content: Shadow Hearts Covenant's 80+ hours of game time are all carefully considered thriller and no filler, packed with so much story and varied incidental content that you wonder if the developers found any time to sleep between the release of this Shadow Hearts and the previous. Also? The last game ended with a battle against an unknowable metaphysical deity from the depths of space, and yet this game gets even weirder. I love it to pieces.

It's probably too early to put together a list, but Shadow Hearts Covenant is easily within my top five favorite games for the system. It remains one of the most impressively layered and perfectly presented linear JRPGs I've ever played and there's no way it's not an instant top shelf qualifier. Approved.

Case File 117: Atari Melbourne's Transformers

Original Release (EU): 25/02/2004
PS2 Exclusive!

Transformers is one of those ubiquitous toy licenses that gets invoked every now and again and this game, which came out long after the initial fandom peak in the 80s but several years too early for the Michael Bay movies, seems to exist only to promote the short-lived Transformers: Armada reboot, which also saw its own animated series and toyline. Tellingly, the intro begins just like the 1986 animated movie with Megatron's all-out assault on the Autobot HQ, only instead of you-know-who taking a fatal shot to the solar plexiglass the game-specific plot suddenly kicks in and both the Decepticons and Autobots suddenly drop everything to go looking for "Mini-Cons" on Earth. The game makes these little guys sound like the key to tipping this endless war of robot attrition, and they were a major aspect of the toyline also, but I have to wonder if the two sides wouldn't be better off trying to recruit one of those city-sized Transformers instead of a bunch of small fry. (Incidentally, there is a level in this game based on - and upon - one of those colossal Transformers, and it's pretty sweet.) The game's a fairly standard third-person shooter with some vehicle sections; pretty much what you'd expect from the license, especially if you've played High Moon's Transformers: War for Cybertron or Platinum's Transformers: Devastation. Regardless of how you might feel about Armada's particular handling of the license, it was pretty cool to run around shooting Decepticreeps as Optimus Prime, Hot Rod or Red Alert (who?) in a modern 3D game. In fact, it's the first Transformers game I can think of that wasn't a steaming pile of Junkion.

But, you know, an OK Transformers game isn't exactly the crème de la crème of what the PlayStation 2 had to offer. Maybe if you were a crazy big Transformers fan, but I can't say I ever was. These days, you'd be better off with either of the examples above if you wanted to get your classic Transformers fandom on with as much distance from pointy Michael Bay's pointy mechstrosities as possible. Eliminated.

Case File 118: Capcom's Onimusha 3: Demon Siege

Original Release (JP): 26/02/2004
Not PS2 Exclusive (ported to PC)

This is probably going to sound familiar, but I've not played Onimusha 3. All right, I'm lying a little bit: I rented 3 before ever buying a single Onimusha game and got thoroughly lost. The game not only builds on two games worth of plot (one assumes, though the first two games feature different protagonists) but a whole bunch of elaborate mechanics and systems that were gradually introduced to the series during its lifespan. I barely recall a thing about it, other than it has Jean Reno playing a modern day French detective who is magically connected to a samurai in medieval Japan because apparently Capcom lost their minds at some point. Remember when they created wonderfully crazy material instead of half-finished fighters and remakes of remakes?

Obviously this is going on the homework pile along with the second game. I'm thankful I can't remember much, because starting here almost feels like what would happen if Furious 7 was your first movie of that series: it'd still be entertaining as heck, but it would lose something significant without witnessing how the series built up to it. Considered.

Case File 119: Argonaut Games's Malice

Original Release (EU): 08/04/2004
Not PS2 Exclusive (also out on Xbox)

Malice is the sort of game that badly needs a documentary to figure out what went wrong where. At several points during its troubled development, it was meant to be an Xbox exclusive launch game, a game that featured the vocal talents of the ska (ska-esque?) band No Doubt and Gwen Stefani in particular as the eponymous protagonist, a game that would let you play certain sections as a cat, and a game that threatened to change the face of 3D platformers forever. To that last point, it wouldn't be the first time UK developers Argonaut Games pulled something like that off: they wowed audiences in their home continent with the wireframe 3D space shooter Starglider for Atari ST and Amiga, and then went on to global fame with Nintendo's Star Fox and the Super FX chip for SNES. Dudes were clearly very talented when it came to tech, but the game's pop-punk posturing about a feisty grrl power goddess retaking her world from the vaguely defined "Dog God" was... well, the instantly dated early 2000s material that it sounds like. Didn't help that a bunch of delays and publisher switcheroos dropped the game unceremoniously in 2004 after everyone had quietly moved on.

It is, therefore, another mediocre 3D platformer that I only bought because I really like 3D platformers, you guys. Eliminated.

Case File 120: Gust's Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana

Original Release (JP): 27/05/2004
PS2 Exclusive!

I, like many monolingual English-speaking JRPG fans, got my start on Gust's enormous "alchemies & animes" Atelier series with the action-RPG Atelier Iris: Eternal Mana. The game introduces a lot of the recurring pillars of the Atelier franchise, which now includes the likes of Atelier Sophie, Atelier Rorona, Atelier Ayesha and Atelier Moxie CrimeFighter, such as its distinctive isometric view (which the games left behind after going fully 3D) and how central the alchemy/crafting is to keeping your party in good stead as far as consumables and equipment goes. Later games would emphasize the alchemy aspect, with gameplay often revolving around farming reagents and collecting recipes for new creations to fulfil the many requests your heroine is given. What seems to get less notice is how incredible the soundtracks to these games are, with beautiful orchestral arrangements for its stages and some rockin' boss tunes. Famous Japanese VGM remixer Saitama Saisyu Heiki, a contemporary to the likes of Jake "virt" Kaufman, frequently takes to the Atelier series for inspiration and was commissioned for a couple of arrangement albums. The three Iris games acted as an ideal gateway between the combat- and plot-heavy JRPGs we're accustomed to and the more recent Atelier games, which downplays the conflict and focuses instead on the slice of life adventures of impossibly cute anime girls crowding around cauldrons.

Anyway, I have my favorite Atelier Iris game and it's not the first one. The first is fine, I should clarify, but doesn't quite push the envelope the way its sequel does. Play us out, Deceitful Wings. Eliminated.

Case File 121: Monolith Soft's Xenosaga Episode II: Jenseits von Gut und Böse

Original Release (JP): 24/06/2004
PS2 Exclusive!

In retrospect, expecting to find one's way into this series' Byzantine plot about mechs, gynoids, clones and humanity's place in the universe by starting on the second chapter wasn't the wisest decision. Oh, you thought I was talking about a choice I made? No, try the brilliant decision-makers over at Bandai Namco itself, who elected to release the second episode of the Xenosaga trilogy in Europe but not the first. Instead, us lucky Euros got a bonus DVD with all the previous game's cutscenes, which don't make a whole bunch of sense taken out of context. (I don't actually recall if my copy had that DVD, actually. It may have been pre-owned.) At any rate, even if I could follow what was going on the second chapter is still paced abysmally, something I hear was a problem for Episode II specifically. Expository cutscenes regularly take over for long stretches, and what little game time we have is spent between constantly changing parties and their mechs in a manner that made it feel like I wasn't making any kind of progress, except for helping the overbearing sci-fi plot lurch along.

I'm probably making a mountain out of a molehill here. The pacing and characterization problems might be series-wide, or it could just be an inherent flaw of the second game, or the result of not being familiar enough with the characters and world. Presently, with no easy way to play the first Xenosaga and little motivation to do so regardless, I'm letting this one go. And yes, before you ask, we didn't get Episode III either. Just this one. Boy, I'm sure glad I couldn't get invested in the story. (Don't worry, Xeno fans: the Xenoblade games have completely redeemed this series in my view, and these days Monolith Soft is probably my favorite currently-active Japanese developer. I suspect they're a large part of why Breath of the Wild turned out so well.) Eliminated.

Case File 122: Atlus's Shin Megami Tensei: Digital Devil Saga

Original Release (JP): 15/07/2004
PS2 Exclusive!

It might surprise you to learn that I was so put off by SMT: Nocturne's extreme difficulty that I bought this game and quietly put it away for the end times, when I might finally be prepared for more MegaTen. The two Digital Devil Saga spin-offs have their own rich backstories that essentially combines Shin Megami Tensei's wild and lawless post-apocalyptic hellscape with the virtual worlds of Tron or The Matrix, pitting the player's Cabal cabal against any number of rivals. It gets grisly pretty quick too, as a demonic virus forces everyone to start devouring each other (in a machine code kind of way, one assumes, though there's no telling how that's represented visually within this world) in an effort to be the final surviving gang and reach "nirvana". Another major departure is in how the player puts together their party. In standard Shin Megami Tensei games, the player character must supplement their party with recruited demons which they can fuse into more powerful forms, while in Persona your party consists of a group of human characters with demonic alter ego "personae" that determine what spells and abilities they have. DDS is a bit more like the latter, as you have a group of NPCs that can each change into their own demonic form, and the player is able to pick and choose new abilities for them via a grid-like character progression screen. I'm not too familiar with how it all works myself but it strikes me that the game was aiming for a slightly more traditional JRPG route, perhaps offsetting Nocturne's complexity a bit. Or it might be twice as complex and I'm unwisely underestimating a Shin Megami Tensei game again.

My plans for Digital Devil Saga haven't changed - the intent was always to start playing it once Nocturne was done and dusted. Since I'll be revisiting Nocturne fairly soon, a playthrough of this game shouldn't be too far behind. Unfortunately, at this point my odds of finding the sequel at a reasonable price aren't high, so I hope it doesn't end on too big a cliffhanger. Considered.

Case File 123: Capcom's Mega Man X: Command Mission

Original Release (JP): 29/07/2004
Not PS2 Exclusive (also out on GameCube)

Yeah, I guess Capcom did make a Mega Man X RPG. And yeah, I guess this is the only Mega Man X-related video game I opted to buy. I might even go so far to say that both of those choices were mistakes. Command Mission attempted to find a new RPG format for the Blue Bomber after Mega Man Legends crashed and burned because... I guess Capcom didn't want to keep making them? Instead, they put together this perfectly banal turn-based JRPG set deep within the X timeline somewhere. (I can do the smallest amount of due diligence here and tell you that Command Mission was developed between X7 and X8, but I've no idea how it is related to those games, or follows/sets up their events. I wasn't even aware the X series went that high numerically.) I think it's perfectly rational to want to buy a Mega Man RPG because the Legends games were great, and also because it's a PS2 JRPG that was released in Europe which is its own rare and special thing, but I can't say I have any particularly strong feelings about this one.

I'm going to have the invoke the second rule of The Top Shelf, which is that if one genre's getting far too much attention there's little chance the also-rans and so-sos of that same genre are going to rise above the stone cold classics, even I were to revisit them for a refresher. If half my collection of 185 PS2 games are JRPGs, and I'm not saying that isn't likely, then there's no point prolonging the inevitable for serviceable but average games like Command Mission. Time for your everlasting peace, Mega Man. Eliminated.

Case File 124: Konami Tokyo's Suikoden IV

Original Release (JP): 19/08/2004
PS2 Exclusive!

All right, let's talk about Suikoden IV. The black sheep of the Suikoden family, IV wanted to try something a bit different and went for this whole maritime angle that meant they could explore a whole new archipelago region of Suikoden's persistent world and also have all its tactical battles revolve around ships and naval warfare. I'm into the Mediterranean atmosphere of the game, and the decision to set it about hundred years before the other games was a bold one, as it meant it couldn't rely on the cameos and guests (besides the omnipresent Jeane and Viki, of course) and historical references that the previous games would lean on occasionally. Yet, I dunno, it didn't quite all come together in a satisfying way. The world felt smaller, and not just because of the minimal amount of land mass, and with a few exceptions the individual characters within the 108 Stars of Destiny didn't really stand out like they've done in the past. When you consider the way the war slowly shifted to your favor in the tense Suikoden or the labyrinthine plot of political maneuvering and betrayed friendships in Suikoden II (or that fateful final encounter with Luca Blight, for that matter), there's no one arc or moment of Suikoden IV that compares. The game also goes for this sort of slightly washed out look that turned what ought to have been a vibrant Greek/Sardinian aesthetic into something muted and dull. Recalling specific issues I had with the game is challenging a decade plus after the fact, but there was a mild sense of dissatisfaction throughout that I remember very well. I'd also complain that the hero Lazlo was this quiet androgynous weenie, but that goes for pretty much every Suikoden protagonist. God only knows how each of them manages to inspire the loyalty of over a hundred followers. (Lazlo redeems himself a little with a cameo in a certain Suikoden offshoot coming soon to this feature.)

For various reasons, the third-best PS2 Suikoden will not be making it to the second round. However, I will say this for Suikoden IV: it's got a great opening theme track. Eliminated.

Case File 125: Sega Wow's Blood Will Tell

Original Release (JP): 09/09/2004
PS2 Exclusive!

Often, designers struggle to fit a game around a licensed property, especially in the short time frames they're frequently given so that the game's release can coincide with a new TV show or movie. What happens less frequently is when game developers come up with a great idea for a dormant license and bring it back to life. Dororo, an Osamu Tezuka manga that had somehow managed to avoid any video game adaptations despite being 35 years old at that point, was selected for the licensed game treatment for little reason I can find, besides perhaps someone having an epiphany about how they might adapt its grim tale of a Sengoku-era clockwork samurai cutting a swath through a series of manipulative demons with the help of a plucky boy thief. It absolutely works, too. In the manga, the hero Hyakkimaru was magically carved up into pieces as a baby by the supernatural coalition named the Forty-Eight Fiends, who in exchange provided his feudal lord father with all the power he needed to unite Japan. The pitiable deformed infant that remained was sent down-river to perish, only to be found and raised by a compassionate inventor and doctor who built the disfigured child a new mechanical body. In both the game and the book, the child grows into a young warrior packed with mechanical weaponry ready to take down the fiends and reacquire his lost organs and limbs, which is reflected in-game as a steady increase in stats and new abilities after each recovery. The game gets pretty clever with it too: the prologue chapter is entirely in black and white until Hyakkimaru slays the tutorial boss and recovers his left eye, giving him the ability to see the world for the first time. The game has an episodic structure, with the opportunity to come back to any completed chapter once the player has learned a few new traversal-enabling abilities that might lead the way to any number of hidden bosses remaining there. And boy howdy, does the game go the full mile with all the demons Hyakkimaru must destroy: almost every one of the Forty-Eight Fiends involves its own distinct boss fight, though there are a few tougher palette swap repeats. There's also an instance per level where you control Hyakkimaru's young thief companion Dororo instead, which comes with its own challenges.

Since playing the first Onimusha, it's become a little clearer to me where exactly this game came from. The exploratory aspect, the third-person sword combat and prohibitively finite amount of ranged weaponry, the way you'll occasionally backtrack to previous areas for now-accessible paths, and even the sequences where you control the weaker but faster sidekick character. The similarities between the two properties are more than just skin-deep, but Blood Will Tell goes that extra mile with its affecting story that condenses many years of a major manga, its wonderfully strange yet video game compatible premise, and the way it builds itself around multiple clever and tense boss encounters. Man, what a special game. It deserves to be known by more people. Approved.

Results

The Top Shelf is heating up this week (it's closer to the sun, y'see) with a couple new star players added to the bench. Naught follows in their wake but desolation however, as the hammer comes down on seven unlucky also-rans. Figuratively speaking, at least. We're well deep into 2004 also; these later years are going to start moving quickly as we get closer to the advent of the Xbox 360 and the next generation. I'm going to have to figure out what combination of El Gato equipment and better PC hardware will allow me to LP Blood Will Tell for everyone, as it deserves more recognition. Shadow Hearts Covenant too, for that matter, though that LP might take half a year. I'll say this for this week's The Top Shelf: I had some incredible VGM to enjoy while I was writing this entry up.

Well, as we always say around here: "Cut the chats, let's bring on the stats!" (I know, I'm sorry, I'm trying to remove it.) With only two games passing to the next round this week, we're looking at 48 out of 125 games for consideration. However, we're now up to eleven confirmed shelf buddies, which means a full quarter of the shelf is now accounted for! Even so, with only six more of these first round blogs remaining it seems likely there'll be plenty of space left to fight over. Next week is actually a little more platformer heavy, to make up for the JRPG japes of this week, and happens to include my favorite non-Mario platformer of all time. We'll also be singing about beer, hanging out with Eazy-E, and making DreamWorks faces. See you then.

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