Tantai Jin Apologist

This just takes one of the most beautiful & chill games ever & complicate it by add pointless nonsense to it, reusing enough of the design elements to be a constant reminder of something better.

On the plus side, I guess at least I haven't lost money trying it out. Lego Horizon Adventures is one of the monthly games, so I was going to reactivate PS+ for one month to give it a go, because I like the Horizon games but have no interest in Lego games. If I like it, I'll buy it after cancelling the subscription, & if I don't, then at least I'm only out £7 rather than £30+. Then I got a £10 voucher for PSN, & Sword of the Sea was on my wishlist because of the Journey association, so decided to go up a tier & get PS+ Extra instead of just Essential, so I could try that too, essentially for only 99p. Looking through the available games, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is on there too. Funnily enough that one was on my wishlist but I recently took it off since it had been sitting on there for years & I hadn't got around to buying it, so clearly I wasn't that interested. So I can try that one & see if it's for me.

I definitely need to rewatch a bunch of times to catch everything I totally missed.

First time I've been to the cinema since before covid (last film I saw in the cinema was Rise of Skywalker, which would put anyone off wasting money on cinema tickets, especially considering how much they cost nowadays). To be fair, there's been stuff since that I might have been interested in seeing, but the cost of tickets means I have to be sure I really want to see something, & have money to burn that I'm willing to make a risky bet with. And have the time. This was the first time all those things have applied.

Also today I checked out a vintage kilo sale on my way to the cinema, but didn't see anything that interesting.

Have to wait a few days because my parents are in town & expect me to spend time with them (while being vague on their plans for each day, so I spend my day sitting waiting to see if they'll arrange to meet up & so get nothing done *sigh*). But hey a few days is fine.

( shh! spoilers! )

My original plan was to read volume 1 then continue on from where the official translation left off using the fan translation, before picking up volume 2 when it comes out in December (assuming there isn't a delay on that as well...). But somehow the end of December looks a lot closer to the middle of November than it does the beginning. Even with my terrible memory it'll still feel like I only just read it, & that's assuming I finish it quickly & don't get distracted. Plus the official translation really is better, so I'd rather wait.

Favourite bit so far is probably Wenren E dangling an unconscious Baili Qingmiao off a cliff on a piece of silk like he's going fishing, just to see if her protagonist nature will open the way they're looking for.

Anyway, I have it now, though I won't be able to read it yet, as I'm in the middle of Devil Venerable Also Wants to Know (which continues to be awesome), & I'm even stalled on that because my free time right now is taken up by Whispers of Fate & Powerwash Simulator 2, & before that it was Horizon Forbidden West taking up my time. My memory is shit & I'm not about to confuse myself by juggling too many sets of characters at once, so any commentary on the quality of the text itself & how it compares to the unofficial translation I'd checked out will have to wait.

But the actual physical book is right there in front of me. I can see it & touch it. And I have some thoughts on the quality & how it compares to previous releases I own. And hoo boy those thoughts are not good.

For reference I am using the 3 MXTX novels (I grabbed the 1st volumes of each for maximum fairness). I also have The Husky & His White Cat Shizun (which I hated, but that's not the point. Since I haven't got around to selling it yet, I have it available).

Cover

The MXTX book covers all have a matte background with glossy characters & foreground details, spine detail, as well as glossy title & author name text (SVSSS also has glossy panels on the back showing key characters). MH&ISiaC has a fully matte cover with just glossy title & author name text, & spine detail. I was ready to shake my head in disappointment, but this was the point where I remembered I still had 2ha stashed away in a box, so I dug that out & found it also only had the glossy effect on the cover text, so it's not a super new thing & I'm guessing 7S did the glossy detailing in an early blaze of enthusiasm before deciding to tone things down a bit. TBH, it's not a big deal & I can see how it was probably a hassle figuring out which details got the emphasis.

What is new & I am going to complain about, is that the cover no longer wraps around the book. The spine is solid black. And considering the blurb is in a box with a solid background, the artwork is way too covered up. (Technically 2ha also has a solid background box for the blurb, but it allowed details of the cover art to encroach into it, wrapping the text around this.) They did still have the full cover art just inside, but still. The cover lacks the little inner flaps too.

Title Font

This isn't necessarily reflective of any overall quality decline, because the various series all have their own title font designs, but this is... A Choice. It's giving shitty steampunk YA fantasy. Additionally this font is also used on the spine, unlike with previous books, where there was a standard font used, which allowed some uniformity in design across the various books while letting them have their own identity in the unique cover art that was visible on the spine.

Also, the pinyin title is no longer visible on the cover, or even on the title page (though that at least includes the title in hanzi). If you want to find what the book is called in Chinese without being able to read Chinese, you have to check the publishing details page. It's also in the pronunciation guide, but it doesn't tell you it's the title. I figured it was as I know this is standard with 7S releases, but I can see a newbie picking this book up in a bookshop out of curiosity & being confused.

Pages

The pages are so damn thin! You can see text, decorative details, & artwork through the page they're printed on! This isn't helped by the decorative details at the beginning of each chapter & at the top corners of each page being super think, elaborate, & printed with extra dark black ink (also printing the title on a blank page in between each chapter, in case you forget what you're reading, even though as with other 7S books, the title is at the top of each left-hand page, with the chapter title on the right), whereas previous books they made the chapter headers grey, kept the page decorations to thin lines. 2ha used little dog icons at the start of each chapter which are quite dark, but they were small, & the paper was decently thick.

And they want 18 bloody quid for this! I was fine paying the cost of the books because they had such a premium feel. This does not feel premium.

I really hope some of the lack of quality (the page thinness) is a side effect of whatever it was that caused supply shortages of this book, & they had to be less choosy about materials used, but I'm not sure I'm that optimistic.

I expect a sequel to expand on a game's mechanics & add new twists, but it feels like they went way to & over-complicated everything. Every tiny step of every aspect of every mechanic had a bunch of complexity & extra steps added in a way that often felt less like innovating so concepts don't get tired & more like adding random obstacles.

Puzzles in HZD are occasional little brain teasers to add some flavour, where to elements of the puzzle are in one space & you can easily figure out what you need to do, so you can get on with trying to solve the thing. Puzzles in HFW are constant multi-step chores that made it hard to figure out what you next step was because the elements of the puzzle were scattered all over & there was no obvious way of figuring out what your next step was. And there were often steps on top of steps because you'd go through a whole bunch of moving something & then going somewhere else & pulling a lever & then going somewhere else to make a hole in a wall & then moving something else & then & then & then... & you get through it (with the help of a guide) & it turned out that was one to find a key. And then you've got to got through another series of steps to find a code. And then a bunch more steps to find a battery. And then more steps to find a charger for the battery to power something to access wherever the door is. And then you have to - you guessed it! - go through more steps to get to the door. There was one where I looked at the guide for how to solve it, saw the number of steps, saw that it was just for half of an access code (yep, not even the whole code), & it wasn't even an interesting series of steps (go here, move thing, go somewhere else, move thing, etc), & I could just look up the code online by scrolling down on the guide I was following & typing it straight into the console. Which I did. It got to the point where I stopped even trying to figure things out - as soon as I saw signs of a puzzle I'd just check a guide & follow it (usually while muttering, 'how tf was I suppose to figure out I needed to do that particular series of steps in that particular order?'). There were occasional 'ooh this is fun!' puzzling sections where there was a clear next step I could find by looking around where I was, but those were rare.

Aloy is often supposed to drop hints in dialogue, but the implementation of that was... not great. Sometimes she'd only make the comment when she was standing in a spot where the only reason she'd be there was if I'd solved the problem already (the worst instance of that was a cauldron where she was supposed to shoot some cannisters being carried through the area & ride the resulting blast to access platforms, & according to really snide people online when I was looking up how to get through the area, she clearly commented on the cannisters when entering the area. Except she said nothing... until I got to the next area, which used a similar mechanic, & got to a point where I was most of the way through that area, & THEN she mentioned the cannisters!). Other times she'd comment on something as if she was right next to it, because the game decided 'eh, close enough', but she was round a corner & down a corridor & the thing wasn't visible on the Focus from where she was standing so I'm looking around going 'girl what are you talking about???'. Or someone would talk over her.

Some of the added ideas where interesting in theory, but poorly implemented. I loved the idea of having a resource where you could hear a audio cue when you were nearby that you could follow! But why were there different sizes that were treated as different resources? A greenshine slab was bigger than a greenshine fragment, but couldn't be used to buy anything that requires a greenshine fragment. Meanwhile both bluegleam (in Frozen Wilds & brimshine i Burning Shores were worth x number of pieces. The food giving buffs to certain stats was interesting, but I never ended up using it was it wasn't easy to check what its effects where without digging through the menus, so it just took up slots in my inventory & meant more stuff to scroll through while looking for a health potion. I fully support the idea of giving Aloy proper melee combat options, because sometimes close range combat is unavoidable. But it was so slow & clunky & timings on the combos were poorly explained, & it was a nightmare. Maybe I'm expecting too much from decades of playing Devil May Cry games, but I found it awful. Splitting the merchants into specialties made some kind of sense, but resulted in a lot of running around (& getting lost in some maze-like settlements) to figure out what I wanted to buy & what I could afford. Maybe should have been kept for some of the larger settlements & have general merchants for the rest. The idea of adding variants to machines was cool, but was overdone to the point where even at the end of the game I was having to scan every single damn machine to figure out what ammo to use, because I could never remember (why the hell were there so many types of Burrowers that were just minute variants of each other, when the thing is just a glorified Watcher?). The added variety of weapons & ammo was great in theory but in practice making a decent loadout with a variety of ammo types was a nightmare & some of the ammo type slots were redundant because why would you need separate basic & advanced versions of the same ammo? You're not going to use the basic one you've unlocked the advanced variety, so just have them replace them!).

There was other frustrating things that felt more like bugs. A few quests where I was meant to defeat enemies in order to progress, & the enemies are super aggressive & would normally attack on sight, but instead they hid away, & in one case barely reacted even when I started shooting at it. There's also a flying mount you can unlock un override for, & an option to un-invert the controls, which I picked because I found the standard flying controls confusing. But then in Burning Shores you unlock a variant that can also diver into water, in order to do a quest that requires a lot of quick dodging, & THE CONTROLS SWITCH BACK WITHOUT TELLING ME. I was struggling to control the damn thing & not figuring out why it wasn't doing what I wanted. Only later when I was flying around without the stress of being shot at & therefore had the time to notice things properly did I realise it was using inverted controls.

Also getting rid of the lure call ability & throwing rocks instead was annoying as most of the time machines barely reacted, so I had to throw rock after rock after rock to attract their attention. Cool that there was no upper limit on the amount of rocks you can have in your inventory though, as I love the crunching sound as you pick them up.

Despite all the complaining, I didn't totally hate the game. I loved the story, & how it emphasized friendship & teamwork instead of having Aloy be some lone wolf chosen one figure who was apart from everyone else. Though I did get annoyed at them getting in the way at various points.

Having to collect part of machines as an additional step to unlock overrides you learning from a cauldron makes them feel more earned & is an example of an added complexity that actually deepens the gameplay.

THE ROMANCE AT THE END OF BURNING SHORES!!!! I loved the rapport between them from the start & when some of the things Aloy was saying towards the end had me getting a vibe that I was putting down to ship[per brain, & then she went & asked & I hit the 'yes' option so fast I' amazed I didn't break the analogue stick! It almost made up for that chore of a multi-step boss fight. Almost.

GILDUN! <3 I was so happy to see him back! He's one of my favourite side characters, probably because he reminds me of my dad, who has the exact same inability to shut up & a tendency to get distracted. I'm not saying my dad is the type to lose an important object to a Snapmaw & get himself locked in a ruin but... No I am saying that actually. He would. He absolutely would.

The most important improvement: O can cancel out of Focus mode. Thank you thank you thank you! So many occasions in the first game where I automatically hit O to cancel because it's such an ingrained instinct, only to have Aloy do an awkward slo-mo roll & inevitably get smacked about by the machine I was fighting that I needed to exit Focus mode quickly so I could evade or attack properly

I have a bunch of photos already that'll get posted at some point. I need to do a New Game+ playthrough though, & will probably gather more.

Ah, so good! But...

HOW DARE THEY PLAY WITH MY EMOTIONS LIKE THAT IN THE LAST FEW MINUTES?! Go to jail for 1,000 years!

That thank you message was pretty cute. :D

The demo offers 3 modes, combat, boss challenge, & adventure, & I went with the 3rd to get a general sense of the game. First off, the dialogue I was launched into seemed to have been written by someone who had never had any conversations in their life. I don't want to make accusations of AI but... well. Exploration seemed fine, though I didn't get too far before having enough, though the camera bugged me & I got mildly nauseous (in the game's defence I am really sensitive to that sort of thing & IIRC there were options to adjust camera sensitivity in the settings. If I'd been enjoying the game otherwise I'd have probably made adjustments & tried again).

Combat was just bad all round. I had no real idea what I was doing so I was basically button mashing to figure out what worked, but I wasn't getting a sense that I was doing anything (someone on youtube said it 'feels like you're whacking enemies with a wiffle bat' which tracks with my experience & sums it up well). Topped off with how it wasn't clear when enemies died. Like I was fighting & then suddenly it was over & I was really confused.

Also whose idea was it to make R3 the lock-on button? Really awkward to press while you're busy fighting for your damn life without accidentally shifting the camera. There was no option to change this.

Do not recommend this.