Avalon Code: DS
One word to describe this game:
Disappointing.
A second word.
Frustrating.
And a third.
Annoying.
(Kinda ties in with the second.)
This RPG was much-anticipated in some circles for its unique plot, cutesy look, and, of course, romance-able NPCs.
Let's take a look at what turned out to be a less-than-satisfying game. It is tl;dr.
Story
This is the most interesting aspect of the game. You're an ordinary boy (or girl. You choose! I chose boy). One day, while relaxing on Sunny Hill, a red bookmark floats on the wind and into your possession. Suddenly, a large book appears. It's the Book of Prophecy!
The bookmark happens to house the Fire Spirit, Rempo, who explains that you're the chosen one. This world is going to end, and it's your job to write down things of note into the Book so that the next world can be a good one.
But! There are baddies who seek to use the book and write their own future! In fact, as soon as you receive the book you're attacked and taught how to use it.
Your goal is to find the 3 other spirits of the Book so that the end may come (Lighting, Forest, Ice).
Gameplay: Code System
In order to get data on anything into the book, you must hit ("code scan") the object with the book. It does no damage; it's not a real attack. Some monsters can be tricky to hit; if you head-on attack, they will block it and get an attack of their own in. The key to winning some boss battles is figuring out how to scan them.
Each item, character, and monster has a page in the Book. Each page consists of a 3x3-sized grid with empty spaces and spaces taken up by elements and attributes. You can move the attributes around, or even take them away from one thing and put them into another. For example, if you're in a field with lots of Goblins and they're giving you a hard time, simply find an ILL (illness) code and pop it into the Goblin's grid to lower all Goblins' HP.
This monster has FAME and COPR. FAME does little, but COPR increases its health.
Sounds interesting? Unique? Revolutionary? I assure you, this system, while a nice idea, gets tedious almost from the start. Here's why.
You can only "carry" 4 codes at once on the side (codes not placed into an item/character/monster's grid). If you are carrying four codes, and want to carry one more, too bad, you'll have to pop one of them onto something. Sometimes it can be very hard to find a thing/character/monster that has room for the code you want to get rid of. Worse, later on you may find that you need that unwanted code, and forget what exactly you put it on.
This monster has 4 different codes. Hopefully you aren't already holding any codes if you want to remove them.
The Book's index is the very definition of failure. To start looking for anything, you must flip to the index. There, you must select a topic. Say, you choose "Monsters." Then, you must choose what type of monster. Say you choose "Undead." The book flips to the very first undead monster. There is no subindex listing all the undead monsters' names. If you want a specific undead monster, you'll have to keep pressing the page flip button on the lower right until you get to the monster you're looking for.
Nothing has a subindex! It can take forever to find the specific monster you're looking for, or the specific character, or the specific weapon.
Finding maps is also ridiculously annoying. Later in the game, you can simply tap on any map in the book to warp to it. If you can find it! For example, the index for the town also includes all the fields around it! It took me ages to find the room before the final boss after I had left the dungeon because I had no idea where the map was filed.
Worst of all, there is no search function! I found myself constantly flipping through the book to find/change one measly little code.
Oh, and did I mention you -must- use the touchscreen when interacting with the Book? Never put that stylus away. Nearly every bloody room in the game forces you to stop everything to mess with something in the book.
Oftentimes you'll have a hard time fitting codes where you want them to be. Some codes are large, shaped like the big L or 2x2 blocks in Tetris, for example, and you only have a 3x3 area on each thing/character/monster. Every thing/character/monster already comes with codes in their grid. So you'll often find yourself stressed trying to figure out where to put your shitty STON codes (stone, add lots of HP to enemy, who wants that?).
And you can't simultaneously swap one of the codes you're carrying for one code on the grid. It won't let you. And, sometimes you'll drop a code onto the grid and it won't accept the action, because you didn't line it up exactly within the lines.
And, the game never tells you, but you can rotate the codes by tapping the arrow above your four code "carry" boxes. Why neglect to tell me something this important?
It gets slightly easier to manage when the book levels up and gains more code space for each page (it first becomes 3x4 then 4x4, but quite a ways into the game).
Oh, and did I mention that moving codes around also takes up Mana Points (MP)? Only a small amount, but you could be in the middle of an epic code re-arrange and suddenly run out, then have to go out and kill monsters for more MP.
I mentioned the book can level up. Each page in the book has a point value. To increase the points, you move codes around, defeat the same enemy numerous times, perform well on puzzles, befriend NPCs, and explore maps well. So you have some options in how you want to do it. Though, the game never mentions why you'd even want to level the book up, so I didn't even try to earn point for a while.
Gameplay: Metalizes
Related to the Code System. To uber up your weapons, you must find recipes ("Metalizes") which are written on stone tablets all over the game world. The recipes are simply a list of codes you need to put into your weapon's 3x3 grid.
Occasionally I found recipes labeled "???" I assumed that at some point in the game I'd find an NPC to explain these.
Hell no. I read on a guide that they're a puzzle of their own. Tap the page for the item to open up a puzzle.
You'll never guess what kind of puzzle.
Come on, try and guess.
A God-damned slider puzzle. Yes, the game has got us doing slider puzzles to waste more time (add more precious gameplay value). If you don't know what a slider puzzle is, take a look here (it's an example from a different game):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUd1XneGLPs
The slider puzzles are in the shape of weapons. This makes them hard for swords (a straight blade results in many pieces looking similar) and easier for hammers.
Oh, and recipes can be frustrating to find. Their tablets appear in some maps only after you've earned the max points from the map. Usually, this means you have to go around rapid-firing the circle button trying to find the 4+ points of interest on the map (if you press the talk button while looking at a rock, for example, your character might note that it's heavy, or big. How important.).
This player got a score of 1000/1000 on this map (the number is covered up by IGN's watermark on the bottom-right). In the English version, the "points of interest" are marked by squares, not blue triangles.
You can spend a lot of time trying to find these little "points of interest" on one map to be rewarded with no tablet appearing at all. This is yet another way to increase the gameplay time by making us do something annoying.
Oh, and the game never tells you about the "points of interest" thing. I randomly talked to a rock and got a message and saw the point score increase before I found out. For the longest time I thought all maps were stuck at 500/1000.
Gameplay: Combat
Nothing special here. Pretty much Zelda-style. You press the attack button (square or triangle), and swing your weapon in front of you. The monster(s) in front of you take damage.
The angle can get annoying. The game isn't top-down or side-scrolling, like some screenshots seem to show. It's at an angle in between. Oftentimes I fell off a cliff misjudging where the hole was.
Anyway, at first, you only have twin swords. Later, you'll have hammers, throwing knives, fists, and a shield. To switch weapons, you have to find the page in the book, tap on it in the book and select to equip it.
There are also charge-up skills you can unleash by holding down the attack button. I found the sword pretty much overpowered so I don't see why you'd bother with the others, really.
Every hit you get in on a monster gives you an exp point for the weapon style you're using. Level ups grant you higher attack power with the weapon, and/or larger range and shorter charging time for the charge-up skill.
Shields are extremely abusable. Just hold the shield's (either square or triangle, depending on which hand you equipped it to) button down to defend and you will block very attack that comes your way, taking no damage. Even the final boss's attacks can be completely blocked this way (you can't really defeat him without using a shield).
You can also ask your spirits to cast magic skills. These are quite useful but I never really used them anyway, since you have to go into the book and select the spirit, and then select use magic, to use it.
Oh, and did I mention you only have 5 HP at the start? You get hit 5 times, you're dead, game over.
Each red leaf is one HP.
But this game is incredibly forgiving, despite its faults; you can tap to continue right where you died, and you'll be revived right where you wiped out (with only half your HP & MP, though). So you can pretty much suicide rush every boss and every dungeon and area in the game if you wanted to. If you died, you also keep all your level ups and experience. So, even if you level up on the boss, but die before defeating it, if you continue, you still have that level from before. Very forgiving.
You can also save anywhere.
Additionally, if you want to give up fighting a boss, you can simply tap the map on the touchscreen and the spirit will ask you if you want to give up. You'll simply be warped to the room right before the boss room, with no penalty (that I could see, anyway). All bosses have a full-recovery pot right before their room, so if you die, simply warp out, grab the pot, and reenter to avoid fighting it with half-health.
When you beat a boss, you also earn one point more towards your max HP. There is no other way to increase it, save an oddball tablet here and there, assuming you're fully-exploring every single map.
This player has a lot of HP and MP. More than what's available in the game, iirc.
My main issue with combat is the limited ways to recover your HP. You will -never- be given a healing item for killing an enemy (you -will- get MP-restoring things and money, but never HP-restoring things). You must successfully juggle (called "Judgement Link") the enemy: sneak behind the enemy and press the circle button to start juggling it. You must hit the weapon attack button at the right time to keep it in the air. Think of Mario's special jump move in Mario RPG if you've played that. It's a timing thing. Every hit with your weapon lowers the enemy's HP, and also flings him higher into the air. The higher the enemy is, the faster it falls back down to the ground (yay realistic gravity). When the enemy runs out of HP, you can continue juggling it for about 5~10 more times. When you've juggled it the max amount of times, the enemy explodes into an HP and an MP -restoring orb.
Of course, actually being able to juggle the enemy for that long takes a lot of skill. Most enemies you fight need to be juggled 10-20 times to explode.
The number of juggles seems to be affected by HP but I never figured out the exact relationship except more HP = more damned juggles.
If the enemy hits the ground, it either dies (if you've depleted its HP), or attempts to attack you like normal. If you try juggling this same monster again, you must start the combo over again.
Also, the height gets ridiculous. You literally juggle the enemy up into outer space. I'm not joking (boo unrealistic-lack-of-gravity-in-space).
Oh, and you're not invincible while juggling. Many times I tried to juggle to recover my HP only to be hit by a 2nd enemy. This net loss of HP pissed me off so much since it happened quite often.
And the enemies respawn almost immediately after you destroy them. So it's not like, "Well, why didn't you just destroy the other enemy first?" You have to kill 5~10 of the monsters in a room/area before they stop spawning. You can't get a break until you do this. Most enemies seem to be able to home in on you, although fortunately most are slow. But say you get hurt twice in one room from having a monster literally spawn on you. You'll have to complete a juggle twice to recover that (or eat through your MP).
If you're good at juggling, you can enter competitions in town for it.
Oh, but you -can- restore HP by eating food like bread (which takes MP to make). But the game never told me this (or if it did I wasn't listening).
Mmm, Forest Bread. What?
Oh, AND you can't see your HP/MP without constantly toggling to see it in the book. There is an options screen somewhere in which you can force it to always show (but I didn't find the options screen until over half-way through the game).
Oh, and in one beginner field, I ran into an invincible Hobgoblin. It had an invincibility code stuck to it. And I couldn't figure out what to do about it. See, the game never tells you, but you can get additional information on anything by tapping the block of squiggles underneath the character/monster/item's portrait in the book.
Gameplay: Dungeons, also known as endless Puzzles
Dungeons in this game are generally not your typical kill-every-monster and onto the next room. When you enter a new room, a "conditions for victory" message appears on the top of the screen, along with other optional conditions. You must complete the main conditions. The optional conditions can earn you more points (since your Book levels up off of these points, generally you'll want to try to fulfill as many conditions as possible). All rooms are also timed, but if you take too long, it's not game over or anything; you just lose points.
You can earn a max of 4000 points per room, though the book for some reason labels it out of 2000. 4000/2000. No idea why. But if you earn 5000 it will display as 4000/2000 so I assume 4000 is the max. You can repeat rooms if you want to try and improve your score by tapping on the map for it.
My issue is with the optional conditions. Sometimes you'll be told to "defeat Fire-type enemies!" which is the most annoying. First, you have to find out what type of enemy is in the rooom. Then, you have to scan the monster, assuming it isn't in your book, OR find the monster's page, and pop a FIRE code onto its grid. So, you have to also find a FIRE code to use. It's so much work for something so trivial like a few extra points to your score which seems to do relatively little.
Or, you'll be told to "fight with Avinium weapons" for example. In this case, you first have to know how to make your weapon into an Avinium-type (if you don't, too bad; look it up in a guide, for the game sure as hell won't tell you, or perhaps they expect you to experiment with changing codes to see what happens? Fast chance), look all over your book to find the codes needed to do this, and then find room on some other page to temporarily store the codes you already have in your weapon of choice. And then, when you finish the room, you'll want to remove all those codes you put in and put back in the old codes to remake your weapon the way it was. Or you can use a shitty secondary weapon for these rooms. But there are very few choices in secondary weapons, especially at the start of the game.
Other optional conditions include juggling monsters a certain amount of times, defeating all monsters and their respawns (usually 5-10), fighting with certain element weapons (find the element, find your weapon, apply to weapon, blah blah). One thing about the "Defeat all monsters" is that there is a purple-red square that you can attack in the room. Apparently it counts as a monster. If you don't destroy it, the room will never be completed; monsters will spawn forever. In one room I couldn't reach this square and killed about 30 bats before realizing I couldn't clear the room.
One main condition is to hit switches. Some have special conditions just to be hit, which was not explained at all in the game. A yellow crystal I found in the first dungeon, for example, required me to put a LGHN code (lightning) on my weapon. I could not figure this room out for 20 minutes (not exaggerating) until I looked it up in a guide. And then I spent 20 minutes (slightly exaggerating) looking through my book trying to find a LGHN code since I didn't even remember ever seeing one of those before.
And, the other thing that ticked me off to no end, is the rooms' setups. There are often holes you can fall through. In some rooms, you have to (open the book to the index, tap weapons, equip the hammer) use the power-up move for the hammer to fly across a void. Except, 80% of the time you fall into a hole on the other side instead of landing on firm ground. Everytime you fall, you lose 1 HP and respawn at the room's entrance.
Because, the game never told us, but we can actually -stop- the flying with the hammer by pressing some button (I forget which one). I somehow went through the whole God-damned game without knowing this.
Oh another complaint is that after juggling something, the book automatically opens to the monsters' page. It's nice if it's been a while since you've seen the monstr and need to edit the code, but it sucks if you want the map to stay open. After every juggle, I'd have to manually toggle the map back open. You want the map open the majority of the time because the monsters' movements are shown on it.
Graphics
Playstation-era polygons. It's on a portable system, so...
The game could have been done in 2D like the old Zelda games, but 3D is what's "cool" these days. Overall no complaints.
Music
The themes are quite catchy. I found myself humming along to many of them. The juggling music has that "minigame" feel to it. No complaints here.
Characters
Okay, so you see why I disliked the game's system so much. Maybe the characters (and the romance!) make the game worth playing? Well, yes and no.
Rempo, your first guardian spirit, is freaking annoying. As the Fire Spirit, he's a typical hothead. He also won't shut up. None of the characters in the game can see him or hear him (except for an undead ghost girl) but that does not stop him from talking shit to all of the people you run into. His comments are useless and detract from any ordinary conversation you could have as the plot progresses.
Meili is the 2nd spirit, a woodland-elfy type girl. She's rather sweet and innocent, but her role is underdeveloped. That's about all I know about her. She likes elves.
Neaki is the Ice spirit. She doesn't talk much. I like her. Her voice acting is just breath effects (like cold wind).
Ur is apparently uber-popular among Avalon Code fangirls. He's the bishie Lightning Spirit. He seems to be always serious (and there is no picture of him on IGN).
Your own character is a silent protagonist, but occasionally says things. And you sometimes have decisions to make (whether they affect the game much, I don't know, but I doubt it).
The romance-able characters include all of the people listed under Hero and Heroine in the Book. You can also romance any of the spirits. Of course, the romancing is gener-restricted. No homo relationships allowed.
Most of the romance-able characters at first seem very underdeveloped. I romanced Fana. She is a sick girl stuck in bed. Her grandma takes care of her. She has an ILL (illness) code stuck in her grid. You can't remove it until you've completed a (decently-developed) sidequest for her.
Over the course of the romance, we learn that she makes toys for orphans. And her parents tried to find a cure but failed. And she has a small inferiority complex (she asks if it's okay for you to date someone as ordinary as her). And that's about it. She's a generic nice girl.
Nanai is the town fortuneteller and witch. Apparently witchcraft is illegal but they let her stay in town. But when you get caught doing miracles with the book, you're thrown in jail. What a dumb justice system.
Sylphy is an elf who dislikes humans. (what a stupid name for an elf =/)
Francesca is the princess. She's stuck up and annoying. End of story.
For men, we have...
Duran, the wannabe hero, who's really a chicken. He collects flowers for his hat. He has a weakness code attached to him that you can remove through a (lame) sidequest.
Duran.
Anwar is an unfriendly guy you'll meet midway through the game. He acts like he's antisocial, but you can befriend him.
Heath is a knight from the other empire. He seems like he should be old so I was not interested in him.
Oh, and most of the romances are meant to happen within 6 in-game days. There's a downtime plot point in the game in which you have 6 days to do whatever you want before a tournament. You're supposed to romance someone during this time. Yes, the characters will fall in love with you within this time.
Right.
Anyway, non-romance-able, we have....
Kamui likes flowers and used to live in the neighboring empire. He seems sweet. I actually would have played the game again to romance him, but he's not available. But then, I'd probably be disappointed with what they'd do with it anyway. He also wears blue.
Rex is (supposedly) your best friend, but the game failed to establish this in a believable manner. He basically just says, "Hey, we've been best friends since we were little!" and you're forced to believe it. He seems like a douche, plain and simple.
Rex.
And various others, some important, some not.
Even after completing the sidequests for some characters (like Duran), I felt I didn't learn much more about them. I mean, they -tried- to make it seem like Duran was being tormented by the crime that he thinks his father committed years ago, but it just didn't seem like it was enough. Like, maybe they could have had other characters talk about Duran and his conflicts. Or something. The characters rarely say anything important other than what's going on in the current plot, which makes them all seem very flat.
And after doing the little sidequest, there was nothing else. After talking with them, they say the same thing as always. It seemed almost pointless.
Final Thoughts
Only an hour into the game I was ready to quit it forever. The book is just so frustrating and time-consuming to work with. I rarely quit games because of frustration. The only game I've ever dropped was Final Fantasy 12 because it was boring, but Avalon Code was very close to being my 2nd.
The interactions with the Book are the main drawback. Moving between pages is slow because it has to make the little page-flip animation every time. And you have to use it nearly every room in the dungeon. Plus, I'm a firm believer in NOT using the touchscreen. Judge me by that if you will.
And the game itself explains jack. Why? It expects you, first to HAVE the manual for it, and second, to actually READ it. In this day and age, games have a high turnover rate into used games, and manuals are often lost. We should not have to go online and google up guides to learn simple gameplay features that could easily be explained in a tutorial or by a small sentence by an NPC.
Though, I have to admit. After I learned all that shit the game never told me, everything was a lot easier. The plot was enjoyable and throws you for a little bit of a loop halfway through, BUT it causes you to repeat what you've already done all over again (way to add gameplay time: make you revisit all the dungeons you've already been through!)
I was almost interested in playing again to try the female character and see if the game is different in any way. However, judging from fangirl forum posts, it's no different and not worth pursuing. Plus, Kamui is not romance-able. Screw you Marvelous Entertainment. Screw you.
Oh, and once you've beaten the game, you can get a "glimpse" of the new world you're going to create. I tried changing around codes, and always my world had 3 NPCs (different NPCs everytime, but really, what a waste of time moving codes around for only 3 NPCs). The endgame content is pretty limited, although you -can- break up with your romance NPC and romance the other characters instead of starting a whole new game. This felt like cheating though, so I didn't =/
There are people out there who worship this game. I have no idea what drugs they are on. Or how desperate they are for an RPG with a dating sim.
If there is a sequel, I'm avoiding it, even if they do improve the Book's menus and usability.
Do yourself a favor and stick with Zelda or the Harvest Moon: Rune Factory series.
All screenshots came from IGN.
Disappointing.
A second word.
Frustrating.
And a third.
Annoying.
(Kinda ties in with the second.)
This RPG was much-anticipated in some circles for its unique plot, cutesy look, and, of course, romance-able NPCs.
Let's take a look at what turned out to be a less-than-satisfying game. It is tl;dr.
Story
This is the most interesting aspect of the game. You're an ordinary boy (or girl. You choose! I chose boy). One day, while relaxing on Sunny Hill, a red bookmark floats on the wind and into your possession. Suddenly, a large book appears. It's the Book of Prophecy!
The bookmark happens to house the Fire Spirit, Rempo, who explains that you're the chosen one. This world is going to end, and it's your job to write down things of note into the Book so that the next world can be a good one.
But! There are baddies who seek to use the book and write their own future! In fact, as soon as you receive the book you're attacked and taught how to use it.
Your goal is to find the 3 other spirits of the Book so that the end may come (Lighting, Forest, Ice).
Gameplay: Code System
In order to get data on anything into the book, you must hit ("code scan") the object with the book. It does no damage; it's not a real attack. Some monsters can be tricky to hit; if you head-on attack, they will block it and get an attack of their own in. The key to winning some boss battles is figuring out how to scan them.
Each item, character, and monster has a page in the Book. Each page consists of a 3x3-sized grid with empty spaces and spaces taken up by elements and attributes. You can move the attributes around, or even take them away from one thing and put them into another. For example, if you're in a field with lots of Goblins and they're giving you a hard time, simply find an ILL (illness) code and pop it into the Goblin's grid to lower all Goblins' HP.
This monster has FAME and COPR. FAME does little, but COPR increases its health.
Sounds interesting? Unique? Revolutionary? I assure you, this system, while a nice idea, gets tedious almost from the start. Here's why.
You can only "carry" 4 codes at once on the side (codes not placed into an item/character/monster's grid). If you are carrying four codes, and want to carry one more, too bad, you'll have to pop one of them onto something. Sometimes it can be very hard to find a thing/character/monster that has room for the code you want to get rid of. Worse, later on you may find that you need that unwanted code, and forget what exactly you put it on.
This monster has 4 different codes. Hopefully you aren't already holding any codes if you want to remove them.
The Book's index is the very definition of failure. To start looking for anything, you must flip to the index. There, you must select a topic. Say, you choose "Monsters." Then, you must choose what type of monster. Say you choose "Undead." The book flips to the very first undead monster. There is no subindex listing all the undead monsters' names. If you want a specific undead monster, you'll have to keep pressing the page flip button on the lower right until you get to the monster you're looking for.
Nothing has a subindex! It can take forever to find the specific monster you're looking for, or the specific character, or the specific weapon.
Finding maps is also ridiculously annoying. Later in the game, you can simply tap on any map in the book to warp to it. If you can find it! For example, the index for the town also includes all the fields around it! It took me ages to find the room before the final boss after I had left the dungeon because I had no idea where the map was filed.
Worst of all, there is no search function! I found myself constantly flipping through the book to find/change one measly little code.
Oh, and did I mention you -must- use the touchscreen when interacting with the Book? Never put that stylus away. Nearly every bloody room in the game forces you to stop everything to mess with something in the book.
Oftentimes you'll have a hard time fitting codes where you want them to be. Some codes are large, shaped like the big L or 2x2 blocks in Tetris, for example, and you only have a 3x3 area on each thing/character/monster. Every thing/character/monster already comes with codes in their grid. So you'll often find yourself stressed trying to figure out where to put your shitty STON codes (stone, add lots of HP to enemy, who wants that?).
And you can't simultaneously swap one of the codes you're carrying for one code on the grid. It won't let you. And, sometimes you'll drop a code onto the grid and it won't accept the action, because you didn't line it up exactly within the lines.
And, the game never tells you, but you can rotate the codes by tapping the arrow above your four code "carry" boxes. Why neglect to tell me something this important?
It gets slightly easier to manage when the book levels up and gains more code space for each page (it first becomes 3x4 then 4x4, but quite a ways into the game).
Oh, and did I mention that moving codes around also takes up Mana Points (MP)? Only a small amount, but you could be in the middle of an epic code re-arrange and suddenly run out, then have to go out and kill monsters for more MP.
I mentioned the book can level up. Each page in the book has a point value. To increase the points, you move codes around, defeat the same enemy numerous times, perform well on puzzles, befriend NPCs, and explore maps well. So you have some options in how you want to do it. Though, the game never mentions why you'd even want to level the book up, so I didn't even try to earn point for a while.
Gameplay: Metalizes
Related to the Code System. To uber up your weapons, you must find recipes ("Metalizes") which are written on stone tablets all over the game world. The recipes are simply a list of codes you need to put into your weapon's 3x3 grid.
Occasionally I found recipes labeled "???" I assumed that at some point in the game I'd find an NPC to explain these.
Hell no. I read on a guide that they're a puzzle of their own. Tap the page for the item to open up a puzzle.
You'll never guess what kind of puzzle.
Come on, try and guess.
A God-damned slider puzzle. Yes, the game has got us doing slider puzzles to waste more time (add more precious gameplay value). If you don't know what a slider puzzle is, take a look here (it's an example from a different game):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUd1XneGLPs
The slider puzzles are in the shape of weapons. This makes them hard for swords (a straight blade results in many pieces looking similar) and easier for hammers.
Oh, and recipes can be frustrating to find. Their tablets appear in some maps only after you've earned the max points from the map. Usually, this means you have to go around rapid-firing the circle button trying to find the 4+ points of interest on the map (if you press the talk button while looking at a rock, for example, your character might note that it's heavy, or big. How important.).
This player got a score of 1000/1000 on this map (the number is covered up by IGN's watermark on the bottom-right). In the English version, the "points of interest" are marked by squares, not blue triangles.
You can spend a lot of time trying to find these little "points of interest" on one map to be rewarded with no tablet appearing at all. This is yet another way to increase the gameplay time by making us do something annoying.
Oh, and the game never tells you about the "points of interest" thing. I randomly talked to a rock and got a message and saw the point score increase before I found out. For the longest time I thought all maps were stuck at 500/1000.
Gameplay: Combat
Nothing special here. Pretty much Zelda-style. You press the attack button (square or triangle), and swing your weapon in front of you. The monster(s) in front of you take damage.
The angle can get annoying. The game isn't top-down or side-scrolling, like some screenshots seem to show. It's at an angle in between. Oftentimes I fell off a cliff misjudging where the hole was.
Anyway, at first, you only have twin swords. Later, you'll have hammers, throwing knives, fists, and a shield. To switch weapons, you have to find the page in the book, tap on it in the book and select to equip it.
There are also charge-up skills you can unleash by holding down the attack button. I found the sword pretty much overpowered so I don't see why you'd bother with the others, really.
Every hit you get in on a monster gives you an exp point for the weapon style you're using. Level ups grant you higher attack power with the weapon, and/or larger range and shorter charging time for the charge-up skill.
Shields are extremely abusable. Just hold the shield's (either square or triangle, depending on which hand you equipped it to) button down to defend and you will block very attack that comes your way, taking no damage. Even the final boss's attacks can be completely blocked this way (you can't really defeat him without using a shield).
You can also ask your spirits to cast magic skills. These are quite useful but I never really used them anyway, since you have to go into the book and select the spirit, and then select use magic, to use it.
Oh, and did I mention you only have 5 HP at the start? You get hit 5 times, you're dead, game over.
Each red leaf is one HP.
But this game is incredibly forgiving, despite its faults; you can tap to continue right where you died, and you'll be revived right where you wiped out (with only half your HP & MP, though). So you can pretty much suicide rush every boss and every dungeon and area in the game if you wanted to. If you died, you also keep all your level ups and experience. So, even if you level up on the boss, but die before defeating it, if you continue, you still have that level from before. Very forgiving.
You can also save anywhere.
Additionally, if you want to give up fighting a boss, you can simply tap the map on the touchscreen and the spirit will ask you if you want to give up. You'll simply be warped to the room right before the boss room, with no penalty (that I could see, anyway). All bosses have a full-recovery pot right before their room, so if you die, simply warp out, grab the pot, and reenter to avoid fighting it with half-health.
When you beat a boss, you also earn one point more towards your max HP. There is no other way to increase it, save an oddball tablet here and there, assuming you're fully-exploring every single map.
This player has a lot of HP and MP. More than what's available in the game, iirc.
My main issue with combat is the limited ways to recover your HP. You will -never- be given a healing item for killing an enemy (you -will- get MP-restoring things and money, but never HP-restoring things). You must successfully juggle (called "Judgement Link") the enemy: sneak behind the enemy and press the circle button to start juggling it. You must hit the weapon attack button at the right time to keep it in the air. Think of Mario's special jump move in Mario RPG if you've played that. It's a timing thing. Every hit with your weapon lowers the enemy's HP, and also flings him higher into the air. The higher the enemy is, the faster it falls back down to the ground (yay realistic gravity). When the enemy runs out of HP, you can continue juggling it for about 5~10 more times. When you've juggled it the max amount of times, the enemy explodes into an HP and an MP -restoring orb.
Of course, actually being able to juggle the enemy for that long takes a lot of skill. Most enemies you fight need to be juggled 10-20 times to explode.
The number of juggles seems to be affected by HP but I never figured out the exact relationship except more HP = more damned juggles.
If the enemy hits the ground, it either dies (if you've depleted its HP), or attempts to attack you like normal. If you try juggling this same monster again, you must start the combo over again.
Also, the height gets ridiculous. You literally juggle the enemy up into outer space. I'm not joking (boo unrealistic-lack-of-gravity-in-space).
Oh, and you're not invincible while juggling. Many times I tried to juggle to recover my HP only to be hit by a 2nd enemy. This net loss of HP pissed me off so much since it happened quite often.
And the enemies respawn almost immediately after you destroy them. So it's not like, "Well, why didn't you just destroy the other enemy first?" You have to kill 5~10 of the monsters in a room/area before they stop spawning. You can't get a break until you do this. Most enemies seem to be able to home in on you, although fortunately most are slow. But say you get hurt twice in one room from having a monster literally spawn on you. You'll have to complete a juggle twice to recover that (or eat through your MP).
If you're good at juggling, you can enter competitions in town for it.
Oh, but you -can- restore HP by eating food like bread (which takes MP to make). But the game never told me this (or if it did I wasn't listening).
Mmm, Forest Bread. What?
Oh, AND you can't see your HP/MP without constantly toggling to see it in the book. There is an options screen somewhere in which you can force it to always show (but I didn't find the options screen until over half-way through the game).
Oh, and in one beginner field, I ran into an invincible Hobgoblin. It had an invincibility code stuck to it. And I couldn't figure out what to do about it. See, the game never tells you, but you can get additional information on anything by tapping the block of squiggles underneath the character/monster/item's portrait in the book.
Gameplay: Dungeons, also known as endless Puzzles
Dungeons in this game are generally not your typical kill-every-monster and onto the next room. When you enter a new room, a "conditions for victory" message appears on the top of the screen, along with other optional conditions. You must complete the main conditions. The optional conditions can earn you more points (since your Book levels up off of these points, generally you'll want to try to fulfill as many conditions as possible). All rooms are also timed, but if you take too long, it's not game over or anything; you just lose points.
You can earn a max of 4000 points per room, though the book for some reason labels it out of 2000. 4000/2000. No idea why. But if you earn 5000 it will display as 4000/2000 so I assume 4000 is the max. You can repeat rooms if you want to try and improve your score by tapping on the map for it.
My issue is with the optional conditions. Sometimes you'll be told to "defeat Fire-type enemies!" which is the most annoying. First, you have to find out what type of enemy is in the rooom. Then, you have to scan the monster, assuming it isn't in your book, OR find the monster's page, and pop a FIRE code onto its grid. So, you have to also find a FIRE code to use. It's so much work for something so trivial like a few extra points to your score which seems to do relatively little.
Or, you'll be told to "fight with Avinium weapons" for example. In this case, you first have to know how to make your weapon into an Avinium-type (if you don't, too bad; look it up in a guide, for the game sure as hell won't tell you, or perhaps they expect you to experiment with changing codes to see what happens? Fast chance), look all over your book to find the codes needed to do this, and then find room on some other page to temporarily store the codes you already have in your weapon of choice. And then, when you finish the room, you'll want to remove all those codes you put in and put back in the old codes to remake your weapon the way it was. Or you can use a shitty secondary weapon for these rooms. But there are very few choices in secondary weapons, especially at the start of the game.
Other optional conditions include juggling monsters a certain amount of times, defeating all monsters and their respawns (usually 5-10), fighting with certain element weapons (find the element, find your weapon, apply to weapon, blah blah). One thing about the "Defeat all monsters" is that there is a purple-red square that you can attack in the room. Apparently it counts as a monster. If you don't destroy it, the room will never be completed; monsters will spawn forever. In one room I couldn't reach this square and killed about 30 bats before realizing I couldn't clear the room.
One main condition is to hit switches. Some have special conditions just to be hit, which was not explained at all in the game. A yellow crystal I found in the first dungeon, for example, required me to put a LGHN code (lightning) on my weapon. I could not figure this room out for 20 minutes (not exaggerating) until I looked it up in a guide. And then I spent 20 minutes (slightly exaggerating) looking through my book trying to find a LGHN code since I didn't even remember ever seeing one of those before.
And, the other thing that ticked me off to no end, is the rooms' setups. There are often holes you can fall through. In some rooms, you have to (open the book to the index, tap weapons, equip the hammer) use the power-up move for the hammer to fly across a void. Except, 80% of the time you fall into a hole on the other side instead of landing on firm ground. Everytime you fall, you lose 1 HP and respawn at the room's entrance.
Because, the game never told us, but we can actually -stop- the flying with the hammer by pressing some button (I forget which one). I somehow went through the whole God-damned game without knowing this.
Oh another complaint is that after juggling something, the book automatically opens to the monsters' page. It's nice if it's been a while since you've seen the monstr and need to edit the code, but it sucks if you want the map to stay open. After every juggle, I'd have to manually toggle the map back open. You want the map open the majority of the time because the monsters' movements are shown on it.
Graphics
Playstation-era polygons. It's on a portable system, so...
The game could have been done in 2D like the old Zelda games, but 3D is what's "cool" these days. Overall no complaints.
Music
The themes are quite catchy. I found myself humming along to many of them. The juggling music has that "minigame" feel to it. No complaints here.
Characters
Okay, so you see why I disliked the game's system so much. Maybe the characters (and the romance!) make the game worth playing? Well, yes and no.
Rempo, your first guardian spirit, is freaking annoying. As the Fire Spirit, he's a typical hothead. He also won't shut up. None of the characters in the game can see him or hear him (except for an undead ghost girl) but that does not stop him from talking shit to all of the people you run into. His comments are useless and detract from any ordinary conversation you could have as the plot progresses.
Meili is the 2nd spirit, a woodland-elfy type girl. She's rather sweet and innocent, but her role is underdeveloped. That's about all I know about her. She likes elves.
Neaki is the Ice spirit. She doesn't talk much. I like her. Her voice acting is just breath effects (like cold wind).
Ur is apparently uber-popular among Avalon Code fangirls. He's the bishie Lightning Spirit. He seems to be always serious (and there is no picture of him on IGN).
Your own character is a silent protagonist, but occasionally says things. And you sometimes have decisions to make (whether they affect the game much, I don't know, but I doubt it).
The romance-able characters include all of the people listed under Hero and Heroine in the Book. You can also romance any of the spirits. Of course, the romancing is gener-restricted. No homo relationships allowed.
Most of the romance-able characters at first seem very underdeveloped. I romanced Fana. She is a sick girl stuck in bed. Her grandma takes care of her. She has an ILL (illness) code stuck in her grid. You can't remove it until you've completed a (decently-developed) sidequest for her.
Over the course of the romance, we learn that she makes toys for orphans. And her parents tried to find a cure but failed. And she has a small inferiority complex (she asks if it's okay for you to date someone as ordinary as her). And that's about it. She's a generic nice girl.
Nanai is the town fortuneteller and witch. Apparently witchcraft is illegal but they let her stay in town. But when you get caught doing miracles with the book, you're thrown in jail. What a dumb justice system.
Sylphy is an elf who dislikes humans. (what a stupid name for an elf =/)
Francesca is the princess. She's stuck up and annoying. End of story.
For men, we have...
Duran, the wannabe hero, who's really a chicken. He collects flowers for his hat. He has a weakness code attached to him that you can remove through a (lame) sidequest.
Duran.
Anwar is an unfriendly guy you'll meet midway through the game. He acts like he's antisocial, but you can befriend him.
Heath is a knight from the other empire. He seems like he should be old so I was not interested in him.
Oh, and most of the romances are meant to happen within 6 in-game days. There's a downtime plot point in the game in which you have 6 days to do whatever you want before a tournament. You're supposed to romance someone during this time. Yes, the characters will fall in love with you within this time.
Right.
Anyway, non-romance-able, we have....
Kamui likes flowers and used to live in the neighboring empire. He seems sweet. I actually would have played the game again to romance him, but he's not available. But then, I'd probably be disappointed with what they'd do with it anyway. He also wears blue.
Rex is (supposedly) your best friend, but the game failed to establish this in a believable manner. He basically just says, "Hey, we've been best friends since we were little!" and you're forced to believe it. He seems like a douche, plain and simple.
Rex.
And various others, some important, some not.
Even after completing the sidequests for some characters (like Duran), I felt I didn't learn much more about them. I mean, they -tried- to make it seem like Duran was being tormented by the crime that he thinks his father committed years ago, but it just didn't seem like it was enough. Like, maybe they could have had other characters talk about Duran and his conflicts. Or something. The characters rarely say anything important other than what's going on in the current plot, which makes them all seem very flat.
And after doing the little sidequest, there was nothing else. After talking with them, they say the same thing as always. It seemed almost pointless.
Final Thoughts
Only an hour into the game I was ready to quit it forever. The book is just so frustrating and time-consuming to work with. I rarely quit games because of frustration. The only game I've ever dropped was Final Fantasy 12 because it was boring, but Avalon Code was very close to being my 2nd.
The interactions with the Book are the main drawback. Moving between pages is slow because it has to make the little page-flip animation every time. And you have to use it nearly every room in the dungeon. Plus, I'm a firm believer in NOT using the touchscreen. Judge me by that if you will.
And the game itself explains jack. Why? It expects you, first to HAVE the manual for it, and second, to actually READ it. In this day and age, games have a high turnover rate into used games, and manuals are often lost. We should not have to go online and google up guides to learn simple gameplay features that could easily be explained in a tutorial or by a small sentence by an NPC.
Though, I have to admit. After I learned all that shit the game never told me, everything was a lot easier. The plot was enjoyable and throws you for a little bit of a loop halfway through, BUT it causes you to repeat what you've already done all over again (way to add gameplay time: make you revisit all the dungeons you've already been through!)
I was almost interested in playing again to try the female character and see if the game is different in any way. However, judging from fangirl forum posts, it's no different and not worth pursuing. Plus, Kamui is not romance-able. Screw you Marvelous Entertainment. Screw you.
Oh, and once you've beaten the game, you can get a "glimpse" of the new world you're going to create. I tried changing around codes, and always my world had 3 NPCs (different NPCs everytime, but really, what a waste of time moving codes around for only 3 NPCs). The endgame content is pretty limited, although you -can- break up with your romance NPC and romance the other characters instead of starting a whole new game. This felt like cheating though, so I didn't =/
There are people out there who worship this game. I have no idea what drugs they are on. Or how desperate they are for an RPG with a dating sim.
If there is a sequel, I'm avoiding it, even if they do improve the Book's menus and usability.
Do yourself a favor and stick with Zelda or the Harvest Moon: Rune Factory series.
All screenshots came from IGN.
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